By Jo (J.K.) Rowling as told to Greg Palast and the Palast twins
GregPalast.com
19 July 2011
Some of you may recall that, years ago, when I lived in England, writing for The Guardian, when I shared the bestseller list with Jo Rowling (she at the pinnacle, me in the valley), we became buds through my twins' love for her astonishing work.
But Jo knows that I found the conclusion of her series a sorry let-down, a second-rate "Show Down at the OK Corral" for Wizards. In my opinion (and she does not at all agree), Jo was too distracted by a concern for how the ending would play on film.
I bugged her about it until she told me the "other" endings. Every author has them - and we all look over our old drafts, after publication, and say, "Damn! I should have used that version" - then we lock it away before someone sees it and agrees.
No, Jo wouldn't show me typed copies, but she told me a couple of "I could have done this" endings.
One of them knocked me over, and I have to share it. (Sorry Jo, that's the danger of befriending an investigative reporter - if you forget to use the magical words, "This is off the record.") I can understand, though, why she would put aside this quieter, yet far more harrowing, conclusion.
I wrote it down that night in October 2007. I don't claim that this is exactly word-for-word as she told it to me (Jo: please edit!) and I left out all the side stuff about me telling my oblivious kids, "You really should listen to this; years from now you'll want to say you heard this," and the minor mishap with my coffee.
But I just have to put it out here and hope that Jo and her publisher don't slam me with an Avada Kedavra curse.
I'll assume you've read the books - and if you haven't, for shame! - so I won't introduce this at all except to say that this alternative (and quite troubling) ending veers away from the printed and film versions just before Harry's final confrontation with The Dark Lord, Voldemort.
And please: If you want to say that I didn't get her voice and story details exactly, keep in mind that I'm working from mental notes - and that I'm no J.K. Rowling. But then, no one is.
To the Forbidden Forest
Harry marched toward the field where Voldemort waited with his pack of Dementors. Harry's scar burned brutally, saving him the pain of thinking too deeply about his decision, likely to bring him nothing but death.
What special evil, what deadly and devious spell had the Dark Lord prepared for Harry's destruction? Voldemort had hunted after Harry for more than a decade; doubtless Voldemort would arm himself with a special curse far more powerful and final than the Avada Kedavra which had failed to kill Harry as a child.
Harry was terribly right. The Dark Lord, in his clearing in the Forbidden Forest, was preparing a charm as devastating as Harry feared, and far more horrific. As Harry marched to this fated meeting, Voldemort passed his wand among the icy Dementors, commanding each to lay their Kiss upon it.
Voldemort, in those pained, lonely nights of his exile and recovery, had conceived of a way to hurl a Dementor's kiss from his wand, the kiss that would take away the soul of its victim forever. And now he would blast Harry with hundreds of them. Voldemort's reward would be greater than watching Harry's burial. He would have Harry frozen in place, Harry's living being encased for eternity at the moment of Harry's ultimate humiliation and defeat, a terrifying monument to Voldemort's victory for all to see for all time. Voldemort's joy rose with every Dementor's kiss to his wand.
Harry could feel their grave-like cold as he approached and the pull of their despair. It was hopeless, and he was helpless in the face of it. And he knew it.
But then, Harry felt the presence of a young man and woman, though he could not see them. These two ghosts lovingly held his body up and raised his spirit. It was, he was certain, the last remaining life-force of his parents, making one last sacrifice by joining him on his final journey. He allowed himself a moment of peaceful happiness, feeling them so close.
Then he stopped. Harry shivered with a deep chill of recognition. They were not his parents. They were Voldemort's: the young Tom Riddle and his bride who, for this occasion, had taken back her beautiful maid's countenance. They said, using no words, "Our dearest son, we will not allow you to be harmed."
Were their words for him? Or for Voldemort? Somehow, it didn't seem to matter - they seemed so kind when he needed nothing more at this moment than a parent's love.
Harry, and the two warm spirits becoming more visible, approached the edge of the swirling crowd of Voldemort's followers, who parted, preparing to give the victim an easy corridor to his doom.
Voldemort's wand had returned to his white, skeletal hand. The Dark Lord pointed it confidently to where Harry would surely emerge from the crowd, not yet to destroy Potter but to hold him while he prepared to give Harry an oration on the eternal punishment about to strike him.
Voldemort laughed when Harry stumbled through. But when the Dark Lord saw the specters of his parents, he howled as if cut in half. With his furious heart in flames, Voldemort immediately unleashed the deadly Kisses, bellowing, "Oppugno Mortimbessios!" And all the vile terrors of the Dementors, in an unstoppable flash from his wand, rushed toward Harry and the spirits at his side.
It was only a hundredth of a second for Voldemort's curse to reach Harry. But somehow the world seemed to slow down, the Earth ceased to rotate; all on the planet held still, though Harry was aware he was free to move. Harry had planned every shield charm for his defense, but all now were clearly useless. Harry found himself unable to do more than calmly bend to one knee and bow his head, preparing to accept the force of the blow and his death and end.
As he kneeled, in that quiet moment outside time, the two shadows flew from him toward Voldemort. And Voldemort changed. The Dementors' chill wind, and Time, moved backward; and there was Voldemort, growing to his younger, more potent, frightening self.
The curse struck Harry's scar, obliterating it, then, in a loud roar, he felt the crushing pain of his skull opening, and then the shrieking curse rushing from his head - back toward the wand that sent it.
As the curse turned back toward him, Voldemort continued to grow younger still, until he was a little child again with his mother and father at his side. When they realized the full force of Voldemort's own spell was about to strike him, his parents put their reassuring arms around their son to protect him from this ultimate blow.
And then it struck. And now the three entwined souls, Tom Riddle, his wife and young child, would remain forever entombed in that one moment, never able to leave.
And never wanting to.
Hogwarts AD 2130
The headmaster, his stringy white beard uncombed and his wrinkled, bald head topped by a drooping wizard's cap, looked with wistful gratitude at the empty picture frame he'd convinced the Ministry to put up, despite their reluctance. He knew he'd soon be residing in that little square etched with the name, "Harry Potter," separated from Albus Dumbledore's only by the portraits of Headmistresses McGonagall and Chang.
The old wizard could hear below the school abuzz with preparations for his 150th birthday. He shifted Ginny, a bird of paradise, to a perch nearer his desk. His wife, rather than grow old, had turned herself into this beautiful bird, but still insisted on giving un-birdlike advice. "Harry, dearest, you can't miss your own birthday party. And it's so lovely outside."
Indeed, the summer day had brought out scores of picnickers who had come to set their baskets and blankets out near the warm light cast by the living statue of the happy family with the little child. No one but the old headmaster knew who was encased in that glowing sphere. When the Dementors were released from the spell of Voldemort, they, and indeed every wizard excepting Harry and the shade of Albus, were cleansed of all memory of the Dark Lord. Now, after more than a century, curiosity about the family in the statue had long ago ceased. Harry had simply ordered a plaque placed there. It said only, "Riddles."
"I will go," he told his feathered wife, "but I have to keep an eye on the boy for a bit." Harry's great, great grandson, not yet able to walk, silently played on the rug with his chocolate frog. Then suddenly, in inexplicable anger, little Tom crushed the candy animal. Harry watched this, and knew the whole world would soon darken again for generations to come.
THE END
Investigative journalist Greg Palast's reports can be seen on BBC Television Newsnight or at www.GregPalast.com. Your thoughts on this other ending for the HP series welcome at the Greg Palast Facebook page. Palast's new book, Vultures' Picnic, will be published by Penguin USA in November 2011.
Showing posts with label J.K. Rowling. Show all posts
Showing posts with label J.K. Rowling. Show all posts
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
'Harry Potter' movie stars help christen Wizarding World
http://www.usatoday.com/travel/destinations/2010-06-17-wizarding-world-of-harry-potter_N.htm
'Harry Potter' movie stars help christen Wizarding World
6-17-10
Magical: The stars of the Harry Potter movies were among the hundreds in attendance at Hogwarts Castle for Wednesday's fireworks show to kick off the theme park's grand opening celebration.
Jennifer Sangalang, Special for USA TODAY
ORLANDO — When you enter the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Orlando Resort, you really do enter the world of Harry Potter.
"Bloody hell!" says Matthew Lewis when asked to describe it.
Lewis, who plays Neville Longbottom in the Harry Potter films, was at Islands of Adventure this week for opening festivities; the attraction officially opens today.
He was joined by castmates including Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter), Rupert Grint (Ron Weasley), Tom Felton (Draco Malfoy) and Michael Gambon (Albus Dumbledore).
"I did actually love the Dragon Challenge," Radcliffe said Thursday during a news conference. "The technology they're using in this is really quite amazing."
The Dragon Challenge features a Chinese Fireball coaster and a Hungarian Horntail coaster. It includes twists, upside-down loops and a free-fall that probably is just a second, but feels like 10.
Radcliffe and the other Harry Potter actors are featured via video in parts of the attraction.
Grint's favorite part?
"The castle. I just can't stop looking at it."
Neither could most of the guests. Stepping into the castle is like stepping onto a movie set — or into the actual Hogwarts. And the Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey ride, though not an actual roller coaster, feels like one. The visual effects are stunning and a little scary. (Ever been breathed on by a Dementor?)
Bob Sehlinger, theme park enthusiast and co-author of The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World 2011, offers insight into what makes the ride so realistic.
The cutting-edge technology Universal used for the ride includes the Kuka Arm, a high-tech robotic device, and Musion Eyeliner, a high-definition video-projection system that creates 3-D holograms. The Kuka Arm, says Sehlinger, swoops and moves in any direction. The arm usually is a fixed platform. Universal, however, made it mobile.
"In Forbidden Journey, these things are mounted on track vehicles — little trains, so to speak. (They) move you from scene to scene. It's never been attempted" at a theme park, Sehlinger says.
The Musion Eyeliner's life-size holograms are used in the chambers where the story is introduced. It brings the characters to life, Sehlinger adds.
Sehlinger says J.K. Rowling, the best-selling author who created Harry Potter, signed off on everything at the attraction, from the food served in the restaurants to the drinks and merchandise.
"She vetoed serving any kind of Coke product," Sehlinger says. "So Wizarding World has its own special Harry Potter-themed foods and beverages."
Like butterbeer, which comes in frozen and fountain varieties. It tastes like a light cola with whipped cream on top.
Visitor Katie Cross of Flagstaff, Ariz., was especially taken with the food. "I'm a big candy freak, so I love Honeydukes."
For theme park guests unfamiliar with the Potter hoopla, Sehlinger suggests brushing up on the topic before you go.
"There's just so much iconography from the films," he said. "It's just more meaningful if you know a bit about Harry Potter."
But even if you don't, "if you're going just to ride a roller coaster, you won't be disappointed," he says. "It's a great coaster."
Sangalang reports for Florida Today.
Saturday, July 25, 2009
J.K. Rowling Writing A 'Political Fairy Tale'
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1616461/20090717/index.jhtml
Jul 17 2009
'Harry Potter' Author J.K. Rowling Writing A 'Political Fairy Tale'
'No one knows anything about it,' writer happily reports, following years of high expectations.
By Eric Ditzian
With its big-budget CGI effects, high-powered celebrity stars and massive appeal, it can be easy to forget that the "Harry Potter" film franchise owes its existence to the mind — and the typewriter — of a formerly unemployed single mother and first-time author named J.K. Rowling.
With the sixth film in the series, "Half-Blood Prince," crossing the $100 million worldwide-box-office mark after only one day in theaters, ABC News aired a special look into a year in Rowling's life, during which she finished work on the final "Potter" installment, "Deathly Hallows," and began to think about her future writing career in a post-Harry world.
"I've helpfully made the note for myself, 'This will need very serious planning,' " she laughed while sitting down to finish — on a laptop, this time — the seventh book in a hotel in Edinburgh, Scotland, in November 2006.
This would prove to be the final stretch of 17 years of writing the books, and after tapping away and scrolling through some last electronic pages, she said with just a hint of a smile, "Yeah, I think I've finished."
"Some people will loathe it," she added. "They'll absolutely loathe it. But the thing is, that's as it should be, because for some people to love it, others must loathe it. That's just in the nature of the plot. Some people won't be happy because what they wanted to happen hasn't happened. And to an extent, there's so much expectation from the hardcore fans, I'm not sure I could ever match up to it. I'm actually really, really happy with it."
Rowling then played Lily Allen's song "Smile," added page numbers and eventually printed the manuscript and hand-delivered it to her publisher at London's Heathrow Airport on January 12, 2007.
After an extensive editing process and a meticulous marketing campaign, "Deathly Hallows" was released across the world on July 21. In 24 hours, 8 million copies were sold in the United States alone — 7,000 books a minute, as ABC News noted. The film version will be split into two separate movies, the first part appearing in November 2010 and the second in July 2011.
But Rowling has already moved on to another writing project, she said, "a story that I describe as a political fairy tale. And it's for slightly younger children. So I think that will probably be the next thing that I finish. I'm not in a mad hurry to publish. I would like to take my time."
"I've lived with deadlines for 10 years," Rowling continued. "And I'm currently able to luxuriate in the fact that no one's really expecting it, no one knows anything about it. I feel I've gone right back to the beginning where I was on [first 'Potter' book] 'Philosopher's Stone,' when it was my private world, and I'd really like to enjoy that sole possession for a while."
Jul 17 2009
'Harry Potter' Author J.K. Rowling Writing A 'Political Fairy Tale'
'No one knows anything about it,' writer happily reports, following years of high expectations.
By Eric Ditzian
With its big-budget CGI effects, high-powered celebrity stars and massive appeal, it can be easy to forget that the "Harry Potter" film franchise owes its existence to the mind — and the typewriter — of a formerly unemployed single mother and first-time author named J.K. Rowling.
With the sixth film in the series, "Half-Blood Prince," crossing the $100 million worldwide-box-office mark after only one day in theaters, ABC News aired a special look into a year in Rowling's life, during which she finished work on the final "Potter" installment, "Deathly Hallows," and began to think about her future writing career in a post-Harry world.
"I've helpfully made the note for myself, 'This will need very serious planning,' " she laughed while sitting down to finish — on a laptop, this time — the seventh book in a hotel in Edinburgh, Scotland, in November 2006.
This would prove to be the final stretch of 17 years of writing the books, and after tapping away and scrolling through some last electronic pages, she said with just a hint of a smile, "Yeah, I think I've finished."
"Some people will loathe it," she added. "They'll absolutely loathe it. But the thing is, that's as it should be, because for some people to love it, others must loathe it. That's just in the nature of the plot. Some people won't be happy because what they wanted to happen hasn't happened. And to an extent, there's so much expectation from the hardcore fans, I'm not sure I could ever match up to it. I'm actually really, really happy with it."
Rowling then played Lily Allen's song "Smile," added page numbers and eventually printed the manuscript and hand-delivered it to her publisher at London's Heathrow Airport on January 12, 2007.
After an extensive editing process and a meticulous marketing campaign, "Deathly Hallows" was released across the world on July 21. In 24 hours, 8 million copies were sold in the United States alone — 7,000 books a minute, as ABC News noted. The film version will be split into two separate movies, the first part appearing in November 2010 and the second in July 2011.
But Rowling has already moved on to another writing project, she said, "a story that I describe as a political fairy tale. And it's for slightly younger children. So I think that will probably be the next thing that I finish. I'm not in a mad hurry to publish. I would like to take my time."
"I've lived with deadlines for 10 years," Rowling continued. "And I'm currently able to luxuriate in the fact that no one's really expecting it, no one knows anything about it. I feel I've gone right back to the beginning where I was on [first 'Potter' book] 'Philosopher's Stone,' when it was my private world, and I'd really like to enjoy that sole possession for a while."
Monday, April 14, 2008
Bible is America's favorite book
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080408/lf_nm_life/reading_survey_dc
Bible is America's favorite book: poll
Tue Apr 8, 2008
When it comes to literary pursuits in the United States most people agree on at least one thing -- the most popular book is the Bible, according to a new survey.
It came in first in a Harris Poll of nearly 2,513 adults but the second choice in the survey was not as clear cut.
"While the Bible is number one among each of the different demographic groups, there is a large difference in the number two favorite book," Harris said in a statement announcing the results.
Men chose J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" and women selected Margaret Mitchell's "Gone With the Wind" as their second-favorite book, according to the online poll.
But the second choice for 18- to 31-year-olds was J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, while 32- to 43-year-olds named Stephen King's "The Stand" and Dan Brown's "Angels and Demons."
Picks for second-favorite book also varied according to region. "Gone With the Wind" was number two in the southern and midwestern United States while easterners chose "The Lord of the Rings" and westerners opted for "The Stand."
Whites and Hispanics picked "Gone With the Wind" as their second-favorite book after the Bible, while African-Americans preferred "Angels and Demons."
"Finally, they may not agree on candidates, but one thing that brings together partisans is their favorite book. For Republicans, Democrats and Independents, the top two books are the same -- the Bible followed by "Gone With the Wind."
Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code," "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee, "Angels and Demons" by Dan Brown, "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand and "Catcher in the Rye" by J.D. Salinger rounded out the top 10 favorites.
(Reporting by Julie Mollins; editing by Patricia Reaney)
Bible is America's favorite book: poll
Tue Apr 8, 2008
When it comes to literary pursuits in the United States most people agree on at least one thing -- the most popular book is the Bible, according to a new survey.
It came in first in a Harris Poll of nearly 2,513 adults but the second choice in the survey was not as clear cut.
"While the Bible is number one among each of the different demographic groups, there is a large difference in the number two favorite book," Harris said in a statement announcing the results.
Men chose J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" and women selected Margaret Mitchell's "Gone With the Wind" as their second-favorite book, according to the online poll.
But the second choice for 18- to 31-year-olds was J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, while 32- to 43-year-olds named Stephen King's "The Stand" and Dan Brown's "Angels and Demons."
Picks for second-favorite book also varied according to region. "Gone With the Wind" was number two in the southern and midwestern United States while easterners chose "The Lord of the Rings" and westerners opted for "The Stand."
Whites and Hispanics picked "Gone With the Wind" as their second-favorite book after the Bible, while African-Americans preferred "Angels and Demons."
"Finally, they may not agree on candidates, but one thing that brings together partisans is their favorite book. For Republicans, Democrats and Independents, the top two books are the same -- the Bible followed by "Gone With the Wind."
Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code," "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee, "Angels and Demons" by Dan Brown, "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand and "Catcher in the Rye" by J.D. Salinger rounded out the top 10 favorites.
(Reporting by Julie Mollins; editing by Patricia Reaney)
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Rowling Hints at Eighth Harry Potter Book
http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2007/12/rowling-hints-a.html
Rowling Hints at Eighth Harry Potter Book
By Lewis Wallace
December 30, 2007
We already know J.K. Rowling can craft a franchise. Now the writer who turned the seven-book Harry Potter series into a money-minting machine reminds us that she's a master at generating publicity. Just two months after cranking up the PR machine with the revelation that Potter wizard Dumbledore was gay, she tells the Daily Mail she's considered revisiting the supposedly finished franchise.
"There have been times since finishing, weak moments, when I've said, 'Yeah, all right' to the eighth novel," she told the British publication. "If -- and it's a big if -- I ever write an eighth book, I doubt that Harry would be the central character. I feel I've already told his story. But these are big ifs. Let's give it 10 years."
Oh, and in the meantime, she's working on a "political fairy tale" and a novel for adults (in between superproductive brainstorming sessions with her publicity team).
Rowling Hints at Eighth Harry Potter Book
By Lewis Wallace
December 30, 2007
We already know J.K. Rowling can craft a franchise. Now the writer who turned the seven-book Harry Potter series into a money-minting machine reminds us that she's a master at generating publicity. Just two months after cranking up the PR machine with the revelation that Potter wizard Dumbledore was gay, she tells the Daily Mail she's considered revisiting the supposedly finished franchise.
"There have been times since finishing, weak moments, when I've said, 'Yeah, all right' to the eighth novel," she told the British publication. "If -- and it's a big if -- I ever write an eighth book, I doubt that Harry would be the central character. I feel I've already told his story. But these are big ifs. Let's give it 10 years."
Oh, and in the meantime, she's working on a "political fairy tale" and a novel for adults (in between superproductive brainstorming sessions with her publicity team).
'Harry Potter' prevails, wands down
http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/reviews/2007-12-26-year-in-review-potter_N.htm?csp=34
Book of the year: 'Harry Potter' prevails, wands down
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
This year's choice had to be the final Harry Potter book. The reasons are as varied as the different wizards' wands found in Diagon Alley. There were the numbers: Hallows sold a record-breaking 11.5 million copies in the USA during its first 10 days on sale in July. Then there was the pre-publication hysteria: Would Harry die? Could the world's children — and a lot of adults — handle it? Was an early version posted on the Web the real thing? (Yes.) Months after the book's publication, Rowling triggered controversy by revealing that Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore was gay. The blogosphere went wild. But none of that matters. Hallows is the book of the year because Rowling gave her story an ending that was as graceful, unpredictable and satisfying as the series itself. She reaffirmed that magic can exist when someone opens a great book and enters a world created from words on paper. She made us believe that the imagination — like her own little wizard, now all grown up — still lives.
Book of the year: 'Harry Potter' prevails, wands down
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
This year's choice had to be the final Harry Potter book. The reasons are as varied as the different wizards' wands found in Diagon Alley. There were the numbers: Hallows sold a record-breaking 11.5 million copies in the USA during its first 10 days on sale in July. Then there was the pre-publication hysteria: Would Harry die? Could the world's children — and a lot of adults — handle it? Was an early version posted on the Web the real thing? (Yes.) Months after the book's publication, Rowling triggered controversy by revealing that Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore was gay. The blogosphere went wild. But none of that matters. Hallows is the book of the year because Rowling gave her story an ending that was as graceful, unpredictable and satisfying as the series itself. She reaffirmed that magic can exist when someone opens a great book and enters a world created from words on paper. She made us believe that the imagination — like her own little wizard, now all grown up — still lives.
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Colbert chosen AP Celebrity of the Year
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071220/ap_en_ot/ye_celebrity_of_the_year
Colbert chosen AP Celebrity of the Year
By JAKE COYLE, AP Entertainment Writer
Thu Dec 20, 2007
While most TV characters remain boxed inside the frames of our sets, Stephen Colbert has routinely injected his on-screen persona into everything from the presidential race to ice cream.
In 2007, the mock pundit on Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report" exceeded the influence of most real pundits, orchestrating an ill-fated (and Doritos-sponsored) run for president and topping the best-seller lists with his book "I Am America (And So Can You!)."
Colbert failed to get onto the primary ballot in his home state of South Carolina, dooming his hopes for the White House. And his show went 0-for-4 at the Emmy Awards, including an especially painful loss to Barry Manilow.
But Colbert did win one honor: He was voted AP Celebrity of the Year by newspaper editors and broadcast producers who said Colbert had the biggest impact on pop culture in 2007.
He finished just a nudge above J.K. Rowling, who authored the final book in her enormously popular "Harry Potter" series. Finishing third was Al Gore, whose year included an Oscar, an Emmy, a Nobel Peace Prize and the global concert Live Earth.
Voting was otherwise spread out across many entertainers, including pop star Britney Spears, "Hannah Montana" star Miley Cyrus, rapper Kanye West, comedy director and producer Judd Apatow and country singer Kenny Chesney.
But it was the slight, bespectacled Colbert — his hair never ruffled, suits forever pressed — who dominated the year. Even from the relatively small stage of late-night cable TV, his satire spread into all corners of media and society — and for a few weeks made a mockery of the democratic system.
Colbert has declined interviews during the writers strike that has shuttered his show, but he told The Associated Press by e-mail:
"In receiving this award, I am pleased that I was chosen over two great spinners of fantasy — J.K. Rowling and Al Gore. It is truly an honor to be named the Associated Press' Celebrity of the Year. Best of all, this makes me the official front-runner for next year's Drug-Fueled Downward Spiral of the year. P.S. Look for my baby bump this spring!"
Julio Diaz, entertainment editor for the Pensacola News Journal, explained his vote for the faux newsman:
"Colbert is more than an entertainer, he's a force of nature," said Diaz. "He's influenced the way we look at the news and even the way we speak. Whenever a major news story breaks, one of my first thoughts is what Colbert's spin on the story will be."
Colbert began his year by facing off against his inspiration, Bill O'Reilly. In one afternoon, Colbert and the Fox News commentator traded guest appearances on each other's shows in an exchange Colbert called "a meeting of the guts."
The meeting had been anticipated since Colbert's 2005 debut of "The Report," a deadpan fun-house mirror held up to "The O'Reilly Factor" and other conservative news programs.
In early 2007, Colbert became the namesake of the new Ben & Jerry's ice cream flavor "Americone Dream." This followed in a tradition of naming things after Colbert, like the mascot for the Saginaw Spirit, an Ontario Hockey League team, "Steagle Colbeagle the Eagle."
While taping an episode on June 27, Colbert fell and broke his wrist — a minor event for most, but weeks of fodder for Colbert. The following month, he unveiled a "wrist awareness" campaign in which he urged anyone famous to wear a "WristStrong" bracelet (similar to Lance Armstrong's "LiveStrong" bands).
Showcasing his extremely detail-centric sense of humor, Colbert said on a September show: "If (Alan) Greenspan can do for my bracelets what he did for secured short-term lending through federal repurchasing agreements — can you imagine how great that would be?"
But Colbert's main act would be the run-up to his White House campaign and his ensuing bid for the nation's highest office. While promoting his new book, Colbert appeared on news programs and wrote a guest column for The New York Times mocking the dance many candidates go through before officially declaring their candidacy.
Colbert eventually announced on his program on Oct. 16, where he made it clear he aimed to parody everything about image-sensitive political campaigns. He appeared beforehand on "The Daily Show" sitting on a bale of hay and drinking a beer to show that he was an Average Joe.
The 43-year-old comedian jokingly suggested his ticket could read "Colbert-Huckabee," referring to former Arkansas governor Republican Mike Huckabee. Huckabee had made several appearances on "The Report" (making him a "friend of the show"). Huckabee's candidacy was then something of a joke; now he has zoomed to the top of the polls.
Colbert's announcement set off dialogue across the political landscape about the legitimacy of his candidacy and how he might impact the primaries.
Wrote New York Times columnist David Carr: "It is Mr. Colbert's ability to both mimic and amplify the tics of political convention and play them back with just a little more topspin that makes his satire so discomfiting."
Colbert said he would run only in his native South Carolina, but after he applied to get his name on the state's Democratic primary ballot (the Republican fee was too high), party officials voted 13-3 to keep Colbert off, claiming he "serves to detract from the serious candidates."
Soon thereafter, Colbert announced that he was withdrawing: "Although I lost by the slimmest margin in presidential election history — only 10 votes — I have chosen not to put the country through another agonizing Supreme Court battle. It is time for this nation to heal."
Colbert's withdrawal may have been hastened by the Hollywood writers strike, which shut down production on "The Report" in early November. Comedy Central, which is owned by Viacom Inc., announced Thursday that both "The Report" and "The Daily Show" will return to the air on Jan. 7, with or without their writing staffs.
On his last episode of the year, Colbert said: "As you know, except for my 13 writers and production crew, I do this show single-handedly four nights a week. I'm also raising a family, promoting a book and, hey, two weeks ago I said, `Let's run for president.' I haven't gotten a wink since I blacked out talking to Tim Russert."
Colbert chosen AP Celebrity of the Year
By JAKE COYLE, AP Entertainment Writer
Thu Dec 20, 2007
While most TV characters remain boxed inside the frames of our sets, Stephen Colbert has routinely injected his on-screen persona into everything from the presidential race to ice cream.
In 2007, the mock pundit on Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report" exceeded the influence of most real pundits, orchestrating an ill-fated (and Doritos-sponsored) run for president and topping the best-seller lists with his book "I Am America (And So Can You!)."
Colbert failed to get onto the primary ballot in his home state of South Carolina, dooming his hopes for the White House. And his show went 0-for-4 at the Emmy Awards, including an especially painful loss to Barry Manilow.
But Colbert did win one honor: He was voted AP Celebrity of the Year by newspaper editors and broadcast producers who said Colbert had the biggest impact on pop culture in 2007.
He finished just a nudge above J.K. Rowling, who authored the final book in her enormously popular "Harry Potter" series. Finishing third was Al Gore, whose year included an Oscar, an Emmy, a Nobel Peace Prize and the global concert Live Earth.
Voting was otherwise spread out across many entertainers, including pop star Britney Spears, "Hannah Montana" star Miley Cyrus, rapper Kanye West, comedy director and producer Judd Apatow and country singer Kenny Chesney.
But it was the slight, bespectacled Colbert — his hair never ruffled, suits forever pressed — who dominated the year. Even from the relatively small stage of late-night cable TV, his satire spread into all corners of media and society — and for a few weeks made a mockery of the democratic system.
Colbert has declined interviews during the writers strike that has shuttered his show, but he told The Associated Press by e-mail:
"In receiving this award, I am pleased that I was chosen over two great spinners of fantasy — J.K. Rowling and Al Gore. It is truly an honor to be named the Associated Press' Celebrity of the Year. Best of all, this makes me the official front-runner for next year's Drug-Fueled Downward Spiral of the year. P.S. Look for my baby bump this spring!"
Julio Diaz, entertainment editor for the Pensacola News Journal, explained his vote for the faux newsman:
"Colbert is more than an entertainer, he's a force of nature," said Diaz. "He's influenced the way we look at the news and even the way we speak. Whenever a major news story breaks, one of my first thoughts is what Colbert's spin on the story will be."
Colbert began his year by facing off against his inspiration, Bill O'Reilly. In one afternoon, Colbert and the Fox News commentator traded guest appearances on each other's shows in an exchange Colbert called "a meeting of the guts."
The meeting had been anticipated since Colbert's 2005 debut of "The Report," a deadpan fun-house mirror held up to "The O'Reilly Factor" and other conservative news programs.
In early 2007, Colbert became the namesake of the new Ben & Jerry's ice cream flavor "Americone Dream." This followed in a tradition of naming things after Colbert, like the mascot for the Saginaw Spirit, an Ontario Hockey League team, "Steagle Colbeagle the Eagle."
While taping an episode on June 27, Colbert fell and broke his wrist — a minor event for most, but weeks of fodder for Colbert. The following month, he unveiled a "wrist awareness" campaign in which he urged anyone famous to wear a "WristStrong" bracelet (similar to Lance Armstrong's "LiveStrong" bands).
Showcasing his extremely detail-centric sense of humor, Colbert said on a September show: "If (Alan) Greenspan can do for my bracelets what he did for secured short-term lending through federal repurchasing agreements — can you imagine how great that would be?"
But Colbert's main act would be the run-up to his White House campaign and his ensuing bid for the nation's highest office. While promoting his new book, Colbert appeared on news programs and wrote a guest column for The New York Times mocking the dance many candidates go through before officially declaring their candidacy.
Colbert eventually announced on his program on Oct. 16, where he made it clear he aimed to parody everything about image-sensitive political campaigns. He appeared beforehand on "The Daily Show" sitting on a bale of hay and drinking a beer to show that he was an Average Joe.
The 43-year-old comedian jokingly suggested his ticket could read "Colbert-Huckabee," referring to former Arkansas governor Republican Mike Huckabee. Huckabee had made several appearances on "The Report" (making him a "friend of the show"). Huckabee's candidacy was then something of a joke; now he has zoomed to the top of the polls.
Colbert's announcement set off dialogue across the political landscape about the legitimacy of his candidacy and how he might impact the primaries.
Wrote New York Times columnist David Carr: "It is Mr. Colbert's ability to both mimic and amplify the tics of political convention and play them back with just a little more topspin that makes his satire so discomfiting."
Colbert said he would run only in his native South Carolina, but after he applied to get his name on the state's Democratic primary ballot (the Republican fee was too high), party officials voted 13-3 to keep Colbert off, claiming he "serves to detract from the serious candidates."
Soon thereafter, Colbert announced that he was withdrawing: "Although I lost by the slimmest margin in presidential election history — only 10 votes — I have chosen not to put the country through another agonizing Supreme Court battle. It is time for this nation to heal."
Colbert's withdrawal may have been hastened by the Hollywood writers strike, which shut down production on "The Report" in early November. Comedy Central, which is owned by Viacom Inc., announced Thursday that both "The Report" and "The Daily Show" will return to the air on Jan. 7, with or without their writing staffs.
On his last episode of the year, Colbert said: "As you know, except for my 13 writers and production crew, I do this show single-handedly four nights a week. I'm also raising a family, promoting a book and, hey, two weeks ago I said, `Let's run for president.' I haven't gotten a wink since I blacked out talking to Tim Russert."
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
EW'S 2007 ENTERTAINER OF THE YEAR
http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20152943_20153269_20161218_25,00.html
EW'S 2007 ENTERTAINER OF THE YEAR: J.K. ROWLING
It would be so easy to explain why J.K. Rowling is 2007's Entertainer of the Year with numbers, not words. The numbers, after all, are so much fun to tally and goggle at: $15 billion (the estimated total revenue generated by the Harry Potter industry); nearly 400 million (the number of Potter books sold worldwide); $4.49 billion (the total worldwide box office gross of the five Harry Potter films, allowing the series to zip past Star Wars and the James Bond films this summer to become the most lucrative movie franchise in history). And let's not forget 1, 2, 3, and 4: the places Rowling holds on the list of the fastest-selling books in the not-very-long history of measuring fast-selling books.
But Rowling never relied on mathematics to gun the motor of the 4,100-page narrative she brought across the finish line this year. So we suspect that she would dismiss the foregoing account as rather dull: Mugglish rather than magical. And although we now know that she is fond of uplifting, even sentimental endings (as long as the joy is qualified by the memory of sorrow and the sentimentality is honestly earned), at this point even she might find her own biography a bit too happily-ever-after; you know, the one that begins in the early 1990s with a young single mother banging away at a manuscript in Scottish cafés, wondering if she could turn her idea into something.
So we'll keep it simple: J.K. Rowling is our Entertainer of the Year because she did something very, very hard, and she did it very, very well, thus pleasing hundreds of millions of children and adults very, very much. In an era of videogame consoles, online multiplayer ''environments,'' and tinier-is-better mobisodes, minisodes, and webisodes, she got people to tote around her big, fat old-fashioned printed-on-paper books as if they were the hottest new entertainment devices on the planet. Let's also credit her for one more thing.
What she spent the last 17 years creating turned out to be completely original. Several years ago, when Rowling's series started to get popular enough to attract attention from the kind of critics who don't usually grapple with popular fiction, she was practically smothered in faint praise that evolved into a low drone of condescension as time went on. Of course, the books are skillful, went the murmurs, but really, isn't this woman merely an adept pickpocket, someone who's synthesized a little bit of Tolkien and a dash of C.S. Lewis and some Lloyd Alexander and a wealth of British-boarding-school stories into a marketable but derivative new package?
No. As it turns out, the Harry Potter books are much richer than their progression from lightness to darkness, from childhood to adulthood, from the episodic simplicity of chapter-books to the heft and sweep of epic novels, and in their constant, book-by-book recalibration of what their readers were prepared to absorb, they've proven unlike anything else in a century of children's literature. Can there be any remaining doubt that Rowling meant every word when she said, some time back, that she planned every aspect of her story ''so carefully I sometimes feel as though my brain is going to explode''? The planning clearly paid off, not only in the blossoming of the books into a worldwide cross-cultural phenomenon but in the widespread declarations that greeted the July publication of volume 7, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, that Rowling had created something timeless, a tale that children would read 25 and 50 years from now.
Timelessness is nice, as far as it goes (although it's an awfully hard assertion to prove before any actual time has passed). But as a compliment, it fails to give Rowling her due for something just as tricky: timeliness. The most enduring works of fantasy fiction have always begun by being firmly rooted in their own moment, not by shooting for immortality. A century ago, when L. Frank Baum was writing his books about Dorothy Gale and the land of Oz, the contrast between a windblown, uneventful, monochromatic world of middle American farmland and the exoticism and magic and horror and danger of cities that seemed impossibly far away didn't require a leap of imagination for his readers; they were living it. J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia were both forged in the fire of World War II; the notion that the fate of the world was at stake in an epic battle between good and evil, and the explicit connection between wickedness and a deranging lust for power, was as alive in the newspapers as it was in the stories they told. And George Lucas' first Star Wars trilogy dovetailed so neatly with the rhetoric that marked the final years of the Cold War that politicians of every stripe continue to appropriate it. Not only has Hillary Clinton referred to Dick Cheney as Darth Vader, but President Bush has suggested that the vice president doesn't even require a costume for the impersonation.
To see how apt a product of our era the Harry Potter books are, you have to take the series apart a little before putting it back together. Now that the long-awaited last words (''All was well'') are official, Harry's saga seems like one 7-volume novel (especially since it's been repackaged in a mammoth faux-Hogwarts-trunk cardboard box; look for a sudden spike in parental lower-back injuries around Christmastime). But the Potter books really read as two distinct trilogies — the first one episodic, light-spirited, and aimed largely at children, and the second, much longer and darker one designed for a general fantasy audience that includes both adults and kids and demands a more sustained attention span and a willingness to grapple with the kind of horror that can't be wanded away by spells and charms. Book 4, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, is the sinew that connects the first trio of books to the second; it's the one that starts with a long, larky trip to the Quidditch World Cup that turns nightmarish, and concludes with a chapter tellingly entitled ''The Beginning,'' a road sign letting readers know that they are about to be taken into a tougher, grimmer, more frightening place.
The first four Harry Potter volumes arrived in U.S. bookstores at a breakneck pace between September 1998 and July 2000. And then, after ''The Beginning,'' came a wait that tested legions of faithful readers: three years. Rowling keeps most details of her plotting process in her own chamber of secrets, unveiling the occasional tantalizing nugget about her decision-making on her website or during an interview or public appearance, but rarely getting specific. Like any terrific storyteller, she knows the value of leaving certain things untold. So unless she decides to spill the many-flavored beans herself, all we can do is guess what happened. Three years bisected by 9/11; three years during which Rowling remarried and had an actual, nonfictional son of her own; three years spent toiling on an installment of her saga so long that she admitted it drained her energy.
The result was a book that ushered readers, even her youngest ones, into a sadder, bleaker fantasy world to match the real one in which they were by then already living. The final three books are bloodier, more wrenching, and more explicit in their parallels to and reflections of the Bush/Blair landscape (book 6 even begins with the Muggle prime minister brooding while England sleeps), and more intense in their depiction of the cost of war. Given Rowling's outspoken progressivism (of which the outing of Dumbledore is only the most recent manifestation), that shift in emphasis can't have been an accident. While cultural commentators of all varieties were busy arguing about the definition of the ''post-9/11 novel,'' Rowling was putting them right under our noses. Six years on, the first generation of kids to grow up with 9/11 as just another bewildering fact of life is now entering high school. It's not a stretch to say that their ideas about war, about leadership, about the dangers of consolidation of power and of dictatorship, about the importance of dissent, and about heroism and sacrifice, have been shaped at least in part by Rowling. Not to mention their concept of freedom of speech. When her novels make their annual appearances on lists of the most frequently banned books in America, she calls it a great honor and tells the kids who visit her website of Ralph Waldo Emerson's credo ''Every burned book enlightens the world.''
None of which would be as much of an accomplishment if the books weren't also such enthralling fun. Rowling's writing is distinguished by its great and sustained generosity — toward her readers and her characters — and the books she spent so long creating are entertaining enough to satisfy anybody who reads them in order to flee the cares of the everyday world, even if what looks like a chance to disapparate ultimately lands us in a universe very much like the one we were trying to escape. As odd as it may sound, Rowling is a realist. Even when the incantations are flying (not to mention the people), she stays focused on the humanness of what she's writing about: the cost of pride and stubbornness and vanity, the toll of living in fear, the ache of loss, the search for home, the pain of holding a lifelong secret, the need to be loved, the quest to find out who you truly are. Maybe timelessness isn't such a bad word after all.
We'd be remiss if we didn't credit some supporting players in this the ultimate year of Potter, notably audiobook master Jim Dale, the only man in the world whose claim to have read every word of all seven books is factually provable; producer David Heyman, who has managed the rare feat of making a movie series that has improved with time (director David Yates and screenwriter Michael Goldenberg's distillation of the gargantuan Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix this year was particularly adroit); and Daniel Radcliffe, who has turned out to be as creditable an embodiment of Harry as anyone could wish. But we're sure they'd admit they owe it all to Jo Rowling. ''J.K.,'' by the way, is the remnant of her British publisher's fear that boys might not want to read an adventure book by a woman, an idea that truly does seem to belong to a previous century.
And now, perhaps we'll leave her alone for a while. Rowling has said that she's working on a couple of new ideas — one for children, one not. ''The idea of just wandering off to a café with a notebook and writing and seeing where that takes me for a while is just bliss,'' she remarked in July. So if you happen to be walking by a coffeehouse in Scotland anytime soon and you spot a 42-year-old blond woman with a pen, a pad, and an expression of intense concentration, do her a favor and don't interrupt her. She knows what she's doing. All is well. —Mark Harris
EW'S 2007 ENTERTAINER OF THE YEAR: J.K. ROWLING
It would be so easy to explain why J.K. Rowling is 2007's Entertainer of the Year with numbers, not words. The numbers, after all, are so much fun to tally and goggle at: $15 billion (the estimated total revenue generated by the Harry Potter industry); nearly 400 million (the number of Potter books sold worldwide); $4.49 billion (the total worldwide box office gross of the five Harry Potter films, allowing the series to zip past Star Wars and the James Bond films this summer to become the most lucrative movie franchise in history). And let's not forget 1, 2, 3, and 4: the places Rowling holds on the list of the fastest-selling books in the not-very-long history of measuring fast-selling books.
But Rowling never relied on mathematics to gun the motor of the 4,100-page narrative she brought across the finish line this year. So we suspect that she would dismiss the foregoing account as rather dull: Mugglish rather than magical. And although we now know that she is fond of uplifting, even sentimental endings (as long as the joy is qualified by the memory of sorrow and the sentimentality is honestly earned), at this point even she might find her own biography a bit too happily-ever-after; you know, the one that begins in the early 1990s with a young single mother banging away at a manuscript in Scottish cafés, wondering if she could turn her idea into something.
So we'll keep it simple: J.K. Rowling is our Entertainer of the Year because she did something very, very hard, and she did it very, very well, thus pleasing hundreds of millions of children and adults very, very much. In an era of videogame consoles, online multiplayer ''environments,'' and tinier-is-better mobisodes, minisodes, and webisodes, she got people to tote around her big, fat old-fashioned printed-on-paper books as if they were the hottest new entertainment devices on the planet. Let's also credit her for one more thing.
What she spent the last 17 years creating turned out to be completely original. Several years ago, when Rowling's series started to get popular enough to attract attention from the kind of critics who don't usually grapple with popular fiction, she was practically smothered in faint praise that evolved into a low drone of condescension as time went on. Of course, the books are skillful, went the murmurs, but really, isn't this woman merely an adept pickpocket, someone who's synthesized a little bit of Tolkien and a dash of C.S. Lewis and some Lloyd Alexander and a wealth of British-boarding-school stories into a marketable but derivative new package?
No. As it turns out, the Harry Potter books are much richer than their progression from lightness to darkness, from childhood to adulthood, from the episodic simplicity of chapter-books to the heft and sweep of epic novels, and in their constant, book-by-book recalibration of what their readers were prepared to absorb, they've proven unlike anything else in a century of children's literature. Can there be any remaining doubt that Rowling meant every word when she said, some time back, that she planned every aspect of her story ''so carefully I sometimes feel as though my brain is going to explode''? The planning clearly paid off, not only in the blossoming of the books into a worldwide cross-cultural phenomenon but in the widespread declarations that greeted the July publication of volume 7, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, that Rowling had created something timeless, a tale that children would read 25 and 50 years from now.
Timelessness is nice, as far as it goes (although it's an awfully hard assertion to prove before any actual time has passed). But as a compliment, it fails to give Rowling her due for something just as tricky: timeliness. The most enduring works of fantasy fiction have always begun by being firmly rooted in their own moment, not by shooting for immortality. A century ago, when L. Frank Baum was writing his books about Dorothy Gale and the land of Oz, the contrast between a windblown, uneventful, monochromatic world of middle American farmland and the exoticism and magic and horror and danger of cities that seemed impossibly far away didn't require a leap of imagination for his readers; they were living it. J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia were both forged in the fire of World War II; the notion that the fate of the world was at stake in an epic battle between good and evil, and the explicit connection between wickedness and a deranging lust for power, was as alive in the newspapers as it was in the stories they told. And George Lucas' first Star Wars trilogy dovetailed so neatly with the rhetoric that marked the final years of the Cold War that politicians of every stripe continue to appropriate it. Not only has Hillary Clinton referred to Dick Cheney as Darth Vader, but President Bush has suggested that the vice president doesn't even require a costume for the impersonation.
To see how apt a product of our era the Harry Potter books are, you have to take the series apart a little before putting it back together. Now that the long-awaited last words (''All was well'') are official, Harry's saga seems like one 7-volume novel (especially since it's been repackaged in a mammoth faux-Hogwarts-trunk cardboard box; look for a sudden spike in parental lower-back injuries around Christmastime). But the Potter books really read as two distinct trilogies — the first one episodic, light-spirited, and aimed largely at children, and the second, much longer and darker one designed for a general fantasy audience that includes both adults and kids and demands a more sustained attention span and a willingness to grapple with the kind of horror that can't be wanded away by spells and charms. Book 4, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, is the sinew that connects the first trio of books to the second; it's the one that starts with a long, larky trip to the Quidditch World Cup that turns nightmarish, and concludes with a chapter tellingly entitled ''The Beginning,'' a road sign letting readers know that they are about to be taken into a tougher, grimmer, more frightening place.
The first four Harry Potter volumes arrived in U.S. bookstores at a breakneck pace between September 1998 and July 2000. And then, after ''The Beginning,'' came a wait that tested legions of faithful readers: three years. Rowling keeps most details of her plotting process in her own chamber of secrets, unveiling the occasional tantalizing nugget about her decision-making on her website or during an interview or public appearance, but rarely getting specific. Like any terrific storyteller, she knows the value of leaving certain things untold. So unless she decides to spill the many-flavored beans herself, all we can do is guess what happened. Three years bisected by 9/11; three years during which Rowling remarried and had an actual, nonfictional son of her own; three years spent toiling on an installment of her saga so long that she admitted it drained her energy.
The result was a book that ushered readers, even her youngest ones, into a sadder, bleaker fantasy world to match the real one in which they were by then already living. The final three books are bloodier, more wrenching, and more explicit in their parallels to and reflections of the Bush/Blair landscape (book 6 even begins with the Muggle prime minister brooding while England sleeps), and more intense in their depiction of the cost of war. Given Rowling's outspoken progressivism (of which the outing of Dumbledore is only the most recent manifestation), that shift in emphasis can't have been an accident. While cultural commentators of all varieties were busy arguing about the definition of the ''post-9/11 novel,'' Rowling was putting them right under our noses. Six years on, the first generation of kids to grow up with 9/11 as just another bewildering fact of life is now entering high school. It's not a stretch to say that their ideas about war, about leadership, about the dangers of consolidation of power and of dictatorship, about the importance of dissent, and about heroism and sacrifice, have been shaped at least in part by Rowling. Not to mention their concept of freedom of speech. When her novels make their annual appearances on lists of the most frequently banned books in America, she calls it a great honor and tells the kids who visit her website of Ralph Waldo Emerson's credo ''Every burned book enlightens the world.''
None of which would be as much of an accomplishment if the books weren't also such enthralling fun. Rowling's writing is distinguished by its great and sustained generosity — toward her readers and her characters — and the books she spent so long creating are entertaining enough to satisfy anybody who reads them in order to flee the cares of the everyday world, even if what looks like a chance to disapparate ultimately lands us in a universe very much like the one we were trying to escape. As odd as it may sound, Rowling is a realist. Even when the incantations are flying (not to mention the people), she stays focused on the humanness of what she's writing about: the cost of pride and stubbornness and vanity, the toll of living in fear, the ache of loss, the search for home, the pain of holding a lifelong secret, the need to be loved, the quest to find out who you truly are. Maybe timelessness isn't such a bad word after all.
We'd be remiss if we didn't credit some supporting players in this the ultimate year of Potter, notably audiobook master Jim Dale, the only man in the world whose claim to have read every word of all seven books is factually provable; producer David Heyman, who has managed the rare feat of making a movie series that has improved with time (director David Yates and screenwriter Michael Goldenberg's distillation of the gargantuan Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix this year was particularly adroit); and Daniel Radcliffe, who has turned out to be as creditable an embodiment of Harry as anyone could wish. But we're sure they'd admit they owe it all to Jo Rowling. ''J.K.,'' by the way, is the remnant of her British publisher's fear that boys might not want to read an adventure book by a woman, an idea that truly does seem to belong to a previous century.
And now, perhaps we'll leave her alone for a while. Rowling has said that she's working on a couple of new ideas — one for children, one not. ''The idea of just wandering off to a café with a notebook and writing and seeing where that takes me for a while is just bliss,'' she remarked in July. So if you happen to be walking by a coffeehouse in Scotland anytime soon and you spot a 42-year-old blond woman with a pen, a pad, and an expression of intense concentration, do her a favor and don't interrupt her. She knows what she's doing. All is well. —Mark Harris
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Gay wizards, hobbits and angels: a celebration
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/10/gay_wizards_hobbits_and_angels.html
Gay wizards, hobbits and angels: a celebration
Philip Hensher
October 23, 2007
Headmaster Albus Dumbledore was gay all along, says Rowling
Jane Austen amused herself by telling favoured correspondents about the ultimate fate of her characters, and other things she hadn't managed to put in her novels (Mary Bennett had to settle for a curate in the end). JK Rowling, perhaps rather demob-happy after finishing her Harry Potter series, dropped a bombshell on an American audience last week. Albus Dumbledore, her kindly headmaster, was gay all along.
This had the air of a terrific public tease, but it looked, as jaws hit the floor, as if she was entirely serious. He had, she continued airily, never quite got over a youthful passion for a dark wizard called Grindelwald.
Quite how this will play with Rowling's readership in middle America remains to be seen. There was never going to be much mileage in their previous favoured objection - to books that celebrated magic and the occult without ever mentioning Christianity. The idea that, all along, they were talking about a boarding school presided over by a gay man might prove much more alarming. This is not some obscure Danish book called Jenny Lives with Eric and Martin, but one where millions of children feel thoroughly at home.
And yet it shouldn't be as surprising as all that. Rowling has been conspicuously liberal in other ways - Hogwarts, for instance, is a pointedly multi-cultural place, with Harry's Asian girlfriend Cho and other students called Patel. The villains of the piece have a decidedly rightwing slant, obsessed with racial purity and with keeping out "mudbloods", or wizards of muggle (non-wizard) parentage.
Other children's writers have started to include gay characters, much more explicitly than Rowling did. There are a pair of angels in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials who are clearly as gay a couple as angels are ever going to be. But is it even a new tendency, or is it just making clear what was always there in a subliminal way? Bilbo Baggins, with his domestic fussiness, his favourite nephew Frodo and constant bitching about his cousin Lobelia seems a strong candidate.
Rowling makes a good point. There have always been gay teachers and headmasters of great distinction and eminence, such as the founder of Stowe, JF Roxburghe. She has chosen a good moment to mention this detail, when the books have all been read and enjoyed. Reactionaries can easily argue against gay teachers in the abstract. But the kids won't listen. They know that Dumbledore, at least, is all right.
Gay wizards, hobbits and angels: a celebration
Philip Hensher
October 23, 2007
Headmaster Albus Dumbledore was gay all along, says Rowling
Jane Austen amused herself by telling favoured correspondents about the ultimate fate of her characters, and other things she hadn't managed to put in her novels (Mary Bennett had to settle for a curate in the end). JK Rowling, perhaps rather demob-happy after finishing her Harry Potter series, dropped a bombshell on an American audience last week. Albus Dumbledore, her kindly headmaster, was gay all along.
This had the air of a terrific public tease, but it looked, as jaws hit the floor, as if she was entirely serious. He had, she continued airily, never quite got over a youthful passion for a dark wizard called Grindelwald.
Quite how this will play with Rowling's readership in middle America remains to be seen. There was never going to be much mileage in their previous favoured objection - to books that celebrated magic and the occult without ever mentioning Christianity. The idea that, all along, they were talking about a boarding school presided over by a gay man might prove much more alarming. This is not some obscure Danish book called Jenny Lives with Eric and Martin, but one where millions of children feel thoroughly at home.
And yet it shouldn't be as surprising as all that. Rowling has been conspicuously liberal in other ways - Hogwarts, for instance, is a pointedly multi-cultural place, with Harry's Asian girlfriend Cho and other students called Patel. The villains of the piece have a decidedly rightwing slant, obsessed with racial purity and with keeping out "mudbloods", or wizards of muggle (non-wizard) parentage.
Other children's writers have started to include gay characters, much more explicitly than Rowling did. There are a pair of angels in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials who are clearly as gay a couple as angels are ever going to be. But is it even a new tendency, or is it just making clear what was always there in a subliminal way? Bilbo Baggins, with his domestic fussiness, his favourite nephew Frodo and constant bitching about his cousin Lobelia seems a strong candidate.
Rowling makes a good point. There have always been gay teachers and headmasters of great distinction and eminence, such as the founder of Stowe, JF Roxburghe. She has chosen a good moment to mention this detail, when the books have all been read and enjoyed. Reactionaries can easily argue against gay teachers in the abstract. But the kids won't listen. They know that Dumbledore, at least, is all right.
Rowling Outs Dumbledore
http://www.gaywired.com/article.cfm?section=67&id=17008
Rowling Outs Dumbledore, and Fans Can’t Get Enough
Article Date: 10/24/2007
By Ross von Metzke
You’ve probably already heard the one about Albus Dumbledore being a friend of Dorothy—the Associated Press, The New York Times… even CNN featured the headline on its tickertape, right behind an update of the California fires.
So why is an innocent announcement by Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling that her 150 some odd year-old wizard is gay such a headline grabber? At the same talk, Rowling revealed that Harry Potter grows up to be an auror with the Ministry of Magic, what conflicted Aunt Petunia says to Harry after their final meeting, what becomes of Hermione. But Rowling’s off-handed revelation that Dumbledore is gay during a Q&A at Carnegie Hall was the only announcement met with near-unanimous applause.
Rowling dropped her bombshell when a fan asked if Potter’s powerful mentor, long a proponent of the power of true love, had ever indeed been in love himself. The author’s response? "My truthful answer to you—I always thought of Dumbledore as gay," going on to detail an intense affection Albus had as a young man for talented wand-wielder Gellert Grindelwald. She said Albus’ affection blinded him to Grindelwald’s faults, as it does for so many mere muggles, leaving him shattered when Grindewald turned out to be evil.
She went on to say that at a script read for the sixth book, she had the screenwriter ax a line which referred to Dumbledore’s intense affection for a young woman. Rowling said she slipped the screenwriter a note reading, “Dumbledore’s gay”.
And yet, for all the intense devotion and connection fans have for Rowling’s characters, the author fielded hardly a peep of complaint. In fact, fans cheered the announcement, one 9-year-old fan saying it explained the sister-like feeling she’d always confused for love that Dumbledore directed at professor Minerva McGonagall.
The question is, why? Is it a sign that younger generations are growing up in a world where an announcement like that is no longer seen as a shock? Possible, though the current administration would have you believe otherwise. Is it that hundreds of fans everywhere had already picked up on Rowling’s numerous clues that Dumbledore might just play for our team (comments of Dumbledore and Grindewald taking to each other at once, trading letters and, in one description, Dumbledore responding with near euphoria to a visit from the wand-wielder)?
Or is it simply a testament to Rowling’s works? In Rowling’s world, issues of bigotry, discrimination and intolerance are commonly discussed. Her stories are filled with a veritable painter’s palate of races and cultures. Discussion of degrees of beauty and class distinction fuel her narrative—Rowling has always been very forthright about the discrimination of the wizard world by Muggles, a subject civil rights activists have used to illustrate their own struggles.
In truth, had a member of Rowling’s world not been gay, it would have been a gross omission.
It’s just goes to show how much power Rowling’s truths hold that audiences would respond with such overwhelming support. Lance Bass coming out on the cover of People Magazine and Neil Patrick Harris declaring that he’s a proud, openly gay man while starring on a hit sitcom opened the world’s eyes to the fact that the gays are indeed among them, but Rowling is to the literary world what Oprah Winfrey is to television. Fans of Rowling’s Potter listen to every word she says… she’s the expert on all things Potter, after all, and to fans, what she says goes. If she insists Dumbledore’s being gay and the heartache that came from that were an essential part of his being the right mentor for Potter, well—you’d better believe fans are listening and, more importantly, accepting.
"I know that it was a positive thing that I said it, for at least one person, because one man 'came out' at Carnegie Hall," Rowling told a news conference Tuesday at the International Festival of Authors, according to the Canadian Press. "I'm not kidding."
In fact, Rowling said she knew Dumbledore was gay even before the first book was published, something that, she says, fueled his relationships with several characters throughout the series. The reason she held on to the information for so long, she says, is because his rather tragic infatuation with Grindewald was a key element in ending the book, and “why would I put the key part of my ending of my story in book one"?
Rowling said she answered a direct question with a direct answer, telling the Associated Press she found it "freeing" to out Dumbledore because she often "felt like a salmon swimming upstream" while writing the books.
The gay media found it freeing as well. No sooner did Rowling’s announcement hit the press than gay media watchdog GLAAD issued a statement. In it, GLAAD President Neil Giuliano said, "It's wonderful that J.K. Rowling would help open readers eyes to the life and truth of such a beloved character. Rowling's decision to allow readers to see Dumbledore for all of who he is—and her determination to preserve the authenticity of his character in the films—will enrich the power of these stories for generations to come."
As to the legions of fans and bloggers who have been questioning Dumbledore’s sexuality since book one, Rowling laughs, according to E! Online, saying, “just imagine the fan fiction now”.
Rowling Outs Dumbledore, and Fans Can’t Get Enough
Article Date: 10/24/2007
By Ross von Metzke
You’ve probably already heard the one about Albus Dumbledore being a friend of Dorothy—the Associated Press, The New York Times… even CNN featured the headline on its tickertape, right behind an update of the California fires.
So why is an innocent announcement by Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling that her 150 some odd year-old wizard is gay such a headline grabber? At the same talk, Rowling revealed that Harry Potter grows up to be an auror with the Ministry of Magic, what conflicted Aunt Petunia says to Harry after their final meeting, what becomes of Hermione. But Rowling’s off-handed revelation that Dumbledore is gay during a Q&A at Carnegie Hall was the only announcement met with near-unanimous applause.
Rowling dropped her bombshell when a fan asked if Potter’s powerful mentor, long a proponent of the power of true love, had ever indeed been in love himself. The author’s response? "My truthful answer to you—I always thought of Dumbledore as gay," going on to detail an intense affection Albus had as a young man for talented wand-wielder Gellert Grindelwald. She said Albus’ affection blinded him to Grindelwald’s faults, as it does for so many mere muggles, leaving him shattered when Grindewald turned out to be evil.
She went on to say that at a script read for the sixth book, she had the screenwriter ax a line which referred to Dumbledore’s intense affection for a young woman. Rowling said she slipped the screenwriter a note reading, “Dumbledore’s gay”.
And yet, for all the intense devotion and connection fans have for Rowling’s characters, the author fielded hardly a peep of complaint. In fact, fans cheered the announcement, one 9-year-old fan saying it explained the sister-like feeling she’d always confused for love that Dumbledore directed at professor Minerva McGonagall.
The question is, why? Is it a sign that younger generations are growing up in a world where an announcement like that is no longer seen as a shock? Possible, though the current administration would have you believe otherwise. Is it that hundreds of fans everywhere had already picked up on Rowling’s numerous clues that Dumbledore might just play for our team (comments of Dumbledore and Grindewald taking to each other at once, trading letters and, in one description, Dumbledore responding with near euphoria to a visit from the wand-wielder)?
Or is it simply a testament to Rowling’s works? In Rowling’s world, issues of bigotry, discrimination and intolerance are commonly discussed. Her stories are filled with a veritable painter’s palate of races and cultures. Discussion of degrees of beauty and class distinction fuel her narrative—Rowling has always been very forthright about the discrimination of the wizard world by Muggles, a subject civil rights activists have used to illustrate their own struggles.
In truth, had a member of Rowling’s world not been gay, it would have been a gross omission.
It’s just goes to show how much power Rowling’s truths hold that audiences would respond with such overwhelming support. Lance Bass coming out on the cover of People Magazine and Neil Patrick Harris declaring that he’s a proud, openly gay man while starring on a hit sitcom opened the world’s eyes to the fact that the gays are indeed among them, but Rowling is to the literary world what Oprah Winfrey is to television. Fans of Rowling’s Potter listen to every word she says… she’s the expert on all things Potter, after all, and to fans, what she says goes. If she insists Dumbledore’s being gay and the heartache that came from that were an essential part of his being the right mentor for Potter, well—you’d better believe fans are listening and, more importantly, accepting.
"I know that it was a positive thing that I said it, for at least one person, because one man 'came out' at Carnegie Hall," Rowling told a news conference Tuesday at the International Festival of Authors, according to the Canadian Press. "I'm not kidding."
In fact, Rowling said she knew Dumbledore was gay even before the first book was published, something that, she says, fueled his relationships with several characters throughout the series. The reason she held on to the information for so long, she says, is because his rather tragic infatuation with Grindewald was a key element in ending the book, and “why would I put the key part of my ending of my story in book one"?
Rowling said she answered a direct question with a direct answer, telling the Associated Press she found it "freeing" to out Dumbledore because she often "felt like a salmon swimming upstream" while writing the books.
The gay media found it freeing as well. No sooner did Rowling’s announcement hit the press than gay media watchdog GLAAD issued a statement. In it, GLAAD President Neil Giuliano said, "It's wonderful that J.K. Rowling would help open readers eyes to the life and truth of such a beloved character. Rowling's decision to allow readers to see Dumbledore for all of who he is—and her determination to preserve the authenticity of his character in the films—will enrich the power of these stories for generations to come."
As to the legions of fans and bloggers who have been questioning Dumbledore’s sexuality since book one, Rowling laughs, according to E! Online, saying, “just imagine the fan fiction now”.
Seven clues that 'Potter's' Dumbledore was gay
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/movies/la-et-showbiz7-23oct23,1,4293482.story?coll=la-headlines-entnews&track=crosspromo
Seven clues that 'Potter's' Dumbledore was gay
"Albus Dumbledore" is an anagram of "Male bods rule, bud!"
By Deborah Netburn
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
October 23, 2007
The Potter-verse was thrown for a loop when author J.K. Rowling announced she had always imagined one of the main characters in the "Harry Potter" series -- Albus Dumbledore -- to be gay.
Even the most diligent "Harry Potter" scholars found themselves caught unaware. But could anyone have seen this coming? Did Rowling leave any clues in the book?
To find out we called Andrew Slack, head of the Harry Potter Alliance, an organization that uses online organizing to mobilize more than 100,000 Harry Potter fans around social justice issues, drawing on parallels from the book. Slack is incredibly fluent in "Potter" textual analysis, and we knew that if anyone could predict Rowling's curveball, it would be him.
Speaking from his home in Boston, Slack said he hadn't guessed that Dumbledore was gay, but in hindsight, he was able to point to specific character traits of the Hogwarts headmaster that might have indicated his sexual orientation.
Below he tells us seven textual clues that Dumbledore was gay.
1. His pet. "Fawkes, the many-colored phoenix, is 'flaming.'"
2. His name. "While the anagram to 'Tom Marvolo Riddle' is 'I am Lord Voldemort,' as my good friend pointed out, 'Albus Dumbledore' becomes 'Male bods rule, bud!'"
3. His fashion sense. "Whether it's his 'purple cloak and high-heeled boots,' a 'flamboyantly cut suit of plum velvet,' a flowered bonnet at Christmas or his fascination with knitting patterns, Dumbledore defies the fashion standards of normative masculinity and, of course, this gives him a flair like no other. It's no wonder that even the uppity portrait of former headmaster Phineas Nigellus announced, 'You cannot deny he's got style.'"
4. His sensitivity. "Leaders like Cornelius Fudge, Rufus Scrimgeour and Dolores Umbridge (yes, even a woman) who are limited by the standards of normative masculinity could not fully embrace where Voldemort was weakest: in his capacity to love. Dumbledore understood that it's tougher to be vulnerable, to express one's feelings, and that one's undying love for friends and for life itself is a more powerful weapon than fear. Even his most selfish moments in pursuing the Deathly Hallows were motivated either by his feelings for Grindelwald or his wish to apologize to his late sister."
5. His openness. "After she outed Dumbledore, Rowling said that she viewed the whole series as a prolonged treatise on tolerance. Dumbledore is the personification of this. Like the LGBT community that has time and again used its own oppression to fight for the equality of others, Dumbledore was a champion for the rights of werewolves, giants, house elves, muggle-borns, centaurs, merpeople -- even alternative marriage. When it came time to decide whether the marriage between Lupin the werewolf and Tonks the full-blooded witch could be considered natural, Professor Minerva McGonagall said, 'Dumbledore would have been happier than anybody to think that there was a little more love in the world.'"
6. His historical parallel. "If Dumbledore were like any one in history, it would have to be Leonardo DaVinci. They both were considered eccentric geniuses ('He's a genius! Best wizard in the world! But he is a bit mad, yes'); both added a great deal to our body of knowledge (after all, Dumbledore did discover the 12 uses of dragon's blood!); both were solitary, both were considered warm, loving and incredibly calm; both dwelt in mysterious mystical realms; both spent a lot of time with their journals (Leonardo wrote his backwards while Dumbledore was constantly diving into his pensieve); both even had long hair! And, of course, a popular thought among many scholars is that the maestro Leonardo was gay."
7. The fact that so few of us realized he was gay. "No matter how many 'clues' I can put down that Dumbledore was gay, no matter how many millions of people have read these books again and again, Rowling surprised even the most die-hard fans with the announcement that Dumbledore was gay. And in the end, the fact that we never would have guessed is what makes Dumbledore being gay so real. So many times I have encountered friends who are gay that I never would have predicted. It has shown me that one's sexual orientation is not some obvious 'lifestyle choice,' it's a precious facet of our multi-faceted personalities. And in the end whatever the differences between our personalities are, it is time that our world heeds Dumbledore's advice: 'Differences of habit and language are nothing at all if our aims are identical and our hearts are open.' Today as I write this, I believe that it's time for our aims to be loyal to what the greatest wizard in the world would have wanted them to be: love."
Seven clues that 'Potter's' Dumbledore was gay
"Albus Dumbledore" is an anagram of "Male bods rule, bud!"
By Deborah Netburn
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
October 23, 2007
The Potter-verse was thrown for a loop when author J.K. Rowling announced she had always imagined one of the main characters in the "Harry Potter" series -- Albus Dumbledore -- to be gay.
Even the most diligent "Harry Potter" scholars found themselves caught unaware. But could anyone have seen this coming? Did Rowling leave any clues in the book?
To find out we called Andrew Slack, head of the Harry Potter Alliance, an organization that uses online organizing to mobilize more than 100,000 Harry Potter fans around social justice issues, drawing on parallels from the book. Slack is incredibly fluent in "Potter" textual analysis, and we knew that if anyone could predict Rowling's curveball, it would be him.
Speaking from his home in Boston, Slack said he hadn't guessed that Dumbledore was gay, but in hindsight, he was able to point to specific character traits of the Hogwarts headmaster that might have indicated his sexual orientation.
Below he tells us seven textual clues that Dumbledore was gay.
1. His pet. "Fawkes, the many-colored phoenix, is 'flaming.'"
2. His name. "While the anagram to 'Tom Marvolo Riddle' is 'I am Lord Voldemort,' as my good friend pointed out, 'Albus Dumbledore' becomes 'Male bods rule, bud!'"
3. His fashion sense. "Whether it's his 'purple cloak and high-heeled boots,' a 'flamboyantly cut suit of plum velvet,' a flowered bonnet at Christmas or his fascination with knitting patterns, Dumbledore defies the fashion standards of normative masculinity and, of course, this gives him a flair like no other. It's no wonder that even the uppity portrait of former headmaster Phineas Nigellus announced, 'You cannot deny he's got style.'"
4. His sensitivity. "Leaders like Cornelius Fudge, Rufus Scrimgeour and Dolores Umbridge (yes, even a woman) who are limited by the standards of normative masculinity could not fully embrace where Voldemort was weakest: in his capacity to love. Dumbledore understood that it's tougher to be vulnerable, to express one's feelings, and that one's undying love for friends and for life itself is a more powerful weapon than fear. Even his most selfish moments in pursuing the Deathly Hallows were motivated either by his feelings for Grindelwald or his wish to apologize to his late sister."
5. His openness. "After she outed Dumbledore, Rowling said that she viewed the whole series as a prolonged treatise on tolerance. Dumbledore is the personification of this. Like the LGBT community that has time and again used its own oppression to fight for the equality of others, Dumbledore was a champion for the rights of werewolves, giants, house elves, muggle-borns, centaurs, merpeople -- even alternative marriage. When it came time to decide whether the marriage between Lupin the werewolf and Tonks the full-blooded witch could be considered natural, Professor Minerva McGonagall said, 'Dumbledore would have been happier than anybody to think that there was a little more love in the world.'"
6. His historical parallel. "If Dumbledore were like any one in history, it would have to be Leonardo DaVinci. They both were considered eccentric geniuses ('He's a genius! Best wizard in the world! But he is a bit mad, yes'); both added a great deal to our body of knowledge (after all, Dumbledore did discover the 12 uses of dragon's blood!); both were solitary, both were considered warm, loving and incredibly calm; both dwelt in mysterious mystical realms; both spent a lot of time with their journals (Leonardo wrote his backwards while Dumbledore was constantly diving into his pensieve); both even had long hair! And, of course, a popular thought among many scholars is that the maestro Leonardo was gay."
7. The fact that so few of us realized he was gay. "No matter how many 'clues' I can put down that Dumbledore was gay, no matter how many millions of people have read these books again and again, Rowling surprised even the most die-hard fans with the announcement that Dumbledore was gay. And in the end, the fact that we never would have guessed is what makes Dumbledore being gay so real. So many times I have encountered friends who are gay that I never would have predicted. It has shown me that one's sexual orientation is not some obvious 'lifestyle choice,' it's a precious facet of our multi-faceted personalities. And in the end whatever the differences between our personalities are, it is time that our world heeds Dumbledore's advice: 'Differences of habit and language are nothing at all if our aims are identical and our hearts are open.' Today as I write this, I believe that it's time for our aims to be loyal to what the greatest wizard in the world would have wanted them to be: love."
Harry Potter and the Xanadu-loving Wizard
http://stars.ign.com/articles/829/829267p1.html
Harry Potter and the Xanadu-loving Wizard
Rowling outs Dumbledore.
by Phil Pirrello
October 22, 2007 - Not many Potter fans saw this coming, but that didn't stop author J.K. Rowling from outing Professor Albus Dumbledore over the weekend.
According to http://www.ew.com POPWATCH blog, while attending an event at New York City's Carnegie Hall, a child in the audience asked Rowling a question about Dumbledore's love life. "I always saw Dumbledore as gay," Rowling revealed. She later elaborated: "Dumbledore fell in love with Grindelwald.... Don't forget, falling in love can blind us. [He] was very drawn to this brilliant person. This was Dumbledore's tragedy."
How does Dumbledore's exit from the closet impact the feature films? According to Rowling, while attending a recent meeting for the sixth film in the Potter franchise, she noticed a line in the script which featured the wizard "waxing poetic" about a girl. Seeing that, Rowling passed a note to director David Yates to "correct the situation".
In related news: Following Dumbledore's coming out, He-Man's Orko is rumored to make his announcement later this week.
Harry Potter and the Xanadu-loving Wizard
Rowling outs Dumbledore.
by Phil Pirrello
October 22, 2007 - Not many Potter fans saw this coming, but that didn't stop author J.K. Rowling from outing Professor Albus Dumbledore over the weekend.
According to http://www.ew.com POPWATCH blog, while attending an event at New York City's Carnegie Hall, a child in the audience asked Rowling a question about Dumbledore's love life. "I always saw Dumbledore as gay," Rowling revealed. She later elaborated: "Dumbledore fell in love with Grindelwald.... Don't forget, falling in love can blind us. [He] was very drawn to this brilliant person. This was Dumbledore's tragedy."
How does Dumbledore's exit from the closet impact the feature films? According to Rowling, while attending a recent meeting for the sixth film in the Potter franchise, she noticed a line in the script which featured the wizard "waxing poetic" about a girl. Seeing that, Rowling passed a note to director David Yates to "correct the situation".
In related news: Following Dumbledore's coming out, He-Man's Orko is rumored to make his announcement later this week.
No Interest In Wizard Sleeves
http://defamer.com/hollywood/no-interest-in-wizard-sleeves/jk-rowling-explains-why-uncle-dumbledore-never-got-married-313564.php
No Interest In Wizard Sleeves
J.K. Rowling Explains Why Uncle Dumbledore Never Got Married
Just in case you forgot to check The Leaky Cauldron over the weekend, J.K. Rowling dropped a bomb before a crowd of young Potterites who had won an audience with the Harry Potter author at Carnegie Hall on Friday. EW.com was there:
Responding to a question from a child about Dumbledore's love life, Rowling hesitated and then revealed, "I always saw Dumbledore as gay." Filling in a few more details, she said, "Dumbledore fell in love with Grindelwald.... Don't forget, falling in love can blind us."
"[He] was very drawn to this brilliant person. This was Dumbledore's tragedy." She added that in a recent meeting about the sixth movie, she spied a line in the script where Dumbledore waxed poetic about a girl, so she was forced to scribble director David Yates a note to correct the situation.
Funny--we had always pegged perennial bachelor-bear Hagrid, forever doting over his pedigreed lapdragons, to be the secret Nimbus 2000-polisher of the Potter universe. Still, the official outing of not just any character, but the most wizened and respected of them all, is sure to be lauded by the open-minded fans of the series--particularly the ardent gay ones, themselves learning to manage their good-taste-having and disco-loving magical abilities in a drab, breeder-muggle world.
No Interest In Wizard Sleeves
J.K. Rowling Explains Why Uncle Dumbledore Never Got Married
Just in case you forgot to check The Leaky Cauldron over the weekend, J.K. Rowling dropped a bomb before a crowd of young Potterites who had won an audience with the Harry Potter author at Carnegie Hall on Friday. EW.com was there:
Responding to a question from a child about Dumbledore's love life, Rowling hesitated and then revealed, "I always saw Dumbledore as gay." Filling in a few more details, she said, "Dumbledore fell in love with Grindelwald.... Don't forget, falling in love can blind us."
"[He] was very drawn to this brilliant person. This was Dumbledore's tragedy." She added that in a recent meeting about the sixth movie, she spied a line in the script where Dumbledore waxed poetic about a girl, so she was forced to scribble director David Yates a note to correct the situation.
Funny--we had always pegged perennial bachelor-bear Hagrid, forever doting over his pedigreed lapdragons, to be the secret Nimbus 2000-polisher of the Potter universe. Still, the official outing of not just any character, but the most wizened and respected of them all, is sure to be lauded by the open-minded fans of the series--particularly the ardent gay ones, themselves learning to manage their good-taste-having and disco-loving magical abilities in a drab, breeder-muggle world.
J.K. Rowling outs Dumbledore!
http://popwatch.ew.com/popwatch/2007/10/rowling-outs-du.html
J.K. Rowling outs Dumbledore!
Oct 20, 2007, 10:20 AM by Tina Jordan
Categories: Books, Harry Potter
First things first: At last night's talk at New York City's Carnegie Hall — an event for thousands of young Harry Potter fans and their parents — J.K. Rowling outed the kindly headmaster.
Responding to a question from a child about Dumbledore's love life, Rowling hesitated and then revealed, "I always saw Dumbledore as gay." Filling in a few more details, she said, "Dumbledore fell in love with Grindelwald.... Don't forget, falling in love can blind us. [He] was very drawn to this brilliant person. This was Dumbledore's tragedy." She added that in a recent meeting about the sixth movie, she spied a line in the script where Dumbledore waxed poetic about a girl, so she was forced to scribble director David Yates a note to correct the situation.
So how did all those lucky kids get to sit in the baronial gilt and red velvet splendor of Carnegie Hall? First they won a sweepstakes event created by Rowling's publisher, Scholastic, and then they flew to New York from all over the country. As I waited in line in the unseasonal muggy New York heat to enter the famous concert hall, I chatted up the father and daughter in front of me. They'd just flown in from Nashville (what's more, their plane had been delayed, so they'd arrived at the concert hall with mere minutes to spare). As I canvassed more families, I found they'd come from all over the country — from as far away as Arizona, Washington, Minnesota, and Texas (it was rumored some came from Hawaii, but I didn't verify that).
When the line, snaking around the block, began moving at 6:30, it moved fast. By 7:00 everyone was seated, the red-jacketed ushers were shushing and closing the box doors, and the event host, MSNBC news anchor Keith Olbermann, took the stage. But not center stage, which was dominated by an enormous, velvet-upholstered, carved wooden chair — a throne, really — planted on a Persian carpet. Gesturing to it, Olbermann joked, "That's not sufficient for someone who'll be signing that many copies" — a reference to the fact that, after the reading, Rowling would be signing a copy of Hallows for every single sweepstakes winner.
The crowd was polite to Olbermann, but when a smiling Rowling finally strode on stage, perfectly blonded and coiffed, fingernails shellacked to a brilliant red, stilettos clicking, they went absolutely mad, screaming, jumping to their feet, even crying. Gently, in true mom fashion, she shushed them, and began to read from the seventh book. She's a brilliant reader, funny and quick, doing all the voices with comic perfection — Ron was abashed and sullen; Hermione, squeaky with rage; Harry, exhausted with the effort to appease the two. (She even made herself giggle in places as she read.) When she finished the crowd rose to its feet again, even as she tried, in vain, to get them sit. "Don't make me cry!" she kept saying. Finally everyone did sit, and the question-and-answer session could begin. The lucky questioners had mostly been chosen in advance (though a few were plucked at random); at least one little girl — 8 years old — could barely reach the microphone.
Neville's love life? "He marries Hannah Abbott!" she announced as the crowd squealed its appreciation. (What's more, Hannah becomes proprietress of The Leaky Cauldron, so Neville becomes cool to his students.)
Why is it Molly Weasley who kills Bellatrix? One, "Molly is a very good witch," even though most people don't realize it. And two, "Bellatrix is as obsessed with Voldemort as Molly is consumed with maternal love." What was it like to finish book seven? "It felt like a bereavement." Were there intentional similarities between Voldemort and Hitler? Yes, there were. The books, she said, were "a plea for an end to hatred, to bigotry" as well as a lesson for kids "to question authority.... You should not assume the establishment tells you the truth." Did Hagrid ever find love? Alas, no (though that had something more to do with the rarity of giantesses than any personality defect on Hagrid's part). To one boy, who revealed his dad had read the series, but not his mom, she said, "If I've got time to write 'em, she's got time to read 'em!" As the crowd roared with laughter, she added, "Is your mom here? Who did you come with?" (Dad, not Mom.)
By 8:20 it was over — the talking part, anyway. Rowling, flexing her hands, announced she had to limber up in order to sign all the books, which were stacked in enormous piles next to the stage. Was she really going to do scrawl her distinctive signature that many times? Yes, she was — and the kids, who were now going to be within touching distance of her, became downright emotional.
As for me, a member of the press, I was shunted back out into the hot October night, where it had started to rain. "That was great!" shouted a reporter next to me. Yes, it was. Like those kids, I'll remember it for the rest of my life.
On the train ride home, as I mulled over the evening, I kept trying to figure out which my favorite book of the series was. Four? Seven? Five? I've got a great argument for each of those. But I just couldn't make up my mind. All of you out there — can any of you say what your favorite is?
J.K. Rowling outs Dumbledore!
Oct 20, 2007, 10:20 AM by Tina Jordan
Categories: Books, Harry Potter
First things first: At last night's talk at New York City's Carnegie Hall — an event for thousands of young Harry Potter fans and their parents — J.K. Rowling outed the kindly headmaster.
Responding to a question from a child about Dumbledore's love life, Rowling hesitated and then revealed, "I always saw Dumbledore as gay." Filling in a few more details, she said, "Dumbledore fell in love with Grindelwald.... Don't forget, falling in love can blind us. [He] was very drawn to this brilliant person. This was Dumbledore's tragedy." She added that in a recent meeting about the sixth movie, she spied a line in the script where Dumbledore waxed poetic about a girl, so she was forced to scribble director David Yates a note to correct the situation.
So how did all those lucky kids get to sit in the baronial gilt and red velvet splendor of Carnegie Hall? First they won a sweepstakes event created by Rowling's publisher, Scholastic, and then they flew to New York from all over the country. As I waited in line in the unseasonal muggy New York heat to enter the famous concert hall, I chatted up the father and daughter in front of me. They'd just flown in from Nashville (what's more, their plane had been delayed, so they'd arrived at the concert hall with mere minutes to spare). As I canvassed more families, I found they'd come from all over the country — from as far away as Arizona, Washington, Minnesota, and Texas (it was rumored some came from Hawaii, but I didn't verify that).
When the line, snaking around the block, began moving at 6:30, it moved fast. By 7:00 everyone was seated, the red-jacketed ushers were shushing and closing the box doors, and the event host, MSNBC news anchor Keith Olbermann, took the stage. But not center stage, which was dominated by an enormous, velvet-upholstered, carved wooden chair — a throne, really — planted on a Persian carpet. Gesturing to it, Olbermann joked, "That's not sufficient for someone who'll be signing that many copies" — a reference to the fact that, after the reading, Rowling would be signing a copy of Hallows for every single sweepstakes winner.
The crowd was polite to Olbermann, but when a smiling Rowling finally strode on stage, perfectly blonded and coiffed, fingernails shellacked to a brilliant red, stilettos clicking, they went absolutely mad, screaming, jumping to their feet, even crying. Gently, in true mom fashion, she shushed them, and began to read from the seventh book. She's a brilliant reader, funny and quick, doing all the voices with comic perfection — Ron was abashed and sullen; Hermione, squeaky with rage; Harry, exhausted with the effort to appease the two. (She even made herself giggle in places as she read.) When she finished the crowd rose to its feet again, even as she tried, in vain, to get them sit. "Don't make me cry!" she kept saying. Finally everyone did sit, and the question-and-answer session could begin. The lucky questioners had mostly been chosen in advance (though a few were plucked at random); at least one little girl — 8 years old — could barely reach the microphone.
Neville's love life? "He marries Hannah Abbott!" she announced as the crowd squealed its appreciation. (What's more, Hannah becomes proprietress of The Leaky Cauldron, so Neville becomes cool to his students.)
Why is it Molly Weasley who kills Bellatrix? One, "Molly is a very good witch," even though most people don't realize it. And two, "Bellatrix is as obsessed with Voldemort as Molly is consumed with maternal love." What was it like to finish book seven? "It felt like a bereavement." Were there intentional similarities between Voldemort and Hitler? Yes, there were. The books, she said, were "a plea for an end to hatred, to bigotry" as well as a lesson for kids "to question authority.... You should not assume the establishment tells you the truth." Did Hagrid ever find love? Alas, no (though that had something more to do with the rarity of giantesses than any personality defect on Hagrid's part). To one boy, who revealed his dad had read the series, but not his mom, she said, "If I've got time to write 'em, she's got time to read 'em!" As the crowd roared with laughter, she added, "Is your mom here? Who did you come with?" (Dad, not Mom.)
By 8:20 it was over — the talking part, anyway. Rowling, flexing her hands, announced she had to limber up in order to sign all the books, which were stacked in enormous piles next to the stage. Was she really going to do scrawl her distinctive signature that many times? Yes, she was — and the kids, who were now going to be within touching distance of her, became downright emotional.
As for me, a member of the press, I was shunted back out into the hot October night, where it had started to rain. "That was great!" shouted a reporter next to me. Yes, it was. Like those kids, I'll remember it for the rest of my life.
On the train ride home, as I mulled over the evening, I kept trying to figure out which my favorite book of the series was. Four? Seven? Five? I've got a great argument for each of those. But I just couldn't make up my mind. All of you out there — can any of you say what your favorite is?
Friday, October 26, 2007
J.K. Rowling outs Hogwarts character
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071020/ap_on_en_ot/books_harry_potter
J.K. Rowling outs Hogwarts character
By HILLEL ITALIE, AP National Writer
10-20-7
Harry Potter fans, the rumors are true: Albus Dumbledore, master wizard and Headmaster of Hogwarts, is gay. J.K. Rowling, author of the mega-selling fantasy series that ended last summer, outed the beloved character Friday night while appearing before a full house at Carnegie Hall.
After reading briefly from the final book, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," she took questions from audience members.
She was asked by one young fan whether Dumbledore finds "true love."
"Dumbledore is gay," the author responded to gasps and applause.
She then explained that Dumbledore was smitten with rival Gellert Grindelwald, whom he defeated long ago in a battle between good and bad wizards. "Falling in love can blind us to an extent," Rowling said of Dumbledore's feelings, adding that Dumbledore was "horribly, terribly let down."
Dumbledore's love, she observed, was his "great tragedy."
"Oh, my god," Rowling concluded with a laugh, "the fan fiction."
Potter readers on fan sites and elsewhere on the Internet have speculated on the sexuality of Dumbledore, noting that he has no close relationship with women and a mysterious, troubled past. And explicit scenes with Dumbledore already have appeared in fan fiction.
Rowling told the audience that while working on the planned sixth Potter film, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," she spotted a reference in the script to a girl who once was of interest to Dumbledore. A note was duly passed to director David Yates, revealing the truth about her character.
Rowling, finishing a brief "Open Book Tour" of the United States, her first tour here since 2000, also said that she regarded her Potter books as a "prolonged argument for tolerance" and urged her fans to "question authority."
Not everyone likes her work, Rowling said, likely referring to Christian groups that have alleged the books promote witchcraft. Her news about Dumbledore, she said, will give them one more reason.
J.K. Rowling outs Hogwarts character
By HILLEL ITALIE, AP National Writer
10-20-7
Harry Potter fans, the rumors are true: Albus Dumbledore, master wizard and Headmaster of Hogwarts, is gay. J.K. Rowling, author of the mega-selling fantasy series that ended last summer, outed the beloved character Friday night while appearing before a full house at Carnegie Hall.
After reading briefly from the final book, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," she took questions from audience members.
She was asked by one young fan whether Dumbledore finds "true love."
"Dumbledore is gay," the author responded to gasps and applause.
She then explained that Dumbledore was smitten with rival Gellert Grindelwald, whom he defeated long ago in a battle between good and bad wizards. "Falling in love can blind us to an extent," Rowling said of Dumbledore's feelings, adding that Dumbledore was "horribly, terribly let down."
Dumbledore's love, she observed, was his "great tragedy."
"Oh, my god," Rowling concluded with a laugh, "the fan fiction."
Potter readers on fan sites and elsewhere on the Internet have speculated on the sexuality of Dumbledore, noting that he has no close relationship with women and a mysterious, troubled past. And explicit scenes with Dumbledore already have appeared in fan fiction.
Rowling told the audience that while working on the planned sixth Potter film, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," she spotted a reference in the script to a girl who once was of interest to Dumbledore. A note was duly passed to director David Yates, revealing the truth about her character.
Rowling, finishing a brief "Open Book Tour" of the United States, her first tour here since 2000, also said that she regarded her Potter books as a "prolonged argument for tolerance" and urged her fans to "question authority."
Not everyone likes her work, Rowling said, likely referring to Christian groups that have alleged the books promote witchcraft. Her news about Dumbledore, she said, will give them one more reason.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
'Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows'
http://www.mtv.com/movies/news/articles/1565295/20070723/story.jhtml
Jul 23 2007
'Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows': Sad And Satisfying
MTV News' Potter expert says spoilers don't matter: Rowling's masterful storytelling is what counts.
By Jennifer Vineyard
How do you talk about "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" to someone who may not have finished it yet?
After all, J.K. Rowling's book is 759 pages long and it just came out — officially, anyway — on Friday night. Amid all the pre-publication theories and plot mysteries, I'd love to be able to say, "I was right! I told you so!" (See " 'Harry Potter' Cast, Adam Sandler, Queen Latifah Share 'Deathly Hallows' Theories," "Why Harry Potter Has To Die In Book Seven," and " 'Harry Potter' Roundtable: Experts Battle Over Theories On How Series Will End.") But I hate spoilers, and I'm not going to spoil this for anyone.
What I will say is this: The book is not about the plot, it's about the execution. Hard-core fans have already made their guesses about what happens in "Deathly Hallows," and some have even guessed (or been told) correctly. But oddly, that doesn't spoil the experience. I'd thought it would. When I read scenes from the leaked "carpet" version of the book (see " 'Harry Potter' Spoiler Deluge Continues: Newspapers Publish Book Reviews"), they felt flat. But when I read the book straight through, I realized the little things the reader learns from so-called spoilers are misleading. The identity of the mysterious R.A.B., for instance, isn't as important as how R.A.B. stole the locket horcrux. Where double-agent Snape's true allegiance lies doesn't mean quite as much as why it lies there. (And even if you guessed why in advance, learning the reason via a trip through the Pensieve makes all the difference.)
"Deathly Hallows" isn't so much about the major mysteries as the minor ones: Everything from the previous volumes starts to come together in it. Half-forgotten moments from the first book that seemed to have little significance are now seen to play an important part in the story; the levels of foreshadowing are staggering. So is the list of deaths, although they come so quickly and frequently that the reader barely has time to grieve for a character.
The level of danger has never been so high in Harry's world — which is now openly at war. Voldemort, who returned in "Goblet of Fire," worked quietly behind the scenes in "Order of the Phoenix" (trying to retrieve a prophecy) and "Half-Blood Prince" (ordering Draco Malfoy to kill Dumbledore). But by "Deathly Hallows," his plan to take over is in full effect. The Dark Lord has seized control of the government, the media and the schools — and it was so quick and easy, you almost wonder why he didn't do it sooner. After a propaganda campaign about undesirables in their midst, the Ministry of Magic rounds up Muggle-born and "blood-traitor" wizards, who it is claimed "stole" their magic from the purebloods. They're brought in for questioning; some have their wands taken, some have their souls taken, too, in the Dementor chambers — the World War II parallels are no doubt intentional.
Those in the anti-Voldemort movement rally around Harry as a symbol of hope — but it's dangerous. The publisher of The Quibbler, who dares to print the truth, is punished by the Death Eaters, who kidnap his daughter, Luna Lovegood, as retribution. Potterwatch, a wizard radio program, is password-protected and spoken in code, to avoid capture. No one dares to rebel openly against the new regime except for the outnumbered resistance movement, the Order of the Phoenix. It's up to Harry, Ron and Hermione, who've had to take measures to protect their families (yes, even the Dursleys) in case they too become targets. There's no going to Hogwarts for them this year, unless it's to fight.
Before they can do that, Harry and his friends have a quest to fulfill: finding the remaining horcruxes that contain fragments of Voldemort's soul so they can destroy them and, in turn, destroy Voldemort. And they have to solve a mystery regarding the Deathly Hallows at the same time. It's a lonely quest, since they can't share the details with anyone, but that doesn't mean they can't seek help during their many daring infiltrations and thrilling escapes. It's that burden — of taking responsibility for something and seeing it through — that plays the biggest role in helping Harry to grow up. Hermione and Ron share the burden of finding and destroying horcruxes — which have a corrupting influence not unlike the ring in "Lord of the Rings" — but when it comes to the most crucial one, only Harry can dispose of it. And it's heartbreaking.
Readers may have suspected that this moment was coming for Harry — where he'd have to sacrifice something to save the world. But there's a twist (and don't worry, we won't tell you what it is). Suffice it to say, the big questions are answered, and mostly little ones remain. Some will be disappointed with that, and will want to know everyone's fate, but the available epilogue falls flat compared to the quick wit and fast-paced action that precedes it.
My advice would be to read the book but skip the epilogue — because anyone who's read the series can probably imagine an ending that is more personally meaningful than the one Rowling provides. As one wise old wizard points out in "Deathly Hallows," just because something happens only in your head doesn't make it any less real.
Jul 23 2007
'Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows': Sad And Satisfying
MTV News' Potter expert says spoilers don't matter: Rowling's masterful storytelling is what counts.
By Jennifer Vineyard
How do you talk about "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" to someone who may not have finished it yet?
After all, J.K. Rowling's book is 759 pages long and it just came out — officially, anyway — on Friday night. Amid all the pre-publication theories and plot mysteries, I'd love to be able to say, "I was right! I told you so!" (See " 'Harry Potter' Cast, Adam Sandler, Queen Latifah Share 'Deathly Hallows' Theories," "Why Harry Potter Has To Die In Book Seven," and " 'Harry Potter' Roundtable: Experts Battle Over Theories On How Series Will End.") But I hate spoilers, and I'm not going to spoil this for anyone.
What I will say is this: The book is not about the plot, it's about the execution. Hard-core fans have already made their guesses about what happens in "Deathly Hallows," and some have even guessed (or been told) correctly. But oddly, that doesn't spoil the experience. I'd thought it would. When I read scenes from the leaked "carpet" version of the book (see " 'Harry Potter' Spoiler Deluge Continues: Newspapers Publish Book Reviews"), they felt flat. But when I read the book straight through, I realized the little things the reader learns from so-called spoilers are misleading. The identity of the mysterious R.A.B., for instance, isn't as important as how R.A.B. stole the locket horcrux. Where double-agent Snape's true allegiance lies doesn't mean quite as much as why it lies there. (And even if you guessed why in advance, learning the reason via a trip through the Pensieve makes all the difference.)
"Deathly Hallows" isn't so much about the major mysteries as the minor ones: Everything from the previous volumes starts to come together in it. Half-forgotten moments from the first book that seemed to have little significance are now seen to play an important part in the story; the levels of foreshadowing are staggering. So is the list of deaths, although they come so quickly and frequently that the reader barely has time to grieve for a character.
The level of danger has never been so high in Harry's world — which is now openly at war. Voldemort, who returned in "Goblet of Fire," worked quietly behind the scenes in "Order of the Phoenix" (trying to retrieve a prophecy) and "Half-Blood Prince" (ordering Draco Malfoy to kill Dumbledore). But by "Deathly Hallows," his plan to take over is in full effect. The Dark Lord has seized control of the government, the media and the schools — and it was so quick and easy, you almost wonder why he didn't do it sooner. After a propaganda campaign about undesirables in their midst, the Ministry of Magic rounds up Muggle-born and "blood-traitor" wizards, who it is claimed "stole" their magic from the purebloods. They're brought in for questioning; some have their wands taken, some have their souls taken, too, in the Dementor chambers — the World War II parallels are no doubt intentional.
Those in the anti-Voldemort movement rally around Harry as a symbol of hope — but it's dangerous. The publisher of The Quibbler, who dares to print the truth, is punished by the Death Eaters, who kidnap his daughter, Luna Lovegood, as retribution. Potterwatch, a wizard radio program, is password-protected and spoken in code, to avoid capture. No one dares to rebel openly against the new regime except for the outnumbered resistance movement, the Order of the Phoenix. It's up to Harry, Ron and Hermione, who've had to take measures to protect their families (yes, even the Dursleys) in case they too become targets. There's no going to Hogwarts for them this year, unless it's to fight.
Before they can do that, Harry and his friends have a quest to fulfill: finding the remaining horcruxes that contain fragments of Voldemort's soul so they can destroy them and, in turn, destroy Voldemort. And they have to solve a mystery regarding the Deathly Hallows at the same time. It's a lonely quest, since they can't share the details with anyone, but that doesn't mean they can't seek help during their many daring infiltrations and thrilling escapes. It's that burden — of taking responsibility for something and seeing it through — that plays the biggest role in helping Harry to grow up. Hermione and Ron share the burden of finding and destroying horcruxes — which have a corrupting influence not unlike the ring in "Lord of the Rings" — but when it comes to the most crucial one, only Harry can dispose of it. And it's heartbreaking.
Readers may have suspected that this moment was coming for Harry — where he'd have to sacrifice something to save the world. But there's a twist (and don't worry, we won't tell you what it is). Suffice it to say, the big questions are answered, and mostly little ones remain. Some will be disappointed with that, and will want to know everyone's fate, but the available epilogue falls flat compared to the quick wit and fast-paced action that precedes it.
My advice would be to read the book but skip the epilogue — because anyone who's read the series can probably imagine an ending that is more personally meaningful than the one Rowling provides. As one wise old wizard points out in "Deathly Hallows," just because something happens only in your head doesn't make it any less real.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Potter magic: Book breaks sales records
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070722/ap_en_bu/harry_potter
Potter magic: Book breaks sales records
By HILLEL ITALIE, AP National Writer
Sun Jul 22, 2007
It is the richest going-away party in history.
"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," the seventh and final volume of J.K. Rowling's all-conquering fantasy series, sold a mountainous 8.3 million copies in its first 24 hours on sale in the United States, according to Scholastic Inc.
No other book, not even any of the six previous Potters, has been so desired, so quickly. "Deathly Hallows" averaged more than 300,000 copies in sales per hour — more than 5,000 a minute. The $34.99 book, even allowing for discounts, generated far more revenue than the opening weekend of the latest Potter movie, "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," which came out July 10.
"The excitement, anticipation, and just plain hysteria that came over the entire country this weekend was a bit like the Beatles' first visit to the U.S.," Scholastic president Lisa Holton said in a statement Sunday.
"This weekend kids and adults alike are sitting on buses, in the park, on airplanes and in restaurants reading 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.' The conversations the readers have been waiting to have for 10 years have just begun."
The numbers are astonishing, but not shocking. "Deathly Hallows" was designed to break records, released Saturday with a first printing of 12 million in the U.S. alone, although Scholastic spokeswoman Kyle Good acknowledged that some stores already were out of copies.
"Our distribution strategy was clearly right on target in order to sell 8.3 million copies in 24 hours," she told The Associated Press. "We are working with retailers to move additional copies to the places they are needed most in the coming days and weeks."
The book's British publisher, Bloomsbury, expects to announce sales figures Monday.
Earlier Sunday, Borders Group Inc. reported that "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" sold 1.2 million copies worldwide in its first day, the biggest single-day number ever for the superstore chain. According to Borders, the previous Potter, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," sold 850,000 copies on its first day of release in 2005.
Both Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble announced that pre-orders exceeded 1 million. In a truly Beatles-esque moment, seven of the top best sellers on Amazon were Potter-related Sunday, including the audio CD of "Deathly Hallows" and a box set of all seven Potters coming out in September.
"Deathly Hallows" was so popular that Hollywood studio Warner Bros. acknowledged it took away business from "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," the fifth Potter movie, because fans were too busy.
"They wanted to get that book Saturday, lock themselves in the house and read it, because they didn't want their other friends by Monday telling them who made it and who didn't," said Dan Fellman, Warner Bros.' head of distribution.
Reviews for "Deathly Hallows" have been almost universally ecstatic, and reader enthusiasm apparently intact despite, prerelease "spoilers" that proliferated on the Internet.
"The book was fascinating, and I think I'll have to read it through at least once more before I get the full scope of it — but I thought it had some of her best, most action-packed, funniest moments in it," says Melissa Anelli, Webmaster for the Potter fan site http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org, who said she finished the 759-page book Saturday.
"When I closed the book I was overjoyed and devastated — overjoyed at the story, and the way it had played out, but devastated that the tale was complete," she said. "It did feel like a bereavement, like it was saying farewell to a long-trusted friend."
Last week, some surprised and lucky readers received early deliveries of their Potters, thanks to a glitch by online retailer DeepDiscount.com. Over the weekend, some unfortunate readers complained that their books from Amazon.com had not arrived on Saturday, as promised. Amazon.com spokesman Sean Sundwall would not confirm or deny reports of delays but said Sunday that anyone who did not receive it on time would automatically be refunded the cost of the $34.99 book, which Amazon sold for $17.99.
Potter fan Anna Todd, a film student at the State University of New York's Purchase campus, picked up her book in person at midnight Saturday at the Barnes & Noble in Manhattan's Union Square. Taking naps off and on, she was finished within 24 hours.
"J.K. Rowling does not disappoint; I thought she did brilliantly. It was terrifying; sometimes I was scared to keep reading on. I cried buckets," said Todd, 20, who lamented that "never again will I stay up all night reading a new Harry Potter book, or go to its midnight release party, or invent wild theories about Harry being the Heir of Gryffindor."
"That's it," she said. "It's all over. I feel like I just said goodbye forever to my oldest, dearest friend. All I can do is re-read, and in the future when I have children, I'll get to share these books with them. I look forward to that day."
Potter magic: Book breaks sales records
By HILLEL ITALIE, AP National Writer
Sun Jul 22, 2007
It is the richest going-away party in history.
"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," the seventh and final volume of J.K. Rowling's all-conquering fantasy series, sold a mountainous 8.3 million copies in its first 24 hours on sale in the United States, according to Scholastic Inc.
No other book, not even any of the six previous Potters, has been so desired, so quickly. "Deathly Hallows" averaged more than 300,000 copies in sales per hour — more than 5,000 a minute. The $34.99 book, even allowing for discounts, generated far more revenue than the opening weekend of the latest Potter movie, "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," which came out July 10.
"The excitement, anticipation, and just plain hysteria that came over the entire country this weekend was a bit like the Beatles' first visit to the U.S.," Scholastic president Lisa Holton said in a statement Sunday.
"This weekend kids and adults alike are sitting on buses, in the park, on airplanes and in restaurants reading 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.' The conversations the readers have been waiting to have for 10 years have just begun."
The numbers are astonishing, but not shocking. "Deathly Hallows" was designed to break records, released Saturday with a first printing of 12 million in the U.S. alone, although Scholastic spokeswoman Kyle Good acknowledged that some stores already were out of copies.
"Our distribution strategy was clearly right on target in order to sell 8.3 million copies in 24 hours," she told The Associated Press. "We are working with retailers to move additional copies to the places they are needed most in the coming days and weeks."
The book's British publisher, Bloomsbury, expects to announce sales figures Monday.
Earlier Sunday, Borders Group Inc. reported that "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" sold 1.2 million copies worldwide in its first day, the biggest single-day number ever for the superstore chain. According to Borders, the previous Potter, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," sold 850,000 copies on its first day of release in 2005.
Both Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble announced that pre-orders exceeded 1 million. In a truly Beatles-esque moment, seven of the top best sellers on Amazon were Potter-related Sunday, including the audio CD of "Deathly Hallows" and a box set of all seven Potters coming out in September.
"Deathly Hallows" was so popular that Hollywood studio Warner Bros. acknowledged it took away business from "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," the fifth Potter movie, because fans were too busy.
"They wanted to get that book Saturday, lock themselves in the house and read it, because they didn't want their other friends by Monday telling them who made it and who didn't," said Dan Fellman, Warner Bros.' head of distribution.
Reviews for "Deathly Hallows" have been almost universally ecstatic, and reader enthusiasm apparently intact despite, prerelease "spoilers" that proliferated on the Internet.
"The book was fascinating, and I think I'll have to read it through at least once more before I get the full scope of it — but I thought it had some of her best, most action-packed, funniest moments in it," says Melissa Anelli, Webmaster for the Potter fan site http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org, who said she finished the 759-page book Saturday.
"When I closed the book I was overjoyed and devastated — overjoyed at the story, and the way it had played out, but devastated that the tale was complete," she said. "It did feel like a bereavement, like it was saying farewell to a long-trusted friend."
Last week, some surprised and lucky readers received early deliveries of their Potters, thanks to a glitch by online retailer DeepDiscount.com. Over the weekend, some unfortunate readers complained that their books from Amazon.com had not arrived on Saturday, as promised. Amazon.com spokesman Sean Sundwall would not confirm or deny reports of delays but said Sunday that anyone who did not receive it on time would automatically be refunded the cost of the $34.99 book, which Amazon sold for $17.99.
Potter fan Anna Todd, a film student at the State University of New York's Purchase campus, picked up her book in person at midnight Saturday at the Barnes & Noble in Manhattan's Union Square. Taking naps off and on, she was finished within 24 hours.
"J.K. Rowling does not disappoint; I thought she did brilliantly. It was terrifying; sometimes I was scared to keep reading on. I cried buckets," said Todd, 20, who lamented that "never again will I stay up all night reading a new Harry Potter book, or go to its midnight release party, or invent wild theories about Harry being the Heir of Gryffindor."
"That's it," she said. "It's all over. I feel like I just said goodbye forever to my oldest, dearest friend. All I can do is re-read, and in the future when I have children, I'll get to share these books with them. I look forward to that day."
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Potter Fans Beg Rowling to 'Save Harry!'
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/09/AR2007070900558.html
Potter Fans Beg Rowling to 'Save Harry!'
By Peter Griffiths
Reuters
Monday, July 9, 2007
LONDON (Reuters) - Thousands of Harry Potter fans have signed a petition urging J.K. Rowling to keep writing novels about the boy wizard after she admitted she could "never say never" to more books.
The "Save Harry!" petition calls on Rowling to reverse her decision to end the bestselling series with the seventh and final installment, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows."
"Millions, perhaps billions of us, love reading his adventures and we never want them to end," says the online petition, launched on Monday at www.saveharrypotter.co.uk.
After spending 17 years writing the books, Rowling said she was both "euphoric" and "devastated" that it's finally over.
But in a television interview, she left fans with the tantalizing, if remote, possibility that she may one day return to the magical world of Hogwarts.
"I think that Harry's story comes to quite a clear end in book seven," she told the BBC at the weekend. "But I have always said that I wouldn't say never.
"I can't say I will never write another book about that world, just because I think: 'What do I know, in 10 years' time I might want to return to it'. But I think it is unlikely."
Even if she does write another book, it is unclear whether some of the main characters, including Harry, would play a part.
Rowling said some characters will die in the last book, but wouldn't say if the boy wizard is among them: "It's not a bloodbath, but it's more than two," she said.
Book retailer Waterstone's, which set up the petition, said Rowling could still write more Harry Potter books even if the title character is killed.
"Sir Arthur Conan Doyle famously killed off Sherlock Holmes, yet brought him back after years of demand from his fans and publishers," said Waterstone's Wayne Winstone. "Couldn't the same happen for Harry Potter?"
Rowling's publicist could not be reached for comment.
More than 325 million copies of the first six books have been sold worldwide, helping to make Rowling the first dollar-billionaire author. The final book is out on July 21.
Potter Fans Beg Rowling to 'Save Harry!'
By Peter Griffiths
Reuters
Monday, July 9, 2007
LONDON (Reuters) - Thousands of Harry Potter fans have signed a petition urging J.K. Rowling to keep writing novels about the boy wizard after she admitted she could "never say never" to more books.
The "Save Harry!" petition calls on Rowling to reverse her decision to end the bestselling series with the seventh and final installment, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows."
"Millions, perhaps billions of us, love reading his adventures and we never want them to end," says the online petition, launched on Monday at www.saveharrypotter.co.uk.
After spending 17 years writing the books, Rowling said she was both "euphoric" and "devastated" that it's finally over.
But in a television interview, she left fans with the tantalizing, if remote, possibility that she may one day return to the magical world of Hogwarts.
"I think that Harry's story comes to quite a clear end in book seven," she told the BBC at the weekend. "But I have always said that I wouldn't say never.
"I can't say I will never write another book about that world, just because I think: 'What do I know, in 10 years' time I might want to return to it'. But I think it is unlikely."
Even if she does write another book, it is unclear whether some of the main characters, including Harry, would play a part.
Rowling said some characters will die in the last book, but wouldn't say if the boy wizard is among them: "It's not a bloodbath, but it's more than two," she said.
Book retailer Waterstone's, which set up the petition, said Rowling could still write more Harry Potter books even if the title character is killed.
"Sir Arthur Conan Doyle famously killed off Sherlock Holmes, yet brought him back after years of demand from his fans and publishers," said Waterstone's Wayne Winstone. "Couldn't the same happen for Harry Potter?"
Rowling's publicist could not be reached for comment.
More than 325 million copies of the first six books have been sold worldwide, helping to make Rowling the first dollar-billionaire author. The final book is out on July 21.
Monday, June 11, 2007
All aboard for the Harry Potter rollercoaster
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070531/people_nm/arts_potter_dc
All aboard for the Harry Potter rollercoaster
By Paul Majendie
Reuters
5-31-7
J.K Rowling, who became the world's first billion dollar author on the back of Harry Potter's success, has given the go-ahead for the creation of a Florida theme park dedicated to the schoolboy wizard.
"The plans I have seen look incredibly exciting and I don't think fans of the books or films will be disappointed," Rowling said of the Orlando park that is scheduled to open in 2009.
The park is a joint venture between Warner Bros Entertainment, whose Potter films have so far grossed more than $3.5 billion worldwide, and Universal Orlando Resort.
In a statement rich in entertainment hyperbole, the builders of "The Wizarding World of Harry Potter" said they planned to "create the world's first immersive Harry Potter themed environment."
Barry Meyer, chairman and CEO of Warner Bros. Entertainment, said: "Over the years we've received thousands of letters from fans around the world wishing they could visit Hogwarts (School) and the wonderful locations described in each of J.K. Rowling's beloved stories."
The park's opening could help to quell the withdrawal symptoms of Potter fans around the globe who have bought 320 million copies of her wizard tales and turned every one of the films into a box office hit.
Pottermania is set to scale new heights in July with the last novel hitting the bookstands and the latest film being launched in a deluge of global publicity.
"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," the final installment in her hugely successful series, is being released on July 21.
Rowling is to mark publication with a moonlight reading for fans at London's Natural History Museum.
Sweepstakes are being conducted by her British publisher Bloomsbury Publishing Plc and American publisher Scholastic to pick the winning fans.
"Harry Potter and the order of the Phoenix," the fifth film in a blockbuster series based on the books, is being given its official world premiere in London on July 3.
Rowling, whose books are always released under tight security, has said two characters will die in the seventh and final book but she has refused to give any clues.
The author has appealed to people to keep the end a secret: "I want the readers who have, in many instances, grown up with Harry, to embark on the last adventure they will share with him without knowing where they are going."
U.S. authors John Irving and Stephen King were so worried about the fictional hero's fate that they urged Rowling to spare the bespectacled hero.
All aboard for the Harry Potter rollercoaster
By Paul Majendie
Reuters
5-31-7
J.K Rowling, who became the world's first billion dollar author on the back of Harry Potter's success, has given the go-ahead for the creation of a Florida theme park dedicated to the schoolboy wizard.
"The plans I have seen look incredibly exciting and I don't think fans of the books or films will be disappointed," Rowling said of the Orlando park that is scheduled to open in 2009.
The park is a joint venture between Warner Bros Entertainment, whose Potter films have so far grossed more than $3.5 billion worldwide, and Universal Orlando Resort.
In a statement rich in entertainment hyperbole, the builders of "The Wizarding World of Harry Potter" said they planned to "create the world's first immersive Harry Potter themed environment."
Barry Meyer, chairman and CEO of Warner Bros. Entertainment, said: "Over the years we've received thousands of letters from fans around the world wishing they could visit Hogwarts (School) and the wonderful locations described in each of J.K. Rowling's beloved stories."
The park's opening could help to quell the withdrawal symptoms of Potter fans around the globe who have bought 320 million copies of her wizard tales and turned every one of the films into a box office hit.
Pottermania is set to scale new heights in July with the last novel hitting the bookstands and the latest film being launched in a deluge of global publicity.
"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," the final installment in her hugely successful series, is being released on July 21.
Rowling is to mark publication with a moonlight reading for fans at London's Natural History Museum.
Sweepstakes are being conducted by her British publisher Bloomsbury Publishing Plc and American publisher Scholastic to pick the winning fans.
"Harry Potter and the order of the Phoenix," the fifth film in a blockbuster series based on the books, is being given its official world premiere in London on July 3.
Rowling, whose books are always released under tight security, has said two characters will die in the seventh and final book but she has refused to give any clues.
The author has appealed to people to keep the end a secret: "I want the readers who have, in many instances, grown up with Harry, to embark on the last adventure they will share with him without knowing where they are going."
U.S. authors John Irving and Stephen King were so worried about the fictional hero's fate that they urged Rowling to spare the bespectacled hero.
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