Joe M. O'Connell: The new reality for independent filmmakers

Tuesday, March 24, 2020

The new reality for independent filmmakers


Painting: Camilo Esparza. Poster: Casey Hunter

In 2001 I talked to producer Scott Perry about Jet Blast, an Austin-made, low-budget comedy about a future time where airlines got super competitive. An evil rogue group armed their planes to take out the other guys. Some planes crashed into buildings. It was clearly a goofy joke. Jet Blast was set to premiere at the Austin Film Festival. Then 9/11 happened. No festival screening. No much of anything for a long time.

"We had somehow managed to find the exact wrong film to make at the exact wrong time," Perry told me then.

Also in 2001, a Spider-Man trailer that showed Spidey swinging from a web between the Twin Towers was pulled. There was talk of shelving terrorist-themed movies. It was a tough time for the movie industry.

OK, as filmmakers today we need to lighten up. Things are not nearly as bad. Yes, festivals have been cancelled. Yes, many more have been postponed. But, like with 9/11, the bigger picture shines through as we huddle in our houses and get back to basics. My family watched Onward on overly expensive pay per view just days after its release in theaters. (It was great.) Screening parties are happening on Facebook. Classic films are being rediscovered. This time film is our escape. It just isn't happening in the normal way.

For example, where I am in Austin, Texas, the documentary Also Starring Austin is screening for free online here for a short while. The Austin Chronicle is asking readers to watch Texas Chain Saw Massacre along with them at home and engage in a running commentary. Film is bringing isolated people together.

I've been quiet lately about the release of my documentary Rondo and Bob, which is about Texas Chain Saw Massacre art director Robert Burns and his obsession with '40s actor Rondo Hatton whose iconic face was twisted from the effects of acromegaly. Deeper down it's about the love Burns searched for and Hatton found. It was set to premiere April 17 at MegaCon in Orlando, with attendance of about 100,000 one of the largest fan conventions in the country. But I knew it wouldn't happen. It had become a rare holdout to the cancellation list.

Word came down Monday that the fest has been pushed to June. Rondo and Bob is the feature screening on June 5. Will it actually happen? Will life be back to normal by then? I'm still not sure. Perhaps it takes a great re-imagining of the film release process. I'd love ideas on that.

In the meantime I want to share this amazing poster based on a painting created by tattoo artist Camilo Esparza and realized by Casey Hunter. It's an homage to a poster for the 1946 film House of Horrors featuring Hatton as the Creeper.

Stay safe. Go watch a movie.

No comments:

Post a Comment

What they're saying about EVACUATION PLAN

"Tales alternately gentle, dramatic, surrealistic, that collectively affirm the beauty of being alive, even as they acknowledge that all of us face the necessity of making our own 'evacuation plan.' "
-- Brad Buchholz, Austin American-Statesman

" The chapters about Matt and the short stories demonstrate O’Connell’s ability to develop sympathetic, true-to-life characters using intriguing details and compelling dialogue. The stories remind us of those times when a brief encounter with a stranger left us wondering about that person’s past. In Evacuation Plan, O’Connell satisfies that curiosity. "
-- The Texas Observer

"It was very hard for me to put this book down. It carries us through the deepest meaning in life and most painful, most hopeful memories for a wide range of fascinating characters. Based in a hospice, this book could have easily resorted to cheap sensationalism, or whacked us upside the head with stereotypic melodrama, but instead it was respectful, honest, and tender. The characters will stay with you - you may even recognize some of them within your own life. "
-- Award-winning author Carmen Tafolla

"An excellent, thought-provoking diversion from our own inevitable plummet toward the grave, and we highly recommend it to you, the living."
-- Wayne Alan Brenner, The Austin Chronicle

"O’Connell has drawn some colourful and believable characters. The material relating to the hospice and terminal care rings true, all the way to reconciliation and forgiving."
-- Dr. Roger Woodruff, International Association for Hospice & Palliative Care

"The tales are nicely written, and some are quite compelling; “The Male Nurse,” for one, is a dreamlike reverie."
-- Texas Monthly

“Evacuation Plan: A Novel From The Hospice by Joe M. O'Connell is nothing short of remarkable … a novel that walks hand-in-hand with death and yet, somehow, the reader finishes the book feeling inspired to live.”
– The Paisano

"A wonderful blend of lives ordinary but with sometimes extraordinary elements. We all share these stories of life in some way, despite moments of harshness or unforgiving pain. There is always a common thread of humanity and ultimately forgiveness to be found, even if it's in the last moment of life."
-- Elaine Williams, author of A Journey Well Taken

"Reading Evacuation Plan is akin to unwrapping a series of small perfectly-chosen presents. Both human and humane, The book resembles a modern Spoon River Anthology with its vivid, touching glimpses into the lives of those in and around a hospice."
-- Tim McCanlies, screenwriter The Iron Giant, writer/director Secondhand Lions

"In Evacuation Plan Joe O'Connell does for the process of dying what Sherwood Anderson did for middle America in Winesburg, Ohio--he shows us in brief flashes the aching beauty of the grotesque, and shows us how extraordinary small lives and quiet deaths can be."
--John Blair, Drue Heinz Literature Prize winning author of American Standard

"Here's a book so rich with stories of the living, so filled with people's bountiful problems, as well as incidents of wry forgiveness, one realizes over and over the circling forces of life's completeness. It's not a sad tale nor a needless feel-good account but a balanced, sometimes comic, affirmation of what is here and what we all know is waiting."
-- Carolyn Osborn, award-winning short story writer

"The broken, the hopeful, the frustrated, the clueless, and the forgiving touch one another with words, remembrances, and hands. Inevitably, readers will quietly wonder about their own evacuation plan."
-- Will's Texana Monthly

O'Connell's protagonist skillfully navigates under the guise of a writer seeking raw materials for his craft in the stories of the dying, but mines and refines instead the stuff we're all made of. In this finely crafted novel, we come away with much more than the astute observation that many of the best stories begin at the end. But, then again, that notion is also worth a lot.
--Jesse Sublett, cancer survivor, rocker and author of Never the Same Again

"Joe O'Connell's Evacuation Plan--this Decameron of the hospice--encompasses a paradox. Death comes for everyone, but death is the only human universal because everyone dies, and witnesses dying, with private, unspeakable shame. Yet there are a few minutes left to speak. As people die, they tell stories which spawn new stories, which remind us that death is agony, a violent struggle, but so is living."
-- Debra Monroe, Flannery O'Connor Award winning author of Newfangled and Shambles

Joe M. O'Connell

Tuesday, March 24, 2020

The new reality for independent filmmakers

No comments:

About Me

What they're saying about EVACUATION PLAN

stat counter

Blog Archive

Followers