Category: Projects

Applause Books to Publish My James Dean Biography Next Year

9/6/2023

I am delighted to announce that I have partnered with Applause Books to publish my biography of James Dean next year. I am deeply appreciative of the tireless work of my agent, Lee Sobel, in helping to find my book the best possible home, and for the support and enthusiasm of my editor at Applause, Chris Chappell. Publication of the book is the culmination of a years-long journey that began when I happened upon Rebel without a Cause on Turner Classic Movies one day during the pandemic lockdowns of 2020 and involved the largest and most comprehensive literature and archival research into James Dean’s life and legacy ever conducted. I am so thankful to have found a team that believes in my book and my work and wants to help me share with the world a story that needs to be told.

14 Comments

Long-Secret James Dean Files Offer Some Shocking Surprises

5/10/2023

14 Comments

Note: This article is cross-posted from my Substack because Twitter is limiting links to Substack. I think you'll find the historical content interesting.

Nearly seven decades after James Dean died, I would have thought that everything that could be known about him was known. All but a small handful of people who knew him in life are now dead, and those left alive have had nothing new to say in decades. The magazine and newspaper articles have been raked through many times, and the scraps of archival materials picked clean. Then, to my amazement, Nate D. Sanders Auctions announced the sale later this month of more than 500 pages of James Dean’s business, legal, and personal correspondence and papers from the estate of his New York talent agent, Jane Deacy, who died in 2008. These papers, never before seen, are, frankly, astounding in what they reveal.

14 Comments

A Dispiriting Project Update

4/22/2023

29 Comments

Over the last year, my former literary agent sent me outlandish descriptions of the various reasons publishers gave for rejecting my book. Frankly, I always had it in the back of my mind that he was making them up. When publishers told him that in “this political climate” a book about a queer topic was inadvisable, or when an editor claimed that there was no reason to ever mention James Dean’s sexuality again because it had been discussed in 1975, I wondered if this could possibly be serious. Then this week I received the most dispiriting of rejections, one that left me flabbergasted.

29 Comments

Project Update

4/1/2023

12 Comments

This week, I took the difficult step of separating from my literary agent after he was unable to place my book with a publisher and had fallen out of a communication with me since late last year. I did not take this step lightly, but going forward, I realize that I need more aggressive and supportive representation for my manuscript if I am to make a success of it. My now-former agent said, in his parting message, that he surveyed other agents who agreed that publishers are not interested in the “Americana” field and have difficulty seeing a book about celebrity as “serious,” which tells me that my agent was probably not selling my book on its strongest or most relevant points. I have some potential plans and options for moving forward, but in the meantime, I will be taking some time to revise the manuscript to make it the best-documented book about James Dean every written, not least so no one can challenge my conclusions on the facts.

Note: This blog post also appears in this week's weekly newsletter.

12 Comments

Read My New Piece for CNN

1/25/2023

1 Comment

I wrote an opinion column for CNN about the recent controversy over museums renaming mummies with more person-centered language. I survey briefly the history of displaying dead bodies and analyze a bit what kinds of messages these displays send. You can read the complete story at CNN: "Why it’s time to stop displaying human bodies in museums."

1 Comment

Read My New Piece on "Ancient Apocalypse" in "The New Republic"

12/5/2022

12 Comments

British journalist Graham Hancock’s Ancient Apocalypse has become a surprise cultural phenomenon since its November 11 release on Netflix. The archaeology-themed series garnered an impressive 24.62 million hours of viewing in its first week of release, landing in the streaming service’s top 10 in 31 countries. It has also sparked unparalleled outrage from archaeologists and journalists, resulting in dozens of think pieces decrying the show’s many false claims and illogical arguments, analyzing its racist implications, and declaring the series everything from “fishy” to the “most dangerous” show on Netflix. “Why has this been allowed?” asked Britain’s The Guardian. The answer to that seemed pretty obvious: Hancock’s son, Sean Hancock, is Netflix’s senior manager for unscripted originals.

Hancock’s show speculates that a crashing comet destroyed Atlantis, or a similar lost civilization, 13,000 years ago in a series of events remembered as the Great Flood. Ancient monuments and wisdom are therefore the legacy of Atlantis’s survivors, not Earth’s diverse peoples and cultures. Explaining all the reasons Hancock is wrong would take a whole book. Fortunately, I’ve written two. Reader, he is wrong...

Read the rest in The New Republic!

12 Comments

Project Update

12/1/2022

1 Comment

I am sure you noticed that I have been quieter than usual this week. That's because a magazine has commissioned me to write an article, so I spent my free time this week working on that project. The good news is that the piece is done and filed. If all goes well, it should run in the coming days, and I will post a link once it does.

1 Comment

Queer Numbers: Tracing the Origins of a Misleading Statistic

5/2/2022

7 Comments

As part of the research for the new book I am crafting out of parts of the one that didn’t garner much interest, I have been researching government persecution of queer people in the postwar era. In so doing, I came across a rather dramatic fact that led me down a statistical rabbit-hole as I hunted the source of a seemingly dramatic fact that turned out not be what it seemed.

7 Comments

Read My New Article in "Esquire"

9/30/2021

8 Comments

On the anniversary of James Dean's death, I am proud to share my new piece for Esquire on the actor's life and legacy.

In 1956, Esquire magazine ran a story blasting James Dean and helping to shape public opinion about him for decades. I am honored to be the one to write a rebuttal in the same publication 65 years later. Thanks go to my brilliant editor at Esquire, Kelly Stout, for making this piece great, and special thanks to Esquire editor-at-large Dave Holmes for supporting my story and making this article possible.

Read it here: “It’s Time to Let James Dean Be the Queer Icon He Is.”

8 Comments

My New Magazine Article Will Be Published Soon

5/20/2021

1 Comment

Undoubtedly, you saw the news this week, from the ongoing national media stories about UFOs, to Sen. Martin Heinrich’s declaration that he believes recently leaked Navy UFO videos depict craft not of this world, to the launch of UFOPAC, the first-ever UFO political action committee, run by Gavin Newsom’s spokesman and a Republican consultant to push for UFO transparency.

I am pleased to announce that I will have an article on the current UFO flap in The New Republic in the coming days. I will post a link as soon as the article is available.

1 Comment