blog: things you should check out

Check out “Save the Date”, an indie movie on VOD today

Here’s a teaser trailer (posted above; here’s the longer theatrical trailer) for the new movie Save the Date. (I’ve mentioned it before.) My friend Michael Mohan directed and co-wrote the movie, which is based on the graphic novels of Jeffrey Brown (author of the recent bestseller Darth Vader and Son.) It stars Lizzy Caplan and Alison Brie, and it’s very good!

The movie has just premiered on Amazon and iTunes for instant streaming! It’ll be in select theaters in December, as well. More info on the movie’s Facebook page.

Mike talks about the making of the movie on the screenwriter John August’s blog:

…A blessing in disguise: that August I was laid off (apparently people download music illegally off the internet?), so I grabbed my team and made a short film. Yes, I had already made a feature film that had played festivals, but I really wanted to take this new process and apply it to narrative. We shot it for next to nothing, and worked in the spirit of the music videos: quickly and intuitively. We filmed it over the course of a weekend, by that Friday it was done. It was the most creatively fulfilling experience of my life.

I still had the feature script to finish, but no job to clock in to. I had earned a free flight, so I went to my parents’ house in rural Massachusetts. They don’t have wi-fi, and therefore it was one of the most productive periods of my entire life. Finally I was able to focus, energized from the experience of making the short. Jeffrey and Egan were on speed dial, should I need them. And the instant I had a decent enough draft of Save the Date, I booked my return ticket back to Los Angeles…

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Another interview with Mike:

I just want to sell the movie for what it is, you know? The thing that’s kind of tricky about the film is that it’s not like these crazy things happen. It’s not the most extreme relationship movie, it’s not the Community/Party Down laugh-a-thon riot. I think that the risks that the film takes are by having these characters just be real. They aren’t extreme. For me, I just want to make sure that when people see the film, they know, “This is a film that I made for you. This is a film about you. This is about real people.” We’re avoiding the stereotypes, but we’re not like “Screw Hollywood!” It’s just a real film…

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And here’s a review from a random guy who just turned it on to check it out:

…Based solely off the cast, I had expected a typical romantic-comedy with actors I enjoyed and something that would leave me with a smile at the end. And, though I did not get that, I got something else — something better — out of it. I felt the disparity, the heartbreak, the joy, and the fear that every character felt. I was watching a movie with actors acting a role, yes. But, at the same time, I felt as if I had begun to take an honest look at every experience I might have ever had, acted out by famous people. I saw the heartbreak in Kevin, the stress in Beth, the fear in Sarah; and I realized that “Save the Date” was something a little more…[it’s] a smart, blunt, adorable, and tender movie that reminds us all of the realities we have to deal with. Rent it for $10 dollars or see it in a month from now. I fell in love with it. Maybe you will too.

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I graduated from film school with Mike in 2002. Ten years later, he has a feature film coming to theaters nationwide. I couldn’t be more proud of this guy. I hope you enjoy his movie!

BONUS LINK: The soundtrack to the movie is by Hrishikesh Hirway, AKA The One AM Radio. If you haven’t heard The One AM Radio, I totally recommend checking him out; I love his music.

Chicago, check out this play! Funeral Wedding: The Alvin Show

My former assistant Zachary Sigelko (who made today’s guest comic) recently moved to Chicago, and right now he’s in a play at the Signal Ensemble Theater called Funeral Wedding: The Alvin Play. (Zach’s the one with the accordion.)

I don’t know much about it, except that it seems creepy and cool and Gorey-esque — in other words, perfect for Halloween! Tickets are here; the show runs through Nov. 17 with a special Halloween show next Wednesday.

I’ve asked Zach if he wants me to try and get him a new job in Chicago and he has always responded politely and noncommittally. BUT I PROCLAIM, if you need a smart, friendly, funny employee in the Chicagoland area, you could do a lot worse than to hire Zach. Email me and I’ll put you in touch with him.

BONUS LINK: The play’s poster (below) is by Phineas X. Jones, who also illustrated our Machine of Death Soviet Propaganda Poster!

EDITED TO ADD: If you’re in Los Angeles this Friday (October 26), check out my friends performing in the Tin Pan Radio Theater, a fully improvised, live-on-stage 1930’s radio show! I saw this show last time it ran and it’s great.

Check out: ‘The Making of Top Gun’

I was saddened to hear over the weekend about the death of director Tony Scott. I haven’t seen a ton of his films, but we dissected Crimson Tide in film school as basically a perfect movie, and of course as a young airplane nut (and specifically fighter-jet nut), Top Gun was pretty seminal for me. I remember all the kids on the playground quoting it in second grade, but it was several years before I could convince my (much older) sister to rent it during a visit to her house.

There’s a lot you can dislike about Top Gun — it’s jingoistic (though not more than many other movies of its time), has some muddled sexual politics, and of course it’s part of the Bruckheimer school of connect-the-dots violent bombast. Still, I think it’s possible to be a fan of problematic things, and I like Top Gun. It’s got airplanes doing cool airplane things, and fighter pilots being hotshots, and just enough aviation lingo peppered into the dialogue to make me feel cool that I know what a RIO is.

Combine that enthusiasm with my background in filmmaking, and here’s a surefire recipe for A Thing That Dave Likes — a very long Making of Top Gun documentary, presumably from a fairly recent DVD release. Here it is on YouTube in two parts!

The documentary features interviews with most of the principal cast (except Kelly McGillis and Anthony Edwards), but including Tom Cruise, Val Kilmer, Michael Ironside, and the actors who played “Wolfman” and “Slider”. Also interviewed are director Tony Scott, producer Jerry Bruckheimer, the editors, one of the writers, several of the pilots and technical advisors, and several of the musicians who worked on the soundtrack, including Kenny Loggins and Harold Faltermeyer.

I personally found it super fascinating! Top Gun came out when I was real young, so it’s always kinda been there, a huge part of the cultural landscape. Yet it hasn’t been obsessively dissected the way that something like Star Wars has, so a lot of the insights and background were completely new to me. In particular, I enjoyed learning about:

• The process of working with the Navy during the script stage to try and find a compromise between a feasible movie, an accurate movie, and an entertaining movie

• How the actors interacted with the actual pilots they were attempting to emulate — both in attitude and in practical matters (Tom Cruise couldn’t get enough of riding in an F-14, but some of the other actors puked up a storm, and Val Kilmer turned down any rides at all)

• How the aerial footage was obtained using camera placements and technique that had until then only been attempted in music videos

• The work of the special-effects unit, which built dozens upon dozens of scale model fighter planes and blew them up, tossed them off towers, and suspended them from cranes, sometimes in front of giant sky-blue backdrops if the weather wasn’t cooperating

• How the editors took hours and hours of miscellaneous aerial footage and essentially wrote huge parts of the story by assembling it however they could manage, then dubbing in new dialogue (over shots of the actors with oxygen masks covering their mouths)

• How the soundtrack was produced, and how it both made the band Berlin super-famous and directly led to their breakup. I found this in particular incredibly interesting: a reminder that sometimes you can’t control what you become known for, and how you deal with that fame, and reconcile that with your creative goals, is up to you.

• How the movie became a cultural force, and even the Navy pilots who’d denounced its lack of accuracy suddenly came around once they became celebrities overnight. The documentary even credits the movie for introducing terms like “crash and burn” into the common lexicon. That’s crazy! I’ve lived with “crash and burn” my entire life, and you’re telling me this movie started it??

SURE ENOUGH. The graph shows the prevalence, in printed media across the 20th century, of the terms “need for speed” (in red) and “crash and burn” (in blue).

(But what in the 40’s gave us “need for speed”? Now I want to find out about that!) (I am guessing it was the nation’s rapid mobilization for war.)

Of course, one of the other neat things about the documentary is hearing from Tony Scott. We won’t hear from him ever again, which is a loss for the world, and I’m glad we have his thoughts here, at least.

BONUS LINK: Somewhere on a floppy disk near my mom’s old 386 IBM compatible I’m sure there is still a painstakingly typed full transcription of a movie I watched a lot more than Top Gun, and that’s Hot Shots!

Rewatching it now, there’s less flying I remembered, but I get more of the jokes, and I can appreciate Lloyd Bridges even more. If you’ve never seen it, here’s the full movie on YouTube. A classic!

Disasteroid! The Musical – Opens in L.A. this weekend!

Friend of Wondermark & Machine of Death Zachary Bernstein has just let me know that his musical comedy, Disasteroid! The Musical — about a budding romance during the end of the world — is opening for its two-weekend run on Friday, August 10!

If you’re in LA and need a fun date event, check it out at THE UNDERGROUND in Hollywood.

More details at: disasteroidthemusical.com