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October 3, 2003
Hello and Happy October!
Hope all of you are enjoying life and
the impending autumnal nip in the air wherever you are.
Just wanted to fill everybody in on
what’s been happening with the movie! Good news! After having to part
ways with the third editor on the project, I was feeling low and
floppy in regard to the future of One For The
Road. In keeping with the roller coaster nature of this whole
documentary process, floppy then turned into elation over the new
editor who has hopped aboard. After the loss of the last editor, I can
only describe my feelings towards the movie as “dischuffed”. I can now
say that my new editor is like Viagra!
I bound out of bed in the morning and can’t wait to get to it! (Making
the movie, that is.) We’re cooking with gas and making fantastic
progress and for the first time in a long, long, long time, I’m very,
very excited about the movie. Dare I believe that we may get this
thing done within my lifetime? Completion seems a surreal prospect
because of what’s happened in the past and because I know we have so
much work ahead of us. Once the movie is completed, I will be adding
my new editor to the One For the Road
biographies so you all can get to know him and appreciate him as
much as I do. If he wouldn’t have stepped up to the plate and helped
out by working for free, this diary entry would be very different
indeed.
My editor and I have had a real
challenge with the quality of the footage. Call it the first time
filmmaker’s curse. I am now an expert in hindsight and wish very much
that I’d had professional sound guys and a multi-camera crew along for
the ride. (Of course, that would’ve been a nightmare with all of us
squishing in on the RV and minivans along the way, but the movie could
be so much better with tons of footage and immaculate audio!) No sense
in playing the woulda/coulda/shoulda game but it is certainly
frustrating and it looks to be a very expensive obstacle ahead of us.
Winston Churchill said that the definition of success consists of
going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm. So we
shall be very enthused when we try and fix the gaps in footage and
sound for the movie!
Due to lack of funds, we were unable
to have multi-camera shoots at all of Glenn’s concerts during that
2001 tour and we are now hurting for ‘coverage’, as they say in the
biz. In other words, you don’t want to see Glenn’s shoe onstage for
five minutes, you want to be able to see him from other angles right?
Well, we don’t have other angles! When Glenn plays, it would be nice
to see an “ooh” or “ahh” moment on the audience’s faces… but the clubs
were so dark that you can barely see any faces. I couldn’t very well
ask the gig to turn up all the house lights for the movie so we are
stuck with what we have. We were actually thinking at one point that
we would have to resort to the Monty Python shot of an old black and
white film of people clapping in a theatre. This is where the genius
of editing comes in and we’re scrambling and scraping for inventive
ways to make up for the lack of coverage! I’m damned impressed with my
editor’s creativity thus far; let’s just hope he can keep up that
inventive spirit until the end! I’m definitely earning my stripes and
taking my lumps at the same time with this one.
We entered a rough cut into the
Sundance Film Festival!
The actual festival is in January so we will continue to work
diligently on the film up to that point regardless of whether we get
in or not! I’m also entering the glennmovie
into the the Tribeca
Film Festival in New York and the
South By Southwest Film Festival in Austin.
SXSW have always had a fantastic
music conference there every year and recently have added a film
festival. I think it would be perfect if Glenn could perform at the
music festival AND have the movie shown at the film festival. A double
pronged attack in spreading the GT love! Obviously, we’d have to
actually be accepted into the film festival and Glenn’s schedule would
have to allow him time to be in the music festival, but it’s fun to
think about that stuff.
The movie’s structure is completed
and all that is left to do are some tweaks. We are finishing up the
graphics and are currently waiting for Glenn to send us the proper
mixes of the live songs. (I’m praying that getting these tracks won’t
take as long as it will for him to write a diary entry on his new
website! I promise to walk the streets of Los Angeles in my
leopard
romper suit if Glenn includes a diary entry before the end of the
year.) Once I receive the tracks from Glenn (I turn 35 next week and
am hoping to receive the tracks before I turn 45!), we will then have
to color correct the movie and get proper sound mixing done. A lovely
young man offered to color correct the flick and emailed me a million
years ago offering his services and I cannot find his email address:
so if you’re reading this, Mr. Color Correction man in NY, please
email me again! If we get accepted into
Sundance, we will then
have to transfer the doc from MiniDV to film because apparently,
Sundance doesn’t have video projection at this time. When I was told
this, I thought, “No big deal. We’ll just transfer it to film.” Uh… I
was then told that a transfer costs twenty thousand dollars. Right
then. Do you think they’d take a debit card? If I actually think about
that right now, I’ll go insane. It seems that each step of making this
movie was impossible but we managed to somehow get past it and then
move onto the next seemingly impossible step, so I’ll just jump off
that bridge when we get to it. There is a good chance that we may not
be accepted into Sundance, since they only accept 16 docs out of
something like 5000 entries. Let’s face it, my doc isn’t about
three-legged orphans from Peru or social injustice but I am
considering it a victory that we are able to enter! And anyway, I
think the social injustice is that Glenn and Squeeze are never played
on the radio!
I have to just concentrate on getting
the movie completed right now and THEN worry about getting the film
transferred, getting an entertainment lawyer and all that scary stuff.
While looking at applications to film festivals, I noticed that many
of them ask for a photograph of the director! Uh, does my high school
yearbook photo count? I don’t have any professional photos of myself,
nor do I particularly want one. The thought of having to be
photographed professionally is slightly traumatizing! Don’t get me
wrong, I’m a camera whore. My pals know this. I love taking pics and
weaseling my way into said pics. But it’s just the thought of having
to seem ‘director like’ in a photo is a bit too much pressure for me.
Do I go the obvious route and stage a photo of me in a director’s
chair with my camera? I might as well put on puffy trousers with a
beret and carry a megaphone! Not to mention the fact that I don’t even
know (or could afford) a professional photographer to take my picture!
I’m thinking of going down to the Kmart (or Boots for those UK’ers
reading this) and picking out some rustic barnyard scene for my
backdrop and just order 50 photos for twenty bucks and send those in.
When you’re poor, you gotta do stuff on the cheap and the kitsch
photos just might pass as “ironic”! If I do end up getting my photos
done at Kmart, I’ll post one on the site for all to mock! So, fingers
crossed, barring any disasters, with much needed financial help, we
will get “One For The Road” completed by
the end of the year if not by the end of November! (I’m aiming for
November 1st!)
In other news:
Glenn’s US tour wrapped up last month
in NYC and I was lucky to catch up with him at the beginning of the
tour when he came to California. His CA shows went well, I think and
it was fun seeing him do some new tunes. Sadly, his CA jaunt lasted a
brief day and a half and not much quality time was had, but when
you’re on the road in the Glenn vortex, quality time is only had if
you’re actually touring with him. I had to laugh when I asked Alison,
his tour manager how ‘the last five days were’ and she looked at me
confused and somewhat exasperated and said, “Oh. Has it only been five
days?” That says it all really. I predicted the fun that she had in
store: absolutely no clue as to what day it is or what city you’re in,
complete and utter exhaustion, no time for planning, the RV breaking
down, Glenn having no concept of the time that the rest of the free
world adheres to --- and nothing ever going as it should! She said
that she had already experienced all of the above. We laughed and I
just advised her to get used to it… and to have fun on the remaining
EIGHT WEEKS! Glenn played me some of the tracks for the upcoming solo
album and I’m very excited to hear the completed rocked out versions!
Glenn played my hometown again and I
was told through reliable sources that the gig was a huge success! I
still can’t believe I wasn’t there to experience the hometown/Glenn
love but hey, I’ve been working on the movie here in LA! My mom
happened to be in Dayton for a reunion that weekend and popped in to
see Glenn on the RV. My mom had only seen GT slumbering on her couch a
few tours ago before she went to work in the morning but this time,
she was able to see him upright and chatty! My friend Andy Valeri also
went down to the gig as my envoy. He cheerfully knocked on the RV door
and delivered plenty of Mike Sells potato chips on my behalf. Andy
worked tirelessly on promoting Glenn’s show the year before and we met
back in 1987 through my work with the local video show “South Side
Video”. Andy remembers me, age 18, talking endlessly about Squeeze
and how I wanted to interview them someday, so he understands the
hilarious twists and turns of my life.
Andy also runs
Big Beef Records out of Dayton.
(Go to www.bigbeef.com for more
info!) Andy still works at the television facility where “South
Side Video” began and he’s currently working on a new TV program
called “UnCommon Sense”. It is a new show and interactive
website that's being produced in response to all the negative events
and recent threats to our democracy in this country as of late. You
can get more information, even watch the shows, participate in
discussion forums, etc.. by going to the website:
www.uncommonsensetv.org
The site is brand new so it's still
coming together but if you want to express your opinions and see
others doing so, check it out and keep on rocking in the free world!
Andy sent me the photos he took of Glenn on the RV and I was surprised
and delighted to find a grip and grin of Glenn with my mom! And also a
hilarious photo of Glenn warming up on the RV, guitar in hand, posed
in all his rock star glory, with a sticker on his clothes that said,
“Hello. My name is Leslie Pickard”. A leftover ID badge from my mom’s
reunion; now stuck to Glenn. Bless him. And bless Andy for all the
Kodak moments!
Don’t know if the UK have been hit by
the Fab Five yet, but I’m now going to discuss the most fantastic show
on American television:
“Queer
Eye for the Straight Guy”. It is a makeover show that involves
five homosexuals, each an expert in their own field: grooming,
culture, cooking, fashion and design. All the gay guys makeover a
straight guy and basically give said straight guy tips on how to
improve his grooming, his look/style, his home and his life!
I nominated Glenn Tilbrook for all of
the above. (Although to be fair, GT is a great cook.) I filled out the
form and sent it to the producers of the show. I want them to makeover
Glenn and the RV! Think of all the fun the Fab Five could have with
the name of the RV alone! How fantastic would it be if they could
paint the outside of the RV! Changing it from the charming nicotine
stained yellow it is now and how fab would it be to get rid of the
1988 curtains and for them to fox up the interior with some rock star
decadence! I’m thinking velvet couches and a disco floor! Well, maybe
that’s a bit much but any recovering of the fabric on the couches and
chairs in the RV would be an improvement. Who knows if Glenn will ever
make the show but it’s fun to think about them putting Glenn in smart
clothes that fit his new skinny shape and scrubbing him up ‘proper’
like!
I had already looked into nominating
him when he called one day and told me about how much he loved the
show. I thought he found out that I wanted him ON the show… but he had
no clue! He laughed very hard at my mission statement: To have five
homosexuals have their wicked way with him and bring out his inner
rock star. He goes onstage in a T-shirt for Pete’s sake! Please Fab
Five, if you read this: Kidnap Glenn as soon as you can!!! Consider
the GT challenge as being your own shock and awe campaign! Imagine the
jaw dropping effect of the audience if Glenn bounded out onstage in a
tailored suit! And then I woke up. Even if Glenn doesn’t get chosen,
every straight man should watch this show. Watch and learn. Just a
little educational snippet shared in the program: Nose hair is bad;
pedicures for men are good! Your bathroom can never be too clean and
updating your wardrobe more than every lunar eclipse is helpful! Women
will thank you for it.
Speaking of TV, my favorite cable
channel BBC America, has
suddenly axed my fave program of all time:
East Enders. We were about a month behind the UK and it was just
getting good with the storyline setup of Dirty Den returning! I’m
completely gutted. I got hooked on EE on my first ever trip to Britain
back in 1987. I stayed with my mate in Stepney and she got me
addicted. I’ve seen the first episode of EE and have been watching it
ever since. Public television aired the episodes over here, which
allowed me to fill in the gaps in between my visits to the UK. I later
moved to Britain and was glued to my TV for every episode. Glenn and
Suzanne have often mocked my soft spot for Ricky. (he reminds me of a
dim ex I once had. Bless.) After I moved back to the US three years
ago, I was forced to get updates on the BBC website until BBC America
began airing the omnibus every Saturday. This could make me sound like
an old lady, but there was nothing I liked more than to wake up around
9:45am on a Saturday, get the morning paper, a cup of coffee and turn
on EE! My flatmate (a yank who lived in Britain for a million years as
well) and I would sip our coffee and talk in really bad cockney
accents for the following two hours. We have also taken to ‘freatening
each uvva wif Phil Mitchell like insults… "Are you lookin’ for a slap
or wha?" Imagine my surprise and horror at tuning into EE last week to
see Phil finally get married to Kate with Lisa catching the bouquet!
What is going to happen next? Well, I’ll never know since there was an
announcement after the credits saying, “EastEnders will no longer be
aired on BBC America. You have just seen the last episode.” We will
now never see Dirty Den’s dramatic return! (I still remember when he
asked Angie for a divorce. Fantastic! And okay, so maybe I had a
little thing for Nick “Wicksy” Berry because he reminded me of singer
Paul Young. I’m not proud.) And what about Kat and Alfie? Is Martin
going to continue being a complete jerk? It’s a sad, sad day at Amy’s
house and our Saturday morning hangover television will not be the
same. I will now be forced to revert to the dreary website for updates
but it’s just not the same. It’s even sadder that I care so much. I
should get out more.
I’m not sure if the
glennmovie.com listers are aware of the “Unofficial
Glenn Tilbrook site” or not, but if you’re not, please check it
out from my LINKS page or click here on
www.babylonandon.com.
If you want the latest gossip on
Glenn, this is an informative and entertaining site. If GT is touring
the US or the UK, you can see photos from his gigs posted by fans as
well as listen to interviews Glenn’s given along the way from the RV…
or RV repair shop! I found this site to be invaluable when I was doing
research for the documentary, since (believe it or not), I did NOT
know all there was to know about Squeeze and Glenn related stuff. (I’m
an anorak, I’ll admit it but even I learned a lot from this site!)
Corina does an excellent job running the site and has always waved the
flag for the glennmovie.com cause so I’d
like to let all of you know about the wonder that is the unofficial
site! If you’re new to the Glenn love, the site’s archives with all
things audio and video are absolutely a must see/listen!
Hope all of you are keeping well and
happy and I’ll try and post a diary entry next month to let you know
how things are going with the movie! I’d like to include a few clips
of the flick on the trailers page soon and I’m happy to say we are
limping ever closer to the finish line. Thanks for your support! Happy
Birthday to my fellow Librans!
Rock On,
Amyx
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