World's Biggest Spider Web: An Update

Dear God... thousands of spiders from a dozen different species are working together to spin and repair this thing.

If there was any one thing that comforted me about spiders is -- with rare exception -- they're not communal. They don't work together. They eat each other. They're not supposed to team up.

This is real end-of-the-world kinda stuff. Dogs and cats! Living together! Mass hysteria!

Bloody-Disgusting

And management/production company the Collective acquired Bloody-Disgusting.

I think BD is one of the coolest sites out there. I check fangoria and arrowinthehead. Fango has the name, and I love arrow's reviews. But BD's just awesome... I dig that they have trailers up for everything coming out. There's a real love for horror in all three sites that transcends fanboy bitching.

I'm the first guy to admit most horror is crap. But I'm willing to dig through the trash to find the diamonds. To paraphrase Lovecraft, fear is the most powerful and primal of all emotions. Which makes horror movies the most powerful and primal of all film. There's something really magical in making a group of people physically and emotionally react to "danger," while using nothing more than flickering images and sound. It's the power of film at its most pure.

It seems like a very similar situation to what Gary Sanchez Productions (Will Ferrell, Adam McKay and Chris Henchy) and CAA are doing with www.funnyordie.com. They're providing content and offering entertainment, while at the same time creating a forum by which they can find new talent.

It looks like Bloody-Disgusting will be like funnyordie... but with horror. That's just fucking awesome.

I honestly think this is the next stage in the entertainment industry. The walls between talent and production are coming down. If you've got the chops, all you have to do is throw your shit up on the internet, and they'll track you down. I know for a fact development execs spend a lot of time hunting around on youtube for talent.

It seemed like it took the town a couple of years to figure out how to deal with youtube and its siblings. At first there were lawsuits. But H'wood's not stupid. They know... if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

I love this. In the past, I've heard a lot of crying from writers and directors and actors about how brilliant they were, but they didn't have anything going on in their careers because H'wood was a big meanie and they couldn't get past the gatekeepers.

Step-by-step, that's becoming bullshit. We're swiftly going to see a situation very akin to something like pro sports holding open tryouts for every team, every season. If you've got the juice, bring it. If not, you've got no one to blame but yourself.

Social Darwinism at its finest. LOVE it.

Diary of the Dead

Here's a glowing review in Variety.

I'm officially really fucking excited. Gimme some Dead!

Speaking of Zombies...

The Weinsteins picked up Romero's Diary of the Dead. Here's the story in the Reporter.

I picked up Land of the Dead from Amoeba the other day for the princely sum of $1.99.

I admit, the price drove the purchase. I thought Land was okay in the theater when I saw it. But, when you're holding a movie up against stuff like the original Dawn of the Dead, or even recent movies like 28 Days Later, it was hard to get excited.

But only spending two bucks and watching it at home with a beer in hand... I loved it. This is a super-tight story on fuckin' rails, man. It's the anti-Day, where everyone sits around and nothing much happens until a massive set piece at the end. I've come to love Day, but it took a while to find the particular charms to that movie. And I don't know anybody who names Day as their favorite of the original Dead trilogy.

Land isn't perfect. Some of the dialogue is painfully on-the-nose. Romero's smart enough to give the really "duh" lines to the stupid guy Simon Baker hangs out with. But I still thought... do we need an explanation of what "flowers in the graveyard" means when they shoot fireworks to distract the zombies? C'mon...

I also winced when Baker gets his SWAT team of obvious zombie-munch fodder. Each member comes into the room and makes this clunky little character introduction. It seemed really comic book.

"I'm the Matador, and you can tell because I wear this matador thing on my shoulder to help you remember. Otherwise, I'm completely indistinguishable!"

"I'm the mean bitch who swears a lot, so fuck you fucking fuckers!"
"I'm the really big guy who eats a lot, when do we eat?"

I'm paraphrasing, of course. But that's the impression I got. This kinda thing also ruined Blade II for me.

Weirdly enough, I totally forgot Asia Argento's in this movie. We're going after her to play Mina Harker in The Un-Dead. After watching Land, I really really really hoped we get her.

John Leguizamo's awesome in Land. Simon Baker's fine, but his character (whose name I can't even remember) is such a goodie two-shoes that Leguizamo's Cholo just steals every scene. He's kind of a dick, but it's just because he's a driven alpha male. He's not a guy you fuck with. And I really dug his friendship with Foxy; it felt real.

There's also a cool Latin flavor to this movie: lots of Latino actors, a Spanish-club soundtrack in the seedy bar where Asia almost gets killed, etc. It felt like a fresh aspect to the zombie genre. Having played way too much Resident Evil IV, zombies and the Spanish language seemed to go hand-in-hand. Let's see more. I'd love something like El Mariachi vs. zombies.

I'm really glad I dropped the two bucks.

Another Really Kickass Nightmare

A woman's voice was coming out of the drain in my bathroom. She wanted me to come into the bathroom and help her get out. I'm sure nothing good would've come from that act of kindness.

It was a really strong nightmare, right on the edge of lucid dreaming. I woke up in the middle of the night, lying there scared out of my mind.

For a long time I didn't have any nightmares at all. Now I've had a couple of really good ones in just the past month or so. I don't know what I'm doing differently, but... bring 'em on!

Franken-update

Hit 2,500 words last night.

I edited down what I'd already written so it was tighter and cleaner. I jumped into the next chapter. It was another tonal struggle; the first chapter has danger and comedy, while the chapter immediately following is more of a down beat.

I had to hack at that for a while until I got them to mesh. Or, at least I thought I did. We'll see when I get back into it tonight.

Anyway, this is cooking right along. I'm not so naive as to think I'll write straight through -- the scripts'll come a-callin'. Meanwhile, it's just fun...

Call of the Day

A woman called the office. I answered the phone.

She asked if I spoke English.

It swiftly became apparent that she didn't ask me because I spoke unintelligibly or in a non-English language. She asked because she knew she was calling Southern California where, apparently, a lot of non-English speakers live. She wanted to make sure I spoke English before she asked if we're interested in her book.

I get a lot of odd calls, but that one's a first.