It's Cohost Will. I wrote a book. Consider buying it? (Patreon)

Michael & Us Nation,

In recent months you've possibly heard me make cryptic reference to "writing a book." Believe it or not, this was no empty threat. Thanks to the good people at OR Books, I am the author of ED WOOD: MADE IN HOLLYWOOD USA.

The book is a critical study of the director of such films as Plan 9 from Outer Space, Glen or Glenda?, Bride of the Monster, who for years has been known as "the Worst Director of All Time." My book is a sympathetic reappraisal that takes Wood seriously, positioning him as a true independent who blurs the lines between high and low art. Placing his films in their cultural context, I hope to show how Wood fused grindhouse with avant-garde, nostalgia with innovation, and failure with vision. The book is an investigation into the politics of taste, and a loving tribute to a defiant outsider artist.

Where can you buy this book? Great question.

• First and foremost, I recommend pre-ordering from the publisher OR Books. That's right, smash this link to pre-order. This is especially recommended if you are a United States or United Kingdom resident. While you're there, why not purchase some other books of interest? Check out The Dead Center: Reflections on Liberalism and Democracy After the End of History by one Luke Savage. I also recommend Blood Splatters Quickly, an eyebrow-raising anthology of short stories by Ed Wood himself. No kidding!

• Check your local independent bookstore. Here in Canada, we have a lot of fine ones that stock the book, including Book City, Flying Books, Another Story, and Queen Books.

Finally, if you need any further convincing, here is some advance praise from kind people who got an early look at the book:

“Sloan's monograph is an astonishing achievement, beautifully written, intelligently funny, packed with surprising facts on every page, and composed with a sensitive love for his subject that is neither cultishly worshipful nor patronizing for the sake of a laugh. Sloan sees Wood as a feeling, human mystery who made movies that are beautiful, strange, and hilarious places to inhabit. The writing is so clear and honest in the service of its inspired approach to Wood that it triggers the reader with jolts of psychological recognition and spasms of anguished emotion rarely encountered in other studies of this legendarily flabbergasting director.”
- Guy Maddin

"My friend, can your heart stand… the shocking facts about… Ed Wood? Will Sloan’s complex, deep-dive examination of this unique and eccentric filmmaker is now the definitive book on the often maligned Ed Wood. Along with Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Welles, Ed Wood, the 'worst director of all time,' was also one of the most fascinating directors of all time, and after you’ve read this superb treatise you’ll understand why."
- Drew Friedman

"Will Sloan’s treatment of Ed Wood is a commendable reckoning of a subject who has long been considered the poster child of bad filmmakers. He does away with easy distinctions of 'bad' and 'good' art and finds a much more useful category of criticism: 'fascination'. This is the book we have always needed on Ed Wood, tending to the seedier parts of his many artistic impulses, and his complex legacy as a queer-adjacent trailblazer in film. He casts Ed Wood as a dreamer, a hard-working filmmaker, an enigma, and an accidental auteur, whose many mysteries upend conventional notions associated with his dubious reputation as a bad filmmaker."
-Willow Catelyn Maclay, coauthor of Corpses, Fools and Monsters: The History and Future of Transness in Cinema

“Will Sloan's Ed Wood: Made in Hollywood USA is a welcome addition to the canon of Ed Wood Jr.-related books to have been recently published. It takes a fair and analytical view of Ed's body of work, both in the film and publishing worlds he inhabited during his 30+ years in Hollywood USA."
- Bob Blackburn, editor of Blood Splatters Quickly: The Collected Stories of Edward D. Wood, Jr. and heir of Kathleen O'Hara Wood

“It’s finally here: The ultimate completist take on the films and literature of Ed Wood. Sloan has cracked open the desires and symbols that lived inside one of America’s strangest multidisciplinary artists and we owe him a great debt as a nation (as Mr. Sloan is Canadian.)"
- Owen Kline, director of Funny Pages

Pardon me, I felt it would be helpful to give you a picture of Tor Johnson's beautiful mug.

Thank you for giving this promotional announcement your time and consideration, and thanks also for being a tax-paying citizen of Michael & Us Nation.

Yours in podcasting,

Will Sloan