Month / July 2007

by Edward Champion

New L.A. Times Piece

I wrote a lengthy feature on confessional writing that appears in this Sunday’s Los Angeles Times. Many thanks to the writers who talked with me for the piece and who put up with my laryngitis. I did try to include everyone, but alas, I ended up talking to far more people than I probably should have. So I’m sorry if you didn’t make it in.

[UPDATE: Ms. Bussel and I talked for close to 90 minutes for this piece and she’s offered some additional perspective on her blog: “Me, I’m much more PG than I am NSFW, and yet by dint of what I do for a living, most of what you’ll stumble across on line is about matters sexual. But talk to me at a party and I’ll quiz you about your babies or your workout routine or your creative endeavors. I’ll ask you about your bad dates and favorite cupcakes. Sure, Martha and I probably horrified some of the Etsy folks with our sex talk, but I don’t think that’s a me thing, it’s a comfort with the topic, amongst friends.”]

by Edward Champion

Fringe on the Horizon

About three years ago, when I talked with fellow theatrical producers at the San Francisco Fringe Festival, many of them told me that they had serious reservations about the New York Fringe scene.

“It’s all money over there,” said one. “They’re just looking for the next Urinetown.”

I was a bit skeptical about this charge back then — perhaps because I’m naive or perhaps because, if you have any ambition, it’s extremely difficult to make money at micro-theatre. (It’s worth noting that my own show cost around $3,000 to make, which I was able to generate after selling off most of my music collection — and that’s not even counting volunteer time. Even if I had filled every seat, there was simply no way to break even. But it was worth it.)

But next month, I’ll be able to confirm the veracity (or paucity) of these charges at the New York Fringe Festival, which occurs between August 10th and August 26th. Are these shows designed to catch the eye of off-off-Broadway producers? I’d like to think — at $15 per show — that the Fringe scenario here is fairly comparable to what I experienced in San Francisco.

I’m hoping to offer some coverage here.

by Edward Champion

Apostasy to Chicago?

Radar: “According to the Chicago Film Critics Association, 20th Century Fox has instituted a policy of favoritism in the Windy City, providing special treatment to select film reviewers. Others, it is charged, are not given adequate time to craft stories between seeing a movie and its release—or are shut out of screenings entirely.”

by Edward Champion

7 Additional Ways to Cultivate a Lifetime Reading Habit (And Become a Misanthropic Kook in the Process)

So here’s a list on how to become a lifetime reader. But this series of suggestions doesn’t perform true justice for the truly hard-core. Because this list is inadequate if we take this vital reading sector into account, here are seven more handy suggestions:

15. Have friend ridicule you during any moment you’re not reading a book. The shame will then cause you to read further, particularly if there are electrodes attached to your hands.

16. Surround yourself with more books than you can possibly read. But this is too easy a suggestion and it should be taken to the next logical level. If you wall yourself in with interesting books, then you will be forced to remove the books that surround you on all sides. Of course, in removing one book from these many walls, you will then become so interested in it and start reading it. Be careful not to die of starvation and dehydration should you choose this option. Create holes in the book walls so that straws can pass through. (And be sure to hire a valet to slip you the appropriate viands and nutritional supplements. If you don’t have an expendable income, you can always dig a tunnel.)

17. If you wear glasses, replace insides of lenses with text cutups. The nice thing about books is that they can be cut up into sections with scissors. However, this technique may be too time-consuming for the true reader, who may read the text inside the glasses after two minutes and pine for more to read. So be sure to put something truly incomprehensible in there like Finnegan’s Wake.

18. Go to pretentious cocktail parties. Ideally, these should be populated by smug intellectuals who claim to read everything and who seem to talk of nothing but books. There, they will quote chapter and verse from obscure texts and talk about some such author’s “dichotomous thematics limning the main post-postmodernist narrative thrust” and other things that are, for the most part, tough to wrap one’s head around. You may be frightened by this people. After all, you can’t even talk about sports with them and some of them don’t even drink beer. But their banter will inspire you to figure out just what the fuck they’re talking about. Ergo, more books to read! An entire nomenclature to deconstruct!

19. Remain celibate. Pay no attention to all that propaganda from the Western World. There’s nothing wrong in being a misanthrope! A partner gets in the way of reading more books. And sometimes when pursuing a reading life, there comes a time in which you have to make tradeoffs. Sure, you’ll end up jerking off twelve times a day. But that also means reading six more chapters a day than those silly people in marriages and relationships. If this causes you to become socially maladjusted, never mind the labels from others!

20. Read while walking. You’ll get more pages read each day if you read while walking. Never mind such silly things as stoplights and objects you’ll bump into. This is, after all, what peripheral vision is for.

21. Why read just one book at the same time? And I’m not talking about “being in the middle of many books.” I’m talking about setting two books side-by-side and reading them both at the same time. After all, if a tough guy can double-first two beers, surely, you can double-read two books.