“Harsh Wilderness” Premieres in June!
The festival run for the short film I wrote, Harsh Wilderness, begins in a couple weeks, when the Western makes its world premiere (!!) at the Marina del Rey Film Festival.
The movie, directed by Ashley Maria (Pioneers in Skirts) and starring Lauren Olipra and Liesel Hlista, will be screening as part of Block S on Friday June 9th at 6 PM at the Cinemark 18 and XD in HHLA. Tickets are $15 (with a “friendly” $3 surcharge) and can be purchased here.
This will be the first time my words will be projected on a big screen in public. I will, naturally, be in Chicago celebrating my father-in-law’s quasi-retirement instead, so you’ll have to let me know how it turns out.
I will, however, be in attendance in Las Vegas for its screening as part of the Nevada Women’s Film Festival at UNLV. Harsh Wilderness and the rest of Block 20 screens on Sunday at 4:35. Tickets are $12, or you can pay $50 for a pass to the entire festival.
Please reach out for any additional information or follow along on the film’s website. This is just the beginning.
Andy Does Voiceover
With the help and tutelage of Austen Moret (TROLL), I recorded a series of new voiceover spots and a reel to gussy up my VO chops and profiles.
Austen wrote and produced all of these beauts.
VO Reel:
And here are the individual spots, baby!
Best Buy - Black Friday Sale!
Buffalo Wild Wings
Better Health [or Better Help, apparently]
H&R
Quickbooks
Shift
Subway
Webroot Internet Security
Which is your favorite? I quote the most from Buffalo Wild Wings.
Fantasy poem, creation myth time…
“The Veins of Stromgyre”
before Before
in the great sea of stars
was but one cosmic spore
big, bright, and full of scars.
In its gassy throes
the sun exploded to glorious death
planting infinite tomorrows
with its last breath.
From Nothing
celestial storms watered this seed
into Something
where life could proceed.
A sapling consciousness
began to thrive
a budding awareness
hungry, thirsty, and Alive.
A galaxy of roots grew
the First Tree:
came to Be.
He spread within and without
the forever blueprint upon which we stand
began to branch out
sisters and brothers sprouted from the land.
Borne from cosmic wanderlust
the roots sought connection
built on a foundation of trust
with love the only natural selection.
Thus the forests evolved
from bark to brush
ways of being dissolved
into primordial mush.
Brush turned to scales then to fur
and fur became skin
Woman and Man sprung from a Fir
Stromgyre’s grandchildren.
Yea! humans were carved from wood
but unlike their parents, they bled more than sap
they felt misunderstood
an evolutionary stopgap.
Their lives mere instants
a freckle on the worn face of Time
a passing glance toward (…what, exactly?) existence
an infected paradigm.
Little more than a faint ring
traced in the heartwood
no songs to sing
missing selfhood.
Instead of love, their foundation was mortality
angry, impatient, and lonely
their lives a triviality
a mistake — family in name only.
They forgot stillness
they forgot their roots
obsessed with unfairness
unsatisfied with life’s many fruits.
They scoured the land for More
and found forged in Frozen Flame
an instrument of war
bound by shame.
Behold! Quatha’s poison axe
a treacherous gift
of parallax steel
only human hands could lift.
They turned this axe upon woodlands
reduced their home to splinters
revenge only expands
kindling for a world doomed to many winters.
They climbed every mountain
they damned every river
and drained every fountain
imprisoned all nary a shiver.
They built and built
always growing and lusting
and blood was spilt
always untrusting.
An ignored internal struggle
made external eternal war
impossible to juggle
an infected spore.
You know.
You have lived it
waiting for that deathblow
ready to submit.
But instead we can Remember
that one life is enough
listen to the whisper in our last ember
shed our slough —
and Return…
Go back!
We have much still to learn
in our yolk sac
where Stromgyre remains
where Stromgyre waits
to break our chains
to change our fates.
In the whorled center of this Earth
in the tiny, boundless hollow in all of us
there is rebirth
our deliverance can only be thus.
Face the last thunderclap —
follow the track:
In every palm lies a map
to a forest without lack.
Ask the Author: Andrew Greene
Normally, I’m the one doing the interviews, but as a companion to the short story I wrote about the weirdly sexual tree cult the above poem references, Robert Frankel interviewed me. Here it is:
Andrew Greene’s “The Roots of Discontent” is a whirlwind of the weird, the sexual, and the mystical — all set against the backdrop of a competition for a lucrative new construction contract. It’s an endlessly entertaining read you won’t soon forget. Co-creator/co-editor Robert Frankel spoke with Greene about how he came up with this story, body horror, and his obsession with hydration.
Where did the idea for this story come from, and how did you develop it into the piece we know and love?
[Creator/co-editor] Ben gave me a prompt about a party gone wrong. As I was thinking about it, I realized I had no idea what I was going to write and fell into a hole of depression. At the time, I was preparing for a solo visit to Lake Tahoe and on the way was listening to the audiobook of The Overstory, by Richard Powers. That put me in the tree headspace. And then the environs of Tahoe — being in the forests and walking around — only put trees even deeper into my mind.
I kept going back to “Wash Away the Plague,” the first story I wrote for Ballads, which was about the aftermath of the Great Quake and the Blue Plague that followed. It felt like there was more there. I thought it’s such a cool thing the rebuilding of the city is what gets everyone sick, and I started thinking about the industrialists who would be in charge of that rebuilding. That meant money. And that means contracts — how does one win that contract? What’s the competition like? That’s where the party came in, as some sort of a stage where someone would gain favor. But I knew we wanted some sort of an Uncanny, and I think I just wanted some, like, weird shit. It felt natural of someone who is a builder to have a relationship with trees if they’re from a really old family. Perhaps they’ve forgotten the roots literally of where they came from. And that to me felt exciting and cool.
One of the many elements I particularly enjoyed is this synthesis of the high and the low — the profound and the profane.
There’s something about being flowery and intellectual mixed with profane and crass. I can’t take myself too seriously, or anything too seriously. I think that’s why I love what most people call “shitty horror movies.” In a way, I think they can say way more than “high art” a lot of times, or at least I think they’re more successful at it. I think I’m trying to find that same kind of sensibility in my own writing.
Dreues, the main character, is the story’s throughline, and I think that’s what makes the story more than just something crazy and weird. It’s all rooted in Dreues’s pain, his coming into a new religion. I’m not a religious person. I guess I consider myself spiritual. But there’s always that desire to find an answer and be saved — to come upon a truth that will open the path for me in the world.
I think that’s something a lot of people don’t expect from genre fiction, especially in highly literary circles — that there can be, and often is, a deep personal element packed into the stories.
Dreues is very much a reflection of how I felt while writing. I was in physical therapy and learning that I was walking wrong, unable to sit and sleep properly. Things that you don’t even think about, and I was doing them wrong and hurting myself. It was very depressing, very infantilizing. I felt like a baby, or that I was too old and on my deathbed. It was really embarrassing and shameful, I think I was trying to write myself out of that thing. I wanted to do anything else — and I think that's what fantasy is: What dream scenario can happen to me?
I wanted to take the story much farther than just that, though. I knew it needed to be weird, or at least interesting and unique. And I think the body horror of the story is where that comes from. The whole thing turned out pretty clean, actually. I was going to add more fluids, but Ben said, “No, I don’t think we need that.” And he’s right. We had enough fluids in the piece.
That’s a really good, good, good philosophy to live by: “We have enough fluids.”
All the fluids, though. Robert, Since I was a kid, I have been obsessed and worried about fluids. My first story that I remember writing, drinking water was a key part. Hydration is very important to me.
At least you have a recurring motif you can always return to. Now we know one of your IMDb trivia will be, “His characters are always well-hydrated.”
Ballads of the Distant Reaches is one of the most exciting projects I’ve ever been a part of. Not only are they publishing great interconnected fantasy stories multiple times a week online, they’re getting into zines and other exciting mediums that I look forward to announcing.
If you like D&D, if you like watching fantasy worlds unfurl and unfold organically, cross the threshold. Through June 4th, sign up and get 40% off your subscription, giving you unfettered access to the entire juicy catalog.
Congratulations on Harsh Wilderness hitting the film festival circuit - may it be the first of many! I wish I could pop down to Marina del Rey to see the first showing. I cant wait to hear your reaction after viewing it in Las Vegas.
I think all the Voice Over spots are great, but my favorites are H&R block, Subway and the Rudolf rendition of Black Friday.
That poem is intense - you are truly a multi-faceted writer, Andy. and a lover of trees.
Great edition of Wanderings
(but I do miss hearing about what David is reading.....)