The plot thickens…

A respondent on Hollywood Elsewhere (whose account I have never seen there before - QT?) wrote, “It's a guy named Jim Sheldon who worked with Margold and died in his late 30's. He was a movie critic for the same porno paper. World of Reel thought Margold was the character inspiration because they were going on the assumption Jim Sheldon was a fictional character who wrote for The Hollywood Press created by Quentin.

He's not fictional. He's real guy who lived and died and like many people who died before the advent of the internet he faded away into obscurity without any digital footprint to know he even existed.”

Now, I didn’t share the Mark Weiss theory on Hollywood Elsewhere, although I did here, because that is a MUCH more public place, and the info came to me not exactly confidentially, but privately still. So I wrote back:

“That is interesting. I have a lead on a seemingly different individual who fits Tarantino’s description to a T, including being very involved in the porn industry as a writer, penning reviews, and dying at age 35. My guy left more of a footprint than Jim Sheldon; he has an IMDB page. I’m being cagey here because of the way the info came to me. But maybe this individual IS “Jim Sheldon”, if that was a pseudonym.”

Poking around the Internet, I see that people are indeed skeptical that “Jim Sheldon” existed or is anything more than an invention of Tarantino’s. One Reddit user notes, “There's…no media footprint of Jim Sheldon outside of Quentin name dropping him.”

https://www.reddit.com/r/Tarantino/comments/12h0er6/tarantino_basically_confirmed_the_movie_critic_is/

Does your head hurt yet? The one thing I am clear on here is that William Margold and Mark Weiss existed, whereas I am not yet persuaded that Jim Sheldon did.