Buzz Kilman

WCKG-FM

Buzz Kilman was born in Detroit, Michigan, but left almost immediately thanks to the quick thinking of his mother Bette. His father, Julian, was in public relations and Buzz spent his formative years moving from city to city as his dad partied his way to the top of his field, ultimately winding up in Miami where his parents divorced. He remained in Miami where he went to Coral Gables high and the University of Miami.

While attending high school Buzz got his first newspaper job as a Printers Devil. At the University of Miami he was Editor of the Campus Conservative and worked at The Miami News as a Copy Boy. After leaving school he became Entertainment Editor at the Coral Gables Times and, later, Editor of the Daily Planet, an alternative paper devoted to harassing the establishment.

In 1972 Buzz got his first radio job as public service director for one of the first FM rock stations in the country WBUS, The Magic Bus, on Miami Beach. He remained there for almost two years before management discovered most of his late night interviews were fraudulent and comedically motivated.

In 1974 he took his first full time radio job with WSHE in Ft. Lauderdale. He did morning news, an all night free form music show and a weekend public service talk show that, once again, featured fraudulent guests who were comedically motivated. This time no one seemed to mind.

In 1980 Buzz came to Chicago and went to work for WLUP, The Loop, doing news for the Steve Dahl Show until Steve got fired in '81.

He spent the next two years doing news for a series of morning jocks including Mark McEwen who left to do the weather for CBS in 1983 and was replaced by Jonathon Brandmeier. 

Buzz had been the longtime on-air partner of Jonathon Brandmeier, and had been working with Johnny for most of his radio career. He is also known as the "newsman blues man," is exceptionally skilled with the blues harp (for the non-Chicagoans, that's "harmonica," and can occasionally be seen playing with his All-Bubba Blues Band around the club scene in Chicago.

Buzz started his gore movie reviews, Drive-In Reviews, in 1985 along with Noted Unemployed Filmgoer Tony Fitzpatrick. 

Together they diligently attended Chicago sleaze houses in search of those B movies that delivered the goods and should, they felt, be brought to the attention of the fans that appreciate a good quality kill but who may not have the cinematic fortitude to actively join in the search. The fruits of their labor were heard on WLUP radio as a weekly feature. But, as with the Drive-Ins, those theaters have all but disappeared and the movies that once sustained them now go "straight to video." 

Buzz and Tony's abiding interest in the genre did, however, spawn a lively season of television shows for Comedy Central and has since been heard on the radio and Fox television in Chicago. Noted unemployed filmgoer Fitzpatrick, a well-known Chicago artist and actor, has since married and is in the process of raising a family and has had the time spent rooting out quality kills severely limited. Not so with Buzz, whose family consists of his lovely wife, Aimee, who not only shares his abiding interest in such celluloid phenomena but is often the one grabbing the remote to replay a good exploding head.

While maintaining a Drive-In Review presence on WCKG radio in Chicago and making periodic appearances on Fox Thing in the Morning & The Big Fat Nude Hippo Show/The Big Show, Buzz concluded that the appropriate home for the show was the internet. No longer obligated to tailor material to the consuming masses, Drive-In Reviews could, finally, be exactly what it is... an exploitation of blood, guts, murder and death in films regardless of their redeeming social, artistic or intellectual value, presenting nothing more nor less than the Quality Kill, a cinematic celebration of life's most significant event.  

Buzz supplements his income playing with the All Bubba Blues Band, hosting The Chicago Blues Jam, reviewing movies on Drive In Reviews and appearing in movies made by his high school buddy Jonathan Demme.

He has never won a major award and he does not dance.