“911.”

(sobbing) “Yes… I … I just saw someone run over a squirrel!  In broad daylight!  He just… he just … kept going and I… I…”

“Okay. Okay calm down… where are you calling from?”

“10 Semolina Drive.”

“We’ll send someone over…”

(hysterical) “I think he’s dead!”

“We’ll send someone immediately…”

“It’s just so… so…”

“Did you get the plate number?”

“Yes.”

“Give it to me.”

She does.

“I’ll put out an APB.  Stay where you are someone will arrive shortly.”

“Okay… okay… okay…”

Later at the scene of the crime:

“How is he?”

“I’m afraid he’s dead ma’am”

(begins to sob) “He was… it doesn’t…”

“I know how hard this can be ma’am. If it’s any consolation he doesn’t appear to have suffered he was dead in seconds…”

“His tail… it kept swishing back and forth!  He was…”

“That often happens.  People’s bodies will jerk and twitch long after they’re dead.”

“It’s just so… so… horrible.”

“I know.” (pause) “Is it okay if I ask you a few questions?”

“O.. o… okay.”

“Did you know this squirrel?”

“Not… not personally, I mean, I’ve seen him around the neighborhood, in my tree, on the back deck… that sort of thing.”

“Did you ever witness him hanging out with anyone suspicious?”

“Just other squirrels I guess…”

“This hit and run was definitely not perpetrated by other squirrels… did you see the driver?”

“Not really… he looked vaguely man shaped.”

“Have you seen any men interacting with the squirrels in the neighborhood?”

“There is… there’s an older fellow who feeds them… he lives at number 24…”

“Interesting.”

“Do you think he… is it possible?”

“Anything’s possible ma’am, but we’ll know more once we run the plates.” (awkward silence)  “If you think of anything else… here’s my card.”

“Okay… thank you.”

“Please let me know if you plan on leaving the province…”

“I don’t have any plans to leave the province.”

“If you do.”

“Okay.”

I’ve recently designed a new business card (business cards, actually: three versions based on the three colour schemes for my corporate site ) and I’m having difficulty deciding how to handle the image on the back. Here are the two options that I’m choosing between:

The top one really pops but the subtlety off the bottom one seems a bit more elegant. I keep going back and forth between the two.

That’s why I’ve decided to seek some outside opinions. If you’ve got the time, please log in and leave a comment letting me know which version you prefer. Thanks!

Back V1: the madfatter in his full opacity glory

Back V2: a gentler, subtler madatter

Read the rest of this entry »

The final chapter of “Meher, me, two strippers and a bodyguard”.

Interlude: A tale of two cops:

Cop one:

The first night I arrive in Los Angeles Meher picks me up at the airport and we set out in search of our original accomodations, Deano’s Motel in Culver City. Just as we accidentally pass the motel a police cruiser pulls up behind us and hits our rearview with this tremendous spotlight, blinding us and making the officer approaching look like the silhouetted aliens in Close Encounters. The cop emerges from the brightness on Meher’s side.

“You guys look lost.”

“We were just looking for Deano’s motel… it’s right there.”

I turn my head to see the officer’s partner silently hovering on my side.

“You’re lights also out in the back.”

“Oh really? Which one?”

“Well there’s a lot back there… hold on.” the cop steps back as Meher plays with his turn signal.

“The left one?” Meher asks.

“Uh… yeah. Can I see your license and registration?” he takes it from Meher. “You guys from Ontario?”

“Yeah.”

“Pretty good huh?”

“You must be psychic.”

The cop disappears for a while… a long while and then returns Meher’s papers to him.

“Ok. You know about that light and everything else is fine.”

“Okay.”

“May the force be with you.” the cop says, leaving Meher totally awestruck.

Cop two:

The next day I’m standing on the steps of our motel staring toward the street in an effort to mentally will Meher to return before checkout time. A police car pulls up next to me and the cop says “Hi.”

“Hi.” I say and then look back up the street.

“So, you’re just hanging out?”

“Yep.” I explain that I’m waiting for Meher and I notice the cop checking out my legs and boots like: “The kid’s thin… is he heroin addict thin? Hmm.”

“So you’re from out of town?”

“We’re from Ontario.”

“Just vacationing?”

“Yep,”

“Well okay then.” and he drives off.

Hassled by two cops in my first 12 hours here… and it hasn’t happened since.

There’s nothing you can do… it’s Culver City Jake.

And now our feature presentation:

As Meher and I return from a late lunch of burritos at La Salsa we find Erika standing in the back parking lot of the motel. It seems that the trucker friend of hers who was supposed to pick them up at four o’clock got held up (not like by a burglar) while trying to offload his truck. The forklift driver miscalculated and dropped a skid full of steel on a guy standing in the loading bay. As a witness to the man’s death the trucker has been delayed indefinitely and they’ll need to keep the stuff in Meher’s car until at least 11 o’clock tonight… the plot thickens.

Meher in the courtyard of our motel. Our room was #3, just to his left.

Read the rest of this entry »

Part two of: What happened to Trevor and Meher while they were in L.A. together composing the score for Reasons To Live.

April 3, 1998.

Stopped working on the score at just after 4am last night. I tried to stay up with Meher but I sort of drifted off at about 3:30. At 12:38 today the phone rings and thus begins The Continuing Story of Tony and His Girls…

RING!

Meher’s eyes light up expectantly.

“It’s the stripper!” I say.

“Hello? Hey how ya doin’!” Meher nods in my direction. It’s the stripper.

Erika wants to know if they can keep their bags in our room. They’ve lost their room (apparently due to some loud fighting late last night) and they need somewhere to stash their stuff until their friend shows up around four o’clock or so.

“What do you think?” Meher asks.

“I don’t know.” I say with a touch of worry.

He hangs up the phone having agreed to protect the stripper’s worldly goods.

“I knew this would happen!” I say feeling pretty world wise, “I wrote it in my book last night.”

“What?” Meher asks.

“That we were supposed to offer our room to them.” I enter the bathroom to wash my face. “Next thing they’ll ask to use our room ‘just for a little while’ and Tony will beat us up and empty our wallets.”

“No we can’t have that.” Meher leaves the room and returns five minutes later. He’s convinced them to put their bags in his car, that way they won’t have an excuse to get into our room if we’re out. Also, Tony wants to go for coffee with us.

“Just Tony? Or the whole gang?.”

“The whole gang, I think. They say there’s a place within walking distance just around the corner. It’s weird, I walked up there and Erika was just in panties and a bra and I was like ‘oh! sorry’ and they were like ‘no, that’s cool’. ”

‘They’re up to something.’ I think. My mind keeps drifting to Jim Thompson novels and how the protagonist is continually presented with chances to escape, but instead keeps digging himself in deeper and deeper…. mixed up with the wrong people until he is double-crossed and he says “I’ve been played for a sucker!”

Later:

I’ve left the door open while I attempt to strategically hide stuff in our room, my ID, camera. walkman etc… Leah appears in the doorway with an armful of stuffed animals.

“They didn’t want to stay in the car.” She smiles coyly, “Is it alright if I leave them here?”

Um… “Sure”. She is really cute in a little girl Lolita kind of way.

“They won’t take up much space.” She puts them on our chair.

“And they add a little colour to the room.”

“Thanks.” She smiles – coyness incarnate – and then leaves. It dawns on me that I am a sucker. She’s just got to bat her eyes and suddenly they’ve got personal items in our room.

Meher with Leah the stripper's stuffed animals

To continue the Reasons to Live retrospective, over the next few days I’ll be excerpting some journal entries that I wrote during the film’s creation.

As I’ve mentioned earlier, when it came time to write the score for Reasons To Live my composer, Meher Steinberg, was in Los Angeles seeking job opportunities. I couldn’t imagine anyone else doing the job and seeing as I was unhappily single and feeling somewhat sorry for myself, going to California for a week or two seemed like a good idea. So, in the spring of 1998 I got on a plane with a VHS tape and a journal and went to meet Meher.

After spending a night in a horrifying motel room in Culver City we eventually settled into the Royal Santa Monica motel in Westwood. While Meher wrote the score hunched over his keyboard in front of the television I’d stay close by scribbling in my journal and doodling. After we’d been there a few nights we got a phone call and thus began our interaction with two strippers and their “bodyguard”. The rest of this entry is transcribed from my journal:

Meher writing the score in our Royal Santa Monica motel room - April, 1998

Meher picks up the phone and there’s a woman on the other end who asks if we have any cigarettes. He tells her we don’t smoke and then she reveals that she’s on the second floor in a room directly across the little courtyard of our motel. She’s an “exotic dancer” and her name is Erika. She’s travelling with Tony, her “bodyguard” and Leah, her sister. She asks Meher if we want to hire them but Meher explains that it’s not the sort of thing he usually does. She says knowingly, “You’ve never done it before and you’re not sure if you can afford it.” Meher agrees. I’m stuck between them waving to her through the window while sitting on my bed. The phone call ends and Erika walks around the upper balcony singing tunelessly.

Later:
“I’ve found a cigarette, Meher!”
Meher – “Yay!
Trevor – “Congratulations!”

She comes down to smoke on some plastic, umbrellaed patio furniture in the courtyard, that sits on a vast expanse of astroturf. She’s a rather large girl with the beginnings of a double chin and a big mess of a dyed blonde bob. She waves to me and I reply in kind. She goes back upstairs.

Even later:
Tony and Leah return with some take-out food. Erika and Leah then come down to the courtyard.

“Is that Trevor sitting in the window?”

“Yep!”, I wave my foot at them. They both sit down at a patio table. Leah is actually really cute although leaning towards her sister’s heaviness. She looks a bit shy and yells “Anthony!” throwing a pack of cigarettes at her motel room door. They bounce onto the balcony. She runs upstairs and disappears. Erika remains, smoking and Meher finds out she’s from Redding California originally. “If you’ve seen red necks, cows and horses… you’ve seen Redding.”

She tells us she’s got to get work tonight or they’ll have to check out at 11am tomorrow but it’s Thursday night and “… nobody wants a stripper on a Thursday night!”. Tomorrow it will be easy to find work she tells us, she’s just worried about the time between 11 and 3 (they’ve got a ton of stuff in their room). It occurs to me that we’re supposed to suggest using our room, I mean, if it’s only going to be a four hours… but I resist the temptation.

“God it’s freezing! I’m going to got get a sweatshirt, excuse me.” Now she runs up to her room. “Don’t come back on our account” Meher says quietly and we leave our door open for a few minutes until we can’t stand the cold anymore.

Later still:
The phone rings.
“It’s like Grand Central Station!” Meher says as he picks up the receiver.
“Do you have a car?” I hear over the phone.
“Oh yeah, I do… but I’ve got so much work to do… I can’t.” Meher asks me if I’ve got 50 cents.
“No, I’ve got about 10 pennies.”
“I’ve got a buck I can lend you… ok.” he hangs up the phone and explains that Erika wanted a drive down to Sunset.
“What’s the dollar for?”
“It’s worth it for entertainment.” he explains, “For the bus.”
“Well,” I say “looks like we’ve picked up a stray stripper.”
Meher laughs.
Read the rest of this entry »

16mm Colour film, 23:03 min.
Synopsis: Colin Payne gets more then he bargained for when The Grim Reaper shows up at his door demanding to know why he won’t die.

After I graduated from college I began to work in the film industry. First as an office production assistant, then as a “heat wrangler” (I was in charge of propane heaters to keep the cast, extras and crew warm during winter night shoots on the 1994 Rae Dawn Chong vehicle Boulevard) and eventually I settled in as an assistant director. I took these jobs with the understanding that I was only doing it until I’d saved enough money to make a film of my own. In 1996 that moment had come.

The Script:

The core premise of the film sprang from my personal experience with chronic health problems. I was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis when I was 12 years old. At the age of 22 I had an operation to hopefully correct the disease but which has proven to have unpleasant complications of its own. The surgery had occurred a few years earlier and I was dwelling on it when I had the idea for Reasons To Live. I began the outline for the film on April 16, 1996 while living in a rental apartment on Lauder Avenue near Oakwood and St. Clair in Toronto with my roommate Christophe Quillévéré (if you’ve read earlier entries you might recognize him as the actor from The Impostor. Christophe also made it into this film as the the Elvis like figure, Hervig Prufrock of whom Colin is a fan). A couple with a young daughter lived above us and the plot started to form as I lay in bed staring at the ceiling hearing the family make a ruckus. There was a lot of clomping going on and I thought, “What the hell is she wearing… tap shoes!?”

The heading in my notebook says “Death and the Colitis Sufferer“, I think it’s safe to say that I eventually settle on a somewhat more accessible title. This early version included considerably more personal anecdotes about living with colitis and included a girlfriend for Colin named Sue. Eventually my writing partner, Rob MacKinnon, and I streamlined it down to the the version that we finally shot.
Read the rest of this entry »

Colour and B&W 16mm film, 8:33 min
Synopsis: A student film that deals with a young man’s struggle to understand the concept of God and religion.

The Cross was my third year film at OCAD. I think that of all my shorts from college this is the one that reeks the most of “student film”. I tried to tackle a big topic using ham-fisted visuals and overall I’m dissatisfied and somewhat embarrassed by the results.

The reaction of my classmates seemed to agree with this impression. When it was screened before the class, one woman said she felt is was an accurate depiction of a young person coming to grips with the concept of God and religion but she was in the minority. The consensus was that the film didn’t achieve it’s goal, was naive, that my character was too distinctly dressed and even my instructor Morris Wolfe, who generally enjoyed my work and was very encouraging said that the music was inappropriate and didn’t convey the proper mood.

Looking at it now I have to agree with the criticism. I present it here with the intention of creating an honest retrospective. The quality of the transfer from an old VHS tape is horrible and the narration is hard to make out at times ( I have a transcript of the dialogue here if you need it). I hope you’ll find it interesting in the context of the other films on this site.
Read the rest of this entry »

B&W 16mm film. 16:36min
Synopsis: A meek real estate agent thinks he’s found a machine that can solve all of life’s problems in this Twilight Zone-esque comedy.

Before I continue I should note that I’m not creating these posts in chronological order; there are quite a few shorts between The Ghost in the Machine and this one. I plan to give all of them their due on these pages before long – be they good, bad or ugly. And now without further ado…

The Impostor was my final film for OCAD. It was shot in B&W 16mm film and was my first with sync sound. It was finished as an actual film and as such I literally cut and taped it together on a Steenbeck editing table at the college.

Though it’s far from perfect I’ve always had a soft spot for this movie. I enjoy that it looks the way it does. I was aiming for a Twilight Zone sort of vibe and for the most part I’d say, with the help of my cinematographer, Brian Sharp, I succeeded. The plot was also an homage to Rod Serling’s classic show.
Read the rest of this entry »

Steve Markle and Jeff Kassel of the FX show Testees

Last Wednesday my sister-in-law alerted me to the fact that the FX show “Testees” was premiering on Showcase.  We were both interested in it as one of it’s stars, Steve Markle, went to high school with us.  I thanked her for the heads up and dutifully set my PVR to record the show on Showcase HD on Rogers cable.

The next day I sat down to check the show out and discovered that the it had been recorded but there was no dialogue track.  The background music swelled, the distant sound of traffic could be heard in the apartment scenes but the actor’s mouths moved silently.  Now I had seen this happen before on City TV HD but usually by the end of the first commercial somebody in the station had noticed the problem and corrected it.  Not so with Showcase.  I fast forwarded to the first commercial and promisingly the dialogue for the ads played just fine. Read the rest of this entry »

I thought I’d mention that this site is set up to use gravatars .  A gravatar is a thumbnail icon that follows you around to different sites and is displayed when you make comments. With gravatars you upload an image to represent yourself and associate it with an email address. When you use that address to sign in anywhere that uses gravatars your icon will follow.  You can use anything you want, your facebook picture, your MSN messenger icon etc. At the moment, I’m using the creepy headshot on the right as my gravatar.

So if you feel like making a comment why not take the minute or two to go to the gravatar site and give yourself some representation!