Paul Chadwick's Weblog

Eels

I remember a TV movie I saw as a child.  It was about a slave-labor camp in present-day America, in the mountains.  Disobedient men were forced to put a hand in The Bag as punishment.  They had to wait all day dreading it.  Nobody was told what was in The Bag.  They only knew the screams of the punished.  When the camp was broken up by the heroes we learned what was in The Bag: live eels.

This NYT article explains how these fat, nutritious and easy-to-catch fish saved the Pilgrims from starvation.  But this bit of natural history captured my sense of wonder:

They moved in great numbers at night, en masse, sometimes forming braids with their bodies to overcome obstacles, or large balls to roll over gravel bars that separate the mouths of rivers from the sea. On wet nights eels would even travel overland, relentless in their quest to return to their natal womb in the deep ocean.

Think about it.  In a strange, cold land of dark forests and a thousand unknown dangers, you could step out of your cabin to see wet writhing things moving through the brush, glistening by moonlight.

Early wild America was really something -- the sky dark with flocks of passenger pigeons and other birds by the millions.  Even when Lewis and Clark set out, there was hope of finding live wooly mammoths.

Nice illustration (a painting in the NYT!) by Roberto Parada.  Click to enlarge.

 

 

Off Vancouver

Inspired by Craig Thompson's magnificent published travel sketchbook, Carnet de Voyage, I've been sketching in recent years at a size and on paper that later I ink in a comics style, creating (I hope) publishable images that will see the printing press one day.

Here's one from last summer.  Was it Rememberance Day?  I just remember we saw both multibillion-dollar warships and a nude bikeride protest on the same day.  O Canada.

Sorry, I didn't sketch the bike riders.

Click to enlarge.

 

Strange Brew

I storyboarded this 1983 movie and am full of sad and happy memories of it.

Sad when director Steve DeJarnatt, who hired me, was fired over creative differences.  Happy that Dave Thomas took me under his wing and shared a lot of his obsessions (cop culture was one) and wisdom of life in a big-brotherly way.  Sad it didn't become a big hit.  Happy that it's become a cult film.

Dave put together a sequel that had cast and crew assembled and ready to shoot when, suddenly, the money people backed out.  That must've been a soul-crushing day.

A collector of movie prop graphics contacted me recently and got me going through the archives.  I still haven't found that Elsinore Beer label I designed, but I know I have it. 

"Elsinore" like the castle in "Hamlet."  Strange Brew borrowed Shakespeare's plot, with Bob n' Doug filling, vaguely, the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern roles.

But among storyboards, call sheets, photos of the crew, I found this. 

It's concept art for the ghost of our "Hamlet" character's father, who was electrocuted by his brother by a rigged video game -- hence the Space Invaders-style blast patterns throughout. 

It was all done with hand animation over footage of an actor.  So primitive (but done well by animator John Wash).

For what it's worth, I also found this still, below, of the actor on set.  It was the cafeteria of an abandoned mental institution, as I recall.  Some spooky psychic atmosphere still clung to the place. 

Click to enlarge.

 

Cowboys And Aliens

I first saw Platinum Studios' presentation for this in 1998, and thought, "kinda fun, but could a high-concept get any shallower?"  They were also pitching it as a movie before the comic was even produced.

But if you throw enough talent at something, sometimes a grand, flowering effulgence can grow from a shallow root structure (no disparagement of the comic, which I haven't read and may be great).

Given this trailer, that's just what they did.  An incredible cast, great director (John Favreau).

Sure, there's the usual: stuff blows up, tough guys kill, spaceships zoom, yadda yadda.

But it's character moments that really make these sorts of movies fun -- as Iron Man demonstrated. 

That look Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford exchange in the last shot is so freighted, so funny.

You want to see the movie just to watch them outscowl each other.

Wow, Interesting Interview

But then I'm a big fan of the guy.

Janna O'Shea interviews Paul Chadwick at Guerilla Geek

GG: There have been multiple screenplays that never came to fruition. How did you envision Concrete coming to the big screen?

PC: Strange Armor is a pretty good guide, as it was written after one of my drafts. A later draft had a climax that partly demolished the fantastical sandstone formations of The Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs. The main thing is to a) anchor it in our familiar world — without other super-characters; and b) get out in nature. We’ve had enough urban superhero films. Get out in the wilderness, say I!

 

Winter's Grip

That's the view from my studio window, looking Northeast at Lopez Island across Griffin Bay.

Arctic air is pouring down the Fraser River Valley and across the San Juan Islands.  To swim in that water would be to die in twelve minutes.  Yet seabirds bob on the waves.  They're incredible.

Frantic little brown birds are tearing seeds and suet from the feeders.  They're puffed up like Yorkshire Puddings from the oven.  Elizabeth told me something yesterday: in winter, birds die of dehydration as much as exposure, since fresh water is frozen.  So I poured some boiling water on the birdbath ice.

I sometimes imagine Concrete walking out there under gray waves.  A half mile out is a dropoff.  Crabs gather there, unable to make it back up the slope, so that's where the crab fishermen lay their pots. 

When they collect them, seagulls swarm, hoping to get the female crabs the fishermen must discard by law.  You can tell the crabs' sex by the width of a particular plate on their underbellies.

How strange it would be for Concrete down in the darkness, thousands of girl-crabs scuttling around him, walking over his feet.