One of the blogs I look at regularly is Lee Goldberg's A Writer's Life. Goldberg is the successful writer and TV producer, perhaps best known for his Monk series, but with credits as long as both your arms.
His mother, who died earlier this year, was Jan Curran. Curran was also a writer, a journalist who worked as a society editor for The Desert Sun and Palm Springs Life.
In a recent post, Goldberg presented some scans of his mom's photos, showing her with various celebrities she had encountered. Which brings us to the Bradbury connection.
I just spotted a new(ish) book with a new foreword by Ray Bradbury. Bound to Last from DaCapo press sees 25 (or 30, depending on whether you believe the blurb or the photo of the book's cover...) writers discussing the books that mean the most to them. Details are here.
Sam Weller, Bradbury's official biographer and author of Listen to the Echoes: The Ray Bradbury Interviews has revitalised his blog of late as a kind of festive treat. Recent posts have included appreciations of key Bradbury short stories and - most interesting of all - a number of interesting items from the archives. If you haven't visited lately, it's well worth the trip: click here.
Reading Listen to the Echoes has prompted one reviewer to compile a list of "10 things you didn't know about Ray Bradbury"... most of which I did know, and some of which are a bit inaccurate. But let's not be picky! The list is here.
CNN also has an article inspired by Listen to the Echoes. Nothing terribly new here, but well put together - and with a decent photo (reproduced above).
The LA Times has an article about a season of Disney screenings taking place in the city, including Something Wicked This Way Comes. It includes a decent overview of the film, quoting Roger Ebert. It also includes images of a couple of props from the film. Read all about it!
Better still is this excellent account from Jim Hill of how Something Wicked went from film idea to novel and back to film - a quite detailed history of Bradbury's inspirations and the people who were tentatively associated with the "property", including Gene Kelly, David Lean, Steven Spielberg and Sam Peckinpah.
Famous Monsters of Filmland, once a famous magazine about, er, films...is returning. And the forthcoming issue features two doses of Ray Bradbury.
First is an interview, and second is a new short story, "Niblick". I have no idea what it's about, but it wouldn't be the first time that golf has featured in a Bradbury short. Read more about the resurrection of this undead magazine here!
More from Sam Weller. I promised myself not to post links to any more Listen to the Echoespublicity, simply because most of the reporting I've seen on the subject has been repetitive and derivative. However, here's something a little different: Weller interviewed on camera at Newcity Lit.
It's an observation I have seen elsewhere, and is one that I have been considering in my own current study of the film. When you add this to some of the other pecularities of the film - the awkwardness of Truffaut working in a language (English) which he barefly spoke; the British studio practices which must have been so different to his experience of film-making in France; Truffaut's decision to style the film in opposition to the James Bond films - it's no wonder that the film seems so odd, and in some ways at odds with Bradbury's novel.
Rosenbaum viewed the film as part of a tie-in event for Listen to the Echoes. He apparently conversed with Bradbury and Sam Weller via Skype after the film.
I've spent a few days reading Sam Weller's Listen to the Echoes, his collection of Bradbury interviews, and companion to his earlier biography The Bradbury Chronicles.
I quite like the book, although I don't think I have really learned anything new from it. That's not to criticise the book, as I'm sure many Bradbury readers will find something new here. It's just that when you've read Steven Aggelis' Conversations with Ray Bradbury and Bradbury's own Bradbury Speaks, it all becomes a little familiar.
I quite like one of Bradbury's phrases which crops up now and again throughout the book, which is something like "get your work done". It seems to be his response to all sorts of questions to do with coping with what life throws at you, and yet Bradbury claims not to be a workaholic. Indeed, his description of a typical day's work would support his non-workaholic claim. However, he just must be under-emphasising how much effort he would put into re-working his stories, as all the manuscripts I've seen show a lot of careful and considered deletions and edits.
What I didn't like about Listen to the Echoes is the endless catalogue of famous people Ray has known. If the famous people are worth discussing, I would have liked to see them discussed at length, not just used as a trivial throwaway.
But what I did like about the book is the breadth of its coverage. Bradbury isn't just asked about celebrity friends, or his own work, or his daily life; he is also asked about literature, poetry, painting, music, pop culture and high art.
Echoes is a useful sourcebook for anyone looking for quotable quotes from Bradbury, and has a good index. You just have to bear in mind that these are the views of an 89-year-old looking backwards. Anyone interested in a rounded view of how Bradbury sees the world would be well advised to also read Aggelis' Conversations with Ray Bradbury, which compiles interviews conducted over many decades of Bradbury's life and career.
Sam Weller is maintaining a blog to tie in with the book, which has recently included this essay by Bradbury on the death of a feline friend.
The Listen to the Echoes publicity machine rumbles onward! Sam Weller's book of Bradbury interviews is out, and picking up some positive reviews. Sam recently appeared on Chicago radio station WGN to talk to Bob Sirott about the book, Bradbury, David Bowie, Ringo Starr and Rod Serling. You can listen to the eleven minute interview here.
Last week saw the launch of Sam Weller's book of Bradbury interviews, Listen to the Echoes. The event at the Mystery and Imagination bookstore in California attracted quite a bit of media attention. The LA Times reports on it here. Weller blogs about it here.
And if that's not enough, watch a video clip of the introductions on YouTube, here.
Further to my earlier post about Ray Harryhausen's 90th birthday, Harryhausen has opened an exhibition of his work in London at the London Film Museum. Fellow blogger Brian Sibley was there at the launch and has posted his account of the event, complete with photos of Mr H's mythic creations - such as this familiar Bradburyan Beast:
According to this article, Ray Bradbury's Pandemonium Theatre Company has stopped running. Although the company has been playing to packed houses, it sounds as if ticket sales were not enough to keep the shows going. We can only hope that this is a temporary state of affairs, as there is no doubt that having his own theatre company has enabled Bradbury to do some unique work.
Meanwhile, reviews are beginning to appear for Sam Weller's forthcoming book Listen to the Echoes. This is a collection of transcribed interviews, originally conducted when Weller was researching for his authorised biography of Bradbury.One such review is this one from the Chicago Tribune. The publisher's page for the book is here, and Weller's new blog is here. (I wonder if he knows that the 'comments' feature of the blog is broken...)
File under "how did I miss that?": Tor.com has been serializing Tim Hamilton's graphic novel version of Fahrenheit 451. Click these links to see each part:
The Paris Review's latest issue carries one of Sam Weller's interviews with Ray Bradbury. Weller, of course, if Bradbury's official biographer, author of The Bradbury Chronicles. In the course of developing the biography, Weller undertook many hours of interviews with Bradbury. In June of this year, another book containing nothing but interviews will be released. Entitled Listen to the Echoes and consisting of over three hundred pages of chat, the book is available for pre-ordering now.
I confess to being a little (I emphasise little) tired of Bradbury's interviews, in the sense that he often reels out the same anecdotes again and again. But I attribute this to interviewers asking the same questions again and again. Steven Aggelis's Conversations with Ray Bradbury is fascinating precisely because Aggelis carefully selected interviews that allowed us to see how Bradbury's thought evolved over his career. I am hoping that Weller's Listen to the Echoes will work because his in-depth knowledge of Bradbury's life enables him to come up with new questions and new angles.
The B-Movie Film Vault Blog has an amusing top ten of the best Ray Harryhausen creatures. At number nine is the rhedosaurus. This, of course, is the dinosaur that was The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, based on the Bradbury story also known as "The Fog Horn". My own review of the film can be found here.
Subterranean Press are highlighting reviews of their edition of Pleasure to Burn, a collection of the stories that were directly ancestral to Fahrenheit 451. I haven't yet seen the book in the flesh, but I believe it has essentially the same fiction content as Gauntlet's Match to Flame. As far as I can tell, however, only Match to Flame has the contextual essays from Jon Eller and Bill Touponce. There are some other small differences as well, but I can't quite figure them all out.
Urban Archipelago Films has announced the DVD release of their film Ray Bradbury's Chrysalis. I haven't seen the film yet, but I know it has been doing well on the festival circuit. The DVD will be out on 27 July 2010 - full details are here. I'm pretty sure this date was announced a while ago, but I may not have mentioned it on this site.
Ever wondered what "a Ray Bradbury" is? Maybe one of these Gene Roddenberrys will know the answer:
One of the blogs I look at regularly is Lee Goldberg's A Writer's Life. Goldberg is the successful writer and TV producer, perhaps best known for his Monk series, but with credits as long as both your arms.
Sam Weller, Bradbury's official biographer and author of Listen to the Echoes: The Ray Bradbury Interviews has revitalised his blog of late as a kind of festive treat. Recent posts have included appreciations of key Bradbury short stories and - most interesting of all - a number of interesting items from the archives. If you haven't visited lately, it's well worth the trip: click here.
