Bøger af Alan Marcus

The saga of the screenplay you're about to read really begins the day that I broke my self-imposed rule about getting involved with "complicated" ( i.e. "serious" )subject matter in my hit-and-run career as a screenwriter for the movies. I had come to Hollywood in 1949 as an invited author of prize-winning fictions, ---and saw writing for film a good way to subsidize my profound commitment to the art of prose --- having learned that -in the majority of cases, -- the General Motors assembly line model of filmmaking --which Hollywood pioneered, ------------(and prospered from!) ---pretty much means that the pervasive confusion-- or collision between "Art" and Commerce---- which runs like a Wagnerian leitmotif through many aspects of mass film making, -- is apt to be trumped sooner or later by the pluses and minuses of The Bottom Line; thus, anyone foolish enough to take seriously the ongoing rhetorical (off-stage) palaver one tends to keep hearing about the unexploited "potential" of film as a medium to plumb the "enigmatic" depths of human experience etc..-is eventually going to hit a brick wall, as I witnessed, firsthand, more than once, ........In my particular case, I certainly DID work (under a pseudonym) on some favorite projects of various producers now and then, in both film and television --But on the whole, I simply found it more congenial to my temperament to follow a freewheeling (figurative) surfboarding life as a free lance, where, if you weren't able to reach success (i.e. pay dirt!) on any particular try, you could always try again.

Respect for the law came slowly to the old West, and in the last decade of the last century a long stretch of cavalier piracy was finally conquered by the steadfastness and courage of pioneer homesteaders who, in a hundred separate terrains, and with a thousand different stratagems, finally won out against various kinds of vandalism and secured the protection of the law for the great onrushing tide of their fellow colonizers. Nowhere was the struggle more joined than in Arizona, Nebraska and Wyoming where, as late as the 1870's, hired militias were sent on terrorizing campaigns to keep the ranges free and clear for the great private herds already feeding there. In this struggle, there was a collision of two ethos'- on the one hand, a veteran resentment and resistance to change which enlisted the service of mercenaries' and, on the other hand, the loyalty and stubborn courage of individual sheep farmers, defending their own lands, rooted there by a sacrificial labor of blood. Here depicted is one man's triumph over such a collusion of savage forces. But what is meant to be shown is not only the heroic quality of this single struggle, but of that larger struggle by which freedoms were gained, a lawless anarchy wiped out, and the growing democratic stature of the Republic consolidated. With the passage of years however, a periodic tug-of-war has erupted between the vast majority of our country's citizens who depend upon the safeguards guaranteed them by the Constitution to protect them from arbitrary-i.e. illegal---power or privilege (as represented by an increasingly unappeasable & overweening corporate, financial, and military elite)----threatening, these days, to upset, -if not render irrelevant, --for all practical purposes, - the very freedoms and opportunities promised all of us by the Founding Fathers, in defense of which they famously pledged, - in Jefferson's timeless words - "their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor"

I was happy to come upon Miracles after my husband Alan's death in 2015. While it was written in the 1960s and dedicated to the memory of David Hahn, it was one of my favorite, imaginative, cinematic novels that Alan wrote and which was highly praised by cinematic critic Pauline Kael and author Paul Bellow. It is as fresh in conception and execution as it was the day Alan wrote it. I am happy to get it into print.With love

Remarks of Father Craft - Missionary to the Indians. 1889 Great Plains: "Indians were not fools but men of keen intelligence... Reductions in rations increased fears. Census takers made grave mistakes, counted less than the real numbers; agents made false reports of prosperity that did not exist... It is not to be wondered that they finally came to believe in a Messiah whom they at first doubted, and listened to every deceiver who promised hope... "Interested whites took advantage of this state and howled for troops; the army protested their false statements but were required to go to the scene of supposed dangers... Persuaded by some whites that their entire destruction was aimed at, the Indians ran away in fear and despair..."