ONWARD CHRISTIAN SLATER!

I wrote "Love Stories" a few months before "True Romance"
came out in 1993

Eleven years ago, right before my wedding to Monica Tiki Goddess, I received a letter sent to the offices of Speakeasy Theaters/Wild Card Press informing me that famous actor Christian Slater - star of such cult classics as Pump Up the Volume, Heathers, Broken Arrow, and my personal favorite, True Romance - wanted to option my novel Love Stories Are Too Violent For Me, which is now out of print. Needless to say, I accepted the offer. Christian Slater, whom I've long admired, reportedly discovered a copy in the house of a mutual friend with the cover artist, Tim Racer, and he has renewed the option annually since then. It was one of those once-in-a-lifetime miracles, seemingly the big break I'd been hoping for since I began writing fiction as a teenager. It seemed too good to be true. But it's not like I hadn't paid my dues.

Love Stories, the first in my Vic Valentine, Private Eye series, set mostly in San Francisco, had been published by Wild Card  Press in 1995. It was their sole effort before they pretty much abandoned the publishing venture to focus on their much more successful movie theater/restaurant venture with The Parkway in Oakland, which became a local institution, and for which I served as publicist/programmer for twelve years, ultimately including their expansion to the Cerrito Theater in 2007.  I hosted Thrillville at both theaters, beginning with my weekly Midnight Lounge series in April, 1997 (I met Monica for the first time when she attended my screening of Jailhouse Rock on May 31 of that year, but didn't officially hook up with her till I ran into her at my Elvis Bday Party at The Ivy Room in Albany on January 8, 1998). Sadly, Speakeasy Theaters and Wild Card Press folded in 2009, and my "career" as a film programmer came to an abrupt end.

I listened to a lot of neo-surf music while writing the Vic Valentine series,  including one of my favorite bands,
The Aqua-Velvets. I was honored to host their recent reunion at Forbidden Island.

Unwilling to return to my pre-Parkway lifestyle of barely getting by working low-paying odd jobs I hated, I returned to my first love: writing fiction. I'd never stopped writing, but throughout my "hiatus" with Speakeasy Theaters, I only wrote and published various non-fiction articles and columns, mostly related to film and pop culture. My last fictional effort had been A Mermaid Drowns in the Midnight Lounge, which I abandoned after writing only a few chapters once The Parkway (and The Midnight Lounge) took off. Thrillville, as a live cult movie cabaret, and "Will the Thrill," my public lounge lizard persona, became pretty much a creative surrogate. But it never gave the fulfillment I achieved when I finally finished Mermaid then went back and self-published much of my back log of manuscripts, reworking many of them, including the four sequels to Love Stories, in addition to writing new work. While this was artistically satisfying, I was still left struggling to make ends meet doing freelance writing work, along with booking bands, social networking and working as a bouncer for Forbidden Island Tiki Lounge, where I also host my movie nite, "Forbidden Thrills." All fun and cool, but my ultimate dream still proved elusive, and I'm rapidly closing in on The Big Five-O. My body of work needed a serious promotional boost, since I could only generate so much publicity via my own limited platform.

The evolution of Vic Valentine: from a typewriter on my kitchen table in a Berkeley studio apartment (1993), to a reading at a bookstore in Fremont CA (1996), to drinking the official "Vic Valentine" cocktail at Forbidden Island (2011), to meeting with Christian Slater to discuss the movie...

It was clear I needed a big break if I was ever going to finally realize the literary goals of my ambitious youth, detailed in this 2002 blog, now itself a decade old.

This fuse was lit a long time ago, and is finally ready to explode...

Though I admit I often lost hope that this completely random, fortuitous seed would ever bear any practical, professional fruit (other than the yearly checks), it looks like Christian's faith in and passion for the project is finally about to pay off, for both of us. This was always planned as his directorial debut, and he adapted the screenplay as well. I finally got to read the latest draft when he suddenly contacted me via email last month, and told me he was ready to move on to the next stage of this long-simmering, seemingly impossible mission, and fly me out to Miami to meet with him and work on updating the material and moving the setting from North Beach to South Beach, together, with the goal of finally bringing this script to the big screen, as early as next year.

Again, I accepted. 

This is that "big break." I finally scored the two elements that have always been missing from my artistic arsenal: Luck, and a powerful champion.

Rendezvous in Miami: "I can feel it coming in the air tonight, and I've been waiting for this moment all my life...."

That's all I really feel free to publicly divulge at this point, but that's plenty. I'll report back after my trip to Miami the first week of June. I'm leaving town the day after my 11th wedding anniversary on Thursday May 31, and two days after my It Came From Hangar 18 reading/signing event with Scott Fulks at Books Inc. in Alameda, on Wednesday May 30, 7PM. It's going to be quite a week. And it will only be the beginning of a new phase in my life - perhaps long delayed, but well worth the wait, and the effort.

Our Rat Pack/mariachi wedding ceremony at the Cal-Neva Resort in North Tahoe, May 31, 2001

As Monica Tiki Goddess has been saying for years in her toasts, and which now serves as the dedication to the second Vic Valentine novel, Fate Is My Pimp: Onward Christian Slater!

Cheers.

Vic Valentine is moving his headquarters to steamier surroundings...

Thrillville reviews: "The Avengers"

Thrillville has thrived for over fifteen years by networking and promoting relatively obscure, underground movies, music and books (particularly those written by moi), so for me to spend precious (but free) blog space "reviewing" The Avengers, a movie that is already well on its way to becoming one of the biggest blockbusters of all time, seems like a waste of my time and energy, as well as yours. And it is, sort of, so I'll cut right to the chase:

I'm not here to add a single penny to Marvel's massive coffers.  I already made my donations to this "cause" at the box office. I'm speaking out simply as a fan who has waited for this movie most of my life. Scratch that. I dreamed of a movie like this for most of my life, but never thought it would happen. There were just too many clashing egos involved, and I don't mean Captain America (Chris Evans/Johnny Storm), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr., duh), Hulk (Mark Ruffalo, the best Bruce Banner since Bill Bixby), or even superhero enabler/S.H.I.E.L.D's badass boss Nick Fury (Samuel Jackson - who still comes off a lot more like Shaft than the '50s pulp style, cigar-chomping white guy I grew up with, but hey - it's Samuel Jackson). Oh yea, Black Widow and Hawkeye too. What's that? Some of you (like my beautiful, patient wife, Monica Tiki Goddess) didn't even realize that Scarlett Johannson and Jeremy Renner were playing superheroes, too? Don't worry, that's not your fault.

The Avengers I grew up with, and never thought I'd see on the big screen, only maybe a crappy TV movie someday...

Therein lies my single beef, and it's not restricted to The Avengers, which is one of the greatest comic book  adaptations ever, right behind The Dark Knight and right up there with Watchmen and Sin City. It's the same constant complaint I've had about most comic book adaptations since the classic 1960s television series Batman, still by far the purest translation of comics to screen in film history, because they weren't ashamed or embarrassed by the source material - they embraced it! Everyone knows how awesome Joss Whedon's witty, fast-paced, thoughtful, action-packed instant classic is, so I really don't need to add my tiny voice to the critical chorus of universal praise. It's better than anyone could've reasonably expected. But not better than it could have been. I give it a 9 out of a 10. Here are a few nitpicky reasons why:

Where the hell was Hawkeye's mask? Who gives a damn if it's purple with a 'H' in the middle of his face - Captain America's mask is blue with an 'A' on the forehead! So what? It's a comic book character, for Chrissake! Why was "Clint Barton" only referred to as "Hawkeye" once during the entire movie (and you'll have to listen hard for it; it's in the heat of battle.) And "Natasha Romanoff" is only referred to as "Black Widow" once - in a subtitle. Superheroes do not have mundane names like "Barton" and "Natasha." Not in the world being referenced, anyway. This was obviously a wrongheaded concession to whatever chickenshit creative entities deemed that calling Hawkeye and Black Widow by their rightful names was too, I don't know...unrealistic? In a movie populated by gods, monsters and aliens? They could've just referred to their original - and established - comic book monikers as their operative, undercover "code names" - repeatedly - and I would've settled for that. But nooooo. That would've crossing some invisible bullshit line. The same line that the makers of Iron Man 2 refused to cross by not outright naming Mickey Rourke's villain "Whiplash." Or Scarlett "The Black Widow," for that matter.

They look so much cooler with their masks on. Sorry, pretty boys.

As for the casting and costuming, it was mostly very satisfying, except: why didn't Captain America's stripes go all the way around his waist? From the back it looks like he's wearing pajamas. It's still a vast improvement over the makeshift outfit he wore in last year's introductory flick, which was otherwise stellar. And of course, halfway through the climactic battle sequence of The Avengers, Cap gets his mask torn off so we can all gaze upon Steve Rogers' - make that Chris Evans' - pretty boy face for the rest of the movie. Foul! And Thor, dude - where's your god damn winged helmet! You only wore it at the very beginning of your excellent debut movie, and not at all this time. Did you leave it back in Asgard? Don't tell me it looks "too silly" - you're a comic book version of a Norse god, for Chrissake! No one gives a shit about your long pretty locks of hair, Chris Hemsworth! Well, I don't. Sigh. But hell - the shield and hammer were both very present, and very active. So I'll reluctantly overlook these aesthetic demerits. Hulk and Iron Man were damn near perfectly realized, as they were in their previous cinematic incarnations, so no gripes there, either.

Lookin' good, as long as Cap doesn't turn around, and Thor  finds his helmet,
and someone makes "Hawkeye" (cough) a purple mask, but otherwise...right on!

Now: onto The Amazing Spiderman, which I'm really looking forward to, despite the fact it's a pointless "reboot," since The Lizard is my favorite Spidey villain; and The Dark Knight Rises, which may match or even surpass the first two installments in Chris Nolan's epic neo-noir trilogy. But Andrew Garfield's Spidey costume looks far less faithful than Tobey Maguire's. Meantime, Christopher Bale, a great Batman, still dresses (while on the job) like he made his costume out of the Batmobile's used tires, and Bane is missing his trademark lucha mask, traded in for some kind of crazy serial killer heavy breathing apparatus, and a fur-lined coat. 

Why? 

Long live Adam West. Cheers.

Thrillville at 15: a decadent decade and a half

Toasting Forbidden Island on its 6th anniversary,
4/22/12

Toasting Thrillville on its 15th anniversary,
4/23/12

Fifteen years ago this month, in April 1997, I began producing, programming and hosting a weekly live cult movie series at The Parkway Theater in Oakland, CA, with David Lynch's Blue Velvet. Since initially the show took place every Saturday nite at 12AM (okay, so it was actually Sundays), I called it The Midnight Lounge (later reinvented for my novel A Mermaid Drowns in the Midnight Lounge.) The basic format - my choice of 35mm classic drive-in/grindhouse B movies, mostly from the 50s thru the 70s, with prizes and live entertainment - was the foundation for the evolution of what would eventually become fairly widely known as "Thrillville." 

Thrillville: from live cult movie cabaret to tiki lounge movie nite to pulp fiction pimp.

"This Forbidden Island Thrillville" (Photoshop by DB Jones)

Flash forward to April 2012, as I present a double bill of Roger Corman's early hit Day the World Ended (1956) with the  unduly unsung sci-fi classic World Without End (1955), at Forbidden Island Tiki Lounge in Alameda, where I now host a monthly movie nite called Forbidden Thrills. No burlesque, no bands, no beer (well, on some beer) - just cult movies 'n' cocktails. The Parkway (and Cerrito) Speakeasy Theaters are long gone, but Thrillville survives, having evolved from a weekly midnight show to a prime time Thursday night show to an occasional road show to a tiki lounge movie nite to its ultimate destination: The Thrillville Pulp Fiction Collection. Ironically, I was asked to create a midnight movie show to promote my first published novel (featuring my private eye Vic Valentine), called Love Stories Are Too Violent For Me, which was printed by Wild Card Press (owned by the folks who later founded Speakeasy Theaters) in 1996, and discovered then optioned by Christian Slater in 2001, annually renewed since then (and I'm hoping this will be the year it finally gets made: Onward Christian Slater!). After the theaters folded and I took my act on the road, I quickly tired of the lounge lizard schtick, not to mention the challenging logistics of booking a multi-media show at different venues around the Bay, so I returned to my first love: writing. So it all came full circle, as least from my personal (and professional) perspective.

Thrillville 2012: B Movies & Pulp Cocktails - smaller screen, but better booze

Toasting Molokai Mike on the 6th anniversary of
his incredibly successful venture, Forbidden Island Tiki Lounge

Back in the fez: still crazy after all these years...

Meantime, my friend Michael Thanos of my favorite hangout Forbidden Island hired me as the successful bar's publicist/live music booker/doorman/movie host, and I've basically started my own small self-publishing dynasty. The rewards so far have been mostly of a creative nature, and not all Thrill Seekers have embraced my evolution into a literary lounge lizard, but I'm slowly and surely developing a whole new following for work that truly matters to me, while keeping my (fez) hat in the movie hosting biz, on which I built my brand name.

With co-author Scott Fulks (left); "Hangar 18" at Books Inc.

So it all came together this past April 23, the day after Forbidden Island turned 6, when I celebrated 15 years of Thrillville at its new remote location, though its home base remains my heart, reflected in my fiction. At the event I sold and signed copies of my latest pulp epic, It Came from Hangar 18, with my co-author Scott Fulks, whom I initially met at the bar, and who hired me to write a sci-fi novel based on his three page outline, with his scientific theories embedded into my tantalizing text. It's now on sale not only online at Amazon but at Books Inc. in Alameda, where we will do a joint reading/signing on Wednesday, May 30, 7PM. Meantime, my first written novel, finally published in 2010, Chumpy Walnut, is on the shelf at the main branch of the Alameda Library.

I'm not exactly where I thought I'd like to be at this point in my so-called "career," but the fact is, I still and will always boast the single greatest result of my years of presenting Thrillville in its various forms: that most divine of dividends, my beautiful wife Monica, Tiki Goddess, whom I met at a Midnight Lounge presentation of Jailhouse Rock at The Parkway on May 31, 1997 (though we didn't officially get together until my Elvis B-day Party at The Ivy Room in Albany on January 8, 1998). As long as I have her by my side, I'm a success. Cheers.

Drinking a "Chumpy Walnut" on the left; "Chumpy" the book at the Alameda Library:
The dreams of my past, present and future converge. THIS is Thrillville.


NEXT IN FORBIDDEN THRILLS at Forbidden Island, Monday May 21, 7:30:
SHATEST returns!

UPDATE: Literally right after I posted this blog entry, I received a possibly life-changing, or at least career-changing email. "Clues" below. Stay tuned. The best thrills are yet to come...

Reading the "Vic Valentine" screenplay while drinking a "Vic Valentine" at Forbidden Island,
4/29/12