"Michael, this is not a movie!" This was the ultimate reprimand from my mother, when I was being the worst son I could muster. I guess you could say I have it in the blood. I think I decided what I wanted to do when I saw GOLDEN VOYAGE OF SINBAD at the tender age of 5.

I started making movies in the Super8 era, when I was in fifth grade. I was the kind of kid who managed to get to STAR WARS five times in the theater. Growing up in the time just before home video, I remember the thrill of bringing our first sell-through VHS title home. It was RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK -- and when I was old enough to start buying them, I did in droves... Everything from TERMINATOR to FRIGHT NIGHT. When I went to college (for film), I worked in the video rental room at Best Buy #25, an electronics store in Greenfield Wisconsin!

For 20 years I've been working as a college-level instructor of all-things film. In 2000 I started by teaching a class on DVD Authoring, and since then have run the gamut from Visual Effects and Motion Graphics to Storyboarding and Digital Cinema. I love every aspect of the creative process towards visual storytelling, and if you're anything like my students maybe some of this enthusiasm will rub off on you.

Head to the SHOP to check out the books (and some other merchandise) that might appeal to the like-minded film fan. Or follow me on Facebook, where pretty much every post is about movies, movie fandom, and movie-making!

 I'm watching a lot of movies these days, thanks to a host of great streaming services and an almost fanatical devotion to physical media (Blu-Rays especially). Thing are better than ever for film fans, nearly any title is just a few clicks away. Plus, with the absurdly high quality of film scanning, all of these remasters of even the fringiest titles from around the world is a absolute godsend. Frankly, popping in a 4K remaster of something like Lucio Fulci's ZOMBIE (1979, below) is one of my favorite things in the world. It's like a pristine window back to another time... With zombies.

Perhaps as an offshoot of this, I have dedicated myself to sharing the love and helping to push some titles that may have gone unnoticed in the switch to Netflix and the like. Enter BIG RETRO VIDEO. What started as an excuse to write books about 80s films has expanded into a platform that includes a capsule review show on YouTube and a general appreciation of all things retro. The latest is CLASS OF 1988: FRIGHT FILM ANNUAL, a book that shines a light on one of the biggest boom years for the horror business, and some of your favorite sequels and original films.
​