what is your damage Heather?

My dear Losers' Club,

How has your week been? What have you been up to?

I have returned! I am back in Bradford, and all is well.

The two and a half weeks I have just spent in Vermont at the Scholarship in Sound and Image Workshop on Videographic Criticism (AKA "video camp") were absolutely brilliant, and unlike anything I have ever done in my life before.

I was living and working with 14 other scholars, mostly from American and Canadian institutions, and one other fellow Brit, Lucy. We all lived in that large Black-Christmas-style-dorm that I told you about in the last newsletter, and spent pretty much all of our time in the Mac Lab or production studio.

Our time was split between learning Adobe Premiere Pro (tutored by the brilliant and infinitely patient media production specialist Ethan), making new videos, screening our week for our peers and getting it critiqued, attending talks and sessions on videographic work, and 1-2-1 feedback from giants of the field, including Catherine Grant (who had to work hard to convince me less is more - I am sure that this is not a surprise to you that I struggled with this concept - and of course she was proven right).

In the first week we made a new video essay every day. And then, every day we screened our work in a small group for intensive crit, and then we screened it to the whole group in a festival format screening. It was quite a lot. Most nights I was working til very late (for me), and a lot of the time people were still working in the lab at 2am. I was warned that it was a "bootcamp" and "intensive", but I was like "hey, every day of my life I work intensive baby (but still knock off at 4pm)" so the usual 7am leave the dorm and 11pm return to the dorm and pass out exhausted within 30 mins came as a bit of a shock....

I also loved the people I was living and working with. This was a surprise. I had a coffee with Zosia the day before I left, and I was dubious about this whole living and working with a ton of strangers concept, particularly because we had to pack stuff to go hiking and wild swimming at the weekend and I was like 'oh god Zos what if everyone is HEALTHY and VIRTUOUS and POSITIVE and I hate them all?'

And it turned out they were all darlings and definitely not virtuous and I hope they still want to be my friend now it's all over.

They also encouraged me and Lucy to take the New York Times quiz on dialects, to see where in America we were from - as well the questions being incredibly baffling for the most part (the 'peenie-wallie' is not what I thought it was), it concluded that I was from Newark and Lucy was from Boston which says A LOT, apparently, ha.

But, the most important thing for the Losers' Club is not that I have come back with some film editing skills (although, I have), but that I followed your advice to the letter -

For the first week we had to work on the same film for the whole week, and I polled you all about which film to pick.

Some discerning voters did go with Pump Up the Volume, some for Censor, I had some very convincing and passionate cases made for the joys of Labyrinth (to which: I concur), but ultimately, and overwhelmingly, the Losers' Club voted for Heathers (pictured at the top of the newsletter).

Hurrah!

And as a thank you for all your suggestions and support, I am happy to release, The Heathers Collection.

I recommend watching the collection on a laptop / PC rather than on your phone. On the computer version of my site, I've included the assignment briefs next to each video so you can see what parameters I was working with - the mobile version is just an intro and the vids themselves.

Some of them are totally experimental, just responding to the brief, some of them are a bit more of a story, or, at least, with a set up and pay off structure.

I think my favourite is the epigraph, but I'd love to know what you think too.

In other news, Three Ways to Dine Well has been accepted for the Lit Scares International Horror Festival for 'Short Film'. Huzzah.

In terms of other video essay work, I have come back from Middlebury all excited about completing Knit One Stab Two. I've ripped it apart (as I predicted I would, several months ago in this newsletter, and despite declaring in same newsletter that I absolutely would not do that) but I've been able to put it back together far faster, and in a much more honed, pacey form.

I'm currently focussed on completing a solid, locked-down-in-terms-of-timing version to pass to Paul to start working on the soundtrack. I am *hoping* I'll get to that point by the end of next week.

Then, while Paul soundtracks it, I can work on the audio mix and making it look pretty (dealing with horror films spanning over 100 years of different aspect ratios, varying transfer qualitites, and burned in subtitles is making some of the multiscreen elements really fun....).

As ever, in the meantime, if you spy anymore knitting examples, please do keep sending them in. You will be credited. I promise. And it's never too late. Very recently, Losers' Club member Eli sent in a recommendation to watch Girly (1970) which includes an absolute stonker of a knitting sequence that is 100% going in and for which I am forever grateful to Eli for.

Next news, while I was at Middlebury, I had my meeting with Philip Leventhal, the Film Editor for Columbia University Press, about my next book, Her Chainsaw Heart. It went really well. We got down to word counts and number of images per chapter and delivery date, which I think is a good sign? I've promised to complete a second sample chapter and submit to him in the Fall, and then it is going to go through their full peer review process. I have everything crossed for this, and I will keep you updated.

I have also informally pitched an essay on the women screenwriters of 1940s American horror film to Tom Brown, for his Film Style special issue, and have got some good feedback. This is for a long (10,000 word) essay on the connections between production studies (the women screenwriters), film genre (horror), censorship (the Production Code Administration) and how these connect to the chosen film's style and tone.

I'm contemplating looking at The Undying Monster (1942, wr. Lillie Hayward, Twentieth Century Fox), My Name is Julia Ross (1945, wr Brenda Weisberg) and Sorry, Wrong Number (1948, wr Lucille Fletcher, Hal Wallis Prod / Paramount). I really, really fancied writing about The Seventh Victim (1943) and I'm very cross the screenwriting credits are shared by dudes.

I've done some preliminary online searching on the Production Code Administration holdings at the Margaret Herrick Library in LA, and it looks like there could be some fantastic material on some of these films (and basically absolutely nothing on The Undying Monster which raises all sorts of interesting historiographic questions about what films are chosen for archiving, and which are not).

Apparently you can now request digitisation of the PCA files you are interested in (at a cost) which is a relief as I think, if I attempt to leave the country again anytime soon, Paul will definitely divorce me.

I'm hoping to write up my pitch as a formal journal abstract in the next week or so and get it submitted. I've suddenly become very aware of how close it is to my daughters' primary school closing for summer which it feel a lot more urgent to get some work done...

FInally, this isn't my news per se, but Manchester University Press are holding a summer sale, and the second edition of Peter Hutchings' Hammer and Beyond: The British Horror Film (edited by Johnny Walker) is included, in paperback, at 50% off. Peter was a dear friend and colleague of mine, and his research (and his unstinting support and encouragement over the years) has had a huge impact on my own work.

To watching and listening now.

Obviously, I've been mostly thinking about Heathers.

I've always loved Heathers, with its tone as black as f*ck, for its dialogue, and for its highly saturated, colourful production design, particularly in the first half. But, I've always felt it loses its way after about 60 minutes (when Veronica dumps JD essentially, which is the right choice of course, but the film rather flails about where to go next). For video camp, I wanted to think about how I could 'break' the film in interesting ways. That's the question I asked myself in week 1 of camp, essentially: how do I break Heathers? What happens if I dump the brilliant dialogue ('what is your damage, Heather', being just one of the highlights)? What if I mess up the audiovisual genre markers? what if I cut JD out completely?

Other than that, I have completed Stranger Things. I Have Thoughts About season four, mostly around the scale of ambition for the storyworld interfering with pacing and generating an awful lot of storylines. I would have loved to see the series a little more regimented in terms of being forced to hew to 45 minute episodes - that would have dealt with some of these pacing issues. I'm also a little circumspect about how High Fantasy it was getting in the final few episodes, when I think my heart belongs to life in (everyday) Hawkins (and YES I KNOW Stranger Things comes out of D&D which is proper High Fantasy, but this is my truth). Having said all this, I still adored it, am very happy it exists in the world, and no doubt Kitty will be making me rewatch Season Four very soon and I will make no protest about this.

As it took me three flights to get to Middlebury, and three to get back, I've also done an awful lot of podcasts. There's something about flying and airports where I struggle to read, or even watch anything. I started watching Scream 5 on the JFK - Amsterdam plane and realised within 15 mins it looked really good so I turned it off to watch 'properly' at home, which I still haven't done, ha.

Instead, I've been listening to:

Roanoake Falls, written by acclaimed gothic novelist Laura Purcell, horror/gothic:
Something is punishing the people of Roanoke with blood...if you have sinned, beware. 1587, North Carolina: Agnes is a reluctant settler in Roanoke, forced to leave England with her preacher husband, Thomas, in search of a better life. But the first colony failed, and Agnes fears this one will suffer the same fate: lack of resources, frigid cold, starvation.

So when a series of ritualistic murders occur in the colony, Agnes finally feels connected to a purpose: to find the monster and protect her community. That is, until people suspect that witchcraft is to blame, and question Agnes’ childlessness as well as her connection to the dead. As the killings escalate and the colony teeters on the edge of ruin, Agnes must go to impossible lengths to save herself— or she will burn.

Hollow SF/Horror:
A mercenary embarks on a corporate mission to track down a rogue leader and encounters the darkness of space, the darkness of colonization, and ultimately, the darkness within herself.

You Must Remember This film history:
The podcast about the secret and/or forgotten history of Hollywood's first century.
Specifically, the first half of the Erotic 1980s series. I assumed it would be all erotic thrillers, but it's way more in-depth than this, and, as ever, I'm in awe in the depth of Karina Longworth's research, the synthesis of her findings, and her storytelling acumen. I'm expecting to enjoy the second half even more, which promises more *actual* erotic thrillers rather than Brooke Shields exploitation, and I'm most excited by the promise of Erotic 90s later in the year.

She'd better dedicate a whole episode to Bound or there's going to be trouble.

Finally, I've got a few reading and viewing recs for you:

Adam Lowenstein's new book, Horror Film and Otherness is out. I've only read the intro so far but, so far, brilliant.

I've pre-ordered two very promising new horror novels: The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and The Pallbearers Club by Paul Tremblay.

Jen Proctor's Nothing a Little Soap and Water Can't Fix (2017) is a supercut of women in bathtubs, mostly in horror and thriller films. This sounds simple but the sound design is great, and the choice of what to include, and when to cut is very smart indeed - plus, there is something incredibly powerful about seeing the cumulative affect of these women, across so many films, all performing the same actions. It's available to rent for $2.99, with proceeds benefitting the Time's Up Legal Defense Fund.

Proctor's piece is what has inspired me to work on my newest video essay, on women and telephone horror, which I made a draft of at Middblebury. You can watch the trailer I made for this piece, entitled Casey, Jill & Leona, should you be at all interested in this kind of thing. The trailer focusses on Scream, Sorry Wrong Number and When a Stranger Calls.

On telephone horror, I would also like to recommend Hannah Neurotica's experimental art piece Operator, which gives me all the feelings and is brilliant.

Next, I met the Japanese cinema scholar Colleen Laird at Middlebury, and immediately bonded over our mutual research on women filmmakers. Colleen is undertaking a huge, public-facing project on Japanese women filmmakers, and in June, she posted her latest video resource - freely available for everyone - on Japanese horror director Asato Mari, which includes a conversation with the director herself. This is all the women, all the horror, all the filmmaking, and I think you will enjoy it.

And finally, a newsletter rec. It's time for me to extoll the virtues of Zodiac Film Club. Their tagline is 'Good looking films, complex female characters and our faves in cult, contemporary and classic cinema'.

You can see why I am in.

In their newsletter, ‘Films for Gemini Season’, they include a recommended reading of Martha Shearer’s brilliant essay on Suspiria screenwriter Daria Nicolodi, where they explain:

Last weekend we went to an amazing Suspiria symposium at Queen Mary's University, because at heart we are blue stocking film geeks. Symposiums are amazing by the way, usually anyone can go, and academics come from all over the world to talk about their specific obsessions. Anyway... Someone mentioned Martha Shearer's great essay about Dario Argento's screenwriting partner Daria Nicolodi, and her underplayed authorship of Suspiria (1977). It’s part of Alison Peirse’s must-have book Women Make Horror, which you should buy if you can.

I mean, obviously, I appreciate the shout-out, but I also love that they are not academics and they still went to the Suspiria Symposium, and that they reference Martha's brilliant essay.

It reminds me what a privilege it is to be an academic, and not to take acccess to knowledge for granted.