Podcast appearances and mentions of jay mcinerney

COVID REFLECTIONS. Jay McInerney is a well-known American writer, one of the most gifted of his generation. Novelist, screenwriter and wine connoisseur, McInerney recently published See You on the Other Side, the eagerly anticipated final volume of his stunningly accomplished and profoundly affecting fictional tetralogy: Brightness Falls, The Good Life, and Bright Precious Days. "The stories that I'm interested in ultimately are the personal ones." "The people who come here are ambitious and energetic and they come here because it's the biggest stage in America that there is." "There is something special about the voices of people in their 20s, which we need." https://www.alainelkanninterviews.com/jay-mcinerney/

In this podcast extra, listen to Jay McInerney on The Beat, plus a special digital conversation with Ari Melber in Times Square, where he discusses his new book and his social life in New York City. Plus, revisit McInerney's past appearances on The Beat. To listen to this show and other MS podcasts without ads, sign up for MS NOW Premium on Apple Podcasts. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

MS NOW's Ari Melber reports on President Trump's escalating influence at the Department of Justice, the latest developments in the Iran war, and growing questions surrounding Trump's mental acuity. Former Trump White House lawyer Ty Cobb joins the discussion. Plus, author Jay McInerney joins to discuss his new book, "See You on the Other Side." To listen to this show and other MS podcasts without ads, sign up for MS NOW Premium on Apple Podcasts. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Sometimes you're tied to your family, sometimes you're a teen werewolf. And sometimes? You crave the... Bright Lights, Big City. Michael J. Fox plays a never-was writer who fact checks poorly by day and does the cocaines all night long with Kiefer Sutherland. His heart is broken and he's stalled out in life. What will he do???? (Probably more cocaine). Do we like this? Do we like Mikey? What about ol Phoebe? Great question! Grab a mirror and a credit card, it's time to listen to us talk about the Jay McInerney adaptation.

Kerouac's Road: The Beat of a Nation explores how the legacy of Jack Kerouac's iconic novel On the Road reflects in today's America. The film interweaves stories of modern-day “on-the-roaders” who share connections to Kerouac's life, alongside those influenced by him or knew and loved him. Featured participants include Josh Brolin, W. Kamau Bell, Natalie Merchant, Matt Dillon, Jay McInerney and Joyce Johnson. On the Road remains as relevant today as it was in the 1950s, but both the book and Kerouac himself have never been explored in this way before. While based on the American road, On the Road inspired people globally to get out of where they are and engage in the world around them. In an era defined by screens and constant connectivity we can all still learn from the book and Kerouac's journey, and what it means to engage in real time with the path we're on.The documentary features Michael Imperioli, W. Kamau Bell, Josh Brolin, Matt Dillon, Natalie Merchant, Ann Charters, David Amram, Jay McInerney, Kim Jones, Jean-Christophe Cloutier, Joyce Johnson, Diana Langley, Tenaj Melendras, Faustino Melendras, Amir Staten, Angel Staten, and Karlynne Staten. Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/arroe-collins-like-it-s-live--4113802/support.

Kerouac's Road: The Beat of a Nation explores how the legacy of Jack Kerouac's iconic novel On the Road reflects in today's America. The film interweaves stories of modern-day “on-the-roaders” who share connections to Kerouac's life, alongside those influenced by him or knew and loved him. Featured participants include Josh Brolin, W. Kamau Bell, Natalie Merchant, Matt Dillon, Jay McInerney and Joyce Johnson. On the Road remains as relevant today as it was in the 1950s, but both the book and Kerouac himself have never been explored in this way before. While based on the American road, On the Road inspired people globally to get out of where they are and engage in the world around them. In an era defined by screens and constant connectivity we can all still learn from the book and Kerouac's journey, and what it means to engage in real time with the path we're on.The documentary features Michael Imperioli, W. Kamau Bell, Josh Brolin, Matt Dillon, Natalie Merchant, Ann Charters, David Amram, Jay McInerney, Kim Jones, Jean-Christophe Cloutier, Joyce Johnson, Diana Langley, Tenaj Melendras, Faustino Melendras, Amir Staten, Angel Staten, and Karlynne Staten. Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/arroe-collins-unplugged-totally-uncut--994165/support.

The government wants to lower the age of voting to 16. Does anyone really know why? Do most 16-year-olds even care about politics? And will it make even a shred of difference to election outcomes? Plus, Donald Trump's Jeffrey Epstein meltdown continues. He's now suing Rupert Murdoch over an article published by the Wall Street Journal last week linking him to the disgraced financier. How damaging is this for the US president? And finally, with more suspensions than the Humber Bridge, has the Labour Party become addicted to heavy-handedness? Escape Routes: • Andrew went to see all-female Slade tribute band Slady • Seth recommends Doctor Who: Warriors' Gate And Beyond by Stephen Gallagher • Jonn went to see Nye at the National Theatre.  • Marie recommends Model Behaviour by Jay McInerney. www.patreon.com/ohgodwhatnow Presented by Andrew Harrison with Jonn Elledge, Marie Le Conte and Seth Thévoz. Audio Production by: Robin Leeburn. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Managing Editor: Jacob Jarvis. OH GOD, WHAT NOW? is a Podmasters production. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In 2003, when the author James Frey published his first book, A Million Little Pieces—a gut-punch account of his experience with addiction and rehab—nobody could have expected what would come next. Thanks to an Oprah Book Club endorsement, A Million Little Pieces was instantly catapulted to bestseller status, but soon blew up in scandal after Frey admitted to having falsified certain portions of the book, which had been marketed as a memoir. The drama that ensued sparked a media controversy—one that now, around 20 years later, feels petty and misplaced, especially in the context of today's cancel-culture climate. More than 10 million copies of A Million Little Pieces have sold since, and Frey is still at it, writing, publishing, and pushing the boundaries of his art. His latest novel, Next to Heaven, is a rollicking, raunchy, absurd-yet-not satire about money, murder, and the all-too-human desires for power, pleasure, and greed. On the episode—our Season 11 finale, in which Frey sat lotus for the entire duration—he reflects on the A Million Little Pieces saga; his long-term study of Taoism; writing as a gateway to vulnerability; and why love, for him, is the greatest drug there is.Special thanks to our Season 11 presenting sponsor, Van Cleef & Arpels.Show notes:James Frey[5:08] “Tao Te Ching”[5:08] Lao Tzu[5:08] Stephen Mitchell[5:08] Taoism[8:51] Cubism[13:11] “A Million Little Pieces” (2003)[14:16] “Next To Heaven” (2025)[14:16] New Canaan, Connecticut[17:14] Jackie Collins[17:14] “Hollywood Wives” (1983)[17:14] Danielle Steel[21:35] Honoré de Balzac[29:37] “Katerina” (2018) [29:37] “Full Fathom Five” (1947) by Jackson Pollock[37:14] “Larry King Live” (2006)[39:09] “Tropic of Cancer” (1971)[42:24] “Up to Me” (1985)[44:20] “Kissing a Fool” (1998)[52:22] “My Friend Leonard” (2005)[52:22] “Bright Shiny Morning” (2008)[52:22] “The Final Testament” (2011)[58:56] “Author Is Kicked Out of Oprah Winfrey's Book Club”[58:56] “James Frey: ‘I Always Wanted to Be the Outlaw'”[01:03:18] Bret Easton Ellis[01:03:18] Jay McInerney[01:03:18] Norman Mailer[01:10:54] Rashid Johnson[01:10:54] HBO's “Native Son” (2019)

Megyn brings you this special episode of "Dedicated with Doug Brunt," on the books every dad needs this Father's Day, featuring authors Jennifer Egan, Jay McInerney, and David Grann.Subscribe to Dedicated:Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dedicated-with-doug-brunt/id1650390838Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/30nZjASHZdffdfDanIaAgzYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DedicatedwithDoug/

Is a $400 wine really ten times better than a $40 one? Does the right glass really improve your wine and is it worth it when the size makes you look ridiculous? Why do wine labels matter and should the label's look be part of every wine review? In this episode of the Unreserved Wine Talk podcast, I'm chatting with Charles Jennings and Paul Keers, co-authors of the hilarious book I Bought It So I'll Drink It. You can find the wines we discussed at https://www.nataliemaclean.com/winepicks   Giveaway Three of you are going to win a copy of their terrific book,, I Bought It So I'll Drink It. To qualify, all you have to do is email me at natalie@nataliemaclean.com and let me know that you've posted a review of the podcast. I'll choose three people randomly from those who contact me. Good luck! You can find the wines we discussed here.   Highlights Why do we feel guilty about window shopping when it comes to wine? What's the worst wine gadget or gimmick Paul and Charles have encountered? How did a 1947 Sauterne create a bond between Paul and a French wine seller? What was their most triumphant wine deal discovery? Are there elements that expensive wine delivers, that bargain wines can't? Why are Charles and Paul suspicious of mixed cases of wine? Has the quality and perception of box wines changed? What's the strangest vessel Paul and Charles have drunk wine from? What was it like drinking wine at 10 Downing Street and Lambeth Palace? What was Queen Victoria's tipple like? Why does Charles love drinking on his own? Which current wine trends will we look back on as ridiculous? Which wines would Charles and Paul now pair with their favourite childhood foods? Who would Paul and Charles love to share a bottle of wine with? Why should wine critics write about wine labels in their reviews?   Key Takeaways Charles and Paul believe there is a greater experience to be gained from drinking better wine, but that the return for your money plateaus quickly. If you go up from a £10 wine to a £30 wine, you will really notice the difference and have a tremendously greater experience. But then if you multiply that by 10 and go from £40 to £400, the difference in quality isn't that great. If I've got people around for dinner and I sit at the end of the table and everybody else has got normal wine glasses, I look like a complete plonker. And I'd love to sit there, “Oh, it's magnificent.” And they're going to think, what an idiot. So unfortunately, it doesn't get much use. It does enhance the taste of the Bordeaux, there's no doubt about it, but I'm so embarrassed sitting there drinking out of this thing the size of a melon that it really doesn't get much use. Charles and Paul mention wine labels because they think that they are ignored by most wine writers, and they're terribly important for two reasons. Firstly, because they're about the only marketing that most bottles of wine have, because we go into shops and that's all we can see, the labels. And second, if you're setting a table for dinner, you've invested in the table, in the dishware, the cutlery, the glasses to set up this beautiful thing. Why would you put a bottle of wine on the table - however it tastes - if it looks terrible? Wine critics should always say what the label looks like and whether it would look good on the table.   About Charles Jennings & Paul Keers Charles Jennings and Paul Keers are award-winning writers based in London, England. Charles and Paul co-authored the wine blog Sediment, described by New Statesman writer and Guardian literary critic Nick Lezard as “the finest wine blog available to humanity.” The blog became the basis for their book, I Bought It So I'll Drink It. Book-Prize-winning novelist Julian Barnes called it “The funniest wine-book I've read in a long time. Not just laugh-aloud funny but snortingly, choke-on-your-cornflakes funny – up there with Kingsley Amis and Jay McInerney.” Their book won the prestigious André Simon Award.         To learn more, visit https://www.nataliemaclean.com/341.

Jennifer Egan, Jay McInerney, David Grann: (Crystal)Jenny, Jay and David create the Best List of the best books, discuss the stylistic and structural reasons why they love these books, and tell insider stories connected to the books on the list and the authors who wrote them.  

How does using everyday metaphors make wine writing more relatable? How has the pressure to be an expert in everything turned simple pleasures into social competition? Does buying your own wine versus getting free samples make you a better wine writer? In this episode of the Unreserved Wine Talk podcast, I'm chatting with Charles Jennings and Paul Keers, co-authors of the hilarious book I Bought It So I'll Drink It. You can find the wines we discussed at https://www.nataliemaclean.com/winepicks   Giveaway Three of you are going to win a copy of their terrific book,, I Bought It So I'll Drink It. To qualify, all you have to do is email me at natalie@nataliemaclean.com and let me know that you've posted a review of the podcast. I'll choose three people randomly from those who contact me. Good luck! You can find the wines we discussed here.   Highlights How did Charles and Paul meet? What was the first bottle of wine they shared, and how did they realize they had the same approach to bad wine? What was it like to meet legendary wine critic Oz Clarke? When did Paul and Charles discover their love for writing? What were Charles and Paul's best and worst moments in their writing careers? How did their Sediment blog create a stir with the PR people in the wine industry? Where did the title “I Bought It So I'll Drink It” come from? Did buying their own wines give them a different perspective than other wine writers who are given promotional bottles? How did the collaborative approach to writing I Bought It So I'll Drink It work? Which writers have influenced Charles and Paul's writing? Is the tension between wine snobbery and enjoyment unique to wine? What was the most pretentious wine moment Paul and Charles witnessed? How did Charles and Paul develop their distinctive vocabularies for describing wines? Which overused wine descriptors do they find cringy? What's changed about wine criticism or writing since they published their book?   Key Takeaways Charles and Paul explain that they drew their descriptions from real life. There's a tendency in wine writing to use metaphors that you wouldn't necessarily experience. I mean, I've got a cat, but I really wouldn't use the term cat's pee in describing any wine. I don't know what cat's pee actually tastes like. Whereas if I talk about wine smelling of ink, well, people know what ink smells like, and it seemed more appropriate to use ink as an analogy. The authors say that everybody has to be a bit of an expert about everything these days. It's not just a question of, “Oh, we've been to France, we've gone to Italy, we've made it to the United States,” or something like that. It's how you did it, and where you stayed, and what you did, and what tours you went on, and it's so full of itself. Then it becomes a transaction when talking with friends. As Charles and Paul think the fact that they did buy thei wine is quite fundamental to a difference between Sediment and other wine writing. They had to do the same thing, go out and buy it. Maybe that gave us a slightly different slant on wine buying and drinking as well.   About Charles Jennings & Paul Keers Charles Jennings and Paul Keers are award-winning writers based in London, England. Charles and Paul co-authored the wine blog Sediment, described by New Statesman writer and Guardian literary critic Nick Lezard as “the finest wine blog available to humanity.” The blog became the basis for their book, I Bought It So I'll Drink It. Book-Prize-winning novelist Julian Barnes called it “The funniest wine-book I've read in a long time. Not just laugh-aloud funny but snortingly, choke-on-your-cornflakes funny – up there with Kingsley Amis and Jay McInerney.” Their book won the prestigious André Simon Award.         To learn more, visit https://www.nataliemaclean.com/340.

Jay McInerney is a New York Times best selling author known for his breakout novel Bright Lights Big City. He also wrote the screenplay for the 1988 film adaption of Bright Lights Big City and co-wrote the screenplay for the 1998 film Gia, starring Angelina Jolie. In addition to his fiction work, McInerney was the wine columnist for House & Garden magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and currently writes the wine column for Town & Country magazine. His essays on wine have been collected in Bacchus & Me (2000) and A Hedonist in the Cellar (2006) and his book of short stories, titled How It Ended, was named one of the 10 best books of the year by The New York Times in 2009. McInernay has also been honored by the New York Public Library as a “Literary Lion” and won the James Beard MFK Fisher Award for Distinguished Writing.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

welcome back to the penn badgley module. today's episode is the most “normal” book we've read in a while: bright lights, big city by jay mcinerney. we talk about the novel's deadpan humor, whether it feels tied to the 1980s, and how the main character ends the book while still sort of spiraling. we explore the current irony of a plot about fact-checking and computers making life easier, the arc to cocaine as a drug in the united states, and a time where t.g.i. friday's was a cool place to hang out. we wonder if there's a jay mcinerney connected universe and we revisit shreds's shared bennington literary universe. we discuss how the second-person perspective villainizes amanda, the amount that bret easton ellis seems to take from this writing, and the weird miscasting in the film adaptation. shreds champions a specific element of kevin smith's movies. reading list for season thirteen interior chinatown by charles yu if on a winter's night a traveler by italo calvino bright lights, big city by jay mcinerney suicide by édouard levé the malady of death by marguerite duras how like a god by rex stout the diver's clothes lie empty by vendela vida the night circus by erin morgenstern a man asleep by georges perec open water by caleb azumah nelson

MSNBC's Ari Melber hosts The Beat on Tuesday, December 10th, and reports on Rupert Murdoch's loss in his bid to alter the family trust, as well as wealth inequality and excess in America. Gretchen Carlson, Michelle Goldberg and Jay McInerney join.

Author and socialite Truman Capote would have turned 100 this year. To celebrate and discuss Capote's literary legacy, authors Jay McInerney and John Burnham Schwartz join us, and take your calls. McInerney and Burnham Schwartz will be speaking at an event at the 92Y this evening, alongside Sloane Crosley. 

Jay McInerney: CristalJay discusses cocaine and a proposition from Truman Capote (spoiler alert: he escaped), his pioneering use of the 2nd-person in BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CITY, his best moment ever with a glass of wine, the perfect 3-course meal with wine pairing, what Raymond Carver taught him about writing, getting fired from The New Yorker, squatting in George Plimpton's house, waking up in December 2023 with his home covered in his own blood and remembering nothing.

In this episode, we are discussing Ex-Wife by Ursula Parrott, a novel originally published in 1929 and a fascinating account of the experiences of women during the Jazz age. I'm joined by Juliana Soltis, an internationally acclaimed cellist, to discuss the book's continued relevance and its portrayal of female independence during the Jazz Age, akin to a 'Sex and the City' for that era. We also shed light on Parrott's obscured legacy in contrast to Fitzgerald's 'The Great Gatsby.' Moreover, Juliana speaks about her new album American Woman, which highlights lost works by female composers, underscoring the importance of preserving and celebrating women's contributions to art and culture. We wrap up with a tasty note, enjoying a non-alcoholic gin fizz themed to the novel, reflecting Prohibition-era cocktail cultureJuliana Soltis is an internationally-acclaimed cellist, specializing in telling the forgotten stories of classical music. Her latest release from PARMA Recordings, American Woman, explores the lost legacy of America's women composers and is now streaming across all platforms. When not on the road or in the recording studio, Juliana makes her home in Richmond's historic Church HIll neighborhood, where she caters to the every whim of her two greyhounds, Rain and Ceci.Gin Fizz Recipe2 ounces gin (We used Monday NA Gin)1 ounce lemon juice, freshly squeezed3/4 ounce simple syrup1 egg white (about 1/2 ounce)Club soda, to top (about 1 ounce)DirectionsAdd the gin, lemon juice, simple syrup and egg white to a shaker and vigorously dry-shake (without ice) for about 15 seconds.Add 3 or 4 ice cubes and shake vigorously until well-chilled.Double-strain into a chilled Collins glass and top with club soda.In this EpisodeJuliana Soltis' WebsiteAmerican Woman AlbumBecoming the Ex-Wife by Dr. Marsha Gordon (Ursula Parrott's Biography)The Great Gatsby by F. Scott FitzgeraldPresentation by Dr. Marsha Gordon on Ursula Parrott (we didn't discuss this in the episode but I found it absolutely fascinating!)Bright Lights Big City by Jay McInerney

Andrew Jefford, journalist and writer"It's not wine writing. It's writing." This quote is from Jay McInerney, a writer I particularly like, about Andrew Jefford and his writing. And I couldn't agree more.I have known Andrew's work for while as I read regularly Noble Rot but I never realised it. Mostly because I don't always read the name of the author of the article. Andrew has this incredible ability to make you travel to the place where the wine is made in just a few lines. A few months ago, Julie Reux, author of the excellent Vinofutur, shared a link on social media about an opening speech that she found inspiring. I read it too. It was from Andrew and it was brilliant. So brilliant that I immediatetly wanted to interview him.That is how I found myself at the top of the Pic Saint-Loup ⛰️ in Languedoc with Andrew at the end of August. Enjoy the conversation dear listeners

Jay McInerney is a writer from New York. It's the 40th anniversary of his book Bright Lights, Big City, and we spoke with Jay from his Malibu home about when people call meat "protein," cinnamon rolls, surfing in Malibu, we romanticize smoking in restaurants and on airplanes, blasting lines with Ray Carver, Absolut Vodka ads in the 80s and 90s, hanging with Bret Easton Ellis, sucks when the producer gets canceled, he finished his memoir but probably shouldn't put it out, Keith McNally's memoir, his hangover cure, classic New York restaurants, Tesla cars, and his thoughts on Substack. instagram.com/jaymcinerney twitter.com/donetodeath twitter.com/themjeans howlonggone.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“The capacity for friendship is God's way of apologizing for our families.”― Jay McInerney, The Last of the Savages "I've gained a lot of experience in my life, but I lack the experience of family through blood." - SRP Topics: Do Rideshares Get Tickets TRUMP Is An Entertainer Don't Discredit Your Wins No One Wants A Regular Girl Anymore Death In The Family Doesn't Equate to Tears How to Enter Your 2nd Act Musical Intellect: Nipsey Hussle x Lithe Recorded in Dallas, TX @robertsmediagroup ⁣'Tha Reality Is' is powered by Roberts Media Group. For more programming and advertisement opportunities, please visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.robertsmediagroup.co⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣ ⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣ If you would like to be a guest on the show or would like us to answer one of your questions from our perspective, email us at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠info@tharealityis.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ or leave a message ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and we'll be sure to answer it on an upcoming episode.⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣ ⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣ Please leave us a rating or review. We don't care if it's a good review, we don't care if it's a bad review, we just want to hear from you!⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣ --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tharealityis/support

In the spotlight is the author of “Bright Lights, Big City” — the explosively successful debut novel by Jay McInerney, selling 700,000 copies during its first year, and tens-of-thousands of copies annually for years running. Dubbed a member of the 1980s “brat pack” (along with Bret Easton Ellis and Tama Janowitz), McInerney followed his sensational rookie effort with titles including: “Story of My Life,” “Brightness Falls,” “The Last of the Savages,” “Model Behavior” and “The Last Bachelor,” and others.  We discuss:  >> Writing in second person >> The trappings of literary success >> His new projects >> Raymond Carver >> New York's literati >> Contrasting the 1980s with the 2020s >> His passion for wine and writing columns about the fermented grape >> Etc.  Learn more about Jay McInerney here: https://jaymcinerney.com  Novelist Spotlight is produced and hosted by Mike Consol, author of “Lolita Firestone: A Supernatural Novel,” “Family Recipes: A Novel About Italian Culture, Catholic Guilt and the Culinary Crime of the Century” and “Hardwood: A Novel About College Basketball and Other Games Young Men Play.” Buy them on any major bookselling site. Write to Mike Consol at novelistspotlight@gmail.com. We hope you will subscribe and share the link with any family, friends or colleagues who might benefit from this program. 

Chloë Sevigny har blivit lika uppmärksammad för sin klädstil som för sitt skådespeleri och många har enats om att det bara finns ett enda ord som sammanfattar hennes stil och personlighet cool. Lyssna på alla avsnitt i Sveriges Radio Play. Just nu kan man se Chloë Sevigny i tv-serien ”Feud: Capote vs. The Swans”. En dramaserie om fejden mellan författaren Truman Capote och de bättre bemedlade kvinnor som tog honom under sina vingar – ända tills han avslöjade deras hemligheter i en artikel i tidningen Esquire, 1975. I serien spelar Chloë Sevigny en klassiskt elegant kvinna vid namn CZ Guest, blond och välfriserad och propert klädd med pärlor om halsen.En stil tvärtemot den som Chloë Sevigny själv blivit känd för. För under det tidiga 1990-talet blev hon höjd till skyarna som New Yorks nya ”it-girl” tack vare att hon inte verkade bry sig om vad hon satte på sig – eller hur hon såg ut – och ändå fick det att se häpnadsväckande rätt ut. Det var mikrominikjolar, förkläden och tigermönstrade strumpbyxor i en osalig blandning.Redan 1994 blev hon porträtterad i den prestigefulla tidskriften New Yorker av den då trendige författaren Jay McInerney som beskrev henne som “the coolest girl in the world”. Då hade hon ännu inte fyllt 20. Men sedan dess har detta epitet ”cool”suttit som klistrat på henne. För än idag – när hon snart firar 50 år, hon fyller i november – är det alltid ordet ”cool” som dyker upp i samband med hennes namn. Förra månaden prydde hon till exempel omslaget av franska Vogue och rubriken var, förstås: ”Chloë Sevigny, les sens du cool”.Att hon har lyckats upprätthålla denna position under mer än trettio år måste nog betraktas som en sorts bedrift. Inte minst i dagens tider då både trender och kändisar kommer och går snabbare än vad vi hinner scrolla på våra skärmar. Men det är inte bara det personliga sättet att klä sig på som fått henne att bli betraktad som en annorlunda stilförebild. Det har också filmerna hon valt att medverka i gjort. Det är inte de mest publikfriande filmerna direkt.I veckas stil pratar vi med Andrea Linett, som på 90-talet arbetade som moderedaktör på coola ungdomsmagasinet Sassy. 1992 upptäckte hon en då 17-årig och okänd Chloë Sevigny på gatan i New York, något som ledde till både modelljobb och praktikplats på Sassy. Vi reder också ut vad som hände med multitalangen och regissören Vincent Gallo. Fredrik Strage berättar om den något kaotiska intervjun han gjorde med Gallo 1998. Och så ringer vi upp komikern och ex-mormonen Carah Burrell för att prata mormonstil och tv-serien ”Big Love” som Chloë Sevigny medverkade i 2006-2011.Veckans gäst är Helena Lindblad, filmredaktör och kritiker på Dagens Nyheter.

This episode of Books for Men is a short recap of all the episodes from July '23. There were two works of fiction and two editions of From the Vault. It's also the one-year anniversary of the show—woohoo—so I share some high-level thoughts about the podcast. Listen for more!If you enjoyed this episode, please consider supporting the podcast. Any of the three things below will help provide awareness for the initiative—inspiring (more) men to read and bringing together men who do. (Ladies, of course, you're always welcome!)Share with a friend or on social mediaSubscribe or follow on your favorite podcast platformLeave a rating or reviewVisit BooksforMen.org to sign up for the Books for Men newsletter, a monthly round-up of every episode with full book and author info, all the best quotes, and newsletter-only book recommendations!

This episode of Books for Men features Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney. A literary novel about a twenty-something writer who resorts to the hedonism of 1980's Manhattan—cocaine, nightclubs, etc—to cope with his hapless life. It's told using a second-person point of view, placing you in the shoes of the unnamed protagonist. Listen for more!If you enjoyed this episode, please consider supporting the podcast. Any of the three things below will help provide awareness for the initiative—inspiring (more) men to read and bringing together men who do. (Ladies, of course, you're always welcome!)Share with a friend or on social mediaSubscribe or follow on your favorite podcast platformLeave a rating or reviewVisit BooksforMen.org to sign up for the Books for Men newsletter, a monthly round-up of every episode with full book and author info, all the best quotes, and newsletter-only book recommendations!

Jay McInerney, (bestselling author of Bright Lights, Big City, Ransom, How It Ended, and most recently Bright, Precious Days) shares his one true sentence from Hemingway's story "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place."

On this episode of Passport to Everywhere, Melissa Biggs Bradley takes you on a captivating journey to the dazzling Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc along the French Riviera on the Cap d'Antibes.  Known for its storied and star-studded history, as well as the glamorous destination where celebrities stay who attend the Cannes Film Festival, du Cap is one of the most legendary hotels of the world.  Melissa sits down with the General Manager Philippe Perd, Hotel Manager Sophie Volant, and Head Concierge Gilles Bertolini, to discuss the history of Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc, the incredible amenities of the property, the staff's dedication to excellence, and the artists, authors and creatives from F. Scott Fitzgerald to Ernest Hemingway who stayed at the hotel and were so inspired by du Cap that it influenced their work.  Melissa also speaks with celebrated novelist, screenwriter, and longtime guest of Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc, Jay McInerney, about his long history as a guest of the property and his favorite things to do while staying at the hotel.

In the classic novel, Bright Lights Big City by Jay McInerney the narrator flashes back to the scene of his mother's deathbed. Battling cancer, aware the end is near, she takes just enough pain medication to be uninhibited but still lucid.The walls between parent and child fall away. They talk openly of the things they never managed to broach in life without embarrassment. They talk about sex. They talk about love. They talk about their fears and worries. They shared their insecurities, their feelings of inadequacies.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com

Season 3* kicks off with full book episodes released on the first Monday of every month. First up, we return to the cocaine novels of the 1980s and one of the literary brat pack's brightest works. This novel has everything: Cocaine, Bolivian Marching Powder, Peruvian Pink (and also some really salient things to say about masculinity within the meat grinder of 1980s publishing.) You could watch the Michael J. Fox movie adaptation, but then you'd miss out on a rare novel told in the 2nd person POV.*Our Season 3 format will feature new episode on the first and third Monday of the month, with longer, full novel discussions on the first followed by special readings, road trips, interviews, and general pop culture discussions on the third. As always, you can join the discussion on Instagram: @litguise

This episode looks at the 1984 debut novel by Bret Easton Ellis, and its 1987 film adaptation. ----more---- Hello, and welcome to The 80s Movies Podcast. I am your host, Edward Havens. Thank you for listening today. On this episode, we're going to talk about 80s author Bret Easton Ellis and his 1985 novel Less Than Zero, the literal polar opposite of last week's subjects, Jay McInerney and his 1984 novel Bright Lights, Big City. As I mentioned last week, McInerney was twenty-nine when he published Bright Lights, Big City. What I forgot to mention was that he was born and raised in Hartford, Connecticut, halfway between Boston and New York City, and he would a part of that elite East Coast community that befits the upper class child of a corporate executive. Bret Easton Ellis was born and raised in Los Angeles. His father was a property developer, and his parents would divorce when he was 18. He would attend high school at The Buckley School, a college prep school in nearby Sherman Oaks, whose other famous alumni include a who's who of modern pop culture history, including Paul Thomas Anderson, Tucker Carlson, Laura Dern, Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian, Alyssa Milano, Matthew Perry, and Nicole Richie. So they both grew up fairly well off. And they both would attend tony colleges in New England.  Ellis would attend Bennington College in Vermont, a private liberal arts college whose alumni include fellow writers Jonathan Lethem and Donna Tartt, who would both graduate from Bennington the same year as Ellis, 1986. While still attending The Buckley School, the then sixteen year old Ellis would start writing the book he would call Less Than Zero, after the Elvis Costello song. The story would follow a protagonist not unlike Bret Easton Ellis and his adventures through a high school not unlike Buckley. Unlike the final product, Ellis's first draft of Less Than Zero wore its heart on its sleeve, and was written in the third person.  Ellis would do a couple of rewrites of the novel during his final years at Buckley and his first years at Bennington, until his creative writing professor, true crime novelist Joe McGinness, suggested to the young writer that he revert his story back to the first person, which Ellis was at first hesitant to do. But once he did start to rewrite the story as a traditional novel, everything seemed to click. Ellis would have his book finished by the end of the year, and McGinniss was so impressed with the final product that he would submit it to his own agent to send out to publishers. Bret Easton Ellis was only a second year student at the time. And because timing is everything in life, Less Than Zero was being submitted to publishers just as Bright Lights, Big City was tearing up the best seller charts, and the publisher Simon and Schuster would purchase the rights to the book for $5,000. When the book was published in June 1985, Ellis just finished his third year at Bennington.  He was only twenty-one years and three months old. Oh… also… before the book was published, the film producer Marvin Worth, whose credits included Bob Fosse's 1974 doc-drama about Lenny Bruce starring Dustin Hoffman, 1979's musical drama The Rose, Bette Midler's breakthrough film as an actress, and the 1983 Dudley Moore comedy Unfaithfully Yours, would purchase the rights to make the novel into a movie, for $7,500. The film would be produced at Twentieth Century-Fox, under the supervision of the studio's then vice president of production, Scott Rudin. The book would become a success upon its release, with young readers gravitating towards Clay and his aimless, meandering tour of the rich and decadent young adults in Los Angeles circa Christmas 1984, bouncing through parties and conversations and sex and drugs and shopping malls. One of those readers who became obsessed with the book was a then-seventeen year old Los Angeles native who had just returned to the city after three years of high school in Northern California. Me. I read Less Than Zero easily three times that summer, enraptured not only with Ellis's minimalist prose but with Clay specifically. Although I was neither bisexual nor a user of drugs, Clay was the closest thing I had ever seen to myself in a book before. I had kept in touch with my school friends from junior high while I lived in Santa Cruz, and I found myself to have drifted far away from them during my time away from them. And then when I went back to Santa Cruz shortly after Christmas in 1985, I had a similar feeling of isolation from a number of my friends there, not six months after leaving high school. I also loved how Ellis threw in a number of then-current Los Angeles-specific references, including two mentions of KROQ DJ Richard Blade, who was the coolest guy in radio on the planet. And thanks to Sirius XM and its First Wave channel, I can still listen to Richard Blade almost daily, but now from wherever I might be in the world. But I digress. My bond with Less Than Zero only deepened the next time I read it in early 1986. One of the things I used to do as a young would-be screenwriter living in Los Angeles was to try and write adaptation of novels when I wasn't going to school, going to movies, or working as a file clerk at a law firm. But one book I couldn't adapt for the life of me was Less Than Zero. Sure, there was a story there, but its episodic nature made it difficult to create a coherent storyline. Fox felt the same way, so they would hire Michael Cristofer, a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, to do the first draft of the script. Cristofer had just finished writing the adaptation of John Updike's The Witches of Eastwick that Mad Max director George Miller was about to direct, and he would do a literal adaptation of Ellis's book, with all the drugs and sex and violence, except for a slight rehabilitation of the lead character's sexuality. Although it was still the 1980s, with one part of the nation dramatically shifting its perspective on many types of sexuality, it was still Ronald Reagan's 1980s America, and maybe it wasn't a good idea to have the lead character be openly bisexual in a major studio motion picture. Cristofer would complete his first draft of the script in just one month, and producer Marvin Worth really loved it. Problem was, the Fox executives hated it. In a November 18th, 1987, New York Times article about the adaptation, Worth would tell writer Allen Harmetz that he thought Cristofer's script was highly commercial, because “it had something gripping to say about the dilemma of a generation to whom nothing matters.” Which, as someone who had just turned twenty years old eight days after the movie's release and four days before this article came out, I absolutely disagree with. My generation cared about a great many things. We cared about human rights. We cared about ending apartheid. We cared about ending AIDS and what was happening politically and economically. Yeah, we also cared about puffy jean jackets and neon colored clothes and other non-sensical things to take our minds off all the other junk we were dealing with, but it would be typical of a forty something screenwriter and a fiftysomething producer to thing we didn't give a damn about anything. But again, I digress. Worth and the studio would agree on one thing. It wasn't really a drug film, but about young people being destroyed by the privilege of having everything you ever wanted available to you. But the studio would want the movie version of the book to be a bit more sanitized for mainstream consumption. Goodbye, Marvin Worth. Hello, Jon Avnet. In 1986, Jon Avnet was mostly a producer of low-budget films for television, with titles like Between Two Women and Calendar Girl Murders, but he had struck gold in 1983 with a lower-budgeted studio movie with a first-time director and a little known lead actor. That movie was Risky Business, and it made that little known lead actor, Tom Cruise, a bona-fide star. Avnet, wanting to make the move out of television and onto the big screen, would hire Harley Peyton, a former script reader for former Columbia Pictures and MGM/UA head David Begelman, who you might remember from several of our previous episodes, and six-time Oscar nominated producer/screenwriter Ernest Lehman. Peyton would spend weeks in Avnet's office, pouring over every page of the book, deciding what to keep, what to toss, and what to change. Two of the first things to go were the screening of a “snuff” film on the beach, and a scene where a twelve year old girl is tied to a bedpost and raped by one of the main characters. Julian would still hustle himself out to men for money to buy drugs, but Clay would a committed heterosexual. Casting on the film would see many of Hollywood's leading younger male actors looked at for Clay, including a twenty-three year old recent transplant from Oklahoma looking not only for his first leading role, but his first speaking role on screen. Brad Pitt. The producers would instead go with twenty-four year old Andrew McCarthy, an amiable-enough actor who had already made a name for himself with such films as St. Elmo's Fire and Pretty in Pink, and who would have another hit film in Mannequin between being cast as Clay and the start of production. For Blair, they would cast Jami Gertz, who had spent years on the cusp of stardom, between her co-starring role as Muffy Tepperman on the iconic 1982 CBS series Square Pegs, to movies such as Quicksilver and Crossroads that were expected to be bigger than they ended up being. The ace up her sleeve was the upcoming vampire horror/comedy film The Lost Boys, which Warner Brothers was so certain was going to be a huge hit, they would actually move it away from its original Spring 1987 release date to a prime mid-July release. The third point in the triangle, Julian, would see Robert Downey Jr. get cast. Today, it's hard to understand just how not famous Downey was at the time. He had been featured in movies like Weird Science and Tuff Turf, and spent a year as a Not Ready For Prime Time Player on what most people agree was the single worst season of Saturday Night Live, but his star was starting to rise.  What the producers did not know, and Downey did not elaborate on, was that, like Julian, Downey was falling down a spiral of drug use, which would make his performance more method-like than anyone could have guessed. The Red Hot Chili Peppers, who were hot in the Los Angeles music scene but were still a couple years from the release of their breakout album, 1989's Mothers Milk, were cast to play a band in one of the party scenes, and additional cast members would include James Spader and Lisanne Falk, who would become semi-famous two years later as one of the Heathers. Impressed with a 1984 British historical drama called Another Country featuring Colin Firth, Cary Elwes and Rupert Everett, Avnet would hire that film's 35 year old director, Marek Kanievska, to make his American directing debut. But Kanievska would be in for a major culture shock when he learned just how different the American studio system was to the British production system. Shooting on the film was set to begin in Los Angeles on May 6th, 1987, and the film was already scheduled to open in theatres barely six months later. One major element that would help keep the movie moving along was cinematographer Ed Lachman. Lachman had been working as a cinematographer for nearly 15 years, and had shot movies like Jonathan Demme's Last Embrace, Susan Sideman's Desperately Seeking Susan, and David Byrne's True Stories.  Lachman knew how to keep things on track for lower budgeted movies, and at only $8m, Less Than Zero was the second lowest budgeted film for Twentieth Century-Fox for the entire year. Not that having a lower budget was going to stop Kanievska and Lachman from trying make the best film they could. They would stage the film in the garish neon lighting the 80s would be best known for, with cool flairs like lighting a poolside discussion between Clay and Julian where the ripples of the water and the underwater lights create an effect on the characters' faces that highlight Julian's literal drowning in his problems. There's also one very awesome shot where Clay's convertible, parked in the middle of a street with its top down, as we see Clay and Blair making out while scores of motorcycles loudly pass by them on either side. And there's a Steadicam shot during the party scene featuring the Chili Peppers which is supposed to be out of this world, but it's likely we'll never see it. Once the film was finished shooting and Kanievska turned in his assembly cut, the studio was not happy with the film. It was edgier than they wanted, and they had a problem with the party scene with the Peppers. Specifically, that the band was jumping around on screen, extremely sweaty, without their shirts on. It also didn't help that Larry Gordon, the President of Fox who had approved the purchase of the book, had been let go before production on the film began, and his replacement, Alan Horn, who did give the final go-ahead on the film, had also been summarily dismissed. His replacement, Leonard Goldberg, really hated the material, thought it was distasteful, but Barry Diller, the chairman of the studio, was still a supporter of the project. During all this infighting, the director, Kanievska, had been released from the film.  Before any test screenings. Test screenings had really become a part of the studio modus operandi in the 1980s, and Fox would often hold their test screenings on the Fox Studio Lot in Century City. There are several screenings rooms on the Fox lot, from the 53 seat William Fox Theatre, to the 476 seat Darryl Zanuck Theatre. Most of the Less Than Zero test screenings would be held in the 120 seat Little Theatre, so that audience reactions would be easier to gauge, and should they want to keep some of the audience over for a post-screening Q&A, it would be easier to recruit eight or ten audience members. That first test screening did not go over well. Even though the screening room was filled with young people between the ages of 15 and 24, and many of them were recruited from nearby malls like the Century City Mall and the Beverly Center based off a stated liking of Andrew McCarthy, they really didn't like Jami Hertz's character, and they really hated Robert Downey Jr's. Several of the harder scenes of drug use with their characters would be toned down, either through judicious editing, or new scenes were shot, such as when Blair is seen dumping her cocaine into a bathroom sink, which was filmed without a director by the cinematographer, Ed Lachman. They'd also shoot a flashback scene to the trio's high school graduation, meant to show them in happier times. The film would be completed three weeks before its November 6th release date, and Fox would book the film into 871 theatres., going up against no less than seven other new movies, including a Shelley Long comedy, Hello Again, the fourth entry in the Death Wish series, yet another Jon Cryer high school movie, Hiding Out, a weird Patrick Swayze sci-fi movie called Steel Dawn, a relatively tame fantasy romance film from Alan Rudolph called Made in Heaven, and a movie called Ruskies which starred a very young Joaquin Phoenix when he was still known as Leaf Phoenix, while also contending with movies like Fatal Attraction, Baby Boom and Dirty Dancing, which were all still doing very well two to four months in theatres. The reviews for the film were mostly bad. If there was any saving grace critically, it would be the praise heaped upon Downey for his raw performance as a drug addict, but of course, no one knew he actually was a drug addict at that time. The film would open in fourth place with $3.01m in ticket sales, less than half of what Fatal Attraction grossed that weekend, in its eighth week of release. And the following weeks' drops would be swift and merciless. Down 36% in its second week, another 41% in its third, and had one of the worst drops in its fourth week, the four day Thanksgiving holiday weekend, when many movies were up in ticket sales. By early December, the film was mostly playing in dollar houses, and by the first of the year, Fox had already stopped tracking it, with slightly less than $12.4m in tickets sold. As of the writing of this episode, at the end of November 2022, you cannot find Less Than Zero streaming anywhere, although if you do want to see it online, it's not that hard to find. But it has been available for streaming in the past on sites like Amazon Prime and The Roku Channel, so hopefully it will find its way back to streaming in the future. Or you can find a copy of the 21 year old DVD on Amazon. Thank you for listening. We'll talk again real soon, when our final episode of 2022, Episode 96, on Michael Jackson's Thriller, is released. Remember to visit this episode's page on our website, The80sMoviePodcast.com, for extra materials about Less Than Zero the movie and the novel, and its author, Bret Easton Ellis. The 80s Movies Podcast has been researched, written, narrated and edited by Edward Havens for Idiosyncratic Entertainment. Thank you again. Good night.

This episode looks at the 1984 debut novel by Bret Easton Ellis, and its 1987 film adaptation. ----more---- Hello, and welcome to The 80s Movies Podcast. I am your host, Edward Havens. Thank you for listening today. On this episode, we're going to talk about 80s author Bret Easton Ellis and his 1985 novel Less Than Zero, the literal polar opposite of last week's subjects, Jay McInerney and his 1984 novel Bright Lights, Big City. As I mentioned last week, McInerney was twenty-nine when he published Bright Lights, Big City. What I forgot to mention was that he was born and raised in Hartford, Connecticut, halfway between Boston and New York City, and he would a part of that elite East Coast community that befits the upper class child of a corporate executive. Bret Easton Ellis was born and raised in Los Angeles. His father was a property developer, and his parents would divorce when he was 18. He would attend high school at The Buckley School, a college prep school in nearby Sherman Oaks, whose other famous alumni include a who's who of modern pop culture history, including Paul Thomas Anderson, Tucker Carlson, Laura Dern, Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian, Alyssa Milano, Matthew Perry, and Nicole Richie. So they both grew up fairly well off. And they both would attend tony colleges in New England.  Ellis would attend Bennington College in Vermont, a private liberal arts college whose alumni include fellow writers Jonathan Lethem and Donna Tartt, who would both graduate from Bennington the same year as Ellis, 1986. While still attending The Buckley School, the then sixteen year old Ellis would start writing the book he would call Less Than Zero, after the Elvis Costello song. The story would follow a protagonist not unlike Bret Easton Ellis and his adventures through a high school not unlike Buckley. Unlike the final product, Ellis's first draft of Less Than Zero wore its heart on its sleeve, and was written in the third person.  Ellis would do a couple of rewrites of the novel during his final years at Buckley and his first years at Bennington, until his creative writing professor, true crime novelist Joe McGinness, suggested to the young writer that he revert his story back to the first person, which Ellis was at first hesitant to do. But once he did start to rewrite the story as a traditional novel, everything seemed to click. Ellis would have his book finished by the end of the year, and McGinniss was so impressed with the final product that he would submit it to his own agent to send out to publishers. Bret Easton Ellis was only a second year student at the time. And because timing is everything in life, Less Than Zero was being submitted to publishers just as Bright Lights, Big City was tearing up the best seller charts, and the publisher Simon and Schuster would purchase the rights to the book for $5,000. When the book was published in June 1985, Ellis just finished his third year at Bennington.  He was only twenty-one years and three months old. Oh… also… before the book was published, the film producer Marvin Worth, whose credits included Bob Fosse's 1974 doc-drama about Lenny Bruce starring Dustin Hoffman, 1979's musical drama The Rose, Bette Midler's breakthrough film as an actress, and the 1983 Dudley Moore comedy Unfaithfully Yours, would purchase the rights to make the novel into a movie, for $7,500. The film would be produced at Twentieth Century-Fox, under the supervision of the studio's then vice president of production, Scott Rudin. The book would become a success upon its release, with young readers gravitating towards Clay and his aimless, meandering tour of the rich and decadent young adults in Los Angeles circa Christmas 1984, bouncing through parties and conversations and sex and drugs and shopping malls. One of those readers who became obsessed with the book was a then-seventeen year old Los Angeles native who had just returned to the city after three years of high school in Northern California. Me. I read Less Than Zero easily three times that summer, enraptured not only with Ellis's minimalist prose but with Clay specifically. Although I was neither bisexual nor a user of drugs, Clay was the closest thing I had ever seen to myself in a book before. I had kept in touch with my school friends from junior high while I lived in Santa Cruz, and I found myself to have drifted far away from them during my time away from them. And then when I went back to Santa Cruz shortly after Christmas in 1985, I had a similar feeling of isolation from a number of my friends there, not six months after leaving high school. I also loved how Ellis threw in a number of then-current Los Angeles-specific references, including two mentions of KROQ DJ Richard Blade, who was the coolest guy in radio on the planet. And thanks to Sirius XM and its First Wave channel, I can still listen to Richard Blade almost daily, but now from wherever I might be in the world. But I digress. My bond with Less Than Zero only deepened the next time I read it in early 1986. One of the things I used to do as a young would-be screenwriter living in Los Angeles was to try and write adaptation of novels when I wasn't going to school, going to movies, or working as a file clerk at a law firm. But one book I couldn't adapt for the life of me was Less Than Zero. Sure, there was a story there, but its episodic nature made it difficult to create a coherent storyline. Fox felt the same way, so they would hire Michael Cristofer, a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, to do the first draft of the script. Cristofer had just finished writing the adaptation of John Updike's The Witches of Eastwick that Mad Max director George Miller was about to direct, and he would do a literal adaptation of Ellis's book, with all the drugs and sex and violence, except for a slight rehabilitation of the lead character's sexuality. Although it was still the 1980s, with one part of the nation dramatically shifting its perspective on many types of sexuality, it was still Ronald Reagan's 1980s America, and maybe it wasn't a good idea to have the lead character be openly bisexual in a major studio motion picture. Cristofer would complete his first draft of the script in just one month, and producer Marvin Worth really loved it. Problem was, the Fox executives hated it. In a November 18th, 1987, New York Times article about the adaptation, Worth would tell writer Allen Harmetz that he thought Cristofer's script was highly commercial, because “it had something gripping to say about the dilemma of a generation to whom nothing matters.” Which, as someone who had just turned twenty years old eight days after the movie's release and four days before this article came out, I absolutely disagree with. My generation cared about a great many things. We cared about human rights. We cared about ending apartheid. We cared about ending AIDS and what was happening politically and economically. Yeah, we also cared about puffy jean jackets and neon colored clothes and other non-sensical things to take our minds off all the other junk we were dealing with, but it would be typical of a forty something screenwriter and a fiftysomething producer to thing we didn't give a damn about anything. But again, I digress. Worth and the studio would agree on one thing. It wasn't really a drug film, but about young people being destroyed by the privilege of having everything you ever wanted available to you. But the studio would want the movie version of the book to be a bit more sanitized for mainstream consumption. Goodbye, Marvin Worth. Hello, Jon Avnet. In 1986, Jon Avnet was mostly a producer of low-budget films for television, with titles like Between Two Women and Calendar Girl Murders, but he had struck gold in 1983 with a lower-budgeted studio movie with a first-time director and a little known lead actor. That movie was Risky Business, and it made that little known lead actor, Tom Cruise, a bona-fide star. Avnet, wanting to make the move out of television and onto the big screen, would hire Harley Peyton, a former script reader for former Columbia Pictures and MGM/UA head David Begelman, who you might remember from several of our previous episodes, and six-time Oscar nominated producer/screenwriter Ernest Lehman. Peyton would spend weeks in Avnet's office, pouring over every page of the book, deciding what to keep, what to toss, and what to change. Two of the first things to go were the screening of a “snuff” film on the beach, and a scene where a twelve year old girl is tied to a bedpost and raped by one of the main characters. Julian would still hustle himself out to men for money to buy drugs, but Clay would a committed heterosexual. Casting on the film would see many of Hollywood's leading younger male actors looked at for Clay, including a twenty-three year old recent transplant from Oklahoma looking not only for his first leading role, but his first speaking role on screen. Brad Pitt. The producers would instead go with twenty-four year old Andrew McCarthy, an amiable-enough actor who had already made a name for himself with such films as St. Elmo's Fire and Pretty in Pink, and who would have another hit film in Mannequin between being cast as Clay and the start of production. For Blair, they would cast Jami Gertz, who had spent years on the cusp of stardom, between her co-starring role as Muffy Tepperman on the iconic 1982 CBS series Square Pegs, to movies such as Quicksilver and Crossroads that were expected to be bigger than they ended up being. The ace up her sleeve was the upcoming vampire horror/comedy film The Lost Boys, which Warner Brothers was so certain was going to be a huge hit, they would actually move it away from its original Spring 1987 release date to a prime mid-July release. The third point in the triangle, Julian, would see Robert Downey Jr. get cast. Today, it's hard to understand just how not famous Downey was at the time. He had been featured in movies like Weird Science and Tuff Turf, and spent a year as a Not Ready For Prime Time Player on what most people agree was the single worst season of Saturday Night Live, but his star was starting to rise.  What the producers did not know, and Downey did not elaborate on, was that, like Julian, Downey was falling down a spiral of drug use, which would make his performance more method-like than anyone could have guessed. The Red Hot Chili Peppers, who were hot in the Los Angeles music scene but were still a couple years from the release of their breakout album, 1989's Mothers Milk, were cast to play a band in one of the party scenes, and additional cast members would include James Spader and Lisanne Falk, who would become semi-famous two years later as one of the Heathers. Impressed with a 1984 British historical drama called Another Country featuring Colin Firth, Cary Elwes and Rupert Everett, Avnet would hire that film's 35 year old director, Marek Kanievska, to make his American directing debut. But Kanievska would be in for a major culture shock when he learned just how different the American studio system was to the British production system. Shooting on the film was set to begin in Los Angeles on May 6th, 1987, and the film was already scheduled to open in theatres barely six months later. One major element that would help keep the movie moving along was cinematographer Ed Lachman. Lachman had been working as a cinematographer for nearly 15 years, and had shot movies like Jonathan Demme's Last Embrace, Susan Sideman's Desperately Seeking Susan, and David Byrne's True Stories.  Lachman knew how to keep things on track for lower budgeted movies, and at only $8m, Less Than Zero was the second lowest budgeted film for Twentieth Century-Fox for the entire year. Not that having a lower budget was going to stop Kanievska and Lachman from trying make the best film they could. They would stage the film in the garish neon lighting the 80s would be best known for, with cool flairs like lighting a poolside discussion between Clay and Julian where the ripples of the water and the underwater lights create an effect on the characters' faces that highlight Julian's literal drowning in his problems. There's also one very awesome shot where Clay's convertible, parked in the middle of a street with its top down, as we see Clay and Blair making out while scores of motorcycles loudly pass by them on either side. And there's a Steadicam shot during the party scene featuring the Chili Peppers which is supposed to be out of this world, but it's likely we'll never see it. Once the film was finished shooting and Kanievska turned in his assembly cut, the studio was not happy with the film. It was edgier than they wanted, and they had a problem with the party scene with the Peppers. Specifically, that the band was jumping around on screen, extremely sweaty, without their shirts on. It also didn't help that Larry Gordon, the President of Fox who had approved the purchase of the book, had been let go before production on the film began, and his replacement, Alan Horn, who did give the final go-ahead on the film, had also been summarily dismissed. His replacement, Leonard Goldberg, really hated the material, thought it was distasteful, but Barry Diller, the chairman of the studio, was still a supporter of the project. During all this infighting, the director, Kanievska, had been released from the film.  Before any test screenings. Test screenings had really become a part of the studio modus operandi in the 1980s, and Fox would often hold their test screenings on the Fox Studio Lot in Century City. There are several screenings rooms on the Fox lot, from the 53 seat William Fox Theatre, to the 476 seat Darryl Zanuck Theatre. Most of the Less Than Zero test screenings would be held in the 120 seat Little Theatre, so that audience reactions would be easier to gauge, and should they want to keep some of the audience over for a post-screening Q&A, it would be easier to recruit eight or ten audience members. That first test screening did not go over well. Even though the screening room was filled with young people between the ages of 15 and 24, and many of them were recruited from nearby malls like the Century City Mall and the Beverly Center based off a stated liking of Andrew McCarthy, they really didn't like Jami Hertz's character, and they really hated Robert Downey Jr's. Several of the harder scenes of drug use with their characters would be toned down, either through judicious editing, or new scenes were shot, such as when Blair is seen dumping her cocaine into a bathroom sink, which was filmed without a director by the cinematographer, Ed Lachman. They'd also shoot a flashback scene to the trio's high school graduation, meant to show them in happier times. The film would be completed three weeks before its November 6th release date, and Fox would book the film into 871 theatres., going up against no less than seven other new movies, including a Shelley Long comedy, Hello Again, the fourth entry in the Death Wish series, yet another Jon Cryer high school movie, Hiding Out, a weird Patrick Swayze sci-fi movie called Steel Dawn, a relatively tame fantasy romance film from Alan Rudolph called Made in Heaven, and a movie called Ruskies which starred a very young Joaquin Phoenix when he was still known as Leaf Phoenix, while also contending with movies like Fatal Attraction, Baby Boom and Dirty Dancing, which were all still doing very well two to four months in theatres. The reviews for the film were mostly bad. If there was any saving grace critically, it would be the praise heaped upon Downey for his raw performance as a drug addict, but of course, no one knew he actually was a drug addict at that time. The film would open in fourth place with $3.01m in ticket sales, less than half of what Fatal Attraction grossed that weekend, in its eighth week of release. And the following weeks' drops would be swift and merciless. Down 36% in its second week, another 41% in its third, and had one of the worst drops in its fourth week, the four day Thanksgiving holiday weekend, when many movies were up in ticket sales. By early December, the film was mostly playing in dollar houses, and by the first of the year, Fox had already stopped tracking it, with slightly less than $12.4m in tickets sold. As of the writing of this episode, at the end of November 2022, you cannot find Less Than Zero streaming anywhere, although if you do want to see it online, it's not that hard to find. But it has been available for streaming in the past on sites like Amazon Prime and The Roku Channel, so hopefully it will find its way back to streaming in the future. Or you can find a copy of the 21 year old DVD on Amazon. Thank you for listening. We'll talk again real soon, when our final episode of 2022, Episode 96, on Michael Jackson's Thriller, is released. Remember to visit this episode's page on our website, The80sMoviePodcast.com, for extra materials about Less Than Zero the movie and the novel, and its author, Bret Easton Ellis. The 80s Movies Podcast has been researched, written, narrated and edited by Edward Havens for Idiosyncratic Entertainment. Thank you again. Good night.

On this episode, we travel back to 1984, and the days when a "young adult" novel included lots of drugs and partying and absolutely no sparkly vampires or dystopian warrior girls. We're talking about Jay McInerney's groundbreaking novel, Bright Lights, Big City, and its 1988 film version starring Michael J. Fox and Keifer Sutherland. ----more---- Hello, and welcome to The 80s Movies Podcast. I am your host, Edward Havens. Thank you for listening today. The original 1984 front cover for Jay McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City If you were a young adult in the late 1980s, there's a very good chance that you started reading more adult-y books thanks to an imprint called Vintage Contemporaries. Quality books at an affordable paperback price point, with their uniform and intrinsically 80s designed covers, bold cover and spine fonts, and mix of first-time writers and cult authors who never quite broke through to the mainstream, the Vintage Contemporary series would be an immediate hit when it was first launched in September 1984. The first set of releases would include such novels as Raymond Carver's Cathedral and Thomas McGuane's The Bushwhacked Piano, but the one that would set the bar for the entire series was the first novel by a twenty-nine year old former fact checker at the New Yorker magazine. The writer was Jay McInerney, and his novel was Bright Lights, Big City. The original 1984 front cover for Raymond Carver's Cathedral Bright Lights, Big City would set a template for twenty something writers in the 1980s. A protagonist not unlike the writer themselves, with a not-so-secret drug addiction, and often written in the second person, You, which was not a usual literary choice at the time. The nameless protagonist, You, is a divorced twenty-four year old wannabe writer who works as fact-checker at a major upscale magazine in New York City, for which he once dreamed of writing for. You is recently divorced from Amanda, an aspiring model he had met while going to school in Kansas City. You would move to New York City earlier in the year with her when her modeling career was starting to talk off. While in Paris for Fashion Week, Amanda called You to inform him their marriage was over, and that she was leaving him for another man. You continues to hope Amanda will return to him, and when it's clear she won't, he not only becomes obsessed with everything about her that left in their apartment, he begins to slide into reckless abandon at the clubs they used to frequent, and becoming heavily addicted to cocaine, which then affects his performance at work. A chance encounter with Amanda at an event in the city leads You to a public humiliation, which makes him starts to realize that his behavior is not because his wife left him, but a manifestation of the grief he still feels over his mother's passing the previous year. You had gotten married to a woman he hardly knew because he wanted to make his mother happy before she died, and he was still unconsciously grieving when his wife's leaving him triggered his downward spiral. Bright Lights, Big City was an immediate hit, one of the few paperback-only books to ever hit the New York Times best-seller chart. Within two years, the novel had sold more than 300,000 copies, and spawned a tidal wave of like-minded twentysomething writers becoming published. Bret Easton Ellis might have been able to get his first novel Less Than Zero published somewhere down the line, but it was McInerney's success that would cause Simon and Schuster to try and duplicate Vintage's success, which they would. Same with Tana Janowitz, whose 1986 novel Slaves of New York was picked up by Crown Publishers looking to replicate the success of McInerney and Ellis, despite her previous novel, 1981's American Dad, being completely ignored by the book buying public at that time. While the book took moments from his life, it wasn't necessarily autobiographical. For example, McInerney had been married to a fashion model in the early 1980s, but they would meet while he attended Syracuse University in the late 1970s. And yes, McInerney would do a lot of blow during his divorce from his wife, and yes, he would get fired from The New Yorker because of the effects of his drug addiction. Yes, he was partying pretty hard during the times that preceded the writing of his first novel. And yes, he would meet a young woman who would kinda rescue him and get him on the right path.  But there were a number of details about McInerney's life that were not used for the book. Like how the author studied writing with none other than Raymond Carver while studying creative writing at Syracuse, or how his family connections would allow him to submit blind stories to someone like George Plimpton at the Paris Review, and not only get the story read but published. And, naturally, any literary success was going to become a movie at some point. For Bright Lights, it would happen almost as soon as the novel was published. Robert Lawrence, a vice president at Columbia Pictures in his early thirties, had read the book nearly cover to cover in a single sitting, and envisioned a film that could be “The Graduate” of his generation, with maybe a bit of “Lost Weekend” thrown in. But the older executives at the studio balked at the idea, which they felt would be subversive and unconventional. They would, however, buy in when Lawrence was able to get mega-producer Jerry Weintraub to be a producer on the film, who in turn was able to get Joel Schumacher, who had just finished filming St. Elmo's Fire for the studio, to direct, and get Tom Cruise, who was still two years away from Top Gun and megastardom, to play the main character. McInerney was hired to write the script, and he and Schumacher and Cruise would even go on club crawls in New York City to help inform all of the atmosphere they were trying to capture with the film. In 1985, Weintraub would be hired by United Artists to become their new chief executive, and Bright Lights would be one of the properties he would be allowed to take with him to his new home. But since he was now an executive, Weintraub would need to hire a new producer to take the reigns on the picture. Enter Sydney Pollack. By 1985, Sydney Pollack was one of the biggest directors in Hollywood. With films like They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, Jeremiah Johnson, Three Days of the Condor, The Electric Horseman and Tootsie under his belt, Pollock could get a film made, and get it seen by audiences. At least, as a director. At this point in his career, he had only ever produced one movie, Alan Rudolph's 1984 musical drama Songwriter, which despite being based on the life of Willie Nelson, and starring Nelson, Kris Kristofferson and Rip Torn, barely grossed a tenth of its $8m budget. And Pollock at that moment was busy putting the finishing touches on his newest film, an African-based drama featuring Meryl Streep and longtime Pollock collaborator Robert Redford. That film, Out of Africa, would win seven Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Director, in March 1986, which would keep Pollock and his producing partner Mark Rosenberg's attention away from Bright Lights for several months. Once the hype on Out of Africa died down, Pollock and Rosenberg got to work getting Bright Lights, Big City made. Starting with hiring a new screenwriter, a new director, and a new leading actor. McInerney, Schumacher and Cruise had gotten tired of waiting. Ironically, Cruise would call on Pollock to direct another movie he was waiting to make, also based at United Artists, that he was going to star in alongside Dustin Hoffman. That movie, of course, is Rain Man, and we'll dive into that movie another time. Also ironically, Weintraub would not last long as the CEO of United Artists. Just five months after becoming the head of the studio, Weintraub would tire of the antics of Kirk Kerkorian, the owner of United Artists and its sister company, MGM, and step down. Kerkorian would not let Weintraub take any of the properties he brought from Columbia to his new home, the eponymously named mini-major he'd form with backing from Columbia. With a new studio head in place, Pollock started to look for a new director. He would discover that director in Joyce Chopra, who, after twenty years of making documentaries, made her first dramatic narrative in 1985. Smooth Talk was an incredible coming of age drama, based on a story by Joyce Carol Oates, that would make a star out of then seventeen-year-old Laura Dern. UA would not only hire her to direct the film but hire her husband, Tom Cole, who brilliantly adapted the Oates story that was the basis for Smooth Talk, to co-write the screenplay with his wife. While Cole was working on the script, Chopra would have her agent send a copy of McInerney's book to Michael J. Fox. This wasn't just some random decision. Chopra knew she needed a star for this movie, and Fox's agent just happened to be Chopra's agent. That'd be two commissions for the agent if it came together, and a copy of the book was delivered to Fox's dressing room on the Family Ties soundstage that very day. Fox loved the book, and agreed to do the film. After Alex P. Keaton and Marty McFly and other characters he had played that highlighted his good looks and pleasant demeanor, he was ready to play a darker, more morally ambiguous character. Since the production was scheduled around Fox's summer hiatus from the hit TV show, he was in. For Pollock and United Artists, this was a major coup, landing one of the biggest stars in Hollywood. But the project was originally going to be Toronto standing in for New York City for less than $7m with a lesser known cast. Now, it was going to be a $15m with not only Michael J. Fox but also Keifer Sutherland, who was cast as Tad, the best friend of the formerly named You, who would now known as Jamie Conway, and would be shot on location in New York City. The film would also feature Phoebe Cates as Jamie's model ex-wife, William Hickey, Kelly Lynch. But there was a major catch. The production would only have ten weeks to shoot with Fox, as he was due back in Los Angeles to begin production on the sixth season of Family Ties.  He wasn't going to do that thing he did making a movie and a television show at the same time like he did with Back to the Future and Family Ties in 1984 and 1985. Ten weeks and not a day more. Production on the film would begin on April 13th, 1987, to get as much of the film shot while Fox was still finishing Family Ties in Los Angeles. He would be joining the production at the end of the month. But Fox never get the chance to shoot with Chopra. After three weeks of production, Chopra, her husband, and her cinematographer James Glennon, who had also shot Smooth Talk, were dismissed from the film. The suits at United Artists were not happy with the Fox-less footage that was coming out of New York, and were not happy with the direction of the film. Cole and Chopra had removed much of the nightlife and drug life storyline, and focused more on the development of Jamie as a writer. Apparently, no one at the studio had read the final draft of the script before shooting began. Cole, the screenwriter, says it was Pollock, the producer, who requested the changes, but in the end, it would be not the Oscar-winning filmmaker producing the movie that would be released but the trio of newer creatives. Second unit footage would continue to shoot around New York City while the studio looked for a new director. Ironically, days after Chopra was fired, the Directors Guild of America had announced that if they were not able to sign a new agreement with the Producers Guild before the end of the current contract on June 30th, the directors were going on strike. So now United Artists were really under the gun. After considering such filmmakers as Belgian director Ulu Grosbard, who had directed Meryl Streep and Robert De Niro in Falling in Love, and Australian director Bruce Beresford, whose films had included Breaker Morant and Tender Mercies, they would find their new director in James Bridges, whose filmography included such critical and financial success as The Paper Chase, The China Syndrome and Urban Cowboy, but had two bombs in a row in 1984's Mike's Murder and 1985's Perfect. He needed a hit, and this was the first solid directing offer in three years. He'd spend the weekend after his hiring doing some minor recasting, including bringing in John Houseman, who won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role in The Paper Chase, as well as Swoosie Kurtz, Oscar-winning actors Jason Robards and Dianne Weist, and Tracy Pollan, Fox's co-star on Family Ties, who would shortly after the filming of Bright Lights become Mrs. Michael J. Fox, although in the film, she would be cast not as a love interest to her real-life boyfriend's character but as the wife of Keifer Sutherland's character. After a week of rewriting McInerney's original draft of the screenplay from the Schumacher days, principal photography re-commenced on the film. And since Bridges would be working with famed cinematographer Gordon Willis, who had shot three previous movies with Bridges as well as the first two Godfather movies and every Woody Allen movie from Annie Hall to The Purple Rose of Cairo, it was also decided that none of Chopra's footage would be used. Everything would start back on square one. And because of the impending Directors Guild strike, he'd have only thirty-six days, a tad over five weeks, to film everything. One of the lobby cards from the movie version of Bright Lights, Big City And they were able to get it all done, thanks to some ingenious measures. One location, the Palladium concert hall on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, would double as three different nightclubs, two discotheques and a dinner club. Instead of finding six different locations, which would loading cameras and lights from one location to another, moving hundreds of people as well, and then setting the lights and props again, over and over, all they would have to do is re-decorate the area to become the next thing they needed. Bridges would complete the film that day before the Directors Guild strike deadline, but the strike would never happen. But there would be some issue with the final writing credits. While Bridges had used McInerney's original screenplay as a jumping off point, the writer/director had really latched on to the mother's death as the emotional center of the movie. Bridges' own grandmother had passed away in 1986, and he found writing those scenes to be cathartic for his own unresolved issues. But despite the changes Bridges would make to the script, including adding such filmmaking tropes as flashbacks and voiceovers, and having the movie broken up into sections by the use of chapter titles being typed out on screen, the Writers Guild would give sole screenwriting credit to Jay McInerney. As post-production continued throughout the fall, the one topic no one involved in the production wanted to talk about or even acknowledge was the movie version of Bret Easton Ellis's Less Than Zero that rival studio 20th Century Fox had been making in Los Angeles. It had a smaller budget, a lesser known filmmaker, a lesser known cast lead by Andrew McCarthy and Jami Gertz, and a budget half the size. If their film was a hit, that could be good for this one. And if their film wasn't a hit? Well, Bright Lights was the trendsetter. It was the one that sold more copies. The one that saw its author featured in more magazines and television news shows. How well did Less Than Zero do when it was released into theatres on November 6th, 1987? Well, you're just going to have to wait until next week's episode. Unless you're listening months or years after they were published, and are listening to episodes in reverse order. Then you already know how it did, but let's just say it wasn't a hit but it wasn't really a dud either. Bridges would spend nearly six months putting his film together, most of which he would find enjoyable, but he would have trouble deciding which of two endings he shot would be used. His preferred ending saw Jamie wandering through the streets of New York City early one morning, after a long night of partying that included a confrontation with his ex-wife, where he decides that was the day he was going to get his life back on track but not knowing what he was going to do, but the studio asked for an alternative ending, one that features Jamie one year in the future, putting the finishing touches on his first novel, which we see is titled… wait for it… Bright Lights, Big City, while his new girlfriend stands behind him giving her approval. After several audience test screenings, the studio would decide to let Bridges have his ending. United Artists would an April 1st, 1988 release date, and would spend months gearing up the publicity machine. Fox and Pollan were busy finishing the final episodes of that season's Family Ties, and weren't as widely available for the publicity circuit outside of those based in Los Angeles. The studio wasn't too worried, though. Michael J. Fox's last movie, The Secret of My Success, had been released in April 1987, and had grossed $67m without his doing a lot of publicity for that one, either. Opening on 1196 screens, the film would only manage to gross $5.13m, putting it in third place behind the previous week's #1 film, Biloxi Blues with Matthew Broderick, and the Tim Burton comedy Beetlejuice, which despite opening on nearly 200 fewer screens would gross nearly $3m more. But the reviews were not great. Decent. Respectful. But not great. The New York-based critics, like David Ansen of Newsweek and Janet Maslin of the Times, would be kinder than most other critics, maybe because they didn't want to be seen knocking a film shot in their backyard. But one person would actually would praise the film and Michael J. Fox as an actor was Roger Ebert. But it wouldn't save the film. In its second week, the film would fall to fifth place, with $3.09m worth of tickets sold, and it would drop all the way to tenth place in its third week with just under $1.9m in ticket sales. Week four would see it fall to 16th place with only $862k worth of ticket sales. After that, United Artists would stop reporting grosses. The $17m film had grossed just $16.1m. Bright Lights, Big City was a milestone book for me, in large part because it made me a reader. Before Bright Lights, I read occasionally, mainly John Irving, preferring to spend most of my free time voraciously consuming every movie I could. After Bright Lights, I picked up every Vintage Contemporary book I could get my hands on. One of the checklists of Vintage Contemporary books listed in the back of a Vintage Contemporary book. And one thing that really helped out was the literal checklist of other books available from that imprint in the back of each book. Without those distinct covers, I don't know if I would have discovered some of my favorite authors like Raymond Carver and Don DeLillo and Richard Ford and Richard Russo. Even after the Vintage Contemporary line shut down years later, I continued to read. I still read today, although not as much as I would prefer. I have a podcast to work on. I remember when the movie came out that I wasn't all that thrilled with it, and it would be nearly 35 years before I revisited it again, for this episode. I can't say it's the 80s as I remember it, because I had never been to New York City by that point in my life, I had never, and still never have, done anything like cocaine. And I had only ever had like two relationships that could be considered anything of substance, let alone marriage and a divorce. But I am certain it's an 80s that I'm glad I didn't know. Mainly because Jamie's 80s seemed rather boring and inconsequential. Fox does the best he can with the material, but he is not the right person for the role. As I watched it again, I couldn't help but wonder what if the roles were reversed. What if Keifer Sutherland played Jamie and Michael J. Fox played the friend? That might have been a more interesting movie, but Sutherland was not yet at that level of stardom. Thank you for joining us. We'll talk again next week, when Episode 95, on the novel and movie version of Less Than Zero is released. Remember to visit this episode's page on our website, The80sMoviePodcast.com, for extra materials about Bright Lights, Big City, both the book and the movie, as well as other titles in the Vintage Contemporary book series. The full cover, back and front, of Richard Ford's 1986 The Sportswriter, which would be the first of four novels about Frank Bascombe, a failed novelist who becomes a sportswriter. The second book in the series, 1995's Independence Day, would win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, as well as the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the first of only two times the same book would win both awards the same year. The 80s Movies Podcast has been researched, written, narrated and edited by Edward Havens for Idiosyncratic Entertainment. Thank you again. Good night.  

Join us into the 80s as we explore the first of the Brat Pack, Jay McInerney, and his debut novel Bright Lights, Big City.  Warning: May Contain Spoilers Created by: Cristo M. Sanchez Written by: Cristo M. Sanchez and Jason Nemor Harden Hosted by: Jason Nemor Harden Music by: Creature 9, Wood, Cristo M. Sanchez and Jason Nemor Harden Follow us on instagram and facebook for the latest updates and more!

“You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning.” So begins Jay McInerney's “Bright Lights, Big City”, a debut novel that sets out to encapsulate an era at its frantic extremity. That era is New York City in the early 1980s and our narrator is living the high life in the fast lane. Or to be more accurate, our narrator is getting high because life is moving a bit too fast. On the surface there's a supermodel wife, a job at an unnamed literary magazine that sounds like it might rhyme with The Blue Talker, and a never-ending slew of yuppie parties and yucky nightclubs. But underneath there is a different story, a story full of the kind of suffering that can't be solved by regular cash contributions to the Colombian cartels. Set over the course of one wild week, McInerney's novel follows our narrator as he races from the heights of New York society all the way to the curb, and in between he has a lot of growing up to do. Some of the books and authors discussed in this episode include: "Bright Lights, Big City" by Jay McInerny “Metamorphosis” by Ovid “Trust” by Hernan Diaz Additional segments throughout the podcast include: Inner Shelf Fact or fiction What are you reading? On that Quote Apple Podcast: https://lnkd.in/gF2zVhQT Spotify: https://lnkd.in/gTHtxVh5 Podbean: https://onthesamepagepodcast.podbean.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesamepagepod_ Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com IG: https://www.instagram.com/on.the.same.page.podcast/  -------- #bookpodcast #podcast #book #novel #stories #shortstories #apassagenorth #anukaradpragasm #brightlightsbigcity #hernandiaz #tolstoy #trust #poetry #shortstoryskirmish #litfacts #paris #literature #books #novels #salmonrushdie #spotifypodcasts #applepodcasts #audible #samsungpodcasts #books #novels #audibleau #lit #onthesamepage #whatareyoureading #literaryfacts #podbean #whatareyoureading

MSNBC's Ari Melber hosts "The Beat" on Friday, August 26th and reports on the newly unsealed, heavily redacted Trump search affidavit. The information reveals more about the unprecedented search of Mar-A-Lago and suspicion over criminal evidence. Former FBI special agent Asha Rangappa, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries and authors Mark Liebovich and Jay McInerney join.

In this edition of The Way Out I'm over the moon excited about bringing you my interview with Author, Poet, Teacher, and person in long-term Recovery Peter Murphy. Peter shares his journey to and through recovery to this point with a candor and wry humor that's as compelling as it is enlightening. Anyone who is in recovery from addiction is by definition a truly remarkable human being, and Peter is no exception, especially considering his childhood trauma and chaotic family of origin. After years of struggling with the internal and external consequences of alcohol addiction, Peter has a fateful encounter with the Bahai Faith which offered much of what 12-Step Recovery offers us – spiritual connection, community, self-examination, amend making, and abstinence from drugs and alcohol and thus Peter's recovery journey began in earnest and provided the fertile soil for Peter to uncover and unleash the Poet, Author, and Teacher within him. Far from being a happily ever after, peter experienced a sober bottom that prompted his active participation in 12-Step Recovery, which led him to lean in and do the hard work that ultimately resulted in meaningful, rewarding, and enduring recovery made up of beautiful relationships so listen up. Contact Peter: Email peteremurphy9@gmail (dot) com or leave a message at 6zero9 823 5zero76 Peter Murphy's Writing: https://peteremurphy.com/ https://murphywriting.com/ More about the Bahai Faith: https://www.bahai.org/ Recommended Recovery Literature (Quit-Lit) Eight Million Ways to Die by Lawrence Block: https://lawrenceblock.com/books/eight-million-ways-to-die/ The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath by Leslie Jamison: https://www.amazon.com/Recovering-Intoxication-Its-Aftermath/dp/0316259616 Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney: https://www.amazon.com/Bright-Lights-Big-City-McInerney/dp/0394726413 Best piece of recovery advice - Don't give up! Song that symbolizes recovery: Marlene Dietrich "You Go To My Head": https://youtu.be/AwJ-kY15eFE Don't forget to check out “The Way Out Playlist” available only on Spotify. Curated by all our wonderful guests on the podcast! https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6HNQyyjlFBrDbOUADgw1Sz (c) 2015 - 2022 The Way Out Podcast | All Rights Reserved Theme Music: “all clear” (https://ketsa.uk/browse-music/) by Ketsa (https://ketsa.uk) licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/ --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/the-way-out-podcast/message

Kania, who grew up in a small town outside of Milwaukee, says she was the black sheep of her family. A child of the 1980s punk/new wave scene, her influences were people like Andy Warhol, Julian Schnabel and Francesco Clemente. So it follows that her first aspiration was to be an artist. But a few semesters at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago convinced Kania she didn't have the talent to make it as a painter. Fortunately, she had a side job as a bookseller.“I can tell you, almost to the day, when I decided to go into publishing,” Kania says. She could, it turns out, get it down to the month—August 1992. That was when Donna Tartt's The Secret History came out. Kania was enthralled not only with the book but also with how it was marketed. “It was her. It was the story of her. It was Bennington. And it was the package.... When you're 21 and you're trying to figure out what your lot in life is, and you wake up and you're like, 'Oh shit, I can't paint,' you know, you panic. I decided I wanted to be a publisher. I didn't want to be anything else.”Although Kania admits she had only a vague idea of what a publisher actually did, she knew enough. She knew about Gary Fisketjon and was as enamored with writers—writers like Raymond Carver, Mark Lindquist and Jay McInerney—as she was with artists. So, with $1,200 and a one-way train ticket, Kania set out for Manhattan. “Bright lights, big city,” she quips. “You know, the whole bit.”Despite a bumpy start in the Big Apple—she was working for a computer programmer, sharing a studio with a drag queen—Kania got a lucky break when she met Michael Morrison at a friend's wedding. “I begged him for a job,” she recounts. “He hired me as his assistant in 1995, and I've been working with him ever since.”Kania's passion for her literary (and visual) idols has served her well professionally. She managed to turn Harper Perennial into a recognizable brand, in part by publishing the kind of literary fiction and nonfiction that turned her on to the business 16 years ago.And while some scoff at the notion that readers notice what's on a book's spine, Kania vehemently disagrees: “If people watch a television show because it's on HBO, if they see a movie because it's a Focus Features release, if they buy an album because it's on Sub Pop Records, then why doesn't the same go for books?” 

Kania, who grew up in a small town outside of Milwaukee, says she was the black sheep of her family. A child of the 1980s punk/new wave scene, her influences were people like Andy Warhol, Julian Schnabel and Francesco Clemente. So it follows that her first aspiration was to be an artist. But a few semesters at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago convinced Kania she didn't have the talent to make it as a painter. Fortunately, she had a side job as a bookseller.“I can tell you, almost to the day, when I decided to go into publishing,” Kania says. She could, it turns out, get it down to the month—August 1992. That was when Donna Tartt's The Secret History came out. Kania was enthralled not only with the book but also with how it was marketed. “It was her. It was the story of her. It was Bennington. And it was the package.... When you're 21 and you're trying to figure out what your lot in life is, and you wake up and you're like, 'Oh shit, I can't paint,' you know, you panic. I decided I wanted to be a publisher. I didn't want to be anything else.”Although Kania admits she had only a vague idea of what a publisher actually did, she knew enough. She knew about Gary Fisketjon and was as enamored with writers—writers like Raymond Carver, Mark Lindquist and Jay McInerney—as she was with artists. So, with $1,200 and a one-way train ticket, Kania set out for Manhattan. “Bright lights, big city,” she quips. “You know, the whole bit.”Despite a bumpy start in the Big Apple—she was working for a computer programmer, sharing a studio with a drag queen—Kania got a lucky break when she met Michael Morrison at a friend's wedding. “I begged him for a job,” she recounts. “He hired me as his assistant in 1995, and I've been working with him ever since.”Kania's passion for her literary (and visual) idols has served her well professionally. She managed to turn Harper Perennial into a recognizable brand, in part by publishing the kind of literary fiction and nonfiction that turned her on to the business 16 years ago.And while some scoff at the notion that readers notice what's on a book's spine, Kania vehemently disagrees: “If people watch a television show because it's on HBO, if they see a movie because it's a Focus Features release, if they buy an album because it's on Sub Pop Records, then why doesn't the same go for books?”  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Meg tells the story of Marla Hanson and The Landlord From Hell. Jessica checks in with NYC's literary Brat Pack: Tama, Jay, and Bret.

Show Notes and Links to Edoardo Ballerini's Work and Allusions/Texts from Episode   On Episode 42, Pete talks with Edoardo Ballerini about a myriad of topics, all revolving around art and creativity in some way. They discuss Edoardo's artistic upbringing, language and translation, his writing for film and other forms, his acting, his award-winning narration of audiobooks and newspaper articles, his literary inspiration, and much more. Edoardo Ballerini, described on multiple occasions as “The Golden-Voiced Edoardo Ballerini,” is a two time winner of the Audiobook Publishers Association's Best Male Narrator Audie Award (2013, Beautiful Ruins, by Edoardo Ballerini; 2019, Watchers by Dean Koontz). He has recorded nearly 300 titles, including classic works by Tolstoy, Dante, Stendhal, Kafka, Calvino, Poe, Emerson, Whitman and Camus, best-sellers by James Patterson and David Baldacci, modern masterpieces by Tom Wolfe, Karl Ove Knausgaard, and André Aciman, and spiritual titles by The Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat Hahn. On screen, Ballerini is best known for his role as junkie "Corky Caporale" on The Sopranos (HBO) and as the star chef in the indie classic Dinner Rush. He has appeared in over 50 films and tv shows, including a series regular role in the critically acclaimed Quarry, (Cinemax)  and recurring roles in Boardwalk Empire (HBO), 24 (Fox) and Elementary (CBS). Ballerini's work as a narrator has garnered international attention. Articles on his work and career have appeared in The New York Times (US), The Guardian (UK), Aftenposten (Norway) and MediaPost (US), among others. In 2019 he recorded Robert Alter's translation of The Hebrew Bible in its entirety. In 2020 he added Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace to his growing list of titles. He is also a two time winner of the Society of Voice Arts Award, and was recently named a “Golden Voice” by AudioFile Magazine, an honorific bestowed to only 35 narrators in the magazine's 20 year history. Other authors Edoardo has voiced include Chuck Palahniuk, Eve Ensler, Carson McCullers, Jay McInerney, Stephen Greenblatt, Jeffrey Deaver, Danielle Steel, Chuck Palahniuk, Louis L'Amour, Adriana Trigiani, Isabel Allende, Stieg Larsson, James Salter, Paul Theroux and Jodi Picoult. Besides narrating audiobooks, Edoardo  is also a regular contributor to Audm, where he narrates the best in long-form journalism for The New York Times, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Atlantic Monthly, The London Review of Books, and many other publications. He is a graduate of Wesleyan University and lives in New York. Edoardo Ballerini reads an excerpt from Martin Eden by Jack London Edoardo Ballerini's Personal Website Edoardo Ballerini on Italics-”The Voice of God” Video Edoardo Ballerini Profile in The New York Times: "The Voice of God. (And Knausgaard, Whitman, Machiavelli..." May 13, 2020 Edoardo Ballerini reads Beautiful Ruins, Chapter One-YouTube excerpt -at about 4:35, Edoardo describes his life growing up among family in New York and Milan, as well as growing up with artsy and creative parents and their parents' artistic friends   -at about 6:45, Edoardo talks about his dual identities as Italian-American (or “Italian AND American”), as well as his love of language being fueled by growing up bilingual/multilingual   -at about 9:35, Edoardo talks about his reading interests as a kid, including myths, followed by a “dip away” into math and science, and then a return to poetry in high school and then his interest in being a writer in late adolescence   -at about 11:25, Edoardo talks about the importance of “place” in his writing, acting, and other art   -at about 14:05, Edoardo talks about the literature that has given him “chills at will,” especially the “book that changed [his] life”-Joyce's Ulysses   -at about 17:10, Edoardo talks about being a man of many talents and interests, and he hones in on audiobook narration and the importance and tough balance of being an interprete as an audiobook narrator   -at about 21:05, Edoardo talks about what it means on a daily basis to be a “creative”   -at about 24:25, Edoardo talks about his mom's influence on him as she was a photo historian, especially with regard to him becoming an actor, a visual and literary medium   -at about 25:55, Edoardo talks about his beginnings as an actor   -at about 27:45, Edoardo talks about his beautiful interaction with Aaliyah during the filming of Romeo Must Die   -at about 29:40, Edoardo talks about his run of four episodes on The Sopranos, including the incredible circumstances involved in filming a crucial scene with Michael Imperioli as a relapsing Christopher Moltisanti   -at about 34:45, Edoardo talks about his role as Ignatius D'Alessio in Boardwalk Empire, including how the run ended   -at about 36:25, Edoardo talks about the movie in which he starred and that he directed, Good Night, Valentino   -at about 44:05, Edoardo talks about how he got started as an audiobook narrator about 10 years ago, which coincided with the growth of the iPod, iPhone, Audible.com, etc.   -at about 47:35, Edoardo talks about continuity and recording long books   -at about 49:50, Edoardo talks about “one of the luckiest breaks of [his] life” in getting to narrate (and doing a stellar and award-winning job) Jess Walter's Beautiful Ruins   -at about 54:00, Edoardo talks about his love for Martin Eden by Jack London, the wonderful recent Italian movie adaption, and Edoardo's recording of Martin Eden on audiobook   -at about 1:01:50, Edoardo thrills with a reading from Martin Eden   -at about 1:03:25, Edoardo talks future projects and laughs in response to The New York Times dubbing his voice “The Voice of God…”   You can now subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, and leave me a five-star review. You can also ask for the podcast by name using Alexa, and find the pod on Spotify and on Amazon Music. Follow me on IG, where I'm @chillsatwillpodcast, or on Twitter, where I'm @chillsatwillpo1. This is a passion project of mine, a DIY operation, and I'd love for your help in promoting what I'm convinced is a unique and spirited look at an often-ignored art form. The intro song for The Chills at Will Podcast is “Wind Down” (Instrumental Version), and the other song played on this episode was “Hoops” (Instrumental)” by Matt Weidauer, and both songs are used through ArchesAudio.com.

“My ambition was not financial, but a creative ambition toward fulfillment and satisfaction — and to be a better human toward those whom I loved.” – Brian Koppelman In this episode of Deviate, Rolf and Brian discuss podcast fandom, and how listening to podcasts is intimate in a way other media is not (2:00); self-improvement and ambition versus fulfillment, and the cultural reach of what Brian has created (11:00); the influence of music, and how a single album or artwork affects you at certain ages or times of your life (22:00); and masculine emotions as they are expressed in music, and writing to music informs your creativity (41:00). Brian Koppleman (@briankoppelman) is a screenwriter and co-creator / showrunner of the television show Billions. His screenwriting credits include Rounders and Ocean's Thirteen. He is also the host of The Moment podcast.  Notable Links: Grantland (sports and culture website) Bill Simmons (podcaster and sports writer) Wesley Morris on podcast fame (Deviate episode) Killing Yourself to Live, by Chuck Klosterman (book) This Is What They Want (Jimmy Connors documentary) “I Contain Multitudes” (2020 Bob Dylan song) The Four Hour Workweek, by Tim Ferriss (book) Rolf Potts on Travel Tactics (Tim Ferriss podcast episode) Seth Godin (business executive) Scriptnotes (podcast) Ryan Lochte (Olympic swimmer) Neil Peart (musician) Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road, by Neil Peart (book) Tracy Chapman (singer-songwriter) Exile in Guyville (Liz Phair album) Bright Lights, Big City, by Jay McInerney (novel) The Number of the Beast (Iron Maiden album) Judas Priest (music artist) Stryper (American Christian metal band) Spoon River Anthology, by Edger Lee Masters 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.

You talk about Jay McInerney's 1984 debut novel “Bright Lights, Big City” in an effort to explore the transition from the Long Seventies to the Eighties and what liminal properties you can pinpoint about this unique time period.

Jay McInerney lives in Manhattan and Bridgehampton, New York. He is a regular contributor to The Guardian and Corriere della Sera, and his fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Esquire, Playboy, Granta, and The Paris Review. In 2006, Time cited Bright Lights, Big City as one of nine generation-defining novels of the twentieth century, and The Good Life received the Prix Littéraire at the Deauville Film Festival in 2007. How It Ended: New and Collected Stories (2009) “reminds us,” Sam Tanenhaus wrote in The New York Times Book Review, “how impressively broad McInerney's scope has been and how confidently he has ranged across wide swaths of our national experience. His third novel charting the lives of Corrine and Russell Calloway is Bright, Precious Days.

Jay McInerney lives in Manhattan and Bridgehampton, New York. He is a regular contributor to The Guardian and Corriere della Sera, and his fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Esquire, Playboy, Granta, and The Paris Review. In 2006, Time cited Bright Lights, Big City as one of nine generation-defining novels of the twentieth century, and The Good Life received the Prix Littéraire at the Deauville Film Festival in 2007. How It Ended: New and Collected Stories (2009) “reminds us,” Sam Tanenhaus wrote in The New York Times Book Review, “how impressively broad McInerney's scope has been and how confidently he has ranged across wide swaths of our national experience. His third novel charting the lives of Corrine and Russell Calloway is Bright, Precious Days.

Author and artist Myriam Gurba joins co-hosts Eric Newman and Kate Wolf for a conversation about her new book Mean, which is receiving effusive praise across the literary, art, and mainstream presses - including a glowing review from last week's guest, Jonathan Alexander, in the LA Review of Books. Billed as part True Crime Tale, part Ghost Story, part Queer coming-of-age Memoir; with all parts deformed by an epidemic of sexual assault and violence in Myriam's hometown - it sounds a perfect fit for the Zeitgeist. Only it's the opposite; as Myriam explains, her love of language is disruptive, and empowering, a lifeline that even allows her to recognize, and commune with, the ghosts haunting our souls. Indeed, as Myriam, Kate, and Eric's conversation turns to our on-going #MeToo moment, Myriam insists we cannot continue to reduce people to good or bad caricatures, our team vs the enemy; rather, we need to talk to each other, have compassion for the traumatized, and, if you're really serious about trying to do some some good, deploy the type of deep psychological insight familiar to readers and writers of literature. Also, Jonathan Alexander drops by to recommend Jay McInerney's latest novel Bright, Precious Days, the third installment of the Calloway Saga; set in NYC in-and-around the (declining) publishing industry during last decade's financial collapse through the early Obama years. Jonathan says it's top notch Mcinerney: delicious junk food for the literati, plus a front row seat for the Decline of the American Empire!

On today's episode I talk to writer Jill Eisenstadt. Jill is the author of the novels From Rockaway, Kiss Out and Swell and with her sister, director Debra Eisenstadt, the co- writer and co-producer of the feature film, The Limbo Room. In the 1980s, she was part of the 'Literary Brat Pack' whose members included Bret Easton Ellis, Jay McInerney, and Tama Janowitz. Other work of Jill's has appeared in such publications as The New York Times, New York Magazine, Vogue, Elle, The Boston Review, as well as many others. Jill is also the recipient of a Columbia University Writing Fellowship, a National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts Teacher Award and a National Endowment for the Arts Fiction Grant. This is the website for Beginnings, subscribe on iTunes, follow me on Twitter.

The new film Captain Fantastic tells the story of a family whose left-wing patriarch has decided to raise his six children deep in the woods of the Pacific northwest of America. Viggo Mortensen talks about playing the idealistic but often dictatorial father in what's been called his best performance yet. The author Jay McInerney became an instant literary celebrity at the age of 24 with his 1984 novel Bright Lights, Big City set in New York's yuppie party scene. He talks about his latest book, Bright, Precious Days, the third volume in his trilogy following an Ivy League-educated Manhattan couple, and how the class of 1980 has fared in the 21st century. Academy Award-winning writer and Danish director Susanne Bier usually works on feature films but made her TV debut with The Night Manager, which aired earlier this year. The experience of working in television has led her to criticise the film industry for its treatment of women directors; restricting them to making movies that are categorised as 'women's films' or as arthouse and niche. She's now being talked about as the director of the next Bond movie - so has she changed her mind?In its 70s heyday, the horror comic for girls, Misty, sold over 160,000 copies per week. As two original stories are reissued, Misty's co-creator Pat Mills and critic Natalie Haynes discuss the comic's appeal and influence. Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Rachel Simpson.

Jay McInerney joins us with his latest wine book, The Juice. Tracie McMillan has gone undercover in the American food industry, and we look at the vegetarian traditions in Morocco with Jeff Koehler.Broadcast dates for this episode:August 25, 2012 (originally aired)August 17, 2013 (rebroadcast)