Andrew J. Rausch

Andrew J. Rausch (born May 4, 1973) is an American film journalist, author, screenwriter, film producer, and actor.

Rausch has published nearly forty books with nearly twenty different publishers. His nonfiction includes multiple books on author Stephen King and screenwriter/director Quentin Tarantino. In 2004, he wrote a book titled Turning Points in Film History (2004) that was used as a textbook in many collegiate film classes. He spent seven years interviewing film directors for his book Fifty Filmmakers: Conversations with Directors from Roger Avary to Steven Zaillian (2008). Some of his key nonfiction titles include The Films of Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro (2010), The Cinematic Misadventures of Ed Wood (2015), and My Best Friend's Birthday: The Making of a Quentin Tarantino Film (2019). Rausch has written on topics as diverse as film, atheism, blaxploitation, and hip-hop music.

Rausch is the co-author of the late cinematographer Gary Graver's memoir Making Movies with Orson Welles. In 2012, he assisted horror filmmaker Herschell Gordon Lewis with the memoir The Godfather of Gore Speaks. At the time of this writing, he was assisting actress Erica Gavin with a memoir titled Vixen: My Life and Movies.

Rausch has written several novels, novellas, and short story collections. He credits Quentin Tarantino and Elmore Leonard as being his biggest influences and writes primarily in the crime/noir genre. He has also written some horror, as well as a thriller, a Western, and a comedy. His work has been praised by the likes of screenwriter Wesley Strick, Joe R. Lansdale, Jason Starr, and Peter Leonard among others. Two of his novels, Elvis Presley, CIA Assassin (2014) and Bloody Sheets (2018) have been optioned for film. Rausch's novel The Suicide Game (2011) has been published by three different publishers (once under the title Mad World). His novella Riding Shotgun (2012) has been published by three different publishers (once under the title Bloodletting). He is the co-editor of the short story collection A Time for Violence: Stories with an Edge, which features well-known novelists such as Joe R. Lansdale, Max Allan Collins, and Richard Chizmar.

Rausch's short stories have appeared in many anthologies including Monsters vs. Nazis (2019), This Book Ain't Nuttin to F--K With: A Wu-Tang Tribute Anthology (2017), and Rise of the Dead: An Earth-Shattering Anthology of Zombie Terror (2014). He has also written essays for a number of books including the Stephen Spignesi books Stephen King: American Master (2018) and Elton John: Fifty Years On (2019).

Rausch is the screenwriter of the indie horror film Dahmer Vs. Gacy (2010). His production credits include Dead in Love (2009), Zombiegeddon (2003), and Evil Ever After (2006). He has dismissed these films as being "mostly bad" in a number of podcast interviews.

Rausch is an activist and protests for human rights. He has been arrested multiple times during protests and sit-ins with the disability advocacy group ADAPT. He is an outspoken progressive and an advocate of LGBTQ rights and groups like Black Lives Matter. He also lectures on the importance of organ donation.

In April 2018, Rausch received a heart transplant at Barnes-Jewish hospital in St. Louis, Missouri.

He was commissioned by Source Point Press to co-write a number of graphic novels and comic series with David C. Hayes, including Union Corpse (2020), which is a civil war zombie story. One series will be based on Rausch and Hayes' novel M-Company in the Axis of Evil (2018), which is about Frankenstein, Dracula, and other monsters fighting against Germany in World War II.

Rausch has contributed to many publications and has worked as an editor at Diabolique magazine. He writes most frequently for Shock Cinema magazine and Screem magazine.