Film News

Horror Stories Scare Up Fun for Dayton, Kent

Austin singer-songwriter Jesse Dayton may have stumbled onto a film career and a new musical identity. He and his band are Captain Clegg & the Night Creatures in Rob Zombie's Halloween II (the sequel to his 2007 Halloween reimagining), which is due in theatres Aug. 28. Dayton says he met Zombie through Texas actor Lew Temple, who played Adam Banjo in Zombie's 2005 film, The Devil's Rejects. Dayton was asked to write and record songs for that film's soundtrack, which has developed quite a following among horror fans. Zombie ran into Dayton six months ago and asked him to write songs for his latest film. "I immediately started getting e-mails from Rob about song ideas," Dayton says, "then two weeks later he tells me he's making another Halloween with Harvey Weinstein, and that's the film we're doing." Soon he found himself filming in a Civil War graveyard in Georgia. "I always wanted to play a psychobilly vampire in a huge horror movie!" he says of the role. If you saw a camera crew at the Continental Club recently, that was likely the video shoot for a Dayton song from the soundtrack, also due out Aug. 28 and to be followed by a Captain Clegg tour... Horror fans may want to stop by the release party at 7pm on July 15 at BookPeople for my pal Gary Kent's memoir, Shadows and Light: Journeys With Outlaws in Revolutionary Hollywood. Kent, a legendary stuntman/actor/writer/director who has worked with everyone from Richard Rush (Hells Angels on Wheels) to Monte Hellman (Ride in the Whirlwind) to Al Adamson (Satan's Sadists), expects the crowd to include Bud Cardos (Kingdom of the Spiders), Chuck Bail (The Stunt Man), Don Jones (Schoolgirls in Chains), and Bob Ivy (who played the mummy in Bubba Ho-Tep).

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Austin Faces Crowd TXMPA Board

Austin is well-represented on the latest Texas Motion Picture Alliance board, which was elected Saturday in San Marcos. At-large candidates Craig Berlin, Jeanette Scott, and Rick Olmos join central region rep Paul Alvarado-Dykstra on the board, and central region alternate Shelly Schriber was elected board treasurer. Don Stokes of Dallas, who led the lobbying group's efforts to expand the state's film incentives program, was re-elected president. The biggest news may well be the election of Oge Young of Sony Online Entertainment as the film lobbying group's first video game, animation, and visual effects rep. Why does all of this matter? Scott's online letter to TXMPA members says it all: "I have spent the last several months in Oklahoma, on a feature film set in Texas. We are filming here for one reason. Legislative incentives. The Oklahoma state legislature has just signed into law a bill granting a rebate of 38% to film productions, and believe me, the studios are lining up and salivating. Never mind that there is no crew base, no infrastructure, no soundstage, no office facilities. We are based in an abandoned department store. The toilets work intermittently. Next to my desk, the water flows down the pipe each time someone flushes the toilet. But the people are lovely, the locations are good, and the community is eager & ready to build up the crew base and infrastructure to make this a truly competitive destination."

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And the Rest...

Turk Pipkin's doc One Peace at a Time won the Audience Award for Global Docs at the Maui Film Fest, and he's on his way to Geneva for a screening at the World Economic Forum... Bob Ray's Roller Derby doc Hell on Wheels is now viewable for free at www.snagfilms.com.

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