Tear up the map, draw a new one.
I’ve never been good at sticking to things. I don’t think I’ve ever finished something I set out to do, honestly - eventually, it gets to be a chore just keeping myself going. This has only gotten worse in the years since I’ve taken on a modicum of responsibility at my job, gotten married and so on. This is why I haven’t written much these last few years.
But these days, I can’t stop myself from thinking that the Dusk to Dawn Project… well, there might be something there. When put together, the films I’m dealing with aren’t just amusing, unpretentious entertainments - there’s a whole world, an alternate history of cinema that says important things about the prevailing culture in which they swam. The more I turn it over in my head, the more it becomes clear: If I finish one damn thing, this has to be it.
So, that’s what I’m going to do. Go back to square one, start clean. In the past, I’ve tackled these films haphazardly as I acquire them; now, I’m going to attempt to do this in roughly chronological order, to give a sense of how things progressed, how trends waxed and waned. Accordingly, the first entry will be up soon on Claude Alexander’s THE WONDROUS MIRACLE OF BIRTH, which actually isn’t as old as I figured it to be but does make for a solid bridge between the roadshow days and the time period with which I’m dealing. The reviews I post here will hopefully be more comprehensive than some of my earlier stabs at this stuff, yet they probably still won’t represent the final product in my head - there’s still a lot of reading, a lot of research that I have ahead of me. Think of these as skeletons of eventual men.
So there it is. This is what I must do. Hopefully, you’ll find some value in it. If you do, let me know. I could use the encouragement.
