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Friday, March 19, 2010

Currently: Afternoon headlines published a bit early today, but they include the new blue-ribbon Hot Chip video. http://tmne.ws/h
about 14 hours ago

Current Reads • Gnashing the Scenery

Book Cover There are some writers—for me, Rick Russo, Jim Harrison, Elmore Leonard, George Pelecanos, Amy Bloom, to name a few—for whom the matter at hand is not whether but rather how much I will like their latest creation. To be honest in Russo’s (Bridge of Sighs, Empire Falls) case, only Straight Man didn’t work for me, and looking back I’d bet even that one might improve with a reread.

The new opus, That Old Cape Magic (Knopf), focuses on the havoc created by familial relations; in middle-aged university professor and unrepentant screenwriter Griffin’s case, havoc lingers well past his childhood. Here’s a guy who cannot rest easy, as much of the story he is burdened with his mother’s persistent telephonic intrusions and an urn of his father’s ashes. His parents, both university professors stranded at midwestern universities (not the Ivy League of their aspirations), are most certainly a pair that beats a full house. What psychic baggage his parents have bequeathed to Griffin manages to wear down his seemingly viable marriage to Joy and dangle him in an emotional limbo.

The narrative dovetails at his daughter’s wedding, where hilarity abounds and various self-truths are realized. It is, of course, one of Russo’s talents that he can extract humor out of the tangled and frayed lifelines of his characters. An extra benefit of this novel is the author’s keen observation of the silliness of the Hollywood film industry, Russo also being a successful screenwriter. I have earlier this year quoted one those juicy tidbits, so that will give you a taste of what you can expect.

Oh, did I mention that important parts of the novel are set on Cape Cod? —Robert Birnbaum, Sep. 23, 2009
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The Book Was Better • West Coast Work

The relationship of writers to the Hollywood dream machine has been extensively documented—the Coen Brothers’ Barton Fink even gave us a spoof of poor William Faulkner’s stint writing for the movies. In the past few years, Jim Harrison has mused on screenwriting in his memoir Off to the Side and Richard Price has been less than enthusiastic about West Coast work. Richard Russo, who has worked on a fair number of films (on his own Nobody’s Fool with Robert Benton, among others) has the protagonist in his new novel That Old Cape Magic (Knopf) fulminating:
Griffin hated that the deals seemed more important than the work that resulted from them. He could and often did riff on the subject. The “juice,” the creative surge, was all front loaded. Talking up the deal, you were excited and the producer was excited and the young studio exec was fucking beside himself with excitement. Why? Because nobody ever made a movie like this before. It was beyond quirky, it was fucking unique. It was fucking better than unique, it was one of a kind. Just go away and write it, the exec would tell them, because it was a can’t miss idea. In fact, there was almost no way to fuck it up. After two years, the new producer and fifteen drafts (only three paid for) based on fifteen conflicting sets of notes, what you had, if you were lucky and the whole thing hadn’t been put in turnaround, was yet another standard-issue piece of shit that a single compelling reason to shoot it…
 —Robert Birnbaum, Jul. 27, 2009
Discuss This • Tweet this • Post to Facebook • FILE UNDER: Coen Brothers, Hollywood, Jim Harrison, Richard Price, Richard Russo, Robert Benton, Screenwriters, The Book Was Better, West Coast, William Faulkner
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