207 Pictures - Now Proven As Effective As Flossing

What I Watched Last Week

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 15:23:00 -0500

I’m going to try to keep a short diary of the movies I watch each week, mostly so that I can look back over it in coming years, but also to help motivate me to watch more and better movies. So far I’m not off to a GREAT start, but I’m working on it. So…what i watched this week: Our Idiot Brother. This Means War. All Star Superman. The Woman In Black. Bronson. In a Lonely Place.

To list the television I watched would get too long and embarrassing. If you really want to know just ask or, if it’s easier, just think about all the shows where someone who isn’t police solves a crime and assume I saw it.

Also, I don’t do movie reviews because of screw that, but I will say that Tom Hardy’s performance in “Bronson” was HUGE. One of the best I’ve ever seen. It was really something.

I’m more or less out of the comic business at this point. The...

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 16:17:00 -0500

I’m more or less out of the comic business at this point. The Cutting Room isn’t dead so much as it’s in a coma while my partner and I try to figure out how to kill it. But I imagine every once in a while when a comic is easy and I have some time on my hands I’ll throw one out there for the giggles and the whatnot. This is one of those times. It’s a super relevant comic, too, because it relies on a basic knowledge of a cartoon that’s been off the air for a decade and an ad campaign that’s been gone even longer, probably. Enjoy!

Late Night Rant:

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 03:57:53 -0500

I get asked for advice and help with writing a lot. Often these questions come with links to other advice with more questions. “Is this true?” “Is this how you do it?” “Should I just put my shit in a drawer because it can’t possibly be any good?”

When you search for general writing advice online, nine times out of ten the advice presumes you suck and are an idiot who is kidding him or herself. This presumption, like all writing, says much more about the source than the subject. Sorkin and Moffat and Whedon aren’t sitting at home handing out advice anonymously on internet forums. They just aren’t. And they aren’t trolling you. They will never try to break you down just for funsies. And I bet they never googled how to be a writer.

I Don't Believe in Judging A Person's Worth Based on Aesthetics. But...

Sun, 08 Jan 2012 19:14:20 -0500

If there exists a more attractive human than Yvonne Strahovski I don’t think my brain could process the sight of them. They would just appear to my eyes like a spinning beach ball floating in the air.

My Christmas Presents This year for my Christmas presents I...

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 14:58:40 -0500

My Christmas Presents

This year for my Christmas presents I decided to recreate the covers of Iconic comic books but switch out members of my family and friends for the heroes. I then had them printed up and framed. These things were a pretty big hit and I had a lot of fun making them, so I thought some of you guys might like to see them. And if not, it’s a big internet. I bet there’s something out there you’d like.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. I love you all. Even you.

I'm Going To Try To Make 2012 The Year of Getting All My Holes Filled!

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 17:43:00 -0500

Maybe I should explain. I have huge, egregious holes in my film knowledge. We all do. For me pretty much if it happened before 1980 and wasn’t made in the US or UK I probably haven’t seen it. I’ve been aware of and embarrassed by this for some time but the laziness that created the holes maintains them. But no more! I’m fixing this shit, dammit. But I need your help. Tell me, please, what movies you feel a human MUST see. If I haven’t seen it I’ll add it to the list. It’s that easy. I’m going to do my best to watch the top 100 films this year. Please don’t feel like you have to suggest all foreign or classic films, suggest the Matrix if you want. I’ve seen that one, but if I hadn’t that would be insane and in need of fixin’. The point is, I could just go to the AFI top 100 list, but I’d rather watch the stuff that actual, whole people think needs to be watched. Suggest genre films, indy films, blockbusters, your wedding video, I don’t care. Whatever. Anything you think is genius, or that means the world to you or whatever.

I’ll give you some examples. “In a Lonely Place” is up first. I’ve been meaning to watch that thing forever. Looks genius, I just haven’t done it. “Goodfellas” is going on the list. That’s right, I haven’t seen “Goodfellas.” I don’t know how it happened but it did and now I have to fix it. Hell, suggest Transformers 3, if you want. I’m not going to watch it, but I’ll appreciate the help nonetheless.

So…yeah. Please help. Here’s how to get in touch with me:

email: ethan [at] 207pictures.com

Twitter: @ethanhunter

Facebook: TheEthanHunter

Call or text me if you know my number.

or, just use the ask a question/suggest a film section of this website.

Thanks so much, guys. I appreciate it.

Advice

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 22:54:06 -0500

No joke. The words of advice that most commonly run through my mind run in Alec Baldwin’s voice. “Shoulders back, Lemon. You’re not welcoming people to Castle Frankenstein.” Thrice a day, give or take.

A fairly close second is the sound of my Dad’s voice saying, “Never call to an inside straight.”

I guess what I’m saying is I have shitty posture and possibly a gambling problem.

Happy holidays,

Mutant Battle Turkeys!

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 14:33:00 -0500

Yesterday my three year old nephew Batman and I made some turkey-shaped treats. We were meant to make these things a little closer to Thanksgiving but we’re busy, man. There’s lots of pants pooping and needless destruction and cartoon watching to be done. And Batman has stuff to do, too. So yesterday we finally got to it. These delicious little bastards consist of rice krispies treats, fudge stripe cookies and candy corn, basically. Bats took a kind of surrealist approach, making some kind of mutant porcupine turkey thing. And just mostly ate his ingredients. Because Bat’s takes a kind of surrealist approach to life, which I totally dig.

I made Larry.

I absolutely cannot bring myself to eat him.

And a good, messy time was had by all. Baaaawwwww.

Yuletide Studies

Mon, 05 Dec 2011 15:27:00 -0500

Christmas is a lot like college. It’s a little bit magic. A little bit unreal. A little too white, probably. A little expensive but sometimes money just shows up in the mail. And you drink more and eat more than you should if you were in the real world but you aren’t so no worries. And a dorm room and a bottle of Aristocrat vodka, that’s mistletoe gone wild. It comes just before the unwrapping.

Watch My Beard Grow! We’ve come to the end of No Shave...

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 19:40:00 -0500

[Flash 10 is required to watch video.]

Watch My Beard Grow!

We’ve come to the end of No Shave November and I wanted to share my progress. Starting with a clean shave on Hallowe’en, thus the Eleventh Doctor costume, and running through today, Nov 30, 126 pictures in 22 seconds take you through the growth like magic or possibly biology.

If I’d planned ahead I’d have taken 207 pictures. Next time.

And, of course, I took a couple of seconds in the middle to support Community with my darkest timeline goatee.

Some Quick Thoughts On The Occupy Movement From A Dumb Guy Who Doesn't Really Understand Things

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 14:18:00 -0500

And forgive me if this sort of thing has been said before.

My parents’ generation grew up in the shadow of the bomb. It hung over them and terrified them and they protested. They did not trust the people at the triggers and they saw no need for a weapon system that could end everything and they had to do something. And so they protested.

The bomb was an idea as much or more than it was anything else and the better idea was not killing millions of people. So en masse and not infrequently in handcuffs they offered their better ideas. They put flowers in the barrels of guns and had lots and lots of sex and they said life was the better idea.

The bomb that hangs over my generation is the future. And the future is an idea as much or more than it’s anything else. It’s not as tangible as a bomb, sure, but more volatile and every bit as dangerous in the wrong hands. And we do not trust the people at the trigger so we are protesting.

The biggest difference I see is our lack of mutually assured destruction. Back in the day If we dropped a bomb, then someone would retaliate and vice versa. Murder was the same thing as suicide in those days and that’s a powerful deterrent.

But we don’t have that kind of assurance. We know we don’t. We’ve seen what happens when the triggermen knowingly, deliberately detonate the economy and government and, with them, many, many tomorows. What happens is WE pay to clean it up. We bail them out and they walk away burdened only with the weight of our cash in their pockets.

What Occupy is, to me, is the better idea. The better idea is fairness and decency and trust. The idea is that maybe the one percent shouldn’t be cheating their way to making the world a small, brutal mess for the ninety-nine percent.

The better idea is life.

The triggermen are on Wall Street and Occupy is saying we’d like it if you didn’t murder us. And if you do pull the trigger, you won’t find us on our knees. You’re going to look us in the eye while you do it.

Cyber Monday Deals

Mon, 28 Nov 2011 14:15:00 -0500

Since, somehow, it’s Christmas time already I’ve dropped the price of my book, “Double Spaced Anachronistic Propaganda in Times New Roman” twenty-five percent. And, JUST FOR TODAY, Lulu is offering an additional thirty percent off of everything on their site. If my math is correct, and it almost never is, that’s fifty-five percent off the cover price for today only, giving you a fifteen dollar book for $6.75. To get this deal all you have to do is enter the code CYBERMONDAY305 at checkout. That’s it.

Also for Christmas the price of my first feature film “For Catherine” is down to $9.95 and will remain so until after the holiday at least. Most of you already own that thing, but it makes a fan-flipping-tastic gift.

Thanks for putting up with another commercial, guys,

A hundred thousand years ago, while we were still in production...

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 02:47:00 -0500

A hundred thousand years ago, while we were still in production on For Catherine, I wrote a sitcom pilot that went nowhere. The show was basically the funny version of Studio 60 (So basically 30 Rock) four years before there ever was such a thing as a Studio 60 (or a 30 Rock). I didn’t exactly predict anything, though, because really it was just Sports Night set at a sitcom instead of a news show.

Anyway.

In that pilot I set up a joke that I intended to pay off 21 episodes later in the season finale. The joke was pretty darn good, to be honest and I thought the boldness of the move would have me elected president in at least four nations without running. But the motherfucking geniuses that run Community set up a joke in season 1 that they didn’t pay off until season 3. Holy. Fucking. Fuck. I have my doubts that that was their actual intention initially, but I don’t care. It’s brutally clever and expertly executed and it’s so good it makes me tear up a bit.

I carry a little sadness with me that my pilot didn’t get picked up, because I worked hard on it and it was pretty good and I really believed in it, but then I watch Community and I feel okay about it all because my show was never going to be as good, and why would I want to make the second best comedy of all time?

For those who were curious, this was the only shot of me as a...

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 15:20:47 -0500

For those who were curious, this was the only shot of me as a zombie that made it into last nights episode of The Walking Dead. So I’ve basically made it, is what I’m saying.

Being a zombie on a show I loved was a hoot whether I was on screen or not, though. Even if I was in a hoodie in 96 degree weather and wearing boots that were three sizes too big.

Big thanks to everyone involved in the show for letting me play in their undead sandbox!

Remember, Remember The 16th of November

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 13:48:00 -0500

This is a blog post I wrote on this day in aught seven. Felt like reposting it today.

I Went To Church Today

Just so you all know.

I went to church today. It’s been a while.

I went to light a candle for my father. Today is his birthday and I needed to mark it somehow. It’s a simple gesture, a plea for one who must be kept, but it’s a ritual I’ve always found nice. Lovely, even.

My father forgot his own birthday once. This is when he was younger than me, probably nineteen or twenty. He was alone in a bus station in, I think, Kansas, and he noticed someone reading a paper. He noticed the date on the page was Nov. 16^th and asked the person, “Is that today’s paper?”

“No,” she said, “It’s from yesterday. Someone left it on the bench.”

He shrugged, he told me, and thought, “Huh. I’m twenty now.”

I believe he then asked for the sports section and that was that.

Beneath the candles at the Basilica of St. Lawrence is a small, hand written sign-basically a post-it note- that says, “votive candles, 25 cents each.”

And I thought, “Is that what a prayer costs? What a memory costs?”

I thought about how Adam Duritz tells us that “The price of a memory is the memory of the sorrow it brings.”

And on days like today it’s hard not to focus on the prices we pay.

It’s hard to understand that, high as they may be, for what you get in return, it’s a steal.

It’s hard to remember your father without remembering how much you miss him. But on days like today, it’s a worth wile endeavor. On all days, but especially on days like today, I much prefer to be simply glad he was born and that I got to share 24 of his birthdays with him.

I paid my quarter-dollar and let the smoke carry my words to my dad.

Then I just threw in everything else I had in my pockets because, fuck it, for what you get in return, it’s a steal.

I went to church today. I spoke to my father through ashes and wax.

But just in case they’ve got the interweb in the afterlife now: Happy Birthday, Daddy. I love you dearly, sir. I still miss the hell right out of you everyday. And I’m sorry I didn’t get you any new books this year. Figuring out the delivery proved a bit tricky.

wearegreendale: E Are Greendale Thanks to E for the submission!...

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 19:29:38 -0500

wearegreendale:

E Are Greendale
Thanks to E for the submission! Preesh, brother.

Solidarity.

An Education

Wed, 19 Oct 2011 00:56:12 -0400

I took a long drive today. I remembered an image of Wolverine on a Harley telling someone he needed to ride for a bit. He needed to “kick out the jams” and that sounded about right. I don’t have a Harely, I have an old Ford, but whatever “jams” are, I’m pretty sure I got some o’ those. I decided to revisit the places where I got my education growing up. On the several-hour journey I passed by and ignored my old high school and both a community college in North Carolina and a junior college in Georgia where I was briefly enrolled in my teenage years before Asheville and 207 and all the girls. I stopped at the movie theatres where I saw Ghostbusters and Pulp Fiction and The Matrix. It was a good day.

Universal Monsters XXI Is Up Now

Wed, 19 Oct 2011 00:21:44 -0400

The new chapter of Universal Monsters is up now in text and audio formats. Space finally finishes his story this week. As always, if you’re new to the book, don’t be intimidated by the fact that we’re 21 chapters in now. That’s really only about 40 pages or so and you can always listen to the whole damn thing while you jog or whatever. Thanks for reading and that.

Finally reading Neil Gaiman’s book American God’s...

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 19:18:00 -0400

[Flash 10 is required to watch video.]

Finally reading Neil Gaiman’s book American God’s after meaning to for a decade or so. I’m about twenty percent in and all along it’s made me feel like I should really know at least one cool coin trick. It feels necessary to being a person actual and whole. So I learned one. And I thought I’d share it. Hope you enjoy it. I’m basically Geoff Blaine at this point. Geoff is David’s kind of crap little brother, I guess.

p.s. The book is really good. You should all go buy it and later we can talk about it and show each other coin tricks.

I wouldn’t presume to call the books and movies I make...

Sat, 15 Oct 2011 21:18:59 -0400

I wouldn’t presume to call the books and movies I make “art” but this, this is art! I used a Rolling Stone to catch my beard clippings when I shaved the thing off and then I got bored and then…ART!