My Year of Flops: The A.V. Club Presents One Man's Journey Deep into the Heart of Cinematic Failure

My Year of Flops: The A.V. Club Presents One Man's Journey Deep into the Heart of Cinematic Failure

by NathanRabin (Author)

Synopsis

In the beginning, Nathan Rabin set out to re-examine infamous films that are reviled for the sheer weight of their failure: whether it was bad acting, bad directing, bad writing, or the colossal amount of money spent to produce them. "My Year of Flops," Rabin's column, appeared regularly in The A.V. Club, the entertainment section of The Onion, starting in early 2007, and it became so popular that he extended his experiment indefinitely. In many cases, he agrees with popular opinion and therefore labels the film a "Failure." However, as we all know, failure can often be fascinating, in which case, Rabin calls the results a "Fiasco"-from The Bonfire of the Vanities to Waterworld to Elizabethtown. Better, still, are the films that emerge from the ashes and turn out to actually be pretty good. Those are the "Secret Successes." Some of these include The Wiz, Heaven's Gate, Joe Vs. the Volcano, and even everyone's favourite film flop punch line, Ishtar.

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Quantity

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 288
Edition: Original
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 11 Nov 2010

ISBN 10: 1439153124
ISBN 13: 9781439153123

Media Reviews
Nathan Rabin's book is funnier than John Travolta's facial hair in Battlefield Earth. He's a brave man for undertaking this dangerous mission and returning alive with a highly entertaining tale.
--A.J. Jacobs, author of The Year of Living Biblically
Nathan Rabin's My Year of Flops is like watching a genius nurse a score of frightened, wounded baby birds back to life--a superhuman level of care and compassion lavished on That Which Never Had A Right To Exist. Truly brilliant.
--Patton Oswalt, author of Zombie Spaceship Wasteland
Nathan Rabin is all-knowing (without being smarmy), open-and kind-hearted (without being sappy), and he'll make you laugh on every page. You can't have a better friend sitting next to you as you watch these glorious atrocities.
--Mike Sacks, author of And Here's the Kicker and SEX: Our Bodies, Our Junk
Jon Krakauer's writing is beyond vivid. You FEEL the cold of Everest as your read his words. Into Thin Air is a harrowing journey, well worth your time. I've also heard great things about Nathan Rabin's My Year of Flops.
--Aziz Ansari
Author Bio
Nathan Rabin is a staff writer for The Dissolve, a new film website from the popular music website Pitchfork. Previously, he was the head writer for The A.V. Club, the entertainment guide of The Onion, a position he held until recently since he was a college student at University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1997. Rabin is also the author of a memoir, The Big Rewind, and an essay collection based on one of his columns, My Year of Flops. He most recently collaborated with pop parodist weird Al Yankovic on a coffee table book titled Weird Al: The Book. Rabin's writing has also appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Spin, The Huffington Post, The Boston Globe, Nerve, and Modern Humorist. He lives in Chicago with his wife.

A.V. Club was founded in 1995 as the arts-and-entertainment arm of the satirical newspaper and website The Onion. The two brands quickly became distinct from each other, with The Onion providing humor and America's finest news, and the A.V. Club becoming a significant, well-received source for pop culture news and commentary. In recent years, the A.V. Club's web presence has become huge, attracting over a million unique users per month who visit for reviews, interviews, listings, and features on film, television, music, books, and more. Inventory will enjoy contributions from the entire A.V. Club staff, but the primary staff members assigned to the book project are Editor Keith Phipps, Managing Editor Josh Modell, and Associate Editors Tasha Robinson and Kyle Ryan.