Shakespeare and Suicide

R.I.P. Tony Scott.  My condolences to your loved ones.
One of my biggest clients has been in business forever with Scott Free, the production company fronted by directors Ridley and Tony Scott, so Tony Scott's suicide over the weekend hit home. I'd met him (and his wife Donna, a sharp lady) and had worked the development side of some of his projects, including the upcoming Potsdamer Platz.
One of my colleagues posted a lovely tribute to Tony on Facebook and ended it with "See you in the Danger Zone," a reference to Scott's movie Top Gun. (Plans for a sequel were in the works.) He was well liked and the tributes are pouring in.
News reports are now saying that Tony had been diagnosed with inoperable brain cancer. And so the ancient debate emerges again--is suicide an act of dignity or an act of despair?
Speaking as someone who has known people who took their own lives or contemplated the act, I'd say it's complicated and personal but if nothing else, for God's sake leave a note.
The question "why?" will haunt those left behind and an answer to that question will help, if only a little.
Suicide is a dramatic act and Shakespeare used it a lot as a plot device, particularly in Hamlet. I found this article that takes Shakespeare's plays and his fictional suicides as a point of departure to discuss a whole range of topics relating to the act. You can find that article here.

Self-Promotion Sunday--The Poisoned Teat

The Poisoned Teat, my latest collection of short fiction is now up at smashwords and available at all their distribution channels. Whenever KDP gets around to it, the book will also be up at Amazon.com. This new 100-page collection features more than 30 stories, a mix of micro, flash and longer pieces. Most of the stories fall into the noir category, a few are straight up horror, but there are some that really don't have a category.  Check out the samples here.

Death of a Patron of the Arts--Veronique Peck

Veronique Peck, the widow of actor Gregory Peck, has died. You might think that the death of a movie star's wife is less than newsworthy, especially in this day of reality shows about the wives of famous (and infamous) people, but like her late husband, Veronique was both old school and a class act.
Here's a brief statement about her that all the obits are running:  Veronique Peck helped create the Inner City Cultural Center in South Los Angeles, was a founder of the Los Angeles Music Center and a longtime fundraiser for the Los Angeles Public Library. By status, the Paris-born former journalist was a member of the One Percent, but she was someone who lent her money and her prestige and her passion to causes that benefitted the rest of us.
R.I.P. Veronique. See Nikki Finke's obituary of Veronique Peck here.

Shakespeare and Company Bookstore

Shakespeare and Company bookstore is one of the most famous bookstores in the world. In its first incarnation it was opened on the Left Bank of Paris in 1919 and moved to a nearby location in 1922 where it flourished until 1941, when the city was under occupation by the Nazis. The bookstore that now bears the name was opened in the 50s and renamed in the 60s as a tribute to the original, which was a part of the expat life of Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, and Ezra Pound. Here's a link to the store's site, which is filled with great images from its archives. You can follow the store on Twitter (@Shakespeare_Co).

Feminist Friday--the blog edition

Taking a break from fiction this Friday to look at a bouquet of blogs celebrating women and their passions. First up is SheBiz, which bills itself as looking at life from the "passionista's" perspective. The work of Renee Daniel Flager, and assorted sister-friends of the blog, the site has invented teh motto "KIC" (Keep it Confident), which is a great thing to remember, kind of the modern variation of "Never let them see you sweat."
The site has a badge from the Lady Blogger's Society on it, so check them out too. They seem to be a support group, a social networking site and a job source all in one.

On confabulicious, I found a post called "This List of Top 10 Blogs by Women will change your life."  Among those cited are Ree Drummond's Pioneer Woman; Rosalind Gardner's Net Profits Today (helping real people make real money online), and Gretchen Rubin's "The Happiness Project." (For the full list, go here.)
What I love about so many of these cited sites is that they are powerfully empowering, going way beyond the "mommy blogger" stereotype.

Celebrity Culture in Shakespeare's Time

Since I'm thinking about celebrity culture today, I started wondering about who the star of Shakespeare's day was. And then I realized I already knew--Richard Burbage. He and his older brother Cuthbert (don't you wonder how poor Cuthbert got saddled with a name like that while Richard got a perfectly normal name?) were both actors. Their father had been a joiner-turned-theatrical impresario.
Burbage was a member of a number of prestigious acting companies but made his name as Shakespeare's leading man, originating the roles of Hamlet, Othello, Richard III and King Lear.
Burbage later managed his own theater. His epitaph is brief, "Exit Burbage."
Martin Clunes plays Burbage in Shakespeare in Love. Wonder if they'll still be talking about Brad Pitt in 500 years.

Seriously? The reboot of Beauty and the Beast

You know, I like to look at pretty people as much as the next person, but this new art for the CW's 2012 reboot of the 1980s series Beauty and the Beast (starring Linda Hamilton and Ron Perlman) makes it look like the series has somehow missed the point. On IMDB there's already a thread that asks, "Is Vincent seriously just a guy with a scar on his face? Because that's kind of lame."
Kind of?
The CW's Vincent (his surname is "Koslow," a tribute to the original creator of the series, Ron Koslow, does have the Twilight golden eye thing going on.  Jay Ryan, a Kiwi actor who honed his craft with roles in Young Hercules and Xena, is a fine-looking guy who is probably best known in the US for doing three episodes of the short-lived series Terra Nova.
Here's a link to an interview Ryan and Kristin Kreuk (in the Linda Hamilton part) did at the 2012 San Diego Comic-Con to promote their new show. In the interview they explain how their show's concept has changed from the 80s show--the Beast is a product of a military experiment, for example, and Kristen's character is now an NYPD detective rather than a DA. Although they hadn't yet seen any of the episode scripts--just the pilot--both insisted that the shows would be a mix of procedural and action and romance and fairy tale elements.