Though their Grindhouse project is still a vapormovie (I think they may start shooting later this month), directors Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez are chronicling the experience for a 250 page “companion” book that should theoretically be on shelves before the movie’s tentative September release date.

The book info from Rodriguez’s site: An insider’s look into the making of the hotly anticipated double feature by Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez. Filled with cast and crew interviews, hundreds of full-color photographs, never-before-seen conceptual art and an in-depth history of the grindhouse genre by the directors themselves, GRIND HOUSE: THE SLEAZE FILLED SAGA OF AN EXPLOITATION DOUBLE FEATURE is the essential fan’s guide to the two-fisted bloodbath of the year.

“Two-fisted bloodbath”… Man, I like the sound of that. For those who don’t know, the duo is making their paean to the lurid cheap thrills produced in the 60s and 70s, each shooting an hour-long film: Death Proof is Tarantino’s tale of a killer car, while Planet Terror is Rodriguez’s space zombie story. Between these mini-features will be several previews for fake trashy films (which we’ll probably end up wishing were real).

The film is being shot digitally, and then getting scuffed and scratched during post-production (something I wish Rodriguez had done with Sin City, which looked a little too crisp for such a raunchy place). As an admitted fan of grindhouse and its elements (violence, sleaze, raucous soundtracks, drugs, murder, sadism, perversion, revenge, sex — what’s not to like?), I’m anxiously awaiting what these two come up with, especially considering they’ve already dabbled in the style with Kill Bill and From Dusk Til Dawn.  We all know of Tarantino’s legendarily scattered attention span, but Rodriguez can shoot a feature-length movie in a weekend, so maybe he can get his filmmaking chum to focus and we’ll actually get to see this in 2006. Or at least read about it.