SPIRITEUR diary

Just met with Hector Mata last night and delivered a copy of Spiriteur that I revised to make it work in the desert and with the constraints of a guerrilla (no) budget. He's jazzed. I'm jazzed.

There's a lot of press about a zombie movie at Cannes right now that cost $70 to make, and that means that (like I predicted several years ago) the flood gates to new cinema are officially open. And we're surfing that wave!

We're tentatively slated to start shooting Spiriteur during the first week of August. I can't wait. Now it's time for me to start putting together all the production needs. On that note, I've contacted the fantastic writer and porn star Mae Victoria and she's agreed to collaborate with us and play April, Summer's mother. She really gets the whole philosophy of mmmmmongrel as well as this particular story, and I cannot wait to see how she creates April.

red hands diary

Hector has given the okay to put out the rough cut of Dirty Red Hands, episode 11. It's a rough cut remix, which means the final sound mixing and color correction haven't been done yet. If you want to see it go here:

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/video/video.php?v=99187183808&oid=140229615416

This is the future, now. And it's all for you.

The rest of the movie be done by July. Right now we're still forging ahead with the release party. Actually, we've decided to have two, one hopefully at the Silverlake Tavern, which will be the down and dirty party, and the other will be a more refined possibly "garden party" -- cocktails and croquet, that sort of thing.

I'll keep you informed about how it's all shaping up.

SPIRITEUR diary

So it looks like the new mongrel movie is going to be called SPIRITUER.

It's a post-modern ghost story that I've been working on, on and off since I got out of grad school. It was originally set in Maine, but after going out to the high desert a couple months ago I became inspired to change it to that location.

It's a very disturbing and powerful story, sort of old school b/c there's not blood or gore. But at the same time it's very explicit and new school, especially the way I constructed the narrative.

I sent a draft of the script to the Red Hands gang and based on their reaction I did the rewrites to change the location and scale it down to make it more guerrilla friendly. I'll finish these revisions this weekend and send it out again.

We could do shoot it in about a week up in Joshua Tree and Palm Desert, for about a grand, if we play it smart. Looks like most of the gang is interested.

I'm very interested. This is a story I've been trying to tell for a while. It looks like the lonely ghost is finally getting born...

Last Friday the cast and crew of Dirty Red Hands met at Neti's place to watch what Hector's assembled so far. Groovy shit. Hector has taken the material in a VERY Kar Wai Wong direction. I don't personally like Wong that much, but that's because I think he's a suck-ass writer. Seeing as how I know I'm not, I'm extremely interested to see what Hector does with his editing of the rest of the movie. Just to make sure he stays on track I made him promise not to go off the deep end into Maya Deren territory (we aren't making a wine and cheese movie, we're making a popcorn and Guinness movie). I also am trying to force him to watch Performance and
Code inconnu: Récit incomplet de divers voyages to keep him on track.

During the screening I dumped a new script on the gang. It's a post-modern ghost story I've written called at this point SPIRITEUR (based on a novella I'm also thinking of turning into a podcast). I want to shoot it in the high desert. Really weird, creepy stuff. So far, no one really seems to like it except me. We'll see what the gang's reaction is.

After the screening we went to check out the

HYPERION TAVERN

where I want to have the soft opening of Dirty Red Hands. They seem interested in hosting us on a Friday like the first week of June or so. I'll go back next week with some footage to blow them away and finalize the deal. It'll go great and then I'm also putting together a hard opening later on in the month at this club in downtown. Groovy.

Meanwhile I continue to do Hollywood projects to try to raise the money we need to finish the traditional shoot of RED HANDS. Just finished a treatment with my Hollywood writing partner Bryn Mooser. It was commissioned by Billy Zane and this African prince. This Nollywood crossover project. I'm really happy with what we turned in - it's like Coming to America meets The Blues Brothers, meets Midnight Run. Right. Should find out in a couple of weeks if we're going ahead with it, and if that happens I'll start dumping my salary into RED HANDS, and hopefully SPIRITEUR. As it should be.

red hands diary

This amazing poster was created by Daniel Van Thomas, who also is playing the AGENT in DIRTY RED HANDS. I'm so blown away by his talent and so pleased he's involved with this project. If you want to work with him you better put extra zinc on your lips when you kiss his ass because this kid is HOT.

What else... Neshia is hooking it up with the promoters for the party the first week of June... Hector is busy editing a rough cut so we can have something to look at during our cast and crew viewing party next week - where we're also going to final the LLC for this pretty little baby... Looks like we might need to a little more pick ups and re-shoots than originally planned - I think when everyone sees the amazing shit we've got so far they'll be more than into it... Oh right, and it looks like I might be able to get funding for the traditional version of Red Hands through the Prince of Nigeria. No, I'm not kidding. More on this later, if it ends up developing the way I think it might.