Just so you know

'Chiseltown' is completed. It is an intensely personal story, although it has nothing to do with me personally, as odd as that may sound. It's about a fictional filmmaker and a movie, from the first phone call to the last. That's how movies are made. I suppose it's not so different in other walks of life. Somebody calls, you do something, there's another phone call to find out if they liked whatever it was that you did. A producer calls, a movie is made, and then there's another phone call from a preview screening to report average Jane and John Doe audience response, in Fresno traditionally. Audience cards don't matter. What matters is whether the movie made them laugh and gasp and cry real tears, because movies should do that.

Along the way, 'Chiseltown' presents a detailed, accessible education in filmmaking, how a script is written and funded and translated into actors and location shoots and sound stages with forced perspective to create a convincing night exterior scene, or an apartment, or a repair shop. Bruno Heckmeier is making a low-budget movie. There are severe obstacles to overcome. He has an unusual home life. There's an enormous amount of comedy for light entertainment purposes. Some of the story is serious literature. Some is slightly adult.

I found that I cared very deeply about the 7 or 8 principal players in this story. There are many more bit players, and if it seems unusual to have so many characters, please consider that the movie Bruno makes involves a production company of fifty skilled professionals, stunt men, two very capable stars, and an unusual supporting cast. It's a very short schedule, six weeks to organize it, six weeks to shoot everything, and six weeks of post production. Trust me, that's working at lightning speed.

It's a personal story in two respects. I had to write the movie for Bruno to make. And I had to live in Bruno's shoes (and those of all the other characters) with honesty, humor, drama, and a deep understanding of the men and women who call themselves "show people," no matter what their specialty or contribution to a motion picture is. Camera grip, driver, bookkeeper, electrician, set decorator, or seamstress -- they are people who sacrifice much to work a few weeks on a movie, a collaborative art that cannot be created without them. I've done many "below the line" production jobs for an hourly wage, in addition to "above the line" writing, producing, and directing.  You have to take my word for it. Directing is a high privilege.

It's done by lots of different men and women. 'Chiseltown' is directed by a talented, goofy, warmhearted, intelligent middle aged guy who got stuck on Poverty Row doing low-budget movies, while others did studio pictures with an average budget of $75 million. Bruno has to conceive and execute a feature film on 1/5 as much money, and he wants it to succeed, not only at the box office, but critically as well. Being an "indie" confers a great deal of freedom. No studio moguls, Teamsters, or IATSE work rules. The whole of Los Angeles as a locale, in a "period" setting that's fun to shoot.

I always experience emotional awe when I've finished a story. 'Chiseltown' is in a class of its own, among all the stories I've written, among all the fictional characters that I loved and still love, of course. The story of making a movie is a personal confession of my lifelong passion.  'Chiseltown' is a movie I didn't get to make, and it's deeply gratifying to have directed its fictional creation. Many of the characters are based on people who I knew and worked with and loved.

Please buy a copy (less than $5 at Lulu) and review it. Thanks.

http://www.lulu.com/shop/wolf-devoon/chiseltown/paperback/product-24225665.html

Attn Salem radio host Eric Metaxas

I have a dog. If the sun is too hot, he sits in the shade. When he hears or smells something that constitutes a challenge to his safety, he barks. When he tires, he snoozes. When he's thirsty, he drinks, and when he's hungry, he eats. He's independent, affectionate, playful, obedient, knows his name and listens to me, because he knows I can help him. Some of the procedures are uncomfortable, like removing a tick. He's a rational animal in many respects. He likes friendly people and friendly dogs, especially females of his own breed.

Simple facts. It does not matter where the Universe came from. It has no bearing on our life. Physical principles like gravity, propagation of heat and light, phases and chemical properties of certain elements and molecules, radioactive isotopes, density, electromagnetism, cosmic rays, and numerous other objectively observable and measurable aspects of the Universe are rational subjects of study. Tall tales concocted by ancients are not. Eyewitness statements concerning "miracles" and alleged "resurrection" of a charismatic rabbi who was put to death are irrelevant to the study of reality. Biologically, when an animal dies, it is dead. There is no life after death, an impossible contradiction in terms. Magic words and rituals can't influence industry or agriculture, except as psychological assaults, no different than false advertising, arbitrary constructs of political obligation, wishful thinking, or idleness, none of which are beneficial. Proper nutrition, reality-oriented cognitive development, and work to provide for the future matters. Medical knowledge matters. Hygiene matters. Capital and durable goods like structures, roads, utilities, and machines extend life and health. Science and math are the keys to success. Prayer and worship achieve nothing in physical reality. Without physical equipment, you would have no radio show, no books, no food or water or medical care.

There is abundant geologic evidence of erosion, deposition, subsidence, tectonic shifts, and extinction events in the rock record to prove that the Earth is billions of years old. Your ability to travel on aircraft resulted from applied science and math, unrelated to claims of faith in supernatural guidance. The entire historical record of religion has been dubious conjectures,  opposition to science, and misdirection of resources. Evil is willful evasion of knowledge. Fantasies of "divine right" to conquer and rule were bloodthirsty evil wrought by mysticism, whether Jewish, Catholic, Anglican, Masonic, Hindu, Apache, Islamic, Mau Mau, or Nazi.

Effusive praise for homosexual Elton John is idolatry, sir.

I think you're an honest guy, no cruelty in you, and very funny. Comedy requires enormous courage and cleverness, which I know from associating with other talented comedians. So, I salute you personally despite epistemological and ethical differences. It would be a strange world if everyone agreed. New ideas emerge from time to time in human history. I think it's accurate to say that you are happy with the Bible, a collection of ancient tales, correct?

www.wolfdevoon.net

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The paradox of achievement

Do you know the story of Thomas Alvah Edison? Uneducated, impoverished, got a job tossing bags in an express car, taught himself Morse Code and worked as a night operator. An idea occurred to him. Duplex telegraphy would double the traffic on a circuit. Then he showed bankers how to speed up stock tickers. Then voice recording, evolved into a wax dictaphone. Then practical electric light and the fixtures required for illumination. We still call modern lamp bases "Edison" sockets. Then a motion picture camera, one of the first in history. Edison was a terrible husband and neglectful father, went on road trips with Firestone and Ford.

No comparison of stature intended, but that's how I lived my life. I was kicked out of school at age 14. I worked in a shoe factory. I learned to smoke cigarettes, pot, and opium in cheap nightclubs and hippie crash pads. Then I discovered 16mm and began a lifelong romance with making films. Thousands of feet rushed through the gate, ran through projectors. I pioneered a burst-frame technique, cutting in the camera, multimedia shows, trick handheld shots.

All this would have been fine, except that I read Atlas Shrugged at age 22. Two years later, I defended myself in Federal Court, appealed to the Seventh Circuit, and went to prison. The experience damaged my moral character profoundly, which was never glued on very well in the first place as a libertine hippie, inflamed by the ideals of Objectivism. To make matters worse, I moved to Hollywood, determined to succeed as a filmmaker, a far more ambitious plunge into vanity and temptation. There were loves, losses, seductions, music clips, and movies as a brash young film director who wrecked everything he touched. At age 40, I had one last shot at success in London. Good show, an A-List cast and crew. No sales. It doesn't matter how the next ten years played out. There was a misfire at Columbia Tri-Star and little video projects, exile on a ranch, a year at Disney pushing paper, a nightclub in Nevada, and another assault on New York. I lived in Holland a couple years and Scotland a couple years, unable to earn a living no matter what I did. And then a funny thing happened. I started to write. My essays caught the attention of an editor.

Remember Edison? -- uneducated and impoverished, ultimately a successful inventor. I was similarly situated, with the additional handicap of radical Objectivism. A stint of publicity and privilege in Costa Rica challenged and freed me. I hit upon an idea, then another. Years flew by, probing the depths of a new career, convinced that I could succeed intellectually.

Cut to the present. Grinding poverty, real hardship, at all points of the human compass a life of constant humiliation, including colossal failure as a husband and father, unread and zero expectation of being noticed. When one is self-published, it kills any hope of being agented or published or selling film rights. Worse, my books are politically verboten, a neanderthal sense of life, irredeemably white male. At age 69, it's doubtful that I can continue. My life is ebbing away, and it's easy to conclude that I failed in every conceivable way. I will be buried in a pauper's grave, no one to mourn my death, no Wikipedia page.

And yet, the body of literary work is immense and original. Some of the fiction is excellent, and the ideas I propounded will survive and triumph. The paradox of achievement is strange indeed. If I had a conventional path, higher ed, and a prosperous career, I would have never conceived The Freeman's Constitution or defacto anarchy. Feeling the approach of a final season or two, I recorded a series of videos. Whenever I doubt my success as an inventor, I replay 'Abbreviated Wolf DeVoon: Part One, Part Two' and rejoice at its clarity, complexity, scholarship, and dignity. It was a life well spent.

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