TimothyT presents … The Fotonovel’s Crappy Life *

* (restored)
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The comeback: first wave, 90s

‘Why is the Fotonovel making a comeback now? Perhaps someone noticed that the marriage of text and image on the Internet has been slightly successful. And for movies that don’t lend themselves to straight text novelizations, like THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, the format seems a good match. Though on the other hand, BLAIR WITCH depends almost entirely on its cinema-verite camera jiggling for its impact; as a Fotonovel, it looks like a collection of grainy photos, with text. It’s the shittiest-looking $9 paperback I’ve ever seen. $9 may seem pretty steep, but the cover price on my old copy of the LOVE AT FIRST BITE fotonovel is $2.75 — a fairly high cost for a quarter-inch-thick paperback in 1979. That was probably one reason Fotonovels went under before: A book composed entirely of full-color photos is expensive to produce. …

The comeback, second wave, early 00s

‘Personally, I think they’re blowing it all over again. If they set their aim a little higher, both demographically and artistically, they’d clean up with uncensored Fotonovels of beloved Gen-X classics like CLERKS and RESERVOIR DOGS. (PULP FICTION would probably be too long to fit into a standard Fotonovel.) I would also go with primarily verbal movies — they’re making their old mistake (with BATTLEFIELD EARTH and DINOSAUR) of trying to convey a big-budget, big-screen experience within photos the size of a baseball card. A talky movie like CLERKS, which kinda looks shitty anyway, wouldn’t lose much by being Fotonovelized. You could even do a flip-page cartoon of Silent Bob dancing to “Violent Mood Swings,” the way they had Travolta doing flip-page disco in SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER. …’ — TimothyT

Some offshoots

from Herve Guibert’s ‘photo novel,’ early 90s

Chad Michael Ward’s ‘Black Rust,’ 2003

Photo novel zine, undated

Jorge Simes Fotonovela No 3 Book No 1 (2000)

from ‘The Johnny Torture Series’

‘You don’t know what it was like to be a geek in the 1970s. There was no VCR and what we liked wasn’t taken seriously by those who produced things. It was rare to come across professionally-published things outside of a few cheap magazines (Famous Monsters of Filmland). Some fanzines managed to get good quality still photos, like Cinefantastique. But on the whole, photos were rare and scripts were even rarer.

‘Then Richard J. Anobile came along and made every geek go WOW! He pioneered a new kind of mass-market paperback that came to be known as a Photonovel or, trademarked, Fotonovel. Orgasmic cries could be heard throughout fandom when that book appeared. Those kinds of books have gone away because, really, who needs them now that we’ve had VCRs, DVD players, and, today, streaming video?

‘However, technology now makes it possible to create our own. That’s a Kindle displaying a PDF with screensnaps made from an episode of Eastenders. The directions for doing that are here: iPlayer for Kindle

‘I’m not up on the kind of software that’s available to do it with American broadcast TV or even DVDs. However, when Rubicon was on the air, there was a LiveJournal site that offered HD screensnaps from episodes — that I now see could be compiled into a DIY photonovel. All that was missing from them were the captions. So I have to think this is possible outside of using the UK setup from that post.

‘Maybe someone out there will attempt this. It’d be interesting to see the size of a digital photonovel with two snaps per screen (portrait mode) or four snaps per screen (landscape).’ — Mike Cane
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*

p.s. Hey. I was interviewed about the reprint of my first novel CLOSER at ZonaMotel if anyone wants to read it. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Yes, many losses. That’s what I heard/figured about the Jarmusch and thanks. I think there are only two or three films by him that had much of an impact on me. According to the forecasts, love is really going to need extraordinary powers to cool me or anyone off for the rest of this week. But they call him love for a reason. Love opening an Ice Cube Museum, G. ** Adem Berbic, Whatever Jesus did yesterday, the French didn’t seem to think it was worthy of closing much of anything. The LA distance is nothing like London’s. It’s kind of subtle and, I don’t know, friendly. Bosnian coffee … I don’t think so. Is it a store purchase thing? I’ll find out. The Pont Neuf cave doesn’t open until June 6 which is just as well given, you know, the current skies. But I can easily walk there, so expect a report, what, next week? Stay dry and scribbling. ** Alice, Luckily my apartment has big windows on both sides so whatever breeze there is outside makes appearances herein. Maintaining the machines … that seems like it would take highly specialised skills. If you have them, then I think you’re kind of godly. ‘House of the Dead’, ooh. Zac and I desperately want to set a film at a theme park, but they cost a zillion euros to rent, and so that’s an eternal pipe dream. Although one of the producers of ‘RT’ just got a job at Disney World in Florida, so … POP was dreamy. To my child eyes at least. There was a ride where you sat in a spaceship and ‘traveleled’ into outer space and landed, and, when they opened the door, they’d constructed the surface of Mars in this giant warehouse, and you could go explore Mars until you got bored. Sigh. I went to Marineland, yeah. I found it really depressing even as a kid. It was just lots of whales and dolphins and stuff trapped in tanks and forced to perform for visitors. This week just see visiting friends and the usual film stuff I think. You? ** _Black_Acrylic, Me too about pencil sharpeners. Any film that comfortably fits in the genre ‘romantic comedy’ is a bridge extremely too far. ** Carsten, Hi. Sorry I haven’t gotten to your email yet. I blame the heat. I will. ‘Taipei Story’ is basically a soap opera on mood depressants and happening in unbearably slow motion. The Jarmusch is now officially a future in-flight entertainment possibility for me. ** jay, I guess Churchill had a moment in the US. I think Trump is into him, so maybe he’ll have a tiny comeback. Big agree about The Weird Museum for Boys and Girls. Certainly one of the most externally inviting museums ever. Thank you! Chapter 6 is maybe my fave part, and it’s also kind of the novel’s engine. Yes, come to Paris when the time is right. T’would be awesome. ** Bzzt, My LA friends haven’t reported in yet, but, if it still exists, the Graveline Tour is lots of fun. And on kind of the same note, Hollywood Forever Cemetery. There’s usually cool new lit stuff/events going on at Stories bookstore in Silverlake. I’ll hope for more tips. Thick skin is key. ** Angusraze, Hey! Good to see you! I’m good if a bit overheated by our heatwave. Sorry about the label shit, but I’m sure it’ll just be freeing ultimately. Sure, I like your ‘Sluts’ adaptation ideas and proposal. If it got sort of solid and serious, you’d have to talk to my agent to get the rights from my publisher and that kind of stuff, but, sure, get started if you want. Thanks! I’m the one who has done most of the submitting and fundraising stuff due to our miserable, do-nothing ex-producer. Fundraising is really hard, let me forewarn you, unless you can get grants or something. I’ve been mostly stewarding Zac’s and my film into the world and writing/finishing the script for the next film for the last while. But all’s good. You take care, sir. xo. ** Bernard Welt, Hi! Mary Renault, there you go, that’s her. You got titillation from her stuff? I think I tried one, and it was so beige I couldn’t handle it. Wow, talking with Wallace Shawn, so nice. Cool about the bomber reader. You know Kramer? How trippy. That guy’s a character, at least from a distance. Shane Parish is great. His transmutation of Autechre into guitar is really something. And he’s in Bill Orcutt’s great Guitar Quartet. Very cool. You’re really busy. Busier than even me maybe. With more variety. So sad that the Recollects has gotten so popular or picky or whatever the problem is. Grr. Lovely to catch up, pal! xoxo. ** laura w, Yes, Connecticut was in the house! I do know Holy Land USA. Never went there, but I think I’ve had it in thematic posts here. NYRB has done some really great reprints: Brainard, Carrington, Gaddis, Darius James, Henry Green, James Schuyler, etc. All the best for your week! ** Laura, Hi. We go to Amsterdam on Saturday. We’re going to be so quickly in and out of there that I don’t think we’ll get to see or do much of anything. I have structuralist films on the blog every once in a while, so … eyes peeled? I’m out of it on the poetry venues du jour, so I don’t know. Instagram, why not? Could be a good start or something? ** Ted, Yep, melancholy central on those museums. With a slight counteracting effect of amusement. In most cases. Your photography sounds plenty interesting. Your characterisation is alluring. To me anyway. I really like tight, concentrated work. So I for one am intrigued. What will you do re: ‘The Tempest’? Perform or do behind the scenes things or … ? Paris is dreamy to live in. I recommend it to everyone. The heat is a definite problem this week, so we’ll see. Some friends are visiting so I’ll at least duck in and out of the shady parts with them. Camel Blue! For some reason they seem just right. I don’t even know why. ** Steeqhen, The heat hasn’t murdered me yet. Friends and their brains and articulations are so underrated even though their value is a given. I hope ok turns into whoa. ** naemi, Hi. Blub: what a nice, ridiculous title for such a place. I don’t think there are any waterparks anywhere near Paris at all. Which I just realised and which seems extremely strange. 9 years, wow. Apart from the hassle of gathering documents that can be hard to gather, my visa thing has been pretty easy so far. I think I seem harmless to them. Your novella or whatever you end up tagging it sounds quite exciting. For the past year I’ve mostly been writing the script for Zac’s and my next film. I think it’s finally at the finish line. There’s an interest of putting out a selected short fiction book by me, so I’ve been wrapping my head around what would be in that. And I’d need to write one or two new things for it. I keep waiting for an idea for a new novel, but it just hasn’t happened, at least not yet. That’s me. IOSS MAMA: When I was living in Amsterdam, Jos Smoulders recorded me reading things for a sound project of his, and then it got finished and released around the time I moved back to the States. Other than being recorded, I wasn’t involved in it at all. Bon week! ** HaRpEr //, Yeah, I’m putting low expectations on myself until the heat dies. Here it’s supposed to stay awful through Sunday. ‘Tonight’s the Night’ is my favorite Neil Young album by far. It’s incredible. And ‘Tired Eyes’ is my favorite song on there. Synchronicity. I think ‘Blood on the Tracks’ is really overrated. Him trying to get back to what he did when he was at his greatest, but it sounds gentrified to me. ** Nicholas., NYC’s museums seem to have mostly been survivors. Your friends were really thinking about your outer realms on your birthday. That’s interesting. And helpful, obviously. I think I agree. Me, surviving a heatwave. That’s the overriding activity of mine at the moment. Drinking lots of cold water. Nothing fancy. ** Okay. Years and years ago, a kind fella who called himself TimothyT and who was an aficionado of Fotonovels shared his knowledge with us here on the blog, and maybe it’s the heatwave, but I thought his post deserved to return to life. See you tomorrow.