“Murder, addiction and heartbreak, all with ocean views.” That’s the best description I could come up with for BLACK SUNSHINE, my new e-book of short stories that offers a fresh take on Florida noir. To read BLACK SUNSHINE, click here.
I’m happy to report The First Hollywood is adding another Lucite doohickey to its trophy case: the Jacksonville Historic Preservation Commission has announced the book is receiving the 2009 Historic Preservation Award. The award reception is taking place Thursday, May 21, at the Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville (MOCA).
Although I started my career at Time Warner (working for CNN’s websites), and later served as an “director of content management” for an upstart website during the dot-com boom, I consider my first real writing experience to be with the Miami New Times in 2002. Something seemed very cool, romantic and indie cred-worthy about getting free CDs from record labels, churning out 100-word reviews and getting paid $40 a pop. Digging around for new releases was fun as well: I got great stuff from indie labels like Sub Pop, Merge, Astralwerks, and Jade Tree, and got turned onto great bands and musicians including Iron and Wine, Doves, and Pedro the Lion. I didn’t make much coin from it, but I was writing for a well-known company (New Times has alterna-newsweeklies in many cities nationwide), and the reviews became the first building blocks in my portfolio, which I leveraged into better gigs. Which is the key to freelance journalism: like a snowball, it gets bigger and bigger the more you push it along. Stop pushing. Stop working.
Reading those reviews now, I find myself being mighty critical. Too wordy. Metaphors that take days to read. Run-on sentences. Comparisons that border on schizophrenic. But they are the first bricks in a house that’s still going up. For all interested parties, here’s my collection of music reviews for the Miami New Times.
Tomorrow I’m heading back home to Finksburg, Maryland for the first time in over a year. I’ve been quite busy traveling for the book tour (including a 1,000-mile trek in 72 hours) and this visit is long overdue. Most people are confounded when I tell them I’m originally from Finksburg, a strangely-named town in state filled with strangely-named villes and burgs (within earshot there’s Fowblesburg, Gaithersburg, Eldersburg, Emmitsburg, Pikesville, Rockville, Burtonsville, and Sykesville). I grew up on Cold Saturday (click here for a Google Earth shot), a hilly green farm framed by reservoirs, lakes and tall thickets of pine trees. There are tractors and horses, docks and muddy rivers, which should keep the boys busy. My bro Aaron and I will likely hit the local links, crush a few drives, and follow it all up with something that might reduce my ability to operate heavy equipment. So please buckle your seatbelt, and return your tray to the upright position.
Just got back from Tallahassee three hours ago. Last night’s Florida Heritage Awards ceremony - which includes the Florida Book Awards - was quite special. A number of fascinating Floridians were there to pick up awards: country songwriter Mel Tillis, the niece of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (she called her ‘my Aunt Margie’), and the Western Hemisphere’s last living builder of authentic Greek sponge fishing boats. I met some very cool people including John Dufresne, whose novel Requiem, Mass. won the gold medal for General Fiction. When it was my turn to pick up the award, I bolted onstage, did the shake-and-smile with Charlie Crist, then mysteriously disappeared into the darkness of the auditorium (actually I went straight to the bathroom - I had a few Guinness before the event). Afterwards, we hit Urbane for dinner (the duck breast over soba noodles and spinach was killer).
On the way home we stopped at the Florida Citrus Center near Lake City, where I was disturbed yet fascinated by the display of preserved baby sharks. They were a hundred of these tiny, schlocky Damien Hirsts, going for $20 a pop. I was waiting for Robert Shaw and his tattered porkpie to pop up from behind the ceramic flamingo Elvises. “And the thing about a shark… he’s got lifeless eyes. Black eyes. Like a doll’s eyes.”
When I got home, I gave the medal to Jackson. He promptly placed it next to his own medal, which he received at this year’s trike-a-thon.
I’m very happy to announce that The First Hollywood has won the 2008 Florida Book Award for nonfiction. More than 130 books were entered into competition, most from major publishing houses like HarperCollins, Ballantine, WW Norton, Houghton Mifflin and Putnam & Sons. I’ll be heading to Tallahassee on March 25th to accept the award at the dinner with Governor Charlie Crist and other local bigwigs. Top of the world, Ma!
I went to a great high school: St Paul’s in Baltimore, MD. It was largely your standard issue Northeast prep school, but it had a real dedication to the arts (they recently gave props to my book). My favorite class was film studies; my friends and I would spend our weekends scripting and shooting short films about vampires, serial killers, and butter addicts (that’s right - butter addicts). So I was especially excited when SP grad Mark Pellington came to speak at our high school in 1994. Mark had just won an MTV Video Music Award for Pearl Jam’s ‘Jeremy,’ arguably the best music video of all time. Our student films were already ripping off Mark’s style (fuzzy picture, rack focus, quick cuts, hyper close-ups), and that student assembly was one of the most inspiring days of my life. In future years I would be lucky enough to meet Mark and even rewrite a script for him. But then his wife died very suddenly - leaving behind Mark and their young daughter. Mark recently unveiled his fourth feature film ‘Henry Poole is Here,’ the story of a lonely man whose life is reignited when - strangely enough - a visage of Jesus appears in a stain on his patio wall and strangers begin to hold vigil at his home. The New York Times Magazine recently profiled Mark, checking into his life and art since the tragedy. It’s a great story about one of my biggest influences.
I’m happy to report The First Hollywood has been nominated for a 2008 Florida Book Award. The awards are coordinated by Florida State University and co-sponsored by the Florida Historical Society, the State Library and Archives of Florida, and the Florida Literary Arts Coalition. TFH was nominated in the category of non-fiction, and faces some stiff competition (no really - I’m up against a book about the history of Tupperware. Those containers are impossible to tear). Check out the competition here.
My publicity agent at the University Press of Florida warned me not to keep tabs on my book through Amazon.com. She said Amazon’s system for book rankings was a beast unto itself, and bared no true measure of a book’s success. But nevertheless there I am every day, pulling up the site, watching TFH’s ranking skyrocket and plummet like the Dow Jones. After the piece in the Hollywood Reporter, I’m the 20th most popular book about Florida! How did I drop to 620,467th two days later? Sometimes I check my ranking three or four daily. I’m an Amazon junkie. I’m an Amazunkie.
But Amazon’s convoluted ranking system has also given me a false sense of greatness and immortality. Turns out my book is ranked above some of the greatest works of American literature and reporting ever inked on the page. So thanks to Amazon, I have compiled a list of books The First Hollywood is better than. Any questions/concerns/criticisms should be directed to Jeff Bezos.
* Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck (Amazon ranking: 301,766)
* The Collected Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald (663,328)
* The Catcher in the Rye - Cliffs Notes (211,118)
* The Kama Sutra Year: 52 Sensational Positions for Erotic Pleasure (unranked)
* The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Sewing (439,033)
Jacksonville’s moviemakers may have been pioneers, but they couldn’t name a film to save their lives. Often reflective of the movies’ content, the titles were crass, boring, blunt and damn near hallucinogenic. Imagine seeing one of these on a marquee today (although a few of them could work for Rob Schneider vehicles). Here are the top 10 worst movie titles from Jax’s silent film era:
10. The Farm Bully
9. The Octoroon
8. A Hitherto Unrelated Incident of the Girl Spy
7. Chickens
6. A Sawmill Hazard
5. Theodore’s Terrible Thirst
4. The Fish Pirates
3. A Slave To Drink
2. The Seminole Half-Breeds
1. She Must Be Ugly
© 2008 Shawn C. Bean.
All Rights reserved.