Welcome to yet another issue of Cashiers du Cinemart. Can you believe that it’s been twenty years since the first, photocopied and glue-sticked issue of the CdC zine sullied the U.S. Mail? Twenty years and eighteen issues isn’t such a great track record but my heart is in the right place even if my head isn’t (and fingers aren’t).
Almost all of the articles in this issue were submitted to me well in advance of the deadline. The tardiness of the release rests solely on my shoulders. Over the last few months of 2013 (and first few of 2014) I’ve been working on a book project for BearManor Media all about the ’80s TV show "Mad Movies." Not being content to just write about the show, the comedy troupe who produced it, and their feature film projects, I took at a look at the history of so-called "mock dub" comedy. The fruits of this research are included in this issue.
As usual with the magazine – now something more like a film journal, I suppose – articles include run the gamut from the obscure to the sublime and everywhere between. Regular contributors Skizz Cyzyk, Rich Osmond, Mike Malloy, and Mike Sullivan are back with looks at Corrupt, Eye of the Tiger, Earl Owensby, and casting decisions that almost were. Jim Donahue, Calum Syers, Scott Lefebvre, and Andrew Leavold have returned to give us pieces about Michael Powell, Ulli Lommel, Anthony Matthews, and Eddie Romero. Joshua Gravel provides another batch of movie reviews that go beyond the usual thumbs up/down tripe. And, I’m very happy to say that we’re also featuring articles by Jay A. Gertzman, Heather Drain, Greg Goodsell, Marisa Young Mike Dereniewski, Ryan Sarnowski, Jared Case, and David Bertrand.
Also new to our pages, Joe "Woodyanders" Wawrzyniak gives us an interesting perspective on the Lianne Spiderbaby scandal that blew up over the summer of 2013. I was hesitant to rehash the discussion in the pages of Cashiers du Cinemart as I had been involved in giving light to the disturbing discovery that Ms. Spiderbaby (née MacDougall) lifted nearly all of her material from other writers. However, Joe relates how one of her victims felt to have their work pilfered.
Joe’s story harkens all the way back to that first flimsy issue of Cashiers du Cinemart where I railed about Quentin Tarantino’s cinematic theft and the lack of attention that mainstream media paid to the story. Tarantino made "homage" something of a cottage industry but his now-former girlfriend crossed a line that the darling director hasn’t (at least according to the court of public opinion).
For anyone who may not know, I’m continuing to keep busy by co-hosting "The Projection Booth" podcast – www.projection-booth.com – and doing other writing gigs like penning a story for Fangoria about William Friedkin’s Cruising and forever working on a book about Elliott Gould’s films of the 1970s.
Thanks for sticking with Cashiers du Cinemart.
Mike White
March, 2014
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