Year: 2014

Turn-Based Press will be publishing a series of prints based on illustrations by Steven Appleby from the illustrated novel The Good Inn. The book was co-authored by Black Francis and Josh Frank, and there will be an event at the Press on May 2nd at 7 PM. Frank will offer a reading, and prints will be on view. Both the books and prints will be for sale.

Currently, Frank is on-tour promoting the novel, which releases April 15. Turn-Based Press has printed the first of the series–an edition of 75 two-run hand-pulled screenprints that Frank will have with him at various events around the country. The prints are $20 each. A partial event schedule and list of locations is below:

April 14–Book People, Austin, TX.

April 18–Cinefamily/Silent Movie Theater, Los Angeles, CA.

April 25–Powerhouse Arena, Brooklyn, NY. Steven Appleby, Black Francis and Josh Frank will all be present at this event.

April 29–Brattle Theater/Harvard Square, Boston, MA.

May 2–Turn-Based Press, Miami, FL.

May 9–Books and Books, Miami, FL.

May 22–Powell’s Books, Portland, OR.

May 23–Elliot Bay Book Company, Seattle, WA.

Author and book descriptions from publisher of The Good Inn, HarperCollins:

From legendary Pixies front man, Black Francis, in collaboration with writer Josh Frank and renowned illustrator Steven Appleby, comes The Good Inn, a bold and visually arresting novel about art, conflict, and the origins of a certain type of cinema

In 1907, the French battleship Iéna was destroyed when a nitrocellulose-based weapon propellant it was carrying became unstable with age and self-ignited, killing 120 people. A year later, La Bonne Auberge became the earliest-known pornographic film, depicting an intimate encounter between a French soldier and an innkeeper’s daughter. Like all films at the time, and for decades afterward, it was made with a highly combustible nitrocellulose-based film stock.

Loosely based on historical events, The Good Inn follows the lone survivor of the Iéna explosion as he makes his way through the French countryside. He falls into a strange love affair with an innkeeper’s daughter and, even more deeply, into a volatile counteruniverse where war and art exist side by side.

But The Good Inn is also the very real story of the people who made the world’s first stag film, and Francis weaves together real historical facts to re-create this lost piece of history, as seen through the eyes of a shell-shocked soldier who finds himself that film’s subject and star. Through his journey we explore the power of memory, the simultaneously destructive and restorative power of light, and how the early pioneers of pornography helped shape the film industry for generations to come.

Black Francis (born Charles Thompson and a.k.a. Frank Black) is the founder, singer, guitarist, and primary creative force behind the acclaimed indie rock band the Pixies. Following the band’s breakup in 1993, he embarked on a solo career under the name Frank Black. He re-formed the Pixies in 2004 and continues to release solo records and tour as a solo artist, having readopted the Black Francis

Josh Frank is a writer, producer, director, and composer. He is the author of Fool the World: The Oral History of the Band Called Pixies and In Heaven Everything Is Fine: The Unsolved Life of Peter Ivers and the Lost History of New Wave Theatre. Frank has worked with some of the most innovative musicians, filmmakers, producers, and artists in the entertainment industry, including Black Francis, David Lynch, Mark Vonnegut, and Harold Ramis. He has interviewed more than four hundred of America’s most notable names in show business for his books and screenplays. In his spare time he runs his mini urban drive-in movie theaters in Austin, Texas, and Miami, Florida.

Learn more about Frank’s Mini-Urban Drive-In, the Blue Starlite, here.