50 in 2011: #28 Juliet, Naked

Like the author of #26, Dennis Lehane, Nick Hornby has written several novels that have been adapted into great films. Movies are once again my introduction to one of this year's authors. High Fidelity is a great read and it's Chicago-set film is one of my favorites - it's that pedigree that attracted me to Juliet, Naked, the story of Duncan and Annie, a going nowhere couple who've lived together for years and never married, never done much of anything except discuss the work of reclusive singer-songwriter Tucker Crowe. 


Tucker is Duncan's obsession. He heads a Crowe-related website and constantly converses with like-minded fans around the world (totaling about twelve). 


Annie is realizing that she's aged out of motherhood before realizing it's what she wanted. This want is handled delicately and without the campy single-mindedness of a cheap rom-com. She's also grown tired of her life in Gooleness, a dead and dying village by the sea where she works at a library/museum and Duncan teaches at the local university. Both have deferred dreams for a life of lazy easy surrender and now they're bitter about it. 


Tucker's been the figurative other man in Duncan and Annie's relationship, even sparking an American tour of sycophantic trivial locales somehow related to Crowe's seminal record Juliet, an epic break-up album something akin to Dylan's greatest work. In this universe, the almost-too-perfectly named Tucker Crowe is listed among artists like Bruce Springsteen, Leonard Cohen, and Dylan himself, though the author smartly avoids trying to actually describe what that music might sound like.


What begins as a slow meditation on the role of hero worship and music in a modern pop life becomes a contrived, but still entertaining, redemption story by the end. Without giving up too much of the threadbare plot, the same internet that feeds Duncan's obsession and cyber-community ends up helping dissolve his relationship and bring their metaphorical love triangle into reality.


Also featured are several illegitimate kids, some tarty dalliances and a preserved shark's eye. Read it if you like HF and AaB and watch the inevitable movie in your head.

New video!

Check out this new video from my PITtv house team "Arthur Warburton"!

The video was made as part of the PIT's co-sponsorship of this year's Quidditch World Cup, a live event coming up on Randall's Island this November.


If you're in the area, you should come through, I'll be an announcer at this year's games!


Credits: 
Written by: Raja Rajanathan (The Documentarian)
Directed by: Emmanuel Vozos (Allwyn Grumpstock)

Lighting, Camera & Sound: Mij Corso & Ron Giameo
Make-Up: Alexis Steponanko
Music: Drew Nichols (Check out Drew Nichols at www.drewnicholsmusic.com)

Quidditch World Cup V
November 12 & 13
Randall's Island, NYC
WorldCupQuidditch.com

Arthur Warburton is Jonathan Desley, Scott Eckert, Katie Haller, Lucas Hazlett, Andrea Kornstein, Raja Rajanathan & Emmanuel Vozos.

50 in 2011: #27 And Here's the Kicker

My next book was supposed to be Nick Hornby's Juliet, Naked but here we are, I'm still mid-way through that book and this collection has been bought, delivered and read. Inside, Mike Sacks has conducted interviews with many comedy professionals, of varying level of mainstream success but all talented and experienced. Pushing one or two questions past the usual surface level conversations had with writers, Sacks gets in-depth and personal responses from such comedy royalty as Buck Henry, Harold Ramis, Bob Odenkirk, David Sedaris, Robert Smigel and Marshall Brickman. While one common theme throughout is that you can't teach funny, this book goes along wau to inspire, advise and support young comedians in that awkward time before hobbies become careers.

It's probably too specialized in the craft for casual readers, but it does contain many funny and intimate memories from the beginnings of Caesar's Hour, Saturday Night Live, Annie Hall, The Simpsons and much more.

You know me. You know I loved it.

Will probably be starting a re-read stack soon, and putting this first. 

50 in 2011: #26 Moonlight Mile

I kicked off the second half of my adventure with Dennis Lehane's sequel to Gone Baby Gone, the gritty Moonlight Mile, the sixth in a series following PI's Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro. I first heard of Lehane when his novel Mystic River was adapted by Clint Eastwood in 2003. I still hadn't read any of his work when I saw more adaptions, Scorsese's Shutter Island and Ben Affleck's directorial debut, Gone Baby Gone. MM was recommended by a friend and former co-worker from L+O, and it's ripe for adaptation in all the best ways.

MM picks up 12 years after the tough and wiley Kenzie returned the kidnapped four year old Amanda McCready to her deadbeat mother after a good-intentioned kidnapping (if ever there was one) by her uncle and some corrupt police, condemning her to a future with no hope. Still uneasy with this life-defining decision, when Amanda turns up missing again, he feels obligated to pick up the case, despite mounting personal and financial problems and the dread feeling that by delving back into the McCready's world, he's risking the safety of his wife and child and the progress he's made in his career since the case that made him famous for 5 minutes.

 From a purists point of view, it's a shame I couldn't help but see the cast of GBG , Casey Affleck, Michelle Monaghan and Amy Ryan's faces, when I read their characters, but I'm not a purist and the book reads like a movie as well. Lehane's dialogue is gritty without being sensational or too smart and is begging to be performed by high-calibre actors like he's had in the past. If MM isn't a departure in style for Lehane, then I'm sure the plot-driven novel would make a great movie, without risk of losing thematic importance that comes with some adaptions. The themes are so tied to the actions of the characters that to miss them is to miss the point entirely.

Top notch crime drama and a very fast read.