possible meltdown Fun bit first-- I just signed a giant stack of the three Clemency Pogue books over at Books of Wonder in Manhattan. Mildly obscene commentary added to every third signature! Go get some clempog at Books of Wonder.

The more frightening part-- Got within a few pages of finishing a script a few minutes ago and my computer felt like it was overheating. Tried to pull the power supply out and discovered that it was fused to the machine. Am now frantically backing up, blogging so that I have something to do while files transfer.  ¶ 2:49 PM 3 Comments

  Black Dog Runs at Night Pretty much anything that comes from Canada I think of as something from the country that created The Big Snit. And those Canadian tax dollars do seem to support some amazing animated shorts.

This is The Black Dog's Progress, by Stephen Irwin. Some observations:
- All questions left dangling by "Fire Walk With Me" are in this answered.
- When in doubt, have a character vomit blood.
- If not answers to "FWWM," it at least expands nicely on the credit montage of "The Hangover."

  ¶ 9:33 PM 1 Comments

  Petty Pretty Horses
To follow up yesterday's post, here was another option for the music over the closing credits of Burrowers. In the temp score, we were using Tom Waits' "Green Grass," (and really, what artfag film geek who came up in the 80's doesn't want to end their movie with a Tom Waits song?) I told my cowboy Carolina crooner uncle Dave that I was thinking about finding somebody to record a version of "All the Pretty Little Horses," and he responded with this.   ¶ 11:16 AM 0 Comments

  All the Pretty Little Horses
I've had a few requests for the song that plays as the credit crawl starts on The Burrowers, (and need some new posts quickish to push that mildly embarrassing "my rabbit is cute" video into the archives). The song is traditional, called "All the Pretty Little Horses," performed by Glaswegian troubadour Grant Campbell. I met him in a pub in Glasgow on my way to Up Helly Aa. From looking at him, you wouldn't think he's the result of putting Bruce Springsteen and Tom Waits together through Seth Brundle's transport machine. But I'll be damned if he's not. Here's a link to All the Pretty Little Horses.

And, extra credit-- I know Grant's looking for a music-video type edit of footage from the movie to the song. Anybody wants to rip a DVD, cut a Pretty Horses montage, and post it online, I'll send them a DVD of S&Man.   ¶ 9:51 AM 2 Comments

  Lorraine Operating Procedure I don't really have a good explanation for this one, outside of figuring out the Zack Snyder cheapshot effect on my new camera and trying to maintain my position as the #5 slow-motion lop photographer on the web.

  ¶ 10:25 AM 2 Comments

  Burrowers at Flyover Film Festival The Burrowers is playing in Louisville this weekend at the first annual Flyover Film Festival , co-founded by Kentucky native and Burrowers cast member William Mapother (Google Alert shoutout to Mr. Mapother).  Who you can find blogging here if you want to find out why he takes the controversial stance of supporting elder abuse.  I think.  I just kinda skimmed it.   ¶ 6:39 PM 1 Comments

  Fangoria NY 2009 Well done!  I think Janice may have now matched / overtaken the marketing efforts of Lionsgate for the movie. I was of course there to show my support of peanut butter and chocolate. 

  ¶ 10:01 AM 3 Comments

  Burrowers Concept Art
Jerard Marantz, who Almost Human brought in to do some concept sketches while we were designing the creature, just posted those sketches up at his blog.  It's great work, really got us from mostly there to where we wanted to be.    ¶ 8:55 AM 8 Comments

  RSS up and running Thanks to some advice from my brother-from-another-mother / brother-because-he-keeps-getting-my-sister-pregnant  David Brunton, I've managed to unfuck my RSS feed.  Which should make my frequent two-month gaps in blogging less annoying.     ¶ 9:38 AM 0 Comments

  Burrowers 87: Brood X
Wikimedia released their pictures of the year, and yes, horses and fire are beautiful (but don't expect either of them to hit their mark on a film set). Down the list, though, they have a prizewinning animated gif of a molting cicada that's kind of pretty to look at.


I've cited cicadas a few times as reference for the creatures' feeding cycle in The Burrowers, (where the creatures come above ground once every three generations, instead once every 17 years). I was either 9 or 10 years old when I first saw the Great Eastern Brood (AKA the more tabloid friendly "Brood X"), and remember being shocked that there could be something in real life that was not only so much like science fiction, but so much like cheesy science fiction from the 50's. Giant insects that carpet the streets so thoroughly that riding your bike constantly sounds like eating Rice Krispies? Insects so numerous that if you stand still, you can hear the sound of a million tiny legs climbing a hundred trees? Seems like the only explanation for either case would need to come from radiation or Charlton Heston.  ¶ 7:58 PM 0 Comments

  NYAFF Trailer I'm on the jury of the New York Asian Film Festival this year, and they just posted the trailer to YouTube. Check out the crazy:



Spending time as an American genre movie maker, it gets hard not to see these as Premakes; you almost have to consciously not imagine the watered down Sarah Michelle Geller future version of the movie you're watching, which is kind of like trying not to imagine the Staypuff Marshmallow Man. Why in god's name did they let me on the jury?  ¶ 8:00 PM 0 Comments

  Revenge! I've been quiet here for a month, due partly to putting my self-promotion time into interviews and such for the Burrowers release, and due mostly to having recently become a father and trying to get my head around that. But the kid's three weeks old now and pretty much pulling her own weight, so I can get back to important things like blogging and watching Samurai movies.

In the world of press for The Burrowers, Elaine Lamkin over at Fatally Yours probably did the most complete series of interviews, managing to talk to me, Clancy Brown, Karl Geary, Doug Hutchison, and William Mapother. Adam Barnick conducted an interview for Icons of Fright, that involved the more drinking than any other Burrowers conversations I had.

Whole bunch of good reviews out in the world. My favorite tagline came from David Alexander at Rue Morgue, who called his article "All Guts, No Glory." Exactly.

And some answers to comments left here in the last few weeks:
1. I don't know when S&Man's getting released. I'm trying. If you have a copy, I'm taking a Jean Lafitte in 1812 stance, please engage in sanctioned piracy.
2. Yes, it sucks that Burrowers didn't get a theatrical release. I should have gone with the original title, "Prom Night."
3. I'll work on fixing my RSS feed.  ¶ 6:22 AM 1 Comments