until further notice...

Due to the overwhelming success of the Pocket Essentials guides our publishing schedule is now absolutely crammed full for the foreseeable publishing period. Consequently we are currently not commissioning any new work - please do not send submissions as you will not get a reply and we don't want you to feel rejected! However, feel free to browse the notes below and as soon as we are in a position to consider new ideas we'll post a message on our site.

Mel McGinnis
Editor

Essentials In Your Pocket: An Introduction To Pocket Essentials

by Paul Duncan (founding editor)

I get all my best ideas in the shower.

Recently, I was washing my hair when I got to thinking about conversations I had had with so-called cinephiles of my acquaintance. One of them proudly boasted that they knew nothing about films made before 1980. Another commented on how innovative Quentin Tarantino was - using all these new storytelling techniques. I was totally amazed by the ignorance inherent in these statements because, to me, the only way to understand the present is to learn everything you can about the past. To wilfully ignore the past is just madness. I thought of all the great film-makers these 'cinephiles' were missing out on - Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles, Sergei Eisenstein, Charlie Chaplin, Akira Kurosawa. What these people need, I thought, was a short, sharp education... somebody to quickly tell them who was who and what was what. Since I love watching films, and I'm not exactly a shrinking violet when it comes to expressing my opinion, I figured I was that somebody.

My mind wandered onto books and writers (this was turning into a long shower, let me tell you) and the woeful lack of reference books on even bestselling authors, never mind great writers of literary import, and even old forgotten writers. Whilst writing and editing Crime Time magazine, I was always surprised to find out how little in-depth research and analysis had been done on many well-known authors. As good as Crime Time and other media/culture magazines are, they provide just a taste of their subjects. At the other end of the scale, if you want to find a major book on a subject, it is either horribly expensive or completely impossible to find. An idea began to form in my mind. What if I wrote short books about film directors? They would be absolutely jam-packed with all the basic information. They would be spiced up with opinions. And, best of all, they would be cheap so that they would be affordable for even the meanest of readers.

Armed with this idea (and rudely awakened from my reverie by the now-cold water), I rushed to my computer to e-mail a publisher and lo and behold Pocket Essentials was born. The first books on Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick were published towards the end of 1999 and they set the format and tone for the series.

The format is a long introductory article followed by sections on each of the films. For each film, as well as the plot, there is an analysis of the subtext (if any), anecdotes about its filming, bits of trivia, and an opinion about the quality. The verdict is very important because we want to encourage some sort of integrity in the writing, where the author is free to express their honest opinion without the fear that they will have to toe the 'series' line. And at the back of each Pocket Essential is a guide to other books, videos and websites where you can find out more information about the film director if you wish.

Instead of buying a biography, a book telling you how the films were made, and a book which analyses the work, you can buy one book which carefully presents the information in an accessible and compact form.

As the series progressed (we published 4 in February 2000, and 2-a-month since), I realised that we had the space to cover many different areas of film. The established masters of the medium (Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, Woody Allen, Orson Welles) could sit alongside contemporary masters (The Brothers Coen, David Lynch, Terry Gilliam, Brian De Palma), arthouse favourites (Jane Campion, Kieslowski) and cult movies (Jackie Chan, Hong Kong's Heroic Bloodshed, Film Noir). And why should we restrict ourselves to film when there are plenty of interesting TV shows like Doctor Who to explore. I also wanted to generate enthusiasm in our readers for different forms of literature (Noir Fiction, Philip K Dick; Cyberpunk; Terry Pratchett) - there are woefully few books on contemporary authors and their literature. (By the way, all the above subjects have either been published as Pocket Essentials, or will be in the very near future.)

It is very easy to list all these ideas, but it is another thing to find the right people to write them. It is rare that I am in the position, so what do I look for in an author? I look for commitment to the subject, a passion for it, an overriding enthusiasm, and it helps if they can string together 35,000 words. In fact, I usually know I've picked the right writer when they tell me they are going to have a hard time trying to fit all they know into such a small space!

For my sins, I have written 6 Pocket Essentials and collated another one over the past year. It has been an education, and both a physical and mental challenge. It was a physical challenge because I watched a couple of hundred films and read dozens of books, and a mental one because I had to throw out all I learned to find out what I really thought about the movies. I found new ideas and approaches to the films which I had never before seen discussed by other critics and commentators. For example, Hitchcock's 1942 chest-beater about the evils of the Nazis infiltrating America, Saboteur, uses the symbols of fire and water throughout (a fire in a military aircraft factory, an explosion in a shipyard) and ends with the main characters atop the flame of the Statue of Liberty, which is on an island surrounded by water. Although this may seem a simple observation, it is not one I have read in all the literature printed about the master of suspense. I also describe Hitchcock as a 'cubist' film-maker because his camera is placed and moves precisely as if it is attached to a cube around the character - hence we see the character from the top, bottom, sides, front and behind. I also listed certain themes and shots from each movie, to show how these reoccur throughout Hitchcock's career. It is my intention that the Pocket Essential series, although primarily aimed at introducing a subject to the reader, should also add to the sum of knowledge, discuss new ideas, and shake up the old accepted views.

The Pocket Essentials series was launched with little publicity, and they were ignored or criticised by much of the major film press because they were considered too cheap, or too short. However, as more and more of them are published, critical opinion has changed. One reviewer said that the books will 'fascinate the casual fan and impress even the most jaded cinephile' whilst another accurately identified them as 'Cliff notes for film fans.'

It is my intention that within the next few years, these Pocket Essentials will be used as reference by film students (media lecturers in both the US and UK recommend them to their students), will be on sale in video shops (they are in London and Holland) and in cinemas (they are in London). Fans and students alike can afford them, enjoy reading them and learn from them.

As we head into our second year of publication, we continue to strive to give readers the essential film information for a price and in a format that will not hurt their pocket. Now we are expanding into new subject areas. December 2000 saw the publication of the Conspiracy Theories pocket essential, and from May 2001 there will be an additional two books a month, one on ideas (Freud, Feminism etc.) and the other on history (Nazi war trials, crusades etc.). Beyond that, who knows? (Well, we do, but we have to keep some surprises up our sleeves.)

As for me, I've been staying out of the shower - there are only so many ideas I can handle at one time.

Note: This is an amended version of an article that appeared in Bookends, the magazine of The Book Pl@ce.