“I’ve been keeping this secret for a while now just to be sure, but now it’s official: …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead is going to be doing the score!” So says Crashcam Films’ Bob Ray of his upcoming Austin-lensed roller derby doc Hell on Wheels, which is currently being edited down from its initial 500 hours of raw footage to a more backside-friendly length by Ray and Flicker Austin’s Cory Ryan. With interest in roller derby at an all-time high thanks to the success of A&E’s Rollergirls reality series (see “TV Eye,” p.53), Ray’s longtime labor of love looks to be finally inching toward completion. There’s a third editor soon to be added to the mix; although Ray is cagey about who, exactly, the new blood will be, we can tell you they’ve worked on one of the Chronicle‘s top 10 films of the year.
In other Crashcam news, Ray’s pitch for the animated series Apesh!t has been shopped around by Madonna’s company Maverick and appears to have found a home at Klasky/Csupo (Duckman, Rugrats, The Simpsons), although no firm word on either a pilot or a series has yet been uttered.
“They love it. They’re totally behind it, and they want to be part of it if it takes off,” says Ray, who adds that in a bizarre, six-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon-esque twist, the animation giant “also took it to Adult Swim, where, oddly enough, the guy they were pitching it to had already heard of the project through my friend Blaine, who sings for Nashville Pussy, who, even stranger, is also in the band Nine Pound Hammer, who just happened to do the theme song for 12 Oz. Mouse, which is a new animated show from one of the Aqua Teen Hunger Force [creators].”
For more on Ray and Craschcam Films, go to www.crashcamfilms.com.
This article appears in January 20 • 2006.