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From Garret to Red Carpet: Novelists Take to the Screen Trade
Last March, when Salman Rushdie announced he was writing a sci-fi series for Showtime called “The Next People,” he was met with a loud chorus of cynics who assumed the Booker Prize-winning novelist had...
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Flashback: Morgan Freeman Teaching Kids To Read in 1971
This collection of extremely silly photos of extremely serious writers has a little of everything. Susan Sontag in a bear suit? Check! Ernest Hemingway kicking a beer can? Check! Suddenly I’m...
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Joan Didion Slouches Toward Hollywood to Co-write ‘As it Happens’ with Todd...
Among the many possible explanations for Joan Didion‘s sixteen-year hiatus from Hollywood, the likeliest is that she grew tired of being the smartest person in the room. Or perhaps her patience thinned...
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Casting Call: Joan Didion in The Year of Magical Thinking
Welcome to Word & Fim’s Casting Call, where we exercise our creative muscles by focusing our attention on extraordinary characters from exceptional books – either fiction or nonfiction – and make...
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Christina Hendricks to Star in Adaptation of Joan Didion’s A Book of Common...
Writer-director Campbell Scott’s forthcoming adaptation of Joan Didion’s A Book of Common Prayer – and today’s news that Christina Hendricks has signed on to play the novel’s lost soul protagonist – is...
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Todd Field Lays Claim to Jess Walter’s Beautiful Ruins
In the seven years since his adaptation of Tom Perrotta‘s Little Children tossed him onto the top tier of literary auteurs, writer-director Todd Field has amassed a menagerie of literary treasures,...
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Allison Janney Joins Christina Hendricks in Joan Didion Adaptation
A Joan Didion adaptation starring Christina Hendricks and Allison Janney? Please just take all of my money, right now! Janney is the latest addition to “A Book of Common Prayer,” based on Didion’s 1977...
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Novelist as Screenwriter: The Good, the Bad, the Debate
We all love a whiff of literature in our movies and TV. Witness the countless articles kvelling over the references to The Yellow King, Robert W. Chambers’ 1885 collection of horror stories, in HBO’s...
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On the Movies and Good Looks: An Interview with David Thomson
This year marked the release of the sixth edition of David Thomson's New Biographical Dictionary of Film, published for the first time in 1975. Now at 1,154 pages long, the book isn't just a reference...
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Mel Gibson to Serve as Creative Advisor on WWII Film
Editor's Note: Mel Gibson has the most unlikely-for-Mel new job ever, the scarcity of black horror filmmakers, and more in our ever-interesting Daily Blunt. Maybe they don't check references in China....
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Infinite Possibility: 5 Authors In Need of Biopics
This week, with "The End of the Tour" and "Paulo Coelho's Best Story," we see the emergence of two long-gestating films that belong to a marvelously fraught genre of cinema - the writer biopic. While...
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Bookstore Campaigns to Get Joan Didion On the $10 Bill
Editor's Note: In today's roundup, we're looking at a campaign to place Joan Didion on the ten-dollar bill, a law to place Emile Hirsch in jail for two weeks, and more. It's Daily Blunt time, people....
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Not That Kind of Girl: Nonfiction from ‘It’ Girls Worth Your Time
Writing in the New York Times, Michiko Kakutani gave Lena Dunham’s new memoir, Not That Kind of Girl, the sort of review Dunham’s character on Girls, Hannah, could only dream about. According to...
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Joan Didion’s Kickstarter Biopic Meets its Mighty Goal, and More…
New York Yankees star and recent retiree Derek Jeter has written a memoir, out today. Written in a fittingly affable manner, Jeter Unfiltered includes tales from the field, about his workout routines,...
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‘Sentimental Journeys:’ Joan Didion on Class Contradictions in NYC
In a 2006 interview, Joan Didion describes the genesis of her essay "Sentimental Journeys," about the trial and conviction of five boys accused of the rape of a woman jogging through Central Park, as...
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Joan Didion’s Life is the Story of Postwar America
Joan Didion’s writing is regarded for its lean, evocative prose, but it is the sheer span of her career — from Run, River in 1963 to Blue Nights in 2011 — and her writing on so many of the big issues...
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Fiction, Memoirs, and Authors Who Dare to Dabble in Both
When reviewers want to praise a memoir, they may say it reads like a novel. Similarly, a truly successful novel may be lauded for feeling as true to life as a memoir. So what, if anything, is the...
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The Pen is Fightier than the Sword: 14 Quotes on World Press Freedom Day
Joan Didion/Image © Flickr Editor's Note: If you’re stirred by these author quotes, amble down our archive for more. Minor holidays like World Press Freedom Day can seem fairly insignificant, until...
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Best Books of March 2017: Joan Didion to H.G. Wells
Every month, Signature combs through the upcoming releases across nonfiction and literary fiction to provide a look at the most exciting titles rounding the bend. After a rollercoaster of a February...
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Original Sins Coiled Like Snakes in Joan Didion’s New ‘South and West’
Joan Didion © Brigitte Lacombe In 1970 Joan Didion spent a month driving through the rural South with her husband. She found swimming pools, endless heat, and, most of all, snakes. On the road from...
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