April 6, 2008

Janet Jackson, Paula Abdul. Herbert Muschamp Is What The World Trade Center Is All About!

Choire's interview with Elizabeth Berkley reminded me of some unfinished Showgirls business here on greg.org. Back in 2002, right after Beyer Blinder Belle released the first, banal master plans for the rebuilding of the World Trade Center site, a...
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Posted by greg at 8:31 PM

Charlton Heston's Rifle Now Presumably Free For The Taking

Shotgun! Does anyone know who wrote about visiting a gun show and the NRA convention for Spy? The caption under the photo of Charlton Heston was "Guns 'n Moses." The title of the magazine got everyone they talked to...
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Posted by greg at 8:03 PM

February 25, 2008

"Remixable German documentary about me and Internet freedom"

Wow. It feels like there's an entire novel just waiting to forth this, the most solipsistic headline Cory's ever put on boingboing. Remixable German documentary about me and Internet freedom [bb]...
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Posted by greg at 12:43 AM

November 15, 2007

First, Shill For All The Writers

This is funny: Not The Daily Show, With Some Writer But this is funnier: From the Colbert Report writers: hungvp158: "Very successful entertainment executive, who is also quite young for his position, on why scribes' strike is asinine. Not tooting...
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Posted by greg at 6:15 PM

August 21, 2007

Magic: Teller Like It Is

At a recent conference talk on magic given in Las Vegas, Teller [the quiet one] gave the most amazing definition of magic I wish I'd heard before writing about Scott Sforza for Cabinet Magazine's magic issue:[Magic is] the theatrical linking...
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Posted by greg at 6:43 PM

July 21, 2007

Comrades, Join Me In A Relentless Exposure Of Michelangelo Antonioni's Despicable Tricks!

I only discovered the Chinese government's published evisceration of Michelangelo Antonioni's 1972 documentary Chung Kuo - Cina after I thought I'd finished my Cabinet article on Scott Sforza. Jonathan wondered if Susan Sontag's On Photography might have a relevant...
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Posted by greg at 11:06 PM

July 19, 2007

Cabinet 26: "Perspective Correction"

Can I just say, I've reached a point in my life where I don't know what's left to accomplish? I mean, how can I top the thrill of getting to write for Cabinet Magazine? I just don't know. I've had...
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Posted by greg at 11:15 PM

May 7, 2007

The Amazingly Coincidental Spiderman

Under the guise of giving advice for our own screenwriting projects, John August makes some good points about coincidences in the Spiderman 3 script. He divides coincidences into two basic categories: Fundamental and Minor. The latter are often the result...
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Posted by greg at 9:19 AM

May 2, 2007

Don't Pass Food Between Chopsticks.

I've always known that you never passed anything from one set of chopsticks to another because it was part of the Japanese funeral service, but I never had any idea... "Letter from a Japanese Crematorium," Marie Mutsuki Mockett's incredible essay...
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Posted by greg at 5:57 PM

March 14, 2007

Economist Class

Tom Scocca does a great takedown of The Economist, and by association, the unalloyed Economist worshippers in the magazine industry: "When other magazines say they want to be like The Economist, they do not mean they wish to be serious....
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Posted by greg at 9:36 AM

March 4, 2007

Funny, I Always Thought Joan Didion Was Taller

Didion has some notes in today's NYT about adapting her memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking, into a play. She could write a laundry ticket and I'd be impressed, but it really is fascinating stuff.I have been asked if I...
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Posted by greg at 9:41 PM

January 19, 2007

On Unfilmable Novels

As someone whose desktop contains several drafts of an adaptation of a straightforwardly narrative but slightly magically naturalist historical novel, I've watched the discussion of Screenhead's list of unfilmable novels with vested interest. It took over forty comments for my...
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Posted by greg at 9:05 AM

November 20, 2006

The Part Of Slothrop Will Not Be Played By Michiko Kakutani

She goes to the trouble of using both "quinary" and "kith," but for some reason, Thomas Pynchon's new book, Against The Day, does not face the unbridled, in-character wrath of The Full Kakutani....
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Posted by greg at 3:07 PM

November 4, 2006

My New Bidding Technique Is Unstoppable

That was my original choice for a title, but I'm happy enough just not botching the Hamlet reference. Thanks to all the people who helped with interviews and research and editing. Since the story closed, I've heard from a couple...
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Posted by greg at 11:37 PM

August 20, 2006

David Foster Wallace As A Commercio-Religious Experience

David Foster Wallace loves himself some footnotes, even when he's writing for the New York Times. So I allowed myself a flash of curious anticipation, even though I knew that when that linky glow showed up on Ralph Lauren's name...
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Posted by greg at 2:51 PM

June 10, 2006

Carbon Copies: Pencils From Cremains

For the writer for whom a $20 Faber Blackwing pencil is just not stressful enough may I suggest Carbon Copies, "pencils made from the carbon produced during cremation. A lifetime supply of pencils can be made from one body of...
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Posted by greg at 11:33 AM

March 23, 2006

From The Funniest Sentence Of The Day Dept.

"It's a nice masculine aesthetic," said Robert Tagliapietra, who with his similarly bearded partner, Jeffrey Costello, designs a collection of pretty silk jersey dresses under the Costello Tagliapietra label.Also, Ulysses S. Grant does not actually appear in Cold Mountain....
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Posted by greg at 10:33 AM

January 4, 2006

From The Mixed Up Files Of Mr JT LeRoy

Although he IS credited with the screenplay for Gus Van Sant's Elephant, I confess to not being a fan of JT LeRoy. Not that I've ever read the work, mind you. [Hold that thought.] Recently the authenticity of his identity,...
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Posted by greg at 2:06 AM

September 28, 2005

Paul Ford, Rock Star

Paul smashes his guitar of truth into the speaker tower of fiction, finally revealing to the world that he is Gary Benchley, Rock Star with a book deal--and a reading next Thursday in [where else?] Williamsburg:As the serial progressed I...
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Posted by greg at 9:50 AM

September 24, 2005

I Haven't Even Finished This Yet

I recall being seized by a pressing need not to let anyone at The Los Angeles Times learn what had happened by reading it in The New York Times. I called our closest friend at The Los Angeles Times. I...
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Posted by greg at 10:09 AM

September 16, 2005

So You Want To Read "Brokeback Mountain"

I shouldn't be surprised that I'm getting this question a lot these days. Here's what Ang Lee told the NYT's Karen Durbin:"When I first read the story, it gripped me. It's a great American love story, told in a way...
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Posted by greg at 7:34 AM

July 12, 2005

I wrote about graffiti-style advertisements for the NYT

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/10/arts/design/10alle.html">And Now, a Word From the Streets. Thanks to Noah at Critical Massive and Edmar at Lumpen for their help, and a special thanks to Marc at Wooster Collective, for both his help and his insights; it always amazes me...
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Posted by greg at 12:34 PM

If Only The Week DID Have Eight Days

So someone wrote to the Observer suggesting--in the nicest, possible way, really. really--that maybe it's your "yucky" outfit. Maybe the expensively groomed people you're covering aren't recoiling at your little tape recorders, dear Observers, but at your obvious lack of...
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Posted by greg at 11:21 AM

May 22, 2005

Unrealized Unrealized Projects

I had a small piece in the Times today about artists' unrealized projects, which is really based on the interviewing work of the curator Hans Ulrich Obrist. Unlike architects' unbuilt projects, Obrist notes, which are published, debated, and considered critically...
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Posted by greg at 10:36 AM

April 24, 2005

Wreading Writers' Weblogs

Used to be when Roger Avary was the only screenwriter with a weblog. No more. Here are three other screenwriters' blogs that are well worth reading: JohnAugust.com: In addition to film credits such as Go, Big Fish, and the upcoming...
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Posted by greg at 11:16 AM

April 18, 2005

Memo To Chavez: Don't Let Terry Gilliam Direct

Venezuelan president (who's working on the "for-life" part)Hugo Chavez is distributing 1 million free copies of Don Quixote to his countrymen as part of a nationwide literacy campaign based on a Cuban model. According to the BBC, Chavez called for...
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Posted by greg at 8:39 AM

April 14, 2005

Wherein I Take Pitch Meetings At The Kips Bay Decorator Showhouse

"Please don't publish narratives in our Home Section; we don't embroider the wallpaper in your maharani boudoir." Or how about, "A decorator with a narrative is like a mule with a spinning wheel. no one knows how he got it,...
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Posted by greg at 5:40 AM

April 5, 2005

Jim Taylor Jim Taylor Jim Taylor

First Jim Taylor and his writing partner Alexander Payne spoke at MoMA as part of the museum's Great Collaborations series, then Jim Taylor and his wifing partner Tamara Jenkins spoke at MoMA about their collaborative, parallel screenwriting/moviemaking as part of...
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Posted by greg at 4:47 AM

April 4, 2005

No Kidding

[John Patrick] Shanley, whose screenplay for Moonstruck won an Oscar in 1988, received the drama Pulitzer for "Doubt," his Broadway debut. "I have been trawling around for a long time before they let me come up out of the muck."Other...
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Posted by greg at 10:34 AM

January 25, 2005

Miuccia Pravda

What with all the access preserving, the source stroking and the advertiser cultivating going on, I guess I shouldn't be surprised at the utter lack of real context or actual reporting when it comes to fashion. Stories about Helmut Lang's...
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Posted by greg at 7:36 AM | TrackBack

January 20, 2005

Like Inviting A Hillbilly To Do Your Taxes

When Richard Hatch of Survivor fame [sic] got busted for failing to report his $1 million prize to the IRS, my mind raced back to some of the first tax advice I ever heard:You.. can be a millionaire.. and never...
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Posted by greg at 10:56 AM | TrackBack

January 15, 2005

Conclusion: Greg Allen Is A Dramatic Genius

The shows are almost entirely presented as direct addresses, and the actors will often talk to one another between plays, using one another's real names. Every performance of "Too Much Light" begins like a political stump speech: someone stands up,...
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Posted by greg at 12:20 PM | TrackBack

January 3, 2005

Good Morning, Brother Worf

"As we discussed Beth's bizarre ability to speak the Klingon language, it suddenly hit us: Why not translate the Book of Mormon into Klingon? It was just quirky enough to be interesting. So Beth whipped out her two volumes...
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Posted by greg at 4:49 AM | TrackBack

December 28, 2004

With Thanks And Apologies To My Editor

There are some habits that are hard to break. For example, when I get lost driving, it's usually because I've exited or turned too early, not too late. In writing, meanwhile, my tendency is to overwrite. Reading back through scripts...
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Posted by greg at 9:24 AM | TrackBack

December 9, 2004

Get Me Bret Easton Ellis On The Phone Moto

Over at TMN, "Rick Paulas has tips for turning your art-house script into big money." The future? In one word: product placement. Of course, unlike, say, American Pyscho, which placed so many products it could've been a Bond film, [wait,...
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Posted by greg at 9:45 AM | TrackBack

December 8, 2004

Canadian Flags AreThe Next Trucker Hat

That whole "Canadian Flags On Backpacks" craze is so 2003. If you're gonna be all embarassed by American folly and all weary of explaining the Bush administration to every foreigner you meet, at least try to look like you've been...
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Posted by greg at 8:20 AM | TrackBack

December 5, 2004

Why Greggy Can't Read

So I've been writing a few pieces for The New York Times lately, which is great, but I can't read them. Or almost any stories at the nytimes.com site, for that matter. Whenever I click on a NYT link, the...
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Posted by greg at 9:40 AM | TrackBack

November 23, 2004

little things from reading the paper:

a couple of the things I would've missed had I not actually read the printed version of the Sunday Times: In her interview at Cannes, a thoroughly justified Manohla Dargis somehow manages to not point out to Jean-Luc Godard that,...
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Posted by greg at 7:27 AM | TrackBack

November 22, 2004

The Cola Blog Wars

So now some guy's drinking only Pepsi for 45 days and blogging about it? 45 days? Call me when you get to three years, pal. This entry, like the 1425 before it, was brought to you by Diet Coke. Now...
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Posted by greg at 8:03 AM | TrackBack

November 19, 2004

Guys and Twenty Dollars

In the nineteen-thirties and forties, Damon Runyon was the most widely read journalist in the country, and his movies like Double Indemnity and Broadway plays like Guys and Dolls were hits. Runyon held court nightly in Lindy's Restaurant on Broadway...
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Posted by greg at 5:11 AM | TrackBack

November 17, 2004

Chest-Haired Americans (Still) Need Not Apply

As part of a settlement in a discrimination suit, Abercrombie & Fitch will create an "Office of Diversity." $50 million buys a lot of waxing [SJ Mercury News]...
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Posted by greg at 7:57 AM | TrackBack

November 12, 2004

Advertiser Shoutout

A round of applause to the advertisers who keep greg.org swimming (ok, maybe wading...ok, maybe slightly damp) in MoMA tickets. Please show them we're not ALL poverty-stricken Marxist anti-consumerists: KevinKringle.com (it's getting to be some time of year, anyway) Moretosee.com...
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Posted by greg at 9:25 AM | TrackBack

November 11, 2004

Note to self: Feuillade, Richie, Gonzalez, Falluja

Just what's been on my mind: Louis Feuillade was the French anti-Griffith, whose crime serials and mystery, Les Vampires embraced elusiveness over narrative primacy; they were met with disdain from French critics. The director in Olivier Assayas' Irma Vep was...
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Posted by greg at 11:19 AM | TrackBack

November 3, 2004

So, 'The Gays' Are The New Nader?

That's the gist of just about every pundit I've heard today: those pesky gays and their persistent existence cost Dems the election. Sounds like it's going to be a long, hard, punishing four years for gay folk in this country....
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Posted by greg at 2:52 AM | TrackBack

October 30, 2004

Nick Nolte Diary's Diary

Hats off to writers Christian Newton and Casey McAdams for their hilarious NickNolteDiary.com, and for their help in putting together the timeline in the Times Sunday. I happily traded a greg.org mention in the piece for the byline, duh. Alas,...
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Posted by greg at 10:22 AM | TrackBack

October 19, 2004

Nice Shooting At A Moving Target

"...a knifeóstrongly made, well balanced, and with an absolute minimum of moving parts. -Michael Swanwick "...looking through a keyhole. A novel is a 360-degree panoramic window. -Matthew Klam "...something you could do in a fit of passion...Writing a novel is...
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Posted by greg at 7:22 AM | TrackBack

October 15, 2004

Nick Nolte's Diary: A Million Irishmen Can't Be Wrong

Father forgive me for ever doubting the authenticity of NickNolteDiary.com. After all, Ireland Online has reported about Nolte's traffic accident with Rosanna Arquette. Nolte crashes into Arquette [Worldwide Entertainment Network News, via IOL]...
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Posted by greg at 2:34 AM | TrackBack

October 13, 2004

Nick Nolte Reviews Movable Type

From the awesome Nick Nolte Diary: [on templates] August 14, 2004, First Entry Well, Diary, here I am on the internet. And at the top of my bookmarks menu is my new site. I have enough trouble with my computer...
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Posted by greg at 12:37 PM | TrackBack

October 12, 2004

Happy (Belated) 2nd Birthday to Gawker

Which was registered two years ago last week, it turns out. Registrant: Pending Renewal or Deletion P.O. Box 430 Herndon, VA 20172-0447 US Phone: 570-708-8786 Domain Name: GAWKER.COM Record expires on 05-Oct-2004 Record created on 05-Oct-2002 Update: Trying to think...
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Posted by greg at 10:26 AM | TrackBack

October 6, 2004

This Week In: BYU In The News

I love this place: BYU newspaper yanks T-shirt ad [Deseret News] And I love these t-shirts: I Cant...I'm Mormon...
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Posted by greg at 11:33 AM | TrackBack

September 26, 2004

The Making Of

That's what I'm thinking of changing the subtitle of this weblog to, although I'm still unconvinced. It works in Europe, where I am not, at least most of the time. Top ten lists on the radio are called "le best...
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Posted by greg at 12:03 PM | TrackBack

September 5, 2004

Almost like TiVO for Public Radio

I just assume that everyone knows about PublicRadioFan.com, Kevin A. Kelly's up-to-the-minute online programming guide for public radio stations. The more I listen to radio online, the more frequently I find myself crafting my own programming schedule; I'll listen to...
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Posted by greg at 8:42 AM | TrackBack

September 4, 2004

The Woman in the Hefty Bag Speaks

"We are starting to go buggy, just getting on one another's nerves," Mrs Mildred Mauney, 81, told The New York Times, after spending the night with some strangers in a classroom-turned-shelter in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. Whatever, Millie. Join the...
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Posted by greg at 2:27 AM | TrackBack

August 16, 2004

Jessica :: Choire , LaToya :: Michael

Until I see them standing side by side, I'm going to assume that "Jessica Coen" is really Choire Sicha indulging his "breast-wielding, 24-year old D-girl" side. I mean, it's not like he needed an excuse to read WWD... Or waitaminnit,...
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Posted by greg at 5:36 AM | TrackBack

July 28, 2004

From the Metropolitan Diary "Yow, did I just hear that?" dept.

To be filed under P for Playah Hatah: Setting: the downtown 6 train, 59th - 50th street. Dramatis Personae: a shapely 20-something woman of a certain race with a JPMorganChase totebag, two 30-ish gentlemen of a certain race with knee-length...
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Posted by greg at 11:14 AM | TrackBack

July 22, 2004

Hawking on Hacking, or How Utah is the Center of the Mediaverse

So I get out of the city for a couple of days, take the kid to Grammy's house (not to be confused with Latin Grammy's, whose calls we don't return), take a break from the hubbub. Little did I know...
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Posted by greg at 12:35 PM | TrackBack

July 9, 2004

Two Good Things I Would Not Have Clicked On

" Like a soufflÈ or brain surgery, the supernatural requires a delicate touch." - Alessandra Stanley's NYT review of "The 4400," a remarkably good-sounding USA Network movie about alien abductees. "One is always on the lookout for an excuse to...
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Posted by greg at 9:49 AM | TrackBack

June 27, 2004

Jocelyn Bell, the woman who discovered pulsars

After discovering an inexplicable pulsing signal (a "sniggling quarter inch" blip that showed up for 5 min/day) in her PhD radio astronomy data (thousands of feet of paper charts) at Cambridge, Jocelyn Bell and her adviser Tony Hewish, wondered if...
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Posted by greg at 11:38 AM | TrackBack

June 22, 2004

On Facing Among Other Things Facts

Now I fear that my entire life may be punctuated incorrectly (it is)....
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Posted by greg at 10:06 AM | TrackBack

June 16, 2004

Someone give that woman a development deal--and a date

Not necessarily in that order. 1989: Woman gives birth to baby girl. Man helps change diapers at first, then abandons woman and 10-month old child. Woman laments the lack of real men like her father, moves in with father. cut...
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Posted by greg at 9:15 AM | TrackBack

June 2, 2004

Graphic Designers & Screenwriters' Pity Party

On Design Observer, Michael Bierut initiated an interesting conversation comparing the collaborative arts of graphic design and filmmaking (initially, it was just screenwriting). Most discussion is about credit and credit-taking, and presupposes some ideal of creative--that is to say, individual...
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Posted by greg at 12:42 PM | TrackBack

May 31, 2004

Geezers, Screenwriters & Directors

It's my guess that we cling to the harsher bits of the past not just as a warning system to remind us that the next Indian raid or suddenly veering, tower-bound 757 is always waiting but as a passport to...
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Posted by greg at 11:08 AM | TrackBack

May 21, 2004

Live Journal is the new Triggerstreet

If you combine reading this hi-larious script with a flip through an oily Brad Pitt photo shoot from [throw rock, hit any current title] Magazine, it'll be like watching Troy--only 2.5 hours shorter*, $10.25 cheaper, and ten times funnier:Beach of...
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Posted by greg at 11:53 AM | TrackBack

May 4, 2004

Try Explaining "Famous Bloggers"

That was my dilemma last night in attending Gothamisty NY Bloggers forum at the Apple store. Like everyone else, I went to drum up traffic for my own weblog. Sure, some will act like they care about the Freddie Nick...
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Posted by greg at 2:41 AM | TrackBack

May 3, 2004

Google seeking to raise $e*10^9 via IPO

[via kottke] Peter Kaminski points out that Google set their IPO target at $2,718,281,828, which is the natural log value, "e." Hi-freakin-larious. Who needs i-bankers to pull valuations out of the air when you've got a Googleplex of phd's who...
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Posted by greg at 12:33 PM | TrackBack

May 2, 2004

The Birthday Boy from La Mancha

Marlise Simons reports in the Times on celebrations under way all over Spain to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Don Quixote, the country's "secular bible." Festivities included a marathon 44-hour mundo hispanico reading, which mirrors nicely my own weeklong marathon...
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Posted by greg at 11:43 AM | TrackBack

May 1, 2004

Movie Mag Maven Mad for Mitchell's Manic Metaphors

MMMMWAHAHAHA. Wendy Mitchell demonstrates why she gets the big pro blogger bucks. Like free sample day at the Whole Foods cheese department, she's laid out bites of Elvis Mitchell's ripest metaphors for you to sample with your little review-reading toothpick....
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Posted by greg at 7:53 AM

April 29, 2004

Writing about making bottles

Whether it's momentum, or a mindshare takeover, or a drive to push the site out of the nest and let it learn to fly, or the fact that I've changed 200 diapers in the last three weeks, I've been posting...
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Posted by greg at 11:52 AM

April 20, 2004

While I Was (heh) Out

The following were not reasons for my not posting for five days: Was walking the dog in the park at 4AM and "fell for a con" [Is that what they call it on Oz now, Kevin?] Was hiring a hitman...
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Posted by greg at 12:13 PM

April 14, 2004

You know that guy?

At that graduate writing lecture? The one on the front row of the auditorium, with the grimy totebags stuffed with sheafs of paper? The old dude, who kept asking about, didn't you ever notice in Shakespeare's Titus how...? and how...
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Posted by greg at 7:22 AM

January 16, 2004

On Adapting for Film

[via IFP] New York Women in Film and Television is sponsoring a panel titled The Art of Adaptation on Jan. 28 in New York, thank you. In fact, it's at the Alliance Francaise/French Institute, East 60th St, so even I...
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Posted by greg at 12:37 PM | Comments (0)

November 9, 2003

On Scripts

Salon is not only still publishing, they're publishing the shooting script of the Ronald Reagan TV movie that the conservative closet cases wanted to see on Showtime (the Queer as Folk Network). It's an 8Mb pdf. Of a TV Movie....
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Posted by greg at 11:53 AM | Comments (0)

September 22, 2003

Choire on The NY'er Festival and Wolfowitz

Absolutely hi-larious then rousing reportage from this weekend's New Yorker Festival by Choire G. Sicha on The Morning News (the G is for Gawker). He too-generously covers the frenetic irrelevancy of Dave Eggers, ("Eggers sold out in 30 minutes (his...
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Posted by greg at 11:27 AM | Comments (0)

August 27, 2003

Things I want to write about, given world enough (or time)

Matthew Barney's Cremaster cycling through the red states. C1's playing in Boise, where it was shot (and Barney's hometown), and C3 has apparently won the Strangest Movie Shown In Nashville Award. (Heads up, bootleggers: The Tennessean's Kevin Nance has...
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Posted by greg at 3:01 AM | Comments (0)

August 23, 2003

On Writing A Screenplay About A Writer

In the Guardian, British docu maker John Brownlow tells about the tricky business of writing a screenplay about Sylvia Plath, one of the most fought-over writers of the modern era. With duelling critics, conflicting biographies, testy literary estates controlling the...
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Posted by greg at 10:55 AM | Comments (0)

July 26, 2003

Ugh. It should be called "American Publishers Yawn at Foreign Fiction"

In the NYT, Stephen Kinzer easily pulls some horrible quotes from major publishers about how Americans don't want to read books translated into English. From a marketing hack at Harcourt: "We [Americans] are into accessible information. We often look for...
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Posted by greg at 6:15 AM | Comments (0)

June 10, 2003

On Taste Tribes

via Boingboing: On Mindjack, Joshua Ellis writes at length about what he calls Taste Tribes, friendship by cultural affinity--liking people who like the same stuff. Blogs are the engines for the smarter artist/chiefs of their own taste tribes. I cooked...
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Posted by greg at 9:32 AM | Comments (0)

April 28, 2003

Adam Gopnik's Metropolitan Diary

Dear Diary: To be filed under "T for That's New Yorkers for ya": Setting: The M4 Limited. Dramatis Personae: the commuting population of Manhattan, and a male writer of a certain age, wearing an insouciantly knotted ascot, who appears to...
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Posted by greg at 3:18 AM | Comments (1)

April 27, 2003

I Like Sites We Like

Daily Script is an excellent-looking archive of html/pdf screenplays. I'm reading the Three Kings shooting script. I got Daily Script from the Guardian film section's Sites We Like, an excellent mix of the entertaining and useful, the mainstream and...
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Posted by greg at 11:39 AM | Comments (0)

April 15, 2003

Useless Screenwriting Tip #1: Write When Ronin's On

According to the little-known Osmosis Theory of Writing, while trying to write a tight, sharp, crime thriller, you should watch a tight, sharp crime thriller, like, say, Ronin (directed by John Frankenheimer, screenplay by David Mamet on JD Zeik's...
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Posted by greg at 11:44 AM | Comments (0)

April 5, 2003

Baltimore Is Burning

Iraqi troops aren't puttin' up a good enough fight for you? Your teams didn't make it into the Final Four? Your need to engage, even vicariously, in tales of the life-consuming urge to win is going unmet? Read Anna Ditkoff's...
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Posted by greg at 11:16 AM | Comments (0)

February 12, 2003

When Do You Cry Reading The Home Section?

Hardly ever, frankly. But William Hamilton's wonderful story of the Kellams, a couple who lived alone, together, on an island off Mount Desert Island, really got me for some reason. Hamilton mentions David Graham's book about the couple, Alone...
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Posted by greg at 11:55 AM | Comments (0)

February 7, 2003

Bill & Nada's Cafe

Bill & Nada's Cafe was where I had my first script idea. It's not that the Salt Lake dance clubs were cooler than the ones in Provo, there were no dance clubs in Provo. (Don't talk to me about...
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Posted by greg at 8:00 AM | Comments (4)

January 1, 2003

Rollin' With My Homi

Under the brown fog of a winter dawn, A crowd flowed over Triboro Bridge, so many, I had not thought the MLA had undone so many. - apologies to T. S. EliotThe MLA Convention was in town, "but now they're...
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Posted by greg at 3:41 AM | Comments (0)

December 18, 2002

LIVE@WTC DESIGN PRESS CON. PIX ...

LIVE@WTC DESIGN PRESS CON. PIX ETC 2 FOLLOW...
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Posted by greg at 10:01 AM | Comments (0)

November 8, 2002

Reading::Writing Drinking::Driving?

In the Casino resaurant, not the slightest impedance at all to getting in, no drop in temperature perceptible to his skin, Slothrop sits down at a table where somebody has left last Tuesday's London Times. Hmmm. Hasn't seen one of...
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Posted by greg at 3:39 AM | Comments (0)

November 5, 2002

I See Harrison Ford As The Daring Writer...

Film critic Anthony Lane is writing the diary at Slate. So far, it's been torrid accounts of the perils of writing. It's pretty suspenseful stuff, journaling as a pitch/plea for giving Lane the Charlie Kaufman Treatment. (Kaufman wrote the...
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Posted by greg at 1:29 AM | Comments (0)

October 7, 2002

Readin', Ritin'

Took a couple of short breaks from writing the as-yet unannounced animated musical (henceforth, AYUAM), just to read the paper: David Kehr's profile of Paul Thomas Anderson. "[In Punch-Drunk Love, Emily] Watson plays one of the many guardian angel figures...
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Posted by greg at 12:33 PM | Comments (0)

October 1, 2002

Joseph Epstein: send me your manuscripts

The way I read this NY Times article, Joseph Epstein is secretly hoping his advice is wrong. "As the author of 14 books, with a 15th to be published next spring..." he writes, "...don't write that book, my advice is,...
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Posted by greg at 11:06 AM | Comments (0)