Bio Randisi; Phillip K. Dick; Frankie Laine

Bob Randisi Update Update
This just in: Vince Van Patten is appearing on Fox News Live on Wednesday, February 21 at 10:00 AM, not February 10 as stated in the previous post. Check it out.

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FROM THE LA TIMES


BOOK REVIEW
'Voices From the Street' by Philip K. Dick
A bleak mainstream novel by the sci-fi legend.


By Ed Park, Ed Park is a founding editor of the Believer.

IN "Search for Philip K. Dick" (1995), Anne R. Dick (the third of the visionary science-fiction writer's five wives) recalls a potentially life-changing response to the manuscript of "Confessions of a Crap Artist," a mainstream novel he had finished in 1959. "Alfred Knopf, himself, wrote Phil a letter saying he was interested in publishing it if Phil would rewrite the last third making the female character more sympathetic," she reports. "He compared the quality of Phil's prose to that of Salinger, Roth, and Mailer…. We were both thrilled with this letter. But Phil said, 'I can't rewrite this book! It's not that I don't want to, it's that I'm not able to!' "

In an alternate universe — of the sort that Dick fluidly conjured in novel after novel — Phil can do the rewrite. Encouraged by critics, he happily departs the precincts of science fiction, which had nurtured and released 10 of his books, and has a successful career producing highbrow, gently experimental fare. He reworks the territory of soured domesticity (à la Richard Yates and John Updike) in a working-class milieu anticipating Raymond Carver. Decades later, his oeuvre (like Philip Roth's) is lovingly enshrined in our national pantheon.

None of this happens in the real world, of course, save for that last outrageous twist: This spring, four of his best novels will appear in a Library of America volume edited by novelist and stalwart PKD champion Jonathan Lethem. Lauded in science-fiction circles, Dick (1928-1982) gained mass exposure after the movie "Blade Runner," based on one of his books, was released the year of his death. His carpet-yanking virtual realities have been film fodder ever since — most recently, Richard Linklater's stunning 2006 adaptation of "A Scanner Darkly."

But mainstream acceptance was Dick's first novelistic ambition, one that took years to dispel. An early fan of "scientifiction" stories, Dick also read widely outside the genre. In 1940s Berkeley, beginning at age 19, he roomed in a converted warehouse occasionally occupied by literary figures like poets Robert Duncan and Jack Spicer, with whom he struck up friendships. During this time, according to biographer Lawrence Sutin, he was inspired to steep himself in the classics ("I gained a working knowledge of literature from the Anabasis to Ulysses," Dick wrote in a 1968 "Self-Portrait"), with special attention to modernists like Ezra Pound and John Dos Passos. Sutin notes that from 1951 to 1958 Dick wrote dozens of science-fiction stories and six science-fiction novels, all of which were published, and seven mainstream novels, none of which found a publisher in his lifetime. "Confessions of a Crap Artist," written in 1959 and published in 1975, is a lean, semiautobiographical divorce drama that nimbly shuttles between points of view. The other surviving mainstream manuscripts gradually found their way to print, and with the publication of "Voices From the Street," finished in 1953, we have a complete view of the path not taken.

At the center of "Voices" is Stuart Hadley, a handsome, New Yorker-reading 25-year-old and amateur painter who is languishing as a repairman at Modern TV Sales and Service. Called "Stumblebum" by his boss, Jim Fergesson, Hadley is a dreamer with unclear dreams. His marriage leaves him cold, and his wife's pregnancy intensifies his feeling that life has trapped him. (His solution: memory-obliterating pub-crawls.) Taking note of a natty young man, Hadley imagines his bookcases hold "French novels in French paperback editions. Gide, Proust, Celine…." A liberal sort with socialist Jewish friends, Hadley is simultaneously attracted and repulsed by a group of holy rollers led by Theodore Beckheim, a charismatic black preacher — and also by the "strong, calculating, ruthless, efficient" Marsha Frazier, who runs a haphazardly produced magazine called Succubus that turns out to be anti-Semitic.

Whereas "Confessions" had both a wrenching, violent climax and a sense of humor, "Voices" is obsessed with rage and race and is unremittingly bleak, a mood intensified by its chapterless format. The title suggests James Joyce's polyphonic "Ulysses," but Hadley is a dominant, unifying presence. Though an early story line centers around an avuncular character named Horace Wakefield, hints of a Bloom-Dedalus dyad get snuffed early. The only deviations from Dick's patient, observant style are Beckheim's tour de force of a sermon and Hadley's violent, drunken ramble, reminiscent of Joyce's hallucinatory "Nighttown" chapter. (At times the novel reads like a hazy, low-rent version of Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead," with Hadley's inchoate ambition as above reproach as Howard Roark's will to power; Hadley's one-night stand with the fearsome Marsha is, troublingly, a more vicious version of Roark's rape of Dominique.)

The word "primordial" pops up frequently in "Voices," and it's tempting to read this early book as a Dickian ur-text. Most fascinating is how Dick's major theme — a playful, terrifying disjuncture between realities — has leaked into this seemingly solid, realistically rendered setting. The book begins mock-epically, with store owner Fergesson opening up shop in Old Testament fashion ("his seventh day — a cup of black coffee"). Promoted to manager, Hadley grapples with the dark thought that "he might suddenly, blindly, burst out and destroy the safety of his microcosmos. In his archaic fury he might smash, demolish, pull down the only world in which he could exist." He quickly becomes accustomed to "the permanent reality of a small retail store," but those dark forces swarm in and destroy the status quo. By book's end, he is carving out a second life, starting a whole new world from scratch.

Dick completed one other novel in 1953. "The Cosmic Puppets" (published a mere four years later) is a slim, intermittently spooky book, a minor entry in the PKD canon but one that functions as a mind-bending footnote to the gargantuan "Voices." In it, New Yorker Ted Barton returns to his Virginia hometown to discover that everything has changed — street names, houses, inhabitants. The local paper reports that he died as a 9-year-old, and he discovers that the current townspeople operate under a mutual, sustainable delusion. All Barton wants is to get back to the status quo — a return to normalcy. What follows is a Zoroastrian freakout-cum-battle featuring golems, spiders, moths and gods. If "Puppets" is a lot more fun to read than "Voices," that shouldn't diminish the real struggle suffusing the longer, lonelier shadow of a book. The struggle lies not just in Hadley's losing bargain with the real world but in Dick's changing notion of what sort of writer he needed to be. •


Ed here:Imagine if Dick had finished Confessions the way Alfred Knopf wanted him to. A good chance Dick ight have been able to escape the sf ghetto. But what about the sf masterpieces that lay ahead? Confessions is is one my favorite literary novels because in it Dick feels free to expand on his characters more than his themes. And it's the usual neurotic, agigated and vaguely despicable Dickian crews. It's my favorite book of his. As for The Cosmic Puppets, it was half of an Ace Doubklebook and is a minor but entertaining sf novel with horrorific elments. I reread it last night to see how it held up. It was first opublished whole in Satellite sf and then appeared soon after in Ace DB. I remember not being disappointed eiter time.

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Ed here: You liked him or loathed him. I liked his hits. I've heard some of his jazz albums from the forties and I thought he was pretty bad. Way too much crooner-sobbing and a vibratto that was frequently out of control. He probably could have had a longer run at Columbia but he had a run in with the reigning asshole there Mitch Miller. One of th reasons Sinatra left Columbia because, at the time "How Much is That Doggie In The Window?" by Patti Page was popular on Mercury, Miller came to Sinatra and told him he had a similar piece that would require Sinatra to bark--yes, bark--several time sin the record. I have no respect for Sinatra as human being--he wouldn't even do his own fighting; his thugs did it for him--but he was th best pop singer of all, flat out. To ask a man of his talent to bark...Mitch Miller said as late as 1962 that rock and roll would never last.

Obituaries

Singer Frankie Laine dead at 93
By Claudia Luther, Special to The Times
1:53 PM PST, February 6, 2007


Frankie Laine

Audio
Excerpt from "That Lucky Old Sun"
(MP3 audio)

Audio
Excerpt from "That's My Desire"
(MP3 audio)

Audio
Excerpt from "Rawhide"
(MP3 audio)
Frankie Laine, the singer with the booming voice who hit it big with such songs as "That Lucky Old Sun," "Mule Train," "Cool Water," "I Believe," "Granada" and "Moonlight Gambler," died today at Mercy Hospital in San Diego. He was 93.

Laine entered the hospital over the weekend for hip replacement surgery but suffered complications from the operation, said his friend A.C. Lyles, the longtime producer at Paramount Pictures.

In all, Laine sold well over 100 million records and was hugely popular not only in the United States but in Britain and Australia.

Even after his popularity crested after the rise of rock 'n' roll, Laine was heard for many years singing the theme to the TV series "Rawhide," which featured a young Clint Eastwood and ran until 1966.

Most of those who remember Laine for his biggest hits would hardly know that his body of work included "Baby That Ain't Right," "Rosetta" and many other songs that were more in the style of what Laine considered his roots -- jazz and blues.

"Years before Elvis Presley, Laine brought a potent blend of blues, jazz and country to popular music," jazz critic Don Heckman said. "Rarely acknowledged in Laine's work, he sang with the easy, loose phrasing and imaginative articulation of jazz performers."

Laine started out in jazz but was sidetracked by arranger Mitch Miller, who fashioned Laine into the popular artist that he is best remembered for being.

"When I told him I'd probably lose all my jazz fans [with these songs], I was right. I did," Laine told David Kilby of Australian Broadcasting Corp. "But he said I would pick up a lot of other kind of listeners, and I did, so he was right, too."

Miller produced most of Laine's hits in the 1940s and 1950s, including "Mule Train" and "That Lucky Old Sun." He said he loved Laine's voice because it sounded like "the blue-collar man, the guy who didn't know where his next paycheck was coming from."

Laine at first refused to do "Mule Train."

"You can't expect me to do a cowboy song," he told Miller. "I won't do it!"

But Miller persuaded him to record it and it was one of Laine's biggest hits.

Though Laine was big of voice, he said he didn't like being referred to as a "belter."

"I was just trying to emphasize the rhythmic aspects of the songs I sang, using my voice the way a jazz soloist uses his instrument," he said in "That Lucky Old Son," his 1993 autobiography (written with Joseph F. Laredo). "'Crooning' may have the more commercial style, but it wasn't for me."

Francesco Paolo LoVecchio was born March 30, 1913, the eldest of eight children of Sicilian immigrants who settled in the Little Italy neighborhood in Chicago. His father was a barber whose customers included Al Capone; his maternal grandfather was the victim of a mob hit. Laine said he came from a "big and poor, but happy" family.

As a kid, Laine sang in the all-boy choir at church, but first became excited about music when he listened to one of his mother's records on a windup Victrola: Bessie Smith singing "Bleeding Hearted Blues," with "Midnight Blues" on the flip side.

"The first time I laid the needle down on that record I felt cold chills and an indescribable excitement," Laine would say later.

This record was his first exposure to jazz and the blues, which would draw him into music.

At 18, with the Depression underway and his father out of work, Laine hit the road as a dance marathoner. Altogether he participated in 14 marathons, coming in first on three occasions. He and his partner, Ruthie Smith, made it into the Guinness Book of World Records for dancing 145 days straight (although he disputed Guinness, saying he and Smith danced for 146 days).

Laine said the life of a marathoner wasn't as grim as was portrayed in the 1969 film, "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?"

Randisi; Foxwell; Patterson from Galleycat

From Bob Randisi

Hey Guys,

  Since yours are the only blogs I read--and I never used to ready ANY--I thoiught I'd let you know that Vince Van Patten will be appearing on Fox News Live on Sat. Feb 10, 10:00 Pacific time, specifically to discuss our Texas Hold'em mystery The Picasso Flop. With a little bit of luck he'll even mention my name.

    Also, my first Rat Pack book shipped so well and was reviewed well enough for SMP to want two more. That's four, counting the one I just delivered. The first two are EVERYBODY KILLS SOMEBODY SOMETIME and LUCK BE A LADY, DON'T DIE. The third will  be HEY THERE, YOU WITH THE GUN IN YOUR HAND.

I published my first book with SMP in 1984, have been on a book every other year schedule with them. This is the first time they've ever given me a two book contract. Go figure.


Elisabeth Foxwell

Ed here: Because I have to go through my webmaster to add sites to my links I'll start recommending some that haven't made it to the links list yet. Writer, editor, mystery historian (and very nice person) Elizabeth Foxwell has one of the best sites going. You really need to check it out.

http://elizabethfoxwell.blogspot.com/2007/02/happy-birthday-margaret-millar.html


The Patterson machine rolls on--Galleycat

 
Inside Patterson, Inc.
I've said all along that to treat James Patterson like any other author - and hold him to the same standards - is an unwise move. He used to run an advertising agency, and the model he's concocted is clearly based on having a CEO come up with big ideas, and creative mouses scurrying around to flesh them out with backbreaking deadlines. (Or as Little, Brown publisher Michael Pietsch puts it, Patterson is effectively "developing a studio system for writers." That's contrary to the image of "the lonely writer in a garret," Pietsch says. "But a lot of great popular entertainment, even great and serious art, comes out of collaboration.") As it happens, USA TODAY's Bob Minzesheimer gets a clearer look at the working life (and success) of Patterson thanks to the author, his newest co-writer and other publishing insiders. Michael Cader at Publishers Lunch calculated that if Patterson were treated as a publishing house unto himself, he'd be tied for fourth for most No. 1 best sellers in 2006 — ahead of all of HarperCollins, a major publisher. Exactly.

Minzesheimer also discovers how Patterson's newest co-authorship with Michael Ledwidge came about. The latter had written three novels that yielded big advances but sold a combined total of 20,000 copies. He'd known Patterson in his doorman days, and the bestseller helped land an agent. When Ledwidge asked Patterson to look at a draft of what he hoped would be his fourth novel, Patterson had a counteroffer: Would he be interested in collaborating on a novel Patterson had in mind? Ledwidge says he agreed "at about the speed of light."

Patterson had the outline, Ledwidge fleshed him out and the younger author seems very happy with the arrangement, since he can now write full-time. "It's like a dream; to have one job, not two...If you look at the newsletter of the Mystery Writers of America, everyone is always talking about how to market yourself, not the writing part. Now I don't have to worry about that."

Posted by Sarah | 09:11 AM | Authors | Email this post

Heather Havrilesky

Heather Havrilesky of Salon.com has become my favorite TV critic. She's fun to read and she generally has her own take on the vast wasteland that stretches unendingly before us. I'm introducing her here with two of her reviews from this morning. Another reason I like her is that I usually agree with her. She's dead on in both of these reviews. For me anyway. I don't know why I got so hooked on Orange County Bimbos last year but I did. But ten minutes into this year's opening segment I realized these women are selfish airheads who bitch about how tough their lives are while blowing through money like Michael Jackson. Maybe I was hypnotized by their gigantic fake boobs, as Heather points out.

Ladies and gentlemen....Heather Havrilesky

A bubblin' crude:

If there's one thing more formidable than dirty-minded female robots, it's dirty-minded female comedians. Sarah Silverman has always taken great pleasure in this fact, peppering her routines with jokes that are sure to make even the heartiest, most resilient, most outrageously un-p.c. jerk among us cringe ever so slightly:

"I was raped by a doctor, which is so bittersweet for a Jewish girl."

"I don't care if you think I'm a racist, I just want you to think that I'm thin."

"A couple nights ago, I was licking jelly off my boyfriend's penis. And I thought, 'Oh, my God. I'm turning into my mother.'"

Silverman may not have shiny silver man-titties, but she does have enormous balls. She's fearless, cranky and merciless, with a taste for the absurd. What's not to like? That girl should get herself a comedy show!

Unfortunately, Comedy Central's "The Sarah Silverman Program" (10:30 p.m. Thursdays) has all of the charms of a joke with an audible fart as the punch line. In fact, in one scene, Silverman and her friends are out to brunch, and each friend takes a turn farting audibly. When it's Silverman's turn, she soils herself instead of farting, then breaks into a melancholy ballad about pooping instead of farting, and we cut to a music video starring Silverman in a flowing white dress, gesturing dramatically on the beach like a lovelorn Alanis Morissette.

Sounds great, right? And it should be, but it's not. This confuses me. After all, I applaud almost everything that Silverman stands for: I like that, instead of accepting her fate playing benign, kinda-funny kinda-hot roles on sitcoms, she insists on writing comedy that's absurd and offensive and seriously crude. That's not the sort of thing that women in Hollywood attempt to do very often.

Nonetheless, it's not funny enough. Furthermore, I find Silverman's character on the show grating and unlikable. Even though her character is supposed to be lazy and self-involved and pathetic, even though I quite obviously relate to this lazy, self-involved, pathetic character, I still find her unbearably cutesy and grating. You know how Chris Elliott of "Get a Life" had a certain flair that told you that, even though he was a total loser, he secretly thought he was a little bit adorable anyway? Well, Silverman has that same coy smile, but in her case, it seems to detract from the laughs instead of adding to them. She's a little too happy with herself, too peppy, too chirpily harsh.

Silverman's character could take a few pointers from Tina Fey on "30 Rock" (You're watching it now, right?): an awkward, vaguely pathetic character who manages not to be unbearably smug and cloying in a way that makes you want to punch her in the face. With all of the potential here -- the fantasy sequences, the extreme weirdness, the desire to offend -- Silverman should manage to make us laugh more often. I'm going to give this one a 3 on the Bad Sitcom Pain Scale.

Plant me in your penthouse:

So there. I just assigned a number to someone else's creation, something that another human being put lots of time and energy into, and that makes me far lazier and more pathetic than any character Silverman could dream up.

But at least I'm not as lame as any of those "Real Housewives of Orange County" (10 p.m. Tuesdays on Bravo), which is why I watch the show in the first place. People who need bad people are the loneliest people in the world, you see.

"Real Housewives" is the purest example of the Bad People genre of reality TV that I can think of. It's all about rubbernecking the worst sorts of behaviors and traits: Laziness, vanity, greed, egocentrism, teaching your children that money is the most important thing in the world, teaching your horse that it's perfectly normal, and not incredibly embarrassing, for a horse to wear hot-pink leg warmers.

Of course it makes sense that when Hollywood went hunting for obnoxious yet telegenic freaks, they didn't have to search very far. Orange County is home to mutants of all stripes, from a rich array of surgically modified, neurotic housewives to a vast and colorful range of fine examples from the whoring sea donkey species. As it turns out, Orange County is the natural habitat for a thrillingly demonstrative variety of freaks who are more than willing to strut and swagger and show off their brightly colored plumage and their repetitive mating cries for the camera's benefit.

Since it would be an injustice if our impressions of Orange County remained represented mainly by the fickle teens of MTV's "Laguna Beach," Bravo's reality narrative allows us to look beyond the enormous fake tits and the botox injections and the ugly clothes that these housewives embrace, in order to see what these very real human beings are like on the inside: Namely, they're obsessed with spending money or contemplating the money they have to spend or showing off the stuff that they've bought with their money or imagining how much money other people have and are currently spending.

In this way "The Real Housewives of Orange County" is something of a paean to consumer culture. It's also a sweet little love letter to motherhood -- crappy motherhood, more specifically. When real estate agent Jeana isn't talking about how much commission she'll make when she sells a $15 million mansion, she's informing her daughter that she'd really like to sell one of the family dogs on eBay. The daughter is horrified and disgusted, but Jeana doesn't mind. In fact, she seems to move about her life in a constant state of distraction, while her kids alternately roughhouse, act out and try to comfort each other, since their mom can't seem to manage it.

When Lauri, a tall blonde who looks like she's been surgically altered to resemble Heather Locklear, talks about her divorce and how it affected her three kids, all she mentions is how devastating it must've been for them to live in a small apartment. Thank god those days are over, because Lauri just met another rich guy, and he's so very successful and he's such a good guy, and did she mention how rich he was? It seems that the males of the Orange County species are more than happy to pay for their wives' extravagant lifestyles as long as they look as much like a Barbie as humanly possible. Lauri's life is going great again! Well, except for the small matter of her son having assaulted a teacher at school (the boy is currently living in a state-run boarding school), which Lauri glosses over in conversations on the beach with her friends.

And then there's Jo, the whoring sea donkey of the group. Jo doesn't seem to have a career or a life of any kind, but she does have a chumpy boyfriend who pays for everything while she dresses up in lingerie and goes to parties at the Playboy mansion without him. These days, Jo is so, like, over her boyfriend, but then she kinda wonders who's going to buy her, like, food if she breaks up with him.

Yes, "Real Housewives" is full of soulless, distasteful people who will disappoint and disgust you and most important, make you feel much better about your own disturbingly shallow existence. Which is nice, because when you smile at how shallow and focused on quick fixes and immediate gratification other people are, the world smiles back at you, then reminds you that there's blueberry pie in the fridge with your name on it.

Next week: What do white rappers, Broadway hopefuls and interior designers have in common?

It probably CAN happen here

From Galleycat:

Expect to Pay at the British Library

Thanks to the prospect of serious cuts - potentially up to 7 percent of its 100 million pound annual budget - the British Library is about to engage in some drastic measures. The Independent reports that in order to survive, the library proposes to slash opening hours by more than a third and to charge researchers for admission to the reading rooms for the first time. All public exhibitions would close, along with schools learning programs. The permanent collection, which includes a copy of every book published in the UK, would be permanently reduced by 15 per cent. And the national newspaper archive, used by 30,000 people a year, including many researching their family trees, would close.

The reaction has been swift and angry. Award-winning author Margaret Drabble, who is currently using the library for research, said: "It would be a very great mistake and tragic to make cuts. It is a great national institution and it is used by scholars from all over the world." Ex-Monty Python star Michael Palin, who is a patron of the library, said it was a "precious and thrilling resource" that needs to be looked after. Even the House of Lords is up in arms, but the Department for Culture says the expected cuts will mean that more savings need to be made. A spokesman said: "The cultural sector has had huge real-terms increases in funding since 1997. Clearly, this cannot go on indefinitely."

Ed here: This sounds like something Bush would come up with--and may yet to pay for his wars. You mean in the entire British budget there wasn't enough fat in some other less vital segment to spare the library? Given all the yahoos in our own congress (no, the world wasn't created 120 years ago!) expect this to come to a library near you very soon.

Cussler vs. Anschutz...oh what a tangled web

Billionaire claims that novelist duped him in selling film rights
As a trial over the movie 'Sahara' begins, Philip Anschutz's lawyers say Clive Cussler inflated book sales figures.
By Glenn F. Bunting and Josh Getlin, Times Staff Writers
February 2, 2007


Anschutz's Hollywood Adventures
Related Stories
- Cussler sues over 'Sahara'
Attorneys for Philip Anschutz allege that author Clive Cussler duped the Denver industrialist into paying $10 million for film rights to the adventure novel "Sahara" by flagrantly inflating his book sales to more than 100 million copies.

"Cussler and his agent had gotten away with these numbers for years," said Alan Rader, Anschutz's lawyer. "It was a lie and it doomed the movie."

The claim is "ridiculous," Cussler said Thursday outside a courtroom at Los Angeles County Superior Court. "They wanted the book. They solicited us."

The allegations surfaced at the start of a civil trial that seeks to settle a dispute over who is responsible for Anschutz's company losing $105 million on "Sahara," the 2005 movie starring Matthew McConaughey and Penelope Cruz.

The trial, which includes claims of sabotage, fraud, profligate spending and racism, is expected to provide a rare behind-the-scenes look at the world of moviemaking. Lawyers selected a jury Thursday and are scheduled to make opening arguments today.

Among those on the witness list are Anschutz, the secretive 67-year-old multibillionaire; former Paramount Pictures Chairwoman Sherry Lansing; director Breck Eisner, the son of the former Walt Disney Co. chairman; McConaughey, who also served as executive producer; and Cussler, the 75-year-old author.

Cussler initially sued Anschutz's Crusader Entertainment in 2004, charging that producers reneged on a contract that gave the author extraordinary approval rights over the screenplay. Anschutz countersued, alleging that Cussler deliberately torpedoed the film through his repeated attempts to write his own scripts, all of which were rejected by the producers. Both sides are seeking millions of dollars in damages.

In court papers, Anschutz's attorneys claim that Cussler "perpetrated a massive fraud" to secure an "unprecedented" contractual agreement in 2000.

"The essence of Cussler's fraud was simple: He lied about how many books he had sold to induce Crusader to enter the agreement," the papers state.

In addition to their effect on the trial, the allegations may raise broader questions about the authenticity of publishing-industry sales figures.

for the rest read here
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-fraud2feb02,0,1143917.story?coll=la-home-business

John McCartry's The Fearmakers

Ed here: John and I go back to the early nineties and have shared pretty much the same kind of careers most full-time mid-listers do. The following is pretty much self-explanatory. I've never read a a book of John's that I didn't both enjoy and admire. He's a true craftsmen.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 19, 2007


GO BEHIND THE SCENES WITH THE DIRECTORS WHO HAVE CREATED SOME OF MOVIE HISTORY’S GREATEST HORROR FILMS

“THE FEARMAKERS COLLECTION”

Three-Disc, 10 Episode Set Available From Elite Entertainment
May 8th for $29.98

Scarborough, ME – They are considered the true masters of horror, with directing careers that span nearly a century. From “Dracula” to “Cat People,” “The House on Haunted Hill” to “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” these illustrious luminaries literally created a film genre. Their fascinating careers and iconic films are showcased in “The Fearmakers Collection,” a three-disc, 10 episode series highlighting some of the world’s greatest makers of classic horror and suspense films. The set will be available from Elite Entertainment on May 8th at a suggested retail price of $29.98.

“Never before have horror fans had the opportunity to hear stories of the horror genre’s greatest directors, all in one complete DVD set,” said Vini Bancalari, President, Elite Entertainment. “From interviews with some of the directors themselves, to the talent featured both in front of and behind the camera, and those that were inspired by these filmmaking giants, ‘The Fearmakers Collection’ will undoubtedly become a mainstay of any horror film collection.”

Each disc in “The Fearmakers Collection” set highlights an array of interviews with directors, producers, actors, writers and critics that have made their mark in the horror and suspense film field. The half hour episodes feature the careers of:

Jack Arnold—Known for his exotic settings and master of the 3-D shock effect, Arnold’s resume includes such classics as “It Came From Outer Space,” “The Creature from the Black Lagoon” and “The Incredible Shrinking Man.”
Tod Browning—Renowned as the director of the original “Dracula” (1931), Browning also made his mark in the horror world with “Freaks,” “Mark of the Vampire” and “London After Midnight.”
William Castle—The master of the promotional “gimmick” (such as attaching vibrating devices to theater seats), Castle directed such popular ‘50s films as “The House on Haunted Hill,” “The Tingler” and “Macabre.”
Roger Corman—Having set a record for the shortest amount of time to shoot a professional feature film (two days, one night to film “Little Shop of Horrors,” which featured a young, unknown Jack Nicholson) Corman went on to have an illustrious career with such films as “It Conquered The World,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Pit and the Pendulum” and “The Raven.”
Terence Fisher—Fisher got his big break at the age of 52 with “The Curse of Frankenstein,” a shocker that set a new standard for modern horror films. His other works include “Horror of Dracula,” “The Hound of the Baskervilles” and “The Phantom of the Opera.”
Tobe Hooper—Perhaps no modern-day director is more associated with one film than Tobe Hooper and the original “Texas Chainsaw Massacre.”
Roman Polanski—Considered a cinematic master of many film genres, Polanski set a high-water mark with his riveting work directing “Rosemary’s Baby.” His other notable horror-themed projects include “Repulsion,” “The Tenant” and the horror/vampire spoof “The Fearless Vampire Killers.”
Jacques Tourneur—French filmmaker Tourneur got his big break in 1942, when noted producer Val Lewton started up the new horror unit of RKO and assigned Tourneur to direct its first picture, “Cat People.” Other works include “I Walked with a Zombie,” “The Leopard Man” and “Curse of the Demon.”
Roland West—Though his directing career was short lived, West was known for such atmospheric, moody horror films as “The Bat,” “The Bat Whispers” and “The Monster” and remains even better known for a real life murder case in which he was a suspect!
Robert Wise—While he’s best known for directing such movie musical classics as “West Side Story” and “The Sound of Music,” Wise is immortal to horror fans as the architect of such genre classics as “Curse of the Cat People,” “The Body Snatcher” and “The Haunting.”

Each episode of “The Fearmakers” also features interviews with a variety of talent connected with these movie masters and the horror film world, including: John Agar, Samuel Z. Arkoff, Dario Argento, John Carpenter, Jeffrey Combs, Joe Dante, Stuart Gordon, Richard Matheson and David J. Skal.

The DVD set is based on the popular book “The Fearmakers,” by John McCarty, who is co-producer, co-director, co-writer, co-editor and narrator of the series. The book profiles about 20 classic horror and suspense film directors (including the 10 featured in the DVD collection).

John McCarty is the author of more than 20 non-fiction books on the film and entertainment industry, including his most recent title, Bullets Over Hollywood: The American Gangster Picture from the Silents to The Sopranos (Da Capo Press). McCarty recently completed a documentary about the late Oscar-winning filmmaker and AFI Life Achievement Award winner Robert Wise, whom McCarty interviewed in 1996.

Elite Entertainment was founded in 1993. The company is currently one of the leaders in the restoration and distribution of horror, science fiction and cult DVD titles, including “Night of the Living Dead,” “Evil Dead,” “Tower of Evil” and “I Spit On Your Grave.” Other titles include the cult favorite “Horror;” a triple feature on the Masterworks of the German Horror Cinema, including the original silent films “Nosferatu,” “Der Golem” and “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari;” the “Drive-In Discs” series, and the popular Millennium Edition series, including “Night of the Living Dead,” “Re-Animator” and “I Spit On Your Grave.” Visit www.elitedisc.com.

# # #

CONTACT: Josh Davidson
ELITE ENTERTAINMENT
(914) 478-8810
josh@elitedisc.com


The Fearmakers Collection
Street Date: May 8th
Order Date: April 10th
Catalog #: ELT-DV-2225
Retail Price: $29.98

Sidney Sheldon; Harold Robbins

The news is filled with the details of Sidney Sheldon's life and death. I was only able to finish one of his books, a passing fair suspense novel THE NAKED FACE that won the Edgar in its year. He was a cartoonist rather than a novelist, his characters so much larger than life that they rarely did anything true to human behavior as we know it. Super soap opera, to be fair to him. I just don't happen to have a taste for it is all.

While his books didn't interest me, his career did. Yes, he had career stalls in his sixty year run but when you consider that he had two Broadway shows running simeltaneously in his early Twenties and international bestseller well into his eighth decade, his achievements were notable. He also wrote several very good old-school movie comedies.

It helped that he was respectable. He was grandfatherly on TV, you could safely give his books to just about anybody, and his Hollywood novels contained the kind of legend and lore that we never seem to tire of.

I've contrasted his press today with that that Harold Robbins got when he passed.

There was a time when Robbins was at least marginally respectable. Back in the late Forties and up to 1958, Robbins managed to not only to entertain but to elevate the form of popular fiction. I agree with Mario Puzo who once claimed that A STONE FOR DANNY FISHER is a serious novel about America in the Thirties and Forties. I think even the fanatically maligned THE CARPETBAGGERS was, if not a serious novel, a damned good trashy one that was besotted with the Hollywood of our fantasies. There's some very nice stuff in that book.

I've never been able to find a believable explanation--or at least a consistently believable one--for why he then turned his books into rather silly soft core porn machines. The easy answer, and maybe the true one, is that he caught the wave of the counter culture, the whole swinging Sixties thing a few years before it became a part of our entire country. He wanted to sell more and more books. And he certainly succeeded.

During the Sixties and Seventies there were many press stories about his yachts, his women, his drugs, his sleazy contacts with international crime barons, etc. etc. In the later Seventies there were even rumors that he was so addled with his hedonistic life that his books were being ghosted. I remember opening one up at a newstand one day--this was about a preacher I think--and being struck by how unlike Robbins the writing was. Even at his worst he was never this awkward.

He was a real writer in the beginning. As I say, I don't know why he decided that being a gazillionaire was more rewarding than turning out a good book. He had to have had plenty of money by the time he turned to porn.

Esquire did a long piece on him shortly before he died. He was rich but in sad shape, boastful in spots but well aware that his time as a literary star had passed. I wish somebody would write a serious biography of his life. It would be a damned interesting book.

Bentley Little

From Ron at Galleycat one of the best sites on the web:


Ed here: Bentley Little writes some of the most searing and spellbinding horror novels of our time. One of the things that drives them is Bentley's anger at the injustice we see all around us. This quality gives his work a reality too often lacking in the horror genre. Ron at Galleycat posted this yesterday.


From Ron at Galleycat one of the best sites on the web:


Rafferty's Latest Dobby Horror Show

You might recall my delight earlier this month when the NYTBR assigned the new Hannibal novel to Terrence Rafferty, their all-too-infrequent horror critic. Well, last weekend they delivered the second installment of Rafferty's column. As we noted the last time this column came around, nobody else at the Review is covering mass-market originals, and very few of its contributors are writing with his full-on verve about any type of fiction. Here, for example, is Rafferty on horror writer Bentley Little:

"In a sense, his whole career—16 previous novels and a short-story collection—has been an elaborate self-conducted anger management program, from which he has yet to graduate. The Burning is just the latest in a series of Little novels in which boiling-mad victims of one social injustice or another set out to redress the wrongs done to them, and go way too far. And in all his books the writer appears to be working extremely hard to keep his sympathy for these angry devils from getting the better of him. In every novel, he maintains a running auto-critique, heckling himself like a drunken doppelganger in the audience, with the invective intensifying noticeably as the act nears its conclusion."

Admit it, even if you can't stand genre fiction, reading that description makes Little sound awfully darn interesting, doesn't it? Heck, last week Lee Siegel churned out how many thousands of words about Norman Mailer, and he didn't make him sound half as compelling as that.

War movie chic; Hwood rules; Marsha Hunt

From Page Six:
(Ed here--whatever happened to band of Brothers?)

IS the director of notoriously trashy "Showgirls" about to top himself? While it doesn't open here until March, Paul Verhoeven's war drama "Black Box" is already gaining notoriety in Europe. Its over-the-top scenes include star Carice van Houten dying her pubic hair blond and getting human waste dumped over her head while half-nude. Cosmo Landesman of London's Sunday Times writes: "Call me old-fashioned, but when it comes to Second World War yarns about the brave men and women who resisted the Nazi occupation of their country, I don't want to see sexy shots of pubic hair."

------------------------
Ed here: brief but interesting piece on trying to get a decision out of the Hwood suits.

THE RULES OF HOLLYWOOD
When It Comes to Patience, First Learn the Math
By Beth Lapides, Beth Lapides' first book, "Did I Wake You? Haikus for Modern Living," was recently published by Soft Skull Press.
January 28, 2007 Los Angeles Times

Everyone in this "I need it yesterday" town is waiting for something: the overnights, the weekend read, the end of the day when they can finally take the edge off all the waiting with a drink. In this business, waiting's the thing. Which is why the image of the Sardi's booth, with a post-show cast huddled in anticipation of the early edition, is one of the stickiest images in show business iconography. And it's why waiting tables is the quintessential Hollywood day job.

"
Unfortunately, I had not yet learned the primary axiom of Hollywood Math: The absence of yes over time equals no. So I kept waiting. (But later she concludes). Because sometimes the absence of no over time equals yes.

-----

SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 28 — The orange and blue neon lights of the Castro Theater shone blurrily on the damp asphalt beneath the crisscrossing catenary wires of the streetcars. The words on the marquee in the Friday night gloom, read:

“Marsha Hunt: In Person.”

Jim Wilson/The New York Times
The Castro Theater in San Francisco on opening night of the Noir City film festival.
Film Noir Foundation

John Ireland and Marsha Hunt in “Raw Deal” (1948).

Jim Wilson/The New York TimesMs. Hunt made more than 50 movies before her career was wrecked in 1950 by the Hollywood blacklist. One of them, a 1948 crime melodrama called “Raw Deal,” has gone on to an unlikely second life as a favorite of the cultish devotees of film noir. On Friday it opened the fifth annual Noir City film festival here, and Ms. Hunt, 89, was on hand to watch its dreamlike silvery hues make a rare appearance on a big — very big — screen.

Lithe and glowing, Ms. Hunt took the stage after the film and said she was surprised not only that this dark little B movie had found fans nearly 60 years after its release, but that so many of them were here, nearly filling the Castro’s more than 1,400 seats. The crowd was a mix of young and old, polished and scruffy, with only a few fedoras in sight.

“I can’t get over this,” Ms. Hunt said as the film festival’s founder and organizer, Eddie Muller, genially interviewed her at the foot of the stage. “It was a strange sort of film,” she added, “about as negative as you can get. They hadn’t coined the term ‘noir’ yet.”

She’s right. It’s hard to imagine a darker film, literally or figuratively, than “Raw Deal.” Consisting almost entirely of luminescent day-for-night photography, it’s the story of an escaped con (played by Dennis O’Keefe) and the two women who love him (Ms. Hunt was one; Claire Trevor was the other), and features, among other pitch-black set pieces, a villain (Raymond Burr) who disfigures his girlfriend with a flaming dessert, and a furious midnight brawl in a seaside taxidermy shop. At the end everyone is either ruined, dead or under arrest.

And that darkness was just fine with the moviegoers here, which applauded vigorously as the closing titles rolled, just as they had at the beginning when the credit for the film’s director of photography, John Alton, the master of all that darkness, appeared on screen.

Ed here: interesting to note that John Ireland gets top billing when the stars are Dennis O'Keefe and Marsha Hunt. But then nobody would know who O'Keefe is, right? Fair enough.

But if you grew up in Iowa you knew O'Keefe, of course. he was born and raised here. He had a decent career in the Bs as a sort of road show Cary Grant. Most of his films were forgettable but every once in a while he stumbled over a good script. This is his best movie and one hell of a good noir. Three times a decades the film magazine carry articles claiming that O'Keefe's career needs to be reconsidered. I don't know about that but here, older, heavier, a real sadness in the gaze, he does some fine fine work. And Raymond Burr is truly scary.

Dail News sez Regan fired for Mantle not OJ

Hack job on Mantle KOd Regan

Top editor sunk by '7' after O.J. fiasco

BY ADAM NICHOLS
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

O.J. Simpson's kill-and-tell book sickened America, but it was the crass sullying of New York hero Mickey Mantle that finally toppled publisher Judith Regan, according to New York magazine.
In a behind-the-scenes look at the scandal that rocked Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., the magazine claims the outcry against O.J.'s book, "If I Did It," left the famously temperamental Regan reeling, but still working.

It was her next project, a fictional account of Mantle's past filled with pornography, foul jokes and a seamy affair with Marilyn Monroe, which led to her downfall after the Daily News splashed it on page one.

"The supposed sullying of Mantle's name hit the cover of the Daily News," says the New York magazine piece, published tomorrow. And "[Harper Collins' CEO Jane] Friedman hit the roof."

"By this point, Friedman was sick of playing nice," the mag continued. "News Corp. executives were appalled, as was [News Corp. mogul] Murdoch."

"Mickey Mantle felt like another major blunder," says one executive of the book, which was to be called, "7: The Mickey Mantle Novel." "It just reinforced the sense that [Regan was] an irresponsible editor."

The falling ax hit Regan, who headed ReganBooks - an arm of Harper Collins. And it fell on the day News Corp. employees, including the staff of the money-losing New York Post, were celebrating their holiday party in New York's Hilton Hotel.

The firing was ordered directly by Murdoch, although its seasonal timing surprised even him, the magazine reports.

But the last to know was Regan herself.

"Everyone was shepherded into the conference room, where a long-suffering ReganBooks deputy made the announcement: Judith has been fired," the mag recounts.

Workers were told Regan had already been escorted from the building, but they later found her eating a sandwich at her desk, ignorant of her firing.

"So I'm eating a sandwich," the magazine reports her telling workers. "Why are you staring at me?"

Regan, who is now reported to be planning a break from work to travel, had apparently seen the O.J. book as the pinnacle of her career, the magazine article says.

But Simpson's hypothetical discussion of how he would have killed Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman disgusted the nation - and outraged relatives of the victims.

Regan was encouraged to speak out in favor of the book - including giving interviews about personal experience of domestic abuse - by News Corp. executives eager to make her take the heat, the magazine says.

"Executives had begun to realize they needed a villain, a scapegoat, distancing the company from the project, making it one woman's mad dream," the article reports.

The O.J. book was eventually canned and so was the Mickey Mantle project.

The magazine said talk of Regan's firing at the holiday party was met with applause by many News Corp. staffers.

"Friedman told editors that she had fired Regan," says the article. "When she said it, people began to clap."

Originally published on January 28, 2007

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Whatever works

I got an e mail from a writer I knew back when we were both starting out. These days he writes as much non-fiction as fiction. he tells me that non-fic is in about the same shape as fic these days. Grim. At least in the slots he works.

I asked him if he still believed it was detrimental to his work process to read fiction. He replied that other than short stories and novelettes (he started out in science fiction) he hasn't read much fiction in the twenty-five years since we've communicated.

I'm a firm believer in the whatever works process. If you can only do your best work sitting inside a refrigerator wearing a snowsuit, go to it. There's no right or wrong when you're talking about stirring your muse.

But as I said to him then and said to him again, it's difficult to imagine a day passing when I don't read for at least two or three hour. That's my process. Now I don't always read a lot of genre. Right now for instance I'm going through a small stack of Larry McMurtry novels set in the Hwood of the eighties. Fine stuff. The writing's so good I get energy from it. It's so good it makes me want to be better with my own work.

Whatever works. Do any of you feel that reading fiction inhibits your own writing?

Blue Cheer

Ed Lynskey has published a number of notable short stories over the past several years so I was interested in reading one of his novels. If the landscape of Blue Cheer (Wildside) is somewhat familiar--backwoods (in this case West Virginia), a homegrown terrorist group, a number of physical confrontations--the writing itself demonstrates that there are truly no old ideas, just old treatments. Lynskey is both a skilled stylist and a wise reporter of human madness. His storytelling is smooth, realistic and full of large and small surprises. This manages to be in equal parts a novel of action and a novel of character. Hopefully Blue Cheer will bring Lynskey the larger audience he's deserved for some time now.

-----------------------
Brazoria mayor ends battle to ban racial epithet | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle: "By RICHARD STEWART
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle

After facing intense opposition against a proposed ordinance that would have outlawed the use of the 'n-word' in his town, Brazoria Mayor Ken Corley announced Thursday he would drop the proposal altogether.

Ed here: I'm against banning laguage of virtually any kind and that includes sending Isiash Washington, jerk that he is, into some kind of Orwellian rehab where he gets his brain washed. I think we have to be very careful of this impulse to make everybody politically correct. But the gun we're turning on the Washingtons now can just as easily be turned on us someday. Any actor who can't get along with cast or crew should be fired but not sent to some shrink who'll bombard him with bromides and pretend that the guy is "cured."

David Goodis

Millepede Press, which thus far has not made a single mistake in the way it has selected, packaged and marketed its books, has now issued two David Goodis novels just in time to join in the attempt by two or three different groups to repair Goodis' reputation and make it equal to that of Jim Thompson's. There was recently a David Goodis convention. Not many writers, living or dead, get a tribute like that.

The two novels here are NIGHTFALL and STREET OF NO RETURN. I prefer the former because it's a damned good story and because Goodis controls it throughout. And, if I might be allowed to sound suburban here, because it features a protagonist I don't mind identifying with. There's an excellent introduction by Bill Pronzini with key biographical information about Goodis.

STREET OF NO RETURN is more typical of Goodis' work for Lion and Gold Medal, the jinxed protagonist, the almost Lovecraftian darkness. STREET also makes clear the difference between Thompson and Goodis. Much as we might at least theoretically feel some compassion for the typical Thompson protagonist, he usually is, and make no mistake, a predator. The typical Goodis man is a victim.

I've always felt that if Goodis' books lacked that quintessential incandescent moment you find in the best of Thompson, he compensated by being a better craftsman. He turns Philidelphia into a city Dante would have appreciated. Robert Polito, in his fine introduction, also points out how Goodis varied his style and language, using in STREET, a "snaky diction" (nifty phrase) to create this particular take on his helltown.

Important books, and emminently readable ones. Millipede scores again.

E. Howard Hunt

From Fred Blosser


Ed,

You may already have flagged this for the blog if the story was reported this morning in your local paper.  The Washington Post reports that Watergate figure and Gold Medal author E. Howard Hunt died yesterday at age 88.  Story linked here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/23/AR2007012301012.html?sub=AR  The obit notes Hunt's career as a novelist, including his work as Gordon Davis, Robert Dietrich, and other noms-de-plume.   Paperback collectors will recall that at the height of the Watergate story (1973-74), Pinnacle brought several of his old Gold Medal books back to print under his own name to capitalize on the publicity.  As David St. John, he also wrote a series of spy novels for Signet in the mid-'60s about Peter Ward, an imitation James Bond.

Fred
----------
EG-
As I've noted before, I remember thumbing through a 1947-maybe 1948 Esquire about twenty years ago and finding an article about the leading young literary writers to come out of WW 11. Mailer, Capote, major players like that--and included among them was E. Howard Hunt. Apparently he wrote pretty good war novel. But by 1951 he was publishing paperback originals, which had to indicate a real career crash back then.I've never seen that satisfactorily explained by the way.

Also Bill Crider has slide show of Hunt's pb covers. You can count the decades of his career when you see them. You and link to it from my Links list here.

Otto Penzler & Uncertain Endings*

Last night, in reviewing Otto Penzler's extraordinarily good anothology Uncertain Endings, I mentioned that I didn't understand Otto's antipathy to female writers. Otto responded in the following letter.

Hi Ed,
Many thanks for the nice review. It's a book I'd wanted to do for 35 years--ever since I turned 50.
I mainly bash women writers because, well, they're mainly lousy writers with no sense of literary style or ambition. While she's a despicable human people, I think Ruth Rendell is brilliant. I love P.D. James. I loved Patricia Highsmith's work. I have (mostly) been a great fan of Minette Walters and Denise Mina. Often Liza Cody. I've liked early Patsy Cornwall. I think Joyce Carol Oates, for all her brilliance, is underrated. So sue me if I find nothing redeeming or original in Lillian Jackson Braun, Rita Mae Brown (and, of course, Sneaky Pie Brown), hairdresser mysteries, etc. They're not written for me, so mostly I try to leave them alone. It's when they start winning awards or are outrageously praised (either publicly or to me personally) that I feel a need to respond. It would be easier if I let them be. I just cain't.
All best wishes, Otto

-------

BTW I really can't say enough good things about Uncertain Endings or Penzler's remarkable introduction. One of the outstanding anthologies of the last few years. Among the many excellent stories in the book, the one that has obsessed me for three days running is Aldous Huxley's "The Gioconda Smile." This is a novel compressed with skilled precision and concision into about 12,000 words. (As I recall, JT Ballard, back when he writing for the science fiction magazines of the Sixties, did his own take on this story.) Among the many stunning aspects of the story is that Huxley creates a protagonist who is a true intellectual (for good and ill) and doesn't just state this but demonstrates it on every page--how virtually every emotional reaction the man has is informed by his knowledge of classical art be it architecture, painting, poetry or history. He is also widely read in the sciences and several of the more astonishing metaphors are scientific in nature. I've read the story three times in four days and will probably read it again tonight. It's that rich in its ironies, self-delusions and treacheries.

Barbara Serenella; Otto Penzler; Kill It and Grill It

Sad news:

Barbara Seranella's Home Page: "Barbara Seranella
Born April 30, 1956
Died January 21, 2007

Barbara Seranella, 50, bestselling mystery author and resident of Laguna Beach and PGA West in La Quinta, died peacefully on January 21, 2007, at 4:15 p.m. EST (1:15 p.m. PST) at the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio, with her husband Ron Seranella and her brother Dr. Larry Shore at her side. Barbara, who died of end-stage liver disease while awaiting a liver transplant, leaves behind her husband Ron, brothers Larry Shore of San Francisco and David Shore of Woodacre, parents Nate and Margie Shore of La Quinta, and stepdaughters Carrie Seranella and Shannon Howard.

Private funeral arrangements are being made by the family. A celebration of Barbara's life is being planned for February; details will be announced later."
posted by Bill Crider @ 12:04 PM

---------
Book review

While I'll never understand why Otto Penzler berates most female mystery writers the way he does, I have to say that his editorial choices are otherwise pretty damned good. He turned Mysterious Press into a major player and the anthologies and collections he edits are usually impeccably selected.

Uncertain Endings (Pegasus $23.95) is certainly no exception. Billed as the "most baffling mysteries in literary history," this anthology "paradoxical puzzle stories" gave me a full weekend's pleasure. All you need to do is read the the tableof contents for author names and you'll unholster your credit card instantly. How about Ray Bradbury, Roald Dahl, Mark Twain, Stanley Ellin and the much underrated O. Henry among others?

This is a serious, dazzling collection of styles, historical periods and plain good writing. This goes on the keeper shelf for sure.

---------
Kill It and Grill It

My less than enthusiastic take on Ted Nugent and his scumbag appearance at the Texas Governor's Ball last week earned me funny phone call from one of our blog readers.

A woman called and said that she'd sat next to Nugent in high school study hall. Her impression of him wasn't especially favorable--no surprise--but then her impression of herself wasn't much better. She called herself "a bookish nerd." She said that she had to credit him with fulfulling his boasts. He said he had a band people would want to hear and after all the predictable trials and tribs he did become something of a one hit wonde after all. Then (my addition) he became a cult hero for people who eat roadkill.

Jerks On Parade-Show Biz takes*

I once saw a photgraph of several prominent TV newsmen at a Georgetown party with several prominent senators of both parties. It crystallized for me just about everything that's wrong with news and congress. Both are tools of the elite and have little if anything to do with us except in a marginal and cynical way. Both forces are in fact one. I was glad to see this take on the situation in the Washington Post this morning, This concerns the hiring of Rich Little as "the guest comic" as penance for hiring Stephen Colbert last year:

As for Little's being hired this year by the White House Correspondents' Association, Black said: "It's like going from Jackson Pollock to paint-by-numbers. God love Rich Little, but he's not in this decade. He's in no position to pose any threat to anyone. He makes Bob Hope look like Lenny Bruce. It's sad that we've reached this point" with comedy as political expression.

Another reason to scrap the dinner altogether, suggests Rem Rieder, editor of the American Journalism Review. After the Colbert controversy last year, and an earlier one in which Bush joked about not finding weapons of mass destruction, Rieder wrote that such press-politico events reflect the "smugness" and arrogance of the news media, suggesting that they are "part of a wealthy elite, completely out of touch with ordinary Americans."

The hiring of "a controversy-free" Little underscores the point, he says: "Do we really need a neon sign to proclaim the coziness of the White House press corps and the White House's occupant? It's really hard for me to understand making a decision like this, particularly so close to the WMD debacle. The dinner must go."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/20/AR2007012001287.html

--------------

In a long interview with the New Jersey Ledger, comes a definition of the kind of comedy that makes you squirm:

In addition to the commentary on the perils of modern celebrity, what "The Office" and "Extras" share (along with "Curb Your Enthusiasm" and the American "Office") is a fondness for the comedy of embarrassment, those moments when a person sticks his foot so far in his mouth that he can taste his socks. As Ricky Gervais notes:

"You've got to write about what you know, really. As a middle-class, Western male, I'm not being shot at, I'm not starving, the worst thing that happens to me is I make a fool of myself. That's it. What's the most interesting thing in a day for a normal person? The bus driver was rude, or you accidentally insulted someone, they took it the wrong way. Everyone can identify with that."

http://www.nj.com/columns/ledger/sepinwall/index.ssf?/base/columns-0/1168752916177390.xml&coll=1&thispage=3


From Ray Richmond and his Past Deadline column: Isiah Washington, Time-Warner,

On Isiah Washington insulting fellow cast member TR Knight by calling him a "faggot"

Again, Washington's intolerance should have been addressed with greater zeal back when the original incident erupted last fall. Instead, it was more or less covered up and deemphasized once the initial storm passed. It opened the door to what happened Monday night, when an actor who clearly was drunk on hubris and conceit seized the microphone from his boss to sneak in a jab at a man whose only sin appears to be a sexual orientation different from Washington's.

The message we're supposed to take from this now is everything has been fixed. It's back to being one big happy dysfunctional family. The fires have been extinguished. Everyone promises to behave. But of course, that's the perception that had to be sold publicly. The truth, however, is no doubt substantially murkier, and it's probably this: we're all making way too much money off of this show to allow for trouble in the ranks, so let's all just shut up, drive down our feelings and get back to work.

Ah, harmony in Hollywood.

(Ed here: I might note that in the past Washinton has allegedly twice had crew members get restraining orders against him. How does this jerk keep getting work?)

The Time-Warner Firings:

The ax fell on Thursday at Time Inc. in New York (and elsewhere), and when the chopping was finished the carnage proved devastating: nearly 300 jobs slashed company-wide at Time magazine, People magazine and Sports Illustrated. The blog Gawker noted that this came despite having just completed a year during which the company notched a profit of about 18%. So what we appear to have here are lambs again being sacrificed at the altar of moolah. What else is new?

The People magazine bureaus in Chicago, Washington, D.C., Austin and Miami are being shuttered, as are the Time mag bureaus in Los Angeles, Chicago and Atlanta along with the News Desk. Yes, Time magazine is getting rid of its News Desk. Does that mean the newsweekly is going out of the news business? It seems utterly incomprehensible.

http://reporter.blogs.com/pastdeadline/

Congratulations Bill Crider

I don't want to slight anybody here. There are a good number of unsung excellent writers trapped in the mid-list ghetto. I'd need three pages to list them.

But the writer I want to congratulate tonight has been at it for better than a quarter century and has excelled in mystery, western and horror. And at novel length as well as short story form.

In fact it's for one of his short stories "Cranked" – Damn Near Dead by Bill Crider (Busted Flush Press) that I'm singling him out tonight. In case you haven't heard, Bill's story was one of five nominated for an Edgar.

His novel Blood Marks remains one of the freshest takes on the serial killer storyline I've ever read. His Sheriff Dan Rhodes series combines wit and sociology in the way of K.C. Constantine. You get a portrait of Texas noirish bombast mostly misses. The real Texas I like to think.

I don't know how many of Bill's stories I've reprinted in various anthologies. Whatever the number, it's not enough. Once again, he works in many different forms when creating short stories. "Cranked" is just one of twenty or more Crider gems in the shorter form. He needs a collection.

So--congrats, Bill. Well deserved and here's hoping you get some more of that attention you've so long deserved.

Like a really really irritating dirtbag

The word always was that macho he-man loudmouth Ted Nugent was a draft dodger. I don't know if this piece clears that up but the rest of it sure clears up any doubts I had about him. Becoming legal guardian to avoid prison? If it's true, it's just one more reason that inviting him to this weiner roast was even more unfathomable.

From Huffington Post: by Ken Levine

Please Give a Warm Welcome to Ted Nugent!

So when Ted Nugent performed at the Texas Governor's Inaugural Ball with machine guns, a Confederate Flag T-shirt, and started shouting offensive remarks about people who don't speak English, uh was this a surprise to anyone? This wasn't John Davidson they hired. This was Ted Nugent, he of the biting live chickens on stage rumors.


Even if Mr. Nugent (or, as he's also known, Sweaty Teddy, Deadly Tedly, Great Gonzos, and my personal favorite - Theodocious Atrocious) was told to just sing his big hits that would mean "Wang Dang Sweet Poontang." Imagine starting the ladies choice dance with that?

Were the Johnny Mann Singers just unavailable that night?

Had anybody in the party planning committee read any of Mr. Nugent's quotes? Here are two of my faves:

Gun Control: "Only a coward supports gun control. You know how to stop carjacking? Shoot the carjacker. If someone is going to kill me for my Buick, I'm gonna shoot until I'm out of ammo - and then I'll call 911."

Feminists: What's a feminist anyways? A fat pig who doesn't get it often enough?"

Charming.

Andy Williams had a gig in Branson that night?

I still can't get over it. Ted Nugent? At the Governor's Ball? Author of "Kill It and Grill It". Legal guardian of a 17 year old Hawaiian girl to avoid statutory charges. The man who got a draft deferment by reporting to his draft board with a week's worth of excrement and urine in his pants (although I'm sure Texans would still have preferred he dressed for the ball like that than sport a Confederate flag). The only thing surprising to me is that THEY were surprised.
Amy Grant wanted too much money?

Personally, I find it hilarious. Mr. Nugent has said he's considering running for Governor of Michigan in 2010. I bet even he's smart enough not to hire himself to sing at the Inaugural Ball.

Bob Randisi's gamble pays off

Several years ago Robert J. (Bob) Randisi decided to start writing books larger in scope to build more of an audience for himself. If you've been on any of the reviewing sites--or picked up a newspaper--lately you'll know how well he's succeeded with his novel Everybody Kills Somebody Sometimes, a book set in the Las Vegas of the early Sixties and starring the Rat Pack no less.

On top of that comes The Picasso Flop (Mysterious $24) which Randisi has co-authored with World Poker Tour TV host and commentator Vince Van Patten. This is another "insider" book, the world of professional poker playing laid out for the reader in colorful and suspenseful scenes as protagonist Jimmy Spain (recently relased from prison) is hired by a Texas gambler (and former cell mate of Spain's) to teach his daughter how to play poker. Unfortunately, murders start piling up at the casino and the young woman Kat finds herself the chief suspect. Some of the character sketches rival Elmore Leonard anti-heroes in their larky downscale lives.

Randisi builds his story with masterful tension, showing us how the poker tour system really works but never forgetting to turn the suspense screws tighter, either. The climax is a beauty and a surprise and certainly invites a second and even third book set in the world of Vegas poker.

EXTRAS

Caught the first episode of HBO Extras' second season last Sunday. So far my favorite episode is still the one with Ben Stiller as the crazed and egotistical film director who keeps quoting his box office numbers to everybody. But in a quieter way the episode last Sunday came close to hitting that high mark. This season Millman (Gervais) manages to sell a sit-com to the BBC which then proceeds to "take it to committee." What was once an original and unique show is now just another sit-com. Millman tells off the BBC show runners and threatens to quit. Will he? This season benefits from Gervais' partner Stephen Merchant being on-screen, too. He has an odd presence that manages to be irritating and amusing at the same time. This guy has no principles at all. He'd kill your mother for $1 if he knew how to load the gun.

Charles Beaumont on pulp fiction

One of the best pieces ever written on the real pulp fiction of the last century was done by Charles Beaumont for Playboy back in 1962. Thanks to Adventurehouse.com the article is available once again in full. I was struck by the opening paragraphs and wonder if kids today are still drawn to books and magazines the way we were or if it's video games and special effects movies that will shape their memories and creative pursuits.

Beaumont:

THERE WAS A RITUAL.

It was dark and mysterious, as rituals ought to be, and—for those who enacted it—a holy and enchanted thing. If you were a prepubescent American male in the Twenties, the Thirties or the Forties, chances are you performed the ritual. If you were a little too tall, a little too short, a little too fat, skinny, pimply, an only child, painfully shy, awkward, scared of girls, terrified of bullies, poor at your schoolwork (not because you weren’t bright but because you wouldn’t apply yourself), uncomfortable in large crowds, given to brooding, and totally and overwhelmingly convinced of your personal inadequacy in any situation, then you certainly performed it. Which is to say, you worshiped at the shrine of the pulps.

What were the pulps? Cheaply printed, luridly illustrated, sensationally written magazines of fiction aimed at the lower and lower-middle classes. Were they any good? No. They were great.potent literary drug known to boy, and all of us suffer withdrawal symptoms to this day.

No one ever kicked the pulps cold turkey. They were too powerful an influence. Instead, most of us tried to ease off. Having dreamed of owning complete sets, in mint condition, of all the pulp titles ever published, and having realized perhaps a tenth part of the dream—say, 1500 magazines, or a bedroomful—we suffered that vague disenchantment that is the first sign of approaching maturity (16, going on 17, was usually when it happened) and decided to be sensible.

Accordingly, we stopped buying all the new mags as fast as they could appear, and concentrated instead upon a few indispensable items. Gradually we cut down until we were keeping up the files on only three or four, or possibly five or six, publications. After a few years, when we had left high school, we got the number down to two. Which is where most of us stand today. We don’t read the magazines, of course. But we go on buying them. Not regularly, and not in any sense because we want to, but

The immortality of film

I always thought that books would outlast movies because movies, until the advent of home video, were difficult to obtain and play at home or at school. Remember how many times the films you saw in high school and college suffered technical glitches in the course of being shown? The lights would come up and the leading smart asses in the group would start goofing on the hapless projectionist?

But times, as they are apt to do, have changed.

We live in a media culture that is almost completely visual, everything from video games to dumb ass blockbuster special effects movies to newcasts that won't deal with anything they can't get good video of. Visual visual visual.

I thought of this recently because I spent a good part of the week watching Turner Classic's salute to Anthony Mann. I wondered if a writer would ever be given such a tribute. Then I saw the Peckinpah documentary and was convinced that even with the aid of the internet reading would probably continue to decline in this country.

Hard to believe that even the greatest of novelists would ever be dealt with in this manner outside of NPR (which recently an extraordinary two hour celebration of Walt Whitman) to PBS.

Elizabeth Foxwell-Clues The Partesky issue

Elizabeth Foxwell is a fine writer of fiction, a fine editor-anthologist, and a fine guiding hand/ managing editor of Clues. She's handed Sara Paretsky one of the grand prizes in the game of novel writing. An entire issue examining all of Paretsk's work in great and enjoyable depth. I can't improve on the piece posted on Rara-Avis tonight. So I'll just run it here. I've read the issue and it's illuminating in every respect.


The winter 2007 issue of _Clues: A Journal of Detection_ has been
published, which focuses on author Sara Paretsky, in honor of the 25th
anniversary of the debut of V. I. Warshawski. The table of contents
appears below; further details at http://www.heldref.org/clues.php.

To order the issue or a subscription, contact Heldref Publications'
Customer Service Dept, tel: 1/800-365-9753 or 202/296-6267, email:
subscribe heldref.org, http://www.heldref.org

Elizabeth Foxwell
Managing Editor, _Clues: A Journal of Detection_
http://www.heldref.org/clues.php

**************************************
Clues: A Journal of Detection
Vol 25, No. 2 Winter 2007
Theme Issue: Sara Paretsky

Introduction - Margaret Kinsman

Ruined Landscapes, Flooding Tunnels, Dark Paths: Sara Paretsky’s
Gothic Vision
Susan Allen Ford

Mythical Musical Connections: The Mother-Daughter Bond in the Work of
Sara Paretsky
Natalie Hevener Kaufman and Carrollee Kaufman Hevener

V. I. Talks Back: Sara Paretsky’s Unlikable Characters as Foes and Foils
Rachel Schaffer

Homeless Women and Social Justice in Sara Paretsky’s _Tunnel Vision_
Donna M. Bickford

Defining the Enemy: Housewives and Detectives
K Edgington

New Maps of Chicago: Sara Paretsky’s _Blood Shot_
Tim Dayton

__._,_.___

Terrill Lankford's brilliant overlooked novel

I have about a dozen novels I keep on a shelf to the right of my desk. The writers include Fitzgerald, Graham Greene, Nathaniel West, Dorothy Parker, O'Hara, and about half a dozen contemporary novels. I keep these there as vitamins for when style and lucidity wane in my own work. In the truest sense I derive inspiration from reading twenty-five pages or so of them.

Lately I find that the novel I pick up most often is Earthquake Weather by Terrill Lee Lankford which, in some respects, is an amalgam of Fitzgerald-West-O'Hara.

The falsely accused protagonist is nothing new but set against natural disaster in the bowels (in all respects) of the movie industry you have something completely fresh, especially when he's presented in language as powerful and lyric and spot-on true as Lankford is able to summon here. The pace is as relentless as the people and the noir effects are born not of standard noir tropes but of the world today, a new kind of noir where Bush, infomercials, special effects movies, trash TV and street gangs are the noises you hear rather the the somber trumpet of traditional noir. There are moments when you think you're reading Philip K. Dick.

The novel works perfectly on three levels--as an insider novel work novel about present day Hollywood; as a dark driven story about the Wrong Man; and as a Westian portait of a man in the final stages of spiritual disintegration. It's the final level that sets this book apart from the flavors-of-the-month and the overwrought neo-noirs of our time. Finally the book is about a man who is a victim of himself and those he's chosen to surround himself with. This is the theme of a good deal of classical literature and Lankford seems well aware of that on every page of the book.

Yes, it was well reviewed. I think it even appeared on a few Best of The Year lists. But given its worth, it passed, in hard and soft appearances, without sufficient note.

It's easily available on abe and alibris. Do yourself a great favor and order it now.

And Mickey Spillane & Mario Puzo are pitching ideas too?

One of the many great bits in Donald Bain's autobiography EVERY MIDGET HAS AN UNCLE SAM COSTUME (Barricade Books $22.95) is his brief description of the days when he used to go up to a publishing company waiting room for a chance to pitch an editor some ideas for stories of the Real Balls Adventure variety. He describes some of the competition in that same room including Mickey Spillane and Mario Puzo. How's that for competition?

Most writers who practice their craft full-time end up writing all sorts of things to make a living. Yes, they see themselves primarily as novelists but novels don't always keep the bank account out of the red.

What's so much fun about this book is Bain's witty observations about the various worlds of fiction, advertising, public relations and ghost writing he's encountered over several decades. This is real life for many, many writers, especially since the days B-movie-type publishing has pretty much vanished.

Bain's currently writing all the Murder, She Wrote books, stories I've expressed amiration for before. They're clever, fast air-clue mysteries that show Bain's writing and humor at their best. Urban legend has it that he's also he author of most of the Margaret Truman bestsellers, though he contiues to deny this.

If you really want to know about the writing life, this is the book for you. True, most of us don't get to dine Gina Lolobridgida as part of our assignment...but Bain took the job on like the man he is. With no complaints.

One of the most enjoyable books I've read in a long time.

Donald Bain--from NAL

Donald Bain, Jessica Fletcher’s longtime collaborator, is the author or ghost/author of more than 80 books, many of them bestsellers. Among his books, the airline comedy, Coffee Tea or Me?, published almost 30 years ago, together with its sequels sold more than 5-million copies worldwide and was the basis of a television movie-of-the-week.

Bain is a graduate of Purdue University and received its highest award for his work in educational radio and television. (He was designated a Purdue “Distinguished Alumni” for 2003.) He went on to work professionally in broadcasting in Texas and Indiana, and co-hosted more than 200 shows in New York with Long John Nebel, then king of late-night talk-radio.

A public relations executive for McCann-Erickson and American Airlines, Bain also was a consultant to Pan Am for the introduction of the 747, the takeover of National Airlines, and a national campaign to promote air travel. Two of these projects earned Silver Anvil awards from the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA). In 1985, with his wife, he co-founded Hyphenates, Ltd., which has provided editorial services to a wide variety of companies.

Bain has worked for over 30 years as a professional jazz musician, has taught at the college level and has written myriad magazine articles. He is a member of Sigma Delta Chi, the Writer’s Guild of America, the Authors Guild, the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, and the Mystery Writers of America.

Don Bain is married to Renée Paley-Bain, also a writer, and who collaborates with him on the “Murder, She Wrote” series. He has two grown daughters and four grandsons.

The real reward

I was in the central library today looking at the mysteries when I saw a guy who was probably late sixties, early seventies smiling over at me from the other side of the new books display. My memory being what it is, I wasn't sure if I knew him or not. He asked me when the next Sam McCain book was coming out and I told him soon. He then did a kind of highlights reel of his favorite McCain scenes in the first six books. He literally knew much more about the novels than I did. He said that even though we were of different generations, McCain's adventures were enough like his own that reading the books was like getting in a time machine and going back to the Fifties and early Sixties. He said that his wife loved them, too, and that now they're going to start reading Carol's books also.

My pleasure as a writer has always been the writing itself. That's the real reward. The business side is just that--business. Not a great ordeal. But not much fun, either, especially the self-promotional aspects that have now become so necessary. For writers like me--and there are a lot more than most folks realize--self-promotion is an embarrassment. For writers who enjoy it, great. But for those of us who'd rather stay home...not so great.

But it is fun to run into a reader occasionally and talk about what he or she likes/dislikes about your books and inquires about what lies ahead for the characters. I always wanted to tell Henry Gregor Felsen how much his hot rod books meant to me while I was growing up. We lived reasonably close to each other but somehow I never had the chance to meet him. Maybe I should've found out what library he frequented and stood by the new books display.

A short version of Norman Mailer's Enemies List

From New York magazine copyright 2007

W henever Norman Mailer puts out a new book—his latest, The Castle in the Forest, about Hitler, comes out next week—eager profilists find it compulsory to mention that the famous pugilist has “mellowed.” It’s hard to dispute, given his two canes and near blindness, but if the reviews for Castle are bad (and the buzz ain’t good), don’t be surprised if the old lion roars yet again. After all, it was only last month in Esquire that he took on one longtime foe, Times critic Michiko Kakutani, saying, “What put the hair up her immortal Japanese ass is beyond me.” Below, a necessarily much-abbreviated dossier, Mailer’s All-Time Enemies List.


(Photo: Bernard Gofryd/Getty Images)
William Styron
Crime: Allegedly bad-mouthing Mailer’s wife Adele.
Action taken: Wrote a critical piece in Esquire and a letter to Styron in 1958 that said, “I will invite you to a fight in which I expect to stomp out of you a fat amount of your yellow and treacherous shit.”
Blowback: Styron sniped at him in print for 25 years, and one of his villainous characters bore a certain resemblance to Mailer. They finally reconciled in 1985.


(Photo: Fred R. Congrad/New York Times Co./Getty Images)
Truman Capote
Crime: Saying of Mailer, “He has no talent. None, none, none!”
Action taken: Mailer sat on him.
Blowback: In 1980, Capote told an interviewer that while Mailer called In Cold Blood a “failure of the imagination … now I see that the only prizes Norman wins are for that very same kind of writing. I’m glad I was of some small service to him.”

Adele Morales Mailer
Crime: Calling her husband a “faggot” when he was drunk and stoned at 4 a.m. at the tail end of a party to launch his mayoral campaign.
Action taken: Stabbed her twice with a penknife, nearly killing her.
Blowback: Though she refused to testify against him, he did spend seventeen days in Bellevue’s psych ward. They finally divorced two years later. She wrote a book about it in 1997.

McGeorge Bundy
Crime: Being Lyndon Johnson’s national-security adviser during the Vietnam War.
Action taken: At Capote’s Black and White Ball in 1966, he invited the official to step outside to settle their foreign-policy differences in a street fight.
Blowback: Not much, after Norman Podhoretz and Lillian Hellman calmed them down.

Peter Manso
Crime: Writing a biography of Mailer in 1985 that, despite being authorized, was not to Mailer’s liking.
Action taken: Cut off relations when the bio was published and thereafter referred to him as a confirmed enemy.
Blowback: In a 2002 book about Provincetown, Manso wrote—among many unflattering things—that Mailer had a doctor’s wife procure psychedelic drugs for him. Mailer fired off a letter to a local paper asserting that “P. D. Manso is looking for gold in the desert of his arid inner life, where lies and distortion are the only cactus juice to keep him going.”

Germaine Greer, Kate Millett, et al.
Crime: Being feminists—and in the case of Millett, coining the phrase “male chauvinist pig” to describe him.
Action taken: Attacked them all in a retrograde essay titled “The Prisoner of Sex” and in a vicious debate at Town Hall with Greer and other women, immortalized in the 1971 D. A. Pennebaker documentary Town Bloody Hall.
Blowback: At Town Hall, Mailer was practically booed off the stage (with help from audience members Betty Friedan and Susan Sontag). Greer denounced the “masculine artist in our society” as a “killer,” but only after saying she wanted to sleep with Mailer. The two went for drinks afterward, but nothing reportedly came of it.


(Photo: Bernard Gotfryd/Getty Images)
Gore Vidal
Crime: Comparing “The Prisoner of Sex” to “three days of menstrual flow” and Mailer to Charles Manson.
Action taken: Head-butting him in the green room of The Dick Cavett Show in 1971, then telling him, on-air, that he ruined Kerouac by sleeping with him. Six years later, he threw a drink at Vidal—and punched him—at a Lally Weymouth soirée.
Blowback: Still on the floor, Vidal said, “Words fail Norman Mailer yet again.” Days later, Vidal went on Cavett’s show to assert that Mailer had—literally—stabbed his second wife in the back. They, too, reconciled in 1985.

Michiko Kakutani
Crime: Reviewing his books negatively.
Action taken: In 2005, he told Rolling Stone, “Kakutani is a one-woman kamikaze. She disdains white male authors, and I’m her number-one favorite target … But the Times editors can’t fire her. They’re terrified of her. With discrimination rules and such, well, she’s a threefer … Asiatic, feminist, and ah, what’s the third? Well … let’s just call her a twofer … She is a token. And deep down, she probably knows it.”
Blowback: Stay tuned. Someone at the Times has to review The Castle in the Forest, and we can be reasonably certain critics won’t like it. Kakutani hasn’t recused herself, and the takedown is her stock-in-trade.

Jethro Lives!

I once saw an interview with Max Baer Jr. about the time he produced and appeared in a very nice little B picture called Macon County Line. Baer, in case you don't remember, played Jethro on The Beverly Hilbillies. There was one problem with the interview. Max is a terrifying dude. He just sat there, amiable enough in conversation, but looking lethal--as if he wanted to bite the head off a hawk ala Conan the Barbarian. Because of the interview I always wondered what happened to him.

The LA Times answered my question yesterday:

Mad Max
Heavyweight champ Max Baer Sr. was unable to defend himself against 'Cinderella Man.' The job fell to Max Jr., who's going down swinging.

By J.R. Moehringer, Times Staff Writer
January 7, 2007


Max Baer Jr.

He walks into the coffee shop and heads turn. He's that type—the type who looks as if he must be famous, or else was famous once. No one walks that way, frowns that way, unless he has some inside knowledge of fame.

He wears billowy black sweatpants, a red windbreaker, a sleeveless black muscle shirt and Uggs. Not your typical outfit for Lake Tahoe in late fall—nor for a 69-year-old man anywhere in any season. But he makes few concessions to age. Against age he'll never stop punching. For instance, he's had three hair transplants and doesn't care who knows it. Blow-dried, delicately molded across his head, his hair is also tinted black to match his razor-thin mustache.

On his waist rides his most telling fashion statement, a small black fanny pack in which he usually keeps a loaded 9-millimeter Glock. But not today. Today, thank God, Jethro is unarmed.

He looks mad, which is good. That's how I pictured him. That's why I came up here to Lake Tahoe in the first place, because I'd heard Max Baer Jr.—who played Jethro in the 1960s sitcom "The Beverly Hillbillies"—was mad as hell about Ron Howard's 2005 boxing movie, "Cinderella Man," which Baer Jr. felt desecrated the memory of his late father, Max Baer Sr., the great heavyweight champion of the 1930s.It was a big story, for a few days, because it was such a kitschy contretemps—Jethro vs. Opie. In dozens of TV and radio interviews, Baer Jr. excoriated Howard and vehemently defended Baer Sr. Then the story went away, since there was nothing more Baer Jr. could do. The dead can't claim libel, so their kin can't sue. Baer Jr. was left to deal with his rage, and "Cinderella Man" was free to go into the world as the most widely and readily available depiction of his father.

For the rest of the interview go here

http://www.latimes.com/features/magazine/west/la-tm-baer01jan07,0,4406121.story?coll=la-home-magazine

The ones that got away...

Just about every writer I've ever known has stories to tell about how close they came to fame and fortune--or at least not having to worry about scrambling for work.

i'm writing about this tonight because I got a call yesterday from a friend I hadn't spoken to in years. It was good to hear from him. Nice guy, good writer.

The last time we'd talked he was about to break out. He'd gotten an advance of $200,000, the novel was bought outright for more than the novel had made him, and for the first time in years, he thought he could relax a little.

His editor left, the orphaned book didn't get the necessary promo and discounting and subsequently it tanked--and the movie never came to pass. He's back to being a mid-lister.

In my twenty-five years of full-time writing I had two moments when I thought I'd move up at least one rung on the career latdder. My agent called and said that one of two women editors who'd ushered in the gothic boom of the Sixties had picked up a novel at the airport by one Daniel Ransom. She finally learned that Ransom was me. She called my agent and told him that if I'd take some direction she felt she could make me a paperback bestseller. We were excited.

Three weeks later she quit her job at one major house and moved to another. I, she said, would go with her. But before she was there long enough to read my pitch, she decided that she'd had enough of big house publishing and retired to a small house that only published books about goldfish. Or rocks. Or some damned thing like that.

Scratch one would-be break.

The second one came the day a famous movie won an Oscar. One of the people associated with it said at a press conference that her very next picture would be Moonchasers by one Ed Gorman. I'm told most of the trades picked up the story. I even got a few calls from reporters asking me what the story was about.

You quickly get cured of Hwood enthusiasm. Everybody out there thinks you're a genius and wonderful and about to become a brand name--while they have you on the phone anyway. But stupidly I really believed this one was going to happen. Such powerful Oscar-winning people, how could it not?

The story's too long and painful to detail here. The director and I slogged through two years of waiting only to see it all just drift away. Smoke, the fire itself long dead.

Since then it's been optioned by three or four other people. I'm not complaining. The option money's been good.

Still I had a few idle daydreams about a movie success bringing back in print the two novels I consider my best. Not big money and certainly no fame...but it would've been nice to see them back in print again.

But then most writers have stories like these...

Talented newcomers

Most writers get far too many requests to read the manuscripts of unpublished authors. There just isn't time in most circumstances.
But the other side of this is discovering somebody who really can write and helping them get started--as Max Allan Collins helped me.
There was a time when I put in appearances at writers' groups and spent evenings talking about aspects of professional writing. Over the course of two or three years of this I met four people who went on to publish both short stories and novels in a variety of genres.
To a person they were shy about asking me to read samples of their work. I always said I'd read two chapters of a book or one short story under five thousand words.
My first discovery told me that here was a story that probably wasn't that good, that in fact after he'd finished it, he'd just stuck it in a drawer. That was a year ago or so. I read it that night and soon enough it was not only sold but Roger Zelazny himself was on the phone telling him what a wonderful piece of work it was.
Since then, as I said, I've met three other people who showed me short stories that were sold within a fairly short amount of time.
It's a good feeling when you see their first few pieces in print. You can kind of relive your own first sales through them. Whoever said that you can never equal the joy of your first was right.

Candace Proctor

Reader Chap O'Keefe, responding to my post on outlining versus not outlining, suggested logging on to the blog of writer C.S. Proctor for further discussion on the matter.

Good suggestion. In simple, lucid terms Proctor looks at several aspects of writing incuding not only plotting but building characters and using story arcs as defined by modern day Hollywood. She's a real find. I've slogged through entire how-to books on the subject of writing that have taught me far less. http://www.candiceproctor.com/

I mention this because when I'm asked to recommend a book on the subject of putting together a novel I always suggest taking a look at any of them by Lawrence Block. He's not only realistic in his approach, he's also fun to read. The two other books I'd recommend are both by Dean Koontz and are unfortunately long out of print.

But take a look at what Candace Proctor is doing. Whether you're a pro or a beginner, she has a lot of solid, helpful information to share with you.

Fighting in the dark

Not being a sports fans, I'm not much on sports metaphors. But in the thirty-some years I've been writing fiction, I have to say that I've come to regard the experience as one long boxing match played out in the dark. You just keep swinging, hoping to knock down your opponent--your own limitations of imagination and competence and stamina.

Outlines sometimes help but not that often and not that much, not in my case anyway. Not outlining gives me a sense of total freedom which is heady as hell until I walk square onto the first trap door. You can be imprisoned in that dark dank nether place down there for a long long time.

I don't mean to over-dramatize here. Most of the time I write with some fluidity and ease. Most of the time. But I'm soon punished for it by the days when the plot turns get dumb and the writing gets even dumber.

Fellini said that every picture was a war for him. That's a bit grand for someone like me. He had to worry about dozens of actors, locations, props, etc. All I have to worry about is why my magic computer has suddenly let me down.

I mention all this because I heard someone on Book TV say that he wished he wrote commercial ficton because he wouldn't have to worry about being (profound). You know, dashing off pop fiction is so damned easy.

In the course of a novel I go through depression, extended headaches, insomnia and the kind of distraction that makes me even worse company than usual. As Carol and I sit there watching TV I'm revising the scenes I wrote that day.

Again, I'm not trying to over-dramatize here. I'm sure that many if not most of us pop fic hacks go through much the same process. And in some odd way it only adds to the satisfaction of finishing a book that isn't quite as much of a disaster as you once feared it was.

But fighting in the dark never gets easier, does it?

PRO-File: Kristine Kathryn Rusch ``

Ed here: Kristine Kathryn Rusch has distinguished herself as a writer of mysteries and science fiction and as important editor during her tenure with The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Her Kris Nelscott mystery novles continue to grow in acclaim and popularity. And I almost forgot to mention that in addition to the two genres already mentioned, she's also an excellent writer of contemporary fantasy.


Tell us about your current novel?

My most recent novel is a science-fiction mystery called PALOMA. This is part of the RETRIEVAL ARTIST series, which are actually mystery novels written in a science-fiction universe. My most recent novel under my pen name Kris Nelscott is DAYS OF RAGE, and it just got listed by Kirkus as one of the ten best mysteries of 2006. I’m quite pleased by that.


…
What is the greatest pleasure of a writing career?

There are a lot of pleasures. I work for myself. I can take a day off when I want, and I can work harder than everyone else if I want. But the greatest pleasure is the stories themselves. Essentially, I get paid for making things up. What kid (or kid at heart) wouldn’t think that’s the best deal of all?


The greatest DIS-pleasure?

The industry itself. I just read an interview with romantic suspense writer Anne Stuart, and she mentioned that what causes a writer to burn out isn’t writing a lot, it’s the business. The business can be crazy-making. You can’t get wrapped up in it. When I started, I thought this was a sensible business, and I reacted to it the way an employee would. Now that I’ve been doing this freelance for more than 20 years, I have outlasted almost every editor, most publishers, and everyone on every sales force I came into touch with. My agent has been in the business as long as I have—as an agent the entire time—and he’s a rarity. I’ve learned to take everything in the business side of publishing with a big grain of salt. Because everything is different all the time—and, here’s the kicker, everything is exactly like it was 20 years ago. If you can’t hold two contradictory thoughts in your mind at the same time, then stay out of this business.

If you have one piece of advice for the publishing world, what is it?

Get out of the blockbuster mentality. You have to nurture writers of smaller books so that they can grow into blockbusters. (Of course, this advice will be out of date 5 years from now when the business pendulum swings back to nurturing small books and not paying enough for big ones.)

Tell us about selling your first novel. Most writers never forget that moment.

I was at work. I worked as a secretary for a forensic psychologist. THAT was a great writer’s job, let me tell you. I checked in patients (all of whom were interesting to say the least), and I typed up reports about cases that were going to go to court. Otherwise, I could read or write on the job. But I had to sit at my desk. My agent called, and told me. Fortunately the outer office was empty, so I could jump up and down and yell for a moment before anyone saw me. Then I had to be the sedate secretary again. I did call my boyfriend (who is now my husband) and he sent me a dozen roses—the first time I’d ever gotten roses, let alone a dozen. I stared at them through my entire shift, trying to let the idea that I had sold a novel sink into my brain. The rest of the day is lost, although I know we celebrated. I was just too dazed. It took 2+ years for the publisher to publish the book, because they wanted to give it a huge push and they kept moving the publication date back. So by the time it came out, I had sold 8 novels. I used to think that you’d sell a novel, cash the check, write another novel, sell it, cash the check, and they’d never ever get published. Or at least, it seemed that way to me at the time. I’ve since learned differently.

PRO-File: Stephen Marlowe

As you know, Ed, I've been around a long time, and "around" is the operative word. Sold my first short story in 1949, wrote probably a couple of hundred of them, s-f and crime, mostly early in my career. Novels after that. First one published in 1952, just when I entered the army during the Korean War. This--the novel, not the war--was science fiction, but before long I switched over to suspense, before switching much later in my career to what I think are unclassifiable novels combining suspense, fantasy, historical, and anti-historical elements.
It's likely that I did so much genre-wandering because I did so much geographical wandering. Have lost count of how many places I've lived--surely more than a hundred in twenty-odd countries. My older brother, mayor of his hometown and an admirable pillar-of-the-community type, which I obviously am not, once asked me what I was running away from. I tried to explain that "running toward" was more like it, or just plain "searching"--which all writers do, or ought to do. And just what do we search for? Ourselves, probably. Or the perfect story that always lurks somewhere, waiting to be found, if only you know how to find it.
My own favorite among my hardcover suspense novels is probably THE VALKYRIE ENCOUNTER. Among my unclassifiable novels (which publishers insist on calling literary novels: more about this later), it's either THE LIGHTHOUSE AT THE END OF THE WORLD or THE DEATH AND LIFE OF MIGUEL DE CERVANTES. LIGHTHOUSE is fantasy-suspense about Poe; CERVANTES is fantasy-historical about its eponymous hero.
But, hey, I never forgot my crime novel roots. My latest book in print is a Stark House edition of two of my paperback originals from half a century ago: VIOLENCE IS MY BUSINESS, a Chet Drum thriller that a lot of critics seem to like, and TURN LEFT FOR MURDER, which has special resonance for me because it is in part autobiographical: I, like the protagonist, grew up in a tough neighborhood on the mean streets of pre-World War II Brooklyn.
I've won a couple of awards, one in France for THE MEMOIRS OF CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS, the other here in the States, the PWA life achievement award for my Chet Drum series. The second, as it is awarded by my fellow toilers, has got to be the more gratifying. I wish I could feel more strongly that I deserved it, because only about half my career is in the private-eye genre.
Which brings me to your question about advice to the publishing world. My pet peeve is publishers insisting on genre-ising every novel they publish. For me, as Gertrude Stein almost said, a novel is a novel is a novel. And, when no category quite fits, publishers still insist on genre-ising. Viz, mainstream novel or, worse, that kiss-of-death genre, the
"literary novel."
My work-in-progress defies genre-isation, which is all I'll say about it. My novels often come to me as a first scene and a last line. Then all I have to do is fill in the 98% between. See how easy it is?
The best all-but-forgotten crime novel I know is Stephen Becker's wonderful A COVENANT WITH DEATH. But I guess a lot of publishers these days would--their mistake--call it a literary novel.
The greatest pleasure I've got out of a writing career spanning more than half a century is the endlessly challenging need to wander far and wide in search of experience and then find ways to use it in my work The greatest displeasure? That there's never enough time to both do all the exploring I want to do and write as well as I can. But that's a frustration rather than a displeasure, isn't it?
I've spent as little as four days (!) writing a novel (THE STAR SEEKERS) and as long as two years (THE DEATH AND LIFE OF MIGUEL DE CERVANTES). The latter could well be my favorite among my own works. The former answers your question about how I felt selling my first novel. Actually, it was my second. The first, EARTHBOUND, was a fairly routine experience. Lester del Rey and I had been asked to outline a series of YA science fiction novels for the John C. Winston Company.I was twenty-three at the time. We saved two ideas each for ourselves, and my first went without a hitch, except that I began my Korean War service the day it was published. A few months later I was at a winter training exercise at Camp Drum, where I was temporarily attached to the 82d Airborne. I got a frantic call from my agent: How you coming on the second Winston novel? I'd forgotten all about it and it was due in a week. I spent a weekend telling myself it was impossible. Then on Monday the colonel I worked for, on hearing of my plight, said, "Son, how much are they paying you to write that book?" I told him the advance was a thousand bucks. "Son," he told me, "even the U.S. Army can't stand between you and that kind of money. Go home and write that book." Which I did--by the end of the week. I have never had the courage to read it, even though the publisher phoned to say good job.
But that was a long time ago. And now? Now I hope to hang around long enough to write a novel or two that will satisfy the critic who always sits perched not quite visible on my shoulder..