![]() ![]() Ryan does her best Everywoman schtick as the most caring of the daughters, but has zip to work with Keaton is one of those caricatured bitchy magazine types that populate this type of film, and Kudrow will be unstoppable when she finds the right movie - only this isn't it. There are lots of signs that this is meant to be a contemporary commentary on the speed and shrill of modern life or the way illness can strike at the most disruptive times, but neither the script or the playing can fill the vapid centre. Never achieving a correct balance in tone, what emerges is a frazzled, frenetic piece that never gets under the skin of any of its characters or their emerging neuroses.īased on Delia Ephron's 1995 semi-autobiographical book, it trades in the warm 'n' fuzzy arena that the Ephrons (particularly in Sleepless In Seattle and You've Got Mail, both directed by Nora) have made their stock in trade. The troika of great comedic actresses combined with brisk pacing and broad brushstrokes suggest this has the makings of a larf riot. Neither Greg nor I knew the answer.The strange thing about Hanging Up is that it has the demeanour of an out and out comedy. She began considering the hybrid possibility for herself, but questioned whether a Booktrope title could actually get out there, not just vanish into oblivion like other friends' self-published books - without a machine behind them - had done. Billie was in a state of frustration, unable to get any traction with New York agents or publishers with her first novel, H ow To Un-Marry A Millionaire, and could see Greg moving slowly but steadily towards a dignified and painless publication of Casanova - a book she had believed in for as long as I had. The result was the bestselling Secret Diary of Anne Boleyn (now in its 24th printing with Simon and Schuster, translated into 14 languages) which kick-started my career as a novelist. It was, in fact, Billie who had nagged me incessantly 20 years before to stop chewing her ear off about Tudor England and write a goddamn book. Meanwhile, Billie - documentary filmmaker and my longtime comedy screenwriting partner - was watching the adventures of our mutual friend, Greg, with the greatest interest. If you were lucky enough to get a deal, in-house money that had once been spent on advertising, marketing and promotion had dried up, and publishers expected authors to pick up the slack with their own Facebook, Twitter and personal blog campaigns.spending their own money to boot! The old Hollywood adage, "You're only as good as your last movie" took hold in New York, and now writers were only as good as their last book's "sales track." Independent bookstores were closing right and left, and if all that wasn't bad enough, one of America's two major bookstore chains - Borders - went out of business. Even once-robust genres (like historical fiction) were dying on the vine. There were bloodbaths at the major houses, with lists slashed by a third, and respected editors being fired, others leaving the business altogether. ![]() ![]() Successful mid-list, and even bestselling authors, were being dropped willy-nilly by their publishers and fired by their agents. The "Grand Battle of the eBooks" was underway, and was the dominant force in the sometimes dicey self-publishing arena. Corporate mergers decimated the field of choices for submission.
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