

Created by Matt Zoller Seitz
Directed by Judith Carter
“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”
Haruki Murakami
Photo by Justin Campbell on Unsplash
Sinner. Saint. Outlaw. Rebel.Voice of protest. Man of faith. Johnny Cash is a giant of American music.
Since its inception in the late 1960s, Rolling Stone has followed Cash's career, writing about him in settings that ranged from San Quentin prison to a glitzy Vegas hotel. Through the years, the magazine has treated Cash not just as a country music star but a rock & roll icon, whose drug-fueled antics, black clothes, and rebel stance have made him a hero to generation after generation of rock fans.
More than than the Man in Black image, it's the substance of Cash's music that make him one of the greatest musical figures of the past 50 years--the resonance of his deep voice, the driving beat of his simple, powerful songs, the fighting spirit of his lyrics, and his commitment to social justice. Cash defied convention and expectation at every phase of his career, and Cash chronicles all of it. The book brings together personal recollections from those who knew him best with the insights of some of America's finest music journalists. A moving foreword by daughter Rosanne reveals Cash as a loving, devoted dad who taught his kids to waterski and made homemade ice cream for them on summer evenings.
From the Cash family archive we have Valentines, notes to his daughters from the road, and many never before seen photographs. A visit with Johnny and June's only son, John Carter Cash, at the family's rustic cabin studio in Tennessee, provides an intimate look at his parents' drive to create new music until the very end of their lives. Moving personal tributes from Bob Dylan, Bono, Merle Haggard, Al Gore, Emmylou Harris, Tom Petty, Sheryl Crow, and Steve Earle show the scope of the people Cash considered his friends. Mikal Gilmore's "The Man in Black" is a lengthy and thoughtful examination of the full scope of Cash's life and work. Robert Hilburn's 1973 interview "Nothing Can Take the Place of the Human Heart" was conducted in a Las Vegas hotel suite and shows Cash at the peak of his game.
David Fricke's interview with producer Rick Rubin offers moving insight into the a remarkable, ten-year relationship between him and Cash that produced some of the finest albums of his career. Greg Kot's exhaustive annotated discography examines all of his classics and unearths hidden treasures among the hundreds of albums Cash recorded. Excerpts from Cash's autobiography let the man speak to his life in his own words. And editor Jason Fine's "A Day in the Life" is a visit with Cash at home less than a year before his death.
MZS.Press is the online arts bookstore founded by author, critic, and filmmaker Matt Zoller Seitz and Directed by Judith Carter. It offers new, used, signed, collectible, and rare books on film, TV, music, photography, and the visual arts. The store was launched in 2019 on a different platform and has expanded to incorporate arts books published by MZSPress's private imprint: titles currently include Seitz's The Deadwood Bible: A Lie Agreed Upon and Dreams of Deadwood, about the HBO Western, and Walter Chaw's A Walter Hill Film.
Our deepest wish is to promote, encourage, and distribute work by small presses, academic presses, and individuals. Extraordinary work tends to get swallowed up on giant platforms like Amazon and Barnes & Noble. The titles featured here are personally selected by a group of curators and advisors, including Seitz and an array of critics, artists, journalists, educators, publishers, and arts mavens who are known for their ability to suss out what Seitz's jazz musician dad liked to call "the good sh*t."
In Honor of the greatest auteur of our time, Judith is using one of her favorite quotes by him.
"Every day, once a day, give yourself a present"
David Lynch (January 20, 1946-January 15, 2025)
Matt Zoller Seitz
Critic, Author, Filmmaker, MZS Press Creator
Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor at Large and film critic of RogerEbert.com; Features Writer for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, Contributing Writer for D Magazine and Texas Highways as well as finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism. His writing on film and TV has appeared in Sight and Sound, The New York Times, Salon.com, The New Republic and Rolling Stone. Seitz is the founder and original editor of the influential film blog The House Next Door, now a part of Slant Magazine.
Seitz has written, narrated, edited or produced over a hundred hours’ worth of video essays about cinema history and style for The Museum of the Moving Image, Salon.com and Vulture, among other outlets such as Texas Highways and AARP. His five-part 2009 video essay Wes Anderson: The Substance of Style was spun off into the hardcover book The Wes Anderson Collection. This book and its follow-up, The Wes Anderson Collection: Grand Budapest Hotel were New York Times bestsellers.
Other Seitz books include the New York Times bestsellers The Sopranos Sessions and Mad Men Carousel; TV (The Book), The Deadwood Bible: A Lie Agreed Upon, The Wes Anderson Collection: The French Dispatch and the new The Wes Anderson Collection: Asteroid City. He is also an interviewer, moderator, and film programmer who has curated and hosted film and TV presentations for the Museum of the Moving Image, IFC Center, San Francisco's Roxie Cinema, and other venues. In October 2024 he brought the legendary filmmaker Oliver Stone back to Dallas for a historic return to the city and the Texas Theatre, considered the biggest film event of Dallas in 2024 by Dallas Observer!
Judith Carter was in the Upscale and Luxury Hospitality Industry for most of her life. In 2004 she had a beautiful baby boy with Special Needs and put the pause on her career until 2017 to dedicate herself to him and then others, assisting and volunteering as a legal advocate ensuring the best medical care, evaluations and educations for Special Needs children and their families.
Matt and Judith were family friends for over 20 years. She was there with her family in support when his wife Jen passed away suddenly in 2006. Then just 6 weeks later while Matt was in Dallas; he and his Father, Dave, and Step-Mother, Genie, were there as support, when Judith was alone and her son received the first of many diagnoses that changed the trajectory of their lives. So it made sense in the turbulent year of 2020, Matt asked Judith to take over running the online store that has become MZS.press. The rest as they say is, "Their"-story.