THB #495: Sent In The Clowns

Being around for a long time in this industry is clarifying. Truth is, it probably isn’t that much different than most industries… except that the highs of success are so much higher and the lows of failure are so much lower. The working middle class of the industry leans quickly how to take the ebbs and flows of the constantly shifting tide. People who learn to take a hard wave to the face survive. People who do not tend to head home to wherever they started.

When I started doing all this online in 1997, movie coverage on the web was basically Roughcut.com (the team onto which I was recruited), Dark Horizons (black page, white copy), and Harry Knowles’ Ain’t It Cool News. (Apologies to the many smaller sites not mentioned.) Dark Horizons’ Garth Franklin was always easy going and well liked. Harry was the monster that I had to figure out. And I never really did.

Harry was feared and loved… both emotions, from different people, were absolutely genuine. Harry could mess things up for yo…