A Press Release from the Bad Craziness Management

ATTENTION FAIR READERS!

We here at Bad Craziness International have been down for a few weeks due to renovations.
A few weeks ago, a terrible accident occurred that claimed the lives of 10,000 Bad Craziness Interns.  The Bad Craziness Central Aerospace Engineering Department built the first completely operational and inexpensive hovercraft based off of Syd Mead's spinner model in Blade Runner approximately 2 weeks ago.  Suddenly, an army of rabid mongoose busted through the door completely befuddling Bad Craziness' own Lloyd Dunn, John Lautner and Karl Benz.  Suddenly, the mongoose army let out a blood curdling war cry and destroyed everything in the room.  The sheer force of the savage mongoose rebels was too much and the jet propulsion systems erupted in a wild science fiction-y rage, destroying a solid 4% of our HQ.  It was a sad day, and we send our condolences to the families of our loyal employees.  But we are returning with a vengeance!
We would like to announce a brand new addition to our HQ.  A bigger, better department that we're surprised we've never had before.  OFFICIALLY, Bad Craziness International is now acquiring a film studio department!  We here at Bad Craziness International are proud to announce our newest addition to the Bad Craziness family: Bad Craziness International Studios.
There will be plenty of films being churned out by Bad Craziness International.  The debut film will be directed, written, and produced by our very own Dylan Merrick and his crack stock team (also employed by Bad Craziness) and we will announce the title in a few weeks once it goes into production.
Be prepared fair readers!  We hope this will be a bountiful journey but it will take your viewership which we are not afraid to gain using brute force.  Just saying.
So fare the well fair readers and welcome to Bad Craziness International Studios!

A word from our founder and creator

~Viva amigos
      ~the mgmt

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF JIM JARMUSCH

Independent cinema would be nothing without Jim Jarmusch.  You know those movies, fair readers, that consist of indie hipsters talking about their problems with sparse, dry humor?  Jim Jarmusch was making fun of those movies before they even existed.  We here in the Bad Craziness Central Surveillance Department love this man, so we decided to stalk him as he went about his daily routine.

Jarmusch is notorious for being quite the aloof character.  He always outsmarts the media how ever he can.  All of us in the B.C.C.S.D. were thoroughly convinced that we could get a shot of him doing Jim Jarmusch-type things (we even had a handwritten copy of his daily routine that we fished from his trash), but alas we were not so fortunate.  This slippery Ohioan escaped our photographic clutches, but we will be at it again one day, especially since we know EXACTLY what he does throughout the course of his day.

Here is a slideshow of the pictures our crack team of photographers took just missing  Mr. Jarmusch:

Slide #1:   In this one, we caught Mr. Jarmusch en route to Penn Station.  We heard that he needed to see one of his many mistresses in Memphis that he met while filming Mystery Train back in '89.  The Bad Craziness Tech Crew attempted to use our patented PigeonCam (hence the bird in the picture), but it malfunctioned.  Okay, to be honest, mano y mano here, we strapped a camera onto a random pigeon and it fell off.


Slide #2:   This one was taken by our one and only man on the street, Caveman Jack.  Jack is usually quite the spy when it comes to stealing pictures of celebrities.  He's dressed up as a homeless person, a hobo, a bum.  Okay, in all seriousness this is some homeless guy that we gave a camera and he ended up taking a picture of Jim Jarmusch's feet.  He was quite delusional and we're surprised that he even knew how to pick the thing up.


Slide #3:   This one is my personal favorite because it's the closest we actually got to seeing Jarmusch.  This is a picture of the parking garage on the Lower East Side where Jim has kept his car for the past 23 years.  He yelled that to us from beyond the way and told us to keep back or he'd "call up the dogs".  We weren't sure if he was serious, but we weren't gonna chance that.


Slide #4:   This is one of two actual photos of Jim Jarmusch that we were able to land.  Shelletivka Bramrofsky, one of our many former-KGB agents here at Bad Craziness, took this picture with our patented BackpackCam using the mirror thing you can find on ceilings in most malls.  This was taken while Jarmusch was going for his weekly pedi in Jersey City.


Slide #5:   This is the other photo of Jarmusch that we got.  People know Jim Jarmusch by his iconic pompadour style haircut (of which everyone here at Bad Craziness has) but in this photo, our crack field reporter, Woody Bernstein, was able to get a rare photo of Jarmusch before unleashes the beast.  He woke up on the sidewalk, in his un-pompadoured glory, after a night of heavy drinking with the RZA, Bill Murray, and Eugene Hutz of Gogol Bordello.


Slide #6:   This is the final photo and ironically the first one taken of Jarmusch's apartment on the Lower East Side.  He set booby traps for people who attempt to take pictures of his apartment (whether they be stalkers or journalists) and this is one of those "mid-booby-trap" kind of photos.  One of our men in the field, Cary Grant (of no relation to the actor; believe me, we do blood tests), snapped this one right before he fell into the manhole.

Perhaps we'll get him when we work the Tribecca Film Festival this year!  Keep your fingers crossed fair readers, keep your fingers crossed!  Happy Monday hombres and as always,


~Viva amigos,
      ~D. Merrick


DISCLAIMER:  We here at Bad Craziness International were not stalking Jim Jarmusch.  This is for a project one of our younger employees had to complete.  We said we'd help him out, but we don't like him very much so we didn't try to hard for him.  In fact, we're sacking him using this blog.  Sorry Jim, better luck at your next job!


~Sincerely,
      ~Bad Craziness Cen. Mgmt. Dept.

ROLL THE REEL: THE IN BETWEEN TEENS - 1916

People my age have some trouble remembering a time when we here in America weren't conflicted about going to war.  Imagine an era where everybody was all GUNG HO! about going to war.

The era you're most likely imagining right now is most certainly NOT the World War I era or any era for that matter.  Prior to WWI, some folks (like Emma Goldman) were violently opposed to the idea of going to war and others (including the U.S. Government) were violently opposed to those who were violently opposed.  In 1916, right before we were about to ship our Yanks off to fight the Hun and save the world from any future wars (which makes cold fusion look like tying shoes), the country was in a state of cultural upheaval over whether or not to join the war effort in Europe.  Movies gave us some valuable points of view about going to war.

There was everything!  Pacifists, war hawks, Russians; everything you need to start a good debate.  So let's kick off...

1916

I.     INTOLERANCE (SEPTEMBER 15th, 1916)

Directed by D. W. Griffith

      The Birth of a Nation pissed off everyone around, so D. W. Griffith decided to make another 3 hour epic dealing with controversial takes on controversial topics.  This 3 hour epic dealing with controversial takes on controversial topics is now regarded as one of the absolute masterpieces of the Silent Era and it's one of my favorite films.

      Intolerance contains 4 different stories as only Griffith could put on the big screen.  The four stories follow a chronological order that only jumps through history a little bit:  ancient Babylon (circa 539 BC), Biblical times (27 AD), Renaissance Era France (1572), and "modern" America (1914).  All of them deal with the idea of intolerance and its consequences.

      The estimated budget of this film nowadays is $46 billion which for 1916 was equivalent to EVERYONE'S INCOME EVERYWHERE.  The scale of the movie is almost beyond comprehension and Griffith's utilization of everything involved in the filmmaking process really distinguished his place among the pantheon of true auteur directors.  

II.     THE QUEEN OF SPADES (APRIL FOOL'S DAY, 1916)

Directed by Yakov Protazanov

     Protazanov was one of the Russian Empire's most celebrated filmmakers when the serfs of Russia were still cool with the pogroms and brutal poverty.  Luckily for us, he wasn't!  

     The Queen of Spades is based off of Alexander Pushkin's short story of the same name, which is a cautionary tale about lying, trust, and putting all your turnips in one vodka milkshake.  It's revolutionary use of combination shots influenced directors all over Mother Russia, especially Lev Kuleshov who was so good at it that it was eventually named after him.  

     The themes of the film were quite poignant at the time of its release and annoyed both the Czar and the Bolsheviks alike.  With its imagery, innovative camera work, and in depth adapted screenplay, Protazanov's Queen of Spades is regarded as one of the greatest films to come out of the Pre-Revolutionary Period.

III.     CIVILZATION

Directed by Reginald Barker, Thomas H. Ince, and Raymond B. West

     There are two films of this decade that were real game-changers in the world of cinema.  One is The Birth of a Nation which I went over in the last post and the other one is the pacifist anthem Civilzation.

     Most of the movies that I've listed so far I've listed for their technical merits and achievements, but Civilization has all that and then some.  Besides having one of the most famous and complicated sequences of the Silent Era, it's also one of the first movies (and probably only movies) to be responsible for the outcome of a presidential election (sorry Michael Moore, you tried buddy).  It's the first film to depict Jesus and thus became one of the first films to be condemned by the Catholic Church.

      The famous scene where Jesus walks through the combat zone, showing the King the horrors of war is easily one of the most beautiful and influential scenes ever put on film and one of my favorites.  I wish I could devote a whole post to this one, but I'll have to leave it at this.

     

     Well folks, we'll be moving onto the Roaring Twenties, leaving "the War to End All Wars" behind in favor of flappers, bootlegging, and flag pole sitting!  But we're leaving the In Between teens with hours of film lodged deep in our brains and a hope for even more solid ones to come.  Our next year here at Merrick's March Movie Madness is...

1922!

Stay tuned on Bad Craziness folks!  Follow me on Twitter (@DylanMerrick6) and like the brand new Bad Craziness Facebook Page!  And always remember,

~Viva amigos,

   ~D. Merrick