Philadelphia Event Alert: APOCALYPSE ON THE SET

Philadelphia native Ben Taylor turned his lifelong interest for film into his first book APOCALYPSE ON THE SET: Nine Disastrous Film Productions. In this compendium of legendary catastrophic productions, Taylor demonstrates that when disaster strikes the movie set, the resulting consequences—sometimes hilarious, sometimes tragic—will rival even the most sensational storyline of the film itself.

A kidnapped South Korean director, a staged shooting-turned-fatal, a studio held hostage—these are only a few of the outlandishly real circumstances under which these nine featured movies were produced. Whether through financial obligation, bravery, or determination alone, each film was completed and released, despite the traumatic conditions that plagued them and threatened their success.

If you live in the Philadelphia area, you can you can hear from Ben Taylor himself at two upcoming events as he discusses the fascinating films and their disaster stories that compelled him to write his book.

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3/29: Barnes and Noble, Rittenhouse; 7:00 PM—FREE

Ben Taylor will be on hand discussing numerous anecdotes from the book and will be available to answer questions and sign books purchased during the event.

4/3: Bryn Mawr Film Institute, Bryn Mawr, PA 7:30 PM—ticketed event

General Admission: $10 | Student: $7 | BMFI Member: $5

Ben Taylor will be discussing his book, highlighting the film Fitzcarraldo and its director Werner Herzog. A screening of Fitzcarraldo will follow at 8:30 PM.

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Ben Taylor is a frequent writer for DamnInteresting.com, a weekly online publication with over 400,000 visitors a month, and contributed to their volume, Alien Hand Syndrome. He is a graduate of LaSalle University and currently lives in the suburbs of Philadelphia.

Visit: www.apocalypseontheset.com

Watch: Book Trailer

Listen: Radio Interview with Ben Taylor

Read: ScreenRant Interview with Ben Taylor

Peruse: Hollywood Reporter Slideshow

TRUE GRIT ... and other great book-to-film adaptations this fall!

We always count on the New Yorker to point us in the direction of the best-looking books and film, and this literary guide to holiday movies is no exception. We're glad they mentioned our slick new edition of TRUE GRIT (read that excerpt below!) but we're also excited for the new adaptation of THE TEMPEST starring Helen Mirren as Prospera.

“True Grit” (December 25th) is the latest from the Coen brothers, and is based on the novel by Charles Portis ,which has been given a spruced-up new package and an afterward by Donna Tartt (“The Secret History”). Featuring Matt Damon, Josh Brolin, and Jeff Bridges, “True Grit” is the tale of Mattie Ross, whose father has been murdered; she attempts to track down the killer with assistance from a U.S. Marshal.

Do you plan on seeing any of these films? (And more importantly, will you read the book first?) Happy movie-going!

Matt Damon praises Charles Portis in Empire Magazine

And of course, Matt Damon's not alone--Portis has long been considered one of the great living American novelists and True Grit is beloved among readers. But it's wonderful to hear people involved with the new Coen Brothers film acknowledge the influence of the original novel in the new adaptation.

"It's just a brilliant adaptation," enthuses Damon. "They change stuff to make a two-hour film out of it, but retain so much of the dialogue, and Charles Portis - who is still alive - has an ear for the way people talk. It's a really special script."

Check out Empire Magazine's exclusive interview with Matt Damon for more. And don't forget to become a fan of True Grit on Facebook to keep up with all of the latest news and buzz surrounding the film, set to release in December!

TRUE GRIT trailer

Get excited for December 25...

Are YOU excited for the new TRUE GRIT film?

Looks like our friends at USA Today and Rolling Stone are! Check out this huge feature that ran in USA Today this morning. Our favorite revelation?

The Coen brothers told Bridges they didn't want him to think about the Wayne movie, and instead draw inspiration from the Charles Portis novel.

Go here to read it all.



The Rolling Stone piece is only available on newsstands, but Walter Kirn said of the "Rediscovery of Charles Portis": "A generation of novelists have simply regarded him as a writers’ writer and have made his name a sort of secret password. Soon, they’ll no longer have him to themselves." Is your interest piqued?



And check out this feature from Cowboys & Indians Magazine!

Bridges particularly enjoyed bringing Portis’ words to life, as the author wrote wonderful dialogue brought to great life by the Coen brothers. “You really feel that you are back in the 1890s,” he says. “The book’s dialogue and story are a bit eccentric, and the Coen brothers keep that rhythm going and create the sense that you’re back in the era when the story took place. It’s a great place for Ethan and Joel to be, and when you read the book you can imagine the two of them directing this movie.”

You can become a Facebook fan of TRUE GRIT here to keep up on all of the latest news for the new edition that will tie in with the Coen Brothers' future classic.

The New Republic on THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN TOUCH"

Today, The New Republic joins the New York Post and others in praising Sinclair McKay's wonderful THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN TOUCH: How the Bond Films Conquered the World. Read the review in its entirety here, but it starts out putting The Man with the Golden Touch in an excellent context of the canon of books exploring the James Bond phenomenon.

Like a number of successful novel sequences or film franchises, the James Bond movies have spawned a stream of books that analyze, often too solemnly, the artistic merit and the cultural relevance of the original works. These books tend to be written by people who take great pleasure in complete immersion in their subject. A book on, say, Arthur Conan Doyle’s famed detective is likely to know what kind of pipe Sherlock Holmes smoked, or where Dr. Watson underwent his training in medicine. The James Bond scholar (there’s a phrase!) is likely to know that Noël Coward was considered for the role of Dr. No, and that if Cary Grant had been willing to sign on for more than one film, he very well might have been cast as the lethal British spy.

Very well and good, you say—an author ought to know his subject. The problem is that such arcane trivia tends to cloud out the bigger picture; fandom, with its purely obsessive approach, does not always produce the most considered or insightful judgments. Most James Bond books (and I do not mean the fiction on which the films are based) tend to get lost in the universe under review—and, to paraphrase Ian Fleming, this world is not enough. Fans of Conan Doyle or P.G. Wodehouse or Star Trek know what I mean, however loathe they may be to admit it.

Another danger stems from the opposite problem: a tendency to condescend to the subject. There are few things worse than a 007 obsessive who pens an entire book about his hero, but, out of an apparent need to appear serious or highbrow, ends up trashing what he most worships. Where is the fun in that? This is a longwinded way of saying that Sinclair McKay’s new book is one of the very best attempts to take stock of the Bond films. It has its share of quirks, and is by no means appropriate for someone with a minimal interest in the series. But his analysis of the movies is smart and unexpected, and his grasp of Bond is obviously the result of thought and study.

The rest of the review can be found here. We also found out that yesterday was Sean Connery's birthday! Was he your favorite Bond?

NYP: James Bond IS "The Man with the Golden Touch"

If you missed Sinclair McKay's interview on the Dennis Prager show, don't fret--this weekend's New York Post had a fantastic two-page spread dedicated to the much-praised new book, The Man with the Golden Touch.

Here's our favorite part of the article, but if you have a few minutes, we recommend you take the time to read the whole thing. If you're a Bond fan and haven't picked this book up yet, this wonderful piece will definitely make you want to do so!

McKay is at his most entertaining simply recounting the absurdity of the films themselves, sprinkled with bits of trivia. Like how cheap the early films were, with “Dr. No” costing only $1 million. Connery was understandably grumpy about his take, which was estimated on the fourth film, “Thunderball,” at about $350,000 — for a movie that took in $141 million worldwide!

Or the fact that most of the early actors, hired for their looks, had to be dubbed. Yet that only made Gert Frobe’s portrayal of Goldfinger better, McKay argues. The German’s lack of English lent him “a constant facial expression of belligerent confusion.”

Today, the greatest challenge facing James Bond is not coming up with an inventive way for the good girl to die — it’s the financial problems of film studio MGM, which has held up Daniel Craig’s third outing indefinitely.

It’s too bad. Because reading McKay’s retrospective, it seems like Bond is just getting started.

Already read, ordered or wish-listed the book? Leave your favorite Bond fan in the comments. We'll share ours later!