How to promote a bad film

This is hilarious and sadly true: It is possible to sell a horrible film to an unsuspecting public. A successful film flack explains how it's done.

Horror in Houston

Joe Grisaffi dropped me a note about his new horror flick Dead of Knight, which is shooting in Houston. He describes it as: "The spirit of a cursed medieval knight is accidentally released in present day. The spirit must complete a deadly quest to be released from the clutches of the evil queen who holds him captive, and to be reunited in eternity with the lover he once betrayed."

It stars Jerin Julia as Marla, Brandon Hearnsberger as Jaxson, Christie Guidry as Cynthia and Dimitri Kouzas as Walker. Co-starring are Sara Gaston, Dan Braverman, Anne Quackenbush, Alan Hall, Kyle Greer, Tiffany Grant, Celeste Roberts and Wayne Stevens. The screenplay is written by Emilio Iasiello. The movie is being produced by Grisaffi’s company, Starship Films, LLC.

Grisaffi’s casting company Southwest Casting handles the audience for Judge Alex and Cristina’s Court. And you can go to the Web site to register to be an extra on the new film.

Dead of Knight is expected to be released on DVD in May, 2007. Grisaffi's previous film, Laughing Boy is available on Netflix and at Amazon.com.

Film and books: do they mix?

A couple of my favorite filmmaker folk, Kat Candler and Gary Kent, were at a Saturday reading at Book People by Robert Stickmanz from his just republished novel Prelude from Dalton Publishing, which is also putting my book out in June. Check out a great feature by Kat's jumping off bridges producer Stacy Schoolfield in the latest issue of Filmmaker Magazine about how they worked to self distribute the film. Gary is writing a memoir of his long career in independent film, which includes a stint as Jack Nicholson's personal stuntman.

http://www.storieproductions.com/katsblog.html

HBO picks up Dallas-set show

HBO has picked up 12 Miles of Bad Road. Will it shoot in North Texas? Not likely as HBO folks indicated early on that most of the show will be shot in Los Angeles, Another Texas-set show, Reba, goes off the air on the CW on Feb. 18.

Latest Dallas Morning News column

My Dallas Morning News SHOT IN TEXAS column this month gives a big-picture look at the industry, the effects of strike talk and, of course, the battle for incentives. Joe-O sez: Check it out.

Austin Stories lives on DVD

OK, I'm slow. I just discovered that for more than a year Howard Kremer has been selling DVD compilations on eBay of the 12 Austin Stories episodes MTV shot way back in 1997. Is this legal? I doubt it, but more power to Howard who now goes by the name Dragon Boy Suede. If this all means nothing to you, Kremer, Chip Pope and Laura House starred as three slacker-types in the comedy, which was the highest rated shows on MTV up to that time, but was dumped when they had a change in management. In Austin it was routinely sneered at, but it holds up as a nice snapshot of the time before the Capital City really began to transmogrify into Dallas junior.

Oh, and it was a lot of fun to be on the set. In my pre-film columnist days, I was an extra in both the pilot (as a sleazy record industry guy) and in episode set at the car lot on South Congress that is now being made over into fancy shops (as a sleazy car dealer). Do you note a trend here?

The show was mainly shot in an empty HEB grocery store on East Riverside (last I saw it was a fitness center now). My scene in the pilot was in the back of the building where they'd set up a fake entrance to a nightclub. I was waiting in line. By this point I was an experienced extra with work on everything from Courage Under Fire (the back of my head stars!) to Richard Linklater's The Newton Boys (my scene was completely cut). So I sidled up through the line until I got in exactly the point where I knew the camera would catch me. Sure enough, for a moment in the episode the stars step back and there's me swiveling my head back and forth.

That's me with Juliana Sheffield, the very first McBubbly, after the shoot. It was summertime and I was sweating like a barnyard critter.
A few weeks later at the car lot I was selected from the group of extras to be one of three car dealers who ended the episode by sneering at the cast through the showroom window. It was shot at the big time! The night the episode aired, my pal Murray, who was also in the episode, and my then-girlfriend, now-wife Tiffany sat down to watch it. The ending had been changed! Tiffany walked down the hall out of sight and said, "Look, I'm on Austin Stories..." Even I had to laugh.

Oh, and I wrote an article about my day on the set that appeared in the San Antonio Express-News at the time. Check it out.

Austin Studios grows up and out...

Voters in Austin, Texas, approved $5 million to improve Austin Studios. Here's my lastest Austin Chronicle FILM NEWS column about how they're spending the cash.