Me, Joss Whedon, and Serenity

Yeah, you know how I roll. I’m all in with the Hollywood crowd. Every morning I have to erase desperate messages from my cellphone from these film cats who can’t direct themselves out of a plot twist. Help us, they cry. You are our SAVIOR.

Well… not quite. But last night I discovered that I have a direct — in a nice fuzzy way — connection to the Firefly movie Serenity.

In 1987 I attended one glorious, D and F filled year of school at the University of Colorado/Boulder. CU’s rep as a notorious party school didn’t affect me, since at the time I was straightedge. I did seem to slack with the best of them, however, resulting in my departure and subsequent enrollment in the University of Cincinnati, once dubbed “the college I’ll never send you to” by my father. Oops!

I befriended a band at CU called the Warlock Pinchers. They inspired me to buy an electric guitar — a Global Les Paul copy — and a Gorilla practice amp and start learning barre chords (side note: I also took a guitar class for two credits, which saved my GPA from academic probation). My closest pal in the band was one Mark Brooks. A cartoonist as well, Mark found me amusingly punk rock and incorporated me into the band themed comics he would release. I was a dead former bass player who died in a car crash with a member of Poison, according to his band biography. They also included me on the list of band members, which at the time both honored and puzzled me. Now I realize I was a running joke in the band, a symbol of the silliness of the American hardcore punk movement. Every band has a band friend who they treasure as an icon of some sort of zaniness. That was me! In their satirical musical world, I provided inspiration. A muse of amusement.

We kept lightly in touch through the 90s, when Mark’s new band, Foreskin 500, toured the country and stayed with me in Cincinnati. After his band broke up, we lost touch. I later found out he was developing a Flash animated feature length movie called “Lil Pimp.” The horror stories of the failure of this project circulate through the animation community, apparently. I even met an animator who worked on the project and described how it had gotten out of control. I was sorry to hear this. “Lil Pimp” made it to video release and, despite an all-star voice cast (Lil’ Kim, Carmen Electra, et al), garnered negative reviews.

Last night, however, I happened to glance at the closing credits of Cartoon Network’s “Metalocalypse” (my new favorite show) and spotted a familiar name in the storyboarder section. Mark Brooks! My friend IMDB confirmed it for me: Mark has been doing storyboards for Metalocalypse… and he developed the animated musical ad in the film Serenity that set the character River off on a rampage in a bar.

Wow!

I’m really happy to see that Mark is experiencing success in his chosen field.

Now I suppose I should check my voicemail for Joss’ messages. He’s bound to call any minute now!

Any minute now.

Back! Nothing yet. I’ll check again.

UPDATE: Still no word from Joss Whedon, although there’s a chance my spam filter caught him. However, I’d like to clarify that Mark Brooks is in fact the Animation Director for Metalocalypse, which is more impressive than storyboarder. Not only that, but through the magic of MySpace we have re-established contact again! Knowing Mark, there will be a little Steve beheaded in some future episode. But meanwhile, go check out his new music project, Mega Jive, at http://www.myspace.com/megajive.