Danny Peary

Danny Peary (born 1949) is an American film critic and sports writer. He has written many books on cinema and sports-related topics.

Biography

Peary was born in West Virginia and grew up in South Carolina and New Jersey. He earned a B.A. in History from the University of Wisconsin in Madison and an M.A. in Cinema at University of Southern California. He is the brother of film critic, writer and columnist Gerald Peary. He has lived in New York City since 1977.

Peary has worked as the fine arts and sports editor for Panorama while he ran a film society. His film criticism has been published in TV Guide (Canada), Focus on Film, Bijou, The Velvet Light Trap, Newsday, Film and Filming, The Philadelphia Bulletin, and the Soho News.

Peary remains an important and influential figure in the film reviewing field chiefly due to his three volume book series Cult Movies (1981), Cult Movies 2 (1983), and Cult Movies 3 (1989). Peary’s informative and passionate dissection of such critically ignored (at the time) cult film hits as Black Sunday (1960), Night of the Living Dead (1968), Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972), The Conqueror Worm (aka Witchfinder General) (1968), Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), Jason and the Argonauts (1963), Eraserhead (1977), The Shooting (1966), and Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959), helped foster a growing interest in these and many other out-of-the-mainstream titles among the more general film fan audience. In all, Peary wrote lengthy reviews of 200 movies in the three books, providing thoughtful criticism and production details, including information gleaned from interviews Peary had with various producers, directors and actors. While the majority of these films have subsequently been extensively written about and discussed in other books, magazines and various genre-specific websites, in some ways the Cult Movies books can be seen as one of the first critical “Seal of Approval” acknowledgements of many of these titles. However, Peary’s response to the films under discussion was not always positive, and his writing often shows bemusement regarding the appeal of some titles (such as Emmanuelle (1974) or Zardoz (1974)), as well as occasional disgust (Blood Feast (1963)).

Peary currently mostly concentrates on sports books. He is the writer-researcher on the long-running national sports interview television show The Tim McCarver Show and has done 3 books with McCarver, a close friend. He is the New York correspondent for the Australian magazine FilmInk, as well as a contributing editor to Timessquare.com. He worked with Ralph Kiner on his autobiography, Baseball Forever. His 21st book, written with Tom Clavin, is his first biography, Roger Maris: Baseball's Reluctant Hero.

Peary was interviewed for Machete Maidens Unleashed! (2010), a documentary film about Filipino genre films of the 1970s and '80s. The director of that film, Mark Hartley, has said that, "I’d worn my copies of Cult Movies 1, 2 and 3 into the ground from constant re-reading so meeting author Danny Peary was a pleasure."[1]

Books

Author:

• Cult Movies (1981)
• Cult Movies 2 (1983)
• Omni's Screen Flights/Screen Fantasies: The Future According to the Cinema (1984)
• Guide for the Film Fanatic (1986), short reviews of over 1650 films
• Cult Movies 3 (1989)
• Cult Baseball Players: The Greats, the Flakes, the Weird and the Wonderful (1990)
• Cult Movie Stars (1991)
• Alternate Oscars (1993), Peary's choices for best picture, actor, and actress Oscars
• Super Bowl: The Game of their Lives (1997)
• We Played the Game: Memories of Baseball's Greatest Era (2002)

Co-author:

• Tim McCarver's Baseball for Brain Surgeons and other Fans (1999), with Tim McCarver
• Baseball Forever: Reflections on Sixty Years in the Game (2004), with Ralph Kiner
• Great Golf: 150 Years of Essential Instruction from the Best Players, Teachers, and Writers of All Time (2005), with Allen Richardson
• 1,001 Reasons to Love Baseball, with Mary Tiegreen
• Raising a Team Player, with Harry Sheehy
• The Perfect Season, with Tim McCarver
• How to Buy, Trade and Invest in Baseball Cards & Collectibles, with Bruce Chadwick
• Tim McCarver's Diamond Gems (2008), with Tim McCarver and Jim Moskovitz
• Roger Maris: Baseball's Reluctant Hero (2010), with Tom Clavin

Editor:

• Close-Ups: The Movie Star Book (19??)

Co-editor:

• The American Animated Cartoon: A Critical Anthology (19??), with Gerald Peary

External links

• Fan site devoted to Peary's Guide for the Film Fanatic

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Name	Peary, Danny
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Date of birth	1949
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