Quite a few months after the release of Cashiers du Cinemart #13, I received a strange email from Thomas Weisser—head honcho of Video Search of Miami and prolific author.
Mike—
I honestly don’t understand you. How can you comfortably continue to publish hate-induced comments regarding my work (and those with whom I associate) and then solicit as if you’ve done nothing?
—Thomas Weisser
This message really stuck in my craw. It seemed to come from left field. I had actually stopped bashing the "quality" of VSOM’s movies long ago, trying to make peace with Weisser. I honestly couldn’t understand what had angered him. I beseeched him to tell me what had brought about such a strange and stinging missive. His reply:
My eMail to you was spurred by a distressing conversion I had with my friend Oliver Stone. He had called me after reading your "review" of my Asian book (and your attack against both me and Oliver... a low blow by the way). As I wrote previously, the words you wrote were certainly not of a friendly nature. I’d say they were hateful.
—Tom
This email opened my eyes. I had completely forgotten the footnote from Chris Casey that I had included in the editorial for CdC #13 in which Casey scratched the surface of flummoxed facts in Weisser’s Japanese Cinema Encyclopedia.
As it’s my policy to try and get a copy into the hands of whoever might be in the spotlight in the pages of Cashiers du Cinemart — good or bad — I was dismayed that I had not sent Weisser a copy of CdC #13. I remedied this situation immediately and enclosed a note imploring him to correct any misstatements made by Casey or myself. I guaranteed him room in the next issue of CdC for him to amend his record of accuracy.
Alas, over a year later I have yet to hear from Weisser, Stone, or anyone else who felt that statements about the accuracy of Weisser’s work were fallacious.
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