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ahtohallan-calling · 4 years

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chapter 1 of the food of love is here!

{kristanna / t /modern au / humor and fluff / pride & prejudice inspired}

Legendary food critic Hayden West is known for their scathing reviews of restaurants and wickedly sharp wit. Restaurant owners tremble at the thought of the day the mysterious reviewer will walk through their doors-- never suspecting that Hayden West is, in fact, the redheaded woman with a sketchbook eating a quiet meal alone.

It's an easy enough job for Anna, and she's got her routine down pat, especially with the help of her assistant, Olaf.

And then comes the day she walks into Kristoff Bjorgman's restaurant-- and gets much, much more than she bargained for.

Pencil-- check.

Sketchbook-- check.

Phone, wallet, and keys-- check.

Anna took one last glance at herself in the mirror, smoothing down the navy skirt of her nondescript dress. Her hair, that couldn’t be helped; a wig would stand out even more than the fiery shade of auburn, but she’d pulled it up into a ponytail to keep it mostly out of sight. Simple makeup, plain unbranded shoes-- she appeared entirely unremarkable.

Perfect.

She hummed to herself a little as she locked her apartment and headed towards the stairs. This week’s assignment was easy enough; some new little bistro on the edge of an area that was trendy five years ago.

She liked the little, unfussy places. It was easier to hide when no one cared if she lingered with her sketchbook, easier to see what she was looking for at places where you could hear what was happening in the kitchen while still watching the manager wander around trying to figure out who Hayden West was.

The only clue they ever got was the day Hayden would be there; no photos existed of the mysterious restaurant critic, no matter how many times their scathing reviews went viral. “The Gordon Ramsay of newspaper critics,” that was what the Times had called Hayden after a withering review of a seafood place had garnered a hundred thousand retweets for its description of particularly horrible crab cakes that “deserved neither to be called crab nor cake but perhaps a vaguely saltwater scented cement patty that should be patented and marketed as an instantaneously effective weight loss supplement.”

Anna had been particularly proud of that one. It was a rare day when the food was actually bad enough to warrant such a review on its own; the fact that the manager had gotten into a screaming match that reduced a sixteen year old waitress to tears was simply motivation to hold absolutely nothing back.

She wondered, sometimes, what people would think if they knew the truth: that in fact Hayden had never existed at all and was in fact a twenty-four-year-old woman who’d unexpectedly been promoted into the gig after the man she’d been interning under was unceremoniously given the boot for drunkenly relieving himself on the editor’s lawn, where he had gotten caught by a ferocious Maltese.

The restaurant, thankfully, was only a few blocks away; her car was in desperate need of a replacement everything, but she didn’t have the heart to get rid of it, not when it’d seen her through thick and thin for nearly ten years, from her sixteenth birthday to her college move-ins to her hour long commute to the Tribune’s office for her barely-more-than-unpaid internship.

It came to a creaky halt in front of the restaurant at ten to noon; she’d have just enough time to get seated without having to wait, but she’d bear witness to the midday lunch rush and its aftermath. The place wasn’t much to look at, though she could tell by the small garden out front and the stenciled outlines on the white-painted brick wall that it wasn’t for lack of effort. It had opened only a month ago, the latest in a long line of valiant attempts to put something interesting on this block. If she remembered correctly, six months ago this space had been a design-your-own-lasagna place (wonderful idea, but impossible to execute efficiently); before that, there had been a sugar-free bakery that had been run out of business in two weeks when it was discovered that the only sugar-free thing it sold was bottled water; and even before that, it had been, like most places that were cursed with a constant “for lease” sign, a Jenny Craig.

And now it was just BB’s, a name that was so simple it made her worry that this venture would fail like all its predecessors, especially considering its lack of marketing and online presence; she’d had to send her intern to do some scouting for her to even get her hands on a menu in advance.

“This place is great, boss,” Olaf had said through a mouthful of food as he’d called her on his way back to the office. “They’ve even got cheesecake.”

“With--”

“Chocolate sauce, yeah, yeah, I know how you are. I got the menu for you and had the cute waiter circle all his recommendations, and that was top of the list. Well, not literally top, the desserts are all at the--”

“I knew what you meant, Olaf,” she’d said as she rolled her eyes, a fond smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. “And thanks.”

Now, Anna found herself hoping he had been right about this place when she pushed the door open, bells jingling overhead; it had been far too long since she’d gotten the chance to write an enthusiastic endorsement of a place that really deserved it. To her surprise, only one other table was taken by two men, one broad-shouldered and blond, the other dark-haired and sporting a wide smile the second he laid eyes on her.

“Hi!” he said brightly, leaping to his feet and wiping his hands on his apron. “Welcome to BB’s! Table for one?”

“Yes, please,” she said, returning his smile after a moment’s confusion; if the place was as good as Olaf had said, why was it this desolate on a Saturday at lunchtime?

“I’m Ryder, and I’ll be taking care of you today,” the waiter said, pulling a chair out for her at a table next to the window. “Let me grab you a menu, okay?”

“Thanks,” Anna said, her focus instead on the other man as he rose to his feet and ambled over to the door that led to the kitchen. He was even taller-- and broader, Jesus but those shoulders-- than she’d realized at first.

This place must have been an old-fashioned diner once upon a time, judging by the window to the kitchen through which she could still see him. He was handsome, she supposed, if you liked men with strong jaws and broad noses and floppy golden hair.

And brown eyes, she thought, her cheeks turning bright red as he looked up and caught her staring. She jerked her attention away just as Ryder said cheerfully “Here you go!” as he put a laminated menu on the table in front of her. “The soup of the day is minestrone. What would you like to drink?”

“Water, please, and a coffee,” she said, still trying to cover her embarrassment.

“I’ll brew some fresh for you and be right back,” he said, that broad grin still plastered to his face as he bustled back to the kitchen.

Anna fidgeted a little in her seat as she pulled out her sketchbook. The whole point of her job was going unnoticed, but if she was the only customer in the restaurant today-- shit, this could blow her whole cover, considering each restaurant knew in advance that Hayden was coming that day.

For now, though, she had to worry about her notes, and so she began to sketch the interior of the restaurant in the notepad. She was no great artist by any stretch of the imagination, but it was the best way she’d found to remember her thoughts and impressions of a restaurant without having to worry about prying eyes reading over her shoulder. With each detail she drew, she thought of something specific-- friendly waiter as she scribbled the outline of the door, not busy, why? for the back of a chair, clean, good health rating posted for the box of the kitchen window.

And the menu-- she glanced over it as she doodled it. Simple, Italian-American fare; judging by the names-- Cliff’s Favorite, a deep-dish pizza with meatballs, and Ronnie’s Ravioli-- these were family recipes. She couldn’t help but wonder about what the chef’s family was like as she dared to steal another peek at him. He was working on prepping something, his forehead furrowed in concentration, and if she noticed the way his shoulders strained against his white t-shirt as he did so...well, so long as he didn’t catch her looking again, what did it matter?

The bells over the door jingled, startling her, and she turned to see a chattering group of six friends come in. A feeling of relief washed over her; she hated to see places like this go under fast.

Ryder set her coffee down in front of her, winking as he dropped a couple of creamers beside it, before scurrying over to seat the newcomers. She took a sip as her phone buzzed with a text from Olaf.

how is it?

Good so far. Decent coffee. Not many people here, though, can you send some friends?

aye aye, captain. i’ll remind them to do a better job of pretending not to recognize you this time lol

God, it was hard to remember how she’d used to do this without him. When Hans had first been fired and she’d been unceremoniously promoted into his newly vacant position, she’d spent the first few weeks scrambling to find a restaurant that actually deserved the sort of bad review Hayden West was known for. Hans, of course, had never had such scruples, but it felt wrong to Anna to make a mockery of a place and risk running it out of business when it was run by perfectly nice people, even if they did have a watery hollandaise. She’d used to rely on word of mouth and her own scouting expeditions to try and find places that really deserved it, but it wasn’t until she’d found the place with the shitty crab cakes that she’d finally found a manager who was a big enough asshole to deserve every bad review the place got.

The problem, though, was that when the review had gone viral, it had spelled a complete shutdown for the restaurant. After spending two sleepless nights worrying about the impact it’d have on the rest of the staff, Anna had gone for a second visit-- this time ordering a simple salad that still managed to be disgusting-- and pulled one of the waiters aside, asking about the plans the rests of the staff had for a next job.

And, because that had been her lucky day, the waiter had been Olaf, and he’d been just as enthusiastic as she was about helping connect the rest of the staff with new places more than willing to hire them on-- and he didn’t ask any questions about why, exactly, she cared so much. But when Anna had asked what Olaf himself was looking for as a next step, he’d blushed and admitted, “Honestly, I’m on a break from college right now. Journalism major-- not sure if it’s worth finishing, you know?”

Anna had confessed then for the very first time that she was, in fact, the legendary Hayden West-- or at least his successor-- expecting him to react with shock and, if she was being honest, a bit of awe, but instead Olaf had burst into laughter.

“Obviously,” he said, wiping at his eyes. “I saw the way you were looking around the place and heard the questions you were asking. Secret’s safe with me, though.”

She’d called her boss the same day asking to bring him on as a paid intern, and neither of them had looked back since. Olaf had a knack for finding disgruntled waitstaff in the Tri-State area complaining on Twitter and Reddit about their shitty bosses, then following up with them after Hayden’s reviews were published to make sure that they and their coworkers had a better place to work, either because their managers had seen the light or because they had moved on to greener pastures.

One of the tricks they’d developed together was sending in decoys if Anna was ever worried about getting caught. Olaf had a whole network of friends who were more than willing to show up to restaurants at a moment’s notice and eat a meal on the Tribune’s dime.

Today, though, she needed a certain pair of them to make sure this went smoothly.

Send the two improv kids, she texted back. They’ve got their work cut out for them-- this place is deserted. They have to act extra Hayden-y.

Olaf replied with only a thumbs-up emoji. Anna sighed and sat back in her seat, and a moment later Ryder appeared by her side. “Ready to order?” he asked, wearing another bright smile.

Extra attentive-- she’d add that to the sketch later. “Yeah,” she said, skimming the menu quickly again. Honestly, so far, this place hit every mark of a restaurant worth one of Hayden’s really positive reviews, which, thanks to the column’s usual reputation, went even more viral than the venomous ones-- not every day that a renowned cynic actually liked something.

There was just one more test, the one that elevated a good place to a great one, great enough that she’d come back to on her own time and money and bring her sister along for the ride.

“I’ll just have the spaghetti, please,” she said with her sunniest smile.

Ryder nodded and turned away, whistling to himself, and she glanced up at the clock over his head.

Five minutes and counting, she thought. Fingers crossed this goes the way I want.

---

a/n: THANK YOU to molly, laura, and melissa for helping me brainstorm and plan this one out!!extra thanks to molly and to johanna for helping me with some of the restaurant stuff, to ronnie for helping me decide what kind of restaurant kristoff would have, and as always, to creative director gabi :')

#kristanna #my fics #p&p&p

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princeraphoffrance · 4 years

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➥ 𝑹𝒂𝒑𝒉𝒂𝒆𝒍 𝑺𝒐𝒍𝒐 # 𝟑

✘ Circa ─ August, 2019.

✘ Trigger Warnings ─ none.

___

Raphael had been lost the last few weeks, months actually, and had been dealing with his own inner demons. Regret had coiled in his stomach like a slippery serpent wiggling about. Lately it had been better, even if only a smidge. He had been transferring money anonymously to Doctor Moyer’s family despite knowing that it could never bring back their wife and mother. At least this way they wouldn’t have to suffer financially. He’s even considered, briefly, giving therapy an honest shot. But he was also well aware that this new one was deeply in his parents pockets.

The sun was out that day and burning hot. Raph was more of a winter person than summer, but autumn would always be his favorite season. He was inside, lounging on his bed with a book laying across his chest. He had been reading, but his attention was beginning to drift. He needed to buy a few more fictions the next time he was in town, the library here seemed to be filled with more educational books than anything. And, he wanted to keep his secret love of books just that. A secret. No need for rumors to spread that a Lynch loved to read, especially one of the two playboy Lynch’s. A riot would start, he mused along to his own thoughts. The thought oddly entertaining.

The heat was making him lazy, tired, and craving a nap. He wore nothing but a pair of basketball shorts as the air conditioner hummed in the background. He had some music playing from Spotify, one of his random playlists. Turning his head, he stared at some of the posters and sketches on the walls of Raven’s half of the room. He knew nothing of fashion, literally nothing, but he admired her talent and passion. He had a nagging feeling in his gut telling him that it was too peaceful, too calm, and something was going to ruin his rare moment of serenity. He just didn’t get peace like this, there was always something happening. Always.

Raphael’s mix matched eyes landed on his book again, having momentarily forgotten that he had it on him. Grabbing it, he slipped a piece of paper in it marking his place before he closed it and sat up. Stretching, he popped his back and groaned. He had been laying there way to long. Then suddenly as of waiting for him to move, the shiril sound of his phone ringing cut through the calmness of the room. Groaning softly, he reached over getting ready to deny it when the name of a legal firm danced across the screen. Odd, considering he hadn’t done anything that would get him in trouble recently.

Sliding the green symbol across the screen, he placed the device to his ear. “Hello?” His voice was slightly hoarse from disuse and tiredness.

“Is this Prince Raphael Lynch?” A feminine voice drifted through the speaker, a frown forming on his lips.

“Yes this is. Can I help you?” His eyebrows scrunched together as he leaned forward, resting his free arm on his knee.

“I’m Candice James, the lawyer in charge of executing the will of one Edith Caldwell. You personally have been named in the will.”

Raphael wracked his brain for a face to put to the name. It was familiar, but it still took a few seconds for him to remember the blonde Scottish noble that had paid for his services nearly five years ago. She had been older by almost a decade and had seemed particularly fond of him. She had paid for him at least three times a week for nearly two months. Until she stopped one day, he hadn’t questioned it. She had been one of the more bearable women he had been with, funny and talkative.

“Yes, right, I remember her. She passed away? How?” He wet his lips, confused as to why he’d be named in her will of all things.

“A car accident last week involving a drunk driver. In the will Ms. Caldwell stated that we were to contact you directly about her daughter, Verona.” The woman paused, and Raphael had a nervous feeling fluttering in his gut. “Verona is your daughter.”

Raphael felt like he had been punched in the gut as all the air left his lungs. His world stopped, and he felt his head spin. His grip on his cellphone tightened so he didn’t drop it. “What?”

“When Ms. Caldwell discovered her pregnancy at the end of your… relationship, the grandparents, your parents, paid her a handsome sum monthly to withhold the knowledge of Verona’s existence from you. Your parents even had a DNA test proving that she is, indeed, your daughter. I have a copy on file. If you could come visit my office, we can work out the technicalities. For example if you wish to claim custody of your daughter and the way to go about it. Or if not, finding her a new home.”

“I’ll, uh, I’ll be there. Where’s your office?”

“Glasgow, Scotland.” The crisp answer came through, the woman talking as it she hadn’t just upturned his entire life.

Raphael uttered a quick goodbye, promising to be there in the next few days before hanging up. His head was spinning, mind racing, and heart beating fiercely in his chest. He felt his stomach flutter, not necessarily in a good way as he stood up and began pacing the length of the room. What was he going to do?

Running his hands through his hair, he pulled on the ends, hoping for some answers. He had a child, a daughter. Verona, he remembered. He liked the name, a lot. She’d be four now, and his parents kept her from him. Being in her life was different from raising her though. He’d screw her up, he knew it. Or he would have then. Maybe not so much now. The idea wasn’t as terrifying as he thought it’d be. Being a dad that is.

The more Raphael thought about it, the angrier he was that it was kept from him. His parents, the cause of the colossal screw ups in his life, kept his daughter from him. He heard his phone ding and groaned, what now? Sliding the screen open, a picture showed up from the law office in his email. A beautiful little girl with dirty blonde hair and wide brown eyes looked at him. Swallowing, he made up his mind and booked a plane ticket to Glasgow.

—

Two days later, Raphael walked through the halls of a prestigious law office. He hoped, desperately, it would be too late by the time his parents found out what he was up too. He had thought about this a lot over the last forty-eight hours and the more he was determined to step up and the father the little girl deserved. Who would have thought. Raph had Raven covering for him, saying that he was sick in bed and they even convinced a bribable nurse to confirm to the story, and he snuck out through an unmarked path the guards didn’t know about. As far as the Estate knew, Raphael Lynch was still on the grounds, sick and bedridden.

“Prince Raphael?” A red haired female was the originator of the voice. His eyes focused on her and he nodded.

“Just Raphael, please. No need for such formalities. How is Verona? Where has she been staying through all this?” He couldn’t help the genuine worry and curiosity in his voice. It was hard for him to grasp how easily he had come to love the little girl who’s picture he had taken to staring at.

“Raphael then. I’m Candice James, we talked on the phone. Verona is doing okay, she’s still confused about her mother, but she’s smart. She’ll be okay. She’s been staying with her aunt. Her mother's younger sister. Eudora Caldwell. She stated that she’ll raise Verona, should you not want too, but as she’s slightly younger than you are, and she is attending university, it isn’t preferable that Verona remain in her care permanently.”

Raphael nodded along, he understood. “That’s good. Will I meet Eudora? I wouldn’t want to keep Verona from her, so I would like to get to know her. And Verona? When will I be able to meet her?”

Raphael noticed the small smile form on Candice’s lips before disappearing. “Both of them are here. Eudora wanted to meet you, and for you to meet your daughter. We both thought it would be a good idea. Come, let’s get the paperwork out of the way. You won’t be able to take Verona… home.. just yet. Due to your age and.. reputation as well as current residency you’ll have to go through a class and meet with a counselor of the firms choosing for a few weeks. We want to make sure that Verona will be in the best care possible.”

Raphael tried to ignore the sting of her words. He knew his reputation wasn’t the best, and being at the Estate worked against him, but he’d do this. Whatever necessary, he reminded himself. The comment about the counselor being of the firms choosing pleased him. “My parents. Is there anyway we can keep them out of this until there is no room for interference? They, uh, won’t approve of this. And even now, they don’t know I’m here.”

A knowing look crossed her features before her lips pursed in distaste. “Yes, yes. We can do that. As technically you are of legal age, they cannot get involved without your approval, nor do they need to be informed of anything.”

For the next forty-five minutes Raphael and Candice worked through the papers, making sure he both understood everything and signed the necessary papers. Finally everything was taken care of and Raphael was escorted to a room off the conference room used to go through the paperwork. A girl around his age and a child occupied the office watching something on the computer screen. Raph noticed then that Candice had disappeared and he was alone. Swallowing he rapped his knuckles on the door frame gaining their attention.

A guarded look crossed the older girl’s eyes as she took him in. Standing, she walked over and looked him in the eye. “My sister said you didn’t know, that if she didn’t accept their bribe your parents would have done something drastic. Is that true?” He noticed a vulnerability in her eyes then, something she tried to hide.

“It’s true. My younger sister, Nesryn. She was kidnapped at birth, we thought she died. When we found out she was alive a few months ago, our parents killed the couple that raised her. Her adoptive family, as a punishment for refusing to be their daughter. They are… not nice, but I won’t let them hurt you or Verona.” He wondered if he shouldn’t have said that, but when a certain strength filled her gaze she nodded.

“Verona, come here sweetheart.” Eudora held her hand out as she half turned towards the child. His eyes landed on his daughter, prettier in person by far, as she came skipping over and attaching herself to her aunt’s leg. Swallowing hard he couldn’t believe that he had helped create her. “This is your daddy. He’s gonna be taking you home once him and Candice have everything figured out.”

“You’re my daddy?” Raph was momentarily stunned at how well she spoke before nodding, and crouching down so that he was on one knee in front of her.

“Yeah. Yeah I’m your daddy. I’m so happy to meet you. I’m sorry it took so long.” He felt his throat constrict as a wave of emotions overtook him. How could he love someone he just met so much?

“It’s okay daddy! Momma said you are a prince and princes are very busy and that you were helping people.” He watched in fascination as she spoke so enthusiastically and so sure.

“Why don’t you tell me about yourself Verona? I want to know everything about you.”

That was all the right thing to say as she grabbed his hand and pulled him over to the couch before climbing in his lap to being talking. He could see Eudora smiling in the background as she followed and sat in the desk chair.

“I’m Verona Iris Caldwell and I’m four years old!” She held up four fingers with the number, practically smacking him in the face in her enthusiasm. “I love the color purple and pandas are my favorite animal.”

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the-master-cylinder · 4 years

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SUMMARY In 1893, a young woman wears a magical bracelet and the dark shadow of an evil jinni (genie) looms over a bloody scene, foreshadowing the violence to come.

In modern day, three criminals burglarize a house owned by the now elderly woman with the magical bracelet. The criminals kill her with an axe to her face and find the lamp. A genie is released from inside and possesses the old lady’s corpse to kill one of the burglars by head butting him with the double-headed axe still lodged in the corpse’s skull. The genie finds and murders the other two intruders.

After surveying the crime scene, an officer sends the evidence, including the lamp and bracelet, for display at a natural science museum. From inside the lamp, the genie observes the museum’s curator, Dr. Bressling, cataloguing the newly arrived artifacts. Dr. Wallace’s teenage daughter, Alex, is also present and she tries on the magical bracelet. In a fit of adolescent angst, she says to her father, “Sometimes I wish you were dead!” She’s unable to take off the bracelet.

Alex’s class goes on a field trip to the museum where her dad works. The genie possesses Alex’s body and convinces her friends to go on an “outing” later to spend the night at the museum. The genie levitates Dr. Bressling’s body and decapitates him with a ceiling fan. The genie embodies more people and museum artifacts to commit acts of violence. Many bloody murders ensue. In the form of a resurrected snakeskin, he murders an opera-singing security guard. Alex’s friend, Babs, takes a bath at the museum and is killed by the demonized snakes during her bath. The genie’s true form is finally revealed as he chases Alex and her friends down the halls of the museum. Help arrives and together, they try to “destroy the lamp to destroy the jinn by throwing the lamp into the fire inside the incinerator.

At the end of the credits, the opera-singing security guard returns to take a bow.

DEVELOPMENT The fantasy-horror movie The Lamp, produced by H.I.T. Films of Houston, Texas. Shot for a little more than $2 million in a little less than six weeks, the film will already have opened in most of the rest of the world by the time Skouras Pictures releases it here late this summer or early fall. According to Warren Chaney, The Lamp’s writer and producer-and Deborah Winters’ husband-that strategy enabled the film to make its money back even before a U.S. distribution deal was struck.

“This picture developed out of an old McGuffey Reader that had the ‘Aladdin and His Lamp’ story in it,” explains Chaney. “My mom used to read it to me when I was four or five years old. There was a picture of a genie in there-half-animal, half-man that wasn’t your friendly genie, and he scared me.”

Chaney went on to make his own 8mm films as a child. He later joined the Army, where he did TV shows, training films and videos and picked up a PhD in behavioral sciences. After leaving the military, he worked as a professional magician and then became involved in TV writing and production for The Fall Guy, among other programs. And even when he moved into feature production, serving as executive producer for the comedy Hunauna Bay (directed by Halloween III’s Tommy Lee Wallace), that childhood image was still working in his head. Finally, it worked its way out through his fingers and onto paper, and The Lamp was born. “My wife had been after me for some time to do a horror movie, because she loves horror films, but I didn’t want to do a regular dice-’em slice-’em thing. So I thought, ‘What would happen if Aladdin’s lamp really existed, and what if it did grant you wishes … but instead of the fantasy that has developed around the lamp, that of the nice sweet genie that grants your wish, it’s more like the actual mythology?’”

He began researching the idea, aided by some friends in the Middle East. “The legend of Aladdin really springs up in two quarters, with two existing legends. One is Chinese, one is Middle Eastern, and they both overlap somewhat,” Chaney elaborates. “Well, I didn’t know anyone in China, so I leaned toward the Middle Eastern version, which is essentially that the genie is a spirit that can take on the form of a man or animal, and it takes on more than that. It takes on the master. According to tradition, the master literally becomes enslaved by the lamp.”

The film’s actual budget was $1.6 million but by the time the production house and studios add on to it, it was around $3 to $3.7 million-about a third of the average film budget then. But, I spent only $1.6 on the film. The film had a 6 week prep time followed by a 5 week film shoot on location.

“I was originally going to shoot the movie in Hollywood. We were going to use Marina Del Rey and dress it up as Galveston,” admits Chaney. “but Fred Kuehnert, a friend of mine I’ve known for 14 or 15 years, said, ‘Why don’t you film this story in Texas? We’d like to get involved with you.’ We ended up shooting in Houston, in Galveston and in Los Angeles. We were able to get most of our locations in Houston, but had to return to LA to shoot some scenes.”

Kuehnert, the president and cofounder of H.I.T. Films in Houston, is no novice. He was executive producer of both The Buddy Holly Story and Aurora Encounter, and before that he served a long stint in TV production. He also knew how to get films funded. The Lamp ended up getting much of its production budget from investors in Kuwait, who were, as Chaney points out, interested in the legend.

Tom Daley, the film’s director, was there from the beginning as well. A former film student at the University of Texas, where he did some palling around with Tobe Hooper, Daley has directed commercials and music videos, including Julie Brown’s “Homecoming Queen’s Got A Gun.” (“I’m infamous for that one,” he laughs.) He and Chaney met at the Milan Film Festival in Italy a few years ago, and nearly collaborated on a movie to be called Breakdancers From Mars. Says Chaney, “It was a sciencefiction parody. It was also one of those cases where I’d get one part of the funding and I couldn’t get the other, then I’d get the other and the first would fall out, so circumstances were such that we began The Lamp instead.” In fact, Chaney, who has taught at the university level, is a bona fide film buff. He’s written articles on movies for several publications, and met his wife at a Western film convention in Memphis, where he was visiting his mother, Penny Edwards, a well-known B-Western star of the ’40 and ’50s. In conversation about The Lamp, he mentions such venerable films as Tod Browning’s Dracula, King Kong, and Howard Hawks’ The Thing. “With a name like Chaney, you have an obvious throwback to the classic horror films,” he chuckles. “I pulled a scene, slightly, from Man in the Iron Mask, there’s a shipboard scene like in Nosferatu, things like that just off and on throughout the picture. There’s a little touch of Lionel Atwill’s Mystery of the Wax Museum. And, obviously, I couldn’t leave out Phantom of the Opera, Hunchback of Notre Dame or The Unholy Three.”

Director Daley agrees that The Lamp harkens back to some of the classic horror films in many ways, although he cites Poltergeist as well as John Carpenter’s The Thing as an influence on his approach. He also credits cinematographer Herbert Raditschmig for the film’s look, which he says is “very rich.”

Whether or not The Lamp will establish itself as the best of the independent horror crop remains to be seen. But it already can claim one distinction. “The concept is the thing that’s really different,” claims Chaney. “There has never been an evil genie movie.”

One of the preliminary design for “The Genie” by Barbara Anne Bock

I did a few versions of the Lamp and Genie. The director just picked one. I always liked to draw mythical beasts. The Lamp is kind of based on sex. The two dragon things are having a good time! I know Chris Biggs sculpted the Lamp alone. The Lamp stayed pretty much the same during sculpture. Brian Wade, Chris Swift and Gabe Bartalos sculpted the Genie. It changed (for the better!) from the original sketch. They made it look great. It was about 10 feet tall and massive. – Barbara Anne Bock (“Genie” and “Lamp” Designer-Reel EFX)

“The Lamp” by Barbara Anne Bock

SPECIAL EFFECTS With Chaney producing, Daley attached as director, and Winters handling the casting and functioning as associate producer, The Lamp swung into preproduction. “It was a very ambitious project and we didn’t have much time to shoot it,” says first-time director Daley, “but the crew put up with working 15, 16 and 17 hours a day. It sometimes took until 4:00 or 5:00 a.m. to finesse the mechanical FX to the point where they were successful. But overall, everything went very smoothly. We spent so much time prepping it-from January until March of last year, working on the special FX, storyboarding the picture out, and doing the casting-that it went much smoother than most.”

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CGI didn’t really exist at that time as we have them today. The effects” that were added in post were mostly “animation such as the glow around the genie, the lamp clicker, smoke enhancement, etc. I knew and liked David Hewitt (Technomagic Film Effects/Hollywood Optical Systems], very much. He worked with us in post-production and some of the animation effects that were added, were his. David was a few years older than me, but being young at the time, we struck it off pretty good. He had also been involved with “stopmotion” animation and I was very tempted to go that way with the genie. Eventually, budget limitations and time overtook us, so I continued with what we had.

A five-man crew from Reel EFX (makeup FX and creature construction supervised by Gabe Bartalos and Jim Gill), in addition to the makeup and mechanical FX, also built the glass shields to keep the snakes away from the actors.

Some of Gabe Bartalos’ fondest memories of the shoot was the construction of the amazing genie and operating it on set. The sculpture, giant fiberglass molds and even foam fabrication was accomplished in Los Angeles at Reel EFX. We then trucked everything down to Huston, Texas, and set up a temporary work space. The genie was revealed in pieces, so we assembled him in sync with production. The first week just the arm was needed to burst through a wall, so Jim built an articulated aluminum armature that was inside the creature’s arm. I then painted the skin using a combination of rubber cement paint that was airbrushed on and complimented by hand painting details in PAX paint. By the time the full genie was needed, we were ready, and it was pretty impressive. The entire genie was mounted on a riser arm attached to a heavy weight dolly. Mounted on the sides of the dolly were the long controllers for the arms, torso rotation and head movement. Under the genie where his waist ended, we attached a cheesecloth pouch that had huge amounts of smoke pumped through it so it looked like the genie was floating on a column of smoke. When we pushed him through the museum at “high speed” with all of us on the dolly manipulating the creature, it was a real thrill—this was making a monster movie!

The genie was latex with foam rubber backing, sculpted from a ton and a half of clay. Its bottom part was mostly a liquid nitrogen tank; operation of the top was, according to Reel EFX’s Martin Becker, “partially pneumatic, partially hydraulic, and partially cable pull. And part of it was radio-controlled.” Becker is “fairly happy” with the work he and his crew did, although he feels that a bit more time would have served the FX better. The hardest part consisted of getting the 20-foot tall monster to move with some degree of freedom. With its elongated, fully-articulated arms stretched straight out, the three-fingered humanoid creature was 23-feet wide. The genie stands only eight feet tall. Its misty bottom was added by means of a liquid nitrogen tank connected below the waist. “The liquid nitrogen gave a nice effect, was non-toxic and didn’t smell everybody out of the room like a lot of fog generators do,” said Bartalos. “Basically, it’s 70 percent of what air is-only much colder. You only have to worry about getting frostbite.”

“The reanimated mummy” was an effect that I tackled” says Bartalos. I began by getting a store bought medical grade skeleton. I then molded its face and created a cement “positive” which allowed me to sculpt on new features. I gave the illusion that the eyes had dried into their sockets, that the skin collapsed around the bones’ high points, and that the overall texture was dried and decomposing. I then molded my facial sculptures and ran them in foam rubber. These pieces I now was able to apply to the skeleton’s face, custom made prosthetics for a skull! I added stringy white and grey hair and painted the whole skeleton with parched colors (a lot of grey and umber tones). At the same time Jim was we waist of the skeleton. He installed a cool pneumatic rig that allowed the skeleton to sit up on its own when activated. He also added a mechanism inside the jaw, so it could chomp down on one of the students’ fingers. For this effect I made a fake hand that had a blood tube concealed inside of it. In closeup you see the “Mummy” bite down on the fake hand and pierce the finger. In the wide shot it was the real actor (Scott Bankston] with his finger bent back with a prosthetic stump attached and plenty of flowing blood.

I did most of the on set gore effects. There is a scene where a lovely young lady [Damon Merrill] gets attacked by snakes while she takes a bath. I was tasked with applying nine different prosthetics to her entire body that simulated the snake bites. Right before cameras rolled, I added fresh blood dripping from the puncture holes and spritzed it with water. The added water over the blood made for a very real “bloody wet look.” One of my favorite effects was the “Night Watch-Man” character that is established as a junk food over-eater. I created a “wrap-around” prosthetic that gave the illusion that mysterious forces have slammed copious amounts of food down his throat. Once I applied this burst neck prosthetic, I placed various hard candies in the open wound: Smarties, Mints, Twizzlers, etc. Good fun.

The Lamp features a reanimated mummy, an animated skeleton and some gore FX as well, all done by Los Angeles’ Reel EFX The major effect is a 26-foot-tall genie-and, unlike the genies usually encountered in popular fiction, this one is anything but benevolent.

Hewitt’s most spectacular effect involved an animated scene in which the vaporous genie flies out of the lamp into a swimming pool, reaches up out of the water, and jerks an actor down by the legs. His favorite FX scene in the picture, however, is one that is mostly mechanical. “It’s the mummy scene in the museum, when the mummy bites the boy’s fingers off and then sits up and bites him in the throat,” he says. “The only thing we did there was right at the beginning of the scene, when the boy and the girl are running through the museum.

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We added the possession part, where the green vapor flies into the room real quick and just for a split second you see the skull of the mummy glow. All we did was enhance the stuff the guys at Reel EFX did. Physical and optical effects work really well together, and when you can put the two together it really sells the effect much better.”

Like the rest of the cast and crew, Hewitt worked under time constraints, finishing the opticals in five weeks. And, though he laughs about “rotoscoping on an airplane” in order to make his deadline, he found working on The Lamp a pleasant experience. “You couldn’t ask for a nicer guy to work with than Warren Chaney,” he states. “He was real open to suggestions. He really knows the pictures back to the silent days, all the effects pictures, so we had a great deal of fun together.”

For Deborah Winters, star of such mainstream films as Kotch and Class of ’44 as well as the recent TV miniseries Winds of War, working with makeup FX was a new experience-and a not altogether pleasant one. The interesting thing is that if she could’ve found an Arab woman in Houston, she probably would have been spared.

“I had all the agents looking, and they would send me an Italian woman, and a Mexican woman, and it just didn’t work out,” recalls Winters, whose previous horror movie experience includes 1976’s Blue Sunshine. “So Warren said one day, ‘Well, I don’t know what we’re going to do. I guess we’re just going to have to have Martin Becker’s people handle this as another special effect.’ And I said, “OK, that’s fine,’ because I was fed up with the whole thing of trying to find somebody,” she laughs. “Then Warren said, ‘You can do it.’ I said, ‘I can do it?’ He said, ‘Sure. You can change your voice and no one will even recognize you; it’ll save us a lot of money and you can forget about it.’” That was how Winters found herself encased in five hours worth of makeup for four shooting days, after flying to Los Angeles and getting a head and torso cast.

“Doing makeup FX in a movie is tough,” she affirms. “I really had no idea. Between the contact lenses and the makeup, and having to sit around and wait until you can’t move and you can’t eat. . . At one point, there was smoke involved in a scene, and the FX guys blew smoke in my face and I couldn’t breathe. It was an experience. But the worst of it was the two hours it took to remove the makeup. Believe me, it was very painful. I had my Early Times with me. After doing this thing, I don’t think we could’ve found anybody that would’ve wanted to go through it.

“It was worth it, of course,” she adds. “But one day Warren told me, ‘Maybe we can do a sequel with the old lady,’ and I said, ‘Listen, brother-if you do a sequel, you can play the old lady.'”

Winters also portrays the old lady as a young girl in the prologue, and has a major role as the museum curator’s paramour. The curator is played by James Huston, and his daughter is Andra St. Ivanyi, a student at the University of Houston who gets high marks from both Chaney and Fred Kuehnert for her performance. Chaney also speaks very highly of Hollywood Optical Systems, the LA outfit that created the optical FX for The Lamp. Fans of low-budget horror and science fiction will recall Optical’s boss, David Hewitt, as the director behind the threadbare ’60s epics Journey to the Center of Time, Dr. Terror’s Gallery of Horrors and The Mighty Gorga. For The Lamp, he and coworkers Bill Humphrey and Larry Arpin added more than 50 optical FX in post-production and, admits Chaney with a laugh, “saved my rear in a couple of places.”

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RELEASE/DISTRIBUTION/DELETED SCENES According to Warren Chaney, The Lamp was the title of the film as sent to distribution. H.I.T. Films separated U.S. domestic from overseas and so “two films” were born: “The Lamp” and “The Outing.” Skouras Pictures took the pic as The Lamp and released it in theaters in the overseas markets; TMS (The Movie Store) was the domestic distributor and wanted to cut 18 minutes out of the film in order that it could run “one more time” in the theaters. The original film ran 102 minutes but after their cut, it was reduced to 86 minutes. Now, their method for editing left a lot to be desired: they merely took a pair of scissors and cut 18 minutes off the front end; they tacked on some “cheap” credits and ripped off some of John’s music (John Carpenter] and they had a pic that would run 4 or 5 times per day instead of 3. Reviews for the original were pretty good; reviews for The Outing were much less so-and I agreed with the critics.

There were some longer shots of the genie that were cut out of the original scenes but later reinserted by the studio. My belief has always been that the “less you show” the greater the fear since people worry about what they can’t see. I wanted to film much less of the physical genie; Tom wanted to film more of the creature and so shot a great deal more footage in production. When I did the final edit however, I cut much of it out but as fate would have it, both distributors (Skouras Pictures and TMS) agreed with Tom and edited much of it back into the picture. I have always believed that when you are filming creatures “less is more,” but given the success both distributors had with the film, it’s hard for me to argue against them.

Five scenes were cut from the opening of the film. The opening scenes set the picture up to be a “tall tale”—there was considerably more detail about the ship, its cargo, and what happened on the way over (however, there were no hints as to the cause … you heard the screams and the helmsman lashing himself to the wheel). In a later scene (cut from the movie), one of the hoods (played by Hank Amigo, Brian Floores and Michelle Watkins] while delivering groceries, hears the old lady talking to the lamp. It occurred prior to the scenes where she was killed. That scene set up the “killers,” her, and her mystical aspects which is misunderstood by the thugs as her having a lot of money. When the scenes were cut, the picture opened in what was probably the poorest directed segment of the film: the scenes with the hoods in the van, on the way to the old woman’s house (if I had known this, I would have destroyed that part of the print). As a consequence, there was no “logic” to the film’s story from that point forward.

The end of the movie was trimmed (some 3 minutes). The museum director’s daughter [Andra St. Ivanyi) was being taken to a local hospital (explained by Detective Charles). Given the circumstances of the killings in the museum, the police are keeping her under guard. The teacher [Deborah Winters] remains to answer questions. There is a scene of a delivery truck delivering cases of soda. When the driver handles the cases, the bottles jingle, producing the sounds of the “evil-bracelet.” What was cut earlier was a quick scene early in the film when the driver is doing the same thing as the kids enter the museum. Andra St. Ivanyi looks at the truck and then at her bracelet. At the close of the film, the same thing happens, only now it’s a deathly reminder the girl of what happened. What was cut in the final scene was the close up of the bottles clinking together and making the bracelet sound.

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CAST/CREW Directed by Tom Daley Produced by Warren Chaney Written by Warren Chaney

Deborah Winters as Eve Ferrell / Young Arab Woman / Old Arab Woman James Huston as Dr. Wallace Andra St. Ivanyi as Alex Wallace Scott Bankston as Ted Pinson Red Mitchell as Mike Daley (as Mark Mitchell) André Chimène as Tony Greco Charity Merrill as Babs

Makeup Department John Blake … special makeup effects artist Ron Clark … hair stylist / makeup artist Thomas Floutz … special makeup effects artist William Forsche … special makeup effects artist (as Bill Forsche) Rick Jones … hair stylist / makeup artist Brian Wade … special makeup effects artist Gabriel Bartalos … special effects makeup Barbara Anne Bock … special effects makeup Nichael Boggio … special effects makeup Jack Bridwell … special effects contact lenses Lesley Chaney … special effects assistant Paul Clemens … special effects makeup William Forsche … special effects makeup (as Bill Forsche) Jim Gill … special effects makeup Tom Hartigan … special effects assistant Frankie Inez … special effects supervisor / special effects: California Bettie Kauffman … special effects coordinator Richard Mayone … special effects makeup James McLoughlin … special effects makeup Bart Mixon … special effects makeup Frank ‘Paco’ Munoz … special effects mechanical supervisor John Naulin … special effects makeup: California Steven Summerfield … special effects makeup Christopher Swift … special effects makeup coordinator (as Chris Swift) Brian Wade … special effects makeup

CREDITS/REFERENCES/SOURCES/BIBLIOGRAPHY Fangoria#67 Cinefantastique v17n01 It Came from the 80s! Francesco Borseti

The Outing (1987) Retrospective SUMMARY In 1893, a young woman wears a magical bracelet and the dark shadow of an evil jinni (genie) looms over a bloody scene, foreshadowing the violence to come.

#80sFilms #80sHORROR

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stillellensibley · 4 years

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The ambiguous pleasures of Puritanism, William Scott at Tate St Ives

DAVID ANFAM

William Scott (1913–1989) is known for his still lifes, landscapes and nudes produced over a 60-year period. A friend of Rothko and de Kooning, he deftly blended mid-twentieth-century American and more historic European influences in his paintings, which oscillate between figuration and abstraction. To coincide with the first retrospective of his work in more than twenty years, David Anfam reveals the complex emotional ambiguity in Scott’s art that aimed for ‘beauty in plainness’

William Scott, Berlin Blues 4, 1965

Jean Sibelius once made a famously acerbic remark about his sparse Sixth Symphony: ‘Whereas most other modern composers are engaged in manufacturing cocktails of every hue and description, I offer the public pure cold water.’ In effect, Sibelius was only stating in starker terms a position he had already taken when Gustav Mahler met him in 1907 on a tour of Finland. To Mahler’s expansive Romantic notion that ‘the symphony must be like the world. It must embrace everything’, Sibelius countered: ‘I admire the symphony’s style and severity of form, as well as the profound logic creating an inner connection among all of the motives.’ There is more than a hint of Sibelius’s inward-looking austerity and cohesion about William Scott’s achievement.

Often, Scott’s universe might be regarded as a kind of pictorial counterpart to that of the composer whose Fourth Symphony was dubbed the Barkbröd in reference to a nineteenth-century famine during which Scandinavians mixed ground-up birch bark with flour to survive. Read Ulster for Finland and one begins to get the flavour of the painter’s roots (born in Scotland, he spent his hard-bitten youth in Northern Ireland). Of course, this was not ultimately a question of economic deprivation alone, although Scott’s beginnings were humble enough and his hallmark empty pots, pans and lone mackerel on a plate hardly suggest Gordon Ramsay (in fact, the artist couldn’t even cook). Rather, it was more like a self-imposed aesthetic diet, a willed mortification of the spirit.

As Sibelius’s stance grew partly in reaction to the extravagances of atonalism and other Continental avant-garde developments, so Scott came to distance himself from European and American modernism per se, notwithstanding his well-documented personal ties to Mark Rothko and other contemporaries. The waters of the various harbours that he painted and the recurrent pale colours or grisaille are cool in more than literal temperature, chill in a sense closer to what Sibelius said he had offered the public instead of cocktails. Scott put the whole matter bluntly: ‘I was brought up in a grey world, an austere world: the garden I knew was a cemetery and we had no fine furniture. The objects I painted were the symbols of the life I knew best and the pictures which looked most like mine were painted on walls a thousand years ago.’ In short, he had a preference for the primitive.

William Scott, Pears, 1979

The preference for the primitive has been a recurrent trend in art and life since antiquity: E.H. Gombrich traced its fortunes in his last book of the same name published posthumously in 2002. Much in Scott’s vision fits the recurrent patterns of taste that Gombrich’s study uncovered. For example, Scott had a deep aversion (confirmed to me by his son James) towards a too-slick, virtuoso handling of paint and draughtsmanship – a tradition epitomised in Britain by, say, the brilliant touch of a William Nicholson – instead opting for blockish forms, coarse surfaces and an anxious line. This sentiment is as ancient as the Roman rhetoricians who, in Gombrich’s words, contrasted ‘the hard and angular shapes of archaic art to the supple grace of Hellenistic masterpieces’. Like Scott, they found a virtue and sincerity in plain speaking (carefully as it might have to be crafted). In turn, Scott said: ‘I find beauty in plainness.’ In his estimate, Ben Nicholson bettered William.

To be sure, Scott’s was not the loud variety of modernist primitivism familiar, for instance, from Picasso’s practice circa 1907 and Die Brücke, or even Dubuffet’s. It seems nearer to the quiet archaism of Gauguin, Moore or Matisse’s simplifications, albeit with faint traces of the post- war ‘geometry of fear’ look – not to mention ‘the plain sense of things’ espoused across the water in Wallace Stevens’s poetry. The apparent voids in Scott’s paintings – from the rectangular planes of his table tops and the quasi-abstractions of the 1950s to the pervasive chromatic fields during the 1970s – tend to feel as immanent as Rothko’s ‘emptiness’ or that in Stevens’s The Snow Man: ‘For the listener, who listens in the snow,/And, nothing himself, beholds/Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.’ Scant wonder, too, that in his final decade or so, Scott was drawn to the stripped-down art of ancient Egypt and its hieroglyphics. Again, a venerable precedent springs to hand. It was Cicero who warned about the double-edged delights of the overly sophisticated senses: ‘How much more brilliant, as a rule, in beauty and variety of colouring are new pictures compared to the old ones. But though they captivate us at first sight the pleasure does not last, while the very roughness and crudity of old paintings maintains their hold on us.’ The same applies to Scott’s idiosyncratic dour awkwardness. Whether it is his earlier seated nudes – their crudely spiky, reductive cast reminiscent of Lear’s exclamation, ‘Is man no more than this?… a poor, bare, forked animal’ – or the grainy, ramshackle images typified by White, Sand and Ochre 1960–1, his work tends to linger in the mind precisely because of its introversion and doggedness. To echo Sibelius on his melodic concision, all its visual motifs resemble the members of one extended family, as still life becomes landscape, figures turn into objects and back, and the little and the large fuse. Akin to a relative whom we half recognise, a latent propinquity haunts Scott’s compositions, prompting us to wonder about the impulse that alike drives them.

William Scott, White, Sand and Ochre, 1960–1

Before Scott pared his effects down with Occam’s razor, as it were, simplifying them into signs, one or two fledgling efforts give a clue as to what he would subsequently turn against – to borrow Gombrich’s phrase, the nature of his ‘avoidance reactions’. A little-known Still Life from 1935 depicts a lemon, apples, a pear or two, a white cloth and what must be a Bénédictine bottle. Surprisingly sophisticated in its painterly touch and evoking Chardin, this exercise hints at the route not taken, the sensuousness that underlay Scott’s later sobriety. Indeed, the multifarious pears and the occasional egg that he painted in the 1970s are about as edible as revenants, which is what they are: mental transformations of old empirical observations. To reach this rarefied state, he took to painting from photographs and from recollection.

Was the thing in itself, the French liqueur and the deft strokes of pigment (evident again in the Cézanne-influenced Girl at a Table (Figure and Still Life) of 1938 with its lush blue shadows playing against orange fruit), too seductive and, hence, distracting for the serious arena of two dimensions? If so, this was why Scott wanted a ‘time lapse’ between what he saw and how he painted it, “a waiting time” for the visual experience to become involved with all other experience. That is why I paint from memory’. It is this distance that separates Scott, even at his most exuberant in the late 1950s, from the lusty immediacy of American gesturalism and Abstract Expressionism in general, despite some superficial parallels. The exceptions to this rule are Philip Guston and Rothko. The former moved between representation and abstraction, immediacy and memory, in ways analogous to Scott, by the late 1940s submerging objects and anatomies into traces and schemata, then a decade or so later wrenching them back from a painterly morass. In Rothko’s case, Scott’s affinity with his American friend hinges less on a shared passion for colour or its lack – the large still lifes that erupt into lush golden and azure tonalities, alongside the monochrome, rectilinear figure abstractions that are his counterparts a decade beforehand to Rothko’s final ‘black and grey’ canvases – than on inner purpose. Namely, the urge that Rothko defined: ‘Tension: conflict or desire which in art is curbed at the very moment it occurs.’ In both artists, there is a case to be made for concluding that they were closet sensualists.

Little else explains the weird role of metamorphosis in Scott’s imagery, which derived not from Surrealism, but rather from the inherent mutability of psychic forces that are liable to be repressed or channelled so that they elude overt recognition. Here an admission by Scott about a picture he executed in 1948 spoke volumes: “It is probably one of the first instances when I make a double image… These objects now take on another meaning, which is obscure, and I don’t personally like to point it out.” A Freudian reading would seize on this statement and such instances as Scott’s erotic sketches for Private Suite 1973 with relish. Perhaps, though, his reticence is just as relevant. Following Rothko, he preferred ‘the simple expression of the complex thought’, as opposed to the blatant self-repression and dualism that the former had discerned in Mondrian: ‘A Calvinist who spent his life caressing canvas.’ Anticipating later artists such as Donald Judd and Agnes Martin, who walked a tightrope between severity and the senses – witness the rainbow hues that the former secreted within his boxes and the latter’s minimalist odes to joy – Scott’s art is a strangely memorable testimony to the ambiguous pleasures of puritanism in a disenchanted world.

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dylan38sanders · 5 years

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Crowd Mics: Turning Phones Into Mics For Events

Another Monday, another Event Tech Podcast, today we are telling the story of Crowd Mics for events! Everyone can relate to the annoyances of sound during a live event. Whether it’s the speaker, the audience, or the AV company, these little glitches affect everyone. Ultimately, they affect the success of an otherwise awesome event, and no one wants that.

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How often have you asked yourself: “Wouldn’t it be awesome if I could just turn my phone into a mic?”. Well, you’ve probably wondered about this in several situations of your life. But with events, in particular, imagine just how much this small tweak could be a game changer. No more mic runners for anyone! If an attendee wants to ask a question, he could just turn his phone into a wireless microphone. Almost sounds like magic, right? Well, it’s not – it’s actually Crowd Mics for events!

Back in 2013, two brothers conceived this idea. The following year, the product was launched, and our host Brandt Krueger got to sit down with them for the first time. And today, five years later, Brandt and Will Curran welcome brothers Tim and Sean Halladay. For this week’s Event Tech Podcast, the four reminisce about the rollercoaster past, what’s new in the present, and what the future might bring. Amp up your speakers, because this week is all about the journey of Crowd Mics for events!

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Click here to download the full audio transcription.

Crowd Mics For Events: The Beginning

Everything Starts With An Idea!

Tim and Sean’s lives took a very interesting turn. None of them was quite on the track to become an entrepreneur – Sean was actually in nursing school. But once an idea hits, you have to embrace it!

“Tim and I were actually sitting at a meeting together and we couldn’t hear what somebody was saying just a couple seats from us”, Sean recalls. “I leaned over and I said, “Man, Tim, what if there was some way you could turn your phone into a microphone? Like, I don’t know how. I don’t know what the technology,” I had no clue, “But what if you could just pull out your phone out of your pocket, talk into it, and everybody hear you over the sound system?” And he was like, “Wow, I don’t know.”

From then on, the rest was history. The two embarked on a journey to introduce the product to the world. In 2014, they had their first product launch, and the event industry went crazy!

All This Buzz For What?

“Twitter kind of just exploded and every event person that I knew was like, “Have you seen this thing? Oh, my God. You can just talk into your phone and it solves the whole issue”, says Brandt. The buzz got them $1 million in investment. All the way from Arizona, the two made their way to Salesforce’s event, Dream Force.

They got up on stage. “Hey, what’s up, everybody? I’m Tim Holladay from Crowd Mics”, Tim began. “So, we want you to download an app. Everybody’s gotta download this app. We’re gonna be giving a gift card away whoever download’s the app first.” And so, people started downloading and we’d start to get them on board, and we’re using all of this footage to capture so we could show investors and we could show other event planners and that we could show people it works. There were 200 people in a room, they were talking into their phone, and you could hear it and it could work”, recalls Sean.

What Now?

They got their product out into the world, with proven value. The first couple of events were free, and the issue of pricing eventually came up. “I mean, this is a product that did not exist on the planet. So, we’re pricing this thing and having a hard time. Is this an event app? Which has a kind of a pricing model. Is this a microphone? Which has a pricing model. Yes, do both. And so, we finally kinda settled in on a per event cut fee and just started charging and people started paying. And we just started running events”, says Tim.

The Challenges

Starting your own company seems like all fun and games, right? Actually, it’s more like hustle and…more hustle. There are more barriers than finish lines, and brothers Tim and Sean know all about it.

Educating

“Like, you gotta realize this is a brand new product that we’re taking to market. So, a lot of time it was educating why it’s important to have audience interaction and why it’s important to be able to capture that audio for recordings and why it’s important to let people express themselves and that’s why they came here. And so, a lot of it was educating and trying to get people to understand why we thought and why it was important in the market”, says Sean.

Validation

Tim compliments Sean’s point of view with the issue of market value: “From both event planner and technical side of things, this is a new product you have never seen before, you have 200 executives from your company that has hired you to pull off an incredible event, you’ve got everything dialed in, you’ve been working on this for a year, and then you bring in these two brothers with some sketchy-looking tech that sounds awesome, but is sketch.”

“I mean, you can see how that would be a little bit like, “Ah,” and in a lot of ways, it was. Meaning, there are a couple of technical X factors that were always a challenge for us to overcome. And so, we had to kinda take everything on a case by case basis in the early days.”

Another Event App?

Will touches upon the matter of people having to download yet another app. How can this issue be tackled?

“It’s kind of like how bad do you want it to work? How bad do you want the tech? How bad do you wanna use it? And in some cases, they say, “Not that bad. Not bad enough to do that. So, can we use your texting? Can we use your polling?” And we would lead them that way, and we did a number of events where all they used was our text feature, all they used was the polling feature, and that was fine”, explains Tim.

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The Next Big Leap

“If I were to look back at one of the biggest challenges that we had with Crowd Mics was that we probably pushed too far too fast, right? Too many markets, too many opportunities, too many just big wide eyes, and didn’t focus as much as we could have. We did the best we could with what we had, but that kind of wanting to explore other markets really spread us very thin quickly, and we ended up into a situation where we were not profitable”, recalls Tim.

What to do in such a situation? “So, the options are either raise more money, figure out how to charge more and get more revenue coming in, or just shut her down. I mean, we literally got to that decision point”, Tim continues.

The Decision

Sean remembers that period quite well, and what it came down to: “To give it a shot, we cut back and I just made the hard decision to go and find something else to do to give the startup life, to give it a chance to go. So, yeah, that was a tough decision and sucked to fire yourself from your own company that you founded and dreamt of, but it was the reality to make it work and to give it a chance. Which now, in hindsight, was the best decision that we made, but it was a tough one in the moment, for sure.”

Tim was the one who stayed. “Sean connected with a friend of his, Shaun McBride, known as Shonduras on the interwebs, and started to do some work up in Utah. So, Sean uproots his family, his little kids, little twins, and literally on a cold December night, moves to Utah. And I’m left here with our developer to keep Crowd Mics moving”.

The Biamp Connection

“So, Biamp, for those that don’t know, they’re a really, a kind of audiovisual provider, a manufacturer based in Beaverton, Oregon up near Portland”, Tim explains.

“They saw us at Info Com, thought it was cool, kept in touch a little bit, and then one day, Sean’s long gone in Utah, I’m keeping things kind of buzzing along, and they came along and said, “Man, this is really interesting. We like what we see. Are you interested in selling Crowd Mics?” Out of nowhere. Completely out of the blue. And the timing, guys, was just-it was the right timing. It was the right timing, it was the right situation. I would either have to raise more capital or figure out a different way and when they came along, it was the right thing to do”, he recalls.

They officially announced it a month ago, but the transaction actually took place in 2018. Ever since, the two brothers have been up to other exciting projects.

Fast Forward To Today

“We work with some of the biggest talent from Peter McKinnon to Tanner Fox to the Ace Family, Chris Ramsay. So, some huge talent on YouTube and Instagram where we go out and work with brands, both to just get paid promotion, basically, to spread the word on what they’re doing”, says Sean.

Tim is still up to some Crowd Mic business: “Biamp, when they bought Crowd Mics, the idea was to do something with it, but at the time, they just saw the opportunity to grab it, but really hadn’t had a formulated plan on what to do with it. So, they grabbed it and kind of sat on it for a little bit. I shouldn’t say sat on it, but they just didn’t really actively pursue doing much with it. So, I kind of just did some consulting work with them and with some other people doing some consulting with a couple local companies, and just recently, they said, “You know what, Tim? We’re gonna launch this sucker. Let’s just-let’s do it. We’d love to have you involved. Let’s launch Crowd Mics. Let’s re-launch Crowd Mics.”

He’s also aiming for some higher flights: “So, right now, I’m doing consulting work with Biamp and I thought, “Man, I’m just such a nerd. What could I do to exploit my nerdiness?” So, I’m a speaker. I’m a future speaker. You go to timholladay.com, I’m just now starting, just getting warmed up where I will do keynote and breakout session type speaking all about looking 5 to 15 years into the future and understanding how, as corporations, as organizations, and just as people, how we can best watch out for the pitfalls and then take advantage of incredible opportunities in the future”.

Some Good Advice

What could these ingenious brothers have to offer in terms of advice to future entrepreneurs?

On Sean’s part, it’s all about who you surround yourself with: “You’ve gotta surround yourself and find people that are genuine and will give you real feedback and thoughts and input. And make the connection when they say they can make the connection and introduce you to people that are gonna benefit and help you”.

Tim’s an advocate for the “you only live once philosophy” – knowing very well what that might mean: “Now that you’ve got yourself surrounded by good people, is just to freaking go for it. Like, really. Life is just way too short to not just do it. Meaning, what I found is all of us truly do have just this 24 hour-it’s super cliché, but we literally all have the same amount of time, and it does require giving up some things. You might need to back off on the Insta kind of trolling, you might need to back off on that latest Netflix series, you might need to make some hard decisions, you might need to put some cash in, you might need to sell your house and rent”, he says.

Conclusion

Overall, it comes down to hard work. “Those who hustle, those who grind, those who can just work, they’re gonna be able to make money. Might as well just do what you wanna do, even if it ends up bombing in a flaming ball of fire, it is worth the journey. Because the next one won’t bomb as bad, and then the third might hit, and then the fourth will change your life”.

So, that was a brief overview of this amazing journey with Crowd Mics for events. Let us know what you think about the technology, and of Tim and Sean’s incredible story, in the comment section below!

Resources:

Crowd Mics

TH: Tim Holladay

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biofunmy · 4 years

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Eddie Murphy Returns to ‘Saturday Night Live’

It took 35 years, but Eddie Murphy came back to host “Saturday Night Live.”

The last time Murphy hosted the show, it was Dec. 15, 1984, just a few months after this one-time wunderkind (who joined “S.N.L.” when he was 19 years old) quit the program to focus on his flourishing film career. In the sketches that aired that night, he revisited several of his beloved characters, including Buckwheat, Gumby and Mr. Robinson.

Tonight, in an episode that also featured the musical guest Lizzo, Murphy revisited several of his beloved characters, including Buckwheat, Gumby and Mr. Robinson. But first, in an opening monologue, he updated the audience on the last several years of his life and received tributes from a few surprise guests.

Taking the stage of NBC’s Studio 8H, Murphy told “S.N.L.” viewers: “This is the last episode of 2019. But if you’re black, this is the first episode since I left back in 1984.”

He then showed a photograph of himself when he was still an “S.N.L.” cast member. “Yeah, I look at least five years younger there,” Murphy said. “You know what they always say: Money don’t crack.”

Among the ways that his life has changed since then, Murphy said, is that “I have 10 kids now — 11 if you count Kevin Hart.” He added, “If you had told me 30 years ago that I would be this boring stay-at-home house dad and Bill Cosby would be in jail, even I would have took that bet.” Slipping into his Cosby impersonation, Murphy said, “Who is America’s Dad now?”

Tracy Morgan, a fellow “S.N.L.” alum, joined Murphy onstage and offered him praise. “If it wasn’t for you I wouldn’t be here,” Morgan told him. “Like, literally. I was conceived on the ‘Delirious’ tour bus.”

Chris Rock, who was also an “S.N.L.” cast member before becoming a stand-up superstar, said that the show’s creator and executive producer Lorne Michaels had compared him to Murphy when he joined the show.

“When I got hired, Lorne told me, ‘You’re going to be the next Eddie Murphy,” Rock said. “And then a year later he said, ‘No, you’re not.’”

Dave Chappelle, another titan of stand-up, told Murphy he had been an inspiration. “I followed your blueprint for my entire career,” Chappelle said. “I became the biggest star on television and then I quit.”

Looking over the assembled group, Chappelle said, “Right now you’re looking at half of Netflix’s budget, right here onstage.”

Morgan said: “Not me. I made all my millions on the road.”

Murphy asked, “You mean touring?”

Morgan replied, “No, I got hit by a truck.”

Mr. Robinson Sketch of the Week

In the first of several segments in which Murphy reprised his former “S.N.L.” characters, he donned the sweater and sneakers of Mr. Robinson, his Mr. Rogers parody, who told viewers that his neighborhood had changed considerably since the last time they saw him.

As Murphy sang in his opening song:

I was gone for a bit, but now I’m all right. My neighbors was all black, but now they white. The check cashing place turned into a bank. Elevator works and the stairs they don’t stink. The white people came and changed everything, But I am still your neighbor.

He also taught his audience about the word “gentrification”: “It’s like a magic trick,” Murphy said. “White people pay a lot of money and then poof, all the black people are gone.”

Buckwheat Sketch of the Week

What started out looking like a straightforward lampoon of Fox’s reality competition series “The Masked Singer” took a turn when Chris Redd (playing the show’s host, Nick Cannon) introduced a new contestant, dressed in a giant corn-on-the-cob costume, who began crooning “Can’t Help Falling in Love” in an almost unintelligible patois.

It was, of course, Murphy, playing his version of Buckwheat, the old “Our Gang” character, who went onto sing other popular tunes including “Dine, Teal, Dawibba,” “I Chot Da Chariff” and “Tinga Nadies.”

Melissa Villaseñor, playing the panelist Nicole Scherzinger, told Murphy, “We’ve missed you these past 30 years.” He told her not to worry, saying, “Wherever I am, I’m doing o-tay.”

Democratic Debate Sketch of the Week

You know how these celebrity-laden, impression-heavy segments go, so we’ll give you a quick rundown of who played whom and what their best lines were:

Heidi Gardner as the moderator Judy Woodruff: “Just like ‘The Bachelor,’ the further we go, the less diverse it gets.”

Kate McKinnon as Elizabeth Warren: “I’m here and I am in my element. PBS is my safe word. Last debate, I gave you policy T.M.I., and now I am ready to walk it back.”

Colin Jost as Pete Buttigieg: “I’m the only person on this stage who isn’t a millionaire or billionaire. I live on my mayor’s salary plus a $20 a week allowance from my parents, and that’s only if I do my chores.”

Larry David as Bernie Sanders: “Look at me. Are you really surprised that my main concern is the temperature?” He added: “Let me tell you, no matter how hot the earth gets I will not wear shorts. I swim in corduroy.”

Fred Armisen as Michael Bloomberg, explaining his uninvited appearance at the debate: “For $30 million, PBS is now owned by viewers like me.”

Yes, there was also an appearance by Alec Baldwin as President Trump (who said he was there “so you people will actually watch this little freak show”), and McKinnon changed costumes mid-sketch to reappear as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose Christmas gift to Trump was two articles of impeachment.

Weekend Update Jokes of the Week

Over at the Weekend Update desk, the anchors, Colin Jost and Michael Che, made a Christmas joke swap and riffed on the latest impeachment news.

Jost:

On Wednesday, the House voted to impeach President Trump. But Nancy Pelosi refuses to send the articles to the Senate until they guarantee a fair trial. So now we’re all in this weird limbo where no one knows exactly what’s going on, there’s this cast of wild characters making fools of themselves, and everyone is thinking, “Please, God, just let this end.” So basically it’s “Cats.”

Che:

In a letter to Nancy Pelosi, Trump claimed that he has been treated worse than those accused in the Salem witch trials. You know where they set women on fire for, like, wearing pants. Well, according to Donald Trump, impeachment is, like, literally worse than that. I’m a little disappointed in Donald Trump. I knew he would snap but I thought it would be fun like Tupac in ’96. This is more sad like Britney in ’07.

Gumby Sketch of the Week

In another welcome head-fake, Jost began to set up a joke about Mitch McConnell, only to be interrupted by Murphy, playing his dyspeptic version of Gumby, the venerable clay-animated character.

Murphy joined Jost and Che at the Weekend Update desk, mostly to bellow out his famous catchphrase, “I’m Gumby, damn it,” and to roast the two anchors.

“I’ve passed kidney stones with more personality than the two of you,” Murphy told them. “Face it, kid, the two of you together couldn’t Velcro my sneakers.” (Meanwhile, if you were hoping to see Murphy’s old character Velvet Jones, he turned up in a “Black Jeopardy” sketch later in the show.)

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longislandweekly-blog · 5 years

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Eugene Cordero, Andrew Rannells, Regina Hall, Don Cheadle and Paul Scheer star in Black Monday. (Photo by Michael Levine/Showtime)

Oct. 19, 1987, was a dark economic date. It was when the worst stock market crash in Wall Street history took place. Three-plus decades later, this financial tragedy is serving as satirical fodder for Black Monday, a new Showtime series that shares the same nickname as that ill-fated day.

Created by David Caspe and Jordan Cahan, it stars fellow executive producer Don Cheadle, who plays Maurice “Mo” Monroe, the head of the Jammer Group. This renegade Wall Street investment firm is rounded out by a misfit crew driven by Dawn Darcy (Regina Hall) and Keith Shankar (Paul Scheer) who cross paths with Blair Pfaff (Andrew Rannells), a wide-eyed trader ripe for manipulation. With the comedic team of Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg serving as executive producers and writers, it’s the kind of comedic project Scheer was eager to jump onto after being an integral part of the FX series The League for seven seasons.

“I’m friends with David and Jordan, who created Black Monday. Years ago, they said they had this idea about Wall Street and they had this part they thought I’d be really good for. I said I’d love to do it, but I couldn’t do anything because of The League and David was doing Happy Endings at the time, so it just faded away,” Scheer said. “About last year this time, I got a call from them again and asked if I remember that show they initially proposed. I said yes and they said they wanted me to meet Don [Cheadle] for the part. It was originally written for a guy in his late ’60s and they wanted to see my take on it. So I came in and read with Don and that’s how the part came together.”

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With the show being set in the mid to late 1980s, there are plenty of cultural references thrown in, whether it’s the video game Duck Hunt, the then-recent World Series champion New York Mets or nods to workplace films Wall Street and Working Girl. And while Scheer was only 11 when everything hit the financial fan on that long-ago date and was more caught up with begging his parents to let him stay up late watching television and taking him to see Planes, Trains & Automobiles, he dove into his Wall Street research with great relish.

“I was finding a lot of great BBC documentaries about people that trade on the floor and the culture there,” he said. “There’s something interesting about traders. These people are essentially living the life of a rock star, without any of the fame or success. It’s just the wealth part. So they are acting insane during their days and making all these cutthroat decisions and a lot of them have to come home to a family. Part of the fun of these documentaries was that you’d see these people on the floor who were just these animals and then go home and play with their kids. But you’re basically putting more stress on your throat and heart from eight until noon and you have the rest of the day off.”

With Cheadle setting the tone for the series, the narrative takes twists and turns that perfectly capture that era’s financial excesses, be it the main character’s use of a stretch Lamborghini, high-stakes wagering on mundanities and the rampant use of cocaine, all fueled by alpha male-driven braggadocio. And while it’s framed with humor, there are a surprising amount of dark and dramatic turns that pop up, particularly when it comes to Scheer’s character.

From left: Maurice “Mo” Monroe (Don Cheadle), Dawn Darcy (Regina Hall) and Keith Shankar (Paul Scheer) of Black Monday’s fictional investment firm the Jammer Group (Photo by Erin Simkin/Showtime)

A scene from Black Monday in which Andrew Rannels’ Blair Pfaff is attempting to dazzle his future fellow traders in the Jammer Group as Regina Hall’s Dawn Darcy looks on (Photo by Erin Simkin/Showtime)

Paul Scheer as Keith in Black Monday (Photo by Erin Simkin/Showtime)

“When I first heard about the show, it was about seeing a character that was much more complex than what I had seen in a comedy, and that was exciting. I love what these guys have been really able to do. While this is a hard comedy, they are adding some of these beats that I love from dramatic shows like Better Call Saul that has a serialization to it,” Scheer explained. “I think a lot of the times when you hear the word dramedy, it’s a lot more drama and a lot less comedy. And I think what they’re trying to do here is balance it.

My character is clearly putting on this very aggressive persona to mask what he’s dealing with in his personal life that, at the time, was not accepted. We are a firm of underdogs, but it’s a little bit deeper than just being The Bad News Bears and I really like that. It’s one of those shows that, as we shot it, I had an idea of what was going to be happening over the course of the season. But when we shot our last day, I literally had no idea where this goes in season two, because everything matters.”

Paul Scheer’s Dr. Andre Nowzick getting to know real-life Chicago Bears/New York Jets running back Matt Forte better during “The Funeral” episode of The League. (Photo by Patrick McElhenney/FX)

With a number of projects in the docket—a couple of podcasts, writing a comic book series, and myriad television guest appearances, the veteran sketch comedian’s television face time is even more ubiquitous. But given the level of talent his three main castmates bring to the set on a day-in and day-out basis and the quality of writing he’s working with on Black Monday, Scheer realizes the unique opportunity he’s been given to be a part of this.

“All three of [my costars] are incredibly playful, fun and ridiculously talented. They want to make the best thing and there are no egos there,” he said. “It’s all a team sport, given that we’re the four regulars on the show. Coming into that world, I felt incredibly well received, although daunted.”

Black Monday is currently airing on HBO on Sunday nights.

Check out this week’s full digital issue of Long Island Weekly!

Paul Scheer chats with Long Island Weekly's Dave Gil de Rubio about his role in Black Monday, Showtime's new dark comedy that parodies Wall Street's worst day. Oct. 19, 1987, was a dark economic date. It was when the worst stock market crash in Wall Street history took place.

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usnewsaggregator-blog · 6 years

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Finding Your Creative Voice Again After Combat

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Finding Your Creative Voice Again After Combat

When I came home from my first deployment to Iraq, readjusting was literally impossible for me. I was a 33-year-old Army combat officer and I could no longer feel or see beauty in anything. And while I didn’t know how to leave the destructive path I was on, I also couldn’t stand to crush the hearts of my wife and children anymore. So, I temporarily moved out of my home and slept on various couches, more concerned with drinking than eating. When I would sit down to write, like I had done my entire life before deploying, I’d come up with nothing but blank pages. I had lost a lot of myself on the battlefield, it turned out. Large, significant pieces of who I was had been killed off somewhere in the desert, missing in action, never to come home.

On my second tour, two and a half years later, I tried my best to prepare the first-timers for the realities of war. My soldiers would ask me what I did before the Army, and I would laugh and tell them I used to be an artist. Those words sounded so foreign to me, too, so profoundly silly coming out of my mouth. An artist. My muse, I believed, had been gone for some time at that point. All I really felt like writing was my obituary, but even that proved too difficult an exercise. I was exactly what I needed to be for the Army, though. My job was running a unit in a combat zone, not explaining the world for the sake of art.

Five years earlier, the idea that I could ever run out of inspiration would have been unthinkable. Just before the terror attacks of 9/11, I was an advertising executive in my late 20s living in Texas, where I was born and raised. I had stumbled into my career while an undergraduate English student writing freelance copy for a boutique marketing agency. A couple of the firm’s senior concept and design chiefs, two artists in their early 50s named Brant and Brian, were dear friends who spent a lot of time helping me develop my interests in poetry, painting, and music when I first entered the industry. I had always been creative and, as my mother would say, was on an endless journey to discover new ways to articulate my feelings. While Brant and Brian were spared the period of me loudly expressing my disillusionment with a fledgling punk rock band in my parents’ garage, they were still enthusiastic about my potential in not only the fine arts, but in advertising design as well.

How Serving in World War II Spurred My Academic Ambition

By my junior year in college, I was given a small but full-time salary sketching storyboards, designing layouts, and writing jingles. It was a glorious time, in no small part because I had found a way to pay a few bills with my talents—whereas before I mostly gave my paintings away to friends and family who could appreciate my abstract depictions of everyday items like ladder-back chairs or half-smoked cigarettes in dark oils and acrylic. Now, I had an office with a drafting table, a light box, and a window; I participated in that age-old workplace rite of learning to appreciate scotch and cigars. Before long my wife was driving a Mercedes wagon and I had been fitted for a decent suit or two.

Because I continued to write short stories, poetry, and the occasional guitar ballad, I didn’t feel like I had sold my artistic soul for the nine-to-five. I actually felt lucky to work with such talented colleagues. They were in some ways also my teachers; middle-aged women and men who had gads of experience to share, like real-life former Don Drapers and Peggy Olsons. Many of them had served during Vietnam as young officers, often fresh out of art or business school. They’d share with me fantastic stories of life abroad, and, sometimes, following a drink too many, of war itself. But their accounts of the battlefield were little more than compartmentalized ugliness on the back shelves of their memory. Something that happened decades ago, and a world away, in another lifetime.

* * *

A few years later—after a couple of job changes, and just when I thought I was ready to step away from the agency world and commit to a serious writing career—the unconceivable took place. On a Tuesday morning in September of 2001, I stood in a corporate conference room watching the horror unfold on the news: crashing planes and fire and falling debris. That’s also when I knew I would soon be in uniform.

I wasn’t itching for an excuse to dump everything I had been working on and head off to the sound of the cannons. The calling was deeper than that, fueled in no small part by the romantic notions of a lifelong dreamer. I could see myself serving my country as great icons like Jack Kennedy or Jim Wright had done before me. Young men who put their lives on hold to do their part, later emerging as heroes who’d go on to say that war had helped shape them into the leaders they were. And maybe part of me hoped I would return from combat with the wisdom of these giants, and write of my own experience on the field of battle just as Ernest Hemingway, E. E. Cummings, and J.R.R. Tolkien had.

There were, of course, more practical reasons to join. While a military career was never expected of me, someone in every generation on both sides of my family (including my mother and kid sister) had served in either the Army or Navy, going back to the Civil War. And if I had ever felt guilty for not doing my part, 9/11 made me feel downright condemnable. So with my wife’s cautious blessing, a day after the terror attacks, I began the recruitment process. Less than a year later, in August of 2002, I raised my right hand and took the Oath of Enlistment.

Hollywood had warned me through the years that my initial training was going to suck, but no matter how many times you watch An Officer and a Gentleman, you can never fully prepare for what will happen when you step off the bus for Basic Combat Training. After two years of intense instruction, the second lieutenant staring back at me in the mirror looked nothing like the once out-of-shape artist I used to be. My wife and three children could see a different kind of transformation, too, one that seemed to foreshadow the trouble to come. Already I was reckless and brooding, my drinking had reached troubling levels, and I was more prone to respond violently to any affront, however small. The perfect time, as it were, to deploy to the cradle of civilization.

It’s not the heat, the long missions, or the terrible food that dominate the memories of my time in combat. Rather, my mind takes me to the feeling of always waiting for something bad to happen: to be driving along a main supply route, resting in your tent, or visiting with locals—and waiting for a rocket or sniper to kill you. Like the Sword of Damocles, but with no great fortune or power to offset the pending doom. And as much as I can tell myself we were all only doing our job, my most haunting thoughts are about the innocents caught in the crossfire. So, when people ask me what it was like, I usually take them down a friendlier road, one of sandstorms, biblical landmarks, and the cornucopia of free energy drinks and cheap pirated DVDs. I tell them about the unbreakable bonds that wartime brothers and sisters in uniform will always share, but I don’t bring up what it is like to lose them.

* * *

I left the Army after 12 years, following my third Iraq deployment, and tried to get back into my old routine. I wasn’t the same angry, self-destructive person who came home after the first combat tour, but there were little reminders here and there—the nightmares, an aversion to fireworks and war movies—that I would never be normal again. My family stuck around long enough for me to get my act together, and I was more grateful than they will ever know. Within a few days, I took over as the head of marketing for a regional telecom company, but I had lost my ability to think creatively, to devise catchy phrases and effective copy. So much had changed since my career had been interrupted. I struggled to get out of bed on most mornings and found no meaning in the hackneyed Monday-to-Friday ritual. With my artistic soul seemingly gone, I began to wonder again what I was doing and why.

Eventually, something simple but profound happened: I started to slowly accept that I was just going to be different. A new future was stretching out ahead of me. I began to spend more time enjoying golf, cigars, and espresso. I took up spice gardening and made pho a weekly dining event. I set aside the whiskey and learned to make exotic cocktails. My wife and I made James Bond movies part of our Sunday afternoons. I turned 44 years old and arrived at the intersection of banality and stereotype.

And then it was safe; the coast was finally clear in my subconscious. I was a civilian and once this new normal set in, and the uncertainty and ambiguity of life as a deploying soldier disappeared, my muse returned. I sat down one afternoon three weeks ago and wrote a short story about a Vietnam War vet turned Hollywood actor in his 70s who is staring down his own mortality. It was good—really good. And it has since been, once again, a glorious time. I have my voice back, and it no longer feels awkward to tell people that I’m an artist.

I’ve always thought there are two primary forces, angst and eros, that drive humans to create. It’s perhaps no surprise that the artists I admired most were Jackson Pollock, John Cheever, and Morrissey—sad souls with a darkness that I could relate to starting in my anxious teenage years and continuing well into my 30s, and whom I tried my best to emulate. While it took a major attack to get me to become a soldier, part of me once saw war as a chance to truly understand tragedy; to internalize and then capture sorrow on the written page or on the canvas or in a song. But seeing such ugliness firsthand planted the seed of a revelation that wouldn’t arrive until years later: I need enough brightness and security, not suffering, to make art. I now possess certain omniscience: the ability to see the gloom and record it, while no longer being consumed by it.

Most of my military past—the certificates, the medals, the regalia—has been boxed away, but it hits me on occasion that I was once a soldier. Like while I am sitting at a red light. Then the light turns green, and my thoughts begin to focus on whatever is next in my quiet world. And what I should write about.

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