Schnakworld

In which a seemingly coked-up Steven Spielberg talks about swallowing a transistor. With Andy Warhol. And Bianca Jagger. Oh, and at one time he could apparently receive radio transmissions through the fillings in his teeth.

You be the judge. Ryan O’Neal in Norman Mailer’s Tough Guys Don’t Dance. Take it away, Ryan!

Gawker sister site Jezebel does a page-by-page vivisection of my Barbara Walters comic. The comments in the discussion thread are especially choice. Money quote: “I hope to God that Gawker Media isn’t making payments to creepy weirdo Robert Schnakenburg.” If only, LazyHippo, if only…

Some great, rarely-seen photographs of many past, present, and future Schnakensubjects, including Stanley Kubrick (below, with cock); Christopher Walken, Francis Ford Coppola, and Kurt Vonnegut.

The children’s classic Curious George, as read by Secret Lives of Great Filmmakers‘ subject Werner Herzog. Can a movie version, Aguirre, The Wrath of George be far behind?

Today we mourn the passing of a Secret Lives of Great Authors favorite, that notorious pee-drinker J.D. Salinger, even as a new crop of compulsives, control freaks and whack jobs emerges in the pages of the soon-to-be published Secret Lives of Great Filmmakers. One of the real stars of the new book is Stanley Kubrick, a director known for his somewhat monomaniacal obsessions. Exhibit A: the new 23-pound coffee table book-that-could-actually-serve-as-a-coffee-table that is Stanley Kubrick’s Napoleon: The Greatest Movie Never Made. Read this New York magazine article and name one other filmmaker whose unmade masterpiece could command such exhaustive treatment.

Okay, so here is the cover of The Secret by Rhonda Byrne:

And here is the cover of The Lost Symbol, the forthcoming novel by DaVinci Code craftsman Dan Brown:

What is it with the damn red wax seal?  Why has it become the universal book jacket designer’s shorthand for “ancient, mysterious knowledge revealed”? And more importantly, why has its use done nothing to improve sales of the Korean-language edition of my book, Secret Lives of Great Authors?

For those who thought the worlds of Michael Jackson and the Supreme Court could not possibly intersect (or that I could not possibly come up with a gratuitous MJ-themed post related to one of my books), I offer the following excerpt from Secret Lives of the Supreme Court:

Long before he became the Supreme Court’s resident P.Y.T., Roberts was telling Michael Jackson to “beat it” in a series of scathing memos written during his time as Associate Counsel to the President in the Reagan White House. The publicist for the self-appointed “King of Pop” had written to Reagan requesting an official presidential letter recognizing the singer’s efforts to combat drunk driving. Charged with handling such correspondence, a beleaguered Roberts hit the ceiling. “The office of presidential correspondence is not yet an adjunct of Michael Jackson’s PR firm,” he raged in a memo to his boss. “Enough is enough.” A few months later, Jackson’s people tried again. This time they asked for a letter thanking Jackson for a concert he had performed in the nation’s capital. Again, Roberts exploded. “I hate to sound like one of Mr. Jackson’s records, constantly repeating the same refrain,” he thundered, “but I recommend that we not approve this letter.” He went on to decry the “fawning” treatment Jackson was being afforded by certain members of the White House staff, calling it “more than a little embarrassing.” Jackson’s concert appearance, Roberts argued, “was a calculated commercial decision that does not warrant gratitude from our nation’s chief executive.” Finally, in a sign that he was keenly attuned to the mid-80s music scene, Roberts noted that “some youngsters [are] turning away from Mr. Jackson in favor of a newcomer who goes by the name ‘Prince,’ and is apparently planning a Washington concert. Will he receive a presidential letter?”

Feel the love tonight at 12:35 on the a.m. as America’s most beloved author and raconteur sits down with Montreal’s master of late-night radio, Peter Anthony Holder, for a rare one-on-one.

Today I proved no match for Elizabeth Edwards as she coolly swatted away three Secret Lives of the Supreme Court trivia questions in front of a jubilant North Carlolina audience on NPR’s Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me. Not since Cherokee Parks last tried to dunk on Eric Montross has there been a rejection this resounding before a Tar Heel crowd. You can check out the carnage here. Thanks to Peter Sagal and the folks at Wait Wait for featuring my book on the show.