Women’s Studies

I’ve mentioned my buddy Lonnie and his movie before, I think.  I’m too lazy to check and, between you and me, I have no idea what I’ve posted on the front page.  Except for the stuff I wrote 20 years ago because I like to sit around and wonder how healthy my childhood was.

Anyway, Lonnie’s finally getting through the gate.  Women’s Studies has been picked up by a distributor and, currently, is slated to appear on the shelf at your favorite video store online and across the street from your ratty apartment in the fall of 2009.  You can keep up with details at Lonnie’s production blog.

Lonnie and I have sort of been on the same path – dumping tons of money into realizing our dreams.  I picked literary niche books and he went with a horror movie with scantily clad girls who hack up men with comically large knives.  Somehow – and it’s a mystery to me – he hit it big while my world collapsed into despair and failure.  Go figure.

Women’s Studies does fail to feature nudity, though.  So I have some cold comfort as Lonnie bounds off to Hollywood to make some big budget flick in the next few years.  You do get to see the lovely Cindy Martin in a tennis skirt but, unless there’s a long, steamy sex scene with Lexa Doig, I have a problem.  Which is why I’m going to stop watching movies.  It’ll give me more time to write 22 page fan letters to Lexa.

I’ve seen Women’s Studies in unedited form, and I even hung around and became unruly and drunk during a day of filming.  And all it took was watching everyone try to make a few minutes of film over an eight hour period to drive home the fact that Lonnie’s crazy for doing this and the mere fact that he actually completed the film is astounding, so it’s really awesome that I’ll soon be able to get it from Netflix.  I’ll be honest, I had some doubts about Lonnie’s ability to get this far and, you know, not start shooting people on the highway from an overpass.  He not only succeeded, but he did so with grace and the energy that marks a true filmmaker.  Women’s Studies is his writing, his directing, his child.  It’s grown from a weird outline, to an engaging script, to a film where his wife is covered in blood and clobbering people with a tennis racquet.

Hey, it’s the American story.  This guy was my crazy RA in college and now he’s a filmmaker about to launch into his second project.  He’s worked hard and scrabbled his way through life, with all the horror and setbacks that life throws at you, and he’s realized his dream from the ground up.  Most people don’t even get within a whisper of that hurdle, let alone succeed in leaping it.

I’ll keep you all updated with news as it comes in.  Oh, and if you think you can read, then there’s still my quiet dream that needs to leap a hurdle.  Please make me more like Lonnie so I can also have a beautiful wife who beats people to death with unusual objects.    Buy Books.