Hello fiends – after a long time lurking in the void we are back to spread shadows and darkness across the net that is inter. Our latest vlog makes good on a long standing threat to produce a series called Lovecrafting – vilifying those whose talents have been twisted and turned to spread the mythos through their creative chaos magic. Enjoy, subscribe, and keep the nightmare alive.
Not really…but insurance can be pretty scary. You have to sit and imagine all the things that can go wrong and then fill out forms and give a corporation money every month. Yikes! But here’s something you can’t plan for – the gibbering madness that awaits on the edge of reality. The third in our HPL comedy trilogy. Prepare to laugh WITH TERROR!
We’re currently in the process of revamping the Bad Advice for Good Times YouTube channel and prepping for another HPL short. In the meantime we’ve moved our web series Fanboy To Farmer to its own channel so please drop by and subscribe! Here’s the latest episode:
If you enjoyed the first episode of our new web series Fanboy to Farmer then here’s a little tidbit to tide you over until the next. Behold the minisode; a bite-sized bit of nerdom to help you start your day, or night, or afternoon.
Y’all know me, still the same old G, but I’ve been low-key, so you’ll be happy to see, we…are back. Yes, we’ve been shooting and producing, and post producing a couple of projects but we’re getting back to the mythos in a big way. But here’s a small step, not a full plunge, into the world of HPL, HPL fandom specifically. This is the first episode of our doc-series/social experiment which follows me as I attempt to lose the trappings of fandom for the tractors of labour. Sound inexplicable? It sure is, but what comes to light in subsequent episodes is that fandom has more practical implications than one would imagine. During the series we’ll also travel behind the scenes of our upcoming production The Festival so stay tuned if you want a sneak peek of what’s coming next from Bad Advice for Good Times and Affari Di Famiglia. You’ll see a lot of visual references to Lovecraftian accoutrements in episode one but we go fully into the mouth of madness by episode three so make sure to subscribe:
We’ve been in cave-like seclusion scheming and meme-ing for sometime now. In the past year we had our first feature length documentary about the real-life horror of Cancer air on the CBC, we finished principal photography on our web series Fanboy to Farmer, we shot some promos for good old broadcast television, and we’re putting some finishing touches on our next doc about Doctor Robert M Price called the Gospel According to Price. So we thought we’d close out the year with a bit of fun, a little cat video, Bad Advice for Good Times style, with some fun and a bit of WTF. Enjoy:
In 2009 I started working on a public service ad for the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre. Truth be told, at the time I was extremely reluctant to get involved. Like most people, the subject of cancer terrified me. I didn’t want to talk about it let alone develop a deeper understanding. As it turned out, the more I learned about the disease the less I was afraid. And when I met the doctors and researchers on the front lines, I became even less afraid. But when I finally met survivors and people personally battling cancer, I found their bravery inspiring. My fear was overcome by understanding but it was the people I met that made me want to do something about it.
We did a great piece of work for the cancer centre. It captured the progress made against the disease. But when it came to the survivors and those deep in their fight, I felt like we needed to tell their whole story, as there was no way a 30-second ad could do them justice. There had to be something more.
A few years later, I got together with my old boss from the project and the idea of doing a documentary came up. Neither of us had ever made a documentary and neither of us knew more about the disease than what we learned through working with The Princess Margaret. What we did know was how we felt about the people we met in our initial endeavour. They made us believe that conquering cancer was possible. We felt all we had to do was turn our camera in their direction, capture their stories and their passion and the viewer would feel the same way we felt when we first met some of the people featured in the film.
I put together a plan, talked to my production company and my colleagues and I approached The Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation and asked if they would like to come on this journey with us. They were more than happy to, and over the course of a year, we shot interviews with doctors and researchers from around the world and, most importantly, survivors — people from all walks of life who had stared down the disease until it retreated, sometimes over and over again. Screening and sifting through the over 70 hours of footage to weave together our story was no small task. To quote our narrator, Bryan Adams, “The politics and emotion surrounding it are as complicated as the disease itself.” We were surprised by the wash of complimentary and contradictory views and opinions we received from everyone we talked to. But our mission stayed the same: let the survivors tell their story and simply show the audience what these people were up against.
At our initial screenings, I noticed people going into it with the same trepidation I had when I started the PSA. It seems to me that for some people, just talking about the disease somehow gives it power. The opposite is true. The more we share, the more we tackle the subject, the weaker it gets. One of the things I learned while making this film is that we need a stronger unified public movement.
We want people to easily relate to the information delivered in our film. It isn’t meant to be complicated; to come up with all the answers or address all the issues. It is meant to take the complicated problem of cancer and simplify some of the obstacles we face in defeating it. ‘A Day Without Cancer’ is a testament to those fighting their own war on cancer. At the end of it, I hope people come away a little less afraid, a little more understanding, and inspired by those who have conquered cancer in their own lifetimes.
*Spoiliness Ahead*
When Stephen King ended his epic Dark Tower series he gave his readers a choice – they could conclude their 4000+ page journey with a “happy” ending or they could turn past King’s afterward and follow Roland into the Dark Tower. It was a ballsy move, something that only a genre king like King could pull off. Who could possibly be happy with a single narrative solution after the epic commitment they’d just made to the series? Inevitably most of us read to the last page, and as it turned out, for Roland, time was a flat circle. But what King did was remind many of us why we read – it’s about the journey, sometimes through strange and dark places, with characters you relate to, sometimes you’re not sure why.
Take Rust Cohle for example, I’m sure no one ever wants to hear, “you remind me of that character from True Detective,” any of them for that matter, but there are days, mostly commuter mornings on the subway, when I hear his dialog in the back of my head and I know exactly where he’s coming from. The seven hours I’ve spent with Cohle have been mostly uneasy, they’ve made me feel strange inside, mostly because sometimes I can see his POV, but the journey through his world, from a narrative, visual, and metaphorical perspective has been fantastic. I work in TV, and film, schooled in visual arts, love genre fiction, and True Detective, like a car battery and two jumper cables, has jolted my enthusiasm for all of the aforementioned. The misdirects, the illusions, both visual and written, the performances, the dialogue (sorry Emily Nussbaum, you’re not even wrong), the show is a prime example of not just what TV can be but what a good narrative can achieve when it is focused, detailed, littered with references, social commentary, subversive ideas, the stuff that has you lingering in the staff kitchen, talking until your tea is lukewarm.
Sifting through the daily dirge of content this show is generating, from Pinterest boards to poignant articles, I can’t helping feeling how great it is we have popular art that instigates such in-depth analysis. Even the show’s detractors are using the content to draw attention to their own little end of the universe. Most critiques chide TD for not having what the reviewer themselves wants to see, but I don’t know anyone who would go to a ballet and expect break dancing. The show is dark. It is about two broken men dragging themselves through the mire of a world made by even more broken men. And that’s what I expect each week. If I want a unique feminine perspective I watch Girls, it’s great. But all this speculation, detraction, invention, praise, around a single piece of entertainment, it’s the stuff powerful popular culture is made of.
No doubt the next few days will be filled with spec spoilers and conjecture as to how the show will end, incidentally Charlie Lange outlined the entire plot when he gave up Ledoux, so there should be no surprises. But I’ll wager that people expecting a Weird Tales-esque reveal are going to be woefully underwhelmed. Pizzolatto’s references are nothing more than window dressing, an homage to predecessors who have influenced the tone and atmosphere of the show. They have added a massive amount of intrigue but the truth is the plot has more in common with The Wicker Man and Timothy Findley’s Headhunter than it does with Robert W Chambers. And that’s cool. For me we’ve already been provided multiple satisfying conclusions like a bullet in the head for Ledoux, Marty and Rust reunited, Tuttle’s “suicide”, justice is getting served along the way, alas, I highly doubt our investigators will be venerated a second time.
Which brings me back to the beginning. No matter what happens next Sunday night, it probably won’t meet everyone’s expectations. Harrelson and McConaughey’s perfect performances, Pizzolatto’s deft pen, and Fukunaga’s flawless direction have delivered an impeccable season of TV and storytelling, they’ve taken us on a journey we seldom get to take in this medium. What a dream, regardless of the monster at the end of it.
Time to bear witness, believers. You have not watched enough documentaries and that, my friends, is a sin. But we have good news for you, the good news of Price, Doctor Robert M Price. The good Doctor has had many lives but as of today he stands with two PHDs, a love of HP Lovecraft, an advocate of the modern myths of Marvel and DC, a avid reader of the bible, but, curiously, not a believer. What? How’s this? All shall be revealed in the new documentary from the folks who brought you Elder Sign and The Necronomicon. Coming next year, this doc on the doc will delight atheists and agnostics and terrify the holy at heart. So step forward… and justify!
Many of you know us for our humorous takes on Lovecraft’s strange and ominous ideas so it was a surprise to everyone, including ourselves, that our first feature would be a serious documentary concerning the subject of cancer. A Day Without Cancer is the story of where we are in the fight against cancer as told by the patients, doctors, and some of the world’s leading authorities. The material is well within our wheelhouse as there are few things more horrific than being attacked by the very system that keeps you alive. The film will be released later this year and you can follow the latest developments at https://www.facebook.com/TheCancerDoc
WATCH HERE!
Bad Advice For Good Times 