Hey you beautiful people,
I am nearly done with my 11 part deep dive into the Fast and the Furious franchise. I only have one movie left to post. I’m super proud of it but, as with everything I do these days, it has failed to find any kind of an audience and slid way below even my most modest expectations.
Seven months into an experiment that takes up about 30 percent of my workday I am not making enough from this newsletter to pay off the interest of my massive credit card debt. Evil credit card companies are making more money doing NOTHING than I am off my furious labor about the Fast and the Furious movies.
In a desperate bid to make some damn money at some point I’m thinking about putting out a book called Nathan Rabin’s Bad Ideas’ Questionable Exercises in Completism that would collect the entirety of the Ernest P. Worrell movies, the Fast and the Furious franchise, the Saturday Night Live movies and the Silent Night, Deadly Night series.
The James Belushi career expose is too big for this nicheiest of niche projects but I’d love to include one or two more deep dives into franchises or movie series.
So I am asking you, the Bad Ideas subscriber, what film series should I write about once I’m done with the Saturday Night Live movies jaunt? Or music series? Or books?Or TV show? I’ve got an exhaustive look at the Silent Night, Deadly Night series scheduled for December but otherwise I am very open to your ideas.
What should I do? I’m open to anything as long as it’s not illegal or immoral.
I guess the question is whether you want the topic to result in the most views, or the best material. I love the niche stuff you write about (which is why I'm a subscriber), but if you want that filthy lucre, then maybe find a topic that gets a lot of engagement elsewhere.
I know it's not a 1:1 comparison, but I watch a lot of YouTube reviews & reactions, and the obvious Gen X favorites seem to get the most views, i.e. The Alien, Terminator, Predator, and Rambo series. Then again, I don't know what more you can say about those (except perhaps by highlighting the diminishing creative returns in all of those).
My personal preference would be a series on Charles Band productions, since you are so well-versed on the subject, and there is so much material to be mined.
tl;dr - target Boomers & Gen X for the money,
This is a quick one, but.....
Roger Ebert walked out of four movies in his entire life as a critic. Caligulia, The Statue, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, and Tru Loved. It's time for you to walk into them, and see what he missed.