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About This Site...
Established: January 27, 2000

(Where does "Flick Lives" come from?)

This website is dedicated to the preservation of the works of Jean Shepherd and as much material as possible regarding his life and career.

I began creating this site in 1998 as an attempt to organize my personal "file of dynamic trivia". Seeing how many Shep fans are out there, I decided to place it on the World Wide Web for all to enjoy. Although I single handedly maintain the website and all the content, there are many 'spies' out there who have contributed content and they are acknowledged again below.

Over the years Shep wrote many stories, articles, and columns. He was on the air almost every night for 20 years in New York, and made guest appearances on many other radio and television shows. He did live shows at hundreds of colleges across the country. The list goes on. His storytelling which started on the radio and later expanded into short stories in magazines such as Playboy and Car and Driver, eventually were collected into several books leading to various movies, the most well known of them being "A Christmas Story."

WantedMany of you who visit this site, came here because you share the experiences of having 'grown up' with Shep, listening to his with that little transistor radio nestled beneath the pillow. If you have any little piece of Shep memorabilia, be it an article or even a few minutes of crummy audio, it might very well be the only copy in existence and should be preserved. If you would like to share it with your fellow Shep fans, I'll arrange for it to get up on the site. Many people have already contributed things like photos they took at book signings, or articles from local papers. Even if you don't wish for it to be placed on the website, I would like to get copies for the sake of preservation. 

Anyone that would like to contribute information so that we may all enjoy it, can contact me via email. Proper credit will be given. 

I don't wish to plagiarize anyone here and if I have done so, it is unintentional. I have attempted to link pages to the actual sources wherever possible. Please visit these links and browse further. 

My sincere thanks to the many fans who have contributed to this site. Check the Credits section for a listing and the Fan Pages section for items from personal collections. I try to keep the list up to date and do not wish to snub anyone who contributes. If you've contributed and don't see your name, send me an email and I will correct it.

As far as the photographs and images on this website, most are from private collections and are used with permission of their owners. If there is any material / images on this website which may infringe on a copyright held by you, please contact me via email and I will be promply remove it.

Please do not use ANY materials / images from this site unless you check with me first to obtain written permission from the owners.

I believe that I speak for all Shep fans in thanking Max Schmid of WBAI 99.5FM New York who kept Shep alive every Tuesday morning on Mass Backwards with rebroadcasts and through his Schmidco catalog of Jean Shepherd tapes. Although Mass Backwards is in the past, Max continues to present Shep on his Golden Age of Radio, heard every Sunday at 7-9pm, whenever he can squeeze a show in. Also You can hear Max on his Saturday morning internet show of the same name hosted by YesterdayUSA.com. While I try to maintain an archive of as much Shep related material as possible, Max has been doing the same with the audio. If you have any audio tapes of Sheps shows or any other of his performances, I highly recommend you contact Max. It is important that these shows be preserved. Max's efforts are unsurpassed by anyone and most of the shows available on places like ebay are mostly due to his preservation efforts although usually low grade copies.

Preservation of Shows
If you have old tapes of shows, please consider letting Max transfer them professionally. While there are many ways to convert tape to digital, there are many formats and compression methods available some of which sacrifice quality for compression size. The most popular file formats are MP3 and Realaudio. Please, if you convert your old tapes to any of these formats, don't discard the original tapes. If you no longer want them, contact me or Max and we will arrange to get them from you, transferred and returned. Also, please do not try to "fix" the audio yourself. Max has the professional equipment to do so and help preserve the best possible quality.
Excelsior Jim
Jim Clavin
Jean Shepherd Historian