Singing Intergalactic Cowboys And The Future Of Film Distribution

In 2001, as a wide eyed and not yet beaten down by realty freshman film student, a couple friends and I went to see a very small and strange little movie called "The American Astronaut." I don't remember which theater we saw it at or which part of town we were in (I was new to LA at the time and still hadn't figured this strange and vast city out... as if I have figured it out by now, eight years on.) But I remember that screening, and vividly. There were only four other people in the theater on that warm night... and one of them was Andy Dick. The surreal, hilarious, tuneful, mesmerizing, and completely original Sci-Fi Western Musical blew all seven of us in the theater away... as troubled B-List celebrities and 19 year old film students who were deluded enough to think they knew anything about anything were united by an amazingly original piece of cinema. A few years later, I had the opportunity to see "The American Astronaut" on the big screen again, at a nearly sold out screening at the Arclight... with an introduction by none other than Andy Dick.

That's the strange power of the movie... it's so funny, involving, strange, so not like anything else in the world, that anyone whose seen it is inherently drawn back to seeing it again, and to use terms like "genius" to describe the film's creator, writer/ director/ actor/ musician/ animator/ all around nice guy, Cory McAbee.

I could go on gushing about how much I love "The American Astronaut," but that's not the point of this post. I'd let you, dear reader, borrow my copy of the DVD, but I loaned it to a friend a few years ago and haven't seen it since. Now I fear it's lost for good, and as much as I'd love to get another copy, "American Astronaut" DVDs are apparently selling on E-Bay for around $100 while the movie is currently unavailable on Netflix (good news though... Cory said more DVDs will be available in October.) Though it's a bit of a tease since the movie is so tough to track down at the moment, check out the trailer below for a brief taste of the movie's unique brand of geniusosity:


Cory has been absent from the film world in the eight years since "Astronaut" came out. He's been developing a movie called "Werewolf Hunters Of The Midwest," (which I'd kill to see,) but funding has been difficult. Sundance commissioned Cory to make a strange little short intended for mobile phones called "Reno," which you can see here.

But now, finally, after eight long years, McAbee is back with a new, major work. "Stingray Sam" is an almost feature length film that is now available for download in six serialized chapters that run about ten minutes each. It's very similar in a lot of ways to "The American Astronaut," in that its another micro-budgeted, black and white space Western with bizarre gender politics and impromptu musical numbers (with songs by McAbee's pretty excellent band, The Billy Nayer Show.) Though its similar to McAbee's previous feature, "Stingray Sam" is also a work like no other, wholly original and strange in different ways than "Astronaut." It's also laugh out loud funny, with amazingly out there photo collages full of densely packed and wildly imagined information, all perfectly narrated by "Frasier" alum David Hyde Pierce.

To try and explain the plot of "Stingray Sam" quickly would do it a disservice, but I'll simply say it's the story of a lounge singer on the formerly popular gambling planet of Mars who is roped into a mysterious rescue mission by his former partner in crime which takes them to the bizarre planet of pregnant men. Also, there are tiny robots that characters can zap themselves into.

Like I said, like nothing you've ever seen.

I saw all six parts of "Stingray Sam" last night at the ultracool new Dowtown Independent screening venue (which is in downtown LA, as the name implies,) to a sizable audience that really appreciated the movie's bizarre yet hilarious comedic sensibility and totally unique rhythms. The screening was also like nothing I've ever been to. The film was broadcast live on the internet for anyone who tuned in to StingRaySam.Com during the screening to see (McAbee described it as an "approved bootleg,") followed by a Q and A that was also broadcast live on the web. McAbee took questions from fans in a chat room live and even took a few calls from webcasters (though there were NASA-like three second delays, since the technology isn't perfect yet.) The premiere event was not held to celebrate the film's theatrical release... instead it was a celebration of the its release on the internet. You can download the movie right now at StingRaySam.Com.
If you need further convincing, watch the first episode and trailer in the player below:

Pretty awesome, huh?

McAbee is a true independent with an unbelievably personal and unique vision. And that vision extends to his distribution model. What's really cool about the whole "Stingray Sam" project is that McAbee is fully embracing the internet, as evidenced by the extremely high-tech screening event. The DVD for the film doesn't come out until October, but you can download the whole thing today for just $8. If you pre-order the DVD, you also get to download the movie, in fullscreen HD and formatted for your iPod, iPhone, or Zune (if you're a person who owns a fucking Zune... ) Or if you're a super fan, you can get the super deluxe edition with all of the above, a photobook signed by Cory, and a "Stingray Sam" T-Shirt. The movie will also continue to screen in theaters all across the country, fulfilling the poster's promise that the movie is "coming soon to screens of all sizes." This is a filmmaker finding ways to distribute his work that are as creative and original as the work itself.

I've lamented about the sorry state of indie cinema in previous posts, but Cory McAbee is exactly the kind of fresh, original, and exciting voice that indies desperately need... and he's not waiting for Hollywood to come running with money (though I hope someone finally ponies up the cash for him to get "Werewolf Hunters of the Midwest" going.) He's finding ways to get his work seen, with the unbending determination of a true cowboy. A singing cowboy, but a cowboy none the less.

The Ballad Of Johnny Saltlake, Or Sundance In a Day and a Half

I promised that I'd follow up my small post about Salt Lake City with a full report from my Sundance trip almost two weeks ago. Seeing as I am a pretty lazy blogger, any of my (millions of loyal) readers would not be blamed for thinking I was never going to fulfill my promise. But here I am, ready to give you the lowdown on the trip and my experiences at Sundance 08.

I jumped into the loaded car with three friends, one of whom had his film, Freezer Burn (which is a really cool and funny comedy that blends elements of science fiction, romance, and character drama into a very original and impressive first feature,) in the Park City Film Music Festival. We drove into Vegas first, and stayed at the Stratosphere. As a major Vegas fanatic, I can now, with full confidence, recommend that you never stay at the Stratosphere. You might as well be in Primm, Nevada (the gas station/ resort 50 miles away from Vegas for people who can't wait less than an hour to feed the demons of their gambling addiction.) The Stratosphere is a bland and ugly place, and the drinks aren't cheap enough to justify how bland and ugly it is. Give me a scummier cheap casino, one of the few remaining classic casinos, or even one of the ridiculous Disney-fied themed Casinos over the Stratosphere. The Stratosphere fails to be any of those things, while featuring some of the worst aspects of all three. Hell, I'll take Circus Circus over it. Because, even though you feel like you might get stabbed by a meth addict at any given moment in Circus Circus, the place has character.

We mostly were in sin city just to sleep, so we only hit the casino floor for about an hour and a half...which was enough time to get five strong whiskey drinks in me and lose 40 bucks playing roulette. Satisfied and drunk, I retired to my room for a brief night of sleep before we hit the road to Utah.

Utah- gorgeous place that I hope to avoid visiting other than for future Sundance trips. But the state didn't get truly disturbing until we entered the Salt Lake City limits. The billboards were the first things that creeped me out. Weird bible quotes, ads for motels that claimed "Brigham says the La Quinta Inn is the coziest in Utah!." an ad for "the first R-rated Mormon film," one of those "adopt a highway" signs that said the highway was adopted by "mothers against gun control," and weirdest of all, a few giant ads that had pictures of recently departed people with their date of birth and death listed on them. I'm sorry for your loss, but did you need to advertise that your family member died?

Then there were the street names. Turn right from West100North Street onto North100East Street. Are the mormons just too uncreative to think of street names or are they just fucking with us secular sinners?

And of course, there are those pesky alcohol laws. Only one ounce of booze per drink, unless you order a "sidecar," which is a second ounce of alcohol served in a shot glass that the bartender is not allowed to pour into your drink for you. And most of the bars are actually called "social clubs," which means you have to pay to get a "membership" to drink there. Even the beer has lower alcohol content in Utah. I guess the Mormons figured that if they're going to Heaven for their beliefs, they should put themselves through Hell on Earth before they die.

The locals seemed to be borderline openly hostile to the invasion of Hollywood types. I used to read about how agents, actors, and directors would invade the town and drive the locals crazy sipping their lattes and yammering on their cell phones (a 90s version of Hollywood stereotypes, I know since this is what everyone in America is like at this point,) and I sympathized. But after a few encounters with SLC citizens, I lost all sympathy. The girls at the CVS Pharmacy near our hotel were openly making comments about us and said as we walked out "but what do we know, we're just a bunch of hicks." I didn't say it, you did. Listen, not to be a jerk, but you work at a CVS in Salt Lake City. You can't make me feel bad about anything in my life.

So, anyway, Sundance. Park City was a short half hour drive up a mountain from Salt Lake, and once you got into town, it was gorgeous. Snow blanketed the entire charming ski town, and being a California native, snow is something that you generally have to drive into mountains to see. It was a frigid 11 degrees outside when we got into Park City, but we bundled up and braved the crowds. We only ended up seeing one movie for a short, day and a half trip to the festival, but it was a doozy- George Romero's newest zombie pic, "Diary of the Dead." The movie was probably Romero's most bluntly political (in a series of bluntly political horror films) but it also had more gore and action than the previous entry into the series, "Land of the Dead." The whole film was shot handheld, with a digital camera, supposedly by one of the main characters, ala "Cloverfield." The device works about as well as it does in the JJ Abrams monster movie, but the characters address the fact that their friend won't stop filming during a crisis way more than Hud's friends do in the year's first blockbuster. Anyway, there was lots of zombie gore, a crazy sequence with a mute Amish badass, and plenty of left leaning political commentary. My kind of movie.

And the good old hippie/ icon of gory and violent horror cinema, Romero, was there, telling the crowd that "I'm a little drunk," and earnestly explaining that "Diary" is "one from the heart." The guy sat two rows behind my friends and I, which was great.

As for the famous Park City celebrity sightings, we had very few of note other than the awesome Romero Q and A. We saw the guy who plays Lloyd on "Entourage," but I've seen him at almost every single slightly big hollywood event I've ever been to as press, so that's hardly one to get stoked about. Our fellow travelers did go to a big MySpace party that Maroon 5 played at and met USC Great Reggie Bush (who my dog is named after, which would have been a weird thing to tell him if I had been at the party) and Perez Hilton. I wonder if those two had anything to say to eachother. Unfortunately, one of my friends got kicked out of the party because some of the former USC players were trying to get their friends in using his bracelet. Not being an SC alumni, I have a feeling he probably thinks a little less of the Trojans than I do. Just slightly. We met up with him after the movie while he huddled in the mall for warmth as we imagined a zombie apocalypse destroying the agents and assistants working the many parties along the frozen streets of Sundance.

Mostly our festival experience taught us that we should probably plan a little more in advance before we go, get ourselves some real Sundance badges and decide what we want to see ahead of time. And oh yeah, probably spend more than just a day in Sundance and try and be there after the first couple days, when nobody is really there yet and none of the big films are screening. All the reports from Sundance 08 I've read in the media have made me feel like I didn't miss much... there didn't seem to be many gems in the festival this year that critics and audiences are excited about. And if the current version of a Sundance "gem" is something as overrated as the cute but not that cute as last year's big hit (and current best picture nominee, WTF,) "Juno," than I weep for the state of American independent cinema.

Our drive back from Utah turned out to be the best part of the trip. As a creative challenge, we decided to start writing a screenplay with the goal of completing a feature by the time we got home. We only got fifteen pages deep, but we decided to keep going with it and finished the script last night. The script is called Johnny Saltlake, and it's about a badass from the town he's named for who seeks revenge on the bad guy who wronged him, befriends a coyote in the desert, runs for Utah state office in order to change the aforementioned liquor laws, fights a giant, Cloverfield-like monster, kills a group of ninja assassins with a chainsaw, discovers a global Mormon conspiracy, fights a flying Shark, hangs out with Martians, becomes the savior of mankind, and smokes. A lot. And that's only part one.

We finished the script yesterday, and it's a full blown, ninety minute feature. And it's totally, completely insane. So if one great thing came out of Sundance 08, it's "Johnny Saltlake." Maybe there's hope for the American indie film scene after all.