Do you enjoy listening to movie geeks talk about movies and TV and video games and movies? Me too! And the nice folks at Always Watching were kind enough to invite me on as a guest geek for this week’s podcast (which is entitled The Watchers). You can view a rundown of what we discuss, and also listen to the podcast itself, and also subscribe to the podcast, here. (A mild warning: I think there’s some naughty language at one point, though I don’t remember when or how much.)

We recorded it Tuesday night, at which time it also was being streamed live for whoever happened to be listening. The regular crew is David Chen (who’s a big fan of mine, inexplicably), Devindra Hardawar, and Adam Quigley; guests were me, Myles McNutt of Cultural Learnings, and Alex Billington of First Showing. A good time was had by all. I think they talked more than I did, though, because I’m nervous around strangers, especially when I can only hear the strangers and not see them.

If you find yourself in Oxford, Miss., this weekend, stop by and say howdy, or how-do, or whatever they say in Mississippi. Why on earth would I be in Mississippi this weekend? Well, I’m honored to say that I will be part of the fourth annual Oxford Film Festival as a panelist and juror. The fact that I’m doing it as a last-minute replacement for my friend Scott Weinberg, who can’t make it due to a serious dental emergency (ouch), does not reduce the honor.

My panel is called “Film and the New Media: Writing about Film in Print and for the Blogosphere.” It’s at 4 p.m. Friday. I don’t know if anyone who reads this blog lives in or near Oxford, but hey, maybe.

This is a very sudden trip — I only got the call from Weinberg at noon today, and I have to fly out at 6:20 a.m. tomorrow — and so I’m a little scatterbrained at the moment. Mostly it means that all the stuff I was planning to do tomorrow and Friday and over the weekend, I have to do today instead. But I’m glad to fill in for Weinberg, and besides, I’m not one to pass up a free trip to Mississippi! Or at least apparently I’m not. It’s never come up before.

Monday’s “Snide Remarks” will almost surely be late in arriving, as I haven’t written it yet, and I won’t get back to Portland until 11 p.m. Sunday night, and I don’t know how much downtime I’ll have in Oxford. Friday’s movie reviews and “In the Dark” should be on the regular schedule,  assuming they have Internet service in Mississippi. And maybe I should refrain from making Mississippi jokes until after the festival, just as a courtesy.

Here’s another blast from the past. On the last broadcast of the semester in April 1999, for some reason I was the guest weatherman on the KBYU News. I don’t remember whose idea it was or how it came about. I was the editor in chief of The Daily Universe by then, and we worked closely with the TV people, so I guess it was synergy in action.

It wasn’t scripted; instead, you’d just watch the monitor in the camera and read the numbers off the screen, making you no more a meteorologist than the people at home doing the same thing. At the 1:32 mark, the numbers leave the screen and I realize I was warned about this and that I failed to glance at the last couple stats I would need before they disappeared, like I was supposed to. So instead I make something up.

Note: I don’t know what the anchorwoman’s name is (Joanna something) or what the deal is with my sweater.

Also note: They told me to take off my glasses so they wouldn’t get a glare off the lights.

Final note: I found this on the same tape as “Venus Envy.” What additional wonders will this old VHS tape hold??

[YouTube link]

Want to see a student film I appeared in 10 years ago? Of course you do!

It’s called “Venus Envy,” and it’s a spoof of cheesy 1950s sci-fi flicks, the kind that are obsessed with “radar” and “atoms” and “lasers” and “invaders from other planets.” It was directed by Brandon Sawyer and written by him and Randy Tayler. Both were buddies of mine, which explains Brandon’s interest in casting me, given my limited acting range.

I play a Venusian named Zankar. You can tell he’s from Venus because he wears tinfoil and speaks in a funny voice. The hero is played by Brian Judd, who for some reason went by the nickname Phontaine in those days. The beautiful lady scientist is played by Charisse Loew, who was from South Africa or something. I have no idea where she and Brian are now.

We shot the film on Dec. 11 and 13, 1997 (10 years ago this week!), and it played as part of the BYU film department’s annual “Final Cut” program the next April. Jared Hess, who would go on to direct “Napoleon Dynamite,” was a cinematographer on another film that year; Jon Heder wasn’t around yet, but his brother Doug was.

The film shoot was fun, except that I couldn’t really move between takes or else the tinfoil would rip. The experience, though obviously much smaller in scale than a feature film, was enlightening. I got a distinct sense of how much setup and preparation is necessary to make a movie, the amount of work that happens out of the camera’s field of vision, and the behind-the-scenes tricks that you do when you don’t have a CGI budget.

The sound isn’t great on this old VHS copy I found, so I subtitled a few lines that I thought might be indecipherable otherwise. All things considered, I think it’s a pretty funny little spoof.

(Warning: Features one use of the expletive “Gadzooks!” and an over-fondness of the verb “to thwart.”)

[YouTube link]

If you live in Utah, you might be aware that KJZZ-TV shows the lousy Mormon comedy “The Singles Ward” now and then. But this Thanksgiving, the broadcast will be different. This time, the movie will be funny!

That’s because Daryn Tufts, Randy Tayler, and Trenton James will be providing snarky commentary on it, in the manner of “Mystery Science Theater 3000.” They’re calling it “Talkies.” It will be like watching a bad movie with three of your funniest friends. Or three of my funniest friends, anyway.

But the reason I’m telling you about it isn’t just that the guys are friends of mine, but that some of the snide remarks© they’ll be making were written by me, Eric D. Snider. Yes, though the performance is carefully crafted to look like they’re ad-libbing their responses to the movie, they are in fact scripted. (Such was the case with “Mystery Science Theater,” too.) Daryn asked if I wanted to write some jokes, and I was glad to do it, though it did mean having to watch “The Singles Ward” again.

(Added dimension that the “MST” gang never had to deal with: Daryn is actually in “The Singles Ward.” He’ll be mocking his own performance.)

So if you find yourself in Utah on Thanksgiving, turn your TV dial to KJZZ at 3 p.m. to record this one-time-only broadcast of “Talkies” featuring “The Singles Ward.” If the audience response is favorable, Daryn and the gang may have a chance to give other films in KJZZ’s library the “Talkies” treatment.

After the jump are some YouTube clips of the show. Daryn warns that the picture and sound are rough in these clips, but they’ll be smooth and delightful in the actual broadcast.

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My friend Mike Russell couldn’t fulfill his normal duties as movie critic on KUFO’s Cort and Fatboy program Friday night, so I stepped in for the assist. The guys were broadcasting live from Portland’s Bagdad Theater in conjunction with their 11 p.m. screening of “Goodfellas,” and I joined them there on the scene to discuss “The Heartbreak Kid” (which is not nearly as good a movie as “Goodfellas”). A fine time was had by all. You can listen to the broadcast here. My appearance starts only a couple minutes into it, so you might as well just listen from the beginning.

I’ve joined Mike a few times in the past to cover films he hadn’t seen (the last time was in February), but this was the first time I’d gone solo, without Mike even there. I was alone with Cort and Fatboy! But it was OK. They were nice to me. I pointed out to Fatboy that he’s really not fat anymore, and he said he’s been losing weight, getting in shape, etc. He said his goal is to get so thin that “Fatboy” becomes an ironic nickname, like when giant guys are called Little John. Also, I finally learned his real first name. (It’s Susan. No wonder he prefers Fatboy!)

After all these years, I can finally say I’ve been published in the Deseret News! I never really wanted to say that, but hey, a byline is a byline.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get a byline at first. The Des News inadvertently took part in a wee bit of plagiarism — a situation that has now been rectified with much apologizing, I assure you.

At the paper’s website, they have a feature called LDS Newsline, a blog-like collection of items of particular interest to Mormons, who make up approximately 70 percent of Utah and approximately 100 percent of Deseret News readers.

An occasional feature there at the Newsline is “Mormon Lite”: “Sincere (but occasionally feeble) attempts at LDS humor.” They are submitted by readers. An Erik Hyer of Layton, Utah, submitted this one, about a Mormon-themed chain of restaurants.

About a dozen sharp-eyed readers have e-mailed me in the last 24 hours, alerting me of this article’s existence, and of its uncanny similarity to a “Snide Remarks” column I wrote way back in 2000.

I was alarmed by two things. One, I had no idea my readership overlapped so much with that of the Deseret News. How can I change that?

Two, why was the Des News reprinting my column without attribution?!

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My birthday is this Sunday — no gifts, please! But if you insist, here’s my Amazon wish list — and I share it with a friend of mine named Christopher. We were in the Garrens Comedy Troupe together back in the day, and then he married the sister of one of my best friends, so now he’s part of the family forever.

Anyway, Christopher’s wife C. Jane writes a delightful blog called C Jane Run, and this week she’s printing birthday greetings from his friends and family members. She asked me to contribute, and I was honored to do so! So honored, in fact, that I’m providing the link to what I wrote right here.

One of my favorite sketches back in the Garrens Comedy Troupe days was “Dinner at Denny’s,” in which a man exhausted from making decisions all day at work goes to dinner and finds even more decisions to be made. We performed it several times back in 1996 (HOLY CRAP, that was a long time ago), and it appeared on the now-out-of-print Garrens CD.

Recently, a British university student by the name of Rob Shiels performed the sketch with his own comedy group and filmed it for posterity. The audio quality isn’t great, and the British accents might give you a run for your money (you can follow along with the script here), but it’s a fun little artifact that can now be viewed on YouTube or right here:

The podcast for this week’s “Snide Remarks” column can be found here. [Link was broken; now it is fixed.] I need to stop writing such long columns; 12 minutes of reading is hard on the voice.

Also, if you missed the announcement about the upcoming scarcity of Eric D. Snider-related merchandise, here it is.

Finally, it’s worth noting that on Friday, Portland’s airwaves briefly featured my voice. I was invited by movie-critic pal Mike Russell to join him on KUFO’s Cort & Fatboy program. Mike is there every Friday to review movies, but he hadn’t seen “Hannibal Rising,” so I was brought in to fulfill those duties.

You can listen to a recording of the show here. Since the commercials and Stone Temple Pilots songs have been removed, Mike and I actually appear very early in the program.