KCRag Forum

FangKC wrote: In movies like "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford," it is filmed in Canada (or wherever)

Given the fall of the dollar maybe the appeal of saving money by filming in Canada has disappeared.  If memory seves me well even the first few seasons of the X-files were made in Canada.

FangKC wrote: The best way to get movies filmed in Kansas City is to have stories with the setting being in Kansas City. Thus, you need authors and screenwriters using Kansas City in the narrative. We have very few writers living here using Kansas City as a character or setting.

That would be a great way to start the momentum. And yes there are a few really talented screenwriters here that have scripts that are adapted for KC that they would love to have produced.  Same with crews, and actors. It's hard to keep talent here when there is no work.... The last few years have been very tough for the locals.

The problem is further worsened when Kansas City is the setting and it isn't even filmed here.

In movies like "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford," it is filmed in Canada (or wherever) and the physical environment doesn't even look like Kansas City or St. Joseph, where the story was set.   Austere prairie isn't the rolling hills of Missouri.

Once again it comes down to incentives. Producers can get tax credits in so many different states now that they would be crazy not to go after them. Missouri has tax credits available, which is great, but the Missouri Film Office does very little to get the word out. I'm not sure what they do... We have been an active film production company in the state of Missouri for over 20 years. We NEVER hear from the Missouri Film Commission anymore. 

Kansas is even further behind in incentives, but from what I've heard KS has a really great new Director of the Kansas Film Commission. So I'm hopeful that will be a positive thing.

The Film Commission of Kansas City is about to launch it's new website which will help get the word out, organize the local film workers, and really try to raise the awareness of KC again as a great place to make films. We need to get out and sell our city to the people that are looking for places to shoot.... but that is not cheap and there really is no budget.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... 724D45.DTL

    (04-09) 11:47 PDT , (AP) --

    Wal-Mart's internal meetings are on display in three decades worth of videos made by a Kansas production company scrambling to stay in business after Wal-Mart stopped using the firm.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. dropped longtime contractor Flagler Productions in 2006. In response to losing its biggest customer, the small company has opened its archive, for a fee, to researchers who include plaintiffs' lawyers and union critics seeking clips of unguarded moments at the world's largest retailer.

Those moments never meant for public display include a scene of male managers parading in drag at an executive meeting, a clip used by union-backed critics at Wal-Mart Watch for a recent advertisement castigating the retailer's attitude toward female employees.

"The videos provide insight into the company's real corporate culture when they're not in the public eye," Wal-Mart Watch spokeswoman Stacie Lock Temple said Tuesday.......

and:
http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/morford/

  By Mark Morford
Wal-Mart cross-dressers in Hell
30 years of wacky behind-the-scenes corporate behavior, all on videotape. It's a nightmare!

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

Friday, April 18, 2008


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My new nightmare goes something like this:

I'm standing just offstage in a large, musty meeting hall inside a weather-beaten Holiday Inn or Red Lion or some sort of drab forgotten convention center in the middle of Oklahoma City or Kansas or Des Moines. It doesn't really matter, because my body is not really my own, not something to which I've ever really paid all that much attention and hence wherever it is or whatever it's doing has no real connection to the meaning of existence. You know?

I feel rather pasty, thick, ungainly. I have a bad mustache and copious clumps of dark hair in my ears and perhaps my skin hasn't seen sunlight since "The A-Team" was on prime-time.

I rarely have sex. I eat very, very poorly. I have weird floaters in my eyes, an uneasy pain in my kidneys. My knees always hurt. But I don't seem to mind because, well, my soul vanished many years ago, happily sacrificed at the altar of the massive company I work for, and by extension for this feeling, right here, right now.

It all, as they say, comes down to this.

I am wearing a very large house dress. Tacky, loud, garish like a giant muumuu or a clown's hospital gown or a reject from "I Love Lucy," only this one's made in a Chinese sweatshop for about a buck and a half and sells on the rack for $29.95 and some women actually buy it. I find my outfit wacky and hilarious, despite the obvious homoerotic elements I would never admit to in a zillion years because, well, I simply have no clue about that sort of thing.
    cont........
and:
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zDMGYdt4-Q


 

Why are professional executives dressing in drag?  Is that some new management technique?

Not sure if this has been mentioned before so here goes.

In the great movie, which is both a western and a comedy, Blazing Saddles there is a scene at the start of the movie where the white cowboys are showing the black railroad construction workers how to sing and dance by singing Camptown Ladies.  Slim Pickens rides up and asks them why they are dancing like "Kansas City faggots".

Most of Mel Brooks humor I can understand but what is so special about "Kansas City faggots" and how they dance?  Does anybody know?  In consideration of GRID I do not know if he meant KCMO faggots or KCK faggots.  Is there a difference?


Another great line is towards the end of the movie when the black sheriff is recuiting the railroad construction workers to help the townspeople build a fake town and all that the workers want is a plot of land for each.  The townspeople say it is OK to give land to the blacks and Chinese but not the Irish.  The townspeople do give in and decide to give the Irish land also. 

In American Gangster, one of the characters is a mob boss from Kansas City.

In the movie "Lucky Number Slevin," the song "Kansas City Shuffle" is featured. 

"Kansas City Shuffle"
Written by J. Ralph (as J. Ralph)
Performed by The Rumor Mill
Published by Tubby and the Spaniard Music Publishing

harbinger911 wrote: KCMO and KCK have homicides on "The First 48" on A&E (Time Warner channel 35) right now.

KCMO has been featured on this show several times.

Kansas City has 3 crime related shows. One- First 48, two- Kansas City SWAT- Come only only 2 other cities in the US are on there besides KC. And Three- of course Cops. What does that really say about our crime rate?

I hope it says that our cops are accessible and not afraid to be on camera.  It's the cops who don't want footage of their actions that scare me.

i wonder if it has something to do with our police force not being under local control?

Local author Joel Goldman will discuss his new mystery, Shake Down, on Thursday, May 22, at 7 p.m. at the Plaza Branch, 4801 Main St.  The story is set in and around the Country Club Plaza. One of his other books in a series has been optioned for a film.

http://www.kclibrary.org/rsvp/2008/joelgoldman/

My wife and I caught a marathon of that "High School Confidential" show about Blue Valley Northwest. The kids keep saying they're from Kansas, although when I went to school there I always said I was from "Kansas City." They show lots of shots of rural farmland, which is funny because that is total suburbia, far from any farms. They did also get some really cool shots of Kansas City.

There is a Southwest Airlines commercial running now ("Wanna get away?") featuring a pro basketball game between "Oakland" and "Kansas City". Perhaps the only way we will ever land a pro basketball team.

Shot from the P&L District at 3:17...

http://youtube.com/watch?v=yH29CT2xKYI

American Idol from KC. Not too shabby. Whatever you think of the show...still pretty impressive.

i love the new UMKC commercials. yummy city backdrops!

Tomorrow's "Celebration at the Station" is going to be televised around the midwest....

http://www.celebrationatthestation.com/broadcast.htm

KCPT and many other regional public television stations across the heartland will replay the concert on July 4th. These stations include:

KETC – St. Louis, MO
KTWU – Topeka, KS
KPTS – Wichita, KS
KOZK/Ozark Public Television – Springfield, MO
KMOS – Warrensburg, MO
KOOD – Bunker Hill (Central Kansas)
NET – Nebraska Public Television (statewide)
Check your local listings for date and time of broadcast, as some affiliates may choose to rebroadcast this event on different dates and times.

My wife was watching a movie on the Hallmark Channel, McBride something.  Anyway the police detective on the murder case states the victim's father is flying in from Kansas City.  But I don't know if it is MO or KAN since the father is suppose to be a US Senator from Kansas.

While I was in Kohls yesterday shopping for my moms birthday present, they made an announcment on the intercom that said Throwdown with Bobby Flay was coming to KC and that you could sign up to be in a raffle to be there for the competition. They said that the competition would be at the end of June.

Good Morning America's Sam Champion did the weather Friday from the Liberty Memorial.  He used the words "breathtaking" and "beautiful" to describe KC.  Maybe Sam was inspired by traipsing in the bushes in PV Park.