THIS WEEK FEATURING: Doomsday Prophet, ICM’s Executive Story Editor Christopher Lockhart, Movies This Week a mini Review of “The Mist”, Peru’s Human Sacrifices, and more…

They laughed at Ezekiel too. Prophet Pyotr Kuznetsov sent his followers underground to wait for the end of the world, which he said would come sometime next year in May. Kuznetsov’s followers, called “doomsday cult members,” have sealed themselves in a “cave” or a bunker in a snowy forest near the Volga River, threatening to blow themselves up if authorities intervene.

Why not just wait until May and see what happens? Maybe they are on to something.

The 29 members have wisely stocked food supplies and canisters of gasoline waiting for the end of the world in the structure 400 miles southeast of Moscow.

Adding insult to the historical significance of prophecy, Kuznetsov is being detained by police and is undergoing psychiatric evaluation. He was charged with setting up a religious organization associated with violence, the True Russian Orthodox Church, after he split with the official Church.

Kuznetsov blessed his followers before sending them into the cave earlier this month. Kuznetsov, 43, a trained engineer who comes from a deeply religious family, declared himself a prophet several years ago, left his family and settled in Nikolskoye. Not surprisingly, Kuznetsov has been diagnosed with schizophrenia. What would psychiatrists say about the prophet Ezekiel, who was told by God to eat his own poop and dutifully did so?

Would doctors say Ezekiel was suffering from coprophagia or obeying a command from God?

Many Russians have refused new passports and taxpayers' personal identification numbers, saying the figures contained "satanic" combinations of numbers.

Frog Arrested in Drug Bust. Missouri police made a peculiar drug bust this week when they caught a man with a toad he allegedly used to get high, KMBC-TV in Kansas City reported Tuesday. David Theiss, 21, of Kansas City, was accused of having a Colorado River Toad for the purpose of using it as a hallucinogenic, KMBC-TV reported.

"People used to do it all the time, but it got faded out awhile, but came back as a fad. Not a smart one," animal expert Danny Snyder told KMBC-TV. "The toxins in it can kill a lot of stuff."

Both Theiss and the toad were taken into custody. While Theiss was released on bond, the toad remains detained at a police crime lab on suicide watch.

 

International Creative Management’s Executive Story Editor Christopher Lockhart. Everyone is writing a screenplay. ICM’s Chris Lockhart will take THE INSIDE PITCH to the Alameda Writers Group in Glendale, California on Saturday, December 1, 2007 from 9:45 AM – NOON. Chris will listen to pitches and offer feedback!  Afterward, the audience will vote for the best pitch, and Chris will read the winner’s script and provide story notes via a phone conference. The event is free.  Details can be found at www.alamedawritersgroup.org. This is a fantastic opportunity.

I love Christopher Lockhart!   

(Hey Chris, I’ve got a “pitch” for you, but I’m still afraid of you!)

 

For those who cannot make it, Chris will be holding an informal Q&A chat in the www.twoadverbs.com chat room the following day, Sunday, December 2, from 10AM – 11:30AM PST (1PM – 2:30PM EST). Also, Chris will teach his INSIDE HOLLYWOOD SCREENWRITING class for six Saturdays in 2008. The class will meet from 10AM – 1PM on March 1, 8, 15, 29 and April 5, 12 at Los Angeles Valley College in the San Fernando Valley. Tuition is (approximately) $90.00 and is a great bargain! 

I met Chris Lockhart at the 2003 Las Vegas Screenwriters Conference held at the Treasure Island Hotel & Casino. The nearly 100 attendees could choose from concurrent sessions, but clearly it was ICM’s Chris Lockhart who enthralled the audience with his charismatic, blunt counsel.

Here is what I wrote about Chris: Chris summed up the script writing process quite elegantly: “In all likelihood, none of you will ever sell a script to Hollywood.”

Writing is easy, getting in to pitch to an agent is impossible. This is why what Chris offers is, so frankly, astonishing.

Chris’s 2 day sessions at the Conference were called “In The Room, How To Get There: The Art of the Pitch.” Lockhart was devastatingly blunt, cruel, and very, very funny. He was also so engaging, passionate, and honest that he captivated the audience regardless of his appraisal of their movie pitch.

“I don’t care about growth! I care about struggle.”

What kind of scripts is Chris interested in? Well, he hates angels. So keep angels (as well as aliens) out of your script. He admitted everybody in Hollywood likes scripts with “fantasy routed in reality.”

Chris Lockhart is the most compelling person I have ever seen talk about movies. Who wouldn’t want Chris to represent them? He has the force of personality that could champion an unknown’s script straight into production. Chris has the kind of devilish charm to insult your screenplay while making you happy about it.  Chris can be contacted through www.twoadverbs.com.

 

The Mist. Stephen King wants to hang anyone who reveals the new ending to this terrific thriller. Like King, I understand the historical significance of human sacrifice, now called genocide.

 

Doing publicity for The Mist, King said: “Frank wrote a new ending that I loved. It is the most shocking ending ever and there should be a law passed stating that anybody who reveals the last 5 minutes of this film should be hung from their neck until dead.”

 

Well, okay, I’ll skirt around the end theme director-screenwriter Frank Darabont added to King’s novella. Too bad. I have a lot to say about it.

 

A fog suddenly rolls into an idyllic Maine town. Movie poster artist David Drayton’s (Thomas Jane) lakeside house is severely damaged by a violent storm. Taking his young son with him, he goes to pick up supplies at the village grocery store. Packed with locals, including David’s nemesis-neighbor, the mist starts engulfing everything. The military are suddenly highly visible indicating this is not an ordinary weather borne mist.   

I don’t have a clue how a large group of people actually react in these kinds of dangerous situations, but in Movieland, everyone just stands around waiting for a self-appointed few to step forward, take charge, and issue orders. David, supported by the supermarket’s manager, leads the sheep. They have plenty of food and supplies but nobody (my logical approach) starts hoarding food or claiming territory.  

 

When a young market clerk attempts to go outside and gets eaten by a monster, the passive shoppers decide to sit it out. Like me, Mrs. Carmody (Marcia Gay Harden) carries her Bible everywhere she goes. With no one having another theory about what the hell is going on, an End-Of-Times scenario looks like a pretty good guess.

 

 

 

As Stephen King knows, human sacrifice has never really gone away. Appeasing vengeful gods with a child sacrifice is built into mankind’s reptilian psyche. Ritual infanticide is a foundation stone of many cultures and a universal custom. There is probably a very good reason for its longevity and its usefulness.

 

We first encounter human sacrifice as a standard practice in The Old Testament.

“After these things God tested Abraham, and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here am I.”  He said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering upon one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.” (Gen. 22:1-2)

Scholars have written that this Abraham-Isaac tale effectively put an end to the widespread practice of human sacrifice as an appeasement offering. God was perfectly without his rights in demanding Abraham’s only son.  Many religious scholars think Abraham actually sacrificed Isaac because here is how the story ends:

“So Abraham returned to his young men, and they arose and went together to Beer-sheba; and Abraham lived at Beer-sheba.” (Gen. 22:19)

(Did Cain murder Abel or sacrifice him? After all, God rewarded Cain with a special mark of protection and a stern warning that “if anyone kills Cain, Cain shall be avenged sevenfold” (Gen. 4:15), great blessings, and a fruitful tribe.)

Has Stephen King read “The Highest Altar: Unveiling the Mystery of Human Sacrifice” by Patrick Tierney? In 1983, while accompanying archaeologists conducting high-altitude excavations in South America, Tierney made a startling discovery: human sacrifice is still being practiced today in remote regions of Chile and Peru.  In La Paz, Boliva (one of my favorite high altitude countries), mountain gods with their leader, Tiu Supraya, live in the mountains, and have great power to bestow wealth - particularly mineral wealth - or to harm people. Human sacrifice is still required.

Mrs. Carmody is the only person to come up with an idea on what to do about the flying monsters. After all, she is spared, so I would indeed be on her side. She might be on to something when she suggests that these creatures need a child sacrifice.

I would love to comment on the terrific, highly symbolic ending of “The Mist,” but that would be a “spoiler” and King knows that is verboten to reviewers. If readers think I have given away too much of a plot, I hear from them.

 

But the ending does bring up another absolutely fascinating key to human nature I have been researching. When do you give up? In my reading of the Holocaust (recently, “Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: The Operation Reinhard Death Camps” by Yitzhak Arad) here is what comes to the fore: Never give up hope. As the victims ran naked through “The Tube” to the gas chamber-showers, they kept hoping someone would come and rescue them. Every moment of life counts.

 

Peruvian Human Sacrifice as Thanksgiving Feast. The October 2002 issue of The New Scientist reported that the sacrificed remains of 200 fishermen been excavated from a beach in Peru. Archaeologists believe the victims were kneeling, tied and blindfolded, facing the waves, then stabbed through the heart as an offering by their Chimu conquerors (1100 to 1476) to Ni, god of the sea in the year 1350.

The grisly find represents the biggest case of human sacrifice discovered in South America. Human sacrifice at that time was fairly common in some parts of the world. Human sacrifice can happen for a number of reasons - sometimes, it's as revenge, sometimes as appeasement, and sometimes as thanksgiving.

It was the Chimu’s idea of Happy Thanksgiving! Being a vegetarian since I was 16 years old, on Thursday I raised a glass of diluted fruit juice to the Turkey God, and told him to pick something from my Wish List.

 

Let’s Hold a John Waters Fund Raising Gala!  I’ve been to enough black tie galas to know it is best to be sitting at a patron’s $10,000 table. You always get a great gift! John Waters, the man who dreamed up “Hairspray," has devised a devilish new way to raise money. Instead of a black-tie dinner filled with boring speeches, bad music and worse food, (What fund raisers has he been to? Certainly not the ones I attended at Tavern on the Green and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts), he's dreamed up what he calls “an un-gala.” Here are the rules: “You have to prove your outfit cost less than $200. You have to have been photographed in it one time before and bring the picture." The cleaning crew gives the speeches. You draw a ticket to which table you sit at. There are no power tables." Would anyone come?," Waters was asked. He replied, “You don't tell them till they get there! And you let everyone in free and make 'em pay to get out. That definitely would work. You could have fun with the whole thing. And un-raise money."