Posts Tagged ‘Nolan’

« Older Entries

A Quarry Discussion Plus a Book Giveaway!

Tuesday, April 1st, 2025

It’s book giveaway time, with the new trade paperback edition from Hard Case Crime of The Last Quarry on offer to the first ten of you who ask for it.

As usual, if you’re interested, you write me directly at macphilms@hotmail.com. If you receive a copy, you agree to write a review at Amazon and/or Barnes & Noble, and/or your own (or someone else’s) blog. If you hate the book, you’re relieved of this obligation. Mixed reviews are fine, and only mildly resented. USA only, due to postal restrictions. Be sure to include your snail-mail address.

This trade paperback includes two of the four Quarry short stories as in-the-back-of-the-book bonuses: “Guest Services” and “Quarry’s Luck.” The other two short stories, “A Matter of Principal” and the fourth (the name of which escapes me – it appeared in The Strand) [“Quarry’s Gamble”, The Strand #52 — Nate] were swallowed up in the novels for use in The Last Quarry and Quarry’s Climax respectively.

The cover of this new book is particularly handsome. It’s by the great Robert McGinnis, one of the premiere paperback cover artists of the golden age of noir paperback originals and the guy who did some of the most iconic James Bond movie posters. I’ve told the story frequently, but I’ll go into it briefly here for you newer comers.

When Charles Ardai started up Hard Case Crime, I was one of the authors he approached (most of the others were dead, so it was their estates Charles approached). He did a reprint (in one volume) of the first two Nolan novels (Bait Money and Blood Money) called Two for the Money. He came back for more reprints and I said I’d rather do an original, even if it was just for reprint-level money. I believe he at first wanted a new Nolan, but I preferred doing a Quarry, the character having always been one of my favorites, and the series one I thought should have lasted and received more recognition.

The final negotiating point between Charles and me was my saying essentially, “I’ll do the novel if you get me a McGinnis cover.” And I’ll be damned if he didn’t.

At this point I’d written one more Quarry novel (Primary Target, aka Quarry’s Vote) in the wake of the initial Nate Heller success, and a nifty little Quarry short film that was burning up the festival circuit. I used that film in an anthology of my other short films as well as the Spillane documentary; this was called Shades of Noir, and the original paperback of The Last Quarry was sort of the movie tie-in to that boxed set of DVD’s.

Quarry was inspired by three things – well, two people and one thing. The thing was the Parker series by Richard Stark (Donald E. Westlake) that I loved then and love now; and Nolan was my direct take on Parker, humanizing him with a young sidekick. But I always thought there was a cop-out nature to that series, and my own – Parker was a thief and when he was forced to kill somebody, that somebody was another bad guy. Same was pretty much true of Nolan. It occurred to me nobody had really done this kind of novel – a “crook book” where the heroic protagonist (okay, anti-heroic) was a hitman. I wanted the reader to have to deal with the point of view character being, unapologetically, a hired killer.

I did not have a series in mind but did leave the door open for a follow-up novel or two. (Nolan had not been conceived as a series either, and even died in the original draft of Bait Money.)

The two people impacting the creation of Quarry were Audie Murphy, the most decorated soldier in the European Theater in World War Two, and later a movie star, mostly in westerns. I’d read enough about him to know he had been traumatized – had PTSD, though nobody was calling it that yet – which I found interesting. A normal kid who became a cold-blooded killer (of the enemy, but that counts).

The other inspiration was Jon McRae, a high school pal of mine who went on to several very bloody tours in Vietnam. Unlike some friends of mine, he came home recognizably his eccentric self, but he was nonetheless clearly traumatized by what were then still ongoing experiences. To give you the idea, he was the machine gunner in the tail of a rescue ‘copter.

Stir my Mickey Spillane obsession into the mix, and my admiration for “Richard Stark,” and you have Quarry. I was approached by Berkley Books to do three more novels about him and snapped up the chance. The subsequent three novels were increasingly violent and black humor-tinged. I was, frankly, worried about the direction they were taking – not the four books I’d done, but what the fifth book might be, and any future ones. I feared I’d gone down a road of having to top myself with some terrible thing Quarry did toward the end of a given novel – the basic idea having been to lure the reader into accepting Quarry as a narrator and even identifying with him, then getting slammed with something awful he does, and making readers question their own ease in going along with Quarry, to accept him as a “hero.”

That became no problem when Berkley Books asked for no further Quarry entries.

Over the years, however, I had more mail about Quarry than any other character of mine (pre-Heller). That, and my feeling that Quarry was an original creation, served poorly by the original publisher, made the series an itch that called out for scratching.

So when Charles gave me the opportunity to write The Last Quarry, an opportunity to answer whatever-happened-to-Quarry and wrap up the series, I grabbed it. When the book became a surprise success, both in terms of sales and reviews, this old war horse didn’t have to hear the bell ring twice. I was off and running with The First Quarry and my series of novels about the missing years in the character’s life between already written books.

Series have a way of knowing when they are either over or evolving, and Quarry is no exception. Almost from the start, the concept of Quarry evolved into him using the list of his dead Broker (murdered by Quarry) to approach targeted victims and taking out assassins…a kind of prolonged metaphorical self-suicide…which eclipsed the hitman aspect. Some of the flashback books depict Quarry in his hitman years, but the initial novel (The Broker aka Quarry) is essentially his last job before his transition to the “list” approach.

Killing Quarry emerged from somewhere in my subconscious to conclude the “list” cycle. The next book, Quarry’s Blood, in part returned to hitman days and then mostly was about Quarry at a much older age – essentially mine, maybe a couple of years younger – and I found that interesting enough to pick that up again in the more recent Quarry’s Return.

Now I will soon be embarking on Quarry’s Reunion, which will almost certainly be another of the Quarry-in-old-age novels. I had promised a while back that any further novels would revert to the “list” days, most likely; but if you’re expecting consistency from me, it’s only to be found in my ability to write readable books.

I realize much of what I’ve just shared is already known to some of you – maybe many of you – but it seemed like returning to the evolution of this series was appropriate with a Last Quarry book giveaway.

Here’s another story you may have already heard from me. I was so thrilled with McGinnis cover to The Last Quarry that I coaxed the artist’s phone number out of Hard Case Crime editor Charles Ardai. I called Bob McGinnis and told him what a career high it was for me to have a cover by him on a novel of mine. I was undoubtedly effusive and he took my fannish enthusiasm with grace. Then he asked me if I’d like the original art of the cover. That threw me, because I was next expecting him to offer it to me at a price I could not afford.

But I could afford it, all right. All he wanted was my address to send me the art.

It hangs near my desk now, an incredible reminder of how lucky I’ve been to have this career of mine, getting everything I ever wanted out of it (except getting rich). I have four other original covers from Quarry novels on my walls, by various artists, and all of those I did find a way to buy. One I particularly like, The Wrong Quarry painted by Tyler Jacobson, hangs near my desk, as well. Not all the covers (and I like them all) for Quarry novels have depicted him. But the ones that do that also match the image in my mind’s eye are the McGinnis and Jacobson ones.

When I’m asked who my favorite is among the heroes (and heroines) of my various book and comics series, it always comes down to Quarry and Nate Heller. Don’t ask me to choose between them, because they are both me.

* * *

Here is a particularly good YouTube video about the film version of Road to Perdition, provided to me by Terry Beatty himself.

* * *

Here is info and pre-ordering for Law and Order, the 1932 Wyatt Earp movie starring Walter Huston and Harry Carey derived from the hard-to-find 1930 W.R. Burnett novel. This has the commentary by me and the great Heath Holland of Cereal at Midnight, a recording I mentioned last week that I was about to do.

It’s a terrific movie. Don’t miss it.

* * *

I also teased last week about working on a screenplay. I can’t (or anyway won’t) give any details, but I’ve just completed my first Nathan Heller feature film screenplay, which will tie in with True Noir, the ten-episode audio adaptation of True Detective written by me and directed by Robert Meyer Burnett. The producers include Mike Bawden, Phil Dingeldein and Christine Sheaks.

This screenplay is not an adaptation of True Detective, however – it’s from another published work in the series. It’s a speculative effort but one that I think has a good shot at paying off. The only previous Heller screenplay I wrote was the pilot episode for FX of a Stolen Away mini-series that never happened (I did, however, get paid).

Speaking of True Noir, the last two episodes will be dropping soon. Then you can order it all at once. The almost five-hour production, starring Michael Rosenbaum as Nate Heller, will eventually be available on Blu-ray. A Blu-ray of an audio? Yes! This production with its incredible cast (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt32507868/) will be on a disc that will also have all ten episodes of my History Behind the Mystery series (one per episode of the audio production) and a lengthy interview with me by Rob Burnett. A book of my ten scripts will also be available around the same time.

If this audio production is successful, our next productions of True Noir movies-for-the-mind will be the other two books in the Frank Nitti Trilogy, True Crime and The Million-Dollar Wound.

You can help make that happen, if you haven’t already, by going to truenoir.co and buying the entire ten-episode series for a modest $29.95.

Eventually there will be a soundtrack CD available of the excellent Alexander Bornstein score.

* * *

You may have already seen this nice little article about Ms. Tree, but it’s worth another look, anyway, particularly in the wake of the recent publication of the sixth and final volume of the archival series from Titan, Ms. Tree: Fallen Tree.

* * *

The Quarry movie, The Last Lullaby, is available on YouTube now. Tom Sizemore is “Price” (aka Quarry). I wrote the first drafts of the script and did a final punch-up, but another writer wrote a draft, too…so it’s not pure Quarry, but it’s pretty good.

M.A.C.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Message from M.A.C. | 5 Comments »

Reviews Discussed…and Shared!

Tuesday, December 10th, 2024

Barb and I did a book signing at Greenpoint Mercantile, as part of the annual holiday stroll here in Muscatine. Thanks to this new bookstore and to those who dropped by to chat…and to buy and chat especially.

Just around the corner, our Blue Christmas/Death by Fruitcake star Alisabeth Von Presley was doing her thing, with my film-making crony Chad Bishop at the controls.

Alisabeth is a force of nature!

Alisabeth Von Presley performing at the 2024 Muscatine holiday stroll.
Alisabeth Von Presley performing at the 2024 Muscatine holiday stroll.
* * *

Let’s discuss reviews.

The baseline of this one-sided discussion is a truism: no two people experience a work of art the same way. A book is the author plus the reader. A film is the movie plus the audience member. A painting is the canvas plus the viewer. This, like all truisms, should be obvious. And yet people argue about whether a novel, say, is a masterpiece or stinks on ice, and every stop in between.

Several things have occurred in recent years that have frustrated any worthwhile discussion of (let’s say for the sake of argument) a novel or a feature film. Reviews used to be the domain of professional reviewers – individuals who worked for a newspaper or perhaps a radio or television station, and presumably had credentials for such work. In recent years – starting with the Internet and careening into the Social Media era – anyone, everyone, is a critic. This is democracy. But democracy is sloppy. And the end result seems to be that everything is judged, minus nuance or context, as either good or bad.

I am thinner-skinned than a professional writer should be. I will brood over a bad review – not long, but enough to make it hard to get to sleep for one night. However. My thin skin has less to do with criticism and more to do with marketing. In other words, I view a good review as something that generates sales, and a bad review as something that lessens sales. The audience, or I should say potential audience, doesn’t necessarily know the difference between an informed review and an unprofessional one.

Which is not to say informed reviews are necessarily “right” – but they are opinions that might reasonably be taken more seriously. And that is largely lost.

Anthony Boucher, probably the greatest reviewer of mystery fiction who ever lived (and a fiction writer of some skill himself), hated Mickey Spillane’s work on the initial publication and success of the Mike Hammer novels. But as the years passed, he re-evaluated Mickey, and came to (somewhat grudgingly) revise that opinion and become an advocate of Spillane as the last of the great pulp fiction writers. That indicates thought, and growth, and yes nuance, on Boucher’s part.

I distrust reviews as they pertain to my potential growth as a writer. That may seem counter-intuitive, as if I want to improve, listening to criticism makes sense. But writers of fiction must have confidence and conviction in what they are creating. Allowing a bad review to undermine you – or a good review to give you a swelled head – is not productive.

There’s an argument, and not a bad one, that if you allow yourself to believe the good reviews, you have to believe the bad ones, too. That however, it seems to me, would lead to mental whiplash or maybe the onset of a bipolar condition. A more nuanced approach would be for a writer (or filmmaker) to consider each opinion on its own merits, and while this makes sense, it can get in the way of the creative process – it leads not to creativity but to second-guessing yourself.

When my first two novels came out in January 1973, I was fairly well-known in small-town Muscatine (pop. 25,000) largely due to my father, Max Allan Collins Sr., who was the director of a national-championship men’s chorus, a beloved former high school music teacher and a choir director at the Methodist Church. If I am half the writer he was a musician, I must be pretty damn, excuse me darn, good.

So eyes were on me when I published Bait Money and Blood Money. And I expected praise. And I got some. But mostly I got dirty looks and dirtier comments because my novels were considered by local residents as, yup, dirty. Should I have taken this criticism to heart and cleaned up my act? Fuck no. Did it hurt my feelings? A bit. Surprised me, more than anything.

My attitude toward reviews, good and bad (few are in between in these black-and-white times) is, “Is there a nice quote that can be pulled from here?” Not that I am either a genius or a fraud. Bad reviews are worthless because you can’t pull a quote for promotional purposes. There was a time, when a mixed review was more common, that you could pull a quote and leave the rest behind, including negatives.

Do I ever allow myself to be seduced by a really terrific review? You bet. Briefly. Do I ever allow myself to be hurt by a really cruel review? Sure. Briefly. But mostly it’s, “That’s going to be helpful!” Or, “That’s not going to be bring some new readers in!”

None of this means that a thoughtful, well-written negative review can’t be helpful. There’s less of that these days because of the this-book-is-fantastic, this book-sucks-donkey-dick dynamic. Also, politics has started to enter in. I first noticed that when Matt Clemens and I got negative Amazon reviews from far-right readers about Supreme Justice – when the book wasn’t available yet, not even advance reviewer copies.

As absurd as that is, it does come back to the point that a book, a movie, a painting, is the artist plus the recipient. That’s especially true with a novel – with a movie, everybody sees the same narrative; they take it in differently, but it’s a shared visual experience. A novel is a movie that plays in the head of a single reader. And sometimes you play at an arthouse, sometimes the local multi-plex, and other times at the Three Mile Island Community Playhouse.

Movies are hostage to their budgets. The most money I’ve ever had to make a movie is half a million dollars. Most recently, I’ve had eight grand to make Blue Christmas and twenty-four grand to make Death By Fruitcake. Before that, Encore for Murder had zero budget – it was strictly a local production I recorded and edited (with Phil Dingeldein and Chad Bishop respectively).

And yet.

I recall back in the early ‘80s when I’d hear from Paul Reubens with a late-night phone call where we’d discuss the Pee-Wee Herman movie he was trying to get off the ground. When he got Warners Bros on board, he was concerned about budget. I told him, “The more money they give you, the more trouble you’ll have.” He said he agreed with me, but not to tell Warner’s. As it was Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure had a modest budget and a terrific unknown director and did just fine.

If a reviewer – a viewer – doesn’t have a sense of scale, of making an effort to meet a movie on its own level, the filmmaker is screwed. Last week, I shared with you a wonderful review of Blue Christmas from a professional critic whose work I admire. Getting that review, I admit, felt great.

But a day later we got a review that dismissed us as low-budget bilge. The reviewer was nobody I’d ever heard of, but I’m sure he has an audience. And I get that when you are used to seeing movies made for hundreds of millions of dollars, or for just a paltry five or ten million, an eight-thousand-buck “blockbuster” like Blue Christmas may be difficult to meet on its own terms.

But a reviewer should try. We all should meet art on its own terms (and I use the word “art” to cover a lot of ground, and perhaps “craft” would be more appropriate). Blue Christmas, a little micro-budget movie that I am pleased with, was worth making. I have been trying to get it done, in various ways, on assorted levels, since 1994. Finally, with my own clock winding down, I came up with a way to do it on a very limited budget, and now – for better or worse (and I obviously feel it’s better) – Blue Christmas exists. (It’s still available as I write this for under two bucks at Amazon Prime; and the Blu-ray release from VCI is pretty nifty, by my biased standards.)

Allow me, if you will, a sidebar about the cast of my little movie. It’s a large cast for a micro-budget production – twenty-four – and consists of professionals, semi-pros (day-job folks who appear in, for example, regional dinner theater), and community theater amateurs. I am grateful to them, every one of them. Our top-billed duo, Rob Merritt and Alisabeth Von Presley, are both well-known in this corner of the world and are film-festival award-winners for their performances in Blue Christmas.

I am pleased and proud to say that we’ve had mostly good reviews for Blue Christmas, a few of which have been raves or nearly so, outnumbering a handful of bad ones.

Now after all that, I’m going to share a really good review with you, our first, for True Noir (based on the first three episodes), the budget for which was around $250,000 and whose cast is overwhelmingly stellar. The review is written by a professional fiction writer and literary critic, by the way.

Here it is:

Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe, Richard Diamond, Nero Wolfe, Pat Novak, Johnny Dollar – at the height of their popularity in the 1940s and 1950s, when radio was the primary means of home entertainment in the United States, detective story serials drew tens of millions of listeners. These serialized private eye dramas, which hypnotized audiences with crackling writing, stirring voice acting, gripping plots, colorful characters, and atmospheric sound effects, were gradually relegated to silence as the art form of immersive audio storytelling went extinct–until now. Enter True Noir: The Assassination of Anton Cermak, a spellbinding sonic re-imagining of the first installment in Max Allan Collins’ most celebrated series, the Nathan Heller casebooks.

Crisply directed and impeccably edited by Robert Meyer Burnett, based on Collins’ excellent screenplay treatment of his own novel, the audio drama drops listeners into an aurally vibrant and thoroughly realized 1932 Chicago, where we follow the shady power plays of characters both fictional and historical. Michael Rosenbaum brings Nate Heller to life with a captivating blend of playful gusto and sensitivity, pulling double duty with a voiceover simultaneously dynamic and velvety. The stacked supporting cast, which includes Bill Smitrovich, David Strathairn, and Katee Sackhoff, unfailingly deliver performances that pop with nuance and flavor. Michael J. McDonald’s phenomenal sound design, which expertly suggests spatial relationships through the subtle manipulation of audio channel elements, such as floating wisps of background dialog, further orchestrates the drama’s heightened sense of reality. Ingenious transitional effects, like traveling through a telephone wire or experiencing a sensory flashback, invent a whole new vocabulary of acoustic alchemy. Alexander Bornstein’s tastefully interspersed original score, with its sultry jazz influences, smoky sax tones and melancholy piano chords, evokes the best retro-noir scores of the twentieth century, like Jerry Goldsmith’s Chinatown, John Williams’ The Long Goodbye, and John Barry’s Body Heat. We can only hope for its eventual release as a standalone presentation.

World-building is a term commonly applied to literary and visual media – but True Noir proves that with the right team at the conductor’s podium, it can be equally batoned to mesmerizing effect just through sound. In a smoky netherworld somewhere between bitter memory and bygone dream, the ambiance-drenched True Noir is the perfect marriage of our past’s most beloved tried-and-true storytelling tradition with the latest cutting-edge technologies of creative soundscaping. The play’s still the thing, and this one hits all the right notes.
—-Author & critic Alvaro Zinos-Amaro

I will add only one slight correction – I’ve never written a screenplay version of True Detective. My adaptation was based on the novel itself, and is to a degree screenplay-style.

Alvaro Zinos-Amaro is the author of the well-regarded 2024 novel, Equimedian.

True Noir promotional banner
* * *

Here is a great review of the new Ms. Tree collection by Terry Beatty and me, Ms. Tree: Fallen Tree. (Scroll down a bit.)

Never heard my punk classic (let’s make that “classic”), “Psychedelic Siren”? Now’s your chance.

There’s some interesting stuff about Road to Perdition as a graphic novel that inspired a big-time Hollywood movie right here.

Never mind what I said above about reviews – this one from Paperback Warrior about the current Quarry’s Return is a honey! Exactly what I wanted for Christmas.

M.A.C.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Message from M.A.C. | 2 Comments »

Nate Heller Wraps, Perdition Is Praised, and a Giant Passes

Tuesday, October 8th, 2024

The last recording session with Michael Rosenbaum playing Nate Heller in True Noir: The Assassination of Anton Cermak is scheduled for the day this update appears. Director Robert Meyer Burnett is doing a terrific job editing this ten-part audio drama (written by me), handling to perfection the huge cast of name performers in bringing the first Nate Heller novel, True Detective, to life.

First episodes will be available SOON.

* * *

The Putnam Museum in Davenport, Iowa, did a special event on this past Sunday (Oct. 6) centering on Road to Perdition, both the book(s) and film. The 2002 film, which Barb and I hadn’t seen for some time, was shown on the museum’s massive I-Max screen. Following this impressive presentation, which played to a nearly full house approaching 300, I participated in a Q and A with Roger Ruthhart, co-author of Citadel of Sin, a non-fiction account of the John Looney gangster story.

I fielded a lot of questions about the differences between the actual history and my graphic novel (and its prose follow-ups), including why John Looney as portrayed by Paul Newman became John Rooney, and why I moved Looney’s story up a decade or so in time. The deft questioning was handled by Truth First Film Alliance’s Travis Shepherd. The Alliance is the work of well-known documentary filmmakers Kelly and Tammy Rundle, perhaps best known for Villisca: Living with a Mystery, focusing on my mysterious Iowa crime in the Lizzie Borden mode. The Rundles put this event together and were gracious hosts.

And the audience had any number of good questions for both Mr. Ruthhart and myself (including a couple of Quarry and Ms. Tree ones!).

The movie looked great on the big screen, but could have looked better if Paramount would get around to releasing Road to Perdition on 4K.


Tammy and Kelly Rundle, Emmy-winning documentarians
* * *

Robert J. Randisi

Many of you have already heard the sad news of Bob Randisi’s passing.

Robert J. Randisi was undoubtedly the last of the Old School pulp writers. He wrote over 500 entries in his adult western series, the enormously successful Gunsmith. He was an instrumental figure in celebrating genre fiction, receiving a Lifetime Achievement award from The Private Eye Writers of America; and another Lifetime Achievement award from Western Fictioneers. He was a founder of both groups. He also began the influential, much-missed Mystery Scene Magazine with another late friend of mine, the great Ed Gorman.

Do not assume Bob received those lifetime achievement awards because he founded the groups that honored him with them. He had made it clear he had no interest in awards of that nature. I am proud to have been instrumental in getting him the Private Eye Writers of America award and made sure it focused on his work as a writer of private eye fiction, which was his real true love in genre fiction. His series P.I. novels included the characters Miles Jacoby, Joe Keough, Nick Delvecchio, Gil and Claire Hunt, Truxton Lewis, and Eddie G. with The Rat Pack. Whew! He was nominated several times for Shamus awards, the honor given to the best private eye novels of the year.

Bob was my oldest and dearest friend in the writing game. He and Ed Gorman were together the friends I most valued in this business, and I miss them both (they were great friends to each other as well – Ed referred to Bob as his “little brother). To say Bob and I go way back is an understatement.

Bob was the first fan – and at that time he was a fan, just breaking into the business with some short stories – not from my home town area who had read my first two novels, Bait Money and Blood Money, and professed to love them and the Nolan series. He sought me out at the first Bouchercon I ever attended (decades ago in Chicago) and we sat deep into the night with him making me tell him the plots of the three more Nolan novels I’d written that had been shelved by Popular Library when they swallowed up Curtis Books, who had published Bait and Blood. Eventually those books were published by Pinnacle, but Bob heard the stories from the horse’s mouth that night in Chicago.

When I wrote True Detective in 1981 (or was it ‘82?) my then-agent Knox Burger was so unenthusiastic about it I fired him on the phone. Knox was influential and important in the genre – he’d been the editor at Gold Medal Books and the fiction editor of Collier’s before that – and he’d seemed stunned when an upstart kid in Iowa fired him. I was stunned, too, and called Bob desperate for advice.

Bob sent me to his agent, Dominick Abel, having paved the way with this already influential agent, and Dominick has been my friend and representative ever since. Dominick called me with the sad news about Bob, who had been his client till the end. Bob probably wrote and sold more books than the rest of Dominick’s clients put together, myself included.

Bob never called just to chat. He had a business-like side, was doggedly unsentimental, but also blessed with a great sense of humor. And when we got together, usually at a Bouchercon, we almost always sat side by side at the dinners and various events. He was the kind of friend you don’t see for a while, but then when you do, no time has passed at all.

The best compliment I can pay him is that he was a pro. A consummate pro. But the compliment I really want to pay him is to simply say thanks for being a friend to me and to every private eye writer of the mid-Twentieth Century until, well, right now.

Let be clarify that, because it might seem like hyperbole. If anything it’s an understatement. I can only speak from personal experience and forgive me for what may seem over the top or self-aggrandizing. My novel True Detective was a breakthrough for me, but it was ignored by the Mystery Writers of America despite its stellar reviews and general success. Because Bob created the Private Eye Writers of America, I got a second chance at winning (as the Old Man in A Christmas Story put it) a major award. I beat a bunch of big names – James Crumley, Loren D. Estleman, Stanley Ellin, and Robert B. Parker, no less. The Shamus award – Bob’s creation – put me on the map.

Mickey Spillane received several awards from the PWA – the first ever in a long career that had given the entire Private Eye genre a second lease on life. Numerous writers, now celebrated, got their start because of Bob’s organization’s boost. For decades, the Shamus was second only to the Edgar in importance in the genre. Perhaps it still is.

But it’s faded a tad, largely because Bob’s declining health (and Covid played a role) chipped away at the annual (and great fun) awards dinners that were held in conjunction with Bouchercon every year. He and his incredible significant other Marthayn Pelegrimas always put on a great dinner and a fun show. Unless someone picks up the banner, the Shamus would appear to have become just another of the various awards given in a group at Bouchercon. Nothing wrong with that, I guess.

But those days were wonderful. And I hope the significance of the Shamus awards remains strong, perhaps even makes a comeback that would include the restoration of an annual awards dinner. That would be the best tribute possible to the writing legend that was Robert J. Randisi.

M.A.C.

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in Message from M.A.C. | 6 Comments »

Death by Fruitcake Begins Production, Thanks to Barb

Tuesday, August 20th, 2024
Death by Fruitcake, auditorium set with cast and crew at work.
Day one on the set of Death by Fruitcake.

When this update appears, we’ll be in our second day of shooting Death by Fruitcake. The week since I last posted found us heavily in post-production mode. It’s been intense but gratifying to see things coming together.

The real pleasure has been working so closely with my wife on this project. She had been intimately involved in my productions – really our productions – in the ten-plus years we did quite a little bit of indie filmmaking. Mommy and Mommy’s Day saw her filling a production manager role, and those productions would not have been possible without her. The same is true of Real Time: Siege at Lucas Street Market (2001) and Eliot Ness: An Untouchable Life (2005), as well as my two documentaries, Mike Hammer’s Mickey Spillane (1998) and Caveman: V.T. Hamlin and Alley Oop (2005).

She has an unfailing eye for detail and a gift for dealing with all sorts of people. And her storytelling abilities are obvious to anyone who’s read her short stories or the novels we’ve done together, in particular the Antiques (Trash ‘n’ Treasures) mystery series.

But there were travails involved with all of those productions, proud as I am (and I think she is too) of all of them. Mommy was a baptism by fire. Difficulties with the director led to letting him go after the first two weeks of a four-week shoot (I was producer and writer), meaning I had to fill the director’s role without any experience or prep, just years of being a movie buff. When I lost the Dick Tracy scripting gig after fifteen years, indie filmmaking was another way to make some money…I thought.

And we had some success, particularly with the two Mommy movies, but my co-producer – my best friend since high school – stole a good deal of the money (he was convicted of a felony for doing so). Nonetheless, we did get a sale to Lifetime where Mommy aired in primetime, and both it and the sequel were chainwide Blockbuster buys (a big deal in those days). I was deeply involved in filmmaking during those years, which included the Road to Perdition (2002) sale and the Quarry movie, The Last Lullaby (2008), which I co-scripted. Several short films happened during that period as well.

But the betrayal by my former best friend and the many difficulties of indie filmmaking – getting the money to make even modest productions was (and is) a nightmare – had me walking away from that pursuit, though there have been some screenplays produced (by others) and, thankfully, occasional options on my books for TV and movies (and on screenplays). CBS Films has Eliot Ness and the Mad Butcher (2020, by Brad Schwartz and me) under option right now, and I think Nolan is still under option, too. Might have run out while I wasn’t looking, though.

Anyway, indie filmmaking was a past pursuit. The closest I came to it was writing two Mike Hammer audio books for Stacy Keach and a full cast, one of which won an Audie for Best Original Work (The Little Death) and the other (Encore for Murder) was similarly nominated, and produced as a play starring Gary Sandy in venues at Owensboro, Kentucky, and Clearwater, Florida. Then I was asked to allow Encore to be produced, radio-play-style, here in Muscatine, Iowa, as a fund raiser for the local Art Center.

I consented, as some of you know, and brought in my Mommy’s Day co-star Gary Sandy (WKRP in Cincinnati, of course) to play Mike Hammer. When I attended the first rehearsal (Gary would be coming in a few days in advance of the actual production), I was pleasantly surprised to find the local cast very good.

Barb had endorsed my involvement (I was co-director as well as writer) but wanted no participation. She was retired from movies and anything vaguely related. The theft of the Mommy money had threatened our house and she remained understandably bitter. But I encouraged her to come to the next rehearsal to see if I was kidding myself thinking these local thespians were pretty darn good. She came and agreed.

Then when Gary Sandy came in and did a terrific job as Hammer in rehearsal, I contacted my longtime collaborator, Phil Dingeldein (director of photographer on all of my features), and convinced him to come to Muscatine to shoot the one live performance. He did this (and shot a dress rehearsal, too, to give us extra coverage). The idea was to use it as a bonus feature on our revised updated version of Mike Hammer’s Mickey Spillane, which we did (it’s available from VCI at Amazon right now).

Barb stayed pretty much aloof from that production, for which Chad Bishop (who was a cast member) worked with Phil on the Encore shoot and edited it into a movie or a program or some damn thing. It came out pretty well, I think, and is available on DVD separately from VCI as well as on the Spillane documentary.

Anyway, that experience got the indie filmmaking juices flowing again and Chad and I (with Phil onboard as d.p.) decided to do Blue Christmas, which I’ve been discussing here quite a bit. Barb gave her blessing but refused to be a part of it. She’d had enough of the hard work and misery that accompanies any kind of filmmaking.

But a few days out from the production (this was last October), I had some very stressful situations relating to the production that sent me back into a-fib. And Barb got on board. She again made the production run smoothly. Ask anyone who the MVP on Blue Christmas was and they’ll say Barb.

Now we’re doing one more – Death by Fruitcake. I tricked her into being part of it by basing this one on our Antiques series, specifically a novella, Antiques Fruitcake in Antiques Ho Ho Homicides. She is caught up in it, with me, and doing a stellar job. It’s unimaginable without her.

Ask anybody in the cast or on the crew.

Again, she has made it clear this is her last production. I believe her. I always do. So this is probably my last indie movie, too – unless somebody gives me enough money to hire a production manager as good as Barbara Collins. Which is itself a long shot for more than one reason….


Barbara Allan

Blue Christmas, by the way, is already available for pre-order at Amazon (it’s a November 11, 2024 release).

And you can read about Blue Christmas at Blu-ray.com, right here.

* * *

Just in case I haven’t given you enough reasons to spend money on me this time around, keep in mind the clock is ticking on the Kickstarter effort to back True Noir: the Assassination of Anton Cermak, based on my novel True Detective in a fully immersive audio drama in ten parts and written by (again) me. It has an amazing cast, and a great director (Robert Meyer Burnett).

Scroll down a ways in this Digital Bits column and get the skinny on True Noir.

True Noir logo

M.A.C.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Message from M.A.C. | 1 Comment »

« Older Entries