A Farewell to Hollywood

"Alas, poor Hollywood! I knew it, Horatio: a source of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. And now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it."

Ladies and Gentlemen,

We are face to face with the remarkable fact that Hollywood doesn’t exist anymore. Like so many of our institutions, it’s gone.

But the market for movies and streaming series is starving.

Here in Athens there is robust activity—production companies, studio space, talent, crew, and a 40% cash rebate on everything shot here.

My own circle includes Andreas Tsilifonis, head of Central Athens Film Productions; Anglo-Greek Chiltern Media; and my crew:

Cinematographer:  Panos Golfis

AD:                         Stella Manola

Line Producer:        Andreas Tsilifonis 

Camera:                  Yiannis Lascaris

Camera:                  Peter Salapatas

Camera:                  Adam Petritsis

Steadicam:             Michael Tsimperopoulos

Sound recordist:     Nikos Bougioukos

Film editor:              Kant Pan

Hair/makeup:          Maro Kokkoni

Sound design:         Valia Tserou

Sound mixer:           Kostas Varympopiotis

CGI:                        Harold Herbert

We can do anything. For example, entirely in Athens, we can make tiny-budget—

Faust: the movie

Woody Allen’s audience—older, educated, sophisticated—has been abandoned. 

They need us.

In the tiny Balkan country of Panurgia, wedged between Italy and Slovenia—

(See it? You really have to zoom.)

—German hacker Heinrich Faust, under contract to the Kremlin, has removed Pentagon files and is waiting in a bar he won in a card game for his money to be delivered digitally. 

Adrian Frieling

In the same game he lost his soul to Mephistopheles—and won it back again, and now the two are dueling over who exists and who doesn't.

Gregory Patrick Karr

Sister St. Helen, vivacious, callow, naïve, a Candide of a girl, believes anything. The other sisters are so in love with her that they think she's an instrument of the Devil, and subject her to a cruel exorcism.

Skyrah Archer

Faust's mistress, Sasha the Assassin, is also a mistress of disguise. You never know who's coming for you.

Despina Mirou

CIA asset Priapo Smegman’s foot fetish leads him into Faust’s bar, into the clutches of the CIA, and into abducting Sister St. Helen—

Duncan Skinner

—with whom Father Rosario is also in love, and he must witness the sadistic casting out of the Devil, until Sasha takes a hand. He finds his sense of direction in Faust, who teaches him about life, not to say murder.

Patryk Michalak

A radiant angel has Mephisto in her cross hairs, but he refuses to be drawn in.

Antigone Kouloukakos

Panurgia’s Queen Delicia, much to the king’s distress, is having an affair with Faust, and in her official capacity is able to help him with the disposal of the bodies. She can get anything done.

Georgia Siakavara

Question: When you rescue a kidnapped nun 

and she falls in love with you, what 

do you tell your mistresses?

Theme song

Pretentious Pictures Presents

Faust: the movie

Robert MacLean is an independent filmmaker. His The Light Touch is on Amazon Prime, Tubi and Scanbox, and his 7-minute comedy is an out-loud laugh. He is also a novelist, a playwright, a blogger, a YouTuber, a film reviewer, a literary critic, and a stand-up comic poet. Born Toronto, PhD McGill, taught at Canadian universities, too cold, live Greece, Irish citizen. No brains but an intellectual snob.

“I don't understand why these Americans have to suffer so much to identify with their characters. Me, I just get up there and act. It's great fun. There's no suffering in it.”

The Light Touch on Amazon Prime

The Natural Wish to Be Robert MacLean

The Devil's Pleasure Garden

Loose Shoes

Reg’d © Library of Congress
A black comedy set in a small seaside hotel

A very very nice woman, on vacation in a beach hotel, meets a very very bad woman, who looks just like her—in fact they’re both played by Despina Mirou—and is determined to seduce Ms Nice’s husband.

Ms Bad is a nightclub singer who impersonates Lucy, Marilyn, Liz, Marlene, Kim, Bette, Joan and Vivien—and captivates Mr Nice. (Tom Malloy)

She is also a dominatrix—

—in the employ of an English aristocrat who enjoys being tortured by her. (Duncan Skinner)

As the ladies step into each other’s shoes their men, and then they themselves, lose track of who they’re supposed to be.

Pretentious Pictures presents a summer comedy.

Reg’d © Library of Congress

Feminism

(A chapter in YOU HAVE UPSET THE BALANCE OF THE UNIVERSE BY BEING BORN: Advice on How to Live by Dr Robert MacLean, PhD: http://robertmaclean.blogspot.com/p/you-have-upset-balance-of-universe-by.html.  A new one every so often.)
    
    Freud taught us that every act is sexual (see Freud).  With the women's movement we have emerged into that Periclean light of day in which every act is political.
    It is in some places now illegal to speak of women as in any way different from men.  If you are a man you may feel you know better but try to keep the issue in the background.  They taught you how to put on your own pants.  You didn't like that.  They taught you how to tie your shoes.  You didn't like that.  You can do this too.
    Women are a constant in life.  You can't run away from them.  Many men actually become women (see HOMOSEXUALITY, YOUR).  You have at least one woman inside you, possibly more.  You are outnumbered.
    Feminism has refined our manners (see MANNERS).  The Doctor believes that we are here for a holiday.  A change.  Shooting-the-rapids sort of thing.  Soon we'll be back in our livingrooms watching TV.  Progress is the good we do while we're here, a natural offshoot of our divinity.  (But see MORALITY.)
    Many women are working towards a value-affirming committee-endorsed rapprochement after which everything will become smooth and predictable.  You regard this as a little ambitious but you play along.
    "Well then are you a feminist, Doctor?"
    "Not particularly."
    "Why not?"
    "I don't know.  Why am I not a Methodist?"
    "Perhaps you weren't born into a Methodist family."
    "Were you born into a feminist family?"
    "How do you know I'm a feminist?"
    "How do I know I'm sitting in a chair?"
    "Because your ass is going to sleep?"
    "That's exactly how I know you're a feminist."
    Remember, you're as good as they are.  You even have tits.