Ron Oliver's Fabulous Life!

THE WRAPTURE

2009-12-11T18:02:00.000-08:00

At long last, the first post-production MARTINI!

Loyal readers will recall the remarkable restraint I have shown these past few weeks, denying myself the pleasures of the well-made Belvedere martini (dry, up, with a twist from may-nov, olives from dec-april, in case any of you out there are buying...) and, though it seems impossible, we are now finished production on Disney’s "HARRIET THE SPY".

In fact, we’ve just this afternoon completed editing what is commonly referred to as “The Director’s Cut”, so named because it theoretically represents the truest incarnation of the director’s “vision” for the film. I say “theoretically” because one’s TRUE vision for any film usually exists only in one’s mind - (like the computer graphics effects which have turned our Hamilton, Ontario locations into New York City) -

- unencumbered by budget, schedule, actor availability and the odd plaster Lion which might just happen to get in the way of the director’s beautifully planned crane shot, as happened on our final day of shooting.

Yes, I said “plaster”.

Granted, I’ve worked with animals before; certainly one of the oddest bits of direction I’ve ever given was “please get that other giraffe out of camera range, I only want a SINGLE giraffe in this shot!”, but that was in Africa of course, where these sorts of problems are to be expected.

However I’ve never had to deal with a beast that, in spite of being inanimate, managed to – with the help two rather ill-advised background performers - throw itself into the path of the camera and shatter the “matte box”.

(This, for the uninitiated, is that square frame which rests at the far end of the camera’s lens and seems to take an eternity to remove or replace, a task usually done when time is running out and there are only seconds to complete an entire scene before the crew dashes off to lunch or, in the case of certain unnamed members of my most recent team -

- the nearest Gentlemen’s "theatrical" Club featuring the artistic dance stylings of ladies named Misty or Chanelle.)

But in spite of that accident, our last day of principal photography went off without a hitch, and even my Producer, the indefatigable Jonathan Hackett, managed to summon a smile –

- rarer than a good John Cusack movie – as he realized that our final special effect shot, involving a series of large plaster statues toppling over and smashing around our stars, worked perfectly on Take One.

Adding to the fun was a visit from my nephew Benmont and his friend, the near-mythical Tyler Crane, both of whom were thrilled to meet one of our stars, Danny Smith, whose appearance in the cult television series "Big Wolf On Campus" seems to have struck a chord with the adolescent male viewer for obvious reasons (lycanthropy is, after all, just puberty without the acne...).

And I would be remiss if I didn't mention the many gifts placed upon the large table one of my minions had set in front of my Director's Chair, tokens of esteem from Cast and Crew bestowed upon me, their Director and, ergo, Father Figure. This of course serves a dual purpose - they get to symbolically make up for any difficulties in their relationship with their own, biological paterfamilias, and I get marvelous presents. Win-win, hm?

Cut. Print. And un-wrap!

And just in the nick of time, I might add, given that Christmas 2009 is mere weeks away.

Loyal readers will recall I have a long history of making movies during the holiday season and have barely managed to make it home by the skin of my teeth for the past half dozen years.

(And when one has a houseful of guests for Christmas week, not to mention a catered dinner party for 30 people planned for The Big Day, every moment counts!)

But this is the closest I’ve shaved it since the making of “A Dennis The Menace Christmas” – has it really been 3 years since I endured that ghastly winter’s shoot in Montreal, with everything from a mutinous First Assistant Director to a rampaging blizzard conspiring against me? –

- and although the Boyfriend is keeping a stiff upper lip, I’m very sensitive to his emotions and can sense a certain anxiety in his telephone voice, especially when he says things like “HURRY UP AND GET HOME! THE CHRISTMAS GIFTS YOU KEEP ORDERING ON EBAY WHEN YOU’RE DRUNK ARE STACKING UP IN THE GUEST ROOM AND SOMEBODY NEEDS TO SORT THEM OUT PRONTO AND THAT SOMEBODY IS YOU!”

Speaking of “A Dennis The Menace Christmas”, I received an email the other day from a dear friend of mine with a photograph attached showing that particular film of mine on sale at a discount department store specializing in overstocked items and end-of-runs.

Such is the fate of the Artiste in modern society, I’m afraid. One minute you’re at a big Hollywood premiere, celebrating your latest cinematic confection, the next, you find yourself marked down at Big Lots.

Yet one mustn’t be dissuaded from always trying to do one’s best; certainly we’ve hit a few high notes – figuratively AND literally – on “Harriet The Spy”, thanks to our star, the dazzlingly talented Jennifer Stone -

- and soon-to-be teen hearthrob Wesley Morgan (you heard it hear first!) -

- but still one never knows what kind of an impact a film is going to have on its audience.

For example, who could have predicted that an episode of television I wrote and directed back in the mid-nineties – "The Tale of the Ghastly Grinner" -

- part of a now legendary series called “Are You Afraid of the Dark” – would end up providing inspiration for a rock band in 2009?

Yes, the name of the "nerdy" heroine in that show has been taken as the moniker for a Boston based musical group.

I am thoroughly honored.

So even if the plane that I’m scheduled to board a week from now should happen to plunge into one of the nearby great lakes or suck a load of geese into its engines, I will be able to go to that great Movie Theater in the sky secure in the knowledge that I have given immortality to the name Hooper Picallero.

In the meantime, however, I’ve still got to make it through seven days of sub-zero temperatures here in Toronto; a few more meetings - including one with a remarkable young man who is planning to produce one of my own scripts as his first feature, a challenge so insurmountable in his home country of Canada (given that the movie features neither lesbians, wheat farmers nor WW1 War Heroes who say "oot") that he is either brilliantly ambitious or utterly insane -

- several cocktail and dinner obligations (it’s surprising how in demand one is when one’s name appears on the “Films In Production” list in the trades…) and an evening of music with Ms. Dianne Reeves performing a Christmas Concert should help pass the time -

- but in truth I am quite anxious myself to return to my desert paradise.

We’ve had some torrential rains recently, quite unusual for our part of the world, and I’m concerned by reports that my houseboy Panton has begun construction of a large wooden arc on the south lawn.

While I certainly admire his “Can Do!” spirit, I’m afraid that his last project, a homemade rocket ship the purpose of which was, as he told us with his usual picturesque mangling of the English language, to “Escape From Bitch Mountain” ended up causing a bit of damage.

I do hope I can stop him before he starts loading up the neighborhood, two by two.

THE WORST THING EVER

2009-11-21T10:29:00.001-08:00

Like a starter pistol’s report, the first Christmas Carol of the season always sets my heart racing; to me, the Holidays aren’t so much “holidays” as they are an Olympic Sport, with the finish line being a crumpled mountain of gift wrap surrounding a group of houseguests drunk on the joy of giving and several gallons of Mimosas.

After all, what better way to celebrate the birth of the proverbial “King of Kings” than maxing out your credit cards AND getting your family and friends royally sloshed by noon?

So it was that I found myself grinning with delight today while enduring an endless line at the rather ominously Kafka-monikered “Shoppers Drug Mart” in Toronto -

- waiting to pay for a tube of toothpaste which would cost me 75% less back home in California (and which is, ironically, MADE in Canada, but is taxed at an astronomical rate in order to pay for, among other things, the long line ups for the “free” services at medical clinics throughout the country) -

- when over the public address system came the dulcet tones of Bing Crosby crooning “Silver Bells”; the opening aural salvo of the Yuletide season.

I suddenly felt as if the world were a fresh and shiny place, and I its freshest and shiniest citizen! Not even the rather suspicious death of a fifteen month old boy at the local Toronto airport, the mother of whom apparently lost her grip on the child and let him topple over a four foot high railing -

- plunging rather perversely from the Departures to the Arrivals level, all while she managed somehow to keep a firm grip on her shopping bags -

- could get me down. However I must admit that pondering the fact that the child was enroute to Argentina to be baptized, and therefore died, according to their Catholic faith, without the benefit of a dab of holy water and ergo will now spend eternity in Hell just because his Mother valued her Juicy Couture carry-on over her kid -

- did give me pause. But I rose above it; after all, Christmas is on the way!!

And frankly, I needed the boost after someone named Richard Lawson declared, at a website rather presumptuously called “TV.com”, that the Disney movie I’m currently directing -

- here in Toronto, Canada is, well, not to his tastes, referring to it as "the worst thing ever made"…

Now putting aside the fact that he has passed judgement on a film which hasn't even hit the editing room yet, the term “worst thing ever made” clearly also takes into account 9/11, The Holocaust AND the sex tapes of ex-Miss California/confirmed Christian/noted lying floozey Miss Carrie Prejean -

- so I suspect Mr. Lawson is speaking metaphorically – although having attempted to read some of his other writings, I’m not entirely sure he would be comfortable using a word with so many syllables.

But even if it does turn out to be “the worst”, it certainly won’t be a result of the marvelous work done by my crew -

- or my leading lady, the fabulous Miss Jennifer Stone -

- nor our "hunk" du jour, Wesley Morgan -

- these past three weeks. I've been so impressed, in fact, that at the end of Day 15 I treated the crew to a glamorous cocktail party in the Library Bar at our location hotel, The Royal York -

- one of the last bastions of glamor in this otherwise architecturally horrendous city.

(Don't just take my word for it -- the absurd and hideous "addition" to the city's historic Royal Ontario Museum, a steel and glass monstrosity jutting out of the classic original building like some sort of frozen projectile vomit -

- has recently been called one of the Top Ten Ugliest Buildings on the planet. Toronto becomes World Class at last!)

And as we reflected on what we've accomplished since we've begun, even I had to admit to a certain pride in the movie we're making.

Of course we ALL know what pride cometh before, hmmm?

So I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. I’ve even been TRYING to find something to complain about during this shoot, but so far the biggest problem we’ve had was when the studio asked for a bit player to get rid of the fake French Accent he employed during his audition, and then expressed shock during their viewing of “rushes” (the daily scenes filmed and sent back to our Hollywood Overlords in a hurry – ie: a “rush”…) when he didn’t have a French Accent.

(And speaking of accents – I wish I could travel back in time and sharply slap the face of the first Teacher who instructed a Canadian student to say “ou” as “ewww” instead of “ow”. There is absolutely nothing as annoying to a director as watching a completely flawless scene, brilliantly acted and gorgeously photographed, suddenly turn into an episode of the late and unlamented Canadian sitcom (to use the word loosely) “The Trouble With Tracey” by an actor’s mealy-mouthed delivery of the word “house”!)

Well, there was the time when the "honey wagon", the charming phrase used to denote any trailer or mobile dressing room which houses the actors, caught fire because of faulty wiring...

And then there was our "stunt" cake which began melting under the hot lights well before its close-up...

Not to mention the creepy shirtless guy on the balcony near our exterior set who kept his binoculars trained on a female member of the camera crew to the point where we suggested that perhaps they should start picking out a china pattern for their wedding gift...

But these, along with the occasional bout of the recently renamed “H1N1” flu (the biggest pharmaceutical cash grab since the invention of VD, resulting in the production offering us all free vaccine shots which, I should report, I have declined as I have no interest whatsoever in allowing myself to be injected with something rushed through production by a drug company who did it as cheaply as possible in order to provide the lowest possible bid to the government. Hello? Thalidomide, anyone?) -

(and doesn't this Kid look just a bit TOO happy to be getting a shot? I see a serious drug addiciton in his future...)

- and the fact that our Star is, by law, only available to us for six hours a day, thus requiring the usage of various photographic “doubles” of varying sizes to fill in for her (resulting in some rather alarming physical metamorphoses from scene to scene like a Carnival Sideshow Attraction – The Amazing Thespia! See Her Hair Grow In Seconds! Watch Her Legs Stretch In The Blink Of An Eye!), is nothing more than the usual nonsense associated with the production of any motion picture, and as such is barely worth mentioning.

What IS worth mentioning however is the radio show featuring myself and my longtime co-conspirator in cultural terrorism, Michael Rowe, aka The Duchess of Milton -

- is currently available on line at www.ciut.fm.

While it was supposed to be a discussion of sexuality and horror in film and literature, it – not entirely unexpectedly – devolved into a a forty five minute stand-up routine where the two of us traded insults, launched politically incorrect assaults on sacred cows and generally misbehaved to the point where our Host was left breathless with laughter and barely able to get a word in edgewise.

But even with all of this to distract me, I still must admit to a certain amount of homesickness. A quick weekend visit from The Boyfriend helped to soothe me somewhat -

- and we managed to put quite a dent in my per diem (which is a latin word meaning "drug and hooker money") at Holt Renfrew, the only decent department store in Canada -

- but his stories of the ever-entertaining adventures of our miniature Manchester, Crawford The Perfect Dog, left me missing our desert paradise even more.

The only solution was to attend a late screening of a newly released cinematic treat known as "Ninja Assassin" starring Korean pop icon RAIN.

While it is not generally known, long before "Rain" became a music and movie star in the Asian world, he toiled for more than a few years as my houseboy, until his constant singing and "busting" of "moves" while he was supposed to be vacuuming got him fired.

It was quite interesting to watch the film, and remembering him fumbling around the house in the regulation uniform of ill fitting Adidas shorts and flip flops made me appreciate my current Ecuardorean (or whatever he is...as i've previously mentioned, we can't understand a word the poor fellow says...) houseboy even more than I do now.

Sure, Panton can't wield a sword to save his life, but at least he keeps the dust off my lampshades.

As it were.

THE LAST MARTINI

2009-11-07T16:17:00.000-08:00

No, no, there's no reason to panic, dear reader. I have not given up the Blessed Vodka to join the rest of my gay brethren aboard that grimmest of train rides, The 12 Step Express.

While I admire those who have made it through "The Program" (and frankly, I'd LOVE to be able to blame my sometimes appalling behavior on SOMETHING other than my own stupidity!) I'm afraid my addictions sustain me and, in return, I them; besides, there are dozens of bartenders around the world depending on me to put their children through university, and who am I to deny the wee tots their education?

I am merely preparing for tomorrow - Day One of filming on my latest epic HARRIET THE SPY, featuring the utterly adorable Jennifer Stone -

- and a cast of "exciting newcomers" who are probably at this very moment tossing and turning in their little nuns' beds, memorizing their Oscar (tm) speeches in the hopes of being the next Marisa Tomei.

After four weeks of endless meetings, hours of driving around exotic Hamilton, Ontario in a mini-van to try to find locations which bear at least a vague resemblance to the upper east side of New York City -

- (we've done our best, but I'm afraid the expression "mutton dressed as lamb" does come to mind) and the seemingly boundless energy, talent and goodwill of all concerned, we are about to set sail on the good ship "Principal Photography".

Thus, to mark the occasion, I am having my final martini for the duration of the shoot as i pore over my copious notes for tomorrow's shots.

As is my habit, I do not raise even a single one of these little darlings until the final night of filming on a project is done, rather like the prize a long distance runner is given for making it to the Finish Line, or the piece of cheese a rat gets for ringing the bell at the end of the maze. For those of you who know me, can you imagine how good THAT martini tastes?

I know what you're thinking - "my GOD Ron, what kind of will power must you have?" Well, to misquote "that venomous fishwife" Addison DeWitt in "All About Eve" -

- I live in the cinema as a Trappist monk lives in his faith, and if those little hooded fellows could take a vow of silence in honor of a Higher Power then I can certainly put aside the martini shaker for a few weeks in honor of HRH Mickey Mouse.

Of course, the Monks had their wine, didn't they? So I suppose....

I mean, let's not be crazy about this.

Follow along, dear reader. For the next four weeks, we get to ignore Balloon Boys, Murderous Muslim Soldiers and all the rest of the drivel that gets pumped into our lives by the wretched mass media, and live in the FantasyLand which is A Movie. Fasten your seatbelts, to steal another quote from Mr. Mankiewicz.

The fun is about to begin...

LOCKER ROOM WHANG

2009-11-06T16:46:00.000-08:00

For decades, people on both sides of the 49th parallel have argued about the difference between Canadians and Americans.

Some say it’s social, others say it’s political. I think it’s simpler than that; I think it has to do with underwear.

- VS., say -

More specifically, I think it has to do with how underwear is removed in gymnasium locker rooms. I saw evidence of this just recently at the “Extreme Fitness” in downtown Toronto, Canada -

- where I’ve been getting myself into fighting shape for the upcoming shoot of the movie “HARRIET THE SPY” –

- based on the classic children’s novel - for the good people at Disney.

(Sidebar note: while it’s a terrific gym, and I highly recommend checking it out if you’re ever in Toronto, I would suggest going on Sunday mornings when all the religious kooks are in church.

It is no secret of course that Christians are, as a species, wildly overweight -

- while atheists tend to be much more physically fit, likely because instead of spending all their time praying for good health and a trimmer waist-line, they are, in fact, working out.)

Anyway, there I was, desperately trying to negotiate the control pad on my iPod – am I the only one who can’t seem to get the damn thing to comprehend the difference between Frank Sinatra and Franz Ferdinand? – when suddenly there came the most startling ‘crash’ from the other end of the Men’s Changing Room.

It sounded as if someone had driven a 1986 Volvo into a crowd of pre-schoolers - not that I recommend that sort of thing, but really, given the current state of youth crime in our culture, for example, those three boys who recently set fire to a fourth over a $40.00 video game debt, which may result not only in significant jail time but also the strong possibility of future careers in the Credit Card Collection Industry -

- perhaps it’s not a bad idea to “nip it in the bud”, as it were - and I couldn’t resist following the noise to its source.

To my surprise I saw a swarthy and heavily muscled gentleman of Middle Eastern descent writhing naked on the floor next to a locker, a towel clutched in his hand and a pair of mustard colored briefs twisted hopelessly around his ankles.

Thinking that perhaps with a single kind gesture I could make up for the horrors of Abu Ghraib, I considered offering some help, but thought better of it as he glowered at me, muttering something in one of those artificial sounding Arabic languages one used to only hear in the movies – often uttered by the Bad Guy as he swing his scimitar over his head and threatened a loin-clothed Victor Mature with the “death of a thousand mongeese” or some such nonsense.

As I backed off, watching him slowly pick himself up and begin gingerly rubbing his head, I suddenly understood what had happened. In fact, I had seen something like it many times before.

Now let me make one thing utterly clear; this is not a rant against Canada.

Indeed, it’s been a year since I was last here, in my home and native land, and while I was certainly in no hurry to return, even I – die hard Beaverphobe that I am – must admit I have been having a disturbingly good time during this latest cinematic project.

The marvelous Grand Hotel – although plopped unceremoniously at the corner of Crack Whore Boulevard and Homeless Person Urine Stain Drive – has been as gracious and as accommodating as always, with a wonderful breakfast every morning and a nightly Belvedere martini so perfectly constructed as to make me re-think the ten year contract I’ve recently signed with my houseboy Panton.

(Granted, Panton has other attributes which even a five star hotel can’t match, but then again the staff of this hotel speaks fluent English, unlike Panton’s indecipherable blend of Peruvian and Sanskrit, so perhaps it’s a draw after all…)

It must also be said that the team assembled by My Producers is one of the best I’ve ever had, including my darling First Assistant Director ROBYN -

- who deftly maneuvered us through the treacherous waters of our movie “Bridal Fever” two years ago -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQzYjjNvuS8

- and who has the kind of obsessive attention to detail that would make an autistic child feel like an under-achiever.

Then there are the actors – including the beyond charming JENNIFER STONE

- and the distractingly wholesome ex- Abercrombie and Fitch model WESLEY MORGAN -

- and of course national Canadian treasure JAYNE EASTWOOD, without whom I simply cannot imagine making a film on this side of the border –

- all delightfully enthusiastic and talented and clearly worshipful of the ground upon which I stand, which is a very admirable trait for people who wish to have their own close up shot from time to time.

Even our Writers – in this case a mother/daughter team so adorable that to just look at them is to develop a case of diabetes - have delivered a charming and deliciously ironic script which not even a GIFTED director could screw up.

Taking into account the usual bouts of homesickness for my loved ones back in our desert paradise - including of course Crawford The Dog, whose recent portrayal of a Chicken during Halloween has been the talk of the town for weeks –

- and the occasional idiots lumbering through the Hotel Bar in search of "Miller On Tap" (the mind reels; how DO these people find their way all the way here from the Bus Station?), I must admit that things have been going remarkably well.

So obviously, with all this good energy circling me, it’s only natural I’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop. I’m just surprised it made so much noise when it did.

And that it sounded like a homophobic nincompoop slamming his head against a locker door.

One of the fascinating side effects of Canada’s rather liberal social construct, in particular, its embrace of the Civil Rights of its Gay and Lesbian citizenry, has been the imposition of a form of “tolerance” onto its people. Canadians, as a nation, may not necessarily “like” homosexuals, but they are forced, by law, to accept them.

This probably works for Joe and Mary Snowmobile, coming from that delightfully innocent era "before" homosexuality -

- and for whom it now exists as a kind of rare bird, seen on occasion in the wilds of downtown Vancouver or, perhaps, on the dock of a rented cabin in Ontario's “Cottage Country”. As is the way of all good Canucks, if it doesn’t interrupt Hockey Night in Canada, it really doesn't bother them.

But for the heterosexual men of a place like downtown Toronto, the Gays surely must seem to be EVERYWHERE. And in classic “straight man” fashion (and by “straight” I mean "STRAIGHT-straight", not “well, I used to be gay but then I found Jesus-straight")-

- they are apparently convinced beyond the shadow of a doubt that, regardless of the fact that they may bear a resemblance to the sort of thing one normally finds living beneath a bridge and terrorizing passing Billy Goats -

- they are in fact the targets of Godless Homos who clearly want nothing more than to lead them away from the path of righteousness-

- and right down Sodomy Lane.

Thus, the Jockey brand ankle bracelets around the afore-toppled Gym Goer.

Desperate to protect himself from the staring eyes of what must have been, in his mind, a Night of the Living Dead-type hoard of Butt Pirates intent on checking out his manhood -

- this deluded fellow had, while still semi-dressed, secured his club-issued towel around his waist and then, with bodily contortions that would have put a Czechoslovakian prostitute to shame, attempted to remove his underpants from beneath the towel, thus shielding his delicate private parts from public view.

Of course, gravity always outweighs modesty and it must have got the upper hand here too, with a single misstep causing the poor fellow to slam his thick noggin against the metal locker with a resoundingly appropriate “WHANNNGGGG!”, knocking himself down to the tile floor where, ironically, his legs spread far enough apart to not only reveal his precious genitals to the entire locker room but also turn the rest of the nearby patrons into amateur, if unwilling, proctologists.

But what, my reader must wonder, does this have to do with the American/Canadian question? Fair enough. Let me continue.

Having spent the past twenty-five years circumnavigating the world, and working out in gyms on five continents, in twice as many countries, I’ve seen a lot of interesting things. Most of these I cannot share, even with you, dear reader; while I have a Sainted Boyfriend who not only endures the stresses of life with a B movie director but actually embraces them -

- even ONE of these stories would likely guarantee me “single man” status for the rest of my life. At my age, this is not only undesirable but probably fatal.

But let it just be said, in all my travels, I have never before seen such a silly and potentially life-threatening display of puritanical penis-cloaking in my life as I witnessed that morning. While the poor fellow was obviously trying to allay suspicions about his own sexuality - rather like the "rap" world's favorite new slang "NO HOMO", used anytime they inadvertently brush up against the turgid prod of homoerotica-

- and which frankly, has been asking more questions than it answers -

- he actually did the exact opposite; laying naked on a gym floor with your legs in the air is basically Gay Porn 101.

Upon further exploration, I've even found a clever Entrepreneur cashing in on the apparently horrific idea of the naked human body being exposed to the world -

- and while I applaud his ingenuity, I suspect this ridiculous product won't catch on. Certainly not in California, where I have lived lo these past twenty years; such behavior would immediately attract suspicion of a terrorist plot. Everybody knows honest, flag-waving, red-blooded American men love nothing more than swinging their genitals around, whether called for or not.

While in this case the un-toweled “slamee” may have been of the Muslim persuasion, I don’t think his religion had much to do with his unfortunate gravitational mishap. More likely it was just a twist of fate – not to mention a fairly lax immigration policy - which catapulted him from the Tehran Gold’s Gym face first into a locker door in Canada.

There is, after all, a kind of insane logic to it; with gay marriage being all the rage up here, and an almost maniacal approach to political correctness running rampant in both the government and the culture at large, perhaps the delicate dance between locker room towel and boxer brief is the last thing that heterosexual men of any race, color or creed can truly call their own.

At least being ashamed of their own bodies is a tradition that they can adhere to without fear of breaking the law.

COLD NUTS

2009-10-12T20:06:00.001-07:00

While the 20th century may have officially ended some nine years back,

- I think there is an argument to be made that the actual curtain dropped on that most American of eras about a week and a half ago. This was the moment that the “Crocs” shoe company –

- and calling those ghastly flower pots with soles “shoes” is rather like calling a McDonald’s ground cow sandwich a “hamburger” –

- officially threw in the towel and called it a day. Apparently when the people of the United States were faced with a choice between feeding their children and owning several pairs of those multi-colored podiatric insults, the kids won. And while it is unfortunate to see any business go belly-up, one is heartened to think that perhaps this event indicates a certain sanity returning to our shores.

There have been other indicators of the end of an epoch - the death of Walter Cronkite, the most trusted voice of the century;

- the death of Michael Jackson, the most danced-to singer of the century;

- the death of Farrah Fawcett, the most imitated hair-don’t of the century –

- all of which seem to point toward a relinquishing of America’s cultural grip on the world.

But it is in the sudden rise and fall of the craze of perforated plastic footwear that one can most readily observe the idea that maybe, just maybe, the much vaunted, and in many cases well earned, ingenuity of these United States has finally been forced to face the fact that a lot of its output is, frankly, crap.

Safely ensconced behind the protective fichus walls of our desert paradise, we at dear old Six Palms have been observing this trend over the past year with something approaching – to be blunt - delight. The drivel which has been served up daily for the past decade as “popular culture” -

- has left us on occasion literally gasping for air as we tried to understand the social urges which compel our fellow citizens to follow celebrity bowel movements on Twitter, and there is much to be said for the fact that the bottom of the barrel may well have been reached when it comes to what passes for entertainment these days.

After all, if that dreadful, overly-fertile couple featured on that hideous reality show can get a divorce and manage to sling their mud with such broad strokes as to soil all eight of their children in the process, anything is possible.

One is aware, of course, of the ever-present risk of sounding like some nostalgia-swathed “Delta Dawn” sitting at the end of an allegoric bar in an old dress with a dead flower wedged firmly behind her ear, especially living as one does in a town which embraces its past like a necrophiliac lover.

But to be honest, in spite of the monthly expenses of running an historic household – not to mention the care and feeding of One Boyfriend with a Sephora Habit -

- One Miniature Manchester with a Bingo Habit -

- and One Houseboy named Panton for whom I've thrown enough bad money into "English As A Fifteenth Language" classes over the years to buy a block of downtown Los Angeles -

- there has been nothing tossed over the wall these past twelve months which has appealed to us enough to slip into our “Dog and Pony” suit and make our way into Hollywood in order to convince The Great And Mighty Oz of the remaining studio overlords that we are the perfect Hitchcock for their epic.

Until now.

Roughly three weeks ago, whilst floating in the Martini Pool and with nothing more pressing on our mind decision-wise than just where exactly we were going for dinner that night, the telephone rang with a rather interesting offer. A bit of research and a couple of meetings later, we found ourselves onboard a plane, en route to commence production on a motion picture for The Walt Disney Company – one of the last remaining studios of Hollywood’s Golden Age – based on a marvelous classic children’s novel entitled “Harriet The Spy”.

We are, of course, delighted to be working in this economy and even more so to be working on a project with a pedigree from the early 1960’s which means, to our relief, it is well-conceived, well-written and well-loved.

Not to mention it features absolutely NO Lohans.

All of these things occurred to us as we walked along the bustling street of the city we are currently calling home. And as we passed the Indian women in their brightly colored saris – invariably smiling and laughing –

- or the Muslim women in their mud hued burkas –

- invariably grim and/or struggling to negotiate the crowded sidewalk with the limited vision granted them by the patriarchal idiocy of a tiny slit in their hoods, we were struck by the fact that we could go for literally blocks at a time here without hearing a single word of English spoken.

Even the turban-wearing young gentlemen of East Indian persuasion loitering outside the nearby industrial engineering college, arguing in that loud, highly strung fashion that turban-wearing young gentlemen often do, resolutely avoided communicating in anything approaching the Queen’s Tongue and for quite a few minutes we were actually relishing the fantasy that we had ventured to a foreign land, full of exotic mystery and intrigue.

But then we turned a corner and saw the CN Tower -

- that most un-sexy of all the phallic objects thrusting up out of the solar plexus of various cities around the world, and remembered that we were, in fact, in Toronto, Canada.

We have, over the years, had a love-hate relationship with this city. When we lived here for half of the 1980’s – back when it was on the verge of relevance on the world stage – it seemed like Paris, full of excitement and wonder. Keep in mind, of course, that when one comes from our kind of humble beginnings – having been born and reared in a white trash village sixteen feet from the North Pole - living in a place where fetching the morning paper doesn’t involve eleven foot snow drifts and the threat of wolves is a relief.

But the innate smugness of a city built entirely around the idea of “We don’t want to be New York!” eventually wore on us and we began to loathe the very idea of returning here for projects over the years. Stuck as it was in some sort of endless Robert Palmer video loop -

- Toronto represented everything we hated about our homeland of Canada.

This is, after all, a place which took the appearance of a couple of second rate nightclub comics on the legendary US tv series "The Ed Sullivan Show" as a sign that they were ACTUALLY funny enough to be given their own Canadian television series for something like 75 years...

And where else but Canada would have chosen as its national animal The Beaver, an oversized rodent as tiresomely industrious and absurdly put-together as the country itself?

To be frank, when we stepped onboard the Air Canada flight to depart my desert paradise - and were promptly told by the flight attendant as we handed him our boarding pass that “you will be treated no differently than anybody else,” – we had a sinking feeling that this trip was going to be just as dreadful as all of those in our past.

But nestling down into our first class seat (where, obviously, we WERE treated differently than everybody else), with a wonderful old film noir available to view on the video screen -

- and an extremely delicious Bloody Caesar in hand – the Bloody Mary is apparently too American for Air Canada, who insist that Clam Juice must be part of one’s daily diet – it quickly became apparent that maybe, again just maybe, an era had ended.

Granted, most airlines serve WARM nuts in first class and the ones we received with our cocktail were as cold as Nancy Pelosi’s stare -

- but given the generally positive experience we decided to simply rise above it.

The flight was, in a word, marvelous, long enough to be enjoyable, brief enough to be endurable. And from the moment we were picked up by Ryan the production assistant, to the arrival at my favorite Toronto hotel – The Grand, plopped unceremoniously in a rather down-at-heel neighborhood but possessed of enough elegance and style to make up for any number of circumnavigating winos and hookers – and all the way through the gracious, encouraging and completely delightful times spent so far with the Producers and Studio Executives, these past several days have led us to believe that, perhaps, it’s not just a Cultural Era that has passed.

Perhaps it’s the end of an era of our own selves as well?

One can only admit this to you, dear reader, but is it possible that, along with this City, we have grown up too? And instead of searching for the negative in all things Toronto – indeed, in all THINGS (which is ultimately a Fool’s Game), the influence of The Boyfriend and Crawford The Dog –

- arguably the steadying power of love - has brought us to a place in our lives where only the good things about a place, about ANY place, seem important?

Time will tell.

After all, those nuts WERE pretty damned cold...

THE DAY AFTER MANANA

2009-08-06T06:28:00.000-07:00

At first, it seemed as though things were getting back to normal here in our desert paradise.

The steady stream of house guests we endured over the late spring and early summer had finally slowed into nothing more than a barely penicillin-worthy trickle -

- and such a sense of tranquility had fallen around our glamorous mid-century Alexander that even my houseboy Panton -

- still in a state of mourning over the passing of The Gloved One last month -

- was actually able to listen to a few bars of “Thriller” without collapsing into a sobbing mess.

So you can imagine my chagrin when, after an evening of literate conversation with noted author David Marlow -

- and famed screenwriter Barry Sandler -

- had devolved into a Margarita-a-thon of “Bill W.” worthy proportions -

- and left me rather, shall we say, "vulnerable" to violent sensations, the peace and quiet of the morning was shattered by the clang of the doorbell ricocheting painfully off my pounding skull and sending Panton, still not yet able to summon the courage to venture anywhere NEAR the front portico, scurrying to hide under a pool side chaise lounge.

I bellowed for The Boyfriend but he had already left for work - he is, as has been previously reported, a prominent local businessman and has little or no time for what he refers to as “your nonsense around here!” -

- and while Crawford The Dog has developed into a vital part of the household, he is still, as of this writing, unable to open doors. Thus it fell upon me to find out the identity of our unwelcome early morning intruder.

Slipping into a sarong and putting on a pair of Prada sunglasses for protection from the ghastliness of the early morning sun, I swung the front door open and was immediately accosted - “greeted” seems too genteel a word for the onslaught of blessings thrust upon me- by a pair of rather morbidly overdressed ladies with the sort of blank-eyed smiles one only sees in the devoutly religious or the recently lobotomized.

They had, so they said, some VERY good news for me.

Now MY idea of good news is a truckload of Belvedere vodka driven by half-naked Marines breaking down in front of my house, perhaps, or discovering that recent GQ coverboy and “actor” Channing Tatum can’t live for another moment without giving me a hot oil massage.

But from the looks of the two dears teetering on their heels before me in the housecat-disintegrating heat of mid-day, I had a feeling that they didn’t necessarily share my passions.

“Did you know that the world is going to end?” the slightly more generously proportioned of the two asked me. “Did you know it’s going to end soon?”

Now I have heard, as I imagine have you, dear reader, about the most recent “Doomsday” prediction making the rounds of the Supermarket Checkout Literary circles.

Apparently, according to the Mayan Calendar, the earth is going to come to some sort of shattering conclusion on or about the year 2012.

However, before you begin cancelling your magazine subscriptions and buying a houseful of new furniture on a “Don’t Pay A Cent Until 2013” credit plan, I would respectfully suggest that we have been down this road before.

Does anyone out there remember “Y2K”, for example?

That was the fin de siecle event with a soundtrack by Prince -

- wherein the world’s computers were all supposed to simultaneously seize up -

- thus thrusting the human race back into the pre-Internet Dark Ages, forcing us all to survive without email, free penis enlargement offers and Keyboard Playing Cats.

(A dear friend of mine actually went so far as to buy twenty acres of uninhabitable land somewhere in New Mexico and proceeded to build a self-sufficient compound in which he planned to ride out the Apocalypse on a diet of canned food, bottled water and pornographic videotapes; last I heard he was trying to turn the place into a “spa”, but it seems nobody was interested in traveling to a sand-blasted bunker seven hours from Taos just to have their blackheads squeezed.)

Going a little further back, the Jehovah’s Witnesses - surely the least attractive of all the Door Knocker Cults - promised the “World Without End” would in fact “End” sometime late in 1973.

This, like the time-traveling arrival of a spaceship full of verbalizing chimpanzees prophesized for that same year in the film “Escape From The Planet Of The Apes”, also turned out to be rather unfulfilled wishful thinking.

With the arguable exception of certain Republican politicians, we have yet to see talking apes.

But the creme de la creme of Armaggedeon harbingers surely must be the long-anticipated return of Jesus Christ Himself.

Three days in a cave obviously wasn’t enough time to get all the paperwork together for a global “sayonara”, so the faithful have been waiting lo these past two millenia for Him to return, Norma Desmond-like -

- and according to some religions flatten the place and start over -

- or, according to others, take the True Believers up to Heaven -

- and leave the heathens to stew in their own sinful juices for all eternity.

Frankly, one has to feel sorry for the Fundamentalist Christians; they’re rather like the Ugly Girl on Prom Night, sitting there all dressed in their finest, waiting for their date to show up and take them to the much-anticipated Big Dance In The Sky.

But after two thousand and some odd years of sitting around in an increasingly moldy gown, it’s starting to look as if they’ve been stood up.

One wonders if perhaps Jesus got a better offer someplace else.

But unfortunately for the Doomsday Brigade, this most recent "End Of The World" seems to be having a hard time capturing the public’s imagination.

Goodness knows all the usual fear-mongers have done their best; magazine covers, Internet reports, even an all-too-predictable Roland (”Day After Tomorrow”) Emmerich “film” is currently rumbling toward your local Cineplex with the pandering tag-line: “Who Will Be Left Behind?”

- (which begs the classic Horror Movie reply: “And what will be left of them?”).

But so far, people don’t seem to be up at night fretting about the possibility of having to spend the rest of their years roaming the burnt-out husk of civilization, fending off the sexual advances of renegade bike gangs-

- and dining on leftover neighbors.

Maybe we’ve got too much to worry about in our own lives - with unemployment, mortgage foreclosure and the divorce of that reality show couple with the eight kids all hovering over our heads, who has TIME to think about the planet blowing up?

My theory is simpler than that. This current End Of Times is, as I mentioned, based on a date provided by a Mayan Calendar which simply stops at the end of 2012.

Ergo - so the believers insist - that must mean we will too. But given the fact that the Mayan race evolved into, amongst other things, Mexicans -

- I think it’s safe to say we don’t have much to worry about. Having visited Mexico on several dozen occasions and having experienced first hand that culture’s rather “elastic” sense of time-

- I have learned that even though the word “manana” might literally mean “tomorrow”, in practical application it actually means sometime later next week.

So while the Mexican calendar may have scheduled the fin del mundo for 2012, you can bet nothing even remotely apocalyptic is going to happen until at least 2014...and even then only if you call in advance and remind somebody.

But I wasn’t about to argue all of this with the religiously inclined ladies standing in my doorway; I doubt they would've been interested anyway, given that all they REALLY wanted was to offer me salvation in return for a small donation to help with their Missionary work around the world.

They seemed so sincere that I didn’t have the heart to tell them, in my opinion, the best use of Missionaries was as a main course for Cannibals.

And so I simply smiled graciously and explained to them that as a homosexual with a hangover, I was likely not the best candidate for their sales pitch on this particular morning and, frankly, if the world was going to come to an end, could they please arrange to have it do so quietly?

I let the door close upon their rather startled faces and returned to my bed with a handful of Advil, some Gatorade and only the vaguest sense of guilt about not giving them a dime. But, I figured, if they were True Believers, they surely wouldn't let this small failure prevent them from continuing on with their Mission.

Manana is, after all, another day.

YOU'RE ONLY AS GOOD AS YOUR LAST FUNERAL

2009-07-09T15:20:00.000-07:00

Good grief, can I not leave you people alone for FIVE BLOODY MINUTES without having everything go straight to Hell in a Birkin?

There I was, undergoing some much needed therapy at the Musso and Frank Spa -

- located in the heart of Hollywood, when I received a frantic call from my desert paradise home. It was my houseboy Panton-

-who, bless his well developed abs, was barely able to sputter into the telephone “The King is no more! The King is no more!!” before collapsing into great whacking sobs and abruptly hanging up.

Now granted, Panton’s mastery of the English language is rivaled in its ineptitude only by that of noted classical guitarist Charo-

- but given the fact that he has been instructed never to interrupt me during one of my deep cleansing vodka treatments-

- especially not the ones administered by my qualified “spiritual masseur” Manny The Bartender-

- I knew THIS was an emergency.

And sure enough, after a phone call to an old friend of mine on the Los Angeles Police Department – the rather aptly named Officer Wang -

- a very well-armed young man whom I met several years ago whilst suffering the after-effects of a sudden rear-ending on La Cienega Boulevard in West Hollywood – it was determined that yes, indeed, the unthinkable had happened. It was the end of an era. .

It seemed impossible to believe, but there it was, in black and white.

Christian Lacroix had gone bankrupt.

For the fashion illiterate amongst my readership – not to be judgmental, but with the size of my audience, it is safe to assume that there are a few dear souls out there for whom Old Navy is le ne plus ultra – M. Lacroix was simply a visionary. He instinctively knew what women wanted – which is to say, he knew what women thought men wanted them to look like.

Prostitutes.

And not the expensive kind, either…

As the first fashion designer of the late 20th century to ignore the rigid boundaries of taste, style or elegance, he somehow managed to convince an entire segment of, to be charitable, “evolutionarily-challenged” women that the only thing standing between them and the highest peaks of beauty and glamour was an inflatable spandex puffy dress and four hundred pounds of sequins.

This is the ultimate reason for fashion to exist, of course.

It enables the hideous first wives of Arab Oil Sheiks and International Sports Stars to - upon discovering that their wealthy husbands have been cheating on them with any number of models, actresses or recently Russian-abducted “white slaves” - blackmail same into spending several hundred thousand euros on designer clothing which they will wear once and then discard like so much used facial wax.

It is, finally, the only thing that separates us from the animals.

But even though Lacroix has folded his paisley and mylar tents and vanished from the world fashion stage for now, I suspect we will see him surface again sometime soon, like the Designer of the Living Dead, selling cheap knockoffs of his original designs on the Home Shopping Channel. I predict he will make millions, because to misquote Mr. Barnum, nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public, and if what I’ve seen being worn on the streets lately is any indication, the women in this country don’t just want to “look” like hookers – they want to BE hookers.

This was brought clearly into focus for me the other evening while watching Sam Raimi’s film “DRAG ME TO HELL”, billed as the director’s “return to horror”.

I had unfortunately missed the private screening at the Director’s Guild of America and was forced to attend a public show at the local Cinemark “second run” theater.

I expected problems, of course; paying $2.00 to see a movie certainly doesn’t come without its tortures. But while the film has its scary moments to be sure, nothing onscreen matched the terrors I encountered in the theater audience.

Besides the constant and mindless chatter DURING THE FILM – apparently these Neanderthals were so dulled by the various drugs their parents must have scarfed down during the 80’s, they had no idea that they were actually IN a theater and not at home slumped across their imitation leather couches beneath the neon Budweiser signs and framed posters of Al Pacino as “Scarface” in their living rooms – I have not heard so much noisy chewing, slurping and swallowing since I spent a somewhat scandalous evening at a rather louche sex club in Berlin several years back.

(Strictly research, of course darlings.)

But all of this paled in comparison to the behavior of the two zaftig young women, who had barely squeezed into ill-fitting halter tops, shorts and – by extension – the theater seats directly in front of me.

Beyond their incessant talking, using the sort of dialogue normally reserved for an episode of “The Jerry Springer Show” (who knew that “respect” was such an issue for the lower classes?), and the continuous tossing of the hair extensions they wore which were so long past their "due dates" they had the consistency of raw wheat, I was utterly astonished to watch this pair of escapees from the spires of Notre Dame proceed to use their cellular phones NON-STOP during the film!

As if the bright light from their iPhones wasn’t enough of a distraction (and as a gentleman, one doesn’t want to venture as to exactly how many trips to the local truck stop were required for these two dolts to afford the things in the first place…), the constant “tap tap” of their “Lee Press-Ons” across the keyboard was enough to drive even the sanest among us to pull the loose armrest from our seat and beat the little darlings to death with it.

But as a civilized fellow, I simply leaned forward and politely enquired: “Pardon me, but will you be texting during the entire film?”

The one on the left turned to me as if I’d just shot her dog.

“What did you say? What?”

Startled by this somewhat aggressive reply – one expects an “I’m sorry”, perhaps, or an “I beg your pardon?” – I tried to continue.

“Well, it’s rather distracting and I was hoping to be able to watch the film…”

The one on the right cut me off.

“What if it’s an important call, huh? Maybe it’s an emergency?”

“Well,” I replied, “perhaps you should take your phone out to the lobby. I’m sure your friend at the other end of the line would prefer to speak with you in person about whatever has gone horribly wrong with her manicure.”

They turned back to the movie, and their texting. Miss Right murmured: “It’s not bothering anybody.”

But I wasn’t giving in. These were the kinds of girls whose mothers had obviously told them, between swigs of their Thunderbird wine coolers, "don't you take no shit from The Man!" And I was obviously "The Man" in question.

“Well, actually darling, it’s bothering me. Now please, if it’s not too much trouble—“

Finally, they both turned to me, flashing the kind of look they probably reserved for their parole officer when he insists they leave their guns in the car.

“We paid to be here!”

I pulled four dollars from my pocket and presented it to them.

“Here’s your money back. Perhaps you could spend it on etiquette lessons?”

At which point they both snorted – something they had clearly been raised to do – got up and stormed out of the theater. The patrons around me applauded and we settled down to watch the remainder of the film.

And then the Usher arrived. A squeaky little fellow with more flashlight than nerve, he sidled up to my seat, kneeled down and said:

“Sir, I’ve just had two young women say that you assaulted them, the manager would like to speak with you.”

Fortunately, the half dozen or so people around me who had witnessed the entire thing spoke up, told him what had happened, and said they would gladly speak to the Manager themselves. The Usher left, we all returned to the movie and that was the last we heard of it.

Of course I kept my eyes open on the walk to the car afterwards; those rat-tail combs can put your eye out.

But as I considered the situation later, while Panton poured me a much needed, nerve-calming martini, I realized that perhaps I’d been a bit hard on those poor creatures. They were, after all, probably still reeling from the death of that Pop Singer, the one with the Glittery White Glove and the Comeback Tour That Never Was.

I hardly need mention his name, and at this point I certainly have nothing to add to the endless commentary elsewhere in the world media, other than to suggest that with the recent spate of celebrity deaths – The Blonde Hairdo Icon, The Guffawing Sidekick, The Faux Martial Arts Master, The Soap Salesman – we’ve also seen a “Perfect Storm” of the ultimate PR Event.

While each of these deaths is tragic in and of itself, taken all together they have become a sort of endless Black Carpet walk of B and C list celebrities -

- each of whom have somehow managed, through their grief, to stop in front of a large poster “honoring” the deceased long enough to promote their latest album/movie/business venture.

I suspect, dear reader, we shall be seeing an endless photo-montage of black suits and dresses for the rest of the foreseeable Hollywood “future” – ie: six months - as every magazine on earth runs their very own “In Memoriam” issue, guaranteed to sell out.

Not to say that we here at 801 haven’t been touched by tragedy as well, but we mourn the old fashioned way – in private and with photographic evidence. Recently, I visited the nearby grave of The Chairman of the Board on the anniversary of his passing on to his eternal appearance at that great “Sands” hotel in the sky.

With only the groundskeeper as company, I placed my traditional shotglass full of Jack Daniels and single orange rose (FS’ favorite color) on the grave -

- and, although filled with grief and sorrow at the loss of a great talent, I still managed to smile for the camera.

Like Corey Feldman, I too understand that it is, after all, “SHOW”-business.

But things aren’t all doom and gloom around these parts. In fact, my terribly handsome BF and I were delighted to attend The Sister’s latest wedding here in our desert paradise and I can safely report that from all indications this third marriage of hers looks as though it may in fact stick.

Certainly this newest Husband, My "Brother-in-Lawlessness" as it were, may have bitten off more than he can chew by joining the Circus of Horrors we call “family” - his “bachelor party” consisted of myself and fellow lush Mr. Glaser barhopping the poor fellow all the way across the Coachella Valley to get him fitted with an appropriate linen suit for his nuptials -

- but I can’t fault his taste in film.

Unlike his blushing bride or my beloved Boyfriend -

- neither of whom share our passion for old, obscure crime pictures - "Hatsy" Bramble joined me at the Arthur Lyons Film Noir Festival - of his own free will, no less! -where we submerged ourselves in three solid days of margaritas, Jack Daniels and the kind of rain-soaked, back-stabbing, double-crossing, murderous-dame-starring movies that Hollywood seems to have forgotten how to make.

The hit of the festival for us, other than my getting a chance to chat with organizer and film noir guru Alan K. Rode -

- was definitely INSIDE JOB -

- a remarkable little “lost” film with the kind of plot which clods like yours truly wouldn’t dare ruin by trying to explain. It was the perfect complement to start our summer “off-season” here in the desert, that marvelous time of year when all of the out-of-town “riff raff” have fled for cooler pastures, leaving only the true desert denizens to soak up the 115 degree temps.

One must be careful, of course, to take the heat in measured doses, chased with a carefully constructed Belvedere martini every day at 5 30 pm.

Failure to follow these rules could be fatal and while I may be an Emmy nominee, whose every public appearance is breathlessly written about in the local press -

- I doubt that my demise would attract quite the same attention as the late King of Pop.

I can think of two nasty girls for whom it would be a dream come true, however. They’re likely sitting in a darkened movie theater somewhere, texting each other about it right now.

APORKALYPSE? WOW!

2009-04-29T00:49:00.000-07:00

In our constant quest to stay abreast of all of the cosmopolitan trends and fads in popular culture-

- I am delighted to report that the “Swine Flu” about which all of the news programs have been breathlessly howling for the past several weeks has claimed its first victim here at 801.

Fortunately, the symptoms don’t seem to be fatal; in fact, if one ignores the dark, comb-shaped bruise on the side of his head, my houseboy Panton appears absolutely healthy in every other regard and hardly required the two days paid leave IN BED he insisted he needed to recover from what he calls (with his limited grammatic skills) "piggy cough cough".

Granted, I might have overreacted by hitting him with that garden rake, but dear reader what would YOU do if you saw a swarthy, half-naked savage come charging toward you with a bandana wrapped around his head?

Is it my fault that he decided to protect himself from the possible inhalation of diseased porcine particles in the atmosphere at exactly the same moment that I was watching Anderson Cooper interview one of those similarly masked Somali Pirates?

It was dark, after all, and that silver tray bearing my evening martini did look rather menacing in the dim light; it could have been a rapid fire automatic weapon for goodness’ sake, and given the current trend toward murder/suicides amongst our nation’s unfortunates one simply cannot be too careful. After all, while the protective wall of ficus trees around our Desert Paradise shields us from the various degradations of modern society, this current “Aporkalypse” may well be the end of the world as we know it.

Now I, for one, don’t particularly fear “la grande finale” as it were; I have lived in Paris -

- I have jumped out of an airplane and I’ve cavorted in the ocean with dolphins, sharks and naked rugby players -

-everything from here on in is simply frosting on the already too-rich cake of my life.

In fact, many is the morning where I awake from my dewy slumber, gaze at the ceiling and cry to - in Cole Porter's words - "the gods above me": “Not another ONE? For the love of all that's decent, what MORE do you want from me?! I've received TWO GLAAD nominations this year alone, have I not given you people ENOUGH?”

(Granted, it could be argued that if one couldn't receive an award nomination from the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation for one's gay movie featuring a gay private eye and his gay boyfriend solving a gay crime against gay people, perhaps one had better choose another line of work...)

However, should I suddenly be given my ticket for that last boat ride across the River Styx, I’m afraid the other passengers are going to have to wait around awhile before I’m ready to board. If, as they say, one’s whole life passes before one’s eyes in the moments before expiration, I expect that recounting just the events of the past couple of months are going to take enough time to have even The Grim Reaper himself ducking out back for a cigarette.

Take, for example, My Big Opening.

Some months ago - as the faithful among you will recall - I finished work on my latest epic, a suspense thriller entitled “DEATH AMONG FRIENDS” which eventually became known as “SOMETHING EVIL COMES”.

To my delight, it turned out rather well and, as such, the studio decided to have a proper, old-fashioned “Hollywood Premiere” complete with Red Carpet, Photographers-
and - best of all - free popcorn!

Now to the untrained eye, these kinds of events seem almost magical - how did ALL of these people end up at the theater, and why are they all so impossibly glamorous, and how can I, a mere “mortal” ever hope to achieve the heights of fame and fortune that these people so casually ascend?

The truth is, like much of show business, nothing but smoke and mirrors. For weeks before the “Premiere”, invitations were sent out, emails were traded, favors were called in and threats were made, all in order to fill the 800-odd seats of the beautiful old “Showcase Theater” on La Brea Avenue with enough bodies to make it seem like an actual “event”, instead of just a nice night out at the movies.

In keeping with the “Day of the Locusts” motif prevalent in the Hollywood of today, we had our fair share of “celebrities” -

- “reality” personalities -

- and any number of actors just happy to be indoors for a change -

- but all were outshone by a special surprise guest who arrived at the last moment and completely took the paparazzi by storm.

Some context might be in order here. Many years ago, while I floundered in that No Man’s Land between high school and “what-the-hell-am-I-going-to-do-with-my-life-now?”, a group of friends and myself were utterly addicted to a soap opera called “General Hospital”.

One of the major characters on the show was an International "Superspy" named ROBERT SCORPIO, played by an Australian actor named TRISTAN ROGERS.

His slightly tongue-in-cheek portrayal of a - to use his own words - “KMart James Bond” helped propel the show to the top of the daytime ratings and made it an iconic part of early 1980’s tv.

It also had a huge impact on a young wanna-be filmmaker who, at that time, was trying to figure out just how he could make his way to Hollywood and carve out a career in show business.

Flash forward to a couple of months ago.

The Boyfriend had, through his generous patronage of a local charity, arranged for us to attend a black tie fundraising dinner held here in our Desert Paradise. (He's the benevolent one in the family - I only contribute to whatever The New York Times lists as its "cause of the week" in the perhaps misguided belief that I'll end up with my picture in the newspaper.)

Between the presentation of yet more awards to our neighbor Barry Manilow -

(who actually deserves them - he recently bought an entire truckload of musical instruments for a cash-strapped local school)

- and a rather bleakly scripted series of “comic” dialogues between TV icons Morgan Fairchild, Linda Gray and Donna Mills

(one had the rather disorienting sensation of having wandered onto the final cruise of The Love Boat), there was entertainment by Miss Dianne Carroll -

(whose rather unfortunate makeup job didn’t distract from her marvelous singing voice - much...).

But none of this could keep me from utterly embarrassing myself by plopping down next to my table mate - the aforementioned Tristan Rogers - and spending the better part of the catered dinner gushing about the influence he had on my life.

As shameless as that was, and fueled by the seemingly endless bottle of wine in front of me, I then compounded the social infraction by inviting himself, his lovely wife and our mutual friends to the premiere of my new film in Los Angeles, never once expecting them to actually show up.

So imagine my shock - nay, my complete thrill! - at the sudden appearance of Superspy Scorpio behind me on the Red Carpet!

The press photographers went wild, flashbulbs blazing at this genuine “STAR” in our midst; with remarkable ease and grace he smiled for them all, genuinely surprised by the attention. When I finally went up to the front of the theater to make some opening remarks, and thank the audience for attending, he gave me a grin and a wave as I passed by.

It’s been almost 25 years since I sat glued to the set on weekday afternoons, following the absurdly overwritten adventures of the characters on that silly soap opera, and imagining what my life might be.

It has, of course, worked out rather well, the occasional run-in with the help notwithstanding. But sometimes one needs a sign-post, a marker as it were, to remind one just how far along the trail the journey has led.

Certainly the material things help - on those days when the writing isn’t working or the phone isn’t ringing or some dull bastard rears his greasy head from his parents' basement long enough to refer to you as a talentless hack, the only real defense is a chilly martini from a Tiffany glass -

- or a nuzzle from the cold and wet nose of the most recent addition to our household, named CRAWFORD in honor of his arrival on Miss Joan Crawford's birthday -

- but failing those touchstones, I think getting a thumbs up from a Super Spy will do just fine.

VALLEY OF THE DOGS

2009-03-17T08:21:00.000-07:00

So I came back from the gym this morning and was puzzled to find my side yard gate barricaded along the bottom by rocks and cement blocks.

This is the kind of thing I normally do when my houseboy Panton is having one of his "episodes", where he decides that the princely wage I pay him isn't enough and he threatens to "giddaway from Boss" back to whatever dusty third world rug market he came from in the first place.

(I think $5.00 a day is quite adequate myself, especially considering his housekeeping chores entirely consist of wearing nothing but a pair of gold lame shorts and bending over to dust under the sofa twice a day...but I digress.)

However, given that Panton is currently out of town, attending some sort of religious retreat in the high desert where he and his brethren are worshipping a "taxidermied" moosehead mounted atop a larger than life plaster statue of Mamie Van Doren they found in a local "vintage" junk shop-

I was understandably confused by the make-shift security measures put in place by persons unknown.

The mystery was solved, however, when I discovered a four footed interloper in the back yard, lurking amongst the tikis. It was, in fact, a dog.

Now, I don't have a dog. Haven't had one since my ex-boyfriend of some years ago left unannounced, taking a good chunk of my self-esteem and our weimaraner, Jack Daniels by name. So i was fairly certain that this tail wagging stranger didn't belong here.

But on closer examination, I noticed he was moving very slowly, as if in tremendous pain, and he looked rather dazed, doubtlessly from drinking out of the salt water pool all night. I know how that feels, having done it myself during one rather inebriated afternoon where I was convinced that the martini glass mosaic at the bottom was, in fact, the real thing, and I could relate to the slightly dopey look in this mutt's eyes.

However when he resolutely refused to eat the garnish i offered him from my morning cocktail - it was, sadly, the only solid food in the house - I realized he was in need of serious medical attention. I mean, what ELSE could possibly cause someone to refuse Jensen's finest blue cheese stuffed olives?

And so, one quick trip to the Animal Doctor and a hundred dollars later, I now have an adorable dog roaming around the property, his discomfort somewhat assuaged by the painkillers he's been taking every six hours, wrapped up in some expensive brie and bacon appetizers (well, when one's Houseboy is indisposed, one must make do with WHATEVER is in the fridge you know!).

In Palm Springs, even the dogs are on "dolls".

I assume that somebody must have hit the poor beast with their car and then, figuring it was my dog and fearing the wrath of a man who has a martini glass flag waving over the front gate, they just heaved him over the fence and locked him in. I shan't bore you, dear reader, by sharing with you my distaste for the sort of people who would do this kind of thing, but suffice it to say I am posting a photograph here in the hope that the lovely little fellow's owner will recognize him and get in touch with me here.

Failing that, we shall have to find a name for him.

If I keep shouting "hey, you mongrel!" when Panton returns from Bible Camp, things could get very confusing around here.

THE PRICE OF LOVE

2009-03-16T18:24:00.001-07:00

Long before it was fashionable - let alone a socio-political weapon of mass destruction - I had my very first Gay Marriage.

Of course being that we lived in California, which in 2000 still didn't allow gay couples to do that which Elizabeth Taylor has done countless times -
Britney Spears did overnight in Vegas-- and the lower classes do for money on reality television programs, our event was considered a "Civil Union". But regardless of the nomenclature, we were getting married and, as such, we had to throw ourselves a real, live, honest-to-whoever-you-pray-at WEDDING.

It was held at the glamorous Yamashiro restaurant in Los Angeles, an authentically recreated Japanese mansion perched high above Hollywood Boulevard and in keeping with my belief that if you're going to do something, you might as well do it first class, we pulled out all the proverbial stops.

The best food, open bar, bottles of Veuve Clicquot champagne by the truckload; and in keeping with this theme, we had our wedding rings done by Tiffany's. During the fitting at the renowned jeweller's Beverly Hills store, one of those bleached blonde OC housewife types who have lowered the bar at every high end shop in town smiled patronizingly and said "that's so cute. Too bad it's not a real wedding."

At which point the Tiffany clerk gave her a hard stare and said "of course it is. It's recognized by a higher authority than the government. It's recognized by Tiffany's."

For this reason, I have been a devoted Tiffany customer ever since.

With rings in hand, and guests in tow, we stood before my old friend The Duchess of Milton who had procured an online ordination as a minister for the event - which really just supports my belief that religion is nothing more than a game for hucksters and suckers, not necessarily in that order - and spoke our vows...you know, the usual, "love, honor and cherish" and "til death do us part"...

Most of the attendees swear to this day it was the most beautiful wedding they'd ever seen. I would have to agree.

The MARRIAGE however was a disaster.

I won't bore you with all the gory details, but suffice it to say that two years later, upon returning from an extended work trip to Africa, I discovered my husband had packed up his things and left. Took the dog.

But left his ring behind.

For five long, increasingly ridiculous years, that ring - and my matching one - sat in my dresser drawer, moving from a place of dark honor ("there they are - the symbols of my broken heart...") to simply being an annoyance ("Panton! What kind of a houseboy are you?! Where are my silver cufflinks? I can't find anything in here except these stupid wedding rings!") to the point where I finally decided something HAD to be done.

While shooting a movie several years back, one of the stars advised that I should melt the rings down and turn them into a key for my house. The other star suggested, considering how things had ended, a BULLET might make more sense; given that he was once married to a large and rather loudly unpleasant television star himself, he knew of what he spoke.

But I'd kept the rings for all these years, tucked away neatly in their little blue velvet bag, taunting me like one of those cuts you get on the roof of your mouth. "You failed," they kept saying to me. "You were a loser as a husband and you'll never find love again!"

This of course turned out to be false, as several years ago I eventually met the current Boyfriend, a prominent Palm Springs businessman, and while I refused to let the car wreck of the first marriage make me gun shy about getting into another relationship, having those rings around didn't help. They lurked there in the dark, rattling behind my gold Brooks Brothers collar tabs like Jacob Marley's ghost, their voices reminding me that every love has a price, a piece of your heart taken and never returned...a piece as big as two men's wedding bands.

Now if you, dear reader, found that last line to be as nauseating to read as I did to write, you'll understand exactly why I spent Valentine's Day this year sitting in a conference room at a local hotel, waiting my turn among the retirees and widows to find out just how much cold hard cash those damned rings would get me.

The time had finally come to let go.

I'd heard about the "Gold Buy" being run by a group of out-of-state jewelers on the local radio station for several weekends running, but decided to wait until the perfect symbolism of February 14th arrived to make my move. And so, with the Boyfriend beside me - and with visions of the vacation in sunny Mexico that these rings would surely buy us dancing in our heads - we sat down in front of a charmingly overbuilt fellow who weighed both wedding bands, checked his scales and values, viewed the Tiffany markings with a magnifying loop and then finally leaned back and smiled at us.

The rings had originally cost me three thousand dollars. In cash. They had also cost me considerably more in self-worth and hard won life experience, and as such they had come to occupy a huge place in my own personal mythology. I wanted them to be worth every moment I'd felt I'd lost, every single heart ache I'd endured and every last tear I'd shed.

They turned out to be worth two hundred bucks. Flat.

So much for Mexico. That wouldn't buy us a weekend in Banning.

But it did buy the BF and I a couple of great books to read on a rainy day at home, and a bottle of wine and a pizza to enjoy while we do. And frankly, I'd rather have that - and him - than those rings any day.

Even Valentine's Day.

URINE AMERICA NOW!

2009-03-16T18:20:00.000-07:00

It appears that last month's somewhat dramatic display of nature's force here in our desert paradise yielded more than just some soggy tourists and a few rather grim looking palm fronds cluttering up the front walk.

When my faithful houseboy Panton did his morning rounds of the house, checking for overturned Tikis, swamped outdoor stereo speakers, or any of those same seven indigents who seem to show up in the regional news from time to time bobbing in the pool, he discovered a delightful little bit of propaganda he felt sure I'd enjoy. Bless Panton - not a word of English bouncing around inside that copper colored head of his and yet he still manages to know exactly what I like.

This particular item, soaked almost beyond recognition, appears to be from the nearby public school. It is a form letter, of the kind one sends home with misbehaving children so their parents can feel even worse about that drunken night in Barstow that begat the little cherubs than they already do.

I myself never received one of these foul notes, having been a perfect student and the light of my mother's eye (she valued me quite highly, naturally - as the illegitimate son of Grace Kelly and George Hamilton -
- I was subsequently lost in a plane crash over the southern Asiatic region, rescued by a kindly group of Tibetan monks and then, eventually, brought back to America by some missionaries where I was adopted by a kindly white trash couple and raised as their own), but I digress...

Entitled "POOR CITIZENSHIP LETTER", it begins "Dear _______", the blank left obviously to be filled in according to each child's situation: "Dear Belabored Grandmother Who Expected Peace In Her Old Age But Instead Ended Up Tending To Her Lazy, Drunk, Good For Nothing Daughter's Brat" comes to mind, but certainly wouldn't fit in the space provided.

In this instance, the salutation is filled with "Mom and Dad" which sounds promising, but it's when we continue through the "form" portion of the missive, a litany of pre-written, shame-inducing sentences including things like "I did not Qualify for Good Citizenship because I did not follow the School Rules" and "the other students who did not break the rules got to do something fun today" that things take a decidedly darker turn.

Further along, in the student's own writing, we find a list he himself has made of his "crimes", the horrendous anti-American activities which have earmarked him as a Communist or, worse yet, a Terrorist-in-Training. These include "I did not raise my hand to speak", "I get out of my seat", "I talk to my friends" and, most damning of all, "I go to the bathroom too much."

I'll admit I'm not necessarily an expert in the field of national defense, but where exactlydoes "incontinence" rank on The Department of Homeland Security's list of "threatening activities"?

Finally, the letter concludes, ominously: "Please have a conversation with me about what I can do to earn Good Citizenship".

"A conversation"?

I suspect that particular "conversation" may have taken place on the business end of a belt, which explains why little "Hassan" - the lad whose paper this was - tossed the damning letter away and let the storm take its course.

Bravo, Hassan. Don't be fooled by these adults and their ridiculous rules!

Freedom of speech is your right, as is the Right to assemble freely. So speak when you have something to say! Visit with your friends!

And for the love of all that is good and just in this world, you urinate whenever you want!

For that, Hassan, is the American Way.

SCHINDLER'S CHRISTMAS LIST

2009-01-12T17:44:00.000-08:00

Finally.

At the risk of looking a "Gift Reindeer" in the mouth, I don't think I've ever been so glad to see the chimney flue hit Santa on the ass on his way out as I was this past Christmas.

Granted, the holiday season has always been a challenge here at “Six Palms”, my little piece of desert paradise so named because of the six majestic palm trees swaying in the back yard –

- although a recent landscaping excavation has uncovered several more palm trees hidden behind a brick wall in the southeast corner but somehow “Nine and A Half Palms” just doesn’t quite have the same ring to it, sounding as it does like a Mickey Rourke movie from the early 1980’s.

(Speaking of Mickey Rourke, his turn in the film "The Wrestler" is certainly remarkable, indeed worth all the praise it's getting, and I certainly can appreciate a "comeback" as much as the next fellow, but could he not have made the return trip without those ghastly lips?

Good heavens, the man makes Cher look like a natural beauty!)

Now don't get me wrong, I simply adore Christmas – goodness knows nobody likes artificial joy -

- simmering family tensions and the absolute bastardization of religious dogma more than yours truly –

- but in previous incarnations of the festive event I have usually been out of town on some remote location shoot, flying in at the last minute to frantically throw together just enough Yuletide merriment to get us through to New Year’s Eve without a homicide. While this sounds like a challenge to even the most devout Elsa Maxwell fan -

- the truth is I’ve always enjoyed the anaesthetic qualities of chaos, and there is something to be said for the calming effect of running around like a “poulet sans la tete”, as it were.

This year, however, was quite different. Having finished post-production duties on both “Black Rain” and “Death Among Friends” – my latest cinematic gifts to the masses - a week earlier than anticipated, I found myself free to obsess over the minutiae of this year’s Christmas debacle with a single-mindedness which would’ve put Captain Ahab to shame.

Walls were scrubbed until the paint peeled, windows were wiped so spotlessly that entire flocks of migrating birds committed accidental suicide against the glass, and carpets were shampooed to the point that even the five-year-old child strapped to the loom back in Rugazikstan smelled “minty” fresh.

All of this was exhausting, as you can imagine, dear reader. Needless to say I myself didn’t actually DO any of the work - that's why one has household staff of course -

- but simply watching my houseboy Panton scurry from chore to chore in his chatteringly haphazard fashion, all the while keeping one worried eye on his rapidly dwindling stock portfolio

- (for someone who professes not to understand a word of English, Panton has a remarkable grasp of the ups and downs of Wall Street) was quite enough to leave me utterly limp.

To top all this off, my Mother arrived from Canada, that deep freeze which masquerades as a country, hat boxes and steamer trunks in tow, all ready for a month in our sunny climes.

She's actually not much trouble, all things being equal, although trying to keep up with her as she reconnects with her various friends -- including Hollywood icon Robert "RJ" Wagner and the like - is quite distracting to say the least.

(As many of you have guessed over the years, I am the product of a brief 1959 liason she had with the late Prince of Monaco - here seen with that tramp Grace Kelly - HOMEWRECKER!!

My mother, being a lady, simply refuses to admit to this little indiscretion - in fact she denies it flatly, insisting the "rockabilly" singer who showed up at our house from time to time during the 60's and 70's was in fact not just her "husband" but also my father. But deep down, I'm sure she knows the truth.)

In spite of all this, I was somehow able to summon the strength for our annual “Christmas Pilgrimage”, during which I graciously fill a twelve passenger van with underprivileged out-of-towners and take them into the world renowned “The Grove”-

- a mildly vulgar shopping megalopolis nestled in the heart of Los Angeles, for a day of celebrating the true meaning of Christmas – Retail Worship.

This year we were joined at lunch by several special guests -

- including my recently affianced sister Jane and honorary Oliver Sister The Duchess of Milton -

- not to mention writer/director Don Mancini, whose first film “Child’s Play” gave the world “Chucky”, arguably the best gift a kid could ever get.

There were some rather unwelcome attendees as well, namely a herd of those dreadful “paparrazi” -

- the amateur photographers/parasites who have started to clutter almost all of Hollywood’s public spaces, including The Grove, like crab lice on a randy college boy, desperately trying to get photographic evidence that "Movie Stars" are just like You and Me.

This is not even remotely true, of course. "They" are not like us, which is why they are Movie Stars. But it doesn't stop these F-Stop Vultures from circling every restaurant or bar in town like moths drawn to the light of people who have, in most cases, actually done something worthwhile with their lives.

Pickings must have been slim on this particular day however, as they seemed to be chasing a skinny bobble head named Peter Wentz -

- apparently the lead singer of yet another utterly forgettable pop band - as if he were an actual STAR, like soon-to-be President Obama, say, or Uma Thurman.

Honestly, stalking D-list celebrities when they are regurgitating their Red Bull and Vodka outside some show business dive is one thing, but chasing them through a crowded shopping mall and blowing any possibility of surprise in their Christmas gift-giving is in my opinion simply beyond the pale. There was one amusing moment however, which practically made up for the sheer nonsense of it all.

As is my custom, I had been buying gifts for friends and family all year long, secreting them in my office closet beneath the vast piles of unread screenplays and unopened fan mail. I'd been keeping track of just exactly how much money I’d spent on these various baubles and trinkets, each one thoughtfully selected to match the exact dollar value I placed on the relationship I had with the intended recipient and was, as far as I was concerned, quite finished with my gifting responsibilities for this holiday season, thank you very much.

So while my luncheon companions departed to make their way through the packed streets of this artificial “downtown” to find some way to express their love for me -

- it is, as you can imagine dear reader, incredibly difficult to choose just the right gift for Yours Truly -

- I was able to linger at the outdoor café and enjoy another champagne cocktail (made with domestic bubbly, I might add – in these recessionary times, methinks it would be a trifle gauche to soak a sugar cube in a glass of Veuve Clicquot…) while watching the magic of Christmas shopping unfold around me...

But it was, perhaps, this second drink – or maybe Frank Sinatra’s version of “I’ll Be Home For Christmas” washing over me – that caused me to be struck out of the blue with the most hideously gut wrenching feeling of - dare I say it ?- INADEQUACY!

Yes, dear reader, as a third cocktail arrived and I gazed at the shoppers laden with bags and boxes, most of which were bought on maxed out credit cards or upside down lines of home equity, I suddenly felt like the lead character in Steven Spielberg’s motion picture “Schindler’s List”.

“Could I have done more?”

Now this is not to suggest that the Holocaust could have been stopped by an artificial pine tree draped in a few hundred feet of tinsel; certainly not even Oskar Schindler himself could’ve saved that little red caped girl with a handful of candy canes and a Betsy Wetsy Doll.

(Although she might have been happy with my favorite doll of all time, found amongst other Chinese import toys with equally mistranslated names in a Sunday market at Takapuna Beach, New Zealand -- the Benign Girl Doll.

One can only imagine Benign Girl comes with such accessories as The Deluxe Chemotherapy Fun Salon and The Survivor Support Group Play House...)

But at that moment, awash in the spirit of giving, I heard a little voice inside of my head, speaking to me – it could have been my conscience, I suppose, if my conscience had an Irish brogue and sounded like Liam Neeson:

“With one more gift, could I have made my Christmas guests happier? With one more book, one more dvd, one more designer tie which lights up with LED bulbs in the shape of the wearer’s Chinese astrological animal, could I have made a difference in someone’s life?”

Fortunately, before I went too much further with that inane line of questioning, I was jolted from my reverie by one of the paparrazi stumbling against the patio railing and knocking the champagne from my hand. He glared at me, as if it was MY fault that he had been so blinded by his pursuit of this year’s Jayne Mansfield that he had been unaware of my Prada clad foot jutting out just ever-so-slightly into his path.

“Thanks a lot, asshole,” he muttered, picking himself up.

“I beg your pardon,” I said crisply. “I believe you owe me a champagne cocktail, you oaf!”

I shall spare you his vulgar reply, dear reader, but suffice it to say that I will not be appearing in the pages of “Hello” magazine anytime soon. I suppose I should have thanked him, though; he did bring me back from the edge of an emotional meltdown, hardly the sort of thing one can afford when hosting a Major Yuletide Event.

And major it was.

With a guest list including celebrated actors and acclaimed politicians-

- award winning journalists and prominent local businessmen -

- motion picture moguls-

- and at least one Supreme Court Judge all enjoying a dinner catered by Barry Manilow’s personal chef AND entertainment courtesy of our very own Diva Denise Carter -

- this particular Christmas party has gone down as the most enjoyable one we’ve had at Six Palms yet.

But still, even after the last present was opened, the last bottle popped and the last bird unstuffed, I have to admit that little voice came back into my head, the one that sounded like Liam Neeson; only this time it wasn’t the Liam Neeson from the Spielberg movie but rather the Liam Neeson from “Batman Begins”:

“Bruce, please! For your own sake! There is no turning back!”

I don’t know why he was calling me Bruce, but I figured he knew what he was talking about. There is no turning back. There is only the New Year…2009.

Bring it on...

THE FIRST NOEL

2008-12-03T11:48:00.000-08:00

There are many ways to herald the coming of Christmas.

For some, it is the arrival of the first pristine snowflake, perfectly formed and falling ever so gently through the crisp, dark Robert Frost night.

For others, it’s the first double homicide of the season, such as recently occurred in a nearby “Toys R Us” when two proud members of the lower classes decided to settle an argument between their respective girlfriends by opening fire on each other.

(Much has been made in the press about the fact that both of the now-dead shooters were Mexicans with criminal records a mile long, but I think this misses the point. Goodness knows I've had my hedge trimmed by countless hot blooded Latin boys over the years but I've come to learn it's not so much their "machismo" which gets them into trouble as it is their inability to properly accessorize an outfit; everybody knows you don't carry a loaded HANDGUN into a toy store after Labor Day.)

But for some of us, there is only one true sign of the arrival of the holiday season. That, of course, is when we see our first Stripper perform a routine to a dance remix of “Little Drummer Boy”. As he hoists himself up onto the festive red and green painted pole, sporting – and soon losing – his tinsel and garland g-string, a warm, tingling feeling rushes over us as we realize that yet, once again, Christmas time is here.

This year’s sighting, I am delighted to report, happened just before Thanksgiving, while I was in Montreal, Quebec to introduce two of my films – “ICE BLUES” -

- and “ON THE OTHER HAND DEATH” -

On_the_other_hand_death
by coolvibesinfo

- in a double bill at the “image+nation” Film Festival held annually in Montreal, Quebec. I had not been back to Montreal since the now legendary shooting of “A Dennis the Menace Christmas”-

- some two years ago and while that particular adventure was, to put it mildly, a rather challenging experience, I have always had very fond memories of the place itself and, more so, the people in it and yearned to return under less frustrating circumstances.

And so after spending the past two weeks putting the finishing touches on my latest epics “Black Rain” and “Death Among Friends” – both of which look far better than two movies made in ten days apiece have a right to – I was delighted to be asked to travel back to this most “European” of North American cities.

I can safely report that nothing much has changed: the people are still incredibly attractive and effortlessly stylish (how they manage to toss a scarf over a jacket and manage to look like they’ve just fallen off the Milan runway is beyond even MY fashion literacy!); the taxi drivers will still talk one’s ear off about politics and the economy and how everything is turning to “merde”; and, most cultural relevant for those of us who enjoy a particular form of “cabaret”, there is always a fresh crop of French farm boys willing to take their clothes off for ten bucks a song.

In fact, from the moment I boarded the airplane in Vancouver, the entire experience was a positive one. Well, except for an odd moment in transit as one of the Flight Attendants apparently recognized me from one of my countless television appearances shilling for my art -

-

- one MUST promote one’s films or one doesn’t get to make many more of them - and gathering his cabin mates around my seat, then proceeded to gush about what a pleasure it was to have a “celebrity” like myself on board their plane.

Modesty prevailed, naturally, and I simply smiled graciously, telling them all what it pleasure it was for ME to be onboard such a well-run aircraft, staffed as it was with such a gracious and perceptive crew with such obvious good taste. Deep down, it must be admitted, I was more than a little flattered; not many of us “behind the scenes” types get recognized in public. The balloon was burst a few moments later, however, when I overheard one of the other passengers ask her seatmate “who is he?” and the fellow replied “I think he’s the guy from the Transporter movies.”

(This is a common misconception: for clarity's sake THIS is Jason Statham

and THIS is me.

But one can understand the confusion, of course.)

Fortunately the pilot chose that moment to start the plane’s descent, so I wasn’t then called upon to do the splits across the seat backs by way of demonstration, and the rest of the flight transpired without incident.

Upon landing, I was whisked across the Montreal night to a charming Bed and Breakfast, housed in a restored Victorian mansion nestled on a side street near the somewhat redundantly labeled “Gay Village”.

In a city with such a distinctly fluid approach to sexuality, rainbow flags, leather jockstraps and the like are perhaps a trifle unnecessary but they do seem to draw the tourists. Upon checking into my quaintly charming suite, however, I soon discovered that this particular establishment had been drawing the tourists with some special features of its own.

The Manager/Owners, a very pleasant couple of the “Bear” variety –

- a term of endearment in the homosexual community for, it must be admitted, gentlemen of a certain hirsute “avoirdupois” - had done everything possible to make my stay comfortable; fresh towels, fresh flowers, wonderful music, a delicious and fresh baked continental breakfast – all the things which make one feel they are truly “home away from home”.

Hospitality does have its limits, however, even with guests as open minded as I try to be, so when the more aggressively “friendly” of the two offered to not only massage me in the hot tub but subsequently help tuck me into bed after his boyfriend had left for the evening, I politely declined this “value added option” and briskly made my way back to my room where a beautiful antique chair served as a very effective wedge beneath the doorknob.

With subzero temperatures the norm at this time of year in Montreal, not to mention the kind of howling wind one normally associates with dog sleds and whale oil lamps, one finds one’s socializing kept rather to a minimum, if only to prevent getting severe frostbite on the walk from the front door to the cab, and this particular trip was no exception.

I did manage an evening of drinks and dinner at the glamorous Vogue Hotel with gifted actor/director – and old friend - Richard Dumont -

- also known in some circles as “The Black Prince” for reasons too arcane to relate. The bartender, obviously aware of my extreme sensitivity to the cold weather (probably because I kept shivering despite wearing two cashmere sweaters and a pair of insulated gloves in the lounge), poured the martinis generously; perhaps a trifle too much so. After a paltry three of these diabolical concoctions, Mr. Dumont and I found ourselves dialing unsuspecting friends on our cell phones to recite dialogue from a long ago mutually collaborated television series-

- eventually going so far as to sing the theme song of said show for our neighboring diners. While I don’t recall their actual reactions, I am SURE they must have been delighted.

The following night’s festival screening went extremely well as a small but enthusiastic – and quite vocal - crowd seemed delighted by both pictures. The “OutTV” sponsored martini party held entre’acte was certainly a hit -

- although to be honest I somewhat blasphemously filled my glass with water instead of vodka, still feeling the effects of the aforementioned evening’s debauchery, and added a couple of skewered martinis to complete the illusion. Nobody seems to have been the wiser, but it was all in vain anyway as my delightful festival hosts, Charlie and Katherine, insisted on treating me to a late night dinner in a sleek little boite called Le Continental where much wine was drunk and much laughter and animated discussions about President-Elect Barrack Obama ensued.

(We have studiously avoided mentioning the recent political campaign in these missives – wiser heads than ours prevail in that sort of conversation – but we must admit not just a sense of “relief” coming from the results but an actual, palpable feeling of “hope”. While we adore Mr. Obama and we certainly expect “magic” we will be quite satisfied with “wonder” - as in, “We wonder what the HELL the country was thinking when it elected that dullard George W. Bush TWICE!?!”.)

The following morning I slept rather late, unfortunately missing a much anticipated breakfast of dim sum which I had been looking forward to since arriving in the city, but made it to the airport in plenty of time to catch my flight back to Vancouver for a quick overnight stay before heading home to our desert paradise in the morning.

And while it must be said that the Bed and Breakfast experience had its charms – although I myself didn’t partake of all of them - if I have learned anything from this most recent trip to Montreal it is that I am very definitely a traveler of the “hotel” persuasion.

Amateur hydrotherapeutic massage and salacious bedtime entertainment certainly have their place, of course, but there is very little in life which can equal the 1000 thread count Egyptian cotton sheets, plush bathrobes and twenty four hour room service of a Fairmont Hotel.

Especially when, as I arrived and was whisked by an attentive and charming young man to my sumptuous suite on the Executive Floor -

- I discovered – as if they had read my mind - a perfectly chilled Belvedere Martini, up with a twist, awaiting my arrival.

Proffering the drink on a silver tray, he smiled and said: “A little something from us here at the Fairmont to celebrate the start of the Holiday Season, Mr. Oliver.”

I accepted the lovely gift with my usual grace and charm, not wanting to ruin the moment by telling him that, as far as I was concerned, the holidays had already arrived.

And they had been wearing a Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer thong.

LEGGO MY EQUITY!

2008-11-24T11:07:00.000-08:00

Good heavens, it’s getting so one barely wants to turn on the morning television for fear of having one's breakfast appetite ruined beyond repair!

Case in point, this whole “worldwide economic collapse” thing everyone’s been yammering on and on about for the past several weeks.

We are certainly shocked of course; what a SURPRISE to discover that John and Mary Q. Public couldn’t quite make the monthly payments on their seventy five thousand square foot MegaMansion AND keep up the maintenance charges on the yacht they bought on their maxed out credit cards, even with their high paying jobs as Official Greeters at the Podunk, Iowa Walmart.

And my word, hasn't it been a REVELATION to discover that the kind of people who would engage in deception about their employment status or financial means in order to convince some equally shady mortgage broker to fork over the cash to buy an overpriced stucco hovel on the corner of Crack Avenue and Whore Boulevard-

- would subsequently bail on said deal and simply abandon the place, often leaving their dogs and cats behind like unruly teenagers dumped at a Nebraska hospital-

- while they returned to whatever corner of the world from whence they came…

But must we hear about it in such breathless detail on EVERY single bloody television network, spewed out by millionaire talking heads for whom economic hardship means cutting back on their prostitutes, on an almost hourly basis?

It’s enough to put one off one’s morning croissant.

Even our houseboy Panton-

- hardly Mensa material to say the least, understands the flawed mathematics which have put the American – and consequently the World – economy into the kind of freefall not seen since Steinbeck’s Joads were reduced to eating wallpaper to stay alive. Whilst the dear amber skinned boy was mixing our morning Bloody Mary, he said:

“You smart man, boss. You say no to refinance mans, you say no to egg-edy mans, you just buy nice things Tiffany.”

(It took several minutes to determine that "egg-edy" meant “equity”; one pardons Panton’s fractured English – while we still have not yet determined his country of origin, we suspect it has neither a particularly strong system of education nor indoor toilet facilities. But he has so many other marvelous attributes, we tend to overlook his grammatic challenges.)

He is right of course, we have studiously avoided all of those “get rich quick” schemes-

- especially the ones which promised to treat one’s home as some sort of automatic teller machine, spewing money at random intervals with no thought whatsoever as to when said “piper” would have to be paid.

It all seemed so terribly “gauche”, prostituting our little desert “casa” to buy such – according to the advertisements - desperately needed items as flat screen television sets, the latest video games and hi-tech exercise devices to work off the fat accumulated while sitting on one’s quickly enlarging posterior watching the aforementioned televisions and video games.

And so, while stocks and bonds are currently plummeting in value, and retirement years, once envisioned as an endless parade of golf course days and island vacation nights, are currently looking more and more to be spent wearing a polyester uniform on the midnight shift at the 7-11, we at 801 seem to have miraculously avoided this particular disaster.

We are not alone in this, naturally; it appears that the “old money” of our desert paradise have also protected themselves.

At least that was the indication at a recent charity luncheon we attended with The Mother Of The Boyfriend -

- (as delightful a lady as her handsome son is a gentleman…) at our favorite local “watering hole” MELVYN’S at the Ingleside Inn.

Nestled in a beautiful, tree lined property, shaded by the majestic San Jacinto mountain, this legendary boutique hotel is owned by a remarkable businessman named Mel Haber –

- whose story is told in a marvelously gossipy little book called “Bedtime Stories” (available online at inglesideinn.com with proceeds to Dimes for The Unwell or something like that…) – and is staffed by a collection of characters that would have made the late, lamented Studs Terkel sit up and take notice.

Among them, our favorite Maitre’d on the planet, Brian -

-who, on this particular afternoon, was quite startled to discover us awake and dressed to the nines for this particular event and promptly seated us at – to quote him – “the power table in the room”.

This provided us with an excellent vantage point for the marvelous “Fourth of July in October” –themed Fashion Show which ensued, parading a collection of vintage (ie: salvaged from the closets of the dearly departed throughout the valley and - hopefully after a good cleaning - donated to charity) couture including Oscar De La Renta, Pucci and, in one startlingly over-sequinned instance, an original Bob Mackie which frankly couldn’t be worn anywhere less than ten feet away from a Las Vegas bordello.

If only Mr. Blackwell, he of the “10 Worst Dressed List” could have been there.

Unfortunately, he had just recently gone on to that Great Catwalk In The Sky where, one hopes, the targets of his “couture criticism” weren’t lying in wait to ambush him. A spiritual army of vengeful female celebrities, armed with tacky stiletto heels and low-slung metal brassieres, is a horrible thing to contemplate.

Speaking of “fashion”, we recently attended a delightful lecture at the local Art Museum by noted designer – and one of our “amis du café” – James Galanos, whose life story reads rather like Horatio Alger in taffeta.

While we are not particular fans of live events – as we’ve previously mentioned the only theater we enjoy is that which features puppets or strippers (preferably simultaneously) – this delightful afternoon whetted our appetites and we then continued on to see the irascible Margaret Cho in concert.

She is a favorite of The Boyfriend’s and while we have long admired her intelligence and talent, we did find her to be a trifle profane for the sake of profanity. In spite, or probably because, of this she has certainly carved a niche for herself and The Gays seem to love her. One suspects this is mostly due to her rather vivid impression of a homosexual gentleman preparing to orally pleasure a lady for the first time; it is as ghastly to watch as it sounds, but it certainly does get a very big laugh and, as she is a comedienne, this is a good thing.

She received her biggest response for her take on California’s Proposition 8 “anti-gay marriage” bill; a bit of pandering perhaps, especially as most of the audience were on her side-

- but I did find myself wondering what her reaction was when this reviled piece of electoral bigotry recently passed with a slim majority, thus threatening to destroy 18000 marriages, not to mention the hundreds of children who suddenly became "bastards" overnight.

It certainly has caused a storm of protests across the country, everywhere from a much-gay-loved Mexican restaurant in Los Angeles-

- to the headquarters of the Mormon Church in Utah.

One does wonder exactly where all this passion was BEFORE the election; certainly part of the problem was that the folks in favor of gay marriage just naturally assumed they lived in a civilized part of the world.

Imagine their chagrin to discover that some 52 percent of their neighbors think they are subhuman perverts barely worth the lube they use up between corrupting children and bringing American society to its, you’ll pardon the expression, knees.

We say “they” of course even though we are, as is well documented throughout the world, a card-carrying homosexual ourselves.

We even attended one of the protests held in our desert paradise-

- where a local religious kook had the Styrofoam crucifix she was shoving into people’s faces knocked to the ground.

This resulted in a national outcry about “Violent Gay Mobs” but was, in actual fact, little more than some silly old woman angling for her 15 minutes of Fame. She's lucky the only thing that got busted was her ridiculous foam prop.

(And as we've previously mentioned, has it occurred to these religious loons that perhaps the LAST thing their beloved - and rather belated - Jesus Christ would want to see upon his return to Earth is a crucifix? Isn't that bit like having John F. Kennedy come back from the grave and immediately taking him on a lovely drive through Dallas?)

Things ended peacefully with a plan to march from City Hall through the streets of town to demand Our Civil Rights until it was pointed out that our desert paradise doesn’t have sidewalks along the planned route, at which point several of the protesters also remembered they had dinner reservations and so things broke up without much more ado.

Frankly, we didn’t for one moment think that gay marriage was going to fly with the electorate, the vast majority of whom are mouth-breathers who can barely control their cringing when the topic of ANY kind of sex – straight, gay, bi or any of the more exotic varieties - rears its shiny head.

Given that we live in a country where fully 90 percent of the population believes that somewhere up in the sky there is a Giant Magic Fairy Who Controls Everything-

- it should hardly be surprising that the Mormons, the Catholics and every nutcase religion in between ganged up to shut down the very idea of civil equality for homosexuals.

The Holy Management are terrified that once people start to see that gay couples can be just as committed – and just as divorced – as straight couples, the brick wall of control encircling the “God-fearing” will begin to crack and the churches will lose not just their congregants but, more importantly, their cash flow.

Religion is, and has always been, nothing more than a money-making proposition.

It’s just another form of Show Business, selling the Snake Oil of the Soul to the gullible, and in return offering nothing more than a way to get to sleep at night without slamming back a full bottle of Jack Daniels.

Is it merely a coincidence that both the Church AND Hollywood Agents collect ten percent from their respective adherents? One doubts it, but at least in the agent’s case one gets value for money; one may be skeptical about the potential for immortality in Heaven, but there is no arguing with the “eternal life” of one’s career in reruns.

And yet the Church isn’t without its uses; it may indeed hold the key to the salvation of our country’s economic problems after all. The removal of religion’s “tax-exempt” status would likely set us up for a worldwide economic boom not seen since Adam and Eve realized they needed to get to the mall and pick up some clothes.

But that isn’t probably going to happen any time soon.

The same folks who are drowning in debt and standing in unemployment lines across the country are the ones who desperately need to believe that there is Somebody watching over them-

- and to feel that their empty homes and hungry kids are all part of God’s Great Plan.

The last thing they're about to do is challenge the Church on anything, let alone its tax-status, especially since it might just end up being their next address when they have to move into a tent pitched in the side yard of the rectory.

We at 801 certainly appreciate their plight and while some would remind us “there but for the grace of God go you…” we are quite sure the Heavenly Fund Manager Above had nothing whatsoever to do with our surviving this current crisis relatively unscathed.

But to be completely honest, we also must admit it has nothing to do with any particularly clever financial decisions nor any sort of wisdom when it comes to business affairs. Likely as not, it is - like faith, hope and charity - just a matter of taste.

Or perhaps Panton was onto something after all; paper money comes and paper money goes but it must be said that the best things in life, while not necessarily “free”, can usually only be had at Tiffany’s.

Even after breakfast.

DYIN' AND DASH

2008-10-12T20:00:00.000-07:00

I might have spent a whole day shooting in a graveyard, but I still didn't expect to be buried in Vancouver.

Certainly a few of the eighty three days I spent in British Columbia-

- while making my two latest motion pictures “Red Torrent” (currently undergoing a studio-imposed name change to “Black Rain” – and not to be confused with the Michael Douglas-wearing-age-inappropriate-tight-jeans-Japanese-motorcycle epic of the same name)

- and “Death Among Friends” (which, for one brief and terrifying moment almost became known as “Shadow of A Doubt” -

- until I literally begged my Studio Overlords not to subject me to the mockery which would surely ensue should I have my name attached to a film with the temerity to take the title of Mr. Hitchcock’s classic) were challenging to say the least, but at no time was there even a hint of the scythe-swinging which normally foreshadows the appearance of the Grim Reaper.

So dear reader, I’m sure you can appreciate the surprise I felt when I almost died the day before yesterday.

Goodness knows this should not be taken as a critique of The Century Plaza Hotel, my stay at which has been greatly enhanced not just by the magnificent view of the ocean from my 26th floor suite and the remarkably attentive staff, but also by my proximity to “Celebrities” dance emporium, the city’s largest “gay” cha-cha lounge.

In fact, on a clear evening standing on my balcony I can see the bus and tunnel twinks lining up outside the place for half price drink Tuesday or – as my spiritual advisor Dr. Wong and I call it – “Amateur Night”.

The engineering staff at the hotel even volunteered to string a high-tension line from my room to the front door of the bar so that should I spy some local “talent” of interest, I would be no more than a quick rappel away from a chilled martini and a potential seduction along the lines of “hey-there-you-oughta-be-in-pictures”.

To the untrained eye, I’m sure this would appear to be nothing more than salacious misbehavior. In the film business however it’s known as “casting”.

But I passed on their very kind offer; as you have likely assumed from my most recent missives, my workload on these films has left me precious little time for extracurricular adventures and, truth be told, my heart remains back in my desert paradise, held firmly in the hands of a certain prominent local businessman whose recent profile in our hometown paper has made him even more of a catch than I previously thought.

One does, however, have to eat, and so I found myself wandering the damp streets of that rainforest masquerading as a city over the past few months in search of new and interesting sustenance and, being vegetarian – which is to say, having evolved beyond the primitive cuisine offered on the usual “Beef and Booze” circuit – my choices have been rather limited.

Certainly there is no shortage of “organic” or “earth-friendly” cafes in that most “tree-huggy” of all of Canada’s provinces. Should one ever find one’s self in dire need of a steaming bowl of carrot rind bisque or a cup of pine twig and pebble tea, Vancouver is definitely where it’s at. However one particular outing, during which I was forced to dine on birch bark plates while listening to angry spoken word poetry recited by a pungent young woman in a Bolivian sack dress, was definitely the recyclable straw which broke the free range camel’s back.

The following night, I decided, I was going to eat with the “regular” folks.

One can only imagine what happened next.

Dodging the monsoon-like rainstorm which seems to perpetually hover overhead like a Catholic priest over a Choirboy, I finally chose to take cover in one of the larger “chain” restaurants which dot the Vancouver landscape; it would be indiscreet to name names of course, but it’s an elegant and well-designed space with high ceilings, dark wood and tile walls and remarkably comfortable leather seats, the type of which one normally doesn’t find outside the higher end bordellos.

After enduring the obligatory Canadian “Customer Service” waiting period (for those of you who’ve never been to Canada, this is a traditional ten to thirty minute endurance test, part of the national cultural identity, wherein the Clerk/Waiter/Host in question denies your very existence regardless of the fact that you are less than three feet away from them, ignoring your silent pleas for assistance until you are forced to either a) shout or b) go to another establishment and repeat the procedure), I was escorted to my seat by a sweet-faced but utterly vacuous young woman who couldn’t have delivered her “how are we tonight?” with less enthusiasm if she’d been clinically dead.

I picked up the menu – chock full of “delitefully decadent dipz” and “tummee yummee starterz” and so forth – and began to search in vain for something to eat which didn’t feature animal entrails when I was suddenly aware of the shouting and screaming going on around me. I glanced up and felt my blood chill as I realized just exactly what I had stumbled into…

It was a “sports” restaurant.

When, one wonders, did our collective culture erode to the point where sitting in a dining room festooned with gigantic plasma televisions, all turned to various lower class athletic events, constitutes a legitimate evening out? Granted, one of the screens did feature several admittedly well-muscled young men in lycra shorts writhing on top of each other in some sort of organized faux-wrestling match punctuated with quick and bloody blows to the head -

- but frankly if I wanted to watch gay pornography I would’ve stayed in my hotel room and rented Disney’s “High School Musical”.

Speaking of Disney, it would appear that the Islamic fundamentalist movement has a new target. Apparently the “rodent” is considered a force for evil amongst our Muslim brethren, and therefore even a cartoon character as beloved as Mickey Mouse cannot be tolerated.

A “fatweh” has been issued for all large eared, four fingered mice wearing shorts, which is surely going to stretch the resources of our terrorist pals to the breaking point; given the rat population of the average war zone, it’s entirely possible they’re going to run out of bombs before they finish killing off every child in the Middle East-

- and then they’re going to be forced into the somewhat socially awkward position of having to murder each other at close range.

This, I suspect, is going to have a rather detrimental effect on the death toll in the region; as any Mafioso will tell you, it’s hard enough to pull a gun out of a double breasted suit –

- one can only imagine how tricky it will be when you’re draped in the equivalent of a full set of Martha Stewart sheets.

Under normal circumstances I would’ve fled the place immediately but with the Noah-esque downpour outside, and with my stomach rumbling like a high school senior’s Mustang, I decided to “tough it out” as they say and order some food. But who knew selecting one’s main course would be a martial art?

Now it’s not as if I’m terribly picky; for the last few weeks, during the post-production process of “Death Among Friends”, my editor Tony Michelle Gellar-

- and I have had to make do with everything from room temperature pizza to an order of sushi with the consistency of library paste. We are cutting the film in a rather suspicious facility on the outskirts of town which we are sharing with the rather James Bondian-named “XENON” corporation, a biochemical research firm whose security is so tight it makes Dick Cheney look like a yoga instructor.

(And has anybody else wondered where exactly dear old Dicky has been these past few months? The entire American financial system is imploding, the new Republican VP candidate-

- is a card carrying nitwit in over her head so deeply that Michael Phelps couldn’t help her -

- and as far as we can tell Cheney is sitting at home playing paddycake with his lesbian daughter’s baby…)

It’s a very peculiar establishment. In spite of having worked in the building for the past five weeks, my editor and I still must sign the visitor’s log in the presence of the young woman at the front desk who never seems to remember who we are; her proximity to the unknown chemicals in the atmosphere has apparently resulted in a mild form of short term memory loss, and we literally have to wear security badges just to go to the bathroom.

The rumor is that the company is working on a top secret diet aid, the sort of thing that fat people take instead of putting down the quart of Dreyer’s, getting off their well-upholstered asses and going for a walk.

I would suggest that instead of marketing a new calorie melting pill, Xenon would have more success by simply moving the obese into their offices; the nearest restaurant is a hilly mile and a half away and even if the hike doesn’t take the weight off, dodging the speeding cars driven by the mullet-wearing locals should help even the most elephantine look svelte in time for swimsuit season.

But back to my near-demise.

Given that the least offensive item on the menu was a “field green salad”, the name of which was obviously meant to conjure up images of apple cheeked farmers plucking luscious fronds from the very earth itself, I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised by the pile of rather depressing leaves plopped down unceremoniously in front of me by yet another unsmiling waitress, her “you want anything else?” barely falling from her collagen injected lips before she wheeled around and vanished into the business suited crowd. Frankly, I hadn’t seen such an unpleasant display of plant life since “The Day of the Triffids”-

- but with the Hounds of Hunger upon me, I decided to simply accept the offering of the Restaurant Gods and find something else, somewhere else, later on.

And therein lies my mistake. Instead of first examining the greenery before me, I simply took a forkful and stuffed it into my mouth.

The “cherry tomato”, so named because of its proximity in shape and size to its prefixed fruity cousin, is not generally considered a deadly weapon.

However, should one find oneself inadvertently swallowing one whole, I dare say this most unassuming of nature’s bounty can put up quite a fight. Had it made its way down my trachea, perhaps, I could have simply choked it back up or should there have been a muscular German named Heim nearby I could have availed myself of his “lich’d”.

Unfortunately, the tiny red missile took a path not into my airway but rather into my esophagus and, in taking its sweet time to slowly, painfully, maneuver its rubbery skin down my throat, caused me no small amount of anguish. For the faint of heart amongst you, I will not describe the unimaginable torment involved in trying to stumble toward the washroom and induce vomiting in a futile effort to dislodge the damnable thing; suffice it to say that not since advertently stumbling into a lunch meeting of the Christian Accordion Players of America have I had such an unpleasant midday meal.

There was, however, a bright light at the end of my tunnel; while fading in and out of consciousness on the cool tile floor of the restaurant’s elegant washroom (and what is it with all of these Vancouver dining spots? The toilets invariably have more style and class than the restaurant itself; perhaps they figure that since the locals tend to drink too much in order to take their minds off the constant drizzle, they're going to end up in the bathroom anyway so it might as well be nice?) I had one of those moments which usually only happen to people in the movies just before they die; as their entire lives flash before their eyes, they realize the error of their ways and, in a sudden third act twist, they survive the horrific event and return to the world a changed person. Fade to black. The end.

Naturally, given how my entire life has been lived completely above reproach -

- there was utterly no reason whatsoever for me to review it let alone have any kind of epiphany and so in lieu of a replay of my own flawless existence there unspooled before me the entire year of 1981 in the life of veteran character actor Rip Torn.

This is known by some of his intimates as the time of “The Beastmaster”-

- a rather better-remembered-than-seen motion picture of the “B” variety wherein Mr. Torn wore a rather unfortunate rubber nose and tossed a baby into a firepit.

I’m not sure what the memory of this film means to him, but given my current experiences making my own B pictures it gave me more than a slight sting of “déjà vu”; has my career devolved into similar territory?

But then I remembered a rather touching moment on set, during the last day of shooting. One of my assistant directors, a young woman who had worked silently and diligently throughout one of the more difficult days, approached me and told me, with tears in her eyes, that she had been planning to quit the film business - until she had worked on my set.

The experience, she said with a catch in her voice, had reminded her of why she wanted to work in the movies in the first place and she wanted me to know that the sense of fun and creativity I fostered in those around me had given her faith in directors once again.

I'd like to say I responded with something pithy and clever, perhaps a brilliant bon mot which would have defused the emotional moment for both of us; the truth is, I just stood there and said "uh...thank you..." and hugged her. Frankly, dear reader I didn't know what else to do...

But it certainly made me feel a little less like I was making "The Beastmaster" and a little more like the filmmaker I aspire to be. And that feeling has stayed with me while I'm writing this as I await my early morning flight back home to my desert paradise, safely ensconced in the Alaska First Class lounge, downing a pleasantly composed Bloody Mary and watching the hoi polloi make their way through the mile long Customs and Immigration line.

(I must admit to experiencing a certain cruel delight in seeing these first time travelers frantically dig through their bags in search of their missing passports/return tickets/visitor visas, arguments and tears breaking out in equal measure; that's what you GET for wearing your "comfy" track suit or baggy shorts and t shirt on the airplane...)

And while it might seem a trifle dissolute to be tossing back the vodka so early in the day, I would hasten to remind the judgmental among you that I am doing this strictly in the interest of self-preservation.

After all, given my recent encounters with solid foods, I think I’d best stick to the liquids for the time being.

THERE WILL BE MUD

2008-09-21T17:59:00.000-07:00

Well...I suppose it could have been worse.

Trying to shoot ANY film in ten days, let alone an action-thriller with stunts, special effects – both visual, physical AND makeup – and a continuous onslaught of torrential “sulphuric acid” rain (hence the movie's title "RED TORRENT") is essentially a path toward madness.

Given our various production challenges, this most recent cinematic project of mine could have been just the thing to finally push what I refer to as "my career" into serious "Golden Turkey Award" territory alongside such classics as "Catwomen on the Moon"-

and “The Killer Shrews”.

Although to be honest, one fears that those more innocent times, when an audience could be terrified by a herd of collies sporting papier-mâché masks, may have long since passed -

- and instead of being heralded as a clever B filmmaker, I will simply end up as the Edward D. Wood Jr. of my price point.

Even my enthusiastic and determined crew found themselves stretched to the limit by the highly uncooperative weather pattern -

- giving us rain when we didn’t want it and blue sky when we did, and forcing us into the unenviable position of actually having to bring rain towers – for the uninitiated, these are essentially overpriced garden sprinklers mounted twenty feet in the air - into a rainforest.

This may seem like an ideal solution, but let me assure you dear reader, standing beneath several thousand gallons of smelly, freezing water pumped from a nearby fire hydrant for hours on end is enough to drive even the most dedicated auteur to distraction. The resulting mud pit covered every square inch of the set, which then had to be hidden by judicious camera angles as we tried, in certain scenes, to create the illusion that the rain hadn’t even started yet. It almost worked, except for the shots where our star, the ruggedly handsome Shawn Roberts -

- had to race across the length of the “campground” at lightning speed in his quest to save the day. In order to not slip and fall on the soaking earth he was forced to take tiny cat-like steps as he ran and it will require some particularly clever editing on my part to keep him from looking like a burly Bette Midler out for her morning jog.

(At one point I was so frustrated by the situation that when the fifth crew member within an hour smiled at me from beneath dripping all-weather gear and said “it’s weird, it NEVER rains in Vancouver this time of the year” I threatened to perform a little amateur hydro-colonic therapy on him with the aforementioned rain tower. The local climate didn't come up in any on-set conversations again...)

The constant wetness caused difficulties for our stunt driver as well; during a rehearsal run he took a particularly slippery corner perhaps a tad too enthusiastically and slammed our fortunately-purchased-rather-than-rented "hero" SUV into a tree. Thankfully he was unhurt, not just because he's one of the city's more visually pleasing stuntmen (observant readers will notice a pattern here...), but also because the cameras WEREN'T rolling and trying to find somebody willing to smash into things this far out of town who wasn't either a) drunk or b) under house arrest would've been time and cost prohibitive. I may be a humanitarian, but I'm trying to make a movie here...

The only respite from the rain came when we ventured indoors to shoot the “Ordox Refinery” sequences, including the massive explosion that causes the whole disaster in the first place. We filmed these scenes at a disused metal works facility even further away from civilization than our previous location, and while the owner of the place couldn’t have been friendlier nor more cooperative, I must admit to feeling a little anxious upon spotting shelves of toxic chemicals being stored within spewing distance of my Director's Chair.

Now I’m no chemist, I'll grant you, but any non-pirate-related glass jar with a “Skull and Crossbones” label on the front of it just seems like the kind of thing from which one would be well advised to steer clear.

My anxiety was not allayed in the least when our Special Effects team began rigging the place for the fire and smoke bombs which would propel our stuntman, the Buster Keaton-esque (if Buster had been a handsome Asian man with abs you could bounce a quarter on...) Raymond Chan -

- off a second storey balcony and down to the hard tiled floor below. I had a sudden and rather disturbing vision of fifty years worth of genetically damaging dust and debris up in the ceiling being dislodged by the concussion and raining down on us; not that I particularly care for myself, as my interest in having children ended when I heard that Clay Aiken had recently became a surrogate father-

- but I certainly don’t relish the idea of receiving a Christmas card from a crew member a couple of years down the road featuring a picture of some gurgling two headed mutant toddler nestled amongst the holiday gifts.

However, I am relieved to report the explosions went off without a hitch, Raymond made a safe landing on the crash pads, and we finished off the rest of the shoot pretty much without a hitch. I say “we” in the most grateful sense imaginable, as the crew on this particular adventure were asked to endure some fairly grueling circumstances.

For example, there was the hour long drive to and from set everyday, which doesn’t sound like much until one takes into account the fact that British Columbians seem to have an almost psychotic aversion to piloting their automobiles in anything other than the passing lane of the freeway. Traffic may be flowing smoothly for a mile or more and then suddenly everything comes to a grinding halt because some dullard is meandering along in the left lane at precisely four miles below the speed limit.

One would like to attribute this to the fact that many of those in possession of a driver’s license here are in fact newcomers to the country, and so they are entitled to some cultural leeway; it’s entirely possible that back in Outer Swinovia (say) they’ve handled nothing more vehicularly challenging than an oxcart -

- so the intricacies of a Yaris would understandably take a little getting used to.

Unfortunately that excuse doesn’t hold water in this case as the perpetrators of this automotive inanity generally seem to be local types. From little old ladies who’ve clearly never been out of the province to the mullet-ridden teenage by-products of several decades worth of inadequate public sex education, these morons clogging up the transit lanes and causing perfectly rational people like myself to imitate drunken NASCAR drivers in order to make it to work on time are clearly homegrown.

But complain as I might, I had it easier than most.

My poor makeup and hair girls had to arrive at our Siberian-adjacent location hours before the rest of the crew in order to erase the effects of our actors’ usual nocturnal debaucheries - being thespians, they are naturally predetermined toward bad behavior of course - and make them look like the clean-cut, fresh-faced young kids they were playing in the movie. This doesn’t even include the extra hour they needed to make Levi (“no, I’m not THAT Levi, I don’t even KNOW Sarah Palin’s daughter”) James look like the victim of a rather aggressive sea salt scrub at the local spa--

- or conceal the loveliness of “24”’s Leslie Hope beneath the cosmetic burns and hideous scarring needed in her role as evil industrialist “Carol Grey”.

Speaking of Leslie, in many of these “modestly budgeted” epics, the “name” actor, whose presence helps secure financing and adds much needed credibility to the proceedings, is usually some drunken lout trying to cover his gambling debts by appearing in everything from Z-grade horror movies to local used car ads. More often than not, said “lout” exhibits unsurprisingly “lout-ish” behavior and inevitably sees his currency plummet lower than the late Bush era stock market; this is known as “The Haim Factor” and it can end even the most talented actor’s career.

I am however delighted to report that this was not the case with Ms. Hope – our “name” - who was a consummate pro on-set, a complete delight to be with (especially when she and I rode together in our picture car, rewriting dialog DURING the shooting of the scene, and cackling over some truly raunchy gossip about which I daren’t breathe a word in this pages for fear of yet ANOTHER lawsuit…) and most importantly, not once did she make any of us feel for a moment that she was lowering her standards by taking time away from her successes in huge network television hits (or from her recent forays into directing) to play in our tiny sandbox.

She was the definition of a Lady.

Actually, we had quite a few “ladies” on this set. Whereas most film crews tend to skew toward male-dominated, this was an unusually gender-balanced bunch, with the fairer sex doing everything from rigging lighting to handling special effects. There was even one particular afternoon where the women completely outnumbered the men by a ratio of fifty-to-one; granted, most of those girls were somewhat limited in their mobility, being locked up for everything from check fraud to murder, but even if the residents of the nearby Alouette Women’s Prison -

- located not five hundred yards from our set, don’t make an actual onscreen appearance in our film, their presence was definitely felt by the male members of the our team – and perhaps a couple of the female ones as well.

I certainly didn’t try to dissuade any of them from pursuing a possible relationship with these distaff “incarcerees” – with the long hours and travel involved in the film business it’s very hard to meet new romantic possibilities, especially ones who know how to make their own tattoos. Besides, there are distinct advantages to dating a murderess; statistically speaking, homicidal women almost never kill a second time, and if they’re notorious enough they always get the best seat in the house at any restaurant. “Table for two? Right THIS way, Miss Homolka!!”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, this wasn’t our only brush with crime during the shoot. One morning we were filming in a parking lot next to a government agency euphemistically entitled “Family Services” but which was in fact a sort of “check in” center for the area’s younger criminals.

For several hours that day, while we muddled our way through a simple dialog scene-

- we were continually interrupted by a constant stream of disgruntled young men – and they were ALL young men, none of them older than sixteen, some of them resembling nothing more threatening than baby-faced members of the Chess Club – being driven to meetings with their probation officers by their stone-faced and clearly mortified mothers. The whole thing looked like some kind of grim parody of “dropping the kids off for swimming practice” except in this case swimming practice actually meant armed robbery.

I was tempted to slide up to at least one of these vehicles and casually ask “so…knife or gun?” but my Producer, probably less worried about my safety than the publicity (“Gun Wielding Teen Opens Fire on Film Crew; Seven Killed, including Hack Director.”), advised against it. Since he was already annoyed with me over one of my recent blog posts I decided not to force the issue.

The offending post in question, by the way, was the one where I suggested that our picture vehicles on this film were “cheap” and, with the ridiculously low budget the studio had given us to make this movie, our Producer had been forced to pay for them with whatever extra money he was able to scrounge from the depths of his pockets.

I would hereby like to publicly retract that statement.

I was mistaken and I sincerely apologize. Apparently, and quite unknown to me, in this part of the world a battered sports utility truck costing less than $5000.00 IS a luxury automobile and even a ten-year-old recreational vehicle with a faulty starter and a refrigerator which smells vaguely of deceased infants is considered a vacation home.

I stand corrected.

Oh, and he didn’t find the money in his pockets. It was behind the cushions of the couch.

But as I mentioned earlier, things could have been much, much worse. Faithful readers know I’ve had some truly ghastly experiences making movies like this, but in this case I have to admit we got off very lightly, in no small way due to something my first AD said to me later.

“You’ve figured it out, Ron” she smiled. “Surround yourself with people you love and make your movie.”

True indeed. And thanks to those people, my cinematic family one and all, we managed to finish the film with virtually no serious problems – well, nothing that a few martinis and some Preparation H won’t cure - and have already started the next one, starring once again the indefatigable MARGOT KIDDER, whose very name on the call sheet has put the crew in good spirits.

How this next adventure goes remains to be seen, but with my good luck charm Margie onboard, not to mention my long-time muse and spiritual advisor NELSON WONG-

as well as, amongst others, BEN AYRES, X Files legend WILLIAM B. DAVIS and our star, the delightful NICHOLLE TOM -

- I have a feeling our luck might just hold for another ten days…

TEN DAYS IN COMMUNICADO

2008-09-07T23:33:00.000-07:00

Heaven knows I’m a big believer in helping those less fortunate than myself. From my be-tuxed appearance at every socially important fundraising event in our desert town-

- to my support of various causes including our local “Fresh Off The Bus Fund”, where young Marines visiting from the nearby military base are offered companionship during their long, lonely nights on leave-

- (I was one of the first in our area to display a “Support Our Troops” bumper sticker on the back of my car, along with my telephone number in case the “$100.00” offer next to it needed clarification), I think it is safe to say that I have spilled more than my fair share of the milk of human kindness.

But I swear to you, dear reader, Mother-Bloody-Teresa HERSELF would have been hard pressed to summon up enough compassion to keep from taking a baseball bat to the begging riff raff lining the streets of Vancouver this summer.

And were she attempting, as I currently am, to make TWO thriller movies -

- at the same time as fending off almost continuous inquiries into her financial status – as in “do you have any spare change?” - by the odiferous and shambling psychopaths wandering the sidewalks of this otherwise beautiful coastal city, we quite probably would have heard a little less about her legendary altruism and a little more about her right uppercut.

Ensconced in a downtown hotel – The Century Plaza, famed as the hotel in the movie “Best In Show” -

- as well as home to the Number One Spa in all of Vancouver 22 times in a row, as they are quick to tell you (not that I, with my dewey fresh skin need any special care in particular, but isn’t it nice to know it’s only a short elevator ride away?) – I have taken advantage of the fact that this is a ‘walking’ city, and have made myself quite at home in the various boites and bistros dotting the urban landscape. But it astonishes me that in such a remarkably civilized city, the vast army of bedroll-toting, resolutely unemployed panhandlers who have set up shop on every street corner, harassing passersby for money in between long draws on their marihuana cigarettes barely raises an eyebrow.

There is even a sort of defacto approval given to this lifestyle by the local media, most obviously in the left-leaning weekly tabloid THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT -

- which, with the earnestness of a high school newspaper, and a level of writing roughly the same, regularly decries any attempts to clean up the streets of this vaguely criminal element with shouts of “Fascist State!” and, my favorite, “Free The Homeless!” which seems to me not just redundant but to have already happened. If they were any freer, they’d be sharing my hotel room.

Granted every society throughout history has had its vagabonds; there is something rather romantic about the image of the Unfettered Man, wandering the earth in search of answers to a question only he can hear.

But the modern breed of hobo seems less interested in philosophical inquiry and more concerned with staying stoned while laying flat out on the same sewer grate day after day.

This behavior hardly seems conducive to any form of intellectual pursuit, let alone being a potential breeding ground for the next Jack Kerouac.

Certainly I am aware that many of our homeless brethren have mental health issues; some estimates put it at ninety percent, most of these having stopped taking the appropriate pharmaceutical treatments for their illnesses and simply self-medicating with whatever is at hand. Liquor, for some; Grade D heroin smuggled into this port city within children’s toys or the orifices of drug-addicted fashion models for others. The local government health organization here has even gone so far as to create a “safe” site for these unfortunates to inject this toxic waste into their bloodstreams, providing a clean facility and fresh hypodermic needles and then defending the practice as being the lesser of two evils. The mind boggles. I’m all for encouraging young people to take up a hobby, but I think the idea of a clubhouse for junkies is stretching the point.

Perhaps an even LESSER evil would be to substitute, Folger’s-coffee-like, the user’s heroin for whatever ACTUAL medication he was SUPPOSED to have been taking in the first place.
A trifle deceptive perhaps, but I’ll bet if the local homeless schizophrenic population suddenly stopped seeing giant earthworms crawling up their legs there’d be considerably less trouble for everyone.

Now this may all sound rather cavalier, but I assure you, dear reader, I am not a heartless man.

The loyal amongst you will recall that when that dreadful Tsunami hit Thailand a few years back-

- I was one of the first people on a plane to Beeg Kok, the region hardest hit by the massive wave, to help out in whatever way I could. In my case, this meant adopting eighteen-year-old twin Thai boys and bringing them back to 801 where they could grow and flourish under my protective care.

And even though that situation ended rather awkwardly, with ridiculous accusations of pornographic filmmaking and so forth (those were ART films, thank you, and both Lei and Mee were paid as professional models!), I have continued to keep my eyes open for ways I can help my fellow human beings.

Until now, that is. From this point on, ALL bets are off. I’ve been ROBBED.

With our current production of “RED TORRENT” in full swing, and with all the usual problems plaguing this production, including the absurdly cold weather here in Vancouver this summer –

- and me packing nothing heavier than a stunning collection of linen sweaters from Brooks Brothers – the last thing I needed was to have my cell phone stolen right out from under my nose.

I suppose I should have been paying more attention to what was going on around me, but frankly after a long day of dealing with soggy actors, rather un-special “special effects” and several on camera “picture vehicles”-

- which, in traditional picture vehicle style, ran perfectly well until they were needed on camera, at which point they immediately broke down -

- I could barely string together the words to order dinner.

Well, that, and the fact that the culprit, some transient drifter, was completely indistinguishable from every other Vancouverite walking the street that rainy night.

The whole city wears fleece and rain gear, practically year round, so it’s all but impossible to tell the homeless from the homeowner, especially given the locals’ complete lack of fashion sense. This is one of the cities, after all, which first championed the wearing of those horrid “Crocs”, the creators of which should burn in Style Hell for all Eternity.

But anyway, there I was, sitting at the bar of a local, open air restaurant -

- enjoying a simple meal of pasta putenesca –

- “streetwalker pasta”, so named because it was (and possibly still is) the favored dish of Italy’s Ladies of the Evening -

- when what appeared to be a friendly local walked in and, sidling up to the counter, began to engage me in pleasant small talk while waiting for his table. I should have sensed something was amiss, of course; in spite of an utterly puzzling reputation for politesse, Canadians are, as a rule, a standoffish bunch who wouldn’t engage with a complete stranger if his hair was on fire.

But this fellow just chatted away amiably, asking about the weather, my choice of wine, what the specials of the night were – all the while leaning against the bar and, in hindsight, perilously close to my Blackberry sitting not one foot from my plate. It was only after he left, and I thought to myself “gee, perhaps I’ve been wrong about the locals, maybe they really ARE friendly after all?” that I reached for my phone to make a call and discovered the dastardly crime.

The restaurant owner was horrified of course – not horrified enough to “comp” my meal mind you, nor even offer a free dessert for my trouble – and promised to keep an eye out for the offender. But quite honestly, with ten days having passed since the crime, and me having been without a cell phone for all that time, I’ve discovered something interesting; I don’t particularly MISS it.

Especially given that I’ve had to do a full rewrite on our next movie, DEATH AMONG FRIENDS, to get it into production shape; the lack of distraction has been quite welcome, really, and I’ve found to my surprise that I can live quite well without a continuous stream of information at my fingertips – a bit better, perhaps.

My larger concern has been the huge database hidden inside the Blackberry’s memory card, including the private numbers of enough B list stars to cast an entire season of “The New Love Boat”.

Immediately after the theft I cancelled the cell phone account, and sent out a mass e-mail to everybody on my calling list warning them of possible annoyances; nobody has had any problems, so perhaps the storm has passed without incident.

Still, one never knows. I don’t anticipate any trouble, given that the criminal mind tends toward cash flow and the phone had probably been sold before the thief made it to the corner, but I don’t particularly relish the idea of Shannen Doherty receiving a late night phone call from some homeless guy asking her for change.

But as I said, I am a big believer in helping those less fortunate than myself, so perhaps this isn’t such a bad thing after all; I imagine just one invective-laced tirade from the currently hot-again TV queen would be enough to make even the most dedicated substance abusing thief rethink his criminal ways.

Hell, maybe he’d even give me back my phone?

THAT BURNING SENSATION

2008-08-24T21:41:00.000-07:00

There are very few things these days which can lure me out from behind the protective fichus lined walls of my desert paradise at 801;

- with a solid investment portfolio consisting of half a dozen rare coins from the Pomeranian Empire-

- a signed first edition copy of the autobiography of Joanne Worley -

- and a U-Lock-It in Reseda filled to the rafters with mint condition Ginger Spice Dolls -

- I am pretty much set for life, so the only projects I deign to accept anymore are the ones which really SPEAK to me on a deeply personal, highly artistic level.

Or the ones that feature handsome young men running around with their shirts off.

And so I find myself back in Vancouver, Canada once again, in the autumn of 2008 to film back to back thrillers – “RED TORRENT” and “DEATH AMONG FRIENDS” – both of which boast enough strapping young male flesh to make even the most devout Catholic priest reconsider his faith.

Case in point, the lead of the first film, Shawn Roberts.

While Mr. Roberts has considerable skill in the Acting Department, having been a child star whose evolution into leading man I have been privileged not only to observe but also to participate in, it is in the Shirt Taking Off Department where he truly shines. As someone with the reputation of being the Jayne Mansfield of his price point-

- (BEFORE the car accident, naturellement) his presence in “Red Torrent” – or, as we’ve been calling it around the set, "That Burning Sensation" – could have simply fulfilled a certain “beefcake” quotient and that would have been that; certainly his nude scene at the side of a river in an ancient forest is utterly breathtaking, with the natural beauty of the surroundings perfectly complementing the flawless body he has worked so very hard to achieve.

Needless to say, I barely paid attention to this particular shot; I find the exploitation of the human form distasteful of course, and although there were rumors to the contrary, let me just say that the arms on my director’s chair were already quite loose and would probably have come off in my hands even without the spectacle of Mr. Roberts admittedly well-defined buttocks.

But to my delight – and, frankly, relief – he is more than just a great set of glutes, having grown over the years into a remarkably accomplished thespian with extraordinary on-camera charm and in this, his first role where he is the undisputed STAR of the picture, literally Number One on the daily work schedule “call sheet”, he simply shines.

(There are still moments when the Shawn I’ve known for almost a dozen years reappears however – when a “take” goes awry, Mr. Roberts slips from his lower registered, slightly gruff “movie star voice” back into his normal tone which could be charitably described as sounding rather like Mickey Mouse after a hit of helium, and it is both jarring and amusing to say the least.)

In the other roles, we have a delightful mixture of actors new to me, as well as a few of my old favorites: the lovely and charismatic SARAH CANNING -

- she of the entrancing eyes and completely beguiling screen presence - being among the former, and the hot-as-a-stolen-pistol LEVI JAMES in the latter category.

Levi and I once worked together on a pilot presentation for a certain music television network run by ex-hippies and pandering nitwits; the sudden decision to cancel the entire project without a word of warning, and the ensuing lawsuits over cancelled contracts and lost wages all but derailed several careers – to my relief, however, not ours and having him in this movie makes all of that seem like a distant memory.

Another new face in the cast is a remarkable South African import by the name of PJ PRINSLOO. Having spent the last several years working in the education industry, PJ has a healthy disdain for the nonsense of the motion picture business but this doesn’t seem to detract from his marvelous performance in our film; he’s graceful, heroic and utterly believable, which is the ultimate compliment for any actor.

Of course no movie made by yours truly would be complete without the marvelous RICHARD COX, who makes me laugh just by standing still.

Another ex-child star -

- Richard worked for years with Hollywood Legend/Reprobate Mickey Rooney -

- and has stories so scandalously funny as to make one incontinent; this is not a good thing on set necessarily, but since we’re shooting in a forest it hasn’t really been a problem – those silly trees have to earn their keep somehow.

With familiar Canadian face ALF HUMPHRIES, star of one of my all time favorite slasher movies MY BLOODY VALENTINE -

- and my latest diva LESLIE (“24”) HOPE-

- filling out the roles of THE BAD GUYS, we have been shooting for the past eight days in and around the usual far-flung Vancouver sub-suburbs in order to suck up the tax credits offered by the province for making movies outside the major urban centers. As regular readers of this blog will recall, the absurdity of trying to make movies in a place where there is simply no “place”, the Maple Ridge/Langley Devil’s Triangle being little more than a collection of used car lots, strip malls and cheaply constructed housing projects built on swamp land, has driven me mad for years.

But oddly, in the case of these two films, the “nothingness” of this place is working in our favor. In fact, we’ve managed to shoot some very dramatic scenes using the mountainous backdrop as a counterpoint to the sheer hokum of the plot – acid rain which is REALLY acid rain – and I am delighted to report that for the first time in many years, we are actually showing off some of the incredible beauty of British Columbia in these movies.

To be honest, this has always been the thing that annoyed me the most about making motion pictures in and around Vancouver; the qualities which make the place so remarkable could never be shown in the cheap made-for-tv crap we were making for the unwitting masses. I for one think the audience deserves more credit – is a by-the-numbers “woman in jeopardy” story starring some vaguely recalled 90's screen siren really made less effective by setting it in a stunning mountain framed town rather than some generic “Any City, USA”? I doubt it, but the – to quote Candice Bergen – “tiny, intense television people” are so terrified of presenting anything unfamiliar to their audience of Spray Cheese Junkies out there in Couchville that they’ve always insisted on hiding the dazzling vistas of Canada’s most beautiful province.

This has, however, backfired recently. There has been a rather precipitous drop off in television production up here lately, due in part no doubt to the recent devaluation of the U.S. greenback against the Canadian loonie. And while the plummeting American dollar also means shrinking film budgets, I suspect there’s another reason why producers are staying away; I think tv audiences are getting tired of seeing the same stories told in the same ten square mile radius of generic, characterless Canadian suburb. In the quest to make movies cheaper and faster, the Carpetbagger Producers who pursue tax credits and exchange rates around the world in order to churn out forgettable films from bottom-of-the-barrel scripts have forgotten one very important thing – people have to want to WATCH them.

The original B movie makers knew how to do it, as I was reminded just the other night while attending a screening of THE NIGHT HAS A THOUSAND EYES-

- at the Vancouver Film Noir Festival with my friend and spiritual advisor Dr. Wong;

get a great concept, develop an original script, find some terrific actors on the skids, a few good character people, and then place the whole thing in an interesting location and let the sparks fly.

Whether or not we’ve managed to do this with our RED TORRENT and DEATH AMONG FRIENDS remains to be seen; as I’ve mentioned, we are only eight days into the shoot.

But with the help of my Brother-In-Cinema, Director of Photography C. Kim Miles -

- as well as my loyal First Assistant Director, Arlene Arnold -

- a delightful madwoman with the energy and tenaciousness of a Killer Shrew -

- perhaps we can rise above the weather problems (non-stop rain in the soggiest summer the region has seen in years), the vehicle problems

- (our cheap picture cars, most purchased for whatever change our producer had in his pocket at the time, are continually breaking down and only the magic fingers of our transportation department can seem to get them going again) and the scheduling problems (trying to figure out how to mesh two totally different movies into one shooting schedule without paying anybody a single cent of overtime) and navigate our crew of old pros and more than a smattering of new comers (who, while enthusiastic, apparently have never actually SEEN a film -

- let alone ever made one) into making ourselves a good picture or two.

But if I have to leave the safety of my glamorous pool-side lifestyle for a few weeks - or, as the clerk at the front desk of the hotel said to me upon check-in, "you're here for 81 nights?", making it sound less like an extended stay and more like a prison sentence - I can't imagine a better reason than to spend time with the collection of misfits, circus performers and societal castoffs which make up a film crew.

It may be a cliche, but we truly are like one big family.

The Manson Family, perhaps, but family nevertheless.

SAY, UNCLE

2008-08-18T22:47:00.000-07:00

The San Jacinto Mountains rise almost nine thousand feet above our desert paradise, sheltering us from the elements and, in many ways, the cheaper strains of popular culture; since the median age here is roughly one hundred and nine, the dubious charms of the various Lohans, Simpsons and the instant porn heroes of the internet age, all of whom seem to get their own reality shows before their sheets have even dried, hold very little sway over our town. We are more interested in the important things in life: denture adhesive, for example, or how to get the most mileage out of your colostomy bag.

However there is one thing the Jacintos CAN’T protect us from, if my sixteen year old nephew, known affectionately by his inattentive uncle as Benmont-

- (owing to some confusion over his actual name during the first eight weeks of his existence) and his comrade-in-charms Senor Crane -

- are to be believed:

Yes, high as it may be, this mighty mountain range is, according to them, an extremely ineffective barricade against the dreaded Chupacabra.

At least, this is what they told each other while they were sleeping “under the stars” on the back patio of 801 during their recent visit.

Why they decided to try to terrify themselves with a mythical Mexican goat sucker when any number of the local snakes, spiders and scorpions lurking unbeknownst to them beneath their chaise lounges would have been more than enough to do the job is quite beyond me, but then one could go mad trying to understand the mental state of the current adolescent.

How my Sister, the one Still Up In Canada, does it I cannot fathom, any more than I can figure out why she dragged herself out of the comfort of her private guest suite every night around one a.m. to supply these two with their bi-hourly frozen pizza and burrito feedings.

I suppose it’s one of those “parenting” things that I’ve never really grasped, and it certainly goes a long way toward explaining why there’s no danger of me wrestling Madonna for the last remaining orphan in Malawi.

They've been relatively unobtrusive houseguests, for the most part , although my housboy Panton has been sulking out by the pool since they arrived.

Apparently my Sister insulted him by suggesting that perhaps using detergent and a scouring brush would be a more effective way to clean the barnacle-clad pots and pans in my cupboards than to just leave them in the sun and pray for rain. He made some sort of strange hex sign with his fingers which may have been Peruvian in origin - we've still never quite determined Panton's lineage, and his paperwork was rather conveniently "lost" during the rather dubious "boat wreck" he claims to have survived before entering my employ, so Peru works as well as anywhere - and hasn't come back inside since.

But despite my inability to entirely understand her, I applaud my youngest Sister, this deceptively sturdy little blonde girl I’ve watched grow from a tiny pink bundle in a crib into a fully self-sustaining, utterly ADULT woman.

Frankly, with her grasp of how human beings really work blended with her empathy and compassion for all creatures great and small, she puts me and The Other Sister -

- the one known in some circles as The Black Widow of Toluca Lake, to shame.

We make quite a trio, us three; all quite dissimilar and yet so very much the same in many ways.

We are slow to anger, but quick to forgive - unless you make us angry again right away and then we just slug you.

We love loud, boisterous gatherings but are always delighted when they are over and we are left alone to our books and music and lovers, preferably in that order and only if the lovers have cleaned up the kitchen before they come to bed.

And in spite of having no real hereditary home in the sense of a place of brick and mortar where, when you go there, your parents HAVE to let you in, we are ferociously protective of the family we have created ourselves, cobbled together out of ex-boyfriends, ex-enemies and the extraordinary people in our lives who have laughed with us, cried with us and sheltered us against the storms that we have, all of us, faced.

Yet, oddly, the events in our lives that one would expect us to attend as a “family” - weddings, births, the Annual White Sale at Macy’s - have always been rather catch-as-catch-can. And as far as funerals go, we’ve gotten off rather lightly; so far, as a family, we haven’t had any that really warranted the plane fare.

There was a cranky and not terribly well-remembered paternal grandmother who always scared the crap out of me as a child with her sinister Anglican faith and the fashion sense of Frankenstein’s Bride.

When she went to that big Salt Lick in the sky, I was enlisted against my will to be a pallbearer and, although I swear it wasn’t intentional, I somehow managed to get the location of the church wrong, and showed up at the baptism of a newborn baby dressed as if I was there to bury him. By the time I arrived at the cemetery the cars were already pulling away and I had to endure the cold glares of my father’s rather rustic side of the family, a group of people for whom coon hunting was an actual career choice, for the rest of the day.

“You missed Grammy’s funeral, asshole,” muttered a generously tattooed cousin I’d never met before. Spilling his beer down the front of his faux tuxedo t-shirt, he looked at me through narrow eyes red-rimmed not from crying, but rather from the smoke of the unfiltered Camel dangling from his lips. “Grammy was a great lady you know, a GREAT LADY.”

I tried to explain about the confusion and how bad I felt, but he just shook his head, sat down on a sofa which seemed to be upholstered in dog-hair and promptly passed out, which was certainly understandable; he’d probably had half a dozen bottles of beer already, and everybody knows twelve-year-olds can’t hold their liquor.

As I recall, my mother glided through that entire day with a smile of sheer terror frozen on her face. In her mind she had always been the wife of a country gentleman, spending her days dressed in jodphurs and velvet jacket, never actually riding the half dozen horses my father kept in the barn behind our low slung ranch house nestled deep in central Ontario, but just happy to know they were there in case a Steeplechase broke out.

Despite her pretensions, my mother does not have a cruel or thoughtless bone in her body. She can, however, be just a little delusional at times. This is, after all, the woman who insisted on dressing the five year old me in a blazer and ascot tie any time we traveled more than ten miles from the house. She always imagined we were the long lost heirs apparent to the Kennedy Clan, and the fact that the late, much-lamented John Kennedy Jr. and I were the same age only reinforced this in her mind.

It’s been a defense mechanism, I suppose; as a young girl she was on her way to be a Ballroom Dancer in New York City -

- but suddenly - in one version of the story - met the man of her dreams, a Rockabilly Singer and minor celebrity at a local dance and that, as they say, was that. In another version of the story, likely the truer one, she got cold feet, bailed on her soon-to-be-gay dance partner, and stayed within spitting distance of her control-freak parents for the rest of her life.

So the only way to survive the disappointment of giving up her dreams was to imagine herself living in New Rochelle, next to Rob and Laura Petrie perhaps-

- or just down the road from the Ricardo’s that season when they bought the big farm house in Connecticut and Lucy tried to raise chickens. It would never occur to her that she had spent her entire adult life in a community where having all your own teeth AND indoor plumbing is considered showing off.

In truth, of course, my father was nothing more or less than a mildly successful musician turned businessman who spent himself into a chasm of debt in order to fuel his beloved wife’s fantasies, and the sudden bracing splash of cold reality my mother felt at my grandmother’s funeral - the realization after all these years that she had married into a family of Hillbillies - was, I believe, the beginning of the end of their marriage.

So I suppose we come by it naturally, my sisters and I, this disregard for “events” that others seem to think are so important. That’s why it was such a big deal for my Still-Up-In-Canada Sister, my nephew and his pal to come all the way down to California to attend the screening at the Los Angeles OUTFEST Film Festival of my latest movie “ON THE OTHER HAND, DEATH”.

We might not make it to Christmas or the last rites at one another’s death beds, but by god we wouldn’t miss a Premiere for the world!

“I can’t tell you what this means to me,” I told my Up North Sister on the phone as I tried to explain that the desert weather in mid-July wasn’t just hot, it was the kind of hot that made housepets explode upon contact with the sidewalk. “Having you guys come down here for the screening is....well....it’s...”

“Will Shannen Doherty be there?” she asked, putting it all in perspective. “The boys want to see some real live stars.”

Given that their idea of “stars” seemed to be the cast of “The O.C.”, a show I had thankfully not seen until they arrived armed with season 4 of the series on dvd which they watched on the poolside television between bouts of roughhousing and Facebook-

- I felt pretty sure we could provide, at the very least, something just as good.

As I mentioned earlier, we don’t get a lot of “popular culture” oozing through the protective ficus lined walls of our desert paradise at 801. So it was somewhat illuminating to spend ten minutes watching dvd's of the now dead tv series “The O.C.”, a beachfront car accident of a show, laden with chemically tanned 20 somethings spewing the kind of dialogue deaf-mutes must write in their sleep.

While it was a truly ghastly program, with performances and production values on the level of a high-school drama class, my nephew and millions of other television viewers had made it into a massive hit.

I on, on the other hand, with my heartfelt and socially charged genre movies, will clearly die a failure.

Perhaps, I thought, I while watching them glued to the set as An Angst-Ridden Girl, who in any other universe would be a hundred dollar a day prostitute but in the world of the O.C. is “The Star”, I should do a little field research to expand my understanding of just exactly WHAT is entertaining the lower classes these days. And so, accompanied by the Boys - both of whom have the kind of physiques one normally associates with athletes and porn stars -

- (the difference between the two being slight when you really think about it...) - and The Sister, we made our way to the legendary Venice Beach.

The problem with public beaches, of course, is that they are frequented by the public who - in terms of their physical aesthetic - generally shouldn’t be allowed to set foot out of their double wide trailers in anything less than a full Beekeeping suit. However, the liberal application of several Mimosas at a beach side boite-

- combined with a few sightings of that increasing rarity, the authentic California Surfer Boy -

-

- helped the ocean view considerably and I was able to sustain what I believe was a respectable level of tolerance while Benmont and Senor Crane soaked up the local color.

Sadly, local color wasn’t all they absorbed; against my direst warnings, they decided to venture into the Pacific surf which, as is well known to all but the most naive tourist, harbors bacteria so ambitious they make Tony Robbins look like a slacker.

But the iconography of the California Coast holds a powerful sway, even to two boys for whom the Beach Boys are nothing more than crazy old guys who hang out with “the ex-husband of that babe from X-Men”. So into the waves they dove, splashing around amongst dolphins and grim-faced Eastern Europeans on package tours until, exhausted from holding their stomachs in every time a pretty girl passed by, they collapsed into a pile in the back seat of the car and slept the rest of the day.

Of course it was less than twelve hours before their ears began to hurt, as the various microbes they’d allowed into their bodily cavities began to work their magic, and for a little while anyway, it looked as though they were going to miss the screening altogether.

But after a bit of rest at the fabulous Magic Castle Hotel, where they were spoiled silly by the staff -

(can anything be better for a teenage boy than staying in the heart of Hollywood with a pack of Cheerleaders in the next room AND an endless supply of junk food at your beck and call?) they had recuperated sufficiently to make it to the theater and watch the film.

When I was my nephew’s age, suffering through what seemed to be an endless Hell at a small town Ontario high school so homophobic that tying up the laces in your work boots meant you were “a fag”, I once found myself inexplicably at the mercy of a very angry young man who decided I needed to be shown who was “the boss”. From out of nowhere, and entirely unprovoked, he grabbed my teenage self and shoved my face against a brick wall, demanding - in rather an old fashioned way I remember thinking - that I “Say Uncle”.

It was a small indignity in a long line of small indignities suffered at the hands of fools throughout my life in the public education system - the Wal Mart of learning, really, in that it provides a rather cheaply made version of the higher end product - and while it hasn’t necessarily scarred me for life, I did not inherit my mother's remarkable ability to reimagine small town hicks as noble savages, so it has resonated enough to be a painful memory through all these many years.

And so, several decades later, when I heard those words again, coming out of the mouth of a young man of the same age as my high school tormentor, I couldn’t help but recall that moment with a certain bittersweet sense of deja vu.

“Say, Uncle,” Benmont said, when he and Senor Crane had finished watching my movie, detailing the adventures of a gay private eye and his boyfriend investigating crimes against a woman who helps gay teenagers. “You know, THAT was a good movie..!”

“Yeah,” agreed Senor Crane. “It was great...”

The reviews for ON THE OTHER HAND, DEATH have been almost uniformly positive; some, as in the case of the Los Angeles Times and New York’s EDGE magazine - “a fantastic noir masterpiece” (!!) - are positively glowing. But I’m not too proud to admit that the effect of these laurels pales in comparison to what I felt when my two young house guests gave me the proverbial “thumbs up”.

Hearing those words again - “Say, Uncle...” - spoken not with undisguised rage but rather admiration and love, I could feel the teenager I carry around inside my deepest heart pull his face away from that long ago wall, brush himself off, and for the first time in more years than I’d care to recount, get on with things...

It’s funny about memories; good or bad, they can sometimes suck the life right out of you. But if you’re lucky, it only takes a couple of soggy teenagers to show you that the past is nothing more than a Chupacabra - a make-believe monster, scary in the dark perhaps, but only really dangerous if you’re a goat.