Nerdery
Not seeing the forest for the trees: ‘Into the Woods’ and other ways Hollywood gaffes in retelling classic fairy tales
“Into the Woods” fans, brace yourself: The Disney adaptation of the award-winning, long-running, grown-up thinking fairy tale musical by Stephen Sondheim – one of the stage’s pre-eminent writers – is getting neutered. As the New Yorker reported recently, during a master class in New York City Sondheim told the audience of high school drama teachers that…
Read MoreGoing ‘Through the Years’ with Casey Kasem and an imaginary ‘Weekly Top Million’
Dear Casey, You were the voice of music for me as a kid. Not literally: You didn’t sing, you didn’t play an instrument. But in my preadolescent days, there wasn’t a single Sunday that went by where I wasn’t glued to the radio for the four hours it took you to work through the Billboard…
Read More‘Revolution’ will no longer be televised, and it comes down to guns, and hair
Ugh, the guns. The guns and the hair. The guns, the hair and the complete lack of forward motion. Hello all, and welcome to the ongoing shiva service I’m holding for the death of NBC’s Revolution, a show for whom the end of the world came twice: Once when the series started – the premise…
Read MoreWhy I will not be killing my treadmill desk
It happened today. I sat down in my elevated desk chair, in front of my elevated desk (probably about four, four and a half feet off the floor) and pulled out my retractable keyboard rest and began working at my computer. And I thought, "Now this is what I wanted." Getting here has taken time.…
Read MoreDune, the dessert planet
I have fallen off the posting wagon, not for lack of things to say, but time to say them in. So in honor of my recent "Dune" posting, I'll just leave you with this. "Dune," in gummi worms. It is, as one wag in the comments notes, a dessert planet. Be back anon.
Read MorePutting that dream into action, you st★r f**ker
Speaking of mining dreams for content. My pal Tamara over here has a call out for talented playwrights interested in a prompt based on a real-actual-honest-to-spaghetti-monster-dream someone had. She writes on Facebook: I am lucky enough to be a producer and actor of new short plays once a year, every summer. It is one of…
Read MoreSweating the details: Notes on “August: Osage County”
Movies are fantasy. We know this. We know that normal people living normal lives don't look like George Clooney or Angelina Jolie (though we can better imagine they might look like Jennifer Lawrence, who is accessable and beautiful), and we know the lives they are living on screen are a kind of heightened reality. And…
Read MoreWhy writers need to keep their eyes on the road
Me, writer's group last night: "The hardest part of writing a book is figuring out how to do it." Much raucous laughter. The thing is, that's true, even if completely obvious. People always ask "where do you get your ideas"? Ideas, frankly, are like flowers at a botanical garden. Everybody's got ideas. That's one of…
Read MoreLife lessons in song, courtesy “American Idol” and Peter Cetera
"American Idol" is back on again, and it really is oh, so easy to look at those people and say: "Shit, I could do that." And though there's less meanness and crappy singers on than in the Simon Cowell years, it's even easier to say, "Those people are morons. Can't they hear themselves?" Answers: No,…
Read MoreSize doesn’t matter (or) how I sold a book to a total stranger
So what if you gave a reading and nobody came? Not the highlight of Arisia for me, but it happens. The programmers ask if you're an author, and if you are, they'll generally slate you in with a couple of other people to sit behind a table and read some of your work for 20…
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