World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks

This was a super interesting story, well executed, but not super well written . . . actually, let’s say this, the story’s writing didn’t reach as high as the story’s ambition.

It’s an oral history, so it’s told by many different narrators . . . except they all sound the same . . . like having the same actor play all the roles.

I hear that the audio book is awesome because all the different parts are played by different actors . . . which would probably help with the voice thing.

Anyway, that’s the only negative I found in the book. The story was super fascinating with a slow burn terror that turns into hope through the indomitable nature of the Human Spirit.

One of the things that Brooks did that I loved was he was very subtle in how he revealed the story. When the book starts, all you know is that there was a Massive Global Zombie Outbreak that almost wiped out the human race, but now it’s over . . . mostly. Then Brooks starts dropping hints as to what transpired. He never out right tells you. He just casually mentions things and then a couple chapters later you find out what he was talking about.

I really liked this book. It was disturbing in few areas, for sure, but way less than I was expecting. The horror came more from the reality of the collapse of civilization than the actual zombie threat (kinda like Red Dawn). Unfortunately because some chapters were rife with profanity I can’t, with clear conscience, recommend it without a strong caveat . . . but dang it was great, especially when the human race rises up from the brink of extinction and turns the tide.

Way to go, Human Race!

I’ll be everywhere.
Wherever you can look.
Wherever there’s a fight, so hungry Bothans can eat, I’ll be there. 
Wherever there’s a Storm Trooper beatin’ up an Ewok, I’ll be there. 
I’ll be in the way Tusken Raiders yell when they’re mad. 
I’ll be in the way a Sarlacc laughs when it’s hungry and it knows supper’s ready, and when the Jawas are sellin’ the droids they scavenge and livin’ in the Sand Crawlers they build,
I’ll be there, too.

It’s been a long while since I’ve drawn, scanned and digital colored anything.  Though I was horribly rusty and slow, I really enjoyed doing it again.

In response to Time Out’s 50 greatest animated films (which I have issue with despite the major love it gives Miyazaki . . . but that’s the joy of lists, isn’t it?) I’ve created:

Kohl Glass’s Top 10 Underrated Animated Film List . . . generated in only 10 minutes

10. TMNT – Conflict within the brothers’ relationship was exactly where this film need to go.
9. Memories – Simply beautiful especially in it’s darkness.
8. The Powerpuff Girls Movie – A fantastic origin story for a series where we thought we already knew the origin story.
7. The Goofy Movie – Unexpectedly amazing. Even still.
6. Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker – Mind blowing use of set up and pay off . . . and one of the most gripping flashbacks I’ve EVER seen.
5. Chicken Run – The humorous homages in this movie are homage worthy.
4. Prince of Egypt – Makes me want to be a better person every time I see it.
3. Millennium Actress – So perfect it’s quiet.
2. Porco Rosso – Easily one of Miyazaki’s most forgotten and yet most beautifuly innocent . . . plus seaplanes dogfighting!!!
1. The Iron Giant – Incredible animation, even better story. I cry every time.

These are just off the top of my head, but I believe each deserves a wider audience and a closer look.  I’m sure I’ll think of more with time.

Lynn Burnham took me flying in his sweet 1963 Piper Cherokee this week (September 29th, 2009). He picked me up at 5:30 AM and we departed Falcon Field a little after 6. We went out past Red Mountain, over to Bushnell Tanks, circled to Horseshoe Lake, down over Bartlet Lake and back. We were airborne for a little over an hour. It was an absolute blast.

www.realultimatepower.net

Long long ago, my friends and I discovered that if you start Tarzan Boy by Baltimora at the first close up of a speeder bike in Return of the Jedi, you’ll find that the song and subsequent chase sequence are EXACTLY THE SAME LENGTH . . . mere coincidence or proof there is a God?

P.S. This the very first Youtube video I’ve ever uploaded. I plan to do more.

Now that we are at the tail end of 2009, I thought it would be a completely inappropriate and pointless time to post this.

In 2008 I set the resolution to read 52 books or a book a week,  I ended up counting graphic novels, which I was initially unsure about.  First, I reread Maus which I felt absolutely should be counted . . . but Eat-Man?  Too late I was already counting comics.

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Night by Elie Wiesel
Maus by Art Spiegelman*
Batman Animated by Paul Dini, Chip Kidd
Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting by Syd Field
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Eat-Man by Akihito Yoshitomi*
Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
Legend Of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving
Italian Folktales by Italo Calvino
I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
DC: The New Frontier by Darwyn Cooke*
Catwoman: When in Rome by Jeph Loeb, Tim Sale*
Spawn: The Armageddon Collection by Todd McFarlane*
The Chosen by Chaim Potok
The Red Pony by John Steinbeck
Enemy Ace: War in Heaven by Garth Ennis, Chris Weston*
Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi*
Turning the Mind into an Ally by Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche
Neon Genesis Evangelion, Vol. 1 – 9 by Yoshiyuki Sadamoto*
Iron West by Doug Tennapel*
Plastic Man: Rubber Bandits by Kyle Baker*
Houdini: The Handcuff King by Jason Lutes*
Nextwave: Agents Of H.A.T.E: This Is What They Want by Warren Ellis, Stuart Immonen*
Gear by Doug Tennapel*
The Arthur Rackham Treasury by Arthur Rackham
Save The Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need by Blake Snyder
Rip Van Winkle by Washington Irving
Showcase Presents: Enemy Ace, Vol. 1 by Robert Kanigher*
Batman/Houdini: The Devil’s Workshop by Howard Chaykin, John Francis Moore, Mark Chiarello*
My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult
Fables: Sons of Empire by Bill Willingham, Mark Buckingham, Steve Leialoha*
Fables: The Good Prince by Bill Willingham, Mark Buckingham, Steve Leialoha*
The Hellboy Companion by Stephen Weiner, Jason Hall
Hellboy: The Troll Witch and Other Stories by Mike Mignola, Richard Corben, P. Craig Russell*
Pinochio by Carlo Collodi
Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo
Batman: Year One Hundred by Paul Pope*
Batman and the Monster Men by Matt Wagner*
Batman and the Mad Monk by Matt Wagner*
Hulk: Gray by Jeph Loeb, Tim Sale*
Band of Brothers by Stephen E. Ambrose
To Draw Closer to God: A Collection of Discources by Henry B. Eyring
Baltimore: Or The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire by Mike Mignola, Christopher Golden
Jack of Fables: The Bad Prince by Bill Willingham*
Usagi Yojimbo: Tomoe’s Story by Stan Sakai*
Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus
Super-Patriot: Liberty and Justice by Keith Giffen, Mary Bierbaum, Dave Johnson*
Amulet: The Stone Keeper by Kazu Kibuishi*
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
Shazam!: Monster Society of Evil by Jeff Smith*
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

My brother J.C. had this resolution for the last couple years, and was the one who gave me the idea.  However he didn’t do it last year because he found he was avoiding bigger books that would take him longer than a week to read.  I kinda wanted to read Don Quixote last year but I didn’t because it would take me months, and ruin my goal.   With the exception of Italian Folktales by Italo Calvino, which I had been reading one folktale a day over the last couple years, pretty much every book I read in 2008 was 500 pages or less.  So there’s pros and cons.  However this year I’m going to try again for 52, but this time be more discerning on what I “count”.

* – Graphic Novel or Manga

Here’s a postcard I did for my friend, Tim Skousen, in thanks for letting me borrow his car and crash at his place while up in UT.  I don’t know anyone who loves Blaxploitation Cinema more than Tim.  He even wrote a Blaxploitation screenplay.  The only thing is, Tim is white, and he was accused of being racist because of it.

Can you be racists against something you love?

Only Tim can answer that now . . . and the answer is, “Probably not?”

This is the Mysterious Traveler,
inviting you to join me on another journey into the strange and terrifying.
I hope you will enjoy the trip,
that it will thrill you a little and chill you a little.
So settle back, get a good grip on your nerves and be comfortable
– if you can!

Since May 18th, 2009 I’ve been working for Powerspeak, writing and directing a radio-play style adventure story that will be implemented into their language instruction software (which is a major reason I haven’t updated this site for a while). It’s been a very interesting project to write since the story is told 100% aurally. I come from a school (both figuratively and literally) that believes that stories are to be told visually, and that dialogue should be the very last resort for a storyteller. You know . . . “Show, don’t tell.” So it was a challenge to get my head around the ramifications of writing a story with no visuals. EVERYTHING has to be conveyed naturally through the only two tools available; dialogue and sound effects.

So I started listening to old Radio Plays to figure out how it is done. I love old radio plays . . . I find it so interesting to see good storytelling shine through the outdated vernacular of the media of that time. They use to say things like, “It makes breakfast more fun than a circus!” and other fantastic stuff like that.

While doing my recent research into radio plays I discovered The Mysterious Traveler a great macabre suspense anthology radio show which opens with the titular narrator introducing himself with the monologue I opened this post with. My favorites (so far) are “Death Is The Visitor” and “The House of Death”.

Check them out . . . if you have the predilection.

This commercial rips me up beautifully every single time I see it.

And I don’t even like F-117s.

The nine Comic-Cons I’ve attended consecutively since 2001 have naturally began to blur in my mind.  Sure there have been events that have stood out, (i.e. Brad Bird talking about Incredibles,  Guerrmo Del Toro talking about Pan’s Labyrinth, meeting Brian Singer, Mike Mignola trading me a sketchbook for a VHS copy of The Promethean, Joss Whedon and Dr. Horrible’s showing,  etc.) but for the most part my absolutely best year at Comic-Con and my absolute worst are not that far apart in scope.  Comic-Con is just awesome, some years are better than others, but it is all still awesome.

Thus I didn’t think Comic-Con 2009 shone any brighter than the other years . . . except for one thing . . . I was in the same room as my favorite director . . . EVER!!!  Hayao Miyazaki

He didn’t say anything I hadn’t heard before, but I was there and he was there . . . in the same massive convention hall and I found myself having a hard time breathing and tears in my eyes.

For a long time my “favorite director” was a three way tie between Hitchcock, Wes Anderson, and Miyazaki.  But I realized that, thought there are things I love deeply about each director’s films, Miyazaki was the only one of the three that I loved with no caveats.  I love every one of his films and I don’t have to warn, avoid or make excuses for anything he’s made.  His films are pure magic, and, in the end, I want to emulate him in y own creativity more than any other filmmaker.

For an excellent treaties on Miyazaki’s greatness check out Why I Love Miyazaki by Brandon Dayton.

Der Ostwind hasn’t had a lot of “luck” outside of the traditional festival circuits. But now that its festival screenings are dieing down (The most recent screening was at the 2nd San Joaquin International Film Festival on May 14th to the 23rd 2009), I’m hoping to find a new life for DO in other avenues, and hoping that we can have a little more luck in these avenues than we have had in the past.

Though I’ve only become aware of it recently, KBYU and BYU-TV has been airing Der Ostwind since May 25th 2009. I received an email today with the schedule of times they are airing my film . . . which they are using as “filler” or, in other words, if a show is coming in 10 minutes and 40 seconds short, they throw Der Ostwind in there. It’s a great honor.

KBYU
Mon 05/25/2009 at 23:18:08 for 00:11:00:00 KBYU
Thu 05/28/2009 at 11:49:24 for 00:10:18:00 KBYU
Sun 05/31/2009 at 11:49:10 for 00:10:18:00 KBYU
Tue 06/02/2009 at 23:17:28 for 00:10:18:00 KBYU
Wed 06/10/2009 at 23:17:36 for 00:10:18:00 KBYU
Tue 06/16/2009 at 23:18:21 for 00:10:18:00 KBYU
Wed 06/17/2009 at 23:17:50 for 00:10:18:00 KBYU
Thu 06/18/2009 at 18:48:37 for 00:10:18:00 KBYU
Fri 06/19/2009 at 23:18:46 for 00:10:18:00 KBYU
Tue 06/23/2009 at 18:47:33 for 00:10:18:00 KBYU
Thu 06/25/2009 at 23:18:32 for 00:10:18:00 KBYU
Fri 06/26/2009 at 11:48:48 for 00:10:18:00 KBYU
Fri 06/26/2009 at 23:18:43 for 00:10:18:00 KBYU
Sat 06/27/2009 at 24:44:05 for 00:10:18:00 KBYU
Sun 06/28/2009 at 19:48:16 for 00:10:18:00 KBYU
Thu 07/02/2009 at 21:48:56 for 00:10:18:00 KBYU
Fri 07/03/2009 at 06:17:37 for 00:10:18:00 KBYU
Tue 07/07/2009 at 23:17:29 for 00:10:18:00 KBYU
Fri 07/10/2009 at 26:48:05 for 00:10:18:00 KBYU
Sat 07/11/2009 at 23:44:24 for 00:10:18:00 KBYU
Tue 07/14/2009 at 06:18:07 for 00:10:18:00 KBYU
Thu 07/16/2009 at 21:47:58 for 00:10:18:00 KBYU
Mon 07/20/2009 at 18:48:14 for 00:10:18:00 KBYU
Thu 07/23/2009 at 18:47:55 for 00:10:18:00 KBYU
Wed 07/29/2009 at 11:48:22 for 00:10:18:00 KBYU

BYU-TV
Wed 05/27/2009 at 11:41:53 for 00:11:00:00 BYU-TV
Fri 05/29/2009 at 24:43:12 for 00:11:00:00 BYU-TV
Sat 05/30/2009 at 26:44:52 for 00:10:18:00 BYU-TV
Wed 07/01/2009 at 17:17:57 for 00:10:18:00 BYU-TV
Thu 07/02/2009 at 21:46:03 for 00:10:18:00 BYU-TV
Sat 07/11/2009 at 26:49:05 for 00:10:18:00 BYU-TV
Sun 07/19/2009 at 17:40:32 for 00:10:18:00 BYU-TV

A little late, yes, but not too late. There are still twelve showings still pending . . . make that eleven. And that’s just what KBYU/BYU-TV has scheduled so far. They say they will be using Der Ostwind as filler for years to come. Supposedly they are also streaming it on their site, but I haven’t been able to find it.

I’m being a bit acerbic because I worked so hard to get them to show it, and then they started airing it without telling me . . . kind of like what the Phoenix Comic-Con did (except the Phoenix Comic-Con was way worse). BUT the only goal I’ve ever had for Der Ostwind was to have people see it. We all worked so hard on it, all I care about is having people see our efforts.

So in actuality, I’m very grateful to them for showing my film. Thanks KBYU/BYU-TV!!!

About a year ago I learned that a man named Jack D. Hunter had seen my short film Der Ostwind, and really enjoyed it. I knew his name instantly. Jack Hunter has held many titles in his life, including author of 16 books, but he is best known for his WWI aviation classic The Blue Max. During the pre-production stages of Der Ostwind we used the 1966 film version of The Blue Max as a reference. Later in my continuing research into WWI aviation I read the novel and loved it. So it was with no small degree of amazement of mine to find out that an author of his caliber and influence would be aware of the work of a novice filmmaker like myself. On May 3rd, 2008, Mr. Hunter even wrote about Der Ostwind on his blog, which you can read here.

In our short correspondence of one phone call and a couple of emails, it became very apparent to me what a kind and extraordinary man Jack Hunter was, so it affected me greatly when I learned that Jack, passed away last Monday morning (April 13th 2009) at the age of 87, due to complications with cancer. Since hearing the news, I find myself wishing I could have talked with Jack more, and gotten to know him better. I feel like I’ve lost something valuable in Jack’s passing. The world of WWI Aviation has lost a giant and as Jonni Anderson, Mr. Hunter’s administrative assistant said, “He was truly a great man, and leaves one huge hole in this universe.”

Thank you, Jack. You will be missed.

Jack D. Hunter — The Official Obituary

It’s been up for a bit but I haven’t officially announced that the Eventide Creative Gallery is fully armed and operational.

I started Eventide Creative in 2000 to showcase my creativity. It was a time when 90% of my creativity was: 1. Sketching a picture 2. Inking it with a standard household pen 3. Scanning it into PhotoShop, and then 4. Mercilessly abusing the picture with filters.

In 2003 I made The Promethean and all my creative energies suddenly started flowing into filmmaking. I all but stopped drawing and I no longer thought of myself as an artist in the literal sense. So, like an old abandoned carnival, my Gallery is now more of a roadside curio than a representation of my current creativity.

My Gallery is set up into three sub-galleries: Sketch, Illustration, and Storyboards.

Sketch has my most recent drawings and since I still sketch sometimes, I will probably be updating that section the most. You’ll notice that most of art in Illustration was done between 2000 and 2001 and, yes, they are rancid with PhotoShop filters. I had a problem. Maybe that has something to do with why I don’t “color” my drawings in PhotoShop anymore. I have a good number of boards up in the Storyboards Gallery but they aren’t organized yet . . . nor are they all there. I’ve gotten permission to put up the storyboards I’ve done for other people’s films, including The Sasquatch Dumpling Gang . . . except I’m still waiting to get those.

The Eventide Creative Gallery is still a work in progress . . . but it’s there and awaiting your perusal.

Der Ostwind is back online! 

You can watch the film in its entirety HERE.

The aspect ratio is a little off so the film is stretched vertically. We’re currently working to fix that.

You can also watch The Promethean at the IMDB Theaters as well. Simply click HERE.

This most recent February 5th, my brother J.C. and I attended the Crooked Fingers/Devotchka concert at the Clubhouse in Tempe. This was a monumental event for me for two reasons. First, because it was the first time I didn’t have to road trip it down to Tucson to see Crooked Fingers, something I’ve done at least four times in the past. Second, they were playing with Devotchka, a band I’d become enamored of in the last year or so. It was my first time seeing Devotchka in concert but not, however, the first time I saw Crooked Fingers playing with Devotchka in concert.

The story goes like this. It was early 2008 and Crooked Fingers was once again coming to Tucson to open for a band I had never heard of (Devotchka). Those of us who made the pilgrimage down south were J.C., Marshall, Jordan, and myself. A Glass Brothers’ night out – minus our last brother, Mitchell. We got our sushi fix at Tucson’s supernal all-you-can-eat Sushi Hama, as tradition dictated (It’s really hard for me to go down to Tucson and not eat there), then off to the concert. After Crooked Fingers’ short but sweet performance there was an overly long wait for Devotchka, who I was calling “The Dostoevskys” at the time, to take the stage. Jordan, fresh from his mission in the West Indies and not yet fully acclimated to civilian life, was growing more disconcerted about being around a lot of people, in a small bar, with loud music. Plus it was getting late and we still had a 2 hour drive ahead of us. It was proposed by one of my brothers that we go home before Devotchka’s performance. I didn’t want to. I wanted to get my money’s worth and possibly discover a new band. Ultimately I conceded and we left early, but not before I gave them this warning, “If we go home and I found out Devotchka is awesome . . . I’m going to be so mad at each of you.”

The next morning I went to Devotchka’s Myspace page and sampled their music. I’ve yet to forgive my brothers for making me go home early. Shortly after, I bought the soundtrack of Little Miss Sunshine to listen to on the way back from an LA trip. And then later I shared How It Ends as my choice for a Music Night.

Devotchka’s lead singer, Nick Urata, has a strangely evocative voice. I feel sad when I hear it . . . even on their more upbeat songs. His voice makes me think of black velvet paintings of matadors with large ornate wood frames painted gold. It makes me feel like I’ve lost something. Something cultural. If you haven’t checked out Devotchka I highly recommend them. However after the concert it was confirmed to me that I like Crooked Fingers more than Devotchka. Crooked Fingers is a band that I fell in love with instantly when my brother J.C. first introduced me and I have been trying to convert others to their music ever since . . . with no success, I might add. Check them out and, please, love them as much as I do.

Here is one of my favorite Crooked Fingers songs New Drink for the Old Drunk.

The Crooked Fingers Official Web Site
The Devotchka Official Web Site

I keep getting these “25 Random Things About Me” emails or Facebook messages, which always end with, “Now, you do yours!”  So today I wrote up my 25 Things, which took me WAY too much time to do, time I was suppose to use for working on my scripts.  I feel guilty about this, so I’m trying to get as much mileage from my 25 Things as possible. Forgive me this narcissistic indulgence.

25 Random Things About Kohl Glass

1. Once, when I was five or six, I saw a creature in the forests of Rye Colorado that I later identified as a platypus . . . it was climbing a tree.

2. I have an elaborate process for brushing my teeth that involves multiple tooth brushes and various chemicals. This process drives my wife up the wall when we are running late.

3. I like to add consonants to words that start with vowels or I’ll change the first letter of a consonant leading word to its voiced/unvoiced counterpart. Like instead of saying “vulgar” I’ll say “fulgar”. I understand that this is odd and possibly annoying so I only do it in my head or when I’m talking to my wife. She loves it.

4. I’ve attended the San Diego Comic-Con every year since 2001 . . . the year I got married. Breaking down conventional stereotypes, that’s what I’m all about.

5. I think it is hilarious when a lone dog is running down the street like it urgently has some place to go. Where’s it going and what are its plans when it gets there? Do dogs plan that far ahead? Hilarious.

6. I always tuck my sock between my big and middle toes before I put on my shoes.

7. I am often mistaken as a German by people who watch my film Der Ostwind before they meet me. LDS people think I must have served my mission in Germany, but I didn’t.

8. I once had dinner with an African king . . . right here in Mesa, AZ (at the Boyles). Kings are just people too.

9. In my mind I think of myself as a pilot and as a detective . . . but I’m actually neither. I don’t even have a pilot’s license and I’ve yet to solve a mystery. Note the “yet”.

10. I was a teenager when I first realized that Han Solo was not saying “Jungle Light Speed” but “Jump to Light Speed” . . . thus the word “jungle” used as an adjective sounds right to me (i.e. “That dog was jungle crazy!”).

11. I don’t carry a wallet. I carry a moleskin notebook that has a pocket in the back for my important cards. One of the best things I’ve ever done in my life.

12. In 2008 I reached my goal to read 52 books, or a book a week. However, about half of those were graphic novels. I set the goal again for 2009 but I’m going to be more discerning on what I count.

13. I love film festivals . . . I just really dislike attending them.

14. I was once in an elementary school bus that tipped over while trying to make it up a steep hill in Rye Colorado during a snow storm (I had already seen the platypus).

15. Back in college, I would go to the most secluded area I could find in the library to study. If someone I knew saw me there, I would wait for about five minutes after they left and then I would move to another place in the library. I liked the idea that no one on the planet knew exactly where I was.

16. I’m a logophile, not a pedant, though I’ve been accused of being the latter . . . sadly, never the former.

17. I’m a pretty nice guy during of the Godly hours of the day. But if I’m woken up in the middle of the night I, to use my wife’s words, “go wheatmo.” I also periodically hold my breath while I’m sleeping (see #23). I would be totally oblivious of both these things if my wife hadn’t told me about them.

18. I often run outside to watch a plane passing overhead, especially if it has a louder engine, because fighters have louder engines.

19. I’m a sharer. I am filled with a driving desire to find the coolest, finest things of life (99% of the time this is some kind of media) and share it with my friends and family. I haven’t been too successful over all, for some reason or another, be it solidarity, personal taste or interest (I learned early that no matter how good, my mom isn’t going to dig a comic book as much as me), but I’ll never give up. It also goes both ways. I LOVE when someone shares something new with me.

20. I’ve won first place every time I’ve entered anything in the LDS Film Festival, which has been three times. (The Promethean, Shorts Competition, 2004. The Strawberries of Eldritch, Feature Length Script Competition, 2005. Der Ostwind, Shorts Competition, 2008)

21. My family uncannily mirrors J.D. Salinger’s fictional Glass Family. I am Seymour, the oldest, smartest brother . . . who kills himself.

22. When I’m driving I rapidly clack the button on the shifter with my thumb as if I’m firing my guns into a plane I just maneuvered behind.

23. I was made Senior Captain of the Swim Team at Westwood High School, not because I was any good at swimming, cause I wasn’t, but because I was the only senior on the team not ineligible and/or uninjured. I also had a speedo that resembled the American Flag that I wore in practice. “The Stars and Stripes.”

24. I love obscure and esoteric references. I love making them and I love when I come across them. If you make an obscure reference, I will go and look it up.

25. I have Africa, Australia, and Antarctica to travel to and I’ll have been to all seven continents.

It was early 1999, three months before the eagerly awaited Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, when I saw the trailer for the movie Rushmore on TV.   I only mention Star Wars because in this period of my life I strongly believed George Lucas could do no wrong, and my taste in movies heavily reflected that.  So when I saw the Rushmore Trailer I was oddly fascinated, despite it being nothing like a movie I would be interested in at the time.  Little did I know it was a presage of my future tastes in movies.

I finally saw Rushmore later that fall on DVD when I had a little film studies under my belt, and it instantly became one of my all time favorite movies ever.  Very shortly after, I saw Bottle Rocket and my devotion to Wes Anderson was sealed.

In the ten years since, Wes has made The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004), and The Darjeeling Limited (2007), all of which I loved to varying degrees.  What I actually love about Wes Anderson’s films is that they are about damaged people learning to accept themselves, usually through self-sacrifice.  In other words, they are redemption stories, which, in my book, are the best kind of stories.

But it’s not all sunshine and smiles.  Wes leaves you with a bittersweet sense that self-sacrifice, though worth it, is not easy.  His damaged self centered characters learn that pursuing the welfare of others can be just as painful as a life hollowed out by selfishness, the difference is sacrifice imbues a sense of purpose and worth. I believe the core appeal of Anderson’s films lies in how clearly this truth rings.  Though sacrifice is painfully difficult, it is also heartrendingly cathartic.

Rushmore remains my favorite Wes Anderson film, because in no other of Wes’s works is this melancholy transcendence so apparent.  Rushmore’s main character Max Fischer, played by Jason Schwartzman, is a brilliant precocious self centered kid pursuing his ideal of greatness. He turns his attention to winning the heart of Miss Cross, a teacher at his school, who is on some level attracted to Max, but knows due to circumstances of age it could never happen.  Max’s romantic pursuits become acerbic, alienating himself from all those he loves.  At his near breaking point Max decides to abandon his desires for Miss Cross and use his brilliance to repair the lives of those close to him. In the final scene of Rushmore, after he has set things right, Max has this exchange with Miss Cross:

Miss Cross:  Well . . . you pulled it off
Max: Yeah, it went okay.  At lest nobody got hurt.
Miss Cross: Except you.
Max: No, I didn’t get hurt that bad.

On one level they are talking about Max’s play in which he sustained a cut to his head (in the exact place where he faked a wound to get into Miss Cross’s bedroom earlier).  And on a another level they are talking about what Max has just been through.  In the end he’s the only one who didn’t get what he wanted.

As the curtain literally closes on Rushmore we are left with Max physically together with Miss Cross as they dance, but we know the truth; they will never truly be together, and through painful self-sacrifice Max has turned that into a triumph

. . . and that is one example of why Wes Anderson is one of my favorite directors ever.

I just imported my old “journal”, which consisted of 15 posts between August 13th 2001 and May 27th 2004, from Blogger into this blog.  I wrote those entries for an entirely different purpose and audience, than this blog, but I felt that I should include them still.  I talk about more personal things than I normally would, but I talk about things like anime, Superman, and my projects too.  There’s also an entry written on September 11th 2001.  I will continue going through, cleaning them up, and adding images, but for now they are down there, ready to be read.

I am also working on getting my Gallery up, especially since it is getting the most hits right now.  I appreciate your patience.  While you are waiting, here is a picture I drew back in 2001 . . . the same time I was writing on my prior blog.

When I was a kid, I thought Han Solo said, “Prepare for Jungle Light Speed!” instead of what he really says, which is “Prepare for the jump to Light Speed!”

“Jungle Light Speed” made complete sense to me, however, for two reasons.  First, the speed of light is not sufficiently fast enough to travel through space in any reasonable amount of time.  Every kid knows that.  A speed beyond light speed is required.  Jungle Light Speed.  Second, jungles were wild, dangerous, hyper, out of control, places, or at least they were in my adolescent mind.  So it didn’t strike me as strange that “Jungle” would be used to describe a speed of light that was dangerously heightened beyond all possible limits.

So I grew up believing “Jungle” was both a noun and an adjective.  I even used it this way in conversation periodically, which is interesting because, though a fallacy, it generally always works.  If someone says to you, “That was jungle crazy!” you are going to think they are an idiot, but you will also know exactly what they mean.  “I got a jungle fever” . . . that one probably wouldn’t work.

The funny thing is I’ve met other people who have misheard this line as well and grew up believing that “Jungle” was an adjective.  One of them is my good friend Jason Conforto, who is working on The Strawberries of Eldritch with me.  So I know it wasn’t just me, or at least I wasn’t the only one. I suspect there are more Jungle Light Speeders out there, like me.

The other funny thing is I didn’t watch Star Wars just once, as a kid.  I watched it hundreds of times, and I heard Han say “Jungle Light Speed” every single time.  It wasn’t till I was nigh unto an adult when I heard it right, and that was a dark, reality shattering day, let me tell you.

To be honest, I wish Han did say “Jungle Light Speed.“  Not only would it give Star Wars an ever so slightly deeper sense of being its own universe, but, once you get your head around it, “Jungle” is an awesome adjective.

My short film Der Ostwind is no longer available on Netflix or iTunes. As part of the 2007 Sundance Film Festival I had the opportunity to make my film available on the 2007 Sundance Online Festival and iTunes. The latter required an agreement with Mediastile Inc who would act as the distributor for iTunes.  The Mediastile deal started off well the first three months, but that all quickly changed.  No download reports, no royalty checks, no returned emails, no returned phone calls.  Then one day I stumbled across my own film, Der Ostwind, on Netflix . . . which I thought was cool, but odd that I was not informed.  Simply put it has been a communication nightmare.  My favorite was getting a text from Mediastile CEO Jason Turner saying, “I’m calling you right now.” He never called and I think he did that to me twice.  I never got any answers.

Luckily, Sundance stepped in and provided some answers.  They told me that Sundance is now in litigation with Mediastile and I should pursue my own legal council if I want to ever see the royalties they owe me.  They also said that they have revoked Mediastile’s right to use the Sundance logo on any of the films they distribute . . . and thus Der Ostwind is no longer on iTunes or Netflix anymore.

If you are interested, you can read a more detailed account about Sundance’s nightmare with Mediastile here: indieWire: Sundance Halts Online Fest Initiative; Short Filmmakers Kept in the Dark by Aggregator Mediastile by Eric Kohn

As for the Der Ostwind DVD . . . I really really really want to print an official DVD of Der Ostwind and all my other short films.  Over the last five years I’ve had a lot of requests to make Der Ostwind and/or The Promethean available on DVD, so I figured there was probably enough interest to warrant it.  But on top of that I think it would just be so cool to have a nicely printed DVD of all my student work.  It’s a dream of mine, it really is.  A year or so ago I worked out all the rights with BYU, secured some investors (read my parents), and started working to put together a DVD.  We shot interview footage for a making of video, we recoded commentary, we got everything we needed for a sweet DVD chalk full of special features.

Then tragedy hit.  The hard drive, and the back up hard drive, that had all my files including the actual film of Der Ostwind got wiped out in one fell swoop.  I can’t really talk about it, it’s still too painful.  Needless to say all the wind I had in my sails for making a DVD was lost with those hard drives, and I haven’t really reattempted it since then.  But I really really really want to make a DVD of my films and someday I will.  When I do it won’t be the same special feature repleate DVD I had planned, but it will still be way cool.

So right now Der Ostwind is not available anywhere online, that I know of, and there are no immediate plans to make a DVD . . . wonderful!

I’ll let you know when this changes.

One of the things I love the most about writing is doing research.  Robert McKee suggested that the key to winning the war on cliché is to enrich your imagination with fact.  Research allows you to immerse yourself in the world you have yet to fully form. You have the thrill of mining for precious metals that you will forge into the fictional world of your story.  Research edifies, embellishes and expands story.  It is the fuel for imagination.

All stories can be researched.  Take the original three Star Wars movies for example (I always end up using Star Wars).  How could research better a story set long long ago in a galaxy far far away? Lots.  Lucas researched and understood the Hero’s Journey as laid out by Joseph Campbell.  He was intimately familiar with the mechanics of westerns, war movies and samurai epics.  He created his space opera, not in a vacuum, but by reorganizing classic aspects of archetype and genera.

The storyteller who first opened my eyes to the wonders of research, and to whom I now pay homage, is Michael Crichton. I haven’t considered myself a Michael Crichton fan for a long while, but at one time (c1993-1997) he was my favorite author.  Of his books I’ve read: The Andromeda Strain, The Terminal Man, Eaters of the Dead, Congo, Sphere, Jurassic Park, The Lost World, and I’ve read a good chunk of Travels (I think my favorite was probably Sphere).

As I got older and my taste in literature moved to more classic fare and I stopped reading contemporary authors including Crichton almost all together.  Still I owe him a debt of gratitude for what he taught me about the power of research.  And when it came to research Crichton was the master. His books tended to be about a slightly fantastic element of peril which is explained by a seemingly unrelated scientific principle.  For instance Jurassic Park wasn’t just about dinosaurs, but also advanced mathematical theory.  What do math and dinosaurs have to do with each other?  In Crichton’s world, everything, and that is what made his stories so incredibly believable.  His world is so completely researched that you come away thinking that though this has not happened, it very well could.  That is the power of research.

Michael Crichton passed away unexpectedly in Los Angeles last Tuesday, November 4, 2008 at the age of 66, after a courageous and private battle against cancer. It saddens me that we have lost such a prolific and influential storyteller, especially one who taught me so much.

In the previous incarnations of Eventide Creative, I had a “Homage” page where I listed the artists and creators that inspired me and my works.  I decided to forgo the Homage page with this new design and use the blog to talk about the stuff that lights up my imagination.

The first creator I will pay homage to is Joss Whedon. Not long ago I was mutated into a Joss Whedon fan by virtue of my wife’s 1.21 gigawatt radioactive Joss Whedon fanhood.  She was a loyal Buffy the Vampire Slayer viewer from season one.  After we got married I watched Buffy with her (I think it was around season six) and I enjoyed it all right, but I wasn’t a full fledged devoted and loyal fan yet.  That came later, when I watched Firefly on DVD. Since then I’ve actively sought out Joss Whedon and he has yet to disappoint me.

Joss Whedon’s genius, in my opinion, lies in his ability to use cliché and self-reflective artificiality as a foil to his unique and complex characters. Joss gets to tell cool genre stories about vampires, space brigands, and super villains and still have them be poignant emotional examinations of the human soul.  His clichés maintain an element of artificiality and are not completely believable, suggesting that the genre elements of the story don’t take themselves very seriously. The genre conventions never delve as deeply as the human interaction. It would be natural to chalk this artificiality up to budget size or the quality of special effects available at the time, but, it seems to me, that Whedon embraces these limitations.

The cliché acts as an entrance to the story and the artificiality self-reflectively suggests a richer verisimilitude which it symbolizes, then quickly scuttles out of the way for the true foundation of the story: strong interesting characters. As an audience we see clearly through the artificiality, like a window, into the world of character.

I’ll use Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along-Blog to illustrate this point. Dr. Horrible is a burgeoning super villain who wants social change and the girl at the laundromat. He’s not really evil, but he sees being a villain as a means to a righteous end. The cliché is that Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along-Blog is a superhero story. The twist is that it is told from the perspective of the villain. The artificiality is shown in the way the superhero element is played down so far that it almost doesn’t exist outside of conversation. For instance it is revealed only through dialogue that Dr. Horrible’s superhero nemesis, Captain Hammer, is supernaturally strong and it is hinted that he is able to fly by showing him jump into frame as if landing. Artificiality and cliché work in tandem as a sort of short hand to tell the story of “boy meets girl”. We know all we need to know about Dr. Horrible’s world, and no time is wasted on origins or back story, contrary to what we have come to expect from superhero stories.

So in short, Joss Whedon twists cliché, employing artificiality as a near self-reflective foil to poignant unique characters . . . and that’s why “Joss Whedon is my master now”.

Here’s a story of me and Show Low Lake.  Over the 4th of July weekend of this year, Chris and I went up and stayed at the Phelps Dodge company cabin up in Show Low Arizona with Chris’s family. One morning I was struck with the impulse to go on an extemporaneous walk to explore some cliffs that stuck up out of the forest on the other side of the lake.  In an hour or so I was exploring the cliffs, which were beautiful.  Well after I was finished exploring I didn’t feel like hiking all the way back around the lake.

Show Low Lake is really long but not very wide, probably 200 yards or so.  I had swam across it the last time we were at the cabin, plus I was on the swim team in high school . . . so I decided to tie all the stuff in my pockets (including my moleskin notebook and my cell phone) and my shoes, up in my shirt and carry it above the water as I swam across the lake.  This was part one of a very bad idea.  Part two was that I was wearing pants, jeans to be exact. It was Saturday, the day after the 4th of July, and the lake was covered with boats carrying people who were fishing.  I had to wait until the path that I would swim was clear of fishermen.  Once it was clear, I was filled with a sense of urgency to cross as quickly as possible before more boats came in my lane.  This was part three.  So I rested up from my hike, made my bundle, and waited for my swim path to clear.

Once it was clear I rushed out into the lake, swimming as quickly as I could while holding the bundle out of the water.  The water was really cold and I was struggling to breathe instantly.  The drag from my waterlogged jeans made kicking pretty much completely ineffective,  and I was trying to swim as fast as I possibly could with just one arm. Needless to say I was exhausted in nothing flat.  I changed tactics by flipping over onto my back and setting the bundle on my chest.  As I did some more leisurely back strokes, I realized the damage was done and I thought I was going to probably pass out.

My bundle was not staying out of the water despite my best efforts and I was starting to realize what a colossally bad idea this was.  At about the quarter mark I turned around and made for the shore I had just left.  By now every person on every boat on the lake was watching the idiot (me) trying to swim across while keeping a wad of something dry.

Two guys in a motor boat pulled up and asked if they could take me across the lake.  I responded to their kind offer by screaming, “Take the bundle first!!!!”  I had already dropped it once and it was half wet.  They took the bundle and I hung onto the side as they pulled me across. I was suddenly aware how humiliating this situation should be, and despite being totally out of breath, I started trying to make small talk with the guys in the boat.  “So, are you from the valley?” “No we’re from here.” “Oh.”  I assured them that I had swam across this lake before but I was younger then and thought I could do it again.   Now I’d learned my lesson.  It was everything I could do just to hang onto the side of the boat.  On the other side, I thanked them and told them they were  “lifesavers”, not ignorant of the irony that I was using the term literally.

I sat on the side of the lake for twenty minutes, huffing and puffing.  Then I made my way up to our tent (we were staying there, as the cabin was full of other family) on very shaky legs.  I opened the bundle to assess the damage.  Everything was just a little damp.  My cell phone was probably the driest, and still worked great.  My moleskin on the other hand got the most wet, and though the ink didn’t run, every page was slightly water damaged. “Gives it character!” I keep telling myself.  That was the worst thing to come out of this little adventure.  Moleskin water damage. I was still having a hard time catching my breath and was super thirsty so I called Chris to bring down a cup of water.

Chris found me lying on the floor of the tent, dripping wet, wearing only my undies.  (She loves telling that part.)  It wasn’t until another thirty or forty minutes had passed that I ventured to stand up and go back up to the cabin.  At the time I was pretty sure that I had almost died, but now in retrospect I’m not sure I ever got very close to drowning.  Maybe though.

On an unrelated note, a week later I skinned up my nose and forehead on the bottom of the In-Laws’ swimming pool doing an underwater back flip.  It didn’t hurt as bad as it looks, but it looks horrible.  It made going to church the next day a winter wonderland of awkwardness.

Then a couple weeks later I badly bruised up my leg jumping over a trash can trying to do “Parkour“.

These events seem to be in a series of communique in which my body is trying to tell me something.  But I have something to tell my body!

“I am not listening!”

When I was age twelve or thirteen (right around the release of Top Gun), I went through a huge phase, in which I would hastily assemble model air planes and hang them from the ceiling with fishing string, making my bedroom a dynamic tableau of aerial combat.

I was by no means good at making models, but I loved it and kept at it for many years, starting with the jet fighters of that day (F-14s, F-16s, and F-18s) and moving backwards through aviation history.

With the help of my good friend, and master model builder, Josh Boyle, I recently assembled the first model airplane kit I completely finished in over 15 years, a 1/48th scale F-86 Saber (the primary air-to-air jet fighter used in the Korean War), and a plane I have been geeking out on as of late.

I coated the model with primer, spray painted it silver, masked off and painted the smart yellow stripes, then masked off those and painted the black boarder stripes.  I even purchased and applied higher grade decals and not the yellowed ones that came in the box. These are things I never would have done back in my early teenage model making heyday, and so it should be no surprise when I say that my F-86 is by far the best model have ever done.

However, this experience left me concerned that making models is quickly dying art/pasttime.  When I was a kid I would buy model air plane kits and supplies at any Kmart or Walmart.  This time I had to go to a specialty hobby shop to get the F-86, and thought they had an impressive selection, most the kits were old and over priced (The F-86 kit I bought was produced in 1976).

So who is making model air planes anymore?  The fact that there are no model kits in the toy sections of huge discount super stores anymore, but can only be found in empty old hobby shops, haunted by silent middle aged men, says a lot about the state of model making.  I wonder if I had had Guitar Hero when I was a kid, maybe I wouldn’t have made models either.  I would like to think that I still would.

Nevertheless making my model F-86 was nostalgically cathartic, and now I get to fly it around the room when I should be writing.  I haven’t hung it up yet, but I’ve been thinking about it.

Welcome to the new Eventide Creative! Now with more blog. This overhaul was four years overdue, at least. Since the year 2000, Eventide Creative has served as a center for my creative endeavors, be they cinematic, artistic, poetic, or literary.

However, if Eventide Creative is recognized anywhere, it is mostly likely as the little vanity plates that appear at the end of my films. Eventide Creative is my “production company” which means nothing other than films that I both write and direct get a vanity plate slapped on the tail end, which so far is only The Promethean (2003) and Der Ostwind (2006).

Anyway, here it is. I’m excited to start using my website again and talk about the things I am working on and the things that light up my creativity. Which I can tell you right now, with few exceptions, will have something to do with anime, comics, movies, books, fairytales, vocabulary, storytelling, animation, and airplanes . . . because these are some of my favorite things.

Thursday, May 27, 2004

I recently saw an anime that . . . I don’t even know where to start talking about this film. It was called Millennium Actress and as I watched I thought, “This is exactly the kind of film I want to make.” It was incredible.

The reason I loved it so much was because it played with storytelling devices in a way that you are never sure what is real, or what really happened in the main characters life because she is an actress and the story flashes around through the movies she has been in and events in her own life, and you are never sure which is which . . . until you realize, it doesn’t matter. It all tells one beautiful story of this woman’s life. It is pure human drama with a completely unorthodox and almost sci-fi like story structure and the animation is gorgeous to boot. I think Millennium Actress is the best anime movie I have ever seen. Millennium Actress was director Satoshi Kon’s second feature, a follow up to Perfect Blue, a dark physiological thriller that is heavy on the “Messed Up.” Like Millennium Actress, Perfect Blue plays heavily on reality and fantasy, so much so that you never know what is real, but instead of being about a girl’s pursuit of her true love, it’s a murder mystery. Kon followed up Millennium Actress with Tokyo Godfathers, which I did see and enjoyed a great deal but it did not have nearly the impact Millennium Actress had on me.

Millennium Actress is PG. It is a pretty famous anime so it should be rent-able at your local video store. Of course if your interest in anime is exclusively martial arts, giant robots, or small trainable monsters, then you might be disappointed with Millennium Actress, but I don’t think you will be.