2024. This was the year that, for me, I finally broke out in a big way. Projects I had devoted years, in one case nigh a decade, of my life left the realm of "work-in-progress" and became real things. I was invited, welcomed, to contribute to physical media releases of movies people have actually seen. Boutique BluRay labels were publicly regarding me as an asset. I was gonna make it after all!!!
And then November, the same month when the news broke about all my work...well, you know; you were there. I can only be honest; it took so much wind out of me, dark voices got in my head, offering bad ideas. And to be out in the world trying to take my victory lap and promote my old shrill chalky Resting Murder Face while so many people I cared about were...not in any sort of mood for trifles...felt wrong. It was the equivalent of the "REVIEW WITH FORREST MACNEIL" episode where Forrest and his father-in-law go to flight school: we watched a horrifying sight in real time, but...ummm...SPACE WAS AWESOME?
Thankfully, it was during a session of research for another project that I somehow found myself re-reading a Roger Ebert review, and the words he used to describe its protagonist hit something in me. To adapt them to my heart's situation, I am using the only gift at my command to protect the folks I love: If I had a weapon, I'd directly attack the villains; If I had an army, I would destroy them. But all I am is an aesthete, and movies, that invention that Mr. Ebert called "empathy machines," are my superpower. I elevate the art I love and the artists who make them because THEY have value. And I present these recommendations to you in the hope you will embrace them also, because YOU have value.
So yes, I am going to take pride in what I've done. I am going to self-promote. I'm going to enjoy my good reviews. If you have it in you to be happy for me, that's kind of you. If you find this all unbecoming, I understand, and I offer you the floor to suggest what I can do that will be of better service for you.
Now, on with the Hit Parade:
The Feeling that the Time for Doing Something Has Passed
MARC EDWARD HEUCK
A summer day, sunshine falling bright and hard on Cincinnati, the smell of chlorine and coconut oil and cooking hot dogs in the air around Clifton Meadows Swim Club. I am perhaps 11, so it is 1978-ish. This crazy, dorky kid, a year or so my junior, has produced a newspaper from the ugly brown Samsonite briefcase he lugs everywhere. The newspaper's banner headline screams:
"MACHO" MARC HEUCK TO APPEAR IN PLAYGIRL!!!
Macho Marc, himself, parades the dummied-up paper, something from some Upper Penninsula tourist pit, all around the Meadows. He vehemently insists the paper is real, the story true.
Marc Heuck knows how to make an impression. No one who meets Marc ever forgets it. I have not.
That was not my first encounter with Marc. Both Clifton kids, his grandparents owned the elegant brownstone apartment house right next to the rowhouse where my childhood friend, Tommy Wells. lived. Tommy and I would see Marc as he arrived with his mom and say hi and then he'd go inside.
Marc was a Catholic kid, meaning he went to Annunciation School, not Clifton Elementary. Meaning once I switched to Lottspiech in 4th grade and stopped palling around with Tommy, I did not see Marc much. Except for summer, either at the Meadows or the rec center's day camp.
As you might guess, a little kid lugging an old Samsonite briefcase around, so crammed full of comics and papers and who-knew-what he listed to starboard as he walked, was not King Kool around the 'hood. Marc ate shit breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And sometimes, I helped feed him.
When we were kids, there was no nerd unity, no nerd power. We were marked, culled from the herd, and taken down. I wanted to be popular, accepted, cool way too much to treat Marc well. I saw everything I was ashamed of in myself in Marc. And he had the gall to be proud, to be his dorky self with no apology. How dare he, right?
Marc, perhaps so inured to his status he saw nothing to lose, fought back. He gave as good as he got, nailing me in the nuts right after I nailed him, at morning assembly at Fort Scott in the summer of '84.
I am not remotely proud of my behavior back when. I am quite proud to say that Marc is of such impeccable character he looked past all that when I transferred to Bacon at the start of junior year. I needed a friend. Marc stepped up and offered his hand. That hand has not been withdrawn since.
Marc Heuck is an estimable man.
The next two years, Marc and I were tight. Both in Drama Guild, where I cast him as the lead in my student-directed segment of the Fall '85 play. Marc was not a natural actor. I was a tyrannical director. But Marc gave his all, and he nailed it.
We shared all the pain, the frustration of forever hearing "Let's just be friends" from the girls we pursued, regardless of our geekdom. I got Marc drunk for his first time at the St. Rita festival the summer after I graduated. Later that night, Marc hurled while drunk the first time. In my toilet. Rarely have I seen the man move so fast.
We vacationed together. We went to movies together. We tried to get a show on WAIF together. A mix of comedic bits and alt rock, we would have been ahead of our time.
Marc and I saw less of each other after high school, of course. He went to OSU, to film school, and I went all over the place. But Marc stayed in touch, seeing me pretty much anytime he was in town. During his too-brief eun as the Movie Geek on Comedy Central's Beat the Geeks I got to go out and see him in LA, where he still lives. Success did not faze Marc. I am not sure he knew he was successful. And that is my man, all the way.
It is not easy, being a professional iconoclast, even in this age of Geek Chic. Marc pays a price to be himself, not always happily, but he has been at it a long time and he endures. He is a thoroughbred.
He is my friend. And he is absolutely King Kool.
Russ, the last thing this world needs now are kings. And frankly, there's a little too much Too Kool for School going on as well. Thus, I respectfully relinquish this title; may it lay next to your resting soul as a token of a simpler, happier time.
The last DM you sent me, on June 29, we were talking about weird things that scared us as kids, cryptids and closing TV logos, and you came up with this inspired statement:
"I think: that's how it is to be a kid - the imagination is in the driver's seat. All kinds of weird shit is scary, and no amount of parental reassurance can conquer those fears."
You never forgot about that time. Consequently, there's a lot I will remember of our decades.
"Friends of mine prefer animals to man. That's ok. Man betrays. Driven by multifold fears, he hurts and kills, destroys beauty, ravages nature. Strangely, this is why I prefer man. He never fails to fascinate and amaze. Conversely, man creates work like the Watts Towers, beauty wrought from waste. He writes poetry, paints, sculpts, sings, plays the guitar solos on 'Marquee Moon.' He loves. He yearns, moves, discovers. He is never not interesting. Fish never wrote 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.' Rabbits never wondered how to reach the moon."
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