184: The Economy of Murder

Hi, I'm Christine Elise McCarthy, and you're listening to Movie Meltdown. Falling Program is a proud member of the Pallava. Family of podcasts. Check out all the shows over at pallava.com. That's P-A-L-L-A-V-A dot com.

The following feature has been rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America. It is intended for mature audiences and parental discretion is advised. It's showtime, folks. Enjoy the show. Our nuclear reactor, pumping out one million kilowatts of power.

Are you going to bark all day, little doggy? Or are you going to bite? What's up and welcome to Movie Meltdown. I'm Brian. I'm Alan.

I'm Fred. And we are coming to you live via digital recording from Christine's bedroom. I should probably explain. We are at the hotel here at the Fright Night Film Fest slash Fandom Fest here in Louisville. And since we're in her room, I guess we should introduce our special guest co-host this week, Christina Leis.

Do you throw the other name on there? Yeah, I actually do now. It's just to make people more confused. It's Christina Leis McCarthy. All right.

And then we also have filmmaker Miles. Miles Miller. Cool. So, yeah, we were going to do a whole themed episode, but I thought we would invite you guys in and do a little bit with you first. I know most people here at this festival were probably here and know you probably Child's Play, too.

This is a very horror-heavy crowd, so they probably know you from that. But, I mean, you've done quite a bit, several seasons on 90210. Actually, I was impressed with the China Beach. I'd forgotten that. I was a big fan of that one, actually.

I guess my favorite job is... That's the work I'm most proud of, too, yeah. Very cool. It was a great show, and it was around for years, but it never seemed like it got recognition. I don't know.

It got some Emmys and stuff, but it still didn't seem like the audience were really in love with it. It never made huge numbers. It just kept it running for years there. Yeah, it's interesting. It did win a bunch of awards.

It got acclaim at the time. It doesn't have any legs, though. It's not one of the shows people look back on or remember as being the great show that it actually was. It's weird. I don't know why.

Yeah, it was really well done. I don't know, any other? ER was huge. And by the same people from China Beach. Yeah.

So the same, overwhelming a lot of the crew was the same. It was great. In the heat of the night, any other big ones you want to throw in there? You've done quite a few projects. I have.

I don't want to talk about that, though. Nothing? I've got good dorky questions, like the black leather hat. That's my hat. I was like, it's got to be hers.

It followed her from different projects. Yeah, it's in like seven shows, as are the boots with the spur that I'm wearing currently. These are also in about almost every job I've ever done, these boots appear. Nice. Often with the spur, sometimes without.

Actually, mostly without the spur because of sound problems. The spur that jingles, jingles, jingles. It's not good for sound. It's not good for the sound department. But yeah.

That's funny you picked that hat up, though. I still own that hat. Well, yeah. A hat person than I am. Anybody who finds a good hat and sticks with it, I like that.

I had bad hair. Always many a bad hair day, so that's why that hat was my best friend. Oh, let's see. If you don't want to go into the 90210 stuff... I don't.

Have a problem going into it. I'm just not going to initiate it. I'll answer any questions you ask. I'm just not going to volunteer stuff. I wasn't going to have, like, Tiger Beat questions.

I was just going to say, like, you know, that was a huge phenomenon at the time. I mean, how... being caught up in the middle of that? Because, I mean, it really was, like, those first five years or so, it was pretty huge as far as pop culture. I mean, what was it like being in the middle of that? It was crazy, actually.

They were like the Beatles. And I. Got a lot of the residual effects of it myself. I, for a long time, couldn't go to the mall because I would get chased around by teenage girls and people gasping. You were probably wearing that hat, and they spotted you right off the bat.

The hair, too. The head didn't help. That's right. They were both bad for me as far as being incognito. But it was exciting.

It's a really rare thing to have happen, and most shows don't get that level of success. It's a really unusual thing to ever have it occur. There's no show like that right now. Including the new one. Yeah, exactly.

It was an interesting perspective to get. I think that a lot of people think that that level of fame is fun and exciting and glamorous and it's really great to have experienced. It and know for sure that it isn't. It isn't what you think and it's something that I never need to have again. But it's a luxury to know it and not have to talk yourself into believing that, because you're never going to get it, because most people don't get it.

You know, to know that it's not, it's a mirage of complications, really. Yeah. I mean, that's, I guess, the distinction of success and fame, which, again, in today's weird reality TV kind of world, there's a very big difference there. So, yeah, it's... And it's that this paparazzi machine did not exist back then.

Oh, no. Jason was huge, and, you know, cover of Rolling Stone... huge and really not able to go anywhere regular, like the supermarket or the bowling or, you know, things that like regular people like us do. Um, but there was nobody camping outside our front door. There was, there was, but we're not, he was the one time we ever had a paparazzi problem. I lived with Jason for five or six years.

Um, it's actually kind of a cool story. I was in that Jason had gone to work and I was in the kitchen making coffee or something. He has a knock on the door and I opened the front door and, uh, uh, Oh, come on Curry. Um, From Tim Curry. Tim Curry's standing at my front door.

Tim Curry's up there with his dog. And I'm like, oh, my God, Tim Curry's knocking on my door. What's going to be happening here? And he's like, oh, I was just walking my dog, and I could see you across the canyon. There's a bunch of people with cameras, and they're pointing them at your big lenses at your house.

I was like, okay. And I told him to go away. And they're like, oh, no, we're photographing the sunrise. They're looking north, and the sun doesn't rise in the north, so I don't think that's what's going on. You might want to close all your curtains and stuff in the back of the house and close your shades.

Well, thank you, thank you, and I did. And then about a week and a half later, I was in Georgia doing an episode of In the Heat of the Night. And I'd been there for a couple days, and the next day. I go to work, and I was like, Christine, if you have any problems, if you need anything from us, just come and ask. If you're uncomfortable ever, let us know.

I'm like, okay. I don't really know. And three or four people finally had to say, like, I don't know what's going on here. Why is everyone so concerned that I'm uncomfortable? And apparently Hard Copy had run a piece about me.

It was kind of about, I have it, it's hilarious, about poor sweet Christine who has to hole herself up in the house every day because she's being stalked by rabid Jason Priestley fans who want her to die. Or Tim Curry. Yeah. And they had this footage of me, and I had to call security on them that day. I closed the curtains and they were in the front of the house and I had to call security and have them chased away.

And they have footage of me talking to security and they have footage of me closing the windows in the back of the house. But they made this whole story up that what I was hiding from was not them, hard copy, but rabid teenage girls. How clever of them. Yeah. Hmm.

That's the only real paparazzi thing that happened in all of that time, and nowadays. It's, yeah. You can't do anything, right? No. It's weird.

It's really not. I don't think it's healthy for anyone, either. Probably not. Again, I just wanted to pick a few of probably the lesser-known ones, one of which was actually something I really liked, and it's been so long because it's not available anymore, but you were on the TV series of A League of Their Own, playing Kit. That is true.

I somewhere have a VHS tape of the entire run of that season. Why? Because I like that show. That show was so bad. That show was so bad.

My taste is questionable. I realize that. That was the unfunniest show that was ever produced. Well, it's hard to do a... And that's what I thought.

It's hard to do a continuation from a movie into a TV... I mean, they've tried on a lot of occasions. How often does it work? So it's... It might have worked if they'd done an hour single camera, but it was a multiple camera sitcom set up and a whole baseball team of women.

So you've got like 13 women that have to have something to say in every episode. And they would basically like deal dialogue like cards out, like playing cards. And everyone would have like one line every four and a half pages. And it was not even specific to your character necessarily. And you'd be like, trying.

To have like a life, like keep yourself busy while, like a character sitting there just waiting to say your line. You have to act like you've got a life going on for so long that you lose track. And then I'd be like, it's. Really quiet all of a sudden oh It's my line. The worst episode for that of all was the one Tom Hanks directed one.

That's what I was going to say. That was one of his first directing jobs ever. And he was really sweet and really funny, but I had the least to do in that episode, and I had the most dropping the. Ball with my line. You must think I'm absolutely retarded because.

I could not. He still talks about it. That's good to know. If Tom Hanks is gossiping about me, I'm cool with that. You can't complain about that.

No. Yeah, he and Tim Curry. They get together and have lunch. Yeah, exactly. Like, can you believe her?

Poor, sweet Christine. Poor, pathetic, blind, forgetting Christine. The only other one I was going to do. I know several of us on the show are big fans of other versions of the Body Snatchers series. We haven't done a whole episode on yours.

What was your take on your version? And specifically, I guess, Abel Ferreira is kind of an interesting director. How is he to work with him? Well, I actually just. Told a story about this yesterday.

Abel is like wound up like a top. And a lot of nervous energy and pacing. I'm unable to speak. He's so tight, like a snare drum. And he tends to, the good thing about him is that he really trusts whoever he hires, whatever department you're in, whether you're an actor or you're a.

DP or whatever. If he's hired you, then he trusts you completely, and he will not question the decisions you make. And with that, just to the point that he doesn't even make you stick to the script at all. As long as you get the point of the story across, as long as whatever had to be. Accomplished in that scene gets accomplished, he doesn't care what words you use to get there.

Which sounds great, but it's also really dangerous, and it's maybe too much freedom. I'm really bad in that movie. I had way too much freedom. I didn't know what the hell I was doing. Really too much freedom. and got lost a couple of times, and the story I tell a lot, and I told it yesterday, was really not doing a good job, and really insecure about it, and he's like having me do it over and over again, and not giving me any guidance as to what it is I'm doing wrong, until finally he gets so frustrated, he's pacing back and forth, back and forth.

He's like, you know, you gotta just act better. The best directing ever. Which didn't help, as you can imagine, and I don't think I acted any better. So, well, the movie, it's actually, it was shot. In a weird stylized way where everything was wildly over lit.

There's huge banks, like the size of a wall, eight by 10 bank of huge hot burning lights that were like serious skin off, even. Got like within a foot of this thing, wall of lights. And then underexposed the film. With this over lit environment, which I guess resulted in a supersaturated color palette. It's a beautiful-looking film, I think, as a result, but they would be lighting.

We'd have setups in that movie that we would break for lunch. We almost wouldn't get a shot until dinnertime just because of lighting. And that's all part of him trusting his DP, too. Like, okay, if it takes 18 hours to light it, that's good with me. So, yeah, I think that he's an artist, but he's a crazy one.

That's pretty much how the stories go. That's why I wondered how your experience was. Well, I guess we can jump ahead. I know now, I guess which came first because you're involved in programming film festivals and filmmaking. So which led you to the other?

I've been doing film festivals for 14 years. I've been doing that for much longer. Programming one in Michigan called the Waterfront Film Festival since 99, I think. And then I made a short film a year and a half ago called Bathing and the Single Girl and that. Got into, I think it's at 86 festivals at this point in time.

But it's a short, and I wanted. To go to a bunch of the festivals, and the festivals don't fly you in if you're at a short, because it's just a financial thing. So I would pimp myself out any way I could to get to go. I'll do anything for you. I'll program for you.

I'll curate a shorts block for you. I'll be a juror for you. I'll do it. And fortunately for me, a bunch of festivals... I took that bait.

And you got a lot of work that you weren't prepared for. A lot of more unpaid work, yeah, but a lot of unpaid work, but a lot of sponsored travel. So that's what I did it for. I knew that's what I was asking for, and I got it. So it's been great.

It's been really fun. And then, I guess, do you want to move into directing more? Directing is what I can't. went to school for it when I was 18. That's what I initially wanted to be, was a director. I had no desire to be a performer on any level.

I was way too shy. And this is never anything I aspired to at all. But as I told the panel. Yesterday, I did a year of film school in Boston at BU, and then I thought, well, there's no point in going to film school in Boston. There's no film industry here.

I'll just go to Los Angeles. Back in the day, state schools in California, like UCLA or USC, was $ 600 a year if you were a state resident. So I thought, and BU where I was was like, you know. 18,000 a year. So I'm like, well, I'll just go to California and I'll live there for a year and I'll do some internships and then I'll go to school for almost nothing and I'll get a film degree and at least I'll know my way around the city I'm working in rather than graduating from Boston.

Anyway, you know, three or four years later, I'm still a cashier on Rodeo Drive and I'm making six bucks an hour and I can't afford even time off from work to go to. Film school if I could even afford the film school. And, um, To make a long story short, I was like, oh, how can I. Get involved in the film industry with no skills and no talent and no training? I guess I'll be an actor.

A lot of actors have no talent and succeed all the time. I don't know why I can't be one of them. That's how that went. It actually is. So now you're finally kicking it into moving into that more of a.

That happened by mistake, actually. I've been getting pressure to write, write, write my entire life. It's almost like I'm being punked. Total strangers walk up to me and ask how the writing is going. It's like, I don't understand why.

The guy, John Wells, who runs. ER, the creator of ER, whenever I ran into him, he would ask me how my writing was going. He's only ever known me as an actor. I have dabbled in writing. I wrote a couple of 90210s.

But it's not how I define myself. So it's a really weird pressure I've gotten just from the universe always. And so a girlfriend challenged me to do this comedy thing, and Leslie Angel said a comedy theater there where you read like a 2,000-word essay, a true comic essay about yourself. She said, I'll do it if you do it. I did it.

She didn't do it. It was supposed to be funny. I think it was funny. It seemed to be... Received it as if it were funny.

And nobody in town thinks I'm funny, though. And Los Angeles is not even allowed to audition for a comedy. So I thought, oh, I should have taped that. I should have gotten a video of that. You're on a black list.

I am. I'm the unfunny list. You know why? A league of their own. See?

Yes. I'll never let that thing down. Tim Curry is the bouncer. Like, no, you're not getting in. Yeah.

Yeah. It's terrible. So I thought, okay, at least I'll do it again at a different comedy theater thing. and have somebody videotape it so I can give it to my agents so they can at least have the confidence that I have some ability. To be funny. And then a friend of mine who's like an A-list commercial DP saw that, and he said, that's really funny, but.

It looks like ass. If you let me direct it, I'll shoot it for you. And he's like, you know, oil of Olay ads and big, you know, huge A-list beauty, he's like the go-to guy for. Beauty, women in beauty things. I was like, yeah, yeah, yes, you can do this.

And so we shot a day or two, and. And he shot his beautiful stuff. The stuff that he shot gets singled out a lot for, oh my God, that shot is so beautiful. But he had a different take on it. I had him shoot shots that he refused to cut in for me.

He wanted to end the movie with me alone eating a TV dinner. It's a movie about dating, and it's a comedy, not a tragedy. I shouldn't be crying into my hungry man dinner at the end of it. So he got frustrated with me. I was like, I don't care.

You can just have the footage. Do what you will. The whole time we had been. Working together, I'd been complaining to another friend who also can be a DP and an editor. And I said, if you'll help me finish it, just shoot the rest of it for me and cut it together.

And so I sort of fell into it. By mistake. Every step I took, somebody pushed me to do it, and I didn't intend to direct it, but that's what happened. Well, it looks really good. Thank you.

Thank you. And I think there's a little of both in there. It is actually, and you are very funny, but I think what I appreciated was that somebody else out there was suffering, too. So it's good to know the sadness. I was just like, this sounds, you know, gender reversal.

But this is pretty familiar, actually. But TV dinner equals tragedy. That's just one of your arms. I eat those every night. Yeah, alone.

Oh, and then we'll have an M.O.I. shot of your washer and dryer in the background. I don't know. At the end of Hamlet, they eat TV dinner. I'm pretty sure. Yep, I think it's true.

Well then, Miles, you had a film that you've done recently. You were trying to get the word out on that one as well. Oh yeah, Pillow is the title. My brother and I, my brother Josh Miller wrote and directed and produced together. We've been touring for a.

Little over a year now. A little few months over a year, I can't remember. Started February 2011 touring. It's kind of wrapping it up right now. But yeah, we have a few more fests to go to and then kind of retiring that. and then working on our feature.

Did you watch Pillow? Yes, I did. It visually is like really impressive. Like is it something, and I'm watching trying to figure out how much was like that originally or did you end up working in like, you know, how much was like filters or how much was post- color adjustment, because it has a very signature kind of, like, tone to it. Yes, we were definitely going for those colors.

We used a red camera and baked in a look and colored the hell out of it, pretty much. Yeah, because visually it looks really good. Thank you. Did it screen yesterday? No, no, it's not here.

Oh. But if we have, I don't know, if you have links or anything, I can put that on the, I can add it to the episode. Absolutely. Yeah. Festivals right now.

Yeah, festivals right now. We can't put it out until after the festival. But, yeah, we can definitely tell people it's out there and look for it at festivals. Thank you. That is Pillow.

And is yours still making the circuit, or have you run the course? No, mine's still doing a couple, too. We're both going to be at Art of Brooklyn in August. I think we're both there, right? I'm pushing to try to break 100.

I want to crest 100. I don't think I'm going to really be able to. I really exhausted all of it. I think all the opportunity there is out there. What are you up to now?

86. There's a lot of cities with a lot of film festivals. You know, but I won't pay entry fees. I can't afford to, frankly. So I have that hurdle of they have to.

Waive the fee and they have to have not already passed. Or already screened it. I mean, there are a lot of festivals out there, but I'm just going through Without a Box. I'm ferreting out the ones that aren't even on Without a Box, which I'm sure there are hundreds that aren't on. Without a Box.

So what we're saying is if you have a film festival out there. And you want to wave my feet. Get a hold of her. Yeah, we're looking for what? Bathing in the Single Girl.

Yeah. What's that website? Bathinginthesinglegirl.com Nice plug. I know. All right.

Well, with that, I think we'll take a break and we'll come back with this week's movie. There's nothing else to eat TV dinners They really can't be beat I like them frozen But to understand I throw them in and wave them And I'm abandoning Oh. Yeah Intermission time. Time for that stretch you've been wanting. And best of all, time to take your pick from that scrumptious array of tasty treats waiting for you at the snack bar.

Where the popcorn's poppin'. The cold drinks are sparkling. The coffee is steaming. And a luscious treasure of confectionery delights with ice cream and candy and so much more to tempt any taste is waiting for you now at the snack bar. You'll be notified in plenty of time when the next show is about to begin.

Help! They're coming! Saturday, May 18th. It is affecting people. A final event for the human population.

People are being duplicated. An event you don't dare sleep through. They get you when you sleep. Sit up! And they don't dare live through it.

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Sounds better. Welcome to a night of total terror. That's Mickey Mouse's penis. They don't look to be afraid. They look to be shocked.

Here's vagina! Did you see Miley Cyrus' globulous breasts? Night of the Living Podcast. I found more syrup on my pants. Bizarre adventure in fear.

There was, however, a guy using. An experience in shock. More shattering than your strangest nightmare. Green and peachy. Night of the living podcast.

Ass to mouth is fantastic. Yeah. Holy shit. That just happened. What's that bad man doing to my donkey?

A night of total terror. I can't maintain this level of ridiculousness. Maybe it's song. Night. Of the Living Podcast.

My mom wants to do a show! This is Monique, the French foreign exchange student who'll be staying with us. This is Diane Franklin with Movie Meltdown. It's time for Sofa Theater. Shit!

CINEMA! CINEMA! CINEMA! All right, welcome back to Movie Meltdown Silver Theater. This week's Sofa Theater feature is Man Bites Dog.

The year is 1992. The director, does anybody think they have a good handle on how to say these properly before I put. Your name in? No, absolutely not. Let's just go with first names.

Remy, Andre, and Benoit is how we're, yeah. So, yeah, before I ruin their last names, yeah, just look it up. You know who we're talking about. Especially if you watch the movie, they're all in the movie. The plot, according to IMDb, In this dark satire, a film crew follows a ruthless thief and heartless killer as he goes about his daily routines, but complications set in when the film crew loses their objectiveness and begin lending a hand.

With that, spoiler alert, it's been since 92. Hopefully you've watched it before you get to this point. If not, fair warning. So, with that, where would you like to begin with Man Bites Time? Good Lord, I don't know.

I can't start this one. I'll just say this, though. I saw it in 92. It's one of my top ten films of all time, but I probably haven't watched it for at least ten years. I think it's been that long for me.

I saw it when it first hit video. It's still pretty vivid in my mind. It's a striking movie. It is. I had a different experience of it this time than before, though.

I kind of did, too. Because it's... I mean, I... I definitely see the satire, and it is moments that it's funny, but it seems a lot more cruel this time. And maybe I just lost that part over the years and remembered some of the better, you know, more interesting things and not so much just the nihilistic heartlessness.

So, yeah, I don't know. Is that how yours changed? I remember in high school seeing Pink Flamingos and thinking it was the greatest thing ever, and then ten years later seeing it and being like, unable to handle it. At all so it's still great in it's own way it's. A lot to deal with it's just I think age though I think your perspective changes a great deal what you'll accept as.

Funny changes so how did yours change since last. Time I it was too long for me this time I was getting really impatient with it this. Time I had a little of that me too I tried to watch it last week again and I had to turn it off and stuff I don't know I thought I was going to have some nightmares of that. I like the brutality of it, definitely still. They don't pull any punches in this one.

They're hardcore. There's a lot of comedy in it. And you get that, again, you go into it and right off the bat you realize you're kind of, you start to get that sense of what you're in for. When at first it comes off and it's just brutal. I mean, first scene, he's murdering someone.

But then you get into it and when he's explaining the way to weight them down when you're dumping the bodies, it starts off pretty grim, but then he starts talking about little people and what to do with old people because they're more porously boned. And you're like, okay, I kind of see where we're going with this. But yeah, it still continues to get darker and meaner as time goes on. Old people and babies, they're all fair game. Yeah.

Again, this movie does not get. I found him a lot more sympathetic, I guess, when I was younger, too. Like, I actually kind of liked him. He's charming, but he's not likable as time goes on. Right.

As the movie progresses, it becomes less and less, but even in the beginning, I was less on his side than I was historically. Yeah. And I don't remember all those other problems with him. I just remember him being a killer. But then as you get into it and he's kind of misogynistic.

He's racist. He might have homophobic issues. He says he's okay with it, but he seems to be pretty specific. I don't trust him. Yeah, he's...

Well, I would hope nobody trusts him. The thing that really bugged me about him the second time around was just how narcissistic he is. Which I guess makes sense because he. But. It just really struck me the second time around.

It's just really annoying more than anything. I don't know. He's launching into the poetry. His self-confidence and self-obsession when he's delivering his poetry. Pigeon.

Which I think plays into it. It's like you start to realize the way that this thing is set up, that cinema verite thing, it's like it... And it's what I've always said about, again, back to reality TV, it's like there is no real documentary. If people know there's a camera, it changed, the camera changes everything just by being there. And even in like you watch, you know, the bad reality TV, they play up the stupid drama that's going on.

But you give this, like in this situation, you give it to him and he just becomes this performer as much as he was a killer before. Now he's got this like showcase for it. And he's just like, it gets more brutal and more ridiculous. And he becomes a little more showboaty about everything he does as the movie progresses. So it's, I think that's sort of a statement that comes in where they're working in sort of the way media is supposed to.

But I think more than media, it's just that documentary film thing where it's like there's only so much of it that's going to be true. And then just having a camera there sort of changes what you're trying to do. It's different for me seeing it after seeing The Office. That's funny. Yeah, because I'm more aware of him playing...

That's true. To the camera. That's just been exploited. And I don't think I'd seen anything much like that when I first saw it. There was nothing like that.

I think that's sort of the terrible thing about time. When it passes, it condenses. And you lose this perspective of the time period that came out and what was going on then. It was groundbreaking. Yeah.

I mean, yeah, there wasn't really... anything that was i mean there wasn't. Even cops yet was there was cops even on them like was i don't know i think maybe cops. Was maybe but but even then i mean there weren't like any of this you know found footage run of movies and so i mean even that style of camera work was kind of unconventional certainly for like mass audiences not this crossed over into mass audiences but it it found its audience and and i think it's because it was just so groundbreaking visually and just the brutality of the story and the way that they sort of address things. But the interesting thing is like, if you read the director's statement, they weren't actually going for any kind of satire groundbreaking thing.

They just wanted to make a movie, see if they could do it before they moved on to other things. And, um, just people loved it. Yeah. So when I, yeah, when I heard that, cause I saw that like interview they did with them and it sort of like cheapened it a little bit because you realize they didn't have this grand, you know, statement they were trying to make. They were like, we don't have any money, so we have to shoot it this way.

We have to make it look like it's a bad camera running through a hallway because that's all we have. In a way, you get the realism of it, but at the same time, they weren't trying for that. They were just some kids in school, and this is what turned out. I think that increases its value, though. I think it does.

I think there's a definite appeal to unintentional art. It seems like at the time, I remember everybody talking about how it was about violence and the media yeah but now it doesn't really seem to me like it's the media i don't get that at all it doesn't seem like it's this organized media it's not like you're watching something like network or something it's just or natural born killers yeah well see i hated natural born killers after seeing um yeah as i saw it and i thought oh it's a ripoff of man bites dog and i already just hated Oliver Stone for various reasons. I'm a fan of Natural Born Killers. Really? I am.

Well, it's kind of that same thing. I liked it. It seems to do that. I remember people saying that about Man Bites Dog, but I don't see it so much. But yeah, Natural Born Killers is definitely.

I liked it at the time, and it's been a long time, so I'm wondering what happens when I revisit it now, that it's probably going to seem very different. I just have trouble with the idea of Oliver Stone commenting on that. It's like, based on what authority is Oliver Stone going to comment on the media doing that? It just seems like he's a participant. I don't see how, you know, how is he outside it to comment?

I don't know. Maybe that's the point. I don't know. I haven't seen it, so I don't know. I was going to go into what you thought on, like, because what I think is really different about him, and it's funny that they make him like he's a serial killer, but I'm like, As serial killers go, he's so not like any other serial killer.

I mean, he has no normal motivation. It's almost like he's just a glorified robber. It's like all he seems to want to do is kill people and take their money. And the killing, he kind of gets off on it, but it's not really some sort of weird need. It's not some specific system that he has to go through because it's something weird in his head.

He consciously knows he's doing it. It's not like he's feeding off of some weird darkness it's like he's conscious of it he just does it because he's it's like it's a job for him it's. A job and he seems to take real pride in being efficient at it like saving a bullet like just yeah effectiveness and efficiency uh economy of murder he's really proud of his skill he's good at yeah but yeah it's all about the money like don't kill a young couple they don't have any money so it's it is all about the money ultimately. Yeah most heroes don't Yeah, right. Maybe he had a thick wallet, sure.

He did kind of show some regret after he killed that suburban family. He called them innocents, like those three innocents in there. Yeah. Which almost didn't make sense, really. I'm not sure what that line meant.

Wasn't that when he was forced. To go out to the rich neighborhood, though? Because they said, I don't kill people that cause a stir. Little people don't. No one writes in the paper about the little guy getting killed.

They write about the big people, so they challenge him. And so I really don't have the nerve to kill him. What was sad in that scene is he seemed almost more upset about not so much the innocence that he just killed, but the fact that they were letting this house go. It needs a coat of paint. He seemed way more upset by that.

I was like, that shows you how hardcore this movie is. That's the part of the aspect of the movie that I really enjoy. It's just that sort of misplaced concern. And so. It's so everyday and ho-hum and that it's dry, you know.

And I think in the beginning that works to its advantage. I think in the beginning it really becomes kind of interesting when he stops and he starts talking about music or he starts, you know, just going off on his thoughts on architecture. It's like in the beginning it's really cool. I think, like you guys were saying, when you start to get tired of it is that second half when he's still doing that and he's still doing pigeon poems and he's still, like, We get five minutes on Remy's breath, and it's just like, you know, after a while, it's like, okay, you could probably trim some of this. Yeah.

It does seem like it could be more like a short story in a way. Probably like an hour run, which, again, is the hardest thing to market, I suppose. But, you know, it does seem like it would probably feel a little better maybe just over an hour. But I didn't have this complaint when I first saw it. Yeah.

So, I don't know. I can make it out of the way through. Yeah, over and over. Yeah. Maybe I'm just burnt out.

Yeah. Maybe we've changed. Yeah. God forbid. Yeah.

I actually watched it this last time with a friend, an author friend of mine from New York. His name is Michael Patrick McDonald, and he's much smarter than me. And he's like, this is like the premonition of Guy Debord, G-U-Y, D-U-B-O-R-D, apparently some French philosopher guy who predicted that. The world was going to be so consumed with consumerism. That it would stop living, people would stop living their lives and only want to watch life happen.

They would be disconnected from, and that's what this movie sort of is parodying, is his disconnection and more enjoying talking about what he's done, not really experiencing what he's doing, but wanting to talk about what he's done. And then how much further it's come. Nowadays, where with reality television, how we really have this become about watching other people live their life, right down to the Jersey Shore idiots and people, the real housewives, all those people who are these people? Why do we care? Why does anyone care?

I can't imagine. Or even just our own social media. Yeah. Facebook in general is kind of that same thing for every man. If somebody eats.

A dessert and they don't Instagram it. Right. It didn't happen. Exactly. I'm the most guilty of that.

My Facebook page is nothing but the meals I eat, lovingly photographed. I indulge in some food porn. Yes, food porn, absolutely. It's kind of becoming a problem. But you know what happened to me the other day?

I was trying to clear out my computer, and I found... that I had like 9,000 photos in my iPhoto trash, and they were all the photos that I have unselected of my life and my family. It's all of us. Blinking, looking fat, looking stupid. It's an alternate world to the one that I've been creating. You should create another Facebook page and just put those ones.

Create an alter ego of just the bad moments. I can't even delete it because it's this whole complete universe that I didn't know I was compiling. That you're in denial. I still say that's a gallery show. The other world.

It's horrible, man. I think that's great. You need to blow those up and put them on a wall. I actually have a question about the movie that Michael had a take on it. I'm not going to say what it is until somebody else has said Maybe a take.

When he's in the restaurant, they're eating the mussels in the restaurant, and there's that weird nude of him. He's running nude down the dune and rolling around in the sand. It's never referenced in any way. It's cut in there, and when they cut back out of it, he's puking. They cut right back to him puking mussels.

So what does anyone think. About what that is? Does anybody? Because I'm not sure. You got me.

Maybe it's like a food allergy. Yeah. Well, Michael's thing was he thought that there's nothing. Sort of more visceral than running around naked, literally rolling naked in the sand, that it's a really primal sort of real experience, and that too intense for. Him to deal with.

He needs to so be in that just talking about a place and not actually experiencing it, that the... the uh even an idea of a feeling that was real is too intense and he threw up which i kind. Of liked because i i would just skip past that scene and and not need it explained but it's obviously there for a reason and it's in that moment for a reason it's not put someplace else and i just i don't uh I would like to know what those guys, what the Remy would say. Yeah, I'm sure they have some reason that they at least put it back in there, even if they just, I mean, they had to go and shoot it, so yeah, what was the motivation for that? Actually, I had a thought about that when I watched it, because they're all dead by the end.

So who was it that found the camera and edited it together? That's true. Because there wasn't any of them. Because those are specific choices, too. Yeah, and there was a lot of interesting stuff.

They didn't edit it. It was fancy. Linear? I think you've unlocked the secrets. I mean, they just in-camera edited, probably, right?

Just shot it in order, right? No, there's a lot of just quick shots and things of him watching footage that kind of cuts back and forth. It's definitely been put together. I mean, I guess that's the last shot. As it went along.

Yeah, I guess there's that. Just add in that last shot. I just thought it was bad muscles. I didn't really think about it that much. It was more one of those things.

He drank so much. They were drinking like crazy, but. Yeah, I just feel like, I feel, I mean, I'm not one of those people that thinks, like, I'm going to film school a little bit, and you watch Psycho, and then you're supposed to think that every single, like, the picture, every picture on the wall has a meaning, and the size of somebody's hat, and the color of their shirt, and black and white movie colors, but every single detail was intentional, and having done, I mean, Hitchcock may be different, but having done a lot of movies, I know so much, not wearing that hat because it's symbolic of, like, man's inhumanity to man, It's because the other hat that she was going to wear, somebody spilled something on it, and that's the only one they could get at the last minute.

And so some film student somewhere is going to read, you know, some amount of meaning into it. So I don't think that there's meaning into every single thing, although it is in. His movie, in Pillow, I don't think there's a single thing in the frame that's not supposed to be there. It's a perfect film school film, but. Thank you.

Which actually sounds gross. That sounds insulting almost, but I didn't mean it that way. Because it's not a film school film, but. But I don't think it. Was unintentional that that nude thing was there and that it was put there.

It just seems like that's... Yeah. They went out of their way to do that. Yeah. Maybe he was just being animalistic.

More primal than strangling him with the dab of his bare hands. That's just part of it. Yeah. And then he got sick on the muscles. Yeah.

No, he also got sick from the muscles. But there is that thing all through the movie. I mean, that's true. It is like sort of inexperienced and then he's outside the experience commenting on it. I guess that I mean, you can't say that doesn't make sense as a reading of the scene.

To me, I guess it's just mental laziness. I saw the scene. It registered. I didn't really think too much about what it was or why it was there. I thought.

I kind of like... I thought, you've got to be careful with muscles. That is true. But I kind of like when they leave it open. Yeah, I almost hate...

In a way, it's kind of nice when you get that behind-the-scenes version and you get every second of the film commented on by the director and he explains everything, but I almost like those where everything's sort of left up to you. It really becomes more of a work of art then because everybody takes from it what they want and you can sort of give that meaning if you want or just sit there and watch it and let it pass by you. I've always kind of liked that, that you can sort of make what you want out of what's on the screen there. I think it's red hair and just a trick. They're just messing with us.

Really? No, it's their French. They have to get naked at some point. It's a rule. You have to have male frontal nudity in all French films, don't you?

I think it's in the bylaws of the country somewhere. But back to what you were saying before with the commenting, that's another thing. Now that you mention that, like, really has come almost eerily into play now that, like, We aren't just happy doing things. We actually have to then narrate what we're doing, which, back to the social media, everything with Facebook and Twitter is like, not only I'm out doing something, but I'm also going to show you and I'm going to sit here and tell you exactly what... I don't know, it's sort of weird how much that has come to light now and actually is a part of people's everyday lives.

It's just standing there like he is, telling you what he's doing and his reason behind it. A big war crime, for example. The toilet crime. On that showbiz end there, I did want to say. What you thought.

There were a few moments. That I thought were. Even if unintentional, fun little comments from the filmmaking side. The fact that when they find the other documentary crew, which is a funny scene anyway, that this world is so overrun with serial killers that they're both making a documentary about one. But then when he takes that camera and they're like, no, it's video.

And he just drops it. He just breaks it immediately. No, we're shooting film. Yeah, that part reminds me of a guy I knew who. He lived in New York, and there was a local weatherman that just looked like the quintessential weatherman, and he and his roommate started a fan club just to punk the guy.

And they were just kidding, and they would write him letters and stuff, and the guy was all into it. But then there was a rival fan club. A real one? Yeah. That got angry at them.

It's, we're the real fan. He was like, we were just kidding. We're the official fan club. Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, man. You know that Flash Mob? They did that to somebody. You know the Flash Mob in New York? That improv is everywhere or whatever?

Yeah. They did a thing where they found some. Local band and they had a couple of CDs out and so they had 200 people get the CDs and learn every word to every song and then 250 people showed up to one of their shows and were like screaming and singing every like every lyric to every song and the. Band's like oh my god like we're we're bon jovi yeah and ended up being coming when it was revealed that It was meant to be a fun thing and it ended up coming across as really mean. It wasn't intended to be mean and that's how it ended up happening.

What if they all really actually liked the band? I don't think they did. I think that's where the meanness comes out. I think they picked the band out for a reason. Probably.

It was just a band that wasn't well known. A band that would really be blown away by 250 people knowing every word to. Every one of their songs. Maybe it was a marketing scam. The band themselves planted this group to go get 250 new listeners.

Yeah, publicity. That's a pretty good scheme right there. Or the club, you know, sell some tickets. Yeah, there you go. They probably did.

I might try that. The other one I thought was funny was the fact that as they get into this movie, they don't have the money to make this movie, and he starts financing the movie. So then you've got basically the producer is a horrible murderer. Right. It's a cutthroat killer.

That seemed a little... That that seems like it has to. Be intentional yeah it's just beautiful that was the stuff that i really remember loving about the movie and how they just start helping him a little like hold yes i love that that slow like they've become more and more involved in. It They become completely involved in it by the end. But there are so many things that are like that that just weren't around when that movie came out, like The Sopranos.

And now looking at it, it just seems like something that's in media. But at the time, it was so new and different. I think that's why they got that response. I think it would be really different to find a kid now and watch them be here, watch this, and they'd be like, whatever, whatever. Again, it's the same style I see most movies now.

It's like, oh, just watch Chronicle. It's kind of like that. Right. Which, you know, this is very different. And I think what works better about this versus a lot of those movies is they're not trying, I mean, they don't have to come up with this weird convention of there's a camera on all the time.

They are just making a documentary. They're telling you, where like Chronicle, they go to so many steps to be like, and then we are in a gas station. Here's the video camera from the gas station. Like they have to. try so hard to pull this together, which is kind of why I'm sick of the found footage thing. It's such an effort on the filmmaker and you to buy into it as the audience, whereas this is just like, here, we have a camera.

We're telling you we have a camera. Does Modern Family ever explain why they're talking to a camera? I've wondered that since the first episode. I think the show's great. But I think I've watched every episode and there's never a reference to why they're talking to a camera.

Yeah. We just accept that now. That convention from like the British office now on the American show has gotten so casual. They're making like a 50-hour documentary about this paper office. Right, right.

And if you hadn't seen the beginning of it, then you'd look at, who was it that said, like you'd look at Jim looking at the camera and think, That guy's. A terrible actor. He's the worst. I read some interesting things about the cinematography in Chronicle. I haven't seen that.

Just how the camera became smoother as the powers. That sounded like a different take on it. It was better than I expected, actually. It's pretty well done for what it is. I think it's just one of those that's almost... they're tapping into so many things that are already played out.

It's like another superhero movie, another found footage movie, that it's like they're just trying to pack them all into one movie. But it's still a lot better story than I expected out of it. And for the limited budget, it all looks pretty good. I'm pretty tired of that found footage. Yeah, it's over now at this point.

Do you think Man Bites Dog influenced what was Behind the Mask? I think yeah the more i the more i heard about that as it came out i was like it kind of feels like that same thing only done more slasher style but yeah i i think they would have to they would have to own up to you know having seen that at some point but i don't know that you brought up the the them getting more involved i think that is also where it starts to get so like it's a good thing some of the things happen at the end Happen at the end because I think you'd be, like, by the time you get to the couple and the rape scene, you're kind of done with these guys. You know, it's like you're going along with them in the beginning when they're just, here, help me drag this over here.

But, like, by the time they're at that point, you're like, I don't really care what happens to any of these people now. It's like, I'm done with you. And that's a hard scene to watch. And the most disturbing thing, I think, is the husband doesn't seem that concerned. Yeah, that's really weird.

He's like in shock or something. Maybe. He just seems like he's just standing there. Yeah. Really weird.

Like, he doesn't even know he's in frame. Yeah. You know? Which maybe he didn't. Maybe that was part of it.

And he just shut down. Yeah. Yeah. It was, yeah. I mean, that's a weird scene.

And that's the thing. I think, had that been earlier in the movie, like, you wouldn't, you really would just sign off and not even want to finish watching it. Yeah. They at least made that progression kind of build to the point where you know something's coming by the time it gets that bad. Yeah.

And what's the name? Jeannie? Is it the hooker woman? What's her name? Jenny.

Jenny? Yeah. The scene toward the end of the dinner table. With the gun. Yeah.

And everyone's sitting at the table with a blow over their face and not even acknowledging it. She's his friend. She's the best friend he has that you see in the movie and that he would treat even her... Even if she's just terrified of him and gets treated that way, it makes him... If that happened in the beginning, again, I.

Think he would check out and be like, I guess I'm not. Well, and that was weird just because he... I mean, again, you see how desensitized he is. Like, he didn't even notice, you know, barely. I mean, he just kept eating his cake, you know.

Yeah. Where at least everybody else was still traumatized. Like, even the cameraman, you know, the guys on the crew still hadn't gotten that far. Like, he's just so far gone that... But you would almost think, okay, he's totally, you know, there's nothing left of him.

But by the time he gets to his, were we calling him his girlfriend? What was she exactly? When she gets killed at the end there and he actually does cry, that almost seemed out of character at that point. You didn't even realize there was that humanity left in him that he could be. Yeah, but it seemed kind of self-pitying.

In a way. Maybe. Maybe because somebody else got to do it. Look what happened to me. I was going to kill her eventually.

You could almost give him the parents, but he didn't seem like he paid much attention to her anyway. So the fact that he gets to this weird scene where he starts crying, but yeah, maybe it was for selfish reasons. Once again. I don't know. I felt like he had genuine feelings towards Valerie just as a friend, even though he treated her like shit.

I don't know. It felt real to me. I think he did, but it weird. Yeah, I mean, to me, he just seems so gone, you can't even imagine him crying. He was washing off her flute, you know, because that was hers.

Again, that all seemed out of character. Yeah, but, you know, we're seeing just this other side of him now. It's there. He's not heartless, as is the IMDb, but it's deep in there. Yeah, the very buried essence that maybe at one point he wasn't a horrible, horrible person.

Which, one thing that I kept wondering about was how come so many people were just okay with him just... killing people i. Think i mean within the the crew i think that again was sort of if you want to read into it that commentary of how impossible it is to make a film so if you we've been trying to make this documentary for years so you know if i got to go along with a couple of murders it does seem like there was a little a little sort of wink to that sort of mentality but yeah all the other people who came in and sort of came to realize that and were okay with it or. Everyone's got to eat. Do you know what he does for a living? He's like, yeah, we don't eat.

Do you have a problem with that? Well, you know, everyone's got to eat. Again, that's the fun stuff. That sort of attitude makes it really kind of clever, the way that they put it together. Yeah.

Times were hard. To me, that does pull you along more than we watched the two versions of Funny Games. And that just seems like it's planned from the start, and everything's... At least this has emotion to it, and you find, like, you know, it's gradual. They get more and more involved, and by the end of the movie, you're someplace different.

I think that's why it sort of disturbs people as well, is I think you're in that point of view of the crew... And the more they get involved, the more you kind of feel like you're getting sucked into it. And you're almost like. And you maybe question things in your life and reality. You're in that mode.

What have I become okay with? Yeah. Would I help them drag the body over there? You know, it sort of puts you in that point of view. And then it's like.

Do you start to feel responsible? Do you start to feel guilty because you're sort of going along for the ride with this movie? It's a weird thing. It's evolving. Yeah, it's more than most of these type of movies or definitely anything at that point had been.

I think that's probably one of the most affecting things is that the documentary style works enough that it sort of sucks you into it, which a lot of documentaries don't do that. It's almost more like educational and you just sit there and you watch this one. it's not a real documentary, but it's set up. I mean, there is never a moment when it's not, you know, pretending to be a real documentary and it still works visually as though you were watching a documentary. And I think maybe that's why people were sort of taken aback when they watched it that first time and were like, Oh, okay. I think, I mean, there were people that were worried that maybe this was a little too real when it came out.

So yeah, I don't know. I think that's probably why it's so, it's sort of hung on over the years and, it's still impressive in its own way. Did they try to market it as real? I don't think so. I think they made it very obvious that it was at least scripted, but I think even then, there were people, again, there's always somebody that's like, oh my god, I can't believe they're making this.

There's probably some idiot. That bought into it. I remember thinking or reading somewhere that it had been inspired on some level by Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer, that movie. Henry Lucas. Yeah, it's sort of a I'm a parody of that.

Which is also really disturbing. Yeah, that's, that's, that disturbs me. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, in a way that's effective, which in the same way that this one is, it's, yeah. So maybe that's...

Well, I think that, I. Mean, I've always said that if you're going to show violence, whether it's rape or murder or whatever, like in Irreversible, which probably has the two of the most unbelievably violent scenes I've ever witnessed in my life, they, it's, It should be upsetting. It should be disturbing. It's immoral, I think, to show. A scene of somebody being raped or bludgeoned to death, and it doesn't affect you.

It's glamorized. Yeah, you're eating popcorn during it, and this is great. It shouldn't be that way. That desensitizes people, and watching it is disturbing. It doesn't.

We just had that piece with Donnie Fritz, and he was talking about working with Peckinpah, and that's what he said. He's like, he wanted his violence to be real so that you would watch it and go, I don't want any of that. That it's not cartoon, it's not fun, it's horrifying, and you take that away from the movie as I don't want that in my life. That's why he made it so brutal. So I think you get this out of Man Bites Dog as well.

What's Killer Inside mean? I've started watching that and didn't get to finish it, but it's weird. Yeah, I did not expect it to do what it was doing. That has a brutal murder scene that just gives me chills. And a weird tone to it as well.

You get sort of comfortable with this character and then things start happening. Have y'all heard of them remaking Man Bite Dog? What? I know. I haven't heard that either.

They're going to be naked with Ryan Gosling. I'm just going through the sand. You know they would. They'd give him anything at this point. Yeah.

I just looked at the catalogs. So do you do that like just with any movie people are talking about? You heard they're remaking it? That's the first time. I want to start doing that.

Really? He's working it out on you guys. It doesn't take much because they really are remaking everything. So at this point it wouldn't surprise me if they tried. Especially because it's found footage style.

We could make it so they found this. Yeah. I'm scared of what they're going to do to the exorcist. Really. How many times can they keep trying to tell that story?

That was another movie that like after seeing it again, and time had passed, because I had forgotten the 70s. That thing holds up for me. Oh, yeah, but, I mean, there are all these things in it, like, you forget. Like, she goes to a doctor, and he's like, cigarette? Yes.

And then they, what. They give her Ritalin? Yeah. Your child is, and that was new back then. That was, like, pretty recent.

Experimental drugs. Yeah, it was. Was it Ritalin or was. It like lithium or something? I don't know what they were doing.

It was Ritalin in the movie and I was like, wow. And then they have that party and the guy can't stand up or walk and they're like, take your keys, go home. And then everybody's shocked when he's dead the next day. I'm like, What happened? So I must not.

It's so 70s. I've got an idea. It's just amazing. I love it that you talk about it because it's so much more than a movie that you couldn't get away with. Yeah.

That's hilarious. Pick your keys. Get home. You're too drunk to be at this party. I'll start the car for you.

There's a lot of movies that used to do that. What do you do? It's a great movie. But it has that 70s stuff that you just forget that people lived differently. People still drive through liquor stores, but back then you didn't even stop the car.

They gave you a glass of ice. They still do, actually. Going back to the idea of the audience becoming complicit, I actually watched a movie on Friday night here at the festival called Zero Killed, which Basically, what it was, it's a documentary. Back in 1996, the filmmaker, he interviewed people about their murder fantasies, just whatever they wanted. And he said, I'll make this into a short film, but you have to act in it as either the murderer or the victim.

And it became this art project. And then 10 years later, he sat down with them and interviewed them about various themes of violence, the idea of vengeance, the death penalty, torture. It's a European film, by the way, so it's much different than it would be made here. And so the result is this documentary about people talking about their murder fantasies acting them out and then talking about violence. And it was really fascinating and pretty chilling.

I bet. Does everybody have a murder fantasy? Well, you know, I heard a related project, and it was just stories. It was on the radio. And it was surprised how evolved some, they weren't just like they had thought about it vaguely.

I want a club her to death. No, not that. They had got to the point of like having somebody over for dinner. They got that far with it. it was just shocking. It's like all these, all these like, I don't know.

I, no, I don't really, I've. Got a winning the lottery. Well, like I've got a two and a half year old and you see all these things in the news about kids being abducted and stuff. And I, I've worked out in my mind, like if somebody was to harm my child, exactly what would happen. I love that was inspired by my viewing of lady vengeance where at the end they capture the guy who killed all their children and they just go at him.

I was like, this is what I would do. And I won't go into that here. Don't eat his face. I spit on your grain of yourself. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, there's, I don't know, you could start fantasizing about that a little bit. If it's dark, go around the room. I'll go last. Yeah. I don't want to incriminate myself.

There was an interesting quote in the film. One of the people says, talking about how everybody's got this dark thing inside them, and she says, people who are afraid of the abyss refuse to see it. And, I don't know. Maybe I'm just dumb. I'm pretty dark.

I just don't feel like killing him. I've had a tremendous urge to punch somebody in the side of the head just all day. Here at this particular convention? Well, no, because it's been too funny. It's like I haven't been here enough.

The difference between comedy and tragedy is, like, if you're part-time. Or if you're full-time. Yeah. But at work, yeah, sometimes at work, I've had that urge to just, if I just hit them in the head. I think we've all had that urge.

Yeah. He found 49 people with pretty involved fantasies. Wow. Fetishized death fantasies. Like, some of them were, like, there was a guy, ah, anyway.

It's a sick world is what we're seeing. Yeah. Great film, though, you know, if. What's the name of it? Zero Killed.

So I guess does it disqualify them if they actually kill somebody? It can't be in the movie anymore. No, it's not a fantasy. Right, right. He had 50 and one of them actually killed him so that one had to go away.

Well, anything else to wrap up Man Bites Dog? No. Go check it out. We ruined it for you. Yeah, you were supposed to watch it earlier.

You did it wrong, but. Alright otherwise I guess is there new projects you guys have in the works that you want to spread the word about to people or nothing new to pass along just go find your short films and bring it to your film festivals people listening. Yes I need 14 Trauma Dance doesn't charge I think. I submitted to them yeah yeah they must have said no it's not on my it's not on my one million laurels so. Yeah I'm pretty sure I did I'd.

Love to go there. It's free to get into, apparently. All right. So how's your writing going? I've written a novel.

I've written a novel, but I just turned in for the second time to my agent just this past week, so I'm not. Going to talk about that until it's published. Really? Really. It's not getting published yet.

That's why I'm not. Talking about it yet. I was doing that because you said everybody asks you how's your writing going. Oh, you just being a wise ass? Imagine that.

So they are. Substantial novel, yeah. Wow. Based on the short, actually. Somebody saw the short and was like, oh, you should write a novel based on that.

Once again, just tell me to do it and hit me like a domino and I'm going to go. That's great. I'll have to come up with some elaborate plan and shove you into it. You know what you should do? Well, we can put these together and come up with a really elaborate murder.

You know, what you should do. I was wondering, was the short based on any actual experiences? Of course. Yeah, completely. Again, 100%.

That's pretty good. That's the only thing that gave me some peace that other people were suffering out in the world. Yeah, you don't make that up. It's, yeah, it is really well, again, really well shot. And I like the way you piece it together, that it's this story from all these different sort of scenarios.

And, that's just to keep pacing going otherwise it's a ten minute monologue it. Makes it really interesting yeah thank you I like it that way. Thank you it's all shot in my house for free with a crew of two actually a crew of one for half of it and a crew of two for. The second that's kind of inspiring thank. You which is why I said I think the thing with the man bites dog that it was just sort of accidental we did it this way because it's all we had yeah I think there's I think there's I see almost more value in that they still tried with to even attempt with nothing is braver to have it all you know packaged up with a bow.

And then do it yeah well i i think you almost have to go in that way yeah so i think yeah it turns out really well on occasion these are two and. I was really lucky that the guy the two guys that shot it and the guys both of them edited too they're both really like really really good at what they do it wasn't like me trying to learn how to edit on that movie i got everyone that did what The sound is bad for half and good for half because the good half is when I had two people. I was the only guy with a camera. Bad sound is when I had just the guy with the camera. The DP.

Yeah, I didn't notice a little bit of a discrepancy there, but yeah. Yeah, a lot of sound. So if it looks really pretty, the sound is bad. If it looks not quite as pretty, but the sound is good, that's how you know which. Person shot which.

It all balances out. Yeah. What do you got to do it was free it was free. So did you have to recite the whole thing like for each four. Million times could you do it for us right now I probably could and I can do it just like that because I did it I shot that like one day in January and then one day in March and a day in April and a day in October because I would shoot it and get cut together and then go to really giant portions where it's really boring I need to cut that up cut that up cut that up and think of what I could shoot to cut it in there And like, you know, what else can I shoot?

And just drop in as a little insert stuff. But it has to be able to seamlessly. With the dialogue go, you. Know, volume and attitude and tone and everything has to match completely because he'll cut in the middle of a sentence. You know, and so it's a different, yeah.

So, yeah, I can do, it's. Like Mick Jagger saying satisfaction. You can do it. Yeah, it became a performance more than anything with all the pauses in the right spot and hitting the right words. And, yeah, it comes together really nice.

And the exact same pace and everything. So, yeah, I could have killed myself. So with all that, plug it again. What's the website? Bathinginthesinglegirl.com.

Very cool. And then did you have one for yours or? No, I don't have a website. Just look for Pillow. It's on Facebook.

There's a Pillow page on Facebook. Pillow film on Facebook. Very cool. Become one of the friends, please. Need more friends.

Definitely. Especially investors. Yeah, investing friends. That's even better. I'm still looking for that, too.

My best friends. Well, we want to say thank you to both of you for sitting in with us this week. Thank you. Thanks for coming to my bedroom. No problem.

We don't get that offer every week, let me tell you. Well, except from Fred, but that doesn't count. He doesn't offer us a bath. Thank you once again to Fright Night Film Fest as well for letting us carry on here this weekend and do what we do. Otherwise, I think that is about it.

We will return next week. Same geek time, same geek feed. Thanks for listening. Man Bites Dog Man Bites Dog Man Bites Dog Man Bites Dog Dank afternoon on a train on the Rhine Nobody. Told us what's on his mind.

Ladies, ladies, come from behind. Thinking of muscles, he's taking his time. How far will this take me? How far will it go? Mozart is not just his passion, you know It's laying in wait till the shepherd's asleep Then releasing the giant.

That's sleeping beneath. Man bites dog Man bites dog. Man bites. Dog Pigeons with oily feathers that fall Explaining their passions and selling us all On memories of robberies and murders begun An endless display. Of the power of the gun.

He really loves his work, but he's just having fun. But it's only a movie, it's just an idea. Three Belgian film students were having a. Beer. Housekeeping.

Who could that be at this time of night? What did we do? Oh, my God. Hi, Mitch. No, thank you.

No, thank you. We're naked. We're French. You don't want any part of us. That's probably true.

There's equipment set up. Yeah. We're doing a porn movie in here. Another one. This episode is a production of Movie Meltdown, produced and edited by the Oddity Studios, with the opening music performed by the Empires.

For more on how to sponsor or support the show, email producer at moviemeltdown.com. Talk hard!