Career Memoir – Page 22 – education and deconstruction.com

My Happy Days in Hollywood

The Book of the Week is “My Happy Days in Hollywood” by Garry Marshall, published in 2012. This ebook is the autobiography of the Hollywood director, producer, screenwriter, playwright and actor.

Marshall grew up in the Bronx. After graduating college, he volunteered for the army. In 1959, almost immediately after returning home, he was hired on the spot as a copyboy at the New York Daily News. He writes, “They didn’t even care where I went to journalism school. As long as I could carry a cup of coffee without spilling it…” He made $38 a week.

The author paired up with a writing partner to create jokes and skits to be sold to stand-up comedians. He also wrote for famous TV shows and celebrity comedians. When he was starting out, in order to get the business, he had to write scripts on spec.

By 1963, Marshall and a different partner had “…written 31 produced sitcom scripts, [with a typewriter in those days] which was more than any team had ever written before.” The TV shows he produced that became most famous were “Happy Days,” “Laverne & Shirley,” “The Odd Couple” and “Mork and Mindy.”

In theater and movies, he realized that “…you need more than ‘funny.’ You have to have a story with depth and emotions that people can follow.”

Read the book to learn what Marshall learned and experienced in his four-plus decades working in television, movies and the theater.

Joseph Anton

The Book of the Week is “Joseph Anton: A Memoir” by Salman Rushdie, published in 2012. This ebook describes an author’s life, and the furor created by his controversial novel, “Satanic Verses.”

Rushdie grew up in India and England in the 1950’s and 60’s. His parents identified with Islam but did not provide him with a religious education. He became fascinated with the subject at university. In the late 1980’s, he wrote Satanic Verses, which was extremely critical of Islam. Some powerful people became offended by it; over the course of the next decade, serious repercussions– not hilarity– ensued.

Iran’s leader, the Ayatollah Khomeini, issued a “fatwa,” or death threat, against Rushdie. Scotland Yard learned that Muslim groups were plotting to kill the author. There were protests by Islamic fanatics. A price was put on his head.

Rushdie’s publisher, Viking Penguin received threatening phone calls, and over time, a few actual bombs exploded at bookstores that carried the book. In international incidents– injuries and sometimes death befell bombing victims, the book’s translators and a publishing executive. The government of the United Kingdom pressured Rushdie and his family to go into hiding, and endure 24/7 police protection. He changed his name to Joseph Anton.

India became the first nation in the world to prohibit importation of Rushdie’s book. For years, India also denied him a travel visa. However, “India was surrounded by unfree societies– Pakistan, China, Burma– but remained an open democracy; flawed, certainly, perhaps even deeply flawed, but free.” He was deeply hurt. Many other Muslim countries later followed suit.

At one point, he met with a political Muslim organization to negotiate an end to the fatwa. He ended up regretting signing a statement acknowledging that his book was offensive to some Muslims, and also saying that he himself was of Islamic persuasion.

“British Muslim attempts to indict him [Rushdie] for blasphemy and under the public order act were heard in court.” New York Times bestseller status bestowed upon Satanic Verses was probably not due to true likability by the public, but rather, due to all the hullabaloo. Rushdie wrote, “I conclude that my difficulties are not with You, God, but with Your servants and followers on Earth.”

For more than a decade, because the author’s life was thought to be endangered, his ability to live like the citizen of a modern nation was severely curtailed. Read the book to learn about the people who helped him through all of the unanticipated trouble stemming from his writings; the ideology behind his various literary works; and the difficult family situations unrelated to his career, of which he was admittedly the cause.

Double or Nothing

The Book of the Week is “Double or Nothing” by Tom Breitling with Cal Fussman, published in 2008. This short ebook describes the business partnerships between the author and Tim Poster.

Poster had a passion for gambling. In high school he and a friend acted as a bookie and made bets on professional sports, from which they won a lot of money, except for one particular boxing match. In the late 1980’s, while still in college, Poster started a hotel telephone reservation service called Travelscape. Breitling joined the business, and it kept growing in leaps and bounds. Travelscape was an early adopter of internet technology, launching an online reservation system in 1998, during which it made $20 million in sales. In 1997, it had made $12 million in sales.

Their partnership was based on trust symbolized by a handshake, rather than on legal documents. Their synergistic personalities made the business successful. Nevertheless, in 1999 when a competitor offered to buy their business, they were at a grave disadvantage due to their inexperience in multi-million dollar deal-making. The situation was extremely stressful for them.

The author describes what eventually happened, the mistakes they made and what they learned from the experience, and goes on to discuss their successes and failures in connection with another business venture– a casino.

About a year later, the partners were negotiating sale of the casino. The potential buyers consisted of two different suitors– a pair of humble, trustworthy brothers who were their close friends, and a narcissistic, petty owner of a collection of properties then worth $700 million (not Donald Trump).

The author relates that at that time, Fortune magazine had ranked the brothers’ company in the top twenty of its list of “Best Companies to Work For in America.” Job satisfaction among employees at the casino owned by the brothers was apparently so high, the employees saw no reason to unionize. That would actually be a problem if the casino was to merge with Poster’s and Breitling’s casino, as the latter was unionized.

Read the book to learn how Poster and Breitling fared with a reality TV show in their casino; how relaxing betting limits, and cheating or lucky gamblers can put a casino out of business; and the details of what transpired when they allowed their businesses to be bought.

Sometimes the Magic Works – Bonus Post

“Sometimes the Magic Works” by Terry Brooks, published in 2003 is an ebook skimmed by this blogger, that provides tips and life lessons for fiction writers who aspire to get published.

In the mid-1970’s, the author got lucky in a unique way with his manuscript whose topic was fantasy; up until then, fantasy was thought to be a poorly-selling fiction category.

Brooks writes that imagination is required for change to happen. “Progress occurs… because we hunger for what might be… looking beyond the possible to the impossible– because what seems impossible to us today becomes commonplace tomorrow.”

Brooks remarks that writers write because they enjoy the creative process and entertaining readers is fulfilling; they do it neither for the money nor the fame. Very few fiction authors become rich and famous nowadays, anyway.

Brooks says the readers are the ones who choose which writers to read, which in turn, determine book sales. In this way, the publishing industry is a democracy. This blogger believes that the American book publishing industry is becoming more democratic every day, due to major cultural changes in the last three decades.

There has been a proliferation of entertainment choices, which for many, has meant reduced time spent reading. Since time is perceived to be so short, people are choosing their books more carefully than previously.

Book distribution channels have expanded from retail outlets, libraries, pass-along value and mail-order to audio tapes, CDs and electronic downloading. Self-publishing– a relatively recent, vast improvement over “vanity publishing,” has increased competition for readers’ attention spans, which are getting shorter by the minute. Enough said.

The Other Side of Me

The Book of the Week is “The Other Side of Me” by Sidney Sheldon, published in 2005. This ebook is Sheldon’s autobiography.

Born Sidney Schechtel in 1917, Sheldon showed a talent for writing at an early age. However, during the Depression, he was forced to work day and night at a series of dead-end, soul-killing jobs, such as courier in a gear factory and coat-check clerk at a hotel. Sheldon was unafraid to approach strangers, and at that time, low-skilled jobs could be obtained in a simple five-minute conversation.

One day, he went to a Chicago radio station to inquire about an amateur talent contest sponsored by a band leader, and by chance, was asked to be the show’s announcer. It was then that he changed his last name to Sheldon, thinking it sounded more show business-y. His excessive talking caused the show to go fifteen seconds overtime, so he was not asked back, but from that experience, he thought he wanted to become a radio announcer.

On another day, he wrote a song with the help of his family’s spinet piano. He went to a hotel to try to sell the song. “In that year, 1936, the major hotels in the country had orchestras in their ballrooms that broadcast [on radio] coast to coast.” He was introduced to a manager at a big-name music publisher who directed him to another hotel with a better-known band leader. Perhaps naively, he never signed a written contract. His song was played and aired, but was never published. He therefore never received a penny in royalties.

Sheldon encountered many more episodes similar to the above, in which he was at the mercy of powerful people who made arbitrary decisions on the use of his creative works– Broadway musicals, screenplays and TV scripts and novels. Read the book to learn more about his bipolar disorder that had a hand in his self-doubt and despair, baseless optimism and persistence, missed opportunities, failures and successes.

All By My Selves

The Book of the Week is “All By My Selves” by Jeff Dunham, published in 2010. This is the autobiography of a politically incorrect, professional ventriloquist. He developed his career-passion as a child when, by chance, he was given a dummy as a gift.

Dunham auditioned to be a guest for The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson” nine times before he was finally accepted in April 1990. His striving to become famous took a toll on his family, but when he “made it” he was afforded an “entourage of management, agents and publicists.”

Read the book to learn of Dunham’s experiences as a professional ventriloquist, that include but are not limited to: his decades-long struggles to achieve an act of sufficient quality to appear on television (prior to the advent of social media), his learning the hard way what not to do before performing, and being stiffed on compensation by night clubs.

Confessions of A Prairie Bitch

The Book of the Week is “Confessions of A Prairie Bitch” by Alison Arngrim, published in 2010. This is the autobiography of the actress who played Nellie Oleson on the hit American TV show, “Little House on the Prairie” which aired from 1974 to 1983.

On the show which was set in a small town in the late 1800’s, Arngrim played the role of the spoiled, rich teenage daughter of the owners of a general store. She frequently got into fights with a goody-goody girl from another family in the neighborhood. Arngrim was twelve years old when she started the show. Prior to that, her show-business parents had afforded her the chance to play some small parts in TV commercials and movies. Starting when she was six, she was subjected to sexual abuse at the hands of her much older brother.

Read the book to learn how Arngrim was able to deal with the trauma from her early childhood in positive ways later in life through her acting career and social and political activism.