By Steve Marsh - Vulture
Lizz Winstead didn’t just create The Daily Show, serving as the show’s first head writer back in the Craig Kilborn era — she helped put both Stephen Colbert and Rachel Maddow on the map. She plucked Colbert from morning television (he was doing goofy little segments for Good Morning America), and she discovered Maddow on a morning radio show in Northampton, Massachusetts, then signed her for a political talk show co-hosted by Chuck D on Air America. This is all in Winstead’s new book, Lizz Free or Die, which shows how the Minneapolis native found her place as a feminist stand-up and political satirist in New York. (Watch the book trailer, below.) We talked to her about romance on the set of The Daily Show, what she thinks about Girls (everyone has an opinion), and wanting to be a priest.
Uggie Is Writing a Book Now
So much for retirement! Since the Oscars, The Artist's mysteriously shaking wonder dog has lined up gigs pitching Nintendo and attending the White House Correspondents' Dinner; now the AP reports that a division of Simon & Schuster has inked a deal with Uggie to write his autobiography, Uggie: My Story, which will be out in October (so long from now!). Let's hope it has as much humping as Frank Langella's memoir.
Alison Bechdel, Lauren Redniss Among 2012 Guggenheim Fellows
Alison Bechdel, the graphic memoirist whose forthcoming book Are You My Mother was reviewed in New York earlier this month, and Lauren Redniss, who wrote the acclaimed illustrated history of Marie and Pierre Curie, Radioactive, were both named Guggenheim Fellows today. It's unclear how much each award winner will get as part of the fellowship — the foundation decides the amount of the grant on a case-by-case basis — but let's hope Bechdel and Redniss at least receive their prizes on giant novelty checks.
Young Adult novels can get away with a lot on the page, but now that Hollywood is buying up every hit YA franchise to adapt for the big screen, something is becoming very clear: These characters all have hilarious names, and when you say them out loud, it's an altogether different experience than it is to simply read them. "Katniss Everdeen" from The Hunger Games sort of works, but will we ever come to terms with "Peeta," which sounds less like the moniker for a romantic hero and more like it was recovered from a list of rejected Lucasfilm alien names? What of "Renesmee," the vampire-baby name from Twilight that sounds so goofball when spoken that the movie had to include a whole scene where the other characters give Bella the side-eye for picking it out? And now that we've got The Mortal Instruments on the way, where characters are named things like "Clary Fray" and "Magnus Bane," we put it to you: Which YA franchises have had names so silly, you simply couldn't get over them?
FX Trying to Whip S&M Memoir Into Shape With Vince Vaughn
By Claude Brodesser-AknerThe ink has barely dried on the deal to turn E.L. James’s 50 Shades of Grey into a feature film at Universal Pictures, but already it seems that Hollywood is hot for S&M: We hear exclusively that Fox’s FX Network is partnering with Vince Vaughn’s Wild West Picture Show Productions to develop Shawna Kenney’s memoir I Was a Teenage Dominatrix.
Chris Weitz Will Write His Own YA Novels Now
Writer-director Chris Weitz is more than comfortable spending an afternoon in the Young Adult section of Barnes & Noble — in addition to directing Twilight: New Moon, he also adapted Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass for the big screen. That particular project did not go the way that he or His Dark Materials fans might have liked, but Weitz is undeterred; in fact, he is so committed to the YA genre that he will now be writing his own novels for the teen set. Little, Brown Books for Young Readers will publish Weitz's trilogy of fashionably postapocalyptic novels in which teens run the world. Vulture sincerely hopes it looks nothing like this video.
Stephen King May Have Another Gore-Fest in Him Yet
Many latter Stephen King novels have noticeably, mostly pleasantly eschewed all-out horror in favor of directions like romance, impenetrable domes amplifying small-town politicking and neighbor-murdering, and time-traveling adventures in getting JFK un-assassinated. Now King is pressing pause on all that messing about, at least for a moment. "He’s writing a book called Joyland, about an amusement park serial killer," author Neil Gaiman almost offhandedly notes in an amusing profile in the U.K.'s Sunday Times (transcript here). With so much semi-prestigious (or at least unusual) showbiz goodwill amassing around King lately — Ron Howard's crazy ambitious plans for The Dark Tower, Ben Affleck's potential trilogy adaptation of The Stand, John Mellencamp's King-written stage musical, Showtime and Brian K. Vaughan's Under the Dome miniseries, Jonathan Demme snagging the rights to 11/22/63, theatrical and Hollywood resurrections of Carrie — we could all use at least one more schlocky horror film based on a bloody work straight out of King's wheelhouse. (And King's Shining sequel Doctor Sleep, due in 2013, may even beat Joyland's return to the murder-y roots.)The Walking Dead’s Media Empire Knows No Bounds
Robert Kirkman created The Walking Dead as a graphic novel, then became executive producer of AMC's hugely popular adaptation, then became a staple on the same network's fan series Talking Dead, too. And with all those ventures remaining stolidly ambulatory, it comes as little surprise that 2011's odd non-comic Walking Dead novel Rise of the Governor wasn't immune to the series' success, either. Kirkman and co-writer Jay Bonansinga will launch a second no-pictures-allowed book, The Road to Woodbury, on October 16, detailing more exploits of the soon-to-appear-on-TV baddie the Governor. The release will coincide with the show's third season, robbing the novel's shot at tiding over ravenous zombie-lovers. But with a comic approaching its 100th issue and a show evidently capable of reeling in 8 million viewers all at once, The Walking Dead is no longer a series that needs to play by any rules but its own. Find your own way to abide the wait, fans.