JOURNAL OF INTERSTITIAL CINEMA #7: On The Road To Cultish Cinema Obscura
Cult cinema 'zines have enjoyed a recent resurgence inthe last few years, with savvy publishers taking advantage of howprint-on-demand publishing makes it easier and less costly to get their musingsout to the world. You can also publicize your work via a variety of onlineplatforms, most notably Facebook and Twitter. As a result, there's a whole newcrop of publishers out there, looking to become personalities in the world offandom.
And then you've got JournalOf Interstitial Cinema. They take the same print-on-demand route favored bytheir fellow 'zinesters but otherwise do things in a way designed to keepthemselves out of fandom's spotlight. The publishers pen their workpsuedonymously and there's no Facebook or Twitter pages to communicate with readers.One could argue they're trying to keep their publication as cultishly obscureas the films they cover.
Thus, it slipped Schlockmania's mind that the JOIC crew put out another issue lastyear: #7, subtitled the "Special Summer Travel Issue." As thatsubtitle suggests, there's a loose theme of travel integrated throughout theissue's contents: it contains both articles about films with travel themes andcinema-themed travels on the part of the contributors. Also included are somefun articles that stick to the magazine's traditional focus on cinema's roadsless traveled, covering everything from the arthouse to the grindhouse. Theresult is another distinctive, often witty read from this secretive set ofwriters.
As has become the standard with the last few issues, thecontents are divided between founders R.J. Wheatpenny and Grog Ziklore withnewer recruit The Po Man. Wheatpenny offers a mixture of reviews and piecesthat deliver factual info with an element of literary whimsy. On the formertip, he starts with a fascinating piece on how the concept of"interstitial cinema" is hard to define in a world where massive changesin film distribution have disrupted all levels of cinema. He then clarifies hisnewer, more conceptual definition of the phrase with a dozen capsule reviews offilms that didn't find traction in the current commercial marketplace. By theend, you're reminded of just how much new cinema is out there today and howhard it is to get noticed.
Wheatpenny also contributes a poignant look at Photographic Memory, the last and mostoverlooked work from cinematic diarist Ross McElwee, and an overview of aseries of short films produced by the U.S. Postal Service about mail fraud. Thelatter sound like fun viewing, a kind of modern, mail-centric update of the Crime Does Not Pay short subjects fromthe '30s.
Elsewhere in the issue, he writes some clever essays:one is a history of home video piracy methods that plays like a comic battle ofone-upsmanship between tech developers and determined pirates and a tale abouta theater robbery from Hollywood's early days, written in the style oflate-period James Ellroy. The latter offers a pretty dead-on channeling ofEllroy's terse "tough guy" writing style. He rounds all this work outwith another installment of "The Screamproof Coffin," the 'zine'sregular horror review column, that is cleverly subverted to show just how muchindistinguishable genre product there is out there today.
Ziklore divides his time between straightforward reviewsand diary style pieces that run with the issue's travel theme. The first of his travel pieces covers fourdifferent trips (two in New Jersey, one each to Delaware and California). Helooks for landmarks, hunts for books, trades DVDs and muses on the short-livedsupernova of Moviepass as he visits an obscure theater. A separate piece delvesinto a Texas trip that began with looking for Texas Chainsaw Massacre locations and turned up megalodon teeth(!).His trio of reviews focus on fascinating Alan Rudolph thriller Endangered Species and two t.v. movieswith real-life origins, porn star suicide drama Shattered Innocence and proto-X-Filessci-fi piece Mysterious Two. Thelatter is fascinating because it covers the beginnings of what would ultimatelybecome the Heaven's Gate cult.
Between the work of the 'zine's two founders, there arethree excellent pieces by the Po Man. The first is a bit of Wheatpenny-esquewhimsy in which a little daydream about going back in time to an old drive-inweaves in a clever, judiciously timed reference to a beloved cult film.
The other two are interview pieces. The first is a kindof oral history of the live promotions that producer/distributor Joe Solomondid for his drive-in faves like TheLosers and The Savage Seven. The commentary is woven from chats with actorsJohn Garwood, Randee Lynn Jensen and Gene Cornelius: they fondly remember howSolomon could use his saleman's chops to get the red carpet treatment in littleMidwest towns and also how the locals would get starry-eyed at the chance to benear someone involved in making movies. Solomon made a lot of biker movies sothere are also a few choice tales involving biker gangs.
The final interview piece is a one-on-one chat withFerde Grofe, Jr., a self-taught filmmaker who pioneered the use of thePhilippines as a filmmaking location as he cranked out a string of war-themedaction flicks between the mid-'60s and the late '80s. It's a fun, candidinterview where Grofe Jr. discusses the challenges of working with eager butuntrained crews, his love/hate relationship with fading star and sometimeproducer George Montgomery and the challenges of selling independently-producedwork to major studios. And this is just the first half of the interview (theremainder will appear in the next issue)!
In short, this is another read packed with distinctivewit and insights from its press-shy crew. Don't let the 'zine's obscure naturefaze you: it's some of the best, most unique cult film writing out there so youshould join its intrepid writers on the cinematic road less taken.
For all issues of Journal Of Interstitial Cinema, click here.