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.

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.

"Austin-set" series will shoot in... Los Angeles!

Bah ha ha! I curse you, Austin!

Hat tip to Joe Gross at the Austin American-Statesman for this scoop:

Rob Lowe will star in Fox series 9-1-1: Lone Star, a spin-off of Ryan Murphy’s show 9-1-1. It will be set in Austin, but shot in Los Angeles because they look exactly the same. Cough cough.

More from The Hollywood Reporter: "The series follows a sophisticated New York firefighter (Lowe) who, along with his son, relocate to Austin and must try to balance saving those who are at their most vulnerable with solving the problems in his own life."

I expect to see Rob at at Joan's on 3rd in West Austin, ur, Hollywood, soon.

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.

It's time to "Uber-ize" the airline industry

My op/ed piece in the Austin American-Statesman:

Photos taken during San Francisco delay.
©Joe O'Connell

It’s not about one customer being dragged off one airplane; it’s about an industry attitude that must change or go the way of the cab industry. Shape up or get Uber-ized, United Airlines.

Consider the Facebook page I Hate United Airlines and its good friends: I Hate American Airlines and I Hate Delta Airlines. Angry customers are in awe that Southwest Airlines reportedly reacts to long delays by buying its customers pizza. A simple act of kindness is the aberration not the norm.

My wife and I traveled from Austin to Santa Barbara to see Van Morrison perform. A short connection in San Francisco and we’d be there. But our United flight was delayed again and again. Weather, we were told. We arrived in San Francisco minutes after our connecting flight had left. The next flight out was canceled — and the next one was already full of people from that canceled fight. OK, we said, put us up and fly us out tomorrow. We don’t pay for weather delays, the United rep said. Later we learned that United had had a well-publicized computer problem the day before. Was it lingering?

We made the best of it and went full-on tourist: Argonaut Hotel at Fisherman’s Wharf, cable car, lunch at Nick’s Lighthouse. To the airport with plenty of time to still make the Van Morrison show. Another delay, another. United workers blamed it on air traffic control this time. We booked an airport hotel, resigned to flying home without having ever set foot in Santa Barbara. Our flight soon was canceled. We’d take a morning flight home.

©Joe O'Connell

The next morning we presented boarding passes and were told our tickets were canceled — canceled because our flights were canceled. A third day in the airport. I started tweeting about our hostage crisis. How I’d taken a job washing dishes at Peet’s Coffee and living off of airport candy. On Facebook a friend sent footage of the show we’d missed: Morrison performing “Moondance” with actual full moon in the background “‘neath the cover of October skies.”

Throughout it all, United workers treated us with resignation mixed with wariness. For our trouble we got two $150 vouchers — a third the cost of our flights. Customer service was an afterthought.

Yes, Austin chased Uber away with threats of regulation, — but it’s clear Uber has forced the old cab company model to shape up or vanish. Use PayPal instead of needing cash? Check. Half the cost? Oh yeah. Less structure. Less fuss. Less hassle.

It’s the same with telephones and television. Expensive landlines? Dead or dying. Cable television? Hah. Innovation and change have made none of the old, tired models safe from welcome extinction. The airline industry needs to be next.

©Joe O'Connell

Consider this: United and other airlines charge for checked bags, so customers bring more carry-on luggage. A San Francisco TSA worker shook her head while she explained how it slowed down their process and overworked them. Security lines were long and stressful. Once we got to United’s smaller plane from Austin to San Francisco, they handed out tags to check luggage anyway. Overhead bins were too few and two small. We piled our bags by the entryway. The same process happened on our aborted flight home. It made no sense. The airline industry makes no sense.

We are living in a changing world where marketing pros talk of “connectedness” as the secret to success. They don’t mean networking; instead it’s about synthesis — taking the old ways and reworking them into something better. It’s what Uber did. It’s why Blockbuster Video and its exorbitant late fees seems like a distant memory. It’s why phone books are as useless as buggy whips.

I don’t have an answer to the airline industry problems, but I know airlines like United with their “friendly skies” need their creaky old models to change or step aside for something new. Please, creatives, Uber-ize them quickly. We need you.

©Joe O'Connell

Austin-shot 'The Son' ready to premiere on AMC

Philipp Meyer was getting drunk on author and folklorist J. Frank Dobie's front porch when he decided to adapt his epic Texas novel The Son for the screen.

"Let's just do it ourselves," he recalls thinking, with the "ourselves" including his compadres Brian McGreevy and Lee Shipman from the University of Texas' Michener Center for Writers. "The worst that can happen is we fail."

Read the rest at the Austin Chronicle.

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

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.

Hello, goodbye, 'Leftovers,' and thank for all the miracles

The good news: HBO is back in Austin at this very moment shooting the third and final season of The Leftovers. Austin serves as the show's Miracle, Texas, in a world torn asunder by the sudden disappearance of 2 percent of the population. Much of the cast returns from season two.


The bad news: The Austin stay will be done in the blink of an eye, with the bulk of the season lensing in Australia. Indiewire has a great breakdown on how this fits into the plot.

For once, this isn't about the shrinking Texas film incentive funding that sent Robert Rodriguez packing to New Mexico. It's really about where the story itself is headed. And can we really be upset when Austin kidnapped the series for its second season after the first was shot in New York state? And, hey, The Son is rising in Austin (and needs extras!), so no worries, mate.

The Leftovers remains some of the best television out there. Based on Tom Perrotta's novel of the same name, the series has a fine pedigree with Damon Lindelof, the showrunner for Lost, at the helm. Read my Austin Chronicle interview with the show's executive producer Mimi Leder for more on that.

Extras! Extras! Background artistes sought for 'The Son'

This just in:

Brock/Allen Casting is hosting an OPEN CASTING CALL for a new AMC series, The Son, a period piece based on the award-winning novel by Philipp Meyer. Filming to begin early June-September 2016.

ALL POSITIONS PAID!

NEEDED : CAUCASIAN, HISPANIC, AFRICAN AMERICAN,
AND NATIVE AMERICAN INDIAN ETHNICITIES.
Males AND Females, AGES 18+, NO visible tattoos or body modifications. Headshots welcome; photos will be taken onsite.

This is a world of cowboys, vaqueros, oil loggers, and American Indians clashing on the frontiers of the American West as Texas rises to make a name for itself, spanning the years 1849 to 1915. If you have wardrobe that you feel fits this time period, please come dressed! If not, COME AS YOU ARE!

Where? When?

This coming Sunday,  May 22 from 1-6 p.m.
Best Western Plus Austin City Hotel

2200 S I H 35, Austin, Texas 78704

More on Facebook.

Robert Rodriguez sends 'From Dusk Till Dawn' to New Mexico

Rodriguez and Linklater (photo by Joe O'Connell)

Cuts to Texas film incentives have a new casualty: Austin-based Robert Rodriguez likes to shoot at home, but he's setting up the third season of his El Rey network's From Dusk Till Dawn series in New Mexico with filming beginning as I type this. The first two seasons shot in the Austin area, of course. But money talks and Rodriguez walks. As have other recent Texas-set shows.

This is what happens when the Texas Legislature slices and dices its two-year film incentive program budget from $95 million to $32 million. In recent years, the incentive program has been most effective at attracting TV series to the state, including Austin-shot American Crime and The Leftovers. The former shot in Austin for both of its two seasons, while the latter shot its second season around Central Texas. The Leftovers already has a third season commitment while American Crime's future is unknown. Will either return to Austin? Stay tuned, but don't get your hopes up. At least we still have Richard Linklater. Right, Rick? Gulp.

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.

"Son" set to rise in Austin with Sam Neill

 Look for a 10-part AMC TV adaptation of Philipp Meyer's novel The Son to set up shop in Austin for a summer shoot. 

The acclaimed novel has been described as a "multi-generational saga of power, blood, land, and oil that follows the rise of one unforgettable Texas family, from the Comanche raids of the 1800s to the to the oil booms of the 20th century." University of Texas prof Don Graham regularly includes the novel in the his well-known Life and Literature of Texas course along side the works of Larry McMurtry and Cormac McCarthy.

Sam Neil plays Eli, the family patriarch who was kidnapped and raised by Comanches, an experience that colors his world view.

Also in the cast are  Henry Garrett (Poldark), Zahn McClarnon (Fargo), Paola Nunez (Reina de corazones), and Sydney Lucas (Fun Home). The show was written by Meyer, Lee Shipman and Brian McGreevy. It's expected to air in 2017.

Now if someone would finally adapt Billy Lee Brammer's The Gay Place (which is also on Graham's syllabus) for TV or film we'd be set with major Texas novels being brought to the big (or little) screen. Oh, I could also go for a faithful adaptation of Dan Jenkins' Semi-Tough minus the silly new age twaddle added to the Burt Reynolds version. Pretty please?

'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.

Urban Cowboy' TV pilot to lens in Austin

The 1980 film Urban Cowboy is being dusted off and set in the modern day for a Fox television series. No word on casting yet, but  the pilot will shoot in Austin in September with Craig Brewer, who also brought us a Footloose film remake, behind this re-imaging of a modern Cissy and Bud.

If picked up for series, it could air as soon as mid-season or not pop up until next summer. No major casting has been announced (will John Travolta's hairpiece and Debra Winger's smirk make cameos?), but we can expect the pilot to be loaded with twangy music.

Meanwhile, John Ridley's American Crime is gearing up for its second season shoot in the Austin area right now. Yes, right this moment. Learn how to be an extra over at Brock Allen Casting's Facebook page. You soon will find extra info for Urban Cowboy there as well.

'Mockingbird' and a friend from long ago

With the release of Harper Lee's Go Set a Watchman today, it a good time to post this essay I read on KUT radio in Austin, Texas, on the 50th anniversary of To Kill a Mockingbird's release in 2010. It's about my old friend Jennifer, loss and growing up. Give it a listen.

(On the air, they used the first paragraph as an intro):

I've been thinking a lot this week about the book To Kill a Mockingbird and my old friend Jennifer Manley. Jennifer was a pretty girl I met on the bus at Austin High School a million years ago. To Kill a Mockingbird was the book we all had to read in school. It was supposed to guide us down the path to adulthood.

The rest can be listened to here. Or you can read it here.

Gary Cartwright's memoir dives into 'Mad Dog' days

My interview with Gary Cartwright is the cover story for this week's Austin Chronicle. This is how it begins:

Photo ©Joe M. O'Connell

How to write about the memoir of an iconic Texas scribe whose life has been way more interesting/wild/chaotic than yours? Use his words.

"On the road home to Brownwood in her green '74 Cadillac with the custom upholstery and the CB radio, clutching a pawn ticket, for her $3,000 mink, Candy Barr thought about biscuits. Biscuits made her think of fried chicken, which in turn suggested potato salad and corn. For as long as she could remember, in times of crisis and stress, Candy Barr always thought of groceries. It was a miracle she didn't look like a platinum pumpkin, but she didn't: even at 41, she still looked like a movie star."

Thus begins Gary Cartwright's 1976 Texas Monthly profile of the state's most notorious stripper, a story that in many ways cemented a style of inserting himself into the narrative. It's a technique that served him well in writing the memoir The Best I Recall (University of Texas Press, 272 pp., $27.95) When UT Press asked him to pen the book, he realized details of events from party days of yore were often hazy.

"Even though I wasn't the topic I was writing about, I wrote in first person a lot," Cartwright, now 80, said recently from his Central Austin home. "So I could go back and re-read stories from Texas Monthly and other magazines and get a timeline of what I'd done and when I'd done it. I put it together by going to school on myself."

Cartwright had a longstanding desire to meet Candy Barr going back to his Army discharge when a buddy and he showed up in Dallas at Abe Weinstein's Colony Club with a bottle of whiskey in the days pre-liquor-by-the-drink. They weren't (yet) drunk, but an overzealous cop threw them in jail anyway. Candy Barr had to wait.

Read the rest here.