Attended the SCIENCE fiction convention and hanged out at the ALAMAT booth with ALANGUILAN. He gave me two copies of the WASTED compilation. Wondered out aloud what he did this time for me to merit two copies. He just smiled this sheepish grin.

We then talk about when we would resume shooting the WASTED MOVIE. It seems that due to his financial situation he could not come and stay in manila. So MOHAMMED MUST COME TO THE MOUNTAIN. We will be shooting key scenes in LAGUNA. I don’t know how to explain to the audience why suddenly the background turns from an urban gritty to mountain scapes and green landscapes and caraboas fornicating in dirty mud waters! I WILL NOT DIGITALLY ERASE THE BACKGROUND! The costs would be prohibitive! Besides it would rob me of the pleasure of hearing him explain in the commentary why this happened.

So I guess WASTED THE MOVIE is back on schedule of being OFF SCHEDULE. He also lent me the OFFICIAL EPISODE 2 DVD. Since I ‘ve been subsisting with the pirated edition I have not seen the supplementary disc. AS I expected I saw nothing new that wasn’t there in the EPISODE 1 DVD. George Lucas is talking about pre-visualition and how to cut costs so that he can make a fast paced action film. That he did except he didn’t pre-visualize the story or the acting of the characters so what you have is a great 30-minute action film and a lousy two-hour movie!

There’s a sequence where CHRISTOPHER LEE explaining how they did the light saber duel. It was painfully obvious that his face was superimposed on a stuntman since his 70 years old, how do you expect him to do those stunts? When I first heard that he was playing the New SITH LORD I wondered out loud how they could top DARTH MAUL who was a real martial artists steeped in WHU- ZHU.

They didn’t! I thought that maybe since LEE' s supposed to be playing this incredibly powerful JEDI that he wont need to jump around and do so much. He would just activate the light saber and it would go and fight OBI WAN and ANAKIN while Lee controlling it telepathically, sits down and pours him an afternoon tea.

Back to the Science fiction con. It was fun to watch all those fans with the hand made costumes. Great creativity! I saw a half dressed Borg trying to find his zipper in the bathroom and failing miserably. There were fleet federation officers smoking and ogling eleven maids. There was a fully grabbed OBI WAN KENOBI with Huge tits and stiletto high heels. An HR GIGER Alien in nylon stockings, trying to scare vampiric Claudia two feet higher than she should be.

I told Gerry that I should have brought the gun and since he had the backpack we could have shot another trailer that would have rocked! (Yeah should have just made trailers! At least they can be done immediately! )

It starts off with federation officers getting shot in the head! They fall down! Then it’s the Borg’s turn! And then The Jedi’s! Then finally the ALIEN! The copy on that would be,

“ DEADLIER THAN THE BORG! “
(White Tex on black background, the Tex flying past the camera to zoom out into infinity!)

“ MORE LETHAL THAN THE JEDI’S”

“ MORE GORE THAN THE ALIEN! “

We then pan across the smoldering bodies and then tilt to reveal Gerry with a gun on his hand and saliva dribble on his mouth.

“ WASTED THE MOVIE “

He laughed his head off and said I was sick. Told him I wasn’t the one who spent months creating a character who blows people’s head off for no reason!

Was invited to the con by my editor when I was directing for TV. He was one of the organizers of the event. He even took my book THE SEXMEN and plugged it on the pa system.

Budgett was there too. Awfully nice of him to let me display my comic book in his booth despite the fact it does not carry the ALAMAT logo.

Also saw some first time BIKERS who came strutting their stuff and “ over projecting “ their image as bikers. Funny how when you’ve been riding for a long time that you don’t have the energy to “ project” or even have the idea to “ project”. You simply are.

Then the event of the evening. The premiere of NEMESIS the STAR TREK movie. When the credits roll, Cecile tells me the sound in THX was incredible and like nothing she’s ever heard in other theaters. I missed this theater. Was hanging out here all the time during the late nineties! Roughly ten minutes in the film. The sound becomes inaudible and Cecile’s high regard for the cinema house sank faster than light speed.

The movie was horrible! It’s not a STAR TREK movie! Its MAD MAX meets a badly remade WRATH OF KHAN!

Oooooh DATA DIES! Oh how terrible! But you knew it coming in because a new DATA was discovered! And even before his “ sudden demise” There’s a scene where DATA OLD IS DOWNLOADING HIS MEMORIES ON DATA NEW! So how can his death be poignant?

Then when he dies, they all sit down and cry their hearts out, PLEASE! I’d have more respect if JORDY suddenly exclaims,

“ Hey wait! WE have another DATA in cold storage! “

They have made STAR TREK into an action movie. Which is not STAR TREK! Cecile said that the producers hired an action director.

But the way it was shot, it didn’t look like an action director. Looked more like second unit work. And when the credits rolled, I discovered that he film was directed by Stuart Braid.

He’s an editor! Not a director! Now it makes sense!

Ahh well at least the con was fun even though the movie was shit! NEMESIS SUCKED! EPISODE 2 SUCKED! What will happen to SCI- FI FILMS?