Tag: Interview (91-100 of 119)

Jul 6 2010 09:05 AM ET

Grab the shotgun and cover your cranium: We talk to Max Brooks about selling 1 million copies of 'The Zombie Survival Guide'

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Max-BrooksMax Brooks’ 2003 public-service book The Zombie Survival Guide has recently sold its millionth copy, meaning there are still approximately 299 million Americans out there who will be devoured like so much pot roast once the undead apocalypse begins. Brooks, a former Saturday Night Live writer and the son of comedy legend Mel Brooks, has become one of the nation’s foremost experts on zombies thanks to works like 2006′s World War Z. In honor of this achievement, we spoke with the 38-year-old author about why the creatures are so scary, why vampires aren’t anymore, and how to protect your brains.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: First of all, congratulations on selling 1 million copies.
MAX BROOKS: I’m still trying to track down the warehouse where my father bought all those books.

I’ve seen other people with it. My brother has two copies. So those are at least two that your dad didn’t buy.
Someone once actually stole a copy from my dad. He was in a bookstore in New York and he was in line and he set it down to get something else. When he came back, it was gone. Someone had taken it. So that’s another one. That’s three.

When it was first published, the initial printing was only around 18,000 copies, right?
Something like that, which scared the frak out of me. I was like, 18,000? That’s, like, half of Dodgers Stadium, I can’t sell that many books! That’s when I started doing my self-defense lectures. It was mainly out of panic. I thought maybe if I do those, I can sell a couple hundred at a time and avoid the two-cent bin. READ FULL STORY »

Jun 11 2010 03:08 PM ET

Author Q&A: Dennis Lehane talks about books, films, and how to turn one into the other

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Dennis-LehaneThere’s something about Dennis Lehane’s books that seems to attract filmmakers, like bees to pulpy, Boston-based honey. And not just any filmmakers, but huge names like Eastwood, Scorsese, and, um, Affleck. With the release of the Shutter Island DVD and Blu-Ray we spoke with the author about adaptations, working with Marty, and why his novels are just so filmable.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: You’ve had a few films made out of your books by now. Do you tend to feel protective of the material, or are you comfortable letting the directors do what they want?
DENNIS LEHANE: I wouldn’t be fine with having them just do whatever they want, but I take extreme precaution to get involved only with people I respect in this business, on an artistic level. I’ve worked with people who, they get the material; they want to take a similar journey. We’ve had some minor differences in interpretation of a character here or there, but never anything major. We’re not talking about the Demi Moore The Scarlet Letter, which is the nadir of what could happen. I haven’t had anything even close to that. If they get the spirit of the material, I don’t care what they do for the most part with the tiny details. It doesn’t stress me out at all. Larry Fishburne in Mystic River was playing a guy who was written very much as a white character. The moment Clint said to me that he had Laurence Fishburne, I was like, “Yay!” It didn’t even give me pause. That to me is minor, it doesn’t matter. The major stuff is changing the ending, stuff like that. And that’s never happened to me.

How important is it for you for a filmmaker to match the mood or tone of your book?
The mood of Shutter Island, I think Marty did the cinematic equivalent of what I was doing with the book. There was a tongue-in-cheek quality to it, there was a sense of we’re never presenting you with real life. We’re presenting you with a love of a certain type of genre. I did it as books, in terms of Gothic fiction, while Marty was riffing on 1940’s Val Lewton movies. We were definitely showing very quickly in both book and movie that you were not entering a real world. In Gone Baby Gone, Ben Affleck changed the ages of the characters. They were older in the book. He wanted them to be the age they were in the first book of that series, which changes it a bit. But that’s totally cool with me. Fine, that’s your interpretation, as long as the spirit is maintain. Then in Mystic River there was a major thematic subtext about gentrification that had to get thrown out, and Clint told me about that right off the bat and that was fine. And that way the book remains the book and the movie is its own entity. Hopefully people will see the movie and might go, “Oh, I’ll go check out the book,” and when they check out the book, they get to go a little deeper. READ FULL STORY »

Jun 11 2010 08:00 AM ET

'The Advanced Genius Theory': Author Jason Hartley explains which artists are on a whole different level

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Jason-HartleyJason Hartley’s Advanced Genius Theory (“are they out of their minds or ahead of their time?”)was hatched over a pizza with his friend Britt Bergman as a way to explain why musical artists like David Bowie and Lou Reed are seen as brilliant in the beginning and slightly kooky as time goes on. EW spent some time talking to him about the theory — and the book.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Can you explain the Advanced Genius Theory as simply as possible?
JASON HARTLEY: It all kind of comes down to there’s a certain level of genius that is so great that it should always be trusted, no matter what the appearance is. So for instance, most people think of artistic geniuses starting out early, making their great statements when they’re young, then as they get older their work seems to decline. The idea behind the Advanced Genius Theory is that there are certain people who start out great and they get greater and greater, but they’re so great that we don’t understand them.

Who’s a good example of this?
Bob Dylan is the perfect one. There are a lot of components of the theory, and some superficial characteristics, and he meets basically all of the foundations and superficial stuff. The foundations are you have to have a long career; you have to be working on your own, you can’t be in a group; you typically end up selling out like doing a commercial; and also you seem to completely lose your way and you also embrace religion. Bob Dylan does all these things. READ FULL STORY »

Jun 10 2010 05:51 PM ET

Anthony Bourdain talks about his new book, no longer being a chef, and the pain of watching the Food Network

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anthony-bourdainImage Credit: Alexander Tamargo/Getty ImagesWhen Anthony Bourdain wrote his acerbic, behind-the-cuisines memoir Kitchen Confidential, he had very few expectations for it, having written it mainly for himself and his fellow chefs. Ten years later, Bourdain has published more non-fiction, penned three novels, stars as the host of the popular travelogue series No Reservations, and possesses a cachet of cultural cool that very few can ever hope to achieve. Now, in his new book Medium Raw, he returns to what he was first known for: Booking the cooks. In it, Bourdain shares his unfiltered opinions on the current food scene and his own experiences in the ten years since Confidential. We spoke with the constantly globetrotting gourmand in between trips to Italy and France about his latest book and what it’s like to have one of the best jobs in the world.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Why did you want to write another book?
ANTHONY BOURDAIN: I guess because it’s been ten years since Kitchen Confidential and the book still sells. A lot. But the food industry has changed. So in some ways it’s a sort of correctional reassessment for what I’ve seen changed in the decade since I wrote that book. That’s a profound change in the business, and I wanted to address that. I’ve been out of that business for a while, but I still swim in that pond. My friends are all chefs.

Have you changed too?
I’ve changed, although I don’t think I’ve changed fundamentally as a personality, who I am, but I think the bad boy thing is getting a little old. It’s always useful to remind people that I’m a dad now, I’m not going to be buried in a leather jacket, for f—‘s sake. Immediately upon the birth of your child it’s pretty much time to burn the Ramones shirt. The earring’s gone. It ain’t dignified. No one wants to see their parents rock. I think it’s just I don’t see myself as the angry young man anymore.

READ FULL STORY »

Jun 1 2010 02:22 PM ET

Q&A: Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter author Laurell K. Hamilton

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Bullet-book-HamiltonAlmost two decades after her first appearance in Guilty Pleasures, Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter returns with her 19th adventure. Out today, Bullet brings back characters from the past, as well as the usual intrigue. Author Laurell K. Hamilton spoke with EW about the music that helps her write (it’s hardcore!), what she hears from fans on the road, and how Anita became a role model.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Can you give fans a little teaser about the new book?
LAURELL K. HAMILTON: I’m so bad at this! I don’t want to give anything away. This is the book in many ways which some of the fans have been waiting for. When I came to this book, I’d been making notes on it for a while, some of this plot. One of the things that really helped me come up with it is the fans wanted to know certain things. They wanted to know where Monica Vespucci, who was in the first book, went. Where did she go? What happened to her baby? They wanted to have Asher have a relationship. Is such and such going to date? Leave town? They had all these questions that I never seemed to have time to put onstage. This is the book where I answer a lot of these questions. I bring everybody out and we take a deep breath. In the beginning of the book Anita is actually not solving a crime; she’s trying to have a quote unquote normal life.

You’re on book 19 in the Anita Blake series. How many more do you see yourself writing?
When I sold the first Anita book, I sold it as part of a three-book contract, so I knew there’d be at least three. I hoped that it would have legs, as they say in the movie business. But to get to number 19 in a continuing series, especially with the audience growing with each book still, you can’t plan that. I can’t imagine saying, ‘Oh yeah I’ll make 19.’ The next book will be 20; that’s amazing. I hoped I would be able to write this far into the series, but I didn’t dare plan on it in the beginning. READ FULL STORY »

May 26 2010 01:25 PM ET

'Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne': An interview with writer Grant Morrison

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Grant Morrison is currently writing a six-issue miniseries, Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne (DC Comics), that some consider one of the comic-book events of the year. Being touted as an event-creator is something this 50 year-old, Scottish-born writer must be used to by now. Morrison’s knack for rich conversational dialogue and intricately knotted plotting has garnered raves since the 1980s for everything from his big hits (the current, superb Batman and Robin series) to cult favorites (the your-head-will-explode The Invisibles).

I spoke to Morrison about Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne, the second issue of which has just arrived in comic-book stores. There’s also news about a BBC sci-fi TV project Morrison is working on. READ FULL STORY »

May 24 2010 01:18 PM ET

Exclusive: Q&A with Paul Hoffman

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left-hand-of-godThe book that set off a worldwide bidding frenzy in 2008 is finally hitting the shelves in the United States on June 15. Paul Hoffman’s The Left Hand of God follows the story of Thomas Cale, a teenager imprisoned in The Sanctuary, a brutal institution that trains boys to become warriors in an imminent holy war. This isn’t entirely a fantasy world — much of it is based on Hoffman’s own experiences growing up in an extremist Catholic boarding school. He recently spoke with Shelf Life about his childhood, how he turned his own story into a work of fiction, and what it was like reliving such difficult memories.

How did you get the idea for The Left Hand of God? Had you been thinking about writing this for a long time?
I’ve written two other novels and had been a screenwriter for some time. I tend to do everything the wrong way around in my life, and I did the same again. When I started out writing my first novel it wasn’t autobiographical, but now in my 50s I thought I would go back to my childhood, which was very odd and not like a normal one at all. From the age of 20 I led a perfectly normal life, but the first 20 years of my life were very strange.

I was born in a house without running water, my father was one of the pioneers of free-fall parachuting, and I saw several people die before I was seven years old doing that. I saw him come very close to it quite often. I was around soldiers all my life. My parents were Irish immigrants, Catholics, and they were sweet people but I was brought up by a particularly strict order and they were very violent. When my father was sent abroad to Africa, my brother and I both went to a boarding school that was very tough indeed, and that was the basis for the Sanctuary in the book. It was run really like a prison, and we were there all except about six weeks a year. It was tough; really thinking about it years later, I came back to regard it as an extraordinarily strange period. That was the inspiration for the first half of the book, the hero is trying to live inside an institution that is incredibly unpleasant, and just trying to survive around people who were often extremely cruel and who have an extraordinarily fanatical and extremist view of life, and given I think the nature of extremism both Islamic and Catholic, it seemed like a very timely thing to draw on.

Where are you from originally, and where was this boarding school located?
I was born in England. Both my parents were born in Ireland, but they came over when they got married. They were working class, but obviously many Americans will know when you move to a new country, you more or less always drop down a class or two, and we really had nothing. READ FULL STORY »

May 18 2010 02:54 PM ET

Sebastian Junger talks about going to 'War'

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Sebastian-Junger_240.jpg Image Credit: Reuters/Shannon Stapleton/LandovThere are two kinds of people in the world: those who hear the sound of gunfire and bolt in the opposite direction, and those who run toward it. For the past 15 years, Sebastian Junger has made his reputation as the latter. He’s donned a flak jacket to cover wars in lawless lands like Liberia and Sierra Leone. He’s been held prisoner by armed militants in Nigeria. And for his latest book, the harrowing and hard-to-put-down War, he spent 15 months embedded with the U.S. Army’s Battle Company in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley — a remote and vicious mountain region in the eastern part of the country that he describes as “too remote to conquer, too poor to intimidate, too autonomous to buy off.”

We spoke with Junger for a profile in this week’s issue of EW. Here are some of the outtakes from that interview.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: When you embedded with Battle Company, you were more than just a reporter with a notebook, you and veteran British war photographer Tim Hetherington also brought video cameras to film the missions (the footage of which was edited into the Sundance-winning documentary Restrepo). How did having a camera help you with the book?
SEBASTIAN JUNGER: It certainly helped me as a journalist. It’s very immediate and very exact. So I would use the video tape as a reference for myself when I was writing. I mean, we’re visual creatures. Most of our information comes through our eyes. Reading ultimately is a cerebral activity, it takes place in your mind. And it’s a way of making reading visual.

Did being preoccupied with filming, help make you less scared?
The camera gave me a reason for being there. I think if your house is burning down and you had your child in your harms you wouldn’t be thinking of yourself. And if you were by yourself and your house was burning down, you’d be terrified what was going to happen to you. The camera was like my baby. It was the thing I was supposed to take care of. My job was to get video. Once I was caught without my video camera in a fire fight, all I could think about was my safety. I had no role. So it really did make a difference. And I’m pretty sure that it works the same way with weapons.

How did you get your start as a war correspondent?
I was 31. I went to Bosnia and I started filing freelance radio reports for 40 dollars a pop. It was the bottom of the journalistic food chain, but I was part of this world of foreign reporting. I was nothing on the food chain, but I was completely intoxicated by it. It was exciting and world events were happening right around me…It was like a drug. READ FULL STORY »

May 6 2010 04:11 PM ET

Dave Barry takes our book quiz

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david-barry-ill-mature-when-im-deadHumorist Dave Barry’s life has changed since he retired from his weekly column in 2005. In his latest book, I’ll Mature When I’m Dead – published this week -- he writes about being the father of the groom, what it’s like to get a colonoscopy and how to save the newspaper business (hint: he has no clue). He recently spoke with EW about everything from what fictional character he most identifies with to the best book to read in flight.

What book changed your life?
The Brothers Karamazov, by Dostoevsky. I was supposed to read it my freshman year in college, but it’s 18 million pages long and I could never get past the first 43. Nevertheless I wrote a paper about it, and I got an OK grade, which taught me that I could write convincingly about things I did not remotely understand. This paved the way for my career in journalism.

Which book has the best movie version?
The Godfather. I would say Animal House, but I don’t think there’s a book version of that, unless Dostoevsky wrote one.

What’s the best author to read on airplanes?
Chuck Norris. Because when you read a Chuck Norris book, the person in the next seat will not bother you.

Which fictional character do you most identify with?
James Bond, because he is licensed to kill. I am not, technically, licensed to kill, but I am licensed to make really sarcastic remarks.

What’s a classic that you’ve secretly never read?
Crime and Punishment, by Dostoevsky. Some day I am going to buy it and read the first 43 pages.

Who is the author whose next book you always look forward to the most?
Chuck Norris. I keep leaving his earlier book on the plane.

May 4 2010 12:29 PM ET

Charlaine Harris: Sookie Stackhouse series author takes our book quiz

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Charlaine-Harris-Dead-in-the-familyTrue Blood fans, you have Charlaine Harris to thank for the highly addictive series; it’s based on her wildly popular Sookie Stackhouse novels. The latest edition, Dead in the Family, is out May 4. We gave the Southern native a quick quiz on some of her favorite books — including the one she wishes she could read again and again.

What’s a book you’ve faked reading?
Moby Dick. I gave it a tremendous try, but I don’t think I ever finished. Oh, The Magic Mountain, too.

What was your favorite book as a child?
Jane Eyre.

What’s a book you’ve gone back to and read over and over?
Pride and Prejudice.

What author (living or dead) would you most like to meet?
I know most of the living writers I’d wanted to meet, which is one of the great things about my job. I would have loved to have met Shirley Jackson.

What’s a book you wish you could experience again for the first time?
Caught Stealing by Charlie Huston.

What fictional character would you most like to marry?
Ha! Hmmm. Mr. Rochester? Darcy? Nope. Oh, I know! Bones, from Jeaniene Frost’s books.

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