Gerrick Kennedy is a newcomer to the Los Angeles Times and the Hero Complex. He sent over this report on the big Starfleet geekfest this weekend in Hollywood. -- Geoff Boucher
"Star Trek" arrives on DVD and Blu-ray next Tuesday as one of the big home-video releases of 2009 and fans can get in on the Starfleet spirit this weekend with Trek Fest, four days of special programming being hosted at the already-running "Star Trek: The Exhibition" at Hollywood & Highland.
Jessica Smith, assistant manager of the exhibit, said fans will be treated to an impressive array of memorabilia. There is a collection of authentic "Trek"ships, set re-creations, costumes and props representing a huge swath of Federation history -- all five live-action television series and 11 films, including this year's sleek revival by dirctor J.J. Abrams, which grossed $385 million in worldwide box office.
Smith said the exhibit offers a hands-on experience, which includes a chance to sit in Captain Kirk’s famed chair. “Everyone," she said, "gets really excited about that.” There is also a showcase of Madame Tussauds wax figure of Patrick Stewart on his Capt. Picard role from "Star Trek: The Next Generation," movie trivia challenges and film screenings. You can find a schedule of events below.
Rod Roddenberry, son of the late Gene Roddenberry, creator of the original “Star Trek” TV series, will be on hand for a DVD release party on Tuesday. Fans can bring their copy of the movie for Roddenberry to sign, but Smith said the exhibit won’t be selling copies on-site. Roddenberry continues to honor his late father’s legacy and said he often considers the reasons why the mythology endures the way it does.
“‘Star Trek’ has always been a lot more than just entertainment," Roddenberry said. "It’s not like 'Star Wars,' and no offense to it. Star trek has substance. It gives people hope for the future. It’s that great feeling that we’re going to actually survive and prosper. Not even the great storytelling, it’s the metaphors that we are worth saving.”
Smith also praised the optimism that is key to the franchise’s lasting appeal. “People are always fascinated by what’s going to happen in the future," Smith said. "People also like the utopian feel of [the story], especially in these times when so much rough stuff is happening."
STAR TREK: THE EXHIBITION
Through Dec. 27. Tickets are $16.50. TREK FEST runs Nov. 14 to 17. Tickets are $11.50 each day (it's $5 dollars off the standard exhibition admission price for this special four days of programming).
SATURDAY NOV. 14 (Spock look-a-likes admitted for half-off admission price): “Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan”: screenings at 11 a.m., 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. and “Star Trek III: The Search for Spock”: screenings at 1 p.m. and 5 p.m.
SUNDAY NOV. 15 (Fans dressed as Klingons get half-price admission) “Star Trek: First Contact”: screenings at 11 a.m., 1 p.m., 3 p.m. and 5 p.m.
MONDAY NOV. 16 “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home”: screenings at noon, 2 p.m., 4 p.m. and 6 p.m.
TUESDAY NOV 17 “Star Trek” DVD release party: With an appearance by Rod Roddenberry, 6 to 9 p.m. and “Star Trek” (2009): screenings at 3 p.m., 5 p.m. and 7 p.m.
Los Angeles Times crime reporter Andrew Blankstein has a distressing report about a hero allegedly gone bad in Hollywood, and photographer Mel Melcon has some accompanying photos that he could sell to the Daily Bugle for a pretty penny. Here's an excerpt with links added by me (as well as a vintage Spidey cover by Frank Miller)... -- Geoff Boucher
A man portraying Spider-Man was arrested on outstanding criminal warrants Wednesday after an incident in which he allegedly slugged a man near the Hollywood & Highland complex, police said.
It was not immediately clear what led to the altercation, which was reported about 12:30 p.m. in the 6800 block of Hollywood Boulevard. But it's the latest in a string of incidents involving movie characters and celebrity look-alikes who vie for space -- and attention -- along the tourist-filled corridor that includes Grauman's Chinese Theatre.
Christopher Loomis, 39, was being held on outstanding misdemeanor warrants in lieu of $5,500 bail, police said.
The incident began when Los Angeles Police Department patrol officers received a radio call reporting battery by a man in a Spider-Man costume. When they arrived, they encountered four people dressed as the web-slinging crusader.
"They stopped one, it wasn't him," said LAPD Lt. Beverly Lewis. "They stopped the second, and it was the suspect."
The victim, who said he had been hit on the face and arms, refused to press charges against the costumed performer. But Lewis said that when they discovered the warrants, Loomis was booked. She said it appeared that the suspect and victim knew each other.
Costumed performers portraying the likes of Elvis, Superman, SpongeBob SquarePants and others have worked on Hollywood Boulevard for years. They collect tips from tourists by posing for pictures or performing in front of the theater. But sometimes the fun has turned violent ...
A Monopoly movie? When word first spread about Universal's plan to make a film based on the venerable board game, it wasn't hard to predict the smirking suggestion from every skeptic within arm's reach of a computer keyboard: "Do not pass go, do not collect $200 ... "
Then came word that Ridley Scott, of all people, was interested in directing the project and, well, observers just didn't know what to think. Why on earth would the filmmaker behind "Gladiator," "Alien" and "Blade Runner" be interested in the dapper little cartoon-capitalist called Uncle Pennybags?
But Frank Beddor, a pivotal figure in the project's odyssey, says doubters should remember that a film's core concept is merely a starting place, not the whole ride. "Everybody reacted the same way when they heard that there was going to be a 'Pirates of the Caribbean' movie -- and I did too."
I talked to Beddor for a Los Angeles Times Calender cover story on "The Looking Glass Wars" (you can read it here on the blog), his reimagining of Lewis Carroll's classic characters -- Alice, the Mad Hatter, the Cheshire Cat, etc. -- as players in a dark fantasy epic of royal intrigue and magical battlefields. Our conversation turned to his interesting role in the Monopoly enterprise and he revealed quite a bit about the premise that lured Scott into the project.
"I wrote the story that got Hasbro excited and I attached Ridley Scott," said Beddor, who may be best known in Hollywood as the producer of "There's Something About Mary," one of the top-grossing comedies ever. "The project was underway but they were in a little bit of trouble I guess and they were looking for a way to actually turn it into a movie. I had a pretty interesting take and it got Sir Ridley interested ... "
Beddor said his inspiration came from Carroll and the "Looking Glass Wars" experience: "They have this big world and this game -- it’s the most famous board game in the world -- and it just really came out of the whole 'Alice' thing. I took the approach of thinking of the main character falling down a rabbit hole and into a real place called Monopoly City ... It was the re-engineering of 'Alice in Wonderland' that got me thinking and then with this it came around full circle and I was able to utilize that. That’s a big world. They were searching for that."
I found myself thinking that "Monopoly" as imagined by Beddor might recall special-effects comedies such as "Bedtime Stories," "Night at the Museum" and "The Mask" as the writer continued with his description of the project.
"I created a comedic, lovable loser who lives in Manhattan and works at a real estate company and he’s not very good at his job but he’s great at playing Monopoly. And the world record for playing is 70 straight days – over 1,600 hours – and he wanted to try to convince his friends to help him break that world record. They think he is crazy. They kid him about this girl and they're playing the game and there’s this big fight. And he’s holding a Chance card and after they’ve left he says, ‘Damn, I wanted to use that Chance card,’ and he throws it down. He falls asleep and then he wakes up in the morning and he’s holding the Chance card, and he thinks, ‘That’s odd.’"
Yes, this is all going where you think it is. Beddor continued:
"He’s all groggy and he goes down to buy some coffee and he reaches into his pocket and all he has is Monopoly money. All this Monopoly money pours out. He’s confused and embarrassed and the girl reaches across the counter and says, ‘That’s OK.’ And she gives him change in Monopoly money. He walks outside and he’s in this very vibrant place, Monopoly City, and he’s just come out of a Chance Shop. As it goes on, he takes on the evil Parker Brothers in the game of Monolopy. He has to defeat them. It tries to incorporate all the iconic imageries -- a sports car pulls up, there's someone on a horse, someone pushing a wheelbarrow -- and rich Uncle Pennybags, you're going to see him as the maître d' at the restaurant and he's the buggy driver and the local eccentric and the doorman at the opera. There's all these sight gags."
The idea of a human dropping down into the logic and universe of the board game (not unlike "Jumanji," I suppose) might work as a film, but how did Scott end up as an interested player? "Well it was that pitch, that's where Sir Ridely got excited. After I pitched it to him, he put out his hand and said, 'What do I have to be part of this movie?' "
Beddor still sounded surprised as he recounted this part. "So I said, 'Do you mean you want to direct it?' And he said, 'Yeah, and I will tell you why – it’s all the things you just said and the fact that I had these epic Monopoly battles with my family when I was young.'"
Well, I guess it's good that Scott wasn't a Rock, Paper, Scissors fan or we'd be watching two hours of hand pumping showdowns. I know that's not fair, but even after talking to Beddor I'm still skeptical that I want to spend hours in a darkened theater with Uncle Pennybags and the thimble.
Beddor chuckled. He's heard all the wisecracks and naysayers. "Look, so much of it is about the execution. You know the visual component is going to be beautiful with Ridley. And you have all of the world editions to deal with -- there are different editions of the game so the city won't be limited to the Atlantic City edition that we know in America. Ridley grew up with the British version ... ."
While Beddor's story was a key moment in the life of the project, Pamela Pettler ("Monster House," "Corpse Bride") is the screenwriter. "Things will change, it's been a couple of years since I came up with all that. I did my job where I created this world so they could get really excited and get Ridley excited."
I mentioned to Beddor that these days, with the economic turmoil and the populist venom toward Wall Street, it might be a an extra challenge to present a film ode to wheeler-dealer culture, renter gouging and fat cats in spats.
"Well it's not about that; it can't be just about the money. To me it's more a metaphor for life, the taking of chances and this character through this process learns that he can do a lot of things. He's completely brave and strategic and risk-taking while playing this game but in real life he's a mess. He won't roll the dice. That’s the character and journey he has to take."
OK, but is that a journey for the rest of us? I have some childhood memories of Monopoly myself and a lot of them involve everybody walking away from the game long before it was finished.
PHOTOS: Frank Beddor, in Mad Hatter attire (Spencer Weiner/Los Angeles Times); Ridley Scott at the American Film Festival in Deauville, France, in 2003. (CREDIT:Neviere/EPA)Monopoly images are trademarks of Parker Bros/Hasbro.
UPDATE: An earlier version of this post had screenwriter Pamela Pettler's last name wrong. Go to accuracy jail, go directly to accuracy jail, do not pass go...
When Shel Dorf died Nov. 3 at age 76, he was hailed as the founder of that big comic book convention down in San Diego – the one that reminds some of a cross between Brigadoon and Disneyland, materializing for but four days each year. “Founder” was not a bad word to describe Shel’s contribution since others did much of the organizing. What Shel contributed was the sheer love of comics, and of the folks who create them.
And there was also the whole idea – “Hey, let’s put on a convention” – which seems to have come from him. Uttered to a group of local comic fans, it was as potent and transformative as Billy Batson shouting “Shazam!” and morphing into Captain Marvel. When folks wonder why the nation’s largest gathering of this kind is in San Diego of all places, the answer is simple: Shel Dorf lived in San Diego. That’s why.
He moved there in late 1969 when his parents retired to that city. Before that, he’d lived in Detroit and participated in a convention called the Detroit Triple Fan-Fair. And before that, he’d grown up in Detroit, utterly captivated by comics. He clipped Dick Tracy and other favorite strips from local papers, pasting them in vast, keepsake scrapbooks. Everyone loved "the funnies" back then but few went to that much effort to preserve and respect them. Shel wrote fan letters to the cartoonists, struck up friendships, even received invites to visit.
Pursuing a dream to become one, he studied art ... and if wishing alone could make you all you want to be, he’d have become Charles Schulz at least. It apparently doesn’t, since Shel got no closer than his 14-year stint lettering the Steve Canyon newspaper strip for his friend and idol Milton Caniff. He also, in the 1980s, assembled a series of books reprinting the Dick Tracy newspaper strip. Those scrapbooks he’d filled as a child were the primary source material.
I met him in early 1970, months before the first convention, which they’d call the San Diego Golden State Comic-Con. His round face glowed when he spoke of the synergy (no, he didn’t use that word) that could result if fans and creators intermingled, each caste to be inspired by the other. The first three days of August of that year it happened, pretty much as he said it would – at the then-shabby, now majestic U.S. Grant Hotel in downtown San Diego. There were 300 of us there, give or take a Star Trek fan, and it was a joy. These days at the con, there are that many people there ahead of you in line to buy a Diet Snapple.
Year after year, it grew and changed names ... though some of us called it (lovingly) the DorfCon, as in, “You going to DorfCon this year?” Finally, it became the Comic-Con International.
Annually, it convenes in a mammoth convention center built in the late '80s as part of a far-reaching redevelopment project. And what inspired the civic makeover? In large part, the comic book convention, which now covers so much more than comics: motion pictures, television, video games and almost any form of imaginative, superannuated storytelling. For the 2009 edition, a staggering 125,000 attendees were reported; there would have been more there but that’s all the building could hold.
Among those not present: Shel Dorf.
He was hospitalized with multiple ailments, diabetes chief among them, for what turned out to be the rest of his life. Even if he could have attended, he wouldn’t have. He cut back in the 1990s and made his last visit in 2001. Too depressing, he said, instead spending the con dates in his tiny Ocean Beach apartment where he lived alone. He’d read comics and watch old movies ... making his own con, I suppose.
He didn’t like how big the one he started had become, didn’t like how top movie stars were eclipsing top comic creators. He wasn’t the only person who felt that way but Shel had a more personal “didn’t like.” He didn’t like having no piece of its annual seven-figure cash flow. In the 1980s, he’d quarreled with those handling operations, demanding this and that. When he didn’t get it, he stormed out in a fit of pique, thereafter resisting all offers to come back, play a role and collect a paycheck or pension. I acted as go-between for some of those discussions but cannot explain why he preferred to play the angry exile.
Still, he was proud of what he started, but from afar. Entertainment industries thrive at that event. Millions are spent on books, comics and memorabilia. Mega-deals are made. Careers are launched. New talent is discovered, old talent is honored and everyone has an awful lot of fun. It flourishes because it was created not for money but upon a solid foundation of passion. Others did the heavy lifting, but that passion was supplied by Shel Dorf. They can call the event what they will, but, for some of us, it’ll forever be the DorfCon.
-- Mark Evanier
Mark Evanier is the author of the 2008 book "Kirby: King of Comics" and is a longtime presence in the comics field as a writer, historian and former production assistant to Jack Kirby. His writing career includes stints in live-action television ("Welcome Back, Kotter"), animation ("Scooby Doo") and comics ("Groo the Wanderer").
PHOTOS: Top, Shel Dorf in the days when the fan event was still called the San Diego Comic-Con. Middle, Dorf and Ray Bradbury, photographed by Mark Evanier. Bottom: Comic-Con International in 2008 drew more than 100,000 people.
Linda Whitmore is our specialist here at Hero Complex when it comes to classic “Star Trek,” and today she checks in with a report about “Star Wreck,” a parody that required her to boldly seek out life forms in a Nordic sector of the universe. -- Geoff Boucher
What would happen if the Starship Enterprise and "Airplane" crashed into the Babylon 5 space station somewhere in the skies above Finland?
The loopy result would be “Star Wreck (The Imperial Edition),” the Starfleet parody from a Finnish writer-actor-producer named Samuli Torssonen and his crew of amateur moviemakers. Seven years in the making, the farce opens on the bridge of the USS Kickstart with the not-so-cosmic sound of a toilet flushing – the men’s room, it seems, is conveniently located right next to the vessel’s command center.
The film introduces us to the intrepid Capt. James B. Pirk (Torssonen), his android science officer Mr. Info (a silver-faced Antti Satama) and a Klingon-like tactical officer named Dwarf (Timo Vuorensola, who also directed). There are gags about Federation jargon (“amigo-class” starships), cosmology (it’s “maggot holes” instead of “wormholes”) and the old familiar “Trek” aliens (the Vulgars, the Korg). What do the bumbling heroes find after flying through that maggot hole? The space station Babylon 13. Yes, “Wreck” is a concept cage match between Gene Roddenberry and J. Michael Straczynski. It doesn’t matter who wins; by the time one character screams, “Zucker, you shall be avenged!” you’re either on board or long gone at warp speed.
The film is being released on DVD in the U.S. on Tuesday. "Star Wreck" is also available on the Internet. Here’s my Q&A with Torssonen, the scrappy, warp-driving force behind “Wreck." The 31-year-old native of Tampere, Finland, is fluent in English, and good thing because when it comes to Finnish I never got started.
LW: So is it right that this “Star Wreck” is just the latest in a series of "Trek" spoofs you’ve worked on?
ST: Yes, it was actually called “Star Wreck VI: In the Pirkinning” in the beginning because there were five "Star Wreck" animated shorts or short films produced between 1992 and 1997. They are all available on our YouTube channel. ... It all began in 1992, when I did the first "Star Wreck" film. It was a very crude, two-dimensional animation. The series progressed quickly to a live-action fan film called "Star Wreck V: Lost Contact," which was a parody of “Star Trek: First Contact." My mother helped in sewing the costumes and loaned the camcorder from my father. It was finished in 1997, took about one year to complete.
LW: Why “Star Trek”? Were you a fan while growing up?
ST: I was a huge “Star Trek” fan, so I guess “Star Wreck” was my way of expressing my fandom -- to do my version of “Star Trek” with my own voice in Finnish. I had every episode on VHS tape and I mean every. I wasn't interested in the other ways of expressing the fandom -- costumes, toys, collecting cards etc.
LW: I watched the new DVD and I thought it was inspired. The men's room off the bridge, the “X-Files” coffee mug -- how long did it take you to write? Was it a collaborative effort?
ST: You could say that the script was never finished. We began to shoot a 20-minute space battle action film and kept adding new scenes that actually tried to explain why all the fighting was happening! So, the script was constantly evolving. We shot some pickups until the last moment in 2005. We had seven years to tweak the script and could see some of the problems later on and were able to correct those. The previous “Star Wreck” films were written by Rudi Airisto and me. We quickly understood that we needed help in writing this two-hour script. We had already formed a small fan base in 1998 because of the earlier “Star Wreck” shorts. “Star Wreck 5” was ahead of its time -- it was one of the very first fan films on the Internet in 1998. It was way before YouTube and the “Star Wars” fan films.
We posted a message stating that we need help with the script on Usenet, a kind of discussion board of its time, and received lots of feedback and ideas to the story. One of the guys, Jarmo Puskala, was really keen so he became a member of the actual screenwriting team and, later on, part of our production company. He also gave the idea about the moon Nazis [for "Iron Sky"]. During the production, we set up our own “Star Wreck” message board and used that for communicating with our fans. They helped us in many ways, giving great ideas to the story, did some 3-D modeling and, of course, spread the word.
LW: When did "Bablyon 5" air in Finland? What led you to introduce the "Babylon 5" angle? I’m a "B5" freak also -- so I got all the “in jokes.”
ST: “Babylon 5” aired in 1998 when we began to write the story. There was a huge battle between the fans of “Star Trek” and “Babylon 5” on the Internet, and we considered that pretty funny -- it was only TV series! So we came up with this idea, what if you actually put the two shows in a deadly space combat. Who will win? Of course, when “Star Wreck” was finally ready, nobody remembered “Babylon 5” anymore.
LW: Talk a little bit about filming “Star Wreck.”
ST: We began to shoot “Star Wreck” as a casual fan film with no money and no ambition at all. So we of course used actors who were committed to the project and didn't cost anything. …We knew very little about filmmaking. None of our team went to any film schools. I knew something about blue-screen technique after “Star Wreck 5.” The team of five people formed by accident. The director, Timo Vuorensola, was not a “Star Trek” fan at all -- which ultimately was a very good thing. Usually, fan-film directors know too much about the subject, and the film doesn't make any sense to non-fans.
We learned everything by doing mistakes. There were a couple of scenes that were shot three times -- at first we overexposed the material -- the second time we didn't have a decent microphone. We of course watched quite a lot of reference films and broke down the interesting scenes shot by shot. So, we were banging our heads on the wall until the very end. The shooting lasted seven years, so it became part of our lives to meet on Saturdays and Sundays at my mother's house where the blue screen was located. My mother or my grandmother cooked usually [for] the whole team.
LW: Have you gotten any feedback from anyone in the real "Star Trek" camp?
ST: No, but J. Michael Straczynski e-mailed me and asked for a couple of copies of the film on DVD.
LW: I was impressed by the production values -- especially the special effects. How did you produce those on a budget?
ST: We didn't have a budget! You can compensate money with time. I had been learning 3-D animation since I was 14. So I did 99% of the special-effects work by myself during the seven years. I had about five computers in my render farm in my kitchen. Everything was self-learned. It's a good thing that Finland has a good social support. Officially, I was either a student or a unemployed for the seven years, and “Star Wreck” was a full-time job for me without any salary.
LW: I think a lot of Trekkies would like to own the DVD or see a screening at a convention -- it has “cult following” written all over it. Why hasn't it been available wider?
ST: Well, of course the free Internet version was downloaded all around the world, but for a DVD distributor, it is very hard to convince that a Finnish “Star Trek” parody is worth their time and effort. I guess if “Star Wreck” had been in English language, it would have helped quite a lot. “Star Wreck” was never distributed in theaters. You could say that Internet was its “theatrical release.”
LW: Why encourage the free download on the Internet?
ST: To put it simply: I, as a filmmaker, want my film to be seen by as many people as possible. For a Finnish “Star Trek” parody, the traditional distribution routes would have been quite impossible. We needed to pique the attention by some other way. So, the free Internet distribution worked as a free PR campaign for us and got the attention of the traditional industry as well, and now we are launching the film in the U.S. as well. The world has really changed! The free distribution didn't exclude the traditional DVD markets -- not everybody is able to find and download the film from the Internet.
LW: Are you coming to the U.S. to promote the DVD?
ST: Most certainly, if somebody would pay for the tickets!
LW: What's in your future? I visited your website, Iron Sky. Doesn't look very funny....
ST: We put about $15,000 into “Wreck.” “Iron Sky” has a budget of $8 million. It is on its way to becoming the largest film production here in Finland. The humor in “Iron Sky” is less slapstick and somewhat darker than in “Star Wreck,” but that teaser for “Iron Sky” is only meant to show the feeling of the film. It really doesn't show any of the comedic aspects of the film. You have to wait for the final trailer with actors in it! If you liked “Star Wreck,” you will most certainly enjoy “Iron Sky” -- I can promise that. And we also have a new “Star Wreck” being written. This time it will be in English.
I wish that, just for a moment, Ian McKellen actually possessed some of those nature-bending powers that he wielded in the "Lord of the Rings" and "X-Men" films because it would have been a delight to see him turn the set of "The View" into a charred crater.
The esteemed 70-year-old thespian was a guest on the ABC daytime show last week and the footage is excruciating to watch. I have to say I didn't know much about this show beyond its reputation for shrill banality but, after watching this, I'm discouraged by the fact that this a nationally aired show. (Thanks by the way to Jay West for sending me the link.)
McKellen was on to promote "The Prisoner," the new six-episode AMC series that begins Nov. 15, but he was met with a quartet of hosts who had their own flaky agendas. One of them had snippy and random things to say about British healthcare, which she obviously knows nothing about. Another asked McKellen: "Do you think you're creepy?" and later gushed about his film performance as "Mag-Netto." Must be a big fan. And then (at the 4-minute mark) the million-dollar question from a croaky Whoopi Goldberg: "Now, are you coming back to 'Harry Potter'?" Uhhh...
McKellen, who has never been to Hogwarts, said that he expects that he will be back as Gandalf in "The Hobbit" films but added that he doesn't have a contract yet and, with a small aside about that, hinted that the dealings might not be a slam dunk. He also pointed out with some good cheer that after he went public as a gay actor his film career took off, which runs counter to traditional Hollywood career wisdom. Did anyone on the show sense that there might an interesting follow-up question on one of these points? Nope. Goldberg thought it better to ask if there would be any black Hobbits in the new movies. Oh, right, well, there you go.
All this reminds me of an old saying: You know the worst part of having your head up your own backside? "The View."
On Wednesday, William Shatner was at Madame Tussauds Wax Museum and this is one of the photos from Getty Images. It's Friday and that means it's a good time for a caption contest. Boldly go to the comments section and give us your best line about this cosmic moment.
Patrick Kevin Day is back with another installment of Scene Stealer, which digs into the magic of movie-making. You can read his previous interviews and Liesl Bradner's Wizards of Hollywood series right here.
A love for the horror films of the late 1970s and early 1980s fueled writer-director Ti West's precise re-creation of the period in his film "The House of the Devil." But he started with a very odd detail. "The first thing [production designer Jade Healy and I] planned on was using the Coke cups that say Coke really big on the side," he said.
The memory of the Coke cups played large in West's self-professed photographic memory of the era, which he bolstered by making extensive lists of items he remembered from his youth. The Coke cups, along with almost all the other props, were found on EBay -- and ended up in West's apartment. "It was important that it not be 'Video Killed the Radio Star' '80s," he said. "It had to be wood-paneled, brown, feathered-hair '80s."
To further enhance the look, West adapted the filming techniques of the era: few close-ups, zooms, sustained shots and the use of Super 16-millimeter film instead of digital or 35-millimeter. The effect worked. Two weeks before the film opened, it had a sneak preview for an audience who'd never heard of it. "Most people thought it was a lost film from the 1980s until this 29-year-old director gets up at the end to speak. They said, 'What's going on here?'"
-- Patrick Kevin Day
Photo: Jocelin Donahue stars in "House of the Devil." / Magnet Releasing
John Horn has the lowdown on the troubled Spider-Man musical, from details about the script to the grim story of a behind-the-scenes tragedy that nearly derailed the most expensive production in the history of Broadway. Here's an excerpt. -- Geoff Boucher
As this Spider-Man tale opens, the audience sees New York City "on fire and in ruins" as "a section of the Brooklyn Bridge ascends with Mary Jane bound and dangling helplessly from the bridge." Soon thereafter, a new villainess called Arachne flies into the picture spinning her own deadly trap, and as Spider-Man battles all kinds of criminals he's swinging right over the audience.
It sounds like the 3-D opening for the next "Spider-Man" sequel, and even though this superhero story is filled with Hollywood-style special effects, it is instead a glimpse from a confidential script of a planned "Spider-Man" musical -- the priciest undertaking, and among the most troubled productions, in Broadway history.
Theater producers are always looking for the next movie-inspired musical blockbuster, and the pedigree of "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark" couldn't be more stellar: Sony's three Peter Parker movies have grossed nearly $2.5 billion worldwide, the musical's songwriters Bono and the Edge have shipped more than 50 million U2 records domestically, and writer-director Julie Taymor's "The Lion King" has earned in excess of $3.6 billion around the globe.
But rather than develop into a surefire hit, "Spider-Man" the musical instead has turned into a tangled web of production delays, unpaid bills and costly theater renovations that even Peter Parker's alter ego would struggle to escape, according to interviews with half a dozen people close to the show who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the show and its finances. Given its immodest ambition to "reinvent Broadway," the musical's budget has soared into the stratosphere: a staggering $52 million, counting theater renovations, according to one person familiar with its finances -- more than double the cost of 2006's "Lord of the Rings" musical, one of the most expensive musicals ever.
Like any compelling superhero story, "Spider-Man's" real-life final act is a cliffhanger.
Despite all the talent the musical has in its corner, it's still far from certain when -- or even if -- the elaborate musical will open after six years of development, as it has struggled to find a deep-pocketed backer to close a massive budget shortfall. If the show doesn't premiere by the end of April, it not only will miss Tony Award eligibility but also face the expiration of the musical's license from MarvelEntertainment, whose comic-book division created the enduring superhero in 1962. Bono and Edge, seem bewildered by the show's odyssey. "But who cares?" Bono said. "The visuals and the music are amazing, and that's what will matter."
This is the 25th anniversary of "Firestarter," director Mark L. Lester's adaptation of Stephen King's spooky and scorched tale about a little girl with a special talent for trouble. The movie had little 9-year-old Drew Barrymore in the lead; she had made her screen debut in "Altered States" in 1980 and became a famous face with "E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial" in 1982, and in this film she was teamed with three Oscar winners (George C. Scott, Art Carney and Louise Fletcher) as well as Martin Sheen, David Keith and Heather Locklear and a score by Tangerine Dream.
I caught up with Barrymore as she basked in the glow of her well-received directorial debut “Whip It” and asked how "Firestarter" echoes for her. She chose her words carefully. “It’s a weird, different little movie. It looks dated when you watch it now, but it was a unique idea.”
Unique, perhaps, but part of a crowd. "Firestarter" was the fifth King adaptation to arrive theaters within a year ("Christine," Cujo," "The Dead Zone" and "Children of the Corn") and, well, it didn't exactly light it up with audiences or critics. Roger Ebert wrote that the film imports King's vivid creations but "the most astonishing thing in the movie, however, is how boring it is." Ouch, that burns.
Sheldon Dorf, who founded the world-famous Comic-Con International comic-book convention, has died. He was 76. A longtime friend, Greg Koudoulian, says the Ocean Beach resident died at a San Diego hospital on Nov. 3 from kidney failure. He had diabetes and had been hospitalized for about a year. Dorf, a freelance artist and comic-strip letterer, founded Comic-Con in San Diego in 1970 after moving from Detroit. Today, the convention draws 125,000 fans a year and is a major gathering for comic-book fans, artists, writers and movie stars.
It’s been 144 years since Lewis Carroll introduced the world to an inquisitive girl named Alice, but her surreal adventures still resonate – Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland” arrives in theaters in March and next month on SyFy it's “Alice,” a modern-day reworking of the familiar mythology with a cast led by Kathy Bates and Tim Curry.
And then there’s “The Looking Glass Wars,” the series of bestselling novels by Frank Beddor that takes the classic 19th century children’s tale off into a truly unexpected literary territory – the battlefields of epic fantasy. The series began in 2006 and Beddor’s third “Looking Glass Wars” novel, “ArchEnemy,” just hit stores in October, as did a tie-in graphic novel called “Hatter M: Mad with Wonder.”
Beddor said it’s intriguing to see other creators at play in the same literary playground. “It’s amazing how many directions it’s been taken in,” Beddor said of Carroll’s enduring creations. “There’s something so rich and magical and whimsical about the original story and the characters and then there’s all those dark under-themes. Artists get inspired and they keep redefining it for a contemporary audience.”
Indeed, creative minds as diverse as Walt Disney, the Jefferson Airplane, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Tom Petty, the Wachowski Brothers, Tom Waits and American McGee have adapted Carroll’s tale or borrowed memorably from its imagery. Few, though, have been as audacious in their reworking as Beddor, whose massive re-imagining of Wonderland has prompted some Carroll-admiring purists to call for his head. It hasn’t helped that he has admitted publicly that he was no fan of the original works as a youngster when his grandmother essentially force-fed him “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.”
“I didn’t like them, it’s true,” Beddor said, “but his imagery became an amazing inspiration for me and this world creation. The idea was to create a bigger world so more characters and environments and quests and conflict and obstacles can confront the lead character.”
Is "V" for victory? The much-promoted alien-invasion series premieres tonight on ABC and, according to Los Angeles Times television critic Mary McNamara, the pilot (like that smooth-talking alien lady) seems like the best thing to arrive on Earth in a long time. Here's an excerpt of her review. -- Geoff Boucher
Some story lines just never get old — star-crossed lovers, mistaken identity, lizard men from outer space.
It’s impossible to tiptoe around the main plot device of ABC’s “V” — those aliens may be smart and purty but they’re up to no good — because it is, of course, a remake of the 1983 miniseries. And even if it weren’t, writers Kenneth Johnson and Scott Peters have infused the pilot with as many sly sci-fi references as CG special effects. [For the record: The review of the television series “V” in Tuesday’s Calendar said the pilot was written by Kenneth Johnson and Scott Peters. As the writer of the original miniseries, Johnson was given a “story by” credit. Peters wrote the pilot.]
Which are pretty terrific, as is the pilot in general. Although fans of the first “V” may find themselves longing for Richard Herd’s Supreme Commander in his jaunty jumpsuit and funky glasses, this “V” is not only sleeker, faster and more visually gripping, it promises to be thematically more compelling.
Its opening sequence is a masterpiece of back-story compression. What appears to be a temblor startles a series of characters (and an almost flawless cast gathered from various sci-fi hits): Erica Evans (“Lost’s” Elizabeth Mitchell) is an anti-terrorism agent with the FBI and divorced mother of Tyler (Logan Huffman), a basically decent but rebellious teen. Chad Decker (Scott Wolf from “Party of Five”) is a newscaster who aspires to do more than “read the news”; FatherJack Landry (Joel Gretsch of “The 4400”) is a young priest working among the homeless; and Ryan Nichols (Morris Chestnut) has just purchased the engagement ring he hopes to offer Valerie (Lourdes Benedicto).
All of their plans are put on hold, however, when the quake turns out to be the arrival of an enormous spaceship, one of a matched set now hovering over all the major cities of the world. But even as the throngs prepare for the requisite scream-flee-and-die scene of mass hysteria, the underbelly of the craft becomes a screen and the lovely Anna (“Firefly’s” Morena Baccarin) assures everyone in flawless English (and French and Egyptian) that “the Visitors” are here to offer technology in exchange for a few undisclosed but very renewable resources, and they come in peace.
Undone by relief, Anna’s Audrey Hepburn haircut and the promise that the Visitors can cure 65 of our diseases, humans, or at least New Yorkers, neglect to consider that they are a renewable resource themselves. Like the gullible little oysters in “The Walrus and the Carpenter,” they quickly embrace the “V’s,” signing up for theme-park-like tours of the ship and, of course, merchandising like crazy. Fortunately, not everyone is convinced...
Brave enough to enter the other world? Come see a free screening of "Coraline" at 7:30 tonight at The Landmark at 10850 W. Pico Boulevard and then stick around for my interview with director Henry Selick up on stage. We'll be taking questions from the audience as well, as this event that's brought to you by the Los Angeles Times and The Envelope is the first of five screenings leading up to the Oscar voting. Hope to see you there.
-- Geoff Boucher
Top photo by David Strick; photo of Neil Gaiman, below, by Kimberly Butler
Scott Timberg takes a look at an exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art that focuses on comics in the Indian culture from a fine-art perspective. -- Jevon Phillips
If you want to understand the meaning of comics in India, one place to start is a battered, chipped piece of sandstone from the 9th century. "Durga Slaying the Buffalo Demon," in which an eight-armed goddess impales a part-man, part-animal monster, doesn't bear any obvious resemblance to the X-Men or even the hipster graphic novels of Dan Clowes.
But this sculpture carved out of stone for purposes of worship represents an image that echoes through Indian culture -- and fuels some of the work created today on computer tablets by companies like Bangalore, India-based Liquid Comics.
"You're going to see visions of Durga all over the place," says Julie Romain, the curator at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art who organized the new show. "In both traditional and popular form -- movies, posters, comics."
She sees Durga and others as archetypes, figures that replicate through Indian society. The show, "Heroes and Villains: The Battle for Good in India's Comics," which runs through Feb. 7, looks at the transformative power of the imagery of Indian mythology: figures such as Durga, an often vengeful mother goddess who is one of several forms of India's supreme goddess Devi, as well as Rama, an avatar of Vishnu, and the mace-wielding monkey god Hanuman. (Though India is religiously diverse, most of the figures in the show come out of the Hindu tradition.)
Romain is not a fangirl but a scholar of classical Indian art, albeit one married to a comic-book lover going through what she calls a nostalgic period.
The show of 54 pieces she put together with paintings curator Tushara Bindu Gude is not comprehensive -- it doesn't look at the entirety of Indian comics and does not explicitly connect the images to the rest of Indian pop culture, whether Bollywood films or contemporary graphic design....
Reed Johnson, one of the best cultural journalists in the country, caught up with R. Crumb to talk about his new biblical excursions. Here's an excerpt from the piece. It's a good one. --- G.B.
The artist who gave the comic-book world Mr. Natural, Angelfood McSpade and Fritz the Cat has a new cast of characters: Adam, Eve, Noah, Abraham and, well, You Know Who.
R. Crumb, the Albrecht Dürer of the urban demimonde, has just published “The Book of Genesis Illustrated” (W.W. Norton), a profusely pictorial, surprisingly faithful version of the first 50 chapters of the Old Testament. In theory, the project may strike some as perverse, like having Charles Bukowski pen the script for a remake of "It's a Wonderful Life."
But as he writes in his introduction, Crumb conceived his work as a "straight illustration job, with no intention to ridicule or make visual jokes." Speaking by phone from France, where he has lived for two decades, the artist suggested that his source material needed no embellishment.
"The original is so strong and strange in its own right," Crumb said. "There's so much in there that's lucid and lent itself to comic book adaptation."
In richly detailed black-and-white imagery and cleanly lettered text blocks, Crumb opens his book with a superbly drafted image of God holding a giant cosmic void in his hands, spinning like a ball of black cotton candy, and ends it with a sober but lavishly detailed picture of Joseph's funeral procession.
Elsewhere, the book bears traces of Crumb's characteristic wit. Its front cover boasts "Nothing Left Out!" and notes that "adult supervision" is "recommended for minors." The back cover looks like a movie poster, with medallions of the dramatis personae and God hovering in the background like some providential Cecil B. DeMille. But for the most part Crumb's Genesis is a literal adaptation of the King James Version, notable more for its painstaking craft than its interpretational risk-taking.
In time with the book's release, an exhibition of Crumb's original "Genesis" drawings will be on view through Feb. 7 at the Hammer Museum. Crumb is hardly the first comic artist to illustrate parts of the Bible. Numerous children's authors have done it, along with such well-known cartoonists as Basil Wolverton.
What's perhaps most striking about the book is how well Crumb's illustrative style matches his subject matter. The brawny, big-boned women he's been drawing for decades are re-purposed here as pneumatic, iron-willed Old Testament matriarchs. Variants of the wild-eyed furry freaks who populated Crumb's semi-true tales of Detroit and the Haight have been retrofitted with goatskins and tunics, and seem to fit their new roles perfectly.
Although he avoids editorializing, Crumb granted himself poetic license to flesh out certain passages. Among his most powerful series of images are three large panels showing the fiery destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, with the inhabitants flailing in agony. The Bible dispatches with this chillingly dramatic episode in a single sentence.
And Crumb's representation of Adam and Eve romping together before the Fall is as innocent and exuberant a drawing as this artist ever has produced. "That was one of the great things to show," he said. "They're frolicking like pups, they've got nothing to worry about. They're in the Garden of Eden!"
Its awfulness is nearly unmatched. Some have even declared it the worst movie of all time. For many, “Troll 2,” the shameful 1990 horror movie, is the best worst movie.
Now there’s a documentary to prove it. In “Best Worst Movie,” director Michael Stephenson — the child star of the undisputed cinematic disaster, which has a rating of 0% on the film critic website Rotten Tomatoes — reunites with his former “Troll 2” costars and investigates the improbable rise of the film to the status of pop-culture touchstone.
“Up until four years ago, I wanted nothing — nothing — to do with ‘Troll 2.' ” says Stephenson. “Then, out of nowhere, I started getting these messages from kids all over the country on MySpace asking if I was the Michael Stephenson from ‘Troll 2.’ Some would send pictures from parties they’d throw. ... I just stared at them and thought, ‘Why would anyone do this? How can anyone like this film?’ That’s how it all started.”
His documentary, shot over a three-year span, has been making the rounds on the festival circuit. It won the “best nonfiction motion picture award” at the Sitges Film Festival in Spain. And it took home the best documentary award from the Indianapolis International Film Festival. The film plays Saturday at the AFI Film Festival in Hollywood.
“It was very cathartic, making the film,” the 31-year-old director says. “I’ve seen the positivity and the fun and the enjoyment that people are having around this awful, awful film.”
“Troll 2,” directed by Claudio Fragasso, centers on the Waits family as they vacation in a deserted town called Nilbog (“goblin” spelled backward); things go awry when they’re pursued by small vegetarian goblins who turn people into plants before they devour them. Don’t be confused, though. It’s not a sequel to the 1986 Empire Pictures film “Troll,” despite the title.
It was filmed in three weeks in a small town in Utah in summer 1989. Twenty years later, the ultra-low-budget horror film has been resurrected into a treasure — much the way “The Room” and “Showgirls” have become cult favorites. In Chicago and New York, and even in Canada and Austria, fans savor every minute of the film; some travel to attend screenings, others host viewing parties.
The documentary includes fan testimonials and scenes from the horror flick, as well as a glimpse into the lives of the actors. At the center is George Hardy, the film’s father figure, who’s now a dentist in Alabama; he’s touched and confused by the movie’s status.
“I didn’t want to simply focus on the pandemonium surrounding this horribly bad movie,” Stephenson says. “I was most interested in having people get to know the cast who had been part of this cinematic car crash.”
Hardy drills cavities by day and moonlights as a cult figure, attending screenings where he often reenacts the infamous scene in which he declares one should not urinate on hospitality (in a more colorful way, of course).
“I remember a patient of mine gave me the VHS about a year or two after it came out,” Hardy says. “I remember ... putting it in and thinking, ‘Ugh, I can’t watch this.’ ”
It wasn’t until he attended a 2006 New York screening — the first scene Stephenson filmed — that Hardy saw the film’s effect, as hundreds of fans attended.
“The way people have embraced it ... it speaks to the power of film — good or bad.”
--Yvonne Villarreal
Photos, from top: "Troll 2" goblins; George Hardy and Michael Stephenson on the set of the awesomely bad film. Credits: Michael Stephenson
Wander around the home of Leonard Nimoy and you'll find very few mementos from all those years spent roaming the galaxy as Mr. Spock. He kept the last pair of pointy ears he wore on the classic television series, and on one wall of his bright and airy home office, there are two Hirschfeld drawings of the actor in his Starfleet uniform. But that's about it -- no movie posters, no plastic models of the good ship Enterprise, no tribbles on the mantel.
Instead, the walls and shelves reflect the passion of Leonard and Susan Nimoy for contemporary art; in fact, their collection would be envied by many gallery owners. But some of the most interesting pieces are the actor's own photography, and on Halloween night he will be at the Santa Monica Museum of Art for a one-night exhibition of selected pieces from his conceptual project "Who Do You Think You Are?"
Last year, Nimoy spent two 16-hour days shooting portraits of total strangers in Northampton, Mass., who had answered a public invitation to share a glimpse of their hidden selves. He photographed 95 people and chose 25 of them for the exhibit that will go on display next summer at MASS MoCA.
"The idea was to invite people to reveal their secret selves, the self they wish to be or the self they hide from the world," said Nimoy, 78, who has been an avid photographer since his youth. "There was a measure of bravery in this by everyone involved. I had no idea what to expect. Some of the people walked in with these amazing stories, stories you couldn't anticipate or make up."
A rabbi arrived with a leather vest over his bare torso and announced that he would use the photograph to publicly acknowledge for the first time that he is gay. A middle-aged psychologist showed up in conservative clothes but toting a chainsaw, a symbol of her inner masculine power, which still goes unrecognized after years as a single woman. One heavyset woman, her voice trembling, came and dropped her robe to reveal the tattoos up and down her backside and described her secret self as "a shy whore."
One of the more striking images is a man who looks like some sort of forest spirit. He is a painter who specializes in portraits of war veterans, and to show his secret self, he applied brown body makeup, pulled on a loincloth and sprinkled tree leaves at his feet -- his desire was to avoid "war, strife and violence of all kind, and be part of nature," Nimoy said.
The portraits speak to the culture of Northampton, which has an active gay and lesbian community, a tilt toward academia and, apparently, a fair number of eccentric souls.
"It would be interesting to see what would happen if you solicited people -- sought them out instead of making a public invitation; it might be a difficult process, an ordeal, or it might be explosive. What would you get if you did this in a different community, such as Los Angeles? Would it be totally different? I don't know the answers to these questions."
Nimoy is a renaissance man -- he may be forever associated with the role of Spock, but he has directed six films (among them "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home," "The Good Mother," "Three Men and a Baby"), written two autobiographies, published seven books of poetry and made a somewhat infamous foray into music in the late 1960s. Photography may be his true passion, though. In the early 1970s, he attended UCLA to study for a career change that would have found him behind a camera instead of in front of it.
"I thought very seriously for a brief time that I would go in a new career direction, but then I realized that commercial photography was not for me," Nimoy said. "I didn't want to photograph to fill a need or at someone else's direction. I wanted to pursue it as an art."
As a young man, Nimoy was fascinated by the darkroom process and for decades he shot only black-and-white and developed all of his own prints. He took a camera with him everywhere he went. Shooting films and television productions on location, he snapped pictures of people and places across the globe.
Only once, though, did he take a photo on the set. Nimoy photographed Yul Brynner while the two were making the 1971 western "Catlow." But looking through the viewfinder, he saw the cast and crew stiffened or changed when a camera was aimed at them. Nimoy realized the camera was invasive in that setting and might undermine the trust of the actors at work.
"I never took a camera to the set again," Nimoy said.
Nimoy's photography has always been based on serendipity, but he changed his approach with "The Shekhina Project," in which he sought to study "the feminine aspect of God" by shooting portraits of women that emphasized the body and soulfulness of the gender. There was a small stir of controversy in 2005 when Nimoy published a book of the photos, many of them nude and sensual, side-by-side with commentary of Jewish scripture.
Next came "The Full Body Project: Photographs by Leonard Nimoy" in 2007, a book that collected his portraits of plus-sized women. Nimoy said that book was intended as a look at the "distance between reality and the fantasy of fashion photography where clothes are worn by women who, on average, weigh 25% less than average women."
The third in his series of concept projects is the secret-self study, which was inspired by a line of mythology about Zeus splitting humans in half -- the species had four legs and two heads before the deity cleaved them down the middle. The idea that the split left humans incomplete on some level, hungry to reconnect with their other aspect, fascinated Nimoy. For the portraits, he shot in color for the first time. He spent eight to 10 minutes with his subjects, on average. The process was videotaped, and a 40-minute "making-of" movie will be screened on Halloween at the Santa Monica Museum fundraiser, which has a masquerade-ball theme. Visitors are encouraged to come dressed as their secret selves.
Nimoy said he no longer carries a camera with him, waiting for moments that present themselves; instead he found, through his latest project, some insight into his own secret self.
"This is the one that came the closest to the bone to the things that interest me," Nimoy said. "There was a certain amount of performance and direction and psychological exploration involved. There was also a lot of role-playing involved, and I've spent a considerable amount of my life doing that. What I love about the project is that anyone who sees it immediately asks themselves, 'What would my secret self be? What could I show -- what would I show?' I know people ask me what my secret self is and I have to laugh. I have no secrets left. I revealed it all a long time ago."
Continuing our countdown to Halloween is another Susan King special touting what will be a cool look by many of the creators of audible terror at some of film's greatest scary tales -- from 1925's "The Phantom of the Opera" to "Poltergeist" and "The Thing." Just spotlighting another event for fear-seeking fanboys and followers of classic Hollywood alike. -- Jevon Phillips
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences explores the things that go boo tonight at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater. But don’t expect any scholarly examination of the use of sound in horror films at "The Sound Behind the Image III: Real Horrorshow!"
"I think what it really amounts to is a ... horror movie night in the doors with friends, pizza and some horror movies," says the program host, veteran sound editor David E. Stone, who won an Oscar for his spook-tacular work on the 1992 horror hit, "Bram Stoker's Dracula."
"What we are going to do is have a handful of basically post-production sound people each introducing clips of a horror movie where we think there is something interesting to say on how the sound was treated," says Stone. "The most exciting role that sound can play in a horror movie is that enhances what you don’t see , and that adds to the suspense."
Sometimes silence is golden in horror movies.
"Scholars tell us sound was always thought about in silent films," says Stone. "It was made part of the story by the composition of music or the characters’ miming that they heard something."
To illustrate the point, Stone will be showing the famous clip from 1925's "The Phantom of the Opera" where Mary Philbin rips off the mask of the Phantom (Lon Chaney), and her silent scream literally echoes in audiences’ ears.
Besides Stone, Oscar-nominated sound effects editors Mark Mangini and Richard L. Anderson will offer a behind-the-scenes look at how the chilling sound effects were created for 1982’s "Poltergeist." Foley artist Vanessa Theme Ament will discuss the work of master foley artist John Post, who was responsible for the terrifying sound effects on John Carpenters 1982 "The Thing." And veteran Oscar-winning production sound mixer Gene Cantamessa and supervising sound editor Don Hall will discuss their work on Mel Brooks' classic 1974 horror spoof, "Young Frankenstein."
Doors open at 6:30 p.m. For more information, go to www.oscars.org.
-- Susan King
Photo: Winona Ryder stars as Mina Murray/Elisabeta and Gary Oldman stars as Dracula in "Bram Stoker's Dracula." Credit: Columbia Pictures
Contributor Susan King brings us some Halloween fun with this piece on the brilliant Roger Corman aiding Netflix with his cliffhanger genius. The result being an interactive three-parter, directed by Joe Dante, called "Splatter." -- Jevon Phillips
When it came to making movies quickly and cheaply, it was hard to beat Roger Corman, who once joked that he could make a film about the Roman Empire with two extras and a sagebrush. He directed 1960’s "The Little Shop of Horrors" in two days.
Corman started directing films in 1955 and, during his peak, could turn out seven a year. A true auteur of "B" movies, his films featured offbeat characters, dark humor, social commentary and a savvy use of special effects and sets -- he would often simply shoot another film on the same sets with the same actors.
With its low-budget, fast-paced parameters, it’s no wonder that Corman jumped at the chance to produce "Splatter," a three-part interactive horror Web series for Netflix that allows viewers to vote on which characters they want to see killed off in the subsequent installments.
"Who doesn’t love Roger Corman?" asks Catherine Fisher, director of publicity for Netflix, the company that offers mail-order DVDs as well as live streaming of movies. "What we wanted to do with this project was to bring to life the fact that Netflix delivers movies two ways to your TV."
And you don’t have to be a Netflix subscriber to catch "Splatter": It will be streamed beginning today for free at www.netflix.com/splatter.
Viewers will be able to cast their votes on the fate of two characters for the Nov. 6 episode. After that installment, they again can choose who meets their maker on the Nov. 13 finale.
"The audience becomes part of the screenwriting team," Corman says.
Shot in eight days on digital video at the evocative Hollywood Castle mansion in the Hollywood Hills, the series was directed by Joe Dante ("Gremlins"), who cut his teeth editing trailers and eventually directing movies ("Piranha") for Corman in the 1970s.
Another Corman/Dante veteran, Corey Feldman ("Gremlins," "The Lost Boys"), plays Johnny Splatter, a goth-rock star who kills himself in the opener. Over the three eight- to 10-minute episodes, Splatter’s five friends get more than they bargained for when they arrive at his mansion for a reading of the will. Only one will survive the night
Corman, who produced the series with his wife, Julie, became involved for the challenge and fun of it.
Netflix’s timing was "incredible," Julie Corman says. "We were just in the throes of moving into digital distribution, so this is on-the-job training. It has really been a dream project, I would say."
Though "Splatter" is embracing the latest technology, the series is also a throwback to Corman’s early days as a filmmaker when he could direct a film in less than a week -- in fact, Corman directed 1960’s "The Little Shop of Horrors" in two days.
Corman turned to veteran writer Richard Matheson, who has written such classic novels as "I Am Legend" and penned the scripts to most of Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe adaptations, to see if he would write the script.
"Dick, as I am, is fairly old and said he was working on what could be his last novel and didn’t have time," Corman says.
But he did recommend his son, Richard Christian Matheson, "who is starting to write in the same style. So I called Dick and we kicked around a number of ideas."
Originally, Corman wanted to shoot the first installment and then wait a day for the audience votes to be tabulated before frantically beginning a six-day process of writing, shooting, editing and doing post-production on the next one.
"I wanted to see if I could do this stuff again," Corman says. But he and Dante soon realized the logistics would be a nightmare.
His wife came up with the solution. "We would shoot the deaths of all five and then, as the votes come in, we may do a little pick-up shooting to tie things together," Corman says. "Then we would edit the deaths in."
Still, the pace is crazy. "We have to have everything ready for when the first vote happens," Dante says. "When the first vote happens, we have to have a rough version of all of these different possibilities and the same thing for the third week. You have to shoot everything three times. There are all of these logistical issues you have to carry around in your head."
"This is guerrilla filmmaking at its finest," Feldman says. "There are Web episodes and interactive stuff out there, but it’s never been presented in this format before. Everybody involved is skilled. It has the signature Joe Dante stuff as far as the dark, twisted humor, and it's scary and gory, which is signature Roger stuff. It’s like ‘American Idol’ for the Internet."
-- Susan King
Photos: Roger Corman with wife Julie, who helped him produce "Splatter" for Netflix. Credit: Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times. Netflix's "Splatter" site. Credit: Netflix.com
Susan King, purveyor of many things film and television and beyond, falls into "The Twilight Zone" in her latest Classic Hollywood column as she gets out the word about The American Cinematheque Egyptian Theatre's tribute to this seminal series on Friday. She also talks a great deal about Rod Serling and the barriers that science fiction had to hurdle. -- Jevon Phillips
"You're traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind; a journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That's the signpost up ahead -- your next stop, the Twilight Zone."
With those now-famous words, TV audiences 50 years ago were introduced to Rod Serling's breakthrough sci-fi series "The Twilight Zone." The series, essentially morality plays with evocative twists of fantasy, ran for five seasons on CBS -- and endlessly in reruns and the public imagination.
One week, viewers could be on a plane with a troubled young man who insists he sees a monster on a wing; another week, an elderly woman could invite death into her house. Performers included veterans such as Ida Lupino and newcomers like Robert Redford and William Shatner.
"He created a new form of television," said screenwriter Marc Scott Zicree, author of "The Twilight Zone Companion."
Science fiction was basically viewed as kids' stuff," he says. "There is a great interview that Mike Wallace did with Rod just prior to 'The Twilight Zone' where he says to Rod, 'Now you are doing this kind of kids' stuff, are you giving up writing anything important?' "
There is no film this year that has been anticipated, discussed or debated as much as "Avatar," the sci-fi epic from director James Cameron that reaches theaters Dec. 18. We're going to start a monthlong countdown to the film here at Hero Complex in mid-November, but here's an early bite at the apple. This is a longer version of a feature I've written about Sam Worthington for the big movie sneaks issue that runs next weekend in the Los Angeles Times Sunday Calendar section.
Forget the flying dragons and giant blue aliens, Sam Worthington is in search of human life amid all that extraterrestrial spectacle of “Avatar.”
Director James Cameron’s sci-fi epic arrives Dec. 18 amid intense discussion of its state-of-the-art performance capture and 3-D innovations, but for Worthington, the 33-year-old Australian star of the film, none of that is as important as locating the human heart in the story.
"I don’t believe there’s a certain way to act in an action blockbuster and I think it’s a mistake to approach it that way,” Worthington said. “It’s still has drama, romance, suspense; it’s only a blockbuster because of the size of scale and the money they throw in and maybe the time of year it comes out. If you bring in the subtleties of proper human emotion, then an audience can relate to a character. That character isn’t just a cartoon. I don’t want to be a cartoon.”
Cartoon or “dead” faces are the bane of motion-capture films and exactly what Cameron hopes to avoid with “Avatar.” The filmmaker wrote the script for “Avatar” before he made his Oscar-winning 1997 film “Titanic” and has been waiting, he says, for the technology needed to pull off his vision. That’s why some observers are referring to “Avatar” as a “game-changer” for special effects films -- and others are calling it the most over-hyped Hollywood release of 2009.
And at the center of this massive machinery is the brawny Worthington, a former bricklayer and high school dropout from west Australia. His life path changed at the National Institute of Dramatic Art in Sydney. A girl he knew planned to submit an application for the program, and he joined her as a lark.
“To have these opportunities now, I’m extremely humble about it, to be honest with you,” Worthington said. “I feel lucky to do these kinds of films. I always said I wanted to make movies that I would go see. I would pay 12 bucks to go see ‘Avatar.’ Just to be part of it all -- I pinch myself.”
In person, Worthington comes off as coolly confident and wildly straightforward; he seems about as ironic as a rugby tackle. He said, for instance, that one of his goals as an actor is to portray men who prove that "a man's fate isn't written, that he decides his own fate," a lesson he himself wants to impart to his 9-year-old nephew. Worthington’s screen career began with an episode of “JAG” in 2000 and he caught the eye of Hollywood with performances in smaller films, such as his lead role in Geoffrey Wright’s gritty 2006 “Macbeth,” which reframed the Shakespeare play in the criminal underworld of Melbourne, Australia.
But there was a big one that got away: Worthington was one of three finalists in the search for the new James Bond but lost out to Daniel Craig, whose screen aura is a more cynical menace. Instead, Worthington is getting a reputation as an action hero with soulful eyes; in “Terminator Salvation,” opposite Christian Bale, the relative newcomer was the most memorable part of the film for many reviewers.
“Wearing his conflicted humanity like Clint Eastwood in his Sergio Leone days ... Worthington overtakes every scene that he is in,” film critic Betsy Sharkey wrote in The Times.
Cameron, whose last leading man was Leonardo DiCaprio in “Titanic,” said that for “Avatar” he needed a star who could handle the action but also pull the audience along on an adventure that covers a lot of emotional ground as well as exotic alien-jungle terrain. Cameron said that, in aspiration, “Avatar” has more in common with Rudyard Kipling, Joseph Conrad and Edgar Rice Burroughs than with modern Michael Bay cinema.
“I’ll go to a ‘Transformers’ film for the fun of seeing the spectacle,” Cameron said, “but, personally, my soul craves a little more story, a little more meat on the bone and characters and that sort of thing.”
In the futuristic tale of “Avatar,” Worthington portrays Jake Sully, a Marine who comes home from combat in a wheelchair. He gets a chance to walk, run and fight again, though, through a strange off-world mission. Scientists will place his consciousness in an avatar, a towering blue body grown in a laboratory melding of alien genetic material with Sully’s DNA. This new body is sent to a jungle planet to help plunder a valuable mineral but, in a sort of intergalactic “Dances With Wolves” scenario, Sully goes native.
In “Terminator Salvation,” Worthington presented the mash-up of man and machine; this time it’s the hybrid of earthling and alien. He chuckled when asked whether there were themes that pull him toward certain roles.
“I just want to work with people of high caliber, whatever kind of genre,” the actor said. “I don’t basically go, ‘I want to make a movie of this type’ or ‘I want this genre.’ I look at who’s making it and who’s in it. With ‘Avatar,’ they tell me Jim Cameron is directing and Sigourney Weaver is in it? Sign me up.”
There’s considerable interest in Hollywood to signing up Worthington. He will star with Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes in “Clash of the Titans,” which hits theaters in March, and he has completed two other films, John Madden’s “The Debt,” a war-crimes thriller with Helen Mirren, and “Last Night,” a New York romance with Keira Knightley, which was shot in 2008.
He was slated to star with Charlize Theron in another thriller, “The Tourist,” but that project may be in flux. There is talk, too, that Worthington will reunite with “Terminator Salvation” director McG for Disney’s major revival of “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.”
For the actor, though, the bigger the franchise, the tighter his focus on the people living and breathing between the explosions.
“If you’re going to do blockbusters, you have to find the human in them or else you’re just making a video game,” he said. “I’ve always said if I’m going to make these things, I’m going to do the thing I can do in a $4-million Australian film -- a dramatic piece -- and bring that into the action film. If you do that, the audience feels it and then they’ve got a way in. They see themselves up there on the screen.”
Photos: At top, "Avatar" director James Cameron, left, and lead actor Sam Worthington on the set. Credit: Mark Fellman. Middle: Worthington in "Terminator Salvation." Credit: Warner Bros.
Leonard Nimoy, who was coaxed out of retirement for "Star Trek" and then lingered in order to portray the mysterious William Bell on "Fringe," says it may be the logical time to say farewell to acting for good -- especially since the Bell role hasn't been a compelling one for him.
"I have such a great life," the 78-year-old actor said at his home last week. "I'm not looking for work."
Nimoy had invited me over to talk about his Halloween night photography exhibit at the Santa Monica Museum of Art(watch for a full story on that event and his photography career here tomorrow), which is just one of the many pursuits that Nimoy would rather focus on these days. "As an actor you're always wondering when you're going to work again, who you're going to work with, what it will be. I don't have that consuming drive," he said. Then he nodded toward an image that will be on display at the exhibit. "This is my creative outlet. This is what I do."
Nimoy was fresh from a trip to the Vancouver set of "Fringe," where he had shot an upcoming episode. He made it sound as if it might have been his final one in the role of Bell, a rarely seen character on the show but one that is, by all appearances, at the very core of the series' mythology.
"I've done three appearances for them. I don't know if I will do a fourth..."
"They've asked me to do more, but we have to talk about where the character is going. So far my character, William Bell, and my appearances have been used to lay in information about this alternate universe and the experience of being in this other world. And that's OK, but I don't know yet what plans they have for really developing a dramatic story for the character. I'm waiting for a conversation about that."
Nimoy said that conversation will be "some with J.J. Abrams" but more so with show runner Jeff Pinkner and series creators Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, the same tandem that came up with the script for "Star Trek," which was good enough to coax Nimoy back into Starfleet service despite his initial resistance to the idea. Nimoy said Orci and Kurtzman are "just terrific, very talented and very smart" but it was quite clear that the actor's goodwill posture toward "Fringe" was earned entirely by the "Trek" experience and that it has its limitations.
"I think they're talking amongst themselves now so they can present some kind of plan, a story arc of some kind."
The sci-fi icon surprised me when he said he signed up for the "Fringe" first-season finale without much knowledge of the series at all.
"I never paid much attention until I was asked to work on it and even then I didn't know a lot. I got the [home video] collection of the first season and [my wife] Susan and I were up in Lake Tahoe and last week we sat there about four or five hours at a time and watched them. And, wow, that show is something. They do a great production job. They have great story hooks, terrific production values and very interesting performances."
He mentioned in particular the work of John Noble, who portrays the wonderfully eccentric Walter Bishop, Bell's onetime colleague in the business of mad science.
"We just met for the first time and it was very enjoyable," Nimoy said, although he was careful not to say whether that encounter was on-screen or off.
For those of you in Southern California, you have a chance to meet Nimoy yourself and even have him shoot your portrait during a photo session. On Halloween, the Santa Monica Museum of Art will be displaying selected works from Nimoy's project "Who Do You Think You Are?" (which will be an exhibit at Mass MoCA next summer); the collection is a series of portraits where Nimoy asked strangers to reveal their secret selves. That "secret self" theme will carry into a costume contest at the Oct. 31 event and there a different price-level tickets. For more details on the event and the possibility of a photo shoot with Nimoy, go right here.
The vampire world just got a new addition to its clan. Edward Cullen, watch out.
Vertigo is launching a new monthly comic book series from short-story writer Scott Snyder ("Voodoo Heart," "The Goodbye Suit") and artist Rafael Albuquerque.
“American Vampire” hits shelves in March, with a breed of vampire — more brawny and vicious — that has distinctly American characteristics.
The series’ first story arc, to unfold over the course of five issues, will feature two separate stories; one penned by Snyder, the other by horror novelist Stephen King.
Marvel has had success adapting King’s preexisting work such as the “Dark Tower” and “The Stand” mini-series. But this new series represents King’s debut in comic book writing. He’ll provide the origin story of the first American vampire: Skinner Sweet, an outlaw of the 1880s.
“He really made it his own thing,” Snyder said in a phone interview. “It was really inspiring to watch him take these characters and make them and their stories so much better.” Snyder’s tale is set in the Jazz Age and centers on Pearl, who “frequents Hollywood’s speakeasies and dance-halls searching for her first big break, only to find something far more sinister waiting for her.” Hero Complex contributor Yvonne Villarreal spoke with Snyder about his new project. Read this brief Q-and-A as he discusses how the series aims to reinvent the idea of our fang-toothed friends.
YV: When people think of you, ‘comic book writer’ isn’t associated with your name. What prompted this venture?
Snyder: Well, the idea … I’ve been sort of kicking around for a while. For the last couple of years, I’ve just been thinking of how I would do it. Would it be through short stories or a book? I actually thought about doing it as a book for a while and then I happened to write a short story for an anthology that was about literary writers writing superhero stories and it caught the attention of an editor at D.C., Mark Doyle. He wound up approaching me at a reading for the book and asked me if I had anything I wanted to pitch for Vertigo DC. So I pitched him this idea and he really fell for it and it went into development pretty quickly. So we hashed it out together. That’s how -- sort of from the production side -- it came together.
YV: There’s no shortage of vampire-themed projects floating around. Did the idea come about pre-vampire craze?
