Joe M. O'Connell

Sunday, September 27, 2009

"The Deep End" dives into Dallas

I was orginally supposed to be at this event tonight, but word came down of a press lockout. Here's a secondhand take on the event--from those who were there--via Facebook:

It was a beautiful day/night to hold a reception to welcome ABC, 20th Century Fox Television, David Hemingson and our own Garry Brown and the cast of THE DEEP END to Dallas for principal photography. Thank you Cobie and Gordon Russell for being such ...great hosts. It is always great to see Governor Perry in Dallas especially when he presents an almost $900,000 incentives check to the Prison Break team.

Friday, September 25, 2009

Texas Longhorns' next 2 opponents: UTEP and inertia

Check out my latest in The Austin Chronicle on the University of Texas Longhorns football team. Did Sergio Kindle's swamping of Texas Tech QB Taylor Potts change everything?

For those too busy to read the blog (or with extreme ADD), here it is a Wordle.

Independent film thriving in Dallas

Everything from a guy with a talking "member" to a family-oriented tale about making it big in the biz. My Shot in Texas column in the Dallas Morning News.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

When the rains end...

No puddle is safe...

'Rock Opera' turns 10

This just in from Bob Ray, the maniac behind the wonderous and wonderful Rock Opera:

In October of 1999, the Alamo Drafthouse screened the soon-to-be cult classic stoner flick, Rock Opera, for three weeks at their original Colorado Street location. Laughter was heard, weed smell was smelt, fun was had. Chad Holt probably got laid. It was a good time by all accounts and measures.

So, come October 10, 2009, the gang is back! Writer-director Bob Ray will present the film and be accompanied by many of the original Rock Opera hooligans. The screening will feature clips from Ray’s documentary work-in-progress, TOTAL BADASS (featuring Rock Opera’s Chad Holt) as well as a selection of Ray’s short animated “CrashToons” (several of which have been featured on Playboy.com and Turner Network’s Super Deluxe). But the main event is a super-rare screening of the cult fave Rock Opera, with Bob Ray and crew hosting a post screening Q&A and an ear-gasmically sweet post-post-screening rock and roll show with bands from the flick (see below).

Rock Opera tells the tale of Austin musician Toe's (Jerry Don Clark) struggle to put together a tour for his foundering band PigPoke. Back-stabbing, dirt weed-selling Toe double-crosses half a dozen of the meanest sonsa’ bitches in Texas to weasel himself into a position to get his band on the road. Half stoner-comedy, half suspense-thriller and 100% dope ass flick, Rock Opera is the original stoner-action-comedy (despite what Pineapple Express claims)!

Oh, and the after-party features a special reunion show for Austin’s VOLTAGE and Pocket FishRmen.

Kat Candler's 'Spider' spins film web

Congrats to Kat Candler whose script for The Spider in the Bathtub (co-written with Chris Mass) has been optioned with Kat attached to direct. See the details on her blog:
http://katcandler.blogspot.com/2009/09/spider-in-bathtub-optioned.html

Sunday, September 20, 2009

A young artist comes clean...

...in the bathtub

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