Me and my friends

Well, I am certainly okay with this disease thing as they say, something that might hit someone of any ages. So, I am still certainly healthy and looking fine and a chance at working for Ghostkeeper 11,

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So I'm having some laptop problems as well as trying to try to find new stories to keep you hanging around. Twenty years has a lot of stuff that you can read through it can be a rough ride. And which has two different parts.

Ghostkeeper: The two parts are both dealing again about film and TV and are part of FB. The first one is all about my first movie, made in 1980 and went dead but after about 20 years became somewhat of a lost movie and now has really created more into by Code Red DV and now with Ronin Flix who is the distributor. So far.

The Working Writer's Screen Play. The second part is about screenwriting. of which I wrote a book on screenwriting and has been going for a long time. I went to UCLA in Los Angeles and took writing classes and to actually teach screenwriting and of it, my book is still going still. I am thinking of writing screenwriting again because it's a lot of fun and also you might want to take a course.

How Not To Get Beat Up In A Small Town Bar. And I also wrote a travel writing book about a lot of people I've met including actors, small towns, looking for aliens and much more.  Here's this title:

Emperor Of Mars. And finally, I wrote a children's book. It's a story about a small boy in a small town and thinks this little town will see a Martian came to the town and the 12-yr old. It's a story that is partial nothing and partial what happens when strange things begin to happen around a the 12-yr old begins to see aliens and connects to another strange people, an older soldier from a war who comes home with strangle ideas.

All of these are still out, the books and the movie still sells.

You can find my works are still running, as mentioned and I hope they stay more. It's hard now in this world of Covid worlds to deals with and nobody knows anything.


So, that's where I am.

Hey dad, why do only liberals make movies?

Hey dad, why do only liberals make movies?

 

First answer is - they're the only ones who write stories.

Second answer is - because conservatives don't have stories.

Okay, so some of you are probably crying unfair. But for the most part it is true. There are some writers who write screenplays, but I truly don't know one. My ex whom I hadn't seen in 26 years or so asked the question. Seems she turned conservative.

Easy answer: One day I was walking with a conservative real estate friend here in Sherman Oaks and he was talking about his sales and I suddenly looked up at the sky and pointed five criss-crossing con trails from passenger jets 35,000 feet or more above.

He looked at me and at the trails and replied "So what."

Get it?

I already was thinking about a story with con trails or alien "chem trails" as some people think that they are dropping chemicals on us.  

I actually shot some photos, I'll post one later.

And yes, I am a liberal, as they say. And like I said before I don't really think I know a conservative writer. There are conservatives directors for sure, Clint Eastwood for one, and he makes good movies... on budget too. 

Another writer/director is John Milius is kind of conservative, and he wrote and directed The Wind and The Lion, one of my favorite movies. He also wrote for Apocalypse Now

for very liberal Francis Coppola. There's also David Mamet, again a really good writer.
  Last afternoon I caught "Good Night and Good Luck", a really good movie about the McCarty hearings looking for communists in the early 1950's. For those who don't know, it was after WW11 and Americans, in fear again, believed there were communists all around us.

And in an interesting way, it was very similar to Donald Trump, in fact it was exactly like Donald Trump. Instilling fear into 1950's Americans, which isn't hard.

The story is simple the "junior" senator Joe McCarthy was telling Americans that communists were everywhere. Incidentally, this fear also went through the movie industry.

You could see that movie now, it was up for an Oscar, Trumbo, for Dalton Trumbo who had passed away some years back.

Truth is, there were communists in the movie industry and a lot of actors and writers and directors were banished, some died, some kept working. You probably know the story. But being a possible communist was still better than a conservative writer. 

There's actually conservative groups who are saying that discrimination is common for conservatives. They even have a term, "political ideology." And this comes from two really old conservative writers and producers, Lionel Chetwynd and Norman Powell.

They even have a book "Primetime Propaganda: The True Hollywood Story of How The Left Took Over Your TV."

So what do I think?

Well, in 30 years of writing I have not ever had an argument with a conservative writer, in fact I don't even know a conservative writer. I never ask what side or religion a person is at all. There's only one thing that matters. 

The writing.

Strangely enough, there are some notable actors that are right wing, Eastwood is sort of right but not really pure. There's Kelsey Grammer, who certainly did well with left wing writers. And Tom Selleck, although he seems to waffle a little.

I have conservative friends and we rarely argue about anything political, most of the time.  But I don't really know a working right wing writer but I do know facist writers who are just funny rather than anything else, wishing for the old commie days...

Still the only thing that matters... is the writing. 

Here's your test.  

Good Night and Good Luck

And don't check your phone.

The Free Days Of Our Life

The Free Days Of Our Life

A story from Detroit

 I went way back to Detroit and my other city across the river, the Detroit River. It went back to where I grew up from age 12 and up till I was married. I had quite the time, lots of memories and my ex-wife, of which was the main reason I returned.

Right now I'm full of memories from almost every turn, some of them vague, others good, and the bad ones seem to not have shown them selves. It helps when you have close friends for well over forty years and who still talk to you. Even the sons of old friends are friends.

I grew up in Windsor, a small city across the river from Detroit, which was huge as compared to Windsor. I had families on both sides of the border and still do, which makes it more interesting.

Growing up in the Motown days was nothing else but great music and what was then, a great city in Detroit and where you could go anywhere. But that's all gone. The huge castles off Woodward Avenue are gone or burned, some of them still stand though.

It was the home of all the slick Motown artists, Supremes, Temptations, Stevie Wonder, even the Jackson 5. On Friday and Saturday nights, many of the Motown acts would travel to as many schools they could and where they would lip-sync their latest hits.

But it was also a strong influence from tough white bands like MC-5 (who influenced the British punk movement) as well as Bob Seger and Alice Cooper and tons more. 

For us it was the best place to be on the planet.

And it was my beginning a career when I got a job at a local TV station to work in the mailroom. That job ended two weeks later as I got a promotion to the editing room. That's where I learned how to edit film, although far from making a feature film.  It was only 16mm film commercials, which we taped or glued together and take to a projection unit where the commercials ran.

No digital here. Not even VHS.

Later I was transferred to radio where the station had a 50-thousand Watt broadcaster that would boom through ten states. But my hope was film and there was an opening soon (much easier than trying to find a job now) for the news film department, run by a World War 2 cameraman.

That's when I got into TV news and we did stories both on the Canadian and American side. Detroit was it's toughest then, homicide rates went up to almost a thousand murders. And we witnessed a shooting just a few yards away. 

It was exciting and I loved every minute of it.

 I was there again. We met again and 

And I met with my ex. We already had contact with each other and both of us looked forward to catch up after more than 26 years.

It worked like a movie. And we're a lot closer now.

Now the question is this; what's the movie?

I might put down some info for a hint.

Even easier, I wrote a screenplay, just finished it again and tells us about us.

I wonder what that means?

Sorry to slow down the blog, this is not the best time to think about the one

who left and the one who didn't.

And thanks for hanging with all this world thing. It slows the story down.

You've never seen this one...

You've never seen this one...

I've had time to think about my trip to Windsor, the little city across the river from Detroit. And of course that means, "what stories can I use for something new."

Now that I'm waiting for Hallmark to decide if they want to use one of my three ideas for one of their Hallmark movies, of which I've explained in the past. My producer sent the 2 page stories a few weeks ago so from now on, it's out of my hands.

In the interim, a director friend of mine is trying to sell a screenplay I wrote some years ago, a weird story that he suggested. Quickly, it's about a hitman who is sent to a city to kill a union agitator but the hitman has to save him from a gang and thus is now his unlikely friend who turns out to be gay. But the real story is about the hitman and conjoined twin women and he falls for one of them.

What?

Yeah, I said it was weird. Here's what they said on Kevin Spacey's website:
 "The main characters are well-defined, the story moves along at a good pace, tension mounts appropriately."


"I really liked it from the first page, it got a little weird with the intro of the twins but after awhile I began to appreciate the inventiveness of it all. Very clever, Bravo"

"Reminded me of Chinatown, best part is the Sally/Sophie characters that compliment each other"

"This script is great. This story is great. I read this story with the girl upstairs, we started reading yesterday and she came home and demanded we finish - the story had so captivated her imagination."

"This was certainly a strange tale, but it grew on me."

"You've created the perfect film noir world, your penchant for character, mood and atmosphere, the progress of the story became a very enjoyable experience."

"The fact that you have both a plot and character is a commendable quality in and of itself."

So what do you think?

Some of my writer and director  friends think it's the best thing I wrote. 

And I didn't want to write it. But the director pushed me on, even though I know little of gay life except for that time in Detroit when my car was broken and I walked into a bar where there were a lot of friendly women. Only friendly women. I had a couple of beers waiting for the auto club and actually had some conversation with them.

And I had very little knowledge about co-joined twins. I didn't even know the word "conjoined".  And the word "Siamese" seemed dated. And why was that word used so long?

So how does a small-town farmboy who moves to the big city write a story of a world he doesn't know?

I treated them like everyone else. In other words, as I wrote their world (with suggestions from my director friend who has a thing for weirdness) as they saw it, just like everyone else. To them, nothing was unusual, the twins worked in a fish packing place, the gay union guy is married to a woman and life goes on.

If you read it, you see that in the writing. Nobody really thinks they're weird, no more than the old lady who lives beside me, who clips leaves off the trees at 6am. Nor the girl with orange hair, or the woman who steals magazines at the Ventura/Van Nuys magazine rack. 

I guess we all have odd things about us, at least to some people.

But by making every "odd person" in the story very normal, it worked out a lot better than if I was trying to write how a co-joined couple live or laugh, or in this instance, love. 

Yes, the hitman and one-half of the conjoined pair make love.

Like I said, I've never written a story like that. In fact I've only written a love scene which was inspired by that same director. I gotta find new friends.

But what was strange to me, was how people reacted. The thought of watching love-making with a cojoined twin would be interesting.

So I just said "they made love." Let the director figure it out.

Besides, my mom, if she was still alive, would probably go with it. If she discovered that Ellen was a "lizbee-an" and still liked her, she'd like the two sisters.

Thinking about it, I might posts the entire screenplay if I can figure out how to do it. Then you can read it and see what you think.

Meanwhile, I wait for Hallmark

Not being John Malkovich

Not being John Malkovich

This is a little bit of a departure, but still within movie limits.

I don’t remember the first time someone said I looked like John Malkovich, nor that I looked like John Lithgow. Personally I prefer Malkovich as I’d put Malkovich’s great scene against Clint Eastwood in In The Line of Fire against Lithgow’s 3^rd Rock From The Sun romp. My first Malkovich comment was from a friend of a friend and it seemed that mostly women who said I resembled him. 

To be honest, there is a slight resemblance, at least to me, and I am in the movie business as well having written a dozen or so TV movies and a few features. One of the early notices was at LAX while I waited for a friend at the gate. I noticed two men about twenty feet away were looking at me then talking, glancing back and forth until one approached and asked if I was John. I smiled and shook my head “No, sorry.” They had to leave but I think they didn’t believe me. 

Then there was the time I visited Scotty’s Castle in Death Valley and joined a group of four. After awhile I caught a woman glancing at me, turning away. She said something to her husband and he glanced back but didn’t want to be obvious. I wondered if something was wrong but they continued to sneak looks at me. As we toured I asked questions from the docent and this time they smiled at me like we three had a secret. Finally the tour was over and I was walking to my car when the woman approached first and said what Malkovich probably hears a lot, “Excuse me, are you…” I stopped her and said with a smile, “No, I’m sorry, I get that sometimes.” Husband came up and quickly caught his wife’s disappointment. I felt bad now. I almost wished that I did say yes.

This has happened at least twenty times with a group of mellennials  at the restaurant at the Roosevelt Hotel on Hollywood Boulevard last Sunday. Before that, about two months ago with a group of African-Americans having pizza on Van Nuys boulevard in Sherman Oaks. As I passed, one spoke loudly, “Hey, John.” I turned around to see who he was talking to. It was me. I said  I wasn’t “him” and my now usual “I’m sorry.” However, the best story happened in Paris, naturally. My brother Dave and I had traveled to France for two weeks and found a nice little hotel on Taylor Street near Republique. 

We stayed for several days and ended each evening at a small cafe on a corner, looking very much like a movie set. There was a tiny alley on one side and a busy street on the other. The alley had several small shops including a barber shop for Africans. I noticed that every time we went to the café we saw several men in the barber shop shouting and waving their arms at each other. Being a writer, I was curious about this situation and on our last evening in Paris, I told Dave that we should go over there to see what the fighting was about. Dave was a little apprehensive but I figured we’d be okay, the worst they would do is tell us to go away.

We began to walk towards the barber shop when a very large African stopped us with a raised hand, which lowered until he was pointing at us. Then he looked straight at me and said those words. “John Malkovich.” I shrugged and said I wasn’t John Malkovich; rather my name was Jim Makichuk. That was always my out whenever being stopped, both names are very similar if you say them fast and it often leaves the person confused long enough that I could leave. But he was not convinced, “You are John Malkovich.” And with that he introduced himself as Etionne and took me by the arm and led me into the shop, with Dave behind. 

Inside, Etionne began to introduce me to the group of six friends. Most smiled but some were suspicious as I made the rounds, shaking hands. Finally I asked why they argued every night here and the big African said “politics and sports.” So it was simple, happens everywhere in the world. He then introduced me to BobX, the African owner who gave haircuts and whenever an American rapper would be in town, BobX would be picked up and taken to whatever hotel the rapper was staying for a cut. Then Etionne said that we should all retire to the bar for wine. So he, Dave and I and BobX along with four more Africans crossed the alley right back to where we started earlier. 

It soon resulted in some deep, serious conversation about life. I learned that it was very hard for them to get work, most didn’t have much education and so they hung out at BobX’s shop while their wives and children were at home. BobX was talking to Dave about the problems of being African in Europe and that he was always afraid that his business would fail. At one point he looked Dave straight in the eye and said “Dave, all I would ever hope for in my life, is to be like you.”

It stunned Dave who answered by saying BobX’s life was way better. But BobX was not changing his opinion, “Dave, you have the good life.” Dave, who is a newspaper man had no answer. In hindsight BobX was right for both of us brothers as compared to the uncertain lives they lived. I smiled and agreed with BobX. We stayed for about two hours and finally it was getting late and we all got up, Dave and I were flying out the next morning so we shook hands, exchanged emails and Etionne looked at me and said quietly, “Thank-you John”. 

This time I simply nodded “Yes.”

I was thinking of putting two photos side by side for you to judge but then I thought that some of you might say I didn't look like John at all, and some would say a little and others a spitting image. So instead I go to the movies and take a great line out of John Ford's movie, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.

"When the legend becomes fact, print the legend"