Friend Highlight #2: Brent Dodge, the WEDnesday Show, and From Screen to Theme

Hello and welcome back to another segment of "Friend Highlight". If you read my last "References" article, then you know what "From Screen to Theme" is. It is an excellent Disney reference book that details all the film references and tributes you can find at the Walt Disney World resort. But, "From Screen to Theme" isn't the only thing author Brent Dodge has done. He is the host of the weekly video podcast show, "The W.E.Dnesday Show" that also highlights the efforts of the Disney company. He also the curator of his own Disney website, the host of the Disney Movie Club and many, many other things.

I'll just let the man himself talk about it...

Hello Filmstrip Memories fans!

If I had to sum myself up in one word, it'd be dreamer. Unfortunately for you, I love to talk so you'll get a lot more than one word. I was born and raised in the wonderful state of Wisconsin. While growing up I was lucky enough to make several trips to the wonderful world of Disney on a somewhat regular basis.



I was hooked on the Disney parks and films and the two really helped shape me into the dreamer that I am today. I know what you're thinking, "You keep talking about being a dreamer, but that gets you no where unless you're a doer!"

I completely agree, but I didn't always. I often believed that you dream a dream and boom, that dream was fulfilled. Well, a lot of times dreams take an awful lot of work, and an awful lot of luck. While I was in college some representatives from the Walt Disney World College Program stopped by the campus to talk about this amazing opportunity they had for Disney fans like me. (Like I said though, I wasn't a doer, just a dreamer!)

So I didn't apply for the program and almost instantly I regretted it. The following year when they came back I jumped at the opportunity to join the College Program and was lucky enough to be a custodian. I know, being a custodian doesn't sound glamorous at all, but it's one of the few postitions that allows the cast member to walk around and interact with guests on a regular basis.

It's a good thing that was in the job requirement too, because one day while talking to a guest he asked where he could find all things Peter Pan throughout Walt Disney World. I pointed out every little detail I knew of, and while I was leaving the guest he said, "You know, there really should be a book about this." I thought, there really should, but kept sweeping the streets of Fantasyland without thinking about the man's insanely wise words.

A few years later while student teaching in a Kindergarten classroom, the class was watching Disney's Robin Hood for nap time. All of a sudden everything clicked with what that wise man told me years before and I began to write every reference to Robin Hood in the parks that I could think of. When I finished with Robin Hood I moved on to Aladdin, Lion King, Cinderella, and more.

Next thing I knew I was a doer. I began to work my butt off for a book that was called Disney by Movie. While talking to a friend, she pointed out that From Screen to Theme had a nicer ring to it, and I agreed.

Take a breath for intermission.



And we're back. While working on From Screen to Theme I realized I needed to promote my book, even though it wasn't released yet. I decided to start a chat room with a few people that knew about my book. I sat down in front of a webcam and they'd ask me Disney related questions in a chat room. We had so much fun that we decided to do the chat again a few days later. And again a few days after that. And then we decided to make it a regular thing that would occur on a weekly basis.



One viewer suggested we meet on Wednesday's since Walt Disney's initials (W.E.D.) were the first three letters in Wednesday. So out of that the W.E.D.nesday Show! was created.

In March of 2010 From Screen to Theme: A Guide to Disney Animated Film References Found Throughout the Walt Disney World Resort was published and I moved back down to Florida.

Yeah, things can get tough money wise from time to time, but I'm a dreamer and I believe everything will work out in the long run.
Now, don't you wish I would have stuck with a one word description of myself?

And there you go, folks! A dream made real! If you want to chat with Brent Dodge visit him and the rest of us friends at From Screen to Theme. The W.E.D.nesday Show happens every Wednesday at 9:30 PM.

Thanks for reading!

Friend Highlight #1: Moonlight Movie Show

On this new segment of Filmstrip Memories I will highlight some of the content you can find online right now, courtesy of the talents of my friends. Make sure to support them!

For the first episode, I will highlight Moonlight Movie Show!



With so many internet reviewers roaming around cyberspace it can be hard to find one that is different from them all. Moonlight Movie Show may have been inspired by several movie review shows, but what makes it different is that the reviewer is actually a wolfman!

How did this came to be? The reviewer's name is Monty Moonlight, played by Nathan Lee James. He is actually a character from a comic strip called "Moonlight Motel" where classic movie monsters come in to have a rest and just hang out, regardless of what many horror film rules dictate.

Who is Nathan Lee James exactly? Well, I'll let the man introduce himself to you...

Well, I'm just a (single and looking) deceptively starving artist in Austin, Texas still trying to break in as an illustrator and cartoonist, and anything showcasing my minimal talents onscreen if ever possible, ha. I've been squeaking by for years as a freelance illustrator in a place with no use for freelance illustrators. I've recently moved to Austin, and now I'm looking for a day job so I can continue doing the same thing outside of my parents' house, ha.



The comic strip I do is called "Moonlight Motel", and it's about Monty Moonlight, a werewolf (that never takes human form) who has been given the job of running a rundown hotel in Texas by his billionaire uncle, Morty Moonlight (another werewolf, as yet unseen, but I intend to base him very much on comedian Ron White, whom I would love to play Uncle Morty in a movie someday) to prove he has some business talent and is worthy of a huge inheritance. Of course, all this plot stuff isn't discussed much in the simple humor strip, but it is the set up and will be in the first graphic novel I'm currently working on in my spare time. Anyway, the strip is purely humor largely based on banter between Monty, his staff, neighbors, and guests of the Moonlight Motel. Most often seen characters are "Fish" Gillman and Russell Scarecrow, Monty's longtime best friends and the motel's lifeguard and groundskeeper respectively, and Seymour the Bellhop, who is a smart alleck employee that has no choice but to hang out with Monty when no one else will (Seymour also happens to be a Muppet-like creature).

While those sidekick characters are based on friends of mine (there are other characters too), Monty is undoubtedly based on myself. Hey's a permanently lonely, hopeless romantic who identifies greatly with Charlie Brown but is a HUGE Disney fan and movie fan in general.

Moonlight Motel evolved from two other strips I used to do, one that I was shopping around for a publication for that was a comic purely based on myself and best friends in human cartoon form, and another that was a single panel strip I would do for Werewolfcafe.com on occasion called Wagner (Werewolf). I don't know how the magically evolved into what I have now, but it really did all just fall into place one day, and I came up with everything for Moonlight Motel with no trouble at all, even the hotel/motel setting. I know though, that at first the idea of Monty was from my idea to do an online or local horror hosting show starring myself as a werewolf (which I initially called slave2moonlight, my LONGTIME internet handle). I envisioned getting something going like Ernest P. Worrell or Elvira, doing local commercials and such. Though, I know nothing about setting up things like local TV shows, websites, and whatever. As a result, the comic strip is what happened, and now I'm back to the film stuff, as I've finally made Monty a live-action reality doing movie reviews on the Moonlight Movie Show on YouTube, a very new project for me that I'm still learning with. I hope I can figure out, somehow, someday in the near future, how to turn a profit on one of these projects, ha.



As for my art and other stuff, I started out as a Disney fan with dreams of being a Disney animator for a living. I couldn't really afford a college with any animation program though. I went to a local branch of U.T. and got a Fine Arts degree that has been useless, ha. Most people would have anticipated that, but I really didn't know what else to do since it was my one talent, ha. At that point, Disney was firing rather than hiring though, so even applying there was out. Anyway, my love of film and Disney too is a heavily influence in my art. I'm not really a gallery or show artist, I'm more commercial, and an illustrator and cartoonist is really what suits me best in the art realm; that's what I'd like to make it doing. Like a lot of other people on Deviantart.com, I prefer to make art of film and cartoon characters, my own characters, and just really cute girls, and I prefer to do it with a combination of pencil and Photoshop. I do have another comic strip called Cloud K9, but I have yet to post any of that one online. Once I started doing Moonlight Motel, I became consumed with it, though a new installment has been held up for a while due to my recent move, job search, and experimenting with my Moonlight Movie Show. I'll be back to the strip soon though. It actually was published for 3 years or so in a South Texas magazine when I was living in my old town, but when I left, I pulled it from the magazine since it wasn't paying me anything anyway. Still looking for a true home for it, and a publisher or literary agent for the graphic novel when I'm done with it, and anyone who could one day turn the live-action stuff into something lucrative for me too, ha, though at the moment I know it's still a primitive project.

Anyway, that's been my project history in a nutshell, and sorry if this is way more info than you wanted. Let me know though if you have any other questions!

Nathan

Thank you my good friend!

Despite his video show still being in the rough stages it has a lot of potential of being a great show that differs from the rest due to the high amount of character the reviewer has (seriously, what other reviewer has become a character from one of his or her works of fiction?).

You can find the Moonlight Movie Show here:
http://www.youtube.com/user/slave2moonlight

As well as Nathan's art gallery:
http://slave2moonlight.deviantart.com/

Remember to support the little guy as he or she may end up ruling the world ;) .

-pap64