A retired actor and her director discuss the film that altered the course of their careers in this provocative new story by Ed Park, author of Personal Days. Barbara Lee Handbook (pronounced "Hanbok"), whom fans will know as Barbie Moran, the ‘80s bombshell and star of the cult sci-fi film Weird Menace, sits down with director Toner Low to discuss the making of the classic film—set on a distant planet featuring mutant attackers, cyber ladies of the 34th century, and no shortage of warring spaceships—for the Blue Ray edition in this absurdly funny and poignant meditation on art, legacy, and our ambivalence about the life choices that define us.
Author
I'm the author of the forthcoming novel SAME BED DIFFERENT DREAMS (November 2023). I started writing it in 2014, but the inspiration for parts of it reach even further back. I hope you like it. My first novel, PERSONAL DAYS (2008), was named a top 10 fiction book by Time Magazine and one of the decade's top 10 pop culture moments by The Atlantic. It was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Asian American Literary Award, and the John Sargent Sr. First Novel Prize. My story WEIRD MENACE is available as an Audible Original. A short story collection is forthcoming. What else? I'm a founding editor of THE BELIEVER, and I've written for The Atlantic, Harper's, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, and many other places. (Check out ed-park.com or https://linktr.ee/edpark for some recent pieces.) NB, I am *not* the author of THE WORLD OF THE OTTER, by the late nature writer Ed Park, but it's worth picking up if you see a copy (and like otters).
