Dennis Cass Wants You To Be More Awesome

I’m generally not one for sudden outbursts of digital enthusiasm, but I’ll say this:

Hooray for Tina Brown!

With newspapers cutting back, she is cutting up? with Book Beast, the new Daily Beast book site. If you haven’t checked it out, I encourage you to give it a look.

Here’s what I took away:

“Long tail” mentality

The “Rediscovery” tag says it all. Thanks to the persistence of the web, there is hope even for obscure, dead Norwegian novelists. That thing you wrote only dies the day you give up on it.

Video saved the literary star

The conventional wisdom says that books and TV are an awkward match. But books and Web video work surprisingly well. Maybe it’s the size of the image. Maybe it’s the fact that you can showcase Chuck Klosterman, John Grisham, David Denby and James Baldwin all in one clickable party strip. Either way, if you’re an author you need to get on board.

Art + Commerce + Whatever = fine by most

There is no reason why serious criticism, service-oriented reviews, profiles, features, gossip, scandal and publishing news all can’t inhabit the same page. While you always want to stay focused, you’re also freer than you ever have been. So go mix that sh*t up, yeah?

I’ve been sick for the past few days, which means when I haven’t been sleeping I’ve been watching TV. Lots of TV. The Sex Pistols documentary The Filth and the Fury was paired with 24 Hour Party People on IFC this weekend and I watched them both twice. Facking brilliant!

I’d seen 24HPP before, but TFATF was new to me. I highly recommend it, especially in light of the recent post about primary source research. The trailer (see below) tries to sell you on punk rock sensationalism, but in reality this film is a nerd’s paradise of found footage, meticulous research, and curatorial choice. You don’t have to care a fig about the music or the subculture to appreciate (and learn from) TFATF’s artistry.

Director Julien Temple also gets huge marks for making one of the best creative choices I’ve seen in a documentary in years: Everyone who is interviewed for the film remains in shadow. All the surviving Sex Pistols participated in the doc, and while you see the silhouettes of their bodies and hear their voices, you never see their faces.

As a result you stay in period. It’s 1977. England is falling apart. Johnny Rotten is fresh and feral. The other guys are . . . well, other guys. (But at least they’re other guys who don’t ruin the mood by looking bloated and saggy.) Toward the end of the film you expect (and maybe even want) the light to finally come on so you can see them now. But it never happens. Nice.

It’s easy to get caught up in the Big Idea. But sometimes it’s small, brave choices like this one that make a piece gel in surprising ways. Next time you sit down to whatever you’re working on, look for an opportunity to make a choice like this. What can you take away? What might its absence add?

And now, ladies and gentlemen, the trailer for The Filth and the Fury: