CREATIVE VISION REWARDED - PAST AND PRESENT: PLUS STUNT ROCK SCREENS THIS FRIDAY MIDNIGHT @ NEW BEVERLY CINEMA

For a filmmaker, a Hollywood Happy Ending is when your last film gets you the next one. Here’s the face of a happy man.

He is Kurando Mitsutake, writer/producer/director/star of SAMURAI AVENGER - THE BLIND WOLF, which won Best Film and Best Special Effects at the recent Fantastic Planet Sydney Science Fiction Fantasy Film Festival for which I was one of the judges. This satirical genre homage is a clever piece of work and dserved the accolades. I was told later that Kurando was a fan of my early work and bought some of my DVDs released by Madman in Australia, while he was there. He was kind enough to send me this happy snap. As a result of the great response to his film, he is off to Japan next month to direct a series of Yakuza movies. It’s great when a passionate filmmaker gets recognized and rewarded.

One of the DVDs in his hand is STUNT ROCK, released in the US by Code Red. And by coincidence, STUNT ROCK will play its second Midnight Show on Friday December 4th at the New Beverly Cinema, Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles. It’s my wry love letter to stuntmen and late seventies metal glitter rock, 90 minutes of laughs and gasps and OMG. In particular it’s a showcase for Australia’s king of the stuntmen, Grant Page, who is still setting fire to his pants in his seventieth year. Click on the artwork for a little taste.

STUNT ROCK was shot in 15 days in 1978, going from 6 page treatment to stereo answer print in 5 months. Grant Page and Monique Van Der Ven starred. I was Grant’s manager at the time and created this vehicle to launch him into the international arena. We could not afford a SAG cast, so I chose a number of actors from The Groundlings, including the young Phil Hartman (What a tragic loss his murder was). Also a splendid turn from future director Dick Blackburn as an oily agent. I was lucky to have Marty Fink as a very supportive producer who connected me with a gallery of below the line talent at the start of their careers, lensers Bob Primes and Rene Villalobos, production experts Chis Pearce and Ann Strasburg, editors Robert Leighton, Earl Watson, Chis Lebenzon, to name but a few: names you might recognize from the credits of subsequent big studio pictures. Costume designer Margaret Rose who has designed for many Vegas topliners, did an amazing job with a loose change budget. Thanks, guys and girls. it was a great introduction to Hollywood.

STUNT ROCK was a somewhat eccentric hybrid for its day; part concert film, part documentary, part mockumentary (I like genre cocktails. Both shaken and stirred.) Response from the late night screenings so far indicate the movie’s sense of humor has finally found its audience. I shall start booking it round the country next year.

So post modern genre geeks of Los Angeles, make a date: Midnight at the New Beverly, Friday December 4th.

P.S. For DEAD END DRIVE-IN fans, here’s a link to to a reviewer who gets it.

Recognition 25 years later. I’m getting a warm glow…