Former Gov. Sara Palin of AK simply must indulge herself in a Double Fudge Anton’s Asshole Sundae

Step 1. Ms. Palin drizzles a butt-load of Hershey’s into my backside. Step 2. Ms. Palin eats it out.

See, it’s called a “Double Fudge” ’cause she’s not only eating what she pours in, but the already-resident bits o’ poo. Ha-ha ha-dee-ha!!

This isn’t about that. I just wanted to start in a more offensive way than with the last post on Palin. To read it, simply do a search on this site for “Palin.” It’s the first one that comes up.

The weirdest thing happened to me a couple hours ago. I got a call from a TX #. I had no idea who it was, so didn’t answer. A moment later, they left a message. It is as follows:

“”Is this Mr. Hill? Mr. Anton Hill? This is Cynthia Buchanan of Comadre Productions C-O-M-A-D-R-E Productions below San Antonio. And it’s Friday. 830 278 3788. (Repeated.) Cynthia Buchanan at Comadre Productions. Thank you. We look forward to hearing from you.”

What I’m about to say I mean in absolutely no mean spirit. I’m serious. I really don’t. Now:

Who the fuck is Comadre Productions? I didn’t know. So I googled her. Seems Ms. Buchanan is a (possibly) 1-woman outfit in TX who writes and produces plays on Mexican/Mexican-American/Borderland culture and experience. And pardon me, Cynthia, if I got that wrong. She won the Fulbright for creative writing and spent it in Spain writing her first novel whose title I’ve forgotten. I imagine you’re wondering the following thing:

Why the fuck did she contact me?? It’s not bad at all, I just don’t know why. She doesn’t say anything in her message about that. And let’s face it, being based in TX and being predominantly a playwright, it’s not that she has loads of cash she wants to give me or AntHill Films in order to produce one of my features. Additionally, if she were, I state very clearly on my “contact” page the appropriate way of pursuing such an endeavor.

In point of fact, I don’t even know how she found my site. I have yet to check the stats.

Yes, I’m going somewhere with this. Here’s the second message left about a minute after the first:

“Uh, Mr. Hill, this is Cynthia Buchanan again. Um, I was admiring your web site, but I came across the post about Sara Palin and I don’t think there’s any reason for you to call our company. Uh, you know, uh, this type of um *floundering* ‘alert’ to the world is not gonna work out with the film project we have for World War II in Texas, Mexico, and the Phillipines. Anyway, you don’t need to bother to call us back. You had many fine things on your web site. You might wanna… reconsider this type of post. Thank you. …Bye bye. I’m sure you’re very talented. Thank you.”

A couple points. So she now gets around to telling me what this is sorta all about. A documentary on World War II. But my forehead furrows. Why on Earth would she want me to be involved in such a thing? Indeed I have a connection to the Second Great War to End All Great Wars, namely my grandparents served, but it was nowhere near Texas, Mexico, or the Philipines. I’m not a huge WWII buff. In fact, I’m pretty tired of the massive boners most filmmakers have for the war. So the only thing that perhaps interested her is the fact taht I’m a screenwriter.

I just don’t know. How did Cynthia find me? Why did she contact me? And oh yes, why was she so offended by my Palin post. Yes, I tell Palin she should suck my cock. Or fat cock. Or whatever. But I’m obviously not being serious. I don’t really want her to do that. And that’s obvious from the post. What’s also obvious is that not only do I not want Palin to serve me with fellatio, but the entire post is about how people believe they have the right to not be offended.

And it seems that Cynthia proves my post.

I also wonder, if you’re doing a film on World War II, why do you care one way or another about Palin? As far as I understand her pedigree, she has no greater connection to the war than I do. She was born closer to it, but as far as I know, that’s it.

My guess is Cynthia realized she couldn’t be publicly associated with me for fear of questions as to why a kindly Texas scholar doing legit work on WWII would have anything to do with the likes of me. And for a second, I thought, that makes sense.

But then I thought, why would Cynthia care? I mean shit, at least it’d be publicity for her film.

HEADLINE: Respected playwright collaborates on project with Evil, near-anarchic-liberal, CA-based, openly Atheist, Palin Hater!!

And for the record, I don’t hate Palin. I don’t even dislike her. I just think she’s nuts. But I think the same thing about a lot of people so that doesn’t make her special.

Oh, I wrote to Cynthia on an address I found. I think it was executive.director@aztecfilms.net or something. I have yet to receive a reply. I would guess this is either due to the fact that Cynthia has no interest in talking to me or to the fact that maybe it’s not a good address.

Okay, so that’s it. I don’t get why any of this happened, but thanks, Cynthia Buchanan, for proving my point.

And so it begins…

Just got off the phone with Jeannie and we have a bit of a battle plan for the immediate future.  And things should start as early as tomorrow.  Guess we’ll see what happens, eh?

BtP diary

12 pages.  And that’s including some pretty big changes I’ve made so far.  I promise I’ll get to the 2nd act marker soon.  I’ve been very distracted of late.  I’ve already cut some bits of dialogue and expanded other bits of action.  I watched a film that came out a couple of years ago (and which sucked, though the sale price was apparently in the low million$) that’s similar and feel confident that mine’s different enough that no one’ll care.  And even if it’s not, mine’ll be an amazing sample.

Announcements (cont’d)

So the 2nd announcement I was gonna make the other day, and I’m glad I didn’t, is that 3 of my screenplays, Chronicles of Cho, the
investment, and Promissory, all made the 1st round quarter-final cut in the PAGE Awards. I didn’t announce this before because there was a 2nd round. And only Promissory made that cut. But here are some numbers…

The total entries this year were more than 4,000. All 3 scripts made it into the top 25%. The 2nd round cut the total down to 553. Promissory made it into the top 10%.

And now the thing I don’t get. You were expecting this, no? I truly believe that TCoC:TLOL is not only my best single script, but the whole story, the trilogy, my best story. I don’t just believe this because I’ve spent easily half my life (and I don’t mean adult life, I mean life life) working on it, but because I truly think it’s the best I will have ever done. Every time I’ve refined my skills, I’ve gone over it. I rewrite it, even if only a little, about once a year. Not to re-send to contests, just ’cause. TCoC:TLOL has NEVER placed in a contest higher than quarter. Don’t get me wrong. Quarter’s cool. But it ain’t semi. Not once. Ever. My holiday comedy, The 12 Days of ChanaKwanzMas, which I wrote in about 3 weeks, by the way, placed semi-finalist in the first contest into which I entered it. 3 weeks. Semi-finalist. 16 years. Quarter-finalist.

But that’s not all.

the investment is perhaps a dark story, a difficult story, but it’s a good story. I wrote that at my last day job, in 10-minute increments, mostly during breaks, then re-wrote it under very strenuous
circumstances the likes of which can be found on another blog. I’d say it took 2-3 months to write and rewrite it to the point where I felt ready to enter it into contests. I wasn’t fully expecting it’d kick ass namely because of the 2 above-mentioned factors, but it does have a great story. I’ve mostly sent it out just to see how it’ll do… and it’s done okay so far with a quarter-finalist placement in this year’s Fade In Awards.

Promissory I first had the idea for during college. I won’t go into the whole thing, but let’s just say it was during a harsh, brutally hot summer when I was staying on campus and basically hating life… for that summer anyway. During AFI, I thought of writing it as a feature. I don’t know why I hadn’t yet. I pitched it. People liked it. So, about 2 years later, I wrote it. Akin to TCoC:TLOL, it’s gone through a few drafts over the last few years.

I do have a point.

So, TCoC:TLOL, big epic story about love, loyalty, friendship, failure, betrayal, blah blah blah. Crazy action, awesome set-pieces, hot sex, etc. the investment, hot sex, fucked up psychological shit, and a great payoff. Promissory, great premise, funny shit, good set-pieces, good action.

My question is, why does the clearly big, awesome, amazing movie keep getting panned?? I get it with the investment. Who wants to sit through 2 hours of getting mind-fucked? But adventure? Action? Hot lovin’? Amazing visuals? Hello? Is this thing on??

I’ll take it. I’ll take my additional feather for Promissory’s cap. I just don’t get why Land don’t get no love. That’s all.

Announcements

I may have 2 big ones coming. I definitely have 1. I’ve got a deal scheduled with my manager and soon-to-be attorney for a game plan on how to get TW and other works out there. I’ll confirm as it’s confirmed. The next announcement confirmation won’t come for a couple of days.

The Widower Diary

Finished the 1st scene in storyboard. It’s very cool, though, in this day and age of cg this and cg that, I now wonder if I shouldn’t just make an animatic. Though this is mostly because I just wanna download and mess around with the latest Animation Master.

Nothing better to fucking do

No, I’m not talking about me.  Not this time.  I’m talking about them.

Wow.  Awesome.  I mean, if I were Dave, I’d be laughing my ass off.  Thanks for the publicity, schmuckos!

TW storyboards

For those who don’t know, partially just for fun and partially for something to show, I’m building storyboards for TW. I probably won’t do the whole thing as that’s a fucking ass load of work, but I’m gonna try to do a little. What this consists of is stick-figure frames of main action or sequences of action, typed dialogue, akin to silent film cards, music, and sound effects. In essence, when it’s polished, it’s like watching a crude graphic novel version of the film. The idea being you can watch the intended vision of the filmmaker (me) without having to shot actors and stuff.

So far, I’ve added major music tracks, 1 sound effect, opening titles, and dialogue titles for the first scene. It has been both satisfying and gut-wrenching. Today, I plan on doing some of the stick-figure frames. When the scene is done, akin to the LyClownThrope boards, it should look pretty neat. All things considered.

Makin’ music

No, that is not a euphemism for sex. For those of you who’ve known me longer than 5 years know that one of my adulthood-long hobbies has ben composing. You also know I have no real talent for performing, other than piano. And some may even know I did an EP many years ago entitled Splashing in Pavement, for which Vern Smith (RIP) recorded and engineered and Ian Strandberg (still alive) designed the album art. This was right when iTunes was exploding, so the idea of doing a CD wasn’t nearly as paleolithic as it is today.

Anyway, due to what I don’t know, but around the time that I cut said EP, I sorta stopped messing with music. In fact, the muse left me almost entirely. Sure I thought about songs and song ideas still, but committed absolutely nothing to paper.

Then Apple came out with GarageBand. I had used this software called Encore (RIP) which worked pretty well. But damn. GarageBand just beats the fuck outta Encore. It took me a while to figure it out, but now that I have the basics, I can’t believe how I survived creating music with Encore, or how Beethoven created music without hearing! Oh, that’s right. He was a genius. Heh.

So I’m back in the saddle. What does this mean to anyone but me? Not much as I have absolutely no professional aspirations whatsoever. However, with iTunes and mp3s and all that goodness, I can foresee a day not too far from now when I’ll put my shit on iTunes and make all of 2 or 3 cents.

See, Succinctrix? Positive thinking! I said “will” make not “may” make.

Sara Palin can suck my fat cock.

And I mean that in the nicest possible way.

People LOVE to be offended. It’s energizing. it’s uniting. It’s congregating. It’s social. it’s FUN. I was having this discussion with Succinctrix the other night. She claimed that mocking tragedy or historic tragedy is wrong. Or rather not funny.

I disagreed.

And to prove my point, I tested her.

“Other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?”

Succinctrix laughed. I pointed that out. She said, “yeah, but I feel bad for laughing.”

Is this a chick thing? And yes,, I know, Friend-to-you, it’s not nice to make blanket statements about women, but come on. I’ve never known any guy ever, EVER to be so upset about laughing at something and then claiming guilt. And Succinctrix wasn’t upset, just troubled.

But I ask you what I asked her. If you laugh, you find it funny, right? “Yeah, but I feel bad.” But why if you found it funny? “Because that’s a bad thing that happened.” Which doesn’t change the fact that it’s FUNNY.

Look people, it’s not mututally exclusive. Cracking a joke on Mary Lincoln is both funny and mocking her tragedy. The one doesn’t cancel out the other.

But as I alluded to above, I think this is a much bigger issue. For the past 15 years or so, as the whole politically correct thing took on its strangehold of our society and all related symptoms permeated. People in general, and I’m guilty in this as well, have tended to assume that they have the right NOT to be offended.

Oh really? Last time I checked, it says “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Yes, it can be argued that a lack of offense contributes to one’s happiness, but it seems logical to deduce that had the Founding Fathers really felt it to be so goddamn important not to be offended, they would’ve included it too.

Yet it somehow doesn’t rank as highly as life, liberty, and happiness.

I know what you’re thinking, well, Anton, you’re not offended by anything. Not true. Every single time people say shit like, “I’ll pray for you” or “God bless you” or “God has a plan” or “Here you go, sir [assuming I'm paying for dinner]“, “Why aren’t men chivalrous anymore?”, “The South shall rise again” or any other ridiculous things, I’m offended. Why? Because every one of those is a basis in assumption completely unsupported by evidence.

And yet I don’t throw a hissy. Not every time. Why? Because not only does it not MATTER, but that whole freedom of speech thing means I have the right to say what I want no matter how much someone else might disagree and that someone has the same right.

But this isn’t about civil rights. This is only about why is it that Sara Palin, or anyone else for that matter, believes he or she has the right not to be offended by anything? And even if that person chooses to take offense, that’s his or her fucking problem. He or she doesn’t have to go on news outlets wasting our time whining about it. Hey, you got a problem with Letterman, take it up with Letterman. Otherwise, you’re proving that your complaint really has nothing to do with him or his joke; it has to do with wanting spotlight.

Notice I’ve not issued any press releases every time a politician asks for God’s blessing of America.

Alright, I’ll shut up now.