Pre-orders for my book, Burn It Down, now available! Plus the badass book cover!
Lots of beginnings and endings lately. We recently finished watching all of the David Suchet Hercule Poirot adaptations on Britbox, and of course, the only possible reaction is “C’est magnifique!” (If you dig the Knives Out movies, this series is worth a look. Rian Johnson knows exactly what Agatha Christie and her crime-novel contemporaries did well, and he updates that malleable and enjoyable formula very intelligently. The same is true of the Suchet Poirot series, especially in its later incarnations – and yes, we are sampling various Miss Marples as well.)
We’re also nearing the end of Endeavour, a chronicle of quietly PTSD-afflicted Brits in retro raincoats solving crimes. The whole cast and the whole vibe = so good. I don’t want the saga of these repressed cops to end. But it will end (and then we’ll go on to Inspector Morse, obviously.)
I also recently finished my rewatch of Battlestar Galactica, and of course, at various points, I cheered, I was on the edge of my seat, and I sobbed like a baby. Does it hold up? You bet your Viper it does! It’s more relevant than ever, and more hard-hitting than ever for me, given that the brilliant character studies so frequently examine loss, love, death, acceptance and moving on — things I learned much more about since the show went off the air. I’ll give you a tiny preview of something in my forthcoming book: I call BSG “my favorite television program of all time.” So say we all!
Oh also, by the way, you can now pre-order my book, Burn It Down: Power, Complicity and a Call for Change in Hollywood. It comes out June 6 from Mariner Books, and if you look at the pre-order page, you can see that a bunch of extremely nice people have said very cool things about the book! It’s really a summing up and expansion of the work I’ve been doing on many fronts for years, and I’m really proud of it. My brain is also pure liquid at this point and is on the verge of running out my ears. Completing all the revisions and edits of this book — that’s been hard for a lot of reasons (though I am very grateful to everyone that helped me with those tasks and supported me during that process – you're the real heroes). In any event, I’m done! And I think it’s really good! And in a few hours I leave town to rest, way off the grid, for a few weeks. I need it.
(By the way, I know that a couple buttons on the pre-order page are wonky; that page may evolve over the next few months. And for now, if the bio on the Bookshop page says I won a BAFTA, let's just pretend that's true! Maybe I have won a BAFTA and just forgot. Anyway, the main pre-order buttons do work, and I am absolutely fine with whatever store you order the book from, should you choose to do such a lovely thing. Pre-orders matter a lot, especially for first-time authors, so if you’re able to order Burn It Down before June, know that I am very grateful!)
There are so many reasons this book means everything to me. I’m a huge reader and this is my first book – my name's going to be in libraries, how cool is that? More than 100 industry people at all levels gave a lot of time, energy and insight to help make the book the thorough yet incisive entertainment-industry assessment I wanted it to be, and I'm grateful for so many people's contributions. The biggest reason is because it’s about a lot of things that matter to me very much, including how to further industry reform (which hasn’t gone nearly far enough – or anywhere in some cases), and how to create and sustain the kind of Hollywood cultures that will be good for everyone. Plus, there is news in the book — some, uh, information that left my jaw on the floor — and I will have more to share on that front in coming months.
By now, you may be like, “UGH, too many words, stop talking.” For once, I will! Because here is the fucking awesome cover of my book. I love this:
One final note: If you ever read the book, and there are things in it that you like, I wrote those parts. Anything you do not like – that was written by an AI.