Wednesday, August 21, 2019

WUH: Stephen King




Stephen King is one of America's most prolific writers whose books have sold roughly 350 million copies worldwide. The Master of Horror, as he's been known for quite some time now, knows how to scare people and sell books, and naturally Hollywood has mined his voluminous output in the hopes of putting butts in the seats and dollars in the bank. From his earliest novel, Carrie, which was put to film two years after publication, hardly a year has gone by without a King adaptation being released in one form or another. There have been big-budget prestige films, low-budget passion projects, TV movies, mini-series, television series, all those "dollar babies" and, more recently, a number of long-form shows and movie options on streaming platforms.

For me it all started with the books. Well, it started with the movies, or rather the trailers and ads for the movies. But I was too young to see any of those R rated films when they first came out. So I started checking out his books from the library, beginning with The Shining, which lead to his previous novels and short story collections, then to buying the paperbacks, and ultimately to buying hardcovers. King adaptations became regular rentals and I always anticipated each new film and book.

Above is the introductory episode to the Spotlight on Stephen King series. Upcoming episodes will appear over the next few weeks and months between our regularly (and irregularly) scheduled programming.

Wednesday, August 7, 2019

Happy Birthday Wake Up Heavy!


It's been a year (give or take a day or two) since I put out the first couple of episodes of Wake Up Heavy. The months leading up to August were spent researching, acquiring the tools I needed to make it happen, and then learning how to use those tools. Those first four episodes (available below) are definitely a little less polished, and a little more varied in overall quality, but they're still fun to revisit.

Since then I have put out around 40 episodes (the WDIRT and Patreon episodes have been compiled, but were originally individually released), and look forward to many more. It's been challenging but fun and ultimately a very rewarding personal venture for me. I would like to think that things have improved overall and will continue to do so. I have no plans on quitting any time soon.

My daughter Cleo helped out with this one, as she did with the Introductory Episode, which will hopefully happen more and more as she gets older. Maybe I'll get her to watch Gremlins soon and we can talk about it. She's a 'tween though, so who knows!

Thank you to everyone who has listened to Wake Up Heavy, even if it was just one episode! Ultimately that's the point of all this, right? Otherwise I could just sit in front of the computer and talk to the screen about these movies. That would be weird though.