Skip to main content
Didn't write yesterday. I was working on getting a package together for the Sundance Film Festival. Trying to keep a low key approach to entering KING'S HIGHWAY into festivals. In particular, the Sundance Festival. I really don't think the movie will get accepted, but there's that little piece of me that's holding out some hope.



For those of you unfamiliar with KING'S HIGHWAY (KH), it's a feature length movie I wrote and directed. It stars Geoff Stults, who has appeared on "7th Heaven" and "Dragnet", Lori Heuring, who starred in a popular thriller called "The In-Crowd" and appeared in David Lynch's "Mulholland Dr.", Ryan Alosio, who was in "The Hi-Line" opposite Rachel Leigh Cook (remember her?) and a funny guy named John DiResta, who was in "Miss Congeniality", "15 Minutes" (opposite De Niro) and has his own series on FX premiering tonight called "Trash for Cash".



We shot the bulk of the movie in 9 days back in May 2001. We had $3000.00 and killed ourselves in that week. It wouldn't have been such a big deal if, say, we were making a movie that takes place in one or two settings and had a few characters. But this is a ROAD trip movie! With Vespa scooters, my parents camper van and a boot car.



Anyway, it took us 2 years to finish the thing. Our actors were out of town when we needed to do pickups, so we had to wait. Our sound guy didn't label anything or call out our shots, so I had to listen to every take while watching the footage and log everything. That took three weeks. Jules and I bought our house and moved. We decided to edit a trailer for KH, which we had to do when our editor was available, so that took about a month (oh, and that trailer was pretty much abandoned after it was completed). Then our editor had to back out, so Villamor (Cruz) had to teach himself Final Cut Pro. And then Jacob was born.



The whole production kind of shut down when Jake was diagnosed. For obvious reasons, I didn't focus on the movie.



2002 was spent editing and doing the sound. Blah blah Blah. If you want to see the final movie, let me know.



My point was that I didn't write yesterday. I got up at 5:30 and ran for forty minutes (approximately 4 miles). I was DEAD by the end of the day, to say the least. Almost didn't have the energy to let the cats in. Today, I rode my bike for about an hour.



I'm having trouble concentrating when I'm out there. I get so stressed about things, it makes it difficult to relax and just exercise.



This entry isn't making much sense, so I'll leave off with a list of the albums in the CD player this past week:



Spingsteen, "Born to Run"

Young Dubliners, "Red"

Men at Work, "Essential Collection" (I'm a glutton for 80's new wave)

Jayhawks, "Rainy Day Music"



I've also added a link to "Radio Paradise", an awesome internet radio station I listen to all of the time.





Comments

Popular posts from this blog

MARATHON FOOTNOTES (for those who didn't think I would really footnote a stream of consciousness thought): Footnote #1 Academy Award Winning Best Picture Films from 1969 to the Present: Midnight Cowboy, Patton, The French Connection, The Godfather, The Sting, The Godfather II, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Rocky, Annie Hall, The Deer Hunter, Kramer Vs. Kramer, Ordinary People, Chariots of Fire, Gandhi, Terms of Endearment, Amadeus, Out of Africa, Platoon, The Last Emperor, Rain Man, Driving Miss Daisy, Dances With Wolves, The Silence of the Lambs, Unforgiven, Schindler’s List, Forrest Gump, Braveheart, The English Patient, Titanic, Shakespeare in Love, American Beauty, Gladiator, A Beautiful Mind, Chicago, Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Footnote #2 Members of the band YES, from 1969 to the present: In 1969, Yes is formed with Jon Anderson on vocals Peter Banks on guitar, Bill Bruford on drums, Tony Kaye on keyboards and Chris Squire playing bass. This group records...

Basement Songs: "Golden Gates" by John Cougar Mellencamp

I’m not sure when my brother, Budd, bought his copy of John (then) Cougar Mellencamp’s “Uh Huh”. The cassette just showed up in the basement on summer, years after its release. Like most of America, I was a big fan of “Pink Houses”, and I was thrilled that now had copies of his other big hits from that album, “Crumblin’ Down” and “The Authority Song.” At this point in his career, Mellencamp was ready to establish himself as a legitimate artist, hence the use of his real name (the record label wouldn’t allow him to ditch the “Cougar” until years later for fear record buyers may get confused….huh?) In addition, there was the radio staple (at least in Cleveland), “Play Guitar”, on side 2, which borrowed heavily from Them’s “Gloria” (Mellencamp often slipped the “G-L-O-R-I-A”’s into his concerts during that number). The rest of “Uh Huh” is filled with more of the same 60’s garage band type of rock that Mellencamp champions, as well as one of Budd’s favorite tunes, the John Prine co-pe...

In Praise of Kanopy

When I was 17, I worked at American Video, a small business housed in the Great Northern shopping strip. My time there was short, as was American Video’s lifespan. The days of the mom-and-pop video stores were cycling out. Blockbuster had just opened in my hometown and within a couple years, American Video, as well as the store where I first fell in love with movies, First Run Video, would shutter their doors. What I loved about these indie video stores was the variety of choices and the limited number of copies of movies each store had. Come in looking for Back to the Future and it’s already rented? You strolled the aisles until you found something similar like Innerspace , or something completely different, like And Now for Something Completely Different, Monty Python’s first movie. Blockbuster, and its cousin Hollywood Video, may have offered more copies of movies, but they didn’t always have the quality. Maybe your Blockbuster was different.   When Netflix and the stre...