Salon.com > Adam Mansbach

Fox adapting “Go the F**k to Sleep” into feature film

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 22:12:00 +0000

The 32-page children's book and internet meme, "Go the Fuck to Sleep," will soon be a movie -- at least if Fox 2000 has its way.

Adam Mansbach's children's book parody became a viral hit in 2011, leading both Samuel L. Jackson and Werner Herzog to tape readings of it. Jackson even parodied the parody for an Obama ad in 2012.

Now, the A.V. Club reports that Fox 2000 is attempting to churn out another round of punch lines from the tired book. Since the main punch line of the book involves the word "fuck," and Samuel L. Jackson has already worn out that meme, it's not clear what direction the movie can go in. But Fox has hired Ken Marino and wife Erica Oyama Marino of "Burning Love" to figure it out.

How to mock a child

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 16:29:00 +0000

Hey, everybody who thinks we're the PC police: It's not that you can't make a joke about a child. It's that the rules of comedy apply no matter the subject matter -- you have to be funny about it.

As we all well now know, Oscar night 2013 will be remembered as that time Seth MacFarlane made joshing reference to Quvenzhané Wallis as an imminent object of George Clooney's sexual attentions, and then the Onion drastically upped the ante by calling her "kind of a cunt." (They later deleted and apologized for it.) The backlash to both outbursts was swift and loud, followed inevitably by the "Can't you take a joke?" backlash to the backlash.

One of the most agonizing side effects of a controversial comedy routine – generally a crude one that involves violence, tragedy, or is at the expense a minority group -- is the scramble to explain why some things are funny and some are not. And explaining a joke is only slightly more magic-defusing than watching how sausage is made. Comedy is alchemy. The minute we say, "That's not funny because…" we risk the approbation of those who'd call us humorless scolds, uptight and fussy party poopers.

Adam Mansbach: My year on the bestseller list

Wed, 12 Dec 2012 01:00:00 +0000

It’s been a year since "Go the Fuck to Sleep" was published, and a year and a half since I read the manuscript at a museum in Philadelphia, taking the stage after a 94-year-old tap dancer. (You never want to follow a 94-year-old -- not on the freeway, not onstage.) But I woke up the next morning to find the book among Amazon’s top 100, despite the fact that it had not yet been published.

A lot of crazy shit has happened since then. Samuel L. Jackson, Werner Herzog, Thandie Newton and an adorable Filipina grandma all did readings that went viral. Corporate publishers tried to buy the book away from tiny, independent Akashic Books for a lot of money, and we said no. Jenna Elfman randomly made a music video, and in return for our not suing her, met up with us in Miami with a plastic baby doll to speak to fans of literature. Time magazine named "Go the Fuck to Sleep" its “Thing of the Year,” presumably in a squeaker win over that bacon-flavored mayonnaise. Sam Jackson and I teamed back up for “Wake the Fuck Up,” a pro-Obama video that reminded America of the importance of voting and vulgarity.