Issue 2

Cashiers du Cinemart #2 was released in the spring of 1995. It was twice as thick as my first venture, and proved tougher to fold into an envelope and stamp with the postage meter at Blockbuster. However, I persevered and began to use larger envelopes and charge up more on the postage meter. To cover my ass I began a campaign to eradicate late fees from our files and bombarded those who owed our store money with an endless barrage of threatening letters. Thus I could explain why our postage bill doubled if anyone was smart enough to ask.

No one was.

In CdC #2, I kept up the charade that I had a large staff and kept using the pseudonym of Mike Barnett (I got it from one of my favorite films, Getting Over). But I actually added a real contributor, my old college chum, Mike Thompson, who provided me with his top ten films of '94 and reviews of five films he saw at the '95 Sundance film festival. I really think the behind-the-scenes stories of why he was there (to support a film his brother, Rob, helped make, THE FOUR CORNERS OF NOWHERE) and how he felt about it (“No Comment"—Mike Thompson) would prove vastly more entertaining than talking about THE BASKETBALL DIARIES, but Mike wants to keep his sibling relationship a healthy one.

It was with this issue that I discovered the “Shrink” option on my company’s copier. Instead of standard 10 point type I began to tighten things up with smaller printing. I took suggestions from some of my readers and decided to go crazy with as many pictures as I could find. I was pretty proud of this issue and decided to take it with me to the New York Underground Film Festival in March of '95. I left it out on the greeting table and later found out what one reader thought of it, Film Threat’s Dave Williams: “a thin, primitive hobby publication with an obvious ax to grind; making it far less interesting than you think it is, and compelling me to conclude it’s impossible for you to ever get your shit together...killing one more tree for your pointless, directionless, self-aggrandizing 'zine with nothing to offer is a sad, selfish waste.”

If those aren’t words of encouragement to keep plugging along, I don’t know what are! Luckily I didn’t hear from Dave until I was already on my sixth issue, not that his narrow-minded views would have stopped me from publishing. Most of my letters, however, were positive. One such letter was from Rich Osmond, creator of the zine Teenage Rampage, who actually wanted to see Cashiers expand into a bigger magazine (despite my Tarantino-bashing). All those letters, pro and con, really helped shape the zine into what it is, and what it’s becoming.