Red Asphalt Blues

I have good news and bad news.

The good news is RED ASPHALT is going to be a major motion picture.

The bad news is that it will NOT be based on my book of the same name.

Nerts.

Timur Bekmambetov, director of the crazy ass (and highly recommended by me) Russian vampire films NIGHT WATCH and DAY WATCH, as well as the 2008 Angelina Jolie starrer WANTED and the upcoming ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER, told Empire magazine that he's turning the old driver's education film documentary RED ASPHALT into a 3D feature film. "I am working on that with Lionsgate," he explained. "It's a movie about drunk driving... in 3D! 3D is the only way to recreate what you feel when you drink and drive. It's my original idea – I wrote the treatment. Everyone drinks and drives once, and I want to make a horror movie about it. It's one big car chase. People will feel what it's like when you're drunk and driving, and it's really scary. The world is not exactly the same."

Wanna bet?

In my world, whatever goes around, comes around...and around...and around...

I took the title of my RED ASPHALT from the same old film as both an homage and an allusion to the former occupation of Calvin Wheeler, my main character, as a traffic school instructor, a not-so-subtle touch of irony since he suffers from road rage.

RED ASPHALT also started out to be a screenplay, albeit an unfinished one. Therefore, the book is technically a novelization.

In RED ASPHALT, Calvin is also writing his sci-fi/fantasy magnum opus called ABRACADABRA, a project he is convinced will deliver him from his hum-drum existence straight into instant George Lucas status. Watching TV one evening, he sees a grade Z cheesefest of a film with the same plot as his book and his dreams came crashing down around him.

Coincidence or precognition?

So what's the thrust of all this, you might ask, if you ever used the word thrust in this context? In udder words, what's it all about, Alfie? Where does this leave my RED ASPHALT? I wouldn't say dead in the water. Oh, the title is perhaps a goner, if the 3D drunk driving extravaganza is ever made at all. Could be ol' Timur won't even get around to making his epic remake. Damn Russkies. Still can't trust 'em.I could always adapt RA into a porno and change the title to say, RED ASS-FAULT. Or maybe change the main character's back story and give him a road raging driver with a severe learning disability, calling it READ ASPHALT. Or I could just change the title altogether and keep true to my vision, which seems a little more likely. (How does HIGHWAY TO HELL IN A HAND BASKET sound? Yes, you're right. Like ass. Well, there's always BLOOD ON THE HIGHWAY. That would make it double jeopardy.) In all sincerity however, I think my version of RED ASPHALT is viable and potentially powerful movie material. And no way, Jose, will it be in 3-D, if I have anything to say about it. Of course, I won't have anything to say about my screenplay at all, no matter what it's called at unless I get off my dead ass and finish it. Aye, there's the rub. Kind of like an Indian burn on the ol' psyche.

Then what's with all this pissing and moaning? Isn't it enough that I already fulfilled one dream by writing and publishing my own novel, one that has not only gotten some decent feedback but also sits on the shelves of more than just one public library? Apparently not. I want more. That's why I keep the dream alive and don't let news like this set me back anymore. Maybe I'm finally learning. More likely, I'm getting older, but not necessarily wiser. The most I can do is therapeutically kvetch about it here and move on. It's how I roll...I guess. I've not tracked the progression of my roll before.

I guess the thrust, the point, the what-the-fuck of the whole thing is this Möbius strip we call LIFE. And once again, here for all the world to see is a clear description of life imitating art. When it concerns my life, it's drawn by M.C. Escher.

At least it's not a black velvet painting...or is it?

Blahhhhhgggggg

So how’s your summer? Yeah, me too. Everything seems to be one disappointment after another. It’s not

that I’m headed into what Robert Crumb calls “The Dreaded Depths of Despair”, but I sure could use a pick-me-up.

The news doesn’t help. After the Anna Nicole “tragedy” and Paris’ jail time, it’s all bimbos, all the time, isn’t it? If I were a religious man, I’d think it really was the End of Days. Don’t believe me? Turn on the nightly news. There they are: Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears, Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie AKA The Four Whores of the Apocalypse. Now they’re trying to force feed the Beckhams down our throats. When will this freak show ever end? Well, when we deem it so. Dennis Miller on his radio talk show has proposed public shunning of this nabobs and blights on society. When they appear, we all turn our backs and pretend that they don’t exist. This can’t be reflected in the marketplace as well. Don’t go to a Lindsay Lohan movie. Don’t watch The Simple Life. Don’t buy US or In Touch or The National Enquirer. Make it stand. It’s makes us all look bad. Guilt by association.

But hey, then there’s the new national scumbag, NFL player Michael Vick accused of illegal dogfighting. Everybody it out for this guy’s blood…even Al Sharpton. You know what that means, don’t you? It’s okay to hate a black man! Really! No, Reverend Al said so! There will be no reprisals. Not so fast there, Mr. Imus…

I guess one of the things that are really bugging me is that for the first time, someone actually guessed my age correctly. Oh and added a year besides. Tool. I thought that was why I was so lackadaisical about the current movie scene. I’ve stayed away from the three-peats of Spiderman, Pirates of the Caribbean, etc. I’ve also avoided The Transformers due to lack of interest. Have I finally outgrown my geekhood? Is it time to put childish things away?

Nuh-uh. If that was true, why do I venture out to see the movies I have this summer, namely the anime Paprika and the delirious Russian vampire extravaganza Day Watch? In your face, poseurs! Both of these, by the way, are as Jerry Lewis might say, “Mahvelous.’

This past year, I caught to speed on two masters of animation, both Japanese. The first, Hayao Miyazaki, is the Academy Award winning creator of Spirited Away and I have had the extreme pleasure of watching his entire catalog including Castle in the Sky, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind and My Neighbor Totoro. But I also discovered Japan’s other genius, a little less known in this country next to Miyazaki. Satoshi Kon’s fertile imagination and technique has placed him in the forefront of emerging filmmakers and I would stack his work along any other director today. After watching the incredible saga, Millennium Actress on DVD, I found to my delight that Kon’s latest, the science fiction tale Paprika was due this summer. Paprika involves the collision of technology and dreams, pretty much of a metaphor of good versus evil. It jabs pointed sticks in the cutey-pie nature of Japanese consumerism (Hello Kitty anyone?) scoring satirical bullseyes left and right. Kon’s work is more adult oriented than Miyazaki’s, but together they make the current crop American CGI work (with the exception of Pixar) pale in comparison.

As for Day Watch, this the second installment of a proposed trilogy that began with Night Watch a couple of years ago. It is weird, wild stuff, with a sense of wonder and fun lacking in the last two installments of The Matrix. This has the best scene of anything I’ve seen this year, that being a crazed female vampire racing a sports car on the side of a high rise building. Impossible? Sure. Too much CGI? You betcha. More fun than a barrel full of Bolsheviks? On the money, honey. It doesn’t make a helluva lotta sense, but if you just go with the flow, you’ll find these Russkies sure make a terrific night at the multi-plex. Sign me up for part three.

Oh and by the by. Pan’s Labyrinth was my birthday movie this year. See. I’m still a geek at heart.

But I’m a geek with taste.