Ep. 71 Alan Dean Foster

“Most great art has been commission work. Bernini didn’t sit around
making statues because he liked making statues, he did it because
Pope So-and-so wanted a bust of himself on his elaborate tomb…
Rembrandt, I’m sure, would’ve been happier doing something other
than painting fat businessmen most of his life.” No name is as
synonymous with the art of novelization as “Alan Dean Foster,”
known for his work reverse engineering novels out of films like The
Thing, Alien and, most of all, Star Wars. We’re joined by the
prolific sci-fi author to discuss his storied career - the
novelizations, continuation novels and original work - in the
context of his recent dispute with the Disney corporation over
unpaid royalties after their acquisition of Lucasfilm and 20th
Century Fox. We start at the beginning with his adaptation of a
crummy Italian gender-swapped Tarzan rip-off before the
conversation explores everything from when Frank Frazetta’s artwork
suggests stories far more compelling than the source they’re
portraying, why world-building in novelistic writing is the same in
original stories or adaptations, and how he came to write the first
Star Wars expanded universe novel Splinter of the Mind’s Eye (which
spawned an entire ecosystem of ancillary material.) Foster is a
legend in his field and this discussion explores his crucial role
in modern pop culture - and why the Disney company’s ambivalence
about paying him the royalty money he’s unquestionably owed is so
repellent in a larger context that extends beyond Foster himself.
The Pink Smoke site: www.thepinksmoke.com The Pink Smoke on
Twitter: twitter.com/thepinksmoke Christopher Funderburg on
Twitter: twitter.com/cfunderburg John Cribbs on Twitter:
twitter.com/TheLastMachine Intro music: Unleash the Bastards / “Tea
for Two” Outro music: Marcus Pinn / “Vegas”