Among the great response we’ve received from the re-issue of Inheritance, some of our collaborators and fans asked when Glazed may get a similar treatment. With the speed and processing power available to us today that we didn’t have then, we figured, why not. So we’ve completely remastered Glazed from it’s original source material realizing many of the color and visual effects we weren’t able to do first time around.
In addition to it’s new look, we’ve also updated the official website www.glazed.notafraid.com and created a Facebook Fan Page to help spread the word and hopefully enlist some new fans. So please become a fan and share it with your friends.
The other night I was at MATCH in North Hollywood, having drinks with client, friend, and Xanderhouse Productions Producer Cheri Waterhouse, discussing a project. While we were there I ran into an old collaborator, Shawn Michael Patrick, the star of Not Afraid!’s Viet Nam war drama, GLAZED.
I hadn’t seen Shawn in a few years and we had the quick opportunity to catch up. He had just finished his second to last sell-out performance of LADY, written and directed by Dirty Sexy Money creator Craig Wright. Shawn and the play have received good reviews from StageScene LA:
“Shawn Michael Patrick as Dyson and Matt Kirkwood as Kenny both give absolutely sensational performances. Patrick is dynamite with a burning fuse, and charisma which masks the damage that his repeated infidelity is causing his family.”
As well as Daily Variety. Not to mention the sell out crowds speak for themselves.
Shawn was a joy to work with on GLAZED, and since then his career has really flourished with parts on CSI, Entourage, Weeds, Brothers & Sisters, and most recently a recurring role on Dirty Sexy Money.
Congratulations Shawn, we applaud your work and wish you continued success.
Keeping going with my collaboration theme today, I’d be remiss if I didn’t spend a little time to talk about the Loach. Co-writer and director of GLAZED, producer of INHERITANCE, and co-founder of NOT AFRAID! Jeff Loach and I were writing and producing partners since 1998 when we formed Not Afraid! As true collaborators we practiced the art of “ego-less arguing.” (I think we borrowed that term from another pair of writers, Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio and their excellent website wordplayer.com but I digress…) Each of us would constantly shoot holes in each others ideas and nary an ego was bruised, because we both understood it was never personal. It was about the idea. The best ideas can stand up to that scrutiny and all others should go by the wayside. That was how to make it great. That’s what makes collaboration work.
Alas, Jeff as great a collaborator as he is, felt another calling. His true calling was not to entertain, but to serve, to put his own life at risk for others. He was to be a firefighter. At an age where most people would say it’s too late, Jeff persevered. He followed that dream with a fervor and tenacity of film-maker searching for funding, and he has made that dream come true.Later this week, Jeff will begin his life as a professional fire-fighter in Fairfax County Virginia, and I couldn’t be more proud. Though I miss his energy in our writing room, even with him 3,000 miles away I can hear him arguing his point, and I smile.
Speaking of collaboration, I just wanted to give a shout out to one of my frequent collaborators, Doug Delaney. He shot both Inheritance, and Glazed, as well as my new project which for now will remain nameless. Doug still manages to find the time to collaborate with me, even while moving up the Hollywood ladder working as a DI Colorist on the ICE HARVEST and THE MATRIX: REVOLUTIONS and additional color timing for THE ITALIAN JOB, THE MATRIX: RELOADED, JAY AND SILENT BOB STRIKE BACK, SPY KIDS, VANILLA SKY, ANY GIVEN SUNDAY, AMERICAN BEAUTY, KUNDUN and ARMAGEDDON, among many others.
He’s recently moved to Post Logic Studios (see the article here. )
Doug is also featured in the Dear DI Colorist feature in this Month’s Post Magazine. (Sorry, no link yet…)
Glazed is the story of listless Viet Nam veteran, Bill Malone. The disheveled and beleaguered vet sits in the dark chain smoking cigarettes. Bill doesn’t want to talk anymore. A calm voice in the room encourages him to continue. Bill relents and again recounts the events of that terrible day he can never forget or forgive. With a strange unknown guilt he describes a Viet Nam as he remembers it, scary, dark, and alone. Through his raw and painful words, we are taken back to the day where his friends were all massacred. Shots ring out in the jungle as a terrible firefight roars in the distance. Bill runs to aid his comrades, but is too late. His friends are dead and he is left truly alone in the jungle. Thoughts of his wife flash across his mind like a ghost haunting him, but the jungle is alive and now it is he who is hunted. Bill flees for his life, but cannot outrun the demon who chases him. Alone and without any remaining ammunition, Bill must face his demon or be consumed by it. Losing his will to carry on, he hesitates in desperation. Thoughts of his wife push him through, and the final confrontation with his demon begins.
Directors Statement:
There are times in your life when you feel very strongly about an incident, a circumstance, or a person. Things happen to you everyday that affect how you think, act, and react tomorrow. The world can change on a dime and usually will. This became extraordinarily evident to Jeff Loach and I during the production of Glazed. A film in and of itself about just that: the precariousness of life and love and sudden change.
It was early in 2001, months before 9/11 that we first decided we wanted to make a film about American soldiers and the aftermath and continuing battles of its survivors. We wanted (in that world of relative peace) to remind people of what the American soldier has done for us over the years, and to think about what we are asking of our soldiers when we send them to war. The horrors they will have to endure and the psychological effects war can have upon them. And so, we crafted the story of Glazed, an exploration into the psyche of a veteran who in the blink of an eye, lost everything in his life, both at war and at home and its effect on him still years later.
We went into production during the summer of 2001 with conviction, purpose, and a sense of responsibility. As we moved into post-production the unthinkable happened: 9/11. The entire world changed. Our feelings for our film changed. Our conviction and sense of responsibility changed. We began to question. Was this story appropriate now? Americans are uniting over tragedy, they don’t want to be reminded of what’s at stake when you wage war. So, we decided to shelve the project.
By the winter of 2004, the world had changed again. The U.S. for the first time had invaded a country on a pre-emptive strike. The country and the world was now divided over whether or not we should have gone to war. The American people began to forget what we have asked our soldiers to do for our protection. The message of Glazed had become appropriate again.
With renewed conviction, purpose, and sense of responsibility, we dusted off our tapes and files and carried on. We completed the film filtered through our changed eyes. Is the completed film a searing look at the U.S. Government and their treatment of soldiers? No. Is it a Michael Moore-like political Pandora’s Box meant to spark controversy and ire? No. Is it a small film about how the world can change on a dime, and how we’ll never be the same? Yes, and we think in this post 9/11 world, that that’s something we can all understand.
