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might be time to hit the brakes. just a little.
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Heh. A Saturday without Danielle around. First one in a while.
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Roger Ebert once wrote, "Hollywood never really stopped making B pictures; they simply gave them $100 million budgets and marketed them as A pictures." I tend to agree, and in classic B movie/exploitation fashion, Mel Gibson's new jesuspr0n movie (which I haven't seen, and probably won't while it's in the googolplexes, if at all) looks like a big-budget roughie. Two hours of a guy getting the shit beaten out of him? And it's man-on-man action, so it's a gay roughie at that. Come back, Andy Milligan. All is forgiven. Of course, it's questionable whether Mel's whipfest is strictly a Hollywood movie, as it was an independent production shot ouside the country with his own money. Only $25 million, which would a bargain by studio standards—the latest Adam Sandler movie cost $75 million, and it's a romantic comedy, for Pete's sake. I say, it's a roughie shot outside the studio system without name stars, so in that respect the $25 million is probably up there on the screen more than the budget of the $75 million romantic comedy. Indeed, the only reason I'd want to see it is I've heard it's beautifully shot—the word "cinematic" keeps being used. I'm a sucker for that one. If it ever hits the Red Vic, I'll probably see it there. Anyway, in actual release it's being treated like a studio film, with enhanced press hoopla and a wide release, on two thousand screens. Interestingly, that's the median of the number of screens for the last two biggest independent films, The Blair Witch Project (1,000 screens) and The Phantom Menace (3,000). Though independently financed, they were distributed by Artisan and 20th Century Fox, respectively. For what it's worth, Blair Witch cost $35,000 and The Phantom Menace a now-modest $115 million. Someone with a grasp of, like, trigonometry or something could probably work out some kind of formula based on those numbers. The bottom line is, as always, the bottom line; the movie is going to be a hit. There's almost no way it can't earn its budget back within the next few days, and I suspect it'll make a bit more than that. You can bet you'll then be hearing the numbers as proof of...something. I don't know. That xtianity is alive and well, or that everyone should go see it. Which I disagree with, by the way. I'm not saying people shouldn't. I ultimately don't give a damn one way or the other. (I can hear it now: if you don't want to see it that means you've already made up my mind, and how can you judge it if you've never seen it? Bite me. I'll bet you wouldn't care if I "judged" Starsky and Hutch.) If Mel thinks endless scenes of torture and degradation will make people convert to xtianity, I wish him luck. Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine. And don't talk to me about suffering. I don't care if you show me $25 million worth of suffering. People have suffered worse than the mythical Jesus did. Why he gets all the credit, why I'm supposed to feel guilty and humble and thankful about it, I'll never understand. Actually, I do. Paul was one hell of a PR guy. While the timing of its release is coincidental to the queer marriage brouhaha, it's perfect all the same. A lot of the wingnuts are rallying around the film even more than they would have otherwise, as if a totem (or idol?) to further protect themselves from the newly corporealized specter of men fucking while wearing wedding rings. And I wonder how many of them are going to exit the movie wondering if Gavin Newsom is actually Jewish. For the record (and I'm pretty sure I've said this before), if The Last Temptation of Christ was considered Gospel, I'd be an xtian. Or maybe even a Christian.
4:42pm Meliza was in the lineup at Michelle's RADAR Reading Series last night. She was powerful, as always. It was announced that series has been extended for another year. Sweet. (All the same, I'm not getting my hopes up too much.) Michelle has also agreed to perform at an upcoming Wicked Messenger. Twilight Zone rehearsal tonight. It was called at the last minute, so we may or may not get Seeley, and I've known since last month that Liz would be in New York this week on a transcontinental booty call. Even with just Maddy, Lynnee and Jon, three of the five cast members, there's still plenty we can work on. I'm finally feeling genuinely confident about it, though. It's not going to suck.
10:49pm If I'm right, and the play doesn't suck, it won't be because of anything I've done. It'll be because of my brilliantly talented cast, who are bringing so much more to the stage than I put on the page. While I do think I'm a pretty good writer and the script is fairly strong, I'm beginning to suspect I'm not a very good director.
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Mixed feelings about my reading at Lit at the Canvas last night. I was still a tad foggy-headed, as I had been all day long whenever standing. (Sitting or driving, no problem. Standing, more problematic.) Since I was trying so hard to stick to the theme, my choice of material wasn't as strong as it could have been, though I got a lot of compliments afterwards about the final piece. Maddy and Sid (Sid!) said I was great, as did others. I don't know. I really wasn't feeling it the way I was on Friday. Perhaps because it wasn't as explicitly a queer audience as at Oral Fixation, so my stories might have seemed a little alien to them—at the very least, I don't think they were quite as familiar with the word "processing" in a dyke context. (Or, I delivered it poorly. That's always possible.) I do hope I get asked back, though, as Melinda has implied I might. I have a lot more material, and I really like performing so close to home. The other readers were Harvey, Trina Robbins and Harmon Leon. Subjects covered included, but were not limited to, sacrilegious necrophilia and golden showers (myself and Harvey, respectively). Trina and Harmon covered some less-than-family friendly material as well. Afterwards, I asked host Kevin Smokler if ours had been the raunchiest show yet, and he said it wasn't—m.i. blue's tales of corpse-fucking still hold that particular crown. Damn! So close, yet so far. After all, there was corpse-fucking in one of my stories, too. Thanks to Harvey and Harmon, though, he said it was the loudest show yet. And maybe, just maybe, that's enough.
3:02pm And to think—up until now, the culture war had been mostly a Cold one. Something tells me that in the months to come, we're really going to sense of who hates us. Although they'll probably claim they're just hating the sin.
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Half the company is gone through Thursday at a convention. As it happens, it's the half which actually gives me work to do, including The Boss. (Although I still expect him to call ten minutes before I'm supposed to leave work, as he always does when he's away from the office, like clockwork. I've been teased about it and called paranoid, but, well, it happens, okay?) In other words, I'm pretty much alone in this office until Friday. Which is nice, but it's also a little nerve-wracking. Okay, I can play my music louder than usual (it's probably going to be a lot of Over the Edge), but I also know The Boss is going to expect me to keep busy, so I won't get to simply slack or work on my own things. And I do have actual work-work to do, which will come in handy when he inevitably asks what I did in his absence. Perhaps ironically, it's stuff which has been backburnering for several weeks now because He keeps piling new This Has To Be Done Now! projects on me. The trick, of course, will be to get right on it and not procrastinate, so I can maybe actually have the last couple days to relax. Like getting your homework done the first few days of vacation. Which I was never very good at. Not spending too much time on pointless diary entries will help. So, we went to the Alternative Press Expo on Saturday. Much like last year, one's overall enjoyment factor in the event itself depends on both your level of disposable income and interest in comic books, both of which are fairly low in Maddy and I. We see it as more of a social event, since a lot of our friends attend and/or hawk wares. Some we know will be there, like Ted or Violet, and some we don't, like Tiff, who's back in town after a few semesters of college in SoCal. (Five years ago, that all was. Blows my mind.) Danielle was there, ostensibly to promote the reprint (more like a remastering, really) of Corpse Delectable. She bailed shortly after we arrived, but we picked her up later in the evening from her current digs, and— Oh, hell. I'm doing it again, aren't I?
11:28am A casting call for a short film being produced by a company in San Rafael. Auditions start today, rehearsals begin next week, shooting commences the following week, and it wraps on April 3. Damn. Mustn't send headshot, don't have time, mustn't send headshot, don't have time...
3:44pm I've been oddly dizzy today, ever since I got to work. It isn't so bad when I'm at my desk, but it's very disorienting when I'm walking around. My vision's like a poorly done steadicam shot. I can drive well enough, at least; I made it to San Rafael and back. Whether or not I should have attempted it is another question, but I did it all the same. My throat's also feeling a little unhappy. God, I hope I'm not getting sick—both on general principles, and because it just wouldn't be fair to be ill when The Boss is away from the office. Lit at the Canvas tonight is going to be interesting, that's for sure. Now, I just need to figure out what I'm going to read. The theme is "Sex, Death, Life, and the Government." Oh, man. That's tougher than it sounds. And I'm up first (as is so often the case), so I won't even get to gauge how much latitude the other readers take. Bummer that (e)'s still out of town. (She's performing in Massachusetts tonight, in fact.) She'd guestlisted me when she featured at the Canvas some months back, and I hoped to return the favor. Except that they don't charge a cover anymore. Hrm.
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