Author Archive

“Even the smallest voice can be heard by millions.” Jay Z Around 10:30 last night this blog hit a plateau that honesty wasn’t even close to being on my radar when I started this blog in 2008—one million all-time views. (And I don’t even know who the person was who hit the magic number.) Now […]

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Well, the wind is blowin’ harder now Fifty knots or there abouts, There’s white caps on the ocean. And I’m watching for water spouts Jimmy Buffett/Trying to Reason with Hurricane Season As I type this post, residents here in Florida are waiting for a hurricane to make landfall in the state for the first time […]

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“In life I wasn’t funny. I felt on stage or in movies I could do whatever I wanted. I was free.” Gene Wilder It’s hard to write something about Gene Wilder that hasn’t been written since he passed away two years ago. But I’d like to touch on his Midwestern roots and how he found […]

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“Always and consciously, I try to hook the audience in the first five minutes. I want them right from the start to feel something—BOOM! I want an explosion right at the beginning. I always what that.” Writer/actor Gene Wilder (Young Frankenstein) Between playwright Tennessee Williams and screenwriter Diablo Cody graduating from the University of Iowa […]

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On the way to becoming an Oscar Award winning screenwriter, Murray Schisgal served in the military during World War II, was a medicore musician (but good enough to be in a band), a failed novelist, a bored lawyer, and a part-time teacher before finding the seeds of success in having some one-act plays produced off-Broadway. […]

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The writer that probably first comes to mind when you think about the modern classic film Tootsie is Larry Gilbert. But the co-writer of the script was Murray Schisgal. The Oscar and Tony-nominated Schisgal was born in Brooklyn and turns 90 in November. He had his Broadway debut in 1965 with a play he’d written called […]

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“Be so good they can’t ignore you.” Steve Martin Getting an agent is easy. The actual process I mean;  Script read. Phone call made. After you written a screenplay that captures the attention of someone influential in the film business. (BTW-That’s the hard part. The part that took Oscar winning screenwriter  Michael Arndt ten years […]

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Jamaica’s six gold medals at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games matched what its athletes did at the 2008 Beijing Games. That made me think of a post I wrote in 2008 on Jamaica and I thought it was worth reposting today as a reminder of how small places foster talent that can perform on a […]

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The 2016 Rio Olympics closing ceremony ended yesterday with many memorable moments over the past two weeks including three more gold medals for Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt. So I thought it would be fitting to re-post what I wrote about Bolt after he won three gold medals four years ago: “I would say I’m the […]

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“To do any kind of creative work well, you have to run at stuff knowing that it’s usually going to fail. You have to take that into account and you have to make peace with it. We spend a lot of money and time on stuff that goes nowhere. It’s not unusual for us to […]

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