« France (Present) and Sundance (Past) | Main | Ten CDs I Play At Night, While Working »

April 20, 2005

Movie Tie-In; London DIE-in

HarperCollins has just sent my author's copies for the "movie tie-in" reprint of Mysterious Skin. This will hit stores in just a few weeks, timed just before the NYC premiere of the film. I'm elated at how splashy the cover looks--a nice turn from 1995's original colorful and strangely subdued Froot Loops (which I was also really happy with, don't get me wrong--was their any bigger gift in the mid-90s than to have Michael Ian Kaye design your book cover?).

This new image is quite similar to one of the two main posters for the US release of the film (the other poster has opposite color schemes and Brady Corbet on the left of the frame, and different review quotes than this Joe Gordon-Levitt version). Anyway, it's like having the novel released, fresh & piping hot, all over again.

Just got back from my favorite city LONDON... and I only have a couple of days to clean my room, run errands, and get healthy (more on this in a second) before Michael and I head off to NYC for the Tribeca festival. In London, I had a terrific and busy time for the most part... until I fell deathly ill for four days. I think I'd initially picked up a bad chest cold during the flight across the Atlantic, but on Friday night or so, I seem to have picked up something else entirely. If this is what severe food poisoning is like, please, I've had it now, you can have it back. I won't give details except to say I'm sorry, Mark Flood and Paul Igo, for anything of any color of the rainbow that might have been splattered across your bathroom's floor, ceiling, or walls.

Uncharacteristically, I didn't take many pictures this time over there. For a few shots of the closing-night ceremonies of the LLGFF, you can look here. The festival opened with the Gina Gershon film PREY FOR ROCK AND ROLL, and it ended with our movie. The screening was at the Leicester Square Odeon-- same place we'd had the initial screening at the London Film Festival back in October-- and it was "packed to the gills," (one of my favorite cliches) around 900 people. Since I was the only person associated with the film there, I had to stand in front of this huge crowd and babble an intro and a Q&A afterward. I'd forgotten what stage fright felt like, actually.

I'd be a moron if I didn't say a huuuuge thank you to Becky Shaw and Sarah Lutton with the London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival for making me feel welcome and coordinating everything!

And thanks, too, to the stellar TARTAN FILMS UK and especially to Virginia Todd, Sarah Bemand, Sam Ross, and Laura de Casto for guiding me and especially for doing so much for the film over there!!!!!! (Feel free to add many, many more exclamation points to this sentence.)

One other, soul-brightening bit of news: The film is really blooming in France... it was on the top 20 box-office list last week, and has gotten 17 Four-Star ratings
out of the 22 magazine ratings listed on this particular French site (click on the blue link). If only it will do that well over here!!

Okay, back to getting over this illness and preparing for tonight's long drive to Manhattan.