Jimmy McDonough

WE CAUGHT UP WITH WRITER AND BIOGRAPHER JIMMY MCDONOUGH TO CHAT ABOUT AN UPCOMING ONLINE VENTURE THAT WILL BRING CULT FILMS AND ART TO A NEW AUDIENCE.

- John Higgins

Director Nicolas Winding Refn, whose films like Drive have stimulated audiences in recent years with their extreme style and content, is aiming to create something significant with the imminent spring 2018 launch of a new quarterly digital content project, byNWR.com, via a new regular event called Expressway.

The Academician’s Room at the Royal Academy of Art in London’s Piccadilly was the venue for the launch in February to provide STARBURST with a sneak peak at what can be expected when the website officially launches.

The first two guest editors of the site, renowned biographer Jimmy McDonough and editor David Jenkins, chatted about Jimmy’s contribution to the project and his career, which had taken him from the heady days of the sleaze of Nightmare USA  Central, New York’s 42nd Street, where he worked for a time, to the current project, which promises to unleash a host of rare  and little-seen-since-release content.

One such example that was screened in an adjacent room downstairs from the reception was the 1961 black and white thriller Night Tide, starring Dennis Hopper and directed by Curtis Harrington. Recently restored by The Academy Film Archive in 2007, it was the first timw many of the attendees had seen the film.

Night Tide tells of Johnny Drake (Hopper), a seaman on shore leave who meets a mysterious woman, Mora (Linda Lawson), who earns a living posing as a mermaid in a boardwalk sideshow. As the relationship builds, it seems there is more to the story than meets the eye…