Ed Gorman's Blog, page 81

Pro-File: Kim Newman AN ENGLISH GHOST STORY

1.      Tell us about your current novel/collection.Kim: An English Ghost Story is exactly what it says – a haunted house novel.  I’ve been writing things like the Anno Dracula series and my Professor Moriarty novel The Hound of the d’Urbervilles, which are expansive and require a lot of historical research and large-scale effects …and I wanted to do something more enclosed, character-driven (not that the other books aren’t) and less dependent on the reader being aware of other books.  It is in part a meditation on the ghost story, in manifestations from the MR James school to 1970s TV movies, but it’s also a study of a troubled family in a crisis. 
2. Can you give a sense of what you're working on now?

Kim: sure – I’ve just written a monograph for the British Film Institute on Quatermass and the Pit and I’m working on Kentish Glory, a superheroine pulp origin tale set in an English girls’ school in the 1920s.  I’ll be doing another Anno Dracula next year, and I’m also planning a book tangentally about the Phantom of the Opera.
3. What is the greatest pleasure of a writing career?

Kim: for me – and my career is quite complicated in the types of writing and I and the way broadcasting and other sidetracks come into it – is that I get to work from home, set my own hours, and pursue my peculiar interests.  As a freelance, everything I do is either my idea or the result of someone asking me to do it – nothing I do is because someone has told me to.
4. What is the greatest DISpleasure?

Kim: Nothing much comes to mind – I’m lucky enough to have a reasonable income, own my own home and not be subject to the insecurity a lot of writers have.  I even quite enjoy the admin side of things. 
5. If you have one piece of advice for the publishing world, what is it?

Kim: don’t give up.
6. Are there two or three forgotten mystery writers you'd like to see
in print again?

Kim: I’m a particular admirer of Richard Condon, Stanley Ellin and Fredric Brown – not exactly obscure, they’ve somehow not quite latched onto lasting status.  They’re each known for one or two books or stories, but almost everything they wrote is worth seeking out.  From the 19th century, I like Guy Boothby, Arthur Morrison and Grant Allen.
7. Tell us about selling your first novel. Most writers never forget
that moment.
Kim: It wasn’t that dramatic – my first novel wasn’t my first book, so I was reasonably established as a genre critic, short fiction writer, broadcaster and troublemaker by the time The Night Mayor appeared.  It came out at about the same time as my first pseudonymous novel, Drachenfels (as by Jack Yeovil), which was written soon after.  Naturally, I was pleased to sell a novel – though, as often happens, the editor who bought it promptly legt the publisher and wasn’t there when it came out. 

Last Stagecoach To Hell by James Reasoner

New From Rough Edges Press: Last Stagecoach to Hell! - James ReasonerBounty hunter Rye Callahan risked his life to capture the brutal outlaw Ike Blaine in a desert showdown. But an even deadlier danger awaits both men when they board the stagecoach bound for an isolated Arizona settlement with a sinister secret. Callahan will need all his cunning and gun skill to survive this trip on the last stagecoach to Hell!

New York Times bestselling author and legendary storyteller James Reasoner returns with a brand-new, never-before-published 10,000 word novella featuring Rye Callahan, the protagonist of his acclaimed story LAST CHANCE CANYON. In Reasoner's hands, the West has never been wilder! 

Need something to read on a lazy summer Sunday afternoon? LAST STAGECOACH TO HELL! ought to be just about perfect. And for some background on this story you won't find anywhere else...I got the idea for it earlier this summer when I was coming back from Robert E. Howard Days in Cross Plains. I drove through Thurber, a tiny town that was once the center of Texas's coal mining industry. The smokestack from the smelter is still there after more than a hundred years and is a well-known landmark along that section of Interstate 20. I'd been wanting to write a story that combined the Western and the Weird Menace genres, and as I drove past the smokestack in Thurber I thought that would be something distinctive to include in a Western, and so the two ideas merged in my head. As it turns out, the story is mostly Western with only a little Weird Menace in it, but I think it's pretty entertaining. It's also only 99 cents, and if you have an Amazon Prime or Kindle Unlimited membership, you can even read it for free. I hope some of you will check it out.

Donald Westlake on James Garner as James Rockford

The real world never never impinges on the entertainment side of television, so fully realized private eyes continued to perform their pulp kabuki all over the tube. Mannix and Cannon and all those fellows, of whom the best was by a long shot Rockford. Rockford didn’t try to break out of the rituals, but used them in a very knowing and able way. His relationships with society, with the police, with his clients, with women, were all very much in the tradition, and yet Rockford was an individual, a human being you could believe in rather than a cardboard figure in a trench coat.
Donald Westlake, The Hardboiled Dicks

thanks to the fine website The Westlake Review for this

http://thewestlakereview.wordpress.com/

 Chris Lyons:

" I grew up on The Rockford Files–I knew nothing back then about who wrote what. I never noticed the names Roy Huggins, Stephen J. Cannell, David Chase, Juanita Bartlett, Meta Rosenberg, until much later. All I knew about James Garner besides this show was that he did those Polaroid commercials with this sarcastic blonde who then showed up on The Rockford Files. Which was confusing. Maybe they should have hired Gretchen Corbett for the commercials, though that might have been even more confusing.
There aren’t a lot of big name stars who can remotely live up to their hype. "Garner may have been nearly unique in that he far surpassed his (because in spite of his long popularity, he was never really an A-Lister). People who worked with him just couldn’t get over how un-full of himself he was. If he had an opinion he’d share it, but at the end of the day, if the writer or director said “This is what I want”, he’d back off and do it their way. And if it didn’t work, he might avoid working with that writer or director again, but he believed in letting people do their jobs. I don’t know if Westlake ever met him–tend to doubt it–but I think it’s a shame they never worked together. Garner would have been ideal to play many of Westlake’s protagonists (for example, the protagonist of the novel I’m reviewing next here)".

CONVERSATION: ED GORMAN & RUSSELL JAMES

The Newly Discovered Diaries of Doctor Kristal



CONVERSATION: ED GORMAN & RUSSELL JAMES
EG:      Tell us about your current novel.RJ:       It’s a breakaway from the noir crime stories for which I’m known – and it has by far the longest title! The Newly Discovered Diaries of Doctor Kristal (subtitled: whose Strange Obsessions caused him to Murder some annoying patients) is a wry psychological crime story set in 1963 through 64, told in diary form by a 35 year old virgin for whom sex – or rather, his 35 years without – sets him off on a line of murders.            This is my first crime novel for five years or so – not that I’ve been idle: in the interim I’ve produced two historical novels, a present-day and (would you believe?) four biographical picture books including, as you may remember, Great British Fictional Detectives.EG:      Can you say a little more about what you're working on now?RJ:       Well, among the curious doctor’s patients is attractive young Jane Quinney, grateful for some help he gave before but now saddled with an unwanted pregnancy.  (This is 1963, remember.)  Then there’s beautiful Eleanor Rouse, unhappily married to a sexually voracious and overweening actor more than a decade older than her.  But it’s another woman, facing an altogether more unpleasant dilemma, who causes the doctor the greatest trouble of all.  Plus there are two other doctors in the town, and they have plans for Doctor Kristal.  So in a tumultuous year which sees the Profumo affair and the assassination of President Kennedy Doctor Kristal’s provincial life is all set to spiral out of control.EG:      What is the greatest pleasure of a writing career?RJ:       Other writers!  I shouldn’t say it but I like meeting and talking with other writers more than I do with readers.  At least they don’t ask me, “Where do you get your ideas?”  In truth though, the greatest pleasure for every writer must lie in finishing a book – that short period when you’re happy with it and think it the greatest thing you’ve ever written and the one that is finally going to make your name.  The moment before reality sets in.EG:      What is the greatest DISpleasure?RJ:       Apart from that moment when reality sets in?  The hardest time is when your latest is not immediately snapped up by a publisher overwhelmed by how great it is and desperate to tie you in before other publishers make a bigger offer.  Or maybe it’s when, for whatever reason, the latest doesn’t get the usual number of reviews.  I don’t know why it is but some books just seem to slip through the net and – you know? – being ignored is worse than being criticised.  You ask, “Why did I bother?” and there’s no answer to that.EG:      If you have one piece of advice for the publishing world, what is it?RJ:       As if they’d listen to me!  But I guess they should realize that the challenge today isn’t whether ebooks will replace print ones but how the two should live together.  The market has been expanded!  Increasingly it’ll be ebooks for an immediate read (cheaper, faster – like paperbacks back in the Thirties) and well-made print books to be cherished and kept.EG:      Are there two or three forgotten mystery writers you’d like to see in print again?RJ:       The truth is they’re all coming back – thanks partly to ebooks and partly to some of the smaller go-ahead new publishers – but it’s probably forgotten booksrather than writers that I like to read again.  A E W Mason’s At The Villa Rose, for example, was a great book but the follow-up Hanaud books kind of fell away.  That often happens with series; the story has been told in the first book and after that it’s just more of the same.  How many times do you want to meet the blind detective (Carrados) or The Old Man in the Corner, or Lady Molly of Scotland Yard?  They’re amusing once but . . .EG:      Tell us about selling your first novel. Most writers never forget that moment.RJ:       No writer could forget it.  If they say they did, they’re lying.  Anyway, my true first novel wasn’t accepted, and while it went the rounds gathering encouraging refusals (is that an oxymoron?) I wrote another, sent it to Gollancz, and had it accepted within three weeks!  They said it would come out in their famous yellow and black livery, and I was taken out to lunch by my young and attractive editor (still a great editor, by the way) and we ate outdoors in a little place off Haymarket in London’s West End, and the sun shone, and she said I should join the Crime Writers Association, and I said, “Would they have me?” and she said, “Of course they will. You’re a crime writer now,” and that, Ed, was as good as it gets for any writer anywhere, any time.  You never forget a day like that.

Forgotten Books: The Collected Stories of Stephen Crane

Forgotten Books: The Collected Stories of Stephen CraneAs one of  the prime creators of Realism Stephen Crane shocked the world of letters both in his writing and his personal life. His first book was Maggie: A Girl of The Streets and he spent a good share of his adult life (as much of it as there was--he died at twenty-eight) living with Cora Taylor, the madame of a brothel. He wrote dozens of short stories as well as his masterpiece The Red Badge of Courage.

While he was accepted and praised by the literary critics of the time, he was frequently derided for the pessimism and violence of his stories. He brought "the stink of the streets" into literature as one reviewer said. But his streets could be found all over America, not just in the cities.

The Open Boat, The Blue Hotel, The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky, Shame and The Upturned Face give us portraits of different Americas. As I was rereading them lately I realized that they all have two things in common--their utter sense of social isolation and the intensity of their telling. Hemingway always put up The Blue Hotel as one of the most intense-"bedeviled"--stories in our language and man he was right. The fist fight in the blizzard on the blind side of the barn is one of those most hellish insane scenes I've ever read. And the ironic words at the last honestly gave me chills, even though I knew what was coming. His years as a journalist gave him a compassion for society's discards no matter where they lived or what color they happened to be.

His sense of place changed writing. Whether he was writing about the slums of Brooklyn or the endless ghostly plains of Nebraska in winter, his early years as a poet gave his images true clarity and potency. One critic of the time said his stories were possessed of "a filthy beauty" and that nails it.

Only a few of his stories are taught today; Red Badge is mandatory in schools. But in the many collections available of his stories you find a passion for life and language that few writers have ever equaled. Too many American masters get lost in the shuffle of eras. Crane is not only an artist he's one of the finest storytellers I've ever read.
POSTED BY ED GORMAN AT 4:08 PM 4 COMMENTS: LINKS TO THIS POST 

GravetappingIn many cases this poor reputation is deserve...

Gravetapping
In many cases this poor reputation is deserved—there have been some really, really bad westerns introduced on television, film and fiction. There have also been some damn good westerns over the years—both past and present. To quote Theodore Sturgeon—he was defending SF, but the same rule applies to westerns—“ninety percent of everything is crap.” It is the other 10 percent that separates a viable genre from a dead one and the western is far from dead, whether we are talking about golden age stories or the novels published today.
An example of an older title—it was published by one of the more maligned houses, ACE, in 1962—that holds its own against the often valid arguments against westerns is Brian Garfield’s The Lawbringers. It is a traditional western from beginning to end. It is short, seemingly simple, and very much to the point, but it is also clever, intelligent, and subtly complex.
The Lawbringers is a biographical novel about the formation of the Arizona Rangers—a law enforcement agency created by the territorial Governor to combat the seemingly endless supply of toughs and criminals that haunted Arizona in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Its focus is directed at the chief Ranger, one Burton “Cap” Mossman, but it is told in an unexpected way. It is a multi-perspective novel that never attempts to get into the head of Mossman. Instead he is painted and defined by the characters around him—some real, others created by Garfield—as a hard, stubborn and tough man.
The novel is dedicated to Burt Mossman—“a chivalrous gentleman, a lawman, and an Arizonan.” But it is far from a one-sided novel of adoration. It tackles the man’s complexity as well as his flaws. He is depicted as a hard man doing a hard job. His decisions are made with the citizens of Arizona in mind, but with a frightening lack of color. There are no gradient shades, but rather his view is strictly black and white, and more often than not the end justified the means. He wasn’t above lynching a man to make his point, and the Mexico-Arizona border was less an end to his jurisdiction and more an artificial line to be ignored.
Mossman is a man who withstood political pressures and did what he thought best no matter the consequences. He typified the mythical western protagonist, but is portrayed by Mr Garfield as nothing more than a man—stubborn, sincere, and flawed. He had friends, enemies, and admirers, but he hid behind a wall of secrecy and loneliness. He was a man that fit into the demands of an era, but whose era passed quickly and without much fanfare.
The Lawbringers manages to does all that and also tell an exciting and tight tale. It has a peculiar heavy quality. It is packed with emotion and wonder; wonder at the basis of right and wrong. It has a conscience without being limited or judged by that conscience. It is complex and wondrous. In short, it is very much part of that 10 percent, which has allowed the western story to survive for more than a century.

This post originally went live September 1, 2009 right here at Gravetapping.

WRATH OF THE LION by Harry Patterson (Jack Higgins) Gravetapping

from Gravetapping and Ben Boulden





WRATH OF THE LION by Harry Patterson (Jack Higgins)

Wrath of the Lion is the twelfth novel published by Harry Patterson. It was released as a hardcover by John Long in 1964, and it is both the longest and best of Mr Patterson’s first dozen novels. Mr Patterson’s early novels all had marvelous titles, and this is one of my favorite. It comes from a line in William Blake’s “Proverbs of Hell”—
“The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God.”
Neil Mallory is a former SAS Colonel now working for British Intelligence. He is sent to a small island in the English Channel, closer to France than England, to search for a French submarine with a renegade crew. TheL’Allouette (ironically meaning “lark” in English) has been cruising the French coast making mischief. It forced a boarding on a ship in the Channel and executed an aging public prosecutor responsible for convicting several of the crews’ comrades.
Mallory’s mission: find the L’Allouette and call in the cavalry. Unsurprisingly, it isn’t quite as easy as it sounds. The island has only a handful of full time residents, and the heavy, who is a self-exiled former military officer from an old line family, seemingly knows more about Mallory’s doings than Mallory knows about his.
Wrath of the Lion is the most complete of Mr Patterson’s earliest work—its characters are crisply developed (and believable—Mallory has something of a genuinely unsavory past), its plot is linear, tricky (in a good way), and while not surprising to the 21st century reader, it is executed with an almost flawless professionalism and very, very entertaining. The prose is eloquent and smooth describing the action, setting, and characters in a succinct and (somehow) economical manner—
“He took her arm. They walked to the corner and turned into the street. It started to rain, a thin drizzle that beaded the iron railings like silver. There was a dull, aching pain in her ankle and the old houses floated in the fog, unreal and insubstantial, part of a dark dream from which she had yet to awaken, and the pavement seemed to move beneath her feet.”
The setting is a perfect fit for the period it was written. The bad guys belong to a real world French terrorist organization referred to in the novel as the “O.A.S.,” which is an acronym for “Organisation de l’armee secrete”; or its literal English transaction, “Organization of the Secret Army.” The O.A.S. was a group dedicated to keeping French colonial rule in Algeria. It, most notably, made an assassination attempt on Charles De Gaulle in 1962.
The factual detail—sprinkled into the narrative in small morsels—is as interesting as the plot. There is an interesting definition of the word “karate,” a bevy of detail about 1960s French-Algeria relations, the workings—in surprising detail—of the tiny Type XXIII U-boat design (an undersea electric tin can), and even a perfectly placed quote—from what I believe is Shakespeare—
“When you sup with the devil you need a long spoon.”        
—which is everything one expects from a high quality Harry Patterson novel.
Neil Mallory may seem familiar to the regular reader of Mr Patterson’s work, and for good reason. A very different Neil Mallory starred in The Last Place God Made; an incarnation that was saw him as bush pilot rather than a former SAS officer.
Posted by Ben Boulden at 7:49 PM No comments:  [image error] French terrorist organization referred to in the novel as the “O.A.S.,” which is an acronym for “Organisation de l’armee secrete”; or its literal English transaction, “Organization of the Secret Army.” The O.A.S. was a group dedicated to keeping French colonial rule in Algeria. It, most notably, made an assassination attempt on Charles De Gaulle in 1962.
The factual detail—sprinkled into the narrative in small morsels—is as interesting as the plot. There is an interesting definition of the word “karate,” a bevy of detail about 1960s French-Algeria relations, the workings—in surprising detail—of the tiny Type XXIII U-boat design (an undersea electric tin can), and even a perfectly placed quote—from what I believe is Shakespeare—
“When you sup with the devil you need a long spoon.”        
—which is everything one expects from a high quality Harry Patterson novel.
Neil Mallory may seem familiar to the regular reader of Mr Patterson’s work, and for good reason. A very different Neil Mallory starred in The Last Place God Made; an incarnation that was saw him as bush pilot rather than a former SAS officer.
Posted by Ben Boulden at 7:49 PM No comments:  [image error]

David Kalat is one of my favorite reviewers and commentators--here he shows how to do it

PRYOR CONVICTIONS  FROM MOVIE MORLOCKSPosted by David Kalat on July 26, 2014Richard Pryor stood on the stage of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington DC in 1998.  It was an unusual audience for the veteran comedian—a bunch of stuffed shirt politicos and hoity toits, there to award Pryor with the Mark Twain Prize for humor, and to congratulate themselves for doing so.  He was 58 years old—and although no one knew it at the time, he had less than a decade left to live.
Those 58 years had been filled with incident: he was born in a brothel, forged his comic fearlessness in front of the Vegas Mafia, set himself on fire while free-basing cocaine, and played a computer hacker in Superman III.
Addressing this audience of VIPs, Pryor said that he considered his mission as a comedian to be more than just making people laugh—it was using that laughter as a tool “to lessen people’s hatred.”
As it happens, we can see this noble calling at work in a particular scene of Pryor’s 1976 film  Silver Streak .

Before we examine that moment, some context.   Silver Streak  was an action comedy co-starring Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor, in the first of numerous pairings.  It was directed by Arthur Hiller, from an original script by Colin Higgins.  And, it is a pointedly Hitchcockian picture.
I don’t mean anyone would mistake this for a Hitchcock film.  And it has none of the ostentatious panache of the thrillers from the supposed “heirs” to Hitchcock’s mantle: Dario Argento, Brian DePalma, Claude Chabrol.
But, it’s a film that was clearly made by filmmakers who had learned lessons from Hitchcock.  They hadn’tmastered any of those lessons, but they at least did their homework and turned in a credible effort.  If the Argentos, DePalmas, and Chabrols of the world were the ace students, Hiller at least earned a gentleman’s C.
Here’s the wrongly accused man (Wilder), caught mid-way between two chases—racing after the real bad guys, racing away from the cops.  Here’s his love interest, an improbably available Hitchcockian blonde played by Jill Clayburgh in her best Eva Marie Saint imitation.  Here’s the MacGuffin that motivates this chase.  Here’s a story that basically just mashes up  The Lady Vanishes  and  North By Northwest .
The story goes that Gene Wilder was attracted to the project (the first movie in a long time that he hadn’t written himself) because of the opportunity to play a “Cary Grant-like” character—and don’t think the parallel was lost on Grant, either.  When Grant met Wilder for the first time, his first question was Hey, did you guys just copy North By Northwest there?  And Wilder’s response: Yup.
Trains make great settings for thrillers—the claustrophobic confined space hurtling at great speeds across picturesque landscapes make for as romantic and dramatic a setting as a filmmaker could ask.  Airplanes offer many of the same attributes, but for all their surface similarities, planes and trains make for very different kinds of movies.  A typical thriller set on a plane would focus on the threat to the passengers posed if something were to happen to the plane—whereas a train-based thriller would typically emphasize the enclosed space and the tension that comes from trapping a bunch of strangers in a thin metal tube from which no one can easily enter or leave.
Which is one reason why  Silver Streak  works as well as it does: it willfully violates those familiar rules.  A thriller set on a train should be about the sensation of being trapped—but Gene Wilder gets thrown off, knocked off, or forced off the train three times in the course of this adventure!  Far from being trapped on the train, he spends as much time off the train as on.
Another rule willfully violated by  Silver Streak  is that it is a buddy comedy in which the second half of the team, the co-billed star of the thing, doesn’t even appear until 60 minutes in.  And here we are, halfway into this blog post, and we’ve barely mentioned Pryor—I’m trying to model that disorienting, frustrating feeling.  But, while it’s true that the movie is half over by the time Pryor shows up, it’s also true that it doesn’t really start until he arrives.
I mean, no disrespect to Gene Wilder—he’s terrific.  He deserves the Cary Grant role here, and he does it well.  And he’s certainly capable of bringing manic intensity to his work (cf.  Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory , still the default version of that story, despite the best efforts of Tim Burton and Johnny Depp).  And despite what the title says, Mel Brooks’  Young Frankenstein  is the demented masterpiece it is because co-writer Gene Wilder insisted on keeping faith with the Universal classics that inspired it.  But, for all that, Wilder’s Cary Grant-ification is a little low-key.  Enter Richard Pryor and suddenly a whole new movie gets going.
Arthur Hiller was reluctant to work with Pryor—the comic’s reputation had preceded him, and Hiller was worried he’d be difficult.
And, just once, he was.
The scene in question occurs when Pryor’s character is trying to help get Wilder’s character safely past the various federal agents who are out in force looking for him.  He takes a can of shoe polish, a gaudy jacket, and a radio and tries to disguise this red-haired Jew as a black man.
OK, so… blackface.  The third-rail of American comedy.  Touch it at your peril.
But, that’s not to say it’s necessarily fatal.  As I’ve written about here before, there are instances of genuinely funny blackface comedy that wrestle with the terrible racial offense without falling victim to it.  There are ways to do this—it’s all in the details.
The scene involves Gene Wilder rubbing shoe polish on his face and indulging in the broadest, most cartoonish racial caricature he can summon.  That’s a given.  What happens next determines the context of this gag, and how the joke is pitched.
As written, the script called for a white man to enter the bathroom while Wilder was blacking himself up and accept the ruse, believing him to be black.
And here’s where Pryor drew a line.  Although Pryor didn’t articulate what bothered him about the staging, it’s easy enough to figure out: in this version, the joke seems to be that this absurd racist stereotype is close enough to the truth about black people that it’s convincing.  It gives audiences a place to laugh atblack people.
Pryor instead suggested an alternate staging—why not have a black man come in instead, the shoeshine man for example, and immediately see through this as an incompetent effort.  “You must be in a lot of trouble,” he could say, and shake his head in disappointment at the world.  Then, when Wilder later manages to fool the cops with this blackface act, the joke isn’t directed at black people, it’s directed at Wilder’s character and the foolish white people who can’t see past the fake skin color.
Pryor had to basically go on strike to force Hiller to shoot it his way—but he was right.  Pryor’s version not only rehabilitated the ethical stance of the joke, he just plain made it funnier.  It was one of the bigger laughs of the movie—a signature moment.  A small tweak, but one that shifted the focus of the joke in a crucial way–and it’s too Pryor’s credit that he saw how to rescue the scene with such a subtle change.
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6 Comments | submit6 RESPONSES PRYOR CONVICTIONS Posted By John : July 26, 2014 2:17 pmGreat post and excellent observations. Reblogged, natch. Posted By AL : July 26, 2014 8:33 pmOn the list of the Top Ten Comedians of all Time, this brilliant gifted man is near to position #1. Richard Pryor. We lost him too soon… Posted By pdb : July 26, 2014 9:17 pmI wholeheartedly agree with AL. My son and I watched Silver Streak recently and I remember the scene Mr. Kalat discusses in this post. His insights and description of how that scene evolved make me respect Richard Pryor even more, if that’s possible. He had his personal demons but he fulfilled his mission of lessening hatred. Posted By Doug : July 26, 2014 10:33 pmIt’s said that all humor comes from pain; Pryor was the master comedian because he hurt so much.
Mel Brooks wanted Pryor for Bart in Blazing Saddles but the studio balked because of Pryor’s drug use, so he only had a writing credit in what could have been his biggest starring role. That had to hurt,too.
It’s been too, too long since I saw “Silver Streak”.
I mean no disrespect, but Jill Clayburgh didn’t look well in her final film, “Bridesmaids”.
I think Wiig cast her in the role of her mom to honor her, to give Clayburgh a curtain call on her career.
Pryor wrote/directed his own career summation, “Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling”. He did more projects after, including two more films with Wilder, but what he wanted to say, he said in Jo Jo Dancer. Posted By george : July 27, 2014 12:38 am“I mean no disrespect, but Jill Clayburgh didn’t look well in her final film, “Bridesmaids”.”
Well, she was dying from leukemia. In fact, she died six months before the film was released. I haven’t seen BRIDEMAIDS. Maybe she should have retired after her role in LOVE AND OTHER DRUGS.
Pryor looked bad in the last film he made with Wilder, ANOTHER YOU (1989). The effects of MS were painfully obvious … so obvious that I couldn’t laugh at the film, or even watch it until the end.

Cool--Lee Goldberg's videos about his books

I've just posted a bunch of short (1-2 min) videos on YouTube about my books... and about writing crime novels. If you find any of the videos particularly entertaining or worthwhile, I hope you will spread the word. I appreciate it!
The Story Behind WATCH ME DIEhttp://youtu.be/DRbwagtpzyg
The Story Behind McGRAVEhttp://youtu.be/IOLk8PUYUWc
The Story Behind FAST TRACKhttp://youtu.be/EvuIdy46z84
Writing My First Bookhttp://youtu.be/hN__HZ-7TDs
My Living Outlineshttp://youtu.be/NsCdH8I7Bkc
My Writing Processhttp://youtu.be/KuDdrYfqpGk
This is the Golden Age of Publishinghttp://youtu.be/bwncGp27mDo

-- 
www.leegoldberg.com
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Dave Barry Learns Everything You Need to Know About Being a Husband From Reading 50 Shades of Grey

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Dave Barry Learns Everything You Need to Know About Being a Husband From Reading 50 Shades of GreyDave Barry March 4, 2014Ed here: Thanks to Dave Zeltserman for the linkIllustration by Leah Goren for TIMEYou need to have an honest, no-holds-barred conversation about sex with the special woman in your life — provided you're a superhot billionaire who can move without being seen
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“Did you give him our address?”“No, but stalking is one of his specialties,” I muse matter-of-factly.Kate’s brow knits further.That’s right: This is the kind of a book where, instead of saying things, characters muse them, and they are somehow able to muse them matter-of-factly. And these matter-of-fact musings cause other characters’ brows—which of course were already knitted—to knit still further. The book is over five hundred pages long and the whole thing is written like that. If Jane Austen (another bestselling female British author) came back to life and read this book, she would kill herself.So why did I read it? I read it because, as a man with decades of experience in the field of not knowing what the hell women are thinking, I was hoping this book would give me some answers. Because a lot of women LOVED this book. And they didn’t just read it; they responded to it by developing erotic feelings—feelings so powerful that in some cases they wanted to have sex with their own husbands.I know that sounds like crazy talk, but I have firsthand confirmation of this phenomenon from my friend Ron, who is married to my wife’s cousin Sonia, a woman. Ron states: “While Sonia was reading the book, I was getting more action than Wilt Chamberlain.”Another friend of mine whose name I will keep confidential out of respect for his privacy[*] told me, “I’d be lying on the bed watchingSportsCenter, and she’d be reading that book and suddenly, WHOA.”So what kind of book is Fifty Shades of Grey? I would describe it, literary genre–wise, as “a porno book.” But it’s not the kind of porno men are accustomed to. When a man reads porno, he does not want to get bogged down in a bunch of unimportant details about the characters, such as who they are or what they think. A man wants to get right to the porno:Chapter OneBart Pronghammer walked into the hotel room and knitted his brow at the sight of a naked woman with breasts like regulation volleyballs.“Let’s have sex,” she mused matter-of-factly.A few paragraphs later they’re all done, and the male reader, having invested maybe ninety seconds of his time, can put the book down and go back to watching SportsCenter.for the rest go here:http://time.com/3030375/dave-barry-50-shades-of-grey/