I attended a couple of things today, one being about 90 minutes of justmovie trailers (Dogma was obviously absent), but among the items worthnoting was The Green Mile. I think this is the same story that StephenKing wrote and released in like 5 parts, one per month. It was directedby the same guy that did Shawshank, so it made sense that this would bea Stephen King thing. It starred Tom Hanks, Gary Sinise, and forgiveme as a couple names escape me, but also had the dude that played ‘Bear’in Armageddon as a man, apparently wrong imprisoned for a murder, who canheal people miraculously. It looks really good and is due on Christmas.

We (my GF and I) made sure that we were front row for the movie previewssince the Focus on Kevin’s films was the next thing on the list in thatsame room. Things got started about 5 minutes after the movie stuff endedand there was a round of applause as people saw Kevin and Scott come in.Before they hit the stage I saw Kevin head over to the AV dudes and givethem a video tape (*CHEER* we would not be disappointed). Kevin tooka buncha questions. Among the info gathered:

• Kevin said again that he’d probably be back to DD after DavidMack’s un on the book, somewhere around issue 18-20. Right around thetime for the 35th aniv. of DD.
• He wants to keep the animated series with the same art style that’sfound in the Clerks books. He likes Jim Mahfood’s stuff and is hopingthat the series will come as close to that as possible.
• As for the Preacher stuff: Scott and he haven’t done a whole lotof actual work on it. They said that they’ve read the script and if wehad read it then we’d have done as much as them. They’ll try and openwhat ever doors they can to help get things going. Kevin was impressedthat the script was so close to the comic and that the movie wouldpretty much be the first story arc (issues 1-4).
• They are close to getting Miramax to get something going for a Magemovie. This sounded like the same type of thing they are doing the same kindathing for Mage as for Preacher, open the doors that need opening and let’sget a flick on film.
• There are some Star Wars references in Dogma. Matt had a hugemonologue comparing Star Wars in a religious sense. Those who have readthe script have read the whole thing, but when it came to editing timethey cut out all but the first and last part. Matt would start the longdiatribe, the movie cuts to other stuff and when they come back Matt isstill going on while Jay has fall asleep listening to Matt droning on.
• Garofalo’s stuff didn’t get hacked very much at all, but fromthe sounds of it, Carlin’s did. Out of all the people who might havestuff to complain about after editting it was Carlin who apparently gotthe most cut out. Cryin’ shame.
• Most of Kevin and Scotts energy is going to be pumped into theanimated series once Dogma wraps up. So he isn’t looking towards anothermovie or a Clerks 2 or stuff like that. And speaking of wrapping thingsup on Dogma, Kevin stated that they’ve got 2 more weeks of stuff to doon it and it was mostly doing the mixing up at Skywalker Ranch.
• Kevin’s guilty pleasure movie (one that he feels bad about admittingthat he likes) is The Cutting Edge.
• They are still waiting word from Cannes, they should hear in abouta week or so. They haven’t gotten the film shopped off yet. If they getinto Cannes then that’ll be a chance to show it to everyone at once. Ifthey don’t get into Cannes then they’ll shop it around individually. I’veread a bit on the NewsAskew site (I think out of the Toronto paper) thatmade Kevin sound cocky, like he knew they were going to get the film in.It’s a crock’o’shit IMHO. Kevin didn’t sound cocky. He did sound a littleconfident, feeling like he had made a really great flick, but nowhere nearthe raving ego maniac he was made to sound like. As a side note to theCanadian folks who apparenly have it in for Kevin, fear not, you’ll bethe target soon enough, since as to be presented in the Animated Series,Canada’s only been civilized for the last 15 years, before that ya’ll”motherfuckers were hidin’ in caves ‘n shit”.
• The questionwas asked if Jay and Bob would ever get cast as the MAIN charactersin a flick or something. Kevin replied probably not ’cause they reallycan’t support a whole flick unto themselves. Think about it, one ofthem’s a stoner, and the other one doesn’t talk.
• I asked Kevin if there were any plans for a ‘West Coast Vulgarathon”of sorts and the feel was “not really”. Since with everything done rightthere in Jersey, people get to see and visit where the flicks were madeas well as The Stash do they get a little more bang for the buck when theyhold events. So Left Coast Askew folks, sorry…I did ask, and it seems likewe’re gonna hafta get together ourselves for something like that.

The original session was only scheduled for an hour, and towards theend of the hour I saw the main scheduling dude(Ryan) head up and mumblesomething to Kevin. I caught up with Ryan’s GF (Kendra) after and Ryanhad apparently bought Kevin another 20 minutes on top of the scheduled hour. So the session ran longer than planned. At the end of the sessionThe AV guys took over and we were presented with a very rough, first cutat the Dogma Teaser Trailer.

My impressions of the trailer ran from “Fuck me! This is gonna rock” to”I don’t get it”. Which isn’t surprising considering this is the reactionto many a trailer. Jay and Bob looked great, Alan looked crazed, Chrisrock sounded hysterical (great line from Rock: “Knew him [Christ] ?!?Shit, Nigga owes me twelve bucks!”). Scariest sight in the movie:Jay with a machine gun. Best sight in the movie: Salma in pig tails whilestripping. The trailer was a bit choppy and if you didn’t have an ideaof the general plot then you were more on the “I don’t get it” side, butas stated before, it was a very rough first cut. Expect to see the trailerby the end of the summer, and the theaters in October.

After the session Kevin did more signing at the Oni booth, I was lucky enoughto help out w/the line again. The guys at the booth were grateful and gota couple books and a pic w/Kevin for the help. He signed right up untilthe ‘con closed at 6pm.

All in all a great ‘Con. There are a lot of great books out there waitingto be read written by the “struggling” artist types, as well as some stuffby folks a little closer to mainstream but who don’t have the visibilitylike things like Daredevil and Preacher have. I strongly urge folks whogo to these ‘cons just to see Kevin to check out some of the smallerpublishers, drop a couple bucks, pick up a book or two and give it a goodread with an open mind. As for myself, I picked up a couple of the non-Kevin Oni stuff which turned out to be great reads. A couple otherthings that turned out f’in great was a book called ‘The Adventures ofBarry Ween – Boy Genius’, and I finally was able to read some Mage stufffor the first time. buy what you like ’cause money does the talkingwhen it comes to what gets published and what doesn’t.

DIARY OF A DEATH STAR ENGINEER

Day 1 -I really love this new job. Great benefits, good pay, and how many people can say thier job involves vaporizing planets with a giantdeath ray? I can’t wait to destroy my first planet.

Day 2 -I brought up to my superior officer what I thought was a slight oversight in the plans of thr Death Star. It seems there’s anexhaust port that leads right to the central power core of the station, and this port is accesable from the surface. And also – thisis the kicker – the port can’t be closed. There’s no lid. So here’s this direct route to the power core that someone could say,drop a penny into and blow up the entire station. Um, does this strike anyone else as maybe just a slight design flaw? So I guessthey decided to build a trench or something to put it in. So in essence, leading people right to it? You’d think that this kind ofquestioning would be welcomed by the people who run this place, ut no. You shoulda seen my boss flip out and threaten to tell LordVader, blah blah blah. Oh well, I’m sure nothing will come of it.

Day 30 -It was a good day. Had a good lunch, stuffed womprats. Told a funny joke, that was a winner. Oh, and I blew up Alderan, nicesatisfying explosion. Debris everywhere. Maybe I’ll rent a movie tonight.

Day 33 -Still no lid on that exhaust port.

Day 47 -Everyone oer here’s been talking about the Rebels. Seems there’s this hidden base around here somewhere, and they’ve been throwingthese little ships at us. What do they call ’em, Z wings?

Day 442 -Wow, it’s bee quite a while since my last entry. Well to recap real quick, I almost lost my job when those stupid Rebels blew up theDeath Star! Can you believe it? It’s a good thing I just happened to be on vacation at the time. Now, back to work on the brand new,top secret Death Star 2.

Day 449 -Well it seems there’s another potential flaw in the design that no one has noticed, apparently. There’s a central reactor as before,but this time there’s a trench leading right to it from the surface that a saucer shaped ship could fly through. This seems bad tome, but it appears I’m alone on this one. Considering what happened last time, I feel I should bring this up with Lord Vader.

This was the last entry.

Just thought I’d give ya’ll a Wondercon update for Kevin’s stuff onDay 1 (Saturday).

Background info: My GF (Angela) and I did the volunteer thing forthe ‘Con. Give the ‘Con a day of your life and get free admitionfor the weekend. From what I understand, the ‘Con folks were reallypleased with the turn out, they were estimating around 1000 peoplecame in the first hour on Saturday and it peaked out around 2800(their estimates). Now onto Kevin’s first appearance:

Got to the Ballroom where Kevin & Co. where doing the Marvel Knightspanel about 15 minutes early and listened to the end of somethingelse (think it was the Batman/Supes animated stuff). Anhoo, when thatwas over I moved my way to the front row, things kicked off about 5minutes later. The panel: Jim, Devin Grayson, Kevin, Joe. They wenton about how things came about, how working together was great. Theytook several questions, one of which was if Kevin ran into any problemswith the religious overtones of DD (considering the crap Dogma’s gettingnow). He said no since Marvel kinda saw how the whole thing was gonnapan out and overall there really weren’t a lot of controversial thingsin there, although they did tell Kevin & Co. that DD couldn’t beat the Black Widow into pulp like he had wanted. He said something aboutthe whole voilence against women thing, but they did still let DD snapthe BW’s leg. When asked how he got into “The Business”, Kevin made yourstandard dick sucking jesture, which became the running joke of thepanel.

They didn’t really discuss any Green Arrow stuff since Jim and Joe aretrying to stay focused on the Knights stuff. As for the future ofthe Knights stuff and Kevin working with them: Kev was originallytapped for 6 issues, this was extended to 8 (old news). But, *IF* the Marvel Knights line is renewed (J&J were pretty sure it would be)then Kevin mentioned something about coming back to writing againsomewhere in the late ‘teen issues (16-18, somewhere in there).

After the Panel, Kevin, Jim, and Joe went to do signing stuff atthe Oni booth (which was pretty large). To avoid the initial rushAng and I went to get lunch then head for the signing line. SinceI had my “volunteer” shirt on I got drafted for crowd control whileI was trying to get in line *grumble*. It worked out great tho’. Iwas the last person to have Kevin sign stuff for (at that sitting).Got a buncha things signed by Kev, Jim, and Joe. Also asked Kevin ifwe were going to get a “sneak peak” tomorrow at the focus on hisfilms, he responded with a rather definate “Yeah”. Someone also askedhim when it was coming out and he sounded rather positive when he replied”October”. So tomorrow we get a peak at Dogma, mere foreplay forthe real thing a full 6 months away.

Also there was Scott Mosier, who, when I caught up with him was givinga film student lotsa info. From what I heard, Dogma was the most tiringproject to date. Since he was used to getting everything done for a flickin 7-8 months and Dogma’s going on for at least a year now, this process ismuch longer than he’s used to. He also commented about the animated seriesin that it was going to be considered “seperate” from the movie stuff so itcould have a life of it’s own and not have to worry about continuity. I askedhim about the much rumored Clerks 2 and if they would try to keep the samelook and feel of the original. He said if and when it ever happens there’sno way they could ever go that cheap again. Since thigns were done that waybecause of a major lack of budget, if there’s a next one, it’d have a muchbetter look to it.

I’ll get ya’ll pics the instant I get them developed and scanned in. I’ve gotat least one of the Panel and a couple shots of Kevin. More will followtomorrow.