One of my favorite things in the world is discovering/devouring a new comic. I think every comic/graphic novel I’ve ever gotten into has been an end-to-end, all-in-one sitting read: Watchmen, Dark Knight Returns, Invincible, Madman, Jimmy Corrigan, David Boring…) It’s been awhile since I’ve had this experience – lately I feel guilty for spending money on comics. Maybe this is part of growing up, or just part of owing UCLA $120,000+ Fortunately, my latest, favorite comic is free…

Norman Buckley was the professor who had the biggest impact on me as a filmmaker. I had him for one semester at UCLA (he was filling in for Nancy Richardson, another great editor and UCLA prof), but he’s definitely for me the WWJD of the editing room…

To compensate for not keeping a production diary and for not doing the Q&A and panel at Indie Memphis, I decided to write: 66.6 Lessons Learned on Savage County. (I added the decimal to the devil’s number because while I learned a ton, I don’t know that I can get all the way to 666 lessons learned, and I know you don’t want to read that many).

LACMA, originally uploaded by holycowboy.

Went to see a preview screening of “Bright Star” last night. I don’t think I’m Jane Campion’s target audience, but it’s always fun to wander through the grounds of the LACMA. I almost never do it, but every time I do, it makes me glad I live in LA.

This last week of pre-production has been run according to Murphy’s law, but it’s been a testament to the talent, perseverance and creative problem solving skills of all the people working with me on the project. When we aren’t dealing with unseasonably bad weather (tornadoes), seeing our first leeches in the wild, or dying laptops – things are actually going really well – on balance. We had our final location scout. Through the lens of Paul (the Director of Photography)’s fancy Canon Mark II V, I’ve seen the first glimpses of what this is going to look like when it comes to an internet browser near you. It’s looking good – and the art department hasn’t even had a chance to really trick anything out yet.

I first met Jason Rzepka when he worked at mtvU and was helping spread the word about HowDoISayThis? – my mtvU digital incubator project. Now, he’s VP of public affairs at MTV – in New York and a genuine MTV mucky-muck… All of which adds up to – he’s a colleague, not someone I know that well. But, I follow him on Twitter. In honor of his “Jesus Birthday” – he’s been tweeting his autobiography. It’s a simple idea, but interesting and revealing and a …

If I had to pick one YouTube channel to watch on a desert island, it would be Everything is Terrible. Rather than resist the statistical dominance of garbage online, they’ve made it into its own art form – scouring thrift stores for instructional videos, industrials, infomercials and random “Christian” programming. Making fun of the 80’s usually feels like shooting fish in a barrel, but the EIT videos tend to hit a higher mark of cheesy, vhs-soaked pop criticism/surrealism.