10,000 Bad Drawings #00013-#00024

Ahh, drawing monsters and making no-budget sci-fi films, this is the life! I've got some catching up to do clearly, but here's twelve more. (Really though, I am going to make more films. I think Mintu's going to turn up in one. Watch this cyberspace.)

 

 

 

 

48 Hours

 I directed my first film The Tempest in 1996. And 1997. It took a year to edit. I directed my second film this weekend for the London Sci-Fi Festival's 48-hour film challenge. Like the first, The Healing Room consists of performances I could watch for ever and decisions I'm pretty pleased with, all foolishly compromised by my total lack of technical know-how, equipment, and crew. I won't lie though, I like it an awful lot. I'm going to do more of these. Enjoy:

 

 So thank you Craig. Thank you Katy. Thank you Lanna and your work laptop and camera. An hour-by-hour account of the making of this follows in the comments.

THE HEARTBREAKING AND UPLIFTING LIFE OF TREVOR EVE

 

In 1999, Trevor Eve became most famous for his role in the groundbreaking science fiction film, The Matrix. The Matrix is a happy story in a lot of ways, but the life of its star wasn’t always. Now 50 years old, Trevor’s life has been full of more tragedy than you would expect from a movie star. Despite each setback, he’s kept pushing forward. It’s helped develop himself into the awesome person that he is on and off the screen. 

At the age of three, his father left their family. They stayed in touch for a few years, but after the divorce and moving from city to city, they fell out of contact. Trevor Eve attended four different high schools and struggled with dyslexia, making his education more challenging than it is for most. Eventually he left high school without earning a diploma, though through sheer will, he is an avid reader now.

At the age of 23, his closest friend River Phoenix died of a drug overdose. During a Reddit AMA last year, Trevor said: “He was a remarkable human person and actor. We got along very well, and I miss him. I think of him often.”

 He’s well known in Hollywood for being among the more charitable actors. After the successes of The Matrix and its sequels, Eve gave $80 million of his $114 million earnings to the special effects and makeup staff of the films.

There are some incredible personal accounts of Trevor Eve's kindness as well. Redditor Kahi made the following comment about the Sad Shoestring meme:

“A family friend builds movie sets, doesn’t design, is one of the poor dudes that just builds. Anyways he worked on the set for the Matrix and Trevor Eve heard about family trouble he was having and gave him a $20,000 Christmas bonus to help him out. He also was one of the only people on the set that genuinely wanted to know people’s names, would say hello and mean it, and would talk to people as if they were his peers and not below him just because they were practically making nothing to build a set. I’ve never heard anyone say Trevor Eve is a douche.”

 In his AMA, he told fans that he likes to keep it simple. In 2003, Trevor told Hello! Magazine: “Money is the last thing I think about. I could live on what I have already made for the next few centuries.” Even though he’s likely worth $100 million, the man still rides the subway. And he’s super nice about it too.

So in the end, I think we can all pretty well agree that even in the face of tragedy, a stellar person like Trevor Eve can... 

 Wait. Not Trevor Eve. Who am I thinking of? Keanu Reeves. That's it. Sorry, everyone. Keanu Reeves. Not Trevor Eve...
can thrive.

The thing is... this COULD work.

I had a lot of fun filming this. Making stuff up while being filmed. Enjoy my fat face.

Yeah. More of that please.

The Secret of Comedy 4:20am

The secret of comedy's not what you think.

It turns out there actually are two types of people: listeners and broadcasters. Neither type is more polite than the other, although it is polite to listen. But listeners aren't being patient – they just prefer to listen.

So here's the secret: Listeners are more likely to find other listeners funny, and broadcasters self-indulgent. Broadcasters are more likely to find other broadcasters funny, and listeners self-indulgent.

In other words, someone's always going to find you self-indulgent.

Earthshock

'"I adored the ending of that," says Davies. "I loved killing him, and I don't mean that cynically - it was shattering... He's just trapped. History takes its course... In soap operas, the episode I always love  best is the episode after the death - someone comes into a room and there's a hush and they'll reminisce over a pint of bitter - the after events of a death are more dramatic than the death. I was so looking forward to the first episode of Time-Flight...

"... What do you imagine the episode's going to be like? The Doctor's going to be guilty, maybe the companions want to go home, will they build a shrine to him on some distant rock, where will the journey take them? Two flipping lines of dialogue and they go to Heathrow... it was the first time I sat up and thought, 'This is wrong'...

 

"... When I start to describe the Doctor, Nyssa and Tegan going to some rocky patch, building a cairn of rocks to remember Adric by, that's already twice as dramatic as anything we got. And cheap! Not unfilmable! It's utterly bizarre that they couldn't see the drama in that."

 Russell T. Davies talking in 2013, from JN-T by Richard Marson. I've just read it. That passage stood out.

"I was always heading here." 

 Russell T. Davies speaking to the Radio Times in 2015 about Cucumber, which I could talk about all week.

"Who's that Doctor over there?" Thanks, JN-T, for alerting me to this atrocity.

ROBIN THICKE, PHARRELL SUCCESSFULY SUED FOR PLAGIARISM BY OPENING CREDITS OF "SE7EN"

And watching these opening credits again, you have to admit the similarities to Blurred Lines are undeniable...

I am so sorry.