Lit 101

For years, actor Billy Bob Thornton was approached by various parties looking to convince him to write a certain kind of memoir. But he had no real interest in writing an autobiography, let alone one that might rate as People’s juiciest.

However, as Thornton explained last night on Tavis Smiley, another rascally son of the American South finally convince him to give the book-writing game a try. As a result, there is this month’s new release The Billy Bob Tapes: A Cave Full of Ghosts:

“People have asked me for years to do it. But they want some gossipy celebrity book and I just wouldn’t do it. But [co-author] Kinky [Friedman] said, ‘Hey, why don’t you tell some of those funny stories about growing up and then give you a couple of chapters to gripe about how our society is crumbling, and, you know, we’ll go from there.’”

Read more

Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews.

To mark the arrival of her newest memoir When We Were Outlaws, storied lesbian writer and activist Jeanne Cordova chatted with Windy City Times reporter Sarah Toce about some of the book’s highlights. What a long and remarkable life’s journey it has been.

On the journalism front, it all started in 1971 with the launch of groundbreaking LA magazine The Lesbian Tide. Most of the time, the publication was powered by donated, like-minded labor. During this time, Cordova also became the human-rights editor at progressive newspaper the LA Free Press:

“I was first hired as The Freep’s token ‘Chicana, feminist, lesbian’ columnist. My weekly essays became know as ‘that dyke column’ by the largely straight readership, but it got people listening to my voice as I covered the [1973] Battle of the Sexes, the famous tennis match between female (and closeted lesbian) tennis player Billie Jean King and male tennis star, Charlie Riggs,” said Cordova.

Read more

New York publishing firm Open Road Integrated Media is calling it Kirk Douglas’ “first E-riginal.” Even though the 242-page work will also be available in paperback.

At age 95, the three-time Oscar nominee and prolific author has conquered just about every other media realm. Come June, with forward help from George Clooney, he will have added material written primarily for the Kindle, Nook and so on, under the title I Am Spartacus! Making a Film, Breaking the Blacklist. From today’s announcement:

Open Road co-founder and CEO Jane Friedman says, “I have admired Kirk Douglas as an author ever since the publication of his first bestselling book, The Ragman’s Son, in which he touched on the complicated and career-threatening decisions he took in producing Spartacus, which resulted in the breaking of the decade-long Hollywood blacklist. I am thrilled that he finally decided— with the wisdom and clarity of his 95 years—to tell the definitive story of the making of this iconic film amid the shameful political climate of the time.”

Read more

There have been several memorable remembrances of journalist and biographer Charles Higham, who passed away in LA late last month at the age 80. Most notably, locally, was Joel Bellman’s guest post on LA Observed about the time he interviewed Higham for an Orson Welles radio documentary.

Another worthy piece comes from the country where the British-born Higham began his transcontinental journalism career, Australia, in the form of a Sydney Morning Herald obit written by Philippe Mora, a French-Australian writer-director who occasionally contributes to the paper. There is much about Higham’s most famous work, the 1980 Errol Flynn biography The Untold Story, as well as this funny anecdote:

Higham had a delight in the macabre and the absurd, exemplified by his invitation to the English widow of Hermann Erben for dinner in Los Angeles with a Flynn double, Chuck Pilleau. Higham coaxed from her a bizarre revelation: SS agent Erben was circumcised.

Read more

Casting director Sarah Monson (pictured), who blogs as The Bitchlorette and contributes to various online outlets, is reaching out to would-be reality TV show contestants in an unusual way. She has authored a new e-book titled Me on TV: The First Ever Kick-Ass Guide to Get You on Any Reality Show, officially released today.

The price for this 130-page tome is relatively steep – $47. But Monson, whose credits include Blind Date, The Bachelor and Survivor, insists she has personally put her methods to the test:

“I’ve even gotten myself cast on a few reality shows and game shows, including Who Wants To Be A Millionaire and How Do I Look? I’ve tested this stuff and it absolutely works.”

Read more

The title of the book is Assassins… Serial Killers… Corrupt Cops… Chasing the News in a Skirt and High Heels. The recalled contents are to SoCal journalism what On the Waterfront was to Hollywood.

Author Mary Neiswender began her trailblazing, twice-Pulitzer Prize nominated reporting career at the Long Beach Press-Telegram just a few years before Brando’s Terry Malloy eviscerated the big screen. She quickly established herself as a journalistic contender, becoming later that decade the first female member of San Pedro’s Harbor Press Room. The booze-soaked, cigarette-stenched den was located above the Harbor Division police station and directly below court chambers and the local jail.

Here’s how Neiswender recalls her first day, alongside ten waterfront-beat reporters for all the major LA newspapers:

As I pushed open the door, the room quieted. There were a lot of throat-clearing noises. I saw my desk top was clean, except for a lone, plastic geranium in a broken pot. I smiled. I could handle that.

Read more

Gustavo Arellano, an editor at OC Weekly, is having no trouble drumming up publicity for his new book Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America. On the heels of an April 18 LA Times piece and April 30 item in the New York Times comes today’s Q&A in the Orange County Register.

When his agent first suggested an overview of how Mexican food has evolved in the U.S., Arellano assumed the topic had already been covered. But to his amazement,he discovered it had only been properly documented for academic purposes. Later on, Arellano stumbled across an untold bit of Mexican OC  food lore:

“On the local scene, the best example [of what I learned] was discovering how Doritos were invented at Disneyland by workers at Alex Foods, a Mexican-food company based in Anaheim run by the Morales family.

Read more

The name of the October 15 graphic novel release is Anomaly, and that it certainly is. Mainly because the co-author is none other than show business super-attorney Skip Brittenham, whose day job involves negotiating massive pay-or-play deals for A-list actors.

At 370 pages, Anomaly is being hyped as the longest graphic novel yet. Brittenham has paired with artist Brian Haberlin (of Spawn series fame) for a story set in 2717:

Humans live in off-world colonies, and a single corporation, The Conglomerate, routinely conquers other planets to steal their resources. The story follows a group of explorers who embark on a diplomatic mission to a mysterious planet, only to find themselves embroiled in a global conflict between its exotic inhabitants… Brittenham and Haberlin worked with distinguished professors in philosophy, religion and science to develop Anomaly‘s cultural landscape and planetary functions based on actual historical and scientific facts.

Read more

It’s a phenomenon no doubt being replicated at adults-only retail destinations across the country. According to a report by Adult Video News, LA sex shop The Pleasure Chest is reaping a bonanza of new sales as a result of the runaway success of the e-book trilogyFifty Shades of Grey.

Kristen Tribby – the store’s delightfully titled director of creative development – tells AVN that the last time they saw this much pop culture-derived action was when Carrie Bradshaw sang the praises of a Rabbit vibrator. There’s so much interest in fact that the chain is going the extra event-mile:

To meet these increased demands, the store has announced “Fifty Shades of Pleasure,” a workshop that lets customers revisit the hottest activities from the books and explore ideas on how to incorporate them into their bedroom adventures. The Pleasure Chest is also offering “Fifty Shades of Pleasure” as a specialized workshop for private parties and small groups.

Read more

Fifty cops. Author Joseph Wambaugh isn’t exactly sure why or how he settled on that number as the one required to write a novel. But as he told interviewer Lee Goldberg yesterday at the LA Times Festival of Books, this was once again – give or take a few participants – the amount of background interviews he personally conducted before sitting down to write his latest, Harbor Nocturne.

Since Wambaugh lives in Point Loma, San Diego, the meeting point for his latest round of anecdotal fact-finding with San Pedro area cops was a Ruth’s Chris Steak House in Irvine. Goldberg joked that since these men and women are not receiving royalties for their contributions, at the very least they are going to require lunch-dinner at a place a cut or two above Arby’s.

At age 75, Wambaugh is still whip-smart hilarious and politically incorrect. The most earnest question posed during the audience Q&A portion was by a man near the front. This attendee insinuated that those attracted to the job of police officer must have issues and wondered what kind of person Wambaugh thought is typically drawn to the author’s former career. Wambaugh replied, deadpan – “First, you have to have a certain feeling for Winchell’s Donuts.”

Read more