RUE MORGUE #65 - BOOOOY!

Got a lovely email from Don Coscarelli thanking me for my Reggie Bannister piece in the new Rue Morgue, part of a larger cover story on the Phantasm films as a whole.

The illustrious John Bowen interviewed Don, while my former screenwriting partner Brad Abraham confronted The Tall Man himself, Angus Scrimm. As John put it, it was Rue Morgue's unholy trinity (aside from editorial staff, the three of us are RM's longest-serving scribes) interviewing Phantasm's unholy trinity. With the three of us leading the feature, it really felt like old times.

I've been a Phan since I saw Phantasm II at age 16. I cut the poster out of the back cover of a Fangoria issue, laminated it with my high school library's laminating machine, and hung it in my locker all the way up to grade 13. I still have it, pinned to the same desk from which I write this, twenty years later.

Since that time there have been two more Phantasm sequels -- I first met Don in 1998 when I introduced the Toronto premiere of Phantasm OblIVion onstage at the Bloor Cinema, as part of the soon-severed TO leg of the Montreal-based FantAsia Film Festival, and we've been friends ever since. I remain as big a Phan now as I did when I was a teenager, so it still fills me with a goofy fannish glee to hear from Don and know I've done right by him.

On The Lot

Last month I submitted Go For It for consideration on the upcoming Steven Spielberg/Mark Burnett reality show On The Lot. While I have a better chance of getting hit in the head with a Soviet satellite than I do of getting an interview, never mind a spot on this show, I'm glad I actually threw down and entered.

I am curious to see how the series plays out. 16 filmmakers in real-time competition, making a short film a week -- that's writing, producing and editing -- in a variety of genres, with the winner receiving a $1 Million development deal with Dreamworks. That kind of pressure ought to separate the doers from the wannabes pretty damn fast.

You can view the On The Lot version of Go For It (complete with my cheesy, shot-at-the-last-minute introduction) here.