The Soundtrack of L.A.

The perfect music to drive around LA to: Alain Goraguer's score to FANTASTIC PLANET. Like the film itself, L.A. is an alien world so arcane that it makes little or no sense to all but a few of its residents. (And I say that warmly... I like the town.)

Talking with the old guys again

I visited an elderly screenwriter yesterday who had begun his career fresh out of NYU in 1951, writing for the very first tv science fiction anthology series and some of the earliest sf comic books. He said that he disliked Columbia Pictures boss Harry Cohn so much, he sneaked into Cohn's personal gold-plated bathroom, pissed in the john, and left it as a little golden present for The Boss. I got the writer's autograph and only when I got home did I discover his inscription: "Thank you for making me feel like a young writer again."

Bradbury knew...

Ray Bradbury knew that hipsters were a damn nuisance, even fifty years ago when they went by other names. At Disneyland, he wrote, there are "No Cool people with Cool faces pretending not to care, thus swindling themselves out of life or any chance for life." Thank you for the millionth time, Ray!

If there IS a hell...

If there IS a hell, rest assured that a Phish cover band is playing there.

My eulogy for Robert Fuest

http://www.videowatchdog.com/home/home.html

My eulogy of my dear friend, director Bob Fuest, appears in the May issue of Video Watchdog (#168). After interviewing Bob many times and reading extensively about him and his work, I filled the article with as much fresh, new information about him as I possibly could.

I'm in L'ecran Fantastique

http://www.ecranfantastique.net/home/

Check out the May issue of L'ecran Fantastique (#331) for my interview with William Goldstein, the creator of THE ABOMINABLE DR. PHIBES.

Memorable Movie-going Moments

An old writer told me about seeing EASY RIDER in 1968 or '69 at the Grandin Theater in Roanoke, Virginia. As the movie ended, with Hopper's and Fonda's characters lying dead, a hippie stood up in the front of the theater and said, "YOU SEE THAT! YOU killed those boys!" A redneck in the back of the theater hollered back: "You shut the hell up, boy, or we gonna kill you next!"

Whatever happened to that kind of audience participation? The kind that didn't involve cellphones?