This more than makes up for the final season:

MELKONIS
Somebody get the cat.

Roby picks a limp cat out of a freezer.

The above is from the original ALIEN script by Dan O’Bannon. The image is from an original storyboard by Ridley Scott himself.

It was always about the cat.

“Let’s not talk about it anymore,” I said. “It gets worse and worse somehow. I wish I’d never laid eyes on the stupid book.” I remember his exact words then. “We can’t turn back the clock now. It’s in us. If we close our eyes, it will jump out at us in the darkness”. I didn’t know what the “it” referred to, whether he meant the story or evil or an amorphous presence, and I didn’t ask. By then I didn’t want to hear. At the same time, I was ensnared like a person in a horror movie who covers his eyes and then peeks.

The Blindfold, Siri Hustvedt

A segment from “On Screen!” looking at Cronenberg’s Shivers (1975):

I completely forgot to mention that I was invited to the Royal premiere of Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland last week. Fun night.

I reviewed the movie for Twitch here. Lots of complaints that it wasn’t dark enough, but I enjoyed it.

But if you want dark…

San Francisco in 1905:

1906

My last trip to LA started out as a personal one. Lots of people reached out at the end of last year after the sizzle broke and my email went crazy for a little while. Some of those email conversations lead to some very interesting phone calls and I decided a trip early in 2010 was probably a good idea. January was taken up in Ireland working with Ciaran – something I hope we can get back to later this year – but by February I was in Hollywood with a couple of fun meetings in my diary. Although I take my work seriously I tend to be pretty laid back in general so rather than being phased by some of the people I was in town to see I figured it was best to just jump at the opportunity and make sure I had a good time. As it turned out it went far better than I could have anticipated and if I’d known what some of those meetings would entail I’d probably not have been so confident.

As luck would have it I also managed to take in a few Slingers meetings on the same trip. Toby arrived a few days after me and we doubled up on a couple of things as we make a pretty good double act at this point. It was very cool to talk to so many people who have been in the industry for so long who, after having access to the Slingers bible, wanted to learn more about the world we’d created. Some of the writers on some of my favourite shows are now fans of what we’re trying to do and that’s an incredible confidence boost personally, but also a resounding proof of concept for Slingers.

The trip was also a chance to catch up with some old friends on Leverage and make some new ones. My next trip is probably going to be a lot busier and with a higher alcohol intake. Just working out the dates now for when that will be, but at the end of this month I’m in Portland and San Francisco (and a few places in between – road trip!). So the bottom line is I’ll be popping back to the States on a regular basis this year I think.

The long term plan of moving out there is now just about within reach. Already started getting the flat ship-shape for rental, but there’s a few things to fall into place first. As with the show though things are looking extremely positive.

So about those fun meetings I took…

The upshot of one of them is that I now have management in Los Angeles. Tucker and Evan over at Principato-Young Entertainment took me by surprise by offering to sign me on the spot. I tried my best to talk them out of if, but these guys are not for turning. Once I turned my diary over to them to fill in a few of the gaps my week got very interesting.

For the next few days I found myself pitching to some of the biggest production companies in Hollywood and I’m still coming to terms with how well that went. If I list all the people I saw I’ll come across as more of a name-dropping fuck than I already am, but I’m comfortable in saying that some of my crazier ideas are now sat on some pretty interesting desks. One of those is all ready to jump from the board to first draft so my first feature script should be doing the rounds come April.

The few people I’ve discussed this little whirlwind with have all said the same thing, “You must be overwhelmed…” I’ve actually been too busy with the TV shows and the first feature outline* to reflect on the trip too much. Even on the flight back I was reading a script I’d been asked to give notes on and it’s been non stop since then. The plan is certainly not to get overwhelmed – “Toil, never recoil” as Godefroy used to shout.

And as with everything else there are a few thousand different ways that I can fuck this up so we’ll see how far I get.

I’ll keep you posted.

* I’m writing a horror movie. Weird.

I’ve had this open in my browser all day. Then I printed it out and stuck it on the wall. I’ll let you know if it ever gets old.

2010 feels like it just got upgraded somehow. Feb’s dead, baby. Feb’s dead.

I just finished putting a new board together for one of several projects I’ve got up on the wall at the moment. Busy year this. I’ll break some of this down and let you know what’s filling my days over the next couple of posts.

Last week over at Sleepydog HQ we had the first development meeting on the project that’s taking shape in the wake of Slingers. No idea how much I can tell you about that at this stage, although we will be blogging from the development room from time to time so stuff is bound to leak a little. I guess it’s safe to say that it’s sci fi (sort of) and police procedural (kinda). But only in the same way that Slingers is a sci fi heist show – we tend to build on those basics pretty fast and as ever are being outrageously ambitious. Hope to introduce you to the show as soon as possible but for now I can’t even tell you where it’s set…

Another meeting on this tomorrow so I’ll tweet when I can. And Toby seems to be in Canada. No idea why…

I really wasn’t prepared for this. Check out the latest Downfall parody care of Nik.

If you don’t know what the hell’s going on here then check out this comment from the director of the scene.

Now we just need to be rickrolled…

What is that little thing?

I’m good at avoiding the trivial (yet am pretty good at trivia – go figure). Twitter brings hints that there’s a wider world out there – a mention of a footballer here or a pop star there. If what ever it is that they’re doing (besides shifting tabloids) explodes into something big enough to become a movie or get referenced in a (good) tv show then off I’ll go to Wikipedia for the context. I’m aware Michael Jackson died, but I’ve heard maybe four of his songs. I did actually buy the Thriller album on vinyl, but for the Vincent Price bit after seeing the John Landis video – still confused why they ruined a perfectly good zombie/werewolf short with all that dancing crap. Come to think of it I’m not sure I ever played the other side of that record.

My dad had a lot of Johnny Cash and Charlie Parker records.

But let’s get back to that little pixelated white dot. Little doesn’t mean trivial:

Descent of Phoenix with a crater in the background taken by Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter

The Reddit thread I spotted this on is worth a read.

“Although it appears that Phoenix is descending into the crater, it is actually about 20 kilometers (about 12 miles) in front of the crater.”

O_0

All this made me think of Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot. Good to revisit that every now and again – Voyager 1 is too busy.

Next time you get bored of the tabloids or are about to complain about the weather just look up. You need really good eyes, but the imagination part is helped along a lot by some little metal things doing their thing on an entirely different planet. On behalf of us.

High five.