Ray Bradbury: “I write screenplays in my sleep”

Ray Bradbury turned 90 years old on August 22nd and The Hero Comples (LAT) had a nice feature on the revered science fiction author:

Ray Bradbury has the most amazing dreams. “I write screenplays,” he says with a wink, “in the middle of the night.” When he wakes in the morning, he calls his daughter in Arizona and dictates his dispatch from the Land of Nod, the latest story in a life of imagination… “Ideas just show up,” he says, “just like that. I just finished a new book I sent off to the publisher. It has 22 short stories in it. It’s going to be published at Christmas. It’s called ‘Juggernaut.’ “

He writes screenplays in his dreams. No wonder he so prolific!

So I’m reading this article when I see this:

Bradbury has lived in the same yellow house on a tree-lined street in Cheviot Hills for nearly 60 years. It’s a bucolic street in the quiet neighborhood that seems lifted from Green Town, the fictionalized version of his hometown of Waukegan, Ill., which he wrote about again and again in short stories and novels such as “Dandelion Wine.”

Cheviot Hills! We owned a house in a nearby neighborhood for 13 years. I used to jog through Cheviot Hills almost every day. To think I was running by Ray Bradbury’s home all that time and didn’t even know it.

For you Bradbury fans, here are a few videos featuring him, the last one presumably shot in his Cheviot Hills home:

Here is a quote from Bradbury from the 3rd video:

“Love is at the center of your life. The things that you do should be things that you love. And the things that you love should be things that you do.”

That about sums it up, doesn’t it?

For more of the The Hero Complex article, go here.

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