Well, dear readers, I spent the important hours of yesterday viewing the little additional changes to The Creature Wasn’t Nice, all of which worked perfectly, save for one shot that needed to have about ten or twenty frames put back to button a joke. The additional music cues work fantastically well, and I could not have been happier. The Dirty Harry sequence is now in place and that’s short and fun. So, we locked it. Then we went to eat at a nearby coffee shop. THAT was unfortunately a terrible meal. I’d been there once before but didn’t really remember it, so I thought it would be fun to try it again. Funnily, I ordered the eggs benedict and the minute they arrived I realized that that’s what I’d had there before, and I hadn’t liked it at all. I ate it, but it was really kind of yuckilicious. I mean, blechhh. But that could not take away from my pleasure at this version of The Creature Wasn’t Nice.
I picked up a package on the way home, and I intended to call the authoring house where we’ll do the authoring for The Creature, but as irony would have it, they’d e-mailed me, showing me tests of converting the PAL DVD, which was 4×3 letterbox into a 16×9 image. Other than a little detail loss, I thought that looked pretty good. They’d done the same for the 3/4″ version of The Creature, but there the detail loss was much bigger, and I think we’ll simply go with the 4×3 letterbox on that. Then I had a long telephonic conversation with them, we worked out the deal, and we’re moving ahead now. I may have to do a little Indiegogo campaign, similar to the small one we did for Nudie Musical, to help pay for the authoring and the initial pressing. Basically, I’d make it just like pre-ordering the thing, signed copies and all, but also offer CD packages, some Creature memorabilia (I have a couple of the original costumes worn by us), I think I have some original scripts, which are fun, and other stuff like that. Just have to locate it. And I have a few other things that are memorabilia related that I think people might like to have and that I have no real use for anymore. I think we’ll try to raise four thousand dollars, which should cover all the costs of doing it. I’m now pulling together stuff for DVD extras (there was no upside at all to do a Blu-ray – it would be stupid, in fact) and I’ll do a commentary track – I’m going to see if Cindy can come in from Las Vegas to do it with me. That would really be fun. I think we’d do one together, perhaps on the producer’s horror show cut, since we could have fun pointing out how wrong-headed it is. Then I’d do a solo track for my cut. I have a trailer, and I have to dig out the preview tape cassette – we recorded the screening and I thought it would be fun to put excerpts from it. I saw the tape when I was redoing the garage and I just hope I can figure out where it went to – it may have gone to where we store everything now, but I’m told all of that is completely organized. We may include an isolated score track, or I may see if we can simply include the CD. Lots of things to explore.
Prior to all that, I’d gotten seven hours of sleep. After the long conversation, I did some work on the computer, listened to music, answered e-mails, and had another conversation, this one about the kind of packaging we’ll do for The Creature. The funny thing is, who knows if anyone will like this version any better than the other? But at least they’ll see what kind of film we actually made. I do think the other version has developed a bit of a cult, mostly people who saw the film repeatedly on USA cable. But it’s never been on home video in its proper aspect ratio – just those awful open matte VHS and DVD things, where you see over the tops of sets, see stuff at the bottom of the frame that you shouldn’t be seeing – just terrible. To put that to rights is going to be so nice. Then I relaxed.
Today, I have to be up early, for the helper is coming by to pick up something. Then Marshall Harvey is coming by at one and we’ll go eat some lunch and I’ll take possession of the hard drive that has the new version of the movie on it. I’ll watch a bit of it, just to hear the stereo music – Marshall doesn’t have speakers hooked up to his computer. Then I’ll get it to the authoring house, and I’ll also hopefully pick up some packages. After that, I’ll relax.
The rest of the week is meetings and meals and whatnot, with an emphasis on the latter. I’m not sure what the weekend holds, and then we finally have our Kritzerland rehearsal week. It’s been weird having this long of a break.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, have a helper visit, have a lunch, hopefully pick up packages, get the Pro-rez final version of The Creature to the authoring house, and then relax. Today’s topic of discussion: What are your favorite cult films? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, happy to have locked the director’s cut of The Creature – or, to put it another way, The Creature Is Locked.