Paul Duncan
Film, Comics, Noir Historian
Paul Duncan shares his passions for films, noir fiction and comics by publishing, editing and writing books and magazines. He spent his teenage years publishing 'Ark: The Comics Magazine' (1980-1990) and writing graphic novels ('Second City', 'Overload', 'Beautiful People'), before co-founding 'Crime Time' magazine (1995-present), and editing 'The Third Degree: Crime Writers In Conversation', as well as writing some mystery short stories.
He founded Pocket Essentials in 1999, edited around 50 titles in the series, and wrote eight of them, including 'Martin Scorsese', 'Alfred Hitchcock', 'Film Noir' and 'Noir Fiction'. This brought him to the attention of the illustrious Mr. Benedikt Taschen, who took him under his wing and told him to make film books. Since 2001, he have carried out these wishes by editing, and sometimes writing, over 50 film books for TASCHEN, big and small, including the award-winning 'The Ingmar Bergman Archives,' 'The James Bond Archives,' 'The Charlie Chaplin Archives' and two volumes of 'The Star Wars Archives.'
He has also edited large monographs on 'The Godfather,' 'Taxi Driver,' 'Rocky' and most recently 'James Bond: Dr. No.'
To make each of these books, Paul has to spend up to two years knee-deep in archives full of original photo negatives, and old, dusty, coffee-stained production documents.
Recently, somebody told him he had the best job in the world, and he thinks they are not wrong.