Search Results for: California

The Hollywood Blockbuster’s ‘Save the World’ Problem

Longreads Pick

Screenwriter-producer Damon Lindelof reveals the formula—and challenges—facing big Hollywood movies: How do you escalate with any shred of originality?

“‘Once you spend more than $100 million on a movie, you have to save the world,’ explains Lindelof. ‘And when you start there, and basically say, I have to construct a MacGuffin based on if they shut off this, or they close this portal, or they deactivate this bomb, or they come up with this cure, it will save the world—you are very limited in terms of how you execute that. And in many ways, you can become a slave to it and, again, I make no excuses, I’m just saying you kind of have to start there. In the old days, it was just as satisfying that all Superman has to do was basically save Lois from this earthquake in California. The stakes in that movie are that the San Andreas Fault line opens up and half of California is going to fall in the ocean. That felt big enough, but there is a sense of bigger, better, faster, seen it before, done that.'”

Published: Aug 6, 2013
Length: 13 minutes (3,391 words)

How a Convicted Murderer Prepares for a Job Interview

Illustration by Kjell Reigstad

Sabine Heinlein | University of California Press | 2013 | 25 minutes (6,132 words)

Our latest Longreads Member Pick is a full chapter from Among Murderers: Life After Prison, by Sabine Heinlein.

Heinlein is a Pushcart Prize-winning writer who spent more than two years at the Castle, a prominent halfway house in Harlem, where she met convicts who were preparing for the outside world.  Read more…

5 Great Stories on the Lives of Poets

Sylvia Plath. Photo via Wikimedia Commons

“If I knew where poems came from, I’d go there.” —Michael Longley

Below are some of my favorite #longreads that fall under the umbrella of “the lives of the poets.” Each is paired with a favorite poem by the poet in question. Quite a few of these stories are personal, not just about the poet, but about the authors of the pieces themselves. Which is unsurprising, especially because, as Billy Collins put it in a 2001 Globe and Mail piece: “You don’t read poetry to find out about the poet, you read poetry to find out about yourself.”

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1. ‘River of Berman,’ by Thomas Beller (Tablet Magazine, Dec. 13, 2012)

David Berman is perhaps best known for his work with the indie-rock band Silver Jews, but his poetry is a thing to behold, as accessible as it is awesome (in the true sense of the word). Beller’s piece, a “tribute to the free-associating genius of the Silver Jews,” delves not just into the beauty of Berman’s free-association, but also his Judaism, his place in the New York literary scene of the 1990s, and his public pain.

Poem: “Self Portrait at 28” by David Berman

2. ‘The Long Goodbye,’ by Ben Ehrenreich (Poetry Magazine, Jan. 2008)

The details of poet Frank Stanford’s life are as labyrinth-like as his most famous work, an epic poem titled, “The Battlefield Where The Moon Says I Love You.” His life was in many ways a series of contradictions: his childhood was divided between the privilege of an upper-crust Memphis family and summers deep in the Mississippi Delta; he was a backwoods outsider who maintained correspondence with poets ranging from Thomas Lux to Allen Ginsberg; and posthumously, he is both little-known and a cult figure in American letters. In seeking to unravel the man behind the myth, Ehrenreich heads deep into the lost roads of Arkansas: the result is a haunting and vivid portrait of both Stanford’s life and his own quest.

Poem: “The Truth” by Frank Stanford

3. ‘Zen Master: Gary Snyder and the Art of Life,’ by Dana Goodyear (New Yorker, Oct. 20, 2008)

Dana Goodyear’s profile of Gary Snyder provides a rich rendering of the Beat poet, Buddhist, and California mountain man.

Poem: “Night Song of the Los Angeles Basin” by Gary Snyder

4. ‘On Sylvia Plath,’ by Elizabeth Hardwick (New York Review of Books, Aug. 12, 1971)

It is likely that if you have made it this far down the list you already know a fair amount about Sylvia Plath, but what makes this piece interesting is Elizabeth Hardwick’s take on her, and her lovely, clear-eyed prose. Hardwick, who co-founded the New York Review of Books, was herself no stranger to the lives of poets, having spent 23 years married to Robert Lowell. It is also—maybe—of interest that the same girls who fall mercilessly hard for Plath at 16 and 21 and often discover Hardwick with a similar fervor a few years down the road (myself included).

Poem: “Cut” by Sylvia Plath

5. ‘Robert Lowell’s Lightness,’ by Diantha Parker (Poetry Magazine, Nov. 2010)

Widely considered one of the most important 20th century American poets, Lowell’s biographer called him “the poet-historian of our time.” Parker’s piece examines a much more personal history, that of Lowell’s relationship with her father, painter Frank Parker.

Poem: “History” by Robert Lowell

Playlist: 5 Podcasts on the Business of Film and TV

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Gabrielle Gantz (@contextual_life) is the blogger behind The Contextual Life. She’s a frequent longreader and also a big podcast fan, so we asked her for some recommendations.

For a while now we’ve been hearing about the rise of television, how shows like Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and Game of Thrones have surpassed the film industry when people think of quality viewing experiences. Gone are the days where writers and actors dreamed of making it big in pictures, now talent is flocking to small screen.

Here are some recent interviews that will be of interest to those who like to dig deeper:

WBUR On Point: Is The U.S. Movie Industry Broken? (45 min.)

This is a panel discussion featuring Lynda Obst, a film and television producer whose credits include “Sleepless in Seattle” and whose recent book, Sleepless in Hollywood: Tales from the New Abnormal in the Movie Business, chronicles the recent changes in the movie industry—with big blockbusters more common and smaller films barely getting made. Alongside Obst, sometimes arguing, sometimes agreeing, was Sharon Waxman, CEO and EIC of TheWrap.com.

KCRW The Treatment: Sofia Coppola (29 min.)

Despite the industry’s changes, Coppola is still making “small films,” including her latest, The Bling Ring, a film based on the real-life events (chronicled by Vanity Fair’s Nancy Jo Sales) of a group of California teenagers obsessed with celebrities; so much so that they break into stars’ homes. 

NPR Fresh Air: Elisabeth Moss (41 min.)

Mad Men just wrapped up its sixth season and has one more to go before it’s off the air for good. Terry Gross spoke with Elisabeth Moss (aka Peggy Olson) about the evolution of her character and how much she knows about the show’s direction before shooting an episode. (Read the transcript here.)

The Nerdist: Charlie Hunnam (1 hr., 17 min.)

Here’s Hunnam, who plays Sons of Anarchy‘s “Jax” Teller, with Chris Hardwick on being approached by real bikers and his life growing up in a working-class town in North East England.

The Nerdist Writer’s Panel: The Lizzie Bennet Diaries (1 hr.)

Nerdist Writer’s Panel host Ben Blacker sits down with the people behind The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, a web series that’s a modernized adaptation of Pride and Prejudice with the story told primarily through the lead character Lizzie Bennet‘s video diary entries. The episode includes co-creator Bernie Su, writers Margaret Dunlap, Rachel Kiley, and Kate Rorick, and writer/transmedia guy Jay Bushman.

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Photo: Michael Yarish/AMC

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Playlist: 5 Pioneering Computer Demos, featuring MIT, Stanford and Xerox

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Mark Armstrong is the founder of Longreads and editorial director for Pocket

Last week we lost a pioneer of early computing, Doug Engelbart, and Tom Foremski has an excellent short backstory about the inventor of the mouse. It was Engelbart’s 1968 demo of computer graphical user interfaces that inspired everything we now use today—yet despite his many accomplishments Engelbart struggled in later years to get attention or funding for his work.

Now seems like an appropriate time to look back at some of the early computer demos, and for further reading, check out “Creation Myth,” Malcolm Gladwell’s 2011 New Yorker story on the work of Engelbart, Xerox PARC and Apple.

1. The Early Days of ‘Cloud Computing’ at MIT, 1963 (28 min.)

This is a 1963 interview with professor Fernando J. Corbato at the MIT Computation Center, where he explains the concept of “timesharing,” which they developed to allow teams to work on individual consoles that attach to one centralized computer.

For more from MIT, check out this 1963 demonstration of “sketchpad” software developed by Ivan Sutherland.

2. Hewlett-Packard’s First Personal Computer, 1968 (21 minutes)

Marketing brochures proclaimed that HP’s 9100A was “more than a calculator—it’s really a desk-top computer!” The cost: $4,900. Read more on how the Model 9100A was developed.

3. Doug Engelbart, Stanford Research Institute, 1968 (1 hr., 15 min.)

This two-hour demo from Engelbart, who founded SRI’s Augmentation Research Center, not only introduces the mouse, but also everything from the graphical user interface to hyperlinking, cutting-and-pasting and collaborative editing.

4. Early Digital Teleconferencing, University of Southern California, 1978 (6 min.)

USC’s Informational Sciences Institute produced this filmed demonstration of early digital teleconferencing technology over ARPAnet, complete with guy-who-nearly-misses-the-call-because-he-was-yachting.

5. Xerox Star User Interface, 1982

It was Xerox PARC where Steve Jobs saw the future for Apple, when he visited and got a demo of the Alto personal computer. Xerox released its Star Professional Workstation in 1981, and this clip features Star designers Charles Irby and David Canfield-Smith explaining how the system worked.

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Image via dougengelbart.org

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‘Why Did You Shoot Me? I Was Reading a Book’

Longreads Pick

An excerpt from Radley Balko’s new book Rise of the Warrior Cop, on the militarization of U.S. police forces and the reasons SWAT teams have been able to conduct raids for seemingly minor alleged crimes:

“In 2007 a Dallas SWAT team actually raided a Veterans of Foreign Wars outpost for hosting charity poker games. Players said the tactics were terrifying. One woman urinated on herself. When police raided a San Mateo, California, poker game in 2008, card players described cops storming the place ‘in full riot gear’ and ‘with guns drawn.’ The games had buy-ins ranging from $25 to $55. Under California law, the games were legal so long as no one took a ‘rake,’ or a cut of the stakes. No one had, but police claimed the $5 the hosts charged players to buy refreshments qualified as a rake. In March 2007, a small army of local cops, ATF agents, National Guard troops, and a helicopter raided a poker game in Cary, North Carolina. They issued forty-one citations, all of them misdemeanors. A columnist at the Fayetteville Observer remarked, ‘They were there to play cards, not to foment rebellion. . . . [I] wonder . . . what other minutiae, personal vices and petty crimes are occupying [the National Guard’s] time, and where they’re occupying it. . . . Until we get this sorted out, better not jaywalk. There could be a military helicopter overhead.'”

Source: Salon
Published: Jul 8, 2013
Length: 30 minutes (7,500 words)

Our Longreads Member Pick: Among Murderers (Chapter 7), by Sabine Heinlein

This week’s Member Pick is a chapter from Among Murderers, a new nonfiction book by Sabine Heinlein, published by University of California Press, examining the lives of criminals as they prepare to re-enter society. Heinlein, who was recently awarded a Pushcart Prize for her Iowa Review essay “A Portrait of the Writer as a Rabbit,” explains the origins of this chapter, which focuses on “Job Readiness”:
 

“A few years ago I set out to learn how New York’s reentry organizations help former prisoners navigate freedom. I talked to clients and staff and observed programs at nonprofit agencies with Pollyanna-ish names like STRIVE (Support and Training Results in Valuable Employees), CEO (Center for Employment Opportunities) and the Fortune Society. The Fortune Society is New York’s most prominent and comprehensive reentry agency. It offers substance abuse treatment to ex-offenders, as well as computer, cooking, fatherhood and ‘job readiness’ classes. Fortune, as it is commonly known, also runs a halfway house in West Harlem nicknamed the Castle. I clearly remember the first time I visited the Castle, its schist rock facade sparkling in the sun. With its miniature lookout towers, its arched windows and the bright crenellations that top some of its walls, the Castle resembled a Gothic bastion. One could easily imagine a muddy moat separating those who had committed serious transgressions—those who had been stigmatized and locked away for most of their lives—from the rest of the world.
 
“To shed light on the struggles of the 700,000 men and women who are released from U.S. prisons each year, I followed three residents of the Castle for several years. Angel Ramos, the protagonist of my book, Among Murderers: Life After Prison, spent 29 years in prison for strangling a young girl in an abandoned building in East Harlem and for trying to kill a co-worker. At the Castle, the 47-year-old befriended two older men, Bruce and Adam, who had also spent several decades locked up for murder. Over the course of more than two years Angel, Bruce, Adam and I spent a lot of time with each other. I accompanied Adam when he bought his first winter coat in 31 years and visited different ethnic restaurants and cafés with Bruce. I helped celebrate Angel’s ‘first’ birthday and was there when, on Halloween, the halfway house residents turned the Castle into a haunted house. Together, the men and I explored the neighborhoods of their youth. We talked about murder, remorse, shame, love, loss and prison. (Sooner or later our conversations inevitably returned to prison, where the men had spent most of their adult lives.)
 
“One of the most revealing experiences the men shared with me was their seemingly endless track through New York’s job readiness programs, a requirement to qualify for housing subsidies, welfare and the agencies’ employment referrals. This is what I saw.”

Read an excerpt here.

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Our Longreads Member Pick: Among Murderers (Chapter 7), by Sabine Heinlein

Longreads Pick

This week’s Member Pick is a chapter from Among Murderers, a new nonfiction book by Sabine Heinlein, published by University of California Press, examining the lives of criminals as they prepare to re-enter society. Heinlein, who was recently awarded a Pushcart Prize for her Iowa Review essay “A Portrait of the Writer as a Rabbit,” explains the origins of this chapter, which focuses on “Job Readiness.”

Published: Jun 7, 2013
Length: 24 minutes (6,132 words)

Hollywood Coming To Dixon? Executive’s Financial Troubles Raise Questions

Longreads Pick

A 10-week investigation into Carissa Carpenter, a self-described entertainment executive who has proposed building a $2.8 billion movie studio in a small farming town in Northern California:

“So who is Carissa Carpenter?

“Those who have encountered the California native – in City Council chambers and in the courts – have widely divergent views, with descriptions ranging from visionary to fanciful dreamer to fraud.

“This much is clear: Carpenter’s quest to raise millions for a movie studio in Dixon is the sixth time in 16 years that she has embarked on a similar fundraising mission in Northern California, with an additional pitch in South Carolina.

“Former investors and past business associates describe a distinctive pattern: lots of initial hype, promises of a big money stream from unnamed investors, enthusiasm among local officials – then missed deadlines, delays and, ultimately, failure.”

Published: Jun 2, 2013
Length: 19 minutes (4,873 words)

Confessions of a Sociopath

Longreads Pick

A diagnosed sociopath explains how she thinks and functions. Adapted from a book by M.E. Thomas:

“I loved getting high marks in school; it meant I could get away with things other students couldn’t. When I was young, what thrilled me was the risk of figuring out just how little I could study and still pull off the A. It was the same for being an attorney. During the California bar exam, people were crying from the stress. The convention center where the exam took place looked like a disaster relief center; people made desperate attempts to recall everything they had memorized over the prior eight weeks—weeks that I spent vacationing in Mexico. Despite being woefully ill-prepared by many standards, I was able to maintain calm and focus enough to maximize the knowledge I did have. I passed while others failed.”

Published: May 7, 2013
Length: 13 minutes (3,422 words)