At a concert a musician, between songs, speaks into a microphone and says “let’s try not to be cruel to animals”.

The crowd suddenly erupts into a chorus of boos…

This isn’t 1935 Germany – it’s 2006 USA. The woman is Chrissie Hynde and the concert took place a couple of weeks ago as her band the Pretenders were opening for the Who in California.

Along these lines, as I continue to do research for the Death & Glory script, I pulled the following content/quotes from an online article written by Sarah Mahoney and entitled In U.S., women go wild for hunting. The article incredibly celebrates the encouraging rise of women hunters in the United States and appears like the reporter penned the piece in the LL Beans parking lot in Freeport, Maine.

 “Among the aisles of aerosol deer urine and digital duck calls, there are racks of women’s clothing in mossy-oak camouflage…”

 “The National Shooting Sports Foundation estimates that Americans spend $2.1 billion on firearms and ammunition each year.”‘

 “Lined up behind the counter are dozens of guns, many available with a short-stock designed to fit more comfortably into women’s shorter arms.”

 A section of the article is titled Hunting to Relax and includes the following passage: “For some, the appeal is strictly social since hunting offers a woman a way to spend time with a husband, boyfriend or brother who already hunts. For others, including Linda Fowler, who doesn’t like hunting with her boyfriend, it’s a way to relax with friends, get closer to nature and develop a new skill. She also loves heading into the wild to shoot birds – ‘It’s a bunch of fun, plus it’s so beautiful…’”

 Helga Cotta, 57, from South China, Maine, said: “Hunting season is like my vacation. It’s so solitary, you can leave all your problems at home and just go out and watch the woods come alive around you in the morning.”

I’m not sure what I get more upset about. People who hunt and kill, masquerading their cowardly acts of cruelty behind such softball lines like “I love being out in nature” or the naive reporters who write pro-hunting article after article while never asking the hunter the obvious questions like “Why do you feel it’s necessary to hunt when all facts suggest that hunting isn’t necessary anymore?” and “Doesn’t it bother you have blood on your hands as you’re taking away a life for no reason?”

But the obvious questions are never asked because the reporter needs to keep his or her job and not be considered an “extremist”.

My goal is to make Death & Glory as much an attack on the ongoing and accepted cruelty that occurs everyday towards animals as it will be about incompetent and unethical journalism, more prevalent and damaging than ever.

Following up on yesterday’s post on ‘Originality” I find myself often running into trouble by being too candid involving my views on independent filmmaking in New Hampshire. Along with my crews we’ve always taken great pride that our films have never accepted in-state grant monies, played politics, or had crew members who are also part of any film festival boards, film commissions, arts organizations or local chambers. There are no conflicts of interests or ulterior motives. Our productions are truly independent – we’re proudly not a member of any group that meets at film festivals to socialize, make contacts and give the manufactured soundbite to the local press as to how the “filmmaking community in New Hampshire is so supportive of one another”. This is exactly the type of optimistic soundbites that make everyone feel warm and fuzzy but have no basis in reality and run directly counter-productive to regional filmmaking.

Instead, we remain defiant on our island, creating films with like-minded people. Yet this stubborn attitude often get us into trouble, be it jealousy from other filmmakers or art groups who resent our work because we succeed in screening and selling it on our own terms. For Dangerous Crosswinds we employed a risky and expensive strategy, raised the bar in the manner in which we approached our screenings and in doing so, opened ourselves up to an avalanche of jealous criticism.

We became the lone dartboard.

Which brings me to the recent SNOB Festival in Concord and their team of dart throwers. Simply put, as with the New Hampshire Film Expo (see my earlier post from October 29) there appear to be signals of conflicts of interest. One such example: In November of 2005 the Concord Monitor featured an article on a filmmaker whose documentary was accepted at that year’s festival – the only problem that the filmmaker also doubled as a member of the SNOB selection committee. Not only was this ethically wrong but once it was made public in this article, nothing was done about it nor corrected.

An example hitting closer to home also occurred last year when we discovered that our feature Dangerous Crosswinds was rejected for this festival. At first there with no explanation or rejection letter. However, thanks to a member of our crew intervening, I was informed by a member of the SNOB committee that the selection committee made a “group decision” to reject Dangerous Crosswinds on the grounds that the film was “too successful” to screen at SNOB. I was also told that since we had already played our film in Concord (at our own expense renting the Capitol Center for the Arts on June 24, 2005) that the committee felt it wouldn’t be appropriate to screen our NH-made film in Concord again. The irony is that when I submitted DC to SNOB I broke from my stance of not submitting DC to festivals (I instead was concentrating on exclusive independent regional screenings). At the time, my rationale was simply that I thought a screening at SNOB might give a nice opportunity for those in the Concord area, who weren’t able to have caught our film at the Capitol Center, a second chance to see it.

I could go on and on about other problems associated with SNOB such as the ludicrous 5×5 Filmmaker’s Challenge (where people were invited to make a five minute film in 5 days and then screen it at SNOB) to the horrendous idea of screening a rough-cut of a local feature with the promise that the audience can suggest their own edits to better the film. Has filmmaking come to this? Has the bar been lowered so much that marketing gimmicks are now part of the filmmaking process?

I welcome a day in the future when filmmakers are able to be as independent in screening their films (with their own monies if necessary) as they were when they were shooting their film. A list of indie film-friendly theatres in New England can be found at this link on the Dangerous Crosswinds website. So, if you’ve produced a feature-length film, you have no excuse – there’s the list, now start making some calls…

I made an obvious mistake by submitting Dangerous Crosswinds to SNOB in the first place. Instead, I should have, along with other filmmakers who’ve produced features, been truly independent and resisted the easy temptation of a free screening and an opportunity to network at the SNOB Film Festival – a festival which unfortunately appears to have only succeeded at one thing to date – that is, in selecting a name which suites itself perfectly.

I placed an order today on the upcoming DVD Preston Sturges – The Filmmaker Collection. The seven-disc set includes the following films: Sullivan’s Travels, The Lady Eve, The Palm Beach Story, Hail the Conquering Hero, The Great McGinty, Christmas in July and The Great Moment.

Sturges was arguably the first writer-director in Hollywood and his hilarious and unique films haven’t aged one bit. Few directors have ever experienced as creative and prolific a run as Sturges did between 1940-1945 and this DVD box captures most, but still not all, of his features produced during that time period. Here’s the link for ordering the set at Amazon if you want to treat yourself or someone you know to an early holiday present. These are brilliant films by a master who still doesn’t get his due in the manner he should.

I was stunned to hear about the tragic murder of actress Adrienne Shelly last week in New York City. I will always remember Shelly from her work in the early Hal Hartley films of the late eighties/early nineties. As with the films of John Sayles, Jim Jarmusch, Bill Forsyth and Wim Wenders, Hartley’s films were, and continue to be, a major influence on me in large part because of Shelly’s unique performances. From the manner in which she looked, sounded and acted, it was impossible to compare her to any other actress. Films like The Unbelievable Truth and Trust defined all that true independent filmmaking could be and what a singular distinct vision could create collaborating with a core and equally distinct cast/crew. I still remember driving to the Portsmouth Music Hall in the early nineties with filmmaker Mike Hall to see Trust on the big screen – in my opinion, that film remains possibly the finest independent film ever produced.

Shelly, who attended Boston University, continued acting throughout the nineties and eventually moved toward a behind-the-camera career directing several films. Her last work was writing and directing the film Waitress which supposedly has been submitted to the upcoming Sundance Film Festival for consideration.

Also, the manner in which Shelly died was just as disturbing as when I first head about her death. According to the NYC Police Department a construction worker Diego Pillco, a 19-year-old illegal alien from Ecuador, allegedly confessed to killing Shelly after she complained about the noise he was making in the building. Her death was originally thought to be a suicide after Shelly’s husband, Andrew Ostroy, first discovered her hanging by a bedsheet from a shower rod in the bathtub of her Greenwich Village office. However, five days later, after Police became suspicious of sneaker prints in the bathtub that did not match Shelly’s shoes, Pillco was arrested.

Rest in peace Adrienne, you’ll be sorely missed…