An unhealthy and unwarranted look into the twisted life and dubious career of Shane Simmons – dark writer, morbid historian, obsessive collector and sick mind
Two years ago, there was a mini reunion for Radio Active, a show I wrote 14 episodes of back in the late ‘90s. I have a lot of fond memories of those hectic two years when I was brought on board for the second season. Writing the last episode of season two, and the first of season three, I was the only member of the cast or crew who had no downtime. And I was glad for the work. It allowed me to commit to buying a house and get the hell out of an apartment building that was determined to burn itself down.
Radio Active was a show so cheap, there wasn’t enough of a budget to have all the cast members on the same episode at once. Fittingly, this reunion only features three of the cast. But it was fun to hear their uncensored accounts of what went on behind the scenes, including some anecdotes I was blissfully unaware of. Like who was caught doing coke in the bathroom.
There are plenty of clips from my episodes sprinkled throughout. Oh, and I get name-checked once.
Claim to fame.
Maybe one day I’ll share some of my own scandalous anecdotes. Unless someone slips me hush money.
“Nothing more foolish than a man chasing his hat.”
A quote from Tom Reagan, the depressed and self-loathing protagonist of Miller’s Crossing, my favourite movie.
After a recent screening for my birthday in July, I had to admit it was still my favourite, and not, as I often claim, Fight Club, a film with a completely different depressed and self-loathing protagonist.
A couple of years ago, when my life was still in the relatively early stages of becoming a nightmare hellscape I can’t wake up from, I attended a Writers Guild of Canada meeting—one of the rare ones to take place in Montreal. Normally, I prefer to skip these unproductive networking opportunities, but there was some pressing news Canadian screenwriters needed to be briefed on. It was so pressing, I’ve since forgotten what it was. But there was free food, drink tickets, and, more importantly, hats.
Sometimes I like to get something out of my annual membership dues.
Exactly enough WGC baseball caps had been printed to be doled out to all the attendees who had submitted an RRSP. Of course, some jagoff absconded with two. That left only a single remaining hat to be divvied up between the final pair of lingering hacks. Namely myself, and fellow hack friend, Sylvie. We had each agreed to show up for the meeting under the condition that the other one would be there as a social-anxiety wingman. It had worked out, right up until it was time for one of us to get screwed out the hat giveaway.
Sylvie bravely threw herself on that grenade and forfeited the hat. I took it home.
But the WGC hat did not become another piece of industry swag, sitting forgotten in a closet, waiting to one day be given away to some homeless shelter. No, I wore the hat. I wore it a lot.
It was grey and black with the Writers Guild of Canada logo on it. Those were my colours, and it reminded me of the days when I used to be a real screenwriter, before my career dried up, crumbled to ashes, and blew away. Mostly because I live in entirely the wrong province, and nobody wants to hire an Anglophone screenwriter from Quebec. Where’s the tax credit in that?
It had been many years since I’d worn a baseball cap—many years since I’d even owned one. Except, of course, for my promotional Predator hat I got back when that movie first premiered. But that was reserved for the head of my taxidermied childhood koala teddy bear (don’t ask).
After decades of wearing a specific style of cap, I took to this new one in a big way and grabbed it whenever I headed out the door. It wasn’t fitting winter apparel, but the rest of the year it kept me from getting sunburned straight through my male-pattern baldness.
I was wearing it the other night, even though the sun was down and it had been an unseasonable warm November day. Coming back from a long commute to Lachine, I was carrying a heavy IKEA bag stuffed with goods, including a winter coat that had belonged to my father. He died last month, so I guess that makes it my winter coat now. Something to replace the one with the broken zipper I’ve been wearing these past few years.
The load was punishing, and the walk after the commuter train doubly so. After carrying this burden for miles, I was sweaty and sore. Along the way, I got overheated enough to take off my guild hat and stick it in the overflowing bag.
I never noticed it fall out. Somewhere along the dusty construction site that is Grand Boulevard these days, it abandoned the bag I had slung over an aching shoulder. Had I made it home, unloaded, and found the hat missing, I probably would have gone out after it again. Tired, exhausted, maybe I’d find it lying the street, maybe not.
But I didn’t have to do that.
“Monsieur!” I heard from an SUV that had stopped in the middle of the intersection and honked at me.
I turned to see what this asshole wanted. Turns out he wanted to tell me that I’d just dropped my hat.
“Thank you,” was I all I was able to say to him before he drove off following his good deed.
I picked up my hat, soaked with sweat and now soiled with roadwork filth, and made a note to give it a good wash when I got back home. Throughout those last miserable blocks I kept wishing I could have thanked that driver more profusely. He’ll never know to what degree he made things suck less.
2020 has been the worst year of my life, except for 2019, which was the other worst year of my life, and 2018, which was the other other worst year of my life. It’s been a brutal stretch of loss after loss.
But I didn’t lose my hat, because one completely random stranger made things suck less. Thank you.
We’ve been doing nearly a month of fright-themed radio shows on Cinema Smackdown for Halloween. Check out these recent episodes for topical topics, including horror themes of past movie nights, quality horror movies from the 1980s that not enough people are nostalgic for, and the cautionary tale of what’s become of Roger Avary’s career.
Okay, that last one isn’t really Halloween Horror, but it’s still pretty scary.
Meanwhile, on the novel front, some of my creepy books like Necropolis, Filmography, and Hot Pennies are all free on Amazon for Kindle and Kindle Unlimited. This is for Halloween only, so you have until 3:00 am to grab them.
He was one of the few actors I ever pursued getting a signed 8×10 glossy of. It was done by mail order, and I got it personalized with the obscure line of dialogue, “I got a brudda.”
It was so obscure, I wondered if Sid would even remember it from his long career.
But of course he had to. It was a line delivered to Sean Connery in Diamonds Are Forever. A statement so stupid, even the unflappable James Bond was taken aback. How do you forget that luminary moment from screen history? I know it certainly stuck with me from childhood.
His late-stage career revival came largely through the films of Rob Zombie. And even though I despise Rob Zombie’s movies, Sid is great in them. I was vastly more pleased to see him appear in the opening scene of S. Craig Zahler’s Bone Tomahawk, and was hoping there would be more collaborations between the two of them, much as Udo Kier has become a staple of Zahler’s work. Alas, it was not to be.
I followed the story of Sid’s recent trip to intensive care following an accident, his near-death experience, and hopeful signs of recovery. But then word of his death hit.
We’ve lost another classic genre star. Sid was 80 years old.
I have been to the Montreal Comiccon and I no longer fear hell.
The Palais des congrès, also known as the Lite-Brite convention centre due to its design atrocities and crimes against aesthetics, is conveniently located right on top of the Place des Arms metro station. Last Saturday, I came spilling out of the turnstile wearing my new Necropolis t-shirt with a QR Code on the back (or, as I call it to be technical, “blocky-blobby-stupid-phone-thingie”). The idea was to walk around the comic convention for twelve hours straight and see how many people would scan me and get directed to the Amazon book page. This, I was certain, was a terrible idea.
It was first thing in the morning, on the big middle day of the three-day show. And there were already thousands upon thousands of people there. It had been a while since I’d done a comic convention, but I recognized the usual misshapen body types, along with a phenomenon new to me since the last time I’d attempted an appearance. Never before have I seen so many tatted-up scrawny nerds. I’m used to seeing tattoos on people with more meat on their bones. Some of these kids looked like they weighed 98 pounds soaking wet, but were sporting the kind of ink you usually need to do ten years in a supermax to earn. They don’t make comic-book geeks like they used to.
Despite my comic background street-cred, I felt like an outsider. I was the sweaty middle-aged dude, grumpy about the early hour, dying in the July heat, eager to get into some air conditioning only to find it negated by so many human bodies packed shoulder-to-shoulder.
“I’m in the entirely wrong line to buy tickets, aren’t I?” I said, once I’d spent half an hour following the incorrect flood of people, spurred on by the convention centre attendants demanding “Avance! Avance!” at all the tourists who didn’t understand French.
The girl at the ticket-check smiled sympathetically and directed me outside to a whole other line for kiosks that weren’t even operational when I first passed them, forty minutes past the supposed opening time of the show.
Great start.
At least I didn’t need to be anywhere. The main point of the excursion was to get that QR Code in front of as many people as possible. And the people just kept coming. Surely some of the bored attendees in the queue would whip out their phones and scan my intriguing shirt to pass the time.
Once I was inside, one $55 ticket later, I took some time trying to get my bearings in the enormous hall. It’s always nice to pay that kind of money to get into a venue filled with nothing but people selling things for even more money. I stopped by the closest booth, and any illusions I had about not belonging there were dispelled immediately when I caught a father asking about the identity of a superhero Lego minifig on behalf of his young son.
“I don’t know all the DC guys,” apologized the shopkeeper.
“That’s Dr. Fate,” I said, feeling a certain shame in knowing that.
I was thanked profusely, yet still felt dirty.
I don’t know why I ever bother to feel dirty about knowing geek stuff or flogging my wares. If I was dirty, then everyone else there was absolutely filthy. Particularly the celebrity guests.
Yeah, I know it’s standard for them to charge for photos and autographs, but dammit Elijah Wood, you starred in three of the biggest movies ever made. Didn’t you save some of that cash?
$95 for an autograph, another $95 for a selfie? A selfie! That’s right, for $95 you have to take your own damn picture. Nobody will even press the button for you. Fuck you, Frodo! Can’t you at least get your bitch, Samwise, to handle somebody’s camera for them while they’re paying your exorbitant fee? It’s not like you’d even have to give him a cut. He’d probably do it all day long for a thimbleful of mead, a turnip, and a pat on the head.
Okay, I’ll try to give the guy a break. He’s been making a lot of indie films for the love of his craft lately, and I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore was my favourite film of 2017. But damn dude, even working for scale on all those projects has to add up.
At least I know who Elijah Wood is. And Lou Ferrigno. And Christopher Lambert. Some of the other guests? No so much. Describing them as celebrities is a use of the word “celebrity” I am unfamiliar with. Take it from a old pro, not everybody who appears on a TV show is famous. Or the least bit notable.
As I wandered up and down the aisles, looking at all the merch for sale, and marvelling on the rare occasion I spotted actual comic books, I quickly filled up my Bingo scorecard of cosplayers.
Darth Fatty? Check. Unintimidating average-height Michael Meyers? Check. Damaged girl dressed as Harley Quinn? Check.
On a related note: ladies, if you’re wearing a costume that would make a stripper say, “Girl, get some clothes on!” rethink that. In fact, any outfit concept that has you walking around the show half naked, rethink that. I’m talking to you too, gentlemen. Nobody liked Jared Leto’s Juggalo-Joker. Nobody. Tuck your boy-titties away.
Props, however, to the guy dressed as Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark. At least somebody was trying to get laid by dressing for success.
I should say that not all of the more repulsive cosplayers put me off. A small child crying in terror at the sight of some murder-clowns brightened my day. I’ll admit it: I had to hide my face behind my program to stifle a laugh.
One of my key goals of the show was to scout out Artists Alley and see if it was well-travelled, or a desert of tumbleweeds and bored artists with no one to interact with. I have a notion I might want to pay for a table of my own next year and see how many books and comics I can hustle.
Once again, keeping to the theme of modern comic conventions having as little to do with comic books as possible, I was several rows into Artists Alley before I even knew I was there. Where were all the comic artists? Tucked into the very last stretch, it would seem. Most of the tables were manned by artisans of a different sort, selling all sorts of derivatives of comic-book culture without tainting their displays with any art that ever appeared in an actual comic. It’s great if you want a fashion accessory with an Avengers logo on it, not so great if you’re looking for someone who had anything to do with an Avengers comic book to sign your back issues.
I remain on the fence about dropping the chunk of change necessary to secure my own shop next year. It might prove to be money well spent, or it could turn into a PR fiasco. Speaking of which…
So how many confirmed pings did I get on my blocky-blobby-stupid-phone-thingie after exposing it to tens of thousands of nerds who would probably enjoy the hell out of Necropolis if they gave it half a chance?
Last I checked…four.
Promotion ain’t no easy thing.
Listen to the first half of last week’s episode of Cinema Smackdown if you want to hear additional details of my Comiccon adventures. Broadcast version is here.
I’ve mentioned the weekly movie night I’ve been curating for the last 16 years on this blog many times before—so much so, it has its own sub-category.
This week will mark the 700th unique feature-length film we’ve screened. There had been more movie nights than that, but I’m not counting a limited number of repeat screenings and the few nights when we watched nothing but shorts.
Partly due to this milestone and partly because we were stuck for topics to talk about, this Sunday’s episode of Cinema Smackdown was devoted to the primordial-ooze days of movie night. I blathered on at length about how this phenomenon came about, the first ten or so movies that were screened, and my close personal ties to this gathering (bizarrely, I now live in the original venue where movie night began in September of 2003).
Cinema Smackdown continues apace, with Michael and I doing weekly shows, almost without failure (admittedly I missed one show a couple of weeks ago because I was so damn sick). I don’t like to constantly promote it because it feels like every time I blink, we’ve done another episode. But if you’d care to delve deeper into the lore of movie night, let me point you at the last hour of radio we did.
You have two options to listen in. You can watch the raw studio feed I post on my YouTube channel (don’t be shy about subscribing or watching other episodes). That will let you listen in on our chatter before and after the show, as well as during commercial breaks. Or, if you want the actual broadcast version, complete with better audio, the news from the top of the hour, and the aforementioned ads, you can check out the CJLO archives. Here’s a direct link to the episode in question.
It’s an Oscar year so uninspiring that the Academy couldn’t even book anyone to host.
This is the second year I’ll be unplugged from my former cable service, and I’m doubly disengaged and more disinclined than ever to seek out a stream or screening. If it weren’t for my friends and colleagues David Fine and Alison Snowdon being nominated for their animated short, Animal Behaviour, I probably wouldn’t bother at all. Even so, the Oscars are old hat for them. They already won a golden statuette for Bob’s Birthday years ago. Been there, done that. I suppose the drama of Alison’s double lung transplant during production makes for a compelling backstory to the film. Maybe.
No shit. That happened.
Other than that, the Oscar ceremony is poised to be even more boring than usual.
If you want some more contrarian opinions about the Oscars (which will probably be more entertaining than tonight’s show) we spent this afternoon’s entire episode of Cinema Smackdown talking about it on CJLO.
Check out the rest of my YouTube channel for other recent episodes. Subscribe to get the raw video feed with all the inappropriate off-air chat that happens during the commercial breaks. You can also listen to the actual broadcast versions on the CJLO website archives, complete with better audio and ads.
We’re live online and on 1690 AM every Sunday afternoon at 2:00 pm Eastern Time.
Just in time for the release of “Halloween,” the latest film in that 40-year-old franchise, and only the third one to simply be called “Halloween”—Michael, Tess and I reconvene for another episode of Cinema Smackdown.
This round we discuss the long history and many entries in the slasher sub-genre. Whether you’re on Team Myers, Team Voorhees, or Team Krueger, there’s plenty to cover, including a lot of interesting, obscure specimens you may have never heard of.
My appearances on CJLO’s Cinema Smackdown number far too many to keep track of. I’ve been at it for a couple of years now and, with the new format and time, hardly an irregularly scheduled episode goes by without my participation.
Eyestrain Productions is not brimming with high-tech A/V equipment. I, infamously, don’t even own a smartphone. But I’ve taken to recording recent episodes with an old Flip. The visuals are hardly compelling, the lone-mic audio attempt to capture an hour of chatter in the room is dodgy, but you work with what you have.
The last three episodes are up on my recently minted YouTube channel. The first one is a straightforward two-shot, despite the fact there are three people doing the show. Reviewing the footage and watching myself fidget in front of the camera for a full hour was unnerving, so the next two episodes feature an uninspiring view of a station microphone, while capturing slightly better audio than previously with my own vastly inferior in-camera mic.
There’s an archive of old Cinema Smackdown episodes on CJLO’s website, but they’re always late to be posted, and early to be rotated off. This is my attempt to preserve some shows for posterity, because occasionally something really insightful gets said, or a genuinely funny joke gets cracked.
This blog post marks the first major announcement that I’m even doing this. With enough views, I might be compelled to buy a better camera and microphone. We’ll see how it goes. But if you miss one of our live-streamed shows (Sundays at 2:00 pm, when we manage to collect ourselves for an actual appearance), they’ll be uploaded to my channel soon after. The sound may not be as crisp as it is on air, but on the plus side you can hear what we’re talking about during the commercial breaks, which may not be fit for broadcast.
Since the last time I mentioned Cinema Smackdown, I’ve become a staple on the show and have lost track of how many episodes I’ve done. You can pick through the archives at CJLO to try to figure that number out.
This week at 2:00 PM (Eastern), we’ll be talking about the catastrophic box office returns for Solo: A Star Wars Story, and the unfathomable reality we now live in, where a Star Wars movie can flop. Expect rants and recriminations as you listen live.
Work on the ebook editions of the Longshot Trilogy continues. If I ever said anything remotely neutral about Kindle Comic Creator in the past, I take it all back. As software goes, it’s a colossal piece of shit. But it is getting the job done, even as I fight it to the death every step of the way. We’re still on schedule to release this week.
That’s it for Longshot talk today, but to round out yesterday’s discussion of the back-cover history, here’s the full scan of “Mrs. Cliff’s Yacht” from 1896.
Eyestrain Productions 