Rosie King may be a good decade younger than me, but she's my hero.

To say that Rosie King's laid back, yet powerful and emotional speech on Ted.com struck a chord with me would be the understatement of the year. I knew that for this particular blog post I would like to address an issue I’ve both struggled with and embraced, something that I do not want to be defined by, but something that has always been a huge part of me and lead me on the path I am on today, even why I enrolled at Full Sail University. Yes, I have autism. A mild degree of it that, I guess, qualifies as Asperger Syndrome, which has effectively altered my social skills and shaped a detailed internal world for me consisting mostly of films and television shows. It’s a world I want to integrate with my “real” surroundings, so a career in the film industry would help me merge the two worlds together.

Rosie King really reminds me of myself, however I was not as brave as she was at sixteen. I would never have openly admitted my autism in public, though I’m pretty sure most people suspected it anyway, even though they were never exactly sympathetic to my predicament. I am also somewhat envious of Rosie’s supportive family, because my parents are staunch believers that autism “doesn’t exist” and that I am just “looking for attention.” Since I don’t want to spoil my relationship with my parents, this is a topic I no longer discuss with them.

I liked that Rosie explained that autism does not fit into one particular stereo-type and not all of us behave like Dustin Hoffman in RainMan. Also, not all of us are math geniuses, I far one, abhor the subject and barely passed it. However, just like Rosie, my autism expresses itself with vivid daydreaming to escape mundane reality and wild creativity and that can barely find an outlet. Since I’m not making any films at the moment, I try to do it through writing, but it’s not enough, so my day-to-day life and schoolwork start suffering.

Will the new Tarantino movie shoot bring in more film business to Colorado?

I suppose you had to have been living under a rock to not have heard that Quentin Tarantino will be shooting his next film. After a series of controversy and false starts, The Hateful Eight will shoot in Telluride, Colorado after theColorado Film Comission, never very receptive to outside productions, offeredTarantinto a $5 million tax incentive to shoot here in December, and now it's touted that the $44 million behemoth is the first major film tobe shot in Colorado since the origial 1969 True Grit. So at long last, the fight is over, right? We Colorado filmmakers have finally scueeded in jump starting a film industry here in Colorado. Something we've been fighting for the good part of the decade. Well... Not so fast.

off, The Hateful Eight is not the first major production to shoot in Colorado since True Grit. That would be the 2009 EddieMurphy flop Imagine That; theprincipal photography of which was done in the highly picturesque city of Denver. The whimsical family movie proved not to be all that whimsical to the people who made it, especially Eddie Murphy. The film ended up only grossing$16 million nationwide against a $55 million budget, effectively putting another nail in Eddie Murphy's career and tainting Colorado as a jinxed place to shoot flops and tax shelter projects, an inside joke I heard from some industry insiders from which I think we are yet to recover. Of course, a big Tarantino blockbuster would be able to change that image and give Colorado a renewed lease on life as a versatile state where all sorts of films can be made. Be it westerns, or family friendly comedies, no matter what their eventual box office intake is.

While most of that may in fact come true, I have some major doubts that this one-off film shoot will change much for Colorado film community. First off, I want to give a first hand account that Colorado is already a very versatile hotbed for filmmakers. Local, filmmakers, that is. I've seen westerns (easiest thing to shoot considering the locale), hip modern indie yarn, films set in Nazi Germany and Soviet Eastern Europe, etc, etc. Most of the people who work here already know this about Colorado, but hardly anyone else does. Also, we're surroundedby such states as Utah and New Mexico, which already have a thriving film industry and got a head start over Colorado, where it has been trying to develop for more than a decade, but many of our conservative house members are less than keen on the idea of turning us into the next Georgia or New Mexico, so whatever bill gets offered every two years to help with tax incentives for filmmakers promptly gets squashed and we never receive any realy, depedenbale moneymakers to set up production here; the Hallmark tv movies, television series, and smaller budgeted studio releases/straight to video fare. These are the projects that keep studios coming back and film people steadily employed in their craft.

So, I guess, the point of this rant is that while having Quentin Tarantino's next opus shot here in Colorado will provide us with brief glitz and glamour of Hollywood, sadly it won't bring any new filmmaking jobs after they leave. Only a permanent sensible tax break for productions and improved publicity in trade papers can do that. Hopefully, however, I am wrong, and The Hateful Eight is the start of something big.

~Evgueni Mlodik

The unsung behemoth of independent film is finally going to get its due with a tell-all book.

Original Theatrical Poster
(http://poster.scancollections.com)

Malcolm McDowell as the 
Anarchist Emperor
(http://telegraph.co.uk)

I don’t want to start this blog off with a cliché along the lines of “Love it or hate it” or “This controversial film,” etc, etc. I’ll be honest Let’s face it, have you ever met ANYONE who likes Caligula? Most likely no; everyone hates. Most film buffs I know love to hate it and/or dismiss it as a cheap porno and few, if any, know of its history in the independent film history; especially at the time of its (arguable) birth that were the 1970s. But not for long!

A new book is soon to be released, detailing Caligula’s bizarre and chaotic genesis and the impact it left in its scandalous aftermath, titled 200 Degrees of Failure: The Unmaking of Caligula. As a long time fan of the film’s unfairly reviled director Tinto Brass and an almost obsessive studier of the film and its botched editing, I have to say I am absolutely thrilled (oh, who am I kidding, I am as giddy as a schoolgirl) that authors RJ Buffalo and James E. Chaffin are going to lift the curtain of obscurity behind this film and its makers and make the general audience aware of the massive of weight of something most people consider to be a sick porno.

Caligula’s genesis is actually quite esteemed, with the original script having been penned by famed man of letters, Gore Vidal himself. And this is what made Caligula so unique. Vidal and producer Franco Rossellini decided not to shop it to any major studios, but do the film completely independently with their own funds, something that was still very rare during that time period (early to mid 1970s), especially for an established famous writer and a producer who only worked under his more famous relatives, the famous Rossellinis of the Italian film industry.  Then, of course, came something completely unheard. When the pair couldn’t raise enough money even for a low budget drama, they decided to get their film financed by Penthouse, of all things.

While hardcore porn pioneer Bob Guccione has been known to quietly finance major motion pictures off the grid (watch the end credits to Roman Polanski’s Chinatown very closely to get a shock of your life), it was the first time a mainstream film could openly boast having ties to something as lewd and “sexy” as a porn empire. While it seems anyone would be worried when a pornographer inexperienced in film production would agree to finance your film, Gore Vidal shrugged any doubts off. As pointed out on the film’s commentary track in the special edition DVD, Vidal simply thought of Guccione as “one of the Warner Brothers.” Of course, he was naïve.

I won’t go into details of what a disastrous endeavor Caligula turned out to be. It made people unemployable due to lawsuits, ruined lives, careers, grossed millions upon millions of dollars, and ended up creating a landmark copyright lawsuit case. If I were, I’d be unfairly stealing the thunder from the other of the forthcoming 200 Degrees of Failure. Let’s just say that after the botched shooting, which resulted in Gore Vidal disowning the entire project, and the lead star Malcolm McDowell antagonizing the entire Penthouse Empire from the lowliest Penthouse Pet to Bob Guccione himself. The footage was confiscated from Tinto Brass and the original editors re-cut, re-recorded, intermixed with additional Penthouse-style hardcore sex footage and proudly touted as the next “in” film of the decade. Naturally, Gore Vidal and Tinto Brass sued.

Tinto Brass, famed Italian director of edgy
avant-garde and erotic films, who's
degree as a lawyer helped him create
a landmark law regarding a finished
film's ownership and country of origin.
(http://wikimedia.org)

The messy trial regarding ownership, author rights, and country of origin resulted in a landmark decision regarding a film’s ownership and the classification of country of origin. While the details of the ruling and what it entailed are still dim to the general public, it is referenced in law cases to this very day.  It should also be noted that Bob Guccione purchasing a theatre to screen the film when no distribution company would touch it was also a brave and edgy thing to do, and predates the infamous release of Tommy Wiseau’s wretched The Room by two decades at least.

Bob Guccione, who's lack of professional
ethics and filmmaking skills set in motion
the botched behemoth production of a
film that changed so many lives and
left so many censors stumped.
(http://s.wsj.net)

I am thrilled that the new book will finally break down and explain how Caligula contributed to modern independent film and intellectual property laws, as well as list all the numerous alternate versions of the film that got unleashed on the public due to this law. Only time will tell whether this will be the first step in giving Caligula the recognition it deserves.

~Evgueni Mlodik

Hello, dear readers and fellow filmmakers & movie buffs!

This is officially my first ever blogpost. I've started this blog as an assignment for my Master's Degree at Full Sail University and hope to offer various interesting news and musings on current independent filmmaking and newest films, especially those of the obscure variety.

I guess the first thing to introduce with my first ever blog is my newest film, The Silver Moonlight, a unique variation on the The Little Mermaid fairy-tale shot in the style of the old 1930s-1940s German UFA productions.

You can find more info and the trailer HERE.

Be sure to check back soon for updates!.

Ev.