Cheno Coast to Coast

Kristin Chenoweth gets a nice write up in the LA Times this morning and opens on Broadway in "Promises, Promises" tonight. (I hear the show is edgier than the 1968 version, taking cues from the "Mad Men" aesthetic.) Meanwhile, Kristin's memoir A Little Bit Wicked is out in paperback this month, and Gleeks worldwide will see her working her Bacharach on next week's "Glee."

Go, baby girl, go!

Anti-Bella (Twilight spoof promos Critics Choice Awards)

VH1 TV Shows | Music Videos | Celebrity Photos | News & Gossip

What Kristin Chenoweth knows (and Kanye West and Joe Wilson don't) that writers need to learn

Last year on Emmy night, Kristin Chenoweth showed up dressed to the requisite long and flowy nines, nominated for her role in "Pushing Daisies," a quirky but critically acclaimed show that was on the rise and destined to become a cult hit.

"It wasn't my moment," she shrugged the next time I saw her. "And losing to someone as fabulous as Jean Smart doesn't sting too much."

Last night was her moment. My girl Cheno showed up in an adorable dress that was neither long nor flowy. Hers were the only legs I saw on the red carpet, and if she hadn't been fighting off a migraine headache, she'd have been suffering less than anyone else there because the poorly planned gauntlet stretched out stifling hot in the direct sun.

She was nominated for the same role in "Pushing Daisies," but the show was canceled last spring and sank quickly and quietly beneath the waves. Turns out destiny isn't always what we think it is. As delightful as she was in the show, the show was dead, and frankly, I don't think anyone was betting the farm on anything other than "30 Rock to sweep." Kristin was surprised to have been nominated and looked stunned when she won.

Alone in a hotel room in Florida (I'm off working with another ghost client), I leaped off the couch, spilled my wine, whooped out loud. This victory is so much more delicious because I've seen this woman lose so graciously.

Kristin is a serious artist with an Masters in Opera Performance and a long history of mule-tough theatre work. Despite the cutesy stuff you see on E!, her career is about dedication to craft, not the collection of accolades. Losing well is something she talks a lot about in her NYT bestselling memoir, A Little Bit Wicked: Life, Love and Faith in Stages. There's a long, hilarious chapter about her perennial "second runner-upness" and various "nomin-not-tions."

"Awards are on the outside. Rewards are on the inside," she says in a sidebar of advice for young actors. "That means rewards don't have to be dusted."

When she collected her soon-to-be-well-dusted Emmy last night, Kristin gave credit to Amy Poehler for rallying her fellow noms in the Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy category ("C'mon! We're the funny girls!") to steal the show with a great little bit. I loved the spirit of that bit: We're all in this together. Only one of us is going to win this time, but we're here because we love what we do.

We've seen some examples of galactically poor losers lately, and in a field as fiercely competitive as publishing, we see the same bitterness play out on smaller stages every day. I just want to take a moment to celebrate these women who know the essential truth of making a life in the arts: You win some, you lose some. But if you hang in there long enough, work hard enough, care about craft deeply enough, and rise above the disappointments, your moment will come.

Watch and learn...

Cheno gets another Emmy nom! (Go, homegirl, go!)

Oh, I am a proud book nanny. Kristin Chenoweth scored a second well-deserved Emmy nomination yesterday for her singing, dancing, adorable role as Olive Snook in Pushing Daisies.

No one was surprised to see this hyper-creative show get canceled earlier this year. It was frankly too good to last -- all about rich writing, quirky characters, an elaborately choreographed premise, and more living color than we've ever seen on TV. I got to hang out on the set a bit while I was working on Kristin's book, and everyone in the cast and crew was so proud of this really good art they were making. Happily, the work will live on on DVD -- it's one of those shows destined to have a cult following -- and we'll catch a last loving glance of Olive on Emmy night.

Meanwhile, Kristin's going to be on an upcoming ep of Jerusha's new favorite show, Glee, doing her symphony gigs here and there, and back on Broadway with Tyne Daly, Katie Finneran, Rosie O'Donnell, Mary Louise Wilson, and Rita Wilson in Love, Loss, and What I Wore, Nora and Delia Ephron's adaptation of Ilene Beckerman's 1995 book, about clothes and the memories they trigger.

Kristin Chenoweth hits NYT Bestseller List (and makes her book nanny very proud!)

Whabam! My homegirl hit the New York Times bestseller list at a respectable #12 her first week out. Gotta love this girl. She was wonderful to work with throughout the process and the moment this book hit the shelf, she busted out the hustle, touring from New York (where she closed her first B&N event by presenting her blushing ghostwriter with a dozen roses) to her native Oklahoma, onto LA, and back to NY this week.

I particularly love that she managed all this without bashing or bad-mouthing anyone in her family or the biz. A few cynical reviewers knocked her for not "digging deeper" (translation: "dishing dirtier"), but Kristin consistently took the high road without even having to sit through my standard "why being gracious facilitates both the legal review and future family picnics" lecture. Read all about her on Broadway World.

Update 4/29: Second week on the NYT list, LIL WICKED moves up to #11! Go, girl, go!

Kristin Chenoweth is A Little Bit Wicked and whole lotta fun

I've watched Kristin Chenoweth raise the roof on a concert hall, blow the doors off a Broadway theater, and melt a movie camera, but Monday night on Jay Leno to plug her memoir A Little Bit Wicked, she accomplished her most astonishing feat to date: she made the Snuggie look good. My homegirl has a penchant for late night infomercial shopping, so I wasn't surprised to see her in the voluminous red blanket-robe-Druid-ceremonial-costume thing that's been advertised lately.

Gotta love her.

No, I mean it. To know this woman is to love her. Not a vindictive bone in her body, generous to a fault, funny, smart, and a phenomenal, classically trained performer completely dedicated to the hard-working work of art. Always willing to give up glamour in favor of a good laugh. She's a diva, no doubt, but she doesn't take herself too seriously, and I've never seen her be rude or impatient with any of the many fans who approach her on the streets of New York, where she's a highly visible Broadway demi-goddess. My objective as her memoir guru was to capture her delightful voice so readers could enjoy hanging out with her as much as I have.

So far, buzz is good, including this item in Express Night Out that captured her spiritual side:

COOTER, HOO HOO and Georgia O'Keefe. Those are a few of the terms that Kristin Chenoweth uses for her vagina in her new memoir, A Little Bit Wicked: Life, Love, and Faith in Stages. And that's really about as wicked as the book ever gets; not surprising really, considering she's a squeaky-clean, God-fearing lass from the Bible Belt state of Oklahoma... Throughout the book, Chenoweth manages to speak of her faith in God in a way that's not cloying or preachy. She's candid about her views of homosexuality. Her appearance on Pat Robertson's ultra-conservative talk show "The 700 Club," "urging the Christian community to be more open-minded, loving, and inclusive," angered many of her gay and Christian fans alike, and Chenoweth is genuinely surprised and saddened by the results: boycotts of her shows and albums were called for from both sides and she was fired from a stint on the Women of Faith tour.

The first week we worked together, Kristin and I had a long conversation about that and other smackdowns she's sustained because of her open support for gay marriage, which actually goes well with her unapologetic old-time religion. (Kind of like the way she carried off Jimmy Choo slingbacks with a Snuggie.) When we parted, I sent her home with a little English assignment: "Questions for God When I Meet Him." A few queries on Kristin's list:

Who killed JonBenét? And does she pretty much own the pageant circuit up here?

Why is forgiveness so dang hard?

Why is slapstick so dang funny?

Who is the sadistic genius behind cellulite? Lord, please tell me you did not have anything to do with that.

Does restless legs syndrome actually exist? And is there something about it that compels the person to sit in the front row?

Why would someone go to all the trouble it takes to be a serial killer? Is there always some kind of Sweeney Todd backstory?

Where are the mates to most of my socks?

Does sugar cause cancer? And if not, what does?

Does sugar cure cancer? And if not, what does?

Why do so many people find homosexuality scarier than war?

What if you made it so that hate would cause hemorrhoids? Just an idea.

For the full list (along with Advice for Actors from Cool Aunt Kristin, recipes for White Trash Cookies and Chenolicious No Calorie Left Behind Pie, a guest appearance by the amazing Aaron Sorkin, and a great story about coming of age on Broadway) hitch a ride to the bookstore in the handiest magic bubble and hook up a copy of A Little Bit Wicked: Life, Love, and Faith in Stages Kristin's book tour includes appearances on Good Morning America and The View this week and events in New York, Philly, and her native OK. Catch her if you can!

Happy Release Day, Kristen Chenoweth!

Today's the big release for Kristen Chenoweth's A Little Bit Wicked, by way of our own Joni Rodgers.

Here's what Publisher's Weekly had to say:

Currently seen as waitress Olive Snook in ABC's Pushing Daisies, the Tony Award–winning singer-actress Chenoweth looks back at her multifaceted career, which has encompassed recordings (As I Am), films (Four Christmases), television (The West Wing), Broadway (Wicked), solo concerts, animation (Tinker Bell), opera and Opryland. Beginning with the intriguing speculation that her unknown birth mother could be watching her career rise, she recalls her Oklahoma childhood and vocal training when she learned "[t]he music didn't come from notes and lyrics; it came from life and mileage." Personal revelations, such as her experiences with Ménière's disease, are balanced with bubbling backstage anecdotes. A chapter about her on-and-off relationship with writer-producer Aaron Sorkin includes a section written by Sorkin himself. With digressions, detours and words like "whack-a-noodle," the book is busy with show-biz flip quips and writing reminiscent of Julia Phillips's You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again (minus the drugs and invective). Chenoweth has a frenzied, free-associative style; it's as if she's speaking breathlessly into a tape recorder between sitcom scenes. To use her phrase, this book is "a hoot and a holler"—a fast-paced frolic that her fans will appreciate. (Apr. 14)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


Check it out!

Score one for Joni and Kristin Chenoweth:A rocking great review from PW!

Congratulations to Kristin Chenoweth and BTO's own Joni Rodgers on the fabulous Publishers Weekly review for their upcoming memoir collaboration, A Little Bit Wicked, which is due in stores April 14!

As Joni would say, gofightwin, book! Here's the review:

A Little Bit Wicked: Life, Love, and Faith in Stages Kristin Chenoweth with Joni Rodgers. Touchstone, $25 (256p) ISBN 978-1-4165-8055-3
Currently seen as waitress Olive Snook in ABC's Pushing Daisies, the Tony Award–winning singer-actress Chenoweth looks back at her multifaceted career, which has encompassed recordings (As I Am), films (Four Christmases), television (The West Wing), Broadway (Wicked), solo concerts, animation (Tinker Bell), opera and Opryland. Beginning with the intriguing speculation that her unknown birth mother could be watching her career rise, she recalls her Oklahoma childhood and vocal training when she learned "[t]he music didn't come from notes and lyrics; it came from life and mileage." Personal revelations, such as her experiences with Ménière's disease, are balanced with bubbling backstage anecdotes. A chapter about her on-and-off relationship with writer-producer Aaron Sorkin includes a section written by Sorkin himself. With digressions, detours and words like "whack-a-noodle," the book is busy with show-biz flip quips and writing reminiscent of Julia Phillips's You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again (minus the drugs and invective). Chenoweth has a frenzied, free-associative style; it's as if she's speaking breathlessly into a tape recorder between sitcom scenes. To use her phrase, this book is "a hoot and a holler"—a fast-paced frolic that her fans will appreciate. (Apr. 14)

2008: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

It's been a tempestuous year in more ways than one. We were battered by gas prices, election ads, and Hurricane Ike. We said goodbye to Studs Terkel, Sydney Pollack, Arthur C. Clark, Michael Crichton, and Eartha Kitt. (Not to mention these poor turkeys.) The publishing industry experienced some high highs (as a thousand Schnauzer puppies were named Brunonia) and some low lows (as Borders and B&N teeter on the edge of the cosmic bargain bin), and here in Blog Vegas, Colleen and I attempted to make sense of it all. A year-end inventory of the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly always helps put things in perspective. So how was your year? We'd love to hear from you, celebrate your accomplishments, commiserate your losses, and/or share your outrage. Pop us an email or post a comment.

Here's my list:

The Good
Ghostworld was a trip this year. In April, I went to LA to meet with ridiculously multi-talented Kristin Chenoweth, who'd just finished doing a revival of "The Apple Tree" on Broadway. We clicked immediately. She's delightful. Huge heart, head on straight, and a laugh riot. While I was in New York doing the book nanny thing, my ed at Random House emailed me the new paperback cover of a project I worked on last year, Rue McClanahan's My First Five Husbands. I instantly recognized the photo of Rue from the original production of "The Apple Tree" back in the 1960s. Seemed like a good omen, and as it turned out, Kristin's project was a blast -- fabulous story, fun fun fun fun research, terrific editor, intensely educational legal review. Unexpected perks of the gig included becoming friends with Kristin's wonderful mom, Junie and best bud Denny, getting to hang out on the set of create-o-palooza "Pushing Daisies", and making the acquaintance of K Chen's famously on again/off again paramour, the brilliant Aaron Sorkin. He generously contributed a short chapter to the book and (totally above and beyond the call of menschly duty) spent time educating me on the screen trade and dialogueing about political, historical, and literary shoes, ships, and ceiling wax.

K Chen's memoir A Little Bit Wicked (think Anne of Green Gables meets Sex and the City) is due out from S&S in April. It's too early to talk about my next ghost gig, but I'm fully engaged, up to my neck in research, and loving it.

It was a great reading year, too. I stepped away from the sort of books I usually consume and worked through about a dozen screenplays. Aaron gave me a list and said, "Read these if you're interested in being lured over to the dark side. I think it's something you'd be good at." Too early to tell if he was right, but reading screenplays is an excellent way to study dialogue. I also delved into the seriously thinky thoughts of Clarence Darrow, Truman Capote, Aristotle, Plato, and some of the philosophical works I way didn't get but read when I was in college so I'd fit in with the hipsters at the Wunder Bar. I read only about a dozen novels this year. Mostly crime suspense thriller lawyer type stuff mixed with complete non sequiturs to cleanse the palate. Two freaky delicious diversions I particularly loved: The Annotated Nose by Marc Estrin and House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski.

The Bad
Last year, I declared my intent to separate my fiction and nonfiction identities and publish novels under a nom de plume from now on. It hadn't occurred to me that launching that fiction persona's career would be every bit as challenging as launching my own career twelve years ago. Progress is slow, but that's okay; my fiction life is a wheatfield, not a factory. The toughest thing about my professional year was making the decision to change agents. Again. This is always a stressful process that sucks a ton of time and energy away from writing, but I ended up with a fantastic agent who will hopefully never never ever retire, catch the flu or get hit by a bicycle messenger.

The Ugly
Being without power for almost three weeks after Hurricane Ike derailed both my WIP and my gym habit. We lost trees, fencing, and shingles (not to mention most of the skin off our knuckles during lumberjacking and clean up) but I did enjoy doing a guerrilla bookmobile for the neighborhood kids, and I was surprised and touched by all the lovely email and comments about that.

All in all, my year was a lot like a spaghetti Western. Hard labor in the hot sun, stunning reversals, agonizingly slow periods interspersed with mood music and dramatic posturing, stunning scenery, and over-the-top characters. In the end, Clint Eastwood speaks the words I'll take with me into 2009: "There's two kinds of people in the world, my friend. Those with loaded guns and those who dig."

I dig.

Can you spot the ghostwriter? (Hopefully not)

I went to a party for my current memoir client in LA a few weeks ago, and it was like somebody shook the famous people tree. I wanted to be there because my client has become my friend, but I felt terribly out of my element. People were asked to leave cameras in the car at this party, and every time one of the official photographer types told me to "c'mon, get in there" I purposely stepped away. I feel like a parade float next to those skinny little LA chicks, and I'm not a photogenic person in any case, so I generally avoid having my picture taken. (Gary persists in snapping shots of me unawares, so I invariably have this "fwah?" look on my face in all our family pictures.) Anyway, I'm not paparazzi fodder like most of the folks who were there that night, so I was pretty surprised to see myself lurking in the background of a photo in last week's People magazine.

I'm not in the habit of reading People, I must admit (and I'm not at all ashamed of this); Gary actually brought the photo to my attention. He picked the magazine up from the seat of an airplane and noticed the picture of my client. He did a double-take. Though my face isn't really visible in the picture, I was wearing a chunky amber necklace Gary gave me about fifteen years ago, and the familiar shape caught his eye.

This is a good metaphor for my role as a ghostwriter, actually. The client must be very much in the foreground. My task is to capture her voice, give words to her ideas, and express her opinions. Only someone who knows me extremely well should be able to tell that it's me in the background, and even then it should require a double-take. I've found that the Stanislavsky method acting I studied in college comes in very handy. I'm essentially doing the same thing my client does when she plays a character on TV or in a movie. I just do it on paper.

I've broken the task of ghostwriting a memoir down to three essential elements:

Content: What does the client want to say in her book? What's her story and what does it mean? This emerges through hours (and hours and hours) of conversation. The most important thing I do as a ghostwriter is listen. I've learned the hard way that trying to impose my idea of what the client should want to say is a huge waste of time. It ultimately won't work. If it's not her message, it will never ring true.

Structure: As I learn about the message and story, I start to see a sort of bell curve -- the story arc -- and chapters sort of fall out onto the table. I'm required to provide a detailed outline to the publisher, so I'm looking for that skeleton from the very start.

Voice: This is where I have to completely recede into the wallpaper. I've been blessed with a few really fabulous Southern women whose unique, strong voices were easy to embrace on paper. I run into rough patches when my spiritual or political beliefs don't jibe with a client's, but walking miles in their shoes has been a good exercise in understanding.

The real magic trick of ghostwriting is achieving invisibility. If a ghost project reads like a Joni Rodgers book, I've failed my task. But hopefully the quality of the finished project will be enough to make editors and agents (the ones who could potentially bring me the next terrific project) do a double-take.

(Indidentally, when this photo was taken, I was chatting with the multi-talented Camryn Manheim, who told me she wrote her own hilarious memoir, Wake Up, I'm Fat!, without a ghost. What a fabulous, funny, scary smart dame. I wish you could see her instead of me!)

Gofightwin Cheno! (My homegirl is up for an Emmy!)

Gotta shout out (woooot!) to my friend, Kristin Chenoweth, who received an Emmy nomination this morning for the supporting role of Olive Snook in the wonderfully quirky dramedy series Pushing Daisies. Having spent the last few months working with Kristin on her forthcoming memoir, A Little Bit Wicked (Simon & Schuster, April 2009), I can tell you there's not a sweeter soul in Hollywood. Kristin's an amazing talent (girlfriend's got a Theatre BA and MFA in Opera Performance) and the hardest working woman I know. While you're waiting for the book, here's a little Snook:

Musical interlude: "Birdhouse in Your Soul"

How much did we all love Colleen's moving post about Andrew's graduation yesterday? (C'mon, give it up for Colleen!) I'm up to my neck in deadline soup, but I wanted her to have a chance to recover from the festivities, so I'm posting a tasty little trifle today to nudge your thoughts about originality, creativity, and what works.

Every once in a while we get a great reminder that an idea that would sound too bizarrely unworkable for words if you tried to explain it to someone...well, it can fly. Above is a little snippet of a song featured last season on Pushing Daisies, the astonishingly...astonishing TV show created and directed by Bryan Fuller. Kristin Chenoweth and Ellen Green -- two Broadway icons who look great on TV -- deliver a different take on "Birdhouse in Your Soul", a song originally (emphasis on "original") done by They Might Be Giants. And below is the They Might Be Giants version. Pure poetry. And another reminder that anything and everything is allowed.


Let your thoughts wonder.