It was an incredibly fun experience to try an inhabit that voice and try to get into Huck’s head and see Los Angeles from the point-of-view of this n… - Tim DeRoche

Writing in the New Yorker, Calvin Tompkins once suggested that stories by Belloc and others are not appropriate for children and are really meant for the grown-ups. To test his hypothesis, I suggest reading one of these classics aloud to a seven-year-old. In my experience, the child very quickly understands that she’s being told a sophisticated joke, and the butt of the joke is the parent who is constantly urging her toward upright behavior. I want to suggest that Gothic nonsense should be a part of every child’s upbringing.

By carving up our cities into attendance zones, we are perpetuating the economic and racial divisions that marked one of the darkest eras of our nation’s past.

My wife and I were out doing a kayak trip on the [Los Angeles River] ... It’s a wilder place than you would think from just driving over it on the freeway. I started to think about the idea of the River as this place where you could have an adventure. I started to imagine, ok, what would it be like if Huck Finn were alive today and he were traveling down the River.