I have known Mike Watt for many years. I have read most everything he has done and consider his film, The Resurrection Game to be one of my all time favorite films. Movie Outlaw feels like a follow up to his recent volume, Fervid Filmmaking, which does a fine job of taking a string of films from off the beaten path and exposing them to the light of day. Movie Outlaw does the same.
The first thing I do with any book like this is see how many of the movies I've seen.
In this case 17 out of 75.
Not too, bad. Not great, but a fair amount.
And here is the interesting thing;
The one's I haven't seen, with a couple of exceptions, I really have no desire to watch. Maybe I'm just getting too old for this kind of thing, but I watch little TV and film now as it is. Between a forty hour a week job and two new grand babies, time is a premium that I find my self becoming increasingly stingy with.
That and sometimes I'm just too damned tired.
That being said, the book was enjoyable. I learned a lot about films I had little, if any information about. Mike is a great writer about film, you can feel his passion about what he watches. Seeps right off the page.
Now, if I am able to give just a little criticism, one of which, Mike already pointed out.
The spacing between lines made this a beast of a book. My old eyes appreciated all the white space for reading purposes, but he might want to consider changing that.
Finally, I have never seen so many damned footnotes in my whole life.
I read history books for fun and Mike Watt could show those stuffy bastards a thing or three about footnotes.
So. Many. Footnotes.
So, in the end, great book. Great reference guide for a lot of films that don't make it into reference guides.
Can not wait for Volume 2
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