Mike Howlett Unleashes "The Weird World of Eerie Publications"

Lookie what the mailman just delivered from Amazon.com: A brand new copy of The Weird World of Eerie Publications (Feral House), a wonderfully illustrated history of a pulp magazine publisher. The 310-page oversized hardcover, written by Mike Howlett, is definitely going to be my holiday reading.

Longtime readers (or even half-awake casual visitors) of this site know that I devote more than is a healthy amount of time and attention to the now-defunct Starlog Group, a New York-based periodicals publisher that lasted from the mid-1970s until the early part of this century. Starlog produced a ton of magazines – regular ones plus zillions of one-shots and limited-run titles – in nearly every category, ranging from genre films to sports to women's fashion to ethnic music to automobiles and beyond. Like Starlog Group, Eerie (under its various names) produced a ton of magazines in a wide variety of categories, but unlike Starlog, Eerie's were usually on the quick-and-dirty-and-cheap side. Eerie was a true exploitation publisher, and just as it's usually more fascinating to read about the escapades of an independent exploitation filmmaker than it is to hear about a corporate studio filmmaker, I can tell from my first scan through the book that this is filled with interesting stories that will tell us a lot about a bygone era in publishing.

So I'm looking forward to reading Howlett's book on the company. I'm sure it'll be amusing to me as a magazine editor and publisher, and it'll be enjoyable to me as a genre reader.

I suppose it's time someone wrote a book about the Starlog company. Me, maybe?

Terror of the Undead: My Filmography

Terror of the Undead. The mere title of this 30-year-old independent American horror film is enough to make older genre fans' eyes mist over with fond memories. Where were they in the summer of 1980 (or somewhere around then) when this film was crafted by a bunch of young teenagers in Manitowoc, Wisconsin?

Just like the hundreds of film vets who got their starts working for B-movie king Roger Corman, Terror of the Undead provided the training ground and launchpad for such modern film legends as mmmmbbllee mummble mummblle and mummble mmrrmerr mummble. This movie is a great example of what art can be created if enough talent is deployed, along with blood, sweat, tears, and about 15 minutes of pre-production planning. Just like you witnessed with the guerilla filmmaking techniques used by The Blair Witch Project, you'll be amazed at the shaky camera work (accomplished using the pre-digital effects technique known as we didn't know how to hold the camera steady).

The acting is, if I may say so myself, sublime. I was honored at this point in my junior high school career to be offered the lead role of "the reporter" in Terror of the Undead. I had been dissatisfied with the scripts being sent to me, and I was on the verge of seeking new representation when the Terror opportunity presented itself, and I recognized it immediately as the career-changing role it was. (Seriously, career-changing. I'm now a magazine editor.)

As I told the Actors Studio's James Lipton, I've never gone in for that old-fashioned method acting stuff. For me, it's enough to know the camera is on and that I remember I'm supposed to look (a) pensive, (b) unemotional, or (c) expressionless. Though I was beaten out at the Oscars that year (damn you, Dustin Hoffman!), I think the industry appreciated my "new-wave" approach to fleshing out and humanizing "the reporter."

Go ahead, watch the film. When you see me, I'm sure you'll immediately say, "Oh, wow, you had a full head of hair back then." No, no. I was a bald 12-year-old, too, but I made you believe that I had a full head of hair. That's called acting.

Watch the entire film – free of commercials or film industry censorship!!! – here.

The Dwindling Ranks of Gay Magazines

On a whim, I decided to update my blog's look at the state of gay magazines, which have been decimated in recent years. A combination of the brutal recession, the ability of the internet to undercut the print publications' market (especially for the adult titles), and some already weak publications has resulted in a steady decline in the ranks of publications targeting the gay audience.

But decimated doesn't do justice to the decline. The word comes from the ancient Romans, whose military commanders would punish mutinous or disastrously performing troops by killing one out of every 10 troops under their command (the deci- root comes from the Latin for ten). A brutal form of punishment, yes; but the rate of loss in the magazine market is likely much more than 10 percent.

Just checking out this list of gay magazines finds that of the 10 listed, five have ceased publication – six if you count The Advocate, which officially became a special section of sister mag Out. (One could quibble with my counting; there are additional surviving and dead magazines not listed, and Echelon, after all, is counted as having ceased publication, but it apparently is still alive as an online-only magazine. An online-only magazine is, to me, by definition an internet product. But such quibbles are what make life worth living, and a disagreement on that particular title doesn't appreciably alter the numbers calculation.)

I've long maintained on this blog – and still do – that print has a healthy future, if it does what print does best and lets the internet do what the 'net does best. I suspect that this market niche is kind of uniquely vulnerable to the internet. That part of the magazines' coverage that was about building community and interaction is exactly what the internet does better than print. And those magazines that offered little or nothing more than adult content have obviously lost their reason for living, in a world where the internet makes videos and pictures of any- and everything ubiquitous and often free.

Hope springs eternal, however. Playgirl (the ostensibly female-oriented but gay-friendly skin publication) is back and is trying to buck the trend, though not well, if you ask me. And on the non-adult side, we'll see how relatively new titles such as the wonderful Winq from the Netherlands fares.

UPDATE 3/27/11: Winq and Mate magazines team up.

Magazine News: Genre Claimed by Recession

Owners have reportedly "suspended" publication of gay lifestyle magazine Genre. As a magazine that survived in the gay men's marketplace without being a "skin" magazine, it managed to do the near impossible and survive for about 16 years.

Who knows how temporary this suspension will be. Though Obama administration officials are projecting a rebound later this year, most economists remain deeply skeptical, and many are predicting at least another year or two of economic sickness. And with Genre's owners reportedly in serious financial troubles, it would be hard to see how that magazine could come back any time soon.

Of all the magazines I've ever thought of creating, a gay lifestyle magazine never got past the initial fancy stage. Because, frankly, there's not a great need for such magazines. Most of them are either pretty cheap pornography books or they skip the skin and try to offer lifestyle tips for a very specific (and marketable) segement of the gay population. So we get the same tired old views on sex, relationships, and politics that every other gay lifestyle magazine puts out. The only problem is that gay men are not monolithic in their views, neither politically, sexually, spiritually, or culturally. And there's not a counter-market for a magazine to serve, because many of the other potential gay readers don't think they need to be told how to be gay. So if you are going to launch a gay magazine, you have to keep going after the same core market with the same old stuff.

Anyway, another magazine, RIP.