Mondo Schlocko posts a YouTube clip of a Hijo del Santo cartoon. It’s actually pretty decently animated, and lots of recognizable Mexico City landmarks and stuff. Spanish language dialogue, and looks fairly modern, apparently from Cartoon Network. Go check it out.
The Horror Blog posts a short Bloomberg interview with Roger Corman. I’ve got a lot of respect for the man and his work, and while the whole interview is worth a read, there’s one quote that stands out. The Horror Blog also chose the same quote, and I think it’s worth repeating:
“The strategy was to make the best possible film for the money. I’ve seen so many people slough off low-budget films. You cannot do that. When Jonathan Demme did his first film, which was for us, it was a woman-in-prison picture. He said to me, “I’m going to make the best woman-in-prison picture ever made.” That’s the attitude that you must have.”
And holy shit, is he ever right. And more than that, he’s actually agreeing with me. Ok, that sounded pretentious. When I finally saw Bolas Chinas, the low budget movie I acted in last year, I was disappointed. Not because it was a low-budget movie with largely amateur actors; I already knew that. I was disappointed because the director, who also wrote the script and edited, had not realised the full potential of the thing. The script wasn’t particularly good, and it also wasn’t finished before we started shooting, and the editing was incredibly sloppy and careless.
The problem, again, isn’t the budget. It’s that people don’t care. In this case, lots of people involved were originally making “art film”, and did this project for fun inbetween other, more “serious” project. And it’s fine to make a movie for fun, I guess. But it’s not fine to not care about it. Making a movie is hard work, and lots of it. If the people who are doing it, when they get tired in the middle of the project, as always happens, say “fuck it, it’s just a project for fun, my real, serious art movies are what matters, I’ll just do this as quickly and carelessly as possible”, then what you get is a movie that sucks, instead of a movie that’s at least competent and decent for the resources you had available.
If you’re going to make a movie, make the best movie you can. Maybe even make the best movie of its type ever made, if you can bring yourself to say that (I’m not sure I could). But always do the best you can, give it 100%, because if you don’t, if you stop caring, it’s going to suck, no matter what the budget is. There are lots of big-budget turkeys that are obviously a result of people not caring, not caring because they don’t believe in the project, or they believe it’s going to be a blockbuster no matter what, or for any number of other reasons. And they flop. Low-budget movies where everyone does their best usually come out at least decent, and the people involved often get a chance to make another movie, maybe with a bigger budget.
If you’re going to do something, do it right. If not, just don’t bother, because it’s going to suck. Roger Corman agrees with me.
Mexploitation Cinema (with the long subtitle) isn’t associated with this blog in any way except for similarities in subject matter. While I call the sort of movies I’ve participated in here “Mexploitation”, Doyle Greene uses the term more strictly, applying it to horror/monster/wrestler movies produced in Mexico from 1957 to 1977. I think that limit is somewhat arbitrary and unnecessary, but it’s chosen to correspond to Greene’s central thesis, that these movies reflect values and preoccupations common in Mexican society during this period.
And what do you know, that thesis works pretty well. Although Greene uses quite a bit of scholarly critical jargon, he makes a clear and quite convincing case for linking the themes and monsters in the movies to issues of Mexican national identity, xenophobia, politics, and oppression. The main arc of the narrative is that from forging a modern, urban Mexican national identity in the 1950-60s, to the political oppression and violence of the late 60s and 70s.
The tone is dry and academic, but that can be quite entertaining, when applied to movies that are as blatantly ridiculous as many of Santo’s efforts. Greene dissects and analyzes the action and symbolism of several such movies in detail, but can’t seem to avoid bemusement at the puerile plots and stilted dialogue.
All in all, this book isn’t for everyone, but given that it’s pretty much the only serious analysis of a locally important subgenre, it’s definitely worth reading for those interested in Mexican low budget movies.
The IMDB entry for Comando Zorras has been updated (not sure if it’s my update or not, since IMDB kind of sucks that way, but I’m guessing it’s not, since I added Leo’s credit too). That gets me another “official” credit, in the sense that if it’s not on the internet, it doesn’t exist. Yay. I just hope Bolas Chinas won’t take as long.
This is the music video I acted in a few months ago. It’s currently playing on latin music TV channels, and on YouTube for your viewing pleasure. I appear several times, although in relatively short flashes. I’m the tallest of the bad guys, the one who gets kicked in the face at the end.
Oh, and I’m back, I went to Norway for a month. Expect more soon.
Yesterday, I went to film a music video. People from Plataforma films called me about it, they didn’t have much of a budget, but needed someone to play a thug (I know, I’m horribly typecast). I’d never been on a music video shoot before, and they were friends asking for a favor, so I accepted. The video was for Naty Botero’s “Te Quiero Mucho”. She’s a Colombian pop singer, and this is her first song, which is currently at number three on the Colombian hit lists. She doesn’t have a web site, but quick googling of her name seems to confirm at least that.
Arriving, I realized the production was full of people I already knew. Miguel Bonilla, director of Comando Zorras, was producing, and several of the people who did art and props on Bolas Chinas were working too. Additionally, I ran into a couple of people from “Supercivicos”, a TV Azteca show that I went to do a little work on about a month ago, but where we couldn’t get the takes they wanted that day, and when they called me again, I was busy.
The video itself is a seventies exploitation movie spoof, where the star gets into a Barbarella-like suit and kicks the ass of some thugs in a bar (that’s us) before we break a bottle over her head and take her to the big boss. The big boss in this case was played by a midget named Chuchín, who they’d put into a shiny black vinyl suit, with a red pirate shirt and a cowboy hat. He was really good actor, though, I suspect that he was the only real professional actor on set. There’s another fight scene (in which Miguel makes a star turn as an actor, who karate-chops his way through the bad guys), and the good guys win.
All in all, it was pretty fun, in many ways fairly similar to Comando Zorras both in feel and basic idea. They were shooting on 16mm, on an old Arriflex, and the production was a bit rushed and basic, but I think it worked well. We did some interiors at the Plataforma offices first, then moved to Barney’s, a bar in Condesa, to shoot the bar fight. Several objects were broken over people’s heads in the duration, first a chair, which didn’t work so well, since it wasn’t really prepared well enough, and didn’t break (ouch). Then one of those fake bottles made of sugar, which I’d never seen in real life before, and which worked surprisingly well. Even the sound is very real.
Since there were hardly any professional actors, the whole crew did stints as actors. The makeup and costume girls were also backing singers/dancers in the bar, one of the producers was one of the bad guys, the camera assistant was the bartender, and so on, which made the whole thing feel like we were playing dress-up, with everyone in and out of various seventies costumes all the time.
In general, it was pretty interesting, and fun to meet the guys again. I also finished early, which is also a bonus.
On Thursday, I went with Øyvind to Rushes to watch the telecine of some material for a commercial. We were leaving a meeting and he asked me if I wanted to come along, since he was going directly there, and I hadn’t actually seen a transfer done before.
It was pretty interesting, but maybe simpler than you think. The hundred thousand dollar Da Vinci unit they use to color correct doesn’t really do much more than what a high-speced PC workstation could do, as far as I could see, and the interface was the typical early nineties “pro visual software” interface, a la Shake, a large screen with lots of buttons and widgets, no windows you can move, and things in tabs. And lots and lots of sliders. The big console the Da Vinci uses is certainly cool, and I’m told you can get those for normal PCs too, but they’re still overpriced (in the 10k dollar range, which is ridiculous for 4 large trackballs and a bunch of buttons and knobs). Brings me back to my rants about why good free software could blow this whole thing wide open.
The telecine itself is a pretty cool piece of gear, though, even though it’s also relatively simple, and overpriced, like much else in movie production. But the results look good (and this was a transfer to SD, even).
All in all, an interesting experience. I hung around the Da Vinci operator and picked up a bit about how the interface worked, and prodded him on how to get the curves right (years of still image correction experience pay off). The best part was the included free food and drinks, though. They make really good sandwiches.
And, hot on the heels of Comando Zorras’ availability, comes the Bolas Chinas trailer, which director Alex uploaded to YouTube. It’s watchable here, but it’s not particularly good. I’ve seen the movie now, and that’s not particularly good either. There’s good material, but the editing and pacing is… off. Very off. Similar to the way it’s off in the trailer, actually. But oh well, there it is.
Yeah, well, don’t get too excited, since it sucks. But, it’s available for rent at Mexican NetFlix-like site MovieNet.
The good thing about this is that I can use that site as a reference to get it into IMDB, so I can get my credit and whatnot.
But seriously, don’t rent it. It sucks.
This is a screenwriting public service announcement, for your comfort and safety.
When writing screenplays about lesbian assassins, there are some simple rules that should be obeyed for greater enjoyment, fewer complaints about clichés, and fewer lesbians demonstrating outside the theater and setting fire to your house.
I’m sure there are more, but these should get you started. Subvert the dominant paradigm, damn you. Oh, and do it with style. And tits.