Photos
You guys, don’t forget that the cult hit Birdemic is coming to New York City this weekend. The Los Angeles premiere was a huge success, but now success has come to the Big Apple! Birdemic, of course, is the bonkers horror-survival cult classic directed by a sentient copy of Photoshop James Nguyen about a successful young business salesman and his beautiful new girlfriend coming under attack by some dangerous eagles? Something like that. It is also a movie about the real-time experience of navigating northern California suburban traffic. You will see. There are screenings tomorrow and Saturday, but tomorrow night’s midnight screening at the IFC Center (tickets here) is the only one that will begin with a Q&A featuring James Nguyen and the film’s stars, Alan Bagh and Whitney Moore, moderated by me.
If you want to go tomorrow but are too poor (gross), we are giving away two pairs of tickets to tomorrow night’s screening. To win the tickets, just leave a comment describing the scariest thing that you ever saw a bird do. Scariest jerk of a bird wins! Did you know they are dinosaurs or something?
After the jump, a video of Birdemic director James Nguyen being interviewed on a cable access show, just to give you a sense of what to expect at the Q&A:
Oh boy, this is going to be a mess. See you tomorrow!
 |
 |
Hey guys, noticed how “James Nguyen” and “James Cameron” is, like, pretty much the same name? GUARANTEED quality!
Nguyen is how you say ‘Cameron’ the Na’vi Language
Capu Flapu And The Spasmatic Pentagrams = Glenn Beck sees a conspiratorial pattern where there isn’t one
I’m sorry, I just…. I love my country. And I fear for it
You didn’t want to be right about this!!!!
A bird broke my heart. Pip, pip…….. Cheerio.
I once saw a bird kill a man just for muttering, “Clever girl.”
I once witnessed a Macaw watching Wild Hogs. They say he sat through the whole thing…
Oh boy, what did I get myself into?
I’ve never seen a bird do anything scary, but I’ve been sexually harassed by a man who called himself ‘Hawk”. Does that count?
Are you Kat from So You Think You Can Dance?
The eyes give you away, Willis
and i once sat at a bar in albany (CA not NY) with michael horse who portrayed deputy hawk on twin peaks. i stared forever to be sure it was him and then couldn’t muster the courage to walk up and say something stupid like “tell me about the black lodge” or “how’s andy?” which is a bummer cause i’m sure actors remembered for one thing and one thing alone really like being reminded that they haven’t acted professionally since 1992. does that count?
http://www.gifbin.com/983732
Scary!
Next time Save the Image to your hard disk (rt click the image, save image as)
Load it to a tinypic.com or some other dealie like that
Resize it to Message Board/Email size (340 x 640 or something)
Copy+paste/Post the Direct Link For Layouts
VORTEX
Awe thanks. I was dicking around with my iPhone in class. I didn’t know what to expect when I hit submit comment. Not that I knew what I was doing anyway. I appreciate your help!
Goodness gracious. Gifs are complicated. Whoever says they are easy is lying!
Also that was supposed to be that awful Pelican eating a Pigeon thing. Not a never ending vortex. I literally have no idea where the vortex came from. I haven’t learned how to do anything new with a computer in 6 years and it shows every time I try to be a participant in the modern world!
[IMG]http://i42.tinypic.com/1215vno.jpg[/IMG]
…ta-da?
This is my letter of resignation. I have enjoyed my time with this company, but I feel I no longer have anything to offer. Good luck in all your future endeavors.
[image]http://tiny.abstractdynamics.org/archives/bird_costume_front_sm.jpg[/image]
I don’t even want to see Birdemic! i just hate being terrible at this!
Man, this is why I hate living in a Maryland suburb. I miss everything fun. I need to move somewhere that matters (NY or LA of course) stat.
[creep]what maryland suburb?[/creep] i also live in a maryland suburb, sometimes.
I grew up on Long Island and seagulls were a common playground acquaintance, basically the pigeons of the coastline. In elementary school we used to throw rocks at them for fun, and because kids are precious flowers(&God & the bible). A detail that will come in handy later in my tale- seagulls generally fly away when rocks are hurled at them.
Anyways one day my art teacher had me run an errand, so I exited the little art shack making my way to the main school building via the playground. What awaited me there was a sight to behold, literally hundreds of seagulls parked on every inch of the vast monkey bar-ed and basketball hoop-ed complex. My bright idea was to throw rocks at them. Feeling big in numbers I guess, I was attacked by a number of them, being pecked at and even bit by one. I guess it hurt my pride more than anything. So, point is, while you bigshot ‘gummers are busy laughing at some horribly envisioned film know this – the birdemic is real, and no one is safe anymore.
your mom should have let you watch alfred hitchcock movies at a young age like mine, then you totally would have seen that gull attack coming.
Im not sure about scariest, but the Lyre bird in Australia mimics construction workers and chainsaws that it hears amongst other crazy noises.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeQjkQpeJwY&feature=related
god it really going to serve as a water for film history with all these 2D-converted to shitty-cult-classics coming out, you know, like alice in wonderland.
god it’s really going to serve as a watermark for film history with all these 2D-converted to shitty-cult-classics coming out, you know, like alice in wonderland.
In the dorms at my college (yup, COLLEGE) there was a bird that would hang out outside the dining hall and attack (read: fly at and nip) people as they tried to enter.
Also, one summer I went backpacking in Europe (yup, I’m white and middle-class) and on my first night in Paris a bird shit on my head. In Paris, even the birds are assholes.
On a final note, I live in San Francisco so, even if I were chosen (which DUH I’M GOING TO BE YOU GUYS WERE AT THE EDGE OF YOUR SEATS!), I couldn’t attend. I just thought it’d be nice to share my bird stories and have you guys be all “that’s so raven!” (ugh.)
Was this bird in San Francisco? Because our beloved city has some mean birds! Remember Swoops, the Front Street Attack Bird?
That’s an awful pretty dress you got on there, boy.
(This picture confuses me because Big Bird is a six year old boy…though to be fair when I was five I used to wear my mother’s nightgown to bed. Whatever makes you happy.)
I once saw a seagull feeding alka seltzer to kids at the beach. It then just sat there laughing while the children exploded.
I once saw a bird execute a contract giving Jeff Dunham his own show on Comedy Central.
i am poor and unemployed! totally gross, i know, but it has given me way more time to read videogum.
once when i was a kid, we left our new pug puppy outside to play in the sunshine. he was so cute and tiny and awesome. R.I.P. sammy. anyway, he was out there for awhile, and the my mother got a phone call from the neighbor telling us that we should probably bring our dog inside. it turns out there was a hawk circling sammy, coming lower and lower with each turn. there was sammy, brain trust that he was, sitting in the middle of the yard, staring up at the hawk, his head following the hawk’s movements like a tiny puppy spectator at a circular tennis match. we brought him inside and did not leave him alone in the backyard until he was big enough to not entice the hawks. the end!
i was totally going to submit this brilliant piece of short non-fiction to esquire or maybe even the new yorker, but for birdemic tickets, it can be all yours, videogum.
this just reminded me of the time i was picking you up from class and as i drove up to the loading dock at the theatre building, a hawk swooped down in front of me, picked up a squirrel, and flew off. it was pretty awesome.
also, so that this sounds less creepy/weird to everyone else, i know dstar in real life. we’re sisters. don’t believe her if she calls me “girl i don’t know.”
you gals are way adorable. You take the VG family to a new level! Keep posting and add a nice photo.
So is this where we share bird memories? Today I saw a feather floating toward the earth and a small baby bird intercepted it, caught it in its beak and then stood on the ground holding the feather for a while. It was like the plastic bag in American Beauty moment
Your story reminded me of this magical movie moment.
so, in the interview clip eric played the woman and tim played the asian guy…..am i right, or was it the other way around?
OR
I don’t know much about James Nguyen, but we share the same last name (oh no, please don’t stalk me). I’m just guessing he was a successful business man, or doctor, who always wanted to make movies but his parents didn’t let him go to film school or something. And then he bought a macbook and made a movie on there. It’s not racist because I am a living example right?
I don’t live in New York but geese scare the hell out of me.
True story: I was a tourist in Key West in the early nineties when I made the acquaintance of an elderly gentleman who brought me to a gay bar. Not being gay myself, I nonetheless had a pretty good time, but after a while I thought it wise to make up an excuse to leave, because I didn’t want to give him the wrong impression. I said I was hungry (nowhere near dinner time), and would go look for a place to eat. He said he knew a good place, and would take me there. I stupidly, naively got into his van, because I didn’t want to be impolite. After a while I asked him where we were going, and he said his place. At that point I really thought I should mumble something about being straight and not wanting to imply anything but that it was maybe relevant to his interests I don’t know. Not a word more was said by either of us for the rest of the day, and arriving at his home (there was another old man all in leather watching MST3K who also never uttered a single word) he went to find the kitchen under a pile of stuff, and I kind of wandered through the house, not having much to say or do. In one of the rooms there was a large parrot who kept calling me a cracker. After a while, the man came back with some burgers, which we ate in silence in the living room. The leather-clad man had now disappeared. Then, he slowly fell asleep (or pretended to), and after a while, I just left. It was quite a walk back to the center, especially since I had no idea where I was. That night, I got really really drunk, and the next morning was probably my biggest hangover ever. I had a lot of fun.
Anyway, that bird was hardly scary at all, and I am nowhere near New York, so don’t be giving me any tickets. Thank you for your attention.
And, of course, That ’70s Show remains popular in syndication.
that is a ridiculous story. I can’t believe you just got in his van and then ate the food he gave you. Oh my goodness. You are a little crazy but let’s be friends. Best friends.
Ok, I’ll let my current best friend know about the new situation. After all, you have a NASA logo.
By the way, I always wondered, is “cracker” a perfectly normal thing to say for a parrot in the south of the USA, or is it obviously meant to have a double meaning? I don’t understand American culture well enough to know if the bird was trying to be clever or what.
When I was little my dad used to take me eel raking. (Yeah. yeah. yeah.) It is exactly what it sounds like. Essentially you take a giant metal rake and you slide it through the soft sand at low tide stabbing eels. Then you take all the eels and dump them in a bucket to use later for bait.
This is pretty gruesome and there are usually lots of people doing it at the same time resulting in eel corpses all over the place and lots of seagulls.
I was swimming through some eel corpses (yay) and a seagull pulled a chunk of hair out of my scalp mistaking it for a delicious eel. It sucked and was terrifying.
Additionally, last week I was walking down eldridge street in chinatown and a little bird flew so fast and so close to my face that I screamed out loud on a busy street. Lots of Asian people looked at me like I was crazy.
I hate birds.
OH I also forget I had a terrible roommate with a farm in her room and she had this just insane looking parrot named Davie or something precious like that. It was so stressed out that it used to SCREAM and rip all of it’s feathers out. It was completely covered in scabs and blood.
It used to mimic the sound of a door creaking and then say “hello” really softly. When I was alone in the house it used to FREAK ME OUT.
You win! This is all birdemic-level scary stuff.
forgot*
What type of story do I leave on here to win tickets for the screening where Bonnie Steiger will be moderating the Q&A?
Are people upset that I am making fun of Bonnie Steiger or are they taking my comment seriously and being offended on behalf of Gabe? It is dry, granted, but it is still meant to be humour.
Obviously I adore Gabe. If it were up to me he wouldn’t just be moderating but Q-ing & A-ing and acting out the movie Rocky Horror-style in front of the screen. I would fly to New York to attend that screening.
I was walking into the Tate Modern in that there London when the remains of a dead bird fell from the sky and landed right in front of me. It was just two wings attached by a bloody bone. Very ominous and a lot better than some of the stuff on inside, a fucking slide fer fuck’s sake.
I can’t play because I don’t live in New York but one time while I was at Sea World one of the seagulls swooped down from the sky and stole my churro. Years later, fueled by my loss and blind rage, I exacted revenge by totally nailing a rogue seagull with a softball while I was at hitting practice.
And by “exacted my revenge” I mean: this happened and I cried inconsolably for an hour afterwards.
i am the seagull. no, that’s not right.
[chekhov anyone? that line always makes me giggle. i'm really bad with super serious things.]
Someone else is controlling that lady’s arms.
Once I was riding my bike and there was a pigeon in my way. I tried ringing my bell and yelling at it, but it wouldn’t move. I ended up swerving into a car to avoid it. Dislocated my shoulder.
I hate pigeons, never getting off the road. And once one flew into my hair while I was biking and it was the scariest shit.
I don’t live in New York unfortunately so this comment is null and void.
Just between you and me (all of Videogum), Gabe, I have a MASSIVE crush on Whitney Moore…
hey guys! what are we talking about? i was- oh… oh i see.
Uh, last summer I was walking on fifth ave and a pigeon hit me in the head with its wing. That was pretty scary I guess… Also I was walking to a job interview and spent the entire time wondering if I was covered in feathers and/or bird disease. I didn’t get the job.
Unless you want to award me fifteen tickets! 
I know mine is clearly the scariest, but I’m busy tomorrow night
I saw a giant Redtail Hawk overhead. It dropped something and flew off. The something hit a small tree next to where I was walking and then rolled in front of me. What is that something you ask? The back half of a squirrel from stomach to tail. Completely ruined my utopian idea that squirrels never die and are always happy.
Obviously you guys love blurry panel photos, so here… [IMG]http://i44.tinypic.com/o9fv5w.jpg[/IMG] Birdemic panel from left: Gabe, James Nguyen, Alan Bagh and Whitney Moore.
hahahahaha. obviously that went off without a hitch. so here: http://tinypic.com/r/o9fv5w/5.