Muir Book Wednesday: The Rock and Roll Film Encyclopedia (2007)

Well, I haven't done one of these shameless self-promotion posts in quite a while, so today I thought I might casually (*ahem*) draw your attention to another one of my written works. In particular, I'm highlighting 2007's Rock and Roll Film Encyclopedia (Applause Theatre and Cinema Books).

I loved writing this book because I wrote it in the spirit of the genre: no f-ing rules! Anyway, here's a sampling of the critical reception the book received on release back in 2007:

"This is one totally rockin’ A-to-Z reference book way too groovy to gather dust on a bookshelf."
—Neil Pond, American Profile.

"...a witty, riff-filled romp through rock-and-popular-music related films, people and genre conventions in post-1956 American and British cinema. The entire book is unabashedly (and quite refreshingly) subjective and unstructured, allowing the author to display his deep knowledge and affection for the subject." - Library Journal, May 15, 2007.

"The Rock & Roll Film Encyclopedia is a perfect book, jam-packed full of pictures, reviews and descriptions of every rock'n'roll film ever made, and is a guaranteed parent's Netflix queue filler for up to a year." -azTeenMagazine.

"..It covers a lot of ground, from ’56 to 2005, ranging from blockbusters such as Grease to documentaries like The Kids Are Alright, with biographies, interviews, notes on casts and crews and DVD availability. The author knows his stuff and isn’t afraid to express his opinions..." Alan Lewis, Record Collector, Issue # 340.

"Popular film critic Muir's latest volume is a comprehensive encyclopedia (231 entries) devoted to the pairing of rock music and film from 1956 to 2005...a good choice for popular film collections...Recommended." - Choice.

"All told, The Rock & Roll Film Encyclopedia is both a unique reference point for film and music aficionados offering some interesting takes on the genre, as well as a fun collection of trivia on some of the best and least well known films of the past 50 years." - Jason Neubauer, Playback:stl, June 24, 2007.

"...infinitely suitable thumb-through reference for teenagers, casual moviegoers, and regular film fans." - Sir Read-a-Lot, June 2007, issue 99.

"The list of rock'n'roll movies includes landmarks such as "A Hard Day's Night" and "Woodstock," as well as a shelf of Elvis Presley flicks too forgettable to mention (OK, just one: "Clambake"). John Kenneth Muir's The Rock & Roll Film Encyclopedia (358 pages, Applause, $19.95) seems to cover them all, along with a number of feature films in which the music simply sounds really good. While Muir clearly loves his subject, he's not blind to its excesses. Witness his refreshingly arch entry for "circular logic" -- "Wherein a rocker / musician attempts to say something meaningful and deep, but only succeeds in confusing the audience, and usually himself." - The Richmond-Times Dispatch.

"An excellent reference." - MBR Bookwatch

"Trust me, "The Rock & Roll Film Encyclopedia" is no ordinary compendium of cheesy movies with really loud soundtracks...More than 200 films are catalogued and there is a handy index in the back. Garage bands everywhere will want to get a copy of this encyclopedia, to stack right alongside the fake books, guitar chord charts and restaurants delivering take-out." - Chuck Graham, The Tucson Citizen, May 2007.

The book features entries on rock films of all varieties, from animated films (Yellow Submarine [1968]) to bio-pics (What's Love Got to Do With It [1993]), to documentaries (The Last Waltz [1978]) to the canon of "The King," Elvis Presley (Kid Galahad [1962], etc). I also look at fictional band movies (This is Spinal Tap [1984]) horror rock like Trick or Treat (1986) and movies with rock soundtracks (American Graffiti [1973]). I'm also happy that I was able to include entries on genre conventions and actors who made my personal rock movie hall of fame. The book also features new interviews with directors Allan Arkush (Rock and Roll High School), Martin Davidson (Eddie and the Cruisers), Albert Magnoli (Purple Rain) and more.

Here's a representative "genre conventions" entry from the book, an excerpt remembering the all-important rock movie cliche, "destruction of property:"

You can't really make a good rock movie unless your stars destroy personal property. It's a rule. And it clearly establishes the anti-authority credentials of the damager.

"In The Who: The Kids Are Alright, a montage is featured during which drummer Keith Moon ransacks a hotel room. The same film also reveals the band's propensity to smash guitars (and even totals up the cost to The Who for this destructive tic.)

In D.A. Pennebaker's Monterey Pop (1968), Peter Townshend is back to his guitar-destroying tricks but is one-upped by Jimi Hendrix who, following a performance of "Wild Thing," sprays fuel on his guitar and then sets it aflame.

In Walk The Line (2005), an angry Johnny Cash (Joaquin Phoenix) rips apart a bathroom, tugging a sink basin right out of the wall.

In Don't Look Back (1967), somebody who doesn't want to fess up (allegedly Joan Baez) is responsible for throwing a drinking glass out a window and angering Bob Dylan.

In both Pink Floyd: The Wall (1983) and The Doors (1991), rock stars (fictional character Pink and Jim Morrison, respectively) make wreckages of their hotel rooms, a seeming rite of passage for this demographic..."

Terry Wickham Reviews The Unseen Force: The Films of Sam Raimi

Author, journalist and filmmaker Terry Wickham has just posted a review of my 2004 Sam Raimi study, The Unseen Force: The Films of Sam Raimi at MantaRay Pictures.

Here's a snippet:

"John Kenneth Muir does a masterful job of assembling the information shared in the book...Muir gives each Raimi film three hundred & sixty degree attention by covering the perspective of the audience, critics and box office. Many of the people who worked on the films share their experience and feelings about the director. What comes across is that Sam Raimi is a passionate, professional film director who has re-invented himself over the course of his career to reach the success he has accomplished today.

The Unseen Force: The Films of Sam Raimi is a book every film scholar, aspiring director, horror geek, deadite and Sam Raimi fan absolutely must have."

Ode to a Delta 88: The Classic Returns!

"He absolutely loved it (the Delta 88), and it kept on getting destroyed, and he would rebuild it. He had a very sentimental attachment to that car..."

-Robert Primes (director of photography, Crimewave).

Once upon a time, director Alfred Hitchcock was famous for making cameo appearances in his films. Today, Sam Raimi is almost as well-known for featuring his beloved car -- "The Classic" (a yellow Oldsmobile Delta 88 from 1973...) -- in his various Hollywood productions.

Ash (Bruce Campbell) piloted Raimi's treasured Delta in Evil Dead (1983), Evil Dead 2 (1987) and even time-tripped with it in Army of Darkness (1993). The director's car was also featured (and virtually destroyed...) in a nighttime car chase in the cult film, Crimewave (1985). More recently, it served as Cate Blanchett's clunker in The Gift (2000),and Uncle Ben's (Cliff Robertson's) car in Spider-man (2002). You can also see it in Spider-Man 3 (2007).

The cinematic love affair between Sam Raimi and his car continues to this very day, with this week's Drag Me to Hell (2009). The 36-year old Oldsmobile returns as the conveyance of diabolical old gypsy, Sylvia Ganush. The Classic even has a good supporting role this time around too: showing up (malevolently) in a darkened parking deck, and later seen quiescently parked in the gypsy's driveway.

When I wrote The Unseen Force : The Films of Sam Raimi in 2004 for Applause Theatre and Cinema Books (now available on Amazon's Kindle...) I had the honor of interviewing several cast and crew members from Raimi's productions, and we inevitably got around to the subject of The Classic. Sheree Wilson, star of Crimewave told me that the car was indeed Sam's "baby" and that she got a lot of special privileges with it, "hanging off...dangling off... "(page 83) of it.

After working on Spider-Man, the great Cliff Robertson told me that Raimi's Classic serves as the director's "signature." Roberson noted he was unaware of the car's deep significance until the "yellow Oldsmobile appeared on the scene" and his character died "in front of it at the Public Library."

Robertson added that it would be "interesting to see" how Raimi is going "to put it in a futuristic movie..." (page 304), but that he was sure that Raimi would "find a way, being the inventive, creative man that he is..."

Let's hope we next see The Classic battling Deadites again in Evil Dead IV...

Chillers and Thrillers Looks at Eaten Alive at a Chainsaw Massacre: The Films of Tobe Hooper

My 2003 reference and film study book Eaten Alive at a Chainsaw Massacre: The Films of Tobe Hooper (McFarland) gets excavated and examined in "Building Horror and Suspense Tobe Hooper’s Way," a new, in-depth article by Gary Pullman over at the excellent blog Chillers and Thrillers, a site "on the theory and practice of writing horror fiction."

Here's a snippet:

"In Eaten Alive at a Chainsaw Massacre: The Films of Tobe Hooper, John Kenneth Muir explains some of the narrative and symbolic devices that Hooper uses in his film, Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), to build horror and suspense..."

Against the Grain likes Encyclopedia of Superheroes on Film and Television

My award-winning reference book, The Encyclopedia of Superheroes on Film and Television (now in a second, updated edition) just got another great review, this one from Against the Grain (Volume 20, # 6, page 57). ATG is published six times a year and counts itself a news source "on the issues, literature, and people that impact the world of books and journals."

ATG writes that The Encyclopedia of Superheroes on Film and Television "will appeal to both enthusiasts of the superhero genre as well as serious students of pop culture," that it contains "interesting facts and off-beat trivia" and that libraries will "need a second copy," one for "reference purposes" and one for fans "to check-out."

Eaten Alive At A Chainsaw Massacre Excerpt

"...the soundtrack is dominated by the sounds of dirt crunching, a discordant whine (part of the music track) and then of periodic camera flashes "clicking" away. On screen, quick cuts of a rotting, decayed corpse are seen in close-up, surrounded by utter darkness. After a short span of these disgusting close-up "flashes," the first fully-lit, recognizable composition of the film is revealed: that of a body displayed atop a cemetery monument. A ghoulish work of art.

The camera originates the shot with a close-up of the corpse's goopy-looking face (replete with a full set of teeth, which gives the impression of a smile), and then pulls back to reveal that his dead body has been "posed," as if indeed a masterpiece of art. Behind and above the corpse hangs a marmalade sky, with the sung hanging low. In one sense, this sequence depicts the particulars of a grave robbing (from the shovel shifting the dirt above the corpse's plot, to the perpetrator proudly snapping photos of his handiwork), but in another, this opening gambit is evidence of Hooper's new world disorder.

The first real composition of Chain Saw is of the dead propped up, perched outside of a grave and positioned under the light of he sun, instead of below the earth in the dark and gloom of the grave. The image of the posed corpse simultaneously suggest that madness reigns in this universe, and that the architect of madness has an unconventional eye for beauty art.

For as certainly as the Hitchhiker and Leatherface are sick in their hobbies, they have an undeniable knack with arts and crafts..."

- from my analysis of Texas Chain Saw Massacre, page 55. Eaten Alive at a Chainsaw Massacre: The Films of Tobe Hooper (McFarland; 2002), now in softcover.

Now Available In Softcover: Eaten Alive At A Chainsaw Massacre: The Films of Tobe Hooper

"...Muir does an excellent job of chronicling his [Tobe Hooper's] career. The history and overview section tells us how the films were made, supplying us with behind-the-scenes stories....I don't know how many of you are going to rush out and rent the director's films...but the author does a great job talking about each movie, finding parallels in a few of his films to, of all things, Alice in Wonderland...I'm all for studies about different directors, and Tobe Hooper...is an inspired choice. That it [the book] is so appreciative and smart is a bonus."-CLASSIC IMAGES, January 2003, page 38.

"...John Kenneth Muir asserts that plenty of trademarks are present in Hooper's films, even if spotting them requires more than a cursory glance. Muir's talent for identifying patterns among the minutiae (visual, thematic or otherwise) serves him well in this exhaustive critique....Muir also documents Hooper's penchant for subtle satire and his long-standing affinity for storylines featuring multiple antagonists working in tandem....Accordingly, Muir paints us a picture of an important horror icon..."-John W. Bowen, RUE MORGUE: NINTH CIRCLE BOOKS, January/February 2003, page 57.

"The book kicks off with a well-written and curt introduction...The 'commentary' sections are what Muir is all about.....My two favourite allegories though are his comparison of TCM to Alice in Wonderland and Poltergeist as an attack on president Ronald Reagan's lassez-faire domestic policies. Engrossing stuff...If you are a fan of Hooper, a film analyst or want to re-examine his work then this book is essential. It drips with a care and attention that would put some authors of similar material to shame. Muir's passion for the genre and his appreciation for Hooper, are infectious. 4 (out of 5) Chainsaws." WITHIN THE WOODS, September, 2004.

"Eaten Alive at a Chainsaw Massacre is a zany and entertaining examination of a director often overlooked in his field...Muir deftly places Hooper among the inarguable masters of the horror film such as John Carpenter, Wes Craven and George Romero. Recommended for all large film collections and also to be added to libraries with Muir's previous books on directors John Carpenter...and Wes Craven."- Mimi Davis, THE SHY LIBRARIAN, Summer 2003, page 39.

"His reporting on the first two CHAINSAW films makes for compelling reading on behind-the-scenes terrors; he also delves deeply into the Hooper-or-Spielberg controversy surrounding POLTERGEIST....Horror fans will want to read this, regardless of their stance on the director." - HITCH MAGAZINE # 33, Spring 2003.

Eaten Alive at a Chainsaw Massacre: The Films of Tobe Hooper is available (in hardcover or softback) at Amazon.com.

ACRL Likes The Encyclopedia of Superheroes On Film and Television

Money quote from Association of College and Research Libraries review of my Encyclopedia of Superheroes on Film and Television 2nd Edition:

"Muir (the author of Horror Films of the 1970s and Horror Films of the 1980s) is at his best in analyzing trends and critiquing plots, and he pulls no superpunches in his reviews: “Ghost Rider is one of those movies in which you know the next bad line even before it’s spoken.”

Midwest Book Review Likes Superheroes Mark II

The Midwest Book Review critiques The Encyclopedia of Superheroes on Film and Television, Second Edition:

"...John Kenneth Muir...presents a newly updated and significantly expanded second edition of The Encyclopedia of Superheroes on Film and Television...a work of impressive dimensions and enthusiastically recommended for personal, community, and academic library reference collections."