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 - The shark suit tester is my favorite. 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 (one reason this project hooked him). 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 September 12 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://issuu.com/sanfranciscobaytimes/docs/2012-06-21

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://issuu.com/sanfranciscobaytimes/docs/2012-07-12

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.