Invancible

Satisfied

2010-06-21T21:31:00.001-07:00

I really like the new job. In fact, I daresay I love it. I'm working in the warehouse at Paizo Publishing, a game publishing company that creates and sells products to the adventure gaming community -- the very community that buys my films. Yes, I am literally stocking my own movies.

I quite like owning a home. Strange how quickly it fills up. This last weekend, we emptied our storage locker, into which we had shoehorned half an apartment's worth of miscellany when we pulled up stakes for California five years ago. On Sunday we picked up a number of inherited heirlooms -- mostly dishes, things to put the dishes in, and things off of which to eat off of said dishes -- from Camille's father while we still had the truck. And in a month, my grandmother's giving us at least three pieces of furniture. Five if you count ottomans.

I'm very tired. It's a good tired. The routine of the days are rise, drive, work, drive, sleep. We eat somewhere in there. I also fail to write pretty much every day. And for the first time in as long as I can remember, I'm okay with that. I'm okay with not writing.

In fact, I love it. I love not writing. I love not feeling like I have to write, like I'm failing at the one thing that justifies my existence as a human being, that justifies the space I've rented in this hirsute sack of organs and unauthored farts. Because I don't have to write it any more. Not if I don't want to, if I don't choose too. I have pretty much everything I've wanted and been working towards since undergraduate -- a home, a marriage, and work I enjoy and (key thing, here) am compensated for.

Disc One, Track 8

2010-05-24T15:17:00.000-07:00

It's not often that I'm surprised by something I already know. So it was a matter of minor shock when The Proclaimers reached out, mid-playlist, and punched me in the ear with a song I'd listened to for years, but never really heard.
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A minor digression. The Proclaimers are -- apart from my favorite band, and the subject of my very first blog post -- identical twin Scottish folk singers who belt the hell out of whatever passes their lips. When you can understand them through the brogue, and even when you can't, they weave tight harmonies of loss and longing, the joys and woes of marriage and drink, Scottish nationalism, and struggles with faith -- my bread and butter, minus the Scottish nationalism.
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Anyway, so the twins are balladeering their way through their second-most recent album, Life With You -- not my personal favorite but near the top -- and they launch into Track 8 on Disc One -- also not my favorite, and a song I've never paid much attention to. And I continued not paying much attention to it until the final two verses, when Craig and Charlie interrupted my day of webseries-editing and box-packing with familiar lyrics that somehow, this time, drilled their way through my passive listening and rang bells in my brain:
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So you need to take your hate and doubt and fear
Distill them through your work til they run clear
Till they run right through your art like highland rain
If you want to hold the flame
You harness pain, you harness pain
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I set down the handful of CDs, perked my ears. You know how sometimes you vaguely know something, but aren't able to put it to words until someone else articulates it in front of you, at which point you blurt out "Yes, that's it exactly!"? It was kind of like that, except I knew what words were coming next. I braced myself, and let them wash over me.
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Do you want to be the best or be well known?
Do you want to repeat lines or write your own?
Do you want to follow paths or blaze a trail?
When you try to succeed you'll mostly fail
And you're gonna lose and lose and lose again
If you want to hold the flame
You harness pain, you harness pain
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I sat at the computer and replayed those verses a handful of times, and after that I wrote this. Such moments, unplanned and unassuming, have a tendency to jump out and punch you straight through the bullshit, leaving you "huh"-ing and sucking at the grains of wisdom stuck in your teeth.

An Indefinite Hiatus

2010-05-20T16:44:00.000-07:00

Well, we got the house. We're officially homeowners. Our move date is tentatively set for June 11, and with all the frenzied packing and away-squaring surrounding that, I'm taking an indefinite hiatus from updating the blog. I don't know when I'll start posting (pseudo-) regularly again, but I expect it to be when we're in the new place, and at least squared enough away that we have internet again.

On a work note, I'm happy to say that I've got a few strong leads on jobs in Washington, and with luck I'll be starting one the Monday after we arrive. No, none of the leads have anything to do with writing or filmmaking, and frankly, I have no problem with that.

Return to PLU

2010-05-11T08:40:00.000-07:00

Last week, I got to fly up to Washington to participate in a special Dead Gentlemen event at our alma mater, Pacific Lutheran University. The university was having us, its only filmmaker graduates -- this being a school with to film program -- back to discuss how we made three features as undergraduates, and where that led us career-wise.
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The band? The band!
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I can't remember the last time Don, Ben, Stevie and I were in the same place. It wasn't on the set of Dorkness Rising (2005), because Ben was living in Ohio. And it wasn't the last time I performed with the DG Improv Troupe (2004), because Don was (I think) living in Bellingham. It may have been a GenCon, either 2006 or 2008, but I can't say for sure. It very well may have been the filming of the DH Orientation Video (2007 or 2008), which was still hundreds of days ago.
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We began our day at PLU by giving an interview in Red Square, where we slipped right back into constant riffing mode, making each other (and our onlookers) laugh while talking over one another and stacking comments which may or may not have had anything to do with our current topic. The reporter commented on such in her article for The PLU Experience, which just went up on the university website. (Correction: I am Director of Development for Epic Level Entertainment, not Epic Films.)
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That evening, we held our feature event -- a retrospective on our films, our process, and a sneak peak at new and unreleased footage. It was eerie being back where it all began, in the lecture hall where we premiered Demon Hunters over a decade ago. Watching our old stuff was so painful that I had to step out a couple of times. Which struck me as funny, since I used to do the same thing when our films were playing for the first time.
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Ten years of Demon Hunters ... who'd have thunk it?
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The event itself was pretty sparsely attended. Only twenty people showed up, and most of them were folks we personally invited. Even so, our audience was enthusiastic and very curious about what we'd been up to. And the rough cut of JourneyQuest was very well received, which was a relief -- I hadn't realized until that moment that I'd been pretty worried about how it would play.
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As much fun as the retrospective was, and as grand as it was to catch up with the friends and fans who attended, the highlight of my day was grabbing a post-interview drink with my two most influential undergraduate profs: Eric Nelson of Languages & Literatures, who taught me Latin and Greek and organized the event, and David Seal of English, my faculty mentor and own personal Yoda. Our conversation meandered from nostalgic reminiscences to advances in digital filmmaking technology to the unusually high talent yield in the crop that was our year to future productions and positions.
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On the last subject, Eric led with "Hey, have you emailed those folks I sent you?" I had queried him previously about the possibility of teaching screenwriting at the university. And why not? I have a rare and unique skill set to offer, what with the years of work in Hollywood, the film school pedigree, the cross-media experience and having actually been produced multiple times. And universities love it when successful graduates return as instructors. He agreed, and sent me a list of university folk to contact, which I'm doing the moment I finish this. He also humbly submitted some suggestions for The Odyssey: A Musical (a DG backburner project forever) which were quite good. I may steal them.
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Just screaming for a kickass musical adaptation
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All in all, our return to PLU was alternately bizarre, nostalgic, and encouraging. It's nice to be remembered, and to know that our university thought enough of the handmade movies we put together to showcase us as an example of what its graduates can achieve. And the prospect of teaching what I learned during my California odyssey at my alma mater is just an added bonus.
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To Eric and Giovanna and David, to Barbara and Kirk and Susan, and everyone who attended: Thank you. I had a blast, and got to skip down Memory Lane with my best friends. Frankly, I can't think of a better way to spend a weekend.

Dead Gentlemen at PLU

2010-04-28T15:11:00.000-07:00

A week from Friday, four of us Dead Gentlemen will be returning to our alma mater to talk all about how we got where we are and where we went once we got there.
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Yes, that's me in the green, in costume for JourneyQuest.
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The panel will be hosted by Dr. Eric Nelson, the man who taught me Latin, which I mostly forgot. The Latin, not Eric. We'll be showing clips of our work, new and old, and probably give a sneak peek of the latest project. The panel will be open to the public.

Whither Must I Wander?

2010-04-25T07:32:00.000-07:00

Home no more home to me, whither must I wander?
Hunger my driver, I go where I must.
Cold blows the winter wind over hill and heather;
Thick drives the rain, and my roof is in the dust.
Loved of wise men was the shade of my roof-tree.
The true word of welcome was spoken in the door -
Dear days of old, with the faces in the firelight,
Kind folks of old, you come again no more.
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Home was home then, my dear, full of kindly faces,
Home was home then, my dear, happy for the child.
Fire and the windows bright glittered on the moorland;
Song, tuneful song, built a palace in the wild.
Now, when day dawn on the brow of the moorland,
Lone stands the house, and the chimney-stone is cold.
Lone let it stand, now the friends are all departed,
The kind hearts, the true hearts, that loved the place of old.
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Spring shall come, come again, calling up the moorfowl,
Spring shall bring the sun and rain, bring the bees and flowers;
Red shall the heather bloom over hill and valley,
Soft flow the stream through the even-flowing hours;
Fair the day shine as it shone on my childhood -
Fair shine the day on the house with open door;
Birds come and cry there and twitter in the chimney -
But I go for ever and come again no more.
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-- Robert Louis Stevenson, Songs of Travel, 1895

JourneyQuest promo pics

2010-04-12T09:12:00.001-07:00

As promised, here are some promotional pictures from the set of JourneyQuest. You may have already seen these on ZOE or Dead Gentlemen's facebook pages. The images have been color corrected and are indicative of what the finished look of the series will be.

The costumes were designed by Dameon Willich and JoAnne Kirley. The prosthetics -- the elf ears; orc foreheads, noses, and ears; and orc facial tattoos -- were designed and created by Shawn Shelton.

Christian Doyle as Superfluous (Perf)

Anne Kennedy as Nara

Brian Lewis as Carrow

Kevin Pitman as Glorion

Emilie Rommel Shimkus as Wren

Kevin Inouye as Kurn

Jeremy Spray as Grellnock

JQ Preview at NorwesCon

2010-04-10T11:49:00.000-07:00

A week ago, members of the JourneyQuest team attended the 33rd annual NorwesCon to offer the world the first glimpse of JQ footage. I arrived early in the morning, got my badge, and set about on some general, all-purpose meandering.
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The art show was particularly spectacular. The sculpture work blew me away. On display were works of fairy tale fantasy, otherworldly masks, and future-past/steampunk gadgetry. Along one wall was a costume piece we used in JourneyQuest: a wicked skull pauldron worn by our lascivious orc shaman, designed by freelance artist and Seattle Knight Douglas Herring.
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Speaking of the Knights, I did a double take when I chanced upon a sketched portrait of their commander, Dameon Willich, who in addition to being JourneyQuest's Production Designer and Fight Director is a tremendously accomplished artist in his own right. It was not a self-portrait, either. That guy's everywhere. It's starting to scare me ...
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After the art show, I scored some $2 paperbacks in the exhibit hall and decided to sit in on a panel or to. I arrived just in time to attend a talk about writing for the gaming industry. On that panel was my good buddy Sean Reynolds, a prolific game designer who works for Paizo. He also played the Inquisitor in Dorkness Rising.
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Sean K Reynolds, shown smiling
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The panel was surprisingly informative, and gave me more than a few ideas for future projects. I got to catch up with him afterward, and he was as glad to see me as his picture above indicates. About that time, I bumped into con organizer Rob Stewart, who played the Innkeeper in Dorkness Rising (see a pattern?). He ushered me into the green room and gave me my "panelist" badge sticker, which, among other things, meant I got free coffee.
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Rob Stewart, also thrilled to see me

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After drinking all the coffee in the green room, I quivered and pulsated my way back among the panels. The JourneyQuest sneak peek wasn't until 10pm, so I still had some time to kill. Lo and behold, I found myself at a panel with the incomparable JoAnne Kirley, our costumer from JourneyQuest. She was teaching the numerous costumed attendees how to move in their magnificent attire without tripping themselves, and how to post for the camera without looking like someone had just drowned their cat. It occurred to me that I'd somehow managed to only attend panels with people I've worked with.
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At 8pm, I and the rest of the JQ team at the con attended a show by A Little Knight Music, the Seattle Knights' choral group. It was a memorial concert for their fallen member, John Moore. The place was packed, the performance wonderful, alternately bawdy and hilarious, somber and bittersweet. Nobody wanted them to stop. A finer choir I have not seen in many a year.
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When 10pm rolled around, we made our way into Evergreen 2 for the JourneyQuest panel. Fans packed the room. First, we showed a 13-minute documentary of behind-the-scenes footage shot by our producer, Corrie Moore of Kairos Productions. That we followed immediately with the 5-1/2 minute convention exclusive teaser trailer, the first time JQ footage had been shown to the public. They liked it so much, we showed it twice. And because it was (and is) a convention exclusive, I can't share it with you here. Long story short, they loved it and wanted more. Hooray, our audience likes the new show.

Congrats all around
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So, by all appearances, the JQ sneak peek was a success. I will be posting promotional photos in the coming days; you may have seen some of them on facebook. There will likely be a non-exclusive teaser/trailer up on the site in the coming weeks as well. I'm keeping busy editing the first cut of the season. We are still set to release the first episodes in July, though we don't have a set date yet.
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To everyone on the JourneyQuest and NorwesCon teams: thank you for a wonderful con experience. I can't wait to share more with you.

In Memoriam

2010-04-02T09:36:00.003-07:00

There will be plenty of time to discuss how unlikely and remarkable it was that we pulled JourneyQuest off. Anecdotes will be shared, photos posted, trailers linked to. What we accomplished with all the roadblocks and setbacks in our way was, in all senses, astonishing. And I will share these things. But not yet, as I'm not ready.
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We lost a dear friend during the production, who passed away during the filming: John Moore of the Seattle Knights, our Art Director, a maker of rare craft and skill, a builder of worlds for theater and opera and film, a man-at-arms, a troubadour, a sergeant in the Knights, a thespian, a gourmand, a man of great humor and greater humanity, who lived a life unbridled, a man free, happy, kind, and pure. The family of our crew will never be the same.
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It is to John we will dedicate the show. And it was to honor him and finish his work, I believe, that we found the strength to rally and complete the project. In the days following the tragedy, when the production was shut down, everyone had the opportunity to leave. And many had reasons far more painful than mine to step away. Yet when we made the decision to continue, everyone came back. Everyone. In trickles and in waves, the cast and crew reassembled. We persevered. And we produced what I think you will agree is a rather amazing piece of cinema. And you have no idea how proud I am of everyone involved.
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Honor is something we think lives in the past, that is antiquated and has no bearing in modern life. That's completely untrue. Honor is alive, though rare, and it is never easy and seldom painless. When you do witness it, it shines like blinding beacon, a lighthouse of resolve, and it was via that light that we steered this foundering ship into harbor. I am humbled and moved in ways I will not completely understand for quite some time.
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This Saturday, April 3, at 8pm, the Seattle Knights' troupe of songsters, "A Little Knight Music," will be performing a concert at NorwesCon in memory of John, who was a member. Two hours later, at 10pm, we'll be screening the first trailer for JourneyQuest with many of the same people. I will be at both. You are invited to come celebrate John's life and work.

Positioning the Bottle

2010-03-05T18:26:00.000-08:00

So I'm sitting alone in the Kairos Productions office in downtown Seattle. An hour ago, Ben came out of the ZOE compartment, rests his hands on his hips, gunslinger style, and eyes me while I peel an orange.
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"Matt, Kat, congratulations." I blinked at him. Was he complimenting my ability to flay citrus? Which, to be fair, is pretty badass. "Tomorrow, we head off to start filming our first feature-length production as ZOE. A production and a company that didn't exist just a few months ago."
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I consumed my orange contemplatively. He was right. Neither Zombie Orpheus nor JourneyQuest were more than ideas a year ago. JQ started talking to me on the train ride back from Comic Con at the end of July. And Ben and Kat first grokked the concept for ZOE, or the company that it would become, in September. A couple months later, JQ morphed from an eenie weenie farce bound for YouTube to a genre-bending, high production value webseries that will introduce ZOE to the world. And it all happened in a whirlwind that continues to gather people and talent to it.
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Honestly, I have no idea how JourneyQuest will do. I have no idea whether non-fantasy fans will find it accessible. Or if DG's amazing fanbase will embrace it, since it's not a Gamers film. Or if sales will allow us our second season, since the first one ends so abruptly. (Well, at least that's how it still feels to me -- several people I trust who've only read the 10-episode and not the 20-episode Season One have said there's no problem.)
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The last weeks and months have all been prep and logistics. Tomorrow, we're off to the first location, which is the farthest removed, and the most remarkable. And that's where I'm most comfortable: on set, on location. Once we're on set, the worries and the fears melt away. Or at least recede to ebb tide. I'm surrounded by colleagues and allies, and against the backdrop of one of the most beautiful parts of the world, I get to tell a lovely and entertaining story with my friends. All the right components for magic.
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Let's see if we can't catch lightning in a bottle twice. Got the same bottle, got the same team. Been studying this storm rather closely. That cloud overhead sure is a-roiling. Zap me, you bastard.

Support JourneyQuest by Seeing Company

2010-02-23T09:34:00.000-08:00

If you're in the northwest and have this Thursday free, you can support indie film and local theater at the same time. Details, cross-posted from the Dead Gentlemen site:

Live in Washington? Want to hang out with members of Dead Gentlemen and ZOE? Want to catch a great show and help us get JourneyQuest made?

Seattle Musical Theatre has generously agreed to help us out with shop and construction space for our JourneyQuest spaces. Now we want to return the favor, so we’re arranging a group night to go see Stephen Sondheim’s classic musical “Company”. And we want you to join us!

So if you live within driving distance of Seattle, call their box office at (206) 363-2809 and mention JourneyQuest. They’ll give you a ten dollar discount, no questions asked. (Here’s a hint–the discount works all weekend. But we’ll only be at the Thursday show, if hanging out with us is important to you.)

See you this Thursday!

Need more convincing? Need to explain to your gaming buddies how musicals and gaming go hand-in-hand? Here are some bullet points to help you out:

Attending the show helps us get JourneyQuest built. Really!
We had to cut the big musical number from the first season of JourneyQuest, so here’s another place to get your musical fix.
Stephen Sondheim (who wrote “Company”) has been a huge creative influence on our stories and writing. The man knows fairy tales!
Small theater companies everywhere are struggling in this economy. The more we support our local performance scene, the better able we are to keep awesome actors in the area.
It will be fun. And the set is way cool.

So please, spread the word, bug your friends, call for tickets before they sell out, and we’ll see you Thursday!

(And as a reward for reading this whole post, here’s the secret link to the list of JourneyQuest lead actors: LINK)

Fear the Boot

2010-02-17T10:29:00.000-08:00

Last week I got to do an interview with the guys at Fear The Boot, an RPG podcast based in St. Lewis.

Fear it! Fear it, I say!

That interview is up on their site now. Check it out. It's about 55 minutes long, we talk Gamers and Dorkness Rising and JourneyQuest, and you can hear Camille heckle me not five minutes in.

Onward

2010-02-16T06:07:00.000-08:00

And I'm off to Washington to film JourneyQuest for the next seven weeks.

It's hard not to see parallels between this project and Dorkness Rising, and not just of subject matter and who all's involved. Five years ago, a month after wrapping photography on Dorkness, we moved to Los Angeles. And a month after JQ is done, if we've found a house -- and, honestly, even if we haven't -- we're moving back. Five years in LA bookended by fantasy-comedies.

I have nothing especially witty or insightful with which to close this. So I'll just say that I'm thoroughly excited to launch this project; I'm dreading being without Camille for almost two months; and I'm praying we'll be returning home sooner than later.

Anyway, to quote Glorion: "Onward!"

JourneyQuest Scout Pics

2010-02-12T07:40:00.001-08:00

Hey, so remember that promise I made a couple of months ago? Better late than never.

So these are a bunch of pics taken on the JourneyQuest location scout back in November. Many of these locations will wind up in the first season, some in the second, and some not at all.

At the edge of the forest

Rolling coastal plains

The ghost coast of Oregon

Slipping between boulders

This would make a great profile pic, but I prefer the one of my feet

Young trees clawing their way out of the stump of another

Jen by another nurse stump

The dungeon's entrance

Staircase into the (near) darkness

Abandon traction all ye who enter here.

Jeremy Spray: Dungeon-Crawlin' Badass

A lovely, if chilly, place to picnic

Jeremy in a spooky coastal forest

Announcing I have to pee

A ruined church in a ruined outpost

An old, overgrown foundation, too cool not to use

A light, refreshing shower

Our final shot of the season?

Right back atcha, nature.

McSterlingthong Interview, Part 2

2010-02-11T08:42:00.000-08:00

He Who IS Fantasy speaks again, in part two of this remarkable interview. I can't wait to get my hands on his upcoming masterpiece, The Clock of Time. And I do hope he releases a cookbook -- the PBR Smoothie and Russian Van Winkle sound too good not to try.

Here there be brilliance.

Restructuring JourneyQuest

2010-02-05T12:16:00.000-08:00

Forget my last post. We've managed to split one giant season of JourneyQuest into two seasons, pretty much right down the middle (with some minor tweaking). It's actually going to work out much better this way -- we won't be rushed or under the constant threat of running out of time -- and by splitting it so perfectly, our second season is already written. Plus, bisecting the project into two seasons allows us to keep all of our fabulously talented cast and crew -- both DG regulars you'll recognize, and some wonderful new folks as well.

Story-wise, the split will allow us to stay comedy-heavy in the first season, and explore the deeper and darker sides of the characters when the story continues in season two. Can't wait to get started -- it's going to be fantastic. It's going to be the next Gamers, I truly believe.

Hobbled

2010-01-31T19:33:00.001-08:00

Today was supposed to be easy. I was going to put the last of the final touches on the JourneyQuest script: translating all the Orcish lines into Orcish, which I've spent the last couple of days developing. It was a recipe for a fun, lightweight day.

Instead, I got to spend the afternoon searching for a way to cut the first season of JourneyQuest in half without fatally crippling it. I don't think it can be done.

Fucking independent film.

2009 in a Nutshell

2010-01-11T13:20:00.001-08:00

I've already broken one of my resolutions, the one about blogging more often. Thing is -- and I've said this before -- when writing takes up the majority of my working day, the last thing I want to do in my free time is more writing.

I had these grandiose plans to do a really bang-up Year In Review for 2009, with a month by month summary of accomplishments and injuries suffered, with appropriate and/or ironic pictures with accompanying smartass captions. But I haven't made the time for that, so I'll just fire this out there shotgun-style.

2009 -- The Broad Strokes

Professional

I write three new feature-length projects: Grandmother Clock (dark children's fantasy), which was immediately optioned; Belly of the Beast (horror set on a 19th-century whaling ship), which immediately went nowhere; and JourneyQuest (fantasy/comedy web-released feature), which I'm directing in March.

The artwork for the Fred, Prince of Darkness pitch package comes in.

I write a webseries pilot, Earth Force 5, which Epic Level produces; it immediately bombs.

Cindi Rice and I pitch 21 geek-humor short films to G4 to use as bumper material; we might get to make some of those sometime this year.

Epic Level submits Pwned to Jim Henson Studios. They really like it -- they've never done a romantic comedy before -- but would like to see a rewrite. They promise to send detailed notes. Still eagerly awaiting those notes.

Anthem Pictures gets The Gamers: Dorkness Rising onto Netflix view-on-demand. The first week of release, it averages 1,000+ new views a day.

History of Demons, which I co-wrote with Nathan Atkinson, comes about two weeks away from full financing. Several months later, it remains about two weeks away from financing.

Ben invites me to partner with himself and Kat Ogden to create a new media production company, Zombie Orpheus Entertainment. He hires me to do the world building and write the scripts Strowlers, the flagship project (previously called Cascadia). We decide that JourneyQuest is the perfect project to launch the company. In the course of a week, JQ goes from just an idea to fully financed. We hold auditions in the twilight of the year.

Personal

We move to Glendale and wind up two blocks away from a Zankou Chicken.

A close family member admits to a lifetime of alcoholism. I spend March in Washington helping get him into rehab, and stick around to help the family adjust during his absence. Extensive group therapy reveals the part I played in it all. My personal mythology about the history of my family permanently changes.

I become a member of the most open, welcoming Lutheran church I've ever encountered. For the first time in years, I'm part of a choir again -- an excellent choir.

My sister earns her degree in nursing and graduates near the top of her class from Hawaii Pacific University. We spend a week in Oahu helping her celebrate.

My parents move to Istanbul, where my father now teaches music at an international school. I fly home to help pack up the house I grew up in. For the first time in twenty years, I don't have a home base in Tacoma.

My grandfather dies at the age of 91. The family gathers -- including my expatriate parents -- to pay their respects. My 83-year-old grandmother makes plans to sell the family farm.

Camille and I have had enough of Los Angeles. We decide to move back to Washington and buy a house in Tacoma. We find the perfect house on Dec. 29. On Dec. 30, we get the financing in order, and on Dec. 31, we're ready to make an offer -- only to discover a real estate investor had sniped the house out on Dec. 29. Ah, well.

I realize that with my sister in Hawaii and my parents in Turkey, I'm the only member of my nuclear family left on the continent.

McSterlingthong Interview, Part 1

2009-12-24T07:59:00.000-08:00

Over the past seven years, I've taken Dead Gentlemen movies to fan and gaming conventions all across the country, and met several New York Times bestselling authors who I now call my friends. I find them urbane and witty, pleasant and cultured, all around nice people who don't take themselves too seriously. And then there's this guy:

I don't know why Dead Gentlemen chose to interview him, but I'm contractually obligated to link to the video.

At Year's End

2009-12-22T07:40:00.000-08:00

Been a while since I posted, and not for any lack of interest. Sunday was my first day off pretty much all month. I had just finished a rather extensive rewrite on JourneyQuest and was about to switch gears into Grandmother Clock, but wound up unconscious instead. Apparently my body overruled my brain's mandate that there would be no nap time.

Projects are coming along nicely. Momentum continues to surge on JourneyQuest -- we're in the process of juggling actor and location availability so we can lock down a shooting schedule. We're nearing the end of casting, and should have an announcement up early in the new year. Also may have a new office space next year -- Kat Ogden scouted out a startlingly lovely, surprisingly perfect potential workspace for Zombie Orpheus Entertainment. That's the new production company I'm founding with Kat and Ben Dobyns in January, the company releasing JourneyQuest and Strowlers (formerly called the Cascadia project). The office space is in one of the loveliest old buildings in downtown Tacoma.

Right, forgot to mention -- we're moving to Tacoma, potentially as early as February, when our lease in Glendale is up. Camille and I are house scouting and will be taking a first-time homebuyers' course while we're up for the holidays. We've been approved for loans and have our realtor; we only have yet to choose a lender and find a house. And then spend months and months in closing. A necessary evil. Still worth it if it brings us home.

Three days until Christmas. How does a holiday that starts marketing itself before Halloween sneak up on me? Our holiday letter will be late this year, as usual. Funny how time speeds up when you need it the most.

Istanbullets

2009-12-13T18:48:00.001-08:00

Follow the adventures of my parents -- the man who taught me my sense of humor, and the woman who taught me when it was appropriate to use my sense of humor -- as they start a new life teaching at an international school in Istanbul. The blog is Istanbullets.

Remarkably, they are not German

Enjoy the kebabs, you crazy kids.

"And Stay Down!"

2009-12-02T08:14:00.001-08:00

I'll have a writeup of the JourneyQuest location scout up by the end of the week. In the meantime, enjoy this pic of me losing a fight.

"That's right, punk."

DG and ZOE Announce JourneyQuest: Season One

2009-11-29T16:33:00.000-08:00

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

28 November 2009

ZOMBIE ORPHEUS ENTERTAINMENT AND DEAD GENTLEMEN PRODUCTIONS ANNOUNCE JOURNEYQUEST: SEASON ONE

From Matt Vancil, writer and director of cult hits THE GAMERS and DORKNESS RISING, comes a new fantasy comedy web series, JOURNEYQUEST. Developed, produced, and distributed by Zombie Orpheus Entertainment (ZOE) and co-produced by Dead Gentlemen Productions and Kairos Productions, JOURNEYQUEST: SEASON ONE will begin production in March of 2010. Free episodes will be released online weekly beginning the following July.

Following a group of dysfunctional adventurers on a quest to discover and destroy the mythical Sword of Fighting, JOURNEYQUEST: SEASON ONE is a comedic adventure through the world of Fartherall, where intellectual orcs, seductive dwarves, lying gargoyles, and holy zombies form the living (and not-so-living) backdrop to an epic story of unrequited love, burning passions, and severely reluctant heroism. And running away. Lots of running away.

In addition to JOURNEYQUEST: SEASON ONE, Vancil will also direct a bonus featurette entitled JOURNEYQUEST: UNDERQUEST, which will be available exclusively on DVD and through several online digital download markets.

JOURNEYQUEST: SEASON ONE will be released online under a Creative Commons Attribution–Noncommercial–Share Alike license. Fans will be encouraged to play and create their own stories and art in the JOURNEYQUEST sandbox.

ZOE is partnering with Dead Gentlemen Productions (DGP) and Kairos Productions to create and promote JOURNEYQUEST: SEASON ONE. The show will be featured content at deadgentlemen.com and throughout DGP’s online syndication network.

JOURNEYQUEST is executive produced by Ben Dobyns and Matt Vancil, produced by Jeremy Spray and Kat Ogden, co-produced by Cornelia D. Moore, and the Production Manager is Elizabeth Heile. It will be shot entirely in the Pacific Northwest.

More information is available at deadgentlemen.com, on the Zombie Orpheus Facebook page, and via the contact information below.

ABOUT ZOE:

ZOE develops and distributes original web content directly to fandom, including especially the fantasy, science fiction, and horror markets. By focusing on building long-term relationships with core fans, ZOE aims to establish a model of sustainable independent filmmaking outside of the studio system. The company is also developing a modern steampunk web series entitled STROWLERS.

ABOUT DG:

Dead Gentlemen Productions is a group of filmmakers with roots in the Seattle/Tacoma area. Their recent film, The Gamers: Dorkness Rising, is currently distributed by Anthem Pictures.

In addition to ongoing comedy sketches and short films, Dead Gentlemen recently produced the high definition feature The Gamers: Dorkness Rising, and co-produced the Demon Hunters Roleplaying Game with Margaret Weis Productions, which introduced the newly canonized world of their original Demon Hunters and a short film entitled: The Brotherhood Orientation Video. To this very day the Dead Gentlemen exercise their super power of unmatched collaboration to create projects together.

www.deadgentlemen.com

ABOUT KAIROS:

Kairos Productions is a reverently irreverent film development and production company based in Seattle, Washington. They are currently developing numerous book-to-film properties based on several works by Newbery Award-winning novelist Madeleine L’Engle. Kairos’ next project is a motion picture adaptation of L’Engle’s novel CAMILLA. Additionally, Kairos is working on HAIRSTORY, a documentary, and a feature entitled THE CURSE OF THE SCOTTISH PLAY.

www.kairos-productions.com

ZOMBIE ORPHEUS ENTERTAINMENT: ZombieOrpheus@gmail.com (206) 659-8963

Dead Gentlemen Announces Zombie Orpheus Entertainment

2009-11-28T12:06:00.000-08:00

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

28 November 2009

DEAD GENTLEMEN PRODUCTIONS ANNOUNCES ZOMBIE ORPHEUS ENTERTAINMENT

Dead Gentlemen Productions (THE GAMERS, DEMON HUNTERS) is proud to announce the formation of a new company, Zombie Orpheus Entertainment (ZOE). Founded by Dead Gentlemen veterans Ben Dobyns and Matt Vancil and by Kat Ogden, formerly of Created By, ZOE will develop and distribute original web content directly to fandom, including especially the fantasy, science fiction, and horror markets.

The first ZOE project will be a fantasy comedy web series called JOURNEYQUEST, to be written and directed by Matt Vancil (THE GAMERS, THE GAMERS: DORKNESS RISING) and executive produced by Matt Vancil and Ben Dobyns. Zombie Orpheus Entertainment and Kairos Productions will present a Dead Gentlemen Production of a Matt Vancil film. JOURNEYQUEST is in preproduction and begins principle photography in March of 2010. Episodes will be released weekly beginning July of 2010. DVDs will be available for the 2010 fall/winter holiday season.

In addition to JOURNEYQUEST, ZOE is preparing an urban fantasy, STROWLERS, scheduled to shoot in September of 2010 for a web release in January of 2011. The project is written by Matt Vancil and directed by Ben Dobyns. STROWLERS is currently partially financed. Interested parties may contact producer’s representative Dawn Roscoe for more information about STROWLERS financing.

ZOE will also produce ongoing behind-the-scenes web content for these projects under the leadership of producer Kat Ogden, including special live interactive streaming events, ongoing opportunities for fan participation, and a wide variety of contests and polls. ZOE also plans to release all web-originated ZOE properties under a Creative Commons Attribution–Noncommercial–Share Alike license, which will allow fans not only to share and promote ZOE projects among their friends, but to create their own noncommercial, noncompetitive derivative works, including fan fiction, video remixes, and games.

Finally, ZOE will offer its distribution, syndication, and promotions services to select companies who produce high-quality media in the fantasy, science fiction, and horror genres, beginning with Dead Gentlemen Productions. In its new role ZOE looks forward to expanding the market for Dead Gentlemen’s brands, including THE GAMERS and DEMON HUNTERS.

More information is available at deadgentlemen.com, on the Zombie Orpheus Facebook page, and via the contact information below.

ABOUT DG:

Dead Gentlemen Productions is a group of filmmakers with roots in the Seattle/Tacoma area. Their recent film The Gamers: Dorkness Rising, is currently distributed by Anthem Pictures.

www.deadgentlemen.com

ABOUT KAIROS PRODUCTIONS:

www.kairos-productions.com

ZOMBIE ORPHEUS ENTERTAINMENT: ZombieOrpheus@gmail.com (206) 659-8963

DAWN ROSCOE: zoe@iamthepartystarter.com (206) 715-4182

PreproductionQuest

2009-11-13T05:12:00.000-08:00

Had a great table read of the rough draft in LA on Wednesday. And this morning, Jeremy and I fly up to Seattle for ten days of camera tests, location scouting, and auditions. We have somewhere in the realm of 200+ people auditioning. Holy crap, this is getting real.

Many thanks to Paige, Nathan, and Rian for hosting the read; to Matt for providing scripts; to Dan for hashing his voice reading action; and to everyone who participated. LA auditions will be in the first week of December.

The Quest Begins

2009-11-09T08:31:00.000-08:00

Many developments this last month. I didn't post at all during October. Much of that was out of respect for my grandfather. Part of it was that I just didn't have the time. One event dovetailed into another into another that scarcely left us room enough to breathe, let alone reflect and report on the events. Here's how it started: Camille and I were going to Oregon for our anniversary near the end of the month, and that trip combined with Grandpa's memorial and fused into an unexpected two-week journey to the Pacific Northwest, equal parts grief and business and celebration.

I've written about the grief, and Camille's written about the celebration. On to the business. I mentioned in a post after Comic Con (near the bottom, it's a long one) a new web project I'd been planning to work on: JourneyQuest, a fantasy/comedy webseries. The plan was to get back to my Gamers roots: shooting a no-budget passion project, running-and-gunning guerrilla style with a skeleton crew, begging and borrowing and stealing costumes and props and locations, and paying for it out of pocket. It would be more for fun than for profit, a welcome break from the grind of my other projects. A pallet-cleanser, a sorbet for the soul.

That was the plan. And that changed rather quickly. Ben and I (but mostly Ben) ran some numbers, just to see what JQ might do if it, say, matched the success of The Gamers. We discovered that JQ would be a viable project for investment. We could raise enough money -- not a lot, a drop in the bucket by industry standards -- to give it top of the line production value. And we wouldn't have to pay for it ourselves.

So we started to putting together an investment package ... and the opportunity was so lucrative that an investor bit before we'd finished the presentation materials.

Boom, JourneyQuest is fully funded. Just like that. And just like that, our shooting and roll-out schedule fell into place. We shoot in March. Which means we need to be cast before the end of the year. Which means casting is in mid-November. Which means we need a script immediately; I've spent the last two weeks on just that. Open auditions in Washington start next week.

Friday, Jeremy and I fly to Washington for a 10-day excursion of camera tests, location scouting, and auditions. Our casting director will be coming to LA in the first week of December to see talent and hold auditions down here. We're having a table read of the script on Wednesday. It's all coming together, at breakneck speed. The Dead Gentlemen serendipity factor seems to be at work again. Expect frequent updates in the weeks and months to come.

Still haven't decided whether or not to capitalize the "Q" -- JourneyQuest or Journeyquest? I think I like the latter more, but I've always written it the other way. I'm open to suggestions.

Dr. Richard O. Failor, 1918-2009

2009-11-03T19:49:00.000-08:00

A month ago, on October 1, my grandfather died. He was 91.

We knew it was coming, but the death hit me harder than I expected. When my dad's folks passed away in 2004, they'd had dementia and Alzheimer's for years. In those final years, the Vancil grandparents didn't recognize me ; I would introduce myself every five minutes or so, and would tell Papa D.O. his favorite World War II joke (which he'd taught me), and hear him laugh and laugh because he'd never heard it before. And then he'd politely introduce himself. I'd been able to mourn them before they were gone, you see, and when they physically died there was as much relief as there was grief. And still, to this day, though I haven't been there in a decade, their little house in Longview is the place I go more frequently in my dreams than any other. I can remember every detail with stark, painful clarity. I believe it is because it's the first permanent place I ever lost. But that's a discussion for another time.

Grandpa Dick had also struggled for years with ailing health, but his mind stayed keen. The man was built like an iron goat, virtually indestructible with a fiercely stubborn constitution and will not just to live, but to stay able bodied. Everything he'd survived had tempered him to be so -- he survived the Great Depression, the death of both parents by age fourteen, two wars, three bypass surgeries and the replacement of both hips. And the only thing he would complain about -- this was in his late 80s, by the way -- was how he couldn't maintain the five-acre farm where he'd lived with Grandma for fifty years by himself anymore. He'd grouse about this to me -- me, in my 20s at the time, drenched in sweat and dirt and manure after only less than an hour outside, secretly wishing it would rain so I could go in without losing face -- about how he just couldn't do it all anymore. These last few years, he didn't spend much time outside. He couldn't. This last year, he could barely leave his chair.

I would call every week or two to check in, see how he was feeling. After exchanging pleasantries and laughs with my grandmother -- I've never met a woman quicker to laugh, though the one I married comes close -- she'd pass me off to Grandpa for about a ninety second conversation.

"Hi, Grandpa, it's Matt."

"Oh, hello there."

"How are you, sir?"

"Oh, you know. Some days are good, some are bad." He'd give me the details of what was ailing him at the time, whether it was the pneumonia or his lungs or his heart or the cancer. "What have you been up to?"

"Well ..." and I'd give him a brief rundown of my projects, and how Camille was doing. He always appreciated brevity.

"Well, thanks for calling," he'd say, whether I was through telling him what I was up to or not. "You take care. Bye bye, now." And he'd hang up. That was a long conversation , especially over the phone.

The way to get to know him was to work alongside him. I didn't really crack into that until I was in college, when I would spend some of each summer working on the farm under Grandpa's supervision. Under his mandatory supervision -- I am a terrible farmer. I can't till a straight line in the garden or uproot a rotten fence post without the foot breaking off or split wood without cracking an ax handle and sending every other piece of firewood pinwheeling off the cutting block. Dick would work alongside me, and when he'd tire (again, the man was in his 80s and still doing field word) would have me take over. He'd watch me work, adjust me when I erred, and emit a single chuckle with a wry smile when I'd embarrass myself -- like by cracking an ax handle or tilling a row that resembled the flight pattern of a moth.

After a few hours, Grandma would bring us out some sandwiches and a jug of lemonade. And he'd start to talk. He'd tell me about growing up in Tacoma in the Depression, and how he would run seven miles to school every day, swim after school, and run back home (hence his legendary stamina). He would tell me about how he worked full time at night while he was studying Orthodontia, expressly forbidden by the university. He'd tell me about being stationed in the Aleutians during the War in the Pacific, and how it would get so cold that a man could grab the coal-burning stove in the tent with his bare hands and not be burned. He'd tell me about becoming the first orthodontist in the city of Olympia, and practicing full time while raising four children on a farm with a dozen head of cattle. He'd tell me about the first time he saw my grandmother, coming down the steps of the library in that city in Texas (I forget which), and he turned to his brother and said "That's the girl I'm gonna marry." Which he did, 63 years ago.

You didn't just get these stories from him. You had to earn them. You had to spend time with him at work, in the trenches, in silent effort, and after that he would gift you with a pearl of family history you'd likely never heard before.

At the memorial service, I heard many stories I'd never heard before. My Uncle Jim spent a day scanning family photos, and put the slideshow on the TV on a loop. Family and friends dropped snippets of stories every time a new picture popped up. Many I recognized; more I did not. I saw sides of my grandfather I'd never seen (due mainly to my non-existence at the time they were taken), but that all informed the old man I had known.

The favorite picture -- indeed, the one that showed up on the program for his memorial -- is dated 1972. My Grandfather is standing on a dock somewhere on Vancouver Island. A solid curtain of trees conceals the horizon across obsidian water. He is holding up one end of a pipe supporting a 52-pound salmon he caught. The pipe in his teeth, held there despite the impish grin, is upside down. It fits him perfectly: his poise, his confidence, his sense of humor, his exuberance for the outdoors. His quiet nature, his eyes that saw everything, and were amused and moved by it all. It's pretty much the same expression in this picture, taken in July of 2008.

I miss you, Grandpa. Take care. Bye bye, now.

Nerd Venn Diagram

2009-09-17T09:19:00.001-07:00

This is too good not to share. Buddy Tom Lommel found this on BuzzFeed. The next time you need to label some oddball weirdo, refer to this handy dandy chart.
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Finally, an accurate, easy-to-understand guide that illustrates the differences between dorks, nerds, and the rest. Study up, people!

Computer Woes

2009-09-16T16:48:00.000-07:00

It's been a rough couple of weeks for us, computer-wise. I blogged a couple posts ago about a rogue anti-virus program that tried to extract money from me by the insipid use of bad grammar.
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What I didn't mention was that not two days later, my computer was sacked again, by a much stronger and far more insidious form of ransomware. This program locked me out of any and all of my other programs -- internet, spyware removal, word processing, everything. I literally could not use any program other than the ransomware , which kept prompting me to buy it. My options were 1) give in and pay off the spyware company, or 2) completely erase and reformat my hard drive. I went with option 2. Scorched earth, mothafucka.
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Thankfully, my OCD extends to obsessively backing up all my files, so I didn't lose anything. And it's nice to have a speedy (circa 2005) laptop once again, now that it's not clogged with four plus years of excess programming. Though I do mourn for my lovely, handpicked stash of exotic porn, hidden in my program directory beyond all reckoning. Ah, well, probably for the best.
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Additionally, between the two major spyware invasions, I also managed to destroy our printer. While trying to force-feed the printer blank paper -- paper the printer insisted was not there -- I managed to completely smash the printer's glass scanner plate. I've seen car wrecks with less broken glass. Now the printer only registers a constant error message.
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On top of that, Camille's computer tower decided, for shits and giggles apparently, not to recognize her work hard drive. You know, the drive with all her software and files on it. I have to say, I never knew that woman could swear so effectively. It was impressive, and terrifying. My eyebrows have yet to grow back.
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But eventually, we got everything worked out. We got Camille's work drive running after only a minor delay, and ordered a new, cost-effective printer. I've gotten all the updates installed for my laptop, and am running at full output once again, so I have to remove "broken laptop" from my list of Advanced Writing Avoidance Techniques.
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Still, though, I miss my porn. If anyone has links to good clown, midget, and/or kung fu porn, send them my way.
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DISCLAIMER: Mentions of pornography in the text do not mean the writer enjoys, views, indulges in, or has ever even heard of porn. Assertions to the contrary will be met with loud, panic-sweat induced denials and fumbling attempts to change the subject.

Midnight Chat with the Wife

2009-09-09T18:39:00.000-07:00

I tend to wake up in the middle of the night. I also tend to wake my spouse up in the middle of the night, usually (but not always) by accident. And when I do, Camille most often grumbles something about how I'm always waking her up, rolls over, and goes back to sleep.
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But sometimes she talks. And sometimes, when she does, the part of her brain that connects words and images is still asleep. And the messages she delivers, while never flagging in passion, make no kind of sense. I remember the first time it happened. She looked me dead in the eye and told me fervently about how I needed to finish the laundry for the stock market.
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It's happened any number of times, and I usually forget what she said. Until now. Because last night I grabbed the mini tape recorder on my nightstand. Here's what transpired ...
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INT. THE BEDROOM
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Camille snoozes under a mound of cats. Matt treks in, tries to slip under the covers without waking his wife. As at most things, he fails.
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Camille pushes herself up, stares intently at Matt.
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CAMILLE: What letter do I wear?

MATT: I ... What?
CAMILLE: What letter do I wear? An "R" or a "B?"
MATT: ... an "R."
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Camille nods, completely unimpressed.
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CAMILLE: And where should I go?
MATT: I don't know. The post office.
CAMILLE: No, that's not what I ... just never mind.
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Camille rolls over and goes to sleep. Matt reaches for his tape recorder.

Proper Grammar for Spyware Providers

2009-09-05T08:18:00.000-07:00

I logged in this morning to find my laptop overrun with spyware. My desktop pic of the Oregon coast was gone. In its place was an unobtrusive "YOUR COMPUTER IS INFECTED!" jpeg. While I was puzzling that out, the first of hundreds of popups opened telling me my computer was overwhelmed with spyware, and if I'd just click here, Windows would download the latest, best, most up-to-datest antivirus spyware-throttling bit of digital badassery available.
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My computer had been sacked by a rogue antivirus program, Advanced Virus Remover. It's a type of program invades and compromises any system it can get into, and then prevents you from doing anything -- like opening programs or trying to delete it -- until you agree to buy its services. It's essentially a digital mob protection racket. Attempts to remove the program or run my antispyware programs resulted in the Blue Screen of Death.
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I managed to expunge the program from my laptop after about an hour -- big shout out to the Malwarebytes Anti-Malware folks -- but not before I'd carefully written down every popup message Advanced Virus Remover threw up at me. See, these rogue programs usually try to camouflage themselves as part of the Windows operating system, to blend in so their messages and prompts appear to be sent by the computer itself. But no one would ever fall for that, because the use of grammar in Advanced Virus Remover used was so stunningly, embarrassingly poor.
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I copied down every popup and alert and emailed corrected versions back to the company. Here is the email I sent:
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Hi there.
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I woke up this morning to find your software buried in my operating system. It took me over an hour to remove it while your program kept offering to protect me from software just like yours. Here's a hint for your next upgraded version: If you're going to try to pass yourself off as a legitimate warning system that's part of Windows, please please please use correct grammar. As a writer by trade and a former English and writing tutor, I've taken the liberty to correct the grammar in your popups and alerts.
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Here they are, in increasing degree of grammatical crime:
CRITICAL VULNERABLES FOUND!
Proactive system found several active vulnerabilities on your computer.
Please read the following instructions before you continue.
Your system is at risk of being damaged by existing viruses- This can lead to PC freezes, crashes, erratic behavior, and data loss. Please run virus removal tool to protect your system.
"Vulnerables" is not a word. The noun version of "vulnerable" is "vulnerability." This wouldn't be so glaring a mistake if you hadn't used it correctly in the very next sentence.
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The next sentence has no article. Which proactive system found the several active vulnerabilities? Was it one of many ("a"), or the only one ("the")? Or did you mean to say there was more than one system ("proactive systems"), which would preclude the need for an article?
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Fourth sentence: you cannot end a sentence with a hyphen. Use a period or exclamation point. If you were trying to connect two independent clauses with a dash, use an em dash (--) instead of a hyphen (-), and don't capitalize the first letter of the second clause.
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The last sentence also has no article. It should read "Please run a virus removal tool" or "Please run virus removal tools".
Click here to protect your computer from spyware!
Your computer is infected! Windows has detected spyware infection!It is recommended to use special antispyware tools to prevent data loss. Windows will now download and install the most up-to-date antispyware for you.
I'm detecting a pattern of article misuse. The third sentence should read "Windows has detected a spyware infection or "Windows has detected an infection of spyware." This is a situation where the definite article would not work -- you wouldn't say "Windows has detected the infection" unless it were the only spyware infection ever to have occurred.
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Also, please note how I have just correctly demonstrated the correct way to separate independent clauses with a dash.
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Put a space between "infection!" and "It". A basic proofread would have caught that. If your sales model is dependent on impersonating a Windows warning message, at least run Spell Check before you send it out.
NEW UPDATE NOW AVAILABLE
Warning! New version of databases is available! Would you like to update them right now?
The second sentence should read "new versions of the databases are available." "A new version of the databases is available" does not work because the object of the third sentence, "them", is plural -- thus, the subject of the preceding sentence, "version", must also be plural. Otherwise the third sentence would read "Would you like to update it right now?".
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Also ... why are you attracting my attention with "Warning!"? A warning is something that alerts people to danger. And yet you're using it to sell me an update of your program. That's like saying "Warning! The next ten shoppers will receive free ice cream!" You wouldn't be able to give away that ice cream, my friend.
Intercepting programs that may compromise your privacy and harm your systems have been detected on your PC. It` s highly recommended you scan your PC right now.
If you delete "intercepting," then the sentence works. But "intercepting" is a gerund -- a verbal noun with an -ing ending -- which makes the gerund phrase "Intercepting programs that may compromise your privacy and harm your systems" the subject of the sentence. That subject is singular, so if you change the rest of the sentence to "has been detected on your PC", the sentence technically will be grammatically correct, though it still won't make a lick of sense. That sentence essentially would mean "the act of intercepting programs ... has been detected on your PC."
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Additionally, the sentence is passive. The programs, or the act of intercepting programs, has been detected. By whom? Passive sentences are used to disguise the agent, that is, the doer of the action. But wouldn't you want to make it clear that your program is the one doing the detecting? An active version of this sentence with the implied subject would read "Our software [subject] detects [active verb] programs [object] that may compromise your security blah blah blah."
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As for the botching of "it's" ... Wow. Just wow. This ( ' ) is an apostrophe, which is sued either in contractions or to denote possession. This ( ` ) is an acute accent, a diacritic mark found in languages that use the Latin, Greek, or Cyrillic alphabets. It indicates pronunciation and stress on a given vowel. I assume you meant to use an apostrophe, since they look so similar, but I can't be certain, as they're pretty much on opposite ends of the keyboard.
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And finally:
Timely update anti-virus databases helps you find and destroy a new viruses. Otherwise, you expose yourself to risks.
Your grammar makes baby Jesus cry.
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What are you trying to tell me? "A timely update of your anti-virus database will help you find and destroy new viruses?" or "Timely updating anti-virus databases helps you find and destroy a new virus?" Or are you attempting an if/then conditional statement? "If you update your antivirus databases in a timely fashion, then it will help you find and destroy new viruses?" I get the gist of all of these, but your syntax makes my brain hurt. Hell yes, I'm exposing myself to risks -- risks like a bad grammar induced aneurysm.
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Thank you for your time. I trust your next version of Advanced Virus Remover will be grammatically sound.
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Sincerely,
Matt Vancil

Feel free to send your own fan mail to the folks at Advanced Virus Remover: support@av-support.us. I'm sure they'd love to hear from you.

Fred, PoD: Swurm and Block

2009-09-03T14:36:00.001-07:00

Two more characters from Fred, Prince of Darkness: Swurm, Hell's own Jeeves, the long-suffering butler and executive assistant of the Prince of Darkness; and Mr. Block, the Cheney-esque CEO of Com Global, who won Hell from Satan in that fateful poker game.
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Hates his job

.Hates your job
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JourneyQuest Riddle

2009-08-28T07:33:00.000-07:00

The characters in JourneyQuest come across a riddle they need to solve in the first episode. Here's what I've come up with. It's not particularly difficult, as riddles go; the characters get it immediately, as I assume you will.
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Always running, stays in place,
Has a mouth but not a face.
Has a bed but never sleeps.
Has no eyes, forever weeps.
Has no lungs and yet can roar,
Passageway without a door.
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First Look at Earth Force 5

2009-08-22T07:01:00.000-07:00

Check it out -- here's the opening animated sequence for Earth Force 5, the webseries I wrote and am producing with Epic Level. Animation is by Epic Level's roommate, Radical Axis, and music is by Karl Preusser. Here is the link:

Earth Force 5 Animated Intro
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I think Don Early said it best: "That's nine kinds of awesome."
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All three episodes of the series should/might be up in a month. We're in the color correction and effects stage of editing. Once it's done and the eps are up, we're off to hunt for a sponsor to take over the role of Great Corp (not an actual company). And if we find one, we get to make more. Which is okay with me.

ALIVE or Dead?

2009-08-20T08:11:00.001-07:00

Came across this last week, front page news in Variety. Yes, it was a bit of a gut punch:

AMC is venturing into zombie-drama territory with multi-hyphenate Frank Darabont.

Cabler is close to finalizing one of the richest development deals ever with Darabont to write and direct a series adaptation of the Image Comics graphic novel series "The Walking Dead," penned by Robert Kirkman. Gale Anne Hurd of Valhalla Motion Pictures and David Alpert of Circle of Confusion are also on board to exec produce.

Project is set among a group of zombie survivors of an apocalypse who are led by a police officer, Rick Grimes, in search of a safe place to live.

Full article is here.

If you'll recall, AMC is where ALIVE, the zombie survival TV show Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens and I co-created with Epic Level, fell about one meeting short of a green light. So, ouch.

But Judy and Gar don't see this as a bad thing. Sure, this means ALIVE is permanently dead at AMC, but it already was. If anything, this shows that we had a good idea. This is proof of concept. In fact, they think this could breathe new life into the project. If there's one thing Hollywood loves, it's an idea someone else already had. If AMC's changed their mind about zombies on TV, who else might?

Also, they pointed out that any Walking Dead series is likely to be excessively expensive to make, considering the weight of the names attached and the ongoing royalties associated with a licensed property. So who knows if it will ever even make it out of development? It might die, but leave the ground fertile for another zombie show. Which is what I'm hoping for. Sorry, Frank. But not really.

Judy & Gar have a contact eager to take ALIVE to Fox and Sony, and other places as well. We'll keep our bony, rotting fingers crossed.

Cascadia Gen Con Promo

2009-08-15T07:00:00.001-07:00

Here's a first look at the Cascadia Project. This flyer is making the rounds at Gen Con this weekend. There's not enough here to call it a sneak peak. It's more like a nibble -- just enough to tease the appetite.
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Front
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Back
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Check out the skyline of Seattle. That's my favorite part. That and the coat of arms. Though how we're going to shoot the castle ...

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I will likely be starting the world building on this project sometime next week. Ah, to film in the northwest again!

Fred, PoD: Celeste

2009-08-12T08:05:00.000-07:00

Some new artwork by amazing Australian comic and pinup artist Martin Abel for the Fred, Prince of Darkness presentation package. Today we have Celeste, the new angelic ambassador to Hell, who replaces Uriel after he goes AWOL to spy on the newly out-of-a-job Satan. Celeste is as competent as Uriel was ineffective, and completes the romantic triangle between Fred and Minnie.
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There's some wonderful alternate art with Celeste in a Charlie's Angels-esque orange jumpsuit, but we ultimately went with the toga and sandals look, which is becoming the standard angel uniform. One idea inspired by the artwork: the size of an angel's wings indicates his or her intelligence. Take another look at Uriel and you'll see how it works.

Stumbling Through the Woods

2009-08-08T08:02:00.000-07:00

At the beginning of every school year, PLU's Choir of the West goes on a less-than-one-day retreat to Camp Cispus in the foothills of Mount Rainier. It's a small camp surrounded by encroaching woods, a cluster of lodges and halls perfect for Capture the Flag. The Choir spends about twenty hours there, arriving Friday evening and departing Saturday noon. In between, there's friendly competition between the vocal sections in skits and genuine camaraderie-building at the candlelit Circle of Light. It's a tradition that delights the newbies, excites the returners, and bittersweetly reminds the seniors about how soon their time in the Choir will be over.
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I had been to Cispus before. As a junior in high school, I had been a camp counselor there for a group of 5th graders from Lister Elementary for a week. I headed up Cabin 5, the Howlin' Wolves. My kids named me Birdman, which is still perhaps the favorite nickname I've ever been given. When the kids were in class, the counselors -- all 17 or 18 year olds -- had free reign of the camp to do whatever. While the others played Capture the Flag, I went exploring.
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On the choir trip to Cispus, after the dinner and the skits and the Circle of Light, I took a flashlight down to the river, down a path I'd found as counselor. The trail was narrow and bumpy and flanked by walls of nettles and blackberries. It ended abruptly, dropping down a tiny dirt and gravel shelf to the water -- a hastening little river, not too deep but glacially cold, rippling like a silver ribbon under the stars. I walked across a short gravel plain, a dry riverbed choked with flung-aside logs and driftwood that would be drowned when the snow melt swelled the river. I stood at the edge and watched the water, and life was good.
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And then the partiers showed up. A couple dozen of them, lugging 24-packs of Rainier they'd smuggled into the camp. We hailed each other. Much drinking ensued. After pounding a few, I woozily announced I was heading back to the camp. "You're going where?" asked one of the basses, slapping a Rainier into my hand. A few minutes later, after recycling my empty in an empty 24-pack case, I announced I was heading back. "You're going where?" the bass repeated. Suddenly there was another beer in my hand, which I properly disposed of. This went on for a while.
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After some time, I announced again that I was heading back. No new beer appeared. I think it was because we'd drunk it all. Satisfied, I nodded and turned back towards the trail. "Don't you need a light?" someone shouted after me -- I'd given my flashlight to a couple who'd left earlier. "Nope," I replied smugly. "I've been here before. I know the way." I stumbled back across the dry riverbed and promptly got lost.
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The narrow path was nowhere to be found. At least not in my state. So I went forward. I'd been here before. I knew the way, damn it. So through stinging nettles and slashing blackberries I pressed, tripping over fallen limbs and sinking ankle-deep into the mud. Knees and shins banged trunks, thorns caught and tore my ears, tangles pulled my shoes off and dropped my face into the mud. For a while I just lay there. How could I get lost? I knew the way. The alcohol wasn't helping, certainly. But this shouldn't be so difficult. I should not have gotten lost.
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I looked up, and saw the light -- literally, the electric light at the edge of the trail down to the river. It hung on the edge of the campfire gathering place, a permanent pavilion with no walls. It was high up and far away. It provided enough light for me to see behind me, but not in front -- the glare prevented that. I could go back, through the same morass and try to find the trail head again, or I could go forward. I was pissed, in more ways than one. So I went forward.
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Bang, smash, trip. Sink, sting, rip.
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Nettle, thorn, branch, mud. Stumble towards the light.
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I mention this story because I'm in a similar place, career-wise, stumbling along a path I thought I knew towards an endpoint that remains tantalizingly out of reach. This is a path I've walked before, a path I knew but lost, and now I'm struggling through a patch I used to walk with ease. I've forgotten the way, somehow. Forgotten how to do what I used to do without thought.
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I shouldn't be much of a surprise that I've been rather depressed for well over a year. It started, I think, when AMC passed on ALIVE last summer. The show was within a meeting or two of a green light, and we kind of let ourselves count on that one; it hurt so much I never blogged about it. Then Dorkness Rising came out, and the five-year project finally ended. And despite all those years of work, no momentum from the release carried DG forward. I've gotten little moving since then. This year's been full of family crises and revelations, and forced reconceptualization of personal and family history, all of which is emotionally exhausting and tempts one to disconnect from everything. And just as a new equilibrium has been achieved, as things are settling into balance once again, my parents are moving across an ocean.
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For the last year or so, the writing had gone from a pleasure to a chore to something I dreaded and despised. I didn't want to do it anymore. The well dried up. My daily page count went from a steady flow to a trickle to a drought; weeks went by where I did not write. I was actively looking for ways out, for jobs and careers that would take us away from this city. I didn't care anymore. What's the point when your fate is predetermined, if you have no influence over the destiny of your working life? Is there a reason to keep rowing against the current? Or do you reach a point where you say "fuck it" and throw the oars overboard?
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I stopped writing. I stopped reading. I stopped watching movies and steered away from my favorite websites. I avoided any form of entertainment that gave me pleasure because I couldn't look at it without hating where I was, without feeling like a failure by comparison. Envy replaced passion. I had completely lost my ability to admire.
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In June, we flew up to Washington for a few days. Camille spent the time in training with NWAG, and I spent it packing up the house I grew up in. The first day, we packed up all their books. I didn't have anything to read, so I checked my backpack for what I'd casually yanked out of my shelf pre-flight back home: Robert Bly's Iron John.
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I hadn't read it for ten years, and hadn't fully understood it then. Reading it anew in my thirties, it spoke to me on a deeply resonant level, particularly the sections about fathers and sons, and deep-seated male grief. I could see where I was stuck in the fairy tale of Iron John, and what stages were yet to be faced. I can't say the book made everything better -- it didn't -- but it did even things out a bit. Stopped the downward spiral, at least. I felt something solid under my feet again.
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And then we went to Comic Con. Secretly, I was worried about how I would react there. We went to the con to promote a movie made by a group of talented college friends, a movie that would be in theaters and would launch their Hollywood careers. Kind of hard not to compare your own situation and find yourself lacking. Also in attendance were group who had succeeded at the same sort of geek humor that fueled DG for years, but who'd eclipsed us in scope exponentially from the get go. It was a recipe for a disastrous weekend of "here's why you suck."
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And yet, it was there, in that environment, surrounded by younger filmmakers who'd succeeded in the fields where I lay tangled, that I saw the electric light from the woods. I stopped stumbling forward, and steadied myself against the trees. There was a recipe here, a pattern I could study. I could learn from these guys if I paid attention. I did, and I could see where the forest ended. I could see the way out.
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How to get there, though, was still in the dark. I used to know how to do this. I used to know this path. I know there's a way back. And in admitting that, I felt something I hadn't in a year and a half: admiration. I could enjoy other peoples' work again without obsessively comparing my own achievements and finding myself lacking. I enjoyed the hell out of that con.
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It was on the train ride back from San Diego that I made a couple of realizations. When we moved down to L.A. in 2005, I knew how to make movies. Hell, I'd been doing it for years. I knew what worked, what was funny, and how to make something hilarious, with surprisingly strong production value, out of nothing. It was my hallmark.
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Then I got to AFI and was promptly told everything I'd been doing was wrong. That's not how you make movies. That's not how you write movies. That's not the audience you should be targeting. Do this and this, don't do this, and for God's sake don't trust your instincts. I listened. Why shouldn't I? These are the industry professionals, the ones who've made a career doing what I'd like to. I should listen to them. So I moved to L.A. and forgot how to make movies. I lost the path.
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I also realized, on that train ride home, how spoiled Dead Gentlemen had been by our early success. When we went to Gen Con in 2003 and sold hundreds of Gamers DVDs, we did not know what we had achieved. We had basically conquered the RPG community without trying. And what we learned from was a terribly wrong lesson that permanently stunted our growth: the fans will come to us. Which is why DG's never really broken out of the RPG crowd. We expected the fans would find us instead of the other way around. That was beneath us, because we're so awesome. And so we didn't follow up the Dorkness Rising release with any sort of push, and lost any and all momentum we'd built. And yet we lament our obscurity when it's entirely our own fault.
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So there I sat on a crowded train to Los Angeles, my feet swollen and pounding from standing on unyielding concrete in bad shoes for three days, mulling over a pair of unpleasant truths. I suppose I would have expected myself to sink back into black depression. The opposite happened. My well filled up. Stories and characters started speaking to me again, with volume I hadn't had since before moving to Los Angeles. I remembered how I used to do things when I didn't know how things were supposed to be done. In sudden clarity, I saw what I could do with the resources at my disposal. I felt the path under my feet, and the woods parted.
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Since I moved to L.A., I stopped making movies. I'm assured this is the way it's done, that it takes years of development and networking to get anything made. And even then, you have to -- have to! -- make something the industry says people want to see, not what you've got burning inside you. Don't trust your instincts.
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Fuck that. You know how I got into film school? By not trying to get into film school. I am a fanboy. I made entertainment that I, as a fanboy, wanted to see. And, lo and behold, they found a fanboy audience, and that audience evangelized and swelled. The end result was a funded feature that got me into film school.
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That is what I'm going back to. My roots, the zero-budget run-and-gun guerrilla filmmaking that got me here in the first place. I have an army of stymied filmmakers and actors, as frustrated as I am with not getting anything made, at my disposal. I know this path; I've been down it before. Hell, I've done it before, with great success. I just forgot that I knew how to do it.
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Back to the lost-in-the-woods story. Eventually, I did find my way out of the forest. With that single electric light as my beacon, I powered forward, slamming my shins and tearing my clothes and scratching my skin and uttering truly blasphemous combinations of words with each step. Suddenly the woods gave way and I emerged onto the lawn around the campfire pavilion. A good portion of the forest was stuck to me; I'd unintentionally camouflaged myself on the quarter-mile trek through the muddy wilderness. I blinked in the light and sighed mightily.
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Then I noticed the four girls staring at me from the benches around the campfire. I don't think there could have been a more embarrassing lineup of ladies: they were my ex-girlfriend, the girl I'd been in unrequited love with, a girl I was quite interested in, and the big sister of the choir. They blinked at me the way you'd blink at someone who looks like he'd just been dragged through a swamp.
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"Hey," I said, because I had nothing else to say.
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"And what have you been up to?" one of them asked. Her tone said they all knew I was drunk.
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I don't recall what I said back, other than that I tried and failed to play sober. They dismissed me and went back to their girl talk. I trudged back to the barracks and tried to sleep while the tenors bullshitted with each other until the early morning hours.
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Why mention the encounter with the girls, apart from its intrinsic humor value? Because the reaction I've gotten from many of my establishment filmmaker friends has been the same. "I'm going back to my roots," I tell them, "back to how I did things before coming down here." And they look at me like I'm drunk.
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I don't blame them. Most of the producers in this town simply cannot think below a certain budget level. That's not how it's done! Nothing exists there! Nobody can survive below that line! Aside from the internet pioneers who've achieved industry success from the same guerrilla roots. I will join them. I know I can. I've done it before. I could launch into a long treatise about how the entertainment industry is contracting, and how the future of distribution lies in emerging new media, but this post is already long enough.
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In the weeks since Comic Con, I've been incredibly busy. I'm knocking projects and goals off left and right, and am working with a stronger sense of purpose than I have since the original Gamers. Many exciting projects are in the works. Primary is a webseries helmed by my longtime friend and coleauge Ben Dobyns. He's created a model for internet distribution that, if successful -- and I have every reason to believe it will be -- will provide a platform with unparalleled potential for convergent storytelling. It could also see the rebirth of Demon Hunters and the resurrection of Hopjockey as webseries. And I have in the works a webseries of my own, a fantasy/comedy I hope to shoot as early as next year: JourneyQuest. I can't wait to tell you more about it.
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So here I stand at the edge of the woods, bleeding and bruised, covered in sticks and mud, frowned at by people who think I'm out of my mind. Which is fine with me. Because it's not the people who stick to the path who find new ways through the forest.

I Stole Their Furniture

2009-08-06T08:47:00.000-07:00

There comes a time in every man's life when his parents move to Istanbul.

For the last twenty years, my father taught choir and art history at a Washington high school named after one of our less memorable presidents. Long story short, the environment was no longer welcoming -- something about the district bringing in bean-counting axe men to target the higher-paid employees, and what with dad having a doctorate ... -- so Dad resigned and he and Mom started looking for work elsewhere. And then the economy swallowed a turd and went tits up. But he did find work. At an international school in Istanbul.

Istanbul

Not Istanbul

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Last week, right after Comic Con, I flew up to help my parents pack up the house I grew up in. During the hottest weather in recorded Washington history. It took several days, but we got it done, to my surprise. The house is now up for rent, and my parents' belongings are all in storage. And for the next two to four years, they'll be living and working in the heart of the former Byzantine Empire. And Ottoman Empire. And several other empires. That area got conquered a lot.

I don't have a pithy way to end this, so I'll conclude by saying we inherited a hide a bed sofa and overstuffed chair from my folks, along with some nice camping equipment and enough canned food to feed a small survivalist compound. And I've got my dad's rugby ball sitting on my external hard drive, within easy reach. My hand keeps drifting to it.

Good luck, Mom and Dad.

Comic Con and Derrick Comedy

2009-07-22T10:10:00.000-07:00

So Camille and I just found out we will be attending Comic Con this weekend. We're thrilled -- this is the only con we'll be attending this year. For a while there, it looked like we wouldn't be seeing any of our con buddies until 2010.

We'll be working Friday and Saturday at the Derrick Comedy booth. Derrick Comedy is a comedy/improv troupe whose videos have been viewed over 100 million times.

These guys = funny

In my opinion, they're the best comedy troupe on the web, and they're starting to reap the rewards of their talent. One of the members, Donald Glover, just won an Emmy writing for 30 Rock. They are definitely worth checking out, but be warned -- much of their material is definitely not safe for work. My fave is Girls Are Not To Be Trusted.

Camille's work, Roadside Attractions, is releasing Derrick Comedy's first feature, Mystery Team (link goes to trailer). We got a sneak peek at Roadside last week, and it's pretty damn entertaining, hilarious throughout and with an actual engaging mystery. I believe there's a Comic Con screening, but I don't have the dates. The film will be released in theaters this fall. We'll be pimping Mystery Team at the Derrick Comedy booth with the troupe members themselves. It's booth #4016 in the Exhibitors Hall.

So stop on by. From what I hear, the team's going to man the booth themselves, and we're there mostly as fillers for when they need a break. So we'll have a lot of free time, but constantly be on call.

Additional: My cell phone's still kaput, so your best bet to reach me away from the booth is on Camille's.

Update: Katy informs me that the screening of Mystery Team will be Thursday from 6 to 8pm at the Gaslight. Also, Derrick Comedy will be doing a panel on Sunday around noon, at which they will premiere a new sketch filmed exclusively for Comic Con.

Shorts for TV?

2009-07-06T14:21:00.001-07:00

Had my first non-pitch network meeting last week. Cindi and I met with a friend of hers, an exec at G4, to discuss producing some short comedy to air as part of one of their shows. If you don't know, G4 is the video gamer geek channel, and wants comedy in its programming, so it seems like a natural fit. So over the past couple weeks, I'd been writing quite a few geek comedy shorts and sketches, standalones and serials, to throw their way. Cindi sent the material to the exec and we got a meeting that week.

The meeting went well, though I couldn't tell at first. Cindi actually called me afterward to confirm that it was "not a bad meeting," because I apparently looked like someone had drowned my cat. No, the meeting wasn't a homerun -- initial meets usually ain't -- but the exec liked some of our ideas and despite development budget problems still wanted to make something. She promised to read the 21 shorts and sketches (had to go with a lucky number) over the holiday weekend -- which I wouldn't hold anyone to, not with family barbecues and random explosions all night long. With luck, me might soon be shooting something that will air on network TV. Which, I don't have to tell you, would land firmly in the "Nifty" column. So here's hoping.

Earth Force 5 Photos

2009-06-29T10:35:00.000-07:00

As promised, here are some pics from Earth Force 5, the new comedy web series produced by Epic Level Entertainment and written by yours truly. I'll leave you to speculate on the plot.
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An EF5 agent in trouble. Yes, that's Jason Marsden.

Chelsea in one of the tunnels
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Nefarious, who is his name. And yes, that's Nathan Rice.

Nina and Gaius. I mean Frank.

Chelsea futzes with some sciencey thingamajig
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A normal day at Earth Force 5

Steve and Superbios need a vacation
..Nina returns from an encounter with Clancy

The EF5 team in trouble. Not pictured: Clancy.

Earth Force 5

2009-06-24T14:01:00.000-07:00

This weekend, we shot the pilot webisodes for Earth Force 5. It deserves a detailed report that I will give you once I have pictures. In the meantime, I can say this: it went very smoothly, almost without a hitch. Having two cameras works wonders. If we'd had just the one, there's no way we would have finished on time. When you can nab two shots per setup, the day can fly. As it must when you're attempting to shoot fourteen pages in twelve hours, not counting your lunch break.

Auditions, Bumpers and Demons

2009-06-09T16:58:00.000-07:00

Quick rundown of the goings-on and the happening-whats:
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Last week were the auditions for Earth Force 5, the webseries pilot I wrote for Epic Level. I love auditions. They're the first time the I get to hear voices for the characters other than the ones in my head. Which can be a weird experience, especially when an actor's interpretation is quite different from mine -- and the actor is right. I got to read the parts across from the actors. But after twelve hours of reading out loud, I was starting to phone it in. The actors, however, did not. The group we cast is strong and copiously talented, and includes at least one guy you'll recognize. The sad thing is that we didn't have parts for everyone. We saw no dearth of talent.
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I'm writing a series of two- to three-page sketches that will potentially show up on TV. I don't know how transparent I can be on the subject, so I'll steer towards opaque. There's a TV station out there that specializes in fan genre programming. And it just so happens they've recently had a regime change, and the new lady in charge is a good friend of a good friend of mine. And while the new exec isn't looking for show pitches right, she is looking for bumper material to fit between the network's existing shows and segments. And any bumpers that get popular enough could potentially spin off into something larger.
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I pitch-chained a few ideas for bumpers up to the exec through my friend, and the result was positive. So I'm downshifting from long arcing narratives to one-off jokes. It's nice to be working short form again, as a change of pace at least. And if any of these shorts get made, there would be pay involved. Which is good. And that's not my only project that might be headed towards a paycheck.

As a student at AFI, I co-wrote a thesis film submission entitled History of Demons with director Nathan Atkinson. AFI gave the project a red light, so Nathan and I decided to redo it as a feature. Three some years later, we're on the verge of optioning the script to a producing team that already has financiers interested. And the budget they assure us they can get is in the $25 million range. If that happens, I'll make more in a day than I ever have in a year, and will get into the WGA to boot. So I'm keeping my fingers crossed. If you wouldn't mind keeping your fingers crossed as well, I'd appreciate it.

Another Cookie Prophecy

2009-06-08T22:45:00.000-07:00

Tonight's fortune cookie: "You will be successful in a business of your own." Jives pretty well with the last one.

Fred, PoD: Skeezix and the Imps

2009-06-01T16:45:00.000-07:00

More of Martin Abel's conceptual art for Fred, Prince of Darkness.
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In Hell, the Imps are the worker demons, the blue collar joes who do the actual tormenting of the damned. It's a thankless job with no overtime and no benefits -- or at least it was before the regime change. With Satan gone, the Imps elect Skeezix head of their union (despite his rather loud protests) and go on strike, figuring Fred must be easier to negotiate with than Satan. And if he's not, well ... they're only down Skeezix.

Fred, PoD: Minnie and Uriel

2009-05-22T15:12:00.000-07:00

A twofer today. Minnie is the career succubus longing for a life outside of seduction. She and Fred hit it off immediately, and puppy love ensues. Nothing more than that ever can, though, because the moment they get carnal, Fred loses his soul. The downside of dating a succubus. Uriel is Heaven's clueless ambassador to Hell. He's utterly convinced that Fred is some sort of trick and that Satan's still in charge. Thus he tirelessly pursues Satan from pointless job to pointless job, striving to uncover a conspiracy that doesn't exist.

I really dig this art. Really gets to the core of the characters. Minnie's gorgeous and alluring without being slutty. "Intimidating beauty" is how I'd put it. And I love how there's nothing behind the eyes of that lantern-jawed angel. Looking at Uriel, I'm reminded of Dark Helmet's words to Lone Star in the climactic duel of Spaceballs: "Evil will always triumph, because Good is dumb."

Fred, PoD: Satan

2009-05-11T10:48:00.001-07:00

After he loses Hell in a poker game, Satan is fired and evicted. Now he wanders the earth drifting from one dead end job to another. A guy whose identity was completely tied up in his job, Satan now finds himself on an unintentional journey of self-discovery. .
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Note the complete lack of giving a shit. Some of the jobs Satan will suffer through over the course of the first season are telemarketer, self-help guru, and mercenary.

Fred, PoD: Fred

2009-05-08T08:00:00.000-07:00

Here he is, the titular character from Fred, Prince of Darkness: Fred, the poor office drone forced to run Hell after Satan loses it in a poker game. Note the panic and the terror sweats.

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That's Virgil the hellhound puppy on the leash. Fred got him for Minnie, the succubus love interest who wants out of seduction, as a first date gift. Minnie will show up here in a couple of days.

Grandma, Red Shirts and Fred

2009-05-08T07:34:00.000-07:00

Lots of movement on several fronts.

On Wednesday, I finished my rough draft of Grandmother Clock, the dark children's fantasy I've been working on for about two years. This was the longest and hardest write I've done since Undergrads, and for similar reasons. I'm rushing now to get a working draft done to disseminate before we take of for Hawaii on Monday. If you want to read it, shoot me an email. Just remember that all the regular first draft provisos still apply.

About a month ago, I was contacted by a very talented pair the AFI class of 2008, the year after mine. Tom Mahoney and Nick Simon, the producer and director of The 7th Claus, went flipping through the 2007 screenwriter's pamphlet looking for projects, and Red Shirts caught their eye. Which is not a surprise if you consider we share a favorite AFI instructor, Star Trek alumna D.C. Fontana. We met and they pitched me an idea for the project that I instantly dug: why not set it in 1960s TV sci-fi, with all the ridiculous sets and costumes and hairdos and social attitudes? The idea excited all of us and breathed new life into an otherwise dormant project. Tom and Nick took the project to AFI class of 2004 producing alumn Brian Udovich, who I first met here, and got him similarly stoked. We're all four in the early stages of some pretty thorough research. (Translation: we're gonna be watching a lot of original series Star Trek.) I'm excited to see where this goes.

I've mentioned before that Fred, Prince of Darkness, my animated sitcom pilot, has been on hold for about a year. We need character and concept art to complete our pitch package before we take Fred out to share. Three times last year, Jonah hired an artist, and three times the guy flaked out before producing anything. Finally, though, we found our guy: Aussie comic book and pinup artist Martin Abel. His style is perfect for Fred, both hilarious and edgy while not sacrificing character for look. If Hopjockey were ever a comic, I'd go to this guy. I'll be sharing some of the concept art here in the next few days.

So yeah, things are good. Maybe the cookie was right.

Cookie Prophecy

2009-05-05T14:33:00.000-07:00

Last night's fortune cookie: "Your ideas are clever, and you will be rewarded." Sweet.

Home

2009-04-29T09:40:00.000-07:00

Been back for about a week now. My stay in Washington was draining and raw, and surprisingly necessary on a personal level. As the clock wound down towards my departure, I found myself not wanting to leave because there was so much left to be done. The family's okay. Well, better than okay, really, but there's still a lot of shit to sort through. All the problems we faced when I first left LA are still there. In fact, a couple have multiplied. But if anything, we feel more able to handle them. You dig your way out of the avalanche one shovel-full at a time.

Me, I'm doing all right. I'm looking at things differently. I've undergone what a friend called a "values shift." What I want, what I'm working towards, has come into rather sharp focus. The career path I've been on is no longer the main one I'm following. Oh, they may still wind up in the same place -- that's the super happy ending, the one that can't be unlocked until you've played through the game a few times -- but it's not critical that they do. What is critical is that I find some form of paying work, and fast.

In the meantime, I'm attacking the writing with renewed vigor. I hit page ninety on Grandmother Clock this morning, and will likely have a draft by mid-May. The most recent final very last I'm-never-doing-this again Pwned rewrite is progressing well. Very happy with that. Epic Level (and, apparently, Endemol) loved the Earth Force 5 rewrite; that shoot's this summer. The Fred, Prince of Darkness artwork is staring to come in. The Hopjockey team has decided to respec the project to pitch as a feature. And Ben's fantasy series has begun to stir.

Still, I can't help feeling like this time might be a valiant last stand for the writing dream. My own personal Thermopylae, where my barbarian student loan interest rates are the Persians. My elite, outnumbered projects have bottlenecked the enemy in the mountain passes of deferment and forbearance. But can they hold them off until promised future earnings arrive?

This is stupid. I'm a go work on my resume.

Easter

2009-04-12T09:59:00.000-07:00

My father was a church organist for twenty-some years, all through my early childhood. Church on Sunday was a half-day affair, from before the sun was up to the early afternoon. I absorbed a lot of things I didn't quite understand, a lot of imagery and half-understood notions, so I filled in the gaps with kiddie logic, the way yunguns do. I knew, for example, that Jesus was born on Christmas and died on Easter. But I thought this happened every year. The way I understood it, Jesus was born every Christmas, magically grew to maturity in the next few months, and then died again on Easter. And I remember wondering why nobody ever warned him. I mean, here's a congregation full of people singing about how much they love the guy, but nobody thinks to give him a heads-up about his impending death? Seemed a bit cruel to me. Must be one of those mysteries. The logic of a five-year-old.

It's Easter morning, nine or so. This is the time of my morning write, the time of day I'm usually scribbling on a manuscript. When all's well and easy, I write every morning, and the pages stack up, and after a while I have a new screenplay to share. Things have not been well, nor easy. I've had two good writes this month. Two. And yesterday my laptop's keyboard started malfunctioning. Again. Gotta swing by Best Buy and get a USB keyboard. My laptop's the only computer here with Final Draft on it.

Here is my parents' house. I came up for a medical emergency at the end of March. I was only supposed to be here for a couple of days -- what needed doing was done the second day I was here. But needs kept me here, and so I stayed. And then things worsened.

We had another completely different medical emergency on Friday. My 91-year-old grandfather had what we thought was a heart attack. Turns out it was only congestive heart failure. I watched the ambulances pull up, watched the paramedics wheel him out of the farmhouse. I stayed out of the way -- my mother, aunt, and grandmother had everything under control, because with Grandpa's decreasing health, this sort of thing has become disturbingly routine. When he comes back to the farm on Monday, he'll be in hospice care. He's decided to die at the farm, which is a surprise to no one. That he's dying is also no surprise, though of course that doesn't make it any easier.

So this has not exactly been an environment conducive to writing. And, frankly, writing's not what I should be dong while I'm here. This is the longest stretch I've been in the northwest since we moved to LA in 2005. Here I must be vague. Since I've arrived, there has been a reeducation regarding my family history, one I've needed to be here for. It is clear that a change, a new start, must happen. The pattern has to change. The future of my parents and the home they raised us in is uncertain. And that uncertainty is infectious. I brought my own sizable load of it with me, and here it's impossible to avoid. That uncertainty, that doubt, is nearly crippling.

Jeff, my brother in all but blood, came out the night before my grandfather was hospitalized. We didn't get much time together. We rarely do. We browsed the Tacoma Book Center but didn't buy anything -- we'd picked that place clean years ago -- rode around the Five Mile Drive and walked Owen Beach. We spoke of many things. Of shoes, and ships, and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings. I spoke of the worry that gnaws at me, that I am constantly agonizing over. Am I doing the right thing? This is a family question, not just a professional one. Should I keep doing what I'm doing? Writing and filmmaking are the only things I'm good at, the only places I excel. But we can't afford to idle here, not the way my rich friends can, to play the waiting game necessary for success. And even if I ultimately find success, how long and what sacrifices will that take? What if it takes twenty, thirty years? Do I want to put my life on hold until I'm fifty, to have our kids growing up hardly knowing me and a wife who resents me? And when, if ever, will we have our children, build our family? What good is success if you have no one to share it with? The measure of a man is not what he does for himself.

Jeff listened. And like he always seems to do, he found the answer to my troubles in a Zen story, a kernel of wisdom easy to understand but difficult to implement. He told me of a student who asked his master what else he might do to guide himself towards enlightenment. "Enlightenment," the master replied, "is an accident." It's not something you can earn, he explained, not something you can track down or pay your dues for or ever be owed. Hearing this, the student despaired. "But," the master added, "meditation makes you accident-prone." Make a couple key substitutions, and you get this:

Success is an accident.

But practice and discipline make you accident-prone.

When Jeff articulated that, it resonated with me, the way a truth you've always known does when it's first put into words. Success in this industry is not about talent, or commitment, or who you know or whose genes you share, though such things can help. It's about being struck by lightning. And sure, you can do things to put yourself in the way of that bolt, but you can't coax it down. It's liberating to think of it in those terms -- if it's an accident, then it's not ever anything you can deserve. And if you can't deserve it, it removes the burden of shame associated with not achieving it, eliminates the "Why hasn't it happened? What am I doing wrong? What's wrong with me?" Nothing. Nothing at all.

This month -- and I'm about halfway through my time here -- has cleared a lot of fog and put things into sharp contrast. What I want is more clear to me now than it has ever been: Family and home, and health for both. I don't need success in film for either, especially if it would take time away from them. That doesn't mean I'll stop writing. I don't think I could. But it does mean I'm going to stop thinking of cinema as my only outlet. I'll go back to writing for the reason I started: I love telling stories, and I have good ones to share. But watering those stories down to fit key demographics, hiring myself out to tell stories I don't really care about for other people? Screw that. That's not why I started doing this. I started doing this because I loved it, not because I ever expected to have a career at it. It wasn't until I moved down here that it became an insufferable burden.

I think that, unless there's some compelling reason for us to stay, that when our lease is up in February, Camille and I will move. Whether back to the northwest or to the California coast, I cannot say. But a change, a new start, must happen. The pattern has to change, because the current one is unraveling and has become unsustainable.

So it's time to consider something new. The option that excites me the most is a foray into hospitality industry. Camille's dream is to own and operate a bed & breakfast, ideally in or around San Luis Obispo. I love that idea. She's so good with people, makes friends with such ease. It's a natural fit. I've had my dream, and pursued it, and though part of it might still come true, likely it won't. And you know what? I'm fine with that. The things I'd do at a B&B are the things I do now: write in the morning, chores and maintenance during the day. Maybe she'd even pay me. And I'm excited, truly excited, to try something new and scary with my partner.

In the Christian calendar, today is the day of rebirth, the confirmation of continuing life. But for rebirth to occur, there has to be a death, and an acceptance of that death. I'm seeing that literally and metaphorically in family right now. And if it's to happen in my own life, I must accept the death of where I thought I'd be and how I thought I'd live -- or at least let go of how I thought things would be. And that, my friends, is liberating.

Ugh

2009-03-30T12:40:00.000-07:00

Ugh. Just... ugh.

Alumn, I

2009-03-25T15:33:00.000-07:00

Last week, I made the last-minute decision to attend an AFI alumni dinner. I heard about it through Jonah, my partner on Fred, Prince of Darkness and Grandmother Clock. He was one of several mini-hosts putting together a table of alumns for the dinner. It was part of a drive to dial newer graduates in to the alumni processes. I figured it could be fun. Might reconnect with some friends, meet a few fellow fellows. Plus, the event was at Mortons: The Steakhouse, and I seriously needed to get my beef on.

We have no mascot

I got there early, and didn't see anyone I recognized. So I mingled. And the first guy I struck up a conversation with was a producer from '04 named Brian Udovich. He looked oddly familiar, but I couldn't place him. He asked me what I'd been working on, and I quite proudly told him about Dorkness making it to DVD. The conversation went something like this:

ME: Yeah, it's on Netflix and Amazon now. I'm pretty proud of it.

UDOVICH: Cool, cool.

ME: So what've you been up to?

UDOVICH: Well, after graduation, I produced All the Boys Love Mandy Lane with a writer and director from my year.

ME: (recognizing him) Right! I saw that! You screened it at AFI that one time. Grats on that getting picked up. Have you done much since them?

UDOVICH: Yeah, we made a film called The Wackness.

ME: (recognizing it) The critically acclaimed indie? With Ben Kingsley?

UDOVICH: That's the one.

ME: How'd that do?

UDOVICH: We won Sundance.

ME: ...

UDOVICH: ...

ME: Dorkness Rising is on Netflix.

We swapped cards, promised to keep in touch. I got a writing sample to him the next day.

I also bumped into Stan Brooks, the heavy who had gotten us the Hopjockey meetings and the man who taught me to pitch. I hadn't seen him since before we pitched Cartoon Network. He asked how the project was going, and then he told us we needed to come in and meet with him. Even though we didn't sell the project, he explained, some of the places we pitched loved us. And he wants to show us exactly what those places are buying. I assume it's so we can pitch them again with Stan in our corner. Talk about an adrenaline boost.

Dinner itself bordered on the divine. I shared a table with friends from my year. After we'd eaten, speakers -- including Jonah, Udovich, and Jon Avnet -- took turns stressing the importance of alumni involvement. I won't overload you with the details; suffice it to say I found myself nodding to everything they said. I was sold. And if I hadn't been, the vanilla cheesecake would have pushed me over the top.

As folks were departing, Jonah and I got to talk to Stan. Jonah mentioned the projects we were working on, Fred and Grandmother Clock, and Stan extended the same offer to us: Come in and I'll show you what places are buying. Then he pointed to me and said "Cartoon Network loves this guy. Loves him." Double ego boost.

Oh, one final bit of awesome: Udovich turned me on to Reel Grit, a film screening series he runs with another alumn. It showcases mindblowing genre films. Sunday's screening was a brilliant Swedish horror called Let the Right One In. It was, hands down, the best vampire movie I've seen in a decade. Unfortunately, it's being remade in the US. Next week's screening is of the ultra-violent martial arts classic Riki-Oh, which from the clips I've seen includes exploding heads and people disembowling themselves to strangle their opponents with their own intestines. I'm so fucking there.

Building Momentum

2009-03-16T16:39:00.001-07:00

Despite the flu that kept my head holes cemented with mucus for over a week, I've made great progress on multiple projects over the last fortnight. I had been waiting for my producing partner to get me feedback on the Grandmother Clock treatment before I started the script. But I got tired of that, so I threw myself into it, and in so doing worked out several writer muscles that were achy with disuse. Now I'm thirty-some pages in, with a stronger Act One than I've had in, perhaps, ever. And while the project is tiring, as screenwriting always is, it was the invigorating tiring, the tiring that leaves you excited to begin again the next day; the kind of tiring where the narrative I'm striving to whittle out is like a crafty opponent I'm trying to outwit, an opponent who gives ground but never breaks. And sure, he may get the best of me after six or eight pages, but I'll be back tomorrow to kick him in the head with my character arcs. I have no idea how much sense that made.

So, to reiterate, it's energizing work, work that energized me to get a couple other things moving as well. I decided I was tired of doing research on Belly of the Beast; there are only so many books you can read about 19th century yankee whaling before you know all there is to know about cutting in and trying out, and can identify every kind of harpoon, and know what a flensing knife is and where a blubber hook goes.* So I launched myself into the pre-writing, a bit prematurely, I thought. But after only one day, I had beaten out the story; after the next, the crew had manned the ship and introduced themselves, had let me know their likes and dislikes; and today I broke the story completely. Now Belly is off to scene work and the note card jigsaw. I'll likely start scripting that one in April; with luck, I'll have it off to the WMA guy by May.

Somewhere in there I penned a mini-bible for the webseries spec pilot I'm writing for Epic Level, Earth Force 5. As you might guess from the title, it's a comedy. Which which was a nice palate cleanser, seeing as how I'd been spending all my time with terrified whalers and a grieving girl and her troupe of haunted friends. Epic Level will likely be doing a conference call this week to schedule a shoot. Which couldn't come too soon -- as I've said more than nine times, I'm going nuts not being on set.

Also, my partners on Sword & Sorcery had a meeting with the top producer in Seattle today. He really likes the project, and wants to see a script. Also, just got an email from a new AFI grad and his producing partner. They'd read the blurb on Red Shirts from my year's screenwriter pamphlet, and think it has huge potential.

So the writing has been good. And I aim to keep it so. In fact, I haven't written this much or this well since my first year at AFI, before they taught me that I was doing everything wrong. It's good to be wrong again.

* It goes into the blubber. That's why it's called a blubber hook.

SLO Life

2009-03-06T10:59:00.000-08:00

Wifey's started a new blog about life in and around San Luis Obispo, our favorite vacation destination. The blog will feature reviews and recommendations of wineries, restaurants, inns and hotels, and other not-to-be-missed accomodations. It's the first step on her (and our) quest to own and operate her own bed & breakfast in SLO. Check it out!

Also, be sure to swing by LiveSLO.org in the next couple of weeks. That's Wifey's new website, chronicling all things to do with San Luis Obispo County. The blog will be an extension of it. Go Wifey!

Cooking with Heat

2009-02-27T08:18:00.000-08:00

Heat is good. Internet is good. No longer living like a caveman in our new apartment is also good, in a continuing theme of goodness. The rain and the cold lifted the day after we got our heat, of course, but that hasn't dampened our spirits. The toilet's been fixed (the bowl was cracked), the floor's been fixed (damaged when the toilet was fixed), and we now have a working phone line (and thus, internet) in the office. Truth be told, though, I kind of miss having the computer at the dining room table. Windows all around me, hills in the distance, cats bopping about mesmerized by birds -- that was atmosphere to write in. And it was a productive time. Since last week, I've made major breakthroughs two bottlenecked projects that have had me pulling out what little hair I have left for far too long. These two projects were the wedges under my writer's block, holding that door shut.

The first is Grandmother Clock, a dark children's fantasy I first came up with for my pitching class nearly two years ago. Before this project, my method for writing a feature was to charge forward wildly and crap out a draft as soon as possible, then spend the next few months rewriting. Problem is, I always wound up having to re-outline the thing due to structural flaws and a weak internal journey on the part of the protagonist. So this time, the goal was to spare myself the inevitable restructuring headache by making the story airtight before jumping in. Easy it wasn't. Emotional plotting has always been my weak spot, doubly so in this case -- the themes of this story are forcing me to deal with Karin's death in ways I haven't. But after much pain, many stymied attempts, and actual tears, I finished it. It's only a treatment, of course, but there's a framework in it that I have not had in my work before. It's going to make the scripting of the first draft worlds easier. Many thanks to my partner on the project, Jonah Bekhor, for his patience.

For the last six months, I've had a producer in Seattle waiting to read a treatment of my second hampered project, Sword & Sorcery. And for six months, I've failed to write him one. It doesn't seem like it would be a hard one to outline; the pitch is simple and natural and never fails to get laughs. The premise: we "discover" a long lost fantasy B-movie from the early 1980s, a cinematic turd like Deathstalker or Amazons or Barbarian Queen, and make a documentary about bringing it to the public, interspersed with clips from the terrible movie itself.

Or like Deathstalker II: Duel of the Titans.

In which there is no duel, and there are no titans.

Sounds easy, right? I thought it would be, until I tried. Because I had no idea how to write a mockumentary, let alone summarize one. Standard feature, no problem (unless it's Grandmother Clock); there are beats and arcs to follow while finding your way. Not so in this case. So I solved the problem by going around it. Instead of an event-by-event summary, I wrote a pseudo-newspapery account, a report of everything that went wrong with the film. It was closer to a series bible than an actual treatment, but it was something to show. I sent what I figured was a rough draft of it to the Seattle producer's partner. She flipped out over it, and sent it to the producer that day. So I guess it worked.

And that leaves me in an odd spot. Because I was expecting either of these projects to take me weeks to crack. Suddenly I'm ahead of my own schedule. Which I haven't been for a long time, and which I find highly awesome. To fill the time, I think I'll start breaking the story on Belly of the Beast for the WMA manager. Should be fun; I haven't written a straight horror before.

Disconnected

2009-02-16T11:12:00.000-08:00

Been unplugged for a while. Ever since the move, really. Haven't replaced my broken phone yet. And we still don't have internet in the new apartment. Or heat. Which ten months out of the year wouldn't be a problem in southern California. Thing is, it's the rainy season, and we've been waking up to temperatures in the 40s. We're sleeping in our winter clothes to keep warm. With luck, we'll have both heat and internet by the end of the day tomorrow. Don't know if I expect it to happen, but it'd be nice if it did.

One thing that has been nice is our near-complete disconnection since the move. The only outside media we've had in the new place is radio, and that connection's not too great. Camille says it's like living in the 80s -- no internet, no cable, and the only phone we have is our ground line. It's been quite refreshing, actually. I never realized what an anchor a cell phone was until I had to go without. So I'm not exactly rushing to get a replacement. I tell myself that in this industry, I need to be available 24/7. But I don't get too many calls at 2am from agents and producers demanding my unique emergency services, so for now the ground line will suffice.

The disconnection has also shown us just how tightly coiled our lives had been living in Hollywood. I'd expect moments of reflection to come after several months, or weeks at least, moments where you look back and notice details you missed, where you realize you couldn't see the forest of your life for the trees. For us, it happened the day of the move, on our way to return the moving truck. Driving down Western to Santa Monica to Highland, the business everywhere -- the press of traffic both foot and motor, the cascade of lights, the constant assault of every kind of noise -- pushed us towards sensory overload. We could only stare at each other. "Did we really live three-and-a-half years in this? Did we really get used to this? This was normal?" Can't say I miss it.

It's raining today. Really coming down. Our new place is a corner unit, second and top floor. Our kitchen and dining room windows face the Angeles National Forest. On cold and rainy days, we look out towards tree-heavy hills shrouded in fog, and it feels like home.

PHWNED!!11!1!

2009-01-30T13:38:00.001-08:00

My phone was broken. Mistakes were made.

On a completely unrelated note, the passive voice is often used when the agent of an action is to be hidden.

My phone was liked. It will be missed.

Unexpected Connections

2009-01-27T08:37:00.000-08:00

Haven't posted in a while. Not completely out of laziness, though that's a big part of it. The entire month has been full and progressed rapidly. No sooner had I finished the two-week stint on the Universal lot that my current write-for-hire project kicked into high gear. I've spent the last week rewriting an animated pilot and blitzing through page after page of episode synopses. And every evening I'm packing up the apartment, to the increasing panic of the cats. So things have been busy. And exciting.

There's been an odd convergence of opportunity in the last couple weeks. In my final days at Zoom Entertainment, I spoke to a manager at the William Morris Agency. That in itself was not surprising--my boss is in constant contact with them on a number of projects. What was surprising is that the manager called me on my cell.

The logo is composed of a merged W and M, not four X's. Common mistake.

"Hi," said the manager, "this is [redacted] from William Morris."

"Hi there." I wondered why he was calling the assistant on his personal line.

Just then I got an IM from Camille. It went something like: "OMG, an agent just called! I gave him your number! WHOOOOO!" I don't recall it word for word.

"I just spoke to your girlfriend," said [redacted], "and she gave me your cell."
"Oh, great," I managed.
"Tell me what's going on!" Camille IM'd.
"So one of your classmates from AFI made the Black List. Brian Kistler." The Black List isn't as ominous as it sounds. It's a list put out every year of the most-liked screenplays that did not get produced. Brian, the most talented writer from our year, made it. In his first year out of school. Talented bastard.

"Yeah, Brian's great. Talented bastard."
"WHAT'S GOING ON?!?!" demanded Camille.
"And so we've been reading material from your year. Scott Cunningham--" (talented comedic bastard) "--said I should check you out. I just got off the phone with him, and called you."
.

By now, I knew who the manager was. A lit manager from WMA, a guy who reads an amazing amount of material and then redirects the right projects to the right agents. I'd rolled calls between him and my boss a half-dozen times. In fact, his was the first call I dropped on my first days behind the desk. He'd been polite and accommodating about the mistake.

"Um," I interjected, "I was a bit thrown when you called. You see, I work for Michael Zoumas."
"Shut up! You're kidding!"
"No, I'm looking at him right now." Not really. A wall was blocking my line of sight. But his door was open, and it sounded more dramatic that way.
"So you're the new guy who dropped my call?"
"Uh... yes."
.

He waxed on about what a small world it was, and then springboarded into stories from twenty years ago of when he and Zoumas and Jon Singleton were all students at USC together. It's one thing to be told that at a certain level in this industry, everyone knows everyone. It's another thing to have it demonstrated. And to think (and hope) that twenty years from now, I'll be similarly connected. If I can last that long.
.

[Redacted] asked to see Pwned. I had to tell him it was already under option. He said that confirmed his interest in the project. So then he asked for Red Shirts, a sci-fi comedy I wrote in my first year at AFI. I cringed a bit--it's not my best work, and badly needs a rewrite. But I sent it to him. It turned out not to be what his client was looking for, but he said my writing was sharp and accessible, and invited me to call in the next week to discuss ideas for what I'd like to write next.

I did call in, and he very patiently listened to my laundry list of ideas, and told me which he thought were best. When I have a draft done, he told me to send it his way and he'd read it ASAP. So the whole uncertainty of what project to write next is gone. I know what specs I'm writing next: Belly of the Beast and Greek Fightnin'! (not the actual title).

So, with time and luck, that call just might lead to representation, that oft-sought but seldom-found Grail of Writer Validation. Odd thing is, that may not be my only route there.

Also while working this temp job, I started an email friendship with a woman who wrote to tell us she enjoyed Dorkness Rising. She spoke knowledgeably about production, and with good reason: "I have worked in the film industry, and I know good from bad, and I was so impressed with your production." Curious, Don and I did an IMDb search for her. Turns out "have worked in the industry" was a bit of an understatement--she worked on dozens of classic horror and cult movies from the 80s, including From Beyond, Creepozoids, and Puppetmaster I and II. The more we emailed, the more she asked about us. She said we should get together if we're ever in LA. I pointed out that we live here. So when we're settled in the Glendale apartment, we have a standing date to get together and talk shop: future projects, representation, and the like.

There was one line from her email that made me sit up and roar "I HAVE THE POWER!!" at the universe: "If I was still producing, I definitely would be willing to produce a film directed by Matt Vancil. You did a better job than many of the directors I’ve worked with." Praise from Caesar. Praise from a person who's made a career of exactly what I'm trying to do. There is no greater intoxicant than recognition from an industry player, especially one whose movies you grew up watching. It's the same way I felt when I discovered John Frank Rosenblum had written my favorite episodes of Red Dwarf.

So... yeah. Good stuff brewing all around.

Packing Haiku

2009-01-26T22:33:00.000-08:00

Tired but not sleepy,
Diversions sealed in cardboard.
All my books are packed.

New Year Changes

2009-01-13T07:38:00.001-08:00

The new year's only been new for a few hundred hours, and already big changes have knocked us onto an interesting new course. The part-time job at Epic Level dissolved, which is bad. But I got a two-week stint on the Universal lot as a producer's assistant, which is good. With the economy corpsing it up, we can't afford our apartment anymore, which is bad. But we just got approved for an apartment in Glendale that will save us $500 a month, which is good. The new place doesn't come with a fridge or dishwasher, which is annoying. And I have to pack up the apartment in the next couple of weeks, which is also mildly annoying. We thought we might move sometime this year, but not right away. As my mother likes to say, life is what happens when you're making plans.

On making plans: Interesting things are afoot at Dead Gentlemen. Every year, when the new year dawns, we declare "This will be the year of DG!" and outline overly ambitious plans that ultimately never happen. We're continuing that trend. But this year feels different. There's a concentration of purpose -- as well as talent -- such as we haven't had before. We'll have a new website up in the next couple of months, a site built to host a constant stream of new material. Producing that constant stream is the challenge. The desire is there. And morale is high. From the feelers we've put out through our collective network of contacts, we're not the only out-of-work filmmakers in this town jonesing to do something. With luck, we'll be shooting another Gamers movie by summer. If that doesn't happen, though, at least we'll finish this year with a few new projects to show.

I'm cautiously optimistic about the Glendale move. Most of our friends live north of the park, and we'll actually be closer to them. And the neighborhood definitely does not feel like Los Angeles. The air was too clear, the streets were too quiet. There were actual leafy trees lining the walks. An oasis in the vast cultural desert. On Sunday, Camille and I went to a farmers market in Encino, which is a straight shot from our new place. We took our purchases to Lake Balboa to picnic with our friends on what was beyond a doubt our windiest day in LA; the ducks looked to be surfing on the swells.

Tuppence a bag

I've said before that 2008 felt more like a year we escaped than enjoyed. It was the Year of the Rat, Jeremy told me, the year you plant seeds and wait for harvest. Now it's the Year of the Ox (or will be in February), the year you supposedly reap the benefits of your hard work. Sounds good to me. Hard work is a lot easier to continue when you can see the fruits of your labor.

Blah blah blah. Back to packing.

2008 Holiday Letter

2008-12-31T23:59:00.000-08:00

Our holiday letter, for those of you whose addresses we do not have. Or who we just plain forgot.

~ Camille & Matt's 2008 Holiday Update ~
2008 was a year of minor triumphs and enduring frustrations. It was a year of pulling weeds and planting seeds. A year of too much travel, more separately than together, that left us craving our cat-infested apartment. A year we escaped as much as enjoyed. We celebrated cousin Leah’s wedding in Fairfield in the summer. In the autumn, we celebrated our seventh anniversary in Cambria on the central California coast. And more than once we snuck away to the Edna Valley to replenish our wine rack and leave the flashy noise machine that is Los Angeles in the rearview.

In June, Camille left Ajilon to work full-time for Northwest Art Glass. She oversees the creation of the product catalogs from the home office. In August, she entered her 4th decade by celebrating her 30th birthday at a Venice Beach barbeque. Her paternal grandfather sadly passed away in November. In December, following her father’s knee surgery, Camille flew to Seattle to play nurse and cook him two weeks worth of leftovers. As usual, she’s made many new friends this year and continues to ponder when she’ll return to the world of cmmunity theater.

Despite the WGA strike that began the year, Matt maintained steady if not glamorous work in Hollywood. In April, he traveled to Las Vegas to attend the GAMA Trade Show where he and a couple other Dead Gentlemen promoted the Demon Hunters Role-Playing Game, released by Margaret Weis Productions. In August, Matt’s feature debut as a writer/director, The Gamers: Dorkness Rising, was released on DVD by Anthem Pictures. Dorkness quickly became Anthem’s fastest and best-selling DVD. The film screened at several conventions, including the world-renowned Comic Con in San Diego.

With a team that included an Emmy-award winning producer and an agent from Paradigm, Matt pitched his sci-fi TV show Hopjockey at four networks: ABC Family, the Sci-Fi Channel, the CW, and the Cartoon Network (oddly enough). Matt’s zombie horror TV show ALIVE, which he co-created with Star Trek veterans Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens, came within a meeting of being picked up by AMC. The producers on both teams are confident their shows will find a home, in some form.

In September, Matt joined the staff at Epic Level Entertainment in Studio City, where he works part-time. The end of the year finds him writing another animated sitcom pilot for Israeli producers. In December, under increasing pressure from Camille, Matt wrote this letter. He hopes nothing significant happens next year so he won’t have to write another. Camille just slapped him in the back of the head.

2009 promises more trips to the Pacific Northwest, a venture to Hawaii in May to celebrate Julia’s graduation, and a possible trek to visit family in Santa Rosa and San Francisco in the summer or fall (or whenever Matt wants a free meal).

We wish you many happy celebrations this holiday season, and good tidings in the New Year!

Much love,
Camille & Matt

Unintentional L.A. Christmas

2008-12-27T10:26:00.000-08:00

The plan was to fly to SeaTac on the 22nd and spend Christmas with our families in the northwest. That didn't quite happen. If you've been paying attention to the national weather, you'll know why. Seattle -- and pretty much all of the northwest -- disappeared behind a curtain of freezing weather and record snowfall. For a city that essentially shuts down when a half-inch of powder hits the pavement (built on hills as it is), over a foot of snow makes any form of travel impossible. Our flight was cancelled, as was every other flight from Burbank to Seattle before Christmas.

We looked for other ways to make it home, and found none. No busses were running. No trains, even. The only reliable route to Seattle was by car, and that would mean crossing the Siskiyous in teh dead of winter. Considering the heater in our Taurus hasn't been working, that route was out. A few intrepid and/or insane souls made it -- my sister drove up the 101 from San Francisco, proving in the process that we could have simply gon around the Siskiyous (Maginot Line, anyone?), but her heater was working. We resigned ourselves to being marooned in L.A.

BELOW: Bean scopes out another ornament to kill
Now, part of my holiday routine is doing the majority of my Christmas shopping online. I have the gifts shipped to my parents' house in Puyallup. That way, I don't have to worry about overloading my luggage or anything breaking -- I just do the wrapping once I'm up north. I did that again this year. And realized, at about the same time that I realized we'd be in Los Angeles on Christmas, that all my wife's gifts were in boxes at my folks'. Not good. Gotta have something for the wife to open the morning of. So I bought her an Italian leather jacket that she absolutely loves. I done good.

And the holiday itself, cut off from family as we were, was lovely. Much easier and more relaxing than we thought, without the constant stresses of bouncing between families and trying to cram every friend from college or high school into too few days. Several of our friends were similarly stranded here, either unable to book or afford travel back home. So we sought out our displaced friends, northwesterners or not, and made for a memorable holiday with our surrogate L.A. family. Much good food was consumed, mostly soup . Many terrible movies were viewed, mostly widescreen. We spent Christmas morning with our kitties and a soup-filled afternoon with Matt and Jessica from down the hall and Nathan Rice, the most recent northwest transplant. We spent a non soup-centered evening with Gayvin and Erik and their four-year-old living tornado, Jack, in Pasadena. Yesterday we went nowhere, which was wonderful, as was the soup. There are leftovers.

My Mommy made these =)

In the northwest, the snow has been melting, so tomorrow we theoretically board a plane for Seattle. That's assuming there's not another cold snap or freak winter storm. So we'll get our family Christmas a few days late. And we'll be able to make Stevie's wedding and Emily and Michael's New Year's party. So, in the end, it seems likely the holiday will work out. And, oddly enough, our unexpected L.A. Christmas was so unexpectedly pleasant, it has us thinking that maybe we'll take an expected L.A. Christmas next year.

Frigid Haiku

2008-12-19T14:12:00.000-08:00

A thousand needles
Dance on my fingers and toes.
Fuh-fuh-fuh-reezing.

Teeth A-Chatter

2008-12-19T06:44:00.001-08:00

I don't know what the deal is, but the heat has now failed in both our car and our apartment. Or rather, it's mostly failed. It works about a quarter of the time in the car, not nearly reliably enough, so when it does kick on we're only too happy to strip out of our layers of fleece. And then it shuts off again just as we're getting warm, and we get to dress while dodging LA traffic. In the apartment, the heat works well enough during the day that we leave it on when we go to bed. Then it shuts off sometime during the night. Not enjoying waking up and seeing my breath. And not fancying a visit to Washington with its current blanket of frosty on the ground.

International Dorkness

2008-12-10T16:17:00.000-08:00

So this cheered me up. Last week, a package arrived at the Epic Level office for Dead Gentlemen Productions. The postmark on the package said it was from Israel. Written on the back were "The Icon SF Festival" and "The Tel Aviv Cinematheque." The package was addressed to Don, so of course I opened it.

Inside was a program for the 12th annual Icon Science Fiction, Fantasy and Role-Playing Festival. The festival is held every year in Tel Aviv, this year from October 14-18. Also inside was a letter summing up the events. The Gamers had screened at Icon. I hadn't known about it, but that's not much of a surprise -- DG allows any festival to screen our movies as long as they don't charge admission, so there are X many screenigs per year that I'm mostly unaware of.

According to the letter, The Gamers was received quite well by the Israeli crowd:

As you'll be able to see in our printed program, Icon has a major
role-playing section. Over recent years we've been complementing it with a few relevant films in the international film festival section.

THE GAMERS is the first film to have received such a vastly positive reaction from the role-playing community in Israel. The screening [was] followed by many excited reviews and conversations (off and on-line) circling the message "finally, a film that shows gamers and gaming for what it is, does it well and does it funny".

... We're quite eager on seeing the new installment, DORKNESS RISING, and possibly screening THE GAMERS again.
Concisely -- many thanks! Ir was a pleasure and I hope to have the chance to work together in the future.

The director of the festival even went on to say that we have friends in Tel Aviv if we're ever there and need showing around. I may take him up on it -- much of the write-for-hire work I've had and continue to have comes from the Holy Land.

I flipped through the Icon program and found the entry for The Gamers. There was the familiar shot of Nathan, Shimkus, Phil, and Justin looking out over the sea, but the summary underneath it was in Hebrew as well as English. What a kick that was. Looks like the next version of the DVD will need Hebrew subtitles. Why not? We've already done Latin.

On the subject of subtitles: This week, I received an email from fans in Estonia. For the geographically-impaired, the Republic of Estonia lies on the Baltic Sea, west of Russia and north of Latvia:
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ESTONIA

NOT ESTONIA

They'd seen Dorkness Rising and enjoyed it immensely. How they got a copy in Estonia, I don't know. But it turns out the guy who sent the email was one of the translators who did the Estonian subtitles for the Director's cut of The Gamers. He offered his services if we decided to put Estonian subtiltes on any future Dorkness Rising DVDs.

So how about that? Our silly little movies about RPGs have an international following. Feeling pretty good right about now.

Beach Haiku

2008-12-08T07:27:00.001-08:00

Far strides the giant,
Yet waves erase his footprints.
Nothing in the sand.

Into the Doldrums

2008-12-01T16:37:00.000-08:00

In Hollywood, we've entered the time of year when the city shuts down for the holidays. The lights go off after Thanksgiving, and sometimes don't come back on until February. Work dries up. Little gets produced. A year ago, the WGA strike had just started. The industry still hasn't recovered from that. Add the economic depression and the potential SAG strike, and I'm very glad to have the mini writing gigs I do.

A year ago, I was in an odd place. All of my projects had gone on hiatus when the town went into hibernation. We were talking to studios on Hopjockey and ALIVE; we'd hired a conceptual artist for Fred, Prince of Darkness; Dorkness Rising was finally out of editing and was poised to make its rounds to the distributors; and I had nearly completed Pwned and a feature-length Demon Hunters. Good things lay on the horizon. It promised to be a good year.

Hopjockey we retooled to pitch to four different networks, and received four different passes. I haven't heard from the Heavy or the Agent in months, and have no idea where the future of Hopjockey lies. Dave and Sean have spoken of doing it as a feature, of setting it in high school with a group of quirky rascals since teen adventure might be the best outlet for it. Not sure if I'm interested in that. Take enough away from Hopjockey, and it stops being Hopjockey.

ALIVE surged forward all spring and looked unstoppable, only to be brought down at the one-yard line. The team has stayed positive, though, and is still having meetings and showing project around. I understand that most shows take years to set up. And I understand that we got atypically far on the first try. But this one hurt. Really, really hurt. We shouldn't have done this, but we (Camille and I) kind of let ourselves count on this one, let ourselves plan like it was going to happen. And when it died so abruptly, we had nothing. The hardest part was seeing Camille break down when I told her the news. I've never seen one of my projects do that to her. That kicked off the months-long depression that I'm just now coming out of, that still grabs me from time to time and pins me to the floor. Hurt doesn't really describe it.

Fred remains where it was last year. Jonah and I have gone through three different artists, all who came on board excited to design the look of the show, and all who flaked out and bailed. It's been maddening, more so for Jonah because he's used to such a level of professionalism. The Demon Hunters script turned out well, and I'm pleased with it. Unfortunately, it's unlikely it will ever get made. Pwned I optioned to Epic Level, but the script fell apart when they sent it out to readers. The general consensus was that it's cute, but not hilarious. I'm in the middle of a rewrite now. And Grandmother Clock, the big new project I was going to finish this year, I've stopped and started so many times I have trouble remembering which version of the story I'm on.

So a year after things looked so promising, I haven't completed anything new -- which is death for a screenwriter, since your specs are what sell you -- and most of my projects lie broken at my feet. Not a great year. I haven't been myself these last couple months. Part of it is that I don't know who myself is, if this is the path I should be taking. But the economy's terrible across the board, and nobody is hiring -- I've checked -- so there's no jumping off the filmmaker ship, at least not now. I knew a life as an artist would be hard, but I never expected to be facing down a mid-life crisis at 31. Sounds preposterous, I know.

And things haven't been all bad. Dorkness Rising found a distributor who wants us to make more Gamers movies; I may be writing one this spring and directing it this summer. I still have my writing gig with the Israelis. This project makes my third Israeli-funded animated pilot so far. I have many friends in and out of the industry, people rooting for me and checking in every not and then to see how I'm doing. And I have a wife whose patience and dedication I simply cannot fathom.

I've unexpectedly learned a lot about myself this year, about what I love and what I don't, about where I need to be and what I need to be doing there. And that, I believe, has come out of this near-constant melancholy. In Care of the Soul, Thomas Moore writes about the gifts of depression. In Iron John, Robert Bly describes the benefits of ashes work. Both hold that depression is not something to be avoided, but something to be grasped and experienced, to be fought and wrestled with. I've certainly been wrestling with mine. Mine fights like a crocodile, drags you down and rolls you around, trying to drown you. And as hard as it's been, when it's let go, I've said "we're not fucking done yet" and pulled it back on top of me.

What I've wrestled out of it has been hard to learn, but important. I've learned that I'm rather lazy writer; I don't fill the day with work the way I should. I've learned that I'm not a particularly good screenwriter, at least not on paper. But I've also learned that I'm a very stubborn writer, a bullheaded writer, and that I can pound out more pages of revisions than most before I burn out. And somewhere in that flurry of redrafts and retakes, I can produce a genuinely entertaining piece of material. Given enough time. And enough pounding.

And that's been motivating, learning how I work, what I do well and what I don't. Recently, I rediscovered my AFI notes while searching some old journals. It surprised me how much of my training I've forgotten. So as I look back on what I've come to see as a wasted year, I've got a lot roiling in my brain. Shame. Anger. And an encouraging amount of determination. I'm not going to have next year feel wasted. I'm not going through another year with no new projects to show.

Last year, when December began, I had a platter of good projects ready to fly. When the town turned itself off, I took it easy and spent a month playing Warcraft. This year, my platter's empty. But this year, while the city is hibernating, I'm doing push-ups.

Project Update

2008-11-10T13:14:00.001-08:00

Not a whole lot going on right now. Here's a quick rundown:

Hopjockey. The Cartoon Network passed. They're looking for more gritty, heavy-action shows, programs that eat suspense and crap cliffhangers. Hopjockey was deemed to light. Maybe I should add a talking car and an ever-ticking bomb timer ...

Pwned. I've added a rewrite of Pwned to my to-do list; Cindi's report from where Epic Level's pitched it is that it's funny, but not hilarious. She thinks they just don't get the MMORPG-gamer jokes. I think the project needs more clarity, and a more likeable protagonist.

Gamers. Had a meeting a couple weeks ago with Anthem Pictures, the distributor for The Gamers: Dorkness Rising. They're interested in us doing another lower-budget Gamers feature, possibly shooting as early as next summer. Which, if we pull the trigger on it, would mean I have about a month to write the script. Easy peasy.

That's about it. Carry on.

Renewal and Pain in Aberdeen

2008-10-31T07:40:00.000-07:00

At the end of our anniversary trip, Camille surprised me with a flight up to Washington to visit my best friend and brother in all but blood, Jeff. He and Tina and their two girls met me at SeaTac, just outside the terminal. Natalie (4) spotted me first, and ran over to give me a big hug. Alanna (2), once she saw it was safe, decided to imitate big sister. Arms spread, she ran directly into my legs -- and headbutted me in the balls. Thankfully, there was zero force behind the collision, else Tina would have had to explain while Unca Matt was writhing on the airport floor.
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Jeff is an avid hiker. And if you lived as close as they do to the Olympic National Forest, with its miles and miles of crisscrossing trails through old growth rain forests and knife-edged peaks, you would be as well. He also lives a barefoot lifestyle, and does these hikes -- over dry streambeds and fields of gravel -- sans shoes. He's always arranged a progressively more difficult hike when I visit. This time, we'd be trekking up the most oddly-named mountain in the Olympics, Colonel Bob. The Colonel was a strenuous, five-star hike, an 8-mile round trip up switchbacks at a near 45-degree incline. Tina said the hike would kill me. It didn't, but the next day I was wishing it had.

. Captain Murder McCrazy-Hike

We started up the trail late in the morning, and ascended slowly but steadily all afternoon. It was a perfect day for a hike, nice and cool and overcast. As we climbed, the maples went from gold to orange and crimson, in stark contrast to the deep gray-green of the douglas firs and hemlock. A couple of miles up, we ran into a few late-season mountain hucklberry bushes in full bloom. Haven't had wild huckleberries ever, far as I can remember. The pace was backbreaking and exhausting, but I managed to keep up with Jeff for most of it. Not gonna let the barefoot monk outpace me.

About a half-mile from the summit, with Colonel Bob's rocky back in sight. we had to stop. We were running out of daylight -- we still had a bout two hours worth, but the final push would put us on the summit right as the sun disappeared. And if we hadn't made it back to Moonshine Flats -- an open flat break in the climb, maybe a mile-wide -- we would lose the trail back down the mountain. So we turned around. And that's where the pain really began. On the way up, my legs hurt, but it was that good, "you're getting exercise" kind of hurt. On the way down, it was that bad, stabbing "your legs are broken, kill me now, there is no God" kind of pain.

The view from about as high as we got

We made it past Moonshine Flats before sundown. The sun finally disappeared after we'd crossed the scree field and plunged back into the forest. And then it got dark. We walked the final two miles in near-total darkness. Once we passed Pete's Creek, it was inky-dark, and we brought out the flashlights. We got back to the car at about a quarter to eight, having just spent the last nine hours working out. The next day, my legs were in so much pain that I couldn't walk a downward slope without bracing myself.

And the next day we went out with the family. To a creamery to get some cheese, a smokehouse to get some sausage, and a farm to get some preserves. I picked out jars of apple butter and pumpkin butter for Camille. Those didn't make it through security -- had to check the bag. And it's a good thing, too, because if the TSA hadn't stopped me, I might have had access to my Terrorist Apple Butter on the plane. Good on you, Homeland Security.

We finished the day on Washaway Beach, south of Aberdeen on the Washington 101. It's the most rapidly-eroding spot on the Pacific Coast. The currents circling out of Willapa Bay keep eating away the coast of Cape Shoalwater; the beach has lost about two miles of land since the 1920s. I'd been there with Jeff before, to a spot where the highway juts out and abruptly ends, pointing out towards the ocean. It was a surreal spot, the literal place where the sidewalk (highway) ends. That point was gone on this visit -- the beach lost another 150 feet or so in a bad winter storm last year. We parked next to the "Danger: Eroding Beach and Tumbling Boulders" sign and picked our way down to the beach.

Best warning sign ever

Out on the beach, we spotted foundations of old homes, plumbing sticking up from the surf in several places. Found a crushed van buried in sand. A whale's spine, with vertebrae as big as dinner plates. The cab of a truck, the only part of it above the water, looking out towards the sea. And that's where my camera died, running around snapping pics. Jeff and I finished the night around a campfire in his back yard. My clothes came away smelling of soot and pine needles.

Cab of an abandoned truck on Washaway Beach

Jeff drove me to my folks' the next day. They'd just finished a service with some members of the Bach Choir, and were having a little get-together. Mom knew I was coming; Dad didn't, and it was a delightful surprise. My last few hours in Washington we spent on the deck, laughing and telling stories, with Mount Rainier in full view (he hides most days). Dad dropped me at the airport later, after a hour of dedicated Vancil Man time. A better way to finish the trip, I can't think of.

This unexpected trip was exactly what I needed. Relaxing it wasn't, not exactly. I'd describe it as centering, focusing. By the time it was over, I was ready to come back, ready to start up work again. It felt more like a pilgrimage than a vacation, a visit to a site of renewal. And I came away feeling refreshed, crippled, and sooty.

Thank you Jeff, thank you Tina, thank you Natalie and Alanna. Thank you Camille for setting this up, and Mom and Dad. And most of all, thank you Richard for giving me time with my best friend, in my favorite place in the world. I love you all.

Anniversary in Cambria

2008-10-23T09:03:00.000-07:00

Monday was our seventh anniversary. We celebrated by heading to our favorite spot on the central Californian coast, the seaside town of Cambria. Whenever we do a getaway along the 101, we inevitably stop in Summerland, a tiny town just south of Santa Barbara, to eat. I don't know what it is about the town, but we've never failed to superbly well there, regardless of restaurant. This time we ate Stacky's Seaside's killer halibut and chips, and tried not to think about how long it took the halibut to get to California. Then it was back on the 101 for the long haul to Cambria, some 240 miles from Los Angeles.

We rolled into Cambria in the afternoon. Our hotel was the White Water Inn on Moonstone Beach. Camille had found us a fabulous deal that included hefty gift certificates to a couple of our favorite restaurants in town. After checking in, we went for a stroll on the beach boardwalk, with the sun glaring powerfully off of the water. And after a few minutes of breathing salt-tinged air and listening to the ever-present roar of the surf, I felt the knot in my brows start to relax. Cambria's coast is rocky and sharp, new by geological standards. A few tiny sand-filled coves fill in gaps in an otherwise unbroken stone shelf above the water. On the few bits of actual beach, the sand -- if you can even call it that -- is coarse and rough and multicolored, more like a handful of seeds. Much rougher than the fine Oregon sand I'm used to. But still beautiful. The ground cover around the boardwalk was full of birds and ground squirrels. One even came out and mugged for us.

"I'm cute. Give me a pretzel."
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We dined that night at Linn's, a restaurant connected to a family of apparent berry moguls. They've got all sorts of garden and farm stores all over the area. Their claim to fame is something called the Olallieberry, a hybrid described as 2/3 blackberry and 1/3 raspberry. It's tart and not overly sweet, which makes it ideal for pies and jams. And wine, apparently. We both had Olallieberry deserts, I a pie and Camille a bread pudding. It was quite good, and tasted just like it was described: part blackberry, part raspberry. When our check came, we realized the waitress hadn't charged us for our drinks. We pointed that out. Our waitress told us we'd have some good karma coming our way, which is always a good thing.

We spent the next morning antiquing in town. Not exactly how I expected to spend it, but we actually had quite a fun time. And we got a good deal of Christmas shopping done. We lunched at the Blue Moon Cafe, a shop with an astounding array of powerful cheeses. This was a place we'd always go when loading up for a picnic, but we'd never actually eaten there. It turns out their sandwiches are just as good as their deli selection. Lunch was delectable. Afterward, we were pretty exhausted (we hadn't slept much the night before), so we went back to the hotel and crashed for a couple of hours.

We awoke in the late afternoon, with the sun again glaring off of the ocean. It was hot, too, mid-80s most of the day. We drove to the edge of the Fiscalini Ranch Preserve and hiked the bluff trail along the ocean. All along the trial, every quarter mile or so, was a giant driftwood chair, a bench really, sturdy and solid and bleached by the sun. After the hike, I convinced Camille to drive up to the old Cambria cemetery. We got there as the sun was setting. This was the first boneyard I'd been to with zero ground cover of any sort. The headstones themselves went back to the mid nineteenth century, severtal of them in family plots. The spookiest thing we saw in the graveyard was a broken set of wooden wind chimes, hanging silent and still above an unmarked grave. Creeeeepy.

Weird blossoms in the cemetery

Dinner that night was at The Sow's Ear, our favorite restaurant on the coast. Camille had their incomparable chicken and dumplings. I had a grilled chicken breast stuffed with goat cheese, kalamata olives, and roasted red peppers. Diagnosis: delicious. Dinner came with their delightful flowerpot bread. It's just like how it sounds: They jam a couple of dough balls together in a flower pot, bake it, and serve it in said pot. We were seated in a cozy corner of the restaurant, right next to two couples who were also celebrating their anniversaries. They dragged it out of us that we were there on our anniversary as well. The owner took our picture and gave us dessert for free. Rather quick return on that good karma.

The morning of our final day, we went for a hike along the boardwalk, and then drove about ten miles north towards San Simeon to see the elephant seals. This time of year, the juvenile seals have returned to the beach to rest. They just lay there under the sun, barking and rolling and pressing into clusters of blubber and fur. The ever-present (and often quite fat) ground squirrels were extra-cute, competing for the tourists' attention and snacks, but people stayed pretty focused on the seals. Then the midday sun came out, some 90 degrees, and put the bake on us. We bade the seals and the squirrels goodbye and started the sad trek back south.

We stopped in Los Osos to visit a friend and former co-worker of Camille's. She and Camille went off chatting while I got to sit and play Lego Star Wars with her three-year old, Brody. And I use "play" in the broadest sense of the word, since it mostly consisted of following Brody's orders. In the game, you can collect "money" in the form of Lego blocks; when you die, your Lego money fountains out and is up for grabs. Brody kept saying "I want money, I want money" over and over. Then he turned to me and said "I want your money" -- and killed me. And stole my money. He's effing three. Learned a valuable parenting lesson there: No video games for kids until they've learned not to crap their pants.

No trek to the Cali coast is complete for us until we've visited our favorite winery, Kelsey See Canyon, not far from San Luis Obispo. There was quite a party of people in the tasting room when we arrived, so we spread our blanket out back and picnicked in the shade while the winery's peacocks meandered about. We're wine club members, so we get to taste for free. We bought a bottle of their famous apple chardonnay. This is the first trip to/near wine country where we didn't need a box to haul back our purchases. Only two bottles this time. Good for us.

It was the late afternoon now, and the sun was starting to droop. On a whim, at the last moment, we decided to detour to Solvang for dinner. We arrived right as their farmers' market was closing down. Unfortunately -- or, more accurately, thankfully -- we were all out of cash, so we couldn't (over)spend anything on the organic honeys and giant strawberrys from the local farms.

We wandered into a high-end antique shop, a place I'd been before, with hundreds of grandfather clocks -- some over 150 years old -- everywhere. There wasn't a wall without a cluster of clocks. I asked the owner if I could take some pictures, and she said yes. So while Camille chatted with a sales clerk and tried on a variety of jewelry (including a $21,000 ring), I ran around snapping pics of amazing clocks until the camera's battery died. Ugh. But I got some wonderful pictures of some pretty machinery. The owner told me that they'd provided several pieces for the filming of The Time Machine. I believe her. If Grandmother Clock ever gets off the ground, I'm so bringing the production team to this place.

It does seem a bit odd to me that I've started to enjoy antiquing. Maybe I'm growing up. Don't tell Mom.

Some of those amazing clocks

We ate dinner at the Bit O' Denmark, and it was there that Camille sprung quite a surprise on me. No, she's not pregnant. But she and her father did arrange to send me to Washington for an extended weekend as a delayed birthday present. So today -- a day I thought I'd be resting and getting back to work -- I'm packing to fly out this afternoon. And Jeff and Tina are picking me up, which means (burn codes allowing) I'll be deep in conversation around a bonfire by midnight tonight. I can't wait.
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High on the news, the drive back to L.A. was easy. We rolled into town at 9pm and were asleep about an hour later. It's been a long time since I've felt so relaxed after a mini-vacation, since we never get away for more than a couple of days at a time. Cambria is a dream, a picturesque town on the edge of the water with no noise other than the ocean. I remember a walk I took the first night we were there. The sky was alive with light -- I haven't seen that many stars in years. And I felt a sense of ultimate peace and tranquility, a timelessness an a re-centering of self I usually only catch a glimpse of while meditating. It was a trip I will remember for the rest of my life, those few days by the sea with my wife and best friend. I love you, Sweetie. Here's to fifty more years.

And here's some more pics:

Cambria from the Fiscali Ranch Preserve trail

A juvenile elephant seal returns to the beach at Piedras Blancas

"Pay attention to me!"

Those creepy wind chimes in the graveyard

Hiking the hills above town

More clocks (I got a ton of pics)

My Lovely

Seven Year Itch

2008-10-20T10:03:00.000-07:00

Today is our seventh anniversary. That's 2,557 days together as a married couple after you factor in the leap years.

We're off to beautiful Cambria on the central California coast. It reminds us very much of the Oregon coast, our favorite vacation destination for years and the place we honeymooned. The California coast is different -- rockier and warmer, with a sharper slope of beach into water -- yet still beautiful and relaxing. Expect many pictures.

Pitching Hopjockey: Part 2

2008-10-14T13:42:00.000-07:00

So it's been a couple of months since I mentioned what's happening with Hopjockey. The last update -- which you can catch up on here -- had us waiting to hear back from the genre network. We finally heard back, and it was a pass. According to the Agent, the Exec we pitched thought there really was something special about the show ... but (and there's always a but) they already had a competing project in development that targets a similar audience. Ah, well.
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[Quick note: I still can't disclose who exactly is involved. But the major players on our team are the Heavy (Emmy-award-winning producer) and the Agent (the Heavy's representation). They're how we're getting the meetings.]

Still looking for a home.

So, yeah, that was a let down. But we shouldn't be discouraged, the Agent assured us. Because we had another pitch coming up, at the strangest of places: An animation network. A channel that specializes entirely in cartoons -- a "cartoon network," one might say. All right, another pitch! Though we weren't exactly sure how our show would fit in there. Our show is a live action one-hour. But a pitch is a pitch, and we wouldn't even be getting a meeting if the project wasn't a potential fit. And the show would work animated ...

Now, I'll be honest. I didn't expect anything to come of this. I've watched the network in question -- some of my favorite shows air on it -- and there's really nothing like Hopjockey in their lineup. I didn't see how it could fit, but maybe they would. Then, the day before we pitched, the Agent filled us in. The animation network is looking to produce some live-action shows, to bridge the gap between age demographics between their daytime and nighttime programming. And our show fits right into the niche they're looking to fill.

The pitch itself went pretty damn well. The humor was there, and the ease of interplay between us and the execs. Maybe it was that the guys we were pitching spoke sci-fi and instinctively understood what we were pitching -- I was able to use terms like dimensional rift and Cthulhuian without explaining them. Maybe it was that I still really didn't expect anything, so I was more relaxed than usual (the lack of an earthquake helped). But about halfway through the presentation, when they started asking us questions you don't ask unless you're interested, I started to think "hang on, this might just catch."

They asked what the toys were the hopjockeys got to play with, the equivalent of the Ghostbusters' proton packs. Potential merchandising? They asked whether the show could work in a high school setting instead of college. Yes, of course. It would fit perfectly into an Exeter-like private school. "I see," they said, "like a sci-fi Harry Potter?" "Of course," we answered, "what an astute and clever observation. You are by far the most knowledgable and -- dare I say it -- sexiest executives we've ever met."

So it went well. Better than the big network pitch, and definitely better than I expected. And so we sat back to play the Waiting Game, whish is played in two- to four-week intervals, the shortest measures of time Hollywood uses. Sure enough, two weeks after the pitch, we heard from the Agent. The Exec we'd pitched had read my sample piece -- the pilot for Fred, Prince of Darkness -- and wanted to read a longer one. So the agent sent him Pwned. As he put it, "Seems like [the network] is interested and still vetting the writing first."

So where is Hopjockey right now? Pretty much exactly where I left you last time -- waiting to hear back from the network, while said network considers my writing. It's the strangest feeling knowing you're being evaluated on something you completed months ago. Like being quizzed when you're not in the room. Or auditioning in a sensory deprivation chamber. I don't care for it much. I keep second-guessing myself, wondering if the samples are strong enough. And they were both strong enough to get optioned, so that bodes well. And at least they're reading them. And it's also been about two weeks since we last heard from the Agent, so maybe will be coming soon.

Older

2008-10-07T17:51:00.000-07:00

So last Saturday, October 4th, I got older. Thirty-one this year. Now I'm firmly mired in the thirties. At 30, there's still some wiggle room, some deniability -- you can always think of it as the very end of the twenties (you know, 'cause when you count in tens, 10 is part of 1-10, and 20 is part of 11-20, that sort of thinking). Can't fudge 31, though. I don't mind. There's plenty of cool stuff about being 31. For instance, my age is a prime number. Haven't had one of those in eight years. I've also been 21 for ten years now. And that's worth celebrating ... *uncork*
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The birthday itself was nice and relaxing, in stark contrast to last year's birthday, which spanned an entire weekend. Camille flew my two best friends and their wives (who are also best friends) down to surprise me with a coronary. The BBQ party had something like forty people in attendance; I still haven't read all the books I received. I have read all the calendars, though. This year, I wanted something small and simple, quiet and predictable. Something respectfully lame. That's what I got, and it was perfect.
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My parents sent me a trippy-cool painting of an iguana. Don gave me a copy of Watchmen, which to my geek shame I had never read. Camille cooked an amazing dinner for my birthday: chicken marsala with mushrooms and capers on a bed of arugula, with pasta and pinot from Kelsey See Canyon, our favorite winery. I don't remember the exact type of mushrooms that were in the dish, as I'm not normally a mushroom guy, but these were amazilicious. And for breakfast the next morning, I got lazy man pancakes. The recipes for both are on the cooking blog Camille shares, Cooking Kama Sutras. Ah, good eating. A gift that will remain around my waist for years to come.

That amazing birthday dinner. I got to do the dishes.

Epic Job

2008-10-01T17:06:00.000-07:00

I've taken a part-time job at Epic Level Entertainment in Studio City. If that name sounds familiar, it should -- it's the production company of John Frank Rosenblum and Cindi Rice, co-producers of The Gamers: Dorkness Rising and the same people who optioned Pwned. I'm manning phones and taking care of sundry office duties. It's easy enough. Most of the time, I'm alone -- I rarely see my boss-friends, who commute from much, much farther away. I'm reminded of my time at the PLU writing center, when half the time I had no appointments and nothing to do. I got a lot of extra writing done at the writing center. And I'm feeling the itch to fill said time productively. Like, say, by updating my blog. And on other things, like writing content for an eventual Vancil website. More on that later.

Swing through E-Wa

2008-09-23T09:06:00.000-07:00

So recently, we took a swing through eastern Washington to visit Camille's relatives (Camille = Wifey). Her family originally hails from Spokane, the second largest city in the state and center of the great Inland Northwest. Mainly we were going to visit her grandfather, who's 87 and in the middle of his fourth bout with cancer. The out-of-region family has been gathering to pay their respects and say their goodbyes. But the old goat may surprise us all and live another few years. He survived World War II in the Pacific and whupped cancer three times already, so I wouldn't count him out just yet.

Spokane River Park

We saw Grandpa most every day we were there. He's been giving his things away to friends and family, doing what he can to unclutter the place before he departs. He showered Camille with jewelry that belonged to his late wife, a lovely lady who died about a year into our marriage. I wish I'd known her longer. The first time I came to Spokane was to meet Camille's family as the fiance. Grandma -- who was carrot-haired and about 4' 10" -- came out with her arms open, an unmistakable "hug me" gesture. I walked into her arms -- and she pulled me down in a hug that guillotined my throat against her shoulder. "Oh, it's so good to meet you!" she gushed. I said nothing, because I couldn't breathe with her shoulder in my throat. At our wedding a few months later, she goosed my dad, who she thought was her younger son (but to be fair, my dad and Camille's uncle are both Gregs). We miss her very much. So does Grampa. Which is why the family thinks this may be the last round for him -- he's ready to be with his wife again. And I can't fault that.

Camille's Grandpa is also quite the hobbyist. He has a basement full of fully functional model rockets and airplanes, which he's selling off to collectors. He made me sit at his computer and play the model airplane simulator -- which has a perfect reproduction controller, with the two mini-joysticks -- until I could perform a simple turn. After about twenty impressive crashes and over $100,000 of virtual damages to his virtual air fleet, he got disgusted and let me leave. I never did make that turn, but I did perform a rare inverted landing (i.e., the plane landed upside down and didn't explode).

He also has a bunch of old several video game systems. And that's what I pre-inherited. He gave me a Nintendo 64 and Super Nintendo, both with extra controllers and head cleaners. But the big prize, which I couldn't believe he gave me, was an old Atari 5200, first released in 1982. A game system as old as my sister. And with it came a stack of over twenty games, with plenty of old school 8-bit classics: Pole Position, Dig Dug, Pac Man, Jungle Hunt, Q-Bert, and more. Getting that through security was fun. I haven't set it up yet, because our home TV doesn't have the right hookups on the back. And because the Atari's adapter has a few exposed wires. And because we can't find the Atari controllers. We'll get it up and running eventually, I'm sure.

We stayed with Aunt Sharon and Uncle Terry on their farm outside the city. Far outside the city -- they own 80 acres of prairie on either side of a gravel road. It's been a long, long time since I've heard crickets. Or seen so many stars in a sky without light pollution. Time seems to move more slowly there, at a more relaxed pace. I actually had time to read for pleasure. I mowed through the latest by S.M. Stirling -- perhaps my favorite author -- before we left. Sharon and Terry have one of those basements that's quiet and dark as a tomb. You lose all sense of time and orientation slumbering down there. My grandparents, the late Vancil Grandparents, had a similar pair of beds in their basement bedroom. Until coming to Sharon and Terry's, I'd never slept as well anywhere as in my grandparents' basement.

The food on this trip was, as it always is with our family, amazing. Sharon cooked huckleberry pancakes twice for Camille. She left a tub of oatmeal cranberry cookies in the kitchen for me to raid, and pretended not to notice. For one lunch, she made me a tuna fish sandwich from a tuna Terry had caught himself and brought back to the farm. And at cousin Lisa's, we had fried chicken with garden-fresh corn on the cob.

We visited cousin Lisa -- who's really Camille's big sister -- and her two boys, Gunnar and Cannan, in the no-horse town of St. John. Last time I was with the bear cubs (what the family calls the boys), they tag-team wrestled me to a draw. They were six and eight at the time. Now they're eight and ten. I would have lost that match, so we played football instead. Eventually it got dark and we had to go back inside. I was the only one without grass stains, because they were more interested in tacking each other than me. And I'm quick on my feet. The boys kept asking if we could stay the night. Sadly, we had to fly out at midday the next day. But that didn't stop them from asking. And if we could have, we'd have stayed. The drive back was beautiul, taking us through the Palouse at night.

The entire town of St. John. I'm kidding. It's actually smaller.

It was hard for us to come back to LA. It always is, but doubly so this time. It didn't help that my bag never made the connecting flight -- Camille's did, but mine, not so much -- and didn't show up for another two days. There just wasn't enough time. There never is. Especially knowing that the next time we return to Spokane could be for a funeral. But at least we know that it's coming, so we could make the time to visit. And there's a blessing in that.

Love letter to DG

2008-09-06T08:41:00.000-07:00

MWP's Jamie Chambers -- the award-winning game designer of the Cortex system and the man who created our very own Demon Hunters Role Playing Game -- apparently felt he hadn't done enough for Dead Gentlemen and wrote us this glowing love letter. It is the finest compliment I and my writing have ever been paid. I'm not used to receiving such praise, especially not from a man I admire so much. Jamie, thank you. You are a true friend and a karaoke god.

PAX Dorkana

2008-09-04T10:21:00.001-07:00

So last week, Don, Jeremy, and I flew up to attend Dead Gentlemen's first ever PAX -- the Penny Arcade Expo made famous by the geek culture vanguards at Penny Arcade. The con showcases computer games, console games, and role-playing games. In only its fifth year, PAX had outgrown its original home in the Meydenbauer Center, and had levelled up to the Washington State Convention Center in downtown Seattle.
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For the DGs, it was coming home. We've filmed all our projects in Washington. The real Washington, not that fetid swamp between Maryland and Virginia. Most of our members, cast, and crew call the damp and drizzly northwest home. And to be honest, compared to the cloying, invasive heat of a Los Angeles summer, we didn't want to leave. Overcast skies, clean air, crisp wind -- I don't want to film anywhere else.
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So excitement trumped our fatigue. For a while. Because this was our fourth con in four months, and our third in six weeks. We were more than ready for the con season to be over. This one should be easy, though, we figured. We only have one screening, so we're only doing one day at the con. Plus, with the home stays and local friends around, it should be an easy and relaxing experience. Right? Right?
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We arrived Friday morning at 11:00. We thought we were arriving a bit late. In our experience, cons usually start at ten. So we got in line to enter the hall -- a rather massive, wrapping-around-itself line that reminded me of a derailed train -- and waited. And waited. Which was odd, because the hall should be open. That's when we bothered checking the schedule, and noted that the hall didn't open until 2:00. So we abandoned the line and groused around, scoping out the hall.
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On the fourth floor, at the top of the convention center, we found our screening room. Which was not so much a room as a corner of the hall floor -- a corner right at the top of the escalators, right at the exit to the main exhibit hall. We were going to screen in an open floor theater. Which, upon reflection, was a great location, really -- the cross traffic alone from the escalators and hall would be massive. Except there was a massive supporting pillar right near the screen that obscured the view from most angles. We'd have to see ...
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So we had a few hours to kill before the hall opened. We ambled around a bit more, and found the entrance to the exhibit hall. Figured we'd sneak a peak in, so we tiptoed up to security. Who, oddly enough, didn't stop us or send us away. So we kept walking -- past them, into the hall. Ninja skills for the win? Not so much. The badges the con had given us -- our special guest media badges, cha-ching! -- allowed us into the exhibit hall an hour before everyone else. So we got to walk the hall with a small crowd. At 2:00, the hall opened to the public, and some 50,000 gamers stampeded into the hall. By then, we'd safely navigated our way towards a lunching station, and had belunched ourselves.

So properly fooded and orientated, we set out to bother celebrities. We met Felicia Day and Sandeep Parikh of The Guild, the much loved webseries that has won all kinds of awards and much critical acclaim. They are lovely people, approachable and funny, with serious Geek cred and the glow of newly-minted celebrity. Sandeep recognized Jeremy from Comic Con, and Felicia recognized Don when he introduced himself -- we've volunteered to crew the second season of The Guild, which is slated to film as early as this fall. Which would be an awesome of undeniable magnitude.

After getting our Guild fix, we found the line to meet geek guru and web entity extraordinare Wil Wheaton. But we didn't actually get to meet him; there was a dude at the end of the line, a Security Guy, turned around with his back to the line. "I'm the end of the line," he told us. Wil would be leaving in a few minutes to attend a panel, so we'd have to come back in a few hours. "Oh," said Don, bummery clouding his face, "we wanted to give him this," and he held up a Dorkness Rising DVD. "Oh, you're Dead Gentlemen!" Said End-Of-The-Line-Guy. Then another Security Guy came over. "Dorkness Rising? Cool!" said New Security Guy. "This is for Wil?" We nodded, and New Security Guy took the DVD to the front of the line. He handed it to Wil ... and Wil warily took it, looked at it ... and then totally geeked out. Big clowny smily grin. "Oh, I've been waiting for this!" he said. "Thank you!" We strutted off, rather stoked. We'd comped Captain Awesome McKickass, and liked our movie.
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After dinner, we attended The Guild screening in a two hundred seat theater, which was packed to the gills; they had to turn people away. The audience -- some of whom hadn't seen it before -- absolutely loved it, as well they should have. At the panel afterward, Felicia said this was the first time they'd actually seen it with an audience. It was a huge thrill for them. There's nothing quite so rewarding as watching your work with an appreciative audience. There's also nothing quite as terrifying. Cinema is the the only art I can think of where you can be both performing and a member of the audience at the same time.

We snuck out of the Guild panel to prep the Dorkness screening, which started directly afterwars. Many of the northwest DGs turned out for the screening, even with Matt Shimkus' wedding looming only fourteen hours away. We saw some people we hadn't seen in years, others we hadn't seen since we filmed: fight choreographer Kevin Inouye; Tracy Ivory, one of our amazing costumers; and the omni-talented Ed Gibbs, who plays the Hierophant. My parents, who'd never seen the movie with a crowd, somehow talked the convention into giving them free passes so they could attend the screening. They stood out a bit, being as they were the only gray-haired attendees we'd seen.

The screening itself went as well as could be hoped. The chairs filled quickly, and it was sitting room only. Over 200 people crowded any spot with line-of-site to the screen. The tech folks had to jack the volume up to contend with the convention noise, which only attracted more people. I've seen the movie so many damn times that I'm interested in watching it is with an audience. And I don't so much watch the film as the audience. They gave us a standing ovation after the credits, and after our mini-panel after the credits. And after that, we completely legally sold about fifty DVDs to fans. Which is pretty good for not selling anything at the con.
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I got a nice chance to chat with Sandeep Parikh, who caught the end of the screening. Great guy, quick on his feet and very funny. He was showing the first three episodes of The Legend of Neil directly after us. If you haven't seen The Legend of Neil, and have ever played or heard of The Legend of Zelda, you must watch this series. It's absotively marvlarious. Really damn funny. Not for the kiddies, though, and not safe for work. But absolutely worth the viewing.
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With the end of the screening, so ended our convention season. And not a moment too soon. We bade farewell to family and fellow DGs, and trekked back to Magnolia to billet ourselves in Wifey's dad's house. The lid came off the hot tub, and it was Tub Time with Don, Matt, and Jeremy, boiling the brats with beer.
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So now we're back in L.A., with no more cons to attend this year. To all the fans, friends, and family of Dead Gentlemen: Thank you for your support and camraderie. We would never have gotten this far without you. And I solemly swear that the next project will not take five years to complete. If I break this promise, you may burn Don in effigy.

Gen Con, Day 4

2008-08-21T10:48:00.000-07:00

Gettin' all Guillermo at breakfast

Gen Con. Day the Last. I promise, I'll try really hard to keep this post in non-mammoth territory.

For the first night of the con, we got a decent night's sleep. Which means we slept well past the hall opening, and didn't arrive until the day was half over. Sundays at cons are sad. Numbers are often down, and continue to go down as people leave during the day to fly back to wherever they hail from. The fact that the con is ending is on everyone's mind, the same feeling you get on the last day of your vacation, or pretty much any Sunday when it's back to work in a few hours. What made it worse was that I was just getting used to the con. Which is how it always happens. But it's still depressing.

Sunday's sales were good, just slightly less than Saturday. All in all, over 1,200 Dorkness Rising DVDs sold at Gen Con -- the first four days it was available. On top of that, Margaret Weis Productions sold somewhere between 80 and 100 copies of the Demon Hunters Role Playing Game. We've never had numbers like that a at a convention. Never. And that's not counting pre-orders on Paizo's website, or what Netflix ordered. By the way, if you add Dorkness to your Netflix queue, it will tell you there's a "very long wait" to get the movie. =)
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As the day wound down, I got my promo copies of the DVD to swag for con goodies. The haul wasn't bad -- a coupl'a boxes of D&D minis, a wonderful little board game called "Key Largo" ... and a TON of Legend of the Five Rings cards from John Zinser, president of AEG. L5R is my favorite collectible card game of all time, hands down. The interactive storyline and fan devotion to their particular factions are unmatched in the CCG world. I've been off the stuff for a few years, pretty much since we moved to Cali. But with Nathan moving down in a couple months, I may have to get back into the game. Can't let the Crane prance around the courts of the Empire while the Crab die on the Great Carpenter Wall.
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Wifey poses with Jen Page, who was banished from the con

after someone left a cold iron charm outside her room. BOOM! Elf joke!

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At four, the hall closed, and the convention hall staff started processing the corpse of the convention. The carpets between the booths were rolled up, the banners above them taken down. Quickly, efficiently, the cold concrete bones of the convention center poked through what moments before had been the center of the RPG universe. And will be again next year.
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The trip back to L.A. was blessedly uneventful. We said our goodbyes to the few DGs hanging around an extra day and vamoosed to the airport. Mercifully, Air Tran's computers were working for the return trip. From the L.A. park and ride, Don and Cindy gave us a lift back to our apartment -- our car still being dead -- and dropped us off shortly after midnight. We have yet to completely unpack.

So ... yay for Gen Con! We can finally get back to regular life. Until next week, when Don and Jeremy and I head up to Seattle for PAX.

Gen Con, Day 3

2008-08-20T09:22:00.000-07:00

One of the realities of convention life is that you're going to have to share your room. I've roomed with my fair share of snorers. Brian was neither the loudest nor most obnoxious of these. He was, however, the hardest to wake. The whispering didn't work. The yelling didn't work. The crossing-over-and-nudging didn't work. What did work was the violently-shaking-the-bed. The snoring stopped after that, but I only netted about four hours of sleep -- the bare minimum to function the next day.
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And sadly, the first thing I did the next day was miss Tracy Hickman's fan-favorite event, one of the hallmarks of the convention, the Killer Breakfast. Every year, Tracy runs a Dungeons & Dragons campaign from the front of a ballroom and mows through hundreds of player characters in about two hours. There are no survivors. It's not if you will die -- it's when, and how violently. If you can survive the Killer Breakfast for more than 30 seconds, that's commendable. I think Christian set a record with two minutes. I was looking forward to getting killed in front of hundreds of fellow gamers myself, but sadly, that wasn't in the cards.
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No, I was at the signing table -- the only Dead Gentleman at the table, I might ad -- nearly getting trampled by the new herd of gamers thundering towards the Wizards booth. Seems today's promo was an exclusive Hero Clix miniature. Watching the gamers galumph across the floor, I imagined a small tile-based board game called "Con Rush." In this game, players would compete to grab as many con promos as possible from different booths before their character died from a massive coronary.
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BELOW: Signing my future away. That's John Frank with the Joker grin.
Saturday is typically the biggest day at Gen Con, but sales-wise, it didn't take the crown away from Thursday. By the end of the day, Paizo had sold 250 Dorkness DVDs. They'd also completely sold out DVDs of the Director's Cut of The Gamers and Dead Camper Lake. Haven't had that happen for a while.
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The signings held steady througout the day. And in the middle of them, I signed the option agreement with Epic Level Entertainment for the next Gamers film, The Gamers: PWNed. I've been working on the script for the last couple years. It's set in an MMORPG, so the budget will be significantly higher than anything Dead Gentlemen's ever done -- hence Epic Level holding the reins on this one. We're pretty excited about it, expecially coming off the momentum of Dorkness. John Frank and Cindi already have meetings set up. If I have to miss Gen Con next year, I hope it's because we're knee-deep in PWNed.
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I left the hall at five to get a nap in before the Big Screening that night. This would be the sole evening screening of Dorkness Rising at Gen Con, at 10 pm. And for me, the film would not be complete until I'd seen it screen with a Gen Con audience. The first Gen Con screening was two years ago, in '06, but due to a family tragedy I had to leave before the premiere. So I had a lot emotionally tied up in this screening. I needed it. I needed to be there, to see it in front of an audience. The Comic Con screening was great, but it was no Gen Con crowd.
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Gen Con expected a massive turnout, so they gave us two ballrooms to screen in. It was the same setup as last year: seating for a thousand, with a large central screen and two smaller side screens at the halfway point where the halls met. We posed for pictures with fans as the line outside the hall grew, and grew, and grew -- we couldn't go in, because the live table reading of Knights of the Dinner Table was just wrapping up. The DGs trekked in when they finished, and then, predictably, things started to go wrong.
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Remember the big central screen? Apparently, the con decided we didn't need one. All we had were the two small side screens -- and half the chairs in the place were past those. So we had two ballrooms, but one we couldn't use because it didn't face the screens. Also, hundreds of people stayed over from the KoDT reading for our screening, so the back seats were already pretty much full before we'd opened the doors to the folks in line. This did not bode well.
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So the doors opened, and we explained to the attendees that the side screens were all they got. Folks filled in the back, and angled their chairs towards the screens, splitting right down the middle at oblique angles. That was weird -- watching a 600 member audience crammed into half the space, facing opposite directions.
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Screening to the left!

Screening to the right!

Stand up, sit down, fight fight fight!

And so our screening began. We led with the trailer for Midnight Syndicate's The Dead Matter, directed by our buddy Ed Douglas. It's a truly original (and rather jump-inducing) horror movie. Don and Jeremy and I got to see it at GAMA back in April in Ed's hotel room, with Ed narrating the effects and scenes that weren't fully finished. We enjoyed the hell out of it, and that wasn't even the final version. So the trailer screened, and as we watched, we thought "Huh. They did the trailer in black and white. Odd choice for a movie in color."

But of course that wasn't the choice, as we discovered when we loaded the Dorkness screener -- the projector was stuck on black and white. So we abruptly stopped the screening to howls of protest. I pondered how quickly a friendly audience could turn into an effigy-burning mob. We powwowwed (it's a word) with the con's tech guys, and fixed the color in record time.

Then we noticed the aspect ratio was off -- the projector was projecting in 4:3 instead of 16:9 (fullscreen instead of widescreen for you non-dorks). The projector was chopping the sides off the image. The loading screen even read "ed Gentlemen presents," with the option to "Play Mov." We circled up to toy with the projector ... and that's when the chants of "Play mov! Play mov!" started. So we just took the aspect ratio hit and played the mov.

I sat down with Wifey in the dark, in the midpoint between the differently angled crowds. Here it was, my Gen Con screening. Please, dear God, let it not suck.

It didn't. I mean, sure, there were some problems. There was the aspect ratio, and the focus was a bit soft, and the audio wasn't as clear as it could be. The fans didn't care. What they cared about were gaming jokes and dead bards. Laughter filled the hall, loud and constant and appreciative. Wifey was so excited she screamed herself into laryngitis, the poor thing. The credits rolled a hundred minutes later to a standing ovation. Two, if you count the divided crowd.

So, completely high off the screening, we headed out to the most raucous party of the con: the White Wolf party. I'd been hearing about this one for two years, about the insane debauchery and the flashing bard junk in a go-go cage. So it was a bit surprising when the club we crammed into turned out to be nothing but three drab stairwells worth of suck. There was no balcony, no fresh air, no open windows -- and no air conditioning.

Now, my three great hates are crowds, heat, and noise. This party was nothing but. By the time I reached the somewhat cooler third floor -- which only felt like a sauna -- I was ready to leave. And oddly enough, so were the rest of the DGs. The party two years ago was in a different space, they assured me. This party wasn't happening. We had to get out or we'd melt.

So we headed over to the Embassy Suites with Jamie and Renae Chambers of MWP to carouse in their con pad. And that turned out to be the best party we could hope for -- friends, alcohol, and privacy. And flow the alcohol did. Tree drank Stevie under the table. Which, to be fair, isn't hard. I believe I texted "Balls 4EVER" to Cindi at one point -- Cindi, my producer. We ended the night in the loading dock outside the hotel, smoking Brian's "I'm a dad!/We made a movie!" cigars.

And it was there, in that atmosphere of effervescent camaraderie, that many of us had to part ways. Several of the guys had early morning flights to catch -- this was it for them. We hugged our goodbyes, bade our fellows safe passage back to the damp and drizzly northwest. We'd be at half-strength tomorrow on the last day of the con.

We got back to our hotel at 4 am. Brian, bless him, had felt so bad about the snoring that he'd bought us a pack of earplugs. We corked our hear-bits and collapsed under the weight of the day.

Gen Con, Day 2

2008-08-19T11:50:00.001-07:00

Friday we rolled out of bed at 8:30 -- 5:30 our time -- and somehow managed to get back to the convention before the Exhibit Hall opened. From our table, we watched a herd of hefty gamers stampede towards the Wizards of the Coast booth. Seems the first couple hundred or so got a free convention-exclusive Magic: The Gathering card. We joked about giving away our own promos at the next Gen Con. We'd get a bunch of pine clippings, stick them in miniature bases, add little Lego hats and guns, and voila! Tree action figures! Ha ha! Trust me, it's a lot funnier if you're extremely sleep deprived.

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Jeremy procured several new Sharpies for the signings, since we'd pretty much bled our pens dry on the first day. The DVDs and RPGs kept selling in a steady stream. It was slightly less than Thursday, but we still didn't get much of a break from signing. I still hadn't had a real chance to walk the hall. And frankly, I wasn't too sore about that -- I was enjoying the hell out of myself at the signing table. Tough I pretty much ran my throat ragged yabbering with people at the booth. And despite the sucky chairs that put a vice clamp on your hips, tilted your ass back at a 45-degree angle, and would collapse if you slightly turned your body.

At 2:30, a delegation of DGs hiked over to the Westin to give a Dead Gentlemen seminar. We had no idea what we were going to talk about. A few months back, when Don had set it up, we were pretty sure we'd have an exciting new project to talk about, to give the insider's scoop on. That project didn't so much fall apart as never came together, though, so we were without a topic as we waited to take over. But Nathan gave each of us a shot of something smooth and burny to limber us up. The seminar turned out easy and fun. We talked about where we'd come from, how we got involved in DG, what our current projects were ... and a bit of what was next, if we had our druthers. And apparently, we didn't reveal anything damning, because John Frank (perched at the back of the room) never piped up. We stuck around to snap pictures and sign some swag at the end of it.

Posing with Sophia's Sister from the DG forums. She has excellent taste.

Back in the hall, things were a-rockin'. Sales of Dorkness Rising DVDs hit 350. Paizo actually sold out of the Director's Cut of the original The Gamers. And over at the Margaret Weis Productions booth -- our friends foolish enough to produce an RPG with us -- the Demon Hunters Role Playing Game was the top seller. They even had to reorder, or so I'm told. Whatever the case, we saw many, many copies of the RPG. And Nathan somehow did not run out of the tree-related puns he kept scribbling on people's Cobbler's Crystals pages..

For dinner, we met with some of our favoritest people in gaming: Cindi Rice of Epic Level, our parner production company; Dave Williams and Ed Stark -- who still can't tell us about the awesome new MMORPG they're developing, on pain of death -- of Red 5 Studios; and Sean Reynolds of Paizo, who played the Inquisitor in Dorkness Rising and made it very clear he was going to steal my wife. We all ate way too much at Buca di Beppo and developed new and creative ways to tell each other to shut up.

We ended the night at Champions because we promised Jamie Chambers, the brain behind the Cortex RPG system, that we'd attend MWP's karaoke night. This was something they did every year at Dragon*Con -- where they'll be when we're up at PAX in a coupl'a weeks -- and it was time to inflict the tradition onto Gen Con. Now, karaoke isn't something I automatically put into the good times column. I've only done it a few times myself, and from what I remember of it, it's not what I would consider a raucous activity. I had to change that opinion rather quickly. It was, to put it mildly, the most fun I'd ever had at a Gen Con party.

The MWP folks broke the ice, and the combination of being with friends and cheap alcohol loosened us up. Wifey and I performed "Barbie Girl," and switched the male/female parts on the last verse. I barely made it through "A-Ha" -- nailed the high notes, though. The people kept pouring in, packing the place, and as the space shrank and the collective body temperature rose, the spirits spirits kept a-rising. Things exploded when, up on the big screen, Michael Phelps won his seventh gold medal by .01 seconds.

BELOW: The karaoke crowd busts a move.

It was the most animated I've ever seen a karaoke crowd. We were all laughing, dancing, singing backup, even acting out sketches -- like when Don, with about six Manhattans in him, climbed up and sang "Thunderball" from the fourth Bond film, and we improvved scenes from Bond films in front of him. My personal big diva moment was when I kicked it old school and did Young M.C.'s "Bust A Move." I was twelve again, but a much, much worse dancer. The night ended four hours later with the DGs doing Chumbawumba and me proving yet again the degree to which I cannot dance. Alcohol definitely played a part.

But by far the best (or worst) karaoke performance of the evening belonged to Cam Banks of MWP. Cam is a native New Zealander, an Aussie-hating Kiwi through and through. So when "Land Down Under" started up, we all looked on curiously -- and then couldn't look away as Cam murdered the song with cold blooded glee. It was hilariously terrible, wonderfully bad, ironically cringe-worthy ... a musical act of war. Good on you, Cam.

And so day two ended, and with it half the con, at about 1:00 am. Plenty of time to rest up for the big events of tomorrow: namely Killer Breakfast, and the big screening of Dorkness Rising.

Wifey poses with Jeremy and Nathan,

who's about to get his damn hand off my wife

Gen Con, Day 1

2008-08-19T09:20:00.000-07:00

Gen Con! The grandaddy of the gaming conventions, the center of the tabletop adventure universe. We first attended in 2003, when the Dead Gentlemen and The Gamers were complete unknowns. By the end of thate con, we'd sold 400 DVDs and met a gaggle of gaming celebrities we now call friends. And we'd also been asked the question we'd be getting for the next five years: "When's the next one coming out?"
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The answer was five years. Five years from conception to copies for sale. Photography began in January of 2005, and we premiered the making-of documentary (which is on the DVD) at that year's Gen Con. Finally, we had an answer to "When's the next one coming out?" And, of course, our answer was wrong. Repeatedly. In 2005, we knew it would be out in 2006. In 2006, we thought it would be out in 2007. In 2007, we hoped our fans would not drag us out of the con and burn us at the stake. But thankfully, mercifully, Anthem Pictures -- our distributor -- gave us a definitive answer on "When's the next one coming out?": August 14, 2008, at Gen Con.
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So it was with profound relief and unmitigated excitement that our party of six departed for Indianapolis last Wednesday night. We'd be catching an 11:15 pm red eye out of LAX. Things got off to a great start when my car didn't. Start, that is. Engine wouldn't even turn over. And it's not like it had been running fine not six hours earlier. But before the panic could set in, wonderful neighbors Matt and Jessica gave us a lift to the rendezvous point. We arrived at the airport with two hours to spare. What a relief. We should have no trouble from here on out.
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We promptly waited to check in for an hour and a half. Apparently, Air Tran's computers were down. So they decided to lift our spirits by playing the check-in line version of musical chairs, where they wait for you to get to the front of a line and then tell you that, ha ha!, you've been in the wrong line the entire time! Yaaay! An hour into waiting, we got to start over at the back of the line. An hour and a half into waiting, we'd moved a total of negative ten yards. The one good thing about the bottlenecking at the check in line was that there was no line at security. We got to the terminal right as the boarding was ending, and moments later were in the air. Now, we'd been going since seven that morning, so were looking forward to getting some sleep on the plane. That wasn't exactly in the cards. See, Air Tran loves the air conditioning. They also, in their peculiar form of customer service, provide no blankets. So we got to shiver our way across three time zones in the middle of the night. I think I passed out for a stretch or two from sheer exhaustion. Never flying Air Tran again, that's for sure.
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We arrived in Indianapolis at 3:00 am, right as the sun was rising at 6:00 am Eastern Time. The light triggered the "It's morning! Time to get up!" zones in our brains, and gave us a bit of a much-needed boost. Which immediately deflated when Enterprise could not find our rental car reservations. So Don shuffled us onto a shuttle to Budget, and reserved a pair of vans via his blackberry en route. Not long after that, with our spirits high, we rolled up to our hotel, which did have our reservations. But we would not be allowed to check in until 3:00. Oh, and you can't leave your bags here, either. So no showers, no change of clothes, and as a bonus, we got to lug our luggage around all day. Let the hatred flow through you. Soon, your journey to the Dark Side will be complete.
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After a massive breakfast at a waffle house -- a waffle house, not the Waffle House, as we learned to our disappointment -- we met up with the DGs already in town and trekked to the convention center. Once we got into the Exhibitor's Hall, everything would be okay. Once Gen Con began, all the suck of the last eight hours would be erased. So it was no surprise to me when, after picking up DG's con badges, we discovered that Gen Con had forgotten one for me. Which is understandable. I mean, I only wrote and directed the damn movie [/mini-rant]. We did have a badge for Matt DeMille, though -- DG's production designer, the same Matt who gave us a lift when our car wouldn't start -- but he was unable to attend the con. A little Sharpie action made the badge mine.
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BELOW: Monday's signing line at the Paizo booth

So -- exhausted, irritable, hungry, and marinated in my own travel sweat -- I finally got to the booth. Dead Gentlemen Productions didn't have a booth this year; we were occupying a corner of the Paizo booth, set aside for cast and crew signings (Paizo is DG's game industry distributor). I meandered over to a rack of Dorkness Rising DVDs by the register, dozens of them standing at attention in matching shrink-wrap -- and all the bad feelings, the annoyances and the petty inconveniences, just melted away. Here it was, after five years of wondering if it would ever come out. Here was our movie for sale. And it wasn't just for sale on the rack. It was already up on Netflix and Amazon (though Amazon seems to think it's some soft-core porn starring David Duchovny -- what's that about?). And from what Cindi told me, pre-orders for those two and others have already exceeded any other film Anthem's ever done. Hearsay, yes, but the good kind. The kind I'm going to repeat here.
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So the hall opened, and the fans descended on the booth. Eight hours later, the hall closed. Sales were good.
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And by good, I mean they were flying off the shelves. We (and by we, I mean Paizo) sold just under 500 DVDs. To put that in perspective, the most DVDs Dead Gentlemen had ever sold at a convention were 400. We smashed that record by a hundred in the single day. And the rate of sale was more than one DVD per minute -- 497 sales in 480 minutes of hall openness. Paizo only brought a thousand DVDs, and it was evident by midday that at least half of that would be gone at the end of the day. So Don sent an email to Chuck, president of Anthem, saying we needed another 1,500 DVDs. A minute after sending that email, Don's phone rang.
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I was sitting two seats left of Don when he got the call. The following dialogue transpired, near verbatim:
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DON: Hello?
CHUCK: Are you shitting me?
DON: What?
CHUCK: Are you shitting me?!
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Don assured Chuck that no, he was not indeed shitting him -- we needed more DVDs. Immediately. So Anthem overnighted reinforcements to Paizo for Saturday. With luck, we wouldn't sell out on Friday. Or with luck we would, depending on your point of view. It's really hard to convey the enthusiasm and excitement of the first day of the con. We saw hundreds of fans, many we recognized and many new. One group even showed up in costume as their own chapter of Demon Hunters: a nephilim, a were-rat, the Dark Gray Ninja, and Bernard, the knife-wielding, eyepatch-sporting potted plant. We bled most of our Sharpies dry.
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After the hall closed, we grabbed a quick bite at Champions before heading over to an IMAX screening of Midnight Chronicles by our friends at Fantasy Flight Games. I wish I could review it, but I can't. I'd been awake for 36 hours when the screening began, and exhaustion + darkness + comfy chair = Matt falls asleep. Thank God the soundtrack was louder than my snoring. What I remember of the movie was very cool and looked great, but I couldn't tell where plot ended and bizarre fatigue dreams began.
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We got back to the hotel -- and finally checked in -- just before midnight, and hit the bed at roughly 800 miles per hour. Despite Brian's truly Olympic performance at snoring, we managed to get enough sleep to function the next day. Because the con had just started, and there was still a long way to go.
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Don meets his doppelganger