Friday, June 29, 2007

TONIGHT - My Short Film Screens! More on Benoit, and MORE.

Aaaaaaaaaaand I'm back.

So, I wanted to get a quick post up to inform / remind everyone of some cool news. TONIGHT (Friday, 6/29, for those keeping track), a short film that I co-wrote and developed will screen as part of the 48 Hour Film Festival in LA! The film, titled "So, Like, Once Upon A Time," is a funny satire of fairy-tale characters - Disney meets Family Guy meets Fables meets The Real World, is one way of looking at it. The idea behind the 48 Hour Fest is that the films are written, shot, and edited within a single weekend, under assigned guidelines that dictate the film's genre as well as certain characters, dialogue, and props that must be included in the film - so not only is it a fun if exhausting excercise, but it forces your team to actually have a finished product in a very short time, which is pretty cool. The screening is tonight in Beverly Hills at 6:30 pm, so if anyone in LA is reading this and wants to come, email or call me for more info! The more that come to support our team the better, because there is an award given out based on audience votes!

I'm pretty excited about this, urge you to come, and if you can't make it, don't worry - I hope to get the film online and on MySpace, YouTube, etc within the next few weeks! For pictures from the shoot, check out my Facebook profile.

I'd also like to give a shout out to all past and present members of Boston University's OVEREXPOSED student sketch-comedy TV show. I basically approached this film like a more intricately-done comedy sketch, and my Overexposed writing experience was crucial in getting it done quickly and done well. The style of humor is definitely straight outta Overexposed as well, so it was nice to get back to the sketch-comedy roots for this one.

Tonight's film fest is my last hurrah here in in LA before jetting off tommorow for a week in the EAST COAST. I am looking forward to much sleeping, seeing old friends, possibly hitting up New York and Boston, catching up on some movie-watching, videogame playing, and reading, defeating my brother Matt in basketball, eating a slice or two of real pizza, and just generally kicking back. If anyone is around from June 30th to July 8th, don't hesitate to contact me. For those in LA, I'll be MIA until July 9th, and I welcome the chance to get away from the daily grind, and hope to be sitting in front of a computer as little as possible. So, apologies if I'm incommunicado for a bit, but there's some big things in store for the latter part of the summer (ComiCon in July, concerts in August, etc) and I'm psyched to get back to LA as well after some much needed downtime.

- What else...?

- Just a few quick thoughts on the Benoit case. It's been ridiculous lately, turning on the news and seeing every blowhard and talking head wailing away about Benoit while making the stupidest statements ever. I've heard everything from "he was depressed about a demotion" (not true - if anything he was due for a renewed push) to "Kevin Sullivan could be the murderer of not only Benoit but of Sherri Martel" (interesting consipiracy theory, but extremely far-fetched with zero evidence to back it up). So after listening to tabloid "journalists" like Nancy Grace and Geraldo talk out of their colelctive asses, it was great last night to flip on FOX News and see Chris Jericho correcting Nancy Grace on many of her ill-informed points, and doing so while being totally well-spoken and articulate. Thank you, Chris Jericho, you are a credit to your profession. And thank you also to the great Bret Hart, for whom it must be unfathomably painful to appear on all these shows and talk about Benoit. Bret once again shows his class in all of these interviews, and is careful in his words and even patient to a fault with these streams of media pundits. On the other side of the spectrum are idiots like Lex Luger, Chyna, and Vince McMahon himself. Last night I saw Chyna on CNN and almost couldn't look at her - she looked 100% different than I remembered her and looked like a poster-child for why NOT to get extensive plastic surgery. Very freakish. Meanwhile, McMahon's Today Show interview was to me very crass and insincere. It's like Vince doesn't know how to talk in any manner other than his in-character PT Barnum-esque hyperbole. He called Benoit a "monster" at every chance he could, painting everything in WWE-style good guy vs. bad guy shades of black and white, repeating ad nauseum that a WWE performer's only job was to "put smiles on people's faces." I don't know, I think on one hand Vince has a point that he can only take so much responsibilty for performers not under a WWE contract. At the same time, does he ever take ANY responsibility for anything? Vince is George Bush like in his inabilty to ever admit when mistakes were made or that he needs to do better.

Meanwhile, there continues to be a small but persistent theory that there is more to the Benoit case than meets the eye. Could it have been a setup? A frame? Were other parties involved? I'd like very much to believe this - as people like Hart and Jericho have been saying, Benoit was NEVER someone who struck even his closest friends as someone who was remotely capable of such an act. But realistically, the simplest answers are often the correct ones, and it just seems too out-there and too much of a stretch to seriously consider some nefarious plot as a possibility here. But who knows. Let's just hope it's a thorough investigation and more answers are on their way ...

- Anyways, hope to see some of you tonight at the 48 Hour Film Fest - stay tuned for updates on how our film does, and hopefully soon I'll have it up here online. Until then, have a great weekend, and the next blog will likely be coming to you live, from Bloomfield, Connecticut!

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