The Justin Guber Institute

Pimpin' In Pusan

		Monday, 23 November 09 - 05:00 PM (GMT +08:00) By Khairil Mokhzani Bahar in Filmmaking Frolics

So it's been a while since I've blogged. A helluva while. And though there are many recent events and thoughts in my head that I wish to blog I can't let the past few months go unnoticed, now can I? That'd be like buying a 5 disc DVD series with one disc in the middle missing and wondering halfway why Jack Bauer went from fighting his old partner to suddenly stopping the Candyman from killing the female president.

Throughout the middle of the year you could say I was going through a... transitional phase. A lot of things hadn't worked out and I realized more and more that I'd been slowly transforming into the Fat Angry Man which is not the type of future I had envisioned for myself. For a good three months I didn't have any jobs coming in either, so I spent most of that time trying to figure out where it all went wrong, trying to figure out how to make things better, how to make myself better and how to crack an egg without getting yolk all over the rim of the frying pan.

So slowly I exercised and controlled my diet so I could lose weight and figured out what was the source of so much of my anger and frustration and after a while I went from being an Angry Fat Man to just a Man. I got by with a lil' help from my friends and picked myself up, bit by bit, and it felt good to be just a Man again.

Then I took a trip to Pusan with the 15Malaysia peeps and went from Man to Pimp.

(If you can't see the video above click here.)

The moment I got to the airport, before we'd even boarded, I already felt different. Better. Things were a little more fun. The whole time beforehand I'd been worried about whether or not I'd have any fun on the trip for some reason. There was the fear of being trapped in an unknown country feeling emo. Thankfully, that wasn't the case.

Straight away we started to naturally form our little cliques - the people that we'd most probably hang out with throughout the entire trip. It wasn't really segregation, as we all hung out with each other at some point, but for most of the trip I had a specific set of peeps:-

1. Jordan

One half of the Suleiman brothers (Dique couldn't make it because of health reasons), those responsible for the excellent 'Rojak' short film for 15Malaysia which I also acted in.

I'd known Jordan since we were 16 back in Concord College in England. I played in my first proper band with the dude and I've seen his company 'Voxel' grow as the years go by. The Pusan trip was the first time in a long time that I'd hung out with the dude for a long period of time. Second we met at the airport we just went back into our usual schtick.

2. Benji & Bahir

I'd never met these two up until the whole 15Malaysia thing got going. For some reason we always got paired for interviews n' stuff. These guys were responsible for the hillarious 'Meter' short film featuring politician KJ.

The weirdest thing is how we'd only really met each other during this whole 15Malaysia thing considering we both came out with our debut low budget features at the same time. Both 'Ciplak' and their feature debut 'Skali' came out at around the same time and there was even an article where both our films were featured side-by-side in KLue.

3. Namron

I'd met Namron before as an actor under the direction of Johan John for both 'Andai' and 'Cahaya'. Namron directed one of the more serious shorts of the 15Malaysia series, 'Lollipop', which dealt with paedophilia.

We both ended up being room-mates on the trip too.

4. Rizal

Rizal was the only non-director in our little gang. A writer from the Star and an excellent bassist, I first met him when he interviewed me for 'Ciplak' and we've been friends since, though I hadn't seen him for a long time up until this trip. Dude's hella cool and wrote a great article about the trip too which can be found here.

Together with the rest of the directors along for the ride as well as them good folk over at Ruumz, the trip was looking to be hella fun.

But nothing prepared me for the red carpet:

(If you can't see the video above click here).

Words cannot describe how that felt. Seriously. The day we arrived we only had a few hours before we had to leave to the red carpet and when we arrived we thought we walked down the wrong entrance and missed the whole thing. But we didn't. That was just the red carpet for the entrance. The actual red carpet was inside and a lot longer than we thought it would be.

When we walked in I was somewhere in the middle of the line but somehow when we got to the stage area for press photos before walking onto the red carpet I ended up at the front of the pack. I remember thinking, "these people don't know who the hell we are. I'm just gonna walk humbly down this thing and enjoy the experience."

The second we walked forward onto the red carpet packs of Korean female fans were screaming their asses off.

I didn't believe it at first, thinking they must be screaming for the person before us or the person after us, but out of curiosity I raised one hand to wave... and the screams got louder. I raised my other hand to wave... and they got even louder. Finally, I raised both to see if I could coax an even bigger reaction and the crowd continued screaming and applauding even louder.

And I can honestly say I have never felt so Pimp in my entire life.

We later realized that whenever a female actress walked down the red carpet there was hardly any screaming. We then realized that the majority of the audience were young Korean girls. Perhaps they were just applauding our sweet tanned asses, God only knows, but it was an insane experience. For me, especially, it was insane because after winning the Anugerah Skrin for 'Ciplak' I never thought I'd experience a moment like that again, but walking down that red carpet topped that experience by a huge margin.

After the red carpet experience (which included Josh Hartnett walking down the red carpet and a very cute Korean girl pop group singing the theme song from 'Pearl Harbor') we went for Korean BBQ and the opening night party before calling it a night. It would later turn out that we'd be going to parties EVERY night.

The next day we had the screening of 15Malaysia at the fest as well as the 15Malaysia party.

(If you can't see the video above click here).

The screening went well and the 15Malaysia party turned out to be both one of the best parties for the whole trip as well as the most emotional for a lot people as everyone paid tribute to the late, great Yasmin Ahmad by releasing hundreds of balloons of her favorite color (white) into the air. Though I'd never gotten the chance to meet her in person, I'd always admired her as a filmmaker and for a lot of the people there who had met her in person and known her, the whole scene was very touching and emotional for them.

Pusan itself is a cool place, even though there were severe communication breakdowns. Regardless, one of the cool things about the Pusan International Film Festival is the fact that the screenings are spread throughout all the cinemas in Pusan in various malls so, in effect, the entire town is a film festival.

(If you can't see the video above click here).

And the food... oh, God, the food! A Korean BBQ meal that would set you back about twenty or thirty bucks a head only costs about eight bucks a head there.

(If you can't see the video above click here).

One thing I especially liked was that new bonds were made between us filmmakers. It's interesting how the little cliques formed naturally. Myself and the fellow Pusan pimps I was hanging out with were pretty much on the same wavelength and conversations flowed like water, as did moments of insane silliness such as the video below:

(If you can't see the video above click here).

All I was trying to do was use the moving walk-way handles as a crude dolly system to get a tracking shot of the gang as they walked so that I could cut together a 'Reservoir Dogs' style shot in the airport. Then Benji started dancing. I have no idea why. He just started dancing. So I asked him to do it again. And again and again. And he did every time. And right after that my mind started racing trying to figure out how to cut that footage together into a surreal video. Hillariously, he is being recognized more in public for the 'Wonderman' video than for his work as a director.

I don't know about the other filmmakers, but for our little clique it felt like we were rockstars, this being our first international film festival and all. So much so that leaving was a slightly sad affair:

(If you can't see the video above click here. Please note that for some reason, this video is not viewable in some countries).

The effects of the trip are still being felt to this day. Before the trip I had been very conflicted about this whole filmmaking thing, every day getting more and more jaded with every meeting with a film company or TV station or producer, making me wonder whether there was any point in doing the films and telling the stories that I wanted to tell since producers wanted the same derivative crap over and over again (and that's not an opinion. I was actually told that by a producer without a hint of shame in his voice).

Seeing how an audience overseas reacted to our films was one thing. To meet people from all over the world who knew and were interested in Malaysian filmmaking was nuts. At least for me, it helped me realize that there's no point pandering - there's an audience somewhere out there for anything you have in your mind to film.

On top of that, myself and the other filmmakers in our little clique have now been working together ever since that trip and the work flow's been steady and good. Though sometimes it feels a bit hectic and insane and sometimes I'd like to shoot the end clients in the head I'm always reminded of how insanely dull and boring it was during that three months prior to Pusan when I didn't have a single job at all. That whole trip wasn't just a holiday for me - it was a book mark in my life leading on to a whole new chapter and I'll never forget it.

Thank you, Pete, for this opportunity, and thank you Albert for all the insane multi-tasking leg work you had to undertake for all of us. Thank you P1 for the funding and thank you Ruumz for the sponsorship for the trip.

Most of all, thank you Pusan. You were brilliant.

Pimpin' Off To Pusan

		Wednesday, 07 October 09 - 04:36 AM (GMT +08:00) By Khairil Mokhzani Bahar in Filmmaking Frolics

So for those not in the know, the last thing I did before becoming a hermit for a couple of months was a short film called 'Healthy Paranoia' for 15 Malaysia, a short film project where 15 local filmmakers created 15 short films about what we thought of our lovely country:-

And there's also a making of here:-

The flick was shot with the actual Minister of Health in the Ministry of Health itself and the dude was a pretty cool guy too. Amongst the other filmmakers involved were the late Yasmin Ahmad, Col. Kurtz himself - Johan John, the Suleimans, Benji & Bahir and a whole bunch of pimp daddies rollin' in the caddies.

When I took the job, I just thought it'd be fun to do a short film on a budget. Gig's a gig, right? What I didn't expect was to find myself with a sponsored trip together with the other pimp daddies to the Pusan International Film Festival in Korea.

Sweet.

Thing is, I thought since I have my 5D and haven't been doing enough with the damn thing, I figured instead of blogging about the experience I might as well video blog it. Of course, this depends on whether or not I find the time to edit and upload whilst I'm there (or whether I'm of sound health and mind during the trip to do so).

Regardless, here's part one:-

Wednesday is flight day. Let's see what bad craziness we get up to...

Melodies/Memories

		Wednesday, 09 September 09 - 01:24 AM (GMT +08:00) By Khairil Mokhzani Bahar in Brain Stew

When I was thirteen I discovered fifties rock n' roll and thus began my love for this wonderful thing we call music and the power it has over a person. When I first heard Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode" I felt like I discovered something magical, like a great secret was laid down to me - "this is music, and it's gonna be with you for the rest of your life".

In truth, however, music didn't really become ingrained into my bloodstream until I discovered that not only could I listen to it, I could make my own too. I was into poetry ever since my English teacher in prep school told me that I had a natural talent for it and I would often write poems to express whatever it was I was feeling or thinking, distilling the haywire of pre-pubescent thoughts into small, concise lines.

Hip-hop gave me the opportunity to express myself in music without having to actually learn how to play music. When I was about fifteen my father bought me a keyboard and I'd use the pre-set drum patterns as a beat whilst laying down some incredibly basic bass lines and write rhymes to lay on it.

When I discovered Nirvana it changed the playing field once again - Kurt was left handed, just like I was, and a friend of mine went about teaching me some very basic chords so that I could play some Nirvana tracks. I went from writing rhymes to laying down lyrics, and by the time I was in A-levels I was in my first proper band playing bass.

Ever since then I've been in one band or another, and ever since I've been writing songs.

These days I've found myself listening to a lot of music that I've heard a hundred times before, only this time I find myself really listening to the lyrics. I've heard "Hey Jude" a thousand times before but only recently do I find myself really listening to the lyrics. Lyrics were always what I was into in the first place - poetry, placing the right structure of words together in the right amount to express a specific feeling, an emotion, a thought, and doing so melodically.

It's amazing how music can sometimes just trigger something - how something someone wrote in another place at another time about something that has nothing to do with what you're going through, but somehow you relate to every word, every feeling the track evokes. Other times, a song can trigger something simply because in your mind and in your heart it's associated with some moment, some person, something, anything, and it floods your every pore, for better or worse.

I totally forgot Corinne Bailey Rae's "Like A Star" was on my playlist when it came on at random, and it just made me miss the person I associate that song with a whole lot more.

(Ironically, just as I wrote that paragraph above, "Love Hurts" by Nazareth came on. Either my Winamp player is being sadistic or I should get more mp3's. Or maybe just play "Surfin' Bird" by The Thrashmen on loop.)

You Do Not Fuck With This Man

		Tuesday, 25 August 09 - 09:56 PM (GMT +08:00) By Khairil Mokhzani Bahar in Geek-o-rama

You just don't. I can't think of a single movie where it would be a good idea to fuck with Clint Eastwood. And from some of the stories I've heard about in Hollywood, it's probably not a good idea to fuck with him in real life either. Shit, even when he had a monkey for a sidekick (sorry, I meant ape) you didn't fuck with his sidekick. And Gran Torino has every bad ass motherfucker Clint's ever played rolled into one bitter old son of a bitch.

I've been watching a lot of comedies for the past two months (though for about two days last week it was violent and bleak movies), just trying to keep my spirits up. 'Mallrats' has never failed me, nor has most of Kevin Smith's work (though 'Chasing Amy' is a bit too painful to watch) but it's been getting old and a lot of the new comedies feel... cheap. The last mind-blowingly refreshingly good comedy I saw was 'The 40 Year Old Virgin' and though there've been a few since that have been good, nothing particularly exciting or surprising.

The last thing I expected was to find myself laughing throughout a Clint Eastwood drama.

Don't get me wrong - the movie's not a comedy, and I wasn't laughing at the movie as if it was so bad it was humorously good. I was laughing in surprise, in joy at watching the movie. Most of all, I was laughing in rejoice at how unabashedly badass Clint is.

Like I said earlier, this is all those characters of his that you've loved rolled into one - the political incorrectness of Dirty Harry Callahan, the no-bullshit attitude and moral code of every cowboy he's ever been from The Man With No Name to the Outlaw Josey Wales. All rolled into a man that's knocking on heavens door.

And he growls. He fuckin' growls, like a pitbull that you've just accidentally fucked with.

This is an old school man in every respect, and it's insanely refreshing to see a character like this on screen. He's not a bad man, and you can see his heart if you look past the unpleasentries. He's just a man, the way men were portrayed all those years ago, back when being a man meant something. And just watching this man go through this movie was an insanely fun ride.

And don't get me started on the direction and the script. I think anyone who's reviewed a Clint-directed movie has said the same thing - lean as fuck. Not an ounce of fat in the direction or the script, not a scene in that's unrequired, not a shot that's indulgent, just what you need and full stop.

By now you've probably noticed I haven't touched on the story at all. Why should I? There are tons of reviews out there and there's the trailer to check out. It's a movie where Clint is Clint, which is one of those things that are just a joy to watch.

Check it out. Find it. Slip it in your DVD player, sit back and enjoy. No CGI, no fancy editing, no pretty stars and starlets either banking in another paycheck or trying to prove their acting chops - just a good story starring Clint Eastwood. And if this truly is his last appearance as an actor, then it's a fitting end to a brilliant career.

Communication Breakdown

		Thursday, 20 August 09 - 07:58 PM (GMT +08:00) By Khairil Mokhzani Bahar in Brain Stew

So I write a blog. I write what I feel and think or post whatever I find is interesting or disturbing. And I like it. I enjoy writing my blog. I enjoy writing here because even though I hope whatever I write is something interesting for others to read, the only censorship is myself, there's no budget and no expectation of financial returns, it's writing for the pure joy of it.

But it'll never replace the real world.

What I write on my blog, I write for anyone to read. When I want to talk to my friends, I meet my friends. I look them in the eye and enjoy a conversation, because in my opinion there is no better way to communicate to another human being than face to face.

Don't get me wrong, I love how the internet connects millions together. Through Facebook I've managed to catch up with friends I thought long since forgotten and helped me pimp out whatever work or events or whatever I have to the public. E-mails have helped speed up work, helped me communicate with friends across the sea. And both have helped me communicate with others in general when I can't meet them.

But it's not a replacement. I'd rather talk to someone face to face than just read text or even through the wonderful world of Skype. I don't have MSN or Yahoo messenger for precisely that reason - it's like a poor excuse for a conversation.

Even the great communication tool we had before the internet, Alexander Graham Bell's telephone. It's great to communicate with, but it's not a replacement to me. If there's no other way to communicate but the phone or the internet I'll gladly use it but it's not a replacement.

I write this because I realize that with some people I know this is the only way they communicate with me, even if they're just a stone's throw away, and even when the shit hit's the fan and when there may be important things to talk about, it's still the phone, the net, anything. Anything but meeting up.

Perhaps with a lot of people these days there's no real difference, but to me there is a huge difference. Many people more intelligent than me have written reams of text on how things like the internet have severed real human interaction, real human connection, real conversations, making us lose touch of one of the many things that make us human - the fact that we communicate with each other.

When one person talks to another, it's not just their mouth that's talking, but their entire body - their eyes, their hands, their legs, everything. It's why on-line poker is never going to beat the real thing because it's sterile - you make a guess based on someone's on-line actions but you see nothing, absolutely nothing.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I would rather have a five minute conversation face to face with a friend of mine rather than a five hour conversation over the phone. If I can make time for a friend and they're in the same time zone as me, I would make time to meet them, especially if I thought what I was saying was important.

The internet, phones, whatever - they're all just tools of convenience, not replacements. And if a person meant something to me, even the slightest, I'd rather look them in the eye than stare at their profile picture.

Pretty ironic, I know, for someone who has a Facebook account, MySpace account, Friendster account and two e-mail addresses. But if there's one thing I realized today it's that if you're within short driving distance of someone and you spend more time talking to them on the phone or on the internet than meeting them face to face, either that person means as much to you as a random person that's added you on Facebook that you may have met but aren't too sure thus keeping your distance or you just don't want to meet that person (and vice versa).

Even starfish don't keep to themselves and they literally don't even have brains.

Kingfisher Birds and Bad Craziness

		Monday, 17 August 09 - 08:56 AM (GMT +08:00) By Khairil Mokhzani Bahar in Brain Stew

Spreading the On-Line Presence

		Thursday, 13 August 09 - 02:39 AM (GMT +08:00) By Khairil Mokhzani Bahar in Brain Stew

So yeah. So far since I first joined Terapad I haven't had too many complaints (apart from only being able to mess around with their templates and not being able to put your own layout) and since I've got my fingers in a couple of pies I've been doing up different websites for each of these thingeys.

1. Rollin' Sixers

Click here or the pic above to check out the site.

Though the band may have a MySpace and a Facebook Group page, I figured a website would help as well for use as a general place to put stuff up at (God, my grammar sucks tonight).

2. Checkered Past

Click here or the pic above to check out the site.

For my filmmaking stuff, since it';s all been under the banner of Checkered Past it was high time I did a website for the stuff. Both this and Sixers page haven't got much on them yet, but give it time, people.

3. Kraftwank

Click here or the pic above to check out the site.

Finally, one for the love, people. As some of you may know most of the stuff I do is packed with a lot of DIY-ing, and almost everything I know about filmmaking and musicmaking I learnt from the web, so why not create a site sharing the stuff I've learnt as well as the stuff I discover on-line?

Incidentally, I'm looking for fellow DIY creatives to add their own posts of experiences to the site. If you're interested, holla back via the contacts section. Or buzz/mail me. You probably know me if you're on this site anyway.

So there you have it. Three new sites which hopefully will not be left neglected and un-updated.

Yeah, right.

Experience This

		Wednesday, 12 August 09 - 06:37 PM (GMT +08:00) By Khairil Mokhzani Bahar in Filmmaking Frolics

I sincerely believe there are two types of writers, especially when it comes to screenplays.

The first type channels specific life experiences of their own into their writing - the names, faces, places and outcomes may be different to what happened, but the similarities to those real life experiences are there. Perhaps it's too exorcise whatever demons the writer may have lurking inside them, perhaps it's just because they're not too imaginative.

The second type writes purely from their imagination, either what they wish would happen or wish wouldn't happen in the world - the fantastical, the imaginary, the down-right weird. These are the ones whose ideas often start off with "wouldn't it be cool if..." or "imagine this..."

The best writers have both traits.

I reckon I've always belonged to the former - the type that writes about what he's experienced - but I've found myself turning more and more towards the latter.

The recent ideas I've been coming up with have been filled with large explosions, fight sequences, espionage, poker and Satan. And I'm quite sure I know why.

Because up until recently I've been blocking out my experiences for the past few years.

My original reasoning before this was that I needed to write something that made some dough or write something in Malay which makes me very nervous as the main thing I love writing is dialogue, but the fact of the matter is they're all just excuses.

It's strange - I've actually been complaining to myself that there aren't any personal experiences to write about when in actuality there have been plenty. I've just either not been able to see it from the correct point of view or simply didn't want to touch those experiences again with a ten foot pole.

It feels good to be able to look at things the way I used to again. It's incredibly refreshing, for one. The instability in some of my more human traits are still there, but they're no longer something I want to hide or repress. To accept life as is, the experiences life gives you, is a good feeling indeed, and I think I know what things to write about now.

Like my bowel movements.

Love, Or Something Like It

		Monday, 10 August 09 - 01:15 PM (GMT +08:00) By Khairil Mokhzani Bahar in Brain Stew

Let's talk, you and I. Let's talk about love.

It's been a good long while since I actually wrote about anything deeply personal, and for good reason - I knew what I would write. And I think I'm a bit too old to be writing self-serving emotional dhiarhea that's poorly disguising the want and need for someone out in that big ol' cyberspace to understand, to say "it's okay" and kiss one's botty better. And if it wasn't a post about that, it would be a post full of macho posturing, an attempt to build up confidence and armor to shield one from the pains of emotions whilst simultaneously trying to tell the world "look at me! I am strong and powerful and I can withstand any shit you give me!"

Balls to that.

From the moment I started blogging I believed that there is nothing else to blog about but the truth. If you believe in something or feel something and are absolutely ok with the idea that you believe or feel that something then there should be no fear in writing about it. I enjoy writing, that's what I do, and one of the things a blog helps me do is keep writing, using them words so that I don't not write so good as I used to have.

And right now I feel absolutely ok with talking about my life with regards to love.

"The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread." - Mother Teresa

Ever since I was a child I'd been fascinated by the concept of love. It was something I had seen on TV and in the cinema and read about in books and it appealed to me - this unexplainable phenomenon that brought people together, filled with passion and affection and romance. Whilst most boys my age were still under the impression that girls had that mysterious and infectious disease called 'cooties' I had no qualms with the opposite sex and I still don't. Whilst my peers may think of women as something to be conquered or approach with caution I think women are fascinating creatures.

Even though the 'cooties' disease no longer became infectious as girls turned to women but instead mutated into a monthly scheduled emotional defect known as PMS (that's a joke, ladies. Have a sense of humor for God's sake).

And of course, over time, one grows up to the age where girls and boys start 'discovering' themselves.

"Where there is love, there is pain." - Spanish Proverb

I remember my first crush with a French exchange student. I remember the moment I laid eyes on her and remember the dizzying sensation of being in her presence.

I also remember a different dizzying sensation of being in her presence after she went out with a guy who pretended to be my friend so that he could get closer to her and make a move.

Ouch.

I remember my first love. I remember how connected I felt to her, how incredible that first kiss under a tree in Hyde park felt and how insanely good it felt to be with someone who felt something for me.

I also remember being dumped over the phone and subsequently beating the phone up. I remember still trying to be friends with her whilst consoling her over how heart broken she was after a friend of mine who went out with her after me dumped her and I remember said 'friend' enrolling in my A level college and being a total dick as far as this past relationship was concerned.

Double Ouch. Goddamn. I hope at the very least my circle of friends is better than it was back then.

I'd go on with more examples, but they'd start to look repetitive and the point is clear - love can be a painful goddamn thing to experience. Unrequited love, more to the point. Plato once said that "love is a grave and mental disease" and in a way he's right - love defies all forms of logic and reason. It is every single emotion ever possible to experience, both positive and negative, bundled into one huge heart shaped blob.

I know a lot of people who've experienced the things I've written above - the heart ache that comes with love, and as time goes by and people get older I notice how much love shapes a personality. Or rather, the hurt of love. It reaches to the point that it becomes a dirty word, much dirtier than 'fuck' or 'shit' or 'Rais'.

In particular, I've seen how heartbreak can cause cynicism. How it creates defence mechanisms designed to protect from heartbreak yet at the same time turning the person into someone who doesn't believe in love.

I've seen countless friends who've gone from helpless romantics to mysoginistic players. I've seen girls go from sweet and adorable to pessimistic and cold. All within the single snap of the fingers of love.

And, for a time, I was set to go the same way too. All the way until I met someone who made me feel like that sixteen year old underneath a tree again.

And once again, history repeats itself.

(Except this time no back-stabbing friends were involved, thank fuck.)

But like Kyle in South Park (or is it Stan?) I learnt something today (or rather, over the course of the past month). I learnt that I too could easily take that one step closer towards being colder, more cynical, more pessimistic and more of a mysoginistic cunt.

But I also learnt that I'm not gonna. And I'm not gonna for a very simple reason - I believe in love.

"Love doesn't make the world go round. Love is what makes the ride worthwhile." - Franklin P. Jones

Some would say that hardening up and accepting that love is a bitch is growing up - it's becoming a man. The type of man that sleeps all night, works all day, cuts down trees, eats his lunch, goes to the lavatory, spends his Wednesdays shopping and has buttered scones for tea.

Or something like that.

There are people out there who'll tell you that love and romance is a dated concept, an explanation for sexual urges for the times way back in the day when having a shag in civilized society required marriage. There are those that'll tell you that to fall in love is setting yourself up for hurt. There are those that'll tell you that there's no point in love, it's just something to explain the crush your feeling when your young. They'll tell you it's a fools game, a childish concept and something one should grow out of in their teens.

Well, balls to that too, you bunch of pessimistic cowards.

I'd rather be a sixteen year old hurt by love but still believing in it rather than a thirty year old who thinks women are nothing more than sperm receptacles.

I believe in love. I believe in the sheer joy and beauty and the awesomeness of it all. I believe in hope, that things can get better. I believe love because to believe in love is to be idealistic, and there is nothing wrong with idealism. Like love, people stop being idealistic the second all their hopes and dreams shatter.

To believe in love, to be idealistic, to believe in hope in the world is akin to being like a child, and what the fuck is so wrong with wanting to feel like a child again? Do you remember what it felt like to be a child before 'the real world' started creeping again? Life was fucking fantastic back then! You believed anything could happen, anything could be done, anything was possible. Lego would have you transfixed for hours!

But as people grow up and these feelings get shattered people start to face the world with a more 'real world' attitude - self-defense and self-preservation sweats from their every pore. And I look at all these people and I just think it's sad.

Without love, there would be no such thing as art. It's the reason music and movies seem so hollow these days - the love is gone and replaced by materialism and wealth. The last four brilliant films that I saw which came out recently were Slumdog Millionaire, The Wrestler, Star Trek and In Bruges, and in each one you can feel the love the filmmaker and the actors have for the material, the sheer passion in it. Two of them were big hits, two were small indie flicks, neither category matters - the love was there. I wish I could list down the last four brilliant music tracks I've heard recently but unfortunately, I hear no love on the radio except when they play an MJ track in memory of the man which just further shows how terrible music has gotten nowadays. You may like Lady Gaga, but I wouldn't let her ride my disco stick for a bazillion bucks.

I will not tell a lie. This past month I have gone through more pain than I could ever possibly imagine, but I also realized something - even though I had pretty much given up on the love that I felt when I was a young, bright eyed lad with so many pimples I looked like someone drew a face on a lychee peel, even after all that I still ended up meeting someone who made me feel like how I felt when I was Khai the human lychee boy. And whilst I can do without the spots I don't ever want to grow up again as far as love is concerned because it is an incredible feeling.

The only difference between now and then is at least now I'm a little wiser, a little smarter and a little more savvy. One of the biggest things I've found that's held me back for the past few years is that I forgot how to dream and hope and most of all, love. And though it's because of these things that I now find myself unrequited, it does not validate the belief that to dream and hope and love is to be hurt constantly. No. If anything, it proves that anything is possible. Absolutely anything.

It would be so much easier to say "fuck you" to love. It would be easier and a lot less painful to 'accept' that shit will always hit the fan so you better fling some shit back, but then I remember what I used to tell myself when I was growing up - I used to tell myself that I never want to grow up. Now, to reduce ones self to the mind set of a child is pointless because we grow, it's inevitable. But it's not impossible to change one's point of view, to look at everything with that same child-like innocence and belief in the impossible. Imagine looking at the world through those eyes, except now your a little older, your a little wiser, and you know how things work. Imagine how goddamn incredible that would be.

These were the thoughts that helped me sleep last night. This was what went through my head when I still felt the pangs of pain. The Dalai Lama once said "we can live without religion and meditation, but we cannot survive without human affection", and he's right (come on, he's the Dalai Lama. Are you gonna question the Dalai Lama?). I believe that all those people living with their shields and body armor merely think they're happy because they've cut off the concept of love from their lives in order to survive. I'm not knocking it at all, everyone has a right to live the way they wanna live. But I do think that deep down they could be so much happier.

I've gone through a helluva lot emotionally, but I'm still standing. There are people out there who are living with the threat of death or poverty or persecution every waking hour and for some of these people, love is what holds it all together. I have seen true love work in the flesh before my very eyes in all ages, races, shapes and sizes. I've seen it when it works and when it does it works beautifully.

"Love is a promise, love is a souvenir, once given never forgotten, never let it disappear." - John Lennon

Love is something that will never be understood and I hope it never will. It's that search for the meaning of love that has given us some of the greatest things in the world, more so than the search for the meaning of life which has given us a ton of books written by men who spent so much time thinking all the hair on their heads went to their chin.

I know some of you may be thinking "what a hopeless romantic". That's ok. I'd rather be a hopeless romantic than a pessimistic cunt any day of the week. I believe in love and I believe in hope. I believe in child-like, wide-eyed idealism. And I'm not ashamed of it.

...

...I also believe in a good hard shag between two consenting adults purely for the pleasure of it and as a closing line to inject some humor in these proceedings. I now leave you to your regular reading schedule whilst I examine these slides of the mysterious 'cooties'.

You want to kiss my lucky egg?

		Thursday, 06 August 09 - 06:18 PM (GMT +08:00) By Khairil Mokhzani Bahar in Brain Stew

When I was a kid, one of my favorite chocolates was Kinder Surprise.

Skate Or Die

		Friday, 31 July 09 - 04:44 PM (GMT +08:00) By Khairil Mokhzani Bahar in Brain Stew

(N.B. If you're reading this on my Facebook's notes page, the pics come out all at the end for some reason. Everything's laid out nicer at my blog where it's taken from which you can check out by clicking here, though I doubt you lazy bastards will.)

So I was walking around One Utama today with the express intent of getting a haircut when I saw that my regular dude wasn't in the shop and I didn't really trust anyone else in there to cut my hair since he'd been trimming my head pubes since I started shooting 'Ciplak'.

It was then that I remembered the Reverend's SMS last week, foretelling of a new skate shop in the new wing. Curious, I thought I'd go and check it out and sure enough, there it was opposite F.O.S. - The Push.


To see this shop in One Utama was a pleasant surprise - when the Asian X-Games came to Malaysia the country went 'extreme sports' crazy and buying a decent skateboard was pretty easy. Extreme, Radioactive and a whole bunch of other stores sold skateboarding equipment as well as the already established skateboard shops. Skate parks started popping up all over the country.

Then, after they left, so did most of the interest. Only the really enthusiastic skaters were left and the stores slowly dissapeared or concentrated on just clothing with a deck or two available around. To see a dedicated skateboard shop in One Utama was pretty unexpected.

What was even more unexpected were the decks they had. In particular, this one -


It seems that Krooked have brought out a bunch of old school style fish decks. In particular, a bunch of Mark Gonzalez reissues as well as two types of fish decks branded Zip Zinger and Zig Zagger.

And yes, you guessed it, I bought it.

To understand the fascination with this huge, poorly color coordinated monstrosity you have to know my history of love for skateboarding. See, when I first got into skateboarding, back when I was nine or ten, most skateboards and skaters looked like this:-

You Can't Show That In Public!

		Tuesday, 28 July 09 - 04:45 AM (GMT +08:00) By Khairil Mokhzani Bahar in Brain Stew

Taken from anilnetto.com via Bob's Facebook page,

"Police Block Movie Screening In Kg Buah Pala

Police blocked the screening of the movie “Gadoh” at Kampung Buah Pala tonight.

Dozens of police were at the kampung to stop the residents association from showing the movie in the open air along the main lane passing through the village on the grounds that it was an illegal gathering, the movie was controversial, and the event didn’t have a police permit.

The 70-minute movie, produced by media communications group Komas, “explores our perception of identity and challenges our hatred of the other”. Check out the trailer here.

So far, the movie has been screened in Penang at D’Space (Weld Quay) and Disted College. It is also scheduled to be shown at USM on Wednesday night.

Kg Buah Pala is believed to be under close police surveillance ahead of a 2 August deadline for residents to vacate the premises in favour of a property developer. The Penang state government, however, has revoked the development order for the developer’s project on the site of the village."

I... really don't know what to say about this. I know they didn't have permits, that technically it's illegal but... for God's sake, man. I haven't seen the movie (and now I'm not sure if I will), but from what I understand it's a movie about racial tolerance, what in God's name is wrong with that?!

I can't even think of a single witty quip to say about this. Not one. First Yasmin Ahmad passes away, now this. Am I ever going to be able to write something happy and nice about the state of the local film industry or will every post I put in this blog about local films be negative?

"That will be all, Francois..."

		Tuesday, 28 July 09 - 03:01 AM (GMT +08:00) By Khairil Mokhzani Bahar in Brain Stew

So for the past few weeks I've been going through a lot of comedy - part of the motivation was for the purposes of research and inspiration on a project I (hopefully) may be working on, the other was simply to laugh.

The thing was, half the time I wasn't laughing as much. In fact, a lot of times I found myself forcing a laugh and not the way one does in order to be polite when someone tells a crap joke, but because I knew the joke was funny, I understood why it was funny, and I was supposed to react in the way one does when someone finds something funny. I wanted to laugh, more than anything, because laughter is the best medicine.

Perhaps it was the very reasons why I wanted to laugh that made it difficult to laugh, I don't know, but in any case it wasn't working. My laughs were polite lies. Though I knew and saw and understood the humor in the situation, I wasn't laughing as much as I would have been, which is a pretty depressing thought for anyone trying to write comedy sketches (which may or may not be something that I'm currently working on. Mum's the word).

Comedies that I loved and laughed over many many times weren't working their mojo as much as they used to, which was just frustrating. For years, 'Mallrats' and the audio commentary have cheered me up regardless of anything, but perhaps I'd used it once too much. And due to the fact that I'd seen every Monty Python movie and sketch at least five times, watching the parrot sketch was more like watching a lecture on the makings of good comedy writing.

The thing is, the reasons why I wanted to laugh weren't really all of it. More than that, I wanted to discover something that completely took me off guard, just like when I was fourteen, flipping through the TV channels and discovering a movie which I thought was a medieval Arthurian legend type epic until King Arthur chopped off a Black Knight's arm and said knight claimed it was only a 'flesh wound'. I remember the complete confusion in my head, I was stunned at surreality. It was as if everything I knew about life, the universe and everything had suddenly been turned on its head...

...and I laughed my fucking brains out.

Comedies now haven't taken me as off guard as that. Certain jokes or style of jokes have become the norm. Nowadays there appear to be only three types of comedies - the semi-improvised adult stylings of Ferrell, Apatow and Rogen (which I enjoy but are beginning to get a bit stale), the light situational comedies of anything featuring either a young teenage type in a fish out of water scenario or middle aged adults in some kind of relationship mix up (which I tend to avoid) and the complete and utter crap of the "insert-recent-movie-genre-to-spoof" movies such as Disaster Movie, Superhero Movie, Epic Movie and Date Movie which makes one wonder if 'Airplane' ever even existed (my opinions of this type of comedy are fairly obvious but I didn't want this line to feel lonely without any brackets though now I feel like Immanuel Kant since that fucker doesn't know how to use a fullstop either).

A few days ago Tony Blair V2.0 popped over with his hard drive so that I could copy Ricky Gervais' "Animals" stand up video and, upon viewing the hard drive's contents, found a whole bunch of comedies I had been wanting to see again.

First, I watched 'Animals'. Quite funny, pretty decent. Then seasons 2 and 3 of 'Blackadder', which I already had embedded in my memory so well that I'd watch them on loop whilst playing Puzzle Bobble on the PS1 (shut up, gamers. If I had a choice I'd be playing ice hockey on a Sega Mega Drive). After that I took a trip into the eighties - 'Ghostbusters' made me feel more nostalgic than anything else and reminded me of the times I'd make a proton pack out of a cereal box, tissue box, toothpaste box, some toilet rolls, string and a paper plate. 'Ghostbusters II' made me realize that I had every line (and I mean every single line) embedded in my head, complete with inflection, tone and accent, including the lyrics to the songs in the movie (completely didn't realize when I was a kid that I was listening to Run DMC). I also somehow knew every line to 'Weekend at Bernies', which made me wonder how many frickin' times I used to watch this movie as a child, and why. Eddie Murphy's 'Delirious' stand up, on the other hand, made me miss the Fuck-You-Man's young raw talent more and more.

Memory lane over and done with, I went on to some of the newer stuff. Some of them I couldn't even finish. I could see what kind of funny they would be from a mile away and promptly clicked them off. The HBO half hour 'Flight of the Conchords' live show had me giggle quite a few times (them boys is talented) and got me curious enough to check out the TV series.

Earlier this evening, I finally watched three episodes. And I'm sorry to fans everywhere of the show, but I couldn't sit through it. I just couldn't. Maybe I just wasn't in the mood, maybe it's not my cup of tea, maybe the hype has been raised about it so much that my expectations were off the scale. In any case, the only time I laughed was during the music video of "She's so hot, boom". Preferred the live show more. In fact, just to get me in high spirits again I quickly switched on another episode of 'Blackadder'.

After that I started searching for funny stuff on the net. I was mainly searching for an incredibly fucked up episode of Rainbow that someone sent me a link to ages ago. I then started looking around YouTube for gag reels and blooper vids from movies, as sometimes there's nothing funnier than watching a pair of comedy professionals trying to outdo each other in the hilarity stakes until one of them cracks up.

Somehow, I ended up on a gag reel of some of the outtakes from the seventies Pink Panther movies starring Peter Sellers, and as I was half watching it, I suddenly saw something that made me crack up laughing in a way I haven't done in such a long time it's silly.

And the best part? It wasn't the blooper that cracked me up. It was the actual gag they were trying to do which was only about twelve seconds (that you can view by clicking here) but was so incredibly simple, so incredibly well timed and executed and so hillarious that I laughed so hard my ribs hurt - the only form of pain that I welcome with open arms.

Well, doubled up arms clutching my body in agony whilst being unable to stop myself from laughing.

I had never really thought much of Peter Sellers before this because, quite frankly, I was never properly introduced to the man at the right time. When I first met Peter Sellers, it was as a young teenager. I knew an acquaintance that was the son of a friend of my parents who was in university and studying film and he passed me two videos that I "had to watch". One of them was episodes of 'The Prisoner' TV series, the other was 'Dr. Strangelove'.

The guy said it was an important comedy that I absolutely had to watch, but in truth I was too damn young to appreciate the thing and switched it off halfway.

(Somewhere out there, I hear a dozen filmmaking friends of mine reading this in horror and shouting the words "blasphemy!" in a loud, Spanish Inquisition-way. By the way, couldn't appreciate 'The Prisoner' either at that age. Ooh! I think I just heard "double blasphemy!" shouted out).

Since then, I didn't really touch on Peter Sellers much. By the time I was at an age where I probably would have been able to appreciate it, I was too snobbish about comedy and, from everything I'd heard, Sellers' stuff was mainly slapstick and I thought, quite foolishly, that slapstick was a lesser form of comedy and instead preferred wordplay.

(Which probably explains why a blog post about how I enjoyed watching moments of Peter Sellers' comedies has become this fucking long).

But now, after that simple twelve second gag, I was hooked. I searched throughout YouTube for other Peter Sellers moments of Great Comedy and found myself laughing so hard I ended up with a migraine and realized that I was completely wrong about my thoughts on slapstick, completely and utterly wrong. There was only one reason why physical comedy is so rarely funny these days - because very few people can top the perfection of Peter Sellers' comedic timing, the precision in it. The simplest of gags become so much more in his hands because he understands what I now believe to be one of the most important rules in slapstick - that you never see it coming. I did not expect what would happen in that simple twelve second gag. A gag so simple yet so perfectly hidden.

So far, after my many YouTube searches, this has been the funniest by far - a scene featuring his most celebrated character ever, Inspector Clouseau, in  'The Pink Panther Strikes Again':

(if the embedded link doesn't appear, click here)

The slapstick gags are so insanely simple their genius. People go on and on about his chameleonic talent in being able to create so many characters, and I totally agree that his characterizations are bar none, but his slapstick... my God, his slapstick is beyong compare and after watching this, I really, seriously wonder what the fuck Steve Martin was thinking when he attempted to do The Pink Panther himself.

Perhaps I'm reading too much into it. Perhaps I'm over analyzing the reasons why I laughed so damn hard in an effort to try and explain to my own brain why the gag had me completely in stitches. Perhaps you'll click on it and find it isn't that funny, I don't know.

For me, however, this simple experience of watching a YouTube video has been cause for celebration. After overloading myself in the past decade with so much 'intelligent' comedy, witty wordplay and improvised lines of mirth, slapstick is something I most heartily welcome.

And in the hands of Peter Sellers, it's absolutely brilliant.

No Bikes, No Bitches, No Trannies, No Fun.

		Monday, 20 July 09 - 08:25 PM (GMT +08:00) By Khairil Mokhzani Bahar in Brain Stew

Anybody read the Sunday Times yesterday? I myself hardly ever read newspapers but picked one up because there was an article on the 15Malaysia project. That's when I saw the front page - 'Mat Rempit and Drag Queens OUT'. Apparently, rempits are now banned from film and television because "it is a fact that each time a movie about Mat Rempit is shown in the cinemas, police have to be on high alert".

This has happened because the Inspector General of the Police sent a letter to the Home Ministry stating this fact. I assume because outright banning something is easier than actually educating the public on why illegally racing on the road whilst trying to perform outlandish stunts on a kapcai.

And it's not just rempits. Illegal car racing portrayed on screen will also take a hit. Drag queens are out, as are scenes of men wearing women's clothing, even if it's in a 'Some Like It Hot' type of comedic scenario. No more lose women to be portrayed on screen. No gays or effeminate men in general.

I think it would be safe to say that chase scenes in general will probably be banned at some point, together with fight scenes of a violent nature, women in short sleeve tight t-shirts, the flashing of the ankles and dogs.

I don't have to tell you how inexplicably stupid this news is to me. Local films were in a bad enough state as it is without adding more restrictions. What, pray tell, is the rating system for, then? And are these laws going to be applied on international films as well, or do they get a pass since they're not Malaysian henceforth no one in this country will try and emulate them?

The thing is, I saw this coming. I saw it coming when the first 'Remp-It' movie hit the cinemas. The second I saw the trailer, with it's illegal racing and stunts and scantily clad women I thought to myself, "I can't believe this got past the censor board! I just hope everyone doesn't jump the bandwagon and keep one-upping themselves trying to see what they can get away with or the government's gonna ban it all."

Then this movie comes out:

"Bohsia: Jangan Pilih Jalan Hitam". Great. That's helpful. Sure enough, this movie was one of the ones talked about as apparently, after this movie came out, the amount of rempit activity doubled.

I don't believe in censorship. I believe in ratings to give the public due warning of the content of a movie and to stop younglings from checking out porn at the wrong age. But censorship, especially at this magnitude, is downright obscene.

If you ever wonder why local movies are so dissapointing, look at it this way - creativity is hampered because of censorship laws such as this, combined with producers' greed in wanting to produce something that has all the elements that will sell yet at the same time too afraid to try something new and creative.

And it's this same greed that's landed us in this shit in the first place. We know the government will ban something if there's enough figures to show that it can be related to something that will harm the rakyat, we can't help that. This is the country we live in. And as much as it'd be nice to change that, adding the straw that breaks the camel's back is only going to hamper it.

Dear God, when will there be some kind of news that will allow me to write something nice about the local film industry for once?

Hammer Time

		Sunday, 05 July 09 - 03:16 PM (GMT +08:00) By Khairil Mokhzani Bahar in Brain Stew

For those who've never been to my little Hub, it's designed in a very interesting way. The staircase is in the middle, leading up to the skylight, making the rest of the ground floor pretty much like a square doughnut. From entering the house, you turn left to the living room and work area, turn right and you end up in the drum area, turn right again and there's a door to the kitchen and turn right one last time to another door to exit the kitchen and take you right back where you started, all the while with the staircase in the middle.

When we're recording in the Hub, in order to not piss off the neighbors we try to let as little sound as possible leak out, so we close all the doors. Once when we were recording the Reverend wanted to go to the kitchen. A few minutes later he couldn't get out. The door knob was stuck. No matter how much you twisted the knob it wouldn't budge.

This was a couple of months ago, and since then that door hasn't been opened, so instead of the square doughnut shape of before, the living room became a horseshoe.

Now, I'm not a big believer in Feng Shui or anything like that, but ever since that day the house didn't feel... right. I could sense, deep down, that something was amiss. Not being able to open that door didn't let things flow properly. I can't explain it, I just knew things weren't right. So today I decided to fix it.

I took out my toolbox and started work. First I tried to find the little button on the doorknob to allow you to dismantle it. No such luck. Then I tried prying the lock open with a pair of pliers. No luck there. Then I tried everything from the otherside. I tried to find the mechanism. I tried to find something I could understand, physically, so that I could fix it.

After an hour of sweating in a hot kitchen trying to figure it out, I gave up and picked up the hammer and started whacking the damn thing in frustration, hoping I'd break it off completely, leaving a big hole in the door but at least the fucker would open.

After three or four whacks, the door knob was fixed and opens properly.



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