Tagged: movie

Au Revoir Red Envelopes

While we’re on the subject of stone-age technology, let’s talk about DVDs. Jen and Kent are big proponents of old school media. We like owning physical copies of the things we love. We buy books and albums, subscribe to a small number of print magazines and even (gasp!) the local newspaper. And we still have a DVD subscription from Netflix. At least for the next month until they kill the service. During the early days of the pandemic we started a project to watch all the classic movies we’ve never seen. That expanded to include spooky movies for research as we write the As Yet Untitled Ghost Novels.

Now that Netflix is cutting us off we’ve been looking around for a way to scratch the same itch. We haven’t made a final decision yet, but it seems like we’ll probably add a couple of channels to our stable of streaming services, like the Criterion Channel, NightFlight, and AMC+.

A good friend of ours was an early adopter of Netflix, a million years ago, and when she told us about how this company would just send you DVDs in the mail, as many as you could watch, we were sure it must be some sort of scam. And now here we are at the end of an era, wishing it didn’t have to stop.

At the End of the Rainbow…

… awaits a pot of more work. Yay!

Now that our rainbowing is completed for all four ghost books, it’s time to start writing. Writing an outline, that is. Also some character sheets, and probably a map. (Sounds a little like we’re playing D&D, which is another form of collaborative storytelling. Hmm.) Actual prose needs to wait just a little longer.

To celebrate the milestone, we took Friday night off and watched a movie. Er, we usually give ourselves Friday nights off. And this movie was, technically, research. But we did get take-out, including dessert.

A writing partner is someone to snuggle up with on the couch to watch a movie that played long, long ago, at the theater where you both worked at the time.

Lights, Camera, Quarantine!

What’s the last movie you saw in a theatre? For us it’s either Knives Out, or the most recent Star Wars.

SKELLEY TRIVIA ALERT: Back before we were married, we worked together at a movie theatre for about 4 years. During that time we saw a lot of movies (we were each allowed to see one movie for free per week at any theatre in town — and bring a guest —  so we saw two free movies a week for four years). The downside was a growing hatred of the smell of fresh popcorn. In the years since, we’ve cut way back on our trips to the cinema, but we usually manage half-a-dozen a year. This past year was a big ol’ goose egg. To scratch our cinephile itch, we took advantage of our DVD Netflix subscription. Yes, those still exist, and yes, we still have one. There’s tons of older movies available there that aren’t streaming anywhere.

After finally making time to watch Get Out, and quickly following that up with Us, we turned our attention to a new genre — Classics We’ve Never Seen. Turns out there are a lot of them. It’s been a mostly rewarding project. We’ve enjoyed the majority of what we’ve seen, and it’s been a nice change of pace. Here’s a sampling of what we’ve watched during quarantine.

  • Harvey
  • Some Like it Hot
  • Lawrence of Arabia
  • Dial M for Murder
  • Sunset Boulevard
  • Blow Up
  • Thief of Baghdad
  • City Lights
  • The 39 Steps
  • Double Indemnity
  • The Day the Earth Stood Still
  • Anatomy of a Murder
  • The Sting
  • Ministry of Fear
  • To Catch a Thief

This is one habit we’ll likely continue, even after we’re allowed to venture back into the world again, so let us know which classics you recommend.

Mystery Science Road Trip 3000

A little while ago Kent had a birthday, and Jen gave him the best present ever: VIP tickets to a Mystery Science Theater 3000 Live show. The date of the show finally rolled around, so we jumped in the Skelleymobile and headed off on a road trip.

Faithful blog readers will know that we like to use car trips as brainstorming time. Our open projects are dwindling in number as we complete novels and launch them into the world. In fact, out of our first three trilogies, we currently have only one book that’s unwritten, and it’s most of the way outlined already. The part of it that’s not nailed down yet involves a lot of moving parts that all need to mesh together just so, and “in a moving car while Kent pays attention to traffic” didn’t seem like the best environment for tackling it. Enter: the Ghost Novels!

Before this trip we had a few wisps of ideas for the way we want the supernatural to work in our newest story world. Now, after a couple of hours of discussion, we have a much clearer picture of the way our ghosts will work, and even the ghost of a plot (see what we did there?). At this point it’s more like two or three plotlings, some of which might work together and some of which contradict each other. A lot more conversation will be needed before we’re ready to start writing. But it felt good to explore a whole new universe, especially this one at Halloween time. We’re surrounded by spooky stories and it’s exciting to start to work on our own.

You know what else is exciting? Getting to have a conversation with Joel Hodgson (who is very nice! — he told Kent he asked a great question!), having our pictures taken on the Satellite of Love with Joel, Jonah, the Bots, and Pearl Forrester’s clone Synthia, and then watching a live riffing of a truly terrible movie.

Most exciting of all? Having a writing partner who shares your sense of humor.

MST3K

We were so excited to participate in the Mystery Science Theater 3000 Kickstarter! We got swag, and emails from Joel, and everything! But now that the new episodes are available on Netflix, they’re something of a drain on our productivity. The urge to binge them all is strong, but we’ve been taking a somewhat slower approach so that we can savor each one, and to make them last. But now we’re almost done. Sniff.

Somewhat to our horror, we had each seen two of the movies in their non-MST form. We have a soft spot for Copenhagen, and so had actually watched Reptilicus on purpose. For those of you who aren’t familiar, Reptilicus is basically Godzilla in Denmark, and it’s the first movie tackled in the new season by Jonah and the bots.

Avalanche was the surprise. Jen and Kent have been married seemingly forever, and it’s hard to remember sometimes that we actually had separate childhoods. But we did! And those separate childhoods each included the viewing of the Mia Farrow/Rock Hudson classic Avalanche. Fate.

A few nights ago we finally reached the episode where we are listed in the credits, and it’s a doozy. Wizards of the Lost Kingdom 2, starring David Carradine for some reason. The fight choreography is stunningly inept, the “humor” even more so. Do yourselves a favor and watch it! Be sure to stay for the credits where you can pause it and see Rune Skelley’s name. I’m sure you’ll be almost as excited as we were!

But seriously, you should watch the whole series. It’s awesome!

Son-of-Music-Novel Project Status Update

r-avatarWe have officially turned the corner.

Jen has created three genuine stubs, and Kent had a research deliverable that bears many of the hallmarks of a stub. Now that we’re pedaling again, the bicycle doesn’t seem so scary.

Another thing we’ve done is watch movies. (For research, honest!) It’s been a mini-marathon of films that deal with combinations of elements similar to what we’re concocting for the new novel. Our aim is to learn the landscape, so we can avoid this scenario:

Rune Skelley: “So that’s our pitch!”
Agent: “A remake of _____? Not interested.”

So far we haven’t seen anything that significantly resembles our story. Our ideas tend to be weird (although it’s more flattering to call them original), so there’s probably not a serious risk of overlapping too much with something that’s already out there. But saying we need to make sure lets us thin out our Netflix queue and deny that it’s procrastination.

If next Friday’s collaboration post consists of us screaming and pulling our hair out, you can blame Lars von Trier.