LA Times Festival of Books

This weekend I attended the above annual event on UCLA's campus along with two of my friends, "Red Dawn" and "Southern Gentleman". I think these two guys might actually adore literature and writing at least as much as I do, if they were combined, of course. As usual, I digress, but I must say that after attending a day at this amazing weekend, I am both chagrin and peeved that I have not gone out of my way more to try it sooner.

Southern Gentleman picked up a variety of tickets to panel discussions with the big highlight in our collective minds being Ray Bradbury's appearance. Sadly when we arrived, we discovered that Mr. Bradbury had cancelled his appearance due to illness. Luckily, he tends to appear on short notice at my favorite bookstore (Every Picture Tells a Story).

The true highlight of this even in my mind was seeing Ray Harryhausen in conversation with Richard Schickel, his longtime friend who was a film critic and producer of documentary films. If you do not know who Harryhausen is, well, you must've had a very different kind of childhood then I did. Harryhausen movies were a staple of my weekends alongside the habitual classic war movies my brother enjoyed. His amazing stop motion creatures creations were innovative and imaginative, not to mention thoroughly captivating.

The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad and Clash of the Titans are just two of my favorite examples of Harryhausen masterpieces. While he may not be the inventor of stop motion special effects in early cinema, his work is the most well known. His Cyclops, Hydra, Medusa are linked inexorably to my youth and who can forget his army of skeleton warriors? Schickel seemed more interested in getting Harryhausen's take on remakes of his creatures, ie Peter Jackson's King Kong. Harryhausen was appropriately modest and although Schikel baited him (this is my interpretation), Harryhausen remained the gentlemen, even if he did think that the relationship between Kong and his leading lady in the movie became ridiculously sexualized. I have not seen Mr. Jackson's film yet, so if someone could fill me in on the parts I missed, that would be great.

Harryhausen said several interesting quotes that give you a real sense of him as a living legend:
"Fantasy shouldn't be analyzed."
"The past is more romantic then the future."
"Everyone wants to be a critic."

Southern Gentleman was ensnared in the giant community crosswords that were put up sporatically around the event. He is a crossword nut, just like my roomate, The Brown One. So Red Dawn and I walked around the many bookstore stalls, my bag becoming heavier and heavier as I saw one after the other book that I "HAD TO HAVE". Granted, I should've been more careful about my purchases, but I was like a kid in a candy store and rational thought flew right out the window.

After a quick lunch, the three of us went to a panel on Quirky Non-fiction feature moderator Megan Daum, a LA Times Columist. The authors were Veronica Chambers(Mama's Girl, The Joy of Doing Things Badly), June Casagrande (A Word Please, Grammer Snobs are Great Big Meanies), and Martin Smith (Poplorica, Oops : 20 Life Lessons from the Fiascoes That Shaped America). This was an intersting panel, but probably not one I would attend again since I so rarely have enough material to write non-fiction topic specific stories. Of course, I still have no clue what kind of writer I am or want to be. Mostly, I just write for me.