Heidi ho good neighbors,

I hope all of you are having a loverly holiday season. I know I am. Had a nice long weekend, which included: a) my three-year anniversary with Jacquie on Thursday (dinner at Forte and Lemony Snicket for dessert); b) Christmas Eve dinner with Jacquie's family, then to church and my parents' house for presents after that; c) Christmas dinner with Jacquie's family and a host of others who stopped by the house, including Love & Plutonium's own Melissa Zinn and Sid Redlin; and d) day-after-Christmas dinner with my extended family at my parents' house. I don't believe I will need to eat again until at least 2005, if you can believe it!

So, with all these gatherings of people, Jacquie and I took the opportunity to promote the movie amongst our family and some friends. We showed the four movie trailers (on VHS) to my family ("We're supposed to know what the movie is about from that???"), and the entire second rough edit (1 hour, 25 minutes) to the Floyd family, et. al. We screened it from the very first Love & Plutonium DVD that I created, and it looked quite good. Considering the troubles we had trying to get Arbor Daze onto a DVD initially, this process was fairly painless. Anyway, enough techie talk. You want to know how it was received, right? Suffice it to say, there was applause whenever: 1) a credit showed the name of someone in the room; 2) a scene took place in or around the Floyd house; and 3) when the movie was over. There was some muted laughter in a few of the right places as well, but then again, what can you expect from people who used to change your diapers? On top of all that, only one person fell asleep during the screening. Now I can't vouch for the cause of that slumber, but I'm thinking there is only a 1 in 3 chance that it was the movie.

So all in all, we are close! I'm thinking that I'll be able to keep my promise of an early 2005 release. I'm in the process of performing more color correcting tweaks, based on the DVD viewings, and I've got about 25 more minutes to go. After that, it's all soundtrack, baby. My New Year's resolution is to hound Katie and Glenn day and night until we have our music. It is the least I can do to repay all of you for your patience and understanding. It will all be worth it soon enough, I promise you that.

Happy New Year and other stuff,
Jeff
  

Well alrighty then,

I know it's been a long time since I rapped at y'all, but fear not -- we've been productive here in the bowels of Suburbiaville. I have completed the first phase of color correcting and I'm now about to begin the process of burning the first Love & Plutonium DVD and watching the movie on several different TV sets to make sure everything looks as it should. I've also received some new soundtrack material from Glenn Poorman, and Katie Held has promised to have her stuff to me soon as well. So we are inching ever closer to a world premiere!

Also, more big news: the Love & Plutonium theme song, "Sometimes Love Goes Boom" by Jeff's band Elixir, is complete as well. This song is used twice in the movie -- once in its entirety. You can listen to the sneak preview of the song on the Trailers page. I had a lot of fun writing this song on an acoustic guitar and then seeing it built into a great pop/rock track by my fearless compatriots in Elixir. This song will also appear on Elixir's debut CD, "Love Goes Boom", which will be released by No Deal Records in January 2005.

I hope the holidays are stress-free for everyone. I know I'll be enjoying them by endlessly watching and tweaking your favorite movie and mine, Love & Plutonium!

Merry Christmas and stuff,
Jeff