EVE on the Cover of Volume 11.1 of 360 Magazine

Earlier this month, 360 Magazine did a photo shoot in New York City with rapper EVE, who appears on the cover of our Volume 11.1 issue.

Her fourth solo album, Lip Lock, was released in the United States on May 14.

That same day, we released this video interview EVE made with Eiko Watanabe shortly after the 360 Magazine shoot wrapped.




Everyone at 360 Magazine was delighted when EVE tweeted a thank you to our team.

We look forward to her continued, fabulous success.

PlayGround Film Festival Starts Today

Late last month, I spent an afternoon in Oakland, California with Dances With Light 's Barry Stone, who's producing the 2nd Annual PlayGround Film Festival now playing at various San Francisco Bay Area theaters through the end of May.

The festival showcases six short films based on short plays produced by PlayGround Theater, plus a fun clip of each writer describing how they conceived of their original piece.




After I watched the festival screener, Barry and I discussed making a trailer.





Here's Barry recording the voice over of one version of the trailer we thought up.

I hope to see you at the festival.

It's a fun way to spend an evening while showing your support for the San Francisco Bay Area independent filmmaking community.

Check out these reviews by SF Weekly and Berkeleyside.

Officially a VERONICA MARS Fan Boy

UPDATED May 3, 2013: This fan boy's dream came true on April 12, 2013, when the Veronica Mars Kickstarter campaign successfully raised the funds needed to make the Veronica Mars movie.

Production begins in Los Angeles, California in June, 2013.

The campaign broke Kickstarter records for raising the fastest $1,000,000, for raising the fastest $2,000,000, for being the highest-funded project in its film category, for having the most backers, and for being the third highest-funded project in Kickstarter history.

When Rob Thomas, creator of the CW's cult television show, Veronica Mars, tweeted me near the start of the campaign, I knew I was officially a fan boy of the show.

The series ran from 2004 to 2007 and stars Kristen Bell as a high school detective.

Female lead + neo-noir thriller = must-see TV for me.

I very much look forward to the film due out summer, 2014.

Me and Antonio GO BACK

Last month, Antonio Toro and I teamed up to rewrite my Twilight Zone script Go Back into a feature-length supernatural thriller. (When you jump to this post on the blog, you can read about the original tv version.)

Antonio is a WGA screenwriter and professional animator. You can see samples of his animation on his site - I like the shark suit tester 'cause he looks deliriously happy with his job.

I very much like writing with a partner. The two of us can determine more quickly and efficiently what works and what doesn't. And, of course, we bring our own unique perspectives and ideas to the project. A consummate cinephile, Antonio says he's never seen on film what happens in Go Back. I am amazed at the twists and turns he's already brought to the story.

I took this photograph at our weekly meeting at Borderlands Cafe on Valencia, where we're hammering out the outline of the new version.

Stay tuned for more updates.

"Airstream Driver" by Gomez

Lately, while blogging and preparing for a major overhaul of bestmusicandbooks.com, I've had playing on repeat "Airstream Driver" by Gomez.

The video has a candid immediacy with Ian Ball staring into what is likely a web camera as he sings the song in one take.

Business Manager at 360 Magazine and 360FOCUS Festival

I'm now the business manager of 360 Magazine and the 360FOCUS Festival in Los Angeles, California.

The film festival takes place on June 13 and is presented by Red Bull in partnership with 360 Magazine and FocusGroup Entertainment.

The one-day festival will showcase a collection of 30-minute or shorter films and new media projects containing racial and sexual ambiguity.

Among the judges are Roy Campanella II (director of Knight Rider, Baywatch, Boston Public and The Company We Keep), Nick Lippman (manager of George Michael, Matchbox Twenty, Rob Thomas and Ryan Cabrera), Rosie Niku (owner of bleumodels.com ) and Joe Moller (executive director of the Downtown Los Angeles Art Walk).

More updates to follow!

Bob Mizer at Invisible Exports

Avid fans of the Athletic Model Guild already know Bob Mizer (1922 - 1992) took 10,000's of photographs in his youth and twenties on all sorts of subjects before becoming famous as a physique photographer.

He took these images in the 1940's at boardwalk beauty pageants on Venice Beach. These and many more photographs from his collection of more than 1.000.000 negatives, photographs, slides and films are on display at Invisible Exports from December 14, 2012 to January 27, 2013.

You can purchase very high-quality prints at the gallery, where I would certainly be every day if I lived in New York.

Holland Cotter writes an excellent article on Mizer and the exhibit in the New York Times.

When you jump to this post on the blog, you can read my interview with Dennis Bell, the current owner of the Athletic Model Guild and founder of the Bob Mizer Foundation.

You can help support the Bob Mizer Foundation by donating directly at its website. There you will find more information on Bob Mizer, the Athletic Model Guild and the Bob Mizer Foundation, including its mailing address for your donations and updates on gallery shows, screenings and lectures.

M. V. P.

Here is the first half of my feature-length, female-lead dark comedy/thriller, M. V. P.

Its logline is

M. V. P. is about a young woman who must discover the connection between a spree of socialite murders and her walking tour of San Francisco's unsolved murders before the killer can murder her and her friends.

I enjoy writing screenplays with strong female leads, and M. V. P.'s heroine is one of my favorite characters I've created to date.

You'll have to ask me for the rest of the script to find out whodonnit and see if/how the lead saves the day.

"You Can Have It All" by Yo La Tengo

While bookkeeping for the San Francisco Bay Times, scanning photographs for my book project, One Man's Collection, with Zach Augustine, or building text in HTML for my blogs and websites, I like to play on repeat Yo La Tengo's version of "You Can Have It All," a gorgeous song that to me is an affirmation of the plenty in the world.

Exploitation Retrospect

I was interviewed by Jonathan Plombon for his article, "Between Sheets and Ropes: Pro Wrestling and Its Scandalized Sibling Pornography," which appears in the current issue of Exploitation Retrospect magazine, "the journal of junk culture & fringe media."

Plombon asked me, in particular, about Pepper Gomez, a very popular pro wrestler in the 1950's and 1960's, who also posed early in his career for beefcake photographers.

Plombon's article is a fun read. Exploitation Retrospect is a cool, strange magazine that's been around since 1986.

J. X. Williams?

I nearly fell out of my chair the first time I saw this video set to Spindrift's version of "Some Velvet Morning." Supposedly, this video is a fragment of J. X. Williams' film, Beach Bum. This fragment was shot in Cinerama and, I am told, did not make the final cut of the film.

Noel Lawrence, curator of the J. X. Williams Archive, released this video on Vimeo in February, 2012. There is much speculation online that Lawrence is perpetrating an elaborate hoax re J. X. Williams, the man, the artist and his body of work.

I, for one, am enjoying the ride. I love this video.


 
"Some Velvet Morning": Lost Cinerama Fragment from J.X. Williams + Music by Spindrift from Noel Lawrence on Vimeo.

360 Magazine, Bob Mizer and the Athletic Model Guild

Even a casual reader of my blogs surely notices my passion for the photographers and studios producing in the 1930's through the 1960's what we today call vintage beefcake photographs.

When you jump to this post on the blog, you can read my interview with Dennis Bell, the current owner of the Athletic Model Guild and founder of the Bob Mizer Foundation. I was pleased when Bell's recent Kickstarter campaign raised nearly $13,000, enabling the Foundation to purchase storage fixtures and materials to properly archive Mizer's massive collection of photographs, negatives, prints, slides, films and other ephemera.

To promote the Foundation and its Kickstrater campaign, I pitched to the publishers of the LGBTQ newspaper, Bay Times, articles featuring Bell, Mizer and the Athletic Model Guild.

I co-wrote with Bell the article appearing on page 26 of the paper's Gay Pride issue, which came out the Thursday before 1,000,000 people descended on San Francisco to celebrate Gay Pride Weekend and watch its Gay Pride Parade:

http://www.sfbaytimes.com/FlipBooks/062112/062112.html (Flipbook version)

http://www.sfbaytimes.com/PDF/06-21-BayTimes-complete.pdf (pdf version)

I was pleased one of Mizer's early, rarely seen photographs appeared on the cover of this issue, whose centerfold article I co-wrote with Bell:

http://www.sfbaytimes.com/FlipBooks/071212/071212.html (Flipbook version)

http://www.sfbaytimes.com/PDF/07-12-BayTimes-complete.pdf (pdf version)

And today I was thrilled to see three of Mizer's photographs and an excerpt of my interview with Bell appear in Volume 8 of 360 Magazine:

http://www.the360mag.com/issue.html (Flipbook version)

http://yakinworks.com/360AnE2012PDFdl.pdf (pdf version)

The two pager starts on page 188, but I suggest you take the time to thumb through this gorgeous magazine dedicated to fashion, art and entertainment.

It is gratifying to see a mainstream magazine acknowledge the trailblazing work Mizer and his contemporary physique photographers did in the commercialization of male beauty - before them, there was no such thing as a "male model."

"So In Love" by Orchestral Manoeuvers in the Dark

While I was in college in the 1980's, one of my favorite bands was Orchestral Manoeuvers in the Dark.

Scenes from the Day of the Dead celebration in their song "So In Love" stuck with me.

In 2002, I completed a feature-length, female-lead dark comedy/thriller, M. V. P., whose final scene takes place at a Day of the Dead celebration at Dolores Park in San Francisco, California.

Endora Was Like Frances

My favorite relative is my paternal grandmother, Frances, who was born in 1903 and passed in 1989.

Her mother - my great-grandmother - lived in Missouri, but wanted her child born in Oklahoma, so at the eleventh hour located a man who rowed her across a river to Oklahoma, where Frances was born four years before the Oklahoma and Indian Territories united to become the 46th State in the Union.

In her sixties when my sister and I were born, Frances thought she was too young to be called “Grandmother” and insisted we call her by her first name.

She was a self-made woman, who was proud she'd worked continuously through the Great Depression, eventually owned and maintained rental properties across Oklahoma City, and was a world-traveler for more than sixty years.

Beginning when my sister and I were small children, Frances would appear at our house very much like Endora would swoop into the Stephens' household in Bewtiched: “I just came back from China! I want to take my grandchildren to India!”

My mother was always horrified. “You are not taking them to India!”

Frances usually got what she wanted, and my sister and I fondly remember our summer vacations with her.

In May, 1927, the bubonic plague struck an African port shortly before Frances' transatlantic steamer was to dock, so the ship was diverted elsewhere. The crew was French. A party broke out on the steamer like none other Frances experienced on the night it was learned Lindbergh had flown his airplane from New York to Paris, France, to become the first person to fly across the Atlantic Ocean.

In 1989, I inherited a map of the world into which Frances had stuck colored pins, different colors representing the number of times she had visited a particular country. (Pins protruded from all but two countries.) Her favorites were India and China.

I like to think I inherited my gift of gab from her: she and I enjoy talking to anyone about almost anything. In the 1970's, after numerous trips to India, Frances became close with an Indian family and was thrilled to attend a young couple's wedding ceremony, which lasted almost three weeks.

I have lots of photographs of Frances in China. She told me she was in the last guided tour through the country before the Cultural Revolution, and she made sure she was in the first guided tour through the country when it again opened its doors to the West.

Over the years, Frances repeatedly told me: “You can do anything you put your mind to.”

I certainly haven't accomplished everything I've set out to do - yet - but I do believe her encouragement has given me the confidence to attempt whatever I want.

"Kingdom of Rain" by The The

One of my favorite songs from the 1980's is The The's "Kingdom of Rain," featuring Sinead O'Connor.

Spring Awakening at the Altarena Playhouse

Sunday, July 8, 2012, Phil and I crossed the San Francisco Bay to have lunch with our friend Judith Lynch in Alameda, California.

We then went to the Altarena Playhouse to watch its production of Spring Awakening, book and lyrics by Steven Sater and music by Duncan Sheik.

You might know Spring Awakening won eight Tony Awards in 2007, including Best Musical, and that it is based on a 1891 play by Frenk Wedekind.

Judith warned us, but Phil and I were surprised by the graphic language and very adult content of this musical, which includes masturbation, homosexuality, teen pregnancy and teen suicide in a sleepy German town at the end of the 19th century.

At the Altarena Playhouse, the audience sits around the stage arena-style, which afforded us an up-close view of the cast singing, dancing and whisking around props.

Under Frederick L. Chacon's direction, this stand-out cast of young actors shone. Leads Brendon North and Riley Krull were remarkable, bringing alive moment by moment the confusion, ecstasy, terror and rage of their characters.

Jordan Dong stood out as Martha, her voice clear, her emotions palatable. I sat close enough to the stage to see her peer into the eyes of each audience member around her, as she was singing.

Nikita Burshteyn was great as Georg/Dieter with a stupendous crush on his piano teacher. I think I left the Altarena Playhouse with a crush on Burshteyn.

Remember the names of this cast: Brendon North, Riley Krull, Jordan Dong, Nikita Burshteyn, Sarah Birdsall, Nathan Brown, Mackenzie Cala, Caleb Haven Draper, Charles Evans, Katie Robbins, Shauna Shoptaw, Steven Sloan, Kristina Stasi and Max Thorne. With their talent, hard work and a few nods from the Thesbian gods, this will be far from the last time you hear someone singing their praise.

Run - Don't walk! - to the Altarena Playhouse to see Spring Awakening. Run!

42nd Annual San Francisco Gay Pride Parade

I marched in the 42nd Annual San Francisco Gay Pride Parade on Sunday, June 24, 2012.

I shot this video with my contingent, which included the families, friends and team members of the San Francisco Bay Times, Betty's List, DJ Rockaway, Harvey's List, Napa Cellars and Olivia Travel.

We marched past 400,000 spectators down Market Street.

An estimated 1,000,000 people came to San Francisco to participate in events celebrating Gay Pride Weekend.

"It Was Almost Lost Forever:" Interview with Dennis Bell of the Athletic Model Guild and Bob Mizer Foundation

In 1945, Bob Mizer founded the Athletic Model Guild (AMG) in Los Angeles, California, operating out of his mother's house, and advertised for sale photographs of bodybuilders in nascent physique magazines like Strength & Health.

In the early 1950's, after the physique magazines had banded together to remove such ads as his from their magazines, Mizer published his own magazine, Physique Pictorial, which featured photographs and artwork celebrating male beauty.

Despite harassment by law-enforcement officials and even serving time in prison, Mizer continuously operated the studio over the next five decades until his death in 1992.

In 2003, photographer Dennis Bell acquired the estate and began resuscitating the oldest, still-operating physique studio in the world.

Today, I visited Bell in the archives, and we soon sat down for this interview:

You and I first met in 2005, just a few years after you'd acquired the bulk of Mizer's estate, which includes 1,000,000 negatives, slides, prints and films.

Do you remember how confusing the archives were? Stacks and stacks of unlabeled boxes.

Yes. But as a huge fan of Mizer's work, I mainly remember feeling amazed that I was examining negatives, slides and 4 x 5 photographs created and handled by Mizer himself more than sixty years ago.

In 2005, we were still trying to ascertain what everything was and how it fit together. We wanted the world to know AMG was about to resurface. You helped with AMG's first modern film, AMG Resurrection. Though the film's popularity has since faded, as happens to so many of that kind, the material in the archives has retained its popularity - and the way it's been catalogued, filed and stored has come a long way since your first visit!

The key was for me to learn to recognize Mizer’s handwriting. From there, we were able to quickly identify boxes full of important artifacts without having to open and inspect the contents of every single box. We eventually discovered there were hundreds of boxes containing roughly 500,000 black-and-white, 4 x 5 negatives. Hundreds more were full of slides, rolls of negatives, and every other photographic format invented in the middle of the last century.

Fortunately, Mizer never shot digitally, or I imagine all that work would have already been deleted and lost forever.

How did you end up acquiring the collection in such a disarray?

After Mizer died in 1992, his heir tried to run AMG for a couple years, failed and decided to clean out the place in order to relocate to Alameda, California. One of Mizer’s artist friends, John Sonsini, helped out, rescuing a lot of important material destined for a dumpster behind Mizer's studio. Sonsini later donated this material to me and the non-profit Bob Mizer Foundation.

So, Mizer's heir boxed up the items he wanted and shipped them to Alameda, where they sat in storage and in his garage for the next nine years.

During that time, I was a photographer in the gay adult porn world, taking still photographs for Falcon, Hothouse and other big studios in that business. I'd discovered the pioneering physique photographers of the mid-1900's, and I'm sure my own style has been influenced by theirs.

Eventually, I set up the website PosingStrap.com [now AthleticModelGuild.com] to showcase the work of all the physique studios. I managed to locate where many of the studios’ archives were and met Mizer's heir.

We hit it off.

He said he wanted me to continue the care of AMG, that he'd nearly decided to split apart the archives, sell off what he could and throw out the rest.

That's how I acquired the estate just over ten years after Mizer died.

Amazing. You were a photographer with a website featuring images by the physique studios. And, suddenly, you were the new owner of one of the studios.

AMG is legendary. I think everything I had been doing as a photographer during the previous ten years pointed straight to my being the next caretaker of AMG. I decided to give it everything I had, including the next several decades of my life.

The surprise for me came when I discovered in box after box thousands of images almost nobody has seen, images never intended for publication, material far removed from the work associated with “Mizer the beefcake photographer.” I learned he was an artist continually experimenting with the emerging technology of his day, an artist whose work needs to be seen by today's mainstream art world.

Is that why you founded the Bob Mizer Foundation?

First and foremost, the Bob Mizer Foundation will hold Mizer’s work and that of other physique studios. Included in Mizer's estate were some other photographers' estates, which he had cared for and owned the rights to. Other material has since been donated to the Foundation.

Today, we have identified and organized numerous pieces of the estate to the point that they need a new home, by which I mean negatives and slides need new archival sleeves, 10,000 films need new archival cans, and 2,500 betamax videos need new cases. All these items need to be stored in new fixtures.

Soon, I hope, the digital database we have amassed will be searchable like an online library.

You showed me today several beautiful photographs quite different from Mizer's physique work.

His work can be divided into two broad categories: the Athletic Model Guild category, which includes the beefcake photographs and muscle films, and the Bob Mizer Foundation category, which houses rare material he didn't catalogue, like his commercial photography, portraits, his boyhood photos, his letters and business-related documents.

And all of this cataloguing, filing and storage certainly costs money, which is why people can donate directly to the Foundation and why you organize fundraising campaigns through Kickstarter.

There will also be gallery shows featuring photographs from both categories. Right now, we are planning a gallery show in New York City of Mizer’s amazing portrait work and early commercial photography from the 1940's.

We’ve done several film screenings, too. The Masculinity of the American Male was presented in February, 2012 to a sold-out audience at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, California.

I gave a lecture earlier this month at San Francisco’s Center for Sex And Culture. That show, "AMG Whizz-Bang," focused on Mizer's work in the transitional years between softcore and hardcore films from 1967 to 1973.

A few years ago, we produced the Taschen book, Bob’s World, which focuses on Mizer's color photographs in the 1980's. And we are now working on a book featuring images from the Foundation category.

You said being the caretaker of Mizer's estate - and now guiding the Bob Mizer Foundation - will likely consume several decades of your life. Why are you doing this?

Well, there are so many reasons.

The misconception persists today that the struggle for gay equality rights in America began on June 28, 1969 with the Stonewall Riots. Since the mid-1940's, Mizer was fighting for gay rights by battling censorship and the morals of his day. He served time in prison and endured numerous legal battles for the right to photograph adult men in the manner he chose.

With his photographs, Mizer was a trailblazer in the commercialization of male imagery whose sole purpose was to let viewers gaze at male beauty. He created and distributed Physique Pictorial, the first magazine in the world specifically designed to make these images available to anyone interested in them. And you can now see his work's influence on mainstream culture, such as in Bruce Weber’s sometimes controversial photo campaigns for Abercrombie & Fitch. It’s homoeroticism for the masses.

Before Mizer, men and women wanting to view the male form had access only to bodybuilding magazines, art study books by Tony Sansone and Eugene Sandow, and underground photographs by a handful of artists such as Paul Cadmus and George Platt-Lynes.

In the 1950's, Mizer featured in Physique Pictorial homoerotic painters like George Quaintance and Etienne, who sometimes produced paintings directly from AMG photographs. David Hockney visited AMG in the 1960's, loved Mizer's photographs of models in showers and created a whole series of paintings about them. Tom of Finland was first published in Physique Pictorial and, though they didn't meet in person for years, began a lifelong friendship with Mizer. Lesser known artists were frequently featured in the magazine, like one of your favorite models, Andrew Kozak, whose primitive-style paintings dating to the late 1940's are still with the Foundation today.

I'm also doing this to showcase all of Mizer's photographs, including the ones outside his physique photography, so that everyone can see what a great artist he was.

And I don't want it to be forgotten that the Athletic Model Guild was more than likely the world's largest, longest-running physique studio, that one man ran it, and it was almost lost forever.

You can help support the Bob Mizer Foundation by donating directly at its Kickstarter campaign and website. There you will find more information on Bob Mizer, the Athletic Model Guild and the Foundation, including its mailing address for your donations and updates on gallery shows, screenings and lectures.

Detour to Tank Hill

In early May, 2012, I was walking home from the Haight, where I'd picked up lunch at Cole Valley Cafe. On a whim, I detoured to the top of Tank Hill, a city park nearly in the center of San Francisco.

I ate lunch there and used my iPhone to shoot this video.

Business Manager at the San Francisco Bay Times

UPDATED April 30, 2013: From March, 2012 to March, 2013, I was the business manager at the biweekly LGBTQ newspaper  Bay Times, whose emphasis is on articles about the LGBTQ community written by LGBTQ people living in the San Francisco Bay Area in California.

In April, 2012, I used an iPhone to take this photograph, which appears in the newspaper's May 3, 2012 issue.

I captured this moment during a recording of the Bay Times' monthly podcast at Cafe Flore, a very popular cafe in the Castro. Seated are Mark Leno (campaigning to be re-elected as a California State Senator), co-publisher Betty Sullivan, Tom Ammiano (campaigning to be re-elected to the California Assembly) and columnist Manny Apolonio. Standing on the left are musician John Steiner and Gary Virginia (Cafe Flore manager and a Grand Marshal of the 2012 Gay Pride Parade), while co-publisher Jennifer Viegas has her arm around Manny's shoulders.

The Wind Riders

I am pleased to announce I have finished co-writing a feature-length, sci-fi/family adventure screenplay with filmmaker/performer/actress, Amanda Boggs, whom you can see kicking butt in The Go-Go's video, "Unforgiven:"


Our script's name is The Wind Riders, and its logline is


The Wind Riders is about a teenaged, misfit girl who discovers the world's most popular online video game is really a portal to another universe and, with the help of her friends, must take control of the portal before its evil creator can destroy Earth in his quest to rule his home world.

It has been a lot of work - and fun - and our script greatly benefited from a dialog read, in which several people participated (including my good friends Barry Stone, Kim Webster, Kimberly Howard, and Zach Augustine) as well as reads and thoughtful notes from people like Robert Downey, Jr's stepmother and Sasha Mervyn.

Now, Amanda and I are shopping the script around Hollywood.

Cross your fingers!

"Very fun and family oriented" - Marty Katz Productions

Book Review

I was delighted when Goliath Books recently contacted me to ask if I were interested in writing a review of its "Goliath Wallpaper of Fame" magazine book, "Classic Male Nudes," the second in its series of very big, unbound books that open up into poster-size photographs.

You can read the review I just completed at this post on my blog Male Models Vintage Beefcake.

EFFT

Recently, I had the pleasure of interviewing on camera Sarah E. Palmer and Noah Phillips of EFFT, a band in San Francisco, California.

This is our interview.


I want to thank Sarah and Noah for their eloquence and for sharing part of their evening with me.

I also want to thank Kenny Suleimanagich, who operated the camera and did an outstanding job editing this project.

Writing for a Video Game Company

Earlier this week, I applied to be a writer at a video game company producing sci-fi and fantasy games.

They asked that I provide details on my writing experience and submit a writing sample based on their story guidelines:

a) It should have four segments. Each segment should be no longer than three single-spaced lines in a Word document, Times New Roman, 12 font, 1" margins.

b) The story incorporates the following elements: a magical item, a Griffin, and a Roman God.

c) This particular "quest" may occur at any point you like among an overarching plot, so feel free to reference a past event or character and assume the reader knows what you're talking about.

This is what I whipped up:

Rork and Narash the Griffin find beautiful Ym unconscious in a fort. Narash picks up a shattered mirror and concentrates until the mirror scrolls back in time to show Omk overpowering Ym. Omk takes her amulet and….Narash sends Rork through the mirror into the past to battle Omk.

Rork and Omk battle over unconscious Ym. Rork retrieves Ym’s amulet from Omk, who realizes Rork has traversed time via the mirror, which he holds up. Omk calls out a prayer to Fulgora, who strikes it with a bolt of silent lightning. Rork is flung back to a changed present.

Rork and Narash are now in the middle of a ferocious battle with Omk’s loyalists. Rork retains the amulet, but Ym is vanished. Narash throws Rork a stone ax and says he must bury it where Fulgora’s lightning struck to return to the past. Rork fights valiantly, buries the ax, and….

Rork appears just before Omk calls out to Fulgora. Rork shouts: “I use my last wish to stop time!” Time freezes. Rork puts the amulet around Ym’s neck. Fulgora appears in human shape and says: ‘She dies, and your quest to save your world dies!” She fires lightning at the mortals.

Justin, Shave It Off Now!

My friend Justin Wicker and I are making a video together.

He plays a character who cannot have a beard...so he recently texted me a photograph of himself with a beard.





Alix, Rachel, Shila, Mary, Eboya, Ken and Phil had no trouble telling him exactly what they thought of this development.

Top 20 Favorite Films

Occasionally, I'm asked which movie stars I see playing my characters when I write a screenplay.

I never approach creating characters that way. It's only when I know a story from start to finish do I start writing the script. By then, the characters are fully formed, unique individuals.

After I've completed a screenplay, I like to host a table read with actors to hear what dialog works and what still needs tinkering. I'm constantly amazed by how actors bring characters alive, making them their own living creations in unexpected ways.

It's obvious casting a film can make or break a production.

Below is my list of top 20 favorite films, which certainly would have been quite different if other actors had played the leads.

 1. La Belle et la Bete - Magic, Jean Cocteau, French surrealism.

 2. Chinatown - Crushing corruption.

 3. The Last Picture Show - Fading dreams.

 4. The Maltese Falcon - Lies, seduction, more lies.

 5. To Have or Have Not - Desperation, romance, Nazi intrigue in Africa.

 6. Dark Passage - Revenge, jealousy, love, madness.

 7. Rebel Without a Cause - Troubled teens, spiritless adults in stifling 1950's America.

 8. The Wizard of Oz - The archetypical hero's journey.

 9. Annie Hall - Love, connection, rising above those who first raised you up.

10. Bringing Up Baby - The best screwball comedy. Ever.

11. Parting Glances - The best American gay-themed film. Ever.

12. Rear Window - A peeping tom nearly bored to death.

13. L. A. Confidential - Lies, corruption, love.

14. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid - Free spirits living on borrowed time.

15. It's A Wonderful Life - Sometimes, you need to be reminded how good you have it.

16. 2001: A Space Odyssey - Evolution.

17. Blade Runner - Don't ask questions. Love your maker.

18. The Matrix - Life is but a dream.

19. Donnie Darko - Bizarre and sad. Only film this century I watched twice in a row the first time I saw it.

20. Close Encounters of the Third Kind - Aliens are our friends.

I was a Video Producer in the Fashion Industry

From February, 2008 to February, 2010, I was the producer of online videos and website content at Winston Retail Solutions, which has become an industry leader in its niche in the fashion industry.

I produced, directed, edited in Final Cut Studio and sometimes wrote online videos, which were client introductions, product delivery introductions and training/instructionals.

I wrote voice-over scripts to PowerPoint presentations, which I also produced, directed, recorded and edited into online tutorials.

I edited, proofed, and wrote, as necessary, then converted into HTML the content of its internal website used by more than 600 employees and contractors across the United States.

Premium clients with whom I worked included American Living, Apple Bottoms, Ben Sherman, Bootheel Trading Co. (Sheryl Crow), Carhartt, Chaps, Coast, Converse, Converse by John Varvatos, Dickies, Dockers, Ecko Red, Emporio Armani, Harley, Hot Sox, Hugo Boss, Lauren by Ralph Lauren, Lucky Brand, Luxottica, Mavi, Nike, Not Your Daughter’s Jeans, Silver Jeans, The North Face, Tommy Hilfiger, Timberland, Tumi, and William Rast (Justin Timberlake).

While there, I worked in Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, Apple Final Cut Studio and Techsmith Camtasia Studio.

I honed my skills as a copy and script writer and kicked into high gear my experience working on others' feature-length films, deepening my command of digital video equipment, filming and lighting techniques.

I had a great time but realized after a while that working around the clock was not giving me the time to focus on my true passion: writing.

Since resigning, I finished co-writing a screenplay, about which I'll discuss in a future post.

I also put more time and energy into my blog Male Models Vintage Beefcake and was pleased when that extra effort was rewarded with it being featured in January, 2011 in Bradford Shellhammer's post on the Sundance Channel's website.

And I started this blog.

Among other projects, I am excited to wrap a video interview I'm doing with a very, very (oh, very) minor celebrity and to start working on a short horror film I'm breaking into 3-minute segments.

Both projects I'll post here when they are completed.

I'm also interested in working as a freelancer – You can reach me here.

I Could See The Future

When I saw A-ha's video "Take On Me" on MTV in 1985, I knew I was seeing the future, when animation and live action would merge seamlessly.

a-ha - Music - More Music Videos

And I again knew I was seeing the future the first time I saw Madonna's video "Ray of Light," which came out in 1998.

The cuts were so fast, so energetic, I felt myself set ablaze by the video's kinetic power.

Madonna - Music - More Music Videos

Both were nominated for MTV's award, Video of the Year. "Ray of Light" won.

“I Chose a Roman Helmet and Short Sword:" Interview with a Physique Model

Rick Alexander (who used his real name, Rich Sternberger, while posing for Champion Studio) was a popular physique model in the 1960’s and early 1970’s. 

Searching online for photographs of one of his favorite physique models, Rick stumbled upon my blog Male Models Vintage Beefcake, where he was delighted to find photos of himself taken by Champion Studio.

I was thrilled when he introduced himself.

We soon sat down for an online conversation.

I started with the question: why did you pose as a nude model?

Actually, at the first studio, Champion Studio, I thought I would be doing posing-strap modeling since that was the norm in 1967. However, the photographer told me nudity was going to be legalized in 1968 and he wanted me to do nude photos, too.

So, we did both.

I was a little hesitant about doing the nude work because I was afraid the wrong person (a family member, school acquaintance, etc.) might see the photos. In the end, I figured the chances of that happening were pretty remote, so I agreed to do it.

Anyway, I decided to try my hand at physique modeling because the whole idea seemed very erotic and appealing to me. I admired the guys in the physique magazines, and I felt like I looked as good as some of them.

I wanted to be a part of that world: wearing a posing strap, being oiled up and flexing for the camera seemed erotic and glamorous to me.

I also wanted to have professional photos taken of my physique at that time to keep as souvenirs. I'm glad I have those now. It's been fun to look back at them forty years later.

I did it to earn some extra money, too.

How was the experience of posing nude different for you at Champion Studio, COLT and the Western Photography Guild?

I got comfortable pretty quickly with nude modeling. It felt a little awkward during the first session, but after a few poses, I just forgot about the nude part and concentrated on the poses.

By the time I did work for COLT and the Western Photography Guild in the 1970's, I fully expected to pose nude, and the idea didn't bother me at all.

The three studios had different takes on physique modeling.

Champion Studio was known for its boy-next-door types. Its models were mostly preppy looking and didn't have huge builds.

COLT, of course, was famous for its ruggedly masculine, muscular models. I had that look when I posed for them in a few photo sessions and one movie, in which I was either paired with another man or was part of a group.

The Western Photography Guild was into an artistic, muscular look, with its models doing more classical, flowing poses.

What memories stand out from these shoots?

I had fun. I found posing a wonderful form of self expression. I felt very liberated.

The photographers suggested poses for the most part, but were open to my ideas, too.

When I posed for Western, we shot in the Rocky Mountains. It was wonderful to stand nude on a rock with the wind and sun caressing my body among the beauty of the mountains. I really felt in touch with nature.

The most difficult part was holding a pose until the photographer had the proper lighting and liked what he saw through the lens. Often, incremental adjustments had to be made to a pose, such as moving my arm a little lower of higher, or turning my body a little to the left or right. It could take five minutes to get the best results out of a pose.

What were the photographers like?

They were really into their work and very pleasant. Most physique photographers weren't muscular themselves, but they had a wonderful appreciation for male muscularity and masculine glamour.

I admired their creativity.

Don Whitman [owner of the Western Photography Guild] did the photography on my shoot. He had an assistant along to help with the lighting and to help me with some of the poses.

Don had a wonderful artistic eye. He told me he admired driftwood and liked to get his models to pose like driftwood in some photos.

You can see that imagery in many Western photos, with the models' arms and legs acting like tree branches and going in different or symmetrical directions.

He also admired the more classical poses.

He used flashbulbs in his outdoor photography, and that gave the models a marble-like look.

There are hardly any shadows in his photos.

I think the popularity of shows about the early 1960's like Mad Men is in part due to younger people today only knowing about that time period through history books and old television shows.

It is a bit shocking how radically different the 1960's became from the 1950's.

How do you think gay life in America in the 1950's, '60's and early '70's differs from today?

Having lived through the 1950's, I can speak from first-hand experience. It was for the most part a white-bread decade. Lots of conformity and wholesomeness.

The exception was the rebel breed, the leather-jacket crowd that appeared around 1955. They added a ruggedness and bad-boy flavor to the masculinity of the time.

Gay life was pretty private.

There was little gay porn. The physique magazines were one of the only ways to view the nearly nude male body.

The early 1960's were pretty much a carryover of the 1950's.

Things started to change in the mid-1960's, with the British Invasion of The Beatles and other British rock groups.

Men's fashions changed, and there was a feeling of self-liberation in the air intensified by the Civil Rights movement and numerous anti-establishment groups.

Things really got interesting in the late 1960's with the anti-Vietnam War protests, race riots and the emergence of the drug counterculture.

Gay life was still rather subdued because of the fear of bar raids and of being outed.

Of course, things changed in 1969 with the Stonewall riots [the defining event that marked the start of the gay equal rights movement in the United States].

By the 1970's, gay life was becoming more acceptable.

Gay bars were rarely raided, and lots of gay bars opened. There were even after-hours places and gay bathhouses.

By this time, the photography of nude adults was legal, and most of the physique studios had died out, having been replaced by more sexually-explicit studios.

More men joined gyms as the muscular look went mainstream.

And a lot of gay men adopted the "clone" look, which included facial hair, flannel shirts, Levi's and boots.

So, in the years prior to Stonewall, physique magazines were frequently one of the only outlets for gay men. Who were your favorite models?

Charles Zunwalt, Ron Rector, Richard Reagan, Keith Lewin and Phil Lambert. All had good, rugged builds and masculine faces.

Photographers?

Bruce of Los Angeles, Kris of Chicago and the Western Photography Guild. They used quality models and presented men in a manly manner.

What did you do over the years between modeling at these studios and today?

Actually, the last physique-modeling session I had was in 1975 at the Athletic Model Guild.

To my knowledge, none of the photos were published, though I thought they were pretty good. I have in my album one photo from that session.

It's possible Bob Mizer [owner of the Athletic Model Guild] kept the photos for his own use or sold them privately. By that time, I think his taste in models had changed to boyish, slimmer guys.

Bob did the photography at my shoot.

He was pleasant and more laid back than Don.

Before the shoot, he showed me the famous pool area and his "central wardrobe" closet with the various costumes he used in his photos.

He asked me to pick out what I wanted to wear in the photos.

I chose a Roman helmet and short sword.

I always had respectable jobs while modeling. Few guys could make a full-time living at modeling unless they did escort work, too.

In 1976, I opened my own gym in Los Angeles.

It lasted a little over six years, when the rent got too high and I was forced out of business.

It was a lot of fun owning that business in the field I loved.

I worked in retail after that and am now semi-retired.

I still work out a few days a week.

I'm glad I had the chance to be a part of the physique-modeling era. It's something that we probably won't see again since I don't think most photographers today are into that type of imagery.

If I had the money, I would love to resurrect that era by having my own studio and finding suitable models. I bet there would still be a market for it, but not as great as it was back in the 1950's and 1960's.

So, Come and Go

This is one of my favorite songs.




This is "The Face of Love" performed by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam.

This song is from the film, Dead Man Walking.

Lyrics:

Jeena kaisa
Pyar bina
Is Duniya Mein
Aaye ho to
Ek Duje se pyar karo

What is life without love
Now that you have come to this world
Love each other
One another

Look in the eyes
Of the face of love
Look in her eyes
Oh, there is peace
No, nothing dies
Within pure light
Only one hour
Of this pure love
To last a life
Of 30 years
Only one hour
So, come and go

How I Accidentally Interviewed Matt Damon for ACCESS HOLLYWOOD

In 2002, I went to a screening of The Bourne Identity attended by Matt Damon at the Kabuki Theater in San Francisco, California.

After the screening, Matt sat on stage and answered questions from the audience, which seemed to be mostly students in acting school.

I'd just finished co-writing my first screenplay, Inclusion, a supernatural thriller set in Paris, with my friend, Isis Bouhraoua, an American who grew up in France. So, I stepped up to the microphone and asked Matt what was the best and worst thing about filming The Bourne Identity in France.

He said it was France, so it was gorgeous, and it was France, where no one seemed to care they were making a movie on a tight timeline, so there were delays in acquiring permits, etc.

After the Q & A period, my friends and I wandered up to the stage, where Matt was talking to audience  members. My friend Michael gave Matt his camera and asked that he take our photo.

That's the one you see here.

The next day at work, I was very surprised when co-workers and vendors across the United States called me to say that they'd seen me on ACCESS HOLLYWOOD interviewing Matt on his latest film.

GO BACK

After months of rewrites, a great script read with friends, family, actors and film industry pros, and a final round of rewrites after receiving notes from lots and lots of people, I recently completed co-writing a feature-length, sci-fi/family adventure script, whose journey around Hollywood I'll describe in a future post.

I'm excited to return my attention to an unproduced Twilight Zone spec script I wrote a few years back. Its title is Go Back. I wrote it to demonstrate I could follow hour-long television formating. Now, I'm going to rewrite it as a feature-length supernatural thriller.

The television script never sold but did serve as an excellent calling card, getting the attention of producer Justin Wicker while he was working at SONY Television under president Steve Mosko. Justin and I co-wrote the pilot and bible to a children's half-hour animation series, which hasn't sold...yet.

I like to write a script while listening to one song on repeat. The song typically finds me while I'm hashing out the outline of the script.

I wrote the Twilight Zone version of Go Back while listening to Beck's "Deadweight."



I'm writing the feature-length version to Len's "Steal My Sunshine."



Two very different songs, I know, but both fit the story.

Stay tuned for news on the script's progress.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Content Marketing Online

In 2004, I started auctioning on eBay, at first specializing in first-edition books and out-of-print CD's. A few years later, I opened an eBay Store (which sells items at fixed prices) and honed my focus to what most interested me: magazines tuned to celebrities, fashion, GLBT themes and vintage beefcake.

Early on, I realized I needed to make my listings stand out online.

Even when eBay supplies a stock image for an item I want to list, I take my own photograph.

I carefully detail the contents of each item and note its condition: BRAND NEW, LIKE NEW, VERY GOOD, etc.

My eBay Store soon did well enough to enable me to open an online store, bestmusicandbooks.com

After years of collecting vintage beefcake photographs, I turned to Yahoo! in October, 2007 to start a group, where I could share my images with other enthusiasts of male bodybuilders and physique models from the Golden Age of Bodybuilding. The group links back to my online store.

In January, 2008, I started the blog Mike and Phil on the Hill. It is not only a journal on my passion – our gardens in San Francisco, California – but also links readers to my eBay and online stores.

In January, 2009, I started the blog Male Models Vintage Beefcake to feature images of my favorite vintage beefcake photographers and models. Not surprisingly, this blog proved to be the most powerful conduit for customers interested in purchasing vintage beefcake from me.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the visibility of your website or web page in search engines' results through search results you don't pay search engines to artificially achieve for you. SEO is important because the higher your website or page appears in someone's search result list, the more likely that person will click on your site or page.

In my eBay and online stores, I perform SEO every time —

– I create and name the photograph of an item (Search engines read the names you give your photographs.),
– I describe in detail each item, and
– I do not discuss anything irrelevant to the item for sale. I've seen other eBayers add words like "Marilyn Monroe" or "Disney" to their listings on irrelevant items such as auto parts. People use this tactic, known as "keyword stuffing," so that their items turn up in a greater number of search results. In the end, I believe this damages their brand, which is their reputation, as frustrated customers repeatedly find these irrelevant items in their search result list.

Another SEO technique I've strongly employed is backlinking. Because I want to bring customers to my eBay and online stores, I have links to these stores on my Yahoo! group and blogs, which I in turn heavily promote in order to create enough interest from other sites that they link directly to my Yahoo! group and blogs. This steady increase in backlinking – or the number of inbound links – improves the visibility of my sites in search engines' results.

Excellent examples of backlinking to the blog Male Models Vintage Beefcake can be seen in Bradford Shellhammer's post on the Sundance Channel's website as well as in Alfred Hickling's article about Tom of Finland on the guardian.co.uk, in which he links to the blog with the word, "beefcake."

To date, I've created one ad banner (as seen at the bottom of this blog) that links consumers to my online store. So, when I write I'm heavily promoting my Yahoo! group and blogs, I don't mean I'm using ad banners to advertise on others' sites. Instead, I mean I am generating content for my Yahoo! group and blogs, which is the marketing strategy known as "content marketing."

It is the way I expand my brand – my reputation – as a knowledgeable resource on gardening in San Francisco, California and on the photographers and models of vintage beefcake. It also makes my brand more visible online and, ultimately, leads to more sales.

Whenever someone confides to me they want to sell on eBay but aren't sure how or even what to sell, I tell that person to sell items they are excited to invest a lot of time and energy into learning about, that they will enjoy having around their home until they are sold, and for which they will find pleasure in becoming an expert and consultant for others.

"Smalltown Boy" by Jimmy Somerville (Bronski Beat)

It is a bit shocking how far away 1984 is from today. It took nearly thirty years for a handful of states to legalize gay marriage and for the United States government to permit gay men and Lesbians to serve openly in its military.

I had recently graduated from high school, when I first saw Jimmy Somerville (of Bronski Beat) sing this song on MTV. Nothing before had come closer to telling the story of my life growing up in a small town in Maryland.

Only a few years later, I returned to San Francisco, California, where I was born.

More Than a Screenwriter

I am more than a screenwriter.

I began writing short stories in the fourth grade. My first story (which I carefully illustrated and bound with red yarn) was about a group of shipwrecked friends trying to escape a magical world hidden inside an iceberg.

I have always been drawn to stories involving magic, mythic beings and heroes who must navigate alien worlds to survive and, once transformed by their adventures, often find the people around them have changed, too.

My all-time favorite film is Jean Cocteau's La Belle et La Bête (Beauty and the Beast), which was released in 1946.

It is everything I crave from film, from great storytelling.

I started screenwriting in 2001 and learned a lot online, most notably from Project Greenlight, which was a television contest with extensive online forums. It was produced by Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Sean Bailey (a television and film producer now the President of Production at Disney) and Chris Moore (a film producer whose biggest hit to date is the Academy Award-winning Good Will Hunting).

For a year or so, I spent a great deal of my spare time commiserating with other newbie screenwriters on the hardships of learning our craft. I pursued several pros I suspect PGL paid to patiently share their knowledge with even the most recalcitrant of us newbies on the forums. And I read a lot of scripts from first-time writers and compared them to those of classics like Bladerunner and Chinatown.

I learned how to write in the proper script format and, most importantly, honed my writing until my voice was my own: concise, a bit ironic and more than a little darkly comedic.