punching through

Hey, look who made this list of Cool Movie Posters Of 2014!

I'm really, really pleased about this.  We're one of the only items on the list that isn't a major studio release and/or featuring major cast.  Justin Erickson did such a fabulous job designing the poster, and it's very gratifying to see it punch through on its own merits.  Here's hoping it's a bellwether for the movie itself when it debuts this August.

pulp. fiction.

I love pulp stories for their potent blend of simple storytelling and boundless imagination (when I wrote and directed Devil's Mile, the tone I told everyone I was going for was "pulpy").  Populist tales, driven by market and word count, and written at a blistering pace that left little time for authorial reflection or scholarly ambition.  As such, they tend to be works of instinct over intellect, inner critics crushed under the weight of sheer pragmatism and imagination left to flourish, unfettered, in a way that is almost childlike.

Case in point.

They are words banged out by writers whose desire to keep a roof over their heads and food in their mouths likely outweighed any lofty love of craft.  And yet despite a mercenary environment  practically designed with the lowest-common-denominator in mind, lasting, even classic works emerged -- H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard spring immediately to mind -- and continue to influence new generations of creators to this day.

I'm fascinated by pulp writer and Doc Savage creator Lester Dent's famous "Master Plot" formula because it represents such a strong and unpretentious distillation of the elements of effective storytelling.  It's a document that could only be forged in a crucible of deadlines and financial necessity.  The inessential and the indulgent are burned away; what remains is what works.