The Theater of Diminished Faculties

You may ask yourself (go ahead, I'll allow it) why it is I have been so remiss in my reviewery and other public service. The reason, as some of you may know by now, is because I'm making a movie, or more properly a VOD-style series, titled (you guessed it) The Theater of Diminished Faculties. I've had to explain this project to a number of people without the sort of shared references we have, so it'll be much easier to explain here. The series is a framed narrative, in the sense of The Illustrated Man, and is oriented toward a kind of 70's ABC Movie Of The Week/Night Gallery/Tales Of The Unexpected kind of vibe, with some of the nested stories playing up more of the lurid giallo-as-psychedelic-soap-opera/perverts from beyond the grave angles you might wisely expect. My strategy is to make the "edited American versions" of the episodes available for viewing online, while selling a deluxe "unedited/expanded" handmade dvd edition (including a copy of my book And So On For Ever, available in part at Cryptonarrative and copies of the soundtrack by my band MPA titled I Am An Empty House Longing To Be Haunted, and a couple dvd-only extras such as the complete Suffer A Witch To Live and The Butterfly Labyrinth Of The Black-Thighed Witch: A Sex Tragedy And Cautionary Tale episodes) for the otaku market. I've been working on getting the scripts ready, rounding up actors, working on puppet designs and scouting locations and hope to begin shooting next month with a "trial run" on a trailer/video for the song The Ghost Of Dried Wells in New York. I plan to do larger shoots in New York, Austin TX and Oakland CA, while doing smaller pickup shots across the country as part of my ill-advised summer tour. After the trailer is shot we'll be doing some fundraising, and I'll have some short-run items available for sale (including a TODF tshirt and hopefully an ep by Clocksucker, the band April and I are working on) and I'll be doing the long-promised Dr. Cocktopus Go-Go Red Hot Action Telethon that'll make the Jerry Lewis telethon look like The Day The Clown Died. Note that's not a one-story-per-episode deal, but jumping between stories, like The Saragossa Manuscript or Arrebato, tho I hope it's clear I'm not trying to do some kinda ridiculous autistic recreation of earlier films or periods of time as is the case with certain contemporary directors I will not sully your ears with at this time. To that end, hardcore gorehounds are gonna hate it: the whole thing is a very baroque theatrical approach, like Gradiva or Eugenie De Sade or a bit like I Drink Your Blood, but the best quick example of the *heavy* stuff I can give is the prologue from Coppola's Dracula, that kind of operatic bombast, despite my inability to resist disclaimers and hucksterism (as heard clearly on the radio trailer). More info (and the usual reviews) coming soon!