American novelist and screenwriter
POPULARITY
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit smokeempodcast.substack.comDavid Marchese has spent the past decade interviewing famous people, from Quincy Jones to Nicolas Cage. He is co-host of “The Interview,” the New York Times Q&A series, and before that, he interviewed bold-faced names for Vulture and NYT Magazine. But he doesn't see his job as “interviewing celebrities” — at least, that's what he says after his old pal Sarah introduces him as such. It's true that Marchese interviews all sorts of people, from author Michael Pollan to happiness expert Laurie Santos. But fame — and its excesses, contradictions, and illusions — is the backdrop for many of his best-known conversations, and it's the launchpad here for a chat about collective experiences, how to ask better questions, how journalism has changed since the days of Playboy, and why discomfort might be a key ingredient to a great interview. NOTE: This is an audio-only episode! Also discussed …As well as:* Sarah sees an advantage to David being “deeply Canadian” * “Celebrity is the coin of the realm.” Or is it?* Nicolas Cage … inspired by Gumby?* Jim Jarmusch did not do interviews that lasted less than an hour* Editor burnout is real* Adam Moss, genius* Friend o' the pod David Rensin and his dozens of Playboy interviews* Age is an undervalued asset in celebrity interviews* Denzel Washington, Nicole Kidman, Edward Norton, Anthony Hopkins* Interviewing as surgery and when to put down the knife* Sarah is still waiting on that mixed tape David promised in 2008Plus: David quotes Ezra Pound, Joyce Carol Oates and Elmore Leonard, what Clive James got right about Americans and fame, and much more!After the paywall: “Which celebrity interview was the most uncomfortable?”We're trying to ask better questions. Like: Will you become a paid subscriber?
This is a preview of a premium episode from our Patreon feed, Paid Costly For Me! Head over to Patreon.com/PodCastyForMe to hear more for just $5 a month. Originally written for Clint Eastwood by friend of the show Elmore Leonard, Richard Fleischer's 1974 Charles Bronson vehicle MR. MAJESTYK is that classic action film setup: a melon farmer accidentally ends up in the middle of a mob hitman's prison transport escape and teams up with a beautiful migrant labor organizer to save his crop. It's a hell of a lot of fun, and probably should have been Patreon episode 3, but here we are. We talk Bronson, small grower economics, and a whole lot about the United Farm Workers, Dolores Huerta, Larry Itliong, and Cesar Chavez. Good ep! Roger Ebert's profile of Bronson: https://www.rogerebert.com/interviews/charles-bronson-its-just-that-i-dont-like-to-talk-very-much Paul Koslo interview: https://iamlegendarchive.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_10.html Review of Christian Paiz's Strikers of Coachella: https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/coachella-united-farm-workers/ Trampling Out the Vintage: Cesar Chavez and the Two Souls of the United Farm Workers by Frank Bardacke: https://www.versobooks.com/products/2213-trampling-out-the-vintage As always, thanks to Jetski for our theme music and Jeremy Allison for our artwork. Additional production by Ryan Torgeson.
The second chapter of B2B - Bedroom to Box Office - brings us a gaggle of porn stars smack dab in the middle of a mean, nasty, supremely entertaining John Frankenheimer joint. Sadly, 52 PICK-UP was too sleazy for critics and not even the Elmore Leonard connection or having Roy Scheider as its star saved it from a rotten Tomatometer score. Listen to Alex & Julio as they welcome the man behind Reindeer Games back to the show with another banger!TIMELINE00:01:24 52 Pick-Up00:08:34 Contrarians Corner- Wanna know how we really feel about 52 PICK-UP? Check out the Real Talk (RT) episode, on your feed RIGHT NOW! (or pretty soon — Spotify can be a pain when it comes to refreshing the feed)- Interested in more Contrarians goodness? Join THE CONTRARIANS SUPPLEMENTS on our Patreon Page! Deleted clips, extended plugs, bonus episodes free from the Tomatometer shackles… It's everything a Contrarians devotee would want!- Our YouTube page is live! Get some visual Contrarians delight with our Contrarians Warm-Ups and other fun videos!- Contrarians Merch is finally here! Check out our RED BUBBLE MERCH PAGE and buy yourself something nice that's emblazoned with one of our four different designs!- THE FESTIVE YEARS have been letting us use their music for years now and they are amazing. You can check out their work on Spotify, on Facebook or on their very own website.- Our buddy Cory Ahre is being kind enough to lend a hand with the editing of some of our videos. If you like his style, wait until you see what he does over on his YouTube Channel.- THE LATE NIGHT GRIN isn't just a show about wrestling: it's a brand, a lifestyle. And they're very supportive of our Contrarian endeavors, so we'd like to return the favor. Check out their YouTube Channel! You might even spot Alex there from time to time.- Hans Rothgiesser, the man behind our logo, can be reached at @mildemoniospe on Instagram or you can email him at mildemonios@hotmail.com in case you ever need a logo (or comics) produced. And you can listen to him talk about economy on his new TV show, VALOR AGREGADO. Aaaaand you can also check out all the stuff he's written on his own website. He has a new book: a sort of Economics For Dummies called MARGINAL. Ask him about it!
How much sleaziness is too much sleaziness? Is Elmore Leonard's 52 PICK-UP as nasty as its John Frankenheimer adaptation? Does the movie deserve its somewhat forgotten status in the director's filmography, or should we all push for a 52 PICK-UP re-evaluation? This and more in this Real Talk segment - including a roll call of all the adult performers in the infamous party sequence!TIMELINE00:01:26 Second Feature00:02:23 Real Talk00:53:27 The Future & Patreon Stuff- Interested in more Contrarians goodness? Join THE CONTRARIANS SUPPLEMENTS on our Patreon Page! Deleted clips, extended plugs, bonus episodes free from the Tomatometer shackles… It's everything a Contrarians devotee would want!- Our YouTube page is live! Get some visual Contrarians delight with our Contrarians Warm-Ups and other fun videos!- Contrarians Merch is finally here! Check out our RED BUBBLE MERCH PAGE and buy yourself something nice that's emblazoned with one of our four different designs!- THE FESTIVE YEARS have been letting us use their music for years now and they are amazing. You can check out their work on Spotify, on Facebook or on their very own website.- Our buddy Cory Ahre is being kind enough to lend a hand with the editing of some of our videos. If you like his style, wait until you see what he does over on his YouTube Channel.- THE LATE NIGHT GRIN isn't just a show about wrestling: it's a brand, a lifestyle. And they're very supportive of our Contrarian endeavors, so we'd like to return the favor. Check out their YouTube Channel! You might even spot Alex there from time to time.- Hans Rothgiesser, the man behind our logo, can be reached at @mildemoniospe on Instagram or you can email him at mildemonios@hotmail.com in case you ever need a logo (or comics) produced. And you can listen to him talk about economy on his new TV show, VALOR AGREGADO. Aaaaand you can also check out all the stuff he's written on his own website. He has a new book: a sort of Economics For Dummies called MARGINAL. Ask him about it!Up next, our FIRF journey takes us back to 2006, with Kal Penn honing his chops as a dramatic lead in THE NAMESAKE! Then Arnold Schwarzenegger shows Glen Powell how it's done in the 1987 adaptation of THE RUNNING MAN! In the meantime, let us know what you thought of 52 Pick-Up: Does John Glover have the Embry locked down? Are you curious about Elmore Leonard's novel? Is that Roy Scheider's real hair? E-mail us at wearethecontrarians@gmail.com or share your thoughts with us on Threads or BlueSky!
California's jungle primary on Tuesday set the stage for the next Democratic governor of the state, and primaries in Iowa, New Jersey and elsewhere tested the strength of progressives in the party. John Nichols has our analysis.Also: from the archives: Elmore Leonard, who died in 2013 at age 87, was unpretentious about his massive accomplishments: 45 novels, more than a dozen turned into movies, and a reputation as one of the great writers of dialogue. When we spoke in 2000, he had just published Pagan Babies, and his movies Get Shorty, Jackie Brown, and Out of Sight had been hits.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
On this episode of Start Making Sense, John Nichols analyzes this week's primary results in California and elsewhere, and, from the archives, Elmore Leonard talks about where his characters and plots came from.California's jungle primary on Tuesday set the stage for the next Democratic governor of the state, and primaries in Iowa, New Jersey and elsewhere tested the strength of progressives in the party. John Nichols has our analysis.Also: from the archives: Elmore Leonard, who died in 2013 at age 87, was unpretentious about his massive accomplishments: 45 novels, more than a dozen turned into movies, and a reputation as one of the great writers of dialogue. When we spoke in 2000, he had just published Pagan Babies, and his movies Get Shorty, Jackie Brown, and Out of Sight had been hits.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
California's jungle primary on Tuesday set the stage for the next Democratic governor of the state, and primaries in Iowa, New Jersey and elsewhere tested the strength of progressives in the party. John Nichols has our analysis.Also: from the archives: Elmore Leonard, who died in 2013 at age 87, was unpretentious about his massive accomplishments: 45 novels, more than a dozen turned into movies, and a reputation as one of the great writers of dialogue. When we spoke in 2000, he had just published Pagan Babies, and his movies Get Shorty, Jackie Brown, and Out of Sight had been hits.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
The big picture of national politics: Trump is not just sinking in the polls, he's accelerating into the most unpopular and toxic parts of his presidency. People are focused on the economy, they want the war in Iran finished – instead, Trump is pushing his billion-dollar ballroom and his slush fund to pay-off the white-supremacist insurrectionists – Harold Meyerson comments.Also: Trump's Billion-Dollar Ballroom is a familiar kind of corruption, but his slush fund to pay the insurrectionists and paramilitary groups that commit violence in his name is an unprecedented attack on democracy. Rob Weissman of Public Citizen explains, and also talks about the immense, and immensely unpopular, proposed Arc d'Trump.Plus: I met Elmore Leonard, who died on August 20, 2013 at age 87, only a couple of times, but he was a memorable guy, totally unpretentious about his massive accomplishments: 45 novels, including many best-sellers, almost a dozen made into movies and TV shows, and a reputation among the literati as one of the great writers of dialogue in our time. When I spoke with him in 2000, he had just published Pagan Babies, a comic novel on the unlikely subject of genocide in Rwanda. (Originally recorded in October, 2000 and later published in LARB on August 20, 2013.)
Fresh from reviewing Top Gun Ian ending up bingeing a whole load of other 1950s westerns. Here are four of the highlights.Man of the West (1958). Directed by Anthony Mann. Written by Reginald Rose. Starring Gary Cooper, Julie London and Lee J CobbThe Gunfighter (1950) Directed by Henry King. Written by William Bowes and William Sellers. Starring Gregory Peck, Helen Westcott and Millard MitchellThe Tall T. Directed by Budd Boetticher. Written by Burt Kennedy from a story by Elmore Leonard. Starring Randolph Scott, Maureen O'Sullivan and Richard Boone.Gunsight Ridge (1957). Directed by Francis D Lyon. Written by Talbot & Elizabeth Jennings. Starring Joel McCrae, Mark Stevens and Addison Richards.
Hot off making Pulp Fiction, Tarantino knocked it out of the park (in our opinions) with this Elmore Leonard adaptation and dedication to a bygone era of filmmaking. DISCLAIMER: Language and Spoilers and Toes!JACKIE BROWNdir. Quentin Tarantinostarring: Pam Grier; Robert Forster; Samuel L. Jackson
The real surprise when it comes to RABID is that Cronenberg meant it to be about the dangers of mishandling an epidemic. As much as we can all relate to that, it can be difficult to connect to that theme when it's carried by a movie that plays like a parody of the director's body-horror obsessions. But how does Marilyn Chambers do, regardless of the film's shortcomings? Listen to this Real Talk segment and find out!TIMELINE00:01:26 Get out of there!!!!00:02:25 Real Talk00:56:33 The Future & Patreon Stuff- Interested in more Contrarians goodness? Join THE CONTRARIANS SUPPLEMENTS on our Patreon Page! Deleted clips, extended plugs, bonus episodes free from the Tomatometer shackles… It's everything a Contrarians devotee would want!- Our YouTube page is live! Get some visual Contrarians delight with our Contrarians Warm-Ups and other fun videos!- Contrarians Merch is finally here! Check out our RED BUBBLE MERCH PAGE and buy yourself something nice that's emblazoned with one of our four different designs!- THE FESTIVE YEARS have been letting us use their music for years now and they are amazing. You can check out their work on Spotify, on Facebook or on their very own website.- Our buddy Cory Ahre is being kind enough to lend a hand with the editing of some of our videos. If you like his style, wait until you see what he does over on his YouTube Channel.- THE LATE NIGHT GRIN isn't just a show about wrestling: it's a brand, a lifestyle. And they're very supportive of our Contrarian endeavors, so we'd like to return the favor. Check out their YouTube Channel! You might even spot Alex there from time to time.- Hans Rothgiesser, the man behind our logo, can be reached at @mildemoniospe on Instagram or you can email him at mildemonios@hotmail.com in case you ever need a logo (or comics) produced. And you can listen to him talk about economy on his new TV show, VALOR AGREGADO. Aaaaand you can also check out all the stuff he's written on his own website. He has a new book: a sort of Economics For Dummies called MARGINAL. Ask him about it!Up next, John Frankenheimer returns to the show with an Elmore Leonard adaptation, 52 PICK-UP! In the meantime, let us know what you thought of Rabid: Did you enjoy the Contagion vibes? Did Marilyn Chambers' past work influence your experience? Will you remember this movie ten years from now? E-mail us at wearethecontrarians@gmail.com or share your thoughts with us on Threads or BlueSky!
Season 10. Episode 3. #OnTheSofaWithVictoria Garry Disher (The Paul Hirsch series) and Dom Nolan (White City) discuss location as character. Recommended: WILLIAM TREVOR, ALICE MONRO, ROBERT PENN WARREN, JOHN LE CARRÉ TINKER TAILOR, CORMAC MCCARTHY, ELMORE LEONARD.Victoria Selman is a Sunday Times and Amazon Charts #1 bestselling thriller author. She has written a number of critically acclaimed novels including the hit Ziba MacKenzie series and Truly Darkly Deeply which was a Spring 2023 Richard & Judy Book Club pick.Victoria has been shortlisted for the ThrillZone Award, 2025, the Fingerprint Thriller of the Year Award, 2023, CWA Short Story Dagger, 2022 and CWA Debut Dagger, 2017 and longlisted for the Theakston's Crime Novel of the Year Award, 2023.Amazon Author Page: https://amzn.to/3xmvMeSWebsite for news and giveaways: http://www.victoriaselmanauthor.comTwitter: @VictoriaSelmanInstagram: @VictoriaSelmanAuthorProduced by Junkyard DogCrime TimeCrime Time FM is the official podcast ofGwyl Crime Cymru Festival 2023 & 2025CrimeFest 2023CWA Daggers 2023-2026 & National Crime Reading Month& Newcastle Noir 2023 and 20242024 Slaughterfest,
Matthew Socey reviews the film Obsession, discusses cinematic graduation weekend traditions and replays his chat with author Elmore Leonard.
Justified: City Primeval is an American neo-Western crime drama television miniseries developed by showrunners Dave Andron and Michael Dinner. The series continues the story from Justified taking inspiration from the Elmore Leonard novel City Primeval: High Noon in Detroit and short story "Fire in the Hole". Timothy Olyphant returns to star as Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens, with Paul Calderón also reprising his role as Detective Raymond Cruz from the 1998 crime comedy film Out of Sight, a film adaptation of Leonard's 1996 novel of the same name. A world premiere was held on June 1, 2023, at the 12th ATX Television Festival, and the series premiered on FX on July 18, 2023, with back-to-back episodes. It received generally positive reviews from critics.Disclaimer: The following may contain offensive language, adult humor, and/or content that some viewers may find offensive – The views and opinions expressed by any one speaker does not explicitly or necessarily reflect or represent those of Mark Radulich or W2M Network.Mark Radulich and his wacky podcast on all the things:https://linktr.ee/markkind76alsohttps://www.teepublic.com/user/radulich-in-broadcasting-networkFB Messenger: Mark Radulich LCSWTiktok: @markradulichtwitter: @MarkRadulichInstagram: markkind76RIBN Album Playlist: https://suno.com/playlist/91d704c9-d1ea-45a0-9ffe-5069497bad59
"Two authors. Two brutal crime tales. One explosive pulp experience. This is a modern throwback to the classic double-feature crime books of the pulp era. Within, there are two hard-hitting crime thrillers in the single volume. Each delivers its own brand of danger, intrigue, and violence." Suit Up! With Nathanael Hummel, he returns to the show to chat about the Veritas Crime Duel in which he and I both have stories! We'll talk about our favorite crime fiction, how the Veritas Duel came to be, Elmore Leonard, the Godfather and much more! Order your copy of International Enforcement & The Midas Game: A Veritas Duel - https://www.amazon.com/International-Enforcement-Midas-Game-Veritas/dp/1968463305 Order my medieval swashbuckler, Thorn https://a.co/d/04i4kDUi Order my crime adventure, Diamonds in Denver https://a.co/d/aHi7p9z Order my 1920's Aviator novella, Unwanted Passenger https://a.co/d/5FVQJWU Order my treasure hunt novel, One Man's Treasure https://a.co/d/i19YMn7 Follow Nathanael https://www.instagram.com/piedmonticus/ https://www.youtube.com/@NathanaelHummel Follow The Show! https://terrancelayhew.com/suitup/ https://www.instagram.com/suitup.author https://www.facebook.com/tlayhew https://suitupwith.substack.com/
Hollywood loves making movies about itself: on this show alone, we've done Sunset Boulevard, Sullivan's Travels, and Singin' in the Rain. Get Shorty (1995) is Elmore Leonard's contribution to the genre, a film that was “meta” before the term became overused: we are given the illusion of spontaneity and the story–like one of Leonard's novels–seems like it's being made up as it moves along. This perfect 90s movie is a lighthearted and wholly enjoyable dramatization of screenwriter William Goldman's famous description of the industry: “Nobody knows anything.” Incredible bumper music by John Deley. If you're interested in reading the original novel, you can find it here. Please subscribe to the show and consider leaving us a rating or review. You can find over three hundred episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Follow the show on Letterboxd and email us any time at fifteenminutefilm@gmail.com with requests and recommendations. Check out Dan Moran's substack, Pages and Frames, where he writes about books and movies, as well as his many film-related author interviews on The New Books Network. Read Mike Takla's substack, The Grumbler's Almanac, for commentary on offbeat topics of the day. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
Hollywood loves making movies about itself: on this show alone, we've done Sunset Boulevard, Sullivan's Travels, and Singin' in the Rain. Get Shorty (1995) is Elmore Leonard's contribution to the genre, a film that was “meta” before the term became overused: we are given the illusion of spontaneity and the story–like one of Leonard's novels–seems like it's being made up as it moves along. This perfect 90s movie is a lighthearted and wholly enjoyable dramatization of screenwriter William Goldman's famous description of the industry: “Nobody knows anything.” Incredible bumper music by John Deley. If you're interested in reading the original novel, you can find it here. Please subscribe to the show and consider leaving us a rating or review. You can find over three hundred episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Follow the show on Letterboxd and email us any time at fifteenminutefilm@gmail.com with requests and recommendations. Check out Dan Moran's substack, Pages and Frames, where he writes about books and movies, as well as his many film-related author interviews on The New Books Network. Read Mike Takla's substack, The Grumbler's Almanac, for commentary on offbeat topics of the day. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film
What does it take to write strong sentences? How do you keep writing when the world feels dark? How do you push past self-doubt, build a sustainable writing practice, and trust that your voice is enough? Anne Lamott and Neal Allen share decades of hard-won wisdom from their new book, Good Writing. In the intro, Hachette cancels allegedly AI-written book [The New Publishing Standard]; How Pangram works; Publishing industry insights from Macmillan's CEO [David Perell Podcast]; Photos from Notre Dame and Saint Chapelle; The Black Church; Bones of the Deep coming in April. Today's show is sponsored by ProWritingAid, writing and editing software that goes way beyond just grammar and typo checking. With its detailed reports on how to improve your writing and integration with writing software, ProWritingAid will help you improve your book before you send it to an editor, agent or publisher. Check it out for free or get 15% off the premium edition at www.ProWritingAid.com/joanna This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn Neal Allen is a spiritual coach, former journalist, and author of non-fiction and flash fiction. Anne Lamott is the New York Times bestselling author of memoir, spiritual and creative non-fiction, and literary fiction, including Bird by Bird: Instructions on Writing and Life, which many authors, including me, count as one of the best books on writing out there. Neal and Anne are also married, and their first book together is Good Writing: 36 Ways to Improve Your Sentences You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes Why strong verbs are rule number one How Anne and Neal's contrasting styles created a unique call-and-response writing guide Practical advice on finding and trusting your authentic voice across genres Why award-winning novelists typically write for only 90 minutes a day — and what that means for your writing practice How to keep writing during dark and discouraging times without giving up The uncomfortable truth about publication, longevity, and why nobody cares if you write You can find Neal at ShapesOfTruth.com and Anne on Substack. Transcript of the interview with Neal Allen and Anne Lamott Neal Allen is a spiritual coach, former journalist, and author of non-fiction and flash fiction. Anne Lamott is the New York Times bestselling author of memoir, spiritual and creative non-fiction, and literary fiction, including Bird by Bird: Instructions on Writing and Life, which many authors, including me, count as one of the best books on writing out there. Neal and Anne are also married, and their first book together is Good Writing: 36 Ways to Improve Your Sentences Jo: Welcome to the show, Neal and Anne. Anne: Thank you so much, Jo. We're happy to be here. Neal: Hi, Jo. Jo: Let us get straight into the book with rule one, which is use strong verbs. How can we implement that practically in our manuscripts when most of us don't start with the verb? We're thinking of story or we're thinking of message? Neal: Throughout the book, it's pointed out that these are rules for second drafts, right? So you've put it down. You've already got your story down, you've already got your piece down—your email, your text, it doesn't matter what. Then you stop, you pause, you go back to the beginning and you go sentence by sentence and look at them. Anne: I'd like to add that there's a lot in the book, usually on my end of the conversation, that has to do with really using these rules anywhere and everywhere. Whether you're writing a memoir or a grant proposal, I believe these rules apply to getting everything written at any time, in any phase of the work because, from Bird by Bird, I'm all about taking short assignments and writing really godawful first drafts. What is fun about writing is to have spewed out something on the page and then to get to go back right then and just start cleaning it up a bit, straightening it out, probably inevitably shortening it. One place to start is to notice how weak our verbs are. If I say “Jo walked towards us across the lawn,” it doesn't give the reader very much information. But if I say “Jo lurched towards us across the lawn,” or “Jo raced towards us across the lawn,” then right away you've improved the sentence with really two or three quick thoughts about what you actually meant with that verb and a better one. So it really applies to every level and stage of writing, but Neal's right—this is really about going back over your work sentence by sentence and seeing if you can make it stronger and cleaner and clearer. The reason it's rule one is to write strong verbs. Neal: A nice thing about strong verbs is that they often preclude the need for an adjective or an adverb, right? If I say “I trudged,” it's shorter than saying “I walked slowly and depressed.” Jo: Absolutely, and how you answered that question is kind of how the book works, right? Because Neal does an outline of the rule, and then Anne comes in and comments. Maybe you could talk a bit about that process. You are both strong characters, obviously you've been writing a long time. Talk a bit about how you made the book and how that worked as a couple as well. Neal: I'd had these rules collected for a number of years and I had them on my website. When I met Anne, she liked them and would hand them out when she was doing writing sessions. I was intrigued at some point a few years ago and looked around to see whether there was a list like mine out there. I noticed that all the other lists I saw were much shorter. Hemingway had his four rules for rewriting. Elmore Leonard, his eight, which are wonderful. Margaret Atwood has 10. The longest I saw was Martin Amis had, depending on what year it was, 14, 15 or 16—he'd go back and forth with a couple of them. I had 30-some and I wondered, well, 30-some might be enough for a book. I didn't want to write a scolding book like on grammar. I didn't want it to be academic or written like “I'm the expert, I know.” I'll just let my mind range. I'll explain the rule and then let my mind go where it went. Which, by the way, is one of the rules—show then tell. Not “show, don't tell.” It's show, then tell. Let your mind riff after you've explained something to the reader or shown something to the reader. So I wrote the book. It was too short to be published, and I showed it to Anne and I asked her, “What do I do with this?” Anne: I said, “Hey, I know something about writing, Bub,” and I asked if I could contribute my thoughts and retorts and examples and prompts to each of his rules. We were just off and running because his stuff was so solid. Mine is more maybe welcoming and giving encouragement and hope to writers because writing's hard. It's still hard for me. This is my 21st book and I'm only a third of it. Writing's hard, and what we hope is that our conversation can help people understand: a) it's hard for everybody, and b) it'll work if you just keep your butt in the chair and do the best you can, and then go back one day at a time and try to make it a little bit better. Neal: It turned out to be pretty serendipitous because just naturally I'm more of an explainer and Annie is more driving toward catharsis. So the call and response is always: I set out the rule, I explain the rule, and Annie drives it toward catharsis and usefulness. Jo: In some chapters you do disagree in some form. How did that work in the process of writing? Anne: Usually I disagree because Neal might be using words that are too big, or it might be a little bit elitist, I would think. Or of course I would point out that he's completely overeducated, whereas I'm a dropout and so I have a much plainer, more welcoming version of the rules. All of the rules are so strong, but I would feel that the way he explained it was beyond me. So I would come in and try to explain what Neal had been explaining. It was actually really funny and fun. We do come from really different directions. Neal is an explainer. He's like an ATM of information, and I am the class den mother who brings in treats and party favours on everybody's birthday. My message is always: you can really, really do this, I promise, trust me. But you start where you are, you get your butt in the chair, and then Neal comes along and says what has worked for him. He was a journalist forever, so he writes in a very different way than I write. It just turned out that the two of us together kind of make a whole. People have asked us if there were a lot of conflicts or if we really objected to the other person's take. I can tell you, Jo, there wasn't a day when we had only conflict. We were just laughing and we were excited because one of us would remember a great example from literature. We came to believe that these two very distinct voices would form one voice of encouragement for any writer. Jo: That brings us to rule number eight, which is trust your voice. I feel like this is easier when you've been writing a while. We're told to find our voice, but I remember as an early writer when I read Bird by Bird and other books and I was like, “How on earth do I find my voice?” Maybe you could talk about this more for early stage writer. How do you find and trust that voice? Neal: Boy, that is a halt for almost all of us. This follows from any intellectual pursuit that requires lots of practice and repetitions. Malcolm Gladwell's great statement, or discovery, or restatement from somebody else who discovered it, that the human brain requires 10,000 hours of repetitions before something can be allowed to just flow without thought. Flow as if intuitive rather than thinking. I don't think that's any different in writing than it is in basketball or football or anything else—sports, creative pursuits, everyday pursuits. There's just a lot of repetitions required. Some people have the experience that I did, where you're just going along getting better and better, doing it over and over again, learning this, learning that, adding in this, adding in that, moving toward a goal of virtuosity or whatever. And all of a sudden, bang, one day, it all works and your voice emerges. Other people don't have that experience, don't have that one day that it happened or that feeling that it suddenly happened. For some people it takes less than 10,000 hours, but for most people it is a hell of a lot of repetitions. Anne: I think for me, the most important aspect to finding your own voice is noticing how desperately you don't think your voice is good enough and that you want to write like somebody else. I always mention that when I was coming up, at about 20, I wanted to sound like Isabel Allende because I loved her work so much. Or Ann Beattie, who was writing those wonderful short stories in the New Yorker. Or Salinger, who I'd started reading probably at 10 years old. I had to come to the understanding that I can't tell my stories and my truth and my version of life—which is really what writing is—in somebody else's voice. Unless it's a kind of advanced writing exercise to write in the voice of an alcoholic billionaire in Spain. For most of us, it's about finding out that our voice is what people want to hear. It's hard to believe, but it is absolutely true. If you have a story to tell me, Jo, I just want you to tell me your story. I don't want you to try to sound like Virginia Woolf or Margaret Drabble. I want you to be Jo. If it's the written version you're sending me, I can probably go through and help you maintain your voice while making the writing stronger by following certain really basic rules. But spiritually and psychologically, this is just about the most important rule of all because that's why we're here. That's why we are on this side of eternity—to discover who we are and why we're here. Part of that is discovering who, deep down, when all the layers are peeled away, we are, and then how to communicate that to a reader. Without trying to sound more impressive or more brilliant or more ironic than we actually are, our voice is good enough. It's hard to believe. Our voice is what we want you to tell us your stories in. Neal: I distinctly remember the day I found my voice, for odd reasons. I just can remember it, and the first thing I did when this story felt like it had written itself to me was look at it and go, “Crap. That doesn't sound like Faulkner.” Jo: It sounded like you. Anne: Or bad Faulkner. Jo: Do you think we have to find our voice maybe multiple times, depending on genre? For example, I recognised that feeling with one of my novels. It was novel number five. I was like, “Oh, that's my voice.” But then it took me a lot longer to find that in memoir because, well, I think memoir is super hard. Do you think we have to go through these 10,000 hours in different genres? Neal: Not for me. I don't think any differently about how I'm entering into a business letter, a text, a novel, a self-help book, or any of the things that I do. I feel like I just have to turn this switch and let it go, and I can trust myself. So that's interesting. I can imagine you could develop a second voice. I haven't ever needed to. Anne: I would agree that I write my novels and my nonfiction really from a kind of central bus station deep inside of me. One of our rules is write the hard things—write about life and death and loss and grief and relationships and getting old and being here during these incredibly cold, dark times. Because the reader, i.e. me, is just desperate for truth and for real. I started out wanting to sound like John Updike or sound like a New York glitterati male writer, and I can't tell you what is really real in somebody else's voice. I disagree with Malcolm Gladwell. I think it's 10 hours—a little bit different there. But when I'm writing autobiographical spiritual pieces or my novels, I have to kind of settle myself down, like gentling a horse, and find that bus station inside of myself where I'm observing and I'm tugging on the sleeve of the person sitting next to me and saying, “I just saw something really interesting. Do you have a minute?” That's really what writing is. I just saw something or thought of something or imagined something or remembered something really interesting. Do you have a minute? If I'm talking to the person next to me, I'm not going to try to sound like Laurence Olivier or anybody else. I'm just going to tell them my story. The best four or five word great quote is from our screenwriter friend, Randy Mayem Singer, and she said: “Tell me a story. Make me care.” Those six words really transcend all genres. It's just: I can tell you a story my way if you're interested. Got a minute? Jo: You mentioned that, really interesting, you said, “I need to settle myself down,” particularly in these dark times. This is not a political show, and obviously we're all from different countries here and we all have different views of what difficult times are, but we all go through them. When big things in the world make us feel like perhaps what we are doing is not so important, how do we get through that? That “shouldn't I go do something more important than writing a story” feeling? Neal: Everybody is encouraged to be a political scientist nowadays, or to be an ethicist or to be a moralist as their job, and that's kind of ridiculous, right? We've been handed our role. By the time you're 30, you've been handed your role in the world, and that's your productive role. You have certain citizenship requirements, which might include voting or marching or watching the news every day. That's not the rest of your day unless you actually work in parliament as an aide or doing some kind of social policy work. I am not going to let the external world ruin my day. I'm going to keep that to a certain number of minutes of my day that is appropriate to my role in the world. I am perfectly productive in the world. I have lots of things that I do. I work hard. Everybody works hard. There are no lazy people in this world any more—civilisation's too difficult. You want lazy? Go back to 300,000 years of tribal life, where as soon as you had fulfilled your last need for calories for the day, you made it back to camp slowly so you didn't burn calories, and lulled from about 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM. The rest of the day you reclined so you weren't burning calories and gossiped with your fellow tribespeople. None of us is like that now. I'm perfectly productive without having to say I should be more productive and more concerned about the foibles of the species. Anne: Neal does something with his clients, with whom he does this work on taming the inner critic. It's about having them make a list of what they do every day. Rain or shine or catastrophe or peace or war or whatever, you just do it. I wake up, I pray, I put my glasses on. I get a little bit of work done every day. I meditate for 15 minutes every day. I get outside every day because that is the most nourishing, spiritual reset button I can get to. I catch up with my friends. We have a grandson here. We hang out with him. I do certain things every day, and one of them is I get a little bit of work done. Of course what I'd rather do is just stay glued to CNN and have my tiny opinions on every single thing that is happening and how things would be better if they followed my always excellent advice. Instead, what I do is I will meditate for 50 minutes a day and it won't be really beautiful and inspiring—it'll be like a monkey at the mall who's over-caffeinated. I will also get outside. I don't know if I'll get a really good long walk with 10,000 steps in, but I will get outside and I will pay attention. I will breathe in fresh air. I will have moments of wonder. I will also sit down, and I will be doing it after we talk. I'm going to get my own writing done for the day. I really recommend that to writing students: write down what you do every day. And in it, figure out at least one pod—a 45-minute pod—where you can get a little bit of writing done. Something that may serve the writers in your audience is that I make long lists and I encourage all beginning writers to make long lists of every memory and thought and idea that they've had. But mostly memories, often starting very young. Thinking about early holidays and school are great prompts. Make a list of 25 memories you have that you've told people over the years that are meaningful to you. If you remember them, they're meaningful. You may think that they're meaningful because of this or that, but you sit down and you write about them for 45 minutes and you're going to discover that there was a kernel of insight, or even healing, in them that you hadn't known when you set out to write them. I taught writing forever at this bookstore called Book Passage in Marin. We would spend a part of every hour having the writers, the students, explain to me why they weren't getting any writing done, and they were excellent ideas. Any excuse your listeners have about why they're not getting any writing done—believe me, it's a good excuse and I've heard it 10 times. If you are committed to writing, you have to meet us halfway, and that means that you set aside 45 minutes or an hour and a half or whatever you can give me to get a little bit of writing done. Get one passage written—the first or eighth thing on the list of really important memories that you've carried in your pocket all these years. Neal: The typical amount of time that a Booker Prize winner, or a National Book Award winner here in America, spends writing—a novelist—is one to two hours in the morning, getting 45 minutes to an hour and a half of work done, a thousand to 1,500 words. And then they stop. The reason they stop is it's really brain-consuming. To do this is hard work, and it's intellectually vigorous. High-end programmers can work two and a half hours on average before they have to stop because they've used up their brain energy—the blood going to the brain and expending calories and whatever is going on in there. It's not a long time. It's just repetitive time. The Booker Prize winners, they typically work six days a week, not five days a week. An hour and a half a day is about the mean. About 1,200 words is about the mean. Jo: It's interesting because you mentioned what's stopping people from writing, and you also mentioned it's hard work. One of the things I've heard a lot recently is: “This is really hard. I thought writing was meant to be this romantic myth where I would sit down and things would stream into my brain and it would be easy. And if it's not easy and fun, then maybe it's wrong for me.” So maybe you could explain more about the hardness and why hard is still good. Hard doesn't mean it's a bad thing. Neal: The interesting thing about writers is that they are really interested in very complex thinking about sentences. A few things distinguish a writer from a subject matter expert or a plotter—who either writes plots and is interested in the movement of plots, or who is a subject matter expert in something and either novelises it or writes nonfiction. It's that a writer is first concerned about the puzzle of a sentence, second concerned about the flow of a paragraph really, and only thirdly concerned about the subject matter. I don't care what the subject matter is. What I want to concentrate on ultimately is the sentence. And getting a sentence to look right in context requires building sentences upon sentences upon sentences. It's more like painting than it is like writing in that sense. If you look at a painter, once they've put one brushstroke down—and usually it takes them a while to figure out what that brushstroke is, how big it is, how wide it is, how thick it is, how grainy it is—then the second brushstroke becomes a puzzle based on what they just did with the first brushstroke and the remaining canvas. A writer thinks that way about each sentence and realises that each sentence has layers of information in it—diction, colour, rhythm, harmony, melody, plot, all sorts of things are happening. How many of those are taken care of in that sentence? Well, that becomes the interest. It's hard in the sense that to be virtuosic at it, to be really good at it, requires a lot of study and a lot of mistakes. Most of the mistakes are getting rid of clichés and finding your way past them, and that's a long, long process. This isn't something that can be just picked up because you have a talent. You were told at a certain time you were a talented writer, so you can just pick it up. As soon as you get into it, you see that the sentences are demanding a heck of a lot of work. Anne: I would add that I don't find it all that fun and easy—I never find it fun and easy. I've been doing this professionally for 52 years now, since I was 20, when I worked at a magazine. I think that's an illusion. So much of becoming a writer is unlearning what you thought it meant and how it would go. That you would sit alone like Bartleby the Scrivener, hunched over working on your ledger. That was not true at all, because a lot of our book, Good Writing, has to do with the collaboration between you and a writing partner, a writing group or a writing collective, and eventually an editor. It's not about that lonely, hunched-over romantic, Wuthering Heights sense of seriousness. And it's also not giddy. It's not Walt Disney. It's just very real. It's one human sitting down at the desk with paper or at the keyboard, and it is just trying, one day at a time, to write what's on your heart, what's on your mind, what's on your scribbled notes, what you're trying to transcribe from this little bit of a flicker of an idea about something that you've always meant to tell on paper. And then writing it. Some parts of the day's work will be pulling teeth. The secret of writing—and I write about this a lot in Bird by Bird, I write a lot about it in Good Writing—is you just don't give up. Because you wanted to be a writer when you grew up. What that means is that you write a little bit every day and you read about writing. You read good books on writing. You read Stephen King. You read William Zinsser. You read all the Paris Review interviews of writers at work. You enter into the writing life because it's a calling, like a monk to a monastery. You've gotten into the water, it's a little cold at first, and you stay in it. And it starts to be something that is so fulfilling, if maybe not fun. It's fulfilling. You will feel this rare excitement that you're doing what you have put off for so long, or that you're re-entering it in a new way with a different sense of commitment and maybe a little bit more wisdom and probably a lot more stories to tell. Jo: I did want to ask Anne, because coming back to Bird by Bird, many writers listening will have read it. I've also read over the years about your son and your faith. These are really personal things that you have shared. It feels like we live in this age of judgement and cancellation, and writing what you call our truths can be very difficult. People are afraid. What would you say to them? And obviously also rule 33 is “write hard stuff”, so I guess that gets into it too. How do we do this? Anne: A lot of people don't have the calling to write personal stuff or autobiographical stuff or stuff about spiritual or emotional or psychological healing. They want to write about England in the 1300s. I've always told my writing students to write what they would love to come upon, because then they're creating it. If they love to read historical romances, or they love to read journals—I have to say, I read every single journal of Virginia Woolf's in my early twenties, and I read every single volume of her letters in my early twenties. It was thrilling to be in that intimate, umbilical connection to a writer that I loved so much, and into the world of Bloomsbury, and into the world of England between the wars. People may not want to write like I write, and I would assume they don't. My calling is that I love to write about real life and I use my immediate experiences of daily living and my family and my husband and our animals and my nation and my recovery and my church. All of that is the stuff that I love to come upon in other people's work, and so I write it. Neal writes differently. He is a journalist and a novelist, and he is writing a lot in a much more sociological way than I am. He is writing with this font of knowledge about socioeconomic and historical understanding of the world. Yet he's just raggedy old Neal Allen, but he loves to come upon different stuff than I love to come upon. Does that answer your question? Neal: I think one thing to notice is that the whole bully-victim cycle that we are promoting and living in now—and it's a cycle because if somebody claims that they have been bullied, then their only defence is to become a bully themselves. The victims become the bullies. It just gets worse and worse. It's the old revenge story. What I've noticed when I think about it is the authors who I respect the most tend to be humanists. Humanists tend not to be cancelled, and I've never felt a great danger. Of course, I watch my words in certain ways that are fashionable—you can't use this word any more, and all of that. But in terms of ideas, humanists embrace the world in a funny, different kind of way than people who chase after conflict, chase after separation of people from each other, tribalism, all of that. When I look back, my heroes were always humanists. Some of them might be cancelled now, but just for the weirdest reasons—like Henry Miller or Mark Twain might be cancelled for very strange reasons. These are absolute humanists who love everybody in the world in a certain kind of odd way. Virginia Woolf is the most incredible humanist in the world. She's not going to be cancelled. Jo: She cancelled herself. Neal: There we go. Jo: As we come towards the end, I do want to return to something—you've both talked about calling and you've been handed your role, and this sort of “we are writers now.” Both of you have had great longevity in the career, and I've been doing this now 20 years. I've noticed so many people who leave the writing life, so I wondered what tips you had on making it long term. How do we do this long term, assuming we are feeling a calling? People have to balance the money side, they're balancing book marketing, which is always a nightmare for all of us, and the writing. Any tips for longevity? Neal: I have no idea. I have lived outside of the writing life, just kind of using it as a secondary skill, for half of my life. I left journalism because it didn't pay well enough to support a family of six. I moved into the corporate world. I loved the corporate world. I didn't have any problem with it, but it wasn't the writing world. When I came out of the corporate world, I first went into “tame your inner critic” sessions with people—executive coaching, other kinds of coaching. Only lately, only in the last 10 years, have I really resumed my writing career. I think maintaining a writing career, like anything in the arts, is incredibly difficult financially. It just will be. Annie will tell you—you were, what, 15 years into your career before you had your first home office? Anne: Yes. Neal: Right. Anne: More than that. I was 20 years in before I had a door I could close to keep the Huns out—i.e. my child. Here's the thing: nobody cares if you write, if you hate it, or if you've given up. It might be that you would find your creative soul, your imaginative, creative life force at ecstatic dancing on Saturdays in the town park, which we offer here in our tiny town. It might be that you're a painter. My best friend started painting several years ago and she's incredible. If you want to write, the horrible thing is that you just have to keep setting aside a pod. I keep using the word pod because that's how I get any work done at all—an hour. Now, Neal and I can both tell you, and Neal alluded to this: you set aside an hour and that will give you maybe 40 minutes of actual writing. And we'll give the Booker Prize winners 40 minutes of actual writing. You have two hours and that gives you an hour and 15 minutes. That's how it works. If you care and if you long to be a writer, to immerse yourself in the writing life—I hate to sound like a Nike ad, and I don't know if you have this in England—but you just do it. One thing that gets in everybody's way is this fantasy of getting published and how if they get published, it will be like the world has stamped “validated” on their parking ticket and their self-esteem will now be much, much better and more consistently excellent than it ever was before. We can tell you: we've got this book that's out, brand new, and it makes you much more insecure and much more anxious than you were before it got published. Because how's it going to do? Is it going to get reviewed? There are very, very few places reviewing books any more. Carol Shields, who wrote an incredible book 30 years ago called The Stone Diaries. She was teaching large, large writing retreats, a thousand people at a time, and she would tell them that five to 10 of them will be published. Getting published means that you get your book out and you have one week to make it. You have one week in the bookstores for it to get noticed. And there are 180,000 hardback books published in America every year in general interest. So you write a novel that's about a small town. You have great dreams that it's going to be an Oprah book and that this is going to happen and it will lead to a second contract, and then you can start investing in diamonds or buy a set of fish forks. It doesn't happen. My first book that made any money at all for me was my fifth book. It was a journal of my son's first year called Operating Instructions, and it was the first time that I didn't have to have a second job. I was 38, and I had been writing—and writing full time—since I was 20 and publishing since I was 26. If the carrot that is enticing you to get any new work done is publication and finding an agent and getting published, it's not going to happen for you. I can just promise you that. If your dream is to become a writer and to become a member of the writing community and to write—and it will be discouraging—but if you want to write, you just keep pushing back your sleeves. You don't get up. You sit down and you keep your butt in the chair. If your work is really good, it may get published. If your work is excellent, it may not. But that can't be what gets you to commit to being a writer when you grow up. Jo: Fantastic. So where can people find Good Writing and all your books and everything you both do online? Neal: On March 17th the book comes out. You can get it online, anywhere online. It's published by Penguin Avery. March 17th, it gets released. Anne: As we said, it'll be in the bookstores for a while. Neal: It'll be in the bookstores in America. You might have to go online in Great Britain at first. Jo: Oh yes, it's definitely there. And what about your websites as well? Anne: I don't have a website. Neal: I have a modest website at ShapesOfTruth.com. That tells you about my other books also. Anne: I'm at Substack, Anne Lamott. I'm on Facebook, Anne Lamott. I'm kind of all over the place. But this is kind of terrifying: 80% of books bought in America are bought at Amazon on cell phones. Jo: Yes, absolutely. Actually, I was going to ask—have you recorded the audiobook as a pair? Anne: Yes, we have. It's available if you go—I hate to always be plugging Amazon, but it's so easy. If you go to Amazon, it'll give you a choice of hardback or audio or Kindle. Neal: And if you don't want to go to Amazon and want to find another place to buy it that you feel more comfortable with, go to Penguin Random House and just put in “Good Writing, Anne Lamott.” I think it'll take you to a splash page that gives you a choice of a half dozen online places to order it. Jo: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much, both of you, for your time. This has been brilliant. Anne: Oh, Jo, thank you. Pleasure and an honour. Thank you for having us. Neal: Thank you, Jo. As you can see, we really get turned on talking about this! Anne: Yes, we do.The post Strong Verbs And Hard Truths. Good Writing With Anne Lamott and Neal Allen first appeared on The Creative Penn.
In this episode, we crack open "Swag" from 1976, one of Elmore Leonard's leanest Detroit crime novels. This caper follows Frank Ryan and Ernest "Stick" Stickley, two likeable rogues from the morally-ambiguous side of the tracks who pair-up with a plan to get rich. As the stick-ups slowly stack up, Leonard dismantles the partnership's illusory hold on their American dream and makes room for hubris and happenstance. So keep your head on a swivel because, like any good con, there's a lot more going on beneath the surface of this pacy tale! FastFacts@8:30; Summary@29:50; PIPES@1:03:20
After a brief hiatus for Sundance we are back to get you caught up on this week's physical media. Erik Childress and Peter Sobczynski look at a pair of enjoyable larks in the careers of John Woo and Jonathan Demme. There is the fun hangout movie that was just celebrated at the film festival where it had its premiere as well as one of the early Rolling Stones concert films. SXSW premiered one of the great twisted films about capitalistic depravity and Arrow does it justice here. There is also some twisted Dario Argento and a kid trying to hook up with Nicole Kidman. But this week is full of original films that were eventually remade including a western written by Elmore Leonard, the film which won William Hurt his Oscar, a Clark Gable film that he made twice, a dynamite thriller on a train, Charles Bronson as a cultured killer. Not but last least a classic rom-com that was remade that the guys have some very different opinions about.2:16 - Criterion (3:10 to Yuma (1957) (4K), Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985) (4K), House Party (4K), Birth (4K))31:44 - Warner Archive (Red Dust, The Narrow Margin)41:10 - Shout (Once a Thief (4K))51:14 - Vinegar Syndrome (Married to the Mob 4K, The Stendhal Syndrome 4K)1:09:33 - Arrow (Cheap Thrills)1:17:37 - Universal (Fifty Shades Trilogy 4K, Marry Me (4K))1:29:52 - Kino (Hold That Blonde, The Mechanic 4K, Sabrina (1995), The Hi-Lo Country, Let's Spend the Night Together 4K)2:09:35 – New Theatrical Titles On Blu-ray (Hung Up On a Dream: The Zombies, Blue Moon, The Thing with Feathers)2:11:41 – New Blu-ray Announcements!CLICK ON THE FILMS TO RENT OR PURCHASE AND HELP OUT THE MOVIE MADNESS PODCASTUSE COUPON “MOVIEMADNESS” TO GET 10% OFF ALL DUBBY PRODUCTSSIGN UP FOR AUDIBLEBe sure to check outErik's Weekly Box Office Column – At Rotten TomatoesCritics' Classics Series – At Elk Grove Cinema in Elk Grove Village, ILChicago Screening Schedule - All the films coming to theaters and streamingPhysical Media Schedule - Click & Buy upcoming titles for your library.(Direct purchases help the Movie Madness podcast with a few pennies.)Erik's Linktree - Where you can follow Erik and his work anywhere and everywhere.The Movie Madness Podcast has been recognized by Million Podcasts as one of the Top 100 Best Movie Review Podcasts as well as in the Top 60 Film Festival Podcasts and Top 100 Cinephile Podcasts. MillionPodcasts is an intelligently curated, all-in-one podcast database for discovering and contacting podcast hosts and producers in your niche perfect for PR pitches and collaborations. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit erikthemovieman.substack.com
Look at me, Harry! NostalgiaCast kicks off its 1995 retrospective with a fond look back at GET SHORTY, directed by Barry Sonnenfeld and starring John Travolta, Gene Hackman, Rene Russo, and Danny DeVito. Jonny and Darin don't say anything more than they have to, if that, as they compare this meta-comedy classic confection to the Elmore Leonard book on which it's based, gush over their favorite performances and dialogue, and marvel at how Sonnenfeld and screenwriter Scott Frank make the adaptation their own. Don't be a f*** ball. Listen now!
paypal.me/LibroTobias ko-fi.com/asier24969 Continuamos el recorrido por la filmografía de Quentin Tarantino. Tras dos obras maestras como “Reservoir Dogs” y “Pulp Fiction”, Quentin Tarantino se enfrentaba en 1997 al reto de rodar su tercera película y para ello decidió adaptar al cine la novela de 1992 de Elmore Leonard, “Rum Punch” y rendirle homenaje al cine Blaxploitation de los setenta mediante esta obra maestra rotunda titulada “Jackie Brown”. Presentación, dirección, edición y montaje: Asier Menéndez Marín Diseño logo Podcast: albacanodesigns (Alba Cano) Escucha el episodio completo en la app de iVoox, o descubre todo el catálogo de iVoox Originals
In THE GRAVE ARTIST, a wedding reception is coming to a close in the Hollywood Hills when the blissful day is shattered by the death of the groom. Though the incident appears to be an accident, Carmen Sanchez and Jake Heron discover that the tragedy is the third in a series of similar deaths and conclude something far more sinister is at play. The two uncover chilling evidence pointing to a serial killer who has taken evil to the next level. Dubbed the Honeymoon Killer, he isn't interested solely in his victims but in creating a macabre masterpiece focused on the survivors and reveling in their grief. And now his dark obsession has turned to Carmen and Jake themselves. The Honeymoon Killer has decided they are the perfect next target. Time is running out as a deadly game between predator and prey begins.ABOUT THE AUTHORSJeffery Deaver is the award-winning #1 international and New York Times bestselling author of the Lincoln Rhyme, Colter Shaw and Kathryn Dance series, among many others. Deaver's work includes fifty novels, more than one hundred short stories, and a nonfiction law book. His books are sold in 150 countries and translated into twenty-five languages. A former journalist, folk singer, and attorney, he was born outside Chicago and has a Bachelor of Journalism degree from the University of Missouri and a law degree from Fordham University. He was recently named a Grand Master of Mystery Writers of America, whose ranks include Agatha Christie, Elmore Leonard and Mickey Spillane. Jeffery Deaver lives in North Carolina and the D.C. area.www.jefferydeaver.comIsabella Maldonado is the award-winning international and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of the Nina Guerrera, Daniela Vega and Veranda Cruz series. She was recently nominated for an Edgar Award and an International Thriller Award. Her books are published in twenty-four languages. Maldonado wore a gun and badge in real life before turning to crime writing. A graduate of the FBI National Academy in Quantico and the first Latina to attain the rank of captain in her police department, she retired as the Commander of Special Investigations and Forensics. During more than two decades on the force, her assignments included hostage negotiator, department spokesperson, and precinct commander. She uses her law enforcement background to bring a realistic edge to her writing. Isabella Maldonado lives in Phoenix and Lakeside, both in Arizona. www.isabellamaldonado.com#jeffreydeaver #isabellamaldonando Instagram: @officialjefferydeaver & @authorisabellaFacebook: @jefferydeaver & @authorisabellaThreads: @officialjefferydeaver & @authorisabellaX: @JefferyDeaver & @isabellambooksTikTok: @authorisabellamaldonado
This week- four films about people driven to extremes. When Harry Graham learns he had blown through his entire trust fund, he makes a desperate gamble to secure his future. Giving himself only 5 weeks to find, court, and wed a rich woman before he loses everything. Fortunately, he soon meets guileless botany professor Henrietta Lowell, whose only dream is to discover a new species of fern. Will Henrietta realize her dream? Will Harry get away with his nefarious plot? Why isn't there more James Coco? The directorial and screenwriting debut of often brilliant but mostly infamously overbudget Elaine May, A New Leaf. Norah, a nightclub DJ, is being harassed by obscene phone calls. The caller has detailed knowledge of her daily life and activities. Soon things escalate and a terrifying object is left in her apartment. Lt. Dave Madden, a cop with an interest in crime inspired by sexual motivations, takes a personal interest in the case. Will the caller escalate their actions before Madden can root them out? An often overlooked cult film that occupies that space between Psycho and gialli, between Peeping Tom and slashers- Who Killed Teddy Bear? Eve Stephens is a Los Angeles trial lawyer who has been shortlisted for a judge appointment. Despite her professional appearance, Eve struggles deeply with self-doubt and conforming to what society expects from her as a woman. Eve's carefully balanced world begins to unravel when her doctoral student sister, Maddie, is arrested for shoplifting. The debut feature from Susan Streitfeld, Female Perversions. Juvenal, a former monk now working as a live-in councilor at an addiction rehab facility, has the power to cure people with a touch. When former grifter Bill Hill learns of this gift, he enlists the help of a beautiful associate to get Juvenal on board his plans to cash in. Unfortunately, militant fundamentalist group leader August Murray also has plans. Based on the book by Elmore Leonard, Touch. All that and Dave gets toxic af, Kevin keeps it sophisticated af, and Tyler makes his smut collection everyone's problem. Join us, won't you? Episode 433- Holy Fronds and Wholly Desire
Today we're going to replay a show from 2007. Barbara DeMarco-Barrett is joined by Elmore Leonard, an American novelist, short story author and screenwriter many of you are familiar with. He was, according to British journalist Anthony Lane, "hailed as one of the best crime writers in the land." Mostly working in the genres of westerns and crime, more than 30 of his stories were adapted to the screen over the course of a writing career spanning 60 years.He wrote Get Shorty, Freaky Deaky, and Glitz. The series Justified was inspired by his book, Fire in the Hole. He had a few rule of writing, and one was, leave the boring parts out. He passed away in 2013 at the age of 87. For more information on Writers on Writing and to become a supporter, visit our Patreon page. For a one-time donation, visit Ko-fi. You can find hundreds of past interviews on our website. You can help out the show and indie bookstores by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. It's stocked with titles by our guest authors, as well as our personal favorites. And on Spotify, you'll find an album's worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. It's perfect for writing. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at writersonwritingpodcast@gmail.com. We love to hear from our listeners! (Recorded in 2007.) Host: Barbara DeMarco-BarrettHost: Marrie StoneMusic: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)
In his famous ten rules of writing, Elmore Leonard says that we shouldn't write things readers tend to skip. What are those things? How can we avoid writing them? Also, should our story have theme and, if so, how can we present it?Support the show
Elmore Leonard ‘did more with less than any crime writer I can think of' J. Robert Lennon wrote in the latest issue of the LRB. Leonard was born in New Orleans in 1925 and by the time he died in 2013 had published over forty novels selling tens of millions of copies, many of which were made into films such as Jackie Brown and Get Shorty. (A few have recently been reissued as Penguin Modern Classics.) He also wrote ten rules for writers that serve as a manifesto for the minimalist, dialogue-heavy style he mastered. In this episode Lennon joins Tom to discuss the usefulness of Leonard's rules and the ways in which great crime writing will always defy the prescriptions of its genre. Read J. Robert Lennon on Leonard: https://lrb.me/leonardpod From the LRB Subscribe to the LRB: https://lrb.me/subslrbpod Close Readings podcast: https://lrb.me/crlrbpod LRB Audiobooks: https://lrb.me/audiobookslrbpod Bags, binders and more at the LRB Store: https://lrb.me/storelrbpod Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk
What do Ernest Hemingway, Cormac McCarthy, and Elmore Leonard have in common? Powerful stories, yes. But also lean and forceful sentences. Here's how they do it. Also: in our plotting,what's an acceptable coincidence and what's a weak, story-ruining coincidence?Support the show
The Vermont DesperadoAd-Free Safe House EditionEpisode 386 tells the epic story of one of New England's most persistent scoundrels. It's the kind of story I delight in finding, that in another context would make a great Elmore Leonard or Carl Hiaasen novel, this one about a slippery but dim-witted thief, that would almost be comic if there wasn't a tragic loss of life in Act II, and even when he gets his come-uppance in Act III, there's still a couple of strange twists in the tale. No spoilers, but let's just say #botchedexecution.Hear More Stories About PRISON BREAKSBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-historian--2909311/support.Join us at The Safe House, where every resident gets the key and safe combination to the dusty old vault where they listen to the largest collection of True Crime Historian episodes available in the entire universe, all ad-free.
“No endeavor to write a travel book is ever lost, since it gives you a useful perspective on (and intensified attention to) the reality of the travel experience itself. When embraced mindfully, the real-time experience of a journey is invariably its truest reward.” –Rolf Potts In this episode of Deviate, Rolf touches on nine lessons from attempting to write a (never finished) van-life vagabonding memoir at age 23, including: On Pilgrims in a Sliding World (1:00) Lesson #1: No work is lost (and “failure” has lessons to teach) On the author as a character (6:30) Lesson #2: “Show, don't tell” is still good narrative advice On depicting other people (14:30) Lesson #3: Travel books require reporting (not just recollecting) On recounting dialogues (22:30) Lesson #4: Be true to what was said (but make sure it serves a broader purpose) On veering from the truth (32:30) Lesson #5: The truth tends to work better than whatever you might make up On depicting places (39:30) Lesson #6: “Telling details” are better than broad generalizations about a place On neurotic young-manhood (48:30) Lesson #7: Balance narrative analysis with narrative vulnerability The seeds of Vagabonding (1:01:30) Lesson #8: Over time, we write our way into what we have to say The journey was the point (1:06:30) Lesson #9: In the end, taking the journey counts for more than writing it Books mentioned: The Geto Boys, by Rolf Potts (2016 book) Vagabonding, by Rolf Potts (2003 book) The Anxiety of Influence, by Harold Bloom (1973 book) On the Road, by Jack Kerouac (1957 book) The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger (1951 book) Epic of Gilgamesh (12th century BCE Mesopotamian epic) Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes (17th century novel) The Travels of Sir John Mandeville (14th century travelogue) True History, by Lucian of Samosata (2nd century novella) Three Cups of Tea, by Greg Mortenson (21st century memoir) Marco Polo Didn't Go There, by Rolf Potts (2008 book) Labels: A Mediterranean Journal, by Evelyn Waugh (1930 book) Essays, poems, and short stories mentioned "The Mystical High Church of Luck," by Rolf Potts (1998 essay) "Greenland is Not Bigger Than South America", by Rolf Potts (1998 essay) “The Faces,” by Robert Creeley (1983 poem) "Reflection and Retrospection," by Phillip Lopate (2005 essay) "Why so much travel writing is so boring," by Thomas Swick (2001 essay) "10 Rules of Writing," by Elmore Leonard (2001 essay) "In the Penal Colony," by Franz Kafka (1919 short story) Places and events mentioned People's Park (activist park in Berkeley) 924 Gilman Street (punk-rock club in Berkeley) Alphabet City (neighborhood New York City's East Village) Brentwood (Los Angeles neighborhood) 1994 Northridge earthquake Panama City Beach (Florida spring-break city) Gainesville (Florida college town) Athens (Georgia college town) Big Sur (coastal region of California) Humboldt Redwoods State Park (park in California) Other links: "Van Life before #VanLife" (Deviate episode) Paris Writing Workshops (Rolf's annual creative writing classes) Picaresque (prose genre) Roman à clef (fictionalized novel about real-life events) "Jumping freight trains in the Pacific NW" (Deviate episode) "Telling travel stories, with Andrew McCarthy" (Deviate episode) "Rolf Potts: The Vagabond's Way" (Ari Shaffir's Skeptic Tank podcast) "A personal history of my grunge-bandwagon band" (Deviate episode) Gettysburg Address (Abraham Lincoln speech) José Ortega y Gasset (Spanish philosopher) Jack Handey (American humorist known for "Deep Thoughts" jokes) Laurel Lee (American memoirist) The Deviate theme music comes from the title track of Cedar Van Tassel's 2017 album Lumber. Note: We don't host a “comments” section, but we're happy to hear your questions and insights via email, at deviate@rolfpotts.com.
“No endeavor to write a travel book is ever lost, since it gives you a useful perspective on (and intensified attention to) the reality of the travel experience itself. When embraced mindfully, the real-time experience of a journey is invariably its truest reward.” –Rolf Potts In this episode of Deviate, Rolf touches on nine lessons from attempting to write a (never finished) van-life vagabonding memoir at age 23, including: On Pilgrims in a Sliding World (1:00) Lesson #1: No work is lost (and “failure” has lessons to teach) On the author as a character (6:30) Lesson #2: “Show, don't tell” is still good narrative advice On depicting other people (14:30) Lesson #3: Travel books require reporting (not just recollecting) On recounting dialogues (22:30) Lesson #4: Be true to what was said (but make sure it serves a broader purpose) On veering from the truth (32:30) Lesson #5: The truth tends to work better than whatever you might make up On depicting places (39:30) Lesson #6: “Telling details” are better than broad generalizations about a place On neurotic young-manhood (48:30) Lesson #7: Balance narrative analysis with narrative vulnerability The seeds of Vagabonding (1:01:30) Lesson #8: Over time, we write our way into what we have to say The journey was the point (1:06:30) Lesson #9: In the end, taking the journey counts for more than writing it Books mentioned: The Geto Boys, by Rolf Potts (2016 book) Vagabonding, by Rolf Potts (2003 book) The Anxiety of Influence, by Harold Bloom (1973 book) On the Road, by Jack Kerouac (1957 book) The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger (1951 book) Epic of Gilgamesh (12th century BCE Mesopotamian epic) Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes (17th century novel) The Travels of Sir John Mandeville (14th century travelogue) True History, by Lucian of Samosata (2nd century novella) Three Cups of Tea, by Greg Mortenson (21st century memoir) Marco Polo Didn't Go There, by Rolf Potts (2008 book) Labels: A Mediterranean Journal, by Evelyn Waugh (1930 book) Essays, poems, and short stories mentioned "The Mystical High Church of Luck," by Rolf Potts (1998 essay) "Greenland is Not Bigger Than South America", by Rolf Potts (1998 essay) “The Faces,” by Robert Creeley (1983 poem) "Reflection and Retrospection," by Phillip Lopate (2005 essay) "Why so much travel writing is so boring," by Thomas Swick (2001 essay) "10 Rules of Writing," by Elmore Leonard (2001 essay) "In the Penal Colony," by Franz Kafka (1919 short story) Places and events mentioned People's Park (activist park in Berkeley) 924 Gilman Street (punk-rock club in Berkeley) Alphabet City (neighborhood New York City's East Village) Brentwood (Los Angeles neighborhood) 1994 Northridge earthquake Panama City Beach (Florida spring-break city) Gainesville (Florida college town) Athens (Georgia college town) Big Sur (coastal region of California) Humboldt Redwoods State Park (park in California) Other links: "Van Life before #VanLife" (Deviate episode) Paris Writing Workshops (Rolf's annual creative writing classes) Picaresque (prose genre) Roman à clef (fictionalized novel about real-life events) "Jumping freight trains in the Pacific NW" (Deviate episode) "Telling travel stories, with Andrew McCarthy" (Deviate episode) "Rolf Potts: The Vagabond's Way" (Ari Shaffir's Skeptic Tank podcast) "A personal history of my grunge-bandwagon band" (Deviate episode) Gettysburg Address (Abraham Lincoln speech) José Ortega y Gasset (Spanish philosopher) Jack Handey (American humorist known for "Deep Thoughts" jokes) Laurel Lee (American memoirist) The Deviate theme music comes from the title track of Cedar Van Tassel's 2017 album Lumber. Note: We don't host a “comments” section, but we're happy to hear your questions and insights via email, at deviate@rolfpotts.com.
In the spotlight are book publicists and Tandem Literary business partners Gretchen Koss and Meg Walker, who have more than 40 years of combined experienced in the business. They have represented authors ranging from Elmore Leonard and Terry McMillan to Suze Orman, Mary Karr and Lance Armstrong. We discuss: >> What book publicists do >> How to choose the right publicist >> What they are expected to deliver to their clients >> When a publicist should be hired >> What book publicists expect of their clients >> The costs involved >> Which genres are hottest >> Etc. Learn more about Tandem Literary here: https://tandemliterary.com/ Novelist Spotlight is produced and hosted by Mike Consol. Check out his novels here: https://snip.ly/yz18no Write to Mike Consol at novelistspotlight@gmail.com
The massive success of “Pulp Fiction” created an arms race for talky crime films. Producers flocked to the genre master himself, author Elmore Leonard. After decades of failed adaptations, Hollywood once again raided his bookshelves, and first up was 1995's “Get Shorty,” a film MGM wanted Quentin Tarantino to direct. Too busy adapting another Leonard bestseller (Rum Punch, which would become “Jackie Brown,”) Tarantino passed, but not before convincing John Travolta to star as loan shark turned film producer Chili Palmer. Andrew Fryer joins Dennis to revisit this industry comedy that suggests Hollywood may be tougher to navigate than organized crime. After all, sometimes you do your best work when you've got a gun to your head. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
"The writer has to have patience, the perseverance to just sit there alone and grind it out. And if that's not worth doing," Leonard said, "then he doesn't want to write." Leonard wanted to write from a young age, and write he did, first producing western stories and western novels before moving toward the crime novels that made his reputation. His is the career of a working writer the likes we don't see much of anymore. About COOLER THAN COOL, Pulitzer Prize winner Dave Barry writes that "If you love Elmore Leonard-and who doesn't?-you'll love this fascinating, richly detailed account of how one of our greatest storytellers lived his life and learned his craft."Over the course of his sixty-year career, Elmore Leonard published forty-five novels that had enduring appeal to readers around the world. Revered by other writers such as Martin Amis, Margaret Atwood, Raymond Carver, and Stephen King, his books were innovative in their blending of a Hemingway-inspired noirish minimalism and masterful use of dialogue over exposition-a direct evolution spurred by his years as a screenwriter.When C. M. Kushins was fifteen he worked up his courage and wrote a fan letter to Elmore and included one of his own short stories. Elmore proofread it and wrote an encouraging letter back. Years later, Kushins finally got a short story published and Elmore sent him a congratulatory note. When he first started thinking about writing this book, Kushins went nosing around the University of South Carolina archives-and found his own letters going back to when he was fifteen. Elmore had saved all their correspondence. It was this story that helped him get the Leonard family on board with the book. Indeed, the Leonard family has fully participated, contributing original interviews, additional personal correspondence, exclusive photographs, as well as access to Leonard's unfinished final novel. The biography also includes unpublished, loose memoir excerpts. These are included here for the first time to illuminate key passages of importance throughout Leonard's life in his own words.Leonard's fiction contained many layers, and at the heart of his work were progressive themes, stemming from his years as a student of the Jesuit religious order, his personal beliefs in social justice, and his successful battle over alcoholism. He drew inspiration from greats like Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, but the true motivation and brilliance behind his crime writing was the ongoing class struggle to achieve the American Dream-often seen through the eyes of law enforcement officers and the criminals they vowed to apprehend.COOLER THAN COOL is not just a biography for fans of Leonard's fiction. His is work was also the source material for many movies including 3:10 to Yuma, Hombre, Jackie Brown, Get Shorty, Out of Sight-as well as the TV series Justified-and influenced American filmmaking, especially the western and crime genres.Definitive and revealing, COOLER THAN COOL shows Leonard emerging as one of the last writers of the "pulp fiction" era of midcentury America, to ultimately become one of the most successful storytellers of the twentieth century, whose influence continues to have far-reaching effects on both contemporary crime fiction and American filmmaking.One more thing: 2025 also marks Elmore Leonard's centennial. In September, Mariner Books will bring a never-published novella by the author, Picket Line, with an introduction by Kushins, timed to Leonard's October birthday.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/arroe-collins-unplugged-totally-uncut--994165/support.
"90mins On Film returns," and we're headed back to 1995 for 'Get Shorty,' the slick, satirical crime-comedy that turned John Travolta into a cool leading man (again), gave us a peak into Elmore Leonard's swagger (again), and pulled back the velvet curtain on Hollywood's sleazy underbelly. In this episdoe we break down Barry Sonnenfeld's precision direction, the perfect casting, and how a movie about making movies somehow ended up being one of THE BEST movies ABOUT making movies ever made.Make a film recommendation for an upcoming episode!Thank you for listening! Don't forget to rate & subscribe. New episodes bi-weekly. Also available on YouTube. All new website coming soon!
Author C.M. Kushins (Nothing's Bad Luck: The Lives of Warren Zevon, Beast: John Bonham and the Rise of Led Zeppelin) joins Daniel Ford on the show to discuss his book Cooler Than Cool: The Life and Work of Elmore Leonard. This episode is sponsored by The Dark Road by Kathleen Rhodes and Libro.fm.
On this episode of Talking Strange, host Aaron Sagers chats with writer and producer Christopher Monfette, the creative mind behind TexArcanum, the new supernatural western comic from Dark Horse Comics. TexArcanum is a genre-bending tale of cowboy arcanist Avery Belle, who finds himself caught in a supernatural land feud teeming with ghosts, demons, gods, and forgotten folklore. Think Yellowstone meets The X-Files, with a splash of Elmore Leonard grit and Stephen King dread. Monfette shares how his background as an entertainment journalist for IGN and G4 eventually led him to comic writing — including his collaboration with Clive Barker on Hellraiser — and how his TV work on 12 Monkeys, Star Trek: Picard, and the upcoming Vision series from Marvel has shaped his unique narrative voice. We also dig into the horror-noir Americana of TexArcanum, its influences from folklore, pop culture, and myth, and what it means to write a cowboy steeped in arcane mysteries in a haunted Heartland. TexArcanum #1 is available now from Dark Horse Comics. Question: Would you rather be an Occult Detective or Supernatural Monster Hunter? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
We welcome the esteemed critic, journalist, and podcaster Jourdain Searles to the show to discuss Quentin Tarantino's seminal third feature Jackie Brown, an adaptation of the Elmore Leonard novel Rum Punch that also serves as Tarantino's love letter to Blaxploitation cinema and one of its defining stars, Pam Grier. We begin with a discussion of Blaxploitation cinema, Pam Grier's status within the genre, and how Tarantino navigates the fine line between homage and aesthetic fetishism. Then, we unpack the film's taught, thoughtfully structured script that manages to pack the customary twists and reversals of a Leonard adaptation without skimping on the romance and hangout vibes that underly Tarantino's most accomplished work. Finally, we pull back to discuss Tarantino today and whether we can successfully decouple the director's artistry from his support for Israel. Follow Jourdain Searles on Twitter. Get access to all of our premium episodes and bonus content by becoming a Hit Factory Patron for just $5/month.....Our theme song is "Mirror" by Chris Fish
The Halfwit Gang Of Golden Gate AvenueJump To Ad-Free Safe House EditionAlthough there's nothing funny about real-life murder, if Episode 361 were fictional, you could shelve it right next to Elmore Leonard or Carl Hiaasen and the wacky characters they create who walk in the realm of dark comedy. The downfall of this gang that couldn't shoot straight begins when one of its members decides to surrender and deliver state's evidence when it begins to look like his days are numbered. And, it turns out, he was right.More FEMMES FATALEBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-historian--2909311/support.
The Losers return for another round of recommends in The Stacks, our monthly series about all the good shit we've been reading, watching, and listening to. Randall, Jenn, and the Dans chat about new releases from Paul Tremblay, Stephen Graham Jones, and Riley Sager, then throw the mic to Caff to unpack his journey through the works of Elmore Leonard. Check out everything we recommended in this episode below. Books: We Ride Upon Sticks by Quan Barry Hungerstone by Kat Dunn William Gibson's Alien 3 (novelization and screenplay) The Dog Stars by Peter Heller Everything by Elmore Leonard (but specifically Valdez Is Coming, Swag, and 52 Pickup) Oracle by Thomas Olde Heuvelt Stupid TV, Be More Funny: How the Golden Era of The Simpsons Changed Television – and America – Forever by Alan Siegel Vermis by Plastiboo Other recs: Love Island US (slop) Petey USA – The Yips (album) This Is Lorelei – Box For Buddy, Box For Star (album) Shifty: Living in Britain at the End of the Twentieth Century (docuseries) Stoker (film) Taskmaster: Series 19 (show)
AudioFile awards Earphones to exceptional audio experiences—it's our version of a starred review, specifically for the audiobook. Host Jo Reed and AudioFile's Laura Rossi discuss three recent Earphones Award-winning audiobooks and why they are well worth your listening time. Elmore Leonard's classic, GET SHORTY, gets a fresh narration from actor Joe Mantegna, just in time for Leonard's centennial celebration in October 2025. Brian Nishii gives an exceptional performance of Shigehiro Oishi's LIFE IN THREE DIMENSIONS: How Curiosity, Exploration, and Experience Make a Fuller, Better Life. And Jason Culp will make you want to spend 44 hours with Mark Twain in Ron Chernow's latest blockbuster biography. Read our reviews of the audiobooks at our website: GET SHORTY Published by Harper Audio LIFE IN THREE DIMENSIONS Published by Random House Audio MARK TWAIN Published by Penguin Audio Discover thousands of audiobook reviews and more at AudioFile's website . Support for Behind the Mic comes from Hachette Audio and NIGHT WATCHER, by Daphne Woolsoncroft (of the Going West podcast), who read an audio-exclusive author's note before the stunning dual-narration by Will Collyer and Helen Laser. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Christopher Monfette has written for movies, tv, and comics. He was a Co-EP at Marvel, Magic: The Gathering, and Star Trek: Picard, and a Producer on 9-1-1 and 12 Monkeys. He has a brand new series from Dark Horse Comics called TexArcanum with artist Miguel Martos. Jimmy described the series as Supernatural meets Justified, which Christopher confirms that's how he pitched it. Christopher talks about his writing influences, the differences with writing for different media, his journey from covering projects as a journalist to creating his own. Plus Jimmy can't resist asking about Star Trek: Picard. There's so much great stuff in this interview, especially for newer creators. TexArcanum #1 is out July 23rd. TexArcanum TexArcanum Trailer From the Publisher America is a melting pot for the supernatural. Ghosts and gods, angels and demons, horror stories and tall-tales, they've traveled from across the globe to collide in the rural Heartland… and cowboy arcanist Avery Belle has spent a very long lifetime amongst them. Horror noir meets Elmore Leonard in the mystic Mid-West. Follow Christopher Monfette on Bluesky Comic Book Yeti's LinkTree PATREON We have a new Patreon, CryptidCreatorCornerpod. If you like what we do, please consider supporting us. We got two simple tiers, $1 and $3. Want to know more, you know what to do. THE ORDER OF THE NUN-YA STARBURST: VIOLA Make sure to check out our friend's new crowdfunding campaign The Order of the Nun-Ya Starburst: Viola that I mentioned in the episode. (LINK) ARKENFORGE Play TTRPG games? Make sure to check out our partner Arkenforge. Use the discount code YETI5 to get $5 off your order. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Hosts Josh and Jamie and special returning guest critic and author Jason Bailey discuss a 90s John Travolta/James Gandolfini double feature of Barry Sonnenfeld's effortlessly charming merging of Hollywood industry satire, Elmore Leonard gangster crime-thriller and laid-back hangout movie GET SHORTY (1995) and Steven Zaillian's procedural courtroom drama A CIVIL ACTION (1998) Next week's episode is a patron-exclusive bonus episode on Gene Hackman in THE FRENCH CONNECTION (1971) and NIGHT MOVES (1975), you can get access to that episode (and all past + future bonus episodes) by subscribing to our $5 tier on Patreon: www.patreon.com/sleazoidspodcast Intro // 00:00-14:14 GET SHORTY // 14:14-1:19:10 A CIVIL ACTION // 1:19:10-2:29:52 Outro // 2:29:52-2:32:58 BUY JASON'S BOOK "Gandolfini: Jim, Tony, and the Life of a Legend": https://store.abramsbooks.com/products/gandolfini MERCH: www.teepublic.com/stores/sleazoids?ref_id=17667 WEBSITE: www.sleazoidspodcast.com/ Pod Twitter: twitter.com/sleazoidspod Pod Letterboxd: letterboxd.com/SLEAZOIDS/ Josh's Twitter: twitter.com/thejoshl Josh's Letterboxd: letterboxd.com/thejoshl Jamie's Twitter: twitter.com/jamiemilleracas Jamie's Letterboxd: letterboxd.com/jamiemiller
This is a preview of a premium episode from our Patreon feed, Paid Costly For Me! Head over to Patreon.com/PodCastyForMe to hear more for just $5 a month. GET SHORTY and OUT OF SIGHT weren't the only high-profile Elmore Leonard adaptations of the 1990s. Quentin Tarantino's long-awaited follow up to PULP FICTION was a race- and setting-swapped adaptation of Rum Punch retitled JACKIE BROWN, starring exploitation icons Pam Grier and Robert Forster. Podcasting's preeminent Elmore Leonard discusser Jane Altoids returns to the show to talk race, class, and Ray Nicolet in what might be Tarantino's best film! Follow Jane Altoids: https://x.com/staticbluebat Thanks as always to Jetski for our theme music and to Jeremy Allison for our artwork. Follow Pod Casty For Me: https://www.podcastyforme.com/ https://twitter.com/podcastyforme https://www.instagram.com/podcastyforme/ https://www.youtube.com/@podcastyforme Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/PodCastyForMe Artwork by Jeremy Allison: https://www.instagram.com/jeremyallisonart
This is Play That Rock n' Roll's interview with author C.M. Kushins about his book "BEAST: John Bonham and The Rise of Led Zeppelin". In this conversation, we talk about why he wanted to write about John Bonham, how Chad navigated the myths and legends that surround Led Zeppelin, and what sets this book apart from all the other biographies about this band. We also discuss the new documentary “Becoming Led Zeppelin” and Chad shares his thoughts about what Zeppelin might have done if Bonham had not tragically passed away when he did. Also, Chad has a new book that will be released later this year called “COOLER THAN COOL: The Life and Work of Elmore Leonard”. We talk a bit about this one as well. Learn more at https://www.harperacademic.com/book/9780063306868/cooler-than-cool/ Our Links: https://linktr.ee/playthatpodcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Exactly one year after his historic comeback in the seminal Pulp Fiction (which he received an Oscar nomination for), John Travolta followed it up with this slick and crime caper/satire adapted from the Elmore Leonard novel of the same name. Here he plays Chili Palmer, a mob enforcer from Miami who LOVES movies, is visiting Los Angeles for the first time, and finds himself very eager to get into the movie business. Once there, he meets a schlock producer (Gene Hackman - RIP), a scream queen (Rene Russo), a pretentious movie star (Danny DeVito), and a menacing wanna-be producer (Delroy Lindo)....among several others. And wouldn't you know it....Chili finds himself getting involved in the movie business. :) Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld (The Addams Family, Men In Black), this would go on to be on of the more quotable and fondly remembered crime comedies of the '90's featuring a cast including several other legends including Bette Midler, the late great Dennis Farina, and the late, great James Gandolfini. Host & Editor: Geoff GershonProducer: Marlene GershonSend us a texthttps://livingforthecinema.com/Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/Living-for-the-Cinema-Podcast-101167838847578Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/livingforthecinema/Letterboxd:https://letterboxd.com/Living4Cinema/