68½ - Movies, Manson & Me (Redux)

"68½ - Movies, Manson & Me" was first published, in electronic and print form, in 2016. The feedback I subsequently received, from both readers, was that, while they loved the bits about my sex life, the drugs, the rock & roll and even the movie trivia, they could have happily done without the “treatments” i.e. the summaries of every script I had ever written. In so doing, or saying, they join a long and honorable list of film producers who never bothered to read my scripts either. Anyway, this being the fiftieth anniversary of the events in Paris in May 68 – not to mention the many other important events which took place around the world in that fateful year – I have whipped out my metaphorical scissors and cut the treatments. Now it’s much shorter, much tighter and all round more like the studio cut of Sam Peckinpah’s "Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid", which is to say confusing, fragmented but fun, and less like the flatulent, bloated director’s cut it used to resemble. Of course, completists can still download (or even BUY hard copies of) the original, but I wouldn’t bother if I were you. My shelves are positively groaning with the pleasure of supporting countless unsold copies.