GHOST PHONE Movie & Phone App is on the Launch Pad for its KickStarter Campaign.

That’s right, we’re going out into the social media/viral messaging world to raise money to promote our latest film, GHOST PHONE the movie. Five years in the making. Untold human sacrifices. Pain and suffering. I’m cutting my ear off to get this movie out into the world. We’re planning to launch just a week or two prior to Halloween & the Day of the Dead. We’re developing a phone app called Phone Calls from the Dead which when downloaded will allow you to receive one or two phone calls a day from famous dead people giving you advice on your day. It’s a kind of Ghost Phone Oracle combined with a sort of serendipitous cosmic intervention. That’s right, we live in a manic world, where daily we swing up and down emotional/spiritually/financially. And, now we offer you help! Hope! A chance to communicate with your dead grandma.

Let me just say, GHOST PHONE is based on true events! We’re going to be asking all of you to help us spread the word. Some of you may scoff. May be cynical. But, let me tell you a story of when I was ten years old. I lived on Riverside Drive outside of Battle Creek, Michigan. I was a restless, disturbed youth. A chronic criminal, a near professional shoplifter. My fifth grade teacher, Ms. Hicks, told my mother at the end of my 5th grade year, that she should flunk me, but she didn’t want me back at the school again for another year of torture to her. So, I was passed on to Highland Junior High. I was troubled. I was walking in my sleep a lot. The phone rang late one night. I heard it but no one else in my family did. I got up and wandered through our brick ranch style house and answered the phone. An old, old voice crackled through the wires, “Jeffrey? Jeffreyyy.” I froze in the dark, my hand trembled so hard I could hardly keep the receiver up to my ear. “Yesss?” I stuttered.

“Jeffrey, you’ve got to stop stealing!” It’s hard to admit, but I peed my pajama bottoms as I stood there listening to my dead grandmother calling me from the grave. “If you don’t stop stealing and smoking cigarettes you’re going to end up in prison!”

Out of the darkness over my shoulder a hand reached down and jerked the ghost phone out of my hand. It was my mother. She put the receiver up to her ear and all she heard was a dial tone. I was crying now. She put the phone back down on it’s base and guided me back to my bedroom. “Jeff, you’re walking in your sleep again,” she said gently, not wanting to wake me up. But, I was awake and somewhere deep down I knew my grandma had reached out from the other side to set me straight. And from that night forth I never stole another thing and I’ve yet to end up in prison.

Coming out of the Indy Filmmaking Closet

Damn it! I’m trying to get blogging going. We’re moving towards launching our Kickstarter campaign to fund our next film, EVERYTHING BEAUTIFUL IS FAR AWAY. Okay, so we’re trying to make this filmmaking experience interactive. Meaning, we’re letting people both observe and participate in our process of making a movie.  [Speaking of interaction, please vote for your favorite Callers, movie poster, to help us decide.]

Just to let you know, one of my big concerns in life is closing what I call the loop in independent filmmaking. Meaning, I’ve worked for many years making films, both experimental and more traditional feature films and I know how to make movies. I’ve even figured out ways to fund my own films through developing land in Taos, NM. But, to be truthful I haven’t found a way to consistently get 

CALLERS Lead Melissa Ordway Featured in “A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas

A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas Starring Melissa Ordway

Okay, I’m watching TV and here comes the ads for Harold & Kumar’s Christmas. Lo & behold there’s our leading lady, Melissa Ordway playing a funny scene with Neil Patrick Harris. If you like her in the trailers and ads you might want to catch her in CALLERS where she plays a very funny lost soul trying to make her relationship work from the otherside. I guarantee you’ll see a lot more of Melissa in CALLERS than in Harold & Kumar’s Christmas. So, keep an eye out for the release of CALLERS which we’ve just completed.

Callers Film Review Posted at Santa Fe Film Festival Web Site

A very accurate description of the film’s underlying subject matter:

Callers film review

CALLERS World Premiere @ Santa Fe Film Festival

Okay, this is my first blog as we begin to launch our newly renovated www.taoslandandfilm.com website. It’s only been about ten years or so since I touched the website. So, this site is about to go up into the public realm here hopefully in the next 24 hours thanks to the diligent efforts of our web designer/master Paul Gutches.

First things first, CALLERS is a film I’ve been working on for the last four years. There is a long story to how it came to be and the struggles and controversies to getting it completed. But, I’d like to invite all of you reading this to come to the premiere at the Santa Fe Film Festival this coming Friday Oct. 21st @ 8:30pm at the CENTER FOR THE CONTEMPORARY ARTS (CCA)
1050 Old Pecos Trail, Santa Fe, NM  87505  505/982-1338. For those not familiar with the area, the CCA is located right behind the Children’s Museum. I’ll be there doing a Q&A afterwards…

Here’s a link to our page on the festival website http://www.santafefilmfestival.com/callers/.

Here’s the ticket ordering information:

Tickets to the 12th Annual Santa Fe Film Festival go on sale Thursday, October 13, 2011 @ Tickets Santa Fe

TICKET PRICES FOR ALL SANTA FE FILM FESTIVAL SCREENINGS*:  

GENERAL ADMISSION $15  General Admission Multipak – Buy 6 Tickets for the price of 5 ($75)  STUDENT (WITH ID) $10

BE SURE TO GET TICKETS TO THAT MUST SEE FILM! 

3 Easy Ways to Buy Tickets

Call (505) 988-1234
Our box office representatives are happy to assist you.

Stop By The Lensic
211 W. San Francisco St., Santa Fe, NM

Buy Online at TicketsSantaFe.org

Check back this weekend for more screening and event listings.  

Mark your calendar for 

opening night and our kick-off party at Cowgirl BBQ

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 20, 2011! Everyone’s welcome!

So, let’s get back to some rambling diatribes about CALLERS…

CALLERS
(Synopsis)
“Nobody believes William Pierce. Not the cops, not the shrinks, not even his own mother. And why should they? You see, Will has a direct hotline to the afterworld: his dead fiancée’s cell phone. Here’s the problem: the dead talk only to him.

In this dark romantic comedy, Will straddles this world and the next, jumping through hurdles to appease those who have crossed over, in an attempt to exonerate himself from a murder charge, prove his sanity, and find closure with his fiancée. Yes, she’s dead, but she’ll go to any lengths to make their relationship work, including asking Will to do the unthinkable: join her on the other side.”

And, here’s the bio I created for the festival. I can’t help myself when I write these things…

Jeffrey F. Jackson, Writer/Producer/Director/Executive Producer

…is the owner of Taos Land & Film Co. which produces feature films through the development of land in Taos, New Mexico. As a filmmaker Jackson’s projects cover a gamut of genres and issues. He considers himself lucky to have escaped the grasp of Hollywood’s soul-sucking demons and found a means of creating films which are both upsetting and untainted by the crass commercial world.

His first mentors in the movie business were Stanley Kramer who he worked with at the end of his career through an American Film Institute (AFI) Internship on Kramer’s “The Trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Robert Wise then assisted Jackson as his executive producer on his adaptation of Flannery O’Connor’s short story, GOOD COUNTRY PEOPLE, which was funded through an AFI Independent Filmmaker’s Grant. David Jauss of the Vermont College of Fine Arts had this to say about  GOOD COUNTRY PEOPLE, “I think it’s terrific—one of the best adaptations of a short story I’ve seen….it leads to some interesting conversations about storytelling in film vs. prose.”

Jackson then went on to spend a decade or so of hedonistic living in Venice Beach, California in an effort to gain some material for his life as an artist. “I think you have to have some decadence and hardships in your life to discover some purpose in your work as an artist” states Jackson.

He finally clawed his way out of his ‘Life Experiences’ phase through working as public relations director for author John Gray (“Men Are From Mars. Women Are From Venice”) where he plunged John into places like San Quentin Prison to hone the depth of his processes with murders and rapists and other various rejects of American society.

At that point Jackson decided it was time to get sober and get back to his filmmaking career and he spent the next five years working as a freelance journalist for Larry Flynt researching and writing exposes’ about the corruption within the federal government. This led to his feature length documentary, DEATH & TAXES, the story of North Dakota farmer Gordon Kahl and his life and death struggle with the IRS.

As the fertile land of Taos, New Mexico was funding Jackson’s film efforts, he decided it was time to give back some of this good fortune to other filmmakers and he started the Taos Land Grant Award with Taos Talking Pictures Festival (RIP) which involved his donating five acres of land in Taos each year to the most innovative film director with a feature film entered in that festival.

Next up was his narrative dark comedy delving into the emerging psychosis of POSTAL WORKER. HBO liked it enough to run it for eighteen months while Jackson discovered there were real life postal workers out there just like the ones he portrayed in his film.

Then came a late in life “Domestic Bliss” era where Jackson spawned a family and settled down to raise two children and become trained in the spiritual arts by his guru i.e. wife.

And, that brings us up to CALLERS. This movie has a very long complicated and controversial story behind it and if you’re interested in hearing about it, come on out to it’s World Premiere at the Santa Fe Film Festival at 8:30pm Friday Oct. 21st at the Cultural Center for the Arts where he’ll be answering questions before and after the screening.

Here’s our CALLERS trailer