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<\/p>\nThis is not your occasional message from George or the minions of Fevre River, but a new addition to the team \u2013 I\u2019m Michael Cassutt, writer of fiction, non-fiction, lots of television (TWILIGHT ZONE, MAX HEADROOM, EERIE INDIANA, more recently THE DEAD ZONE and Z-NATION). \u00a0Since October I\u2019ve been working with George as his \u201ccreative director,\u201d helping to shape and advance non-HBO TV, film and game projects and even some publishing. (No, I\u2019m not \u201chelping\u201d George with his writing.)<\/p>\n
Last spring and early summer I directed a short film titled THE SUMMER MACHINE, based on a lost TWILIGHT ZONE TV concept by George, from my script. We shot for eight days in Alamagordo and Las Cruces, New Mexico, with a cast led by Lina Esco, Charles Martin Smith and Matt Frewer, and just recently finalized the cut.<\/p>\n
This is the fifth film that George has produced, following four adaptations of stories by his great friend Howard Waldrop: NIGHT OF THE COOTERS, HEIRS OF THE PERISPHERE, MARY MARGARET ROAD-GRADER and THE UGLY CHICKENS. Four are complete.<\/p>\n
So what do you do with a short film? Theatrical exhibition is always a goal, but difficult for even feature-length projects these days.<\/p>\n
Streaming? Yes, but you have a short film, under 40 minutes in length. Where does it fit on Netflix, Amazon, Apple+ etc.? Almost nowhere.<\/p>\n
But you want your film seen, so . . . .<\/p>\n
You hit the festival circuit. Not only does this expose your work to an audience, but it opens the door to the holy grail of indie filmmaking, distribution.<\/p>\n
Winning awards helps with that, too.<\/p>\n
Our team started with NIGHT OF THE COOTERS, which had its premiere showing at the LA Shorts film festival in North Hollywood in August 2022, where it won best sci-fi short. COOTERS, directed by and starring Vincent D\u2019Onofrio, earned additional honors at Midwest Weird (Eau Claire, Wisconsin) and the Atlanta Film Festival, too.<\/p>\n
Since then we\u2019ve released MARY MARGARET and THE UGLY CHICKENS, and both of them have picked up awards and made themselves known:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
MARY MARGARET, written and directed by Steven Paul Judd, has been recognized by the deadCenter Film Fest and the Mojave Wasteland Film Fest.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
At the recent Miami SciFi Film Fest, Steven was judged co-winner of the Russell Bates award, honoring the first Native writer of SF for television.<\/p>\n
As for THE UGLY CHICKENS, directed by Mark Raso, written by me and starring the talented Felicia Day\u2014<\/p>\n
Felicia was chosen as best actress at the Yellowstone (India) Film Festival last fall, and Mark won the best director, short film, at the Pittsburgh Film Festival in December.<\/p>\n
This week is the Pendance Film Festival in Toronto, and UGLY CHICKENS has already won the Best Canadian Short Film.<\/p>\n
Upcoming we have the Fargo Film Festival, where Mark will be present. I will be attending<\/p>\n
Cinequest in San Jose (March 22-24) and producer Elias Gallegos will be representing us at the Cleveland International Film Festival (late March-early April).<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Cinequest-2025-1024x602.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
And new news, UGLY CHICKENS has been accepted at the Certain.e.s laiment court (CLAC), a short film festival in Lyon, France, April 4-5.<\/p>\n
And we\u2019re nowhere near done with MARY MARGARET, which has been submitted to half a dozen upcoming festivals. (Typically we find out about acceptances three weeks ahead of time.)<\/p>\n
My SUMMER MACHINE will be submitted for the first time this spring.<\/p>\n
I mentioning these events now because George and I and the team that made these films would like you<\/u> to see them, too \u2013 and dozens of other great shorts and features at these festivals.<\/p>\n
And if you do attend and see one of us, say hello!<\/p>\n
# # #<\/p>\n
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This is not your occasional message from George or the minions of Fevre River, but a new addition to the team \u2013 I\u2019m Michael Cassutt, writer of fiction, non-fiction, lots of television (TWILIGHT ZONE, MAX HEADROOM, EERIE INDIANA, more recently THE DEAD ZONE and Z-NATION). \u00a0Since October I\u2019ve been working with George as his \u201ccreative […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9589"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9589"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9589\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9618,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9589\/revisions\/9618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}