brothercyst

ODDS

2012-01-27T21:46:00.001-05:00

Great article in the New Yorker about the prison system.

They're posting pictures from the Teen Wolf set on the show's tumblr almost every day. Exciting to see stuff dreamed up in the writer's room actually getting filmed right now. The pool scene they just posted a glimpse of is going to be great. So is the scene that the "claws on ice" image is from.

VALENTINE'S DAY 2012

2012-01-19T19:32:00.003-05:00

Available soon for pre-order.

GREAT DIALOGUE

2012-01-18T22:40:00.003-05:00

Sometimes I read or overhear a really vivid phrase or exchange and I've got to take it down for posterity, to use later or just for inspiration. The transcript of the conversation between the Italian Coast Guard captain and the captain of the Costa Concordia who abandoned the ship as it was sinking is such an exchange. Really extraordinary.

—De Falco: “You go aboard. It is an order. Don’t make any more excuses. You have declared ‘abandon ship.’ Now I am in charge. You go on board! Is that clear? Do you hear me? Go, and call me when you are aboard. My air rescue crew is there.”
—Schettino: “Where are your rescuers?”
—De Falco: “My air rescue is on the prow. Go. There are already bodies, Schettino.”
—Schettino: “How many bodies are there?”
—De Falco: “I don’t know. I have heard of one. You are the one who has to tell me how many there are. Christ.”
—Schettino: “But do you realize it is dark and here we can’t see anything...”
—De Falco: “And so what? You want to go home, Schettino? It is dark and you want to go home?

SEVERED HEAD

2012-01-18T02:55:00.001-05:00

Ken Baumann just sent me this exciting article. (Best part: "Two females were hiking with nine dogs...") A severed head was found in a bag beneath the Hollywood sign. Man. The Secret History of the Lord of Musahi comes to mind, as well as a weird kind of envy. After I die, cut off my head and put it in a bag under the Hollywood sign.

WEEKEND OF EH

2012-01-16T01:00:00.000-05:00

Been mostly in front of my computer with the TV on in the background for the whole weekend. It seemed as though the AFC and NFC championships might be entirely composed of four "local" teams for me: Saints (born in New Orleans); Ravens (grew up just outside of Baltimore); Patriots (college in New England 2000-2005); and Giants (lived in New York 2005-2010). Alas the Saints got knocked out. But it did mean that for the first time in two years I was actually watching football games.

And in the foreground I was working on some maddening shit. I wrote a very long short story/short novella over the holidays that now, on re-reading, seems deeply exasperating to me. All first drafts do, though. No, that's not true. I was fucking around with it for much of the weekend. At least writing's cheaper than going to therapy.

BNCF REVIEW

2012-01-13T02:47:00.000-05:00

Elizabeth Hand, a terrific author (whose Available Dark is out soon) reviewed the rerelease of Brand New Cherry Flavor for the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and calls it one of the best horror novels she's read in the last few decades. I've been singing its praises for a long time, and will again: it's awesome. Read it if you haven't.

ALARM

2012-01-12T23:27:00.001-05:00

Man, how humiliating.

The unmistakably jarring sound of an iPhone marimba ring interrupted the soft and spiritual final measures of Mahler’s Symphony No. 9 at the New York Philharmonic on Tuesday night. The conductor, Alan Gilbert, did something almost unheard-of in a concert hall: He stopped the performance. But the ringing kept on going, prompting increasingly angry shouts in the audience directed at the malefactor.

That happened to me once, sort of. I was at a small advance screening of a movie made by some people I admire (there were maybe 20 other people in the audience) and just like with the Philharmonic guy, my phone was off, but the alarm was set (from a previous night) for a time that happened to fall during the screening. I didn't realize the phone (Blackberry Bold) would turn itself on for the alarm. But then in the middle of the screening, at a particularly dark moment, this maddening jangly noise starts to come from my bag, and of course it takes me a moment to realize it's me since I thought my phone was safely off. Fortunately no one shouted at me, but I feel for the guy. Mortifying.

DEBATES

2012-01-08T04:53:00.004-05:00

Huh. For all this talk about the Republican debates, I watched one for the first time tonight. Romney looking on in patient exasperation, resisting the urge to check his watch, waiting to be crowned... the loathsome worm Rick Santorum squirming and gulping; what an evil, awful figure, he's like the villain in a Stephen King novel, like that church lady in The Mist who gets trapped in the grocery store with them... meanwhile Ron Paul being generally appealing, talking about ending the drug war. I wouldn't vote for Ron Paul because I want the government to provide citizens with health care (and, you know, roads and bridges), but I do love it that he supports immunity for Wikileaks whistleblowers.

And Jesus, watch the ad at 2:40... he's right, that's the kind of ad progressives dream of seeing our candidates have the guts to run.

edit: wait, found the whole ad, it's longer

VIZZINI/COLUMBUS

2012-01-05T22:49:00.003-05:00

My friend and screenwriting partner Ned Vizzini (our first TW episode shoots soon!) will be co-writing a YA fantasy series with Harry Potter & Home Alone director Chris Columbus--officially announced today in Entertainment Weekly. Awesome news! Congratulations Ned.

MIGRATIONS

2012-01-04T22:20:00.001-05:00

My story "Migrations" is in the new issue of the New Haven Review. I encourage you to subscribe! (You can also download the whole issue for free here.) It's about an alcoholic experiencing the beginning of the end of the world.

FERRARA & NHR & EOTN

2012-01-02T03:42:00.004-05:00

I just watched Bad Lieutenant on TV... saw it probably ten years ago and remembered it being good, but not that good. What a fantastic movie. Somehow it hit me a lot harder now than it did when I was a teenager. Something about the patterns of relentless behavior and the visceral self-loathing and the inability to comprehend selfless behavior (even while groping toward an imitation of it)... this time it was just physically and viscerally jarring. Fucking awesome film... For some reason I guess I'd had an idea in my head of Ferrara as a really sloppy filmmaker with big vivid flashes of talent, but after seeing this again (and seeing Body Snatchers not too long ago), it's clear there was at least a period in the early 90s when he had enough discipline to deploy that talent really judiciously.

***

I have a story in the new issue of the New Haven Review. Issue 9. It's not out yet, comes out soon. It's called "Migrations." I believe it will make me the only author so far to have had two pieces of fiction in the NHR. Proud! Brian Francis Slattery and Bennett Lovett-Graff at the NHR have been very kind.

***

Currently reading John D. MacDonald's The End of the Night. It's about four young people who go on a killing spree. It's told in a non-linear but fairly gripping fashion. I got it because Stephen King said, "John D. MacDonald has written a novel called The End of the Night which I would argue is one of the greatest American novels of the twentieth century. It ranks with Death of a Salesman, it ranks with An American Tragedy." I'm halfway through. It's definitely good so far.

HOLLYWOOD ON FIRE

2011-12-31T07:40:00.000-05:00

So last night some pyro or pyros set NINETEEN FIRES in Hollywood and West Hollywood. Police presence was beefed up because of fears they'd strike again tonight. And so it seems they have. This is happening like right now. From the Hollywood Hills, awake at 4:30 am, I can hear sirens going apeshit and helicopters are buzzing over the hills, close enough that I can feel the house vibrate slightly. Fucking crazy. This time it's North Hollywood, apparently. Switching it up.

ODD

2011-12-31T07:36:00.000-05:00

Occasionally I have moments in which I wonder if L.A. has corrupted my artistic sensibilities in some mortal way. Last night, for no real reason except I was bored and tired, I watched The A-Team on Cinemax. That's the one with Liam "Paycheck" Neeson and Bradley "Smarm" Cooper and the guy from District 9, Sharlto Copley, who was so good in that movie. The trailers for The A-Team looked embarrassing. I never had any desire to see it. And, delightfully, I kind of loved it. It's cartoonish and ridiculous, but the performances are all completely charming, irreverent, endearing. Random remarks that feel improvised ("And you're covered in gasoline, which I find interesting"..."B.A. looks like a huge banana") proliferate, and there are lots of clever, pleasing one-off moments, like when two ex-lovers, now agents on opposite sides, get in a fight in a photo booth which snaps pictures of them as they beat each other up. Yeah, I probably would've enjoyed this before I came to Hollywood.

MEANDERING

2011-12-28T00:42:00.004-05:00

So that whole day is over. My favorite Christmas and New Years ever were spent alone in a cottage in the Dominican Republic. (And my best birthday ever was alone in a snowed-in cabin in Maryland.) This time I did have an excellent dinner that was only six people in total, all lovely. A good Christmas.

Writing some. Still reading 1Q84. Just bought The Devil All the Time since I've heard such great things about it, as well as Leaving the Atocha Station and some other things.

Some movies I'm excited to see next year: Cogan's Trade, You're Next, Only God Forgives, The Place Beyond the Pines, Dark Knight Rises of course, Prometheus of course, Wettest County, Haywire, The Grey, Chronicle, The Impossible, Savages, Gangster Squad, Gravity, Django Unchained.

1Q84

2011-12-23T23:00:00.002-05:00

I asked a friend a while back if he intended to read 1Q84. He said, "It's not my fault that Haruki Murakami is still alive and writing books." I kind of felt the same way. I did buy it though. And I cracked it open today and ended up reading the first 125 pages (ie ~ 1/9th of the book) straight through. So far, it's actually really great. I'm surprised, somehow, although I don't know why I should be. The last new-ish book I tried to read was The Night Circus, which completely bored me, although lots of people seem to love it.

****

Posted a few words about Sleeping Beauty on HTMLGIANT. You'll never find it in a theater but it's still on demand and downloadable on Amazon. See it! I'm curious what other people think.

DICK MOMENT

2011-12-18T06:25:00.003-05:00

This Charles Platt piece about Philip K Dick's posthumously published notes reminded me of this fantastic, fascinating Philip K Dick speech which I've probably linked to before, perhaps several times, but that's ok, because I like to reread it every now and then. It is a look at genius touched by madness.

Some books I read since this summer that I haven't written about:
Art of Fielding (pretty good, think Wonder Boys era Chabon with baseball)
You Deserve Nothing (awesome, feels like Salter mixed with Francine Prose)
House of the Scorpion (I liked this, Liz Hand recommended it to me, quite gripping YA)
The Last Werewolf (had its moments)
Lost in Cat Brain Land (insane stories. "I am Meat, I am in Daycare" was excellent. I like stories that give me ideas for other stories, and a lot of these did)

Been reclusive, reading, watching movies. I saw The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo last week. My god, was it boring. Fincher's worst movie, by far. I was seriously suffering. I just watched Predators on TV. That was pretty good.

"INTERVIEW" AT COLLAGIST

2011-12-07T04:33:00.015-05:00

The Collagist did an "interview" with me where the questions are answered via quotes from Fires. The republished Fires! Which, like, go buy it.

Today I had a good meeting. Before that I wrote a little. I rewatched some of Sleeping Beauty. Tonight I saw Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. I have never, never in my life seen a movie whose trailer was so much better than the movie. The trailer looked just beyond fucking awesome...like the best spy movie ever made. The movie is a hard, rough, incomprehensible trudge.

I didn't like Shame all that much when I left the theater. Some of it felt silly, although there are lots of very familiar, recognizable moments (I loved it when the subway train stopped and the doors didn't open). If it was supposed to be a descent into hell...it wasn't. It also isn't disturbing or shocking, as advance word had indicated that it would be. My friend Nic called it "just a hair away from being called Single Man with a Job in NYC." But I realized I did think about it a lot in the two days since seeing it.

However, Sleeping Beauty is much better. In fact the more I think about it, the more I think it's extraordinary. And I think Emily Browning should be getting the same critical praise that Michael Fassbender is (deservedly) getting for Shame.

GRIMSON ON OREGONIAN

2011-12-06T14:55:00.002-05:00

So, here's a very cool article about Todd Grimson, formerly aka Innocente Fontana, who I wrote about for the Paris Review Daily earlier this fall. Check it out...

Just read an excellent new Grimson story.

GREAT MOVIES I SAW IN 2011

2011-12-04T11:04:00.013-05:00

In rough order.

1. Sleeping Beauty

I just saw this. (It's available on demand even though IFC either just released it in theaters or is about to.) Fucking mesmerizing...hypnotic. Like a dream. Not for everyone. Most reviewers are mixed or negative. I loved it, loved it.

2. Margin Call

Mamet-level writing. Far-superior-to-Mamet-level filmmaking. Stellar performances.

3. Take Shelter

Atmospheric, beautiful, scary. Really upset me.

4. Warrior

Genuinely touching. Hits all the familiar buttons but hits them expertly. Total commitment performances all around. Tom Hardy is a beast.

5. Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Rupert Wyatt, who I thought disappeared after his amazing debut The Escapist from a few years ago, comes through with a massive-scale blockbuster that has a stand-up-and-cheer/down-with-humans finale.

6. X-Men: First Class
The scene with the quarter was great. Fassbender was great. The teeth ripping out of the mouth... the knife flying from his hand in the bar...

7. Win Win
Just a pleasure to sit through.

8. Insidious
Surprised by some genuine scares. A well-structured script.

9. Bridesmaids
I laughed.

10. Attack the Block
"They're my neighbors. They protected me."

11. Drive
On here for the opening scene alone.

Haven't yet seen, but might be great:
Shame [update, saw it, strong but it wasn't great]
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy [update, saw it, torture]
Girl with the Dragon Tattoo [update, so fucking boring!]
The Descendants [too much narration but Shailene Woodley is good]
Martha Marcy May Marlene [update, saw it, beautifully shot but I hated all the characters and wanted to shake some sense into them; also it ends without a climax]
Melancholia [beautiful, somewhat tedious]

Young Adult [update, saw it, kind of great although a few false notes brought it down]
Carnage
Rampart [very good movie until it just ends with no ending, just like MMMM]

Tyrannosaur
The Skin I Live In

HMM

2011-11-30T21:12:00.000-05:00

What did I watch last night? I watched The Help. Then I watched Cocaine Cowboys 2, which was fun. I also started reading Mr. Fox by Helen Oyeyemi, which is fucking awesome so far. I also bought this book which I've heard good things about. Also my car got fucked up yesterday and that was terrible. Should I continue spending money to maintain it, or should I go into debt to buy a new car with a 5 year warranty?

THANKSGIVING

2011-11-26T19:00:00.002-05:00

So, I went to San Diego with my dad for Thanksgiving, which was pretty great, and we had dinner with some composer friends of his, Roger and Chinary, and their families. He was on his way back from a trip to Mexico. I was taking a break from writing a bunch of treatments and the last bit of an episode of Teen Wolf. I've been watching a tremendous number of movies and TV shows lately. The best new show on TV is probably Boss, on Starz, which nobody sees because nobody has Starz. Because it's a terrific show. Possibly the best thing on TV right now. Also watching: Homeland, Boardwalk Empire, American Horror Story, Beavis and Butthand, Always Sunny, and reruns of Mad Men. And that American Masters documentary on Woody Allen that ran last week.

Today I finished reading The Last of the Live Nude Girls by Sheila McClear, which I loved. She used to work at one of the last peep shows in Times Square. I used to work in Times Square, from 2005 to 2009, and had no idea those places existed. The book is well-written, poignant, illuminating, and sad, and it does a perfect job of capturing a mood of fearful and nervous dread. It also doesn't read like some shitty half-brag, as I had sort of expected, since McClear used to write for the loathsome Gawker blog. I read it on Ned Vizzini's recommendation after he read it for a review. He was right, it's terrific.

ALLEN

2011-11-23T16:42:00.002-05:00

Robert Weide's Woody Allen documentary on American Masters on PBS was great. The footage of him directing on You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (a way underrated movie) and Vicky Cristina Barcelona is great. It reminded me to look up this diary he wrote from the shooting of VCB a few years ago.

OUR YOUNG NOVELISTS

2011-11-22T00:51:00.003-05:00

Bret Easton Ellis tweeted this. Look at Ellis. So New Wave. Also, it made me want to read Fernanda Eberstadt. Jesus, she's beautiful.

BREAD LINE

2011-11-17T14:28:00.000-05:00

So I'll be sleeping late again...my gig on Teen Wolf ends this week. It was fucking awesome and season two is going to be amazing. Back to writing other stuff! More announcements coming up soon...a novella and a collection of stories. Working on scripts and treatments for the moment.

UNCANNY

2011-11-15T01:39:00.000-05:00

Apparently I'm in web ads now, looking unusually healthy and stylish.

THIS IS CALMING

2011-11-13T14:23:00.003-05:00

BODY SNATCHERS

2011-11-06T18:34:00.002-05:00

Over the last few days I watched four "body snatchers" movies. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956, dir. Don Siegel)... Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978, dir. Philip Kaufman)... Body Snatchers (1993, dir. Abel Ferrara)... and The Faculty (1998, dir. Robert Rodriguez).

The Faculty is entertaining silliness with only a few innovations (the aliens are parasitic sea creatures who need to constantly drink bottled water to survive, and diuretic powder kills them), and a number of lines stolen directly from the earlier movies.

The '78 Kaufman Invasion of the Body Snatchers with Donald Sutherland, Jeff Goldblum, Leonard Nimoy, and Veronica Cartwright is very strong, but aesthetically very dated, especially in the first act--the decision to keep the camera away from people's faces inhibits investment with the characters. The one moment of greatness is a total non sequitur involving a dog with a human face.

The original 1956 Don Siegel Invasion of the Body Snatchers is terrific, by far the best of them. Fast-paced, lean, smart, and fucking chilling. Kevin McCarthy is great--should've been a movie star. And the embryonic pod people are more disgusting in this version than in any of the others, surprisingly. I saw this movie when I was a little kid, loved it, and it really holds up.

The biggest surprise, though, was the 1993 Abel Ferrara Body Snatchers version. It's uneven (and has a bizarre denouement, in which the seemingly low-budget movie suddenly, briefly becomes an action extravaganza, with missiles firing and huge explosions), but overall it's a forgotten horror classic. There are three or four great scenes, but one true standout... a genuine classic scene... when the "replaced" version of the Meg Tilly character calmly explains to her husband that it's no use running. "Go where? Steve, this is important. Go... where? That's right. Go where? Where you gonna go? Where you gonna run? Where you gonna hide? Nowhere."

Some nice person has cut together a few clips of the best moments from the Ferrara version (although the sync is slightly off in the best part)... NSFW...

*********

So not only are the Occupy Wall Street protests happening in my old neighborhood (Zucotti Park is maybe four blocks away from the apartment building I lived in) but The Dark Knight Rises is shooting literally outside my old front door. This video is clearly shot from one of the lower floors of 45 Wall Street, my former address. The camera looks directly down on the awning over the entrance.

And this one's from the lobby:

MARGIN CALL / DREAM

2011-10-30T12:54:00.001-04:00

Saw this last night. It's in theaters but you can also watch it on demand in HD. Terrific movie, one of the 2 or 3 best I've seen this year.

****

Then I had a dream where I was riding in some sort of fancy airport shuttle bus with Harrison Ford, and I asked him what movies he was most embarrassed about. He got very angry. Then when I told other people this anecdote, everyone started telling their own anecdotes about angry actors, and we were all talking over each other, and I got frustrated because no one could be heard.

SAUDI ARABIA / SWIMMING POOLS

2011-10-29T13:26:00.000-04:00

Thanks to Paul Kwiatkowski for a cool shout-out to Midnight Picnic.

****

I've been sleeping a tremendous amount lately.

Just woke up from a dream where, first, I was driving around a somewhat modified Los Angeles. Everything was closer together and a little more vivid/cartoony, which I guess goes without saying since it was a dream. I kept discovering elaborate pool complexes, like pools surrounded by hanging gardens, and maze-pools. One was in the Hollywood Hills and another was in West Hollywood. I went swimming in them with other writers.

Then I dreamed that I was back in high school, or just out of high school, and my class was going on a trip to Saudi Arabia. I had certain clothes I wanted to wear there. But when we got there, I realized I had brought nothing but boxer shorts. I quickly went back to America (not sure how that works), missing a sort of field trip, and when I got back to America I was in a strange garden at twilight with my brother, who told me he'd seen on the news that all my former classmates had been tortured and killed by the Taliban. (They were in Saudi Arabia, in this dream.) He told me what had happened to each of them. A large ant-eater, almost the size and shape of a deer, with glowing eyes came out of the shadows and began to look for smaller, squirrel-like animals to eat as my brother went through the names.

SALES ART

2011-10-27T23:45:00.000-04:00

The other day... BloodyDisgusting.com posted some fun sales art for The Cottage. I had never seen this before, actually. I do like Saul Bass!

THIS IS REAL?

2011-10-25T20:32:00.002-04:00

When was the last time you saw a presidential pitchperson take a badass drag on a cigarette while staring down the camera in a campaign ad? What a surreal commercial.

HARLAN ELLISON

2011-10-20T17:07:00.004-04:00

thx N 

thx to ned vizzini

EXOTIC ANIMALS

2011-10-20T02:46:00.000-04:00

That photo of the dead animals in Zanesville, Ohio, is profoundly fucking depressing.

It's been a depressing week, really.

OCCUPY WRITERS

2011-10-18T00:35:00.000-04:00

They just, like, let you sign up for this.

FIRES ON COLLAGIST

2011-10-15T14:42:00.002-04:00

The Collagist has published an excerpt from Fires to coincide with its republication. Cool!

TAIBBI ON OWS

2011-10-14T12:10:00.002-04:00

Great piece by Matt Taibbi on the Occupy Wall Street protests, and what they should do next. I love this guy.

MAYBE WANT TO SEE

2011-10-14T11:34:00.001-04:00

Hm. Well, I like Michael Fassbender more than almost any other actor in his age group, and I like squalid movies about sex addiction, so I'll definitely be seeing this.

But this earnest music is a little silly. And I laughed at the comment on this Hollywood Elsewhere post by someone named "LexG":

Alright, I can't wait to see this, but... come ON.

Fucking Fassbender in this interview DROPPING THE KNOWLEDGE about sex addiction, like it's some serious thing, like he isn't a noted world-class pussyhound. "Sex addiction." Otherwise known as "the ability to have sex." Funny how the movies about sex addiction are always about guys who look like Michael Fassbender fingering supermodels on the subway, or Rockwell fucking some LA 9 in a dank bathroom stall. For the Other 99%, "sex addiction" is more commonly known as "masturbating every day." Any Keith Gordon-as-Arnie Cuntingham-looking dweebs out there with Asperger's syndrome and a job at a canning factory who drive a 1978 Datsun have a SEX ADDICTION?

I mean, I know he's wrong, but still.

PR DAILY POST

2011-10-12T11:08:00.000-04:00

I wrote a piece for the Paris Review blog about my relationship with Innocente Fontana / Todd Grimson. (Grimson's incredible novel Brand New Cherry Flavor was just re-released, within days of the re-release of Fires, in an odd, pleasing coincidence. I can't recommend it highly enough, it's one of my favorite horror novels ever.)

FIRES OFFICIAL RE-RELEASE IS TODAY

2011-10-10T22:44:00.001-04:00

A little anti-climactic, since it's been available to buy for a few days, but: TODAY IS THE OFFICIAL RE-PUBLICATION DATE OF FIRES by Civil Coping Mechanisms. You can buy it here. Very pleased to have the novel, which I started when I was 19 and finished when I was 20, finally back in print after a several-year hiatus.

WATCHING

2011-10-09T22:02:00.004-04:00

I haven't been swimming lately and I'm emaciated. Physically I'm reverting to my college-era concave chest situation. Most TV writers get fat on snacks when they start working. I'm wasting away.

*****

I can't get enough of these videos. I used to walk through Zucotti Park all the time. I wish I were there to see this!!

Right Here All Over (Occupy Wall St.) from Alex Mallis on Vimeo.

YESTERDAY, RIGHT WHERE I USED TO LIVE

2011-10-06T21:17:00.001-04:00

FIRES ON AMAZON

2011-10-04T22:18:00.003-04:00

Fires is back in print! Thanks to Civil Coping Mechanisms and in particular Michael Seidlinger, the first novel I wrote (originally published in 2006 by Impetus Press), is now available again. Official release date is five days from now, but you can buy it immediately on Amazon. Check it out! (Also, feel free to buy it, that would be great. This edition includes my short stories, "The Girlfriend Game," "Rat Beast," and "Winter Was Hard.")

ADDICTED TO TV NOW

2011-09-30T21:44:00.003-04:00

I've been watching a lot of TV for the last few years, ever since in 2008 I decided I wanted to write for TV in addition to writing novels and adjusted my long-term life plans accordingly. (I really, really don't want to get a day job again.) I watched a lot of TV before that, and absorbed a lot of information about how to tell stories in a serialized format, but I wasn't actively analyzing it. Now that, at least for the period of my contract, I actually am sitting in a real TV writers' room all day, I watch a near-overdose amount of TV. I also watch things that are on TV, which are not produced for TV; those things are called movies. I watched Terminator 2 and Inglourious Basterds last night as a break from TV. I also watched an hour of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and I watched A Gifted Man (Jonathan Demme and Martin Scorsese and Michael Mann are all directing episodic TV now...). I haven't socialized at all in the last month or two. (I spend less money now because I never go out; that's good. On the other hand, I just had to pay a brutal life expense that cancelled out most of my show earnings so far.) I feel a strong, almost painful imperative to become a better TV writer / screenwriter. I take a lot of notes.

CROSS BETWEEN NAKED LUNCH AND HAROLD & KUMAR?

2011-09-26T21:19:00.002-04:00

I don't know if John Dies at the End looks good, actually, but I definitely want to see it. I love the Phantasm movies. (Well, the first two.)

THREATS

2011-09-25T15:57:00.000-04:00

Got a galley of Amelia Gray's Threats (FSG) in the mail, and I'm looking forward to reading it. It's weirdly gloomy in LA and has been for the past few days. Today I'm spending the entire day in bed, cycling my brain from laptop to TV to book. It's odd that because of my job, "working" now means watching large amounts of television. That can be good (Dexter season 4) and bad (some shows that aren't as good).

Saw Moneyball and Killer Elite. The latter contains a perfect and hilarious scene near the end where a homeless-looking Robert De Niro roots through a suitcase containing ransom money, grabbing wads of bills and stuffing them in the pockets of his windbreaker, grumbling, "Gotta cover my expenses." So meta!

FIRES IMMINENT

2011-09-23T02:28:00.003-04:00

The re-release of FIRES from Civil Coping Mechanisms is on October 10th. I'm so grateful to Michael Seidlinger and CCM for putting this back into print. I wrote it eight years ago and it's been out of print since late 2008... too long!

This edition includes the short story "The Girlfriend Game." Thanks to those of you who've read the book before, and thanks in advance to those who read it for the first time now. More soon.

MAMET MEMO

2011-09-14T11:29:00.000-04:00

I read this a long time ago, but it came up again yesterday in conversation and I re-read it... it's relevant to all dramatic writers in any medium. David Mamet's all caps memo to the writers on THE UNIT:

IF THE SCENE IS NOT DRAMATICALLY WRITTEN, IT WILL NOT BE DRAMATICALLY ACTED.

THERE IS NO MAGIC FAIRY DUST WHICH WILL MAKE A BORING, USELESS, REDUNDANT, OR MERELY INFORMATIVE SCENE AFTER IT LEAVES YOUR TYPEWRITER. YOU THE WRITERS, ARE IN CHARGE OF MAKING SURE EVERY SCENE IS DRAMATIC.

THIS MEANS ALL THE “LITTLE” EXPOSITIONAL SCENES OF TWO PEOPLE TALKING ABOUT A THIRD. THIS BUSHWAH (AND WE ALL TEND TO WRITE IT ON THE FIRST DRAFT) IS LESS THAN USELESS, SHOULD IT FINALLY, GOD FORBID, GET FILMED.

IF THE SCENE BORES YOU WHEN YOU READ IT, REST ASSURED IT WILL BORE THE ACTORS, AND WILL, THEN, BORE THE AUDIENCE, AND WE’RE ALL GOING TO BE BACK IN THE BREADLINE.

SOMEONE HAS TO MAKE THE SCENE DRAMATIC. IT IS NOT THE ACTORS JOB (THE ACTORS JOB IS TO BE TRUTHFUL). IT IS NOT THE DIRECTORS JOB. HIS OR HER JOB IS TO FILM IT STRAIGHTFORWARDLY AND REMIND THE ACTORS TO TALK FAST. IT IS YOUR JOB.

WARRIOR

2011-09-14T00:22:00.003-04:00

It depresses me when good movies do poorly at the box office. To my shock, I loved Gavin O'Connor's Warrior last weekend, and just saw that it basically bombed. It's pretty shamelessly manipulative, but it's fucking awesome. Basically, what this review says. It's a total pleasure to watch, or at least it was for me. It can be fulfilling to see cliches executed brilliantly. Go see it while it's still in theaters.

****

Halfway through House of Holes, love it.

NICK MCDONELL ON 9/11

2011-09-09T21:18:00.003-04:00

My friend Nick McDonell from back in NY wrote a great piece on 9/11 in N+1. Check it out.

TW SEASON 2 / HOUSE OF HOLES / LA IN 40s / SALMON

2011-09-07T23:46:00.006-04:00

I'm on the fourth week of my new job, which is enough time that it seems real. I'm a writer, along with my screenwriting partner Ned Vizzini, on season 2 of MTV's Teen Wolf. It's a show I love and have been a fan of since it premiered. The job's fucking great and I'm lucky to have it. (Lucky because TV writing jobs, especially your first one, are insanely tough to get and there's no clear path to getting them if you're coming from outside the TV world.) So I'm super grateful that the showrunner gave us a chance.

****

I'm about halfway through Nicholson Baker's House of Holes, which is amazing. Also, today I bought Super Sad True Love Story and The Art of Fielding. Good times.

****

Check out this fascinating footage posted by TheAtlantic.com's Kasia Cieplak-Mayr von Baldegg. It's rear-projection footage that would appear blurry in the background of car scenes in movies from the late 40s, early 50s. But when you see it like this, clear and unobstructed, you get a long, lived-in look at what LA was like then.

****

I've been eating a lot of salmon lately. Salmon sashimi, and wild salmon steaks that I buy from the grocery store. (Probably not actually wild, that's likely a lie.) I used to live near a farmer's market, but no more, so it's easiest just to go to the grocery. Should I not be eating so much salmon? Is 3 or 4 days a week too much? I do love it, and it's "brain food." Mercury doesn't seem to be an issue in the same way that it is with tuna.

CLIVE BARKER / POINT BLANK / MISTY / EMMY THE GREAT

2011-09-01T03:50:00.001-04:00

Today at the office I read Clive Barker's short story "Twilight at the Towers" and it reminded me that I fucking love Clive Barker. It made me want to go back and read all the Books of Blood, which I did when I was in my early teens. And also The Damnation Game, which I read around the same time, and which I'm pretty sure introduced me to the word "chitinous."

*****

I saw Point Blank, the French film, two nights ago. Really very good. Best new action movie I've seen in several years. Reminded me that Americans just don't know how to make them anymore. I mean, compare this to the trailer for Abduction (which will probably be a hit but elicited groans of just absolute contempt in the last theater where I saw it play).

*****

I also saw Play Misty for Me recently for the first time. Deeply upsetting. Like, pit of the stomach. Arguably the first modern stalker movie and Clint Eastwood's directorial debut, it's got a fairly ingenious and clever screenplay, and despite some dated shit (the awful romance montage in the woods, or whatever) is truly squirm-inducing to watch. You just loathe the Evelyn Draper character so much (or at least, I did). Also, Clint Eastwood at 41 was an impossibly handsome human being.

*****

Got this from the Paris Review blog. Video is unremarkable but she's really good, no?

BROOKLYNER: "PRUNES AT GUNPOINT"

2011-08-23T01:28:00.005-04:00

A new website called Brooklyner just launched and I have a story called "Prunes at Gunpoint" in it. It's fun!

If James Salter's in the running for short story prizes, everyone else can just give up. Except like Alice Munro and William Trevor.

Last night I watched True Blood, Breaking Bad, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and maybe something else, I can't remember. This weekend I saw Fright Night and Conan the Barbarian. Fright Night was extremely fun... Colin Farrell in particular was eating up his scenes like steak. And the girl is gorgeous.

Then I read The Book of Werewolves.

Today I got in an elevator and Tom Cruise and Jeremy Renner got in too. I tried to look anywhere except at Tom Cruise, to avoid seeming like I knew it was Tom Cruise. Then before I got off I made eye contact and he nodded, like, "I know you know I'm Tom Cruise. It's ok. Really."

NEW JOB / MORE

2011-08-18T12:18:00.003-04:00

So now I go to work every day of the week for the first time since 2009. I just started. My brain is still getting used to the fact that it can't take a nap in the middle of the afternoon anymore. The job is fucking awesome. It's what I came to L.A. to do and it's really exciting.

*****

I'm going to try to go see Fright Night this weekend. I always had a soft spot for the original, and this one is written by Marti Noxon, a terrific writer and producer who Ned & I have been working with this summer.

*****

Glad I got to catch up this week with Amelia Gray, who was in L.A. for a few days and whose novel THREATS is coming out from FSG next March. An indie/internet writer with FSG... fucking cool.

FINALE

2011-08-15T22:40:00.001-04:00

I'm psyched for the Teen Wolf season finale tonight...

HENDRIX / WU-TANG

2011-08-15T22:25:00.002-04:00

The Hendrix / Wu-Tang mash-up album is terrific. This might be my favorite track. But they're almost all great.

THE MAGICIAN KING

2011-08-15T18:55:00.003-04:00

Read The Magician King by Lev Grossman this weekend and loved it, devoured it. I read The Magicians when it came out in 2009 and was really into that too -- I think I read that in two days also, while I was on vacation. The sequel is a little better, maybe... one minor observation: the writing is very pleasing in the way Grossman cannily manages to have his cake and eat it too on a scene by scene level. For example, when the swordsman who's going to train Quentin begins his lesson, he disdainfully takes Quentin's old sword, a semi-useless one which kind of sucks. One way to play the moment would be to have the swordsman toss the lame-ass sword overboard (they're on a boat) but that would be broad/silly/not grounded in the reality of moment-to-moment interactions (which Grossman's storytelling very much is, despite this being a "fantasy" novel)... a more realistic behavior would be for the swordsman to simply set the useless blade aside, but that's boring and unremarkable, so Grossman plays it like this: "For a second Quentin thought he was going to do something drastic, like chuck it overboard, but he just placed it on the deck next to the two other swords." A very mundane example, yes, but not a bad one with regard to the way that Grossman manages to go broad and stay grounded at the same time. He does this on a lot of different levels, all throughout the book. Funny, exceptionally smart, excellently constructed, and with a few really surprisingly harrowing/disturbing moments. He really earns the ending, too.

****

My Blackberry is dying. I need a new one. The background of my Blackberry is an Avedon photo of a woman's face, up close, actually just the eyes. And some digital artifact has now appeared on the screen in the shape of the paramecium, or more appropriate a teardrop, right beneath one of the eyes. It's fascinating but it's also getting bigger and will soon obscure the text of emails I'm trying to read. But the new Blackberry that just came out has a fucking camera without autofocus?? What the fuck? Are you kidding?

CORIOLANUS

2011-08-11T00:24:00.002-04:00

Hey, cool, I'll see this.

*****

Weird few days... lots of swimming. I've been kind of under the weather for about a month, just feeling ulcer-y and lugubrious. But I get more writing and reading done like that. So, all is well, I guess.

L.A. LIGHT

2011-08-06T13:53:00.002-04:00

I assumed the band was Antony and the Johnsons but no, it's a band that sounds exactly like them. The point is the imagery. Beautiful stuff shot on a 5D.

LA Light from Colin Rich on Vimeo.

R.I.P.

2011-08-03T18:38:00.003-04:00

Various places are reporting that William Sleator has died in Thailand. This is really heartbreaking. He was only in his 60s and still writing actively, I believe. I hadn't spoken with him since sometime late last year, but we were in fairly regular contact by email and gchat for some stretches of 2009 and 2010. That was following an interview I did with him. I really admired him, I loved Singularity when I was a kid and then I returned to it when I was older and found that I still loved it. Same with House of Stairs and Fingers and to some degree Interstellar Pig as well. He was an incredibly sweet, mild-mannered guy, who was also very kind the one time I met him in person, which was when he came to visit Yale about ten years ago. He will be missed.

TODAY

2011-08-01T21:16:00.004-04:00

Was a good day. Going to Cru soon, a new restaurant I haven't tried, with one of the executive producers of The Cottage. Then back home to write more. Life is good today, got some good news, and got a copy of Bizarro Fiction #5 which is a blast and which you should buy, because it's cheap and awesome and I'm proud to be in it.

Last night I read some fiction and I watched part of a movie with the best title ever: Seduced and Abandoned. I also watched True Blood (because a friend has a role in it), Curb Your Enthusiasm (because I love it), and a couple episodes of Louie (because it is fucking brilliant, honestly one of the greatest shows of all time, it's actually auteur television). Tonight, Teen Wolf, which I love, and maybe I will read some Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.

BLAH

2011-07-30T20:26:00.002-04:00

As Mahbod of RapGenius says, these guys just... aren't the same anymore.

BED

2011-07-30T09:46:00.000-04:00

Fascinating... I sort of just... didn't really get out of bed yesterday. That was weird.

SATURDAY

2011-07-24T06:02:00.003-04:00

My default mode is lamentation and complaint, but today was really a lovely day. I can't be bothered to think of things that sucked. I woke early and did a good bit of writing on a script. Passed it back and forth with my screenwriting partner Ned, who was at Comic Con and texting me pictures of himself with the cast of Teen Wolf, a show we both love. Then I took a short break and went to a friend's birthday party at Silver Lake Meadow, an unremarkable patch of grass by the reservoir. Had brownies. Saw Ned's wife Sabra and baby Felix, who cooed and gurgled. Then came home and did more writing. When I got home the mail had arrived and I got my very first check for TV writing, which was in the scheme of things not very big but was still bigger than all the money I've ever been paid for my novels and short stories combined in the history of my life. Traded the script back and forth a little more. Went out again and ate a burger from the Oaks Gourmet, which has maybe my favorite burgers in Los Angeles. Spent a while in a conversation with a friend I really enjoyed talking to. Sat out on my deck for a while. Wanted a rare pack of cigarettes at 2:10 a.m. when CVS is closed, so I went down to Pink Dot, which is like 300 yards from my house. They close at 2 a.m. and I knocked on the window but they refused to come out and open the door. But then I noticed they deliver until 3 a.m. So I called the number and had them deliver to their own front door. Came back home and did some more writing. Feeling pretty good.

BIZARRO

2011-07-22T19:02:00.003-04:00

Magazine of Bizarro Fiction issue 5 containing my novella The Obese now available on Amazon. Get it now, or get the novella as a stand-alone (maybe w/ some extra fiction) next year, I think.

I WANT TO SEE IT!

2011-07-22T18:31:00.001-04:00

THE VIEW

2011-07-21T04:13:00.000-04:00

This is of Highland Park, but the view from my deck on July 4th was very similar.

WEEKEND OVER

2011-07-17T22:03:00.000-04:00

I haven't slept since Saturday morning, really... the freeway stuff was all bullshit. The 405 was closed but the streets were empty... except when I tried to go to North Hollywood mid-afternoon. I tried to take a little shortcut and hit *other* construction, ended up just hanging out in my own neighborhood until evening, when I drove up to Sunland and it was clear sailing.

I saw a girl put a lizard in her mouth last night and a guy showed me a Straight Outta Compton jacket that Eazy E gave him. I also got a $2 bill.

That Psychopath Test book was good. It reminded me of one of my old bosses, who was always intellectualizing reasons to fire people. But he wasn't a psychopath, he was just a lapdog to his corporate overlords. I feel like I've known some psychopaths though. I can think of at least one, maybe two, from Yale. Maybe one or two from my old job. I can't think of any I'm in regular contact with right now.

Movie shoot stuff happened last night. It'll be a little while before there's even a rough cut finished but seeing it get made was an amazing experience, everybody involved was a class act on set, the atmosphere was good despite a punishing schedule, and it was just fucking awesome to see people running around with bloody knives stabbing each other as per the script I wrote. Chris Jaymes the director -- I have much gratitude and admiration for that man.

Tonight I'm going to watch Breaking Bad, True Blood, and Teen Wolf, and maybe read a script.

ALMOST DONE

2011-07-14T15:42:00.000-04:00

They're still shooting The Cottage... visited the set again this week... some of my favorite people got covered in blood packs and done in. It's interesting to see the movie change as it gets made. The footage I've seen looks good. There are some things in it that were added during development or even during shooting. I watch the dailies and see actors saying words I wrote, and I also see stuff I never heard of before. There are no creepy doll masks in the script I wrote, but there are going to be creepy doll masks in the movie. So, cool!

I FEEL LIKE AN EARLY 90S SKULL & BONES GUY

2011-07-14T15:36:00.000-04:00

THERE ARE NO WOMEN IN THE THING, OK?

<a href='http://movies.msn.com/movies/movie-trailers/#/video/f749b83d-e1d0-4983-a918-a9c3914b03c0' target='_new' title=''The Thing' Movie Trailer' >Video: 'The Thing' Movie Trailer</a>

Of all the lame & unnecessary remakes, this is the lamest and most unnecessary. Just stop it already, would you? Come on.

BIZARRO FICTION ISSUE FIVE / "THE OBESE"

2011-07-11T19:07:00.000-04:00

Issue Five of The Magazine of Bizarro Fiction just came out and it contains my novella "The Obese," which will be published along with a short story down the road by Lazy Fascist Press. Buy a copy! The magazine is awesome.

TIRED

2011-07-09T14:44:00.003-04:00

Got home at like 8 AM this morning (ie 3 hours ago), slept a couple hours, and just woke. Was on the set of the movie. Saw Ken Baumann and David Arquette and Kristen Dalton do their thing. Pretty amazing & fun to watch actors work, and say dialogue I wrote (and improv new stuff, which in this case was all awesome and will prob go in the movie). The crew guys & girls are all great, fun, good at their jobs. I took a bunch of pictures and will post some when the shoot is over. (Here's Ken in Variety yesterday for the movie.)

RELIEF

2011-07-08T18:41:00.000-04:00

I've spent the last three days at the mercy of a punishing tension headache. I woke on, I think, Wednesday night with what felt like a pulsing vice around my skull. It had been getting worse for about a day but it was so bad in the middle of the night that I thought: I have a brain tumor. This is it. It's a tumor. I'm fucked. And my health insurance is basically nonexistent. I spent the next 24 hours massaging my own neck. The headache has finally gone away.

FIRES TO BE RE-RELEASED THIS OCTOBER

2011-07-05T14:02:00.001-04:00

new cover design by Michael Seidlinger!

There is pleasing news: My first novel, Fires, is being re-released by the excellent indie press Civil Coping Mechanisms on October 10, 2011. Three short stories will be published along with it. Fires has been out of print since the original publisher, Impetus Press (run by the inimitable Willy Blackmore and Jennifer Banash), closed its doors in 2008, so I'm thrilled it is back.

As you can see, there is a vivid new cover, painted by Michael Seidlinger. The new edition will also contain three short stories: "Winter Was Hard" (originally published in a UK magazine called Short Fiction), "Rat Beast," (originally published as a limited edition chapbook by J.A. Tyler's Mud Luscious Press), and "The Girlfriend Game," (originally published and still available online at Frank Hinton's Metazen). CCM is also the publisher of Noah Cicero's Best Behavior, which contains a character based on me.

I wrote Fires in my dorm room when I was 20 years old. I want to make a movie out of it someday. Here are some booknotes about it, wherein I talk about the music I was listening to while I wrote it. I was thrilled when Michael Seidlinger got in touch and asked if CCM could republish it... much gratitude to them. I'm glad it will be out in the world again.

SUNDAY

2011-07-03T14:42:00.000-04:00

Keeping weird hours... I had plans last night that I failed to fulfill because I simply fell asleep. When I woke it was after 2 am, so I just watched Single White Female (GREAT until some ridiculous turns in the last few minutes), Swimfan, and Fear. Then I slept again. Good times! Also reading a galley of The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson, which my friend Rachel sent me from New York.

Meanwhile, as I read and watch various movies and write a bunch of different things, this otherthing is happening, and I'm very psyched about it. I can't write any more about it for now, or even "announce" it (though I can link to twitter posts), but it is shooting right now.

WANT TO SEE

2011-06-30T14:40:00.002-04:00

SQUIRRELS WITH DIRTY MOUTHS

2011-06-28T14:28:00.054-04:00

I just tossed an apple core in a trash can at the pool and the trash rustled and a squirrel hopped onto the edge and glared at me. The fur around its mouth was darker, matted, and wet. It was like a wino squirrel. I was relieved when it wandered away. A few minutes later I was sitting in a beach chair in the shade and reading when the tree above me shook and a squirrel fell to the ground, far more clumsily than squirrels usually descend from trees. It looked at me angrily. Its mouth looked dark, wet, and strange. Then it ran away. I wondered if it might be the same squirrel, but I was pretty sure this one had a stringier tail. Then from the bushes I heard some of them barking at each other hysterically. I started to be worried that they all had some disease. I put my book away pretty soon and left. On my way out, I heard a shuddering in the bushes beside the path and saw one of them hunched there, eating what looked like half a Fig Newton caked in dirt. Its slimy mouth was coated with crumbs and it just kept munching as I walked by. It didn't fear me at all.

NEW NOVELLA: "THE OBESE" COMING IN 2012

2011-06-23T05:09:00.000-04:00

My novella The Obese will be published in "The Magazine of Bizarro Fiction #5" then later as a standalone novella by Lazy Fascist Press next year, early in the year. It's like Daphne du Maurier's "The Birds" except instead of the birds, it's the obese. This really is a novella; it's about half the length of Midnight Picnic, around 20,000 words. Much thanks to Cameron Pierce for taking a chance on a very demented piece of writing.

PRIZE MONEY

2011-06-21T13:44:00.001-04:00

Yale's giving out huge literary prizes starting end of next year or beginning of 2013.

STORIES V!

2011-06-21T04:46:00.002-04:00

I've been reading Scott McClanahan's new book of stories. Actually I don't know how new it is anymore, but it's new to me. And it's very good. Stories V!, go get it.

I'm in a sort of unsettling grey zone right now, just finished working on some things, waiting on notes on another, and a thousand nascent projects. Time to select a wave.