Q&A with Tim Lucas on PAUSE. REWIND. OBSESS

Q&A with Tim Lucas on PAUSE. REWIND. OBSESS



Tim, your new Bear Manor Media book is called PAUSE. REWIND. OBSESS. - ONE MAN’S ONE YEAR ESCAPE INTO CINEMA. it’s only been a few months since your first Bear Manor book, NOZONE, which collected all of your reviews for SIGHT AND SOUND. What gives?

It might seem too soon if the books were unrelated, but NOZONE and P.R.O. are related in a strange way. I didn’t know it at the time, but my SIGHT AND SOUND column “Nozone” would come to an end in 2012, which was the year when I decided on a whim to review every single movie I saw in that year, which I published on a blog I called “Pause. Rewind. Obsess.” And I was also editing VIDEO WATCHDOG magazine at that time, and maintaining my other blog, “Video WatchBlog.” So I was a very busy fellow. But the material collected in these two Bear Manor Media books represent the metamorphosis of one side project into another, in a manner of speaking.

As a title, PAUSE. REWIND. OBSESS. suggests a home video experience. Did you review only the movies you saw on video?

By 2012, I was definitely seeing far more films on home video - DVD and Blu-ray - than I was seeing in theaters. But I did see a handful of films in theaters, such as HUGO, SKYFALL, and also CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER, which I saw during a trip to Los Angeles. I didn’t include or review my television viewing, shorts or cartoons, just feature films. And under that heading, they could be new or old, seen for the first time or a beloved favorite. There are some titles in the book that overlapped with titles reviewed in NOZONE; in those cases, NOZONE has the more comprehensive review. I omitted from the P.R.O. book a couple of blog entries where I essentially said, “I watched this movie, but I can’t review it here because I am obliged to review it for SIGHT AND SOUND.”

And you got the idea for this blog/eventual book because you saw people on Facebook sharing lists of all the films they’d seen in 2011?

Yes, I never occurred to me to keep a list of everything I saw. I didn’t see the point of keeping such a list, but the idea of reviewing everything I saw in a year did make a kind of sense, and I committed myself to it with the same immediacy as when I decided to start “Video WatchBlog.” As soon as I conceived the title, it was something I felt I had to do and I posted my first blog entry that same day. I like the idea of committing to projects and ideals. Certainly, getting married was the best thing I ever did. Both of these books are dedicated to my late wife Donna, who passed away suddenly in October 2022.

Did you ever regret deciding to review every film you saw in a year?

Almost immediately! It wasn’t like I had no other work to do, and I could have used that time to relax or even to write a new novel. Then again, it evolved into something more than I intended, which was to write simple, thumbnail-sized reviews. But I found I couldn’t do that; the reviews wanted to be longer, more detailed. The undertaking became a dedicated process in its own right. I had to learn something from what I was doing - about films, about the films I decided to write about, and about myself, ultimately.

Speaking of the year, did the year 2012 have any particular significance for you?

Not really. As I say, it was a random decision prompted by what other people had done, keeping lists of the films they saw in 2011. That said, as I’ve reflected on the matter, I was born in 1956 and 2012 was the year in which I turned 56. I find a certain serendipity in that.

What were the best and worst things you learned about yourself from undertaking this project?

Some people think of me as an adventurous critic, because I have a knack for bringing obscure films to a broader, more appreciative audience, but I can be very locked into those realms I find familiar. I regret that you won’t find in this book many (or in some cases, any) films from countries like China, India, Poland or Korea, and yet almost every time I decide to watch such films, they provide me with a rich experience that transcends subject matter and gives me an expanded idea of what cinema is and can be. Andrzej Wajda’s KANAL is just one case in point; I avoided seeing it for decades because it was a political war picture, but when I finally sat down and was open to the experience, I discovered it was all about camera movement, lighting and textures. It was bliss! But I am more readily attracted to films from France, Italy, and Germany.

So the worst thing I learned about myself was that I have some stubborn limitations, however much I can successfully explore within those perimeters. The best thing I learned about myself is that I can keep a promise, even a foolish one, and make something good come from it.

Was there a “worst” part of this particular project?

Falling behind. There are some 226 reviews in this book, but there were 366 days in 2012, which was a leap year. This leaves 140 days unaccounted for, and under the rules of this particular game, that means there were at least 140 additional reviews that could have been written for this project. But my wife and I spent much of our personal time together watching television series, old and new, some of them multiple times; I wasn’t willing to sacrifice my time with her and I wasn’t going to write about what we watched unless it was a film. But even in the course of reviewing films for P.R.O., other work sometimes prevented me from getting to those duties in a timely manner. So I kept a list of what I’d seen and reviewed those films as soon as time and energy permitted. I can remember times when I deliberately didn’t watch other films when I had time, even when I had the desire, because I didn’t want to add to the stack of reviews waiting to be written.

You chose the films you used randomly, but did you later notice any “themes” emerging unconsciously from your selections?

Sometimes themes can surface in random viewings because I’m watching things with an eye toward a future project. For example, 2012 happened to be the year that Quentin Tarantino’s DJANGO UNCHAINED came out. I saw it theatrically, so it’s in the book. Because of that, I revisited his INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, which is also in the book. And as Quentin was promoting the new film, he approached me to interview him about his choices for the 50 Best Movie Sequels for a French entertainment magazine, which ran the interview in short form. My own magazine VIDEO WATCHDOG published our entire discussion and I later won a Rondo Award for the year’s best magazine interview. But to prepare for that interview, I had to watch films like THE SON OF MONTE CRISTO and BEVERLY HILLS COP 2, which made Quentin’s list; I watched anything he listed that I hadn’t previously seen, and all of those films I subsequently had to review - so this book is importantly allied to that popular interview. He also got me very interested in the films of Fred Williamson, which also make up a nice chunk of the text. So you could say that Quentin had a lot of direct influence over my viewing selections that year.

Is this the sort of challenge you’d be interested in taking up again?

Not a chance! But I’m very happy I did it, and I did it without even thinking it might become a book someday.

So what’s next for you, in terms of your film-related books?

I’ve been working on a book about “Adults Only” filmmaker Joe Sarno for about seven years, which I really need to finish in the next year or so. I’ve also been collecting a file of what I think are my best published writings about horror and fantasy cinema from a 50+ year period. It’s always been my specialty and I have no single representative work on the subject, so this would be that. I also have a couple of other ideas that I’ve been turning over in my mind as possibilities, one I’ve been living with for years, and another that occurred to me just the other day. But I would also like to write more novels also want to write more fiction, so we’ll both have to wait and see what happens.