Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. Some of you may have seen that A Movie A Day abruptly stopped last week. Was it a glitch in the system? A terrorist plot to erase all movies before 1990? Did a rival gang kidnap the column? Let me give you a little timeline rundown.
I’ve been thinking of bringing the AMAD column back for a couple of years, but it’s very demanding of my time, so though I was determined to bring AMAD back I wanted to be very careful of when I chose to reboot it.
In December 2012 I was convinced now was the time. I knew I wasn’t going to Sundance, so that left me 3 months to get in the groove before any serious juggling of work went on. So around Christmas I started the process of picking the films I’d cover, finding the connections between each and essentially programming out 6 months worth of movie watching.
I announced the column returning, both on social media and on the site, and was super excited about it.
A Monday was picked to start the column and everything was all set and ready to go. The Sunday before I was to start, Harry made me Managing Editor of AICN.
Essentially he was tired of me complaining that the site was getting behind on the news stuff, so he said, “Well, why don’t you do something about it?” and I was given a whole lot more responsibility.
I hope you’ve been noticing an uptick in production over these last 3 or 4 weeks. All the editors have joined forces to hit a pretty great stride when it comes to news posting, averaging about 25 stories a day with a lot of the filler posts (contests, etc) being restricted to the stuff that’s really really cool. There’s a lot of organizational work that has gone on behind the scenes.
While I have to devote more of my time to news posting than I had in years past, that alone wasn’t enough to squash AMAD. Unfortunately I’ve had some family stress to deal with as well, which all came to a head last week, hence the halting of the column.
Last year I bought my first house. That very same month, my mom was laid off after 10 years at Motorola. They really fucked her over and she spent the majority of last year trying to get another job. Thanks to her being an older woman working in the tech industry in a college town at the tail end of a recession job-hunting became a bit of a task.
She finally got a job at Dell, but by that point she got so behind on her bills and house payments that she was within an inch of losing her home. It also doesn’t help that she had to take a job that paid her around half the salary she was making in her previous position. I helped out as much as I could emotionally and financially (I did just buy a house, remember), however we’re at a point now where she can either sell her house and walk away with some money or let the bank take it. Every free moment of my life these past 2 weeks have been spent with the realtor or with Mom trying to get her house in order so we can go with option one. My brother and I tore down her half-rotten deck this weekend and we have a ton of work to do inside before next weekend, which is when the contractors are coming in to give the house a make over and make it as desirable as possible.
The 4 or so hours a day I need to watch and write-up each AMAD is time I have to be putting towards getting my mom squared away. I hope you guys understand.
I’m not writing this to explain why the column is cancelled. It’s not, but I’m hitting the pause button on it. This is a perfect storm of professional obligations clashing with personal responsibility and once the personal stuff eases back a bit I can get back to it.
I’m not sure when the column will be back, but I know a week from today Mom will be out of her house, so there’s a lot of packing, trashing and organizing to do. I’m sure there will be some residual obligations once she’s out and then we’re bumping right into SXSW, but I wanted you guys to know that the column means a lot to me as do the regulars who pop up in the talkbacks to discuss vintage cinema.
That’s the update. The column will return, I promise.
-Eric Vespe
”Quint”
quint@aintitcool.com
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