Readers of Millions Originals ebook Epic Fail are deeply familiar with Tommy Wiseau’s heroically bad 2003 film, The Room. So, too, are people masochistic enough to sit through the actual movie. Together, they might be wondering how such a production came to be – and how it came to fail so horribly. Well, finally a new book co-authored by Greg Sestaro and Tom Bissell seeks to answer that question. You can check out an excerpt over here.
How The Room Was Made
Hunter S. Thompson’s Job Application
From Hunter S. Thompson's 1958 job application to the Vancouver Sun: “And don’t think that my arrogance is unintentional: it’s just that I’d rather offend you now than after I started working for you. I didn’t make myself clear to the last man I worked for until after I took the job. It was as if the Marquis de Sade had suddenly found himself working for Billy Graham.”
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Which Wilder?
We've written about the newly published Laura Ingalls Wilder memoir several times, but a new review in the LA Times calls attention to one of the most interesting questions raised by the work: how much influence did Wilder's daughter Rose Wilder Lane, an accomplished author in her own right, have on the final Little House books?
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Hinchas Nuevos
Hinchas de Poesía, which is “a digital codex of contemporary Pan-American writing,” has just released their 11th issue, and it’s certainly worth checking out.
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It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year
New York Review of Books Classics is having its annual Summer Sale, and some of the bundles this year are particularly enticing. For instance, you can grab perennial Millions favorite (and current international bestseller) Stoner as part of a bundle that also includes Renata Adler’s Speedboat. The publishers are also offering John Horne Burns’s lost masterpiece, The Gallery, as part of a collection of World War II novels. You may recall David Margolick’s great profile of Burns from the New York Times Magazine last month.
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The Billionaire is Dead…
At long last, a viable alternative to Mike Bloomberg and Bill Thompson has entered the NYC mayoral race. This candidate's "zero tolerance anti-hipster policy" is certainly worth a look.
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New Margaret Atwood Coming in September
MaddAddam, the third book in Margaret Atwood's trilogy that began with Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood will be out in the U.S. in September. Bonus: the cover of the book's Australian edition.
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Visions Beyond Imagining
“Hell-bent on researching the most microscopic pieces of a layered family history, Charles Ward burrows deeply into Old Providence. Lovecraft’s meticulous scene-setting is answered in the graphic novel with Ian Culbard drafting stately mansion exteriors and farmhouses in simple, slender strokes and never lending them more than two or three tones from his understated color palette.” On a graphic novel treatment of The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.
Thoroughly Modern Dilemmas
How many writers actually know how a word processor functions? Chances are the answer is: not many. At Page-Turner, our own Mark O’Connell examines this odd state of affairs, which he became more cognizant of after reading Vikram Chandra’s new book, Geek Sublime.
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