In March of last year, Los Angeles was blanketed with some kinda misogynist-seeming billboards in promotion of a movie called Forgetting Sarah Marshall. You can check out a post April Flores wrote on the topic for an in-depth analysis of the ad campaign, but the gist of it was finding humor in being insanely hateful about an ex. Not insanely hateful with wit, just insanely hateful. I often find hostile humor funny, but this was just stuff on the cleverness level of “you suck” and “my mommy thinks you suck too”. So, at any rate, I didn’t bother to see the movie.

This weekend, I was feeling a little under the weather and I get free On-Demand, so I thought without much optimism that I’d give a comedy a few minutes to draw me in. I turned on Forgetting Sarah Marshall, fully expecting to turn it off within less than five minutes. Go figure.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall is actually a really nice romantic comedy. The humor is done with great humanity and one of the most notable aspects of the movie is precisely that nobody is the villain. Kristen Bell might be the sadistic Elle on Heroes, but, as the character of Sarah Marshall, she plays the role in a fully humanized sympathetic way. Writer and leading man Jason Segal’s jilted Peter Bretter is precisely not the sort of guy who would be really horrible to an ex. Which makes the situation he finds himself in — at a resort where Sarah Marshall is hanging out with her new beau rocker Aldous Snow of Infant Sorrow, played by a hilarious Russell Brand — all the more humorous. Peter Bretter is very sympathetic and he is treated with kindness by front desk hospitality agent Rachel Jansen, played by a very beautiful Mila Kunis. I don’t want to include any spoilers, but the whole cast is amazing and everyone has just perfect comic timing. Maybe it is the writing. Maybe it is first time director Nicholas Stoller’s direction. Mostly, it seems like just a really nice alchemy of big talents coming together. Other notables are SNL’s Bill Hader and Liz Cackowski as the stepbrother Brian Bretter and his wife, Paul Rudd as a cute surfing instructor with limited short term memory, Jonah Hill as a waiter who is just a little too forward, and 30 Rock’s Jack McBrayer as a religious innocent who gets honeymoon coaching from Aldous Snow. Plus more fun cameos and a killer spoof of CSI, which Jason Segal actually also had a recurring role on.

Two more fun things about Forgetting Sarah Marshall to endear it to me: First off, as many of you probably know, SLC Punk is one of my favorite movies of all time and the part of Mike, the angry fighting sort of Positive Force punk in the movie, was played by Jason Segal. Secondly, there are muppets by the actual Jim Henson workshop in Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Vampire muppets.

Christian Bale tells us what attracted him to the project, despite the many previous movies. Plus a clip of the fine actor in action as John Connor receiving a special Resistance mission and a warning about Kyle Reese.

Last month, Blue Blood made a submissions site live for models and photographers and writer/photographers to submit to various Blue Blood projects, mostly BlueBlood.com and, to a lesser extent, BlueBlood.net. Blue Blood enjoys publishing a variety of body types, both male and female and in between. The most important thing for modeling for Blue Blood is that someone have that certain something, star quality, individuality, passion of personal expression to put in front of the lens. The original Blue Blood magazine in print featured exclusively interactive pictorials of people who were lovers in real life, who would be doing what they were doing, whether or not a camera was present. Non-feature photos in Blue Blood in print were generally related to specific entertainment news or how-to articles.

BlueBlood.com features pin-up and interactive erotica photo sets where all the images in a particular gallery will be of a person or couple, in one setting, in a series, which generally tells some sort of story. BlueBlood.net, of course, features articles and galleries about cool events, genre movies, goth-industrial music, punk nightclubs, interesting clothes, and similar fun stuff i.e. BlueBlood.net publishes photo galleries which are about a particular topic of interest. You would think that more photographers would shoot entertainment news, fashion, and music work than shoot nudes, but apparently that is not really the case. I’ve found that the most common question I get from interested photographers is what the galleries on BlueBlood.net should be about. Somehow, once the naked aspect is removed, many of them don’t know what the photos are about, other than that there is a photographer who happens to take pictures. I am baffled that there are people who consider themselves Photographers with a capital P and have no idea what their work is supposed to be saying.

I entirely understand, however, why many models are confused by the submission process and gunshy about asking questions. Running a site can be stressful and there are never enough hours in the day, but I’m genuinely kinda weirded out by how many site operators or model coordinators hate to answer questions from models. I’m always happy to answer anyone I might work with’s questions beforehand. It makes me ballistic when people try to go back on their word, once they have made an agreement, but, to me, that just means everything should be entirely clear from the beginning. The most common question I get from interested models, once they have read the Blue Blood Photo FAQ is almost the opposite of the most popular photographer question. Models are puzzled by the whole nudity vs. clothes thing. Some models don’t seem to get that they have to keep their clothing on for BlueBlood.net editorial. By the same token, any model who has even considered modeling for a membership site besides BlueBlood.com wants to double-check precisely what she must do on camera and what she must not do. This is because of the way these models have been pressured to do either less (nice girls only do conservative nudes) or more (all the cool girls give strangers blowjobs) by sites they have considered working with. I really don’t get the thing where some sites feel like everyone has to be fully nude but nobody is allowed to (heavens to Betsy!) insert anything or where some sites have the attitude that anyone who hasn’t fucked everyone else on it shouldn’t be allowed in the clubhouse. It really bothers me that there are models who go along with this conformity BS and peer pressure other models to only do exactly what they have decided is okay for them personally, no matter whether other models personally prefer to be more conservative or more extreme. These are not decisions which should be made via groupthink.

If everybody on BlueBlood.com was doing the exact same level of nudity or naughtiness, with the exact same amount of explicitness or lack thereof in presentation, that would be as antithetical to the point of Blue Blood as if everybody looked exactly the same. (You are not required to have tattoos either; they are optional and only a plus if you got them for a meaningful reason or they are quality ink or ideally both.) Of course, all publications have to have some sort of structure, a certain promise to the reader of what they will find inside. However, any pay site with a bunch of chicks who look the same and apparently all want to get the exact same amount naked is just pandering to a fetish and it is not punk and it is not about freedom.

Many of Blue Blood’s photographers and writers and models, and certainly your truly, have fetishes too and naturally they are more likely to be represented in the variety of BlueBlood.com content than kinks various creative team members are less into, but Blue Blood doesn’t have all the hang-ups so many of the sites seem to about nudity. The whole point is that it is about individual expressions of sexuality and sensuality. Individuality is key. If all a photograph does is hit a format, that is not art, just commerce. If a photo utterly fails to hit any format, that is not art either, just wanking. For photography to be art, it must both express something and communicate something.

When, in his first inaugural address, US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt stated that, “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself” he wasn’t necessarily talking about the nature of horror in television and film. The main thrust of his speech was that, in wretched economic times, hope and a positive attitude were integral to pulling America out of the Depression. Nonetheless, that one expression has, in the general zeitgeist, outlasted the rest of his speech about how “Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy and moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits.” And it seems fair to say that the line about the only thing we have to fear certainly outlasted FDR’s exhortations that there must be a strict supervision of all banking and credits and investments; there must be an end to speculation with other people’s money, and there must be provision for an adequate but sound currency.”

Historically, comedy entertainment has flourished in times of economic strife and war and drama and horror have done better when the audience’s day-to-day lives have been more comfortable and free of fear. But we live in interesting times and horror is booming. NBC has an ambitious new television series starting today which showcases the works of thirteen top horror teams. In case this wasn’t obvious from my deconstruction of the origins of the expression about what we have to fear, the name of the series is Fear Itself.

I asked my unsavory pals and I asked the Blue Blood boards and I asked my sixty thousand close personal friends on MySpace what frightened them. They were all frightened by things besides fear, but hopefully they’ve got some optimism and some taste for the allstar horror series NBC is releasing.

Interestingly, Alien, The Exorcist, and Halloween tied for first place as scariest movies ever. Most people I know were quick to add that they absolutely 100% only meant the first Halloween movie when they were talking about terror. Poltergeist came in fourth and apparently scared a lot of viewers off of television. Pretty clever for the filmmakers, given that Poltergeist came out at a time before movies and television media had quite the synergy they do today. Hellraiser came in fifth, although I think some people I know liked the fashions more than they were genuinely scared, but I’ll accept it. Bizarrely John Carpenter’s The Thing and E.T. tied for the next slot. Apparently, I know some alienated-ass people, who didn’t trust their government or scientists as children, and who were just sick with fear over what was going to happen to that poor alien. I felt the same way actually about both E.T. and Short Circuit, if the truth be told, but no one but me thought of Short Circuit for this list, so I think it doesn’t make it. The Shining came in number eight and I would have felt that all work and no play had made us all very dull if it wasn’t somewhere on the list. Newer flicks like the SAW movies and 1408 and The Descent were mentioned, as were slightly older ones such as Event Horizon and Child’s Play and The Cell, and of course classics like Jaws and Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Nightmare On Elm Street. But none of those films got a real critical mass of respondents putting them in their top ten. I’d have to give the number nine slot to a special subgenre, rather than one movie. And the number ten spot actually is a movie I’ve never seen, but I’m vaguely creeped out at how many people thought of it in the top scariest movies and television of all time.

So, in conclusion, here are the top 10 scariest films of all time, according to Blue Blood readers:

1. Alien
2. The Exorcist
3. Halloween
4. Poltergeist
5. Hellraiser
6. The Thing
7. E.T.
8. The Shining
9. Anything Japanese involving doing weird stuff to eyeballs
10. Jesus Camp

As I rode back from the airport yesterday, my car passed a bevy of Blue Blood hotties including Roxy Contin and others, all decked out and waving Doomsday signs. This reminded me that I wanted to tell you all about the upcoming flick. (These two things are related; they were promoting the movie, not predicting the end of the world in their underwear.)

Doomsday is a movie of a dystopian future. In a present day United Kingdom, a fatal viral epidemic has broken out, so a portion is walled off to quarantine the infected. Fast forward 25 years in the future and the disease appears again outside the quarantined zone. The authorities realize that there are still people living within those walls, so they dispatch a hot chick to go see if she can find a cure. The hot cure-hunting chick is played by Rhona Mitra whose accomplishments off the silver screen include being expelled from boarding school and booth babe appearances as Lara Croft at trade shows. I actually thought she was Kate Beckinsdale when I first viewed the trailers for Doomsday and apparently I’d make a good casting director because she is starring in the upcoming Underworld: Rise of the Lycans vampire movie.

At any rate, once inside the walls of the quarantined city, Rhona Mitra’s Eden Sinclair has to go up against an army of citizens who appear to be rather justifiably pissed off about being walled off and then asked for help. The inhabitants of the walled city include a forceful Malcolm McDowell playing a character named Kane and the Golden Rule seems to indicate to me that the outside world doesn’t really deserve a lot of help. The preview images and videos show some very appealing Mad Max or perhaps dark gothic Burning Man style. The action looks like it is going to be compelling. I really like the overall aesthetic achieved by talented writer/director Neil Marshall, best known for the psychological horror of his spelunking movie Descent and also critically-acclaimed for his wereworld film Dog Soldiers. I am looking forward to Doomsday and hope it does not end up having the message that the overculture can legitimately exploit the counterculture for anything it likes, including being lab rats for viral vaccine research. Does mankind have an expiration date?

Cloverfield opens this weekend. Even though I requested their normal press releases, the Cloverfield people inexplicably did not get them to me in time. But they were kind enough to give us money, so I thought I’d post their trailer here. Watch the trailer and see if you can tell me what this movie is about. Anybody?

When a bunch of my friends went to see Nightmare Before Christmas for Halloween, I took a pass. I think director Tim Burton has one of the most beautiful and impressively realized aesthetics in film today. Unfortunately it bums me out that his misunderstood and offbeat heroes and heroines often accept their second class citizen status. Different does not equal lesser. I just can’t get with that, no matter how poignant the color palette or how extravagant the design. So I’m pleased to see such a master of darkly beautiful cinema taking on the vengeful barber of Fleet Street in his forthcoming adaptation of Sweeney Todd.

Also, I find the posters where Johnny Depp is reclining in his chair, with a straight razor in his outstretched hand, unaccountably erotic. I feel a little spark every time I see it online (thanks for advertising on my sites, guys) and every time I drive by one of the ubiquitous billboards in Los Angeles. There are just times when what turns you on is not what you would find convenient to be turned on by. (I will still shoot anyone who comes at me with an open razor because I always bring a gun to a knife fight. So don’t get any ideas; I’m just sharing my feelings.) You can check out the Sweeney Todd trailer below, after the jump. I’m not personally that big a fan of show tunes, but, damn, that is one gorgeous movie in both the lush scenes and the spare ones. Yumtastic and no mean feat. (more…)

Last night, I went to see Beowulf with a bunch of my unsavory pals. This was our third attempt to put together a group of people to see it, but third time is a charm and there ended up being around a dozen of us including Blue Blood hotties Scar 13, Tassy Pink, Joel Awesome, and Kitty Von Klau, Blue Blood Creative Director Forrest Black, Allan Amato who shoots for Scar13.com and more. It was kind of cool because it seems like it is becoming less common to have a bunch of people get together for something simple like seeing a movie. Yes, I’m thinking of going to see a movie with naked vikings fucking water sprites as a wholesome activity. You have to consider what the rest of my existence is like to put it in context.

We saw Beowulf at the Arclight so we could view the 3D version. The Arclight has extra-comfy chairs and prides itself on its high tech theater equipment. This is Los Angeles, so the front hall featured a display with actual costumes worn by actors in the movie. I sort of thought they were all in motion suits and they made the flick video game style, but I guess physical outfits were involved at some point. I liked the clothing anyway. I think I need to start wearing a royal cape around. The Arclight personnel handed us 3D glasses on the way into the theater.

Spoiler alert: If you didn’t read Beowulf in school (or at any other point), then the rest of this might include spoilers. I studied all the Icelandic sagas in school. When I was in college, I actually took a class called “Kinship and Law in Medieval Iceland.” And now it is my job to do things like write up the Beowulf movie. I guess I wasn’t wasting time and money at university after all. Phew.

Most of the Scandanavian sagas came from many troubadours through oral tradition and they were about heroism and adventure. And possibly about the fact that vikings tended to drink mead stored in flasks which were fabulous breeding grounds for hallucinogenic fungus. Beowulf, by contrast, believed to be by one author of English or German origin, is almost a satire of the saga genre. In the book, it is unclear whether the hero Beowulf or the monster Grendel is really the protagonist. Grendel is a sympathetic monster and some scholars feel that he represents nature in the epic battle between man and nature. It seems like, in these environmentally conscious times, the movie makers would have hit the green message a bit harder. Personally, I buy recycled where I can, even if it costs a bit more. But I roll in a big American car and I leave my air conditioning on when it is hot, whether or not I’m home. So this didn’t exactly damage my enjoyment of the movie.

The main deviation from the original poem is in the nature of Beowulf’s relationship with Grendel’s mother. Scholars disagree vehemently with one another on whether Grendel’s mother was a heroic female warrior who, in response to the killing of her son, simply carried out the requirements of blood feud and debt. Or whether this descendant of Cain was monstrous in appearance. In the poem, Beowulf is described as killing her with a magical sword and then using that same sword to decapitate Grendel’s corpse and bring his head back to the mead hall. It is entertaining to think that the screenwriters looked at this and wondered why the warrior would have only brought back one head if he had slain two monsters. Their explanation might not be so true to the original, but many things can be explained by Angelina Jolie’s wet, buoyant, gold-slicked, CGI boobies. Many scholars believe that the original Beowulf poem was a Christian propagandist restructuring of familiar tales to impose Christian values on them. So one can hardly blame a modern retelling for imposing current rules of cinematic story structure on the film. Beowulf’s relationship with Grendel’s mother not only allowed Robert Zemeckis to bring us hot naked viking/water sprite sex, but it also honestly ties the Grendel portion of the Beowulf saga and the dragon portion together much more neatly, for modern sensibilities, than the original does. Some feminist scholars argue that Beowulf has a three part story structure where the battle with Grendel’s mother is as important as the one with Grendel and the one with the dragon, although the story is generally viewed as having a two part structure. It would probably be reaching to call the Zemeckis adaptation a feminist retelling, but it is tidy modern story structure for a modern audience.

Much as the original saga was almost making fun of the braggadocio of its predecessors, the Beowulf movie is sold as a costume adventure blockbuster, but it points out that maybe the adventures just are not really that great. When Beowulf kills Grendel, the monster is tragic and, despite Beowulf’s humorous and aesthetically pleasing nudity, the warrior comes off as a bully, brutalizing a monster who is no match for him. It is uncomfortable to watch and the monster takes an agonizingly long time to die in his mother’s arms.

The movie pretty immediately switches tone from a certain almost cheesy brashness to a dismal and depressing ever after. The plot goes briskly from the warrior king yelling “I am Beowulf!” Flava Flav style to telling his young slave girl that none of it was as great as it should have been, not the battles, not the treasures, not the kingdom, not the women. She seems distressed that not even the women excited him in a particularly pleasant way, but he pretty much confirms that he can’t even summon interest in sex.

Beowulf set out to do battle for glory rather than gold, but he has acquired both through his exploits. Beowulf’s closest companions revere him. He is a king. He has wealth and many followers. People keep telling him that his praises will be sung after everything then alive has turned to dust. But, basically, nothing feels good.

Unusually, for a Hollywood blockbuster, the writers of the movie get top billing in the closing credits. The screenplay was written by the very impressive duo of Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary. Neil Gaiman is very well known in comic book and science fiction and fantasy circles. If you are gothic, you are probably familiar with his Sandman comic (or should probably at least fake like you are.) If you are more fandom-identified, then his somewhat tongue-in-cheek novels may be more your thing. Although Quentin Tarantino is the name everyone knows from Pulp Fiction, Roger Avary also has a screenwriting credit on it and has said in interviews since that he can’t hang out with Quentin Tarantino because the man just sucks the ideas right out of him. Roger Avary is probably best known for having written and directed the solid film adaptation of one of my favorite books, Bret Easton Ellis’ Rules of Attraction, (which Forrest Black and I shot some promo for with Scar 13 years ago.) There is some buzz about whether the technology involved in making Beowulf will ultimately somewhat replace actors, or at least turn them into licensable clip art. I will be interested to see if this sort of technology will ultimately mean that writers and scenic designers and people like that will receive more credit for how a movie turns out. Before I knew anything about how Hollywood works, it used to trouble me, as a consumer, that whether or not I enjoyed a movie depended very much on plot and story structure, only movies were never advertised as “written by the guy who wrote that other thing you liked.” A great actor with a horrid plot is generally Michael Madsen in that awful poker movie which comes on late night cable only. No Oscars there.

Perhaps because the original Beowulf saga mocked the more traditional sagas, although the movie is marketed as an epic adventure for fantasy fans, it feels almost like the viewer is being told that what they were coming to see is not as terrific as they might think. After the credits ran, most of my group of mighty thanes went to get shabu shabu. Everyone kept asking each other if they liked the movie. Except for Scar, who had promised to dislike the movie beforehand, no one seemed to know if they felt like it was a good movie or a bad one or somewhere in between. I know the film left me feeling a little extra aggro such that I wanted to attack the waitress when I asked her for a sparkling Voss water the seventh time. Not that people doing their job badly doesn’t annoy me normally, but not in such a visceral way. I think Joel Awesome and I might have been the only ones who were somewhat familiar with the saga genre. (Wait until you all see the super hot signature couples set of Joel and Kittie which Forrest and I shot for BlueBlood.com. All that hotness and smart and well-read too!) I think the movie was well-done and technologically interesting, but, being familiar with the original, I was mostly sort of kicking myself for being surprised that it was not a feel-good movie.

The message of the Beowulf movie seemed very much: “Look upon my works, ye mighty, with 3D glasses, and despair.” (Joel says that, when he was little, he used to confuse Gilgamesh and Grendel, so I can stick Ozymandius in my Beowulf if I want.) Fortunately, we had to give the 3D glasses back to the Arclight after the movie. It was disorienting, at first, to look at the world without them.

Every once in a while, I like to watch old black and white movies. I’m particularly partial to ones where men speak in clipped strong rhythms and people get murdered. But I’m open-minded and my TiVo recently suggested that I try watching The Wild One.

The Wild One is the classic 50’s flick where Marlon Brando’s Johnny character, when asked what he was rebelling against, famously answered “What’ve you got?” It is difficult to watch the movie in the present day and fully grasp the impact it had at the time. Supposedly many people felt that James Dean was a Marlon Brando wannabe and Brando’s swaggering performance in The Wild One informed the later acting careers of men like Steve McQueen and Jack Nicholson. The rival motorcycle gang, lead by Lee Marvin’s Chino in the movie, is called The Beetles and is believed by many people to have inspired the name of the band The Beatles with an a. I’ve seen mention that Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols had a jacket based on Brando in The Wild One or possibly even the specific jacket used in the film, but I haven’t been able to find confirmation more solid than rumor on this. Regardless, even today, everyone from lesbian drag kings to Leonardo DiCaprio takes inspiration from the seminal role of troubled Johnny Strabler. Heck, I personally even commissioned a Cookie Monster Brando before I ever saw the movie in its entirety, so ingrained is this flick in the American consciousness.

Despite this, watching today, it is difficult to know what mood the movie could have evoked when it came out in the 50’s. The movie was released in America in 1953 and was banned in the UK upon its overseas release in 1954. Ben Maddow, one of the writers on the film, went uncredited at the time, probably because he was blacklisted due to McCarthy era paranoia. So the movie is about rebellion. It inspired generations of rebels. The bike Brando rides is apparently his own personal Triumph. Even one of the writers on the movie was an outlaw. So it just seems like the movie should feel truly menacing. But it honestly feels more filled with innuendo and symbolism than menace.

Rebel Johnny has a second place trophy strapped to his bike, which has given thousands of film students what to talk about for half a century. Chino keeps stressing that he really misses Johnny and really wants to “have a beer” with Johnny to the point where the viewer becomes certain there is some sort of homosexual code in the invitation. The man driving the car which injures one of Johnny’s motorcycle club followers is said to be hopped up on vitamin pills and overstimulated. Were they prescribing Dexadrine to seniors in the fifties? I have no idea, although I’m terribly curious. I think of leather jacketed bad boys as being feral and rail thin grifters, but the BRMC or Black Rebel Motorcycle Club guys all appear to be gainfully employed and capable of paying for their beer and coffee and maybe a nice sandwich.

Johnny Strabler and the guys just don’t seem that dangerous by today’s standards. It is hard to tell how much of that is attributable to the times or the intentions of the moviemakers. Sunset Blvd. for example is a far darker movie and it predates The Wild One by only three years. Perhaps McCarthyism lead to a lamer approach to cultural danger in movies. Perhaps the filmmakers wanted to create something camp, although this seems unlikely for a director like Laslo Benedek who first became known in America for doing the first movie version of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, also a darker movie now that I think about it.

But maybe in 1953, a large group of guys dressed all freaky in leather and what my grandmother used to call “dungerees” were just terrifying. I certainly know some people in the here and now whose posturing for what they perceive as the normal folk makes me roll my eyes. And would probably come across campy in a movie. Yet a group of thirty or forty of them dressed to kill would probably frighten most small town dwellers. Marlon Brando’s Johnny Strabler is easily grabbed and beaten by the proper men of the town. This would probably be the same fate that would befall a lot of people whose eyeliner and hair frighten and horrify even now. You really can’t judge who will be dangerous by what they wear. A leather jacket or colored contact lenses might make a person doable, but it doesn’t make him dangerous. The same can be said for a suit. You just can’t tell what a cornered person will do by the cut of his gib. Actually, liking the cut of someone’s gib is a nautical reference, but doesn’t it seem like it should refer to haberdashery?

My mama always told me to find something I’m good at and to then apply it in my day-to-day life. I’m one hell of a screamer. Throughout the years, I’ve developed a decent name for my screams on stage with my music, but one day my dream happened. A good friend of mine, Joseph Bishara (Rasputina, Marilyn Manson, 16 Volt, etc.) walked up to me after one of my band Satiate’s shows and asked, if he paid me, would I let him record me, audibly, for some horror movie work. His exact words were “how’d you like to get paid to puke?” I immediately was into the idea for a multitude of reasons. One, I’m a huge horror movie freak. Two, I’ve always wanted to work in horror movies. Lastly, how awesome would it be for someone to ask me what I do for a living and I can go “I get paid to puke and scream.” From this one conversation a few years ago, I get calls from time to time to come down to the studio and track vocals, screams, eerie voices and, yes, weird noises, like gurgling, gargling and yes, puking. Most of my work is featured in movie trailers and TV commercials, some of the more “known” work in my resume is: The Village, Amityville Horror (remake,) Silent Hill, and The Grudge 2. One of my latest treks into the studio was for the After Dark Films Horror Fest, 8 Films to Die For, The Gravedancers.

It’s very challenging work. The first half of the session was vocal pieces that range from simple choral to intense and powerful operatic type vibratos. I recorded pieces in several rooms with different microphones to get different natural analog textures. Then, I also was selected to do the voice for the ghost of Emma, the homicidal wronged lover hell-bent on revenge from the grave. A few of those takes consisted of me mic’d by sitting on the floor and pushing physically along my stomach. Then, comes the hard part, adding in the textures and the free run of ideas. This is the area that Joe tosses me a sound idea and we brainstorm and try to figure out how I can create it. Where the only rule is, the more unnatural sounding, the better. On the recording for this session, we mic’d me in his bathroom gargling first a watered down vanilla yogurt (which looked like a bukkake film gone wrong when we were done,) then beer. It was interesting to know that while moaning during the gurgling of the yogurt, you can get a wet slap of sound, and then while doing it with the beer, you got a hissing foam texture. Both pieces made it into the score to give the actual finished product this uncomfortable sensation.

Now came the hard part, waiting for this movie to come out. There were initial screenings, which got killer reviews. I got to see the work I did placed in the movie, finally. The movie opened and it had such a wonderful cast of characters. Three friends have a friend die. Two of the friends used to be lovers, and one of them is currently married creating tension between the two. The other one is flippant comic smart-ass. After the funeral, they go get drunk and notice a mysterious note telling them to dance for the dead. They blast their little boom box and start dancing, on people’s graves. Well, turns out, it’s a curse. The ghosts of the three graves the friends danced on are super pissed and proceed to haunt the living for a full turn of the moon (that’s 30 days people…) As time passes, the ghosts get stronger. The three ghosts belonged to three people buried in the “crazy” part of the cemetery. One ghost is a pyromaniac child. Another is a physically and sexually abusive man. The last one is the one I did the work for, a woman who’s married lover wouldn’t leave his wife for her, so she butchered them both with an axe. The three finally discover what all the creepy and insane problems are coming from and get help from some paranormal investigators. If you want more, you need to get the movie, but yeah, you get the idea. After being disappointed by so many horror movies, I was glad to see one that actual had me jump in a few moments. It made me so happy to be a small part of it’s magic. So here is a great movie, but no distribution.

Finally After Dark Film’s, Horrorfest 8 Films to Die For, was born. The Gravedancers hit the screen. Emma, what I consider my ghost, is now turning up in places I’d never expect (like in random MySpace pages and message boards) and I’m grinning inwardly, because I loved being a part of this evil ghost, even if it’s only a few minutes of voice or vocals. I loved the idea that these independent filmmakers were coming together to get GOOD horror movies to the people. Something that should be prevalent over the thousands of HORRIBLE remakes and corporate takes on what they think a horror movie fans should love. It still amazes me, that bumping into random people around town, they will start talking about The Gravedancers and how they loved the evil ghosts, when the subject of current horror movies get brought up. Nothing better to see people scream and jump when they are watching a horror movie, even the trailer, when it’s your scream that scares the hell out of them. I love making my mama proud. I get even more sick satisfaction out of the fact when she brags about my work she goes, “Yeah, my daughter gets paid to scream and puke.”