GlenJM vs. NYC

Oi everyone, Glen Matthews reporting from Brasil. I’m laying in a bed in the mountains of Petropolis, Rio De Janeiro and letting my brain melt. I thought I would catch you up on the progress of my vacation: things are good.

But let’s take a step back, shall we?

On our way down to Brasil, we (myself and my lady-slave Kristin) had a 14 hour stop-over in New York City at JFK airport.

Allow me to take you on a photographular-spectacle-tour-of-NYC-of-photo-proportions!

May 5th
5:30am
Surviving on 3 hours of sleep, Kristin crashes at Halifax International Airport before the voyage begins and her “power-nap” quickly becomes an out-cold invitation for molestation.

7:30am
We entered JFK, and passed by customs with not so much as a finger up either of our butts. Good start!

Shortly after, Kristin grabbed some coffee to make herself mildly tolerable, and a portly Cuban man convinced us that his shuttle service (titled Super Shuttle) was the way to go. We hopped in and were on our way to Times Square.

10:00am
Upon arrival, it is discovered that New York City hates epileptics…

10:30am
Me being disgusted by a man dressed in a duck-suit…


Being my first time in NYC, I handed the navigational duties over to Kristin who claimed to “know the city”.

She determined we would bypass Al Roker and his Good Morning America friends and head straight for Central Park.

11:00am
Here is an excerpt of some dialogue between two New York City citizens that we observed…

Biker: On your right!

The Biker passes on his left.

Man: Wrong side, mother fucka!

...Glorious.

“You’re gonna make some sort of sexual joke about that picture, aren’t you?” –Kristin Slaney referring to the bag of honey roasted nuts, with the tag-line “Nuts 4 Nuts” on it… What a slut.

Apparently, Central Park is the world’s largest man-made park; but with Harlem on the other end of it, who bothered to find out? Badum-pish!

Racism?

Back to civilization…


And by civilization, I mean the giant 3-storey Disney Store. Magical!

Kristin getting molested again…


Me giving consent…


Oh Cruella…

1:00pm
All this magic and wonder lead to the buildup of some mean hunger pains. It was onto the Café Edison (AKA The Polish Tea Room).

This was where most of Avenue Q & Neil Simon’s 45 Seconds From Broadway were written. I don’t know either of these shows, but there seemed to be some pretty good mojo working for the place, so I decided to haul out my notepad and continue writing my top-secret epic feature film.

Top-secret.

2:00pm
Kristin decides it’s onto Chinatown where she promises I will have many opportunities to haggle with Chinamen (her terminology, not mine).

Here she is using her know-how, to figure out the subway route to Chinatown…

Unfortunately, one hour later I discover that she is full of shit when we are lost in (you guessed it) the mother-fuckin’ Bronx. For whatever reason, rather than getting off of the subway and switching tracks, she thought that staying on would get us to Chinatown eventually.

It didn’t. We ended up deep in the Bronx. The mother-fucking Bronx, man.

There are no photos from this 2-hour endeavor because I was busy playing the role of “Scared Whitey #1”.

After some friendly directions from a friendly man named Robbie, we were well on our way to [hopefully] friendly Chinatown…

4:00pm
None of the people appearing in the following photograph granted me permission to use their photograph. They were total assholes about it.

It’s sort of like the Bridgewater Exhibition, but instead of drunks, you have people who likely-are-concealing-weapons; and instead of cotton candy, there’s Chinamen (and women).

Here we are celebrating our haul: cheap sunglasses!

6:00pm
The sun began to set behind the buildings surrounding us, and our flight was scheduled to depart in a few hours, so we caught a subway back to JFK to get some soup and chill.

...NYC whooped my ass.

Tour of Brasil of-photo-proportions coming soon!

GlenJM Design!

As the current Emperor of the GlenJMpire, I have the arduous duty of being a multi-talented artiste. One of my many talents is graphic design.

Let’s take a blog entry to look back at my short history as a graphic designer. Most recently, I was assigned to graphically design a poster for the upcoming production of Lilly, Alta. at Neptune Theatre...


Earlier in the year, Neptune Theatre also had me create the poster for Little Women...


I created a businass card for my acting endeavours...

...what a pederass.

In the Summer, I created a poster for the show I was taking part in for the Atlantic Fringe Festival, Tough!...

Here is the un-used cover art that I proposed for The Top Dog, a short film by Evan Elliot that was featured in the 2008 Atlantic Film Festival...

About a year ago, Neptune Theatre allowed me to create the poster for the Pre-Professional Training Program’s show, Blood Wedding (which I was in)...

Two years ago, I did a poster for another show I was in called Jump! An 80’s Musical.


A poster I did for a BBQ/Skate jamboree hosted by Homegrown Skateboards...


Here’s the poster & the VHS sleeve for my baby: Mugshots...



And here’s the poster for Park View Education Centre Men’s Hockey, which was never used because the printing costs for it were too high.

And the last stop on this tour through time; my earliest documented poster was for Ultimate Wrestling Championship’s 13th Pay-Per-View: 666 (which I also took part in)...

That’s all for now, more to come I hope! New York City is up next week!

Building the GlenJMpire: Chapter 6.

CHAPTER SIX:
“Quitter”
Spring 2003

A couple months past the Mugshots release and I was still exhausted from the whole ordeal.

I wrote a script for a feature-length film to be shot that summer titled Repo Men (starring myself, Scott Bailey and Evan Mosher) about a rogue group of repossession men who were experiencing hard times.


The summer months came and we started shooting our epic comedy; days were long and took much more orchestrating than when we shot Mugshots, which required (1.) showing up & (2.) a video camera. Still without a car (or a driver’s license), “showing up” became the film’s nemesis.

There was one day when I had to bike an hour to the shooting-location carrying an army kit bag full of props, the camera bag, and a tripod. And then everyone else showed up an hour late.

The strain was too much, and after filming approximately 25% of the film, I called it quits. Getting to and returning from the locations was just too much of a headache.

Here's the only released material from Repo Men. A behind-the-scenes photo. We convinced Dave F'n Maddox (our dear friend and grip for the day) to let us shoot him in the junk with our high powered Super Soaker.

The Super Soaker was used as a prop for the main character, Ben (played by Scott Bailey) as he had a difficult time managing his morning boner and ends up running through, and pissing all over his house. High-class comedy.

It really hurt to just let the movie die, but I really didn’t think that we could pull it off without me turning into a torrential typhoon of bitchy grumpyness and punching someone.

Months went by, and no new films were being produced. Seg-Way Productions was on an unofficial hiatus.

In school, I took Film & Video where we produced a few videos (80’s COP SHOW, RESIDUE EVIL, LIFE IN PVEC, IRON CONQUEST, FEED MY FRANKENSTEIN) but the motivation didn’t come back to us to make our own films on our own time. Lazy bastards.

FEED MY FRANKENSTEIN...


High school ended. My camera broke. I got a girlfriend.

I decided filmmaking wasn’t for me; it was time for me to buckle down and get in shape to follow my dreams and become a pro-wrestler (see: chapter 1). Next WInter, I would attend The Kardinal Sinners Pro-Wrestling Camp (in Moncton) taught by Hercules AKA Kingman AKA Brody Steele AKA Peter Smith.


Most of my friends moved away in the pursuit of knowledge, leaving me with my girlfriend, and a job at Bluenotes. Fuck. It was the longest Winter of my goddamned life.

The time came, and I went to Moncton, leaving my girlfriend and my shitty job behind me in Bridgewater. I stayed for 4 days of training before I hurt my back, got really homesick, depressed, and decided to head on back home.

I quit.

It was one thing to quit a movie that no one was expecting to get made, but quitting pro-wrestling really sucked. I was so sure for all of my life that this was what I wanted to do; to tour the globe as a high-flyin’ babyface named JJ Loveless… and now I had no fucking idea.

Back to Bridgewater.

I applied [and was accepted] to Nova Scotia Community College for Applied Arts (Graphic Design & Photography) in Halifax where I could at least keep myself entertained during the Winter months.

Could be okay.

I am Not a Skinhead.

Hey there, how are you doing? Keepin' it sexual? Good.

Last night, during my bi-weekly hair trimming that I do all by myself (like a big boy) I accidentally switched up my 8mm guard (which I use for my hair) and no guard at all (which I use for beard trimming).

The end result (take a deep breath) is as follows....

Not to be confused with...
I still like blacks, jews, asians and mexicans. Every last one of them.

Moving on.

What's new?

Myself and my girlfriend Kristin Slaney (I know, we're still together, I didn't think it would last either), and Sher Clain (another Neptune Theatre Pre-Professional Training Program '07 graduate) have been having rehearsals for the film Scanner, written and directed by Daniel Jardine. We'll be shooting mid-April.

Scanner will be my 4th time working with Dan Jardine on a film, what can I say, the man has an irresistable smile.

Scanner will be Kristin's 5th time portraying a pregnant woman. What the fuck?

Mr. Jardine doing sound on some other film that doesn't matter.

One last note before I leave you longing for more; tomorrow night (Wed. 26th @ 8:00pm) is Night of the Killer Reel II hosted by Scott Thorne, at Ginger's Tavern (1662 Barrington St.) is a night of short horror films. The teaser for Parker Porkham by Sam Fisher will be featured in the lineup.


That's all for now, keep it fresh.

Building the GlenJMpire: Chapter Five.

CHAPTER FIVE:
“VHS FTW”
November 2001

Into my second year of high school and boredom was deeply settling in. This was the first time in over 5 years that I had absolutely no creative outlet. Help Wanted TV had just ended (as with all ties with Garden Hoe Productions), and so did Ultimate Wrestling Championship. What’s a teenaged boy to do?

I drank.

We all drank.

A lot.

To waste the time, and to try and get the opportunity to touch a female. One particularly foggy evening in November in Lunenburg, myself and Scott Bailey were drinking on a hill in front of Composites Atlantic (a Lunenburg trademark) before a “gig” (that’s cool-teenager-lingo for “rock concert”) when Scott pitched me the idea of a movie titled Mugshots.

He wanted to keep making the type of films we were making with Mike Nauss (and Garden Hoe Productions), but this time it would be on our own terms.

He proposed that since we knew fuck-all about HTML and internet-ing that we would just buy a camera, shoot a buttload of footage, and get it out to everyone in one glorious hour-long jam-packed VHS film.

I asked him what the title “Mugshots” meant. He said it was a double-entendre, that it could mean doing shots of booze with mugs, but it could also mean an actual mugshot (as if we were arrested). And I still think it’s a stupid fucking title.

Dumb title or not. I was drunk and I was psyched.


Soon thereafter, we entered the Pre-Production stages for Mugshots and after a few months, I purchased my first video camera, a Sony CCD-TRV108 Hi-8 CamCorder, and a whole bunch of tapes.

Summer came and we started shooting.
Half of us had our driver's licenses and none of us had a job, so we had a whole lot of spare time to kick around and film whatever. And boy, did we film a whole lot of "whatever".

This summer went on to be one of the randomest (not a word, I know), funnest summers I have ever had.

This was the first summer that we had, where we knew that the law couldn't touch us. Being under the age of 19, especially in a small town like Lunenburg, meant that the long arm of the law, was rather forgivable towards us, and our demographic.


Sporadic , is one way to describe that summer. Non-stop, random, and efficient all at once. It was a weird mixture of careless production.

The end of the summer was closing in, and we knew that we had some great footage on tape; but another thing we knew, was that we didn't have that "big" stunt. Scott called me one night and put forth the idea that he wanted to jump from the second floor of the Atlantic Super Store onto a check-out.

After some discussion, we planned out "the skit", and headed to the Super Store where Scott jumped from the second floor onto a check-out. Managers, cashiers, and other Super Store staff chased all around Bridgewater for about 3 hours in one of the greatest memories I will ever experience. I rendezvoused with Scott on the riverbed of the Lahave River then headed back to my Dad's where we played video games for a few hours until everything die down.

Principal photography on Mugshots was complete.Come November, I started telling people that Mugshots was coming late in November. Like an idiot, I left myself about 3 weeks to import, and edit an hour-long film. During these 3 weeks, I had school and exams, which are pretty stressful to begin with.

The editing was unbelievably frustrating on a PC that was already 3 years behind it's time.

I switched the release date to December 19th to allow myself to put the finishing touches on my baby.

Come the 19th, I had finished editing, and recording more than 50 copies of Mugshots, ready to be distributed.
Within the next year I had produced more than 150 copies of Mugshots (from San Fransisco to France) and everyone sincerely loved the film.

Everyone seemed to overlook some of the pacing issues I had with it (thanks to my time constraints), and really enjoyed the finished product.

Through the years, I have continually heard of people putting Mugshots on at parties, which has consistently brought a smile to my face.

Scott Bailey & Evan Mosher model to Mugshots tee-shirt

Looking back now, Mugshots was our send-off to our innocent/devious teenage years. We knew the end of our immunity was forthcoming, I'm just glad we managed get some of it on film before it was uncerimoniously snatched away on our separate 19th birthdays.


Thanks to absolutely everyone involved in Mugshots. It was one of the most triumphant projects ever undertaken in my life. Thank you to everyone, everyone involved and everyone who watched it.

Treevenge Cock-Tease!

Above is the teaser-poster for the upcoming short film written & directed by Jason Eisener, produced by Rob Cotterill (Yer Dead Inc.) that I will be featured in.

COMING SOON.

Stupid Foreigner Volume 2: NYC

Coming in June!

Filming May 5th. I have 14 hours at JFK Airport so I'm gonna be a tourist for the day. Shit's on.