I struggled with an appropriately descriptive title here. I’ve been listening to a bunch of podcasts lately, and while I generally find Dan Savage’s advice column to be an enjoyable read, he is a pretty lame and obnoxious podcaster. Like, his personality was so off-putting that I couldn’t even finish an entire episode.
I totally get it-- just because you’re good at one thing doesn’t mean you’ll be good at something else. I just found it strange how poorly a written column translated to another format.
What about Andy Warhol as author? I remember my local library having an Andy Warhol novel. I didn’t fancy reading it. Assuming it’s his only novel does anyone know if it is highly or poorly regarded?
Andy Warhol’s real art form was the media. The art that he created didn’t exist for itself, it existed to be talked about. He was a professional social media troll and reality show star before we knew what those things were. So none of his various art projects were particularly brilliant, and he didn’t have any particular talent at any art form. Except trolling the media.
That novel, called a, was actually a transcription of recorded conversations, with typos left in for effect. It’s more a curiosity than anything highly regarded.
A better sense of his writing ability comes from his memoir of the 1960s, Popism, and The Andy Warhol Diaries, which although both written with the help of Pat Hackett, clearly show his wit and intelligence.
Thanks. Yes, that all rings a bell with me. I picked it up briefly and browsed through. Im not sure what I expected but I had visions of James Joyce style troublesome prose. The typos probably led to my expectations.
He was fine once they figured out how to use him: two successful TV series, plus his work with Rocky and Bullwinkle.
Only a handful of silent stars failed to transition to talkies; after all, most had appeared on stage before getting into films. John Gilbert is often cited, but it seems the problem was that his “romantic” dialog, while fine on a title card, didn’t work no matter who was saying it. Further, he had alcoholism problems, which hurt his career.
The only one who had to quit immediately was Raymond Griffith, who was a major silent star, but who had blown out his voice as a stage actor and couldn’t speak above a hoarse whisper.
Not entirely true; he was a pretty decent graphic artist. Before he became famous he did a few stylish album covers for the Blue Note label; I’ve always particularly liked this one.
I think my post was inaccurate. A number of silent stars didn’t have great success in talkies for other reasons than their voices or acting, like Gilbert’s alcohol problems, or they just got old.
It’s worth noting, I think, that the Savage Podcast is critically lauded, has been adapted for television, and is consistently rated by listeners in the Top 20 Podcasts on iTunes. I’m not saying your wrong for disliking it - taste is subjective, and if it doesn’t work for you, it doesn’t work for you. But by any objective measurement, Dan Savage’s jump to podcasting has been wildly successful - arguably more successful than he ever was with just the newspaper column.
Many fine politicians didn’t survive the introduction of the radio; their voices were off-putting to say the least, no matter how smart/clever they were at politicking and/or running a country.
Not quite what the OP had in mind, but my own IRL experience nonetheless: during my time in the U.S. Army, I had no less than two 0-6 “bird colonel” Brigade Commanders who were atrocious public speakers; one was incoherent, with rambling digressions and bizarre non sequiturs (in fairness, he was much better one-on-one), the other sounded just fine, if you were doing voice-casting for Snuffy Smith.
There are two local radio talk-show hosts who I admire greatly for their humor, wisdom, intelligence, and insight; too bad I can’t stand the sound of their voices.
Savage also co-founded the Greek Active theater company in Seattle, which performed re-contextualizations of classic plays. I saw a few of their performances and they were excellent.
