If you have a second, would you be lambs and head to Amazon for me?  I need more reviews for the book.  For some reason, more reviews = more sales.  Right now I only have nine reviews.  That translates to a paltry $6,311 per day in my pocket.  How am I supposed to live on that? 

I must have more reviews.

— S

Keeping in mind that what you’re experiencing is merely one of an infinite number of realities (for those of you who haven’t read up on M Theory, I highly recommend it), I’d like to wish you (specifically, the “you” in this universe) a most plentiful, football-tastic, gravy-soaked time this Thursday.  As the first major holiday since Halloween (with apologies to our Veterans, but what did they ever do) it seems a fitting end to our Dodge The Kills adventures.  Alas, we’ve yet to post dramatic chipmunk or dancing comedian numbers, but I wouldn’t trade the experience for all the tea in Chad.  I’d like to thank all the many fine, talented people who worked behind the scenes: Cranky Adam, Director Dave, Composer Dave, Handsome Alex, Suicidal Bryce, Besieged Katie, Meticulous Matt – as well as the executives who left us alone, the post guys who tried to hide the fact that they hated us, the actors, the web guys/girls, our many, many, many sponsors, and you – the viewer.  I’d also like to thank God that I work in an industry that values hard work and artistic merit above all else.

Now that’s worth giving thanks for. 

— S

Halloween’s over, but DTK lives on — here, on YouTube, Vcast, and XBox Live.  With the writer’s strike looming here in “Los Angeles,” Daddy’s back to the grindstone writing another book so he can keep up with those Diners Club minimums (what do you want, Diners — blood?  My first born?  Your check’s in the mail.  Stop calling and threatening to have my wife’s legs broken).

It’s a little depressing, actually.  No more edit bay.  No more long walks past the throngs lined up to see The Price is Right.  No more all-night chats about astronomy, art, and Korean barbecue with Craig Ferguson out on the helipad.

The experience of making these eighteen little Internet McNuggets is over.  But their impact on the world at large is only beginning to be understood.  Will they expedite a peaceful resolution to our troubles in the Middle East, as they were designed to do?  Will they foster peace and understanding between people of all races and creeds?  Or will they merely mark a brief, magical chapter in the story of our great nation?  A time when people of all cloths — black and white, gay and straight, Christian and Lutheran — came together and declared that the Internet is a place for witty puns, sex jokes, and obscure movie references.

If I should be blessed with a long, reproductive life — I look forward to the day when I tell my children’s children of such a world.  They’ll know that their Grandpa looked at an Internet filled with subtle humor, and changed it forever — one fart joke at a time.

Two more episodes will be posted on our YouTube channel soon.  That brings the total to 16 — what a treat for our 29 subscribers!  (Granted, we’re not posting pro-bowl numbers over there just yet — but it’s Hell competing with a fainting Marie Osmond, soccer highlights, or never-before-seen footage of Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination.  How can you resist?  It’s so compelling!).  But more of you are finding us thanks to pieces like this one over at IGN.

No episode descriptions today, since they’re both covered in our 3rd and final commentary.  Instead, I give you a tribute to the man responsible for writing and performing all the music you’ve heard over the course of our series…

David Gregory Byrne

Composer Dave joined the DTK team only a few weeks before our scheduled Oct. 9th launch date.  By that time, we had most of the episodes cut.  I’d used all sorts of temp score from movie soundtracks — John Williams, Danny Elfman, James Horner, etc — but since we didn’t want to get sued for copyright infringement, we had to replace all that music with our own.  Dave slaved over a hot home studio day and night — writing, performing, and mixing cue after cue (sometimes delivering two full episodes a day). 

It’s one thing to be fast, but the thing is…Dave’s also good.  Really good.  He managed to write cues that mimic the sounds of some of the best composers out there.  And he did so without complaint, and despite a crippling addiction to prescription painkillers.

For this…he is today’s Profile in Courage.

Yesterday I challenged you, the Internet, to PROVE that people actually read these entries.  I predicted that I’d receive a total of ZERO emails.  I was wrong.

I received TWO.

The first came from Nick, who wrote “I just proved your theory wrong and I relish the fact that I did so…the book and the episodes are hysterical and I love that my local Borders sold out of the book.”

The second came from Pascal in Switzerland, who tried to cheer me up by lamenting the passiveness of blog-readers.  “You might be sitting in front of the monitor for sixteen hours…but writing an email is just soooooooo…excruciating.”  Tell me about it, Pascal.  Tell me about it.

And so…it is for brave Nick, Swiss Pascal, and Myself that I write about today’s episodes.

“What to Do if You Have Seven Days to Live”- Clearly our dumbest episode.  Fun?  Sure.  But DUMB.  I mean…c’mon.  David directed it, but I have to take the blame for the sheer…dumbness of it all.  In the book, the whole idea was to put yourself in Naomi Watts’ shoes ala The Ring.  OK, you’re cursed to die in seven days — what are you gonna do about it?  The joke was, instead of trying to undo her curse, our heroine would just resign herself to the fact that she was gonna die, and spend the week having fun.  Simple enough, right?  So what does she do?  She watches her favorite movie (Cliffhanger- that’s me doing my worst Lithgow/Stallone voices), she buys a beach house, she hires a male escort, she kills that male escort just to see what it feels like to kill…all well and good.  Except it never really came across the way we wanted it to.  When you write eighteen of these in a period of two weeks, some episodes don’t get that much-needed second draft.  There are some lovely shots in it though — and Taryn in a bikini, which is always a bonus.  And of course, a tribute to Back to the Future.  Because, hey — why not?

“What to do if Your Corn Has Children in It”- It’s easy to sit down and write “Steve flies over the cornfield in a biplane and crop dusts the kids with powdered Ritalin.”  It’s an entirely different thing to go out and make that happen on a shoestring budget.  For one, we shot in the middle of summer — and corn doesn’t grow in the summertime.  So we had to rent silk cornstalks (apparently you can do that) which, I must say, are incredibly expensive.  So expensive that we could only afford sixteen of them.  Next you have to find a place to set them up (a little league field in the San Fernando Valley).  Next you have to take your actor two hours South to San Diego, and send him and cameraman Adam up in a biplane (again, not cheap).  And last but not least, you have to paint a piece of PVC pipe orange (to match the plane’s wings) and hook it up to a smoke machine for the insert of the Ritalin spraying out (and film that insert only days before the website goes up).

…that she cut her finger and gravy poured out.  You know why I can say that without fear of insulting you?  Because I have a theory.  A theory that NOBODY reads blog posts.  Am I wrong?  If you’re actually reading this, and aren’t A) someone who worked on the show, or B) an employee of CBS, its parent, or affiliates, or C) somebody I already know, then send me an email at:

dodgethekills@hotmail.com

If I get any emails, I’ll post them here tomorrow.  Perhaps you’ll tell me what your favorite pre-episode commercial is (mine’s Charles Schwab!).  If I get ZERO (my money’s on zero), then my theory will be proven correct, and I’ll continue blogging for my own amusement.  Frankly - with the WGA strike coming up - it may be the only writing I get to do for a while.  On to today’s episodes…

“How to Properly Dispose of an Evil Object”- This was a Frankenstein episode — not in the sense that it’s scary (it isn’t), or has anything to do with Mel Brooks (it doesn’t) — but in the sense that it’s cobbled together from little shots grabbed here and there.  The shots of Steve pouring molten metal and painting baby Jesus were from our first one or two days of shooting back in May.  The shots of him sitting on the bench, handing over the crutches, and opening a children’s hospital were grabbed two or three weeks later (on the same days we did a lot of the “Corn” stuff).  And the close-ups of burning, smashing, and stirring were shot just a few days before the site went up at the beginning of October - after Adam realized, “oh poopy-winkles…we forgot to grab those shots.” Those were his exact words.

“The Seven Deadly Horror Movie Sins”- Another David-directed episode.  I really like this one - I just wish I’d written a better ending.  Like “Ghosts,” it’s one of those eps that simply lists things, so when you get to sin #7, you’re kind’ve like “oh, it’s over?”  Also, I worry that people watching on the Internet won’t see the killer’s reflection in the glass at the end (it’s there…trust me).  We thought about going back and shooting a reverse of the killer furiously masturbating as he watches the vehicular sex (we may still do that for the Criterion DVD of the series).  That’s my wife Erin’s hand, by the way.

About half the episodes are now available on YouTube, on our very own DodgeTheKills channel!  Others will follow as they’re released here on the mothership.

“Know Your Four Ejection Seats” - I don’t really know what to say about this episode.  A guy chops his own arm off.  A girl speaks fake Italian.  Another girl quotes Jerry Maguire.  David makes his one and only cameo as our “smiling jock with a delicious grape soda.”

“How to Tell if You’ve Been Dead Since the Beginning of the Movie” - It has the triple distinction of being A) the episode with the longest title, B) the longest episode, and C) the very first episode we shot.  This was the pilot we filmed back in February of 2007 to entice CBS into giving us all that sweet, sweet cash.  It’s also the only episode that parodies one specific movie from start to finish (The Sixth Sense, in case you’re wondering).  It stars our resident “guy having a bad day,” Steve, with a cameo from our resident “terminally ill girl under bed,” Britt.  Steve’s wife is played by Marion from Karla (check ‘em out).  Trivia nuggets: The boy in the red hat is my brother, Sam.  The naked guy in the bathroom is our line producer, Alex. 

Happy hump day.  Today we’ve got our two-part investigative series…

“Am I in a Horror Movie?” (Part 1)- Britt’s back, and this time she’s traded the salvage yard for a creepy old house - which, in fact, was shot at our EP’s grandmother’s creepy old house (grandma, however, is lovely and not at all creepy).  As he will in several more episodes, line producer Alex plays the ”masked guy with weapon” to perfection.  And once again, I can’t help but place the camera perverted-ly low when an actress is wearing a miniskirt.  By the way, those scary pictures on the wall are actual unaltered 19th century portraits from the Library of Congress.

“Am I in a Horror Movie?” (Part 2) - This one was directed by David, and shot in fragments here and there over a period of months.  For instance, the bit with me at the end (“The Jew”) was our second night of shooting - back in May, I think - while the “old New England codger” was the very last pickup we shot - at the beginning of October (after we hadn’t shot anything since June).  Our attitude toward this one was, we’ll grab it when we can.” It was the episode nobody wanted to think about.  It’s like we were Cuba Gooding, Jr., and this episode was every movie we’d made since Jerry Maguire, you know?  In case you’re wondering, the “virginal girl with the gigantic melons” is named Taryn Southern, and yes - you’ll see her again.  In a bikini.

We’re kicking off Week 2 with a pair of girls in trouble.  One is being chased around a salvage yard by a well-dressed zombie — the other is being stalked by a ghost in a “beer” t-shirt.  Both spend at least part of their episodes scantily dressed.  Both are pregnant with Zac Effron’s baby and haven’t decided how to tell their boyfriends (although this is never addressed in either episode).  Einstein shows up.  Comedy ensues?

A side note — some of the videos will start popping up on YouTube this week.  So, you know…watch them.

“Know Your Ghosts” - Shot in one night at the same place we filmed “Killer Doll.” The ghost is played by Michael Busch, who you may recognize as “Sprint” from those marvelous Alltel commercials.  The frequently-annoyed homeowner is my friend Liz, who - funny enough - is frequently annoyed in real life.  Many of you will scratch your heads wondering how we pulled off the “ghost” effects.  Or perhaps you have lice.  Either way, we were all set to fly to Israel and film Michael in front of a green screen, then paint him in frame by frame using iTunes.  Luckily, Alex (our line producer) figured out a cheaper way to pull it off at the last minute.

“C.R.A.V.E.N.” - Again, an episode I was insistent on filming in Israel, until my friend Eric (a location scout/manager) found a salvage yard in Sun Valley, CA.  We shot this on what felt like the hottest day in California history — the heat nearly killed our wool suit and makeup-covered zombie, Bryce (also one of our producers).  The damsel is played by Britt Erickson, who was one week from her wedding day when we shot this, yet still game to run around a sizzling salvage yard with a low-cut dress in front of a bunch of strange guys. 

Early evening here in Sandwich, and I’m typing this on a borrowed laptop while everybody else is out on the beach marveling at a mind-blowing Cape Cod sunset (losers - don’t they know it’s cooler to be inside blogging?).  It’s winter coat weather, and the combined smells of chimney smoke and Dunkin’ Donuts coffee hang in the salty air as we prepare to watch the first game of the Red Sox/Indians series.  I don’t think there’s a better part of the world to spend October. 

We’ll be back with six new episodes and a fresh commentary starting next Tuesday (they’ll also start popping up on YouTube).  In the meantime, keep watching and commenting - I love your feedback, whether it’s good, bad, or REALLY bad.  After all, you haven’t made it on the Internet until somebody with a handle like “eyeh8u69” rips you a new one.

 Go big this weekend.  I’m off to steam some clams…if you catch my drift.

— SGS