by Matty Boy Anderson 12.07.07

In all honesty, I don't know how to adequately describe the past year of my life. I've probably given the vague impression of an individual coping with a debilitating compulsive disorder in recent weeks. I imagine that to a layman outsider, my original late-2005 plan to fabricate an entire animated feature film in three months would suggest the bittersweet bloom of schizophrenia. Perhaps my behavior during and after the summer of 2006, when I intermittently lost the ability to distinguish one fall month from another (it happened again in 2007), might, to some, appear as the first tremulous twinges of the dreaded internet plague known only as Ass Burger's Syndrome. The truth is far less glorious; if I plan 10 things, I have a pretty good chance at fucking up 9 of them. On a production schedule like this one, where I am the sole administrator and animator, and which includes not only the animated feature but promotional materials as well, those fuck-ups tend to snowball after a bit.

If such a thing as an eagle-eyed viewer of this website existed, they would undoubtedly notice that there were numerous shows and conventions in 2007 that the JA movie was not ready in time for, one or two in which I'd already paid for the table. When I missed the Fuck-it-woulda-been-so-awesome premiere date of September 11th, I decided to try and keep my big fat mouth shut until I can at last present the finished article. I don't think I need to remind you that was two months ago, and I'm still here stuck in front of the monitor. As I said, I knew this would be hard to convey- the closest I can come to doing so is to describe to you an office where, while inside, every second is actually an hour. Outside the office windows, however, every week passes as a second (a real one) while you're inside. If you tell anyone what you're doing in the office, you run the risk of giving away too much and sabotaging your efforts up to that point. So if you crave any sort of human encouragement in your work, you'll have to carefully disseminate something that won't cause a "leak", or sully anybody's opinion on the final product.

But staying in that office for too long can make you crazy. You have to decompress from the chronal back-and-forth every so often or you'll implode. You get moody. You get depressed. You get uncontrollably angry. You gain a secret understanding of why people don't typically make movies by themselves, particularly animated ones. Your dreams trick you at night into thinking unfinished scenes are finished. Your brain feels stuck in stasis because you see friends and/or celebrities aging, dying, entering and leaving jail, falling on and off the wagon. During this production one of the principal voice actors courted a mate, got engaged, then subsequently got un-engaged months later. Our main sound guy was subsumed into the black hole of grad school. We moved into a loft studio space which we later lost. Paris Hilton, Nicole Richie (both of whom are "impersonated" in the JA movie), and Indecline founder Ryen McPherson all went to jail, served varying sentences (McPherson served a few months for utter bullshit, look it up), and were released. Kramer from Seinfeld made it clear how he felt about black folks. The Transformers movie was produced and released. Cartoon Network made a movie that would have killed thousands in a Boston terrorist act, had a single person actually seen it past the first ten minutes. Many possible John's Arm fans were brutally gunned down at Virginia Tech, by an unforgivingly atrocious playwright and retard, best known for his one-act "A Textbook Example Of How Shit Slips Through The Cracks." Both Newgrounds and Something Awful went "Web 2.80", for better or for worse, but mostly serving to make me feel even lousier about my own site. Et cetera. Et cetera. Et cetera.

But through it all, a tiny, increasingly loudening voice in the back of my head says "It's gonna all be worth it." Don't focus on the foibles. Don't focus on the fact that you posted the first eight minutes of the movie on YouTube almost a year ago, and some people possibly think, incorrectly, that it was all you had completed at that point (not by a long shot). Don't focus on the never-ending barrage of shit on TV, on the radio and in theaters. Don't focus on that stupid "Cloverfield" shit, and how everybody's all gooey over some vague images and ideas (and how ROB'S THE #1 GUY!!!), when you've been dropping clues and hints about the JA movie for over a year on the site and in IRL, and people are still more excited about Cloverfield because it might be about Cthulhu, which means you'll have to endure endless amounts of fuckers saying "KA-THOOLOO", like they're Lovecraft with a fucking lisp. It's KUH-TOO-LOO, for the last fucking time, everybody. KUH. TOO. LOO. For damn's sake, even GWAR and The Real Ghostbusters said that shit correctly.

"It's gonna all be worth it." So what if Imdb won't return my phone calls on their nonexisting internet phone? All the better for them; their faces will be spared from being fucked clean off their skulls by my movie, at least for the time being. So what if Wikipedia doesn't have an entry about me beyond a tiny zine-related mention? Wikipedia is where white supremacist dicktard Hal Turner learns everything he knows; you think I want that hate-oaf knowing about me and my plans to make a joke on a future frontpage about how "in my opinion, it would be awesome great justice" if Big Dick Mandingo would cut off Hal's head and violate his neck-stump with his blood-engorged Negroid tube snake? Besides, anyone who's anyone knows that Wikipedia is a shameless rip-off of this far superior site. I even attempted to build a John's Arm wiki some time back, but deciphering the requisite metal-paged Interociter Manual in order to operate it proved too time-consuming a task. (Hell yes it would be called "Wakapedia".) I had a big fat book to read before I could work Final Draft 7 efficiently, and the same goes for the DVD authoring program I use. No way was I going to thumb through another 470 pages just so everybody would know Willis' last name is "Ratliff" and he attends Coleman Francis Middle School.

Over the past eighteen months or so, I have assuaged my anxieties regarding the John's Arm movie by reading reviews of, or if possible seeing, terrible movies. The reasoning behind this practice was not immediately apparent to me, as it isn't much different from my regular behaviors (see our sparse Reviews section), but over time, I started to understand that I was indirectly trying to puff up my confidence. After all, I couldn't submit that much of the movie to Newgrounds or YouTube, because for one, it would definitely spoil aspects of the film, and two, I intended the movie to be feature-length, and it all doesn't necessarily play well in l'il chunks. These run-on sentences are beginning to terrify even me.

Now that we're so close to the Real Premiere, the date of which I'll be revealing on the pre-order page in the next few days, I've been able to view the JA movie more as a cohesive whole than a collection of scenes, something I haven't been able to do until recently. I don't have an precise count of the running time just yet, but I'm estimating from the "rough cut" (read: about 75 authoring files) that John's Arm: Armageddon will clock in at a handful of minutes more than an hour and a half.

Yes, you read that correctly. Over an hour and a half. Think of the last Dane Cook shitfest that pooped its way into theaters. I don't want to look it up on Imdb for fear of raising Mr. Cook's activity arrow, but I'll bet you it wasn't longer than 85 minutes. Idiocracy, possibly the greatest comedy film in human history and something I would never DARE compare Armageddon to, is a lean 84. The South Park movie was only 81 minutes, and half of that was padded out with singing. The hotly anticipated Simpsons movie was 87 minutes, and yes, that's pretty close to an hour and a half, but don't forget, it had help from Earth's #1 animation resource: A Team O' Koreans.

Now, as I said, I don't intend to compare JA:A against these movies, since mainly, for one thing, my movie isn't out yet. However, as I also remarked before, I do revel in comparing JA:A against certain other movies, all of which are available at Blockbuster or through Netflix or eBay, despite their unbelievable shittiness. The agonizing process of putting my film together, coupled with the hair-whitening amount of time it's taken, has caused me to develop a second, harder set of balls, directly underneath my original testicles. They're very heavy, and when I walk, they clack loudly. A couple of doctors have kind of inferred that they're tumors, but I prefer to believe that I grew extra balls just from the sheer fucking will and force of putting this movie together. It's made me a pretty mouthy shit-talker, and god knows it's only bound to get worse after the DVD begins shipping all over the woild. You remember the last time you worked so hard and so long on something that you just threw up for no reason one morning, right? Of course you don't. You'd totally freak if you just up and puked suddenly. I animated a scene that day. I'm not trying to brag or act like I'm better than you, I'm just doing my best to explain the depths of this thing, and why I've done such a deplorable job of estimating when the movie will be ready.

For instance: longtime readers of this site will recall those gauzy halcyon days early in the JA production, when I kept a Production Diary (before I understood that things would eventually become so punishingly boring and redundant that typing out a play-by-play of them became sheer torture), which on occasion featured a production sketch I'd scanned, to goose up interest or whatever. I don't remember if I quit after posting two or three sketches. Last time I went through the big black accordion file and counted, there were 97 sketches. It's somewhere over 100 now. So let me run some sums by you real quick: 75 authoring files. 100+ production sketches (not counting storyboards). An hour and a half running time, give or take. A 184-page script. A cast report of over 150 characters. Literally hours upon hours of audio. Hopefully, all of this will help you see why exactly I've been up my own ass for two years. 'Cause I've been up my own ass like there's treasure up there.

And while I've always been very critical of movies in the past, taking one from "concept to can" largely alone has made me more Ebertine than ever, now that I'm poised to hurl my own bastard offering into the big bad world. Films that once seemed as pitiable trifles to me are now calculated offenses, their every flaw and blemish in bold relief. I don't think I've created a perfect movie, by any stretch, but I know the amount of time and energy I've expended fixing its flaws (or trying to). I've done the best goddamn job I am capable of. It's as good as I am capable of making it. I feel that I can state, with reasonable authority, that my movie is sure as shit better than a whole bunch of movies out there that have been given legitimate release treatment and packaging and such. And in nearly every case, you can check the credits of these awful films, and they'll have enough names listed to fill a fucking war memorial monument. How can so many people be involved, knowingly, in such obvious shit? Sure, a job's a job, as well you might say. So's shoveling shit, you don't see unions forming to ensure proper shit-shoveling credit is given.

In the interest of providing perspective to all of you out there who've been so patient while I've been building this fucker, here are some actual movies- some of which actually saw theatrical release- that I can pretty much guarantee you my movie will kick upside the ass. Sure it's tempting fate to say so, but if you've seen any of these films, you can think to yourself "Wow, his movie is better than that piece of crap I saw once on USA Up All Night, and he pretty much made it by himself? I'm SOLD!" Or something like that. Shit, I don't know you.

SCREWBALL ACADEMY (1986)

I bought this movie for $2, sight unseen off eBay, for one reason only: the vain hope that Colleen Camp would be topless in it. I figured because of the title, and the fact that the movie was from 1986, it would be a sure bet for tit-shots (you'll understand all this if you've seen Camp as the French maid in the movie Clue). Little did I know Screwball Academy was a TV-movie from Canada, and that to call this movie "plotless" would be like saying it's kind of tough to get a job when 80% of your body has been burned off by flaming acid.

First and foremost, there isn't a single funny moment in this movie. Not one. Nor is there an academy, nor are there screwballs. Yet, it is touted as some manner of raunchy comedy. My movie kicks the corn-chute out of this shit. You don't see me roping people in with false promises of tits and bawdiness. There are more laughs in four minutes of my movie than there are in the entire 88 minutes (!) of Screwball Academy. Shit, I even threw in some bouncing tits in one scene. They aren't naked, but you should thank me for not leading you on.

AX 'EM (2002)

I made sure that all the English text that appears onscreen in Armageddon was spelled correctly, with one intentional exception you'll have to discover for yourself. I felt this was the least I could do, being that every textual aspect of the movie originated from inside my computer, which contains "spell-check". Spell-check ensures that you will not appear as a cloven-hooved moron sucking on a gym sock to your viewers. Spelling probably seems like a minor quibble to you, in which case I'll assume you've never seen Ax 'Em and the text crawl that opens it. If you haven't seen it, allow me to sum it up succinctly: LOL OK yea, there ideots.

Also, all the dialogue in Armageddon is audible; I achieved this effect by not using a default mic mounted on the front of a Radio Shack video camera to record voices. Rent Ax 'Em and tell me how much of the dialogue you can actually understand, if any. Or how only one person was (sort of) "axed" in the whole movie, even though the "urban" title is pluralized. Somebody believed it was sane and ethical to release this shitburger, warts and all, possibly because the creator's father was a Congressman in Baltimore at one point. Your guess is as good as mine. Even for a terrible movie, Ax 'Em goes out of its way to be as unwatchably godawful as it can possibly be.

Simply put: my movie whips the dogshit out of Ax 'Em. My movie's title isn't misleading, and my nickname isn't a fucking pronunciation guide to my last name. However, if you've ever seen Ax 'Em, you'll note that its running time is like nine excruciating hours, and like I said, my movie's only an hour and a half give or take ten minutes or so. Ax 'Em; I leave you dead in the dust.

UP THE ACADEMY (1980)

Unless you are incredibly traumatized by cartoon arms, I can more or less guarantee that watching John's Arm: Armageddon will be a hilarious and fun experience. Sure, parts of it will likely offend or nauseate you, but if you do find yourself offended, it won't be because you're watching a lazy, incompentently constructed shitheap of a movie that no one would ever like in a million years, ever.

Up The Academy was directed by Robert Downey Jr.'s father, and if anything could possibly explain Bob's turbulent relationship with hard drugs a ways back, that fact is it. Even Scarface would take pause at the Mt. Fuji of cocaine it must have taken to get to a point where you could call this turd a "movie" without your soul blasting out of your mouth in protest. This film nearly seeps with disappointment and loathing of the audience. It is so impossibly awful, so monstrously inane, I'm sure I'll have to vent my grief more fully in a future review. At the center of this movie, there is a scene that I refuse to believe people continued to stay in the theater for. All the atrocious acting, missed cues, inappropriate background music and overt racism was but a shit-mist compared to the full-on fecal barrage that is the scene of which I speak. A scene so foul, humor cannot escape its surface.

Without exaggeration or hyperbole, I can state that for many hours after first seeing Up The Academy, I was unable to find anything funny at all. It is the death of love, art and joy. The mere fact that this movie saw theatrical release is an insult to anyone with an IQ over 30. I can not only guarantee that John's Arm: Armageddon is a thousand times better than Up The Academy, but it has far fewer characters in it whom you will want to punch in the face or stab with an sharpened electric cattle prod.

DELTA FARCE (2007)

There is nothing I can say about this movie that CHUD didn't say better.

If there is a person who watches both Delta Farce and my movie, and legitimately thinks Delta Farce is better, that person is over 300 pounds and retarded. I bear no fear of offending Larry the Cable Guy or his fan base with that remark, as none of them can read.

This took longer than I thought it would. Keep checking here and the Podd Blogg... I'll be posting details as soon as they are solid. The release and premieres and shit. Hang tight. It's gonna all be worth it.

I DIDN'T EAT THE FUCKEN SANDWICH OR THE TOILET THING EITHER!
-MBA