Episode 283: Miike's "Dead or Alive" & John Carpenter's Fan Expo 2026
It has been a rough month for CatBusRuss. His new warehouse job is expecting 11-hour days starting at 6 pm, and with every other weekend being mandatory Saturdays, he considers himself lucky to have the strength to check out the last day of Fan Expo Chicago. Then the convention organizers kicked him between the legs.
Was it a worthwhile trip? Yes. Our podcast host got to hang out with ThePoeticCritic, gave out of all his "I Dig Crazy Flicks" promotional buttons and pins, and got to ask "The Horror Master" John Carpenter a question at the "Halloween" panel. Unfortunately, if you did not give Fan Expo all your money up front, they could care less about how your experience was. They basically decided that one-day visitors are losers.
Russ had been to three conventions last year hoping to get an autograph from Keith David, and the legend had to cancel all three appearances. Life happens, the podcaster understands that. Unfortunately to Fan Expo, life only happens to celebrities. If you cannot make it to all three days of their attempts to take all your money, you do not matter. The fault for not getting his signature this time solely rests on Russ.
Sorry you were not in a position to buy a fan experience in advance. It is your fault for not calling in sick to work. And you call yourself a "fan". A fan will bend over backwards to accommodate Epic Conventions' income like Russ did at the 2022 Fan Expo Chicago.
And fans should only want to bow down to celebrities. If they go to panels facilitated by other fans, where is the money for us to make?
It kind of makes CatBus wish the convention would have concluded like the end of Takashi Miike's "Dead or Alive". Russ will be on "Collateral Cinema" for their annual Miike episode. To give you a preview of what is to come over there, our host got a really incisive rewatch in and does his best to provide us with a limited review of this brilliant feature.
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