Ed Gorman's Blog, page 211

Jason Pinter Goes Digital

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From The Huffington Post:

Jason Pinter Bestselling thriller writer
Posted: February 2, 2011 11:25 AM

About nine years ago, I was a college senior, struggling with what to do with my post-college life. I'd always had somewhat of an itch to be a writer, or at least try my hand at writing, but other than a few pale short stories and a navel-gazing attempt at a roman-a-clef, I hadn't written much. Then, as I imagine most fits of creativity stem from the same place, it took a combination of a spark of inspiration and boredom. I was sitting in a not-particularly inspiring class, when I had the idea for a story. A story that resonated with me.

At its heart, it would be the story of a man, not totally different from me, who was trying to figure out what to do with his life. This man, John Gillis, was older, 30, had spent his life toiling behind the same bar, doing nothing but picking soggy tips off the countertops. John would try to discover his destiny through his own mind--specifically by writing a memoir to harness his thoughts. Then came the cherry bomb...

A literary agent would discover John's manuscript. A man desperate to reinvent his once-great career. He loves John's story--but that story needed more action. Romance. Danger. So this man, Nico Vanetti, sets out to manipulate John's life without him knowing it, to artificially create that drama that would skyrocket the asking price for John's still-in-the-works memoir. The greater the drama, the greater the risks, until Nico is willing to put his career--and John's life--in jeopardy. Throw in Nico's associate, an ambitious young woman who falls for John, and it torn between her feelings for him and her devotion to her boss, and I thought I had a pretty good story. I'd interned at a literary agency in college, knew a few folks in the industry, and set out trying to learn more.

When the book was complete, I managed to land a literary agent for this novel in 2003, at the time stintingly titled THE REAL LIFE MEMOIR OF JOHN GILLIS. We went through numerous drafts, then began submitting to publishers. There were a few close calls, but nobody made an offer. One editor offered to buy it--but only if I turned it into a chick lit novel and published it under a female pseudonym. I declined. Not exactly how I imagined my literary career beginning.

for the rest go here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jason-p...

Voyage To See What's at The Bottom

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Ed here: I watched the first couple episodes of "Voyage To The Bottom of The Sea" from a hospital bed, recovering from a bad car accident. I'd had modest hopes for it despite the fact that it was being produced by Irwin Allen. I gave up early on. The tilting camera whenever the submarine was hit was almost always the worst part of the show until Allen went into Monster of The Week. Another science fiction hope dashed. I was still reading and occasionally writing for sf fanzines in those days. It was generally referred to as "Voyage To See What Was At The Bottom." And bottom it was.

The co-star David Hedison talks about the show in the LA Times and manages to make it interesting. I always felt it was pretty sad to see an actor of Richard Basehart's cred on a show this bad. But he'd hit a rough patch in his career and life and I suppose he thought he could bank some serious cash by humiliating himself this way.


From The Los Angeles Times:
'Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea': David Hedison looks back on periscope days
Jan. 30, 2011 | 8:48 a.m.
by Susan King


Richard Basehart, left, and David Hedison on "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea." (Fox Home Entertainment)

When you think of sci-fi stars on American television in the 1960s your thoughts naturally beam up to the Enterprise and the famous crew of "Star Trek," but the cast of "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" actually logged more time aboard its ship — the ABC maritime adventure that ran from 1964 to 1968 ended up as the decade's longest-running non-anthology sci-fi show.

The most famous faces of the "Voyage" cast were the late Richard Basehart , in the role of Admiral Harriman Nelson, and David Hedison as Commander Lee Crane. Hedison, now 83, was a reluctant star at first — he had very little interest in getting on board with the show's creator and producer, Irwin Allen, when Allen was putting together the 1961 submarine feature film that would spawn the television series of the same title.

The reason? Hedison had worked with Allen on the 1960 sci-fi feature film "The Lost World" — and it was not a memorable experience for actor. "I made some excuse that there was something else I wanted to do, so I got out of that without being put on suspension at Fox," Hedison said. "When the series came about, he asked me to do it. He just kept hounding me, but then he said that he had Richard Basehart as the admiral, I thought, 'My God, maybe between the two of us, we can really make something out of this.' So I signed on immediately."

http://herocomplex.latimes.com/2011/0...

The Trap of Solid Gold

I never miss the great blog The Trap of Solid Gold. Steve Scott does a great job charting the life and work of John D. MacDonald. This week he ran a particularly interesting series of quotes from JDM about other writers.

for the rest go here:

http://thetrapofsolidgold.blogspot.com/

THE TRAP OF SOLID GOLD

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 2011

JDM on Other Writers
"[Dashiell Hammett's] strengths, and they were so considerable as to elevate his work from hack to art, were in persuasive characterizations, deft, understated, graceful transitions, remarkable dialogue and such little touches of reality in description that he could bring a walk-on completely alive in about two sentences."

-- JDM's 1981 review of Shadow Man by Richard Layman, in the Washington Star

"Some of the people I like to read nowadays are Thomas Williams -- some of his titles are Town Burning, The Night of Trees and The Hair of Harold Roux. I like Charles Williams -- Charley's good, particularly his books Scorpion Reef and Aground. And Nabokov -- splendid, except when he gets too fanciful; when he gets too far away from his story line into erudition, he begins to intrude, he begins to spoil his own narrative effect, almost mischievously. I like John Cheever, very much, and Peter DeVries. Let me see now... that fellow who wrote The Spy Who Came in From the Cold -- John LeCarré. And Eric Ambler I like, and John Updike. And James Jones -- he was a plodder, and was predictable, but he has such a vivid and marvelous control of his own ability. He could create a scene that becomes as unforgettable as if you'd seen it yourself.



"[Norman] Mailer is one of my literary heroes not only because of the restless flood of his talent -- at times he has reminded me of a one-man band, snare drum, bass drum, banjo and a harmonica around his neck on a wire brace -- but also because, along with Saul Bellow and John Updike, he keeps on charging ahead just as if the novel were at the center of the contemporary cultural experience instead of that weeny little thing out there at the far edge of literacy."

-- JDM's USA Today review of Mailer's 1983 novel Tough Guys Don't Dance

Jack Nicholson interview

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The Daily Mail (UK) published a fascinating interview with Jack Nicholson. In honor of old guys everywhere, here's an excerpt.

'It's funny, because he'd already left the party before I arrived… But contrary to opinion, however sated I got, I always looked after myself. I've woken up in trees, I've woken up almost hanging off cliffs, but I've always known how to sort myself out.
'Keith (Richards) would stay up seven nights in a row. I stayed up late, but I slept in late, too. I always believed in taking care of myself. There was always a discipline within my partying structure. I've never kept a camera waiting, and in all my career I only missed one day of work, on The Shining. I put my back out.

'At the time I thought it was down to a scene where I had to throw this ball. In fact, the reason was that the movie was filmed in London. I loved British actors, and the fact there were these wild guys over there, and I wanted to show them what Jack the Waggle could do.

'The reality was that I was annihilated emotionally by the separation from Anjelica (Huston). That was probably the toughest period of my life'

'I wanted to work like a beast and then go out and be all over London like a fire, the wildest of the lot. I rented a house next to the Thames that had a big high wall, and I'd come home most nights without my keys and I'd climb this wall. The first time I had no memory, and the next day at work I did in my back after this ball scene.
'A few nights later I was out again, climbing the wall, and when I landed I knew exactly how I did my back in – it was no ball.'

for the rest go here:
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/mosli...

Forgotten Books: Wild Night by L.J. Washburn

For generations the Hollywood cowboy was the most inspiring of manly men. Not even during the era of the singing cowboy did the American public doubt that the bespangled, yodeling fool on horseback was anything less than the kind of man who kept our nation strong. The kind of man who took us again and again to the mythic West where right was right and wrong was wrong.

No matter that The Great Train Robbery, the twelve-minute film that brought westerns to the fore in the U.S., was made in Milltown, New Jersey. No matter that the earliest Hollywood actors were men who'd plied their craft in Eastern dramas. Print the myth.

Only when the movies moved to California did real cowboys begin to appear in movies as extras, stunt men, advisors, actors and occasionally as huge stars. There was an informal community of these cowboys in Los Angeles. They had their own bars, nightspots, even living areas.

It is one of these transplanted cowboys, and former Texas Ranger and Pinkerton to boot, that L.J. Washburn writes about in her Shamus winning series about movie extra and private detective--Lucas Hallam.

In three novels and numerous short stories, Livia Washburn takes us back to not only the mythic West but also the Mythic Hollywood because Hallam finds himself involved in mysteries dealing with the first generation of Hollywood actors, directors and hangers-on.

And the books and stories have real bite. In Wild Night, for instance, Hallam is forced to defend an evangelist he doesn't like; an evangelist who'd fit right in with today's batch. With the history as backdrop, the storytelling tight and vivid as the early days of Black Mask, we watch Lucas solve some truly mysterious mysteries.

Livia brings warmth, wit, cleverness and real style to her books. These are now available on Amazon for $2.99 each. Treat yourself.

The Hallam Novels:

DOG HEAVIES
DEAD STICK
WILD NIGHT

CINEMA RETRO #19 AVAILABLE NOW!

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Issue #19 is truly one of our best to date. Consider these highlights:

We celebrate the Blu-ray release of The Exorcist with Matthew R. Bradley and Gilbert Colon's in-depth interview with author William Peter Blatty, who discusses some fascinating aspects about the making of the classic movie. There's also an abundance of facts and rare photos including a cover photo that is bound to give you the creeps.

Todd Garbarini has an exclusive interview with the original cougar, Angie Dickinson, who discusses Roger Vadim's quirky sex comedy/murder mystery Pretty Maids All in a Row, with Rock Hudson as a horndog high school counselor- who might also be a serial killer.

Lee Pfeiffer celebrates the 45th anniversary of the film version of The Sound of Music by visiting the famed Von Trapp Lodge in Vermont, where he met with Johannes Von Trapp, son of Captain and Maria.

Steve Saragossi presents an in-depth look at the career of an under-rated leading man of 60s and 70s cinema: Rod Taylor.
In part two of Matthew Field's interview with Lewis Gilbert, the famed director looks back on his "personal" films including the classic Alfie.

Dave Worrall takes you behind the scenes at the James Bond Aston Martin DB5 auction in London

Tim Greaves examines the off-beat 60s sex comedy Here We Go 'Round the Mulberry Bush
Phil Gavin looks back on the history of classic Hammer horror film posters.
John Surles recalls his meeting with actor/singer Jimmy Dean and his role as Willard Whyte in Diamonds Are Forever.
Famed character actor Shane Rimmer's new autobiography
S.O.S Film Industry - Gary McMahon culls comments from famed filmmakers who take issue with the direction of today's motion picture industry.

Adrian Smith covers Brian Clemens, director of many classic episodes of The Avengers, at his BFI tribute in London.
Matthew Field covers Sean Connery's appearance at the Edinburgh International Film Festival and gets to meet the Great Scot, who introduced a screening of The Man Who Would Be King.

More on the world of 007 in this Bond-heavy issue: Gareth Owen and Dave Worrall spend a day with director Guy Hamilton and accompany him to an outdoor London screening of Goldfinger.
Raymond Benson provides us with his choices of the ten best films of 1978.
Darren Allison covers the latest soundtracks on CD
Plus extensive DVD and film book reviews

TO SUBSCRIBE FOR SEASON #7 (ISSUES #19, 20 AND 21), CLICK HERE FOR INFORMATION.

FOR QUICKEST SUBSCRIPTION PROCESS, NORTH AMERICAN READERS CAN SEND $36 BY PAY PAL TO: CINEMARETRO@HOTMAIL.COM

IF YOU LIVE IN THE UK, SEND £19.95 BY PAY PAL TO: SOLOPUBLISHING@FIRENET.UK.COM

The Window

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Ed here: I've mentioned before that Bobby Driscoll was my first cousin. Born in Cedar Rapids his family moved to LA when he was five or six. A barber there suggested he try out for the movies. He did and went on to have a solid career until his late teen years. His life spiraled downward from there. I'm glad to see this film is available again.

From the great Cinema Retro
By Lee Pfeiffer

I first saw The Window as a kid in the 1960s when it was shown as part of New York's legendary Million Dollar Movie broadcast. I can't recall seeing it many times since then, so I was all the more astonished at how well I remembered virtually every seen when I viewed the DVD release through Warner Archive. The film must have made a tremendous impression on me to have an impact that has lingered so long. What also strikes me is that the impact has not been diminished at all. The low-bduget RKO release was shot on location in Brooklyn and conveys a real feel for life in the tenemants during one particularly scorching summer. The 1949 movie stars Bobby Driscoll, a Disney discovery, as Tommy, a small boy with a penchant for telling tall tales. His loving, but frustrated parents (Barbara Hale and Arthur Kennedy) are exasperrated by their inability to teach Tommy about the dangers of crying wolf. One night when Tommy seeks to nullify the searing heat by sleeping on the fire escape, he looks through the window of a neighboring apartment- and witnesses the resident husband and wife (Paul Stewart and Ruth Roman) murdering a man in a bungled robbery attempt. Because of his constant fabrications, Tommy finds know one believes him. An ill-advised trip to the police station only results in sullying his reputation even further. When the murderous couple learn that Tommy has witnessed their crime, he realizes it's only a matter of time before they kill him, as well. The opportunity presents itself when an emergency requires that Tommy be left alone in the apartment. This sets the stage for a nail-biting confrontation when the murderers kidnap Tommy and attempt to do away with him.

The film's lack of a major budget actually works to its benefit. Director Ted Tetzlaff optimizes the use of actual Brooklyn locations, accentuating what it was like to grow up in tenements where children's playgrounds were traffic clogged streets and dangerous, abandoned buildings. Best of all are the performances. Driscoll was so convincing that he earned a special Academy Award for his performance. Barbara Hale and Arthur Kennedy are completely convincing as a hard-working couple dedicated to providing a good home for their son, despite their impoverished conditions- and Paul Stewart and Ruth Roman are excellent as the outwardly pleasant husband and wife who moonlight as murderers. The film examplifies Hitchcock's theory that there isn't always safety in numbers. Young Tommy is surrounded by hundreds of neighbors, but when he needs help, he finds himself in complete isolation.

The Window, originally released by RKO and now "saved" by Warner Brothers, is classic American film noir, a top-notch thriller that will have you on the edge of your seat.

CLICK HERE TO ORDER FROM WARNER ARCHIVE

TERRIFIC News from Haffner Press

Greetings everybody. A lot to share, announce, and update in re: goings-on at Haffner Press (www.haffnerpress.com), so getting to it:

1) THE UNIVERSE WRECKERS: THE COLLECTED EDMOND HAMILTON, VOLUME THREE and THE COLLECTED CAPTAIN FUTURE, VOLUME TWO are at the printer and the galleys are undergoing their final check. Barring mishaps, we plan to have copies in mid-March.

2) We are pleased to announce that Grand Master Anne McCaffrey will write the introduction to Leigh Brackett's SHANNACH—THE LAST: FAREWELL TO MARS. We can also announce that the endpapers for SHANNACH will feature artwork by Ed Emshwiller from PLANET STORIES. This will be a spectacular title for your bookshelf.

3) We have been running an Early-Bird special at www.haffnerpress.com for an exclusive book, AN INSIDE LOOK, for (pre)orders of Kuttner's TERROR IN THE HOUSE, UNIVERSE WRECKERS, CAPT. FUTURE #2, and SHANNACH. We will continue to run this offer until we take possession of stock on UNIVERSE WRECKERS and CAPT. FUTURE #2, so if you're thinking about getting in on this offer, the clock is ticking . . .

4) We have locked the contents for THIRTY-FIVE YEARS OF THE JACK WILLIAMSON LECTURESHIP and will be announcing the retail price and begin taking pre-orders later this week.

5) The folks handling permissions for Ralph McQuarrie have come through big-time with the delivery of the cover art for AT THE HUMAN LIMIT, THE COLLECTED STORIES OF JACK WILLIAMSON, VOLUME EIGHT. The artwork for the endpapers is also finished (see www.haffnerpress.com/jw8.html) and we hope to launch this title at the 35th Jack Williamson Lectureship on April 1st at Eastern New Mexico University in Portales.

6) We have just closed the deal for the contents of the slipcased/limited edition of TERROR IN THE HOUSE, THE EARLY KUTTNER, VOLUME ONE:
•1/75 copies
• Signed by Dr. Garyn G. Roberts & Stephen Haffner
• A chapbook available only with this edition, with:
-Two collaborations with Robert Bloch: "The Black Kiss" and "The Grab Bag"
-*all* of Henry Kuttner's poetry
-A gallery of the interior illustrations for each so-decorated story included in TERROR IN THE HOUSE
• Matching Black Arristox cloth slipcase

7) The slipcased limited edition of DETOUR TO OTHERNESS will be shipping in mid-February and it is beautiful! A *few* left if you're wondering . . .

8) Tid-bits: Work continues on the slipcased editions of THE VAMPIRE MASTER and STARK AND THE STAR KINGS (as in, we keep adding more stuff), and they should be announced as available soon. A copy of the manuscript of Henry Kuttner's THUNDER IN THE VOID was delivered to Mike Resnick last week (he's doing the intro) and design-work is nearing completion on TALES FROM SUPER-SCIENCE FICTION, edited by Robert Silverberg.

We have a number of incredible projects to announce in the coming months, so keep your etherwave-set tuned to www.haffnerpress.com and be sure to follow us on Facebook.

Until next time, fellow astrogators, may the (solar) winds be at your back and . . .

Keep Watching the Skies!

Stephen Haffner
Big Poobah
HAFFNER PRESS

The Alaskans

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Ed here: I was looking through a 1960s book about the Warner Brothers TV factory of the Fifties and early Sixties and came across a reference to The Alaskans. Now I was a huge fan of all the WB product except for 77 Sunset Strip which I couldn't take because of Kookie. Really no-talent obnoxious jerk. The James Garner Mavericks were my all-time favorites but I liked all the westerns and suspense shows, esp. Cheyenne and Bourbon Street Beat. But The Alaskans...well I Googled it and came up with this long Wikipedia entry. Mostly what I remember of it (and I always watched it) was Roger Moore bundled up in furs mushing unseen huskies against a back screen of bitter Alaska winter. John Dehner did a couple of them as a con-man; those are the only two episodes I have fond memories of. The biggest selling point was Dorothy Provine who was then at the peak of her beauty. But the show had quite a (brief) history.

Wikipedia:


The Alaskans is a 1959 television series set in the port of Skagway, Alaska during the 1890s. The show features Roger Moore as "Silky Harris" and Jeff York as "Reno McKee", a pair of adventurers intent on swindling travelers bound for the Yukon Territories during the height of the Klondike Gold Rush.[4] Their plans are inevitably complicated by the presence of "Rocky Shaw" (Dorothy Provine), "an entertainer with a taste for the finer things in life".[5]
The show lasted for just one year, and is principally notable for being Moore's first regular work on American television.

The Alaskans is closely related to the series Maverick through broadcast and production.
Maverick was a lead-in for ABC's Sunday night of western dramas. For the 1959-60 season, Sundays began with Colt .45 and Maverick, went to Lawman and The Rebel, and concluded with The Alaskans.

This may have influenced the career path of Roger Moore. The same year that The Alaskans was canceled, James Garner decided to leave Maverick. Moore became, under protest[7], Garner's replacement, playing Bret Maverick's cousin Beau in the fourth season of Maverick.

Maverick and The Alaskans were also related through script, if not narrative. The two shows were not part of the same fictional world, as evidenced by a lack of crossovers between the two. Because of the 1960 Writers Guild of America strike as well as an ongoing Warner Bros. policy to save money on writers, however, The Alaskans inherited a certain amount of scripted material from Maverick. Moore bristled at the lack of originality in scripts: "An old Bronco script would interchange with an Alaskans or Maverick. In some cases, even the dialogue stayed unchanged."[7] In 2007, Moore noted, "Quite often I realized that we were filming Maverick scripts, with the names changed."[8] This made it simple for Jack L. Warner to envision Moore as Maverick since Moore had literally delivered Garner's dialogue while reshooting the same scripts with different names and locales.
Since the show has not been available to home audiences for over 40 years, independent verification of either claim is difficult. However, The Alaskans may have drawn from other series, as well. One viewer has detailed which specific Maverick, Sugarfoot and Cheyenne episodes spawned clones on The Alaskans. Cannibalizing scripts was standard operating procedure at Warner Bros. television. Their first big hit in the detective genre, 77 Sunset Strip, was copied in analogous series such as Bourbon Street Beat, Surfside Six, and Hawaiian Eye, with only the locations changed - L.A to New Orleans, Miami Beach, and Hawaii. The basic characters were identical with only the character parts which spoke in jargon being re-written eg. horse racing tout to jazz slang. It was an assembly line factory in the strictest sense of the phrase.This pre-dated the troubles with the Writers

For Roger Moore, the series is memorable for being "my most appalling television series ever". In particular, he found that attempting to recreate Alaskan exteriors on a studio backlot in California made for disagreeably hot work days.[10] The show also caused some marital strife for the actor when he had to admit to wife Dorothy Squires that he had fallen in love with co-star Dorothy Provine.

New Books: Every Shallow Cut by Tom Piccirilli

There's a long tradition in American literature of writers using their mental and spiritual breakdowns as material for their work. Certainly Poe's phantasmagoric moments allude to his sometimes tenuous grip on reality; Jack London traveled to Whitechapel to see if The Ripper was worth writing about and ended up in an asylum--drunk and temporarily insane; F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote about how his personal crash coincided with the market crash of `29 in both the infamous The Crack Up and in the wan sad opening lines of "Babylon Revisited;" and Fredrick Exley's masterpiece A Fan's Notes is nothing but a poetically and clinically detailed charting of alcoholism and dislocation and madness.

Tom Piccirilli's new novella Every Shallow Cut indirectly owes it title to a line on page 139. The novelist-narrator, wasted and wandering, possessor of both murderous thoughts as well as a hand gun, is told by a writer friend who suggests he might be better off in a mental hospital for a time: "I can feel every shallow cut you've ever suffered in it (the writer's new manuscript), all of them still bleeding, tearing wider and becoming deeper. You can die from a paper cut if it becomes infected."

And that's what Tom deals with in the novella. Infection. An infected narrator, an infected world.

The narrator--an esteemed novelist with a trunk load of literary awards and an empty bank account. "A pore lonesome wife-left feller" as Nelson Algren said of one of his characters. Groping for some kind of understanding of all the things that torment him--being fat for so much of his life (though no longer), his resentful relationship with his older brother and the publishing world's indifference to anything except commercial success.

The world is even more infected than the narrator. There are many references to the market crash--jobs lost, houses and cars repossessed, millions of people, much like the narrator, wandering, seeking, as baffled and hurt as he is. He even sends up the publishing business by spoofing some of the books that are hot tickets. My favorite is the one where the archangel comes back to earth to manage a kids' baseball team.

I love the writing here. It is stripped down to a kind of Charles Willeford-Charles Williams simplicity that is all the more effective for its bluntness and accessability. The dialogue is dead-on. The man's relationship with his dog Churchill could have been the one false treacly note but Tom makes it work perfectly. No cutesy-poo.

Tom Piccirilli has written many fine books and stories but at this point in his career, for me anyway, I would call Every Shallow Cut his masterpiece.