So pleased to be a contributing writer to Orange Coast, which was recently named Best City & Metropolitan consumer magazine in the Western U.S. by the Western Publishing Assn. In addition, the December 2014 issue, which spotlighted “Growing Up in O.C.” and featured O.C. boy John Stamos on the cover, took honors for Best Cover. That issue included my interview with the affable Stamos and other celebs who hail from the Big Orange.
The man who guards the Johnny Carson legacy – and his archives
Ten years after the death of legendary talk show host Johnny Carson, I check in with the keeper of the flame, Jeff Sotzing – Carson’s nephew, protégé and president of Carson Entertainment Group – in the May issue of Orange Coast.
The 1922 murder of director William Desmond Taylor still resonates
Glad to see that others share my enthusiasm for the book Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood (Harper & Row), which I reviewed last year for BookPage. The author, William J. Mann, just received an Edgar award (named for Edgar Allan Poe) from the Mystery Writers of America. The genre: best fact crime.
In the April issue of BookPage, I interview Kate Mulgrew of “Star Trek: Voyager” about her just-out memoir Born with Teeth (Little, Brown and Company). The book doesn’t go the route of the usual celeb autobio; as I note in my piece, instead of moving through her many films, TV shows and theatre work, “the emphasis is on family and friendships, along with the actress’s own indomitable spirit, which is a hallmark of the characters she’s known for portraying.“
Some of the press about Dakota Johnson daring to appear in “Fifty Shades of Grey” includes nods to her famous parents and their own free-spirited performances. After all, mom Melanie Griffith has done nudity; dad Don Johnson let it all hang out in “The Harrad Experiment.” What no one’s remembering is that the 1973 film was based on a book just as shocking for its time. When Harrad was published in 1969 it was considered so super-hot you could only buy it via mail-order! (After Bantam issued the “free love manifesto” in paperback, it sold 300,000 copies in the first month.) The racy tome wasn’t a beginner’s guide to S&M like Fifty Shades, but there were hookups galore (of college kids), group marriage, and lines like, “Sometimes I wake up in the night and for a sleepy moment I may forget whether I am with Stanley, Jack or Harry…”
Happy New Year, and happy to say that I’ve been asked about the possibility of putting out an ebook of the Elvis bio I wrote with Peter Harry Brown in the late Nineties. Down at the End of Lonely Street: The Life and Death of Elvis Presley (Dutton) got some nice reviews when it was first published (the Toronto Star called it “by far the most comprehensive examination of the Presley phenomenon yet written”), and has had an interesting afterlife. (The late Johnny Ramone included it in his Top Ten Elvis Presley Books list; it’s also received considerable digital ink from bloggers.) Hoping to make this new incarnation happen.
back to writings