 Portrait of the Artist As A Younger Man  New Book: The Manhattan Beach Project DAY JOB (AND OTHER) NEWSAfter four books with Random House and three with Simon & Schuster, I had decided it was time to publish with a company that is not just a division of a large multi-national corportation that puts out 500 books a year, and, instead, try a small, dedicated publisher for whom my book would be more important. With the cancelation of Macadam/ The book combines two areas of interest to me: Show business and France, where I lived part time in the 1980's. In this book, Charlie Berns returns but as only one of five major characters floating around Cannes, seriously jet lagged, trying to make things happen. The other major characters are a studio publicist representing a $165 millon bomb and eager to try out some of her recent cosmetic surgery around the pool of the Carlton; a gossip journalist trolling for a story (and, boy, does he ever find one); a young American intern at the American Pavilion who wants to be an agent and who networks her way through the festival; and a gay Catholic studio executive who finds himself involuntarily channeling Golda Meir. This action all plays out against the background of a major French labor dispute. I am confident that after this book is published, they'll never let me eat lunch in France again. I am doing my best to remain undaunted by these difficult economic times for writers and am going once more unto the breach. After all, that's what we writers do -- we write. Otherwise, it's forty hours a week on the golf course, a cruel and unusual fate. So I am six months into a new novel -- this one, perhaps a little more centered than my other books. It is the story of an immigrant Jewish-American family on Long Island, concentrating on five siblings born in the 1940's, tracing their lives, and the life of the family, over forty years, from the sixties to the present. It has been a strange adventure to tell such a sprawling story, and I'm still not sure how it will turn out or when it will be finished. At some point, I may have to take it out and shoot it if it shows signs of becoming "War and Peace." The Audio CD of "The Deal," as well as the DVD, read by the film's star, William H. Macy, is available, not to mention affordable. Buy it and hear Bill channel Charlie Berns. Instructions above. "The Deal: The Motion Picture" -- shot last Spring in Capetown, South Africa, with a cast consisting of William H. Macy (as Charlie), Meg Ryan (as Deidre), Jason Ritter (as Lionel), L.L. Cool J (as Bobby Mason) and Elliot Gould (as Rabbi Seth Guterman) -- had its world premiere at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and was unable to get a domestric ditributor, no longer an uncommon fate for independent features. I think it ran right into the teeth of the zeitgeist, this era when good distributors of independent movies are going out of business every day. Still, I think Bill Macy and Steve Schacter did a terrific job adapting the novel. Readers of the book will understand South Africa, where they shot the movie in 2007, doubling as Yugoslavia doubling as 19th century England. Makes perfect sense. Life imitates art. Other news: As has been reported here earlier, "The Dreyfus Affair" has been reoptioned, for the fifth time. A new script was written, and we are looking to put together the right package. Anyone with a few million in their pocket, please contact Ken Gross (KGMLA@ I think we must thank the critical and commercial success of "Brokeback Mountain," and, more recently, "Milk," for breaking through the conventional ignorance about audiences being reluctant to enter a movie theater if they think they may inadvertently see two guys kissing and about the notion that it is career suicide for a straight male actor to play a gay role. It appears to be just the opposite. Scripts were piling up on the desk of the agents representing the late Heath Ledger and are still piling up on the desks of those representing Jake Gyllenhal. So thank you, Focus Films, James Schamus, Ang Lee, Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, Sean Penn, Gus Van Sant and everyone else involved in "Brokeback" and "Milk" for having the courage to put your money behind a good story. Let's hope that in the future, all good stories, gay, straight, or zigzag, will be considered material for films. In the less than good news dept... Buena Vista Home Video continues to postpone the scheduled release of the DVD of Season One of "Beggars & Choosers" indefinitely. I had reported here earlier that we had done DVD commentary on some episodes and that BVHV has slated the release for January. I will continue to pester them to release the DVD's, but as we know, the DVD market for TV episodes is both a little saturated and a little soft at the moment: those shelves at Target are sagging under the weight of unsold episodes of old TV shows. So we have to wait until someone deems it financially advantageous to spend the money to release the DVD's. If you'd like to try to help get them out of captivity in Burbank, you can write to: Buena Vista Home Video, 3900 W. Alameda, Burbank, CA 91505 and badger them. Tell them that you had been planning on ordering a dozen of them for Martin Luther King or President's Day. However, the DVD of that old chestnut I worked on (and won an Emmy for), "Cagney & Lacey," was released in April. They sent a film crew to my office last summer, and I did some nostalgic commentary that appears on the DVD. I am a talking head among others, creating a montage of the nostalgia of all of us who worked on the show twenty years ago. Other screenwriting developments: the noted producer Fred Roos ("Apocalypse Now," "The Virgin Suicides," "Lost in Translation," among many others, has joined Ivan and Phyllis Green in trying to get my adaptation of "Eleven Karens" to the screen. If you have a few million lying around or some brilliant casting suggestions (or if you are Gwynneth Paltrow and would like the opporunity to play all eleven Karens), please contact Fred at the offices of FM Productions (310 470-9212. My adaptation of "The Woody" remains with Andrew Lang Productions in New York waiting for casting and financing. We have a script that needs very minor tweaking in the face of recent political developments in this country. And, last but not least, "The Manhattan Beach Project," nominally a sequel to "The Deal" remains available. Anybody interested, call Ken Gross (323 512-2999). |
WELCOMEHaving this website has proven to be more than just a way of promoting my books. It has brought me back into contact with people whom I hadn't heard from in years: Old friends from New York, from Vermont, from Cleveland, from Paris, from the Peace Corps, from Togo, from Quebec, and from people I have worked with in my various incarnations in Hollywood. The collateral damage is that I am now a target for the very small group of people whom I don't want to hear from: people I owe money to, the attorneys of people who think I've libelled them in my books, people who have misconstrued my dark sense of humor. You know who you are. My apologies. Please don't sue. I have no lawyer on retainer. Meanwhile, I'd like to make some specific public apologies to the people I have injured over the years, at least those whom I can remember: Bob Zimmerman, I'm sorry that I didn't think you had any talent and called you a "Road company Woody Guthrie" when you came to play a gig at the Cafe San Remo in Schenectady, New York, in the winter of 1962. Karen B, I am sorry about that night in August of 1966 on the Staten Island Ferry. I was very drunk. Vladimir F, I didn't really have a flush in that big pot you folded out of in the game at your apartment in Quebec City in 1971. I had a pair of threes. I thought that after all these years you could handle it. Jean Pierre S., Je suis desole que j'ai vole les 40 francs de ta porte feuille rue des Francs Bourgeois a Paris environ 1978. J'etais fauche et je crevais de faim. Si tu veux, je te les remettrai. To the cabbie in the immaculate Checker in New York, circa 1980. Sorry about barfing in the back seat of your cab. I'd had the house red along with an undercooked shrimp scampi at a soon-to-be-condemned Sicilian restaurant on Ninth Avenue trying to impress a woman who had no intention of going home with me anyway. Joan Collins, I'm sorry I refused to write more dialogue for you in 1986 when we were filming "Monte Carlo" in the south of France and you told me that you were the star and wanted more lines. You had to bring Leslie Bricuse over from London to punch up your scenes. I'm sure that was humiliating. To Patricia R., my exwife's divorce lawyer: I regret calling you a parasite in the corridor outside the courtroom of the Los Angeles Superior Court in 1992, where you were taking me to the cleaners. Like Adolf Eichmann, you were only following orders. To Kato Kaelin: I'm sorry for writing your role as Brian Kerwin's poolboy out of "Beggars & Choosers," but we needed the money to hire Ivana Trump. |
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