There is always a level of fear, nervousness, and anxiety that comes with interviewing talent. In my decade of doing just that, the nerves certainly dulled to a low hum, but there was always some presence of them, even when Covid forced us all to start doing interviews on Zoom.

As I stated earlier in the book, junket-style interviews are essentially speed dating. You are ushered into a room with cables running all over the floor, chairs all around, monitors, cameras, bright lights, and the talent sitting there waiting to get the next round over with. You are a ball of nerves, having just waited for hours in a hallway or break room with other journalists, never knowing for sure when they’ll call your name. Finally, you’re in the room. You shake hands with the talent and take your seat. You’re told you have anywhere from three to five minutes. Someone will be standing just offside to give you a countdown as each minute passes. Aaaaand, go!

Now, you’ve got three to five minutes to make an impression, read the mood of the talent, and rattle off a few of the questions you’ve written down, not knowing if you’ll be able to get to even half of them. All of that will depend on how long the talent takes to answer your questions. If they are long-winded, you may only get one question in. If they’re short and unengaged, you might run out of questions and have to improvise (this rarely happens). As you get to the last minute of your time, the person sitting offside starts making a wrap-up signal with their hands, telling you to finish up. If the talent is still talking, you let them finish answering, but it essentially means no more questions.

When the time is up, you’re ushered out as fast as you came in, the next journalist passing you by as they sit down for the same thing, and you move on to another room to take on your next speed-dating exercise with someone else. It’s fast, furious, unpredictable, and utterly impossible to get anything of true substance in that timespan.

Now, let’s say we lead with a controversial question or something that we knew would ruffle feathers. Some may say, “Yeah, man, that’s your job, hit him hard and fast!” and I can only cite the absolute ignorance of such a move. You not only alienate and piss off the talent, but you do the same for everyone else in the room. At that point, depending on the outcome, they may ask you to leave directly and kick you out of the rest of the interviews and possibly blacklist you from any future interviews with that studio. Now, you’ve lost credibility, respectability, and invitations from a major Hollywood studio in a massively overcrowded market of movie news websites.

It’s extremely rare for a movie news venue to get long-form interviews with big-name talent. They haven’t built a reputation for it. Outside of the bigger trades like Variety and The Hollywood Reporter or Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair, movie news sites simply aren’t hunting for that information as much as they are for scoops about the “next big thing”. Yesterday’s controversy doesn’t sell as well as tomorrow’s comic-book movie casting. That’s the reality.

All that said, I’ve had some unique experiences throughout my days interviewing talent, some of which play a bigger role in later chapters. But many are simply one-and-done experiences, even if significant or compelling to me. Below are some of the highlights from those days, including my observations gleaned from them. We’ll call this the Cliff Notes version of my interview experience, which was a lot of fun to look back on and recount. I hope you enjoy it and that it doesn’t “ruin” anyone for you, a common complaint from my wife sometimes.

Mark Wahlberg, Kurt Russell, Kate Hudson, Peter Berg (Deepwater Horizon)

I was in New Orleans for the Deepwater Horizon junket, which was a standard hotel floor of rooms, chatting with the entire cast. I was most excited to interview Kurt Russell, whom I had grown up loving in films like Escape From New York, Overboard, Big Trouble in Little China, and Tombstone, amongst others. He was, in short, a legend. I decided to wear an OD green button-up with a bunch of zippers and pockets that made me look very soldierly, which wasn’t my intent, but it came off that way anyway.

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The Hierarchy of Celebrity Interviews

One of the most frequent questions I get when people find out I’ve met and interviewed a ton of celebrities is who was the worst and who was the best? It’s a fair and expected query, as most people go their entire lives without ever meeting and speaking with a movie star, director, producer, or anyone who hangs their hat in Hollywood, but it’s also difficult to answer, as my assessment may not be a fair one.

After my set visit for The Expendables 3, more and more opportunities came flooding in for set visits, interviews, and interactions with the people I’d hailed as heroes, gods, and otherworldly forces of nature who spoke to me from the pedestal of a glowing screen for as long as I could remember. The weird thing is that I had never set out to do that, let alone prepared or trained for it. It wasn’t my ambition to be an on-air interviewer, like a host from E! News or Entertainment Tonight, all bubbly, dressed up, and acting like I was best buds with my subject. I just wanted to write about movies.

But after The Expendables 3 and my deep dive into running JoBlo.com, it quickly became clear that I now had the ability to make the choice to interview or not to interview. Our go-to guy for interviews was JimmyO, and he’d been a staple of the site for about a decade by the time I showed up. Chris Bumbray and Eric Walkuski were also regular interview guys, usually relegated to East Coast events or the festival circuit. At the very beginning of JoBlo, it was Berge himself doing the work, which eventually led to others taking over. Now, it was my turn.

The thing about movie news site reporters interviewing talent is that it can be awkward as hell.

I’m sure that’s no surprise, but the reason is simple.

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You may be asking yourself why I’d begin this chapter with a quote like that. You may even be offended, uncomfortable, or even have to turn the volume down while you’re listening in your car with the windows down. On the surface, the quote feels excessive, uncouth, or just inappropriate. A man describing his love, lust, and passion for women, unabashedly, even proudly, all the while knowing that the words he’s speaking will make some men, even those who feel exactly the same, squirm in their chairs.

To note, Al Pacino won his first and only Oscar for this role, and it’s one of his most honest portrayals of a blind man defined by and stripped of his passions at once, clinging to memory. In many ways, it’s an allegory for the journey of MovieHotties, built on the same kind of worship, blind to the world around it, yet carrying on with reckless abandon.

One of the many things I inherited when I became Editor-in-Chief of JoBlo.com was MovieHotties.com, a sister site within what was called The JoBlo Movie Network. The network included the main site, JoBlo.com, the horror site Arrow in the Head, and the red-headed stepchild of the whole operation: MovieHotties.

If you lived through the early 2000s, then MovieHotties’ existence wouldn’t be hard to understand. The rise of magazines like Maxim and FHM mainstreamed sexy photo shoots featuring famous (and not-so-famous) actresses and models, geared toward male audiences. Rather than pretending they were artistic Vanity Fair spreads that “celebrated femininity,” these magazines leaned directly into the sexualization and, yes, the celebration, of celebrities and models wearing next to nothing.

Now, here’s the part you probably won’t believe.

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Playing The Scoop Game

Getting “the scoop” is a common term used in the news business. It’s when a journalist gets a piece of information that’s exceptionally noteworthy, newsworthy, controversial, or breaking in a way that shines more light on a subject, revealing new information that can be enlightening, damaging, or controversial. In sum, it’s the kind of news that drives the most clicks, and everyone is chasing after them. For a time, it was its own industry within an industry for the movie news game, until it all came crashing down.

My first foray into the scoop game came just a few months before my tenure as Editor-in-Chief, when I received an email from a source that had information on the in-production Jurassic World. Directed by Colin Trevorrow, Jurassic World was a follow-up to the Jurassic Park films, serving as both a reboot and a sequel. A “rebootquel” if you will. It was a hotly anticipated movie for a well-known property that had been languishing for nearly fifteen years, so fans were eager to know more about what the studio and filmmakers had in store for the franchise.

The source, which I obviously won’t reveal, had previously worked with the former EIC, Mike Sampson, providing information on Marvel’s Captain America: The First Avenger, including early looks at his costume for that film. Upon Sampson’s exit, the source continued to reach out and was eager to share the information they had. Seeing as we’d run their information before and it turned out to be completely accurate, I decided to hear them out for Jurassic World. Everything felt legitimate and far too detailed to be a farce. I ran it by Berge and got the go-ahead to proceed with publishing the information.

The original scoop was the basic breakdown of the park itself, with the biggest news being that it would be a “tamed” theme park, rather than a zoo, with attractions for patrons to view and take part in, including the infamous scene where the Mesosaurus eats a great white shark in front of an audience. It also revealed that there would be a new dinosaur in the film, which would turn out to be the famed Indominus Rex.

The news was a hit and was picked up by most other competing sites, as it was big enough and reliable enough to be considered noteworthy. There’s an unspoken rule between sites that we don’t publish other rumors or scoops unless it’s something unavoidably big. Each site is in competition with one another, so why boost their site or give them credibility? I’m positive that was the prevailing thought from our competitors whenever we published a scoop, of which I’d publish many throughout my time at JoBlo. Many scoops were unavoidable for other sites, while some were completely ignored, likely out of spite and to simply not lose traffic to us. If another site posts our scoop and that site’s audience comes to us to read it, then they could very well start reading our news each day, rather than going to a place that doesn’t have our scoops.

Another reason some sites wouldn’t post our scoops is that they were in bed with the studio and didn’t want to disrupt that “relationship”. By publishing a Jurassic World scoop, some sites could damage their standing with Universal Pictures, which in turn would mean fewer press opportunities and a stricter policy when those sites attempted to share certain assets, such as trailers, posters, and images. Ultimately, publishing a scoop could be a risk, as it could put your site on a blacklist of sorts by the studio, which was a risk if you depended on said studio to generate content by way of press opportunities. Sure, JoBlo had connections and relationships with studios, but some were just better than others, and, ultimately, a scoop was a scoop.

JoBlo has done (and continues to do) interviews with talent and filmmakers for all manner of movies and TV shows, but it was never a given, and there were no arrangements or deals made to secure those spots. We would get an e-mail invite, and we’d say yes or no to it. It was that simple. Another aspect that went along with that was that the press team for each studio was a huge factor in whether you got an invite, and it often felt personal if you didn’t. And, in fact, it may well have been. Studios, particularly reps, had favorites. A lot of it amounted to how much traffic your site drove, but it also had to do with the site itself and how it reported on a particular studio and its slate of films. If you write an op-ed or take a negative stance on the studio or any of its films, then you can expect some backlash. It almost cost me The Expendables 3 set visit, as I had written the humorous story about the PG-13 rating, but they ultimately “overlooked” it and let me come to set anyway.

Access is everything in the movie news business. If you don’t have access, then you'd better have scoops; otherwise, your site is doing nothing more than repackaging and aggregating news all day long, and there are already plenty of sites doing that. Of course, I’d later find that a third option exists, which is to become a content farm of base-level explanatory pieces, where writers break down every little aspect of a movie or TV show down to the silliest details to match up with Google searches.

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“I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse.”

Don Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather (1972)

Upon returning home from my first Comic-Con, I found myself in a new dilemma that threatened to upend everything I’d worked for. My government day job was about to put me in a temporary assignment, working a position I never applied for, which amounted to being a desk clerk to sign out equipment, something I never would have accepted in the first place. But the government is going to government, so I didn’t have any choice in the matter.

While I awaited an official offer from Berge for the Editor-in-Chief position, I was stuck with the possibility of having to quit altogether if that offer didn’t come through. The new position wouldn’t allow me to work those few hours for JoBlo in the morning (which I sold as “college courses”) during my normal news editor shift. I would have to choose one thing or another and choose it fast. Either I quit my day job and stay with JoBlo as a news editor, a job I loved but paid almost nothing (with the potential of being promoted to EIC, which would solve the issue entirely and replace my day job), or I quit JoBlo for the “safety” of a steady paycheck in a job I couldn't care less about. I talked it over with my wife, and we both agreed that it was a risk, but she ultimately supported whichever route I took.

I wasn’t about to e-mail Berge and ask when he was going to get around to hitting me up with that job offer, as I didn’t want to be presumptuous or ruin my chances, so I was in a holding pattern. With the new government job starting within days, I had to make a decision. In the end, I decided to go with my gut and take a leap of faith. I went to my government boss (who was also my former First Sergeant while in Iraq) and told him I would be quitting instead of taking on the temporary position. He was understanding for the most part, and that was that. I was out. Two weeks given.

The next morning, I awoke to the Editor-in-Chief offer from Berge. It was as if fate, circumstance, and luck had collided, and the outcome ended up being an explosion of perfect timing. Berge’s offer was lengthy and outlined what my duties and responsibilities would be, none of which even made me bat an eyelid. I read through the offer and got more and more excited with each passing sentence. The last part sealed the deal for me, and I felt my heart swell with pride. It was everything I wanted, and Berge let me know with his last paragraph that it wasn’t just a process of elimination that got me there. It read:

“I hope you know that I believe you to be the ideal candidate for this post and I mean that with all my heart. With the previous Editor-in-Chief, it was more of a “seniority” thing, but looking back, I don’t believe that he had all the required abilities to oversee/manage such a huge movie network of content and people, but with you, I feel as though you were meant for this job and even moreso with our JOBLO MOVIE NETWORK, which is why I’m very happy to be making you this offer. I hope you will accept.”

And accept I did. Immediately.

I responded with gratitude and excitement, even letting Berge know that I’d already left my day job. I was ready to go. The journey that followed would change my life forever and ultimately be the best job I ever had.

Until it wasn’t.

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"Life is essentially sad. Happiness is sporadic. It comes in moments, and that's it. Extract the blood from every moment.”

- Robert Redford, Esquire, 2011

In the summer of 2013, I would experience a few game-changing things that would alter the course of my life forever, all of which transpired at San Diego Comic-Con, which had gradually built itself up over the years from a basic comic-book convention to a massive cultural event that encapsulated everything from movies to TV to comic books to merchandise, and everything in between. It was a pop-culture explosion that brought people in from all over the world, serving as a place to celebrate the geeky things we loved, with a significant investment from the studios, companies, and businesses that would profit the most from such an endeavor.

The event took place in the massive 615,700-square-foot exhibition area of the San Diego Convention Center, which had two floors, cylindrical-shaped windows, sharp, jutting “sails” in its architecture meant to represent the maritime environment of the area, and incline elevators that moved alongside the structure. The building looked like a spaceport ripped straight from Star Wars, Star Trek, or any other big-budget sci-fi film that anyone in attendance would surely be well-versed in.

It had been my dream to attend Comic-Con at some point in my life, but it seemed nearly impossible to get tickets as a fan. I knew it was possible, but it was a hassle to make it happen. I tried to arrange a trip with friends in the years prior, but it always fell apart. I mentioned to Berge that I’d love to be a part of the JoBlo team for the 2013 Comic-Con, as the site had covered it since it began back in 1998. I could remember seeing their posts from the event, which included interviews and coverage that fed my movie news soul, while also making me green with envy as I saw the JoBlo crew partying and hanging out in San Diego, enjoying the adventure with fellow movie geeks.

That’s the party I wanted to be at.

So, it came to pass that I was finally invited to take part in this long-running event, and I could barely contain my excitement. I was looped into the e-mail threads that helped plan our coverage, which was run by Berge and Eric Walkuski, as Eric had been going for years and knew it well. I was brought in to cover panels and events, as well as anything else we needed to cover, including cosplay and floor pics.

Everything was planned and executed to a tee, logged into a Google spreadsheet with times, locations, events, and contacts for each event. There was an annual lottery to get hotel rooms, which was always a disaster, with everyone logging on at the same time to put in for rooms in the surrounding area. It’s the never-ending nightmare that every attendee must endure, unless they want to go the Airbnb route or stay at a Holiday Inn ten miles away from the venue.

With so many people, be it fans, press, or talent, converging on the site for those three days in the summer, every room at every hotel was full within the entire block surrounding the convention center, which bled into the Gaslamp district of the city. No bed was left behind during Con season, I assure you.

We were lucky to have secured plenty of rooms in 2013, as we would house two people per room, and that year we had a team of six, plus Berge and Fallon, who were coming along to enjoy the festivities more so than to do any work. I was linked up with my first-ever off-site event to cover, which was a Godzilla installation for the upcoming 2014 movie from director Gareth Edwards.

My name was down for several panels, which took place in Hall H, the esteemed “most important room in Hollywood”, a 65,000-square-foot showroom that was used as the premiere destination for movie studios to hold panels, while simultaneously debuting early peeks, trailers, and more for their upcoming wares, usually comic-book, sci-fi, or otherwise related. It was the place to be during Comic-Con, especially for studios at the time, including Fox, Disney, Marvel, Warner Bros., Legendary, and more.

Eager attendees would sleep outside in the pavilion-covered area just outside Hall H, waiting for their opportunity to be let into the venue, which could hold only 6,500 people at a time. Fans would be let in as others exited, like letting air out of a balloon, before closing it off. Fans would camp out all night long, even if there was no guarantee they’d make it in. They came prepared with sleeping bags, chairs, food, games, etc., to make the wait less painful, despite the onslaught of cockroaches and rats that regularly infested the area.

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“So you’re saying there’s a chance!”

Lloyd Christmas (Jim Carrey) in The Farelly Brothers’ Dumb and Dumber

I quickly adapted to my new schedule and my new job, assimilating it into my life with relative ease, too excited to even notice how far I was stretching myself. It didn’t matter. I was having a blast and treating every shift I had as an opportunity to spread my wings. A pattern formed in my daily rituals, which was to check all the main news sources (Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, Deadline) and then move on to our competitors to see what was hot, what was being talked about, what was breaking, interesting, or worthy of covering, be it a newly-released movie trailer, poster, casting announcement, or a rumor about a new project that may or may not come to fruition.

I scoured everywhere, including old favorites like Aint It Cool News, Coming Soon, Dark Horizons, Screen Rant, as well as some of the newcomers to the scene, including Collider, Comic Book Movie, and a handful of others, always looking to get up a breaking story before any of them. I viewed it as a challenge, and I’d be fist-pumping every time I beat them to the punch and sulk every time they beat me.

Most movie news sites are aggregate sites in that they have a writer who covers stories that originate somewhere else and repackage them for their respective site, to reflect their standards and brand. JoBlo was no different in that regard, but we weren’t just rephrasing news. We sent it out to our readers with all the facts of the original source, but with a deeper perspective on that news and how it may or may not relate to other projects, etc. Then, we would add our own opinion on the project, which was ultimately a biased, but measured one, as it was very much each individual news editor’s opinion.

We were also allowed to swear and talk a little trash, but not to excess. Berge preferred we use “shite” instead of shit, and we had to asterisk our f*cks, a practice I’ve never understood to any degree. It doesn’t make you more professional to put an asterisk in profanity. If it’s that big of a deal, just don’t fucking put fucking profanity in your stupid fucking story. It’s not that hard. But, alas, the Internet is a weird place that only gets weirder with every passing second it exists, and the customs we create for ourselves, be it large scale or for a conglomerate, are odd and ever-changing, up to and including putting asterisks in your sh*ts and f*cks, as if you’re somehow fooling someone.

There was this feeling that those who were writing and reporting for big-name sites were living and working in Los Angeles or New York, and many were, but many were also scattered all over the globe, from London to Canada to Atlanta to Texas to Tulsa to Seattle, and now, Alaska. Most worked in their pajamas while sipping coffee from a movie-or-TV-themed mug, cut off from the wheeling-and-dealing world of Hollywood directly, but deeply invested by way of high-speed Internet and at least a passing knowledge of how the industry works (even while some are absolutely clueless). It was ironic to me that the prestige of Hollywood was being reported on by everyday geeks who kind of hijacked the Internet and created this cottage industry of news sites that made the big business of movies their business. In every way, it showed the power of fandom, more so than the power of entertainment journalism. The fans had taken over.

I decided right away that I would overperform in my job as a news editor. I would put everything into it and prove my worth. In every way, I wanted to shine. I wanted to impress Berge, impress my co-workers, impress the readers, and impress myself upon this digital world I’d been welcomed into. In short, I wanted to be a voice in the community I loved so much and wanted to create a lasting impression as someone worthy of it, if not respected.

One of the things I liked about Berge early on, before I’d even gotten the job, was that he added a personal touch to the site. When his father passed away, Berge posted a lengthy tribute that discussed the origins of JoBlo and his relationship with his father, as well as his roots as an Armenian immigrant who settled in Canada with his family. I found his story profound, inspirational, and moving. I respected the hell out of his hustle to create JoBlo, which was literally created in a small room in his parents’ house.

It ultimately humanized and humbled Berge, who I felt was very much a geek like me. I related to him and his desire to be a part of this community that we all gravitated toward. The Internet, for all its drawbacks, created a place for like-minded people to form communities like the movie news community. While it took guys like Harry Knowles, Garth Franklin, Nick Nunziata, Berge Garabedian, and many others, it was an inevitability no matter what. The very existence of the Internet beckoned movie news sites into existence. If it wasn’t those guys, it would’ve been someone else, as no one person owns the credit for making movie news on the World Wide Web a thing. There’s no Steve Jobs of movie news. It’s just a bunch of like-minded geeks who took that extra step in starting up a site. They all deserve their kudos in one way or another, but this revolution was happening with or without them. They just happened to be first.

With Berge, I found that he was simply a more relatable human being, and I appreciated what he had created with JoBlo. He suffered from a physical ailment that nearly took JoBlo down at one point, but he pivoted and hired his first editor-in-chief, Mike Sampson, to help pick up the slack while he recovered. Sampson remained with the site for nearly a decade afterwards, leading to my time at the site.

I interacted with Mike each day, getting approval for my stories and exchanging dos and don’ts for the site, be it technical or editorial things. Mike seemed cool enough, but we never connected on any deeper level. I felt more connected to Berge, in terms of the voice and style of the site, whereas Mike seemed more like a manager, which was fine given his position, which I viewed as an exceptionally esteemed one.

In early February, after a quick question over e-mail, Mike casually dropped that he was leaving the site, saying, “I don’t know if you heard since you were coming on, but tomorrow is my last day at JoBlo.com, so any of those larger decisions should be left to Berge at this point.”

I had not heard any mention of Mike leaving the site when I came aboard, but the news of his leaving immediately spawned two things in my head: 1) Why on Earth would you leave such a prominent position at such a big site? 2) I want that job.

From that point on, the second that I knew the Editor-in-Chief position would be open, I knew I had to pursue it. I suddenly wanted it more than anything. In the movie news circle, it meant something. It meant that you were someone steering the ship, someone who had influenced the site’s direction, and, more than anything, could make a difference. Granted, we’re not curing cancer or even saving kittens from a tree, but in the movie news world, those in charge had the opportunity to shape the narrative. In short, it was a position that would make me even more a part of the movie news world, and I wanted that more than anything.

So, I hit the ground running. I knew that there was only one person to impress, and that was Berge. I had to prove to him that I was worthy, that I could handle all aspects of the job, and that I had a multitude of talents to offer. Beyond being a well-read, well-researched movie geek with a catalogue of useless movie information in my brain, I was also a proven leader in the military who had planned, conducted, and executed a massive number of missions and patrols throughout my tenure, while also managing upwards of platoon-sized elements, all while people actively tried to shoot or blow me up. I think I could handle a crew of movie geeks culling stories from the Internet.

Berge was great in that he was always open to ideas. It was like a swinging saloon door of openness, as he would take in whatever ideas you had, be it for a new column, new graphics, or any new idea that would make the site better. I respected the hell out of that and vowed that I would do the same if I ever ran the show. But I had to get that opportunity first.

In truth, I already had a ton of ideas for the site. I had already sent over e-mails to Berge with a laundry list of things I’d love to do, including new columns and new graphics. As I was close to finishing my graphic design degree, my Photoshop skills were at an advanced level, and I loved creating cool headers (the images at the top of an article). Many of JoBlo’s headers were way out of date and needed a refresh, and I immediately offered my services in doing so. Berge was receptive and let me take on the task, which quickly stacked up to the point that I was doing all manner of them.

I also offered to make new skins for the social forum part of the site, called Movie Fan Central, or MFC, for short. It was basically a JoBlo-themed Myspace portal that readers could sign up for and create their own profile and page, while connecting to other fans within the community. You could choose various skins for your page, which were photoshopped mock-ups from various popular movies. However, I noticed that the selections were minimal and thought it would be cool to offer up new choices for our readers and allow them to further customize their profiles. If anything, it showed that we cared about MFC and encouraged people to use it.

So, amid my day job, full-time school, family/personal life, and now my second job, I was stacking up even more side work for the site. But it served two purposes, one of which was simply because I loved doing it. The second, and more maneuverable reason to take on all the extra work, was to prove my worth as someone who could be the next editor-in-chief.

I think another big aspect of my desire to pursue the gig was Berge himself. In many ways, I felt like I’d found a mentor. I related to him greatly, and we had an easy rapport (through e-mail anyway) that felt like I was talking to a friend, rather than a boss. There was a connection, an understanding, a bond that was developing, and I came to value his input on the site, as well as my own work, which only served to make me better. In the wake of resisting anyone who tries to tell you what to do, you sometimes find a person that you should absolutely listen to, as they aren’t serving to make you do what they want, but rather to be a better version of yourself. I felt that with Berge in those early days, and I came to view him as a kind of movie news Yoda to my Padawan version of Luke Skywalker.

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Son Of Movie Nerd Arrives

I will spare you the stereotypical adoration of a newborn child, as it’s been trodden upon enough. Actually, no. I’m going to go ahead and hit those same beats, because it’s the most goddamn special thing you can imagine. So, you can just toss my sentiments into the same pile, as becoming a father was (and continues to be) the most amazing, special, harrowing, frightening, beautiful, shocking, brutal, and fortuitous gift anyone can experience.

In May of 2009, my son Dashiell (Dash, for short) was born. Cherie and I had been trying for a child before I deployed to Iraq to no avail, and were both eternally grateful that we were finally able to conceive. He was a miracle to us, and the second that his little head popped out and his voice echoed into the air for the first time, we were in love.

I know you want the dirt on all the celebrities and insider info on my journalistic adventures. They’re coming, I promise. But, to skip over all of these aspects of my life and just serve up the “hot gos” does very little to give any context of the experiences, as they were all uniquely mine, shaped and viewed through the life I lived and built, including the many trials and tribulations that got me there. So, bear with me while I gush over my kid.

It should come as no surprise that becoming a parent changes your life completely. Not just your life, but your entire sense of existence. Up until the moment that your offspring is pushed, pulled, or otherwise yanked into the world, it was all about you. What you wanted. What you dreamed. What you were doing that weekend. What time you were going to bed. How much sleep you thought you might get.

A child changes all of that. And, while you may think that your little fuck trophy will do nothing more than disrupt everything you had planned for your life, the truth is that if you allow them and welcome them, they do the opposite. They enhance everything about your life and challenge you in ways you never expected (and in all the ways you did). They are a part of you that branches off to become something else entirely, something new and unique.

I was excited to have my own little human (prisoner?) to subject to all the movies I loved as he grew. There’s nothing like a blank canvas, and introducing him to all the movies I’d come to love and appreciate was something that genuinely excited me. Obviously, I’d have to gradually roll them out, as we weren’t watching Basic Instinct at age two, but he would definitely be more advanced than any of his peers in the movie-watching department.

Dash would grow from a baby to a teenager throughout my tenure as an entertainment journalist, taking part in many of my adventures as I got older, which is almost as surreal as becoming a dad. His role in my life would be the best casting of any story I could imagine, and having him along for the ride in the long run was a treasure to share. Stay tuned, as he’s got some hilarious and insightful moments in this little tale of mine.

The Phone Call We All Dread

In December 2011, I got one of the most surreal and heartbreaking calls one can get. My father was dead, having died suddenly in a car accident. It’s a lot to reckon with, and at sixty-one years old, it was far too young to exit. He was an imperfect man, but one who believed in me, more so than anyone else. My father loved movies, and he helped impart that passion to me at an early age. I’ll forever be grateful for that.

My greatest memory of my dad and the movies was one he likely had no awareness of. In the summer of 1992, Universal Pictures released Ron Howard’s Far and Away, starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, who were married at the time. It’s the story of Irish immigrants who come to the United States with dreams of getting their own land after hearing about the Oklahoma Land Rush, where citizens could race to claim free land in the territory in 1889.

My father spent his life trying to achieve his dreams, or, at least, dreaming about achieving them. Where he faltered in that pursuit was in not doing the work, the suffering, the endless crusade to succeed after countless failures. He let setbacks, women, cars, doubt, and quick-fix gigs guide his path. Yet, he always dreamed. He dreamed of something better, something more, something extraordinary, even if it seemed just out of reach to attain.

In Far and Away, Cruise’s character is Joseph Donnelly, a poor, young farmer with aspirations of owning and farming his own land someday. After his father dies unexpectedly and the land they farmed is foreclosed, Joseph sets off to kill the landlord as an act of vengeance. But, in that endeavor, he ends up meeting Shannon, as played by Kidman, a beautiful, young debutante who also has dreams of being free to do as she pleases and overseeing her own destiny, even as her every whim is catered to. The duo ends up escaping their fates in Ireland and sails to America, where they learn the harsh reality of chasing their dreams.

The land race scene is an epic sequence in Far and Away. It’s the finale of the film, shot for the first time in Panavision 70mm, with more than 800 extras, 900 horses, 200 wagons, and a quarter-mile set, which was actually located in Montana, not Oklahoma. It’s the pinnacle moment of the film, as the doorway to both Joseph and Shannon’s dreams has been opened, with one last test to make it all come true.

It’s a thrilling, awe-inspiring sequence, swept along brilliantly with a rousing, inspirational score by John Williams. Cruise is saddled with an unbroken horse, and it appears that he may not make it, as everyone is ahead of him when the race kicks off. But he finally harnesses the horse and takes off, gaining speed and momentum as he does, suddenly passing everyone. And it’s at this moment that I realized how a movie can touch someone in a deep, personal way.

I was sitting in a row behind my father, as we’d arrived late to the movie, and it was before the days of assigned seating. I could see my father watching the movie, and he was intensely focused on it, especially the moment that Cruise’s Joseph was zipping past everyone in the land race. Williams’ score crescendos into a heroic blast, as Joseph charges ahead, his dream well in hand again.

And I see my father react. Leaning forward, I see his fist raise, shaking in the air in front of him, and I hear him say under his breath, “Yes! Go! Go! Go get your land!”

I was fifteen years old at the time, and this brief, seemingly insignificant moment would stay with me forever. Because it wasn’t insignificant. It was powerful, it was inspiring, and it spoke to my father, who chased his dreams much like Joseph did in Far and Away. At the time the movie was released, my father still had those hopes and dreams, those aspirations to pursue that which spoke to his soul. And in that moment, I knew that he wasn’t rooting so much for Joseph but rooting for himself. He was reminded, in this 140-minute movie, of the pursuit of his dreams, the pursuit of life, the chase that is the human experience.

In that moment, I knew that a movie held more power to the soul than just a few meaningless hours to pass the time.

It was enough to remind you who you were.

And who you still might become.

One month after we buried my father, I opened an email that would change the trajectory of my life.

I didn’t know it then, but it would pull me into Hollywood in a way I never could have imagined, and one that my father would never see for himself.

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“The way it works is, you do the thing you’re scared shitless of, and you get the courage after you do it, not before you do it.”

Archie Gates (George Clooney) in David O. Russell’s Three Kings (1999)

I was in bed with my future wife. The sun was shining, and we were taking our time getting up. It was, at that moment, another day of promise, another step in my journey toward the future, which was filled with infinite possibilities. Although I had no guarantees of anything, I had hope, dreams, and plans for what was to come and what I would make of myself.

It was Tuesday, September 11^th, 2001.

We heard Sean on the phone in the next room, talking loudly. He sounded panicked. He came to our doorway, exclaiming that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center, before running into the living room to turn on the TV. I lay in bed, not thinking much of it (remember, there was no iPhone for me to grab and start scouring the news to confirm anything), and casually lumbered out of bed into the living room, where Sean was anxiously glued to the TV. It was then that I realized this was serious.

Sean, Cherie, and I sat there, soaking in the words of the reporters as cameras were transfixed on the smoking north tower. We watched in horror as people leapt from the smoking wreckage, falling to their deaths. At the time, we had no idea if it was an accident or even what type of plane had crashed into the tower. Then, as we sat watching, the second plane hit the south tower. It was at that exact moment that it became clear that this was an attack. I welled up with fear and anger, watching it unfold. Then came word that another plane had crashed into the Pentagon. I found myself in a state of panicked fear and was furious that I had no idea why any of this was happening.

The name Osama Bin Laden was floated early in the day before either of the towers fell to the ground in a massive cloud of dust and debris. The word “terrorism” began to spread like wildfire, and I was stuck in a state of hateful ignorance. I was angry that I didn’t understand why this happened. I felt much like a sheltered lamb, blissfully ignorant inside my fenced, safe world, and something was tearing at me to break free of it.

The coverage, impact, and fallout of 9/11 changed the face of America. It changed everyone’s lives, one way or another, directly or indirectly. The country has never been the same since and likely will never return to what it was before. I knew it then, as I know it now. We were all forever altered, and I was faced with a new predicament, as everything I had ever wanted suddenly felt meaningless.

Did the world need another filmmaker? Another comic-book artist? Did it need another entertainer to keep the masses fat and happy, while everything on the outside was trying to kill us? These were the kinds of thoughts that infiltrated my mind in the wake of 9/11.

As the nation became glued to 24/7 news coverage and the eventual announcement came that we would be going to war, I knew that something within me had changed. Or perhaps something was awakened. I remember watching the news coverage of the first Gulf War at home with my parents in January 1991 as jets took off and headed into Iraq. I was about thirteen years old at the time, but felt this overpowering urge to be a part of what was happening. It’s not something I could explain. It’s just what I felt.

It wasn’t that I was bloodthirsty or violent or just thought it would be “cool” to go to war. It was something else entirely that cannot be easily explained. Perhaps it’s simply a human trait, as we’ve fought and bled on battlefields almost as long as we’ve walked on land. Maybe it was a bell being rung by my ancestors, lighting the fuse on the warmonger within. Either that or the most fucked up case of FOMO ever.

Part of it likely came from growing up with G.I.Joes and action films, and all of us trying to be the hero in some form or another. We played with toy guns and recreated movie battles in our houses, backyards, and woods, chasing each other around as if we were combatants in one of our movie-themed worlds. And it felt natural. Nothing about it felt like we were being influenced or pushed to “play war”. It was inherent. And we loved it.

A Call To War

In the days after 9/11, the entire country was mourning. People were sticking American flag stickers on their cars, which would soon be followed by “Support the Troops” yellow ribbon magnets, and the “We Will Never Forget” memorial slogan emblazoned everywhere, all of which have faded into obscurity by now, proving that we will indeed forget, except once a year where we maybe share a post on social media on the anniversary date.

I could see the frustration in people’s reactions as they watched the news in the DGTV breakroom. It was something I felt as well, but my resolve was different. I remember a woman walking in briefly to buy a soda from the vending machine, stopping long enough to stand and watch the news, where they were highlighting terrorist training camps in Afghanistan. She uttered, “We should just bomb them all,” loudly enough for anyone in earshot to hear before quickly traipsing back to her spreadsheets and e-mails.

Who were the “we” in this woman’s scenario, I wondered. Surely she meant the American military, but did she see beyond the nameless, faceless “we” that she so easily sends off to kill some people in a foreign land? In many ways, that small break room moment carried weight beyond what anyone sitting in there could’ve imagined, especially me. It put things in perspective for me. I could be the person yelling at the TV and then returning to my cozy world, or I could be the nameless, faceless “we” that was so callously assumed and casually relied on by the American public.

I knew, then and there, that I had to find out. There was no way that I could carry on with my life without finding the answers that burned within me, which were many and varied. The deck was stacked in this scenario. I felt ignorant, privileged, and blind, as well as obligated, by my very nature as a citizen of this country, to do as much as “we” expected of those we send to war. Beyond that, the same fuse that was lit when the Gulf War started was relit again. I had to know the answer, the riddle, the reality of war, and, in doing so, prove to myself if I had what it took to make it, survive it, and live with it.

There was also a part of me that was deeply conflicted when it came to my creative life. I loved action movies and comic books, but when writing my own stories, I struggled terribly with believably portraying action and violence. I was creating characters and putting them in harm’s way with no real idea how any of it worked. I’d gone hunting as a boy and shot some firearms here and there, even taken up martial arts, but I had no real understanding of that world as I’d never lived in it.

Watching John Woo’s The Killer, or Richard Donner’s Lethal Weapon, or even John Milius’ Red Dawn, amongst countless others, made me constantly question where the lines of reality and fiction took hold in these films that glorified the violence that humanity can inflict. In short, I felt like a phony. I would write men shooting at one another and battling one another with no concept of what it was really like. It nagged at me every time I wrote a scene or drew an image depicting such things.

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It’s fall 1997, and I’m sitting in my first film class at the College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn, Illinois. I’m freshly arrived from my sabbatical in Virginia, where everything seemed to go wrong, and my path became muddled. Somehow, I survived the ordeal (again, a tale for another book) and was finally back on the path. I was pursuing my dream of being a director.

Having moved back in with my mom, stepdad, and half-brother in LaGrange Park, Illinois, I had hit the reset button on my young life. I was starting over at nineteen years old with a completely clean slate. No friends, no roots, no connection to anything. All I had was my passion and my desire to be more than I was, and I felt that being a filmmaker was where it led.

My mom had taken me to an open house orientation at Columbia College Chicago. This private, non-profit art college housed all manner of dreamers and doers, with its most prominent graduate being Steven Spielberg’s frequent director of photography, Janusz Kamiński, who won Oscars for both Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan.

It was a cold fall morning when we went to the open house. The sun was beaming through the city, creating a deceptive contrast against the blistering cold that was common for The Windy City. We took our seats amongst other dreamers seeking glory and fame amidst a chorus of glory and fame seekers, while one of the alumni led the orientation. I don’t remember his name, but I’ll never forget the impression he left, which was basically that the odds are against you.

After constantly referencing Kamiński as their crowning achievement of the school, there was very little else that Columbia could cite as a measure of success in the film department. Obviously, there are no guarantees for anything in life, but the success rate felt exceptionally low for such a massive investment of time and money. At one point, someone raised their hand and asked the alumni what he had done since graduating, to which he replied he was…getting married. You don’t need to go to school for four years and drop six figures to make that happen.

I left the orientation shrouded in doubt, but no less committed to my passion. It just wasn’t going to be at Columbia. After a brief search, I discovered that the local community college, College of DuPage, offered a film and TV production degree, specifically labeled as an Associate in Applied Science. They had a full studio and a multitude of classes that ran the gamut of production. It wasn’t Ivy League, but it was a step toward my dream, so I put on my shoes and got to stepping.

The department was run by Claudine Jordan, a documentary filmmaker who was partnered with fellow documentarian Tom Klodin. Neither produced anything particularly noteworthy, but they knew enough to teach the craft to a bunch of aspiring kids in the Chicagoland area, and I fit that bill just fine. The first class was an introduction of sorts, which consisted of learning the basics of filmmaking from conception to release while watching all the films that you’re supposed to watch, but probably never would, unless you enrolled in a film school that made you watch them.

Shuffling into the classroom in 1997, I felt the pressure of my dreams and ambition, suddenly surrounded by other people who wanted the same things I did. It felt like competition more than anything, and I felt the need to prove myself the best of the group, even as I feared that any of them could be better than me. At that point, nobody knew anyone, and it felt like an instantaneous battle of wills as everyone jockeyed for position, hoping to be the next Spielberg, Tarantino, or some undiscovered gem of a filmmaker yet to make their mark.

The first person I met was Andy, a baby-faced guy my same age who would later become a lifelong friend. We sat next to one another and struck up a conversation, and soon found that we had a lot in common, particularly with our ambitions as filmmakers. There is a strong commonality that develops among movie fans that begins with a penchant for certain filmmakers. It’s a good way to determine who you’ll get along with and who you won’t.

Andy was a big John Carpenter fan at the time, and we bonded immediately over that. We both read the same movie news and absorbed the same information, meaning we both spoke the same language. It was the first time I’d met anyone in person that I was able to converse with over such things without giving up early on in conversation due to the lack of understanding. It was a breath of fresh air. I’d stumbled into a new jungle and found my people.

That’s not to say that we were better than anyone else. Far from it. But, for those who watch sports regularly, the cult of movie geeks is very similar. If you don’t watch sports and happen upon a conversation about them, then you’ll likely be lost, annoyed, and indifferent to everything being discussed. In short, you wouldn’t belong in that conversation. It was the same with movie geeks. We had our own vernacular, our own terms, our own threads of conversation that would sound totally foreign to anyone not well-versed in the world of film.

Andy and I talked about our goals and ambitions, setting the record straight on who we were and what we wanted. Both of us wanted to be directors akin to our heroes and had grand ambitions of making it happen. In addition to filmmaking, Andy was also a massive Disney fan and took part in the Disney College Program, which involved a semester-long paid internship at Walt Disney World. In his notebook were scribbles of rollercoaster rides and theme park designs, which I thought were cool. He had visions of working with Disney Imagineering, where the rides were designed. I had no such ambitions, so there was no threat in letting him dream his dream, as it didn’t compete with mine.

Almost a decade later, Andy would be working for Disney and many other companies, designing rides and attractions at theme parks all over the world. It’s something I’ve thought back on frequently, as many of the friends I would make throughout my college years, particularly in film school, would go on to work in the industry in some capacity or another. Even as my path deviated for a decade, I was brought back to it as well.

It’s a cool feeling knowing that those you learned and dreamed with early on went out into the world and made something of themselves. Even those who chose a crappy community college over an expensive university in the city. It proved, more than anything, that where you go to school doesn’t mean shit. It has everything to do with how hungry you are to make those dreams a reality. And, for everyone who made those dreams come to fruition in one way or another, there were many more that washed back out to the sea of dreams to find a new wave to ride into shore, leading them to an entirely different path, sometimes better, sometimes worse

That first semester was a revelation. It opened my eyes to so many things (kind of literally when we had to watch Salvador Dali’s The Andalusian Dog), but most of all, it showed me whether I was meant for the world of filmmaking or not. I met more friends and acquaintances, and we soon began to form pockets of friendship. Like an episode of Survivor, alliances were made, and we grouped in like-minded huddles. It felt obvious who had the potential to make something of themselves and who didn’t, even if the odds were against all of us. It didn’t matter. Regardless of the guarantee of a prize, human beings are seemingly made to compete, and it will always be that way.

We were immersed in an array of early films that are constantly on the list of must-see works for aspiring filmmakers; Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potempkin, Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu, Robert J. Flaherty’s Nanook of the North, Wim Wender’s Wings of Desire, Leni Reifenstahl’s Triumph of the Will, and, of course, D.W. Griffith’s infamous The Birth of a Nation. There were many, many more we watched, of course, but those were some that stuck in my mind, for a multitude of reasons. Seeing many of the films we were exposed to proved why they were on the list, while others begged the question of how they ever got there. It was the beginning of my understanding of how film worked as an evolving art form, even if I didn’t quite grasp it at the time.

At the end of the semester, we had to make our own short film. Everyone was nervous to a point, as we all wanted to prove how gifted we were and that we were destined to be Academy Award-winning filmmakers who would change the landscape of film forever. For me, that would start with a short film called The Date, which was brilliantly written by me and my two partners on the film, Jeff and Jill. It was a silent film, which was an exercise in telling a story with visuals only. The concept was beyond simple: Two people on a date would sit down to a spaghetti dinner, which begins basic enough until the male decides to toss a meatball at his date, which she would catch with her mouth.

Yup, that was it. Academy Award-winning stuff.

We had to find our own actors for the project, which we did by visiting the acting department and enlisting a male and a female for the life-changing role in The Date. This visionary film, languishing on a VHS tape in my garage somewhere, was, in short, a disaster.

It’s by no means a good film or even a watchable film for that matter. It’s about 30 seconds in length, and we toiled over making it. I can remember Jeff taking on the editing chores, which was tape-to-tape in those days, years before digital editing would become the standard, and rushing to complete our final edit before we had to debut it in class. It felt like a race against time to enter our god-awful film into the eyeballs of our classmates.

But The Date served as something very special to me personally. It proved to me that I was in the right place. Up until that very moment on that very day, I had never directed anything. I was raised in a time when VHS, then Beta, then digital tape were all that was available. We didn’t have 4K video recorders in our pockets, and we couldn’t edit videos at home and upload them to YouTube instantaneously. We were at the dawn of the digital revolution, so the opportunities to make films on our own weren’t anywhere near as accessible as they are now.

On the day that we shot The Date (we literally had a single class period to film the whole thing), it seemed to be a kind of tug-of-war between me, Jeff, and Jill as to who was in charge of the production. We had the two actors who were gracious enough to appear free of charge and lend us a class period to make our opus. But what we lacked initially was clear direction. We hadn’t decided who would be the actual director. If anything, we found that three people trying to direct at once simply doesn’t work. There are far too many conflicts for that to be a reality, especially at our amateur level. At one point, after securing a few shots, we hit a wall. I had disagreed with Jeff and Jill about the next shot set-up, and since none of us were that close, it was nearly impossible for anyone to back down.

So, we stood there, unwavering and yet giving up at the same time. It was one of those awkward moments where time stood still, and you knew that everything was in danger of collapsing entirely. Jill threw in the towel, while Jeff sulked nearby. I had a choice. I could join them and cross my arms and huff and puff until this little production got blown down, or I could do something. In that moment, I chose to act. Or, rather, direct.

The frustration I felt at my classmates’ unwillingness to compromise fueled something within me to take action. I got behind the camera and immediately just took over. I didn’t consult with Jill and Jeff. I just started shooting and allowed them to fall in line, which they did. They helped with the set, the actors, and the props, while I directed each shot for the rest of the production. I felt invigorated. It was a rush unlike anything I’d ever known, and this was just for some crap assignment in my first-ever film class.

When we wrapped, I handed the master tape to Jeff, who would edit, and there was an air of agitation among us. I can’t recall what I’d said, but Jill sarcastically replied to me, “Okay, Spielberg,” which was an implication that I had taken over the production as the director. It was meant as a jab, yet I took it as an absolute compliment. I remember walking down the dark, shiny corridor of the school afterward with a big, stupid smile on my face. I wasn’t Steven Spielberg. I had no illusions of the sort. But, until that moment, I had a lot of doubt as to whether I had what it took to be a director or not. I knew there was a long road ahead of me, but now I had confirmation that I could do it. It felt right. It felt real. It felt like I was where I was supposed to be.

The next few years of my life would be nothing short of amazing. Fueled by the confirmation that filmmaking was, indeed, something I absolutely loved, the journey began in refining my tools and chasing the dream of becoming the best filmmaker I could be. But first, I needed a crew, and I would soon find a host of friends who would all make their own mark in Hollywood in the years and decades to follow.

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“This job would be great if it wasn’t for the fucking customers.”

- Randal Graves (Jeff Anderson) in Clerks (1994)

My first job was at the local dollar theater, The Lincoln Theater in Belleville, Illinois, working concessions. You would think that working at a movie theater would be a dream gig for me, but it ended up being a nightmare. At first, I thought I’d be around a bunch of people who had similar interests, but at this particular theater, the people working there couldn't care less about movies.

It was just a job to them, whereas I had a more vested interest. I think that’s where things started to go downhill. Since I knew far more about movies than any of them, I was quickly branded a know-it-all movie nerd, and attitudes shifted rapidly toward treating me like the annoying kid who got sidelined. I was given all the worst tasks, including cleaning out the popcorn bins and butter dispensers, which had to be done in the rat-infested basement that looked straight out of a horror movie.

I hated it immediately and could feel it wouldn’t last. The manager, a twenty-something girl named Julie, had no business running a theater, and her lack of management skills was obscenely obvious. One day, just as I felt like I was settling into the gig, I went to check the schedule to see when I was next scheduled to work. I noted it and went home, only to get a phone call that Friday asking where I was.

I explained that I wasn’t on the schedule but was told that I was. Attempting to make good on it, I said I’d be right down. Julie replied, “That’s okay, we don’t need you anymore.” I paused for a long beat. “Are you saying I’m fired?” She took a long beat, then said, “Yes.”

I said okay, hung up, and went to the movies anyway, only as a patron, seeing the awful action flick Surviving the Game with Ice-T and Gary Busey.

When I got home, my mom informed me that she had called the theater and gotten my job back. It was the ultimate ego smash for a teenager, having their parent call their workplace to fight for their job. I was pissed that my mom even made the effort, bless her heart, because I was relieved not to go back. The last thing I needed was my love of movies to be sullied by people who didn’t give a shit about them, and I sure as hell wasn’t celebrating the craft by washing popcorn bins in a dingy basement.

Of course, I was already in that predicament when I was fired, which led me to a gig as a cart pusher at the local grocery store, Shop n’ Save. It was a standard gig for a teenager, and I quickly made friends with everyone there. The grocery store ended up being a far more welcoming environment than a movie theater, which boggled my mind, but there it was. I was entering my senior year and wanted to work as many hours as I could to earn money for the summer, proving myself to be a good worker. Soon after, I was approached by one of the managers to see if I’d be interested in working in the video store.

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I was born in 1977 in Falls Church, Virginia, a suburb of Washington, D.C. Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky was number one at the box office at the time, and a few months later, a little movie called Star Wars would dominate cinemas for the rest of the year, becoming a global phenomenon that continues to this day.

By all accounts, I was a pretty normal American kid growing up. My parents divorced early in my childhood, and I split my years between two households, one in Virginia and one in Southern Illinois. Eventually, I had two brothers to share in my upbringing, as well as a host of friends and acquaintances that filled my time.

My family became a bit nomadic, moving frequently due to my mom and stepdad’s pursuit of new opportunities, living in Florida for a time, then back to Southern Illinois. I would visit my father in the summers, where I hung out with my grandparents while he worked during the day, usually at various reprographics firms, something he’d done for a long time, having never found the will to pursue work as a photographer, which was his early passion.

My grandparents, nicknamed Bucky and Har Har, were fairly standard old folks in many ways. They lived in a modest three-story home in Fairfax, Virginia, surrounded by massive trees in a clustered neighborhood, sitting on the corner of a busy street. My grandmother was Bucky, and I couldn’t tell you why we called her that, as her real name was Laurie. She was a big woman, with old-lady glasses and dyed-red hair with a take-no-shit attitude that I always appreciated, even as a kid.

Har Har was thin and grizzled, with a lower jaw that jutted out and a jokey demeanor befitting of an old man his age. He was an alcoholic who served in WWII as an engineer, and upon entry into the house for the first time each summer, he would bellow from the comfort of his easy chair, “Har-Har, Maties!” as we entered. It became something we expected with delight, and decided that it was only fitting that his mantra would also be his name.

His real name was Paul, and I was later told that it was where my name came from, as well as from my dad’s favorite member of The Beatles, Paul McCartney.

My father, Jon, lived in the upstairs of my grandparents’ house, having never found the footing to really branch out on his own after his divorce from my mom, despite several apartments, townhouses, and failed relationships that always ended in his return to Bucky and Har Har’s. Dad was a dreamer, like me, and was quick to follow his passions in the early stages of fermentation, but quickly lost steam when it came time to dig his heels in and stay the course, making him a lifelong wanderer.

The summers would be a vacation for my brother, Scott, and me. Growing up in the 80s, we spent most of our time riding bikes, reading comics, playing with G.I. Joes and Transformers, watching Nickelodeon, beating the shit out of each other, and snacking.

Lots and lots of snacking.

However, amidst driving Bucky and Har Har nuts with our prepubescent antics, they would indulge our whims with trips to the comic shop and the movies, keeping us well fed on entertainment, as well as sugar, throughout our long summers.

When most people think about or discuss their grandparents, they often harken back to fond memories of going fishing, baking, sewing, or learning a time-honored tradition passed down from generation to generation. Outside of Bucky teaching me to tie a bow on a wrapped present, I can’t think of a single thing they taught me. But what they did do, however inadvertently, was plant the seeds of my movie geekdom.

My brother and I had been to the movies many times since birth. I was even taken to Star Wars in 1977, although you’ll forgive me for not remembering the experience, as I was an infant. I remember E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial and the magic of John Williams’ magnificent score tuned to Spielberg’s visual flair. I remember The Goonies, sitting front row because we showed up late, loving every “truffle shuffle” minute of it.

I remembered Back To The Future, always wondering what it meant that the film ended with “To Be Continued…” as we hadn’t yet been weaned on the promise of sequels.

I remembered Rocky IV, experiencing the movie with an audience as if we were at an actual boxing match, the crowd yelling and cheering with each punch. I remembered Teen Wolf, seeing Michael J. Fox become the weirdest-looking werewolf I’d ever seen in a movie that both scared and delighted my young self.

I remembered Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, seeing it with a bunch of my friends on a Saturday afternoon, with one of their older sisters coming along and freaking out at each gross-out scene, causing all of us to chase after her every time she got up and ran out of the theater.

I remembered The Three Amigos! and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, seeing both films multiple times, and loving every revisit more and more. I remember so many films like these that made up a significant chunk of my early cinematic awakening, but it wasn’t until 1987 that it really started to take hold in a new way.

Bucky and Har Har straight-up did not care about ratings. They didn’t even flinch. PG, R, G, whatever, they didn’t care. It was never a consideration for them. But they loved movies. They loved TV. They loved the moving pictures a whole lot, and two chubby grandkids weren’t going to stop them from that enjoyment. So, they did what they had to do. They brought us with them.

On July 17, 1987, the sci-fi action film Robocop was released in theaters. It was directed by Paul Verhoeven, a Dutch-born filmmaker who had previously done the medieval flick Flesh + Blood starring Rutger Hauer and Jennifer Jason Leigh, as well as a string of films in his native Netherlands. The film starred Peter Weller as the titular character, along with Nancy Allen, Ronny Cox, and Kurtwood Smith as the particularly diabolical villain Clarence Boddickeer.

Robocop takes place in the distant future of Detroit, where robotics and military-grade technology are being introduced to fight crime in the deteriorating city, making way for the construction of a “new” Detroit that would seemingly be better than the old one. After a first run at using a robot as a cop malfunctions before even getting on the street, the Robocop program is put into effect, which takes a recently deceased cop (played by Weller) and augments his human body with robotic parts to make him a compliant and effective robotic policeman.

That’s a pretty basic way of explaining Robocop, as anyone who’s seen it knows that it’s got a lot more going on than its sci-fi premise, much of it due to Verhoeven’s sensibilities. Robocop is a subversive, violent, hilarious, and yes, even philosophical film that mirrors what Verhoeven would continue to emulate in later films, which is the absolute absurdity embedded in these violent delights.

At age 10, sitting in a dark theater with Bucky and Har Har, who dragged my brother and me along for a little weekday matinee of Verhoeven’s opus, I was mesmerized.

The shocking, blood-spattered carnage was on a scale I’d never witnessed before. The emotion I felt, watching the movie unfold at a young age, worked me over, as if twisting the wiring in my brain to connect to things I had not yet considered or even dreamed of. My synapses fired like a film reel starting up. It was an awakening.

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Former Editor-in-Chief, JoBlo.com, and Former Senior Writer, Screen Rant

Hollywood isn’t what you think.

I spent a decade inside the access machine — red carpets, junkets, set visits, Comic-Cons, studio pressure, movie reviews, and the job of a lifetime.

Access and truth coexist.

Sometimes they collide.

This is what it actually feels like inside.

Chapter One is free.

The rest unfolds weekly — independent, unfiltered, and owned by no one but me.

Join the journey and get the truth about it all.

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Who is this Substack for?

Confessions of a Movie Blogger is for driven creatives who love film and want the inside truth about ambition, access, and the real price of getting close to the Hollywood machine.

For a decade, I navigated the access game — movie sets, junkets, red carpets, Comic-Con, Sundance, Star Wars Celebration, and everything in between. I got close enough to see how the machine really works.

What it rewards.

What it hides.

And what it quietly takes from the people trying to get in.

This is the story of how I got there — and what it actually costs to stand at Tinseltown’s gates.

This isn’t gossip.

It’s truth. My truth. My lived experience.

If you think you already know it — you don’t, I promise you.

Introduction

I was talking to a film journalist friend a few years ago and telling him I was writing a book about my experiences in our field. He said he thought it was a cool idea, but didn’t feel like he had enough material in his own career to warrant an entire book about it, even though we’d both covered the same beat for nearly the same amount of time. It made me pause for a moment and question if my experiences were worth recounting, disclosing, and confessing.

The answer that came back was: Absolutely.

Now, that didn’t mean that everything I experienced was noteworthy to everyone on planet Earth. But for anyone who loved movies as I did, they would certainly find my experiences to be, at the very least, interesting, and at the most, fascinating.

The reason I know this is that when I was a teenager and exploring my film education, there was no book about what I would end up doing. To my knowledge, there still isn’t. So, whether I’m the first or last to share my journey in this field, at least it will be shared, for better or worse.

Seventeen-year-old me would’ve devoured this tale because he never could’ve imagined what awaited him. That much I can assure you.

Working with movie studios, breaking news and scoops about upcoming projects, visiting movie sets, interviewing stars and creators, traveling the world, and being part of an internet ecosystem that thrives on movies was more than I could have ever predicted for myself.

But I never considered myself special or better than anyone because of it. I knew, on a fundamental level, that I was simply lucky. Not that I didn’t have talent or skill, as that was always a factor, but my desire, will, and more than a little bit of good timing and luck paved the way for an amazing, challenging, and fulfilling life experience I could only dream of.

I have deviated from that path now, heading into my next evolution as a writer and artist, but the journey I had is one worth remembering, sharing, and learning from. It is my deeply personal journey. For all intents and purposes, it is a memoir of an era of my life that continues to reverberate.

I hope that this book will entertain, inform, and inspire anyone and everyone who seeks to be part of something they’re passionate about. I believe that it will find you if you seek it, as I did.

A note on the format:

As this is nearly a decades-long journey, the presentation will be a vignette style. I will take you into very specific parts of my journey, but not in a day-by-day, month-by-month format, save for the first few chapters that give you some insight into who I am and why you should give a shit (or not). I’m afraid you’ll have to get to know me a little first, so if you’re here just for “dirt,” then you may be disappointed.

This story, for all intents and purposes, is a highlight reel of the best, most interesting, most controversial, and most revealing parts of my journey, leading up to my exit from the profession and the evolution beyond it.

To note, for those who prefer to listen, I am personally reading each chapter and uploading it here, so that you have the option to listen as well as read.

I am debuting this book on Substack with a plan to publish it in book format once complete. Chapter One is free for all, but all subsequent chapters are available to paid subscribers only, because A) This is a profession, and B) as the Joker says in The Dark Knight, “If you’re good at something, never do it for free.”

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CHAPTER ONE: The Great Film Awakening

It’s 2017, and I’ve got a late morning pod time. My phone alarm wakes me up, and I roll out of bed, immediately feeling the jitters of the day ahead. I haven’t written any questions yet, which I’ll do when I arrive at the other hotel. I’m in London, staying at a ritzy hotel downtown. Not ritzy enough for talent, but perfect for entertainment journalists, as movie stars and directors stay a few blocks over. It makes sense, really, as it keeps us from running into them in the hallways and elevators, potentially risking an awkward run-in where silly questions are asked and selfies are prompted.

I take a quick shower and fix my hair, making sure not even one is out of place. Jeans, a t-shirt, and a dress jacket are the outfit of the day. The t-shirt is a fitting one, featuring a group of cartoon-like Xenomorphs from the Alien franchise at a birthday party with a Xenomorph stripper popping out of the stomach of a dead human. Irreverent, funny, and completely on-brand for a film journalist. Or movie blogger. Or, more accurately, someone who happened to get this job purely out of being a complete movie nerd. Well, that and the ability to form words into sentences for consumption on the Internet.

Nerves. Always nerves on days like this. I tell myself that I’ve done it a hundred times. That there’s nothing to be nervous about. That they put on their pants the same as you and me (they probably just cost a lot more). It’s an hour till my pod time, but I’m too nervous to sit around. Better that I show up early and sit around awkwardly with all the other journalists, sipping coffee and eating some catered hotel food, while waiting for our names to be called. Fuck it. Let’s do this.

I step into the overcast, cool London morning and start walking. Since it’s the 21^st Century and we all have smartphones, getting lost simply isn’t an option. I can get my bearings quickly, an attribute I liken to my military days, but in reality, I just know how to read a map and orient myself accordingly. London’s signage is strange, as the street name signs are on the actual buildings, rather than signposts, but this isn’t my first trip to the UK. In fact, I almost feel like I know where I’m going – even if I don’t.

London, I’ve decided, is a fucking cool place. At least, it was in 2017. I love the vibe, the atmosphere, the architecture, the accents (hey, they’re accents to me), and the scope of it all. For a city that’s over 2,000 years old, it had an energy and liveliness that drew me in, from the unique boutique shops, pubs on every corner, and the ever-changing districts that continued to reveal themselves with each step the further you walked. I often likened it to a “clean” New York, but Londoners and New Yorkers would surely laugh in my face for the comparison. Doesn’t matter. That’s how I saw it.

I found the other hotel and made my way in. It was my opportunity to compare it to my own hotel, noting how different it was to see how much better the celebrities had it. In truth, our own hotel was a five-star upscale joint, so I couldn’t complain, but it was still fun to note the differences. I rode the elevator up and got off at the designated floor, stepping out into a world of busyness.

The studio would always book an entire floor at whatever hotel they used for these junkets. Rooms would be designated for the talent, reserving the nicer, bigger rooms for the key players. Audio/video cables ran through the hallways, running into various rooms, making the place look like it was either under construction or under surveillance (or both).

In the middle of the hallway, they always positioned a rep or two, who had a list with names, room numbers, and times, armed with walkie-talkies to communicate and coordinate the garden variety of journalists who would swarm the hallways throughout the day. My first order of business was to check in and let them know I was there, getting my name in the queue so that I could be stacked with the rest of the cattle being fed through the celebrity trough.

Names are typed and printed on a sheet of 8x11 paper and taped to each door, denoting which talent was in which room. I note one of the names: Katherine Waterston. I note another, the one that has my breathing bated and sweat forming on my brow: Ridley Scott. He’s the reason I woke up nervous. The reason why my heart was pounding strong enough that I could feel it reverberate in my ears. He’s the draw to all of this, and I’m extra nervous because I have it in my mind to talk about his deceased brother, as it’s the closest I’ll ever get to him.

Ridley Scott is a legend. A British-born filmmaker who started his own ad company in the 70s, eventually moving on to feature films, starting with a period piece starring Keith Carradine and Harvey Keitel called The Duellists, released in 1977, the same year I entered this beloved giant rock full of humans floating in space. Then, in 1979, Scott would direct a movie that would change his career forever, and one that would be the very reason I’m standing in that hotel in London in 2017.

Alien, a sci-fi horror film starring Sigourney Weaver, would become nothing short of a global phenomenon, launching the famed Xenomorph “alien” into the pop-culture zeitgeist, spawning nine sequels and a TV series. I was there for Alien: Covenant, which was set to release worldwide shortly after the premiere in the UK.

Scott would go on to become one of the most renowned and prolific directors in Hollywood, filling his filmography with a string of hits (and misses), such as Blade Runner, Gladiator, Thelma & Louise, Black Hawk Down, The Martian, etc. He has produced countless others through his Scott Free production company, which he formed with his brother, Tony, in 1970 and has continued to grow and expand ever since.

I loved Ridley Scott’s work. It was a hallmark of my film education. My dad, whom I give a lot of credit to for influencing my early movie exposure, was obsessed with Blade Runner and would play it on VHS frequently. I was fascinated by the film, even if I couldn’t comprehend it at a young age. Still, the visuals were enthralling, the music by Vangelis electrifying, and the performances strong and subtle. I was pulled into it every time, even if I couldn’t make heads or tails of what was going on.

But, as much as I loved Ridley’s work, the one filmmaker that awakened my fandom, as well as my general inspiration as an artist, as a viewer, as a consumer, was Ridley’s brother, Tony Scott.

You know who Tony Scott is, even if you don’t know who Tony Scott is. He’s the rock and roll stylestician who dusted off the traditional minutiae of American films and injected them with a kinetic, in-your-face, quick-cut orchestra of visual punch and bombastic energy that’s been ripped off since he took flight with 1986’s Top Gun.

Tragically, Tony Scott committed suicide on August 12th, 2012 by jumping off the Vincent Thomas Bridge. It was revealed (by Ridley), that Scott had been battling cancer over the years, although a definitive reason for his suicide has never been given, despite the director leaving behind notes to his loved ones beforehand. The news of his death was devastating to me, as it felt like the death of a hero and mentor, even if we’d never met. The only connection left to him, for me, was through Ridley.

While Top Gun served as the “ah-ha” of my film awakening, it was Tony’s dark thriller Revenge that truly pulled me in. As a kid growing up in the 80s and 90s, we didn’t have a few of the things that we seemingly can’t live without today. There was no Internet, and no Blu-rays, DVDs, 4K, streaming, YouTube, or any other means to quickly access anything and everything you could ever want to watch within a matter of clicks and seconds.

No, we had two things in the 80s and 90s, before DVDs and the Internet changed it all: HBO and VHS. HBO, of course, is the cable provider (which stands for Home Box Office) that dominated the cable industry (and continues its foothold with streaming) at the time, debuting movies and original shows before debuting movies and original shows became commonplace.

Frequently, we would discover movies on HBO, sometimes just on a whim, catching it at some random time we happened to be watching.

Yes, dear reader, there was a time when movies played continuously, and if you didn’t tune in at a specific time, you’d miss the opening and catch up along the way. We had another strange device at the time, which we called the “TV Guide”. It was sold in supermarket check-out stands and was literally what the title implied. A listing of everything that would be on TV that week, including HBO, presented in what can only be likened to an Excel spreadsheet of dates, times, and titles.

Sometime around 1991, I discovered Revenge. It was on HBO, typically late at night, and I found myself fascinated by it. It looked different than other films I’d seen but somehow felt familiar. There was something about the way it was shot: extreme close-ups, quick cuts, a hazy, smoky atmosphere, coupled with filtered shots that made everything look cooler, more colorful, and more stylish than your average 90s action thriller.

Revenge starred Kevin Costner, just before he would direct Dances with Wolves and become a megastar, as well as veteran actor Anthony Quinn, Madeleine Stowe, the late Miguel Ferrer, Sally Kirkland, and a young John Leguizamo. As the title implies, it was a tale of revenge, based on the short story by Jim Harrison, which follows a retired Navy pilot who goes to visit his “businessman” friend in Mexico and inadvertently falls in love with his wife. What transpires is a vicious tale of betrayal, sex, violence, despair, and, of course, revenge that kept my eyes glued to the screen from start to finish.

Any and every time Revenge came on, I was all in. It didn’t matter what else was going on; I paused it all to watch it. Eventually, I went to the trusty TV guide, finding out when Revenge would be on HBO again and making sure to note the time. Keep in mind that there were no smartphones to set a reminder, let alone a DVR to set a record date. There were VCRs that you could set up to record at a specific time if you weren’t going to be home, but that honestly only ever worked half the time.

Yes, we were slumming it in those early days, the cavemen of digital progress. It was rough, but it was beautiful. We survived just fine.

One day, I happened to catch Top Gun playing on TV. Having seen the film in the theater when it came out in 1986, swept up in the same fascination as the rest of American audiences at the time, I knew the movie well and had seen it dozens of times by then. I remember watching the scene where Tom Cruise’s Maverick is in the locker room, bullshitting and grandstanding with his fellow pilots, when something struck me. The shots looked familiar. Very familiar. The lighting, the hazy, smoky atmosphere, the fast cuts, the boundless, energetic style.

Where had I seen this before?

I wasn’t quite sure how to solve the riddle, as the Internet and search engines were at least five years away from me. So, I did what everyone else did in those difficult times: I went to Waldenbooks.

These days, the last holdout for bookstores is Barnes & Noble, but we had trusty old Waldenbooks, traditionally positioned in a shopping mall and a place I sought refuge many times over as a youth. I found my way to the entertainment section looking for answers. There had to be some kind of reference book that would crack this code for me.

And there it was: “The Video Movie Guide” by Mick Martin and Marsha Porter. This book, without question, changed my life forever. The set-up was quite simple; movies were listed alphabetically and cross-referenced by director and cast, making it exceptionally easy to find whatever movie you were looking for, be it by name, star, or director. This was IMDB (The Internet Movie Database) before IMDB existed.

At the time, I had no idea about specific directors outside of Steven Spielberg, which is probably the one go-to director that even the most uninformed movie fan would know. That’s likely expanded to include the likes of Quentin Tarantino, Tim Burton, and M. Night Shyamalan at this juncture, but in the mid-’90s, Spielberg was about all anyone really knew.

There was no hesitation. I went straight to the “R’s” and found Revenge. Each entry featured a star rating as well as director, cast, and a brief “review” of sorts.

“Directed by Tony Scott”.

Hmmm. That’s a name I’d not heard before. I flipped back to the reference section, looking up Scott’s credits, and an atomic bomb went off in my young brain. Top Gun. Beverly Hills Cop II. Days of Thunder, The Last Boy Scout.

Holy shit. This guy had directed four of my favorite films! Films I’d watched over and over and over again in my short life. Films I adored. Films I knew I’d watch again and again. Immediately, I thought of my all-time favorite movie, Die Hard. I flipped to the director. John McTiernan.

A second wave of atomic bombs dropped in my brain. Predator, Die Hard, The Hunt for Red October.

Holy shit: Part 2. This was nuts. I didn’t waste another second at Waldenbooks. I went to check out and took that book home, peddling on my bike as fast as I could so I could get home and…read.

I rummaged through that book like I was Johnny Five in Short Circuit, soaking in the input. I was Neo, plugged into The Matrix, learning kung-fu. I was Daniel LaRusso learning that my summer wasn’t wasted sanding some old man’s deck, and I was actually learning martial arts in The Karate Kid. You get the idea.

Bottom line is that I was forever changed by that book, which suddenly connected me to the art of filmmaking in a way I had never known before. Movies weren’t just entertainment anymore. No, they were art, painted by an artist, their style all up on the big screen, their brush a camera, their subject a script, their tools made of actors and a massive production crew that brought their vision to life.

Naturally, this discovery created a desire to learn more about filmmaking overall. I had to know everything about it. What is a director? What do they do? How is a movie made? Can I become a filmmaker? How hard is the job? And on and on it went, as the birth of a lifelong passion took root in my heart and spawned this lifelong love affair with the magic that is cinema and the magic-makers called filmmakers. I had to join their ranks. I had to be one. I had to dive as deep as possible into this world, and I’d never come up for air again. I’m still drowning in that celluloid ocean.

The years flew by, and each new year brought a new Video Movie Guide, updated with the previous year’s releases. I scooped it up like a man starved for water in the desert as soon as it hit the shelves. As time marched on, the filmography of my favorite filmmakers grew as well. Tony Scott would go on to direct many more amazing films, including Crimson Tide, True Romance, Enemy of the State, Spy Game, Man on Fire, Domino, and Unstoppable. John McTiernan would direct the underappreciated Last Action Hero, The 13^th Warrior, and The Thomas Crown Affair (and some duds like Rollerball and Basic) before sadly going to prison over a controversial charge.

I would follow every filmmaker who rocked my world. Quentin Tarantino, Steven Spielberg, M. Night Shyamalan, David Fincher, David Cronenberg, Guy Ritchie, Tim Burton, Christopher Nolan, Antoine Fuqua, Wes Anderson, John Carpenter, and countless others. I would deep dive into the classic filmmakers, some still alive, some long gone. Stanley Kubrick, David Lean, Sidney Lumet, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Orson Welles, Sam Peckinpah, David Lynch, etc., etc., etc.

It got to the point that if I watched a movie, any movie, I had to do my due diligence and look it up in the Video Movie Guide. I built a reference library in my brain that has served me well ever since, stacking that knowledge over time, paying off like compounded interest in a movie knowledge stock. Today, we have things like IMDb.com and Wikipedia, but back in the early to mid-90s, we had the Video Movie Guide, and it was a biblical reference book that put me on the path to geekdom.

I putzed around the waiting room, which had a buffet of food, hot coffee, and cold drinks. Hollywood money frequently brings the best that can be afforded, even for a junket in London. On a table nearby was a cake set-up of Alien eggs and Xenomorph hatchlings, which was both disturbing and awesome. It was common for big-name films to have things like this at their junkets. There was always some kind of extravagance that related to the film, causing us journalists to bust out our phones and take pictures, furthering the promotion of said film. It was very Hollywood in that way, making the junket more of an event than just a series of interviews in a hotel room. There was almost always a level of showmanship to some degree.

I talked with one of the studio reps who had become my favorite to work with. I say “worked with” as a term commonly used when outlining the relationship between a journalist and a movie studio representative. Most of the time, we communicated via e-mail, usually with them sending out information or promotional material, such as posters, trailers, etc., pushing to have those items featured on our site. In some cases, it would be communication over removing something we posted, such as leaked images or video, or reporting on something that was either incorrect or something they simply wanted to shut down.

We also coordinated with reps for all other aspects of promotion and access, including press junkets like this one, as well as set visits, local interview opportunities (i.e., New York and L.A.), and anything else that had to do with their respective movie slates.

Reps were the lifeline to access, and it greatly benefited us to have a good relationship with them. A bad relationship with a rep or studio would put the kibosh on all forms of access, which is something you needed to compete with every other movie news site on the internet. Otherwise, you were just another amateur with a URL.

I had attended the premiere the night before and churned out a review for the site, and the rep wanted to know what I thought. The reps always want to know what you thought, mostly to get a bead on what you’re going to say about it on social media, as well as getting a consensus to take back to the bigwigs. It also lets them know what they’re in for, as they’re assigned to work on specific movies through their theatrical run, and you always want your horse to win. But sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it fails badly, and it’s nice to know how big a pool of shit you’ll have to wade into as a result.

I worked for JoBlo.com, which was founded in 1998 by Montreal native Berge Garabedian, aka JoBlo. It was a reputable name in Hollywood, known as a kind of “bad boy” Internet movie site, but one that had garnered a strong reputation as the voice of the everyday fan, rather than some of the more stiff, rigid, and stuffy sites that frequently catered to elitists and film snobs.

JoBlo.com was a mom-and-pop kind of site. There was literally Berge at the top, running the business end of things, and then there was me, the current Editor-in-Chief. I managed the day-to-day, the staff, the content, etc. I managed everything to do with what you saw when you landed on the homepage. At the time, we had a small number of writers who covered a 4-hour shift each day, reporting on the news we deemed worthy. As we were limited in staff, we had to be far choosier in what news we covered, which amounted to the big stuff we couldn’t miss and the cool stuff we didn’t want to miss.

We reported the “facts,” of course, but the thing I always loved about the site, long before I worked there, was that it injected opinion and perspective. Each writer would present the news itself, then launch into their own take, frequently with some colorful or hilarious commentary that spoke to fans. It always felt like I was talking with my movie geek friends when reading JoBlo.com, and it was something I aimed to keep alive while I steered the ship.

Working for JoBlo.com was, in short, a dream come true. It was an amazing and life-changing experience that I had told myself early on I’d never take for granted. I’d soak up every opportunity as if it were the last and remain humble. I would never lose sight of being a fan and appreciating that I was lucky to have the gig and to represent the everyday fan who would kill to do the things I was doing. I was them, and they were me. It was my responsibility to bring them these experiences, not hoard them for myself.

In this instance, although I was working in service to the JoBlo.com audience, I wanted to share a moment with Ridley Scott. It wasn’t for the fans or for anyone else. It was for me, and it would serve to ultimately validate my journey that began so long ago, flipping through the TV Guide to see when Revenge would be playing on HBO again.

I interviewed actress Katherine Waterston (daughter of actor Sam Waterston of Law & Order), who was cooler than I thought she’d be, more relaxed and fun. I then interviewed a trio of paired actors, which included Danny McBride, Billy Crudup, and Demian Bichir. The reason they were paired is likely due to prominence in the cast. Lead actors will frequently get solo interviews, whereas the supporting cast is often grouped to save time and resources.

As a big fan of HBO’s Eastbound and Down, I made sure to shake McBride’s hand and say, “Kenny Fuckin’ Powers” as I left. It’s those small moments that tend to mean something not just to me, but to the fans, who would likely do the same (if not more) if given the chance. I always felt it was important to be genuine and chase those opportunities because it acknowledged our fans and followers, who had the same level of geekdom as we did. I viewed myself as a conduit of that, as much as just another nerd connecting with the art and artists.

I awaited my time with Ridley Scott, who I found out would be paired with Michael Fassbender, the actor who portrays the evil android known as David in the Alien franchise. Fassbender is great, and I’d interacted with him on a previous set visit for X-Men: Apocalypse (more on that later), but I was concerned about my limited window with Scott.

The reality of celebrity interviews at a junket is that it’s little more than speed dating. You have roughly four minutes to sit down and make a connection, getting through the drivel, while trying to find something notable and worthwhile to discuss in that timeframe that’s interesting enough for your audience. It isn’t 60 Minutes. It’s a pressure cooker of an experience, fighting for a sound bite that gets viewers to watch the whole interview, hopefully getting something with actual breaking news or a scoop or something else that propels it into newsworthy territory.

But, frequently, these are casual, playful, and cordial exercises, usually ending with an attempt to get news about an upcoming or rumored project. Sometimes they bite, sometimes they don’t, but you always have to try. You wouldn’t be doing your job if you didn’t.

For Ridley Scott, however, I wasn’t looking for scoops, and I didn’t care if it became newsworthy or not. I intended to be respectful to Fassbender and feed him at least one question, but lead with what I wanted to lead with and see where it went. The ultimate goal, of course, was to pay my respects to the man who awakened my film journey, as closely as I could, through his brother.

Anytime you begin an interview, there’s an immediate surge of energy, be it positive or negative. You enter a room that has bright lights beaming down on you, with camera people, technicians, studio reps, agents, etc., crowded into the room. You take your seat, and you’re told who will be counting you down, which is always a rep in a chair, sitting in the dark, facing you. Usually, at the two-minute mark, they’ll give you a signal, then again at the one-minute mark, then a wrap-up signal when you hit the 30-second mark, telling you to finish up.

It’s an exhausting exercise, to be sure, and not for everyone. In many ways, it’s a performance, and one you can’t afford to screw up if you ever want to be invited to other junkets. That said, I always found entitled, arrogant, and generally unpleasant journalists in my midst, as much as there were kind, funny, and respectful ones. Again, we’ll dive more into that later.

I was finally called up and entered the room with Ridley, who was dressed casually in a black hoodie and khaki pants, while Fassbender was dressed similarly to me and more chipper than both of us. Ridley immediately noticed my humorous Xenomorph shirt, and we all shared a laugh over it. Of course, that was always my intention. Breaking the ice can be difficult, and sometimes it helps not only to look professional but to give some fuel to the forthcoming exchange by way of humor and recognition. I would use it many times in my career.

My time was short, and I decided that the vibe was good enough to launch into my therapeutic paying of respects to Scott, explaining how, ultimately, I wouldn’t have been sitting there had it not been for his brother, Tony, which is as true as it gets.

Ridley asked which film of his brother’s had awakened me, to which I replied, “Revenge,” and he replied, “Oh, yeah. Kevin [Costner].” I laid out the rest of my cathartic testimony, and Ridley replied simply with, “Yeah, he was special.”

The rest of the interview involved talk of Alien: Covenant and Xenomorphs, but there was a kind of release for me afterwards. It was the closest I’d ever get to coming full circle with the man whose work brought me into the world of film in a way that would change me forever.

Ridley would go on that day to discuss his new film endlessly with countless other journalists, fed the same kinds of questions I asked, minus the confession of his brother’s influence. I doubt he remembers the exchange, even if it lives on with YouTube, but it held tremendous weight with me and still does.

Strangely, it felt like I could walk away from the job at that point and be content that I paid my respects to the flame that lit the fuse on my film journey, however silly that may seem to others. But, there was much more to experience before I stepped away, and even more that transpired before that afternoon in London (and after), going all the way back to the late 1970s.

THE STORY TO COME:

My origin tale: Blockbuster, Film School, 9/11, Oh, My!

A Visit to the X-Mansion…in Canada?

My first set visit: Stallone and his Expendables

Comic Con Cherry

How I ruined Jurassic World (and it still made a billion dollars)

Deadpool Shenanigans and how Ryan Reynolds is my best friend

Meeting Your Heroes (and Avoiding Some)

The Politics of Film Journalism and The Politics of Film Journalists

Seeing (actual) Ghosts For Doctor Sleep

Lost In Tokyo With Godzilla and Pikachu

The Reality of Making A Living as a Movie Blogger (Hint: it’s not realistic)

James Wan Doesn’t Fucking Know (Aquaman and Shazam! Adventures)

Never Read the Comments (or just delete them)

Set Visits Are Amazing (For Me) and Boring For Readers

Hiring and Firing in the Blogosphere

The Studios that Loved (and Hated) Me

Why I Left JoBlo.com (and Screen Rant)

What a Movie Site Offers The Reader

How To Watch A Movie: My Philosophy On Film

AND more…

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If you’ve been following along with me for any amount of time, then you have some idea that my memoir, Confessions of a Movie Blogger, has been in the works for a while. If not, consider this your advisement, as well as a kind of mission statement preface to explain why I wrote it and why I’m releasing it the way that I am.

I served as a news editor and Editor-in-Chief of JoBlo.com for eight years, then did a year with Screen Rant, all the while building my own “brand”. Whatever the hell that is. Personally, I think branding is both essential and a waste of time. Finding the balance between those two extremes is no small feat.

I was a movie nerd, a film geek—whatever you want to call an obsessive movie watcher—since high school, when everything awakened for me. It’s been in my DNA ever since, and despite my best efforts to deviate from my dreams and ambitions of working in the world of Hollywood, I was pulled back at every wrong turn, as you’ll see in my book.

The journey of someone falling in love with the art form that is film is a story we all share to some degree.

This is mine.

It’s not a story with a bunch of insider gossip. That’s not a story, that’s TMZ-level tabloid trash. I’m not here for that. But that doesn’t mean you won’t learn about the inner workings of the industry, including some of the negative aspects, as well as the reality of what it offers, what it takes away, and what it costs. I wouldn’t call it an exposé, but well, you can if you want to.

My intent is to share my journey, shining a light on the industry I poured myself into, highlighting the good, bad, and ugly of it all. I also want to showcase what drove me there to begin with: my love and passion for movies. It’s not just my story, but my love letter to the mistress I danced with for the better part of a decade before we went our separate ways.

So, why write it at all? Why share it now? Why should you care?

In truth, I wrote the brunt of this book years ago, just after quitting Screen Rant and realizing that it had drained me of my passion for writing about film the way I used to—when it was fresh, new, and inspiring. So much had changed, and I was demoralized. I saw the giant wave building that was about to flood the movie news industry and knew it was time to get out of the way and move on to higher ground.

While I was stepping away, however, it didn’t erase the journey I’d taken. It was an amazing, unbelievable, globe-trotting, wild, and surreal journey that I felt deserved more than a few Facebook memories and forgotten URLs. Beyond that, I saw the way things were taking shape in the online world and, well, I felt some of those things needed to be addressed, if for no other reason than transparency to the legions of people who visit movie news sites and spend their days chasing news on film Twitter.

One day, out of curiosity, I tabulated the number of posts I’d written just for Screen Rant daily for a year.

I totaled the word count.

It amounted to three full-length novels.

That stopped me cold.

Why was I writing bullshit stories explaining the plot of TV shows to people when I could be writing actual books? I’d already written screenplays and had attempted (and planned to attempt) a number of books. I mean, isn’t there always someone you know who’s writing a book? Seems like everyone has a story to tell, but most never actually sit down and write it.

It was time to change that.

I was writing what amounted to multiple novels for the better part of a decade, but they were actually disposable casting announcements, character posters, and movie trailers. Sure, I snuck in some great content along the way, including scoops, videos, and editorials, but the transient content outweighed anything evergreen.

So, I quit. And, I began this book. Four hundred odd pages later, I had a manuscript. Then, I got married. I moved to another state. I bought a house. I struggled with the massive change in my life, career, and environment, just like anyone would. In that time, I remained persistent and committed to the next evolution of my career.

When it came time to decide how to release this book, there were many avenues to pursue. I could send it out and hope a publisher picked it up, making a pittance of profit for my time and effort. Or, I could Andy Weir this thing, just as The Martian author did, and play the odds. But I didn’t want to just drop it all at once. What I wanted was to drop this book by chapter, each existing as a “blog post” similar to the movie news pattern of a weekly editorials. It felt fitting, organic, and genuine to the story I was telling. So, that’s how my book will be meeting you initially, with a plan to publish as a single-volume book later in the year.

I never got into film journalism to be a lifelong film journalist any more than I joined the Army to be a paratrooper for life. My end-state goal has always been to produce work, not just consume it. I wanted to make films, not write about them. I wanted to tell stories, not report on stories that were already written. I wanted to make art, not just buy art.

So, here I am. This is my jump. I have jumped many times before. This is just the next big one. I have worked nonstop, quietly, passionately, and stubbornly, enjoying and toiling with the struggle. It’s been challenging and beautiful. I have fought the demons of doubt, the grip of fear, and the shadow of inferiority. That time in the trenches has produced another book and a graphic novel series, both of which will follow Confessions of a Movie Blogger.

Now, standing atop the mountain I’ve climbed, it’s time to shout my story to the heavens, hoping that it reaches the hearts, minds, and ears of those it would matter most to. I hope my story makes you laugh. I hope it makes you relate. I hope it gives you insight. I hope it welcomes you into my experiences. I hope it makes you watch movies you’ve never seen. More than that, I hope it inspires you to tell your own story.

Our lives matter. What we do matters. Sharing it with the world matters.

Confessions of a Movie Blogger: 10 Years of Superheroes, Celebrities, Set Visits, Comic Cons, and Keyboard Shenanigans in Hollywood will begin releasing weekly starting on Friday, January 23rd, only on Substack.

Chapter One will be free to ALL subscribers, but all subsequent chapters will be available to paid subscribers only.

It’s $5 a month or $50 a year. If you want to get fancy, you can become a Founding Member for $100.

For the price of a single Starbucks coffee—or less than a pack of trading cards—you get access to my story: weekly chapters, exclusive images and links, and even my own voice-over narration. If you’d rather listen than read, think of it as part audiobook, part podcast.

That’s four chapters a month, about 20–30 minutes of content each week. Roughly two hours a month—about the same time you’d spend on a $4.99 movie rental on iTunes, for the same price.

Beyond that, you’re supporting my work, my voice, and the stories I’ve spent a lifetime building toward. Your support truly means everything, and I hope you’ll come along for the ride.

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