While at Scarefest last month (the largest horror and paranormal convention in the U.S.), I was invited by Bryan Renfro to do an interview on his weekly podcast Movie Meltdown.  This one was a real treat for me since, in addition to talking about my career and upcoming projects, we discussed the movie Aliens at length in a segment Bryan calls “Sofa Theater Feature.” Aliens is my favorite movie of all time, so getting to explore it with another aficionado was a perfect capper to my Scarefest experience.

Lance Henriksen is also interviewed in this episode; his segment begins about 32 minutes in and mine at about 64 minutes.  I love how much attention Bryan gave to the movie sound bites and cool intro music hand-picked for the subject matter.  Hard work and attention to detail are never lost on me.  Check it all out here.

As a comedian, I had to appreciate seeing this image of Deadpool in May’s Marvel Previews. Comic Leo Gallagher was widely known for his watermelon-smashing stage show back when I was climbing the stand-up ranks in the ’90s, but he was also something of a whipping boy. Though he was selling out huge theaters at the time, comedy purists rolled their eyes at his corny jokes and prop-heavy repertoire. Many snide remarks were made at his expense, but Gallagher achieved something that few entertainers ever have: the status of an icon. He made himself so familiar that his image is a shorthand cultural reference, and this Deadpool comic is proof of that a full twenty years after Gallagher’s rising star peaked. Is there a cooler way to be honored than to have your schtick memorialized in a Marvel comic book?

1. By a package of manilla-colored paper at your local Staples office supply store.  Have employees in the Copy Center cut it into 6 1/4″ by 2 5/8″ slips.  This will run you $40-$45 altogether.
2. Get a stack of 100 one-dollar bills.
3. Compress the stack of real bills, then create five stacks of the paper slips that are the same thickness as the real deal.  NOTE: It is the thickness of the stacks you want to match, not the unit count.
4. Take each stack of slips, spread them out, and wrinkle them up some.  Don’t go nuts, just get each bill a little rumpled, then re-stack the slips.
5. Sand the sides of each stack with some light grit sandpaper.  This will give them the same ratty edges as circulated currency.
6. Lightly airbrush the sides of the stacks with a solution of: one part black acrylic paint, one part olive green acrylic paint, and eighteen parts water or thinner.  Compare the color to your stack of real bills and airbrush to match.
7. Now you need two real $100 bills for the top and bottom of your $50k bundle.  I can’t recommend that you scan and print the bills, because that’s illegal.  But if you were to scan and print, you’d probably want to give each bill face a once-over with your airbrush solution just to add some age and organic color.
8. Buy a bundle of $10,000 cash straps at Staples.com.
9. Strap all five stacks of your prop money with a face bill on the top of your top stack and on the bottom of your bottom stack.
10. Cut apart a couple of vinyl sheet protectors into flat, single sheets of plastic.
11. Use the sheets, along with some clear packing tape, to wrap the five stacks together into a $50,000 bundle.

You’ll love not only the realistic look of your prop money, but also the hefty weight.  I actually made a $100k bundle and gave it to a friend at his birthday dinner.  People passed it around the table like the golden phone at the meeting of the five families in The Godfather.  You’ll blow people’s minds.  Enjoy!

Last week I had the pleasure of joining Ben Jackendoff and Alexis Diana on their infectiously geeky show ComiCast.  I always think of my love for science-fiction as being born in the basement, so this simple, informal environment put me in a great frame of mind.  If any of you were wondering about my science-fiction roots, or how I came to write The Brain Eater’s Bible, you might enjoy this interview; I am introduced at about the 17-minute mark.  Thanks Ben and Alexis, and best of luck with the show!

If Blackhawk Down with aliens is a mash-up you’d like to see, then get your tickets now for Battle: Los Angeles.  Too often, studios try to make a popcorn, sci-fi actioner, only to blow it completely in spite of a giant effects budget (Skyline managed to piss off even easy-to-please genre fans).  But Battle: LA knows its wheelhouse and goes all out to deliver in that arena.  Shaky-cam firefights with extra-terrestrials on a convincing, battle-torn streetscape is money in my book, and I got all I could handle.  Aaron Eckhart does a nice job of anchoring the cast with his role as a square-jawed, veteran Staff Sergeant.  His chops as an actor come in handy when he sells a few pretty corny lines with believable sincerity.  And the aliens are pretty solid, too, though their design is often obscured by the “fog of war” fast action and smoky terrain.  The first act of the movie is a little perfunctory and ham-handed with its character exposition, but sit tight, because what follows definitely doesn’t suck.

Some good friends of mine invited me to do the voice of FDR in a trailer for their upcoming shooter, Dino D-Day, which will be released this March through Steam.  I love the faithful attention they put into the media and propaganda of the WWII era.  The conceit of the game is best encapsulated in two words: Nazi dinosaurs.  In this inspired alternate reality, Nazis have revived extinct raptors, T-Rexes, and other nasties, and trained and equipped them for battle.  I was able to play-test an early version of the game and loved the rush of trying to bring down a charging triceratops by pumping rounds into it with my Garand.  Look for Dino D-Day next month… the guys did an amazing job!

Serious and Professorial with My Zombie Bust

My book, The Brain Eater’s Bible, is also a stage show – a scientific PowerPoint presentation on the dangers posed by a zombie pandemic.  I give the talk at colleges and science-fiction conventions, and had a great time at the NACA West conference this weekend, meeting with students to warn them about the PACE virus apocalypse.  For those of you who are beginning writer/creators, I would highly recommend this kind of direct interaction with potential readers, especially those outside of your own social circle.  You’ll get invaluable face-to-face insight into how your work will resonate with fans.

As long as I was in a bloody lab coat, I had to get a picture with the peace-loving monk.

The human skull is an iconic symbol of horror and can be used to great effect if you’re building a macabre world. I made this distressed cranium on the cheap from a $25 plastic model kit. After assembling it, I filled the seams with Magic-Sculpt and sanded them, then stippled the skull’s surface with MMD Green Putty to give it a crusty texture. Finally, I painted it an orange-brown to simulate the protective coating used by archaeologists to preserve bone.

I like this particular kit (which is hard to find nowadays but appears to be available here) because the teeth are cast individually. There are a couple of human skull kits available from Lindberg that you can get at any local hobby store, but their teeth are lumped together in pieces like a dental bridge and don’t look as real.

I’m pretty happy with the final product; it’s a little small at eight inches in length, but it has a nice, lived-in look that movie props often lack.

I’ll give you an example:  Early in my career I booked a pair of national commercials for Budweiser, a landmark accomplishment for me at the time.  Both of the spots would feature me prominently and were to run in heavy rotation on network TV.  Since I was a starving artist, I wondered right away, “How much am I going to make?”  I didn’t have to ask – my agent, my manager, the director, and the producers all told me I would surely make $40,000 on each spot.  That would mean $80k to me for two weeks of work.  Sweet.  And why wouldn’t I believe these people?  They were professionals, after all, with much more experience in the industry than I had.

The problem is that they were also human beings, and people want to be liked; they want to be the stirrers of excitement and the bearers of good news.  I definitely liked every one of these guys in the moment they told me I was $80,000 richer, but the reality of it wasn’t that rosy.  One of the commercials never aired because it didn’t feature the beer enough, and the other had only a short network run before being shelved.  In the end, I made less than a quarter of what they predicted.  My representatives should have known better than to raise my expectations so high, but they couldn’t help themselves.

So, while on your path to a creative career, be aware of this phenomenon.  You’ll encounter plenty of well-meaning people who will lose their professional objectivity and misinform you in the excitement of the moment.  Show business and publishing are emotional, mercurial pursuits, and you can’t always defer to the credentials of your associates.  You must be responsible for your own inner equilibrium, approaching your work with passion and what I call “skeptical optimism”.

When I see clever animations like this featuring toys from my childhood, it strikes something in my creative core. It realizes the fantasy I had that my toy figures would come to life and embark on extraordinary adventures.