The Karate Dog (2005) and How a Post Comes Together for the Sunday "Bad" Movies

The Sunday “Bad” Movies has been a blog series for nearly five and a half year.  What started as a simple way to write about bad movies became something more.  It became a weekly look at bad movies and the many things that they could teach people about film in general.  Whether it was a personal lesson that was laid out through writing it down, or a lesson to others based on knowledge already gathered that could be filtered through a specific bad movie, the movies led to hundreds of posts.  A community, albeit quite small, was found within the bad movie world that kept the energy up.

School came onto the scene two years ago, taking some of the focus off of the blog.  The heart has always been there.  The quality of the posts may have fluctuated based on the added experience making the quality better and the quick turnaround making the quality worse, but overall there has been an improvement.  School caused the quick turnaround issues, and this week was no different.  The post was started two nights before it was published.

There’s a good amount of effort that goes into making each post.  The most obvious of the work involves getting the words onto the page.  That might seem like fairly easy work, yet there are a bunch of steps to get to that point, and some of them take time to get done.  Today, you’ll get to go on a tour through the life of the average post.  This is your look into how the Sunday “Bad” Movies come together on a weekly basis.  It will all be filtered through this week’s movie, The Karate Dog.

The first step for a film’s life in the Sunday “Bad” Movies is to go through the scheduling process.  There are two stages to this process.  The first is for a film to get onto the list of possibilities.  A few things can get a movie onto that list.  One is that it was a movie that I already knew about.  The second way to get onto the list was for the movie to be featured on one of the bad movie podcasts I listen to.  Third would be for the movie to be in one of the bad movie DVD collections I own.  Finally, a movie could be suggested to me.  Any of the four reasons are enough for the movie to make the overall list.  The Karate Dog got in because I knew about it from having watched it at a younger age, as well as being featured on one of the podcasts.

After that initial screening step, the movies get selected for scheduling.  The scheduling usually gets completed in twenty-five week blocks, about ten to fifteen weeks before that block begins.  The movies get chosen based on suggestions, timing, overall desire to watch the movie, wanting to fill a certain area that was lacking, or franchise weeks.  Movies suggested by more than one person automatically get scheduled in the next block.  Movies suggested once get put every two or three weeks, in most cases, and one person’s suggestions only get one appearance per block.  There have been a few exceptions, but that’s usually the case.  Timing could be for a holiday or a big theatrical release.  Overall desire was where The Karate Dog came in.  Because it was a part of my childhood, I knew that it would get included at some point.  Now was the right time.  For the lacking areas, that might mean that there have been too many horror in a certain timeframe, so something else gets put in instead.  Or it could be that The Asylum or Troma haven’t been featured in a while.  Franchise weeks are the tens, when more than one movie gets featured.

With that, there’s a schedule.  It might get tampered with as things change.  The schedule usually stays fairly close to how it was originally structured.  One or two movies might get moved or replaced, but most of it stays exactly the same.  As I go through the weeks, the movies end up in the “Next Four Movies” section on the overall movies list page for the blog.  And that’s where we move onto the next stage: preparation.

The preparation for any Sunday “Bad” Movie isn’t tough.  It can sometimes take way longer than preferable.  It’s not difficult, though.  One thing that must be done for every movie is to write down a list of the actors involved in the production.  This gets done in a computerized movie catalogue and an Excel spreadsheet.  This way, any connections to other movies covered in the Sunday “Bad” Movies can be listed at the end.  The Karate Dog featured Jon Voight, who has been in movies like Bratz and Getaway.  The directors also get listed.  That gives the connection of Bob Clark who directed The Karate Dog and the first two Baby Geniuses movies.  Suggestions are listed in the Excel sheet to keep track of who suggested what movies that have been featured so far.  Finally, release dates get listed to see what the most frequent years are for the movies that get featured.  These details could take anywhere from ten minutes to an hour and a half to get listed out.  Usually they’re a multitasking feature.

The other big step of preparation for any Sunday “Bad” Movies post is to watch the movie.  It might not always seem like it because of some of the posts barely touching upon the movies of the week, but I do watch every movie before writing about them.  This week was The Karate Dog, a movie starring Simon Rex as a detective looking into the murder of an old man in Chinatown.  There was a talking dog, voiced by Chevy Chase, and an increasingly insane old man, played by Jon Voight.  It was a wacky children’s movie that was nowhere near good, but nowhere near as bad as some of Jon Voight’s other children’s movies.

This could be considered the halfway point of creating a Sunday “Bad” Movies post.  It takes much longer than the other half, but constitutes about half of the total work that goes into these coming out on a weekly basis.  That was all of the pre-post work.  Now we get into the actual post.

Before sitting down and typing out all of the words that you guys digest through your eye sockets, there must be an idea of what will be written.  Freeform doesn’t work when it comes to creating quality for these posts.  It can work for the idea portion, though.  Unless I know what I want to write while watching the movie, it usually takes a little bit of work to hammer out a decent subject.  Something that has happened recently is that a Word document gets opened up and some freeform writing is put on the blank page.  Whatever comes to mind in regards to possible topics is thrown onto the page until something clicks.  When it clicks, that becomes the subject.  This was one of those, and it seems to be working out.

When the topic is decided, the post can begin.  Word document.  Typing.  Panicking that the post is too short.  Panicking that the post is too long.  Panicking that I want to type more and don’t have the time.  Stress eating and procrastinating.  Panicking that I just procrastinated another hour of writing time away.  Typing furiously.  Realizing that the one paragraph I’ve typed so far is garbage.  Restart.  Typing.  Get a good 700 words and realize that’s only a third of the post.  Tired.  Go to bed.  Wake up and realize it’s Saturday and I still need to finish the post I started.  Type like a maniac.  Realize the beginning is better than the end.  Accept that and be done with it.  Oh crap, I forgot the notes at the end.  Rapidly get them added.  It’s finally done.

Now that the post has been written, I can move onto the post-post writing.  There are eight steps, though most are very quick to get done.  Sometimes there are a few that don’t even need to be done.  The first and longest of the steps is editing.  Every post now gets an edit the day it goes up.  Sometimes that involves an overhaul of a specific section of the writing.  Usually that’s the beginning or end if it happens.  Other times, there are spelling mistakes found, something gets added, or wording gets changed.  The quality of the edit usually depends on the amount of time I have to get it done.  If the post was finished the night before, the edit probably won’t be too intense.  If the post was finished a week before, some extra time might be given to making it stronger.

After the edit, pictures must be found to go with the post.  The pictures are stills from the movie, usually found through a Google search.  Posters are found as well.  If there’s something really good in the movie that I want to be sure to include, I’ll screenshot it myself to have it.  The pictures give a visual of what was watched.  They also break up the text so that readers don’t come to the post and see a wall of words with nothing else.  Movies are visual, so a visual element can help with reading about them.

The final bit of touching up for the post itself is to put the links into the notes.  The connections between the movie of the week and the other movies that have been covered are mentioned.  When those past movies are mentioned, a link to the post gets attached.  When you look at the bottom and see that Jaime Pressly, who played the love interest in The Karate Dog, was in The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure, there will be a link to a post about that movie.  It’s not only my way of keeping tabs on the actors I’ve seen more than once, it’s a way to let new readers find older posts connected to the current one.  Links are also made for the Sunday “Bad” Movies Twitter account, and the Twitter account of the person who suggested the movie, if someone suggested it.

Once all of that is done, the post gets published.  It goes onto the blog for the public to see.  The link is sent out twice on Twitter.  The first Tweet is from the Sunday “Bad” Movies Twitter account, which will also Tweet links to other posts, or discuss bad movies.  Then the link goes out on my personal Twitter which, if I’m being completely honest, has far more followers.  Sending out the link on two accounts only ever gets me about ten people reading the post, but it’s something.  Maybe someday there will be a following for these posts outside of Pablo.

Only three steps are left at this point.  Update the movie list on the blog, update the stats on the blog, and update the suggestion list on the blog.  The movie list is the most important one.  It involves linking to the post that was just released, and then updating the next four films list to be the right next four films.  The stats page means that the top 10 most frequent actors, top 5 most frequent directors, and top 5 most frequent years get updated to be right when including the newest, most recently posted about movie.  The suggestions page involves adding whoever suggested the most recent movie, if someone suggested it, or adding the movie to the list of movies suggested by someone who is already on the page.

That’s how a post comes to fruition in the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  Hopefully, by this point, work is already underway for the next week’s post.  In this case, it is.  The movie has already been watched.  And pretty soon, work will begin for the week after.  It’s a process that happens every week and it seems to have worked out thus far.  It has been sustainable.

I hope you enjoyed this look into how the Sunday “Bad” Movies comes together.  If you have any questions about it, feel free to ask.  I’m here to answer pretty much anything.  Thanks for reading.

Before you go, though, here are those notes I mentioned:

• The Karate Dog was directed by Bob Clark, who also directed Baby Geniuses (week 50) and Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2 (week 50).
• Jon Voight was in The Karate Dog.  He is the most frequent Sunday “Bad” Movies actor, appearing in Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2 (week 50), Bratz: The Movie (week 63), Anaconda (week 80), Getaway (week 135), Baby Geniuses and the Mystery of the Crown Jewels (week 250), Baby Geniuses and the Treasures of Egypt (week 250), and Baby Geniuses and the Space Baby (week 250).
• Not too far behind him is Jaime Pressly.  Before The Karate Dog, she appeared in The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure (week 39), Torque (week 43), Cruel World (week 47), DOA: Dead or Alive (week 191), and A Haunted House 2 (week 274).
• Garry Chalk showed up in The Karate Dog.  He was also in Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2 (week 50), and Warriors of Virtue (week 88).
• The Karate Dog marked the third Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance of Dagmar Midcap, who was previously featured in Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2 (week 50), and Catwoman (week 174).
• Bonnie Paul returned to the Sunday “Bad” Movies in The Karate Dog after showing up in Baby Geniuses (week 50).
• Thomas Kretschmann was in Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2 (week 50) before he was in The Karate Dog.
• You may have noticed Ed Anders in The Karate Dog.  That’s because he already showed up in the Sunday “Bad” Movies in Alone in the Dark (week 152).
• The Karate Dog wasn’t the first time Kirsten Robek showed up in the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  She was already featured in Jingle All the Way 2 (week 160).
• Finally, Chevy Chase, the voice of Cho-Cho in The Karate Dog, was the lead actor in Nothing but Trouble (week 267).
• Have you seen The Karate Dog?  What did you think about it?  What do you think about Jon Voight’s children’s movies in general?  Let me know in the comments.
• The comments are also a good place to leave me suggestions for what I should be checking out for the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  If there’s a movie that you feel would be a good fit for the blog, tell me about it.  You could tell me on Twitter, too, if the comments aren’t a place you prefer.
• I have a snapchat if that’s something you want to check out.  Add me (jurassicgriffin).
• I mentioned in the post that I had already been watching next week’s movie.  It was a long one that I managed to power through last night.  The 1998 version of Godzilla, directed by Roland Emmerich will be featured in next week’s post.  See you then, when I have something written about it.