Friday, October 14, 2016

Bullets: An Interview, An Appearance, and Insight into The Fade Out.

One massive omnibus post wasn't enough to cover a very busy week, so here are a couple more brief notes.

• Brubaker Interview on Comics and Westworld.  Wednesday, the AV Club posted an extensive interview with Ed Brubaker.  The writer discusses the genesis of The Fade Out and the themes and dark humor of Kill Or Be Killed.  There are hints of where the story might go, but Brubaker didn't want to reveal upcoming twists and turns that were present in his "basic pitch" for the story.

He also discusses the challenges, research, and experimentation in the new series' claustrophobic visuals.  Sean Phillips' transition to digital artwork has resulted in much greater detail in the images, and Brubaker says the art improves upon the already high standard set by The Fade Out: it's an assessment we won't gainsay.

The writer also discusses the modern state of Hollywood, the value of multitasking in his career, and the lessons he has learned as a supervising producer for Westworld and in its writing room.

The whole thing is worth a read, and again Brubaker recommends the podcast on Hollywood history, You Must Remember This.

(And, we notice that the top photo was taken by his wife Melanie, and we can't remember the last time we've seen the writer without a hat on.)

• Sean Phillips at the Lakes Comic Art Festival.  We hate that we didn't mention this earlier in the week, but we would be remiss in highlighting what we only alluded to previously:  Sean Phillips is attending the Lakes International Comic Art Festival in Kendal, England, this weekend.

There, the artist is making available the festival-exclusive screenprint that we mentioned in September.  A signing is scheduled for Saturday, along with other events listed in the program guide, which will be followed by signings as time permits as well as on Sunday afternoon.  Kendal also sees the month-long return of the Phono+Graphic exhibition that Phillips curated for the previous year.

A local site has also published a brief guide with selected highlights.

• More Insight into The Fade Out.  We saw a couple more things this week about The Fade Out that we'd like to share.  First, our copy of the book's deluxe hardcover is still on its way, but we're guessing that we've seen a couple pages in Wednesday's AV Club interview we mentioned above.

The interview includes the following low-res image of Sean Phillips' familiar headshots for the graphic novel's "Cast of Characters," but it's neither the single-page version found in the monthly issues nor any of the lists of 14-16 characters found in the trade paperback collection.  We believe this is the final cast list for the deluxe edition.



The same day, we saw a conversation on Twitter about something even better:  info that evidently didn't make the deluxe edition.  Twitter user @EllusiveJ brought up the subject of comic creators' playlists, and Ed Brubaker mentioned a playlist that he wanted to include in The Fade Out, presumably the single-volume book.

He then took a screencap and posted "THE FADE OUT playlist," which we're reproducing below.


Brubaker explains that this playlist helped with writing the book: "It really helped set the tone, to know what they'd be hearing on the radio, etc."  We've already mentioned his earlier revelation that most of the book's chapter titles were taken from contemporary song lyrics, so we're curious what we'll find in these songs.

• Classic Movies Online, Classic Muppets on HBO.  Finally, a couple other news items that our readers might find interesting, not directly related to Brubaker and Phillips.

First, the New York Post has an article on FilmStruck, a new streaming channel being launched by Turner Classic Movies:  "Starting Oct. 19, for $6.99 a month you will be able to sample a library of hundreds of TCM films at a time, on a rotating basis, via an app that will initially be available only on the web, Amazon Fire, iOS and Android devices."

We're salivating already.

Second, regular viewers of Westworld have another reason to appreciate their subscription to HBO, especially if they're of a certain age or have young children.  Just this week, IndieWire reported that all 96 episodes of Jim Henson's Fraggle Rock will return to the channel by year's end, remastered in high definition.

Dance your cares away, worry's for another day...

(Now try getting that song out of your head.)

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1 Comments:

Blogger Bubba said...

It's worth pointing out, if only in a comment, but those who have already read The Fade Out will notice that there's a glaring and surely deliberate omission in that cast list.

9:53 AM  

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