I’m Writing The First Fan Film Book!

The Good News:

I’m starting work on the first ever book about fan films; it’ll be published by Continuum Publishing, and is tentatively titled Homemade Hollywood. The book will explore different aspects of fan flicks, from their rich history, to their sociological impact, to their implications for Big Media in the future. Plus, y’ know, how cool they are and stuff.

There’s been a few books where fan productions were mentioned or, in rare cases, even warranted their own chapter, but fan films have been largely ignored by mainstream media. At best, you’ll stumble across the occasional newspaper article, or a rare, two-minute piece on a morning news show, where the reporter is astounded that people make their own Star Wars movies.

Meanwhile, I’ve been covering fan films for ages, first with articles in magazines, then with Mos Eisley Multiplex, a website I founded in 1998, which was the first site devoted solely to fan films. Between those, library lectures and now Fan Cinema Today, I’ve been following fan film culture for a decade, and lemme tell you, there’s much more to this underground movement than providing fodder for some newscaster to chuckle over before going to an Excedrin ad. Fan films have become such a integral part of fandom and internet culture, that I knew they deserved their own book—and fortunately, Continuum agreed.

Continuum is probably best-known to pop culture fans for 33 1/3, its series of tiny books, each devoted to one landmark music album. I’ve got a few of them: the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds and Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique ones, as well as the compilation paperback that came out last year. I keep meaning to pick up the Smiths and GnR titles, too, but I only seem to stumble across them when I have $1.58 in my pocket. Anyway, folks interested in theology and spirituality are probably familiar with the Continuum imprint, too—my mom has an Ark-load of the company’s Thomas Keating books, for instance.

The Bad News:

What this means in the short term, however, is that Fan Cinema Today is going on an extended hiatus, starting today. I can’t write for a living at my day job, write a book on the side, write a blog, do lectures at libraries and raise a family all at the same time; something’s gotta give, and this website is it.

Fan Cinema Today has been a great project so far, and has already accomplished the main goal I set when I started it: proving that there’s enough going on in the fan film world to warrant a five-times-a-week blog. In the two-and-a-half months since I started it, FCT has run more than 46,000 words on fan productions and related topics. I’d be the first to say that’s an insane amount of work, but my wife, Michelle, would beat me to it, having put up with my incessant writing all this time.

The Next Step:

The Fan Cinema Today site will change over the next few months; I plan to use FCT as a place where people who want to get involved with the new book will be able to contact me, pass along their ideas and suggestions about fan films, perhaps answer a survey about fan efforts, or just send me their email address so that I can let ‘em know when the book’s gonna come out. In fact, you can email me now about all that stuff at [email protected].

I do believe that Fan Cinema Today will return in the future, perhaps in a different format that doesn’t require me staying up ’til 3AM a few times a week to write it. In the meantime, if you have used FCT as a place to find out more about fan films and what to watch, click on the word “Resources” in the menu on the right, and you’ll find plenty of links to fan film sites.

Thanks for reading this announcement this far, thanks for reading FCT over the last few months, and most of all, thanks for reading Homemade Hollywood next year!

–Clive Young

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