In a sad bit of irony, playwright Harold Pinter died a few days ago. If you've seen Synecdoche, New York or read the script, you'll know that Caden Cotard spots a newspaper article about Pinter and mistakenly believes Pinter died - when actually the article is about his Nobel Prize.

Harold Pinter was speaking to the press just after receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005. "I was told today that one of the Sky channels [the satellite news network owned by Rupert Murdoch] said this morning that Harold Pinter is dead.' Then they changed their mind and said, 'No, he's won the Nobel prize.' So I've risen from the dead."

This true-life joke is repeated in Charlie Kaufman's film about a madly ambitious theater man, Synecdoche, New York. So people have been anticipating the death of one of the 20th century's most revered and mysterious playwrights — the near equal to his fellow Nobelist Samuel Beckett, with plays that achieved far more commercial success than Beckett's — for quite some time. Now they can stop. Pinter, who had long been ailing from cancer, died on Christmas Eve, at 78. (Source)

Lots of folks emailed about this. I was busy indulging in Christmas Merriment. Hope you guys have all been having a good one, too, whatever you're doing!