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BOOKS, NEWSPAPERS AND MAGAZINES
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| Full page in Asbury Park Press Section X the Friday before the Garden State film Festival |
Featuring stories on, or interviews with, Warren F. Disbrow.
John Russo did various important creative jobs back
in 1967 while working with George Romero on the original classic NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, including co-writing the script
with Romero. Since NIGHT he has made other horror movies and comedies as well as providing scripts for terrific movies like
RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD (1985) and he co-produced the Tom Savini remake of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD in the 90's. Movies
he wrote and directed personally include HEART STOPPER, a vampire film based on his published novel, and MIDNIGHT, financed
by my friend Sam Sherman and his Independent-International Pictures. When not making movies he teaches and is a prolific writer
of horror novels. Over the years John Russo has been very supportive of my goals and even arranged a distributor to release
INVASION FOR FLESH AND BLOOD. That deal fell through because of my actions (I rewrote the contract into something more fair
and honest which pissed off the distributor), but Russo kept helping, printing interviews with me in his magazine and lumping
me in with a bunch of very famous horror writer-directors in his book SCARE TACTICS. I'm on page 25. Whenever we see each
other - usually at horror conventions - its always very nice. I like him alot as a person and respect him as a filmmaker and
writer. John Russo even offered me a job working with him on a CBS show on the life and career of make-up genius Dick Smith,
who did THE EXORCIST, LITTLE BIG MAN, SCANNERS, GODFATHER and HOUSE OF DARK SHADOWS among many other big movies. As my actor
friend Ruben Santiago would say, John A Russo is good people! And it was nice of him to include me in the who's who of
great directors in his book SCARE TACTICS.
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| Who would have thought? INVASION FOR FLESH AND BLOOD being used to teach journalism students! |
As I go along I come across things involving my movies by accident.
I found this on Ebay. Years after it was used in courses to teach college students the proper way to review a movie, I found
this book that used a reprint from the rave review INVASION FOR FLESH AND BLOOD got by Joe Bob Briggs in the New York Times!
Skimming through it gave me some insight into how future journalists were being trained to handle reveiwing the arts. Let's
just say that "critic" I guess is short for "criticism" which isn't a positive mind-set. There are some excellent, honest,
valuable critics out there who honestly do a professional job of accessing the positives and negatives of whatever art form
they are reviewing. HOWEVER, there are loads of hacks too, who approach their jobs unprofessionally, and just try to think
of clever ways to put a work of art down while building their own worthless selves up.
Reality check folks. A critic is just a guy or girl at a computer, no different from you or
me, who has artificial power based on the fact that their ideas get printed up and mass produced, or spoken over the TV set
or radios. The "medium" tends to create the illusion that whomever is on it or in it is higher up on the food chain than the
rest of us. It's smoke and mirrors. They are exactly like you and me. Their opinion is not more important than your opinion
or mine, it just looks so because their opinion has a media medium to express it through. I've had good, honest reviews of
my movies, and I've had reviews done by guys or girls unfit for their jobs as critics. The best thing is always to see for
yourself and form your own opinion. You can form your own opinion, can't you? I'm sure you aren't so devoid of intelligence
you need to be told what to see by others as if their opinion is more valuable their your own. Of course, if you prefer to
be a sheep....
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