Elton, ben: popcorn
Batchelor Boys - The Young Ones Book
This is a book spin-off of the infamous TV serial, written by Ben Elton.
Stark (1989)
From the backnote of the book....
"Stark has more money than God and the social conscience of a dog on a croquet lawn.
What's more, they know the Earth is dying. Deep in Western Australia, where the Aboriginals used to milk the trees, a planet-sized plot takes shape. Some green freaks pick up the scent. A Pommie poseur, a brain-fried Vietnam Vet, Aboriginals who lost their land ...
not much against a conspiracy that controls society. But EcoAction isn't in society; it just lives in the same place, along with the cockroaches.
If you're facing the richest and most disgusting conspiracy in history, you have to do more than stick up two fingers and say 'peace'."
This was Ben Elton's first novel, and sold massively in Britain and Australia. It was reprinted 23 times in its' first year of publication, and sold over a million worldwide.
Priced at £4.
99, the ISBN number is 0 751 501 999 and is now printed by Warner Books. You can have it delivered anywhere in the world via Bookpages.
Gridlock (1991)
From the backnote of the book....
"Gridlock is when a city dies.
Killed in the name of freedom. Killed in the name of oil and steel. Choked on carbon monoxide and strangled with a pair of fluffy dice.
How did it come to this ? How did the ultimate freedom machine end up paralysing us all ? How did we end up driving to our own funeral, in somebody else's gravy train ?
Deborah and Geoffrey know, but they have transport problems of their own, and anyway, whoever it was that murdered the city can just as easily murder them."
Reviews of GRIDLOCK
"Brilliant .
.. the comedy sometimes achieves Tom Sharpe levels of outrage and the thrills sometimes match Alfred Hitchcock for malign invention ... somewhere under the stage suit there may be a Booker candidate.
" - Richard Heller, Mail On Sunday
"He combines passionate espousal of a cause with the machine-gun narration of a stand-up comic, peppered with good jokes and with the energetically managed, funny and violent action of a manic strip cartoon." - Ned Sherrin, Evening Standard
"Perfect fodder for the politically-correct holidaymaker" :Time Out
"Leaves you wondering why our more up-market novelists can never be bothered to write about something as obviously important, topical and politically resonant as the nightmarish growth of the motor industry." - The Guardian
The ISBN number is 0751510114, and published by Warner Books.
Gasping (1990)
From the backnote of the book...
.
"Lockheart Industries are making senior money. If God wanted to buy into their stock, he'd have to think twice and talk to his people. They have a profit curve wound so far round the room it looks like a Blue Peter Christmas Appeal.
But they're bored, they want more. New ideas, new products.
That's when someone discovers Suck and Blow... The marketing phenomenon of the decade has arrived! Designer air! Perrier for the nostrils!
But when the world starts gasping, only the biggest suckers survive...
"
Reviews of GASPING
"A poisonously funny morality play...a remarkable debut" - Sunday Times
"A sharp-witted satire on the heartlessness of market forces...
extremely funny... never, unlike the world's population, runs out of puff" - The Independent
"As barbed as, and much funnier than Serious Money, the sharpest futuristic comedy since Henceforward, and the best Green comedy since The Good Life was young." - Financial Times
"Sheer Jacques Tati'esque..
. a traditional morality play... one Ben Johnson would have recognised" - International Herald Tribune
The ISBN number is 0 7474 0889 0, and was published by Sphere Books Ltd.
Silly Cow (1993)
From the backnote of the book.
...
"Doris Wallis, queen of the tabloid press, is, in her own words, 'a nasty cow who slaughters sacred cows'. Bitchy, brassy, and bolshie, she writes a venomous TV column that specializes in slagging off celebrities. She's so poisionous that - as she tells her mousey secretary Peggy - 'Bogeyman get scared imagining me under their beds'.
Her bitchiness is her career - and her career is on the up. On the verge of a glorious venture into TV, she's not going to let anything get in her way - not even the 'silly fat talentless old cow' who is currently suing her for libel. And any skeletons she may have in her cupboard are (like her bondage gear) firmly locked up. Or so she thinks...
.."
Reviews of Silly Cow
"Crude, clever and killingly funny" - Daily Mirror
"A perfect occasion for Ben Elton satire on the modern world. Like his first West End play GASPING, it's fast and slick. And what's clever about that is that fastness and slickness are what it satirises. It also has an ingenious plot .
..
"This Other Eden (1993)
From the backnote of the book....
"Small, well appointed future. Semi detached.If the end of the world is nigh, then surely it's only sensible to make alternative arrangements. Certainly the Earth has its points, but what most people need is something smaller and more manageable.
Of course there are those who say that's planetary treason, but who cares what the weirdos and terrorists think? Not Nathan. All he cares is that his movie gets made and that there's somebody left to see it.
In marketing terms the end of the world will be very big. Anyone trying to save it should remember that."
The ISBN number is 0 6718 5180 2, and is published by Simon and Schuster Ltd.
Popcorn (1996)
From the backnote of the book...
.
Death imitates artBruce Delamitri makes movies about killers. Great movies, stylish movies. Not the usual low rent,low brow, slash, shoot and screw garbage that recoups its' budget with a blood and boobs video sleeve. Bruce's movies are hip. Post-modern cinematic milestones, dripping with ironic juxtaposition.
His killers are style icons. They walk cool, they talk cool. Getting shot by one of them would be a fashion statement.
Wayne and Scout actually are killers. Real ones. Low rent, low brow, morality-free zones.
Appalling, sad, unbalanced maniacs who kill people they do not know.
One night, one Oscar-winning night, when Bruce has the world at his feet, Wayne and Scout hijack his life. They have decided that it is time Bruce faced up to his responsibilities. Fact confronts fiction in the heart of Beverley Hills and a terrible siege begins.
Bruce thought his oscar-winning movie was a drama: it was a documentary. Popcorn is a taut and darkly funny page-turner of a novel.
In a society addicted to murder, is there such a thing as a responsible person?
The book has won praise from the likes of Mary Whitehouse for his attack on sex and violence in the movies. Ben Elton has said "I don't think balanced people can be driven to be any different from what they are ... The suggestion is that those who are open to anti-social behaviour may be seduced into believing it is the norm ..
. I feel slightly exposed here because I am putting a point I don't entirely believe." (The Daily Telegraph, July 29th 1996)
Originally written as a play, the book is available now, on hardback for £12.99 from Simon and Schuster. The ISBN number is 0-684-81612-1, and is also available as an audiobook. It has also been adapted as a stage play, and a Hollywood movie version is in the pre-production stages, adapted by Ben Elton and directed by Joel Schumacher (director of Flatliners and Batman Forever).
The paperback version is out in May.
Find out more about the book, courtesy of the Pure Fiction Web site. Just tell them that the British Comedy Library sent you here!
Bookpages will have other works by Ben Elton, including the Blackadder series.
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