Anatomy of an Author Photo: Die Hard Trivia Book

I do try to put careful consideration into which author photo goes on which book.

My author photo for The Canadian Mounted: A Trivia Guide to Planes, Trains and Automobiles for example, was relatively easy. All I had to do was take a shot of me reading the book with a backdrop from the scene at LGA where Del Griffith (John Candy) and Neal Page (Steve Martin) first meet (at least officially).

So when I was creating my author photo for Yippee Ki-Yay Motherfucker: A Trivia Guide to Die Hard I wanted to come up with something that would "speak" to the look and feel of the original Die Hard film, if not the franchise in general.

 Here's what I did for that shot.

1) I used fake blood/paint and splotches of grime onto an undershirt

2) I purchased a Baretta brand BB gun so that I could take the same stance that John McClane (Bruce Willis) takes on several of the more popular versions of the movie poster.

3) I splashed some water onto my face to denote sweat (and even added a few post-photo beads of sweat onto my face)

4) I purchased a Toronto city-scape piece of stock art as well as stock art of explosions and had explosions at the top of the CN Tower. (I figured why not make it a more local/Canadian backdrop since the author is Canadian). I also went with an orange colorized sky like in several of the movie posters. My attempts at creating a multi-colored sky ended up distracting too much from the buildings in the background, so I opted for a single shade of orange.

5) John McClane's skull in a top-hat tattoo isn't visible in the movie posters, and is only seen in fleeting glimpses throughout the movie. But it does appear in a few of the Die Hard 2 promo images. So I added that in.

6) John McClane isn't bald until the later films in the franchise, and he never had facial hair. But I wasn't about to shave or grow back my receding hairline for the photo. And besides, I'm a huge fan of Weird Al, and he's done plenty of parodies over the years without losing that trademark Weird Al mustache.

7) I thought the photo should be framed by something and so went with bits of broken glass, to call out that "Welcome to the Party, Pal!" scene from the film.

8) And though I didn't end up in the same pose as John McClane for the more popular movie posters, I felt that this shot of me (from the out-takes seen below) at least had enough of the trepidation in my eyes to convey something similar to the look Bruce Willis was conveying.

Here are a few of the out-takes from the photo shoot I did in my home office. (I used an Android S21 propped up on my standing desk with a 5 second time delay for the shots, and a small USB ring-light and of course, a green screen tacked in to the ceiling in front of my book cases). I took perhaps a dozen shots.

Putting together an author photo for a specific book can be a lot of fun.

Are you interested in venturing any guesses as to what I'll be doing for the author photo for my 2024 release of Merry Christmas! Shitter was Full! A Trivia Guide to National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation?

The Canadian Mounted

If, like me, you pay attention to when books appear in movies, you might be familiar with the mass market paperback that John Candy (Del Griffith) is reading in PLANES, TRAINS AND AUTOMOBILES.

 

Ryan Reynolds (Wade Wilson) holds the same (or at least a strikingly similar) paperback in DEADPOOL 2. It seems to be a cheeky nod to Candy's character in that classic film. Reynolds has publicly acknowledged being a fan of John Candy and his work.

After being fascinated for years about that hilarious paperback I've decided the world actually needs this book.

So in Oct 2022, 35 years after the original release of the John Hughes classic where the book first appeared as a prop, it'll be coming out.

My version of THE CANADIAN MOUNTED is a combo trivia book and appreciation of PLANES, TRAINS AND AUTOMOBILES as well as John Candy and John Hughes.

The eBook is up for pre-order already. The paperback version will be loaded soon.

And I've been having a blast researching this book.

The Prop Book That Keeps on Popping Up!

Yes, the cover of this book looks a lot like the one Del Griffith (John Candy) is reading at the New York airport in the 1987 movie Planes, Trains and Automobiles. That same book also appears in 2018's Deadpool 2. But prior to now, it was only a fictional prop book. This actual incarnation of The Canadian Mounted explores the use of this prop book and many other intriguing, insightful and entertaining behind-the-scenes details as they relate to the classic 1987 John Hughes film.

Created for fans of the movie and of John Hughes, this book explores and shares stories related to the writing and making of the film, curious tales and collected trivia associated with it, including:

• The incident that inspired Hughes to write the original script
• Del-isms
• The film's eclectic sound-track
• Missing Oxford commas
• Deleted scenes
• Ryan Reynolds' adoration of fellow Canadian John Candy
• General trivia
• And more...

If you love and regularly re-watch Planes, Trains and Automobiles, then this is a book you must read.

Spud Wars: A New Hopelessness (A Star Wars Parody)

As a writer, I have, lately, been recognizing the value of recycling, or re-using, old material into newer forms.

Come to think of it, perhaps I have regularly taken that approach. I'm only just starting to recognize it now.

"I, Death," a 1000 word short story I wrote in the mid 1980s in my second year of high school was re-imagined into a serialized horror story in blog format in 2006. That same story was slightly revised and rolled out again in 2012, and then it was later adapted into a novel that came out in 2014.

A ghost story that I made up to scare students when I was teaching drama as part of a summer program at Carleton University (Prospero's Ghost) was re-adapted over the years to be set within the context of almost every new bookstore I worked at between 1992 and 2008, to entertain and frighten fellow bookstore employees. That story then got re-envisioned to take place at McMaster University when Kimberly Foottit and I co-authored "Prospero's Ghost" to be included in the anthology Campus Chills, which was released in 2009.

And yesterday, for May the Fourth, 2020. I released a silly parody video called Spud Wars: A New Hopelessness.

Spud Wars: A New Hopelessness

I spent a few hours on Sunday May 3rd working on the parody, which basically stars me playing every role, with not much in terms of costumes, makeup, or even acting ability, a Darth Tater Mr. Potato Head, and our dog, Maya. I then added in a few visual effects.

It is, of course, silly, and self-reflective, and produced with virtually no budget and a hastily written outline.

Of course, the parody video was based on the Spud Wars series rolled out on this blog, originally in 2006, and then re-vised and re-edited/crafted in 2011.

Spud Wars: The original text/photo story

That original Spud Wars series was a text and photo based serialized story inspired by a a simple photo I'd taken of myself unmasking Darth Tater.

The original storyline, of course, actually had somewhat of a plot, which involves Darth Tater wanting to get revenge because I ate his father (as a plate of French Fries the night before) - he attacks, I am knocked out. The story continues in The Carb-Eater Strikes Back where I seek help from the wise old Yoda-figure mentor, Mister Bunny. He advises me to "use the forks" which I do to defeat the spud. The story continues in Return of the Spud-Eye where Darth also seeks help from the same old master, who advises that he clone himself.

At that point, the story devolves in terms of storyline and trying to parallel the original Star Wars movies, because the next chapter is Darth Comes Knocking - and then trying to adapt cloning into it (in recognition of the Star Wars prequel movies), with titles like Darth's Revenge Part I and Part II, followed by Mark's Last Stand where I am defeated by the clone army of Taters.

I then, of course, adapted a picture of Alexander man-handling my camera when he was about 18 months old . . .

The story continues with Alex Attacks and then more episodes, including images of Alexander fighting a bunch of the Tater clones in The Final Standoff, then coming to a truce and playing video games (because all this violence makes them want to play video games) in All This Violence.

It was supposed to end there, but I'm a sucker for cliffhanger endings, and so had someone creeping up on them at the end of that one, and the story ends with Spud Wars: The Conclusion and Spud Wars: Epilogue.

It was a fun 12 part serialized story.

Of course, writing a parody script to a few images and shooting an entire sequence of these things are two different things. Alexander most certainly wouldn't participate in it with me, and he's no longer 18 months old. He is 15. Most of the additional Star Wars Mr. Potato Head figures are in Liz's office at the school, so I only had the one Darth Tater in my office at home to use. Not to mention, I had less than 24 hours from conception of the movie trailer parody to wanting to release it on May the Fourth, Star Wars Day.

That is why the recent adaptation is so different than the original scrip.

The lesson, of course, is a concrete example of why the movie version and the original text-based version are so different.

No wait, the lesson is that re-adapting and re-imagining an idea can take many different forms and formats, over the years. It's all part of the creative process of being a storyteller.

Well that's neat. I started writing this thinking there would be a lesson about re-using and re-cycling ideas into different forms and I also ended up exploring one of the many reasons why a movie adaptation of a book, or comic can't possibly be the same thing, that it has to become it's own unique  entity, it's own unique experience.

Two conclusions for the price of one.

I'll take that as a win.

Friday the 13th: The SUPER Superstition

There are plenty of things in western culture that we associate with superstitions and luck.

A broken mirror brings seven years of bad luck. Don’t let a black cat cross your path. Walking under a ladder also brings bad luck. But of all the superstitious beliefs even those who are skeptic regularly acknowledge, the superstition surrounding the fear of Friday the 13^th is compiled up an intriguing selection of different fears and beliefs which form a recipe for a super superstition, if you will.

According to Chambers Dictionary of the Unexplained, it has been estimated that as many as 8 percent of Americans actually suffer from the crippling fear of the day Friday the 13^th, known in phobia terminology, as paraskevidekatriaphobia. Say that one five times really fast!

Let’s take a look at the two main ingredients that helped to create the commonly dreaded day of Friday the 13^th.

Big Monster On Campus

Yesterday we took Alexander and his cousin Madison to see Monsters University.  It was a fantastic movie and a wonderful prequel to Monsters, Inc.

While, as a horror writer, I wished I could have gone to a university like MU, I was delighted to see that they actually had a great tie-in website made to look like virtually any other university website out there, complete with admission info, faculty profiles, academics, campus life, etc . . .

Monsters University website

For example, they outline the various schools within the university, wonderfully mimicing

Academics listing at Monster University

They even go so far as to outline different courses for the schools.  Example below from the School of Scaring....

MU Sample course listing from School of Scaring

And, the cool swag shop called The MU Store for MU branded clothing (which is what I had been looking for) . . .

Banner for The MU Store

I had originally been looking to find a t-shirt that might have played on the "Big Man on Campus" motif.  I remember, when Alexander was a toddler and I had been working at the bookstore at McMaster, we got him a "Big Man on Campus" McMaster shirt -- he loved it.

I would LOVE to be able to get a "Big Monster on Campus" shirt for him.  So, though the MU store online is pretty cool, there are, I think, more opportunities to sell some really cool swag.  Maybe the Disney store already has one - I'll have to go check.

And, given the trend I have seen with university bookstores abandoning books in favor of tchotchkes and other branded crap (even abandoning the name "bookstore" in favor of "campus store" [insert loud audible sigh here]) I find it interesting that in this fake MU Store there isn't even a single mention of textbooks - despite the fact that Mike Wazowski spends a good deal of effort studying from some classic monster textbooks, and some of the ones used in the movie, however brief, were really funny.


[insert second audible sigh here . . . ]

In any case, it was a fun movie, and I really am interested in getting ahold of some of the fun swag; and, of course, going back and watching Monsters, Inc again.

MU forever . . . . .

Eight More Days Til Hallowen

Halloween III - Season of the Witch came out in 1982 and was unrelated to the previous and following Halloween movies which featured Michael Myers.  (Warning: This blog post contains Spoilers - so if you haven't seen the movie and intend to, proceed with caution, as I'll be giving the ending away)

And although, once I started watching it, I was disappointed with the fact that Michael Myers wasn't in it *, the movie won me over.

* (I should note that, although Michael Myers wasn't in Halloween III, there is a cute scene where there's a TV playing in the background featuring an ad for one of the other Halloween movies)

The basic story involves a plan by the evil owner of a mask company to kill children all over the U.S. on Halloween using specially developed masks with embedded computer chips that interact with a high frequency to be broadcast on a special program on network television.

The beauty is that the horror is about mass consumerism and seems to take the evil scheme of a sinister adult putting "razors in apples" and the associated fears of Halloween to a whole new level.

For those reasons, though critics despise the fact that the movie diverted from the rest of the franchise, to me, it's a more interesting film that says a lot about our culture and society.

One of the most annoying "ear worms" that live in my head to this day (and was the genesis of the title of this blog post) and replays itself in the days leading up to my favourite holiday, are the television commercial jingles advertising for the Silver Shamrock Halloween Marathon.


Thus, the "Eight more days 'til Halloween" as seen in this YouTube clip.

 

Of course, one of the more wonderfully kinds of moments for me, involves something seen in this YouTube montage.  "It's almost time. Don't forget to wear your masks!"  What a wonderful sense of foreboding and dread.

 

And I just love the way the movie ends. After struggling to put a stop to the whole event, Dr. Challis, the movie's main character, is on the phone with a station manager, attempting to get the program pulled off the air.  He succeeds in getting two out of the three taken off the air.  But the third station continues playing the program, and the screen strobes between Challis yelling "STOP IT!" and the flashing Silver Shamrock pumpkin.  Roll credits.

Most Hollywood movies tend not to end in such a way, with the bad guy succeeding. (Okay, except perhaps for horror films where one last quick and final scene reveals that Jason or Freddy or Michael Myers is seen to still be alive at the very end)

But that's one of the things I loved about this film.  I think I'll watch it again some time this week.

While wearing my Silver Shamrock mask, of course.

Die Harder

I've always felt that Die Hard was a great Christmas movie. What can I say? A smart alec Bruce Willis in peril on Christmas Eve shooting it out with the bad guys while quipping like Spider-Man. Yeah, that's the stuff. Sure, Frank Capra pulled our heart strings with the tale of George Bailey, but give me John McClane putting bad guys in their place for a feel good Christmas movie any day.

I sought out and ready the book Die Hard was based on. (Roderick Thorp's Nothing Lasts Forever which was written in 1979) Having read the excellent book a couple of times and seen the movie close to a dozen, I'd have to say the movie closely followed the book's content (with the exception of changing the main character from Joe Leland, who appeared in an earlier Thorp novel into John McClane, as well as a few other specific details)

Die Hard 2 (which is being run on CHCH tonight) was also based on a novel -- though, inspired by the novel is more accurate. The premise is based on Walter Wager's novel 58 minutes, which I also read, but which I doubt I'll read again. It was a decent novel, but I wasn't a fan of the omnipotent narration and style of the novel and that kept putting me off throughout the reading of it.

But the movie, directed by Renny Harlin and written by Steve E. de Souza and Doug Richardson, beautifully continues the saga of John McClane, again, on Christmas Eve, fighting off a group of terrorist bad guys. This time, instead of taking over a skyscraper, they've taken over Dulles International Airport in Washington.

It's a great, fun movie -- and having just watched a bit of it on TV, I'm remembering why I liked it so much. Not only great casting, dialogue and action, but also great writing and direction.

The scene where McClane runs out onto the field to try to warn a plane of an impending crash (due to the terrorists hacking into tower and recalibrating ground level to be 200 feet below sea-level) is made much more powerful by a few brief yet powerful glimpses into the passengers aboard the doomed flight. The writers and director allow us to really feel for these passengers as well as the crew. So when McClane is unable to save them, you really feel for the incredible loss of so many lives.

It wasn't just a plane that went down and exploded in a big Hollywood movie explosion in an action film. It was a plane filled with real people with lives, with hopes, dreams, worries, plans, smiles, loved ones.

And of course, it makes the concern over McClane's wife Holly who is on a plane circling the airport with only 90 minutes of fuel left, that much more tense.

Powerful, well written, well directed. And a good example, in my mind, of a movie that was far better than the book it was based on.

And, as I mentioned, a great movie to watch again close to Christmas.

R.I.P. Mr. Hughes

A number of the movies I have seen repeatedly over the years are films that John Hughes wrote, directed or produced.

If I had to pick an absolute favourite, which is hard because many of Hughes movies would make it to my "top of the top" list, I'd have to go with Planes, Trains & Automobiles, even though I've watched Christmas Vacation every year pretty much since it first came out (it's a tradition, like many other Christmas movies that are aired that time of year).

There are so many memorable quotes from the movie, that I wanted to walk through here. But I'd be writing this all day.

One of the many ones I regularly pull out (particular when Francine and I are driving somewhere) is the following one that takes place when Del is driving on the wrong side of the highway shortly after a near accident where he re-enters the highway via the exit ramp. Across the divided highway, another car driver and his wife are frantically trying to tell them they're on the wrong side of the highway:

Neal: He says we're going the wrong way.
Del: Oh, he's drunk. How would he know where we're going?

Classic human miscommunication.

Two things that appealed to me so much about this movie are the friendship born out of the misadventure between two dynamically different strangers as well as the never-ending tangents they are thrust on in their attempt to get home.

Interestingly, the very first short story I sold was a young adult humour tale "The Progressive Sidetrack" -- it was about a student doing everything he can to get to a girl he has a crush on to ask her out to the dance that night. From the beginning, circumstances continue to thwart him at every turn, and the entire day becomes a huge misadventure with obstacles thrust in his way and preventing him from getting in contact with her. I first wrote it as part of a writing assignment for a grade 13 writing class, and my teacher at the time mentioned how it reminded her Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

I suppose that is an apt enough description of the story (since I'd seen a ton of John Hughes movies and could say I was heavily influenced by them), but I like to think that while my story certainly was a young adult comedy/adventure tale, it was more akin to the simple goal and obstacles as laid out in Planes, Trains & Automobiles. They want to get home to Chicago. He wants to ask a girl on a date. And unlike Ferris, my main character isn't quote so popular. He was more bumbling and a bit of a nerd. (Yes, I know -- he was based on me, which is why he couldn't possibly be cast in a Ferris Bueller kind of light)

That, alone, should be enough evidence of how well I have always admired the writing of John Hughes. You know, that whole imitation/flattery thing.

To Boldly Go Wait In Line For Hours

I'm quite excited that tonight I'm going to be seeing the new Star Trek movie with a friend.

I remember watching episodes of the old television series with Jim Turcott in his basement in Onaping back in the early 80's -- he was a Trek fan and his passion for the show was infectious -- he converted many of us into Star Trek fans over the years. A group of friends of Jim are gathering this evening in Sudbury to see the movie and celebrate Jim's memories. While I won't be with them, I wish that I were, and I'll certainly be thinking of Jim and wondering what he would think about this movie . . .

I've heard that for die-hard Trekkies, it's great -- and also for non-fans it's great. Gotta love something like that.

Of course, there's this hilarious spoof of the "reviews" of the movie from The Onion . . . (don't worry, there are no spoilers in it . . . just fun laughs)


Trekkies Bash New Star Trek Film As 'Fun, Watchable'

Christmas Vacation Remixed Trailer

As one might be able to easily tell, I'm a huge fan of National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. It's one of those movies I love to watch every holiday season. (Of course, I also love to watch Die Hard and Die Hard 2 as well as Lethal Weapon -- to me, all four movies are great holiday classics)

Speaking of thriller type movies, while looking for a clip of Clark Griswold attacking Santa and his reindeer from Christmas Vacation, I stumbled upon this hilarious re-mix of a movie trailer for Christmas Vacation.

Only, the creative genius behind this re-mix makes it out to be a thriller rather than a comedy.

Nicely done.

A Clark Griswold Style Attack

Okay, it's not a scene that will get me a nomination for father of the year, and I'm not proud of it, but Francine and I couldn't help busting a gut when at dinner time I described how the spiral white light Christmas tree ended up in many broken pieces yesterday afternoon. Last night when watching National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation for the thousandth time, Francine couldn't help pointing out how similar my reaction to a Christmas display gone bad is to Clark Griswold's.

Alexander and I were working in the front yard, diligently setting up a snowman, Christmas tree and attempting to add the spiral tree to the mix.

But I kept running into issue after issue trying to get the spiral tree set up. It wasn't fitting together properly, wasn't standing the way it should, and for the life of me, I couldn't get the top of the tree and star properly in place.

After about 40 minutes of repeatedly fiddling with it, my frozen, numb fingers ended up pushing too hard trying to get the star lodged into to the top section of the tree and snapped the top section into two pieces.

Completely at the end of my rope, I kicked the remaining part of the tree over then proceeded to repeatedly hammer blows down onto the tree, letting out a barbarian-like battle cry.


After releasing a bit of pent-up frustration, I looked over at my poor dear four year old who was standing in the garage looking at the scene and crying uncontrollably. "My tree!" he sobbed. "My spiral Christmas tree!"

Bad enough that the tree broke -- but poor Alexander had to watch Daddio pitch a Clark Griswold style fit on the broken tree.

Despite my antics, this story DOES have a happy ending.

Alexander's tears were quickly dried, his heart was consoled and the broken pieces of the spiral Christmas tree were laid to rest in the garbage can. Another one of my "not so fine" moments of fatherhood was over.

This morning, I made a quick trip to Canadian Tire where I purchased not one but three miniature spiral Christmas trees for my son. I surprised him by setting them up in the kitchen while he was playing downstairs. He was completely delighted.

I figured it was the least I could do after subjecting him to the horrific scene he had to endure the day before.

Only ten more days until Christmas Eve -- let's see how many more Clark Griswold style goofs I can pull off . . .

I Finally Saw Saw - Though I Have See-Sawed Before

Though I'm a horror fan (admittedly a fan of reading horror over watching horror movies -- and there is a huge difference, BTW, which I won't get into here for lack of time and necessary space), I don't watch a lot of horror movies. One of the reasons is that Francine doesn't enjoy them all that much and I'd rather watch a movie with her than alone.

I am thus far behind in being "caught up" on relatively recent horror films that have come out.

But this past Saturday evening, Francine was heading out with a group of friends, so I thought I'd give one of the relatively recent movies I've heard a lot about but haven't yet seen a look: Saw.

I didn't know much about the movie, hadn't read anything about it, and only knew it had something to do with a person being chained in a room and given a saw -- apparently one that wasn't good enough to cut through the thick steel chains but would be good enough to cut through flesh and bone.

I was amazingly surprised at how good this movie was.

Based on the hype about it, I was expecting it to be a really violent film involving intense torture. But it was actually an intelligently suspenseful story told in an intriguing way and while certainly violent and disturbing, there was a certain cinematic style to the violence in which it was done in a tasteful yet effective way. I'm always impressed when you don't need to actually see the thing happening -- like in this case, a limb being sawed off -- in order to be fully disturbed, frightened and repulsed. That, in my mind, is the director working hard at creating the mood, setting up the character and scene in such a way that the viewer gets it without having to see the "dumb-show" version of it.

The Jigsaw Killer in this tale reminded me of MOG (Master of Games) in the Richard Laymon novel In The Dark from 1994. (Ten years earlier than this movie's release). In this great novel, a librarian receives an envelope containing a $50 dollar bill and a note instructing her to "look homeward angel" signed by MOG. When she looks into a library copy of Thomas Wolfe's novel Look Homeward Angel, she finds $100 and another note. This note asks her to do something a bit risky and says the dollar value offered if she performs the task will double. So she tries it out. The stakes keep getting higher and the risks keep getting riskier. It's a slippery slope she starts traversing, both intrigued with the clues and determined to find out who is behind them. It's a great story, classic Laymon and has twists similar to the ones pulled off in Saw -- even though the storyline is a lot more straightforward in Laymon's novel. If you liked Saw, you'd likely LOVE In The Dark.

See, I told you I preferred reading horror over watching horror movies . . .

But in any case, I quite enjoyed how Saw was done and am now curious to see the next installment in that film francise (though my experience with popular and successful films that went on to sequels, particularly in the horror genre, hasn't always been that good)