This is the first of two about/at the Patio Theatre.
The Patio Theatre is on the west side of Chicago, in Portage Park. It was built in 1927, seats 1500, and was only recently closed in 2001. Like many theaters in the '20s and '30s, its auditorium sports an "atmospheric" canopy, with twinkling stars and moving (projected?) clouds.
The Patio was featured as the "star" in a recent "Save These Theaters" feature at Forgotten Chicago (a truly fantastic resource for Chicagoans). Devi and Jason will undoubtedly visit the other two someday (but probably not too soon).
The nearby Portage Park Theatre was recently brought back to like (as the Portage Theater — and is the new home of the Silent Film Society. (Alas, these panels take too long for me to visit both this week. But someday, perhaps.)
Panel 3 — minus Devi and Jason (and Jason's car) — is up as a TopWebComics vote incentive.
Be sure to check out the latest Kickstarter updates, where I detail the (recently revised) final incentive in the Kickstarter project's fundraising period: a job at the Multiplex 10 Cinemas. That's right, you can be a character in a Multiplex story arc next summer. Initially this was going to be contingent upon reaching the $12,000 in pledge, but due to a recent revelation about income taxes, that has been removed: any backer at any level — even the $1 level — will be eligible to win.
MULTIPLEX: BOOK 1 PROGRESS REPORT Updates from the Club of Awesome
This is — potentially — one of the best ways I've been wrong about something: I spoke with a tax consultant who assures me that most (if not all) of the Kickstarter funding will not count as taxable income.
We have a more in-depth meeting about it (and my other business affairs) in a couple of weeks, so I will let you know if his opinion changes after reviewing things more closely, but it looks like I can operate under the assumption that most — possibly all — of the Kickstarter funding will not count as taxable income. (This does not mean it's "tax-free" — it just means that the income taxes may only come out of the book profits next year, not both the funding and the book profits.) This would be, of course, fantastic news, because it would free up the $2,500 I was planning on setting aside for income taxes — and pushes the Kickstarter project into the black in the process.
If you previously increased your pledge specifically to help me with the tax load, please feel free to adjust your pledge downward! (You may want to wait until after my meeting, though, because it's not 100% sure just yet.) Whatever the conclusion is, rest assured that every penny of the Kickstarter funds will be applied towards the printing, distribution, and promotion of the book (and the pledge rewards), and that I will account for every penny in future Progress Report/Kickstarter updates.
Now Hiring at the Multiplex 10 Because of this tax news, I've canceled the $12,000 Challenge — but not the "Win a Job at the Multiplex 10 Cinemas" giveaway! That means I will just be giving away the "job" at the Multiplex 10 Cinemas to one random backer shortly after the end date, whether or not we reach the $12,000 mark. All the other rules apply: all past, present, and future backers at any level are eligible!
Paper Stocks I am looking into sturdier paper stocks than what I had quoted out before, so the printing costs will be rising somewhat when I get around to that. But I got some samples in and the stocks I'd initially specked out just seemed kind of… flimsy. I want to make the Multiplex: Book 1 collection look as good as it possibly can.
In the movie The Sound of Music, naive apprentice nun Maria says to Captain von Trapp that when “the Lord closes a door, He opens a window.” In the case of Australian actor Sam Worthington, it was more like “When the other creatives decide to get a little rambunctious, it’s time to exercise your option, and get the hell out of that movie and into a new one.”
Which is exactly what it looks like Worthington did when he left the set of The Tourist due to “creative differences,” and signed on to film The Last Days of American Crime instead, according to Variety.
Based on a bi-monthly comic book miniseries written by Rick Remender and drawn by Greg Tocchini from Radical Publishing—the first of three issues will ship next month—Crime tells the tale of an possible future where the U.S. government plans to use a secret signal which will make it impossible for anyone to consciously break the law.
This leaves Tourist with a different male lead, and is likely to start a crop of rumors about how difficult it can be to work with Angelina Jolie or Alfonso Cuaron.
I really feel for the Tourist producers right now. All they want to do is make a little movie about an American traveling abroad who gets drawn into a cat-and-mouse game between Interpol and a man with whom she once did the horizontal mambo, but they keep losing lead actors. And even though Variety says that Johnny Depp is now the lead actor, I can’t buy that there would be any chemistry at all between him and Jolie.
In the movie The Sound of Music, naive apprentice nun Maria says to Captain von Trapp that when “the Lord closes a door, He opens a window.” In the case of Australian actor Sam Worthington, it was more like “When the other creatives decide to get a little rambunctious, it’s time to exercise your option, and get the hell out of that movie and into a new one.”
