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.
© 2008 Shawn C. Bean.
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