This is where I keep all the old stuff…
Rayzor (1993-94)
My sophomore year of college, I wrote and drew a daily comic strip for the student newspaper called Rayzor.
Rayzor was a loving parody of/homage to popular superhero comics and their tropes, with a good amount of fourth-wall breaking by various characters. Every word of that description feels done-to-death and tiresome today…but in 1993, it was still a fairly novel approach.
Student Films (1995)
I took a Film Production class during my senior year at IU, and made (or helped to make) two silent short films. I kept the finished 16mm films–“preserved” in a plastic dry cleaning bag–until somewhere in the mid-2000’s, when I had whatever was left of them transferred to digital.
They were shot on an ancient Bell & Howell camera and are (unsurprisingly) not very good. I share them here more as historical curios than anything else…
Ersatz Jones and the Jewel of Destiny
This one was shot first, as a group project written and directed by the four of us who appear in the film.
As the title suggests, it’s basically a riff on Indiana Jones and the serialized adventure films that orignally inspired that character. We didn’t have the time or resources to do old-timey title cards. (This was the mid-90’s, so we were cutting and splicing actual film; digital editing suites were not available to us.) But the story isn’t that complicated, either, so I doubt anyone will get lost.
The Intruder
This was my second film and first solo directorial effort. I remember it better because (a) it was my final for the class, (b) I got to use a color camera for at least part of it, and (c) all the actors were my friends, so we to to laughing at it’s overwrought cheesiness in real-time.
My old friend and erstwhile roommate Kirsten plays the woman under siege. Another old friend and former roommate, Andres, plays the creepy campus predator–at least for most of the film. He wasn’t available the night we were shooting exteriors, so another friend, Allison, serves as his “stunt double” in several of these shots. (Big, baggy 90’s sweatshirts for the win!)
Mister Hollywood (1997-??)
My first regular, professional on-air role was as the “entertainment correspondent” for the Mark Shaw Program on WGCL. I was billed as Mister Hollywood, and every Friday I’d run down the new movies in theaters that weekend and shoot the shit with Mark about the week’s big pop culture stories.
What started as an ironic on-air handle soon became a full-fledged alter ego. Mister Hollywood embodied the self-serious bluster of a “big time” national entertainment reporter, despite only being heard on a low-power AM station.
Ghosts of the Desert (2004)
After I moved to L.A., I wrote, registered, and failed to sell two feature-length screenplays. A few years ago, I pulled them out of storage to see how well they aged (or didn’t). Up first: my 2004 zombie movie, Ghosts of the Desert.
The Logline
A construction crew in a sleepy desert town in Utah stumbles upon a long-buried government research facility, accidentally unleashing a horde of zombies. Three college students on a cross-country road trip find themselves trapped in the midst of the carnage and must fight to survive and escape.
What Holds Up?
I think the basic premise remains solid. The scares and set pieces still mostly work; there are elements that by now feel shopworn, but this was written before the Walking Dead-inspired zombie renaissance, so the ideas were fresher at the time. It’s unsentimental (no one is safe, including the main characters)., which good zombie stories have to be. It leaves room for sequels, but is definitely a full, standalone story. And I think the zombie baby sequence still lands.
What Maybe Doesn’t?
There’s a little too much time spent with the kids before we get to the fireworks factory. The idea was to give viewers time to bond with the key players before they start getting eaten/turned. That could have been done more efficiently, with a lot less talking (and better dialogue). The overall quality is definitely “beginner level,” and there’s backstory hinted at that needs to be more coherently drawn or just cut altogether.
What Would This Be Now?
Either a character backstory episode for one of the Walking Dead spin-off shows or a Netflix-produced cheapie with one B-list star that gets auto-recommended when you watch something like Train to Busan.
Jeff Dellinger 