Joss the Box Office Slayer

THE KILLOUGH CHRONICLES

by James Killough

This isn’t another review of The Avengers, but it is part of our impromptu Shoot Your Heroes Week here at PFC.  While I’m not sure exactly what that means, I think it sounds rather dramatic and subversive enough to be one of our themes.  Perhaps it will one of many, or perhaps this will be the first and last.

My new friend Adam Von Rothfelder isn’t my hero, but I’m certainly a fan. (Ph: P. Reizt)

‘Shoot Your Heroes’ comes from the fact I’ve only had two heroes in my life, one of whom—a producer I admired more than any other in the business—I ended up wanting to kill after she tried unsuccessfully to fuck me over by poaching my investors on a film.  The other, Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton, died in 1890, but I’m pretty sure I would have want to shoot him, too, at some point.

Sidney Bag-o-Pucks

BAKER STREET

by Eric J Baker

The Pittsburgh Penguins, crowned by most sports writers as presumptive 2012 Stanley Cup Champions, were just smoked by the Philadelphia Flyers in the opening week of the NHL playoffs. Thus proving true the sports writer’s axiom, “That’s why you still have to play the games.” The Pen’s captain, Sidney Crosby, is arguably the best hockey player on the planet. I say trade the bum.

You call that a playoff beard?

In 2009, Crosby led his Penguins to a championship (above) and months later won a gold medal for Canada, all by the time he was legally able to order a Miller Lite in a bar. He is a gifted athlete who can turn crap into a goal while the guys on the other team are standing there wondering who pulled their jock straps over their heads. He’s five seconds ahead of everyone, as only the most elite players can be. He’s tenacious, and he’s a winner.

Oh yeah. Everybody hates him.

Cult of Personality

THE KILLOUGH CHRONICLES | REVIEW

by James Killough

It’s not easy for someone like me—a member of a spiritual group in which the devotees wear all white on ceremonial occasions, perform ablutions before meditation, touch our heads to the floor before a ritual meal and obey the Master of the Path without question—to sit through the first parts of Sound of My Voice, much less be interested in seeing it at all lest it make me squirm right out of my preferred movie theater seat, C22 in the handicapped section of Arclight Hollywood, the most legroom in the galaxy.

The transcendent Brit Marling.

Granted, the secret Sufi handshake of my group isn’t as elaborate as the one in SOMV, but nor is it particularly secret.  A sort of cross between a bro handclasp and a kiss, it is elegant enough to be performed quickly on the street; it doesn’t even look like a secret handshake, more like the Middle-Eastern equivalent of a European air kiss, which is what it is: very Arabian Nights somehow, or how Crusaders in an esoteric brotherhood might have met or left each other in medieval Jerusalem.

Post

THE KILLOUGH CHRONICLES

by James Killough

After financing fell through on the first iteration of Hatter the film—arbitrary changes to British tax laws threw the entire industry there into chaos for about eighteen months, long enough for many productions to fall apart—I began to develop other projects.  Rather than learn my lesson about how hard it is to finance esoteric, difficult films, I managed to come up with one that was even more obscure, Post.

James Franco Kissing Himself (2011), by Solve Sundsbo

The idea for Post came from two sources.  The first was a two-day discussion I had in 2001 with filmmaker Tarsem Singh (Immortals, Mirror, Mirror) about the nature of romantic love.  Everything in Tarsem’s world is highly visual, perfectly designed down to the most minute detail.  The conversation took place in his loft overlooking Trafalgar Square, and this rarified environment gave me a sense of how the piece might work cinematically, even though it was primarily just a philosophical conversation with no real conclusion.