acting reel

my acting demo

copy and paste to watch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5VZWdMVRco

The Dallas International Film Festival

Divine Access will be at the Dallas International Film Festival on April 13 and 14. Should be loads of fun. Tickets are on sale now.

http://secure.dallasfilm.org/festivalfeature/id/23871675209902286

Divine Access coming soon

Believe what you want to believe.

My movie Divine Access has a brand new divine web site as it prepares to launch. Read all about it...

http://www.divineaccessmovie.com/#

dog language

Someone once told me that dogs understand every word that you tell them. I didn't really believe that - until I got Fletcher. And being a Jack Russell must mean that, when he appears not to listen, he's actually just ignoring me.

The Confederate Dead

On the grounds of the Texas Capitol is a memorial to the Texas soldiers and sailors who were killed in The Civil War. The text on the monument goes on and on about state's rights as guaranteed in the US Constitution, and how these brave men took up arms against their homeland to assert these rights. The right to own slaves is not mentioned on the plaque.

But the memorial does have a great tableau of statues. 

The figures do more for the memory of those who fought than any differences those sides might have had - differences both sides took with them to their graves.

Tai Chi

Just a reminder that I've had Fletcher two years now. He continues to be a playful, energetic, great little guy. 

One of his finest moments happened while I walked him in the park, off-leash. Six or eight people were performing their tai chi exercise, doing that slow motion zen stuff. Fletcher did not like the looks of them, moving their arms and legs and torsos with just slightly more animation than a tree. The sight of them just didn't sit right with him, and he sounded the alarm, barking like crazy, warning anyone else nearby to stay away from these slow motion people. (Fletcher has also barked at statues.) 

I leashed him up and got him out of there. Then I told him he was a good dog.

Divine Access

A screenplay that I began 12 years ago wrapped production at the end of May. It was an idea that started with Steven Prince, the first couple of drafts written by me. Steve went to work on the script then. At one point, our work won first place in the Santa Barbara Screenplay competition. Nice to have the recognition, but the studios and production companies were not kicking down our doors to throw money at our feet. But Steve always pushed it, uphill much of the time. He ended up directing it.

It's Divine Access, starring Billy Burke, Gary Cole, Patrick Warburton, Dora Madison, and Joel David Moore. Adrienne Barbeau has a nice part in it as well. The cinematographer was Julie Kirkwood, who made the whole thing look just beautiful. As a bonus, I was cast in a role, playing a hayseed who has a near death experience after choking on a hot dog. 

Currently, Divine Access is in post-production. 

Inspired by this taste of acting again, I was motivated to update my head shot:

Looking through my Cuba photos from a year ago, this is one of my favorites. I shot it with the iPad mini, out a vehicle window, a quick draw and shoot. So, it's not technically the best. But look at the magic hour colors, the decaying architecture, the driver heading into the sun in a classic car. Yeah, even the hat is cool...

Click on the photo to enlarge it.

corrected format

It was pointed out to me that the books of mine that had appeared in hardcover had been uploaded onto Amazon Kindle in a format that was haywire, jumbled, crazy, bewildering...

So, I went through the three novels, line by line, and corrected the format. The work does look good now, and reading through the stories again, I found quite a bit that I liked. The novels still hold up.

If you go to my Kindle page (click on a book cover up above), you can then click on an individual book for a free preview. Even if you decide not to purchase one at a bargain rate, I hope you enjoy the free samples.

Since I'm beginning to get some credits listed on imdb.com, I tried uploading an image for that web site to use - various photos from productions, older headshots. But imdb does not seem to want to publish them. Here they are anyway:

a headshot

a frame from Fight Club

growing my beard out for a western

a clean-shaven headshot

Sundrawn art

This entire area was swept clean a couple of months ago when Shoal Creek flooded, leaving nothing around the tree trunks except newly deposited gravel. Earlier this week, a kind of art installation appeared. Reminiscent of the old wood-burning kits, images have been burned onto logs using only the sun and a magnifying glass. The logs are standing on end for now. They seem too heavy and bulky for anyone to walk away with one of them. Sooner or later, though, the creek will claim them. Months or years from now, the sundrawn art might be a part of the debris piled up in the next flood.

Fletcher at the park

My routine with Fletcher has developed into taking him into Pease Park across the street about an hour before dark. He has had his dinner, and he has learned that it's the last romp of the day...which means he feels free to completely ignore any suggestion or command from me. Such is the temperament of a terrier.

Here's a three-minute illustration:

an appreciation of Strother Martin

This is a clip from Hard Times (1975), featuring the great character actor Strother Martin. Usually cast as prairie trash, derelicts and deviants, he is unusually dapper here in the company of James Coburn. Playing a sidekick by the name of Poe (thus the reference to the poet), Strother could well be channeling Tennessee Williams. Wouldn't that have been something? Strother Martin as Big Daddy, or even Williams himself.

I've been posting videos of my trip to Cuba on my youtube channel, "msz1923". They should number more than thirty by the time I'm done. Some of them are very brief - well under a minute. But they're kind of interesting and informative little glimpses at any length. This one is a Santeria dance, whose origin is a combination of of African and Caribbean culture. The cave is the location where runaway and escaped slaves hid out, in the Viñales area east of Havana. Here is the youtube link to it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PGhogLIX9c

Cuba's Vintage Cars

I am putting together an ebook of photos that I took in Cuba of the vintage cars there. Barring computer glitches, and a minimum of procrastination, look for it on Amazon by the end of the month...

Cuba

My week Cuba was remarkable. Very friendly people. And with their lack of amenities, it was a rarity to see anyone fiddling with a cell phone or blackberry, stumbling around focused on the device in their fingertips. I loved it.

A couple of street artists sketched caricatures of me. I particularly like the first one - such an economy of lines, how the cheek becomes the glasses, the glasses become the forehead - all done in a few seconds. They draw on a scrap of poster paper, hand it over to you, and ask for nothing. Of course, you give them something for their effort.

The second artist was on the following day...

Take a look at my youtube channel, "msz1923" for videos of Cuba that I'm gradually putting up...

The Last Man in Paradise

Rescued from a storage box beneath my bed, I have just posted a neglected novel on Amazon Kindle. Available for the first time, and at the bargain basement price of $3.98, it's The Last Man in Paradise. If, like me, you do not have a Kindle device, download the free app for your laptop or iPad. It works just fine that way too.

My Amazon Kindle page:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&field-keywords=Michael+Zagst

Fletcher The Dog

I've gotten a new roommate, courtesy of Russell Rescue, Inc. As roommates go, you couldn't ask for much more. He's respectful of my property, housebroken, crate trained, neutered, and microchipped. Best of all, Fletcher is not aggressive with other dogs. Terriers do have to be outwitted from time to time, but it's clear that he's a good one.

Fletcher

And here he is in action, star of The Fletcher The Dog Show, Fletcher the dog:

In Scotland

I was recently reading the journal/diary my that my grandfather kept when he enlisted in the navy in World War 1. He wasn't very educated or sophisticated,  or travelled, and most of the entries just listed the drudgery of military routine - standing watch, washing his laundry, receiving letters from home, but rarely revealing their contents. Now and then, a detail cropped up that was intriguing, perhaps because the specifics were so lacking:

--On Lake Michigan, at the Great Lakes Naval station, he saw snow falling for the first time. He was 25 years old.

--An officer in one of the Great Lakes barracks went insane, and had to be restrained and taken away.

--Theodore Roosevelt addressed the assembled troops on the parade ground. But he was too far away for my grandfather to photograph him clearly.


--The sailor running the ship store was caught stealing, and was put in the brig on a ration of bread and water.

--On the Atlantic, homeward bound, escaping the crowded hammocks and stuffy air below, he slept on the deck of his battleship, the USS Delaware. During the crossing, he spotted a two-masted schooner, and a whale.

--While overseas, the ship and crew of the Delaware were inspected by the king of England.

Queen Elizabeth's grandfather

The one incident I could picture clearly was when he was granted a twelve-hour shore leave off the coast of Scotland, while the Delaware was at anchor in the Firth of Forth. He decided with his brother, who was assigned to the same ship, to walk three miles into the town of Dumfermline. On the way, the two of them  were caught in the open in a sudden rainfall. They took shelter beneath a bridge, and talked to each other for a couple of hours, about the folks back home, about their shipmates, how lucky they were not to be in the trenches, and all the events that had brought them to this place.

When the rain cleared enough to continue their walk, they bought post cards and tobacco, and found a photo studio where they had their portraits done in traditional Scottish garb.

my grandfather

my great uncle

They found the local YMCA, where they were given doughnuts and coffee. My grandfather, the one in the upper photo, played the piano there until it was time to make the walk back to the Delaware.

I stopped near Smithville on a drive from Austin to Houston yesterday. This is an overpass over the Colorado River. Too many swallow nests to count. They line the concrete, protected from the elements by the overhang. Laid end to end, both sides of the two overpasses would probably stretch for a mile, at least. Nice engineering on each nest, too.


Let's say each foot of concrete has five nests, packed with mud and grass like adobe. 5280 feet times 5 is 26,400 nests. Each nests will hatch 4 to 7 eggs. Call it 5 hatches. Two adults plus five hatchlings comes to 158,000 birds.


And then you come to the next overpass, less than a mile away.

(click to enlarge)