making a science fiction movie

Gen Mt Dew Nintendo

2009-08-25T08:16:00.005-07:00

Gen Mt Dew Nintendo
Originally uploaded by jedamitchell

DrDyspepsia Nintendo

2009-08-25T08:16:00.003-07:00

DrDyspepsia Nintendo
Originally uploaded by jedamitchell

Mr Mephisto Nintendo

2009-08-25T08:16:00.001-07:00

Mr Mephisto Nintendo
Originally uploaded by jedamitchell

El Pepsi Nintendo

2009-08-25T08:15:00.003-07:00

El Pepsi Nintendo
Originally uploaded by jedamitchell

Hessia Nintendo

2009-08-25T08:15:00.001-07:00

Hessia Nintendo
Originally uploaded by jedamitchell

2009-07-27T16:00:00.003-07:00

2009-07-27T16:00:00.001-07:00

in the wastelands

2009-07-27T15:56:00.000-07:00

LotA3 Journal_10

2009-07-24T22:04:00.001-07:00

LotA3 Journal_10
Originally uploaded by jedamitchell

LotA3 Journal_9

2009-07-24T22:03:00.003-07:00

LotA3 Journal_9
Originally uploaded by jedamitchell

LotA3 Journal_8

2009-07-24T22:03:00.001-07:00

LotA3 Journal_8
Originally uploaded by jedamitchell

LotA3 Journal_7

2009-07-24T22:02:00.003-07:00

LotA3 Journal_7
Originally uploaded by jedamitchell

LotA3 Journal_6

2009-07-24T22:02:00.001-07:00

LotA3 Journal_6
Originally uploaded by jedamitchell

confessions from the underground (chevron gas station @ marsh and higuera)

2009-07-24T15:56:00.000-07:00

Nights spent on the job making mix tapes for the movie. Inspiration. More: GHB chased with sprite, marajuana in the car garage, visits from late night satyrs.

Soundtrack: ariadne's america (you asked for it)

Side One
Queen "killer queen"
Prince "let's go crazy"
Duran duran "save a prayer"
Neurosis "raze the stray" and "lost"
Moss icon "mahpiua luta" (live)
Duran duran "lonely in your nightmare"
Prince "when doves cry"

Side two

Placebo "20th-century boy"
C average "usurper girl"
Mudhoney "hate the police"
Men's recovery project "neu man"
The cramps "what's inside a girl?"
Guns 'n roses "paradise city"
the fuckin' champs "dale bozzio"
Queen "as it began"
Iggy pop "gimme danger"
The ramones "I wanna be your boyfriend"
Patti Smith "dancing barefoot"
Aretha franklin "do right woman, do right man"
Godheadsilo "in the air tonight"

LotA3 Journal_5

2009-07-24T10:57:00.003-07:00

LotA3 Journal_5
Originally uploaded by jedamitchell

LotA3 Journal_4

2009-07-24T10:57:00.001-07:00

LotA3 Journal_4
Originally uploaded by jedamitchell

LotA3 Journal_3

2009-07-24T10:56:00.003-07:00

LotA3 Journal_3
Originally uploaded by jedamitchell

LotA3 Journal_2

2009-07-24T10:56:00.001-07:00

LotA3 Journal_2
Originally uploaded by jedamitchell

LotA3 Journal_1

2009-07-24T10:55:00.001-07:00

LotA3 Journal_1
Originally uploaded by jedamitchell

the guy who shows up at your party with action figures

2009-07-17T12:05:00.000-07:00

I was the guy who showed up at your party with a shoebox full of action figures. You would grab a beer and down a shot or two, and you'd watch as I opened my box and set up my action figures.
Maybe we'd smoke a bowl or two and then i'd ask "have you seen mu action figures?" well, yes you'd day, at the last party. You'd seen me do the dame thing, good versus evil, el pepsi vs. Hessia, and maybe i'd convinced some buy to let me borrow a crappy video camera. With lights off and the smoke from cigarettes you'd help me stage some battle on williamrobertsplace or somewhere else on those americas of the 3001 year era.
So you were part pf it too. You hung out with a guy at a party and played with his action figures.

...days (pt6?)

2009-07-16T22:36:00.001-07:00

early j. southcross w\ collage
Originally uploaded by jedamitchell

...disposable camera...

2009-07-16T22:35:00.001-07:00

early j. southcross
Originally uploaded by jedamitchell

...and more...

2009-07-16T22:34:00.001-07:00

c.h. jerichius
Originally uploaded by jedamitchell

disposable camera days (pt4)

2009-07-16T22:33:00.003-07:00

early C.H. Jerichius
Originally uploaded by jedamitchell

disposable camera days (pt3)

2009-07-16T22:33:00.001-07:00

early 'rio w\ collage
Originally uploaded by jedamitchell

disposable camera days (pt2)

2009-07-16T22:31:00.001-07:00

'rio and m. messiah
Originally uploaded by jedamitchell

disposable camera days

2009-07-16T22:30:00.001-07:00

pre-autobot anacreon
Originally uploaded by jedamitchell

greater east asia co-prosperity sphere

2009-07-14T20:11:00.000-07:00

I used to play music all the time. That's all I did. I wasn't happy unless I was in a band. It got so bad that I had to figure out how to play on my own. So I did, with pedals and amps and all sorts of sounds. That's when I met sean.
He was of the kids who hung out on garden street, in front of linnaeus, when michael used to yell at everyone on behalf of the merchants. Bastards.
Sean was a wiz--actually still is one. He won play every cure and new order song on an acoustic guitar. I passed out at as many houses as the times he would show up, tune a shitty guitar the owner of the house never played, and play songs for hours. I would wake up and he'd just have finished disintegration, or some other album.
Getting him to play the theme of LotA was quite a thrill. Getting others to collaborate on the soundtrack was even better
I had moved on in my music not knowing I would play less and less as time went on.

Moons over the Mississippi

2009-07-12T13:23:00.001-07:00

myles
Originally uploaded by jedamitchell

Composing the LotA theme

2009-07-12T13:22:00.001-07:00

sean
Originally uploaded by jedamitchell

Our Fascist Youth

2009-07-12T13:21:00.001-07:00

sean and chris
Originally uploaded by jedamitchell

they say you shouldn't reveal the behind the scenes, but...

2009-07-11T23:18:00.000-07:00

Feels kind of strange putting up these pictures of the sets before I would paint them, and what what they were--or were not in this case--and that's not mine. But I stole them from Goodwill as admitted before and I had a pretty good idea what I was going to do with them long before I moved to Berkeley.
It started when my friend Matt was dying. He'd never say he was close to death, and in most ways closer to the truth, he wasn't. In fact, it was kind of a joke to say that he was. But we were a cynical lot, that's the nature of our sense of humor. Or it still is.
Matt came down to our home town--let's call it "Los Robles," after the mythical town in my seminal American revolutionary tale. He came because he had/has Crohn's Disease. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crohn%27s_disease) While he was in town he saw what I was starting to do with the action figures and advised that we could do something with them, make a movie with a green screen and all that Final Cut Pro magc that I'd only started to hear about when I knew I wanted to make movies out of collages. And at this point, I was pretty obsessed with this LotA business. I mean I'd already tanked a Math Class for the Humanities at Cuesta College with a pretty bad final project of a zen diagram for the difference between a "Raven and a Writing Desk." So, when Matt said he would help, I pretty much started grabbing up every toy that would reference my next installment, Part Three.
So, here's Matt battling this killer disease and I must have bugged him to death, coming over to his mother's house every day with more toys, more ideas, more script revisions. And Matt you see was totally losing weight, and basically pretty freaked out about the whole thing.
I remember calling him one day and his mother said "he's in the hospital." So I called him. And he sounded so disappointed when he realized it was me, almost as if he was like "what now, what crazy scene do you want me to film? Because I don't have long to live. And I might get a tube the width of a garden hose shoved up my nose and into my stomach to drain the toxic fluids in my stomach."
I was petty out of mind, I think anyways. Sure, there is a bit of me being really hard on myself. But there was a quiet mania I was starting to display, one that my friends gradually noticed. Or had been noticing. I think at this point I was starting to burn every bridge I'd need in San Luis Obispo, if I was going to retreat from this premature invasion of the Rhineland that was my obsession.
I think Matt was the first to think "there's something wrong with Jeffer."
So, when I arrived in Berkeley, I did so with the full intention of starting this movie. Matt temporarily recovered from his illness. He had rented out a warehouse in a part of Oakland where he made his furniture (more on that later), where I could pay rent and have a spot to begin filming this movie. I remember how he got mad when I told him I would stop by his house as soon as I arrived with the first load of stuff, and instead I dropped by Justin's and got stoned.
Eventually, McDonald's found it's way into the warehouse, along with the other sets-to-be-assembled. Matt invited me out to miniature golf and things were fine. I smoked a lot of pot. I cut a lot of meat.
And I thought about cities made out of McDonald's.
But I forget I told you that, ok?

mcdonalds prepaint 2

2009-07-10T18:02:00.001-07:00

mcdonalds prepaint 2
Originally uploaded by jedamitchell

mcdonalds prepaint 1

2009-07-10T18:01:00.001-07:00

mcdonalds prepaint 1
Originally uploaded by jedamitchell

sleeping or fucking or something

2009-07-09T19:46:00.000-07:00

Definitely sleeping on the floor. The guy in the back of the picture? That was my roommate. Gave his floor so I could sit around and finish my action figures. I had to find a place for myself first. So I sat around and nursed my bloated self. Oversized green goodie. Cross-trainer shoes. Gave myself my own haircuts with an electric razor.
In the meantime I needed a job, so my roommate talked to his fine employers at whole foods market. Asked what I wanted to do for work and knowing me well enough to keep me out of his department, I fashioned my future bio in a mike davis kind of way and took a job in the meat department. Dragon breath and a vietnam war vet, I had a new boss and some money. Enough to get my own room and a place to make more action figures and sets, some of which found another home at the warehouse where I would film this motherfucker, yo.

This is your brain on creativity

2009-07-08T19:52:00.001-07:00

pic 4
Originally uploaded by jedamitchell

moving to Berkeley

2009-07-08T18:28:00.000-07:00

Disheartened, our young artist is heartened by his upcoming project that at this juncture had nothing to do with reality. With the car his father bought him under the pretext of future college goals our young hero pursued his muse to the city where as a younger and more impressionable youth he read "Junkie" by W. Burroughs and then lived it but for a few months.
This bout with obsession however would last much longer and take more of a toll. Least of which had been had been his girlfriend. How she would have loved to take that new suzuki esteem on a road trip, or so was the plan. But 1/6 of the way through the collage-making madness of LotA and she was gone
Dumped for his cut-out magazines, since become a few shoe boxes filled with action figures. And more to come.

1998 Suzuki Esteem

2009-07-07T23:51:00.001-07:00

pic 3
Originally uploaded by jedamitchell

Berkeley bound. Late January 2001.

arthur c. clarke is dead

2009-07-07T19:54:00.000-07:00

New years and a show at the railroad cafe. Playing with the band little wings. Herein excited to show my new poster with the new action figures from part two
I decided to play the second half from Lot, thinking people had collected the part one tapes given foe free in boxes at boo boos and cheap thrills.
But really it was about the action figures and the new idea: part three would be with action figures.
So thanks goodwill, the collection truck idea since raiding barnes and nobles for magazines in the dead of the night. Digging through dumpsters never felt so good. Little did I know it was the prozac sharpening my obsession.
On new years 2001 saw the coming and going of part two. Delusions that the new year would see the death of arthur c. Clarke. Delusions. You,d see nothing yet. But so excited. Even the audience didn't know when to applaud. Maybe they didn't know when the movie was over. I sure didn't.
For me it had just begun.

Part Two (movie poster, New Year's showing, 2001)

2009-07-07T00:13:00.001-07:00

pic 2b
Originally uploaded by jedamitchell

2009-07-06T23:42:00.000-07:00

This is how I looked in late 2000. I had no idea what was in store.
I was pretty sure at this point I could do anything I wanted. Maybe even screw someone's girlfriend. A consistent theme. You'll cease to be the judge long before me.
So here I went, to finish my sci-fi epic...

I have an idea for a movie...

2009-07-06T23:12:00.001-07:00

Pic 1
Originally uploaded by jedamitchell