Category: Movies and Television

Jonny’s Run

Actress Jenny Agutter fell onto Hack’s radar after he watched a single scene from the sci-fi “Logan’s Run.”

It seems that Logan (played by Michael York) and his scantily-clad girlfriend Jessica (Ms. Agutter) have been on their eponymous run for a while when they inexplicably happen across some animal furs in an icey cave. Jessica suggests they put them on but Logan, being a red-blooded dude, insists that they take their wet clothes off first “before they freeze on us.” Because this is a movie, that means that Logan just has to take off his shirt while Jessica removes every stitch before wrapping herself in the Wookie skin (or whatever kind of animal they have in the world of the movie). Her nudity was totally exploitative and, from Hack’s twisted perspective, totally mind-blowing. He immediately ran out of the theater and wrote this novelization, which is nothing more than an extended sexual fantasy where a Hack Werker-like character leaps into the scene and performs unspeakable perversions with Ms. Agutter.

Although not a success in its first printing, it sells well today at science fiction conventions.

The Affairs of Mrs. Miniver

The first movie Hack saw in a theater was “Adventure,” superstar Clark Gable’s comeback after World War II that was advertised with the famous slogan “Gable’s Back and Garson’s Got Him.” The Garson referred to was British actress Greer Garson, who made her American film debut in “Goodbye, Mr. Chips” and won her the first of four consecutive Academy Award nominations, culminating in the Oscar in 1942 for her most famous role as the stiff upper-lip British housewife overcoming the hardships of war in “Mrs. Miniver.” Ms. Garson was lauded as The Perfect Lady during her years at MGM and Hack admitted to sordid sexual fantasies which (in his words) “tore her off her goddamned perch.” This book is little more than an account of those fantasies, loosely strung together by an implausible plot in which Hitler will be killed if Mrs. Miniver has sex with every man in London. Although declared “unreadable” by The Tolucan Times, Hack considers it to be his masterpiece.

Billie Newman: Girl Reporter

Another TV show that Hack was obsessed with in the 1970s was the dramatic spin-off “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “Lou Grant.” As is usually the case, he fell in love with the series’ attractive female character Billie Newman (played by actress Linda Kelsey) and could not be convinced that she wasn’t a real person. He ultimately began committing a series of petty crimes in the hopes that Billie Newman would write a story on them but they only resulted in his getting a six month jail sentence where a brutal beating by a fellow inmate blocked any memory of Billie Newman from his mind. He did develop a short-lived crush on Ed Asner.

The Client Yada Yadaed

This book was inspired by the famous “Seinfeld” episode “The Yada Yada” in which Elaine (played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus) conversationally edits a story about a sexual encounter with “yada yada…I never heard from him again.” After writing dozens of unanswered angry letters to the producers of “Seinfeld” demanding to know the details of what she “yada yadaed” over, Hack wrote his version of what happened which was just 139 pages of sordid sexual encounters between the character and a series of men, women and animals who inexplicably show up at her apartment. It won Hack a National Book Award.

Uhura’s Passion

Hack’s forays into sci-fi are infrequent but usually rewarding. This one has Lieutenant Uhura of “Star Trek” jumping ship at the end of the movie where they go back to the twentieth century to save whales so that she can continue her love affair with a Hack Werker-like writer of pulp fiction novels who she met while Captain Kirk was off hitting on a hot marine biologist.

Agent 99

Hack was a huge fan of “Get Smart” and, as always, became sexually obsessed with its costar Barbara Feldon. This novelization has Agent 99 going undercover as a prostitute who specializes in anal sex in order to infiltrate KAOS and get a binder of top secret information. Most copies were recalled after a lawsuit from NBC but the few that are available on eBay prove that the book is really as bad as it sounds.

The House Dick

Hack came to sexual maturity in an age when hotels still employed house detectives to ensure that couples who stayed under their roofs were married and not just there for Godless hanky panky. Since the vast majority of his sexual activity at the time was with syphilitic prostitutes, he carried a bogus marriage license to display at check-in which would typically result in his being beaten to a pulp in the alley behind the hotel by the house dick. This novel is a remembrance of those golden times.

The Client was on the Titanic

Hack’s obsession with actress Frances Fisher caused him to watch the film “Titanic” over a hundred times and he became consumed with theory that the door that Rose floated to safety on at the end while Jack froze to death clinging to its side was easily big enough to hold Rose and Jack. While most of Hack’s books top out at about 175-200 pages, this one is over fifteen hundred pages long because it contains Hack’s elaborate theories about why the door couldn’t hold them both.