A.I. Bezzerides, who wrote the great overlooked film noir Thieves’ Highway (thankfully now available through Criterion after many years of being unavailable in any video format), has passed away.
HarperCollins has doled out a shitload of money for Vikram Chandra’s Sacred Games. A million dollar advance and a $300,000 marketing budget. Is there any way that this 916-page epic will make its money back?
Rake on “fatherhood writing”: “Somehow, we’re suffering from a spate of fellows who’ve struggled to the conclusion that parenthood is a mixed blessing, yet are dumb enough to think that this isn’t common knowledge, and, unfortunately, maintain just enough intelligence and dexterity to bang away at a computer keyboard. This is a highly dangerous mixture of persistent and stupid, found generally in drug mules, sportswriters at mid-market newspapers, traders of Dave Matthews Band live boots, and dudes who hang barbells from their junk in-between acts at Ozzfest.”
Now we’ll never know exactly how and where to score Scooby snacks, or precisely what substances these delicacies were laced with. Only Iwao Takamoto knew the answer.
You mean parenting is difficult? Nah!
And now writers who are daddies are cashing in?
Damn. If Hockeyman and I had kids, we could’ve, like, written about them and made lots of money.
Maybe the difficulties of pet ownership will be come a hot new trend and we can finally cash in.
John Leonard’s Olsen tribute is, mostly word for word, the same as an intro (or was it afterword) he wrote for a 1990s reissue of Tell Me A Riddle.