Paging Doctor Kickass

How good is Josh Bazell's debut novel, Beat the Reaper?

Last year I took my girlfriend to see Equus. During intermission, I pulled the book out of my bag to see how much I could read before the show started again. That's the measure of a great book - one where you spend your day looking for moments to get in a few more pages.

Beat the Reaper is the story of Peter Brown, a.k.a. Pietro Brwna, a reformed Mafia hitman looking for a little redemption through a medical residency in a Manhattan hospital. When a dying mobster threatens to out him, Brown finds the old adage true: just when you think you’re out, they pull you back in.

You're digging it, right?

James Ellroy has written a new book. After eight long years and a short story collection or two, Mr. Ellroy has finished his Underworld USA Trilogy with Blood's a Rover, a wild and unpredictable ride through the end of the 1960's and the end of our country's innocence for good.

James Ellroy began his career with such fantastic works in Noir as Brown's Requiem, Because the Night, and Killer on the Road. He hit it big with his LA Quartet: The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, LA Confidential, and White Jazz, all of which were international bestsellers. LA Confidential was made into a classic film starring Russel Crowe and Kevin Spacey.

"The Novel of Bullshit is dead."

"The Novel of Bullshit is dead."
 
Those were the words of praise Thomas Pynchon heaped on Rudy Wurlitzer's debut novel, Nog, published in 1969.
 
As if that wasn't enough of an endorsement, a few weeks ago I got a copy in the mail.  After scanning the back, I had to read the synopsis out loud to my girlfriend: Nog tells the tale of a man adrift in the American West, armed with nothing more than his own three pencil-thin memories and an octopus in a bathysphere.
 
I can't remember the last time I've read a synopsis that good, so beautiful in its simplicity. 
 
The book didn't disappoint.  Wurlitzer's prose meanders wildly but remains imminently readable. It’s a fascinating narrative that challenges your preconceived ideas on how a story can be built. 
 

Weathering The Storm

Author.  Surfer.  Skier.  Survivor.  Norman Ollestad has done quite a lot in his life already.  On February 19, 1979, he was 11-years-old, traveling from Santa Monica airport into Big Bear to retrieve a skiing trophy he had won the day before.  Along for the ride were his father, his father's girlfriend, Sandra, and the pilot of the small, chartered Cessna. 

About fifteen minutes into the flight, they were caught up in a blizzard and the plane crashed into Ontario Peak mountain and Norman's father and the pilot were instantly killed.  Norman and Sandra survived, but she had a broken arm and a severe head injury.  Cut off from radar, and in the middle of a near white-out, little Norman had to lead them down to safety with Sandra, sometimes, literally on his back.  The dangerous trek down the steep mountain lasted 9 hours, and when it was over, Sandra too, was dead.  Frostbitten and barely able to walk, Norman was the only survivor of the tragedy.

Moods, Masochism, and Murder: A Conversation

Stephen Elliott is “giving” away his latest, yet to be released book; a memoir entitled The Adderall Diaries: A Memoir of Moods, Masochism, and Murder .  

But...with a few simple and lovely conditions attached.

A new release from Elliott is always a  pleasure, compounded now by his generous, and to me, slightly counterproductive, offer to let 500 fans get their eager hands on a copy well in advance of its September release date.  He's named this venture the Lending Library and participants are simply requested  to read the book, sign it,  and then must pass it on to the next person on the list within a week.

A Conflicted Reaction

On April 24th, The Informers, the latest adaptation of a Bret Easton Ellis novel, hits select theaters.  For Ellis, this is a particularly unique adaptation as this is the first time that he has a co-screenwriter credit on the finished product.  In fact, Ellis was involved during every stage of production, from writing over seventeen drafts of the script, to being on set, to viewing tons of cuts in the editing studio.  It is perhaps for this reason that it hits him harder than most that the end result of the film is something he has very conflicted feelings on.

With The Informers already screening at Sundance last year and advance reviews popping up all over the web, the film is already receiving a very mixed response.  C.H.U.D., a movie review site, gave it a 0 out of 10 rating, saying it actually demanded a new classification of Fuck God.  When I was invited to view the film by the wonderful people at Senator Distribution, I didn't know any of this.  And perhaps that was for the best, as I carried no veiled biases in with me.  For this reason and many others, I walked away from the movie actually liking what I had seen quite a lot.  I won't go into an in-depth review, but I will frankly say that, some of the negative criticism The Informers is getting seems very unfounded to me. While the film is far from perfect, it captures an atmosphere and tone you see absent in many movies nowadays.

So when I was invited to Bret Easton Ellis' sleek, Patrick Bateman-esque apartment a few weeks ago to conduct this interview, I did not know that I'd be stepping into any potential 'controversy'.  So I was happy to find that, in the end, I think it turned out great as Bret got to air a lot of his grievances over the film and I got to meet the man for the first time.  Bret and I had such a fun time with the interview, that I was his guest for over two hours.  He was nothing but a warm and gracious host and someone I'd be lucky to have the chance to interview again.  I'll shut up now and let the piece speak for itself.

Jerking Off To Sesame Street

Often it’s noted that fiction work mimics reality; especially the author’s known and experienced reality. This would certainly explain Jerry Stahl’s newest release Pain Killers. After all, the protagonist is a jaded ex-addict whose tone sounds similar to Stahl’s own narrations in his narco-memoir Permanent Midnight. How would one explain, though, how he writes with such familiarity about the book’s other key concepts – Nazis, hookers and transvestite urine (oh my!)?

Over the years, Stahl has used both his version of reality and the boundless imagination to pen stories for porn magazines, create a fictionalized memoir of comedian Fatty Arbuckle entitled I, Fatty and get Permanent Midnight adapted into a screenplay starring Elizabeth Hurley and Ben Stiller. Now under his name emerges Pain Killers, a novel weaving an intricately odd plot that truly, no synopsis does much justice. Ex-cop and murdering wife battle a demented evil genius doctor? Frightening commentary on the media’s obsession with prison television? Perhaps it’s better to let Stahl dissect it a bit himself… or simply read and interpret yourself.

Grinding Out a Riot Act

Take a drop of Joe R. Lansdale's blood. Then a slice from David J. Schow's scalp. Scrape some phlegm off Tarantino's tongue. Inject some of Robert Rodriguez's sperm. Pour in some Karo syrup. Mix it in a blender. Pour. These are just some of the ingredients of Stephen Romano's unique work.

Stephen Romano is a mutant. He's a military science experiment gone all bug-fuck bad. He's a dangerous DIY author/artist/hyphenate. Residing in Austin, Texas, Stephen Romano is best known as the screenwriter who, along with the infamous Don Coscarelli (Phantasm), brought to life Joe R. Lansdale's "Incident On and Off A Mountain Road" for the pilot episode of Showtime's Masters of Horror series. Stephen also released THE RIOT ACT, a collection of his balls-to-the-wall short stories, in which Joe R. Lansdale wrote, "This may be the best new short story collection I've read in years. Stephen Romano isn't fucking around."

If the buzz surrounding his new book, SHOCK FESTIVAL, is any indication, Stephen Romano's work will not only turn heads, it's going to make heads roll, because no, he isn't fucking around. FANGORIA called it "One of the greatest homages to B-cinema ever undertaken." FILM THREAT described it as "A stone groove and as badass a tome as you're likely to come across this year or next."

Here Stephen Romano talks with Joshua Jabcuga about SHOCK FESTIVAL, his love of movies, and working as a professional screenwriter.

A Long Time Coming

Amy Hempel is a tough interview.

I don't mean that to say she's rude or doesn't answer questions, it's just that this interview started more than two years ago.

The first time I approached her for this was Aug. 10, 2006, at a reading in the park at Union Square, where she joined other writers to read excerpts from Unleashed: Poems by Writers' Dogs.

By the end of the reading the skies opened. The kind of rain that changes the direction of rivers. She ducked under a tent and stayed to chat with friends and fans. When the crowd cleared, I made my pitch.

She was gracious in saying 'no.' She ran out of things to say after a flurry of interviews for her collected works, she said, and told me to contact her in a year.

So I waited. One year later, I made my pitch again, and our back-and-forth culminated in an agreement to answer a list of questions by e-mail.

You Were Expecting A Dude?

Close your eyes. Well, not yet. Read the next paragraph first.

Picture a hard-boiled bad-ass. That noir anti-hero with blood-flecked armor, imperfect but too cool to show it. Lighting a cigarette and staring off into the distance with that world-weary look of someone who knows all the angles but still can't figure out how the hell they got into this mess.

OK, now you can close your eyes, and once you get that image of that person in your head, open them back up.

Ready?

You pictured a guy, didn't you?

I'd bet good money you did, and maybe it's not a sexist thing. It's fair to say that the hard-boiled crime genre has long been a boy's-only club. Sure, there are strong female characters, but at the end of the day, the person at the end with their finger on the trigger is almost always carrying a bottle of whisky and a Y chromosome.