Dinosaur Jr. tomorrow night.

Original lineup. Ears will bleed.

Can't wait.

The Cross (as done by Prince)

I'm getting closer to finally finishing Witchcraft 13 in it's DTV market form. I don't really know what's going to happen to it, but I guess it will be out there in one form or another - possibly even with commentary and behind-the-scenes. It seems like a lifetime ago that we were in production on it...but it hasn't even been a year yet. Crazy.

Closet Space is trucking along - we shot some test footage for the tentacles over the weekend. Test footage...tentacles...does that make it "test-tacle" footage? These are the questions that haunt us.

Anyway, the digital FX guy is working on that stuff for us right now, so we can see what he can do with it. The practical FX guy is also doing some tests and designs.

Started doing the CS shooting schedule last night - its another motherf&%ker, but we only have 3 locations. If we can hit things efficiently, I think we'll have no problem shooting this one out.

But then again, I said that last time, didn't I?

In totally unrelated news, I experienced the worst pain I've had to endure in a while at the doctors office today. I will leave you with this: stop using q-tips to clean out your ears immediately. Trust me.

Manic Compression

I'm spending this weekend in a state of quasi-relaxation to allow my brain and body to catch up to one another after the madness of the last few weeks. Actually, it's been longer than that...this is the first pure down-time that I've had since my honeymoon late last year. But, as is par for the course for me, I'm not fully immersed in laurel-resting. To wit:

After we returned from the mini-tour with Jonah, I dove right back in to Closet Space mode - getting the actors ready to rehearse, securing some locations and materials, getting the shoot dates together, and most importantly finding a digital and practical FX supervisor. I believe that I've found both, and they seem to be on the same page creatively, which of course, is a huge plus. They both are also very enthusiastic about the project - another huge plus. The final plus is that neither of them are flinching about any of the really brutal, gory, rough stuff that I want to do in this movie. We all seem to be sick in the same way, which is great. Now we can begin the design and life-casting process.

We are doing some more location work tomorrow, and then I'm going to start storyboarding and character designs this week. Our go date is May 20, and we are shooting throughout June. I guess I'd better rest while I can.

And by "rest", of course I'm implying that I'm going to see a midnight screening of Cannibal Holocaust tonight. What better way for the House to unwind than to watch an infamous exploitation movie featuring bludgeoning, animal cruelty, rape, genital mutilation, and (of course) cannibals? I tremble in anticipation. Of course, I've seen the movie dozens of times already, but I can't wait to see it on the big screen with a crowd. Should be a blast.

I'm not really here...

Wow. This week(end) has been surreal.

I've been the unofficial tour manager/bass player for Jonah Matranga these last few days on a small Texas run of shows. Jonah came in on Tuesday night, and we had dinner, hung out a little and had a short practice with the other two members of his band to be. Wednesday Jonah and I got to hang out and talk a lot about various things (some of which might prove to be exciting projects for the future). Wednesday night was the show at the Proletariat. Radio Pioneer, You In Series, and Jenny Westbury opened the show, and they were all really, really good. Jonah dedicated "A-L-L-Y-S-O-N" to my wife Melanie (who became his unofficial merch woman), which was sweet.

Thursday night we played at The Yellow House in Denton. The "venue" was punk-rock/d.i.y. to the extreme, but it ended up being a pretty fun show, with Jonah jumping up on couches and furniture while singing. Right afterward, we got on the road to get to Austin in time for our 9 AM SXSW showcase load-in. Domingo was a driving machine, and we made it to Austin in time to catch at least a couple of hours of sleep.

Friday was a madhouse - there were 10 bands showcasing on each of the Emo's stages, and it was total anarchy at times - but in a good way. During the day, I got to catch pieces of sets by Head Automatica, You In Series, Fear Before The March Of Flames, Fall Of Troy, and the reunited Lifetime (who were incendiary).

Before I knew it it was time for us to play, and I quickly went from being pretty nervous to having the time of my life. Jonah did a couple of solo acoustic songs while we set up behind him, and then we all launched into "Lukewarm" - but not before Jonah plugged Witchcraft 13 (thanks for that, by the way). The crowd (which was probably the largest that I've ever played in front of) went crazy over the loud rock. When we closed out the set with the Far classic "Bury White" it all went to a whole other level entirely. I was screaming the song along with guys in the crowd who were going positively batshit over the whole thing. I forget how much of a following that Jonah has until stuff like that goes down. It was a phenomenal experience, to say the least. Afterwards, I spent the rest of the afternoon/evening in Austin eating and walking around the 6th St. St. Paddy's day/SXSW nuttiness, all the while coming down from that sizable high.

This morning the crew all woke up and headed home to get Jonah on his flight. Before we left Austin, we stopped in to Whole Foods for breakfast, and we ran into a couple of Jonah's friends from NYC. They told me that they absolutely loved my playing during the show and the fact that I was getting nuts and singing along the whole time. I told them thanks, and that it meant a lot to me...seeing as how Jonah is a huge musical idol of mine. Their remarks really made me feel nice and complete, and it was a neat post-script to this wonderfully surreal experience for me.

Thanks to Dwayne and Rudy from Radio Pioneer for being a kick-ass guitarist and drummer, and helping me with this crazy idea. Thanks also to You In Series and Fear Before The March Of Flames for letting us all use your stuff. And most of all, thanks to Jonah for being not only an inspiration, but a great friend as well.

This Is The Part

I played onstage with one of my rock idols last night. It was bad ass.

The crowd was practically screaming all the songs, especially the Far stuff. Or maybe it was me screaming them on stage.

More to come once we finish up our Texas run of shows on Saturday.

Could this be the impending release of Witchcraft 13?

If you look at the description, it is that of Witchcraft XII, but the box art makes it look like the included movie is Witchcraft 13.

Either way, I guess we'll know on May 23, 2006. Thanks to Joel for pointing this out to me.

Just a quick aside:

You should all be watching Penn & Teller's BULLSHIT!. If you don't have Showtime, go out and buy the DVD's right now.

Penn Jillette for President in 2008.

I'm out of luck...are you the same way?

Well, we are back from our trip to Chicago for the Midwest edition of the Fangoria Weekend Of Horrors. I believe the trip was a pretty successful one, even though I'm still suffering through the final throes of a killer cold/laryngitis (which of course, was exacerbated by the snowy, cold Illinois weather).

I arrived on Thursday, picked up my rental car (somehow upgraded to a 2006 Mustang at "economy class" rates - thanks Hertz), checked myself in to the hotel, and pretty much slept until dinnertime to try to get the sick out of my system. Later on, I hooked up with Mike (WC13 sound guy) and Will (WC13 DP), and we hooked up with Shaun (WC13 producer) and Mike Wolinski (WC13 writer) and had some "pie" aka pizza.

Friday, we pretty much killed time until that evening, when it was time to start setting up our booth for the convention. We put up posters for Witchcraft and Drawing Blood, and generally situated things. We also met up with Zoe Hunter (one of the witches of WC13 in attendance for the convention), and it was good to see her again. Then we popped into Chicago proper to see Jeff Wolinski's (WC13 writer and brother of Mike) new band play. I enjoyed what I saw/heard, but I felt like utter crap, so we had to bail relatively early.

Saturday morning I got to the convention center about 8 AM, and things were ramping up. The con ended up being pretty freaking packed, and there was a lot of traffic around our table. Zoe sold and signed a bunch of pictures, and even I did a few, but the big crowds started forming when Robert "Maniac Cop" Z'Dar joined our merry band of misfits. He was signing at the Tripod Films table to promote Drawing Blood (which he stars in), and a lot of the fans showed him some love, most of which spilled over onto us through osmosis.

Saturday night the gang and I caught an advance screening of Slither (with cast and crew in attendance), and I have to say that it was pretty much everything that I expected. Slither wears it's influences on it's sleeve, but what's great about that is that the aforementioned influences are the wet, slimy, hard-R body horror movies of the 70's and 80's. No pussy PG-13 "horror" here. Kudos go out to James Gunn and company - the audience enjoyed the hell out of your movie.

Sunday was more of the same, although I did get to see the Silent Hill panel, which amped me up for the movie even more than I already was. The SH producers showed the brutal clip that they showed at the Comic-Con a while back, and it looks freaking sweet. Thank Christ that someone finally applied the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" adage to these survival-horror video game adaptations. We can finally have one to be proud of, it seems.

Thankfully I didn't go swag-crazy this time (although I did finally pick up the Meet the Feebles DVD), but it looks like I'll be going to the Burbank show as well, so maybe I can go broke then. I was also informed that Witchcraft 13 will be screening in Chicago next month, so I'll be heading back up there for that. Hopefully, it won't be so freaking cold.

Vitruvian Man

We did our first set of auditions/readings for Closet Space yesterday. They went very, very well (thanks to the LeBlancs for letting us use their place AGAIN for movie stuff). The luxury I have this time around is that we have so many good people and no real nudity or sex scenes to worry about, so I pretty much have my pick for the cast. Plus, I'm actually at the top of the food chain on this movie, thus making me the sole casting decision maker - which is the way I like it, of course. I think I have all the roles decided on by this point - there are just a few x-factors floating around out there before I can finalize the cast. I was most worried about the male lead, though....turns out the filling of that role fell into place quite well yesterday.

Now we can start setting up cast readings and crew meetings, in addition to getting the remainder of the financing and legal stuff squared away (aka the "Movie Business" part).

The doer alone learneth. - Freidrich Nietzsche

Preach on, brother Freddie.

It does feel kind of strange wrapping up the Witchcraft stuff - as much as it drives/drove/has driven me crazy, it has been a large part of my life for the last 6 months or so. I guess in a way, I have Closet Space ramping up quickly to quell my cinematic separation anxiety. That, and I don't want to waste another 4 to 5 years between movies.

In hindsight, Witchcraft has paid off in a lot of ways (and it hasn't even hit the market yet) - our Closet Space budget is in large part due to those who were impressed by what we did on WC13. And the enthusiasm seems to be spreading...in the days surrounding the release our CS budget effectively doubled as we gained more interested (and impressed) parties. I always read about things like that happening to producers/directors, but now it's actually happening to me....and it's kind of weird, but also exciting at the same time, of course.

I'm hoping to make some more inroads at the Fango convention next week - I made a shit-ton of connections at the Texas Frightmare Weekend, and Fango is probably the largest convention of that ilk. Plus, the fanboy side of me is looking forward to it as well, especially since we are "vendors" and have heightened access. Witchcraft and Drawing Blood are set to have a table, and Robert Z'Dar (Drawing Blood, Maniac Cop, Tango and Cash), and Zoe Hunter (Witchcraft 13) will be with us to sign autographs and take pictures.

In other news - my other musical identity took over and we had our first full-band practice for the Jonah Matranga shows next month. Things went pretty well - I'm actually a better bassist than I thought I would be, what with not really playing at all the last few months, and only then playing guitar while I was rendering an edit or something. Plus, I only really play bass guitar on our Grey Party demos and recordings (and on the Electric Purgatory teaser trailer theme). At least I won't be the center of attention, so I can creep into a dark corner and rock out at the shows.

The best and the worst of me...at the same time.

So the Witchcraft 13 premiere was tonight. I had a feeling that it was going to kick ass early on, when we had to move everyone from the smallest theatre in the Drafthouse to one of the largest. The original theatre seated 80, and the second, larger one held 150 (supposedly). The evenings head total was 170. 170 people there to see the movie that I went through all 7 levels of hell for. It was a pretty cool feeling...but what would they think of it?

More importantly, would I care?

Fortunately, everyone seemed to like the flick. The refrain for the evening was "Better than I thought it would be" ...which leads me to wonder what it was exactly they expected.

All of the people whose opinions I actually would take to heart dug the fuck out of WC13 - these are the working actors, musicians, film/movie makers, and general industry people that have gone through the trenches as well. Actually, the only thinly-veiled shitty comments I recieved were courtesy of the biggest reprobates that I know. "Talking loud and saying nothing", to quote the Godfather of Soul. Sad, really...but some people are just curmudgeons for life, I guess.

I hung out with some of the local filmmakers afterwards, and it actually seemed like I inspired a few of them to get their things off the ground. I couldn't ask for a better reward. Just make sure you put that 'Made In Texas' tag on there.

Now the final cut gets turned in and the video release date gets set, and I'm off to start pre-production on Closet Space...well, I guess actually I'll start that AFTER the Jonah shows, so I have to put on the musical hat before doffing the movie one again. Closet Space auditions are this weekend, though, so that should be fun.

Next weekend we are in Chicago to promote WC13 and Drawing Blood at the Fangoria Weekend Of Horrors. That should be fun as well, especially since the guest list kicks ass.

I never wanna say my best days are behind me.

We went on our first location visit to one of the locales for Closet Space today. The place is awesome, and offers lots of opportunities. We are doing a small audition on Saturday the 25th, mainly so that we can start the FX casting process (molds, etc.) There's some weird stuff going on right now in regards to some of the roles, but hopefully I'll be able to iron that out in a week or so. One luxury we have with Closet Space is that of time.

I have two screenings at the Alamo this week: Electric Purgatory tomorrow night, and the Witchcraft 13 premiere on Wednesday. It's Mel House week at the Drafthouse, apparently.

I'm also practicing for the upcoming mini-tour with Jonah Matranga. So basically...I'm finishing post on one movie, prepping another to shoot, and learning music in any downtime that I have after that (plus my 8 -5 job, of course). It makes for an interesting sleeping schedule.

Rockin' in the free world...

Okay, so here's the news. A lot of you probably already know who Jonah Matranga is. If you don't - well, he was in a bunch of really good bands like Far, Gratitude, New End Original, and Onelinedrawing. He also sings on the new Fort Minor record. Those of you that came to my wedding heard me play one of Jonah's songs.

Anyway, Jonah is coming to Texas to play the SXSW showcase for Equal Vision Records (on March 17 at Emo's if you're interested in coming down for that), but we are trying to book a couple of Texas shows around that for him. So far we have the Houston one locked down: the show will be Wednesday, March 15 at The Proletariat (903 Richmond). Actual show time and cover are forthcoming, but I would guess we will start about 7-ish.

Houston's own Radio Pioneer will be opening the show, but here's the "big personal musical announcement": myself and members of Radio Pioneer will also be performing as Jonah's backing band. I'll probably be playing bass, maybe regular guitar as well. I'm pretty stoked about that - it should be a really fun time. Some of you may remember me going up in flames the last time I played with Jonah (in 1999 I think)....hopefully that won't happen this time. I was mainly freaked out about being on stage with one of my musical idols (I would liken it to playing onstage with Kurt Cobain for me, seriously), but I think I've gotten over being squirrely about fame in the last few years.

Anyway, I hope to see all the Houstonian readers there. Dallas/Ft. Worth area people - do not fret, as we are working on getting a show set up there the following night.

For more info, you can check out Jonah's website or the Equal Vision Records site.

The long in the works "musical announcement" is about a day or two away. It's not necessarily a huge deal, but it's pretty exciting for me (and who knows, it might excite one or two of you as well). Check back in a couple of days for more info.

In The Valley Of Dying Stars

Got back from my whirlwind excursion to L.A. today - it was a very productive trip, and I also managed to enjoy myself a little bit as well.

Friday afternoon I arrived, went through the usual "pick up the rental car and fight LA traffic" BS, and I met up with Andras Jones in Hollywood (oddly enough, he was staying at Andy Dick's house), and we proceeded to talk a little more in depth about Closet Space. Andras has lots of great ideas about the script and character dynamics, and it gets me really excited about the possiblility of us collaborating on this project.

Plus, he was in A Nightmare On Elm Street 4. So this is still a little surreal to me.

Friday night I met up with Cesar (from Witchcraft 13's opening scene) and Pam B. (who trained me at the Cheesecake Factory back in my table-waiting days...she was also the object of my first and last Chasing Amy-style crush back then) and we had a great time eating chicken and waffles and then selling our souls to the mighty Amoeba.

Saturday, Jason (writer of Closet Space) and I went out and killed some time in the lovely O.C. weather (which of course included my consuming a 4x4 "Animal Style") until we could meet up with Andras again - mainly so that we could pow-wow on the script ideas with Jason present. We sat and talked about things for a while, and generally all got amped up about the project. Andras is also helping us make some connections that have the potential to greatly increase the quality of the movie.

The trip went so well that I didn't once mind waking up at 3 AM to drive into LAX and catch my early Sunday-morning flight. Of course, I slept the whole plane ride home (with the help of the iPod and The Soft Bulletin).

This week will see me trying to get all the ducks in a row to make this project happen the way that I want it to.

Walk Among Us

So this weekend I will find myself in Los Angeles once again, mainly trying to make some things fall into place for Closet Space. I guess you could say that I'm "taking meetings"...which is strange, to say the least. Unfortunately I'll miss a Fishbone performance by a scant few hours. I guess this is technically a business trip, anyway, although I still plan on hangin' with my other LA homies if I can.

Before I take off, I'll be meeting with several key crew and cast to try and get the ball rolling on CS. I'm also trying to put the next (and hopefully final) edit of Witchcraft 13 to bed in the next few days.

I know I still have yet to make that "musical announcement" - that's still coming together as well, but hopefully I'll have something solid by the beginning of next week.

Just got back from the Texas Frightmare Weekend. Lots of cool stuff went down, but I guess most importantly... Witchcraft 13's Anjanette Clewis was on a "Scream Queen" panel (along with Brinke Stevens, Debbie Rochon, Caroline Williams, Ashlie Rhey and Heidi Martinuzzi) moderated by Joe Bob Briggs. She told the story about going blind. We also set up a monitor at Anjanette's table and played the WC13 trailer on a continuous loop. She posed for photos and did a few signings, and even I got to autograph a few of the WC13 postcards that we printed up. Nice. People did seem to have a morbid curiosity towards the movie, which I guess is positive.

I also made a few valuable connections that may come into play for Closet Space...we'll see how those pan out. Look for a Horror Channel interview with myself in the coming days coverage of the TFW. Also, good show kudos go out to the Necrophobia gang as well as the guys from The Quick and the Undead. Keep an eye out for these flicks in the coming year.

In closing, original Jason Ari Lehman is one cool mofo.

Radio Ga Ga

To expand further on the radio8ball stuff - On a lark, I decided to ask one of the Nightmare On Elm Street 4 cast if he would be interested in being in Closet Space. This guy actually delivered one of my favorite horror-movie performances in his role in that film, even though he doesn't go crazy and kill anyone, or have a massive death scene. The character just seemed real, and I responded to that.

Anyway, I contacted Andras Jones (aka Rick in NOES4), and he seemed up for at least reading the script. He seemed to like it, and asked me to call ino the radio show last night. To explain:

"KAOS 89.3 FM in Olympia, Washington from 6 to 8PM (PST) on Tuesday nights. ----- People call in with questions. We answer these questions by picking a CD at random, placing it in the CD player and pushing shuffle function. The song which is randomly chosen is the answer to the question. Like drawing a tarot card, throwing the I-Ching or shaking a Magic 8 Ball."

Andras' idea was for me to call in and propose the filmic collaboration to the Radio 8 Ball.

First, Andras asked the Radio8Ball himself (probably thinking that I wussed out):

But little did he know - I was the next in queue.

(FYI - The above files are kind of large and long, because they play the whole song through).

It was a fun way to initiate things, and even if it doesn't work out this time around, I can definitely see us working together in the future. Check out Andras' show on Tuesday if you can (they stream live)...I found it pretty entertaining (and at times, eerily accurate).

Andras, I hope you don't mind me posting about this. I figured we blew our cover last night.