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A library of interviews with the world’s biggest thinkers.
2mins
Following the gulf oil spill disaster, the best thing that BP can do is to clean up the mess as quickly as possible. “Their actions will allow them then to […]
3mins
A conversation with the Global CEO of Razorfish.
4mins
The past doesn’t so much teach us specific lessons as give us an appreciation for the complexity of the issues we face.
7mins
Problems in corporate America are often connected to the fact that management is no longer answerable to the people who actually own their companies.
5mins
Cornelius Vanderbilt couldn’t spell, but he had a consummate passion for competition.
6mins
Digitization has actually made working on biographies more laborious. The sheer amount of material means that the process actually takes longer if you’re going to be thorough.
2mins
Although biographies often focus on individuals, they’re really about exploring big historical trends.
26mins
A conversation with the Cornelius Vanderbilt biographer.
6mins
Digital books and iPads are certainly changing the way that people write, but so did computers when they first came out. You just have to move with the culture and […]
7mins
Writing a novel isn’t a practical, logical thing to do. The author starts by writing an outline from an “emotional place” and then becomes a “cool technician” to shape it […]
1mins
“It’s very easy to write a script compared to a book,” says the author. A novel is not a logical thing and it doesn’t come from a logical place—a screenplay […]
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It’s much less fun to release a book these days—with all the necessary Twitter and Facebook promotions—than when the novelist began.
3mins
The author has “no idea” why characters from his previous novels reappear in his new ones. “It just feels right.”
4mins
“There’s an argument to be made, sure, that the violence in ‘American Psycho’ was gratuitous,” says the author. But he also sees how the book is “a kind of performance […]
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The biggest mistake young screenwriters make is “over-reliance on dialogue” when, in fact, a screenplay is really about setting up the visual scene.
3mins
The tendency seems to be toward telling the same old stories with a new kind of “visual panache.” The screenwriter wants to see “more movies of substance.”
4mins
Screenwriting is like creating Frankenstein’s monster; assembling body parts is easy, but giving them life is “almost impossible.”
4mins
At first, the critical consensus was that “Groundhog Day” was merely “cute.” But over time it developed a mass following of viewers and critics alike.
5mins
The screenwriter had 50 meetings with different producers when he was trying to sell his script. The most common reaction: “I loved ‘Groundhog Day.’ Of course, we can’t make it.”