Locals making short, bloody small screen debut

Oh, bloody hell, there they are again. Not in the lobby or in the shadows of a darkened theater, where you usually find them, but on the small screen, in a gory, gross-out horror flick. At least they will be next week. Granted, you don’t want to close your eyes during the feature presentation, even though you desperately want to close your bloody eyes, because, if you do, you could very well miss them. The actors, not your eyes. “I'm little more than a dot in a large, dark mob of hungry, hopping — yep, Chinese vampires hop — vampires with glowing red eyes," says the guy we usually call Port playwright Ron Pullins because we love alliteration. His wife and sometimes-writing partner, Leslie Powell, fares a little better, at least from a performance point of view. She plays a little old lady who is sweeping her doorstep and then, a couple of minutes later, all that remains of her is, um, entrails that are unceremoniously tossed out the door.  But at least she gets a speaking role, albeit brief.  She says "Hi, dear" to Frank, an assassin and the unfortunate fellow who tangles with the vampire, while she is sweeping the stairs. We get a second peek at her a little later in the film, in a montage, she flashes on the Powell and, um, her guts, "because sadly I've been eaten by the Vampire," she says. "Yes these guys eat you, blood isn't enough for them.") The film which will premier at 8 p.m. April 30 on what used to be WNDS. Remember the slogan? The winds of New England. Now it’s called MYTV. Used to be Channel 50, we're not sure what Comcast, that evil corporate giant, calls it. 

Read more »

Silent is golden: Miller unveils Deren scores

Kristen Miller’s new obsession started quietly — appropriate, considering the media — seven years ago, even though nothing really came of it until last year. She had been hanging out in Gloucester with Brian King, from the band What Time Is It, Mr. Fox?, a band rooted in folk and blues, but filtered through cabaret and alt-rock, and a frequent Miller collaborator, working on a project — a long-form experimental piece. They had been at it all morning and decided to take a break. King told Miller, an innovative cellist with three albums under her belt, that he wanted to show her something, so he fired up the DVD player and played “Meshes of the Afternoon,” a silent film by Maya Deren, who famously said she could make an entire movie for what Hollywood spends on lipstick. This film, of course, was not Hollywood by any stretch. It is stubbornly interior, a film that inhabits the world of dreams and myth, attempting to tell a life story in less than 15 minutes with little in the way of linear plot and without a word being spoken. It “reproduces the way in which the subconscious of an individual will develop, interpret and elaborate an apparently simple and casual incident into a critical emotional experience,” Deren said in her program notes for the film’s premiere in 1943.  The experience was a revelation for Miller. “I was speechless,” she says. 

Read more »

In the Cards: Films to benefit stage

My favorite moment in a Charles Card film comes near the end of “The Good Samaritan,” when the vampire (Jack Rushton) bares his fangs, ready to feed, for better or worse, on the life blood of that vapid party girl (Nicole Foti) who had disgusted him a few minutes earlier when they met at a cafe that looks just  like Stella’s, the former Middle Street Foods, and little Miss Pretty (vacant) looks up at him and asks, “You’re not from around here, are you?” It’s not the first vampire flick for the Newbury biochemist-turned-filmmaker. That would be “Natural Selection,” a character-driven story about a sad, self-loathing and desperately lonely night stalker who is sickened by what he is and what he has to do to stay alive.  And it probably won’t be his last: He remains intrigued by the kind of “multilayered, tortured” characters vampires tend to be. Besides, the undead will never be dead. Not in this culture. Vampires — and zombies and the whole array of creatures that haunt the night — are huge and “will never lose their appeal totally,” he says. “There will always be vampire movies around in some form.” But, while intrigued by the genre, the filmmaker is not stuck on it, as anyone attending the screening of his work this weekend at the Actors Studio will see. He’ll show the vampire films, but will also screen two comedies, an action martial arts film and even a music video, now in post-production, for prolific Amesbury songwriter Andy Pratt, best known for his mid-'70s hit “Avenging Annie."

Read more »

Andrew Mungo and the fame game

This is the story of two Andys. The first one came up with the insight — prescient, now a cliche — that in the future everyone would be famous for oh, just about a quarter of an hour. And he became very famous indeed, Andy, almost as famous as the amazing Lindsay Lohan is today. The other Andy has a peculiar relationship with celebrity. Unlike Andy I, a genuinely revolutionary artist who became famous the world over for being famous, Andy II is very well known, famous you could say, but only within narrow geographical constraints. Call him a local celebrity. If you’ve been in the city for a while, chances are that you know him. You’ve probably given him money for a good time. He's been a fixture in downtown Blueberryport for more than three decades .... What's that? Yeah, right, Blueberryport. That’s what our Andy — Andrew Mungo, the owner (and the guy behind the ticket counter and sometimes behind the projector and popcorn machine) at The Screening Room — calls the community that looks an awful lot like Newburyport in “Thanks for Listening, A Memoir," a film that has been in the works for a decade and that will make its big-screen debut this week. Not at the alt-hip downtown cinema, but just up the street, at a meeting of the Newburyport Public Library's Film Club.

Read more »

'Mutes' has lots to say about Port DIY scene

I’m not sure how to approach this thing, seeing how I’m the star of the film and everything, and ... What’s that? Overstating the case? Well, maybe a little — okay, a lot. But I did survive the editing process. I am in “Mutes in the Steeple: Stories from the Newburyport Music Scene,” a new film by Port native Joshua Pritchard. There I am, I’m sitting by the river, playing myself, an eminence grise, if you’re feeling charitable, or a crusty, grizzled Lester Bangs wannabe talking about the underground music scene back in the day. Which, coincidently, is just about the time that I bought the Plastic People of the Universe t-shirt I’m wearing in the film. I had been roped into the interview by a smooth-talking Dylan Metrano, who, with Gregory Moss, performed with the edgy, confrontational proto-punk band Hamlet Idiot a couple of years after I bought the PPU tee. That would be the dawn of the 1990s.

Although there were important Port bands before Idiot (like Jeff Morris’ Psychotic Youth, the precursor to NPD, the first legit homegrown Port punk outfit, or the Bruisers, an Oi! outfit that managed to break out of the Northeast indie ghetto), in many ways, the local DIY scene grew up around Metrano and Moss, mainly because they forced the issue with the whole Envy concept, or brand, as people would say now: Creating venues when they couldn’t find them, founding a magazine and web bulletin board to create a community and spread the word, even putting together music festivals and founding a record label for like-minded weirdos. I had been writing about the scene for a while for a variety of local rags, and I couldn’t figure a way out of it, so down by the river I faced the questions instead of asking them, a disorienting experience for an ink-stained wretch, as curious tourists on the Boardwalk stopped and watched, wondering if I were someone famous. Half an hour later and it was over; a couple of months after that, it was forgotten.

That was six years ago. And that was the last I heard about it — until this week, when I found out the film was done, that it was available, that that it would make its Big Screen debut May 15 during the first-ever Burst & Bloom festival, a day-long festival in Kittery that will also feature performances by Mary Flynn, Guy Capecelatro, South China, Tiny Fires and Andrey Ryan, who will also read from “The Need To Be Heard,” her book about the whole DIY experience. They mentioned that there would be a red carpet for folks in the film. I think they were joking about that. I hope they were joking about that.

Diary of a community
The film, which takes its name from an Archers of Loaf song, provides a behind-the-scenes look at the city’s DIY music community, now for the most part dispersed, using interviews, still photography and archival concert footage from a half-dozen key artists, including Morris, Metrano and Moss, as well as Jake Trussell from Electro Organic Sound System, Julian Shea from Lost Cause and Sam Buck Rosen. It’s about music, obviously. It’s also about making a scene, both literally and figuratively. But, more than that, it’s about community — a specific community, Newburyport, but, more importantly, a community of friends tied together by their “otherness,” their rejection of mass-produced, mainstream music and the whole culture of conformity. And while it might not seem like much on this side of the millennium, where there are thousands of niches in a fractured cultural marketplace, it was back in the day. As Morris makes clear in the film: If you wore a Dead Kennedys tee to school, you had better be prepared to defend yourself — and not necessarily intellectually. And the Port punks were so completely overwhelmed, numerically, by the mainstream that friendships, community, could be built “on something as small as liking the same band,” says Julian Shea, frontman for the Lost Cause. This is the genesis of the alt-community in Newburyport.

The film is tied together with footage of the actual physical community, much of which was shot from a moving vehicle — a deliberate aesthetic and intellectual choice (“I think it’s an essential part of the experience,” says Pritchard. “So much of the city, of life, is seen from a car when you’re a teenager.”). It also creates a mood that borders on melancholy; it also has a whimsical feel and a sense of movement.

The filmmaker was a part of this community. Pritchard, 29, went to all the Hamlet Idiot shows. Not a whole lot of people did, for whatever reason — one of the reasons Moss calls the band “a failed experiment.” He also played, with twin brother Jay, in Chestnut Blight, a band that took its name from a disease that decimated chestnut trees around Newburyport High School (“Seemed like a perfect name for a band,” he says.) and Knew Mewn, whose lineup included J. R. Gallagher, who would later play with Tiger Saw, a slowcore band that rose from the ashes of Hamlet Idiot. “If they were underground, we were something below that,” says Pritchard, who now plays in Ruin/Renewal, a Boston-based trio that sounds like REM and Sonic Youth covering Nirvana. “They were a big act to me,”he says. “I found what they were doing was really inspiring. They were doing it. They just started booking local shows. They just didn’t take no for an answer.”

Same as it ever was?
In the film, Shea, at this point working with his new band, These Lies, talks about this same sense of community, and suggests that Newburyport “will always have that underground feel,” which, at the time — six years ago — may have seemed right, but, from this side of the divide, feels a little like whistling past the graveyard — or, perhaps more on point, like the dull echo, back in the day, of those insisting that punk is not dead, as it slowly withers in front of them.

Pritchard says “Mutes” is a “a time piece,” he says. “It captures a time and place, and this is important: You can look back.” He also notes a “certain melancholy,” not by design, in the film because a lot of the issues are the same — the city may not be so polarized, but there still are few, if any, places for kids to go out and make some racket. OK? So I’ve got to get out of here. I’ve gotta figure out what I’m gonna wear to the premiere. Think I can lose 15 pounds to get into that party dress of mine?

JUST THE FACTS, MAN: Joshua Pritchard’s film “Mutes in the Steeple: Stories from the Newburyport Music Scene” will debut May 15 at the Burst & Bloom Festival. The event will also feature performances by Mara Flynn, South China, Tiny Fires, Western Homes and Andrey Ryan, who will also read from “The Need To Be Heard,” about the DIY music scene. The event starts at 6 p.m. at Buoy Gallery, 2 Government St., Kittery, Maine. All ages. Tickets are $10. The DVD will be available at the festival, but you can also pre-order. More information, about the festival is available on the festival’s Facebook page. Info on Burst & Bloom is here.

Montezinos: Role-ing with the punches

It's Friday afternoon. Adrienne Montezinos is on the phone. The Newburyport actress is getting ready for a weekend trip to Hatchling Studios, the Portsmouth animation studio owned by Marc Dole, to ... well, the details are still a little fuzzy. She won't know what she's going to do, exactly, until the evening, when her group, Team Pineapple, gets the phone call from the folks at the 48 Hour Film Project, which is kind of like Random Acts, the Newburyport play-in-a-day series launched by Leslie Powell and Hailey Klein six years ago, but designed for film rather than stage. The call will give the crew the first clues about what they'll actually be doing, usually revealing a genre, a prop, a character's name and a line of dialogue. Then all the crew have to do is write, cast, costume and film a short movie in two days. There would be about 75 people involved and, yes, the actress says, it's going to be a madhouse.

Montezinos, who has been building up stage, film and commercial credits since she "got the bug" about three years ago, got the nod to work, in some unspecified capacity, in the still-undefined project, in part, because of her performance in "Crooked Lane," the Chase Bailey directed short that won film of the year honors at this year's New Hampshire Film Festival. She plays Dr. Elena Leder, a psychologist treating a woman, played by Ann Cusack, whose daughter begins having visions of her murdered eight-year-old daughter in the paranormal thriller. She is in the trailer and Bailey is planning on turning it into a full-length feature. The film, which also won best New England film honors at the this year's Rhode Island International Film Festival, although it is not, strictly speaking, a horror film, was edited by Dole. His Pineapple Pictures production "Tweet," a short about a crusty, old school cop, played by Bailey, who is getting left in the dust by a desk-bound computer nerd, won best directing honors and was runner-up for best film in last year's 48 Hour Film Project. And when Dole started building a team for tthis year's competition round, Montezinos was a known quantity. She would play a role. What that would be, she doesn't know. No one does. And, for now, it isn't even that important. "I love working in film, creating the inner life of a character on screen," she says. "I love the process of bringing a director or writer's artistic vision to fruition and collaborating with the team of creative people it takes to create a film. It's an endlessly fascinating process."

Originally from New York, Montezinos moved to the city thirteen years ago. She has a background in dance and choreography, training at Alvin Ailey and the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance, and has worked with Exit Dance Theatre. ("Dance will always be a part of who I am," she says. "It's in my blood.") She began teaching pilates locally eight years ago, now running private classes through her own business. She got eyes for the theater about three years ago, and has performed at the New Works Festival and in Stacey Fix's Theater Workshop — including a role as the Sun, performed atop a ladder, in "Into the Act," a retelling of Aesop's Fables. Her most recent stage role was Christine Shoenwalder in last April's Actors Studio production of "Picnic." But increasingly, she has turned to film and commercial work — with increasing success in a variety of media. She's featured in recent commercials for Anton's Cleaners and Midas Muffler — not especially glamorous, but honest work, sort of, real work that pays the bills. On the big screen, in addition to “Crooked Lane,” Montezinos is in “Ghosts of Girlfriends Past” and a comedy based on “A Christmas Carol” starring Matthew McConaughey and Jennifer Garner (“very quickly,” she sasy, “about one second in the wedding scene.”) She plays a flight attendant in “Wichita,” the James Margoles action-comedy film featuring Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz set for a summer 2010 release — another short scene for Montezinos, but one she shares with the stars. She’s also in “The Women,” the Diane English remake of the 1939 Joan Crawford film — a long shot in a health club with Montezinos sweating it up, sort of, on an elliptical trainer, right next to Annette Bening. And, no, the Pilates instructor slash actress isn’t all primed from a cardio-vascular workout. “It’s movie magic,” she says. “They gobbed us with glycerine to make us look dewy.” There’s lots of work, enough that the day-to-day grind of nine-to-five has started getting in the way of auditions and rehearsals, and the pace of the work has picked up enough to justify it, so she walked away from her job as assistant to the headmaster at Sparhawk School. "It can be a blur sometimes,” she says. “It takes lots of time, and organization skills. Sometimes there are several audition a week, sometimes not. There's a lot of fits and starts.” She'll be leaving for the mystery New Hampshire film project shortly. “It should be exciting," she says — "nerve-wracking but exciting. I imagine we'll all be pretty stressed out, but in a good way."

They get the call at 7 p.m. The theme is "the end of the world." It can take any form, natural disaster, nuclear annihilation — or the way the crew does it in what will become "The Bureau," a spoof of "The Office." They brainstorm ideas for a while, then the writing teams — there are two — get down to business. The rest of the cast goes home to rest a couple of hours before the real insanity begins. In the morning, everyone finds a copy of the script in his inbox — as well as pleas for wardrobe assistance. Montezinos, who landed the Michael Scott character, brings a black suit and pumps and Alice Cooper-like massacre strategies. Then back to Hatchling for 12 hours on Saturday and another eight on Sunday. "We just mobilized," says Montezinos. "It was amazing, it was intense.” The story looks at one of those bureaucratic shell games that comes back to bite you on the ass: The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (that would be Death, War, Famine and Pestilence, for the Biblically challenged) get their assignment from headquarters — plan for the end of the universe. The job gets bogged down in red tape, which is fine, because folks in the office figure it's a gravy train that they'll ride to retirement, because it would ever happen, because, well, because it would be the end of the world and everything in it. Who would be crazy enough to do that? Then the financial crisis bankrupts the universe and the timetable for Armageddon is fast-tracked. The crew and cast won’t hear how Team Pineapple did until January. Either way, a party is planned.

Until then, Montezinos has plenty to do: She’s casting director for a new Web soap in pre-production out of Portsmouth called "Proper Manors." She’s also in a short film called "the Marriage Counselor" directed by Steve Day. She’s also working on a short short with local filmmaker and editor Brian Cassin. The working title is "The Shambling." She will play an undead woman, a role that could be informed by her work in The Bureau’s Department of Death. She's just auditioned as a model for a exercise machine commercial, done a voice-over for a Boston healthcare marketing firm and performed as a guerilla dancer in Boston in a campaign for Memorex and …

Turning the Red Planet green

They say that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, and humans, being the frustrating perverse and clever creatures that they are, may be able to take it a step further, harnessing the thing scientists say is the greatest danger to our survival on this planet and actually putting it to good use — assuming we can get our act together, enviornmentally and politically. It’s called terraforming — intentionally altering the climate to turn Mars, our galactic neighbor, into a living planet with forests, lakes, and (eventually) breathable air. And it means, in essense, finally getting serious about global warming, but in exactly the opposite way that we're thinking about it now. It’s about first, getting to Mars, which has been bleak and barren for billions of years, and setting up shop old-school, churning out those greenhouse gasses until we turn the Red Planet green.

Pipe dreams? Sounds it. Colonizing Mars (or, conversely, avoiding being colonized by “them”) has been science fiction boilerplate for the entirety of the modern era. But the forces behind terraforming are not pale white boys talking sci-fi trash during rare excursions from their basement lairs. These are serious people, like NASA astrobiologist Dr. Chris McKay, who has spent three decades researching extreme environments on earth, places where the bare necessities of life are met, as a prologue to planetary engineering. It is also the subject of “Mars: Making the New Earth,” the latest documentary by Newburyport filmmaker Mark Davis, who won an Emmy for Outstanding Science, Technology and Nature Programming last October for "Five Years on Mars," his film about Spirit and Opportunity, the Mars rovers that defied everyone’s expectations by surviving five-plus years — and delivering a mountain of data that will keep scientists busy for years. The new film debuts Nov. 19 on the National Geographic Channel.

But don't pack your bags yet. It will take 100,000 years, give or take a thousand or two, to turn Mars habitable, with a (minimum requirement) breathable atmosphere, for humans, let alone a cosmic vacation destination. But, scientists say, it could be “warm, wet and ready for (primitive) life” in about a century. "Mars: Making the New Earth," a part of NatGeo's Expedition Week series, is a step-by-step guide on how to reanimate a foul, nasty planet with an average temperature of -80 degrees and an atmosphere made up of deadly ultraviolet and cosmic radiation, a place that has been dead as a cosmic doornail and frozen solid for 3.5 billion years.

As with any big project, you start with baby steps. First, get there, necessarily with a small, expeditionary force. Then start cooking the atmosphere, setting up little factories, which, of course, would have to be built from scratch, and make use of super greenhouse gasses like sulfur and florine, thousands of times more potent from a planetary warming point of view, than fossil fuels and both present on the planet. Slightly warmer temperatures would set off natural processes that would get the greenhouse ball rolling. After 100 years, liquid water would exist. The atmosphere would thicken, turning the Martian sky blue. Although much of the planet would remain icy, like above the Arctic Circle, life would be possible. Lichen and mosses would be introduced. The primitive life forms would break rock down into soil, paving the way, so to speak, for grass and shrubs. Then high-altitude fir trees, possibly genetically engineered, would be introduced. This would improve the soil and atmosphere, making it possible for more complex life forms — humans — to exist, if we don't wipe out the species by ourselves.

Terraforming represents "planetary engineering on an almost inconceivable scale," the documenary admits. "It sounds crazy, but it's a scientifically credible idea," says Davis, 59, whose previous documentaries include “The Curse of T-Rex” in 1996, and “Mars Dead or Alive” in 2005, and who is currently chasing an American Experience deadline for his documentary on the so-called “bone wars,” a knock-down/drag-out battle between paleontologists Charles Marsh and Edward Cope. But why do it, other than to show off how clever we are? Our survival may depend of it. In the distant future, our sun will grow larger and burn hotter, a process that cannot be stopped; the closest planets will burn first. The only future, long long term, will be to escape to the farther reaches of the galaxy. To do that, we, if we exist, will have to know how to build a better planet. But, in the here and now, the reason to do this, beyond the fact that it is in our nature to explore, is knowledge: how planets work, how to keep them alive.

JUST THE FACTS, MAN — "Mars: The New Earth" airs at 9 p.m. Nov. 19 on the National Georgraphic Channel. Check your local listings.

A super-duper low-key anniversary

It sounds way more impressive than it actually is. That's Andrew Mungo's thinking, anyway. "Lots of couples have done it, probably without ever realizing it," says the co-owner of The Screening Room. After all, it's just a click past silver on the anniversary scale. Which is pretty impressive. Chances are that you're not going to get smacked upside the head with a frying pan or, worse, the open-ended cold shoulder, for forgetting your twenty-seven-and-a-half, more or less, anniversary. But if the missus knew that you had let the occasion of your 10,000th day of wedded bless pass without an appropriate fuss? Big trouble? Maybe not. Right, dear?

And that, in a nutshell, is what's going on with Newburyport's long-running, hip-but-homespun alt-cinema: The theater marked a big anniversary not that long ago — its 25th or 30th, depending on how you count (30 years since Mungo and Nancy Langsam showed their first film, 25 since they got run off Plum Island (long story, that) and set up shop on State Street) — without a whole lotta hoopla. A story in the formerly cool alternative weekly, a mention on their Internet pages and mailers, lots of private congrats from the regulars. Then it was time to fire up the popcorn machine, run the evening's film ("La Vie En Rose," a portrait of French singer Edith Piaf, if we remember correctly) and then, after the hard-core filmies finish reading the credits, cleaning up all the spilled popcorn. A similar blowout celebration is in the works for the Screening Room's 10,000th night at the movies, which will also feature,by coincidence, a French-themed film: "Julie and Julia."

Now for the math — and we're taking Mungo's word on this, so let's hope he did well in school — the cinema began its run (on State Street) on June 12,1982, so October 28, 2009 marks 10,000 Nights at the movies for us. The tricky part is remembering to add seven nights for seven leap years. Mungo estimates they've served up one million pounds of popcorn. If that is true, and we have no way of verifying that number, exactly, we estimate that he has swept or vacuumed up 25,000 pounds of popcorn. Or maybe people don't spill as much we do.

Credits roll, curtain closes, congratulations.

You can always find out what's going on at The Screening Room on their Web.

Port filmmaker takes home an Emmy

Looks like third time's a charm for Mark Davis. The Newburyport filmmaker finally has an Emmy — in theory, at least. Last week, the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences gave him the thumbs-up for "Five Years on Mars," his documentary about Spirit and Opportunity, the Mars rovers that defied everyone’s expectations by surviving five-plus years — and delivered a mountain of data that will keep scientists busy for years.

The news didn’t come during the glitzy, star-studded and mind-numbingly vapid televised ceremonies, but the next day, quietly, away from the cameras, in the “grand ballroom” of an overpriced midtown hotel, where newsies were safe from the prying eyes of TMZ. No matter. Davis, 59, was more than 2,000 miles away, standing at the top of a 8,000-foot butte in Wyoming (“a beautiful, beautiful space,” he says) when they named the winner of the Emmy for Outstanding Science, Technology and Nature Programming — him.
He knew the ceremony was going on, but he was trying not to think about it. He had been nominated and passed over twice before — for “The Curse of T-Rex” in 1996, and “Mars Dead or Alive” in 2005, both Nova episodes. He went to the ceremonies. The first time he wore a tuxedo, the second time a suit. So when he saw his name on the list this time out, he decided to take a raincheck. It wasn’t a snub. He just decided he didn’t want to get his hopes up.

Then, while he was enjoying the view from the Wyoming butte, he started getting a flurry of messages on his cell, which worked only intermittently in the rugged, desolate western terrain where he was shooting for his next project: a documentary about the so-called “bone wars,” a Civil Ward-era smackdown between paleontological superstars Charles Marsh and Edward Cope, a competition that eventually destroyed them both.

He was disappointed to learn that “the Academy” had passed over Mars animator Dan Maas and 2D motion graphics designer Anna Saraceno, Davis's daughter, for animation work for “Five Years,” which aired in November 2008 on the National Geographic Channel. “There wouldn’t have been a film without the animation,” he says. But he enjoyed his moment. “It was a nice way to end the day,” he says.

And about that Emmy ...

He doesn’t actually have it. They said it should arrive — by mail — in six to eight weeks, like something you order off the telly.

And what does it mean in the grand scheme of things? That Davis, who has been making films for Nova, American Experience and National Geographic for more than a quarter-century, will get the recognition of his colleagues and a gold(ish) statue ... Eventually. There’s no big cash prize, so the he’ll be hauling his camera a while longer. Which is fine, seeing how he’s got one project set to air ("Mars: Making the New Earth," which premieres in November on the National Geographic Channel), another show in production (the Bone Wars piece) and another film about the Red Planet on the horizon. “It's hard to get away from Mars,” he says. “It's got a hold on me."

As for the little statue, it’s probably going to travel around a bit until it finds a permanent place to collect dust, probably in Davis’s editing room.

When it finally arrives.