Posts Tagged ‘True Noir: The Assassination of Anton Cermak’

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Death by Blue Christmas & True Noir Kicks

Tuesday, September 24th, 2024

Last week’s update/blog was very short and I didn’t bother to post it to the various Facebook pages that follow me. So if that’s where you generally see these posts, you may wish to catch up with last week’s right now.

The truth is last week I forgot all about writing a post until my son Nate (who handles this for me) called me last minute wondering why I hadn’t sent it. This is the first time that ever happened and I’ve been writing these weekly posts for…ever.

Am I getting old and possibly senile? At least one of those two things is true and the other may be inevitable. But let me speak just a moment about the notion that I am the hardest working man in show business. People often comment on the prodigious amount of work I turn out. My standard response is, “Nobody sends money to my house if I don’t.”

I am undoubtedly a fast writer. Not Bob Randisi fast, but pretty, pretty fast, as Larry David might say. Nonetheless the amount of work I’ve produced is based on a couple of things: (a) slow and steady wins the race, and (b) I’ve been publishing since 1972. Do the math. No, really – do the math…I’m shit at it.

Several people have commented on how amazing it is that we shot our movie Death by Fruitcake in two weeks, then turned around and had it edited and essentially finished within another three weeks (the “we” being editor/d.p. Chad Bishop and me). What gets lost in that shuffle is that we’d been planning the movie since around April and I’d been full-time on pre-production starting the first of July.

This was a kind of experiment for me to see if I could do another movie at my age. We’d done Mickey Spillane’s Encore for Murder in 2022, but that was primarily a radio-style stage play that we shot in dress rehearsal and its one performance, then edited into a movie or program or…something. (You can find it as a special feature on the expanded Mike Hammer’s Mickey Spillane Blu-ray or on its own DVD, or on several streaming services. Gary Sandy is a wonderful Hammer.)

Encore got my filmmaking juices going again and we made Blue Christmas last year for release, well, right about now or anyway very soon. Some of you know that my novella, “A Wreath for Marley,” is a favorite of mine among my work. And maybe a few know that it was planned to be the follow-up to my movie Mommy back in the mid-‘90s, but when a sequel to that surprise success shouldered its way into the front of the line, Blue Christmas got lost in the shuffle (to mix a bunch of metaphors).

Many years later (last year specifically) I figured out a way to make Blue Christmas on one set, essentially, and on a six-day schedule. My longtime collaborator Phil Dingeldein helped make that happen, and my editor/co-producer Chad Bishop brought it home.

Death by Fruitcake grew out of two things – the desire to make a second Christmas movie, since Blue Christmas was warmly received in its advance screenings and had stoked our ability to get VCI and MVD to bring it out on physical media. The other factor was the frustration Barb and I have had with our Antiques comic cozy mystery series almost becoming a TV series a bunch of times. We decided to make an indie movie and show Hollywood how it can be done.

Here is the trailer, which Chad put together and I tweaked a little bit; I think it’s rather wonderful.

And let us not forget that Blue Christmas comes out this holiday season. I was delighted when Diabolik, my favorite source for boutique physical media (that is, Blu-rays and 4K’s), picked our movie to showcase on their great site. You can pre-order it from them (or Amazon and a few other places) but here is the Diabolik link.

And in case you didn’t take a peek at it previously, here’s our Blue Christmas trailer.

Many of the Blue Christmas actors return in Death by Fruitcake, including star Rob Merritt, who is probably the most prolific and popular actor in Iowa. And we showcase Midwestern broadcasting legend Paula Sands (who was in Mommy’s Day!) and American Idol’s Alisabeth Von Presley as Vivian and Brandy Borne. They are, I have to say, wonderful in it. Barb agrees.

We hope to have a few premiere Fruitcake screenings here in Iowa yet this year, perhaps in tandem with promised runs at various Iowa movie theaters. Stay tuned for info.

But wait, there’s more!

The ten-part immersive radio drama, True Noir: The Assassination of Anton Cermak, successfully achieved its KickStarter goal and then some. You can read about it (and pre-order True Noir in several forms) right here.

In case you’ve arrived at this party late, True Noir is my 350-page adaptation of the first Heller novel, True Detective, directed by the great Robert Meyer Burnett and with an astonishing all-star cast headed up by Michael Rosenbaum. I’ve been attending many of the recording sessions via Zoom, and have heard advance examples of what Rob Burnett is turning out, and I can only say this will be one of the true (get it?) highlights of my long and lucky career.

True Noir has been getting considerable press attention. Check this out.

What else is happening?

Return of the Maltese Falcon awaits.

In other news, I have once again seen my reviled Batman work proving useful to Hollywood creators. I should say “seen,” because I haven’t watched the new Penguin series that recycles my origin of Robin (i.e., a little hoodlum who steals hubcabs). I haven’t watched the Penguin series because it’s obviously a reflection on how Batman keeps getting taken way too seriously. The whimsical villain the Penguin becoming a gritty noir character just has me shaking my head…although I realize I’m condemning something I haven’t watched, and certain people I respect like it. But, hey –- I’m the guy who never watched Wild Dog on Arrow. I had to bitch to get compensated for the use of that Collins/Beatty character, which may explain why I choose to do so little comics work these days.

Anyway, you can read about Penguin and me right here.

M.A.C.

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Fruitcake Warming in the Oven & True Noir Makes its Goal!

Tuesday, September 17th, 2024

This very brief update is because the producer/editor of Death by Fruitcake and I having been working like the madmen we are, and have just completed a rough cut of our movie, having completed principle photography Aug. 31 and Second Unit photography on Sept. 9.


Left to right: Rob Merritt, Paula Sands, M.A.C., Alisabeth Von Presley.

We are still burrowed in with much left to do, despite the enormous amount of work we’ve accomplished in a short period of time.

During that period of time I’ve also sat in (via Zoom) on four four-hour recording sessions with star Michael Rosenbaum (Nathan Heller!) and director Robert Meyer Burnett on True Noir: The Assassination of Anton Cermak, a ten-part immersive, all-star audio novel based on my novel True Detective and scripted by me.

Our Kickstarter recently reached its goal of $30,000 and then some – as I write this it’s at $51,071! This is largely due to Rob Burnett’s efforts on YouTube, which include a last-minute Jerry Lewis-style pseudo-telethon that put us over the hump.

We have around six weeks past our goal deadline for you to take advantage of the perks. If you’re a Nate Heller fan, do not miss this. The cast is incredible, and I hear the script is very, very good…

In the meantime, my in-progress Return of the Maltese Falcon for Hard Case Crime continues to attract more attention than I could ever have imagined. It’s a project I’ve been dreaming of doing for literally decades.

M.A.C.

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The Falcon Returns, Nate Heller Is Cast & Fruitcake Wraps!!!

Tuesday, September 10th, 2024

Some of you may have seen this elsewhere on Facebook, but this is exciting news I’m glad to share. My long intention to write a sequel to The Maltese Falcon, which I consider to be the greatest private eye novel ever written (and the one establishing all of the conventions of the genre), has become a reality. Read about it below.

Novelist Dashiell Hammett, author of “The Maltese Falcon” appears in New York on Nov. 7, 1947. (AP Photo/EF, File)
By HILLEL ITALIE

NEW YORK (AP) — The story of one of the great fictional sleuths, Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade, will be continued by prize-winning crime writer Max Allan Collins.

The publisher Hard Case Crime announced Thursday that Collins’ “The Return of the Maltese Falcon” will be released in January 2026, when the Hammett classic featuring Spade, “The Maltese Falcon,” enters the public domain. “The Maltese Falcon,” published in 1930 and known to movie fans for the 1941 adaptation starring Humphrey Bogart, is widely regarded as a model for the hard-boiled detective novel.

“It has been an inspiration to authors and filmmakers, actors and illustrators and musicians — and to me, for the entire 50-plus years I’ve been a novelist,” Collins said in a statement. “Not that writing about the world Hammett created, and those immortal, sometimes immoral characters isn’t challenging — Hammett’s best mystery also happens to be one of the greatest American novels, period.”

When copyright protection ends for a book, anyone is free to use the characters and story line. After F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” entered the public domain, in 2021, new creations included a Tony-winning musical of the same name and a prequel novel, “Nick,” by Michael Farris Smith.

According to Hard Case Crime, Collins’ new book will bring back Spade and Joel Cairo among other Hammett characters, and “a mysterious new femme fatale.” Collins, whose “Road to Perdition” was adapted into a film starring Tom Hanks and Paul Newman, has a long history of working with famous literary detectives. He took over the Dick Tracy comic strip in the late 1970s after creator Chester Gould retired, and he was later authorized to continue Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer series.

“I’m something of an old hand at walking in the shoes of the giants who came before, though I never claim to filling them,” Collins told The Associated Press.

Various authorized Spade projects have been released, including a 2009 prequel, Joe Gores’ “Spade & Archer,” a novel about Spade and his professional partner, Miles Archer. Spade was featured this year in an AMC miniseries, “Monsieur Spade,” starring Clive Owen in a sequel that finds the detective retired and living in the South of France.

The coverage of this announced Maltese Falcon sequel has attracted attention to me and my work more extensively than anything else in my memory, including Road to Perdition.

The other really important thing this week is the impending end of the Kickstarter campaign for True Noir, which is my adaptation of my Best Novel Shamus award-winning True Detective as a ten-part audio drama directed by Robert Meyer Burnett. If you’ve sampled this update/blog lately, you know that we have an amazing cast.

Big news is this: Michael Rosenbaum (of Smallville and Guardians of the Galaxy fame) has been cast as Nathan Heller. He’s been recording the role already and is fantastic.

Time is running out – three (3) days left to help back this project. If you’re any kind of fan of mine, you won’t want to miss it.

Finally, with the exception of a few Second Unit shots, we have completed filming of Death by Fruitcake. Specifically, we shot the beginning and ending of the film, at Meg’s Vintage Collective here in Muscatine. Chad Bishop and I are hard at work (and it’s going well and fast) in the editing suite.

We had a wrap party of sorts at Boonie’s in Muscatine, where a sandwich called the Max Collins Turkey Burger is on the menu. Appears I have arrived…from the kitchen, anyway.


Alisabeth Von Presley, Barb Collins,, M.A.C., Paula Sands.

Alisabeth, Meg McCarthy of Meg’s Vintage Collective, Paula.

M.A.C. directs Paula and Alisabeth, Chad Bishop shoots.

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
* * *

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.)
* * *

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.)
* * *

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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