Hero Hero - 20 Years Ago

My buddy Rob reminded me today that it was 20 years ago this week that we opened Hero Hero Comics Cards and Games. It seems like a lifetime ago..and it was - the lifetime of my son, who was born the week before the shop closed in 1997.

I found a few photos up in my office - they're not a complete picture, just a glimpse of what was many years of incredible experiences.


Chatting in the shop one late night with my buddy Mitch.


We had rubber stamps made with these cartoon faces I'd drawn of the 3 owners - we would stamp our faces next to items we liked in the monthly ordering catalog.


Frank and Rob - check out Rob's cool Madman shirt!


In-store appearance by Shane Glines. Shane was just starting out when he was at the shop. Soon after this, he moved to California to work for Spumco and went on to work on animated shows like Batman: The Animated Series, Batman Beyond and Samurai Jack.


Frank, me, comic book artist (and featured actor in TRAILER PARK DOUBLE WIDE TRILOGY OF TERROR) Jack Pollock, Rob and our friend Dale at an in-store appearance by Jack celebrating the release of his Devil Chef one-shot from Dark Horse Comics. We are enjoying some celery, which according to a hilarious fake ad in the Devil Chef book is "nature's toothbrush for your colon!"


Rob watering the sidewalk on the day of Jack's in-store appearance

Taking Stock....

As the end of the year races towards me, I'm taking a look at where I am on many of my movie projects...

EVIL RISING - Writer/director John Bowker will be visiting next weekend to upload the final pick-up shots and credit files I have. Which means I need to get 'em done by then!

DEADLY PREMONITONS - Had an incredible screening back in August of a 99% done version. Just a few tweaks left to do.

TWISTED FATES - Have been working a bit on the 'It Haunts' and 'New Neighbor' segments, next up will be music & sound effects for the 'Welcome Sister' segment.

TRULY DREADFUL TALES - The 'Death Nurse' and 'TreeSpirit' segments have been done for a while now, the 'Beetlemaniac' segment has been shot and I am waiting for the footage. The 'Crazed' segment materials are in the hands of the director - hoping they can get something shot by the end of the year. Still haven't made that pool monster outfit, but am leaning back towards rewriting this is a mummy story (which I'd started to do last year).

BLOOD CREEK WOODSMAN - Man oh man this thing turned in to a monster. It's going to be a hell of a flick once it's done. Still have several pick-ups and inserts to take care of as well as a big flashback kill scene. Maybe this month?

Camryn Manheim

I ran a Camryn Manheim fansite for a few years, starting back at the end of 1997. At the time, there was very little about this actress on the 'net - she hadn't won her Emmy "...for all the fat girls," she hadn't published her "Wake Up I'm Fat" book, etc. I periodically gathered photos and news items and posted them on the site. In late 2002, Camryn opened a new, gigantic official website (http://www.camrynmanheim.com) which pretty much rendered my site obsolete. I chopped mine down to just these few pix and my tale of meeting her. More recently, I've been downsizing my site and decided to move that stuff here.

Meeting Camryn
Coolness of all coolness - I met Camryn Manheim! In person! In the flesh! She was in a nearby town for a book signing and through a variety of circumstances, I was invited to spend some time with her and her brother between dinner and her signing. So, my wife and I got to spend about a half an hour chatting with the Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning actress in a dimly lit lounge in Portland, Oregon. It was surreal! I mean, we had watched her every week as Eleanor Frutt on The Practice and here she was..."real," right across the table. We chatted about my website for her, her brother's website for her, e-mail, movies, the gruelling book tour, etc. It was so cool and she was so nice. We went outside and snapped a bunch of photos before splitting up to go over to the bookstore.

When my wife and I got to the store (after driving around in circles for a while trying to find a good parking place), there was a loooong line and we overhead that this was the "overflow line." That is, the room was already full and they had roped it off. We figured we were screwed and wouldn't be able to hear the reading. Then, through a wonderful set of circumstances, we were waved through the rope and got to spend the entire reading and signing hanging out with Camryn's friends and family behind her table! Like I said, it was surreal.

It was fascinating to stand behind her during the signing and hear all of the things fans said to her. Many brought gifts and letters. Many were moved to tears in telling her how inspirational she was. A long lost high school classmate of Camryn's even showed up! We took some more pictures and then Camryn was off to the airport to catch a red-eye to Atlanta for a signing the next day. She was a very cool, funny and nice woman and quite an inspiration to all!

Blood Creek Woodsman - October Shoot Pix

Still shooting on BLOOD CREEK WOODSMAN. Shot on some private property in Dallas, Oregon for the movie's opening logging scene. The forecast was for afternoon showers, but it only sprinkled a few times! I also was very happy to have several old friends show up to act as cast and crew. Not only were they very helpful but they couldn't wait for their death scenes! True horror fans, all of them. As the day went on, we got more and more involved in squirting blood all over everyone and didn't really get any pictures, but here is what we did get.


Adam is mad...and Brent has no idea what's coming...


Bob as Jason the foreman


Craig waits with tubing up his pants while Rob prepares for rain...both water from the sky and blood from a pump!


Bob runs the blood-filled super soaker while Adam tries not to saw anything off and I try to get it all on tape!


Craig is impressed with Rob's chainsaw blade effect.


YEEEEARRRGGGGGH!


All smiles! Adam, me and Craig after a particular bloody death scene!


Rick in mid-splatter!

INSANE!!!!

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/12/education/12discipline.html?bl

So a 6-year-old was so excited about joining the boy scouts, he took his new camping utensil (fork/knife/spoon combo) to school to use at lunch. Thanks to a zero-tolerance policy with no allowance for discretion by the district, this kid was suspended and is up for 45 days at reform school! What the hell? If that's not infuriating enough, last year state lawmakers there tried to make disciplinary rules more flexible by giving local boards authority to modify the terms of the expulsion on a case-by-case basis, but because the law addressed "expulsion" and not "suspension," this kid was still kicked out of school for a month and a half. This poor kid is scarred for life because of a technicality!

Pissed off yet? Get this - also in Delaware, a third-grade girl was expelled for a year because her grandmother had sent a birthday cake to school, along with a knife to cut it. A year!!!! Even worse: the teacher called the principal — but not before using the knife to cut and serve the cake. WHAT?!?!?!! The teacher uses the knife to cut the cake, serves it to the kids, then calls the principal and gets the birthday girl kicked out of school for a year?!??!

I just checked and my kid's school district's policies includes this: "Under state and federal law, expulsion from school is required for a period of not less than one year for any student who is determined to have brought a weapon to school. The superintendent may modify the expulsion requirement for a student on a case-by-case basis."

Additionally, under "discipline/due process," the following is included: "Disciplinary measures are applied depending on the nature of the offense. The age and past pattern of behavior of a student will be considered prior to any suspension or expulsion."

Good. Just like most schools, my kid's school has it's fair share of kids who are just complete assholes, so I certainly want some rules, but I'm glad to see the policies allow for some discretion to avoid situations like these completely insane examples from Delaware.

AAAAAUUUURRGGGHH!!!!!

Blood Creek Woodsman - September Shoot Pix

Here are a bunch of pictures from the September 2009 shoot for BLOOD CREEK WOODSMAN!


Happy campers Darla Doom and Joe Scott.


One flashlight and two headlights.


Branch through the head rig I made for Darla Doom!


Pair of fake legs I made. I should've taken a picture before I covered it all with foam and t-shirts - it's closet rods and hinges underneath.


Shooting upstairs with Mike on sound and Daren waiting for his close-up!


Shooting the "party house" scene. They are playing a game I made up called Sweet Corn!


Jaime screams for the first time in a movie...and she was great!


Annie performed a fantastic death scene!


Annie and Rob bask in the blood!


Hot chicks...kissing! Nice.


William meets the Blood Creek Woodsman.


Annie and Daren get close for a scene.


Sex and violence.


William splattered against the side of the RV.


Amanda screaming bloody murder!


Another great and bloody death scene in the can!

Blood Creek Woodsman - August Shoot Pix

Here are a bunch of pictures from the August 2009 shoot for BLOOD CREEK WOODSMAN!


Rob Merickel and Bryn Kristi.


Madeline Morgan.


Madeline screams, reflected in blood splatter!


Thanks to Mike and Ward, we had this great police car to use!


Mike Hegg's rig done up as the sheriff's vehicle. Vinyl lettering, a color xerox sheriff's star and a real police car light bar made this look great!


We put this sign on the two police rigs when we were driving them to a location or around town.


Morgan Mayhem ready for some fake blood!


Bryn Kristi and Tom Stedham.


Tom Stedham argues with Jeremiah Benjamin while Michelle Ame Mahoney looks on.


Talking over the next shots with Adam Paris.


Michelle Ame Mahoney and Bryn Kristi beat the snot out of each other!


Tom Stedham takes aim.


Pigging out at The Markum Inn - me with John Bowker, Tom Stedham and Bryn Kristi.


Tom Stedham and Bryn Kristi share a quiet moment.

Thicker Than Water

Rob Merickel and I travelled up to the lovely Markum Inn last Friday night to play extras in a "honky tonk" scene for a local indie vampire flick called THICKER THAN WATER. Things got started about 11 p.m. and we ended up getting home around 4 a.m. It was really nice to not be working like a sleep-deprived dog and worried about every aspect of production! We just relaxed in the bar, had some iced tea and waited to be told where to sit. The director brought the cowboy hats and I kind of like the look as a character type of thing. Maybe I'll have to get myself a decent cowboy hat and have this fella show up in some future project! Thanks to Gary for the invitation and thanks to Eric for the hats and ginger ale! Good luck on the project - can't wait to see it!


Rob, Markum Inn owner Ward Frederick and I, all thinking, "You're not from around here, are ya?"

August Vacation

We traveled up to Seattle to visit friends for a few days in August and we visited crazy pop culture weird stuff store, Archie McPhee.


I love pickles!


I love bacon!


Here is my son with his purchase - a unicorn impaling a mime. Classic. It also comes with a snooty businessman and a hippie to impale.


Here is some awesome lasagna I had down the street from Archie McPhee...with a unicorn.


Darth Vader puts the death grip on me in front of Comics Dungeon during their anniversary sale.


Me and members of the 501st.


We stopped at a used record store called Golden Oldies. Great place crammed with vinyl. I picked up some old Hall & Oates records as well as this rare gem:


Apparently this was some special premium or gift to Canada Dry distributors - a 4-record set of a radio special celebrating H&O's 10 years together. 3 sides are cuts from various albums with the pair providing anecdotes about writing the songs, people they worked with, etc. And Don Imus is the host! The other 5 sides are a concert recording from Montreal. Totally sweet!


We stopped at the world famous Scarecrow Video in Seattle. All I can say is holy cow! Mike was nice enough to take the kids on a long walk while I spent an eternity checking out their gigantic inventory. I rented a dvd-r of the 1978 TV-movie Cotton Candy, directed by Ron Howard and written by Ron and his brother Clint (who also starred, alongside Charles Martin Smith).



For all of it's 1970's trappings, I still dig this movie (likely a lot due to nostalgia) and sure wish Ron would put it out on an official DVD. It was produced by Ron Howard Productions and Major H Productions (which according to Biography.com was a company founded by Howard) as part of a multi-year deal with NBC. Someone in some Internet Movie Database comments said that Disney bought it and has it locked up in their vaults. Who knows?

I've love to see a DVD release of it, with some extras. Ron and Clint and Charles could do a commentary track. Heck, Leslie King (who played the drummer) is still around from what I can tell - she directed a short film back in 2004 and appears to have cowritten a new project that's in development. Here she is in 1979's Gas Pump Girls.




Pretty decent BBQ pulled pork sandwich at a Texas BBQ place.


Then we went to Portland's Oaks Park amusement park with my sister for the first time and it was a blast. This is where they filmed part of the Sasquatch Dumpling Gang, one of my favorite flicks!




That was an awesome corndog.


We rode Big Pink, one of the rides that the characters in the Sasquatch Dumpling Gang rides. It was fun!


Later, we went to the Oregon coast with friends and had a swell time. Here I am hurling some seaweed back to the ocean at the coast and thinking it would be cool to make an H.P. Lovecraft movie someday.

At a pirate-themed shopping mall, I picked up some old VHS tapes including Breeders, the ridiculous sci-fi horror b-movie by Tim Kincaid. Here's a monster shot:




In other August events news, our dog got a haircut.


My son earned his third degree blackbelt. He's only 12! In fact, he is the youngest student to achieve third degree blackbelt at his school. I am constantly impressed.

So now the summer is over. School is cranked back up and I am still trying to finish shooting on BLOOD CREEK WOODSMAN. Getting great performances and bloody kills (like the one below), but it is taking a long time.



After that's all shot and the footage is off to my buddy (and the movie's writer/producer) John for editing, I'll get back to finishing up all of the stuff still on my plate.

Onward!!!

Brooke Wilberger, Rest in Peace

I had this flier taped to the door to my garage for years. The apartment complex where she was abducted is just down the road from my house. It was one of those situations where you can't believe something like that has happened in your town.

We screened one of my flicks at a theater at the beginning of August. I'd shot a lot of the movie in my house and I noticed the flier on the door in the background of a few scenes. We'd taken it down only a while back, after Joel Courtney had been extradited to Oregon for a while.

All of the information released by the DA thus far adds up to the location of Brooke's remains being anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes from my house. It's eerie.

The first thing I thought when I heard the news was that her family would be able to finally lay her to rest.

Time is Flying

I cannot believe summer is over!!!!! Geez louise it went by in a flash. My kid's back to school next week so my nights will soon be booked up with helping with homework when not occupied by Boy Scouts or other activities.

Had a good time visiting Seattle, then Portland, then Bend over the last few weekends. Will post some vacation photos soon.

Still need to call my website host and see if they've been able to track down the bandwidth issues with the drsquid.net site.

Movie-wise have mostly been busy planning the next round of shooting for BLOOD CREEK WOODSMAN. May not fit it all into September, but hopefully can get everything done by the first part of OCTOBER.

Heard that Luc Bernier and Isabelle Stephen finished shooting the "BeetleManiac" segment for TRULY DREADFUL TALES. I have another package ready to go out for a segment and need to get a monster costume done so my friend Rob Merickel can take a crack at the last segment for it.

Ridiculously busy so pardon the sporatic postings here. After October, things should settle down a tad and I can hopefully start posting some real progress reports from all these projects!!!!

Deadly Premonitions World Premiere!

We held the DEADLY PREMONITIONS world premiere on Friday, August 7, 2009 at the Northern Lights Theater Pub in Salem, Oregon. This capped off a week of shooting with Tom Stedham on the BLOOD CREEK WOODSMAN. Tom had flown out from Alabama so it was extra swell to have him out for the premiere!


Tom says, "Hey! Look at me on the big screen!"

I started shooting this movie back in the summer of 2005 when Tom had offered to come out to Oregon to star in a project. It was the only thing I had close to a finished script for, so I quickly fleshed it out and we shot for a quick 4 days. Over the next two years, I shot the rest of the movie here and there with local folks. After a good six months or so of editing, my buddy Mike helped with some post-production and DVD authoring stuff. What we screened at the premiere was a 99% done version - just needing some color work on one scene and a bit of sound work.


Sabrina, Tom and the rest of the crowd waiting for the show to begin!

We had sent Amanda ahead to buy a block of tickets earlier in the day. Unfortunately, one page of the theater's website said 9 p.m. and the other said 9:30 p.m.! So there was a whole gaggle of people outside in the parking lot waiting for their tickets, but it didn't really matter because I had the copies (one plus a black-up disk) of the movie! The projectionist was pissed because I guess no one had told him he needed to set up the digital projector - I had arranged the screening through some local film festival folks as I have with all of my other screenings there.

The film fest guy showed up just before the show and then everything went great.


Well, here we are - the cast of DEADLY PREMONITIONS! Me, Darla Doom, Toni Draggon, Alexandra Paris (showing off), Rob Merickel, Barb White, Amira, Tom Stedham, Morgan Mayhem, Robert J. Olin, Michelle 'Ame' Mahoney, Terry and Jerry Eckert.

During my intro, I had suggested that the movie's drinking game was to drink whenever there were boobs on the screen. Well, boy did everyone get into that! They started holding their glasses in the air and counting down when they even thought that boobs were coming. Since most of the cast were there, along with their friends, and there was lots of beer, there was a lot of yelling and cheering whenever someone appeared on screen or did something cool or sexy on screen. When Darla and Michelle's make out scene came on, the place nearly exploded!


(back) Toni Draggon, Me, Darla Doom; (front) Michelle 'Ame' Mahoney, Tom Stedham


Amanda Bounds can't get enough of that Tough Tom Stedham!


Amanda and Morgan were inspired by Darla's strangulation death scene!


Others might say that there are seven boobs in this photo, but I would never say such a thing about my buddy Tom.


Mike Hegg and Rob Merickel check for rain inside the pool hall/bar after the screening.

It was a mind-blowing experience and afterwards most of us headed across the parking lot to a bar/pool hall to hang out and chat. I can't thank everyone enough for coming to the show - it was a great way to end a grueling week!

Much To Do, Much To Do

So it's been a while and I have been very busy.

Last week Tom Stedham flew out from Alabama to star in a horror flick called THE BLOOD CREEK WOODSMAN. John Bowker wrote and produced it and he asked me to shoot and direct it. Rob Merickel came on board to play the deputy as well as do make-up and special effects and my BLOODSUCKING REDNECK VAMPIRES partner Mike Hegg picked up a sweet new HD camera and allowed us to use it for the shoot.

I was a crazy few weeks of planning, storyboarding, asking for favors, borrowing and buying props, designing logos, costumes, etc. Then it was a crazy week of shooting. I totally blew the scheduling and we were behind from day one. We had to have a bit of a pow wow and thankfully a few actors and actresses could make it for an additional day. We also pushed even more stuff off to sometime in September, adding to several sequences we had already planned to pick up then.



Great performances and some real magic captured on tape. Life has also been busy at home and work has been a killer, both before I took the week off and now that I have returned.


We capped off the week with a premiere of DEADLY PREMONITIONS at the Northern Lights Theater Pub in Salem, Oregon. It was extra special because Tom Stedham could be there for it, being out from Alabama for the movie shoot and all. We screened a nearly perfect DVD-r, that only really needed one scene's lighting tweaked and some sound fixed. Everyone said the thing looked finished to them. Because of those last few tweaks, I didn't have copies for everyone, so will have to take care of that in the coming months.

Several folks were taking pics during the shoot, so I'll try to look at them as well as my own and then put a bunch up here on the blog.

You may notice my snazzy blog design is gone - I had some bandwidth issues with my website host, so have taken a bunch of files down temporarily so they can track traffic and see if it's just someone hotlinking to some of my stuff or if by some weird fluke I am actualy getting TONS of traffic to the site. In the meantime, I've reverted back to this green motif that I like quite a bit.

Going to be travelling a bit in the next few weeks as well as getting back to some of my other movie projects and planning for the September shoots for BLOOD CREEK WOODSMAN.

More soon...

Patch

Markum Inn

Man sakes alive this place has awesome burgers! 36903 S Highway 213, Mount Angel, Oregon, (503) 829-9853. Tell 'em Dr. Squid sent ya!

Platoon of the Dead On Sale

The price for PLATOON OF THE DEAD just got knocked down five bucks to $14.99 over at tempevideo.com

Busy and Busy

Will be checking a new DEADLY PREMONITONS dvd proof soon. Mike burned it with some new software and says everything looks great.

Have been busy with work and home stuff as of late, but gearing up for involvement in a new project.

Finally fixed a problem in the "It Haunts" segment of TWISTED FATES. Need to double check a dvd proof to make sure I've fixed all sound issues and then can set that aside and plow through other stuff "on my plate."

More news soon...