15 Responses to “by the way, Nothing Lasts Forever is back in print”

1. 

   Griff

   May 22nd, 2013 at 2:37 am

   nothing lasts forever but the Earth and sky…

   and all your money wont another minute buy!

2. 

   Mr. Majestyk

   May 22nd, 2013 at 3:31 am

   I managed to track down the British printing of the movie tie-in edition for like five bucks a few years back. The only problem is the cover is just the movie poster and they changed the title to DIE HARD so it looks like some cheesy movie novelization. Still, small price to pay to get back to the source.

3. 

   Forrest Taft

   May 22nd, 2013 at 6:56 am

   Thanks for tip. Finally bought this – the Kindle edition no less. I see that the same publisher have also put out a Kindle edition of Walter Wager’s 58 MINUTES, aka the novel that begat DIE HARD 2: DIE HARDER. I think I’ll also purchase that one. Has anyone here read it?

4. 

   Mouth

   May 22nd, 2013 at 12:28 pm

   After seeing the movie so many times, might as well check out the source material, might as well Amazon it from here.
   I sorta didn’t want to read NOTHING LASTS FOREVER, putting it off as much as possible, lest it somehow reduce or confuse the purity of my enjoyment of DIE HARD. But Bruce Willis’s politics has done that already, so the time for the literature has come.

   Silver lining for a recent knee issue that’s bothered me in much the same fashion as broken glass lacerations on bare soles in my opinion — instead of running, I do miles of stationary bicycle or elliptical machine, and when I’m on those machines I can read my robot books while simultaneously indulging & overcoming my human weakness.

   Just a matter of time before we’re all Cronenbergian constructs, unnatural melds of flesh & wires, as chaos ensues — our best books simultaneously papery & digital-coded, our best movies simultaneously action classics & Christmas tales, our suave international terrorists mere petty thieves, our establishing shots converted to dis-establishing shots.

5. 

   Franchise Fred

   May 22nd, 2013 at 2:40 pm

   I actually read 58 MINUTES when I was a kid but never NLF. 58 was pretty good, totally different except the basic premise. I remember all the action is at the end but then it’s cool. That’s 12-year-old Fred’s review. Maybe not Franchise Fred yet but Franchise Curious Fred.

6. 

   Vern

   May 22nd, 2013 at 3:00 pm

   I actually have 58 Minutes and haven’t gotten around to it yet. I should remember to do that. I figure it’s only the terrorist plot that was taken from that.

7. 

   Mr. Majestyk

   May 22nd, 2013 at 4:26 pm

   I also own first paperback printings of FIRST BLOOD and SHAFT and the hardcover first edition of THE TAKING OF PELHAM 123. (I own these things because I rule, in case you were curious.)

   I also have the novelization of HALLOWEEN II (1981), which oddly transposes director Rick Rosenthal’s weird obsession with windows into prose form. And if you thought Loomis’ dialogue was purple, wait’ll you read his inner monologue.

8. 

   Vern

   May 22nd, 2013 at 7:27 pm

   How’s Shaft? Isn’t he a white guy in the book? First Blood is great. David Morrell also wrote a novelization of part 2, which is interesting. It seems to be more based on James Cameron’s draft than the finished version, and it gives us some different information about Rambo, like I think it was in that one where it says he’s part Native American.

   I can also recommend the book of Death Wish, although Death Sentence (the sequel, which the Kevin Bacon/James Wan movie has nothing to do with but is credited as being adapted from) is pretty bad.

9. 

   Mr. Majestyk

   May 22nd, 2013 at 8:15 pm

   SHAFT is pretty decent. Ernest Tidyman was mostly a screenwriter (His filmography isn’t huge but it’s got SHAFT, THE FRENCH CONNECTION, HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER, and, um, A FORCE OF ONE are on it. Not too shabby) but he had a way with overcooked but evocative pulpy prose. The movie stuck pretty closely to his novel (not surprising, since he cowrote the screenplay), even down to the famous title sequence, which is basically the first chapter of the book, in which he wakes up in a lady’s bed and walks the streets of NY for a while. I’ve always wanted to read the other books in the series (especially the second one, SHAFT AMONG THE JEWS, which, wow, I just don’t think you could call a book that anymore) but I have never come across any of them.

   But no, Shaft was never a white private dick who’s a sex machine to all the chicks.

10. 

    Mr. Majestyk

    May 22nd, 2013 at 8:30 pm

    Apparently, Morell wrote the novelization of RAMBO III, too. It’s kind of cool that he got to hold onto the character even after Stallone turned him into something he was never meant to be. Bummer that he didn’t get tapped to do one for RAMBO, because it’s not like he retired. He’s still writing books to this day. Not bad ones, too. He did one called CREEPERS a few years ago that I really liked about one damn thing after another going wrong when some urban spelunkers explore an abandoned hotel in Atlantic City. He bills himself as “The Master of the High Action Thriller,” and it’s not far off the mark. He’s not much of a stylist and his dialogue is perfunctory, at best, but damn if he can’t write an action scene.

11. 

    JD

    May 22nd, 2013 at 8:37 pm

    Love FIRST BLOOD. I want to see a new, more faithful film adaptation of the novel. (And I say that with all due respect for FLOODING WITH LOVE FOR THE KID.)

    And yes, Morrell’s novelization of RAMBO does indeed incorporate a lot of material from Cameron’s excellent draft. And it’s a much better version of the same story then the film. It’s strange to say, but that’s a case where the novelization is far superior to the movie.

12. 

    Griff

    May 23rd, 2013 at 2:54 am

    I read on Wikipedia that Morell named Rambo after a type of apple

13. 

    RRA

    May 23rd, 2013 at 6:17 am

    Mr. Majestyk – was a novelization even done for RAMBO (aka JOHN RAMBO)? I don’t remember.

    (But also I thought James Cameron’s Rambo script was pretty darn good, much better and interesting than the movie we got.)

    Anyway it should be noted that Morell has several reasons to be kind about the Rambo movies and what Stallone did to his character.

    (1) Back in the 1970s when Hollywood badly wanted to adapt FIRST BLOOD but couldn’t figure out how to (i.e. nobody had balls to just be faithful to book instead of chickening out of the book’s tragic grimness), Morell’s agent told him that he wwas able to keep the merchandising rights to the character/film away from the studios. And really that’s not a surprise. Why would any studio fight to get merchandising rights to a story about a Vietnam vet going crazy, killing everybody, and then getting his head blown off by a shotgun?

    But fast forward into the 1980s, remember the Rambo toys and that cartoon? (Ah remember the days when R-rated movies got kids cartoon spin-offs?) Well when Rambo was at its peak back in the 80s, Morell made a shitload of money from the merchandising.

    (2) Whether #1 reason has any bearing on this one or just coincidental, but Morell has said that he liked what Stallone or appreciated how he reframed that character. Of course I wouldn’t mind either if I was making good money too from it.

    (3) On the FIRST BLOOD commentary Morell recorded (maybe one of my favorite commentary tracks ever), he told a touching story about one of his kids having a terminal illness and Sly met or talked with him for a half hour and the kid soon became a celebrity at his school for being “friends” with Sylvester Stallone. Very obvious from his tone of voice and words that Morell was very thankful of what Stallone did for him on a personal level.

14. 

    neal2zod

    May 24th, 2013 at 2:45 pm

    Forrest – Yeah I read 58 minutes as a kid, if I recall correctly there’s only one villain, so it’s basically more like Speed or Speed 2 than Die Hard 2. If you ask me, the plots in DH 2 and 4 seem like the typical “evil computer hacker” plot and the goons all seem shoe-horned in just to give McClane people to kill. With a Vengeance has a somewhat better justification for all the goons (with the gold theft plot and all) but you can still kind of see that is was born from a premise with only one villain.

    I still haven’t seen Die Hard 5 but I think it’s weird it’s the only sequel from an original screenplay and it’s universally regarded as being terrible.

15. 

    Griff

    May 29th, 2013 at 4:49 am

    Roderick Thorpe sounds like the name of the lead singer of a 1970’s prog rock band