Post by Andrea on Jan 13, 2005 10:45:26 GMT -5
I thought this was interesting as sheds some light over Courtney Love's control over her paid for lie-o-graphies... From Poppy Z Brite herself:
Poppyzbrite.com - BIOGRAPHY
PZB: Around that same time, rock diva Courtney Love contacted me and asked me to write her biography. Yes, although she made clear from the beginning that she would not officially authorize the book, it was Courtney's idea. She'd read and liked Lost Souls, and she wanted a version of her story written to counter all the negative biographies that were supposedly being written. (Only one of these, the hatchet job Queen of Noise, has yet seen publication. An editor at the house that published it reportedly said of my manuscript, "It's responsible journalism, and that's not what we're looking for.") She would give me access to journals, letters, photographs, and other material I could never have obtained without her; IN RETURN, SHE WOULD HAVE CONTROL OVER WHAT DID AND DIDN'T GO IN THE BOOK. I don't consider the biography part of my real body of work, but it's a fairly juicy and readable piece of pop culture flotsam that financed a lot of travel, short story writing, and animal care. Courtney Love: The Real Story was published by Simon & Schuster (US) and Orion (UK) in 1996.
Poppyzbrite.com – Q&A
-- After you wrote the biography of Courtney Love, I read that she cut you out of her "buddy" list for who knows what reason. Has she inspired you in any way toward future stories and did the two of you ever return to speaking terms?
PZB: I wouldn't say Courtney and I were ever buddies per se, so I never felt that I was "cut out" of anything. After I finished and sold the biography, she stopped contacting me on the advice of her new managers. This made me lose some respect for her, since she'd always claimed to be so free-thinking and punk rock, but frankly it was kind of a relief - Courtney can be a very stressful person to have in your life. No, she hasn't inspired me to write any other stories, since everything I found interesting about her went into the biography.
CHIZINE INTERVIEW SERIES:
Poppy Z. Brite
Q: You must be one of the few genre fiction writers to have written a biography of someone who is not a fellow genre writer (Courtney Love). How different was the experience of writing a biography? Would you do it again?
PZB: I doubt it. It was just a lucrative opportunity that came along at the right time (i.e., when I didn't have much else going on), and while Courtney herself was a real pain in the ass to work with, the actual writing was easy to the point of being dull. It gave me a few years of complete financial freedom, during which I travelled a lot and wrote a lot of short stories, but I'm currently too involved with my own fiction to feel much interest in taking on any other projects.
Poppyzbrite.com - BIOGRAPHY
PZB: Around that same time, rock diva Courtney Love contacted me and asked me to write her biography. Yes, although she made clear from the beginning that she would not officially authorize the book, it was Courtney's idea. She'd read and liked Lost Souls, and she wanted a version of her story written to counter all the negative biographies that were supposedly being written. (Only one of these, the hatchet job Queen of Noise, has yet seen publication. An editor at the house that published it reportedly said of my manuscript, "It's responsible journalism, and that's not what we're looking for.") She would give me access to journals, letters, photographs, and other material I could never have obtained without her; IN RETURN, SHE WOULD HAVE CONTROL OVER WHAT DID AND DIDN'T GO IN THE BOOK. I don't consider the biography part of my real body of work, but it's a fairly juicy and readable piece of pop culture flotsam that financed a lot of travel, short story writing, and animal care. Courtney Love: The Real Story was published by Simon & Schuster (US) and Orion (UK) in 1996.
Poppyzbrite.com – Q&A
-- After you wrote the biography of Courtney Love, I read that she cut you out of her "buddy" list for who knows what reason. Has she inspired you in any way toward future stories and did the two of you ever return to speaking terms?
PZB: I wouldn't say Courtney and I were ever buddies per se, so I never felt that I was "cut out" of anything. After I finished and sold the biography, she stopped contacting me on the advice of her new managers. This made me lose some respect for her, since she'd always claimed to be so free-thinking and punk rock, but frankly it was kind of a relief - Courtney can be a very stressful person to have in your life. No, she hasn't inspired me to write any other stories, since everything I found interesting about her went into the biography.
CHIZINE INTERVIEW SERIES:
Poppy Z. Brite
Q: You must be one of the few genre fiction writers to have written a biography of someone who is not a fellow genre writer (Courtney Love). How different was the experience of writing a biography? Would you do it again?
PZB: I doubt it. It was just a lucrative opportunity that came along at the right time (i.e., when I didn't have much else going on), and while Courtney herself was a real pain in the ass to work with, the actual writing was easy to the point of being dull. It gave me a few years of complete financial freedom, during which I travelled a lot and wrote a lot of short stories, but I'm currently too involved with my own fiction to feel much interest in taking on any other projects.
