Sunday, February 04, 2007
What I'm reading:
Just finished Chuck Taylor: All Star, by Abe Aamador.
Oh and there's a blog about the book.
Chuck Taylor's are the only shoes I wear,and Converse is the company I lost all my money in a few years ago, so I picked this book up used awhile back and noticed it in a box in the basement while moving boxes due to a water leak. Didn't put it down until I finished, with a break for sleep.
Aamador writes, or used to write, for my local paper, the Star, and I knew about the book. It's the first ever bio of Chuck Taylor - previously, what people knew about him was based on ad copy from converse, which was incomplete and had some out and out lies,so this is the first telling of the story behind the man whose name sold millions of shoes and became an American Icon.
Taylor was from a small town in Indiana, was a star player for Columbus high school, turned semi-pro his senior year, got a spot playing on the Converse team, which turned into a day job of sales. He figured out that coaches were the ones that drove basketball shoe sales, so his selling efforts were pitched to coaches. His career, from 1917ish to his death in 1969, paralelled the growth of basketball.
During the war, he coached a team at Wright Air base in Ohio. The army used sports as a morale and fitness booster. If the victories of the british empire were won on the playing fields of Eton, then America's sports craze was used in the service of nationalism and militarism. As I write this, the Colts/Cults are winning or losing the Superbowl. It's probably too cold out for a good riot, but since about 1980, Americans riot more over sports events than political events.
Now, I couldn't care less about basketball. Don't like playing it, don't like the thunk thunk thunk of other people playing it. But this was a fine book, a slice of Indiana history and a slice of American history.
I feel like writing Aamidor a fan letter asking about the movie rights.
I'd see if I could get todd stephens to direct.
Nike, which bought converse out of bankruptcy in 2003, could fund the movie out of the budget for that swoosh logo I dislike so much.
It would be hard to cast - the story covers him as a skinny kid, a fattish middleaged sales guy, an elder statesman. The actor or actors would have to have Taylor's amazing abilities to sink baskets, or special effects to fake it. Period costumes.
Would take a budget. But I think there would be a market for the film. It's a heck of a story, and one that hasn't been told. Meanwhile, the book's pretty good.
And this entry is running too long.
I have no follow through on ideas like that.
For other rights queries, please contact:
Anne Roecklein
Rights Manager
Indiana University Press
601 N. Morton Street
Bloomington, IN 47404 USA
Email: permiss@indiana.edu
Just finished Chuck Taylor: All Star, by Abe Aamador.
Oh and there's a blog about the book.
Chuck Taylor's are the only shoes I wear,and Converse is the company I lost all my money in a few years ago, so I picked this book up used awhile back and noticed it in a box in the basement while moving boxes due to a water leak. Didn't put it down until I finished, with a break for sleep.
Aamador writes, or used to write, for my local paper, the Star, and I knew about the book. It's the first ever bio of Chuck Taylor - previously, what people knew about him was based on ad copy from converse, which was incomplete and had some out and out lies,so this is the first telling of the story behind the man whose name sold millions of shoes and became an American Icon.
Taylor was from a small town in Indiana, was a star player for Columbus high school, turned semi-pro his senior year, got a spot playing on the Converse team, which turned into a day job of sales. He figured out that coaches were the ones that drove basketball shoe sales, so his selling efforts were pitched to coaches. His career, from 1917ish to his death in 1969, paralelled the growth of basketball.
During the war, he coached a team at Wright Air base in Ohio. The army used sports as a morale and fitness booster. If the victories of the british empire were won on the playing fields of Eton, then America's sports craze was used in the service of nationalism and militarism. As I write this, the Colts/Cults are winning or losing the Superbowl. It's probably too cold out for a good riot, but since about 1980, Americans riot more over sports events than political events.
Now, I couldn't care less about basketball. Don't like playing it, don't like the thunk thunk thunk of other people playing it. But this was a fine book, a slice of Indiana history and a slice of American history.
I feel like writing Aamidor a fan letter asking about the movie rights.
I'd see if I could get todd stephens to direct.
Nike, which bought converse out of bankruptcy in 2003, could fund the movie out of the budget for that swoosh logo I dislike so much.
It would be hard to cast - the story covers him as a skinny kid, a fattish middleaged sales guy, an elder statesman. The actor or actors would have to have Taylor's amazing abilities to sink baskets, or special effects to fake it. Period costumes.
Would take a budget. But I think there would be a market for the film. It's a heck of a story, and one that hasn't been told. Meanwhile, the book's pretty good.
And this entry is running too long.
I have no follow through on ideas like that.
For other rights queries, please contact:
Anne Roecklein
Rights Manager
Indiana University Press
601 N. Morton Street
Bloomington, IN 47404 USA
Email: permiss@indiana.edu
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