I wish these were real:

Created and uploaded by jennyrusks to Creative Review.

Great Sunday viewing this. An Orson Welles fronted documentary based on Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock:

Been a fan of Orson since I was a kid and thanks to F for Fake I tend to be more interested in the stuff he did during his ‘decline’. This taps into one of the projects I’m currently working on, but also into stuff like Shift Happens that we’ve been banging on about for years.

To be honest though I can watch/listen to Welles in anything. Once I get this next workload under control I’m treating myself to an evening of old Welles docs that I just acquired.

Life is good.

I was talking to a friend this evening about my love of old school Republic serials and notably Buster Crabbe as Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon. The conversation reminded me I meant to post this ages ago when I was babbling about how movie marketing used to get it so spot on:

It’s part of the original teaser campaign for the then upcoming Flash from some time in the 30s (actually reprinted in the July 1962 of Spacemen magazine).

How the cameramen performed all their magic remains a secret of the studios, never to be revealed…

Which in turn nudged me to link to this post, wonderfully entitled Screenplay Structures, Flash Gordon and the Death of Cinema.

Well worth a read as I think it’s spot on. In fact I was talking about it this morning with a friend in LA as we discussed small format webisodic productions. Most people don’t get it yet, but it’s something I’ve been thinking about for a few years and there’s so much turmoil in the large format right now that it’s gonna pay off to take a closer look at what Buster was up to before WWII.

Exciting times ahead.

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.