“The CampChuck Reviewer” began in 1980 as “The Unsolicited Movie Newsletter.” The current name was initiated in 1986.
CampChuck held its first “occasional” film festival in Feb. 1986, followed by a film festival of sorts in November 1986 – really just a slide show of our four month bicycle trip in Europe. The other two film festivals happened Aug, 1990 and July 1994.
You can link to statistics about the history of CampChuck Oscar Predictions
You can link to an archive of poetry that has appeared in The CampChuck Reviewer.
The premier edition of the newsletter in 1980 was scrunched onto four pages using a font size inspired by resource constrained judgment. After three years of four 8.5x14 pages, the newsletter settled into its eight page 8.5x11 format.
The AFI “America’s Greatest Movies” top 100 was updated after several years, in a somewhat arbitrary way, but still serves as a “course” in Amercan films as well as a marketing gimmick.
Beginning in 2007, after three years of top ten lists in the Manufactured Mailbag, it became a separate feature in each Oscar edition.
Lived in Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, & San Jose, CA 1980-96 and late 1999- early 2003, and in Philomath, OR, in between; in Nevada City, CA, 2003 to present. Rented, except 6 years owning a condo in Santa Clara before OR & buying a house to move to in Nevada City.
Worked craft fairs 1980 into 1983 before getting “real” jobs technical writing at Four Phase (bought by Motorola) into 1986, then Arix into 1989, then Hewlett-Packard Company for 18 years until snapping up an early retirement package; one 8-month contract technical writer interruption of retirement in 2008.
What started as occasional CampChuck Film Festival editions shifted to accounts of vacation getaways. Out of cheapness, I tend mostly to send these special editions to current CampChuck subscribers.
CampChuck published special newsletter editions. The August, 2010 edition came after a lapse (no real reason) in producing special travel editions. 08/10: Olympic Nat'l Park & Vancouver BC 09/03: Lakes Basin in California Sierra 05/03: Italy 09/02: Mt. Lassen in California 05/02: Central California coast 08/01: Nevada, Utah, Colorado 05/99: Death Valley,CA; Zion, UT 10/98: Washington D.C. 09/97: Central and Easter Oregon 09/96: Andalucia, Spain 05/96: Jawbone Falls, CA 12/95: Santa Barbara, CA 07/95: Rocky Mountains, CO 10/94: 5th Festival (Hidden Villa) 06/94: 4th Festival (Best Scripts) 01/94: Anza Borrego, CA 05/93: Northeastern CA 07/90: 3rd Festival (Best Pictures) 10/86: 2nd Festival (Spain trip) 02/86: 1st Festival(Movie favorites)