My name is Tommy. I'm a 21-year-old college student from the primitive wilds of Kentucky who really likes horror films. Like, a lot. This blog is my tribute to them. It features creepy pictures, gifs, reviews, ramblings and fiction.
I post this every Friday the 13th. Here it is in higher quality, now that I’ve found my old memory card. It was taken on my birthday at Scarefest 2008, a year before I lost a ton of weight and stopped wearing goofy button-downs. It’s one of the happiest memories of my entire life. I love this photo so much.
Okay! As some of you may recall, I mentioned in my Goals For 2012 post that I’ve been writing a script and hoped to finish and then shoot it later this year. I was (intentionally) rather vague about the whole thing and focused more on the fact that it was a goal of mine than the film itself. I feel a little more comfortable discussing it now though because, well, I’ve finished draft one of the script!
I’m not sure that I can make you understand how big of a deal this is to me. I never finish anything. Like, seriously. I’ve been trying to write a script since I was 15 years old. I mean, yeah, I’ve written chunks of scripts, some longer than others, but I’ve never gotten through one without discarding it because it’s garbage. After nearly six years of starting and stopping and starting anew, finally, I’ve seen one through to completion. I can’t even describe how it felt to write “FADE OUT” at 6:52 AM this morning. I’m not sure I’ve ever felt so much weight lift from my shoulders in one go before. It’s brilliant, really.
I’m just gonna take this time to impart some basic knowledge about the film to any of you who might be interested in seeing it some day. No plot details yet; those will come later. It’s presently being called Mina. It’s a simple title and I am completely in love with it. It’s a horror film, as I’m sure you’ve guessed, and it’s going to be available to purchase on DVDs I’ll produce myself for as cheaply as it possibly can be right here on this blog (unless something better comes along) . I’ll also be using the blog to document the entire production — I’ll throw up set photos, teasers, miscellaneous ramblings, etc. I’ll still be posting the usual stuff too, of course. I’ll just be documenting the production alongside it. I’ll try my best to avoid doing so excessively or obnoxiously. Promise.
Now that the script is done, I’m focusing on the budget, the cast, and the schedule. I’ve got the money but it’s a bit tied up until next month. I’ll be buying the camera, external mic, and some rudimentary lighting equipment and dollies and whatnot. The film itself isn’t an expensive affair and it’s looking like I’ll be funding the entire thing for around $2,500. Maybe a little more, maybe a little less. Either way, it’s doable: I consider the money more of an investment than anything. I get the equipment now and I can make films on the proverbial cheap-and-easy for the rest of my life if I’d like to.
Casting is its own issue. As you can probably expect, Eastern Kentucky doesn’t exactly have a thriving indie film community. I know one indie filmmaker and a handful of people who’ve acted for him and that’s it. As such, I’m intending to rely on my friends for cast and crew. They’re not actors and you should probably know that going in, but I can bully and patronize and ride each and every single one of them until they give me the performance I’m looking for without feeling like a dick for doing it. So there’s that! And they’ll also work for free. Or for pizza. I can live with either.
The biggest holdup, really, is the schedule. I’ve been in love with the idea of shooting in Autumn — it’s nice and cool out and the look would really suit the film. That said, I’m also sort of tentatively praying to have it ready to release near Halloween. Having both things isn’t really realistic. As such, yeah, we’ll probably do it in the earlier months of Summer, unless there’s an issue with the budget or something. I’m a bit too anxious to endure nine months of waiting anyways. Six years was plenty.
I’ve never been more excited for anything in my entire life!
Goals For 2012
Hopefully you’ll forgive me if I ramble about some things that aren’t necessarily horror-related for a bit. I’m just the sort of person who needs to be held accountable when they commit to things, and I can’t think of a better way to do so than to commit to them in front of nearly 20,000 people.
Goal #1: Lose more weight. Some of you who’ve followed this blog for a while know that in 2010 I lost a veritable shit-ton, as they say, of weight. My final deficit was just over a hundred pounds, which transitioned me from “sickening swamp monster” to “random chubby guy”. I’ve yo-yo’d up and down a bit in the year since because I’m a terrible stress-eater whose been terribly stressed, but I’m still nowhere near my old weight. The goal for this year is to further transition from “random chubby guy” to, uh, “healthy person”. I just pinned up a new Seinfeld calendar — I mark the day with a black slash mark if I’ve eaten healthily, and a red if I’ve exercised — to guilt-trip myself into committing.
Goal #2: Get rid of the people who treat me like I don’t matter. I had an awful relationship in 2010, and on-and-off-again in 2011, that went to hell one year ago today. Positively terrible night, that one. It’s only recently that I’ve gotten away from that girl completely — and even then, it wasn’t by choice — and I’m still picking up the pieces. I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve wasted an entire year of my life on a manipulative, emotionally-abusive hypocrite and I hate it. I’ve no intentions of ever speaking to her again, but I’d like to be able to stop thinking about her altogether. That’s the goal. It’s not just limited to her, though; I’m finding more and more that a lot of the people I consider my friends don’t care nearly as much about me as I do about them. I’m getting rid of those people. I have enough trouble caring about myself and it’s time I stop letting other people reinforce my self-loathing. I’ve still got a few tight-knit friends and I’m gonna go ring in 2012 with them as soon as I’m done typing this.
Goal #3: Accomplish my one — and only — life goal. I’ve wanted to make my own film for as long as I can remember. Since I was a kid. I’ve mulled over idea after idea in my head, and have over the years become fixated on one in particular. And I’m finally working on it. Open on my desktop now is the first 45 pages of what I’m anticipating to be an 80 page script. I’m over halfway there. I’m doing online classes this semester so I’ll have time to finish it, and polish it, and be ready to film sometime in Autumn. I’ve even worked out the money. It’s not a lot, but I don’t need a lot. It’ll cover what I do need. I’ve been hesitant to announce this on here because I’m not done with the script, but I’m very-cautiously-and-rather-nervously doing so now. There’s a certain poetic justice to announcing it today, I think. The goal is to market it via tumblr and self-distribute as cheaply as possible. If I made a horror movie and sold it on the cheap-and-easy I’m sure at least a few of you would buy it, right? If you would, excellent. If not, that’s okay too. At least I’ll have accomplished the only dream I can ever remember having.
Goal #4: Figure out what to do with myself once I’ve accomplished my life goal. I’m currently working towards an Associates in Arts at the local community college. The idea thus far has been to finish that and then transfer, um, somewhere, and pursue a career in education as an English teacher. I can’t do that, though. I feel like it’s settling. I don’t wanna teach people how to write — I wanna write. Or direct. Or, ideally, both. I want to create things. And part of me really wants to drop out and pursue that goal properly. Or maybe finish up my AA and pursue it? Or, at the very least, find some go-to-college-and-get-a-degree type job that I actually feel passionate about, and then pursue my dream on the side. Either way, I can’t see myself as a teacher — or anything else, really, except for my two totally-unrealistic-dream-jobs — and I need to fix that and make my life the life I want it to be. Like, now. I can’t stomach the idea of letting myself become a failure anymore.
I feel like a weight’s been lifted from my shoulders. Sheesh. Thanks for reading this, if you did. Feel free to inbox some comments or questions or thoughts on your own resolutions!
I just had the worst nightmare ever. Here’s what I can remember from it:
- My mother kept dying. Like, repeatedly. Constantly looping. She’d pass away and then get back up and pass away again. It looked exactly the way it did when she died in real life.
- There was a gate to hell inside of some door in the corner of my bathroom and it wouldn’t stop opening and trying to suck everything into it. I’d have to force it closed, and one time when I failed to do so I inadvertently stared into the proverbial abyss and lost my mind. Next thing I knew I was in the fetal position in my bedroom, where…
- Little black-eyed kids were standing outside of my window, laughing. Occasionally an old man in camouflage would walk up and shoot one of them in the head with a shotgun. They wouldn’t die, though — they’d just get back up and keep laughing, more deformed with each shot.
- My grandma and sister would have heart attacks and then get back up as if nothing happened.
- The corpse of an old lady walked into our house and kept trying to kill me by hurling her various decomposing extremities at me and laughing like Henrietta from Evil Dead 2. Whenever anyone else was in the room she’d just pretend to be an Avon saleslady. It was at this point that my voice began to wither into nothingness so I couldn’t tell anyone or get help. I tried fending her off myself but she’d just crumble into nothingness and rebuild as if nothing had happened at all.
- My ex-girlfriend shows up, but something’s clearly amiss. She’s ghostly white and distant. She says she’ll help, and she leads me to the hell-gate in the bathroom, right? Her eyes start bleeding and her skin begins to rot off. She starts laughing — the same Henrietta laugh from before — and pulls out a massive knife. I guess you’d call it a knife. It looked more like some gigantic, otherworldly animal claw with a hilt attached. She starts carving up my face and whatnot, while the hell-gate tries to pull us in. As it does, my arms and legs shatter like glass and I’m left laying there as a battered, bloody stump surrounded by the broken fragments of my former limbs.
- Anddddddd then I woke up because there were people in my living room laughing way too loudly. Not that I mind, on this particular occasion.
Ugh. I’ve been awake for fifteen minutes now and I’m still shaking.
There’s a gigantic, basketball-holding werewolf Michael J. Fox at the top of my Facebook profile and EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD IS FANTASTIC.
Going out tonight. Time to quit worrying about things I can’t change.
