Publicity is always double edged. You never know what kind of reactions you will get or how the information will be interpreted.
Am I immortalizing Keehan? Looks like that is already taken care of. I keep reminding people my film is about a very flawed character. Did I like the guy? Of course I did. But he is two people, I liked John Keehan and was fascinated 
by Count Dante. I wasn’t gonna be hanging around with the guy. Could have been bad for my health at my tender age of 11-14. His badness will never outweigh his goodness to a lot of people. Maybe it was his percieved goodness that opened the doorway to the darker side. Such are the pathways of life. I can get philopsophical at half a century.
Why dreg up the disgraceful pasr of the martial arts? Because no one ever laid this to rest. Bottom line, no one was supposed to get killed that night at the Black Dragon Hall in 1970. This is where the story really takes off for many.
Many of the people there had regrets and remorse about it from what I am hearing. Age happens, sometimes wisdom happens along with it. Memories fade and more often they alter. As someone said at Ken Knudson’s memorial, we tend to remember ourselves a whole lot tougher than we were.
Since the Reader article I have had my share of odd emails and the occcasional email. I was looking for it to shake out of the tree of public consciousness for missing parts of the puzzle. I have not been too dissapointed. Robert Cooley’s name comes us more than a few times. Chicago has it’s own way of remembering him I am finding. I have even heard of other sightings of Dante from other than my potentially punch drunk martial artist acquaintances.
I have had email suggestions that Dante was a memebr of a Satanic VooDoo Sex Cult even before the article. I have to take it serious because he named it and I had an ex-girlfriend who was supposedly a member of the same Rush Street centered group. Cooley told me some stuff I cannot repeat…well maybe in an X version of the doc…LOL.
I had a guy email me saying Dante started some Back of the Yards street gang and he jacked him up in a school yard in 1974.
One of the calls I got was from Fearless Radio. Fearless is an online radio station that wants to do an on-air roundtable on Count Dante. They want to do it next week.
I was approached by a guy whose name I will not use until I get his permission. He in in the investigative field, young and quirky though he may be. He is about 31, has personal knowledge of Cooley and says he know’s people who knew Dante personally. He is trying to get them to come on the radio show also. He also went to Mt. Carmel and grew up in Beverly, same as Keehan did. This should be interesting.
Am I gonna film this????? You betcha booty! I am not above a little humour and who knows what kind of real information I might unearth from a few minutes of potential embarassment.
I was going to go to the Black Belt Magazine convention in Long Beach, CA this weekend but some interviews have come up I need to do this week and weekend. The Reader article has stirred the pot. This is absolutely a Chicago story .
Meanwhile I am fleshing out the budget when I get a chance, have been not attentive enough with 3to1 Studios, and working on solving the Podcast glut with the Jazz Institute. We are starting to plan a fundraiser for the film and I expect to see you all there. I am still at the bo-budget phase with 20 hours of footage and about 100 hours more to go before I can get to editing in December. It will be Dante Christmas season editing sessions if all goes as planned.
I am more than confident I am going to finish this.
Axé!
