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If you haven’t already listened to Episode 5 of The Lethal Voice Podcast, check it out now! LETHAL VOICE PODCAST—EPISODE 5

That’s me singing my version of a song called “Lightnin’ Bar Blues” from a group called Hanoi Rocks – originally by a group called Brownsville Station. I have a habit in my art of being what I call a pop culture vulture. I love to take little pieces of stuff I love and cut it up and then stick just a little piece into whatever I’m working on. We called the bar in Vengeance Turns, The Lightning Bar. Note my putting the cart way before the horse, wearing the OFFICIAL “Vengeance Turns” cap.

^{_{Let’s review the FACIAL HAIR TIMELINE:}} 

You’ve already heard about TAKER, and maybe even watched it, but here’s the link to the B/W version: It was the first project to unfold and was in August  2017. 

After that, David and I teamed with Amanda on a pretty cool project of hers that I wish she’d finished called “the Ex-Files” -- No, not the series with Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny -- her title was a creative spin of that and was referring to psycho ex boyfriends and girlfriends. The idea was to have short seasons that would all tell the very high drama tales of being stalked by exes etc and would all be based on true stories. She had written out the first story and David and I shot a “pilot” episode with her in August of 2017 as well. 

During this time as David and I got to know each other, he introduced me to one of his favorite places, a microbrewery in Torrance called SMOG CITY, and that would pretty much act as our headquarters for the first couple years we were working together. I’m not a big drinker anymore but I absolutely adore a few of the brews at Smog City, especially as all my friends know -- one called Infinite Wishes… Wow. Anyway -- not getting paid by Smog City. That’s not an official plug. Just me ranting about good people making good beer. Not only did that place act as our HQ, but they literally saved our asses when we needed a location for “Her Own Demons” and then let us screen it there too. 

It was right around this time too, that I STARTED ACTING CLASSES AT BERG STUDIOS. That was in SEPT of 2017 after I audited a couple other schools. The idea starting out really was just to take a few classes because I thought this was one more thing that would make me a better writer for the screen and for the actors themselves. As it turned out, I quickly fell in love with it, and in the opinion of those around me, I was good at it too.

I will say that I am an education junkie though, and take every opportunity possible to increase my own skills in areas that I care about. There are a few books on screenwriting that I still consult pretty regularly -- pretty much out of habit -- as I start developing and writing a new screenplay. And if you remember the previous episode, I’m a research nut, so all this just kind of goes together for me. When you really care about something you dedicate the time to it to be the best you can. I do anyway. 

Back to the Facial Hair Timeline: 

We shot HER OWN DEMONS Oct 2017 which got David and I together with Kelsey again, along with Jamald Gardner this time, Spencer Belko was back again too from Taker,an actor named Katie Fuleki was in this and would later be part of Vengeance Turns too as Mrs. Dubois in the opening scenes -- and we got to work with the makeup artist named Alondra who we hired as part of our Putting the Cart Before the Horse tradition. So except for Amanda who ended up not being in Vengeance Turns, Her Own Demons was a neat little trial run for all of us working together as a team. We ended up with a pretty cool little scary psychological thriller on our hands that in my opinion shines far beyond our near zero budget. 

If you have listened to previous episodes, particularly EPISODE ZERO “WHY LETHAL VOICE”, you know about my band in the  90s called Wild Love Rebellion and maybe about the album we recorded in 1994 but never released called “Wake UP…or let me sleep!”. It was in January of 2018 that I was able to finally release the album as a very indie self-release and am proud to say it is out on Spotify and all the streamers pulling down pennies to this very day. Getting that album out finally led me to writing a very brief light memoir called Wild Love Words that was released in January of 2018 as well. I really wanted to release the lyrics from the songs as poems on their own since there was no “lyric sheet” in the album and I decided to add very brief stories about what was going on in our lives at the time the song was written, maybe what inspired it, who wrote it and how -- all of that, along with just weird stories about the band tripping on acid and painting our house and stuff like that. 

We were back to working with Spencer Belko in a very intimate 15 minute short co-written by Spencer and me called Relatable in March 2018. That one actually ended up in some contests as my way of learning how to submit to festivals etc and — surprisingly— it really didn’t do too badly. 

March 2018 was busy for David, Amanda and me though, as we came up with an idea for a show called “SCENE IT ROUTE” and ended up in an RV and traveling to the Grand Canyon and across AZ, visiting certain spots to film short films and all our BTS along the way--The basic idea for SCENE IT ROUTE STILL stands out to me as a great idea and is also still one of most fun and amazing experiences I’ve had since I started filmmaking -- Thank you Amanda, David and Moriah again for those amazing memories.

By the time we were working on “SCENE IT ROUTE”, my FACIAL HAIR WAS OUT OF CONTROL -- To the point that my MOUSTACHE was growing in a curl going directly into my mouth. It looked funny but it made eating complete hell.

Even after getting back from AZ, we weren’t done. David and I got together with one of my friends from acting class named Jordan Ashley Grier and one of his actor friends named Xander Rain. We all got together for just one single day and shot one of my favorite shorts, a 3 minute homage to Black Mirror called Maddest Love. That was shot in April 2018.

After that, suddenly not much was happening for a few weeks, then a few months. I hated driving for rideshare and needed money from background acting to resume so I finally broke down and Shaved in mid-June 2018 and ironically almost missed out one of the coolest castings of my whole life. My pictures at Central Casting all had my long hair and facial hair now, and like I said calls had slowed to almost zero until I shaved. But literally the day after I shaved -- before I could even update the pictures for Central Casting, they called me and cast me as BG on The Mandalorian… and guess why? That's right… DUE to the facial hair -- That was the reason they called -- and when they found out at my fitting that I had shaved, I almost didn’t get the role. 

And that would have been a huge bummer for so many reasons, but primarily because of my little habit of using it like film school. After our first few takes, I got brave on the first of my 3 days of shooting with them and just stayed behind as all the background were released and sent back to holding. If you don’t know much about the politics of Hollywood and especially around the secrecy and strict codes involving any Star Wars or Marvel project, let me tell you what I did is just not done. I walked over and just sat down on the set and watched as they continued to work.

 So back to deadlines and what it meant to me shaving off all that facial hair. I’m sure by the time this rolled around and I finally shaved that no one to whom I had made my bold proclamation even remembered my doing it. But I knew something was wrong. It was my personal clock still, and when I shaved it off, there was a very certain feeling of defeat on a lot of levels although I tried to never show it on the outside. Almost losing that Mandalorian gig was a very strange omen.

By this time we had already had two false starts and dealt with another crooked producer -- this one from America -- to scam us and have me going from believing we might be handed a million dollars to fund our film to launching the first of several failed crowdfunding efforts.

A few short months after shaving all of the facial hair off, all would truly seem lost as I would find myself homeless and living in my car all to keep the dream of making “Vengeance Turns: The Motion Picture” alive.

Make sure you listen to all of CHAPTER 2: EVERYTHING FALLS APART starting next week on the The Lethal Voice Podcast for the whole sordid, sad story.