chris . word

I don’t think it’s much of a secret that I’m a film nerd. I love movies of all genres but have a special place in my heart for sci-fi. Among my favorites is Ridley Scott’s 1982 film Blade Runner.

The film, an adaptation of Phillip K. Dick’s novel “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” made quite an impression on me as a young man. I saw the film at a rough cut screening in San Diego after having won tickets on a local radio station and was treated to a version somewhat different from the finished product. It was a great experience.

I’ve watched the film so many times since that day and each time I still see something new in it. It was definitely before its time and not something soon to be repeated — any potential reboot/remake notwithstanding.

One of the stars of the film is Sean Young. She played Rachel, the replicant who thought she was human. During my travels in Hollywood I almost worked with Sean on a film but she ended up doing it and I ended up dropping out. At least I had the pleasure of meeting her once during pre-production.

She could not have been nicer during the meeting and towards the end even put up with a few Blade Runner questions from me that had absolutely nothing to do with the project we were talking about at the time. I enjoyed that meeting very much.

Recently, Sean put up a bunch of polaroid photos of her, and others, taken during the Blade Runner shoot. They are pretty cool and show a lot of my favorite actors as their younger selves. They also give us a glimpse into the friendship and bond that takes place during the making of a film.

I’ve often heard people in the business describe the filmmaking process as like going to war. You have a mission and you have a group of people all working together to reach a common objective. I’ve never been to war nor do I ascribe the same significance to filmmaking as I do to the sacrifices made by our men and women in uniform.

However, I get what they mean. Long hours, sometimes difficult working conditions and a sense that you’re isolated except for the rest of the people working with you can lead to that esprit de corps often talked about in military circles.

I’ve experienced the bond and friendship that comes from hours, days, weeks and months “in the trenches” and often it is an amazing experience that you keep with you for the rest of your life. It’s one of the things I miss most about working in the business, on set, helping to create something.

Still, I do like what I’m doing now. Writing is, in some ways, much harder. But is also very rewarding when you know you’ve done a good job on something. As you often work alone, you don’t develop the camaraderie and bond as you would on set but the sense of accomplishing and creating something is certainly there, and often more pronounced.

No, I don’t think I would change how things are now. I’ve got my memories of the good times and I’m still great friends with many of my comrades in arms. For me, those are enough.

How I didn’t see this before I’ll never know, but apparently the site Mr. Skin rated the all-time best nude scenes in movies and one of my favorite actresses of all time was number one. I’m talking about, of course, Phoebe Cates in Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

To a young man such as myself, Cates represented all that was awesome about girls and helped start us on the way to manhood. I’m very happy that many others obviously share my enthusiasm for Cates. She truly is one of a kind and still looks great today (at 46), btw.

But here she is in her younger days in one of my favorite movies of all time. Also, keep in mind, this video is probably NSFW. Enjoy.

In case you don’t know who I’m talking about, here’s some video that points out the true phenomenon that was Bettie Page — who, sadly, passed away yesterday at the age of 85. Time Magazine also has some great photos and a tribute over here, so take a look. Enjoy.

Just imagine how annoying and frustrating things would have been for Neo, Morpheus, Trinity and the gang if The Matrix ran on Windows. Although, if it did and ended up having this many errors, we might have been spared the two sequels.

Alas, that didn’t happen. But its fun to think about the what if? Enjoy.

Yes, all the thrills, chills, excitement and sweaty fanboys you could ever want. But also, great artists, writers, costumes, cool shows and all the true geekery you could ever want. This is Comic-Con and no matter what the negatives, I still seem to go back every year.

I’ll probably do a longer post-mortem later, but until then I just want to highlight a couple of the great things that happened to me, and around me, during the show. Here’s a few:

Meeting Robert Englund (aka Freddy Krueger).

Meeting Stan “The Man” Lee

Meeting Joss Whedon

Getting to hang out with some great friends and the cool people I work with at ComicMix.

Making some great new friends from in and around the “business.”

Getting a chance to talk a little about my own personal projects with people in a position to do something about them and be taken seriously and met with enthusiasm.

Oh, and did I mention I met Joss Whedon. That was cool. Matt Raub, one of my ComicMix pals, met him as well earlier in the week while we were hanging at the Hyatt bar. Which, as it turns out, was pretty much the place to hang out.

It seemed that after all the parties and events that people felt compelled to attend, most anyone would end up at the Hyatt to actually have a bit of fun and relax. Glad we were there too.

For some of my interviews and such done during the show, check out ComicMix.

Last, but certainly not least, here’s a few pics of the “BSG” cast (including my personal favorite Katee Sackhoff) taken by my pal Tony Mark during the press event.

Check them out after the jump. Enjoy.

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Really, at this point, what more could I add?   

For some reason I’m up late watching Conquest of the Planet of the Apes on Sci-Fi Channel. I don’t know the exact reason for watching it other than it happens to be on and I like Planet of the Apes movies. This is the one where the apes revolt against their human oppressors and take over the planet in futuristic 1991. The movie was actually released in 1972 and was partially filmed in the then very futuristic-looking Century City Mall — now known as Westfield Century City.

A great deal of the film was also shot at the very nice UC Irvine Campus as well. The college’s buildings have also seen quite a bit of film production over the years, including this Apes film and sequences from other films like Ocean’s Eleven, Poltergeist and TVs Arrested Development.

If you ever get to Irvine, or better yet, LA you can go to the mall and see the actual locations used in the film. They are still there and in most cases look pretty much the same. Century City is a pretty popular area where other films like Die Hard and Liar Liar (starring Jim Carrey) were filmed — which makes sense, especially in the case of Die Hard, as the entire area used to be part of the giant backlot of 20th Century Fox Studios. In fact, the infamous Nakatomi building in the film is actually the Fox Tower.

But really, you can’t go very many places in LA without seeing a place where something was filmed for some movie or TV show. In fact, its hard to drive through the city sometimes without running into some actual filming taking place on the streets, in the buildings or at the swimming pool of your favorite hotel.

You can always tell when you see old and obviouly retired motocycle cops sitting on their motorcycles on the side of the road that you’re getting near to some film or TV production. Orange cones are many times a telltale sign as well. Also, look for the big trucks filled with all sorts of equipment and a whole bunch of people mostly standing around waiting to spring into action at a moments notice.

Really, that’s what a lot of film and TV production is — standing around. Well, sometimes, if you’re smart and/or important, you actually get to sit. Either way, you end up waiting for the opportunity to do something much of the time. Not that people who work in production don’t work very, very, very hard. They do, believe me. I’ve been there. Its just that you have a lot of downtime and waiting around and then a period of intense activity. Then, its back to waiting again. That’s just the nature of the business. Hurry up and wait.

I recently did a piece for CBR about Portland, its creativity and its thriving comic book scene. I found Portland to be inspirational for many reasons, chief of which is the fact that it just feels like a great place to “get things done.” It has many of the big city virtues but still manages to maintain some of the small-town feel and, dare I say it, innocence, so often lacking in other places — like Los Angeles.

When I was there talking to a great many of the people responsible for putting Portland on the map as a creative town and a town where there are lots of talented people producing some great stuff, I also got a sense that something else was just around the corner. That we hadn’t seen everything that was going to happen in Portland and that comics were just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

Well, if you take a look at this article in Variety, I guess we now have an idea what that something else might be: Hollywood. Hollywood, it seems, is in love with comic books and wants to make as many comic books into movies as possible. In many ways that’s a good thing. It gives people who work in comics a chance to see their work on the big screen and potentially puts a lot more money in their pockets. It also opens up these stories to a much greater potential audience who may, after discovering the movie they just enjoyed was based on a graphic novel or comic book, go to their local comic book store to check out a few more. They might even end up purchasing some too.

But I wonder if, in the end, this attention will really be good for comics and Portland. My first clue that all may not be perfect in this new relationship is the title of the Variety article. It’s pretty openly condescending to comic book creators, calling them “wannabes.” Of course, that may not be an insult to Hollywood people. After all, doesn’t everyone want to work in the movies?

From experience I know that Hollywood often has a tendency to find that “next big thing,” use it until there’s no more left and then move on to the next thing. Unfortunately, that often leaves quite a bit of destruction in its wake. As someone who likes comics, comic book creators, publishers and Portland, I just hope Hollywood doesn’t do the same to them when its finished squeezing every penny it can.

I hope Hollywood, in its desperation to save a dying business model, bring people into the theaters and sell lots of DVDs, doesn’t end up ruining comics for the rest of us and crushing that last bit of innocence in Portland and comics we could all use a little more of now and again. That would be a shame indeed.

As people who know me well can attest, I’m pretty much the kind of person who likes to do the same things pretty much all of the time. I like to eat at the same restaurants, go to the same bars, drink the same beverages, see similar kinds of movies, read similar kinds of books and comic books, etc. You get the idea.

Another thing I usually do has to do with my writing. When I leave the house to write out in the world I almost always go to my particular Starbucks to do it. The reasons for this are simple. I know the place, I know the people and I know what I’m getting when I go there. That can pretty much be applied to the other things I do pretty much all the time. I’ve been around long enough to know what I like and like what I know. No harm in doing what you want to do, is there?

Even though I’m what you would call a “creature of habit” every once in awhile I like to mix things up. So today, instead of going to my usual Starbucks to write some stuff for Cinematical and work on the pilot that can’t yet be discussed, I decided to try something new today. I threw caution to the wind and went not to Starbucks but instead, to a place called LuLu’s Beehive in Sherman Oaks. That was a couple hours ago and so far, so good.

When I first got here I was privy to an interesting argument between what could best be described as a few “disgruntled” writers. There were three middle-aged dudes arguing about how various studios around town don’t know what they are doing, that executives and development people are “idiots” and how the hole business of show i basically a blight on society. Of course, in the next minute they bragged about their upcoming projects and the stuff they had in development and their upcoming deals so they can’t hate the business too much as they are still hip-deep in it. Its funny to hear these kinds of conversations because that’s what showbiz does to people.

I like to think of showbiz as being like chocolate cake. Its one of those things you know is bad for you but its also so good you just can’t help yourself. And really, as I’ve probably said before, the worst day on a movie set is still so much better than the best day working at a bank or some other “real” job type job. Yes, showbiz and I have had our share of issues. But like any dysfunctional relationship we have also had our very good days as well so I can’t say its all bad. Plus, as anyone who knows me will tell you: I love cake.

photo “borrowed” from my former boss at LAist jason toney

as we all know, the middle east seems to be imploding by the minute. we can’t seem to get a handle on iraq and now isreal and pretty much anyone else are trying to kill each other. so, if you want all the bad news, i’m sure there are a few places around the net where you can get your fill.

if you have no clue where to go, following are a few suggestions. if you are like me, you like to get your news with a little opinion thrown in. hopefully, said opinion is an informed one and makes for an interesting read. the following links fill those criteria, at least for me. there are countless others but these also have a certain level of writing quality which i can only aspire to. i don’t always agree with what’s being said on these sites but they are rarely borning:

andrew sullivan

the drudge report

daily kos

and if you lean more to the right:

the huffington post

ace of spades hq

or, there are the more traditional sites such as:

the washington post

slate magazine

cnn

the los angeles times

and, if you are less interested in cold hard truth and more interested in cold hard truth mixed with humor, try this:

the onion

and be sure to watch:

the daily show with john stewart

the colbert report

now don’t you feel much more informed and ready to speak at parties and not sound like an idiot? these sources of information can help you but you have to also keep in mind that drinking six beers and then trying to talk to people doesn’t make you smarter, it just makes you drunk. and many times drunk people are just annoying and say really stupid things that, of course, they don’t mean. let’s all learn a lesson from mel gibson, shall we?