Post by timartwonis on Sept 25, 2004 15:18:32 GMT -5
www.nytimes.com/2004/09/23/movies/23hand.html
Lemony Snicket's Down and Dirty Indie
By JULIE SALAMON
Published: September 23, 2004
The writer Daniel Handler, a k a Lemony Snicket, was in New York this week promoting two new works. One is "The Grim Grotto," the 11th installment of his hugely successful "Series of Unfortunate Events." These gothic children's books, following the star-crossed Baudelaire orphans through fantastical misadventures, have sold about 25 million copies in the last five years and won approval from grown-ups for their shrewd storytelling and clever wordplay.
The other is "Rick," also grim, but strictly for adults. An independent movie written by Mr. Handler, it is unsparing in language and sexuality. "One of those films that makes one want to take a long shower afterward," huffed Variety's film critic. From the producer of "American Psycho," it opens tomorrow at the Angelika Film Center.
Actually, Mr. Handler was flacking three projects, the third being the big-budget movie version of his Lemony Snicket books, a Paramount- and Dreamworks-produced extravaganza starring Jim Carrey and Meryl Streep, scheduled to open Dec. 17.
"They almost couldn't be more different experiences," Mr. Handler said of the two movies with a giggle, when interviewed early one morning this week. He was waiting to do drive-time radio promotions, a series of 10-minute conversations with morning radio shows in cities including Albany, Pittsburgh, San Diego and Kalamazoo, Mich., and he looked a little wan, having flown in from his hometown, San Francisco, the night before. And he is the father of an 11-month-old boy.
"Children tire one out," he said.
He did not, however, write "Rick" to escape being identified solely as an author of children's books. He wrote the screenplay, loosely based on the opera "Rigoletto" (in which a father bears responsibility for his daughter's death), seven or eight years ago when he was just another struggling writer living in New York.
"I couldn't get arrested as a writer back then," said Mr. Handler, who is 34 and graying but still possessed of chubby boyish cheeks and a tendency to giggle wildly. Indeed, "Rick" became possible only after he had become famous as Lemony Snicket, the vaguely British nom de plume Mr. Handler adopted when he began writing the "Series of Unfortunate Events."
The British identification has appealed to critics, who liken his books to those of Roald Dahl and Edward Gorey. Mr. Handler, though, thinks his work harks back more to Isaac Bashevis Singer's; the sensibility isn't Eton but Eastern European.
Weirdly (or logically) the link between "Rick" and the Lemony Snicket books, all tales of trouble and woe, is the Holocaust. Mr. Handler's father was a Jewish refugee from Germany as a child; the family left in 1938. Stories of escape, horror and fortuity were part of Mr. Handler's otherwise benign upbringing in San Francisco as the son of professional people who enjoyed opera and literature. But he heard and registered the stories of his grandmother hiding diamonds in the hollowed out heel of her shoe, of a disagreement about whether to stay or leave that ended his grandparents' marriage.
"I don't mean to say, 'Oh, it's my father's painful legacy that is coming out on the page,' " Mr. Handler said. "For me the central lesson, over and over again, was the sheer unaccountability of fate and where you might end up. That definitely drives the Snicket books. In a lot of children's books if you behave well you're rewarded and if you behave badly you're punished. But anybody who tells a story about getting out of a country by the skin of their teeth, it's not because they were braver or more charming or better people. It's because somebody looked the other way or didn't bother to search the hollowed out heel of a shoe."
The Holocaust connection seems inescapable. When he was introduced to Steven Spielberg - who is part owner of Dreamworks, one of the companies behind the Lemony Snicket movie - the subject arose almost immediately. "I had occasion to meet Steven Spielberg for, like, two minutes, and that's what we talked about," he said. The director of "Schindler's List" asked Mr. Handler about his childhood, and the reply, Mr. Handler said, went more or less like this: " 'Funny you should mention it: my father, Germany, escape.' And that was our 45 seconds of small talk."
Otherwise Mr. Handler had a more typical Hollywood experience. He had written a screenplay for the Snicket books; Scott Rudin was going to produce and Barry Sonnenfeld, whose credits include "Men in Black" and "The Addams Family," was going to direct. Harmony ruled, Mr. Handler said, until the producer quit and the director quit or was fired, depending on whom you asked. When the project moved to Dreamworks, a new creative team was installed, including a screenwriter who was not Mr. Handler.
For a brief time the Snicket and "Rick" projects overlapped and Mr. Handler had a glimpse of the difference between big budget and independent filmmaking. "I would have coffee in a diner and plot this tiny little effort with Curtiss Clayton and Ruth Charny," he said of the director of "Rick" and one of its producers. "We would say things like, if it snows that day there will definitely be snow in the motion picture and if it doesn't snow there won't be snow. Then I'd head back uptown and meet with people who would say, 'We're meeting with Industrial Light and Magic to talk about creating leeches.' "
When he isn't promoting books and movies, Mr. Handler mainly writes. His third adult novel is coming out next year, and he plans two more Snicket books, for a total of 13, naturally.
Does he think that his work will become gentler now that he has a child? "It's almost the opposite, particularly when your child is an infant," he said. "My son has just started to crawl. I'm always assessing the threat level of plugs and sharp corners and glass tables." In fact, fatherhood has reinforced the world view that he believes accounts for the success of his children's books.
"When children reach the ages that are appropriate for the Snicket books, they have the sense that the world is going in a way that's contrary to the rules you're told about," he said. "You're given this code of behavior by your parents and teachers and watch the world disobey those rules. You can behave well and not necessarily be rewarded. Or behave badly and not necessarily get punished. The books reflect that truth."
My dad showed this to me in the newspaper. I didn't actually finish and he asked me if I read it and I said yes because I read part of it so then he started talking about it and he was like, "Isn't it amazing how his father escaped from the Nazis?" It was quite confusing because he kept rambling on about how the books are conencted with that and how good people are often put in bad situations and all that so I read it after that. Yeah.
Lemony Snicket's Down and Dirty Indie
By JULIE SALAMON
Published: September 23, 2004
The writer Daniel Handler, a k a Lemony Snicket, was in New York this week promoting two new works. One is "The Grim Grotto," the 11th installment of his hugely successful "Series of Unfortunate Events." These gothic children's books, following the star-crossed Baudelaire orphans through fantastical misadventures, have sold about 25 million copies in the last five years and won approval from grown-ups for their shrewd storytelling and clever wordplay.
The other is "Rick," also grim, but strictly for adults. An independent movie written by Mr. Handler, it is unsparing in language and sexuality. "One of those films that makes one want to take a long shower afterward," huffed Variety's film critic. From the producer of "American Psycho," it opens tomorrow at the Angelika Film Center.
Actually, Mr. Handler was flacking three projects, the third being the big-budget movie version of his Lemony Snicket books, a Paramount- and Dreamworks-produced extravaganza starring Jim Carrey and Meryl Streep, scheduled to open Dec. 17.
"They almost couldn't be more different experiences," Mr. Handler said of the two movies with a giggle, when interviewed early one morning this week. He was waiting to do drive-time radio promotions, a series of 10-minute conversations with morning radio shows in cities including Albany, Pittsburgh, San Diego and Kalamazoo, Mich., and he looked a little wan, having flown in from his hometown, San Francisco, the night before. And he is the father of an 11-month-old boy.
"Children tire one out," he said.
He did not, however, write "Rick" to escape being identified solely as an author of children's books. He wrote the screenplay, loosely based on the opera "Rigoletto" (in which a father bears responsibility for his daughter's death), seven or eight years ago when he was just another struggling writer living in New York.
"I couldn't get arrested as a writer back then," said Mr. Handler, who is 34 and graying but still possessed of chubby boyish cheeks and a tendency to giggle wildly. Indeed, "Rick" became possible only after he had become famous as Lemony Snicket, the vaguely British nom de plume Mr. Handler adopted when he began writing the "Series of Unfortunate Events."
The British identification has appealed to critics, who liken his books to those of Roald Dahl and Edward Gorey. Mr. Handler, though, thinks his work harks back more to Isaac Bashevis Singer's; the sensibility isn't Eton but Eastern European.
Weirdly (or logically) the link between "Rick" and the Lemony Snicket books, all tales of trouble and woe, is the Holocaust. Mr. Handler's father was a Jewish refugee from Germany as a child; the family left in 1938. Stories of escape, horror and fortuity were part of Mr. Handler's otherwise benign upbringing in San Francisco as the son of professional people who enjoyed opera and literature. But he heard and registered the stories of his grandmother hiding diamonds in the hollowed out heel of her shoe, of a disagreement about whether to stay or leave that ended his grandparents' marriage.
"I don't mean to say, 'Oh, it's my father's painful legacy that is coming out on the page,' " Mr. Handler said. "For me the central lesson, over and over again, was the sheer unaccountability of fate and where you might end up. That definitely drives the Snicket books. In a lot of children's books if you behave well you're rewarded and if you behave badly you're punished. But anybody who tells a story about getting out of a country by the skin of their teeth, it's not because they were braver or more charming or better people. It's because somebody looked the other way or didn't bother to search the hollowed out heel of a shoe."
The Holocaust connection seems inescapable. When he was introduced to Steven Spielberg - who is part owner of Dreamworks, one of the companies behind the Lemony Snicket movie - the subject arose almost immediately. "I had occasion to meet Steven Spielberg for, like, two minutes, and that's what we talked about," he said. The director of "Schindler's List" asked Mr. Handler about his childhood, and the reply, Mr. Handler said, went more or less like this: " 'Funny you should mention it: my father, Germany, escape.' And that was our 45 seconds of small talk."
Otherwise Mr. Handler had a more typical Hollywood experience. He had written a screenplay for the Snicket books; Scott Rudin was going to produce and Barry Sonnenfeld, whose credits include "Men in Black" and "The Addams Family," was going to direct. Harmony ruled, Mr. Handler said, until the producer quit and the director quit or was fired, depending on whom you asked. When the project moved to Dreamworks, a new creative team was installed, including a screenwriter who was not Mr. Handler.
For a brief time the Snicket and "Rick" projects overlapped and Mr. Handler had a glimpse of the difference between big budget and independent filmmaking. "I would have coffee in a diner and plot this tiny little effort with Curtiss Clayton and Ruth Charny," he said of the director of "Rick" and one of its producers. "We would say things like, if it snows that day there will definitely be snow in the motion picture and if it doesn't snow there won't be snow. Then I'd head back uptown and meet with people who would say, 'We're meeting with Industrial Light and Magic to talk about creating leeches.' "
When he isn't promoting books and movies, Mr. Handler mainly writes. His third adult novel is coming out next year, and he plans two more Snicket books, for a total of 13, naturally.
Does he think that his work will become gentler now that he has a child? "It's almost the opposite, particularly when your child is an infant," he said. "My son has just started to crawl. I'm always assessing the threat level of plugs and sharp corners and glass tables." In fact, fatherhood has reinforced the world view that he believes accounts for the success of his children's books.
"When children reach the ages that are appropriate for the Snicket books, they have the sense that the world is going in a way that's contrary to the rules you're told about," he said. "You're given this code of behavior by your parents and teachers and watch the world disobey those rules. You can behave well and not necessarily be rewarded. Or behave badly and not necessarily get punished. The books reflect that truth."
My dad showed this to me in the newspaper. I didn't actually finish and he asked me if I read it and I said yes because I read part of it so then he started talking about it and he was like, "Isn't it amazing how his father escaped from the Nazis?" It was quite confusing because he kept rambling on about how the books are conencted with that and how good people are often put in bad situations and all that so I read it after that. Yeah.