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Oprah Picks “Wild” First Book for New Book Club

Roger Friedman
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Oprah Picks “Wild” First Book for New Book Club

Oprah Winfrey — looking really enthusiastic–is starting her book club back again. She’s calling it Book Club 2.0. It’s digital, interactive, and still featuring the hardcover book. Cheryl Strayed, the author of “Wild,” will be helping Oprah conduct interactive conversations. You can see Oprah talk all about it at http://www.oprah.com/oprahsbookclub/Oprah-Announces-Oprahs-Book-Club-20-Video. I admire Oprah’s love of books and her determination to bring everyone along on the ride. Let’s just hope this isn’t another James Frey situation.

Here’s the press release:

os Angeles, Calif. and New York, NY – On Monday, June 4, OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network and O, The Oprah Magazine will launch Oprah’s Book Club 2.0, an interactive, multi-platform reading club that harnesses the power of social media, bringing passionate readers together to discuss inspiring stories.  The best-selling memoir Wild, by Cheryl Strayed (Knopf), is the club’s first selection. A true story of adventure, bravery and hope, Wild is full of life lessons that have resonated with many readers, including Oprah, who is bringing its message to book lovers around the world in a modern, community-oriented way.

 

Starting Monday at 12 p.m. ET, special Oprah’s Book Club 2.0 digital editions of Wild – with exclusive content including a reader’s guide and Oprah’s notes on her favorite passages – will be available for Amazon Kindle, NOOK® by Barnes & Noble, on the iBookstore and everywhere e-books are sold. 

 

Click here for a message from Oprah (link with embed code)

http://www.oprah.com/obcannouncement

 

“This is a book club for the way people live and read today,” said Sheri Salata, president of OWN.  “In addition to the traditional way, we also access books on smart phones, e-readers and tablets and we talk to our friends about them through social media.  Oprah’s Book Club 2.0 takes the Oprah.com online community, readers of O Magazine and OWN viewers and connects them through their shared love of great books.”

 

 

“Oprah’s Book Club 2.0 is the perfect extension of what we do every month in O Magazine,” said editor in chief Susan Casey.  “We cover books in depth, and even offer the first chapters of those we feature on our iPad edition.  The club is a great way to create a community and a global conversation while promoting one of the greatest pleasures: getting lost in an amazing story.”

 

The club’s first read kicks off with Oprah’s interview with Strayed in the July issue of O, The Oprah Magazine (on sale June 8) andculminates just as readers are completing their journey through Wild with a simulcast of the interview airing on Sunday, July 22 at 11 a.m. ET/PT on OWN’s Emmy-nominated “Super Soul Sunday,” streaming live on Oprah.com and on OWN’s Facebook page (facebook.com/owntv), and airing on “Oprah’s Soul Series” on Oprah Radio (Sirius 204, XM 111).

 

Conversations about Oprah’s Book Club selections will live on the Book Club hub at Oprah.com/bookclub and via mobile and social media platforms.  Additional digital elements include:

 

  • A series of webisodes featuring Oprah and Strayed will post weekly, progressing with readers as they read during the months of June and July.

 

  • Readers will have the opportunity to answer weekly questions on Oprah.com with text or photo using Facebook and Twitter (using #oprahsbookclub).  Readers will also submit questions about Wild.  Oprah and Strayed will answer via video responses each week, and real-time updates will be featured on Oprah.com.   

 

·      Using Storify, Oprah.com will highlight reader tweets, Instagram photos and Facebook posts that will be curated into a social wrap up that will live on Oprah.com, providing readers with a snapshot of what participants are thinking, feeling and sharing as they read Wild together.

 

  • Starting June 28, a map display on Oprah.com will allow readers to locate other Book Club participants around the world.

 

  • Using the mobile messaging application GroupMe, Oprah’s Book Club 2.0 will have a section where readers can create smaller book clubs with their friends to have discussion groups about the book club selections.

 

“I admire Oprah Winfrey tremendously, and could not be more honored and thrilled that Wild is the first selection for Oprah’s Book Club 2.0,” said Cheryl Strayed.  “When she called me out of the blue and said, ‘this is Oprah,’ I was astonished. It was not a call I was expecting, and I will always remember her kind words about Wild.” 

 

“It’s great to have Oprah back as a champion of books. Her enthusiasm for an author’s work has always been a catalyst for readers as well as a prompt for conversation,” said Paul Bogaards, EVP, Knopf, the publishers of Wild.  “What is especially heartening with her new book club is the social dynamic she has woven into it.”

 

About OWN: OPRAH WINFREY NETWORK

A joint venture between Harpo, Inc. and Discovery Communications, OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network is a multi-platform media company designed to entertain, inform and inspire people to live their best lives.  OWN debuted on January 1, 2011 on what was the Discovery Health Channel and is in approximately 85 million homes.  The venture also includes the award-winning digital platform, Oprah.com.  For more information, please visit www.oprah.com/own and www.press.discovery.com/us/own.

 

About Super Soul Sunday

 “Super Soul Sunday” (Sundays, 11 a.m. ET/PT on OWN) delivers a thought-provoking, eye-opening and inspiring program designed to help viewers awaken to their best selves and discover a deeper connection to the world around them.  All-new conversations between Oprah Winfrey and top thinkers, authors, and spiritual leaders take place everywhere from an oak grove at her California home, to on location in Hawaii, India, New York, Chicago, and around the world. Exploring themes and issues including happiness, personal fulfillment, wellness, spirituality and conscious living, “Super Soul Sunday” presents an array of perspectives on what it means to be alive in today’s world.  For more information, please visit www.oprah.com/supersoulsunday.  To connect via social media, follow us on www.twitter.com/supersoulsunday and www.facebook.com/supersoulsunday

  

About O, The Oprah Magazine

O, The Oprah Magazine (oprah.com/omagazine) encourages confident, intelligent women to reach for their dreams, express their individual style and make wise choices, guided by the values of one of the most charismatic women in the world, O Editorial Director Oprah Winfrey. With an emphasis on personalgrowth, the magazine inspires, addressing every aspect of a woman’s life –  the material, the intellectual and the emotional – and deeply connects with more than 15 million readers every month (MRI, 2011 Doublebase). From the moment it launched, O, The Oprah Magazine carved out a unique position in the marketplace and created an entirely new category in women’s magazines, delivering the Live Your Best Life message through thoughtful, ever-evolving content and the trusted advice provided by Suze Orman, Dr. Phil and Dr. Oz and other well-known experts.  In May 2012, O, The Oprah Magazine won the publishing industry’s highest honor, the American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME) award for General Excellence. O, The Oprah Magazine is available on Zinio, Barnes & Noble Nook, Amazon Kindle and Flipboard, and its namesake iPad app is available on the App store at www.itunes.com/appstore.  Follow O, The Oprah Magazine on Twitter @O_Magazine.

 

O, The Oprah Magazine, which also publishes a South African edition, is a co-venture between HarpoPrint, LLC and Hearst Magazines, a unit of The Hearst Corporation (www.hearst.com), one of the nation’s largest diversified media and information companies.   With its acquisition of Lagardère SCA’s 100 titles in 14 countries outside of France, Hearst Magazines now publishes more than 300 editions around the world, including 20 U.S. titles. Hearst Magazines is a leading publisher of monthly magazines in the U.S. in terms of total circulation and reaches 87 million adults (Spring 2011 MRI).

 

 

Nicole Kidman’s “Paperboy” Oscar Material, Waits for Sale

Roger Friedman
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Nicole Kidman’s “Paperboy” Oscar Material, Waits for Sale

You may be wondering–what happened to Lee Daniels’s very hot, controversial movie “The Paperboy’? The film got a 16 minute standing ovation in Cannes. Kidman got the best reviews of her life. But the movie polarized people. Some loved it, some hated it. Kidman is said to be incandescent playing against type as a kind of broke down white trash gal who even pees on one of the characters.

“Paperboy” was made by Avi Lerner’s Millennium Films, with producers Hilary Shor and Cassian Elwes. There was a special screening in Cannes for distributors before the red carpet premiere, and lots of talk. There was even some talk that Millennium would just release “The Paperboy” themselves and skip a distribution deal.

But I am told that “The Paperboy” continues to a hot potato. More screenings are being set up in New York and L.A. Millennium is said to still be open to another distributor coming in–Weinstein, Fox Searchlight, etc. Whoever gets the movie also gets Kidman’s automatic Oscar nomination, and maybe even win. So even if the movie repulses some, and turns others on, there’s going to be lots of talk and Nicole as a big bonus.

Stay tuned…

John Edwards, Rielle Hunter: Who First to Write A Book?

Roger Friedman
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0
John Edwards, Rielle Hunter: Who First to Write A Book?

Now that they’re off the hook, we can expect books from both John Edwards and his baby mama Rielle Hunter. My guess is, literary agents, publishers and lawyers are lined up to get this done–and to get big bucks.

Hunter already had a feature in GQ. But she certainly hasn’t told her real story from crib to hotel room bed in hardcover for a significant price. She has lots of material. 1980s party girl with Jay McInerney, marriage to the son of the Jon Benet Ramsey prosecutor, her life in Hollywood (already the people from “24″ are getting nervous) to meeting John Edwards in the Regency Hotel bar.

From there, Hunter has her family to flashback on including her father — he was in a scandal that  involved  killing race horses for their insurance money. http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/columns/story?columnist=munson_lester&id=3533725

Then she has the big affair, how she tried to get rid of Elizabeth Edwards, the whole saga of running around the country with the Youngs.

And then finally, deliverance: living nearby Edwards, raising their daughter, Elizabeth all gone. It’s a blockbuster, to be sure.

And Edwards? He’s going to have to write a mea culpa. Otherwise he’ll be stuck repping Night Court participants in North Carolina.

Publishers, start your engines.

Hey Jack Kerouac: “On the Road” Finally Comes to the Big Screen

Roger Friedman
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Hey Jack Kerouac: “On the Road” Finally Comes to the Big Screen

Jack Kerouac’s eternal novel of youth and frienship, “On the Road,” is finally a movie after 55 years in publication. You can look at this two ways: it should never have been done because Kerouac is like mercury. On the other hand, the fact that Walter Salles tried it, and did as as he could, should be applauded. My feeling is, “On the Road” at Cannes is too long. It needs cutting. But Salles can only be commended. And really, after all this time, it’s nice to see Sal, Dean, and Carlo—aka Kerouac, Neal Cassady and Alan Ginsberg–come alive on screen.

The script, by Jose Rivera, captures a lot. It misses some, too. But “On the Road” is like that. Rivera got the travel, poetry, and look right. It’s the interior lives of the characters that suffers. Salles has filmed the book faithfully. In doing so, it’s as if we’re observing “On the Road” rather than experiencing Sal’s adventure. This will frustrate critics and Kerouac scholars.

But the performances and filmmaking are strong. Sam Riley as Sal, Garrett Hedlund as Dean and Kirsten Dunst as Camille make strong impressions. Elizabeth Moss nearly steals the movie in a powerful, and jolting scene. Tom Sturridge, the latest actor to play Alan Ginsberg (James Franco was so good as him in “Howl”) puts on the heavy black glasses and does a fine turn. Kristen Stewart and Amy Adams, in smaller roles, are also excellent. Stewart, trying to break out of the “Twilight” world, will get the most attention for appearing nude and in some eye opening sex scenes. Adams is just always great. (And wild looking here, also breaking her goody two shoes image.)

Francis Ford Coppola has been been trying to make “On the Road” since at least 1979. In 1994, I wrote a piece in NewYork Magazine back then about a casting call he put out for the characters. His name is on the film as exzecutive producer. But this is Walter Salles’s film, coming after his amazing “Motorcycle Diaries.” He captures the sex, drugs, poetry and jazz capably. A little trimming and he’ll have it. Nice touches: Sal writing “On the Road” on Kerouac’s famous TeleType scroll. And Kerouac himself, I believe,  reading the end of the novel.

Joyce Johnson will publish a very important biography of Kerouac this fall. Many other Keouac and Beat scholars, like Regina Weinreich, will weigh in on the movie. The discussion is set to rage on. A lot of post-Cannes discussion has been divided on “On the Road.” The cast and crew also had one of the worst press conferences in recent history: either the foreign journalists didn’t get Kerouac, or the press at large was bored. Salles filibustered with his explanation of the film–very ponderous. But one thing he said was right: the film will re-boot the book’s–and Kerouac’s– popularity no matter what. And that won’t be bad at all.

Back from Cannes: Ten Days of Exciting Films, Odd Parties, and Vertigo

Roger Friedman
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Back from Cannes: Ten Days of Exciting Films, Odd Parties, and Vertigo

We’re back from the Cannes Film Festival. You can read my coverage at www.forbes.com. Ten days that started with dinner with Jane Fonda and ended at the new Cannes Hospital with an inner ear infection and Vertigo. That’s right, Vertigo, but without Jimmy Stewart or Kim Novak. Just Alfred Hitchcock. Social highlights: the Vanity Fair party at the Eden Roc, Sean Penn’s Haiti fundraiser with Petra Nemcova and Paul Haggis, Charles Finch’s annual dinner — this year sponsored by IWC watches.

Funny things about Cannes: the people who float around on yachts but never actually come in for the film festival. You get communiques– “Cyndi Lauper” is on Paul Allen’s boat. (He brought his small gigantic floating mall this year.) If you’re there for the film festival, all of this is like static. Especially news of Paul Allen, the Microsoft co-founder, playing bar band music on his boat at 2am in the rain.

Yes, it rained. It poured. It was cold. The weather gods were not with us this year. You could buy a $50 umbrella on the Croisette. The ran dampened the whole Cannes gestalt, but not more so than the sinking European economy. This was by far the least flashy Cannes for studios and hype. Billboard advertising was way down. Prices were way up. None of the studios brought blockbuster screenings to Cannes, or even decent promotions. The only exception: Sacha Baron Cohen, who came in for ten minutes, rode a camel for “The Dictator,” and left. Otherwise, no sign of the new “Spider Man.” “Batman,” or even “Men in Black 3.” Is showmanship dead?

Not if you were Harvey Weinstein, who was everywhere. He showed three really good films to get excited about– “Lawless,” “Killing Them Softly,” and “The Sapphires.” He had a viewing party for footage from Quentin Tarantino’s “Django Unchained,” Paul Thomas Anderson’s “The Master,” David O. Russell’s “Silver Linings Playbook.” They all looked great. “The Master” is going to be controversial. In a good way.

Things that didn’t work out: amfAR’s Cinema in Cannes. Described as “glamorous and boring” by people who went and did not see Janet Jackson perform because she didn’t. “Glamorous” because the women wear gowns. Otherwise, this thing has devolved into something to be avoided. Alec Baldwin not only didn’t emcee, he didn’t even get up and speak. Sharon Stone was still missing. Nicole Kidman didn’t go; she had her own movie premiere that night.

Nicole’s movie, “The Paperboy,” directed by Lee Daniels (“Precious”) was a last minute hit for all involved. Kidman is the first actress of the year headed to awards glories. There were lots of other good films. I loved the Italian film by Matteo Garrone called “Reality.” The star, Aniello Arena, is in prison for killing three people 20 years ago. He will not be doing press. But the movie is great. Also memorable: Wes Anderson’s charming “Moonrise Kingdom,” the difficult “Rust and Bone” with Marion Cotillard, and Walter Salles’s brave attempt at filming Kerouac’s “On the Road.” Sony Pictures Classics comes home a winner with “Amour” by Michael Haneke–and another film they picked up from the Directors Fortnight called “No.”

And then, the Vertigo, or vertige, as the French say. Suddenly, on Wednesday night, I got hit with a deep inner ear infection. It was a text book case, if you had the textbook. Off to the new Cannes Hospital, where they put me through a loud MRI to see if I had a brain tumor. Negativo. There’s a Vertigo specialist at the hospital! They got right to the bottom of it, so to speak. Now I wear a little patch the size of a nickel behind my ear for the next three weeks. Still much wobbling. But nothing fatal.

Was the Vertigo a symptom of Cannes? Or vice versa? We’ll never know. But the rain, the cold, and the constant itinerary planning took its toll. Next year will even be stranger because the Carlton Hotel is closing down completely for renovations. Nothing will knock out the Croisette vibe more than that.

And what about the weird movies? Hated by just about everyone: “Holy Motors.” Also a foreign film in which a guy reportedly twists his head off or something. (I missed that–vertigo!) Few people could make out David Cronenberg’s “Cosmopolis.” Of course, for sport, there was James Toback’s roaming film crew, with Alec Baldwin, trying to get some of this down for a mockumentary. The results are keenly anticipated.

 

 

Nicole Kidman in Cannes for “The Paperboy”

Roger Friedman
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If the early morning buzz is any indication, Nicole Kidman will be a major player this winter in he Oscar race. Her Lee Daniels directed film, “The Paperboy,” was shown to the press this morning. The reaction was unanimous raves for Kidman, who already has an Oscar for her role as Virginia Woolf in “The Hours.” She most recently was nominated for “Rabbit Hole.”

Kidman and her cast, including Matthew McConnaughey, will be walking the red carpet at the Palais tonight to much fanfare. Lee Daniels, who directed the indie hit and six time Oscar nominee “Precious,” should be beaming. That’s because all day distributors are fighting for the chance to buy “The Paperboy.” Everyone should be this popular! Kidman and crew will steal the heat from everything else tonight.

Brad Pitt Back in Oscar Race With Witty, Violent “Killing Them Softly”

Roger Friedman
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When did Brad Pitt become such a good actor? He nailed it in “Moneyball” and got an Oscar nomination. As Cogan, a literate hit man in Andrew Dominick’s “Killing Them Softly,” he’s magic, a real old fashioned leading man who’s integrated character actor choices into his repetoire.

Cogan doesn’t even come into the movie right away; he’s preceded by Scoot McNairy, in a Best Supporting Actor worthy performance and several other really terrific turns by Ray Liotta, Vince Curatola, and Ben Mendelson. They are each gifted with remarkable, quotable dialogue that will be memorable.

This is The Weinstein Company’s third entry here in Cannes so far, making them three for three with “Lawless” and “The Sapphires.” Not to mention their screening last night of footage from three more films that look great: “The Master,” “The Silver Linings Playbook,” and “Django Unchained.” This should be some wild fall season from Harvey Weinstein, who’s back in form with a vengeance.

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Set against the 2008 election and the rapidly growing recession, “Killing Them Softly”– while violent–is a thinking man’s crime story. Cogan delivers the final line, destined to be as much of a classic as the film: “America isn’t a country, it’s a business.”

And business it is, as the hold up of a gangsters’ card game goes wrong, angers the wrong modern outlaws, and triggers a series of “hits” that come to involve Pitt and a very amusing James Gandolfini (as a hit man who’s more interested in his own hedonism than completing his job) and Richard Jenkins as a new kind of corporate stooge.

Gandolfini once joked that every time he was in a movie with Brad Pitt it was a failure and he was Pitt’s bad luck charm. No more.

Cannes First: Lead Actor of Italian Movie in Jail for Murder

Roger Friedman
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You want weird? Aniello Arena, the star of Matteo Garrone’s brilliant new film, “Reality,” is in prison for life for murder. In Italy. He was cast by Garrone from his prison theatre troupe.

Watching the movie, a sort of Truman Show look at the effect of reality TV on a Naples village family, you’d   never guess that the charismatic fellow playing Luciano is in real life a murderer serving a 20 year to life term. He was able to make the under some kind of Italian work release program. He’s described in Italian newspaper reports a “lifer” in his prison. And a brilliant actor.

Arena  could easily wind up winning Best Actor here. He won’t be able to attend the ceremony if so. Whoever gets “Reality” for American distribution gets quite a story. Details are sketchy but more to come⿦

Sean Penn Cannes- Haiti Press Conference Cannes 2012

Roger Friedman
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Armani is sponsoring this unique never before event.  Giorgio Armani’s niece Roberta starts by reading a statemen of support for Sean Penn’s work in Haiti.  Penn, Petra Nemcova, and Paul Haggis are on the dais. Their three organizations for Haiti are holding a joint all star fundraiser tonight in Cannes, endorsed by the festival.
Sean: “Central problem in Haiti is poverty. Paul Haggis’s group was there before the earthquake, in 2008.”
Haggis: “Before the quake no one gave a damn about Haiti. I stayed there because of the people.” Haggis couldn’t get into Haiti. Penn organized planes and doctors. “Sean is a hero of mine.”
Petra: “We were there in 2007. We came to build schools. After the first anniversary of a disaster, people forget. We come in one year later. It  will take ten years to rebuild Haiti.”
Sean: “The organizations have solidarity. This is an expression and shared voice⿦it’s basic love between people.  Mathematically Haiti has never had a chance. It’s not defined by the earthquake.
Sean:  “It is time for our formidable and elegant president stand by side with the new president of Haiti.”
Haggis: “We’re three white people. What we do is work with grass roots organizations on the ground.”
Petra: “We don’t want to focus on the past.”
Haggis: “Lots of other people working hard on this, like Donna Karan.  There is so much hope in Haiti.”

Roman Polanski Coming to Cannes for Tribute and Image Scrub

Roger Friedman
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Controversial French filmmaker, Oscar winner Roman Polanski, may be the real lightning rod at Cannes this year. Today a filmed interview with him called “Roman Polanski: A Memoir,” was shown to a packed house. Polanski’s old friend Andrew Braaunsberg conducted the interview with the director at his Swiss estate during his house arrest in 2010.   This is not Marina Zenovich’s “Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired,” which revealed a lot about Polanski’s  original legal situaton. The new film barely addresses much of that.

The new film is more of a conversation between Polanski and Braunsberg and Polanski about the director’s horrifying experiences a a child in the Holocaust, and the way he recreated them for “The Pianist.” In that respect it’s a fascinating interview. Braunsberg and director Laurent Bozeau make Polasnki, who is rarely seen by his fans or detractors, a very human side. He’s certainly no monster but a complicated man wih a painful past.

Press shy, Polanski comes to Cannes on Monday for a tribute and a screening of one of his great films, “Tess.” He may also attend a small filmmakers dinner. But his presence here will be felt, without a doubt. And when a deal is made for the interview film to be shown in America, it will cause  a sensation.

 

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