Ezra Miller kaput

Thank God that's over. Gun-loving recidivist criminal Ezra Miller's career finally appears to be finished and it's about time. I still want to know what happened to that woman and her children who disappeared after staying at his gun-littered marijuana farm.

Next time he strangles someone, he could go to jail.

His career lasted fifteen years which is actually pretty good. He must still be a millionaire. 

He reportedly went back to using masculine pronouns so I can stop feeling like a jerk for mis-gendering him.

Brats

Yeah, I watched it on Hulu. I recognized the name Andrew McCarthy but I really don't know who he was/is. The whole Brat Pack thing was after my time. I was in my twenties when they started making their teen movies and they didn't interest me. I did see Ferris Beuller's Day Off but it made no sense to me. In high school, I skipped classes all the time for no reason---I had a friend who got in his car one morning to drive to school but drove seven hours to Boise, Idaho, instead and no one cared especially. My mother skipped school in the 1940's and it was of no concern to anyone.

It never occurred to me that the term "Brat Pack" was derogatory or upsetting to the callous young millionaires who were part of it. Maybe it should have been obvious to me, but I wouldn't have cared.

I read an article in a radical film journal at the time about the way young people were portrayed in cinema. It's been almost forty years, but if I remember correctly, they were described as foul-mouthed ass-grabbing saints. The grown-ups were the villains. It wasn't just these Brat Pack movies. There was Stand By Me where the tweens were pure of heart and the high schoolers had already become cruel monsters. Luckily, the 12-year-olds had a handgun. 

Billy the Kid, New Evidence

About the guy who bought a photo of Billy the Kid playing croquet, one of only two pictures of the young fellow known to exist. The documentary from National Geographic focuses on efforts to authenticate the picture. We know how it ended so there wasn't much suspense. I mostly felt sorry for the poor wretch who sold the photo for $2.

The doc had recreations of Billy the Kid's "crimes". Seems like he was right to kill at least some of those people. It might have been better if they used clips from Hollywood movies about him.

Billy the Kid was no Paul Newman. I never noticed he was wearing a sweater.

Zero budget film: What about the actors?

I always wondered about this watching zero budget movies that hit it big. Did Robert Rodriguez go back and pay the people who appeared in El Mariachi for free? Even less successful films like this one I just watched, American Taboo---did the filmmaker go back and pay the people who acted in it when he got a distribution deal?

Variety is reporting on the poor devils who starred in The Blair Witch Project, who operated the cameras, sound equipment, improvised their roles and came up with an explanation for why they kept filming while they were being murdered by the Blair Witch, and were then paid nothing. 

“I’m embarrassed that I let this happen to me,” Williams says via Zoom from his kitchen in Westchester County, N.Y., as Leonard and Donahue listen from their respective homes in New York’s Hudson Valley and rural Maine. In a flash, his face flushes and his eyes fill with tears. “You’ve got to put that stuff away, because you’re a fucking loser if you can’t,” Williams says. “Because everybody’s wondering what happened, and your wife is in the grocery line and she can’t pay because a check bounced. You’re in the most successful independent movie of all time, and you can’t take care of your loved ones.”

One thing from the article:

As the film’s lead and its sole woman, Donahue also had to endure the brunt of the often misogynist backlash. “Heather’s portrayal of a fierce and relentless artist who would not stop filming wasn’t an acceptable archetype at the time,” Leonard says. “She was fair game to be hated on, and they were using her real name.”

I do remember a witty writer at the time said that the message of the film was to never put a woman in charge of a film crew. This was a left-wing critic so I took it as ironic sexism.

Ten or fifteen years ago, a couple of co-workers were talking about The Blair Witch Project, They were talking about how people thought it was real. I butted into their conversation and said that the real give-away that it was fake was that there's no such thing as witches. They both gave me a blank stare which made me realize that they thought they themselves were witches. One of them later told me that his girlfriend was a Wiccan. He said that they can never use their powers of witchcraft for their own benefit.

I always thought Darrin Stephens was an idiot, but it turns out he was a Wiccan. Seems like a stupid religion where the only people who can't benefit from it are the ones who practice it.

But my point is that, to maintain the illusion that it was a true story, the studio, Artisan, insisted that the actors not appear in anything else so people would think they were dead. 

American Taboo (1983)

I came across this on Tubi. There was a scene of the "couple" walking in the fog on a cold freezing beach and I realized it must have been filmed in Oregon. Made in Portland for $20 thousand by a 32-year-old film student at Portland State University. It won a Student Academy Award the same year Spike Lee won for his student film.

An apparently serious drama about a socially awkward photographer in his 30's who sleeps with a high school girl. Kind of slow. 94 minutes.

To Die is Hard (2010)

It wasn't bad. Amusing. A Die Hard spoof about a Professor who rises to the occasion when a trio of terrorists invade the English Department.

After watching El Mariachi, I came across a book at the library called The Independent Filmmaker's Guide/How to Make Your Feature Film for $2,000 by Glenn Berggoetz which gives what seems like sensible advice. He's made several movies for next to nothing, some of which were shown theatrically. According to IMDb, To Die is Hard cost around $1,500 and grossed over $5 thousand at the box office which seems pretty good, as good as you could hope for.

The terrorists were lightly armed with obviously toy guns, which was fine. You want people brandishing real guns on the set of a zero-budget movie? El Mariachi had real guns they borrowed from local policia, but I always assumed they were toys.

Free on Tubi.

Writing a book on how to make zero budget movies always seemed like the best, perhaps only way to merchandise a movie that cost nothing. Your book would publicize your movie and your movie would publicize your book and you might get a teaching job out of it. I guess you could try writing a novelization.

El Mariachi (1992)

There's a YouTube video debunking the debunkers. The movie really did cost only $7 thousand and most of that went to pay for film. Shot on 16mm. If it had been shot on digital video, it would have cost $600. The studio, Columbia Pictures, paid only for a blow-up to 35mm and to remix the sound. I don't know why the skeptics always focus on that when they had to have spent several million on publicity and advertising. 

I was talking to a guy in his 90's at the Senior Center who lived in Mexico in the 1950s. He saw the movie and thought it was stupid. Every time the Mariachi goes outside, people try to murder him. Why doesn't he stay inside? I hadn't seen it in 30 years and didn't remember this, but, watching it again, I see he did have a point.

Can you really walk around Mexican towns brandishing submachine guns? I guess you can since they did this while filming the movie. I wouldn't have asked unpaid actors to perform stunts, like running in cowboy boots, unless they were covered by workman's comp.

This is the first time I've seen it in decades. My memory of it was pretty accurate, which may be one reason it didn't stand up to repeat viewing. And I'm going to watch it again and listen to the commentary.