My next documentary is 'Rondo and Bob'

The cat has clawed its way out of the bag. I'm working on a documentary called Rondo and Bob about The Texas Chain Saw Massacre art director Robert A. Burns and the actor Rondo Hatton, whom Bob Burns was obsessed with. (See more at the web site here: Rondoandbob.com

Robert A. Burns

 Austin American-Statesman columnist John Kelso made the announcement in his column:


Joe O’Connell is doing his part to promote Austin’s eccentricity.

O’Connell, an old newspaper guy who has written about film for several Texas papers, is shooting a documentary about the late Robert Burns, the man who put the gore in the original “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” movie.

In case you haven’t been keeping up with your blood and guts horror classics, Burns did the macabre artwork for the film. Although you wouldn’t guess he’d head in that direction if you met him; Burns was a real sweetheart, a soft-spoken guy with what I suspect was a genius IQ.

There’s never been another one like Robert Burns. They didn’t throw away the mold, because there was no mold. Although his South Austin home was a bit moldy.

Rondo Hatton

Burns lived in a two-story dust-collector in South Austin furnished with props from “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.” There was the arm chair, so-called because of the prosthetic arms Burns attached. When I visited Burns, a battery-powered rubber hand was crawling across the floor upstairs with a knife run through it, a prop Burns put together for an upcoming film project.

Burns made these masks.

What project? Who knows? But I’m betting it wasn’t “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.”

During my visit Burns sat me down and showed me the massacre movie on a small TV. His review? He had one complaint: All that screaming from characters being hacked to pieces made the film extremely loud.

Read the rest here.

Zombies, unicorns and some fine writing

Manuel Gonzales' debut story collection The Miniature Wife and Other Stories took a while to hook me, but then it dug in deeply. It's got zombies, a werewolf, a unicorn and an airplane that will never land. Oh, and that tiny spouse is pissed. Watch out! What's not to love? Read my review in today's Austin American-Statesman.

My top 10 stories of 2012

The Swim Test

I  continued to pump out writing both personal and about film/literature in 2012. Check it out, with the lede (it's in the photos) buried at the end.

(Here's my 2011 list, as well my top 10 stories of the 2000s.)

10. I've been blogging about the University of Texas Longhorns football team for The Austin Chronicle for a few years now. This year I decided to chronicle the rise of the school that shall always be known as Southwest Texas State as it advanced to Big-Time Football. My rule? Write as little about football in the blog as possible. Sometimes I even write about murder.

9. SEX! Yes, I said SEX! As in talking to Suzy Spencer about her new book Secret Sex Lives: A Year on the Fringes of American Sexuality, which is part memoir, part journalistic look at SEX. That includes orgies, hookups and, yes, SEX. Did I mention SEX?

8. Jim Sanderson is one of those Texas writers whose work comes out from the smaller presses, but is indeed worth checking out. I talked with him for the San Antonio Express-News. In 2011 I had reviewed another of his books for the Austin American-Statesman.

7. I don't get to actually write reviews enough, but that's been changing. I enjoyed reviewing Don Coscarelli's new film John Dies at the End for The Austin Chronicle. Also a pleasure to put my two cents in for the Austin American-Statesman on Carolyn Osborn's lovely new novel.

6. The Austin Chronicle gave me some great opportunities for star gazing and listening during the South By Southwest Film Festival. Willem Dafoe proved smart and interesting, and a joy to photograph. I also got to hear from Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane who brought along a surprise guest when talking about his film Ted.

5. Everyone else was interested in Matthew McConaughey moving to Austin, but no one but me seemed to pay attention when Dallas native Meatloaf also moved to the Capital City. I reported on it for The Dallas Morning News during the Texas Film Hall of Fame ceremonies. I also took some good pix.

4. Certainly one of the more interesting assignments during SXSW was to talk to the director of Girl Model, which looks at very young and very poor women plucked out of their Siberian homes and taken to the Japanese modeling world, most likely to be cast aside shortly, shaken and broken.

3. I voluntarily dropped my Texas film industry column from The Dallas Morning News a year ago. That follows columns in The Austin Chronicle and Austin American-Statesman on the subject dating back to 2000. I continue to blog about the film industry here (and write the occasional scoop about the industry elsewhere), but it's the personal pieces like the touching story of my friend Louise Shelby that matter more.

2. I was given a nice year-end gift from The Austin Chronicle when I was asked to go to the set of indie Western Red on Yella, Kill a Fella AND take photos there, including of cult actor Michael Berryman. Notice photos creeping more and more into this yearly list?

1. The most important piece I wrote this year is the most personal. It's about my son teaching me a lesson as he learned to swim. It ran in The Williamson County Sun.

Here's to 2013, where I'm continuing to put pen to paper (or more likely keystroke to computer). Look for more news soon in the way of fiction writing....

Tobe Hooper plays himself in new novel featuring a swarm of zombies in Austin

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre's Tobe Hooper has a new novel out called Midnight Movie starring a guy named Tobe Hooper and a bunch of zombies swarming the South by Southwest Film Festival. An Austin Chronicle film writer helps our host battle the baddies.

Read my Austin American-Statesman review here.

Book review: 'Kings of Colorado'

I enjoyed reading David Hilton's Kings of Colorado. You can read my review of this story of kids at at remote, and quite brutal, reformatory in the Austin American-Statesman.

Excellent writer Carolyn Osborn releases first novel

She's had four short story collections and is acclaimed as one of Texas' premier purveyors of the form, so it's hard to believre Carolyn Osborn's novel Uncertain Ground is her first in print. Bookpeople quickly ran out of books tonight and her publisher had to step in with more. The line continued for more than an hour and a half.

Carolyn is a frequent guest speaker to my college-level creative writing and literature classes, so I was pleased to be there for her moment.

Carolyn's daughter Claire Osborn is an Austin American-Statesman reporter, and on hand were a lot of her fellow Statesman writers including Mary Ann Roser, left, and Eileen Flynn, right. In the middle here is the paper's former longtime society columnist (and incredibly nice person) Lee Kelly. It was great to see her.

Oh, and while there I signed a few copies of my novel-in-stories EVACUATION PLAN. If you want an autographed copy, you couldn't buy it from a better place than Bookpeople.

Goodbye, Austin Chronicle, and thanks for all the film

Today marks the publication of my last FILM NEWS column in The Austin Chronicle. Tough economic times has them cutting back. It's been a great ride, with 4.5 years there and 4.5 years before that doing a film column in the Austin American-Statesman. My Dallas Morning News column SHOT IN TEXAS continues, but I'm not sure I'll be writing about the Austin film scene in the future. I will provide tidbits here (see them below!).

Statesman's XL gets snakebit

Snake!!!

My neighbor Tony with the rattler.

This evening I opened the front door to discover a three-foot rattler slithering around on the porch. I promptly ran out the back door to the neighbors and "helped" Tony and his kids off the sucker.

Speaking of deaths, today the Austin American-Statesman's XLent weekly tabloid officially died, though it was replaced with something very similar but wit a different name. Truthfully it was an acknowledgment that what had been the XL had actually been dead for a good while. I was a grad student and part-time copy editor when meetings were held that resulted in the new Gen-X concoction that was part the same old entertainment tabloid and part a pseudo-zine. A few years later I was an assistant entertainment editor at the Statesman and writing a lot of creative personal essays that appeared in the XL. It was a brief period when creativity was encouraged at the Statesman. I'm sorry to see it go as the Statesman and newspapers everywhere squirm like that snake on a knife blade.

Statesman death watch: A dozen from the newsroom take the buyout

That's the word from friends on the inside. The names I'm hearing are great losses of institutional memory for the Austin American-Statesman and a continuation of the national story of the death of the daily American newspaper.

The unconfirmed (but almost certain) takers include former M.E. and now editorial page writer David Lowery; longtime EXCELLENT features editor Ed Crowell; three genius old-school reporters/editors, Jim Phillips, Bruce Hight, Bob Banta and Laylan Copelan; plus a few of the less-known but very hard-working folks from the copy editing ranks. That's in addition to Ben Sargent and Diane Holloway, whom I previously mentioned.

Good news if there is any? No one from sports is biting (I expected Kirk Bohls to bite) and John Kelso is staying put.

Statesman death watch: Ben Sargent takes buyout

This is unfortunately what I expected to hear when word trickled out about the Austin American-Statesman's early buyout offer for older, long-term employees: Pulitzer-winning cartoonist Ben Sargent and his wife Diane Holloway have taken the buyout and are gone almost immediately. Both are major losses and the beginning of the end for the Stateman's institutional memory. Sargent has been with the paper for 35 years. Holloway at least 25 years.

Here's more on the story with one more early retirement taker in the Austin Chronicle.

Austin American-Statesman sharpens ax

I predicted this a while back, but just now heard of the announcement from a friend who works there: The Austin American-Statesman is offering buyouts to early retirees who are over age 55 and have been at the paper for at least 10 years. They say 130 people fit the bill. Let me list some of the writers you're likely to see flee: John Kelso, Diane Holloway, Michael Corcoran, Kirk Bohls, Brad Buchholz, Denise Gamino... Those last two may not be quite old enough, but you get the idea. Voluntary buyouts are the first step before the bloodletting at newspapers. And they often take away the best writers and the established voices that keep readers coming back for more (see my list).

The Statesman has been largely immune to the staff cuts that have been common elsewhere, but plans by the Cox chain to sell it off apparently have them wanting to get lean and mean in advance. Once the sale goes through, look for larger staffs cuts. It's the same story everywhere as newspapers contribute to their own demises by chopping off their arms and legs. It's a sad story that seems to be unstoppable. The Statesman is a case study in contraction: kill the weekly TV section, nix a separate Sunday classified section for jobs (thanks, Craigslist!), fold the business section more often into the metro section, permanently fold the weekly film section into lifestyles. Slow new hires to a trickle. You get the idea.

I've been saying we'll see major daily newspapers begin to drop their print editions within the next five years. I think that figure may be too generous.

The oddest thing I've notice from the Statesman camp has to do with circulation. They now give away a handful of papers at Austin Community College, where I teach, and have removed the sales rack completely. The free ones are gone by 8 a.m. So they don't want people to buy their paper and are limiting their readers say 10 people? Out of sight; out of mind.

Newspaper suicide; book "souvenirs"

I got an email from Jenny yesterday. We had been having an email exchange recently about how newspapers are committing suicide in anticipation of their own demises in the transition to an electronic world. Our discussion began when news was released of the cutting of 150 editorial department positions at the Los Angeles Times where she and her husband both work. She wrote me yesterday to tell me that her husband is among the 150.

What do I mean by suicide? Newspapers are largely run by corporations these days that are not satisfied with the small profit margin that newspapers have traditionally offered. So they cut in the only place that really saves money: staff. It's so far centered on incentives for early retirement, but also includes forced retirements and layoffs. Who goes? In most cases it's the names you'd recognize--the longterm book critic or film reviewer, the editorial cartoonist, the guy who writes about television or sports. These, of course, are the names your dwindling readership identifies with. Once you've set those big names adrift, your readers increasingly lose loyalty and feel fine dropping that subscription.

I'm an Austin native and I've worked for the Austin American-Statesman three times, first as a general copy editor for news, features and (now defunct) neighborhood sections, then as an assistant entertainment editor and last as a free-lance film industry columnist. Oh, my actual first job there was as a paperboy way back when. Recently I cut my subscription to weekends only. Why? To save money, and because I, a guy who writes for two newspapers, get more and more of my news online. I also figure to check out the newspaper at work on someone else's dime.

The Statesman is luckier than most major metropolitan newspapers. The Dallas Morning News, where I'm a free-lance film industry columnist, announced a third wave of staff reductions recently. Over at the Poynter Institute, Romenesko's regular column reads like an obituary: staff cuts, cuts cuts. The Lexington Dispatch is going so far as to chop off its own toes by deleting its entire Monday newspaper.

The Statesman's Cox chain has yet to slash into its staff, but just you wait. The signs of decay are already there. Show World, the weekly listing of television shows was dropped. I guess it was assumed only old people kept it near their rabbit-eared televisions as a guide to programming. The rest of us watch the guide channels offered by cable and satellite providers. The classified ads, once considered a reliable indicator of the state of the economy, are another goner. Craig's List stole it all. Another buggy whip for the museums. Like the phone books that keep piling up at my house untouched when the Internet is so much easier.

Why all the melancholy navel-gazing? Part of it is that email from Jenny. Another part comes from reading this article about the future of the printed word, primarily books. One person interviewed in the article suggests books will become souvenirs given out for free when authors talk. That's not too far fetched. Will all our reading soon be multimedia? Maybe so. I know I'm not ready to give up on newspapers just yet. And I'll keep on writing novels with paper and ink in mind, thank you very much. I just hope the publishers are not giving up on themselves too soon.