Category: Video

I love that this was shot in Detroit…

…but hate that it’s yet another sci-fi film shot in the bizarro Detroit that’s mysteriously devoid of all Black people. WtF, dudes!  

Do you know how hard it is to find great Black actors for an SF movie in Detroit?  ZERO HARD! It’s a huge city, there are several solid acting programs at the various colleges and universities there, plus an additional 700,000 people.[*]

Also, not for nothing, but imagine how much more tightly on-theme this movie would have been if you highlighted race and consumption, rather than white-washing Detroit—THE BLACKEST CITY IN AMERICA:

[*] Yes, I saw that there were a couple Black ladies in the background of one shot. But, c’mon, dude, please. Incidentally, they weren’t even credited; i.e., they were probably just a pair of ladies that happened to be wandering around. 🙄

Like if “Springtime for Hitler” was both a real thing, and being performed by a middle school drama club

I’m sure I’m missing something here, but this looks an awful lot like a troupe of little mixed-race American girls doing a dance—with ropes!—around a “hanging tree”, which ends with a flamboyant black man crowing “Whooo! That was fierce you guys; I wanna hang from that tree!”

😳

P.S. “Springtime for Hitler,” just in case none of us are sharing any overlapping portions of bubble.

OH MAN! This is one of my favorite sounds! #WinterWonderland ❄️

CONTEXT: I grew up outside of Detroit, where we were taught to never, ever go out on ice (very few ponds froze solidly, because so many were spring fed, or had weird inflows of nice warm waste that kept the ice rotten). But one time I was walking on a gravel path around a pond, scuffing my feet, and the gravel went shooting out over the thin, glass-smooth, clear ice and made this most amazing space-phaser-time-portal-starship-battle-pew-pew-pew! sound that I love-love-loved! (My ongoing experiments in slinkiphonics have largely been about chasing this Good Noise™ and wielding).

This is that sound:

(And here’s a bonus Winter Wonderland 🐻 bad judgement call)

HAPPY THANKSGIVING: “As God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly!” #gobblegobblegobble 🦃💀

(Yeah, I repost this every year, because I love this gag, and because watching this on TV—and rehashing it with my mom and sisters each year—is one of my fondest childhood holiday memories.)

THANKSGIVING TURKEY GIVEAWAY! (WKRP in Cincinnati) from Tony DeSanto on Vimeo.

This is, in my humble, a damn-near perfect gag—which is saying something, because I find single-camera laugh-track situation comedies almost entirely unbearable to watch.

I hope your day is good and sweet.  Gobblegobble!

(If you wanna read more of my thoughts on this specific gag and what it can teach writers, you can do so here.)