MetaChat - WTF - I just got off a "How to Write for the Web" phone conference/slide show

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15 May 2008

WTF - I just got off a "How to Write for the Web" phone conference/slide show with none other than Hershell Gordon Lewis, Godfather of Gore!→[More:]Writer, Director and/or Producer of Blood Feast, 2 Thousand Maniacs!, Color Me Blood Red, She Devils on Wheels and over 30 others, I guess now instructs people how to best compose SPAM e-mails (Note - links contain lots of fake blood and grossness).
I left half way through it, but it was pretty entertaining - lots of talk about this "World Wide Web" thing, how things have changed since 1995, and for God's sake, to limit your use of exclamation points to one per e-mail. If I'd known it was actually him at the time (I suspected but thought surely I was wrong), I would've stayed for the Q&A portion and asked "Regarding 1965's 'Color Me Blood Red', for the apartment scene where the police search the premises, you clearly used a Cooke Deep Field Optical lens instead of a more traditional indoor telephoto. My theory has always been that perhaps it more accurately caught the intensity of the moment, allowing a more depth-filled perspective. Can you talk a little about that lens choice?"

post by: Hellbient at: 15:04 | 2 comments

Oh, cool. I've seen a few of his films, and especially 2000 Maniacs! Spam courses? What kind of spam? Buy my stuff or I'll feed you to a bunch of whacked-out hillbillies with a penchant for MURDER!!!?

I'd ask him about the scene in which the girl has had her thumb sliced to the bone is screaming at how much it hurts, has that cured by one of the MANIACS! who cuts her arm off. "Yer thumb don't hurt no more, does it??" A comment on the state of the medical system, or, as I truly suspect, a visceral exploration of Hobbes' theory of the unification of the Body, the Mind and the State as relating to North-South relationships with an axe, and also possibly relating that theory by extension to male-female relationships (such as they are) in the film.

posted by Zack_Replica 15 May | 18:02

I saw him last year at NYC's Horror Film Festival when he received the festival's lifetime achievement award. He didn't mention the SPAM thing at all, but he was a fabulous public speaker. (If he were to hold a public speaking conference,I would definitely attend.)

Someone asked him about why he, as a northern Jew, decided to make a horror film set in the South. Was it some sort of social commentary on the Civil War and so forth. Lewis simply said, "It was summer time in Chicago, so we decided to go down South and make a movie. We made it up as we went along." He then led the entire audience in a rousing chorus of "The South is Gonna Rise Again!" YYYYYYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWW!

Oh and I agree on the exclamation point thing.

posted by miss-lapin 15 May | 18:30

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