Monday Musings

Hey, who's that curly-topped moron?

No, the one on the left!

This photo arrived from my old Mirage Studios amigo Ryan Brown this past week, and I thought some of you might get a kick out of it.

I'm the bozo on the left, scouring the bins for weird collectibles; that's toy and collectibles dealer Bill Bruegman dead center, and a youthful Kevin Eastman on the right.

Ah, a lot of water under the bridge since then. (BTW, as Marge and I unpack, a lot of old photos from the convention days are beginning to turn up -- I'll be posting them from time to time here, so let's favor Ryan's sharing of this photo as a harbinger of things to come as well as days gone by, shall we?)

Ryan writes, "Remember when we all boarded the Magic Bus for Mid Ohio Con and stopped at Bill Bruegman's Toy Scouts for a look at all his old toys? Ah... those were the days!"

They were indeed.

But that was then, this is now.

That was brought home in spades with this --

-- the other surprise that Ryan emailed me this weekend --

-- which I'll post sans further comment for now.

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My 'Cash Flagg' reference and evocation of the great 'Cash Flagg' (aka Ray Dennis Steckler)'s magnum opus The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies prompted a couple of email jeers, but hey, here's the proof: yes, the film not only really existed, it's enjoyed a healthy (if odd, appropo enough) life on video and DVD.

(FYI, I mentioned the film when I referenced

Artemis aka Ashley Flagg's blog, here.)

I first saw the film under another title in a northern VT drive-in -- Teenage Psycho Meets Bloody Mary was the moniker it was re-released as, with "ax wielding maniacs actually in the audience!" as its ballyhoo. Drive-ins didn't serve this gimmick well: stooges in rubbery 'Cash Flagg' monster masks dashed around the grounds in the dark, waving cardboard axes. We could barely see 'em from our car, though everyone started honking their horns, making for high spirits and dissolving the narcotic effect of the film itself into drive-in delirium.

This film came up again recently, as a clutch of the CCS students plan their annual Easter zombie film fest. One of the programmers is pushing for The Incredibly Strange Creatures to join the lineup, but I cautioned him -- I mean, it's not a zombie movie (acid-scarred caged maniacs do not zombies make, whatever the title sez). Besides, though I love the film, it's deadly dull, dominated by mind-numbing stage musical numbers that kill any festive movie-viewing gathering (I know from experience!). That said, it remains Steckler's most famous and infamous film, bar none; The Thrill Killers is a far more entertaining followup, to my mind, and my personal fave of the 'Cash Flagg' pantheon, spiced with livelier lunacy and a dollop or two of then-shocking onscreen violence (decapitations) and a "where the hell did this come from?" B-western-like chase finale typical of Steckler's eclectic cineuniverse.

'Nuff said on that!

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However, there was some tragic news that arrived this past weekend. Rick Veitch emailed me before the weekend with rumors that our old self-publishing 1990s tour amigo Drew Hayes had died --

-- and damn, it turned out to be true.

This is a real heartbreaker; Drew was only 37 years old.

Rick and I had let contact with Drew drift since the heyday of the Spirit of Independents tours of the mid-'90s, though Drew's Poison Elves soldiered on, beyond the collapse of Capital Distribution and the rise of the Diamond Monopoly, thanks largely to Sirius providing a sorely-needed publishing umbrella.

I don't know yet what happened, save for what's on the links posted above. My best to Drew's family and friends; it was a privilege to tour with him, and Drew poured himself 100% into his art and comics.

Damn, comics claims some good souls. Gene Day, Wally Wood, and too many others -- Drew went too young. He'll be missed.

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Work on the upcoming April WRIF -- the White River Indy Film festival -- is nearing completion, too, so I'll have some announcements (and an active link) to share by the coming weekend.

We've corraled an extraordinary lineup of films, complete with visiting filmmakers, panels and special events. I'll be hosting a panel of Vermont filmmakers on April 27, and if you're up for it, my lengthy presentation on Green Mountain Cinema: Vermont Films & Filmmakers helps kick off the event with a special April 22nd fundraiser.

More info next weekend!

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A Week of Walton!

Yep, my old pal Rob Walton is a-comin' in, so I'll be barely blogging after tomorrow. Rob is staying over with Marge and I here in our new homestead, and since he's sleeping in our guest room -- where the computer resides -- I'll be offline for the bulk of the week.

See you here tomorrow, then likely no more 'till Friday. No worries, I'll be back at it next week.

Rob is coming in part to work the Center for Cartoon Studies students to little nubs. We've got two intensive workshops planned -- a lecture-based overview of editing graphic novels on Wednesday morning, primarily composed of Rob's analysis of his revamp and revision of Ragmop into the graphic novel that saw print just last November, followed by a two-part afternoon drawing workshop we'll be tag-teaming on. See what you're missing, not attending CCS?

It's been years since Rob and I got to spend any time together, so we're both really looking forward to the week ahead. In the meantime, you can savor Rob's creations yourself, here in virtual space --

Here's Rob's website, always worth a visit, folks --

and that's not all. You see,

Rob also has a radio show, which you can access (with a little exploration) here. Enjoy!

OK, that's all for now -- have a great Monday, a great week, and see you here tomorrow. Got to get to my Monday duties...

He Asks for Patience...

Happy Fourth Anniversary of the Iraq War, one and all. Four years ago this morning, I was arguing with trigger-happy fans on the now-defunct Kingdom/Swamp boards, furious over the war's launch. "You've got your fucking war," I posted, prompting mucho heat from those who wanted war, but didn't want to fess up to war mongering.

Everything those of us who opposed this war said would happen before it began has not only come to pass, but every reason we gave for not launching war has proven to be valid. The only lies that have been uncovered were the always-dubious reasons to go to war -- lies, lies, and more lies.

And on this anniversary,

sans irony, President Bush

asked for patience this week.

Four years since he ignored all calls for patience with the inspection process,

since he recklessly plunged our country and our allies and Iraq (and the world) into this maelstrom of violence,

since he ignored all calls, pleas, protests for patience, diplomacy, due process,

since ignoring reality to pursue his own insane agenda, heedless of the consequences (save the fantasy he and his compadres fabricated), he asks for patience.

In preparation for this momentous call for patience, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow patiently

told CCN's Ed Henry to "zip it,"

a demonstration of Snow's impeccable, Fox-News-cultivated tact you can see here for yourself.

Of course, the momentous occasion of the anniversary has resulted in this event being downplayed (CNN's own immediate followup, to Ed Henry: "Ed, if it weren’t such a solemn day we could do about five minutes on that whole zip it exchange, but because of the the anniversary, we will let it go at that..."), though it is the most succinct summary imaginable for the rampant arrogance, hubris and power abuse that led us down this bloody path.

Fuck these clowns; their arrogance is at last being challenged by the inevitable toll of reality -- not their manufactured reality, but reality -- and time.

May it all crash down around their ears without taking the rest of us out.

Happy fucking anniversary, U.S. of A.

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U R Invited!

I'd be remiss not to mention, after the attention I gave to Frank Miller's invite to yours truly to attend the NYC premiere of 300, the fact that Jeanine Atkins and Peter Laird invited Marge and I to this week's Massachusetts premiere/preview of the new CGI Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles feature. Alas, it's timing (late afternoon) didn't jive with Marge's or my work schedule -- especially given the additional hour the drive entails for us now, living further north up I-91 -- but the invitation is greatly appreciated!

As with 300, reckon we'll (or I'll) see it with the rest of the country.

Former Mirage Studio compadre, Cowboys of Moo Mesa and Bog creator, and all around sweet guy Ryan Brown also sent the invite, here, to a parallel TMNT event in Ohio; again, distance prevents our taking advantage of this, but such is life.

[It was great to hear from Ryan, in part because of Bog -- I'm making some plans that (if Ryan approves) will bring some new life to Bog after a number of years laying fallow, as bog-beasts do at times. More on that later, after Ryan and I can talk...]

It's been fun, too, seeing the anticipation among some of the Center for Cartoon Studies students for this new TMNT movie. I've no idea how it might be impacting on Peter, Kevin or the remaining Mirage crew, but a whole generation that grew up on the Turtles will soon get their shot at seeing this new take on the now-venerable heroes of their childhoods that played such a key role in their own lives. I hope to attend one of the opening night shows, if only to see what the audience is like, and how they react.

It's fascinating to me, personally, how little of any substance has been written about the Turtles phenomenon and Mirage Studios in particular. It's the great untold story of comics in particular and the pop culture in general, and it's one well worth someone telling one day, in all its ups, downs and compelling human dimensions.

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"Frank Miller invites you to attend a screening of 300 IMAX on March 8, 2007 at 7:30 pm at Lincoln Square IMAX 1998 Broadway, NYC. Please see attached invitation..." (visible here, now that the event itself is safely past)

By now, most of you will have seen 300, so I feel it's appropriate to post my own views on the film later this week. I caught 300 opening weekend locally with some of my CCS student/compadres; though it was a 4:45 matinee, the theater was packed.

It's been somewhat amusing to see, too, the ripples, including the

expected backlash against the film's caricature of history, Persia and its implications given current strained US/Iranian relations (or non-relations) and the Bush-fomented nuclear standoff,

and this petition against (chuckle) Warner Bros. prompted by ire against the film and all its stands for in the minds of those infuriated by its existence.

In the opening volley of the Iranian outrage directed against 300 visible to us stateside,

Siamack Baniameri wrote, "300 depicts King Xerxes as a fat homosexual and Persians as deformed and stupid monsters similar to what the Orcs looked like in The Lord of the Rings. Spartans on the other hand are revealed as rocket scientists trapped in bodies of Greek gods with comic book bravery and constant worry of losing their beloved and hard-earned "freedom and democracy" to the damn Middle Easterners."

Well, almost.

Xerxes is in fact presented as power-body-sculpted as the Spartans, except he's got all kinds of "shit in this face" (Tarantino Pulp Fiction speak for facial adornment) and moves and speaks with the narcissistic bisexual/homoeroticism Mel Gibson assigned to the gliding devil of his Passion (of the Christ) (which, by the way, was staged with techniques stolen from Mario Bava's '60s horror films). This is especially funny in the context of the Greek/Spartan homosexuality that history proper designates as part and parcel of their culture (and warrior classes); as Bob already pointed out in his comments to this blog, the macho elements of 300 are as homoerotic as anything mainstream American cinema has yielded since -- uh, Alexander, which was just over a year or so ago.

And the Spartans hardly come across as "rocket scientists", though those bods are clearly Greek classical in their perfect pec-and-ab (CGI-enhanced) refinements: the Spartans, in fact, come across as reckless warriors. In his graphic novel, Frank Miller made a point of adhering to the Spartan mode of warfare he made key to his narrative (the reason for the rejection of the hunchback as fit warrior material); for the film, director Zach Snyder adheres to Frank's stated reason for said hunchback's rejection -- then shows his Spartans time and time again dispensing with any reasonable strategic advantage to indulge more vain-glorious onscreen posing and mayhem, however vulnerable it might leave them. It's stupid, really, resulting at one point in a supposedly tragic death (a decapitation that looks as patently phoney as any seen in the post-CGI revolution; Snyder should have called in Tom Savini or the KNB crew) that is risible, neutering the consequences of any conviction. So, if I may be so un-PC blunt, from fag-boy Xerxes to dumbo Spartans, it's all a CGI cartoon, as so many action films are today.

Let's face it, we're in a pepla revival -- pepla being the Italian Hercules-inspired wave of muscle-man movies that flooded international movie screens and TV screens in the late '50s and the '60s [PS: see Tim Lucas's comment on this post, below -- and note his correcting my initial post misspelling of pepla, which I indeed, off the top of my head, misspelled pebla first time around; oops!]. And 300, the movie, is a fucking great peplum, and as ridiculous as any of 'em. Instead of Carlo Rambaldi rubber monsters, we get CGI orcs (and yes, they do come across as orcs in the film, and have no corresponding source in Frank Miller's graphic novel); instead of paper mache rocks and fog and Spanish beaches, we get CGI-created fake cliffs and oceans.

But "history proper" has little, if anything, to do with the kind of full-blown pepla -- a permutation of the fantastique more than historical epics per se -- imagery and kinetics 300 the movie revels in, any more than it informed Ridley Scott's Gladiator (which was and remains a much better film, but more on that later). For that matter, the ignorance most critics betrayed last week about 300's source material says a great deal: compared to director Zach Snyder's slow-mo celebration of machismo, violence and war, Frank Miller's 300 is a model of cunning storytelling economy and restraint -- and by far the more focused, successful creation.

Here's the most insightful and pragmatic analysis of the international 300 situation I've read to date,

from the online Payvand's Iran News (posted March 9th, "The Persian Empire Strikes Back"), in which Iranian author Darius Kadivar places the pre-release anger in its proper contexts.

This is essential reading; Kadivar ultimately poses the core questions, "What is more shocking: To be depicted as Villains in a film that is supposed to be anything but a history lesson about an event that took place 25 centuries ago? Or, To be associated to an entity that exists no more that is the Persian Empire itself ever since its removal by a widely popular Islamic Revolution that put an end for ever to what its supporters considered as an evil and corrupt institution?"

He continues, "What the controversy about this film reveals as in the case of Oliver Stone’s movie Alexander is that the Persian Empire, with or without its King or legitimate heir, still exists in the minds of all Iranians and probably transcends even political convictions. It probably has more to do with our own Ego ( justified or not ) or is it a Freudian sense of self preservation and of our role as a nation in the History of Mankind?"

More to the point, Kadivar asks, "Do we as viewers have [to] adopt a partisan attitude towards a film we have not even seen?"

This places the initial controversy, in Islamic terms, within the realm of the overreaction to the pro-Islamic Mohammed: Messenger of God (which, despite it's being pro-Islamic and a film by a devout Islamist, prompted violence in mere anticipation of its premiere), and in Christian terms in the arena of the pre-release outrage fomented by Monty Python's The Life of Brian, Jean-Luc Godard's Mary, and Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ.

And that, my friends, is meat for another post, later in the week.

Now, given the fact the film has been widely seen, the outrage has only escalated, as the boxoffice for the film soars. So it goes with such controversies, by and large, though 300 had its own exceptional pre-release buzz (triggered in part by those ravishing trailers, the most effective in recent memory).

I gotta run --

Have a great Tuesday!

Painting With Mike &
The Only Performance
That Counts...

'Good Dog' by Mike Dooney, (c) 2006

There's more exciting Mario Bava DVD news on

Tim Lucas's February 5th post on the Video Watchblog,

which I urge you to pop right over to pronto if you've any interest at all in Bava's rarest of all films. I'll leave it to Tim to tell you about it...

But my mind wanders to something else -- I've unpacked my old LP collection and been spinning many of my favorite vinyls. Prominent among those is Performance, which I was spinning a fair amount before our move, for reasons I can neither articulate nor divine.

For some reason, the film and score have been much on my mind of late, in part due to my own struggling through a comics story I'm working out in my sketchbook that's clearly informed by Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg's approach to Performance (a 'fragmented narrative' orientation that Roeg explored more adventurously than any other filmmaker, to my mind, and which I trace back to a fave film Roeg photographed but did not direct: Richard Lester's Petulia).

I first saw Performance on the expansive screen of Burlington, VT's Strong Theater (sadly, long gone now) with my best high school friend Bill Hunter; we were teenagers, and completely unprepared for the film and its impact on our tender teen psyches. Like the underground films (which we'd begun to sample, thanks to two competing underground film societies that sprang up in Burlington and on the UVM campus at the same time) and comix (thanks to my high school art teacher Bill Cathey, who could have lost his job for turning me on to Zap, which forever changed my life and made me want to draw comics forever) I was just beginning to explore, Performance completely demolished all previous modes of cinema I'd ever experienced. It quite literally blew my mind, as surely as any illegal substance I'd later dabble with ever did or would (I was not a stoner in high school, had never smoked a joint or even been drunk before graduating high school: in terms of body and brain chemistry, straight-arrow Boy Scout, that was me).

It forever altered not only how I experienced movies, but how I saw and experienced life. Bill, I recall, loathed the film, so I drove myself back to the Strong the very next night to see Performance again, both shows, back-to-back. Remember, this was the pre-home-video era, and I feared I might never, ever get to see the film again. I had to experience it anew, plunge into its maze and sort out what I could from its strange multi-tier layering.

Like almost every film I loved from that period in my life, the American critics reviled the film; if memory serves, John Simon scribed the single most scathing review, treating the movie as an infectious viral aberration. That it was, but like so many other films of the time, I was glad to have caught the contagion.

In that pre-video era, too, the only artifact most films offered that one could take home to preserve memories and/or further explore the experience were paltry and few. Some films had paperback adaptations, some had comic book adaptations -- neither a reliable companion to the cinematic experience, though still treasured -- but many had soundtrack LPS, and Performance's was a doozy. Given the limited time I have this morning, I can't come close to the eloquence of

Tim Lucas's shared memories of the impact of the Performance soundtrack album, which I urge you to go and read right now,

but I have to stress my experience was quite different from Tim's, in that I'd seen the film, three times, before bringing the LP home.


Still, Tim's post rings lots of bells for me, as that album has been a key one in my collection since I first picked it up back in '71, days after seeing the movie. Jack Nietsche's score -- and the album -- are among the best ever wed to a film, and that record turned me on to Randy Newman, The Last Poets, Ry Cooder and, natch, Nietsche. Too bad he scored so few films; one of my (and Tim's) favorite cuts on the album, "Harry Flowers," has another association for me: it anticipates the lovely concluding passage of Nietsche's fantastic score for Robert Downey's Greaser's Palace (a score never released on LP or CD, to my knowledge), another of my favorite '70s movies (and a viewing experience which I'll rhapsodize over another time).

I'm glad I caught Performance three times in its original X-rated run at the Strong (no, I wasn't 17; the Strong always accepted my ticket money, whatever the rating of the film showing) because here in the US, the film never, ever unreeled in that complete a state again. I know, I've screened it many times since: the film was re-rated 'R' in every incarnation since (a fact Tim seems to misremember).

I showed it on 16mm at Johnson State College to kick off our Nicolas Roeg retrospective, heartsick at the minor cuts and missing bits of vital tissue; it was among the first videocassettes I ever rented, or purchased, though the video version was even more truncated than the 16mm print I'd projected onto the Dibden Theater screen -- and the cuts were odd: plucked piecemeal hither and thither, like tiles chipped from a fresco with no discernable reasoning (note that Ken Russell's The Devils -- also first seen by this sick puppy at the Strong! -- suffered the identical fate: someone, or someones, at Warner Bros. had it in for their most daring 1971 films). A few years ago, a British fan of my comics work helped me secure a copy of the UK video release, and despite the inevitable degeneration of even the best available transfer (from PAL to vhs), that release was closest to the film I'd seen back in '71.

Thankfully,

Tim's analysis of the new Warner domestic DVD release of the film is heartening,

and I'll be picking up my copy later today when I visit my old day-job digs at First Run Video in Brattleboro, after speaking to two sessions of the Center for Digital Art filmmaking class.

I'm eager to pop Performance into the player and savor the first near-complete (note Tim's picking up one inexplicably dropped line from the opener of the unforgettable "Memo from Turner" sequence), and once again split my skull for love of cinema.

I'll just remember to personally lip-synch Mick's "Here's to Olde England!" toast at the appropriate moment.

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And now, for something you'll really like!

Away down in Massachusetts, in the land of Mirage Studios, lives one hell of an artist (among many) named Michael Dooney, who I've now known for some twenty-odd years. Mike's got a great site up posting his "sketchbook paintings," which habitually knock my best paintings in the dirt.
The man's got the touch, as these portraits should demonstrate, and you can see more

on Mike's site, "Sketchpaints!"

Lest you think these exquisite portraits are solely representative of Mike's abilities and vision, pop on over to

Mike's main site and have a peek,

you won't be disappointed!


There's also

Eric Talbot's site to savor, packed with whacked imagery and juicy delights,

and both Mike and Eric have mucho links to other fine cartoonist and artist sites to share. Check 'em out!

OK, I really, really have to run.

See ya later in the week...

(Eric Talbot mummy, but not his mommy: (c) 2006)