Oswald in the doorway: the blog of the Oswald Innocence Campaign, by Ralph Cinque

I have been in touch with Dr. Helen Caldicott, the Australian pediatrician who is the founder and head of Physicians For Social Responsibility, which is based out of Washington D.C.  Dr. Caldicott is an anti-war activist, and she is also an anti-nuke activist. And that includes depleted uranium weapons, to which she is fiercely opposed. 

Dr. Caldicott watched my film, My Stretch of Texas Ground, and she loved it. After viewing it, she sent the link to other activist doctors, and urged them to watch it. She copied me, and I am going to put up a piece of it. So, this is by Dr. Helen Caldicott:

We are in the process of reaching out to other influential people- in Medicine, in Hollywood, and in other walks of life. Of course, in Dr. Caldicott's case, I don't presume she judges the film artistically. A woman like her, who practices Medicine and also runs an international activist organization, who testifies to Congress, who writes extensively, she is so busy, she may not give any thought to movies at all.  I happen to think the movie is quite good now, artistically speaking. It's a thrill ride. But, that's not what makes it important. It's the message that makes it important. And the message is very simple, that killing people is wrong, whether you do it with a suicide vest or a smart bomb, and both have got to stop. 

Now, there are people who are going to trash the movie, either because they hate the message, or they hate me, or both. But, what can they say? That they're in favor of killing millions of people?  That they think it's justified? That it's OK for the United States to cross the ocean, repeatedly, to start wars? Imagine if Russia did it. Recall how we reacted when they invaded Afghanistan. So, their reasons for doing that were bogus, but ours were valid? You think it's valid to start a war, one that has been raging for 18 years, over the extradition of one guy? We knew ahead of time that starting a war was going to get a lot of innocent people killed. But, we did it anyway.  How many innocent people are you entitled to kill to get what you want? The answer is zero.  

So, like Christopher Hooks, they'll probably attack other things, technical things. But, this is a low-budget film made for well less than one million dollars. The average cost of a Hollywood movie today is over a hundred million dollars. The most expensive movie ever made, Avatar, cost almost half a billion. Take a look:

https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/budgets/all        

So yes, a movie in this low budget range is not going to have the production values of a big Hollywood blockbuster. But, I am very pleased with what we got from the budget that we had, and I mean that artistically. And I had a hand in it. Besides writing the script, I did the voice-overs of three characters. (See if you can tell who they are.)  I also composed and performed the musical score, and it's all piano music, with me playing.  I recorded it not in a studio, but at home, on my electric piano, using a thumb drive, where the piano's computer saves it as what is called a MIDI file. It's a mathematical file. It represents the music mathematically. And then, I just took the thumb drive to a music editor, and it was converted into an actual sound file, a MOV  file.  

I also wrote an original song for the film, but that was recorded in a studio, and here is a picture of it.  We were posing here after we recorded. So, that's me, my good friend Paul Popa, and Sarah McSweeney, who is a prominent Austin vocalist. The only one I had to pay was Sarah. Paul did it for free. 

But, there is more music in the film than mine. There is quite a bit of stock music, which you buy online and download. It is a very common practice to use stock music, stock sound effects, and even stock footage in "indie" films.  You have to operate within your budget, and I am very proud of the result we got. Despite the limitations of low-budget, it is a rip-roaring film. The people who trash the film just to strike out at me will only demean themselves. Their nastiness will not look good on paper.