James Frey's Blog, page 19
June 10, 2024
A Residency In Portland
By Alexandra Tremayne-Pengelly
Ursula Le Guin’s writing studio, where she created works like The Books of Earthsea. Courtesy and copyright Ursula K. Le Guin FoundationA cozy second-floor studio in a three-story Portland home is where Ursula Le Guin, the late author renowned for her achievements in science fiction and fantasy, created seminal works like The Books of Earthsea, The Dispossessed and The Left Hand of Darkness. Le Guin’s longtime home is now set to host other promising authors as it transforms into a new writers residency overseen by local nonprofit Literary Arts.
The family of Le Guin, who died in 2018 at age 88, donated the property to Literary Arts with the goal of celebrating and supporting historically underrepresented writers. “Although Ursula’s reputation is international, she focused much of energy on the local community of writers, libraries and literary organizations,” said the author’s son Theo Downes-Le Guin in a statement. “So it’s fitting that this residency, ambitious in the breadth of writers it will reach, will be rooted in the house and city she loved and lived in for more than a half-century.”
Next To Heaven
By Mike Fleming Jr.
The novel Next to Heaven hit the market this week. Written by Anonymous, it’s a social satire that is being shopped by WME simultaneously for both a publishing deal and a TV deal. The TV deal has just closed, and the publishing deal will be next.
The rights to turn the book into a TV series were snapped up by former AGBO and Chernin executive Mike Larocca and Michael Schaefer for their as yet-unnamed production venture. They will produce with Entertainment 360’s Guymon Casady (Game of Thrones). Schaefer most recently ran New Regency and produced The Martian.
So, who is Anonymous?
Deadline sniffed out that it is James Frey, known for A Million Little Pieces and many other literary works. Actually, this was not like cracking the case of the Lindbergh Baby Kidnapping. Lit scouts who read the novel quickly deciphered the mystery. Frey has a way with grammar and sentence structure that makes his works move at 60 mph, and those trademark flourishes were there.
In Next to Heaven, best friends Devon and Belle are the Queen Bees of super-affluent New Bethlehem, Connecticut (a town that suspiciously resembles Frey’s hometown of New Canaan). They are very beautiful, very rich and very bored, their marriages mostly business arrangements at this point. And so they decide to host a carefully curated, invitation-only swingers party. But later, when one of the invitees ends up dead, the stakes in their game turn out to be much higher than any of the guests could have anticipated.
June 3, 2024
AIgnore, No
We talk to the famed futurist about his new book, ‘The Singularity is Nearer,’ and why he’s doubling down on his prediction that humans will merge with machines by 2045.
(Credit: Ray Kurzweil)Discussions about AI inevitably turn to the potential for disaster, but futurist Ray Kurzweil argues in his new book that focusing on the downsides will instead create “delays in overcoming human suffering.” Out June 25, The Singularity is Nearer is a follow-up to 2005’s The Singularity is Near, and offers updated data and new guidance on how humans can fully pursue AI without fear.
The book contains dozens of graphs intended to convince the naysayers that technology—including AI—has given us a far better life than our ancestors. Literacy rates are up while murder rates are down, democracy is more widespread, and the use of renewable energy is on the rise, according to Kurzweil, who warns against taking anti-AI sentiment too far.
“We need to take seriously the misguided and increasingly strident Luddite voices that advocate broad relinquishment of technological progress to avoid the genuine dangers of genetics, nanotechnology, and robots (GNR),” Kurzweil writes in The Singularity is Nearer.
May 31, 2024
Time For The Moon
Shown here is the old marble sundial at Palace Paco de Sao Miguel in Evora, Portugal. Sundials have kept humans on schedule for millennia. Geography Photos/Universal Images Group/Getty ImagesPerhaps the greatest, mind-bending quirk of our universe is the inherent trouble with timekeeping: Seconds tick by ever so slightly faster atop a mountain than they do in the valleys of Earth.
For practical purposes, most people don’t have to worry about those differences.
But a renewed space race has the United States and its allies, as well as China, dashing to create permanent settlements on the moon, and that has brought the idiosyncrasies of time, once again, to the forefront.
On the lunar surface, a single Earth day would be roughly 56 microseconds shorter than on our home planet — a tiny number that can lead to significant inconsistencies over time.
NASA and its international partners are currently grappling with this conundrum.
May 29, 2024
Camp 6200 B.C.
Geomorphologists made the chance discovery while driving past a roadcut.
[image error]Matthew Cuba, 49th Civil Engineer Squadron cultural resource manager, brushes off the remnants of a Paleo-Archaic hearth at Holloman Air Force Base. (U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Isaiah Pedrazzini)Two researchers have stumbled upon an 8,200-year-old campsite formerly covered by sand dunes at the Holloman Air Force Base just outside of Alamogordo, New Mexico.
While driving past the side of a roadcut, the geomorphologists from the University of Arizona noticed “an unusual rock sticking out,” a spokesperson from the base explained over email. Upon closer inspection, the duo realized the rock might be an artifact, and contacted Matthew Cuba, the 49th Civil Engineer Squadron cultural resource manager. Cuba and his team unearthed “a significant and well-preserved site” over six feet beneath the earth, according to the base’s source.
“The formation of the white sand dunes inadvertently buried the site, with windblown silt protecting the delicate archaeological remains,” Cuba remarks in this week’s release “This site marks a pivotal moment in shedding light on the area’s history and its early inhabitants.”
May 25, 2024
Anora d’Or
Sean Baker’s New York-set romantic dramedy Anora has scooped the Cannes Film Festival’s top prize, the Palme d’Or. This marked Baker’s second time in the competition after 2021’s Red Rocket, and tonight’s win amounted to the realization of what Baker said has been his “singular goal as a filmmaker for the past 30 years.”
Anora stars Mikey Madison as a stripper from Brooklyn who transforms into a modern Cinderella when she meets the son of a Russian oligarch. Complications arise when his parents find out and try to get the marriage annulled.
In his review, Deadline’s Damon Wise called it “a high-decibel screwball comedy… that accelerates at speed, cruises at high altitude for a surprisingly long time, then comes back down to Earth with a deeply affecting and almost unbearably melancholy coda that sends the audience out in silence.”
May 24, 2024
Taco Art
‘They made it sound like they were talking about the Mona Lisa’
Artist Mark Smith alongside his Taco Bell painting “Empty,” featured in the King City, Calif., location.Courtesy of Mark Smith and via Yelp user Saralee S.When artist Mark Smith stepped off the plane from New York and arrived in Louisville, Kentucky, on that fateful day in the early 2000s, he knew he was about to enter one of the most important critiques of his entire career.
But Smith wasn’t doing a studio visit with the owners of a prestigious gallery — he was meeting with the corporate executives of Taco Bell, the California fast food chain that peddles Crunchwrap Supremes and Baja Blasts to the masses.
This was back in 2002 or 2003, before the company even created these artificial masterpieces. At the time, Smith was trying to convince them to let him make three paintings that would eventually get rolled out to most, if not all, Taco Bell locations in the U.S. At first, not everyone in the room was onboard with the concept because it was so expensive: It would require making prints of his Basquiat-like paintings, stretching them on canvas and then hanging them in each store to make them feel like real art as opposed to ubiquitous branded messaging.
But, against these odds, Smith got the green light of approval, and the pieces were distributed in 2003. Over the course of his expansive career, he’s been commissioned to work on projects for major clients like Absolut Vodka, DaimlerChrysler and the Olympics, cementing his status as a professional artist. Life went on, and the trio of paintings faded into memory.
May 23, 2024
Nasty
Days before the start of the French Open in Paris, there’s going to be some tennis action at the Cannes Film Festival – with one of the greatest players ever.
Thursday will mark the world premiere of Nasty, a documentary about the brilliant Romanian pro Ilie Nastase – who at the height of his career was one of the most gifted, entertaining, and polarizing figures in sport.
Tudor Giurgiu, Cristian Pascariu and Tudor D. Popescu directed the film, which debuts in the Special Screenings section of Cannes. Goodfellas is handling international sales as part of its new sports-focused sales label, Oui Michel. We have your first look at the film in the trailer above.
May 22, 2024
Demi On Nudity
Demi Moore has defended the extreme violence, nudity, and body horror in her shocking Cannes film that has received the festival’s longest ovation.
The Substance, directed by Revenge creator Coralie Fargeat, premiered at the French festival yesterday, with many lauding the Ghost actor’s, 61, performance.
Yet to receive a UK release date, the Palme d’Or contender sees Demi star as Elisabeth Sparkle, a fading Hollywood actor whose career is at risk of being axed until she discovers an experimental medical procedure to combat ageing.
The all-star cast is rounded out by Margaret Qualley, Hugo Diego Garcia, and Dennis Quaid, who replaced Ray Liotta in the film following his death aged 67 in 2022.
May 21, 2024
They’re Coming!
by Sayan Bose,
INCREDIBLE footage captured the moment a comet travelling at 1,700mph lit up the night sky in a rare spectacle.
Stargazers were left stunned as the fireball shot turned the pitch-black sky into greenish blue in parts of Spain and Portugal.
Amazing footage captured by the dashcam of a car in Portugal shows a dazzling blue-coloured fireball-shaped object with a long tail falling from the sky.
Within moments, the blazing object explodes to paint the entire sky in the shade of blue.
A different footage captured by the European Space Agency (ESA) showed the object illuminating the sky over the western Spanish city of Caceres into hues of blue and green.
James Frey's Blog
- James Frey's profile
- 3309 followers
