Interviews « Friends/Family/Fans of Max Allan Collins

Bullets in Santa’s Bag for a Christmas Book Giveaway!

Tuesday, December 12th, 2023

Hardcover:

Paperback (New!):

E-Book:

Digital Audiobook:

Audio MP3 CD:

The Big Bundle with Nathan Heller is out in trade paperback from Hard Case Crime today. If you’ve not read it, what are you waiting for? What’ll it take, a free copy?

Okay. The first ten of you who write me at macphilms@hotmail.com will get one fresh off the presses in return for writing a review at Amazon or Barnes & Noble or Goodreads or your own blog or whatever. Due to shipping costs, this is open to US Residents only. Yes, it’s another free book giveaway – Merry Christmas!

Also, any of you who have been good enough to buy and read the new Heller, Too Many Bullets, need to write a review at Amazon and elsewhere, toot sweet. As I’ve harped about here, because of a dock strike in the UK last year, the hardcover edition of The Big Bundle didn’t hit our shores until this year, months after its 2022 publication, sending it careening into this year’s Heller, Too Many Bullets, and causing the trade reviewers in the US to ignore the second book – no review in any of ‘em (Publisher’s Weekly, Kirkus, Booklist, Library Journal), which hurts brick-and-mortar bookstore sales and library sales, too. And not a single appearance on any “best of the year” mystery lists, despite some of them being voluminous.

So please fight back with posting a review. (If you hated the book, why not find something else to do with your time?)

We are soon to launch the crowd-funding effort to help launch the ambitious Nate Heller podcast series adapting as many of the novels as possible (starting with True Detective and True Crime) with me scripting and Todd Stashwick (of Twelve Monkeys and Picard Season Three fame playing Nate Heller. I hope to get my pal Dave Thomas to portray Mayor Anton Cermak – he’s said yes, tentatively.

The great Robert Meyer Burnett is producing/directing the project, and frequently mentions what we’re calling True Noir on his popular podcasts (he does several). He’s been good enough to hold Too Many Bullets up for the camera to catch, and frequently.

To promote True Noir and the publication in trade paperback of The Big Bundle and in hardcover of Too Many Bullets, I’ve done an interview with Titan mastermind Andrew Sumner that you can find here.

Andrew is fantastic interviewing the likes of me, and Titan and their sister publisher Hard Case Crime have been responsible for keeping me and Nate Heller (and Quarry and even Nolan!) afloat despite this uptight politically correct climate. Andrew Sumner and Charles Ardai are the champs who have kept Heller and me in the game.

* * *

In the meantime, producer/editor Chad Bishop and I are putting the finishing touches on our film, Blue Christmas. I am thrilled with how it’s come together. Here’s the poster.

When can you see this? We’re not sure. If the Greenlight grant had come through, we would have shot the feature in time to get it out for this Christmas (2023). Then Greenlight decided to fund a couple of documentaries instead. But we decided to make the darn thing anyway. (I can’t say “damn thing” because it’s, well, Christmas and all.)

We have a distributor already interested, but it will probably be held for Christmas 2024. I’m sure we’ll have some events (local and area premieres, a few film festivals) that may allow you to see it sooner than that. And it’s also possible it will come out much sooner than Christmas 2024 and then be re-promoted at that time.

All I can tell you is that I’m very pleased with how it’s come together. As I say, we are almost done. Chad and I have the edit where we want it, with just one little Second Unit shot to grab this coming week. I think my grandson Sam is going to be in that shot!

The novella on which I based the screenplay, “A Wreath for Marley,” is dear to my heart for reasons I’ve expressed here numerous times. You can find it in Blue Christmas and Other Holiday Homicides by me and published by Wolfpack. You can also find it in Otto Penzler’s The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries, a Vintage Crime Black Lizard original.

* * *

Barb and I make a habit of watching a Christmas movie every evening in December. I’ve written about my favorites here before, but here they are again:

THE TOP FIVE

1. Scrooge (1951). Alistair Sim is the definitive Scrooge in the definitive filming of A Christmas Carol.

2. Miracle on 34th Street (1947). Hollywood filmmaking at its best, with Edmund Gwen the definitive, real Santa Claus, Natalie Wood in her greatest child performance, John Payne reminding us he should have been a major star, and Maureen O’Sullivan as a smart, strong career woman/working mother who could not be more glamorous.

3. It’s a Wonderful Life (1946). Heartwarming but harrowing, this film is home to one of James Stewart’s bravest performances and happens to be Frank Capra’s best film. (I thanked him for it in the Green Room at Good Morning America in 1981 – promoting the Dick Tracy comic strip.)

4. A Christmas Story (1983), Jean Shepherd’s unlikely claim to fame, and a Christmas movie with Mike Hammer and Carl Kolchak in it. Now if the PBS specials about Ralphie and his family would only emerge on legal home video!

5. Christmas Vacation (1989) uncovers every Christmas horror possible when families get together and Daddy tries too hard. This holds up very well and has unexpectedly eclipsed the original film.

THE WONDERFUL RUNNERS UP:

Bad Santa (2003). This dark comedy has a warm heart, but you have to wade through a whole lot of black humor to get there. Billy Bob Thornton is wonderful, but here’s a special salute to the late John Ritter (who apparently died during the production) for the funniest moments in a side-splitting film. It’s become a Christmas classic at our house, and the very underrated sequel,

Bad Santa 2 (2016), is perhaps even funnier with Kathy Bates almost stealing the picture playing Billy Bob Thorton’s mother, who deserves more coal than anybody in either picture.

Holiday Inn (1942) is easily better than White Christmas, although the latter has its charms – it’s helped keep Danny Kaye from being forgotten, for one, and my late pal Miguel Ferrer’s mom is in it. The original has better songs and is funnier and ultimately more heart-warming.

Bell, Book and Candle (1958) is an old favorite of ours, the the movie Kim Novak and James Stewart made together after Vertigo. With Jack Lemmon and Ernie Kovacs stealing scenes left and right, it’s a precursor to

Bewitched and might seem a better choice for Halloween, only it’s set at Christmas. I love the George Dunning score (he did some of the best scores for the original Star Trek TV series).

The Family Man (2000) with Nic Cage, a modern reworking of It’s a Wonderful Life, heartwarming and funny. Cage may be an over-the-top actor, but the man commits – he gives one thousand percent to every performance, and this time he has a wonderful movie to do it in. This is a favorite of my son Nate’s, whose goals in life include seeing every Nic Cage movie.

The Twelve Days of Christmas (2004). Okay, so it’s a shameless reworking of Groundhog Day as a Christmas movie, but this admittedly minor TV flick is funny and rewarding – good-hearted but with a darkly comic sensibility. Steven Weber is excellent as the successful slick businessman (similar to Cage in The Family Man) who has twelve tries to get Christmas Eve right. Molly Shannon gets her best post-SNL role.

Remember the Night (1940) is probably second best (after Double Indemnity) of the films Barbara Stanwyck and Fred McMurray made together. It’s written by Preston Sturges – should I really have to say anything more? – and makes its humanistic points with sentiment, not sentimentality. It’s really a gem worth looking for.

I, the Jury (1953). The Classic Flix multiple disc set (with both 4K and 3-D versions, as well as Blu-ray) is finally a reality and anyone following this update/blog probably has already made that essential purchase. But this much underrated first Mike Hammer movie is set at Christmas and plays off of that fact throughout, with Christmas cards and carols the connective tissue between scenes. I continue to feel Biff Elliott was much underrated, and the cast is filled with wonderful character actors. The great John Alton shot it.

A Christmas Horror Story (2015) features William Shatner, excellent as the comic glue (a disc jockey) holding together inter-related stories about Krampus and Christmas. There are almost as many horror movies about Christmas as there are Christmas movies, but this is one of the best. It was put together by many of the Orphan Black people.

Office Christmas Party (2016) is a raunchy comedy whose preview in the theater (remember those?) turned me off. Somehow I wound up seeing it on Blu-ray and turns out it’s very funny and eventually betrays a good heart. The great cast includes Jason Bateman and Kate McKinnon.

A Bad Moms Christmas, recommended to me by Mark Lambert (who produced my documentary Caveman and is an associate producer on Blue Christmas), is an unlikely combination of raunchy humor and even dark comedy of the Bad Santa sort but an overwhelmingly good heart. It’s worth seeking out. Thanks, Mark!

Scrooge (1970) is the second-best Christmas Carol movie. Albert Finney is wonderful as Ebenezer in this musical version, with the Leslie Briccuse score perhaps the one most like his work with Anthony Newley, who did not contribute to this score but who played in the much-seen British stage version (which came after the film).

Also, don’t forget It Happened One Christmas (1977), which I wrote about here a while back.

NEW ADDITION: Silent Night, the great John Woo’s return to theater screens after something like a two-decade absence, isn’t being greeted with much if any fanfare. But it’s a taut, harrowing revenge drama in the Death Wish mold, but better than any entry in that franchise. The underrated Joel Kinnaman (so good in the American version of The Killing mini-series) has the lead, and has virtually no dialogue. The movie itself, except for TV broadcasts and background noise, is essentially a silent movie…well, there’s the gunfire and explosions, a lot of them. The film takes the time to show Kinnaman training for his assault on the gangbangers’ hideout (my favorite moment is Kinnaman writing on his calendar, on the date Dec. 24, Kill Them All! The final half hour rivals the two Raid movies and is perhaps even more intense and effectively staged. I loved the hardboiled nastiness married to the occasional melodramatic, even sentimental moments of reflection by the vengeful father, between killings. And Woo uses Christmas imagery well and imaginatively.

* * *

Too Many Bullets reviews are coming in, thanks to the Good Folks at the Internet. Borg has a good one here.

Ed Catto at Pop Culture Squad has nice things to say about the latest Spillane/Collins Mike Hammer novel, Dig Two Graves.

A nice Goodreads review can be read here (and, below, more of the same and a very few naysayers, the world being a place where you find all kinds – I should know…I was at WalMart today!).

M.A.C.

Tags: A Wreath for Marley, Blue Christmas, Dig Two Graves, Giveaways, Interviews, Mickey Spillane, Mike Hammer, Movie Reviews, Nate Heller, Reviews, Too Many Bullets, Ture Noir
Posted in Message from M.A.C. | 9 Comments »

Heller Is 40, a Blue Christmas Trailer & The Princess Bride

Tuesday, December 5th, 2023

This is the 40th anniversary of Nate Heller (True Detective came out in 1983) and the 50th anniversary of my professional mystery writing career (Bait Money and Blood Money came out in 1973).

I haven’t made a fuss over it, because (a) I was too busy celebrating various Spillane birthdays (Mickey’s 100th and Hammer’s 75th), and (b) I didn’t notice. Several other folks did, and nudged me about it.

So hooray for me, I guess, but mostly hooray for you, for keeping me in business, despite many a bump in the road (to perdition or otherwise). Many a mystery writer, any number more highly touted than me, has come along in these fifty years, but where are they now?

Me, I’m right here with you. And as long as I’m on the right side the grass (the green stuff), I still will be.

Maybe even after that.

* * *

Here is a look at our first trailer for Blue Christmas.

You may have to wait till Christmas 2024 to see the whole movie, as we’re just about to go out to market with it now, with next Yuletide sales our goal. We have an edit that needs just a little tweaking and then we’ll be ready to go.

I want to salute my collaborators, including the remarkable cast led by Rob Merritt, Alisabeth Von Presley and Chris Causey, as well as my longtime director of photography Phil Dingeldein, aided this time by the talented 1st camera assistant Liz Toal. And then there’s Chad Bishop, whose list of efforts on this feature is staggering – producer, editor, lighting tech, sound tech, and playing a major supporting on-screen role (not counting preparing posters and other promo materials).

Chad was the editor on Mickey Spillane’s Encore For Murder, which you can pre-order on DVD from Amazon now or pre-order the Blu-Ray of the expanded Mike Hammer’s Mickey Spillane documentary and get Encore as a 90-minute bonus feature!

* * *

If you stop by here regularly, you already know that the release of the new Nate Heller RFK-assassination novel Too Many Bullets ran into a major snafu when the previous Heller (The Big Bundle) was delayed by a UK doc strike. The two books somewhat collided in the marketplace, and the trade reviewers ignored Bullets – no reviews from the usual suspects, Publisher’s Weekly, Kirkus, Booklist, Library Journal. Ouch.

Fortunately, the Internet has been making up for that lapse, starting with a lengthy Heller-centric interview at the great Rap Sheet by longtime M.A.C. supporter, J. Kingston Pierce. Jeff has done two previous in-depth interviews with me over the course of thirty years (!), and this may be the best. He knows just what questions to ask, and the follow-ups, too.

Then Mr. Pierce turned around and wrote Bullets up in his terrific secondary column, Killer Covers. Jeff, your check is in the mail.

And here’s a nice review of Bullets from Reviewing the Evidence (the reviewer has a few quibbles but mostly is flatteringly positive).

And Book Reporter has done a really nice review of Too Many Bullets, right here.

Speaking of The Big Bundle, it will be out in trade paperback from (of course) Hard Case Crime on December 12. You can pre-order that one, too.

* * *

For years now – really, years – I have spent Saturday afternoons with my grandson Sam Collins (Samuel, actually, like Mr. Spade), sharing 3-D movies with him. This goes back to when he was three years old and we watched cartoons – the good stuff, Warner Brothers, Fleischer Popeye and Superman. These weren’t 3-D, but when Sam turned four we switched mostly to movies, and those usually were.

I have seen more kid’s movies than any adult should ever have to endure. Now some are quite good, like pre-Sleeping Beauty Disney. And some are okay, like…well, nothing comes to mind. But a goodly number of kid’s movies are dire. Recently Sam and I watched the latest Paw Patrol movie and a week later – at a movie theater no less – saw the latest Trolls movie.

That was it. That was the straw.

I decided we were going to up the ante and see movies that I felt (that I feel) the eight year-old Sam is ready for. After all, I was a DICK TRACY fan at seven (and this included the Model Jones and Crewy Lou and the Brow stories, twirling bullets through bodies and all). I have been assembling movies to share with him. Ghostbusters and The Great Race (we’ll watch that in two parts) are on deck. We watched Willy Wonka (the original) a month or so ago, and Sam loved it.

So I showed him The Princess Bride on this past Saturday afternoon. And he loved that, as well. When it was over, he said, “It’s a story about a story!”

I do not raise (well, help raise) any dumb grandkids. Obviously. Anything else would be inconceivable.

M.A.C.

Tags: Bait Money, Blood Money, Blue Christmas, Interviews, Nate Heller, Nolan, Reviews, True Detective
Posted in Message from M.A.C. | 7 Comments »

Another Book Giveaway, An E-Book Sale & Major Announcements

Tuesday, September 12th, 2023

A limited book giveaway kicks off this Update.

I have only five copies I can share with you of the new Mike Hammer novel, Dig Two Graves. So move fast.

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

IMPORTANT: If you recently won a copy of Too Many Bullets, please don’t enter. If you’re not sure whether you were a winner in that giveaway, e-mail me at the above address and I’ll let you know. But before you do, keep in mind that I contacted everyone who entered who did not win and informed them of it. And please don’t tell Nero Wolfe I used “contact” as a verb.

You agree to write a review (or reviews) at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and/or Goodreads, or your own blog.

* * *

Speaking of Dig Two Graves, the great Andrew Sumner of Titan interviewed me about it recently, and you can watch it right here.

Dig Two Graves will be available from Amazon and others a week from today (Sept. 19).

Hardcover:

E-Book:

Digital Audiobook:

Audio MP3 CD:

Audio CD:

* * *

Two of my novels are on sale right now (and until 9/30/’23) at Amazon, e-book editions of Executive Order ($2.95 Amazon ) and Girl Most Likely ($2.49 Amazon ). Exec is co-written by Matthew Clemens and is a Reeder and Rogers political thriller. Girl is one of my personal favorites.

* * *

Robert Meyer Burnett, You Tube’s finest commentator on pop culture and physical media, made an interesting announcement on air last night (Sunday Sept. 10). All of a sudden he was talking about me! Hearing my name invoked was startling and, I’ll admit, a little thrilling, because I respect this man’s opinions and admire his uncanny ability to hold my attention for literal hours with his good-humored brilliance. But I wasn’t entirely surprised, because he and I (and our mutual friend Mike Bawden, who is the producer of the Burnett podcasts, and happens to be located near me in the Quad Cities) are embarking on a project together.

We are setting out to do a podcast series based on the Nathan Heller novels. Each multi-episode podcast would take on a single book. I will write these adaptations myself. Rob Burnett is, among other things, a Hollywood director (Free Enterprise, Femme Fatales, The Hills Run Red). There will be a crowd-funding effort to get the first podcast off the ground, and I’ve written a 10-page self-contained script (based on the opening of Stolen Away), to be presented as an example of what we’re up to at the crowd-funding site.

These are early days, but I think we’ll be moving fast. We are talking to several terrific name actors about playing Heller on the crowd-funding pilot, and when we’re a go for the podcast (likely six episodes – we’re considering several titles, including Carnal Hours), other name actors will be cast as well.

Since we haven’t had a Heller movie in all these years, despite continued Hollywood interest, I think a superior podcast could really jump start things on that end.

But the podcast on its own will be great fun, and producer Bawden is a genius at promotion and utilizing You Tube. Not surprisingly, my longtime movie collaborator Phil Dingeldein is involved in the project, and we’ll be making behind-the-scenes and behind-the-story “true crime” videos. That, at least, is the plan.

* * *

Meanwhile, work on Blue Christmas continues apace.

We are trying to secure Gary Sandy, but he has several prior commitments we have to find a window between. If we don’t land him, he has nonetheless been a friend to me and my work, and incidentally a fan specifically of Blue Christmas. His taking on Mike Hammer for our Golden Age-radio style local production made recording it (and turning it into a modest but fun little movie) possible.

We are having auditions this week for the rest of the Blue Christmas cast, and I intend to use as many of the players from Mickey Spillane’s Encore for Murder as possible. I was very pleased with their work.

Both the Blu-ray of the expanded Mike Hammer’s Mickey Spillane documentary and a DVD of Encore for Murder will be out in December (exact date TBA). Here is the trailer for Encore.

We are on a very fast track for Blue Christmas – the shoot is toward the end of October.

* * *

Yesterday afternoon/evening (Sunday Sept. 10), my band Crusin’ made its last appearance of the summer. Rain kept threatening but never happened, and a large appreciative crowd seemed to have a great time.

Barbara and Samuel dance to Crusin’

I had to postpone this from a scheduled August appearance, due to my health stuff; but I was pretty much fine for this performance, although I admit to tiring easily. It’s becoming obvious that I’m near the end of my rock ‘n’ rolling days, and I think next summer (if the rest of the band is up for it) we’ll do a Farewell Tour of three gigs here in Muscatine.

We’ve been preparing new originals for one last CD, which would include the Crusin’ originals from Real Time: Siege at Lucas Street Market.

This version of the band has been very gratifying. This is the line-up, basically, that appeared at the 2018 Iowa Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame induction concert. Our late bass player, Brian Van Winkle, appeared with us there. He passed away not long after, most unexpectedly, and his sunny presence and self-deprecating humor is sorely missed – in many respects he was the heart of the band. His replacement – our guitarist Bill Anson’s son Scott – is one of the best bass players I’ve been privileged to appear with. He has his own sly sense of humor, too. By the way, Bill Anson came aboard just to fill in for a while – that was seven years ago.

I hate to hang it up, but I figure I’ve accomplished everything I ever will in this artistic/performing arena, and will concentrate whatever time is left to writing novels and working on movies. Blue Christmas is, in part, an experiment to see how I do directing a movie at this rarefied age.

I have designed it to be low-budget – a necessity, particularly since we didn’t get the expected Greenlight grant – and wrote it to be shot on a single set in a studio-style setting. I will have some wonderful actors lined up (with or without Gary, though I sure hope he’s able to do it) and great collaborators in Phil Dingeldein, Liz Toal and Chad Bishop.

Since Encore came out well and the filming of it was something of a last minute, impulsive decision, I had originally conceived Blue Christmas to be presented as a play that we’d shoot. There are advantages to that approach, but also disadvantages – shooting it film-style, without an audience, will broaden our market, and be more artistically satisfying to boot.

Wish us break a leg and stay tuned for reports from the front lines.

* * *

Here, from the Pulp, Crime & Mystery Books site, is a nice review of Dig Two Graves.

Finally, here’s a short but great write-up on Too Many Bullets from Craig Zablo.

Tags: Blue Christmas, Crusin', Deals, Dig Two Graves, Executive Order, Girl Most Likely, Giveaways, Interviews, Krista and Keith Larson, Mickey Spillane, Mike Hammer, Nate Heller, Nathan Heller, Podcasts, Reeder and Rogers, Reviews
Posted in Message from M.A.C. | 2 Comments »

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.

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.

Tags: Batman, Blue Christmas, Crowdfunding, Eliot Ness An Untouchable Life, Encore for Murder, Interviews, Mickey Spillane, Mike Hammer, Mommy, Mommy's Day, Real Time: Siege at Lucas Street Market, Road to Perdition
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Posts Tagged ‘Interviews’

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