The only stories I love to read more than "The Making of ..." this or that film are stories about films that almost got made, kinda got made, never got made. I recently treated myself to a popcorn book, The Greatest Movies You'll Never See, and although I knew broadly about several of these would-be … Continue reading A Very Strange Preview: Sergio Leone’s The Siege of Leningrad →

Best known for his role as Moe Green in The Godfather, Rocco won an Emmy for his role as a talent agent in The Famous Teddy Z, starring Jon Cryer (of Two and a Half Men and Pretty in Pink fame), one of those shows that critics loved but that could not find a durable audience. You know … Continue reading R.I.P. Alex Rocco →

So among the many Wayback TV channels I watch, where I can find classic and not-so-classic television shows from 30, 40, even 60 years ago, is Decades, on channel 483 (Verizon FIOS). You know what I mean by "Wayback"—not just old, but from a time when the networks' goal was the production of lighthearted entertainment … Continue reading Somebody Down Here Likes Him →

So if you're into movies, you've probably heard about this aborted project: a Tim Burton–directed "Superman Dies" starring Nic Cage as the Man of Steel. The script had among its writers Kevin Smith, of Clerks, Chasing Amy, Dogma, and Comic Book Men fame. So imagine: the director who gave us the Michael Keaton Batmans and … Continue reading The Superman Movie That Never Got Made, Thank Goodness →

So The Federalist asked a bunch of notables in the conservosphere, and me, what they were reading this summer. Click here for their, and my, responses. To help you get into the mood, below are two of the titles I included in my list, one of which seemed to catch the attention of a few commenters: “Lutherans … Continue reading Read This Not That This Summer →

Everyone's been culling from the history of ancient Athens a fitting metaphor to illustrate the financial disaster befalling modern Greece. As far as this story goes, I played with working Tiresias, the blind prophet, or Odysseus, the self-blinded king, into the post's title. But I'll just let the following report speak for itself: It was the rumours … Continue reading Socialism as Transableism →

You read correctly. The late Stanley Kubrick will be reanimated to direct his original screenplay, which will star the late Clark Gable, William Holden, and Gary Cooper, although I may be mistaken about that. The director of such classics as Paths of Glory, Dr. Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, and Roller Boogie wrote The Downslope … Continue reading A Strange Preview: Stanley Kubrick’s The Downslope →

Life is weird. Depressing, stupid, and tedious. And weird. Let's review. It's the mid-1980s, and I'm in college, and I'm working part-time for a travel agency whose owner happened to be good friends with Dick Van Patten. And so I write a sitcom for him (Van Patten, not the owner of the travel agency), about … Continue reading R.I.P. Dick Van Patten →

So I'd been in Delaware two and a half years before I discovered this indie bookstore in a part of town that was, err, in transition. Called Between Books, it featured sci-fi, comics, graphic novels, games (think Dungeons and Dragons type), and was a kind of community center for local geeks since the late 1970s. … Continue reading The Rebirth of an Indie Bookstore →

Nonsense vocables to replace "unwords" (simply affix the suffix -phobe), the defiance of logic, the blackballing of unvetted opinions, the shuttering of businesses whose owners do not "do what is required of them," the social media hate fests: it's been too easy to make comparisons between the progressive era in which we live and the … Continue reading Are We Living in Orwell’s World or Lewis Carroll’s? →