The Drink Tank 030 (2005).pdf

My Kind of

Afternoon

I spent my Saturday

watching movies. I know,

how rare for me to be watch-

ing licks instead of debating

the merits of our current ad-

ministration or reading Mo-

liere. Instead, I picked up a

documentary and a ilm that

pretended to be a documen-

tary.

The legit doc was

Stacey Peralta’s Dogtown &

Z-Boys, all about the early

days of modern skateboarding. it’s a great

documentary, especially for a guy who loved

skateboarding videos when he was young. I

had watched it before and this time, I was

more carefully watching for technique and

visual clues that might be useful for my

documentary.

Then there was the second ilm. This

was called Incident at Loch Ness. Now, y’all

now that I’m a nut when it comes to cryp-

tozoological and supernatural stuff, so this

was a natural for me. I love mockumentary

ilmmaking. It started with Spinal Tap,

though others have been just as success-

ful, like Meet The Ruttles, Best In Show and

even The Blair Witch Project. Incident at

Loch Ness follows all of these in its methods,

but it plays the ield between legitimacy and

comedy with a deft turn of the shoulder at

exactly the right moment.

Werner Herzog is one of those guys

that ilm school geeks love to talk about.

There are many legends, like his direction

of Klaus Kinski in Aguirre: The Wrath of

God where, story goes, he directed Kinski

with a gun pointed at him. He’s also done

some other ilms that make him seem like

a mad man, including Fitzcarraldo where

he insisted that a riverboat be carried up

a mountain. Some would say that he has

an over-abundance of dedication to the bit.

Supposedly, Herzog is directing a ilm called

Enigma at Loch Ness while having John Bai-

ley (a HUGELY respected cinematographer)

ilming a documentary on his life called Her-

zog in Wonderland.

Producing the Loch Ness ilm is Zak

Penn. To give you a good idea of the type of

guy Penn is, take me, shave my head, give

me a little talent, a lot of connections and

a little bit extra chutzpah. He’s a wheeler

and dealer and doesn’t seem to have a care

in the world about legitimacy. My type of

guy. In reality, he’s actually the director of

Incident at Loch Ness, which is strange, but

understandable. It’s that type of movie.

The cast is mostly composed of actual

working ilmmaking types. The guy playing

the soundman is a working, Oscar-winning

soundman. The Cinematographer is a big

name cinematographer. It’s a great piece of

business if you’re trying to make your fake

doc seem legit, though the look of the ilm

is never on the level of documentaries.

The Blair Witch Project did that better

than anything else as it all seemed

liek it was exactly done like a

documentary shot by college

kids. This was clean and

steady and well-built,

all things that

modern docs

don’t seem to

be.

I’ve

FromChristopherJ.Garcia

learned enough

about ilmmaking

to know that as bad

as things get for the

crew, they actually

go far better than for

most crews. There

are petty arguments:

Herzog wants to make

a simple doc about the

myth of Loch Ness and

Penn really wants to

do a big budget action

piece. The sound guy

can’t work on the boat because the engine

is too loud, so the producer strongarms

the Captain of the boat to put in a smaller

and quieter motor. Penn even hires an

actress/model, Kitana Baker of the Miller

Light Catight Commercials, to be their

sonar operator. Much of the comedy comes

from the conlicts between these two, though

there are other bits that are great.

As they get out on to the Loch, things

start to get weird. Zak has told his cam-

era man that he plans to do some effects as

‘Recreations’, something which Herzog re-

ally doesn’t want to do. But things start to

happen and Zak keeps claiming that he has

nothign to do with it. This is where things

get interesting and the plot starts to roll

along.

I thought the cast was really great.

Herzog is uber-serious adn with that voice,

you can’t help but enjoy him. Penn is

probably the weakest, as he’s perfect as

the coniving bastard

producer (Ghod, how

I miss that role!), but

there’s always a hint

of a smile behind

everything he does as

it relates to the weird

things that are going

on around the boat.

Michael Karnow, as

the cryptozoologist, isi

hilarious and made

me want to strangle

him at the same time as laughing my head

off at the stupid things he said. This plays

into the story very well as we roll along.

Shockingly, Kitana Baker may

have been the best actor in the ilm. Her

presence adds a strange comedy to Penn’s

vision and her scene where she legitimately

goes down to a bikini and jumps into the

freezing, black, peat-heavy water of Loch

Ness shows the lengths she’ll go to for her

craft. She also is the one that makes all

the strangeness around the boat seem

legitimate. With her reactions to the dark

movements

and strange

humps in

the water, we

wouldn’t have

a reaction

that we would

understand.

She’s

surprisingly good at playing real emotion,

even though they give her one of the lamest

things in the entire script by having her

say that she was hired to play the sonar

operator, so she studied up on actual sonar

and did well enough to actually operate the

sonar on the boat!

I’d say that Incident at Loch Ness is

worth your time and a little bit of money. I

bought it, I love Herzog, and I’m glad I did.

It would make an good triple feature: open

with The Last Broadcast, go on to Incident

at Loch Ness and close with 2001’s Session

9 starring David Caruso. That would be a

nice way to spend an afternoon and evening.

Karnow and Herzog

Kitana Baker preparing to jump into the Loch

Zak Penn Turns the Tables on Herzog

Art Bell: My Hero

Bringing up Loch Ness made me think

o fthe guy who I respect so damn much that

I once said I’d name a child after him. Art

Bell is a radio personality whose show Coast

to Coast was a favourite of mine for a long

time in the early part of this decade. He’s

had his ups and downs, but he’s always

been my favourite radio guy.

Art is best known for being the

one who will tackle everything from

conspiracy theory to UFOs to ghosts to

those mysterious Shadow People. He’s also

a well-known HAM Radio operator and a

collector of antique radio equipment. He’s

headquartered out of Parump, Nevada,

where he supposedly broadcasts out of his

trailer. I’ve never quite believed that, but it

seems that it’s true.

Art started out young, about 13, as

a radio guy, using a homemade HAM set

to connect with folks. He later went on

to start a pirate radio station while in the

army. This station, which could have easily

got him in big trouble, played rock ‘n roll all

night. He later was the main disk jockey

on an English-language radion station in

Okinawa. He set the record for longest DJ

run with 116 hours and ifteen minutes. He

did more radion stuff in Asia and Alaska,

but he eventually ended up in getting an all-

night radio gig out of Las Vegas’ KDWN for

Chancellor Broadcasting. That’s where he

gained a huge national following.

Sometime he has strange guests on.

What am I talking about? He ALWAYS has

strange guests on. He has brought Hollow

Earth folks on to talk about the Snake

People and Tiny Earth people to talk about

the Cosmic Giant. In 2001 and 2002, a

called brought up the concept of Shadow

People, strange moving patches of darkness

and the Art Bell show took off, with

hundreds of reports from around the world,

opening up a whole new area of paranormal

study. His shows from that period are some

of the best he’s ever done.

He has some classic reoccuring shows,

like his annual All-Ghost Story episodes,

which have produced some of the greatest

tales radio has ever heard.

The strange thing is, I’m never quite

sure if Art believes in the stuff, or if he just

has an open enough mind to not block

anything out of the sphere of possibilities

and present it as potential fact. It’s that

sense of respect, even when it’s obvious that

he’s not sold on something, that I highly

enjoy.

Still, everyone who has been on an

episode is cool in my book. David Icke,

who I consider to be the greatest nut of the

New Century, was on not long ago and Art

even made him sound respectable. That’s

incredible! When the whole Segway thing

happened, Art was the irst guy to get the

goods.

Yeah, he’s that good.

12 pt. Courier New by Jay Crasdan

Chris loves Art Bell. So

does M. I don’t get it. He’s just

a crazy guy and a fraud and they

eat up everything he says. I will

admit, the guy has a great voice,

but really, I’ll never understand.

His Name is Charlie

Kaufman

might just get Charlie Kaufman.

He had been writing ilm scripts all

along, though he couldn’t get anything sold.

He wrote one about a poet in Paris that

actually sounded great. He was a terrible

poet, but he didn’t know that to be the

case. It never got made, though the script

is circulating on the internet, even as we

speak.

Charlie started to write a script about

a guy who falls in love with a woman who

is not his wife. That’s the seed of the script

that made him famous. He started to hang

odd little bits around the premise, like a

hundred year-old boss, a main character

who is a puppeteer and a guy named

Malkovich. This led to the Spike Jonez ilm

Being John Malkovich, which got Charlie

an Oscar nomination and a lot of respect. It

also led Charlie to have to follow it up with

something great.

And he did three great things right in

a row. Human Nature, a ilm which much

of the world hated but I found impossible

to not watch. Rhys Ifan is brilliant, as is

Patricia Arquette. That was followed by a

ilm called Adaptation.

Adaptation is perhaps the most

important ilm for screenwriters of the last

I love movies. I always have. I like to

think that if The Drink Tank says anything

about me it’s that I worship at the gates of

ilm and science iction, often at the same

time. It’s not the ilm that I regularly watch

that keep me coming back for more, it’s the

off products that come along the conveyor

belt of Hollywood that keep me watching.

There is a man who causes more of those

factory irregulars than anyone else. His

name is Charlie Kaufman.

Charlie Kaufman started off his

writing career doing the struggling thing.

He wrote for the National Lampoon, he

worked for a Minneapolis Newspaper, he

even moved to LA without a job or even a

prospect for a job. It was that move that

did it for him, actually, much in the same

way that my move to Boston with nothign

lined up and found the job that I’ve held

now for almost 7 years. He eventually was

asked to move back to Minneapolis, but he

instead got a gig writing for the Chris Elliot

Fox-TV programme Get A Life. The show,

in it’s second season, was on its way to

cancellation, but Kaufman

put soem really weird stuff

out there and that started

him writing regularly for

sitcoms. He worked on

a lot of second seasons,

including shows like

Ned & Stacy (I think he

wrote the Mr. Belvedear

Episode) and The Dana

Carvey Show. The latter

proved to be a ratings

success, briely, but it also

got heat from censors and

sponsors for it’s content

and comedy methods. He

wasn’t well-known, even

in the TV ield, but if you

wanted a quirky writer

and you knew enough to

sell something to Fox, you

decade. It’s brutal honesty

about how Hollywood

works, combined with it’s

genius humor, made it the

best script of 2002. He

got another Oscar Nom,

and that was followed

by Confessions of a

Dangerous Mind, based on

Chuck Barris’ book.

In 2004, Michel

Gondry made Eternal

Sunshine of a Spotless

Mind, which Charlie wrote

and won the Oscar for.

It’s the single best piece

of subtle SF ever made.

Witty, heart-warming/

breaking and fun, it’s a

delightful ilm that proves

Kaufman is the Greatest.

They’ll Turn

Anything

into a Bed +

Breakfast These

Days!

Fall River, Massachusetts is famous for two

things: being the birthplace of Celebrity Chef Emeril

Lagasse and the site of the Lizzie Borden Murders. In

fact, it’s far better known for the latter than the former.

I’m planning a visit to MA for my friend Janice’s

wedding (Fall 2006) and I wanted to see about inding

a nice place to stay. I found the website for the Lizzie

Borden B+B and knew that I had to stay there. It also

made me think long and hard.

No matter how romanticized

the place has become, it was still

once a murder scene, and even if

Lizzie didn’t do it, it’s kinda gross

to think of staying a night in a place

which is based on her life and around

the savage deaths of two human beings. Still, the

place is quaint, and from what I understand, the place

is supposed to be haunted (for more about my love of

haunted places, read The Drink Tank issue 31).

Back about 1999, I got very much into reading

up on the Borden murders. There’s a lot of evidence

both ways, that Lizzie did it (She hated her step-

mother and killing her father may have seemed like

the only way to keep him from inding out the truth to

incest theories that represent pent-up rage exploding

through) and far less in the way of Lizzie being

innocent. There’a also the possibility that the Maid

did it, and I’ve seen a very good presentation on that

very concept.

I’m not sure how I’d feel about supporting a

place that sells itself as being the home of a famous

murder. There are other places that do the same thing,

but this one gets to me the most. I’ve heard of plans

for a tour company to open up regular tours of all the

People’s Temple locations, including round-trip airfare

so you can see the Jonestown site. These leave me a

bit queezy.

So, I might, or might not, stay at the Lizzie

Borden Bed & Breakfast. If I can ind a nice place for

less money, I’ll stay there instead.

Strange E-Mails from M

Lloyd

Lately, I’ve been getting great emails

from M. I should say that I’ve been getting

great email subjects from M as she has left

the messages blank. Here are a few of my

favourites.

- Dancing the Tango to Memories of

Pamplona

- My Side of That Vietnam Story

_The Devil is in the Details, and That

Sucks

- The Location of the Nazi Gold

-I’d Read Plokta, then copy everything

they do!

- Anyone here afriad of Virginia

Woolfe? Didn’t think so.

- You’re a Vice-President? Damn, I

wish I was there to mock you for it.

My New Favourite Burger

I like coming up with burger concepts,

and this one is a new favourite. It’s kinda

rigorous, but trust me, it’s delicious. I call it

the HamDog!

First, lightly sweat some inely diced

shallots and garlic. Just a clove or two,

and use butter. Save the butter, and add

the shallots to lean ground beef, a bit of

salt, pepper, a touch of cumin, a pinch

each of celery and fennel seed, a bit of inely

chopped parsley, a half of the shot-glass

sized Tomato Paste can, bread crumbs and a

bit of honey. This is a kinda middle-eastern

burger.

Next take one string cheese. Roll it

in a combination of chili lakes, or if you’d

prefer something milder, onion or garlic

lakes. Make a narrow meat trough, about

twice the size of the string cheese. Lay the

cheese on top of that and put more meat on

top to form a hamburger sausage.

Brush a sausage with a bit of the

butter from the garlic and shallots and

lightly grill. Assemble and enjoy!

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