I’m Everywhere!

Like SPECTRE agents, I’m everywhere… at least during the month following the release of a new book. Over the last two weeks, I’ve done a ton of interviews for podcasts, radio shows, video programs, and newspapers, discussing MALIBU BURNING, my sordid career, and the craft of writing. If you missed any of them, you can watch, listen, or read some of them below…

I did a lively interview with David Temple of The Thriller Zone, which you can see here.

Lee and Tod

My brother Tod and I were interviewed together by Erik Pedersen…and it’s by far the best one that’s ever been done with the two of us. You can read it in the Orange County Register. You can also find it in the Los Angeles Daily News, The Boston Herald, Long Beach Press Enterprise, The Pasadena Star Newsand many other newspaper sites nationwid

You can watch me and Tod being interviewed by Sandra Tsing Loh on Bookish.  It is hosted on the Southern California News Group’s YouTube channel.

I was cross-examined at length by Toni Marcolini on her show It May Interest You To Know. You can see it here.

I spoke about collaboration and other aspects of writing with Daniel Paisner on the As Told To podcast. You can listen to it here or here.

I got In Between the Pages with James Lott Jr., which you can see here.

I talked about how I create my stories with Steven James at The Story Blender. You can listen to it here.

R.G. Belsky held my feet to the fire for an interview you can read in The Big Thrill.

I had a lot of fun talking with author Sara DiVello for her Mystery Mavens show, which you can watch here.

You can also watch me being interrogated by Cyrus Webb on his Amazon Live show, here.

Finally, I was grilled by Al Warren and author Joe Goldberg (no relation) on the House of Mystery Radio Show, which you can listen to here or here.

 

Lee Goldberg and Craig Johnson

Speaking of interviews, a few years ago, I interviewed author Craig Johnson, and the cast & producers of LONGMIRE, the TV series based on his books, for a live, ticketed LiveTalksLA event. That event was filmed, and it’s finally shown up on YouTube. You can see it here.

I hope you enjoy the interviews… and that it inspires you to read MALIBU BURNING!

TV and Movie Books

I’ve been remiss in talking about some of the TV and movie reference books I’ve read over the last year…so here are a few short reviews… 

 
I have to admit some biases from the get-go — I’ve known the author for years and we had the same mentor in TV business, Remington Steele showrunner Michael Gleason. So it’s probably no surprise that I loved this book..but I am sure I would have regardless of my biases. It’s a long overdue, nuts-and-bolts guide to TV showrunning that should be required reading before any writer-producer is put in charge of a TV series. I’ll go further than that. Every TV writer who joins the WGA should get a copy of this book with their membership card so they understand exactly what they are getting into.  And the book should also be required reading for network and studio executives, many of whom, it would surprise you to learn, don’t actually realize what goes into producing a TV series (ignorance often reflected in their notes). Melvoin’s book reflects the wisdom he’s gained from his years of in-the-trenches experience running shows, but it also benefits from his active role as a teacher / mentor / advisor in the WGA’s showrunner training program, which helped many of today’s top TV showrunners hone skills they might not have picked up on the job (especially in this era of eight-episode limited series and tiny, pre-production writer’s rooms). Melvoin delves into just about every aspect of showrunning, from tiny details to big-picture concepts, and it’s great stuff. But even if you’re never going to run a show, if you’re just fascinated by TV, this is a remarkable inside look at how series are made. Speaking personally, seeing the photos of Jeff’s early scripts, with Michael Gleason’s handwritten notes on the side, brought tears to my eyes….and many good memories. 
 
 
 
The prolific Irvin continues to mine the corners of TV ephemera for his exhaustively detailed, wonderful unique TV reference books which, as I’ve said again and again, seem to be written just for me. I love his books and wish they’d existed before I wrote my book Unsold Television Pilots back in the 80s. It would have made my research so much easier, and my listings much more informative… particularly in the case of this book. If you’ve always wanted to know more about pioneering TV producers Jack Chertok, Roland Reed, or Edward Lewis, the King of the Backdoor Pilot, this is the book for you. Speaking of back-door pilots, Irvin’s chapter on Movie Star TV Production Companies sounds like a pilot proposal for a series of books aimed, with laser-focus, on my wallet. This is a must-have for any TV reference collection….and for true historians of TV history.
 
 
This huge book is the definition of a niche title, covering every theatrical and TV movie made with a flake of snow and a set of skis in the story (It’s also the definition of the perfect bathroom-read…especially for AirBnB snow cabin vacation rentals).  But it’s much more than a collection of detailed and snarky movie reviews — the listings often include interesting production information and interviews. Even if you aren’t interested in the genre (is it one?), movie-lovers and movie-historians will find the book a fascinating and engaging reference work. I sure did. (As an aside — I can’t believe the notoriously litigious Bond producers haven’t sued McFarland & Co. for using the full poster of ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE as their cover!).
 
 
This wonderful book by IAMTW Grandmaster Alan Dean Foster is, IMHO, mistitled. It isn’t really about the film trade, it’s about the movie and TV tie-in business and the rocky, land-mine filled world of novelizations. And nobody knows more about
tie-ins and novelizations, perhaps, than Alan Dean Foster. His anecdotes about novelizing movies and TV shows can be enjoyed on so many levels –. as a primer on the business and creative life of a working writer, as a history of tie-in,as an inside look at movie marketing, as history of film-making over several turbulent decades, and as a collection of amusing anecdotes/vignettes about Hollywood and writing. And on every level, it’s a resounding success.   
 
 
This is another one of Irvin’s niche TV reference books, this one focusing mostly on short-lived series that were abruptly cancelled, leaving a few unaired, and probably never-to-be-seen, episodes on the shelf. He could write fifty books like this, so his picks of which shows and pilots and never-aired-series to include seems very arbitrary. It’s not clear what made these particular bombs any more worthy of being remembered than the 100s of others out there. The detailed descriptions of unaired episodes of short-lived become tedious and irrelevant, unless you happen to be one of the very few fans of one of these forgotten shows. I wish, instead, that less information was given on the unaired episodes and more space given to interviews with the writers & producers to give us more details on the creation and failure of these shows…and why they deserve not to be forgotten. That said, I don’t really get the point of this book. While I loved it, because I eat this kind of stuff up, I’m an outlier. I have to admit, as Irvin’s biggest fan, that this is his first misfire, a book that doesn’t strike me as necessary, or particularly useful, TV reference or history book.
 
 
I thoroughly enjoyed this book, which charts the history of the movie from the writing of the initial novel and on through the sequel films that followed decades later. The movie is chock-full of great personal and production details about the writers, producer, studio executives, actors, and especially star Lee Marvin, who Epstein previously wrote about in biographical book Lee Marvin: Point Blank. Epstein builds his book on his own interviews, but also upon previously published material gleaned from newspapers, actor biographies, and the like. The only drawback to the book are the lengthy, overly-detailed synopses of the novel and each draft of the script, Frankly, I skimmed most of the synopses, though I might go back to re-read those portions of the book if I ever re-watch the movie. I heartily recommend this book to anyone who is interested in film-making, regardless of whether you’ve seen the movie or not.