Mission Failure :: Is the End of The Cult Movie Project?

It began, as always, with good intentions. And it ended, almost equally as always, in disaster -- dashed upon the rocks of biting off more than I could chew and then laid waste by a combination of procrastination and being too easily distracted by other things. (SQUIRREL!) Thus, The Cult Movie Project, a noble effort to watch and write-up all 200 films author Danny Peary threw a spotlight on in his indispensable triumvirate of movie tomes, Cult Movies, Cult Movies 2, and Cult Movies 3, in one calendar year, that officially launched last March, crashed and burned and cratered deep into the earth as the year progressed and finally fizzled out Thanksgiving last.

Okay, okay, it’s not as dramatic as all of that. Essentially, what happened was I committed to this fool’s journey without really doing the math. (200 films divided by 52 weeks equals nearly four write-ups every seven days.) And so, in an effort to stay on schedule, I plowed into the films with much gusto and got into a pretty decent writing groove as well. Alas, other things kind of got in the way, from health woes to putting it on hold to participate in things like Hubrisween last October on top of several other blogathons suddenly had me finding myself nearly ten to fifteen films watched ahead of the last one I’d actually written up. And as that gap grew bigger and bigger, it got to the point where I had to start rewatching things, which, of course, made the situation even worse before officially blowing the schedule all to hell -- and rather irrevocably.

And so, what started out as something ambitious but a lot of fun, suddenly turned into a headache and a lot of work. It did not help that the reviews themselves also got out of hand and a lot more involved and far more in-depth than I had ever intended. Two to three paragraphs tops, and that was supposed to be it, suddenly turned into full, kitchen-sink reviews with accompanying art. *sigh*

And so, and so, here we are, with just under sixty Cult Movies watched with only 21 written up. (See what I mean about the gap there?) This, is too bad as I really enjoyed the watching (and even to an extent writing these films up), especially the ones I hadn’t gotten around to yet or the ones I had only seen through the miracle of pan’n’scan VHS tapes or on the late, late show.

So what now? Honestly, I’m not sure. My home, and this world wide web, are littered with projects started but never completed by me, myself and I. Sorry, that’s just how we roll. (It’s a character flaw, I know.) I might take another run at it, but pare it down, and take them one book at a time. I also may just do this for my own viewing enjoyment and nix any reviews altogether. Or I might start posting them in bunches, streamlined, like with my recommendations. Maybe. We’ll see, as the one thing this endeavor has taught me -- no blanket commitments; it always ends in ruination, tears, wailing and gnashing of teeth, and the last thing I want to do is bring any form of resentment against these films or the source material that spawned this inevitable disaster to begin with. No, that's all totally on me.