Posts Tagged ‘Eliot Ness An Untouchable Life’

55 Is Not the Limit! Barb and Me

Tuesday, May 23rd, 2023

Our wedding anniversary is coming up on June 1. It’s our 55th, a number that sounds more like a speed limit than a designation of how long two people have been together in a marital partnership. Barb and I have been a couple longer even than that – the fall of 1966 – and have known each other since childhood.

Barbara Collins

In the West Junior High band, here in Muscatine, Iowa, Barb was first chair trumpet and I was second chair. I was okay (not false modesty) but she was excellent. I tried several times to “challenge” her, the process by which you could unseat the person occupying the chair above yours. I failed miserably, and I would even say trying to play “Golden Gate” (the difficult piece she sadistically chose) was one of my more humiliating experiences, even in junior high terms, which is basically one humiliating experience after another. The band director actually interrupted my performance, saying, “I lost you somewhere, Mr. Collins.” Barb had already completed the impossible number flawlessly.

And yet I wound up marrying the girl who had visited upon me the most withering humiliation of my youth. This only goes to show how weak a male can be when a beautiful blonde is willing to go out with him. (I should also note that I quit band after junior high, concentrating on chorus.)

We were thrown together, in a way, because we were the only two of our extended crowds who had, after high school graduation, wound up at Muscatine Community College and not at the University of Iowa or some other institution of higher learning. Our first date in MCC days was to Wild Cat Den as part of a group that may have been a church one – I don’t recall. I only know I made clear to Barb how little I enjoyed the Great Out of Doors. Despite her lovely company, I had a terrible time, looking out for snakes and other small creatures bent on my destruction.

How we wound up on a second date, I will never know. We went to the nearby Quad Cities to a movie – possibly a drive-in – and I was trying to impress her with my brilliant gift of gab. She was quiet, occasionally nodding, and doing her best not to look glazed (she still does this when I am off on some verbal tear, which is frequent). She states that the moment she fell in love with me was when I put my hand in a water glass (during some brilliant monologue) and she had smiled and thought to herself, “He’s not so smart. I can put up with this.”

We were an item by Thanksgiving, disgusting our fellow students with our lovey-dovey behavior. It became obvious to me that, within this quiet lovely girl, was a smart, funny human being worth hanging out with forever. A crisis having to do with her mentally ill mother dragging Barb and two of her sisters across country (to Arizona) to get one of those sisters well from a supposed illness (undiagnosed) had only brought us closer together upon her inevitable return. Her mom’s general erratic behavior had a lot to do with why we decided to get married right after graduation from MCC – Barb was nineteen, I was twenty.

When I look back on these fifty-five years, I realize how very lucky I was and continue to be. While I tend to focus on my career, I don’t value anything more than my relationship with Barb. She has continued to amaze and amuse and delight me, and occasionally put me in my place. I had no idea – nor did she – that she would develop into such a wonderful writer. The Antiques series is a unique accomplishment and my co-authorship of Barb’s novels is among my proudest achievements. The son we produced, Nathan, is another.

Then there’s how beautiful she still is. I am obviously a shallow soul. I have been criticized for celebrating attractive women in my fiction – apparently I should have been celebrating harridans – but I admit that one of the great pleasures of my life is the many times each day when I glance at this lovely girl (yes, I know she’s a woman!) and think, “Wow. How can I be this lucky?”

On the other hand, it’s another reason for people to hate me. I get it. I would feel the same way. I’d be right there with you saying, “That lucky effing stiff.”

She may or may not read this. She reads my updates sporadically – after all, she is subjected to what I think every time we go out together. We’re easy to spot. She’s the beauty. I’m the beast with his fingers in the water glass.

* * *

The day this appears we will have seven days remaining on the Blue Christmas Indiegogo fund-raising effort. Just in case you were wondering what to get Barb and me for our wedding anniversary.

I will continue, this week, to honor requests from anyone who puts in $35 or more to do my best to fill in some blanks on their M.A.C. want list. Barb and I have sent out around fifteen packages so far, often containing one-of-a-kind items that I’ve parted with in gratitude for this support.

We do not know yet (soon, I hope) if we’ve nabbed a Greenlight grant, but even if we don’t, we intend to go forward with the best version of Blue Christmas we can. The Indiegogo $5000 (we are at 85% now!) will go toward matching funds, if we get the grant, or into the production itself, if we don’t.

Chad Bishop is the mastermind here, aided and abetted by Karen Cooney. Karen is the go-getter who went and got me to do Encore for Murder as a fund-raiser for the local Art Center. If I hadn’t had the experience of turning that one live performance into a multi-camera movie (or “movie”), I would not have got my filmic juices flowing again. Right now Chad and my longtime collaborator Phil Dingeldein (and a talented young woman named Liz Toal) are working hard to get other projects going, including Reincarnal and even Road to Purgatory.

I did not imagine at this age (75, choke) post-open-heart surgery that I would be back at filmmaking again. Few in that field have trod a weirder road than mine. Mommy and Mommy’s Day had respectable low budgets (half a mil and a quarter of a mil respectively); but after that, my then best friend slash producer stole most of the profits, and my subsequent productions have been put together with spit and chewing gum – Real Time: Siege at Lucas Street Market and Eliot Ness: An Untouchable Life are respectively $10,000 and $15,000 productions but managed to get national distribution and some decent critical reaction.

And yet my graphic novel Road to Perdition became a $90 million movie (at the same time Real Time was shooting on a budget that maybe covered one day of stocking Perdition’s craft services table) and I made respectable money on two films I wrote but did not direct, The Expert and The Last Lullaby. The Quarry TV series at Cinemax, for which I wrote two scripts, also paid some bills.

Along the way there have been two documentaries (Mike Hammer’s Mickey Spillane and Caveman: V.T. Hamlin and Alley Oop) I wrote and directed, and three short films, and one I didn’t direct – A Matter of Principal – but wrote; that one was an award-winner and led to the feature, The Last Lullaby. By the way, that’s a Quarry movie with a great Tom Sizemore performance and it’s available on Amazon Prime right now.

I am the rare writer of prose fiction who will admit that he likes movies as much as books. I feel lucky, even honored, to have been able to do as much as I have in that arena, even if my own little movies have never made me a dime. The joys of collaboration – my friendships with the likes of Phil and Chad and the late Steve Henke, my creative collaboration with the late Mike Cornelison – are more reward than anyone could dream of.

Should I have gone to Hollywood and pursued that dream, as opposed to joining the fiction-writing ranks of Hammett, Chandler, Cain and Spillane? No. I do not have the temperament for what Hollywood puts writers through. Because movies are my side hustle, screenwriting for Hollywood on occasion is something I can abide. I would also probably have been married three or four times by now, and I refer you to earlier in this post for the reasons why that would have been a tragedy.

Last night I watched Mickey Spillane’s Encore for Murder on the local public access channel. Because we have landed a deal with VCI that includes both home video release and streaming for both the new expanded Mike Hammer’s Mickey Spillane and Encore for Murder, we have decided not to offer either to the Iowa or Quad Cities branches of PBS. But my collaborator Chad Bishop runs Channel 9, Muscatine’s public access channel, and his participation in the project includes the right to show Encore there.

I had worked on Encore on a computer screen – on several actually – and have seen it projected on a full-size movie screen at our recent premiere showing. But this was the first time I’d seen it on my TV at home. And that was a thrill, because that’s the venue we had in mind. I refer to it as a “movie,” but really it’s a TV program. I thought it held up pretty well. When you consider that we only decided to record the play a few days out from dress rehearsal and its one public performance, it’s another of the small miracles that seem to litter my life.

And there’s nothing wrong with small miracles. You can enjoy them. The big miracles are so overwhelming, you can’t really enjoy them.

But I’m willing to try.

* * *

I did an interview with Jason Dehart on his podcast Words, Images, & Worlds that is fairly wide-ranging and covers some things that have rarely come up, like the influence of Hong Kong movies on my work.

This is a really good interview with my frequent collaborator, Matthew Clemens.

Here’s a way to access my Batman comic strip continuity with Marshall Rogers.

Here’s a free-wheeling interview that I really enjoyed doing – you might, too.

Finally, he’s a largely positive review of Eliot Ness: An Untouchable Life.

M.A.C.

Encore for Filmmaking

Tuesday, April 25th, 2023

This new e-book collection of the three John Sand spy thrillers by Matthew Clemens and me is available from Wolfpack and, for the first time, includes Murderlized, a collection of our stories, one of which is the first John Sand story.

Max Allan Collins Collection Volume Two: John Sand cover image
E-Book:

An informal meeting of Quad Cities area filmmakers was put on at dphilms on Saturday, April 24. Since I‘ve largely been away from indie filmmaking in the area – though of course I’ve done some screenwriting in the interim – it was a nice opportunity to see some new and old (and in between) faces.

Quad Cities area filmmakers meet at dphilms
Quad Cities Filmmakers Meet at Dphilms, Rock Island. Chad Bishop and Max Collins at far left, Phil Dingeldein centerstage (next to colorful painting).

I had frankly thought filmmaking was behind me. The last thing I shot was an award-winning short in 2007 called “An Inconsequential Matter” starring my friend and longtime collaborator, Michael Cornelison (it’s a bonus feature on the Eliot Ness Blu-ray (), with excellent cinematography by Phil Dingeldein). Mike had starred in both the stage and movie version of Eliot Ness: An Untouchable Life in 2005, as well as narrated Mike Hammer’s Mickey Spillane and my comics-history documentary, Caveman: V.T. Hamlin and Alley Oop (). Mike worked with my right up to the end of his too short life, appearing as Pat Chambers on both Mike Hammer audio presentations, “The Little Death” (winner of an Audie for Best Original Work) in 2010 and “Encore for Murder” (nominated in that same Audie category) in 2011.

Mike Cornelison

Losing Mike – who was as valuable a collaborator to me as is my friend Phil – took the wind out of my filmmaking sails. I have, of course, had some things happen since then in the movie realm – we sold Heller to FX and I wrote the pilot (never produced), Quarry became an HBO/Cinemax series in 2016 (and I wrote an episode) and I’ve written a screenplay, Cap City, for director David Wexler. Recently, Eliot Ness and the Mad Butcher by Brad Schwartz and me has been optioned by CBS Films, Nolan has been optioned by Lionsgate, and Mike Hammer (not just Mickey’s novels but the joint Spillane/Collins ones) just closed a deal at Skydance. Some serious interest is also afoot for the Antiques series, Ms. Tree and Fancy Anders.

With Hollywood, you never know, but there has been a lot going on. The truth is, on these projects my direct involvement is likely to be limited to being the source writer and a consultant, and maybe getting to write an episode of anything that goes to series (Hammer appears to be on track for a feature film, which is great, but there’s no way I would get to write it).

After my heart and cancer surgery, I figured my moviemaking days were over, and they may largely be. We shall see as we shall see. But the “instant” movie that Encore For Murder with Gary Sandy became – a rather last minute decision to shoot the live semi-pro production with multiple cameras – is what really got me going. Sitting with the gifted Chad Bishop in his editing suite, seeing our little movie come to life, reminded me how much I love doing that kind of thing.

This is a good time to remind you that – if you are close enough to Muscatine, Iowa, to make the trip (the Merrill Hotel is great, by the way) – Mickey Spillane’s Encore for Murder, the movie, will be shown at 7 p.m. on Friday, May 5, at Muscatine Community College. The details are here.

We will also be answering questions about our upcoming production of Blue Christmas, my return to serious indie movie production. Chad Bishop, my producer on the project, will be present as well as much of the Encore cast (not Gary Sandy, though).

If you’ve dropped by here in recent weeks, you’ll know that we have launched an Indiegogo crowd-funding effort to raise a mere $5000 (of course in Iowa five grand is not “mere”) intended either to provide some matching funds required by the Greenlight Iowa grant we’re going after, or (should we not get that grant) to help fund a version of Blue Christmas along the lines of a recorded live production a la Encore (however not Golden Age Radio style – plenty of bells and whistles).

As an incentive strictly to those of you nice enough to show up here at my weekly Update, I will offer a perk to anyone who comes in at any level by way of some item from your M.A.C. want list. Now somebody at the $25 or $35 level needs to be sane about what books and such they put on their want list. Larger contributions mean you can shoot higher and, in any event, I will do my best to make it worth your while. (This has a nice Nate Heller sleazy sound to it, doesn’t it?)

Your name will go in the credits at the $100 level, and at $500 you get screen credit as an Associate Producer, enabling you to impress your more gullible friends. There are other perks mentioned at Indiegogo, and at that level you can probably talk me out of something rare from my private stash.

An Executive Producer credit is available at (choke) $2000.

As I write this we are at $1440 – 28% of our goal, with a little over a month left on the campaign.

* * *
Quasi (2023) movie poster

For those of you with a twisted sense of humor, I have a couple of film recommendations for you.

Just debuting this past week on Hulu – wholly unexpected to me – is the latest from the Broken Lizard comedy team, Quasi, the only Quasimodo movie that lacks a bell tower. I love Broken Lizard. They are masters of smart dumb comedy. The movie everyone knows – and most comedy fans adore – is Super Troopers. They write the scripts together and – with the exception of the crowdfunder Super Troopers 2, produced a decade and a half later – always go after a different subject or genre. Hence, Super Troopers 1 & 2 (cops), Club Dread (horror films), Beerfest (well, beer), Slamin’ Salmon (the restaurant game), and now Quasi (historical epic). Various team members have taken the “hero” role in these films, and various of them have directed, most often prolific TV director, Jay Chandraskekhar, although Kevin Heffernan directed both Slamin’ Salmon and Quasi.

The humor in Quasi comes from a cheerfully anachronistic approach to dialogue and a sweetness surprising for a film depicting somebody’s ballsack being nailed to a wooden block. It recalls Monty Python’s Holy Grail (the Broken Lizard guys each play multiple roles) and Start the Revolution Without Me, but despite the nonstop silliness, Quasi is more concerned with story than either of its two probable inspirations.

I watched it twice.

As I’ve mentioned before, a while back Barb and I saw Broken Lizard perform live at the Englert Theater in Iowa City and got to spend some time with them after. They were nice, normal human beings, funny and approachable, exhausted from the show they’d just presented but signing all of our DVDs and Blu-rays with patience and even joy. (Probably helped that I had their somewhat obscure first outing, Puddle Cruiser.)

Streaming on Peacock, the already notorious Cocaine Bear proves to be the funniest gory movie since Evil Dead 2. Its humor is a blend of Coen character eccentricities, Three Stooges slapstick, and jawdropping carnage. It’s largely about parenthood – specifically, motherhood. I realize some horror fans want it to be even gorier and dislike the amount of humor – for me, the fact that I’m laughing to the point of pain while watching humans getting torn apart strikes just the right balance.

* * *

Back Issue, an outstanding magazine on comics history, covered my brief run (one continuity) on the Batman comic strip. It’s really in depth with lots of Marshall Rogers art, and I would encourage you to seek it out.

Finally, here’s a decent Kirkus review of the imminently forthcoming Mad Money, collecting Spree and Mourn the Living, the last of Hard Case Crime’s reprint series of the Nolan novels.

M.A.C.

Chain Book Stores, Indie Movies and Avoiding Real Work

Tuesday, February 14th, 2023
Big Bundle Cover
Hardcover:
E-Book: Kobo Google Play
Digital Audiobook:
Spillane: King of Pulp Fiction Cover
Hardcover:
E-Book: Kobo
Digital Audiobook: Kobo Libro.fm

Both The Big Bundle and Spillane – King of Pulp Fiction are now out and available, but I don’t seem to be getting much shelf space for either from the likes of Barnes & Noble and BAM! This despite starred reviews from Publisher’s Weekly and Booklist, and a very, very widely distributed positive review circulated by the AP. You don’t get much better press than this.

But our surviving book chains determine what they’re going to order by past sales of the author. Which does me no favors. I remain a cult author (yes, I’ll remind you that Don Westlake told me, “A cult author is seven readers short of making a living”) and these stellar reviews have arrived long after B & N and others have put in their orders.

So what is my point? If you see Bundle and/or Spillane at one of the chains, and buy it, tell the register jockey (and perhaps the help desk) that you are purchasing the last copy in the store of this very well-reviewed book. It may inspire them to order more.

What else can I do for Max Allan Collins today (a question I’m sure you ask yourself upon early rising, right after your exercise regimen)? If you won a book giveaway for either title, be sure to read the book soon and get a review in. If you are an unlucky soul who merely ponied up the dough for one of these titles at Amazon (or anywhere, really), post a review at Amazon and elsewhere if you’re truly dedicated to the cause of keeping me in business.

It is extremely undignified for me to beg, but I have never been particularly dignified. I wrote the song “Psychedlic Siren,” for Pete’s sake. But don’t think I’m complaining (though of course I am) because I am well aware of how blessed I am to have been able to avoid real work for over fifty years by telling elaborate lies known as novels and comics and film scripts. To play working man I have to reach back into bussing tables in high school and sacking groceries in college.

I don’t consider teaching “real work.” There’s not much heavy lifting in teaching, beyond lifting the aspirations of, in my case, high school graduates who hadn’t quite learned to read yet and were now in community college wondering why it’s a struggle.

I don’t mean to dis community colleges, because I believe in them wholeheartedly and think going to the first two years of a four-year college is akin to setting your future earnings on fire, till that pesky student loan is paid off, anyway (which should only take a few decades). I am back at Muscatine Community College right now, working on a project (the Blue Christmas one) and am about to be feted as an MCC Legend (“feted” not “fetid”). I may have already mentioned this here, but I’m going to get a dinner and everything. My band was asked to play for it, but I stop short of honoring myself. That much dignity, shabby as it may be, I do have.

I want to thank all of you out there in Mystery-Fiction-Land who have responded so beautifully to these two new books – The Big Bundle and Spillane – King of Pulp Fiction, that is. Also to Kill Me If You Can, the 75th anniversary Mike Hammer novel (post reviews please!).

My partner in cinematic crime, Phil Dingeldein, and I are putting the finishing touches on the 75th anniversary expanded edition of Mike Hammer’s Mickey Spillane, my 1999 documentary. It’s jumping from 47 minutes to 61 minutes. We are in serious talks with Robert Blair at VCI Home Entertainment to bring it out on Blu-ray and DVD, and to include the film Chad Bishop and I put together of the Encore for Murder play we mounted last September. Gary Sandy has okayed its release, and it’s possible it will go out to the streaming services for their consideration. We’ve also entered the Iowa Motion Pictures Awards and the Cedar Rapids Film Festival, though we don’t know if we’re nominated for anything yet.

There’s a strong possibility we’ll be presenting Encore for Murder (the “movie”) on Friday, March 31, at Muscatine Community College. That would be the day after the Legends dinner. More later on that subject, but for those of you close enough to get to Muscatine, pencil in that date. It’ll be shown on a big screen in MCC’s “black box” theater.

Putting together Encore for Murder as a video presentation got my filmic juices flowing again (which I admit sounds kind of disgusting). Several of my fiction markets have fallen by the wayside – neither Thomas & Mercer nor Kensington seem even vaguely interested in me at this point, for example – so I find myself drawn back into indie film. I like the idea of low-budget (even micro-budget) filmmaking. Real Time: Siege at Lucas Street Market and Eliot Ness: An Untouchable Life had cash budgets under $15,000 each (though if I’d paid myself and Phil had taken any pay, and any number of other volunteers hadn’t gone along on the rides, we’d have skyrocketed to maybe $30,000 each).

Even the Mommy movies were under half a million – Mommy’s Day was under $200,000. Again, several of the key participants did not draw upon that budget.

What happened was the ten years I worked on indie films had me alternately learning the craft (on the job training) and then – after my producer stole all our Mommy 1 & 2 money – figuring how to operate on a micro-budget. This was followed by a lengthy attempt to get the sequel to Road to Perdition made. I wanted to direct my script of Road to Purgatory and we came very close a number of times. But it always fell through.

Now, at my advancing age, I know doing a big project is probably too challenging – too hard on me physically, post-heart surgery and stroke, and Barb had forbidden me going down that road, preferring me alive to dead (no accounting for taste). But working on a low-budget feature – despite the stresses even that level of filmmaking can bring – is more a doable proposition. The support I’m getting from Muscatine Community College had made all of that more manageable. Or it looks that way at this stage.

If indeed we get to make Blue Christmas – which we intend to – I will report the journey here.

And don’t you hate when people talk about their “journeys”?

* * *

We’re starting to put material together for seeking grant money and investors for Blue Christmas. Here’s the Demo Real put together by Chad Bishop.

* * *

I did a fun interview with the very smart Terrance Gelenter, who is based in Paris. And this is about as close to visiting the City of Lights as I’m likely to get in the near future….

* * *

Here is a Ted Hertel (wonderful guy) on The Big Bundle in the February 2023 print issue of Deadly Pleasures:

“One of the finest historical crime novel series being published today” Deadly Pleasures (Rating: A)
The Big Bundle by Max Allan Collins (Hard Case Crime, $22.99, December 2022) Rating: A

In 1953 six-year-old Bobby Greenlease is kidnapped. His wealthy parents call on the services of private investigator Nathan Heller, who had represented them in another matter some years earlier. Robert Greenlease insists on having the kidnapping of his son handled on his terms with as little interference from the FBI and police as possible. The kidnappers pick up the ransom, as scheduled, but Bobby is not returned. The kidnappers, however, assure the family that he’ll be back, safe and sound, within twenty-four additional hours. But then half of the $600,000 ransom disappears and things take a turn for the worse. Five years later Heller is called back to try to find the missing money. But Washington politics, Bobby Kennedy, and Jimmy Hoffa all manage to get tangled up with Heller’s efforts to help Greenlease once again.

All of the Heller novels are based in solid fact, thoroughly researched, with details of the characters and their eventual fates detailed at the conclusion of the story. Of course the real-life kidnapping of Bobby Greenlease is nowhere near as well-known as the 1932 abduction and murder of the Lindbergh baby. Heller had investigated that crime, as well, in Max Allan Collins’ Stolen Away (1992). In spite of the outcome of that case, he is once again entrusted with finding and returning a missing child to his parents.

Collins is a master (actually an MWA Grand Master!) at finding a plausible method of inserting his long-running fictional detective into the events of the day. He does this by using actual places, events and real people such as Kennedy, Hoffa, Chuck Berry, and Drew Pearson to add authenticity to the narrative. In doing so Collins immerses the reader in the 1950s’ era lifestyle. What’s even more remarkable is that he’s been doing this for forty years, since his 1983 debut Heller novel, True Detective.

If you’ve never read a Heller novel, don’t be discouraged by the fact that this is the eighteenth book (plus a number of short stories) in the series. The chronicles are not published in any specific order, moving around in time from the days of Capone and Nitti to Monroe and the Kennedys. But this one, the first from Hard Case Crime, is as good a place to jump in as any other. Then you’ll want to go back to the 1920s and start with that first one in what is one of the finest historical crime novel series being published today.

Ted makes an excellent point. I find that many mystery fans, who – like me – have a certain amount of OCD in their souls, are prone to wanting to read a series in chronological order.

I’ve touched on this here in the past, and I’m about to touch on it again. First of all, only the first four Hellers are in chronological order (and have done Hellers set within the parameters of certain books…Damned in Paradise, for example, takes place within the structure of Stolen Away). Second, if you only read my back list, then you risk putting me out of business.

If you have never read a Nathan Heller, start right now with The Big Bundle. You are big boys and big girls – you can handle coming in late. I keep things very clear for newcomers. No whipsaw effect in your brain is imminent. Imagine you are getting this advice from the guy in those Progressive commercials who is counseling new home owners who are in danger of becoming their parents….

* * *

Here is a dual interview with my co-author Jim Traylor and me about Spillane – King of Pulp Fiction. A shorter, somewhat different version appeared in Publisher’s Weekly.

The same web site, Bookreporter.com, also gives Spillane – King of Pulp Fiction a lovely review, right here.

M.A.C.

Book Giveaway! Blue Christmas and Bucket Lists…

Tuesday, January 17th, 2023
The Big Bundle audiobook
Hardcover:
E-Book: Kobo Google Play
Digital Audiobook:

We have a book giveaway this week – ten copies of the hardcover of The Big Bundle. You agree to write a review for Amazon and/or other on-line reviewing sites, like Barnes & Noble or even your own blog. This is for USA only – overseas is, I’m afraid, too expensive.

[All copies have been claimed. Thank you! –Nate]

The book will be out in about a week and a half, so time’s a wastin’. (I may not be writing Caleb anymore, but some things get in your blood.)

The audio may or may not already be available – I haven’t been able to determine that. But it will definitely be out when the book itself is released (it’s out there now on e-book). Barb and I listened to the first third of it on a jaunt to Cedar Rapids yesterday, and Dan John Miller is simply brilliant as Nate Heller and this extensive cast of characters. He’s always good but he’s outdone himself here.

* * *

We hope to include Mickey Spillane’s Encore for Murder on a Blu-ray/DVD release of the expanded Mike Hammer’s Mickey Spillane documentary, which Phil Dingeldein and I are working on right now. I think this makes more sense than releasing it on its own, because it is after all a local production, even with the commanding presence of Gary Sandy, who I think is really terrific as Mike.

But the experience of shooting the play (which we did live, as well as two dress rehearsals) and then editing the footage into a kind of movie got those juices flowing again. I honestly didn’t think, post-heart surgery, that doing a film project was possible. But this showed me, on a more limited scale, a project was possible.

We are going after grant money to get Blue Christmas off the ground. It will be, to say the least, a low budget production. Probably $75,000 plus that much again “in kind.” We initially were going to mount it as a play and shoot it that way, as we had with Encore for Murder, only with actual pre-production, as opposed to me just realizing we might have hold of something and oughta shoot it.

If the grants don’t come through, we would still do it, most likely, and would go the play route in the fall, with four cameras recording two dress rehearsals and two performances. We will be in a smaller theater – at Muscatine Community College, where years ago Barb and I fell in love and I later taught for a while – and if we do shoot it film-style, that black-box theater will be converted into a studio.

There is a part of me – the part of me that loves movies at least as much as I love books – that wishes I had gone the film route. There is a power to Chinatown, Vertigo and the Aldrich/Bezzerides Kiss Me Deadly that in my experience can rarely be touched in a book. (Feel free to disagree. I was shaped as a storyteller more by Hammett, Chandler, Spillane and Cain than by TV or movies. So I get that view.)

But I also like the collaborative aspect of making a film. It’s part of why I’ve stayed active with my band since 1974 (and from 1966 to 1971 before that). I am fine with working by myself, and as an only child am a loner. And the control that can be exercised in writing a novel or story is all-inclusive – nobody tells me what to do.

In collaborations, however, the human interaction is compelling and rewarding. Since I am a natural leader – I don’t know how to behave otherwise (I’m not proud of it) – I still tend to hold sway over the decision making. But that input from others makes the result far richer.

We are also in the “bucket list” area – not a term I love. But I am going to be 75 on March 3 (start shopping now!) and (like I said before) time’s a wastin’.

I began having a sense of the ticking clock well before my health issues kicked in. I started ticking off dream projects as early as Mommy, which was all about my obsessive desire to see Patty McCormack play a grown-up variation on The Bad Seed. USS Powderkeg (also published Red Sky in Morning) was about honoring my father and getting his WW2 story, with all its racial implications, told. Black Hats represented my desire to do a Wyatt Earp book.

Sometimes bucket list projects have foisted themselves on me. I thought Eliot Ness: An Untouchable Life was my last word on Ness. But Brad Schwartz convinced me we should write the definitive history of both Ness in Chicago and in Cleveland – though the instigator was Ken Burns. When he got Ness wrong in his Prohibition documentary series, by listening to uninformed, biased “experts,” those two massive books Brad and I did became necessary.

Blue Christmas is a story that has great meaning for me. As I’ve said here before, it was a story written on Christmas Eve 1992 – all fifty pages of the novella, in one fevered sitting – that got me back up on the pony to ride, after the bastards at the Tribune took Dick Tracy away from me.

I, of course, did not realize the Tribune had done me a favor, because I was about to fill the slack with Road to Perdition. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but I also think about what Dean Martin said: the two best things that ever happened to him were teaming up with Jerry Lewis…and breaking up with Jerry Lewis.

* * *

The great Ed Catto has written a lovely piece about Ms. Tree. Don’t miss this one. It’s right here.

J. Kingston Pierce was nice enough to say this at the Rap Sheet: “Among the non-fiction releases I look forward to seeing (is) Spillane: King of Pulp Fiction, Max Allan Collins and James L. Traylor’s ‘first ever’ biography of ‘the most popular and most influential pulp writer of all time.’” See that in context here.

Here’s a nice look at Jacques Futrelle, the detective mystery writer who starred in my The Titanic Murders. (I rate a mention!)

You may have already seen this interesting article on Quarry, but it’s worth at least one look.

M.A.C.