And you just don't get it. Richard and James are two people I consider friends. God knows, I've done enough free work for them both to know this. But I have also been dismayed, since leaving the 88 fold, that bare bones editions have become the way forward for them. As Dave rightly mentions in that article, this is our last chance to capture all of this activity from the past. And for the guy poking fun at David Warbeck - well slow hand clap to you mate because Mr. Warbeck is dead now. And people like myself and John Martin and Mike Felsher take it very seriously to get these people on tape and on camera because otherwise there won't be any document of their lives and careers - however 'boring' you might find it.
I have spent my life now chronicling forgotten films, stars who went AWOL (such as Me Me Lai), past genres and entire industries which no longer exist. You have no idea how pissed off I was that this really interesting fundraiser - which will remaster the blaxploitation movies made under apartheid in South Africa - didn't take off...
Restoration Heaven: Help Retro Afrika Bioscope Rescue Lost African FilmsZombie Hamster
Yet you are shelling out for what might be bare bones movies. Now tell me which of these fundraisers is more immediately vital? Films made under a period in history that should never be forgotten and taught to generations for centuries to come or an HD version of Aenigma with a slipcase and nothing else on there?
Now god bless 88 (and I got them to take on the UK license for Joe Bullet - which I hope to god you will all rush out and buy and for which I can't thank 88 enough because it is such an important movie) but we need to act responsibly with these films. All of them.
Late era Fulci, for instance, is surprisingly undocumented. As is late period cannibal movies (we couldn't get Michael Sopkiw without paying him a fee for Eaten Alive - and we funded that thing ourselves and then sold it to 88/ Grindhouse). There's stuff to be done with these titles. I can't do it - I'm in Asia now - but 88 can, and they can find people who can too.
I'm honestly baffled that so called 'fans', many of whom are the first to dump all over me (and if you think you'd be seeing Shaw Brothers movies, or apartheid cinema or the bloody Suckling in HD without my existence you're living in cloud cuckoo land) don't seem to give two hoots about the movies they love and the stars and directors from eras which are fast dying out.
I'm reading a great book just now called Rhodesians Never Die (I'm on a bit of an African history bender). If that book had been written in 50 years time, no one would be around who lived in Rhodesia and remembered the ins and outs of the Bush War. And a vital insight into a time of change would not exist.
Whomever my critics, I intend to keep going on and writing about/ documenting stuff that no else seems to give a toss about. I write and document this stuff for myself - and hope to bring things, such as apartheid era cinema, to a curious audience who may also be intrigued by life in the townships under a white supremacist government and the struggle for expression. I have lots more I want to do too - stuff based in Indonesia, Taiwan, the Philippines and beyond. I have a huge list of projects because I absolutely live, eat, sleep and breath my research.
You guys should be asking for/ thinking about doing the same. Keep that in mind.