(the) david press.com

I’m working towards moving this blog over to my Tumblr, but I’m pretty clueless on handling those kinds of things so it could be a bit to figure out how to break this site down and move it over there.

I’m doing it mostly because I’ve become too busy/preoccupied/more scatterbrained than usual and have too much going on to write daily content for this site.  With grad school, and gearing up work on my thesis, internships and “side projects” it is tough to keep this site updated.  So, in the name of more content, I’ll be moving this over to Tumblr because I post some kind of content there, but most of it is just notes and sketches of various things. I like Tumblr because its quicker and easier to update, and it suits my needs at this stage in my life.

Speaking of stages, this week I’m celebrating my five-year anniversary living in New York City, and also my one year anniversary with my wonderful girlfriend.  Things have been pretty great for me this year, and I owe a lot of it to this person I’ve been with. So coming up, I’ll be writing up posts on Tumblr about each year I’ve been living here, through the years my blog has grown, and changed platforms.  It start out at Blogspot, moved to Livejournal, settled here for a while, and is now mostly at Tumblr.  So I feel like writing up the retrospective on this newest platform goes along with my indecisiveness.

But: sorry, sorry, sorry for ignoring this blog, but its because things are going well–and that’s not to say that things were bad and that’s why I resorted to blogging–but things are going so well, that I don’t have much time to blog anymore.  So, sorry, but yeah: good things.

My good friend, and writing partner Tim Brearton asked me to write a review of his second novel, Rehabilitation, and when I finished the book a couple of weeks ago I had to sit down for a while and think about it. I couldn’t really write a review because Tim and I have been friends for almost ten years now.  So what I ended up with was an introduction.  Below is the text, republished from Tim’s website:

I should start right off by saying that Tim Brearton is one of my closest friends.  I wouldn’t be a particularly good critic if I didn’t say that I’ve been his friend going on ten years now, and now that you’ve read that you probably think this review isn’t meritorious. That’s okay, I’m going to take it in another direction.  This essay is better thought of as an introduction to him, and to his writing.  I’m a big believer in knowing a writer’s style is also knowing them personally, and Tim is a writer I’ve known for a long time.

I met him when I was a tender 20 years-old reporting for duty as the Lake Placid Film Forum’s intern.  He was head of the Volunteer Department, and was (still is) someone who wouldn’t be satisfied if he wasn’t running around doing a million things at once.  That’s not to say he has no focus, but he likes being busy and is especially busy in his head.  Tim may be the greatest deliberator I know, because what may take you and I two minutes to analyze the possibilities of, Tim has thought of every angle you and I could think of in half a minute. That is easily the best personality trait of his that comes through in his protagonist, Jack Aiello, in this book you have in your hands.  It allows you, the reader, to get inside his character’s head, and that for me is a writer’s number one objective; to make you feel like you’re a part of that character’s psyche.

I became Tim’s right hand man that year at the Film Forum. Running the mail, making copies, hanging fliers, and making sure all the parties had the appropriate amount of booze.  Things that interns do.  Since then I’ve been along Tim’s journey from Burlington, Vermont, to when he quit drinking, to when he started writing full time shortly after his son’s birth.  Jude Russell Brearton, Tim’s son, is easily the greatest work of art Tim will ever do.

So, I ask you to take part in Tim’s art with this exceptionally personal novel about a Brooklyn strong-arm named Jack Aiello and his journey to rehabilitation.  Rehabilitation from fighting, from drinking, and from the women he’s lost.  This is Tim’s personal statement on issues such as substance abuse, single-parenthood, and gene manipulation, wrapped in the cover of a private eye story.  Aiello transforms from amateur private dick to someone not fighting for a cause, like the Naturalists he encounters, or fighting for a better world like the gene manipulators of the Utopia Corporation, but fighting for his family.

You see, in this world, everyone is fighting for something.  Whether you are President Obama fighting for health care, or fighting for gay rights, very few books are about fighting to get better for your child, and generally those books become classics.  And that’s why this book is a classic not just for tackling hot-button issues, but personal issues that everyone struggles with.  In the end it’s about children, and knowing Tim and seeing his son Jude grow up, I can’t help but smile knowing that this book, this work of art on Tim’s part, is for his greatest work of art—his son Jude. It’s a present from father to son.

So, go on, enjoy. You’ll be rehabilitated for it.

David Press

New York City

Saturday, October 10, 2009

I have to say this may be one the best things I’ve ever written about or for a person, and I’m distinctly proud that Tim is using it.  Tim, like a lot of writers today, are self-publishing their work through print on demand methods such as Lulu.  This is becoming a more viable situation these days as print hurts more and more.  Wil Wheaton uses it to great success, it probably helps that he was a former child actor and has an exceptionally popular blog.  Clearly he can make some sort of money from his writing by printing on demand.  So, Tim, like a lot authors are using this method.

Coming up, an update to what I’m doing and the reason why I call Tim my writing partner because there is some good news to shill on my part here.

Warren Ellis wrote:

I have a Tumblr, as previously mentioned. I use it as a notebook. Eventually (when my hosting company upgrades its SQL), my jottings in that online notebook will be ported here as a daily digest. And they are jottings, I’m not taking care to do anything like form sentences or follow grammar for the most part. I have the Tumblweed app open in my menu bar and I can just pop it and quickly jot something in as an idea passes through the void that is the front of my brain.

I’ve been getting more and more busy with grad school wrapping up for the semester, so I haven’t really had as much time to blog here like I used to. Which is why I’ve been using my Tumblr even more.  I started out using it in a similar manner to what Warren described above about a year and a half ago.  Which is essentially as a scrapbook full of various notes, photos, and music tracks I liked and stories for research or of interest pieces.

With that said, I’ll probably be using Tumblr mostly and using this as a news site, as my New Things start gearing up.  Unfortunately, what all of this means is that there will most certainly be less blogging going on here, and mostly small tidbits over there. The good news is that my New Things are so cool they keep me super-busy, so I just don’t have time to compose posts here.  Fortunately, soon enough, I’ll be able to announce those Cool New Things here, but until then all that will be going on is my random blathering here.

At some point, I’ll figure out a way to integrate my Tumblr blog with this site for your convenience.

My buddy and colleague Chris Ullrich emailed me a while back asking if I’d like to contribute to his new venture: The Flickcast.  Really the first of its kind, its a podcast that talks not just about comic book movies, but movies in general and other geek culture items. Joined by good people like Matt Raub and Christina Warren, Chris is having a great time putting together these podcasts and I’m loving listening to them.

These days, it’s sometimes tough picking out good comic books to read. But here at The Flickcast, we care about what you read, and only want you reading good things.  So, with that in mind, I give you our new feature: Dave’s weekly comic book recommendations.

So, every Tuesday you can expect new columns from me recommending comics, and possibly a indie movie review. But in the meantime, tune in every Wednesday as Matt, Chris, and Christina talk about all things geek.  I hope you all like it as much as I do. Also, comments are closed on this post, so share your thoughts over at The Flickcast and let us know what you’re looking forward to reading or, y’know, if you think I suck.

My tumblr-blog, is mostly a collection of things I like. Those things being bits of news, photos, trailers and music. For those not on Tumblr, this weekly feature here at my main blog, will mostly just recap some of the things I post there.

• MUSIC: I listened to a lot of Beck’s Information album, and Badly Drawn Boy.
• PHOTOS: I posted pictures from yesterday’s walk in the Lower East Side.  We walked all around the Lower East Side, to the Five Points (which was gloriously unimpressive), and had beers at Spitzer’s on Ludlow and Rivington. I think I want my pre-30 birthday party there.
• BLOG-SHIT: There’s this sweet David Foster Wallace tumble-log, which mostly has quotes, videos and interviews and hard to find pieces from the writer.  Check out this sweet video from 2005.
• QUOTES: I posted a ton of stuff from J.J. Abrams’s issue of Wired, including his piece and Paul Pope’s excellent six page comic.
• LINK: Though my new favorite thing is Choire Sicha’s and Alex Balk’s new blog, The Awl.  Which is essentially just like Gawker but simpler, and not too flashy. I started reading Gawker around the time that Balk, Choire and Emily Gould were on it, so its good to see them doing a similar thing here.  I’d rather get my Gawker-ish news from them than on Gawker.

Oh, also its Wolverine movie week. So, yeah, go see that.

Viking #1: Written by Ivan Brandon, art by Nic Klein, logo by Tom Muller

I’m sure I’m probably the millionth blogger to write and sing the praises for Ivan Brandon and Nic Klein’s first issue of Viking.  The language was steep and rich: the speech bubbles often required a second reading to get the complete meaning, something that I can say is only equaled by Jason Aaron’s Scalped, and the wider book size was also eye catching to the benefit of Nic Klein’s art.  To describe how finite Klein’s art was take a look at page four, the first full page spread spotlighting Finn and Egil. I must have spent 10 minutes examining every inch of that page, and I suggest you do the same. I’ll wait. Okay, the sky is what does it for me, you can tell its just starting to set, the perfectly straight lines behind the figures of our main characters, tells that the sun is setting to the left of the reader and its windy out.  There is no way Egil’s hair is permanently stuck like that, flowing to the right with winds coming from the direction of the setting sun, though it may not be so difficult.  God knows, when the last time these guys showered (bathed? whatever).  The best part? Its not just this page, this kind of detail is throughout the entire book.

You can buy it any of your local comic book shops, though hurry up, it sold out at the retailer level before it even came out.

Cheating is humiliating. No matter what form it takes. Skipping ahead—even without the help of someone in Underoos—lessens the experience. Diminishes the joy. Makes the accomplishment that much duller.

Perhaps that’s why mystery, now more than ever, has special meaning. Because it’s the anomaly, the glaring affirmation that the Age of Immediacy has a meaningful downside. Mystery demands that you stop and consider—or, at the very least, slow down and discover. It’s a challenge to get there yourself, on its terms, not yours.

It turns out the 7-year-old was right. His tip finally worked, and Greg and I finished the game that day. But I’d traded any true satisfaction for a cheat. I can’t even remember seeing that end screen.

The point is, we should never underestimate process. The experience of the doing really is everything. The ending should be the end of that experience, not the experience itself.

So, if you’re still reading, I say please:

Dig.

J.J. Abrams is the creator of Alias, cocreator of Lost and Fringe, and director of the new Star Trek movie.

From the latest issue of Wired.

Yesterday, after a really shitty discussion that really made me buckle down, and feel my own shame as a person, I went for a walk, in search of this issue.  I can’t remember the last time I bought a copy of Wired, but from all the stuff that I had been gathering that week on the issue–it seemed really cool. A Paul Pope short comic on Star Trek, and some other cool things that I’m blanking on. I’ve always been a big fan of J.J.’s work, starting with Felicity which came out my senior year of high school, and I took it a bit literally, thinking of it as a reality show for what next year was going to be like for me.  Was it? No. Then Alias was exactly what I wanted in an action show and was one of only two shows I watched in college. The other was The West Wing. So, its safe to say that I’m a Abrams fanboy.

Along with Abrams the other writer I was really into during my undergrad days at St. Bonaventure was Bret Easton Ellis.  In my sophomore year, I went crazy and read American Psycho, Rules of Attraction and Less Than Zero. In a recent interview with the A.V. Club, Ellis talked about movie adaptations of his work, and the most recent one The Informers.

AVC: How much does the finished film resemble the script?

BEE: Very little. [Laughs] Gregor would have to admit that too, and so would Marco. This is not me complaining. That’s the fact. The 95-minute version of The Informers is very different from this sprawling, epic movie that Nick and I had in mind when we wrote the script. For some people, that probably sounds like its own kind of hell, but there’s a lot more resolution in our script, and it was also kind of lighter, funnier, more Altman-esque. This is a very different creature. I like the movie. It is very different in terms of tone and style from the movie we were thinking of when we were writing the script. There’s also literally 40 or 50 minutes missing from it in terms of stories being resolved, and…

The Informers stars Billy Bob Thornton, Kim Basinger, Winona Ryder, Mickey Rourke and features Brad Renfro in his final performance.  It looks terrible, but comes out this weekend around the corner from my apartment and is probably worth seeing. I’ve been going through movie withdrawal.

Seriously. If I hear one more joke about needing a catch phrase I may throw something.  Just, go make the Arrested Development movie and sit down, and…(I’ll stop).  In the mean time, watch Chuck, because its been siiiccckkk.

My tumblr-blog, is mostly a collection of things I like. Those things being bits of news, photos, trailers and music. For those not on Tumblr, this weekly feature here at my main blog, will mostly just recap some of the things I post there.

• What Late Night with Jimmy Fallon really is: as any reader knows from my initial viewing of the show, I couldn’t help but think this poster hit the nail right on the button (head?) for what that show actually is.
• MUSIC: “Getting Old is Getting Old” by Silversun Pickups.  Yeah, the new record is pretty awesome.
• TRAILER: Steven Soderbergh’s new movie, “The Girlfriend Experience”.  This is the top of my list of non-event movies I must see, including Woody Allen’s Larry David movie, Whatever Works.
• LINK OF THE WEEK: David Simon’s THE WIRE Original Pitch and 1st Season Bible.  Seriously, for any writer, I shouldn’t have to do anything to convince you to download this.
• Kiel posted on his Tumblr this 8-bit Presidential Election RPG that is pretty sweet.
• My new favorite blog: Look At This Fucking Hipster.
• A hint of things coming up.   Maybe I’ll say what it is if there is anything to say about it later on.

Things I’m pumped to check out this week? JJ Abrams’ issue of Wired, and Ivan Brandon and Nic Klein’s first issue of Viking.

My girlfriend recently left a copy of Fast Company magazine at my apartment, telling me about the article on Chris Hughes, a founder of Facebook and how he helped Obama win his campaign. Flipping through, I found this short Q & A with Tony Gilroy, writer/director of Michael Clayton, discussing corporate espionage in his new movie, Duplicity.

FAST COMPANY: How did you get interested in corporate espionage?

TONY GILROY: I’ve done a lot of spy movies, law enforcement, and military-intelligence things, and I’ve built up contacts in the intelligence community. Most of the spies in my address have gone private.  I watched them set up companies or join ones, and make more money than they ever though they would make.  You’d see them two years later, and they’d have their teeth done, a new suit, a new wife.  So I thought there was something fresh there for a movie. Nobody had done it. It was surprising that it was so untouched.

You don’t hear much about this, especially from companies.

There’s no upside for the victim or the victor to talk about it.  You’re not going to see a press release saying, “Hey, our $60 million idea just got ripped off.” Most of this remains unreported. But when I was working on the script a few years ago, there was an espionage war between Proctor & Gamble and Unilever that got out.

It was a pretty good story that changed my opinion on Duplicity. Fairly recently, I realized Gilroy followed up Clayton (which I think is probably one of the best screenplays in the 21st century) with this movie, I thought it was a pretty weak follow-up based on the marketing, advertising it as a super-lame Rom-Com between corporate spies trying to rip-off their employers.  However, when I read this article, I now realize its at least worth seeing.