Avidly listening to the legendary director Otto Preminger in his Detroit hotel suite in 1971 as he recounted acerbic tales of an old Hollywood slipping into the sunset from the man who had made such classics as Laura and Anatomy…
Blog Archives
WUNDERKIND MEETS LEGEND: REMEMBERING PETER BOGDANOVICH
Tagged with: Book Soup, Laura, Orson Welles, Otto Preminger, Peter Bogdanovich, The Last Picture Show, The Sopranos
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WEST SIDE CRYBABY
Steven Spielberg’s beautifully reimagined West Side Story succeeds in doing what the musical has always done to me—turning me a sobbing emotional wreck. Tears-streaming-down-my-face wrecked. For-god’s-sake-it’s-only-a-movie wrecked. Please-don’t-turn-the-house-lights-on-at-the-end wrecked. Leonard Bernstein’s brilliant score has only to swell majestically as Tony…
Tagged with: Arthur Laurents, Carol Lawrence, Elizabeth Ashley, Frankie Avalon, Jack Nicholson, Jill St. John, Larry Kert, Leonard Bernstein, Natalie Wood, Richard Berymer, Richard Chamberlain, Robert Redford, Robert Wise, Russ Tamblyn, Stephen Sondheim, Steven Spielberg, Warren Beatty, West Side Story
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The Old Man and the Chair
It was falling apart, my chair. My forever office chair. The hours I have spent in that chair! I’ve written most of the Sanibel Sunset Detective novels sitting in that chair, written four Milton mysteries and two Priscilla Tempest mysteries…
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WHAT ROSALIE LIKED, EVERYONE LIKED
When I phoned Rosalie Trombley, at the time one of the most powerful figures in the music business, I did not expect her to agree to talk to me. Writing for the Windsor Star, I had been something of a…
Tagged with: "Bennie and the Jets", "What's Going On", Anne Murray, Bill Drake, Bob Seger, CKLW radio, Detroit, Elton John, Gordon Lightfoot, Marvin Gaye, Rosalie Trombley, the Big 8, The Guess Who, Weekend Magazine, Windsor
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The Forgotten Comedian: Remembering Mort Sahl
When I encountered him, Mort Sahl was opening at The Top Hat, a Windsor, Ontario nightclub better known for take-my-wife-please comedians than it was for Sahl’s cutting-edge brand of satire. At that point, in the early 1970s, the Montreal-born Sahl…
Tagged with: comedians, Dave Shappelle, Joe Rogan, Mort Sahl, Ontario, Time magazine, Top Hat, Windsor
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Final Curtains
This past week Silverview, the last novel by the great John Le Carré arrived on my doorstep. Earlier, I saw No Time To Die, which—spoiler alert!—may very well be the final James Bond movie. And now word has come from…
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Writing in the Time of Covid
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09CLR7T11 If you are a writer, a worldwide pandemic leaves you with little choice but to do what writers are supposed to do and yet try to avoid—write! In the past two years, hunkered down in Milton, Ontario, unable to…
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TEN YEARS LATER: REMEMBERING BRIAN
Impossible…It can’t be ten years since the journalist, broadcaster, bestselling author, life loving force of nature, and best friend, Brian Vallee, made his exit. But there you have it, time passes and Brian is gone and a decade later a…
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CAN YA DIG IT: SHAFT REMEMBERED
Fifty years ago, I was driving along the John Lodge Freeway in Detroit, Issac Hayes’ theme from the movie Shaft blaring away on the radio. That theme played constantly back then, its beat perfectly synchronized to the traffic on the…
THE LEON ROARED: Remembering Leon Spinks
One of the strangest experiences I had as a magazine writer was the time I spent with the onetime World Heavyweight Champion Leon Spinks who has died far too young at the age of 67. When I met up with…
Ron Base Writes 