Topic: Makin' Movies
On the road
On my way to Portland, OR to see "Secret Identity Crisis" screened in a program at the Portland Gay & Lesbian Film Festival tomorrow night.
I'm flying out of San Jose so I can be in the area for a company dinner with a Japanese colleague when I return on Monday.
I'm running a little later than I want. Since I want to leave the car at the office garage, I have to leave time to catch the free shuttle that goes to the airport from near the office. As I park, I'm debating abandoning this plan and parking at the airport proper. Just then I see someone from our Marketing department enter the garage. I instantly volunteer him to drive me to the airport. Fortunately, he agrees—after all, the airport is literally walking distance from our office.
In the air
It's a small plane. For a moment I'm worried that I'll get stuck next to the man who clearly will overflow the meager seat width, but I luck out. I really luck out. I end up next to a very friendly fellow from Monterey and we chat the whole way. From the way he doesn't move his leg away when it touches mine, and the fact that I don't move mine, it's pretty obvious we're both batting for the same team. When I misspeak my age as 42, before I can correct it to 43 he chimes about the "ultimate answer" (if you don't get it, keep moving). I think I'm in love! Ok, back to earth (heh heh). We swap phone numbers and email addresses. Maybe I'll get a date out of this.
A pleasant walk
In Portland, after a filling lunch at an Italian restaurant and a visit to Powell's Books, we end up back at Scott's place and he shows me the Solar-Man image that NEO f/x created for a handout he plans to print. I hate the image, as I think Photoshopped photos processed to make them look drawn are uniformly hideous. So, instead of hanging out and visiting, here I am at Scott's kitchen table drawing a comic book version of the same pose as the Photo...but, somehow, Solar-Man ends up a lot buffer than his cinematic counterpart. Hmmm... oh, of course. The camera adds 20 lbs. That must be it! Sure! (Click here to see the image.)
Anyway, it's a gay audience, and it is a guy in tights, so he gets lots of muscles, killer abs, and, er, a generous package. I resist the obvious temptation to pull a Joel Schumacher by adding solar-nipples to the suit. This leaves just one outstanding question... does Solar-Man dress left or right?
Left, I decide.
Now, as to if he's Jewish...
As I finish inking, Scott says we should have our villain on the cover somewhere, and suggests his face in the "company imprint" box in the upper left. I don't really want to spend a lot of time drawing another caricature, so I grab a printout of a screen grab and trace over it with Sharpies. I flip the result over, where only the black lines bleed through the paper, and clean that up. It's a cheat, but it's fast.
The images are scanned and coloring in Photoshop begins, but we stop to actually go do something other than work.
Cinema and Cocktails
We meet Scott's friend Dean, who also acted as our A.D. on "SIC", and attend one of the features of the festival. This is the theater where our film will be screened. The showing we attend is pretty full, but it's a Saturday night. The film is Shelter. It's one of those films where boy meets perfect boy with no (apparent) flaws and everything works out so perfectly in the end. Sweet but bordering on unbelievable. The pace is too languid in the first act, and I feel the older sister character is written as a plot device more than as a believeable human being, but it's not a bad film, even if I saw the ending coming by the third reel.
Dean leaves us after the show, and we attend the Closing Night Gala at a martini bar called CRUSH. Yes, the festival ends tomorrow, but they decided to celebrate the conclusion rather prematurely. Anyway, here I get a nice compliment on my beard and my new look, and I flirt with a guy, but mostly Scott and I talk about projects we'd like to do.
And now... sleep!
