Posts Tagged ‘Quarry’

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Many Happy Returns (Except For…)

Tuesday, November 12th, 2024

I stepped out from behind my usual “no politics here” stance last week by expressing my support for Kamala Harris. Wow, that really made the difference! Look, I am a centrist generally pissed off at both the far left and far right, having been cancelled by both in various eras. But I am grateful that nobody who follows this blog/update stepped up to slap me down last week. They respected or at least ignored my opinion. I had exactly one “pushback” on Facebook from somebody astounded that I would see Donald Trump as a threat to the rule of law. So at least I got one good laugh out of this.

The real winner of this campaign was social media for getting away with completely (a) blotting out any real news coverage in favor of this opinion and that one, and (b) making every one of us feel a sense of importance none of us deserve. Just this week I have had a movie I directed, and a book I am writing, lambasted by people who have not seen the movie and not read the book (not a surprise, since I haven’t finished it). I realize I am being a bit of hypocrite being opinionated in this – but how many of us now think our opinions are so important we need to express them in public, even when we are discussing a movie we haven’t seen, or a book that isn’t even out yet?

This is Alice in Wonderland stuff, boys and girls. And it’s going to get worse.

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Trade Paperback: Bookshop Purchase Link Amazon Purchase Link Books-A-Million Purchase Link Barnes & Noble Purchase Link
E-Book: Google Play Kobo
Digital Audiobook: Audible Purchase Link Google Play Kobo
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Audiobook MP3 CD: Amazon Purchase Link Books-A-Million Purchase Link

Quarry’s Return is out now and you should be able to find it at your favorite brick-and-mortar bookstores, but it’s also available at the usual online retailers.

I’ve said a few places that this may be the final Quarry novel, but let’s face it – I said that before (about The Last Quarry and Quarry’s Blood, to name two). So who knows?

This novel is very much a sequel or follow-up to the Edgar-nominated Quarry’s Blood, though like all of these books, each can be read out of order without causing you too much mental whiplash. What I’ve discovered about Quarry, via this one and the preceding book in the saga, is that I like writing about him when he shares with me my current age (he’s actually a tad younger). I think that’s because he was conceived, in the first novel (Quarry a.k.a The Broker), as being my age, very much my contemporary as a child of the 1950s caught up in the Vietnam era.

Nate Heller has also been older in more recent novels (Too Many Bullets is something of a concluding one, though I do have one more to write, which is next up on my novelistic plate). Those books got out of chronological order fairly early on – only the first three (True Detective, True Crime, The Million-Dollar Wound) are strictly chronological, although you could kind of lump the fourth in (Neon Mirage) as well. After that I’m all over the map with Stolen Away and Damned in Paradise and so on.

Speaking of Heller, True Noir – the ten-part fully immersible, M.A.C.-scripted audio adaptation of True Detective is deep into post-production. Plans to drop the episodes gradually, while the later ones were still in post, have been scrapped by producer Mike Bawden in favor of waiting till the entire ten parts are complete. There is merit in this decision. Release should be some time in December or very early January. Exactly how and where they will be released I’ll announce here, as soon I know it.

What I do know is the cast and director Robert Meyer Burnett have done me proud. We have a terrific Nate Heller in Michael Rosenbaum of Smallville fame, and the supporting cast is second to none.

Getting back to Quarry, I should note that we have another terrific audio book of this one read by the great Stefan Rudnicki.

As far as more Quarry is concerned, it frankly depends on my health and the interest of a publisher. As long as Hard Case Crime is around, and I’m around, I’ll probably find a way to write the occasional Quarry. Whether any future one will be about the geriatric Quarry or a flashback to his earlier days remains to be seen.

At my age, writing this kind of book, I face not only my advancement of years, but that of my readership, which (let’s face it) is pretty much cult-ish, despite the occasional break-through like Road to Perdition.

I have found it revitalizing doing several micro-budget movie productions (Encore for Murder, Blue Christmas, Death by Fruitcake); but even at this modest (!) budgetary level, funding is difficult. We’ll see how Blue Christmas and Death by Fruitcake fare.

Right now Blue Christmas is playing a week-long run at the Palms Theater in Muscatine. Seeing our little film on a great big screen, with terrific sound, has been gratifying. (It’s still there through and including Nov. 14.) It’s a testimony to what director of photographer Phil Dingeldein and producer Chad Bishop were able to achieve on a wing and a prayer.

Blue Christmas also out on Blu-ray and DVD right now. Lots of special features, including a nice bio documentary of yours truly done for Muscatine Community College. A good place to get the Blue Christmas Blu-ray online (in addition to the usual online retailers) is the great website Diabolik. They are a terrific outfit offering all kinds of off-beat items, including our little Christmas fable. Their price is in line with other online retailers and I’d love to see you support them.

As for the DVD version, you can go to Amazon or Barnes & Noble and get it for eleven bucks and change.

Speaking of Blue Christmas, shortly after its run ends at the Palms Theater in Muscatine, there’s a special showing (open to the public) in the very Black Box venue where we recorded the film. This should be a great event and those of you in the eastern Iowa area may wish to take it in.


Hardcover:
E-Book: Nook Kobo Google PLay

Also out right now is the latest Antiques Trash ‘n’ Treasures comic mystery, Antiques Slay Belles. With Death by Fruitcake warming up as a release for next Christmas, with Brandy and Vivian Borne brought to life wonderfully by Alisabeth Von Presley and Paula Sands (co-starring with Rob Merritt who plays P.I. Richard Stone in Blue Christmas), Barb and I are happy to present another Antiques Christmas mystery. Sometimes the mystery of the Antiques novels is where to find the darn things. Our publisher, Severn House, is in the UK and sometimes it’s difficult to find the latest Antiques novel in a brick-and-mortar USA store (there have been some inroads with Barnes & Noble as well as mystery bookstores).

But you can absolutely get Antiques Slay Belles at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and whatever your favorite online retailer is likely to be.

Let’s face it. These are ideal stocking stuffers for a mystery fan – but choose wisely which of these items you stuff. Only the hardiest of souls out there might find both Antiques Slay Belles and Quarry’s Return (and yes, it’s a Christmas novel!) equally palatable. On the other hand, Blue Christmas would make a fine Christmas day family film, despite its noir-ish themes (same noir-ish themes as A Christmas Carol!).

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Check out our Blue Christmas IMDB page!

This is quite a lovely review of Blue Christmas, very positive but frank about our low-budget indie feature.

Here’s another nice Blue Christmas review, if brief; you have to scroll down to find it.

Hey, movies don’t get much more indie or micro than this; but if you like my work, I think – I hope – you’ll impressed with what we came up with. Much thanks goes to our eastern Iowa cast, with Alisabeth Von Presley already receiving a Best Actress award from the Iowa Motion Picture Association for what is essentially a supporting role. And Rob Merritt as Richard Stone carries a good deal of the weight of the production on his shoulders and proves his value as probably the most popular, busiest actor in this region.

M.A.C.

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Do I Have New Projects for You!

Tuesday, August 27th, 2024

I have been meaning to mention this, but it’s so odd…and oddly wonderful…that I haven’t got around to it, till now.

But I have two indie movies shooting right now. If you make these update/blogs a regular stop, you’ll already know I am in the midst of a two-week shoot on Death by Fruitcake, bringing to life the Antiques/Trash ‘n’ Treasures mystery series that Barb and I write as “Barbara Allan.”

More about that later.

But another movie I scripted, Mickey Spillane’s Saturday Night in Cap City, began shooting its two-week schedule on the very same day Fruitcake started rolling.

Sharing script credit with me is director David Wexler. He is also one of the stars of the movie. We have been developing this project for several years – and were about to begin a more elaborate version when Covid kicked in and de-railed us for a time. David became a fan of Mickey Spillane and me out of a general enthusiasm for Hard Case Crime. He knew Mike Hammer wouldn’t be available, but inquired about the novella “A Bullet for Satisfaction,” which I completed for inclusion with Mickey’s final completed novel, The Last Stand, which HCC published.

Read about the talented David Wexler here.

David had me work up a script based on the novella, which I did in tandem with him, and we worked on it in that fashion for some time. When that somewhat ambitious version didn’t get sufficiently off the ground, one of us suggested (I think possibly David, because of an actress he thought could be signed) for me to use my Ms. Tree muscles and turn the protagonist – a rather typical Spillane cop anti-hero – “Dex” Dexter – into a female. This was a fairly elaborate rewrite, if a fun, challenging one; but the Spillane story remained largely intact.

This version attracted several female stars and, again, almost got off the ground. When it seemed doomed to stall yet again, I shared my Blue Christmas approach with David – limit the story to one set and make a micro budget possible.

“A Bullet for Satisfaction” began at the crime scene in a hotel where a wild party had taken place…and also the murder of the mayor of this equally wild town.

David liked the idea, and I wrote a new draft and he adapted it to fit a location he could acquire. For some time the film had been called simply Cap City, but I suggested Saturday Night in Cap City to reflect the action taking place in a hotel suite after a swinging Saturday night party.

That we are shooting simultaneously is a complete coincidence, though it’s a fun way to show that I am indeed back in the filmmaking game. The black-and-white photos here are from the production in progress.


director/co-star David Wexler
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A very nice early review of Quarry’s Return has rolled in from Publisher’s Weekly. Here it is:

Quarry’s Return
Max Allan Collins. Hard Case Crime, $12.95 trade paper.
Retired hit man Quarry returns to the killing business with ruthless efficiency in the highly satisfying 17th entry in Collins’s crime series (after Quarry’s Blood). When a journalist shows up at Quarry’s door searching for his daughter, bestselling true crime author Susan Breedlove, Quarry senses trouble. Predictably, the reporter turns out to be a hired assassin, and his expert knife skills make him more than a match for the 71-year-old ex-killer. Fortunately, Quarry’s former lover Luann Lloyd, who he believed was dead, arrives in the nick of time to rescue him. But Quarry’s daughter is far from safe; evidence suggests she’s been abducted while investigating a series of cold case murders, forcing Quarry to return to Port City, Iowa, where he met Susan’s mother and left contract killing, and where Susan had been conducting research. With Luann’s help, Quarry begins his own investigation into the killings Susan was writing about, in the belief that exposing the culprit will lead him to her. The fluid narration is better than ever, and Collins brings the proceedings to an exhilarating and unexpected conclusion. Fans will hope Quarry returns again soon. (Nov.)
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The first week of Death by Fruitcake went extremely well, sometimes surprisingly so – this is the first time I remember on a movie set where we completed the day’s work early…and it happened most days.

This week will be harder. Our male lead, Rob Merritt (star of Blue Christmas), is working only on the second week, meaning the first week had to shoot material that, obviously, didn’t involve his character. So we shot 30 pages of a 90-page script, meaning (my math skills come into play here) we have 60 pages yet to shoot. We do have an extra day (we’re working Saturday), but that hardly covers it.

I am not worried because this cast is doing incredibly well, and when Rob comes in, a real pro will be among us (as are Paula Sands and Alisabeth Von Presley). This bunch works hard and never complains, making for a real team effort. Also, our first week knocked off some of the most elaborate, toughest scenes on the schedule.

There are always fires to put out, and changes that have to be made on the spot, which is why I think having the writer be the director makes a lot of sense. Barb and I spent much of the weekend studying shooting schedules and call sheets and making last-minute arrangements.

Friday night had us bringing in a group of around sixty or seventy to be the audience for the play-within-the-movie, Vivian Borne’s The Fruitcake That Saved Christmas. My grandson Sam and granddaughter Lucy were among the highly cooperative audience members who gave us what we needed (“Now laugh big, as if you just saw for the first time Gene Wilder’s big scene in The Producers!”) even as they had a good time doing it.

Producer/director of photography Chad Bishop had a stellar week and rounded it off with a screen cameo as Louis Wilder, who accompanies wheelchair-bound FDR to the fruitcake factory to be presented with the key to the city. Turns out that specific fruitcake has surprising recuperative powers….

This is hard work but I love it. I never dreamed I’d be back on set again in this lifetime. Glad I was wrong.


Alisabeth Von Presley as Brandy; Paula Sands as Mother

The Suspects (some of ’em)

Tommy Ratkiewicz-Stierwalt as FDR (with M.A.C.)

The Least Efficient Assembly Line Anywhere (with M.A.C.)
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We appear to be very close to making a deal with the terrific actor we have chosen to play Nate Heller in True Noir: The Assassination of Anton Cermak. In case you haven’t been by lately, that’s our fully immersive audio drama based on the first Heller novel, True Detective. The ten-episode production is written by me and directed by Robert Meyer Burnett. Our fellow producers are Mike Bawden and Phil Dingeldein. It’s an Imagination Connoisseurs presentation.

You can order True Noir in various forms from our Kickstarter page here.

The Kickstarter campaign ends in 17 days, so get crackin’. As of Sunday we were at $20,290 of a $30,000 goal. Unlike most such crowd-funding campaigns, you will receive what you order in a short period of time. We already have most of our amazing cast recorded, and editing and sound design are well under way.

True Noir is one of the best (and rewarding) projects of my fifty-year career.

M.A.C.

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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.

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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.

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Quarry Returns…In a Book Giveaway! True Noir Is Coming…To the San Diego Con!

Tuesday, July 16th, 2024

A big reminder that the True Noir at San Diego Comic Con will be Thursday, July 25, 2024 at 5:30 pm in Room 6A.

True Noir banner

Attendees can join director Robert Meyer Burnett (Free Enterprise, The Hills Run Red) and Mike Bawden (marketing executive), with Rob moderating a panel including actors Anthony LaPaglia (Without a Trace, Happy Feet, All-Star Superman), Don McManus (Vice, Ocean’s Thirteen), Bill Smitrovich (Air Force One, Ted), Louis Lombardi (24, The Sopranos), Kris Carr (Last Week Tonight with John Oliver), and surprise guests.

My longtime collaborator Phil Dingeldein filmed a greeting video for the panel by me this past Friday. So I will be there on tape and in spirit. Deadline demands on the final Mike Hammer novel (Baby, It’s Murder) and pre-production on Death by Fruitcake (due to start shooting Aug. 19), plus the health issues I’ve been dealing with of late, make it impossible for me to attend in person…which I hate.

I am so proud of this ten-part audio drama, of Rob Burnett’s excellent direction, co-producer Christine Sheak’s assembly of an incredible cast, and producer Mike Bawden’s orchestration of the whole damn thing…including that I adapted my 1983 award-winning novel, True Detective, myself, giving me a chance to revisit and (I hope) even improve on that key work in my (ahem) oeuvre.

If you are at the San Diego Con on that Thursday evening, you will get a sneak preview of what we’ve accomplished so far. And very soon a Kickstarter will be launched, providing the opportunity to buy in various media the entire 10-episode immersive audio drama on a number of formats.

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Quarry's Return

It’s been a while since we had a book giveaway here, but the time has come. I will share ten copies of Quarry’s Return with the first ten who write me asking for one.

The idea is that you promise to post a review at Amazon and/or other appropriate web sites like Barnes & Noble and Goodreads (including your own if you have one). The book publishes on Nov. 5 of this year, but you can’t submit your review to Amazon until then. That’s important to note. If you have your own review site, you can review it as soon as you read it. I am not mandating positive reviews, but if you do not like the book or have a mixed but negative response to it, you are released from your obligation to write a review.

I have 10 copies and, as they say, when they are gone they are gone. Write me directly at macphilms@hotmail.com and include your snail-mail address (that’s important). This is open to US residents only, due to shipping costs.

M.A.C.

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