Guitar World Writer Lands Movie Deal

According to the Hollywood Reporter, former Guitar World editor Alan Paul's memoir, Big in China: My Unlikely Adventure Raising a Family, Playing the Blues and Reinventing Myself in Beijing (HarperCollins Publishers), has been picked up by director Ivan Reitman and Tom Pollock’s Montecito Pictures for a big screen adaptation. The project will be directed by Reitman and is currently out to writers. For more information, read the full article here.

Alan Paul cut his teeth reporting on the Allman Brothers Band and other U.S. roots artists. The last thing he expected was to become a blues star in his own right. But that’s what happened when Paul—a former editor and current contributing writer to Guitar World—landed in Beijing, in 2005, after his wife accepted a job as China bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal. Once there, Paul met a local guitarist named Woodie Wu, with whom he formed the blues-rock band Woodie Alan, and promptly became a national sensation.

Paul recounts his adventures in Big in China, a new chronicle of his four-year experience in China and his evolution from stay-at-home dad to rising blues star. Published on March 1 from Harper, the book follows his group as it stumbles through its first gig, records an album, is named Beijing’s Best Band, and tours the country. Along the way, Paul discovers that, for all the apparent differences between U.S. and Chinese cultures, people have the same basic goals and desires. And he learns that like us, Chinese musicians just want to play a good gig, get the audience going, and dole out a few tasty licks.