"When Giant fellas alive, them big animals still bin walkabout this country... "



From a book called Pyramids In The Pacific: The Unwritten History Of Australia:

"It is one of the objectives of this book to demonstrate that these people not only discovered and mined the mysterious "great south land" and its neighbours, but established colonies {some of which may have survived for generations} and were large and important enough to establish a local ruling class. By the time they vanished they had influenced the cultures of the native peoples of the region, leaving behind them ghostly megalithic ruins of temples, tombs and pyramids and rock scripts in a host of ancient tongues; relics that continue to perplex conservative historians and question the dogma that the peoples of the ancient world lacked the ability to construct and navigate oceangoing water craft."

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Attack of the Subtitle Monster

Anyone who's ever written a book can tell you that it's a fairly jarring experience when your work - - the fruit of your labor, often created in solitude - - gradually becomes an entity shared with the publisher.

The book business is, to put it mildly, tough. Publishers have to find a way to make a profit in a business where, for instance, their very product is returnable by the stores that buy it. One of the big chains can stock 5000 copies of your tome, but they can then ship back 4700 of them and only pay for the 300 they kept. I read a story recently where a buyer for one of the chains explained that sometimes she needs certain colors on book covers for the upcoming season and will increase her order of certain titles on that basis. Amazing.

So it's quite understandable that my editor and I have had somewhat animated discussions about certain requests made by the sales and marketing people regarding EIGHTH WONDER. Our latest debate was one that I hear is common for many nonfiction books: What, exactly, will be the subtitle of the book?

Take a trip down the nonfiction aisle of your local Barnes & Noble and it quickly becomes clear that the subtitle of a reality-based book - - also referred to as the sales handle - - carries a heavy load. Your actual title can be as short and pithy as you wish, but you better load up after the colon.

William Germano, vice president and publishing director at Routledge and the author of Getting It Published: A Guide for Scholars and Anyone Else Serious About Serious Books (University of Chicago Press, 2001), puts it thusly: "We've led authors to believe the way to make their book attractive is to start with something general or jazzy, then drop your guard and show what you really are writing about." (More here.)

So, EIGHTH WONDER is actually EIGHTH WONDER: THE AMAZING TRUE STORY OF CARL DENHAM AND THE BEAST-GOD OF SKULL ISLAND. "General and jazzy" followed by exactly what it is that I'm writing about.

Alas, after the contracts are signed my editor relates to me the gist of a meeting he's had with the marketing folks. "We have to get 'King Kong' in the title. Can you do that?"

Well, I explain, "King Kong" is not a name that the actual Carl Denham used for the beast he brought back from "Skull Island." It was a name created by RKO Pictures for their adaptation of Denham's story. In a book that seeks to, in many ways, rehabilitate the soiled reputation of a misunderstood figure, using the name created by RKO for a film that depicted Denham himself so poorly would be inappropriate.

“I understand,” my editor says. “Now, how will you work ‘King Kong’ into the subtitle? Let me know in the next couple days.”

So that’s that. Given the job that folks in publishing sales have to do, it’s understandable that they’d want the “big name” up front.

So, the title is now as follows –

EIGHTH WONDER: CARL DENHAM AND THE BEAST-GOD OF SKULL ISLAND - - THE AMAZING TRUE STORY OF KING KONG

Thank goodness for colons and em-dashes - - which, fortunately, do not actually appear on the cover design itself.

It's comforting to note that Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels was originally titled Travels Into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and Then a Captain of Several Ships.

KING KONG on TV: So Good It's...Great

For some reason, it's irresistable to watch the original KING KONG when it's on TV. Maybe it's because you know subconciously that many millions of other people are sharing the experience in their own living rooms at that very moment.

April 3rd, 7am Central Time, Turner Classic Movies

The Mighty Kong: So Bad It's... Bad

From JABOOTU'S BAD MOVIE DIMENSION:

"Poor Kong. Since starring in what is perhaps the greatest monster movie of all time – only The Bride of Frankenstein vies for the crown – his screen appearances have been increasingly dismal. First there was a fun but juvenile sequel, Son of Kong, rushed out the same year as his father’s appearance. Japan’s Toho Studios represented him with a moth-eaten ape suit, first in King Kong vs. Godzilla and then in King Kong Escapes. Dino De Laurentiis mauled him via an admittedly better ape suit in his lousy 1976 remake, and then delivered the coup de grâce in the hilariously atrocious King Kong Lives. As well, a hideous cartoon series in the ‘60s followed the lead of King Kong Escapes by continuing the adventures of mad scientist/Kong nemesis Dr. Who. (!) The only memorable thing about the show, which inevitable turned Kong into a small boy’s pet ala Gentle Ben (see also that same decade’s Moby Dick cartoon series), was the theme song. This reminded us that "You know the name of / King Kong / You know the fame of / King Kong / Ten times as big as a maan!""

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Another Quake in Sumatra Region

From CNN: Hundreds of people are reported dead after a massive earthquake struck off the west coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, just three months after a huge quake and tsunami devastated the region. Indonesia's National Coordinating Agency for Disaster Management and Refugees puts the death toll at 330.
This is yet another deadly quake in the region where Palau Batu Tengkorak, or "Skull Island," once was located before breaking up in a similar cataclysm.
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Missing Links: The Jungle Origins of King Kong

Excellent essay by Gerald Peary:

"In April, 1930, representatives of "Congo Pictures, Ltd." walked along Market Street in San Francisco offering the theatres purchase rights to a picture, INGAGI, said to show footage of Sir Hubert Winstead of London's sensationalist travels into the Belgian Congo. Every theatre but one turned down the film as a fake. The Orpheum decided not only to exhibit INGAGI but to promote it vigorously. A tabloid newspaper filled with stills from INGAGI was distributed door to door in the area of the theatre. A jungle exhibition was set up in the lobby. The Orpheum brought in $4,000 worth of business the opening day, an unprecedented $23,000 for the first week. RKO Studio, owner of the Orpheum, picked up national rights, and soon INGAGI was playing everywhere. It doubled house records in Seattle, was termed "the talk of the town" in Chicago, and soon was among the highest grossing films in the USA."

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DVD Comparison: "King Kong"

From DVDBeaver.com, a comparison (with sample stills) of various KING KONG dvds.






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Team Locates Huge Japanese Sub

"We came up to her from behind, and you could tell immediately she was from a different era," said Kerby. "Almost a turn-of-the-century, Jules Verne look to her. Lots of big rivets."

"Their mission, which was never completed, reportedly was to use the aircraft to drop rats and insects infected with bubonic plague, cholera, typhus and other diseases on U.S. cities."

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Lost Races in the Cinema

Comprehensive list of "lost race"-themed films by Jessica Amanda Salmonson.

"KING KONG. 1933. Based on the novel by Edgar Wallace. Producer/director Merian C. Cooper wisely got stop-motional animator Willis O'Brien to help out, resulting in a classic that is still a powerhouse of a film after all these years. When we first meet Kong we also meet a tribal people in the Indian Ocean "way west of Sumatra" who worship Kong on Skull Island. As one of the characters states, the architecture of this island is "built so long ago that the people who live there have slipped back, forgotten the higher civilization that built it" -- so they are no mere oceanic tribe, but a degraded remnant of a Lost Race. Only a few of the many sequels & imitations retain the lost race element even in passing, but some few do. The original sequel Son of Kong (1933) for example does take place on Skull Island but the lost race that lived there among the prehistoric beasts seems to have moved away."

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ABC News: The Mystery of Hogzilla Solved

Georgia hunter Chris Griffin poses with the beast that became known as "Hogzilla."


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DeLaurentiis on "Tomorrow Show" SNL Skit

"Tom Snyder": Mr. De Laurentiis, a few members of the Hollywood press have said that with all the money you spent on 'King Kong', you could have made twenty good movies instead. Some reporters have called you everything from a 'toy commercial maker' to a ruthless 'monkey pimp'. How, sir, do you answer these charges?

"Dino DeLaurentiis": Okay.. I want to tell you something.. when the Jaws die, nobody cry.. when my Kong die, everybody cry. Everybody love my Kong... kids, women, intellectuals, all love my Kong. "

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King Kong Returns to Sell Fords

From ADAGE.COM (registration required)

Marketer: Ford Motor Co.
Brand: Ford Ranger
Title: 'King Kong'
Agency: J. Walter Thompson, Bangkok
King Kong has returned and is currently living in Thailand, where he and his son are promoting Ford pickups.

Cartographers Redrawing Maps After Tsunami

One of the strange consequences of the tragic tsunami disaster in Indonesia is the fact that the ocean bottom in the region has changed so dramatically that cartographers will have to re-map the area. Palau Batu Tengkorak, or "Skull Island," happens to have been located in this very area, so some of the data gathered might turn up interesting new information about the habitat of Carl Denham's beast.

KATHERINE PFLEGER SHRADER
Associated Press 1/6/05
WASHINGTON - Water depths in parts of the Straits of Malacca, one of the world's busiest shipping channels off the coast of Sumatra, reached about 4,000 feet before last month's tsunami. Now, reports are coming in of just 100 feet - too dangerous for shipping, if proved true.

A U.S. spy imagery agency is working around the clock to gather information, warn mariners and begin the time-consuming task of recharting altered coastlines and ports throughout the region.

Officials at the Bethesda, Md.-based National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency say the efforts will take international cooperation over months, if not years.

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They might be giants, or dwarfs

Evolution often takes unexpected, and sometimes bizarre, directions on islands

By Beth Daley, Globe Staff | November 16, 2004

Their lives could have been the plot of a monster movie. Three-foot-tall humans recently discovered to have lived on an Indonesian island had to dodge giant lizards and rats the size of dogs. They were so tiny it appears they couldn't even overcome adult dwarf elephants, forced instead to hunt the animals' young.

But their adult size -- comparable to a modern 4-year-old -- had an upside, too, apparently allowing them to survive in isolation for tens of thousands of years. The existence of these little people, reported in the journal Nature last month, provides new scientific fodder for a mysterious evolutionary phenomenon that can radically shrink or balloon a species' size when it becomes isolated on islands.

"When species get to an island, you get evolution taking unexpected directions," said James H. Brown, distinguished professor of biology at the University of Mexico who has studied the phenomenon. "And some of it is bizarre."

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Is this the moving picture ship?

The EIGHTH WONDER blog is now on the air.

EIGHTH WONDER acts as companion volume to a documentary by filmmaker James Mansfield. The book is scheduled for NOVEMBER, 2005 release, published by Avalon Publishing Group. This site will provide updates on the progress of the book and documentary, as well as the occasional preview of what is shaping up to be a fascinating project.

Like most blogs, I anticipate that this will be a work-in-progress that will expand as I figure out how everything works. In the meantime, welcome aboard.

Launched: The EIGHTH WONDER Blog