INT. J ROLAND KELLY - NIGHT

As in my earlier, post I talked about writing a song with an Ecuadorian I met here, and I needed a guitar. I was feeling that nervous-anxious itch, after not having played for six weeks anyway.

I walked around to different guitar shops in El Centro Historico of Quito, of which there are many, and decided on a little student guitar by Rosero Nunez. It cost $45 and is totally playable.

I don’t know who this Rosero Nunez (or the company) is. I do know that there are many small guitar-making shops in Ecuador, but I couldn’t find any information online about this one.

And when I can’t find information online; I blog about it.

All I have is the inside label:

Notice the hotmail email address on it.

I’ll pass that along, in case anyone wants a custom guitar.

I hear from an Ecuadorian peace corp’er that the country has many guitar makers that are 70 years old with no children who wanted to continue the tradition. So it goes.

My new guitar is quite inexpensive (but good) and in the store I purchased it, I saw many more Rosero Nunez guitars that were of really good quality but at a higher price.

I decided on my particular guitar because it was small (in case I have to travel with it), it was cheap (in case I have to toss it), it’s not large enough to make too much noise in my hotel room, and while being a “classical” guitar, it’s made for children so the strings are almost the same distance apart as in the American tradition.

Having a classical guitar is new to me. I have never had nylon strings, I’ve never had strings don’t fan out as you go down the fret board, and if I break a string I would not know how to replace it, as the strings have no “ball” and are tied on in an elaborate way.

Still it has a unique sound, and I’m quite satisfied.

I should say that many things in Ecuador are bootlegged, and just because the label lists it as being a Rosero Nunez, that’s no guarantee that it’s not a guitar made somewhere else with an Ecuadorian label. I bought a hat that says it was made in Italy and that is obviously not true.

Even if - it’s still a playable guitar.

-J Roland Kelly

I’ve written a lot about the future role of MIDI in popular music. Two weeks ago I wrote about a software plug-in that I wanted created that would convert audio to MIDI in real time, and then play the MIDI as if it were coming from a real MIDI controller thereby allowing you to control a synthesizer with an organic instrument such as a guitar.

It already exists.

In my wanderings on the Internet it wasn’t like I didn’t find it right away, but it did take a while for me to understand what I was looking at… hey, is that a hole in the ground?

It took longer to write the blog posts than it did to download, install, and implement the conversion software. I feel a little strange about that, but the one consolation is that I predicted EXACTLY how the software would work.

Plus, it’s something I really wanted, and so now I have it. That’s a win.

First the lesson on audio plug-ins:

1. Steinberg created the Virtual Studio Technology (VST) plug-in system for Cubase. It had complicated and expensive licensing, it only became popular after third-party developers started to disregard the licensing rules. VST is now the standard plug-in format for most DAWs in the windows environment, including Adobe Audition 3.

2. Apple went their own way and created a new system for plug-ins on the Mac, which they call Audio Units (AU).

These plug-ins work at the operating system level and should work with whatever sound recording software you have installed at the time (that use plug-ins).

So, now the plug-in (this is really cool and I recommend that you try it even if you are not a musician)…

Widisoft makes an Audio to MIDI conversion audio plug-in to be used directly in the sound recording suite (DAW) that you are using. They have VST and AU versions of the plug-in.

I am going to focus on the Mac, if you need this for windows (or VST) you can find instructions on the Widisoft website.

You can try the plug-in for free. It will last 20 days, but will only work for 15 seconds before cutting out for 15 seconds, working then not working etc. It costs $80 dollars to purchase, which I recommend, it works well and I’ve not seen anything like it.

The whole thing should only take a few minutes.

1. Download the audio to MIDI conversion plug-in here.

2. Install it with the instructions (a few seconds).

3. Follow these instructions to get it to work with GarageBand.

That’s it. Now you can control a MIDI Synthesizer with an organic instrument in GarageBand.

Plus… Audio Unit Plug-ins breathe new life into GarageBand eliminating many of the things that make it suck. True.

-J Roland Kelly

It has been one year since I had my last drag. I set this post to publish on the one-year anniversary of my last puff at 10 pm on November 15th. Last year (2007) that date fell on a Thursday night.

I had been a smoker for six and a half years, having started at the ridiculously ripe age of 21. In the place from which I come, at the time I started smoking, 25% of all adults smoked and 50% of all young people smoked, and one day I just found myself on the wrong side of the line.

In the course of those 6 and a half years I smoked cigarettes, cigars, and a corncob pipe; each exclusively and each for months at a time, all in a quest to find what my forefathers found so magical, and in the end (unbeknownst to me at the time over-commercialized spirit of connoisseurship) I found none of it magical.

In half a dozen different ways, I must have quit half a dozen different times, but as they say about the one thing that you eventually find… it’s always the last place you look.

I finally found what I was looking for in a series of three writings: Junkie by William S. Burroughs, The Tobacco Timeline, and most importantly of all (the only piece of written work that I will claim saved my life) The Easy Way to Stop Smoking by Allen Carr.

Before I quit, I never would have imaged that books were my way out. I had spent most of my time dealing with different forms of nicotine replacement therapy. Which I strongly do not recommend as reasons explained in Allen Carr’s book.

If you are struggling to quit, you don’t live in quiet desperation, and don’t lose hope, just read the first 20 pages of The Easy Way to Stop Smoking, you’ll know that your card has been pulled.

As it turns out, I read the very last edition of Allen Carr’s book; he was to die of lung cancer a year after publishing it, and it was just as I started reading it.

It has to be one of the cruelest twists in the world that people die of smoking related cancers 30 years after quitting.

The book is a good read even if you are a non-smoker. It contains a lot of de-commercialized truths that are censored in the American mainstream. I can never view the medical community, businessmen, or drug addicts the same way again.

To this day, I’m still impressed with the wisdom of the book.

When it comes to The Tobacco Timeline, it is just amazing; the further that we get from the days of big tobacco the more un-biased information that is revealed. This is one of the very unique stories in human history, you might think that you have heard it, but I promise you haven’t heard all of it.

William S. Burroughs and his works need no introduction.

These are three honest books about Tobacco and addiction in a world full of misinformation. My advice is to go to them first, don’t buy something you see on TV, and don’t believe everything you hear.

You can’t trust anyone, in the Jim Jarmusch film, Coffee and Cigarettes during a conversation with Iggy Pop, my hero Mr. Tom Waits says about smoking, “you know what they say… you never really quit.”

Those words have resonated with me, through all my time as a smoker, but you know what… Tom Waits is wrong. Read the books.

Plus I have an interesting story about when I actually quit—

I had spent the whole previous year cutting down, and getting really fat. As I said it was a Thursday when smoked my last smoke. I went the whole next day at the office without smoking, and my car was loaded up with camping gear and 5 $80 dollar bottles of tequila.

My plan was to spend the first three days camping.

After work, I drove 40 miles to Henry Coe State Park just South of San Jose. Parked the car. Got trashed. Really meant to put up the tent but slept in the car.

The next day hiked (staggered?) two miles away from the ranger station to a walk in campsite. Around 7:30pm, about 45 minutes after it got dark, and after a day alone with five bottles of expensive tequila, I felt like I was being watched.

It wasn’t the alcohol, I really was. I found two eyes reflected in my little AA battery flashlight, and they where maybe 100 yards away. I had drunk with coyote that had lost its fear of people and ventured into the campground the previous night, I thought it was something like that.

That coyote was real attentive.

So, I walk towards the eyes with the flashlight up above my head (like a cop), bottle of Patron still in my other hand, when I’m maybe 25 feet away I realize what I’m looking at…

And while I didn’t freak out, or move, inside I was filled with real terror, almost a panic attack. I was looking at a mountain lion.

The mountain lion was broadside to me, looked at me for a moment and then on silent pads ran towards the tree line where I couldn’t see it.

I felt like I almost had a heart attack, and briefly thought I should take better care of myself.

Very focused, I got my backpack out of the tent, stuffed in my sleeping bag (and a few bottles) and walked back to the ranger station in the dark.

Mountain lions are supposed to be the most elusive animals on the planet. They are not supposed to let a human walk up to them. They are not supposed to be 2 miles from a campground. This was BULLSHIT!

The next part of the story I would entitle: Through a Dark, Drunkly…

…because I still had to walk two miles back to the ranger station. And it seems like the walk back in the dark, not knowing if you are being hunted would be scary. Here’s what I thought about…

When I was a much younger camper, I heard a story that’s meant to get under your skin. Roughly, it’s a kind of a ghost story evolving a kid, maybe 10 years old, maybe two miles away from home playing out in the country, when he sees a ghoul, who smiles at him and them disappears into the ground, and the kid has to walk back home at sun down, alone, wondering if this ghoul will get him.

I always wondered what if I was that kid. When I was 20 or so I was taking a bus out of Mexico City, when I looked down from a highway upon one of their infamous shantytowns. I had never seen anything like it at the time and I thought, shit, if I suddenly found myself down there, I would rather just be dead, then to have to find my way out.

Anyway, the walk back to the ranger station made me feel like I now know what it’s like to be that kid or what it’s like to find yourself in one of the rough Mexico City Shantytowns, basically after the initial moments of terror, and near panic attack heart attack it’s all focused adrenaline precision from there.

Nothing can be as bad as the first fright, so it’s all down hill from there.

When I got to the ranger station I told them the story and they said I was full of sh!t, that mountain lions don’t get that close to people, unless they are hunting and then you won’t see them until you are being attacked.

But I know what I saw. I spent the next week reading about them. They most actively hunt just after sundown, and the fact that I saw one’s broadside means it wasn’t hunting me, as they stalk, hunkered down the same way as a housecat.

For the last year the mountain lion has been my anti-smoking totem. I couldn’t start smoking again because then I would have to quit, and to quit would mean going back to where the mountain lion lived.

- J Roland Kelly

I had an awesome thrill recently; I found out two young filmmakers that I don’t even know (yet?) included a song (The World’s Warm Womb) from my first album in their short film entitled Cool.

It was a surprise to me, I found the video on youtube after searching for my name.

The film was created by F. Chiaverini and stars Matthew Branham.

And, I must say they nailed it. They knew what the song was about and independently created an image for the song that elevated it to newer and higher levels of “cool.”

F. Chiaverini´s ability to astutely pick out emotion from a series of shots is not something that just anyone can do, and having Matthew Branham with the expressive face of a great actor complemented that in the film.

They entire thing works well together.

F. Chiaverini and Matthew Branham both seem like nice young artists, won’t you help them out when you can. You can start by leaving feedback for their super short film Cool on youtube.

-J Roland Kelly

And as always my two albums: J Roland Kelly, Stop Your Nursing Unless You’re Rendering Fun and J Roland Kelly Taunts the Process …into Attacking are available at ITunes and Amazon.com, as well as where ever else fine music is downloaded.

UPDATE: Sound Engineering & Making Music: Converting Audio to MIDI In Your Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) to Perfectly Intertwine Organic and Virtual Instruments Plus a Lesson on Audio Plug-ins

After last weeks post about the new power of MIDI, I had another idea about how to incorporate my idea and hurry the future along…

The new power of MIDI rotates around the development of audio to MIDI conversion software, and I wrote last week that we would have to wait until a sound recording software maker like Apple or Adobe add this feature to their software packages like GarageBand, Adobe Audition, Logic, etc. in order for the full power of this to be seen, but it doesn’t have to be that way if some third party would create a new type of MIDI interface.

Let me explain.

A type of third party plug-in could be created that would work with every recording suite. It would work like this:

1. A microphone would record audio and convert it to MIDI in real time (this part is already done and you can download programs for free already).

2. Than a program (the program in question; not yet created) would take the MIDI newly being recorded from the audio and reconstitute it as the MIDI cable and USB pluses of a real MIDI interface such as a keyboard, thereby mimicking just another MIDI controller (again, all in real time).

The result would be that every sound recording program would just accept this as another MIDI input device and… Ta-Da the future!

More detailed advice to computer programmers:

1. Take one of the audio to MIDI conversion programs already created (lease it, buy it, or hack it at first, I suspect these are a dime a dozen and never make money) and look at the MIDI file that it creates as it converts audio to MIDI in real time. The MIDI file can’t be any different than a database.

2. Read up on USB and MIDI protocol to learn to generate MIDI signals from the file being created by the Audio to MIDI software.

3. Market the whole thing to cool young indie musicians, and feel cool and young… and rich and a music pioneer.

I just can’t get over what a good idea this is. Imagine laying down the guitar track, then you want the melody layered on top by an oboe but you don’t have an oboe or know an oboe player so you just play the melody on guitar and it gets converted to an oboe instantly… or forget the guitar for melody, you just hum it into the microphone.

I am currently reading a book on songwriting, and it mentions a few unorthodox songwriting methods; apparently Mel Brooks (who can’t play a single goddamn instrument) wrote the score for his Tony award winning Broadway show The Producers HIMSELF by humming into a tape recorder, and well paid musicians then took it from there.

And that’s the future I dream of… I want to be able to score an entire Broadway show (Tony winning) without knowing how to play a single instrument.

Of course Mel Brooks could have used the software that I propose, and his humming would have been turned instantly into a grand piano or a string section or what have you- for demo purposes.

- J Roland Kelly

Thank God.

UPDATE: Sound Engineering & Making Music: Converting Audio to MIDI In Your Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) to Perfectly Intertwine Organic and Virtual Instruments Plus a Lesson on Audio Plug-ins

I’m here in Quito, I’ve got Tom Waits on the ol’ Ipod, and it’s raining real hard. I thought I should get this rant down before the rainbows come out and start taking lives.

THE PREMISE

Basically, for the first time I think I understand where modern indie music is going, and I want to place my bets. (Mostly) all analog instruments are finished, and I want to make a guess at how they are finally going to be phased out. I bet that a sound recording program will “recreate” organically recorded music in pure perfect computer-generated tone, somewhat in the form of the current concept of MIDI.

I got this idea in my head when recently, against my will, I was forced to learn a lot about MIDI. I was surprised to learn that MIDI was actually nothing at all like what I thought and only in the last two years has it been worth a damn.

That surprised me because MIDI is very old.

PROBLEMS OF NOW

MIDI belongs to the piano, and to classical music, but things changed, the piano became the synthesizer, the synthesizer became the MIDI keyboard, and now if you just say “MIDI controller” people will understand what you mean.

Many homes still have a piano in some form or another, either a child’s keyboard, or a high dollar MIDI controller, the important thing being that the piano is still a very popular instrument.

And in my experience everyone who thinks they can play the piano, also believes they are on top of this MIDI thing. Every single time this has proved untrue.

Problems arise when you meet a person who plays a MIDI keyboard and you try to record a song together. You will eventually figure out that they have no clue how to control their software.

This has always frustrated me.

One, because the software is such an important part of their instrument that it IS their instrument.

Two, because I always thought they wanted me to learn their software for them, like it’s ONLY a software issue, like it’s my problem, like I care how their keyboard software works, when I can’t even play the keyboard.

And three, we always ended up recording their keyboard live through analog. I felt a little bad about it, as I knew it stripped the power of MIDI out of their instrument, but I didn’t know what to do about it, nor did they.

What I learned in the last few weeks is that MIDI for most of its life has been really weak, and when I recorded a MIDI keyboard as if it were a synthesizer, unknowingly that was the best I do at the time.

Everyone spoke of MIDI as magical and I didn’t know any better so I believed them.

But what’s magical? You can record a musical line, then play it back with different instrumentation, and also edit the musical line itself.

THE LIMITATIONS OF MIDI

Here is what you couldn’t do until recently – kick out the jams, motherfu*ker. You couldn’t jam, you couldn’t interact with other live organic instruments, while recording live.

In order for MIDI to be incorporated into a modern recording with voice or a live instrument it had to be completely finished and locked down, then the organic components could be added on top of it. I’m sorry, but that’s not how modern contemporary music is created.

This is why MIDI has always been pushed away from the mainstream, and why the classical music crowd has always embraced it. It’s perfect for old dead perfectly notated music.

THE NEW EVOLUTION OF MIDI

Most people who have a MIDI controller don’t understand the new power that’s opening up to them.

Ok, what’s changed? The software, but it’s all software.

Three major software developments have changed the world of MIDI.

The first was that (cheap or free) virtual instruments became so perfect that no one could tell the difference between a real and a fake. That is, MIDI tells the computer to play this music with a grand piano and the grand piano is so life-like the only way to tell that it is most likely MIDI is that it is TOO WELL RECORDED.

The second was that multi-track recording programs (GarageBand, Adobe Audition, etc.) rethought the way MIDI should be incorporated into the recording process. Why not treat it like any other instrument, let it be recorded live with other live instruments?

I always thought this was the case, as it should have been, but it’s actually quite new.

Of the sound recording programs with which I’m familiar, the first one with this feature was GarageBand. Adobe Audition 3, which is still only a few months old, added this feature mainly just in response to GarageBand.

I know nothing about Pro Tools and hopefully never will, as I don’t like their dependence on hardware. I don´t know anything about Logic 8, but hear good things about it.

While it sounds like GarageBand might be an innovator, I can’t recommend it. I find a new reason to hate GarageBand every day, while at the same time I find new reasons to like Adobe Audition.

That’s how I finally stand on the GarageBand Vs. Adobe Audition debate.

The third development was that all of the amplifier modeling software and after effects (like software EQ, software hardlimiters, all the professional stuff, etc.) got better than their physical counterparts.

Now, even with endless money to spend, after music is in a computer there is no reason that it should leave for any reason. This means that organic sound and MIDI have finally come together in the same place at the professional level.

That’s it. This new software and it’s new potential for MIDI isn’t very old.

WHY MIDI WILL RULE MUSIC

Recently, I saw someone working on an electronic music album. I even wrote a song with them and in the process saw their music making routine, which was new to my style.

The problem came when, during our song-making attempt, I wrote the guitar part first. Now, what? The MIDI has to interact with an organic instrument.

The programs like GarageBand and Adobe Audition could have handled it, but this person was using high-end software from the MIDI tradition.

After two weeks, they figured it out. They used Ableton Live “rewired” with Reason 4. These are two expensive programs from different software companies made to work together in tandem.

Remember, software that allows for interaction of organic and MIDI instruments is relatively new. I thought it was a hack, but it worked.

And when I saw how well it worked, I started pondering my faith.

I play guitar, and I was very jealous of what they had. Imagine being able to record a performance in a perfectly pure way, then if you hit a wrong string, or just wanted to make a small change, it was only a mouse click away, and that edit would become as good as if you had played it that way.

Powerful stuff.

But this person was in the stages of “mastering” their album. In the processes of working on our song I saw the waveform of one of their MIDI tracks and it was perfect already! What was there to master?

Why would a computer spit out a track derived from computer-generated sounds in any form less than perfect? How could it be morally culpable to let the track hit the peaker? If you don’t mess with it, MIDI is perfection itself.

The last thing is that there are no microphones involved. You don’t know what a blessing that is. Microphones are usually the give away of a non-professional recording.

Every MIDI instrument is always a perfectly mic’ed instrument, that is quite priceless in a production value sense.

I’m still waiting for an omni-directional USB microphone with a frequency response of 20-20k Hz. Even if MXL or another company finally releases one, it will still only produce the same old uneven recordings that are the nature of analog (with unintended car noses in the background probably).

The perfection of a computer-generated tone will break a sound engineer’s heart.

That’s why I’m packing up the analog instrument tent and giving up.

THE WORLD DOES NOT END WITH THE MAYAN CALENDER IN 2012; IT ENDS WITH THE STOCK MARKET CRASH IN 2008

I look at it this way, when I was learning to play guitar 10 years ago, I thought I needed all kinds of musical equipment that I couldn’t afford. The one solace in later life is that it all proved unnecessary, if I had been able to buy it, I would have just been throwing my money away.

Case and point: guitar amplifiers. I always wondered why my $80 practice amp (in 1998) never sounded like any guitars I heard on the radio. I always thought it was that I didn’t spend enough; I didn’t know anything about sound engineering at the time.

Now, everything has come full circle, and I think it’s a joke. If you want to spend two grand on a high-end amplifier today, guess what, it is just a computer with a large speaker mimicking what it thinks high-end amplifiers sound like.

Let me explain it this way, guitar amplifier modeling software has gotten so good, that real amplifiers now use it to create the sound that the software was supposed to be mimicking. It’s great, it allows for presets and so on. The point? You can buy the two thousand dollar amp or you can plug your guitar into your home computer, and your computer will give you more options.

So, acoustic guitars made out of endangered trees, the fine details between an American versus a Mexican made Stratocaster, expensive cables, all of that proved pointless. Plug in your guitar, record it, add a little reverb, and now tell me how much the equipment cost?

Sorry to have to tell you this, but if you can’t entertain a group of people with a $99 student guitar, you won’t be any more entertaining with a $7000 pre-war martin. It takes a long time to learn that but it’s true.

THE APOCALYPSE (Organic Instruments are MIDI)

Organic instruments for final playback are dead. MIDI recreations of those instruments are so much better, and there can be only one.

I’m a guitar player, not a great one, but I enjoy it, and I realize that I am never going to learn to play the piano. That may sound sad, but I’ve had plenty of time to get over it.

I wanted to know how could I get in on this MIDI thing?

I’ve spent time on the Internet trying to figure this out. People have come up with a few different options—

I could buy a “MIDI Guitar.” Companies are out there that are selling guitars with no strings, only buttons along the fret board. These are not cheap, start around $1500, and I can’t see how they could possible play anything like a guitar. Not for me.

Then there are aftermarket add-ons, essentially unique pick-ups that you attach to your guitar that goes to a computer. The computer tries to read the notes you are playing and converts them to MIDI. This technology is a little more bit my style, it’s called tone-to-MIDI, but I can see through the logic. Mostly it is someone wanting to sell you the pick-up, because a guitar pick-up no matter how unique is just a type of microphone.

So, my next google search was simply “audio to MIDI” and I hit the jackpot.

Everything now is just software of course, and what I found were dozens of programs both freeware and not, that try to convert audio to MIDI. Some say they can do it in real time. I tried a few of them and found out that they worked with my guitar, but with errors.

As it turns out tone-to-MIDI technology is not that advanced, and a guitar is very demanding instrument for the software, it spits out notes faster than a piano, it is always slightly out of tune, much of the time there are six individual notes playing, good guitaring is about some really subtle movements, and the software just doesn’t record and sample fast enough. All of this is problematic.

100 MILLION DOLLAR ADVICE FOR ADOBE AND APPLE

Get that tone-to-MIDI software working right and incorporate it into the next releases of GarageBand and Audition.

It might take some work, I can see it being a little like voice recognition technology. The musician might have to teach the software how to listen to their instrument. The software might ask you to play some common chords for example. It could be processor intensive and unrealistic in real time, but it would change the face of modern music.

Imagine being able to play an old beat up guitar, mandolin, trumpet, kazoo, clarinet, violin, or saxophone into an old beat up microphone, and after some calculations the software will convert it, and give you the most angelic perfectly recorded piece of music you ever laid down.

That’s the potential.

Every organic instrument could already be a MIDI controller.

MIDI is only going to get more powerful, and the number of life-like virtual instruments grows everyday.

Imagine, Apple puts this into GarageBand… one day a college kid practices the drums on a practice mat in his dorm room (you know, a bunch of different circles to hit that make slightly different sounds, but quieter than a drum kit, or maybe just set up coffee cans), his MacBook is recording nearby with its built in microphone, the kid hits a button and his practice session is converted into the most perfectly mic’ed drums ever. Drums have a reputation as the most difficult instrument to mic, it’s not for amateurs.

Apple could even brand and sell the drum practice mat; they love that kind of thing.

Or you find a virtual instrument pack that mimics yodeling. You yodel into a microphone, the computer will measure pitch and length and then give you perfect yodels to your specification. It won’t sound like you, but it would if you could yodel.

Well, that’s the future as I see it.

There might be some people uncomfortable with this; they might argue that all music would sound the same if everyone used the same set of virtual instruments for example, or they might be uncomfortable with how “un-genuine” the music is.

But after post-production things get changed so much even the same virtual instrument would not sound any more similar than one acoustic guitar compared with another. And anyone who is concerned with how fake music is getting, should realize that for a long time now, algorithms have existed to keep music in pitch and in tempo.

It’s possible that someone who could barely play his or her instrument or can’t really sing laid down a million dollar track. But I hoped they at least had style.

AFTERWARDS: THE ACOSTIC GUITARS AND THE COCKROACHES

Beating on an old acoustic guitar is a lot of fun, and it always will be. The guitar as a musical instrument is going to go in and out of fashion, but I will always be a guitar player. I bet there are plenty of people out there who feel the same way about their organic instrument, no matter what that instrument may be.

That being said, in the recording process, organic instruments don’t hold a candle to computer generated virtual instruments. If tone-to-MIDI software were improved, it could lead to generating music of the highest production value, from instruments of the lowest, and that is the Do-It-Yourself spirit. With one click of a mouse, you could finally have your million-dollar studio.

3-2-1 Watch for the flash.

-J Roland Kelly

So, I’m in Quito, and I’ll watch any film that’s in English. I’ve had the opportunity to see films that I would normally never see. I got bored and watched a few Rob Snider films (more than one even) and I also sat through a modern Jean-Claude Van Damme flick, but you have to take the good with the bad, and in the process I have discovered a few gems.

Now, the first rule of blogging of which I’m well aware is not to write about anything you don’t like unless controversy is your thing (maybe a product review). This really applies if you write about something subjective like screenwriting or any other type of art. There are well-documented cases where some kid has displayed his art for the first time and it was good enough for art critics to bash it at the national level. The critics then learn that it’s just a kid’s first project and feel like foolish old men.

It’s best to stay away from that.

Also, with the nature of the universe and the Internet, any press is good press and so it’s just better not to write about what you don’t like.

I realize that I broke that rule a few posts back when I wrote about how to turn off the MacBook start-up sound and I suggested that the reason that a feature like that was not built in was that Steve Jobs was an arrogant son of a b!tch. That was wrong, there was no need for that, and I would like to officially apologize to Steve Jobs.

Here is where I’m really tested when it comes to the first rule of blogging. I recently found a type of film that I absolutely can’t stand. I’m not really sure what to call this genre- evangelist film, missionary films, really racist Christian movies, I don’t know.

The films aren’t really mainstream; I think I just found them in a quest to watch anything, but still they exist. They usually always center around some “brave” missionary going to a part of the world perceived to be the middle of the nowhere, like an island in the south Pacific or the middle of China for example.

Then the area is always portrayed as having no belief structure whatsoever, and the locals do unrealistic things like hunt dinosaurs for food, etc. If there were dinosaurs left in China, the Chinese would have eaten them by now.

Wait, I just checked Microsoft Encarta it said that the last of China’s known “lost” dinosaurs was killed for food in a well-publicized event in 1984. Wow, I had no idea.

I saw this one particular film (to remain unnamed) that takes place in a country that I know a little about. All I can say is that I hope the makers of the film are already in hell, the Taoist one.

That’s a film review that you won’t hear from Roger Ebert.

Anyway then the missionary is always prosecuted by local authorities and has to stand up for his beliefs and the rest of the community stands up with him.

There you have it; the magic formula for these films. Please retire it.

-J Roland Kelly

Unbelievable! Jesus (Charlie?) just came into my life and told me, to tell you, that Steve Jobs IS an arrogant son of a b!tch. Now you have it one good authority; I mean who you going to believe?

Living in the old historic part of Quito is great, but sometimes it’s hard to find modern trendy things; like a place to workout. Plenty of decent gyms exist in the new town, but I have only found one near where I live in the Old Town.

It’s called Samsom Y Dalila, and it’s located at Montufar & Chile in El Centro Historico.

They have a good selection of free weights, most of the machines are pretty beat up, but I found one stationary cycle in good shape.

If you want to pay by the month, it’s 20 bucks for a membership plus a one-time sign up fee, otherwise it’s two bucks to enter.

I think the hours are 6:30 am until 9:30 pm Monday – Friday, 9:30 am – 2:30 pm on Saturday and they are closed on Sunday.

It’s located on the ground floor of a residential building, but a stainless steel “GYM” sign on top of building makes the place easy to find.

I couldn’t find any information online or in a Quito city guide about gyms in the Old Town so I am writing this up.

If you are preparing to play Joe Versus the Volcano with the Cotopaxi (5897m), Chimborazo (6310m), or just taking the TeleferiQo (sky tram) up the Pichincha above Quito (4100m, where I play Joe vs. the Volcano, they built a bar and an entire amusement park up there) you can use Samsom Y Dalila to stay in shape.

“I’m sorry to inform you, you have a terminal brain cloud.”

-J Roland Kelly

A volcano! The one thing that the Bay Area doesn’t have, somebody petition Google to buy one.

I saw this film recently, and enjoyed it, mostly because it takes place in Ecuador (where I live now during my extended writing vacation).

In fact some of it is shot like only three years ago at the main bus station of Quito, which is about 200 meters from where I’m staying. Did I just write meters? I mean yards. WTF?

The story consists of a European girl (from Spain) and a native Ecuadorian girl trying to get to Cuenca (Ecuador’s third largest city) during a worker’s strike. When the bus they are on suddenly stops, they decide to hitchhike together. It then becomes a road flick and female buddy film with really beautiful scenes of Ecuador’s countryside in the background. I highly recommend netflixing it just for that.

I read one review of the film that said much of the film is lost in translation. I can testify to that. There are many inside jokes about Ecuador in the film that I don’t think will be perceived by the outside viewer, although the film did ok at international film festivals such as the one in Austin.

One thing about the film that’s odd is all the references to the geography of Ecuador. They are all right on, but unless you know anything about Ecuador’s geography, it will all be lost on you. It makes me wonder how much of this film was designed for international consumption.

The film is more political than it lets on at first. There’s a cab driver at the beginning that I would have kicked the sh*t out of, and the European girl convinces the Ecuadorian girl to stop playing a victim in her own life (a metaphor for larger things perhaps).

The thing I like most about this film is that it is straight shot Ecuador, the buses, the cities, kids walking with goats, the people, etc. After watching the film, I watched the “making of” on the DVD copy that I had, and was disappointed to learn how much effort went into the making of the film.

I have probably never said that about any other film, but what I mean is that the film contains no lies. The backgrounds, and the portrayal of Ecuador is completely genuine. So much so that I hoped this was a real low budget movie shot with a handheld on the sly sort of Dinosaur style. But no, tracks were laid out for tracking shots like any one else pretending to make a film. It’s actually pretty professional.

I have been trying to find and watch Ecuadorian films but it’s more difficult than I would have thought. I think it would be easier for me to find these foreign films in the States. Of the Ecuadorian films I have seen so far, this one is by far the best.

-J Roland Kelly

Not to be confused with all the other movies you didn’t see with titles like The Bank Job; this one came out in February of 2008. It’s a British film directed by Roger Donaldson and written by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais.

At its heart is a conspiracy theory film, but it’s told with the style of a “crime is cool” picture. This makes it a little unique and worth looking into, if you are developing such a project.

First let me give you the premise of the film: small time crooks get a hot tip that the alarm is off in the safety deposit box room of a well-to-do London bank. They rob it, and find cash, jewels, and everything you might expect, but they also find deposit box after deposit box of dirty secrets belonging to some of the most powerful people in England. This apparently is a true human event, it happened at Lloyds Bank of London on Baker Street in 1971.

It’s hard enough to develop a story with full artistic license; it’s a little bit more difficult when you have to stay within certain historical facts. I think there are certain things about this film that really work, and certain things that this twist in style completely ruins.

Most conspiracy theory films are 3.5 hours long, boring, and directed by Oliver Stone. I don’t mean to start an argument, but I don’t think conspiracy theory film is a genre that has been figured out or gotten right.

And so I think of Oliver Stone, but I also think of Michael Moore, go figure.

The Bank Job doesn’t fall into any of the traps, the film is fast (only 1.5 hours long), completely dramatized, and interesting. In this way the film works and wins. It stands alone as a film, even if the viewer doesn’t care about the historical details it’s still a good bank heist film. I chuck that up to good screenwriting.

Here’s what the film loses with all that dramatization: the magic that it’s a true (or almost true) story.

Also, I didn’t like how the film was advertised, movie posters with some guy holding a gun looking tough like it was a “crime is cool” film. It doesn’t do justice to the fact that this is a truly unique and f**ked up event in human history.

I’m not reviewing this film because it’s good, I actually think it’s somewhere in the middle. I’m reviewing it because it’s a unique attempt with an unbelievable real life event. That and…

I saw this other film a number of years ago; I can’t remember the name of the movie, another bank heist flick, where they also rob a safety deposit room. The film was just a “guns and money” film, but when they open one of the boxes (with explosives I think) there is a split second where you can see one of the boxes contains an explicit photo. I totally can’t remember that film, but I do remember the film never addressed the explicit photo in the safety deposit box.

Why was there an explicit photo in a safety deposit box? That’s a story in itself, and it opens up a whole new world. As a filmmaker or a screenwriter, an image like that is one you should try to create.

As it turns out, that film just referenced the conspiracy theory about the London 1971 bank robbery and left it at that. The Bank Job is all about that one particular robbery and I had forgotten about how badly I wanted to know the story about that explicit photo until I started watching the film.

I dig conspiracy theories films from other countries, mostly because I’m not emotionally attached. I couldn’t watch Oliver Stones’ JFK without some baggage, but a conspiracy about trying to keep the public from knowing that Princess Margaret was a complete sl*t, well… who the f*ck is princess Margaret? Just kidding. Kinda.

Okay, I’m done with the screenwriting movie review bit, let me tell you about the conspiracy, it’s so interesting I can’t resist. I see why this was developed into a film; these safety deposit boxes were a window into the world of the powerful. They story should have been told long before, but maybe a certain royal person had to die first (Princess Margaret died five years ago at the age of 70 something).

Here are the facts: four petty criminals were arrested for robbing the safety deposit box room of a famous bank with high-class British clients. Most of the money and such was never recovered. The robbery was really elaborate, it involved leasing a commercial building by the bank and tunneling. Four days after the robbery, the news media was asked by the British government to stop reporting on the robbery, as it had to do with national security. After the four men were arrested, their identities were kept secret, as were the length of their prison sentences. They would remain hidden from the public for 30 years. A file containing information on one person thought to be blackmailing the royal family at the time has been made classified until 2054; the crime happened in 1971. Lastly, the filmmakers of The Bank Job were asked by the British government not to release the film. Since this “asking” had no legal weight, the filmmakers released the film.

Here’s the conspiracy: the reason that that a few petty criminals (more than four) could have pulled off a major bank heist on that scale was because they had help from the MI5 (turning off the bank alarm, working behind the scenes, etc. maybe). The idea is that the MI5 were using the bank robbers (unbeknownst to them) to retrieve photos of Princess Margaret having sex with a guy in Trinidad that were stored in a safety deposit box of a black militant, who was using the photos to blackmail the government to avoid prosecution for certain crimes he was continuing to commit. Things changed when the bank robbers realized what kind of stuff they were finding in the safety deposit boxes. The story goes that most of the bank robbers traded the photos and secret documents to the government for new identities taking with them most of the treasure. The black militant was hung in Trinidad, his house burned to the ground, his file closed until 2054. The government pinned the crime on four people, letting the rest go.

But here is the best part of the story (this is true), of the roughly 265 safety deposit boxes that were broken into, the insurance was never collected on over one hundred; so, that’s a lot of rich people (the crème of the crop in London) that didn’t want to admit what they had in their box, and that is the stuff of legend.

The film makes reference to just three items allegedly found in the boxes: the pictures of Margaret having sex (I mentioned the execution of the Trinidad guy), pictures of well known public figures in a high dollar brothel (it was raided afterwards, true), and a ledger sheet from an organized crime boss of police officers that were on his payroll (Scotland Yard underwent major clean-up of corrupt cops after the bank robbery).

Yeah, so all very interesting but what’s more is that one of the guys who was in prison for 30 years for this crime (without giving away his identity) gave an interview to a British newspaper about the robbery before the release of The Bank Job.

What did the rest of the safety deposit boxes of the powerful contain, when they didn’t contain valuables? He said surprisingly, many contained handguns (you know the assumption), and also terrible amounts of ch!1d p*rn*gr*phy. He said that every one of the bank robbers was disgusted with the later, and would leave it in its box facing up so the cops could trace it back to the owner, a noble gesture.

But still it’s strange, my attorney consistently reminds me that when I’m in the middle of a major bank heist I shouldn’t do any thing that might let anyone know that I understand the difference between right and wrong.

I guess laws are different everywhere.

The last cool thing about the film- the London police in 1971 drive series II Jaguar XJ-6 cop cars. I had a series III.

Google the name of the film, you will find information on the conspiracy. It’s good reading.

-J Roland Kelly