SirJohn
02-05-2006, 07:40 PM
This is from Mcall.com
In here :
Sports stories don't always stick to the facts, either. In his autobiography, football coach Dan Devine tells readers he wanted to have practice team player Rudy Ruettiger dress for his last game at Notre Dame and he planned to play him, as well. The film, ''Rudy,'' portrays Coach Devine as cold and less than enthusiastic at the prospect of putting Rudy on the field. Turns out that's not exactly the truth. The drama worked for the movie, though, right?
PS I never would have seen this if it did not make it's way to Notre Dame News. The quicker you are forgotten the better for all. Rudy Lives! :D
*************
Now hold on Mam. It's one thing creating lies in a book in print yet you started comparing to movies. In movies we do get 'based on' Blah Blah.
You don't think I believe James Bond novels and movies do you? A director, editor, producer has the right to even slightly alter a scene to make a visual impact to even a historical scene. I don't believe John Wayne won WW II or the west.
I am aware Coach Devine said that. I never felt bad for Devine's character in the movie. Eating an apple while sitting with some girls laughing over D Bob with two watces (SB is on Central other places EST)
It just made for a good story. I also don't believe The Rock in Rundown can do all those things. Now if he says in print he has, well then he is a liar. :)
Renee A. James
Email: raaj3@msn.com
February 5, 2006
'Million Little Pieces' shows power of printed word
There is good news emerging from the James Frey ''A Million Little Pieces'' debacle. If you think about it, this story of deception and the high-profile responses to that deception does one marvelous thing that nothing before or since has done: it verifies the status of books in this country. It demonstrates that the printed word particularly those in a book is still held sacred by most. In an enlightened, wired age of instant electronic information that's ubiquitous, and there for the taking, that's extraordinarily good news. As someone who works in publishing, I watched this story unfold daily for about a week.
Unless you've been on a remote island for the past few weeks, you've heard or read about the considerable, and understandable, uproar from book buyers denouncing author Frey's lies and distortions in his ''memoir'' of addiction and redemption. Frey and his agent presented the book as a true story to his publisher, Nan Talese, his editor, Sean McDonald, and others who brought the story to the public, including Oprah Winfrey. (Talese has had a long and distinguished career in publishing, and it would be regrettable if most people think of her as little more than the woman who was behind the James Frey episode. If the one and only thing she'd ever accomplished was editing and then publishing Pat Conroy's work, that would have been enough for me.)
Yet, I can't help but compare the outcry against Frey with the kind of responses we usually hear or, more correctly, don't hear when other kinds of storytellers get it wrong. It says something that even when objections are raised toward them, they are never as strident; never as enthusiastic; never as bitter.
Remember Ron Howard's movie about Princeton mathematician John Nash, ''A Beautiful Mind?'' The movie that won an Academy Award for Best Writing based on material previously published or produced? I'm certain Akiva Goldsman did an admirable job adapting Sylvia Nasar's book, despite the fact that the movie script left out entire episodes of Nash's life, including his affairs with men and the child he had with his mistress. Moviegoers seem to forgive the movie its lapses.
Or, what about the Coen brothers' Academy Award winning film, ''Fargo''? Remember the opening title that called it a true story? Well, according to the details listed on the Internet Movie Database and elsewhere, the film ''is not, in fact, 'based on a true story.' '' Nothing even remotely like that story ever happened anywhere near Fargo. Where was the outrage? The filmmakers told us it was true. Except, they lied.
Sports stories don't always stick to the facts, either. In his autobiography, football coach Dan Devine tells readers he wanted to have practice team player Rudy Ruettiger dress for his last game at Notre Dame and he planned to play him, as well. The film, ''Rudy,'' portrays Coach Devine as cold and less than enthusiastic at the prospect of putting Rudy on the field. Turns out that's not exactly the truth. The drama worked for the movie, though, right?
The headline is, in almost everything except books, we tend to forgive a lot of embellishment or distortion of the facts. But when something we read in a book is presented as ''true,'' we expect it to be nothing less. That's good. There must be something unchanging and trustworthy about the way we regard our non-fiction books or we've lost something tenable and ancient about recounting actual events.
And what of author James Frey? Come on, this is America. He'll emerge from this ''crisis'' with his own reality show. He'll interview those public figures who dramatically fall from grace and how they work their way back into society. Survivor's Richard Hatch, discussing his tax evasion problems, can be his first guest. Next up: ''journalists'' Stephen Glass and Jayson Blair, both of whom fabricated stories that were far from factual. Frey can conduct a ''point-counterpoint'' with historian Doris Kearns Goodwin who requested that her book, ''The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys,'' be withdrawn from the marketplace while source discrepancies in it were addressed. That would be a display of greed vs. class.
You wait only in America.
Ren้e A. James of Allentown works at Rodale Inc. Her e-mail address is raaj3@msn.com.
In here :
Sports stories don't always stick to the facts, either. In his autobiography, football coach Dan Devine tells readers he wanted to have practice team player Rudy Ruettiger dress for his last game at Notre Dame and he planned to play him, as well. The film, ''Rudy,'' portrays Coach Devine as cold and less than enthusiastic at the prospect of putting Rudy on the field. Turns out that's not exactly the truth. The drama worked for the movie, though, right?
PS I never would have seen this if it did not make it's way to Notre Dame News. The quicker you are forgotten the better for all. Rudy Lives! :D
*************
Now hold on Mam. It's one thing creating lies in a book in print yet you started comparing to movies. In movies we do get 'based on' Blah Blah.
You don't think I believe James Bond novels and movies do you? A director, editor, producer has the right to even slightly alter a scene to make a visual impact to even a historical scene. I don't believe John Wayne won WW II or the west.
I am aware Coach Devine said that. I never felt bad for Devine's character in the movie. Eating an apple while sitting with some girls laughing over D Bob with two watces (SB is on Central other places EST)
It just made for a good story. I also don't believe The Rock in Rundown can do all those things. Now if he says in print he has, well then he is a liar. :)
Renee A. James
Email: raaj3@msn.com
February 5, 2006
'Million Little Pieces' shows power of printed word
There is good news emerging from the James Frey ''A Million Little Pieces'' debacle. If you think about it, this story of deception and the high-profile responses to that deception does one marvelous thing that nothing before or since has done: it verifies the status of books in this country. It demonstrates that the printed word particularly those in a book is still held sacred by most. In an enlightened, wired age of instant electronic information that's ubiquitous, and there for the taking, that's extraordinarily good news. As someone who works in publishing, I watched this story unfold daily for about a week.
Unless you've been on a remote island for the past few weeks, you've heard or read about the considerable, and understandable, uproar from book buyers denouncing author Frey's lies and distortions in his ''memoir'' of addiction and redemption. Frey and his agent presented the book as a true story to his publisher, Nan Talese, his editor, Sean McDonald, and others who brought the story to the public, including Oprah Winfrey. (Talese has had a long and distinguished career in publishing, and it would be regrettable if most people think of her as little more than the woman who was behind the James Frey episode. If the one and only thing she'd ever accomplished was editing and then publishing Pat Conroy's work, that would have been enough for me.)
Yet, I can't help but compare the outcry against Frey with the kind of responses we usually hear or, more correctly, don't hear when other kinds of storytellers get it wrong. It says something that even when objections are raised toward them, they are never as strident; never as enthusiastic; never as bitter.
Remember Ron Howard's movie about Princeton mathematician John Nash, ''A Beautiful Mind?'' The movie that won an Academy Award for Best Writing based on material previously published or produced? I'm certain Akiva Goldsman did an admirable job adapting Sylvia Nasar's book, despite the fact that the movie script left out entire episodes of Nash's life, including his affairs with men and the child he had with his mistress. Moviegoers seem to forgive the movie its lapses.
Or, what about the Coen brothers' Academy Award winning film, ''Fargo''? Remember the opening title that called it a true story? Well, according to the details listed on the Internet Movie Database and elsewhere, the film ''is not, in fact, 'based on a true story.' '' Nothing even remotely like that story ever happened anywhere near Fargo. Where was the outrage? The filmmakers told us it was true. Except, they lied.
Sports stories don't always stick to the facts, either. In his autobiography, football coach Dan Devine tells readers he wanted to have practice team player Rudy Ruettiger dress for his last game at Notre Dame and he planned to play him, as well. The film, ''Rudy,'' portrays Coach Devine as cold and less than enthusiastic at the prospect of putting Rudy on the field. Turns out that's not exactly the truth. The drama worked for the movie, though, right?
The headline is, in almost everything except books, we tend to forgive a lot of embellishment or distortion of the facts. But when something we read in a book is presented as ''true,'' we expect it to be nothing less. That's good. There must be something unchanging and trustworthy about the way we regard our non-fiction books or we've lost something tenable and ancient about recounting actual events.
And what of author James Frey? Come on, this is America. He'll emerge from this ''crisis'' with his own reality show. He'll interview those public figures who dramatically fall from grace and how they work their way back into society. Survivor's Richard Hatch, discussing his tax evasion problems, can be his first guest. Next up: ''journalists'' Stephen Glass and Jayson Blair, both of whom fabricated stories that were far from factual. Frey can conduct a ''point-counterpoint'' with historian Doris Kearns Goodwin who requested that her book, ''The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys,'' be withdrawn from the marketplace while source discrepancies in it were addressed. That would be a display of greed vs. class.
You wait only in America.
Ren้e A. James of Allentown works at Rodale Inc. Her e-mail address is raaj3@msn.com.