Last Tuesday I made the hour and a half trek to Birmingham, AL to watch Workplay‘s latest Sidewalk Cinematique indie movie showing Stone Reader.
Stone reader is about a man named Mark who picked up the book, The Stones of Summer, in 1972 based on a rave New York Times review that convinces him it is the book of a generation. He never gets past the first 20 pages of the book. Fast forwad to the present and Mark re-discovers the book. He makes it a point to read it from coverless beginning to coverless end. This time he does finish it and falls in love with it. Mark looks for other works by the author Dow Mossman and finds that Stones of Summer was the only book the author made.
Frustrated by this, Mark sets out on what would become a two year journey to find the author. Mark interviews professors, Mossman’s agent, the guy who designed the book cover, and anyone else who would talk to him. All in order to find Mossman and ask him why he never released another book.
The premise, at first, sounded boring but I figured, wtf, I had no other pressing plans and I want to break into indie filmmaking somehow. Maybe the movie would at least give me pointers on how not to set up a scene. I met MedicMike and his friend and co-worker Bhavesh at the Workplay bar, had a few Heinekin‘s (my random beer of choice this evening) and we all proceeded into the theatre.
What followed was an enjoyable, if not a bit long, journey into the world of literature. Seeing all the authors and wannabe authors talk about what it takes to become a successful writer was surprisingly captivating. And the author Mark finds at the end of the flick was a totally different person than I expected. I have only one caveat to those interested in Stone Reader. This movie is definitely angled towards writers and those who absolutely love books. When I say love, I’m not talking a passing glance, but full on dinner and a movie type romance. I recall one author saying that he’d heard of a conscientious reader but that Mark was something else entirely.
Geek note: Several times in the movie when Mark was shown to be searching for Mossman on The Net… they showed the yahoo search window. If Mark had only used Google, his journey would have been much shorter.
