Description:
Welcome to Metaphysical Science Theater 3000. This collection is the first comprehensive attempt to place Traditionalism within a major field of modern popular culture-cinema, good and bad - and to recognize how each can clarify and illuminate the other.
Although Hollywood classics are included here (from Sitting Pretty to Touch of Evil) along with popular hits like Groundhog Day, Manhunter, and Silence of the Lambs, the emphasis is on movies small and personal, forgotten, or just plain weird (Psychomania). There's Manos, of course, but the real standout is an extended examination of autistic auteur Coleman Francis and his trilogy of boredom and postwar despair. All are minutely examined until they reveal evidence of cyclical time, karma, reincarnation, and ultimately the amoral attainment of enlightenment by what the author calls "passing the buck."
Review Quotes:
"In a way, it reminds me of Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung, the collection of classic essays and reviews by the late proto-rock critic Lester Bangs. Where Bangs dumpster dives into the world of bizarre music, O'Meara trawls the Z-movie swamp with his beeping sci-fi metal detector searching for gold. ... Because when you lack talent and money, what do you have? You have freedom. And this freedom is what any artist needs in order to create something profound, whether on purpose or not. O'Meara has made it his job to grind out the hours watching forgotten movies in search of the latter. In Passing the Buck, he finds it." - Spencer Quinn
"Drawing on an easy familiarity with the most abstruse areas of metaphysics but with an eye for the absurd in life, O'Meara manages to combine your favorite college professor with the class clown. Just relax and repeat to yourself, "It's just a show."" - Peter D. Bredon