sais that he landed this internship because he is basically just an amazing geeky dufus of the highest caliber.
He goes on to say that it was a no brainer and it would be the company's loss if they passed up the opportunity to work with him during his days when he is not kickin' major bootie times at The Los Angeles Film School holding down a 3.93 GPA.
When asked what his only regret in life was his answer is not doing the extra credit in Business Law having scored a 92 and thus fucking up his GPA for a good fort night.
He goes on to say that luck is merely when opportunity meets preparation and that he takes luck and makes it his bitch thang.
His colleagues best describe Art Holmes as follows:
"Art Holmes can take a lump of coal, shine it up real nice, and then turn it into something of the utmost magnificence because HE RULES!!!"
The following clip emulates why What's Trendingwith Shira Lazar is one of the hottest most sought after internships in the Industry today.
Why do you love music? Asks our young hero scribe, William Miller, in 'Almost Famous' or as I like to call it 'Untitled' cause that's really the true version to watch.
This is the first question I pose to Mr. Friend for the interview I conducted with him in August of 2011. This was not actually the first time I met Mr. Friend in person. No, the first time I met Lonn Friend was the second day I had arrived in the land with the big fancy sign hung over in glorious fashion.
This came about because I've been a fan of Lonn's since he started doing his 'Friend at Large' segment in 1991 I believe it was.
This was a segment featured on the 'Head Bangers Ball' a show I had been watching religiously since 1987. Before 'Head Bangers Ball' MTV would have shows dedicated to metal and hard rock. Dee Snider hosted one I think maybe once a month? That I loved and they would have a daily 30 minute block of hard rock vids during the lunch hour so my summer breaks from grade school would be consumed with pretty much Inspector Gadget, Spider-man, and that metal block in the afternoon.
Now let's go back even further to the birth of MTV in '81. This is where my soul's passion for music really started to form. Whether it be
The Buggles,
The Police,
and then evolving into Motley Crue's Looks That Kill,
And of course Michael Jackson's Thriller Album
So beginning at the age of six this was basically my musical foundation. I was also blessed to have a sister that is 12 years older than me so I got a great history lesson in seventies rock 'n' roll so there's certain songs such as Joe Walsh's Life's Been Good that takes me back to being a four year old and not really enjoying life so much.
My home environment was how one might say a tad broken, divorce, re-marriage, sister moving out after she graduated high school, a tormentor of a step-brother, so music was the escape for me. Especially during those horrid years of '82 to '84. Things got so bad for me I begged my father to let me live with my mother and my step mother basically told father that it's either he goes or I go. I was basically the demon child and cause of all the problems in the household. And by some miracle I was able to move to Belvidere, Illinois from Milton, Wisconsin in the summer of '84.
And this is where my tastes in music really blossomed or as my sister would probably think descended into santanism. She was just starting to find the republican jesus around this time and I was just starting to get into Twisted Sister, Iron Maiden, Dio, Judas Priest,
and god forbid Black Sabbath and the Prince of Darkness Ozzy Osbourne. Which was pretty much due to that knock out performance they did at Live Aid
But as far as being one of the most well behaved children on the planet and being a stellar angel to the best of my ability for a 9 year old I was definately an honors society member of that league.
I won that damn sunshine gram award in the third grade twice in the same week pretty much forever putting me in the uncool league of outcasts. And of course I sucked at sports and got picked last for everything. But enough of this tangent, back to the music.
I was very fortunate when I moved to Belvidere to be living across the street from my cousins who were a good 10 years older than me. My mother had me when she was 36 so basically I was the same age as my second cousins across the street, but my first cousins were amazing. They had the movie poster for Apocalypse Now hanging up which I was always mesmerized by
as far as letting me watch anything I wanted and they were watching things like 'A Clockwork Orange'
The Wild Life
Fright Night
The Warriors
Maximum Overdrive
Repo Man
Return of the Living Dead
and MTV was on all the time
so as far as an education in Music and Film
I was getting an excellent education at 10 years old.
At 10 I transitioned from toys to music cassettes as my preferred luxury item of the week.
My first cassette I ever owned I bought with my 10th birthday money.
It was World Wide Live by the Scorpions
and I had it constant rotation,
and then Live After Death came out by Iron Maiden and that it was it for me.
Almost 30 years later and Iron Maiden is still my all time favorite band.
But if I ever I want to transport myself back to 1985/86 three videos that do it for me are
Ratt's Your in Love, Motley Crue's Home Sweet Home and Ozzy's Shot in the Dark.
I also specifically remember getting Master of Puppets the week it came out.
They were profiled on Dee Sniders MTV show and thinking how cool they were for going on stage in their street clothes and just being themselves and then getting teased at school for liking that satanist crap.
So 4 year later when the Black Album hit and everyone loved I absolutely hated it. It would take me about 10 years to realize what a master piece that album really is.
Onto 1987 and the beginnings of the Head Bangers Ball.
Every saturday night from 10 to 1 in the morning or was it 11 to 2 ? The greatest videos of all time would be on. Stand out videoes for me at this time were
Megadeth's Anarchy in the U.K.
Dokken's Dream Warriors from Nightmare III
and Love Kills from Nightmare IV
Once I realized Megadeth's Anarchy was a cover I immediately seeked out the Sex Pistols album and actually found it at Kmart. Go figure that one?? And thought well that was interesting but it was the beginning of me finding punk rock and branching out into another similiar yet different genre of music.
Scoring a cassette tape from my mother almost every week for five years tends to add up. My collection was pretty impressive as far as real authentic metal as opposed to the Bon Jovi, Poison stuff. It was like if the girls went gaga for it I usually stayed away cause again like with sports it just wasn't in the plan for me to be that IT guy in school. I guess the god person thing wanted me to bloom out at 35 freakin' years old.
Back to 1991 and The Head Bangers Ball changes up it's amazing format with the smashing trucks and the SOD music bumpers to kung fu stuff with this kind of elevator metal music which I never cared for and Riki Rachman was o.k.
But the segment that I really loved was 'Friend at Large' with Lonn Friend. This guy was sooo cool. It was like he was the coolest metal kid ever. Just sitting there in his room reviewing albums and he had the platform of MTV and he had access to all the bands and living this amazing life on Sunset Blvd. which is really well chronicled in Decline Part II.
Now Decline Part II is interesting cause it was not the first thing that I had seen or read about that portrayed the scene as it really is and the reality of it. No the first thing I ever read was actually a piece by thee Lonn Friend in Hustler Magazine. Now you may ask how does a 15 year old kid get a copy of Hustler Magazine. Well ask my second step father that one. Anywayz, I read this article and it blew my mind cause it was just brutal. And I read this before Lonn Friend started hosting his segment and then eventually I made the connection when I discovered RIP magazine in June of 1990,
and that it was Flynt Publication so to me this just put Lonn Friend as the coolest person ever.
So up till I graduated high school in 1994 music really was my life. After high school, my musical states brached off into Sinatra and pretty much everything that wasn't country or rap but especially country.
YUCK!!!
To lyric based for me and too depressing. I mean peaches christ people. Really??? You pay people to depress the crap out of you. I don't get it and neither should you.
Fast forward to 2009 and I'm hardcore into my Facebook addiction and of course I remember Lonn Friend and how much of an impact he had on me in my formative years. Found him on the facebook, sent the request, and turns out he's really good at the Facebook. Who knew?
So me being me I would comment on a lot of his posts and keep up to date with what he was doing now. He had written a book called 'Life on Planet Rock'
about how he started in the industry up to losing himself as a cog in the machinery that was Arista records run by Clive Davis. And of course since I lived in the cheese wiz utopia the chances of scoring this book were somewhere around the outer reaches of Uranus (if you know what I mean).
But I was always fascinated by what thee Lonn Friends life must be like so I found it amazingly interesting that he's not as metal as I had thought but a very spiritual person. And I was really starting to understand my own spiritual progression so I really felt like I had found a kindred spirit and to have this tiny yet significant for me repoir with him through the facebook really took that last year I lived and made living worthwhile.
So now its April of 2010 and my grandfather passes away leaving me five thousand dollars of an inheritance. I knew he was going to leave me something and told myself if he leaves me at least five thousand I'm moving to Los Angeles and low and behold that is exactly what he left me. So I got my big big monies and I was gone.
A week later I'm in Hollywood, Sunset Blvd, at the Sunset 8 hungover and went to the nearest internet console I could find and messaged Lonn about how to finally get a copy of his book and low and behold he said we could meet at Steve's pizzeria place by capital records.
So that first meet and greet was pretty mindblowing and getting a signed copy of his book. Besides Al Gore he was the first celebrity (at least for me) that I met and the first person I ever met when I moved here. If that's not a good sign I'm not sure what is???
15 months go by and I find myself in month 1 at The Los Angeles Recording School. Once I ran out of money and finally went to skid row to get help cause I ended really getting derailed that second half of 2010 my path for what I came here to do in the first place really went into full effect. I really wish I had been smarter and knew that I could have went to school here immediately in August of 2010 a good year before I started I would have had a year of the G.I. Bill but old habits and old ways of thinking die really fucking hard.
So month 1 of the Recording School we are givin this assignment to find a celebrity that you've always to meet and seek them out for an interview and the film the process of trying to get the interview. Well my immediate thought was to interview Lonn Friend cause his credentials are so amazing and fit so well within the Recording School program and he was a very easy get. Did the interview and when I got to class our instructor said if you get a direct contact your basically being a lazy bastard so we did this instead.
But, I will always be grateful to Mr. Friend for allowing me to have this experience. So thank you Lonn Friend. Not many people in life can say they ever had a moment in their life that they got to sit down and have a one on one interview with one of their heroes and have a documented account of it.
Art Holmes
P.S.
I still want to do that follow up interview for 'Sweet Demotion' up at Griffith Observatory using that big fancy sign as a backdrop.
This is part 1 of 6 of my interview with Lonn Friend be sure to check out more info in the description section
On June 11th, 2013 I crossed off a major item on my bucket list. Well, actually it's not one of those things that through the years builds and builds with regret but it's so far out in left field that you lack the creativity to come up with it in the first place and it resides somewhere in the shitty pipe dream realm of your brain.
For instance, the Tony Scott tribute I have written about previously. Never in a million years would I have thought that I would experience that. But I did and so it is. But with this I actually got to sit down with thee Kevin Smith and get one on one time with him and for it to be recorded forever and ever, ever. Or however Jack sais that in 'The Shining' ???
So now onto Kevin Smith. I first heard of Kevin Smith back in the mid nineties when I discovered 'Clerks' quite by accident. At that time I was renting 2 to 3 movies a night so it was an eventuality that I would find it and I really loved it and it was a movie I was not expecting and it was so parallel to my own life at that time. And then I went to the theater eagerly anticipating 'Mallrats' and I remember coming out of that mall theater on a Saturday feeling entertained but yet disappointed that it didn't say more or have more meaning to me.
So I figured well the guy had a one off so I never paid attention to Chasing Amy and then I went into the Military and private Goldenfinger or Goldenschlager??? something like that was a really big fan so I actually bought the collectors edition around 2000 when I was really getting into DVDees and what I took from it was I absolutely hated Ben Affleck as an actor. I also remember Kevin Smith being profiled on CNN and how he is navigating the mine field of Hollywood and just thinking this dude is just not gonna make it and good luck with that and your crazy to think you can go to the Land with the big fancy Sign and make a go of it.
Around this time 'Dogma' came out and I was going to the movie theater almost every weekend and I would digest about 10 movies from Friday night to Sunday Night. I pretty much saw every movie that came out between 1998 and 2000 in the theater. And again I remember feeling entertained by 'Dogma' but I felt it had a very adolescent gross out type of humor and I was really more into dramas and serious art house movies at that time. I still am but I've really progressed into going into a movie theater with a certain headspace as to the movie your going to. Especially now that I can actually watch a movie with a real audience.
And then Mr. Smith did RED STATE and it blew my freakin' mind. Because again it was not what I was expecting. Just like that first time I saw 'Clerks'. What I got with RED STATE was something I would have expected from Rob Zombie. It reminded me of Texas Chainsaw Massacre but with that insane crazy religious element, which again, was something I totally related to having tried on the mormon suit the last four years I lived in the cheese wiz.
I still remember specifically a nightmare I had about 'the true church' when I first joined and it took place where I was sitting in church and then everyone but me got possessed by demons. I also had a dream about the church that really knocked me for a loop. It was where the missionaries came over to do a lesson, and the 1 missionary who was really attractive and educated was talking and I asked 'can I kiss you?' and she very properly said as only mormons can say 'absolutely not' but me knowing that this was in fact a dream decided to go in for the kiss anywayz and then just as I'm going in for it I'm woken up by thee loudest clash of thunder I have ever heard in my life. Anywayz, if I had ever in my life had a god will strike you down by lightning moment that was it.
So fast forward to 2012 and Smith and Mewes are going to be doing an A and Que in the main theater, at mount super fabulous, and it was really difficult to get into and then I was able to get into and the main theater was half full if that. And this theater seats about three hundred and fifty people. And Mewes was Jay on the spot with the microphone going through the audience. It was so
much fun to be a part of that and remembering my experiences those first three years out of high school and the first time I discovered 'Clerks' and telling my buddies, HAY!!! you gottah see this. I also couldn't believe how not silent Silent Bob is.
Fast forward again to the first week of April 2013 and thee Kevin Smith will be doing podcasts for the entire semester with, mount super fabulous, of which I got an invite for and 30 minutes later, after it was sent down, I saw it in my inbox, sent the RSVPee, and it was already too late. He needed 20 students to do 4 podcasts with a panel of 5 which are the first four episodes on the Friday Film School link below.
Onto June 2013 and now for whatever reason Mount Super Fabulous on their FB page are giving out seats via a trivia question. First one to answer correctly kind of thing and these were super simple trivia question like what is the movie Kevin Smith shot in black and white?? Are you freakin kidding me??? The students who got to do this in April were specifically sent emails because of their awesomeness factor and now 'they' are just giving them away???? And again I was too late like three times. And then I had emailed the booker to these just to put my name on a possible future list if Mr. Smith would be doing more in the future and amazingly there was an open slot.
Unfortunately it was right in the middle of class time but I made a bucket list decision that I would forgoe the perfekt attendance award and do this. Also, I really wished I had been on the panel after mine cause I would have loved to have had that experience with the people who will be on Episode numero VII.
Also, the most surprising thing that I got out of Mr. Smith being here for the podcasts was the last one he did two days later in the main theater. About half way through it I really started to feel like a peer instead of a fan and that the next time I meet him (which is a pretty high probability that I will at my internship sometime down the road cause Mewes just did a promo for comic con on the pot last week which I missed cause I am so lazer focused on skool) I will have had this experience with him.
When the podcast was over he came up to me and told me 'great fucking job' and was very sincere about it and not in that fake land of the big fancy sign way where it just feels like a hollow empty comment. And again you can hear that sincerity right before I ask him about the African Child paradox.
So, here is the link to Episode number 5 in all its unedited uncensored glory and my own edited ego version. Unfortunately as of yet no pictures that were taken by the school photographer seem to exist??? And for some reason the techie dufus never turned on my mic for the first 10 minutes of this so I clip gained the little things that I added into the conversation in my glorious Pro Tools 10. I just love that clip gain. It's like the best invention ever.
Also, I've never been a fan of the sound of my voice (that goes for the movie as well) but listening to this, I don't know if i've ever been more impressed with myself.
The original ending to Clerkswhich is very RED STATE in its essence and also it reminds me of the first season of 24 going in this direction with their season finale
The scene from RED STATE that blew my freakin' mind
and never expected thee Kevin Smith actually had it in him to do
Making of RED STATE
Jason Mewes on the pot at my internship last week, and now I know where all the handsoap went cause it was a lot lower on Wednesday
So as I have written previously, I am not fan of the weekends. Now take your typical weekend and multiply by a factor of 4 and a half and you've got summer break at Mount Super Fabulous. Now due to having an internship this would actually be a blessing but, turns out, that my internship went dark this week so no shows. Well alrighty then, still have a couple of possible days to get in work study and then nope not gonna happen due to orientation being in the way. So no work study either.
This basically meant 9 days of vegging out. Now prior to 2006 this would have been a most welcomed break and sleeping in but now with these breaks I just feel like the biggest unproductive loser ever. I was fortunate to work on the short film 'The Flag' during spring break but it is a really weird feeling to feel just completely unproductive cause I'm rockin' it with the GPA (3.93 oh my), I just got an additional 100 hours added onto my work study, and my internship is beyond perfect for me, but there is nothing quite like 9 days of nothingness when your putting in 18 hour days fairly consistently.
In conclusion, I do not do down time well. I think it may have to do with the fact that I'm almost forty when I should have been living and doing this 10 years prior so I feel like I don't have the time to waist by lounging around. But the interesting thing is watching the boob tube in the land with the big fancy sign is actually A LOT more productive than watching it in the cheese wiz utopia so it's very surreal to watch Hollywood Access and feel like your actually gaining info that may actually be important in your actual life. Or with the Xbox and playing games and then having an actual dialogue with the voice actors.
So I'm pretty amped for next week to start with 'Statistical Applications' and back to my internship and work study and feel like a productive member of society.
But TONIGHT!!! we drink the vodka, and play the xbox, watch a movie or two, and rock out on the itunes.
