Other Random Posts

Casino Royale Theme

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William Simon sent me this link to a Chris Cornell song "You Know My Name" from for the new 007 movie CASINO ROYALE.  I hope this isn’t actually the theme song…because if it is, it’s the dullest 007 title tune since Garbage’s "The World is Not Enough."

Civility

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I spent an hour or two today catching up on some of the "back-blog" debates here… the discussions going on in the comments to my posts. I tend to post, watch for a day or two, and then not look back. Well, today I looked back and I was surprised at how the discussions have eroded into name-calling and personal attacks.  I prefer not to meddle in the discussions, even when people are calling me names and criticizing my work, but now things are getting out-of-hand.  You can feel free to disagree with me and one another — I think that’s great. But I am going to start deleting name-calling and personal attacks (unless I am the one doing it. Hey, it’s my blog, after all).  I am also seriously considering either holding comments for approval before they are posted or going back to Typekey authentication to prevent anonymous posts. I’d rather not do either of those things so please, try to be civil, okay?

Dumb You Tube Question

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How do you download clips from YouTube? I’m a moron and can’t seem to figure it out.  Please explain it to me in the comments. Thanks!

And thank you again, William Simon, for hooking me on the video crack. I can’t seem to get enough of all those main title sequences, which I often use as part of my course when I teach TV writing.

Film-making Boot Camp

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The Kansas City Star and the AP reported today about an innovative new film-making program at Stephens College in Missouri that my writing partner Bill Rabkin is actively involved in as an instructor. The students learned by doing — they worked as the crew on an hour-long pilot directed by Bill and written by Ken LaZebnik, who is also dean of the School of Performing Arts at the Stephens College.

Director Bill Rabkin, whose credits include a stint as director and
executive producer of "Diagnosis Murder," called the student crew
members eager to learn and overwhelmingly positive – even in the face
of lunches on 16-hour days that often consisted of bologna and cheese
sandwiches on white bread.

For LaZebnik, who co-wrote the "Prairie Home Companion Movie" with
Garrison Keillor, the film camp is more than just a teaching exercise.
He hopes to shop "Triangle" – his story of a family struggling to cope
with the death of a 6-year-old child while adopting a new daughter from
China – to studios as well as regional film festivals.

"This is an educational experience. But it’s also for real," he said.

Greetings from the Swiss Air Lounge

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I am sitting in the Swiss Air business class lounge at JFK, awaiting my flight to Germany. On the LA to NY flight, I sat across from Norman Lear. I managed not to stare or chat him up. What could I have said that he hasn’t heard a thousand times before? Still, it was cool to see that he picks his nose just like the rest of us.

More later…

Typepad Crash

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Typepad, the service I use to host this blog, had a major database crash yesterday. As a result, some of the comments you left here in the last 24 hours have been lost (along with a couple of my posts). Sorry for the inconvenience.

Thrillerfest Day Three

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Day three  — or was it day four? I’ve lost track with so many hours in the sun and 11o-degree heat — was a lot of fun. But again, I spent more time hanging out at the Biltmore than I did attending panels. And most of the time I spent talking to readers and other authors was either in the pool or sitting around the pool.  I was on a lively panel with Dale Brown (who flew himself in from Tahoe in his private plane for the day), Erica Spindler, Diane Vogt and Brad Meltzer — but with Goldberg luck, we were up against Clive Cussler, so attendance was sparse. Still, we had fun. During the day, I chatted with Raymond Benson, Harley Kozak, Jeremiah Healy, Sandy Balzo, Richard Hawke (Tim Cockey), David Montgomery, Paul Guyot, and, of course, my fellow panelists before and after our panel. I was particularly impressed by  Brad, who has successfully branched out into comic books and television. He’s also a genuinely nice guy who, it seemed to me,  made every reader he met feel like his close friend (I guess that would include me, too). My daughter Maddie was thrilled because several people asked her to sign their copies of THRILLER (dozens of people came up to her to tell her how impressed they were by her question to R.L. Stine, which embarrassed and thrilled her).

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I can’t say enough good things about the Arizona Biltmore. The rooms, the service, the food, the location, the grounds, the architecture, everything about the place was great. We skipped the awards banquet last night. Instead, we went to dinner for a third time at Sam’s Cafe, where my wife sweet-talked the waitress into sweet-talking the chef into giving us the seasoning for their steaks and ribs. Not only did they give us a big sample, they also wrote down a list of exactly what we were getting.  Then we hurried back to the hotel, where they were playing SPY KIDS 2 on a big screen above the pool and serving S’Mores by a roaring campfire.  My daughter floated in the pool, watching the movie and eating  S’Mores…after a day of playing on the water slide (And she met R.L. Stine here). I think the Arizona Biltmore may have replaced Disneyland as the place she’d like to live.

The convention was great — smoothly run, interesting, and a lot of fun. But I can’t helpP6280126
wondering if it was more of a "author’s convention" than a fan convention. It seemed to me that the authors either out-numbered, or equalled, the number of civilians in attendence. That’s not a bad thing, but I think it will shape how the programming is planned for Thrillerfest 2007 in New York. If they want more "civilians," they will probably need to come up with more innovative ways to allow fans to interact with authors. I told ITW big-wig David Dun about what Joan Hansen has done with Men of Mystery, and that they might want to use her program as a template for a luncheon at the next Thrillerfest. He seemed intrigued…or maybe I had barbecue sauce on my chin.

I’ll share some pictures from Thrillerfest in a day or two (I have to wait to get most of’em from Diane Vogt. In the meantime, here’s an out-of-focus picture of Brad Meltzer, me, and Erica Spindler and another photo of the Naked Bookseller at Reader’s Oasis in Quartzsite, AZ…notice my daughter in the background, aghast).