In case you missed my Journal posting under “Spectrum”, here’s a link to a National Geographic rotating 3-D depiction the first accurately colored dinosaur:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/01/100127-dinosaurs-color-feathers-science/o/

Amazing! I never thought I’d live to see this!

Will we soon know the actual coloring of a Tyrannosaurus rex?

The current issue of the magazine Blues Revue has a cover article on the 25 most import blues releases of the last decade. Big blues fan that I am, I was horrified to discover that I only had 5 CDs on that list. The other 20 quickly became an internet shopping list.

They’ve begun to trickle into my mailbox. There has been one disc, so far, that really blew me away: Mavis Staples’ We’ll Never Turn Back.

If you’re anywhere near my age you might recall the Staples Singers’ hits “I’ll Take You There”, “Respect Yourself” and “Let’s Do It Again”, all 70s chart hits. The sultry lead vocals on those hits were by Mavis Staples. The intense eroticism of her performance came as a surprise to a lot of people as the Staples Singers first appeared in churches, beginning as a gospel/folk group. That’s the Staples Singers backing up The Band on “The Weight” in Martin Scorsese’s film The Last Waltz.

This new CD is a Mavis Staples solo effort. Blues Revue described it as the finest album of her career. It would be difficult for me to disagree.

The CD is produced by slide guitar (he can expertly play anything with strings, actually) and production legend Ry Cooder (Ry is the only person with whom I’ve had a total fanboy meltdown. I could write several dozen Journal entries on the amazing Ry Cooder. You’ve heard his fine work all over the place for the last 45 years; if by some chance you’re unfamiliar with Mr. Cooder, check out his Wikipedia entry).

If you liked Ry’s work with Little Village (this incredible group consisted of Ry, John Hiatt, Nick Lowe and Jim Keltner, music legends all), you’ll love We’ll Never Turn Back. Mavis’ CD has got that same spare, tasty production that’s on the Little Village CD.

Ry, with only a few instruments (Little Village’s Jim Keltner is on drums), manages to convey a very personal, rich, steamy mood throughout each track. The songs are a perfectly seamless combination of Mavis’ gospel roots with the thick sensuality of the most deeply felt blues. The music and her performances are profoundly moving and heartbreakingly personal. The painful yet triumphant struggle for civil rights weaves through her well chosen track list; there are a few sad nods to the Katrina disaster as well. We’ll Never Turn Back is true soul music.

This CD came out in 2007. I don’t know how I missed it. I try to obtain every recording Mr. Cooder has ever touched. I am sure glad it made the Blues Revue Top 25 list!

I sent off 32 pieces of art to Spectrum the other day. Spectrum is an annual compendium of the best sci-fi/fantasy art created each year.

Its standards are high; it’s very tough to get in each year. I usually submit 24 pieces and get just three to five in each year.

I’ve happily won a number of Spectrum awards which is one of the coolest award designs ever, a sort of Lovecraftian pyramid.

I was a judge one year and was highly impressed by how fair and non-political the judging is. Cathy and Arnie Fenner do a great job of keeping the judging fast, fun, fair and efficient. And they host great meals in the evenings!

Our rains here in southern California seem to be over for awhile. My front porch faces the San Gabriel Mountains (I live near the foothills). They’re beautifully dusted with snow right now. The air is crisp and clear; cold, but not wet anymore. I’ll be painting on my front porch every day until the end of the month (big painting deadline). If you drive by and see me, wave!

Last night my wife and I saw a wonderful play, Brian Friel’s Molly Sweeney. The award-winning Irish playwright’s drama about what it means to see has been re-envisioned in this Los Angeles production. It is worth attending if only to experience the astonishing, intelligent and incandescent performance by Melina Bielefelt as Molly. I was riveted throughout the performance by Friel’s compelling tale about a blind Irish lass given a chance at regaining her sight.

I wish you all could have the opportunity to see this incredible show. It’s at the tiny Son of Semele Theatre, 3301 Beverly Blvd. in Los Angeles (not too far from Alvarado).

This is the final weekend with Saturday night performances nearly sold out. Their Sunday matinee is selling well too. They just added one more performance on Sunday Evening at 7:00 pm.

Tickets are still available to all performances, so reserve your seats fast!

http://www.facebook.com/l/41f2e;www.brownpapertickets/event/86716

Here are some brief critical comments on this intimate production:
LA Weekly – “GO!”

“…a tender, profound staging of Brian Friel’s Molly Sweeney…”
“…intercut personal arias that are so rich in local color and composition…(Melina) Bielefelt’s Molly has an intoxicating mix of intelligence and tenderness.”
- Steven Leigh Morris, LA Weekly

“Randee Trabitz directs her excellent ensemble on a stage divided by two translucent scrims.”
- Amy Nicholson, LA Weekly

“Molly Sweeney is such a beautifully constructed play, but very tricky; director Randee Trabitz and stand out performers made it all look effortless.”
- Jennie Webb

According to this morning’s Los Angeles Times, the new Fox TV show I participated in, Our Little Genius, will not premiere this Wednesday as previously scheduled.

Mark Burnett, the show’s producer, has decided to reshoot the episodes.

I may be called back to participate in the reshoots; I don’t know yet.

Meanwhile, I just completed the cover art to two new collections of my fantasy work coming out this Spring from Flesk Publications. Randy Dahlk has already taken my cover art for the first book and has designed a gorgeous cover. I’ve been seeing my Flesk dinosaur books, Dinosaur Discoveries and New Dinosaurs A to Z in lots of bookshops now.

It is heartening to see the kids book (A to Z) so enthusiastically embraced by budding dinosaur fans.

I’m still getting lots of orders for both books (as well as my murals book) from this site and I’m still drawing a sketch in each ordered book.

Thank you!

Happy New Year!

This is just a quick heads-up for Stout collectors (I know you’re out there…because I can smell your brains!*).

Check out the latest issue of the UK magazine Record Collector (#371, January 2010). On pp. 10-11 there’s an article on my friend, rock photographer Ross Halfin. The spread is not on his brilliant photography, though. It’s on his music collection which includes the largest collection of the original art to my bootleg record album covers in the world. Eight different covers appear fully or partially in the accompanying photos.

Ross also has a few very nice things to say about me and my work.

Record Collector is one of my favorite magazines (along with Q and Mojo); I’m proud to have some of my work included in Ross’ profile.

* The Return of the Living Dead dialogue reference.

This has been a strange Christmas in the Stout household for a number of reasons, the biggest one being that our little dog Butch died last night on Christmas after a long struggle with Cushing’s disease. He was about 12 or 13 years old.

We rescued Butch from the pound. Actually, I should say that Butch was rescued by my wife and sons from the pound.

At the pound he was all charm and cuteness and licking. He was half American Eskimo, half Cocker spaniel. Early in his life he looked all American Eskimo; later on the Cocker in him began to surface and his coat turned from its initial soft, fluffy snow white to more of a caramel/butterscotch color. When we first got him, he looked a lot like a fox with his pointy nose and erect fox-like ears. As he got older his nose rounded and his ears got more prone to floppiness.

They brought him home and presented him to me. My wife was a little embarrassed to have brought home what she called a “little froo-froo dog.”

I took a look at this diminutive devil and said, “No. This guy’s not a froo-froo dog. Look at him. His name should be ‘Butch’.”

I was right. Butch was a tough little street dog. He had obviously had a difficult first few months. Despite his friendliness at the pound (a clever ploy on his part to bust out of there), at home he was reserved and distrustful.

If Leave it to Beaver’s Eddie Haskell had died and been reincarnated as a dog, he would have come back as Butch. In his youth Butch seemed to have a perpetual wise-ass grin on his face. He always seemed to be laughing at us and our innocence, snickering at our rarely successful attempts to control his behavior. I think he truly enjoyed outwitting us (especially me) and found it absolutely hilarious when he did. He followed such behavior with a sort of “Take that, schmuck!” look on his puss. The expression on his aged mug for the past year, however, was more like “What the hell do you want?”

Butch approached the world on his own terms. He was extremely smart but never so smart that he took the easy path. He was the most difficult dog I’ve ever owned. He rarely hesitated to bite people if he thought it was appropriate or if he found you annoying. He HATED shoes for some reason and often viciously attacked them — even if they were still on someone’s feet.

Butch was more like a cat than a dog. Sure, he liked being petted. But he didn’t NEED affection. Like a cat, he would accept affection and then depart after he had been satisfied with the amount he had received. Unlike most dogs, he wasn’t eager to please anyone except himself. To contradict and badly paraphrase Ray Bradbury, for this dog, at least, everyday was NOT Christmas.

Woe to anyone who tried to come between Butch and his food (this must have been because of his hard life on the streets). Any tampering with his access to food was met with sheer rage.

He never knew he was a little dog. He would take on all comers, no matter what their size, dog or human.

For some strange reason, though, he ignored the squirrels in our yard.

Butch was an escape artist par excellence. He loved to escape and then relish my total exasperation in attempting to recapture him. He’d pause until I was almost in reach and then bolt out of range once again. He often evoked murder in my heart.

We tried many (often expensive ) systems to keep Butch from escaping our yard. The one that finally worked was a cable system. We suspended a cable the length of our yard from our roof to the top of our old swing set. A line with a roller on one end attached to the cable came down and attached to his little harness. That allowed him freedom of movement around our backyard; the line connected to him kept Butch from getting close enough to our fence to leap over it.

His high pitched yapping could peel the paint off a wall. One neighbor finally threatened to sue us and take our house if we didn’t do something about our dog’s incessant barking. Frankly, I was on their side and contemplated suing myself. I was having trouble getting any work done because of his constantly irritating barking.

Reluctantly, my wife took him to the vet to have his vocal chords clipped. He healed quickly, his voluminous bark now a soft rasp.

It didn’t slow him down for a second. At the sight or sound of anyone approaching Butch would launch himself toward our fence with an energy so powerful that he would career several feet into the air, his flight (and rage-filled attack) ultimately restrained by the tether that was shaking our entire heavily anchored swing set.

In his youth Butch sported the perky flag-like tail of an Eskimo. As he got older his tail was held aloft less and less.

As I said, except when it would benefit him most, Butch was extremely smart. He easily learned tricks. His strangest one was his response to the command, “Walk like a seal!”

He would flatten himself to the floor and extend his hind legs straight backwards, like the tail of a seal. Then he would crawl forward on his elbows, simulating the fore-flipper walk of a harbor seal.

Cushing’s Disease changed him from a taut, buff little fellow into a slightly larger dog with a tiny head and a huge round belly. He could no longer jump fences with that belly, so we untethered him and gave him the run of the yard. He began to get slower and mopier.

When his companion Katy died, he was inconsolable. Katy was our Bassett/Doberman pound dog. She looked like a Bassett that was colored like a Dobie. Katy was dumb as a rock but with a heart as big as any I’ve ever seen in a dog, a real sweetheart who lived solely for food, sleep, attentive scratching and the occasional walk.

Butch loved to tease and torment her, stealing her favorite toy and then playing with it right in front of her. If Katy made any attempt to repossess her toy, Butch would grab it and dash out of range.

As soon as Katy died Butch sank into a deep depression. He expressed this first by searching everywhere for her, and then by peeing a huge puddle of strange urine (strange because it was voluminous and didn’t smell) on the kitchen floor every night. As soon as we got our little long-haired Dachshund (Spunky), Butch stopped his nocturnal floor peeing.

In his later years Butch became a crusty old curmudgeon. He put up with Spunky’s youthful playfulness — but just barely.

My wife investigated Cushing’s disease (which humans also get, too, although it’s not contagious) and found that there was medicine for it in the UK. She bought these expensive pills and they began to work almost immediately.

Unfortunately, they also increased Butch’s aggressiveness and he began to become dangerous to be around. He bit me on a number of occasions.

We stopped his meds and then would occasionally add them when we thought he needed them, trying to strike a kind of balance between health and aggressiveness.

We knew something was seriously wrong with Butch yesterday when he threw up his breakfast. We offered him food throughout the day but he refused it — a first in the entire time we’ve known him. He moped around like Katy did before she died. He was oblivious to us and our attentions. He seemed to be pondering another world, one that none of us could see. He’d take a few steps and then stare off into infinity.

Typically, my family and I don’t spend Christmas day at home. We spend Christmas Eve at my brother’s house, then go to my mom’s house to spend the night. We have an early Christmas dinner there, watch a movie and then head home. This year, though, my mom visited my brother Dave up near Stockton, CA this Christmas.

It was extremely lucky for both us and Butch that we spent Christmas day here at home, having both of my sons at home and all of us lavishing Butch with attention on what would become his last day on earth.

We had just watched the emotionally powerful (both my wife and I were crying) “Ode to Joy” sequence in The Immortal Beloved. I put on an episode of the old Boris Karloff-hosted show Thriller. We were five minutes into it when my wife entered the room.

“I have an announcement to make,” she said. “Butch has just died.”

He was lying down in our service porch, in between our house and the backyard. His little body was still warm. My wife had placed his head on a pillow. My wife, sons and I took turns stroking and petting him, saying our goodbyes.

She called the Humane Society (from whom we got Butch) and they sent over an extremely kind, gentle and thoughtful Animal Control officer who retrieved his body.

As I said, this was a different kind of Christmas for us.

Dan and I attended the cast and crew premiere of Lifeforce, a film that Dan had written (with Don Jakoby) that Tobe Hooper had directed. I much preferred the film’s less pretentious and more honestly descriptive working title, Space Vampires (its title in the UK). In many ways, Lifeforce was a space program/sci-fi version of The Return of the Living Dead. I highly recommend Lifeforce, if only for the abundant nudity of the exquisite Mathilda May.

I was working with Tobe on the remake of Invaders From Mars (that Dan had written with Don Jakoby) at the time. Early on, Dan would visit me in the Invaders art department and suggest things to include in the film. I could tell that Dan was creatively frustrated and eager to direct again.

If you haven’t seen Dead & Buried, a 1981 film Dan wrote with Ron Shusett, definitely track that baby down. It’s got one of the best openings in horror cinema. The rest of the film plays out like a classic Twilight Zone.

Dan told me he wrote Blue Thunder in response to the police helicopters that would hover over his abode at night. They drove him nuts. He used to stand on his rooftop and angrily flip off the cops above him as they shined their Night Sun down on him.

Total Recall was a Philip K. Dick adaptation (from We Can Remember it For You Wholesale) by Dan and Ron Shusett. Originally, the lead character was a meek little Walter Mitty kind of guy (which makes much more sense, dramatically, than the film’s final incarnation if you think about it). When Arnold signed on for the lead (which turned Total Recall into a hot “go” project) nearly everything had to change, script-wise, obviously.

Let me end with a bit about my experience with Dan in recording the commentary for The Return of the Living Dead DVD:

Dan and I met at the recording facility. He was anxious. Dan was carrying what looked like a large briefcase. I got distracted by one of the producers. When I turned back to Dan, he had vanished.

Getting close to our taping time, I decided to use the restroom. I found Dan inside. His case was on the sink, opened. It was a thoroughly stocked professional makeup kit.

“I just can’t trust anyone to make me look good, so I always do my own makeup for camera.”

I watched as he skillfully applied various substances to his neck and face.

“You know,” he confided, “I’ve never done this before, this commentary thing.”

“Don’t worry, Dan,” I replied. “I have. I’ve done this live at conventions. They’d begin our film and hand me a microphone. I did live commentary throughout the entire movie. It’s not so hard and the fans love hearing all of that behind-the-scenes stuff.”

“But I’m worried I’ll just clam up, that I won’t be able to think of anything to say.”

“You’ll think of things.”

Dan seemed truly worried.

“You’ll cover for me if that happens, won’t you? I’ll be depending on you. Really.”

“Sure; not a problem, Dan.”

We entered the sound stage. Each of us were miked and our volume levels were set. They projected our film on to a huge screen. All we had to do was begin talking about whatever came into our mind about the making of the film, triggered by the images we were seeing.

Dan had no need to worry. From the very first frame of the movie, Dan was off and running; I could barely get a word in edgewise. He was stepping all over my favorite TROTLD stories but I figured Hey! — this is Dan’s movie, it’s his moment to shine. So, I pretty much just filled in the few gaps where Dan took a break to breathe or when he actually paused for some other reason.

That same day we shot the DVD’s Designing the Dead documentary (on my production designing of the movie), so I ended up getting my own proper face and voice time anyway. We both had a lot of fun that day.

And that DVD of our little film became MGM’s biggest selling DVD of the year!

Bless you, Dan. I’ll always think of you with amazement, awe and a smile. I am very, very lucky to have known you and to have counted you as one of my friends. Sleep well, my brother, at last.

Hi, Local Fans! Last minute holiday gifts, anyone?

Today I’ve got a signing of my new dinosaur books over at Dark Delicacies in Burbank from 2:00 to 4:00 PM. Yes, I will be doing sketches in books purchased.

(If you haven’t caught my recent drift, I actually have been drawing sketches in all of the Deluxe Edition Dinosaur Discoveries purchased from me on this site as a nice little holiday surprise for my fans.)

See you there!

Dark Delicacies
4213 W. Burbank Blvd. Burbank, CA
818-556-6660 / 888-darkdel
www.darkdel.com

Last night I was happy to catch my friend Ray Bradbury at the Fremont Center Theatre in South Pasadena. I was pleased to present him with his Christmas gift: a signed copy of the Deluxe Edition of Dinosaur Discoveries with a sketch of a Tyrannosaurus rex….and a big kiss on his cheek. Bless you, Ray; you’re one of America’s Living Treasures.

O’Bannon Tale #1: Dan was fastidious in regards to climate control. He constantly was messing with (and breaking) the thermostats in the Burbank warehouse where we were shooting the interiors for The Return of the Living Dead.

His climate concerns were not limited to the set. They carried over into his home life, too.

One day he got into a conversation with the fellow who was fixing his air conditioning. He quickly discovered that the repair guy was my Uncle Buddy (small world, ain’t it?). My uncle always has done excellent work; he knows his stuff when it comes to heating and cooling systems (he’s retired now). So, whenever anything went on the fritz in the O’Bannon household, which was often due to Dan’s own attempts to “fix” things, he called the air conditioning company, always demanding that “Billy’s uncle” (Dan couldn’t remember my uncle’s name) be sent out (my Uncle Buddy still calls me “Billy”; he’s known me since I was a baby). My uncle loved working at Dan’s home and he loved Dan and his eccentricities.

O’Bannon Tale #2: I mentioned in yesterday’s Journal entry that Dan’s tales often emanated from his own intense neuroses. O’Bannon was probably the most paranoid guy I ever met. He tapped that paranoia as a writer, creating classic scripts for Alien and Blue Thunder.

While making The Return of the Living Dead, I was in the process of buying a house with the Conan the Destroyer money I had squirreled away while living on my per diem down in Mexico City during the making of the film. Dan had just been through the process of buying a house.

Now, Dan was a researcher. He loved to research everything. Buying a home was no exception. On our hair-raising drives (when Dan was driving we ALWAYS missed our freeway exits) together to location scouts, Dan gave me the benefit of all of the house research he had just done.

Dan had determined that the absolute best house to own was a Spanish adobe-style home. He told me, though, that Spanish adobes had one drawback.

“The walls aren’t machine gun proof.”

So, at enormous expense, after purchasing his very expensive Santa Monica Spanish adobe abode, he had the house’s walls taken out and had steel plates inserted inside of them before replacing them. Now they were machine gun proof! Problem solved!

O’Bannon Tale #3: Like I do, Dan O’Bannon loved comics. Before he died, I had enthusiastically agreed to drawing a whole series of comics with him. We were both very excited at the thought of collaborating again. I had read so much of Dan’s work and knew him so well that I was convinced we were going to produce some great things together and make history in the world of comic art.

You may or may not know this, but Dan O’Bannon wrote what was to become one of the most influential comic book stories ever published. No, it didn’t do a lot to influence other comics. But it changed motion pictures forever.

The story is called “The Long Tomorrow.” It was illustrated by Dan’s friend Jean Giraud — better known to comics fans as “Moebius.” I believe it originally appeared in the French comics magazine Metal Hurlant and was reprinted here in the States in Heavy Metal.

Hunt it down. The entire look, ambiance and feel of the story was used by Ridley Scott as the visual template for Bladerunner. Scott even duplicated some of the panels as shots in his magnificent film.

That was not the first time that Dan had changed film making forever.

In the mid-1970s Dan was hired by George Lucas to design the onscreen computer graphics in Star Wars. Not long after that, Dan was hired by Alejandro Jodorowsky to work on Jodorowsky’s filming of Frank Herbert’s Dune. The phenomenal cast that was slated for this epic sci-fi adventure included Orson Welles and Salvador Dali. Together, Jodorowsky and O’Bannon assembled an amazing art department that boasted Moebius, Ron Cobb, Chris Foss and H. R. Giger.

I have to halt this story for a moment to emphasize the historical importance of what Dan and George Lucas have done for the art of cinema, art direction-wise.

History lesson: The first production designers were originally called “art directors.” The two most important art directors, William Cameron Menzies and Anton Grot (I borrowed heavily from Grot for my production design of Masters of the Universe), came from an illustration background (they have been reported to have been children’s book illustrators but I have yet to find a single copy of any book they illustrated. Their work does look like early 20th century children’s book illustration, however). Menzies began in the silent era with Douglas Fairbanks; Thief of Bagdad; Grot designed the Errol Flynn swashbucklers.

Later in his career, William Cameron Menzies not only designed Gone With the Wind, he storyboarded the entire film in full color. On top of that, he directed a third of the film, including the famous “burning of Atlanta” sequence.

GWTW’s producer, David O. Selznick, had a problem. The film’s other director, Victor Fleming, did not want to share directing credit for the film.

Selznick came up with a solution.

He approached Menzies, explained the problem, and then presented Menzies with his solution. Although Menzies would not get a director’s credit, Menzies would receive the on-screen credit “Production Designed by William Cameron Menzies.” That was the first time the title “production designer” was ever used. It quickly caught on and soon there were both production designers and art directors on movies.

Here’s the basic difference now between the two (and this varies from picture to picture): The production designer is responsible for everything you see on the screen except for the performances of the actors. That’s sets, costumes, make-up, special effects, props, etc. The art director usually is in charge of the Art Department’s budgeting and scheduling, with hands-on involvement in regards to the entire Art Department.

Decades later, the backgrounds of Production designers and art directors had changed. No longer were they from an illustration background. Instead, nearly all of them came from the world of architecture. In the studio system, set designers slowly worked their way up the ranks to become art directors. If they were lucky (and careful politically), some eventually became production designers.

George Lucas changed all of that by hiring illustrator Ralph MacQuarrie to design Star Wars, along with a team of other talented artists (although Ralph didn’t receive the production designer credit; neither Moebius nor Syd Meade received the production design credit they deserved for Bladerunner).

Jodorowsky and O’Bannon shared the same vision, using comic book artists and illustrators to design Dune.

Unfortunately, the financing for Dune fell through and the project was dead. At that same moment in time, though, O’Bannon’s (and Ronald Shusett’s) script for Alien was greenlit. Ridley Scott brought Dan to London to work on the film. Dan mentioned the aborted Dune project and the great art department that had been assembled. Dan suggested that Ridley consider hiring the Dune Art Department to design Alien. Scott looked at their work and agreed.

The success of Star Wars and Alien briefly opened the doors for guys like me to enter the film business. I didn’t have to become an architect and slog away for decades in the hopes of becoming a production designer. In 1979 Ron Cobb (a production designer after five years in the business, beginning with Dan on Dark Star) hired me to work on Conan the Barbarian. That led to other films, and within three years (and with the mentoring and guidance of Ron Cobb and Pierluigi Basile) I became the production designer on an American Godzilla film (sadly unfilmed) and then The Return of the Living Dead.

The door pretty much slammed back shut not too long after that, although there have been a few exceptions (my friend Tim Bradstreet, known for his Punisher covers, just designed a film).

Dan O’Bannon had that vision, though. He knew that visual excellence in one medium could transfer and translate well to another medium. Bless him.

More to come…