Category: Showbiz Stories
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S2E7: Dirty Laundry
If you really want to know what’s happening on any film or TV set, the last people you should ask are the executives. We know nothing of value. We may have a pretty good fix on where the budget is, but we have no idea who’s sleeping with whom. Film and TV sets are emotionally […]
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I Wrote A Jerry Lee Lewis Movie That Shoulda Been Made
Rock ‘n roll icon Jerry Lee Lewis passed away yesterday. It always sucks when rock icons die; there aren’t many left from the original batch. Jerry Lee was especially iconic. In the early days of rock, Jerry Lee was the unabashed rule breaker. He was cocky, arrogant, almost fatally full of himself. But, that attitude […]
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“Nobody Knows Anything”
“Nobody knows anything” was screenwriting god William Goldman‘s terse, brutal, spot on assessment of how show business works. The people at the top of the food chain – the decision-makers – will insist that a combination of logic and personal insight rule their thinking. But, at the same time, they’ll insist that past results can’t […]
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I ALMOST Cast Donald Trump In Tales From The Crypt
Casting a movie or TV show is make or break. We all know what happens when an actor inhabits a role completely. Also we know what happens when an actor and a role conflict with each other. Example: casting Donald Trump as President Of The United States. Curious as a stunt, utterly pointless otherwise. In […]
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I’ve Loved Working With My Film-Making “Idols”
Man, have I been lucky! Not only did I get to have a “Hollywood career”, that career allowed me to work with people whose film work I adored. It’s a stone cold fact: I’ve loved working with my film making idols! Looking back at my TV-film writing-producing career, the fact that I had a career […]
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The Chicken Sushi Experience
You haven’t lived until you’ve tried chicken sushi (chicken sashimi actually but “sushi’s” a much funnier word). Or lived the chicken sushi experience. The “chicken sushi experience” has become my go-to metaphor for life experiences where it’s the second time around that hurts far more than the first. There’s a dark twist to this – […]
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Groucho Marx Inspires Me: An Ode To Groucho
Apropos of nothing, as I sat down to work this morning, a song popped into my head: Groucho Marx singing “Whatever It Is, I’m Against It” in the movie “Horse Feathers“. That song inspires me especially in these here times. How can it not? In fact, Groucho Marx inspires me. He always has. I wonder […]
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Republicans Are Like Movie Monsters But Waaaaaay More Evil
I’m no expert in movie monsters but I have put words into the mouths of a few. Over the course of my Hollywood writing-producing career, I’ve worked with a few name brand movie monsters: Freddy Krueger, He Who Walks Behind The Rows (The “Children Of The Corn” franchise) and especially the Crypt Keeper from HBO’s […]
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Republicans Are Like Movie Monsters – But Way More Evil
I can claim a certain “insider knowledge” where movie monsters are concerned. I’m no expert in them but I have put words in the mouths of a few name brand movie monsters: Freddy Krueger, He Who Walks Behind The Rows and the Crypt Keeper. In order to do that, I’ve had to get “intimate” with […]
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Shameless Pitch-O-Rama: Have You Checked Out The “How NOT To Make A Movie Podcast”? You Should!
If you’ve made this blog part of your ongoing online experience, you know that from time to time I like to tell a few show biz stories. Before losing nearly two decades to writer’s block and depression (the good news – I bounced!), I wrote and produced some pretty iconic TV shows including HBO’s “Tales […]