Giving That Rapture Guy His Due

  So the world didn't blow up. Or get raptured. Or whatever the fuck was supposed to happen this weekend that didn't.
  There's a lot of people out there now heartily mocking Harold Camping's apocalyptic prediction and the dumb people who took it seriously. And they should.
  But, you know, Camping's stupid religion isn't stranger or more "out there" than any of the other competing faiths. At least Camping put his set of beliefs up for an actual empirical test. And now we can see it's Grade A bullshit.
  Many of the people who are now laughing at his believers owe their owe allegiances to religious institutions pushing claims that are equally or more absurd. But almost all of these institutions, even the ones with their own specific brand of End Timeism, have long ago learned the secret to keeping their lucrative fraud rolling: Don't be specific!
  Keep it all vague and murky.
  God is coming. The Promises will be fulfilled.
  "But no one can know the hour or the day." Blah blah blah.
  Just don't lose your faith. You'll be rewarded...eventually. Whatever, dude.
  It's a con that can run forever. And probably will.
  That's how it's generally done. But Camping, somehow, never got the memo. He --as opposed to,say, the Catholic Church or your local Baptist preacher--  actually did give his followers the oppurtunity to empirically test the mettle of his claims.

  How unchristian of him.

I Do What I Have To Do For "What Would You Do For a Klondike Bar?"

Matt Bartholomew practices his game face    (photos by Tom Robertson)

  Had the premier of my film at Atlanta's Plaza Theatre last night.

  By film I mean the one minute and forty second short that I originally wrote and shot for Sketchworks last month. And by premier I mean: "Hey Luke, you want to show my piece before the monthly Splatter Cinema film?" "Yeah, okay."

  So, yeah. Going on before the 1984 horror turkey "Ghoulies" isn't exactly opening at Cannes but nevertheless it does technically make me eligible for an Academy Award nomination.

The cast and crew of What Would You Do For a Klondike Bar?

  The piece, What Would You Do For a Klondike Bar?, was originally written a couple years back for Sketchworks but never made it into a show. It's a simple joke: What would you do for a Klondike Bar?" "I'd kill my wife for a Klondike Bar." "Well, here you go." Gory domestic crime follows.

  I've found that the more murder I put into a comedic script, the harder it is to get it accepted for stage. When I put on my own show last year, Crimes Against Nature, which consisted primarily of the scripts Sketchworks thought were too extreme to include in their main shows, I ended with Klondike and was pretty happy with the crowd response. So when I started shooting short films for Sketchworks last year, I put this script near the top of my list.

I demonstrate to Matt the proper way to stab Sasha Friedman (left) to death.

The important thing was that, given the deadline, this be a quick and cheap production. No using colored gels and constructing a Goblin-esque soundtrack in an attempt to mimic a Dario Argento feel. Just get in and out. We shot just a little over two hours and most of that was just rehearsal. Once the fake blood started covering actors, reshooting would be extremely difficult.

Matt after another application from Shane Morton's bloodhose

  It went more or less according to plan. Sasha Friedman, who starred in Crimes Against Nature along with George Faughnan, reprised her role as the wife and Sketchworks-regular Matt Bartholomew replaced Faughnan, who was unavailable, as the man driven to madness and murder by the temptation of a momentary pleasure. Atlanta horror jack-of-all-trades Shane Morton provided his bloodhose expertise.

  So a few days of furious editing and then a just-in-time delivery of the product for the show and...

  Denied.

 "It's just not right for the show."  Too much blood.

Fuck!

Too much blood my ass!

  

  So anyway... "Hey Luke, you want to show my piece before the monthly Splatter Cinema film?"

   "Yeah, okay."

  In this business, it's all about who you know.

Life In Atlanta

I love this town.