Dave Eggers Short Francis
When Ira Glass of the radio show, ‘This American Life’ asked six famous writers to create short stories about adventure Dave Eggers answered the call. Dave Eggers’ book ‘A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Beauty’ happens to be one of my favorite books of all time. A truly heartbreakingly touching autobiographical novel. He’s gone on to write a number of other fantastic books, and whose latest novel is ‘The Circle‘ the fantastic “fictional” account of a Google-esque company has become Big Brother.
[pullquote]Francis was read on the show by Dave who lent the story a wonderfully touching quality. But the story is basically a campfire story about a girl and a monster[/pullquote] in the 300 foot deep lake. I remember when I first listened to the podcast of the story I thought it was scary in a cute and middle school sort of a way. Well, now, Richard Hickey took the radio show audio and pulled in 40 people to work on all the different elements in order to produce an animation of the radio broadcast. The film has gone on to be shown at Cannes and Raindance.
The animation is lovely in a Tim Burton sort of a way. And I’m sure that Eggers is touched to see his story brought to life in this way. A part of me does wonder what copy write issues there may have been with This American Life. The legal issues not withstanding, this is a great turn of events. And we are all the better for it.