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And the Best Actress goes to...
Sunday, Nov 15, 2009 9:46PM / Members only
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Please vote for this "Crash the Superbowl" Ad
Thursday, Nov 12, 2009 4:11PM / Members only
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Video Tapes... DVDs... Anthony Lapaglia...
Tuesday, Nov 10, 2009 3:26PM / Members only
When DVDs came out, I knew I would probably end up with a lot of them... with video tape, even if you get it brand new, after you watch it a few times, the tape gets stretched and on it's 20th run, you are no longer watching the same movie you bought...'
It was 2000, a video shop in my neighbourhood in Brisbane was closing down, they were liquidating all their stock, I ended up buying a shitload of movies, I remember it was close to 300 tapes... I had no time to read all the synopsis on the back of the case, so I made a lot of judgment calls on the art work of the video sleeve... with impulse buys, you end up with a lot of duds like "Tremors 2" or "The Glimmer Man" with Steven Segal and Damon Wayans... but out of that lot of tapes, I got a few gems, one in particular was a movie called "Jerry and Tom", Joe Montagna and Sam Rockwell play a hitmen duo, Rockwell plays the apprentice who learns a lot about the hitman business from Montagna and eventually finds himself surpassing Joe to become a better hitman... I remember watching that movie so many times, until one day, the tape snapped inside my VCR... I have been searching for the DVD of Jerry and Tom for years, still I haven't been able to find a widescreen version of the DVD...
Another gem from the video store close down sale is a film called "Phoenix" it starred Ray Liotta and Anthony Lapaglia, a gritty gangster story. Now my Phoenix tape didn't break, but I lost it after lending it to a friend, who is no longer a friend now since he failed to return the tape and still to this day maintains that he wasn't the one who borrowed it...
Anyways, I have been looking for the Phoenix DVD for awhile and again no luck, then it was 2007, I was at the Rome Film and TV festival having lunch at this restaurant when I see Anthony Lapaglia, sitting two tables across from me, signing authographs for people. This is during his Without a Trace era, so after the fans left, I went over to introduce myself, he once lived in Brisbane also and we talked about Rugby and other Aussie stuff... then he said he has to leave, and in my mind, I had two things I wanted to ask him, 1) Would you read a script I wrote, I thinkg you'd be great in it... 2) Do you think you can get a copy of "Phoenix" on DVD?
Any sane person knows it's bad manners to ask a movie star a favor, so I went with question 1) We setup a breakfast meeting the next day to talk about it, it was my first actor pitch... So that night, I walked all over Rome looking for a photocopy place trying to print my script out, but I couldn't find one, so I went back to my hotel and printed it out there, which cost me 40 euros, the most expensive script ever printed in the history of script prinitng...
The next morning, I went to see Lapaglia at his hotel, we ended up having breakfast at this cafe, I told him about my script, again, his face lit up and he said, he has a first look deal with Warner brothers that this film would be perfect for, I gave him the script, offered to buy him breakfast, but got beat to the punch by a really hot girl who works for the festival who saw us eating there... He gave me his agent's email and his own email, told me to send him the script and my reel...
I took me 2 days to realize after meeting him that the email he gave me was a dead account, the agent's email didn't work either, it took 2 months for me to realize he wasn't gonna call to talk about my script, now 2 years later, I realize what I should have asked was question 2... getting him to get me a copy of "Phoenix" would have been the right thing to do at the time, he proabably has boxes of them at his house he's trying to get rid of... I'd be doing him a favor...
Here is a photo of Lapaglia with Director Stanley Kwan that I took... I should mention that I was working for Stanley at the time, pitching his new projects at the festival. the day I met Lapaglia was the day I was leaving Rome, I was late getting back to the hotel, Stanley and the actress Chow Muyan had to wait for me which resulted in me being yelled at by Stanley and his producer James...
So I have learned my lesson, the lesson here is, never piss off a producer to get a script to an actor and... never lend your DVDs to friends.
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Are there any Good Samaritans left in the world?
Wednesday, Nov 4, 2009 1:27AM / Members only
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Getting old and out of shape... time to lose some weight...
Thursday, Oct 29, 2009 1:56AM / Members only
So.... I just turned 28 recently and I hate to say it, I do feel old. Worrying about ones career can give you white hairs overnight, and for the past few years, it's all I have been worrying about, needless to say, I woke up one day not long ago and found a patch of white hairs in the top of my head... you see... when you focus your energies on something that involves your brain a lot, you sometimes forget to take care of your body...
I admire professional athletes of all kinds because they are constantly in the best shape of their lives, they need to be, or else, their career could pass them by... I am a huge fan of MMA and I have always wondered, could I ever become a fighter, back at UFC 1 in 1993, I really thought I could... then life got in the way...
I used to be an active person, I was on the basketball and tennis team in high school and have been an avid gym goer for the past decade... keeping yourself in tip top shape is hard and at 28, I am really struggling... Having been on the "filmmaker's diet" has wreck havoc on my body, I went from a lean mean 160 pounds to the now 200 pounds, I used to like walking places, now I hate the sight of a flight of stairs...
What is the filmmaker's diet you ask, well, there is a lot of late night Macdonalds runs, especially when they came out with the double decker quarter pounder... there is a lot of eating hotpot, that's where producers like to talk script ideas... I eat KFC by the bucket, so that helps...
from that very old picture you are looking at on the right, I look to be in okay shape, and that's why it's been my profile picture for so long... In my high school days, I had motivation to stay fit, the reason I was in shape was cos I used to get picked on an beat up a lot when I was in school, you need to be strong to fight off all the bullies... now that I am no longer in school, what's my motivation?
It's been about 12 months since my mom started calling me "FAT BOY"... that name has stuck and caught on to other family and friends and it hasn't been easy... My sister calls me "Puffy" and it has nothing to do with P.Diddy... To have a beer gut and not having had a beer since 1999 is JUST NOT FAIR, and seeing that winter is fast approaching, if I don't do anything about it now, I don't think I will do anything at all after this Christmas, thus begin my total body transformation....
So for the next 2 months, it will be tuna fish, chicken breasts, oats and protein shakes... no pasta, no KFC, no more burgers... it's gonna be distilled water instead energy drinks... and oh that's right, along with a bunch of supplements I got as birthday presents... fat burners, stuff that helps boost your metabolism, Carbohydrate blockers and that stuff that makes you crazy strong so you can run like Forrest Gump...
So that's me in my 200 pounds and all its glory... I am hoping that this blog could continue and hopefully after christmas, I could fit into my old school uniform again... and who knows, if this catches on, I could take a career turn and become the 155 pound MMA Champion like my idol Mike Brown... or at least look more like him if not to be able to fight like him... but then again, this could be the last time you ever hear about my dieting plans... and the next time you see me at the Halloween party, I will be the guy who looks an aweful lot like John Goodman or Tom Arnold without a costume on...
This is Mike Brown the WEC 155 pound champ by the way...
Stats
- Chan was born in Hong Kong in 1981 and grew up in Brisbane, Australia. He wrote, directed and produced his first English feature film ‘Half Lit’《暗火》in 2003, It was hailed by critic Dr...
- Occupation: Director , Screenwriter , Film/TV Producer
- Age: 28
- Gender: Male
- Total visits: 52,286
