I do not have any interest in being famous. I'd like to be respected. That would be nice. I'd like to make works that people enjoy. I'd like to be wealthy enough to not have to think about how that box of Ben & Jerry's ice cream bars is going to affect my grocery budget. All of those things would be great. But famous? For the birds, in my opinion. The worst part would be having people bother you all the time. Leave me alone, dammit! I'm just trying to get my legs waxed in peace like a normal fellow!

That's why I would not want to be an actor. Because the only way to succeed as an actor is to be famous. I mean, I guess you can be that guy who's in those things that no one has ever heard of. But I would doubt there are a ton of actors striving to be that guy. If you're an actor, the winning trajectory is to make the most of a small role so you can get better roles in bigger movies where you will be seen by more people and make more money.

Not that it's all about making more money - I would imagine most actors sincerely enjoy pretending to be other people. But what I'm saying is it isn't a job that can exist in a vacuum. Sure, you can pretend to be other people all by yourself in your bedroom, but I'm not sure how to turn that into a viable career path. A successful actor doesn't just love pretending to be other people, he loves pretending to be other people in front of other people.

Unfortunately, along with all that pretending to be other people and making lots of money comes a few job requirements. One of those requirements is publicizing the movies you just got paid a shit ton of money to be in. Sometimes this promotional period can last for weeks. You might have to do one interview after another for a whole day. A whole day! Can you imagine? Like, 20 interviews in a single day, talking about the same thing. You might have to say the same thing 20 times! You will be fed and coddled and you will sit in a comfortable chair and you will almost certainly be treated in a very deferential manner by everyone who talks to you. But you might have to say one thing 20 times in a row!

I am being facetious because you know what? That does not sound very hard to me. But apparently it is the hardest thing in the world to Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig, because in this week's issue of Entertainment Weekly they sure do complain about it!

"I can't do the tits-and-teeth stuff," Craig, 43, says when asked about the grind of promoting a movie. "I'm not hardwired to do that. I can't sell." Ford, 69, is even more succinct: he just growls slightly.

First of all, "tits-and-teeth?" Daniel Craig just made that phrase up. Second of all, if Harrison Ford ever growled at me I would punch him in his wrinkled old man mouth. Look, Harrison Ford, I know you've been around the block a few times. But also: YOU HAVE BEEN AROUND THE BLOCK A FEW TIMES. You should know at this point in your career that being interviewed is part of your job. If you don't feel like doing press for the movie, TELL YOUR PRODUCERS. I'm sure they'd be happy to give your cushy acting job to someone nice, like Sir Ian McKellen.

Well, you and Rachel Weisz did have a very private wedding. Why did you decide to get married that way?
Craig This question answers itself. You said we had a private wedding and now you want to ask about the wedding. You are barking up the wrong tree. No disrespect, but if you think it through, that's the reason we've said fuck all on that subject. Because it was private.

Oh, give me a fucking break, you ass. You're a celebrity who recently married another celebrity. What do you think Entertainment Weekly is going to ask you about, your views on Palestine? And who really gives a shit about your stupid wedding, anyway? Tell the poor writer it was a lovely ceremony and move on.

Look, I understand you don't want paparazzi hanging around your wedding. Keep it private, do something respectful. Great. But refusing to even talk about it afterwards? Can you imagine if a normal person responded this way? "Hey Dave, how was your wedding?" "I cannot believe you would have the gall to ask me about that." Asshole.

That ring on your wedding finger, Daniel--what's that made of? It looks almost like copper.
Craig [smiling coldly] Really. You just see a line in the sand and want to fucking step over it.

Oh give me a fucking ... IT'S ON YOUR FUCKING FINGER! Not only can we not mention the wedding, we can't even talk about the ring now? It's right there! WE CAN ALL SEE IT! You are not wearing a private, secret ring!

Have either of you actors turned down jobs and later regretted it?
Ford There have been roles that I've turned down because I just couldn't figure out how to do it. And people have made great successes out of them.
For example?
Ford No. You know, Tom Selleck doesn't go around saying he was the first choice for Indiana Jones. You don't do that. It doesn't matter.

These guys and their rules! Since when don't you do that? And why shouldn't Tom Selleck go around saying he was the first choice for Indiana Jones? If I was Tom Selleck, I would tell that to anyone who would listen. I'm sure Stephen Spielberg is kicking himself that he didn't give the job to Selleck, 'cause then he wouldn't have had to spend four movies working with this prick. I bet Tom Selleck's a wonderful guy to work with. I bet he shows up on set on the first day with home-baked cookies for the crew. Tom Selleck! What a mensch.

I know that an enormous amount of discussion went into the choice of Harrison's hat in Cowboys & Aliens. The last thing you wanted was for it to look like a fedora, like Indy's How many different hats did you go through?
Ford I would reject them without even putting them on. I said, "This guy wouldn't wear this hat. If I put that hat on, I don't know who this guy is."

Oh for fucks ... IT'S A FUCKING COWBOY MOVIE! What were they trying to give you, bowlers? Berets? Can you imagine if you were a poor costume designer on Cowboys and Aliens, and you show up to set with five hats, all of which probably look exactly alike, and Harrison Ford is like, "I refuse to even put that hat on my head." Or better yet, if he did put the wrong hat on his head and suddenly he's playing his character with a cockney accent. Ha! Also: ugh!

Also: Harrison Ford, it doesn't matter what hat you're wearing, all of your characters are going to sound and act exactly the same. Because you are not a very good actor!

Truth be told –- this year, it was pretty slim pickings for the genre. Rib-bone thin. The multiplexes presented a dearth of horror flicks worth leaving the house for. Venturing beyond the genre offered a few deadly diamonds-in-the-rough for those brave enough to go hunting for them – but they’re out there, believe you me, lurking within some of the furthermost sections of the video store. I can feel myself already catching heat from the die-hards for a few selections on this list, but let’s be completely honest with ourselves here: Some of the most unnerving, truly frightening, utterly engrossing horror films of the year wouldn’t even be considered quote-unquote horror by traditional genre standards. I dare you to defy my selections for the best horror films 2010 had to offer…

HONORABLE MENTIONS
Buried, Splice, The Crazies, The Last Exorcism, The Children, Altitude, Survival of the Dead, Rec 2, The Disappearance of Alice Creed, The Eclipse, and The Horseman.

10. FROZEN
Written and directed by Adam Green.
Watch the trailer here.

Full confession: I am not a fan of Adam Green’s Hatchet films. At all. Reductive rather than resourceful, his lauded slasher re-hashes smack of microwaved leftovers from a Vorhees family Thanksgiving dinner circa Friday the 13th Pt. V. So – imagine what a pleasant surprise it was to encounter FROZEN. Coming in with the lowest of expectations, I was happy to discover a film that prefers patience over genre-pandering. Taking a very simple concept, a trio of friends stranded on a ski lift, Green goes for broke and milks every conceivable polar-moment for their blistering potential. Frostbite has never felt more palpable onscreen… or this much fun. The camera lingers on skin-in-distress to such an intense (zero) degree(s), it’s impossible not to feel one’s own flesh crackle while viewing it. Kudos to Green for favoring the simplicity of a humble story and telling it well, taking the physical limitations of his conceit and turning them into narrative strengths – which only makes the fact that FROZEN was book-ended between Hatchets, parts one and two, all the more disheartening. Back to the slasher re-treads, I guess…

9. TRIANGLE
Written and directed by Christopher Smith.
Watch the trailer here.

Christopher Smith has been responsible for several British fright flicks – such as Creep and Severance – that, while commendable in their execution, ultimately fall short from hitting their bull’s eye. Which is a bummer, for sure, given Smith’s immensely self-evident dedication to the genre. It’s impossible not to root for this director, film after film, because you can tell he’s learning – and luckily, the learning curve has been kind to the man with TRIANGLE. Third time’s the charm. All it took was setting sail into the Bermuda Triangle, twisting along this Mobius strip of a film that’s equal parts time-travel mind-funk and slasher-flick. Imagine The Shining meets Donnie Darko. Or Back to the Future meets The Burning. Or A Sound of Thunder meets… No. Nevermind. Don’t imagine A Sound of Thunder. At all. Most reminiscent of all, however – is Nacho Vigalondo’s Spanish (and moderately more tongue-and-cheeky) Timecrimes. A double feature of these two films might cancel each other out in some odd cinematic space/time continuum. Mirrors upon mirrors upon mirrors.... The less you think about the goofball complexities of this puzzle and just go for the ride, following Melissa George as she cruises through an endless loop of axe-murderers on the open seas, the more fun you’ll probably have. I’m betting Smith’s next film, The Black Death, is even better…

8. PEACOCK
Written by Michael Lander and Ryan O Roy. Directed by Michael Lander.
Watch the trailer here.

Where in the hell did this movie come from? One of the biggest mysteries of this Cillian Murphy starrer is that virtually nobody has ever even heard of it. How could a movie featuring Susan Sarandon, Ellen Page, and Bill Pullman, among other Hollywood heavies, go this unnoticed? Its storyline – that’s how. Dumped onto DVD earlier this year, PEACOCK presents itself as a Psycho-inspired thriller, where the mystery of whodunit is entirely internalized into the mind of one wildly fractured individual. The less you know about PEACOCK, the better – but rest assured, this one’s worth the cinematic rubbernecking purely for the perverse pleasure of watching a film that challenges itself to tell such an offbeat story. Most of the time, it succeeds, thanks to Murphy’s delicate performance – his second time in drag, following his turn in Breakfast On Pluto. Norman Bates has got nothing on this mother-humper. As soon as he’s pitted against, well, himself, this occasionally-plodding film shifts into some devious fun well worth the rental. Find it.

7. MONSTERS
Written and directed by Gareth Edwards.
Watch the trailer here.

It was inevitable: A mumblecore monster movie. Bound to happen sooner or later, right? Don’t let the slackened performance style fool you, though. This flick has a lot to offer sci-fi fans, particularly its crisp creature design by visual effects artist Gareth Edwards. A little lo-fi FX goes on awfully long way here. MONSTERS milks the all-too familiar metaphor of aliens-as-other xenophobia a la Alien Nation and Enemy Mine, this time taking that ol’ extraterrestrial chestnut and heading south of the border. After a NASA deep space probe crashes back on earth, the majority of Mexico gradually metamorphoses into an “infected zone.” Migrating packs of tentacled humpbacks now call the country their stomping ground – and America promptly responds by erecting an immense barrier that would make the Great Wall of China blush. Quicker than Jan Brewer can say SB 1070, immigration gets its own interstellar spin. At its hipstered-heart, however, MONSTERS is something of a love story, as our two slacker-protagonists Andrew and Samantha mutter their way through Mexico in hopes of hopping the border back into the states. Lessons in intergalactic tolerance are learned and… well, I’m being a hair-too cynical here. Criticizing MONSTERS for its earnestness would be like chastising the sci-fi flicks of the 50’s for their sense of social consciousness, which this film is clearly kin to. Beautiful moments abound, especially when Edwards focuses on the environmental minutiae of the aftermath of his alien “invasion.” And it looks so real. I’d recommend a double feature of MONSTERS along with last year’s District 9 purely for their vérité effects – but if you pushed me to pick a favorite, I’d be bold and say I prefer Edwards’ micro-budgeted walkabout over Neill Blomkamp’s action-yarn, strictly for its simple story and quiet moments. Even the mumbling.

6. COLIN
Written and directed by Marc Price.
Watch the trailer here.

Released in the UK in 2008 but just now making its way to DVD in the states, COLIN has every right to be re-titled The Lil’ Zombie Romp That Could. Dragging the term low budget down to profoundly infinitesimal depths, the total price tag for this by-the-bootstraps production tallied somewhere around £45. As in – seventy bucks. As in – my monthly Metro card cost me more than the entirety of this heartfelt film. And it was a hit at Cannes! Shot on a clunky Panasonic mini-DV camcorder, Marc Price jumps in headfirst with his spin on the well-tread zombie apocalypse – introducing us to Colin, bitten before the opening credits, well on his way to zombification within the first few minutes of the movie. Freshly dead, we follow zombie-Colin through his reanimated day-to-day, noshing on survivors and ducking lynch mobs in the streets of Manchester. We’ve officially entered Bub territory here, people. Fans of George Romero’s Day of the Dead will find a kindred spirit in Colin, as leading man Alastair Kirton humanizes the inhuman much the same way that Sherman Howard provided a tragic depth to his zombified private back in 1985. While the first half of COLIN suffers the most from its budgetary constraints, viewers will be rewarded for sticking around for the final forty-five minutes – shifting into a series of intense set pieces that run through the gamut of complex emotions, equally frightening and heartbreaking in their execution. Most rewarding by far is the familial: Scenes of Colin’s surviving kin and the choices they are compelled to make in the name of family resonate well past the closing credits. Send a Hallmark card to your sisters, boys. She may just end up saving your undead ass one day…

Actual still from actual film that may actually exist if you donate to support the cause!

Well, there is one more talented-ass filmmaker waiting in the wings, but we need your support to make sure his film sees the light of day. In order to do that, we need to raise $750. The film is "Zen & the Art of House Painting," based on the hilarious and touching story by Wayne Scheer. I have not seen the finished product yet (it doesn't exist. For more information, see: the entire post surrounding this parenthetical remark) but the script is great and the actors are phenomenal and the director (Joel Maguen) and DP (Kevin Krupitzer) are talented, talented, talented, and I think this is going to be one fantastic movie when it's finished.

To collect your donations, we've put up a page on Kickstarter.com. You can visit it right here. There are incentives for donating! These incentives are:

• $5-$9: Special thanks in the credits of Zen And The Art of House Painting
• $10-$24: Above plus free electronic download of Awkward Two book release, including short film adaptations.
• $25-$49: Above plus hard copy of Awkward Two book + DVD of films
• $50-$99: Above plus hard copy of Awkward One book
• $100 +: Above plus Executive Producer credit on "Zen And The Art of House Painting"

Once the final film is finished, we're going to press a DVD featuring all the films, to be sent out to anyone who orders the book through our site and to anyone who makes a donation of $25 or more.

Now, I know what you're thinking. "You guys are a for-profit company! Why do you need my money?" Here's the thing: we are absolutely for-profit. But we are also entirely self-financed, and we have put a lot of money into this project so far. More then we can ever possibly make back. Basically, we're trying not to lose our shirts on this deal, and your donation could really help make sure that happens.

I mean, if you want my baby daughter to live in a box, that's cool ... the world is a harsh and cruel place, a lesson she'll have to learn at some point in her life. No pressure. But if you can give a few bucks, we'd really appreciate it.

The Vanishing Point from Awkward Press on Vimeo.

The Awkward Press film project got underway this past Saturday with the shoot of The Vanishing Point, based on my story of the same name from the upcoming Awkward Two anthology. It's fitting that this story was the first to be shot, as it was really the catalyst for the entire project. A few months ago, my friend Eric Kissack told me he was looking for a project to direct while he was between editing gigs. "What a coincidence!" I said, "I happen to have written a story that I believe would make an excellent film!" Because that is how I roll.

Remarkably, Eric dug the story. I went home and busted out a screenplay in a few hours. This is not as impressive as it may seem - the screenplay was only 7 pages long. It is a very short story.

We sent the script back and forth for a few weeks until we finally came up with something we thought would work. I kept waiting for the moment when Eric said, "Hey, I've changed my mind, this is a terrible story," but that never happened. Before too long, he'd signed on two excellent producers (my wife, Sarah, and Eric's friend Lisa) and the ball was rolling.

At that point, I was pretty much out of the picture. Being a writer is the best thing a person can do on a movie, I decided, because you get all the thrill of watching people enact your vision without having to do any of the hard work of actually making that vision come to life. They say we're not very well-respected in Hollywood, but my new pool does not really care how respected I feel. That joke would be much funnier if I was getting paid.

I showed up on set (a backyard in Encino) Saturday morning bright and early at 6:15. In addition to writing the thing, I was also playing a gorilla who shows up at the end of the movie for no reason that I can really explain other than I wanted to wear a gorilla suit. Vision! Most people on the set had no idea I wrote the script and probably wouldn't have cared even if they had known. "Hey," they said when they met me, "you're the gorilla." I did not bother to tell them I was the writer, because I think I was getting more respect just as the gorilla. Although as one of the actors pointed out, my name was on the front page of the screenplay three times - written by, last revision by, and latest revision by. I swear, that was not intentional. I thought Eric deserved a co-writing credit because he was instrumental in creating the final script, but he declined. What a mensch.

Shortly after Sarah and I got there, the lead actress arrived. Her name is Jennifer Irwin, and she's done a lot of really impressive work. She played a conniving executive in Slings and Arrows, which is an amazing Canadian show about a theater company. If you have any interest in laughing or crying or not being stupid about great TV, you should Netflix it immediately. She also played the sister-in-law in Eastbound and Down, which is possibly the funniest television show of all time. She said a very friendly good morning, we introduced ourselves, and then she was led off to get hair and makeup done.

I continued standing around like an asshole until our friend Andrea, who was helping wrangle people up for the day, wrangled me. Eric was not on set yet, and Jennifer had some questions about the script. I got very nervous because I don't really know what the script is about, and I did not want to be that guy who was like, "it is whatever you imagine it to be." So I went back and answered her questions in a way that hopefully did not betray my complete ignorance of my own work.

The first thing we shot was a scene in which the parents exit the house with me in the gorilla suit. I was truthfully very nervous about putting on the gorilla suit. The last time I attempted to wear an animal costume was back in college when I worked at Borders book store. I was asked to play Curious George one day for a special event that was being held in the kids' section. As soon as I strapped on the head, I FLIPPED OUT. "Get this fucking thing off me!" I screamed. Luckily, I was not actually in the kids' section at the time ... I could have given those kids some permanent life scars. I would not call myself a particularly claustrophobic person, but the minute I got inside that hot, giant head, I was convinced I was going to die.

I felt a similar sense of panic when I put on the gorilla head. I was seconds away from saying I couldn't do it, but then a sense of calm overtook me. "You're okay," I told myself. "It's just a plastic gorilla head. Other people in the world have to deal with things that are far more terrifying. Wars and things. You can do this." I didn't know I would have to do it for the next hour and a half, which is how long it takes to film people walking out of a house and onto a porch in movie time. But I got used to it, and I think I might have finally conquered my fear of wearing fake heads over my real head. This is a good thing, because that fear has prevented me from engaging in many of life's finer pleasures.

It was weird being inside the suit ... the minute you put on a gorilla head, you become this strange leering presence that intimidates everyone around you. Jennifer and the actor playing the dad (the phenomenal Brian Huskey) bonded with each other while I hulked around like a jackass. For some reason, I felt like I was not allowed to speak when the head was on, which probably made my presence even more upsetting.

After the gorilla experience, the Prisoner and the Boy shot for a few hours, while I hung out on the porch with Brian and Jennifer. They were both incredibly funny and nice and I spent most of the day laughing like a giddy schoolgirl. I did not have much time to bond with the actor playing the Prisoner (who must remain nameless for mysterious IMDB reasons) because he was filming most of the day, but the Boy (Anthony Crehan) was a really great kid. His dad Kevin was on set all day, so I got to talk to him a lot ... he was a great guy, too. Really, an incredibly nice and supportive environment all the way around.

The day ended around 8:00. From what I was able to see, I think it's going to be an excellent piece of Communist propaganda that we'll all be proud to have on our resumes some day. Just kidding. I don't have a resume.

Black Christmas

Video World was tucked off into a topiary-barricaded alcove of the Stony Point Shopping Centre, a swift five-minute Schwinn sojourn from my front door.

No bigger than a boutique, this early-80's video store was infinitesimal in comparison to the cancerous sprawl of the Blockbuster Video chain that had begun to malignantly metastasize its way through America’s suburban strip malls, eventually putting all the mom-and-pop operations like Video World out of business. I was fortunate enough to push through my preadolescence before the big blue-and-yellow Blockbuster awnings started cropping up all across my hometown. Walking into Video World was like immersing myself in a Betamax Shangri-La. Every last inch of wall space, from floor-to-ceiling, was lined entirely in video cassettes. At 8 years old, I had officially found my home-away-from home. Each 4 by 7-and-a-half inch VHS cassette contained a different story, just waiting to be told – and I made it my mission to watch them all. Or as many as my allowance would allow.

Hidden at the rear of the store, buried behind comedy, family, drama (but before you reached the “private room” of adult films at the very, very back) – there remained a single row of videos off-limits to children. Little boys and girls were not allowed to rent the videos from back here at the shadowy edge of the forest.

The horror section.

A kid like me couldn’t help but feel a shift in the atmosphere upon entering the aisle, suddenly surrounded by so many R-rated movies. The carpet seemed to darken, stained somehow. Even the air had a miasma of decrepit breath to it, thicker than the air in the childrens section. I knew I wasn’t supposed to be here, which only made me want to explore even more – go deeper, take just another couple steps in, see if I could make my way past the A’s, past the B’s, even the C’s, until I was utterly immersed in the aisle, enveloped in images of terror from all around.

This – this was where fear resided.

Every kind of fear you could think of, or not think of, was right here – captured on magnetic tape and sealed inside its own cardboard box – little gift-wrapped packages presented in a tableau of carnage.

Deadly Spawn. Faces of Death. Def-Con 4. Xtro. The Stepfather. The Driller Killer. The Stuff. Texas Chainsaw Massacre II. I Spit On Your Grave. The Dead Pit. Black Roses. Headless Eyes. Magic. Black Christmas. He Knows You’re Alone. Class of Nuke 'Em High. Cellar Dweller. Mother's Day. The Prowler.

So go ahead, kid – I dare you. Slip a video off the shelf.

Pick any horror film and take the cassette into your hand. Rub your finger over the cardboard cover with its softened edges. Feel how fuzzy and worn the corners are?

Now look at the cover.

Video after video displayed a frozen moment of terror – either a snapshot of a victim caught in that instant just before the axe comes crashing down upon their cranium or of some hideous monstrosity still covered in the gory remains of its last meal. Too many to list – but I can still remember them all. The corpse of a college coed sitting upright in a rocking chair, a clear plastic bag wrapped around her head. A pair of eyeballs slithering away from the very sockets of their owner. The silhouette of a man wielding a butcher knife, only inches away from stabbing his stepdaughter and her defenseless dog.

Most of these movies have long since drifted off into a sea of beta-obscurity, lost forever in a back catalogue of forgettable movies. But somehow, their cover art remains indelibly rooted within my subconscious. Their Photoshopped tentacles have wrapped themselves around the deeper recesses of my brain and refuse to let go. The image of Freddy Krueger from the front cover of Nightmare on Elm Street II. The pool of melted human remains from the front cover of The Stuff.

Even to this day I can conjure up distinct images of grotesqueries from any number of video cassette covers, like photos displayed in a gallery. Your friendly neighborhood video store is presenting its own art show of terror. A monstrosity exhibition.

I was too young to actually watch any of these movies at the time – but I didn't need to. The cover artwork was enough. The shock of the image had a searing effect on my subconscious, imprinting its visual signature on my little boy's brain in far more damaging (and therefore effective) ways. The sleeve activated my imagination by exposing it to images of visceral horror more unnerving than the movies themselves.

This was the true horror here: Not the films and the stories they told, but the preadolescent-mind taking that snippet of information from the front cover (an act of violence, a look of terror, a monster) and letting a narrative develop from there.

For the curious 8 year old who gets lost in the woods of his local video store, entering into the horror section is like being a kid in an anti-candy store. Look – but don’t rent. All a child has are the covers. For an adult in the decision-making process of what-to-rent, the images on the video sleeve are a point of entry into these movies – while for the child, they are the movie.

The images alone are their total and finite experience with the film.

There is nothing else beyond that singular isolated picture.

Viewing these movies becomes completely moot for the underage viewer. It is, within these proposed rules of engagement, totally unnecessary to watch the actual film in order to receive its intended effect. On the contrary, most of the time it’s better not to watch them. The story told by the filmmakers is rendered null and void by the personal interplay between our brimming imagination and the video sleeve itself – taking the raw material of an image and fabricating our personal narrative around it, tailoring them to fit our individual fears. Our imaginations are completely unhampered by hammy acting and sloppy special effects. Budgetary constraints and a lack of talent are no longer an issue. We are absorbing the visual vocabulary of the video's cover art to conjure up a more personalized horror. It is ours, all ours. We created this nightmare. We are making up our own horror movies – and we are the stars now.

Which is all to say: Mission accomplished. As a devout horror fan, I want to lay claim to the idea that the impact of these movies didn't begin and end with the viewing of the movies themselves, but the very ritual of engaging with the tangible aspects of these VHS tapes. The act of entering into the video store and walking down the horror aisle was integral to this ceremony, if not vital – immersing myself in the visual stimulus of over a hundred different horrific images, navigating the aisle until zeroing in on that one video cassette cover and letting it tell its own story within my imagination.

FUTURE-KILL
Written and directed by Ronald W. Moore.

Future-Kill

Designing VHS covers for horror films is a lost art of inducing terror in children too young to watch the movies themselves. As effective salesmanship, these individual images were here to tempt the prospective renter into taking their movie home for the night. The need for an illustration so visually arresting that it convinced us to choose it over all others quickly became a game of graphic design one-upmanship, these sleeves presenting an image that presumably distilled the very essence of the movie onto the front cover – though, more often than not, the cover tended to be the best part of the movie.

Take H.R. Giger's poster for the 1985 film Future-Kill. Writer-director Ronald W. Moore allegedly begged Giger to design the poster art for this sci-fi/horror schlocker. Giger himself had absolutely no involvement in the actual production of the film whatsoever – but his slithery image found its way onto the movie’s cassette sleeve, luring naive renters into watching this fraternity brothers vs. mutant punks yarn. That black and white tendril of a finger stretches over the face of some alien-like mutant, more mechanical than organic, presenting the prospective renter with an unfulfilled vision of horror Future-Kill itself never quite ponies up to. The movie itself had little relation with what its cover promised, much to the dismay of those duped into dropping two bucks for a one-night rental. Future-Kill is often criticized for its cassette cover bait-and-switch – but it does testify to the power of a striking icon. The film itself dissipates from our memories, while Giger's cover design still lingers.

TROLL
Written by Ed Naha. Directed by John Carl Buechler.

The cover for 1986's Troll is one of the more deceptively simple boxes on the horror section shelf. The image on the front cover is a close-up of – yes, a troll, complete with deep-set eyes and pointed ears. Both of its gnarled hands are gripping a child's rubber ball laced in yellow, red, and blue rings. The creature seems to be holding the ball out towards the viewer as a gift.

The tagline, printed alongside the troll's forehead, reads – "Come closer."

The quotation marks are there to indicate that the troll itself is saying this, as if to beckon me to take the ball out from its hands. It's mine. I lost it, it rolled away from me, he found it and now he wants to give it back. But to do so, to take back my ball – first, I must take a strep forward. I must somehow reduce the distance between the two of us and render myself even more vulnerable to this strange little creature. By obeying the troll's invitation, I had to willfully disavow everything my parents taught me: Don't talk to strangers, don't take candy from strangers, don't listen to trolls.

Two individuals, the troll and myself, were now locked in some sort of struggle – his video box in my hands, my ball in his. A decision had to be made: Should I or shouldn't I obey the creature’s innocuous request? What would happen to me if I came just a little bit closer?

Watching the film itself years later was inevitably a letdown. Nothing within the movie even came close to matching that considerable level of dread conjured up by its VHS sleeve. Not a young Julia Louis-Dreyfus, not an elderly June Lockhart – not even a stoned Sonny Bono could strike that same cord of terror within me that I had first felt by merely holding onto the box in the video store, however many years ago, suddenly forced into a life-or-death game of tug-of-war with this runty-looking troll.

That being said, Avatar just did not look good to me. Three words: blue cat people. I'm all for computer animation if it involves adorable Pixar characters, but I have yet to see anyone convincingly combine CGI characters and people characters. I mean, I guess that's why people were so pumped about this in the first place, because Cameron was assumed to be the first person who was able to do it properly. But then the previews came out, and the blue cat people looked like bad video game animation. So I wrote it off as a movie I would not be attending. Until the rave reviews started coming in, and I decided that I didn't want to be left out of the conversation at the water cooler. Even though I am the only one in my office right now and the only person who would try to talk to me about Avatar at the water cooler was me. Also, someone else bought tickets for me.

So I saw it. First things first: go see it. I mean, you have to. I am not the kind of person who gives a rat's ass about special effects. But this is truly a new thing. After awhile you forget that the blue cat people are cartoons. Their lips still look kind of weird sometimes. But the 3D is absolutely amazing. It is very beautiful and very something new. As a work of visual wonderfulness, it meets its goal. You don't even mind that it's 3 hours long, because you just want to keep seeing shit fly around in the air in front of you.

As a movie, though, let's be honest with each other--it's pretty ridiculous. The story, as I'm sure you know by now, is that in the future, we'll be able to grow these avatar bodies and zap into them with brain teleportation machines. That part's just a given; of course we'll be able to do that. And so our hero Jake Sully zaps into one of the bodies and falls in love with a blue cat lady and becomes super into being a blue cat person (in fact: he becomes the BEST blue cat person) and decides to fight the humans who are trying to destroy the blue cat planet. The blue cat people are called the Na'vi, because it's more futuristic to put apostrophes in the middle of names. They look like a bunch of 10 foot tall golems, especially when they all get together at their tribal parties where they all golem around and snarl at each other. Also of note is that the main guy is white but all the Na'vi people appear to be black. That did my head in a little. Why was I still able to identify who was white and who was black, even though they were all blue cats?

In the end it doesn't matter, because the white guy blue cat is kind enough to come in and save all the black guy blue cats from the white guy white guys who are trying to destroy their planet to get at their minerals. It's exactly like how we're destroying Iraq to get all their oil even though they're actually a dignified people who love the land and ride dragons. Or anyplace else we've destroyed; really, there are countless examples, and the Na'vi are a pretty good stand-in for all of them, because war and politics are simple.

Here are my main problems with Avatar. #1--For all the time they spent fleshing out the Na'vi universe, they never bothered to explain who in the Hell the Earth people were. Some of the Earth people were from a corporation. Some of the Earth people were from the military. Some of the Earth people were scientists. And they all seemed to be living in the same camp, but with radically different goals. The corporation people wanted to get the minerals. The scientists wanted to do science and play basketball in blue cat bodies. And the military people wanted to, I guess, just destroy shit. Which, okay, clearly there is intermingling of corporate and military interests in the real world right now--that part's not completely unbelievable. But there was no indication in the movie of who was supposed to be taking orders from whom, and that made it very confusing. All of the separate elements seemed to be doing whatever the fuck they wanted to do, yet they were working together, yet they were constantly running away from each other ... very confusing.

#2--There is no military leader in the world who has ever acted the way the bad-guy colonel acts in this movie. Imagine General Ripper from Dr. Strangelove crossed with the Predator. He is rabidly insane. And I found that surprising coming from Cameron, because I think Aliens paints a pretty nuanced portrait of military life. The colonel in this movie is more cartoonish than the actual cartoons.

#3--Most of the Na'vi speak English, even though they appear to have no interaction with the humans other than shooting at them with arrows. I do not know why.

#4--A big part of the plot hinges on something you will not see in any preview: the Na'vi have magical hair.

#5--In the beginning, the bad guy says the blue cat planet is worse than Hell. But the blue cat planet is beautiful! They have floating mountains! They have some pretty ugly dinosaurs. But it sure didn't seem worse than Hell to me. Hell is pretty bad.

#6--One scene featured Sigourney Weaver saying, "yoooooou muurrrrddderrreeerrsss" in slow motion while new age music played in the background and futuristic helicopters shot at a tree.

#7--I never knew the name of the blue cat female love interest. She was the main character in the movie, and I think they said her name once.

I could go on, but none of this really matters. It's a stunning film and one you should see regardless of the ridiculousness of the script. But as a writer, it will never fail to annoy me that these movies could be so much better if they took $200,000 out of the $300 million budget and threw it my way. It doesn't matter that it's a story I've seen a million times before. Every story has already been told. You can still tell it with finesse. I mean, good on Cameron for showing us something we've never seen before. But really, if you're going to all that trouble to make your masterpiece, you might want to take a day or two to run your script through the plausibility machine. Thankfully, there's so much going on in the background of this film that you can get a worthwhile viewing experience without paying a lick of attention to the action happening in the foreground.

Oh, and the other thing, which isn't Cameron's fault ... those glasses suck. They're heavy, they hurt my nose, and they're impossible to clean. And the digital displays are unusually bright ... it's like staring intently at a computer monitor for 3 hours. So 3D is cool and all, but until they figure out how to make the viewing experience better, I don't think it's going to revolutionize film-making just yet. Of course, I'm still somewhat skeptical of talkies, so what do I know?

But you went ahead and made the movie that wasn't cool to make, because you are Spike Jones, a self-generating credibility machines. And then you made the previews for that movie so good that I would pay to watch them all on their own. They are not previews, they are tear extractors.

Here's the thing: I saw you that day in front of Square One cafe across from the Scientology center. You rode up on a Vespa and you had a long white scarf around your neck. A riding scarf. And a mustache. You had the gayest 70s porno mustache that has ever been worn outside of 70s gay porn. And you met up with two guys who were just totally normal guys. And you were waiting for someone who kept calling and saying she would be there in five minutes. You stood there the entire time that we were eating, making very normal conversation with your two normal friends, and you never lost your cool, even though your friend was making you all wait. That was pretty awesome.

I really hope you're not a Scientologist.