On location: The Seventh Python Malibu shoot

Once again, Cloud 9 handicaps the Oscars®

And now for something completely different...

There's comedy of a different kind with this morning's announcement of Academy Award® Best Picture nominees and, along with it, another list of "incredible, amazing" connections to our 2006 feature film comedy Cloud 9-- the beach volleyball stripper comedy-social commentary starring screen icon Burt Reynolds and written and produced by own own Brett Hudson and Burt Kearns, along with our pal, Academy Award®-winning producer (The Godfather, Million Dollar Baby) Albert S. Ruddy.

Our pals over at Tabloidbaby.com are having a lot of fun with this.  So here goes:

In this bleak, depressing strike-ridden movie season, many in Hollywood have wiled away the time playing the parlor game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, linking the intense actor to any other actor in the industry through six steps or less. But when it comes to the influential Cloud 9 (with a phenomenal cast also includes Paul Rodriguez, D.L. Hughley, Angie Everhart, Gabrielle Reece, Paul Garito, Gary Busey, Tony Danza and Tom Arnold) the connection to the great ones can be made in one link—or less-- and the phenomenon has brightened up a dreary list of Best Picture noms!

ATONEMENT

Atonement director Joe Wright made his debut with the short called The End. That was also the name of the classic 1978 black comedy that starred and was directed by Burt Reynolds. Atonement star Vanessa Redgrave appeared in the 1992 Merchant-Ivory classic, Howards End with Anthony Hopkins, whose name, clothing and alleged beach house play key plot points in Cloud 9.

JUNO

Star Rainn Wilson starred with Paul Rodriguez in Mario van Peebles’ 2003 documentary/homage to his father, BAADASSSSS! How to Get the Man's Foot Outta Your Ass.

MICHAEL CLAYTON

Michael Clayton star (and Best Actor nominee) George Clooney appeared with Cloud 9 costar Paul Rodriguez on the 2003 TV special, Playboy’s 50th Anniversary Celebration. He also appeared as “Joe” in the 1991 TV series Baby Talk, in which Tony Danza, who has a Hopkins-related cameo in Cloud 9, supplied the voice of a baby.

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN

Costar Barry Corbin appeared in 1982’s The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, which starred Cloud 9’s Burt Reynolds. On March 7, 2003, Star Woody Harrelson and Cloud 9 star D.L. Hughley shared the panel in the third episode of Season 1 of HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher.

THERE WILL BE BLOOD

Ten years ago, Cloud 9 star Burt Reynolds was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and won a Golden Globe Award for his role in Blood director Paul Thomas Anderson’s breakthrough film, Boogie Nights.

Cloud 9 stars Burt Reynolds as Billy Cole, a down-and-out conman living in Malibu who hits on the idea of starting a beach volleyball team comprised entirely of strippers! Hilarity most definitely ensues. 

(See the trailer here.)

Joaquin Blanco charms The Seventh Python

As we get a step closer to announcing release plans for our nonfiction musical film, The Seventh Python all the concert, interview and performance extras that will accompany its eventual DVD release-- and the original soundtrack CD and downloads-- we stop to mention another member of the Frozen team who's helping make this one of the best musical biopics in the history of rock 'n' roll.  And comedy.  

Joaquin Blanco, another film veteran with varied and wide experience in the industry, took control of the design content at the beginning and, in the end, followed up with color correction, exclusive graphics, the opening and closing credit sequences and finishing touches and the F& F Post Production facilities at the Los Angeles International Airport.

While his work in the film, television and forward-looking online industries continues to push past new boundaries, Blanco has also maintained a reputation among the avant garde and surrealist crowds as a prominent underground thinker and artist. 

He's perhaps best known to general public for his 2004 LAX-area holiday season installation, The Garbage Cane (above left). The giant, fifty-foot candy cane was made up of thirty garbage cans and adorned by faux-crystal lamps, lighting up the area, attracting Christmas car traffic from miles around and generating media attention from coast to coast.

Blanco had planned to top the work the following year with a Rudolph-lid rooftop installation, but retreated into obscurity when the idea was rejected by his partner and frequent collaborator in the Lennon-Ono, Nasty-Chastity (as seen at right) mode, Peggy Hippdom, AKA "The Keeper of The Silver Balls."

But that's his mysterioso side. We know Joaquin as a multi-talented moviemaking artiste, and his graphic, design and coloring work added more wonders to a project that's already full of magic. Once again, he's taken something special-- and taken it over the top!

Daniel Brown edited The Seventh Python!

When it came to editing our nonfiction musical motion picture The Seventh Python, we needed a pro with a sense of rhythm and an appreciation of music. Well, we got that an more the form of Daniel Brown, a veteran film and video editor who not only boasts Bonzo Dog Band elpees in his vinyl collection—but is an accomplished and acclaimed musician himself!

As his official biography informs us:

“Dan's musical journey began, starting with an aural exposure to his mother's Yoko Ono record collection…. Dan was able to persuade his parents, through negotiations and Sufi mystical mind tricks, that he should be allowed bring the family piano into his room so that he could play it while at the same time playing drums... Reaching the age of majority Dan found himself in New York attending an unnamed but high-priced private university to learn how to put two pieces of film together to make one piece of film. It is also at this time that his musical career starts to blossom.”

Dan is renowned in the music world as an avant garde, experimental, post-punk, indie percussionist who’s released acclaimed solo albums and worked with music groups including God Is My Co-Pilot. (the New York City band that toured in Europe and performed on the BBC 1 radio’s John Peel Sessions), “anarcho-musical terrorist group” Salmon Skin, the group Pacer (compared by Gerard Cosloy to Sonic Youth) and the trio Hall Of Fame, which have lot of albums you can find on line or on i-Tunes.

And did we mention our fellow music star is also an accomplished editor? Dan worked the board on Bluebook Films’ Bloodline, the chilling documentary that exposes the real life story behind the Da Vinci Code (written by yet another Dan Brown), the legendary The Gods of Times Square (just out on DVD), and television series as diverse as Raising The Roofs, Tourgasm and The Chelsea Handler Show.

The Seventh Python is coming soon. Dan made it rock!

The worldwide influence of Neil Innes

Our doco musical, The Seventh Python, is coming soon!