Day 4:
And then there's this (not my video)
Ahem.
I had completely forgotten that a different actress was Tammy (Eladio's wife) originally. Debra Michel is the name on the call sheet.
On my Facebook page for the past week, I've been posting pics from a movie now making the festival rounds called KICK ME - shot in Kansas City KS in 2012, with some reshoots taking place 1 1/2 - 2 years later. Hired as the script supervisor, I lasted 14 days into a 30 day shoot - well nights, as most of the action was to take place in a single night. I demanded that my name get taken off the film, which was honored.
The film got finished, premiered at the Another Hole In The Head Film Festival in San Francisco, CA in Dec. 2022 and had its Kansas City premiere at the Kansas City International Film Festival, March 2023.
What follows are pics & vids from the 14 days I was involved in the film.
Day 1:
I was originally cast as Luthor's Father - Sean Hill (Luthor's Mother) is still in the film, but she's not clearly seen. Walter Coppage was cast in the reshoots and the film is much better for it.
Day 2:
Gary and Jason Cantu, who was the first DP. If you've read the FILMMAKER MAGAZINE interview, there's a darkly amusing anecdote Gary tells about hiring him. It makes a great story...
Anyway - he was hired last minute, so he probably was not Gary's first choice.
This sequence was reshot later on after DPs changed. Note Santiago's shirt - his wardrobe got changed to what's now in the film.
Day 3:
When Santiago runs into Betsy - original version.
Notified that my account is 'currently restricted' on FB for the next couple of days due to 'hate speech', which is defined by using the word 'trash', especially when preceded by the word 'White' and with pics/videos of Marjorie Taylor Greene's behavior. FB has no problem with the word 'Nigger' however, which apparently does NOT fit their definition of 'hate speech'.
Interesting...
So I won't be able to immediately comment there on the sad news about Jen Angel's death in connection with a robbery she attempted to prevent.
I met her briefly during her time as zine editor, when she attended the Midwest Underground Media Symposium in KC, MO back in 1999. She started a bakery in Oakland, CA in 2008 and it looks as though they will continue on, in the wake of her death.
Here's some video from that Symposium featuring her:
As stated in last year's review of Season One, 2022 was primed to be The Year of Night Gallery, with K-L scheduled to release Seasons 2 and 3 (Season 2 released in July 2022 and Season 3 just got released this week - Thanksgiving week). 'The Year of Night Gallery' proved to be even more dead on than I thought at the time - the aforementioned 'companion' book, AN AFTER HOURS TOUR is available at the end of the year in a revised/expanded version, this on the heels of the 2021 release of THE ART OF DARKNESS, a coffee-table book featuring the artwork that the show utilized. And in October 2022, Netflix dropped the anthology show GUILLERMO DEL TORO'S CABINET OF CURIOUSITIES, which is perhaps the ultimate homage to NIGHT GALLERY to date.
Season 2 is the NIGHT GALLERY that most will remember aside from the pilot TV film; it's the first full season, divorced from the "Four-In-One" concept and when the show starts to develop its own distinct identity. The first year has a sort-of warmed over TWILIGHT ZONE vibe to most of Serling's scripts and producer Jack Laird's influence is muted. Year 2 has Laird's sensibilities brought to the foreground and Serling's influence, while still present, is backgrounded compared to Year 1. That clash results in the now classic H.P. Lovecraft adaptations of 'Cool Air' and 'Pickman's Model' as well as memorable shows 'Camera Obscura', 'Silent Snow, Secret Snow', 'The Messiah of Mott Street', 'Green Fingers', 'The Sins of the Fathers' among others. It's a good mixture of stories set in the Past and Present Day and an emphasis on settings in the UK.
It also brings forth the most reviled and ironically, probably the most influential part of the show arguably - the comedy blackouts. The show did have humorous episodes and when they worked ('The Housekeeper' in Year 1, 'Phantom of What Opera?", 'Hell's Bells') they worked really well. When they didn't ('The Funeral', 'Junior') they just sat there, leaden - much like most of the overt comedic TWILIGHT ZONE episodes, though at least the NGs weren't nearly as long to suffer through. Mainly, the blackout episodes just resulted in a lot of eyerolls (and luckily, no rimshots were added to the soundtrack). But as much as people say that they hated them, they opened the door for the comedic horror that started to boom in the 80s up to present day.
Kino-Lorber again does the show justice - 2K scans from the interpositives makes the show look even better than it did on broadcast, and uncut - if you've only seen the show in syndicated form, you haven't really SEEN the show. Season 2 is 5 discs and has a whopping 32 audio commentaries - porting over the 6 commentaries from the DVD release (3 from AFTER HOURS/ART OF DARKNESS authors Skelton & Benson and 3 from Guillermo Del Toro [!], it quintuples the amount of new commentaries by most of the usual suspects from the previous set (Gary Gerani, Tim Lucas, David J. Schow, Stephen Jones & Kim Newman, among others) and adds a new wrinkle to the newer tracks by Benson & Skelton - incorporating interview snippets from cast & crew when researching for the first edition of AFTER HOURS TOUR.
Also ported from the DVD are featurettes REVISITING THE GALLERY: A LOOK BACK and ART GALLERY: THE PAINTINGS and some TV spots. New for the blu-ray is THE SYNDICATION CONUNDRUM, PART 2, an in-depth look into the convoluted life of the show in syndication, which helps putting into context another bonus feature LOST TALES, a 'new' episode of the show comprised of 3 segments only seen during the syndication run and a longer version of LITTLE GIRL LOST.
Season 3 is only two discs, but no less packed - commentaries as noted from Year 2 (no Del Toro commentaries this time around, unfortunately; he was a bit busy - he does turn up in interview segments however, in the new Benson & Skelton tracks), and the last part of THE SYNDICATION CONUNDRUM unraveling the deconstruction & fusing of THE SIXTH SENSE to bulk up the sale of both shows to syndication and a special bonus - including all 25 of the intros that Serling did for those additional shows to incorporate them into NIGHT GALLERY.
In one of the commentaries, author Stephen Jones & Kim Newman make two observations about NIGHT GALLERY - that the show is the culmination of Universal Studios' history in Horror; they are the home of 'classic horror' Frankenstein, Dracula, The Mummy and The Wolfman, after all, up through suspense creepers of the 40s, and sci-fi horrors of the 50s before Horror starts to mutate & modernize - and that it ushers in the next generation of filmmakers who will become very familiar for the next 30-40 years. And there's a solid case for both - THE NIGHT STALKER debuts midway through NGs Year 2 run and the KOLCHAK series debuts a year after the end of GALLERY; and soon to follow is the ascent of Stephen King, the debut of David Cronenberg and 'body horror'. It's also the sunset of the anthology show - GHOST STORY/CIRCLE OF FEAR never really reaches the level of NIGHT GALLERY, and who remembers QUINN MARTIN'S TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED nowadays? DARKROOM is probably the Last Gasp of studio genre anthologies - after that, the torch is carried by TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE/MONSTERS but there's nowhere near the level of production resources available on the studio shows.
NIGHT GALLERY gets a lot of flak for being perceived as "the lesser TWILIGHT ZONE" and a 'sort of' failure for Serling, which is wrong on both counts - there were rocky times before NG, of course (look up THE LONER, THE DOOMSDAY FLIGHT, THE NEW PEOPLE), but that perception comes from the official title of the show, 'ROD SERLING'S NIGHT GALLERY' which implied that, like TWILIGHT ZONE, he was The Main Guy when in fact, he was A Main Guy. Jack Laird is nowhere near as well known as Serling, but he was an important TV writer as well, who settled into Universal/MCA in the early 60s - he was a producer of KOJAK after NG and had a love & knowledge of genre - prior to NG, he did a pilot with Leslie Nielson, DARK INTRUDER (also available on K-L) and after NG, he produced the mini-series THE DARK SECRET OF HARVEST HOME, based on the Thomas Tryon 'folk-horror' follow-up to THE OTHER, HARVEST HOME. But NG will be what he'll be long remembered for.
