{"id":360,"date":"2008-04-28T09:47:55","date_gmt":"2008-04-28T16:47:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/2008\/04\/frey-forgoes-oprah-for-hell%e2%80%99s-angels\/"},"modified":"2008-04-28T17:45:24","modified_gmt":"2008-04-29T00:45:24","slug":"frey-forgoes-oprah-for-hell%e2%80%99s-angels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2008\/04\/28\/frey-forgoes-oprah-for-hell%e2%80%99s-angels\/","title":{"rendered":"Frey Forgoes Oprah for Hell\u2019s Angels"},"content":{"rendered":"

from the NY Sun<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Frey Forgoes Oprah for Hell\u2019s Angels<\/span><\/p>\n

By\u00a0KATE TAYLOR<\/a><\/span>\u00a0| April 28, 2008<\/span><\/h3>\n

Who needs\u00a0<\/span>Oprah<\/span><\/a>\u00a0to promote your book when you have friends in the art world, a narrative dripping with sex and violence, and firsthand knowledge that ordinary readers care little about the publishing world\u2019s efforts to shame a former darling?<\/span><\/p>\n

\"photo<\/p>\n

Memoirist\u00a0James Frey<\/a>\u00a0has a novel coming out next month, and it\u2019s a safe bet that Ms. Winfrey won\u2019t be selecting it for her book club. After all, two years ago she publicly excoriated Mr. Frey for having fabricated details of his book \u201cA Million Little Pieces,\u201d after her praise for his saga of drug addiction helped propel the book to best-seller-dom.<\/span><\/p>\n

Readers didn\u2019t seem to mind the details Mr. Frey had fudged, though. When\u00a0Random House<\/a>\u00a0offered refunds to readers who had purchased the book before the falsifications came to light, only 1,536 people requested their money back. \u201cA Million Little Pieces\u201d remains among the books most frequently borrowed from libraries. Mr. Frey was able to find a new agent and sell his novel, \u201cBright Shiny Morning,\u201d to\u00a0HarperCollins<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Frey\u2019s plans to promote the novel disclose something of what he has been up to in the years since the Oprah flap, and how comfortable he is in the zone of celebrity and spectacle. He is relying largely on connections outside the publishing world, such as friends at Sotheby\u2019s auction house, where a dinner in honor of him is being held, and the artists\u00a0Richard Prince<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Terry Richardson<\/a>, who have contributed to a limited-edition \u201ccompanion volume\u201d to Mr. Frey\u2019s novel.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cDespite the fact that he writes books, he\u2019s much more a part of the art world than the literary world,\u201d Mr. Frey\u2019s friend\u00a0John McWhinnie<\/a>\u00a0said of him. With the money from his two memoirs (the second was \u201cMy Friend Leonard\u201d), Mr. Frey has purchased works by, among others, Mr. Prince,\u00a0Matthew Barney<\/a>,\u00a0Damien Hirst<\/a>,\u00a0Ed Ruscha<\/a>, and\u00a0Cecily Brown<\/a>, Mr. McWhinnie said. (Mr. Frey was unavailable to be interviewed for this article, because, as Mr. McWhinnie put it, he is \u201cin media lockdown\u201d in advance of his novel\u2019s publication, under the terms of his contract with HarperCollins.)<\/span><\/p>\n

He also recently opened a tiny art gallery on the Lower East Side with his friends\u00a0Andy Spade<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Bill Powers<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

The companion volume to \u201cBright Shiny Morning\u201d was partly the idea of Mr. McWhinnie, who runs a bookstore and gallery on the Upper East Side, where he sells immaculate first editions of 20th-century books, and mounts solo shows of artists including Mr. Prince and Mr. Richardson, Mr. Barney,\u00a0Cindy Sherman<\/a>,\u00a0Elizabeth Peyton<\/a>, and\u00a0Ryan McGinness<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBright Shiny Morning,\u201d he explained, tells the loosely intertwined stories of four couples in\u00a0Los Angeles<\/a>. Interspersed are dozens of vignettes about L.A., including digressions on immigration, water politics, the porn industry, gang culture, and cars.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. McWhinnie had a vision for a book that would pair a few of these episodes from the novel with photo essays commissioned from Mr. Richardson, who is known for his often louche portraits of celebrities. Mr. McWhinnie selected three vignettes: one about an affair between a politician\u2019s wife and a schoolteacher (an account so torrid, he said, that it was ultimately cut from the American edition of the novel); one about car culture in L.A., and one about gangs. Mr. Frey gave the sections the titles \u201cWives,\u201d \u201cWheels,\u201d and \u201cWeapons\u201d \u2014 a trinity that is also the title of the book.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. McWhinnie, Mr. Frey, and Mr. Richardson then went out to L.A. and checked in at \u2014 where else? \u2014 the\u00a0Chateau Marmont<\/a>\u00a0for a week to do the shoot. For the \u201cWheels\u201d section, Mr. Richardson photographed hot rods and souped-up cars and took shots of L.A.\u2019s freeways from a helicopter. For the \u201cWeapons\u201d section, he recruited Bloods, Cholos, skinheads, and Hell\u2019s Angels.<\/span><\/p>\n

For \u201cWives,\u201d Mr. McWhinnie\u2019s idea was for Mr. Richardson to capture quintessential L.A. \u201cMILFs\u201d \u2014 an acronym for a phrase, unprintable in a family newspaper, which denotes extremely attractive mothers. Although Mr. Richardson stopped short of depicting actual sex acts, Mr. McWhinnie described the eight photos in this section as \u201cdripping with sexuality.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. McWhinnie is publishing \u201cWives, Wheels, Weapons\u201d in both hardcover and softcover, priced at $150 and $75, respectively. He is also publishing a boxed, limited-edition \u201cWife Girlfriend\u201d edition, so-named for the cover image by Mr. Prince, which is titled \u201cGirlfriend,\u201d and for a special pullout photograph of a \u201cWife\u201d by Mr. Richardson. The \u201cWife Girlfriend\u201d edition will be signed by both artists and by Mr. Frey, and will cost in the $30,000\u2013$50,000 range. (Mr. Prince also supplied the cover image for \u201cBright Shiny Morning.\u201d)<\/span><\/p>\n

The sections about L.A. history and culture in \u201cBright Shiny Morning\u201d are \u201csprinkled with facts that may or may not be accurate,\u201d Mr. McWhinnie said. \u201cThe book opens with a tongue-in-cheek disclaimer that nothing in it can be considered true,\u201d he continued. Mr. Frey intentionally mixed true and made-up \u201cfacts\u201d \u2014 mixing real names of gang members with fake ones, for instance \u2014 in order to highlight both the factitiousness of L.A. culture and the ironies in his own authorial past.<\/span><\/p>\n

To promote the book, Mr. Frey will eschew typical bookstore readings for events at rock venues. He will appear at the Blender Theater in\u00a0New York<\/a>, Whisky A Go Go in L.A., and Slim\u2019s in\u00a0San Francisco<\/a>. At each venue, he will have music and a light show, with images from \u201cWives, Wheels, Weapons\u201d projected on a screen while he reads. At the San Francisco and L.A. readings, local heavy metal bands will perform.<\/span><\/p>\n

Members of the Hell\u2019s Angels will handle security at the events, in what Mr. McWhinnie described as an allusion to the infamous 1969 concert at the\u00a0Altamont<\/a>\u00a0Speedway, in which fighting between members of the crowd and the Angels led to one fan\u2019s being stabbed to death. Presumably Mr. Frey will not attempt to carry the historical echo that far, but who knows? Perhaps he can stage an altercation and use it as grist for his next book<\/span><\/p>\n

[ click to read original piece in the NY Sun<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from the NY Sun Frey Forgoes Oprah for Hell\u2019s Angels By\u00a0KATE TAYLOR\u00a0| April 28, 2008 Who needs\u00a0Oprah\u00a0to promote your book when you have friends in the art world, a narrative dripping with sex and violence, and firsthand knowledge that ordinary readers care little about the publishing world\u2019s efforts to shame a former darling? Memoirist\u00a0James Frey\u00a0has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conversation-information","category-culture-art","category-los-angeles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}