About Brian Flemming

I make movies, I write plays, I blog. Examples:

MOVIES:

The God Who Wasn't There
When I began working on The God Who Wasn't There, I was planning to make a film about modern Christianity, but it ended up being a feature-length documentary partly exploring what amounts to Christianity's dirty little secret: That Jesus Christ probably never existed at all. Everyone seems to like this documentary a lot, and it isn't the least bit controversial. Available on DVD.

Danielle
I started working on Danielle (once called The Beast) before The God Who Wasn't There, but I got sidetracked. Now I'm back on it full-time. Danielle is a thriller in which Christian girl ends up in possession of conclusive proof that Jesus Christ never existed. Danielle is forced to deal with her own religious delusion as well as a group of fundamentalist Christians who will do anything to destroy the evidence she possesses.

"Nothing So Strange"
My feature-length documentary about the assassination of Bill Gates, which debuted at Slamdance in January 2002, has since appeared at many film festivals, and is now available on DVD. And for free, right here at the weblog, you can see an 11-minute mini-documentary I made about shooting the movie. (See also: Print and TV coverage.)

PLAY:

"Bat Boy: The Musical,"
The musical I wrote with my pals Keythe Farley and Laurence O'Keefe. It opened Off-Broadway on March 21, 2001. It has also been produced in London's West End, Japan and all over the place. The musical is the tragic life story of a half-boy/balf-bat originally reported on by the Weekly World News. For reasons unknown, it is controversial with the Christian right. You can buy the RCA/Victor cast album at Amazon or elsewhere (script, too). There is an active community of Bat Boy fanatics (they request that you call them "Batophiles") at the message board on the official site. The great John Landis will direct the movie version, set for release in 2007.

BLOG:

You're soaking in it.

OTHER:

The Bruce Willis Incident
If you're looking for a story filled with men who exemplify just how magnificent human beings can be, don't read this one.

Slumdance
A one-time-only (ahem) "film festival" that I co-founded in Park City, Utah, in 1997 with many others. We took over the basement of a former Mrs. Field's cookie factory and turned it into a ridiculous theatrical event that also had films. The slumdance.com web address is a legacy of that event. We have no plans to do it again.

Flemming for California Governor 2003
Hey, everyone else was doing it. I think I had a unique platform, but you kind of have to put yourself back in a very particular stage of the California recall election madness to understand it. (I.e., before Bustamante entered the race, and no prominent Democrats had yet come forward to challenge the prominent Republicans who had declared their candidacies.)

"Hang Your Dog in the Wind"
My first feature film, completed in 1997. I don't talk about it much because I think it kinda sucks. The actors, director of photography and everyone else did a bang-up job, but I hadn't yet learned how to write a script when I made this film. Making the film was my film school. The main thing I learned is that plots can be really useful and you should probably have one if you're going to make a 90-minute narrative work.

FUTURE PROJECTS:

Untitled Chase Movie Project
It's about a San Diego family that gets together on the Fourth of July and ends up watching a member of the family being chased by the police on TV. David James, who will play a lead role, has found some public-domain footage of police chases that we can use, so one part of production has essentially already been done. The movie, currently untitled, will be produced and released under the rules of a new film movement called Free Cinema. This is the movie I really wish I could get around to making. It's in a constant state of development.

See also:

Internet Movie Database: Brian Flemming

Wikipedia: Brian Flemming

(Last updated November 27, 2005.)