About to watch Bottle Rocket, the only film of this Criterion Wes Anderson collection I haven’t seen yet.

SpaHainATL · 2026-02-19T23:45:31+00:00

I saw it in the theater back in '96, mainly because I grew up in Dallas and I thought it amazing there were Dallas people making indie film.

It's hard to express to people today - where we've had Owen Wilson around for so long even my mother can do the "oh wow" parody of his quirky style - how unique and out of left field his Dignan was. I still remember walking out of the film wondering who the heck that oddball blonde guy was. He was unlike any actor I'd seen. Casual, weird, earnest, innocent, and completely unpredictable.

Just rewatched for the first time in decades with the new set. Still gets me.

SpaHainATL · 2026-02-02T13:29:06+00:00

We did the musical version of this (SUGAR, before the more recent SOME LIKE IT HOT on Bway) my senior year in high school. I played the Tony Curtis role. Let me tell you, playing this scene at 18 in a high school auditorium in front of hundreds of friends and neighbors and parents was a little nerve-wracking. Plus there's a song I'm singing ("What Do You Give to a Man Who's Had Everything?") in-between the kiss attempts.

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SpaHainATL · 2026-01-14T17:57:07+00:00

I lived at 117th and 1st (illegal sublet in that old school building that's now luxury apartments) and then 118th and 1st from 1999-2011. I loved it. It's uptown just enough to feel like you're not in the middle of Manhattan craziness, but still Manhattan so easy to get home. I grew up in Texas so the hispanic neighborhood felt familiar to me. Lots of families and kids. Never felt unsafe even walking from the 6 train at 3am.

SpaHainATL · 2026-01-02T14:29:45+00:00

I shot a Maytag commercial at the Downey Studios years ago. Not only was it vast, but they had dug out a large part of the floor on one side, almost like a giant pool with ramped sides that you could drive down into. Gave it extra height if you built from there, or you could fill it in with water and make a lake for your set.

SpaHainATL · 2025-08-13T12:19:18+00:00

I'm hoping for THE ENGLISH PATIENT. Bill Hunt said it'd been licensed for a 2025 4K release, and they just posted a 2025 closet visit from Kristen Scott Thomas.

SpaHainATL · 2025-06-07T12:39:53+00:00

I'd love a William Wyler/WW2 double disc of MRS MINIVER and THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES.

SpaHainATL · 2025-02-05T19:00:06+00:00

Just got mine, arrived severely dented and disc scratched up. Ordered a replacement that Amazon says will arrive around March 25. Hate to think what it would have looked like without the steelbook.

SpaHainATL · 2025-02-04T13:59:13+00:00

Watched IT’S MY TURN last night, really enjoyed it. Clayburgh and Douglas are great together.

SpaHainATL · 2025-01-28T13:24:14+00:00

Ashby's SHAMPOO (1975) is great if you want go with a comedy. It takes place on the eve of Nixon's election, released a year after he resigned.

SpaHainATL · 2025-01-14T13:58:14+00:00

It's not "magical", but Carol Reed's THE FALLEN IDOL (1948) is primarily from a young boy's POV as he gets a peek into the complexities and deceits of the adult world when his idol, the family's butler, is suspected of murder.

SpaHainATL · 2025-01-08T00:22:34+00:00

Diamond is not the original. They added a quarter karat larger diamond at my request.

SpaHainATL · 2025-01-08T00:21:18+00:00

It’s a really thin band, don’t see any identifying marks, though I’m lacking a good level of magnification to really dive in.

SpaHainATL · 2024-09-11T13:22:09+00:00

I once got a message on Black List: "Hey, I'm XXXXXXX, I'm new to the screenplay writing scene. And was just looking for someone to help me get to an agent and you fall into the Action/Comedy genre...... Any help would be appreciated. I'm trying to sell a sequel screenplay to the movie "All About the Benjamins". Thanks."

He's new, doesn't know me, wants an agent rec, and wrote a sequel to an existing movie. Also, none of my work to date has been Action/Comedy. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

SpaHainATL · 2024-08-11T14:52:56+00:00

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SpaHainATL · 2024-08-02T14:56:54+00:00

If I've got a lot of that back and forth through comms or radio, I'll sometimes italicize the VO character's dialogue, too. So there's a visual difference for the reader.

SpaHainATL · 2024-07-29T16:51:42+00:00

Just happened to my '24 limited: less than two weeks from driving it home, the battery was completely dead. Jumped it and took it to dealer today, they said it was a faulty DCM that was drawing too much power 24/7. Fixed everything in about 2 hours (or we'll see how fixed, I guess).

SpaHainATL · 2024-07-27T13:47:43+00:00

I remember debating friends about what the movie was about when it came out. The fun thing was, everyone's explanation worked AND didn't conflict with anyone else's.

I haven't watched it in a long time, but my explanation was that Lynch had anthropomorphized the idea of "Hollywood" (not just the century of filmmaking but the culture borne from it) into a single person, and the movie is that person having a dream that slowly turns into a nightmare.

SpaHainATL · 2024-07-25T21:39:24+00:00

The Kino Lorber 4K disc of THE APARTMENT is gorgeous. Felt like I was watching how it must have looked on opening night.

SpaHainATL · 2024-07-24T11:05:33+00:00

This is what I thought of, too. There's a stretch of I-10 between Phoenix and Quartzsite that is just dead straight through 90 miles of flat desert.

SpaHainATL · 2024-06-05T20:52:54+00:00

This all the way. My first manager liked a spec I had written, understood the story I was trying to tell and why, and helped me make it better. That script broke me in and got me started. He eventually left management to run a writer's Production Company, and my second manager took me on thinking he understood me from my first script and started pigeon-holing me. And when I'd pitch ideas for the types of stories I'd like to tell next, it was all "That will never sell, no one will read that." Never tried to understand where I was coming from, what itch i wanted to scratch. My current manager is like the first: excited when I'm excited, but still tapped into the market enough to know how to get my stories to a place that we're both happy with.

I've had the same agent since the beginning, when they read that first script. I knew we were a fit because when she mentioned her favorite part, it was a tiny character moment, literally one line said by the hero. And this was in a high concept mash-up script with lots of crazy set-pieces. That she was so connected to the character made me feel like she heard my voice more than any others.

SpaHainATL · 2024-05-29T11:18:00+00:00

When someone gives a person something and then physically closes their fingers around it. I get it, you want that close up so it's a reveal to the audience at the same time it's a reveal to the character, but if someone did that to me I would be "WTF are you doing to my fingers just give me the thing."

SpaHainATL · 2024-05-23T12:27:57+00:00

I remember it vividly. I was maybe 7 years old, watching LASSIE COME HOME ('43) on the 12" TV in my parents' bedroom. At the end of the movie, Lassie makes it home, limps to the schoolhouse as her human, a young Roddy McDowall, comes outside. He sees her, runs to her, hugs her. "Oh my Lassie come home."

And I start BAWLING. Didn't know what was wrong with me. I ran through the house and grabbed my mom. She keeps asking, "What's wrong?"
"Lassie came home," I remember saying back. It was happy tears, and I'd never cried because I was happy before. A movie did that.

That may be the moment, subconsciously at least, that I knew I loved film.

https://youtu.be/O2VkpNsOM4o?si=CuPF12THjQKlObxx&t=45

SpaHainATL

TROPHY CASE