Burlco man with many tales to tell starts typing

'Being dead," Mark del Costello says, "gave me the opening of my autobiography."

If the promise of that evocative line is fulfilled when the long-unfinished manuscript is finally completed, del Costello's memoir should be memorable indeed.

Not too many guys from South Jersey get to work for Martin Scorsese. Or attend a private concert featuring an all-star version of the Blues Brothers doing "Louie, Louie" with Keith Richards on guitar.

And those are just a couple of the stories destined for the book friends and associates have been urging del Costello to write for the last 10 years.

"I want [the memoir] to explain to family and friends what I've done," says the retired rock photographer, concert producer, and film historian, 65.

A collector, scholar, and showman with deep knowledge of 20th-century popular culture, del Costello sprinkles his conversations with celebrity names.

He also speaks often about May 18, 2009, when his car was broadsided as he drove near his home. The impact shattered an artery and caused a stroke that left him in pain and unable to swallow.

"I can no longer teach. I can no longer shoot photographs," del Costello says. "I can't dance anymore. I can't eat."

Although del Costello must take nourishment through a gastric tube, he's mobile and lives independently, with family nearby.

"I always figured my autobiography would be my epitaph," he says. "I want to get my affairs in order. I'm not dying, but I'm surprised I'm still living."

I'm visiting his Burlington County home primarily to get a look at selections from his collection of movie posters, a subject he wrote about for American Film magazine in 1979.

"I live in a museum," del Costello quips, walking me through a gallery-like display of family photographs, including several of his father, former Burlington City Mayor and Seventh District Assemblyman Herman T. Costello.

"I grew up in a big clan," del Costello (he uses the un-Americanized version of his family name) explains.

Many of the posters he's assiduously amassed since 1967 are in storage. Others he's donated to museums.

How he began collecting movie posters is a story too long to be told here, involving as it does a "hippie lawyer" and a poster exchange's going out of business.

The dazzling sample he shows me includes splendidly rendered, lushly lithographed American and European posters of Hollywood hits, as well as of relatively obscure foreign and silent movies.

And when he unfurls glorious, lobby-size posters for The Day the Earth Stood Still and All About Eve - two of my all-time favorite films - I recognize our kindred spirit.

Like other baby boomers, del Costello and I grew up movie-mad in an era when film was being rocked by television.

In the 1950's, content-desperate TV stations filled many broadcast hours with Hollywood product. (I caught Hitchcock's Lifeboat one afternoon after school.) Meanwhile, silly/scary gimmicks for horror movies like The Tingler drew kids like us into fast-fading downtown movie theaters.

"All my peers went to the same movies I did at the High Theater in Burlington," del Costello recalls. "The movies got into our imaginations."

After serving in the Army (where he learned photography) and graduating from St. Francis University in Loretto, Pa., with a history degree in 1972, del Costello shot pictures of hundreds of shows at the Electric Factory and other Philly-area venues.

(He also collected concert posters, some of which he exhibited in 2004 at the James A. Michener Art Museum in Doylestown and in 2012 at the southern Alleghenies Museum of Art in Altoona, Pa.)

By the mid-1970s, del Costello was working in the film department at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, a gig that ultimately led to a job as an assistant to Scorsese, then in the midst of Raging Bull.

"Working for Marty was like standing in a bucket of water and sticking your finger in an electric socket," he says, describing a relationship that was as volatile (they haven't spoken in more than 30 years) as it was exciting.

Not averse to name-dropping (Louise Brooks, Gloria Swanson, and Cary Grant, among others), del Costello provides me with photos, contemporaneous media coverage, or online links to corroborative information.

The book Hollywood's New Yorker: The Making of Martin Scorsese, by Marc Raymond (SUNY Press, 2013), cites del Costello's working relationship with Scorsese. One of del Costello's projects, Raymond writes, was to facilitate a collaboration between the director and MoMA.

During those heady days, del Costello says, he came breathtakingly close to realizing screenplays and dream deals. "Marty said, and I'm quoting: 'Mark, you're the best pure conceptualist I've ever met.'

"But I had trouble finishing stuff," del Costello adds, describing himself during a subsequent conversation as "a great procrastinator."

In the 1980's and '90's, del Costello had success producing doo-wop and other concerts of nostalgic music. He also taught at Burlington County College and the Art Institute of Philadelphia. Then came that day in May 2009.

Forced to retire due to the stroke, he says, he wants to get back to writing. But first, there are extensive home improvements to supervise; once those are done, del Costello expects to be able to focus.

He's got about 15,000 words in his computer so far, and hopes to revive the relationship he had with an agent a decade ago.

I ask del Costello to imagine his memoir being made into a movie - and what the poster for such a movie would look like.

He envisions something with the jazzy style and jagged typography that the graphic designer Saul Bass made famous in the 1950's and '60s.

Something bold.

"Just a silhouette," he says.

I hope Mark del Costello will be able to flesh out that silhouette, that main character. And finish the project of a lifetime.