This month marks my 30th year as chronicler of Chicago’s visual media industry. I’m told that I’m the longest-running film trade writer in the business. It isn’t what I planned, but as they say, life happens.
I started with the typewritten, 4-page “Screen Newsletter, the Indispensable Source of Chicago Production News.”
The first issue, Jan. 29, 1979, bowed inauspiciously during one of the worst blizzards in 10 years and the Screen Actors Guild’s first commercials strike in 23 years.
In fact, my first lead story was about the SAG strike.
When my story stated advertisers declared they would continue to produce commercials by going overseas and by using ? eek! ? non-union talent ? I earned the unforgiving enmity of the director of the local SAG chapter.
It didn’t matter to him that both sides of the strike issue had been described. Not much changes, does it.
To assure Screen launched at the most propitious time, I called my astrologer friend and asked for to consult the stars for the best date to start my new venture. Her advice was the Jan. 29 new moon would be ideal. Anything venture begun on a new moon would grow and prosper, she said.
And so it did. Since that first issue, I edited and published the Original Screen for 23 years.
During that period we produced a total of 1,104 issues containing an estimated 35,328 pages (based on an average of 32 page issues) and possibly wrote 32 million words (based on an average of 16 pages of 2,000 word text for 1,104 issues).
ReelChicago.com was a natural evolution of the print publication. Since going viral in 2002, The Reel has delivered brought you more than 5,000 original news stories.
This number includes 1,560 columns (The Reel Thing, Indie Film Focus, Screenings & Events, etc.). Since each column contains an average of 10 individual news items, that adds up to an incredible total of 15,600 pieces of additional information.
And those 5,000 stories don’t include the nearly 900 BackTalk items we’ve printed since we first introduced the feature in 2004.
In the days ahead during our celebration month, we’ll bring you some stories of the industry highs and lows over the past three decades, so you can see how far the business has come in certain respects, and the glaring holes that need to be filled.
