Every Day Is Halloween 3: living skeleton actor fuck

role puts flesh, blood, guts on this frame
not to mention tumors,  scars, bad thoughts, eureka insights,
mercy, sadism, self-sacrifice, greed, ambition, romance;

build each persona up from micro-replicators
into complex thoughts, interlocking processes of pattern recognition,
various esoteric mental exercises culled from misreadings of Stanislavski and Grotowski,
irrational desires, fears, obsessions, joys;

book the gig
fill me up
live in the moment
'til it got heavy
with burdens of reputation
now he's just repeating the same old shtick
fuzzy stretch where I didn't shoot after 4:30pm for about five years
'cause I was stinking shitfaced
but it made me more of a cult fave in the years to come
I'm slurring lines on camera,
always seated, slightly listing to one side,
visible use of body double when standing and shot from behind
obvious ADR by anonymous voice over artist
since lips and tongue were only capable of blotto-talk
the voice is one thing and then another
sad at the time
YouTube clipjob comedy gold in this New Era.

online parodies resurrected me
for stunt casting, for the new wave of self-aware exploitation flicks.
a lot of work,
a lot of love from all over the world
festival and con bookings
I go even if it's on my dime
depends on the size of the marketing budget
but I'll go just for the feeling
nothing like this was ever supposed to be in my future
what a racket,  you know?

my latest job
is a dipshit detective
gets his head cut off by a psycho lumberjack
they didn't even do a proper cast of my head
the wig
from behind
kinda looks like my hair
but they do it old school when they put my head through a hole in the set floor
and have me silently work my mouth like a freshly decapitated fish head,
it's actually an homage to a previous death scene I played
in the 1980s
one of the Italian Mad Max knockoffs
I did three or four of those back in the day
current crop of directors go crazy cramming in callbacks,
scenes from the past,
b-movies constitute their own reality, history, liturgy

I have this weird dream:
I strip it all down to the bone.
not even rehearsal clothes, like in my repertory theatre days,
not even the bare skin, like in my experimental protest theatre period.
no skin, blood, guts, eyes, brains, lips, tongue,
just the skeleton
all pinned and jointed together,
suspended from an ornate carved rack,
polished and lacquered to a piercing sheen.
you crank up the air conditioning,
put the script in front of the vent,
words lift off the page,
whisper'n'rage through my ribcage.

Something that stripped down-well, they could slather on some CG if that's too pure of a hit.
Make me into a transforming talking car or some shit.
-July 2015-October 2016
Copyright 2016 by William D. Tucker. All rights reserved. Used with permission. 

34 Hour Tetris Escape Plan

Within the 34th consecutive hour of a Tetris session lies the bardo gate.
Death,
Transcendence of earthly illusions,
And Rebirth lies across the border.
Death and Rebirth,
But not total forgetfulness.
You will carry with you knowledge of Reconfiguration,
Transformation,
Mutation,
Iteration in the Moment.
Cross the threshold, the real work begins.

SKULL HOPPER

SKULL HOPPER
by
William D. Tucker

1.
White light against a plaster wall
Looking with my back turned.
Window is the vacancy of intersection.
A perspective on one aspect of the jagged upper texture
There is pointing and then there are jabs from the buildings.
You sit there, white light on your back.
The room is so suffused with cold, clear light.
Nothing is hidden yet nothing is revealed in the cold, clear light.
We speak of matters with a speech that the Observer does not render exactly
In the rendering, we become a pantomime.
Nowhere above and beyond this room,
So filled with light,
Can we ever speak truly of the vacant point of intersection.
Who has ever spoken before the cold, clear light suffused this room,
How was it even possible?
It isn't blinding,  it isn't sudden,  in fact it lacks all flourish or sensationalism.
The cold, clear light simply is,  and it is in a most unavoidable way.
Nothing hidden, nothing revealed.
Looking with my back turned.

2.
Drink. Purchase. Sitting.  Another drink/purchase.
Routine of the room of the cold, clear light.
Papers. Organize. Read. Papers. Sort. Prioritize.
This is the work of the room of the cold, clear light.
Pillows. Laughing. Porch. Train car. Outdoors. Indoors.
This is the room of the cold, clear light.
Green, beige, red, blue, yellow,  purple:
These stand out in strange new ways beneath the cold, clear light.

3.
He wished to communicate sunlight on the side of a building.
Many received his communication.
Others received many other things besides.
Drink. Routine. Cold. Clear. Light.
"More real than real" as one person put it.
Critical response: good, suffused with the cold, clear light.
He did not try to explain,  except for elaborate designs and plans,
Which were not accepted as any sort of explanation.
Many view. Experience an array of emotions.
There is a look of awareness at the science and rigor of construction.
Science/rigor/effort is reduced to "emotional response. "
Cold, clear light becomes invisible.
"I get a sense of loneliness, " one person says.
"This makes me feel the way I felt in college,  at 4:25am at a Waffle House after a night of drinking," says another.
Rigor, effort,  construction, science subsumed by "emotion."
Opinion. Subjective. I like. I think.  I feel.
Drink. Routine. Cold. Clear. Light.
Looking with my back turned,
I fall back into myself,
"I wished to communicate ..."
Taking over from "He wished to communicate ..."
I see them turning away having observed, felt, thought,  and processed very briefly the offering before them.

4.
Plans. Construction. Intersecting lines of purpose.
The science and the rigor necessary to achieve that specific, sleepless effect.
"I want to communicate sunlight on the side of a building."
Result: opinions.
I think. I feel. Maybe.Kinda.Wouldn't it be funny if.  I like. I did not like.
I am approached for moments, perhaps,  having extensively researched, practiced, and calculated myself.
Moments.
The rigor disappears. Lines of intersecting purpose are softly,  gently smudged into pleasant, distinct blurs of opinion.
Invisible. Cold. Clear. Light.

5.
Opinion passed.
Return of routine.
Beyond initial foray into understanding.
Drink. Office.  Papers.  Organize. Dance. Sunbathe.
Conceive ideal spectator,
Cloned from my own mind,
Hand them operations manual,
Put them through course of certification,
Indoctrination,
Overseer behind their eyes,
Now let them work:
Analysis:
Cold, clear light becomes visible, perceptible
Intersecting lines of purpose rise to the surface.
"I can see the wires. "
Repetition of analysis as per doctrine.
Rigor and science unearthed
Notebooks are thumbed through
Paradigm shift on schedule, as per doctrine:
Cold, clear light hides nothing, reveals nothing.
Analysis,  as per doctrine:
"In this place,  there are fewer, wealthier people.No one has any memory of the past, nor any need for such memories.Everyone is prosperous, satisfied,  happy, and no one quite wants to remember how it got that way."
Paradigm shift on schedule, as per doctrine:
"He is expressing a deeply ambivalent attitude towards his subject matter. The elements of the voyeuristic collide with an overwhelming sense of the privacy of each person's universe. Ultimately,  the voyeuristic wins out, because,  alas, the end result is the work itself.  He could not resist looking into the realms of privacy and then share what he saw with others."
Paradigm shift on schedule, as per doctrine:
"It is the portrayal of man's environment as supremely indifferent that wins out over everything else. His settings are neither threatening nor comforting, destructive nor supportive, good nor evil. His humans, likewise,  have learned to dwell in this environment with all harmony by becoming creatures of supreme indifference themselves. "
Analysis.  Paradigm shift on schedule as per doctrine.  Many cycles.
Results ad infinitum.
Return of opinion.
Opinion refined,
Elaborated as per doctrine on schedule.
Still opinion.
Overseer disengaged, cloned brain discarded.
Cold, clear light hides nothing and reveals nothing.
-April 2003-May 2016

Florets and Rostrum-shod Stylets Chopped'n'Mushed in the Maw of the Nuclear Devil Ape

I eat broccoli at all times
Even when it crawls with wee blue bugs
Aphids=Protein

Hustleforms

Don Quixote becomes the book
Hamlet the stage
Captain Ahab the harpoon
Bruce Wayne the cape and cowl ersatz bat
Travis Bickle the gun
The Thing from Another World every-goddamn-one.
You can't be happy with who you are
If you wish to become a legend
Good, evil, categorically transcendent
In your time
Or the time beyond.

Back when I had friends

We would get together to play Wild Bunch,
And always fight over who gets to be Ernest Borgnine.
I usually ended up being Warren Oates.
I had the wardrobe for it.
And the teeth.

Wait Comix

Excellent comix
only functional wait mechanic
to bust you out of the eternal, punitive present.

Making the Villain Fist

The Invisible Man,
Dr. Doom and countless aspiring conquerors drawn by Ditko and Kirby,
Darth Vader,
crushing the cosmos in a fearsome gloved or gauntleted hand,
compacting Reality down into an ultra-dense chess piece,
it's a thing these people do, you know?

Every Day Is Halloween 2

Every Day Is Halloween 2
by William D. Tucker 

Sequel
slash the budget
dump it in some film school grad's lap
command and control functions stay with the producer

Maximize marketing budget
optimize gore
optimize tits
optimize confusing, pseudo-arty shaky-cam bullshit
optimize shouting
optimize piss' n'shit grim'n'gritty color palette
optimize bogus "true story" websites

Economize talent
shoot in an anti-union right-to-work state
hire actors with low Q-ratings
for low pay
work them like pack animals

Strangely,
there's always money for 3-D post-conversion

If it's a hit,
crank out another one,
same formula

If it bombs,
write it down,
dodge some taxes

It isn't art,
nor is it truly entertainment,
but it's a healthy living
for the New Era Corporate Citizen.

Broccoli Gears

Broccoli gears
imagine giant gears
like you see in the obligatory clock tower stage
in one of those Castlevania games
teeth rotating into each other's gaps
mecha-comrades playing kissy-face
or something more X-rated.
I leave it to your imagination.
Now picture those giant gears
replaced by big, bulbous broccoli heads
florets grinding scandalously
into one another's intimate gaps . . .
. . . broccoli gears . . .

Tom Joad was here . . .

I'm guessing he's on his way, now, to that Not-So-Promised Land.

The Power or the Abyss

Self-Portrait Goes off the Rails '08

Starring Steven Kell

Some old madness
Intruding into present time frame

Am I Enemy,
Or Detective?

Am I merely another Secret Mastermind squatting in some shadowed corner,
Or just another washed-up Dungeon Master,
Dice all rolled out,
Scattered to dust, further obliterated by B-movie wind machine action?

All we can do is dress sharp
In anticipation of some cinematic showdown or other

Hope we can outdraw the lousy sinister villain
Trailing us through this dumpy dystopia

Words/Photography by William D. Tucker
-May 2015

Look at that face! Totally playing for the camera! What a ham!

The Scribble Phoenix

Dedicated to Osamu Tezuka. With apologies.