Raymond Gaynor's Blog, page 32

WHAT'S A LITTLE AD-LIBBING BETWEEN FRIENDS?

OKAY, so this last weekend, 31 July to 1 August 2021 was our last on-location film shooting. So, as they say, "It's a WRAP!" Check out the unofficial photo/video montage at https://youtu.be/ZUpRpzOAKDw or all eleven at https://janik.yolasite.com/actor.php.

With the filming for The STATIC Movie Honolulu now complete, the project moves from production to post-production, with editing, scoring, special effects, closed captioning and opening and closing credits to be added. With less than 54 days left, the film will air on 25 September 2021 at 7 p.m. Hawaii time on KHON2, KHII and Hawaii CW. In addition, it will premiere nationally and internationally for that day on KHON2.com, KOHN2 YouTube and KHON2 facebook pages. Absolutely no excuse. Record the date and get ready to check it out!

For official announcements, follow https://kspllc.media/the-static-movie and consider becoming part of the crew by donating to our crowd-funding effort at https://fundmyfilm.org/narrative-feat....

ACCOLADES, THANK YOU!

IT’S my personal pleasure to announce that THE EDGE OF MADNESS (Aignos 2020) by Raymond Gaynor is not only an Amazon Genre BESTSELLER, but recently received award recognition at the San Francisco and New York Book Festivals! By way of celebrating, I’ve asked the publisher to drop the price of the printed version from $16.95 to $12.95, and the Kindle eBook version from $7.95 to $2.99 for the rest of July and August (https://www.amazon.com/dp/0999693859)! Celebrate with me throughout August 2021 and enjoy a peek into a plausible future and the struggles of three young firebrands as they seek to find their places in this challenging and sometimes dangerous new world.

The Edge of Madness

THE EDGE OF MADNESS by multi-award-winning author and actor, Raymond Gaynor in printed, ebook and audiobook versions; purchased for manga, animation and cinematic treatments by K. Simmons Productions.

OF WHALE FAT AND PALM OIL

WHAT really drives the global economy? Money? Power? Energy? Nope. It used to be whale products: oil, baleen, and ambergris. Then it was rubber. So what are today’s felled Amazon trees being replaced with? What’s really driving the contemporary world economy other than drugs, war and human trafficking? Palm oil.

According to Wikipedia, “Palm oil is an edible vegetable oil derived from the…fruit of the oil palms…Palm oil accounted for about 33% of global oils produced from oil crops in 2014.” And that was seven years ago! Specifically, it’s used today in the production of cake, chocolate, biscuits, margarine and frying fats as well as found in cosmetics, soap, shampoo, cleaning products. And with petroleum production, nuclear, wind and sunlight-to-electricity liabilities increasing daily, palm oil is being used for production of both commercial and military jet fuels, as well as the basic lubricant for future car, bus, train, military equipment and the fuel of choice for winter home heating.

In THE EDGE OF MADNESS (Aignos 2020) by multi-award winning author Raymond Gaynor, the issue of powering the world is crucial to everything, including the expansion of applied technologies, the necessary conquest of space, even the very social fabric of society. But how and in what form will the greed for electrical power come? And what will the consequences of continued “unlimited” power be? These are key questions that totally underly such seemingly unrelated issues as affection, romance, love, sex and family life, all of which are addressed in the printed, digital and audio versions of the work (https://www.amazon.com/dp/0999693859). And watch carefully for K. Simmons Productions’ manga, animated and cinematic treatments to come, the work having been purchased for such several months ago (https://kspllc.media/future-projects).

As an author and actor (https://janik.yolasite.com/actor.php), I have considerable interest in audio-video communication, which is reflected in THE EDGE OF MADNESS, where I cover in detail where I think the communication industry will soon be, reflecting equally on its importance to every aspect of humanity from government to education, transportation, business, health care, even religion and spirituality, and what will ultimately power it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Je6CC...

SHOOT THE CAST!

TODAY is the outdoor on-location filming for the K. Simmons Productions’ The STATIC Movie Honolulu (https://kspllc.media/the-static-movie) at Lunalilo [Rest] Home. An anticipated nine hours with the possibility of even more depending on the weather, which currently looks like it’s planning to cooperate. Nonetheless, eighty-six degrees in the hot Hawaiian sun with only a smidgeon of trade wind. I’ll be bringing hat, sunglasses, umbrella (for sun not for rain) and hand-fan. For me, playing “Will Gardner,” the principal character, shouldn’t be as difficult as previously, as I have fewer, albeit more emotional lines. Today will be the acting debut for my wife — competition dance partner, author, authority on somatic therapy — speaking and acting as “Edna” in a Bridge game. Go Setsuko “Edna” Tsuchiya!

Today’s cast will include Daniel S. “Will” Janik (me), Eriko “Susan” Okada, Ben “Donald” Wilkison, Jerri Lynn “Ginny” Endo, Lisa “Stevie” Simmons, Setsuko “Edna” Tsuchiya, Yuriko “Martha” Asakawa, and a bevy of extras. Big cast, big shoot, big show! Add BTS (“Behind the Scenes”) photography and videography for publicity and historical purposes, interviews and publicity stills and it will be a busy, long day. After today, we have only one more outdoor on-location shoot and the movie will be ready for post-production (editing; adding effects, sound, music, and opening and closing sequences; test screening; and final editing). The STATIC Movie Honolulu is scheduled to air at 7 p.m. on 25 September on KHON2, KHII and CW.

Ever wanted to be part of a movie production? Consider a tax deductible, free will donation at https://fundmyfilm.org/narrative-feat....

Follow us throughout filming via a series of unofficial on set BTS photo/video montages by Setsuko Tsuchiya at https://janik.yolasite.com/actor.php.

https://i.postimg.cc/RVTh2j38/Film-IM...

SEARCHING FOR PRIVATE RYAN…

I’M often asked in author interviews what I think makes today’s literature “contemporary.” Has it changed over the decades I’ve been authoring? The simple answer is, “Yes, it’s changed and especially so these last couple years.” There is, however, one thing that hasn’t changed: the need to appropriately address and express violence and sex, two intrinsically human issues, if not obsessions. There is so much trauma, or put in a more general way, violation, or, if you prefer, thwarting of our individual needs, wants and desires, that literature has and will, I think, continue to play a singularly important role in it’s sublimation. I would say resolution or recovery, but medical science today suggests that traumatic learning “crystalizes” into a complex of eidetic but repressed executive, procedural, emotional and body memories that we carry with us throughout our lifetimes. I have often wondered if this isn’t what “fate” is all about: the lifelong attempts to resolve violation, the two greatest being birth and death, over which we had and will have little if any control.

Sex is a bit different, as it can be, and often is, a combination of volution and violation, its singular position in human lives making it something we all face, most experience and few ever really understand. Humans seem to me to be intolerably lonely, solitary creatures for whom sex is a surprisingly risky but definite drive. We’re mostly safe when alone, and highly vulnerable when not. Either way, writing about violence and sex are two of the charges every author must face and conquer. To be clear, I’m not taking about gratuitous violence and sex, sometimes offered in books more like a “fix” to an addict, in the end, adding to any burdens we carry surrounding them. No, I mean writing “about” violence and sex in a manner that non-traumatically helps readers to gain “clarity in meaning” over time about these two singular events.

I haven’t forgotten the first question: how literature has changed and what makes today’s stories contemporary. You might anticipate me saying that today, literature seems to need to have social “relevancy” or at least have a social “edge.” But, no. What I think makes today’s literature unique is, first, what I call “Post World War” in reflection, and second, a science or technology base. WWII is over, and, while actual survivors are disappearing fast, the issues of inequality, xenophobia and glorification of obedience in war continue to haunt this and, I assume, future generations. As far as being science or technology based, these two issues more than anything else, I believe, define our times. Poised to leave behind a dying Earth, we surely must be some of the vilest creatures that have ever existed. Dealing with our abdication from our stewardship responsibilities of Gaia can’t and won’t be easy.

In the Amazon Genre Bestseller, THE EDGE OF MADNESS (Aignos 2020) by Raymond Gaynor, currently available in printed, digital and audio formats, and purchased by K. Simmons Productions for manga, animation and/or cinematic treatments, I address each of these issues: volition, violation, violence, sex, inequality, xenophobia, glorification of obedience all within a wholly plausible and not unlikely future science and technology scenario.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0999693859

WHY DOES SO MUCH FRUIT THESE DAYS HAVE NO TASTE?

AH, perhaps you’re already wrestling with this title as a metaphor for writing or authorship? Nope. I am an author, but I mean the question quite literally. It’s a contemporary question up there with how come so many drivers ignore the speed limit on freeways, and how come things AI-digital increasingly seem to take more time and effort than human face-to-face? But I digress…

You must admit (if COVID hasn’t damaged your olfactory system) that many foods, but especially fruits, today lack flavor and with all due deference to the five classic “tastes,” both sweetness and umami. Actually I wouldn’t have know it had I not tasted “real” fruit in Japan where an apple tastes like a mouthwatering apple, and eating a fresh peach is pure ecstasy. I assume it’s all part of the denaturalization of things organic, from being what they actually are to being simply “food.” Protein. Energy. Think “Soyalent Green.” Add to that contemporary dis-integration, in this case, of the “food distribution and delivery system,” where it takes so long to move fruit from the tree to the millions of hungry urban mouthes, that fruit is simply picked “green” well before it can ripen and acquire a decent sugar content. Add to that, that it’s decidedly “uncool” to sample the fruit before you buy it; hence, consumers only have appearance to rely on. Add to that, that while the USA has some of the strictest food quality laws anywhere, much of our fruit, especially outside of summer, comes from other countries which may or may not have ANY food quality laws or restrictions. And add to that the increasing emphasis on use of pesticides and GMO (where the food produces it’s own pesticides) and I suspect that’s the answer. But it’s only an answer, not a solution. I mean, after all, should fruit have taste? It’s a secondary, very American question. And if it should — and I believe so — then how to reconstruct our “food system” to emphasize quality over mere quantity? Or, in a broader sense, how to reconstruct our society to emphasize quality and service, over quantity and products sales.

I has to begin with consumers, of that I feel certain. Think “organic” food. The food business might be so dehumanized that it no longer places quality and taste over quantity, appearance and cost, but it does ultimately respond to consumer demand. The problem is that consumers appear in “generations,” and it’s not so unusual for one generation to “forget” the experiences and values of previous ones. To youth, whatever he or she experiences in this world is the “norm” and without reference, a society driven by money and power can quickly lose it’s way.

If all this seems too existential, think about the most recent piece of fruit you’ve eaten, be it a cantaloupe or tomato (yes, tomatoes are actually fruit), plum or apricot, cucumber (another veggie that’s actually a fruit) or apple. Did it fill your nostrils and mouth with richness and anticipation? Or was it more like eating crispy cardboard?

In my Amazon Genre Bestseller, THE EDGE OF MADNESS (Aignos 2020) by Raymond Gaynor (https://www.amazon.com/dp/0999693859), I address this “problem,” and actually offer a rather clever and unique solution. Haven’t had a good fruit in a while? Try going boldly to THE EDGE OF MADNESS!

The Edge of Madness

Video Book Preview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Je6CC...

BETTER THAN SEX

IT’S true! There are rare “Ah-ha!” in-your-face-and-body, totally mind-blowing, moments of ecstasy in life that result from a concerted combination of prolonged devotion, discipline and action. I know it, because I’ve experience such a moment. The first happened one day during my 20 years of competitive-style dancing at a lesson. I was dancing with my coach, and suddenly, I wasn’t in the studio anymore. I was flying along effortlessly in a state of pure bliss. And yes, it was better than sex!

I’d like to share my second such experience, one that happened just yesterday. I was reading lines with the cast for the next scene filming of The STATIC Movie Honolulu (https://kspllc.media/the-static-movie). During the last reading, we were adding movements and emotion, and it happened again! I suddenly wasn’t in my room on Zoom reading lines with everyone. I was in another world, where every word came alive. I felt my heart open and gooseflesh ripple along my arms and back. The air felt electrified and the hair on the back of my neck tingled. It was a feeling of pure, limitless joy. Looking back, I can’t actually recall what lines I said or how I said them, but when the moment passed, everyone fell silent. It was one of those even rarer SHARED “Ah-ha!” in-your-face-and-body, totally mind-blowing, moments of ecstasy!

Dancing. Acting. What about authoring? I’ve been writing for over 40 years, professionally for at least half of that, and numerous times felt myself creep up to the very edge, but never over it into that ecstatic instant when mind, body, emotion and soul abruptly go into freefall. I’m curious if other authors have not just gone up to the edge, but beyond. I’ve wondered if the moment might be a flash in space-time when the edge of the universe in which I exist momentarily touches the edge of another (in which I exist?), if for just the briefest moment. I’ve wondered if it’s a harbinger of what awaits everyone — dancer, actor, author — during that last scene in life when one sheds this world’s mortal coil. Could it be just the faintest experience of the soul directing one to the next universe? I wonder…

THE EDGE OF MADNESS (Aignos 2020) by Raymond Gaynor (https://www.amazon.com/dp/0999693859) begins with the awakening of a conscious soul in a fetal body, “taking up where TOTAL MELTDOWN (Borgo/Wildside 2009) by Raymond Gaynor and William Maltese left off, in NewAmerica, a shadow of its former United States of America, providing a challenging and dangerous future place for three young firebrands to live.” The sequel, “Prophecy,” which is now more than half finished, takes up where TEOM ends and deals more directly with those “better than sex” moments that some of us, if we’re lucky, might experience in this life and beyond. Ready for YOUR moment? Grab a copy of TEOM in printed, digital or audio format today. Or follow with me in the filming of The STATIC Movie Honolulu at https://janik.yolasite.com/actor.php.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Je6CC...

THE EDGE OF MADNESS, purchased for manga, animation and cinematic treatment by K. Simmons Productions

DON’T BOGARD THAT LINE, MY FRIEND…

Authoring, in general, and THE EDGE OF MADNESS (Aignos 2020) by Raymond Gaynor (https://www.amazon.com/dp/0999693859), specifically aside for a moment, the cast of K. Simmons Production of The STATIC Movie Honolulu (https://kspllc.media/the-static-movie) did our first script read-though for this weekend’s filming on location at Lunalilo Home. It’s the last of the “big” (meaning many lines to deliver) scenes after which there will be two more short, but emotionally intense “on street” scenes to film and the movie will be a wrap. As always, our trusty unofficial site photographer/videographer and actress Setsuko Tsuchiya (playing “Edna”) was there taking shots of all of us, while reading her own lines, if you can imagine that kind of dedication. Whether you can or can’t, it’s the kind of dedication that is, in my humble opinion, making The STATIC Movie Honolulu the outstanding movie that it will be. The plan is to put her shots together with videos of the filming which will be posted probably Monday or Tuesday to a variety of sites including my own actor website at https://janik.yolasite.com/actor.php where you can follow the movie’s progress.

While screenwriting is different from authoring, acting is quite different from either. One immediately obvious difference, especially at a script read-though like yesterday, is that, as the read-though progresses, the cast often end up contributing to the script in a sort of evolutionary manner, depending on what each actress or actor brings from her or his life experience, to the reading. I’m often told that the best actresses and actors reach into their world of personal experiences to better portray a character in a similar situation. That was definitely true of yesterday’s read through. In less than an hour, each character’s lines took on the prerequisite, ever-increasing authenticity as they were read and re-read under the Director’s ever watchful eyes, ears and instructions.

In my experience, that doesn’t occur as much in authoring, even during creation of an audiobook version of a book. In the book world, characters take on their richness mainly from and in the reader’s mind. In that sense, an author is like a screenwriter AND director who, like in the movie industry, usually remain invisible “behind-the-scenes.” I wholeheartedly recommend acting or screenwriting to authors to add a new dimension to writing. I know that’s what’s happening for me, as I pen the sequel to THE EDGE OF MADNESS tentatively entitled “Prophecy.” While I still create the characters, nowadays I try to let them “rehearse their lines” over and over in my mind as I write, letting them (and of course the reader later) add the requisite richness to the read that elevates a “good” to an “outstanding” one. In the meantime, I’m working equally hard at imbuing my character, Will Gardner, in The STATIC Movie Honolulu with the most authentic richness possible.

https://i.postimg.cc/t4fmhN5P/Edna-Wi...

INTIMACY

HUMANS are social animals. We thrive on physical contact and savor intimacy. It’s what makes the human world go ’round, and books as well as movies play a big part in satisfying our human need for intimacy. Books have to totally engage the reader’s mind to be “successful,” acting like a basket within which readers place their own experiences that fit into the literary basket’s unique shape. It’s up to the reader which “monkey see, monkey do” neurons are activated. It’s a deep engagement, capable of transforming, adding meaning to lives.

Movies are similar, but different: They engage viewers by appealing directly via the natural audiovisual senses, activating the “monkey see, monkey do” neurons with or without viewer choice. They are capable of transforming lives, but within a narrower, whether-you-like-it-or-not experiential sense. While movies can transform lives in a positive manner, they invoke a stronger effect, often non-volitional, and carry a deeper responsibility in regard to negative or traumatic learning.

As an author and actor, I always try keep in mind that both reading and viewing are powerful forces, especially meaningful when invoking and moderated by empathy and intimacy. For example, in the Amazon genre bestseller, THE EDGE OF MADNESS (Aignos 2020 – https://www.amazon.com/dp/0999693859) by Raymond Gaynor, though an LGBTQ action, adventure, love, romance and erotic/sexually provocative work, I draw a line between responsible reader engagement by exclusion of purely gratuitous violence or sex. Perhaps the best example is Brie and Billy’s Sweet Sixteen SalsaSexcapade . The same is true with my acting, for example, in the K. Simmons Production of The STATIC Movie Honolulu, currently in filming and scheduled for nationwide television release on 25 September 2021 on KHON2, KHII and CW (follow me throughout rehearsal and filming at https://janik.yolasite.com/actor.php). The movie deals with ever-so-human themes as dealing with Alzheimer’s Disease, mortality and both family and social issues, as well as individual hopes and dreams. When acting, I am ever careful to not cross the line between transformative authenticity and unnecessary trauma or violation. A strong believer in the power of intimacy to positively transform lives, I try to remain true to this belief in everything I write and act.

https://i.postimg.cc/vTtw1KJQ/IMG-384...

An “aged” Daniel S. Janik (aka Raymond Gaynor) as “Will Gardner” in The STATIC Movie Honolulu https://kspllc.media/the-static-movie)

GOING BANANAS

YEP! Going bananas over the different kinds available in Hawaii right now. Alright, you already know about the long, chalky-tasting Cavendish available in most grocery stores. But in Hawaii, right now, there’s plantains, baby-finger bananas, apple-bananas, ice cream bananas and more. My favorite (I’ve tried them all): those short, stocky but oh-so-sweet apple-bananas grown right here in Hawaii! Where to get them? In some “local” grocery stores, but the best tasting are ones purchased on the Northshore of Oahu Island at a growers’ fruit stand. And pick up some papayas, mangoes, lilikois, pineapples (the Maui “Gold” ones are my favorite), and, if you can find them, some “wild” tropical apples (look like crab apples but are sweet, sweet, sweet and juicy).

What’s this have to do with my newly released, Amazon genre bestseller Sci-Fu novel, THE EDGE OF MADNESS (Aignos 2020) by Raymond Gaynor? Check out this excerpt:

“Encouraged by their government, NewAmericans slowly began to re-define what recreation meant. It soon became ‘in’ to take one hour or even one or more days off work to tour formerly ravaged byways, officially renaming in the vernacular the animals and plants they noted while walking or Bwheeling.

“Namingtheanimalsandplantsafterthemselves…?

“The idea was to inspire feelings of environmental stewardship through government established and funded official Naming Ceremonies—N-Cares—whereby human caretakers and the animal or plant names of their now ‘cultivated natural’ darlings would be publicly announced, ceremoniously celebrated, then recorded digitally in ever-expanding governmental N-Cares information vaults called I-Cares.

“The honor caught on and the practical result was immediate: I-Cares, in essence governmental genetic diversity repositories, sprang up everywhere, and awardees gladly paid for public recognition, contractually committing themselves to husbanding the animals or plants which they had name-recognized for the duration of the human’s life. As a further honorific, caretakers were permitted to wear a light blue colored armband. At the same time, the government inserted a tiny, inert, bioluminescent DNA tag into the now protected entity, identifying it as under the care and protection of the government by way of that particular human caretaker.

“This program singularly changed the surface of NewAmerica into one citizen-tended, cultivated-natural paradise.”

What makes TEOM so special is that every advancement described is simply an extension of current technology and science, making it wholly PLAUSIBLE. It’s that very plausibility that makes TEOM a “natural” feeling read.

Go buy some bananas — future bananas, named, stewarded and tagged by, who knows, maybe your domestic partner, child, or neighbor, or maybe even the president of NewAmerica! And if you can’t find what you’re looking for in your local grocery, try looking on Amazon for a great read like THE EDGE OF MADNESS in printed, digital or audio book format to satisfy your reading hunger.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0999693859

Purchased by K. Simmons Productions (https://kspllc.media) for further treatment into manga, animation and cinematic formats.