Sean Paul Murphy, Writer

Sean Paul Murphy, Writer
Sean Paul Murphy, Storyteller

Thursday, November 30, 2017

Writer Tip #17: Attaching Talent

Linda Blair

A couple of years ago, a screenwriter friend of mine called me and said he had attached Linda Blair, of The Exorcist fame, to his script. I feigned enthusiasm and resisted the urge to roll my eyes. No offense to Ms. Blair, whom I do respect, but I didn't see how my friend could benefit from attaching her to his script. He wanted to make a theatrical film, and Linda Blair hadn't starred in a theatrical film since 1990's Repossessed. She didn't have the box office appeal to help get his movie made.

Don't get me wrong.  As I said in my earlier blog, Who's In It?, I believe getting "names" for your film is one of the biggest keys to success, particularly in this difficult environment. However, not all "names" are created equal. The truth of the matter is that most actors, like everyone else, want to work. They have mortgages and car payments, just like us lesser mortals.  Most of them would be happy to appear in your film, unless they feel it will damage their reputation, if you can meet their day rate and pay their travel expenses. Attaching well-known working actors does not necessarily validate the quality of your script or your talent as a writer.

If you are looking to sell your script, rather than produce the film yourself, there is no point attaching actors to the project unless they can take it to the next level. If you are invited to hand your script to Jennifer Lawrence or Dwayne Johnson or Melissa McCarthy or Denzel Washington, do not hesitate for a second. Go for it. If they are willing to champion it, chances are you have a movie. That said, there's no point attaching Gary Busey or Gunnar Hansen at the spec stage if you envision your film as a summer theatrical release.

Another screenwriter I know recently attached a reality star, well-known in faith-based circles, to her script. She thought it was a real coup because her script got some reads afterwards. But she got no offers at the level she desired. I asked her if she thought the response would have been different if she had attached Jennifer Garner instead. The answer was obvious. However, she will never get Jennifer Garner. That role has already been taken in the eyes of the production companies to which she submitted the script.

Here's the truth. If your script is good, the agents and producers who read it will imagine it with the biggest names in the business in the lead roles. Additionally, they have greater access to those actors than you do. And they can get them, too. Conversely, when you send them a query letter about your script with the exciting news that you've already attached Linda Blair for the lead role, they know it is a straight to streaming project at best. They will not be interested in reading your script because they will not see how Linda Blair can put money in their pockets.

Don't put limitations on your script!

There's another reason not to do it. Over the course of my career, I have worked with a number of wonderful actors and actresses. I look forward to working with them again. I can certainly see some of them playing characters in my current work. However, I would never think of calling and attaching them to the scripts. Why? Because, ultimately, the people who bring the financing make the casting decisions. How am I going to look when I promise someone a role and the production company picks someone else instead? I do not want to be that guy. You shouldn't either.

If you love Linda Blair, and who doesn't, you can always offer her for a nice supporting role after the producers snag Scarlett Johansson for the lead.

(Once again, when you're producing the film yourself it is a different matter entirely. Now, I am just talking to my fellow writers.)

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Monday, November 27, 2017

THE PROMISE - Chapter 3

Over the next couple of weeks, I will be offering a taste of my memoir, The Promise, or the Pros and Cons of Talking with God, published by TouchPoint Press, here on my blog. It is my true story of first faith and first love and how the two became almost fatally intertwined. Keep checking back for additional chapters.



3 - Childhood

I WAS BORN ON DECEMBER 28, 1960.

I was the second child of Douglas Ernest Murphy, Sr., and Clara Marie Protani. Not only was I their second child, I was their second child born that year.

My older brother Douglas was born in February, and, in a sense, he was very much to blame for my early debut in 1960. I was a little premature. My mother went into labor after Dougie accidentally pulled the Christmas tree down on her.

At the time of my birth, my father was nineteen year old. My mother was seventeen. They were married on August 29, 1959. Dougie appeared six months later. ‘Nuff said?

My two doomed siblings followed. Laura Lee Murphy was born on September 16, 1962, and Mark Brendan Murphy followed her on February 26, 1964. There was no hint in their happy childhood faces of the depression and madness that would later drive them to self- destruction. My sister Jeanne Kathleen Murphy rounded out the original quintet in 1965. My kid brother, John Christian Murphy, was the “oops” child. He would be born nearly a decade later in 1975 after the family moved to the larger house on St. Helens Avenue. He wasn’t part of the raucous chaos that echoed off the walls of that small house on Hamlet Avenue.

My father Douglas attended the University of Baltimore and worked part-time as a clerk for the Social Security Administration at the time of my birth. In 1966, he graduated Magna Cum Laude with a Law degree. He never practiced. He never even attempted to take the bar exam. He had already found his true life’s calling as a computer programmer for the Social Security Administration. I would hear his genius touted by friends, family and total strangers alike over the years. He won many awards and commendations during his long government service, and turned down many lucrative opportunities in the private sector. He loved working for SSA. He shared his passion with three of his brothers, Richard, Brian and Kevin, as well as his brother-in-law, Tony, who all joined him at Social Security as computer programmers or systems analysts of one variety or another. I nearly followed him there myself.

My father was a lifer. Decades later, even after falling into a permanent alcoholic depression following the deaths of two of his children, he remained a valuable resource at work. My uncles said my father operated in such rarified air that even when intoxicated, he was sharper than most programmers at their prime. The difficulty was finding problems that stirred his dormant interest. I remember watching a television documentary about computer languages with him near the end of his life. The narrator said computer languages were developed because people couldn’t read the series of ones and zeros that computers operated on. “Idiots,” my father angrily intoned. I don’t doubt he could read the zeros and ones.

My mother was full-time mom until the nineteen eighties. Having five kids in five years certainly kept her hands full. We had a loud family. Lots of screaming. Lots of yelling. Lots of running around. Lots of activity. The squeaky wheel definitely got the grease. A quiet kid was by definition a good kid. Sometimes the way to get lost was in a crowd.

Our family took weekend road trips to every historical site within a hundred mile radius like Fort McHenry, Harper’s Ferry and various Civil War battlefields. We spent one week every summer at Ocean City, and later went on raucous white water rafting expeditions to the Youghiogheny River accompanied by eighty Social Security workers, family members and, on occasion, crazy outlaw bikers.

I liked being a Murphy kid. We were rambunctious and constantly fighting among ourselves – except when faced with an outside threat. Then we were a team. We were not a touchy-feely family of hugs and kisses. We weren’t always saying “I love you,” but I honestly always felt loved and secure. We were also allowed to be our authentic selves. Our parents did not press upon us rigid patterns to which we were compelled to conform, like it or not.

I was a scrawny little kid. I had thick brown hair, which started out somewhat light but grew darker over the years, and hazel eyes. I was extremely thin. I doubt I was five-foot anything by the time I graduated. I had large ears, accented by the crew cuts inflicted on me in my youth. No hippies in our house! However, my most distinctive feature was my large nose. Dougie, the official dispenser of Murphy nicknames, dubbed me Rubbernose. Fortunately, few followed his lead. Still, it would be years before the rest of my face finally caught up with my notable proboscis.

Life was good. Life was happy. I had lots of friends and enjoyed playing all the traditional outdoor games of the time. But I was equally, if not more comfortable playing all on my own or watching television. Not surprisingly for someone who would become a professional screenwriter, my favorite place was the Arcade Theater near the corner of Harford Road and Hamilton Avenue. I was still very young when my mother, anxious to get any of her children out of her hair for a few hours, started letting me go alone. I loved walking into the theater on a bright afternoon and staying until it was dark outside. That always made it feel like the world changed while I was at the movies. Start times really didn’t matter back then. You came when you came. If you missed the beginning of a film, you just stayed and watched it again. If the movie was good, you could watch it a third time.

Movie going was a perfect hobby for a Rosenberger disposition. It allowed you to sit back and observe in comfortable silence rather than actually participate. The quintessential Rosenberger hobby of the previous generation was fishing. Fishing allowed you to go out and spend time with your buddies in silence. The only things that opened up on those trips were beer cans.

I was very cognizant of my tendency to remain alone. And it scared me.

I clearly remember sitting alone on the landing of the stairs to our dank basement, which served as both bedroom and bathroom to our untrained dog Zeus, thinking I would never get married. I knew I would never be able to express my true feelings to anyone. I couldn’t have been more than ten or twelve years old at the time. Who sits around thinking things like that at that age? Maybe a lot of people. Not that I’d ever have known. I would have never dreamed of discussing it with anyone. Not at home. Not at school either.

My siblings and I attended St. Dominic Elementary School. Although my brother Douglas and I had attended kindergarten together, I was held back a year before entering first grade. The school had a strict policy of not allowing siblings to start school in the same grade unless they were actual twins. “Irish twins” like Dougie and myself were out of luck. Actually, I was the one who was out of luck. I had to repeat kindergarten while he moved over to St. D.

It isn’t particularly surprising my parents decided to send their children to parochial school. Both sides of my mother’s family were Catholic. She, like her mother and grandmother before her, attended St. Wenceslas Elementary School before she eventually jumped ship for the public Mergenthaler Vocational-Technical High School. Things were a little more complicated on the Murphy side of the family. My paternal grandfather, Paul James Murphy, Sr., was very Catholic but his wife, Margaret Angie Robertson, was extremely Presbyterian. They had to marry in secret to avoid the wrath of Margaret’s parents, but the question remained how to raise the children. The first three boys, Paul, Jr., Douglas and Richard were baptized Catholic, but Margaret balked after her daughter Carol was born.

The pastor of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church often thundered dire warnings at my grandmother Margaret about the eternal fate of her unbaptized daughter whenever he saw her on the streets of their hometown of Dunmore, Pennsylvania. Margaret refused to relent. A compromise was reached. The boys would be baptized and raised Catholic while the girls would be predestined to follow their mother into the Presbyterian Church. Peace was restored, and the deal held as Brian and Sharon were born. Margaret reneged at the birth of her last son Kevin. She wanted her baby to go to church with her, so Kevin was raised Presbyterian like his sisters.

My father Doug wasn’t much of a churchgoer and had very little to say on the subject. Early during my childhood, I remember him going to church on the major holidays like Christmas and Easter, but rarely on any other occasions. Before long, he was generally absent on the holidays. Sunday was reserved for the Murphy Football League – a group of family and friends from Social Security who played touch football on the field at Northern High School. My mother Clara was an avid churchgoer, and managed to get us kids up and dressed to go with her most of the time. I was just grateful she didn’t dress us all up in the same clothes and make us sit in a pew in order of height like Mrs. Mazziott did with her equal-sized brood.

When my mother couldn’t attend church, she would send Dougie and me there on our own. We were instructed to bring home a church bulletin as proof of our attendance. Dougie would sneak into the back of the church, grab a bulletin, and then we would have a free morning. I didn’t feel particularly guilty about skipping church. I was too young to get anything out of the mass. Especially when said in Latin. But I was always a believer.

I always had an innate belief that God existed, and that He heard my prayers. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t believe that. I can’t say I was always completely orthodox in my theology when I was a child and a pre-teen. I had an inquisitive mind, and I wondered frequently about the nature of God. Not His attributes. I had more practical concerns like: What is spirit? What is God made of? How big was God? Was He the same size as the universe or was He larger? Could God possibly be a manifestation of our combined, human consciousness? I contemplated the nature of eternity. The Trinity. And, yes, I must admit I sometimes got caught up in the kooky theories of the day. My mother laughed when I came home and announced that we could throw away the Bible after I saw Chariots of the Gods, a pseudo-documentary about how ancients worshipped aliens, based on the kooky Erich Van Daniken book of the same name. There were, however, a few tenets of faith that I never doubted: God existed, He had a personality, and He took an active and compassionate interest in His children. That was all I needed to know at the time.

In my own childish ways, I was debating and examining the issues that troubled philosophers and theologians for centuries, and I was answering them to my satisfaction without any outside help. I would have never dreamed of discussing these issues with one of the priests or nuns. I was very Rosenbergian about my faith. I found my faith to be too private to discuss with others. Still, I took all of the rituals of the Roman Catholic faith very seriously and very thoughtfully. I never thought of rebelling, and I couldn’t have done so even if I had the desire. I was going to Catholic school. The rituals were part of our curriculum. I was, however, never an altar boy. Why? No one asked me.


I loved going to Saint Dominic Elementary School. There were about 104 children, give or take a few, depending on the year, in the class of 1975. They were neighborhood kids. I’d already been out playing on the streets with many of them before we were old enough for school. Since Hamilton was a working/middle class neighborhood, there were few socio-economic distinctions between us, or even between us and the kids who went to public schools. In other words, we were us.

In the summer of 1973, my family moved about a half a mile away to 21 St. Helens Avenue. The beautiful, five-bedroom Victorian home sat on top of the second highest hill in the city, 360 feet above sea level. Baltimore was spread out before us like a glorious panorama. You could see everything from the skyscrapers downtown in the Inner Harbor to the smokestacks of the steel mills in Sparrows Point. The house was close enough to Morgan State University to hear its marching band practice on a quiet night. Sometimes you could even hear the crowd roar during an exciting Oriole baseball game at old Memorial Stadium on 33rd Street.

The new house was definitely an upgrade over our small, three- bedroom home on Hamlet Avenue. Although my parents initially assigned us three boys to a single large bedroom on the second floor, Dougie and I both staked out separate bedrooms in the comfortable attic. I got the larger room in the back of the house with a fabulous view of Baltimore city. Dougie got the smaller room in the front with an unhindered view across the street into the bedrooms of the nubile Luzerne sisters. That poor family. Seems they could never afford to put curtains on the girls’ windows.

The seventh and eighth grades were the apogee of my childhood. No bullies. No enemies. I liked everybody, and everybody liked me. The move brought a new friend into my inner circle. Jim Jackson was a year ahead of me in school, but we became fast friends. The boys and I had some great summers. If we had a leader, it was Charlie Woods, a handsome, charismatic blond kid with an easy smile and a great sense of humor. Guys liked him. Girls liked him. Parents liked him. He was also trouble. Serious trouble. But not yet, not during those innocent summers.

My new house became the summer daytime hangout. Garrett Heights Elementary School was located only a few houses away. We played baseball on its green fields every afternoon. During our first year of play, we’d count it as a homerun if anyone hit the ball over the fence separating the field from the parking lot. By the second year, we were all bigger and downgraded the feat to a mere double.

The nights our parents would let us camp out in the backyard, we’d devote ourselves to pool hopping. First, we’d record about an hour of conversation on a cassette player. We’d rewind the tape and press play for the benefit of any eavesdropping parent. Then we’d slip out for our nocturnal pursuits. There were plenty of pools, mostly above ground, in Hamilton and we were intent on swimming in them all, uninvited, of course. In one night alone we visited twenty-six of them. The biggest prize was the Mazziott family’s large in-ground pool. Not because it was the best pool in the neighborhood, though it probably was. It was prized because the Mazziotts constantly boasted how no one would dare pool hop them. They had lights, horns and BB guns at the ready.

We did it. Piece of cake. I think we even knocked over some garbage cans on the way out to alert the family of our conquest. Those were great summers. The whole world seemed to smell of mowed grass and honeysuckle.

Around that time I started noticing girls. I developed my first true heart-pounding crush on a girl named Jennifer Poskocil. She was the first girl I felt I could talk to, and I did. It was a great feeling. Still, I never even attempted to ask her out on a date despite the fact that some of our more precocious classmates were already dating. That was beyond the realm of my possibilities. Not that I would have known what to do with her anyway. We did have sex education in the sixth grade. However, Sister Margaret, our instructor, as well versed as she might have been in the subject, didn’t necessarily make it sound like anything in which anyone would want to willingly participate.

Curley Freshman

In 1975, I left the world of girls and started attending the all-male Archbishop Curley High School. Entry into high school broke up my familiar gang on a day-to-day basis. Among my closest friends, only Jim Jackson attended the school with me. Bob Burgess, my best friend since kindergarten, went to our cross-town rival, Calvert Hall, and Charlie Woods attended the co-ed Towson Catholic. Lucky dog!

Jim’s older brothers drove, and I had an open invitation to ride to school with them in their green Volkswagen van every day. I only took them up on the offer a few times. Once again, I don’t know why. Perhaps I didn’t want to feel dependent on anyone else. Perhaps I valued my privacy. Perhaps I was just being a Rosenberger. But instead of comfortably driving in with them every day, I dutifully walked down the hill and threw myself on the mercy of the mass transit system.

I was the second shortest kid at St. D. Fortunately, the same kid who spared me the unhappy distinction of being the shortest also joined me at Curley. However, my diminutive height still made me an immediate target of the seniors. It did no good to point out there was someone even smaller they could pick on. If the seniors caught you near the back parking lot door, and there were no teachers around, you could expect to be thrown into the school dumpster or under the grating where they kept the boilers. If they caught you in the cafeteria with no teachers around, you could expect to be thrown into one of the garbage cans. No big deal. Nothing personal. It was just one of the perks of being a senior, and one of the drawbacks of being a freshman.

They never got me. Never.

Sometimes as many as a half a dozen seniors would try to grab me and throw me into the dumpster. The emphasis was on the word try. I might’ve been little, but once I got both of my arms and legs going, I was impossible to hold – and a clear and present danger to my tormentors’ reproductive organs. There was only one problem. The more you escaped, the greater challenge your eventual capture became. Things finally came to a head one afternoon when a teacher took about ten of my fellow freshmen and myself to the cafeteria for some reason and told us to wait for him. He left with about thirty seniors sitting at the other side of the room.

The seniors gazed at us with the same affection that a pride of lions gazes at a herd of gazelle. Everyone was sweating. Would they come for all of us? Or just one? The herd emitted a sigh of relief when it became clear they were only going to come for one of us. Me.

Five seniors raced toward me to finally put me in my place, which they concluded was one of the large blue plastic garbage cans. They chased me around the tables and through the empty kitchen to the laughter of their colleagues. Twice they got me. Twice I managed to wiggle free before they got me into one of the trashcans. Finally, a big senior came over and ended the game. As my tormentors went back to their table, the big senior put twenty dollars into my hands. He said he and his friends had bet the other seniors that they wouldn’t be able to get me. They won their bet, and he wanted to share some of the winnings with me. I never had a problem with the seniors after that day.

Still, I had problems making real friends at Curley. It wasn’t a lack of good guys. The problem was a lack of transportation. Nobody drove during our freshman and sophomore years, and most of the guys I hung out with at school lived in exotic, faraway neighborhoods like Dundalk and Highlandtown. Call me asocial, but there was no way I was going to take two or three buses to hang out with new friends on a weekend or during the summer when I could hang out with my old neighborhood friends. I only rarely took the bus to Curley itself during off hours for activities like dances, plays or sporting events.

I also despised the immense pressure I felt to join a self-defining clique. Tribalism started raising its ugly head almost immediately. Perhaps I would have been less annoyed if I knew what clique I belonged in. I didn’t. I did, however, know which ones I didn’t belong to. I wasn’t a motorhead or a stoner or an athlete. I wasn’t a musician or a brain or one of the kids aiming for the priesthood. I certainly didn’t consider myself a nerd. In the end, I became a member of the default clique: The Alphabetical One.

We were never permitted to pick our own seats in classes. The instructors always seated us in alphabetical order. As a result, most of my friends had last names with letters starting from L-to-P. There were others, of course, but most of my friendships were born of simple alphabetical proximity. I honestly believe if my last name had been Batemen instead of Murphy, I would have ended up with an entirely different group of friends.

As the years passed, I did find myself gravitating toward the kids with a more literary bent. My natural desire to write was enhanced by the encouragement I received from my English teacher, Mr. Jones. He made us write essays practically every night, and he would call out my name for me to start reading mine before he even sat down behind his desk. My essays were always a hit.

I would write for the literary magazine and the school newspaper and got in a little trouble as a result. Once I wrote an advice column. I supplied both the goofy questions and the sarcastic responses. My trouble began when I gave the phony letter writer’s initials. A guy even nerdier than I, if such a thing were possible, was highly incensed that I used his initials for a sexually embarrassing letter. He wanted to fight me. I had to laugh. I couldn’t fight him. If we were gladiators in the arena in ancient Rome, our battle would simply serve as comic relief before they brought on the real combatants. Instead, I apologized profusely. I may have many faults, but I do possess the ability to admit it when I am wrong.

Despite the many diversions high school offered, I felt increasingly isolated. When I think back on those days, I picture myself as a loner;; completely anonymous, but it wasn’t true at all. I was actually somewhat popular. I was elected freshman class president. I mainly credit that achievement to block voting by my large and loyal St. D. contingent and the fact that I was such a goofball that everyone in the class recognized me. Still, later during my senior year, when the natural leaders of the student body had already emerged, I was elected once again to the student counsel.

I wasn’t a loner. I wasn’t anonymous. Not really. I just felt that way.

Other Chapters:
Chapter 1 - A Photograph
Chapter 2 - My Death
Chapter 3 - Childhood
Chapter 4 - Saved!
Chapter 5 - The Promise
Chapter 6 - The Mission
Chapter 7 - Mission Accomplished

You can get a copy of the whole book here:


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Saturday, November 25, 2017

My 5 Favorite Westerns

Drawing by Rita Rosenberger Protani Pollock

Alas, the poor Western. It was once one of the most sturdy and reliable genres. My grandmother Rita always fondly recalls how she and her parents always went to see westerns every week during the depression. Randolph Scott was their favorite star. Sadly, the genre gradually died a slow death at the box office during the late 'sixties and early 'seventies.

Critics say that westerns fell out of favor because they were too morally simplistic for the increasingly sophisticated audiences. I disagree. As my list below shows, westerns could be just as morally sophisticated as the other dramas and action films of the period.  Instead, I would propose that westerns fell out of favor because the emerging directors of New Hollywood, i.e., Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Brian DePalma, William Friedkin, Hal Ashby, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, had neither the proper feel or inclination to make westerns. When the top filmmakers abandon a genre, it withers. I believe the box office shows that a good western still brings in an audience.

Here's my list of (mostly) good westerns.*

SPOILERS - SPOILERS - SPOILERS



(5). They Call Me Trinity (Lo chiamavano Trinta). 1970
Written and Directed by Enzo Barboni

A good-natured drifter named Trinity, who has quite a way with a gun, wanders into a town torn by a range war between a rancher and a religious sect of farmers. Trinity is surprised to find his estranged older brother, Bambino, a recent prison escapee, masquerading as the sheriff while he waits for his gang of rustlers. Trinity manages to convince his gruff brother to come to the aid of the farmers.

Originally, this post was about my ten favorite Westerns, but I was too busy revising my novel to deal with ten films.  On that list, this film was originally number ten, behind McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Red River, The Long Riders, The Magnificent Seven and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. All five of those films are objectively better than They Call Me Trinity. So why is this western spoof on this list?

First, it is a sentimental favorite. I saw this film often at my neighborhood theater, The Arcade, during my youth, often in conjunction with its sequel. Secondly, late at night when I'm in the mood for a western, this tends to be the DVD I throw into the player. (No Blu-Ray available yet.) Why? I really enjoy the chemistry between Terence Hill's easy-going Trinity and Bud Spencer's gruff Bambino. The film is not consistently funny, but the tone remains enjoyably, goofy throughout.

Hill and Spencer would be teamed in many films, but never to this effect. Terence Hill would also play a little more ambitious variation of the Trinity character in the 1973 film My Name Is Nobody, also starring Henry Fonda. I recommend that film as well.

(Some other guilty Western pleasures from my "Arcade" period include Big Jake, 1971, starring John Wayne and Richard Boone, Bandolero!, 1968, starring James Stewart and Dean Martin; 5 Card Stud, 1968, starring Dean Martin and Robert Mitchum; Chisum, 1970, starring John Wayne and Forrest Tucker, and The Train Robbers, 1973, starring John Wayne and Ann-Margaret.)



(4). The Wild Bunch. 1969
Director Sam Peckinpah/Writers Sam Peckinpah & Walon Green
Story by Walon Green and Roy N. Sickner

An aging band of outlaws take one last job, stealing guns from the U.S. Army for a Mexican general, in this masterful western about the end of the west. This film is director Sam Peckinpah's true classic. It is a perfect mix of director, script, timing, and ultimately, casting. Since this is a film about men, Peckinpah's trademarked misogyny is less pronounced than in many of his other films, and he never had a better canvas for his explicit yet poetic violence. It is, in some ways, an exploration of the nature of violence, and how it is handed from one generation to another as symbolized by the American children who replay the violent bank robbery in the bloody street, and the young Mexican boy who joyfully watches the battle at the side of the Mexican general Mapache.

The script is wonderfully understated. It's truest and most brilliant moment comes when William Holden's character makes his suicidal decision to rescue his tortured comrade. He simply says, "Let's go." No speeches. No explanations. There is a certain grandeur in the simplicity of that moment. The timing of the film was important in two ways. This film was one of the first to be edited with tape rather than glue, and that innovation in and of itself made it much easier to edit. That, in no small part, can be credited for the frenetic cutting of the gun battles. The editing of this film was tremendously influential. Also, the film was relevant in terms of theme during the Vietnam era. Many saw this violent tale of armed Americans interfering in a third world civil war highly-symbolic of America's bloody loss of innocence. Still, despite any real or implied meaning, the film would be irrelevant if it didn't work. And it does – thanks in no small part to the excellent cast led by William Holden.

William Holden is truly stunning as Bishop Pike, the aging, disillusioned leader of the gang. He is a great actor, too little acknowledged today, and this is one of his very best performances. His character reminds me more of a film noir detective than a normal western outlaw. Like a film noir anti-hero, (imagine, in comparison, Bogart in The Maltese Falcon,) Pike lives outside society's corrupt morality yet maintains an inner dignity and superiority by living by his own ironclad code of conduct. There's only one problem: Pike really doesn't live by his code. He readily speaks of it, but he really only uses it to maintain a hold over his unruly bunch. Despite the code, he is willing to sacrifice member after member, even his old friend Sykes, in the shabby name of self-preservation. Pike, more intelligent than the other members of his gang, realizes his life is a lie. His decision to rescue gang member Angel, or die trying, is a true moment of redemption that gives the ensuing orgy of violence meaning.

The rest of the cast is very good too. Ernest Borgnine gives an excellent performance as Dutch, the conscience of the group. Ben Johnson and Warren Oates are excellent as the rowdy Gorsch brothers. Robert Ryan is also very good as a former outlaw compelled by the railroad to bring Pike back face down over a saddle.

This is one of the truly great westerns. There would not be another truly great American western until 1992's Unforgiven. One complaint. The Blu Ray only features the "director's cut." The theatrical version of the film was superior. None of the restored scenes were truly needed. They only slowed down the narrative.




(3). Unforgiven. 1992
Director Clint Eastwood/Writer David Webb Peoples

After a prostitute in the town of Big Whisky is mutilated by two of her customers, her co-workers raise a thousand dollar reward for the man who kills the cowboys when no justice is delivered by the sheriff Little Bill Dagget (Gene Hackman). William Munny (Clint Eastwood), a formerly ferocious killer and outlaw who had been reformed by his late wife, is lured out of retirement by the young, boastful Scofield Kid (Jaimz Woolvett), the nephew of one his former associates, to go after the reward. After securing the aid of his former partner, Ned Logan (Morgan Freeman), William agrees.

This film practically oozes with moral ambiguity. Sheriff Little Bill Dagget, who definitely views himself as a good and just man, indeed provides the town of Big Whisky with security but at the price of uneven and often sadistic justice. Dagget's dark side is shown when English Bob (Richard Harris), a notorious killer seeking hero status, comes to collect the reward with his wide-eyed biographer W.W. Beauchamp (Saul Rubinek) in tow. Dagget treats English Bob with a viciousness he hopes will discourage other bounty hunters, and wins over Bob's biographer in the process. William Munny also wrestles with moral ambiguities. He truly believes he has been reformed from evil-doing by his late wife, but nonetheless finds himself on a journey to kill two men. The prostitutes desire to seek justice for their friend is also admirable on one level, but they have no idea how much bloodshed their actions will cause.

Thematically, Unforgiven can be viewed as the antithesis to John Ford's 1962 film The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. The theme of that film was "when the legend becomes fact, print the legend." This film is also very much about building the legend, at the expense of the fact, and all the characters pay a price for it. Practically everyone in the film from English Bob to Little Bill Dagget to The Scofield Kid are constructing their own self-aggrandizing legends. Everyone except Will Munny. Munny pointedly deflects or downplays any references to his legendary, larger than life past. If anything, Munny is trying to build a counter legend that he's changed until he is pushed too far and can no longer maintain the charade.

"You'd be William Munny out of Missouri, the killer of women and children," Dagget says to him at their showdown. "That's right," Munny replies. "I've killed women and children. I've killed just about everything that walks or crawled at one time or another. And now I'm here to kill you, Little Bill, for what you did to Ned." Only now do we finally see the legendary William Munny and the people of Big Whiskey will never be the same.

This Academy-Award winning Best Picture currently remains the last great American western.  Hopefully, there will be another! (The Corn Brother's True Grit came close....)



(2). Once Upon A Time In The West. 1968
(C'era una volta il West)
Director Sergio Leone/Writers Sergio Leone & Sergio Donati
story by Dario Argento, Bernardo Bertolucci & Sergio Leone

Once Upon A Time In The West is perhaps the most beautiful western ever filmed. Employing his signature style, director Sergio Leone uses the wide screen format with the skill of a master painter, alternating breath-taking vistas with stunning close-ups against the magnificent score by Ennio Morricone. Leone lets the story unfold slowly. Characters surrender their motivations only grudgingly, all the while slowly building to a powerful conclusion. The pace of the film, which I credit as one of its strengths, may also be its main drawback today. Many members of the post-MTV generation accustomed to quick editing may not have the patience to let themselves be swept up by this film. That is a pity.

Once Upon A Time In The West stands as Leone's homage to great, and not so great, western films that came before him. Johnny Guitar certainly springs to mind and the opening sequence makes an undeniable nod toward High Noon. However, unlike Quentin Tarantino's homage to his roots, Kill Bill, Vol. 1, this film not only stands on its own two feet, it expands the genre.

These characters are more than a group of western archetypes. Jill isn't your traditional victimized widow. A New Orleans prostitute who took a chance on a new life on the frontier with a man who owns valuable land in the path of the railroad, she's an independent woman who knows men only too well. If sleeping with Frank, her husband's murderer, is the only way to save her life, she will do so, knowing that after a hot bath she'll be the same as she was before. Frank, in a brilliant performance against type by Henry Fonda, is also a man in transition. A killer hired by railroad magnate Morton to clear obstacles from the line, Frank envies the power flowing from his boss' money. He desires to be like Morton, but his propensity toward baser evil deprives him of the discipline he needs to become a businessman. Outlaw Cheyenne seeks revenge for being framed for the murder of Jill's husband. He pretends to be interested in the wealth Jill's land will bring, but he is mainly motivated by growing feelings for the widow. He's the most sentimental character in the film. He's a bandit with a heart of gold, which is more than can be said for Harmonica. Harmonica, the man with no name, develops a liking for both Jill and Cheyenne, but one gets the feeling he would sacrifice either or both of them if there was no other way to get Frank. He is not the classic, selfless western hero of old.

When I originally saw this film, I was disappointed by Bronson as Harmonica. I didn't think he made the most of a role obviously tailor-made for Clint Eastwood. I was mistaken. Bronson brought nuance to the role I doubt Eastwood would have at that stage of his career. In his three films with Leone, Eastwood's "Man with No Name" character tended toward smug amorality motivated only by self-interest. Harmonica has a little more depth and introspection than Eastwood's characters. He plays him with a certain sadness in his eyes; a doomed self-awareness. Harmonica realizes that when he kills Frank the remainder of his life will be devoid of meaning or purpose. He doesn't speak much, but he tellingly attempts to wax philosophically with Frank about the nature of men of like themselves in the changing West. In a sense, he knows Frank is the only person who could understand him, since he had to become a gunman like Frank in order to achieve his well- deserved revenge. The characters Eastwood played for Leone were less troubled about their place in the universe than Bronson's Harmonica. This might be Bronson's best performance.

Once Upon A Time In The West deserves an esteemed place among the canon of great westerns.



(1). The Searchers.  1956
Director John Ford/Writer Frank S. Nugent
(From the novel by Alan LaMay)

Civil War veteran Ethan Edwards goes on a long quest to find his niece Debbie who was kidnapped by Native Americans.  However, Ethan's goal isn't to rescue her.  He plans instead to kill her to spare her the indignity of assimilation into her captor's culture.

Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorcese have both declared The Searchers to be the greatest American film.  It's easy to see why.  It was directed by the great John Ford at the peak of his powers from a literate script by Frank Nugent.  It also boasts beautiful photography in Monument Valley, Ford's favorite location.  However, the true greatness in this film can be found in the monumental performance of John Wayne as Ethan Edwards. It is the performance of his career. John Wayne is the quintessential good guy of American cinema. He always wore the white hat. In this film, he plays a complex character consumed by a hatred of Native Americans. As a result, many people in our more politically correct times want the film banned. They are, in my opinion, idiots. In their zeal to banish anything resembling racism, they are overlooking the themes and moral of the story.

Ethan Edwards despises Native Americans, but the cause is actually personal and not inherently racist. In the cemetery scene, we see the graves of Ethan's parents which indicate they were murdered by Commanches. To me, that makes Ethan's suspicion and rage more understandable and acceptable in the context of an action film. The death or kidnapping of a loved one is a time honored catalyst for the protagonist in such films. You wouldn't call Liam Neeson's revenge spree in film Taken racist simply because most of his victims are Albanians. Is Neeson's character a hate-filled Albanipobe? No, he didn't choose his victims because of their ethnicity. He chose them because they kidnapped his daughter.

Ethan Edwards is doing the same thing here. He is hunting a band of Native Americans who massacred his family and kidnapped his niece. The fact that he had an existing grudge against the Indians because of their massacre of his parents only further fuels his rage. Does the film celebrate or endorse this rage? No. Not at all. Ethan's rage against the Indians is troubling to everyone else in the film. In the very poignant ending, Ethan's life of anger prevents him from being part of the joyful reunion. The door to normal loving human relationships is closed to him. He must wander alone. The film is hardly an endorsement of racism. Quite the opposite.

The film is not without its flaws. John Ford was a fan of broad comic relief, and he displays that sometimes lamentable tendency here. Additionally, many of the performances might be considered too broad for today's tastes. More troubling to me was Ethan's change of heart went he finally comes face-to-face with his kidnapped niece. His goal throughout the film is to murder his niece to spare her the indignity of assimilation into the Indian tribe. However, when he finally gets her, it simply grabs her, lifts her up and then tells her that they're going home. I could not accept that ending the first couple of times I saw the film. However, I eventually accepted the ending as a triumph of love over hatred. When Ethan finally held Debbie, he could no longer objectify her as something alien and enemy. She was family, the only family he had. He accepted her, even if his underlying rage made him unacceptable to the civilized world.

A truly excellent and poignant film.


Honorable Mentions, in no particular order: Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, 1969, starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford. A very well-written, often comic film enlivened by compelling star turns. The Magnificent Seven, 1960, starring Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen. Classic, badass good vs evil western. The recent remake doesn't hold a candle to it. McCabe & Mrs. Miller, starring Warren Beatty and Julie Christie. Sometimes I hate this cynical Robert Altman film, but sometimes I find it very compelling. Red River, 1948, starring John Wayne and Montgomery Clift. Perhaps John Wayne's best performance prior to The Searchers, but the film falls apart in the last act. The Long Riders, 1980, David Carridine and Stacy Keach. The stunt casting of brothers in this depiction of the James/Younger gang elevates this film. True Grit, 2010, Jeff Bridges and Matt Damon. Sorry, I liked this version better than the John Wayne one.  Little Big Man, 1970, starring Dustin Hoffman and Faye Dunaway. An epic, tragicomic walk through the history of the West told through the eyes of a white man adopted into a Native-American tribe. Shane, 1953, starring Alan Ladd and Jean Arthur. A classic, with a great supporting performance by Jack Palance as a gunslinger, but I prefer a little more action. High Noon, 1952, starring Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly. Entertaining, but a bit one-note. The Outlaw Josey Wales, 1976, Clint Eastwood and Sondra Locke. One of the better late westerns, but I subtract a point or two for the exploitative nature of footage of the near rape of Sondra Locke. She Wore A Yellow Ribbon, 1949, starring John Wayne and Joanne Dru. Classic John Ford western populated by his normal cast of characters. The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, 1966, Clint Eastwood and Eli Wallach. Compelling, but I find its background depiction of the Civil War in the west unhistorical.  Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid, 1973, James Coburn and Kris Kristofferson. The leads are all too old for the roles, but the film is elegiac and benefits from an excellent score by Bob Dylan. Rio Bravo, 1959, starring John Wayne and Dean Martin. If you don't like this one, see the near remake El Dorado. Dances With Wolves, 1990, starring Kevin Costner and Mary McDonnell. I enjoyed the film, but found it over-rated. Tombstone, 1993, starring Kurt Russell and Val Kilmer.  Overblown but entertaining. I wish it had some of the seriousness and historical accuracy of the nearly concurrent Wyatt Earp.  Between the two of them, there was one excellent film.

*I repurposed some of my reviews previously posted elsewhere for this blog.

Other Lists:


My novel Chapel Street is now available! You can currently buy the Kindle and paperback at Amazon and the Nook, paperback and hardcover at Barnes & Noble.


Learn more about the book, click Here.

Watch the book trailer:

  

Listen to me read some chapters here:


Read about the true haunting that inspired the novel here:

The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 1, An Introduction
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 2, The House
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 3, This Is Us
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 4, Arrival
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 5, Methodology
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 6, Clara's Tale, Pt. 1
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 7, Clara's Tale, Pt. 2
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 8, My Tale, Pt. 1
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 9, My Tale, Pt. 2
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 10, My Tale, Pt. 3
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 11, Natalia's Tale, Pt. 1
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 12, Natalia's Tale, Pt. 2
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 13, John's Tale, Pt. 1 
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 14, John's Tale, Pt. 2
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 15, Come Inside!
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 16, Marion's Tale, Pt. 1
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 17, Marion's Tale, Pt. 2
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 18, Jeanne's Tale, Pt. 1
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 19, Jeanne's Tale, Pt. 2
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 20, Lisa's Tale
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 21, Recap, Pt. 1
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 22, Recap, Pt. 2
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 23, Recap, Pt. 3

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Friday, November 24, 2017

THE PROMISE - Chapter 2

Over the next couple of weeks, I will be offering a taste of my memoir, The Promise, or the Pros and Cons of Talking with God, published by TouchPoint Press, here on my blog. It is my true story of first faith and first love and how the two became almost fatally intertwined. Keep checking back for additional chapters.


2–MyDeath 

JULY 2011.

My name is Sean Paul Murphy. Welcome to my life. And my death.

As the summer began, my life could have hardly been better. I was married to a lovely woman named Deborah Lynn Crum who still delighted and inspired me after eleven short years of marriage. While I must confess we have more than our share of silly fights, my main complaint about my wife is that I didn’t meet her ten or twenty years earlier. She felt the same way. 

I was also blessed to have both a satisfying vocation and avocation. By day, I enjoyed a lucrative career as a film editor. I edited some independent feature films and cable network shows, but I mainly edited television commercials because they paid more money. On nights and weekends, I labored as a screenwriter. At the time I had seven produced feature films under my belt and numerous award- winning shorts.

Was I rich? No, but I was my own boss. I hadn’t held a full time job in over twenty years. Financially, my wife and I were comfortable, despite some rather large swings in my income on a yearly basis due to the nature of my work. We had a small two- bedroom house in the quiet, leafy neighborhood of Hamilton in northeast Baltimore, a scant few blocks from where I was born. The original owner told me it was always a happy house. I kept it that way. Christine Fry, one of my three stepdaughters, shared the house with us, giving me a welcome taste of fatherhood I had missed in my younger days.

I was popular. I had lots of friends, but I must admit none of them had any clue how emotionally withdrawn I was at my core. I tried to hide my inherent shyness behind a practiced mask of extroversion. I was always ready to perform, and I consistently attempted to fill every silent moment with chatter of some sort. Silence was my greatest enemy. I felt dangerously vulnerable in it, as if the silence could reveal how many words I used to say so little. 

What was I hiding? Well, nothing and everything. I could pontificate endlessly on practically any subject. I just never felt capable of discussing the deeper things of my heart like my feelings and my faith, which, in the end, are the things that define us all as human beings. I felt sufficiently transparent with my wife. If she asked a question, I would always answer with some degree of straightforwardness. That said, I wasn’t one to volunteer too much information on my own. 

I truly despised this quirk of my nature. Here I was, by profession a storyteller, yet I was emotionally unable to tell the story of my life. Granted, most of my life was dull as dishwater, but I believed I had experienced some extraordinary moments well worth discussing. But I couldn’t. My stories, like the other treasures of my heart, remained bolted down and locked away.

I didn’t like it, but it seemed only natural to me, a byproduct of either my familial nature or nurture. I saw the same trait on conspicuous display throughout my mother’s maternal family the Rosenbergers. 

I once met a cousin researching the Rosenberger family. His first question to me was: “Have you noticed that people in this family don’t get married?” 

Yes, I had. The evidence was all around me. In fact, at the time, I could have been considered Exhibit A. Men in my grandmother Rita’s immediate family rarely married. Her brothers died as bachelors living in the same house they shared with their parents. Only the girls, Rita and her sister Helen, married and had children, but their male children and grandchildren proved equally averse to it. 

“Your grandsons are all gay,” June Pollock, my grandmother’s best friend and sister-in-law, used to tell her periodically in the years before I finally married. “And ugly, too.” 

While I must concede beauty to the eye of the beholder, I must take issue with dear June’s assessment of my three brothers and myself. None of us were gay despite the fact that none of us were married at the time. We were just Rosenbergers. 

This marital abnormality was not an isolated phenomenon in my grandmother’s branch of the family. It is systemic throughout the greater Rosenberger clan as a whole, which definitely falls well outside of the statistical norm. But I think it is more than a question of marriage. It was a question of emotional intimacy. My grandmother Rita once asked her father George why he never talked to his older brother Frank. “I didn’t talk to him when we slept in the same bed together,” he replied. “Why would I talk to him now?” 

Those words might sound harsh, but I’m reasonably sure George said them without any animosity. When brothers and sisters refused to talk on my mother’s Italian side of the family, the Protanis, it was because they were angry at each other. Grudges were held for years. Curses were dutifully intoned. That wasn’t the Rosenberger way. If they didn’t talk to someone, it usually meant they simply didn’t have anything to say. If my grandmother had asked her father if he loved his brother Frank, I’m sure he would have said, “Of course!” Loving is one thing. Talking is another. 

I interviewed my grandmother Rita right before her ninetieth birthday. She made an interesting admission. She said she never really knew her brother Butch despite living with him for over seventy years. I didn’t know him either. He’d talk about his work. He’d talk about sports. He’d talk about politics. But he would never talk about himself: his dreams, his goals, his loves. He was a Rosenberger. 

Don’t get me wrong. I loved my Rosenberger uncles. They were great guys who’d give you the shirts off their backs, but I didn’t want to be like them. I didn’t want to stay at home with my parents, yet I did until I was in my thirties. I wanted to share my emotions, yet I couldn’t. I saw my own fate in my uncles, and I fought it. I didn’t want to be a Rosenberger. I wanted to be a Murphy. One in particular: Paul James Murphy, Senior. 

My paternal grandfather was my role model from my earliest days. He was a big, balding, boisterous man who everyone loved and respected. His full, hearty laugh still rings in my ears. He was a born leader of men, although not in a dictatorial or military manner. You didn’t follow him out of fear or obligation. You followed him because you wanted to see what he was going to do next so you could be a part of it. Time and time again, my desire to be more like him forced me out of my limited emotional comfort zone. 

It was a conscious decision I made as a child. I knew I wasn’t like him, but I wanted to be. In a very real sense, I was playing out, in my personality and heart, the theological battle between Determinism and Free Will. I seemed predestined to be a Rosenberger. However, I was using my free will to become a Murphy. It was a battle I fought every day. 

Eventually, I compromised. I maintained the façade of a gregarious Murphy on the outside, but remained an introspective Rosenberger on the inside. I learned to accept those walls around my heart as inevitable. They certainly didn’t prevent me from being happy. I had friends. I had a loving family. By any objective measure, I was a success. Little did I know my life would soon be demanded of me.

My decline started on the evening of July 2, 2011. My wife and I were at the home of my Uncle Richard and Aunt Phyllis for their traditional Fourth of July party. They lived at the end of Wilson Point, a thin peninsula jutting out into Maryland’s Middle River. From their property, which even possesses a small sandy beach, the waters of the Chesapeake Bay can be seen just beyond the mouth of the river.

My uncle, who inherited his father’s keen sense of hospitality, is a consummate host and the party was always widely attended by friends and family. The highlight of each party was the river walk. Everyone would wade into Middle River and walk out to a large metal pole marking the boat channel. With floating coolers filled with beer and Jello shooters bobbing around us, everyone would circle the pole in the warm chest-to-neck-high water. Then we would all touch it at the same time and scream at the top of our lungs. Needless to say, this ritual often elicited the concern of the nearby boaters. 

After returning to shore I began coughing. A lot. Enough that even my wife noticed. She suspected I had a summer cold. But it didn’t go away for days. It got worse. 

I didn’t let it stop me from working, but it proved to be a hindrance. I would spend hours editing a project but I would have to step out of the room when I played it for the clients because my coughing competed with the dialogue.

I continued to decline. I was building up so much phlegm and mucus in my lungs that I would wake up in the middle of the night literally choking for breath. I responded by using a wide variety of over-the-counter drugs to battle each individual symptom. That only made matters worse. I didn’t take into account that not all of the drugs worked well together. Their plentiful side effects also began taking a toll. I soon became paranoid. My main fear was choking to death in my sleep. As a result, I only slept in a sitting position, and then for only two or three hours a night. Now I was battling exhaustion as well. 

Eventually, my family convinced me to go to the doctor. He listened to my chest and didn’t like what he heard. He said I had pneumonia. Thank God! That was a relief. I hated thinking I was being waylaid by some stupid, little summer cold. That would have been an affront to my manhood. Plus, pneumonia was no big deal. I had it before and beat it. Yawn.

The Doc prescribed some antibiotics and told me to get an X-Ray. The X-Ray, however, returned with no sign of pneumonia. Uh-oh. Now it was time to visit the specialists. I was sent to a pulmonologist who made me take an MRI. The result: Swollen lymph nodes. I was told not to jump to conclusions, but everyone was thinking the same thing: The Big-C. Cancer. Lymphoma. 

Strangely, the diagnosis did not worry me. Despite my intense and sincere Christianity, I did not suddenly find myself beseeching the Lord for healing. Nor did I question Him whether I would live or die. It seemed unnecessary. While I often found myself in prayer concerning the inconsequential things in life, I had long ago learned to trust the Lord entirely in the greater things. If it were His will for me to die now, then I would die. What was I going to do? Say no? I don’t think so.

To know for sure whether I had cancer, they needed to do a biopsy. Not a needle one. They needed to make an incision down below my throat and yank out just enough of a lymph node to see what was really going on. It was a routine operation. Out-patient. I would arrive at Union Memorial Hospital around 7 a.m. on Tuesday, August 10th, and I would be home in time for lunch. No big deal. 

But it didn't quite work out that way. After they lifted me onto the operating table, the last thing I remember was the anesthesiologist saying, "I'm going to give you a little of this."

The operation proved to be a success, but I died. With all of my stories locked inside me forever. Gone.

Until now.

So let me, the brand new Sean Paul Murphy, who was yanked back to life from a premature date with death, tell you my strange story about a boy and girl and a God and a man.

I will attempt to be as open and honest as possible. If I do hold back, it won’t be to protect myself, but rather the privacy of people I care about. I have changed some names and places to protect the innocent. If I make any mistakes concerning the events in this book, or their chronological order, please credit the long years that have passed rather than any intent to deceive.

Other Chapters:
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6

You can get a copy of the whole book here:


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Thursday, November 23, 2017

Yippee-Ki-Yay Mother Podcast #2: Marathon Man


I got to pick the film we discussed this week on the multi-generational Yippee-Ki-Yay-Mother Podcast. I chose John Schlesinger's paranoid thriller Marathon Man from 1976, which was written by two-time Academy-Award winner William Goldman, based on his own novel. The film stars Dustin Hoffman as a graduate student, who inadvertently becomes involved in international intrigue with the death of his brother, played by Roy Schneider. Sir Laurence Olivier plays a Nazi war criminal who is forced out of hiding to secure a cache of diamonds from a bank in New York. The film is a classic showdown of acting styles personified by Hoffman and Olivier. If you ask me, Olivier wins. The film is perhaps best known for the following scene between the two of them. (Warning: If you have a fear of dentists, this scene may trigger you.)


Strangely, I find that scene more enjoyable since Dustin Hoffman has been accused of sexual harassment. In this podcast, we discuss how the sexual harassment scandal affects our own viewing habits. You can watch our podcast here:


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Check out our other episodes here:


My novel Chapel Street is now available! You can currently buy the Kindle and paperback at Amazon and the Nook, paperback and hardcover at Barnes & Noble.



Learn more about the book, click Here.

Listen to me read some chapters here: