A Rondo Hatton short until 'Rondo and Bob' is released

The release of Rondo and Bob at film festivals is on hold until, well, there are film festivals again! We were set to premiere during Megacon in Orlando at the affiliated Saints and Sinner Film Festival, but Megacon was first delayed, then canceled. It may be back in October. We may be part of it, but that's not a certainty.

In the meantime, what is there to do but make some short films from home! We created Meet the Creeper! for Roger Corman's Quarantine Film Festival. The Rondo Hatton mask Paul Smith created for Rondo and Bob was at my house, so we told Rondo's story. I enlisted my son and wife. Kirk Hunter did the editing. My son played trombone and wore the mask. My wife was Mae Hatton. The Austin Chronicle even wrote about the short. You can see the completed film here.

Granny from 'Chain Saw' found!

Photo © Joe M. O'Connell

It took more than a year to track her down, but we finally unearthed Granny, as created by Robert A. Burns for the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre. She was in an undisclosed--and quite secret--location in Texas.

The purpose? Film her for my documentary Rondo and Bob about Chain Saw art director Bob Burns and his obsession with the actor Rondo Hatton. We are entering the main editing phase of the project so it was particularly sweet to find Granny, who is holding up nicely. My shooter/editor Kirk kept the zombies at bay while I took this snap.

You can see more about the documentary at rondoandbob.com or find us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/rondoandbob/.

My next documentary is 'Rondo and Bob'

The cat has clawed its way out of the bag. I'm working on a documentary called Rondo and Bob about The Texas Chain Saw Massacre art director Robert A. Burns and the actor Rondo Hatton, whom Bob Burns was obsessed with. (See more at the web site here: Rondoandbob.com

Robert A. Burns

 Austin American-Statesman columnist John Kelso made the announcement in his column:


Joe O’Connell is doing his part to promote Austin’s eccentricity.

O’Connell, an old newspaper guy who has written about film for several Texas papers, is shooting a documentary about the late Robert Burns, the man who put the gore in the original “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” movie.

In case you haven’t been keeping up with your blood and guts horror classics, Burns did the macabre artwork for the film. Although you wouldn’t guess he’d head in that direction if you met him; Burns was a real sweetheart, a soft-spoken guy with what I suspect was a genius IQ.

There’s never been another one like Robert Burns. They didn’t throw away the mold, because there was no mold. Although his South Austin home was a bit moldy.

Rondo Hatton

Burns lived in a two-story dust-collector in South Austin furnished with props from “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.” There was the arm chair, so-called because of the prosthetic arms Burns attached. When I visited Burns, a battery-powered rubber hand was crawling across the floor upstairs with a knife run through it, a prop Burns put together for an upcoming film project.

Burns made these masks.

What project? Who knows? But I’m betting it wasn’t “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.”

During my visit Burns sat me down and showed me the massacre movie on a small TV. His review? He had one complaint: All that screaming from characters being hacked to pieces made the film extremely loud.

Read the rest here.

Dracula vs. Frankenstein vs. Sam Sherman

Sam Sherman and Frankenstein from Joe O'Connell on Vimeo.

Just when we thought the documentary Love and Other Stunts was complete, I took a trip to legendary B-movie producer Sam Sherman's New Jersey house and met Frankenstein.

Sherman and I talked about the independent film scene of the '60s and '70s, about director Al Adamson (and Adamson's murder) and, of course, about stuntman Gary Kent whose story is the focus of Love and Other Stunts.

Sherman said he believed Kent was destined to be a major Hollywood star or perhaps the star of a television series, but instead Kent was soon back on the Adamson crew. But Kent's life did take interesting turns as you'll see in the doc. (Get regular updates on our Facebook page.)

Sherman said Kent's role as the good-guy lead in Satan's Sadists was a turning point for his Independent-International Pictures. Sherman is first and foremost a fan and a collector of film reels and memorabilia. He's also still actively working as head of IIP. And, as you can see, he knows just what box to open to reveal the star of Dracula vs. Frankenstein.

Find more about Love and Other Stunts here.

Sam Sherman: Photo by Joe O'Connell

First trailer for 'Love and Other Stunts'

Love and Other Stunts trailer #1 from Joe O'Connell on Vimeo.

We are gearing up for a 2017 film festival launch of my documentary Love and Other Stunts.

We're working now on taking care of legal aspects and getting all our ducks in a row. I hired an amazing designer who will create our film poster.

The film's main character, legendary stuntman Gary Kent, is just back from Milan, where a film he starred in, Frame Switch, took best film honors at a festival there. At 83, he is rocking it.

Here is the first trailer for Love and Other Stunts!

Thanks again for your support.--Joe O'Connell

SXSW 2015 in photos and words

 

I've been remiss is posting here lately, so here are some random images from South by Southwest that give a bit of the feel of the combo music, film and interactive fest. The images are all  ©Joe O'Connell.

I once again covered the film fest for The Austin Chronicle. I interviewed Alan Berg, the head of Austin's very cool Arts & Labor film cooperative about his new doc The Jones Family Will Make a Way. I also got an inside look into the moment the punk rock scene exploded in Austin. I reviewed the films Steve Jobs: Man in the Machine, The Goob and Sailing a Sinking Sea.

Andrew Shapter beats cancer while making art

Since August I've been tailing Andrew Shapter, a former fashion photographer turned documentary filmmaker, through his 
aggressive treatment of chemotherapy and radiation aimed at sucker punching cancer. In the midst of it, he's been working to get his magical feature film debut The Teller and the Truth out to the world.

My resulting article is the cover story of the current Austin Chronicle. It's a twofer as my photos run with the story, including this cover image.

Here's how the story begins:

The air outside Texas Oncology in South Austin smells of burnt electricity. The scent lingers as Andrew Shapter is summoned to radiation. White confetti covers the floor outside the room Shapter visits five days a week. It signals that someone – not Shapter – has completed treatment. Two emergency medical technicians steer a man reclined on a stretcher near a sign that reads CAUTION. VERY HIGH RADIATION AREA. Shapter greets the man, and they compare radiation treatments. The man has 35 scheduled, Shap­ter 33. "You can have my extras," the man says with a smile. Inside, Shapter strips his shirt off, dons a white mask molded precisely for his face, opens his laptop to a playlist he's put together for just this moment, and braces himself for the X-ray beam that will burn into his neck. Louis Armstrong sings, "What a Wonderful World."

Andrew Shapter, 47, has been many things in this life: a high school class clown who concocted homemade fart devices, an actor, a political junkie toiling in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., a successful fashion photographer, a documentary filmmaker, a husband, a father. Today he focuses on three challenges: Ford, a doe-eyed infant son crawling across the floor and urging his dad to play; a feature film, The Teller & the Truth, five years in the making; and squamous cell carcinoma, a form of skin cancer that claims about 2,500 lives each year. "I had a choice of either going for the fierce fight or the long road," Shapter says. "With my son in mind, I decided I was going to take it hard and fast." The 20-minute radiation treatments are capped by once-a-week, six-hour chemotherapy sessions. On weekends, he crashes. Hard.

Read the rest here.

Sneak footage of 'Love & Other Stunts'

I spend the afternoon looking at footage we shot in Los Angeles for the Gary Kent documentary Love & Other Stunts that I'm directing/producing. Here are a few snippets that may or may not make it into the completed film. We're aiming for a rough cut by the end of the year.

Here's The Stuntman director Richard Rush talking about how his career began.



Director/stuntman John "Bud Cardos talking about doing stunts.



Director Don Jones talking about why he quite doing stunts.




and actor Marc Singer talking about Chuck Bail and The Beastmaster.

Elephant Gun takes aim at photography

I'm pleased to be part of a new photo collective Elephant Gun. Check out the photos (Mine are here) and dive into true creativity. It's gritty. It's real. It's art.

By the way, the image you see is my shot of movie director Richard Rush speaking on camera for Love & Other Stunts, the documentary film I'm making about legendary indie stuntman Gary Kent. The folks at Elephant Gun were particularly taken with the image. Thanks for including me in the Gun, guys!

Why I'm making a documentary about Gary Kent

This is a clip from a press conference we had Saturday in Dallas for the documentary Love & Other Stunts about indie film legend Gary Kent. Watch it, and you'll see why I'm making this movie! Check out the IndieGoGo campaign here! With nine days to go we are 79 percent funded.

'Love & Other Stunts' nearing halfway point at IndieGoGo

Get Gary Kent and this doc out of jail!

We're trying to raise finishing funds for my documentary LOVE & OTHER STUNTS about legendary stuntman Gary Kent over on IndieGoGo, and it's going well. We're at 42 44 percent of our goal--more than $4,000--with the midway point approaching. Not bad.

Now we've decided to have a special screening at some future date (most likely in Austin, Texas) just for contributors. Sound good? Wait until you see the other  perks.

Help us complete the ultimate stuntman documentary!

 OK, it's official. The IndieGoGo campaign to fund the completion of my doc Love & Other Stunts about stunt legend Gary Kent is a go as of this very moment. (Hat goes out and bumps you in the chest.)
Please visit the site and consider dropping a few dollars in the coffers here:  http://igg.me/p/309171/x/2068884

Here's more info you will find on the site.--Joe O'Connell

 

The most interesting man in the world

I was at a writing conference in the late '90s when I met a white-haired hustler with a Burt Reynolds mustache and a knowing grin. He introduced himself as Gary Kent and told me about a cult biker film he'd starred in called Satan's Sadists. That night I tracked down a copy of the film and watched it, then I tracked down Gary and wrote a couple of articles about his unique film career doubling Jack Nicholson and Robert Vaughan,  and staging stunts and special effects sequences for notable directors Peter Bogdanovich, Monte Hellman, Richard Rush, Al Adamson and Don Coscarelli for movies including Hell’s Angels On Wheels, Psych-out, Targets, Bubba Ho-tep, and the noir Westerns The Shooting and Ride in the Whirlwind.


One day I told Gary someone should make a documentary about his life and career. Then I realized that someone is me. Gary agreed and opened his archives of personal photos and home movies to me and provided contacts for his long-time film industry friends and his family.

 

I've written about the film industry 15 years, including as a columnist for The Dallas Morning News, Austin American-Statesman and The Austin Chronicle and as a contributor to Variety and Video Business. I'm also an award-winning fiction writer, novelist and photographer. I'm a storyteller.

The documentary begins following Gary's journey with the release of his memoir Shadows and Light: Journeys with Outlaws in Revolutionary Hollywood. But I soon realized this film is about more than a guy who makes movies. Gary has faced bigger challenges in his personal life: his wife and soulmate's battle with alcohol and an abusive mother; his own struggle to sucker-punch cancer. The documentary gets to the heart of a survivor who learned how to take a fist to the gut, stand up and try life again.

It's time for the martini shot

We've got a lot of footage in the can, but this campaign will fund final shoots, editing and permissions to use film clips in the documentary. An editor is lined up and waiting. Gary is on board 100 percent, and isn't shying away from the grittier parts of his personal story being revealed. Your donation will assure this project is completed.

Why you should help

Gary Kent's story is one worth telling. You'll see from the brief video above that he is a compelling, charasmatic, good guy with an amazing film career and personal story worth telling. My aim to see this film screen at both mainstream and genre (horror, biker, sci-fi) film conventions like Cinema Wasteland. Both domestic and foreign televisions, DVD and streaming sales will follow.

Did you check out these perks for participating in our campaign? First edition copies of Gary's memoir are at this point ultra-rare. Come have lunch with us, pretty please?

Spread the word!

Please post a notice of this campaign to your Facebook page. Blog about it. Send a note to Filmnewsbyjoe at yahoo dot com and ask me questions. Let's cement Gary Kent's place in film history.

Duplass sez help send 'Kevin' namesake out to world

Jay Duplass's doc Kevin is about Kevin Gant, an Austin musician in the '90s who vanished without a trace until the filmmaker tracked him down and set out to tell his story. The film premiered at SXSW and is on the film festival circuit. Duplass wants your help making sure Gant can make the journey as well since most festivals can't afford the expenses. Go to Kickstarter to see how you can donate and receive cool prizes like signed CDs and a DVD of the film.

This is what Duplass says about his doc:

"In Austin, TX in the early '90s, Kevin was my hero. He was the purest, most inspired artist I had ever seen. His fusion of all-American folk-poetry with a wild flamenco guitar style was completely original, and I went to every show of his I could.

But in 1995, Kevin disappeared completely from the music scene, and I had no idea why.

Two years ago I finally tracked him down, and we began a friendship. I learned about the painful events back in ’95 that shattered his lifelong dream of making and sharing music. I learned he had barely touched his guitar ever since, and had forgotten how to play almost all of his songs.

But then, thanks to a magical twist of fate I could never have imagined, Kevin and I found ourselves traveling halfway around the globe and back. And along the way, I watched as Kevin’s dream reignited right before my eyes.

KEVIN, my documentary debut, is that story."

By the way, Dan Eggleston reports that Duplass has asked him to portray a homeless man in a scene from the upcoming group-effort recreation of Richard Linklater's Slacker.

Weinstein Co. buys SXSW doc 'Undefeated'

High school football doc Undefeated has been purchased by the Weinstein Co., the film's co-director Dan Lindsay announced to a small group of viewers at the Westgate following Monday's screening. The film premiered Sunday night with some of the players in attendance. It follows an inner city Memphis team as it aims to win district and then win its first playoff game ever in the school's more than 100 year history. The filmmakers said the project began after they spotted an article about a football player who had moved in with a coach a la The Blind Side. Instead they found their main focus in a charismatic and chubby redhead who volunteered to coach the team. Lindsay said they watched other sports docs while spending eight months immersed in the high school team's season, but their greatest inspiration came from the film Glory and its powerful third act.

The film that was shown was just completed Thursday night, Lindsay said.

'Psychobilly' and Gary Kent collide

I spent Friday night outside a raucous nightclub near Paleface Park where the bikers were revving their engines, a blues band was playing passable Stevie Ray Vaughan covers and a fight was slowly breaking out. The fight in question was part of Psychobilly Saturday Night, Lane Law's local independent film staging a scene that would shoot later in the evening. Famed stuntman Gary Kent helped block out the scene and offers tips from his long career. Camera jockey Jacob Peirce and I did our best to catch the action for the documentary I've been slowly putting together on Gary and his illustrious stunt career.