Clean Up

As I was cleaning up my bedroom a few weeks ago, I found a Blood Car souvenir underneath an unread autobiography of filmmaker Sam Fuller: the blood towel. Prior to the production of BC, this towel was created to cleanse me of the gallons of blood in which I was to be submerged. They made the mistake of giving me this towel and I thought it was so neat that I decided to keep it at my apartment. So, the towel has never been used. Thinking back, no one ever asked me for the towel. I guess no one knew about it except whoever made it (Gretchen or Stephanie) and I. Thinking it would make a great tapestry...

We recorded a commentary track last week for the Blood Car. That sounds pretty exciting, and it was, but we approached it knowing that we would record several and collect the best pieces from each for the final track. The commentators consisted of Alex O., Adam P., Katie R. and myself. We watched the film on DVD and recorded our comments with two microphones (one of which was Bob Barker style) onto the ubiquitous P2 cards of a Panasonicam. Adam and Alex did most of the talking with Katie and I contributing the occasional anecdotes and sidebars. I think it's probably better when there are fewer people, so they have to talk more. Some topics we covered included Hawmi, characters/subplots in the script but not in the film, Lorraine's and Archie's t-shirts, the classroom blackboard, who wrote what scenes and lines, the weather, cinematic influences, the screwing couple found on Craig's list, the history of Archie's bike and we hope many other answers and clarifications to all the BC curiosities. Undoubtedly, some of these topics and stories will end up on the commentary track cutting room floor. I'd like to have a go at the commentary by myself. I think we all should.

In other news, Blood Car is still on the market. Compared to some of our festival myspace peers like Great World of Sound, Silver Jew, Hannah Takes the Stairs, Monster Camp and Murder Party, we currently hold the greatest number of myspace friends, totaling 10,195 at the time of this writing. No one really comes close here. Nice job, Mr. Orr. One of these friends deserves mention here. Off and on, I surf through the comments on the BC myspace page, sifting through the shameless self-promoting adds for real comments about the film. I found one from Nicky B., a 17 year old guitar player from the island of Guernsey off the coast of Normandy in the English channel. He trekked into Paris for the European Independent Film Festival back in March and ended up at a screening of Blood Car. From what I can gather from his comment, it seems like he made the 234 mile trip for the festival intending to see the film. Victor Hugo wrote Les Miserables living on the island of Guernsey. It is also home to some megalithic art, large upright stones of the Stonehenge variety thought at various times to have been used by Druids for human sacrifice, for calenders, as territorial markers or as some sort of ideological marker. If you want to get into a hot debate about European prehistory, read up and start making reckless comments and you're sure to piss some people off. Guernsey is also proud of their cows.

We have a few film festivals coming up in August that I am planning on attending, at least the one in the smallest state in the union. With the information I have, our current festival BA is .366, which is a slight increase over last time. Margin of error: +/- .20

A new credit sequence for the film is supposedly in the works. Georgia State University, our "nourishing mother", contacted us recently about doing an article about us for the alumni magazine. We happily obliged them with a photo shoot on a blue screen studio at the university. We wore suits and held bags of potato chips in the photo. Katie R. wore a wonderful pant suit that I wish I had photographed. Unfortunately, we may not see it because it showed just a little bit of skin; hardly any, if you ask me, but the photographer seemed to think GSU wouldn't go for anything risque. They have obviously not seen Blood Car.