In 2012, I started STEPHEN ROMANO EXPRESS as a content destination and general info hub for my creative endeavors. It was a long and wild ten-year journey through many hearts of varying darkness. I ranted and screamed. I crashed and burned. I cast many disparate observations and essays into the ether of the internet. Some of it was silly. Some of it was rubbish. A bit of it was even good. But I think I also learned thtt the more you stare into an abyss… well, the more in danger you are of getting sucked into the swamp.
And so, on the TENTH ANNIVERSARY of its inception, THE EXPRESS becomes something a little bit different. What you will find here is a collection of essays I wrote for this website between the years of 2012 and the moment you are now reading this. I no longer actively pursue “blogging,” for many reasons, and yet I have had so many adventures in publishing and filmmaking over the past twenty years or so; it would be a fucking shame not to write about SOME of it, yes? Why not rip out an essay or two if the mood strikes and I have an extra minute or two? Plus I thought it would be damn cool and personally gratifying if I returned to those old EXPRESS posts and came at them differently, with an ear towards the good some of it might have done, while casting away the elements that may or may not have been destructive to my soul, and the soul of the internet.
Oh sure, we’ll still have some fun. Sure, I’ll say plenty of fuck words. (I just said one right then!) You’ll still find TEETH here, baby. (There’s some up there at the top of this page!) You see, even when I’m trying my damndest to be a nice guy… well there’s always my blasted MUSE, leering over my shoulder, goading me on to do bad things. His name is the Klown Prince of Darkness. He lives in all my work. Even the Lifetime family movies I write.
And so, by way of an INTRODUCTION to this collection of essays, articles and life-stories, I am explaining my intent to reach out into the future, while respecting the past. As a great filmmaker once said, we all wander the wasteland in search of our better selves. I think my journey is still just starting. There are many questions left to ask. And as another wise man once said . . . here in this fortress of solitude, we shall try to find the answers together.
Read on.
Because reading is FUN!