A Bucket of Blood

I *love* this movie. I've watched it several times in the past, and it was on TV the other night for Halloween season, and I gladly watched it again. And I enjoy it every time. I stare deeply into its eyes, and it stares back, unafraid, and every time, I see something deeper, something I didn't see before. It's funny, I constantly am meeting people who have read my game design book, and not one time has anyone asked about the quote in the frontispiece:

I will talk to you of art,
For there is nothing else to talk about,
For there is nothing else. 

Life is an obscure hobo,
Bumming a ride on the omnibus of art.
                                                              -Maxwell H. Brock

It's a very bold statement, perhaps the boldest statement possible. And yet, no one who has read it there has ever occasioned to ask me who Maxwell H. Brock is. And I'm sure you don't care either. But I'll tell you anyway. He's nothing more than a fictional character in a low budget horror movie. But this is no ordinary horror movie -- this is a movie that somehow, in its ridiculous simplicity, explores the hall of mirrors of what it means to be an artist. And I think, quite possibly, more than all the philosophers and art historians and media digerati combined, this movie gets it right.