F.C. Schaefer's Blog, page 5

The origin of the species...the vampire species.

All good vampire stories have got to have a good monster origin back story to give it the right kind of verisimilitude necessary for the dark fantasy elements of a horror tale to work. In the first book of my BIG CRIMSON horror trilogy, Good Samaritan Kyle inadvertently saves the life of a vampire named Jim from Zachariah Locke, the leader of a clan of the Undead. Jim is now in Kyle’s debt, as Locke’s clan are out for revenge against those who took his life. In the excerpt below, the original atrocity that resulted in the creation of the first vampire is relayed to Kyle by Jim, the blood drinker whose immortal life he saved.

Excerpt from BIG CRMSON 1: THERE’S A NEW VAMPIRE IN TOWN:


“…Let me elaborate. A minute ago I compared the blood to a faithful lover. Well she loves some better than others. Some like Locke are fortunate enough to be a literal descendant of Juda, a greedy old shit from back in Bible times who actually got an angel of the Lord drunk, then slit his throat while he was sleeping it off. Juda did all this because Satan came to him on a river’s edge in the dark of night and told him that to eat the flesh of one of the Lord’s hosts was to gain immortality, so Juda threw a big feast for all his kin and friends where the murdered angel’s flesh was the main course.”

“Wait a minute. I don’t remember that story being in any part of the Bible, Old Testament or New.”

“Maybe not, but everyone who has ever set one foot on the Dark Road knows it’s the truth. It’s also true that old Juda and his clan got what they wanted: life everlasting, but it came with a hitch or two or three. Seems that God was mighty pissed at what happened, and in his wrath, he cursed the dead angel’s blood so that it would forever be in the mouths who those who’d tasted it, giving them a thirst for it that could never be sated. And because Juda had taken the Devil’s council in the dark of night at the water’s edge, all of our kind was forever forbidden the warmth of the sun on their skin. That cursed angel’s blood has flowed down through the centuries, and if it happens to flow into someone lucky enough to be part of old Juda’s family tree, you get to be royalty; you get to be a Big Crimson. That’s why Locke was the Maker of Clans, the Sire of Bloodlines, and when you rammed that fork into his heart, releasing his life force, every member of every bloodline, all the fruit on every vine, flowing to and from Locke, felt it at that moment. It’s a sensation like being tossed into a roaring furnace, and for a minute, you can feel the flesh being seared from your bones. We feel it when our Maker dies the true death, and in turn, a Maker feels it whenever anyone who has drunk from him meets their demise.”

Kyle remembered the scorching heat and mini hurricane that swept his back-yard just before Locke began to ooze the previous night. “I think I know what you’re talking about.”

My book, BIG CRIMSON 1: THERE'S A NEW VAMPIRE IN TOWN, can be found on Amazon at: https://amzn.to/3GsBh2E
and on Smashwords at: https://bit.ly/3kIfrAb

My alternate history novel ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964 can be found on Amazon at: http://amzn.to/2jVkW9m
and on Smashwords at: http://bit.ly/2kAoiAH

Visit my Goodreads author's page at:
http://bit.ly/2nxmg

Visit my Amazon author's page at: https://amzn.to/3nK6Yxv

The making of THE GODFATHER, a real story in its own right.

I have become a big fan of the subgenre that can be called “the making of (insert film title).” This includes Glen Frankel’s books on the making of HIGH NOON and THE SEARCHERS along with W.K. Stratton’s account of how THE WILD BUNCH came to be. My favorite is still Chris Nashawaty’s book on the chaotic filming of CADDYSHACK, which really is a deep dive into a special time and place in American popular culture. So of course Mark Seal’s LEAVE THE GUN, TAKE THE CANOLI: The Epic Story of the Making of THE GODFATHER would end up on my reading list. With all due respect to CITIZEN KANE, I consider THE GODFATHER to be the greatest film ever made in America. The grand story of Don Vito Corleone, his sons, the men who make up his organized crime family, and all those in the wider world who become entangled in their Mafia Empire to be one of the most compelling pieces of fiction ever created. It is filled with larger than life characters, so vividly rendered that we have come to know them like they are part of our own family. What Seal’s book does is remind us that it took some real larger than life flesh and blood characters to bring the novel to the screen, and in the course of that journey, created a story every bit as compelling as the movie they made.

Among those larger than life characters: Mario Puzo, a financially unsuccessful published novelist who was constantly short of money because of a family to feed and an addiction to gambling; Charles Bluhdorn, the tycoon who bought a failing Paramount Studios with the determination to turn its fortunes around though he knew next to nothing about the film business; Robert Evans, the former actor hired to manage production at Paramount, who had an ego as big as his cocaine habit; Albert Ruddy, formerly employed at the Rand Institute, now a Hollywood producer with a reputation for bringing in films under budget; Francis Ford Coppola, the director and screen writer for a handful of small films whose biggest qualification was his Italian-American heritage; and Marlon Brando, the greatest American actor of the post war era, but now a has-been after a string of box office disappointments and some self inflicted wounds to his career.

Of all these characters, I really came to like Puzo, if only because I am a self-published author and know how hard it can be to get words on paper (or these days, a laptop screen). There is something in Puzo’s determination to be a success that really speaks to any writer, and how he came upon the idea to write a book about the inside workings of a Mafia family is a real tale of circumstances coming together at the right time. Though he always denied having any direct source in the Mafia, Seal’s book recounts how close Puzo walked up to that line; one of my favorite anecdotes is the author’s trip to Las Vegas for “research.” Though the book was a publishing phenomenon in the late ‘60s, and a natural for a screen adaptation, the path it took to become the film classic so many of us love was a rocky one. That is what I like best about these books where we get to see the alchemy of the creative process. Two very contrasting themes emerge in Seal’s book. One is the enormous self-confidence needed to be a success in Hollywood, to sit behind a desk and make decisions that risk millions of dollars just on a hunch and a gut feeling, not to mention the leadership skills it takes to bring a film crew and a cast of actors together and marshal them efficiently to one purpose. Another anecdote of how a young Ruddy got a part-time job at a shoe store to help cover the payments on a Jaguar perfectly illustrates this. But with the striving for success comes self-doubt and second guessing. Coppola was anxiety stricken throughout the production and afterward, convinced (not without reason) that he was about to be fired at every turn, and that he was doing a lousy job, and that the finished film would surely be failure. He was not alone, as many in the front office at Paramount fought every casting decision, the staging of scenes, and the cost of everything. Only a few would admit after all was said and done that they were wrong.

Much has already been written and documented about the production of THE GODFATHER, and Seal leans on some of these old sources, but his book does help put a lot of this into context, and after the passing of time, give it a proper prospective. A lot of the suits at Paramount wanted anybody but Brando as Don Vito, with everybody from Ernest Borgnine to Laurence Olivier touted for the part—Burt Lancaster tried to buy the rights to Puzo’s novel for himself. From a cinephiles standpoint, the portrait of Brando that emerges in these pages is of a legend on the skids who rises to the challenge after years of failure, and commits totally to the role. By all accounts, Brando was a joy to work with on the set of THE GODFATHER, and for a lot of us film lovers this is bittersweet, because this great talent would spend much of the rest of his career squandering his gifts and taking jobs for the money. Al Pacino was almost nobody’s choice to play Michael, and James Caan was far from the first choice to play Sonny, and how they came to get those roles is a fascinating part of the story. With all due respect to Lenny Montana, who made a magnificent Luca Brasi, I would love to have seen what Timothy Carey would have done with the part, and I am disappointed that Seal doesn’t mention Joe Spinell, whose few minutes as Willie Cicci made him a fan favorite. But despite that, I learned so much from this book, including the un-credited contribution Robert Towne made to the script, the background on how the famous horse’s head scene was shot, along with Sonny’s beat down of Carlo (who really had it coming), and Sonny’s subsequent spectacular death scene at the tollbooth. Some of the best remembered dialogue was ad-libbed on the set, including the book’s title by Richard Castellano. Seal also documents just how much the real life Mafia was involved in the film’s production in New York City thanks to Joe Columbo, an organized crime boss who really knew how to play the angles.

Coming in at just over 400 pages, Mark Seal’s book is a quick read and a must read for any true film lover. It left me wanting to know more. THE GODFATHER, both the novel and the movie, were a cultural event, the kind we just don’t see any more in the fractured 21st Century. That is our loss, but we still have this great movie to remember the glory that once was, and this book truly honors the men and women who made it all happen.

My book, BIG CRIMSON 1: THERE'S A NEW VAMPIRE IN TOWN, can be found on Amazon at: https://amzn.to/3GsBh2E
and on Smashwords at: https://bit.ly/3kIfrAb

My alternate history novel ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964 can be found on Amazon at: http://amzn.to/2jVkW9m
and on Smashwords at: http://bit.ly/2kAoiAH

Visit my Goodreads author's page at:
http://bit.ly/2nxmg

Visit my Amazon author's page at: https://amzn.to/3nK6Yxv

Big Crimson 1: the facts of vampire life

In the first novel of my vampire horror series, BIG CRIMSON 1: THERE’S A NEW VAMPIRE IN TOWN, a young man named Kyle saves the life of a vampire named Jim by killing Zachariah Locke, the Big Crimson of the title and the leader of a clan of vampires. Jim now owes Kyle a debt, and vows to protect him from the vengeful members of Locke’s clan. One night, Jim explains a few pertinent things to Kyle about life among the Undead, and how a vampire navigates the night life.

The following is a short excerpt from my book:

“If you don’t mind me asking,” he said and sat the coffee cup on the counter, “what did you do to get this Locke all pissed off at you in the first place?”

“The lying son of a bitch said I was a cheat.” Jim’s reply was adamant. “Let me pull back the curtain a little further on my world. One of the ways our kind pass the time—and we have lots of time—is games of chance. The cards, wagers, dice…you name it, they play it. And since we have all this time on our hands, the games can go on for a very long time; I have been told that a poker game lasted for the entire duration of the Nazi occupation of Paris, hand after hand dealt in the wine cellar under the Hotel Napoleon. I’ve known a lot of vampires that work Vegas and Atlantic City and use their heightened senses to clean out the mortals; the rhythm of the heart is a 100% perfect tell for a bluff. Because of my permanently youthful appearance, that’s not always an option for me, but I’ve developed some pretty hot skills with both the cards and a pool cue just the same. That’s what got me in deep shit with Locke. The Makers of the Clans get together several times during the year, and put it on the line, wagering not money, but things like territories and bloodlines; mansions that serve as great homes for the Makers, and most of all, a select group of mortals, whose blood is especially sweet and refined, kind of like a very fine wine.”

“No offense, but I can’t imagine someone willingly letting one of your kind….you know?”

“You would be surprised, but it’s not too difficult when you think about what a prostitute lets a pimp do to her or a wife who lets her husband beat her like a cur. Quite a few mortals happily sell themselves into service to a vampire. Most of them though—especially the men –have a monkey on their backs, be it drugs or drink. People who’ve hit rock bottom and can’t get up. Locke was famous for finding some alcoholic on the streets and using him like an errand dog until he got tired of him and drained the poor fool dry.”

“People that no one would likely miss.”


My book, BIG CRIMSON 1: THERE'S A NEW VAMPIRE IN TOWN, can be found on Amazon at: https://amzn.to/3GsBh2E
and on Smashwords at: https://bit.ly/3kIfrAb

My alternate history novel ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964 can be found on Amazon at: http://amzn.to/2jVkW9m
and on Smashwords at: http://bit.ly/2kAoiAH

Visit my Goodreads author's page at:
http://bit.ly/2nxmg

Visit my Amazon author's page at: https://amzn.to/3nK6Yxv

Quantumania, a review.

When it comes to any comic book film now, I like to go see them cold, avoiding any and all reviews and spoilers so I can have as much of an unbiased view as possible going in. This is true for both the MCU and the DCEU, and I’ve found it works pretty well for me. I followed this same practice with ANT MAN AND THE WASP: QUANTUMANIA. The story picks up with Scott Lang enjoying life after the events of AVENGERS: ENDGAME (which seem like a long time ago now) reconnecting with his teenage daughter Cassie, romancing Hope Van Dyne (aka The Wasp), and working with her parents, scientists Hank Pym and his wife Janet. Scott’s written a book, and is taking to the life of being celebrity. But in short order, Scott and his extended family are shrunk back down into the microverse, a hostile world where they must find a MacGuffin that will return them to their home. They also must keep said MacGuffin from falling into the hands of the story’s main villain, Kang the Conqueror, a legacy Marvel bad guy. Kang is a time traveling multi-dimensional tyrant, bent on proving himself against all of existence who was exiled to the Quantum Realm and would very much like to reconnect with Janet who played a very important role preventing him from escaping during the years she spent in the microverse, and who hid the MacGuffin away where Kang couldn’t find it. There is much chasing and hiding, capturing and escaping, in the progress of the story, ending in a big set piece battle between good and evil, where the latter is on the verge of destroying all the worlds as we know them if he is not stopped.

One thing this movie got right is one of the essentials: a great super villain. In Jonathan Majors’ hands, Kang is a Thanos level antagonist. He’s smart, capable of being charming, but able to turn on a dime and be chilling in his cruelty. The biggest selling point of this film is the intro of Kang, who is slated to play a big role in the MCU going forward, and Majors alone makes QUANUMANIA worth seeing. Also, this movie looks great and uses CGI well to create an alien world, filled with bizarre looking creatures and strange landscapes. I’m very critical of films that are too dependent on CGI, but this one isn’t one of them. Michelle Pfeiffer, as Janet Van Dyne, has still got it: a striking beauty with big star screen presence. Michael Douglas, as her husband Hank, had not lost it either, reminding us why he was such a big deal back in the day. Paul Rudd has lost none of his charm; I think Scott Lang will be his signature character. I especially like the sequence where the endlessly multiple Scotts must try to find a way to reach the power core and retrieve it.

But overall, I must say that ultimately, QUANTUMANIA is average at best. I don’t think Jeff Loveness, a writer from RICK AND MORTY, is the best guy a for comic book film. The humor doesn’t always work, and some of the character development, especially turning Cassie into a resentful teen, seems done only to create some plot tension. The dialogue is filled with trite lines we’ve heard in hundreds of films before—I never want to see the hero in a superhero ever again stand over the super villain at the seeming end of the battle and say, “It’s over.” To call Peyton Reed’s direction unimaginative is being kind—there’s not one plot turn in this film we haven’t seen before in other MCU movies, and can’t see coming this time. There are other nits to pick that range to the downright annoying. On the comic book page, the villain MODOK is truly sinister and grotesque looking, and that is where he should have stayed. Some things just don’t translate well to the movie screen no matter how sophisticated the CGI. And the way they used one of Marvel’s most iconic monsters in this film is a travesty. And why is Bill Murray even in this movie besides the fact that he just wanted to be part of the MCU. From the way his one scene is shot, I don’t know if he was even on the set with Rudd, Douglas, Pfeiffer and the rest the cast at the same time. Was I the only one who hoped we might see The Micronauts show up in the Quantum realm? I know Marvel doesn’t have the rights to those characters anymore, but just the same, it would have been nice.

I liked QUANTUMANIA better than the last two MCU films—WANKANDA FOREVER and THOR: LOVE AND THUNDER, but not by much. It feels like the MCU has struck out for the third time and this is a problem going forward. Whatever the Russo brothers, James Gunn, and Jon Favreau brought seems to have left with them. We still have the third GUARDIANS film coming, but after that… Time to go find some fresh talent that understands what makes comic book films work.

There is a mid-credits and end-credits scene, the first setting up the character of Kang to be a Big Bad in future projects, and second features two characters from one of the streaming series that didn’t appear in QUANUMANIA, but whose presence might have helped. Neither one exactly left me wanting to know more; what I really want to see is some sign of the Fantastic Four and the X-Men, and when we will see them in the MCU.

I am an indie author and my latest novel is ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964. It is available at the following:
http://amzn.to/2jVkW9m on Amazon
http://bit.ly/2kAoiAH at Smashwords

And the first book of my vampire trilogy, Big Crimson 1: There's a New Vampire in Town, is available for to order on Amazon at https://amzn.to/3GsBh2E.

Visit my Goodreads author's page at:
http://bit.ly/2nxmg

The darkness in the sunshine state. A book review.

There are a lot of non-fiction books, and quite a few well written novels, that detail the cruelty, brutality, and the injustice of the Jim Crow South, but few are better than DEVIL IN THE GROVE by Gilbert King, the Pulitzer Prize winning account of a rape case in Lake County, Florida, in July 1949. The story centers on Norma Padgett, a 17 year old White woman who went out for a Saturday evening of dancing with her estranged husband, a night that ended with her being sexually assaulted by four young Black men—or so she claimed the next day. Four suspects, ranging in age from late teens to early twenties, who were guilty of nothing more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time were quickly singled out. This rape accusation for a crime where there was little or no evidence that the actual rape had been committed, set off a chain reaction of Klu Klux Klan mob violence, murder, multiple trials, and an exhaustive effort by the NAACP to save the lives of the defendants from a corrupt legal system intent on putting them to death one way or another.

It is a true life thriller filled with heroes and villains, and secondary characters that emerge as compelling and complex. The hero of the story is Thurgood Marshall, the top lawyer of the NAACP who took on the daunting task of walking into hostile Southern courtrooms filled with die hard segregationists to make the case for a Black defendant who had run afoul of the system. More than once, Marshall had barely escaped the wrath of Klansmen and vigilantes intend on punishing the Black northern lawyer who dared to come into their county and act “uppity.” Marshall oversaw the defense of the surviving defendants who became known as the Groveland Boys; he had little or no hope of winning an acquittal in a Florida courtroom, but the strategy was to win on appeal in the Federal courts which were not always sympathetic to the shoddy ways of Southern justice. As a litigator, few were better than Thurgood Marshall, but he still had to find a White lawyer to sit at the table with him in front the jury. King paints a full portrait of Marshall, a crusading lawyer who worked himself into a sick bed for his clients who nevertheless liked to party hard in the off hours, and was perhaps less than faithful to an ailing wife. King makes it plain that even though the legal branch of the NAACP was doing the work of the angels, it was also a place where ego and ambition thrived. Still, one cannot help but make the contrast between the experiences of Marshall on his way to becoming the first Black American to be appointed to the Supreme Court to some of the frat boys and networkers who sit on the Court today.

If Marshall is the hero of the story, then Sheriff Willis V. McCall of Lake County is the villain. In the annals of nefarious Jim Crow era law enforcement, McCall just might be the very worst of a truly sorry lot. He ruled his Florida fiefdom with an iron hand and doled out violence with virtual impunity to any and all challenges to White supremacy. A bullet for “resisting arrest” or “attempting to escape” was part of this playbook, and he was determined that his brand of justice would be meted out to the Groveland Boys no matter what. And if their Black lawyers pushed too hard in the courtroom, then too bad for them. To dismiss McCall as a Boss Hogg buffoon is to miss the point. Among the book’s large cast of characters, those who stood out to me were local newspaper editor Mabel Norris Reese, state prosecutor Jesse Hunter, and martyred lawyer Harry Moore, among the White thug deputies, crusading civil rights activists, complacent judges and politicians, and the suffering family members of the accused who turn up in the story.

Despite its disturbing subject matter (it has some harrowing depictions of racial violence), I really did enjoy reading DEVIL IN THE GROVE. Other reviewers will may not come out and say it, but this book is a great read because it tells an engrossing story very well. Author King wisely gets out of the way and lets the events unfold and the story tell itself. It’s a true life legal thriller with plenty of twists and turns, and I found it to be a real page turner. King explains how the economic system in Florida exploited poor Black and Whites alike, but kept them from ever making common cause on their own behalf because of racial animus whipped up by the Klan. Blacks who got out of line, or who got too prosperous in the eyes of their White neighbors, did not fare well. There is not a Hollywood ending to this story, life is far more complex than pop culture, but King makes the case that the story of the Groveland Boys had an impact on a post WWII America that was slowly, but surely, becoming less tolerant of the outrages of the police dictatorship for Black Americans that had existed in the Old Confederacy since the end of Reconstruction in no small part because men like Thurgood Marshall and his fellow lawyers would not let the country look away.

I know that for many their reaction to the DEVIL IN THE GROVE will be outrage and anger. But books like this fill me with humility. If, as Americans, we are the heirs of those who came before us, then we should look back at the courage of men like Thurgood Marshall and strive to not fall short when called to do what is right even when it pains us. Yet, if we are the heirs of Thurgood Marshall, then we are also part of the legacy of Sheriff Willis McCall, and we must be wary of wedding ourselves to a status quo that we are willing to do anything, even countenancing cold blooded murder, in order to preserve it.

One final thought: is this the history Governor DeSantis doesn’t want taught to children in Florida schools?

My book, BIG CRIMSON 1: THERE'S A NEW VAMPIRE IN TOWN, can be found on Amazon at: https://amzn.to/3GsBh2E
and on Smashwords at: https://bit.ly/3kIfrAb

My alternate history novel ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964 can be found on Amazon at: http://amzn.to/2jVkW9m
and on Smashwords at: http://bit.ly/2kAoiAH

Visit my Goodreads author's page at:
http://bit.ly/2nxmg

Visit my Amazon author's page at: https://amzn.to/3nK6Yxv

More than just Stephen Spielberg's coming of age story.

Not another coming of age story. Well, this is Steven Spielberg’s coming of age story in a sort of semi-autobiographical film, and it is very much worth seeing if you are a hard core cinephile like myself. Spielberg and his co-screenwriter, Tony Kushner, have created a tale that takes young Sammy Fabelman (Spielberg’s stand in) from a young kid in New Jersey in the early ‘50s, though adolescence in Arizona and California as his engineer father moves for work, and along the way, a budding young film-maker is molded. A fateful trip to the movie theater to see DeMille’s THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH sparks a love of storytelling and movie making in young Sam, one that only intensifies as he gets older. He makes backyard films as part of a Boy Scout project with his fellow scouts and friends, amateur westerns and war movies where he begins to grasp the both the art of movie making, and the technical skill and knowhow that comes with doing the work. But this is also the story of Sam’s relationship with his parents, Burt and Mitzi, and their complicated family dynamic. Burt, played by Paul Dano, is a technocrat, one of the early designers of computer operating systems, while Mitzi, played by Michelle Williams, is a former piano prodigy who gave up a chance for a professional career to be a wife and mother. Though outwardly a successful and happy post-War suburban family, there are tensions which are hinted at in the beginning, but become readily apparent as the story progresses as Sam grows older and the family moves across the country.

Some have criticized THE FABELMANS as Spielberg making a love letter to himself, but I would disagree. This film is a love letter to all of us who, early in life, become hooked on the joy of great storytelling, and simply can’t get enough. More than that, they want to spread that joy to others, to be considered worthy to be placed in the company of those who brought such happiness to their lives in the first place. It’s not a hobby, it’s not an infatuation, it’s a calling, and a dream that must be pursued. That’s who I think Spielberg made this movie for, not for himself. It’s also the story that shows the power of the camera to both create an illusion, and to illuminate the truth. The latter is shown when the home movie the teenage Sam is making on a camping trip reveals the relationship between his mother and a close family friend (something Spielberg’s parents acknowledged as happening in interviews many years later).

The acting is fist rate, especially Williams, who has earned high praise for playing a woman struggling with unhappiness. She’s a mother who could be difficult to deal with, yet early on, sees the artistic spark in her son and nurtures it. Dano has the less showy part as Sam’s father, but I think he registers just as strongly as Williams, as a husband and father trying to be patient and doing what he believes is right by his family. In his own way, Dano’s Burt spurs his son along on his path in life just as much as his mother. It is such a dramatic departure from Dano performance as the Riddler in THE BATMAN earlier this year. And Spielberg has somehow managed to make Seth Rogen not his usual annoying self as Bennie, the family friend who is more than that to Williams’ Mitzi. A lot of people have praised Judd Hirsch’s turn as Uncle Boris, the family member who ran off and joined the circus. But I found his character to be a cliché, and the same for Hirsch’s animated old man performance, which he has been doing ever since INDEPENDENCE DAY. It’s the only thing in the movie that didn’t work for me. But Gabriel LaBelle is a real find as Sam Fabelman, this movie works so well because he is so good. LaBelle’s scenes with Williams have such poignance because he really conveys Sam’s anger and hurt so magnificently. But he is able to pull off that comic scene in his Christian girlfriend’s bedroom just as well.

There are two scenes that are my favorites. One is when the anti-Semitic high school bully, who has made Sam’s life miserable, confronts him in the hall on Prom night after being moved to tears seeing himself in the film Sam made for the class on Ditch Day. It’s a real comment on the power of celluloid. The other scene, of course, is the finale, when a college age Sam gets to meet the legendary director, John Ford, in his Hollywood office. It’s a reenactment of a story Spielberg has told of an event that happened in real life, and for us Ford fans, it is the perfect Valentine to one of the greatest film makers of all time. I am not so sure that Ford didn’t come back from the Hereafter and play himself using David Lynch as an alias. It is my favorite moment in any movie I’ve seen in years.

I do fear that THAT FABELMANS has not found the wider audience that it should have because it just might be a little too inside if you’re not a film fanatic. How many casual film goers today know who John Ford is and why he matters? If that is true, then it is truly a loss for many. But for us cinephiles (a fancy name we movie buffs have given ourselves) THE FABELMANS is an acknowledgement from one of our own, telling us how he did it, and to keep the faith in the power of great stories and the joy they give us.


I am an indie author and my latest novel is ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964. It is available at the following:
http://amzn.to/2jVkW9m on Amazon
http://bit.ly/2kAoiAH at Smashwords

And the first book of my vampire trilogy, Big Crimson 1: There's a New Vampire in Town, is available for preorder on Amazon at https://amzn.to/3GsBh2E.

Visit my Goodreads author's page at:
http://bit.ly/2nxmg

For those who loved To Kill a Mockingbird, and pondered the mystery of Harper Lee.

One of the great mysteries of American literature is why didn’t Harper Lee write another book after the incredible success of TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, a publishing phenomenon and the winner of the 1960 Pulitzer Prize. Writer Casey Cep attempts to answer that question in her book FURIOUS HOURS: MURDER, FRAUD, AND THE LAST TRIAL OF HARPER LEE. It seems that the reticent Lee really did attempt to write another book about a real life murder case in her native Alabama more than a decade and a half after her first novel. What happened, and why no other published work came of it all is quite a story, one of those gothic tales that that is simply in the cultural DNA of the American South.

My paperback copy comes in at just over 300 pages, and is divided into three separate story lines centered on the three main characters. I give Cep credit for not introducing Lee into the narrative right away, but instead letting us meet the Reverend Willie Maxwell, a Black Baptist minister in Alexander City, Alabama in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. Over the course of some years, five members of Maxwell’s family (including two wives) died under mysterious circumstances. All five of these individuals had life insurance policies taken out on them by the good Reverend Maxwell, with himself as the sole beneficiary. The second central character is Tom Radney, the White lawyer and Southern progressive politician, who represented Maxwell when dealing with the insurance companies and the suspicious local law enforcement who suspected, but could not prove, that all those deaths were not coincidental. Ultimately, there is a murder trial with Radney leading the defense, but it is not the trial we expected when the story began. This is the point when Nelle Harper Lee appeared, as she attended the trial, and did detailed research afterward with the intent to write a book based on these true life events. But that book never happened, and Lee never explained why, not that anyone ever got the chance to ask her as she avoided all interviews and publicity for most of the second half of her life.

If Cep’s book is about a mystery that never quite gets solved, it is rich in detail, and in the details we may glimpse an answer. The author does a great job of giving the reader a sense of time and place, especially George Wallace era Alabama, and the White and Black cultures that lived side by side, and the lines that didn’t get crossed lightly. There are sections which explain the importance of hydroelectric power to the development of post-Reconstruction Alabama. There’s a brief history of the insurance industry and how the voodoo religion flourished alongside Christianity in the lives of many Black Alabamians. Cep does an especially good job with giving us a picture of who Willie Maxwell and Tom Radney were, and the issues of race and class that colored their relationship. Of course, the most compelling part of the book for me was the section dealing with Harper Lee, the daughter of a small town Alabama lawyer, the tomboy who befriended the odd little boy who grew up to be Truman Capote. Some familiar ground gets covered in the retelling of how Lee accompanied Capote to Kansas in 1959 to help with research on the murder of the Clutter family that ultimately resulted in Capote’s masterpiece, IN COLD BLOOD. What I found interesting is the details of how TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD came to be. Most importantly, how agents and editors were critical in its development. The success of the book made Lee something of a taxophobe after it made her a multi-millionaire, and created an expectation of a follow up novel, and there were stories of excessive drinking. None of this fully explains why she never produced a book about the Maxwell case after putting in years of preliminary work, and as FURIOUS HOURS comes to its conclusion, the reader is left with a profound sadness for what might have been. It is apparent that Lee intended to write a “nonfiction” fiction work similar to IN COLD BLOOD, and I was left wondering if it never came to be because there was no longer an agent or an editor to push her to succeed. TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD stands as one of the great American novels, and perhaps Harper Lee, when she put pen to paper after writing it, found her words lacking. Near the end of that great book, Scout remembers what her father Atticus has told as she stands on Boo Radley’s front porch: that to understand somebody, you have to stand in their shoes and walk around in them. Nobody could stand in Harper Lee’s shoes, much less walk anywhere in them, but Casey Cep’s book comes as close as we’re likely to do so.

Get started on my horror trilogy at BIG CRIMSON 1: THERE'S A NEW VAMPIRE IN TOWN, found on Amazon at: https://amzn.to/3GsBh2E
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BIG CRIMSON 1: There's a new vampire in town. An excerpt.

Below is a very short excerpt from the first novel in my new horror series BIG CRIMSON, with the first book subtitled THERE'S A NEW VAMPIRE IN TOWN where my MC, Kyle, a young prison guard minding his own business at home late one evening, has uninvited company.

Excerpt:

With the knowledge that nothing could be accomplished before daylight and with sleep out of the question, Kyle got up and ambled back into the kitchen to fetch another beer. His head was in the refrigerator when there was a loud, metallic crash from the back-yard. Kyle instantly forgot about grabbing another bottle of Budweiser and rushed out the door, hitting the wall switch for the back-yard spot-light on the way. Outside, in the middle of a pool of light, Kyle found the prone figure of a young man—face down in the dirt—arms and legs splayed out, next to the overturned barbeque grill. It appeared as if he’d been running full tilt in the darkness and hadn’t seen the grill right in front of him.

The young man let out a groan and tried to push himself up from the dirt. “Hey, buddy, looks like you forgot to put your high beams on,” Kyle said, standing over the intruder. “And wherever you were going, this ain’t the short-cut to there.” He reached down to offer his hand and the young man gripped it tight. Kyle found himself staring into the face of a kid not more than seventeen with a gash ripped over a swollen right eye. Purplish colored blood seeped from the cut and flowed into a rivulet down the side of his face.

“Please, sir, have pity and let me come inside your house,” the kid pleaded. “I’m dead if Locke gets me.”

Kyle had no idea who Locke might be, but the rest he understood on instinct. The swollen eye told him everything, for in his short time at the Harlow Correctional Facility he’d seen more than a few inmates sporting identical wounds and knew they didn’t come from walking into a cell door. “Guess you pissed off the wrong one, dude,” Kyle said as he pulled the kid to his feet. He was quite sure he now understood why the young man was jumping over fences and racing through darkened back-yards. “Who the hell’s this Locke? Her father? Her boyfriend? You’re really screwed if it’s her husband.”

“Please tell me I can come inside, I need to hear you say the words.” Fear was painted on the kid’s face—the kind of fear Kyle had seen in the exercise yard when one of the fresh fish had gotten on the bad side of some muscle-bound Aryan Brotherhood wanna-be.

His words were cut off by a low snarl, coming out of the darkness beyond the back fence; it instantly put Kyle in mind of the pit bulls his Uncle Roy raised in a pen out behind his house in the woods near Dawkins, West Virginia. No one in the family ever said anything out loud, but it was no secret that Kyle’s uncle made some good scratch selling the pit bulls to dog-fighting rings down in Tennessee.

I am an indie author and BIG CRIMSON 1: THERE'S A NEW VAMPIRE IN TOWN is now on sale on Amazon and Smashwords. If this sneak peak piqued you interest, I hope you will consider purchasing it at https://amzn.to/3GsBh2E on Amazon, and at https://bit.ly/3InqZCm on Smashwords.

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Reagan and Carter, and the real That '70s Show.

The best nutshell description of Rick Perlstein’s REAGANLAND: America’s Right Turn 1976-1980 is “this is the real That '70s Show.” This is the fourth volume of his exhaustive history of the rise to political dominance of modern conservatism in America and its takeover of the Republican Party. His previous books were BEFORE THE STORM, NIXONLAND, and THE INVISIBLE BRIDGE, which recounted the years between 1964 and the summer of 1976, going from Goldwater to Nixon to the nomination battle for the soul of the party between Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan. The final book ended at the Kansas City convention in August of ’76 with Ford narrowly triumphing over Reagan on the first ballot, seemingly consigning the former movie star and California Governor to the history books as a has-been who came close and fell just short, and at the age of 65, too old to ever again be a serious contender for the nation’s highest office. At least that is what most of the pundits thought at the time, but Perlstein’s book proves just how wrong they were, and how even the most perceptive of political journalists, not to mention the politicians, had little notion of what was happening in America at the time.

My copy of REAGANLAND comes in at well over a thousand pages, which is good news for those of us, like me, who really enjoy a history book that takes the deep dive into its subject. Perlstein brings back to life the second half of the 1970s in America, a time most who lived through it were glad to move on from and put in the rear view mirror, but his book more than makes the case that what happened during that time laid the foundation for much that followed. That “Make America Great Again” and “A Contract with America” were first heard in the 1980 Presidential campaign is one of the many things I learned in this book. And when I say it’s a deep dive, be prepared to revisit Inflation, Stagflation, the Iranian Revolution and the rise of the Ayatollah, Three Mile Island, the Panama Canal Treaty, the battle to ratify the ERA, the Moral Majority, Billygate, Lancegate, the Camp David Accords, gas lines, the killer rabbit, Proposition 13, Kemp Roth, NCPAC, the “Malaise” speech, Supply-Side economics, “the Miracle at Lake Placid,” Gay rights, Love Canal, the B-1 bomber, the Russian brigade in Cuba, the hostage crisis, Afghanistan, and host of other issues and events that defined the times. There is an incredible cast of characters ranging from idealists, opportunists, incompetents, and zealots, who made their mark. It’s a list that includes Hamilton Jordan, Bert Lance, Phyllis Schafly, Paul Weyrich, Harvey Milk, Dan White, Milton Friedman, Arthur Laffer, Paul Volker, Orrin Hatch, William Safire, Howard Jarvis, Terry Dolan, Billy Carter, George H. W. Bush, John Sears, John Anderson, Richard Viguerie, Anita Bryant, Jerry Falwell, the Ayatollah Khomeini, Ted Kennedy, John Connally, and Jude Wanniski. There’s a trio of serial killers: the Son of Sam, John Wayne Gacy, and Ted Bundy. A trio of Republican operatives who make names for themselves in the years ahead show up: Newt Gingrich, Roger Stone, and Lee Atwater—and a passing mention of Paul Manafort. Two men who would occupy the Oval Office far in the future, Donald Trump and Joseph Biden, make cameo appearances. But the book is dominated by the two main characters, one who held the Presidency, and the other, who very much wanted to take it from him: Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.

REAGANAND follows two narrative paths dominated by both men, as one confronts a series of challenges from the White House while trying to hold an ever more fractious Democratic Party together, while the other maneuvers among rivals in the Republican Party and tries to convince a skeptical public that he is up to the job. The majority of the space is given over to Carter, after all, he was the President, and I must say that Perlstein writes one of the most damning accounts of the Carter Presidency I have ever read by an objective observer. He makes a good case that the problem was Carter himself, an honest and well meaning man, but one who’s apparent high intelligence blinded him to the obvious. A devout Christian who possessed a moralistic streak that often led him to look down on what he considered the grubby and demeaning aspects of politics, and those who practiced it, which included a great many of his fellow Democrats. The Carter in Perlstein’s book totally lacks the ability to see things from the point of view of others, an essential aspect of a good leader. He was a micro-manager who expected admiration for how rigorously he used his intelligence to arrive at a decision after looking at all sides first, but the American people had little patience for this public dithering, and he quickly developed a reputation as wishy-washy and indecisive. He got off to a bad start in the awkward and undignified 1976 Presidential campaign, marred by Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz’s racist dirty joke, an epic microphone failure during a debate with Gerald Ford, and Carter’s own unforced error by giving a Playboy interview where he revealed a little too much. The more Americans saw of Jimmy Carter, the less they liked him, and though he won the Presidency by promising to restore honesty and decency to the White House after Watergate, those virtues began to matter less when inflation began driving prices up at the grocery store and gas station, factory assembly lines started shutting down, and foreign enemies openly flouted their contempt for a post-Vietnam America abroad. Carter had the bad luck to encounter an inflationary spiral he was not responsible for, and be handed the ticking time bomb that was the Shah’s Iran, but it was his responsibility to deal with those challenges, and lecturing Americans about “austerity,” “limits,” and “sacrifice” didn’t cut it. In retrospect, Carter’s policies were remarkably pragmatic, his energy program would have made the country self sufficient and off mid east oil before the end of the century. But he lacked the political skills to sell his vision, and didn’t try to hone them so that he could. As a result, he lost the Democratic establishment, which was still enamored with big government New Deal solutions, and was challenged for re-election by the remaining Kennedy brother who promised to make full employment a priority instead of reigning in inflation.

While the Carter White House stumbled from crisis to crisis, the opposition was getting its act together. Phyllis Schlafly led a counter revolution against the feminist movement that stopped the Equal Rights Amendment in its tracks. The increasingly emboldened crusade by homosexuals for equal rights helped prompt fundamentalist Christians to abandon a hundred years of political non-involvement and organize against gay rights initiatives and ordinances anywhere and everywhere they appeared and legalized abortion, not to mention pushing back hard against what they saw as government intrusion on the way they ran their private Christian schools. Thus the Moral Majority was born, and in Jerry Falwell, they had a determined and charismatic leader. The heads of American corporations decided they’d had enough of paying union wages to their workers, taxes to the federal government, and having to comply with regulations that protected the environment and worker safety, and began putting big money behind Republican candidates who vowed to rid them of all three concerns. The Political Action Committee (PAC) became their weapon of choice, and money was soon in the hands of Republican operatives who knew how to put it to good use. A group of conservative economists began preaching the miracle of lower tax rates, and the wonders they would bring. The National Rifle Association, formerly an association of sportsmen, was taken over by a group determined to fight gun control anywhere it raised its head. Hard line Cold Warriors, on the defensive after the defeat in Vietnam and the rise of détente with the Soviet Union, vigorously returned to the public square arguing that America was falling behind and that Communism was on a roll. All these different factions began to walk in lock step; they had money behind them, and an enthusiasm and determination that won them many converts. The status quo, symbolized by Carter and the Democrats who controlled both houses of Congress, were no match for these challengers. The country was changing though few in the media really took notice as working class home owners now came to resent the high taxes they were paying while their standard of living declined. John Wayne passed away and the fictional Texas oilman, J.R. Ewing, from the primetime soap opera Dallas, became a cultural icon. More and more, it was less about the little man and more about the big dogs.

The genial Reagan of Perlstein’s book is less the fabulist of THE INVISIBLE BRIDGE, and more the optimistic reactionary he appeared to be at the time. After he shakes off attempts by his campaign managers to make him appear more moderate, and begins listening to those who said “let Reagan be Reagan.” He becomes the one leader all those far flung groups of conservatives and their various agendas could come together behind. Reagan was comfortable in front of audiences, and he knew how to make a point in plain language, and he didn’t come off like an old man. He disdained Communism, big government, and the high taxes that funded it, and said there was nothing wrong with America that a change of leadership couldn’t fix. He brimmed with good humor and optimism, things Carter sorely lacked, and when he faced the President on a debate stage one week before the country voted in 1980, he mopped the floor with his over confident opponent, who arrogantly thought that the former California governor and ex-movie star, who knew how to present himself well in front of a camera, would be no match his vaunted intelligence.

What I especially liked about REAGANLAND was the forgotten history it revealed, and truths obscured by the passage of time. There were once many pro-life Democrats, and pro-immigration Republicans, Reagan among them. How fundamentalist Christians and cultural conservatives were animated by a hatred of what they saw as tolerance for sexual degeneracy from the beginning; there’s a quote by an Idaho Republican voter from late in the ‘80 campaign that is chilling. How American politics, never as civil as we’d like remember it as being in the past, nevertheless descended to a new level of organized nastiness from which it never again rose above after NCPAC successfully took down a slew of veteran Democratic Senate incumbents in the ‘80s election. How the liberal establishment was simply caught flat footed by the desertion of White working class voters to the Reagan banner; an anecdote of a reporter for a Socialist magazines’ visit to some bars in Macomb County, Michigan, during the Republican convention in Detroit, is most revealing. That Jimmy Carter was taken to task for being “mean” to Reagan on the stump during their campaign. It is absolutely quaint to read what the President said back then when compared what is routinely said in political discourse today. How if Carter’s campaign had just done some decent opposition research against Reagan, something that is Politics 101, they might have fared much better. It’s worth remembering that Reagan’s campaign got off to a rocky start, both in the primaries and the general election before finding its footing.

I’ve come to believe that when America went to vote on Election Day 1980, that they were voting against a status quo which stretched back to the assassination of JFK, seventeen Novembers in the past. In the years since there had been Vietnam, racial and generational strife, Watergate, an energy crisis, the social dislocation of the Women’s and Gay rights movements, and a line of leaders that seemingly couldn’t meet the challenges of their time, and restore stability and prosperity. The Iranian Hostage Crisis and inflation were just the straws that broke the patience of a country that felt like it had put up with a lot. Because of this, the voters handed Reagan to most consequential Presidential victory since FDR vanquished the Depression era Herbert Hoover, whom the defeated Carter would compared to for many years to come. On Inauguration Day in 1981, Ronald Reagan took the oath of office as President before a crowd of ecstatic conservatives as dreams and hopes nurtured since Barry Goldwater’s failed ’64 Presidential campaign now seemed within reach. They were filled with determination, and looked to the future with confidence. That day is quite a contrast when compared with another group of conservative Republicans who descended on the Capital on another January day in 2021. What happened in the intervening years is another story as important as the one told in the preceding sixteen, and I hope a writer as good as Rick Perlstein tackles that story, and produces a book as insightful as REAGANLAND.

I am an indie author and my latest novel is ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964. It is available at the following:
http://amzn.to/2jVkW9m on Amazon
http://bit.ly/2kAoiAH at Smashwords

And coming soon, my vampire trilogy, Big Crimson. The first book can be found on Amazon at https://amzn.to/3GsBh2E

Visit my Goodreads author's page at:
http://bit.ly/2nxmg

Black Adam is a fun film that really left me wanting more.

I made it a point to avoid any reviews, and spoilers (for the most part) before going to see BLACK ADAM, the first official DCEU movie in over a year, as I have found that going in cold really adds to the enjoyment of any comic book movie immensely. It’s great not to have to carry someone else’s baggage, and view the film on my terms. My verdict: while BLACK ADAM will probably not top anyone’s list of all time great superhero films, there was a lot to enjoy here despite some flaws, most of them the being the kind that usually plague these kind of films no matter what comic book universe its set in.

The character of Black Adam’s origin lies back in the original Captain Marvel (Shazam) comics, a super powered warrior created by the same wizards who bestowed powers on Billy Batson, who back thousands of years ago became the protector of the kingdom of Khandaq (a middle eastern civilization clearly based on the Egypt of the Pharaohs). In the film, Teth Adam (as he was called back in ancient times) rises from the tomb where the wizards imprisoned him back in the day and proceeds to clean out the modern day Khandaq, now occupied by InterGang, who are intent on exploiting the country for its resources. Adam is one of the most powerful characters in the DC comic universe, with insane superhuman strength, endurance, and the ability to defy the elements. A being this powerful is quickly on the radar of Amanda Waller, last seen heading the Suicide Squad, who calls in the Justice Society to take on this presumed threat to the world. This sets up a battle royale between Adam and the heroes that occupies most the middle section of the film before a new Big Bad rears its head, forces Adam and the Justice Society to join forces and take it down in the finale.

A brisk two hour running time, BLACK ADAM moves along with a fast pace, even if there are clunky parts where some exposition and back story is shoe horned it to bring the audience up to speed. Along with the fast pace, there is plenty of humor, and the mood is kept fairly light without any of the heaviness that dragged down the DCEU’s previous outings with the Man of Steel and the Caped Crusader. And they got the characters from the comics right. Black Adam is basically an anti-hero, a character who acts on a different moral code than the rest of the heroes of the DC universe, one that has no problem with killing those he perceives as a threat to Khandaq. He is a warrior for his people, one not interested in a common good. Dwayne Johnson, at his physical peak, is perfect in the title role, bringing him to life with an awesome capacity for intimidation. But he is more than matched by the Justice Society, led by Aldis Hodge as Hawkman (aka Carter Hall), the reincarnation of an ancient Egyptian prince who possesses super weapons based extra-terrestrial tech, and Pierce Brosnan as Doctor Fate (Kent Nelson), a master of magic with the ability see possible futures. They are joined by two young rookies: Noah Centineo as Atom Smasher (Al Rothstein), who can grow to be giant, and Quintessa Swindell as Cyclone (Maxine Hunkel), who can control wind and the elements. One of the great strengths of the movie is seeing old pro Brosnan as Dr. Fate, and he and Hodge more than convince us that these characters are old friends who have worked and fought together many times. There is just something about casting a former James Bond that just elevates the film without even trying. Sarah Shahi and Mohammed Amer play citizens of Khandaq caught up in the action, there to remind us what the stakes are for the people on the ground. Bodhi Sagongui plays the requisite young kid who idol worships the heroes and provides commentary and background info whenever it is needed—a trope of many comic book films. Henry Winkler has a welcome cameo, and Viola Davis, back as Amanda Waller, and Djimon Hounsou are uncredited. If you blink, you’ll miss the latter as the wizard he played in SHAZAM.

I am often very unimpressed with CGI, but I’ve got to say it was put to good use here, especially in the many, many action scenes. With a striking use of colors and slow motion, this film has some great visuals that do a good job of portraying what a battle between super powered beings should look and feel like. If some have a problem with the slo-mo, then I would answer that it is the only way to show what happens when characters who are basically gods clash.

The most glaring weakness of the film is the final Big Bad, the demon Sabbac, who shows up late in the film, and is woefully underdeveloped. But by that point, BLACK ADAM has treated us some great face offs between the title character and the Justice Society that it does not really bring the movie down. I am a big fan of the animated DC films put out by Warner Brothers. They often do a much better job of staying true to the heroes and villains of the comics than many of the live action films, so the best praise I can give BLACK ADAM is that it really does a good job of replicating that animated vibe.

The icing on the cake is the mid-credit scene, which brings Adam face to face with the one character in the DCEU who can really go toe to toe with him. This is a huge payoff to some long suffering fans, and I hope Warner Brothers builds on it and gives us a sequel worthy of our expectations. And I hope to see Hawkman, Dr. Fate, Atom Smasher and Cyclone again in some form or another. They left me wanting to see more, and that’s a real credit to the film.

I am an indie author and my latest novel is ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964. It is available at the following:
http://amzn.to/2jVkW9m on Amazon
http://bit.ly/2kAoiAH at Smashwords

And coming soon, my vampire trilogy, Big Crimson.

Visit my Goodreads author's page at:
http://bit.ly/2nxmg