Showing results by author "Rick Schmidt" in All Categories

NEW DARK AGES--How a Punk Movie Emerald Cities Got Its Improv, is a bold new addition to Rick Schmidt's how-to books about moviemaking, that includes Feature Filmmaking at Used-Car Prices and Extreme DV (Penguin/Random House Books). NEW DARK AGES lets the reader participate in Rick's IMPROV decision-making process as he applies his stream-of-consciousness approach to solving moviemaking problems, where the filmmaker must battle his/her movie into existence, often with little money and little time to complete the task. Readers can learn from Rick's "open universe" approach, where he dares to...

Every so often, an inspiring book comes along that helps the reader reform their approach to art and life, and A TREASURY OF ART (Part 2)--UNDISCOVERED WORKS 1966-2022 is one of those. The author, Rick Schmidt, was graced by ACTOR VIN DIESEL reading and utilizing his earlier "Feature filmmaking at Used-Car Prices" Viking Penguin how-to, so the superstar could kick-start his career. WRITER/DIRECTOR KEVIN SMITH also made his breakthrough feature, CLERKS, with Schmidt's book. So, somehow, the contents of Schmidt's tomes seem to generate positive energy to the reader, to help them get busy on ...

Every so often, an inspiring book comes along that helps the reader reform their approach to art and life, and "A TREASURY OF ART––Undiscovered Works" is one of those. The author, Rick Schmidt, was graced by ACTOR VIN DIESEL who read and utilized his how-to, “Feature filmmaking at Used-Car Prices” (Viking Penguin Books), to kick-start his career. So somehow, the contents of Schmidt’s tomes seem to generate positive energy to the readers, with maybe even success and $ to follow–– count in WRITER/DIRECTOR KEVIN SMITH as well, who created CLERKS with Schmidt’s book. TREASURY ...

Every so often, an inspiring book comes along that helps the reader reform their approach to art and life, and A TREASURY OF ART (Part 3)--UNDISCOVERED WORKS 1966-2022 is one of those. The author, Rick Schmidt, was graced by ACTOR VIN DIESEL reading and utilizing his earlier "Feature filmmaking at Used-Car Prices" Viking Penguin how-to, so the superstar could kick-start his career. WRITER/DIRECTOR KEVIN SMITH also made his breakthrough feature, CLERKS, with Schmidt's book. So, somehow, the contents of Schmidt's tomes seem to generate positive energy to the reader, to help them get busy on ...

In the world of art there are many 'undiscovered' artists, including sculptors and painters whom I have known personally. Many deserve a wider audience for their fine works. I doubt few can argue that the paintings included here, by Julia A. Eastberg, should remain in this obscure category. She was born in 1940 in the tiny lumber town of Index, Washington, and how she emerged from that environment to become such an accomplished fine artist is anyone's guess. Her adult life took her to San Jose art classes––she "trained with John Mark Briggs, who also taught Julia’s classmate, sculptor...

One of the grandest questions a person can ask in life is, “How different would things have been if I’d just made different decisions?“ Well, filmmaker/author Rick Schmidt has bravely tackled his own “WHAT-IF’S” in this amazing new memoir-novel, “Other Lives, Bends in the ROAD, and What-Ifs.” Included are stories from age 11 on, through his college and adulthood. Reaching back, he’s bravely dug into a past in which there seemed to have been build-in dangers on all sides, threatening the man he’d later become. For instance, when he won a gigantic panda worth hundreds in ...

KENNEDY'S TWINS is the follow-up companion to BLACK PRESIDENT (Picnic Publishing, UK ©2008 ), which takes place after Jackson Little, an unknown illegitimate black son of President Kennedy, has assumed the US Presidency in 2012. He and his identical twin brother, John, now Attorney General (as was his uncle, Robert Kennedy, in the Kennedy Administration of the early 1960s), join forces to remake the American Presidency in support of the working class, favoring hard-working minorities like themselves over the rich, striving to undermine worldwide corporate control, lower inflation, and halt...

In THE SCULPTURES OF FILMMAKER RICK SCHMIDT 1967-1971, we get to experience his artistic life hanging in the balance, during his years of education at the CALIFORNIA COLLEGE OF ARTS AND CRAFTS (CCAC), Oakland, CA (now California College of the Arts). Without a few critical moments of assistance and mentorship, there would have been none of the inventive and elegant lacquer-sprayed, cast aluminum, "white" and silicon bronze works displayed in the pages. Schmidt's commentary, about both "the making of" his artworks and recollections excerpted from his 2017 memoir, "12 Dead Frogs and Other ...

COLD, THE 1918-19 SIBERIAN ESCAPE OF CAPTAIN EWALD LOEFFLER, a novel by Rick Schmidt, follows a young German soldier, Ewald Loeffler, as he struggles to traverse 5000km of frozen and barren land across Siberia, to finally reach Germany and his family home. After he'd been in a Siberian prison camp for four years, the guards suddenly deserted their posts to join the Russian Revolution in Moscow, leaving the prisoners to fend for themselves. Loeffler, in the minority of those who survived such extreme cold and other human dangers, tells a harrowing tale of just keeping alive, one day at a ...

"BLACK PRESIDENT––The Story of JFK's Secret Sons" begins with President Kennedy's seduction of Sarah Little, a devout, married, African-American woman. Two-and-a-half years later he is dead. Against all conceivable adversity, their son rises from poverty to attain America’s highest office. Victory in the White House has its roots in the lost innocence of the past… Weaving together important US events and personalities, this is a breathtaking journey through fifty years of subterfuge, civil rights scandals, assassinations and conspiracies, from the Bay of Pigs to the Twin Towers and ...

THE GREATEST SECOND-CHANCE FROG QUEEN by filmmaker/author Rick Schmidt (he wrote the classic how-to 'FEATURE FILMMAKING AT USED-CAR PRICES," from Viking Penguin Books) has lended its pages to the voice of a small, off-green, not very attractive frog, Queen Gertrude, who makes up for her appearance with her extensive wisdom. A not-just-4-small-children read––it could be shared between an inquiring adult and medium-sized child––it nevertheless uses simple-and-direct language to explain the differences between us and amphibians... and how we're blowing it. Where have the last couple ...

TWO GIRLS IN HIGH RAFTERS is a rough and tumble fiction account of a woman's life, 1900-1966, concerning how her life was affected by a nude photo that her and a best friend's fathers' produced just before WWI. The making of a "pornographic" cabinet card product designed to earn the dirt farmers a living in the depressed Sandhills region of Nebraska is where the story begins. The photograph gave chase to Mildred Conner's life, somehow pulled her into prostitution (for survival, some might say...), while her Black friend Sissy did equally less well (an early pregnancy–the death of her ...

While there have been many notable accounts of the destruction of the Native American tribes of North America—Wounded Knee in late 1800s to the Alcatraz standoff of the 1960s––there is less that’s known about the small Ponca tribe of Niobrara, Nebraska, and how their struggle against relocation by armed US military forces led to a courtroom drama that determined if “an Indian was a human being.” And while Schmidt touches upon the facts of the Ponca’s battle with the US government, the trial of Standing Bear and judge Elmer Dandy’s judgement May 12, 1879, it’s up to the ...

"BLACK PRESIDENT––The Story of JFK's Secret Sons" begins with President Kennedy's seduction of Sarah Little, a devout, married, African-American woman. Two-and-a-half years later he is dead. Against all conceivable adversity, their son rises from poverty to attain America’s highest office. Victory in the White House has its roots in the lost innocence of the past… Weaving together important US events and personalities, this is a breathtaking journey through fifty years of subterfuge, civil rights scandals, assassinations and conspiracies, from the Bay of Pigs to the Twin Towers and ...

While artist Julie Schachter has received national and international attention for her pinhole photography (see RESUME, back pages/Preview) few are aware that she has also created a large body of paintings, drawings, and sculptures that cover the creative spectrum. Her artworks presented here are infused with wit and humor, and the highest level of craft, while addressing the major issues of the old and new Millennium. To attain a fuller understanding of her approach to conceptual subject matter, her lens- less pinhole camerawork offers some important clues. Her photographic work, which ...