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| Larry Longstreth |
I've been saving the second half of my interview with filmmaker Larry Longstreth and producer Mark Ordesky. We first spoke on the phone all the way back in September when they were promoting the DVD release of their film
The Long, Slow Death of a Twenty Something. (What's that? You're Christmas shopping you say? Well then...)
When we talked, I knew that Larry and Mark were already planning a series of other projects. The press has a nasty habit of only paying attention to what's happening right in that very millisecond. But the projects Larry is working on under his
Eddy Spaghetti production banner are worthy of your attention, especially now when he's smack in the middle of working on them. (You can find the
production company on facebook for updates.)
In the works and already happening are an animated series called
Four Tanks and a Healer that already premiered on theonering.net, an animated feature called
The Wanderer King, a documentary called
Before the World Goes Boom, and an animated pilot called
Captain Wilcox vs. The End of the World.
Did I mention that Larry and his team are essentially moving forward on all of these projects at once? In some way, each of these projects is in their own stage of development. Did I mention that Larry lives in the Midwest? Not Los Angeles or New York. The Midwest.
My hope is that this will inspire you. I directed a successful actress in a small project recently who shall remain nameless, but she tells this great anecdote about "making it". She says she was once sitting in a golf cart with Tom Wilkinson for hours waiting for the weather to clear on a shoot. They talked about life and he told her the one secret to making it. (I like to think he held his finger up like Jack Palance's "Curly"...) The secret is...never quit. Eventually, as the years go by, if you just keep going no matter what, others will quit but you'll still be there. Doing what you love.
That made me laugh, but in a way Longstreth represents that kind of anecdotal tenacity. So many of us talk about the need to recapture the magic of the eighties. While we talk about it over beers, Larry talks it about it on his film sets or in development meetings. If the eighties was the generation of Spielberg and Lucas and Howard and magic aplenty...then we're the generation after them that has to figure out how to deal with that. How can we aspire to match that spirit without directly ripping it off or not doing it justice?
Longstreth is doing something about that and there's something extra exciting about the fact that he's doing it from the Midwest. Whether it's by choice or necessity, I don't know. But it adds just a touch of rebel sheen to the whole operation.
As I previously mentioned, this is the second half of our interview.
Read the first half here and then check out the second part where we talk celebrity heroes, films of the eighties and yes...even a little
Lord of the Rings.
In the following interview - A: Audrey, M: Mark Ordesky, L: Larry Longstreth.
Ah...parody rock. The true cornerstone of any healthy marriage.
