If you’re in Chicago, Illinois you can now pick up a copy of “Hitler High: Pandora’s Bong, Some Short Stories and a Haiku or Two” at Quimby’s Bookstore! Get a copy before they sellout!
It even made their Instagram account, you can see my face on the cover peaking out there to the bottom right! I’ve loved Quimby’s since I was a teen and used to go there with my grandfather the few times I visited Chicago. It’s pretty cool that something I did is now being sold there.
The thing I’ve learned after years of trying to do long-term projects is that sometimes those projects change or need some adjustments to see them through to completion so:
Though I’ve enjoyed doing my zine on a regular three month basis I’m going to move the upcoming issue back until I feel the writing comes closer to what I want rather than try to keep to my deadline schedule.
The short film, “Blue Skies” that I’ve been trying to make will also have to be pushed back due to financial reasons beyond my control right now.
I’m going to start recording “Cutie Eyeballs” (the production group I work with) in the studio instead of DIY’ing it with my 8-track. My recordings of drums are good but not as good as a permanent studio could do and I’d really like the drums to stand out in the pop stuff we’re doing. Expect some of our first recordings to show up on the Internet in the beginning of winter.
I’ve closed my record lathe business except for a few “friend” clients and I’ve ended the recording section of Alta Fidelidad Productions. I was never able to charge enough to make money on the lathe cuts and I could never get a band to give me music to put out on the label. Both were super fun things to do but in the end each began to take too much time from other projects.
I have always made art and been fascinated by mass produced art, like Ai Weiwei and Andy Warhol. This summer I began to experiment with creating mass produced art pieces and will be coming out with my first line this winter which will be available through the upcoming Tripp Nasty webstore (I know I’ve been promising to open up one for years but this time it’ll happen.). I’ll post more information about this project as I work through it.
Also, I have five copies left of the third printing of my collected fiction zine, “Hitler High: Pandora’s Bong (the trailer) and Some Short Stories and a Haiku or Two”. If you’d like a copy write me at tommypython at yahoo dot com. They’re $3.00 shipped to anywhere in the USA, for outside the USA please write me so I can figure out mailing costs.
<End Update>
In 2013, I made my first film with my friend Matthew Mendull. It was a short advertisement for an appearance I was making at the Pehrspace in L.A. in February of that year. It took Matt and I two days to finish shooting it. One evening to gather a few friends together and do a brief scripted rip off of Revenge of the Nerds and an afternoon to walk around and grab musical montage shoots. When Matt had completed the editing I was amazed that I had made a film.
The bug had bit me and three months later Matt and I tried to make a trailer for Kevin John Wesley and I’s film idea, “Hitler High: Pandora’s Bong”. It was an ambitious affair compared to our first attempt. We made a graveyard set in Matt’s basement, filmed in multiple location throughout Denvver and Golden, hired Nate Hayden (creator of Cave Evil) to create some gory special effects, and dragged a group of 10 people around for two days.
And, in the end we didn’t end up with the film we had wanted. We made minor mistakes in our filming which left the narrative a bit muddled and our post-production process wasn’t too great so in the end, our “trailer” became a short Cinéma vérité style documentary of our attempt instead. (you can watch it here!)
And for some reason this failure to produce the desired end result left me wanting more so in the Fall of 2013 I began writing a short film. By the Spring of 2014 I had completed a 20 page script, convinced five of my friends to act in it, found a costume and makeup person and even found a local filmmaker (who had even made two feature length documentaries) to handle all of the cinematography and editing. Rehearsals were done for three weeks and filming was scheduled months in advance.
On the first day of shooting in the Summer of 2014, one of the main actors didn’t show up. We rescheduled a few weeks later but then our local filmmaker (the only one of us who owned a camera and knew how to edit film) suddenly enrolled in graduate school and that film was never completed. I was totally bummed and after all of that logistical work to get this thing together I was also extremely frustrated.
For three months I searched around for someone else with experience, good taste and a camera to no avail. A few weeks after that I was lamenting that I’d never be able to make a film again because I could never afford a camera that could produce screen worthy images when I discovered cheap HD camcorders on eBay. Both Matt and the other filmmaker I’d worked with had fancy cameras with costs way outside of my budget. I would never be able to invest in a DSLR or something better but I could afford an HD camcorder which wasn’t great but did produce something good enough.
In November 2014 I began writing a script. Using what I had learned over the last year I wrote a short one with minimal casting and production needs to try to achieve something that I could realistically shoot and edit myself. Then I found a trustworthy friend to act in it with me and over the course of the next 10 months we’d get together, rehearse and slowly film what scenes we could. Even then, I had to accept the fact that the end result would probably not match the vision in my head.
Even then, the filming didn’t work out as planned. People’s schedules never matched up with other people’s schedules, it rained on a night when we were to shoot under the moonlight, I accidentally forgot the microphones…..but, this time in the end I had enough good footage to edit down. This time, I would be able to finish a film.
On October 3 (the day before my 44th birthday) we finished filming and I began editing two days later. A day into, it I realized I needed more coverage for certain shots so I did more filming and then began editing again.
Even today, the night the film premieres, I’m still editing but more importantly, the film has turned out pretty darn good. It has its beginner’s mistakes but overall, it ended up way better than I had expected and in my head I’m already begun planning the next one.
Come down to Glob tonight at 9:00PM and see my first short film, “STONER WITCHES” starring Jim Compton, Colin Blount, Justin Loski and myself with directorial assistance provided by Amie Rau and Joel Spencer.
Really, I think you’re going to be amazed.
The graveyard set for Hitler High: Pandora’s Bong
