Michael Cunningham (born November 6, 1952) is an American writer, best known for his 1998 novel The Hours, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award in 1999.
Cunningham was born in Cincinnati, Ohio and grew up in Pasadena, California. He studied English literature at Stanford University where he earned his degree. Later, at the University of Iowa, he received a Michener Fellowship and was awarded a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. While studying at Iowa, he had short stories published in the Atlantic Monthly and the Paris Review. His short story, "White Angel", was later used as a chapter in his novel A Home at the End of the World. It was included in "The Best American Short Stories, 1989," published by Houghton Mifflin.
In 1993, Cunningham received a Guggenheim Fellowship and in 1998 a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. In 1995 he was awarded the Whiting Writers' Award. Cunningham has taught at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts and in the creative writing M.F.A. program at Brooklyn College. He is currently professor of creative writing at Yale University.
James Edward Franco (born April 19, 1978) is an American actor. His first prominent role was a lead part on the short-lived cult hit television program Freaks and Geeks; he later achieved recognition for playing the titular character in the TV biographical film James Dean (2001), for which he was awarded a Golden Globe Award. He achieved international fame with his portrayals of Harry Osborn in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy.
Franco has won or been nominated for a number of awards. He has done both dramatic and comedic work in projects and has appeared in an eclectic range of films since the 2000s, ranging from period to contemporary pieces, and from major Hollywood productions to less publicized indie films, as well as fantasy films to biopics and soap operas. Other notable films include Pineapple Express, a 2008 stoner comedy that earned him his second Golden Globes nomination; the 2008 Harvey Milk-biopic Milk; and Danny Boyle's 2010 drama film 127 Hours, about real-life mountain climber Aron Ralston's struggle to free his hand from a boulder. His performance in 127 Hours earned him nominations for many high-profile awards, including the Academy Awards, Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Awards. In 2011, he starred opposite Andy Serkis in Rupert Wyatt's successful science fiction film Rise of the Planet of the Apes, a reboot of the Planet of the Apes franchise. Since 2009, he has played a recurring role in the ABC daytime soap opera General Hospital.
Stacey D'Erasmo (born 1961) is an American novelist and literary critic.
D'Erasmo was born in 1961 in New York City. She received a B.A. from Barnard College and an M.A. from New York University in English and American Literature. From 1988 to 1995, she was a senior Editor at the Voice Literary Supplement. She was a Stegner Fellow in Fiction at Stanford University from 1995-1997. She created and developed the fiction section of Bookforum from 1997-1998.
She is the author of three novels. Her first novel, Tea (Algonquin, 2000), was selected as a New York Times Notable Book. Her second novel, A Seahorse Year (Houghton Mifflin, 2004), was named a Best Book of the Year by the San Francisco Chronicle and Newsday and won both a Lambda Literary Award and a Ferro-Grumley Award. Her third novel, The Sky Below, was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in January, 2009. She lives in New York City. In 2009, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for her fiction work.
D'Erasmo's articles and podcasts have been published in The New York Times Book Review, The New York Times Magazine, Ploughshares, and the Los Angeles Times.
Plot
Max and Ruthie, a dysfunctional hit team pairing, get caught up in a very wild-and-crazy day of work. As they shoot their way through the client list, performing hits across L.A. while attempting to work together smoothly, their maniacal boss, Michael, decides to fly from Vegas to eliminate them after they miss a hit and a client escapes. Now, Max and Ruthie find themselves with the targets on their backs as Michael and his henchmen touch down in the city to hunt them down...
Plot
Highschool geek Arnie Cunningham falls in love with "Christine", a bright red 1958 Plymouth Fury which has seen much better days. Setting himself the task of restoring the car to its original condition, his friends notice that the car is not the only thing that is changing. Arnie seems to spend more and more time with his car. He's also developed a sort of cocky arrogance which does not seem like the real Arnie at all.
Keywords: 1950s, 1970s, animate-car, anthropomorphic-car, automobile, based-on-novel, based-on-the-works-of-stephen-king, car, character-name-in-title, christmas
She'll possess you. Then destroy you. She's death on wheels. She's...
Once she lures you behind her wheel...You're all hers.
Body by Plymouth. Soul by Satan.
Seductive. Passionate. Possessive. Say hello to Christine...Your Girlfriend The Car.
Hell hath no Fury...like a 1958 Plymouth.
How do you kill something that can't possibly be alive?
She was born bad. Plain and simple. Somewhere deep on a darkened assembly line. Christine. A '58 Plymouth Fury possessed by Hell. She's taken control of her teenage owner, Arnie. Her previous owner is not alive to warn him. And now she's steering straight for the one person in her way. Arnie's girlfriend, Leigh. The other woman.
Leigh Cabot: God, I hate rock and roll.
Will Darnell: Ya know Pepper, ya can't polish a turd.
Rudolph Junkins: The kid was cut in half Arnie, they had to scrape his legs up with a shovel.::Arnie Cunningham: Well, isn't that what you're supposed to do with shit? Scrape it up with a little shovel?::Rudolph Junkins: Don't get smart with me, son. Your girlfriend is a hell of a lot more convincing than you are.::Arnie Cunningham: [laughs] She's not my girlfriend. And since when is it against the law to fix up your own car when somebody else busts it up, huh?::Rudolph Junkins: ...since never.::Arnie Cunningham: Then you get off my back.::Rudolph Junkins: [pause] Okay.::[Junkins walks away. Arnie rubs at the spot where Junkins leaned on Christine]
George LeBay: Her name's Christine.::Arnie Cunningham: I like that.::Dennis Guilder: Come on Arnie, we gotta get goin', huh?::George LeBay: My asshole brother bought her back in September '57. That's when you got your new model year, in September. Brand-new, she was. She had the smell of a brand-new car. That's just about the finest smell in the world, 'cept maybe for pussy.
Arnie Cunningham: Okay... show me.
Arnie Cunningham: Whoa, whoa. You better watch what you say about my car. She's real sensitive.
Bemis: She smiled at me. I want to have deep, meaningful sex with her.
Arnie Cunningham: Has it ever occurred to you that part of being a parent is tryin' to kill your kids?
[Arnie is pulling a worn out, smoking old Christine into Darnell's Do It Yourself garage as Darnell and Dennis look on]::Will Darnell: 'Kiddo, you sold him that piece of shit, you oughta be fuckin' ashamed of yourself.::Dennis Guilder: I didn't sell it to him. I tried to talk him out of it.::Will Darnell: You shoulda' tried harder.
[Will and Dennis are approaching Arnie who has just parked Christine in Will's garage]::Will Darnell: [to Dennis] I knew a guy had a car like that once. Fuckin' bastard killed himself in it. Son of a bitch was so mean, you could've poured boiling water down his throat and he would've pissed ice cubes!::[to Arnie]::Will Darnell: Okay. That's the last time you run that mechanical asshole in here without an exhaust hose... I catch you doing it one time, and you're out, you understand? HUH?::Arnie Cunningham: Yes, sir.::Will Darnell: And I'm gonna tell you something else right now. I don't take any shit from you kids. This place is for working stiffs gotta keep their cars running so they can keep bread on the table, it's not for rich-assed, snot-nose kids who wanna go dragging around on the Orange Belt. I don't allow no smoking in here, neither! You wanna' butt, you go out in the junkyard!::Arnie Cunningham: Oh, well I don't sm...::Will Darnell: [interrupting] Don't interrupt me, punk! Don't interrupt me, don't get smart!::Dennis Guilder: Uhh, sir?::Will Darnell: What?::Dennis Guilder: [points at Darnell's own men who are smoking at a card table] Those men over there smoking. You better tell then to stop.::Will Darnell: You trying to help your buddy right out of here, jerk?::Dennis Guilder: Nah.::Will Darnell: Then shut your pie-hole. I know a creep when I see one. I think I'm looking at one right now.::[turns back to Arnie]::Will Darnell: You're on probation... you get it? You screw around with me once, I don't care how much money you paid up in front, I'll throw you out on your ass! Now you got it? HUH?::Arnie Cunningham: Yessir, yessir.::Will Darnell: Good! Now, get the hell out of here, we're closed.