12/12/12

 
Today's the day!  The official launch of To Hell You Ride, the new comic series I co-created with Lance Henriksen and Tom Mandrake.

I've been trying to come up with something to mark the occasion.  I haven't wanted to give away anything about the story, so I started a series of posts about apocalyptic prophecies in different cultures throughout time and around the world.  The problem is that these posts took on a life of their own, and inevitably began to reveal too much about the THYR story.  You see, my head is still in the game... I don't have the ability to be objective yet.  Everything comes back to the enigmatic tale of an American Indian named Two-Dogs.

To explain: I heard the first notes of this story from Lance nearly three years ago.  While researching Not Bad for a Human, I ran across a brief mention of it in a 1993 article from a Fangoria interview...

I asked Lance to tell me his stories.  (I was, after all, writing a book about his twisted mind...)  He was pretty dismissive of Tracer Pierce, but he shared the entire prologue of Telluride with me.  Lance is a visual storyteller, so he described the scene shot for shot.  You can see it for yourself if you pick up the first issue today. 

From there, things took on a life of their own.  At last year's San Diego Comic Con, Dark Horse president Mike Richardson asked Lance if he wanted to write a comic.  Lance said hell yeah and pulled me into the mix.  One week later, we met Tom Mandrake at a convention in New Jersey.  Tom had done an exquisite illustration of PUMPKINHEAD for Lance's bio, but this was the first time we'd met him in person, and the three of us just... clicked. 

Roughly twelve months ago, Lance and I put together a five-act script.  The focus of Lance's story changed (from the character of Shipps to the character of Two-Dogs), and so did the title.  Ever since then, Lance, Tom and I have been piecing this thing together, one detail -- one word -- one panel at a time.  I have two thick binders full of research and ideas.  We could never possibly use all of that material in our story, but it provides the backdrop of the world and the characters we're exploring. And that's really what this is: an exploration.

Even as the first issue goes public, we're not quite done with Two-Dogs yet.  The end is in sight, that's for sure (and it's going to be a doozy), but this tale has a life of its own.  It will keep evolving, right up until the very end, like a human life.  We know the cycle of life, of course, but every day we encounter something new.  It ain't over till it's over.

Today we enter a new phase.  The readers (that's you!) become part of this world.  As I've said elsewhere, what is a story without someone to absorb it and pass it on?   If you happen to join us on our strange little adventure, drop me a line -- either here on this blog or on the THYR forum at Tribespace.org -- and let me know what you think of the first issue.  I'm very curious to hear which details resonate and which ones fade into the background, waiting for their moment.

To Hell You Ride #1 is available at your friendly neighborhood comic store.  While you're there, let me also recommend our friend Steve Niles's latest miniseries, Criminal Macabre: Final Night, a continuation -- and possibly the conclusion -- of Lance Henriksen's favorite vampire series. 

In the meantime, here's a taste of things to come....

Back to Frank Black

Back to Frank Black co-editor Brian A. Dixon writes that Chris Carter’s TV series Millennium “defies all traditional labels, simultaneously adapting and combining the stylistic elements of mystery, horror, police procedurals, scripture, crime thrillers, slasher films, mythic and apocalyptic fiction, and others.  The series disrupts those lines that we imagine between genres, reinventing each in turn for its own creative purposes and ultimately defying any definitive attempt at classification.”

His message is clear: Millennium is something profoundly unique.  No doubt that’s why, thirteen years after Fox cancelled the series, it still has a strong enough following to produce a 500-page book of essays and interviews that would meet the most rigorous academic standards, without ever becoming so narrowly focused that it loses sight of the forest through the trees.  I’ve been following the Back to FrankBlack campaign for a few years now, and I’m extremely proud to be part of this achievement.  I’m astounded that a fan-led campaign has not only been able to produce such a thoroughly literate work, but that it has also able to secure the involvement of nearly every major cast and crew member associated with the series (including showrunners Glen Morgan and James Wong, who didn't even participate in the official DVD release of the series!).  Even Joss Whedon’s Browncoats -- arguably the most enthusiastic and effective fan organization around -- haven’t done that.

If you’ve followed the Back to Frank Black campaign at all, then you’ve probably heard at least a few of the podcasts conducted by Troy Foreman and James McLean.  McLean says that their initial agenda was to profile the series creators and contributors as artists, rather than simply using them as “a teat from which the fan could suckle more information about their favorite television show.”  (James has a way with words, doesn’t he?)  What they found out was that most of the people they interviewed wanted to talk more about Millennium than about themselves -- another testament to the enduring power of the show.  Everyone’s enthusiasm is evident in the new book, which repurposes the best interview material from several years worth of podcasts. 

It would have been easy enough for editors Adam Chamberlain and Brian Dixon to reproduce the interviews verbatim, but they’ve done something much better -- incorporating them into intelligent, comprehensive essays that provide greater context.  Some of the essays include quotes that were not included in the original podcasts, while some of the essays are entirely new contributions, including a heartfelt essay from Brittany Tiplady (who played Jordan Black on the series) and an interview with director of photography Robert McLachlan (the only major cast/crew member who worked on as many episodes as Lance Henriksen). 

These interview essays alone are enough to make up a book that any fan of Millennium or Chris Carter’s Ten Thirteen Productions should own, but there’s more…  The book intersperses this material with 11 original essays by well-informed viewers.  John Kenneth Muir takes an in-depth look at each season, offering an essay on the zeitgeist that informed the first season, symbolism that reveals the mythic quality of the second season, and a new theory that unifies the noticeably schizophrenic third season.  With these three essays, he charts the divisions in the Millennium fandom.  Each season has a unique focus, and each fan inevitably has his/her favorite season. 

Muir really got me thinking about my own reaction to the third season.  Like many fans, I think, I expected the series to draw order out of chaos as the storyline moved toward Y2K.   I didn’t feel like that happened over the course of season three.  A wonderful interview with series writers Erin Maher and Kay Reindl offers some perspective on how the season developed, making me feel much more forgiving about the first half of the season.  And as Muir points out in this essay, the second half of the final season has plenty to recommend it.  There are a handful of episodes that progress the series mythology in huge strides.  Regardless of that truth, the general thematic chaos of season three still leaves me feeling unsatisfied -- which is precisely why I would love to see the return of Frank Black.  Maybe a fourth season would have provided the order and closure that I was hoping for.  A Millennium movie could still pontentially achieve that.  In his interview chapter, Chris Carter talks about “a reconceiving of the original idea”...

Here’s my thing: The best storytelling in any medium has a distinct thematic arc.  It doesn’t have to be a simple arc (in fact, the most difficult arcs are often the most satisfying -- which is why Muir’s insights on season three are so resonant), but it answers the questions that the original story set out to ask, one way or another.  In my mind, the cancellation of Millennium left the tale of Frank Black unresolved.  If the questions that the series initially posed weren’t so important to me, I could let that go.  But this series, from the very beginning, asked some of the biggest, most important questions in life.  When I think about it, I’m amazed that a series like this actually existed.  People like to compare Millennium to shows like CSI, but to me it’s much more.  It’s as if Dostoevsky made a TV show.  CSI is entertainment.  Millennium is dense, meaningful literature in a visual medium.

The essayists in Back to Frank Black understand this.  Rev. Paul Clark, Gordon Roberts, Alexander Zelenyj, Adam Chamberlain and Brian A. Dixon delve deep into personal examinations of the proper context for this series: fables and histories that go back hundreds of years, defining and redefining humanity across different cultures as we face the timeless challenge of real evil.  Their insights into literary and visual storytelling are remarkable.  Perhaps my favorite essay in the volume, Joe Tangari’s “The Evil Earworm” made me consider the series from a completely new perspective: “watching” with my ears, instead of my eyes.  (It’s worth noting that Back to Frank Black also features a new interview with composer Mark Snow, the man behind the music…)

Bottom line: Like the Millennium series itself, this book achieves such a high standard of quality that I almost can’t believe it exists.  As a reader, it makes me feel like a more active part of a very meaningful world -- a world that still lives on in the imaginations of viewers across the globe.  Back to Frank Black campaign founder James McLean helps to explain this feeling in his essay: “This book is not a testament to people who own DVDs, the type you’d commonly call ‘a fan’; this book features journalists, filmmakers, actors, writers, and artists.  It is the epitome of what Lance calls the Tribe: a group of individuals, each as vital as the other, coming together to celebrate the past and potential future of a timeless work of art.”  And that’s certainly something worth celebrating.

The Back to Frank Black book is available HERE.  (Did I mention that all proceeds from the sale of this book will go to charity...?)

If you want to make your own voice heard, you can join the new Tribe forum HERE.  There's a designated page for discussions of Millennium.

Finally, if you want to see the return of Frank Black, please write a letter and send it HERE.  It's time to let the executives at Fox know who we are.

FOUR CORNERS TOUR, Part 4: Moab & Monument Valley

There are quite a few conflicting accounts of Hollywood’s “discovery” of Monument Valley.   According to John Ford’s biographer Dan Ford: “John had first heard about Monument Valley from Harry Carey, who had stumbled into it while exploring the Navajo country in the 1920s.  No other film company had ever worked there, and John had been waiting for years for a chance to do so.”  Later, John Wayne took the credit, telling biographer Maurice Zolotow in 1974: “I was the guy who found Monument Valley.  And I told Ford about this place.”  In Where God Put the West, author Bette L. Stanton sets the record straight: George B. Seitz was the first filmmaker to shoot in Monument Valley (when he made THE VANISHING AMERICAN in 1925), and Harry Goulding was the man who introduced John Ford to Monument Valley in 1938.

For years, Goulding and his wife were the only private land owners on the vast Navajo reservation.  They built a small trading post at the bottom of Big Rock Door Mesa, won the trust of their native neighbors, and eventually convinced the Navajos that they could all make a better living by trading in scenery.   With the help of Arizona Highways photographer Josef Muench (whose work is featured prominently in K.C. DenDooven’s book Monument Valley: The Story Behind the Scenery), Goulding pitched the location to Ford and producer Walter Wanger, who were then mounting their production of the epic western STAGECOACH.   Despite the awe-inspiring scenery, Monument Valley wasn’t an easy sell.  Wanger didn’t want to his cast and crew to be so cut off from Hollywood (at the time, there weren’t even any paved roads into Monument Valley).  Ford, however, loved the idea and eventually got what he wanted -- his own mini-Hollywood in the desert.  STAGECOACH made Monument Valley (and of course John Wayne) a star, and the filmmaker happily returned many times.  With MY DARLING CLEMENTINE (1946), FORT APACHE (1948) and SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON (1949), he transformed the landscape into an iconic vision of the historic American West and put Monument Valley on the map for generations of international tourists.  In the process, he also provided work for generations of Navajo natives, who still graciously share their land and their culture with us.

Goulding's

John Wayne's cabin from SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON

View from Goulding's Lodge

Monument Valley

John Ford's Point in Monument Valley

Three Sisters

Desert Window

Rain Gods

Desert Eye

That wasn’t the end of Ford’s legacy in the desert.  In 1950, he asked cattle rancher George White to help him find a location for his next film WAGON MASTER.  White took the filmmaker on a tour of Moab.  When they reached the gravel bar at Nine Mile Bottom on the Colorado River, looking toward Professor Valley and Fisher Towers, Ford knew he had found what he was looking for.  WAGON MASTER is not one of Ford’s best known films -- it’s an intimate story of Mormon settlers rather than an epic story of soldiers or gunslingers, and it doesn’t feature John Wayne -- but it was one of the director’s personal favorites, and it proved to be a boon for the nascent Moab-Monument Valley Film Commission.

Moab's answer to Monument Valley

Professor Valley ranch land

Fisher Towers

Onion Creek area

Red Cliffs Lodge

John Ford's view in Moab

The following year, Ford came back to Moab to make RIO GRANDE with John Wayne.  The director and his star later returned to the Moab-Monument Valley area many times, to make THE SEARCHERS (1956), SGT. RUTLEDGE (1960), THE COMANCHEROS (1961) and CHEYENNE AUTUMN (1963).  They certainly weren’t the only filmmakers who fell in love with the place, but their use of the region was so compelling that a lot of other filmmakers were intimidated by the prospect of trying to make it their own.  I’d argue that Sergio Leone had the most success with his 1968 masterpiece ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST, which brought Henry Fonda back to the place where he’d once played Wyatt Earp. 

In the 1980s, a number of independent filmmakers transformed Moab into a science-fiction landscape.  When I happened upon the Movie History Museum at the Red Cliffs Lodge on Highway 128 (a B&B built on the site where Ford shot much of RIO GRANDE), I was surprised to find almost as much space devoted to these strange mini-epics as to the classic westerns of Ford and Wayne.  In addition to SPACEHUNTER: ADVENTURES IN THE FORBIDDEN ZONE (1983), NIGHTMARE AT NOON (1987), and SUNDOWN: VAMPIRES IN RETREAT (1988), the two that really caught my eye were CHOKE CANYON (1984) and KNIGHTS (1992).   

 

The former is an “eco thriller” starring Stephen Collins as cowboy physicist who believes that he can turn sound waves into usable energy... with the help of Haley’s comet.  (Don't ask me - I can't explain it.)  He’s at odds with a bunch of slimy businessmen who’d rather use his favorite canyon as an atomic dump site.  One of those slimy businessmen is played by none other than Lance Henriksen... who has understandably blocked this film from his memory.  For anyone who might be nostalgic about lighthearted 80s sci-fi movies, CHOKE CANYON is diverting enough, but in my opinion the only real highlight is Janet Julian.  Also worthy of note is the fact that footage from the movie was used in the MTV video for “Silent Running” by Mike & the Mechanics - one of the more memorable music videos of the early 80s.

Janet Julian in CHOKE CANYON

Henriksen cuts a more imposing figure in KNIGHTS, which I like to think of as the poor man’s CYBORG.  Of course, I also think of CYBORG as the poor man’s CYBORG.... Both films were directed by Albert Pyun, who makes his movies fast and cheap but somehow nevertheless compelling.  Maybe a better way to characterize KNIGHTS would be as a rich man’s ROBOT MONSTER (1953).  Whatever the case, there’s a soft spot in my heart for this post-apocalyptic western fantasy about two humanoid robots fighting over the future of the human race.  The good robot is played by Kris Kristofferson, who pairs up with kickboxing champion Kathy Long to hunt the megalomaniacal vampire robot played by Lance Henriksen.  It’s a ridiculous story, but I don't mind because everyone seems to be having fun -- in spite of brutal shooting conditions.  Stanton’s book says that the temperature would often get well above 100 degrees, causing actors and extras to pass out from heat exhaustion.  Perhaps that explains Henriksen’s apparent delirium in his death scene, when he mumbles something incoherent about being taken away on the wings of a black bird.  (When I interviewed him for Not Bad for a Human, I asked Lance if he improvised this line... wondering if maybe it was an homage to Rutger Hauer’s death scene in BLADE RUNNER... He said he didn’t remember.)

Lance actually joined me for the next part of my trip.  After taking a tour of Monument Valley with an excellent guide from Sacred Monument Tours named JT (who told us some good stories about Johnny Depp’s recent visit to Navajo country for the making of THE LONE RANGER), we headed north...  Through Four Corners, where we met some amazing local artists, including potter Bob Lansing...  Past the turn for Shiprock, a mountain that was holy to the Navajos until the Sierra Club profaned it in 1939 (also Wyatt Earp's apparent destination in MY DARLING CLEMENTINE a few years later)...  Into the Colorado mountains, toward the quiet town of Telluride. We had more business there of the post-apocalyptic sort.  But that’s a story for another time...

Lance & JT

Lance at Four Corners

Looking back at Shiprock

Looking ahead, into the mountains...

MOVIES MADE ME #27: THE TERMINATOR / ALIENS

I could write at length about both of these films... but I won't. John Kenneth Muir recently celebrated the 25th anniversary of ALIENS with an in-depth post that I can't expect to top. I imagine he'll be equally thorough in his forthcoming post on THE TERMINATOR, due the week of August 8th as part of his summer-long celebration of filmmaker James Cameron. Instead of repeating his analyses, I'm simply going to reminisce...

I became aware of THE TERMINATOR shortly after it was released into theaters in the fall of 1984, but not because I saw the film or even the previews for it. Instead, I heard the entire plot -- scene by scene -- from a teenage girl in the neighborhood who used to babysit me and my brother when we were kids. I remember sitting in a makeshift "fort" (an old table with a huge blanket tossed over it) in the basement of my childhood home, listening intently while Samantha spun a wild yarn about a robot from the future who travels through time to carry out a violent abortion. She had just seen the movie the night before, and she spared no detail... But I didn't believe a word of it.

It was a great story. No question. I think I held my breath the entire time, eager to hear what came next. But I didn't believe that she'd actually seen all of this on a movie screen. I figured she had to be making it up... I thought the story was WAY too far-fetched to be an actual movie.

Years later, when I finally saw THE TERMINATOR, I was amazed that the film lived up to the hype I'd generated in my own brain. What really blew me away was the final act, when the Terminator sheds his Schwarzenegger skin and becomes a stop-motion animated skeleton (an upgrade on the old Ray Harryhausen movies)... I remember being utterly horrified by the thought that this thing simply could not be killed. That final act was a nightmare, pure and simple... There was no logic, no reason, no hope.

Watching THE TERMINATOR the New Beverly Theater a few nights ago, I realized how much it has in common with Cameron's subsequent film ALIENS. Both take place almost entirely in the dark (the noir aspect), both revolve around a super-human threat, and both feature androids (which get ripped in half at the end). In ALIENS, the android is benevolent... so you could perhaps view ALIENS as, among other things, a test run for TERMINATOR 2.

The first time I saw ALIENS was on the small screen. My father rented the home video a few years after it was released. This was a big deal for me because I was still too young to watch R-rated movies. I was surprised that he had picked it out. I think he might have had a thing for Sigourney Weaver, though I never asked. Whatever the cause, I wasn't complaining. Dad rarely wanted to watch the kind of movies I was interested in (action, horror, sci-fi), so the memory of that lazy summer afternoon stays with me.

As I saw it, he had Sigourney Weaver and I had Bishop. Lance Henriksen's character is the kid in the story. The story focuses mostly on Newt, the surrogate daughter for Sigourney's character, but I didn't care about her because she existed only to serve the Ripley's arc -- to set off her mothering instincts. Bishop was a self-contained character. He wasn't part of the tribe. He was the one who was trying to prove himself, trying to earn the approval of the adults around him. I could relate to that, and watching the movie with my dad made the experience even more poignant.

It's different watching the movie as an adult... I still identify with Bishop more than the human characters, but now it seems to me that he shouldn't have to try so hard. From the very beginning, he's more human than the humans. When the New Beverly screening was over, I was left wondering how James Cameron was able to make the leap from the Terminator to Bishop in just two films, spaced only a year apart. In the first film, the technology of the future is a source of profound fear. In the second film, the technology of the future is the light in the dark. Watching these two films back to back, it seems like there's an evolution going on in the storyteller's mind - like he's learning to trust hope. Or maybe that was just me.

MOVIES MADE ME #19: JENNIFER EIGHT

It's been less than a month since my biography of Lance Henriksen came out. We kicked things off with a blogathon that went beyond my wildest hopes, followed by a book launch party that went beyond my wildest hopes. We made our first west coast convention appearance at L.A.'s Weekend of Horrors and are preparing for our first east coast convention at Baltimore's Monster-Mania. In the meantime, we've been signing books, shipping books, and talking about the book with everyone who expresses an interest. At this point, you'd think that I would be ready to talk about something other than Lance Henriksen...

But I find myself returning to my woefully-neglected blog with a desire to pick up exactly where I left off a few weeks ago. When we wrapped up the blogathon, there were still a few Lance Henriksen films that I felt had been overlooked. At the top of that list was Bruce Robinson's film JENNIFER EIGHT. I've had a strong affinity for this early 90s thriller ever since I was a teenager working in a small town video store. For some reason the video store had a VHS copy of the movie without a slipcase, and so I felt the need to tell people about it... I suppose that's what I'm still doing, though I think I have a better grasp now on what works about the film.

The first thing the viewer notices about JENNIFER EIGHT is the music, which kicks in as soon as the Paramount logo appears onscreen. The piano-driven score is by a guy named Christopher Young, who's one of my favorite film composers. Young has scored well over a hundred films, big and small, and dabbled in a lot of different genres, but (surprise, surprise) I'm particularly fond of his work on horror films. He's responsible for what is arguably the best horror film score ever produced -- for Clive Barker's HELLRAISER. Although the music in HELLRAISER is very unconventional for a horror film (it sounds surprisingly classical), I can't imagine a better way of introducing people to Clive Barker's visions of hell. The operatic score makes Barker's nightmares every bit as complex as they have to be: dark and terrifying, sure, but also beautiful and exotic, hauntingly ethereal, hopelessly entrancing and ultimately overwhelming.



Young also did the score for George Romero's film THE DARK HALF. In my opinion, it's a flawed film that lacks the subtleties of Stephen King's novel (George Stark shouldn't be all monster... the real horror in King's work comes from the fact that "Mr. Hyde" is in more likable than "Dr. Jekyll"... even to Jekyll's own children), but it benefits tremendously from a breathtakingly beautiful score. I've read that the studio ran out of money at the end of filming and Romero wasn't able to shoot his original ending, but personally I think that Young's music makes the existing ending as poetic as anything we could hope for.



Young has also done some exceptional work for filmmaker Sam Raimi (THE GIFT, SPIDER-MAN 3, DRAG ME TO HELL) and, more recently, an excellent score for the underrated Bret Easton Ellis adaptation THE INFORMERS. I could go on and on... In fact, I did go on and on when I met Young briefly at a signing for the DVD release of the NEVER SLEEP AGAIN documentary. (It turns out that Young also wrote the music for A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET PART 2... but we didn't talk much about that one.)

I digress. Back to JENNIFER EIGHT, which boasts an opening credit sequence that effectively lulls the viewer into a dream world. The first image is of Andy Garcia driving. His face is partially hidden by shadowy reflections in the windshield, and his eyes hidden even deeper behind dark sunglasses. The subtle layers of light and shadow set the tone of the film perfectly. On the surface it's a film about literal blindness, but on a deeper level you could say that all of the characters see the world of JENNIFER EIGHT as "through a glass darkly."

Garcia's character is headed to Eureka, California - a coastal town with the stereotypically gloomy weather of the Northwest. (We won't see sunshine until the final shot of the film... and then it comes streaming in, so sharply that we're blinded by the light.) No doubt the aesthetic and the storyline were partially inspired by SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, which practically reinvented the horror genre in the early 1990s. Instead of monster movies, everyone with darker desires was making "psychological thrillers." This was the era of Hitchcock-plunderers PACIFIC HEIGHTS, SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY, FINAL ANALYSIS, THE HAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE, SINGLE WHITE FEMALE, MALICE, BLINK, and of course SE7EN. (I have to say that I'm looking forward to John Muir's upcoming book Horror Films of the 1990s, to see what he makes of this subgenre.) What makes JENNIFER EIGHT stand out from the pack, I think, is the performances.

Let's start with Lance Henriksen. When I first saw the film, I was well aware that Henriksen mostly played heavies... and, as Lance himself points out, that makes his character the most obvious suspect in a whodunit. That said, I never suspected that he was the killer in this movie. In fact, if the twist ending had revealed that he was the killer, I don't think I'd be writing about JENNIFER EIGHT today. I'd feel too cheated. Henriksen's character, Freddy Ross, is just too damn likable to be a killer.

In an interview with Fangoria writer Ian Spelling, Henriksen described his character this way: “I’m a regular guy with a slight drinking problem. He loves his wife, but he’s in denial about the drinking. He’s still a good cop, and he walks right into the biggest crisis of his life.” The simple exchanges between Ross and his wife, played by actress Kathy Baker, are beautiful because of they way the two actors play off of each other. As a viewer, you know right away that this couple has been married for a long time, because they don't have to talk... They can apparently read each other's minds. From their playful exchanges (Lance stealing a drink and pretending to get away with it; Kathy smirking knowingly in response), it's clear that they love and respect each other enough to embrace all the little quirks, foibles and even weaknesses. Their onscreen relationship is not so much about what they do, but what they don't do... They don't communicate with each other in obvious ways. They do it in very small, subtle affectionate gestures. They do it instinctively, effortlessly. You see those kinds of relationships all the time in real life, among people who've known each other forever, but it rarely happens between actors onscreen.

Henriksen's rapport with Andy Garcia works the same way. In their first scene together, the two men are digging through a garbage dump in the rain, searching for decomposed body parts. It's a grim scenario, but they play off of each other so casually and naturally that it's surprising when, at the end of the scene, we realize that they haven't worked together for years. Right away we understand that they are the type of friends who can go without speaking for months or years, and then pick up exactly where they left off. They're the type of friends who know and trust each other so implicitly that they can say whatever they're thinking, even if it's critical or unflattering, without having to choose their words carefully. For example: When Andy falls for Uma Thurman, Lance jokes: "Isn't she a little young for you, bro? You really think she's going to go for an old dog like you?" The line doesn't quite work because Andy Garcia appears to be in his prime (which is exactly how the character smugly responds to the question), but there's no question about the rapport. Later, when Andy has become obsessed with a murder case, Lance plays big brother again by taking him out drinking and insisting that "we're not talking the talk tonight." He's not making a criticism; he's showing genuine concern. Again, that's something we observe more often in real life than in films.

For me, the heart of the film is the story of these two friends rather than the romantic relationship between Andy and Uma. The most devastating scene in the film is when Ross gets killed... all the while believing that his best friend is pulling the trigger. Garcia's character never quite recovers from that one. In the next scene, he's matching wits with a callous police interrogator John Malkovich (in an utterly brilliant love-to-hate-him kind of performance) and beginning to unravel. We've already been told that Garcia's character is an obsessive cop with a propensity for unnecessary violence, but this is where he begins to show his true colors. If pushed too far, he might even become as destructive as the man he's chasing.

When I first saw JENNIFER EIGHT, I felt that Garcia's performance was a little over the top... The fact that he could go from smoldering intensity to hot-headed rant in a matter of seconds seemed unlikely to me... and there's not much anyone can do with lines like "I wish you ill." That's not a criticism of Garcia's acting ability. I honestly believe that he's one of the most underrated actors of his generation -- I remember going to see Sidney Lumet's NIGHT FALLS ON MANHATTAN (anybody remember that one?) in the theater and thinking that he was right on the cusp of superstardom. Years later, I saw his performance in another unjustly overlooked film called THE UNSAID, and I have since changed my mind about his performance in JENNIFER EIGHT. In THE UNSAID, Garcia has to react to the suicide of his only son - and his "monk's wail" is truly chilling. As an actor, he completely sheds his self-consciousness and goes for broke. The same thing is true of his best moments in JENNIFER EIGHT, and you have to admire that kind of dedication.

Uma Thurman also gives a notably complex performance as Jennifer. She imbues her character with strength (when she meets Garcia for the first time, and calls him out on his smoking, and especially in the scene where she convinces him that she was in fact visited by the killer), innocence (particularly in the boat scene, where she is laughing in the rain), vulnerability (wearing high heels at the Christmas party) and of course beauty. It's hard not to fall in love with her.

Finally, it would be unfair if I didn't assume that writer/director Bruce Robinson was partly responsible for the subtleties of all these characterizations. From what Lance has said, I gather that the director scrutinized every line and every movement the actors made during filming. I don't think it's going too far to suggest that, on some level, he helped Lance to start developing his career-defining role as Frank Black. Henriksen had played cops before, but he remembers that his research for JENNIFER EIGHT made an impression that he carried with him until the TV series MILLENNIUM. Robinson had arranged for him to ride along with a Los Angeles homicide detective to prepare for the role. Henriksen remembers the detective distinctly: "He imparted something to me that affected me while I was doing MILLENNIUM. That was that I started seeing innocent street corners full of possible dangers and possible scams going on. We would go into certain situations, just hanging out, and he would see everything so differently than I did. I started sort of slipping into that a little bit."

If Bruce Robinson didn't quite craft a thriller of Hitchcockian proportions, he certainly created a character study that's worthy of repeat viewings. JENNIFER EIGHT is one of those movies that I can always go back to. In some ways, it's like a late night call from an old friend.

Horror & Comics

The limited edition of Lance Henriksen's biography came about because of a conversation I had with horror writer Steve Niles. I knew Steve as the creator of 30 DAYS OF NIGHT, CRIMINAL MACABRE and EDGE OF DOOM. What I didn't know at the time was that Steve had recently become a very vocal advocate for creator-owned comics and do-it-yourself publishing. When I mentioned Lance's biography to him, he not only offered to publish it, but he also began to rally some of his favorite artists to illustrate it.

In a blog post announcing the project, Steve said, "Our hope is that by combining Lance's book with some of comics top talent, then maybe we can each find new fans." A few weeks later, with his campaign in full swing, he added, "I'm now going to make an effort to reach out to possible fans OUTSIDE the [comics] bubble. I know a lot of Horror Fans and Science Fiction fans who don't read comics." (He further explained his agenda in a recent interview with Meltdown Comics.) In the past few years I've become one of those people, but this project has re-introduced me to the world of comics. As I began to explore the works of the artists who have contributed to Henriksen's bio, I began to realize just how close the worlds of comics and genre film really are. Here's a visual crash course:

BILL SIENKIEWICZ

Sienkiewicz's contribution to the book is already well-known. His depiction of Frank Black has been floating around the web for a couple of months now, and it appears on the cover of the final book. Sienkiewicz was so inspired by the project and by a short conversation with Henriksen (who he referred to on his facebook page as "a true artist really committed to his passion for acting") that he produced his drawing overnight! Anyone who doubts his enthusiasm for genre films need only look at some of his work from the past:

In much the way that Henriksen has been able to cross paths with so many iconic characters over the course of his career, Sienkiewicz is no stranger to modern-day myths. He has professionally illustrated Batman, Superman, Spiderman, The X-Men, The Hulk, Thor, Elektra (for the astoundingly beautiful Elektra: Assassin, written by Frank Miller) and even Yoda. And NOT BAD FOR A HUMAN is not his first biography cover - he also provided the art for Martin I. Green's VOODOO CHILD: THE ILLUSTRATED LEGEND OF JIMI HENDRIX and SANTA: MY LIFE AND TIMES. Upcoming projects include LionsGate's supernatural western film THE MAN WITH NO NAME, Dreamworks' film ALCATRAZ VS. THE EVIL LIBRARIANS, and an adaptation of his own graphic novel STRAY TOASTERS.

TIM BRADSTREET

Recently on his website, Bradstreet posted, "I'm a long time ridiculously huge fan of Lance Henriksen, so I about lost my mind when I got a call from my pal Steve Niles informing me that Lance was publishing an autobiography, that it would be illustrated, and they wanted ME to join in the fun." Bradstreet's love of NEAR DARK (which features Henriksen as a ruthless redneck vampire) probably doesn't come as a surprise to his readers who are familiar with his work on VAMPIRE: THE MASQUERADE. Bradstreet is also well-known as a cover artist for DC's HELLBLAZER, Marvel's THE PUNISHER, BLADE and BLADE 2, Spectra's ALIENS: MUSIC OF THE SPEARS, Fox Atomic's 28 DAYS LATER: THE AFTERMATH, Wildstorm's THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET and FRIDAY THE 13TH, IDW'S MOTEL HELL, and the new CLIVE BARKER'S HELLRAISER from Boom! Studios. Bradstreet also co-created Image's BAD PLANET with Thomas Jane and Steve Niles.

MIKE MIGNOLA

Mike Mignola has become a household name, based on his creations B.P.R.D. and HELLBOY, a comic series published by Dark Horse Entertainment and adapted into a pair of excellent feature films directed by Guillermo del Toro and starring Ron Perlman. This was not Mignola's first foray into the world of horror. He's done cover art for the Topps comic adaptation of BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA, Image's SPAWN, Dark Horse's ALIENS: SALVATION and DC's ALIENS VS. PREDATOR. He also created B.P.R.D. and BALTIMORE: THE STEADFAST TIN SOLDIER AND THE VAMPIRE. In 2011 he's returning to his most famous creation, working with Richard Corben on HELLBOY: BEING HUMAN (due May 11 from Dark Horse) and the graphic novel HELLBOY: HOUSE OF THE LIVING DEAD. In June, Dark Horse will also release a hardcover collection of his series BALTIMORE: THE PLAGUE SHIPS.

ERIC POWELL

Eric Powell is best known as the creator of Dark Horse Entertainment's THE GOON, which is currently being adapted into an animated feature directed by David Fincher and starring Paul Giamatti and Clancy Brown. Powell may also be familiar to horror fans as the cover artist for Dark Horse's UNIVERSAL MONSTERS: CAVALCADE OF HORROR and DC's monster mash FREDDY VS. JASON VS. ASH. His current project is IDW's GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS. Also, keep an eye out for THE GOON / CRIMINAL MACABRE crossover, due on July 20.

TOM MANDRAKE

In addition to his superheroes work for Marvel (CALL OF DUTY: THE PRECINCT) and DC (JLA DESTINY and THE SPECTRE), Tom Mandrake is well-known for his horror comics, including the creator-owned CREEPS. Often he combines superheroes and horror, as in DC's SUPERMAN AND BATMAN VS. VAMPIRES AND WEREWOLVES and THE X-FILES / 30 DAYS OF NIGHT crossover. He's also done artwork for books based on John Carpenter's film HALLOWEEN and the recent TV series FRINGE.

Hell, this guy's illustrated everything from HAMLET to ALICE IN WONDERLAND... which reminds me of another pro-comic movement that's worth mentioning here. 5280 Comic Book Classroom is a nonprofit organization that uses comic books to teach underprivileged kids how to read. If that isn't a sound argument for the value of comics today, I don't know what is.

ASHLEY WOOD

Ashley Wood is an Australian multi-media artist known for his wide-ranging work on comics, video games, toys and art books. In the comics world he is perhaps best known for IDW's METAL GEAR SOLID as well as the original covers for 30 DAYS OF NIGHT and Image's HELLSPAWN and SPAWN: BOOK OF THE DEAD. You'll have to check out his website to get a sense of his full empire.

KELLEY JONES

Kelley Jones, who has created an additional piece of art for the softcover edition of Lance Henriksen's biography, is a well-established creator of horror comics, including DC's BATMAN-as-vampire series (with writer Doug Moench), DC's DEADMAN, and Dark Horse's ALIENS: HIVE. He also worked with Neil Gaiman on SANDMAN and with Steve Niles on the current EDGE OF DOOM series and the first Bloody Pulp book CAL MCDONALD: DETECTIVE TALES.

It's worth pointing out that all of these artists chose their own image ideas for the NOT BAD FOR A HUMAN book - based on their own interests and their own perceptions of Lance Henriksen. The results are distinct artistic interpretations, and the subject of these visual musings could not be more pleased with the results! Check out the book and definitely check out the work of these amazing illustrators.