Straight Up |: August 2003 Archives

The agenda is just what it says: news of arts, media & culture delivered with attitude. Or as Rock Hudson once said: "Man is the only animal clever enough to build the Empire State Building and stupid enough to jump off it."

I'm the author of "A Talent for Trouble," the biography of Hollywood director William Wyler. Putnam published it in hardcover.

It is now in paperback (Da Capo Press).

I've also co-written "Cut Up or Shut Up," experimental fiction, with Carl Weissner and Jurgen Ploog (with a "tickertape" intro by William S. Burroughs).

Writing of mine has appeared in "little magazines," among them VDRSVP, Ricochet, Unmuzzled Ox, San Francisco Earthquake and John Bryan's Notes From Underground, as well as in Partisan Review, The New York Times Book Review, Trans-Atlantik and The Journal of Film History.

When not listening to Bach or Cuban jazz pianist Chucho Valdes, or dancing to salsa, I like to play jazz piano -- but only in the privacy of my own mind.