Show Me Your Indies

IndieFlix, an On-Demand DVD site where you can buy a standard edition of "The Bet" without specials features for $5.95, has a special site called "Show Me Your Indies." As part of that, they are highlighting filmmakers with films for sale with a "What the heck are IndieFlix filmmakers up to?" blog. Mine is up now. They asked 10 questions. My responses are at the link (opens a new window).

Sometimes technology is better than people

Hello the man in the planet, We at BLOODY-DISGUSTING.COM would like to wish you a happy bloody birthday!

'nuff said.

First feedback on "Detox"

Kurt Rauf gave feedback on the latest draft of Detox. Kurt was the DP on "The Bet" and many other films, including My Name Is Bruce with his buddy Bruce Campbell. Kurt's leaving to go to Michigan next week to catch the tour of MNIB. But he managed to get through the latest draft and make notes.

It'd be pretty much impossible to go into any kind of detail regarding the notes and have it make sense without having first read the script. So I won't - at least not yet. What I will say is Kurt said we went from a mediocre script (draft 4) to a pretty damn good one. He agreed it was a drama that has horrific elements and thriller trappings, but it's not a horror film, nor a thriller. He had absolutely no problems with the story/plot; his comments were mainly on dialogue (we were a bit wordy), artifacts of plot devices removed from previous drafts and some suggestions to punch up the characters a bit.

Still waiting for other responses, but so far, not too drastic of changes.

Oh, and today is the notification date for The Movie Deal. They haven't posted the winners yet, but, based on previous experience, I'd say we'd have known by now if we won.

Horror

I just blogged about the first script pitch for Detox over at the Detox blog HERE. And at the end I mentioned wanting to write a horror script that couldn't construed as anything BUT horror. You'd think that'd be easy. And, I guess, it would. But maybe my brain is just not wired that way. I set out for Detox to be classifiably horror as a reaction to "The Bet" not being perceived as horror. Now, I am looking to write something else that's horror since Detox isn't perceived that way.

Anyhoo. I think the problem I keep running into is that, for the most part, horror films are stupid. They're good, but there's usually not much to them storywise. And if there is, they start to move into other genres. Slasher films are undeniably horror and their scripts are usually pretty lame. Group of unsuspecting people trapped somewhere isolated and picked off one-by-one. Sure, a film like Wolf Creek follows that, but front loads with a lot of character development and was unapologetically brutal. A Nightmare on Elm Street mixed things up by adding fantasy elements. The Thing added sc-fi elements. Maybe I just don't know what horror is.

Actually, I do. I recently was going nuts trying to come up with a short film idea. I had ideas with horrific elements, but they didn't feel like horror. According to Wikipedia, "Horror films are movies that strive to elicit fear, horror and terror responses from viewers." Seems pretty simple. And by that definition, "The Bet" is a horror film. It may not have worked for everyone and may have been very light in the fear arena, favoring other darker emotions, but it did "strive to elicit fear."

I think what I'm expecting out of myself is something more traditionally horror. Something with blood and monsters and screaming. The new idea I've got cooking is definitely looking good in the blood department. It might not be the best way to write a script, but going in I'm determined to get a lot of blood, a lot of sex, a lot of nudity, a lot of screaming, a lot of death. I'm sure it will somehow, in the process, skew off into a more heady direction - and that's fine. I'll just make sure to keep the blood flowing on the screen.

Obama. FTW!

Thank you.
Let's hope change really does come.
Cos we need it.

And thank you, especially, to Shannon. She made me want to vote. And if she made ME vote, she made others (and I know she did). And, considering the number of new voters, there were a lot of Shannons out there.

I just hope America's vote for change is real.
Cos we need it.