Here’s a fun, catchy tune written by Dennis Haggerty and performed by his band, Stage Fright. Captures the essence of Novato, our little gem of a town!
Wines can be a lot like dogs: thin out the breed a bit, and look for some interesting character traits. While some winemakers, like pedigree breeders, might not like these red- haired stepchildren much, they’ve got a lot of personality.
In the documentary film, A State of Vine, http://astateofvine.com, more than a few wineries featured exalt a particular varietal as their “best of show.” Silver Oak cabernet, Pride’s cult classics, even Harvest Moon touts their zinfandel, while admitting its status as a bastard of sorts, not even considered a varietal by the French. Even the grandaddy of good cheap wine, Charles Shaw, a/k/a “two buck Chuck” offers an assortment of varietals.
While most varietals do contain a light blend of other grapes – 75% of the grapes must be the designated grape in the US, 85% in the more regulated European Union – the blends don’t have as many rules, except for Meritage which prides itself on class and caliber, much like a yorkie poo.
In the movie, Mike Martini of Taft Street Winery, offers a practical approach to wine selection, emphasizing the friends at the table, and the art of the conversation. Offing the wine snobs, who are also a subject of discussion in a single beat, he says, ” Grapes are a weed, they’ll grow anywhere.”
Incredible as it might seem, my husband and I get tired of the same wine, no matter the price point. It’s like looking at a french poodle day after day when one really feels like tossing a stick with a lab mix. When that happens, we add some unusual blends into the mix, without concern of quantity nor grape. We always find some new “must haves” and rather than hide the bottle and embrace the decanter, we introduce them proudly when we entertain.
Apparently so. Because this Halloween weekend, beautiful, seemingly benign Marin County will be scaring the wits out of a bunch of British horror film fans.
“The Beckoning,” a frightening suspense thriller shot entirely in Marin’s spookiest locations (like the Novato Public Library), has been selected to be shown at the first ever “Grimm Up North Festival of Horror” in Manchester, England.
It will be in some bloody good company, screened along with 30 films from across the genre, including “Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl,” “The Graves” and “Schooner of Blood.”
A festival promo spells out the English terror trend, saying, “Blood, guts and the utterly perverse. A horror revival is hitting the U.K. with a vengeance, so prepare to be taken to hell and back.”
Inspired by British privateer Sir Francis Drake’s landing on the beaches of what is now the Point Reyes National Seashore, “The Beckoning” is the debut feature from Zan Media, a family-run film and video production company in Novato.
“The Manchester people somehow found out about the movie, and because of the Sir Francis Drake connection, they called us and asked us if they could put it in their festival,” said associate producer Niki Scioli. “It’s pretty exciting.”
The movie stars the lovely Marin actress Lindsay Drummer as the obligatory innocent young co-ed who, in this particular scenario, is terrorized by a vengeful Sir Francis Drake, played by the Marin Shakespeare Company’s
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Robert Currier.
But it’s lovely Marin that’s the real star of this show. A review on the Web site FlamesRising.com makes a big deal of the fact that “The Beckoning” was “filmed on location in gorgeous Marin County, California,” pointing out that “the film ends with more of that beautiful Marin County scenery.”
The screenplay was written by the husband and wife team of Don and Christine Scioli, who founded Zan Media 28 years ago after moving to Marin from the East Coast.
They originally set their story in Salem, Mass., site of the Salem Witch Trials. But they quickly concluded that Marin was a much better setting for a movie that involves “a generous dose of demonic spirits and repressed memories of a terrifying past life,” and not just because of our large number of psychotherapists.
“The locations here are so great,” Don Scioli said. “That’s why we decided to do it. These locations are better than New England.”
The filmmakers were particularly taken with the old world stone turrets and towers of the San Francisco Theological Seminary in San Anselmo.
And any horror film director would kill to shoot scenes in the creaking stairways and dark corners of the Falkirk Mansion, the 19th century Queen Anne Victorian that sits like an old spinster on the former Dollar family estate in San Rafael.
“We had gone there for chamber of commerce things,” Scioli said. “But when you get upstairs, way upstairs, it’s kind of creepy.”
They also liked the Dolcini Ranch and its old farmhouse for its spooky, Hitchcockian qualities.
“That place was particularly creepy,” Niki Scioli noted. “It set the mood for everything.”
Because of permission issues, they used Novato’s Stafford Lake as a stand-in for Drake’s Beach.
“It poured rain the night we shot there,” Don Scioli recalled. But what at first seemed like a disaster turned out to be a blessing. All the fog and rain made a sweet little lake look like a raging seashore. It became an ideal location for burning a terrified co-ed at the stake.
“All you could see was water and hills,” Scioli said. “It was the perfect double for Drakes Beach.”
“The Beckoning” was shot in just 18 days on a budget of less than $1 million. It was by no means the first horror movie set in Marin. Don Scioli’s fellow student at USC’s film school, John Carpenter, shot “The Fog” and “Halloween” here. So Zan Media is following in a hallowed tradition.
Since “The Beckoning,” the company has gone on to do many other film and video projects, including “A State of Vine,” a documentary about the California wine industry.
But their pride in “The Beckoning” has been renewed with the Manchester screening.
“We decided to make the movie because the locations here are so great,” Don Scioli said. “Plus, there’s something cool about doing a low-budget horror film.”
SEE IT
“The Beckoning” is available on DVD at the Novato Public Library and for $19.99 at www.thebeckoningmovie.com.
Contact Paul Liberatore via e-mail at liberatore@marinij.com; follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LibLarge
Northern California based film and video production company, Zan Media, commissioned by Marin and Mendocino County Sheriffs’ Robert Doyle and Tom Allan respectively, for projects aimed at striking a nerve in the community and hopefully saving lives in the process. The productions were extremely different in both content and style, but the goal, AWARENESS was the same.
My husband and I own Zan Media, http://www.zanmedia.com , and I am so proud to recount our interaction with these fine men and their departments, which serve this area with such notable distinction.
In Mendocino County, Sheriff Allman heard a clear mandate in his ‘06 election victory as Sheriff: solve the methamphetamine problem ravaging the county. But, in his words, “ I could think of 20 ideas that I knew wouldn’t work, but I needed one that MIGHT work, and I knew it couldn’t be as simple as throwing it into the hands of law enforcement.” He was struck by an idea that if parents, community youth counselors or religious leaders AND law enforcement worked together, they might be able to curb this crisis. The idea had several components: offer saliva drug testing to parents through the schools, coupled with an explanatory video. “Methamphetamine, Deathamphetamine” is the title, http://www.zanmedia.com/content.htm?mov=meth.mov , and result of the video portion of Sheriff Allman’s campaign which will kick off in earnest in 2008.
The video had a life and story of it’s own. On the first day of shooting at the Mendocino County jail, we noticed a group of female inmates of various ages working in the garden. They asked the Sheriff what we were doing, and testing his own statistics, that of the people incarcerated there in the last 30 days, 80% were “meth” related, he questioned how many of these four were in jail due, in some extent, to meth. They all were. Then to a one, they asked if they could participate in the video, to tell their own story of what this drug did to ruin their lives. To say this was compelling video footage is an understatement. It provided a core of realism to launch this campaign and seek a solution. We also interviewed a man who coined the term “deathamphetamine,” as he chronicled his slow decent into hell and back. While our journey into the interior of the jail, serenaded by a most unhappy inmate drying out, provided a stark visual backdrop, it is the story of the youth who takes a live, on camera drug test that offers the most dramatic moment. The citizens of Mendocino County are lucky to have a Sheriff that isn’t afraid to tackle difficult issues in a novel manner. Hopefully, this program will bring success in the year ahead.
In Marin County, a continuation of youth safety issues were the topic of “Trust Your Gut,” http://www.zanmedia.com/content.htm?mov=gut.mov , a video that appears on the Sheriff Department’s web site and is available through the Office of Education and other outreach groups. Sheriff Doyle, at the helm for many years, continues to “think outside the box” with a overwhelming sense of community, much like his Mendocino County counterpart. He enlisted the services of his department as well as police officers and detectives in the various cities in Marin County, to participate in this production, together. Scenarios include three distinct age related topics, from grade school-ers to preteens to college aged students, with information what each can do to stay safe. After each reenactment, a law enforcement officer presents some tips and the reenactment is “rewound” and played again, correctly. The combination of youth appealing video segments shot MTV style, along with the real officers appearing in the actual locations, creates an entertaining yet didactic vehicle.
I thank both of these dedicated men and their extraordinary staff for this opportunity.
Manchester England PREMIERE FESTIVAL OF HORRORS Invites Marin County, CA Produced Film For Halloween Screening
NOVATO, Ca ( September 8, 2009) - Manchester Premiere Festival of Horror/GRIMM UP NORTH, has invited Novato based, Zan Media, to screen their feature film, “The Beckoning,” at the first annual festival, Halloween weekend. “The Beckoning,” shot entirely on location in Marin County, is a contemporary suspense thriller, based on actual events, that includes a generous dose of demonic spirits and repressed memories of a terrifying past life, as an innocent young co-ed encounters the legendary privateer, Sir Francis Drake, and his swarthy men, who are obsessed with an insatiable desire for revenge.
The film stars a plethora of Marin based actors ( including Marin Shakespeare Company Artistic Director, Robert Currier as Sir Francis Drake), and was shot over the course of three weeks at Drake’s Beach, Point Reyes Station, Mira Monte Marina, the San Francisco Theological Society, the Dolcini ranch, Falkirk Mansion and the Novato public library.
Director Don Scioli, who was part of a team the won the Academy Award®while at USC Cinema School, for “A Field of Honor,” commented: “ As a huge fan of Manchester United, the world’s most famous soccer team, I am honored to have this movie screened at ground zero for English ’football.’ I hope the folks there will gain a new appreciation of Northern CA, Marin County in particular, and England’s most famous world explorer, Sir Francis Drake.”
Two weeks ago my company, Zan Media, http://www.zanmedia.com was called in to produce counter attack videos and TV ads for a sanitary district under fire. This agency gave little thought to proactive outreach videos that would keep ratepayers informed about what they were doing, as they were doing it. They waited until the wastewater hit the fan.
Most organizations like this one do the same thing – they go about their seemingly routine business, doing the best job they can, but consider a few wordy press releases uploaded to their website, minutes from monthly meetings and the annual report, all that is necessary to keep the public informed. The thought of using video ongoing is an alien thought, a seemingly unnecessary expense and perhaps overkill. Not so. Not ever so. Well produced videos can be both reasonably priced and extremely versatile. A few hours of shooting can produce video press releases, viral videos for YouTube and other social networking sites, as well as a great enhancement to the agency website and as a stand alone DVD for community organizations like Rotary.
In this particular case, disgruntled employees, worried about losing their jobs, joined forces to create a grass roots effort to sling some mud ( sludge?) by suggesting an upcoming board vote to outsource a new waste water treatment plant reeked of privatization, globalization and of course, the ever popular and fear mongering, rampant water pollution.
Within a few days we had developed an easy strategy with the consultants for crisis communication: the facts. This agency quietly created magnificent wetlands, so we filmed the egrets and geese happily playing therein. They entered a partnership with a pristine local golf course to create wastewater irrigation and they continue to build a state of the art, totally “green” treatment plant. (They are of course, a certified green business, having passed a rigid certification process.) Everyone we Interviewed was totally stoked about all sorts of little things – a new machine that separates little pieces of kaka better then ever before. So in fact, while the opponents “went negative” a trend quite epidemic in all things political, we just told our story with visually compelling images.
The drama has not completely played out yet, but the district now has the huge satisfaction of knowing that a few more folks out there know about their their hard work and honest efforts to do their jobs as best they can.
The rain FINALLY is gone for good. The farmer’s market opened on May 5th, just in time for Cinco de Mayo. Zan Media is hosting a booth for the Novato History Museum and Novato’s school foundation, School Fuel, where market goers can purchase, A Century of Gentle Seasons, A History of Novato, http://www.novatohistory.com, and other locally produced films as a fundraiser that is both fun and entertaining.
If you want to learn more about Novato’s place in bootlegging history, the Grateful Dead in Novato, or how John C. Fremont backed down from a duel in Novato with Kit Carson by his side, you’ll want to watch this video.
Visit our booth across the street from Finnegan’s. I’m buying tomato plants from Tommy next week!
After an interesting tour of an organic farm which we thought was quite in the middle of nowhere, we found two BIG destinations: Cache Creek Casino ( Vegas style, and would have been fun to stay for awhile but for the cigarette smoke!) and the RH Phillips’ massive but very personable operation in Esparto. One of our traveling companions, an older fellow, noted ” if you have a heart attack out here, you’re a goner.” Complimentary tastings included a few that weren’t on the list, “just because.” We spent some time detailing large winery operations in our documentary film on the CA wine industry,
“A State of Vine,” http://www.astateofvine.com. Just because they are big, and the prices are reasonable, doesn’t mean they are producing bad wine. On the contrary, RH Phillips has some great Night Harvest brand selections worth bringing home – and we did just that.
None of that wine snob nonsense, here. Just good folks and some decent wine.
I just don’t get why there are so many pretentious idiots in the wine world. We addressed this issue in our documentary film, A State of Vine, http://www.astateofvine.com, and it doesn’t seem to be getting any better. I’ve lived in the gateway to Napa and Sonoma wine country for 26 years, and I’ve been drinking wine for a lot longer than I haven’t been drinking wine, so you really can’t make me think your wine is great when it tastes lousy, costs too much, and is served by an obnoxious man in a very cramped, inhospitable tasting room, who couldn’t believe that, at the end of our visit, we walked out without buying anything.
That about sums up our visit to Schug Carneros. Rating, D.
Yesterday I met a realtor at a foreclosure “open house,” though those last two terms don’t really go together in my mind. I’m still living in the old world of open houses, where houses were staged by proud owners and smelled like just-baked cookies. Now they are owned by banks and are bare-boned affairs, devoid of any hint of happiness and home that once might have been. She was really just a babysitter for the bank and how she missed those days when her job was fun!
So many greedy little lies, mounted up one upon the other making people – mortgage brokers, bankers, stock brokers, insurance executives, money managers – wealthy for the short term, but producing the worst our country has ever had to offer.
I hope this time America gains something it never seems to have for long. A memory
