The Dromer Book Series is intended as an opportunity for those interested in film to write about one movie in particular, from a place of total subjectivity. Series like the 33 1/3rd books will sometimes veer into this, but are often shot through with research about the making of particular albums. The Dromer books will not be this. We’re assuming that you’re a fan, an obsessive, but for whatever reason might not have the means to write the Definitive History of the Making of Repo Man. What are your options, then? Writers throughout the history of film, not to mention art, have frequently adopted the subjective perspective when other resources simply aren’t feasible, and probably aren’t even wholly of interest when we think of the actual experience of watching a film. Geoff Dyer’s Zona, all of Pauline Kael’s criticism, Christopher Sorrentino’s Death Wish, Ander Monson’s recent book on Predator, each stand out as examples of writers using film as their starting point, and pushing into a subjectivity that proves illuminating. 

Pick the film you need to war with, and war with it for 30-70 thousand words, however you must, and we’ll consider working with you to bring it out as a Dromer text.

For an example of how a book of this series might begin to take shape in an author’s brain: I (Grant) have always found Psycho to be one of the most comforting cinematic experiences ever. And it isn’t only due to nostalgia. The first time I saw it I was riding in the back of our conversion van, as a kid, driving through a blizzard to a place we were staying to ski. Even then, though we anxiously checked the showers at the hotel, I found it comforting. Were I to write a Dromer book on Psycho, I’d want to speak only to this, which I might connect to Douglas Gordon’s 24 Hour Psycho—what attests more to this odd subjective experience of the film than a visual artist creating a day-long looped version of the film you can effectively live inside of while the museum is open—or Van Sant’s shot-for-shot remake, i.e., not only am I driven to remake this film out of love for it, I’m going to remake it as closely as I can to its original. Admittedly, this is veering into more standard critical territory, but perhaps I’m only bringing in these figures as models of what I feel, and refracting my experience through theirs—I happen to love both artworks (Van Sant’s and Gordon’s) anyway.