Terrance Zdunich's Blog

Chicks Love Chocolate

Last spring, I took a road trip up California’s coast on my motorcycle for a sidecar picnic and photo shoot. I hadn’t shaved in months and was bearded. In that wooly state, I thought posing as a Lebowski-esque beach bum, sipping a Martini from a plastic flamingo glass, would make for a fun postcard. After procuring some tacky beach props—including a six-foot inflatable cockroach raft (yes, this happened)—I was ready for my closeup.

The photographer and I selected a coastal camp site in Ventura County that allowed us to pull my motorcycle right up to the shoreline. There, we set our stage, fighting to keep our gaudy props and set pieces from blowing away in what ended up being a blustery day at the beach. My beard collected currents of sand as I sat, sprawled across a rickety beach chair, thinking to myself, if these pictures are half as ridiculous as I feel right now, then we have gold on our hands.

Speaking of beards, not all gals care for them… but chicks love chocolate.

In describing my beach blanket field trip, I nearly forgot to mention the pièce de résistance: longtime friend and graphics collaborator, Oceano Ransford, created a decal to decorate my motorcycle’s sidecar. In a retro typeface, the words Roach Coach really tied the photo shoot together.

When making the graphic, Oceano asked if I needed the sticker to be removable. Unable to imagine a more suitable handle for my retro carriage than Roach Coach, I saw no reason to make my vehicular branding temporary. I figured since there’s nothing subtle about riding around Los Angeles on a motorbike that looks like it rolled out of Hogan’s Heroes, why should my sidecar sticker be any less forthright?

Not all gals care for motorcycles, but chicks love chocolate.

The sidecar picnic was one of a series of photo shoots I’d organized as content for a new TZ website (said site was meant to go live last week, but unforeseen technical glitches have stalled our launch a bit… so thank you for your patience). To help recoup the costs associated with building the site, I also endeavored to create some slick new merchandise to be featured in the site’s online store. In doing so, my motorcycle’s Roach Coach decal came to mind. As such, I saddled up to my drafting table to take the concept a step further.

Putting pencil to paper, I doodled a series of cartoon cockroaches riding cartoon motorcycles with cartoon sidecars. Once I had a sketch that worked, I married Oceano’s Roach Coach typeface with the finished drawing.

Not all gals care for insects, but chicks love chocolate.

Now that I had a logo, I set out to determine the types of merchandise on which to feature it. A friend suggested Roach Coach totes. I loved the idea, especially since it furthered the concept of a Roach Coach being a utilitarian hauling implement.

In picking a color scheme for the roach tote, I experimented with a variety of shades and palettes, which I then shared with a handful of friends to help me decide on a direction. Immediately, I was struck by the disparity in color preferences between my male and female friends. The fellas tended to favor earthy, almost camouflage-like patterns. The dames, on the other hand, gravitated towards colors that looked like desserts.

Yes, chicks love chocolate.

What sort of gentleman would deny womenfolk their God-given confectionary addictions? What civilized man would be complete without a handsome, candy-colored roach murse? Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the mint chocolate roach tote!

So… who’s hungry for a tasty tote? What better vehicle in which to transport your books, laptops, and body parts? And who wouldn’t want to hear the checker at their local market simultaneously “Ew!” and then “Aw!” as they load groceries into your icky-but-oh-so-cute roach tote? Best of all, your purchases will be helping to support an artist who promises to bring you creepy and cool new work for years to come.

Roach Coach Totes—and other spanking-new toys—are now on sale for $19.99 at: http://www.TerranceZdunich.com/store. So, what will you stuff into your Roach Coach? Please share your intended tote booty in the “Comments” section below.

Piano Tuners, Tuba Players, & Cave Paintings

Once there was a time you needed transcripts

In triplicates and drooplicates to log

By letter-bone and tar, and as the time slipped

Stenographers and upstrikers and slogs

Yes, it was a sorry time for chalking

Every foot and header to be drawn

But now we have machines to write the talking

The days of breaking hands with words are gone

The above lyrics are from “Good Little Dictation Machines”, a tune from my upcoming movie musical, The Devil’s Carnival: Alleluia!  The song is about innovation… specifically… *takes deep breath*… the ever-striving journey towards perfecting interrogation techniques through technology in a world where angels and devils compete for an edge.

Last Friday, at Grandmaster Recorders, Ltd.—a recording studio in Hollywood, Ca—we tracked some of the core instrumentation for the musical numbers featured in TDC 2: Alleluia!, including Good Little Dictation Machines. Many of the old vs. new world struggles featured in the song’s lyrics were on display during our all-day recording session.

For starters, Grandmaster’s studio is a throwback to another era of the music industry. Above the entrance to this veritable time machine is a hand-painted Shakespeare quote: “What fools these mortals be!” The otherwise plain exterior of this two-story venue doesn’t prepare visitors for the glory, excess, and cheesiness that awaits inside; to cross the building’s threshold is to travel back in time to the 1970s.

The studio’s architecture is designed to look like an old-world boat, replete with portholes, a brass engine order telegraph, and a faux brig. It also houses a spiral staircase surrounded by a kaleidoscope of floor-to-ceiling, multifaceted mirrors, and a shower made to look like a cave. The woman’s restroom is pink with floral wallpaper, a bidet, and clawfoot tub. It could double as porno set, and probably has.

Yes, there is history here. In addition to being the site where many genre-defining albums were recorded—like Tool’s Undertow and No Doubt’s Tragic Kingdom—one’s imagination doesn’t need to stray too far to picture the parade of eccentric souls and situations that have graced these halls. One of our session musicians summed up the location best by saying, “If someone were to run a vacuum over the carpets here, we’d all get a contact high.”

It’s not just the retro décor that dates Grandmaster’s facilities, but also much of the equipment in the studio, including reel-to-reel audio recording devices and spools of analog tape spilling from the various consoles and crevices. In the corner of one of the sound rooms, an old, white grand piano shimmers like a ghost. You can count the cigarette stains on the its lid and pedals and reckon the many great players who have touched its keys over the decades.

The process of recording piano—as we did last Friday—always starts with a piano tuner… and the man hired for this task had just as much character as the theme park-like recording space and fixtures.

Older than the studio’s fabricated hull and pearly piano, the piano tuner was described to me as a legend by those at Grandmaster. They didn’t need to announce his status, however, as you could tell that the gray-haired gentleman was a bad ass by the way he swaggered into the room and effortlessly pitched the piano’s strings (over the roar of thunder from a barbarian-like kick drum, I might add). Watching the man work, I was both in awe of his skill set and saddened by witnessing what I imagined to be a dying breed of artist: souls from a bygone era when your craft was also your lifestyle… souls all but replaced by technology.

Speaking of lifestyles, becoming an expert tubaist is no casual affair. To that end, I’m happy to announce that, like with TDC 1, there’s a healthy serving of tuba in the new film. We may also be booking a sousaphonist for an upcoming session, which I’m pretty stoked about.

Watching a tuba player blow devil brass in a ’70′s makeshift pirate vessel is a sight to behold. One can’t help but smile. And smile, I did.

Observing the tubaist through a soundproof glass, I pondered out loud the question of what makes a man decide to make tuba his axe. Someone in the control room answered, “Well, it ain’t about getting chicks!” Yes, tuba is a lifestyle and I for one dread a future where robotic lungs make the discipline obsolete (although I would appreciate a John Henry-like ballad on the subject).

Like piano tuning and tuba crooning, it takes a lot of years of practice (usually alone in a room) to become a competent illustrator. I cut my teeth as an artist drawing on paper and worked as an animator before the industry switched entirely to digital production lines. As such, I’ve found it nearly impossible to transition from paper and pencils to Wacum tablets and Cintiqs.

Speaking of pencil and paper, I’ve recently completed a series of hand-drawn illustrations for a set of holiday greeting cards. The cards will be featured on my brand new website and online store, which will go live on November 28th (also known as Black Friday). The collectable cards will spotlight some of your favorite characters from Repo! The Genetic Opera, The Devil’s Carnival, and The Molting comic book series… so mark your calendars!

A big thank you to all of the players and personnel who participated in Friday’s marathon recording session, including Jimmy from Grandmaster Recorders, Ltd., Chris Spilfogel, Fernando Morales Franchini, Scotty Morris, Alisa Burket, Joshua Levy, Shem Andre Byron, Spooky Dan Walker, Joseph Bishara, and my TDC co-composer, Saar Hendelman, who made his conducting debut.

So… any piano tuners, tuba players, cave painters, or other old-world specialists reading this blog? Do you cobble shoes or weave on a loom? Do you moonlight as an apothecary or blacksmith? What special skills do you have that would qualify as a lifestyle? Do you juggle or play a didgeridoo? What artistry do you appreciate that you’d hate to see usurped by technology? Please share your hands-on loves in the “Comments” section below.

The Long Side Of The Road

Show business is brutal. You spend years in labor trying to get a project off the ground with the false hope that cigars and giant cardboard checks will be waiting for you at the finish line. Instead, the industry midwife points up. Up, past the odd stains on the ceiling. Up, past the windows, to the top of a hill you didn’t know existed. Up, up to the drowning well. All you want to do is collapse. All you can do is grab that fat baby and climb!

Three months ago, we wrapped production on my third musical film, The Devil’s Carnival: Alleluia! Due to an impressive gathering of bodies and big tops on set, completing principal photography felt like a finish line, but nothing could be further from the truth.

In reality, the filming portion of a movie like ours is the briefest part of the filmmaking journey. Our fourteen day shoot barely stretched the course of three weeks. Post-production, on the other hand, which commenced immediately after picture wrapping—and still has babies to carry and hills to climb—has already extended beyond the rolling camera durations of both episodes one and two combined. For that matter, each of the fourteen songs featured in the upcoming film took longer to write than the entirety of principal photography.

It’s these sorts of lengthy calculations, as well as the many toils that lie ahead before a project like this is completed and shareable, that make the process so daunting. When I’m feeling especially overwhelmed by what seems to be an ever-moving finish line, I go for walks. These walks often yield not only perspective, but also amusement.

Last week, on one of these walks, I encountered two blog-worthy characters. The first was a tall, muscular cross-dresser trying to walk a dog. I say trying because this person was ossified drunk, stumbling out of a very, very tight dress. It was eleven a.m.

The cross-dresser’s dog, seemingly aware of its owner’s intoxication, was keeping its distance as its wobbly master tried in vain to get it to heel. The wildest part of the bizarre exchange was observing the drunk man attempting to maintain a feminine affectation in the face of total inebriation and a stubborn, stubborn mutt.

I watched as the drunk dog walker would sloppily (and comically) alternate between a wispy, high-pitched “C’mere, precious” and “GET OVER HERE NOW!” in a fed up baritone, which put mine own to shame.

On the return leg of my stroll, I wandered past a middle-aged man who appeared lost… and in every sense of the word.

The lost man was standing beside a parked motorcycle. As I passed him, he muttered, “I can’t believe I got all the way here without realizing I’d left my helmet at home.” Concerned, I asked him if he had someone who could bring him his helmet as riding without one in California could result in his bike being confiscated. Seemingly in a fog, he confided that this was the first time he’d been on his motorcycle in years because his wife felt it was too dangerous. With a sobering smile he then said, “I was diagnosed with prostate cancer this week. It felt like the right time to take my bike out again. I can’t believe I forgot my helmet.”

Whether it’s waiting at the side of the road for someone to bring you head gear, or for an ornery pet to cut you some slack for being drunk at breakfast, or for your years of effort on a project like TDC 2 to come to fruition, it’s experiences like these that make me resent the waiting and appreciate the end result.

This Friday, TDC 2‘s music team and I are venturing into a Los Angeles studio to record the first day of instrumental tracking for the film’s soundtrack. Up until this point, the songs have only had Midi (digital instrument) arrangements. Unlike the music, however, the lead vocals on all of the songs were recorded and comp’d prior to filming because the actors had to lip-sync to their own voices on set, as is customary with musical films.

With an independent project like TDC 2, casting often occurs right up until the first day of principal photography—and sometimes well into production. This meant that composers Saar Hendelman and I had to be prepared to make possible last-minute tempo and key changes to our songs to suit the actors that were cast. We used Midi instrument beds for this vocal tracking, because it gave us the freedom to easily make musical changes when necessary. Now that the film is in the can, we’re working to replace as many of the synthesized parts as possible with live players.

I’m excited to announce that on Friday we will be tracking a mini big band—with players from a rather famous big band—which will provide the core sound for the majority of Heaven’s music in the film. I’m also excited to share that I will be launching an entirely new website at the end of this month. I’ve been working on this online project for some time and am very pleased with the artistic direction that my webmaster, Will Weyer, and I have come up with.

As part of the site’s launch, I’m putting together some really cool merch to be displayed in a new online store. The store and site will go live on November 28th, Black Friday. Store items will include greeting cards featuring new artwork that I’ve hand-drawn for the holidays, some snazzy roach totes, and more. So mark your calendars!

Who’s excited for some devilish big band music and a brand new crawly TZ site?

 

The Devil’s Carnival: Alleluia (Official Teaser Trailer)

At long last, The Devil’s Carnival 2 teaser trailer has arrived. Spread the word!

Talented Friends – SIX-LEGGED COLLABORATORS

Scientists have recently uncovered that cockroaches are a far more social species than previously believed. They make friends, recognize kin, and collaborate to survive… but, unlike bees, ants, and humans, their social structures are notably more fair and democratic.

As an artist, I’ve been fortunate enough to collaborate with both two and six-legged conspirators on a variety of projects over the years. From teams small enough to count on one hand—like the intimate crew behind The Molting comic book series—to more expansive projects, like the upcoming musical film The Devil’s Carnival 2: Alleluia, which wrapped principal photography in August and involved well over a hundred standing and crawling souls.

Although my natural creative state bends toward the misanthropic, there’s an energy that comes from collaboration that can’t be denied, and, when creative partnerships are healthy and balanced, the end results are often superior to what can be achieved alone.

Although most of the cast and crew of TDC2 wrapped last month, the collaboration on the project is far from over. We are presently in the thick of editing the film. When this phase ends, we’ll move onto scoring. We’ll then record all of the instrumentation for picture and soundtrack, before, ultimately, collaborating with you, the audience. If all of these collaborations succeed, we’ll be in a better place to continue making likeminded cult musical movies for years to come (based on the output thus far, I’m feeling more optimistic about this project than my former musical film endeavors, which were not nearly as impressive or cohesive at this point in their collaborative journeys).

As I thrash through the tides of whiskey and roach legs and TDC2 collaborators, I’m also actively working on overhauling my website, terrancezdunich.com. The site’s almost seven years old, so a cyber facelift is long overdue. In advance of TDC2‘s release—as well as another super-top-secret music project—I plan to go live with a completely renovated TZ.com before year’s end.

Like the aforementioned projects, building a website is also a collaboration. As such, I’ve been in collusion with a batch of fellow artists on a series of photo shoots to be featured within the new web pages. Sticking with the six-legged motif of my present site, I’ve already procured a giant cockroach raft, erected a small cockroach statue, and had a latex cockroach mask sculpted for the adventure.

Below is a sneak-peek from a noir-inspired photo series for the impending website. The list of cockroach conspirators for the shoot includes model Snow Mercy as the cockroach muse goddess, silicon roach head by George Frangadakis, Andrew Freeman, and Jesse Galvan of Immortal Masks, and photography by Hannah Havok of Pocket Watch Photo Emporium. Additional antenna aid came by way of a location provided by composer and performer Joseph Bishara, and props courtesy of Nathan Haskell of The Hand Prop Room. Thank you, all, for lending your talents, tools, and tarsi.

Everyone else, be sure to “like” my artist page on Facebook, as I’ll be revealing more images from the noir shoot there soon.

The Fable of The Cockroach, The Grasshopper, & The Devil

After a delirium-inducing night shoot on The Devil’s Carnival 2: Alleluia, where production raced against the slow-rising sun to complete the day’s final shots, I crept home, bleary-eyed, to a horror show happening in the aquarium where I keep my : the eldest female was in the throes of delivering a clump of stillborn babies.

Madagascan hissing cockroaches have live births, and have them often. I’ve kept hissers as pets for years and throughout that time have watched the population inside Tank Shawshank ebb and flow. I’d never witnessed the birthing process until that fateful morning, however, just the crawling, hissing aftermath (incidentally, groups of roaches are unfairly labeled “intrusions” as opposed to the friendlier handles bequeathed groups of less-vilified species, like “litters” or “colonies”).

After carrying an egg—an ootheca—inside them for roughly two months, a female hisser goes into labor, pushing out the shell of the egg, followed by a wriggling bundle of thirty-plus sunflower seed-sized babies, called nymphs. Except for the black of their pinpoint eyes, the nymphs enter the world a creamy white. In the hours following birth, however, their ivory shells and antennae gradually turn a familiar cockroach brown.

It’s hard to know what labor is like for a roach, but, like with most she-creatures, the experience looks painful and exhausting, and the scene I came home to after that all-night film shoot was no exception.

It was dawn, and even though every muscle and neuron of my being was ready to collapse from work weariness, I couldn’t look away from the unjust plight of this would-be mother, fighting to create lives that never had a fighting chance. The agonizing minutes dragged as I watched her twist and heave behind the aquarium glass, slowly ejecting what looked like an accordion of dried, dead rice kernels. The gruesome, protracted experience ended with the drained mama heavily eating what she could of her failed nativity, before limping away to hide—and, presumably, sleep—beneath a shelter of egg carton scraps and sod.

With hissing roach labors producing thirty to sixty offspring at a time, it’s a matter of routine that each successful birth produces a handful of birth defects—gimp nymphs and roach runts that don’t survive their first molts—so perhaps botched labors are also par for the cockroach course.

I’ve had this particular mother bug for years, and my gut is that her ineffective labor was the result of her being past her reproductive age, but it just as easily could’ve been caused by other natural phenomenon. For example, I’ve noticed that hissers seem very susceptible to temperature, especially when molting. Maybe the climate was wrong for life that direful morning. To that end, the eating of dead offspring, although outwardly gruesome, probably also has natural advantages for roach mums. Maybe they do this to keep their nymph nests hidden from predators. Or maybe they simply need to replenish the calories exerted during labor. Whatever the natural cause, my artist brain saw the behavior in more poetic terms: I imagined her eating her dead nymphs to hide her shame and the evidence of her creative failure… and, as such, I couldn’t look away.

I suppose the reason my tired eyes couldn’t turn from the miniature birth/death/cannibal scene on that sleepless morn—and why I still haven’t thrown out the nymph remains—is I felt/feel a connection between the beautiful disaster that was happening inside the roach tank and my own plight, struggling to bring TDC 2 to life.

The carnival-cockroach connections were not just emotional ones; in the TDC universe, the character of God is a craftsman who’s routinely frustrated by, and dismissive of, his defective creations. The string of baby cockroach corpses snaking bloodlessly from the womb of their heaving mother, mirrored some of God’s creative malfunctions featured in our screenplay.

Like the God of our tale (and my bereaved Blattaria mother), The Devil’s Carnival has also overcome its share of malfunctions and mutations. The project is fast approaching its five year mark… and its fight for life continues.

In June, I blogged about the drawn-out, complicated pregnancy phase of TDC 2. The birthing difficulties shared in that blog have unfortunately continued beyond the project’s green-lighting, onto set, and will undoubtably wriggle, kick, and bite for many months to come as we squeeze against birth pangs and splash through slippery afterbirth on the road to delivering our own crawling, hissing intrusion.

In spite of difficulties, on Sunday, August 24th, we wrapped principal photography on TDC 2—another all-nighter where we hustled to beat the inevitable daylight. The shoot, like all creative efforts, was unreasonable, but the unreasonable quest did not begin there.

Years ago, director Darren Lynn Bousman, co-composer Saar Hendelman, and I made a pact to fight against probability and create something that in survival terms was completely unnecessary: art. More specifically: cult musical films. Our dedication to this irrational cause inspired others to join our carnival covenant, like producers Sean E. Demott, Chris Bonifay, and executive producer Brian Perera. These stalwart souls, in turn, inspired others to be a part of the illogical journey—and then others still—until we were a fully-staffed, functioning film production.

Like our creative pursuit, production was also unreasonable. We had fifteen days—reduced to fourteen—to shoot a feature-length movie musical. Due to financial restrictions, the twenty-two musical selections that Saar and I penned for the episode were reduced to fifteen, and, due to cast availability and shrinking location options, scenes had to be rewritten on an almost daily basis throughout production. Because of these challenges, there were moments where I felt like the devil had leapt from the pages of the script onto my shoulder to reasonably whisper, “Give up.”

In spite of daily chaos, we battled through devils, exhaustion, and frustration to keep our vision and sanity intact, and, in the end, succeeded. Due to the vast and diverse talents of our cast and crew, we captured something beautiful and bizarre through the camera lens that promises to exceed the quality and scale of our past collaborative endeavors. There were even rare moments during our delirious production where I was so inspired by what was happening on set, that I modified story elements to serve those slivers of unpredicted magic.

On the last day of filming, the insect poetry that began with a cockroach miscarriage came full circle: after five hours of being glued to a make-up chair to visually become the character of Lucifer, I was stewing at a table, under the open sky, frustrated by prosthetic malfunctions, when a lone grasshopper came along to befriend me.

For over ten minutes, the green stranger perched on my red, be-clawed hands and preened itself. Due to the hopping nature of this species’ namesake, I’d never before had the opportunity to examine the grace and complexity of a grasshopper up close. In dance-like motions, the insect brought its long, flexible legs and antennae, one-by-one, to its mandibles to groom. I could have watched this insect ballet until the sun rose, but had to eventually brush it from my knuckles as I was called back to set.

The moral of the fable of The Cockroach, The Grasshopper, and The Devil: good, bad, or ugly, I wouldn’t trade these experiences for the world. A heartfelt thank you to everyone who helped to make TDC 2 a reality. I’m excited and anxious to share with you the final product. Always Alleluia!

Some Have Razors

We’re weeks away from principal photography on The Devil’s Carnival 2. This being my third musical movie, I’ve learned a thing or two about filmmaking: 1) no matter how well you budget, there is never enough money; and; 2) if you’re going to play the devil, prosthetic makeup, glue, and real facial hair don’t mix. As such, I decided to rob a bank and shave my beard.

Yes, my beard. For the last six months or so, like so many misfit pianos and treadmills, my shaving razor had become little more than furniture in my dusky apartment. Untouched and hanging on a shower rack, the silver handle and blades had all but blended into the ivy and silverfish. Over the weeks and months, my face had also transformed, sprouting into something wooly and virtually unrecognizable.

It’s weird to grow a new chin, but there’s something liberating in forgoing notions of grooming and congeniality. As an added bonus, whenever I’d catch a glimpse of the furry stranger that I’d become—in a whiskey glass or foggy mirror at the Greek bathhouse—I’d chuckle and think, “I finally look like my thoughts.”

It’s this coily mindset that inspired me to throw on a dark hoodie, sneak a pistol from ma’s favorite handbag, and kill two birds with one straight razor: clear my chin forest for the imminent onset of spirit gum and pitchforks, and see if I could prevail upon that pretty, young bank teller to help with my budgetary woes.

“Ev’rybody, freeze! On yo’ knees! Butt naked, please!”

In all seriousness, TDC2‘s upcoming production angst mixed with fears of having my mouth mane yanked out by Lucifer adhesives, made me realize that a clean slate, jaw-wise, was needed, both physically and emotionally…

After six months of beard growth, however, shaving was not only going to be a undertaking, but an art project.

Speaking of art projects, I’m in the process of redesigning TZ.com. Part of this cyber facelift involves organizing a series of conceptual photo shoots by which to decorate the new site. While approaching the daunting task of pruning my six-month-old beard, I thought it would be fun to not only document the epic mandible-molting, but tell a story through a set of sequential images that might also fit into my planned web renovations.

Collaborating with photographer Hannah Havok of Pocket Watch Photo Emporium, seizing some props from Nathan Haskell of The Hand Prop Room, and coercing my friends George Frangadakis and Andrew Freeman of Immortal Masks to let me transform a restroom at their place of business into a set, I purchased a bag of disposable razors and got to it.

As I snipped, sawed, and scraped my way through the jowl brush, a face I had all but forgotten emerged, which included a beard-shaped farmer’s tan. Even though my pale, bald chin and I felt naked and rudderless on the motorcycle ride home from the set, my transformation was complete. Well, almost. My newly-revealed baby(ish) face was ready for all that TDC2 could have to offer, including an impending metamorphosis into a singing, be-horned Lucifer. As some of you know, this episode will feature a lot of Jazz Age slang, including (ironically) a little “chin music”, which in that era meant a punch on the jaw.

The images included in this blog are just a teaser of what’s to come over the next few months. I’ll be debuting a more expanded look at this particular photo shoot—as well as others—on FaceBook soon, so be sure to “like” my artist page to receive updates.

So… who’s ready for a little chin music?

The Devil’s Carnival 2 is Green-Lit!

“The train whistle blows and the carnival goes ’til there’s only the tickets and crows here”

~Tom Waits

Holding Patterns

If you’ve done much traveling by plane, chances are you’ve experienced flight delays. And not just long turns sitting at airports, waiting for tardy jets to arrive, but also protracted stretches aboard aircrafts, strapped into seating arrangements, impatiently awaiting clearances to land and/or gate.

These latter delays are especially frustrating. You’ve all but reached your destination, often after a long and turbulent flight, only to be stuck, loitering at the finish line. Aside from anxiety over being so-close-yet-so-far from home, you can sense the swelling restlessness from every soul aboard the vessel. The lingering sighs. The craning necks. The fidgeting feet. It sucks.

For the last twenty months, my life has been in a holding pattern, although not on an airplane.

For those of you who follow this blog, or my work in general, you may recall that in January of last year, the team behind my second musical film, The Devil’s Carnival, went live with an online teaser announcing the imminent release of a sequel. The nine-minute promotional piece featured rap star Tech N9ne as Heaven’s Librarian.

Even though it’s been over a year-and-a-half since the teaser debuted, the promised followup film has yet to manifest. This is not due to a lack of wanting or trying on the part of TDC‘s team, or yours truly. In fact, at the time that the aforementioned trailer dropped, months of negotiations had already taken place with a company set to finance and distribute the episode. Unfortunately, due to a series of unforeseen issues, the deal fell apart at the end zone.

As you might imagine, this sudden dead-end was disappointing as a lot of work and hope had gone into the lost deal.

Picking up the pieces, TDC‘s team and I went back to the drawing board to hunt for capital. The stakes were heightened by the knowledge that we needed to find funds quickly… that is, if there was any hope of achieving the 2013 release date boasted in the Tech N9ne teaser.

Even though this was a tall order—less than a year to find and close financing, plan and shoot a movie, write and record an album, and edit and prepare the final film and soundtrack for public consumption—we were optimistic. Because of TDC‘s awesome fanbase, episode one had such a buzz around it (and we were all so pumped about the project in general), that anything seemed possible.

Operating in good faith that we’d be in production before the year’s end, TDC‘s co-composer, Saar Hendelman, and I set out to write the book and music for part two.

Composing a musical is no small feat. In any scenario—even one where the tunes suck!—it would be a ton of work, but Saar’s and my specific and intensive writing process made the endeavor even more sprawling and bumpy (for a peek into our songwriting techniques, click here).

Believing that a green-light was close, however, and that it’d only be a matter of time before we’d be rushing into full-blown music production, Saar and I worked tirelessly on the episode’s tunes and lyrics, and, in November of last year, completed them. The year’s worth of creative labor culminated in twenty-two musical selections.

The writing journey was both exhilarating and exhausting, and since this twelve-month job was done on spec, it was also financially tasking… but we believed that movie funding was just around the corner, so we hung on by the foreskin of our teeth.

Throughout 2013, several encouraging production prospects arose, so our optimism seemed reasonable, but, one by one, the proposals evaporated. We were hovering in a holding pattern where we could see the runway, but a smooth landing was nowhere in sight.

Fortuitously, my first musical film, Repo! The Genetic Opera, was celebrating its five year anniversary in movie theatres at the same time that Saar and I wrapped TDC 2‘s compositions. To celebrate Repo!‘s theatrical birthday, director Darren Lynn Bousman and I booked a mini-double feature tour. In touring, we were also looking to find renewed joy in our creative accomplishments to counterbalance the year of limbo with TDC 2.

The tour was great, but its conclusion marked the beginning of 2013′s winter holiday season, where Hollywood all but shuts down. Because of this, I was painfully aware that progress on TDC 2‘s production would most likely stall and that our taxiing around the tarmac would continue into 2014.

Darren and I took this industry downtime to put together some flashy (and costly) new TDC sales tools. We wanted to hit the new year armed and running, fighting to keep the project we’d all sacrificed to make alive… especially knowing there was an audience out there just as eager to see a sequel as we were.

The elapsing time, however, especially the reality that much of TDC‘s team would be forced to move on to other projects, was making it obvious that TDC 2 might not happen, and that the music Saar and I slaved over may never see daylight.

Faced with this depressing forecast, as well as the hefty debt I’d incurred from a year without income, I was determined to break the holding pattern, so I started exploring an entirely new music project with Saar, one where we weren’t so at the mercy of factors beyond our control. I was still pushing along TDC part-time, but devoting the majority of my hours to this new endeavor. I even found an angel investor to cover the project’s start-up costs.

Renewed, I dove face-first into this new project with all the passion that creative hunger and financial desperation can inspire, and, six months later, was confident we had developed something every bit as cool and distinctive as Repo! and TDC.

In April, Saar and I were primed and ready to crawl out of limbo and into production on the new project. I was relieved and eager to make something great, and anxious to share it with all interested and sympathetic souls.

And then it happened. Just like with the initial investor for TDC 2, the financier for the new project inexplicably abandoned ship at the eleventh hour. The experience was confusing, depressing, and humiliating. And the holding pattern continued.

Below is the face of a man called Oblivion. Let she who hath wisdom, stare into its wooliness and reckon the number of months spent on stand by.

After careful consideration of the aforementioned mug, I hope it is plain that a man such as he would not waste breath vomiting over a thousand words merely to complain or elicit sympathy… not unless there was a happy ending to the saga.

That’s right, fair readers; the holding pattern has reached its limit. The beast Holdor, its belly, gorged with blood, sated and leaking, has finally released me from its terrible jaws. A production—a real production—is green-lit. I can’t divulge the details of said project yet. Official announcements will follow shortly, but the wait is over and a shinny new experience is a-coming your way. Thank you for your patience in the interim.

Who else is excited for the mystery project?

Hard Bodies

There’s a bizarre marketing trend happening amongst small businesses in my neighborhood: recently, a string of shops have stationed life-sized, motorized mannequins outside their storefronts in attempts to draw costumers. On one major boulevard, in less than a four-mile stretch, a half-dozen of these sign-waving dummies have emerged over the last month or so.

While there is some variety in the shade, shape, and wardrobe of these statuesque sales props, they are all female. Dead-eyed, come-hither gazes (traditionally found only in strip clubs) are painted on each fiberglass figure. It’s strange. Stranger still, these lifeless lasses are all chained and bolted to dollies—Hannibal Lector-style—then propped beside lampposts, like street bawds from a Victorian melodrama.

These displays are truly tacky. As such, I’m curious how effective they are at drumming business.

From an economic standpoint, I’m sure there are benefits to using battery-powered models over ones that require sunscreen and bathroom breaks, but is anyone convinced to purchase auto insurance or a haircut because of a plastic hussy with a sign? And how did this become a trend? Was a secret mannequin memo circulated amongst Los Angeles shop owners? Or did those late to the dummy party merely gaze at their competitors’ gaudy mechanical greeters and say, “Damn, I need to get me one of those!”?

Pediophobia—a fear of dolls, including robots and mannequins—is a common anxiety disorder. Popular schools of psychiatry believe that pediophobia springs from a feeling that dolls may come to life.

I don’t harbor any entrenched fear or mistrust of robots or mannequins, but I did have occasion once to visit a prop house filled with dozens of human-sized, standing dolls. It was creepy. The showroom featured an assortment of male, female, and child dummies, and the presentation was claustrophobic; the mannequins were stacked in rows, shoulder-to-shoulder, like a frozen army. I have to admit that squeezing past the stiffs did cause a shudder or two.

On the other end of the cognitive spectrum is agalmatophilia, a sexual attraction to statues, dolls, or mannequins. Mannequin, an unintentionally creepy, yet mainstream romantic comedy from the late-’80s, revolved around this paraphilia. Bizarrely, the film was successful enough at the box office to warrant a sequel in 1991. This was most likely due to the sexiness of a young Kim Cattrall—who plays the plastic department store fixture of the movie’s namesake—than to some sort of mass audience fetish… but who knows?

While I don’t have a thing for dummies, or bad ’80′s films, I have been known to turn a lusty eye at certain curvy jean mannequins placed outside Latino clothing stores in my hood. I’m not sure what this says about me, as these figures are routinely cut off at the waist. They possess no heads, torsos, or arms with which to hold swiveling mechanical signs, but the sculptors did a fine job shaping the bottoms of these would-be ladies.

I read once that a teenaged Jeffrey Dahmer stole a male mannequin from a department store and kept it hidden in his grandmother’s house, where he was living at the time… but I digress.

On a related creepy note, I remember walking through a female clothing store as a wee lad with my mother and being captivated by an underwear display. The presentation was a row of disembodied mannequin hips. The thought of pulling down the panties on the fake flanks occurred to me (you know… to see what was underneath), but even at that young age, I knew this behavior would come across as pervy, so I refrained.

As an adult, I probably should have also refrained from stoping my vehicle several times along a busy stretch of road to snap photographs of the mannequin mamas featured in this blog, which begs the question: who’s creepier, the entrepreneur who displays mechanical maidens, or the writer who reports on them?

So, now that I’ve shown you my figures and stumps, will you show me yours? Have you, fair readers, noticed humanoid billboards popping up in your town? Do mannequins and dolls frighten or enchant you? Or are you tempted to grab a sign, strap yourself to a dolly, and see how long you can hold a pose without blinking at passing traffic? Share your “Dummy Details” in the “Comments” section below.