All It Has To Be

So, let me tell you about what I have been doing lately that has been bringing me much joy.

Many, many years ago, I was a foot messenger. That was back in the mid 1990s when I was young and ripe and moist and was still making my way through the world, blissfully unaware of the greatness within me. Being a foot messenger was really cool, I got to go to tons of places taht I would never have thought of visiting otherwise. It was totally cool to walk through these new neighborhoods and coming across places I never would have spotted.

My favorite street is still ST.Mark's place in the East Village right next to Tompkins Square Park. It was there that I came across Kim's Video.

I have allready stated my film preferences in an earlier blog, and I even discussed very briefly the types of films that i enjoyed. But there was another genre of film that I truly enjoyed as a kid, and those were the campy, weird b movies that played in Grindhouse theaters in Times Square (the real Times Square, not that sanitized crap that the tourists have infested now) Kim's Video was and still is the place where you go to find these amazing B movie treasures (or should i say Z movies considering some of the titles I was exposed to)

oh, what a joy. Even when I didnt have the money to buy anything, It was still a pleasure to walk into Kim's Video, go up to the second floor and lose myself within a universe of films that did not take themselves seriously, or where to graphic and mind blowing insane to be released by any mainstream studio.

BANNED IN 30 C0UNTRIES!! THE FILM TOO VIOLENT TO BE RATED!! DR BUTCHER MD!! (HE MAKES HOUSECALLS) The cover blurbs exploded across the dvd and vhs covers in a parade of capital letters and garish colors!! Films of every genre were represented, Blackexplotation, horror, action, western, sex, films from every corner of the globe sat side by side with the main stream stuff you could have picked up at Blockbuster or Best Buy, but here it was so much cooler..

How could you be in the vicinity of a movie called Attack of the Killer Tomatoes and not pick up the damn box just to see what the hell it was??

Sadommania
Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry
The Flesh Eaters
I Spit on Your Grave
Make Them Die Slowly
Cop Killers
Class of 1984
Faster Pussycat, Kill Kill!!

Thousands upon thousands of Grindhouse treasures just sitting there awaiting to be ingested by that part of my mental universe that could easily accomodate such madness, depravity (and really terrible acting)

Flying Guillotine
Grizzly
The Car
Maniac
New York Ripper
Slaughter's Big Rip Off
Zombie2
I Drink your Blood, I Eat your Skin

How the hell can you say no to films like that??

Now granted, these were not academy award winners by any means. these are not the films you sit your family down with a bucket of popcorn and say "We're gonna have a warm, wholesome family film night tonight!!"

No, sir, these films are for those of us who understood that not every film had to be art, or to tell a message. these films were for when you wanted to violently slaughter a few million brain cells (that sounds like a Grindhouse title by itself, doesnt it?)

the actor's knew what they were getting into when the participated in them, the writers knew what they were doing when they wrote it, and the directors knew what they were creating when they directed it. And I know what I am getting into whenever I wanna see something called The Bronx Warriors 1999.

I know where to go when I want to see something that has emotional weight. I know where to go when I want to be mentally stimulated. When I walk into Kim's video I am looking for something fun and cheesy.

I have been to Kim's video twice in the last three weeks. I have purchased (in no particular order) Lucio Fulci's The Beyond, The Copkillers, Don't Go in the House, Tenement (aka, Slaughter in the South Bronx) and for no reason, The Candy Tangerine Man (which features some of the worst camera work and lighting I have ever seen in a film) And you know what? I knew these movies were crap when I brought them, and I knew what I was going to be exposed to everytime I popped one of them in there.

and that's really the bottom line when I buy them. They dont all have to be epic achivements in cinema, Any film that i pop into the dvd player doesnt have to be a award winner. All it has to be is fun.

It's not just a book, It's also a social study!!!

I hated the term Social Studies. I didn't even hear it till I got into junior high school. I don't know what the hell that was!! I don't wanna study social things!! I don't even like to study!! but it was part of the school curriculum so I had to take it. I don't know about what Social Studies class you guys had to take in any of the schools you went to, but mine turned out to be more history than anything else. I never recalled having a class where we discussed relations between races or ethnic or religious groups. Satellite East JHS? their social studies class was global history. Same thing with Bushwick High School.

Now, history, that was something I enjoyed. Learning about other places, countries, peoples and cultures, now that was cool. I don't recall whether or not I had any real compassionate adults that taught the subject, (I do remember Mr.Stern, my junior high Social Studies/global history teacher who popped a mental gasket one day when he realized not every kid in the class had written down the homework assignment from the chalkboard one day..) Outside of that, I had no adults teach me anything about relating to other human beings in any setting.

And I wonder if that is one of our problems.

If our educational system does not feel obligated to teach our youth about how to relate to people of other cultures, religions or sexual orientations, then how exactly are they to be expected to be tolerant and understanding as adults?

I was watching the movie Mississippi Burning last weekend, (a film which has always resonated with me no matter how many times i watch it) and one of the characters, a female who was married to one of the racist police said what i have always believed about racism. (no one is born a racist. It is taught and it is acquired)

I love the Sci Fi fantasy genre. I always have. anything that gets a person's imagination to soaring and expanding beyond its boundaries is a wonderful thing. One half of my mental universe is always in that realm and will never leave. But as a Latino male who has heard and experienced his share of racial perception, hostility and indifference, the other half of my mental universe is always comprised of tales of intolerance, defiance, understanding and racial harmony.

all of those facets and factors combined to make A Distant Battlefield, my own little Social Study.

Yes, the novel is Sci fi on its surface, full of action, and drama and all the things needed to make a story experience that you will not be able to put down or dismiss quickly. I guarantee that these will be the fastest 440 pages you have ever read in your life.

But underneath that surface, I feed the other side of your brain as well with a Social lesson. A question really. Can a group of strangers from diverse backgrounds put their suspicions and hostilities and preconceived notions of certain people aside long enough to deal with a situation together as human beings?

I'm hoping you bring both sides of your brain with you when you read my words. I'm hoping you enjoy the characters, concepts, action sequences as well as the comedy relief,drama and intrigue that my tale will provide.

Hope you are ready for an interesting Social Study..

Damn Shame

About a week or so ago, I sat down to watch a two hour documentary about the making of the original Jaws film. (It was on the Biography Channel I think) anyway, it was a fun program. It discussed all of the problems that a young Steven Speilberg and his crew had with getting the mechanical shark to work. It was tested in fresh water and it worked fine, but upon putting Bruce (the name the shark was given.) into salt water, it began to go haywire. (and someone on that crew should have figured that out or at least questioned..)

But anyway the most interesting part of the documentary was toward the end. The cast and crew were all being interviewed, Steven Speilberg, Richard Dryfuss and a number of production members, and Dryfuss said something that really stood out to me. It was in regard to the movie's staying power. During the year the movie made its debut it remained in theaters from June to December of 1975.

Toward the end of the program they showed a picture of a Times Square theater with a monstrous line of people waiting to get inside. I smiled at the end of the documentary, I was so very thankful to have seen this movie in a film theater, so thankful to have experienced everything this documentary talked about. Then i thought about my neices and nephews and their generation.

Damn shame.

This young generation wont get to experience true tentpole films. They walk instead into a massive mega theater (which is of course part of a monsterous chain of hollow classless establishments which are scattered across the country), they will pay an obscene $15 dollars to walk into a small shoeboxed shaped room and sit through a bland 20 minute program which has...COMMERCIALS!! To finally get to the trailers, and maybe, just maybe the movie that they paid to see will have some sort of substance to it and will resonate within their heads for more than a week or so, before finally being supplanted by the next piece of fluff that hollywood swears will be the next big thing.

The films of my youth played to packed houses, did repeat business, stayed in theaters for months and created legacies and lasting impacts. There are so many films from the 70s and 80s that created the foundation for my own universe..so many of them to list here (that would be a fun project though)

sigh..so this is progress. (how long was Iron Man 2 at the top of the box office this May? Is it even still in theatres?)

Damn shame.

When Do You Know?

When exactly do you know or come to realize that you are doing exactly what you were meant to be doing in life? Is it an instantaneous thing or is it a slow process that we don't even take notice of until the watershed moment occurs and leaps out at us?

I've always fancied myself as a writer and creator. (and that's another good question, are you a writer when you write, or are you a writer when you are recognized for your writing?)

So back to my ramblings..I always considered myself a writer. Even as I made my own comic books as a kid and my artwork wasn't all that great, I looked forward to the writing aspect and felt that would save whatever story I was trying to tell at the time. I went the screenplay route at first, but after years of receiving one paragraph responses thanking me for my submission (or even worse, no replies at all), I began to lose hope. In 2000 I turned my creative energies to producing a number of indie films and projects, none of which got any further than the shooting stage, (something I attribute to the minds and desires of the people I was around at the time, and turned away from writing at that point.

I think I still have outlines for about 20 projects of all genres somewhere in my home, and when the Distant Battlefield franchise becomes successful, I plan on introducing these to the world as well.

Anyway, I was still spinning my wheels mentally around 2007 or so when my lower intestines sent me to Woodhull Hospital for a two month vacation from the world. As I lay in the hospital bed after the initial surgery, I took the time to do a quick reassessment. I was still alive, still on this planet, and when I get out of the hospital I will eventually have to return to the world...as what?

Am I to be a 9 to 5 humanoid for the rest of my life? is that all my life is?
Will I spend another few years of my existence shooting music videos for wanna be rappers and putting in hour after empty hour on someone else's indie project, making phone calls, dealing with actors and manning lights?

what exactly am I going to do now?

The only thing in my life that ever spoke to me was writing and creating. Stories, short stories, screenplays. If i remember the old saying, a person is what they do, not what they say. If all I ever did was talk about writing but never wrote anything, then I'm not a damn writer. Very simple.

I saw no labor in writing A Distant Battlefield. It was a love. It was spending time with a host of characters and having them play off each other. It was creating a universe which comprised 440 pages, and I enjoyed every single page.

Even months after the first installment was written, I think about the characters and the story every damn day. My mental editor is still going over pages and phrases and sequences, wholly satisfied with what we have done, but still believing we could say and do it better.

Part two is in outline form, and is more an array of thoughts and sequences than an actual order of events. But that's OK. That rough outline is the clay from which the second book will be sculpted, and I'm ready to get in there even now.

I'm about a good month away from introducing you guys to what I have created. Hope you like what I have presented to you, hope you understand what message I am trying to convey.

I truly look forward to the conversations I will have with all of you in regards to what I wrote and what my thought process was like. Hope to meet alot of you in person. If not, drop me a line or send an email. I will gladly write you back.
After all, I am a writer.