Mitch Jenkins knows the score too!

Photograph by Mitch Jenkins

Few days ago extraordinary photographer and filmmaker Mich Jenkins' posted the above photograph with the text note below, on his Instagram profile, HERE. 

I love that pic! Fantastica!

I was working at my local newspaper as a junior photographer when a call came in from Q Magazine, for their first edition they needed a shoot doing with Alan Moore and they offered me a £125 to go and shoot him. Thirty some years later we are are still the best of friends. He truly was a legend way before Watchmen and one of the nicest human beings I’ve ever had the privilege to know. - Mitch Jenkins

Qabalah, Mercury, humor and... the bogey-man

Mercury on a bronze coin

Excerpt from an interview published in Wizard magazine n.95 in 1999.

 

[...] So, what do you practice?

Alan Moore: Qabalah is one. It's part of the Western occult tradition. It includes all of the religious systems: Greek, Egyptian, Norse, Christian, it's all there. It's seen as a map of the universe on one level, but it's also seen as a map of you, the individual. I might do a ritual that involves the god Mercury. You can have a dialogue with that energy, that cluster of ideas we label with the name Mercury.

You've had a conversation with the god Mercury.

Maybe. During the experience, you believe you are actually talking to a god. Who's to say if you are, or if you're not? I've tried to keep an open mind about it. I tell myself, "On one level, this is a hallucination. This is an element of my own personality, some subconscious element of myself." On the other hand, I also have to allow that this might be something completely beyond my personality, a higher entity. I mean, if it barks like a go and smells like a god, it's probably a god. [Laughs]

 

[Laughs] At least you have a sense of humor about it.

You have to. Most of this is a lot less dramatic than you'd suppose. It's reading a bunch f books, and every three months or so, doing a working. We'll do a proper ritual working, something peculiar will happen, and then we'll get our strength back in a few months and do it again.

That dispels the image some readers have of you--- that you're some kind of unapproachable "goth genius." I bet they get it from that black-and-white photo of you. You look dangerous.

[Chuckles] Ah, the photo. That's all [photographer] Mitch Jenkins. He always goes for the dark, scary look. I don't know. To me, my life is completely normal. I have no desire to have a dark allure. I have my hair like this because, frankly, I think it looks gorgeous. [Laughs] Those rolling, natural highlights, you know.

But I'm sure that looks dangerous to some people. And from experience, I know if they met me in some foggy circumstance, they'd find me a bit alarming.

You have a great "Alan Moore looks like the bogey-man" story, don't you?

[Laughs] I remember walking through a park here in Northampton --- a park notorious for its muggins and the like --- during a foggy night. I heard some guys coming, probably from the pub or something, and I knew our paths would intersect. They were loud and boisterous. We finally crossed paths in this fog, and they stopped dead in their tracks. I kept walking. Finally one of them gave this nervous laugh.

Did he say anything?

Yeah. He said, [in a fearful voice] "I didn't know what it was."

The Show official poster

The Show

 More info HERE.

The Show is... here!

The Show!

Dreams of serious things.

 

From the mind of Alan Moore comes a new feature film directed by Mitch Jenkins starring Tom Burke, Siobhan Hewlett, Alan Moore, Ellie Bamber, Darrell D'Silva, Richard Dillane, Christopher Fairbank, and Sheila Atim. Watch the trailer HERE!

 

More info HERE. 

The Show... in October

The Show, the movie written by Moore and directed by Mitch Jenkins, will be finally premiered this October at Sitges Film Festival!

 

More info and details HERE.

The Show... coming soon!

Posted the 11th of December on Facebook Alan Moore Official Page:

Although this is my first attempt at working seriously in cinema, the audience may want to know how it connects with my just-recently-concluded comic book career. The answer, as I see it, is “not very much at all”: this is completely fresh, with staggering new possibilities for mesmerism and immersive storytelling.
Then again, those seeking bleak dystopias in my narratives will be relieved to learn that this, occurring in the recently collapsed town of Northampton, is a fine example, with as many otherworldly characters as one might reasonably expect.
And yes, there is a superhero, but not like you think.

This hasn’t been adapted from work that was never meant for cinema; this is me and the talented, fantastic people that I’m working with, attempting to make the most stunning piece of British film that anyone has seen in years.

This is The Show, and we’re doing it right here.

 
Alan Moore

The Show in the making

Art by Paul Chessell.

Today Mitch Jenkins has launched The Show official site on Instagram: "Official site for Alan Moore and Mitch Jenkins' new feature film, The Show. Regular updates now that the film is fully funded and in pre-production."

In his first post Jenkins announced: "Me and Alan start our new adventure as of now. It seems the bloody feature film has been fully funded. We will be posting everything Alan / Mitch and The Show here most days." 

Are you ready?

Mr. Metterton and Mr. Matchbright double act

Alan Moore plays Metterton in A Professional Relationship.

Below, some dialogues from "A Professional Relationship" one of the five videos included in SHOW PIECES, the film project created by Alan Moore (writer) and Mitch Jenkins (director).

[From the video's synopsis] A Professional Relationship: Matchbright and Metterton - a working partnership, a meeting of two minds. A Double Act. Well at least that's the general concept. All is fair in love and war.

Metterton: 

I mean, I'm the conceited, judgmental one, and you're the monumentally ugly face of darkness, sin, and temptation.
I mean, that's who we are, Nick.
That's our act. That's our double act.

Matchbright:
Oh, right. We're a double act.
We're Morecambe and Wise.

Metterton: 
Yes, that's the general concept, you know.
Hitler and Churchill, Tom and Jerry,
thesis and antithesis, that kind of thing.

Matchbright:
We're not a double act.
We've never been a double act.

It's always been about you, isn't it?
The Great I Am.

I don't get any say in how things develop, do I?
I'm just here to take all the blame and make you look good.

Metterton: 
Well, to be fair, Nicky, I think I look pretty good already.

I mean, gold skin and a haircut like the Big Bang?

I mean, I look like the light of the world, whereas you look like Death's prolapsed rectum.

But I take your point, Nicky.
I take your point.

I've been very hard on you.

You're a good man, Nicky.
You're a good colleague and I don't give you enough credit and we've been with this project since its genesis.

And believe me, you're going to be there for all of its final revelations, you can depend upon it.

I value your contribution, Nicky.
I really do.

 You can buy the Show Pieces box set here.

Also an interesting review here.

The Show: "doing it our way again"

Signed Show Pieces!

Excerpt from Orphans of the Storm news page:

"[...] Next stop.....THE SHOW! Alan's screenplay is now in the hands of our trusted fellow Orphan, David Crabtree. David has been the most supportive first AD that any director can have. He is now in the process of producing our shooting schedule, the plan being to start shooting the feature next summer. We have had so many serious offers of big cash from Networks, both terrestrial and digital, the issue being that they all seem to require more jeopardy and want to get Alan to re write things to fit their vision! Hmm, lets think about. So, we are doing it our way again. More money doesn't mean better but it can mean less imagination." [Orphans of the Storm]

Orphans of the Storm, Fellini and Ed Wood

Excerpt from Orphans of the Storm's Mission Statement. 

The complete text can be read here.

 

"[...] We promise you carefully themed and considered extensions of an idea rather than shamelessly strip-mined franchises. We promise you Fellini at Ed Wood prices. We promise you new concepts that are sufficient to their times, and not merely the reanimated corpses of light entertainment past, although we do have some of those as well. We promise you an antidote to the toxic amusements you’ve already thoughtlessly ingested, and we hope to God it’s not too late." [Orphans of the Storm]

Alan Moore reinvents comics: ELECTRICOMICS!

Big announcement dated 28th of May: ELECTRICOMICS!

Below, you can read the press release and the Electricomics' team "Welcome letter". 

You can also read more at:
Mitch Jenkins's blog: here.
Colleen Doran's Tumblr: here.
Todd Klein's site: here (about the Electricomics' logo creation)
and The Beat: here.

Alan Moore creates digital app.

The most famous modern comic book writer in the world, Alan Moore, is leading a research and development project to create an app enabling digital comics to be made by anyone.
Already known for revolutionising the comic book industry in the 1980s, Moore is pushing boundaries again with Electricomics - an app that is both a comic book and an easy-to-use open source toolkit. Being open source and free, the app has wide potential not just for industry professionals, but also businesses, arts organisations and of course comic fans and creators everywhere.

“Personally, I can’t wait,” said Moore. “With Electricomics, we are hoping to address the possibilities of comic strips in this exciting new medium, in a way that they have never been addressed before.

“Rather than simply transferring comic narrative from the page to the screen, we intend to craft stories expressly devised to test the storytelling limits of this unprecedented technology. To this end we are assembling teams of the most cutting edge creators in the industry and then allowing them input into the technical processes in order to create a new capacity for telling comic book stories.

“It will then be made freely available to all of the exciting emergent talent that is no doubt out there, just waiting to be given access to the technical toolkit that will enable them to create the comics of the future.”

Electricomics will be a 32-page showcase with four very different original titles:
Big Nemo - set in the 1930s, Alan Moore revisits Winsor McCay’s most popular hero. Art by Colleen Doran. 
Cabaret Amygdala - modernist horror from writer Peter Hogan (Terra Obscura)
Red Horse - on the anniversary of the beginning of World War One, Garth Ennis (Preacher, The Boys) and Danish artist Peter Snejbjerg (World War X) take us back to the trenches
Sway - a slick new time travel science fiction story from Leah Moore and John Reppion (Sherlock Holmes - The Liverpool Demon, 2000 AD)

Electricomics will be self published by Moore and long time collaborator Mitch Jenkins as Orphans of the Storm, and funded by the Digital R&D Fund for the Arts. As a publicly funded research and development project, Electricomics will be free to explore the possibilities of the comic medium, without the constraints of the industry.

The app will be built by Ocasta Studios, under the guidance of Ed Moore (no relation). Ocasta create apps for the likes of Vodaphone, Yahoo, and Widerweb which link service providers and their customers. They are excited to be making their first foray into the world of comics.

The research team will be led by Dr Alison Gazzard, who has published widely on space, time and play in interactive media, and is a Lecturer in Media Arts at the London Knowledge Lab, Institute of Education. Joining her, Daniel Merlin Goodbrey is a pioneer in the field of experimental digital comics and senior lecturer at The University of Hertfordshire.

Moore’s daughter Leah will edit the project, having created the 150 page digital comic The Thrill Electric for C4 Education in 2011.

About the Digital R&D Fund for the Arts
The Digital R&D fund for the Arts is a £7 million fund to support collaboration between organisations with arts projects, technology providers, and researchers. It is a partnership between Arts Council England (www.artscouncil.org.uk), Arts and Humanities Research Council (www.ahrc.ac.uk) and Nesta (www.nesta.org.uk).
We want to see projects that use digital technology to enhance audience reach and/or develop new business models for the arts sector. With a dedicated researcher or research team as part of the three-way collaboration, learning from the project can be captured and disseminated to the wider arts sector.
Every project needs to identify a particular question or problem that can be tested. Importantly this question needs to generate knowledge for other arts organisations that they can apply to their own digital strategies.

Welcome to…Electricomics.

Almost three years ago, Alan Moore had an Idea.

Whilst working with director Mitch Jenkins on The Show, an eerie film and TV concept which seemed to have a life of its own, he imagined the children in the background of a scene reading comics on transparent flexible scrolls called Spindles.
The comics, he idly supposed, would be Electricomics, and would be yet another facet of the multi-nuanced and multimedia world of The Show.

So far so dull right? Big Idea Man has yet another idea.

Wrong.

Alan Moore ideas have an uncanny habit of inveigling themselves into reality, by fair means or foul, they emerge somewhere and demand to be taken seriously.

Almost a year on, when the small film project had inflated in the manner of an airbag deployed in case of cultural stupor, to become not just one but several films, not just one story but dozens of them woven together into a huge billowing cloud of wonder. It was then, that a colleague of theirs happened to chat to a friend and mention that scrappy little idea, Electricomics.

That was all the chance it needed, and before you could say ‘Hold on is this wise?’ or ‘ Don’t we all have other jobs to do?’ there was a meeting and a pitch and a funding application to the Digital Research & Development fund for the Arts. The path was not straight or quick, but in the end it arrived here, in this website, in this project, before your very eyes.

The team that was assembled then could not be more delighted, and more than a little surprised, to find themselves here and now in this position.

They have been charged with the task of producing new comics for the digital age.
They must attempt new storytelling techniques, create and use new comic making tools which they must then make freely available to everyone.
This large and somewhat daunting burden will be shared with them, by such mighty talents as Garth Ennis, Nicola Scott, Jose Villarrubia, Pete Hogan, Peter Snejbjerg, and Todd Klein.
The stories produced will not only showcase what is possible but also hopefully inspire others to do the same.
The Electricomics toolkit would give users the power to create their own Electricomics.
Different, better comics, completely new and fresh comics in every way.

Right now, as this project launches, Electricomics is still an idea up in the ether, a hope and  a plan before it becomes a reality, but like I said, Alan Moore ideas usually find a way to get through.

Electricomics.

Coming soon.

A major comic project is coming!

A frame from His Heavy Heart.

Excerpt from Mitch Jenkins' blog dated the 13th of May

"We will also be announcing a rather major new Comic project any day, as it seems the contract has finally been agreed. So much more on this to follow in the coming days...We can't wait!"

Me too! :)

His Heavy Heart trailer

 

His Heavy Heart's trailer is out there!

"I am puuuureeeeeeeeeeeee!!!"

Enjoy.

More info at Mitch Jenkins' blog here.

10 rules of collaboration

Screen from the Unearthing Live film.

From Mitch Jenkins' blog.

If you are doing something that you are entirely comfortable with, that is probably because you have done it before, or somebody else has done it before. So there is little point in actually doing it again. Always take on incredibly difficult and hard projects that will probably be the ruin of you. [Alan Moore]

You can read the complete piece here.

Kickstarter campaign: "WE'VE HIT OUR GOAL"

His Heavy Heart project is funded!

But the campaign ends the 17th of July, so there is a new goal.

If we can make it to £50k, there's another mini short film that's been written...
*FRANK & NICK MAKE YOU SICK*

Matchbright and Metterton have a strained relationship. It may be a professional one but as we all know, it's also one that crosses boundaries in more way than one. On one particularly drunken evening, they decide to wax lyrical and improv an obscene dialogue which rapidly spirals out of control.
This would be a mini short - it's a simple set up, filmed in Metterton's living room. We never thought we'd make this, but given the opportunity, we'd LOVE to!
 

If we reach £50k, this will be included on the DVD and in the download option.
Let make this happen!

CAST OF 'THE SHOW' (L-R): Khandie Kisses, Andrew Buckley, Darrel D'Silva, Siobbhan Hewlett, Dark Teaser, Alan Moore, Robert Goodman, Luli Blue, Roze Thorn, Boy Kitten, Melinda Gebbie.

UPDATE!!!: We have the sixth film!!!

Alan Moore needs you... on Kickstarter

You probably already know this but... Alan Moore and Mitch Jenkins are on Kistarter crowd-funding their fifth short film titled His Heavy Heart and part of the so-called Jimmy's End Cycle. It's the final missing piece of a bigger project which could eventually generate a feature film titled The Show.

Kickstarter campaigns run for 30 days and this will ends July 17. With just 6 days to go, currently the funding reached 35,000 pounds of the 45,000 they need. 

Kickstarter incentives for His Heavy Heart are really appealing, including beermats, t-shirts, artwork, and most attractive of all, the boxed set of the 5 short films with... Alan Moore's, never before seen, original hand-drawn 80 panel storyboard!!!

So... BACK THE PROJECT!

In a recent interview Moore said: "These films are going to be done the way that Mitch and I want to do them or they won’t be done. We’ve got a very hardline approach which might ultimately mean that they don’t get done, you know, but me and Mitch are happy with what we’ve done so far. Everybody’s done a brilliant job and we hope that when people have listened to the music, seen the other films, that they’ll realise that we’re offering a very unusual flavor here and a bit of an unusual art event in that it’s hopefully very accessible. I mean, I don’t think that Jimmy's End comes across as an arthouse film. It’s kind of like weird mainstream cinema."  

 

Article in the NY Post.

Bleeding Cool interview with Moore: HERE.

Salon interview with Moore: HERE.

BACK THE PROJECT!

Moore Movies

Mitch Jenkins e Alan Moore sul set di Jimmy's End.

We talked about it some months ago and last November 2012 they were officially released: Act's of Faith and Jimmy's End, the first two shorts in a noirish film series realized by Alan Moore in collaboration with photographer Mitch Jenkins (they previously worked together on the Unearthing project).

Official website: www.jimmysend.com

"[...] The series, comprising five shorts leading up to a feature-length, also entitled The Show, marks Moore’s first writing specifically done for the screen and is set in their mutual hometown, Northampton, exploring the locality’s seedier underbelly.

So far, two films have been delivered: the first, Act's of Faith, follows Faith Harrington (Siobhan Hewlett), a single nymphomaniac living on her own who pursues increasingly insidious ways to fulfil her addiction. The second has James Mitchum (Darrell D'Silva) making his way into the bowls of St James End Working Men’s Club's neo noir-tinged crypt of debauchery and hedonism."

From The Quietus interview with Mitch Jenkins: here.

Other references:
Alan Moore about the making-of Jimmy's End: HERE.

he says... 59!

photo © Mitch Jenkins

Today Alan Moore has turned 59 years old! 

So... happy birthday, Magus!

And I was wondering that... more than 10 years passed from my initial idea that became the Alan Moore: Portrait of an Extraordinary Gentleman. Tempus fugit!

Moore movies are coming soon!

Alan Moore joins forces with director Mitch Jenkins for a series of short films, produced by Lex in association with The Creators Project. These shorts are written by Moore with his ongoing creative involvement.

The first installment, entitled Act of Faith was recently shot in London; the second piece, Jimmy’s End, will be filmed in Northampton later this summer.

Originally intended as a brief ten-minute, one-off piece, the project has evolved into a multi-layered, multi-episode narrative created by Moore and brought to life by Jenkins. The working title for the overall series is Show Pieces.
Act of Faith and Jimmy’s End will premiere at The Creator’s Project event in NYC October 2012.

Moore and Jenkins previously collaborated on the Unearthing project and Dodgem Logic magazine.