Saturday, Saturday, Saturday

This Saturday is my big event at Bookworks. I'm hoping that JK Rowling, Stephen King and Dan Brown might drop by. Perhaps JJ Abrams and George Lucas will be in the audience to offer some hints on the next Star Wars film. Even better, maybe JD Salinger faked his own death, and will read excerpts of his unpublished sequel to Catcher in the Rye. Well, an author can dream, can't he?

Who would be on your ultimate author panel? When I was at the American Film Institute, we were lucky enough to meet some of the most powerful people in Hollywood. I asked James Cameron a question. I don't remember the question, but I do remember the cold look he gave me as if he was the iceberg and I was the Titanic. I tried to pick up on Salma Hayek, but that is another story.

I mention JK Rowling because she is literally richer than the queen of England, but I probably could not pick her out of a line-up. I do want to know if she had any idea how successful she would become. It's not her writing that I admire so much, it's her faith.

Dan Brown wrote the Da Vinci Code, and is currently on the best seller list with Inferno. How can someone with so little writing talent come up with such amazing ideas?

I might get in a tiff with Stephen King. I recently read his book on the Kennedy assassination. The parts about the Kennedy and Oswald are brilliant, yet there's a 200 page detour about being a small town teacher that is among the most self-indulgent passages that I have ever read. The Under the Dome  TV series started well, but really sucks now. He also said that he didn't like Jack Nicholson in the Shining. I'd like to see a fight between the two of them. I'd bet on Jack.

As for JJ Abrams, he has had my career, the one I have always wanted. I would ask him if I could have it back. And JD Salinger, what the hell did he do for the last sixty years of his life after he finished his last book...and what the heck is a bananafish?

Perhaps, it's good that I will be the one on the panel on Saturday at Bookworks. Still, I will leave some empty chairs