These are actually things I learned on Savage County – not advice. What the hell do I know?

Here’s a comic I wrote/drew based on an overheard conversation.

We crawl slowly and with a nonsensical numbering system closer and closer to 66.6 lessons learned making Savage County.

Every job has its secret, and the secret to his job was this: there was no penalty for destroying what need not be destroyed. Things left undestroyed, however, were full of the potential to end careers – both his and the careers of those above him. It was rarely the obvious that slipped by. Egregious misdeeds were either exposed by whistleblowers or erased in the field. In the few rare instances that photographic evidence or transcriptions of obvious crimes or criminal errors crossed his desk, he destroyed them immediately. Pictures of blood, reports of bodies, catalogs of burnt vehicles, maps of ruined homes, descriptions of weapons of any sort, recordings of crying bystanders, video of wounded soldiers… these could not be removed quickly enough. But would he notice that one man talking to two others is wearing boots issued only to Iranians? Would half of a seemingly senseless phone call connect to a hand-written note in a manner that exposed a conspiracy? He could not be sure, and so he would destroy them both.

I stumbled-upon’ed this image and saved it because of the D.H. signature on the print (vanity!) – but eventually tracked it back to this article by Saul Chernick…

I’m writing this from a Motel 6 in Grant, New Mexico, on the road to Memphis Tennessee to begin production on Savage County, my first “real” project as a director. I decided to blog the process, in hopes that it would be of some use to somebody to have a window into my particular route into first-time directing and to see a little of how we’re attempting what we’re attempting with the time and resources we’ve got.

“The English Lesson” tells the story of a wormy, closeted momma’s boy who gets his comeuppance from a Croatian gangster and his sex-starved wife. There’s not a likable character in it and a very large part of me wishes it had been my thesis project at UCLA.

You can download the pdf here or scroll down. I promise that (I think) it’s funny. I want somebody to make this film.

From guest writer: Ho Keen Fi
we all know darn well the countless amount of films made on the stones about the stones. they may well be the most documented band in rock history but Scorsese captured something that’s close at heart …the music. we all darn well know about the drugs and sex. but to capture the full force gale of a stones concert Scorsese did a great job.
PLUS being a master Cineaste manipulator.
what we see is a bunch of old guys who has been around for almost fifty years …

While she was alive, he had hated her car: a white 2004 Buick LaSabre, as generic as his coupe was particular. It was sluggish. It started, stopped and turned with flabby, gelatin imprecision.

Sunday, Fi took me to a screening at the Billy Wilder theater at the Hammer Museum (part of the “The Talking Pictures of Manoel de Oliveira” series). Made in 1942, the film is wall-to-wall with syrupy music and well-timed mugging between members of its young cast. Boy looks at girl, eyes go wide, boy is rejected, bottom lip juts out in clown sadness. The film is constructed entirely of these moments of oh-aren’t-they-cute-ness, but manages with only a tinge of darkness at its core (a child is …