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Infinite Monkeys

@infinitemonkeyshq.bsky.social

A home for fiction writers and readers, screenwriters and viewers. All the intel and advice they never tell you. From Mark Chadbourn - novelist, screenwriter, journalist. Here: infinitemonkeyshq.substack.com Buy Me A Coffee: coff.ee/chadbourn

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Infinite Monkeys @infinitemonkeyshq.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

NO SPOILER NERD REVIEW: I was ambivalent about Amazon's new Carrie series. Brian DePalma told the story effectively in an hour and 38 minutes. Did we really need a seven-hour TV series to tell the same story. (See also Apple's awful Cape Fear series.)

Carrie poster: a girl walks through a burning corridor

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Infinite Monkeys @infinitemonkeyshq.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

The most disturbing thing in this movie, every single time I see it, is not the supernatural element, it’s the gaslighting of Rosemary by her husband.

Rosemary's
Baby movie poster, green background, a pram silhouetted against Rosemary’s face

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Infinite Monkeys @infinitemonkeyshq.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Writer to writer.

:A letter from Ernest Hemingway, to F.
Scott Fitzgerald:
Key West
28 May 1934
Dear Scott,
For Christ sake write and don't worry about what the boys will say nor whether it will be a masterpiece nor what.
I write one page of masterpiece to ninety one pages of shit.
I try to put the shit in the wastebasket.
Forget your personal tragedy. We are all bitched from the start and you especially have to hurt like hell before you can write seriously. But when you get the damned hurt use it-don't cheat with it. Be as faithful to it as a scientist.
I'd like to see you and talk about things with you sober.
You were so damned stinking in NY we didn't get anywhere.
You see, Bo, you're not a tragic character. Neither am I. All we are is writers and what we should do is write.
But Scott, good writers always come back. Always. You are twice as good now as you were at the time you think you were so marvellous. You know I never thought so much of Gatsby at the time. You can write twice as well now as you ever could. All you need to do is write truly and not care about what the fate of it is. Go on and write.
Anyway I'm damned fond of you and I'd like to have a
chance to talk sometimes.
Always your friend,
Ernest

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Infinite Monkeys @infinitemonkeyshq.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

The TikTok effect:

Chart showing US book sales have rebounded to record highs

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Infinite Monkeys @infinitemonkeyshq.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

My problem with the current crop of Star Trek series, particularly Strange New Worlds, is that they're character-based.

Star Trek characters walk across an alien landscape

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Infinite Monkeys @infinitemonkeyshq.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Apple really has a problem finding movies that land (the less said about The Dink the better), but there are a couple of decent moments in this which all come down to Ryan Reynolds’ delivery.