I haven’t had the chance to do much reading this year and that’s been really frustrating. Like many people, I often enjoy catching up on my reading during the summer months when the hot weather makes it difficult to do much of anything except lounge around in a comfortable chair or on a sofa and thumb through a book. Last weekend I finally decided to set aside some reading time and found myself engrossed in Mike White’s Impossibly Funky: A Cashiers du Cinemart Collection.

Mike White started writing about film in the 1990s while self-publishing his own small press movie magazine (or zine) devoted to cult films and Hollywood hits called Cashiers du Cinemart, which was a creative play on the title of the respected French film magazine Cahiers du Cinema. The book compiles many of the best articles from Cashiers du Cinemart, but it also contains some new material and updates for the book release. Contributors include Mike Thompson, Leon Chase, Chris Cummins, Skizz Cyzyk, Andrew Grant, Rich Osmond, and Mike White’s wife, Andrea White but a large portion of the book highlights Mike’s own writing and personal insights. The book also features a great forward written by film director Herschell Gordon Lewis (Blood Feast; 1963, Two Thousand Maniacs!; 1964, She-Devils on Wheels; 1967, The Wizard of Gore; 1970, etc.) and a funny introduction from author Chris Gore (Film Threat, The Ultimate Film Festival Guide, The 50 Greatest Movies Never Made, etc.)

Impossibly Funky: A Cashiers du Cinemart Collection opens with an entertaining rundown of the events that have made Mike White somewhat of an enfant terrible in the world of independent film criticism. In the ‘90s when many major critics were falling all over themselves to praise the directing and writing skills of Quentin Tarantino, White decided to release a short film of his own titled Who Do You Think You’re Fooling! that took Tarantino to task for borrowing plot points and ideas for his 1992 film Reservoir Dogs from the Hong Kong film City of Fire (1987) without crediting director Ringo Lam. It caused a minor controversy at the time, was noticed by MTV, and ended up getting Mike White banned from the New York Underground Film Festival. White’s recollection of the events are fascinating and fun to read and almost worthy of their own book. It has become commonplace for critics to toss around phrases like “homage” when discussing Tarantino’s films but in the ‘90s you’d be hard pressed to find one critic who noticed the similarities between City of Fire or any of the other films Tarantino liberally borrowed from at the time to make Reservoir Dogs such as The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974) or even The Big Combo (1955) so White’s observations were definitely eye-opening. I may not agree with all of his conclusions but I appreciate Mike White’s efforts and I think it’s an important topic worthy of serious discussion.

Director Quentin Tarantino and writer Mike White

One of the things that becomes easily apparent when reading Impossibly Funky is Mike White’s obvious respect for the writers he admires (including Tarantino himself) who often toil behind the scenes during film production and rarely get the kind of respect that they deserve. Some of the books best pieces include White’s detailed overviews of film adaptations based on the work of crime writers such as David Goodis, James Ellroy and John D. MacDonald. The book also contains a lengthy chapter detailing the ways in which a script can evolve throughout the filmmaking process. Mike White reads a lot of movie scripts and I found his observations on the development of films like Alien III and Catwoman surprisingly insightful. The book is also very funny and I occasionally found myself laughing out loud, especially while reading White’s personal recollections of working at a movie theater.

The book devotes an entire chapter to the little seen cult film, Black Shampoo (1976), which might be the highlight of the book. Black Shampoo is undoubtedly one of the most unusual and entertaining blaxploitation films made during the ‘70s and readers are treated to interviews with the film’s cast and crew as well as essays about the film and its subsequent DVD release. These pieces shine a light on a part of black film history that I personally find fascinating but it’s often overlooked. Another of the books many highlights are the interviews conducted with film directors such as Monte Hellman and Guy Maddin as well as actors like Bruce Campbell and Crispin Glover who discusses his directorial debut, What Is It? Many of these interviews are observant and relaxed so the participants seem genuinely willing to say just about anything that’s on their mind.

Impossibly Funky: A Cashiers du Cinemart Collection is a book for film lovers with eclectic viewing habits and I appreciated the wide variety of topics covered within its 375 pages. It’s a brisk and exhilarating read that reminded me of how much fun it was to browse the magazine racks of Tower Records in the ‘80s and ‘90s looking through small press magazines and fanzines devoted to the movies such as Psychotronic, Video Watchdog and Asian Trash Cinema. My own writing developed in self-published zines and within the pages of small press magazines so I appreciate the author’s motivation and determination. Publications like Cashiers du Cinemart often survived off the pennies and dimes of their creators and were independent products made to celebrate or chastise any movie the publishers wanted to cover without having to apologize to corporate interests. Writers struggled to piece together articles without the aid of a computer, DVD players or net access and they were rarely paid for their efforts. Film fans everywhere owe an incredible amount of gratitude to these writers even though many are unaware of it. While big publications and newspapers spent all of their time covering new releases or cannon approved classics, these small, stapled together zines were uncovering lost gems and little seen oddities such as Two Lane Blacktop (Monte Hellman; 1971), The Big Crime Wave (John Paizs; 1985), Emperor Tomato Ketchup (Shuji Terayama; 1971) and Black Shampoo (Greydon Clark; 1976). Times have changed and films like Two Lane Blacktop are now celebrated by critics everywhere but I’m glad that books like Impossibly Funky: A Cashiers du Cinemart Collection exist to remind readers how film devotees shared information and ideas about movies before the invention of blogs and chat boards.

The book should be available at Amazon and some independent bookstores soon but in the meantime you can purchase it directly from Mike White at the Impossibly Funky website. White is a Detroit native and he’s currently planning a Midwest book tour that kicks-off on Sept 19th at Book Beat in Oak Park, Michigan. Potential readers can also watch a trailer that White put together for the book release. It includes clips from his own short films Who Do You Think You’re Fooling! (1994) and its follow-up You’re Still Not Fooling Anybody (1997) as well as highlights from the variety of movies covered in Impossibly Funky: A Cashiers du Cinemart Collection.