Johnny Hammer Sticks meet Captain Tying Knots...

Friday Fun invites you to join musicians Dan Deacon & Liam Lynch on an acid trip inspired animated short ride to the other side...



...because it makes me smile.


Via Diane Kristine

Light Me Up, Babe...

Those of us stuck out in the sticks or the boonies (or just not lucky enough to be part of any cable package in Canada that offers the AMC network) have had to endure months of listening to everyone else exalt the praises of Mad Men. That is until CTV began to broadcast the series last month on Sunday nights. But I've already missed a couple of episodes, so it was with much delight I purchased the DVD box set of Season 1 when it was released this week.

To coincide with the release, TV critic Alan Sepinwall gives it a nice write up, and today Jaime Weinman does up another one of his most excellent 'Better Know a Writing Staff' pieces over at TV Guidance.



And to ensure the cool factor award, it's packaged in a classy silver and black flip-top case...you know, like a Zippo lighter. Mmmm....Beavis has got himself something hot to watch this summer.

F***in' With Sesame Street...

I know these sorts of laughs are so so soooooo cheap and easy, but the Beavis in me still can't help sniggering...




Found via Anon

Make, Release, And Catch 'The Nines'

Thanks much to John August for his very informative yet terribly sobering wrap up to his journey that was The Nines. And because his feature directing debut and its subsequent theatrical/DVD release was so firmly rooted in the world of the small independent film, thus making it like pretty much all Canadian feature films, I thought it worth excerpting some of Mr. August's wisdom.

A quote from Mark Gill in the LA Times last week would seem discouraging for independent filmmakers:

Of the 5,000 films submitted to Sundance each year — generally with budgets under $10million — maybe 100 of them got a U.S. theatrical release three years ago. And it used to be that 20 of those would make money. Now maybe five do. That’s one-tenth of 1%. Put another way, if you decide to make a movie budgeted under $10 million on your own tomorrow, you have a 99.9% chance of failure.

There are lots of ways to criticize his logic. For starters, most Sundance movies are way under $10 million. Many are under a million. And he seems to omit a figure for how many indie films are getting a theatrical release now as opposed to three years ago.

We need to ask, “Failure for whom?” Even a movie that doesn’t earn its budget back will likely make money for its distributors, once you factor in video and TV sales. More crucially, a good indie film generates future work for its stars and filmmakers. So there’s a lot of success to be found in that 99.9% failure.

All that said, he’s kind of right.

He's kind of right...shiiiit. That's some bad odds. August goes on to say that his movie turned out just the way he wanted, but the release of the movie was deeply disappointing. Thankfully though, he doesn't do a lot of finger pointing but instead lists several crucial stages in the The Nines release, from Sundance screenings to the DVD hitting the shelves, and then explains what he might have done differently at each stage vs. what actually went down.

Take Sundance for example --- August lists all the other films in addition to his that had buzz when he was there, and then lays out how they ultimately performed.

Eighteen months later, it’s fascinating to see how little the festival buzz mattered. Prices for these movies — a key component of buzz, as in, “Did you hear how much it sold for?” — were all over the board, from the low six-figures to $7 million for Son of Rambow.

But it made no difference. They all pretty much tanked.

Waitress sold quickly, was released quickly, and made the most by far at the box office ($19M).3 Second place was Under the Same Moon ($12.5M), followed by Once ($9M) and How She Move ($7M). Son of Rambow will likely end up in fifth. It’s currently in release, and made $8M overseas.

In terms of box office, none of these are hits in the way Little Miss Sunshine was. But you’d be happy being any of them, because beyond those five, the other movies on the list fell off a cliff. None of them made a million. In fact, most didn’t make it over $100,000. The Nines didn’t, despite opening well.

But at least we opened. At least we sold. For our year, 3,287 feature films were submitted to Sundance, of which 122 played. Roughly 20 played in theaters.

Wow. That's some kind of seriously depressing numbers game going on. And here I was last week criticizing Canadian release Young People F**king for only mustering up around a 300,000 gross over the past month (this considering all the free publicity surrounding the film and Bill C-10) ...but damn, perhaps I was a little harsh.

Or maybe, as August says later in his post, "(for the small independent feature)...theatrical release is kinda bullshit."


I get a lot of questions every year from students or up and comers about why does the Canadian feature film biz suck... or why aren't more Canuck features in theatres... or how easy or hard is it to make a low budget feature film... and the takeaway is it's really f**king hard for everyone. And then you have to try to get people to see it, which in many ways can be even harder than making the damn thing.


Thanks for sharing John...the post in all its honest and straightforward entirety is entitled 'Sundance, The Nines, and the Death of the Independent Film', and you can read it HERE.

Wanted Wanting & Slutting The Links

Saw Wanted on Friday night...lots of good loud sexy mind-bending fun, thanks in part to solid performances from James McAvoy and Angelina Jolie, but primarily due to the incredibly imaginative visual stylings of Russian-Kazakh film director Timur Bekmambetov. Bekmambetov is best known for his effects-ladden vampire franchise Night Watch and Day Watch...and he brings more A-game to Wanted.

Seriously, check out this dude's work --- it's like the Wachowski Brothers on steroids.


But speaking of the Wachowski's, Wanted was no Matrix, even though much of its story was structurally similar. Regular guy...works in cubicle...finds out he has special abilities...learns to use them --- I won't play spoilers...but will say that not only was The Matrix groundbreaking as far as visual effects go, it still holds up as an exciting, well-told story today (I had to watch Neo do his thing again later that night). Wanted's story wasn't bad but it left me wanting... more.

LINK SLUTTING EDIT: Sex In The Sub's Bill Martell rambles on not only about Wanted but also the ups and downs of a possible SAG strike (see further down) over at his digs.

---

And speaking of directors, Ken Levine writes a nice post about 'Why Writers Direct', including this snippet...

No, the real reason writers want to direct is this: directing is easier. Sure there are long hours, a million stupid questions (who gives a fuck what color the floss is? It’s floss!!), difficult actresses, and Faye Dunaway. But your job is to make something that already exists work. That’s a whole lot easier than creating something out of nothing.

He's right you know...but even though its easier, I will still give top marks to the good smart directors out there who can take that something that already exists on the page and elevate it, I mean really elevate it, to a new and exciting level. Like a Timur Bekmambetov for example...

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And go get educated by Nikki Finke about where things are at and where they might go regarding a possible SAG (Screen Actors Guild) strike. The actors contract with the AMPTP expires end of this month, and a lot of what you'll read will sound exactly like what was heard earlier this year during the WGA writers strike, and it is...the same i mean...but hopefully, lessons were learned then by the studios and networks and another extended work stoppage can be avoided (it's certainly slowing down right now for a lot of Canadian service producers I know). Or perhaps another shutdown is exactly what the Big Seven want...


That said.... Happy Canada Day everyone.

Get The Dumpling!

Yes, it was rather simplistic with a predictable storyline, but still the most fun I've had at the cinema so far this year was watching Dreamworks latest animated effort Kung Fu Panda. Chock full of several very imaginative and visually stunning sequences...the highlight was this Friday Fun-worthy chopsticks battle over a dumpling...



Because it made me smile...and say 'kewl'.

(X)PS....I Love You

Mmmmm....is there anything prettier than a new laptop right out of the box?



Beavis has to transfer over all his files, and then it's time to play.

Diane Gets Busy...And Bible Belting

Ms. Diane Kristine has been busy, not only providing us with some interesting interviews via her BlogTalkRadio podcast with Canadian TV directors Martin Wood and David Winning...LISTEN HERE...but also piecing together a nice TV writing post gleaned from her time in Banff spent with House's David Hoselton and Jeff Greenstein from Desperate Housewives.

One snippet that stood out for me was this:

Hoselton confirmed that House doesn't have a show bible, a document that supposedly collects the known facts of the series. "It's sort of a joke," he revealed. "Every now and then, somebody will say 'Where does Wilson live?' 'I don't know, it's in the bible.' "

Greenstein suggested show bibles are not particularly common or useful, given the collective memory of the writing staff and the availability of episodes and scripts online. "If there's one on Desperate Housewives, I haven't seen it." In fact, he hasn't read a bible for any of his shows. "It's probably a useful tool if you're a freelancer," he shrugged. "But the series bible to me is a relic of pre-Internet days. It's not necessarily a tool we worry about."

Pretty much every US showrunner I've spoken with over the past few years has echoed this sentiment, that TV series bibles are a thing of the past. There might be a pitch document that gives character overviews and the gist of the show and where it all might go, but once it gets rolling the 'bible' really only lives in the writers room and showrunner's head.

But here in Canada for some reason, bibles continue to be a broadcaster-required necessary evil. I suppose it helps the execs maintain some control over the creative process ("That can't happen, it's not in the bible!"), but it can truly stifle the natural progression of things.

Good TV series don't happen according to a hard and fast pre-designed plan...they evolve. Of course you need a jumping off point, but once production begins, actor chemistry develops and character relationships take on a life of their own...pitches that sounded great don't end up that way on the page...arcs that felt right don't play out as well as expected....budget crunches require a bottle show or a lot of studio shooting...and then there's the audience response to take into account. And by that I don't mean listening to the screeching of the Internet fan boy/girls...I mean getting a sense of what viewers are responding to once shows go to air (what they are digging and what they aren't) and then applying it to future episodes.

And most importantly, there's 'the rooms' response to produced episodes. If you are any good as a creative, you should be able to recognize if something is working or not. But that can't happen if the season is being mapped out in minute detail from beginning to end prior to filming even beginning. And if it wasn't working, it'd be so painful to keep adhering to the bible because someone upstairs kept saying you had to...and by upstairs I don't mean God, though some may see themselves that way.

I'd forgotten I'd written about this subject last year, but pretty much everything I said then still holds water now.

The only shows I worked on that had bibles that were truly helpful and continually updated were Mentors, Are You Afraid of the Dark?, and The Outer Limits. Note that all these were anthology series of sorts...and unlike most shows today, they used to hire a lot of freelance writers. So the bible was primarily an overview of the 'rules of the show' and the continuing characters (if any), and then a synopsis of all the stories produced thus far (so the freelancer would know what not to pitch). That kind of bible made sense...but in today's day and age of most series being written in the room by the staff, not so much sense.

And for Canadian shows entering their 2nd or even 3rd season, it really really makes no sense at all.

Read the entire post by Diane HERE.


EDIT: And as usual, anything I say here McGrath says better (and longer)...go read the big guy riff on Bible bashing over at DeadThings.

When The Good Stuff Gets Taken From Us...

...it's a sad day indeed.



I always had and always will have a place for Carlin's stuff. RIP.

Musically Tagged...Or What's Making Me Sing These Days

I've sort of avoided playing the tag game for some time now, but UK's Blowing My Thought Wad hit me up with one that I'm happy to take a run at...


“List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re not any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now.”


In no particular order, here are my Magnificent Seven:

1) High & Dry' by Radiohead...



...from the new cd release Best of Radiohead...only purchased because I have always thought of Radiohead as an 'album band' as opposed to 'hit artists', and wanted to see if a compilation of their better known songs would be an enjoyable listen. It's okay, but still like their albums better.


2) 'War On War' by Wilco...



...after finally watching the marvelous music documentary I Am Trying To Break Your Heart about the making of the band's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot album.


3) 'We Rock' by the Jonas Brothers et al...



...because 'Camp Rock' airs tonight, and my kids won't stop playing/singing it....and I find myself singing along. Shrug.


4) 'The Funeral' by Band Of Horses...



....because my eldest recently turned me onto them, which in turn made me want to pull out my old dusty copy of...


5) 'Chloe Dancer/Crown of Thorns' by Mother Love Bone...



...one of the pioneers of the Seattle grunge scene before singer Andrew Wood's untimely death, and first cassette tape of 'check this band out' music sent to me by Hart Hanson....


6) 'Stickboy' by The Hanson Brothers...



...because Henshaw thinks it should be the new HNIC theme.


7) And coming full circle sort of, Prince's live cover of Radiohead's 'Creep' at Coachella last month...

*WATCH CLIP HERE* - F'in Prince keeps taking down YouTube clips*



...because it's so smokin' hot cool (damn that boy can still sing AND play guitar)


The final instruction is to tag seven other people to see what they’re listening to. Well those seven that are magnificent are:

Um...McGrath, Weinman, Henshaw, Girotti, Rogers, Christina, and Jane... plus anyone else who wants to play (I'm looking at you Epstein and Diane)

.

Gooooooooaaaaaaalllll(s)...Of Blogging

This blogging as hobby but a form of networking thing still continues to pleasantly surprise me. As happened last year, I had a lot of people at Banff last week pull me aside to say hello and that they read the blog all the time. In fact, I found it almost disconcerting that maybe 2 out of 5 people I met randomly had heard of 'Will Dixon'...but on more than one occasion someone in the group would pipe up: 'Oh, he's Uninflected Images...", and then more like 4 out of 5 would say "Ohhhhhh!" (in a good way).

And when I asked why they read, one young aspiring writer from out West described this blog as a kinda cool stream of consciousness thing about the industry, and a great compliment to Dead Things, Complications, and The Legion.

So I got that going for me...which is nice.

And the networking factor extends far beyond this continent...for example, English Dave (whose most excellent UK blog Was It Something I Wrote? continues to shine) posts about finding himself on the set of Bones over in London the other day...says hello to Hart, and my name/blog comes up as common ground...very cool.

So with across the pond in mind, Euro 2008 soccer is down to the final games...so Friday Fun has to be this announcer...



GOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAL!!!!

Because it makes me smile...