Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas

Hunter S. Thompson just died.

Oh, good doctor, we hardly knew ye. Suicide. That's how Hunter went out. We needed counterculture heroes like him around. Especially now.

I didn't want to sit around for a short vacation I had taken from work. So I figured ROAD TRIP!

I've never jumped in the car and just drove. So I picked up the Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas soundtrack and book and cruised the Mustang down the 15 freeway to Sin City. Using the spirit of Hunter to guide me.

I gambled, saw a show, ran up massive hotel room service bills, got plastered on champagne, and had a pretty decent time.

Of course if it had been 1975 and not 2005 I would have been ordering in hookers galore. But in this day and age that's still a little too risky what with disease and all.

The power of Thompson compels you!

Post Cinequest

Well, back again, back again.

I've returned from the world premiere at Cinequest 2005. The world premiere was success. The theater was roughly half full with people scattered evenly throughout the place.

The response from the audience was overwhelmingly positive. After the show the members of my cast and crew who had made the journey to San Jose went to an after hours party. A Latin themed nightclub. We drank beers, danced (I didn't) and networked with other filmmakers.

So I'd say our world premiere was a smashing success.

However the second screening of the film was a much more mixed reaction. I was pretty disappointed. But I heard word from another filmmaker who had a short showing there that the same thing happened with the second screening of his film. And he just shrugged it off to an audience simply not digging his film.

This is the sort of thing I'm gonna have to develop a tougher skin too. Since I took it harder than I thought I would. I'm generally almost always depressed and rarely smile. So this was a pretty bad bout of depression for me. But I'll live. I always do.

You think I've got problems? The wife of a filmmaker friend of my just died. She was in great shape and still young. And she drank some bad water in Cancun and dropped dead from a virus that attacked her heart six months later. How tragic is that? She was quite beautiful too. She didn't deserve that.

Anyway, we are planning on doing the reshoots at long last. I'm reshooting about 30 pages of the script. And adding some new stuff. Then we lock picture and go onto the next project.

Adieu for now, cheri...