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Scott Timberg on Creative Destruction

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Is Cable TV’s Heyday Over? And, Guitarists’ Brains

April 30, 2014 by Scott Timberg

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="3RwcvvUk1AC4BkVM7TnYA96GH4qbLhTJ"] SOMEWHERE between consensus and cliche is the idea that television is better than ever and has reached a new depth and intelligence. To optimists, The Wire, Homeland, Mad Men and so on show what's possible even in these difficult times for culture. My sense, as I looked into various economic models for Salon, here, is that the … [Read more...]

Historical Documentary and “The Story of the Jews”

March 23, 2014 by Scott Timberg

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="Jxeq7goyZFHTuT1NApP4ZsOM8ZKVKFcG"] TODAY I have a piece in the Los Angeles Times about a new documentary, commissioned by the BBC but playing in the US on PBS, The Story of the Jews with Simon Schama. (The first part broadcasts Tuesday night.) Schama, the British-born, Cambridge-educated historian who now teachers at Columbia, is likely known to many of my readers … [Read more...]

Cable TV and the Niche-ing of America

July 21, 2013 by Scott Timberg

TODAY I have a story in Salon looking at the golden age of cable TV post-Sopranos, and contrasting this with the economic/technological forces in the culture right now.And I ask: If HBO, or AMC, can find a profitable quality niche -- and stay in business -- can a jazz club? A book publisher? Theater company? I also look at the world of indie rock labels.I speak to the authors of two new books, … [Read more...]

Tom Stoppard and "Parade’s End"

February 27, 2013 by Scott Timberg

THIS week on HBO, Americans can catch up with a literary adaptation that hit hard in the UK last year: Parade's End. Godlike playwright Tom Stoppard adapted this series of four short novels by the underrated Ford Madox Ford -- published in the '20s and set around World War I.Yours truly had a story today on the miniseries and the process of adapting a very long and difficult text. It meant, among … [Read more...]

Ken Burns Goes to the Dust Bowl

November 19, 2012 by Scott Timberg

LAST night the first half of Ken Burns' latest docs, The Dust Bowl, went up; it concludes this evening.By now, we have a pretty good sense of what a Burns doc will be like. That said, parts of this are quite ravishing. And while it is not exactly a work of polemic, this look back at this man-made disaster, coming so soon after the ravages of the storm Sandy, show us how we're really throwing the … [Read more...]

Oliver Stone’s History Lesson

November 12, 2012 by Scott Timberg

ABOUT a week ago, I spent some time with Oliver Stone, and his co-writer, the historian Peter Kuznick, talking about their new "Untold History of the United States." The 10-part program, which goes up on Showtime starting tonight, is in a Howard Zinn/Noam Chomsky line in looking at international and domestic issues, starting with World War II.Perhaps the key theme of the series is the idea of … [Read more...]

Ric Burns and the Civil War

September 10, 2012 by Scott Timberg

IT'S not a pretty picture: The Civil War saw as many people killed as all American wars put together. In some places, the proportion of  young men killed was quite high: Parts of the South essentially lost a generation. But the huge number of deaths, and the need to count the fallen, bury them, contact loved ones -- and to make moral/ spiritual sense of it all -- remade this country, says Ric … [Read more...]

BBC’s New "Copper"

May 25, 2012 by Scott Timberg

COMING from BBC America this summer is a new series called Copper, created by Tom Fontana (Oz, Homicide, Borgia) and set in 1860s New York. Much of the show takes place in Five Points, the rough Irish neighborhood some of us know from Scorsese's Gangs of New York. The protagonist is a tormented, Irish born detective named Corcoran.I've not yet seen much of the show, but it hits several of my … [Read more...]

Owen and Kidman as Hemingway and Gellhorn

May 21, 2012 by Scott Timberg

SOMETIMES, in this business, you have to do things you don't want to do -- deal with unpleasant people, write about a production that bores you to tears. Other times, you get to talk to Clive Owen and Nicole Kidman about Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn, the strong-willed war correspondent who would hate to be remembered at Papa's third wife.Later this month, HBO will broadcast a film, … [Read more...]

The Wreck of the Titanic

April 2, 2012 by Scott Timberg

THE hype around James Cameron's film, which came out while I was working as a film editor, was so deafening that a lot of us closed our ears when it came to this infamous ship and its demise. I know I did. There didn't seem to be much more to say about the whole mess.But here we are, approaching the 100th anniversary of the Titanic's demise, and there are a ton of new television projects coming, … [Read more...]

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Scott Timberg

I'm a longtime culture writer and editor based in Los Angeles; my book "CULTURE CRASH: The Killing of the Creative Class" came out in 2015. My stories have appeared in The New York Times, Salon and Los Angeles magazine, and I was an LA Times staff writer for six years. I'm also an enthusiastic if middling jazz and indie-rock guitarist. (Photo by Sara Scribner) Read More…

Culture Crash, the Book

My book came out in 2015, and won the National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Award. The New Yorker called it "a quietly radical rethinking of the very nature of art in modern life"

I urge you to buy it at your favorite independent bookstore or order it from Portland's Powell's.

Culture Crash

Here is some information on my book, which Yale University Press published in 2015. (Buy it from Powell's, here.) Some advance praise: With coolness and equanimity, Scott Timberg tells what in less-skilled hands could have been an overwrought horror story: the end of culture as we have known … [Read More...]

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