Stro

[Greg]

Film Freeway has all my money. I have now submitted to 17 festivals. If you follow Stro on Twitter you're bound to see mention of a few of them. I'll be mentioning more tomorrow and Sunday.

[Drunk Monk]

Couldn't find it on Twitter. Just found you.  And I'm already following you.

[Greg]

It was a screwed up name but I fixed it. @StroTheMovie

[Drunk Monk]

followed.

lucky follower #14.

liked all your posts.  

will share on my twitter soon (but my twitter is minor - i don't really work that platform)

[Drunk Monk]

Thank you Greg, for honoring our Stro.

The final cut came together nicely. I had some issues with my wifi and vimeo (strictly an issue on my end) which made viewing choppy but it still flowed well. Excellent work. Stacy didn't watch it but will as soon as we get a night with a better connection (it ebbs and flows in our hood). I may pass it along to Tara to watch at some point, maybe when she's got a break in her studies. I'll forward their reviews.

Lots of swordfights. Top DOOM recommendations. 

As for those nicknames, Stro was fond of saying "Cole Harkness, Prince of Darkness". He often called me "Geno", the only person to ever call me that.

[Dr. Ivor Yeti]

I liked it, and not just for vanity’s sake. It is a better movie than The Last Captain, more cohesive. I’m pretty biad=sed, though, as Stro was one of the most complex people I’ve even known.

Thank you, Greg.

[Greg]

Whew. There's that hurdle. I'll be sending out the link to other interviewees today.

[Drunk Monk]

I liked it, and not just for vanity’s sake.  

There was an awful lotta yeti.... hey now, that's a decent band name, right?

This morning the sound of Stro's voice rings anew in my head. Coincidentally, this is 2nd anniversary of the passing of Sifu Kwong Wing Lam (http://www.brotherhoodofdoom.com/doomFor...p?tid=4459). Sometimes you never really know when you're in the presence of greatness on a daily basis. You take it for granted. We take so much for granted that we don't realize until it is gone.

[Drunk Monk]

Stacy's take - she enjoyed it. At first, she was a bit put out by the amount of talking heads and losing track of who's who, but once it got rolling, she accepted into your method of storytelling through the pastiche of quotes and was engaged. She was very impressed by your editing and that you did pretty much everything. In the end, she felt she wanted to know a little more about exactly how Stro changed fencing (I reiterated a few points like what he did for Women's fencing and she let that slide). She also felt it was very much a love letter from fencers to Stro, which is fair I think. She also was hoping for more Jungian references. She also said 'awww' when she saw tQ's credit. 

Is she the first non-fencer to see this?

On second viewing (with minimal wifi crashes - just one in the middle and we needed a break for snacks then anyway) the Nonomura brothers got a little confusing, especially when they are spliced right next to each other. But it held up quite well and I caught more details. It's dense but in a good way.

[Greg]

Stacy wins as the first non-fencer to see it. Her points are valid. I don't think Stro would have sat down and said he was busy living a Jungian lifestyle. He would have just gone out and done. My first thoughts in putting together the structure was that there were different distinct phases to his life. When he entered the new phase, he just discarded the old. But it never really came together with the information late in the game. The Jungian bit was mine gleaned from a few comments you and Stacey Johnson said.

Thanks for watching it again. Thank you to Stacey watching. I think only three people have seen it at this point. Your crashing and restarting messed up the count. It says 20 views but only 3 made it to the end.

I had the same thought about the Nonomura brothers but just let it go. Just think of the confusion if I got all eight members of the clan!

[Drunk Monk]

You know, yesterday had me reminicing on Stro and Kwong Wing Lam a lot. When it comes to Stro, he actually did discuss the Jungian implications of his life with me. I suspect because at the time, I was studying psych and conversant in the topic, as well as sport psych (he worked with Thomas Tutko who wrote Sports Psyching and was one of my undergrad advisors). Like your interviewees all say, he was a complex man and we all saw different sides of him. And like Yeti said, he came off as the mook at first. A lot of fencers are mooks (many aren't but enough are) so he didn't show that side. 

In retrospect, I was pre-hippie at the time I knew Stro. If you'll remember, I was more of a proto-goth back then (the genre had yet to be defined) and didn't see Jerry play until '87. Nevertheless, I was familiar with the literature from the philosophic and psych perspective. People often write hippies off as illiterate drug abusers (and there are plenty of those) but there is a literate base. I never saw Stro again after he retired from SJSU. I don't remember him coming to AFS when I was there. Maybe he did, but those AFS years were my haziest. I never engaged him as a 'hippie' really. We smoked and drank together, but never shroomed. I remember him being bummed that he had got to the age where pot was making him sleepier and not really getting him that high anymore. Man, how he would've loved the potency of pot nowadays. BTW, you pulled off the psychedelic effects well. I might have added a drop more color, especially for the whiteout with Knies, but it served its purpose. 

One more thought - you trowelled in the music very well. Even Stacy thought the music worked and she can be really discerning there.

[Greg]

Ah, Tutko. I really wanted to talk more about him and sports psychology but I didn't have enough concrete information to get that theme going. I really pushed Stacy Johnson on the subject as well. She also brought up Tutko. I do have the Women talking about going to group therapy together but it came to be more about them and less about Stro. I left it out. I have lots of story threads that I'm going to address that didn't make the film. I have big chunks on Gaugler. I have a little on Neil Diamond. All sacrificed on the altar of brevity.

The music. I'm glad you liked it. That's my weakest area. I think he was really key on getting The Last Captain to be a movie. So, he was my only pick for Stro. I paid for him out of my own pocket. The money for Stro ran out last February (2019). I put one chunk aside to pay for the Stro in 1983 footage but even then I got a steep discount.

The only input I had with Philip Kreyche, the composer, was I didn't like certain sequences. And then tell him I had no idea what I wanted in their place. For instance, the original music for the butt stab story was so dark and menacing when you first heard it. Kreyche does downbeat music really well. But I always the story was supposed to be kind of darkly funny and his music worked in total opposition to it. I referenced to him that a lot of people thought he was living in West Side Story. The next version was this hep cat jazz lounge version. Really wrong. I finally stacked to the two versions he gave me and that worked a lot better, the deep menace notes with some of the lively jazz stuff.

The other area that drove us to distraction was when the Yeti wanted to kill Stro. Kreyche's music was all over the place. It seemed to act in opposition to the strory. Kreyche again went super dark. I didn't mind the dark, but the music needed to change when Stro in the story changed, from dark to light. I also wanted to build up a frenzy in the music to show the gathering frustration of the Yeti. To be honest, I don't think the final version quite captures what I wanted, but it works.

On the whole, I think the music really supports the story in The Last Captain better than it does in Stro. But I think the final piece we have at the end that underscores the reminiscences and praise really works well. That's where Kreyche shows his strength.

Thanks again for watching and reviewing most of all not hating it.

There is a lot of Yeti in the film , but there is Greg voice everywhere.

[Drunk Monk]

Shoot. I replied to this earlier but it didn't stick. Alas.

Strange that Stacy J. would be privy to both Tutko & Jung. I never knew her that well, only met a few times. I knew Gay because she was hanging around back then - even got some lessons from her. Vinnie was at the SJSU summer camp where I first met Stro, along with Charlie and Dan Dechaine - no reason for them to remember me though. I just remember Vinnie used to say 'you guys are doing this all wrong' so much that we did a skit at the very end roasting the coaches, and that was her line. Man, I just remembered that my role in that skit was to be one of the background fencers that was goofing off and as part of my role, I had this rolled up piece of paper that I was passing back and forth like a joint with some others. I distinctly remember Stro and Charlie pointing at us and laughing at that.

Shared your links across all my social media.

NOTE - your link to twitter off your Stro site is broken.

[Greg]

Probably because I just changed the link on Twitter to make it more legible. Thanks for the heads up. I will go fix that now.

Yep, Stacey and Tutko. Not so much Jung. Her thoughts didn't really string together as well. But she's got a fascinating story. She actually learned fencing at Fort Sam where Stro was stationed for Pentathlon training.

[Drunk Monk]

Didn't know that about Stacy. But like I said, I didn't know her at all.  

I remember fencing pentathletes. Stro used to say 'let 'em have the first touch. that's all they're good for. but don't let them have anymore.' 

I also remember he tearing up Schifrin. He always used to tell me 'go on top' because it was a better way to catch the elbow. But I'm short for an epeeist, so it was hard for me to get on top. So he said 'Pull his guard down. Here, I'll show ya. Peter! Get over here. Fence!' Peter was like 'uh oh. what did you guys get me into?' This was in front of the whole epee squad. Stro demonstrated drawing Peter's guard down for the first touch or so, but then it just degenerated into a bout where Stro was just picking Peter apart for sport. After a few more touches, they stopped, saluted and laughed. Then Stro came back to us, remembering that he was supposed to be teaching us something. 'See? I did it. Not so hard.' End of lesson.