In the meantime, awesome Project follower Heather made this hilarious bingo card for use when reviewing self-published Phantom novels. I laughed, I cried, I thought of how true it was and got drunk.
Now you, too, can follow along with the self-pubs in your own libraries! I did a few for the greatest hits of the Pit of Infamy on the Project site, and oh boy, you can totally see them hitting all the high notes.
To the left, Becky Meadows' Phantasy; to the right, Etienne de Mendes' The Return of the Phantom: Le Coeur Loyale. Truly amazing.
In more serious news, however, some of you may not be aware that Universal Studios is currently planning to demolish Stage 28, which was the original stage on which the 1925 Julian/Chaney Phantom film was shot, and which was used again for the 1943 Lubin/Rains movie as well as for countless other Universal productions since. The Phantom set itself is being preserved, according to this Variety Magazine article, and hopefully moved to a new home as a historical attraction or museum exhibit, although we don't yet know where it will end up or in what shape (the article notes that it's unsure how much of it can be preserved when it's moved off the stage it's lived on for the past ninety years).
While I personally am pleased as punch that the set is being preserved and don't mind letting the stage go once it's been moved off, there is a petition started by fans of the first Phantom film adaptation and other Universal movies to try to stop its demolition, if any of you would like to go add your voices to it.
No matter what your feelings on it, now seems like a great time to go show the 1925 film some love, right? Let's get some Chaney up in here!
Oh my god. I cannot stop laughing that you actually played with the de Mendes novel. It's so appropriate. That one was the prototypical self-pub I had in mind when I was making the cards up, you know? It holds a special place in my heart for being the first Phantom Project review I ever read and for introducing me to the wonders of self-pubs early. It also gave me quadruple bingo! The violins you used to mark the cards are very tasteful, by the way. Help to balance out the horror.
ReplyDeleteI played it with several of the self-pubs (some of which did surprisingly well!), but these two were just bingo all the way around.
DeleteViolins make every situation better, as I'm sure the original Erik would agree.
I'm not too surprised that some of the self-pubs failed to achieve the inspiring levels of bingo reached by these illustrious artists. After all, we can't all be like de Mendes.
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ReplyDeleteOn an unrelated note, what happened to the Masked Obsession review?
ReplyDeleteI took it down after having a talk with the author of the book, who had some extenuating circumstances that made it being up here a problem for him (beyond the normal "I don't like what you said about my work" kind of problem).
DeleteI've got a copy archived for myself, for posterity, but it probably won't be back on the site unless I hear back from him okaying it.