SPIRITEUR diary

SPIRITEUR DIARY - 10/19/9 - okay, so I've been doing the movie journal stuff at mmmmmongrel.blogspot.com, but I hate jumping around from site to site and right now all the action is right here.

Spiriteur began as an germ in my head when I was temping after I graduated from AFI back in 2000. I'd file and xerox reports at this company in Burbank and it was so tedious and boring that I started to try to think up the scariest stuff I could, just to keep from numbing out. I started thinking about scary movies, like really scary movies, not just thrillers dressed up as scary movies. I started writing SPIRITEUR, working on it in between other writing projects. When I finished the first draft in 2002 I gave it to my manager at the Pitt Group. They told me it was "too small," "too disturbing."

I kept noodling with it in between other projects for the next seven years. After MONGREL COLLECTIVE finished the guerrilla version of my crime thriller Red Hands back in July (we've just finished editing it and are getting ready to put it out there for you and send it off to Slamdance, but that's another story), SPIRITEUR seemed like the next logical step.

In future posts I'll give you the skinny on the production process and hopefully inspire you to collaborate with us in the future, or even go out and make your own movie, which we've proven can be done quickly for virtually no money if you're down with the MONGREL dogma.

RED HANDS diary

So we had an official LLC meeting a couple weeks ago where I impressed upon our editors that the sooner they finish they're cuts, even if it's just a rough cut of the full feature, the sooner we can shop it around and start hooking up places where we can screen it. I think they got the message.

Last Friday I went out with Refael (our web guru) and Daniel (our actor and graphic designer) to some bars downtown to look at potential possibilities. We started at the top with the Standard and worked our way straight into the gutter with the Smell (which was closed, but the smell lingered on...). At around 1:30, still having not found a place that was suitably hip and progressive and gritty, but still affluent I took the party over to the Echo in Echopark. This was paydirt. The Echo has everything and most importantly has the right crowd. I don't think Refael was that impressed, especially with the women. That's okay, he'll come around that the real visercal excitement of a place like the Echo far outplays the plastic cliche fantasy of the Standard. We shot footage of this great outing and should have a videopodcast for the site as soon as Refael can find the connecting wires.

I've recorded a couple more MONGREL podcasts, which in various forms are available on the site. I think I'll have to set up another site dedicated to the podcasts. So be it. After three I'm starting to get the hang of the technical aspects.

The collective agreed that August will be about loading content onto the site, and that at the beginning of September we'll have the launch party. We're going for a "white trash" theme, complete with mud wrestling and homemade moonshine. We'll raise some money from this party to help pay for our state business tax in November. In October, from this momentum we've established, we'll have the big desert party in Palm Springs. I'm going out to the desert this Tuesday to solidify the details of that with Kimberly Nichols, our desert party queen.

Next objective - T-shirts.

Stay tuned to www.dirtyredhands.com to see how this all continues to develop.

red hands diary

Last Sunday I drove out to the high desert and met with Kimberly Nichols who's this very cool artist/writer friend of mine. She's agreed to do net marketing with us and we're blessed to have her talents.

She's also helping us set up this awsome rave party out in the desert to officially launch the
www.dirtyredhands.com

site. At this point we're looking to have it August first. Like a thousand people in the warehouse of artist Robert Dunahay
www.robertdunahay.com

Should be an extreme sort of freakout. Robots, lasers, artists and desert scoundrels and mongrels raving it up. Because I'm a total follower of the Corman aesthetic I'm even planning on shooting footage for the next movie I'm putting together with the Mongrel Collective: SPIRITEUR. Everyone's invited. If you come out you could be in the new movie! In any case you'll be able to meet all us and join this very cool and exciting revolution. And get drunk and walk into Joshua Trees. Burning Man eat your toasty heart out. Stay tuned to this blog or join the mmmmmongrel group at Facebook to get the exact dates and times.

What else is going on? Refael continues to tweak and update the site. Hector and Khoren continue to cut their versions of DRH. Once we get a finished version I'll put together a "package" and start casting about for corporate investors. That should be fun.

We're having another meeting next Friday to see how the episodes are grinding out and to also talk t-shirt and other merc exploitation. I'll keep you in the loop.

red hands diary

Had an official DRH LLC meeting last night where the collective talked about how we want the website to try to make money. We all agreed that all the versions (both of them) should be available on a LIBRARY page of the website, and that on the main page we'll have several episodes that we change every couple of days. Instead of charging people for watching the episodes we're gonna try to cash in with ads. I like this. It follows the network TV model and the rock and roll band model. We'll have ads on the website and we'll sell episodes to ad-based interenet TV networks. What's crucial then is we need to really create buzz and get an internet marketer on board who'll plug like crazy all over the net... Following the rock and roll track some more we also decided that we could really use some corporate sponsorship. Niall said he was able to hook this up for a fanzine he worked on back in Chicago, back in the day. Once we have a finished feature we'll put together a "package" and go for it. I have no idea how to lure corporate sponsors so I guess I'll learn as I go. We all agreed that best way to get anyone, corporate or otherwise, to the site was just to be really fucking cool. People look for and try to connect with shit that's really cool. We are really cool, and we're sexy and fun, and I still think having parties is a critical tool for getting people involved and spreading the word. I keep hitting a wall with this myself so I'll just keep putting it out there that DRH is looking for a party promoter to help us get things started in the downtown, Echo Park, Highland Park, Silverlake, Los Feliz, Hollywood area. I know it'll happen, and when it does, it's going to be huge and sick.

Tomorrow I travel out to Palm Desert to meet with a prospective internet marketer and also plan the huge premiere launch party, which should be really cool - robots, lasers, one thousand mad desert artists and moviemakers... I'll keep you in the loop about the where's and when.

RED HANDS diary

Well, I realize I said that this diary was moving over to
www.dirtyredhands.com
but there's still some pretty serious bugs in that system so until we get them fixed I'll keep people up to date here.

We finally finished our shooting. Last weekend we did our picks ups and inserts on Saturday, and then our reshoots on Sunday. Things went very well. Only one person called 911, and that was in the valley so we really should have seen it coming. I guess she didn't like us pretending to beat the shit out of someone under her window during church hours. She told the police on the phone that our camera was a gun and well, that's what you call a wrap. We bolted and no one was pinched.

Ed and Neti and Myles shot a final scene that we didn't get at the downtown bar on their own last Wednesday. That's a hot shit crew for you - no money, no producer, no glory - and they still went out and got gold. Love. I've been looking at the results on Khoren's final cut pro and everything looks very cool. We're still on track for having it all up and running by the end of the month.

I've been putting up DRH fliers all over Silverlake and even though I'm green to street promotion I learned quickly that my height is a big advantage. The higher up the flyer on the telephone pole the longer it stays up.

Next Friday we'll meet and talk about what and how to sell stuff. This is the perfect time. This is the time of innocence and splendor and there are no rules and we are all absolute beginners. It's our time.

SPIRITEUR diary

We (me, the writer/producer, Ed Joyce, the director, and Khoren Mirzakhanian, the editor) went to the desert last Sunday to do the location scouting. It's very noir out there. Stephen Mooser, the acclaimed children's book author, has graciously allowed us to shoot at his guest house in Joshua Tree and it's going to be perfect. Originally in the script I written the sex/sacrifice/black magic scene to drop in a basement. No basements in the high desert, but there is a natural cave in the hills next to the guest house which will be even cooler!

We then met with Kimberly Nichols, who's this really cool artist/writer who lives in Palm Desert. She's interested in helping us secure some more locations and organizing the community to get involved. More exciting is that she's agreed to play Katie, the psychic.

At this point we're still on track for the end of July/first week of August shoot. I'll go out again in a couple weeks to nail down the rest of the locations and deal with other logistical issues. The weekend of the 17th we'll do a podcast of the novella and, if it all comes together, throw a party to celebrate the completion of last MONGREL COLLECTIVE movie (DIRTY RED HANDS) and to shoot the rave scenes of SPIRITEUR. I'll keep you informed on this blog what's happening with that party and if you come to it you'll BE in SPIRITEUR. Won't that be fun!