How to use this Page

Author Neil Gaiman hopes to write a sequel to his novel, American Gods. According to an interview with MTV News, the novelist has a “boxful of stuff” he would include in the sequel.

Gaiman told explained: “The first book was very much about the grifters and the lowlifes, and you don’t really get to see much of the new gods and you don’t really get a sense of those gods who are doing incredibly well in America. In the second book, I definitely want to go into both of those things.”

Gaiman (pictured, via) released the 10th anniversary edition of American Gods on June 21st. This edition (the author’s preferred text version) contains 12,000 additional words–expanded chapters, essays and interviews.

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The final preview of the first episode of Season Four came up on HBO GO. In the extra two minutes, Sookie and Grandaddy Earl are running from the fey and Queen Mab. We (possibly) meet Claude, Claudine's brother (not as hot as the books convey…). And it ends on such a cliffhanger (pun intended). Can't wait for June 26th!!

A friend of mine got me hooked on the Sookie Stackhouse series by Charlaine Harris and also True Blood. I am catching up on all the books and I bought all the seasons of TB thus far. I am in love with both stories and I am dying for Season 4 of TB to start on June 26th.

I decided to do episode recaps as they come out so please join me Mondays after each new episode and discuss your thoughts about each episode. Obviously there will be spoilers, just to warn you.

For those suffering from TB Withdrawl like me, check out the first six minutes of Episode 4.01 and a TB trailer.

Enjoy!!

P.S. Waiting Sucks

Tweet

By Michelle Rafferty

How real is the HBO series Treme? Here John Swenson reflects on what it was like watching the first season as a resident of New Orleans (he has yet to comment on the second, which premiered last night), as well as what the culture of the city means to its people.

As a writer for OffBeat Swenson has written about the musicians returning to NOLA after Katrina, and in his forthcoming book New Atlantis: Musicians Battle for the Survival of New Orleans he talks about their crusade to save the endangered city. Swenson himself suggested the song in the video “Dogs Chase Cats” from Andy J. Forest’s NOtown Story (2010).

Click here to view the embedded video.

Neil Gaiman‘s American Gods could be coming as an HBO series. The cable company is discussing the acquisition of the fantasy novel with Gaiman and his collaborators.

Here’s more from Deadline: “The project was brought to HBO by Playtone partners Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman, and it was brought to them by Robert Richardson. The plan is for Richardson and Gaiman to write the pilot together.”

In 2002, American Gods won the Hugo, Nebula, and Bram Stoker awards in the Best Novel category. Last year, American Gods was voted as the title to kick off the One Book, One Twitter program.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

This week the New Yorker published a profile of fantasy novelist George R. R. Martin–exploring his relationship with his online fans (and detractors).

Here’s an excerpt from the online abstract: “An entire community of apostates—a shadow fandom—is now devoted to taunting Martin, his associates, and readers who insist that he has been hard at work on the series and has the right to take as much time as he needs. The online attacks on Martin suggest that some readers have a new idea about what an author owes them. They see themselves as customers, not devotees, and they expect prompt, consistent service.”

On April 17th, HBO will unveil a televised adaptation of Martin’s Game of Thrones (with some violent content). Above, we’ve embedded a sneak preview of the first 15 minutes of the series. What do you think?

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Celebrity chef Tom Colicchio created a Game of Thrones food truck to promote HBO’s adaptation of George R.R. Martin‘s A Song of Ice and Fire series.

The menu includes rabbit, squab cooked in sweet wine, and a head cheese dish. Colicchio told Jacket Copy he did his homework for the menu: “These are things that are right out of the book. Every night we’ll have lemon cakes out on the truck … If I really could do it, I would have whole goats roasting on a spit.”

The video embedded above features Colicchio preparing some of the Game of Thrones menu items. Bibliophiles and foodies can find the truck in New York City from March 28th to April 1st and in Los Angeles from April 4th to April 8th. HBO will air the series starting April 17th.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Michael Chabon (pictured, via) and Ayelet Waldman will collaborate on an HBO drama called Hobgoblin.

Here’s more from Variety: “[It is] an offbeat drama project at HBO that revolves around a motley group of conmen and magicians who use their skills at deception to battle Hitler and his forces during WWII.”

The married couple will write the script and act as executive producers together. This endeavor marks the first time the two have worked together as professionals.

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Tweet

A new HBO series, Boardwalk Empire, premiered this weekend. Worlds away from what we see on Jersey Shore, it has reignited interest in New Jersey history and culture. Bryant Simon (author of Boardwalk of Dreams: Atlantic City and the Fate of Urban America and Professor of History at Temple University) has been interviewed for the accompanying HBO documentary, and here we ask him some questions about the “dreamlike” place that is AC.

You’ve described yourself as a native of South New Jersey. What drew you to writing the history of Atlantic City?

When I was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s in Vineland, Philly was not the place that drew us; it was more Atlantic City. That was where we went for splurge meals, special occasions, amusement parks, parades, and shopping. In fact, that’s where I got my bar mitzvah suit! Years later, my family moved just outside of Atlantic City and I watched, while riding my bike in the morning on the Boardwalk, as gambling woke the place up and irrevocably transformed it. I was transfixed by the city, by people’s nostalgia for it, by its nervous energy, and its aching sadness and painful poverty in the midst of plenty. Really, it had everything I wanted to write about it – it was like a Springsteen song, a place that could be mean and cruel, but a place of romance and possible redemption. How could I resist?

Compared to places like Las Vegas or Coney Island in its heyday, how did/does Atlantic City epitomize the urban playground?

All of these places share something in common – they are each the tale of two cities. They are places built in the interests of visitors, not necessarily residents; they sell (or sold) fantasies – fantasies that put tourists as the center of the narrative and allowed them to slip their daily skin and imagine themselves not as they were, but as they wanted to be. That is what people paid for when they went these places – they paid for fantasies.

As you researched the book, what memorable anecdotes did you come across that really captured the heart and history of Atlantic City?

One of the first things I learned about Atlantic City stayed with me throughout the project. I remember looking at a postcard from the 1920s or so. In it, the benches on the Boardwalk were pointed away from the beach. I asked if this was a mistake. “No” an expert on the city told me, “That’s how it was.” That was my first lesson that Atlantic City was essentially a stage and the visitors were both actors and audience.

You’ve been interviewed for a documentary that’s set to run in conjunction with the HBO series, Boardwalk Empire. What do you make of the series’ take on Atlantic City, and what to your mind does it say about public perception of the city?

If the show is a success, it will no doubt draw tourists to town, looking for the romantic, if still violent, past the program surely mythologizes. Yet the real Atlantic City Boardwalk of today has little relationship to the past except its common geography. Most of the dreamlike hotels – buildings that looked like French chateaux and Moorish palaces – have been torn down. The amusement piers are long gone or covered up and turned into air-conditioned malls. The crowds of people dressed in their Sunday – really their sleek and elegant Saturday night best – have been replaced by people in t-shirts and flip flops. Except for the ocean and

John Sledge is an architectural historian with the Mobile Historic Development Commission and Books editor for the Mobile Press-Register. He is the author of three books on Mobile history and architecture.  His father, E.B. Sledge, was a World War II veteran and the author of two memoirs, With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa, and China Marine: An Infantryman’s Live After World War II.  On Sunday, HBO will premiere a ten-part miniseries based on the lives of three U.S. Marines who fought in the Pacific rim in World War II called The Pacific. Part of the series is based on Sledge’s experiences.  In honor of the premiere John Sledge kindly reflected on China Marine and his father.  Check back tomorrow for an excerpt from the book.

China Marine provides the much needed emotional closure to my father’s famous memoir, With the Old Breed and that is the reason HBO also bought the rights to it for their epic ten part miniseries, The Pacific. While With the Old Breed is the better known book – both for its searing honesty and the humanity of its narrator – it ends rather abruptly. But as everyone knows, after having won the war, the veterans had to muster out and come home to a very different set of challenges.

China Marine details the underappreciated story of the First Marine Division’s north China occupation duty at war’s end. My father’s descriptions of what was essentially a medieval culture undergoing terrific strains on a new international stage are fascinating. But more importantly, that book’s final section, an essay entitled “I am not the man I would have been” is, to my mind, and certainly I am biased, one of the most elegiac meditations on WWII homecoming and healing in print. In particular, the scene where my father goes hunting with his father, and finds that he can no longer bring himself to kill living things, is heart wrenching, and has been effectively used in episode 10 of The Pacific.

Everyone who watches the HBO miniseries, and who reads and is captivated by With the Old Breed, will want to read China Marine as well. For in its beautifully crafted pages lie the lessons and reflections of one remarkable American veteran. It is to our great benefit that he was able to overcome his demons, and tell his story with such feeling.

Kids upfront season kicks off (with Disney presenting advertisers its 2010-11 slate of programming for Disney Channel and Disney XD including new original Disney Channel movies "Avalon High," based on the Meg Cabot book, and that Harriet the Spy... Read the rest of this post

HBO brings 'Funny or Die' to TV (Plus The CW renews "Gossip Girl," "The Vampire Diaries," "90210," "Supernatural" and "America's Next Top Model." And Nick renews its game show "Brain Surge." Also the new MTV series "My Life as Liz" is revealed... Read the rest of this post

The Godmother is out into the world, looking for a producer. Two Acts, simple set, 13 characters played by 6 actors, gender-bending multi-racial actors. Young, actors who want to have a great time. This play is The Sopranos meets The L Word. If HBO or Showtime comes knocking on my door, I'm ready to play. Know why? Because I am totally in love with every character who showed up for The Godmother. Everyone has a backstory and a character arc. Every body has a story to tell. There are so many A, B, C and D stories here that we can go on for years. Seriously, The Godmother is just the beginning. Tomboy wants a lovelife! Bill has to grow up and find himself. Who knows what all Corker has in store? Like I say ... they all want their stories told. Meanwhile, The Godmother needs a producer. Or local investors, we could produce it here in Portland, Oregon no problem. The director would love to continue on. The script it already out in the world, and will be in other theater's literary managers in-boxes shortly. Wish us luck.

Or however many it takes to write this last scene. We've had the dark night of the soul, the climax, and now we're wrapping it all up. Heading for that final scene, that final look at Tomboy that echoes our first look, but is totally different. The one that shows us where she is now after her journey, the journey we took with her. I love Tomboy. I hope she has a long life on the stage. I hope lots of people fall in love with her as I have. This is the first play I've ever written that I can visualize in other media. The Godmother could be The Sopranos meets The L Word if HBO or Showtime comes knocking. Or maybe it's a movie with a sequel. Or maybe it's more than one play, but whatever it is, Tomboy wants off the page and onto the stage. I have to continue to do my best for her. So, back to the coal mines I go.