I'm A Moving Blogs...

For the sake of handiness and convenience, I'll be moving the majority of my blogging over to a brand spanking new website that Ken McGuire made for me. He's a dote.

It's over on johnmorton.ie if you're interested in checking it out and from there, I'll likely blog.

Summer

Vultures Episode 5 Bloopers

And from Vultures Episode 5 'The Adventures Of The Hidden Microfilm' comes a whole bunch of the bits we messed up:



Enjoy!

Spring

'Address The Silence' by Von Bizmark

Von Bizmark have just released their 'Address The Silence' single and we got the lovely job of doing the video for it.

I scripted and directed it with Alan Slattery producing it under our Mycrofilms outfit. Also thanks to John Doran, Lucy McKenna, Stephen Morton and Sarah Dunphy for all their work on it. Sarah also got to do some acting along with Jessica Walsh and Stephen Colfer who did a fine line in loving and torturing. But mostly torturing.

I'd had this voodoo doll couple chase concept chalked down for a potential music video and when John Coady of Von Bizmark sent me the track and there was a mention of 'voodoo dolls' it was pretty inevitable that this was the video to use it in. And here it is:

The single itself is out since Friday and the lads have a tour in full swing to support it, all details can be found over on www.VonBizmark.com. There's also a website set up for the video itself so check it out over here. Ken McGuire of Rewind PR is the man doing a fine line in promoting and websiting for Von Bizmark so additional thanks to him for pimping out the video.

Vultures Episode 4 Bloopers

The bloopers for the fourth episode of Vultures 'The Case Of The Poisoned Dates' have just gone online. Proof conclusive that there's nothing funnier than people fucking up. Apart from people falling.

Enjoy!

Skangered

I came across this little curio online a few weeks back. It's a clip from the first film I ever made back when I was 17. Made by YIFM in 2001, Skegs and Skangers was my idea of an Irish teen movie set on the weekend before a bunch of Kilkenny youths go back to school. Unfortunately it had no nudity, bongs or anything else remotely interesting. Mostly people getting in fights with scumbags at shit house parties and being embarrassing with girls. So essentially, it was not unlike my actual teen years.

Here's one scene from it that ended up a bit more finished. It features Mark Colgan, Mick McGrath and Chris Walshe in a shop that no longer exists in Kilkenny:

I can remember none of us had a fucking clue how to make a film and I'm pretty sure the whole thing is nonsensical because there was roughly 30,000 storylines. But it was pretty good hands on experience at the time and I remember it being a lot of fun. The film remains unfinished (or abandoned) and will likely never see the light of day. It had a huge cast that could do with the embarrassment so maybe some more of it may resurface.

I took all the teen characters and moved them on a few years and used them to make another Kilkenny piece, a play called Smitten, which was first performed by Devious Theatre in 2008. A lot of the characters are the same and the story was just as ramshackle. I'll probably do something with the same characters when they're in their 30's as well.

It is very likely that it will involve lots of different stories set in Kilkenny and not make much sense when pieced together.

Devious Theatre's Dario Fo Season

Pretty much all of my blogging activity over the past 8 months has taken place over at the Devious Theatre website as we worked on our Dario Fo Season.

Now that it's over I will (a. return to this lonely neglected blog and (b. find something else to do with my time. Hopefully.

We've wrapped up the entire Dario Fo escapade with a huge feature blog that sums up the entire experience. It's quite a read and a piece of archiving that will stand to us in future times. The entire project has been thus far the pinnacle of my wee theatre life. You can read a lot more about it right here.

No Point Crying Over Spilt Olives...

I had intended to do a lot more updating of my blog through the production of Can't Pay? Won't Pay! and well, I didn't really. Much to my busy chagrin.

Most of my blogging for the show was done on the Devious Theatre website and my own blog hasn't really gotten much love in the process.

The show (and indeed our entire Dario Fo Season) finished on Sunday after 7 months of hard work from the entire Devious Theatre crew. We were delighted with the audiences, the feedback and the reviews, one of which was posted today. You can read it here. And that brings our excursion into the work of Dario Fo to a close.

It was a lot of fun and I'm going to miss it.

Here's some pictures from the show. There's literally gazillions of blog updates about the show over on DeviousTheatre.com so that's definitely the place to go if you'd like to find out more.

Vultures Episode 3 Bloopers

All the bits we fucked up from 'The Mystery Of The Night Time Refuse' have just gone online.

And there's quite a few of them it must be said.

Enjoy!

Once Upon A Time In The Glorious Revolution

Once Upon A Time In The Glorious Revolution is an Irish historical western that I was very fortunate to work on last year. After the trailer was released a few weeks back, the entire film has just been put online in all it's rainy, blood soaked glory.

Written and directed by Sean Clancy, it's a about a family of Irish guerilla fighters in the 17th century who are thrown into disarray when an old comrade comes back looking for revenge. I play one of said family of guerilla fighters and it was a mighty fun shoot, jumping, hopping, lepping and killing lads around the beautiful, wild Leitrim countryside. Why more films aren't shot in Leitrim I don't know, it's a veritable harvest of amazing locations, as you'll see with this film. Apart from the fucking midges. Which you'll also see in this film. Bastards.

Apart from meself, the cast features Peter McGann, Dermot McKee, Stephen Considine, Caolan Clancy and some handsome, multitasking pup as the youngest of the three brothers. I'm the middle one so that made a nice change from real life.

I wrote a previous entry about the shoot here. And now the final product is ready for online eyes to see. It's been shopped around a few festivals as I speak.

Sean has just put the film up on IMDB and it can be watched right here.

Can Poster Will Poster

We're just about 4 weeks off the opening night of Devious Theatre's production of Dario Fo's Can't Pay? Won't Pay! and business is really starting to pick up.

I've been working on the play for the last couple of months in terms of development and rewriting the script. Since January I've had the good fortune to be directing the show. It's the second part of our Dario Fo Season and so far it's the biggest project we've undertaken as Devious Theatre. It's pretty much been a non stop Dario Fo fest since we launched the project back in August 2009.

This week we unveiled the final poster for the play, as designed by the wizard that is Paddy Dunne and it features the first reveal of the cast of Can't Pay? Won't Pay!

Here you see the shoplifting duo Antonia and Margherita (Angela Barrett and Hazel Fahy), their husbands Giovanni and Luigi (Ken McGuire and Ross Costigan) and the hapless Inspector (David Thompson)

I've just posted a new rehearsal blog over on www.DeviousTheatre.com. You can check it out here. Keep and eye on that there sight for all other info and bits and pieces on the production.

It runs 10th - 14th March in the Set Theatre, John Street, Kilkenny.

Vultures Episode 2 Bloopers

The bloopers from the second episode of Vultures 'The Scarlet Lady Vanishes' have just gone online. There's not an awful lot of them but here's what we cobbled together. As always, gratuitous corpsing.

Enjoy!

Old Fangs Arrives At Sundance

Nearly a year ago I wrote a post about a short animated film I was involved with called Old Fangs.

Now a year later, the film, written and directed by Adrien Merigeau and produced by Cartoon Saloon has been screening in the Animation Showcase of this years Sundance Film Festival.

This here is the film but it's probably best to watch it over on Youtube. The bigger the better.



The film tells the story of a young wolf who embarks on a journey with his friends, a cat and a fox, to visit his childhood home and hopefully reconnect with his father. My involvement in the film is that I am the voice of the cat. And he wears a hoodie. So I'm pretty chuffed to be involved in such a fantastic project and also be the voice of a cat who wears a hoodie.

I did my recording over a year ago and since then I've got to see the project coming together and the final product really is a credit to Adrien and all of his collaborators. It was a pleasure to be asked to work on it and it's great to see it getting such a warm reception.

The process of making the film was documented on Adrien's blog and can be viewed here.

You Just Keep Me Hanging On...

A one act play I wrote called Tenterhooks is getting another airing tomorrow night as a part of What's On Tom's 7 Deadly Scenes show. 7 short plays all performed in 2 hours in the really lovely surroundings of the Set Theatre.

Tenterhooks stars Jack O'Leary and Lynsey Moran and is directed by Andrew O'Leary. It's a black comedy about a suicidal woman searching for a knight in shining armour in a variety of different suicide and accident blackspots. That's pretty much it.

So, that and 6 other plays for 10 Euro is a pretty good deal. And it's one night only! 7 Deadly Scenes plays tomorrow night in the Set Theatre, John Street, Kilkenny.

I wrote a review of the last performance I attended and if so interested it can be checked out here.

Can't Pay? Won't Pay!

Rocking into my first big theatrical project for 2010 and it's the second part of Devious Theatre's Dario Fo Season. This time it's his 1974 comedy Can't Pay? Won't Pay!

A wild farce about shoplifting, unemployment and standing up for yourself against government forces, it's my second crack of the whip at directing a Dario Fo play after Accidental Death Of An Anarchist back in December. I was delighted with how that play was received, the audiences were more than healthy and we got some really lovely notices. So I'm hoping this one can trump it.

We've assembled another fantastic cast and crew and I couldn't be happier with them unless they could do the get in in 10 minutes or had their lines off tomorrow. This time out the cast will consist of Angela Barrett, Ross Costigan, Hazel Fahy, Ken McGuire and Paul Young. They've already sat in for our first cast reading and recording which were followed by the start of rehearsals this week.

I'll be blogging the rehearsal process over on Devioustheatre.com so if you're interested in the progression of the play, that's where I'll be documenting it. As will the rest of the team in what we hope will be a good sustained campaign of bloggination.

Can't Pay? Won't Pay! by Dario Fo will hit the Set Theatre, John Street, Kilkenny from 10th - 14th March 2010 at 8pm nightly. You can grab your tickets over on the website and the printed versions should be hitting Rollercoaster Records in the next week.