First things first! Our guest author, Ernest (he's
definitely an Ernie) Cline, who wrote Ready Player One, drove his DeLorean to Barnes & Noble and parked
next to Pam's car. Then he came into the store and regaled us with a
fascinating rendition of his adventures in screenplay and novel writing.
Cline refers to a lot of influences from numerous aspects of
life. He is an avid pop-culture fan, especially as it applies to books, movies,
and computer games; not always in that order. He started his literary career by
writing a fan-fiction sequel to the movie The
Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, from 1984. Cline posted
his sequel as a screenplay online and was surprised to see that people were
copying it to websites and even selling it. He tells more about this experience
on his blog.
This success of his fan screenplay guided him to write a
serious original screenplay, which he did, with Fanboys. Fanboys is about
a group of teenaged friends who absolutely can't wait for the impending sequel
to Star Wars, which they have become somewhat obsessed with, as were many young
folks during the heyday of the Star Wars movies. Cline was one of those who
grew up a Star Wars fanatic. Three Star Wars movies were released 3 years apart
beginning in 1977, when Cline was very young. The next episode was not released
for 16 years, when Cline was a teenager. During those 16 years, Star Wars was a
pop culture phenomenon and a major theme in Cline's life. As circumstances led
to Fanboys being produced, directed, and acted by successful Hollywood moguls
and stars; Cline was surprised and delighted. His story of the long and winding
road to the release of Fanboys had us all enthralled.
After learning that screenplays most often take years to
reach the screen and also that the screenplay is often edited heavily to fit
Hollywood, Cline decided his next project would be a novel. To prepare to write
Ready Player One, Cline researched
and tuned in to a variety of pop culture phenomena. He built the plot of Ready
Player One around a hero's journey, which he learned about from Joseph
Campbell's book, The Hero's Journey.
Some other influences Cline mentioned include the Atari 2600 computer game
machine, which Cline had when he was 5 years old; Roald Dahl's books,
particularly James and the Giant Peach
and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory;
Stephen King's books, Harry Knowles's website aintitcool.com, Warren Robinett, Richard
Garriott, the novel The Westing Game,
Stephen King's books, and lots more reading of books and screenplays, watching
of movies, and playing of computer games.
While the author was signing our books, he graciously gave
us access to his DeLorean, complete with Hoverboard and Flux Capacitor replica.
We all went outside on that beautiful day and sat in the car and took photos.
It was really quite exciting! Among 9000 original DeLoreans, there are
approximately 6000 left. You don't see one or get to sit in it every day!
Most everyone read the book, and everyone who read it enjoyed
it, and everyone enjoyed the author visit! It was gratifying to see how much
Ernie Cline loves what he does. He gives book talks to groups of all ages (he
was tickled to be the youngest one at our meeting), bringing his car around for
everyone's pleasure; and he is working on a second novel and writing the
screenplay for Ready Player One! We
wish him continued success and look forward to more of his books and movies.
