'Scarface' on the Soccer Pitch
➕ A movie-mad mystery and a reclusive author with a mysterious past
Welcome to The Optionist. As always, thanks for reading along.
If you spend as much time as I do scanning the news — a professional obligation heightened by being a longtime news junkie — you start noticing how the rhythms of the seasons affect coverage. The back half of the summer should be an object lesson in that. It's fascinating to witness how the should-he-stay-or-should-he-go Biden storyline and the failed attempt on Trump's life have sucked up all of the news oxygen. Now we've got the Paris Olympics on tap, followed by the Democratic Convention, plus whatever unpredictable political subplots pop up between now and then. I'm sure great option-worthy stories will still surface, but I won't be shocked if it feels like there are fewer than usual (I say this even though we have two really strong true-crime stories this week).
Some good news from the home front: The man who elevates my scribblings every week has a new book coming out. For the last six months or so, Chris Nashawaty has been editing the Optionist, putting a fine polish on my words, making great suggestions and saving me from mistakes large and small. So I'm pleased to see that his new book, The Future Was Now — which covers eight sci-fi movies that all came out in the summer of 1982 and their long-lasting impact (out July 30, but preorder!) — just received an enthusiastic extended review from Anthony Lane in The New Yorker.
“Such is Nashawaty’s command of superlatives that he merits a sci-fi yarn of his own,” Lane writes, capturing why it’s so much fun to work with him. “‘The Optimizer,’ perhaps. Or ‘The Hyphenator.’ Thus, Star Wars is lauded as ‘a true once-in-a-generation pop-culture juggernaut,’ while the triumph of The Wrath of Khan was to turn ‘a cash-grab sequel into a franchise-resuscitating classic.’ Far from scorning this excitable tic, I find it both judicious and contagious.”
While I of course want to sing Chris' praises, this book will definitely be of interest to anyone reading this. In The Future Was Now, Nashawaty explores how Blade Runner, The Thing, Conan the Barbarian, Tron, Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Poltergeist and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, all released between May 16 and July 9, not only became part of pop culture but transformed "the way that the movie industry did — and continues to do — business, paving the way for our current all-blockbusters-all-the-time era."
Nashawaty’s book is full of interesting anecdotes and little-known details about the making of these movies: how much then-Paramount head Barry Diller hated the word "wrath" in the title of the studio’s Star Trek sequel; who else might have played Harrison Ford’s private detective in Blade Runner (Tommy Lee Jones, Nick Nolte, Martin Sheen and Peter Falk); how much Tron influenced Toy Story; and this might be tops for me, how violent the alien was in the first draft of E.T. That finger? Not a cute light-up toy but a deadly weapon.
I am 100 percent going to start referring to Chris as “The Optimizer” to my Optionist as if we are some kind of bizarro superhero duo. (For another appetizer, check out Richard Rushfield’s interview with Chris over at The Ankler.)
More good news: Former Los Angeles Times book editor Boris Kachka, who was laid off during the paper’s cutbacks in January, has landed at The Atlantic. Boris did great work at the LAT, creating one of the most interesting book sections anywhere by mixing highbrow with lowbrow while balancing interviews, reviews and think pieces. I'm not sure how that'll transfer to The Atlantic, but I'll certainly be reading.
Onto this week’s picks, which include a very promising front-list novel, two great backlist picks and, after a month of great international soccer, a pair of scandals involving the world’s most popular sport. The rundown:
A drama in the vein of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
A courtroom drama about the murder of an eight-year-old autistic boy that explores the burdens and benefits of raising a child with special needs
A cult-classic thriller from the ‘90s that’s a Hollywood-set Da Vinci Code
A true-crime drama centered on an international sports star, his secret collection of illicitly-filmed revenge porn and the mystery of who outed him
A true-crime thriller chronicling how South America’s biggest drug trafficker was brought down all because he dreamed of playing pro soccer
