Week #46 The Making of the Making of… - Movie

While looking online the other evening at the upcoming movies I was taken aback by the high percentage of them that where either based on another medium (usually comic books or video games) or a straight up remake of another film. The one that made me wonder if I was living in an evil alternate reality was the Robert Zemeckis motion capture remake of “Yellow Submarine”.

Having just ranted about this for a while my girlfriend Kirstin suggested that this weeks project be something about this subject. Her idea was a remake of a “making of” movie.

I liked the idea a lot and immediately thought the perfect one to do would be Heart’s of Darkness, the making of Apocalypse Now. We’d cast a full group of people to play Francis Ford Coppola, Brando, the weird tribe of people who had to play severed heads then we’d direct based it entirely based on a transcript from the original documentary.

Another more ironic idea would be to do one of a lesser known movie. Netflix’s first response to a search for the phrase “The making of” was “The making of Westword”. I’ve never seen that particular documentary but I’ve seen Westworld and I can only imagine how awesome the making of it was.

Another idea, to get even more meta, would be to do a dramatized film based on the making of “RKO 281”, the movie about the making of Citizen Kane. Now that would be far out!

Week #45 James Call’s World - Conceptual Art

So I didn’t have any idea what to post for this week so I asked James Call if he had any ideas this was his response:

"Yeah I think the backgrounds in Super Mario Brothers 1 and other famous video games should be filtered out (like, filter out blue or black, etc.) and replaced with congressional hearings, documentaries about torture, etc. I also think old episodes of Love Connection should be randomly interspersed in the middle of any given television show, especially news programming, like someone needs to invent a machine that does that. I also think occupying an entire city block and populating it entirely with cats and dogs - only humans allowed are caretakers, who can only visit - should happen.”

My idea would be to either work this into my ideas for project #25 (The James Project) or #37 (Greg Travis James Call Greg Travis).

Either way I think the best way to do it is to document these ideas as if James had already done them complete with pictures of there completion and critical/popular responses to them.

Week #44 Mishap Trading Cars - Trading Cards

This is an idea that actually belongs to two other people.

The idea is simple and fairly self explanatory. Trading cards with pictures of all the various members of Mishap Productions. The front having a picture and name of the member on it and the back containing facts and statistics about the person.

The first person to attempt this was James Call. He made a bunch of them back when we where living in New York. He used to hand them out at German Cars Vs. American Homes shows. You can see mine here. Or the Beebe brother’s one below.

A couple months back Kirsten Goldberg (Aka KGB) had pretty much the exact same idea. She sent out an email about it and we bounced a bunch of ideas back and forth. Eventually we decided it would be cool to make them like Magic the Gathering cards where we’d all have weird statistics like “smarmyness” and special abilities “exeptional sleeping power”.

We never got around to making the actual cards but it’s never too late. The idea just keeps seeming better and better.

Week #43 - Monthly Dinner Parties - Event

A while back me and my close friend Kirsten Goldberg set up a private cooking company called Brandywine Cooking. Kirstin Cummings made an awesome website, we did one dinner party, even made business cards. Then we sort of ran out of steam.

This year at the Mishap Prom Kirsten brought up the idea of Brandywine doing a monthly dinner party. At first we’d just do it for friends and family, charging little over the cost of the food, then when we start to really figure it out, we’ll raise our prices a little and open it up to the outside world.

We had our first one of these parties last night.

This was the menu:

Local Dungeness Crab and Chick Pea Fritters with Persian Cucumber and Yogurt dipping sauce

Shaved Fennel and Honeycrisp Salad with Champagne Vinaigrette

Mushroom Braised Lamb with Gremolata

Tangerine and Honey Roasted Roots

Assorted California Cheeses Curated by Kirstin Cummings

Warm Spiced Quince with Ricotta and Pink Peppercorn Cream

and here’s a picture of Kirsten with the lamb:

The party went wonderfully, if it was maybe a little strenuous but we learned a lot. I think we need to bring in at least one more person to help with the cooking and serving.

I want to have another one in either late december or early January. Who want to come?

Week #42 The James Hughes Call Show - Performance Piece

For the past ten years or so I’ve been promoting and producing the music of James Call. Either in the guise of the Missing Teens, German Cars Vs. American Homes, James Call Erotic Photo Hunt or just plane James Call, I’ve booked show for him, produced albums & done pretty much every promotion thing I could think of.

Recently it occurred to me that maybe we’ve been going at the wrong way. Maybe James isn’t a rock star, maybe he’s a performance artist.

I’ve loved James’ recordings for years but what’s always really sold him is his performances. Nearly everyone who’s ever seen him has loved him and recently his performances have become a truly ecstatic experience. They’ve also become more and more conceptual.

My idea, which I’ve been running by James every time I see him recently, is to have James perform with semi-scripted banter between his songs. We’d bill him as a sort of musical motivational speaker and he’d perform every weekend for three or four weeks like a play. He’s be aided by video, a power point presentation and maybe even celebrity guests.

James of coarse would have to do most of the writing (hopefully aided by at least one of the Greg Travis’) so the content would really be up to him. I figure we could have either a band or pre-recorded music or a little of both.

Obviously this was all reliant on James but if we could pull it off I’d be totally down to produce it here in San Francisco and maybe in New York possibly even in connection in some way with Sleepwalkers Theatre.

Week #41 Larry’s Idea for a Comic - Web Comic

Originally when I started this blog I wanted to feature some projects by other people. Alas this never really worked out.

However last week I received the following email from my good friend and fellow comic book geek Larry Luna.

I decided to make it this weeks project:

“I was thinking a good idea for a comic strip would be for any group of us to all tell the same true story but all from our own perspective. For example, with out seeing or being influenced by each others strips we would each write/draw a strip telling a funny or interesting story we all experienced. So if there were four of us at said "story" we would end up with four different versions/strips of that story. I got the idea when I talked to james about the time I punched him in the balls. Hearing his perspective was hilarious, so I think that should be our first strip, The mishap prom where the prom king got socked in the balls mid performance by a drunk mexican and a dog ferociously barked from the audience. I think this should be one of many random web comics on a webcomic blog we need to finally start.”

It’s a good idea and one everyone involved in is really excited about. What I need to do my part of this comic is find someone to draw it. Preferably someone who wasn’t there and doesn’t know the people involved. That way we can add a whole new element the Rashomon angle of this project.

Week #40 Everyones Gay in San Francisco - TV Show

I was out to dinner in North Beach for Larry Luna’s birthday the other day. Somehow in the middle of dinner the topic of Homophobic attitudes toward the Bay Area came up and I developed this little idea for a police drama.

In my story a New York cop gets transfered to San Francisco after a misunderstanding regarding his sexuality leads to constant harassment by the other officers.

In San Francisco he reluctantly investigates a series of murders in the San Francisco gay community. Throughout the coarse of the show he slowly starts to discover that literally everyone in San Francisco is gay. It turns out the murders he’s been investigating are part of a large conspiracy against a group who want the whole city to “come out of the closet”.

In the end he catches the murderers but in the process he inadvertently forces the whole city to go public. Everything works out in the end and the cop ends up living happily as the only straight person in San Francisco.

The show would obviously be a satire of both the bay areas appearance to the rest of the world and the “slowly unraveling conspiracy” genre.

There’s probably no way I’ll ever make a TV show but if anyone else wanted to, even as “webisodes” I’d be totally stoked.