photo by Greg Hamilton
FELONY FLATS at the HOLLYWOOD THEATRE tonight!
FELONY FLATS trailer from BM A/V on Vimeo.
CHARLEMAGNE! @ Hunter’s Moon All Dayer
Though CHARLEMAGNE! Has been rejected by 12 film festivals so far, Hunter’s Moon played it last Saturday preceding one of my all time favorite movies ever, George Kuchar‘s Hold Me While I’m Naked. It’s pretty cool b/c CHARLEMAGNE! is dedicated to George.
I got an email from one of the fest’s organizers a while back and they ended up showing my movie, which is a big thrill. I’m very proud of the picture and I am so happy somebody out there wants to show it to people.
The Hunter’s Moon Festival takes place in Northern Ireland’s woodsy regions. Willie and his cohorts make awesome zines and soothing music with some concrete elements, nymphy and droney in cool hand made packaging. Lovely stuff. This whole thing makes me very happy. He was kind enough to send me this package packed with goodies.
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Manifesto
On personal, political, philosophical, and, above all, moral grounds, I make movies using inexpensive consumer film and video products for non-existent budgets.
The idea of the art of filmmaking being intrinsically linked to commerce is a scam and a sham perpetuated by powers afraid of the power of art. They are afraid of no budget, no name, truly independent non corporate affiliated art changing lives and influencing the way people think. They are afraid of losing their position of power, for theirs is linked to the smoke and mirrors game it takes to keep the cash flowing. As we all know, you can’t take it with you.
The fetishized commodification of singular artists who missed the train to success in their lifetimes is destined to eventually resurrect a corpse. The marketing of one’s self to zombie throngs for a fleeting shot at fame and glory is an obscene waste of time. Instead it is more productive focusing on creating bold new cinema.
I make films for critical thinkers. For those who are hungry to be entertained in a different way. For those who don’t want to wallow in shit. I do what I do to balance the violence and fraud rampant commercialism has brought upon the art of filmmaking.
I am here to help the art heal. The soul stirring power of cinema, corrupted by commerce, needs the spirit of invention, experimentation, play, humor, foolishness, and innovation for its vigor and health. I am a volunteer cinematic janitor. A maintanence man for the film arts. I am interested in the welfare of cinema, not my own success as an artist.
My work is informed by the films and books I devoured as a lonely and confused third culture youth; bold, brash Hollywood offerings, cinematic trash of the exploitation/sexploitation, horror/slasher, kung fu mold, the long lost art of the crime drama, sci-fi, high art films from all over the world, soap operas and telenovelas, the Kuchars, Anger, and the wild experiments of avant garde literature, Antonin Artaud, archetypes, myths, Jung, psychology, and the teachings of the spiritual masters. And music.
The films I create are narrative based features and shorts run through a psychic blender of the self. Familiar genres and tropes collide, tear, and reconfigure into a Mobius strip dripping with the very miasmic essences of the creator’s self. My figurative sweat, blood, bile, come, and tears are ingrained in the pixels and film grain. The personal becomes universal. Microcosm becomes macrocosm.
Instead of rejecting art which does not conform to a dictated and predicated standard, the viewer should seek out wild new forms, shapes, and configurations of cinema in order to truly blossom as a human being. Repetition of form is stagnation. The artist has the freedom to experiment, to make mad mistakes, and to grasp at things which seem completely out of reach. It’s beyond language and numbers. It’s not a formula. It’s not math, or money.
The bankers do not own art. We do. Let us revel in that fact, rather than be obscured by those who fear it. I call upon us to plumb the wondrous depths of the self and to ultimately unshackle ourselves from the menacing menacles of commercial conformity. Let’s help each other set ourselves free. Let us not be afraid to seek, see, and truly recognize new, beautiful things.
Bob Moricz - Portland, OR 5/10/13
ITZ AHHLIIIIVE!
My ace A/V buddy BAF shooting a scene from Death Doesn’t Hide Her Panties
Wowee it’s been a while! Busy as a beaver these days and not feeling very reflective as am engaged in processes one must ride out in a sport of psychic surfing. I surf in the brain, not on the shore.
So I totally effed up FELONY FLATS. I got a little crazy with the filters and sound options on my new setup and went a little overboard and got pretty disgusted at what I did to it so I dumped what I did and started over. It was a great feeling because I learned many things to get to the point of throwing it all out and starting over again.
Not this last weekend, but the weekend before I shot another Death Doesn’t Hide Her Panties sequence. In this picture a big motif is the doppelganger, so I’ve invited the actors from FELONY FLATS, the first installment, to come back as different characters. Shot a scene with the fearless Kim Bissett where she plays a talk show host named Letty Sumac. The name of the show is Cup O’ Joe. She interviews the director Bob Moricz and Todd Morris shows up as a noisy musical guest.
Cup O Joe graphic by Irina Beffa.
Post-It Scripts
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These days I find that I have the best luck writing scripts on 3 x 3 Post It notes. I prefer the light yellow kind. There’s just something about it that makes me focus my thoughts so everything congeals properly. I tend to self edit a great deal before I even get the words out on a page. Writing my screenplays on post its make me focus and edit even more before letting the words spill out. You just don’t have a lot of room for padding on post its. For me, it’s the way to go. Who needs screenwriting software, man? Sheesh!
