yesterday i was sitting in my little closet office (as opposed to office closet, which since i live in san francisco, would actually be classified as a second bedroom), and i looked up to the one large framed item i have in there, which is a poster for the movie the killer, signed by director john woo.
this is something i used to have in my office when i worked at sony, but haven’t put up at xxxxxx, for the simple reason that it’s really hard to hang large framed items on cubicle walls. and let’s not even talk about how the cubicles are literally shrinking. the funny thing is, seeing this poster yesterday didn’t remind me of john woo or chow yun-fat, or even anyone at sony.
instead, it reminded me of javier grillo-marxuach.
back in high school, i fell in with a rough and tumble group of iconoclasts, both feared and shunned by the rest of the school. yes, i’m talking about huron players, the school drama department. i don’t even recall quite how that happened, but it was really fun, and it did result in my first girlfriend, so who’s complaining? i managed to go through a couple of years without actually learning anything, but i recall doing tech, running lights and sound for some productions, and basically learning to kill time without actual education taking place.
while i never acted in the formal plays, i did have little bit parts in a weekly lunchtime theatre that we put on, most of which was written by our most talented (only) playwright, one javier grillo-marxuach. yes, this crazy kid with the big glasses and bushy eyebrows penned play after play for us, most of them silly and nonsensical but a big hit with the kids. i forget where he went to college, but i heard through the grapevine that after college he moved out to lost angels, trying to write screenplays and break into the biz. although i was living in venice at the time, we never hooked up, and i lost track of him, probably due to the fact that i’ve lost track of basically everyone i know before college. (hell, if i’ve known you for more than four years and i still talk to you, count yourself lucky. if i’ve known you for four years already: be warned!)
much to my disappointment, i realized later that many of the more hilarious skits that we performed for lunchtime theatre were actually edited monty python bits. however, there was one really outrageous story idea he pitched to me once that involved a crazy action plot which was just an excuse for the brilliant line for the poster: “…and ten thousand bullets.”
alas, if you look at the tagline on my poster of the killer, it reads, “one bad hitman. one tough cop. and ten thousand bullets.”
thus, seeing this again, i was reminded of javi, and i wondered if he ever made it in the biz, or if he just wasn’t really that talented at all.
and yet tonight, while catching up on my six week backlog of lost, the most brilliant tv show of the season, what do i see in the opening credits?
supervising producer - javier grillo marxuach.
Posted at January 19, 2005 11:38 PMlost is that good? haven’t seen it yet. i’m currently hooked on Battlestar Galactica (2004). but i don’t have the tivo or the teevee, so i’ve got to torrent the bastard.
it’s damn good though.
and stealing other people’s ideas and re-working them in a minor way? that’s SO hollywood. congrats javier!
Posted by: xz at January 20, 2005 8:20 AMlost is that good. housewives is fun and trashy, but lost is actually *good*. i haven’t started bg(04/05), but i’m afraid to, honestly. too many shows (lost, housewives, 24, alias) plus anime plus basketball suck up too much time…
Posted by: e at January 20, 2005 8:47 AMthat’s so cool about your long Lost buddy…ok, cheesy, I know, but I couldn’t resist.
and yes, xz, Lost is very good. and besides the impressive writing and movie quality production, that evangeline lilly (kate) is just a super hotty.
so, if nothing else, that’s definitely a reason to watch. ;)
let’s see… venice… john woo…
…ed?
could this really be you after all these years?
to set the record straight, we actually did hook up while you lived in venice - albeit very briefly. that’s when i pitched you the screnplay you mentioned. it was was something earl and i were working on during my “ohmygodijustsawthekillerandithaschangedmylifejohnwooisafreakinggod” phase - a sentinment later rescinded after repeated viewings of “hard target” and “face off”.
in spite of the derivative title (which was actually “ten million bullets” - we felt the need to up the ante a little) the story had little to do with mr. woo’s work - it was more of a touching, stand-up-and-cheer saga of the struggle between the gun-toting owner of a beleaguered elvis impersonator school and a corrupt city bureaucrat…
…that much said… i do remember that the finale was a fifty minute gun battle between elvis impersonators and the bureaucrat’s bodyguards, all of whom were dressed as clowns (the bureaucrat was the grand marshall of a circus parade). my then-newfound worship and admiration of john woo made for an uneasy mix with my other obssessions.
sadly, the funniest of our lunchbox theater (“luncthime?” has it been THAT long, man?) work probably was when we busted out a couple of monty python skits in the absence of any original student-written work - and judging by the heavy hand the pythons had on my developmental years, i can’t imagine my high school experiments in playwriting as being anything other than pale impersonations of their brilliance.
which is why i’m ecstatic that you like “lost.”
i am also ecstatic that you are a lomographer who doesn’t use capital letters. i bought an lc-a a few months ago and am slowly being won over to its blurry-supersaturated-fisheye-lens-charm.
i guess i’ll just scroll down to your archive and see what you’ve been up to all these years…
…thank you so much for your kind words about “lost.”
ja
vi
ps: do you really have a framed one-sheet for “the killer” in your office? if you ever get tired of looking at it, i’ll trade you for the framed original hk english-language “hard boiled” i have in mine.
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