M3DICINE SHOW CIN3MA

The Medicine Show Website is now open and available for business as well as your reading pleasure. You can visit the new site here: http://medicineshowcinema.com/

So what we’re trying to do here is create a new model. A model that works for the digital age and for a generation that was brought up moving through the online world with as much ease, and possibly even more ease, then they do the “real” world. It is a model based on the facts that using modern technology you can create a feature film that in many ways has the same production values as anything being done for ridiculous amounts of money for pennies on the dollar. Fractions of pennies on the dollar. That you can have visual fx and computer generated fx that not five years ago would have cost you thousands maybe even tens of thousands of dollars for literally nothing. Films that you can market online completely bypassing the leeches and other middlemen with their hands always held out, their fees and costs and expenses that they expect you to pay for while they take the profits. This is the dream of independent film as it was meant to be lived. And that is what Medicine Show Cinema is all about. We don’t talk about why we can’t do something, we think about how we can do it and then we do it. We reject those who have bought into the film school lie that you need to do things in a certain way, that there is a process. There is no process other than that which you care to implement and if the existing process does not work, then you go over it under it around it through it. We reject anyone who tells us that something doesn’t fall under their job description because everything falls under your job description no matter what that job description is. We need you to hold a freakin’ light bulb you hold the freakin’ light bulb. It really is that simple. We reject those who start a sentence with the words “technically….” because technically my ass stinks too and so shut the hell up and just do it. We don’t care what everybody else is doing, what anyone else is thinking. We are doers not talkers. Whether you like what we do or not isn’t an issue we concern ourselves with. Check out Rotten Tomatoes - look at the number of big budgeted mainstream movies that barely hit a respectible 50/50 good reviews/bad reviews ratio. I should care what Joe Blow thinks about our films made for a buck fifty when films made for a buck fifty million are getting slammed? Please. Kindly slip my dick in your mouth and suck. Thanks.

I’m a huge fan of old school low budget filmmaking. Today we’ve got “low budget” horror filmmakers with budgets of a million five (or better). A million five is certainly low budget when compared to the money pits that most hollywood films are but in the world of real low budget horror? A million five is an immense amount of money. It never ceases to amaze me how bad the films turn out despite having that sort of coinage. Sure the cinematography is crisp and clear, the sound good, the actors decent, the make-up fx and CGI nice but…the story is lame. The story is your typical cookie cutter paint by numbers snore fest plot we’ve seen done a million five times before. Where are the Evil Deads? The Phantasms? The Boogens? Where is the stuff that grabs you by the face and shoves it into the blood and gore? When the frak did horror become so safe and non-offensive? Old school low budget horror really was low budget. And it was shot on film so even more so. Film is expensive. You only have so much money for it. And there’s just not the cost of the film stock. You have to pay to have it developed and workprint made and the cut workprint conformed to the negative and prints struck from the negative and sound transfered to mag stock and mag stock synced to film and….filmmakers raised on video/digital have not a clue. Think of it this way - you have to make a movie with a single tape. Once you fill that tape, there ain’t no more. So each shot has to count. And even if it doesn’t count - it may have to be used because it may be all you have. If you want to do another take, you are taking away a take from another scene. So, okay, the actor flubs a line or doesn’t do exactly what they were suppose to do. Do you really need to shoot it again? Can you shoot it again? Are there more important scenes? Money shots you’d be taking resources away from? Those are the kinds of decisions the low budgeters of yore had to make. It is that aesthetic that I embrace. You have a certain amount of time and a certain amount of money. When you use that time and when you spend that money you need to have a product you can sell - one way or the other. Ed Wood would have killed to have a onepointfivemillion budget. So would most low budget filmmakers. Shit, I could make 10 films for that amount. And maybe even one of them would be good.

We are very close to launching our new Medicine Show Cinema website. There you can get a daily dose of my random rantings and purchase Medicine Show Cinema DVDs either directly from us via our secure shopping cart or directly from your Amazon account. Does that mean that this version of MSC is going away? Hell no. I’ll still be posting here as well. Think of it as twins…really hot but exceedingly dangerous twins. Worth doing both of them? Oh man you know you want to! But are you man enough? Probably not. But give it a try….who the hell wants to live forever right?

One news program that I try to watch on a regular basis is Sunday Morning on CBS. Always some interesting stuff going on there. Last Sunday however they royally pissed me off. They did a piece on the current economic meltdown and talked about class warfare and all that. In what they appear to believed was a “far and balanced” presentation they offered views from both sides. Those Dems and working class types who wanted justice and then the Repubs and an editor from the Wall Street Journal.

What pissed me off were the statements made by the right that went completely unchallenged. For example - that the top 1% who own more wealth now than any other time than just before the Great Depression pay 35% in taxes. Well…no, they don’t. 35% is the top tax rate yes, but I challenge anyone to show me anyone who is suppose to pay that amount who actually does. Ever hear of tax loopholes? Of write-offs? Of tax shelters?

Another statement was that, yes in Europe there is a more balanced distribution of weath but the standard of life is less. Hello? What? Based on what metrics? Certainly not those offered by the International Quality of Life Index that rates countries on cost of living, culture, entertainment, environment, health and even climate. In terms of final score, USA is #3 behind France and Switzerland. Not bad. But. The devil as they say is in the details. In terms of cost of living we fall to about 58. In terms of Health again, 58. We score 100 (top score!) in Freedom but guess what, so do 48 other countries. In terms of Risk and Safety we also get top score but so do 56 other countries.

Don’t get me wrong here, I am not putting down the USofA. Who am I putting down is a news program that allows someone to make a statement and does not challenge that statement. Who allows that statement to be accepted at face value and asks not a single question. That is not news that is propaganda. The dems and common folk stated facts and opinion. People are made as hell. They sure are. The masters of the universe should be bent over and skull fucked (well, nobody actually said that but that is what they meant and that is opinion).

Then there was the black woman who was working for some tech company who made the statement that she played by the rules and had no sympathy for those who took out more mortgage than they could afford. A prime neocon talking point, already proven to be nonsense. With no mention of the banks and mortgage and loan officers who convinced people they could afford more house when they questioned if they could, and no mention of the fact that the majority of people who are now losing their homes are losing their homes because they have lost their jobs.

I expect this of Fox “news” not Sunday Morning.

Shame.