I'm dead tired

So I failed to sell a film book.

Being a film writer, I've been looking to publish one for years. After one abortive attempt in the 2010s, about the growth in mainstream cinema outside of Hollywood, I thought a blatantly commercial subject would see me through the door. And how much more blatant and commercial could you get than Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone, the kings of the 1980s box office?

The meathead pair seemed to tick several boxes that might grab publishers: a juicy personal rivalry, 80s nostalgia, well-known movies, oodles of sordid gossip. Behind that, there was plenty to interest me journalistically, including the chance to layer in lots of sociology about Reagan's America, the changing face of masculinity, and what that era looks like from the mid-21st century. Not forgetting the chance to shower the whole thing in the irony it deserved. I mean, come on: the machoness was hilarious, something Schwarzenegger especially leaned into. The title was a no-brainer – Beef: Schwarzenegger v Stallone.

No one wanted it.

My agent tried with every single major UK publisher, as well as some independents. The line twitched in a few cases, but there were no hard bites. My man tried to soften the blow, telling me film books are a hard sell now. Which was depressing enough in itself. As a cinephile, I lapped up novelistically detailed accounts of my favourite film stars or scenes, with Peter Biskind's Easy Riders, Raging Bulls – about 70s New Hollywood – still top of the list. But perhaps people's relationship with cinema was so blasé and degraded these days that my agent was right: there was no consistent market for books about it.

Or maybe I just hadn't thought strategically enough about the subject matter. In several publishers' cases, editorial expressed an interest – but the marketing departments had apparently poured cold water on the idea. Guessing that the latter were likely younger than the former, perhaps Schwarzenegger and Stallone were simply too old-hat in their eyes to justify the outlay. Even in terms of the most obvious readership – Gen-X and millennial male film fans like myself – there were questions to be answered about how my take would satisfy them (I will save this for a future blogpost).

And yet ... couldn't potential readers come from outside the expected demographic? It was with great delectation that, preparing to write the proposal, I had read Shaun Considine's Bette and Joan: The Divine Feud – about the mortal showdown between Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, recently dramatised in a television series. I'd seen some of their key works, but wouldn't count myself a diehard fan of either. My book would be the same catty contretemps – only with rocket-launchers!

In short, I can't let the idea go – or the work I did writing the first batch of material. Among that, a handful exclusive interviews with many people who worked with both Schwarzenegger and Stallone; my effort to flesh out their rivalry with fresh journalism and avoid falling into the puff-piece trap.

So here we are. This is going to be an experiment in serialising a non-fiction work through a website/newsletter platform. The introduction and first chapter will be free to all, and available imminently in the next first posts. Certain posts – going behind-the-scenes on the Arnie/Sly spat and also reflecting generally about my process – will also be free. But subsequent chapters will be for paid subscribers; the more of them, the quicker the work on them will progress. Less a Terminator-style individualistic pursuit, then being powered on by the crowd Rocky-style.

So please sign on for updates – and consider becoming a paid subscriber. I've chosen Ghost in order to keep prices low, more in line with what readers would've paid for a hardback book.

Like Sly says: keep punching!