There's nothing I hate more than things I don't like, and things that I don't like just keeps popping up like tainted burritos...
My biggest tainted burrito is James Frey.
I admit it, I don't like the guy.
He's an admitted liar with his whole A Million Little Pieces faux autobiography scam, and his Full Fathom Five "packaging" business is one big bend -the -writer- over -&- ream- them- with- a- stiff-wire- brush operation where authors are paid the steam off James Frey's pee to do all the work for him with no rights, and all the liabilities. Even at their most controlling and penny pinching worst the major studios at least made sure the writers were at least well paid.
So far the company has plopped a bunch of mostly forgotten YA books onto the market, one movie, I Am Number Four, which didn't even break even at the domestic box office and got a "rotten" rating from critics, and one TV pilot they sold to CBS about a former President who becomes a street level lawyer called Legacy, which in itself was a pretty blatant rip-off of the failed NBC former Supreme Court Justice becomes a lawyer drama Outlaw. On his own, Frey was only able to plop out something that wasn't so much a novel, but a cry for attention & the sympathy of the literary elite by penning a deliberately offensive and ultimately pointless modern dress retelling of the New Testament.
Now he's expanding his reach into film and television with the hiring of former Reveille executive Todd Cohen to run things for him. Knowing Frey's style of contracts any idea he comes up with becomes Frey's property, but if they lead to a lawsuit Cohen will be on his own.
Which leads me to a mystery that I may never solve.
Why on Earth would anyone do business with this guy?
Seriously.
You can't even say that it's the money. So far he's got a movie that came and went like a popcorn fart, some YA books that have been overshadowed by the mega-phenomenons of Twilight and the Hunger Games, and a TV pilot that eerily resembles the premise of a failed series for another network that I don't think has even become a series yet, because like its predecessor is doomed to crash and burn.
I can't even find anyone who has anything nice to say about him.
He must be one hell of a salesman.
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