Airport Bloggin’: Long Beach Nights

Del;ayed in Long Beach, CA. One of those hurry up and waits…I took a brief nappy-poo in the afternoon, not too much to do on my last day in lala-land. Flight was 7:30. Woke up from that little nap at, whooo, 5:15. Now, I don’t know how familiar you might be with the traffic patterns during rush hour in the greater Los Angeles area. They are, shall we say, sluggish?

Anyway, so it took an hour to get down to Long Beach, had to refill the tank, etc. And so when I pulled up, I was about fifty minutes before my flight time.

This is getting dull, sorry. Not so interesting. Short cut. Wanted to have dinner, no time. Left restaurant. Flight delayed. Return to restaurant. Eat mediocre corned beef. Return to terminal and here I am. Waiting for this flight, which when I booked it, seemed to be direct, but now, somehow, is through Salt Lake City. Not that I don’t like Utah. I like Utah just fine. Anyway, you get it.

So it was an interesting couple of weeks in LA. I rented a place off Sunset in Hollywood, and got there to discover, that my new room had, hey, no wall. It had a skateboard ramp (or two) and a piece of plywood. Not good. Little detail escaped the dude from whom I rented it. Took the better part of the whole time I was in LA to find a wall guy, and get said wall guy to put up the wall. He kept doing it in pieces. Its finally up, though, so I am thankful for having what I should have had the whole time. At least the rent is cheap.

We also had a dead rat smell in the place, which arrived shorly after I did. Another lovely addition. Turned out, though, that the dead rat smell was being caused by a dead rat, which had picked the stove burner as his final resting place. I was happy I hadn’t used the stove since I’d been there. Not with Quizno’s and Carl’s across the street.

Work was OK. Sporadically busy and not. I can pretty much do what I do most of the time, from anywhere. There is wireless in the place. And its self contained.

I guess I really haven’t described what the dwelling is. I live in a two bedroom bungalow behind a big main house. I share it with a music vid director named Mike. It has a kitchen, a bathroom, both pretty grungy, and the two rooms. Mike’s room still doesn’t have a wall, it has its own makeshift arrangement. Not my problem.

The bungalow is one of three buildings on the property, including the main house, and a third building that has a bunch of storage rooms and seems to be a general waste of space. There is a patio, a BBQ grill and everything is fairly shabby. I did some cleaning while I was there, but in all likelihood, it will be similarly shabby by the time I get back to LA in thee next month or so. But it’s a good location, the room is fine, now, and its got parking and is definitely livable. And cheap, did I mention cheap.

So much for the glamour of being bicoastal, skateboard ramps and rats in the kitchen (and I do care).

Digger was announced, hit JoBlo and DreadCentral, which are two big horror blogs that get tons of traffic. That’s cool, and great for John Gallagher, who will direct, and our young writer, Stephen Lancellotti. Stephen, despite his youth, has had a good career already in the entertainment biz, which includes stints at Dreamworks and other big production companies, and working as an assistant and a story editor for Jean Domanian, who was Woody Allen’s producer before she produced for David Mamet. I think (we all do) that he wrote a great script, and we’re very excited about making it.

Speaking of horror, Slaughter is picking up speed as well. A respected horror director who shall remain nameless has offered his services. We’re still figuring things out, but we should have a director aboard in the next few days after the weekend. It’ll be great after all this looking and waiting and wanting.

I am on the flight now. Flying. It’s a phobia. A necessary evil. I need Xanax or something stronger when I fly, cause relaxation techniques aint cutting it no more. I serious think that the plane engines just turned off for like two minutes, a bit ago. No hum, nothing, like we were gliding. And when the altitude showed on the screen, we were lower than we had been minuted before. During takeoff. I admit I have this phobia, but that cant be normal. Can it? Why am I asking you?

Middle seats suck.

Otherwise, that’s mostly it. I am headed back bccause Valerie will be in town and I have much to get ready for the NYC PictureStart Film Festival. I also have a movie, Take The Bridge, in the Tribeca Film Festival, one I worked on years ago. I’d almost given up hope that it would see the light of day, as it hasn’t got any name actors – they are all newcomers. But its in Tribeca, and its getting some press now. I’ll be seeing this cut of it for the first time tomorrow nite. Come out and see it if you are in NYC. I am not going to swear by its quality because I haven’t seen the finished product, but really, what else do you have going on. Exactly.

See ya there.

Grumpy.

At it again with the bloody stuff..

MAVERICK RED AND ANGEL BABY ENTERTAINMENT ANNOUNCE “DIGGER” CO-PRODUCTION

Project Marks Second Co-Production between Companies
NEW YORK - Mark Morgan of Maverick Films, and Gregory Segal of Angel Baby Entertainment, announced pre-production on Digger, the second co-production between the Companies. Digger will be directed by Angel Baby Entertainment partner John A. Gallagher, from a script by Stephen Lancellotti.

Digger will be produced by Angel Baby Entertainment and Maverick’s freshly minted horror label, Maverick Red. The two companies, in association with the Slamdance Film Festival, are already in pre-production on the 2007 Slamdance Horror Screenplay Competition winner, Slaughter, written by Nathan Brookes and Bobby Darby. Principal Photography on Slaughter is scheduled for July 26th in New Mexico and the film will have its World Premiere at the 2008 Slamdance Film Festival.

Digger unearths the legend of Joshua Bauer, raised by a sadistic gravedigger in a small New England town and forced from youth to dig graves by hand. When Joshua comes of age, he rebels with savage vengeance, embarking on a brutal killing spree. Digger brings a new maniac to the horror screen with all the hallmarks of a classic movie monster icon.
Segal and Gallagher of Angel Baby Entertainment will produce Digger along with Maverick principal Guy Oseary, Morgan, and Thompson of Maverick Red. Cheri Wozniak, who brought the project into the new horror label, will executive produce. Production is scheduled for late summer in Connecticut.

Angel Baby Entertainment is a partnership between Gregory Segal, producer (My Brother), and John A. Gallagher, writer/director/producer, (The Deli, Blue Moon). The company has produced six features and two short films over the past two-and-a-half years and has numerous projects in development.

Gallagher most recently produced The Insurgents and Hot Baby! with Segal; his last four features as writer-director (Cupidity, Blue Moon, The Deli, Men Lie) earned two dozen awards in international film festivals.

Maverick Films, a Los Angeles-based production company founded by Madonna and Guy Oseary, recently announced the launch of its new division, Maverick Red. While Maverick Red will focus on the horror genre, the production company is not new to the horror genre. Maverick Films’ co-chairman and founding partner Oseary executive produced Rob Zombie’s House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil’s Rejects. Maverick also has a number of thriller and horror films in development including; The Stepfather for Sony – Screen Gems, the remake of the Asian horror film, The Phone; and the serial-killer thriller Labyrinth, for Summit Entertainment, written by Russel Gewertz (The Inside Man) and starring Hilary Swank.

Maverick is in post-production on My Sassy Girl, a remake of the Korean box-office hit, with Vertigo and Gold Circle Films; and is prepping The Stanford Prison Experiment, to be directed by Chris McQuarrie and Shoot to be directed by Ron Krauss.
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Sofa Bloggin’: The Great In-Between

Holy Canoli, Batman. Its an entry not written at 35,000 feet.

Yes folks, sorry for the interlude. Im back. Been a few weeks of decompression since the first round of My Brother releases, which weren’t overly successful from a box office standpoint, but weren’t expensive either. And the preorders on the DVD seem to be very strong. Which is good. Though not really for me, cause I am not particularly a profit participant on the movie, not for a while.

Its like I lost my job. I really haven’t and I’ve continued to work on some My Brother stuff, but most of the work I spent on the movie I’ve been reallocating to other tasks. Like the PictureStart Film Festival, for which I don’t yet have a venue. Working on it, though.

Anyway, things have been quite a bit slower. I’ve been working, but its not as frantic. However, its gearing up to get busy again. We’re selling the Insurgents, likely this week. I also rented a place in LA so that I stop spending so much money on hotels when I am out there. Its in Hollywood, and is a bungalow on a large piece of property around Sunset and Highland. I’m told, despite the loud neighborhood, that its fairly quiet because of the size of the property. We shall see.

Otherwise, things are fairly normal. Slaughter continues to move forward. We’re set a preliminary schedule for preproduction, production, etc. And hopefully everything can speed up with the extra time I will be spending in LA LA land.

That’s all I really got right now.

But I am flying on Tuesday, so I am sure there will be more.