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Dog Days is headed to three festivals over the next two weeks back here in Wisconsin!

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Dog Days will be screening in Tucson, AZ @ the Loft Film Fest!

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DOG DAYS @ the 2015 EL DORADO FILM FESTIVAL

Last Thursday Dog Days screened at the 2015 El Dorado Film Festival in El Dorado, Arkansas.  I was really bummed I wasn’t able to make it, as I was still finishing production on “Speaking in Tongues.”

Next up is the Orlando Film Festival in Florida and the Driftless Film Festival back home in Wisconsin!

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Photos from “Speaking in Tongues”

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Leg one of production has wrapped on my first feature, Speaking in Tongues.  Shot for three weeks straight in a hot and sweaty Chicago.  Now we wait for it to snow...

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Dog Days has been accepted to the 2015 Orlando Film Festival!

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Dog Days gets 4/5 stars from Hannah Giles of the London Film Review: "On the surface, Dog Days is a sleepy tale of teenagers with too much time on their hands heading off on an adventure to rescue the family pet. However, this simplicity belies a carefully structured and layered tale of two bored young men transitioning to adulthood who want to break away, but who are also reluctant to let go of their waning childhoods."

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"Tongues" will be screened at the 2014 Edinburgh IFF!

TONGUES, my 5th term project at the London Film School, will be screened at the 2014 Edinburgh International Film Festival the last week in June as part of a showcase of student shorts.

http://news.lfs.org.uk/2014/05/lfs-films-selected-as-part-of-edinburgh.html

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Breaking Bad: Overrated?? [part 1]

Okay, so ever since the finale of Breaking Bad and I'm a little bored I google "Breaking Bad" and "overrated" to see if anyone on this goddamn planet will voice my opinion, or if I really am just crazy for not getting swept up in the "greatest TV show of all time."

There's been a few articles in this extreme minority of mine written over the show's run, but nothing since the finale, now that we have the whole picture.  The best, by far, is the A.V. Club's take on the show - which simply claims that the show isn't as nuanced or complex as people make it out to be - but look to the comments and you'd think John Lennon was saying he was bigger than Jesus again. 

So I get it.  I know it sucks to just go taking dumps on things, and it sucks to read about how your favorite show isn't the bestest of all time, but goddammit, I feel like we've all been a bunch of teenagers going on and on about the literary delights of Twilight and we just need pop culture's English teacher to sit down with us with a knowing smile and ask us all just why we like Twilight so much - while slipping East of Eden into our backpacks and encouraging us to keep reading, keep thinking, keep watching.

I'm disappointed because I want a better, more concise writer than me to tackle this, I want to read a more intelligent mind parsing through this stuff, but all I got is me, a few hours free this Monday morning so I figure I'll try to get this stuff out as clear as I can, Doctor.

1. BREAKING BAD = SOAP OPERA

First, let's just clear up what Breaking Bad is.  It's a melodramatic, white middle-class soap opera family drama crossed with a sexy, great action film.  

Is that bad?  No!  It just means this is the fuel in the tank.  People watch Breaking Bad because "they're addicted" or "they don't know what's going to happen next."  I binge-watched for heads on turtles, Skylar cheating on Walt, and for Walt's Wyle E. Coyote style plans.  You really didn't know what was going to happen next, and this makes the show compelling.  This is what makes the show good.

But it does not make the show a penetrating social drama or morality tale that has anything complex or interesting to say about human nature, American society, or even the show's main topic, drug trafficking.

2. Mr. Chips to Scarface

Walt's "descent" is the first thing any reviewer seems unable to get past, as if the notion of watching a good man go evil hasn't been done in film (The Godfather, Scarface, Star Wars) or TV (our current crop of popular TV shows is nothing but antiheroes) or anything before (Madame Bovary, Crime and Punishment, Julius Caesar).  The show's best move is that it stretches it out over 5 seasons, but this does not make it, as 99% of the internet or your friends may tell you "genius."

In fact, it's one of the easiest stories to tell - guy goes from Point A to Point B.  It's as simple as narrative gravity.  The delight of the show then is waiting for moments where Walter White cracks and we begin to see his new, emerging, terrifying alter ego.  But it's not like that's hard or difficult to accomplish, and the show makes a few clunky decisions along the way.

Par example, everybody's favorite example of a "no turning back" point for Walt is the end of season 2, where Walt coincidentally arrives at Jesse's the moment his girlfriend ODs on heroin.  Walt could call the police, could roll her to her side, do something - but he just watches, horrified, until she dies.  This sets into a motion an absurd chain of events that the show has been teasing for two seasons that ultimately has nothing to do with Walt or this little event, but the writers really, really want it to.

The first problem is with this little situation - if the writers' intention (and it is) is for us to watch Walt make a "bad" decision with terrible, unknowable consequences, then it should've been a much more defined decision.  Instead, Walt's just paralyzed, unsure of what he's just walked into, and although for selfish reasons he'd probably prefer the girl gone I don't think we've reached Heisenberg levels of manipulation yet.  He doesn't even necessarily know she's ODing at first - he's just walked in to find a girl throwing up.  He can't call the police for a million reasons, and he's not sure how Jesse will react if he finds him there.  So he just does nothing - not sure of what to do.

This would be fine - a very nuanced moment, actually, where Walt accidentally allows a death, something he'll have to come to terms with and will ultimately inch him further towards Heisenbergdom, but the writers clearly want it to be much more than this, ending the season with an absurd dramatic flourish that sounds like something an undergraduate writing student would come up with - the girl's death leads to her depressed and grieving father (an air traffic controller!) to rather purposefully (or just negligently) collide two commercial planes over Albuquerque (an event, it should be added, that is relatively forgotten about after a few episodes.)

I guess this is supposed to be a gesture towards the idea of how interconnected our lives are, the ripples our decisions can have that unintentionally affect other people (something The Wire is 400x better at showing realistically and plausibly).  Or, as Vince Gilligan puts it "It's a butterfly effect. All these gears have been turning, this particular outcome was stuff Walt put into motion a long time ago by choosing to cook crystal meth."

Not exactly subtle symbolism there, and a bit of a frustrating moment after we've spent two seasons being teased with body bags and charred teddy bears floating around Walt's pool.

Now The Wire is a show all about connections, and the way characters' decisions affect others - but the effects are much more subtle and nuanced.  When Kima is shot halfway through season 1 McNulty blames himself for pushing the case far enough that she was hurt - a similar, Gilligan line of thinking that connects all the story elements to one person's decisions - but is quickly cut down for thinking that way.  Life's much more complex than that, and it's narcissistic and pointless to think it all goes back to one person - and ultimately, the same is true for Walter White.  The real person at fault in the airline incident is the grieving father.  For Walt or anybody else to think otherwise would be a little…weird.  I like to think Albuquerque is still chugging forward despite one science teacher's decisions to break bad. (And maybe this is the ultimate blow to Walt's ego: life will go on without him, the fears of every dying person.)

But maybe this has more to do with the show's failings as a "morality tale" overall.  We feel the writer's presence in this Event as a judgment from above - literally, from the writers' room.  They don't think Walt's doing good stuff, so they invent a sign from above that confirms this.  Real life is much more complex, and while bad, immoral decisions can have ripples of shitty consequences, there's not really a Writer's Room in the sky keeping us accountable...

…Or is there?  Because I think Breaking Bad ultimately thinks so, which is why some of Walt's journey from "Mr. Chips to Scarface" is so silly.  But I'll talk more about that next time on...

BREAKING BAD IS OVERRATED????

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FARGO the TV show is a big stinking pile of shit

Okay, I'm coming onto this real strong right now, don't you know, I've barely watched 15 minutes of the show (my roommate has it on) and I'm even cooking during it - but I already hate it.

I hate it, I hate it, I hate it.

How do I hate thee?  Let me count the ways.  Wait, no, I won't, I'm not going to waste my time.

It's a big, stinking, pile of shit.

Oh jeez.

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sperm egg you 1

Before you were You you are fluuuuuuuung through stars and space, through wormholes and time rifts, through the collection of all matter and antimatter and dark energy that isn’t you and thrown into a vessel, a ship, a body that is you, now formed, like the Earth, sun, stars, nebula clouds, suddenly in possession of an identity as a whole - a temporary one at that, as are all wholes.  Even atoms can’t help flirting with each other and whoring out their electrons.  

(Ninety-five percent of the solar system’s mass is contained in the sun - can you imagine the brothers, sisters, cousins, birds, fish, insects, mountains, hills, lakes, buses, cars, roads, planes, trains and automobiles that could make?  Not that it’s anything useful like lead or coal or iron in the sun, it’s too hot, it’s a big useless (useless?) ball of hydrogen and helium and a sliver of the good/diverse stuff - that combined in just the right way makes ballpoint pens, hot air balloons, and shampoo.)

(But what’s really the difference between hydrogen and carbon except a difference of electrons?  Can identity be transmuted with the simple addition or subtraction of a new element as small as an electron?  Pulling something else into orbit, do we change?  Would the earth be any different if we had six moons?  Would I be me if I wore two pairs of pants instead of one?)

Anyways before you were You you take this really trippy cosmic trip during which you understand everything and nothing, except that’s not true because you’re not you and you’re not on a trip, you’re consciousness isn’t floating around the universe in some unexplored region looking for home among a cold, lifeless galaxy until you happen on earth, that’s absurd, that’s preposterous - just because we can’t trace the origins of you, or that indefinable thing that makes you you, this collection of atoms (constantly changing atoms, would a rose of any other composition still be a rose?  just in language it quickly becomes a sore) it’s absurd to believe that it’s any traceable or quantifiable or spiritual, just the result of an expression of complex chemistry.  A rock falls into a pond and creates ripples: this is not a personality, it is an event.  Atoms smashing into atoms, producing an effect.  A behavior.  There is not motive behind it, or intelligence, so we don’t think much of it, it’s just a dumb rock splashing into a dumb pond.  If a tree falls in a forest, and no one is there to observe, does it still make a sound

....

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Are People ‘Born Gay’? Who Gives a Shit?

It’s OK to be gay because I say so. Fuck science. If you want to bump uglies tonight with someone who has the same set of genitals as you, go for it. Seriously, this is on me, folks—as one of Britain’s leading slut bags, I now pronounce you free to go gay. Or not. Whatever. I really couldn’t give a shit.

You may’ve read some stories recently about researchers actually finding this mythical and vitally important “gay gene.” Others say they might now be able to tell if someone is gay by their earwax. A lot of this research isn’t peer reviewed, but who cares about dreary old details like that? And who cares that despite years of searching, scientists don’t even know which genes control height?

These quests to find the mythical “gay gene” have proven to be pretty controversial, to the point that the scientists involved have come out and defended their efforts. Qazi Rahman, a psychologist at King’s College London, recently insisted to the Guardian: “We need to do ‘gene finding’ studies… to have a better idea where potential genes for sexual orientation may lie.” Why? Why do we need to know? There are other areas of human sexuality that might be worth investigating. Is there, for example, a rapist gene? A pedophile gene? That knowledge could be useful. But what’s the point of finding a gay gene? So homophobic moms-and-dads-to-be can abort gay fetuses? If that’s not the reason, what is?

Continue

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Well internet, here's my first proper short film I've directed (as part of an exercise at the London Film School.)  It's about sex and God.  And masturbation.  And speaking in tongues.  Enjoy!

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My short film "Tongues" just got featured on the Friendly Atheist's blog!

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Second clip from my grad film for LFS, "Dog Days."  Message me if you're up for seeing a rough cut and are willing to give me feedback!

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11 times Bill Nye threw it DOWN for science.

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Well I know what I'm doing this fall.