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On July 4 I rallied ten people who stayed in town
and filmed three movies The Surreal Cafe,
Don't Spill the Eggs, and Make Way for the Queen.
Here are few stills from the production.
Amazing to see the government swiftly anouncing the victory of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Friday as divine assessment. If they were so confident of this divine assessment then why did they ban protests, beat demonstrators and cut off web and phone lines? Sounds fishy to me. Anecdotal evidence suggests massive fraud robbing the election from Mousavi and his supporters dressed in green.
Its the same old story. Just look at Zimbabwe last year. Mugabe lost the election hands down, nullified the results, intimidated the opposition and now his country is in financial ruin. Hundreds of people are getting sick with no health care. Hundreds of Zimbabwe orphans are wandering to other countries suffering from starvation. Where is the goverenment helping it's people? Nowhere to be found.
Protests in Tehran have turned deadly. Last night thousands of students in Tehran got up on their rooves and shouted Death to the Dictator!
Monday hundreds of thousands of people defied the government and demonstrated in the streets of Tehran. You can't help remembering that The Tiennamen Square massacre happened just 20 years ago. Last night thugs beat up students in their dorms but they are planning more demonstrations defying the government.
These events put the Iranian hardline government in a harsh light as seen by the international community. Well there is no rest for the weary. I just saw The Stoning of Soraya M a real intense movie about a woman wrongfully stoned to death in Iran.
The BBC and news organizations aren't allowed to leave their hotel rooms. Democratic struggle doesn't come easy in third world countries. The government clamped down on street protests but they have come under criticism from clerics inside Iran questioning the legitimacy of the elections. Recently the government has staged these group trials which several Ayatollahs have objected.
The Iranian people still resist this illegitimate government. To the brave Iranian people...keep yelling Death to the Dictators from your rooftops! Remember Nada! keep rocking the boat until you capsize Ahmadinejad and the repressive government he represents!
Photos from Yahoo news
First stop on my french tour...Grenoble My cousin took me to where she worked...European Synchotron where they spin electrons around a machine and then study them to find cures for Aids, swine flu, etc. 
After a few days of family R & R its off to Cannes to screen my movie The Dreams of Leonardo da Vinci. Its a 9 hour train ride but passing through Avignon I saw castles up on hills and Roman aqueducts. Stopping in Marseille for an hour and a half seemed like a scene from stopover hell. Chaotic crowds scurried around and the garbage cans in the train terminal where overflowing. I guess no one in town wanted to be the ones to clean it up. Walking out onto the balcony I stopped suddenly. The end of the balcony turned into the top of a giant staircase with lions on both sides that went down to the main street of the city. In the background of the city was a mountain with a cathedral perched on top. 
I passed Cannes on the way to Nice and saw yachts in the harbor. 
Since the average hotel in Cannes is over $3000 a week during the 
film festival I had a to settle for a room in Nice at the Clown hotel. Yes there where giant clown heads on the every landing of the staircase that lead to my room. Checking in I passed all the heads again as I headed back to Cannes. 
On the train I met Pauline who had a movie Enter the Preacher in the Short Film Corner and walked down the main drag. Palm trees stretched over the streets, paparazzi hung around the red carpet like locusts, and there was entrance to the temple of film the Palais of the Cannes Film Festival. 
Grabbing my badge I headed straight for 
the Short Film Corner where I was going to show my movie.
There I met Debbie from Boston who translated my movie into French subtitles and talked me into sending my movie to the festival. It was 5:00 PM and that meant happy hour. That meant that the Short Film Corner was the favorite area of the festival from 5-6 since it was the only department that had free wine and beer in the building.
There we meet Bita an actress appearing in the upcoming movie the Stoning of Soraya M about Iran.
It's a powerful movie that you will be hearing a lot about in the next few weeks. The 3 of us spent the next 4 days going to movies, parties, seminars, 
and the international pavilions. We saw an Israeli movie about a troubled family that worked in a car repair shop, Mother a Korean movie about an overprotective mother and The Kings Letter a Dutch film about the Middle Ages. We saw Precious about a struggling woman in Harlem. The cast including Maria Carey walks up the Red Carpet and take their bows onstage to a theater packed with several thousand people. The room goes dark and the film is projected onto the largest movie screen I've ever seen. Unfortunately I had to leave early to catch the last train to the Clown hotel.
Being part of an entourage of film people has its advantages since we have more information and networking opportunities. We got invited to the Egyptian Pavilion where they served their native food and we me the director of Heliopolis a feature movie premiering at Cannes. 
We went to
a party at the Thailand pavilion. Mpower the new film company launching the Stoning of Soraya M had a screening of the trailer and the company background at the exclusive Carlton Hotel followed by a reception on the balcony with scotch, shrimp, and salmon. We met film company people and an Italian couple who design Mazzaratis. We saw Francis Ford Coppola talking about writing the screenplay for Patton and his film career. We went to a talk by UK director Stephen Frears who produced Dangerous Liasions with Michelle Pfeiffer, the Queen and other movies talked about casting and editing.
Going to Cannes movies and parties is fun. Sometimes we would stop by the Turkish pavilion sit under the palm trees and look out at the beaches of the French Riviera and reflect about how that at that momen in time there was n
o other place in the world that we would rather be.
We went to a French comedy on Sat. night but I had to head out once again to get back to Nice so I could check out of the Clown hotel the next day and take the train to Gare de Lyon in Paris.
I met my friend Maria there and we saw a Spanish concert and an avante garde band at a bar. We went to a gypsy band in a club basement. Maria got up to dance with the band. In all the years I've known Maria I've never seen her enjoy herself so much.
Jacques one of the artists from the New Surrealists show I was in back in 2003 took me to see Kandinsky and Calder shows at the Pompidou Center. Debbie arrived from Cannes and we went to the Louvre and the DiChirico show at the Modern Art Museum. Walking by Place d’ Clichy I stumbled upon a movie being filmed on the Paris streets. The scene has a guy following a woman with leather pants down the street.
They didn't even close off the sidewalks as they do in shoots in Boston. Whoever was strolling down the street at the time was in the movie. Debbie had a reading of her play that she wrote in French LE PARESSEUX ou Le Mari est Assis performed at a private house party near the Arc de Triumphe. 
The next day I had breakfast with Maria and headed to the airport. Now when I walk by the river I don't see the Eiffel Tower....which means I'm no longer in Paris. Now...if I could only stop dreaming about those damn clowns.
To watch the Cannes movie click Here.
My new movie Suspicious Minds premiered at Boston Fiim Night
Saturday May 16th @
the Somerville Theater
You can see the movie on youtube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dE-hw9c3Y0
Its a murder mystery/comed
My movie The Dreams of Leonardo da Vinci will be screened at the
Cannes Film Festival Short Film Corner May 14-23.
After having this film picked for 3 film festivals this is a major
leap to take it to the international community. It's an animated movie where Leonardo's inventions
and artwork come alive. It's based on the drawings and writings of Leonardo's famous notebooks. Maybe I can get
Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt to come by and watch it.
Apocalypse Soon. Swine flu is spreading out of control from Mexico
to places around the world.
The Taleban are taking over major parts of Pakistan and the economy
is still in recession. Chrysler is on the verge of bankruptcy. Reading the
front page headlines has too curl your tail these days.
Here is a cartoon that has nothing to do with world events....just an
extra with delusions of Hollywood stardom. 
Tired of your dead end job. Start a New career. Become a brain surgeon in your spare timeSign up for the
Cerebellum School of Brain surgery. You get a manual, a map of the brain with the different lobes,
a cauliflower to practice with and you're on your way.
Start your dazzling new medical career in just six weeks! Watch the movie on Youtube!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JolxcLnu_Ms
Posted April 1, 2009
Last week I saw the Academy Award shorts at the ICA. All the animations were pretty good. Though the Japanese anim won the Oscar this movie This Way Up was the most amazing one. Its a humorous take on two undertakers. In one scene they stumble upon a Mardi Gras in Hell with a huge brass band of skeletons and ghouls...playing music and dancing around. The animation is worth seeing when it comes around.
This winter has been cold here so I've been indoors watching old film noir movies from the 1940s with Robert Mitchum, Jayne Mansfield, and Edward G Robinson. Many of the characters are extremely solitary lonely people. They don't seem to belong to a community. They may have one close friend or a wife. Even the other people at work seem to be strangers.
Contrast that to the 60s where half a million people communed together in a muddy field watching Hendrix and the Who. Whether the Woodstock Nation was a momentary reality or a myth it's a concept that would be totally unfathomable in 1940. Last year I created a film noir animated movie called City of Dark Shadows set in the dimly lit 1940s.
I've also discovered this quite amusing HBO comedy series Entourage. This one young guy becomes a rich Hollywood movie star and he gets his 2 high school friends and his brother to quit their jobs at Pizza Hut and move in to his mansion. From there they drive his cars, meet beautiful starlets, and share in this fantasy world that he lucked into. Its based on the early life of Mark Wahlberg.
The cast are a bunch of clueless knuckleheads stumbling into situations that most people only dream of. They're like kids let loose in a candy store without adult supervision. They spar with their insane agent giving you an insiders look into how movies are made by completely irrational egomaniacs. It s a pretty amusing show.
The winter wind is howling. Ice and snow and ice are covering everything and the temperature is dropping to 2 degrees. What else could a sensible person do but take a week off to a visit a tropical Island. Vieques Isn't a well travelled resort like the Bahamas or St. Thomas. Its' an island off the Puerto Rico mainland with miles of beautiful beaches. Beaches that you have practically to yourself. Why is that? Vieques is called the best kept secret of the Caribbean. Vieques hasn't had much time to develop into a resort. The U.S. Navy was kicked off the the island by the locals in 2003, after using it for 60 years as a place to do target practice and play war games. The bunkers formerly filled with ammunition are still there...empty and now covered with weeds.
To say that the people in Vieques are laid back is an understatement. People go to work when they feel like it if they even go to work. Those who own horses let them roam all over the island for days or weeks at time. Their roosters also walk anywhere they want. They cock adoo doo doo each other all night long. Hanging around the boardwalk by the palm trees late at night after a day on the beach is the perfect escape from the tribulations of the Western world.
Recently there was a caricature convention in Raleigh, NC. Over 200 artists from all over the world drew each other for 5 days. Caricature artists work in theme parks, conventions, parties, etc. Every year there is a convention to practice drawing more exaggerated pictures of each other in a hotel ballroom that is open 24 hours a day.
Below you will see some drawings people did of me and some that I did of the other artists.
