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Blue Christmas Is a Wrap!

Tuesday, October 31st, 2023

Jake Marley (Chris Causey) and Richard Stone (Rob Merritt) in the private eye’s office.

We completed production on Blue Christmas last evening, and will be picking up various things and stuff at Muscatine Community College (our gracious host) this afternoon. Before I discuss the shoot, let me provide some background, requesting patience from those of you who have heard this story before (perhaps more than once).

The day before Thanksgiving 1992, I was notified by mail in a letter from a particularly odious editor at Tribune Media Services that my services as writer of the Dick Tracy strip were no longer required. I had done the writing of the strip, taking over for creator Chester Gould, since late 1977 – a fifteen-year run plus a few months.

Actually, they had already picked up my contract by not notifying me into I was three months into the new contract period, which was an automatic pick-up. But when I called the gracious Robert Reed, the recently retired head of the TMS, he talked me out of suing the Trib. He had hired me, and he deplored the decision of the editor (who had not hired me), but reminded me how many lawyers the Trib had, and how costly it would be for me to fight a battle even in the right. Then he said something I will always appreciate him for.

“You don’t need to worry about your next job,” he said. “You’re Max Allan Collins.”

I had needed reminding on that point. My friend and future DC Comics editor, Mike Gold, had already told me, “You really should have moved on after ten years. It stopped serving your career at that point.”

Nonetheless, it was a blow. And the same day, my agent informed me that – just a few weeks after winning the Best Novel Shamus award for Stolen Away – my Nate Heller contract had been dropped by Bantam Books, who had screwed up the series by publishing the hardcover and trade edition simultaneously, and making my hardcover sales on that title look like shit in the computers.

So I had lost everything, career-wise – both Tracy and Heller. I scrambled and did a few short stories for my pals Ed Gorman and Marty Greenberg, God bless their memories, but mostly I was at a loss. Untethered. And as close to a writing block as I had ever got. Thanks to Ed and Marty I kept going. But other than those assignments (writing for their theme anthologies), I had hit the wall.

Then on Christmas Eve 1992, after the festivities were over (my family has always celebrated Christmas Eve, rather than Christmas Day), I had an idea and began to write. A Christmas Carol was one of my favorite stories, the Alistair Sim film of it in particular, and my favorite single detective novel was The Maltese Falcon. I had the stray thought that the two stories might be effectively combined, and began to type. I have no idea how long I worked – most of the night, as it was a single session – but the result was a fifty-page novella, “A Wreath for Marley.”

I am not by inclination a short story writer, but as soon as I’d finished it, I knew “Marley” was special. Maybe not to anybody else, but to me. And over the years it’s been in several anthologies and ultimately the lead story in a holiday-themed collection of my shorter stories, Blue Christmas (available from Wolfpack in the collection’s most current incarnation).

The writing of “Marley” ended my creative logjam. Soon I had sold Carnal Hours, one of the best Heller novels, to Dutton in a multiple-book contract; and – on the fly, at WonderCon – sold the idea of Road to Perdition to a DC editor who wondered if I might be interested in writing a noir graphic novel. Mike Gold and Robert Reed had been right – losing Dick Tracy was like Dean Martin breaking up with Jerry Lewis – teaming with Jerry was the best thing that ever happened to Dino (Martin said) and the next best thing had been breaking up with Jerry.

Another result of losing the Tracy strip was finally pursuing my interest in filmmaking. In 1994 I wrote The Expert in Hollywood for director William Lustig, and wrote and directed Mommy here in Iowa. The latter feature – in which Patty McCormack portrayed a grown-up variation on her famous evil kid role in The Bad Seed – became a video store hit and sold to Lifetime as a movie of the week. Its success led to my scripting a feature film version of “A Wreath for Marley,” which I called Blue Christmas. We were in pre-production of that project when the success of Mommy made it necessary to follow up with a sequel, Mommy’s Day, causing us to temporarily shelve Blue Christmas. The thought was to do it next.

That did not happen. While Mommy’s Day was also a video store hit, we did not get a cable TV sale, and then my producer – only my best friend from high school days and the best man at Barb and my wedding – stole our money. I was never able to mount a full-throated production again. Our budgets of half a million and a quarter million for Mommy 1 and 2 respectively were never to be repeated.

I managed to stay active in indie filmmaking for another decade. I served three terms as president of the Iowa Motion Picture Association. I was able to get funded for two documentaries (Mike Hammer’s Mickey Spillane and Caveman: V.T. Hamlin and Alley Oop) and did three short films with my Mommy director of photography, Phil Dingeldein. Phil and I mounted Real Time: Siege at Lucas Street Market for around $10,000 (shooting mostly on security cameras) and had a similar budget (thanks to a Humanities Iowa grant) with Eliot Ness: An Untouchable Life. I wrote numerous screenplays and sold a few, including some that were never produced, with a short Quarry film, “A Matter of Principal” leading to the feature The Last Lullaby, which I co-wrote.

Then, of course, there was Road to Perdition with its big-name cast and Academy Award nominations and so on, which led to Phil and me trying to get the sequel, Road to Purgatory, off the ground. Much time was spent on that and we came heart-breakingly close several times. While various screenwriting projects continued (and still do), gradually I came to accept that my film directing days were over.

I did not consider this a tragedy as my fiction writing was trucking along. A Quarry TV series was produced by HBO for their Cinemax network and I was able to do a couple of scripts for it (one for the never-produced second season). Filmmaking was a part of my credentials and that was nice but nothing I was actively pursuing any longer.

Then last year I co-produced the “Mike Hammer” Golden Age Radio-style play, Encore for Murder, originally an audio full-cast production with Stacy Keach. I had done the play twice before (in Owensboro, Kentucky, and Clearwater, Florida) with Gary Sandy as Hammer. Gary and I were friends going back to his co-starring role in Mommy’s Day. This latest Encore production was a fundraiser for the local art center/museum, and Gary generously donated his time.

The play came together so well that literally a few days before its single performance, I called Phil Dingeldein and asked, “Do you want to make a movie this weekend?”

As some of you already know, Phil came down and he and Chad Bishop (who was the on-stage foley guy in the play) pooled their resources to shoot two dress rehearsals and our one performance. Then Chad and I spent a month or so editing the footage into a movie of sorts – or maybe it’s a television program, hard to say exactly what animal it is.

At any rate, the result, like the performance itself, was surprisingly good. Phil and I were already mounting an expanded version of the Spillane documentary as a 75th anniversary (of Mike Hammer) release for VCI. We showed Encore for Murder to Bob Blair, the president of VCI, pitching it as a Blu-ray bonus feature for the expanded documentary. Bob not only snatched it right up for that purpose, he planned a release on DVD of Encore itself. Both will be out well before year’s end.

So my filmmaking juices were flowing again. I proposed to Chad Bishop that we mount a follow-up Golden Age radio-style production of Blue Christmas. This morphed into a stage play that I planned to shoot much as we had Encore, only with more elaborate pre-production.

Finally I decided just to shoot it as a movie.

The script needed to be reworked from one that had half a dozen locations to one location in which all the the Scrooge-like visions take place in the private eye hero’s office – a single realistic set that would serve surrealistic purposes.

Phil came on board, taking a week’s vacation to shoot it (with his sometime accomplice, the talented and skilled Liz Toal), meaning we had to mount the principal photography in a single week. I approached Muscatine Community College about using their black box theater as, essentially, a film sound stage for the week-long shoot, and they got on board.

We had been led to believe we had a good shot at a Greenlight Iowa grant for $50,000, which would have been tight but sufficient. We mounted an Indie Go Go campaign to raise supplemental funding and reached our $7000 goal. But the grant did not come to us – although frankly we were never contacted about that after jumping through many an official hoop (never even informed we weren’t getting it, which stalled us while we waited for news that never arrived).

So finally we built upon the Indie Go Go money, took our own payment completely out of the budget (Chad, Phil and me), and got one $5000 investor and a few more donations, coming up with a princely $14,000 to produce the equivalent of a $300,000 to $500,000 indie. This was a big part of planning to do the film in (choke) six days.

For a long time, Gary Sandy was going to play Marley, but other commitments and a reluctance to work during the actor’s strike (although our micro-budgeted production was not a target of the strike) caused Gary to drop out a few weeks before shooting began. That left us with a cast consisting of talent from the Quad Cities, Cedar Rapids and Muscatine, with almost everyone from Encore for Murder back again.

So how did the shoot go?

The professionalism of Phil and Liz was a breathtaking thing to watch. Chad Bishop wore more hats than Barthlomew Cubbins – lighting, audio, producer, actor. I had caught Covid about a month out and got cleared to work weeks before the production would begin; so I was tired and exhausted going in…but that didn’t stop me. I would say I got my stride back by the second or at the latest third day.


Barb and Max on set at Blue Christmas.

Our set was a thing of beauty thanks to Bill Turner, a veteran of local theater; and Bill took on a role in the production as well, doing a fine job. Our lead was the remarkable Rob Merritt from Cedar Rapids, who has many movie roles under his belt and held up under the burden of being in virtually every scene. Among his co-stars was national celebrity Alisabeth Von Presley, who looks like something out of a Russ Meyer dream and performed like a dream, period. The entire cast did stellar work, including Encore veterans Chris Causey, Rene Mauck, Cassidy Probasco, Brian Linderman, Keith Porter, Judy Wilson, and Evan Maynard. Tommy Ratkiewicz-Stierwalt, Chase Bishop, Kim Furness, Dave Juehring, Tracy Pelzer-Timm and Scot Gehre, among others, were also in a very talented cast of twenty-four. Corey Ruby did the special effects, and my old Seduction of the Innocent pal Chris Christensen has signed on to do the score.


Director of Photography Phil Dingeldein gets a role…

…and lead actor Rob Merritt films a scene.

We worked long days – seven a.m. till at least seven p.m. On all but one day, I went home on the lunch hour and took a nap. The production was both brutal and rewarding, and it’s doubtful I’ll ever be foolish enough to put myself through something like this again…although I’m glad to have done this one last time.


Special effects man Corey Ruby takes pride in applying bullet holes to lovely Alisabeth Von Presley.

Barb had sworn not to be part of this crazy effort, but she was right there with me on the first day and thereafter. She ran craft services and did so very much more. Nathan Collins and Matt Clemens were there every day running security (MCC was in session). Nate did everything from man a boom pole to shoot footage on a high-end camera.

Of course, we’re not finished. Chad and I (and Chad’s cohort Jeremy Ferguson) will be shooting Second Unit material, chiefly establishing shots (once the snow starts to fall here). And right away we will begin editing, a process I enjoy a great deal.

I will report here as we move forward, but I can say that at long last, the promise of Blue Christmas is being fulfilled. If we’re not the best goddamn fourteen-thousand dollar movie ever made, I defy you to show me one that is.

* * *

Despite some stellar reviews on Amazon, Too Many Bullets remains mostly ignored by critics elsewhere. As I mentioned previously, none of the trades – Publisher’s Weekly, Kirkus, Library Journal or Booklist – had reviewed it.

I am going to get the book into some reviewers’ hands, but in the meantime, if you’ve read and enjoyed the novel, please review it at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Goodreads and elsewhere, and if you have your own blog, talk it up there.

There have been a few notices, like this one.

And this.

M.A.C.

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Quarry on the Brain

Tuesday, July 25th, 2023

On the occasion of my starting a new Quarry novel, Quarry’s Return, let’s look at Quarry on audio and screen.

Let’s start with this excellent overview, which properly gives Hard Case Crime some praise for bringing the series back to life, and lavishes praise on the film The Last Lullaby (more about that below).

I have been very lucky with the readers of my audio books. Dan John Miller is, hands down, the voice of Nate Heller. For a long run, I had Stacy Keach himself reading the Spillane/Collins novels. When Stacy stepped down, Stefan Rudnicki stepped up and has done a fabulous job – no small job filling those Keach shoes (and trenchcoat). Several readers have done right by Quarry, but Stefan is the definitive Quarry.

Check out this sample and see. And hear.

If you’ve never seen The Last Lullaby, the Quarry movie starring Tom Sizemore, co-written by me (and derived from my novel The Last Quarry), it’s available on Amazon Prime.

It’s also available on YouTube. Looks good there.

Here is the trailer.

While I like the Quarry Cinemax series, I think The Last Lullaby – even though Quarry is called “Price” there in – is the more accurate rendition of the character.

I required the production not to call the lead character Quarry because I didn’t want to give up sequel rights. This is the same reason Parker is called “Walker” in the film Point Blank, based on Richard Stark’s The Hunter.

Unfortunately, the short (and award-winning) film, “A Matter of Principal,” which I wrote for the same director (Jeffrey Goodman) who put together The Last Lullaby, does not seem to be available anywhere but on the somewhat out-of-print Black Box that collects a number of my films.

It’s available at Amazon for (gasp!) $68, but secondary sellers there have it for much less.

Troma Direct has it for a much more reasonable $29.71.

I won’t provide a link, but e-bay has it for $40 and up.

Wherever you get it, The Black Box includes: Real Time: Siege at Lucas Street Market; Mommy; Mommy’s Day; and Shades of Noir, which has several of my shorts, including “A Matter of Principal.” Be forewarned that better versions of the two Mommy movies are coming.

There are a few copies of just the Shades of Noir DVD (never sold separately from the Black Box boxed set) at e-bay in the $25 range. The Troma option seems the best.

Now if only they’d send me some royalties!

* * *
Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One, still from train action scene.

A quick appraisal of Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One.

Well, it’s a terrific action movie. Beautifully shot, with Tom Cruise going for broke in what is likely to be the conclusion of the series with Part Two. It’s a thrill ride and often surprisingly witty. Not without heart, it shows a human side of the Cruise character and his supporting cast.

On the downside, the A.I. aspect is not explored as anything but another Blue Meanie. A Big Blue Meanie, the Ultimate Blue Meanie; but little is done with it. The biggest deal is probably screwing up the Internet and forcing our agents to (arrghhh!!!) go analog to use the Net.

The horror.

I am also not crazy about the Part One/Part Two thing, because a two-and-a-half hour movie ought to give you some resolution.

Terrific and fun, Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning etc. is not, to me, as satisfying as Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (reviled by some, particularly those who decided to hate it before seeing it). Here’s the difference: MI is an action movie and a satisfying one, a wild ride. Indiana Jones is an adventure movie. It’s about, among other things, archeology. Which is to say it’s about something, and not just a vague, scary Big Blue Meanie.

That does not mean you should skip MI, because it’s a terrific example of an action movie. Its action scenes outdo the Indiana Jones movie by half; the final scene on a train in MI is one of the best action scenes (and funniest) I’ve ever seen, if not the best). But Indy is adventure and speaks to the inner child in a very different way.

Not a popular view perhaps, but there you have it.

* * *

Here is a positive review of Spillane – King of Pulp Fiction that is nicely illustrated and worth a look.

And here’s yet another “Movies You Didn’t Know Came from Comic Book” articles. Guess what’s included. (And no, I didn’t “base” Road to Perdition on Lone Wolf and Cub – the latter was an influence among a number of other influences. A key influence, like John Woo HK cinema and the real life of John and Connor Looney and Richard Stark’s Parker and various movies about Bonnie and Clyde and more.

M.A.C.

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55 Is Not the Limit! Barb and Me

Tuesday, May 23rd, 2023

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

Barbara Collins

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But I’m willing to try.

* * *

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

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

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

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

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

M.A.C.

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Chain Book Stores, Indie Movies and Avoiding Real Work

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

M.A.C.

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