My book about the Ross Sisters

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

UPDATE IN May 2025: I've completed the third and final draft of the book. The working title now is The Contortionists. Follow the Facebook page here or get more info at joeoconnell.com.

You've likely seen the video on Youtube. Soon you'll learn their true story.

What I'm currently working on:

Three sisters from West Texas saved their family from the Great Depression when a chance encounter with acrobatic neighbors sparked an unexpected career as singing contortionists.

The Ross sisters quickly traded in their childhoods for roadhouses and rodeo shows. Soon they were on Broadway and in the movies. At the urging of their mother Veda--who trained them relentlessly--the girls lied up their ages.

Just after WWII ended, the Ross Sisters sailed on the Queen Mary to London to perform in a hit stage show. Free of their mother for the first time, they each met a fellow performer and married: Betsy Ross to a schizophrenic and charismatic dancer from America, Vicki Ross to a lovable French ventriloquist and baby Dixie to an English actor and comedian.

Dixie would die on her 15th wedding anniversary, and her sisters would be left to pick up the pieces and save their own children from what they feared had become a family curse.

The Ross Sisters fame was short-lived, but bubbled up in the '90s when their act was featured in the film That's Entertainment III, and again in a new century when their contortions made them Youtube sensations.

I'm in the middle of research and writing. Wish me luck!

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.

Dallas VideoFest's AltFiction goes online

I'm getting almost daily notices of film festivals pushing back to at least the summer. More interesting in the here and now are the fests that are going online. The latest is the Dallas VideoFest's AltFiction which will be online for FREE.

Here's the skinny from the press release:

Dallas VideoFest’s Alternative Fiction (http://videofest.org/Alternative-Fiction/ April 2-5) partners with Falcon Events, Dallas-based event producers, which specializes in producing live online and virtual events, to deploy the latest live online technology via a secure and robust platform to create a virtual film festival experience in your living room.

“We are recreating the festival experience, showing films, and connecting filmmakers with their audiences, with technology that is just right for the moment,” said Bart Weiss, founder and artistic director of Dallas VideoFest.

Alternative Innovation

Falcon Events has the technology and capability to include film introductions from the Festivals’ film hosts as well as Q&As following films. Viewers will be able to hear and potentially see the filmmakers as they answer the viewers’ questions. Falcon Events has very strict protocols in place to ensure each film’s content is not copied, and each film will only be available live.

Dallas VideoFest has been innovating with technology since 1987, such as showcasing HDTV and VR in 1988,  exhibiting interactive media, and pioneering using files instead of videotapes. We are constantly looking for new easy to connect with audiences, and this is the technology perfect for this moment in time.

“In this time when we are literally homebound, we are looking to be inspired. AltFiction’s narrative films will prove entertainment, inspiration and will be the cure for cabin fever,” Weiss said.

Movie lovers can go online and watch great films at specific times.  Like traditional film festivals, there will be questions and answers and intros to the films from hosts and from the filmmakers, but these will be done on video (and unlike the films themselves will be viewable later online). Audiences can ask questions of the filmmakers and have them answered in real-time. 

Here's how you do it:

 

1. Sign up at OnlineFest.us 
2. Browse content
3. Register for screenings you want to watch
4. Log back in before the event start time to begin viewing (an email reminder goes out 30 minutes prior to the start time)

In addition, viewers can expect a seamless switch into a filmmaker Q&A using a text-based tool that allows attendees to submit questions online.

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.

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.

'The Son' to rise again on AMC

Good news for the Austin film/TV industry: Deadline reports that a second, 10-episode season of "The Son" is slated for AMC and almost certainly will be shot largely in Central Texas.

The show starring Pierce Brosnan (whose Texas accent is a bit "creative") is based on Philipp Meyer's epic novel of the same name, and the author is a driving force in the series as well. Read my interview with him in the Austin Chronicle.

Patty Hearst gets kidnapped in Austin

Filming begins next week in Austin on a limited-run retelling of heiress Patty Hearst's kidnapping, my sources confirm. It will continue through June 10.

It tells the tale of publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst granddaughter, who was abducted from her Berkeley apartment by terror group the Symbionese Liberation Army in 1974 and soon was sporting a gun of her own during a bank robbery.

The series comes from Austin-based Bat Bridge Entertainment, which shot some scenes at a former bank in Taylor last summer. 

Casting calls talk of a "major network" behind the "Untitled PH Series" seeking " featured extras for recreations of real people, so the actors will be matching historical figures, and their faces will not be seen straight-on." That network is either CNN or CBS. The latter talked of just such a series last year.


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Also currently shooting around Austin are a Comedy Central pilot Power Couple and Andrew Bujalski's indie film Support the Girls.

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

Rodriguez seeks extras as 'Alita' begins Austin shoot

Robert Rodriguez is back in action directing Alita: Battle Angel for Fox in Austin from now until February.

According to Deadline, it's set in a 26th-century dystopian future: "The film follows the story of an amnesiac cyborg who, after being rescued from a scrap heap by a doctor (Christoph Waltz), becomes a bounty hunter tracking down criminals."

Actress and singer Eiza González has the lead role. She also stars in Rodriguez's El Rey Network series From Dusk Till Dawn. Rodriguez shocked Austin locals when he moved series production to film friendlier (as in incentives) New Mexico for season three. The cast also includes Lana Condor, Rosa Salazar, Jackie Earle Haley and Ed Skrein.

It's an adaptation of  the graphic novel series Battle Angel Alita by Yukito Kushiro. James Cameron wrote the script with Laeta Kalogridis.

Third Coast Extras is handing background roles, which include punk rocker types, Asians and East Indians, but also general folks of all ages. Get more info at the casting company's Facebook page.

The film is set for a 2018 release.

Dallas-based actress shines in 'No Letting Go'

Cheryl Allison's long, successful career has taken her to Broadway, but she's back in Dallas and finally breaking out on the big screen as the anchor of the film No Letting Go, which is being released on demand on cable television starting today.

It's a harrowing tale based on a true story of a mother who struggles to keep herself and her family together as one of her three sons suffers from an anxiety that blossoms in his teen years into a full-blown bipolar disorder combined with haunting depression.

Allison knows the role well. She starred in the short Illness that won so many honors on the festival circuit that filmmaker Jonathan Bucari chose to expand into a full feature film. It's inspired by the real-life experiences of Randi Silverman, who co-wrote the script with Bucari. She co-founded a support group for parents raising children with anxiety, depression and/or mood disorders. The group has served more than 800 families in the past five years. Silverman talks about that experience here.

No Letting Go provides a perfect showcase for the realities these parents face. It's beautifully shot and ably acted, with Kathy Najimy particularly shining as a no-nonsense therapist. The cast also includes Richard Burgi of Desperate Housewives and a number of soap operas, and Janet Hubert of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Silverman's real-life son Noah Silverman stars as the 14-year-old suffering from mental illness. His brother's story is the film's inspiration.

In Fort Worth, Allison is regularly seen on stage at Casa Manana, but she might see more film roles coming her way once word gets out of her strong performance in No Letting Go. It's a film that rates seeking out for its frank treatment of a topic that people are often unwilling to openly discuss.

Pee-wee Herman is back

Photo by Joe M. O'Connell

My interview with Paul Reubens in advance of the Pee-wee Herman's Big Vacation premiere in the Austin Chronicle:

Paul Reubens never once breaks into Pee-wee Herman's voice during a telephone interview ("I know you are, but what am I?"), but the odd manchild character fills the empty space around Reubens' words begging to be defined.

Kid show innocent? Subversive prop gag comedian? Pop culture icon? Early Nineties tabloid scandal-sheet cover boy? Pee-wee/Reubens is all of these things. He is both vintage, punk rock kitsch and smooth, white innocence. More importantly, he's back in Pee-wee's Big Holiday, an only somewhat unlikely collaboration with Judd Apatow that premieres at the South by Southwest Film Festival before airing on Netflix starting March 18.

"I'm part of Austin culture," Reubens said, reminding us that a big chunk of 1985's Pee-wee's Big Adventure was shot in Texas. "There's a famous sign that says 'Keep Austin Weird.' I'm represented on that artwork, and I tell it to people proudly." He's not certain of the sign's locale, but Pee-wee's image can be spotted in a Home Slice Pizza mural on South Congress emblazoned with the admonition "Don't Hate."

In 2011, Reubens also appeared at SXSW in support of HBO's The Pee-wee Herman Show on Broadway, a televised version of his stage show, which revived and essentially rebooted Pee-wee.
"I did that stage production with the idea that enough heat would happen to attract someone to make a Pee-wee movie," Reubens said. "Judd Apatow saw the show, and we set up a meeting. He was a big Pee-wee fan. He very early on said, 'I feel strongly that it should be a road movie somewhere in the same wheelhouse as Big Adventure.' That's what we did."

Read the rest here.

'Kill or Be Killed"

Duane Graves and Justin Meeks finally get an Austin screening for their dark western Kill or Be Killed just prior to its DVD/stream release, and I sat down to talk with them for The Austin Chronicle.

The film has been a few years in the making. I visited the filmmaking duo on set, and you can see the story here and the rest of my set photos here. 

Justin Meeks, Michael Berryman and Duane Graves (Photo by Joe O'Connell)

They had 13 blank bullets to shoot in the crucial scene. It was 3am on a frigid morning at Jourdan-Bachman Pioneer Farms, a living history museum on a swath of tree-filled acreage surrounded on all sides by a residential North Austin neighborhood. Duane Graves and Justin Meeks were in the middle of filming their dark Western Kill or Be Killed.

Go. The explosions barked toward the houses and echoed. Go again. Four takes in all before the police cars arrived.

"It wasn't our first rodeo," Meeks said and recounted an earlier short film production halted when police arrived at a rural creekside just as an actor was yanking a fake heart out of a bloody chest.

Kill or Be Killed was originally called Red on Yella, Kill a Fella, but retitled for release March 1 by RLJ Entertainment on DVD, streaming and in Redbox locations. First they'll have an Austin screening Feb. 29 at the Alamo Drafthouse Village. It's the latest step in a slowly widening career for the unlikely filmmaking partnership that began in a college classroom and now finds both with wives and children.

Graves is the self-described emotional one who takes it all a bit too personally. Meeks is the charismatic actor/filmmaker with hair flowing down to his shoulders and an easy grin. He stars in Kill or Be Killed as outlaw Claude "Sweet Tooth" Barbee. Meeks' early work was dark, dark, dark. Graves first gained note when Slamdance screened his heartwarming and funny 2000 documentary Up Syndrome, chronicling his childhood friend Rene Moreno, who was born with Down syndrome. It includes VHS footage of the pair shooting goofy horror films in their backyards on a camera Graves begged his parents to buy him.

"Being co-directors is not for everyone," Graves said. "You need to know when to yield."

Have they ever come to blows? No, they say. But there have been disagreements.

"There are two egos here," Meeks said. "You have to put it in check."

"We end up laughing about it later," Graves said. "Two brains are better than one."

Read the rest here.

Fear drove Hitckcock, author says

My conversation with Michael Wood about his new Alfred Hitchcock bio for  Kirkus Reviews:


The famed director Alfred Hitchcock’s secret to success? He was afraid.
 
That’s Michael Wood’s take in Alfred Hitchcock: The Man Who Knew Too Much, a thoughtful peek into the director’s work and psyche released as part of the Icons series, which has in previous volumes delved into everyone from Jesus to Stalin to Edgar Allan Poe. Hitchcock is most famed as the master of suspense, and the book submits that it points back to his youth when Hitchcock was consumed by the fear of being stopped by a policeman.

Read the rest here.

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.

Terrence Malick's 'Cups' head to Berlin, has first trailer

Austin resident Terrence Malick has two movies in the works (not counting the big Imax project about the history of the world). One is Knight of Cups set in Los Angeles. It's set to premiere at the Berlin Film Festival, we learned today. And there's a first trailer on Youtube.

The Austin film? It's set in the music scene and out there somewhere. Here's the best lowdown on it that I've seen.

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.

Linklater: More school and rock, less fish

Photo by Joe O'Connell

Richard Linklater must feel the adrenaline surging through his veins lately. First there's major critical acclaim for his 12-year project Boyhood. Now comes word that both his long-delayed college project and a TV version of School of Rock are in the works, but he's the latest director punt on the fishy Incredible Mr. Limpet remake.

The Hollywood Reporter: "According to sources, Linklater wants to concentrate on That's What I'm Talking About, a 1980s, university-set project that is akin to his cult hit, Dazed & Confused, which was set in the 1970s and set in high school. The project, which is based on Linklater's life, follows freshmen as they navigate through the first year of college life, while trying to make the baseball team."

Linklater played baseball briefly at Sam Houston State. The project may shoot in the fall.

Meanwhile, Linklater is producing a 13-episode Nickelodeon order of School of Rock based on the film he directed starring Jack Black. No word on whether this would shoot in Austin, but it probably depends on Linklater's level of involvement. It's also set to lens in the fall. Look for a casting announcement soon.

'Boychoir' films in Taylor, Texas

Most of the film was shot in Connecticut, but the Texas-set film Boychoir stopped in Taylor, Texas, for a brief two-day shoot this week at a former school and a few other locations.

Dustin Hoffman, Kathy Bates and Debra Winger (who replaced Sissy Spacek) star in the story of a troubled Texas teen who gets rescued by a prestigious N.J., choral group. Connecticut got the bulk of the filming because of generous 30 percent state incentives, which have now been put on hold for two years.

Odessa officials were apparently not happy with how their city is to be portrayed in the film.

Kat Candler's long journey to overnight film success

Photo by Joe O'Connell

I sat down to talk to Kat Candler for The Austin Chronicle about her adventures along the way to Hellion, which premiered at Sundance earlier this year and screens at South by Southwest in the next few days.

I was the first person to ever interview Kat back in 2000. It's an honor to interview her again now. Hellion is a fine film. Check it out.