The news is over a week old now, but I’d still like to acknowledge the recent death of Moustapha Akkad. He was the producer of the Halloween movies, the man who made certain that “the boogeyman,” Michael Myers, kept coming back time and time again, long after the character’s creator had moved on to other projects and the series itself had become something of a joke. Some would say that’s nothing worthy of commemorating — heaven knows I’ve done plenty of my own grumbling about endless strings of sequels that diminish the strengths and reputations of their original films with each new entry in the series — but if it wasn’t for Akkad’s periodic trips back to Myers’ well, I very possibly would not have met one of my best friends.

It was the fall of 1989 and I was working as an usher at a multiplex movie theater in Sandy, Utah. I’d just started my junior year of college and was very close to choosing Engish literature for my major. Truth be told, I was becoming something of a snob.

For weeks, I’d been sneering at the trailers and posters for Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers. I’d never seen a Halloween movie, not even the first one. I didn’t know a thing about them, but I knew they were beneath my sophisticated, intellectual tastes. Ridiculous, low-budget movies about men in rubber masks carving up jiggly, promiscuous young girls — nobody with any brains could possibly like such trash, I thought.

The crowd of horror fans that turned up on opening night did little to change my mind. It was composed mostly of young boys (at the age of 20 I considered myself far more mature than these guys only two or three years my junior), and they were rowdy, buzzing with anticipation at the thought of ninety minutes of bloodletting and boobies. Standing at the front of this mob of unwashed testosterone, within a couple feet of my station at the usher’s podium, was a tall, gangly, loud drink of water with what he would later describe to me as “top-ramen hair,” a short-cropped mass of tight, dense curls that really did look much like dried noodles.

It wasn’t unusual for the first person waiting in line for a movie to strike up a conversation with the usher at the podium (we called it “the chopper,” for reasons I no longer remember). It usually began with, “so, have you seen such-and-such yet?” Those were likely the first words exchanged between myself and this teenaged horror fan — I honestly don’t recall — but whatever was first said, the two of us were shortly engaged in a lively debate over the merits of horror movies in general, and the Halloween films in particular. He did little to convince me that there were any merits to them — I had to figure that out on my own a few years later — but I remember being impressed with this kid’s passion for his particular flavor of fandom, and by his knowledge of filmmaking technique, and by the fact that he’d actually seen part of Halloween 5 being filmed (the fourth and fifth Halloween movies were shot in and around Salt Lake, FYI). I thought his taste in movies was a little weird, but he obviously loved movies in general as much as I did… so much so that he would soon be working at the very same theater as me, and shooting his own movies on VHS tape with me regularly cast as his villain. (Blame it on my dark complexion and beard, I guess.)

It’s been a long time since I worked at Movies 7. For that matter, it’s been a long time since that theater was called Movies 7 — the owners added onto it in 1991 and it became Movies 9. My friend, the Michael Myers fan — who comments here under the name of Chenopup — now has a wife and two kids, and there’s some grey in his top-ramen. (Hey, at least he’s still got some hair, ramen or not!) But we are still friends, and occasionally we’re creative partners, too. And I like to think that Moustapha Akkad and his slasher-flick sequels had something to do with that.

Akkad and his 34-year-old daughter were killed in the terrorist hotel bombings in Amman, Jordan, that occured on November 11. The way I heard it, Rima Akkad Monla died instantly while her father lingered overnight in hospital before succumbing to his wounds. He was 75.

It is always tragic when people die under such circumstances. But it rarely means anything to those of us watching the nightly news half a world away. The victims are usually anonymous foreigners with little connection to ourselves. This time there was a connection for me. And it hurts. I hope we eventually see a day when you don’t hear these types of stories anymore.