Today 1/29/05 Saturday
I will be on Animal Radio Hour http://www.animalradio.com/ (it will air in LA next weekend)
Mtn Time it's 12-1 live today on the EAST coast it is also
airing live (10-11) I think,
oh MAN I have to subtract!
No wait ADD. 1-2!
You can find your station via their website!
You can listen to it on their website NOW
and during this whole week!,
or if in Los Angeles it will be on
KOST 103.5 NEXT Sunday 2/6/05 at 6:30 AM!
They called because of the email
I sent out (and posted on my blog)
They want to talk about the 20/20 segment
(and my film). And the whole animal issue.
Wow, I should really finish redoing my
website then, huh.!?.
I just saw a clip from 1/28/05's - 20/20 MYTHS, LIES and NASTY BEHAVIOR and had to get back online and write to alert everyone to WATCH and TAPE the 20/20 tonight 10PM on ABC which will show several men dumping garbage from pick up trucks onto the side of the road... and then a man DUMPS/THROWS/TOSSES a PLASTIC garbage bag from the bed of his PICK UP TRUCK and jumps back into his truck while the bag left on the side of the road starts to MOVE and out from the plastic garbage bag stumbles one, two, three, four or MORE PUPPIES.
People have asked me a million times about my film, about where are the animals are coming from, are there puppies in shelters? Don't I have to go to a breeder to get a puppy? ...NO! Do these things really exist? Are puppies and kittens really found in garbage cans... tossed onto the side of the road?
WE (animal rescuers) KNOW it for fact because we are on the front lines and we go to retrieve the puppies and kittens from the neighborhood garbage dump (when someone else calls us to help them take care of it) or dumped on the side of the road, like the litter of kittens I helped an elderly woman with when someone saw her feeding a colony of ferals and decided to DUMP five 6 month old kittens into this same field but these poor kittens were NOT ferals and were instead terrified, frightened and NOT welcome by the feral colony.
But people still don't believe that these MYTHS and NOT MYTHS they are TRUTHS that people DO dump animals in the desert, on the side of the road/and in garbage cans (if we find babies in garbage cans why would it be such a leap that we would find "pets" there?)
A friend, recently asked me why she kept seeing so many dogs "roaming loose" when she went to visit a friend by Victorville, CA (She has SEEN my film and KNOWS that all I needed to get the footage for my film was to drive into LA. I FOUND HUNDREDS of strays to interact with, a LOT of which we rescued.)
She was shocked to find out that the likelihood that these "roaming dogs" were probably HOMESLESS STRAYS dumped by heartless people who toss animals like trash into deserts and on the side of roads.
I beg everyone to either TAPE this 20/20 show and show it to their friends who asked, who don't quite believe it when we say we have were just called to pick up some animals that someone dumped into the trash.
These kittens were found on the side of a highway as my lead actress (Katherine Norland) was meeting me at an adoption event to help promote the film.
"One at a Time: A Week in an American Animal Shelter"
I wanted to post this title someone mentioned and find out if anyone else has read it? I never heard of that book, which is odd, people tell me about stuff all the time, although mostly it has to do with a documentary (which my film is not, although I shot in that style, we use doc footage) or other media, but rarely books. Have you heard of the book, Save ourStrays? It has a lot of stats but is very insightful. But I will definitely look into "A WEEK" it seems interesting and sounds like a doc that was made about ten years ago...calledKISS THE ANIMALS GOODBYE, or BEST FRIENDS FORGOTTEN.I am dying to see them but on one hand want to wait until my film is done and on the other I am too ghetto to buy them. ( : I did however get to see SHELTER DOGS. Really good look into a small "shelter" or "rescue." Not that it is the norm but you KNOW that kind of "rescue" is out there.
The doc that got me started making this film is a Student Academy Award winning short doc called, MAN AND DOG. by Randolph BENSON (I think) I cannot remember his last name. Fabulous! Heartbreaking! It shows a "dog catcher" aka "Animal Control Officer" somewhere in the Southern US, like Georgia or a Carolina and a day in his life. Everytime I think of Randy Grim and his dog, Quentin, who was put into the gas chamber and LIVED, I think of this film or when think of this film I cannot help but remember Quentin. Great dog, was able to meet him at the IDA (In Defense of Animals) awards recently.
I actually applied for the job of General Manager to LA's Animal Services. Long shot but what the heck. Didn't get it but now I feel like I want to write the new GM a letter and tell him about this book I am reading now, The Tipping Point,one of the things it does is describe how NYC went from high crime to very low crime.I think the concept could EASILY be used for animal rescue and shelters.
What they did is called the Broken Window theory. Which is, if a abandoned building has a broken window and it is not repaired then people think no one cares about it so they the chances of it becoming even more vandalized is really likely. Kathy Riordan said something that just triggered a bunch of ideas, one being to make it shameful to drop off your pet at an animal shelter. To make it just unheard of. For me it would be but for so many others some who if they don't know, pretend not to know and think, what I don't know won't hurt...
But in NYC they started with turnstyle jumpers. In America people constantly ADVERTISE in newspapers etc, that they have a litter to SELL, and in LA and a LOT of other areas you have to have a breeders license to SELL puppies or kittens, so maybe busting Betty Crocker homemaker who thought it was a good idea to breed their favorite dog or cat might get the attention that its NOT such a good idea....But to have an unaltered dog or cat is ONLY 100 dollars, I think that should be 1000, and if caught without a licensed animal who is unaltered should be 5000. That is a deterrent amount!
I have soooo much footage and thought of a commercial I could edit, to educate the public about things they don't know... without being too in your face. Too many times docs and commercials like the in-your-face approach... I think it puts people off... to reach them you have to get them on their level and not throw images for shockvalue into the mix.
Wow, and thank you for taking the white water raft ride down my steam of consciousness.
It sucks to post your very first blog telling of the worst of the worst case scenarios.
My film, FREE to a Good Home http://www.freetoagoodhomemovie.com, has had its technical difficulties and were are constantly standing by, but this one takes the New Year's cake. We finally received some finishing funds and had three months in an editing office we rented, whoohoo... only to find that two of those months were completely wasted because our hard drive went down.
I received word over the weekend from the tech guy, he cannot recover ANYTHING. We are still scrambling to find out if we managed to back up onto dvd. But that hard drive was our back up hard drive. Don't ask how it happened a series of unfortunate events.
This film WILL be finished this year.
So I spent the weekend working on redoing our website. It's still a mess, but at least improving... If anyone thinks indie filmmaking is easy... have them call me! But frankly I would not change this experience for anything. I learned so much, just wish it wasn't all through the school of hard knocks!
The only thing I would change is losing my pets. Other than that all was what it was supposed to be. But then I think if I did not lose my pets and everything else I wouldn't be in Venice Beach and I most likely wouldn't have Homer and Schlimie.
So, why is this little indie film taking so long? Editing is pure and simple torture and now I have to rewatch those hours of footage to relog into a new hard drive to redo those two months that were lost. My pets are all over that footage and going back there just is not all that much fun. I hope the evil way this year is starting out is a sign that the turn around is near. That another funder, or more funding comes our way.
All I wanted to do was make a little fictional feature film about a girl who does animal rescue, to help all the animals that need rescuing. Thanks for listening, reading and writing.
Filmmaker and Animal Rescuer, living in Venice Beach, CA
Trying to complete my first feature film about a girl who does animal rescue.
Check out our trailers!
http://www.freetoagoodhomemovie.com