Jonathan - I’m still waiting . . .

The festival sounds fantastic. I’m a big fan of Lee Marvin. I really love Point Blank.

I hope you’re doing well.

I started a new blog called That Black Magic. It will focus on black entertainers in the world of cinema, music, and television, both in the past and present. It’s at:
http://thatblackmagic.blogspot.com

Thanks. Take care. Have a great week.

Hey, I should try that! Look for pictures of Jonathan Lapper in a red satin thong soon!

Vanwall - Thanks for the very kind words. How cool it must have been for your father to have dinner with Marvin & Palance?! That’s almost too much macho at the same table.

Jonathan - Thanks! I’m not so sure about the recognition but it would be nice to be able to do some freelance writing again. After freelancing on and off for 25 years for various magazines and zines, it seems like there’s just not a lot of opportunities for writers anymore. I also have rather eclectic tastes so the audience I write for is extremely small in the scheme of things. If I was smarter I’d try and take super sexy pics of myself and post them all over my blog. And in between my cam-whore escapades I’d spend my time writing rapturous praise full of sarcasm about hot new movies like The Dark Knight. I bet Ain’t It Kewl News would hire me then! ;)

Ann - Thanks a lot for the nice words about my blog, but I don’t have a film showing at the festival. If you read my post again you’ll see that I only contributed the program notes for John Boorman’s 1967 film Point Blank.

Adam - Point Blank is the kind of film that I enjoy revisiting again and again too. I often find new things to admire about it as well.

Brian - Great to see you! And yep, teleportation would be a great superpower to have.

Bob - I’m not familiar with Bela Fleck’s music but your enthusiasm leads me to believe I should be. A giallo film festival would be amazing! I would love to program something like that and write the program notes for it.

Neil - I totally agree that Point Blank is an amazing film and I really enjoyed writing about it since I wanted to touch on aspects of the movie that I hadn’t seen covered by a lot of critics.

Peter - That would be pretty neat! I had the pleasure of meeting Nick Cave and interviewing him during a book-signing tour he did for And the Ass Saw the Angel and I bumped into Tom Waits at a comic book convention once (the music of both men, as well as Iggy Pop, gets a lot of play in my home) but I’d love to have the opportunity to chat with Jim Jarmusch since he’s one of my favorite American filmmakers. I briefly mentioned the Sons of Lee Marvin in this post. It would be fun to start a “Daughters of Lee Marvin” group but I’m not sure that I look anything like Lee Marvin and I don’t think I’d get many members.

Marilyn - You’re making me blush. I haven’t seen Gorky Park in about 15 years but I really liked that film and thought it was rather creepy. There were a lot of great actors in the film but I remember Marvin’s standout performance the most.

Thanks again everyone!

I just watched Gorky Park the other night and think it contains one of Lee Marvin’s overlooked performances. He is really perverse in it.

Too bad you can’t attend. Not only for the obvious reasons, but also because Bela Fleck is just awesome live.

I hope this leads to bigger and better things - like programming your own festivals…Imagine an entire Giallo Film Festival. Damn, that would be great!