Posts Tagged ‘True Detective’

Spirit of Seventy-Six

Tuesday, March 5th, 2024

The Muscatine premiere of Blue Christmas on March 16 is already about half sold-out, so if you want to attend, getting tickets now is not a bad idea. It’s reserved seating, which is another factor.

Advance ticket sales are available here.

Blue Christmas Horizontal Poster
* * *

Here’s a nice article about Blue Christmas and its upcoming Muscatine premiere.

Fridley Theatres to hold red carpet premiere
for local indie film on March 16

A red-carpet premiere is coming to Muscatine for a local indie production.

This month, on Saturday, March 16, the Palms 10 Theatre in Muscatine will be holding a premiere for Blue Christmas. The red-carpet event will begin at 6 p.m. with the movie starting at 7 p.m. A Q&A will be held with the film’s cast and crew afterwards.

Taking place on Christmas Eve, 1942, in Chicago, Blue Christmas focuses on a private eye named Richard Stone, who is visited by the ghost of his late partner on the 1-year anniversary of his murder. Through the guidance of three visiting spirits, Stone is forced to visit his past, present and future to finally find his partner’s killer, as well as redemption for himself.

The film was written and directed by Muscatine novelist Max Allan Collins and stars Iowa actor Rob Merritt; Alisabeth Von Presley, who some may recognize from her time on America’s Got Talent; and Chris Causey. Chad Bishop helped produce and edit the film while Phillip W. Dingeldein served as the director of photography.

Collins described the film’s story as a mash-up of The Maltese Falcon and A Christmas Carol.

“They’re two of my favorite movies and two of my favorite novels, and I just saw a way to kind of do them both at the same time… So the material will be familiar to people, and it’s material that really resonates with people because it’s about a person who becomes better by the end of the story,” he said.

Although Collins is best known for his books and comics, this is far from the only time that he has worked in film. Throughout the ’90s and early 2000s, Collins had the opportunity to work on several independent film productions. After he was unable to get a sequel to the film adaptation of Road to Perdition, however, Collins shifted focus back towards his writing and left the film scene.

Then, in 2022, during the production of Encore for Murder, a Mike Hammer radio play that was performed live before then receiving a video recording, Collins was inspired to try doing film again, he said.

“(Encore for Murder) got me thinking about getting back into doing an indie film after about a decade and a half away from doing them,” he said. “I really do enjoy doing films because I enjoy the collaborative nature of it. Being able to bring talented people together is very rewarding, and it’s very different from the sort of solitary endeavor that writing a novel is.”

Reflecting on the production, which was filmed in October 2023 over the course of only six days, Collins had much praise to give the film’s cast and crew. He also thanked Naomi DeWinter and Muscatine Community College for its support in letting the production use its Black Box Theatre for nearly all of its filming.

“It was very much a Muscatine/Quad Cities affair,” Collins said. “I’m really proud of what we were able to do with it – and, boy, does it look good on the big screen.”

Tickets can be purchased on the Fridley Theatres website at https://www.fridleytheatres.com/movie/Muscatine-Palms10/BLUE-CHRISTMAS#.

For those who are unable to make it to these one-time showings, Collins said Fridley Theatres, the chain that owns Muscatine Palms 10, has shown interest in showing the film at each of its Iowa and Nebraska theatres during the 2024 holiday season.

“That’s something we’re really excited about,” Collins said.

You can read the article with photos here, at least for the present.

* * *

Our Cedar Rapids premiere (with Cedar Rapids-area stars Rob Merritt and Alisabeth Von Presley present, as well as me and Chad and various cast members) will be March 13. The house is already half sold out. Tickets can be ordered here.

Our final premiere will be at the Last Picture House in Davenport, thanks to our friends Beck and Woods (creators of A Quiet Place). Here’s where you can buy advance tickets for the Friday, March 22, event.

We are also an official selection in the Cedar Rapids Independent Film Festival, with a 9 a.m. screening and a 1:05 p.m. screening on April 6. Barb and I will be attending the latter screening.

* * *

For any birthday past 70, my late grandfather Ray Rushing used to answer questions about his age this way: “Over seventy, damnit!”

I know the feeling.

On March 3, yesterday as I write this, I turned 76 and the only thing that’s good about is that I’m not dead. There’s so much left to do and I’m going to try to do it. As Barb says, “Just keep on keepin’ on.”

That may explain why I did Blue Christmas at this ripe old age and have another indie film on the docket for later this year. More about that later. For now I have on my plate a final Heller, more Antiques novels with Barb (we were just offered a two-book contract from Severn), the final Mike Hammer novel for Titan, and a very exciting project that I’ve pitched (apparently successfully, but it’s early days) that I won’t be able to share with you until it’s signed, sealed and delivered. This year’s Quarry novel (Quarry’s Blood) may be the last, as well. Kind of feels like I’m wrapping things up, but there’s still a lot going on – one last indie movie after Blue Christmas, for example. And a Nate Heller series adapting True Detective (True Noir: The Nathan Heller Casebooks) and perhaps other of the novels as fully produced multi-part podcast. This involves my pals Robert Meyer Burnett, Mike Bawden and Phil Dingeldein.

My health seems to be relatively good, though I have a bad day now and then (one was on my birthday itself) that indicates I have to pace myself better if I want to stick around for a few more years.

On my birthday we went to Dune Part Two and I really didn’t care for it. Neither did Barb. Son Nathan, a science fiction fan, liked it more but termed it “slow and unpleasant.” We had all liked Part One, and the advanced praise for Part Two from a bunch of people whose opinions I trust make me question my own judgment. I found the film tedious in the desert sequences and over-the-top in the bad guy portions with two risible villains – the usually reliable Stellan Skarsgård (the Broker in the Quarry pilot!) and least-scary-sociopath-ever, Elvis actor Austin Butler, as well as Christopher Walken as the evil emperor or something, a particularly misguided choice.

Dune Part Two

But Barb and I seem to be alone on this. The best I can say for it is that the lead, Timothée Chalamet, did a creditable job. Best supporting players? The giant worms.

I love science fiction and fantasy movies and TV, particularly Star Trek (I am a stubborn Star Trek The Motion Picture apologist) and the first two Star Wars films, and Forbidden Planet and Outer Limits and on and on. But I’ve always found s-f novels, most of them anyway, clunky with prose worthy of the side of a paint can (Ray Bradbury and Richard Matheson excluded). I truly believe this to be my problem, because too many smart people love the stuff, and I was a shit science student. But man I love me some Kirk and Spock and Bones.

Here’s the thing. Feel free to love Dune Part Two. Too many smart people like it for me to be right about this for anybody but myself. The narrative arts (actually a lot of art in general) is the receptor plus the deliverer. Novels and short stories, and movies too, are inherently collaborative – the audience member plus the artist. I like to say, when somebody dislikes a book of mine, fair dinkum (as the Aussies put it) – sometimes I present my shows on Broadway, other times at the Podunk Playhouse.

In other words, your mileage may vary.

Certainly people who dislike my work are not wrong (though I prefer to think of them as misguided). I get complaints from readers (and reviewers) who think I go into too much detail about clothing and setting, when my approach is otherwise fairly spare. It confuses some readers and irritates others.

My frequent collaborator Matt Clemens always says something to the effect of, “Max doesn’t like to have his characters run around naked, unless they’re naked.”

Ironically, this has to do with my twin enthusiasms for prose fiction and motion pictures. From a very, very, I might say VERY, early age I sought out the books (prose novels and comic books) that movies I liked had been based upon. And I would admit, if pressed (and you’re pressing me now, aren’t you?), that the works I most admire tend to be movies. I probably like Chinatown better than Hammett and Chandler, and boy do I like Hammett and Chandler. I probably like the film Kiss Me Deadly more than Mickey’s actual Mike Hammer novels (maybe excluding One Lonely Night, Spillane at his most vivid and crazed).

So on some level I am trying to make prose fiction that plays like a movie in your mind. I may or may not be successful at that, but that’s the attempt, anyway.

Going back to Dune Part Two, the smartest response I’ve seen to it comes from people who love Frank Herbert’s novel and find the film a sort of visual adjunct to that work as opposed to a cinematic version of it.

But what do I know? If I tell you I liked the David Lynch Dune much more, would you have me locked up? Maybe in the cubicle next to David Lynch?

M.A.C.

Back in Business

Tuesday, January 9th, 2024

Somehow it’s the first week of 2024 and it seems to be business as usual around M.A.C. Productions. Which means we are busy but there’s nothing “usual” about it. But it’s all good news, and good problems, so despite the Buck Rogers sound of the date on my calendar, I am rarin’ to go.

First news to share is that we have lined up four Iowa premieres for Blue Christmas in February and March.

We will have the World Premiere in Des Moines at the Fleur Theatre on Saturday, February 24. The Fleur is a terrific venue. They have a quote from me on the wall! We had a big Road to Perdition event there on the film’s release, and a few years ago I introduced (and spoke after) a screening of Kiss Me Deadly.

Our Cedar Rapids Premiere will be Wednesday March 13 at the Collins Road Theater. Another great venue, Collins Road Theater (love that name) is very supportive of independent film, hosting the Cedar Rapids Film Festival.

(We are entered in the fest and, if selected, there will likely be another Collins Road screening of Blue Christmas on the weekend of the fest, April 5 – 7.)

We will have our hometown Premiere at the beautiful Palms 10 Theater here in Muscatine on Saturday, March 16. It’s a treat and a privilege to have our film made available to our friends and family so close to home. We’ll go the Red Carpet route and everything.

On Saturday March 22, the Quad Cities Premiere will be held at the Last Picture House in Davenport. This is the brand spanking new theater that is the brainchild of the Quiet Place//65 filmmakers (local boys!), Scott Beck and Bryan Woods. Their support of their home-state filmmakers is much appreciated.

We – Chad Bishop, Phil Dingeldein and I (the executive producers of Blue Christmas) – are very grateful to the various managers of these theaters for welcoming us onto their screens. It came together remarkably quickly and is extremely gratifying.

Chad and I will be participating in a Q and A session after each screening with various cast members present. Phil Dingeldein will be there as much as his busy schedule allows, as will star Rob Merritt and his co-star, Alisabeth Von Presley. Alisabeth and Rob have been confirmed for the Cedar Rapids premiere.

As you may know, we shot the principal photography in Muscatine Community College’s Black Box Theater, and we are working out details for a screening there as well for students and teachers.

If you were a contributor to the fund-raising effort, and were promised admission to a premiere, please write me at macphilms@hotmail.com and let me know which of these premieres (choose one, please) you would be able to attend. More details will follow.


I’m centerstage with my back to the camera, directing Alisabeth Von Presley and Rob Merritt in Blue Christmas; left of me is Liz Toal, first camera assistant, and I’m blocking my buddy Phil Dingeldein, at right.

A lot of people who keep up with these updates helped make this film possible, and we are very grateful. I frankly thought I’d hung up my indie film shootin’ iron with Eliot Ness: An Untouchable Life (2006). But Encore for Murder came together so well as a play, we shot it at the last minute and soon the ol’ juices were flowing. Which in a man my age isn’t pretty….

I will tell you, with no modesty at all, that Blue Christmas came out most satisfactorily (as Nero Wolfe might say). That our cash budget was $14,000 indicates just how remarkable a feat this was. (The budget would sky-rocket if everyone, myself included, who took no remuneration were actually…you know…paid.)

Heath Holland at Cereal at Midnight on YouTube showed off on both the Blu-ray of Mike Hammer’s Mickey Spillane (which includes Encore for Murder as a bonus feature) and the DVD of Encore on his wrap-up of new releases. Thank you, Heath! (I am recording an interview with Heath tomorrow.) You can also rent both the documentary and the recorded Golden Age Radio-style play on Amazon Prime and VUDU.

* * *

And so the writing year begins.

I have just completed what I’m calling Conversations With Nathan Heller, a 13,000-word look at the entire Nate Heller novel series to date. The format is that I am visiting Heller at his Boca Raton digs to interview him before beginning each book in the series. This has been done for Otto Penzler at Mysterious Press, and was just shipped yesterday. What Otto’s reaction will be is hard to say, but obviously I hope he likes it. The title may change – that will be up to Otto, at least to some degree – but I think any Heller reader will get a charge out of it.

No idea when this will be published, but I will keep you informed here. I’m told there will be a square-bound hardcover edition.

Additionally I have corrected and tweaked Quarry’s Return, the copy edited version on its way back to editor Charles Ardai. The novel is scheduled for December, I believe. Going to be a busy December, with Blue Christmas possibly playing in some regional theaters (we’re working on that).

In the meantime, Barb has been working on her draft of Antiques Slay Belles – another Christmas book! I will start my draft yet this week.

After that I will be starting the massive podcast script combining the novels True Detective and True Crime (the first two Hellers) into one massive dramatic piece.

Stay tuned.

* * *

I received today copies of the fifth Ms. Tree collection, Ms. Tree – Heroine Withdrawal. It’s (as Chester Gould used to say) a honey. Just physically lovely. I am so grateful to Nick Landau and Vivian Cheung at Titan for keeping after to me to do these Ms. Tree collections with them (a shout-out to the great Andrew Sumner).

I also received two books from Gary Kato, who helped Terry Beatty out on Ms. Tree from time to time – Peter Pan in Return to Never Never Land and Satin’s Ways – both written by my pal Ron Fortier. Both are published by Redbud Studio.

M.A.C.

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

Tuesday, December 5th, 2023

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

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

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

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

Maybe even after that.

* * *

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

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

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

Blue Christmas Poster

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

* * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * *

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

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

That was it. That was the straw.

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

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

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

The Princess Bride poster

M.A.C.

William Friedkin, Collector Burn-Out, Bargains & Batman

Tuesday, August 15th, 2023

First, I want to share two very good deals with you.

Spillane: King of Pulp Fiction cover

Spillane – King of Pulp Fiction by Jim Traylor and me is 50% off (!) at Barnes & Noble. Going for a mere $13.47 for this hardcover thing of beauty. If you’ve been waiting to spring for a copy, now’s the time.

The Long Wait cover

The Long Wait, one of the best Spillane movie adaptations (it stars Anthony Quinn!) is on sale, a combo 4k and Blu-ray package. Even if you don’t have 4K, the Blu-ray alone is well worth the price. I did the commentary and provided an extensive gallery of stills. From Classic Flix, $21.98 (regularly $39.99).

* * *

I’ve fallen a little behind writing Quarry’s Return because of what I’d been told would be a simple out-patient procedure. First of all, that may have been simple for the surgeon but for me it was a long day of assorted inconvenience and unpleasantness.

Then I was sent home with a complication waiting to kick in — bleeding that wouldn’t stop — but an ER trip the next day to get some stitching up (in a good way) has me doing much better. But I have had to recuperate all (and some of next) week.

For the first time since 1965 (!) I had to cancel a band job (actually, we were able to swap places on the roster of Second Sunday concerts here in Muscatine, allowing me to trade August for September (not a bad trade generally). Crusin’ will appear at 5 pm on Sunday September 10.

* * *

Robert Meyer Burnett, one of my two favorite pop culture podcasters, discusses Friedkin below. He also discusses Friedkin on his weekly Midnight Musings, but that goes far afield including a discussion of the anniversary of Hip Hop.

Here’s my mini-memoir about Friedkin, which I shared with Burnett the night of my hospital procedure – hence a tad fried.

I Slept in William Friedkin’s Guest House

My wife Barb and I were guests of Friedkin by way of his then-wife Kelly Lange, the LA newscaster. Miguel was going with (they were engaged at the time) Kelly Lange’s daughter, whose name was also Kelly (her mother’s real name was, I believe, Dorothy). Kelly Jr. was funny and sweet and a babe, and I thought Miguel had done very well for himself. No idea what happened there, but Miguel and BIll Mumy and Steve Leialoha and I were at the time in the process of putting our band Seduction of the Innocent together to play at San Diego Comic Con. We’d go on to perform there around half a dozen times and at a few other comics cons and once for a comic book shop that rented out the Ferris Wheel hall for us at the Santa Monica Pier. One of our roadies was Brandon Lee.


Seduction of the Innocent, Santa Monica Pier

I am, as you know, from a small town in Iowa. I never did the con circuit, just San Diego Con. There is little reason why I should have otherwise encountered anybody famous. But my early Nate Heller novels had ridden my comic book Ms. Tree’s coattails to some geek recognition; so had the fact that I was the second guy after Chester Gould to write the Dick Tracy strip. How Bill, Miguel, Steve and I got together is for another time. (Chris Christensen came a little later.)

Where he hell is Billy Friedkin in this? Patience.

Kelly Jr. gave us a tour of Friedkin’s house. He and Kelly Sr. were away. (Honeymooning, my memory wants me to believe.) I remember a vast ornate bed with black sheets. In the living room were a few huge framed vintage movie posters from famous films…of the ’20s and ’30s.

By way of thank you, I left a copy of the first Heller, True Detective, for Friedkin with a fannish inscription. And of course I hoped he’d read it. He got in touch with me by phone, leaving a message, wanting to inform me of something. For that to mean anything, I have to describe the first section (briefly) of True Detective.

Young police detective Nate Heller is drinking rum out of a coffee cup in a speak when the cops known as the Two Harrys come in and grab him to come along on a bust, telling him nothing more. They are Mayor Anton Cermak’s two-man “Gangster Squad.” In a sports book on a high floor of a Loop building overlooking the Chicago River, the Two Harrys roust Frank Nitti himself. They shoot him several times in the neck and back, leaving him to bleed and die. They send the horrified and very pissed Heller (he will have to share the blame for this!) in to make routine arrests in the sports book, but a guy heads for a window and the fire escape. Heller tells him to stop and he doesn’t and Heller shoots him (“He wasn’t in the window anymore”). Heller decides to quit the force, not because it’s corrupt or even because for the first time he’s killed somebody (the graft is why he had a rich uncle get him on — it’s the Depression) and, in exchange for providing building security for his childhood friend, boxer Barney Ross, he gets a one-room office over Barney’s speak (aka Blind Pig) where he works as a PI (and sleeps on a Murphy bed).

Where the fuck is Friedkin?

So the two Harrys come around in the middle of the night at Heller’s flop, having heard Heller quit the force, and drag him to see Mayor Cermak at the Congress Hotel. Heller, who is young and tough and has scruples when necessary, is asked by Cermak why he (Heller) quit the PD. Heller turns down an offer to become the third man on the mayor’s Gangster Squad; but promises if his new one-man PI business is left alone, he’ll say whatever is necessary at the inquest and later trial. Having made this deal, Heller leaves but knows he’s now on Frank Nitti’s shit, er, hit list. Middle of the night, he’s hauled by Outfit gangsters to a suburban hospital to see Nitti…WHO HAS SURVIVED (historically, this happened — the whole Nitti roust is real, except for my substituting Nate Heller for the compromised young cop). Nitti gives Heller a pass, because it’ll give him an inside man with Cermak, who is soon to head to Miami (where of course history thinks the assassination target was FDR when it was actually Cermak).

That’s all 1933.

Around 1987, William Friedkin contacts this punk kid mystery writer in Iowa who somehow — it’s crazy — not only slept in his guest house, but knows about his Uncle Harry! Harry Lang, who was a Chicago cop in the ’30s! And he wants to know all about the Nitti hit. Friedkin told me his uncle was exactly that guy, the Harry Lang was who half of the two Harrys (I used photographs in the book, and Friedkin said he was flipping through and saw his uncle’s picture!).

There was talk of Friedkin making True Detective but that obviously didn’t happen. He was making TV movies at time — C.A.T. Squad…with Miguel.

Now they are both gone.

There’s a bittersweet postscript: Jason Miller was one of the stars of my little indie feature Mommy.

* * *

Heath Holland (my other favorite pop culture podcaster) at Cereal at Midnight discusses collecting burn-out, and I am given an extensive shout-out.

I wrote Heath with the following response:

I am honored to have been invoked on Cereal at Midnight. Got a real kick out of it.

And what an excellent, frank discussion of a real problem. I wrestle with the collecting bug constantly. And, despite a decent income, I spend way too much. My wife sees me watching you or Burnett or another three or four unboxing type podcasts and says, “This doesn’t mean you’re getting more ideas about what to buy, does it?” Not in the most loving voice.

@fiendformojitos: So you purchased 4 new Blu rays in the July Barnes and Noble Criterion sale, correct? Yes that's accurate. But isn't it true you haven't even opened any of the Blu Rays you purchased in the November sale?

What resonated with me most was one word you used: obligation.

This is when your collection starts to own you. This sounds ridiculous, but the main thing I am trying to do is not buy anything I don’t like or am probably not disposed to like. For example. Jess Franco — I have bought a lot of Franco stuff because of the enthusiasm of so many for his work in this hobby. There’s a line of European horror that came out some time ago that I was (wait for it) attempting to get every numbered spine, which meant every damn release. That line-up included at least half a dozen Franco titles. How could I not own them? They had numbers on the spine that I needed!

But I freed myself and got rid of them. Jean Rollin is constantly hyped and I know smart people who like those movies, but I am not one of them. Yet I bought them (and have since dumped them). I see podcasts from people, like Brandon Chowen (I think is the spelling), whose enthusiasm I get a kick out of…but he’s clearly not watching much of what he’s buying. He’s collecting stuff by directors he’s heard are good and intends to watch one day…but shouldn’t we be collecting because we like something already? Or contains cast/director/writer/genre that means we’d probably be inclined to like it?

That doesn’t mean I am entirely rational. I will get a film noir I don’t particularly like, because that’s a collection I want to maintain. I will hold onto any Hitchcock title, whether I like it or not, because I generally love him and I have a completist streak. Ditto Joseph H. Lewis or Sam Fuller or Brian DePalma. But if it’s a journeyman director, who is sometimes good, sometimes okay, sometimes bad, why not keep just the good?

And as you point out — time is distressingly, frustratingly limited. I am in my seventies…who am I trying to kid about ever watching a fraction of what I’ve collected?

This is art we’re collecting, not baseball cards.

But it’s hard. So hard. I hated To Live and Die in L.A. when I saw it in the theater. Hated it so much it pissed me off. And then I hear Rob Burnett enthuse over it, rhapsodize over it…and I ordered a copy. Arggggggh!

That’s the new rule I want to follow, and it is stupidly obvious: only buy, only keep, what you like. You don’t even have to love it. But at least like it.

* * *

This is a long overdue (in my biased opinion) discussion of why I deserve some credit for the popular Batman character, Harley Quinn.

And the same site, apparently taking the unpopular stand of defending my Batman run, discusses my Robin and how he and I are misunderstood.

Finally, here’s a great review of Fancy Anders Goes to War.

M.A.C.