Franz Lidz

Last updated

Franz Lidz
FranzLidz5&25&2009.jpg
BornFranz Ira Lidz
(1951-09-24) September 24, 1951 (age 73)
New York City, U.S.
Occupation
  • Journalist
  • memoirist
  • American professional basketball executive
Alma mater Antioch College
Notable worksUnstrung Heroes (1991)
Ghosty Men (2003)
Fairway To Hell (2008)
SpouseMaggie Lidz (1976–present)
ChildrenGogo, Daisy

Franz Lidz (born September 24, 1951) is an American writer, journalist and pro basketball executive.

Contents

A New York Times archaeology, science and film essayist, [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] who originated the archeological column "Lost and Found". [9] [10] He's a former Sports Illustrated senior writer, [11] [12] Smithsonian columnist [13] [14] [15] and a onetime vice president for the Detroit Pistons. [16] [17] His childhood memoir Unstrung Heroes was adapted into a Hollywood film of the same title in 1995. [18] [19] [20] [21]

Early life

Lidz was born in Manhattan, to Sidney, a Jewish electronics engineer who designed the first transistorized portable tape recorder (the Steelman Transitape), [22] [23] and Selma, a homemaker. His father gave him early exposure to authors like Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter and Eugène Ionesco. [24] [25]

At age nine, still named Stephen before later legally taking Franz as his first name, he moved to the Philadelphia suburbs. [26] [27] [28] Lidz attended high school in Cheltenham [29] [30] and college at Antioch College, [31] where he was a theater major. [32]

Career

Lidz was a novice reporter at the weekly Sanford Star, where he wrote a column and covered police and fire beats. He left Maine to become a crime reporter and write a column called "Insect Jazz" for an alternative newspaper in Baltimore. [33] He later became an editor of Johns Hopkins University Magazine. [34]

In 1980, he joined the staff of Sports Illustrated , [35] [36] [37] [38] [39] even though he had never read the magazine [40] and had covered only one sporting event in his life – a pigeon race in Shapleigh, Maine. [41] [42] [25] Lidz remained on the writing staff for 27 years. [43] In 2007 he jumped to the short-lived business monthly Conde Nast Portfolio, and then WSJ. magazine [44] before landing at Smithsonian in 2012. His first feature story in The New York Times, on making the second descent of the Zambezi River, appeared on January 30, 1983. [45]

Among his most controversial features are essays on reappraising the dodo; [46] reconsidering Neanderthals; [47] the effects of climate change on glacial archaeology; [48] the Pacific Northwest barred owl cull; [49] Hannibal; [50] the 2002 Paris-to-Dakar Rally; [51] George Steinbrenner and the New York Yankees' line of succession; [52] [53] [54] [55] [56] the hijinks of onetime Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling; [57] [58] [59] and a S.I. cover story with NBA player Jason Collins in which Collins became the first active male in one of the four major North American team sports to announce he was gay. [60] [61] [62] [63]

Notable works

Unstrung Heroes

Unstrung Heroes is about Lidz's childhood, with his mother, father and his dad's four older brothers. [25] [64] [65] He had previously written about two of the uncles in Sports Illustrated. [66] [67]

In his review of Unstrung Heroes in The New York Times, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt called the memoir "unusual and affecting ... a melancholy, funny book, a loony tune played with touching disharmony on mournful woodwinds and a noisy klaxon". [68] Jonathan Kirsch of the Los Angeles Times likened the memoir to a "miniature Brothers Karamazov . There's not a false moment in the book, and that is high praise indeed." [69] The Village Voice called Unstrung Heroes: "Astonishing, hilarious, angry, poignant, always pointed." [70]

In 1995, Unstrung Heroes was adapted into a film of the same title. [18] The setting was switched from New York City to Southern California, and the four crazy uncles were reduced to an eccentric odd couple. Asked what he thought of the script, Lidz said: "It's very neatly typed". [71] He was unhappy with the adaptation, but was prevented by his contract from publicly criticizing it. "My initial fear was that Disney would turn my uncles into Grumpy and Dopey", he told New York magazine. "I never imagined my life could be turned into Old Yeller." [72] In a later essay for The New York Times, he said that the cinematic Selma had died not of cancer, but of 'Old Movie Disease'. "Someday somebody may find a cure for cancer, but the terminal sappiness of cancer movies is probably beyond remedy." [73]

Ghosty Men

Ghosty Men (2003) is the story of the Collyer brothers. Lidz has said that he was inspired by the real-life cautionary tales that his father told him, the most macabre of which was the story of the Collyer brothers, the hermit hoarders of Harlem. [74] The book also recounts the parallel life of Arthur Lidz, [75] the hermit uncle of Unstrung Heroes, who grew up near the Collyer mansion. [76]

In his review for The Washington Post , Adam Bernstein wrote, "The Collyer Brothers made compelling reading then, as they do now in this short, captivatingly detailed book." [77]

Fairway to Hell

Fairway to Hell is a 2008 memoir centering on Lidz' unusual golfing experiences: encountering nudists, llama caddies [40] and celebrities like the heavy metal band Judas Priest. [78] [79] Bill Littlefield reviewed the book on the National Public Radio show Only A Game , saying "His estimable wit is also evident in Fairway To Hell." [80]

Collaborations

Lidz has written numerous essays for The New York Times with novelist and former Sports Illustrated colleague Steve Rushin. [81] [82] [83] Three of them appear under the title Piscopo Agonistes in the 2000 collection Mirth of a Nation: The Best Contemporary Humor.

Lidz has been a commentator for Morning Edition on NPR, [84] and was a guest film critic on the syndicated Siskel & Ebert , following Gene Siskel's passing. The segment did not air. [85] He also appeared on David Letterman's show. [29]

Personal life

Lidz lives in Ojai, California [86] with his wife, Maggie, an author and onetime historian at the Winterthur Museum in Delaware. [87] [88] [89] [90] They have two daughters. [91] [92] [93] [94]

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References

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  2. ↑ "Film; The Scenery, Though, He Won't Chew", September 29, 2002 – The New York Times
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  6. ↑ "She Fell Nearly Two Miles And Walked Away", June 18, 2021 – The New York Times
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  10. ↑ "Put a Bird on It? Ancient Egypt Was Way Ahead of Us", June 6, 2023 – The New York Times
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  12. ↑ "Jason Collins", May 6, 2013 – Sports Illustrated
  13. ↑ "Dr. NakaMats, the Man With 3300 Patents to His Name", December, 2012 - Smithsonian
  14. ↑ "Behold The Blobfish", November, 2015 - Smithsonian
  15. ↑ "Britain's Lake District Was Immortalized by Beatrix Potter, But Is Its Future in Peril?", May, 2018 - Smithsonian
  16. ↑ "Detroit Pistons Media Guide: Executive Staff", 2016–'17. (Free PDF download). Use search term "Franz Lidz"
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  18. 1 2 "Lost In Translation", September 21, 1995 – Philadelphia Inquirer
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  25. 1 2 3 "From the Editor", April 8, 1991
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  27. ↑ "Arn Tellem and Franz Lidz Are Going to the Hall of Fame", Philadelphia , May 17, 2015
  28. ↑ "Franz Lidz & Arn Tellem entering Hall together", Philadelphia Daily News , May 27, 2015
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  30. ↑ "Letter From The Publisher" – March 9, 1987 – Sports Illustrated
  31. ↑ "Letter from the Publisher" March 26, 1984 – Sports Illustrated
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  33. ↑ "Odds are, these guys are real characters", September 21, 1995 – Baltimore Sun
  34. ↑ "Redford movie may be filmed locally", January 23, 1991 – Baltimore Sun
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  38. ↑ "Meat Bomb", May 18, 1992 - Sports Illustrated
  39. ↑ "She's Got Balls", November 2, 1998 - Sports Illustrated
  40. 1 2 "The Sport of Drunken Hairy Scots", May 7, 2008 – Philadelphia Inquirer
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  44. ↑ "Upstairs, Downstairs and In Between", December 1, 2011 – WSJ.
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  46. ↑ "Who’s the Dodo Now? A Famously Extinct Bird, Reconsidered", September 20, 2024 – The New York Times
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  57. ↑ "Up and Down in Beverly Hills", April 17, 2000 – Sports Illustrated
  58. ↑ "Donald Sterling Has Been Lost In Another Century For Some Time", April 27, 2014 – Chicago Sun-Times
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  60. ↑ "Why NBA center Jason Collins is coming out now", April 29, 2013 – Sports Illustrated
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  63. ↑ "Jason Collins, 10 Years Later: Progress Made, but There's Work to Be Done for LGBTQ Athletes", April 25, 2023 - Sports Illustrated
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  67. ↑ "Uncle Harry Never Lost A Fight But He Never Really Fought One, Either", December 20, 1982 – Sports Illustrated
  68. ↑ "Books of The Times; Reality Was Relative and the Relatives Were Nuts", March 4, 1991 – The New York Times
  69. ↑ "The Unlikely Heroics of Unstrung Heroes", February 20, 1991 – Los Angeles Times
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  71. ↑ "The star and author of 'Unstrung Heroes'", September 22, 1995 – Entertainment Weekly
  72. ↑ Nancy Jo Sales (18 September 1995). "Undone Heroes". New York . New York Media, LLC. p. 58.
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  74. ↑ "The Paper Chase", October 26, 2003 – The New York Times
  75. ↑ "A Trashy Read / Hoarding hermits? A typist's true tale", November 2, 2003 – Newsday
  76. ↑ "Author delves into his inner hoarder His eccentric uncle led him to write about the Collyer brothers", May 16, 2004 – Philadelphia Inquirer
  77. ↑ "If Anything Should Inspire ...", January 4, 2004 – The Washington Post
  78. ↑ "Heavy Metal Rockers Find Peace And Quiet—and Rock Fans—on The Links", November 27, 1986 – Sports Illustrated
  79. ↑ "Fairway to Hell", April, 2008 – ESPN
  80. ↑ "Books In Review", May 30, 2008 – Only A Game, NPR
  81. ↑ "We Know What You'll See Next Summer ...", November 15, 1998 – The New York Times
  82. ↑ "Here A Comic Genius, There A Comic Genius", January 30, 2000 – The New York Times
  83. ↑ "How to Tell a Bad Movie From a Truly Bad Movie", August 5, 2001 – The New York Times
  84. ↑ "News Briefs", November 19, 1998 – The Tuscaloosa News
  85. ↑ "A Shot at Thumb-Wrestling With Roger", April 16, 2000 – The New York Times
  86. ↑ "The Uses of Irreverence", Fall, 2020 - Ojai Quarterly, pgs. 38-41
  87. ↑ Requiem For A Jumble of Artworks, January 21, 2010- The New York Times
  88. ↑ "The Amazing Costumes of Downton Abbey", February 18, 2014- Slate
  89. ↑ "The duPonts: Houses and Gardens in the Brandywine", December, 2009 Delaware Today
  90. ↑ "Meeting Maggie", February, 2009 O, The Oprah Magazine
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  92. ↑ "Where the wild things are – inside the tent", November 21, 2004 Los Angeles Times
  93. ↑ Gogo Lidz: Staff Writer, Newsweek
  94. ↑ "Daisy Lidz, Thor Ritz", July 23, 2010 – The New York Times
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