Hey gang! Once again, thank you all from the bottom of my embiggened heart! If I'd known I would hit my campaign goal in three days, I would've asked for ten times as much, and absconded with the funds to Buffalo or someplace nice. But screw it. I guess I'll write this book.

I've been exploring the possibility of adding stretch goals - i.e. extra content that might make this book even more special than I believe it's going to be. My conclusion: I'm already writing the book I want to write. All I'm asking for now is more time to write it. Basically, the closer you folks can get me to, say, $10,000, the more I can cut back on freelance work to focus on what could very well be the online movie writing world's Swann's Way.

But let's open it up to questions.

What specifically would the additional funds allow you to accomplish that $8,000 wouldn't?

An additional segment of the book I'm tentatively calling "The Industry Strikes Back". This would consist of interviews with directors, writers, actors and studio executives (past and present) who will hopefully give me their unfiltered take on the positive/pernicious influence of online movie journalism. I want to reach out to as many people as possible, including people with whom I've had... difficult relationships. For instance, I really want to talk to Tom Rothman. I can't guarantee I'll get everyone I want, but the more time I can spend chasing people down for this chapter, the more entertaining and insightful it will be.

Come on. $2,000 worth of entertainment and insight?

Goddamn right. You're also helping me pay for transcripts of these interviews. Those charges will pile up.

Any new perks?

1) I'm still waiting to hear back from Spielberg on the "Direct Ready Player One For a Day" package, but my hope is growing dim. For now, the perks are the perks. However...

2) I've knocked the Olly Moss Rolling Roadshow ROBOCOP poster perk (aka "The Pachanga") down to $300. Savings. I'm all about 'em.

3) How about this? If we hit $10,000, I'll release a video of me singing "On the Street Where You Live" from My Fair Lady. Like kissing The Fonz, that's a bargain at any price.

Again, to those who've donated, plan to donate again or about to donate, thank you so much for your support. I didn't expect anything close to this response. I'm beyond fortunate to have so many wonderful readers and friends.

As always, please feel free to contact me with any questions you may have. And now, back to the grind...

Hi! I’m Jeremy Smith, the author of the national bestseller George Clooney: Anatomy of an Actor. (Pause) The one commissioned by the legendary French film journal Cahiers du Cinema, and published by the ultra-swanky Phaidon Press? (Pause) Nothing? I used to write as “Mr. Beaks” from Ain’t It Cool News? (“Fuck you!”) There you are!

Twenty years ago, I began hiding behind this Trading Places-inspired moniker as a means of infiltrating studio test screenings in New York City. As an employee on the fringes of the entertainment industry, I was not supposed to attend these screenings; regardless of what I did for a living, I was absolutely prohibited from disseminating my opinions of these works-in-progress outside of the theater. But I went and, on occasion, filed reviews with Ain’t It Cool News. Before long, I was a regular contributor to the site – one of Harry Knowles’s infamous (and largely reviled) “spies”. A few years later, I moved to Los Angeles, and quickly found myself engaged in more legitimate journalistic enterprises like interviewing filmmakers and actors, visiting sets and attending official press screenings (I eventually had to swear off test screenings after one studio threatened to ban me for life from covering their movies). At some point, it became a career, I actually started getting paid for all of this.

If you’re wondering how I managed to survive so many years without earning an honest (i.e. taxable) wage, well, that’s a long story. But as Ray Kinsella once said to Terence Mann, it’s a really good story, and I’ll tell you on the way to Fenway Park! When It Was Cool: A Personal Journey Through 20 Years of Online Movie Writing will serve as my warts-and-all recollection of the rise, stumble, and, in some cases, fall of online movie journalism’s “first wave” (including, but not limited to, AICN, Corona’s Coming Attractions and Dark Horizons). I plan to explain how I got caught up in the racket, spill on myriad behind-the-scenes dramas (involving studios, movie stars, filmmakers, etc.), dispel some longstanding myths and confirm some of your worst fears. To be clear, this won’t be a mean-spirited, bridge-burner of a book ala Julia Phillips’s You’ll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again. My intent is to write a fun, anecdotal, yet brutally honest history of my time in the entertainment journalism trenches – something akin to acerbic showbiz memoirs like William Goldman’s Adventures in the Screen Trade or Art Linson’s A Pound of Flesh. At least, that’s half of my intent.

The other reason I’m writing this book is to compile some of my favorite reviews, interviews and essays – not just from Ain’t It Cool News, but the other outlets to which I contributed over the last two decades (e.g. The DVD Journal, Collider and CHUD). The structure of the book will be the memoir told in chronological order, followed by a collection of relevant articles. Basically, it’s two tomes in one. Some of you have been asking for the second half of this book for a while, primarily because many of my older articles are now unreadable due to formatting screw-ups caused by multiple site upgrades and server changes. Having recently noticed that a sizable chunk of my writing has disappeared entirely from Collider and CHUD, I figured it was high time to get on this.

On to the money portion of this pitch! I anticipate the research (need to get stuff like facts and dates right, folks), writing and editing of this book to take, maximum, three months. It’s going to be my primary focus, so I’m factoring in personal expenses (rent and bills) as well as the cost of a proofreader (I’m a pretty good editor, but I want this sucker to be typo-free), tech issues (e.g. I need to have minor maintenance done on my 2007 MacBook pro, and, this is key, retrieve drafts of lost articles from my long-retired Sony Vaio), the limited production of a hard copy and the eventual shipping of perks.

Since I’m incredibly touched that any of you care at all about my writing, I’m going to take requests for favorite articles in the comments here. Hopefully, those articles still exist in some form on my old laptops, if not online. Meanwhile, I hope the other perks are of interest. I’m incredibly excited to get a lot of old stories off my chest, while setting down on the record my version of how the first wave of online writers both reshaped and damaged the movie industry (and journalism in general). I’ll be as hard on myself as I am on others – and if you’re at all familiar with my writing, I trust you know that I can be awfully hard on myself.

Thank you for your time, your interest and your generosity.

Faithfully submitted,

Jeremy Smith