Warren Adler's Blog, page 38

ROTTEN TOMATOES: THE WAR OF THE ROSES on “DANNY DEVITO’S 10 BEST MOVIES”

Warren Adler’s THE WAR OF THE ROSES makes the top 10 list for best movies by Danny DeVito. Let’s see where the sequel, THE WAR OF THE ROSES: THE CHILDREN, ends up when it hits the silver screen!

See the entire list here

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Uncle Don and Uncle Brian : Thoughts on Brian Williams

For some reason the strange saga of Brian Williams reminds me of another equally bizarre story concerning Uncle Don, who ran a popular radio show for kids on WOR in New York when I was a pre-schooler in the distant past.

I listened to Uncle Don religiously in those days. It was every mother’s choice of wholesome entertainment for kids circa 1930’s and my mom was no exception. Uncle Don sang songs and opened his program with a warm and cozy little ditty that went like this:

“This is Your Uncle Don. Hello nephews, nieces too,

Mothers and daddies, how are you?

This is Uncle Don all set to go,

With a meeting on the ra-di-o!”

Okay, so I had to google the exact words, but heck it’s been eight decades since I heard that tune. I do remember his cuddly voice. He would sing cute songs and announce kids’ birthdays; listening to Uncle Don was a standard routine for children about five or six.

What happened or did not happen to Uncle Don was this: One day in the mid-1930’s when his program was near the end, he spoke the following words into an open mike. “This should hold the little bastards.”

As the story goes, after that alleged remark, Uncle Don’s credibility went down the drain. Thousands of angry letters were supposedly sent to the station and according to apocryphal legend Uncle Don was summarily dismissed never to be heard from again. I always believed that story, but my recent sortie into google discredits it as one of those weird anecdotes that passes for truth over time.

Nevertheless, there is a lesson in it. For a guy who runs a kids show to display contempt for his audience is an unforgivable offense. Kids are very sensitive to deceit. The Brian Williams story follows along a similar path: For an allegedly respected newscaster to show contempt for his believing audience by offering self-aggrandizing lies is monstrously unforgivable. Credibility is his stock in trade.

Worse, he is operating in an electronic environment where there is little curation, that is chest deep in bullshit, false claims, self-serving propaganda, blatant bias and a Niagara of lies and deception. NBC has spent decades and much treasure promoting the integrity of its news program. It had no other choice than to excise Williams from its lineup. In my opinion, Brian’s so called six month suspension is likely to last forever.

Not that NBC is without sin. In its stable of owned outlets it offers cable and other internet sites that pursue an acknowledged biased line replete with the usual hurly burly of blather designed to pursue a specific agenda. Nevertheless in its proud ethically sacrosanct flagship news program it cannot maintain its integrity if its chief disseminator is an exposed liar.

Gone are the days when there were only three major on air networks who proudly competed for eyeballs by assuring the public that their news was painstakingly accurate, honest, and believable.

To be fair, those three surviving networks continue to try valiantly to maintain the culture of integrity, honesty, and neutrality that once gave heft to on air names like Murrow, Huntley, Brinkley, Cronkite and many, many others. Given the current menu of news outlets spawned by cable and the internet, one has to acknowledge their efforts to maintain that sterling tradition. Brian Williams, like Dan Rather before him, became spoilers of that effort and had to be eliminated. On balance one gives these old time networks a passing grade on their efforts, even as they work with a vastly diminished worldwide network of reporters.

The truth, and I use the “t” word with great trepidation, is that “just the facts” journalism seems to have completely vanished. The proliferating networks of cable news and internet news gatherers have opted, whether for profit or conviction, to take sides, making it increasingly difficult to get at the unvarnished no spin facts.

I’m not knocking their choices. In a passionately divided world they’re trying to get a piece of the money pie and their bias is blatant and up front. Unfortunately, to get at the real skinny, one must approach most so-called “news reports” that appear on those proliferating cable and internet programs with total skepticism, a jaundiced eye, and some knowledge and awareness of the issues – a tall order in our frenetic and overwhelming menu of fast moving events.

Those once exclusive news networks, meaning NBC, CBS and ABC appear to try for a reasonably accurate presentation although their political stance often feels like it is influenced by a gravitational pull from the left.

Another pervasive problem I have observed in today’s so called news operation is the byline, whether in print or video, which has over personalized journalism; the identity of the messenger who aspires to become a heroic journalist celebrity has become hostage to the alleged facts. It’s about me folks, my take, my interpretation, my spin, my political leaning, my style, my turn of phrase.

For the most part, these communicators are more concerned with attaining celebrity status by portraying themselves as honest brokers and wise interpreters of what passes for news. Many attain their reputation by exposing corrupt crooks, sexual predators and ruthless tyrants among the power elite.

There is a vast payoff in detective journalism, especially when it tears the mask off of the pretenders and the self-righteous. The payoff gets more and more lucrative as it travels up the line and fells the mighty oaks of politics, celebrities, the powerful and the super rich.

Notoriety has cash value. Just ask Woodward and Bernstein or Michael Moore and the vast array of profitable byliners who follow in their footsteps. At times it has a bizarre reverse effect, actually enhancing a clever and charming rogue who can wink at his mischief and restore a remarkable level of acceptance, if not respect. Bill Clinton is a prime example.

But on the other side of the coin is the pursuit of accurate, unbiased, objective reporting, the goings and comings of our contemporary world, the meaningful events, good and bad, that impact our lives, the crimes and wars and ideologies that threaten us, the inspirational and the horrifying, that require our knowledge and evaluation for us to arm our reason and help us navigate our increasingly complicated world.

It is essential that we search out and trust those who gather the news without biased adornments, hidden agendas and manipulative intent. Separating the truth from the background noise is hard enough without having to penetrate vast layers of distortions and egocentric ravings.

So let’s wave bye bye to the hapless Brian Williams. The bastards finally got his number.

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Warren Adler Teams With RosettaBooks for eBook Distribution

Catalog Includes 39 Reissues and 9 Unpublished Works

Best-Selling Author Warren Adler and Stonehouse Productions have teamed up with RosettaBooks for the eBook marketing and distribution of Adler’s entire catalog of novels, led by his masterpiece The War of the Roses.

“We are thrilled about our partnership with RosettaBooks and about bringing these terrific stories to new audiences,” said Jonathan Adler, President of Stonehouse Productions.

The first group of novels distributed to retailers worldwide includes his six bestsellers: The War of the Roses,The War of the Roses: The Children, Target Churchill, Cult, Trans-Siberian Express and American Quartet.

The War of the Roses, the relatable and ultimately realistic tale of divorce, is about a husband and wife, once seen as the perfect couple, plummeting into domestic warfare over their house, money, and extensive antique collection. It illuminates the relationship-shattering materialism, contempt and selfishness of husband and wife.

A box office and critical hit in 1989, The War of the Roses — starring Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner and Danny DeVito — garnered multiple awards and nominations internationally, including the Golden Globe, BAFTA and Berlinale. It was announced in August 2014 that The War of the Roses would be making its Broadway debut for the 2015-2016 season.

The War of the Roses: The Children is a hilarious sequel to the original iconic tale and is set to be adapted into a feature film.

Additional eBooks include the dark comedy, Mourning Glory, the story of an unemployed single mother who attends funerals of the wealthy in search of a rich husband, and the political thriller The Casanova Embrace, which intertwines international politics, corruption, and seduction into a tale that is at once plausible and unbelievable.

Adler’s newest psychological thriller, Treadmill, is the story of a man with nothing to lose and his unexpected journey into the mysterious underbelly of Washington.

Adler’s works have been translated into more than 25 languages. Like The War of the Roses, his books have been the source of many media uses, including Random Hearts starring Harrison Ford and Kristen Scott Thomas and The Sunset Gang, a book of short stories adapted into a PBS American Playhouse trilogy garnering Doris Roberts an Emmy nomination for ‘Best Supporting Actress in a Mini-Series.’

Adler has taught creative writing seminars at New York University, and has lectured on creative writing, film and television adaptation, and electronic publishing. He lives with his wife, Sunny, a former magazine editor, in Manhattan.

Click here for more details: http://www.rosettabooks.com/warren-adler-ebooks/

About RosettaBooks: RosettaBooks is the leading independent digital publisher. Its prominent author collections include 52 works of Winston Churchill, 35 titles by renowned science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke, 22 works by Kurt Vonnegut, 12 titles from international bestselling business author Stephen R. Covey and 18 works by Robert Graves, celebrated 20th century English poet, critic, and author of I, Claudius andClaudius, the God. RosettaBooks also publishes eBook lines in collaboration with AARP, Harvard Health Publications and Mayo Clinic. Publisher of ten Kindle Singles, including Ray Bradbury’s The Playground, RosettaBooks has launched nine of them to bestseller status. RosettaBooks is an Inc. 500 company, on the exclusive list of the fastest growing private companies in the United States. For more information, please visitRosettaBooks.com and follow the e-publisher on Facebook and Twitter.

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“Let’s Give Our Empty Pocket College Kids a Fighting Chance” featured on THE HUFFINGTON POST

“Let’s Give Our Empty Pocket College Kids a Fighting Chance” featured on THE HUFFINGTON POST

Read the entire article here

“I am viscerally offended by the fact that today’s students are stuck paying huge debts incurred getting a college degree. What kind of a country have we become where a college graduate with empty pockets starts their working life burdened with a debt that will take them decades to pay off?” Continue Reading…

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“Let’s Give Our Empty Pocket College Kids a Fighting Chance” featured on THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR

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“There is something inherently counterproductive in today’s student loan program. It hobbles the drive and ambition of students whose legacy will be empty pockets through no fault of their own. I’m not knocking the richer kids. Lucky them. Chances are that many of their parents encountered the same obstacles I did but at least they do not have the burdens of student debt to stand in their way…Continue Reading

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Let’s Give Our Empty Pocket College Kids a Fighting Chance

What kind of a country have we become where a college graduate with empty pockets starts their working life burdened with a debt that will take them decades to pay off? If there was ever a reason to defrock politicians, it is for their inherent inability to remove the needless barrier of debt that impedes the best and the brightest, the most ambitious and creative among the lesser financially endowed.

I am viscerally offended by the fact that today’s students are stuck paying huge debts incurred getting a college degree and I keep wondering if my experience six decades ago is relevant to what college graduates have to look forward to in today’s world.

My College Days: A Stroll Down Memory Lane

Although I graduated from Brooklyn Technical High School, which is one of the elite high schools in New York, my marks were not exactly stellar. I was rejected by most colleges until thankfully being admitted to New York University’s uptown campus when it was on University Avenue in the Bronx.

I entered NYU in January 1945 at the age of 18. WWII was still raging and I was in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps in preparation for my expected entry into the Army but the European War was over in April and the Japanese surrendered in August so I had just missed the call for additional troops. Given those circumstances, I opted to take an accelerated course with a heavy academic schedule, which allowed me to graduate early with a BA in English in the fall of 1947. My marks in Science and Language courses were borderline flunking, but I managed to squeak by. I loved my English Lit courses and did exceedingly well. Indeed, my freshman English Professor Don Wolfe inspired me to become a Novelist, for which I am, and will be, forever grateful, eternally (if there is an afterlife).

My family was hit hard by the Depression. My father was mostly out of a job, and when we were finally dispossessed by our landlords, we were taken in by my maternal grandparents whose sons–my uncles–had bought them a tiny house in Brownsville, Brooklyn. It became our family’s refuge during those hard years.

During my time in college, my father did have a modest job, although hardly enough to finance my education. I started to work at fourteen years old, which was, in those days, the age when one should get official working papers. It was a given that I would have to pay my own tuition and whatever other expenses were needed to sustain me through college.

That was perfectly fine with me. I did not think of it as a hardship. It was expected, and while I might have missed much of the intramural activities of college life because of it, I look back on those jobs as one of the great experiences of my life. It was what poor college students did. I felt no shame or depressive burden.

After my classes I would rush off to my various jobs, an activity which I was accustomed to. I worked at anything I could find. I was a bus boy, a survey-taker, a shoe salesman at Macy’s, a bar checker at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, a camp counselor, a candy packer at Abraham & Straus in Brooklyn, a counter man at a hole-in-the-wall cigar and candy store at 25 Broad Street, a waiter at the Goldman Hotel in New Jersey, a lifeguard, a babysitter, a janitor, a snow shoveler, anything that paid the going wage of fifty cents an hour. It was an accepted part of the American spirit of striving through adversity and the fact of the matter is, I was able to pay my tuition and expenses because the cost of a college education at that time was not nearly as astronomical as it is today.

If I had to carry a debt burden at that crucial time in my life, I would have been trapped into the slavish pursuit of paying off my debt; it would have been my first financial priority and would have crippled my ambition and future. Thankfully, I was debt-free and had the freedom to make upwardly mobile choices.

Post-Graduation

When I graduated in 1947 most good jobs were filled by returning veterans. I worked my butt off trying to find a job, but who the hell wanted to hire an English major? It was difficult running around New York City, sitting in employment agency offices, suffering rejection after rejection. It was downright discouraging, and I was angry as hell. I thought, I’m a college graduate, I deserve a job.

It is already hard enough for a young person with empty pockets to get started on the path to self-support and fulfillment and entering the labor market with a debilitating debt burden to top it off serves only to inhibit ones ambition and corrode the soul.

After college, the only job I was able to get was as a copyboy for the New York Daily News at $12.50 a week, the equivalent of $130.00 by today’s inflation rate, and an extra two bucks for working night shifts. Despite this, I felt lucky as hell to get that job. It marked the beginning of my career, a startup, to use a contemporary term.

Land of Opportunity?



It is disgraceful, shameful, elitist, and un-American to saddle our young people with astronomical amounts of debt they will likely spend half a lifetime (or more) trying to pay off.

We live in America, land of opportunity, fierce competition, innovation, imagination, ambition, risk-taking, resourcefulness, big dreams, big ideas, and big chances. Not everyone becomes a movie star or a billionaire and, as they say, wishing won’t make it so, but the least we can do is give our young people an education that is sustainable and affordable enough so that they can chase whatever dream they have.

We hear a lot about inequality these days. Dependency is the enemy of equality. It’s time our politicians and educators figured out a better way to nurture our young people and not handicap them. Feeding one’s mind with useful and productive skills and knowledge should not be burdened by such unnecessary debt constraints.

There is something inherently counter productive in today’s student loan program. It hobbles the drive and ambition of students whose legacy will be empty pockets through no fault of their own. I’m not knocking the richer kids. Lucky them. Chances are that many of their parents encountered the same obstacles I did but at least they do not have the burdens of student debt to stand in their way.

Upward mobility in America is like a horse race. Equalize the weight the horse has to carry and allow the race to commence – the joy of striving is an achievement in itself, win or lose.

You may also like Creativity Over Coinage: Why Making Money Is Never My Objective For Writing Literary Fiction

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PICK THE BRAIN FEATURES WARREN ADLER’S “CREATIVITY OVER COINAGE: WHY MAKING MONEY HAS NEVER MY MAIN OBJECTIVE FOR WRITING”

PICK THE BRAIN FEATURES WARREN ADLER’S “CREATIVITY OVER COINAGE: WHY MAKING MONEY HAS NEVER MY MAIN OBJECTIVE FOR WRITING”

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‘Funny Boys’ Movie in the Works with Julian McMahon (VARIETY Exclusive)

‘Funny Boys’ Movie in the Works with Julian McMahon (VARIETY Exclusive)

“Actor Julian McMahon and Charlie Loventhal are partnering with Grey Eagle Films on a movie adaption of Warren Adler’s novel “Funny Boys,” Variety has learned exclusively.

Paradigm will package the project. Adler is best known for the novel “The War of the Roses” which spawned the 1989 film and a play.

Set in the 1930s in Brooklyn and the Catskills, “Funny Boys” follows the story of a young man with a promising future in comedy who gets a gets a job as a “tummler” to entertain and host at a lavish hotel casino — only to discover that he’s become involved with mobsters.

McMahon’s credits include “Nip/Tuck,” “Charmed” and the first two “Fantastic Four” films as Doctor Doom. He’ll next be seen in Syfy’s “Childhood’s End” miniseries.

Adler’s “The War of the Roses: The Children,” the sequel to the 1989 film, is being co-produced by Grey Eagle’s Jonathan Robert Adler and David Permut of Permut Presentations.

Other Grey Eagle projects include “Target Churchill,” co-developed with Solution Entertainment Group; “Mourning Glory,” to be adapted by Karen Leigh Hopkins; and TV series “Capitol Crimes,” based on Adler’s Fiona FitzGerald mystery series, co-developed by Sennet Entertainment with Eric Overmyer as showrunner.”

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THENEEDS Features Warren Adler’s “Creativity Over Coinage: Why Making Money Is Never My Objective For Writing”

THENEEDS Features Warren Adler’s “Creativity Over Coinage: Why Making Money Is Never My Objective For Writing” 

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“Creativity Over Coinage: Why Making Money is Never My Objective For Writing” Featured on THE HUFFINGTON POST

Warren Adler’s “Creativity Over Coinage: Why Making Money Is Never My Objective For Writing” featured on

THE HUFFINGTON POST

Read the Full Article Here

 

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