...at least according to the himself incredibly talented Glasgow Phillips, whose terrific book The Royal Nonesuch I recommended a few days ago.
If you don't believe me check out his post Thomas Rigler is Clearly a Genius on The Royal Nonesuch blog, a destination well worth a visit.
Also check out this vintage edition of Backdoor Hollywood featuring Phillips as the host of a tiki-themed movie review show.
General consensus in our industry is that the most influential book published on convergent business models was last year's The Long Tail by Chris Anderson. A loyal fan and long tail evangelist myself, I recently re-evaluated my position and am hereby nominating a new contender for that precious title.
The Royal Nonesuch, written by Glasgow Phillips, is the memoir of a true multi-hyphen cross platform creative type of the sort only the Dotcom era could have produced. Seems like Phillips did it all, and years before it became hip and fashionable: Washed up novelist, indie director, rehab, Internet entrepreneur, TV writer for South Park and the list goes on.
Reading about the author's adventures on his way to adulthood (the sub-title is...Or what will I do when I grow up) comes from the same state of mind that made Dave Eggars A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius so compelling: It's an incredibly funny, well written, tell-all style memoir that doesn't shy away from stupidity and suffering...even more so it actually finds a way to make the painful moments resonate personally. And this book isn't only about real people you'd want to know, but in the case of Trey Parker and Matt Stone, people you've at least heard of.
What does any of this have to do with the Dotcom era: Glasgow Phillips apparently participated in initiatives that still impact our industry: His tales of running a branding agency dedicated to names and tag lines sound eerily familiar when considering today's intuitive witch doctors active in product branding and viral marketing. Hustling with Hollywood producers for breadcrumb budgets is more than just a familiar notion.
Phillips' countless failed and successful attempts at crossing the bridge between VC capital, television, Internet video and Hollywood may have been chaotic and sometimes ill-advised during the 1990's heyday. In a way, though, we've all been growing up trying to become mini-moguls at our own little studios, and have all re-invented ourselves repeatedly by the time we turned 30. I this regard, The Royal Nonesuch is a scary and tremendously uncomfortable read.
Phillips' efforts appear very much in tune with today's young mavericks carving out their share of an audience on YouTube and BlipTV. His guerilla approach to both business and content creation should be a blueprint for any young filmmaker getting out of school today and should probably be taught at the appropriate departments and become required reading material.
Here's a book trailer by the man himself with highlights from a decade of defiance.
For his second book Shining City, novelist Seth Greenland took matters into his own hands: In a video produced for his website and YouTube, the author takes us on a hilarious guided tour through a shiny version of the City of Angels.
At the same time comment on creating entertainment for the ADD generation and holding on to the slow pacing and beauty of the written word, Greenland's author video gets straight to the point: Patterned after intros like masterpiece theater, the author introduces his video lamenting the losing battle of words vs. imagery, only to reveal he's doing all of it comfortably sitting down in his underwear.
Can it get any better?
Ron Hogan has written extensively in Galley Cat about the fairly new and very effective tools book trailers offer both authors and publishing houses alike. The LA Times Book Review also caught up with the trend and dedicated a feature called Straight to Video in a recent edition.
I've been guilty of producing for the genre myself, we just uploaded our third satirical campaign spot for Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict. This one is all about "Jane '08:Truth".
Jane '08 trailer # 1 of our fake campaign ad series has been quite successfully stomping in support of 'Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict'. The viral clip has been picked up by bloggers everywhere and already reached more than 1000 views on YouTube and close to that number on Zannel.
We decided it was time to send installment # 2,'Jane '08: Leadership' into the running.
Decide for yourself.
Talking about campaigns:
Nice "Exercise your Emmy Rights" campaign-themed spread from Universal in the current Emmy Magazine by the way: Every Universal show in the running received the presidential campaign treatment.
My favorites:
'Support Our 'Heroes,' 'Baldwyn * Fey - All the Way,' 'Get a Clue / Vote SVU' and 'D'Onofrio * Noth tough on crime'.
Google continues their quest to make the world a better, searchable place with insatiable appetite for the printed word. Not stopping at their attempt to archive every book ever written with the sometimes controversial online library project, here's an extremely worthwhile foray into contemporary literature. So far, more than 60 authors have participated in taped readings and interviews at Google's Mountain View headquarters, Santa Monica, Dublin and London.
"The Authors@Google program brings authors of all stripes to Google for informal talks centering on their recently published books. Readings of everything from serious literature and political analysis to pioneering science fiction and moving personal memoirs; past participants have ranged from playwright Eve Ensler and Nobel-prizewinning economist Joseph Stiglitz to novelist Jonathan Lethem and U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton."
Who wouldn't want to be the booker for that series, even though Google staffers insist it's volunteers running the show. Since the appearances continue to live on YouTube into online perpetuity, it's the hot ticket to land for every author's rep to push for their established and up and coming client.
As my friend and Internet guru Michael Mascha frequently repeats, like a new media mantra: It's a Google world, we just happen to live in it.
Here's a part of Chris Anderson's The Long Tail presentation.
Authors @ Google are also archived on GoGooroo.
The New York Times’ excellent Video section posted a series of four beautiful, tremendously moving and—believe it or not—uplifting interviews with Art Buchwald after his Death on Thursday 1-18.
Located at the bottom of all New York Times channels (column on your left), click on Art Buchwald and he'll be opening with the words “Hi, I’m Art Buchwald and I just died”, the Pulitzer Prize winning satirist and columnist recounts the start of his career at the Herald Tribune in Paris and a life spent amongst the powerful, famous and extremely talented.
The interview never loses sight of Buchwald’s recent months spent inside a Washington hospice after he was diagnosed with kidney failure. In a very public move the writer had decided not to undergo dialysis but instead to simply die.
Given a maximum of two to three weeks to live by his doctors, the columnist wasted no time and embarked on saying his goodbyes to a never ending stream of friends, colleagues and political and showbiz figures who made the trek to his bedside.
“I became some sort of celebrity for death. […] When people came to the hospice, they didn’t realize, they came in, they were very nervous to see someone who was dying. And they couldn’t believe it because I was up, I was laughing, telling stories, jokes and they went away happy”.
To everyone’s surprise, his body kept his kidneys working and after several months of holding court at the hospice Buchwald was released to his summer home, which in his own words meant having to scrap "all the plans for my funeral" and "start worrying about Bush again." He continued to write his column, even finishing "Too Soon to Say Goodbye", a book on his experiences at the hospice that was published in November.
“The most important thing about a hospice, it is the most important thing about the whole thing—people are afraid of death and they are afraid of talking about death. And they don’t know what to do about it”.
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