I created Voices From The Balcony after writing for a few sites such as DVD Resurrections, Rogue Cinema and Beneath the Underground. I started out at DVD Resurrections back in the days of physical screeners, the site was based in Australia and a lot of indies didn’t want the cost of mailing things that far so I was taken on as the US correspondent. After it eventually went under due to the owner’s health issues I went back to just watching movies for a couple of years.
Then a friend decided they were going to resume reviewing and it sparked my competitive nature as we’d frequently sparred over who was the better reviewer. I had a couple posted under a pseudonym at a large website but wasn’t happy with the situation there so I looked around and ended up at Rogue Cinema where I was a contributor for a few months before becoming a full staff member. I was assigned all manner of screeners not just my usual genres and it became a real learning experience. After a while, I joined Beneath the Underground at first as a book reviewer and then covering films as well.
Rogue Cinema ceased operation earlier this year after it’s thirteenth-anniversary edition leaving me with no outlet for non-horror reviews and I began thinking about my own site for them. When the guys running Beneath the Underground began getting buried under family and work obligations and I was left with assorted festival and PR people wondering where their reviews were I knew it was time to act.
I got a domain, taught myself WordPress and here we are. The site’s still a bit rough around the edges and I still manage to break things all too frequently but it’s getting there. I’ll be adding a few writers besides myself and pulling the site together a bit more in the next few weeks. I hope you like what you see, and I hope you come back.
Jim