Ned Vizzini's Blog, page 5
January 21, 2011
The Artist and the Art, or Meathead McBeef
Here comes a poem. Stop me if you've heard it:
Meat Head
Awaking on the first day of school
Pain of a morning hang over
Attending a weight lifting class for college credit
Attempting to exercise since freshman year of high school
Crawling out of bed and walking to the shower
Warm water hitting my back
Eureka
Thoughts of being promiscuous with a female again
[more]
"Meat Head" (that's about the first third) was written by Jared Lee Loughner, who needed an entire country (China, parts 1 and 2) to knock him out of the American news cycle. Following his murder spree, the 22-year-old had his poetry published on CNN; HTMLGIANT and Bookslut picked it up.
I'd feel bad posting "Meat Head" except I think it's a good poem. It's specific, evocative and full of real-life moments. If you told me it were written by a 22-year-old poet whom HTMLGIANT was wild about, I'd say, "Good for him."
Likewise, I recently watched "Richard McBeef: The Motion Picture" on YouTube, an interpretation of the one-act play by Cho Seung-Hui, the Virginia Tech shooter of 2007. Here it is, NSFW and not for everybody (it looks a bit like a Whitest Kids U' Know sketch):
(I'm partial to the opening:
JOHN: What's up, Dick!
RICHARD: Try 'Dad.'
JOHN: You ain't my dad, and you know it, you Dick.)
Once again, if you sent this to me telling me it was the celebrated work of a new playwright who subverted contemporary paternity through the lens of South Park, I wouldn't question it.
These are the most extreme examples I can find of the problem of separating the artist from the art, a concern for everyone who experiences art. This issue arises because many artists are bad people:
Writer Charles Bukowski kicks his girlfriend on camera in the documentary Bukowski: Born Into This , looking oddly fetal while doing so.
Musician Kurt Cobain kept heroin needles in the toothbrush holders in the house he lived in with his infant daughter, according to Heavier Than Heaven .
Writer Norman Mailer stabbed his wife with a penknife, unprovoked and without a word, according to Time .
Writer Jim Goad went to jail for beating his 21-year-old stripper girlfriend (detailed in Goad's book S___ Magnet ).
Musician Vince Neil killed Hanoi Rocks drummer Nicholas "Razzle" Dingley after sliding into oncoming traffic while driving drunk on an alcohol run, doing 65mph in a 25mph zone in a '72 Ford Pantera, about four blocks from his house (source: Paul Miles).
Sordid, bad stuff. I can't defend the artists -- but my life is richer and fuller because of their art. If I were to disavow one of them, how could I continue to appreciate the others? Where would I draw the line? Is it okay to kick your girlfriend but not stab your wife? And what about Jacko?
Just as defending free speech means defending objectionable speech, defending art means defending drug addicts, abusers and murderers.
It becomes a little more complicated with Jared Lee Loughner and Cho Seung-Hui because there is evidence, in their manifesto videos, that they killed in part to make a name for themselves. (This was also clear in the Columbine killings.) That means that by reading or viewing their work, I'm supporting an artistic persona that they killed to produce, and you could argue that I'm an accomplice to murder.
But Loughner and Seung-Hui also live, through no choice of their own, in a world where "fame" and "greatness" are conflated. When I speak at schools, students don't ask me if I know any "great" authors; they ask if I know any "famous" ones (and they always ask this). Celebrity culture equates fame with greatness to such a degree that the artist cannot be separated from the art -- fame is the only thing that makes his or her art credible. Since mass murder is a guaranteed way to get notoriety, there's a risk of culture moving toward violence the way David Foster Wallace wrote in Consider the Lobster about pornography inexorably approaching the snuff film.
But I went to an exhibit recently at the Huntington Library in Pasadena:
"Charles Bukowski: Poet on the Edge" exhibited Bukowski's letters, broadsheets, wine glass and typewriter. Sabra took pictures, including this one of Bukowski making fun of my double chin:
The exhibit reminded me that the process of sordid artistic myth-making has been around since Lord Byron and we haven't all become snuff-film makers yet. Bukowski carefully managed his image as a virile drunk, taking advantage of his place in an "antifragile" industry.
Ken Baumann explained antifragility to me: it's a concept being explored by aphorist Nassim Nicholas Taleb ( The Bed of Procrustes ) in his next book. The idea is -- if hot is the opposite of cold and strong is the opposite of weak -- what is the opposite of fragile? There's no true word for it in English. The opposite of something fragile, which breaks under stress, would be a substance that gains strength under stress, something like the hydra, who grows more heads the more you cut off:
Very few physical things are "antifragile", but one thing that is antifragile, Taleb argues, is the reputation of the artist. No matter how many bad deeds the artist commits, from drug abuse to murder, his or her reputation gains strength. I tried to find some counter-examples -- look what happened to Kathy Acker after she went from pedophilia to plagiarism -- but I had to admit that as a general rule it's true.
The easiest way for an artist to fall out of the public eye is by being a good person.
So is it all hopeless? Are we entering a world where you have to kill people to get famous if you want anyone to read your poems? Not quite. The advantage of separating the artist completely from the art is that you can judge the art fully on its own terms -- and "Meat Head" and "Richard McBeef" aren't that good. I don't think I'll be reading them in 20 years, nor will anyone else, no matter how many more horrific acts the artists commit -- and they they won't be committing any more, considering that Cho's dead and Loughner is trapped in the desert castle of Super Mario Brothers 3:
Whoops, sorry, no. That's the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) in Phoenix, AZ. Rot, Jared. But keep writing.
Meat Head
Awaking on the first day of school
Pain of a morning hang over
Attending a weight lifting class for college credit
Attempting to exercise since freshman year of high school
Crawling out of bed and walking to the shower
Warm water hitting my back
Eureka
Thoughts of being promiscuous with a female again
[more]
"Meat Head" (that's about the first third) was written by Jared Lee Loughner, who needed an entire country (China, parts 1 and 2) to knock him out of the American news cycle. Following his murder spree, the 22-year-old had his poetry published on CNN; HTMLGIANT and Bookslut picked it up.
I'd feel bad posting "Meat Head" except I think it's a good poem. It's specific, evocative and full of real-life moments. If you told me it were written by a 22-year-old poet whom HTMLGIANT was wild about, I'd say, "Good for him."
Likewise, I recently watched "Richard McBeef: The Motion Picture" on YouTube, an interpretation of the one-act play by Cho Seung-Hui, the Virginia Tech shooter of 2007. Here it is, NSFW and not for everybody (it looks a bit like a Whitest Kids U' Know sketch):
(I'm partial to the opening:
JOHN: What's up, Dick!
RICHARD: Try 'Dad.'
JOHN: You ain't my dad, and you know it, you Dick.)
Once again, if you sent this to me telling me it was the celebrated work of a new playwright who subverted contemporary paternity through the lens of South Park, I wouldn't question it.
These are the most extreme examples I can find of the problem of separating the artist from the art, a concern for everyone who experiences art. This issue arises because many artists are bad people:
Writer Charles Bukowski kicks his girlfriend on camera in the documentary Bukowski: Born Into This , looking oddly fetal while doing so.
Musician Kurt Cobain kept heroin needles in the toothbrush holders in the house he lived in with his infant daughter, according to Heavier Than Heaven .
Writer Norman Mailer stabbed his wife with a penknife, unprovoked and without a word, according to Time .
Writer Jim Goad went to jail for beating his 21-year-old stripper girlfriend (detailed in Goad's book S___ Magnet ).
Musician Vince Neil killed Hanoi Rocks drummer Nicholas "Razzle" Dingley after sliding into oncoming traffic while driving drunk on an alcohol run, doing 65mph in a 25mph zone in a '72 Ford Pantera, about four blocks from his house (source: Paul Miles).
Sordid, bad stuff. I can't defend the artists -- but my life is richer and fuller because of their art. If I were to disavow one of them, how could I continue to appreciate the others? Where would I draw the line? Is it okay to kick your girlfriend but not stab your wife? And what about Jacko?
Just as defending free speech means defending objectionable speech, defending art means defending drug addicts, abusers and murderers.
It becomes a little more complicated with Jared Lee Loughner and Cho Seung-Hui because there is evidence, in their manifesto videos, that they killed in part to make a name for themselves. (This was also clear in the Columbine killings.) That means that by reading or viewing their work, I'm supporting an artistic persona that they killed to produce, and you could argue that I'm an accomplice to murder.
But Loughner and Seung-Hui also live, through no choice of their own, in a world where "fame" and "greatness" are conflated. When I speak at schools, students don't ask me if I know any "great" authors; they ask if I know any "famous" ones (and they always ask this). Celebrity culture equates fame with greatness to such a degree that the artist cannot be separated from the art -- fame is the only thing that makes his or her art credible. Since mass murder is a guaranteed way to get notoriety, there's a risk of culture moving toward violence the way David Foster Wallace wrote in Consider the Lobster about pornography inexorably approaching the snuff film.
But I went to an exhibit recently at the Huntington Library in Pasadena:
"Charles Bukowski: Poet on the Edge" exhibited Bukowski's letters, broadsheets, wine glass and typewriter. Sabra took pictures, including this one of Bukowski making fun of my double chin:
The exhibit reminded me that the process of sordid artistic myth-making has been around since Lord Byron and we haven't all become snuff-film makers yet. Bukowski carefully managed his image as a virile drunk, taking advantage of his place in an "antifragile" industry.
Ken Baumann explained antifragility to me: it's a concept being explored by aphorist Nassim Nicholas Taleb ( The Bed of Procrustes ) in his next book. The idea is -- if hot is the opposite of cold and strong is the opposite of weak -- what is the opposite of fragile? There's no true word for it in English. The opposite of something fragile, which breaks under stress, would be a substance that gains strength under stress, something like the hydra, who grows more heads the more you cut off:
Very few physical things are "antifragile", but one thing that is antifragile, Taleb argues, is the reputation of the artist. No matter how many bad deeds the artist commits, from drug abuse to murder, his or her reputation gains strength. I tried to find some counter-examples -- look what happened to Kathy Acker after she went from pedophilia to plagiarism -- but I had to admit that as a general rule it's true.
The easiest way for an artist to fall out of the public eye is by being a good person.
So is it all hopeless? Are we entering a world where you have to kill people to get famous if you want anyone to read your poems? Not quite. The advantage of separating the artist completely from the art is that you can judge the art fully on its own terms -- and "Meat Head" and "Richard McBeef" aren't that good. I don't think I'll be reading them in 20 years, nor will anyone else, no matter how many more horrific acts the artists commit -- and they they won't be committing any more, considering that Cho's dead and Loughner is trapped in the desert castle of Super Mario Brothers 3:
Whoops, sorry, no. That's the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) in Phoenix, AZ. Rot, Jared. But keep writing.
December 31, 2010
Information: The Ultimate Free Lunch
[announced: It's Kind of a Funny Story coming to DVD/BluRay 2/8/11!]
Information may be the building block of the universe; it's certainly the building block of the internet. A pop physics book published last year, Decoding Reality by Vlatko Vedral, lays out a grand unified theory of the universe based on information as the fundamental unit, making the entire world a quantum computer.
"the most exciting philosophical question for any human being"
But what about the information on Decoding Reality?
It was funneled to me through Google, through a search for "information as a building block of physics", leading to the blog "Before I Forget…", then to the Economist review. Who's getting paid here, moving all this valuable (universal) information around?
Vedral was paid for writing Decoding Reality by Oxford University Press (I hope!). Someone at the Books and Arts department at the Economist was probably paid to review it (although you don't want to assume). It doesn't look from the "About Me" page on "Before I Forget…", which introduces us to systems engineer M. M. Madan, that he was paid to share the Economist review. He just likes re-posting things from the Economist:
Information is funneled around the internet in parcels that people were trying to call memes for a while, until that phrase got co-opted by the internet-celebrity biz. It's best to think of internet information simply as content -- something you want, like the escape that comes headlong into a good book or movie.
Some organizations -- Netflix, Apple, Amazon -- act as toll-keepers in the information flow. People like M. M. Madan aggregate information and add a tiny spin on it -- sometimes just in the presentation of the content -- to give it value.
That's what I try to do here. Vedral, in his book, outlines a disheartening rule:
The information content of any event is proportional to the logarithm of its inverse probability of occurrence.
That means the more rare something is, the more information it contains. If I tell you about an amazing event that you've never heard of, I add lots of value.
Unfortunately, for me, most of those kinds of events are painful and embarrassing personal stories valuable to me because I can use them for books, one of which I will have an announcement about soon.
There is some comfort in another rule from Vedral's book:
Information can be created out of nothing.
Unlike matter and energy, which are conserved, information can be created out of thin air -- and if you twist it the right way, it becomes entertainment/art. Just by adding the framing device of his well-designed blog, M. M. Madan added value to the story of information as the building block of physics (and managed to beat the Economist on Google) and he doesn't want to get paid -- he just wants to be loved like you and me.
Content:
Thanks to Cinemablend for the coverage. Soon you won't have to watch bootleg clips like this one!
"The Year's Best and Worst Book Trailers | Books | The L Magazine"
An article I wrote about 2010's crop of book trailers, also covering the short history of the book trailer:
In a year where I have a lot to be grateful about, my parents, small-business owners in New York with a manufacturing operation, have survived the economy and introduced new energy-saving lights to the world:
Congrats everyone at Edison Price Lighting!
I visited The Brentwood School in Los Angeles:
"Mr. Vizzini was funny, honest, and authentic while he presented about his past experiences being clinically depressed, why he writes, and what makes a good story (a love triangle and FIRE). We hope to have him visit again." [more]
Thanks to librarian Elisabeth Abarbanel and Jennifer Banash at the Brentwood School for having me in. I answered lots of writing questions and apparently kept people entertained despite the beard. More here.
I was really impressed in 2010 by Strength of Us, a project of the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
It's a social networking platform for people who want to talk about mental health, full of boards and groups on everything from "Depression support" to "My New Dog!" I did an interview with Chuck:
"Strength Of Us: Chuck's blog: Author Ned Vizzini Talks about Depression, Suicide & Writing"
You have to sign up to read it, but if you have any interest in mental health or issues with it yourself, this is one of the best resources to come around in a while; you might want to sign up anyway.
Finally, Happy 2011! Thank you everyone for your support in 2010. I'll keep doing my best to produce more information for you in the last year before, you know...
Information may be the building block of the universe; it's certainly the building block of the internet. A pop physics book published last year, Decoding Reality by Vlatko Vedral, lays out a grand unified theory of the universe based on information as the fundamental unit, making the entire world a quantum computer.
"the most exciting philosophical question for any human being"
But what about the information on Decoding Reality?
It was funneled to me through Google, through a search for "information as a building block of physics", leading to the blog "Before I Forget…", then to the Economist review. Who's getting paid here, moving all this valuable (universal) information around?
Vedral was paid for writing Decoding Reality by Oxford University Press (I hope!). Someone at the Books and Arts department at the Economist was probably paid to review it (although you don't want to assume). It doesn't look from the "About Me" page on "Before I Forget…", which introduces us to systems engineer M. M. Madan, that he was paid to share the Economist review. He just likes re-posting things from the Economist:
Information is funneled around the internet in parcels that people were trying to call memes for a while, until that phrase got co-opted by the internet-celebrity biz. It's best to think of internet information simply as content -- something you want, like the escape that comes headlong into a good book or movie.
Some organizations -- Netflix, Apple, Amazon -- act as toll-keepers in the information flow. People like M. M. Madan aggregate information and add a tiny spin on it -- sometimes just in the presentation of the content -- to give it value.
That's what I try to do here. Vedral, in his book, outlines a disheartening rule:
The information content of any event is proportional to the logarithm of its inverse probability of occurrence.
That means the more rare something is, the more information it contains. If I tell you about an amazing event that you've never heard of, I add lots of value.
Unfortunately, for me, most of those kinds of events are painful and embarrassing personal stories valuable to me because I can use them for books, one of which I will have an announcement about soon.
There is some comfort in another rule from Vedral's book:
Information can be created out of nothing.
Unlike matter and energy, which are conserved, information can be created out of thin air -- and if you twist it the right way, it becomes entertainment/art. Just by adding the framing device of his well-designed blog, M. M. Madan added value to the story of information as the building block of physics (and managed to beat the Economist on Google) and he doesn't want to get paid -- he just wants to be loved like you and me.
Content:
Thanks to Cinemablend for the coverage. Soon you won't have to watch bootleg clips like this one!
"The Year's Best and Worst Book Trailers | Books | The L Magazine"
An article I wrote about 2010's crop of book trailers, also covering the short history of the book trailer:
In a year where I have a lot to be grateful about, my parents, small-business owners in New York with a manufacturing operation, have survived the economy and introduced new energy-saving lights to the world:
Congrats everyone at Edison Price Lighting!
I visited The Brentwood School in Los Angeles:
"Mr. Vizzini was funny, honest, and authentic while he presented about his past experiences being clinically depressed, why he writes, and what makes a good story (a love triangle and FIRE). We hope to have him visit again." [more]
Thanks to librarian Elisabeth Abarbanel and Jennifer Banash at the Brentwood School for having me in. I answered lots of writing questions and apparently kept people entertained despite the beard. More here.
I was really impressed in 2010 by Strength of Us, a project of the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
It's a social networking platform for people who want to talk about mental health, full of boards and groups on everything from "Depression support" to "My New Dog!" I did an interview with Chuck:
"Strength Of Us: Chuck's blog: Author Ned Vizzini Talks about Depression, Suicide & Writing"
You have to sign up to read it, but if you have any interest in mental health or issues with it yourself, this is one of the best resources to come around in a while; you might want to sign up anyway.
Finally, Happy 2011! Thank you everyone for your support in 2010. I'll keep doing my best to produce more information for you in the last year before, you know...
December 4, 2010
The Science of GFP Bunny
I've worked with Smart Pop Books on two anthology projects:
Through The Wardrobe (reissued for 2010!)
The World of the Golden Compass
And I'm contributing to this upcoming anthology on The Hunger Games--
The Girl Who Was on Fire: Your Favorite Authors on Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games Trilogy (April 2011)
-- but unfortunately I missed out contributing to The Science of Michael Crichton --
--because I am not a scientist nor have I written about science in any substantive way -- although stay tuned.
The Science of Michael Crichton is great because it led me to GFP Bunny:
GFP Bunny is a transgenic animal art project created by Eduardo Kac (pronounced "Katz") in 2000. Its genome was modified to result in cells that produce florescence when excited by light of a certain wavelength, in this case blue light with maximum excitation occurring at wavelengths of 488 nm. Exposure to this light causes GFP Bunny, who Kac named "Alba", to glow green light at 509 nm. In normal light, she looks like this:
The essay that mentions GFP Bunny, by freelance writer and former associate biochemistry professor Phill Jones, covers Crichton's Next (2006):
Next was the last album Crichton published before he died. He had really learned how to name his characters by this point:
Alex Burnet (heroine, who may or may not be brunette, I forget, which is great for casting)
Frank Burnet (Alex's father, who gets his genes stolen)
Michael Gross (the doctor who steals Alex's father genes)
Vasco Borden (the bounty hunter who tracks down Alex's father's genes in Alex's body)
"Jack" Watson (ruthless venture capitalist)
Brad Gordon (irresponsible nephew)
Mick Crowley (allegedly based on Michael Crowley)
Dave (talking chimp boy)
Crichton also knew how to name the science:
LoxP
Cre recombinase
lentiviral vectors
homologous recombination
cytokines
Given those scientific terms and those characters, how could you not write a novel with an intelligent parrot? Of course we're far away from people branding sea turtles with corporate logos but that's why they call it speculative fiction. Both Jones' essay and Dave Itzkoff's New York Times review quote Michael Crichton's message to the readers:
"This novel is fiction, except for the parts that aren't."
Which brings me back to the bunny. Because although GFP Bunny has been vetted by reputable news organizations, I remember Photoshop being pretty good back in 2000, and I see a striking resemblance between the tonal hues of Eduardo Kac's project and High on Fire's 2000 album The Art of Self-Defense:
In Other News
Congratulations to all winners of the Its Kind of a Funny Story Movie Stub/Book Giveaway Contest! Our winners came from all over the United States:
Photos of ticket stubs are here: It's Kind of a Funny Story in the Real World. Stay tuned for news of the DVD release!
Through The Wardrobe (reissued for 2010!)
The World of the Golden Compass
And I'm contributing to this upcoming anthology on The Hunger Games--
The Girl Who Was on Fire: Your Favorite Authors on Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games Trilogy (April 2011)
-- but unfortunately I missed out contributing to The Science of Michael Crichton --
--because I am not a scientist nor have I written about science in any substantive way -- although stay tuned.
The Science of Michael Crichton is great because it led me to GFP Bunny:
GFP Bunny is a transgenic animal art project created by Eduardo Kac (pronounced "Katz") in 2000. Its genome was modified to result in cells that produce florescence when excited by light of a certain wavelength, in this case blue light with maximum excitation occurring at wavelengths of 488 nm. Exposure to this light causes GFP Bunny, who Kac named "Alba", to glow green light at 509 nm. In normal light, she looks like this:
The essay that mentions GFP Bunny, by freelance writer and former associate biochemistry professor Phill Jones, covers Crichton's Next (2006):
Next was the last album Crichton published before he died. He had really learned how to name his characters by this point:
Alex Burnet (heroine, who may or may not be brunette, I forget, which is great for casting)
Frank Burnet (Alex's father, who gets his genes stolen)
Michael Gross (the doctor who steals Alex's father genes)
Vasco Borden (the bounty hunter who tracks down Alex's father's genes in Alex's body)
"Jack" Watson (ruthless venture capitalist)
Brad Gordon (irresponsible nephew)
Mick Crowley (allegedly based on Michael Crowley)
Dave (talking chimp boy)
Crichton also knew how to name the science:
LoxP
Cre recombinase
lentiviral vectors
homologous recombination
cytokines
Given those scientific terms and those characters, how could you not write a novel with an intelligent parrot? Of course we're far away from people branding sea turtles with corporate logos but that's why they call it speculative fiction. Both Jones' essay and Dave Itzkoff's New York Times review quote Michael Crichton's message to the readers:
"This novel is fiction, except for the parts that aren't."
Which brings me back to the bunny. Because although GFP Bunny has been vetted by reputable news organizations, I remember Photoshop being pretty good back in 2000, and I see a striking resemblance between the tonal hues of Eduardo Kac's project and High on Fire's 2000 album The Art of Self-Defense:
In Other News
Congratulations to all winners of the Its Kind of a Funny Story Movie Stub/Book Giveaway Contest! Our winners came from all over the United States:
Photos of ticket stubs are here: It's Kind of a Funny Story in the Real World. Stay tuned for news of the DVD release!
November 30, 2010
The Power of Humor
Amidst the sad news from Michigan about the the three boys who went missing after their father attempted to hang himself is this suicide story from the New York Post:
"Woman leaps to her death on W. Side"
[image error]
NEW YORK, NY, November 27, 2010 - A woman jumped to her death earlier today off a swank West Side hi-rise, authorities said.
The victim – who hasn't been identified – leapt just before 9 a.m. from one of the upper floors of 505 West 37th Street near Tenth Avenue, authorities said. The luxury apartment building is located a block from the Javits Convention Center.
She was pronounced dead at the scene.
The impact of the woman's fall was so powerful that it split the concrete sidewalk where she landed.
It's a sad story not just for the loss of life and attendant madness (moment of release, secret knowledge of death) but for the straight-faced nature of the report. We don't know who the woman was; we don't know what she accomplished and what she didn't; we don't know if she'd been depressed for a long time; we don't know if she was part of a tortured love affair; we don't know if somebody outed her for being gay on Twitter... All the sexy and interesting details that sell people on suicide are missing.
But when you read the comments on the story you dig deeper into suicide and suicide prevention:
Nasty !
11/27/2010 2:01 PM
I know exactly where that building is. Tomorrow morning I will go there , Trip on the crack in the sidewalk , Take an ambulance ride to the hospital , Claim my back hurts , And hire A nice greedy [ethnic slur redacted] lawyer . I will then sue the woman's estate , The owner of the building ,And the City of New York . Unless of course 20 people beat me to it.I probably too late already .
YANKEESSUX
11/27/2010 1:40 PM
Has the concrete's next of kin been notified. Curley Concrete went all to pieces learning of his son's demise. The funeral for Charlie Concrete will held at Slate Rock Quarry in Stone Mason, VT on December 1st, 2010 at 3pm. Donations can be made in Charlie's memory to the Hard As A Rock Foundation.
Queen of Mean
11/28/2010 12:03 AM
Very Sad. It's such a depressing area of Manhattan to begin with. Right near the Tunnel and looking at New Jersey. I'd get Peter Falk on the case....are they sure she jumped or was it another faulty balcony rail?
Many people are disgusted with comments like these --
Jimmy The Gooch
11/27/2010 3:50 PM
All you that joke. This is why people hate people from N.Y.C.. You make it bad for all of us. They say people from Philly have no class. Well we are not far behind. May God forgive all of you.
-- but I wonder if we couldn't have stopped this suicide by showing the woman who jumped how people would ridicule her. In School is Hell , Matt Groening gives the reader 3 reasons why not to commit suicide in high school:
"Why you shouldn't kill yourself in High School"
Nobody will care
They'll make jokes up about you
There's no TV in heaven
No kidding about #2, especially in the New York Post comment section.
The most important thing to drill into people's heads regarding suicide is that if you're feeling suicidal, you need to call a hotline. That's something we should all be taught in health class. 800-SUICIDE is a real phone number that works, not just something I invented for It's Kind of a Funny Story; 800-273-8255 (the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline) works as well.
Besides calling the hotline, though, the best way to talk yourself down from suicide might be to laugh at it.
Take Jim Knipfel's fantastic memoir Quitting the Nairobi Trio :
It begins with the author wanting to kill himself in graduate school -- but not wanting his family and friends to know it was a suicide. So he goes through an elaborate set of steps involving a knife, chair and duct tape to make his suicide seem like a murder. You don't want to laugh... but you have to, because Knipfel is that good a writer. After his faked-murder-suicide fails, he downs a lot of pills and then has a florid psychotic episode where he begins reciting Nietzsche in German. He wakes up in a psych hospital and the meat of the book begins.
Quitting the Nairobi Trio is one of the books I think about when I consider the power of humor. Humor's strength lies in its ability to make us step back from ourselves and look at our lives from the perspective of a skeptical observer. If she did commit suicide, the woman who jumped from the building in New York was so twisted and torn in her own head that she couldn't laugh at herself -- because if she could, she would have been able to remove herself from her ego and reconsider the situation. Suicide is the ultimate ego-trip. New York Post commenters are the cure.
"Woman leaps to her death on W. Side"
[image error]
NEW YORK, NY, November 27, 2010 - A woman jumped to her death earlier today off a swank West Side hi-rise, authorities said.
The victim – who hasn't been identified – leapt just before 9 a.m. from one of the upper floors of 505 West 37th Street near Tenth Avenue, authorities said. The luxury apartment building is located a block from the Javits Convention Center.
She was pronounced dead at the scene.
The impact of the woman's fall was so powerful that it split the concrete sidewalk where she landed.
It's a sad story not just for the loss of life and attendant madness (moment of release, secret knowledge of death) but for the straight-faced nature of the report. We don't know who the woman was; we don't know what she accomplished and what she didn't; we don't know if she'd been depressed for a long time; we don't know if she was part of a tortured love affair; we don't know if somebody outed her for being gay on Twitter... All the sexy and interesting details that sell people on suicide are missing.
But when you read the comments on the story you dig deeper into suicide and suicide prevention:
Nasty !
11/27/2010 2:01 PM
I know exactly where that building is. Tomorrow morning I will go there , Trip on the crack in the sidewalk , Take an ambulance ride to the hospital , Claim my back hurts , And hire A nice greedy [ethnic slur redacted] lawyer . I will then sue the woman's estate , The owner of the building ,And the City of New York . Unless of course 20 people beat me to it.I probably too late already .
YANKEESSUX
11/27/2010 1:40 PM
Has the concrete's next of kin been notified. Curley Concrete went all to pieces learning of his son's demise. The funeral for Charlie Concrete will held at Slate Rock Quarry in Stone Mason, VT on December 1st, 2010 at 3pm. Donations can be made in Charlie's memory to the Hard As A Rock Foundation.
Queen of Mean
11/28/2010 12:03 AM
Very Sad. It's such a depressing area of Manhattan to begin with. Right near the Tunnel and looking at New Jersey. I'd get Peter Falk on the case....are they sure she jumped or was it another faulty balcony rail?
Many people are disgusted with comments like these --
Jimmy The Gooch
11/27/2010 3:50 PM
All you that joke. This is why people hate people from N.Y.C.. You make it bad for all of us. They say people from Philly have no class. Well we are not far behind. May God forgive all of you.
-- but I wonder if we couldn't have stopped this suicide by showing the woman who jumped how people would ridicule her. In School is Hell , Matt Groening gives the reader 3 reasons why not to commit suicide in high school:
"Why you shouldn't kill yourself in High School"
Nobody will care
They'll make jokes up about you
There's no TV in heaven
No kidding about #2, especially in the New York Post comment section.
The most important thing to drill into people's heads regarding suicide is that if you're feeling suicidal, you need to call a hotline. That's something we should all be taught in health class. 800-SUICIDE is a real phone number that works, not just something I invented for It's Kind of a Funny Story; 800-273-8255 (the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline) works as well.
Besides calling the hotline, though, the best way to talk yourself down from suicide might be to laugh at it.
Take Jim Knipfel's fantastic memoir Quitting the Nairobi Trio :
It begins with the author wanting to kill himself in graduate school -- but not wanting his family and friends to know it was a suicide. So he goes through an elaborate set of steps involving a knife, chair and duct tape to make his suicide seem like a murder. You don't want to laugh... but you have to, because Knipfel is that good a writer. After his faked-murder-suicide fails, he downs a lot of pills and then has a florid psychotic episode where he begins reciting Nietzsche in German. He wakes up in a psych hospital and the meat of the book begins.
Quitting the Nairobi Trio is one of the books I think about when I consider the power of humor. Humor's strength lies in its ability to make us step back from ourselves and look at our lives from the perspective of a skeptical observer. If she did commit suicide, the woman who jumped from the building in New York was so twisted and torn in her own head that she couldn't laugh at herself -- because if she could, she would have been able to remove herself from her ego and reconsider the situation. Suicide is the ultimate ego-trip. New York Post commenters are the cure.
November 12, 2010
Add to Blog
I don't know how other people handle their email. Sometimes I see over someone's shoulder when they have their email open (or I intentionally look--
) and I see a Gmail box with 10,213 messages in it, with some unread ones on top and a pile of read ones below. I couldn't imagine living this way. I use Gmail; for me, whenever I click "Archive" and take a message out of the inbox, I feel like I'm winning a war.
If a message is still in my inbox, that means it requires action. What kind of action? I use labels to remind myself, so my inbox is a colorful, happy place:
Generally I have a few unread emails on top and 100 read and labeled emails awaiting action below. The oldest of these labeled emails is currently from *2007* so I'm a little behind, but I'll handle it, maybe after I finish this blog entry.
My labeling system gave me a lot of stress in the past but recently I read Gig , an update on Studs Terkel's classic Working that collects interviews of people talking about their jobs:
[image error]
In Gig, there's an interview with a town manager (sort of like a mayor-for-hire for a small town) who says that she always has a list of things to do, and this list always has 100 items in it. You find wisdom in strange places.
One of the labels I have is "add to blog," and "add to blog" has been choked up lately with a ton of things I've been meaning to post here. What with the It's Kind of a Funny Story film and my next book I've been pretty busy, so here goes!
"Method Man & Redman – Da Rockwilder | Meaning of Rap Lyrics"
Big ups to Rap Genius for featuring "Da Rockwilder" by Method Man & Redman on their site. This is the song that plays during the "basketball scene" of the It's Kind of a Funny Story movie; people have been asking about it.
Rap Genius is an freeform folksonomy website for explaining rap lyrics.
It's Kind of a Funny Story Theatrical Interpretation Video
A while ago I shared some pictures from Oak Lawn Community High School's "group interpretation" of It's Kind of a Funny Story, where the students used the text of the book but added a Greek chorus for a unique theatrical take on the material. I now have the videos up!
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Oak Lawn did an amazing job with this project and I look forward to visiting the school in February 2011. Thanks to Erika Buys for sending me the images and video and giving me clearance to post.
Interview on "The Geek Generation" Podcast
Thanks to Rob Valois for interviewing me on his podcast, "The Geek Generation." We talked about It's Kind of a Funny Story and he asked me what I "geeked about" out about. My answer:
Note: Steven Seagal panda link NSFW.
It's Kind of a Funny Story Exclusive Clip: Emma Roberts Asks Some Tough Questions
The Story of Funny Story on Fuse #8
Thanks to Betsy Bird for posting my behind-the-scenes account of the filming of It's Kind of a Funny Story on Fuse #8, School Library Journal's blog:
"Picture this: a reader familiar with my work drags her/his friends to the opening night of It's Kind of a Funny Story, the film based on my novel. In the middle of the film, my dumbass face appears. The reader recognizes me and grabs her/his friends: "That's the author!" The friends (who couldn't care less about me) think: "So this is the doofy white guy responsible for this stuff…"" [read more]
Also congrats to Betsy on her forthcoming book, tentatively titled Wild Things! : The True, Untold Stories Behind the Most Beloved Children's Books and Their Creators .
Chase Whale at Gordon and the Whale Interviews Zack Galifianakis
Zach tells Chase why he didn't win an Oscar for OUT COLD.
Chris Peckover"I analyzed Hannibal Lecter for a long time before writing UNDOCUMENTED because I wanted Z to be a villain of that magnitude. It ends up you need a lot of heroic elements in your villain to make that happen. Z needed to be intelligent, well spoken, persuasive, well mannered, and truthful." [read more]
"Movie Review | 'It's Kind of a Funny Story': A Coming-of-Age Tale, Set Among the Sad"
From the New York Times. Thank you to A.O. Scott and his kid for reading my book(s)!
It's Kind of a Funny Story Exclusive Clip "Ice Cream" on Fandango
Music: "Where You Go" – Elden Calder from the soundtrack
My Art from the Psych Hospital
I was always embarrassed by "artist statements" but at least they're short:
Thanks to Samantha Schutz (You Are Not Here) for posting this on her site You Make Me Feel Less Alone. Thanks also Samantha for reading with me at Barnes & Noble this fall:
"'It's Kind of a Funny Story' Review - TIME"
"Morever, the movie makes a valuable point about teens and depression: Craig's popularity skyrockets amongst his friends when word gets out that he's in a mental ward. Teens love drama; even the girl he adores from afar, Nia (Zoe Kravitz) is suddenly interested in him. The realization of this irony — that popularity is based on bizarre and unreasonable factors and should therefore should not be taken seriously — is a reiteration of something our knowing pop culture has been playing with for years. (Think of 1989's Heathers, where a mean girl's popularity grew by leaps and bounds after her supposed suicide.)"
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,2024080,00.html#ixzz1554uUIWB
The 10 most depressing professions | BusinessBrief.com
Sent to me by my mom. Thanks mom.
"It's Kind of a Quirky Interview | Moving Pictures | SPLICETODAY.com"
I talk about Focus Features vetting the conceit of a hospital mixing teen and adult patients.
"Vermin on the Mount: ONE-QUIZTUNE INTERVIEW: NED VIZZINI"
Thank you to everyone who came out to "Y.A. AUTHOR NIGHT AT THE MOUNTAIN" at the long-running Vermin on the Mount reading series in Los Angeles on November 7, 2010. I got a chance to read about Star Wars: Attack of the Clones --
-- with Sonya Sones, Lauren Strasnick, and Lauren Kate, who all read decidedly un-PG-13 material. Guest host Cecil Castelluci kept things flowing and series chieftan Jim Ruland held down the fort and the book sales.
The essay on Attack of the Clones is available in the zine "I Love Bad Movies" #3, on sale now! ($5)
Marty Beckerman | America's Sexxxiest Journalist
Marty has redone his website and is bringing us his views on inflation and his classic video My Penis Hurts! (But the Mango Was Nice...),
An NSFW warning feels redundant, as Marty hasn't been safe for work since before he had a job at New York Press.
Ned's Reader Mail -- with Ned Vizzini and Nick Antosca
I made this video with Nick Antosca and
I hope people take it in stride, it's a little mean-spirited but meant to be fun.
Two New Reviews
I wrote two new reviews:
"Young Adult - Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly - Halo by Alexandra Adornetto - NYTimes.com"
"The Complete Works of Marvin K. Mooney: Applause, Please | Books | The L Magazine - New York City's Local Event and Arts & Culture Guide"
Pkease enjoy, the first was printed in the New York Times and the second in the L Magazine.
"What's Good?: Guest Blog Post: Be More Chill"
L.A. Gabay recommends Be More Chill for teaching literature, using the unabridged audio version. Thanks to his school, Passages Academy in Brooklyn, for hosting my visit on October 27, 2010.
It's Kind of a Funny Story Press
"There's a whole lot of crazy going on in 'Funny Story' :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Richard Roeper"
"Ned Vizzini's Funny Story | Movie Journal | The L Magazine - New York City's Local Event and Arts & Culture Guide"
"A 'Funny' Thing Happened in Brooklyn - WSJ.com"
"The New Season Film - Breaking Out of the Mold - NYTimes.com"
"Mr. Gilchrist has done mostly television ("United States of Tara"), but he has mastered the big-screen need to remain low key while being clearly expressive. With his full lips, bumpy nose and perpetually anxious eyebrows, he has an appealingly funny face, yet without ever clowning he makes it the barometer of Craig's emotional progress. Various events contribute to the gradual drop in Craig's anxiety level, but the most crucial is revealed in Mr. Gilchrist's eyes: the emergence of a new and empathetic interest in the suffering of others." [read more]
It's Kind of a Funny Story is now available on Kindle!
I'm told that this means it can work on iPads as well. Thanks for making it competitive with Treasure Island (?!) in in the "Children's Popular Culture Literature" Kindle Category.
I have fallen in love with bit.ly; most of the above links are shortened for Twitter. Ah, Twitter. I managed to avoid you but now you are dragging me in as a content aggregator.
) and I see a Gmail box with 10,213 messages in it, with some unread ones on top and a pile of read ones below. I couldn't imagine living this way. I use Gmail; for me, whenever I click "Archive" and take a message out of the inbox, I feel like I'm winning a war.
If a message is still in my inbox, that means it requires action. What kind of action? I use labels to remind myself, so my inbox is a colorful, happy place:
Generally I have a few unread emails on top and 100 read and labeled emails awaiting action below. The oldest of these labeled emails is currently from *2007* so I'm a little behind, but I'll handle it, maybe after I finish this blog entry.
My labeling system gave me a lot of stress in the past but recently I read Gig , an update on Studs Terkel's classic Working that collects interviews of people talking about their jobs:
[image error]
In Gig, there's an interview with a town manager (sort of like a mayor-for-hire for a small town) who says that she always has a list of things to do, and this list always has 100 items in it. You find wisdom in strange places.
One of the labels I have is "add to blog," and "add to blog" has been choked up lately with a ton of things I've been meaning to post here. What with the It's Kind of a Funny Story film and my next book I've been pretty busy, so here goes!
"Method Man & Redman – Da Rockwilder | Meaning of Rap Lyrics"
Big ups to Rap Genius for featuring "Da Rockwilder" by Method Man & Redman on their site. This is the song that plays during the "basketball scene" of the It's Kind of a Funny Story movie; people have been asking about it.
Rap Genius is an freeform folksonomy website for explaining rap lyrics.
It's Kind of a Funny Story Theatrical Interpretation Video
A while ago I shared some pictures from Oak Lawn Community High School's "group interpretation" of It's Kind of a Funny Story, where the students used the text of the book but added a Greek chorus for a unique theatrical take on the material. I now have the videos up!
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Oak Lawn did an amazing job with this project and I look forward to visiting the school in February 2011. Thanks to Erika Buys for sending me the images and video and giving me clearance to post.
Interview on "The Geek Generation" Podcast
Thanks to Rob Valois for interviewing me on his podcast, "The Geek Generation." We talked about It's Kind of a Funny Story and he asked me what I "geeked about" out about. My answer:
Note: Steven Seagal panda link NSFW.
It's Kind of a Funny Story Exclusive Clip: Emma Roberts Asks Some Tough Questions
The Story of Funny Story on Fuse #8
Thanks to Betsy Bird for posting my behind-the-scenes account of the filming of It's Kind of a Funny Story on Fuse #8, School Library Journal's blog:
"Picture this: a reader familiar with my work drags her/his friends to the opening night of It's Kind of a Funny Story, the film based on my novel. In the middle of the film, my dumbass face appears. The reader recognizes me and grabs her/his friends: "That's the author!" The friends (who couldn't care less about me) think: "So this is the doofy white guy responsible for this stuff…"" [read more]
Also congrats to Betsy on her forthcoming book, tentatively titled Wild Things! : The True, Untold Stories Behind the Most Beloved Children's Books and Their Creators .
Chase Whale at Gordon and the Whale Interviews Zack Galifianakis
Zach tells Chase why he didn't win an Oscar for OUT COLD.
Chris Peckover"I analyzed Hannibal Lecter for a long time before writing UNDOCUMENTED because I wanted Z to be a villain of that magnitude. It ends up you need a lot of heroic elements in your villain to make that happen. Z needed to be intelligent, well spoken, persuasive, well mannered, and truthful." [read more]
"Movie Review | 'It's Kind of a Funny Story': A Coming-of-Age Tale, Set Among the Sad"
From the New York Times. Thank you to A.O. Scott and his kid for reading my book(s)!
It's Kind of a Funny Story Exclusive Clip "Ice Cream" on Fandango
Music: "Where You Go" – Elden Calder from the soundtrack
My Art from the Psych Hospital
I was always embarrassed by "artist statements" but at least they're short:
Thanks to Samantha Schutz (You Are Not Here) for posting this on her site You Make Me Feel Less Alone. Thanks also Samantha for reading with me at Barnes & Noble this fall:
"'It's Kind of a Funny Story' Review - TIME"
"Morever, the movie makes a valuable point about teens and depression: Craig's popularity skyrockets amongst his friends when word gets out that he's in a mental ward. Teens love drama; even the girl he adores from afar, Nia (Zoe Kravitz) is suddenly interested in him. The realization of this irony — that popularity is based on bizarre and unreasonable factors and should therefore should not be taken seriously — is a reiteration of something our knowing pop culture has been playing with for years. (Think of 1989's Heathers, where a mean girl's popularity grew by leaps and bounds after her supposed suicide.)"
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,2024080,00.html#ixzz1554uUIWB
The 10 most depressing professions | BusinessBrief.com
Sent to me by my mom. Thanks mom.
"It's Kind of a Quirky Interview | Moving Pictures | SPLICETODAY.com"
I talk about Focus Features vetting the conceit of a hospital mixing teen and adult patients.
"Vermin on the Mount: ONE-QUIZTUNE INTERVIEW: NED VIZZINI"
Thank you to everyone who came out to "Y.A. AUTHOR NIGHT AT THE MOUNTAIN" at the long-running Vermin on the Mount reading series in Los Angeles on November 7, 2010. I got a chance to read about Star Wars: Attack of the Clones --
-- with Sonya Sones, Lauren Strasnick, and Lauren Kate, who all read decidedly un-PG-13 material. Guest host Cecil Castelluci kept things flowing and series chieftan Jim Ruland held down the fort and the book sales.
The essay on Attack of the Clones is available in the zine "I Love Bad Movies" #3, on sale now! ($5)
Marty Beckerman | America's Sexxxiest Journalist
Marty has redone his website and is bringing us his views on inflation and his classic video My Penis Hurts! (But the Mango Was Nice...),
An NSFW warning feels redundant, as Marty hasn't been safe for work since before he had a job at New York Press.
Ned's Reader Mail -- with Ned Vizzini and Nick Antosca
I made this video with Nick Antosca and
I hope people take it in stride, it's a little mean-spirited but meant to be fun.
Two New Reviews
I wrote two new reviews:
"Young Adult - Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly - Halo by Alexandra Adornetto - NYTimes.com"
"The Complete Works of Marvin K. Mooney: Applause, Please | Books | The L Magazine - New York City's Local Event and Arts & Culture Guide"
Pkease enjoy, the first was printed in the New York Times and the second in the L Magazine.
"What's Good?: Guest Blog Post: Be More Chill"
L.A. Gabay recommends Be More Chill for teaching literature, using the unabridged audio version. Thanks to his school, Passages Academy in Brooklyn, for hosting my visit on October 27, 2010.
It's Kind of a Funny Story Press
"There's a whole lot of crazy going on in 'Funny Story' :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Richard Roeper"
"Ned Vizzini's Funny Story | Movie Journal | The L Magazine - New York City's Local Event and Arts & Culture Guide"
"A 'Funny' Thing Happened in Brooklyn - WSJ.com"
"The New Season Film - Breaking Out of the Mold - NYTimes.com"
"Mr. Gilchrist has done mostly television ("United States of Tara"), but he has mastered the big-screen need to remain low key while being clearly expressive. With his full lips, bumpy nose and perpetually anxious eyebrows, he has an appealingly funny face, yet without ever clowning he makes it the barometer of Craig's emotional progress. Various events contribute to the gradual drop in Craig's anxiety level, but the most crucial is revealed in Mr. Gilchrist's eyes: the emergence of a new and empathetic interest in the suffering of others." [read more]
It's Kind of a Funny Story is now available on Kindle!
I'm told that this means it can work on iPads as well. Thanks for making it competitive with Treasure Island (?!) in in the "Children's Popular Culture Literature" Kindle Category.
I have fallen in love with bit.ly; most of the above links are shortened for Twitter. Ah, Twitter. I managed to avoid you but now you are dragging me in as a content aggregator.
October 23, 2010
It's Kind of a Funny Everything: Contest & Tour
It's Kind of a Funny Tour The tour is over -- long live the tour. See pictures and recaps below.
[Barnes & Noble Park Slope, 10/26/10]
A common misconception that people have about authors is that they go on book tours. It seems reasonable enough -- if you write a book, you travel around the country reading from it and signing it, like a touring band. But, as Peter Hyman explained to me once, the economics of book tours rarely make sense.
If you go on a book tour, it's going to cost the book company a few grand to fly you around from city to city and put you up in hotels. Let's say that every night of the book tour, you do a reading at a bookstore and bring 25 people -- which means you're a smashing success. (I have done readings where 0 people showed up and I had to walk around the bookstore trying to convince people to listen to me). Say 10 of these people actually buy your book. Now you've sold 10 books, times 7 for a week-long tour... your book company has just sold 70 books for the low low price of a few thousand dollars. It doesn't compute.
That's why, the last time I went on a U.S. book tour, it was 2004 and it was self-financed. Luckily my friend Adam Collett traveled with me and took video: the result is "Squip Takes Over Tour 2004" , one of my favorite videos of all time.
Now, with the It's Kind of a Funny Story film in theaters around the country (check out the movie stub/book giveaway contest below!), I am going back on tour. Once again it's self-financed as I am flying from LA to NYC with my American Airlines miles and then borrowing my parents' van for some visits in the Boston area before heading down to Radford, VA to speak at Radford University. I will be signing books at all events. I hope I can see you at one of these dates. Without further ado:
It's Kind of a Funny Tour: October 24 - November 2, 2010
Sunday, October 24, 2010, 2pm - Teen Read Week at the Metuchen Public Library
I will be presenting my "How Not to Go Crazy in High School" program, followed by a Q&A.
FREE. Open to the public.
480 Middlesex Avenue, Metuchen, NJ 08840 [more] Thanks to everyone from Metuchen for a great event!
Monday, October 25, 2010, 1:45pm - "It's Kind of a Funny Story: the Book and Film" at Tompkins Square Middle School
I will speak to 175 6th-8th graders about It's Kind of a Funny Story.
600 E 6th St New York, NY 10009 [more] Thank you Tompkins Square Middle School for your excellent questions and your wonderful letters to me!
Tuesday, October 26, 2010, 7:00pm - Reading at Barnes & Noble Park Slope with Samantha Schutz
This is the big one!! I hope to see you there, Brooklyn. I'm honored to return to Barnes & Noble Park Slope, where I ran the B&N Teen Writing Workshop for five years, to read from new work. Also reading is my friend Samantha Schutz.
FREE. Open to the public.
267 7th Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11215 [more] [Facebook] Thank you everyone for coming! (see photo above) [more photos]
Wednesday, October 27, 2010, 1:00pm - Passages Academy "Be More Chill Book Discussion & Completion Celebration"
I will be speaking with students in the juvenile justice system in Brooklyn.
167 Willoughby St, Brooklyn, NY 11201 [more] Thank you Passages students and staff for making this a great event, and for the "Katz's Deli" hat.
[more photos]
Wednesday, October 27, 2010, 6:30pm - "Do the Right Thing" Fourth Annual Benefit for Behind The Book
It's my privilege to be a guest at the Annual Benefit for NYC nonprofit Behind the Book. This is a charity event to benefit students. I will be auctioning off "brain map" art from the It's Kind of a Funny Story film.
Open to the public.
William Bennett Gallery 65 Greene St #A New York, NY 10012 [more] [Facebook] Thank you to Behind the Book, host Ben Greenman and fellow participant Randy Cohen -- and thanks to the winner of the IKOAFS "brain map" auction!
Thursday, October 28, 2010, 7:00pm - Ned Vizzini and Timothy Gager at WELLESLEY BOOKSMITH
Please come out for this bookstore reading in the Boston area so I don't have to walk around asking random people to buy books! Also reading is my friend Timothy Gager.
FREE. Open to the public.
82 Central Street, Wellesley, MA 02481 [more] [Facebook] Thank you Tim Gager, Lee at Wellesley Booksmith, and everyone who came down to the event.
This high school visit will include a "How Not to Go Crazy in High School" keynote presentation and two "From Personal to Published" intensive writing workshops.
758 Marrett Road, Lexington, MA 02421 [more] Thanks so much to student Jake Ravanis for spearheading this visit and to all Minuteman students for your time, attention, and cake!
Also thank you Judy Bass for this wonderful report on the visit. [report] [photo]
Saturday, October 30, 2010, 2:00pm - New Haven Free Public Library
I will read from It's Kind of a Funny Story, discuss the novel and film, and do a Q&A session.
FREE. Open to the public.
133 Elm Street, New Haven, CT 06510 [more] Thank you for your questions, New Haven, and for sticking around to talk YA books.
Monday, November 1, 2010, 9:08am - Institute for Collaborative Education
I will present my "From Personal to Published" workshop to I.C.E. students.
345 E 15th Street, New York, NY 10003 [more] Thank you I.C.E. student Travis and I.C.E. teacher Nadia for bringing me in!
I will present my "How Not to Go Crazy in High School" program to students and adults interested in mental health and take questions about the It's Kind of a Funny Story book and film.
FREE. Open to the public.
43-06 Greenpoint Avenue, Sunnyside, NY 11104 [more] Thank you QPL teens and librarians Abigail Goldberg and Christian Zabriskie for having me return to speak with the talented Sunnyside students.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010, 7:00pm - Speaking at Radford University
I will present my "How Not to Go Crazy in College" program to Radford students.
801 East Main St., Radford, VA 24142 [more] Thank you R-SPaCE for bringing me to beautiful Radford University!
[photos by Brooke Nelson]
[photos by Karen Valluri]
=
Well now this is pretty simple. I'm having an old-school contest to encourage people to get out and see It's Kind of a Funny Story or see it again. Here's how it works:
Go and see the movie at a theater near you.
Take a picture of your ticket stub.
Comment on this blog entry with a link to the ticket stub photo. (You can use Photobucket, Flicker, or Facebook to host the photo, or your own blog or website. Be sure to leave some way to contact you in your comment; do not post your street address or phone number.)
You will automatically be entered for a chance to win a signed & personalized brand spanking new movie tie-in edition of It's Kind of a Funny Story!
I will do a random drawing to determine the winners. I will respond to your comment if you are one of the winners and we will message one another so I can get your address and send you the signed book. I will pay for shipping!
Good luck and thanks everyone for your support of the film.
[Barnes & Noble Park Slope, 10/26/10]
A common misconception that people have about authors is that they go on book tours. It seems reasonable enough -- if you write a book, you travel around the country reading from it and signing it, like a touring band. But, as Peter Hyman explained to me once, the economics of book tours rarely make sense.
If you go on a book tour, it's going to cost the book company a few grand to fly you around from city to city and put you up in hotels. Let's say that every night of the book tour, you do a reading at a bookstore and bring 25 people -- which means you're a smashing success. (I have done readings where 0 people showed up and I had to walk around the bookstore trying to convince people to listen to me). Say 10 of these people actually buy your book. Now you've sold 10 books, times 7 for a week-long tour... your book company has just sold 70 books for the low low price of a few thousand dollars. It doesn't compute.
That's why, the last time I went on a U.S. book tour, it was 2004 and it was self-financed. Luckily my friend Adam Collett traveled with me and took video: the result is "Squip Takes Over Tour 2004" , one of my favorite videos of all time.
Now, with the It's Kind of a Funny Story film in theaters around the country (check out the movie stub/book giveaway contest below!), I am going back on tour. Once again it's self-financed as I am flying from LA to NYC with my American Airlines miles and then borrowing my parents' van for some visits in the Boston area before heading down to Radford, VA to speak at Radford University. I will be signing books at all events. I hope I can see you at one of these dates. Without further ado:
It's Kind of a Funny Tour: October 24 - November 2, 2010
Sunday, October 24, 2010, 2pm - Teen Read Week at the Metuchen Public Library
I will be presenting my "How Not to Go Crazy in High School" program, followed by a Q&A.
FREE. Open to the public.
480 Middlesex Avenue, Metuchen, NJ 08840 [more] Thanks to everyone from Metuchen for a great event!
Monday, October 25, 2010, 1:45pm - "It's Kind of a Funny Story: the Book and Film" at Tompkins Square Middle School
I will speak to 175 6th-8th graders about It's Kind of a Funny Story.
600 E 6th St New York, NY 10009 [more] Thank you Tompkins Square Middle School for your excellent questions and your wonderful letters to me!
Tuesday, October 26, 2010, 7:00pm - Reading at Barnes & Noble Park Slope with Samantha Schutz
This is the big one!! I hope to see you there, Brooklyn. I'm honored to return to Barnes & Noble Park Slope, where I ran the B&N Teen Writing Workshop for five years, to read from new work. Also reading is my friend Samantha Schutz.
FREE. Open to the public.
267 7th Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11215 [more] [Facebook] Thank you everyone for coming! (see photo above) [more photos]
Wednesday, October 27, 2010, 1:00pm - Passages Academy "Be More Chill Book Discussion & Completion Celebration"
I will be speaking with students in the juvenile justice system in Brooklyn.
167 Willoughby St, Brooklyn, NY 11201 [more] Thank you Passages students and staff for making this a great event, and for the "Katz's Deli" hat.
[more photos]
Wednesday, October 27, 2010, 6:30pm - "Do the Right Thing" Fourth Annual Benefit for Behind The Book
It's my privilege to be a guest at the Annual Benefit for NYC nonprofit Behind the Book. This is a charity event to benefit students. I will be auctioning off "brain map" art from the It's Kind of a Funny Story film.
Open to the public.
William Bennett Gallery 65 Greene St #A New York, NY 10012 [more] [Facebook] Thank you to Behind the Book, host Ben Greenman and fellow participant Randy Cohen -- and thanks to the winner of the IKOAFS "brain map" auction!
Thursday, October 28, 2010, 7:00pm - Ned Vizzini and Timothy Gager at WELLESLEY BOOKSMITH
Please come out for this bookstore reading in the Boston area so I don't have to walk around asking random people to buy books! Also reading is my friend Timothy Gager.
FREE. Open to the public.
82 Central Street, Wellesley, MA 02481 [more] [Facebook] Thank you Tim Gager, Lee at Wellesley Booksmith, and everyone who came down to the event.
This high school visit will include a "How Not to Go Crazy in High School" keynote presentation and two "From Personal to Published" intensive writing workshops.
758 Marrett Road, Lexington, MA 02421 [more] Thanks so much to student Jake Ravanis for spearheading this visit and to all Minuteman students for your time, attention, and cake!
Also thank you Judy Bass for this wonderful report on the visit. [report] [photo]
Saturday, October 30, 2010, 2:00pm - New Haven Free Public Library
I will read from It's Kind of a Funny Story, discuss the novel and film, and do a Q&A session.
FREE. Open to the public.
133 Elm Street, New Haven, CT 06510 [more] Thank you for your questions, New Haven, and for sticking around to talk YA books.
Monday, November 1, 2010, 9:08am - Institute for Collaborative Education
I will present my "From Personal to Published" workshop to I.C.E. students.
345 E 15th Street, New York, NY 10003 [more] Thank you I.C.E. student Travis and I.C.E. teacher Nadia for bringing me in!
I will present my "How Not to Go Crazy in High School" program to students and adults interested in mental health and take questions about the It's Kind of a Funny Story book and film.
FREE. Open to the public.
43-06 Greenpoint Avenue, Sunnyside, NY 11104 [more] Thank you QPL teens and librarians Abigail Goldberg and Christian Zabriskie for having me return to speak with the talented Sunnyside students.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010, 7:00pm - Speaking at Radford University
I will present my "How Not to Go Crazy in College" program to Radford students.
801 East Main St., Radford, VA 24142 [more] Thank you R-SPaCE for bringing me to beautiful Radford University!
[photos by Brooke Nelson]
[photos by Karen Valluri]
=
Well now this is pretty simple. I'm having an old-school contest to encourage people to get out and see It's Kind of a Funny Story or see it again. Here's how it works:
Go and see the movie at a theater near you.
Take a picture of your ticket stub.
Comment on this blog entry with a link to the ticket stub photo. (You can use Photobucket, Flicker, or Facebook to host the photo, or your own blog or website. Be sure to leave some way to contact you in your comment; do not post your street address or phone number.)
You will automatically be entered for a chance to win a signed & personalized brand spanking new movie tie-in edition of It's Kind of a Funny Story!
I will do a random drawing to determine the winners. I will respond to your comment if you are one of the winners and we will message one another so I can get your address and send you the signed book. I will pay for shipping!
Good luck and thanks everyone for your support of the film.
October 9, 2010
It's Kind of a Funny Story -- In Theaters Now!
If you haven't gotten the chance, please go and check out
It's Kind of a Funny Story
at a theater near you today!
Thank you! Feel free to post comments/reviews of the movie here...
Thank you! Feel free to post comments/reviews of the movie here...
September 28, 2010
It's Kind of a Funny Story: TIFF Photo Essay, School Visit Contest, and Assorted Insanity
[Before we start: if you're interested in having me visit your school, along with getting free copies of the It's Kind of a Funny Story novel and meeting a cast member from the film, enter Focus Features' It's Kind of a Funny Story Campaign!]
A lot of people have asked me how I felt at this moment. To answer the question I have to go back 14 years to when I was in high school and I first got a story published in New York Press . The story was called "Horrible Mention" (about me getting honorable mention at the Scholastic Writing Awards) and it is collected in my first book Teen Angst? Naaah..., which is now available in a new edition. When I saw "Horrible Mention" -- saw the title and my name and the small humorous cartoon that the editors saw fit to accompany the piece with -- I went through a triptych of emotions:
pride - I had done something I set out to do
shame - I had done something other people could, and would, make fun of
fear - I would be expected to do it again
These feelings were so strong that I tripped in the pizza place where I was looking at the newspaper (it no longer exists; it was on Chambers Street) and had to catch myself. It was like a vortex enveloped me and spat me out and now I was not myself but two people, the person in the paper and the person holding the paper. From then on, whenever I published a book or wrote something in a newspaper, my emotional reaction was a shadow of that first time, when it was all new and unbelievable.
...So in Toronto, I had the three emotions listed above, but I had something else, stronger than all of them: luck .
I know a lot of writers who are very talented who have not had their books turned into films. I know a lot of writers who are better than me who have not had their books turned into films. I know writers who have had their books turned into films and have been disappointed by the results. The idea that my book would...
get optioned (legally reserved for the film development process)
get a script written based on it
get award-winning directors (who adapted the script) to direct it
get bonafide Hollywood stars to be the characters I invented or purloined from the jagged edge of reality
go into production
finish production on time with nobody getting killed or nothing exploding
come out in the end as a film that stays true to the tone and feel of the book
...is just too lucky to even ask for. It doesn't happen to people. It doesn't happen to people in movies. It shouldn't happen to me. But then I think that's being solipsistic. But then I wonder if this is all solipsistic, because the story came out of something that I experienced. But it doesn't matter because I have to sell a new book. But I have to promote this movie too. And then my head starts to explode and I figure it's just better to take pictures, so here goes...
The It's Kind of a Funny Story TIFF Premiere Photo DiaryWhen I arrived at the Ryerson, there were crowds. The crowds were there for the red carpet, although the red carpet at Toronto isn't really red, it's orange. They wanted to see Zach Galifianakis, Keir Gilchrist, and Emma Roberts, who all attended the premiere. They were snapping pictures so I turned around to take pictures of them.
I wondered if any of them had read the book. I wondered if any of them would read the book. But most of all I wondered who they were, how they got there. It wasn't like a reading. It wasn't like I could ask them. It wasn't 40 people; it was 400. I knew that part of this process would be a letting go but I was surprised at the sense of loss.
People told me throughout the movie journey: "At some point, Ned, you're just going to have let go and realize there's nothing you can do." But I didn't want to do nothing! I wanted to thank each and every person who was there. But to do that I would have had to explain who I was and they wouldn't have time, really. So I'm doing it now: if you're in these pictures, THANK YOU for coming to the Funny Story premiere! (Thank you especially to that guy in the third picture there who waved at me.)
Focus Features was at the premiere in full force. They were giving out "Diagnose Your Neurosis" wheels to promote the movie while dressed in hospital scrubs:
I thought back to when Teen Angst? Naaah... and Be More Chill came out and I promoted them by handing out flyers. Now there were other people handing out the flyers. I felt guilty; I felt like I should be the person handing them out. I felt like if I didn't hand them out people could accuse me of losing touch with my audience. "It's not your audience," I reminded myself. "It's the film's audience." But I couldn't help myself; I got a bunch of blank notebooks from Focus Features and I'm going to try to give them away as a promotion. If I'm not promoting this thing as much as I can, I feel like a freeloader.
Keir Gilchrist arrived at the premiere.
I took pictures of him but then I felt bad, invasive, because so many other people were taking pictures. I know that part of Keir's job as a professional film and television actor is to get his picture taken but I still felt like a vulture and so I didn't take any pictures of Zach or Emma or Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden when they arrived. I did walk on the orange carpet. Nobody took my picture and that was just fine.
I watched the movie. Inside the theater I had reserved seats dead center that said "Vizzini". My name was spelled correctly. Back when I wrote the "Horrible Mention" piece one of the things I wrote about was how nobody could spell or pronounce my name. I know PR people say that all that matters in press is that they spell your name right but I sometimes wonder if that's when you have to worry -- if they spell your name right all the time haven't you become a robot? But that's crazy. If my name were Smith I wouldn't have these questions....
The movie finished and everyone clapped. They didn't just clap at the end, they clapped in the "Under Pressure" scene in the middle that I'm still very happy has had no photos released of it. One of the nice things about It's Kind of a Funny Story is that you don't see all the visuals in the trailer. There are still things in this movie that are hidden and I hope they stay that way until it's released. I applauded with everyone else. It was the second time I'd seen the movie (I saw a screening this summer) and I thought it was great. Great performances, great music, great heart. As the applause rang out the stars and directors took the stage:
This was the first time I got to see Zach Galifianakis do his superhuman promotion thing. Zach has been pushing It's Kind of a Funny Story hardcore and the way he does it is by being preternaturally funny every chance he gets, on Jimmy Kimmel, on MTV, and here, where he announced his love child with Emma Roberts:
The reactions from the people onstage are so priceless. I felt like I was watching a top-notch improv class. When Anna Boden announced that the movie was filmed entirely in Brooklyn, I hooted and clapped and thought of everyone I was there to rep from New York -- from the person who "Ronnie" is based on in the book who really did tell me once "When a man puts on his first piece of jewelry, there's no turning back" to the people I met in the hospital, some of whom are probably dead now. "This is for you," I thought, and I clapped and clapped.
When we left the theater it was pouring. I was supposed to go to the It's Kind of a Funny Story after-party with Sabra. I held her hand; she looked beautiful. There weren't any cabs; there wasn't any hope of getting a cab. But then I saw a black Focus Features vehicle and I went up to the driver.
"Hey, I'm Ned, I wrote the book that the movie is based on, can I--?"
"Come on in!"
We slipped in. I felt like a million bucks. Sabra squeezed me. We drove to the after-party --
-- where I was once again struck by how different this was from a book event. It wasn't dozens of people; it was hundreds, with perfume sponsors in insane outfits --
-- and free food and bartenders wearing "It's Kind of a Funny Story" t-shirts. I got my picture with Keir --
-- and hung out with Sabra and talked with friends and took congratulations and smiled and nodded and felt good. This thing is going out into the world. It really is. I took a final picture of myself to make it real.
See the raindrops? It's real.
Movie News, Links, Interviews, Contests...
The New York Times ran two pieces interviewing Ryan Fleck & Anna Boden about It's Kind of a Funny Story's John Hughes influences, as well as how much of the movie is improv and how much is scripted:
"A Teenager Flying Over a Cuckoo's Nest"
"It's Kind of a John Hughes Homage"
Nick Dawson interviewed me for Focus Features; I answer questions about my life and career and Drunk Horse T-shirt.
"In Conversation with It's Kind of a Funny Story Author Ned Vizzini"
Focus Features has generously sponsored a contest with Eventful.com to bring me in to speak at five high schools who "Demand" me. Click below to enter!
The book review collaborative Tottenville Review interviewed me; thanks to Alex Gilvarry and Brianne Kennedy for this!
"Tottenville Review » Interviews » Ned Vizzini"
I answered another reader question for the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers:
"The Alliance for Young Artists & Writers: Do writers choose the actors starring in movies based on their lives?"
Chase Whale of Gordon and the Whale, who has been a big supporter of the It's Kind of a Funny Story film and novel, interviewed me:
"TIFF 2010 Interview: "It's Kind of a Funny Story" author, Ned Vizzini » GordonandtheWhale.com"
Betsy Sharkey of the LA Times gave It's Kind of a Funny Story some nice wrap-up coverage from Toronto:
"'It's Kind of a Funny Story,' from Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden -- whose searing 'Half Nelson' in 2006 established Ryan Gosling as a serious actor -- was among my favorites. Breaking that fourth wall with the audience whenever it felt right, the film spins a whimsical coming-of-age, maybe-suicide-isn't-the-answer, story of young love, friendship and insanity." [more]
Here's a longer clip of the cast and directors of Funny Story doing Q&A after the premiere in Toronto:
Thank you so much to Hunter College for inviting me to speak to incoming students!
It was an honor and privilege to return to Hunter, where I graduated in 2003, to speak to freshmen and transfer students at the Hunter Convocation about the diversity and energy of the place. Thank you to President Jennifer Raab and Sarah Wilburn for arranging the event, and thank you to everyone who I signed a notebook for! (These were those Focus Features It's Kind of a Funny Story notebooks that I mentioned earlier.)
The It's Kind of a Funny Story movie soundtrack is out!
Get it now on iTunes or go buy a CD! Man, a physical CD... I can't even believe it. More than the premiere, more than the posters... when I grab that CD I might trip again like I did in the pizza place.
A lot of people have asked me how I felt at this moment. To answer the question I have to go back 14 years to when I was in high school and I first got a story published in New York Press . The story was called "Horrible Mention" (about me getting honorable mention at the Scholastic Writing Awards) and it is collected in my first book Teen Angst? Naaah..., which is now available in a new edition. When I saw "Horrible Mention" -- saw the title and my name and the small humorous cartoon that the editors saw fit to accompany the piece with -- I went through a triptych of emotions:
pride - I had done something I set out to do
shame - I had done something other people could, and would, make fun of
fear - I would be expected to do it again
These feelings were so strong that I tripped in the pizza place where I was looking at the newspaper (it no longer exists; it was on Chambers Street) and had to catch myself. It was like a vortex enveloped me and spat me out and now I was not myself but two people, the person in the paper and the person holding the paper. From then on, whenever I published a book or wrote something in a newspaper, my emotional reaction was a shadow of that first time, when it was all new and unbelievable.
...So in Toronto, I had the three emotions listed above, but I had something else, stronger than all of them: luck .
I know a lot of writers who are very talented who have not had their books turned into films. I know a lot of writers who are better than me who have not had their books turned into films. I know writers who have had their books turned into films and have been disappointed by the results. The idea that my book would...
get optioned (legally reserved for the film development process)
get a script written based on it
get award-winning directors (who adapted the script) to direct it
get bonafide Hollywood stars to be the characters I invented or purloined from the jagged edge of reality
go into production
finish production on time with nobody getting killed or nothing exploding
come out in the end as a film that stays true to the tone and feel of the book
...is just too lucky to even ask for. It doesn't happen to people. It doesn't happen to people in movies. It shouldn't happen to me. But then I think that's being solipsistic. But then I wonder if this is all solipsistic, because the story came out of something that I experienced. But it doesn't matter because I have to sell a new book. But I have to promote this movie too. And then my head starts to explode and I figure it's just better to take pictures, so here goes...
The It's Kind of a Funny Story TIFF Premiere Photo DiaryWhen I arrived at the Ryerson, there were crowds. The crowds were there for the red carpet, although the red carpet at Toronto isn't really red, it's orange. They wanted to see Zach Galifianakis, Keir Gilchrist, and Emma Roberts, who all attended the premiere. They were snapping pictures so I turned around to take pictures of them.
I wondered if any of them had read the book. I wondered if any of them would read the book. But most of all I wondered who they were, how they got there. It wasn't like a reading. It wasn't like I could ask them. It wasn't 40 people; it was 400. I knew that part of this process would be a letting go but I was surprised at the sense of loss.
People told me throughout the movie journey: "At some point, Ned, you're just going to have let go and realize there's nothing you can do." But I didn't want to do nothing! I wanted to thank each and every person who was there. But to do that I would have had to explain who I was and they wouldn't have time, really. So I'm doing it now: if you're in these pictures, THANK YOU for coming to the Funny Story premiere! (Thank you especially to that guy in the third picture there who waved at me.)
Focus Features was at the premiere in full force. They were giving out "Diagnose Your Neurosis" wheels to promote the movie while dressed in hospital scrubs:
I thought back to when Teen Angst? Naaah... and Be More Chill came out and I promoted them by handing out flyers. Now there were other people handing out the flyers. I felt guilty; I felt like I should be the person handing them out. I felt like if I didn't hand them out people could accuse me of losing touch with my audience. "It's not your audience," I reminded myself. "It's the film's audience." But I couldn't help myself; I got a bunch of blank notebooks from Focus Features and I'm going to try to give them away as a promotion. If I'm not promoting this thing as much as I can, I feel like a freeloader.
Keir Gilchrist arrived at the premiere.
I took pictures of him but then I felt bad, invasive, because so many other people were taking pictures. I know that part of Keir's job as a professional film and television actor is to get his picture taken but I still felt like a vulture and so I didn't take any pictures of Zach or Emma or Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden when they arrived. I did walk on the orange carpet. Nobody took my picture and that was just fine.
I watched the movie. Inside the theater I had reserved seats dead center that said "Vizzini". My name was spelled correctly. Back when I wrote the "Horrible Mention" piece one of the things I wrote about was how nobody could spell or pronounce my name. I know PR people say that all that matters in press is that they spell your name right but I sometimes wonder if that's when you have to worry -- if they spell your name right all the time haven't you become a robot? But that's crazy. If my name were Smith I wouldn't have these questions....
The movie finished and everyone clapped. They didn't just clap at the end, they clapped in the "Under Pressure" scene in the middle that I'm still very happy has had no photos released of it. One of the nice things about It's Kind of a Funny Story is that you don't see all the visuals in the trailer. There are still things in this movie that are hidden and I hope they stay that way until it's released. I applauded with everyone else. It was the second time I'd seen the movie (I saw a screening this summer) and I thought it was great. Great performances, great music, great heart. As the applause rang out the stars and directors took the stage:
This was the first time I got to see Zach Galifianakis do his superhuman promotion thing. Zach has been pushing It's Kind of a Funny Story hardcore and the way he does it is by being preternaturally funny every chance he gets, on Jimmy Kimmel, on MTV, and here, where he announced his love child with Emma Roberts:
The reactions from the people onstage are so priceless. I felt like I was watching a top-notch improv class. When Anna Boden announced that the movie was filmed entirely in Brooklyn, I hooted and clapped and thought of everyone I was there to rep from New York -- from the person who "Ronnie" is based on in the book who really did tell me once "When a man puts on his first piece of jewelry, there's no turning back" to the people I met in the hospital, some of whom are probably dead now. "This is for you," I thought, and I clapped and clapped.
When we left the theater it was pouring. I was supposed to go to the It's Kind of a Funny Story after-party with Sabra. I held her hand; she looked beautiful. There weren't any cabs; there wasn't any hope of getting a cab. But then I saw a black Focus Features vehicle and I went up to the driver.
"Hey, I'm Ned, I wrote the book that the movie is based on, can I--?"
"Come on in!"
We slipped in. I felt like a million bucks. Sabra squeezed me. We drove to the after-party --
-- where I was once again struck by how different this was from a book event. It wasn't dozens of people; it was hundreds, with perfume sponsors in insane outfits --
-- and free food and bartenders wearing "It's Kind of a Funny Story" t-shirts. I got my picture with Keir --
-- and hung out with Sabra and talked with friends and took congratulations and smiled and nodded and felt good. This thing is going out into the world. It really is. I took a final picture of myself to make it real.
See the raindrops? It's real.
Movie News, Links, Interviews, Contests...
The New York Times ran two pieces interviewing Ryan Fleck & Anna Boden about It's Kind of a Funny Story's John Hughes influences, as well as how much of the movie is improv and how much is scripted:
"A Teenager Flying Over a Cuckoo's Nest"
"It's Kind of a John Hughes Homage"
Nick Dawson interviewed me for Focus Features; I answer questions about my life and career and Drunk Horse T-shirt.
"In Conversation with It's Kind of a Funny Story Author Ned Vizzini"
Focus Features has generously sponsored a contest with Eventful.com to bring me in to speak at five high schools who "Demand" me. Click below to enter!
The book review collaborative Tottenville Review interviewed me; thanks to Alex Gilvarry and Brianne Kennedy for this!
"Tottenville Review » Interviews » Ned Vizzini"
I answered another reader question for the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers:
"The Alliance for Young Artists & Writers: Do writers choose the actors starring in movies based on their lives?"
Chase Whale of Gordon and the Whale, who has been a big supporter of the It's Kind of a Funny Story film and novel, interviewed me:
"TIFF 2010 Interview: "It's Kind of a Funny Story" author, Ned Vizzini » GordonandtheWhale.com"
Betsy Sharkey of the LA Times gave It's Kind of a Funny Story some nice wrap-up coverage from Toronto:
"'It's Kind of a Funny Story,' from Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden -- whose searing 'Half Nelson' in 2006 established Ryan Gosling as a serious actor -- was among my favorites. Breaking that fourth wall with the audience whenever it felt right, the film spins a whimsical coming-of-age, maybe-suicide-isn't-the-answer, story of young love, friendship and insanity." [more]
Here's a longer clip of the cast and directors of Funny Story doing Q&A after the premiere in Toronto:
Thank you so much to Hunter College for inviting me to speak to incoming students!
It was an honor and privilege to return to Hunter, where I graduated in 2003, to speak to freshmen and transfer students at the Hunter Convocation about the diversity and energy of the place. Thank you to President Jennifer Raab and Sarah Wilburn for arranging the event, and thank you to everyone who I signed a notebook for! (These were those Focus Features It's Kind of a Funny Story notebooks that I mentioned earlier.)
The It's Kind of a Funny Story movie soundtrack is out!
Get it now on iTunes or go buy a CD! Man, a physical CD... I can't even believe it. More than the premiere, more than the posters... when I grab that CD I might trip again like I did in the pizza place.
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