I wrote a screenplay once, back in the early '90s, "Horror 'Hood" by name, co-written with Reggie Bannister of the Phantasm films, this was in my L.A. days, used to drive home on the freeway at 4 AM, dodging drunk drivers, after writing at Reg's all night, straight outta Long Beach, it was about a former medic/Vietnam vet who was a medical examiner in Washington D.C. (this was before medical examiners starred in every second crime show) and there was a monster but he wasn't completely evil and of course a government plot and we forced a copy of the script into pre-Oscar-winning Quentin Tarantino's hand (I knew him a little bit) and Quentin had to carry it around all night at these horror convention after-parties and we got onto the Warner Brother lot and tried to brazen our way into the script department to drop off a copy but they were having none of it but we managed to send it through WB interoffice mail to Steven Seagal and we got a letter some weeks later from one of his people letting us down easy probably because they thought we maybe knew someone and so why not be nice and luckily the person who got us on the lot didn't get fired and we pitched it to a few people but it wasn't all that great probably and not long enough and not structured the way they say scripts should be and I was gonna write a novelization but I didn't get past page 60 but maybe I'll finish it when I'm retired but set it in Hawaii instead of D.C. and by the way there's another Phantasm movie coming out soon have you heard and Reg is in it, can't wait. But I never thought of asking your dad for money. I'll give him a call.

I'm imagining you shouting this from your limo as it peels out of Ikea.

Ian, you should have come up with the line, "...THE MATADOR THAT WAS OUR HUBRIS," two weeks ago, so everybody could have used it in all the whiny stories about the dive bar that recently closed down.

Here is my Kickstarter about something where I know the fuck what I'm doing. In the face of kickstarter fatigue, and the joke that things like 'potato salad' make of it, kickstarter still has a place. For my project, no one will be making any money. This will only get the thing done, if that. For me crowd funding is great for passion projects where you are not going to be making a profit. So, insert blatant self promotion!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1077190235/the-new-portland-bridge-map

There was a famous director who once during an interview, devalued the screenwriter. His main man packed one hundred pages of blank typing paper into a manila envelope and sent it to his director along with a note which said: "Here, direct THIS!"

Write your script. It costs you nothing but time. Make the movie yourself; on your cell phone if necessary. The education is invaluable.

Quentin Tarantino advises not to attend film school, but rather to use the money saved by not going to college, to buy a camera, instead.

http://www.exposure.co.uk/makers/minute.html
Now a famous film-maker a while back said something about 'Everything you need to know about film you can learn in a week.' He was being generous. You can learn it in 10 minutes.
http://ifsstech.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/10_minute_film_school.pdf

Well look whose on Maron's podcast today. I just finished the first season of Maron's IFC show, holy shit it's great!

Just because this week's column isn't horrible, doesn't mean it's not generally digital doo-doo.

Portland Mercury, will you consider moderating your comments just little? Does publishing these trolls' hate-speech really improve traffic that much? Your readers don't actually want to plow through this garbage hell-scape btw.

Just about anyone can shoot video and edit it now days yet no one is making good movies. Clerks was shot on film, which requires real discipline, real money and real skills (yes analog film is still the gold standard). And there is a lot more to cinematography than point and shoot, even if you're shooting video. It's a lot like someone with a Casio keyboard synthesizer calling them self a musician, when they can't play any real instruments. No good movies, just a lot of dumb folks making crap.

^Dude, every scene in Clerks is the definition of Point and Shoot!

Some dude the other day got $17,000 to buy himself pinball machines and then stream videos of him playing them.

After my initial rage wore off from this news, I started wondering, "wait, who am I ticked off at again: this dude, or the people who donated?" Basically, the fact that his campaign succeeded sorta nullifies my rage. If he failed I'd be like, "oh the audacity!" But since he succeeded, I'm just like, "man, I wish I had $17,000 to buy pinball machines."