The Moby Awards are the creature of the MobyLives book blog by the Hoboken-based Melville House Publishing. They celebrate the best (and worst) in a growing book-publishing trend — the book trailer. If movies can have them, then why can’t books?
The award for best foreign book trailer went to Sean Stanley for a video he created to promote Etcetera and Otherwise: A Lurid Odyssey. It comes complete with cameos from Margaret Atwood, Leonard Cohen, Robertson Davies and Yann Martel, and gets rounded off with the decapitation of Michael Ondaatje. (Note: no authors were harmed in the making of this video.) I wrote a mini review of Etcetera and Otherwise last August. What I find surprising is that MobyLives didn’t mention Stanley’s previous book trailer which exhorted viewers to help a struggling author hire a sex-trade worker.
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June 3rd, 2010 at 3:06 pm
As I posted on Facebook, that trailer sure piqued my curiosity, I will have to read the book now!!! Loved the Robertson Davies bit especially… which opera singers could I decapitate if I were to produce a trailer for my upcoming Liederabend?
June 3rd, 2010 at 3:11 pm
The problem with doing an opera trailer is that a lot of operas are already so over-the-top that the loss of an arm or a decapitation might seem pretty ho-hum
Maybe you could stage a bitch slap-fest or mud wrestling.
June 3rd, 2010 at 4:37 pm
You are so right!!! Your suggestion has possibilities. I might just use Tenors…