INT. J ROLAND KELLY - NIGHT

I’m still in Quito, and I continue to find things that are still new to me. I’m going to say as few words about the following pictures as possible.

Let me say the name of the restaurant, Menestras del Negro translated into English is something like Black Guy Beans.

Notice the black guy. If you look closely at the menu, you will see an African guy hunting a dinosaur with a spear. Now, everyone knows the Chinese are the only ones in the modern era to hunt dinosaurs for food. But before you say, “oh, Ecuador is like that.” Check this out.

Old man Sanders and a guy with a bone fork in his hair together side by side. Fried chicken and beans- tasty. It´s all fun and games except for this restaurant.

This by the way is just a Catholic church suit, as you might have figured out the restaurant is in a renovated church. But in case you think I´m seeing things that aren´t there, this is the front door of the restaurant.

Imagine seeing your refection in a door like that.

- 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.

Google spots Jesus (or Charles Manson) in Peruvian sand dune

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?

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

There’s a lot of talk about 3D films coming back. Over the weekend I went to see Journey to the Center of the Earth in Real D to see what all this noise was about.

The new 3D is going to be huge. I now know what all the noise is about; I was blown away. I always thought these were gimmick films and I didn’t bother to see one until just now.

But man, it was magic. I was like a kid. Take an unsuspecting woman to see one of these new 3D films; if the two of you haven’t seen one you will be bonded forever.

I have been wrapped up in film history films for too long. I’ve been watching French New Wave films as of late, and I couldn’t believe I let something like this pass.

The whole experience was fantastic. The glasses themselves fit over my real glasses, I forgot that I was wearing them. Everything on the screen seemed new again.

In terms of storytelling Journey to the Center of the Earth was not great, which is why you should see it. You don’t want a story getting in the way of wigging out on this new Real D.

Smoke in 3D; just imagine it.

There have been a number of animated stories in Real D, and Beowulf was also released in it, but I considered these children’s movies. I don’t see children’s movies because I’m an art snob, and there you have the reason that I’m only now getting floored by this.

I suspect that here are a number of people in this boat.

Sitting in the theater, watching this film, I realized that most of the standard continuity film edits no longer work in 3D. There was a time before Sergei Eisenstein, when one character looking at something and then the camera looking at that something, and the audience connecting the link between the two, didn’t exist.

How basic is that? Editing.

The train could be filmed pulling into the station and then what? Hitchcock would have still filmed the train going into the tunnel, the perv.

Anyway, when I was in the theater I had a feeling that something as basic and simple has yet to be done with 3D.

This will be huge. The previews for other films at the beginning of Journey to the Center of the Earth where also in 3D, there are a lot of these Read D films coming.

Go blow your mind, see if you are the genius who will come up with the new 3D Battleship Potemkin.

Here’s a tip. Get there early, so that you can sit directly in front of the screen (not off to the side). The effect is diminished as you move off to the side.

Even the freaking credits at the end in 3D were interesting. 

-J Roland Kelly

A couple of days ago I mentioned that I went to a screenwriting workshop taught by Terrel Seltzer who worked on the screenplay for Chan Is Missing. I was thinking about it. I dig this film. I like it because it is shot Dinosaur! style, and I like everything shot Dinosaur! style.

I think it’s an inspiration to all of us what you can do with a single camera and a good-looking city for a backdrop. Forget permits, just move to a city long enough to know how to get away with it.

With this film, and because it is low budget, you get to see real 1982 San Francisco.  No closed off streets, no one is holding the crowd back during shooting, none of that, just a small group of people with a camera trying not to get noticed in a larger group of people.

Also, the film has some significance for me. I first saw it on a 30 inch flat-screen monitor, when I thought 30 inch flat-screen monitors were unbelievable large. I had just moved to the Bay Area and I was living in a closet in San Mateo, and it was the first Indie San Francisco type film that I saw. 

The film was made by this guy.

-J Roland Kelly

So, I made this film when I was nine years old. I watch it from time to time, and make other people watch it from time to time.

I remember the making of this film in great detail.

We never asked our father to borrow the video camera. The gun was real, and at nine years old I had enough foresight to make sure the gun was unloaded before I handed it to my eight year old brother to point at me and the camera for that perfect shot. The parent people were not around.

I remember knowing already that there was some kind of fake speech on T.V. that did not allow for cursing, so I arranged ridicules things (fake cursing) for my brother to say.

My brother was the most arrogant actor that I have ever worked with… and lets be honest, it hurt the project.

But basically I remember just talking to my brother about how the next scene was going to go down, shooting it, and then if we didn’t like that take we would just rewind the type and shoot it again.

The filming took place over the Christmas holiday break in 1989.

More than a decade later I tried to preserve the film from its decaying VHS-C format and digitalized the whole thing. The next logical step of course being to enter it into the small student film festival at my university, where it didn’t win anything, and was poorly received by the few people in the audience.

But the guy running that festival said it was his favorite and asked if he could show it in this college childhood development class (I think he was some kind of T.A.). I left him the festival copy and a few months later he emailed me a said that he had shown it to a few classes.

I felt better. In the end, this film found a larger audience than the winning films from that festival.

I like to think of it this way… I was nine years old. I had a Nintendo and a baseball glove, but I chose to pick up a video camera and work out scenes with my brother and a plastic dinosaur.

You know that question that guidance counselors ask when confronted by indifferent teenagers that don’t know what to do with their life; what would you do if you had a million dollars? …start a death country & western band… well that’s exactly what you should do my friend, start a death country & western band.

Anyway I picked up a camera and started ordering other people around. So, whenever I have any doubt about my calling I think about that.

If I had a million dollars I would pick up a camera, get back in touch with my brother, and start to work out scenes for another film. But wait, then I would immediately fire my brother because I would remember what a little starlet he was to work with, he didn’t follow my stage directions, and he didn’t hang up the phone when I told him repeatedly. Punk.

Here it is then. A film that ended the genre: Dinosaur! (a lot of people’s been missin’) 

 - J Roland Kelly

It’s not often that a short gets much attention. The cell phone video of the guy sitting in the chair that suddenly breaks gets more coverage. You know, the one with the guy and the chair.

But this film: Are You the Favorite Person of Anybody? by Miranda July (sexy art chick #1, are you down with the analytics Miranda?) put on the YouTube as found an audience.

It makes filmmaking look easy doesn’t it.