the awesome/terrifying freedom

i had my second day of shooting at the 'den of iniquity,' which is in an office building on 25th street.

holy crap.

i'm debating whether or not to post the picture.

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sometimes you find out things that make you feel like shit.

and the thing you found out really has nothing to do with you at all, and you know with all rational thought that it really shouldn't make you feel anything at all, but nope. still feeling shitty.

i turn to my dinosaur egg oatmeal for comfort.



because they start out as little eggs, little eggs of sugar, see, and then when you pour the hot water in, it melts the little sugar eggs and reveals the little dinosaurs inside, little dinosaurs made of a different kind of sugar that doesn't melt so easily. sugar technology is amazing.

so this is basically my costume in the film, now titled alicia in wonderland:



you will get to actually see my face most of the time.. unless i end up on the cutting room floor.. it's hilarious. my original role was, unfortunately, recast. i'm now playing peter, a nervous first-timer to the fetish dungeon. i have a couple very fun scenes. the script is clever, funny, and intelligent, and the director is great to work with... will post some pics as soon as i have them..

apparently helen hunt has gone in for the 'tina fey' procedure.

why were both of the 'winner's singles' for american idol christian-rock dentist office waiting room blather?

i wanna be inside your heaven?

angels brought me here?

bo didn't win because when he sings the song it's obvious that he'd rather be inside something else.

i don't want her too, but she will. the crappy songs sound better in her voice than in bo's, and she won the coin toss and got to close out the night. she'll win.

what i loved about revenge of the sith:

1. finally, an opening shot to rival the opening shot of ep 4.

2. right from the start, the banter between anakin and obi wan is more grounded, and the characters actually seem to be in the situations they've been blue screened into.

3. the battle droid humor and the comic bits with r2 work because they are driven out of the situations and not tacked on for comedy's sake.

4.

it's ok hayden, i still think you can act. especially in that one little part where you were acting with your abs. your acting is awesome, expecially since you added 20 lbs of muscle to your acting.

5. palpatine's history of the sith monologue.

6. the plotting of the emperor's rise to power is fantastic. it's a shame that the steps he took in ep 1 and 2 were not as dramatically executed.

7. anakin and padme look at each other across the city in a moment of quiet stillness. i actually think this is even better than luke's gaze at the twin suns in ep 4. it's the pivotal moment where anakin makes the big choice. good job, george.

8. yoda crushes imperial guards with a gesture. crowd cheers.

9. yoda and palpatine rise out of the senate floor as they fight. this was such a virtuoso moment it overshadowed the anakin obi wan fight, which was so dark we could only see windmills of lightsabers.

10. the final shot, perfect.

things that bug:

1. leia remembers her mother. lame.

2. vader screams 'nooo!' so anticlimactic. that scene should have given me chills but came off as hokey.

3. midichlorians. i was certain that this was introduced in ep 1 to be used later as an 'ethnic cleansing' method for the empire - kill all babies with a high midichlorian count.. instead we get a veiled reference that palpatine or palpatine's master somehow induced a random slave woman on an outer rim planet to have a virgin birth. luh. ame.

4. the 'you're beautiful.' 'because i love you.' 'because i love you.' 'no, because i love you' scene. rrgh. all their other scenes are acceptable, but this takes us right back to the horrid days of ep 2 when they sat on a blue pillow and some poor fx person had to try and turn it into a hippo. oh there is another terrible line: 'hold me like you did by the lake on naboo.' did tom stoppard write that?

5. the clone troopers. george, just build a suit and put an actor in it. i really can't believe that it was easier and more cost effective to create all of these characters with CGI. and! the attempts to drop temura morrison's head onto all of the helmetless troopers.. why!? put him in a suit! was he too fat or something?

6. stronger tie into episode 1. we really needed to see qui gon's ghost. apparently it was filmed. it must have been boring as all get go to be cut. also - as much as i hate to say it, we needed some sort of jar jar payoff. we needed to see him die, or, more unlikely, but possible, we needed to see the character redeemed for a: being so unforgivably annoying, and b: starting the empire! if lucas could have somehow redeemed jar jar, then we could look back at ep 1 and see a progression, and a purpose to sitting through all that drivel.

7. i was hoping for a surprise on the level of 'i am your father.' ..not only as a plot device, but also for its emotional resonance. i had always been hoping that palpatine and sidious were actually two people, one a clone (nicely foreshadowed by padme's doubles in ep 1 and 2).. and that palpatine actually was a good person, only to be replaced by a dark side clone. that woulda been cool. any big surprise woulda been cool.

it's better than return of the jedi, i'll give it that. jedi's main conflict is based on the construction of a magical second death star that conveniently appears out of nowhere only so that it can be blown up again. even the slightest hint that the empire was going to build 2 of these would be nice.. lucas was careful to put refs to the death star in both eps 2 and 3.. i think this is one of the biggest weaknesses of the entire saga.

i wish we could start over though, take the entire prequel story and retell it all again, but better this time, with like, a real director. you know, the way alfonso cuaron put life into harry potter. it's an amazing cinematic achievement, and now that the entire cycle is revealed.. i just wish ep 1 and 2 (and some nitpicks with 3) could be polished up to be the truly great films they aspire to be.

there's no shortage of great stuff in ep 3, finally, but it still lacks a lot of the drive of the original films, a drive based on chemistry between its leading actors and a genuine wit in their banter. ep 3 comes close, but is still not quite there.

i've begun editing my incomplete opus from high school - my screen adaptation of 'sorry wrong number' that i shot with all my friends from junior high during the summer between 10th and 11th grade. the entire film is phone conversations, and we literally shot each line of dialogue as a separate take, changing the camera angle each time. we ended up with four full vhs tapes of material that that turned out to be totally impossible to edit with our only equipment at the time: two vcr's.

'wrong number' was to be my homage to hitchcock - i would employ all of his lessons in suspense, i would artfully frame every shot, and i would storyboard the entire film. we shot half of it in jennifer hausle's basement guest bedroom, which was to serve as the set for 'mrs. stevenson's' upper east side apartment, and the other half of the film, all the operators, policemen, and murderers that mrs. stevenson speaks to, were filmed on a multitude of tiny sets constructed in my parent's garage. we used the orson welles trick of low light to make spaces seem bigger. well, we tried the orson welles trick anyway.

'wrong number' was also to be the first real film that our little team (me, max morel, adrienne weil, david mann, david mankin, emily hey, and a host of others) would finally complete. we had wasted summer after summer, weekend after weekend playing with the camera, accomplishing next to nothing, always having a great time, but with little discipline.

watching all the old footage, i'm sort of amazed at what we accomplished as kids. it's evident how seriously we took the project, and ourselves. the performances range from over the top to bland ambivalence, and are sometimes quite hard to watch, especially when my big scene as the villain comes up. dear god i was an awkward kid, so awfully gay. my attempt at villanousness is hilarious in its sincerety and complete lack of threat.

adrienne does a teriffic job in the workhorse role as mrs. stevenson. what's most interesting to watch is how she grows as an actress halfway through the film. during the first half she overplays the character's helplessness to stage proportions, proving to all of us that she has done her homework, and providing more unintentionally hilarious moments - but then at the midpoint, her hair suddenly changes from blonde to brown (believe me if i could get the actors to sign contracts to maintain continuity, i would have), and her performance suddenly loses its mannerism, and becomes much more real. i suspect she was channeling her frustrations with me, and with spending most of her weekends in a basement crying into a phone wearing a nightgown.

what is also so funny about watching this footage now is that the story takes place in new york city, on the upper east side. all of us had memorized lines about the queensboro bridge, second avenue, etc, without the slightest notion of what they mean geographically or culturally. the upper east side is where the richest people in the city live? we had no clue. and here i am, working on the upper east side, not three blocks from where mrs. stevenson would live.

when filming was finally complete, david mankin and i set out to edit the whole thing together in an all night marathon. we were less than successful. my dad had borrowed a 'fancy new' editing machine from casey junior high - it turned out to be an automated version of the 'two vcr' technique, which had no intuition, and was not designed for fast edits. our entire movie was fast edits. every line of dialogue was a cut, some scenes lasting only seconds. we hadn't even filmed the conversations continuously (which i realize now provides me with no cutaway shots of characters listening.. dammit!).

three cuts into the film and david and i gave up. the next night all our friends were coming for a dinner party and premiere.. we had to deliver something. so we turned it into a blooper reel of the past four years of film projects, which included an attempt at remaking the opening scenes of indiana jones and the temple of doom (damn those other kids who did raiders and finished!), and my own epic space fantasy mythology 'the pyramid of pyra,' which was about adopted kids julie and jason embarking on a multidimensional adventure to battle the evil queen VEVELVA and return control over the universe to its rightful place.

once the edit was completed, we had to copy it once more to add the background music to the left hand soundtrack, making the final product a hazy, fuzzy fourth generation copy.

this finished product will look like the star wars special edition compared to our original version..

the best part about finally finishing the film will be tracking down all my old friends and getting copies to them..

i'm almost done editing it. will post a clip soon..

fill this out.

christ, what's next? my big fat obnoxious boss, the musical?

other good musicals:

dateline nbc: the musical
nanny 911: the musical
real world/road rules challenge, inferno II: the musical

there was a time, in the year 2000, that the coolest font anyone had ever seen was trajan. every movie poster you can think of was in this font. nothing said 'this is a serious movie' like trajan.



so let me say thank you to the da vinci code people for not falling into the 'trajan trap.'

so here's what's been going on..

"But it wasn't the context of the messages that had some observers troubled. Rather, it was the method by which they were transmitted: through spam zombies.

Zombies are personal computers that have been infected with a virus that allows spammers to control them from a remote location for the purposes of sending out mass quantities of spam. These infected machines allow spammers to send much more e-mail than they could with their own e-mail server. It also makes it harder for authorities to trace the source of the messages."

interesting commentary in the times about gay people and research into biological roots of homoness.

i've always been puzzled by the genetic origins of gaywad behavior - what were the circumstances that encouraged these genes rather than selecting them out?

the op ed piece wonders "Perhaps the environments that set off homosexuality today didn't exist while our genes were being selected." which doesn't make much sense to me. is he saying then that it's environmental?

i still think that the gay gene evolved from primitive family groups that survived the elements because members of the group were gay, did not contribute more children to the tribe, and were able to assist in caring for the multitude of children birthed by the horny heteros. the survival of these children passed the gay gene on and on.. it's the best idea i can come up with. anyone got a better theory?

..which is what 'crash' should have been called. if you take the exact same structure as 'love, actually,' and instead made all the characters spew racist banter, you'd have this film. it's on the right track, but includes five too many ironic coincidences meant to teach each and every character a lesson in prejudice. in addition, it doesn't really seem to know what it's saying - that we're all a little bit racist, and that's ok? it's a fine thesis, but the film avoids diggin deep into it's issues by tacking pat, happy endings to each story. puke city. it has 'big, important film' written all over it. the performances are good, it's nicely shot. just another example of a writer who should not direct his own screenplays. it has merit, but fails to meet it's own ambitions.

i'm auditioning for the part of a gay asian hitman this afternoon. the script is quite fun. very john woo, but with cool gay tension. a 15 minute film that of course manages to include a mexican standoff. would make a great anime piece, very action oriented. hope i get it.

am i the only one who's been hit by an onslaught of german spam? someone figured out that none of our spam filters read german i guess.. not that it does the spammers any good if we can't read what they're sending us... very strange.

did the aidswalk this weekend. i bitched and moaned about getting up at 7am, but the event was really quite cool. hal sparks was walking next to our group for a long time. i wanted to chat with him, he was walking right next to me, but i didn't know what to say that wouldn't sound stupid, so i didn't. he's a big star wars buff. we coulda been best friends. i'm so lame.

walked with the group campaigning for sean patrick maloney, running for attorney general. what a guy - hot, charismatic, just amazing. one of those awesome people who just exudes political charm in the best way possible. he was there with his partner, a former male model, pushing a double stroller with two of their three adopted children in it.



totally inspiring. i hope one day i'll have the resources for that kind of life.

dear lord, this is the most hilarious thing ever

and you simply must read the times review:

"The viewer, meanwhile, is sure to cringe -- and often. This is another inexplicable effort by an actor to overplay a slow, strange character and teach everybody lessons. The sanctimonious old stunt is not fair to viewers. This is a deeply -- even thrillingly -- embarrassing movie."

got this from mike dawson. this story says pretty much the same thing as yesterday's except it also cites a study showing that gay men preferred the body odor of other gay men, and that none of the other groups in the study (gay women, straight men, and straight women) preferred the odor.

i saw a similar study featured on the discovery channel that was done with women and men (without sexual preference determined) showing that women preferred the body odors of men whose features were more symmetrical. it's really quite amazing. our BO essentially tells everything about us, whether we're attractive, healthy, gay...

beyond that, i think our choices as to how to mask or enhance our body odor via a variety of products also speak volumes. are asymmetrical people drawn to choose colognes, perfumes and deodorants that mask the molecules in their sweat that betray this flaw?

it's obviously more than just marketing that certain colognes are more attractive to gay men - probably it's because these scents enhance whatever it is in our sweat that telegraphs our gayness.

my first roommate in the city - the poor boy was drawn to use 'secret' deodorant. you know, 'strong enough for a man, but made for a woman'? i said 'gordon why the hell would you use that?' and he just shrugged 'i like it.' if that doesn't scream 'i'm from homosassa, florida,' i don't know what does.

thankfully i'm at the other end of the spectrum. i use 'axe,' which is pretty gay, but it's also pretty gay in a kinda straight way. which is maybe what i am: pretty gay in a kinda straight way.

which opens up a whole bunch of questions about preference. what is preference really? is it something we really choose? or are we just at the mercy of our brains telling us what it needs and then making us believe it's what we'd like?

further evidence that homos are wired differently

here.

this is pretty scary. go to zabasearch.com and type in the name of someone you were obsessed with in high school.

instantly you get every address they've ever lived at, including phone numbers, and you can click on the addresses to get a satelite photo of their house. you can probably even see them hanging out in the backyard.

well, now i know what happened to jason, who has a cozy little place near san francisco.

buddy came back into town, did his headshots..

few things since i been gone:

show ended, was a big success. felt so good to have it under my belt.

wanted to get my tattoo, finally, once the show was over.

tattoos are expensive. well, they probably should be since you're gonna be stuck with them forever, but c'mon. i was thinking of more like $50, not $150. so, it's not gonna happen until i have that kinda cash to chuck around. and i'm not gonna get a $50 one because they will definitely fuck it up.

ok, so maybe the new star wars won't suck. maybe. i just refuse to be suckered in for the third damn time. still, i'll be there opening night.

i've been enjoying the silence. i went to bed at 10:30 last night which was one of the most amazing things i've ever felt in my life.