Getting ready for Sheffield
Sheffield Doc Fest coming up!
Wrath of Gods starring Gerard Butler again available on Amazon
Wrath of Gods documentary is again available on Amazon.com
The 2009 re-release of the documentary Wrath of Gods (with Gerard Butler) is now available on Amazon.com. Buy a copy.
Away from the disaster-zone
Paris is good as always. The apartment seems bigger every time I stay there. It’s good to get away from the disaster zone back in Iceland.
The krona is dead. Long live the krona.
I’m afraid that the sate of our currency (the Icelandic krona = IKR) can best be expressed/explained with this video:
Wrath of Gods SOLD OUT – 1 copy on Amazon for $58 !!!
Wrath of Gods is sold out. Someone is selling a used copy on Amazon for $58.
The North American version of Wrath of Gods (with Gerard Butler) DVD is sold out. There are no more new copies left anywhere. I just found this on Amazon.com. Someone is offering one copy for $58. This version will not be produced again, but I am working on a final version, with subtitles in German and Spanish and never before seen footage. Still haven’t decided if it will go into production.
Gerard Butler beats up a paparazzo – Finally!
Gerard Butler kicks paparazzo ass according to the Icelandic yellow press.
All I can say is FINALLY!!! Gerry has been way too cool and controlled given everything that has been going on around him. Even the Icelandic yellow press has this!!! But those silly journalists mention 300 and Tomb Raider, but forget to mention that he co-produced Wrath of Gods!… and, yes… played Beowulf. The article reminded me of the stories of how he used to fight all the time as a teenager, back when he first met Tony Curran (see the long interview on the Wrath of Gods DVD) The only thing this will do is raise his profile. I’m not sure he needs more attention though. He’s everywhere these days. I thought the in-flight version of Nim’s Island was better than the one I saw in the Chinese Theater.
Nim's Island on Icelandair
End of summer
Lighthouse at Grotta, Seltjarnarnes, Iceland. End of summer 2008. (click on the photo to see a bigger version)
Really feels like it’s gone. Hope I get one more trip into the mountains though.
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- Lighthouse at Grotta, Seltjarnarnes, Iceland. End of summer 2008.
iPhone comes in handy
Sunset, Reykjavik, Iceland August 27, 2008. iPhone comes in handy when i don't have a real camera on me.
The Big Party Weekend
The big August long weekend is here. Thousands of people are camping out at these big drunken orgy festivals, but not me. I went for a hike around Ölkelduháls and Reykjadalur (Steam Valley). If you ever get to Iceland you should try to find this place. At the top of the valley you find the source of Reykjadals-river, actually two sources, one hot and one not so hot. Where those two meet is a very popular bathing spot.
Damien Rice and Amy Kuney in Reykjavik
I love surprises. Last night I had two. First of all Damien Rice is entertaining as hell and secondly, a girl from LA called Amy Kuney came out of the blue and impressed a Nasa full of Icelanders. Great voice and great songs. I looked her up on MySpace and she seemed to have mostly done cover songs and posted them on YouTube but there seems to be a CD coming out. She looks young but her voice sounds older. Somebody obviously brought a video camera to the concert and posted this on YouTube (not me).
Horses, mares and foals
This time of year I don’t want to be anywhere other than in Iceland. I feel sorry for those of you who have to tolerate the heat and humidity of New York and Toronto, or the scorching heat of New Mexico and California… (you know who you are). Just to torture you I have to post these pictures I took last week. A friend of mine needed pictures of his new foals. Here you go:
It took a while till the mares trusted me. They are very protective of the young ones.
Location scouting
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- Location scouting in Iceland
Location scouting on the edge of Reykjavik at midnight. Love those white nights. The hope is that we’ll be able to make a short film here in the fall.
Location scouting in down-town Reykjavik
It’s not until you look sideways, till you turn of the main street and into the back alleys that you see the real city. There is a feature film to be made here and we found the perfect location for it, Shadowville, down-town Reykjavik.
Bjork in the park
A well timed concert. Right now we are in the middle of an economic down-turn. It is quite possible that the unemployment rate in Iceland will rise from the current 1% to 3 or 4% in the coming months. Many people are demanding that we start building more hydro dams so we can build more aluminum smelters to keep more people employed and to raise our GDP. This is the time that we need Björk and Sigur Rós to remind us not to destroy more Icelandic natural treasures because of short sighted greed. I got there too late for Sigur Rós, but Björk was fun as always.
Solstice in the north of Iceland
Just had one of the most fund nights ever (with no woman involved that is). We left Reykjvik harbor last night at 5pm. My friend JoJo invited me along to film his gig onboard the Delphin Voyager. After the concert we sat up at the Panorama Bar on the top level of this gigantic cruice ship with guitarist Alfredo Fernando and watched the WestFjords as we sailed north in the midnight sun. After all this was the longest day of the year and we were up by the Arctic Circle. Those Germans know how to have fun. 10am on a Saturday morning. As we sailed in Eyjafjordur, towards Akureyri, they brought out the beer and the liverwurst an danced their way around the top deck of Delphin Voyager.
Sabor a mi – surprise on a cruise sip
One of the first people I met on board the Delphin Voyager was Alfredo Fernando, a Scottish/Chilean musician who lives in Germany. The first thing that came to my mind was, this guy must know one of my favorite songs – Sabor a mi. Alfredo and I ended up at the Panorama bar till 5am, watching the sun not set up by the Arctic Circle as we sailed past Hornstrandir and the rest of the Westfjords.
Halli Hansen – the one and only
I created this video when Halli Hansen drew the winner of the CUT!2008 VIP pass winner. The winner, Liz Drogula, couldn’t use the pass, but for some reason the video became viral among her friends. When I removed it from the WRATH website I stuck it on YouTube, so for those of you who haven’t seen it… here you go.
My Winnipeg!
This is my Winnipeg. Osborne Village Motor Hotel. The pictures speak for themselves.
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- Osborne Village Motor Hotel 2008
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- Osborne Village Motor Hotel 2008
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- Osborne Village Motor Hotel 2008
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- Osborne Village Motor Hotel 2008
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- Osborne Village Motor Hotel 2008
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- Osborne Village Motor Hotel 2008
Gerry finally hit the big time
When even the Icelandic yellow press reports on who Gerry is talking to in a club in Hollywood, I know that he has finally made it big. The afternoon paper DV said that Gerard Butler, who played King Leonidas after he played Beowulf, had been seen in intense conversation with Miranda Kerr, Orlando Bloom’s girlfriend, and clearly trying to chat her up. Butler of course clarified that they were just talking business. I find this quite interesting because for the longest time the Icelandic media didn’t make the connection. Guess they all watched Wrath of Gods when it was broadcast on Icelandic State TV and finally realized who he was. The article is here.
Jody in the background
Mr. Butler signs an autograph before the premiere of Nim
It’s Sunday and my screening at CUT is over. I wanted to stay for the Horror day but Gerry had invited Martin and I to the premiere of Nim’s Island at the Chinese Theater on Sunset. At the end of the show it was quite interesting to see Gerry being swamped by fans and Jody Foster more or less ignored by all. The most surreal moment was when two nine year old girls walked past us and one of them proudly stated that she just got Gerard Butler’s autograph.
CUT!2008
Martin, Tony, (Tony’s guest) and I (behind the camera). Heading down to the theatre for the Wrath of Gods screening at CUT!2008 in the New Beverly Cinema.
Good company after the screening at the New Beverly Cinema. Linda Judd, Flowergurl, Ruby (Blondesquaw) and 200 autographs.
The screening of WRATH is over. The only logical thing is to go to the LA Gun Club and shoot at things. That Magnum was quite an experience.
JoJo and The Boss
This is my friend and neighbor JoJo. Few people have as much charisma as he does.
JoJo is a street musician. He played in the streets of Copenhagen for 12 years. One day Bruce Springsteen walked past him. JoJo called out “Hey, Boss! Don’t be so stuck up. Come and play a song with me”. Springsteen kept walking and then suddenly he turned around and asked JoJo if he had a spare guitar. They ended up playing 3 songs together. By the second song JoJo was singing along in harmony. After the second song Springsteen said “This guy knows my songs better than me”. After three songs they hugged and Springsteen walked away. Someone had a video camera. That night this video was on Danish TV and the next day there were pictures in every paper. JoJo became an instant star in Copenhagen.
Lights Out!
Just posted the “lights out” part of the 1 hour interview with Gerry on YouTube. We did this interview in the middle of the night, a couple of days before the end of the Beowulf & Grendel shoot. I am usually very much ‘in control’ when doing interviews, but this time I couldn’t help myself. It’s hard to explain how absurd this was, especially after having gone through months of hardship up there in the mountains. Gerry had been putting the interview off for a few weeks but when we finally got going the generators broke down in the middle of it. By the way, I just read about a new YouTube trick. You just add &fmt=18 after the URL to play the video in higher resolution (have to be on www.youtube.com for this to work)
New York
The screening at the Stony Brook festival was great. Almost one thousand people in the house. It was great to show the film to this many people.
Wrath in Reykjavik
I finally received my DVD this week, and believe me, I pre-ordered. I have no idea why it took so long to get from Canada to Iceland, but I know that Icelandic Customs held it for a few days. They wanted me to
pay a percentage of the purchase price. I had to convince them that I didn’t have to pay for this DVD. Finally I just told them to open the package to see my name on it: “a film by Jon Gustafsson”. They finally gave in and stopped claiming that I had bought this one on eBay.
This week I got a message from a woman in the UK who ordered a long time ago and hadn’t received her copy yet. After some research we found out that there had been some labor action within Royal Mail, and as a result they are seriously backlogged. Since I hadn’t yet opened my copy, I decided to mail it to this woman in the UK, hoping that it would get to her sooner. So now I don’t have a copy for myself, but that’s ok… I’ve seen it a couple of times already.
We seem to be having a big problem with mail going to Australia, and we are very sorry for those who still haven’t received their copies. Brazil also seems to take a long time but the Philippines seem to be catching up. Today we also found out that Royal Mail in the UK is staging another strike next week, so this will affect some deliveries for sure. It’s frustrating, but we don’t have any control over the mail services in all these different countries. Yesterday WRATH played at the Perth Revelation International Film Festival in Australia. This morning I got a message from a supporter who was at the screening. She wrote: “As we went to collect our tickets the guy at the counter said that of all the Revelation Film Festival movies he had seen this was by far the best, as you can imagine that put a huge smile on my face.” Little comments like this one mean as much to me as winning an award, so thanks.
Next week I’m heading to the Stony Brook Film Festival on Long Island. If any of you are in the area I would love to see you at the screening. It’s on July 25th at 7pm. After that I am heading to California to attend a screening at the WineCountry Film Festival in Sonoma (don’t have the screening date confirmed yet). I’m also looking forward to getting to spend a couple of days with friends in LA.
By the way, did you all see this clip about Gerry’s new film, directed by Guy Ritchie (Madonna’s husband). Here is the link: http://www.worstpreviews.com/trailer.php?id=972&item=0
Midsummer Night in Iceland
I can’t help it. I don’t want to sleep when the night sky is like this. I took these pictures around 3am close to my house. See here on Flickr.
Midnight Sun in Iceland. © JonGustafsson.com
The Watchmen – Brighter Hell
A friend just sent me a link to this music video that I did back in 2000. This brings back a lot of memories. It was so cold out that the singer, Daniel Greaves, could not make it all the way through the song. He had to stop in the middle and get into the car with us to warm up. The Blizzard Award we won for this video was mostly thanks to two outstanding professionals, director of photography Brian Rougeau and editor David McGunnigal.
oh… it’s been a while since I thought about this one…
A trailer for a low-budget movie that I made in 2000. The film probably went to fourteen festivals in different countries and was even invited to Iran. It won some minor awards and ended up getting a very small release.
Waterfront Film Festival
I arrived in Michigan on Thursday evening. Had a great screening in the Saugatuck High School on Friday. It’s Saturday now and I think I already have alcohol poisoning. This is the first festival that I have been to that has a help-yourself 24 hour bar next door to my room, and a Sea-Doo tied up to the dock right in front of my room at my disposal. The best say to wake up after a Friday night of partying in Saugatuck is to go Sea-Doo-ing as fast as you can across the lake and back (a few times), so I did. Forgot to put on sun-screen. I’ll survive. Just had the second Waterfront screening and once again the audience response was great. Tomorrow I’m going sailing with a friend of mine, Mark, and his wife Mary, on their 35ft sailboat. The people here are great. The whole festival is run by volunteers, but they are doing an incredibly professional job of it. Waterfront has to be one of the most fun film festivals I have ever been to.
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