Yes, there have been projects where I only worked as a writer. And others where I worked as a Director or an Assistant Director or in whatever position that needed to be filled. But nine times out of ten, I tend to wear a lot of different hats on a production, and as maddening as that can be, I never lose sight of the fact that all the elements fit together into one big jigsaw puzzle, and at the end of the day, I consider it all simply part of FILMMAKING. Writing, shooting, producing, directing, editing. It's all just FILMMAKING.

Writing: No matter how great a script is, it can be sunk by poor casting, shitty camera work, bad audio, and lousy editing.

Giving all the credit to a script is ridiculous. A script isn't a book and shouldn't read like one. It is what it is. A blueprint. Write simple, non-flowery descriptions that tell your cast and crew in a concise, and precise manner, EXACTLY what this universe you've created looks like and sounds like.

You can make a bad movie from a good script but it's nearly impossible to make a good movie from a bad script (unless you simply throw it away or deviate from it to the point that it's total improvisation). Having everything laid out as simply as possible in your blueprint can and will save your ass though. When people who speak the language can look at your script and immediately spring into action to create what you want created, you're twelve steps ahead of the game.

Pre-Production: Gathering all the tools to bring the script to life. Getting your cast and crew in place. Making sure you have the right actors to bring your characters to life and the right people working on the technical side of your film.

Putting your project in the hands of the wrong people will be your downfall. There's compromise at all levels of filmmaking (from no-budget indies to $250 million corporate blockbusters) but take the time and effort to make sure you've surrounded yourself with the right people.

Get the actors you're confident can bring your characters to life. Again, bad acting will kill your script no matter how good it is. Good or great acting might elevate it to levels you didn't imagine though. The same with the crew and the raw materials you need to make your movie.

If you walk onto the set that first day with a kickass script, a solid game plan, and the right soldiers, nothing is gonna stop you. Not even the unexpected.

I've gone into battle in the past lacking at least some of those elements (though never a bad script and rarely subpar actors). The first time, it was a disaster. The second time, I had learned to swim and sharks were slain left and right. It wasn't always pretty but everyone made it out alive.

Principle Photography: This is the most collaborative part of the process. It can be the most frustrating aspect of filmmaking (since you have to give up at least some control of your vision and trust others to carry out your will) but it can also be the most rewarding (that is if you get everyone on the same page and they start working toward a common goal).

Every director has a different style and every script calls for a specific mood and tone. On my first project, the infamous "Radio Free Babylon," the script was written in such a way that I would've looked at it as blasphemy if someone omitted or changed a single line of dialogue (unless there was a long and involved discussion prior to such an act). Coupled with the fact that the film had two directors who had to fight with several other idiots who THOUGHT they were directors and you had a recipe for artistic tragedy.

On "Communication Breakdown," we concentrated more on the mood so there was much more improv. That 95% of the original script still made it to the screen is a testament to just how groovy that screenplay was.

We had an eclectic (*cough* insane) collection of people on the set too and things could go from laid back to chaotic at a second's notice.

As for working with actors, I like nothing more than to be able to do the Woody Allen minimalist thingy. I LOVE IT when I can click it to autodrive, tell the DP (that is, if I'm not DPing myself) to gimme a master and get coverage on everyone, then turn the actors loose and let them just be in the moment and bring it to fruition.

Sometimes, it's more of a chore. Sometimes I might hafta get in the head of an actor (particularly an inexperienced one) and lead him or her in the direction I want (even if it's someplace that maybe they don't wanna go). And yeah, depending on who the actor is, they might either love me or hate me after it's over but nine times out of ten, it works out alright.

Having done this for just a few years, I'm constantly learning. I've stepped on toes here and there and I've made miscalculations along the way.. But that's part of the adventure. Sometimes you just hafta feel your way and that's something you can't get from a film school or a how-to book.

Post-Production: This is the part of the process where you can redeem yourself by fixing at least some of your fuckups.

You can loop bad audio (or even a line that maybe shouldn't have been left in the script to begin with) and you can cut around a bad shot by getting creative with different takes and angles (which is why you must ALWAYS get enough COVERAGE while you're on the set, especially if you don't have the luxury to go back to that location with all your actors at a later date).

To me, editing is an extension of screenwriting. It's the true final draft of a script.

I did my first solo edit in 2004. When I started, I immediately felt a sense of Deja Vu. Like I'd done it before. That's the moment I truly felt like an actual filmmaker for the first time. When I realized all the elements of making a movie had come somewhat natural to me because I had imagined them years earlier when I wrote my first script.

I could cast, because I'd done casting in my head when I created the characters. I could instruct others on how a set should look because I'd built these locations in my mind and put them on a page. And I could cut together a scene because that's what a script is at its very essence, a cut & paste of imagined action.

I simply needed the physical tools to make it a reality and once I had those tools in hand and once I embraced the organic flow of the process (and I'm sorry if that sounds like hippie bullshit but in this case it's true), things really started to breathe.

Overall, I've been fortunate. Lucky I guess, or maybe just good (competent in the very least). I've never looked back at one of my scripts and SHUDDERED (well, not one that I had final approval over anyway). And I've never looked back at any scene that I've shot and thought, "Christ, it was a mistake hiring that actor," or "Jeez, that was just awful."

The problems that have plagued me have usually been more technical or financial in nature. Simply needing more money or more daylight or more time. Sound issues. Location problems. Basic scheduling headaches. Trying to fit eight people in one scene when it's impossible to get more than three of them in the same city at the same time on any given day.

But through it all, no matter how cheapo a production has been or how crazy shoots have turned out to be, I'm very very proud at how my/our ability to put together a blueprint, bring together the appropriate materials to construct from that blueprint, and implement that construction, has developed.

So much so that I'm constantly in shock whenever I watch a big budget motion picture now and see fuckups that should've/could've/would've been caught in a split second on one of my little nickel and dime sets.

Plot holes that should've been red lighted at the scripting or early development stage; shots which fail to build drama and stress the most important point of an entire film; bad acting choices; and yes, continuity errors (I said I wasn't gonna cover this, but sometimes those screwups are more than just an arm or a leg being out of place and affect the entire outcome of a story). The whole nine yards.

To cover a quick example of what I consider bad acting choices/direction of said acting choices, while watching the first season finale of "Heroes," I was struck by how lackluster and anticlimactic the explosion scene was. After 22 episodes building to that one moment, I was REALLY disappointed in the decisions made by two of the main actors and of the overall direction of that scene.

For those of you who didn't see the show I'm referring to, the whole thing hinged on the director getting an emotional performance out of three actors. Milo Ventimiglia (sensitive good guy who is about to explode and destroy NYC), Hayden Panettiere (indestructible niece of exploding guy), and Adrian Pasdar (father of indestructible girl, brother of exploding guy, recently elected Congressman with the ability to fly).

The conflict in the scene is that Ventimiglia's character can't stop himself from exploding. He's taken on all the various powers of the other mutant heroes he's come in contact with, but now he's powerless to stop himself from literally turning into a bomb and destroying the city. He's immobile. He asked for his brother's help earlier but the politico turned him down, opting to align with a "well-intentioned" (though essentially evil) power structure which was seeking to use the impending New York tragedy as a method to "build a great new society."

As a result, exploding guy has entrusted his niece with the duty of killing him (by shooting him in a specific part of his brain, which is the only way to put him down) in order to stop the carnage.

But just as she's about to put a bullet in her beloved uncle, the flying Congressman swoops in, puts his baby brother on his shoulder, and soars into the atmosphere, sacrificing himself to save millions of lives. Beautiful...on paper.

And beautiful to some degree on film.

Panettiere was excellent. The cutaway shots to the supporting cast were great. But Pasdar and Ventimiglia were far too understated. If I had been directing this scene, with the knowledge of the emotional buildup of the previous 21 episodes, then I wouldn't have left that set until I got those two guys to sell the emotional weight of that conflict to its fullest potential.

I was sitting on the edge of my seat. I KNEW what was gonna happen. I knew that the Pasdar character was gonna fly in and save the day. And I was ready to bawl like a baby. Cue Bowie, motherfucker. We can be HEROES...just for one...day.

But it fell flat because of the performances of those two main actors (both of whom had been mostly excellent throughout the season). It just felt like something that should've been caught by someone on the set. That no matter what deadlines or time constraints there were to get that ep in the can (either in principle photography or post-production), that a couple more takes with those two guys connecting on an immediate personal level, selling the idea that they were sacrificing EVERYTHING for one another, for love, for the greater good, for humanity itself...well, that should've/would've been my number one priority.

Given the type of money they pump into that show and the level of talent they have involved, they could've made that scene fucking SING. I mean, Jesus, with no money in my pocket, I've gotten actors to drive hundreds of miles to reshoot scenes just to get one simple shot. If I had their wad, their actors, their crew, their resources, we would've damn well made that motherfucker bleed. With a "Heroes" type budget, anything less would have been unacceptable.

Now contrast that scene to the "Veronica Mars" series finale and a simple exchange between former lovers Veronica and Logan after Logan beat the shit out of a mob boss' son in full view of a hundred witnesses.

MOB KID: I don't know who you are...but you're gonna die!

LOGAN: (to Veronica, not the Mobster, sly grin on his face) Yeah...someday.

Veronica, dating a new guy, having just ordered Logan out of her life once again, spoke a million words with one simple smile. One of those smiles that could've just as easily been a scream or a curse. Sad smile, happy teardrop, roll 'em all together, it's all the same thing.

But it told you everything you needed to know about the dynamics of their relationship. He would sign away his life for her and any verbal declaration of that fact was unnecessary. His actions spoke. And she KNEW. There was a connection there that had less to do with specific dialogue than raw pure emotion. He would've flown into the atmosphere for her. He would've exploded in space for her. If "Heroes" could've achieved that (or a reasonable facsimile), then I would've had chills up my spine for weeks.

I've had certain "filmmaking" know-it-all's watch what I do on-set and make snarky comments about the way I direct actors. It usually boils down to them wanting me to somehow "describe" in 1,000 words (or more) what an actor "should do" versus the method I believe in, which is, (hopefully) creating a mood where a skilled actor, having learned his or her lines, can live the dialogue and action rather than simply acting it out robotically.

I don't want an actor to "think." I want an actor to feel. I want that actor to become that character and be as natural as possible. And if I think I can get an actor in that state better by having an inane five minute conversation about something completely unrelated to the scene at hand and then yelling "Action!," then I goddamn will.

Now, one of the things I wanted to stray away from in writing this piece was picking out movies that are so obviously horrible and simply dissecting their very obvious flaws. That's too easy and it's the bastion of lazy ass film journalists and college professors the world over. What I wanted to do is pick out some scenes in films I like (and in some cases absolutely love) and point out some glaring boo-boo's. Such as...
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BATMAN BEGINS: Anyone who knows me knows how I worship this film. It's my favorite super hero movie of all time, has the greatest villain of all time (Ra's Al-Ghul, played sympathetically by Liam Neeson), and does what no "Batman" film or TV rendition has ever done...it captured the true essence of not only Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) but also Alfred (Michael Caine) and Gordon (Gary Oldman). It wasn't perfect though. I wasn't as crazy about Katie Holmes or the Rutger Hauer character but that had as much to do with how comparatively blown away I was by Bale, Caine, Oldman, Neeson, Morgan Freeman, etc. than anything else.

One specific scene, however, really, REALLY bugs me. In a flashback to his childhood, Wayne is taking the train into Gotham with his mother and father. At one point, he looks at the Wayne Enterprises building and asks his dad, "Is that where you work?"

I was like, "HUH?"

The kid's about ten years old or whatever. Knows English. Seems to be of above average intelligence with no apparent learning disabilities. He appears well-adjusted (at this point in time) and seems to have a good, open, honest relationship with his parents. How the FUCK could he not know that his dad worked at a hospital and not the Wayne corporate HQ? He knows his dad's a doc. His dad set his arm and gave him his stethoscope earlier in the film.

How could the kid NOT know where his dad worked? How could he have not visited the city before that time? How could he have not seen his family's place of business? It just didn't wash with everything else we knew about these characters and the type of relationships they have with one another.

Director Chris Nolan, Writer David Goyer, the development monkeys at Warners, the obsessively note-giving execs at the prodcos involved, every actor involved, and basically anybody and everybody who read the script dropped the ball by not working that whole thing out. It made no sense and took me out of the moment for a few minutes. It irks me every time I watch the movie now and trust me, I watch it a lot.
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HANNIBAL: My favorite of all the Lecter films, this one paints the cannibalistic doc as the flesh-eating antihero I always believed him to be. I mean, really, he basically only kills and eats people who really, really deserve it, right?

One scene though--and it's the payoff scene--really got botched and it makes me bang my head against the screen every time I watch it.

Clarice (played this time by the goddess that is Julianne Moore) handcuffs Lecter (and herself) to a refrigerator to keep him from escaping. The FBI is approaching. He gazes into her eyes, then at their wrists intertwined with the fridge. Sawing through the fridge isn't an option. Sawing through the cuffs isn't an option.

He picks up a cleaver. He looks at her wrist.

CUT TO:

Julianne Moore walking in the woods. The first line of dialogue is from an off-camera male voice which says "FBI! Put your hands up!"

Now...that line of dialogue right there gives a director all he needs to work with in order to build drama, build suspense, and tie the previous scene, which was all about Hannibal's intent, together with this scene, which is all about the consequences of his actions, whatever they may have been.

The goal here is to get to a place where you really know how he feels about Clarice, and to a place which will inform how she feels about him.

"FBI! Put your hands up!"

Up until this point, it is absolutely IMPERATIVE that we NOT see Clarice's hands in the shot (especially not the hand that had been cuffed). We should merely see a dazed, traumatized Julianne Moore (possibly in shock, possible suffering from excessive blood loss), slogging through the woods, with her hands OUT OF FRAME.

When the FBI agent says his line, THAT is the moment she should bring her hands up into view. THAT is when we should learn that Hannibal cut off his own hand to escape. That he left his beautiful Clarice intact. That he sacrificed a part of himself for the woman that he loved.

But unfortunately, the shot wasn't set up like that.

In the film, as soon as we see Julianne Moore walking through the woods, we can clearly see that she has both of her hands. There's no drama. No suspense. The weight of Hannibal's selfless act is reduced to a yawn. It makes the off-camera FBI agent's line meaningless and calls into question everyone involved with the project.

Someone. Dropped. The. Ball.

But WHO? Was it Writer David Mamet? Probably not since he obviously intended for the FBI agent's line to translate to the visual payoff of Clarice raising her hands to reveal the lengths of Lecter's love for her (or obviously he wouldn't have written it like that). But did the almost always brilliant Mamet, in his attention to dialogue detail, neglect to paint the picture in his descriptions of the action?

Or did the Director and/or the Cinematographer simply fuck up?

At any point during the creative process, wasn't there SOMEONE...ANYONE...who could've pointed out that the scene absolutely, positively HAD to be shot the way I described it in order to make sense?
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Then there are the basic continuity errors. Some are forgivable. I've made plenty of them. A person's hair is different in one shot to the next. Maybe an arm is out of place. Or a chair is in a different position. If you're on a low budget shoot, sometimes you just have to live with it (if you can't fix it in post). But when they happen in big budget productions, could easily be fixed, and fuck up the entire story when they're not, I just wanna grab everybody, scream at 'em to put down the pipe, and make everyone do their fucking jobs.

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER: There's an ep where Spike tells Buffy that her soldier boy lover Riley is cheating on her with vampire whores. There's a whole sequence that's been airing completely out of order on FX for like five years. Buffy gets busy with the boyfriend at night as Spike lurks, we cut to Buffy in the daytime talking about her plans for the evening, then we go back to Buffy in bed as the boyfriend sneaks out to the bloodsucker brothel. Am I the ONLY ONE who fucking noticed this?!
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HACKERS: Computer whiz kids (led by Jonnie Lee Miller and Angelina Jolie) watch an interview with an FBI agent on TV two scenes before he gives it (within the context of the linear progression of the story).
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ULTRAVIOLET: A character watches security camera footage of Milla Jovavich's vampire heroine character kicking ass. Only problem is, the editors used the WRONG fight scene. The fight scene on the monitor actually takes place some twenty or so minutes later in the movie.
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STAR WARS: If George Lucas wasn't such an icon (not to mention a pioneer and a billionaire and all that), he'd get more flak than Ed Wood. I mean, seriously, he spends a gazillion damn dollars to "improve" the original Star Wars films with CGI but he leaves in those ridiculously obvious light saber jumpcuts, which could've simply, seamlessly, and far more effectively been shot by using two different angles and a quick edit.
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WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE?: Did we REALLY need to be "convinced" that Bette Davis was driving that car when she pulls into the garage? Screw the bad jumpcut. Just show the driver pulling in, then cut to Bette from another angle, hopping out of the vehicle. It ain't rocket science, folks.
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But okay, whatever. Maybe I'm overanalyzing. Maybe I have no room to talk. But all I'm saying is...I don't care how "stressful" big budget movie making is, at SOME LEVEL, someone needs to catch these things. If someone entrusts me with a $100 million budget or a $20 million budget or even a $2 million budget, you can damn sure believe I wouldn't let this shit slide through the cracks.

Don't believe me? Whip out that checkbook.

Richard O’Sullivan is an award-winning Writer/Producer/Director for film and television and the founder of Lost Colony Entertainment. You can contact him via email at sodfedora@aol.com.

I Was a Teenage Disc Jockey for the Ku Klux Klan
Posted by Richard O'Sullivan 4/19/09

My adventure in radio began when I was eighteen. I wet my feet at my college station, then roped a part-time gig at a shitty little AM country station just outside of Charlotte, North Carolina when I was nineteen. That stint evolved into a six-day-a-week job, in which I manned the mic from six until midnight (as well as later running the board practically all morning and afternoon on Sundays for the local preachers who would buy time on the station to deliver whatever delusion they were pushing).

We operated at 5,000 watts throughout the day, powered down to 500 watts at night (sometimes I'd forget to reduce the juice and on stormy nights, I'd get requests for George Jones coming in from eastern Tennessee). I think minimum wage was like a buck and a quarter then but I was pulling in a sweet $3.50 an hour. Life was like a lush green grape, byatches.

My duties were simple. Make commercials for such companies as Stowe Merchantile and Jess Osbourne Home Improvement (I wasn't allowed to touch the station's golden goose, the Carouther's Funeral Home account), make sure the ABC news feeds came through, run the board for remote broadcasts of high school sports, and keep the reels spooled on the automated equipment.

Oh, didn't I mention that last part? This shitty little station that almost no one knew existed was part of the evil, automated empire, subscribing to an outside programming service (which, in turn, dealt with the various record labels, thus cutting out the middle man in the whole payola process). The music arrived in the mail, we spooled it up, flipped a switch, and the computer did most of the work, even telling the jocks when to talk.

T'was Borg Broadcasting, Inc. Resistance was futile. I would soon be assimilated.

Or maybe not.

Rage Against the Machine.

My first night on the air, I immediately got bored with the music on the automation reels. Barbara Mandrell? Lee Greenwood? Sawyer Brown??? What is this shit? I started rummaging around in the back for actual vinyl records (the station engineers had left turntables installed so that the Sunday morning jocks could play gospel LP's), shut down the automation, and put on Willie & Family Live. Then some Flying Burrito Brothers. And some Hank Sr. By the end of the night, I was playin' the fucking Smithereens.

I guess I knew I could be fired at any moment but at that point, I had no impulse control (as opposed to now). Plus, both the station owner and the program director had confided in me that they lived too far away from the station to pick up the signal and really, I got the impression they wouldn't have been listening anyway.

The owner was this overgrown 30 year old kid, who had bought the station from his dad, the mogul of a "mini-Clear Channel" (a string of mostly FM stations in several states). He openly admitted that he would ditch radio in a heartbeat to design cars if he could, and when he got the offer to do so, that's exactly what he did. Selling the station back to his dad's company (per terms of their original agreement I'm certain), the boss walked and I was tossed out with him.

Was no biggie really. I had been hired and re-hired several times already. Mostly due to on-air infractions, like playing a Springsteen track while sitting in for the afternoon drive guy (I got back in by writing "I Will Not Deviate From the Format" 200 times and sliding it under the PD's door); faking an ABC news broadcast (when the satellite went down) and announcing that Lady Bird Johnson had been arrested for "defecating in an Austin, Texas shopping mall fountain"; and of course the Tom Bodette Motel 6 parody in which I might've accidently encouraged people to break into a lawn mower dealership ("We'll leave the window open, you can crawl right in").

Through three sets of owners, I came and went again and again and again. My value being that I was willing to show up, be as entertaining as I could be given the restraints, and work for next to nothing in potentially dangerous situations.

Dangerous situations?

Bring in the Jesus, Bring in the Loot.

Though the station was licensed for twenty four hours a day and ran programming from 5 am til midnight, it relied on three basic sources of revenue to survive:

1] The Swap Shop - A one hour daily show in which listeners would phone in to literally buy, sale, and trade household items or services. Got a used car you wanna to get rid of? Call the Swap Shop. Cat had kittens and you can't handle 'em? Put the little bastards on the Swap Shop and give 'em away. The kid who's mowing your lawn does a shitty job? Find someone else on the Swap Shop who can do a better job. It was a phenomenon. People who wouldn't otherwise touch our frequency with a ten foot finger would tune in just to listen to this show. It was, for lack of a better comparison, the eBay of its time (albeit on a local level) and thus, was jammed packed with paid commercials (and naturally, I was the only jock at the station who was barred from hosting the Swap Shop for fear that I would somehow "make fun of the callers").

2] High School Sports - Baseball, basketball, and especially football games. Big audience. Big business.

3] Sunday Morning Worship - Churches both locally and nationally would buy blocks of time to spread their version of the gospel. Some would send in tapes, some would phone it in, and others would come to the studio and do a whole sermon live. My favorites were the African-American churches, whose members were quite lively and often brought kickass music. Black services made up the bulk of the morning schedule (in fact, there was only one white minister who came in, more on him in a bit).

The Sunday morning gig was a fucking marathon. I'd have to get there to crank up the transmitter before 5 am and was usually there half the day before backup arrived. My duties? Tape the commercials on the ABC feeds for later playback as "make good's" (since the sermons preempted the news), run the board for the services, spin a few gospel records, and of course, handle the money.

*screeching tires*

Handle the money?

Yup. Amen.

There is no 'i' in Ku Klux Klan.

Break it down. The preachers would roll in, plop down fifty, seventy-five, maybe a hundred bucks for fifteen, thirty, or sixty minutes of airtime. All depended on the timeslot, the preacher, or how creative/greedy a particular salesman was. My job was to take the check, cash, or money order (and sometimes it was in a combination of two or once in a blue moon, all three) and write them out a receipt.

Being the guy who would eventually concoct a movie about radio being used as a tool of government and big business mind control, I obviously didn't fully trust this situation and started making photocopies of the receipts so I didn't get blamed for any transaction that might've gone awry.

Which brings us to the Reverend Charles S. Beasley.

A seemingly friendly sort, this plump, sixtysomething gent would probably have been--upon initial inspection--the first guy in the neighborhood you'd go to if you needed someone to swing by the office Christmas party as Santa. The host of The Emanuel Hour (which for some strange reason was only thirty minutes long), Beasley emitted that "favorite uncle vibe" that could instantly put you at ease.

First time I saw him, he was standing in the lobby of the station, his hand on the shoulder of the black minister who proceeded him, both laughing, joking around. Two old friends for sure.

Which is why it stunned the Holy Crap out of me--the third or fourth week of running the board for him no less--to hear him say the following on-air:

"Hello again everyone and welcome to The Emanuel Hour. This is the Reverend Charles S. Beasley, your minister and Exaulted Grand Wizard of the North Carolina Christian Knights of the Ku Klux Klan."

My mouth dropped open. I stacked a few carts, casually exited the booth, and made my way to the production room to phone the program director.

ME: Dude, did you know that one of the Sunday morning preachers is the Grand Fucking Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan???

THE PD: (still half asleep) Which one?

ME: The WHITE one!

THE PD: Ohhh, Beasley. When'd he get promoted?

ME: What??

THE PD: Yeah, he's been in the Klan for years. Don't worry about it.

ME: Don't worry about it? Dude, do you realize that each and every Sunday morning, our station lobby is filled with an equal mix of black people and white supremacists? Not just white supremacists but white supremacists who think that Jesus is telling them to kill 'n***ers.'

THE PD: Well...yeah. Why do you think we have so much trouble getting people to work Sundays?

ME: (sigh)

THE PD: Look, relax. Everything's fine. First Amendment and all that. God bless America, I'm going back to bed...

ME: But...

(click)

Coming Together to Keep Us Apart.

I sat there in amazement. The Klansmen and the black churchies were coexisting like fluffy cartoon animals on a My Little Pony bedsheet. Friendly, thoughtful, imbibed by the Spirit of the Lord. On numerous occasions, the two factions would even plug one another's shows and mention to the listeners how oh-so-very "Christian" the other group was.

Once, I even heard Beasley and one of the black ministers agree that each was doing "his part" in "keeping the races properly separated" (appropriating that whole Tower of Babel thing as "proof" naturally). This, while they embraced in a manly, smile-on-your brother, everybody-get-together, try-to-love-one-another hug.

Yes, I'll admit, as shocking as this may sound, I thought all this to be just a tad bit...odd. But I finally figured, hey, maybe the PD was right. Maybe this was simply all part of the gig. I mean, lookit, if the black churches and the Ku Klux Klan can get along, why can't the rest of us. I mean, isn't that what we all want in the end?

(ponders)

JESUS H. CHRIST, WAS EVERYONE INSANE???? THERE WAS A WEEKLY KLAN RALLY RIGHT SMACK DAB IN THE MIDDLE OF BLACK WORSHIP SERVICES ON THE RADIO AND I WAS RUNNING THE FUCKING AUDIO!!!!

Needless to say, I eventually left the station to "pursue other opportunities" and was surprised when literally, days after I signed off for the last time, I turned on the TV and saw a news story on Beasley getting kicked off the radio. Apparently he had "missed last week's payment" and the station had no choice but to ax him. Beasley of course contended that he had paid the bill and promised ACLU intervention and mass protests outside the station with Klansmen coming from around the country.

The protests wound up being Beasley and a couple of fat broads (his wife and his sister maybe) and pretty much petered out after a few weeks.

I later heard that the station had wanted him off the air for some time but didn't really have any legal recourse. They were basically just looking for the right loophole and the "missed payment" did the trick. Only thing is, a few years back (long after this all went down), I was putting some stuff in storage when I came across a box filled with those photocopied receipts I had made for my own legal protection. I looked, and sure enough, the last one I wrote was to Charles S. Beasley. He paid in cash via the mail (thus I never personally handed him the receipt). Due to some family crisis, he had been mailing in his check along with taped broadcasts instead of showing up live. I guess the station took this as an opportunity to hose him.

It wasn't really something I was gonna lose sleep over though. The whole "right" and "wrong" debate in this situation went out the window almost from the start. What I will mention in closing, however, is that in 1996, Beasley's Invisible Empire of the Christian Knights of the Ku Klux Klan was ordered to pay $21.5 million for burning down a 100-year-old black church in South Carolina. Unable to come up with that amount, the group's property was liened and the organization was essentially reduced from what was described as being "the most active hate group in the nation" to being completely defunct.

Today, that radio station is a 100% all-day, all-night Jesus station. To the best of my knowledge, the Klan accounts for none of its on-air programming...at least not openly.

Richard O’Sullivan is an award-winning Writer/Producer/Director for film and television and the founder of Lost Colony Entertainment. You can contact him via email at sodfedora@aol.com.

Saw "Adventureland"--the film where Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Ryan Reynolds, and Bill Hader work in an 80's amusement park--today. If you haven't seen it yet, plan to, and don't want anything spoiled, read no further.

I had avoided reviews and promotion so I didn't know fully what to expect. Didn't even realize Reynolds was in the film until the opening credits kicked in. I knew it was the followup from "Superbad" director Greg Mottola so I was pretty much expecting it to be in the same vein (even though Judd Apatow had no involvement with this film).

What I saw though shocked me. It was NOTHING like the joke-per-frame Apatow films. In fact, it put me more in mind of 80's slice-of-life, coming-of-age films like "Gregory's Girl" and "Little Foxes" (which was perfect tone-wise, since it was set in the late 80's). And the McGuffin (kids thrown together to work in a cheesy amusement park) was a nice device to create a "Meatballs" or "Breakfast Club"-like ambiance.

"Adventureland" doesn't have enough laugh-out-loud moments to be considered a pure comedy and isn't life-or-death enough to be a drama. Yet it felt like real life and that's an incredible fucking feat to accomplish in my book. And perhaps the thing I liked most about it was the fact that it had a unifying theme that the writer/director didn't feel the need to beat you over the head with. In fact, you don't even realize (or I didn't at least) until the film is over what the theme was.

And that theme was..."Are you gonna rat me out?"

Again and again in this film, people's honesty (or lack of honesty) is revealed to someone and the question, very subtly, each time is, "Are you gonna rat me out?"

It's established early on when one of the characters explains to James, the Michael Cera-esque character played by Einsenberg how all the games in the park are rigged (hats glued to mannequins heads so they can't be knocked off by baseballs, that sorta thing). The kids all play along with the ruses even though they get the whole right versus wrong construct.

Then, as we see how they interact (with each other and their parents), it becomes obvious that the park's games are a bit of a microcosmic metaphor for the choices they make in life. And each time, the question becomes, are they gonna rat each other out or are they gonna play along.

Strangely enough, it's Reynolds' character who is, in some weird way, sort of the soul of the movie. In a lesser film, he would've been a stock foil (maybe not a total villain but a less sympathetic antagonist).

Playing the older married lover to Eisenberg's would-be girlfriend (played by the always mesmerizing Kristin Stewart), Reynolds walks a very thin line here. One mistep and he could come across as an unredeemable, pathetic, scumbag jackoff. Instead, in some weird way, he winds up being the most honest character in the film, really the only character who doesn't rat anyone out.

I've always liked Reynolds as an actor but here he steps up to another level. His performance is flawless, real, and a major accomplishment. Completely in tune with the rest of the film, he does some some of the most powerful work of his career but with a touch so soft that you don't really even sense the power behind his acting punches.

Einsenberg is probably gonna get paintbrushed with the poor man's Michael Cera label until he breaks out and goes in a completely different direction, but I think ultimately he's gonna be able to play roles Cera won't even get looked at for.

Stewart is gonna be top shelf if she keeps her head in the game (TMZ keeps getting shots of her holding bongs in public, let's hope there's not a Lohan-like meltdown anywhere in sight). Bill Hader was the comic relief in the film (which sounds funny to say about a movie marketed as a comedy) but he was more understated than usual and is quickly becoming one of those guys who instills confidence that you're gonna be entertained everytime he appears on screen.

I liked this film a lot. It wasn't what I expected going in but I wasn't disappointed. I got a meal I didn't order but I ate it and enjoyed it anyway.

Richard O’Sullivan is an award-winning Writer/Producer/Director for film and television and the founder of Lost Colony Entertainment. You can contact him via email at sodfedora@aol.com.