Mikey Goes to Hollywood

The Watermelon Listed at Celebrity Video

2009-05-24T16:04:00.000-07:00

The Watermelon is listed at Celebrity Video now, see here, y'all...

It will also be available to rent on Netflix and @ Blockbuster...but is that better than owning your very own copy?

Odd...summer seems to be Watermelon time...the screenplay was optioned summer 2006, shot summer 2007, first shown summer 2008 at San Diego Film Festival, and now hits the streets summer 2009...a three year process, typical story of any indie (and studio) film.

Pre-Summer Updates

2009-05-24T08:22:00.001-07:00

Things been a bit quiet on the Hollywood front, other than the documentary for Cannes Short Film Corner, working on revisions for How to Win a Diamond Ring, trying to finish pilot scripts for The Interior and Sanchez & Kelly, gearing up for TV show pitch time over the coming five months, and trying to wrap a zillion things up in the book publishing biz.

Major projects: big novel, Raymond Carver biography, revise Gordon Lish book, put First Person Sociology anthology together, finish Vollmann bibliography.

The stage version to Stations is being produced this summer at Compass Theater in San Diego, opens July 13. Have not gone to any rehearsals yet. The future of the film version still lingers...

A Critique of Star Trek

2009-05-24T03:02:00.000-07:00

My critical book on star Trek is now out, get it here at Amazon or here at MobiPocket.

Watermelon Update

2009-04-20T07:35:00.001-07:00

Did writer's audio commentary on The Watermelon two weeks ago.

It will be out on DVD and BluRay July 4 from Celebrity Video.

Buy or rent from Blockbuster, Netflix, Amazon, etc. Might be in those Redbox DVD kiosks too.

Short documentary update

2009-04-20T07:33:00.001-07:00

Editing "Life in Zona Norte" right now, for its Cannes screening.

I have kept a blog about the process here.

A sneak peak can be viewed here at YouTube.

Short Doc Gets Green

2009-03-09T20:31:00.000-07:00

I have been given the green light/micro grant to shoot a short documentary film for Real Ideas Studios for a program of international short docs that will be screened at Cannes Film Festival this May.

The doc will be about lives in Tijuana's zona norte -- the street vendors, the street walkers, the children playing in the gutter...

Film Life Updates

2009-02-28T20:41:00.000-08:00

The Watermelon has a distribution deal on the table...we are gonna go for it, it seems, keeping theatrical and foreign rights while distrib. will get it on Netflix, with Blockbuster, pay per views, chain stores etc. Will this help pay off investors and deferred pay? One can hope a dent will be made -- I dream of the day I may actually get my deferred script fee and producer's salary.

Two projects have had their options re-newed last week. Much needed $$$. Will they ever get made? Who knows. Hopefully.

My screenplay The Gold Tooth is in competition at the Beverly Hills Film Festival. This is, what, my fourth year there? The first one, 2006, Liv Kellgren was so excited about attending as we had two scripts in competition, and she had never come this close to the fabled Hollywood Dream, but of course she fucked that up for herself like she does everything (see first post of this blog) and missed out on that in her life, the Hollywood dreamer who had Hollywood denied. Deservedly so.

Looks like I may get this microgrant to make a short documentary in Tijuana, that will screen at Cannes with a few others. Will know for sure in a week or two but my phone talk with the project mentor went well. I'm keen on showing something at Cannes this year.

Looks like Fifty Bucks may be dead in the fray and its rights tied up till November. I think Sean is gonna fuck me out of the Chinese-set version for Amblin, like I knew he would. Ya just can;'t trust anyone in H'wood.

Trying to finish pilots The Interior and Sanchez & Kelly for pitching season this summer. Do wanna get The Interior into Slamdance's TV thing. I think it could do as well as Blogger did and make final cut.

Dunno if my short "Valerie" will be shot. Was supposed to last Jan. -- I go thru this a lot with sorts: these people get all hyped on shooting my stuff, using them as calling cards and festival entries, all this big talk, and then they bail or vanish. Ya just got deal with all the "talkers" in H'wood who love to gab about what they're gonna do and they never do shhhyat.

"So it goes." -- Kurt Vonnegut

Dispatch from Park City:

2009-01-23T23:44:00.000-08:00

Cold & snowy. Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr....

Options and Scripts Update

2008-12-30T13:32:00.000-08:00

The option on Wild Turkey fell through, but there is another interested party...a bit miffed because we had a verbal deal set in place and the money guy backed out last minute.

Fifty Bucks is optioned,though (same money guy), but one of the guys involved, who will act in it, is giving a go at the rewrites himself. Whatever. he is WGA, though, and has some film credits, including a Ray Liotta film. No one has ever been able to match my cadence and dialogue when trying to work inside one of my scripts. They can't. A few have tried and failed; no one has succeeded. But everyone in Hollywood wants to "play writer" because if it "looks" easy, they think it's "easy."

The money guy asked me about writing some short scripts for what will be Grindhouse Online. We came up with a verbal deal but he has yet to pay me, so I have done no work yet on the script he asked me to revise or revising the other one of mine, "The Crimes of Joy," that he seems to want. (A short segment of that script appears asa TV show that Achilles Pumpkinseed watches in The Watermelon, shot in cool noirish black and white.)

Trying to wrap new screenplay, North Hollywood, before 2009 rings in, so I can "feel" like I finished one more screenplay for 2008.

Doing a short script adapt of Carver's story, "Gazebo," for myself.

Still working on pilot script of Sanchez & Kelly.

Didn't make final cut at Sundance Screenwriting Labs for The Gold Tooth.

Have submitted Stations with my application to Film Independent's Director's Lab.

The Watermelon didn't make it in Slamdance or Palm Springs Film Fest -- which was a long shot anyway. It is currently at Santa Barbara, Tribeca, Beverly Hills, Newport Beach, Portland, Los Angeles, and Malibu. An entertainment lawyer has agreed to rep us and we got high scores at a certain sales rep group who may offer to take it on once the top guy takes a look-see.

Options

2008-11-19T21:41:00.000-08:00

My script, Fifty Bucks, and novel, Wild Turkey, are being optioned...

Updates

2008-11-01T05:23:00.000-07:00

Ah, time to update on the film biz, the book biz, the life biz...

Went on my second Helm Fellowship to the Lilly at Indiana Univ. two weeks ago, this time to examine all the Vollmann art object books they have there, for an article, for an appendix in the forthcoming Vollmann crit book, and for an annotated bibliography that I am doing for Scarecrow Press (probably out in 2010). His book art objects are amazing, as always, viz:

As for The Watermelon, after its first screening at the SD Film Fest, we have it out at half a dozen other fests and talking with sales agents and planning other strategies, such as "platforming" in a city outside L.A. -- more on that later.

Am waiting to hear from Sundance Screenwritings Labs. I'm on the short list with my adapt of Frank Norris' McTEAGUE, called THE GOLD TOOTH. Should hear in December. I also applied, at the insistence of someone, to the Director's lab at Film Independent with STATIONS.

Looks like I will adapt Ronald Malfi's novel, PASSENGER (Delirium Books, 2008) into a screenplay. He has been bugging me about it. I looked it over today and yeah, it'd make a hot movie -- and since he's sold two projects to Paramount and has good Tinsel Town connections, why not?

There is a play and another screenoplay 'd like to wrap up by 2008's end, but I also have the Lish book, the Star Trek crit book, the crifiction book, and the Carver's women book to also wrap up...shit.

Duck me.

The Bukowski/Carver book is out from Borgo Press.

As is The Yacht People:

This one was supposed to have been out last March in the UK by Neon Books, but the imprnt was cancelled by the parent publisher, Orion Publishing. They paid me. Wildside Press now has it out.

What else? Black Lawrence Press accepted my collection of literary stories, Pictures of Houses with Water Damage, see their press release.

My experimental post-postmodern (auto)ethnography, Zona Norte, is out from Cambridge Scholars, and is actually selling for an academic book
(I'm sure the cover helps).

So...next is hardcore Zombie Girls, a novel that is way overdue, ridiculously overdue, so I have decided to complete it this month as my NaNoWrMo Project, while at the same time wrapping up the Gordon Lish book, and finishing a big project for Ninthlink.

Do I need to sleep for the next two months? Nah.

Cover to Vollmann Critical Book

2008-10-19T03:33:00.001-07:00

At the publisher: here

At Amazon

Zona Norte Cover

2008-10-06T12:17:00.000-07:00

DVD Cover for The Watermelon

2008-10-06T12:14:00.000-07:00

The Watermelon

2008-09-04T15:01:00.001-07:00

My movie's page @ the SDFF:

http://sdff.bside.com/2008/films/thewatermelon_sdff2008

The Audacity of Democracy

2008-08-25T03:28:00.000-07:00

So LightSong Films has been hired to make a documentary about some funny and possible illegal dealings in the Obama Campaign and the people funding (pulling the strings). The doc is produced by PUMA (Party Unity My Ass) and called The Audacity of Democracy. Right now, Brad and Lori are in Denver for the DNC.

It’s been weird for them…much traveling…here is a trailer of some of what they have shot.

But there are those, it seems, who do not want this doc made…

Brad talks about it on his blog – going from JFK Airport to O’Hare in Chicago, he was pulled aside by the TSA and searched and questioned. That’s no big deal, the same happened to me in March at the Indianapolis Airport – a 50ish tall TSA dude ZOOMED HIS SITES on me the second I walked in, I heard him say to another TSA guy, pointing at me, “He is a referral.” They searched all through my stuff (tho did not catch I had Tramadol in an aspirin bottle) and the tall guy asked me rapid-fire questions, the kind meant to trip you up, which does not work on me…

Anyway, Brad then says two rigid Air Marshall types sat on either side of him, not moving, not saying a word…coincidence, maybe…

But he found that both his XL2 cameras had been stolen. How does this happen in a post-911 Orange Alert era…if someone can WALK OUT with two big cameras, someone could WALK IN with a bomb, eh…unless of course the people doing security do the theft….so it was either the baggage handlers for Jet Blue or the PSA guys…the Chicago cops told Brad they felt it was the PSA, and noted that Chicago politicos are corrupt, and there are many in Chicago who have vested interested in Obama…

PUMA bought him a replacement and they are trying to get Jet Blue to pay for the loss. I guess there was no insurance and Jet Blue claims they cannot be held responsible for a political black ops theft…still, I think the threat of having Homeland come down hard on their security should get them to pony up.

Brad says in his blog he did get threats…

Then Lori says she came home and it looked like the door lock had been messed with, an d missing from the apartment was a notebook that had all her contacts, info, schedules, etc., for who to interview and meet…

This is not hard to believe. PUMA has their lines tapped, this doc has been in the news from The Wall Street Journal to FOX, so Obama’s people, whoever they really are (I feel Obama is actually fronted by the Republicans to keep Hilary off the ticket) are keeping tabs on this doc, and have done their intimidating…

I just hope they are okay in Denver and don’t get tossed in those mass jails or get beaten up…this is all I need now that The Watermelon is getting its wings…then again, this sort of newsworthy matters could help the film in great ways… “Producer and Director of Hemmingson Indie Film Disappear at DNC, Without a Trace.”

Kidding.

Well, this is the world we live in….we have free speech still, but they won’t make it easy for us to express it.

Still Working on Screenplay…

2008-08-25T03:10:00.001-07:00

…for Sundance Screenwriting Labs. I got an extension to Sept. 1. I have been having some blocks and just tinkering with little things, but I have to get my ass in gear and wrap it up this week…as it is an adaptation, I KNOW what is going to happen….

San Diego Film Festival

2008-08-19T20:46:00.000-07:00

Just got official word that THE WATERMELON, has been selected for the San Diego Film Festival, Sept. 25-28, two screenings at the Gaslamp AMC 15.

Don't know dates yet, which will be posted on the site c. Sept.
1--

www. sdff. org

Since I began this blog with the germination of the script and chronicled its journey to production, I now start the next phase -- the festival circuit run.

Adapting McTeague

2008-08-09T03:09:00.000-07:00

For the second time, I have made finalist round for the Sundance Screenwriting Lab, this time with my adaptation of Frank Harris 1897 novel, McTeague. The only film version is a cool 1924 Erich von Stroheim silent flick, Greed, which ran nearly 10 hours long. Storheim cut it down to 4, then MGM cut it down to an hour and a half and it flopped; the cut film was accidently put in the incinerator by a janitor and is lost forever. It was the highest budgeted film at the time, at half a million, unheard of in the silent film biz. I always wondered why no one re-did it -- I am sure there are some adaptations on development shelves, but the book is public domain so I can do my own.

I am having fun adapting someone else's work, let alone a classic novel, what Larry McCaffery calls the darkest, best dentist novel ever written. I am calling it MAC. I was calling it TEETH until I saw the recent indie, TEETH.

Some recent published stuff --

My cover story at the Reader on Tijuana violence --

http://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2008/aug/06/greetings-from-tijuana/

A review-essay of Eric Kohn's PURSUING HOLLYWOOD --

http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/995

My novelette, "Long Island Iced Tea," has finally appeared in issue #35 of HARBOILED MAGAZINE and a prose poem, "Nothing," in Issue #33 of ART MAG.

Two short essays on Raymond Carver stories accepted in THE EXPLICATOR.

Thinking of doing my second Helm Felloship at India U's Lilly Library next month -- this time on the William Vollmann art books they have archived there, which I will write an essay on and include in my Vollmann bibliography.

SDFF

2008-06-02T22:25:00.001-07:00

Talked LightSong Films into letting me submit The Watermelon to the San Diego Film Festival. Their PR firm also handles the Reader's website.

The movie is ALMOST finished with post, half the original score is done and placed in, and the VO needs to be re-done, some finessing here and there, but after a year, it's time to finish this thing and get it out and sell it...I know it takes about a year for movie's to be in post, but really...it's time to get this out in public and determine if it is any good or not. I am too biased and close to it to gaze on it objectively. I want to watch an audience's response.

New Book out -- My 44th!

2008-05-31T06:03:00.000-07:00

My new novel, In the Background is a Walled City or, How Santa Claus and I Saved the World is now available from The Borgo Press --

Order here --

http://www.wildsidebooks.com/In-the-Background-Is-a-Walled-City_p_316-2349.html

or @ Amazon.com --

http://www.amazon.com/Background-Walled-City-Michael-Hemmingson/dp/1434402428/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1212239702&sr=8-1

Beverly Hills Fllm Festival - A Blogger's Gaze and Memory

2008-04-13T16:45:00.000-07:00

I arrived to the fest tired, half-asleep, straight from Mexico – who else but yours truly can go from a Tijuana slum to the heart of the heart of Beverly Hills within 4 hours?

This is the third year I have gone to BHFF, with a screenplay “in competition” for the screenwriting award. This year it is for Antarctica, set in the South Pole. I wrote it based on a story idea by my friend Will Beinbrink (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1080718/), who is also the lead male actor in my film The Watermelon. The script was short-listed for the Sloan Initiative at the Sundance Screen Lab, is submitted for the Sloan thing at the Hamptons Film Fest, and is in talks to be optioned with a certain entity/someone (more on that later as it does or does not develop).

In 2006 when I went to the BHFF, I had three scripts in the running, two co-authored by Liv Kellgren, the other The Watermelon. All have been optioned, one was made, none won the main award – so what does hat say abot subjectivity and judges? It says no one in Hollywood knows shit and cannot tell the difference between a good screenplay and a bad one.

I don’t know who won this year, yet, and I am not going to the awards ceremony @ $125 a plate; it all brings back bad memories. Two years ago, things really fell apart with Liv, badly, and at the last moment she not only failed to show up in Beverly Hlls, she attempted to cancel our dinner reservations on her credit card. She was told there were no refunds. She did this solely to make my happy experience a bad one. Her act of malice cost her $250. I had intended to reimburse her – since she tried to cancel dinner hours before it happened, without informing, I decided fuck it, if she wanted to hurt, it would come out of her pocket.

There is a price to pay for betrayal, and Liv Kellgren has paid it ten-fold.

All of this coming from someone who, weeks before, said, “I feel like I am living in a dream” because many of the things she (we) had dreamt of were starting to come true – many meetings with producers and studios, scripts being finalists and winning here and here and there…it was closer than she ever got…

Then she turned her dream into a nightmare...and has a bogus money scheming biz with fake testimonials: www.ConsciousEnvironments.com.

And I am always reminded of that time when I go the BHFF.

Last night, I told someone about my other bad memories of Beverly Hills, when I lived there back when I was 24, with Sharon, and how that went south and I truly became “down and out in Beverly Hills.”

9 months there…another life…

Maybe I should avoid that part of L.A. – Beverly Hills truly is where dreams are born and die…

As for the festival, as every year, I saw many great short fllms. Of the features, the best was the doc on The Red Hot Chilli Peppers, A Dutch Connection.

Bio-Diesel Fuel Conspiracy

2008-04-13T16:14:00.000-07:00

A DIFFERENT GAZE~AT HISTORY

At the Beverly Hills Film Festival (www.beverlyhillsfilmfestival.com) I watched a screening of the documentary Fields of Fuel (http://www.fieldsoffuel.com/) that chronicles the history and facts about “bio-diesel” liquid as an alternative and future fuel. The narrator of the film has written a book about this subject:

http://www.amazon.com/Fryer-Fuel-Tank-Vegetable-Alternative/dp/0970722702/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1208126003&sr=8-1

Both book and film show how any diesel engine can run off treated vegetable-based oils (peanut, corn, soy, hemp) that do not emit harmful waste and are less costly than regular diesel fuel.

http://www.greasecar.com/

The documentary makes a radical claim that John D. Rockefeller was behind the drafting of the Volstead Act (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAvolstead.htm) – a.k.a “The Dry Law” of the18th Amendment that engaged Prohibition, the outlawing of alcohol in America that gave birth to a great deal of criminal activity.

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/troy/4399/

Fields of Fuel claims Rockefeller wanted the manufacturing of booze illegal to stump the making of ethanol (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel), which was the basis for bo diesel fuel. At the time, the diesel engine was in its infancy and was slowly gaining popularity in the public If diesel cars became the wave of the future, Rockefeller’s Standard Oil could have been ruined – why use petrol-based fuel from the ground when corn oil could do a better, cheaper job?

http://hemp-ethanol.blogspot.com/2008/01/part-two-history-of-hemp-fuels.html

Inventor Rudolf Diesel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Diesel) did die a mysterious death before his engines could become all the age:

“In the evening of 29 September, 1913, Diesel took a ship (SS Dresden) to cross the English Channel from Antwerp, Belgium, to Harwich, England. He took dinner on board the ship and then retired to his cabin at about 10 p.m., leaving word for him to be called the next morning at 6:15 a.m. He could not be found the next morning. Ten days later, he was found dead in the water off the Dutch coast; after the recovery of his body, it was thrown back into water.”

Rockefeller did donate $350,000 to the Anti-Saloon League (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAprohibition.htm) …but did was he the puppet master of the Prohibition, and was it to deter the making of bio-diesel fuels?

If this is so, it casts new light on American history, and all those gangsters, booze runners, speakeasys, and the thousands of people killed during that era were nothing more than pawns to ensure the oil barons got rich off of gasoline sales.

From Bloomington to Tijuana to bevelry Hills...

2008-04-09T20:59:00.000-07:00

I recently returned from Bloomington. I did my thing for the Gordon Lish project early than I anticipated, and it was a good trip for research and studying the Midwestern lifestyle. The information I gathered is invaluable for my book.

http://www.routledge.com/books/Gordon-Lish-and-his-Influence-on-Twentieth-Century-American-Literature-isbn9780415991773

I came home and headed for Tijuana to work on a feature story on the violence down there, which will probbaly make an appendix for Norte Norte, which I am still working on rewrites to return to SDDU Press.

Today, my cover story of street kids appeared in the Reader. Worked 7 weeks on that one, had a hard time kidding street kids to talk to me. An expanded version of it will wind up being a chapter on my auto/ethnographic project on homelessnehttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.italic.gif
insert italic tagsss, Now I Know What Happened to Me.

Next, off to Beverly Hills Film Festival this weekend. Third year in a row -- maybe I'll win a troply this time. The screenplay I did with Will, Antacrtica, that was short listed for Sundance/Sloan Screenwriter's Lab. It's the one that this certain kind fellow is interetsed in being his directoral debut, but I am also thinking he may like Because better, when I finish it, which I hope to do this month. Either would be fine with me -- I mean, it's another movie.

Speaking of movies...Stations still has ts set backs but I am working on getting it shot by years's end, and Mommy vs. the Evil Bank Robbers is inching along in pre-production. The who wanted to do my short, "asa and Andi," vanished on me, no surprise -- looking back in this blog, he's the third producer/director to flake on me. I suppose one of these days an unflake will take it on.

Working on an artcle about shooting The Watermelon and the state on indie films in San Diego. Had some good talks with the people at the SD Film Commission and SD Film Festival.

Ah, The Watermelon. I tremble, waiting to hear the original score. After seeing it so many times with the drop in music, it may be akin to seeing a whole new movie -- which I hope it is, and I hope the music is damn good. It is time for that film to get out of post-prod. and start heading for the festivals and buyers. LightSong Films says they want this to change all our lives, and that would be nice -- why do we do this stuff, this art stuff, if not for changing our lives...

My first published novel changed my life. My first full length play production chnaged my life. Hollywood thus far has changed my life -- sometimes for the worst, sometimes for the best, a mixed-blessing as I knew it would be. I have met some great people, I have met some insane people; I have been happy and hurt; I have been disillusioned and felt like I was on the right track; I have been helped and I have been lied to.

Meanwhile, I would like to get back to writing a novel soon, after all these non-fiction projects.

Of which, I am doing a study of blogging for Hampton Press and just signed the contract with McFarland for Women in the Work of Raymond Carver. I am waiting to hear from Indiana Univ. Press about my proposed biography of Carver, and son Borgo Press will release my dirty realist monograph on Carver and Bukowski. I am all Carvered out.

L.A. and Bloomington, IN

2008-03-20T13:53:00.000-07:00

I'm pitching some TV show concepts to the producer to Baywatch tomorrow, have some imporant meets with important peeps, then I am off to Indiana Univ. to do my Helm Fellowship and research Lish's papers.

Oh, will be doing a feature for the Reader about the two year process of writing and filming The Watermelon.