If you follow me on twitter then you’ve heard me ranting about this already, but Hi Hollywood has just been released and I have to say it’s a must read for anyone who works in the movie industry, does not work in the movie industry, enjoys watching movies, has seen a movie or has not seen a movie but is seriously considering it. While at face value this book is a collection of proposed movie treatments, if you peel back a few layers you find it has a much bigger purpose, and a much loftier goal. From the publishers description:

This book is about the magic of movies. About reaching to a higher standard. About daring to dream. About making movies awesome again. We dare you to read any one of the potential oscar winners presented here in rough treatment format and say that they wouldn’t be awesome movies. We fucking dare you.

It starts off with ‘Brunch of the Dead’ a radically new approach to the zombie genre, and movies quickly into ‘Disaster’ a film I’m sure every person who has ever enjoyed an on screen explosion would kill to see. Things get romantical with ‘Garbage Dude’ and ‘80 Foot Hamster’ is a story about cold blooded revenge that even the most kind hearted hippy could relate to. And that is just the beginning, I could go on and on, but that would just take time away that could be spent reading it on your own. And since it’s a free downloadable ebook you really have no reason not to. So what are you waiting for?

But even I am flabbergasted at what Farrar’s attempted: setting the words of Kerouac to music. The album “One Fast Move or I’m Gone: Kerouac’s Big Sur,” primarily composed by Farrar with collaboration from Gibbard, sounds like the perfect storm of awesome. Apparently the two musicians realized their mutual love for the writer of “On the Road,” while they were involved in the production of a documentary of the same name about Kerouac (which screens tomorrow at Arclight with a Q&A with the director & producers; the film includes reflections on Kerouac by Tom Waits, Patti Smith, Sam Shepard, and more).

The duo is bringing their makeshift band, which is composed of other Death Cab, Son Volt, and Mountain Goats members, here to LA for two of the 6 US dates they’ll be playing. They’ll be at Largo at the Coronet this week on the 22nd, and the El Rey on the 23rd. I am SO there.

For those who miss the talk, you don’t have to miss the art:  UCLA will host a related exhibit in the Hammer Museum.  “The Bible Illuminated: R. Crumb’s Book of Genesis” will be on view from October 24 to February 7.  For future reference, Thursdays are free!

Should you wish to witness a spirited and entertaining discourse on this very subject, however, why not head out to The Warehouse in Marina Del Rey on Saturday, and catch The Lowdown?

Here’s what your host Jeff Norman has to say about it:

The Lowdown is a bold cultural revival fueled by unique collaborations between world-class artists, authors, activists and other public-spirited leaders. Presenters and performers connect the dots between media, government, national security, sustainability, psychology and the arts. By confronting disinformation, promoting civic engagement and having fun in the process, we help people cope with life in America.

The Warehouse Restaurant
4499 Admiralty Way
Marina del Rey, CA 90292
Hosted by JEFF NORMAN and featuring performances and a discussion with

music by I SEE HAWKS IN L.A. (Full set at 5 PM)
Author PETER RICHARDSON
Journalist ROBERT SCHEER
LA Weekly founder JAY LEVIN
Comedian ED CRASNICK
Musician-satirist GARY GORDON
Drinks and appetizers available – no minimum required.
Happy hour discounts from 5 to 6!
FREE admission
Seating is first come, first served.
The evening will conclude with a book sale and signing by Peter Richardson, author of A Bomb in Every Issue: How the Short, Unruly Life of Ramparts Magazine Changed America, hosted by Book Soup.

(Ow, my linking hand!)

On October 13 at the Skirball, WIT and Hazelden present Chasing the Muse (when you are stone cold sober). Hosted by William Cope Moyers, with filmmaker actress/singer Katey Sagal; writer/creator of Sons of Anarchy, Kurt Sutter; novelist Michelle Huneven; and journalist/author Mark Ebner, the conversation will range from sources of inspiration to the role of recovery in the creative process. Ray Bradbury once said “You must stay drunk on writing so reality doesn’t destroy you.” Yes, but how?

The panel is $25 and you can register online here.

And there is a dessert reception afterward because inspiration is even better when followed by dessert.

Station Fire photo by Brittany Bagheri and American Red Cross

People who live with fires think a great deal about what will happen “when,” as the phrase goes in the instruction leaflets, “the fire comes.” These leaflets, which are stuck up on refrigerator doors all over Los Angeles County, never say “if.” When the fire comes there will be no water pressure. The roof one watered all the night before will go dry in seconds. Plastic trash cans must be filled with water and wet gunny-sacks kept at hand, for smothering the sparks that blow ahead of the fire. The garden hoses must be connected and left where they can be seen. The cars must be placed in the driveway headed out. Whatever one wants most to save must be placed in the cars. The lights must be left on, so that the house can be seen in the smoke.

That’s from Didion’s essay “Fire Season.” You can get it here

His Infinite Jest , of course, was no failure, but for those who have tried, but failed, to read this behemoth of a book, who can blame them?  It is like a foreign language.  When it comes to big fat books in general, I break people up in three groups: 1) people who read the book¹; 2) people who did not read the book²; and 3) people who pretend to have read the book.³ Infinite Jest warrants a fourth and fifth category: 4)  people who glazed over the footnotes like they were too young to realize that footnotes help!⁴ not hurt!⁵ you; and 5) people who took the title to a weird place and read the footnotes, but not really the actual text it annotated.⁶

Over the summer, Skylight Books⁷ encouraged and supported a concerted city-wide effort to read Infinite Jest.⁸ What category these people fall into may or may not be revealed on September 22 at 8pm, when Skylight hosts Infinite Summer’s End David Foster Wallace Celebration to fete those who finished the book (or said they did) and to fondly remember the sadly short life of DFW.   Friends and admirers will be in attendance; cake and cookies will be served; and there will be discounts for books clocking in at over 800 pages.⁹ Because the film version of Brief Interviews with Hideous Men¹⁰ comes out the following week, directed by John Krasinski,¹¹ there may be some movie tie-ins as well.

UPDATE:  Just received confirmation from Skylight that Mr. Krasinski indeed will make an appearance to promote the film.  He’ll read from Brief Interviews with Hideous Men,¹² talk about the movie, and sign movie posters.  Cookies for everyone!

Infinite Summer’s End David Foster Wallace Celebration
September 22nd at 8pm
Skylight Books
1818 N. Vermont
Los Feliz

Footnotes follow after the jump…

¹ I know of only 3 people who have actually read the entire book.

² I know considerably more people who claimed to have read the book, but I don’t believe them.  Their Cliff’s Notes rundown of the characters is suspicious – like people who can only explain the story of Moby Dick by analogizing to the characters’ counterparts on The X-Files.^a They also mention it in passing, without more detail or excitement.  Look, if you finish Infinite Jest, it’s not like you just read the Stop sign on your way home.  It is an accomplishment about which you brag to everyone with a smile of self-satisfaction.

³ I freely admit that I pretend to have read War and Peace, partly out of shame from not having read it and partly out of my eternal hope that the more often I say it, the faster it will come true.  I love Russian literature – I just read The Master and Margarita, and wow, I’ve been reading so much crappy fiction^b that I forgot what good books sound like – but this is one that I just haven’t done.

⁴ One of the most best footnotes I ever read was from a judge’s order [links to PDF] granting a group of law school professors and lawyers permission to file an amicus brief in support of Scooter Libby back in 2007 when he was being prosecuted for obstruction of justice and perjury (U.S. v. I. Lewis Libby).  The order itself was merely 5 lines long:

…Because the views expressed by the Amici in their brief may assist the Court in addressing the issue raised therein, it is hereby ORDERED that the Motion for Leave to File is GRANTED.¹

But that footnote was not:

¹ It is an impressive show of public service when twelve prominent and distinguished current and former law professors of well-respected schools are able to amass their collective wisdom in the course of only several days to provide their legal expertise to the Court on behalf of a criminal defendant. The Court trusts that this is a reflection of these eminent academics’ willingness in the future to step to the plate and provide like assistance in cases involving any of the numerous litigants, both in the Court and throughout the courts of our nation, who lack the financial means to fully and properly articulate the merits of their legal positions even in instances where failure to do so could result in monetary penalties, incarceration, or worse. The Court will certainly not hesitate to call for such assistance from these luminaries, as necessary in the interests of justice and equity, whenever similar questions arise in the cases that come before it.

⁵ This, of course, is a generalization.  Footnotes should not hurt.  Unfortunately, some people like to footnote things not for the sake of disrupting the linearity of text while still maintaining its cohesion, but to show off their ability to refer to things Gilmore Girls-style.

⁶ I met a slack-jawed academic, incomplete without elbow pads, at a bad party with bad alcohol who insisted that the parallel narrative of Infinite Jest’s footnotes positively is the paradigm of irony in post-modern literature and thus, were what DFW truly intended the reader to digest.  Accordingly, he read the book as if the dominant text was the footnotes.  Some people like to create problems for themselves, and he was one of them.^c

⁷ RIP Lucy the Bookstore Cat, who captured so many hearts by patiently pining over a lonely row of cocktail shrimp after an author reading one evening.  A new Bookstore Cat, Franny, has since taken up residence at Skylight.

⁸ This project is part of a broader collaboration with similarly adventurous readers called Infinite Summer.  It’s like Oprah’s book club, except it’s just one book, and the book does not end with a rape, murder, female suicide (literal or metaphorical), and/or marriage.

⁹ (Perhaps tis the season to to re-start the whole War and Peace project.  I will call it The Fall of War and Peace dot org.)

¹⁰ I, too, have not decided how I feel about this.

¹¹ John Krasinski’s filmography on the Internet Movie Database may be accessed here.  See also fn. 10, supra.

¹² You can hear DFW read from Brief Interviews with Hideous Men here and here.

——————-

^a Dana Scully nicknamed her father Ahab (not a very flattering nickname, Scully); he nicknamed her Starbuck.  When she inherited a Pomeranian from a psychic who could see people’s deaths, including his own (creepy!), she called it Queequeg.  Queequeg is eaten by a giant crocodile a few very short episodes later.

^b This includes you, short story section of The New Yorker.

^c Another example would be the first contestant axed from this season’s Top Chef. During the elimination challenge, she chose – chose – to serve seitan.  Why, oh why, make it that much more difficult on yourself?

My favorite is on the list.   Don Quixote.  I loved that book in high school.  It was the source of  my question authority mindset I have carried into adulthood (Hunter S Thompson sorta cemented that notion, but I digress a bit).

If you want to easily see what has been banned and pick up your own copy just pop on over to either of the Vromans locations in Pasadena.

Vroman’s Bookstore:

• 695 E. Colorado, Pasadena CA 91101, 626-449-5320
• 3729 E Foothill Blvd (Hastings Ranch), Pasadena CA 91107, 626-351-0828