Grab Bag

Gore pickup for Scene 10. Shot in LA over Thxgiving.
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I had my cameo as "L.C." in the infomercial.

Check out "Killer War", the main KW2 theme,
by our man Joe. Look for more cuts from the
KW2 soundtrack over the coming weeks...

Busy times, indeed. Good times...

Dripping With Draper

Another busy few days here. Last night we shot a behind-the-scenes interview with Scott for the DVD doc, and it went painlessly. Scott took a list of talking points and responded to my prompts from there. May I just say that his insights were informative and well-spoken. No doubt his experience as an editor has turned him off to talking heads blithering uncontrollably for minutes at a time, then blindly stumbling towards something resembling an answer. Kudos.

I can't wait to hack into my existing edit and add his gracious contributions, which is why I spent today transcribing the dubbed tape and later digitizing the good bits. Problem is, they're all good bits. In the next week I begin splicing into my timeline and improving the movie tenfold.

One thing stood out as I shot it and watched it and typed it and rewatched it and dig'd it: Scott enjoys talking about our movie. He enjoys the sense of authorship and oversight. He likes shepherding Chris and I through the spiritual wilderness that is post-production. He likes the element of chance, "the jazz" as Mr. T would call it. And I think that's why I like Scott.

From our earliest collaborations with Bill Moses on, from the Hillbilly sketches on up through 'Dude, Where's My Boat?', Scott's never wavered when faced with a project that's at once time-consuming and profit-averse. He's never needed a reason to do it, which is why we make a perfect fit.

Asked in interview why he works these silly movies, Scott said: "Every time I pull out, (Matt) pulls me back in." Well, I would remind my friend that it was he who pulled me in this time. But who am I kidding; he just beat me to it. We've always seized on a mutual gravitational draw, like two binary stars spinning in formation, each waiting for the other to burn out.

Matt

KW2 Headlines

Update time. A lot has happened in the last few weeks, including holiday travel to and from Alabama, but now it's back to business as usual at the Wm. Moses H.Q. in sunny SoCal.

Scott Draper spent a lot of time in December working with an old colleague to punch out effects shots, mainly keying backgrounds. A lot of technical mish-mash, and time-consuming.

Elsewhere, Chris Merritt and I were coordinating a run of custom stickers for advertising purposes. Special thanks to his parents for footing the cash.

Costume honeypot Karolyn Mayo singlehandedly sewed a miniature version of the Pope wardrobe. This of course is intended for our littlest star, the Pope puppet (Poppet), and my, does he look dashing.

Speaking of dummies, I'm in the middle phases of completing one more, marking a change of plans. I've scrapped my initial notion of reproducing all three principals/puppets in favor of a funnier (and easier) solution. For now I'm keeping the specifics to myself.

Otherwise, I've spent my time editing, and of course writing on other projects. If it was ever in doubt, the "very thin behind-the-scenes reel" (as I've called it in an earlier post) has slowly become this sprawling gargantuan love letter to everyone involved. So, yes, it keeps me up nights.

Scott is in the next room massaging the real movie with even more tender loving care. Something tells me he likes to edit naked.

He outsourced one scene of the film to me for rough editing, and I was kind of nervous I'd screw it up. Worked extra hard on it. Pretty much passed it over to Scott yesterday, and am glad to be rid of it. So far so good.

And the last item: KW2 illustrations are now 90% complete and scanned. It took me a day to do all this, if you count the scans I did for...

"8-Toe'd Joe & The Army of Toes!!!" -- That's right! Making its triumphant return in a special retouched second printing, it's my 2001 comic book all about the real-life 8-Toe'd Joe and Pope and their absurd encounter with the Toe Army as led by Der Fuhrer Toe! Details later...

Matt