Category Archives: works in progress

The Hills, The Stars, The Stacks of Wax

Posted on February 24, 2011 | Comments Off

I’m sitting in front of the window in my fourteenth floor hotel room in Hollywood, overlooking Hollywood Hills, and it’s sunny and very springish outside, which makes me wish that the sudden touch of winter we had in Maryland earlier this week would finally just pack up and leave. While I can’t see the famous HOLLYWOOD sign from my window (thanks to the rest of the hotel looming up to my right) there’s no mistaking where I am.

The Hollywood Bowl is just over that hill, and the famous Magic Castle — official home of the Academy of Magic Arts — is the yellow building visible at center left, with the gray roof and turret. Oh, I also apparently forgot there’s some sort of formal awards ceremony going on this coming Sunday, which explains why the lobby of my hotel is bustling with people wearing name badges proclaiming them as part of an OSCAR SET-UP CREW. Who knew.

I arrived here yesterday with plenty of time to spare before my interview last evening, so I decided to walk over to Roscoe’s on Gower Street, which meant my footsteps took me right along the famous Hollywood Walk of Fame — which, as I think I’ve mentioned before, is both exciting and sort of depressing. It’s fun to pick out the famous names as you stroll the sidewalk, but it’s a bit shocking to see stars for former heavy hitters like Gary Cooper or Katherine Hepburn gracing the pavement in front of a tattoo parlor — and it’s even more heartbreaking to hear someone say “I don’t even know who these people are!” as they step past the star for James Cagney. (Okay, maybe you don’t know George Cukor, but James Cagney? )

Oh, and I did manage to find this one — which, I’m happy to say, was not in front of a tattoo parlor or cigarette shop:

Meanwhile, the Sinatra fan in me couldn’t resist snapping a quick shot of this famous building:

Ring-a-ding-ding, baby.

After stuffing myself on chicken and waffles, as promised, I made the much-needed long walk back to my hotel and spent the next few hours preparing for my interview. While it seems that an interview should be easy — especially when you’re the one asking the questions — I like to go in prepared, so I spend time reading over my questions several times, making notes where I may need to clarify something, or making sure I have any materials handy that I might want to have my subject read or look at during our conversation. I also try to make sure the questions are in something that at least looks like a logical order so I don’t disorient them — or me — by jumping from topic to topic, though that’s always bound to happen once you get talking.

Finally, around 6:00 or so, I got into the rental car and drove down Sunset Boulevard, looking very much out of place in my Ford Focus as I headed for Beverly Hills. And I had a fantastic evening, with great conversation and even better company.

Today, it’s back to Jim Henson Studios over on La Brea. Stay tuned.

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Posted in Capitol Records, Jim Henson, walk of fame, works in progress

Over and Under and Through

Posted on February 22, 2011 | Comments Off

I’m off bright and early tomorrow morning to head to Los Angeles to conduct several interviews — and, if I have time, catch lunch or dinner at Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles. Next week , it’s interviews in New York and Pittsburgh, and an Irving event in Philadelphia. I’m counting on not knowing what day it is for the next two weeks. But I plan to report back here this week, so keep watching.

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Posted in Jim Henson, works in progress

Back At It

Posted on January 6, 2011 | 2 comments

Happy 2011! And good lord, is the first week of the year really almost over?

The winter break was a quick sprint through the Southwest for Barb and me — I’m a New Mexican, and she’s an Arizonan, so we spent a few days with family and friends in each state before setting up camp (read: staying in a hotel) out in the Gold Canyon region of Arizona for several days. Barb took advantage of the spa services while I spent my time in front of a fire, sipping Land Shark, burning the eight-dollars-a-piece Duraflame logs provided by our hotel, and reading Robert Caro. All in all, not a bad way to pass the time.

It was unseasonably cold while we were out there — as it seems to have been across most of the continental US that week — and a snowstorm blew through northern Arizona late last Wednesday, blanketing Flagstaff under two feet of snow and closing roads in all directions. The only problem was, our New Year’s Eve plans included driving to Flagstaff and ringing in 2011 from there. Fortunately, the roads cleared and we made it to Flagstaff with no problems, though we greeted the new year with temperatures hovering at 15 below. On New Year’s morning, I discovered that a case of sodas I had stupidly left in the back seat of the rental car had frozen and exploded — then instantly froze again, making the clean up easy: I simply picked up the frozen ice sculpture of cans, box, and foam and threw it away.

I left behind the laptop I had intended to carry along with me — we decided to forget work and stay off the grid during our vacation, though Barb couldn’t resist bringing along her iPad and checking e-mail every once in a while. Since our return, however, we’ve been back at it. In fact, this week, I’ll have a draft of several chapters completed that I can ship off and have some folks take a look at. Yeah, I’m pretty excited, too.

On a completely random aside, I’m pleased to announce that I’ve got two Washington Irving-related events in the coming months, both in Philadelphia. One is a speaking engagement at the Rittenhouse Club, while the other is at a celebration of Rebecca Gratz at the Rosenbach Museum and Library. At the Rosenbach, I’ll be speaking in tandem with Susan Sklaroff, a Gratz scholar and docent at the Museum. Susan writes a great blog about Gratz (which you can see here) and she and I will be discussing Irving and Gratz’s rather amusing relationship, as well as whether Sir Walter Scott based his heroine Rebecca in Ivanhoe on Irving’s description of the dynamic Rebecca Gratz. I’ll post more information as it becomes available.

Finally, I just registered for the Biographers International Organization’s 2011 Compleat Biographer conference, right here in Washington, DC. And you should too.

Happy New Year!

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Posted in BIO, damn it's cold!, Jim Henson, Philadelphia, Washington Irving, works in progress

Tagged Washington Irving

Nonblogging

Posted on November 23, 2010 | 3 comments

…and hello again. Sorry to be away so long — in the past week, I’ve been up to New York and back to carry out the first of what I hope are several interviews with Someone Wonderful (or someone “Super Cool,” to quote the adjective I apparently kept using over and over as I spoke with my wife on the phone afterwards) and I’m working now to get my notes organized.

Who was I talking with? While I’m not sworn to secrecy, I’ll just be coy and provide this hint — and add that it was one of the most memorable mornings of my life:

If I don’t see you until then, Happy Thanksgiving.

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Posted in Jim Henson, works in progress

Tagged Jim Henson

Yellow Leaves and Red Books

Posted on October 29, 2010 | 1 comment

Wow, has it really been more than two weeks since I last posted here? Sorry to leave you hanging. Apart from book work, we’ve been enjoying the fall, cleaning up the yard and flower beds, and preparing for Halloween. Given our schedule this year (including Madi’s incredibly busy volleyball schedule, where’s she’s starting on the varsity squad as a freshman — yeah, we’re pretty proud of her, too), we won’t make it to Sleepy Hollow for the first time in several years, so we’re decking out our place appropriately, including these two fellows near our back door:

Rest in pieces.

On a different note . . . if you’re a Jim Henson fan and you’re not reading the daily excerpts from Jim Henson’s Red Book . . . well, for shame, Doc, for shame. What is the Red Book, you ask? At the end of each year, Jim Henson would go through his personal calendar and write down in his red notebook everything that had happened during the previous year — or, at least, what he thought was interesting. It’s a fascinating (and, oftentimes, funny) document — not quite a diary, but more than just a simple listing of events. Think of it this way: if Jim were alive today, these are the kinds of things he might put up on a Twitter feed.

Anyway, over at the Jim Henson Company, crack archivist Karen Falk is putting up daily entries — corresponding to actual dates, meaning if today is October 29, then she’ll put up an entry from October 29 — and, where appropriate or helpful, providing a bit of background.

Go get it — and if you’re on Facebook or Twitter, subscribe to it for daily updates. It’s fun. Trust me.

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Posted in Halloween, Jim Henson, works in progress

Tagged Halloween, Jim Henson

Sensational, Inspirational

Posted on October 8, 2010 | 1 comment

…and hello again. I’m back from a week-long visit to New York *, where I spent several days buried in the archives at the Jim Henson Company — and if you’re at all a fan of Jim Henson or the Muppets, then you can imagine just how much fun that is. (But really, take the amount of fun that you think it is, then multiply it by ten, and you’ve got a much better idea of the Actual Fun Level.)

The archives themselves are physically located in the company’s new digs out on Long Island — needing more space, they moved from Manhattan a while ago. As I was staying in Brooklyn, I had to travel to Long Island City by subway every day — and I’ve gotta tell you, even though I’ve taken the subway in several cities around the world, for some reason, I was terrified of taking the New York subway. I was worried I would have no idea how to purchase tickets or use the system — and meanwhile, in my befuddlement, I would be clogging up the system, blocking the way for New Yorkers trying to commute into the city who would now be late and surely fired because I was costing then two minutes. Yeah, I’m a mess that way.

Fortunately, Agent J was kind enough to lend a hand and show me that it was actually really easy — and it was — and I’m pleased to say I took the subway regularly with no problems at all except for (1) missing my stop one day when I wasn’t paying attention, and (2) burning several dollars when I mistakenly entered on the wrong side of the platform and had to exit and re-enter (and thus pay again) on the other side of the street.

Each day, then, I would take the R train, as it made its hour-long trip from Brooklyn and boomeranged off Manhattan to curve into Queens. Here’s my stop each day — 36th Street, near Northern Boulevard:

The Subway stop near the Jim Henson Company. Yes, it really was that quiet.

After exiting the subway, it’s just a brief walk up the street toward the Jim Henson Company — which is located in this unassuming white building right here:

Now, don’t be fooled by this building’s rather industrial facade. It’s like Clark Kent: behind the plain blue suit and nerdy glasses lies something wonderful. Go through these doors, take the freight elevator up several floors, and when the door comes rumbling open, you’ll see a simple white sign (among a sea of similar square signs) that lets you know you’re in the right place:

The Jim Henson Company takes up a long stretch of space at the end of the fourth floor, wide enough so that both sides of the workshop are lined with windows. There’s a long wooden meeting table just inside the front door — with a Skeksis throne in one corner — and just behind the ornate reception desk (with a Kermit phone sitting on top of it) is a wonderful, life-size photo of Jim, Frank Oz, Jerry Nelson, Richard Hunt, and Caroll Spinney performing on Sesame Street. Beyond that, the workshop stretches out as far as you can see, weaving its way around large white pillars that march up the center of the space.

And what a space it is. Several Elmos sit on a table for adjustment. Miss Piggy waits patiently on another bench as a number of incredibly talented people sew her new costumes. Snuffleupagus hangs from a rack for repair and restoration. A young woman glues feathers to a Muppet arm. Classic rock vibrates from a boombox on a middle workbench as two craftspeople cut and glue and sew in front of a wall of plastic drawers with labels on them like “Monster Fur” and “Eyes.” The magic you see on the screen of any Jim Henson production is due to the hard work of these master craftsmen, and I’m humbled, and a bit intimidated, at being in their presence. So I try to stay out of their way.

Meanwhile, I’m in good hands as Archivist Karen Falk (and her awesome assistant Crystal) brings me box after box of materials, which I spread out on a desk in the workspace they’ve generously provided for me — a quiet side office, lined with windows overlooking Long Island. Here’s a bit of my mess as I worked one morning, poring over scripts, receipts and correspondence:

By Friday, like a kid in an amusement park, I was wishing I had just one more minute to keep reading before I had to catch my train back to Maryland. It may be too ambitious to try to emulate Neal Gabler — who allegedly read every page contained in the Walt Disney archives for his spectacular Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination — but that doesn’t mean I’m not gonna try. I’ll be back soon.

* Actually, I was there the week of September 27, but haven’t the chance to blog about it until today…

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Posted in Jim Henson, Muppets, super powers, works in progress

Happy Birthday, Jim Henson!

Posted on September 24, 2010 | 2 comments

Seventy-four years ago, the world became a sillier, brighter, and better place.

“My hope still is to leave the world a bit better than when I got here.” — Jim Henson

Happy Birthday, Jim Henson.

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Posted in happy birthday, icons, Jim Henson, works in progress

Tagged Jim Henson

Southern Charm

Posted on September 22, 2010 | 1 comment

I’m coming to you today from my hotel room in Greenville, Mississippi, where the view out my window — once you overlook the roof of the casino just below — is of the wonderfully swampy Mississippi delta region. Over the tops of the cypress trees, I can just see the braces of a brand new bridge spanning the Mississippi River. And while it was a seasonably cool 65 degrees when I left Maryland on Monday, it’s still hovering in the mid-90s, making me wish I’d packed something other than long-sleeves.

I’ve spent the past few days visiting the locations where Jim Henson was born, and where he and his family lived, on and off, for the first decade of his life. A sense of place is very important to me in biography, and I wanted to make sure I stood where Jim might have stood as a boy, saw what he might have seen from the front porch of his house, knew where his father worked, and learned how far it was to the local movie theater.

And don’t let anyone tell you that Southern hospitality is a thing of the past. It may be a remnant of a long-gone era, but it’s still very much embedded in the way they do things in the delta region. I met with town historians and longtime residents who showed me newspaper clippings and photos, steered me through the local elementary school, and who willingly piled into their cars and drove me around. And every one of them invited me to dinner (or suppuh, as they so wonderfully say it here), extended an invitation to stay with them, asked me to “sit a spell,” and pressed on me personal possessions they thought might help in my research. All in all, a memorable — and incredibly productive — trip. I’ll be back.

I’m now getting ready to pack up and make the two-hour drive back to Jackson. I love long drives, and I love listening to local radio. To my complete and utter surprise and disappointment, I’ve been unable to locate a blues station anywhere on the radio dial. Incongruously, then, I drove into the delta region listening to Men and Work and Night Ranger on the local 80s channel. But I’ll keep trying.

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Posted in Jim Henson, Mississippi, works in progress

Tagged Mississippi

Project Blue Harvest Revealed

Posted on July 26, 2010 | 2 comments

…well, not quite. But for those of you who keep kindly asking me, “What are you doing next?” . . . you’ll have your answer shortly. In the meantime, I’ll take a moment to address the next most popular question, which is: “What’s the first Beatles song to feature an Epiphone Casino guitar?”*

Ha ha! No, actually, it’s “What is this ‘Project Blue Harvest’ reference anyway?”

(My fellow Star Wars nerds can stop reading and come back tomorrow.)

Back in the early 1980s, when George Lucas was hard at work on Return of the Jedi — the final installment of the Star Wars series, until later, when it wasn’t — speculating on the plot of the final film was something of a parlor game. Would Han Solo survive? (rumors were that he wouldn’t, since Harrison Ford now had the Indiana Jones franchise and was on his way to making Serious Films) Was Darth Vader really Luke’s father? (many argued that Vader had lied, and that some sort of change-up was coming down the line in the final film) Who was this other hope Yoda spoke of? (Leia? Chewbacca? Or, god help us, the hopelessly cheesy Lando?) To keep information from leaking out — and to throw nosy reporters and fans off the scent — Lucas and his film makers began production on Jedi under a fake working title, a horror film called Blue Harvest (tagline: “Horror Beyond Imagination!”) As Jedi producer Howard Kazanjian said later:

When shooting Jedi in the United States, we called the film Blue Harvest. Camera slates, invoices, hotel reservations, call sheets, production reports, and crew hats and T-shirts all read Blue Harvest. So when a visitor would ask, ‘what are you shooting’ and we said Blue Harvest, they went on their way. Can you imagine what would have happened if we had said, ‘We’re shooting the next film in the Star Wars trilogy’?

In fact, if you watch the special features on the Indiana Jones DVD boxed set, you’ll see Steven Spielberg in one scene wearing a baseball cap emblazoned with a Blue Harvest logo. And I want one.

Anyway, since the publication of Washington Irving: An American Original in 2008, I’ve been pursuing another project, involving those Really Amazing People you keep hearing me talk about. But until we could all make it come together, I promised them — and myself, since like most writers, I’m a notorious jinx — that I would keep quiet about it. For a while, then, when asked what I was working on, I would hem and haw and deflect or say I wasn’t really sure. Eventually, however, I settled into admitting that, yes, I did have a project I was pursuing, which I started referring to as “Project Blue Harvest.” And it just sort of stuck.

So, given the origins of the name, then, you might rightly ask if my project has anything to do with Star Wars? Am I, perhaps, pursuing a biography of George Lucas?

The answer is: No. While there is a remote Star Wars connection, my subject is not George Lucas. It’s someone even more exciting than that. And I’ll tell you who it is this later this week.

* It was “Ticket to Ride,” and the jangly opening was actually played by Paul McCartney, on a left-hand strung six string. Now you know.

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Posted in George Lucas, Project Blue Harvest, Star Wars, works in progress

Tagged Project Blue Harvest

The Next Voice You Hear Will…Oh, Forget It.

Posted on March 11, 2010 | 1 comment

My plans for voice recognition software were thwarted.

As Jane Smith — from How Publishing Really Works — pointed out in the comments section, voice recognition software is fairly voice specific. You have to “train” it to recognize your own voice, at which point you can play your own recorded voice back to it (or speak through a microphone) and the program will recognize your own words well enough to come up with a reasonable transcription.

My problem, however, is that that’s not really what I needed. I wanted to be able to play back an interview between two people, and have the VRS system be able to transcribe it. That, alas, is beyond the capability of most VRS systems.

The literature for MacSpeech didn’t really make that clear — I thought it was going to be a technological wunderkind, capable of transcribing whatever I might play through it (“Revolution 9” from The Beatles might have been fun), no questions asked. That wasn’t the case — and since I don’t work by dictating into the computer, Scribe is pretty much a useless program for me.

Unfortunately, when I called customer service at MacSpeech to see if I could get a refund on the program — since it really didn’t do what I needed it to do — they told me no dice, since the program “was working as it was supposed to.” Rats.

So I’ve gone back to Plan B — having the conversation transcribed. I did learn, however, that if your transcription doesn’t have to carry a standard of “legal weight” — meaning it won’t be scrutinized in a courtroom — you can have things transcribed for a much more reasonable rate. I’m supposed to have my transcript back soon. I’ll let you know how they did — and if it looks good, I’ll let you know who I used.