Month: February 2024

Geek Punditry #60: Taking the Challenge

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As much as I love stories and storytelling – as much as I love books and comics and TV and movies – the truth is that the world is a busy damn place, and sometimes it can be difficult to find the time for these pursuits. It seems counter-intuitive, doesn’t it? That we should take the things that really make life fun and give them a lower priority than so many less enjoyable pursuits…but we all have jobs, our kids have sports, people get sick and thousands of other little obligations chip away at the things that we enjoy the most. Oddly enough, when there’s something I really LIKE, I find that making a challenge out of it is sometimes the way to become most productive. Just reading, writing, watching things in a vacuum…that can wait. But once you make a game out of it, those priorities shift in a productive way.

Pictured: the death of freedom.

We all do it. If you’re any kind of a reader at all, you probably participated in a summer reading challenge back in elementary school. Once school is out for the summer, kids are encouraged to read books to help prevent their brain from rotting before they make it back into the classroom. We all remember the glory age of the Pizza Hut Book It! Program, in which we read in exchange for free pizza (a game that remains dormant despite calls from, I assume, the United Nations to bring it back). While Pizza Hut may not be in the game anymore, a lot of local libraries still have their own competitions, and although those are usually for kids, there are apps that you can use even as an adult to get in on it. On the other hand, if you’re the sort to write books and not just read them, there’s National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, the annual challenge in which writers all over the world attempt to write a 50,000-word novel in the 30 short days of November. I’ve taken part in that challenge many times myself – in fact, two of my published novels (Opening Night of the Dead and The Pyrite War) both began life as NaNoWriMo novels. Of course, so did several others that you’ve never heard of because they died on the vine, but let’s not belabor the point. 

Currently, the challenge I’m engaged in is “FebNEWary.” A few years ago, some movie-loving friends of mine invited me into a Facebook group where the members attempt to spend February watching movies that they’ve never seen before. Any genre is allowed, any platform, any kind of movie, as long as you watch 26 “new to you” movies, one for every letter of the alphabet. It’s harder than it sounds. Sure, it averages out to less than a movie a day, but what about those days where you have to work late or you go to your nephew’s basketball game or you have a headache and just can’t summon up the will to watch? It’s not that simple. Despite that, I’ve taken the challenge every year since it was created in 2020, and for four years in a row, I’ve made it.

In 2023, this is what progress looked like.

This year, I’ll admit, I’m a little worried. Sure, there are 29 days in February this year, and I’ve got 20 films done, as of this writing. How hard can it be to watch six more movies in the next six days? Well, those same issues that I mentioned before still apply. Work. Kids. Kids‘s sports. A kid who wants to use the television to watch sports. Lacking the motivation. It’s a possibility that it may not happen.

But whether I cross the finish line or not, I love the game of it. Over the last five years of taking part in this challenge, I’ve found that FebNEWary has an odd influence on what movies I choose. There are so many times – don’t lie to me, I know you’ve felt it too – where you’re stuck looking for something to watch. Are you in the mood for a comedy? An action movie? Do you want to be scared? Do you want to cry? When you sit down wanting to watch SOMETHING but not having an actual idea WHAT to watch, that’s when you find yourself scrolling the Netflix catalog for three hours before giving up and watching reruns of The Big Bang Theory. But during FebNEWary, that isn’t a problem. For one month a year I’m not worried about figuring out what KIND of movie I want to watch, I’m in a position where I just need to find the most acceptable movie that starts with the letter J. 

Consequently, I’ve watched several films that I may otherwise have never watched, sometimes being delightfully surprised, sometimes being utterly disgusted. But believe it or not, that’s the part of fun of it. When I watch a lousy movie in, say, June, I feel like I’ve just wasted two hours. But when I watch a bad movie in February, it’s like I’ve defeated a particularly challenging level of a video game. It actually even makes crappy movies a little more worthwhile. For example, in 2021 I watched the movie Queen Kong, a spoof from 1976 which is set in an alternate world where gender roles are (somewhat) reversed, with women holding a more dominant position over men…and then there’s a giant gorilla. The satire fails, the comedy is awful, and the gorilla suit is one of the most abominable things I’ve ever seen in my life. I never would have watched this movie if Q wasn’t one of the harder movies to tick off the list. In the five years I’ve been playing this game, this may well be the worst movie I’ve watched. Still worth it.

Then last year, Q led me to Quick Change, the 1990 heist comedy starring Bill Murray, Geena Davis, and a pre-insanity Randy Quaid. I’ve learned since that there have been reports of Murray being less than kind to Geena Davis on the set of the movie, and I mention this here only because if I don’t someone will bring it up in the comments after I say I thought the movie was actually really funny and very entertaining, and I wish I had watched it sooner.

Bad Q, better Q, best Q

The alphabetical stipulation, obviously, is very easy for some letters, but Q, X, and Z are always tough. In five years of playing, I’m proud to say that I’ve only resorted to a zombie movie twice, and one of them (Zombie Hamlet) wasn’t even REALLY a zombie movie, but a movie about somebody MAKING a zombie movie. X, for somebody who has already seen all of the X-Men movies, is an utter nightmare. I’m still looking for suggestions for this year’s X, by the way, to keep me from my emergency plan of a three-year series of the Vin Diesel xXx franchise that I have thus far avoided. Some people in the challenge cheat a little on this one, using movies like Exit Wounds on the rationalization that it SOUNDS like “X-It.” I cast no aspersions upon these people, but thus far, I am unwilling to compromise my principles in that way.

“I know, I thought this was a Fast and Furious movie too.”

If you, like me, have a ridiculously long list of movies that you want to watch and you’re never going to get around to without some sort of motivation, gameifying your viewing is a great way to do it. I’d always heard that Arsenic and Old Lace was an excellent movie, and since I needed an A, I finally confirmed that fact in 2023. The same goes for this year’s T movie, Alfred Hitchcock’s The Trouble With Harry. If you’ve never seen this one, find a chance to do it. It’s one of the few comedies ever made by Hitchcock, but it still has his bizarre and morbid proclivities right on display. In this film a kid played by Jerry Mathers (the most notable time in his life when he was not “The Beaver”) finds a dead body in the woods. As different adults are alerted to the presence of the corpse, a small community begins to form among separate people who each believe themselves responsible for the man’s death for various reasons. The freaky thing is, everybody in the movie is treating ol’ Harry’s remains as a sort of minor inconvenience. “Welp, guess we need to get this guy buried,” is the prevailing attitude, as if they just replaced their water heater and can’t figure out how to get rid of the old one. I loved this movie, but I don’t think I can do justice with it via mere description. 

It’s also a good excuse to tick off more recent films that you missed but really wanted to see. This year, for instance, my wife and I got around to watching Godzilla Minus One (which was excellent), The Marvels (which I am happy — but not surprised — to report is a much better movie than the internet wants you to believe it is), and Elemental (which I find better than most recent Pixar movies, but not quite up to the standards of their Golden Age). It’s also a chance to find movies that you otherwise may never have watched, and are the better for it. My “A” this year was The Artifice Girl, an independent sci-fi movie from 2022 written and directed by Franklin Ritch. The movie is about a trio of people who use an artificial intelligence to bait and capture child predators online. The premise is dark, but don’t let that put you off – Ritch doesn’t wallow in the darkness of that world. The movie isn’t really ABOUT child predators, it’s about the moral and ethical use of artificial intelligence. The genius here was in giving the investigators a goal that nobody would disagree is noble (saving children), but then using that to ask the ethical questions about HOW to use AI to do it. With AI becoming such a prominent part of our lives, I expect to see more sci-fi movies that tackle this topic. I don’t expect most of them to do it this well, though, and I strongly recommend you watch this movie at your earliest convenience. If you’ve got the Hoopla app (available through many local libraries for free), it’s waiting for you there.

My occasional “Not making a joke here, just watch this movie” plea. All right, now back to the comedy.

It may seem silly to resort to a game to make myself watch movies, because I love movies and I watch them all the time. But there’s something about having a community of people doing the same thing that makes it more fun. People taking part in the challenge make a post in the Facebook group announcing each film they watch, often with their reviews. You get to see what other people are watching, and I’ve added more than a few movies to my own watchlist based on what they recommend. I’ve recruited my wife into playing the game with me, and a few other friends both online and in real life. The community aspect of the thing makes it worthwhile, and although February is often a barren month for new cinematic content, the FebNEWary game has legitimately made it the most exciting movie month of my entire year. Even when the Christmas decorations are coming down in January, I don’t feel quite as sad because mentally I’m already trying to decide what this year’s “S” movie is going to be.

If you want to see what movies – good and bad – this game has led me to watch, here are links to my Letterboxd lists of each one, and each movie has my thoughts: 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024.

And if it sounds like something you’re interested in, join the group! We’re happy to have you. There may not be enough time left for you to squeeze in 26 movies before the end of the month, but there’s always another February coming around the corner. 

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, now complete on Amazon’s Kindle Vella platform. He wasn’t kidding about taking suggestions for X movies. For Heaven’s sake, don’t make him make Vin Diesel a thing.

Geek Punditry #59: The Crossover Question

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It was the kind of news that grinds the internet to a halt, sometimes for upwards of 17 seconds. After years, decades even, where some of the most sought-after comic books of all time were out of print and unavailable unless you wanted to pay crazy eBay prices, this week DC and Marvel Comics announced a pair of omnibus editions collecting most of the crossover comics that have been produced over the years featuring meetings between the two most famous superhero pantheons in the world.

This is not a drill, people!

I’m not sure if younger fans will realize exactly how big a deal this sort of thing is. From the moment that the two respective worlds solidified, there were fans who were anxious to see the Justice League meet the Avengers, the X-Men meet the Teen Titans, Brother Voodoo meet Brother Power: The Geek. It’s like when you have toys from multiple toy lines and try to play with them all together. I know that every kid my age, at some point, had their G.I. Joes face off against Darth Vader, the TransFormers clash with He-Man, and the Thundercats and Silverhawks grab a drink down at the bar. Those were the stories that spilled out of our imagination. But the idea of a “real,” “official” story in which such a thing happened was the stuff of dreams. So in 1975, when the two publishers announced their first joint venture, it was like a dream come true!

For Wizard of Oz fans, that is. Yes, because of some weird things like licensing agreements with MGM and the public domain status of the original novel, the first comic co-produced by Marvel and DC Comics was an adaptation of MGM’s The Wizard of Oz, hitting the stands a scant 36 years after the film’s debut. I was only around for the last few years of it, guys, but it really seems like the 70s were a bizarre time.

The part where Wolverine rips out the Cowardly Lion’s entrails, in retrospect, may have been a tad overboard.

But that collaboration seemed to grease the wheels between the two publishers and, in 1976, fans got Superman Vs. the Amazing Spider-Man. Like the Oz book, this was an oversized treasury edition featuring the clash of the respective publisher’s two most popular characters, and it was a hit. In 1981 there was a second Superman/Spider-Man meeting, followed by Batman Vs. the Incredible Hulk (or, as I like to call it, “Battle of the Bruces”), and in 1982 we got The Uncanny X-Men and the New Teen Titans. Then work began on an Avengers/Justice League crossover, a story that would surely be the crown jewel for the two publishers, but things kind of fell apart. Not only did that planned crossover never happen, but all crossovers between the two dried up for over a decade. 

Childhoods were defined in these books.

That changed in 1994, when the era of comic book excess was in full swing, and the two collaborated again with what would be the first of two Batman/Punisher crossovers. It wasn’t Bruce Wayne, though – this story took place during the Knightfall era, and the Punisher ran across the Jean-Paul Valley version of Batman. By the time the sequel rolled around, Bruce was back and Frank Castle learned what the real Batman is like. This pair kicked off a new wave of Marvel/DC crossovers including Batman/Spider-Man, Batman/Daredevil, Batman/Captain America – look, by the 90s it was clear who DC’s top seller was. But Superman got in on the fun too, meeting both the Hulk and the Fantastic Four. Green Lantern met up with the Silver Surfer, and then there was the villain-centric Darkseid Vs. Galactus: The Hunger by John Byrne. 

College years, on the other hand, were defined by THESE books.

The creme de la creme, of course, was 1996’s mega-event DC Vs. Marvel, where the two universes collided in a four-issue slugfest where the fans voted for the winners of the five top battles. This was a great gimmick from a sales standpoint but posed something of a creative challenge, as writers Peter David and Ron Marz had to figure out some way to have Lobo (an indestructible alien with Superman-level strength) lose a fight to Wolverine (a character who is considerably less powerful unless you count his mutant ability to sell a trillion copies and, in this case, garner a trillion extra votes). Their solution, hilariously, was to have the two of them duck behind a counter and only have Wolverine pop up, thereby avoiding the need to actually explain how he could possibly have won.

Nerds argued over this for almost 60 years before Marvel and DC decided to settle things. It didn’t stop nerds from arguing.

Specious battles aside (I also take issue with Storm of the X-Men beating Wonder Woman with a bolt of lightning and Batman beating Captain America because the latter got hit by a wave of water from a flooding sewer which threw off his aim), the book was a smash hit. It spawned two sequel miniseries, but the thing that fans remember most were the series of one-shots that came in-between issues three and four of the main storyline, the Amalgam Universe. Basically, the Marvel and DC Universes were merged, and we got 12 one-shots starring character mashups like Super Soldier (Superman fused with Captain America), Dark Claw (Batman and Wolverine), Speed Demon (Flash and Ghost Rider) and so forth. A year later there were another series of 12 one-shots, half of which were follow-ups to the original dozen and the other six introducing new mashups like the Lobo the Duck (Lobo and Howard the Duck) and Iron Lantern (Iron Man and Green La– look, do I have to spell out EVERYTHING?). 

The next time someone tells you that drawing doofy fan mashups won’t get you anywhere, show them this.

The Marvel/DC crossover craze ended in 2003 with the long-awaited JLA/Avengers crossover, and it came about in a sort of odd way. The legendary George Perez, whom everyone agreed was the only man alive who should draw this book, joined upstart publisher CrossGen Comics, and CrossGen made all of its talent sign exclusive contracts for the term of their employment. The only loophole allowed was in Perez’s contract, which stated he would be allowed to do JLA/Avengers if it ever happened. That seemed to be enough to get Marvel and DC to figure things out, and the four-issue miniseries finally came about. But that’s the last time any Marvel or DC characters met one another.

There were other crossovers in that era, of course. Marvel’s Iron Man met Valiant’s X-O Manowar, and Daredevil encountered Shi from Crusade Comics. DC and Dark Horse comics became besties: Superman crossed over with Michael Allred’s Madman, the Joker fought the Mask, and Batman met both Grendel and Hellboy (the latter with Starman in tow). But the two biggest games in comics stopped playing together at that point, possibly because of corporate chicanery and possibly because the always friendly rivalry between the two publishers became somewhat less friendly for a while. 

Marvel, in fact, seems to have quit crossovers altogether. A search on the Internet (which, as we all know, has never been wrong about anything) seems to indicate the last time Marvel characters crossed over with any other publisher was back in 2009, when the Avengers and Thunderbolts were featured with Top Cow Comics characters in a miniseries called Fusion. We’ve recently got a new crossover, though, with Wolverine fighting the Predator, but as both characters are now owned by the Walt Disney Corporation and IP Farm and Macaroni Grill, and therefore both published by Marvel, I don’t know that it technically counts. 

And it’s not like other publishers haven’t gotten into the game as well. Before Disney bought Fox, Dark Horse Comics held the rights to Aliens and Predator, and they fought EVERYBODY. Superman Vs. Aliens, Batman Vs. Predator, Green Lantern Vs. Aliens, Magnus: Robot Fighter Vs. Predator, WildC.A.T.S. Vs. Aliens, Archie Vs. Predator (no, I’m not kidding), Batman and Superman Vs. Aliens and Predator…it was a cottage industry.

Fellas, when THIS many people have trouble getting along with you, maybe it’s time to admit that the problem is YOU.

And their sparring partners often met other publishers’ characters as well. Archie Comics has crossed over with – among others – the Punisher, Batman ‘66, Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy, Vampirella and Red Sonja, and the Tiny Titans. They also crossed over with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles when Archie was publishing THAT book, but since the Turtles have moved to IDW Publishing they’ve encountered the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers (twice), Batman (four times), and the characters from Stranger Things, which has also crossed over with Dungeons and Dragons, which has also crossed over with Rick and Morty. The Power Rangers have also met both the Justice League and Godzilla, and the Justice League and Godzilla are currently meeting each other – along with King Kong – in a crossover with the Legendary Monsterverse. 

While Marvel has pulled out of the crossover game (which is something I largely suspect is an edict from Disney, although I have nothing to back that up, it’s just a gut feeling), DC has kept it up. Besides the aforementioned TMNT, Power Rangers, and Godzilla/Kong crossovers, the Justice League has met the characters from Jeff Lemire’s Black Hammer, and enjoyed crossovers with corporate siblings the Looney Tunes and the Hanna-Barbera cartoon characters. Batman and Scooby-Doo, who have met in cartoons many times, now share an ongoing children’s comic. DC has also partnered with IDW for Star Trek/Green Lantern, Star Trek/Legion of Super-Heroes, and an inventive crossover between DC’s Sandman Universe and Joe Hill’s Locke and Key. IDW seems to love crossovers, even with different licensed properties in their own stable. While they owned the licenses to these assorted properties, they crossed over TransFormers with Ghostbusters, Back to the Future, and Star Trek: The Animated Series (making new Autobots out of the Ecto-1, the Delorean, and the Enterprise, respectively). Star Trek, by the way, also crossed over with the X-Men when Marvel owned that license, in two one-shot comics and a prose novel titled Planet X. And Valiant and Image Comics did the “universes merge” story three whole years before Amalgam Comics in a series called Deathmate, which is largely remembered today for the fact that Rob Liefeld’s issue of the series was hilariously late. 

IDW is the Nick Cannon of comic book crossover events. No, not musically.

In fact, there’s only one really major franchise that has significant comic book presence that – as far as I know – has never done an official crossover, and that’s Star Wars. Even before the Disney buyout and the comics moved to Marvel, Dark Horse never made an effort to have Luke Skywalker meet Barb Wire or something. The closest they’ve come was in an out-of-continuity story in the Star Wars Tales anthology comic from 2004, in which the Millennium Falcon gets lost in a galaxy far, far away and crash-lands on a primitive planet, only for the remains to be discovered centuries later by an archeologist strongly implied to be Indiana Jones. 

I know it can seem overwhelming if you’re a casual fan, trying to make all of these things work out. The good news is, you don’t have to. The vast majority of these crossovers are either considered non-canonical to the main properties or are of such little consequence to the ongoing story that they may as well be. There are rare exceptions (the WildC.A.T.S./Aliens crossover killed off several members of Wildstorm Comics’ Stormwatch team, for example), but for the most part, they can be read on their own, self-contained, without impacting the ongoing comics in any significant way.

So why do them at all?

Because they’re fun. They’re fun for the readers, who like seeing beloved characters interact, and they’re fun for the creators, who enjoy making them just as much. It’s true that there was a saturation point of crossovers in the early 2000s, but the solution to saturation is to slow down the flow, not cut it off entirely. 

So the announcement of the two DC/Marvel omnibus editions is welcome. The DC Versus Marvel: The Amalgam Age omnibus will collect the DC Vs. Marvel miniseries, its two sequels, and 13 of the 24 Amalgam books. The DC Versus Marvel omnibus will collect most of their other crossovers. But the exclusion of the remaining 11 Amalgam books is surprising and a little frustrating, and the DC Versus Marvel omnibus will exclude JLA/Avengers, which was reprinted in a very limited charity run two years ago after George Perez announced that he was suffering from terminal cancer. The fact that it was once again Perez being on a deadline that got that book off to the printer is a sad sort of cosmic convergence. 

No joke here. George Perez was one of the greatest comic book artists ever to pick up a pencil, and he deserves all the love and respect he gets.

I hope that there are plans to reprint the rest of the Amalgam books at some point, but even if there aren’t, the fact that they’re doing the omnibus editions at all is encouraging. It’s something fans have wanted for a very long time and we didn’t really think would ever happen. It also, of course, has everybody asking a couple of pertinent questions. First, why now? What has changed in the Marvel/DC relations that allows these books to finally see print again? A lot of the people responsible for the bad blood between the publishers are gone now, and that may indeed play a significant role. And if THAT has changed, let’s just ask the most obvious question of them all:

Could this be a precursor to more?

As I said, it’s been over 20 years since the Marvel and DC Universes connected in any official capacity and a lot has changed. I think there are a lot of fans who would be interested to see Miles Morales meet Damian Wayne or have Kamala Khan interact with Jon Kent. How would the Titans of today – now DC’s premiere super-team – react to the X-Men in the age of Krakoa? And come on, fans have been pining for a Deadpool/Harley Quinn crossover for ages. Such a book would be as good a license to print money as Wolverine was in the 90s. 

I’m not saying it will happen. I’m just saying that if it DID, it would be cool. 

I’m also saying that the two omnibus books are coming out in August, which also happens to be my birthday month. I’m just. Sayin’. 

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, now complete on Amazon’s Kindle Vella platform. He’s always wanted to write the Captain Carrot/Spider-Ham crossover that America deserves. 

Geek Punditry #58: Finding Movies at the Bookstore

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Not too long ago, I remember seeing a statistic that said among adults who read frequently, men are more likely to be nonfiction readers, whereas women are more likely to read fiction. When you consider just how prodigious the romance section of a bookstore can be, the idea that women read fiction makes perfect sense. (I’m not trying to indulge in gender stereotypes here, but let’s be honest, ain’t nobody marketing a Harlequin bodice-ripper to a male audience.) I’m a bit more confused about the men reading nonfiction, though. Sure, I suppose men are more likely to be into things like military history and other such subjects, but if I were single and looking to meet a woman in a bookstore, I would probably start hanging around the true crime section. And subsequently get arrested, now that I think about it. Dear God, I’m glad I’m married. Anyway, I suppose I’m a bit of an odd duck in that I very rarely read nonfiction. My shelves are stacked with novels and comic books, for the most part. And when I DO read nonfiction, it’s usually nonfiction that, in one way or another, is ABOUT fiction. In fact, my favorite nonfiction books are all about the movies.

It’s like if The Godfather were written by a sarcastic robot.

Back in 2002, Mystery Science Theater 3000 alumni Kevin Murphy (a few years before the birth of RiffTrax) released his book A Year at the Movies. I bought it, mostly, because it was written by Tom Servo and I thought that was cool, but I was amazed at how utterly engrossed I was when I opened up the book and started reading. In the years after MST3K ended its initial run, Murphy had become – understandably – a bit disenchanted with the movies. For this book, he embarked upon a quest to rediscover them. His goal was to attend a public screening of a movie every day for an entire calendar year, and this book is a memoir of his experience.

And it’s great.

First of all, it’s funny. This should come as absolutely no surprise to anybody, that a book written by Kevin Murphy has plenty of knee-slapping moments. But it’s a lot more than that. Murphy doesn’t just go down to the local megaplex 365 times. He explores the world, going to film festivals and special events. He travels to the smallest movie theater in America, visits a theater built inside an ice hotel where the movie is projected onto a wall of snow, experiences a film festival in a country where the sun doesn’t set for months at a time. He takes Mike Nelson with him to watch Corky Romano. Reading about these adventures makes me want to go and join in.

In Kevin Murphy’s Odyssey, this is Scylla AND Charybdis.

And he talks about the movies, of course. The good ones, the bad ones, the ones in-between. The book is part film critique and part travelogue. And it should be mentioned that the year mentioned in the title happens to be 2001 – so fair warning, when you get to September, something happens that obviously is of far greater significance than Kevin’s little movie watching project, but nonetheless impacts his quest.

It’s a magnificent book and I’ve often wished Murphy would write a sequel. In this age of streaming and the massive changes that have undergone the movie theater business in the last decade, I’m wondering what his findings would be if he tried to do this again. Mr. Murphy, if you’re reading this, I know you’re pretty dang busy with RiffTrax, but I read this book probably every other year and I would LOVE to intercut it with a Part II.

The fact that I do re-read this book, on average, every two years or so, brings me to my next point. Obviously, this is the kind of writing that appeals to me. So I need more. I need more books ABOUT movies. Not just the making of movies (although there are obviously some excellent books written about that very subject matter), but books by people who love movies, about WHY they love movies, about HOW they love movies. So let me tell you some of my favorites that I’ve found in the years since Kevin Murphy inadvertently set me off on my own quest, then I’ll open the floor for recommendations from the audience.

Not THAT Showgirls. Except for the one part where he talks about Showgirls.

In terms of matching the flavor that Kevin Murphy brought to his project, the next best thing I’ve found is Showgirls, Teen Wolves, and Astro Zombies: A Film Critic’s Year-Long Quest to Find the Worst Movie Ever Made. Written by Michael Adams, this is a book whose subtitle lays out its premise exactly. Adams, at the time a writer for Empire magazine, was struck by the idea of trying to find the worst movie of all time. The book chronicles his journey of hunting down DVDs and old VHS tapes, categorizing them, brushing with fame, and the conclusions he has reached at the end. The amazing thing about this book – like most of the books I’m talking about here – is that even when he’s telling me how awful the movies are, Adams describes them in such a fun and charming way that I find myself adding many of them to my watchlist on Letterboxd.

Brian W. Collins had a similar project, his Horror Movie a Day blog, where he watched and reviewed a different horror movie every single day for a few years. Eventually he gave up on the “daily” aspect of the project, but he still publishes new reviews relatively often, and he put the best of them into Horror Movie a Day: The Book. In this one, Collins simply chooses some of his favorite reviews (not necessarily his favorite MOVIES) and divides them up into several categories. For horror movie fans, this is a fun way to find lots of movies you may never have heard of and get opinions on movies that you already have your own thoughts on. Collins is also a strong writer, and his style is entertaining to read in and of itself.

Of course, I don’t want to discount books about MAKING movies. There are three books by Dustin McNeill worth mentioning here, the first two co-written with Travis Mullins, all of which are about some of our favorite slasher flicks. In Taking Shape: Developing Halloween From Script to Scream, McNeill and Mullins do meticulous research and conduct lots of interviews with the principal writers, directors, actors, and other people involved in the production of the various movies in the Halloween franchise, beginning with the original in 1978 and going up to the most recent film at the time of publication, which was 2019. What I love about this book is that even though I’ve seen all of these movies time and again, there are a lot of things that went on behind the scenes that I never knew about. It’s not like some lame clickbait article with a headline like “20 things you never knew about Halloween III that turns out to be 17 things everybody knows and three things that are bullshit. This book gives serious, entertaining insight into the production of one of the most iconic horror franchises of all time.

It’s the Lord of the Rings of books about slasher movies, some of which were never actually made.

The sequel, Taking Shape II: The Lost Halloween Sequels, gives the same treatment to all the Halloween movies that were NOT made over the decades – the rejected pitches, the movies that started production but died on the vine and so forth. I liked this book even more than the first one, because it not only gives great insight into the way the movie business works, but it lands with a wealth of ideas for movies that never existed but that, in a few cases, really sounded a hell of a lot better than the movies that were actually made. 

Before either of those two, though, McNeill published Slash of the Titans: The Road to Freddy Vs. Jason. It’s the same conceit as the Halloween books, but focused solely on the project that ultimately became Freddy Vs. Jason. The movie was in development for many, many years, and McNeill breaks down all of the various iterations that it went through before finally landing on the one that made it to the screen. It, too, is a fascinating read. McNeill has several other similar books on his bibliography that I haven’t gotten around to reading yet, but I want to, including another Mullins collaboration, Reign of Chucky, and a book co-written with J. Michael Roddy called Adventures in Amity: Tales From the Jaws Ride that sounds pretty darn interesting.

All of these books are well worth reading if you’re a fan of the movies in question or even just a fan of movies in general. I am, however, always in search of more. My question for you, guys, is simple: what are your favorite books ABOUT movies? Books that are similar to the ones I listed above, books that aren’t at all like any of them, I am open to all suggestions. Movies are one of the greatest forms of storytelling, and stories about that form of storytelling – be it from the perspective of an insider or an outsider – absolutely fascinate me. Hit me up with your favorite picks, and maybe in a few months I’ll come back and do a follow-up to this column evaluating what you guys recommend.

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, now complete on Amazon’s Kindle Vella platform. Has anyone ever written anything about that Star Wars movie? Seems like that would have been chronicled somewhere by now, right?

Geek Punditry #57: Guilty Reality

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I’ve never really been a fan of the term “guilty pleasure.” It seems inherently reductive to me. It’s announcing to the world that you’re ashamed of something you like, but I don’t think anyone should have to feel that way. If you’re a grown-up who’s into Squishmallows, so what? Get yourself a Squishmallow. Tell your friends so they’ll load you down with them on your birthday. Why would that be anything to be embarrassed about? Adult Fans of Lego? We’re a thriving community. And if anybody tries to tell me that Bluey is “just a kid’s show,” I will personally offer to help them look for the soul they have obviously misplaced.

Don’t call yourself a dad if you can get through this episode without a lump in your throat.

That said, I do UNDERSTAND the idea of a guilty pleasure. There are some things that you enjoy that, for one reason or another, you feel like maybe you shouldn’t. It’s not a matter of shame for me, though, it’s more a question of why does this one thing, this piece of pop culture that includes so many elements that I usually find reprehensible, for some reason not only hold my attention, but leaves me thirsting for more? It’s not a guilty pleasure for me, it’s a confusing one. And here, of course, I am referring to the Peacock “reality” competition series, The Traitors. 

It’s kinda like Knives Out, only the characters aren’t as likable.

I’m not a huge fan of reality competition to begin with. I watched the first few seasons of Survivor back in the day, the show that popularized (if not outright invented) this hybrid game show and docudrama, in which people in competition with each other are also forced to live together. The thing that makes this type of show stand out is that we aren’t solely watching the competition, but also the lives of these people in-between the events. The thing that made the format revolutionary, though, is also the thing that turned me off. Those day-to-day moments became much darker. The contestants started to turn into vile, backstabbing jerks to each other, and it became increasingly difficult to pull for anybody. It wasn’t long before the majority of shows in this category were wiped clean from my viewing slate. Most of the reality competitions I watch these days are the ones that focus solely on the “competition” part, like The Great British Baking Show, Masterchef, LEGO Masters, or Crime Scene Kitchen. Without the manufactured drama between games to make people hate each other, these shows are much more pleasant to watch. In fact, there are plenty of times on British Baking Show where one contestant will drop what they’re doing to help out one of their OPPONENTS in a moment of need, an act of kindness and goodwill that on a show like Big Brother would result in somebody’s spleen being removed and served to the group for dinner with a light balsamic glaze. 

“It was kind of you to help Jeannie with her tartlet, but I’m afraid we WILL have to feed you to the leopard now.”

But back to The Traitors. Based (as so many of these things are) on a British series of the same name, when I heard about the first season a year ago I thought it would be worth a watch. The concept reminded me a little of one of the few reality competitions that I DID enjoy, The Mole. In that show, contestants worked together on a series of missions, with each success adding to the prize pot that would be awarded to the final victor at the end. One of them, however, was a “Mole” working for the producers and actively attempting to sabotage the others. This was a fun show in that the viewer got to play along, analyzing the clues and observing the behavior of the competitors in an attempt to figure out who the Mole was. Netflix brought that show back in 2022 for a reboot which worked well, although a promised second season has not yet materialized.

The Traitors is similar. Again, the competitors are working together to win challenges, and again, the prize money for each challenge goes into a pot to be awarded to the winners at the end. But there are several major differences. First of all, rather than a single Mole, a small group of the competitors are secretly chosen in the first episode to be the Traitors. And their task is NOT to sabotage the missions – in fact, it is in their best interest to see the missions succeed, because at the end of the game the prize will be split among the winners. If the non-traitors, or “Faithful,” manage to eliminate all of the Traitors by the end of the game, they win and those that lasted to the end share the pot. However, if even ONE Traitor remains at the end, then the Faithful get nothing and the money is divided among the remaining Traitors. Like most shows, each night the Faithful vote someone out, hoping like hell that they get one of the Traitors and not one of their own. But afterwards, the Traitors are allowed to choose a Faithful to “murder” and eliminate from the game.

Unlike The Mole, the audience is aware of who the Traitors are from the very beginning. We watch as they are chosen and we watch as they plan and scheme against the Faithful. We also watch the Faithful’s attempts to weed them out, which feel increasingly bizarre and nonsensical to those of us on the outside who already know the solution to the puzzle and can’t figure out how they could be so egregiously wrong. 

The big thing about The Traitors, though, is that when I tuned in to season one last year, about half of the contestants turned out to be veterans from various other reality competition series like Big Brother. They hadn’t played THIS game before, but they played similar ones, and they think they’re savvy enough to carry through to the end. Not being a fan of those shows, the personalities were blanks to me, but they were frequently shown acting as though they were experts or major stars. I was even more alarmed in season two when it turned out virtually EVERY competitor was a reality show vet, including some dude who unironically calls himself “Johnny Bananas.” These were people who had actually turned appearing on these shows into a career. Would I be able to handle this level of ego on my television?

This is what it looks like to be famous for being famous.

To my shock and confusion, the answer seems to be yes.

The show is incredibly backstabby, and the competitors take it super personally. I get that there’s a lot of money on the line, but to hear them talk about the Traitors as if they were Nazi war criminals instead of people trying to win a game show seems a bit much. Are they lying? Sure – but in the context of the game I don’t really see that as any more unethical than bluffing at poker. Are they kicking out innocent people? Absolutely – because they have to do that in order to win the game. It’s in the DNA of the thing. And yet the Faithful seem to talk as though they were literal thieves and murderers. I want to go up to some of these competitors and ask them what they think THEY would be doing had they been chosen to be Traitors, and wait to hear them try to do ethical backflips to try to avoid conceding that they would behave precisely the same way. In both seasons so far (season two is only six episodes in, as I write this), I have found myself surprisingly rooting for the Traitors to win, because the level of rage and invective that comes from the Faithful actually makes the Traitors seem like far more agreeable people. Also because the Faithful are unbearably stupid.

I need to correct that. It’s not really fair to call them unbearably stupid. It’s the way these shows are made. The producers prod the contestants to say certain things and act certain ways, and then they take their performances and edit them down, taking whatever reality exists on the set and shaving it away to sculpt them into characters: this is the arrogant guy, this is the ditzy girl, this is the narcissist, this is the bitch. Actually, on The Traitors, they seem to sculpt multiple bitches. But the point is, I am aware that the figures I see on the screen are not the people that they really are, but rather who the producers of the show want me to THINK they are. So the accurate thing to say is that the producers want me to THINK the Faithful are unbearably stupid.

“Okay, Kate, tell us again how smart you are. But…maybe don’t try to spell it this time.”

I know it’s easy for me, from my perch on the couch knowing exactly who the “bad guys” are, to laugh at the wrong avenues the Faithful follow to try to capture them, but even without that filter, I just don’t see how a lot of their tactics make sense. In the first episode, the Traitors are selected duck-duck-goose style, blindfolded, as the host of the show walks around the room and taps the chosen on the shoulder. As soon as the blindfolds come off, before even the Traitors have a chance to find out who the other Traitors are, the accusations begin. “This guy breathed funny.” “I’m getting Traitor vibes from her.” “I’ve been suspicious of him since DAY ONE.” Dude, it’s Day Two. Stop acting like that’s impressive. 

Another contestant gets confused by one of the Traitor’s “victims” and, unable to figure out why they killed that person, declares that the Traitors must be really stupid. This person who has utterly failed to track down a single one of the Traitors and has voted out several innocent people in the effort, helping their cause all along, is calling THEM stupid. I wanted to throw something at the TV.

One contestant is determined that “The Traitor HAS to be an Alpha Male.” Why? Because other Alpha Males are among his “victims.” This is ludicrous for various reasons. First of all, the Faithful are aware that there are, in fact, multiple Traitors. Second, the whole “Alpha Male” concept in and of itself is a myth. Even the biologists who first coined the term among wolves later dismissed it, saying they had misinterpreted the data, but the idea lingers. I’ve always thought that anyone who refers to himself as an “Alpha Male” as some sort of badge of honor is someone not worth paying attention to, but I suppose I need to extend that policy to include anyone who uses the term “Alpha Male” in an attempt to identify a fake murder suspect on reality television.

So I watch each episode, worried that the Faithful will get dumber and dumber and hoping that the Traitors – who damn it all, I actually like – can pull it off. I watch as the strategies learned from being on Survivor and Big Brother and The Challenge and The Bachelor inevitably fail, I watch as assorted Real Housewives decide which clique they’re going to be in, I watch as the only people with common sense are targeted by the rest of the Faithful and voted off the show, and I ask myself why the hell I keep watching this?

Gotta be because Alan Cumming is the host.

I’m not saying that this guy not coming back is the REASON X-Men 3 sucked, but it sure didn’t help.

As another great fictional detective, Benoit Blanc, once observed, “It makes no damn sense. Compels me, though.”

There’s nothing else I can say to explain why I keep watching The Traitors.

Or why I can’t wait for season three.

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, now complete on Amazon’s Kindle Vella platform. He’s about to start Tweeting at Netflix to find out when the hell The Mole is coming back.