© Copyright Clive Young
HOMEMADE HOLLYWOOD:
FANS BEHIND THE CAMERA
BOOK BLOG
AUGUST, 2008 UPDATE:
The new book is less than a month away now--Homemade Hollywood comes out in September, so things are ramping up. Key among those things: Advance reader copies went out to critics and the media during the last week of July. Heck, even I got one. It's standard publishing industry practice to make the ARCs from uncorrected proofs, so even though I went through it a few weeks earlier, finding mistakes, fixing so-so writing and cutting bits here and there, people are still reading the old version. That said, after 10 years of wanting to write this baby, getting the 'almost there' version in the mail was a thrill.So what's next? For now, it's mainly been a matter of getting ready to do some author appearances--a signing and a talk with a writer's group--this fall. More will fall into place, but for now, I'm mainly doing the blog, talking the book up online and trying to organize some good stuff to be mentioned once all the pieces fall into place.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- JULY, 2008 UPDATE:
There was no June update, but that doesn't mean that book-work has come to a standstill. Instead, I was on the road for most of the month, hitting Las Vegas and California for various commitments. Ever try to edit a book in a food court in Vegas? Oh yeah...now that's a fun time, baby.Thanks to my fool-hardy dedication, the book is nearing publication; I'm finishing last-minute proofreading and edits, and uncorrected galleys are going out to critics and readers in the next few weeks. There's been times when I couldn't wait to shove it out the door into the world, but now, as I make my last correction marks in the margins of the proofs, I'm a little sad to see my baby book go.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- MAY, 2008 UPDATE: You'd think that now it's done being written, that things would calm down. You'd be wrong (I was fooled too!). I had to get the photos together, which took weeks, captions, corrections, and more, and now it's a matter of waiting for the layout. There's a bit of time because (sigh) it's now coming out in September.
Word is getting out about the book though, as I've been talking about fan films at libraries, I-Con and, in the biggest audience I've gotten to talk to yet, as host of the Fan Film panel at the New York Comic Con. We had a BLAST and you can read all about it HERE.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- APRIL, 2008 UPDATE: I believe it was the noted philosopher Tom Petty who once opined, "The waiiiiiiiiting is the hardest part," and no truer words were ever spoken (other than "the check is in the mail." 'Cause it is. I swear it. Honest. April fools!). Where was I?
Oh yeah, the waiting. See, although I finished the writing part of Homemade Hollywood a few weeks ago, I actually didn't hand it in until March 31, the drop-dead due date. Why? Well, I had a lot to do. The book was contractually required to be at least 75,000 words. No problem; flew by that. It was also required to not be more than 85,000. Flew by that as well. My patient editor at Continuum, David, asked that it not go over 90,000 or else. Yeah....well, I flew by that one, too. Damn book landed at 95,330 words--more than 20,000 words more than I had to write.
I had a lot of editing to do, but a funny thing happened when I sat down to slice and dice. The book lost weight like it had a tapeworm. Reading along, I discovered that A) most of it was pretty good, even the parts that I hated when I wrote them, and B) there was still some fat--stuff that didn't go anywhere, places where I used 30 words where all I needed was five, and so on. And any time I got bored, I made like a chainsaw-wielding maniac--because if I'm bored, imagine how stupefied the reader would be.
In no time, the book was down to 87,000 words. I then added some stuff that should've gone in the first time, and now it rests comfortably at 89,100 or so. So now what? (Cue Tom Petty).
Yep, waiting.
Waiting for the last fan film photos to come in so I can send them to David.
Waiting to learn when the new publication date is.
Waiting to find out when we start copy editing.
Waiting for the second half of my advance.
Waiting to hold the book in my hands.
(sigh) Waiting. This is gonna be hard.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- MARCH, 2008 UPDATE:March is almost half over but here's the scoop, finally. The book is done, but it still has a long way to go. (Whaaaa..?) I have until the end of the month to scrape roughly 5,000-10,000 words out of the manuscript, as it landed just shy of 95,000 words. I both love and hate this part, 'cause editing is a breeze compared to writing, but it also means a lot of material is going to get 86'd--cool stories, people I spent hours interviewing, and entire movies are going to vanish from the text. Not only does this process wind up disappointing people on occasion, but frankly, when I worked hard researching, interviewing, transcribing, analyzing and so forth, I want the book to show off that I made the effort. That said, a flabby book won't get read by anyone, so if something's gotta go, it's gotta go.
Last week, I got to do the final interview for the book, talking with Henry Jenkins, who was a wellspring of ideas. One surprise was that the guy was a full-on speedtalker--you don't need to shotgun a six-pack of Red Bull to keep up with his deluge of thoughts and concepts, but it probably wouldn't hurt. He confirmed a lot of loose, woolly ideas I'd been mulling over, but articulated them so concisely, it was amazing. Well, that's why he's at MIT, right?
I also had the honor of getting to read a chapter from a book that's coming out right around the same time as mine. It's called Fear, Cultural Anxiety and Transformation: Horror, Science Fiction and Fantasy Films Remade, and is a collection of essays on...well, the book title says it all, really. Daryl Frazetti's "Distinct Identities of Star Trek Fan Film Remakes" covers a lot of ground in a small space, covering history and motivations behind a slew of Trek fan productions. If you're (hopefully) looking forward to my book, you'll want to give his essay a read, to be sure. Folks who've seen the 1999 documentary, Trekkies, may remember Daryl; these days, he's a professor in the Department of Anthropology at Lake Tahoe Community College in Nevada, but back then, he was probably best known for appearing in the movie as "that guy who dresses his cats in Star Trek uniforms."
Hey, Newsday finally ran that story on fan films that I was interviewed for in December. Nice piece--check it out.
Finally, while I'm no fan of classic rock, it looks like Steve Miller's famed, nonsensical lyric, "Time keeps on slippin', slippin', slippin' into the future," is actually true for once--because the time that my book is supposed to come out keeps getting pushed back. Ignore what you see on Amazon; I'm told now that it's "probably" August.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- FEBRUARY, 2008 UPDATE: Y'know, whenever you watch a movie where there's an author character, the first thing everyone says to him/her is 'How's the new book coming?'--and invariably the writer responds with a sigh and a complaint about writer's block.
That never happens in real life, of course--not the writer's block part, but the people asking how the writing process is going, because they don't. Ever. And you can't blame 'em, 'cause every writer I know, including myself, manages to work whatever they're writing--be it a book, play, script or grocery list--into the first 20 seconds of every conversation. People don't ask how your writing is going because they're sick to death of hearing about it.
And since you didn't ask, why yes; I'd love to tell you how it's going.
I'm kickin' ass and typing names. In January, I interviewed Hugo Award-winning author Timothy Zahn, who's written and sold many more books than me--most of them hit Star Wars novels--and Trey Stokes, the auteur behind the Pink Five movies. Looking ahead to chats in the near future, I also set up interviews with major 'gets' for the book--James Cawley, leader of Star Trek: New Voyages, and Henry Jenkins of MIT's Convergence Culture Consortium. It's extremely exciting to get such leaders in their respective fields as a part of this book. But wait--there's more! Chris Gore--founder of FilmThreat.com, movie expert on G4's Attack of the Show and general bon vivant, sent in his foreword for the book, and it's better than anything I could have hoped for (meaning it's great).
While the start of the month saw very little progress, the end of January was all pedal to the metal--or stubby digits to the keyboard if you prefer--as more than 8,000 words poured out of my fleet fingers. With the ol' word count sitting comfortably around 80K, I've passed my contractual minimum by 5,000; that means in theory I could stop mid-sentence now and just type "...and they all lived happily after," send it in, and Continuum Books would have to accept it. They'd hate me and the book, but I'd be done--and there's some kind of strange comfort that comes from that idea. It makes me feel like I'm taking the high road by, you know, finishing the book and all.
Lest it sound like I'm not taking the book seriously, I certainly am, and the folks at Continuum are taking it even more seriously--heck, they're even taking orders for it; just check out the listing for Homemade Hollywood in their Spring 2008 catalog. Now, sure, there's a few errors (Son of Rambow isn't a documentary, and the book isn't due in April, otherwise I'd be a deadman right now), but the catalog copy actually does a great job of capturing the book's tone and topics. Until I hold a finished paperback in my hand and sell a few gallons of blood in order to afford the hardcover edition, reading this PDF is about as real as it gets--and how unreal is that?
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- JANUARY, 2008 UPDATE: The year closed out on a good note as the book landed within striking distance of the end--I'm at 72,000 words, and while I still have two major fan films to cover in-depth and two chapters to write beyond that, the end is now definitely in sight. Then I get to tear it all up and shove it all back together again in a massive loquaciousness-slashing frenzy.
In the meantime, it looks as if Newsday may give the book a little push in February, as I recently did an interview with the paper as part of a feature they're doing on the upcoming Jack Black movie, Be Kind, Rewind. I hear mixed things about the flick, but the director, Michel Gondry, is usually pretty interesting--I actually talk about his early work extensively in my library program, Video Killed The Radio Star: The History of Music Videos.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- DECEMBER, 2007 UPDATE: It's really only been two weeks since this book blog got updated, but things have been edging along. I'm not in the home stretch by any ... er ... stretch of the imagination, but it's in sight. It better be, however-- Amazon is now listing the book, even if they don't have that nifty cover in their database yet. Now I have to finish it (as if having signed a contract with the publisher doesn't count or something?). Still, it makes the end result of this epic quest (i.e. a book) seem all the more 'real.'
Something a little unreal is the hardcover edition of the book. Don't get me wrong--it's definitely a paperback release, but a handful of hard-bound copies will be made; Amazon's got them going for $53.55, so even I may not splurge on one (yep, authors have to pay for their own books, too). The hardcover version isn't some exotic 'limited edition;' apparently it won't have a dustjacket, and perhaps not even the cover illustration. Rather, it's made for libraries (mostly academic ones) that can't be bothered to put that big, fat book tape on the spine to help the book last. Naturally, I suggest that rather than spending $53.55 on a single hardcover, libraries should spend $53.55 on four copies of the final product; that way I might even see royalties from this puppy someday.
Of course, I have to finish writing it first...
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- NOVEMBER, 2007 UPDATE: I held back on the monthly update in hopes of unveiling the cover for Homemade Hollywood: Fans Behind The Camera, and after months of waiting, here it is! Between the good (and patient) folks at Continuum Books and myself, we've gone back and forth on more than 18 cover designs. In the meantime, the book hit 60,000 words right around the turn of the month. New interviews gathered for it include feature director Joe Nussbaum (Sydney White; American Pie Presents The Naked Mile), NYU professor Dan Streible, Five Towns College professor Dan Galiardi, Iron Fist fan film actor Albert Lamont, and others. Things are humming right along....
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- OCTOBER, 2007 UPDATE: Lots and lots going on with Homemade Hollywood recently; September saw some big things take place. First off, I got to interview director Eli Roth for the book, as he explained how he got the famed Raiders: The Adaptation fan film into Steven Spielberg's hands. It's a tale that's never been told in-depth before, so it was a real treat to get the story straight from the man himself. Roth is the writer/director behind the hit Hostel movies and the indie screamfest, Cabin Fever, which have earned more than $100 million combined at the box-office. With a track record like that, I'm grateful (and a little surprised) he took time out to answer questions about a little VHS fan film from the Eighties.
Another big name is going to be a part of the book, too: Chris Gore has agreed to write the foreword--and I didn't even have to kidnap his DVD collection to talk him into it. Chris is a filmmaker, television personality and writer who has built a solid reputation as an outspoken voice in the film world. As a teenager, he founded the brutally honest magazine Film Threat, which has been named one of the top five movie sites on the web by The Wall Street Journal. Chris is the author of several books on film, including The Ultimate Film Festival Survival Guide, which is considered the bible for fans and filmmakers touring the festival circuit. He also co-wrote and produced the feature comedy, My Big Fat Independent Movie (Anchor Bay DVD), which played over 40 film festivals worldwide and can be seen on the Sundance Channel. In addition, Chris appears on television weekly as the film expert on G4 TV's Attack of the Show as well as on Reelz Channel's Dailies show. He has written for The New York Times, The Hollywood Reporter, Variety, Video Business, Total Movie, Spin, Blender and Details, and regularly spouts his opinion on his own blog at ChrisGore.com as well as his popular column, "Footage Fetishes," on SuicideGirls.com.
So as you can see, he's grossly unqualified. The best part about Chris agreeing to do the foreword? That's 1,000 words I don't have to write. In all seriousness though, I'm really honored that an indie film guru like Chris is so enthusiastic about my book covering some of the most independent filmmakers ever. Given that the foreword is the first thing people will read, the rest of the book is gonna have a hard act to follow.
Despite all that, yeah, I did actually get some writing done. Not only did I get to write about one of the most legendary fan films ever, The Green Goblin's Last Stand, but I also found a link between--ready for this?--the earliest known fan film and the earliest surviving stag movie. No, really. Did I mention I'm having a blast writing this thing?
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- SEPTEMBER, 2007 UPDATE: The book is now half-complete, which is great news, but now I worry about being able to cram in everything I wanted to cover into the remaining 40,000 words. Just watch--I'll get writer's block at 60,000 and struggle to finish it.
As of this month, there's one important set of words in the book that I didn't even write: the subtitle. I hated the original subtitle, so I held an unofficial contest on a few fan film websites, asking folks to come up with a better one. As a result, thanks to Bryan Patrick Stoyle of Cheektowaga, NY, the book is now called...
HOMEMADE HOLLYWOOD: Fans Behind The Camera. Bryan gets a free copy of the book when it comes out, his name in the acknowledgements, and of course, bragging rights that he's a more conscise writer than the guy who wrote the book.
Most of August was spent slaving over the complex tale of Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation, one of the most legendary--and least seen--fan films ever. Three teenagers from Mississippi spent most of the 1980s creating a shot-for-shot remake of the Spielberg classic, and their own personal story is so wild that it's being turned into a Hollywood movie, too. Interviewing them for hours and digging through reams of documentation took forever, but it was some of the most fun I've had on this project.
Something else that wasn't quite as fun? Digging up photos to possibly put on the cover of the book. Continuum is getting started on that cover and needed the shot that would convey the passion, expertise, fun and foolhardiness of fan filmmaking. Finding that shot? Not so easy, but a number of high-profile productions contributed a few behind-the-scenes photos that might just be the right pic. Let's hope--I wanna sell some books once I'm done toiling over this thing!
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- AUGUST, 2007 UPDATE: It's been a little insane in my house recently--I did eight speaking engagements in July, made business trips to London (covering Live Earth and Metallica at Wembley Stadium) and Austin (Summer -yawn- NAMM), and managed to squeeze in a two-day vacation. Amazingly, my kid still recognizes me. With all that travelling, though, I've still found time to write, and am now over a third of the way through the book. The interviews keep coming together, as I've gotten the inside scoop on a few fan films that are so famous, even your mom has heard of them (well, maybe just my mom). There's some stories that are going to be controversial, but will make for some great reading, and it looks like some more 'name' interviewees will wind up in the book, too. So, despite a scarcity of time, the world's first fan film book is progressing nicely.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- \ JULY, 2007 UPDATE: This book keeps taking surprising twists and turns--for instance, let's just say that when I started writing, I never figured I'd wind up interviewing punk rock legend Tommy Ramone for it! It was surely the first interview he's done where there wasn't one question asked about The Ramones; the bemusement in his voice was palpable. In the meantime, I was in touch with a variety of other folks as well throughout June, and have been getting the unexpected but highly appreciated research/nagging assistance of Chris Mason of SuperHeroHype.Com--thank goodness for well-connected friends.
The actual writing of the book is continuing, but it's slow going--I spent the month neck-deep in the 1970s, an era I thought I'd be done with by now. I'm also writing a lot--while I have a long way before I get there, if I keep going at this rate, and cover everything I have in mind as extensively as I'd like to, 85,000 words ain't gonna do the trick. Then again, I'll burn that bridge when I get to it. Part of the slow progress is due to the extensive interviews I keep getting; they're chock full of great stories and inside information, but they take hours to transcribe--an exhausting but necessary evil. All of this means, though, that there'll definitely be nothing quite like this fan film book when it hits the shelves next year!
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- JUNE, 2007 UPDATE: Writing this book is a slow, painstaking process that is driving me crazy, and I love every minute of it. With the first month of work officially done, I've written about 9,000 words or so; when you add that to the 14,000 I'd already written prior to signing the deal, it's a great start on a book that is contractually required to be no more than 85,000 words.
Of course, people don't buy a book based on word-count; they buy it 'cause there's something interesting in it that they wanna read. Well, if you like fan films, comics, sci-fi or history, you're gonna dig Homemade Hollywood; in the last month, I've interviewed people like Sandy Collora (Batman: Dead End; World's Finest); Kevin Rubio (Troops and the upcoming Star Wars CGI TV series); Don Glut (TV writer for He-Man, Transformers, Land of the Lost, film director, and author of the Empire Strikes Back novel); Cris and Cort Macht (The Force Among Us); Bruce Cardozo (Spider-Man Vs. Kraven from 1974); and Michael Wiese (producer of Hardware Wars). Throw in hours of research on top of that, and you have a pretty hardcore month of hard work. It's a lot of fun to write, though, and I'd enjoy talking with these folks even if it wasn't for a book. Ironically, because I'm writing it, I'm the first person to legally make money from fan films!
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- MAY, 2007 UPDATE: I'm starting work on the first book about fan films; it'll be published by Continuum Publishing, and is tentatively titled Homemade Hollywood. The book will explore different aspects of fan flicks, like their longstanding history, impact on culture and implications for mainstream mediia in the future. Plus, y' know, how cool they are and stuff.
There's been a few books where fan productions were mentioned or, in rare cases, even warranted their own chapter, but fan films have been largely ignored by mainstream media. At best, you'll stumble across the occasional newspaper article, or a rare, two-minute piece on a morning news show, where the reporter is astounded that people make their own Star Wars movies.
Meanwhile, I've been covering fan films for ages, first with articles in magazines, then with Mos Eisley Multiplex, a website I founded in 1998, which was the first site devoted solely to fan films. Between those, library lectures and now the Fan Cinema Today blog, I've been following fan film culture for a decade, and lemme tell you, there's much more to this underground movement than providing fodder for some newscaster to chuckle over before going to an Excedrin ad. Fan films have become such a integral part of fandom and internet culture, that I knew they deserved their own book--and fortunately, Continuum agreed.
Continuum is probably best-known to pop culture fans for 33 1/3, its series of tiny books, each devoted to one landmark music album. I've got a few of them: the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds and Beastie Boys' Paul's Boutique ones, as well as the compilation paperback that came out last year. I keep meaning to pick up the Smiths and GnR titles, too, but I only seem to stumble across them when I have $1.58 in my pocket. Anyway, folks interested in theology and spirituality are probably familiar with the Continuum imprint, too-my mom has an Ark-load of the company's Thomas Keating books, for instance.
Have a tip, idea, question or maybe a fan film I should see?
Drop me a line at fancinematoday@aol.com
