Tag Archives: “ART” by smile from The Lower East Side

The Story Behind My Logo

April 8, 2022 smile from The Lower East Side Leave a comment

This is an image that has been associated with me or characters I’ve played for the bulk of my career. It’s a still from the first film I produced, Death Fish, which was shot in August, 1997. One of writer/director Carlos Sanchez Lopez‘s influences was Sergio Leone, especially the film A Fistful of Dollars:

Still of Clint Eastwood from A Fistful of Dollars

When I was a kid, A Fistful of Dollars was on television a lot because westerns were still popular and Clint Eastwood was at the height of his superstardom in the 1970‘s. Also, it was only about 100 minutes long without commercials, so it fit perfectly into a two hour prime time TV slot. If Clint had a new movie out in theaters, Fistful of Dollars would be on The Million Dollar Movie all week, so I saw it a lot.
– Carlos Sanchez Lopez, writer/director

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NFT Gallery

The Next Freakin’ Thing

April 1, 2022 smile from The Lower East Side Leave a comment

Today finally sees the launch of my first line of Digital Collectibles. It will be a series of non-interactive NFTs providing access to original art, photos, videos and other forms of media created by me. A lot of it wil be previously unreleased material from my archives, but I will also be creating new content as well.

The NFTs will be hosted on the WAX blockchain. I chose the WAX blockchain for its reduced environmental impact. You can get the NFTs at the Atomic Hub Marketplace; my collection is called smileartwork.

Rather than flooding the market, I will be minting the NFTs to meet demand in order to minimize resource use. Each NFT will have a rarity level based on how many are made available. Initial pricing for the NFTs will vary based on subjective quality and rarity. The Rarity Levels are:

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Original Videos

Highlights from House of Glory: Salvation 2022

Video March 18, 2022 smile from The Lower East Side Leave a comment

This video is a slideshow of photo highlights from the pro wrestling event Salvation, presented by House of Glory, an independent pro wrestling organization based in Queens, New York. The program is available to watch via streaming video at Fite.tv

Wrestlers featured include Mantequilla, KC Navarro, Ringleader Midas, Ken Broadway, Charles Mason, James Evander, Lo-Ki, Biff Busick, Natalia Markova, Taya Valkyrie, Arez, Penta El Zero Mierdo, Jay & Mark Briscoe.

House of Glory Salvation Photo Highlights
photos by smile from The Lower East Side

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#smileSays

Check out my new podcast

May 4, 2020 smile from The Lower East Side 1 Comment

It’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve posted anything because I have been prepping my new podcast. #smileSays is now available on the following podcast platforms:

Subscribe now so you won’t miss a thing. I was originally going to host the podcast here, but decided to let Anchor host and syndicate it in the hope of generating revenue through donations or integrated advertising. There was more that went into the decision than that, but I’ll digress for now. I’m going to see if I can embed the episodes on the site as well. The player featuring the latest episode should load here:

If it doesn’t load, or you want to listen to an older episode, you can check out individual episodes in the meantime by checking the sidebar on a desktop or scrolling further down on mobile. I’ll get it to work eventually.

Spread the word and leave me a voice message with some feedback if it moves you.

Insomniac Non Sequitur

Update on What an Institution!

March 9, 2020 smile from The Lower East Side Leave a comment

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything on the Police Academy documentary. Got an email update yesterday from the team:

We finally got Steve Guttenberg on board and his 3-hour interview was amazing, but really reshaped the narrative of the doc. We tried to insert him in where he was needed but in the end, we felt we needed to start the edit from scratch. We strongly believe that this was the right decision and now the doc is shaping into something very special. We will have a more detailed update soon!
Team Cult Screenings UK Ltd. – March 8, 2020

Steve Guttenberg in a Police Academy T-shirt

So that’s that.

Insomniac Non Sequitur

First Look: What An Institution! The Story of Police Academy

October 7, 2018 smile from The Lower East Side Leave a comment

Hey, you got 10 minutes? That’s about how long this sizzle reel is:

^{If the embedded video doesn’t load, click to watch
What An Institution! The Story of Police Academy (2019) Exclusive 10-minute Preview
at YouTube.}

What An Institution! The Story of Police Academy is in production now. The team is still collecting interviews, but here’s a list of confirmed participants:

Paul Maslansky, Executive Producer
Bobcat Goldthwait, “Zed“
Michael Winslow, ” Jones“
Leslie Easterbrook, “Sgt. Callahan“
Shawn Weatherly, “Karen Adams“
Marion Ramsey, “Hooks“
Art Metrano, “Captain Mauser“
Brant Von Hoffman, “Blankes“
Peter Van Norden, “Schtulman“
Tim Kazurinsky, “Sweetchuck“
Charlie Schlatter, “Connors“
Matt McCoy, “Nick Lassard“
Julie Brown, “Chloe“
G. W. Bailey, “Captain Harris“
Brian Tochi, “Nogata“
Donovan Scott, “Leslie Barbara“
Scott Thomson, “Copeland“
Lance Kinsey, “Proctor“
Gregg Berger, “Talinsky“
Andrew Paris, “Bud Kirkland“
P. J. Ochlan, “Lester Shane“
Don Lake, “Mr. Wig“

The film is scheduled for release in 2019. I’ll post updates here from time to time, but if you’re on Facebook, you can follow the project here.

Insomniac Non Sequitur

I’ve been promising something relating to Police Academy for years. It’s much bigger than I planned

July 23, 2018 smile from The Lower East Side 1 Comment

Been a while since I posted anything new, and it’ll be a while longer. If you’ve been here before you might have noticed that I’ve updated the design of the site and I’m now going through it and fixing broken links and whatnot. Just to post something (sort of) fresh, I’m recycling a comment I made on a Police Academy post at The AV Club six years ago. I know, you’re thinking, “A comment?!? Seems like a pretty half assed thing to repurpose!” It’s not; the comment is about 1300 words of objectively deep insight. I was intending to write a thesis further expanding on the those ideas, but never did.

The poster for the documentary, What an Institution! The Story of Police Academy — In the 1980s, women had no torsos.

So, why this? Why now? Last month, I became an Executive Producer on the documentary, What An Institution! The Story of Police Academy. I’m the guy who spit out 1300 words off the top of my head on Police Academy, what did you expect me to produce? “A reboot,” you say. Sure, I’d love to, but I doubt that AT&T is going to replace Academy Award winning auteur Jordan Peele with little old me. I’m not really doing any of the heavy lifting on the project, that’s being taken care of by director Gary Smart and the team at Cult Screenings UK with assists from Paul Maslansky and Adam F. Goldberg. Shooting starts this week, so keep your eyes peeled for What An Institution! in 2019. Until then, enjoy this: Continue reading I’ve been promising something relating to Police Academy for years. It’s much bigger than I planned →

Original Videos

Remember that time I was a puppeteer?

Video September 4, 2015 smile from The Lower East Side Leave a comment

Ten years ago this weekend, I was the host / emcee of The New York Infringement Festival, a series of plays and one person shows held over Labor Day weekend in Greenwich Village. Someone (I forget who) had created this large puppet called Bushiva to parade around Washington Square Park. I don’t know if they had any specific performance planned, at least, I wasn’t given any direction when I was asked to help operate the puppet.

Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans that weekend, and if you remember, the initial government response to the crisis was far from adequate. Consequently, there were a lot of activist groups and politically minded individuals demonstrating when we arrived with this giant George W. Bush head. I decided to give Bushiva a voice right there on the spot and started fielding questions from pedestrians, offering satirical commetary on the policies and practices of our then president.

I’m not sure who shot and edited the video below, which was posted to YouTube some years ago and I came across recently. Even though the general public’s questions prompting the responses aren’t included, you can still get the idea. It would be great to have a look at the raw footage since I’ve never seen it, but I’ll take what I can get.