Strawberry Letter 23

Longtime reader and fellow writer Peter emails:

Saw that photo of you in your snow suit shovelling snow and it immediately cleared up some writer's block I was experiencing. I was having absolutely no luck being able to visualize a serial killer from small town Indiana so I could create the character... Then, I saw that photo... :)

This month's Premiere magazine has an artice about "DTV," the cool new name for direct-to-video fare, and how it is performing extremely well for companies. One interesting note the article mentions is that a lot of writers and directors will take a chance on DTV because they would like to get the work, but many actors still won't touch it. I'll have to show the article to the next person who asks when I am going to make some "real" movies.

I was waiting in a bookstore down the way from where my daughter was getting her hair done for Winter Dance and happened to grab a Fangoria off the shelf and open right to the reviews of my pal Jon McBride's recently re-released cult classics Woodchipper Massacre and Cannibal Campout. These two SOV features are finally coming up from the underground and getting the recognition they deserve as products of their time. Cannibal is downright skin-crawling and Woodchipper is a surprisingly funny dark comedy; both shot on glorious SVHS, circulating among afficianados and hard to find for close to twenty years. Jon has given me great advice over the years, and as "Wayne Beaubier" stole some scenes in my bigfoot movie Among Us, so I wish him nothing but luck with this latest good fortune. Definitely look for these, new on DVD for the first time.

Give me a yell at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.