Everything wrong with publishing: A letter to Rebecca Barden, editor of Bloomsbury's BFI Film Classics series

Wednesday 8/6/25

This will suffice for now. More later.

Here is a letter I sent today to Rebecca Barden, who is the editor of Bloomsbury's BFI Film Classics series. It had essentially been agreed that I'd be doing a book in said series on A Hard Day's Night. What is a more logical pairing of subject and author than that? Doesn't seem very possible to have one, does it?

Then, Barden became editor. She was nasty to me immediately. She lied to me in her first email. I later saw what became of my emails. To whom they went. What was being done.

I took the abuse. And the clear cut discrimination. This was to do a book for zero dollars. That's right, for free. I offered other ideas. Rolled with it. Was polite. I sent a full proposal. She told everyone else there to also ban me. This person who had done her no wrong, who publishes on film constantly, and has done for nearly thirty years, in every kind of outlet.

Sometimes, I'd send a film piece written at a level that no one is approaching. A horror film piece. A 5400 word essay on Make Way for Tomorrow. A Charlie Chaplin op-ed in one of the ten highest circulation newspapers in the country. A piece on the Beatles and Stan Brakhage. For legal purposes. That's what it comes down to. You know what these people are up to. So then it's about documentation. Proof.

Periodically, I've circled back to the forthcoming section of the BFI Film Classic series home page, because I knew I would eventually see A Hard Day's Night there. You know what she told me initially? The film wasn't worthy of the series. When it was on the BFI's own list of the 100 best British films.

You see how filthy these people are? How hateful? How petty? How envious? How toxic? How embittered? How nasty? But here's the letter to get this started.

I knew this day would be coming, because I knew right from our first correspondence the kind of person you were, and that's a bigot. 

I was supposed to be doing a book on A Hard Day's Night in the series, when you took over. You were rude to me from the jump. You talked down your nose to me, despite my absurd over qualifications to do a book in this series, and that I was essentially told I could do on this film that I am the world's leading authority on. Type in my name and Beatles on Google and see how that turns out for you. 

You lied to me. You said--and it was such an obvious lie--that A Hard Day's Night did not rise to a sufficient artistic level to be included in this series. This, from the same person who commissioned a book on Die Hard. I've been waiting to catch you in your lie for a long time, and today I saw that listing for, big shock, a book on A Hard Day's Night.

You know, the film I wrote a feature about for The Atlantic, which I guess is all of a sudden of sufficient artistic merit for you to have commissioned a person who knows nothing about the Beatles, this film, and doesn't write on the Beatles or film.

I knew it was coming. Because I know what you're really about. And how bad you are at your job. And how prejudiced you are.

I have written for just about every major magazine and newspaper anyone can name. I've done a short book on a film--which, what do you know, is exactly the kind of series you preside over--with one of the oldest academic presses in the world, lest you try some facile additional excuse about how I'm not the right fit because I work for all of these mainstream outlets.

My film writing appears in hundreds of venues, including all of the film-centric ones--Sight and Sound, Film Comment, Cineaste. I've done a short book for Bloomsbury. I've given hundreds of interviews on cinema--a vast range of cinema--on NPR and the like.

I'm also the only writer who regularly publishes pieces on classic cinema in the biggest op-ed sections in the country. A person could not come close to being as qualified as I am to write a book in this series on many diverse films, let alone A Hard Day's Night. 

What is wrong with you? What kind of person are you? I pivoted to other ideas, despite your rudeness and lack of professionalism. Chimes at Midnight, for one. Why don't you type in my name and Orson Welles's on Google while you're at it, too. I sent you a whole proposal, which you ignored. I reached out to other editors there, whom you also obviously told--for whatever insane reason in your petty brain--to shun this guy. 

I'm going to expose you for the bigot you are on my blog, which documents things in publishing like rape, theft, plagiarism, favor trading, sexual harassment, incompetence, the bad writing, and someone like you. That will move quickly up Google. I'm going to flesh all of this out. I'm going to put your emails up there. I'm going to break down--because I know--how such and such a person got a book commissioned with you. 

You want to do me like this? Take a look at that blog. You will have no peace. And once one thing goes up, that's just the start. I'll keep after you until the day I die. I've also seen what you've done with my emails, because I knew you were up to no good, so I made sure to have all of the documentation for when this day inevitably came.