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Where’s Elmore When You Need Him?

Daily Mail (London)
Private eye’s tales are criminally rambling;
Tom Sykes

NO JOB FOR A WOMAN by Sandra Mara (Poolberg Press, €15.99 )
.

THE great crime writer Elmore Leonard once cautioned writers: ‘Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose.’ No Job For A Woman by Sandra Mara — subtitled, ‘the story of Ireland’s first female private investigator’ — could have used an editor like Elmore Leonard.

Because among the many things this memoir of a life spent in the demi-monde of paramilitary-linked criminals, insurance fraudsters and cheating spouses needs, far fewer exclamation marks would be a good starting point.
The problem with exclamation marks, and the reason Leonard advised avoiding them, is that they are the single most disruptive piece of punctuation in the writer’s arsenal.

When you are reading a book littered with exclamation marks, it’s hard to concentrate. Especially if they come at totally inappropriate times! Like when the writer thinks they’ve said something really funny! But actually they haven’t!

 

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Mr. Paradise Book Trailer

Back in 2004, Flash flash Todd Wheeler and I put together a Mr. Paradise Mini-site which includes the trailer you see here.  Now book trailers are all the rage like music videos once were.  A lot of them are silly or lame, but there are some good ones.  We’re going to do a couple of videos next year for Road Dogs.  Stay tuned.

 

 

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“Stephen King on Manfiction”

Entertainment Weekly
What a Guy Wants
Our columnist takes a Beretta and blowtorch to the idea that men don’t read.
By Stephen King

If you catch publishing types in a ‘‘don’t quote me’’ mood, they’ll tell you the male audience for fiction is disappearing. Agents and editors are constantly on the lookout for the next hot female writer, and why not? At the end of August, 7 of the 10 New York Times hardcover fiction bestsellers were by women, and that doesn’t even include Stephenie Meyer’s mega-selling Breaking Dawn (which the Times considers kid lit, thus not meriting a place on the adult list).

But, to misquote Mark Twain, reports of the male reader’s death have been greatly exaggerated. Women have chick lit; guys have what my son Joe (as in Joe Hill) calls ‘‘manfiction.’’ And publishers sell it by the ton. Here’s a concept so simple it’s easy to miss: What men want from an Elmore Leonard novel is exactly what women want from a Nora Roberts novel — escape and entertainment. And while it’s true that manfiction can be guilty of objectifying women, chick lit often does the same thing to men. Reading Sandra Brown or Jodi Picoult, I’m sometimes reminded of an old Julie Brown song, ‘‘I Like ‘Em Big and Stupid.’’ One memorable couplet goes, ‘‘My father’s out of Harvard, my brother’s out of Yale/Well, the guy I took home last night just got out of jail.’‘

Read the rest.

 

 

 

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Killshot - 53 Days until “Launch” -  Falsehoods Persist

I have never seen so much neglect and downright misinformation as surrounds Killshot.  With 53 days to go before Killshot will supposedly get it’s long awaited theatrical release, websites continue to post the most persistent falsehoods:  Quentin Tarantino is the producer, Johnny Knoxville is still in the cast and there’s a trailer.

The facts: Tarantino has never had anything to do with Killshot except at the very beginning, and let’s just say his contributions were not productive.  Johnny Knoxville was cut after test audiences rejected him big time.  Then there is the matter of the trailer.

Yes there is a trailer but it’s two years old and shows scenes from “Killshot 1” which is very different from “Killshot 2.”

Why doesn’t The Weinstein Company do something that will clarify all the misstatements?  Why do they continue to fuck up this movie?

 

 

 

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Elmore Leonard expands ‘family business’

BY JAY M. GROSSMAN • ECCENTRIC STAFF WRITER • SEPTEMBER 14, 2008

The godfather of pulp fiction looks forward to his son joining the family business.

“He has marvelous characters. He knows what they sound like and that’s important, very important,” Elmore Leonard said about the cast of killers and hard-luck dames dancing across the pages in Peter Leonard’s debut novel, Quiver.

“They sound so real and most of them are talking ‘street.’ Peter picked that up somewhere ...”

Perhaps from the maestro who penned Rum Punch, Get Shorty, Out of Sight and a dozen other gumshoe classics.

Swapping father-son anecdotes along with some tricks of the trade, the two authors entertained a packed audience Wednesday at the Baldwin Public Library. Peter Leonard was there to promote his new book, a gritty crime thriller set along the shores of northern Michigan.

Dad decided to tag along.

Read more.

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Harvey Weinstein “Inspired” to Release Killshot?

Defamer’s predictions for the Fall include this item of interest about Harvey Weinstein.

The Weinstein Company will muscle its way back to prominence. Harvey had a relatively hemorrhage-free summer, closed out by his $16 million-grossing (and counting) Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Meanwhile, Zack and Miri Make a Porno (10/31) left Toronto with goodwill to spare, the LA immigrant saga Crossing Over (10/24) has Harrison Ford, Sean Penn and others channeling Crash, and the company bumped up The Reader for Kate Winslet Oscar consideration. (NB: The Rourke Factor also reportedly inspired Harvey to finally slot his long-shelved Killshot on Nov. 7.) The Weinsteins being the Weinsteins, of course, the operation could crash at any time, but at least the ensuing conflagration promises Hindenberg levels of spectacle. That’s our Harvey.

We still see no evidence of Killshot being released in 56 days other than the lone mention on the TWC website.

 

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Elmore on Playaway

Playaway is a new format of audio, combining a wide variety of content with an easy-to-use player in a small unit.  It comes with earbuds and a battery.
Each Playaway contains an entire book or music compilation, up to 80 hours.  A Playaway weighs only 2 ounces and is pocket size.

Elmore has one of the first titles available on the Playaway system, Elmore Leonard’s Western Roundup, narrated by: Peter Renaday ($34.99).  This audi collection includes The Bounty Hunters, Forty Lashes Less One and Gunsights..

 

 

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Killshot Countdown - 58 DAYS

The Weinstein Company says they are going to release Killshot on November 7.

We want to believe it.

But we have questions.

When are we going to see an announcement in the trades?

When are you going to return our e-mails confirming it?

Where is the trailer?  Don’t you put out a trailer months in advance of a movie?

Where are the posters and billboards in Hollywood and New York?

Where is the Internet buzz?  People are still clinging to the false and misleading information from the past.

Why doesn’t anybody connected with the movie know anything?

Why would Harvey bullshit us?

Why would he do harm to a REALLY good movie.  (I know it is, I’ve seen the release version.)

Perhaps the answer lies in the dismal market for independent film. Read about it in the Wall Street Journal.

Won’t somebody give us some answers?

PLEASE.

 

 

 

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Elmore to Find “The Devil Within”

The New Yorker Festival, a three-day congregation of writers, artists, thinkers, strategists, and performers, returns for its ninth year, from October 3rd through October 5th.

Taking place a month before the Presidential election, this year’s Festival will feature incisive political programming and a weekend-long voter-registration drive, along with participants from across disciplines and continents.

Fiction Night returns on Friday, with writers joining New Yorker editors to discuss the themes that inform their work.

The Devil Within
With Matthew Klam, Elmore Leonard, and Joyce Carol Oates. Moderated by Daniel Zalewski.
7 p.m. Ailey Citigroup Theater
Joan Weill Center for Dance ($25)

For details, please see the Festival schedule on this site and in the September 15th issue of The New Yorker, on newsstands September 8th.

Tickets on sale September 12th.

 

 

 

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Mickey Rourke - Key to Killshot Release?

 

The Wrestler starring Mickey Rourke just won big an the Venice Film Festival.  Is Mickey Rourke the reason The Weinstein Company just announced a Nov. 7 release date for Killshot?  He’s DAMN good in Killshot and Harvey knows it.

Everybody is still saying the information is bogus.

MercuryNews.com

VENICE, Italy (AP) — Darren Aronofsky’s “The Wrestler” won the top award at the Venice Film Festival on Saturday.

The film awarded the Golden Lion stars Mickey Rourke as a wrestler forced into retirement who strikes up a romance with an aging stripper played by Marisa Tomei.

In “The Wrestler,” Rourke plays a fighter with heart problems who tries to reconnect with his estranged daughter while feeling the dangerous allure of a return to the ring.

German filmmaker Wim Wenders, who headed the jury for the 65th edition of the storied festival, announced the winning movie and played on the lead character’s heart problems to praise Rourke’s work, which he called “a truly heartbreaking performance, in the very sense of the word.”

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