(the complete interview with Joseph Walsh is incluRead an excerpt from the with author Joseph Walsh
JOSEPH WALSH, February 2008:
(the complete interview with Joseph Walsh is included in the , and a copy of Walsh's book Gambler on the Loose is included in the STOP SMILING gift special)
I never wrote that exact ending of California Split. That ending happened by accident. In the final moments [after a winning streak in a Reno casino:], Bill (George Segal) says to Charlie (Gould), “I gotta go home.� Charlie replies, “Yeah, where do you leave?� Bill stares at him, then says, “I gotta go home, Charlie.� He walks out and Charlie spins the wheel of fortune. Credits roll.
Now, that was not the original ending. When that happened, Elliott wasn’t supposed to say that line “Where do you live?� This is what played out: I was on the set during shooting. After that take, Elliott runs over to me, his friend for life and who wrote the script, and says, “Joey, I’m sorry. I don’t know where that line came from.� I said, “It’s okay, it was interesting.� Then here come George Segal running over saying, “That’s it. That’s how the movie should end. I never really understood this picture until then.� Robert Altman walks over at that point. George turns to him and says, “Bob, why should we go any further about this? Can’t you feel this movie ending right here?� Bob agreed and said it was a wrap.
I thought, “My God. This is interesting what Elliott said, but let’s film our ending now, and we’ll have both.� George was adamant. Altman agreed it was done. Now, I understand � it might have been that rush, that feeling of wanting to get something over with. But here’s how it ended in the script: I wrote a whole ramble for Charlie [after Bill throws his last roll and retreats to a private room to take inventory on his chips:]. Charlie says, “Bill, here’s what we’ll do. We’ll go to Mustang Ranch, we’ll get a few girls. I’m gonna go to the tables and get a little spot. I’ve been hurting here, I haven’t had a taste. You’ve had it all. You’ve done great, you’re my hero, but I got to get a taste. My blood pressure’s been up, it� been down, but it’s my turn at the table.�
(This interview originally appeared in the third annual Read the with author Jane Mayer
Lift Every Voice By James Hughes
(This interview originally appeared in the third annual )
After millions embraced Barack Obama on election night in Chicago, though still weeks before the record crowds that flooded the National Mall and its tributaries became flyover country for a departing president bound for Dallas dormancy, I spoke with author Jane Mayer about the range of emotions and challenges churned up in her startling account of detainee abuse under the Bush administration, The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals (Doubleday).
“I’m glad you had the time to read all those happy chapters,� Mayer says with equal parts consolation and self-deprecation. “Was it depressing?� Though the material is not for the faint of heart, her reporting in the book contributes vital information to the national conversation about our government’s stance on torture, and provokes essential questions about how to challenge violators of the Geneva Conventions.
David Thomson is a historian, critic and the author of several books on movies of tremendous influence, among them The Biographical Dictionary of Film, The Whole Equation and, most recently, Have You Seen�?: A Personal Introduction to 1000 Films and Try To Tell the Story: A Memoir. He’s contributed to publications such as Film Comment, Salon and the Guardian. His prose remains highly distinctive among critics, at once bold and intimate, often addressing an individual movie in a context that aligns it to “the movies� as a single, vast cultural phenomenon. Even Thomson’s novels, such as Suspects, which offers interconnected cameo biographical portraits of fictional characters from dozens of movies, speak to a fearsome obsession with the cinema and an urge to consider and articulate the peculiar nature of its spell and how it reflects and distorts our world.
David Thomson is a historian, critic and the author of several books on movies of tremendous influence, among them The Biographical Dictionary of Film, The Whole Equation and, most recently, Have You Seen�?: A Personal Introduction to 1000 Films and Try To Tell the Story: A Memoir. He’s contributed to publications such as Film Comment, Salon and the Guardian. His prose remains highly distinctive among critics, at once bold and intimate, often addressing an individual movie in a context that aligns it to “the movies� as a single, vast cultural phenomenon. Even Thomson’s novels, such as Suspects, which offers interconnected cameo biographical portraits of fictional characters from dozens of movies, speak to a fearsome obsession with the cinema and an urge to consider and articulate the peculiar nature of its spell and how it reflects and distorts our world.
David Thomson is a historian, critic and the author of several books on movies of tremendous influence, among them The Biographical Dictionary of Film, The Whole Equation and, most recently, Have You Seen�?: A Personal Introduction to 1000 Films and Try To Tell the Story: A Memoir. He’s contributed to publications such as Film Comment, Salon and the Guardian. His prose remains highly distinctive among critics, at once bold and intimate, often addressing an individual movie in a context that aligns it to “the movies� as a single, vast cultural phenomenon. Even Thomson’s novels, such as Suspects, which offers interconnected cameo biographical portraits of fictional characters from dozens of movies, speak to a fearsome obsession with the cinema and an urge to consider and articulate the peculiar nature of its spell and how it reflects and distorts our world.
Stop Smiling: Tell me about the first poem yoRead the with Mary Jo Bang:
A Talk with Mary Jo Bang
By Jennifer Kronovet
Stop Smiling: Tell me about the first poem you wrote. Did that experience reflect why and how you write now?
Mary Jo Bang: I wrote it in high school, after JFK was assassinated, and after reading a lot of Ayn Rand. It was probably no more than six lines. I remember the last line was: “The man who stands alone,� which now sounds like it should be followed by a few bars of melodramatic music.
Stop Smiling: Tell me about the first poem yoRead the with Mary Jo Bang:
A Talk with Mary Jo Bang
By Jennifer Kronovet
Stop Smiling: Tell me about the first poem you wrote. Did that experience reflect why and how you write now?
Mary Jo Bang: I wrote it in high school, after JFK was assassinated, and after reading a lot of Ayn Rand. It was probably no more than six lines. I remember the last line was: “The man who stands alone,� which now sounds like it should be followed by a few bars of melodramatic music.
ABUSE OF SELF The Stop Smiling Interview with Will Self
By Sally Vincent
(This interviewRead the with author Will Self.
ABUSE OF SELF The Stop Smiling Interview with Will Self
By Sally Vincent
(This interview originally appeared in the )
The first time I laid eyes on Will Self, he was monologuing about flying buttresses to a startled and ever-increasing audience of slack-jawed strangers, seemingly dumbstruck by his magniloquence. It was as though he couldn’t help himself. As though all this passion about architecture had been building up in his brain, to be unleashed at this moment simply because someone (I can’t remember who) was having their book launch in this vaulted, elegant old building and the sheer grandeur of it all had broken a dam in his corpus callosum. It was, I have to say, an entirely beguiling experience. Later that evening, my best friend introduced me to this loomingly tall bloke with a face like the Turin Shroud, and I knew instantly she was going to marry Will Self and I’d have to find a new best friend. I must have been a bit standoffish because he asked her, most intently, if my accent was posher than his, and she replied instantly, “Yes. No contest.�
ABUSE OF SELF The Stop Smiling Interview with Will Self By Sally Vincent
(This interviewRead the with author Will Self.
ABUSE OF SELF The Stop Smiling Interview with Will Self By Sally Vincent
(This interview originally appeared in the )
The first time I laid eyes on Will Self, he was monologuing about flying buttresses to a startled and ever-increasing audience of slack-jawed strangers, seemingly dumbstruck by his magniloquence. It was as though he couldn’t help himself. As though all this passion about architecture had been building up in his brain, to be unleashed at this moment simply because someone (I can’t remember who) was having their book launch in this vaulted, elegant old building and the sheer grandeur of it all had broken a dam in his corpus callosum. It was, I have to say, an entirely beguiling experience. Later that evening, my best friend introduced me to this loomingly tall bloke with a face like the Turin Shroud, and I knew instantly she was going to marry Will Self and I’d have to find a new best friend. I must have been a bit standoffish because he asked her, most intently, if my accent was posher than his, and she replied instantly, “Yes. No contest.�
Q&A: WELLS TOWER, author of Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned
By Eugenia Williamson
TheRead the with Wells Tower...
Q&A: WELLS TOWER, author of Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned
By Eugenia Williamson
The name Wells Tower entered the literary lexicon in 2005 when a short story about ennui-addled Vikings appeared in The Paris Review. “Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned,� plucked at random from a teeming slush pile, was Tower’s first attempt at publishing his fiction.
For the next few years, fans of ±á²¹°ù±è±ð°ù’s magazine and readers of The Washington Post could read Tower’s giddily depressing journalism on subjects as casually horrifying as telemarketers and Young Republicans. Simultaneously, his fiction gained traction, culminating in last year’s New Yorker publication of the story “Leopard.â€�
Still, those hoping for a glimpse of the personality of this writer, deft enough to slam-dunk a first person account of a faked fainting spell, a panegyric about carnies as well as the aforementioned Vikings, were doomed to fail. Unlike nearly anyone with a byline in the supermarket circular, Tower forewent any means of self-promotion, including a homepage.
Then suddenly, thanks to the near-universal freak-out over the brilliance of his first short-story collection (the first printing of which sold out within two weeks of its release) and numerous print profiles, two of which appeared in the New York Times, everybody knew the basics: his pedigree (MFA, Columbia University), his age (35), his hometown (Chapel Hill, North Carolina) his residence (Greenpoint, Brooklyn, third-floor walkup).
STOP SMILING sat down to talk to him on the Boston stop of his first book tour to find out if they got it right.
Read the STOP SMILING review of , along with a review of Thom Gunn's Selected Poems (2009, FSG).
It is a special necessity to mentioRead the STOP SMILING review of , along with a review of Thom Gunn's Selected Poems (2009, FSG).
It is a special necessity to mention Seidel's biography when discussing his poetry, which is true of all dilettantes, or of those who play them. Seidel is rich, born into it, in fact. One suspects he is the only poet his rarified friends know, and this explains why his often brutal, weird poetry has been employed to commemorate the establishment of the Hayden Planetarium, or the collapse of the World Trade Center in the pages of the Wall Street Journal.
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Also, Frederick Seidel is interviewed in the third-annual STOP SMILING . ...more
The STOP SMILING features a 16-page feature by Nile Southern, son of maverick New Journalist and screenwriter Te The STOP SMILING features a 16-page feature by Nile Southern, son of maverick New Journalist and screenwriter Terry Southern. It includes an extensive interview between Terry Southern and Stanley Kubrick, a short story and unpublished letters, and new information on some of Southern's greatest works, including Candy and the screenplay for Dr. Strangelove.
(This interview originallyRead the with Jimmy Breslin
GO OUT AND GET A STORY: JIMMY BRESLIN
Interview BY JEREMY SCHAAP
(This interview originally appeared in the 2nd annual )
As luxury condos tower over the once-downtrodden Bowery and a billionaire tech mogul reigns over a robust tourist mecca (and toast of the Republican National Convention), the days of the government telling New York City to drop dead are but a footnote to this new, untested era of scorched-earth gentrification. Yet the inequities and injustices of old still persist, even while the voices of dissent in the media are ominously silent (or are preoccupied crafting clever quips in the blogosphere). Then there’s Jimmy Breslin, a torchbearer from the days of big-city print journalism, the quintessential constant in an ever-changing megalopolis. As a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for multiple outlets, among them the New York Daily News, the same paper responsible for that infamous “Drop Dead� headline in 1977, Breslin earned his readers� trust � or raised ire � through a time-tested formula: First, the simple dissemination of facts. Then, “somewhere in the middle, rising on strong, steel legs, is an opinion.�
The STOP SMILING dedicates 40 pages to an oral history of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, which includes inte
The STOP SMILING dedicates 40 pages to an oral history of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, which includes interviews with collaborators and friends such as , , wife Anita Thompson, , and more.
About the issue, Slate media critic Jack Shafer , "Stop Smiling's oral history of Hunter S. Thompson bested Rolling Stone's similarly constructed special issue about the Doctor in every way.
The STOP SMILING dedicates 40 pages to an oral history of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, which includes inte
The STOP SMILING dedicates 40 pages to an oral history of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, which includes interviews with collaborators and friends such as , , wife Anita Thompson, , and more.
About the issue, Slate media critic Jack Shafer , "Stop Smiling's oral history of Hunter S. Thompson bested Rolling Stone's similarly constructed special issue about the Doctor in every way.
The STOP SMILING dedicates 40 pages to an oral history of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, which includes inte
The STOP SMILING dedicates 40 pages to an oral history of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, which includes interviews with collaborators and friends such as , , wife Anita Thompson, , and more.
About the issue, Slate media critic Jack Shafer , "Stop Smiling's oral history of Hunter S. Thompson bested Rolling Stone's similarly constructed special issue about the Doctor in every way.
The STOP SMILING dedicates 40 pages to an oral history of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, which includes inte
The STOP SMILING dedicates 40 pages to an oral history of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, which includes interviews with collaborators and friends such as , , wife Anita Thompson, , and more.
About the issue, Slate media critic Jack Shafer , "Stop Smiling's oral history of Hunter S. Thompson bested Rolling Stone's similarly constructed special issue about the Doctor in every way.
The STOP SMILING dedicates 40 pages to an oral history of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, which includes inte
The STOP SMILING dedicates 40 pages to an oral history of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, which includes interviews with collaborators and friends such as , , wife Anita Thompson, , and more.
About the issue, Slate media critic Jack Shafer , "Stop Smiling's oral history of Hunter S. Thompson bested Rolling Stone's similarly constructed special issue about the Doctor in every way.
The STOP SMILING features a cover-story with filmmaker Bruce Robinson, who adapted The Rum Diary into a screenplay for a movie starring Johnny Depp that is currently in production.
The STOP SMILING dedicates 40 pages to an oral history of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, which includes inte
The STOP SMILING dedicates 40 pages to an oral history of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, which includes interviews with collaborators and friends such as , , wife Anita Thompson, , and more.
About the issue, Slate media critic Jack Shafer , "Stop Smiling's oral history of Hunter S. Thompson bested Rolling Stone's similarly constructed special issue about the Doctor in every way.
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