BULLCRANK.COM IS ALIVE

After almost a year of waiting, I'm finally happy with http://www.Bullcrank.com. Different versions have been worked on, scrapped, or deleted... but we finally have a Bullcrank that showcases our films the way I need them to be. Big thanks to Nich for his work. There are a few minor changes I've requested but nothing huge. For the most part, what you see now is the gist of what the site will be. Nich and Christina are talking about getting together to go all out on a new version sometime in the summer but I don't know. First off, you'll notice I removed the "Meet the Gang" section. The reason for this was that people were taking it a little too seriously and taking offense to not being listed or whatever. We don't really HAVE a true, concrete group yet. Sure, we have our regulars... the friends who will always lend a hand when they can, but we have to become professionals first. I have to separate the movie makers from the friends who help (they are and will always be welcome to help) once in a while before I put up an actual roster of any kind.

1. Okay, I'm about to start recording voicework for our sequel to "Batman's Gonna Get Shot in the Face". The sequel is rightfully titled "The Greatest Fan Film of All Time". It will feature superheroes from every movie, comicbook, and cartoon and while it's a sarcastic comedy at heart, I promise some very cool moments. As usual, our main man animator Jacob Drake (Nintendo: Oldschool Revolution, Batman's Gonna) will be animating this beauty. There are too many voice actors to name but we've even managed to nab a few celebrities. Our Lady Peace singer Raine Maida will be voicing the Marvel character "Guardian". If you're a fan of fan films, you may have seen "Patient J" ( http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4095303199635469669&q=patient+j ), starring Paul Molnar as "The Joker". Many people online argued and lobbied for Paul to play "The Joker" in the upcoming film "The Dark Knight" but we all know that Heath Ledger nabbed the role. He will be voicing... you guessed it... "The Joker" in our film. Hollywood FX guru Jerry Constantine (Fantastic Four, Van Helsing)(I didn't say they were GOOD movies) will be doing some background sounds also. Michael Manna, also known as professional wrestler Stevie Richards in the WWE, will be voicing the man without fear, "Daredevil". Rick Montgomery Jr., star of the Cleveland Theatre's "Full Monty", "The Losers Have a Junkyard", and the feature film "Hero Tomorrow", will be voicing "Dr. Strange". Lloyd Kaufman himself may be voicing a character but I've yet to confirm this. As for the billions of other heroes, I held a sort of online voice competition and we've got some talented individuals. Many of the voices will be voiced by us, the Bullcrank crew, because hey... it's what we do.

   

   Michael Manna also has also started his own pod cast show, which you can tune into right here:

   http://www.blogtalkradio.com/T4Show

   As for the progress of the feature film "Zombies on My Airplane", I just got back from Michigan and I'm still finishing up draft 2. Once it's done I'll print it out, let it sit for a few days or so, then take a pen to it and finish the final version. Mark Ordesky, the VP of New Line Cinema, is waiting eagerly to read it. If he loves it, good. If he doesn't, that's fine too. I'll make it myself like I planned on in the beginning.
   If you don't mind helping us out then swing by Spielberg's On the Lot contest and give us a review right here: http://films.thelot.com/films/18290

   There isn't much more news to report as of right now. Our feature film will be amazing. Our animated fan film will be amazing. Jacob's new cartoon, temporarily titled "The Ghost and the Girl" will be amazing. We're very good at what we do and we just keep on getting better. BULLCRANK.COM... SPREAD THE WORD! - Larry

The Executive Producer of Lord of the Rings, Mountains, Zombies, Hobbits, Nintendo, Batman, Troma, and The Devil's Olives

Who am I? The name is Larry Longstreth. I'm 25 years old and I make movies. I started about 5 years ago with nothing more than a crappy video camera and some friends. Now we've shot on everything from Hi-8 to film and everywhere from the mountains to the studio.



BEFORE YOU READ ANY FURTHER... if you want to see some very awesome short films and don't want to read the story below before getting the links then visit iFilm.com and search for "Batman's Gonna Get Shot in the Face", "Nintendo: Oldschool Revolution", "Harvey Daggit and the Devil's Olives", or "Zombies in My Neighborhood". There are plenty of others (and their links) listed below, but those are our hits and have thousands (millions even) of hits online. CARRY ON...



I won't bore you with the details of our first few projects but I'll just say that they sucked. They were long, maybe an hour each... but they were uninteresting and didn't show a lick of talent. What they did show, however, was our motivation and the fact that I would finish the projects I set out to finish. It sounds easy, sure.... but 95% of the people who say they're going to make a movie never do. They give up when they find out work is involved. Anyways, our projects... "Safari Larry" and "An Unlikely Savior" were finished between 2002 and 2004 and they showed that we had the fire in our guts to do stuff but we hadn't yet developed the eye for what worked and what didn't.





That all changed when we decided to goof around with the camera and start making little sketches based on whatever we had at the time. Later, we'd end up making well over 50 of these little short films (making fun of everything from superheroes to rednecks to ghosts to aliens) and we'd dub them "The Eyeball Papercuts". You can see them here under my friend Ian's youtube profile (mine is LawsonMoonrunner) and believe me, you'll enjoy some, if not all of them: http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=kapaaian

I edited "The Eyeball Papercuts" into 6 half hour shows and it was agreed that for $600.00 I would show them on our local access channel. The man working there explained that the copyrights were no issue and that we were on late enough that our college humor wouldn't offend anybody. One year later I had finished the project and given it to him. Times had changed. Howard Stern and his FCC battles were the talk of the country at the time and we were no longer able to show our stuff. Everybody was afraid of being put under the microscope and so our work had been for nothing. Not so fast. I spent about $200.00 to put together 34 minutes of what I felt were the best shorts of the bunch and posted them on iFilm.com. We ended up getting over 5,000 views on it... more than we would have on local access TV in one viewing, and suddenly I was being interviewed online and invited to film premieres. Now, our films were nothing to look at and the audio quality was terrible, but the creativity was there and it was the spark we had needed.

While at the premiere of a film called "A Joker's Card" I met a lot of filmmakers who had laughed at our stuff. I also met a young girl named Sveta Binshtok who informed me of an upcoming film festival. The deadline was in a little over a week. She said that our stuff was funny and that I should take a shot at it but there was so little time. In 6 days my brother Aaron and I wrote, filmed, edited, and submitted "Zombies in My Neighborhood"... a short film about a group of rejects trying to make a movie. They have no idea how bad their film is but to the viewer it's obvious. It was a total tribute to the works of Christopher Guest (Best in Show, A Mighty Wind, For Your Consideration) and it ended up being seen by a lot of people online on various sites. We got around 30,000 hits on Zombies on various sites not because of the production quality but because our sarcasm and timing were so sharp that people loved seeing something new. See "Zombies in My Neighborhood" here: http://www.ifilm.com/video/2677439

Over the next couple years we got better. We were invited by an actress who loved "Zombies" to work as chicken zombies on Troma's latest film "Poultrygeist" up in NY. We visited special fx guru Jerry Constantine in LA where we met Tarantino and other big names. We passed out DVDs of our crappy yet talented work in Zombies and Eyeball Papercuts. Aaron and I actually were sitting in The Hunan Cafe the night before our flight home when I heard a familiar voice. I looked at the man but wasn't sure. It was Mark Ordesky, the executive producer of Lord of the Rings. ( I know, I'm a dork ) We spoke with him and he was awesome, giving us his business card, taking a DVD of our stuff, and just being an all around good guy. When we got home, Mark e-mailed me telling me he had been rolling on the floor laughing at our stuff and wanted to see more. He even asked for... a feature SCRIPT when we had one.

We shot another Zombies-type comedy about amateur wrestlers called "Real Men of the Mat" next. See it here: http://www.ifilm.com/video/2715529 Also, I had written a cartoon short film called "Nintendo: Oldschool Revolution" before I'd left for Hollywood and a Cleveland animator named Jacob Drake had been a fan of our stuff and we'd decided to make it together. The story was about Mario's mysterious death and the war of Sony and X-Box vs. Nintendo that followed. It... was... HUGE!!!!!!!!! I knew it would be big on iFilm when I wrote it but I mean this thing has been seen by atleast 2 million people over the interent. Now, it's copywritten characters so I can't make money but it put my name out there big time. Interviews, feature articles, podcasts, all that followed. Jake was so lucky to have had his first work become the most watched animated short of 2006 on iFilm. Our animation was good enough to tell the story but we knew there was room for improvement. Still, this thing was beatiful. Watch "Nintendo: Oldschool Revolution" here: http://www.ifilm.com/video/2686716





I stayed in touch with Lloyd Kaufman after working on Poultrygeist and even flew him out to star in my first 16mm film, "The Losers Have a Junkyard". I'm proud of "Losers" visually and of the acting and over all production but it wasn't as creative or sharp as what I'm capable of doing. I was so obsessed with proving we could pull off good production value that I ignored what made us great. Still, I love it and I'm content with it. It also starred Rick Montgomery Jr., who I will hopefully work with forever now. Lloyd mentioned having it brought up to him at countless conventions and stuff and it had about 30 or 40,000 hits online. Not bad. We also released our second animated short film... another "fan film" titled "Batman's Gonna Get Shot in the Face". It didn't come anywhere close to the amount of hits "Nintendo" had had... but it was praised as the "4th best short film of 2006" by Filmthreat.com and has a huge following. Watch "The Losers Have a Junkyard" right here: http://www.ifilm.com/video/2766330

Watch "Batman's Gonna Get Shot in the Face" right here: http://www.ifilm.com/video/2766332

Now, we're working on our feature film "Zombies on My Airplane" and I'm currently on the second draft. When it's finished I will send it to Mark Ordesky of New Line Cinema. Recently, we finished up a short film called "Harvey Daggit and the Devil's Olives" that you can see right here: http://www.ifilm.com/video/2822444 . Stay tuned for more as we learn it. LARRY