Rodney Redbottom

Rodney Redbottom is the first in a series of short movies I'm writing/directing titled the Benefits of a Small Town series. Believe it or not, this first chapter is based off of a very true story: Back in the day my good friend Brando inherited his Grandpa's car when he passed away. One day while driving said car he had a flat tire and as you do, he went into the trunk to pull out the spare. What he instead discovered wasn't a wheel, but tons of BDSM paraphernalia addressed to what turned out to be his Grandpa's pseudonym, Rodney Redbottom. After he begrudgingly confronted his Grandmother about the subject of Rodney, she enlightened him as to his Grandpa's more *ahem* interesting side.

It was Brando's constant drunken regaling of this story to me that struck a chord. What a wholly original and weird tale it is to discover such a thing about a patriarchal figure. Sometimes truth is indeed stranger than fiction. So with his permission I wrote up a treatment of the project and we both sat down and wrote the script. After a few months of planning I enlisted my wife Olivia Roush to produce it, my buddy J.C. Reifenberg to shoot it, and we got to work on preproduction. We shot the movie in May 2014 over the course of a few weeks on a Canon 5Dm3 DSLR shooting RAW. My uncle William S. Abramson financed the project with the majority of the money buying me the laptop that I've used to make all of my content for the past three years.

Dylan and I at the Premiere

To star in the project we recruited a friend of mine who was collaborating with John Roecker on their debut album (which just got released) to play the young version of Charlie Thomas*. We grabbed Joe Karam to play the older version of Charlie, the ever-amazing Elaine Rinehart to play Grandma, and William Gary Penn to play Grandpa. To fill out the cast of the "play parties" we recruited all of my friends to dress in bondage and smack each other around for an afternoon. I am truly lucky to have such stupidly loyal friends. My personal favorite cast decision though is my buddy Brandon playing the younger version of his own Grandpa.

*Charlie Thomas will be the name of my first son (if I have one) due to me promising a man on his death bed I would name my first son after him at thirteen years old.

Never one to shy away from researching the actual topic that we
were committing to screen, we talked to several individuals in the BDSM community and my wife and I even visited a "play party" in an industrial section of Los Angeles. Eventually we found an amazing lady named Trea Wallis-Taylor who amazingly came out and helped us add an air of realism to the portrayal of bondage in the film. During the timelapse section of said BDSM scene we even had a buddy of mine who works at NASA come out and design a motor to move the camera in a way in which we could create a seamless shot over four decades. Yes, you read that correctly, we had a NASA engineer design a bondage shot in our short movie.

I love and am proud of this weird, strange little flick we made and I look forward to continuing this universe in other shorts, the next of which you'll see is The Mission which we're currently screening in festivals. At the end of this year we'll also be shooting the third chapter of the Benefits of a Small Town series titled Dick Burrito followed by several more in 2017.

Thank you to all my friends that helped make this happen.
Hope you enjoy.

AntiCurrent.com Archives Vol 13: Joe Strummer- The Permanent Record Outtakes

This is the thirteenth edition of the "AntiCurrent.com Archives", a collection of rare bootleg-albums I'm releasing through this blog. Click here to view all past AntiCurrent.com Archive Albums. If you'd like to hear more about this album, we cover it in the Slippin' Through The Tracks segment on Episode 12 of my podcast, The Soapbox Office.

Joe Strummer was many things: Rockstar. Punk Rock Warlord. Composer. Of the few films he wrote the music for, the one that has fallen through the cracks is to a movie titled Permanent Record. The reason for this is although he wrote thirteen tracks for the album, the powers that be largely hated his work and only released five of them on the official soundtrack.

When Paramount approached Joe to write the music to the movie, they screened the film privately for him at their lot. During the middle of the screening he reportedly broke down crying and immediately agreed to do it on the spot. They booked him time at The Baby O Recorders Studio and he went to work right away. Early on in the process, the studio expressed their displeasure with Strummer's work and started looking for other tracks to fill out the album. Strummer, though knocked back, continued on with the process and finished the whole of the thirteen songs intended for the movie (the film's star Keanu Reeves even guests as the rhythm guitarist for the theme song).

This being his first undertaking with a group of musicians since he left The Clash, he assembled a band to help him execute the undertaking and named them The Latino Rockabilly War. This group consisted of Zander Schloss, Joey Artuda, Willie MacNeil, and Jack Irons. This lineup changed slightly through the few years it existed, but these are the same musicians responsible for bringing about Joe's first solo album, Earthquake Weather.

The album is raw and feels as if most tracks were captured live in the studio during one solid take. Though the album as a whole does lull at times, one has to keep in mind that much of it was designed to be an accompanying score to a film. The one track that is the absolute stand-out from the rest of this undeniably has to be the super-catchy Trash City. The lyrical style of this song was a foreshadowing of what to come with his future band The Mescaleros while the backbeat of the song is reminiscent of his past work in The Clash.

If you dig this album, buy the soundtrack as it is a much higher audio quality than these outtakes. If you are looking for more rare Joe Strummer that is actually purchasable, I would suggest looking into his first Pub-Rock band The 101'ers as it's one of the biggest unheralded masterpieces of his career.

Download Zip File Here

The tracklist is:
1:  Trash City
2:  Louisiana Turnpike
3:  Search Party
4:  Baby The Trans
5:  Plymouth Roadrunner
6:  Nefertiti Rock
7:  Outta Space
8:  Theme From 'Permanent Record'
9:  Nothin' 'bout Nothin'
10: Detour
11: Japanese Cars
12: Nameless
13: Cholo Vest

Bring Back Penn & Teller: Bullshit!

Modern Culture:
We live in a world where we refuse to let our youth die. Every week there's another news story about Netflix resuscitating another fondly remembered product from our past. Sometimes it works, as I'm told is the case with Dr. Who, sometimes it's a mixed bag of both genius and low-budgeted missteps like Arrested Development, but more often than not it's Fuller House. I have no idea why the world demanded in unison that they desired more of the cheesy 90's show, but they did, they got it, and they seem to have immediately regretted it. Hell, I read even the new X-Files sucked. Next up? Returns to the universe of Coach, Twin Peaks, and Gilmore Girls. Who's to say if they will be as good as the bar our nostalgia has set for them, but I suppose we have no choice other than finding out.

However, there are some shows that seem to be in need of being brought back. The limited run of the Carl Sagan remake of Cosmos is an excellent example. It was ripe to be updated with new information and graphics and although I cannot stand the spotlight whore that is Neil Degrasse Tyson, good on him for helping make it happen. Intellectual fodder fares better with this new found phenomenon of bringing shows back from the crypt because knowledge is never passé, knowledge is only ever power. The one show that personifies that core concept better than all else is Penn & Teller's show Bullshit and it's high time it got brought back.

Bullshit:
Bullshit tore away at popular fads and misconceptions with a blend of scientific prowess backed by cut-throat comedy that is likely to never be matched. To this day, anytime there is an argument made against vaccination, people inevitably start posting their bit demonstrating the importance of the subject by throwing balls at bowling pins. They didn't tackle subjects leaning to the left or the right, they tackled anything they viewed as a potential danger to humanity. Through their eight seasons they tore into the inaccuracies of the bible, the hypocrisy of PETA, and even the Criminal Justice System. Nothing was too precious to avoid their crosshairs and they tackled every episode with an equal amount of veracity and disdain.

The show is best summed up by a quote from Hunter S. Thompson: "Some people will say that words like scum and rotten are wrong for Objective Journalism — which is true, but they miss the point." Penn and Teller were biased, but they owned their bias and never attempted to cloud you with false information. Through this technique they accomplished things that modern "liberal" journalism never could. When someone is lying on camera and wholly ignoring the facts, that person is an asshole and should be labeled as such. They weren't concerned with offending people, nor did they make it their mission, they simply were fearless enough to mercilessly call out the people that were full of shit. Their cause was righteous and just and if more people practiced it, perhaps we wouldn't be looking at the possibility of a Donald Trump presidency.

A Personal Note:

My Hometown

This show was and still is important. As a kid who grew up in Ohio and had a science textbook with a sticker in the inside cover stating that evolution was only one of many theories, this show changed my life. I spent most of my impressionable years being brought up in such a sheltered environment with the internet only beginning to dawn. As many children, I was heavily subject to the beliefs and viewpoints of those around me due to very little external influence. I was seventeen when this series came out (though I likely started watching it around nineteen) and was long suspect that most everyone around me was full of shit, though I had little hard evidence of such.  When you are raised with family members that are religious, believe in psychics, reiki healing, and alien abduction, it is hard for a young mind with limited resources to gather enough external information to have a well-rounded understanding of the world.

When I first caught a broadcast of Bullshit, I immediately set out to find a DVD copy and eventually did at a DVD store in Dayton. I got home, popped in the disc, and my life changed. Not only did it show me the tactics behind "clairvoyants" such as Sylvia Brown, episodes dealing with subjects such as Environmental Hysteria proved to me that regardless of a right or left viewpoint, everything in life inherently needs to be questioned and Penn and Teller aren't beyond being questioned either.

Question Everything:
As is the nature with science, our understanding of it is always changing. A few of the arguments they made along the way (such as the dangers of second hand smoke) have fallen apart with further research. Other viewpoints I just flatly disagree with (such as their constant disregard for the potential horror of global warming just for the fact that the data is not fully in). But it's amazing to watch a show that invites questioning and doesn't insist that you fully prescribe to their logic in order to enjoy it. They've long stated that if this show was brought back, they would do an episode titled "The Bullshit of Bullshit" in which they tackle their own show from a critical perspective and illustrate the times that they got it wrong. C'mon, we need that.

(Science + Stats) (Comedy + Magic) + Naked People = Gold

This show was built around a simple equation that holds up to this day. Watch episodes from Seasons 1-7 and the only argument you could make for them feeling dated is that they weren't shot in HD. Bullshit wasn't just informative, nor was it only a soapbox for the duo to bitch about the wrongdoers of the world, it was downright fucking hilarious. Penn & Teller incorporated aspects of comedy and magic simultaneously with science and statistics in order to entertain and inform. Plus, they constantly showed naked people on TV, and in all reality, who the hell doesn't want to look at naked people while gaining a greater understanding of the world around us? This show reached all demographics that were willing to question. It's the perfect recipe to enlighten intellects and entertain the populace, all while stimulating the more primitive recesses of our brain as well.

Bring Back Bullshit:

Bullshit was just released in its entirety on Amazon Prime. If you haven't watched it, do yourself a favor and view what is the most important show of all time. If you already have, do us all a favor and rewatch them on the service because Teller hinted that Amazon may be interested in commissioning a new series of episodes. If fans of fucking Full House and Beverly Hills 90210 get to have their mindless entertainment back, then let's fight to see something of significant importance back on television.

This show has been responsible for so many people in the world pulling their head out of their own ass and applying critical thinking to every aspect of their life. I should know, I'm one of them. Do us all a favor and watch the series again.

Voting for Sanders Isn't Enough. We Need Trump.

I know what you're thinking, and yes, we all hate him. Hell, I suspect even his constituency hates him. But for just a few moments I want you to entertain the notion with an open mind. As a country we've tried to abolish poverty, racism, and sexism through legislation, education, and dialogue. While we have indeed made some meager strides toward these goals, they've been largely ineffective. It's been an estimated one-thousand, nine-hundred and eighty three years since the death of a man who espoused such radical notions as feeding those who cannot feed themselves, loving one another, and forgiving each other’s transgressions. That's an estimated 66 generations that have handed down this man's teachings to a world that is populated by 32% of his followers and yet, this country has only recently given homosexuals the same rights as straight people.

The people who are voting for Bernie Sanders are well-intentioned, but it's not enough. It's time to choose the nuclear option. In order to inspire the amount of disdain, anger, and violence that it takes to produce a true revolution, we need to elect Donald Trump.

Failed Revolutions

Before you overreact, think back to the 1960's. Revolution was inevitable. The Black Panthers and the Hippies and The Weather Underground were on a course to change the planet. Whether or not that was for the better is of course debatable, but all of those failed for the same reason: Tiny Victories. A tiny victory is allowing Blacks to have equal rights while over 60% of the population incarcerated are Black. A tiny victory is allowing women the right to vote while keeping their wages 21% lower than males. A tiny victory is giving Americans the promise of free health care, while instituting a complex system that financially penalizes them for not purchasing it. These tiny victories have been just enough to appease the populace and keep revolution at bay.

The world has always had an undercurrent of racism and sexism in our populace that inevitably re-emerges when a leader such as this rears its ugly head from the cesspool of human-indecency. Our only chance at cleansing this mark against humanity is to clearly identify the enemy by putting them into absolute power so that they may be violently overthrown. It's time that we stop thinking about our own well-being and resign ourselves to losing a battle in an effort to win the war. We need to subject our children to absolute hell. Like a spur to a horse, let us provoke a new generation with a leader and a constituency that is openly sexist, racist, and homophobic. Let us finally do away with gently teaching the upcoming class of young men and women to be good to one another through gentleness and love. Let us reintroduce the rod to show our children the horrors of this world so that they will be forced to fix it themselves.

Exceptional art comes from
exceptional times

If one needs proof that having a tyrant in charge of the country inspires the best that humanity is capable of, simply look to the arts. While the vile creature that was President Nixon was in power we were gifted with songs such as Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young's Ohio. As a response to the overlord that was Margret Thatcher, we received the gift that was The Clash. But it's not just music, Italy's world-war torn economy led to the birth of the Italian Neorealism Movement which focused on the glum, meaninglessness of life in such beautiful films as Umberto D. Hell, even before modern media the Dadaism Movement sprang forth in the early twentieth century as a response to the First World War. Give humans tiny victories and they remain complacent. Give them a tyrannical force of oppression and hurt them during hard times and that's when you see the true mettle of man, the product of which will inspire generations to come.

From Far Wreck Chords

Like many of us, I had the horrendous honor of growing up under the power that was the George W. Bush Regime. As he invaded a country under false-pretenses while using fabricated evidence, I got to watch the biggest powers of Rock N' Roll and Punk Rock come together in the unified spirit of waking up the youth. Unfortunately, as is their habit, the youth chose to remain dormant. The reason for this is that George W. was passively evil, not actively. The poor sap was little more than a marionette controlled by Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Chaney, and Karl Rove and thus, not truly repugnant enough to inspire change. This is where Trump oozily outshines his competition, he represents the worst of the bottom of the barrel, and as Mark Twain once said. "If we would learn what the human race really is at bottom, we need only observe it in election times."

Trump will inspire the change this country yearns for while triggering the type of change this country needs. They will get the chance to spit their rhetoric about keeping Muslim's out of the country while we read books to our children about how our land was once a home offered to refugees. They will eliminate half of their army by kicking out gay's and women as we recruit from their castaways. They will bask in their entitled white-heterosexual-male excess like the Roman Orgies of old while we teach our children the guerilla tactics of Che Guevara. Hitler came to power under the popular misconception that the Jewish people were to blame for their problems. If our country wishes to be ruled by a man who blanketly blames Muslims for the threat of terrorism and Mexican's for a lack of jobs, then by god let America grow fat on a third helping of desert while we gruelingly train for battle.

Trump in 2016

If a large population in our country is prepared to run Donald Trump for President of the United States, then we need him to become the President of the United States. If the Republican Party no longer represents small-government and fiscal conservatism, then let it stand for blinding hatred and let us wholly embrace them for it. If this is indeed the way that the nation is swaying, then let us do away with tiny victories and let them have this one for once. Let us all stand back and watch the country fall so that we might one day actually reclaim it from the people that seek to destroy it.

Voting in Bernie Sanders would be just another Tiny Victory that we don't need.

We need a hard loss.
Vote for Donald Trump.

The SoapBox Office Podcast

Tusk One Sheet

I first met my buddy Mitch Cleaver on the set of Kevin Smith's film Tusk. We were the two assholes that volunteered to fly ourselves to North Carolina in order to work on the film for free because we just wanted to be part of something cool. Almost immediately we both forged a friendship over a mutually extensive knowledge of films, music and comics. That worked out well because as it turned out, we were to be roomates with each other for the entire eight week shoot. During that time we'd wake up at 6am, visit Waffle House, go to set, work until the last person broke, steal boxes of cereal from crafty for dinner, go to bed watching Jim Jarmusch flicks, then wake up to do it all over again. Spend that much time alone with a man and you will either grow to love him or fucking despise him. Lucky for the bastard, it was the former.

Mitch is one of the good ones. One of the dependable ones, and there ain't many out there, trust me. He does things for the same reason I do: Because why the hell not. Life is stupid and life is shitty and as long as you're ok with that concept, then why not suffer to make some cool shit? We're like-minded in that sense, and it doesn't matter what the project is, if one of our friends is involved, we'll break our backs to help, even as a PA.

The Mission

Last year I was all set to shoot my short The Mission and the DP had to back out. I was fucked. At that time Mitch was based out of New Jersey so calling him with a weeks notice was beyond a long-shot. I phoned him from the office of my old bosses house and told him how incredibly and royally screwed I was. His response? "Yeah, I'll be out in two days". He came out, we studied and worked with the Ronin Stabilizer for four days leading up to the shoot, and we shot it. The entire time he stayed on a futon bed in the same small 10x12 room that my wife and I both inhabited.

For years, a multitude of friends have asked me to start a Podcast. For one reason or another, things just never worked out. Sometimes people would get lazy (mostly me), sometimes things were on too grand of a scale, but mostly, there was just never a fully-formed concept. Well after months of badgering I finally convinced Mitch to move out to Los Angeles and I used the concept of the podcast to lure him. Is it the reason he came? Not at all, but I knew it would sweeten the pot. However, now that he is out here, I'm stuck in the unfortunate predicament of actually having to follow through with this promise. Even worse, I have to listen to myself talk on recordings.

Logo

Back in those days in the hotel he had mentioned the podcast he was working on, it was titled "The Soapbox Office", a pretty genius title I do have to admit. He had already secured all of the major social media handles with the name, but didn't have a concept yet. Lucky for me, he never found one until he moved to Hollywood, makes my life a little bit easier.

So here we are, having just recorded/edited the first episode. The root of the concept we've came up with is deconstructing movies we feel have been too built up over the years (not movies we hate, just ones we feel are overrated). But you can't do a podcast based only on beating up on something, that's just cruel. So in the place of the movie we deconstruct, we offer up a little known gem that we feel is overlooked and deserves a bit of the attention. Also we're treading into the hotly debated notion of Torrents and the positive benefit that they also serve beyond simply taking money away from artists.

Episode 1

So here goes folks. Give it a listen, or don't actually. That's kind of the beauty of this little project. We talk like this every time we hang out, we just happened to put a little production effort into it as well. We hope you like it, sincerely we do, but it's just one of those things that we're gonna do regardless.

The Soapbox Office
SoapboxOffice.com
iTunes
Stitcher
RSS

AntiCurrent Video Archives Vol 5: William S. Burroughs- The Junky's Christmas

Old Bull Lee

William S. Burroughs:
There are only a few select writers on the planet that I would rather listen to than read, and William S. Burroughs is among that group. Even though you unmistakably hear his voice when you're reading, there's something magical about the old man's flat tone and creaking, crotchety voice that adds a layer of ambiance that augments his written word so perfectly. Though his voice did age like a fine whiskey, he was born an old soul who Kerouac described as "...a gray, nondescript-looking fellow you wouldn't notice on the street unless you looked closer and saw his mad, bony skull..." Burroughs was only 43 years old when that description of him was published in 1957's On The Road.

Spare Ass Annie

The best capture (or at least my favorite) of his unmistakable voice was on the 1993 album, Spare Ass Annie and Other Tales. On it, he recorded many of his short stories from miscellaneous books through the years put to a backing tracks by The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy. One of the most notable of these tracks was "The Junky's Christmas", a short story from his 1989 book Interzone. The story is all about a junky named Danny who is released from jail on Christmas day and is attempting to find his fix. After searching the entire city, he dupes a doctor and gets a small dose via a pill. As he returns to a hotel to shoot up, he instead discovers a kid going through kidney stones in agony and shoots him up instead. It's a beautifully twisted little story about choosing humanity over your own addictions.

Junky's Christmas Short Film:

Cover

The story combined with music and Burroughs' amazing narration was so brilliant in fact that Zoetrope Pictures (Francis Ford Coppola's company) and VH1 teamed up to turn it into a narrative, short film. The film was done as claymation with live action bookends where Burroughs pulls Interzone off the shelf and effectively reads you the tale on Christmas day with his friends and family. It was aired on VH1 (presumably as part of a Christmas lineup) and was eventually released via Koch Vision in 2006 on a long out-of-print DVD.

The problem with the DVD release is that it sucks. The claymation footage is presented as interlaced and in the wrong aspect ratio. This is unfortunately a normal result of mixed media presentations on DVD. It's hard to say exactly who's fault this is, but generally it results when the disc image is being designed immediately before being delivered to the factory. Additionally there are sections where Danny's collar has a moire effect going on due to the crosshatching on his coat. This is more than likely accentuated due to the project being edited on tape rather than on film.

This Release:

So in order to fix this, I downloaded an ISO, disc-image capture of the film from the ever-amazing Uncle Jerk (who's post about this movie is the reason I'm writing this blog, thanks Jerk!). I popped it into Premiere CC, upscaled it and cut the movie apart from it's live action bits. I deinterlaced the claymation, stretched it out from its wrong aspect ratio into the correct 4:3 dimension. To remove the moire effect I desaturated all sections of the movie that didn't have color, and I snapped the blacks to a reasonable number in order to remove some of the DVD's digital artifacts. This is likely the best version that will ever be made available unless the original authors return to the original tape captures of the material.

*If you have a keen eye, you may notice that the claymation footage still has ghosting (blended frames) but after experimenting with several different frame rates to attempt to solve the problem, I consulted my friend Ian about it. After reviewing the credits at the end (which will show you if the image is skipping, repeating, or blending frames), it is undeniable that this project was created with them as either purposeful, or that they are baked in and cannot be removed without very tedious work.

Final Thought:

Amazing Claymation Work

If you dig this little gem, go and buy the album "Spare Ass Annie and Other Tales" because it's pure gold. Also, if you dug this (I don't know how widely available it is for purchase), grab Burroughs' audio-book of "Junky", you won't regret it. The point is, this isn't meant to compete with being able to purchase an artist's work, merely to make available things that are rare or out-of-print that should be experienced by anyone that loves his work. Either stream it from YouTube, or download it at the link provided below in h265 (be sure to be running the latest version of a decent player like VLC).

So here you go, one of the best holiday specials ever made for those of us a little off that beaten path. Enjoy!


h265 link (Right Click, Save As)

*EDIT* 

The cinematographer of this project, Simon Higgins, was kind enough to write in (see below in the comments) and add to the available information about this wonderful project! Thanks!

I was the cinematographer on the claymation component of this project. You've done a pretty decent job of restoring it. Great to see it looking like the original after so many years.

It was shot on Bolex cameras colour standard 16mm Kodak film stock, aka (7298) 100ASA, in the late spring/summer of Sydney,Australia 1993. The production design was almost entirely monochrome and the remaining colour was removed in the film to tape (telecine).

It was mastered on PAL video, that's just 576 pixels tall at a 1.33:1 aspect ratio and I guess that's what probably got transferred to VHS and eventually to DVD. A 16mm film print was also struck from the PAL video master and it toured the world film festival circuit for quite a few years and was lucky enough to attract some critical acclaim. 

Free Download of To No End's Music Video "Twisted Knives" in 4k

Playing Under Projection

My buddy Nick Dellaposta and I go back, way back. Matter of fact we were in our first band together, *Adorn. Before the dawn of the internet, you either had to sink money into a proper 4-track recording system, or you had to get inventive... we chose the latter. Desperate to record, I discovered that if I cut apart my guitar cable and twisted the ends together with an RCA cable that I was able to record the instrument with my mothers Aiwa cassette deck. Moreover, if I did this while "dubbing" a previously recorded cassette, I could effectively create a makeshift multi-track recording. About three times a week Nick would make the three mile walk to my house and we would record demos together into the homemade system. I cannot overly-express the genuine happiness that arises in me by bragging that despite two thousand, one hundred and eighty miles between us and fifteen years having passed, we're still collaborating on art with one another.

*I use the term band loosely as we never played a single show... or even had a drummer.

Nick and I

About a year ago I got a drunken text message from Nick as I was watching a movie. I ignored it and several thereafter, but upon my phone beeping for the 6th time I read it. He had just written a new song and wanted me to listen to it. Fine. I walked into the kitchen and listened to the song he had just recorded directly into his phone. There is no other way to put it, I cried. My longtime friend had written a song about my life and the craziness I have been through and it moved me to no end. Flash forward to a year later and Nick again hit me up. This time it was to direct the music video for the song based on my life. At first I laughed, after all, the idea of someone directing a song about themselves is pretty far up it's own ass, but after some thought, I agreed on one condition: We had to kill the main character in the music video. We all die, but how many of us have had the chance to direct our own death? When Nick asked who we could get to play such a role, I immediately thought of my good friend, Michael Parks.

Nick, Parks, and I.

I first met Michael Parks (from Kill Bill, Dusk Till Dawn, Then Came Bronson, etc) during the shooting of Kevin Smith's film Tusk. After a few days on set, it became evident that Parks needed an assistant to help him on set with mundane tasks and Kevin assigned me to be that person. Believe it or not, the first few interactions between the green-haired punk-rocker and the grumpy old man were a bit awkward. However, over the course of a few days we discovered a mutual admiration of cinema and music and formed a kinship that continues to this day.

Matt's account of the music
video is great.

So with the concept and the talent taken care of, I needed a crew. I'm lucky enough in this life to have a group of insanely talented folks in the same industry who all share common interests, thus I hit up my friends Andrew Heaberlin and Matt Rowbottom. Andrew is a badass cinematographer from Kentucky who has done everything from his own short-film Let It Be War to being an Executive-Producer on Yoga Hosers. Matt on the other hand is the behind-the-scenes producing talent who just finished his new project Going Dark: A Sith Story, starring Darren Hayes and Tim Stanton (from the He Said, He Said Podcast) . My wife agreed to assistant-direct (shes a saint for dealing with me on set) and with the essential building blocks in place, the rest was just a matter of "getting the band back together" as the kids say. I called up my friends J.C, Erik, Mitch, Joey, Shaun, and Cam and we were off to the races.

I cannot thank all of my amazing friends enough for all they have done for me and my stupid projects. I would fight and die for each of them.

Andrew Shooting Babies

We shot and edited the project in 4k, but the problem with the newly budding format is that there is next to no downloadable content for it. The long term solution to this seems to be highly effective encoding codecs like h265,which gives you ample quality with very small format size. The only issue with these is that it takes an incredible amount of processing power and a very good video card to reap the benefits of it, otherwise you're just staring at moving macro-blocks.

So here's our little contribution to the world of 4k, on the provided link below you can either download the highly efficient 4k, h265 video via my website (I suggest playing it in VLC), or if you follow the Vimeo link and click download, it will provide you with the 4k, h264 (easier on your computer to process, but larger filesize) download for free. It also provides you with 1080p, 2k, and other formats as well.

H265 (Right-Click, Save As)


Twisted Knives (Official Music Video) - TO NO END - 4k Resolution

Serving Divorce Papers to a Cheating Lesbian from New York

Some days I feel like I'm less living a life than I am completing a video game with countless side missions and as a result, I probably possess the most diversified resume of anyone I know. I grew up working construction where I did everything from dig holes to operate cranes. I spent years in high school as a mechanic/body-man. I've owned my own custom guitar shop and clerk'd everywhere from gas-stations to record-stores. I've assistant-edited multiple seasons of a television show and even spent more than a year as a driver/bodyguard. Quite a few of these gigs are the result of being the guy to call when my friends experience issues in their normal lives that they need resolved by someone incredibly loyal.

That's me. Someone's sister is getting kicked out of her house by an aggressive landlord? Call Josh. Need a music video shot and you have no budget, no cast, and no equipment? Call Josh. Someone about to get the shit beat out of them at a bar? Call Josh. You get the point. So when my buddy back in New York called and told me he had a friend who needed something taken care of in Los Angeles, I was the one that got the call to serve divorce papers to a cheating lesbian in North Hollywood.

I was in Olympia, WA hanging out with my family at a goth bar at the time I got the call. "Josh, I have a friend in New York who's wife ran away with another woman. She needs someone dependable in Los Angeles to do a favor." He sent me her details and I got in contact with the woman the next day. Her name was Dianne and she was absolutely heartbroken that not only had she been cheated on (with a woman she described as a Yeti), but her Ex, Sabrina was using her social security number to create an ever growing mountain of credit card debt. As if that wasn't enough, the woman was actively avoiding being served papers and had dodged two Process Servers thus far. The first of which gave up for unknown reasons while the second lost the element of surprise by presenting the papers to her girlfriend and not her. He shortly gave up as well.

I looked into it, and as luck would have it, she seemed relatively easy to track and only lived a few miles away from me. She still had New York plates and worked at Saphire's, a chain of local make up stores. But that was the end of the good news. Dianne described Sabrina's girlfriend quite vividly as "a violently angry guerrilla" who apparently dwarfed me in every way. After a week I received the paperwork and the affidavit in the mail. Under California law, anyone may act as a process server assuming they over 18 and not actively involved in the case. My job was to approach her, get her to acknowledge her name, and if she didn't willingly accept the paperwork, drop it at her feet. Seems easy enough on paper, but the fact that two people who did this as a professional-vocation had failed was a somewhat frightening notion.

So I set out at 7:30am to go and stake her house out. I knew they lived in a very suburban area so I dressed myself in a long-sleeve, black shirt to cover my tattoo's. I immediately found the SUV with New York plates and the girlfriends accompanying white SUV in the driveway. I parked around the corner with their house barely in sight and sat there for the first hour as the neighbors walked their dogs and gave suspicious looks. The only way to not stick out while unavoidably sticking out is to completely own it. So I smiled and waved at the local inhabitants. When one finally approached me I gave my already well coached line that my little sister had sent me to this cross-street to pick her up, but the little bugger must've drained her cell-phones battery and wasn't answering my calls. Having mastered this line many times before, she bought it hook line and sinker.

Eventually the white SUV turned out and left. I struggled with whether to follow it or not, but ultimately it wasn't listed to me as her car, so I let it go and played it safe. I sat there and followed up my lead that she worked at a local cosmetic supply store. I was amazed and bewildered to see that there were 15 of these damn stores within a 6 mile radius. Women, truly love their damn makeup. Realizing that I in no way wanted this woman to have my contact info, I downloaded a "Pranking" App for my phone and made it seem as if I was calling from the local pharmacy. At 9:25AM, the first ten local Saphire's received a call from "Jake the Pharm-Tech" representing the local CVS pharmacy. Each time he asked to speak with Sabrina about a "personal matter".

One lady I spoke with told me she wasn't sure of the Sabrina from her store's last name, but that she should be in around 11am. I thanked her and hung-up. Another I called hesitated in speaking to me me, but ultimately laid on me that she USED to work there. This made me suspicious, so I put this location at the top of my list. Just then the Black SUV pulled out of their driveway in a fury. I started my car and waited until she turned the corner and gunned it to catch up. From the time I first played Grand Theft Auto 3, I had been preparing for this moment. I stayed behind, leaving her just in view so I could track her every movement, but not close enough for her to notice me.

After a few moments she turned into a gas station and my pulse pounded. It's not often I get nervous, I go years at a time without feeling the kind of nerves so many speak of, but I damn-well did at that moment. I took off my seat belt and prepared to pull in behind her car in order to block it in so that she couldn't escape without dealing with me. Just as I was about to make my turn she got out and it was her mammoth-mountain of a girlfriend, not her. Bust. I took the next corner without being noticed and downtroddenly continued on to the first store.

I parked in Hollywood and walked up to the local Starbucks, after all, I wanted to look natural. I ordered my coffee and mosy'd over to the first Saphire's. Though I could make out several employees... there was no Sabrina. I walked away and called my wife who was delighted at my inquiry of what makeup I could buy her to establish my front. She texted me the name of some unholy expensive nail-polish and I walked in looking like a confused husband (something I excel at as I've done so many times before). I snooped around playing stupid and eventually was approached by a worker. I asked for the shade of ultra-rare polish and she walked me over to the area and picked it out for me. On the way to the counter I asked about my wife's old friend Sabrina and whether she worked here anymore. It's then that I was informed that she had quit and moved to a new area. Damn. Bust 2.

I pulled out of the parking garage when I suddenly noticed a Chevy Suburban speeding away from a hotel and toward my window. I screamed at the man as he looked down at his phone. Just as he was about to hit my door I sped out of the way and he creamed the back of my car. My head hit the side of the car and the world went all spiny for a few moments. I grumbled and growled nonsensically at the man as I stumbled out of my car toward him. As I watched him climb out of his ridiculously monstrous automobile, I noticed that he looked dazed as well. So, like a damn fool, I asked if he was ok, a question to which he did not reply. After somewhat-less politely asking him exactly what the hell was going through his head, we pulled over to the side of the hotel and exchanged information. I suppose it was in a failed attempt to diffuse the situation that he brought attention to his name being Mellick and my middle name being Milton and what a funny little world it was. At that point, I turned to him and deadpanned, "Yeah, we're practically fucking brothers."

I drove away still in a bit of shock and messaged Diane that today was not to be the day and that I had gotten in an accident. As I drove home I figured what the hell and routed myself past Sabrina's house. No one home. I sat there for a moment and realized that if she was gone this long, she HAD to be at work. I continued down my list and called the other five Saphire's and the last one was the winner. CVS (heh) called the Saphire store in Glenview and the lady put me on hold for Sabrina.
Fuckin' Bingo, Mother Fucker.

I took off, pissed off due to my car's new wounds for the Glenview Mall. After all, zombie-like consumers walking in hordes was what I was in the mood to deal with. I arrived, walked in the mall and found the map directing me to the center of a huge department store. I no longer possessed the patience to deal with the "needing to buy nail-polish for my wife" front and darted around the store analyzing all of the workers. Once I was sufficiently convinced that the target was not in the showroom, I asked a lady if Sabrina still worked there. She told me that she knew her, but that she worked at the other Saphire store about three blocks away.

Incensed that there would be two such stores in such a small proximity, I again stormed off, this time on foot. However, once I got a foot outside the door, paranoia creeped in. She said she knew Sabrina. What if she would warn her about my impending arrival? There was no way I had came all the way to the Glenview goddamn Mall just to be evaded at the last second, so I sprinted across the street, paying no mind to the oncoming cars. Once I arrived at the destination and had sight of the front door, I took a moment to regain my breath before my approach. After all, the building didn't appear to have any exits out of the back and I had the front more than covered.

I stalked around the area for a few moments before I walked towards it and paused. I caught the reflection of blond hair with black roots that matched hers. I peered around until I could get a full sight of her face... it was her. She was stationed to the left of the main door so I walked in with confidence and spoke to the door greeter. "Hello! I'm looking for a friend of mine." Her eyes perked and I swung my head around to her. "Oh my god! Sabrina?!?" I exclaimed. Her eyes went wide and she dawned a flirtatious smile. "Yes?" she said. I then spun around, grabbed the papers out of my back pocket and released fake the smile from my own face and hers followed suit immediately. "I've been served haven't I?" she groaned. I handed her the papers "Yes ma'am, you have, enjoy your day." and I walked the fuck out.

Looking back at the entire ordeal, I gotta say that it was fun. I always wanted to be a detective when I was growing up and this was probably about as close as I'll get. I'm just extremely glad that I was able to confront her in public rather than at her house with the gigantic apelike girlfriend that could have torn me limb from limb. And I don't feel bad for the girl at all. She cheated on the friend of a friend and ran away. Sure she looked sad when I served her, but fuck her. This wasn't Karma coming back to bite her in the ass, this wasn't even justice, this was just the mathematic-like result of repeatedly doing horrible things to someone who loves you and I'm glad I got to help that out.

A Personal Look at John Roecker & His Upcoming Green Day Documentary

John Roecker is a fucking rarity. He somehow skirts the line of being one of the best humans I've ever met on the planet and yet, one of the more depraved. A sweet man who's been incredibly supportive of my career, but also the man that insisted I touch his original painting by John Wayne Gacy. He has an active Facebook presence, yet is extremely proud to have never sent a single text message to anyone. When we once spent an hour trying to gently guide a humingbird out of his house, we had to move his actual human skeleton out of the way to do so. I suppose it's through these types of clashing duality that his art and films are able to perfectly capture the low-fi, punk rock aesthetic that so many people constantly fail at.

How I met John: Live Freaky, Die Freaky
In 2004 I was still living in Middletown, Ohio and paying extra attention to anything cool taking place in Southern California as I was plotting my inevitable move there. Around this time the name John Roecker and his film Live Freaky Die Freaky began to pop onto my radar. As soon as I read the cast list and description of this incredibly fucked up premise, not only was I sold, but I immediately purchased a LFDF shirt for myself via the Machete Mfg website.

Flash forward a few years and I was living in Fullerton, CA while attending CSUF. Though I should have been studying, I spent most of my time working and hanging around Black Hole Records. It was then that I began to hear rumblings of LFDF actually coming out. In early January the store received some publicity material announcing the release date of January 17th, 2006 and I immediately took to the internet to see if there was to be a premiere. Because if so? There was no way in hell I was going to miss it.

LFDF Flyers

On January 5th 2006 I was calling everyone involved and finding out any info I could. Once I discovered where it was to be held and who the production company was that was putting it on, I immediately went to work. I called Epitaph (the label) and begged for tickets, I called Wellspring Media (the distributor) and offered to work the show. I even called the venue pretending to be an invited guest's assistant so that I could find out the exact time and location in case I was to attempt to sneak in the back.

Finally, I hit the jackpot. I got hold of the social media manager of the show and told him that I represented Black Hole Records and that we were interested in promoting the hell out of the DVD sales. He bought it and invited my then-girlfriend and I to the premiere.

The night started when John Doe (from X) and Rancid came out to do some acoustic songs. They played everything from classics from their back catalog to Ramones, Clash, and Green Day covers. It was pretty epic to see the biggest band in punk rock on such a small stage with the who's who of Punk royalty watching them. Then they played Live Freaky, Die Freaky. A gross, drug-addled, account of the Manson murders drenched in stop-motion puppet-sex and musical numbers. It was fucking genius. I sat there and watched these people bask in crude, John Waters' style humor and love it. Standing there was legitimately the first time it occurred to me that I could make my own movie.

When the night died down, I cornered John and drunkenly told him how inspired I was. A few days after the premiere I drunkenly sent the LFDF website an email asking them to tell John if there was any project he ever needed help on, to please look me up.

Rodney Redbottom:

Rodney Poster

A few years went by and MySpace fell by the wayside being replaced by Facebook. Eventually John popped up on my feed and I sent him a request. Not long after, we began messaging back and forth, updating one another on our various projects. It was then that he told me all about the new band he was working on with Dylan Melody, appropriately titled, Roecker/Melody and that they were about to have their first show at the Redwood. I told him I'd love to come and he asked me to shoot it for him, to which I instantly agreed. A few nights later my buddy Joey Harris and I shot their amazing first show.

Rodney Redbottom Premiere

About the same time, I was in the beginnings of pre-production for my upcoming flick Rodney Redbottom and needed a star. Moreover, I needed a star that was willing to work with fucked up material and do it for free. After holding a few casting sessions, it dawned on me that Dylan's baby-face would work perfect for the role. I got hold of John and got Dylan's info from him. Fortunately for me, Dylan agreed and knocked the role out of the fucking park. After we had wrapped and I finished the final edit and was working on the poster, I was unable to come up with a clever tagline. It was John that came up with "Whips, Paddles, Bondage, Grandparents."

Heart Like a Hand Grenade:

My Green Day CD Collection

I've always dug Green Day, though admittedly, the last few albums haven't really moved me. That being said, few records that I own mean more to me than Nimrod. I remember the day I borrowed that album from the only other person in school that listened to Punk. I played it for days straight and bought my own copy the following week. From there I eventually worked backwards to Insomniac, Dookie, and so on (though someone stole my copy of 1,039/Slappy). Their self-deprecating sense of humor and I don't give a fuck style defined the poppier side of Punk for me.

Now, I do remember talk of John shooting a Green Day documentary while the band was recording their album American Idiot, but when I didn't hear anything about it for a few years I assumed it had fizzled out. I couldn't have been more wrong. Evidently not only was the doc done, but it had actually screened in a (to my understanding) four hour cut at The Egyptian on March 25th, 2009. How that slipped under my radar I still haven't figured out. A few people have reported that night that John mentioned that it may be released on the album's 10th anniversary. That ended up not being too far from the truth.

Green Day Wall

On June 18th this year John hit me up and explained to me that he didn't like the old intro to the film and asked me to come over and see if we couldn't figure out another way to tackle it. A few days later I headed over to his place to see if we couldn't crack an idea. We met up and discussed several options on the table, but ultimately chose a more low-fi approach to the idea. The following week I contacted my buddy Andrew Heaberlin and we went over to John's house with a truck full of equipment. Andrew lit, I operated, and John directed, and although I won't spoil it for you, I was pretty happy with the way the raw footage turned out.

Everywhere Oct 15th

So there you have it. On October 15th, 2015 this documentary, more than 10 years in the making will finally see the light of day, on one of the biggest and most famous screens in the world, The Cinerama Dome in Hollywood, CA. I know this article is basically a Roecker-suck-fest, but I wouldn't have it any other way. I'm incredibly grateful to be part of a film of one of the bands that helped so many people in the world get into Punk Rock. Be sure to come and check out a legit piece of music history through the distorted lens of one of the most creative, solid, and just plain weird motherfuckers I've ever had the pleasure to call an inspiration and a friend.

Trailer:


Click Here To See Showtimes in your area!

An Introduction to "Open Matte" Films

Recently I've joined a private torrent site specializing in rare and out of print films and TV shows. This has led to my stumbling down an entirely new rabbit hole of movie-nerd collecting: The "Open Matte Version".

What is an "Open Matte" film?

Open Matte Example
(Augmented from Wikipedia)

Shooting in an "Open Matte" is the process of achieving a different aspect ratio than the one you are shooting in by masking part of the full frame image with black bars.

One of the main reasons people collect "Open Matte" films is that they contain extra image information (generally at the top and bottom of screen) giving the viewer a bigger glimpse into the world. However, since the cinematographers job was to frame for Widescreen first and the Open Matte second (or sometimes not at all), this is generally NOT what they intended the viewers experience to be.

For the most part, viewing the Open Matte version does not make for a more aesthetically pleasing image on screen (at least not in the traditional sense). In fact, this added information sometimes disrupts the movie watching experience for the typical movie-goer. For example, where black bars were intended to be, the viewer may occasionally see a ladder on screen, a rope pulling a prop, or just an oddly composed frame with too much headroom for the actors.

So why would you collect something that effectively makes the movie harder to watch? Because if you are like me and have viewed your most-coveted films several hundred times, these are new, rare glimpses into some of your favorite on-screen moments. Due to both changes in cameras and distribution, I'm organizing these "Open Matte" films into two categories: The Pre-Digital and Post-Digital Revolution.

Pre-Digital Revolution

4x3 Matte Example

By the 1980's many movies were shot in widescreen on 35mm film despite the format's native size being a 4:3 square image. To accomplish this without the employ of expensive image-bending Anamorphic lenses, cinematographers would have guide-lines on their viewfinders and monitors showing them where the intended aspect ratio was in relation to what was fully being captured. Then in post-production (or sometimes exhibition), they would throw black boxes over-top of the image, blocking out the information that wasn't meant to be seen.

This was largely brought about by the rise of consumers watching movies via VHS and Cable TV. During this time, home viewers weren't open to having letterboxing "cover up part of their TV" and unfortunately, home distribution was exclusively catering to the 4:3 square format*. This effectively rendered widescreen obsolete after the movies initial run in the theatrical market (at least until the rise of Laser Discs). In order to force many films of the day into this TV friendly aspect ratio, production companies employed the use of "Pan and Scan" (a technique in which you crop the widescreen image and artificially move the camera's viewpoint).

Pan & Scan Example

Thankfully, for some movies, pan-and-scanning was avoided as it looked cheap and suffered image quality loss. To avoid their art being butchered, many cinematographers shot their films in widescreen while "protecting" for a 4:3 frame as well. By extracting the square image from the original 35mm frame, it contained additional information at the top and bottom of the screen. Most Open Matte 4:3 versions of pre-digitally shot movies often come from either broadcast, Laser Discs, early DVD's, or accidental release.  

*Explaining to the general public that widescreen is how the filmmakers intended the film to be viewed was generally lost on them while explaining the concept of "pan-and-scan"  has yet to be accomplished.

Post-Digital Revolution

16x9 Matte Example**

These days, most movies are made with digital cameras and are thus shot in the 16:9 widescreen format. However, to accomplish a more extreme widescreen image (without Anamorphic lenses), the same technique as mentioned before is performed. The monitors and viewfinders have aspect ratio guide-lines on them (or in the case of indie film, gaff tape is often put over the monitor) indicating where the intended image is located. This extra information comes in very useful in post production where the frame can be moved up or down in order to fix a potentially wrongly-framed shot. 

These "Open Matte 16x9's" are more rare and are generally released on accident or in some cases, broadcast because the home viewer still can't handle having boxes on their screen. Additionally, many of the films that fall under this category have been exported from the studio because the engineer who is outputting the film has forgotten to turn the black bars back on overtop of the image.

**Yes, Seven was shot on film, however it's an excellent example of a 16x9 Open Matte and this version was more than likely accidentally released on Blu Ray in Canada. .

Some Great Open Matte Examples:

Pee Wee's Big Adventure

• Pee Wee's Big Adventure: Legend has it that the guy who output the 4:3 VHS version of this film still gets shit for a few shots that blatantly showcase the special-effects in this movie. The best example can be seen HERE. In this shot, Pee Wee is pulling an endless chain and it's source was designed to be masked out. In this version, we clearly see where the chain is coming from.

• Evil Dead: For years, only a select few, original VHS copies contained the original, unmatted 4:3 aspect ratio. The reason that so many die-hard fans clamored for this version is because this film was NOT shot with the idea of a widescreen presentation. Furthermore, when they did put the "black bars" over top of the image, they gave zero thought about re-framing the shots and blindly pasted them over the entire movie. Thankfully, the last few editions of the film have in fact contained the original, unmatted version.

Evil Dead 2

• Evil Dead 2: I was only recently alerted to this. The 2001 "Tin Box" release of this film contained not just the original 16:9 version, but also contained the unmatted 4:3 version of this movie as it was shot. There's no goofs in this version that I've found yet, but this is a great, rare copy of the film and is totally worth giving a watch.

• Terminator 2: In the open matte version of this you can plainly see Arnold's pants when he's supposed to be naked.

• Buffy The Vampire Slayer- Season 1: This is rare because it is the pillar box mattes that have been removed. The show was obviously framed for 4:3, but Fox wanted to re-release it in 16:9 anyway. That means throughout the season there are errors abound. On the sides of the screens you can see ladders, lights, boom poles, and even the occasional person. Pretty damn hilarious.

One film I have seen with my own eyes that had an Open Matte but I have yet to find commercially is the 2011 film Drive. While I worked at S*** we received a copy of it for Australia and I personally failed it myself for having the wrong delivery specs. 

Other great examples of "Open Matte Versions" include: The Matrix, Seven (shown above), Back to The Future 2, The Shining (and almost every Kubrick movie), Planet Terror, and Stephen Kings IT. There are a TON more, but I don't want to get carried away. Feel free to add your own favorites in the comments below.

In Conclusion:

He didn't actually say this...
but it was implied.

If I was a professional cinematographer and I saw an unauthorized version of a film I'd shot, I'll admit, I'd be pretty pissed off. And in the 80's and 90's I'm sure a lot of them were. Imagine being Victor J. Kemper (who shot Pee Wee's Big Adventure) and seeing that bike gag ruined on screen because of some post-production idiot. I'd personally be fucking furious.

Strange versions of classic films aren't necessary for the public at large, and for the most part, they probably offer a negative experience for filmmakers and most viewers... but for die-hard collectors, they give a whole new way to appreciate our favorite movies. Whether you collect them for an inside view into the process, to laugh at, to get that extra bit of screen information or just to have them on your hard drive so you can brag to your collector friends (who are also likely NOT getting laid), it's a great excuse to re-watch your favorite flicks one more time.