Hey friends,
It’s been an incredibly busy last few months.
Since January I’ve continued my work with the Alamo Drafthouse, celebrating my tenth year with the company. Despite a global pandemic nearly crippling the theatrical industry, I was lucky to be able to continue to be able to work behind the scenes on creative and marketing for the locations in Katy and El Paso. In April, we opened a gorgeous new location in East El Paso and this upcoming weekend we are reopening our location in Lubbock. In addition, I’ve been doing some work behind the scenes with the amazing folks at Fangoria, assisting with ad sales and partnerships. Most importantly to me, though, is the fact that I wrote a goddamn comic book!
In February I decided to take a script for a narrative podcast that I had written and adapt it into a comic book script. I worked with the amazing artist Debora Lancianese and superstar letterer Jack Morelli to create WHERE WOLF, a nearly 300-page graphic novel about a Texas reporter who goes undercover at a furry convention while on the trail of a werewolf. I’m very proud of the comic book and, as I get closer to its completion, I hope to have news to share about how you’ll be able to read it.
So, all that said, what is this Substack about?
Well, for starters, I’ve missed writing about other stuff besides werewolves. During 2020 I kept a pretty regular schedule posting on a personal blog. As I got heavy into writing WHERE WOLF, though, I let the blog wither, culminating in eventually letting the domain expire this past month. The stuff I wrote is still up there, somewhere, but I’m all about starting from scratch when it comes to new creative projects.
The other thing is that I’m tired of social media. I spend so much time on social media for work that, at the end of the day, I’ll take any opportunity I can get to avoid having to look at Facebook or Twitter. But I want to write and I want to share recommendations for movies and books I’m reading so the answer, at least to me, was this Substack.
Every Tuesday (give or take) I’ll share a post about cool stuff I’ve watched or read, updates on WHERE WOLF or other stuff happening in my life, or whatever else I have a jonesing to write about.
And now, on with the show!
STUFF I WATCHED THIS LAST WEEK:
GHOSTBUSTERS: AFTERLIFE - I saw this at CinemaCon last week. CinemaCon is a big honking convention for movie theater owners and operators. Thousands of folks converge in Las Vegas for a week every year to learn about upcoming movies, discover the latest advancements in Hot Cheeto-flavored concession technologies, shop for new fancy recliners, and enjoy a chance to rub elbows with the industry whose films we support every year. This was my fifth year attending CinemaCon. In previous years, the convention would be a star-packed event - with cameos from folks like The Rock and Tom Cruise dropping by during studio presentations to wave at the audience and promise untold riches if theaters supported their upcoming films. With COVID wrecking all kinds of havoc on the industry this past year, celebrity appearances at CinemaCon were, expectedly, scarce. That said, Sony did bring out Ivan and Jason Reitman to screen the new GHOSTBUSTERS film. I’m not allowed to say much about the movie - but I’ll share that I dug it. It’s a youth-focused, nostalgia-filled cover song of the original film that plays more like STRANGER THINGS than the original GHOSTBUSTERS, but it works and I think audiences will dig it when it comes out in November.
SHANG-CHI AND THE LEGEND OF THE TEN RINGS - Fun film! Tony Leung is fantastic and Marvel Studios continues to knock it out of the park when it comes to taking comic book source material and remixing it for modern audiences into something fresh and exciting.
CLIFFORD THE BIG RED DOG - Pleasent-enough family film with an unexpected but welcome nonetheless cameo from Rosie Perez. The movie is basically OKJA for kids.
CANDYMAN - It was not the film I expected it to be, but I enjoyed it very much! The original is an all-timer but it was also a movie made about black people by very white people. It's great to see black artists who grew up on the original CANDYMAN make the story their own. Philip Glass's CANDYMAN theme is one of the all-time greatest horror themes. Chicago is a beautiful city. Bees are scary. What more do you need to hear?
NIGHT OF THE CREEPS - While revisiting this film, I got so excited when I learned that the song "Let Go" by Intimate Strangers - a song I think of as the theme to MY DEMON LOVER - is also in NIGHT OF THE CREEPS. When I should have been sleeping, instead I was falling down the (admittedly limited) rabbit hole of information online about a band that has an inexplicably large amount of music on the soundtracks for two '80s genre films.
THE SPY WHO LOVED ME - First-time watch. I loved how everybody - from Bond to his villains - all performed as I would in a fight: lumbering, uncoordinated grabassery. It’s an action film made for and by people who spend most of their life sitting on something soft.
THE LADYKILLERS (1955) - First-time watch. After watching THE LADYKILLERS, THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI, and MURDER BY DEATH this year, I've come to the conclusion that it's a big bummer Alec Guinness will be most remembered for STAR WARS. Don't get me wrong, the WARS is an important film - no doubt - but there's no way Obi-Wan Kenobi is anywhere as interesting as some of Guiness' character actor roles throughout his career.
BEYOND THE DOOR III - First-time watch. Finally, a horror film for model train enthusiasts! This mash-up of RUNAWAY TRAIN and THE OMEN finds a virgin on the run from the Serbian villagers that want to meet cute her with Satan. Gnarly deaths by the bushel as a demonic train wrecks havoc.
TRUMAN & TENNESSEE: AN INTIMATE CONVERSATION - Maybe not the flashiest documentary around (it sometimes feels like a glorified Powerpoint presentation) but I really enjoyed the juxtaposition of Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams' career and their relationship with their art. It's a fascinating, breezy film that could have gone on much longer without me noticing - a testament to the writers' voices.
RESERVATION DOGS - If you’re not watching this show on Hulu, you should get on that ASAP. It’s a great, great show about a group of teens living on an American Indian reservation who think of themselves as budding criminals. This past week’s episode was seriously something special. Any show that combines cultural specificity, great dialogue, the casual supernatural, and sooo many WILLOW jokes deserves to run for as many seasons as it wants to.
PEN15 - Hulu released a special animated episode of this wonderful series over the weekend. If you haven’t seen the show, get on that! Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle write and star in this presumably autobiographical series about two middle-school girls struggling with social anxiety. The animated episode was produced due to limitations created by COVID but the crew behind the series use animation to do some great stuff with self-perception and body dysmorphia. I can’t recommend the show enough.
STUFF I READ THIS LAST WEEK:
HOME SICK PILOTS - This comic book from Image follows a group of musicians in the ‘90s whose lives are changed after they encounter a haunted house. Some become ghost hunters, others are turned into supernaturally-charged pilots for giant ghost mechas. Others are just plain slaughtered in incredibly gruesome ways. Casper Winjngaar’s art is unreal - every issue gets better and better. HOME SICK PILOTS is easily one of the best-looking comics out there right now, plus Dan Waters is telling a killer story. This book is weird, wild fun.
THE BOX - Joshua Starnes and Raymond Estrada’s comic book series kicked off its run recently with the release of its first issue. The issue was a fun introduction - laying some great framework for the rest of the comic’s story. A private detective with a magic box is at the center of a conspiracy. Pulp vibes, noir aesthetics. It reminded me of THE LOST ROOM mixed with CAST A DEADLY SPELL.
KING OF NOWHERE - I’m a huge fan of W. Maxwell Prince’s ICE CREAM MAN and I really dug the mini-series he did last year with artist Tyler Jenkins. The comic follows an alcoholic who finds himself in a dreamlike town full of mutants, with little memory of how he got there. More linear than Prince’s work on ICE CREAM MAN, the comic book is like a David Cronenberg Disney cartoon - surreal, colorful body horror fantasy.
That’s it for this week. More recommendations and other brain droppings next Tuesday.