Sunday, November 25, 2007

Nine Month Makeover

On Nov. 4th, 2006, Mark, Freddy, Phil, Mandi and I went out into the coldest night of the year and filmed Meter. At 5:11am the camera was so cold it stopped working. As I drove home, I worried what I really had captured. It wasn't until February that I realized that we had done a damn good job and something small turned into something huge. Within the nine months that Meter has been in circulation. We have been excepted to 6 film festivals, placed a close second in two, capturing a mediocre sixth overall prize, with three that have not even taken place yet, (and this is all in North Carolina.) Meter will hopefully be making it to Boston Theatres as it just entered the Boston Film Festival and New England Underground Fest. With the exciting journey of "the little film that could," my buddies who assist me in some of this marketing stuff advised me that I should change the box cover art of the DVD and utilize some of the good review quotes and add the 'official selection' logos given along the way. So over the weekend I did just that. I stripped down all the beveled yellows and pointless 'snaz' making it more basic black as this film is: No Frills. No Snazz. Just Dark.

Let me know what you think.

(Two Official Selections have been blurred out because the festivals have not yet released the finalists to the public, only to the filmmakers and I was told not to spill the beans.

ORIGINAL




1 YEAR ANNIVERSARY


Thursday, November 22, 2007

The Curse of the Little Bambino

I about plunged into the world in the floor board of my father's car back in 1974. It was the first year they were letting dad's back to watch the birth. They wheeled in my mom and by the time my father had put on his gloves and scrubs, BADA BING, I was out. Having little boys in the Lane family would not be so easy after that faithful night, for the Bambino Curse began. Italians are usually good at producing 'little bambinos,' aka, baby boys. It comes natural.


Not in the Lane Family. I was the last boy produced in several attempts with various family members. Estrogen bomb, after estrogen bomb, the little BambinAS arrived.


Upon turning, 21, my grandfather began pressing the issue of how important it was for me to, stay alive long enough to have a son. (I honestly think that may be the only thing he has said to me in 12 years.) "You are the last Lane. You must carry on the Lane name," is what my father and he always say. When Mandi and I decided to have a baby out of wed lock, my family, I was sure was going to disown me, until I realized, "wait a minute... They need me as much as I need them." If I was to have a son, the other technicalities would be overlooked. Well, I guess it is not hard to figure out that in fact, I not only had a baby out of wedlock, (and had not planned to have a shotgun wedding,) but well, I had a girl. "Boy" was I in the shit house. My cousin, (Jennifer,) had no problems producing a boy. My sister at 38 years old had no problem, (will have no problem in December anyway,) in popping out a boy. Imagine that... THEY WEREN'T LANES anymore! Meanwhile, in my wife's family, they were having the same problem. Girl after girl after girl were being produced. They had not had a boy of any sorts for nearly 8 years and there had been a lot of offsprings since. Even in the extended families they were coming up short in the 'little pecker department.'


We were doomed. The odds were stacked against us. Mandi and I reluctantly knew that if we to have another girl we would have to try a third time. We had been real careful and decided on reading "the book" to assure we would get a XY mix the second time around. Then suddenly, we were a cliche' as we got pregnant on our honeymoon. It wasn't quite what we had in mind. The days and weeks pressed on. Mandi and I were both sweating bullets because she wanted a boy as well to be the first for her family and thank God pitied me. She knew my mission would somehow have to be accomplished. "If it is a boy, we're done. If it is another girl, well, we'll wait three to four years and try one more time.... But that's it!! You get two more chances," Mandi professed.  Shit, I didn't want two more times. I was barely making it through the first. The days closed in. Mandi and I both had come to grips with the fact that we were having another girl. 'Preston Velna' would be her name. It was destined. Karma, would come back and beat my ass.


YOU PAY FOR EVERYTHING YOU DO.


Tuesday we went for the sonogram. They made us wait twenty minutes. Within four seconds of the little thingy being pressed on Mandi's belly we knew.


It was over.....................................................................................................................


IT WAS A BOY! I damn near fell out. Anxiety rushed over me as she showed me his little winky. I had never been so relieved in my life. We had done it. I if a failure in everything else I did had produced a little Lane Bambino. We were going to keep it a secret until Thanksgiving. Mandi lasted about 10 minutes out of the doctor's office. Me.. Maybe 15. My grandfather will not know until about 2pm on Thursday afternoon. It may bring the morale up at the Lane Family Thanksgiving. (They had been getting quite bland.)


The curse had lifted. The Lane name will continue on for I am happy to announce that sometime in mid April, Boston Winslow Lane will explode into the world. The reason for his name.... One I love the name and have been waiting years to name him that name, (get past the city, and think about it,) and two, I find it fitting because I had called the drout of testosterone in the families, 'The Curse of the Bambino,' for the last eight years. It was fate that his name would be this. When he asks,why we named him this, I'll give him this exact story and say... "If this doesn't explain it, touch up on your Red Sox history, son." There really is no other name that will suit….


 


Friday, November 2, 2007

I'm Writing a Horror Movie????

Anybody I have ever talked to says that horror film screenplays follow a completely different set of rules and formats. I had always taken a non shalant attitude towards them in general. My theory was, "A bunch of kids somehow congregate in somewhere in some woods or something. Some crazy circus animal shows up in a mask wielding a metal sharp thing of some sorts and well.... The rest is history." The characters in these "slasher/supernatural" films are one dimensional and are basically props for our demented appeitite for blood and destruction. There are exceptions to the rule. See List below:

1. The Shining
2. Rosemary's Baby
3. The Exorcist
4. Psycho
5. Cannibal Holocaust

I had always wanted to write a good Slasher flick. My slasher flick was to be handled a little differently. I wanted to keep all the great qualities of the '80's style horror flick such as, old style effects in gore, cheesy Whitesnake big hair music, mystery machine vans, pot smoking hippies... You know the rest. The difference would be, the kids that normally posed as slabs of meat waiting to be selected by the meat cutter, would actually have stories. The atmosphere would have a story as well. For example and I hate to use this because it kind of blows my cover on a little of the story I stole off of to tell mine, but in 'Delieverance,' the film/book wasn't about four old koots taking off in their canoes down a river just to end up getting caught by a couple of imbred bumpkins who well treat them to a taste of backwood hospitality. It's about riding the river one last time before it disappears due to growth in industry around it. It's about getting out in the wilderness at the ages they are. It's about four friends who have all let life change them in different ways and how they try to get back to the good things during the weekend. Around all that, comes the horror of what happens after the boats hit the river.

All the drama and set up makes the horror way more harder to stomach after you meet these guys. That is what I am going to try and do. I want the audience to like these kids and yes, even though they know the inevitable outcome, they almost fear the moment the nightmare begins because they like these guys so much.

In typing the first 25 pages, I realize I have plot holes and will have to do some reverse engineering to make it perfect, but it is a start.

I use to crank these things out in weeks flat, but then would spend three months to a year rewriting. I found, writing ten to fifteen pages at a sitting, then taking time off, bouncing the ideas around in my head and then going at it again, gets me closer the first time around. One of the most exciting elements of this venture, is that it will be the first feature screenplay, I will have written in almost six years. I wrote two shorts, ghost writed four of my friends', and written 30 pages of an incompleted one since-- But this one, will be the first feature I complete.

I kind of walked away from it, because let's be honest. If you don't have the means to make the film or don't have some kind of clout or know somebody that can get you in a literary agency somewhere, you are really just doing it to make yourself feel good. I have LSD, cocaine and tequila to do that with.






A quick inked sketch of one of my Demented Circus Animals I drew on a 2 hour ferry ride to Ocracoke Island.


Keep up with the all the horror.HERE

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