They're taking the money, setting up the chairs. For just a couple of moments on Saturday night, I looked into the empty screening room, when everyone was going to get things out of the van. It occurred to me that this was one of the most important things I'd ever done for myself. It's a bizarre feeling, putting something so close to you out there for all to see. Did I mention that its scary as hell, too? I had a shot of fear run through me like nothing I'd ever felt before. This sheer, unadulterated panic that what I had been working on for two years and four months wouldn't be up to snuff. After all, most of the people that were going to be here are fucking caustic to films that don't meet they're potential. And then it was gone. The next thing I knew, I was introducing GFL to the crowd of around 30 people. Following that was a moment that I'll remember for the rest of my days. Whether I make 100 films that millions go to see at the multiplex, or whether this was the largest audience that assembled to watch one of my flicks, this moment will stick. The movie is fading out, the music is swelling up, and in just a couple of heartbeats, my name would be on the screen as the director. Horribly egotistic of me, sure... But that was something. A moment after that, it was over. We were picking up the chairs and heading to dinner at a local brewery. And back to business as usual. So to all of those folks who were there on Saturday, I wanted to say thanks for that moment of silence between the film and the credits. I think I'll live there for a while.

And now we need to get entered in the Rome (Georgia) Film Festival.

So I'm sitting at my computer, working on Luna last night at around midnight, when my editing software starts to auto-save. No big deal, I've got it set to do this every so often so as to not lose important data. As it nears the end of this auto-save (5 seconds, tops), my computer blue screens.

Before I go on, a little back story may be in order. My computer is in desperate need of a rebuild, but I have been hesitant to do it since Luna isn't done. I don't want to do anything that could adversely affect my ability to get Luna out the door on schedule. Remember the Simpsons where Mr. Burns goes to see the doctor, and the doctor tells him that he has more diseases than the CDC has catalogued, but they are all keeping each other in check, sort of a terminal equilibrium? That's my computer to a "T".

Anyway, so the damn thing dies. Not an uncommon occurrence, I just power it down and bring it back up. Open up the editor, click on my project, and...

Nothing fucking happens.

Nothing. It dies, killing the editor as well. Now I begin to get concerned. See, that project contains all the work I'd done on Luna for the last month or so. All of my work. I try again, with the same result. The last backup copy I had made of the project was over a month old, and relatively worthless for the amount of work I had done since then. I'm near suicidal at this point, cursing Microsoft at every turn. I make a last-ditch effort to at least export the movie as it stands. (There's a difference between saving the project and exporting the movie) Thanks be to Allah, Buddah, and Jesus himself, the movie exports okay. So now I just have to deal with a corrupted project. Not the best, but not the end of the world, either. So at this point I'm starting to relax a little, so I send Windows through to do error correction on the files, and it fixes the offenders. Things are back to normal now, with only a severe coronary later. This movie stuff is painful.

It's now official. Groping For Luna is going to premiere on Saturday, June 5th at around 7-something. The lovely Lab 601 has offered to host the screening. 601 is directly across from City Hall East and is much easier to get to than Cinevision. More info will come up later, but those of you who were a part of GFL's making will be required to attend. That means you, Myers. I don't give a fuck if you have rehearsal or not. More news later, but that's the big stuff.

All right, so some of you know that I was in Sweet Home Alabama as a wedding guest. That was me, surprised Alabaman growing out of Jean Smart's shoulder. Fewer of you know that I was also an extra on a film that comes out today. I was on set for Stroke Of Genius for a total of one day. I was so disgusted by that experience that I decided not to return. I got a phone call about a week later, saying that I had been chosen to play a caddy, and would I mind returning to the set to shoot that role. As this role would very likely involve me having a speaking part, I said, "Sure!" I return to set the very next day, showing up at some God-forsaken country club up I-85 about 100 miles (give or take 90) past Kurt and Ilene's exit. My call time was 5:15. In the morning.
So I got up there and headed to wardrobe, where I waited in line with the rest of the extras. After waiting in line for two hours, I finally get to the dresser-people, who work incredibly hard, and my heart goes out to them. Anyway, I get there and say that I am to be a caddy. They check their list, and I'm not on it. So they call on their walkie-talkie to get the master list, and sure enough, there I am. Unfortunately, they've already got another extra as the caddy, as he was already in costume when they needed him. So I tell the dresser, as politely as I can, that I don't get paid for not working, and if I'm not going to be a caddy, I'd rather just leave. (I sounded like such an ass, I'm sure, but I was very apologetic.) It simply didn't make sense to me that I should get paid $9 an hour to stand in the back (as they had run out of most clothes by the time I got through the line). So I leave, head shaking. I get why it happened, so I wasn't upset, just a little put off. I still have no intention of seeing the movie, as the story doesn't really interest me. But here's the funny part. I'm checking out the trailer, figure, "What the hell?" No more than thirty seconds in, I see it. Not it, actually. I see ME. After all that, I make it into the freaking trailer. Strange business, the movies.

As a certain Peruvian has seen fit to point out, I'm a Matthew Perry apologist. Only, I don't think I have anything to apologize for. The guy's funny. Legitimately. He's a master of comic timing with a sly wit that could be British if he'd dry it out some. He's a talented bloke, is all I'm saying. Now Tom Arnold, that's something else. I'm the first to say that I'm a Tom Arnold apologist. I've seen McHale's Navy more than once. Voluntarily. And I still think it's a funny flick. Arnold, Bruce Campbell, Dean Stockwell, and Debra Messing? Its worth a look, folks.

Anyway, the point of all this is that I checked out The Whole Ten Yards on Easter Sunday (by myself, as my wife had gone to Indiana to see her family, which I apparently don't rate as part of.) The big thing was that it just wasn't that terrible. It isn't a great film, or even a good film, but I'd put it up against a hell of a lot of films that have come out in the past couple of years. Dumb and Dumberer was worse. House of the Dead? No contest. The plot is more than a little hackneyed, the characters are pretty one-note, and the reactions are nonsensical. But here's one thing that makes the film palatable to me. When you watch it, you can tell that the actors had a GREAT time making this thing. It's a small thing, and for most people it isn't enough.

But for my money, I'd much rather see that than another fucking Ashley Jolie serial killer movie.

I've updated the link to point to the new boards, we'll see how long these ones last.

I don't know what happened to the massage boards (get it?), but they're spreading some foul stuff. Until I can get them figured out, they're gone. Until then, you can write on pieces of paper and leave them in the bathroom of The Highlander. I'll archive those pieces of paper and post them once the MBs are back and working. Anyone with ezBoard experience out there? My trial with them just expired, and I'm wondering if this is what happens after the trial is up.. Gray, do you know?

So I said below that I got to see Hellboy. I also was priveleged enough to have a long lunch with the film's creators. Ron Perlman (actor), Guillermo Del Toro (director), and Mike Mignola (creator). Is that pronounced Min-Yol-A or Mig-Nol-A, incidentally? Anyway, these guys were the gold standard when it comes to meeting idols. They were everything you would hope them to be. Cool, forthcoming, appreciative of their situation, great guys.

The hook from this is, after meeting Guillermo especially, then seeing his films, I'm really wrestling with some serious anxiety about my feeble attempts at filmmaking. I'm not sure I'm on the right path, after seeing what these guys can do... It's so hard to keep moving forward, when you see just how high the bar rests. I'm not 100% happy with GFL, and I don't think I ever will be. To me, there's a problem there. As a director, shouldn't I have the ability to bring to the screen that which I can be proud of, regardless of the media used? (Sigh) It's funny that something so great could cause this massive inferiority thing to rise up, and it hasn't tarnished the experience of Hellboy at all. But it has made it that much more difficult to work on Luna, knowing that films like Hellboy make this whole thing seem so effortless. I have no illusions that it's nigh-impossible. But still, it seems incredibly far away right now.

I've officially seen Hellboy. And it's better than you people deserve.

It's been a damn long time since an Internet scam came remotely close to hooking me, so I was delighted that I got one that almost did.
When you click on the link, it takes you to the page above: I got all the way through typing my user name and password, hit Enter, and thank God I use Mozilla FireFox (Number one browser in the world..). Firefox has this thing where it will remember passwords for you, just like IE will. But I already have my username and password built into Firefox for Yahoo's IP Address. So when the box came up, I almost clicked on 'Save Password', and then I realized... My browser had never been to this page before. My eyes shot up to the URL bar, and I realized that, while Yahoo was in the URL, it wasn't the domain I was sending to. Obviously, I cancelled everything out before it could send (I hope). But then I got curious. So I went back to that site and retraced the address in the URL. Deleting directories in the address, trying other ones, and guess what I found?

The Paypal login screen. Built just like the Yahoo one. Whoever this is is also doing this to Paypal users, something that could be drastically worse than getting in to my Yahoo account. So let's be careful out there.

Incidentally, here's the URL for the fakes: Yahoo and Paypal. As far as I can tell, these chaps are registered in the UK somewhere, doing their dirty business to the Queen mum. Pip pip, old boy! (And it really couldn't be as simple as some guy named Bill Wisely doing all this, could it?)

I'm going to use this space to talk up my man, Matt Myers. Cat should be doing comcis for a living, as he made oatmeal exit my eating cavity today with a couple of his strips. If you don't know, Stripcreator.com has comic strip contests that are always running. In this one, the contest was to finish a comic strip that was started by the contest starter. So all of the entries have the same first two panels.
That Matt's a funny guy. Check them out..
My Favorite | My Second Favorite

Upon further review, I realized that the Buffy muscal is in the sixth (6th) season, not the fifth. So you hve to wait a little longer to see it, and to understand the humor of the following:

"I think this line's mostly filler."

In other news, Martha Stewart was found guilty. The best part of all of this? The entire stock diversion scheme allowed her to save a whopping $51,000. On news that she was found guilty, her stock dropped a magnitude of that on the news that she was guilty. Let's give her a big "Oops" on that one. But hey, that's why pencils have erasers.
Lastly, there's a poker tournament every Monday at Frankie's sports bar in the Prado (by Will's house). Justin and I played in it this past Monday and had a good time. I had more fun than Justin, who didn't win a hand. He was later made to feel better by murdering me at Literati. I came in 6th overall in the poker thing, and we're going back next week.

Until further notice, go get yourself a better browser. This page won't look exactly right in IE because Microsoft refuses to adhere to standards. Not my fault.

Two things: The first is a video clip. I'll give no intro, just check it out (with sound if possible): The Video
The second thing is a track by Neil Cadsawan that is going onto the score of GFL, you can check that out as well. The Audio

So I'm listening to Norah Jones. She's a talented girl, that one. I'm just testing some CSS stuff with extraneous media and whatnot. Don't mind me. But that's all I've got for now. Oh, before I forget. Hellboy comes out April 2nd, so you've no excuse to miss that. Also, Club Dread competes with Jesus this weekend, let's wish them luck. Finally, the new Mozilla Web browser (Firefox 0.8) is out, so go download it immediately.

I used to just sit back and laugh at George W. Bush and his policies. Being the global policeman, the big bad-ass with the gun, to hell with the economy, let's give back $300 to everyone! That mentality was just political manuevering. Blah. But now, I'm getting concerned. Here is a guy who is willing to amend the Constitution of the United States because his approval rating is going down. He wants to actually take away something that the Federal Government has no business doing in the first place. The whole gay marriage thing isn't really my affair, but I'll be the first to stand up and say that this is bullshit. For one, you don't use the Law of the Land to pump up your numbers. It isn't a toy. Secondly, George, you have no business telling anyone how to live or who they should be with. You've gone from just plain stupid to dangerous. God, do I wish we had someone a little more charismatic running for your office.

Just a quick intro to this site. If you don't know me, I'm Andrew. I won't be updating this site much, as I have too little time as it is. Consequently, there won't be much here. This page will be used by me for little tricks of CSS (like these neat little floating panels here) and things like that. Don't expect too much from me, because I'll disappoint you easily. If you want a site to actually read, try CHUD or even my film's site, Groping For Luna