Max Allan Collins's Blog, page 8

You Tube and Me (And How to Be a Fiction Writer!)

I have gotten into the habit of looking at a lot of YouTube of late. Working on a big project like True Noir – the ten scripts for a massive audio production of the first Nathan Heller novel, True Detective (1983) – I find the bite-size offerings that YouTube serves up make ideal late night comfort food. Earlier in the evening, I have usually watched a movie on physical media with either my wife Barb or my son Nate – who comes down from his house up the street after he and his wife Abby manage to get our two grandkids Sam and Lucy to bed – and don’t feel like digging into another feature-length presentation.

The algorithm YouTube uses to generate new offerings on their “recommended” feed – fed by what you last watched and by your subscriptions – means there’s always something new to watch. Unfortunately the flaw is that if you sample something just to get a look at it in the “what’s this about?” sense, you get barraged with material generated by that sampling. Look at one Jordan Peterson video and you’ll get ten more. Look at one Jimmy Carr video and get you swamped in those, but also other “offensive” comedians. Check out Steve Schmidt’s The Warning and receive an avalanche of anti-Trump material. Videos on filmmaking often attract my attention, particularly ones on micro-budget indies.

Sometimes that’s okay. You learn things and at times your interests are fed (as opposed to simply your curiosity). I watched a Ballistics Burgers video and enjoyed it and now I’m on my way to learning how to make a delicious cheeseburger, if I ever get around to trying. And the algorithm thing led me to Robert Meyer Burnett of Robservations and Let’s Get Physical Media, who is now my collaborator on the Nathan Heller audio project, and Heath Holland, whose Cereal at Midnight I am now guesting regularly on (or irregularly – about once a month). Both Rob and Heath are now good and valued friends of mine.

You quickly learn that some of the presenters on YouTube are naturals at it – like Rob and Heath – and others are just guys in their basements with the appeal and communication skills of somebody who just starts talking to you in the supermarket. A YouTube video with a subject that interests you, or just intrigues you, is not guaranteed to include a presenter who ought to be presenting. It’s a democratic landscape, but we all know democracy is messy.

Recently I checked out a few videos purporting to teach novices how to write. I am always willing to learn – after all, I’ve only been doing this since I was in junior high in the early 1960s, and writing professionally since 1971. I have since been bombarded by tips on how to avoid “filter words” (a very popular phrase right now) and words to never use (like “very,” which I just did).

What is disconcerting about these videos – and I’ve sampled a bunch, meaning my YouTube feed will drown me in the damn things for a while – is they feature (A) very young writers…damn, I did it again!…or (B) writers you’ve never heard of, or (C), young writers you’ve never heard of. Many tend to be young woman (under thirty) who speak with clear-eyed confidence in training others how to do what has enabled them to become successful writers. Being a successful writer among these self-appointed teachers of the craft often means they self-publish, though that fact is usually glossed over quickly.

Not all of this advice is good, but neither is it necessarily bad. But who are these people, except up-talking young ‘uns who have no business giving advice to anyone? Never mind, because (as I say) not all their advice is bad, and they often do discuss important topics like writing a good first sentence and whether or not to outline.

The problem, beyond too much self-confidence and an overwhelming desire to fill a YouTube screen with their face, is that fiction writing can’t really, not exactly, be taught. I used to do seminars – for a long time, it was every summer at Augustana College in Rock Island, and a lot of my attendees went on to successfully publish – but I always made the point that fiction writing has no rules, just strategies. No right or wrong, just what works. For you. The individual.

I had tips and shared them. For example, I discouraged opening with a line of dialogue, a practice in which a lot of writers (including published ones, even successful ones) indulge. I would point out to those attending the seminars that opening with dialogue does not tell you enough – you don’t know who is speaking or where they are uttering this supposedly reader-catching bit of fake human speech.

Both opening with dialogue and avoiding doing so, however, are a strategies. Tactics. Not rules.

I have written here before about how useless I consider advice from the likes of Elmore Leonard and Stephen King is to wannabe authors. Not because I think Leonard and King are bad, but precisely because they are good. Better than good. They are great storytellers who have developed their methods by trial and error, and by having grown up as little Leonards and Kings consuming a lot of narrative storytelling, both novels and movies and maybe even the occasional play.

No quick path to learning how to write fiction is available. None. You have to be obsessive about storytelling – wanting to tell stories, wanting to read/see/and-ultimately create stories. But it’s mostly strategy.

What should the first line be? Is the basic story I have in mind better served by first person prose or third person? How is point of view best served in this piece of fiction? The answers to such questions come from the individual writers.

James M. Cain
Mickey Spillane
Donald E. Westlake

James M. Cain taught me to write dialogue (also Jack Webb on 1950s Dragnet). I never met Cain (or Webb), but they taught me by example. Raymond Chandler and Mark Twain schooled me in writing in first person. I came to know – personally know – Mickey Spillane and Donald E. Westlake. But I learned writing action/violence scenes from Mickey and sublime point-of-view technique from Don, long before I met either one outside of the pages of their books.

Some young blue-eyed girl, staring out at you from the television (or “monitor,” to you younger folks) is not going to tell you what a grown-ass woman like Fannie Flagg or even Ayn Rand will. Rand is a good example because she did a lot of things wrong, but also a lot of things right. That kind of successful writer can stimulate thinking along the “I should do this but not that” line. People of less than genius intelligence (like me) can learn more from Harold Robbins in The Carpetbaggers than Marcel Proust in Remembrance of Things Past – particularly when you are starting out to teach yourself in junior high school.

I don’t mean to pick on the females here, because plenty of guys – particularly in the screenwriting area – are turning their own experiences into rules for the easily swayed. I started watching a video where the interviewer was acting like he was in the presence of a real master of the craft – Robert Towne, maybe, or (again) Elmore Leonard – and when the uber-confident dispenser of screenwriting craft’s credit was finally mentioned, the guy had written a Charlie’s Angel movie.

When I was doing seminars, I worked with a lot of young women of all ages who wanted to be romance writers when they grew up (some of these young women were twenty, others sixty with all stops between). They did a lot of things right, in their fiction, and often came together in writers’ groups and helped each other learn and grow. I found then, and believe now, that this kind of thing is positive. Workshops, like the Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa where I fought many battles, gets you down in the trenches with other writers, discussing specifics like plot and character, not “rules,” learning tactics, not “never use adverbs.”

Most of the people telling you never to use adverbs do so in sentences that contain adverbs.

There is only one teacher who can teach you writing: you. The fiction you love will guide the way. Looking at novels and stories (and movies) that are favorites of yours, but doing so in an analytic way, can be helpful. Hitchcock can teach any writer and that isn’t even what he’s trying to do.

Of the young, clear-eyed women teaching others how to write on YouTube (often with pets lurking in the background, scene-stealing), almost none of them discuss first-person writing, or understand that many of the “filter” words to avoid are crucial to writing effective first-person. Barb and I (as “Barbara Allan”) use two narrators in the Antiques novels, neither of whom is a trained writer, which is a great source of fun for us in the books and, we hope, for readers.

One of these very young (“very” again!) writers weighed in on a topic I’ve explored here quite a bit – the wrestling match I sometimes have with editors and even readers about my insistence on describing what a character is wearing. This young writer said she got around that by simply stating something along the lines of “Joe was a sharp dresser” and never describing Joe’s wardrobe again in any way throughout the novel. That’s a choice. A tactic. But I consider physical description and a rundown on wardrobe to be key elements of characterization, at least as I approach it.

That’s all for today. I have Steve Schmidt and Jordan Peterson videos to watch.

* * *

The first Quarry’s Return reviewer has appeared and it’s a nice one.

How to read the Nolan books in chronological order.

And Road to Perdition is once again cited as an outstanding film from a comics source.

M.A.C.

Eliot Ness, Quarry, Writing Series Characters and More

My YouTube appearances with Heath Holland at his Cereal at Midnight continue, with what I think is the best so far: a discussion of Eliot Ness on screen, kicked off by the current Blu-ray edition of The Scarface Mob from Eureka.

Also on the YouTube front, Robert Meyer Burnett, on his Robservations and Let’s Get Physical Media, continues to provide updates on his audio “movie for the ears” adaptation of my novel True Detective. It’s called True Noir: The Casebooks of Nathan Heller, and I am writing the scripts myself. I have delivered the first seven of ten of what will be a fully immersive audio presentation directed by Rob, with an incredible Hollywood cast, and will run at least five hours.

Todd Stashwick of Picard and Twelve Monkeys (and much else) makes a terrific Nate Heller. If this project resonates with the public, look for three more Heller novels to become movies for the mind, all adapted by Heller’s creator himself.

You know – me.

* * *

Paperback Warrior posted the cover of the upcoming (it’s a fall release from Hard Case Crime) Quarry’s Return. That was a post on X, which I guess is what they’re calling Twitter now. It’s from Elon Musk, who named a ship after Ms. Tree, then didn’t follow up on his people asking to license the name from Terry Beatty and me. Somehow I’m reminded of the penny-pinching kazillionaires in classic Li’l Abner by Al Capp.

But since this cover image is floating around out there, I thought I should share it, though we’re a few months away from the novel’s release. I didn’t expect to be writing another novel about Quarry in his (ahem) later years; but sequels have a way of worming into my brain as if I were a Presidential candidate and then percolating there (that’s what we writer folks call a mixed metaphor).

Now I have a notion for yet another “old Quarry” story that is wormily percolating, and we’ll see. I had thought that The Last Quarry would be the last Quarry; but then a whole slew (past tense of “slay”) of ‘em followed, filling in the blanks of his life and varied career. Then came Quarry’s Blood, which was really designed to be the last, only when it was warmly received for a book about a cold-blooded killer, I changed my mind (again). And now here’s Quarry’s Return, with Quarry again a geriatric retired hitman kicking younger ass.

It isn’t that I was planning to retire the character. I figured I might do the occasional younger Quarry novel while I am still above ground. I am never anxious to retire a character completely, in my imagination anyway. It wasn’t hard at all to bring Nolan and Jon back in Skim Deep something like forty years later. I knocked on their door and they promptly answered, not much the worse for wear.

I think the reason why I’ve stayed with my series characters is that good ones don’t come along that often. The only one I’ve really consciously retired is Mallory, because there really isn’t a premise there to generate more novels, and anyway he’s essentially me and that bores my ass off.

But I will never understand mystery and suspense writers who do a new character each and every time. Most of these scribes, well, many of them are simply hanging a new name on the old character. Also, I am too aware of how unsuccessful some incredible writers have been, trying to create a second series character. You may have noticed, if you’ve been paying very close attention, that I like Mickey Spillane – the man and his writing. But what’s your favorite Spillane series character after Mike Hammer? And Velda and Pat Chambers don’t count. (Velda could carry a novel, and some would say she carried a whole comic book series under a separate name. Hint: Ms. Tree. But can you imagine the sheer snooze factor of a Pat Chambers novel?)

So with apologies to you Tiger Mann fans, Mike Hammer can’t be created twice. Edgar Rice Burroughs came close by writing John Carter of Mars, but that character was no Tarzan (and Carson of Venus wasn’t even Carter). Going back to Mickey, his second greatest series protagonist was Morgan the Raider (The Delta Factor); but I had to finish the only other book that character generated (The Consummata) from a few chapters in Mickey’s files.

Barb, a while back (in the throes of writing an Antiques novel and enduring the suffering that process creates in my talented wife), started talking about ending that series, fed up with the difficulties of generating more stories about Vivian and Brandy Borne. I insisted that she stick with it (not that my insistence carried any particular weight) because the Borne girls are fabulous fictional creations, in my unhumble opinion. They live and breathe on the page, and act of their own volition, as all great series characters do.

Here’s the thing: Rex Stout was a genius. His Nero Wolfe books are among the most readable and re-readable novels of any kind ever written. No other two fictional characters live and breathe like Wolfe and Archie. They are as good as fiction gets in the world of the creation of mystery genre recurring characters. Holmes and Watson never breathed as fully, and before Nero and Archie, they were the top.

And yet Rex Stout’s publisher kept after him to create another series. And of course he was a smashing success with his other incredibly famous character, Tecumseh Fox. Right? Right? Okay, how about Alphabet Hicks? There’s a banger of a character! Or how about giving Inspector Cramer a mystery of his own? Or that famous female PI, Dol Bonner?

Nope. One of the few true geniuses of mystery fiction, Rex Stout, stunk up the place with these more contrived creations. So I’m of the opinion that when a mystery writer stumbles upon a character that resonates with the public, said mystery writer should give the public what they want.

Are there dangers? Yes, artistic ones. For example, what if I’d been hugely successful right out of the gate with Nolan, who was after all an homage to Don Westlake’s Parker (“homage,” as we all know, is French for “rip-off”). I might still be writing nothing but Nolan books. I’d have written, say, 40 or 50 Nolan and Jon novels…selling millions…and writing nothing else.

Writers do need to flex their talents. That’s why Robert B. Parker wrote westerns on the side and did his own unsuccessful Dol Bonner-type female private eye novel. So it’s risky, sticking with one series. I do think, with the Antiques books, you have two interacting characters – like Archie and Wolfe – who provide a kind of engine for the story beyond the plot machinations.

Mickey wrote about Mike Hammer throughout his sporadic career. Early on he came to feel he’d characterized Hammer so fully, there wasn’t anything else to say. He compensated by writing Tiger Mann and some standalones, though he drifted back to what was essentially the same protagonist under various names. What kept him artistically sane (not a word used much in relation to Mike Hammer, I grant you) was his decision to make Hammer always reflect where he, Mickey Spillane, was in his life. He allowed Hammer to grow somewhat older (not realistically so, but older) and to allow this indomitable character to have frailties – Hammer went on a seven-year drunk; he was, in several novels (including some I completed) recovering from wounds or otherwise physically impaired. This reflected Spillane’s own advancing years, and the on-and-off nature of his writing career.

Look, every mystery writer – every writer – has to do this his or her own way. I am only suggesting that for me it’s been an interesting, rewarding ride, following my characters through their advancing years (and mine). That was true of Nate Heller in the current Too Many Bullets. It was true of Nolan and Jon in Skim Deep. And Quarry in Quarry’s Blood and Quarry’s Return. And if I ever return to Ms. Tree, you can bet your ass she’ll be in menopause.

* * *

Speaking of Ms. Tree, Terry and I are working on the sixth and final Titan volume of the collected Ms. Tree, which gathers almost everything he and I did with the character and her supporting cast (no The P.I.s, though). She had an impressive dozen-year comics run (1981 – 1993) and represents one of the most gratifying collaborations I’ve ever enjoyed. Terry Beatty and I, I am glad to say, will always be thought of by many comics fans as a team.

Right now Terry is working on helping put together (much as he has on the Titan volumes of collected Ms. Tree) our Dark Horse Johnny Dynamite graphic novel, Underworld, in an improved publication that will happen later this year.

It’s an enduring frustration to me that we both worked on Batman but never together. And that we both did syndicated comic strips (Dick Tracy and Rex Morgan respectively), but not as a team. He’s still doing Rex Morgan, but he doesn’t need me – he writes it himself. I like to think he had a good teacher.

As for Dick Tracy, the VCI Blu-ray collection of the four RKO Tracy feature films – with two new commentaries by me and lots of bonus features – will be out in early August.

Getting back to Ms. Tree, here’s Comic Book Treasury’s best crime comics write-up (it invokes Road to Perdition, but lists Ms. Tree).

And speaking of Collins/Beatty, here’s a look at Wild Dog at Tvtropes. It says: “The series was writted by Max Allan Collins with art by Terry Beatty.” I don’t know who “writted” this otherwise nice piece.

M.A.C.

True Noir News, Another Nomination Plus a Serving of Fudge

The crowd-funding effort at Kickstarter for True Noir: The Casebooks of Nathan Heller has been postponed until June (exact date to be shared when I know what it is) because we’d be in conflict with another crowd-funder our star Todd Stashwick is involved with. We don’t want to be competing with somebody in the family. (True Noir is directed by Robert Meyer Burnett and is a fully immersive audio drama. In production now!)

Also, I’m going to be announcing soon the next indie film I’m doing, and I won’t be crowd-funding that, either. But any of you who are interested in contributing to the production will be invited to contact me directly. Associate Producer credits and first edition books of your choice will be in the offing.

* * *

After all the talk about winning and losing awards last week, another nomination has popped up for Spillane: King of Pulp Fiction by Jim Traylor and me. I’ve spoken here before about how meaningful this work is to both my co-author and myself – our many decades-long friendship grew out of the need for two Spillane enthusiasts to work together on one Spillane literary bio. We were stymied a bit by Mickey’s insistence that he would cooperate but only in terms of a book about the Mike Hammer/Mickey Spillane by examining his fiction and limiting the biographical material to a short single chapter.

Mickey wanted to write his own biography – that is, autobiography – but he never got around to it. He did cooperate with me (and how) on doing a documentary on his life and work, which became Mike Hammer’s Mickey Spillane (1998), which has been expanded by my collaborator Phil Dingeldein and myself into a special edition now available from VCI (and on Amazon, of course). As a bonus feature it includes the 90-minute program (kinda a movie), Mickey Spillane’s Encore For Murder, the radio-style play we mounted here in Muscatine, Iowa, as a fund raiser for the local art museum. My Mommy’s Day star (co-star with Patty McCormack), Gary Sandy (of WKRP in Cincinnati fame) came in to play Mike Hammer. Gary was so terrific that, at the last moment, I decided to record the show (and our little movie version was edited by Chad Bishop and myself from one dress rehearsal and the lone performance).

Some of you will recall a longer radio version of Encore was done for Brilliance (there were two done, both Audie Award nominees and one winning, The Little Death) with Stacy Keach in his iconic role as Mike Hammer. Gary portrayed Hammer for me in two stage productions of Encore, one at Owensboro, Kentucky, another at Clearwater, Florida.

Anyway, the Spillane documentary is available on Blu-ray as mentioned above, with the 90-minute Encore for Murder as a special feature. Encore is also available alone as a DVD.

Some years ago, in its first incarnation, Mike Hammer’s Mickey Spillane won an Award of Excellence from the Iowa Motion Picture Association. And in 2023 I unexpectedly won Best Director from the Iowa Motion Picture awards for the production. So there have been various awards, I’m happy to say, connected to all of these endeavors.

We, of course, lost the Edgar (as I expected to) to a bio of James Elroy (not my favorite author). And now we’re up against that book, and a number of others, nominated for the non-fiction Anthony, the awards named for critic Anthony Boucher given at Bouchercon. I’ve won one of those before, in 2005, for The History of Mystery (written with George Hagenauer). I’m not going to Bouchercon in Nashville, August 28 – September 1, as I’ll be shooting my next indie movie at the time. Because it’s a fan event with the voting going on at the event, it would be a good thing to be there, since that amps up your possibility of winning. And I’ve been to many a Bouchercon, but just can’t make this one.

Which makes this a good time to request that those of you attending Bouchercon 2024, who liked the Spillane book, consider voting for it.

But, as I discussed here last week, I really did and do consider the Edgar nomination a major victory for this biographical study of the genre’s most controversial figure. And I could not be more thrilled by this surprise Anthony nomination – and I know editor Otto Penzler, co-author Jim Traylor and, hell, my agent Dominick Abel are also pleased.

To those of you out there whose votes got us included among the nominees, you have my sincere thanks. Two nominations among the handful of the genre’s major awards (no, it’s not a leg lamp) are nothing to sneeze at. And I ain’t sneezing.

Speaking of awards, I’m going to provide a window onto a January 1968 performance on The Ed Sullivan Show by a rock group that is not in the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame. This may seem like a non sequitur to some, but longtime fans/readers of mine will probably recall that (as is the case with Bobby Darin) I am a huge fan of that particular, incredibly great, historically significant and hugely influential band who have been roundly forgotten by the rock organization that is too busy giving out its awards to Hip Hoppers and country western artists than to recognize true pioneers in the field.

But, as my wife says to me frequently, “At least you’re not bitter.”

M.A.C.

Winning and Losing

NEWS FLASH: True Noir: The Nathan Heller Casebooks, the ten-episode full-cast, fully immersive audio adaptation of the first Heller novel (True Detective) is now in production! The Kickstarter crowd-funding effort will go live soon, to enable us to add physical media and other bells and whistles to the project. Watch Robert Meyer Burnett’s various YouTube shows and appearances for ongoing updates.

* * *

We did rather well at the Iowa Motion Picture Awards (held in Forest City, Iowa, on May 4).

Actor – Award of Achievement
Blue Christmas
Rob Merritt

Actress – Award of Excellence
Blue Christmas
Alisabeth Von Presley

Direction – Long Form (60 minutes +) – Award of Achievement
Blue Christmas
Max Allan Collins, Chad Bishop

Screenplay (Produced) – Award of Excellence
Blue Christmas
Max Allan Collins

We were also nominated in the Best Feature Film category and Best Supporting Actor (Chris Causey as Jake Marley).

<img src="http://maxallancollins.com/news/20240... were any number of categories we were not considered in, because every category you enter in this award competition comes with a somewhat stiff entry fee. I settled on what I thought we had a chance at winning (roughly speaking, the Award of Excellence is first place, the Award of Achievement is second place).</p><p>What I like about the Iowa Motion Picture Awards is that each category has a separate slate of judges (and the second round is out-of-state). That gives a film several bites at the apple…though you have to pay for each bite.</p><p>This is, in a way, an important competition for us, because we were looking to do well enough to be able to legitimately put some impressive-sounding Laurel wreaths on our poster and on the Blu-ray and DVD sleeves. And we accomplished that. This is preferable to, say, the Cedar Rapids Film Festival, where they have a large slate of awards but only two awards (essentially first and second place) apply to indie feature film projects, the rest to corporate and student. No acting, writing, directing awards. That means being an official entry, as we were in that festival, is an accomplishment in itself; but it isn’t as impressive as, say, Best Actress.</p><p>I had originally hoped to attend the Iowa Motion Picture Awards, but it’s a twelve- hour round trip drive from Muscatine, Iowa, to Forest City, Iowa. And we had a conflict, too, which had us cancelling our motel room at the last minute and not making the trip. Our star, Rob Merritt – who won several awards not just for our production but a couple of others (he’s the busiest actor in Iowa and for good reason) – was there to represent us, as was Jake Marley, that is, Chris Causey.</p><div class="center" style="margin-bottom:2.5em"><img src="http://maxallancollins.com/news/20240... had also decided not to attend the Edgar Awards, which were just a few days before the Iowa Motion Picture Awards. That was a different situation. For one thing, we figured the NYC trip would cost probably at least $3000 and that was a conservative estimate. For another, the minute I saw that a biography of James Elroy was nominated in the same category as my (and Jim Traylor’s) Mickey Spillane bio, I knew we were (what is the term?) fucked.</p><p>Elroy is inexplicably (from my biased viewpoint) a writer worshiped by any number of readers, reviewers and, of course, Elroy himself. He’s the only writer whose work I truly despise. I have not hidden this view, nor have I hidden that it likely derives from my being jealous because he’s hugely successful working my side of the historical street. And I also have not hidden the fact that any number of smart people think he’s a genius.</p><p>The thought of shelling out three or more grand to go to New York and sit through a long evening to watch a book about a writer I abhor beat a book about a writer I admire was just one rubber chicken too far. There’s an irony here, of course, which is that many in the mystery field still feel about Mickey Spillane the way I feel about James Elroy. It just goes to show what a sick sense of humor God has (it’s uncomfortably like my own).</p><p>I have nothing against the writer of that book or the book itself, not having read it. It came down to, “Is this how I want to spend three grand?”</p><p>And it was a good call.</p><p>The award – the reward – for our Edgar-nominated book is the book itself. I am so happy to have written it and found in Jim Traylor a copasetic collaborator and in Otto Penzler an enthusiastic publisher/editor, who has a true affinity for the mystery genre and its history. I wouldn’t trade our book for a barrel of Edgars.</p><p>It is kind of funny that an Elroy book beat us.</p><p>Of course, in that same category there were two books about Poe (after whom the award was named) and another by an author who passed away recently, so even if the Elroy bio hadn’t been there, one of those would have likely beat us. And since I haven’t read any of the competition (including the Elroy bio), I have no opinion as to the quality of those books – any one of them could be better than ours…including the Elroy one.</p><p>Two Poe books up for the Edgars reminds me of when I was a presenter at the Eisner Awards at San Diego Comic Con a while back, and one of the two guys up for the award was Will Eisner himself. And I said to the audience, “I’m not sure which is worse – being up against Will Eisner for the Eisner, or being Will Eisner and losing the Eisner.” (He won.)</p><p>I should probably not be talking about this at all. Frankly, I’ve always been somebody who wants to be outspoken and yet loved by everyone…in other words, something that has zero chance of ever happening. To anyone. But it has made me reflect on my competitive nature and my desire to win. Which may be a little sick, but what would a desire to lose be but psychotic?</p><p>For me the ultimate award was being made a Grand Master Edgar winner by the Mystery Writers of America. That was something I had hoped for and dreamed about for decades. Anything else that followed would be gravy. So why at this late date do I still care about winning awards?</p><p>Actually, the people who say it’s a win just being nominated aren’t wrong. A few years ago, Jim Traylor and I did a really good book on Spillane and the film/TV adaptations and did not get nominated at all. Neither of the massive, extensively researched and groundbreaking Ness non-fiction books with Brad Schwartz – one about the Capone years, the other about Cleveland and the rest of Ness’s life – even got a nomination. So you bet it’s a “win” to be nominated.</p><p>But what is not a win is sitting through an endless banquet waiting to hear if you win or (much more likely) lose. I think I’m done with that. It’s a masochistic pursuit that, in the greater schemes of things, adds up to nothing. It’s much better to be at home, minding your own business, and learn by phone or e-mail that you’ve just lost or even won.</p><p>Don’t get me wrong. Awards are great, and so are nominations. But let me briefly return to the subject of bad reviews. As I mentioned last week (I think it was), I have been blessed with many good and some even great reviews. Even at this late date, the occasional bad one stings. Rarely – actually very rarely – something is pointed out by a reviewer that resonates with me and improves my writing by pointing out a weakness I can work on. </p><p>Generally, however, a bad review irritates me not because my feelings are hurt, but because it’s going to cost me sales. And a good review doesn’t make me feel good because it builds my ego, rather because I know there’s a pull quote in there I can use to promote that book in an ad, and/or that can appear on the dustjacket of my next book (or the interior opening pages of a paperback).</p><p>Which brings us back to <em>Blue Christmas</em> and the two competitions I entered here in Iowa. I love hearing that people like a film of mine, because it’s not just me being praised as a writer/director, but indicates my cast and crew are succeeding, and that is truly gratifying.</p><p>Yet ultimately it’s about how published, public praise can be utilized in promoting, in selling, the work. What we truly got out of the Iowa Motion Picture Awards (in addition to some nifty physical awards) was the right to affix Laurel wreaths bragging about our film on posters and on physical media. That is what we were after.</p><p>And we got it.</p><div class="center">* * *</div><p>Here is a great piece on <a href="https://www.cbr.com/best-mob-movies-n... Ten Best Mob Movies (That Aren’t the Godfather)</a>. <em>Road to Perdition</em> is number two! (Of course <em>The Untouchables</em> is number one, a great movie with a not-great Mamet script…I like Mamet almost as much as I like James Elroy!).</p><p>Finally, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list... is a link</a> to variant versions of the <em>True Noir</em> proof-of-concept audio.</p><p>M.A.C.</p>

True Noir Is Coming, Criticism and Me, Plus Movies!

The Kickstarter crowd-funding campaign for my new project may go live as early as tomorrow (as you read this – it’s tentatively set for May 1). This is to support True Noir: The Nathan Heller Casebooks, a fully immersive audio production based on the first book in the series, True Detective. I am writing all ten scripts myself.

My talented director, Robert Meyer Burnett, is assembling a great cast, led by Todd Stashwick of Picard and the 12 Monkeys TV series (and much more). Impressive names are being sought, a number of whom have already said yes, but these will be parceled out to the public as the crowd-funding campaign continues.

Here again is a link to the 12-minute proof-of-concept audio we put together.

It’s based on the first chapter of Stolen Away, which is not the book we’re adapting but was chosen for its combination of establishing Heller in an action situation.

It’s truly odd returning to True Detective (no relation to the HBO show that came after) for the first time in over forty years (!). Also the form is one that has special challenges. The story has to be told in completely audio terms. Its length ultimately will be three times longer than a film adaptation, but still substantially shorter than the 100,000-word novel I’m adapting.

I do find myself pleased to tweak scenes and make them better than the first time around (in 1981!) but at the same time I’m trying to honor the work of the young writer who wrote the novel so long ago.

Fortunately, as some of you know, I wrote a number episodes of the web series Fangoria’s Dreadtime Stories, so I’ve written radio-style scripts before and feel I’m fairly adept at it. But nothing as long-form as this, a script of ten episodes that will ultimately add up to over 300 manuscript pages.

I have high hopes for the quality of what we’ll produce – and for its reaction among listeners. As the Heller series winds its way toward its last entry (which I am contracted to write for Hard Case Crime this year), I am happy to be revisiting where the saga began. And it may open the door to more adaptations, and bring more attention to Heller from new readers and perhaps even the TV and movie world.

There will be a strong physical media component. We’re planning a Blu-ray that will contain the entire audio drama, the production of which will be elaborate and truly a movie for the ears; but also an hour-long interview by Rob Burnett with yours truly, footage shot in Chicago of star Todd Stashwick, and much more (my longtime collaborator Phil Dingeldein shot this footage). There may even be a vinyl version!

* * *

You know what my greatest strength is as a purveyor of long elaborate lies? (AKA novelist.) It’s how well I take criticism.

Insert hysterical laughter here.

I have no idea what it is in my psychological make-up that makes me react so badly to criticism. I have a ridiculous amount of self-confidence, but the inflated balloon of my ego is easily pricked. Especially by pricks.

Recently I got dinged at Black Gate, an interesting genre-oriented website where this lovely review of (yup) True Detective appeared in 2018.

But someone named Thomas Parker (the word “Editor” is next to his name but he’s not listed among the Black Gate staff) criticized Charles Ardai and Hard Case Crime for using their line as “a Max Allan Collins manuscript dump.”

This gratuitous cruelty appealed to my poor judgment and I replied, but Black Gate did not post that reply. I never understand the reluctance of websites and publications to allow authors – even those like me with poor judgment – to respond to this kind of thing, when they allow people like Parker to prattle on in the first place.

My response was perhaps less-ill-judged than usual because I was defending a great publisher, and editor, who have almost single-handedly kept 1950s-style noir novels alive, both through reprints and books by contemporary authors.

Anyway, here’s what I wrote that did not appear:

HCC a “Max Allan Collins manuscript dump”? Well, yes. Among the manuscripts I dumped (or helped dump) at HCC are The Cocktail Waitress by James M. Cain; The Comedy is Finished by Donald E. Westlake (I provided the manuscript that Don had given me when he abandoned the project); and the first posthumous, 80% completed Mickey Spillane manuscript (Dead Street) and Mickey’s last completed novel (The Last Stand). I also encouraged the republication of Rex Stout’s early pre-Nero Wolfe novels. When editor Charles Ardai made me the first living author he published (in the first year of HCC), he sought to reprint the second Nolan novel, Blood Money. I gave him instead both the first Nolan (Bait Money) and Blood Money to be published together at the same rate he’d offered for just Blood. After that twofer was published, Charles wanted more reprints but I offered to write new novels at the reprint rate because I relished the chance to write whatever I chose. What I chose was The Last Quarry, designed to end that series but becoming surprisingly popular, which led to more, still at the same reprint rate (which is what I still get, actually a little lower now). That Quarry novel led to a feature film and an HBO/Cinemax series, which led to Charles reprinting the original Quarry novels with McGinnis covers. The Nolans followed, with the first new one in thirty years (Skim Deep) written at Charles’ request. He is, incidentally, the best editor I’ve ever had. Lately I’ve written two Nathan Heller novels — the Edgar-nominated and Shamus-winning historical PI series — for HCC, still at the same reprint-level rate despite being 100,000-word books. I will be doing one more for HCC, ending the series. You may prefer dead authors, but I am 76 so you don’t have long to wait.

I might add to this that I have not foisted any unpublished manuscripts from my drawer for HCC to publish or even consider. Nothing of that kind exists. The only unpublished book from my drawer that I did allow to be published was the first Nolan novel (sans the Jon character), Mourn the Living, which I let be serialized in a fan magazine back in the ‘80s. Later several publishers asked to collect the serialized novel into a book and I allowed that. And when Charles Ardai wanted to reprint all of the Nolan novels as two-fers, when we got to Spree (a rather overlong entry and, at the time I wrote it, another attempt to end a series), he asked to include Mourn in that volume as a bonus.

Look. I understand writers need to learn to take criticism well (I’m still working on that). And I have learned from critical reviews from time to time when the reviewer pointed out some weakness of mine I hadn’t seen or anyway been able to overcome; that’s called constructive criticism, and I may not love getting it at the time, but it can – and often does – pay off.

Sometimes readers, reviewers, just don’t like your stuff and that’s their privilege, obviously. I know that my propensity for describing characters and their clothing in some detail alienates some readers/reviewers. But I’ve explained why I do that, here, any number of times (it has to do with characterization). I’ve been a professional novelist since 1971 and that’s always been the technique I’ve used. That doesn’t make it right, but it does indicate a choice as opposed to some blind flaw. And I am still trying to exercise that approach in a more economical way.

I do not think it proper for me to respond to a thoughtful negative review. But a gratuitous swipe? I do not have enough character to just let that pass.

Or as my wife Barb says when somebody attacks me, “Don’t they know you’re the guy who created Quarry?”

* * *

I generally like Guy Ritchie’s films, which might best be described as British variants on Quentin Tarantino but funnier. Along those lines, I heartily recommend The Ministry of UnGentlemanly Warfare. I freely admit that I thought the bold on-screen claim at the start that the film was based on a true event had to be tongue-in-cheek nonsense.

Then at the end of the film came photos of the actual people and little whatever-happened-to paragraphs.

Turns out historical events and people are at the heart of it, but the outrageousness of its exaggerated version of those events (and the people therein) was such that my assumption that history had nothing to do with it seems reasonable.

Basically it’s a rousing adventure story in which many, many Nazis are slaughtered with relish (and catsup and onions) by the roughneck heroes. What makes it particularly interesting to me is its inclusion of Ian Fleming and Henry Cavill’s dashing and bloodthirty hero, a reflection of the historical figure Major Gustavus March-Phillipps, who was one of Fleming’s role models in creating James Bond.

And it’s cheeky fun that Cavill – often talked about but apparently looked over in the post-Daniel Craig Bond sweepstakes, is playing a guy the character was based on.

Cavill, who appears to be having the time of his life, is joined by a strong cast including Avan Richardson, Elza Gonzalez, and Babs Olusanmokum. I hope you don’t think less of me, but I could watch Nazis getting obliterated all day.

Speaking of the home-grown variety, many nasty folk meet their doom coming up against Jason Stratham (a Guy Ritchie graduate) in one of his best, The Beekeeper, out on home video and streaming here and there right now. I love Stratham, but his list of films is spotty. This one is high on the list (though it does go perhaps too far over the top in the final third), probably right behind the outrageous Crank movies.

For those of you following the saga of introducing my eight year-old grandson Sam to movies not entirely designed for kiddies, we have gone from King Kong (1933), which he loved, to the Ray Harryhausen fest, The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad (1958), which he found utterly amazing. I did, too. It’s a movie I saw on it’s first release when I was probably ten and was blown away then, and now.

Lots more Harryhausen to come!

M.A.C.

True Noir, Dick Tracy and King Kong

The crowd-funding campaign for True Noir: the Nathan Heller Casebooks at KickStarter is set to go live on May 1. I have delivered the first of ten-episode scripts (the production is based on my novel True Detective) and everyone seems pleased. Director Robert Meyer Burnett has started casting. Todd Stashwick of Star Trek: Picard and the 12 Monkeys TV series has been onboard to play Nate Heller for a while now, and in fact you can hear the 12-minute sample starring him – our “proof of concept” – as Nate right now. Right here:

Longtime readers of the Heller saga will recognize this as the beginning of Stolen Away, but that was just chosen as a way to intro newcomers to Heller and to give director Rob Burnett a chance to get the concept on its feet. We’re starting with True Detective, the first novel of course. In addition to Todd, several other notable actors have signed on, including a favorite of mine, Jeffrey Combs of the Re-Animator movies, as Mayor Anton Cermak. The image we’re sharing here is still in progress but you should get a kick out of it.

I am about to dive into the remaining nine scripts (each episode should be in the 35 – 40 minute range) and this is now my current major project. I have a very busy remainder of the year ahead: the last scheduled Mike Hammer novel (Baby, It’s Murder), another Antiques novel (we have just signed to do two more!), and what looks to be the final Heller.

This past week was a busy one. Work on preparing the materials for the VCI/MVD release of Blue Christmas continued, with producer Chad Bishop in the lead. I recorded three (!) Blu-ray commentaries – Chad and I did the Blue Christmas commentary (and he did a great job), and for VCI I recorded commentaries for two mid-‘40s RKO Dick Tracy movies: Dick Tracy Vs. Cueball and Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome. These are for an upcoming Blu-ray release of the four RKO features, a boxed set that looks to be a jam-packed affair with multiple commentaries and much more.

I had done commentaries for the other two Tracy films (Dick Tracy and Dick Tracy’s Dilemma) in 1999 for the late Cary Roan, and these are included. Now, a quarter of a century later, I found myself completing the quartet of B movies for Robert Blair at VCI. I’ve always been fond of these films, though the sometimes lauded Gruesome is by far my least favorite, but did not expect to revisit them ever again.

As I have expressed here on occasion, my bitterness over being essentially fired from Dick Tracy – the strip that I had, in my estimation and that of others, saved from cancellation – had been deep and abiding until I was called upon by editor Dean Mullaney (who had first published Ms. Tree) to put on my Big Boy pants (so to speak) and write introductions for the IDW volumes that would collect the complete Chester Gould. I took on that task, spanning a number of years, and reminded myself how much I liked the strip and basically came to terms with the firing that frankly opened the door on much else good that has happened for me. Probably no Road to Perdition, for example, had I still been on Dick Tracy.

This is not to say I don’t retain some bitterness. I was told by a reliable source that the Joe Staton and Mike Curtis team (who’d been approached to take the strip over after Dick Locher’s passing) asked why the Trib wasn’t returning to me. The editor there (a newer one I had never met) reportedly said, “Why would we make the same mistake twice?”

Nonetheless, revisiting Tracy in both the IDW volumes (a long-running series now completed) and again last week by way of those four fun RKO B-features was indeed like Old Home Week. Tracy was my childhood introduction to crime fiction (and comics), and the first big break of my career.

Speaking of Road to Perdition, I was pleased to see the movie version again turning up with some very impressive neighbors — number 17 on Ranker’s list of The 90 Best Mafia Movies Of All Time.

By the way, when I recorded the two Tracy commentaries I did so with my longtime collaborator Phil Dingeldein at my side. Phil is the Director of Photography on most of what I’ve done in the world of indie filmmaking starting with Mommy (1994) and continuing through this year’s Blue Christmas. Between the two recording sessions for the pair of Tracy movies, Phil and I took lunch and discussed the revision I did recently of my script for a proposed film of Road to Purgatory, my prose sequel to Perdition. It’s a low-budget version (not “low” in my usual scrounging sense, but the Hollywood sense) designed for me to be able to direct myself.

That, frankly, is part of why I undertook doing Blue Christmas and am preparing another feature to shoot late this summer – I want to see if the Old Boy still has it in him. And I’m not referring to Phil.

Road to Purgatory has been the dream project for a long, long time. We’ll see if a dream is all it is.

* * *

For several years now I have spent Saturday afternoons with my grandson Sam, watching movies. We began with animation, including classic Warner Bros and the Fleischer Popeye and Superman cartoons. After that it was 3-D Blu-rays that were mostly CGI – Pixar and others – with occasional live action like the Spy Kids movies (some of which are also 3-D – my obsolete 3-D screen got a workout).

In recent months we’ve delved into comedies, in particularly the Pink Panther movies (skipping the first two) and The Great Race, the latter being more of writer/director Blake Edwards at his comic best. I’ve been edging up on some things that I loved as a kid, and Sam’s father Nate also loved (though not Lone Wolf and Cub yet – Sam is just eight!) (of course so was Nate at the time).

So this week we watched the 1933 King Kong. Barb had warned Sam that the first half hour or so was pretty boring, a lot of it on the ship sailing to the island with Skull Mountain. But Sam never wavered. He wanted to see the whole thing. When Kong arrived in all his gorilla glory, I explained stop motion to Sam – that Kong was mostly a puppet recorded incrementally, and that also a giant head and hand had been used. He did not get frightened but he was into it.

At the end I searched YouTube and found a colorized clip of the fight between Kong and the T-Rex. Sam told me to make sure I stayed with it till we saw Kong flapping the defeated dead T-Rex’s jaw, which was his favorite part (mine too).

Then Sam announced that he liked the black-and-white version better.

There is hope for the world.

M.A.C.

Cutout Emerges and True Noir Begins

Paperback:
E-Book:
Digital Audiobook:
Audio MP3 CD:

Today is publication date for Cutout, the new novella written by Barb and me. You should be able to order the print version from Amazon now (it includes some wonderful illustrations and should be a very nice physical book). Also available are the Kindle version and an audio version from Skyboat, who have done such a terrific job with the Quarry novels, the first two of three Fancy Anders titles, and more. The reader is Gabrielle de Cuir, who always does an excellent job. Barb and I have not heard it yet but are anxious to. Nor have we seen the print version and are anxious to.

I’ll interrupt myself to share with you this nice write-up from “Bits and Pieces” at Jerry’s House of Everything blog:

Max Allan Collins and Barbara Collins (or maybe Barbara Collins and Max Allan Collins), Cutout. Crime novella. “A young woman from the Midwest, recipient of an unexpected college scholarship, is recruited into a lucrative courier job that shuttles her from Manhattan to Washington, D.C. There’s a slight drawback: the previous two ‘cutouts’ died by violence.” Preordered; publication date is tomorrow 5/16. Also, Max Allan Collins Collection Volume 5: Twist in the Tale. E-Book compilation five books by Max Allan Collins and Barbara Collins: two novels (Reincarnal and Bombshell) and three short story collections (Murder — His and Hers, Suspense — His and Hers, and Too Many Tomcats and Other Feline Tales of Suspense). A superb bargain.

Thanks, Jerry!

The idea for Cutout was Barb’s and her draft was so good, working with it was a genuine pleasure. I think it represents our best work together, and really reflects her remarkable abilities as a storyteller and just flat-out good writer.

Neo-Text, who brought out the Fancy Anders novellas, is the publisher. They are in finally stages of prepping the third Fancy Anders, which will again have Fay Dalton illos. It’s my hope that the three Fancy Anders novellas (which interconnect) will be gathered into one novel with the Dalton art done full-color justice. And if the first two audios of Fancy Anders read by Gabrielle de Cuir (with music and sound effects) are any indication, Cutout should be very well-served on audio.

On a somewhat similar vein, the Kickstarter for the Nathan Heller fully-immersive audio dramas is about to go live. I have described this as a podcast series but that doesn’t do it justice. You’ll soon be able to get a sample of director Robert Meyer Burnett’s impressive handiwork with the proof-of-concept “pilot” I wrote, based on the opening of Stolen Away. Nate Heller is portrayed on that pilot by Todd Stashwick of Star Trek: Picard fame. That Todd is a Chicagoan and a former Second City cast member resonates extremely well with me.

We are beginning with the first Nathan Heller novel, True Detective, and I have delivered the first of ten scripts, which I am pleased to say got a rave review from director Burnett. I will admit it felt odd returning to a novel I wrote in 1981-1982 for 1983 publication, the book that I consider in many ways the real beginning of my career (meaning no offense to Nolan, Mallory or Dick Tracy). Since I am planning what will likely be the final Heller novel, The One-Way Ride, to be published by Hard Case Crime, the audio series seems somehow right to also be circling back to Nate Heller’s first recorded case, “The Assassination of Mayor Cermak.”

There’s an official Nate Heller/True Noir YouTube Channel with a pic of Rob Burnett, Todd Stashwick and the rest of the cast at the proof-of-concept pilot session.

* * *

Speaking of True Noir, Nate Heller and Rob Burnett, here’s a podcast interview with Rob that gets into True Noir and Heller, on John Suentes’ excellent Word Balloons.

The great Putnum Museum in Davenport, Iowa, is showing Road to Perdition on Sunday, May 19, at
2:30 p.m. in their Giant Screen Theater. I will be handling a Q and A session afterward. Details are right here.

Finally, the best ten performances on film of Tom Hanks are discussed here. Guess what #3 is?

M.A.C.

Cut it Out!

E-Book:
Digital Audiobook:
Audio MP3 CD:

Barb and I have a new book out, Cutout, a novella, and we’re assured it’s coming out in paperback as well as audio (from the great Skyboat) and Kindle (from Amazon of course). But right now all we have info on is the audio and e-book.

While I am the co-author, this is Barb’s baby – her vision and her strong first draft (that I just fiddled with a little) carried the day. I think it’s one of the best books we’ve done together.

Here’s some info:

Cutout (2024)
A Novella by Barbara Collins and Max Allan Collins

A young woman from the Midwest, recipient of an unexpected college scholarship, is recruited into a lucrative courier job that shuttles her from Manhattan to Washington, D.C. There’s a slight drawback: the previous two “cutouts” died by violence.

Sierra Kane – who has bounced from one foster family to another – faces an uncertain future when she receives an unapplied-for scholarship to Barnard College specifically designed for orphans whose academic records are merely above average. A second unexpected boon comes her way when another recipient of that somewhat mysterious scholarship offers her a part-time courier job.

Soon Sierra is caught up in a whirl of espionage and murder, with a new boy friend who may or may not be part of a plot, a college mentor with a possible agenda of her own, and an FBI agent who rebuffs Sierra’s plea for help.

It’s a classic story of a small-town girl caught up in an overwhelming big-city world; but Sierra Kane is a young woman whose curiosity and determination will lead her to the truth…and into more than one deadly confrontation.

Married writing team Max Allan Collins (Road to Perdition) and Barbara Collins (Bombshell) – whose Antiques mystery series is a long-running mystery fan favorite under the name Barbara Allan – have crafted a novella that is at once as timeless as a fairy tale and as modern as a headline.

YOU CAN READ A GENEROUS SAMPLE OF CUTOUT RIGHT HERE!
https://neotextcorp.com/fiction/cutout/

* * *
M.A.C. in the Q and A session with a packed house at the Cedar Rapids Film Festival.

Our two Saturday, April 6 screenings of Blue Christmas at the Cedar Rapids Independent Film Festival – held at the Collins Road Theatre, where our C.R. premiere went down last month – were extremely well-attended and received. I had good comments all day from particularly those who’d been part of the packed house for the 1:05 p.m. showing.

We were one of the three nominees for Best Feature at the fest, but lost out to the wacky anthology Friendly Faces (sporting eight directors) and the nicely shot, well-acted Knee High. In a heavy field of submissions, just snagging an Official Selection slot is a positive.

Three of our Blue Christmas actors were on hand – Rob Merritt, Dave Juehring and Chris Causey. Also great to see them and chat (about our next project!). Too bad individual awards weren’t given out for acting, direction, writing, etc., but the format skews heavily toward students and pro-am.

M.A.C. with Collins Road Theater honcho, Bruce Taylor

We are not planning to attend very many (if any) other festivals, since we already have physical media (VCI) lined up and representation to the streaming services (MVD). Right now no public screenings are scheduled (with the exception of one at 10 a.m. on May 4 in Forest City, Iowa, as part of an Iowa Motion Pictures Awards mini-festival). We anticipate getting into a good number of Iowa theaters with Blue Christmas, judging by the interest expressed by the Fridley movie chain, the Collins Road Theater in Cedar Rapids, and the Last Picture House in Davenport. Our premiere events at two Fridley theaters – the Fleur in Des Moines and the Palms 10 in Muscatine – had sell-out crowds. We think we can do well with limited runs during the holiday season at these venues.

* * *

You have to scroll down to see it, but there’s a request for my brief newspaper run on Batman (with the late, great Marshall Rogers on art) being reprinted. This article is a reprint itself, a 2010 column by another late, great: Greg Hatcher.

You don’t have to scroll down very far to see the recommendation for watching Road to Perdition at Amazon Prime. At the C.R. film fest, supposed young film buffs would come up to me and say, “I’ve heard of Road to Perdition, but I’ve never seen it.” Now’s your chance.

Here’s a nice review of the Ms. Tree collection, Heroine Withdrawal.

Here’s another variation on Tom Hanks extolling the virtues of a certain film of his he thinks doesn’t get enough attention:

Finally, Road to Perdition is number eighteen on this list of the best 90 Mafia movies.

M.A.C.

Cedar Rapids Film Festival & True Noir

This week we have our only film festival screening (to date, anyway) for Blue Christmas. It’s at the Cedar Rapids Independent Film Festival, which holds its 21st edition April 5-7, 2024 at the Collins Road Theatres, 1462 Twixt Town Road, Marion, Iowa. CRIFF (in their words) will celebrate the work of filmmakers from across the state, throughout the country, and around the world, all with connections to Iowa.

Here’s the festival’s official listing:

Blue Christmas
Professional Narrative Feature | 1h:20m
Sat 9:00am & 1:05pm

Max Allan Collins – Writer/Director
Chad Thomas Bishop – Producer
Phillip W. Dingeldein – Director of Photography
Muscatine

Synopsis:
In 1942 Chicago, private eye Richard Stone is visited on Christmas Eve by the ghost of his late partner on the anniversary of the murder. Escorted by three spirits, Stone must visit his past, present and future to find the killer…and redemption.
Iowa Connection: The entire cast and crew is from Iowa… wow!

Star Rob Merritt will be in attendance for the 9 a.m. screening, and Barb and I will be there for the 1:05 p.m. screening. Other cast and crew members may surprise us at one or both screenings, and I will be there for the awards on Saturday night at 9:30 p.m., hoping to take home some gold or silver.

We are also entered in the Iowa Motion Picture Awards, which are presented May 4 at Forest City, Iowa, at the awards event. That is a competition but not a film festival. My films have done well at this event in the past, and just last year I won Best Director for Mickey Spillane’s Encore for Murder. Barb and I plan to attend.

We are considering a few other regional festivals, but the reality is that we already have our home video distributor in VCI, whose partner label MVD will be taking us out to streaming services.

And the Iowa-based Fridley chain, as well as the Collins Road Theatre in Cedar Rapids and the Last Picture House in Davenport, have expressed interest in running Blue Christmas this coming holiday season. So further festivals, if we choose to enter any, will be for fun and a little recognition; but it’s the Cedar Rapids Independent Film Festival and the Iowa Motion Picture Awards that could prove beneficial to marketing. Every indie film likes to have a few Laurel Wreaths for bragging rights.

The support we’ve received from the Fridley chain, Bruce Taylor at the Collins Road Theatre, and our pals Beck and Woods at the Last Picture House has been enormously gratifying, as has been the audience response to our little movie. As I’ve said before, I am well aware that we have a certain home court advantage here in Iowa. But it feels good nonetheless.

Seeing Blue Christmas on huge movie-theater screens, as opposed to at home screening or on physical media, has been an unexpected treat.

As the news regarding Blue Christmas will be taking up less of my weekly updates – at least till Christmas season 2024 – I want to take this opportunity to thank my talented cast (toplined by Rob Merritt and Alisabeth Von Presley) and my key partners, producer/editor Chad Bishop and Director of Photography Phil Dingeldein, for making this $14,000 production look like a million bucks.

Also, thanks to my bride Barb, who swore she would have nothing to do with this one, and then at the last minute dug in and did her usual stellar job.

* * *

I am about to begin scripting our fully immersive audio production (calling it a podcast doesn’t quite cut it) of True Noir: The Nathan Heller Casebooks, based on the first Heller novel, True Detective. This will be ten scripts designed to run around forty minutes or so each. I’ve already broken the book down into those ten episodes in an outline/synopsis that runs 70 pages.

So it’s a massive project.

Director Robert Meyer Burnett – whose Robservations, among much else on YouTube is well worth following (I do) – did a fantastic job with an exemplary voice cast in doing a sort of pilot (a twelve-minute version of the opening of Stolen Away) that will be part of a crowd-funding campaign launching soon. Rob (who, among much else, directed the cult-fave Free Enterprise with William Shatner) created in the pilot a virtual movie for the ears.

Starring as Nate Heller is Todd Stashwick, who appeared memorably on the recent third season of Picard as Captain Liam Shaw. A fan favorite among Star Trek enthusiasts (of which I am one), Todd is a Chicagoan who brings a great grasp of that key city to the proceedings. His casting, both for his Chicago and Trek cred, is a masterstroke on Rob Burnett’s part.

Barb and I have been Star Trek fans since college days (original series and, later Next Generation), and I cast Majel Barrett Roddenberry (Gene’s widow) in Mommy, knowing the value of Star Trek to then vital cast listings on video boxes (we were a chain-wide buy at the then-dominate Blockbuster). I knew Majel through Big Entertainment, the comic book company where she and Leonard Nimoy were doing titles when I was doing Mike Danger with Mickey Spillane. We also had Mickey in the cast and scream queen Brinke Stevens (who I knew from the San Diego Comic Con, where we became friends) as well as Jason Miller for his Exorcist value (and acting talent). Miller came on board because he liked the Mommy script, and since he was a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, that was a hell of a compliment.

By the way, if you’ve read Spillane – King of Pulp Fiction by Jim Traylor and me, you may recall that Gene Roddenberry and Mickey Spillane were pals and planned several projects together (that unfortunately did not come to pass).

Anyway, I want to share with you this fabulous poster for the upcoming audio drama, which I feel represents Heller better than most of the original cover art ever did (excepting the excellent recent Hard Case Crime packages).

More about the crowd-funding effort will be shared here in the days and months ahead. But for now feast your eyes on this….

M.A.C.

Blue Christmas at The Last Picture House

Today I’m sharing a few photos from our Muscatine, Iowa, premiere screening of Blue Christmas and more than just a few pics from the last stop on our premiere tour, The Last Picture House.

Karlyn Larson, MAC, and my old friend from band days, Charlie Koenigsaecker
Sheila Miller, Dave Juering (who plays the “snake” Larry Turner in BLUE CHRISTMAS), Rob Merritt (Richard Stone) on the red carpet at the Muscatine Premiere showing of BLUE CHRISTMAS at the Palms 10.
Charlie Koenigsaecker, Karlyn Larson, Christ Causey (Jake Marley in BLUE CHRISTMAS) Barbara Collins and Sheila Miller at the Muscatine, Iowa, Premiere of BLUE CHRISTMAS at the Palms 10.
Sheila Miller, Linda Annis, Karlyn Larsen and MAC at the BLUE CHRISTMAS Premiere at Muscatine’s Palms 10.

All of these theaters – the Fleur in Des Moines and the Palms in Muscatine (both of which are Fridley Chain venues), as well Bruce Taylor’s Collins Road Theatre in Cedar Rapids and Davenport’s Last Picture House – have been incredibly supportive, and the turnouts have been stellar. Cedar Rapids, Muscatine and Davenport were all sold out, strictly capacity crowds with tickets at a premium.

First A.D. Jodi Hanson watches from the sidelines at the packed house for BLUE CHRISTMAS at the Last Picture House.
The capacity crowd at the Last Picture House in Davenport prior to the Premiere screening.

The response from the audiences has been great, but of course we are careful not to get too full of ourselves, as we are well aware we have a home court advantage. Still, it feels very good. As I’ve said here before, Blue Christmas was designed for streaming and home video, and seeing it up on these huge movie screens, with booming movie-theater sound, has been frankly thrilling to our little army of actors and crew who turned six days and $14,000 into a credible movie – in a world where Hollywood thinks $5 mil is low budget.

I was blessed with a terrific cast, all from here in Iowa, and a crew that included my producer (and editor and much else) Chad Bishop, longtime partner and D.P. Phil Dingeldein (aided by First Camera Assistant Liz Toal), and our lead actors Rob Merritt, Alisabeth Von Presley and Chris Causey. But really everyone in our cast of 24 (!) and tiny crew of half a dozen (!) hearty souls came through for me and for the production.

At the Last Picture House, Director of Photography Phil Dingeldein schmoozes with First Assistant Director Jodi Hanson and Set Design/Props Mistress Meg McCarthy.
Brian Linderman – Eddie Marley himself in BLUE CHRISTMAS – gears up for the Quad Cities Premiere at the Last Picture House.
Chris Causey (Jake Marley in BLUE CHRISTMAS) answers a query at the post-screening Q and A at the Last Picture House in Davenport.
The beautiful Barb Collins with unknown attendee at the Last Picture House premiere.

We have one more stop on this mini-tour – Blue Christmas is an official selection of the Cedar Rapids Independent Film Festival and will be shown at 9 a.m. and at 1:05 p.m. on Saturday April 6, again at the Collins Road Theater (1462 Twixt Town Rd, Marion, IA 52302 – Marion runs side by side with Cedar Rapids). Tickets are $10 advance and $12 after April 4. I will be there for the 1 p.m. screening.

This will be the last opportunity to see the film before this year’s holiday season, when we’ll be in a number of Iowa theaters as well as available on Blu-ray from VCI Home Entertainment (MVD is handling streaming marketing, but it’s too early days to know what streamer or streamers will make it available).

The real final stop of our mini-tour will be for the Iowa Motion Picture Association Awards, an event held in Forest City, Iowa, on May 4. But this is a competition, not a festival.

My apologies to my readers and friends (not exclusive groups) who have been subjected here of late to pretty much nothing but news of this indie film production. We’ll be back to our regularly scheduled Heller, Quarry, Antiques news very soon.

And serious work on True Noir the Nate Heller podcast starting with a 10-episode adaptation of the first novel, True Detective, begins this week.

* * *

According to this excellent article on Road to Perdition (the movie), James Bond was not Daniel Craig’s best role!

Finally, here’s a video about the upcoming Nate Heller podcast series. Check it out!

M.A.C.