Theo Jansen...genius...

Dutch artist Theo Jansen builds wind powered automata collectively known as StrandBeests; each design has it's own Latin binomial and usually a unique inbuilt survival strategy, e.g. a dangling siphon mechanism that prevents it from wading too deep into the water; or a tail spike with an automated hammer so that the Beest can anchor itself to the ground when the wind picks up...


Via: VideoSift

Jansen's walking mechanism is designed such that the "hip" remains level and at a constant distnce above the ground plane...as would the axel of a wheel



the above video was animated by a Mr. Daniel Wyllie

Here come the Hills of Time...pondering that elusive "state of grace"...

Some years ago it occurred to me that it was wildly hopeful and overly optimistic to speak in terms of the best years of one's life...surely about the most that we can hope for (or humbly expect)is to have accrued a small collection of memories which may have originally lasted only moments...I remember crossing Fore street from the station to the mall at Edmonton Green seeing Zen and our baby son James, in his push chair beaming...so happy to see me...Me of all people!
...I remember one of those perfect London summer afternoons in our new house...sitting on our sofa, (also now long gone), reading the Times; church bells, and even that beautiful English sound of willow on leather...yes the crack of a cricket bat...
Kate knows what I'm talking about...

Dreams Have Gone Out of the World...

As I have said before, there are so many other things I would rather do, should do or have to do.
A couple of days ago I was looking through some of my late father's writing and came across this rather beautiful but rather glum piece of poetry, which was probably written in the late 60s...how much more relevant it is today...I realized that in some sense, it was as if my father and I were born centuries apart...

A long term project which is essentially already finished will be the creation of a Blog from his journals...again; here's something I should have started when I wasn't working...

click on the images to enlarge.

Hey Joe!...the joys of being a Yankee sound-alike.

One of the lesser but still important themes of My Unmade Movie is Anti-Americanism. Anti-Americanism is as pervasive as American culture and American influence EVERYWHERE.
Personally, I have to make a conscious effort to keep mine in check...and therein lies the problem. I at least recognize that it is a problem and not an acceptable norm. How often do people in the outside world, i.e., the actual world that isn't America...and there's a lot of it...how often do those people stop and think, "wait a minute, maybe not all Americans think that way". Presently, a Republican politician, Ron Paul, has dared to suggest that perhaps American foreign policy is to blame for the enmity that showers America from off her shores. To use a great Americanism, "Well duh!", the Brits would call this restating the blinding, bleeding obvious; more succinctly one man's retaliation is the CIA's "blowback". Would it be wildly preposterous to suggest further that Hollywood or at the very least Fox news could just possibly, just occasionally, be producing what someone, somewhere else could rightfully describe as "propaganda"?
Personally I marvel when members of the American public ask, "why do they hate us so much?" Just ask your politicians, if their answer is anything other than "America's bullying foreign policy", then they're lying which of course should come as no surprise. In the outside world we have very little good to say about politicians generally, even if we like them! In the outside world we maintain a healthy skepticism.
It was your founding fathers who so perfectly framed all the basic principles of modern democracy; checks and balances, separation of church and state, and the right to a dissenting opinion; what the hell happened?, what's wrong with you (the) people?

Lewis Black one of my many, many favourite Americans addresses some of these issues, and is, as ever, very complimentary toward Canada. LANGUAGE WARNING!



more about all of this later...

My Privilege

I've been meaning to write for such a long time...and it's not as if nothing much has happened...although that wouldn't be unexpected around here; but if I do say so myself I do have something of a knack for having interesting things happen to and around me in the dreariest of times and places...
e.g. a couple of weeks ago I rather impulsively caved in and panic purchased what is certainly the second last multi-system VCR in Hooterville...possibly the entire world...(they ain't makin' em like that anymore!)...a beautiful Samsung machine which does standards conversion on the fly...anyway, the first thing I dubbed to NTSC VHS and then to DVD was an 8mm off air recording I made almost twenty years ago of an incredible film by an amazing director; I shant say more as it is hoped that this masterpiece may at last be released on DVD within a few months time...
I gave a copy to my friend Josh who promptly e-mailed me a link to the director's website; wherein I read that even the director himself had been unable to obtain a copy from the distributor!
I wrote to this director; as it later transpired so did my friend Josh. I offered to send this gentleman a copy/copies in whatever standard he preferred and received the kindest and most gracious reply...he's a major, though not mainstream, director; one of THE GREATS...took time to write me a nice reply...whereas local media "big shots" can't even return a call or even mouse click to acknowledge receipt of an e-mail. Real class shines through.

What all the fuss is about

I started painting about 10 months ago and at present have five or six unfinished canvases to my credit, not the least of which is this portrait of my darling wife...AKA...the heroine of My Unmade Movie...

Turn Right at Jupiter...'til you get to Saturn...

An early working title for Manila Envelope was inspired by a friend's directions to a cab driver. Jupiter was the name of a street not far from the apt. building where myself and some of my expat work colleagues lived. One morning as I was sharing a cab into work, my friend Rob Nothisrealname., instructed the driver to "turn right at Jupiter", which I loved, but let's face it, it's just too ambiguous.

Gentle Reader,

I've been on holiday for over a week, which has been lovely, but...
I haven't really done much of any of the things that I had planned to do...
like, PAINT!
...or...tidy up this Blog...write a few entries.

Tidy up our flat!...sort crap out; build some shelving.
Get my badly needed eyeglasses.

Lots of things have changed quite considerably of late, in ways that were not immediately obvious...I wouldn't go so far as to suggest that I suddenly feel more secure...but I certainly feel less insecure about our situation than I have for a very long time...maybe ever. Curiously enough we're all working right now; although at this writing only James is at work as this is the first day of Zen's break.
This is also the first real paid holiday I've had in years (as opposed to an unscheduled, unplanned for, sudden cessation of work (like in the God-forsaken animation biz).
I actually like my current job.

I've also realized; as I thought might turn out to be the case; that I've completely let go of any ambitions to ever work in the film biz at any level ever again...how did I ever get so hopelessly sidetracked?...what sheer folly!...of course there's still a part of me that thinks that having reached that level of detachment and cynicism I'm now better equipped to tackle it.
Anything for a quiet life...that has long been my guiding principle.

...but to digress, I have done some painting, and am enjoying playing with my new camera, a Panasonic FZ8, hence the space trip in the Intrepid class Starship Potemkin above.

Even I know that it's not all about M.E.

So much to write about and so much that is so much more important than my stupid Unmade Movie (M.E., Manila Envelope); but then, hey...I had to kick this all off somehow...I had a sense that this would start out one way and little by little become something else...in fact, I was kind of counting on it...

The BIGGEST and Best news is that my son, our son, started his first job today...he should be finished shortly so I'm going to go to pick him up...

I'm with Busey..sort of...

Me and my hopeless dream of making a movie...You and I both know that it's all been done before.
Not long after I left the Philippines, an Australian production company, McElroy & McElroy, (who curiously enough had offices in the same building as Hanna Barbera; where I first worked in Sydney) produced a very fine dramatic mini-series about the People Power Revolution and the assassination of Ninoy Aquino.
Much to my immense frustration it aired in Canada after I resettled in the U.K.
I finally saw it in London in '89, only three years after witnessing some of the real events first hand. I taped it at the time and again in '96 when Channel 4 ran it to mark the tenth anniversary of the revolution.
A couple of years ago I was able to track down an NTSC copy on Amazon.

A Dangerous Life
Director: Robert Markowitz
Writer: David Williamson (teleplay)



The Dynastic Duo
FM and FL*, are brilliantly portrayed by the much too lovely Tessie Tomas and the late great Ruben Rustia, whose performance is also a flawless vocal impression.

*Ferdinand Marcos and First Lady (the Filipinos love their achronyms and abbreviations)

Jake Busey looks so much like his Dad...wouldn't it be great, I thought, in a tangequel kind of way, to have a scene where my protagonist meets Tony O'Neil (this time 'round played by Jake Busey) in the lobby of the Manila Garden Hotel..."You know, Tony O'Neil, he's that muck-raking reporter for that American news channel who's always getting into trouble, yeah, I talked to him at the Garden, he's a really cool guy."

an accident of birth...eh

Oh Can'tada

What does Canada Day mean to me?...I can remember my first July 1st in Australia...working at Hanna Barbera and thinking Thank God I 'm not in Canada...

and who the Hell do you think you are?...

A dear, long lost friend of mine who I've only been able to renew contact with thanks to the Internet, had a look at my Blog and asked me if I was still an aspiring film director. Truthfully I'm too cynical now to aspire to much of anything...I did tell him that if pushed I might consider myself an aspiring screenwriter.

What I am, at present, as I told him; is an electronics assembler and tester. I work for a firm which is a leading manufacturer of head-end equipment for wireless; cable television, Internet, VoD & VoIP...at least I think that's what we do.

Countless years ago I dreamed of a career in film, but even at the outset I was more interested in Art Direction and Cinematography and had hopes of breaking into the biz from one of those angles.

After veering off of my carefully chosen path into the cul-de-sac of animation with its inherent reductionist mode of film making I soon discovered that if a picture is worth a thousand words I'd rather write the thousand words than draw one more @*#&ing! picture...

However, it was many more years 'til I finally started to write my still unfinished script...if anything I've said or will say comes across as arrogant...Please accept my apologies in advance...any writers' presumption that they have something to say worth listening to requires a certain degree of over-confidence to begin with...I'm starting to think that all creative endeavours are a thankless task to the creator...it's no big news that lots of writers hate to write, painters hate to paint etc., but still, they just have to do it...

my incredentials...

The following is from a letter which I sent to the Director's Guild of Canada a couple of years ago when it looked as though;
a.) I might be able to join in some very minor capacity without jumping through hoops and signing away the souls of my loved ones to Beelzebub;
b.) it might actually be worthwhile for reasons which I've long since forgotten...

...it has occurred to me that part of this also comprises the "back story" to Manila Envelope.

Thank You for your call re my query regarding membership. Thank You also for your candidness and encouragement. The following letter was written from; what I hope you’ll appreciate is a somewhat jaded perspective and before I contacted your office. I include it here only because it is the most up to date summation of my on again off again career...so be warned...

To whom it may concern,

I am writing to ask you most sincerely if there would be any point in my seeking to apply as an associate member of the guild; or, if I even qualify.

In 1977-78 I attended the London International Film School in the U.K., and subsequently returned to Vancouver where I hoped I might break into the local film biz. Being neither pushy, nor well connected, I quickly discovered that the union was virtually impenetrable. I was even advised by the film liaison officer for the B.C. government, that I could, in a desperate pinch, try to get in by joining a “farmers” local, i.e., somewhere out on the prairies.

I did luck out however, when I met an American art director, who was working on a Paramount Pictures project entitled “All Washed Up”...later released as “Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains”. This gentleman aware of my need to accrue some recognized work experience, took me on as his assistant.
I should point out that this was frowned upon by a local union man, who coincidentally was foisting a rather attractive young lady on the art department at the same time!
This was all so long ago that I suspect the parties concerned are long since retired from extensive and rewarding careers in the industry, the likes of which I, myself, can only dream of!

I've never seen Ladies and Gentlemen the Fabulous Stains; it is now a Cult film...LANGUAGE WARNING



I do have fond memories of going to a wrap party at a chic Vancouver restaurant with a beautiful actress friend. John Lydon also starred in the film and was there; he was very pleasant, not rotten at all...

I had, during this period applied to whatever, I.A. locals would respond to my requests for applications. In 1980, while still living in Vancouver, I was accepted into the Toronto Camera Local as a second assistant cameraman. Obviously I was thrilled...I packed up, and headed to Toronto. I arrived to discover that I and a host of other hopefuls had been duped. (Including an Argentinean guy I’d gone to Film School with in England!)
The local was in desperate need of funds (our dues) as they were engaged in a legal wrangle. At that time, the Toronto camera local was part of New York...Wow!, technically I belonged to the New York local...and, look Ma, no Green Card!
The Toronto people, quite rightly, wanted a separate charter; hence the sudden intake of members and their hard, cold cash; ($1800 in my case, borrowed from my Mom, on top of all my moving expenses etc.).



You can't get job without a ticket...and you can't get a ticket without a job...and you can't get a job without a Green Card...not so much a note of bitterness; rather a symphony of resentment and contempt! (and yes; that's my real name...or is it?)

After a year of working in a picture framing shop...how apropos...and one day of work shooting camera tests in a dusty corner at Magdar studios with a surly camera operator (who shall remain nameless), I returned to Hooterville, en route to Australia.

Foolishly, I made one last attempt at getting work here before heading to the Antipodes. I answered a small and cryptic ad in the local paper. I correctly deduced that the mystery project was SCTV Network 90, which had just moved to ITV Edmonton. I sat up all night reworking the best pieces from my portfolio and doing some new artwork which I couriered the next day.
I was hired as assistant Art Director.

The first set I designed for SCTV, for Bobby Bitman's Julius Ceaser...



I also designed the soviet mini-cam which appears later in this episode; but it was prop master extraordinaire Bruce McKenna who breathed life into it..Bruce has incidentally gone on to write and direct...his first feature was a charming family film called Saltwater Moose, filmed in his native Nova Scotia and starring Timothy Dalton.

When the two and a half months of work came to an end on SCTV, I was back at square one...The show became a big hit in the States and, of course, had to be relocated back to T.O. I had been offered the chance to go to Toronto, but declined...gee, can’t think why?

During the delay in my departure, my Australian Visa had lapsed and the reissue now had severe restrictions regarding work and length of stay.

I did, however go to Australia; tried to get work in stage, film or television, but ended up working for Hanna Barbera Animation...all within two weeks of my arrival.
It was still my intent to find work in live action, though I was now simply grateful to be working at all. My first priority became staying put in Australia. After a year at Hanna Barbera I was offered a better job at another studio.
Animation layouts, had rather more in common with art direction so I leapt at the chance. I was also fortunate enough to have been allowed two weeks away from that job to do some story-boarding assisting on Mad Max III: Beyond Thunderdome.


with Bill Hanna and the gang; Sydney 1981
(captions to follow)

I fought tooth and nail to stay in Australia, applying for extensions, then appeals with the Immigration Department. After three and a half years my luck ran out. Knowing of my dread at returning to Canada, my employers offered me a job at their newly established studio in the Philippines...a stop gap measure...'til my residency in Oz was resolved one way or another.

While working in the Philippines I gained considerable and varied work experience, not the least of which was trying to finish a show for a client in the States while the U.S. puppet regime of Ferdinand Marcos was being overthrown in a revolution....Difficult to get those animators to fill their quotas when they’re out being tear gassed and lying down in front of tanks...

Returning to Canada in June ’86, I was able to quickly (two years later) parlay all of this accumulated know-how, into a grudging offer of some inbetweening work on the Care Bears Movie...at Nelvana back in beautiful T’rona the Good...to them I was still just some hick from the Snowy Boondocks...

One blisteringly cold afternoon...in Ottawa this time...where I was beavering away on the Raccoons...if that makes any sense...I happened upon the British Consulate. With less than nothing to lose I furtively enquired as to whether or not I could get a work visa. I was assured that I qualified for a Grandparent Entry Certificate and could stay and work indefinitely.

Less then a month later I was once again walking along High Street Kensington in the rain...and not looking back.

Australia scenario redux!; within two weeks in London, I was fortunate, or unfortunate enough, to find work...this time on Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

Like it or not...and I didn’t; I would remain stuck in animation for years to come.

My animation career in the U.K. was book-ended rather nicely by Roger Rabbit at one end and Space Jam at the other. The former was entirely composited using old school methods; hand painted mattes, multiple passes through an optical printer etc. All the drawings in Space Jam were scanned without a cel (or a rostrum camera) in sight, computer composited then scanned onto film.
By 1998, the London animation scene was in tumult; Warner’s had shut down rather suddenly the year before. Numerous “classical” animation projects were on hold, as CGI was taking over. I hadn’t the resources, or the opportunity, to learn computer animation.
Work was scarce, and thus I resolved to make a major career change.
I took a course in fibre optic splicing and testing, but was unable to find work in telecoms until early 2000. When even this work started to dry up in 2001, my situation became untenable.

It was with great reluctance that I returned to Hooterville in late 2001; now with a wife and son; to even less opportunity than my justly cynical self could have imagined.

To summarize, quite simply, I can not offer a great deal of bona fide local experience, nor can I offer much that is relevant and current...a bit of story-boarding on “Body and Soul”. I have neither the time nor the inclination to work my way up through the ranks as an I.A. umpteenth assistant craft service guy to become a clapper loader by the time I’m 75.

I have written a screenplay and am a card carrying member of the Australian Writer’s Guild. (at least they let me join!)
I would very much like to get my project off the ground as a co-production, and am working towards those ends at present.

If nothing else, I have had a great deal of experience working with some amazingly talented people, from all over the world. I am not stupid (I'm sure that this letter has opened up that debate).
Despite what you might think from the tone of this letter, I don’t have an “attitude”...other than a dislike of needless bureaucracy. I have nothing to lose.

Bloomsday

Must note here, if only for the sake of doing so, that today is June 16th...yesterday I bought the DVD of Before Sunrise to complete my set...I bought the sequel (Before Sunset) a few days earlier...I watched them both last night...got a kick out of the fact that the day the first film takes place is June 16th!

I first saw Before Sunrise on television when we where still living in London...caught it by chance very near the beginning...the couple arguing on the train...I was instantly hooked!...what a gem!

N/SAQ: Manila Envelope

to my very few and very patient readers:
please be advised that I am continually editing and adding to this post;
until I can sort out a better way to reorganize..this is it...hence the date shouldn't change.

...as presently imagined; Manila Envelope opens with a newsreel clip of the Philippine National Anthem as would have been shown preceeding any theatrical film screening in Manila at that time (circa '85-'86). The Lupang Hinirang is a beautiful anthem, and this modern version which I found on YouTube is particularly stirring...when that shot of the huge flag, the brass and the big drums come in I start to mist up!...then of course, that is still to say nothing of the stratospheric production values!...




Lupang Hinirang
(official version used since 1956)


Bayang magiliw
Perlas ng Silanganan,
Alab ng puso,
Sa dibdib mo'y buhay.
Lupang Hinirang,
Duyan ka ng magiting,
Sa manlulupig,
Di ka pasisiil.

Sa dagat at bundok,
Sa simoy at sa langit mong bughaw,
May dilag ang tula
At awit sa paglayang minamahal.
Ang kislap ng watawat mo'y
Tagumpay na nagniningning,
Ang bituin at araw niya
Kailan pa ma'y di magdidilim.
Lupa ng araw, ng luwalhati't pagsinta,
Buhay ay langit sa piling mo;
Aming ligaya, na pag may mang-aapi
Ang mamatay nang dahil sa iyo.



Never or (at best) Seldom Asked Questions

Q: So what is this unmade movie you're talking about?

A: My Unmade Movie (M.U.M.) is presently titled "Manila Envelope";
it is intended to be a romantic comedy/drama about a young(ish) Canadian guy who; after getting started in the animation industry in Australia, ends up spending ten months working in a cartoon studio in Manila. Part of the story unfolds against the backdrop of the first "People Power Revolution" of February 1986...which is also sometimes referred to as "the Miracle of EDSA".

Q: You say it's intended to be a romantic comedy/drama...why is that?

A: Right now; in its present form, it isn't particularly romantic, funny or dramatic...which is frustrating because in real life it was all those things.

Q: In real life?...is it autobiographical?

A: Maybe...mostly...with some embellishments.

Q: What really happened?

A: What really happened was I, or perhaps it was somebody else, was living quite happily in Australia with the intention of staying put and building a new life. Rather less happily this person was working in the animation industry which almost kept them fed and clothed and sheltered.
After three years in Sydney his visa had long since expired, and his various appeals through proper channels were rejected. He was told by the authorities that he had to leave...it was, for him, a complete tragedy and a disaster.
However, his Australian employers; Tinseltoons Pty Ltd. (a pseudonym) aware of his circumstances offered him a position heading up the Layout Dept. at their newly established satellite studio in Manila.

Q: Wow!

A: Not really, not to be churlish, but to some extent it was like being handed a poisoned chalice.

Q: Why do you say that?

A: Because the whole thing was a ghastly mess from the get go...except that the option of returning to Canada and no work in time for winter made it an offer he couldn't refuse...mercifully he was demoted to asst. dept. head before he even got on the plane.

Q: You were demoted?

A: Thankfully, he happily conceded to the seniority of another coworker who had arrived there a few months earlier. Ironically, this other fellow was a great guy and a good friend but not particularly good at running the dept.

Q: I see...so what was the project?

A: It was a Saturday Morning superhero thing, it was something like this...



...but for the sake of my story I've reimagined it as a thing about an 80s New Wave Pop band who are also a top secret tactical operations squadron. The band was going to be called HeatWave..but of course there was/is a real band called Heatwave...maybe I could get away with a different spelling...HEETWAAV?
Their alternate identities are as the HotW; "Heroes of the World"...not an official title but the way they were to be described in the media...which even then, in the real world, was hungry for sound bites.

Q: and?

A: and that's about it for now...aside from a blurb I wrote in the style of a studio press release; the sort that you might see in Variety, touting the networks new fall line ups...
...at some point I suppose I shall have to devise a couple of whole shows for the cartoon film within the film...suffice it to say that one idea is to have an episode titled "Intoducing Penny"...it's in homage to "Meet Pamela" in Truffaut's Day for Night.

Q: ?

A: I'm a pretentious git and I'm expropriating genius because I'm incapable of coming up with anything that good myself ...so why not celebrate the greatness of others...imitation is, after all, the sincerest form of flattery...and possibly copyright infringement...besides I desperately wanted to portray, at some point; in montage, the now almost lost process of making an animated cartoon the old fashioned way; with drawings on paper, Xeroxing and hand painting of cels, track reading off of full coat mag film, shooting on rostrum cameras etc.
I also wanted to use some beautiful baroque music, preferably Bach, one of the Brandenburgs...after I'd hit upon that idea I rediscovered the montage sequence in Day for Night...call it cryptamnesia, subconscious plagerism...Truffaut's original will give you goose bumps!...if you love film...they used the same score (by George Delerue) for a montage at the Oscars a couple of years ago...so obviously I was onto a good thing...
There's also meant to be a reprise of this montage in the style of Koyaanisqatsi when they're frantically trying to hit a tight deadline...that kind of crap happened all the time.

Q: You seem to speak disparagingly of animation on the one hand and yet seem determined to celebrate it.

A: Basically, it is just the backdrop to the story, a triviality compared to what happens to the various characters and of course the huge, historically significant events of the revolution...but yes, people outside the industry have little or no idea how cartoons are made. It was certainly the case at that time that most shows were of such poor quality by the time they hit your TV screens that it belied the effort that went into them. Even then people who might feign an interest in what I did would ask, "oh yeah, they do all that with computers now don't they?" Not then they didn't!

Q: It's seldom spoken of today; was the revolution in the Philippines that big a deal?

A: Yes!, absolutely, although you're quite right...you wouldn't know it.
The will of the Filipino People had been frustrated by a corrupt regime that stole the election...sound familiar?
Sadly the phenomenon that started in the Philippines probably had less effect there than anywhere else...the Filipino people are still too self effacing to give themselves credit where credit is due. They are, or can be very...not neccesarily pious; but reverential in a fatalistic way; which is probably how they came to credit the almighty for the "Miracle of EDSA"...as if they couldn't do it themselves! They are, or could be, a great people.
When the time came the People took to the streets in a peaceful revolution of organized civil disobedience...nobody had done anything like that since Gandhi!...civilians formed a human shield around the break-away anti-Marcos military, who were, initially, outnumbered by the Marcos Loyalists...Filipino's demonstrated to the world that it could work...it was undeniably, grass-roots Democracy in action!...Kalayaang Democrasiya!...curious that it was only after the phrase "People Power" entered the language (and public consciousness) that the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain finally came down...
Reagan and Bush snr. might have liked to claim that they had won the Cold War...a War of attrition and outspending the other guy...maybe they did...but don't you think that just maybe, the People of the Philippines helped awaken the sheepish Eastern Block from it's apathetic stupor?

Q: Good point, but don't you think you sound like a bit of a propagandist?

A: the Latin root of propaganda translates as something like, "that which is worth disseminating". In the Philippines advertising of any kind is referred to, even in a positive context, as propaganda.
I had something of a political epiphany in the Philippines, I try not to take what freedom we still have too much for granted...

Q: You mentioned some interesting choices of music; Bach, and by inference Philip Glass...

A: The Philippines is an extremely musical country...I can't stress that enough...I need to find a way to work more of that aspect into my story...MTV launched that year...it was in Manila that I first saw Karaoke machines!...everybody had them, from the poorest of the poor to the super rich...the GMA supershow ran every Saturday morning...I think it was three hours long and there was always a new, very polished dance number to some current hit...The Vietnam War is sometimes referred to as the Rock and Roll War...it follows then that the People Power Revolution could be considered the MTV Revolution...I was glued to channel Four for most of it...that was the station that the rebels took control of first...

Q: So, obviously aside from Baroque music?...

A: I hope to include lots of contemporaneous Pop music...mostly as incidental BG stuff...how you can ever hope to "sell" the historical accurracy of recent history without it I don't know...unfortunately I was never a big fan of what is called O.P.M., Original Pinoy Music, which tends to the shlockier end of the international Pop spectrum...however I did and I do like the APO Hiking Society, the exquisite Kuh Ledesma...unforgettable...and Freddie Aguilar; but then, Aguilar in particular is a serious folk artist. I also remember the now very famous Leah Salonga as a kid; a Bobby Soxer in an ad for toothpaste with a Tagolog jingle sung to the tune of Madness' Baggy Trousers. I was hardly surprised when she was discovered, only a few years later by the producers of Miss Saigon and became the toast of London...here she is on Wogan in 1989...I seem to recall watching this at the time, when I was living in Finchley...



...a tad precocious in this interview perhaps, but still very young, and so charming and beautiful...

Q: What about the late Yoyoy Villame?

A: Yoyoy was and is a lovable cornball...I had in mind a scene in my film which recounts a rather tense episode in comedic form and again pays homage to other films; my protagonist and a friend thwart some banditos in a recreation of the pat-a-cake routine from the Hope Crosby Road pictures when they lead a group of villagers in a rendition of Mag Exercise Tayo...

Q: Bandits?

A: Yes that's an embellishment which I probably won't use...why would I?... the truth was more than interesting enough.

Q:?

A: I spent an incredibly tense day with a friend who had a complete and total mental break down...a serious psychosis...I was reticent about putting it in the story at all...but it still is just a dramatization...who can say if it really happened that way?

Q: Your friend wasn't you was it?

A: No, although I certainly feel that I earned the right to a melt down myself, especially after that day...I think I might have taken a day or two off work but perhaps not, because I did at one point tell the Studio manager to go F--- himself!

Q: You didn't get fired?

A: I didn't; it was in the heat of the moment...and by then I didn't really care....strangely enough it was soon after that that they asked me to extend my contract.

Q: Why was that?

A: At long last, they realized that I was the guy who had been trying to get the FX done that the client in the States was demanding...and that we weren't delivering...mostly because their man on site; the camera supervisor; had been turning down and otherwise sabotaging every request I made.

Q: So who was this guy?

A: I call him Jack Hackle (or High Jacker or Jack Hassle), he was a jaded, career animation cameraman who had worked for, and probably pissed off; everybody!
He turned fifty in Manila which is a year younger than I am now. Picture Tim Allen's Santa Claus with a permanent nicotine stain on his beard, and an attitude rather more like Billy Bob Thorton's version and there you have it...

Q: He sounds horrible...

A: Not really...he's probably the principle antagonist...the only real nemesis to our main character, but he isn't all bad either...in fact it was/is my intent to portray him in a somewhat more sympathetic light...almost tragic. As it stands he's quoted or alluded to in the epilogue...he has the last word; if only indirectly.

Q: Tell us something about the other characters...the plot...

A: There's our protagonist, the aforementioned antagonist...



a foreign guest worker foreign to work.

MORE TO FOLLOW...

Manila Envelope AKA Mr. Greens' Manila Envelope...My Unmade Movie

What this Blog was supposed to be about...

back in 2004 I finally knuckled down and hammered out a screenplay...which although more nearly complete than most of my other creative undertakings is still a work in progress...this Blog was meant to be a showcase for the script, my designs and other ideas relating to the film. Lest you think I have a problem staying on topic let me assure you that it is my intention to post the script on it's own separate Blog(s)...but here's a short treatment...

Manila Envelope

After three and a half years in Australia, Canadian animator Christopher Green’s immigration difficulties have become insurmountable. His employers; Tinsel Toons Australia Pty Ltd., offer a solution. Christopher is dispatched to the company’s newly formed Manila studio, to head up the layout department.
It’s the autumn of 1985, and Sydney has been subcontracted by NooTrak Cartoons (U.S.A.) to produce the first season of “HoTW: Heroes of the World”, at its Philippine studio.
Chris takes a quick trip back to Canada, before flying to Manila via L.A., for a meeting and to collect some material from the client.
A junior secretary in Sydney, has erringly booked Christopher a ticket in Philippine Airline’s exquisitely luxurous “Mabuhay” class. Off to such an auspicious start Christopher arrives in Manila, with a feeling of relief and disappointment, to find that he’s already been demoted to assistant dept. head. Former colleague Antonio Charot is an incredibly talented artist; kind, worldly, but surprisingly, quite hopeless in his capacity as Chris’s new boss.
The next ten months will prove to be something of a trial by fire. Christopher will struggle with office politics; a language barrier, falling in love, and actually having it reciprocated.
His best friend, Rob, will have a serious mental break down, for which he’ll be hospitalized and returned to Australia.
All of this is the least of it however, when set against the last days of the Marcos regime, and the original People Power Revolution, which set off a swathe of movements around the globe that would change the rest of the world forever. Christopher will also finally finish scene 101.

a few disparate thoughts...

In hind sight I don’t think I’ve ever given up on anything so much as merely lost interest. There’s a fine line between the required amount of saintly patience and futile pursuit of anything particularly difficult, and sadly the location of that line often doesn’t become known until well after the fact; if ever.
Failure then; is a matter of perspective. If a machine part breaks with catastrophic results it could still be the case that it has already performed well beyond its original design spec. The point is; that a life lived on the brink can’t be judged by such limited standards.

Fish out of water...everything that crawls, walks, runs and flies owes something to that first audacious, Cambrian Era beach bum!

It’s not love that makes the world go ‘round; it’s a gravitational distortion of space time that makes the world go round---and be round for that matter!

Tangequels

(Tangential Sequels)
You film buffs will know that Hitch was fond of employing a device of his own invention which he called the "McGuffin". I was never a big Hitchcock fan, so I'm sure that there are better examples, but the one that comes to my mind was in one of his later flicks...maybe Family Plot...I'm not sure (this post is actually starting to sound McGuffinesque); to wit; We open on a street scene; the camera follows a man walking a dog...(Hitch himself if I recall in one of his walk-ons)...we've established that he's a character of interest...or is he?...No!, it's the guy that just fell to his death from the balcony in the BG...the man walking the dog was the McGuffin...a Red Herring by any other name...which brings me to the somewhat similar concept of Tangential Sequels...call them Tangequels (but remember I coined the term here first!)...a Tangequel takes a character, script reference (preferably, but not necessarily obscure), or related set of circumstances and goes off on a whole other tangent.

One possible Tangequel would be a Klingon adaptation from Shakespeare alluded to in Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country...a text for a Klingon Hamlet exists, published as part of the Shakespeare Restoration Project, undertaken by a dedicated group of scholarly Trek and linguistics fans...

When I first saw Disney's Holes I thought that a Western based on the tale of the outlaw Kissin' Kate Barlow would have made a great Tangequel...and vehicle for the oh so very lovely Patricia Arquette...

Remember all those humans who stepped off the Mothership in Close Encounters?...we see most of them in silhouette...no certainty as to how they're attired...what if one of them had been whisked away from Renaissance Europe and returned to modern Wyoming?...that'd be some debriefing and reaclimatisation...where and how and how long did they live on another planet?...living amongst strange creatures with a technology akin to sorcery...then returned to Earth to live amongst humans long settled in the "New World" , again with magical, but less sophisticated technology.

How about Ed Chigliaks movie?...Tangequel to the T.V. series Northern Exposure...maybe Woody Allen could co-direct it.

Last but not least where's the Wyld Stallyns album which features the cuts that finally brought peace to mankind...or the Rockumentary about Stallyns Bill and Ted?

Paalam sa iyong pag-yao

Yesterday, my son informed me that Yoyoy Villame had died, it came as a sad shock to the Hyperbolic Hyperborean as I had had a chance to see the ebulient troubadour here in my own remote neck of the woods only last fall but didn't go...alas, mostly for want of money as I was still out of work at the time...more later...

R.I.P. Yoyoy



Please bear with me, this will all make more sense as and when I'm able to get back to my postings...

Forward (from the unfinished, unpublished intro to the book of the film of the...)
The following started out as a screenplay which, after gestating for well over a decade was finally blurted out over the space of many weeks beginning in May 2004. At this writing, I am still toying with the idea of trying to shoot a few scenes to use as a pitch to potential investors. I am much encouraged by the recent upsurge in the success of independent films. Also, we have reached a point where almost affordable digital video technology renders image quality comparable to, if not better than super 16mm, on a standard sized cinema screen.

There are nay sayers, and rather than be put off by them I’m energized by the challenge...There are after all a million good reasons to not even try to make a film...the trick is in finding the one reason to continue to try...I’m not so sure that even within a huge, well established studio that the process of getting any particular project “greenlit” doesn’t vary greatly from one picture to the next...oftentimes the stories of how films get made are better, or at least more interesting or amazing than the films themselves...hopefully if this project ever comes to light it won’t disappoint...

When friends and family continually prompted me to write a book I was reticent. I felt that I had to stick to my guns; I had, after all, already written a script...because I wanted to make a movie! Although, truthfully, I wouldn’t have even started had I not convinced myself that my only goal was just to finish a script. Curiously, the confidence gained in finishing 132 very imperfect pages, was enough to shift those goal posts; and the notion of actually bringing this project to fruition once again seized my thoughts and was keeping me awake at night. The idea of returning to square one; tearing it all apart and trying to rewrite it in novel form was onerous. I wrote a script, partly as a compromise to begin with, precisely because I wanted to tell the story, but I didn’t care to, or feel that I could write a novel/memoir. I had scenes in my head that I wanted to see shot the way I’d imagined them. I had recounted some of these as anecdotes, often many times over, others less so, and still others kept as secrets until they were laid bare on the page.

It occurred to me some months later that perhaps I could assemble all the material I had collected, including my own writing, research text and images, storyboards, designs, etc. and attempt to publish it as a ready made “kit” for making this film. The end result would not be unlike those numerous “making of” or “art of” film books that have become so much more popular over the last few decades. The only significant difference being that this would be a making of book for an as yet unmade film. It’s also a neat, and as far as I know, an as yet untried marketing strategy. Furthermore, even if it was self published (admittedly a strong possibility); properly bound and printed, it could be a very handsome and comprehensive proposal document, and/or press kit...it could even include an EPK on CD. In this latter instance, it needn’t even be expected to sell as a book; merely be used to drum up interest and hence, although more expensive to produce would only be published in a small edition...and of course if successful, then well worth it. Producing a book might also be a good crash course in tackling...on a smaller scale...some of the problems of producing a film.