“No bathing suits in the lobby, please.”
“Well my wife shot it first…”
The Time Alice Hoffman’s Review Drove Richard Ford into a Gun-Wielding Rage
In a comment thread from a post earlier tonight about Alice Hoffman, commenter PromQueen mentioned that Richard Ford once shot up one of Hoffman’s books after she “wrote nasty things” when she reviewed his work for the New York Times.
Turns out the story is true. Here’s what Ford, talking about his book The Sportswriter, told the Guardian in a 2003 interview:
“People had written me off. When the book came out it just took a while to make its way. It didn’t happen overnight. It got bad reviews — that’s the book that Alice Hoffman wrote nasty things about in the New York Times.”
Ford’s run-in with Hoffman, with whom he shared a publisher, has become legendary. In retaliation for her criticism, Ford shot a hole through her latest book and posted it to her. “Well my wife shot it first,” says Ford, rather proudly. “She took the book out into the back yard, and shot it. But people make such a big deal out of it – shooting a book – it’s not like I shot her.”
Wafers & Wine & Larceny
Cops: Woman takes kneeling woman’s cash in church
WESTBURY, N.Y. (AP) — Nassau County police said a congregant at a Long Island church disregarded at least one of its commandments: Thou shalt not steal. Police said the 46-year-old woman reached over a pew and took cash from a purse while its owner knelt Sunday at Our Lady of Hope Roman Catholic Church in Westbury. Police said an usher saw the theft, and officers stopped the woman as she left the church.
Police said they determined the same woman stole cash from another worshipper’s purse while that victim took communion May 10.
MTV on Frey On Bay
Yes, Dear.
Schnabel and Reed
Reed It and Weep: Legendary Lou, Velvet Underground Singer, Greets Groupies at Book Signing with Schnabel
By Joe Pompeo
Lou Reed, legendary frontman of the Velvet Underground, and Julian Schnabel, noted artist and filmmaker, were sitting at a rustic wooden table inside the Steven Kasher Gallery in Chelsea on the evening of Thursday, June 25.
The two longtime friends were there for a book-signing and cocktail party celebrating the forthcoming release of Berlin, a new collection of photographs taken during Mr. Schnabel’s filming of a tour Mr. Reed did in 2007 to revive his classic 1973 album and rock opera of the same name.
One by one, enamored fans approached the duo with copies of the book and other memorabilia—vintage concert posters, black-and-white photographs, Velvet Underground LPs—that they wanted Mr. Reed, dressed in a saggy black sweater and black jeans, and Mr. Schnabel, wearing loose white pajamas, the top half of which were unbuttoned just enough to reveal a thick swath of chest hair, to autograph with shiny silver markers.
“The Editors” – Still Can’t Get Over It
From the Inbox: James Frey’s “I Am Number Four”
By THE EDITORSFrom John:
Hiding identity here may be the result of the fact that number four is more or less a copy of number three, except for the fact that only one has been thrown in to change the mix.
Clearly, the number three and even possibly two and one, are going to claim that substantial portions of four have been lifted from them (then embellished?) and they will press some sort of claim if four picks up a book contract and/or movie rights.
For that reason alone, given Mr. Frey’s previous issues, legal departments would most likely be on high alert if his name were to be associated with something called “I am Number Four.”
He ought to skip ahead to 10 to put a little distance between himself and those other numbers.
He needs to avoid seven, 14 and 21. I have already optioned them to a large publisher.
“Are you shitting me!” – Billy Mays Gone
If Only Janet Could Have Choreographed
Filipino prisoners pay tribute to Michael Jackson
Inmates in a Philippines prison honored the late pop icon Michael Jackson the way they’ve always celebrated his music, officials said, by dancing.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
(UPI) – Hundreds of inmates in a Philippines prison honored the late pop icon Michael Jackson the way they’ve always celebrated his music, officials said, by dancing.During the past two years, the more than 1,000 prisoners of the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center have routinely danced in unison to Jackson’s “Thriller” album. The spectacle of the orange uniform-clad men’s synchronized dancing not only attracted hundreds of curiosity-seekers to the prison but a video of it became an Internet sensation. The 4-minute video clip attracted 23 million views after being posted in 2007.”He is like the God to them. It is Michael’s music that gives them international recognition,” Byron Garcia, a security consultant at the prison told Xinhua inside the sprawling jail.After Jackson died Thursday, the prisoners decided to perform to four Jackson songs in a row as a final tribute.
The 1,581 inmates, serving sentences up to 10 years for murder, rape and drug crimes, Saturday danced to an audience of about 500 visitors and journalists, the Chinese news service reported.
James Frey Clip From Craig Ferguson’s Late Late Show
Major League Fields In Relief
World’s Oldest Instrument
I Am Number Four
DREAMWORKS, FREY IN “FOUR” PLAY
DreamWorks has acquired screen rights to “I Am Number Four,” the first of a six-book science fiction book series that has “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” director Michael Bay aboard to produce and possibly direct.
DreamWorks is working on a high six-figure deal, sources said.
The real surprise in the deal, though, is the identity of one of the two authors. Though WME began shopping the book Thursday under a pseudonym, sources said one of the writers is James Frey, best known for writing “A Million Little Pieces.” Neither the agency nor the studio would confirm.
The deal puts Bay right back in business with DreamWorks and Steven Spielberg and Stacey Snider. It is expected that Steven Spielberg will be as active in a behind the scenes capacity similar to the godfather role he has played in the “Transformers” franchise. The sale comes as “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” takes a run at the record books this weekend, after setting records on its first two days in theaters.
The franchise is about a group of nine earthbound alien teens who escaped their planet just before it was destroyed by a hostile species. While the high school-aged kids assimilate, the title character discovers that he is being hunted by the enemy that blew up his planet.
Both the publishing rights and the screen rights were shopped simultaneously, with Bay taking it into DreamWorks/Disney, Columbia and Universal; J.J. Abrams’s Bad Robot for Paramount; Bryan Singer for Fox, and BenderSpink for New Line and CBS.
Frey recently became a client of WME when his agent, Eric Simonoff, joined WMA from Janklow-Nesbit.
Frey On Ferguson
James Frey to Craig Ferguson: ‘I’m happy to be notorious,’ plus what he said about Tom Cruise
Jun 27, 2009, 11:39 AM | by Ken Tucker
James Frey gave a rare and revealing interview to Craig Ferguson last night on the Late Late Show. The author, whose 2003 memoir A Million Little Pieces brought a hailstorm of criticism for charges of inaccuracy, most notably in a 2006 TV interview with Oprah Winfrey, has apparently come to terms with his reputation.
Due to his various addictions, “I didn’t remember [various details] so I just made it up,” was how Frey summarized his Pieces experience to Ferguson. “I’m perfectly happy to be notorious,” he said. He was put at ease by Ferguson, who has spoken openly about his own struggles with drugs and drink, and will himself publish an autobiography in September called American On Purpose.
Frey was promoting the paperback relase of his novel Bright Shiny Morning. At one point, Frey admitted that he “thought Tom Cruise” when he created the Morning character Amberton Parker, whom Frey described as “a gay movie star with children.” Strikingly, the studio audience laughed and clapped at this.
Frey made no reference to a deal announced this week, in which he will collaborate with another, unnamed writer on a six-book science-fiction series, the first of which, I Am Number Four, has been optioned by director Michael Bay.
Undercover
Undercover, James Frey Pitches Again
By MOTOKO RICH
James Frey, the author of “A Million Little Pieces” and “Bright Shiny Morning,” is working with another writer and anonymously shopping a young adult novel called “I Am Number Four.”
A source familiar with the project said that Mr. Frey, who was famously caught embellishing details in “A Million Little Pieces,” his memoir of drug addiction and recovery, came up with the idea of what is proposed as a six-book series and is working with another writer to write the actual text.
A manuscript of the first book in the series has been circulating among editors at several large New York publishing houses. The story is about a group of nine children from a planet called Lorien who have been attacked by a hostile race from another planet. The nine children and their guardians evacuate to Earth, where three are killed. The protagonist, a Lorien boy named John Smith, hides in Paradise, Ohio, as a human and tries to evade his predators.
The Man Who Gave Us HAROLD AND MAUDE
Hal Ashby, turbulent genius of the ’70s
AMPAS
A special Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences salutes Oscar winning film editor and director Hal Ashby on Thursday, June 25, at 7:30 p.m. at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. The conversation will be followed by a screening of Ashby’s 1971 bittersweet romance “Harold and Maude.”
The late director’s brief run, including ‘Harold and Maude,’ ‘The Last Detail’ and ‘Coming Home,’ put him in the upper strata of filmmakers.
Hal Ashby is the cinematic equivalent of a supernova. The director’s work burned startlingly bright for a brief period in the 1970s — before his demons, including drug abuse, got the better of him, extinguishing his star shortly before his death in 1988.
Now, the director of such seminal films as “The Last Detail,” “Shampoo,” “Coming Home” and “Being There” is being rediscovered in a confluence of upcoming events (not to mention the biography “Being Hal Ashby: Life of a Hollywood Rebel” by Nick Dawson, which published in March). On Thursday, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences pays tribute with a screening of his eccentric 1971 love story, “Harold and Maude.”
Jon Voight, who won an Oscar for 1978’s “Coming Home,” will join Judd Apatow, Cameron Crowe, Seth Rogen, Oscar-winning scribe Diablo Cody and Variety editor Peter Bart at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater for a panel discussion and Yusuf Islam will perform two songs from “Harold and Maude” that he recorded as Cat Stevens. The academy will then screen Ashby’s work at the Linwood Dunn Theater beginning with “The Landlord” and “Shampoo” on Friday and continuing with other films through Sunday.
Gone
What Should You Read Next? The Book Seer Knows
Click on the picture below to visit The Book Seer, enter the title + author of the last book you read, and let The Book Seer be your librarian.
Tonguing All Of Humanity
Iconic Signed Photo of Albert Einstein Sells for $74K
Saturday , June 20, 2009
CONCORD, N.H. — One of the original signed prints of Albert Einstein sticking his tongue out at photographers has been sold by a New Hampshire auction house for $74,324.
Bobby Livingston, of RRAuction.com in Amherst, says the picture was taken in 1951 after a 72nd birthday celebration for the physicist.
Einstein had nine prints made. He signed the print that was auctioned on Thursday and gave it to journalist Howard K. Smith. In his inscription, Einstein said his gesture was aimed at all of humanity. Livingston says it also was aimed at the Red Scare and the McCarthy anti-Communist hearings of the 1950s.
“The advent of the entry of pornography into the mainstream.”
FBI files show wide “Deep Throat” investigation
By MATT SEDENSKY
MIAMI (AP) – Newly released FBI files show agents across the country and at the highest level of the agency investigated “Deep Throat” – the 1972 porn movie, not the shadowy Watergate figure – in a vain attempt to roll back what became a cultural shift toward more permissive entertainment.
The documents released to The Associated Press show the expanse of agents’ investigation into the film: seizing copies of the movie, having negatives analyzed in labs and interviewing everyone from actors and producers to messengers who delivered reels to theaters.
All of it in a failed attempt to stop the spread of a movie that some saw as the victory of a cultural and sexual revolution and others saw as simply decadent.
“Today we can’t imagine authorities at any level of government – local, state or federal – being involved in obscenity prosecutions of this kind,” said Mark Weiner, a constitutional law professor and legal historian at Rutgers-Newark School of Law. “The story of ‘Deep Throat’ is the story of the last gasp of the forces lined up against the cultural and sexual revolution and it is the advent of the entry of pornography into the mainstream.”
The Finger Drummer
Farrah Gone
Farrah Fawcett Dies at 62, Succumbs to Cancer
Ryan O’Neal: ‘After a Brave Battle with Cancer, Our Beloved Farrah Has Passed Away’
Farrah Fawcett, the 1970s “It Girl” who was known for her cascading golden hair and bombshell body, died in a Santa Monica hospital today, ABC News has learned. She was 62-years-old.
Fawcett first stepped into the spotlight playing Jill Munroe in the TV series “Charlie’s Angels” in the 1970s. The series became a smash hit and Fawcett quickly became an iconic pin-up model for millions of men. She pioneered a feathered hairstyle dubbed the “Farrah Do” or “Farrah Hair” that remained in vogue throughout the decade.
She later went on to earn one of three career Emmy Award nominations for her role as a battered wife in the acclaimed television movie “The Burning Bed.”
Tea With Fellatio and Cakes
Fæcking, Germany
James Frey on The Late Late Show w/Craig Ferguson Tomorrow Night
James will be a guest on CBS’s The Late Late Show
Tuesday June 22 @ 12:35am
Coconut Fingering Record Broken by Malaysian Kung Fu Master
Coconut Kung Fu finger sets record
(00:54) Rough Cut
Jun 21 – Malaysian Kung Fu king, Ho Eng Hui, pierces four coconuts with his right index finger in just over 30 seconds, breaking his own personnel record.
Rachel And The Comet Caliente
Happy Father’s Day
Father and Child by BUWA SHETE
Declare Independence
Rat Press Re-dressed
Rat Press: Hollywood Director Moonlights as Publisher
By day Brett Ratner is a Hollywood producer, director and photographer. At night, he moonlights as the publisher of Rat Press. “It’s a one-man operation,” he said. “I do everything, basically,” including editing books in his bedroom.
Rat Press had its beginnings nearly a decade ago when Ratner published Naked Pictures of My Ex-Girlfriends by Mark Helfrich. Several years later he wrote a book of his own, Hillhaven Lodge: The Photo Booth Pictures, with powerHouse Books. Ratner has now re-launched Rat Press, creating a new logo and signing on with Perseus Distribution. 
The company aims to publish works “from the most prolific individuals in film” that consumers “never have the opportunity to see in a theater” and in a variety of formats. Titles will include biographies, interviews, novels, scripts, photos and artwork.
“Brett is a passionate book lover, and he’s done a wonderful job of bringing the film and book industries together,” said Tyson Cornell, director of marketing and publicity at Book Soup in Los Angeles. Ratner, whose big-screen work includes directing X-Men: The Last Stand and the film adaptation of Thomas Harris’ novelRed Dragon, acknowledges that “there is definitely a synergy” between the book and movie markets and envisions a wide readership for the books. “They call movies that reach many audiences four quadrant movies,” he said. “These are four quadrant books” that will appeal to film students, movie buffs, pop culture enthusiasts and those who like reading historical books and biographies.