..:S...P...I...D...E...R...B...I...T...E...S:..

Saturday, December 30, 2006

"If we don't hurry, you'll get a bad horse."
"All horse are bad."
- "Wolf: A False Memoir," Jim Harrison

"When he's around, nothing adds up!"
- terrible, inappropriate tagline to "The Minus Man"


what up people. anybody left around here? been awhile. couple of holidays i skipped, couple of concerts i missed, couple of people i didn't see. couple relatives are mad at me for it. got my first grades from gradual school. all A's and........one A minus. let me get this out of my system real quick: in spite of this A minus being better than 90% of all my grades up until grad school, it makes me extremely angry. something about that minus is infuriating. i'd rather get a B or a C+ than anything with a minus. the minus is like saying "you didn't quite get what i'm giving you" whereas the C+ would say "i'm adding this little symbol after the letter to show that you're actually better than the fuckup you presented in class." know what i mean? but this class was a head-scratcher anyway. first of all, in this workshop, a bunch of people that got A's without that minus didn't write much of anything. turned in old shit. missed some classes. kissed some ass. sold their soul. what did i do? turned in 60 pages of NEW shit while working on another story and a script outside of class. about 190 pages of workable material in one semester. everyone should have done the exact same thing. i hate to sound like Thom Jones here but, seriously, do they really want to write? at this level they should have fucking stories pouring out of them, but the vast majority of what was turned in had the distinct smell of having been workshopped before. like years ago. like back in high school. see, i can smell that old shit a mile away, dude! who are they kidding. (time out. i love it when my cat shreds my taxes while i'm typing! go ahead you little maniac. didn't need those forms or anything) anyway. i'm writing like a madman, and this is what you should be graded for, not for how well you can pretend to meditate or doodle with crayons. yes, we meditated and doodled with crayons in this graduate-level class. true story. but you know what? when i wasn't making fun of it, i actually worked harder on the crayon nonsense than the people without the minuses, too! teacher would say, "draw how you feel about your writing." (which of course means nothing) and people would draw a bunch of sunrises and stick figures. i drew (no bullshit) the dude across from me with dreadlocks and a highly detailed Spartan helmet (two things he didn't actually have), an exact replica of the class meditating while ten versions of me pulled the fire alarm, a bunch of eggs frying on an architect's drafting table (not sure that that was all about) and, of course, myself crouched under a car wreck collecting gasoline in a cracked frisbee with some post-apocalyptic critter dropping out of the exhaust. and they drew...shit with smiley faces. what the fuck. and when we got more vague instructions like "present something before your particular workshop," (?) i spent a bunch of time carving a goddamn pumpkin with something to symbolize everyone's stories while everyone else...brought in cookies. actually the muted trumpet on that pumpkin was from a tattoo Caroline had, not her story. and, to be honest, i carve a pumpkin every year so i can't really complain about that. but anyway, crayons or no crayons, i was way ahead of that class and that minus still bites my ass. i was going to get all my classmates a copy of the movie "The Minus Man" as a protest, but as a stress-relieving joke it was too expensive.

so i skipped Christmas for the first time this year. i was going to go to Toledo but at the last minute locked myself inside and finished my western. it's done. did i say it was done before? then i lied. i can't be trusted. but i can admit that i lied back then because now i'm telling the truth. i swear that now it's done. i know no one gives a fuck but it i worked hard on this thing. i used this calendar as inspiration and had to get it done before i threw it away. i feel good. 130 pages, which isn't bad since i was trying to keep it down to just 90 pages this time (the first draft of the prison movie cracked 180 making it the worst miniseries ever) by giving all the characters three days to live. because when there's no water, yo, you got a countdown better than any ticking timebomb! so, if you get a chance, it'll be posted Monday. check it out if your bored. pretend you're watching a movie. even if you don't like westerns, it's the western to end all westerns. every myth exploded! every cliché overturned! every payoff delivered! every line crossed that nobody every crosses! horses treated with little or no respect! bible quotes used with and without irony! a hero who hates horses? every single character punished in some way!!! also made a bunch of soundtracks and gave them to some confused friends and coworkers. and i've immediately started on another script! since i'm trying to do every genre of film (and so far i've got a prison movie, a killer-on-the-loose movie, and now a western) i thought i'd tackle.......the buddy-cop movie! i think that'll be fun and easy to do since all through the 80s i probably saw hundreds of movies like that. but anyway, i stocked up on Raviolios and Little Debbies and didn't come out of my apartment for like 30 hours. and that's what you have to do to finish shit sometimes. and bam! finished it. i'm so riled up after finishing it that i can't stop saying the word "finish." i'm so worked up that i want to punch a horse in the mouth right now. so, now i got to catch up on some movies. i picked up a movie channel and watched a bunch of stuff. All bad. "Clerks 2," bad. "Superman Returns," bad. "Domino," bad, although Tow Waits popped up in the desert with busted fingers. "Freedomland," bad. "Underworld Evolution," bad. "Flightplan," so far, so bad. "Brokeback Mountain," average at best and NOT a western as advertised. how the hell is that a western? there's not a single gunfight, hanging, and, most importantly: no fucking villian! without a villain, you're not a western! and, actually, you're barely even a movie. but "Brokeback Mountain" is just this love story thing. it's like the fucking "Notebook" or something. it's like Cartman predicted long ago "gay cowboys eating pudding." okay, i'll admit there's some decent acting and what's-his-name beats the shit out of some bikers with fireworks over his shoulder and that was cool, but everyone kept saying, "it's the first gay western!" of course, maybe they weren't refering to the homosexuals in the movie and just saying it's the first gay western, not the first gay western. ask Eminem, only he can detect subtle differences in inflection when that word is used. but nope, it ain't no western. some horses and cattle but would you call "The Last Picture Show" a western? of course not. i know this for a fact 'cause i absorbed soooooooo many westerns leading up to the completion of this script. don't believe me? okay, just for kicks, here's what i watched in the last couple month in the order that i can remember them:

"Dead Man" ("looks like a goddamn religious icon" squash! boot crushes skull!)
"Django Kill" (hero comes to town dragging a coffin full of fun!)
"Fistfull of Dollars" (gets better and worse over time)
"Quigley Down Under" (just gets a little worse)
"Duel in the Sun" (best ending to a love story ever, excellent crazed preacher)
"Geronimo" (very underrated. best line "i was aiming for his head!")
"Heaven's Gate" (insanely expensive, piss-yellow-looking masterpiece)
"The Proposition" (very "Pat Garrett" ending, best music in a western ever)
"The Missouri Breaks" (say it again! waking up Brando by cutting his throat! mornin' dude!)
"Kill Bill 2" (lots of hardcore neo-western stuff in this actually, especially the burial)
"High Noon" (not really "real time" like everyone claims, but decent)
"Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" (first third is so fucking perfect)
"The Three Burials of Melquaides Estrada" (should have had twelve burials. see below...)
"El Marichi" (old news but it still makes you believe you could make a movie, too)
"Way of the Gun" (even more western stuff in this than "Kill Bill 2." perfect final 20 minutes)
"Quick and the Dead" (rips off "Once Upon a Time in the West" but has plenty new shit, too)
"Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid" (of course. so heavy that your TV will actually slump forward)
"Last Man Standing" (he's not the last man standing, which unforgivably fucks up the ending)
"Tombstone" (Val Kilmer, baby. so many people love him in this for good reason)
"Ox-Bow Incident" (my dad's favorite movie. i did a report for school on this. without crayons)
"Yojimbo" (only watched half the other night actually. got distracted by "Scanner Darkly")
"The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" (best mythbusting that doesn't involve Mentos and cola)
"Extreme Prejudice" (no "prejudice" to be found, but a villain squeezing a scorpion! sweet!)
"Young Guns 2" (decent knife fight between LaBamba and Arkansas Dave)
"Wild Bill" (another absolutely perfect first third then turns average. gunfight in wheelchairs!)
"Pale Rider" (ax handle party! who brought the snacks! "hell followed with him")
"The Wild Bunch" (of course! eeeeeeeeeevil children open the door for us)
"Ballad of Cable Hogue" (of course! huge inspiration with the no-water thing in mine)
"Outlaw Josie Wales" (not that good, except maybe when he keeps spitting on the dog. maybe)
"Desperado" (it's like the greatest music video of all time)
"Once Upon a Time in the West" (do i even need to say 'of course'?! first Oscar given to a fly)
"The Searchers" (i'm "searching" for more scenes in it as good as Wayne blinding that corpse)
"The Unforgiven" (another mythbuster that gets better and better and better and better)
"One-Eyed Jacks" (keep seeing this in grocery stores for a buck)
"Maverick" (waste of time. decent villian, stupid psychic poker games, good hanging. too smug)
"The Left-Handed Gun" (got to love that little girl laughing at the dead man's boot! slap!)
"Blue Velvet" (not a western but i needed a good villain to remind me how to introduce one)
"Ride the High Country" (bought it, put it in 5 times, still haven't watched it. just like "Amalie")
"Red River" (watched it in class this semester. i was the only one rooting for Wayne)
"Wyatt Earp" (dull as flies fucking, except when he throws the 8-ball)
"Silverado" (goofy, smug Hollywood horseshit, only watched it 'cause it was on cable last week)
"Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" (worst western I've even seen. started smug fake shit)
"Hud" (got to love Paul Newman NOT sticking up for the guy who stuck up for him)
and a whole bunch of "Deadwood" episodes (Swearenger is quite simply "the shit")

um. i think that's it. did i say "The Proposition?" that, too. how about all those flies on everyone's backs at the whipping? wow. and how about about "The Three Burials of Medquaides Estrada"?? maybe i was just in the mood for it, but that was some great stuff. i'm thinking the only reason that got no attention is because who's gonna remember a title like that? see, THAT'S how you imitate Peckinpah. many inspired moments in this flick. him pumping anti-freeze into the mouth of that corpse? lighting its head on fire so the ants won't eat on it all night? that's right out of the "Head of Alfredo Garcia" playbook. but three burials ain't enough. how about an burial for that horse that bites it falling off that cliff?? people never have the balls to fuck up a horse like that. and how about them digging up that body with the high school football game in the background? all great great images. and how about that last line of the movie out of left field like that?? as soon as he said it i thought, that would be a perfect place to roll the credits and POW. credits.

yeah, i soaked all those flicks, man. these days i see dust and hooves every time i close my eyes to sleep. at this point, i'm ready for a dose of "48 Hours" and "Tango & Cash" and "The Hard Way" and even "Dead Heat" (zombie buddy-cop movie!) to flush the westerns out of my brain. need some hard-boiled, racially insensitive wisecracks and heated debates during high-speed pursuits to take over my dreams instead.

hey, speaking of muted trumpets up there, this dude's a big Pynchon fan...and one of the founding members of The Bucketmen. He has his own blog now. my boy, Diamond Dog, aka Matt Desmond is up and running with a suprisingly professional looking page. little pictures, clearly stated opinions, easy-to-read fonts, and the amazing ability to make me homesick for horrible bars like Rocky's and overpriced record stores like Boogie. you'd think he'd been doing this blog this all his life instead of waiting until everyone else started to quit. dude, i'm not saying that you took forever to finally force your opinions on others, i'm just saying this:

you know how in some movies they establish that it's the distant future by doing that gag where they show a sign in the background saying "Jaws 9" or "Rambo 12" or "Halloween 99?"
well, guess what? "Rocky 6" is in theaters. that's all i'm saying.

oh, yeah. Matt, know how i was complaining on your comments about someone calling Nick Cave a one-trick pony? well, i found a funny web site that truly IS a one-trick pony. i stumbled across it when i was looking for a video of a dude getting fucked by a horse, a video clip that was described to me at a party last night by a friend with these very serious words: "it ruined the rest of my day." i should have listened to him. but this blog that i found instead surprised a laugh out of me in the middle of a rainy afternoon.

"Flightplan" is on right now and this flick blows. trying to be all "Lady Vanishes" and crib from the master. not a chance. and this plane is the size of a fucking aircraft carrier. why even have the action take place on a plane if it's going to the largest plane in history? if you need to isolate your cast, then isolate them. if you're going to make the area that big, don't pretend it's a plane. they might as well be trapped on an island. these dumb shits ripping off Hitchcock just don't even try anymore. wait! hey, did any of you kids see "The Matador?" actually, that movie was great. reminded me of "Sexy Beast." not plotwise or giant man-rabbits or anything, just the tone of it and its small, successful ambitions. nailed it. plus, whoever made that movie gets big bonus points for the first use of an Asia song without being ironic or a smartass who can't admit they really like the tune (example: "40-Year-Old Virgin") when no one's in the car with them. They actually crank "Heat of the Moment" during a suspenseful scene and i got chills, i swear. i ain't scared to say it.

::: david - 1:44 AM [+] :::
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