hey! I'm back from Pacific NW tour. Went to Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, Bellingham, Eugene and Olympia.

HAnging out in Eugene with my wonderful daughter, Amelia, while she does some general home improvement on my dome:

my daughter, Amelia Laine Worth, cuts my hair.

This was a fucking great day. And I met Amelia's best pals, and they're really cool. Amelia is going to college here starting soon.

NOTE: I am gonna use one of the photos of her shaving my head on the disc art (not the cover art, but the photo on the disc itself) when "DIY or DIE: How To Survive as an Independent Artist" comes out on DVD.

Michael Dean NW tour report for DIY movie:

So, I’m in Vancouver in a coffee shop on July 5, 2002. I am showing my film here tonight at The Blinding Light Cinema. I came up a few days early to work on my new non-fiction how-to book (20-Dollar Film School) and to get away from America for July 4^th. I love America, but never liked July 4^th. All the noises frightened me as a child, and seeing everyone drunk ‘n’ ugly on megapride, that has nothing to do with our founding fathers, scares th’ bejezus outta me as an adult.

I had this feeling that I had to leave LA a day early, the third rather than the 4th, and yesterday someone shot people at LA airport. There's articles about my film tonight in three local papers and I did two radio interviews today. One local rag has a woman who says that my attitude “makes Canadians wet and twitchy.” We’ll see…..

I din’t pick a bad time to split. The paper left outside my hotel door (I’ve always said, from my experience with bands, that artists are treated much better outside America. The 99-seat cinema showing my film paid for four nights at a hotel) greeted me this morning with the knowledge that someone shot someone yesterday at the LA airport. Jesus. Like David Bowie, “I’m afraid of Americans”. …..

I’m getting a lot of writing done….my cell phone doesn’t work here, and the amazingly bitchin’ laptop I borrowed for the trip from long time e-pen pal Christian Cliff (I finally met him the other day, at his house in Seattle, when I went to pick up the laptop) would cost too much to use on the hotel’s network, so I’m not checking e-mail every three minutes. I’m sitting in a café and writing 6 hours a day. (I can’t write in a café in Los Angeles….too many idiots desperately pecking out screenplays that they KNOW are gonna make them rich and famous…the stink of pre-approved failure makes me too sad).

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( http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/issues/2002-07-11/calendar.html/1/index.html new article about this film)

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I met (subpop artist) Tad on tour. He walked up to me and said "Weren't you in Bomb? (made my day). He said "I used to love to listen to Bomb and do bong hits in the tour van. I love Bomb." (Made my day more)

me at work on my new book, using Christian's laptop on Clint's kitchen table in Seattle. I got a lot of writing done on this trip. I love this photo.

clint.

Dyslexic marquee in Portland. Do yourself in or die.

There are Internet cafes EVERYWHERE here (and they’re darned cheap, too--$2 Canadian….$1.50 US approx, per hour) and there ARE people who think they’re gonna make a zillion dollars in film….but they’re mostly Americans. The Vancouver Film School is around the corner, and at noon, those kids fill this café and plot taking the world in a storm of blockbuster banality. As stated, they are mostly Americans. I guess they couldn’t get into UCLA, or perhaps like me, they like weather where it’s cool enough to think.

(And it ain’t that unlike LA in other ways too…there’s a Church of Scientology HQ around the corner.)

I love this town. I could live here. It’s like San Francisco surrounded by mountains, with people speaking French, no guns, gorgeous hookers and legal Cuban Cigars. I don’t need the last two, but I like the idea. And they cuss on TV and have more interesting shows here. (People in Hollywood hate Vancouver, as there is a booming film industry here, not just X-Files. Hollywoodies hate the Canuck film people. Acommon union bumper sticker in Los Angeles declares “Keep Hollywood IN Hollywood. Film Locally.”

My hotel is the downtown Ramada on Pender Street. It used to be the Hotel Niagara, and they kept the sign. It’s cool….the final scene in my favorite Canadian movie (Hard Core Logo) was filmed in front of this hotel.

Showings should be good. There’s glowing articles in all four arts weeklies and I’m doing an interview in an hour on drive-time national CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) radio. (So I’m up at 7am…..WAY early for me). And this afternoon I’m getting skewered by Nardwuar the Human Severette (check out his site…it’s great. I’ve been a fan for years. Download the interview of him sparring with Courtney Love for starters.)

Later: interview number one went well. It was at CBC, sort of the Canadian cross between BBC and NPR. Mega amounts of listeners. They put me on for five minutes during morning drive time between sports and a Bruce Cockburn segment. I was in and out of the building in fifteen minutes.

I’m gonna go back to bed for a while to rest up before interview number two.

Steve Albini. New interview with him is up (by Kime and Jonathan Buchanan) CLICK HIM for Windoz media file. > If the Albini media file comes up machine code goop soup in Netscape, try i.e. or right click and save it.

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Later…man, a radio interview with Nardwaur is an ordeal. Afterwards I needed to eat comfort food and take another nap. This dude is Howard Stern crossed with Tiny Tim. Totally mellow until the interview comes starts and then he goes into character….affecting a really high, (I actually wore earplugs in the studio…) annoying voice and asking cranky questions and not giving you time to answer. I hated it. I have heard his show on his webcast and it’s funny when you are hearing it but a drag when it’s being done to you. I messed with him back, kept calling him “Narwhal”, and saying things like, “Yes folks, Narwhal is naked and trying to touch my nipples. You know…he looks pretty good naked for a 60 year old man……” (he’s probably 35 in reality).

I guess I handled him ok. Someone told me that Thurston Moore beat him up during an interview, and that there’s a video of it available somewhere.

The show at the Blinding Light Cinema was fun. 66 people paid and they loved it. I’d say it was the best crowd yet anywhere. And I’m doing another one there tomorrow. Fun. People wanted me to go part after but I felt like some solitude, and came back to the hotel. I did get to meet Jeremy Flynn, another long-time e-mail pen pal, so that was really good.

I love Canadian money. So pretty and colorful. Like money in Europe. I think I read a headline in America the other day out of the corner of my eye that said that the US is gonna add some color to our boring green.

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ANYONE WANT TO BE IN A MOVIE?

When I do the Q&A for DIY, someone always asks me “What’s next?” And I don’t have an answer. Well, the other day it hit me:……..

When Christian Cliff lent me his bitchin’ new laptop, he also lent me two DVDs: films by Richard Kern and by Nick Zedd. So I’ve been watching cool evil sexy druggy Super-8 flicks for the past couple days. And I made a decision: I think instead of waiting for a fairy godmother to come make my script/book/life, “Starving in the Company of Beautiful Women” into a film, I’m gonna DO IT MYSELF. I’m gonna shoot it cool and groovy on the cheap, on High-8 video (looks more like film than DV does) and use some DV footage also, including stuff I shot already. I will have to see if Simon’s available to play Cash, and if he’ll still do it after I tried to get Leonardo DiCaprio and failed. And have to go to San Francisco to do it, but I’m gonna fucking do it. I’m gonna write, direct, produce, shoot and edit it all myself.

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In Seattle, everyone looks like Kurt Cobain, even the women.

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