It's that time again, time to count another milestone in the millstone (I use the word affectionately) that is my blogging. Old habits die hard, and this one is getting older by the annum. This posting will be brief, simply to assure you that another issue of VIDEO WATCHDOG is indeed nearing completion, and that it's my intention to continue using this blog - as time and energy permits - to share my most essential thoughts on recent releases. Because the publication of the magazine has become more irregular, I'm also going to go ahead and start posting here some reviews written for print that aren't getting any younger and would be unseemly to present as new by this point in time.
I also want to share here the news of a recent extra curricular activity of mine. In addition to audio commentaries for Kino Lorber here in the States, Arrow Video in the UK, and Koch Media in Germany, I'm nearly finished with a first draft of a novel based on the MAN WITH KALEIDOSCOPE EYES screenplay I co-wrote with Charlie Largent. It's a comedy based on the sequence of events leading Roger Corman to make his classic 1967 film THE TRIP, scripted by Jack Nicholson and starring Peter Fonda. Joe Dante has optioned our script, and we're hopeful the film gets made - next week's public table reading at the Vista Theater in Los Angeles, with Bill Hader reading the part of Roger Corman, may help in this regard - but we all felt that the story we had to tell was too good to keep to ourselves. The requirements of a novel are somewhat different than those of a script, and this has allowed me to make use of some of the fun stuff that our screenplay has lost over time as a result of rewrites. So it should make very interesting and entertaining reading not only apart from the film Joe hopes to make, but as an actual annex to it. Next year will mark the 50th anniversary of THE TRIP, and it would be wonderful if it also saw the long-awaited production and release of THE MAN WITH KALEIDOSCOPE EYES.
