Michael Ventura | |
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Born | United States | October 31, 1945
Occupation | Writer |
Michael Ventura (born October 31, 1945) is an American novelist, screenwriter, film director, essayist and cultural critic. [1]
Michael Ventura commenced his career as a journalist at the Austin Sun , a counter-culture bi-weekly newspaper published in the 1970s. In 1978, Ventura co-founded the LA Weekly along with Joie Davidov, Jay Levin, and Ginger Varney.
Ventura is best known for his long-running column, "Letters at 3 A.M.", which first appeared in LA Weekly in the early 1980s and continued in the Austin Chronicle until 2015. One of his essay collections -- Letters at 3 A.M.: Reports on Endarkenment (1994) -- is an anthology of his most well-known published columns from this period of work. His first essay collection, Shadow-Dancing in the U.S.A. (1985) also collected work that originally appeared in alternative weeklies and other journalistic publications.
Ventura has published three novels: Night Time Losing Time (1989), The Zoo Where You're Fed to God (1994), and The Death of Frank Sinatra (1996). An excerpt from his novel about Miriam of Magdala was published in the third issue of the CalArts literary journal Black Clock in 2005. With psychologist James Hillman, Ventura co-authored the 1992 bestseller We've Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy – And the World's Getting Worse .
Other books by Ventura include If I Was a Highway with Butch Hancock (2017) [2] , Cassavetes Directs: John Cassavetes and the Making of Love Streams (2008) [3] , and Marilyn Monroe: From Beginning to End (2008) [4] .
Ventura appears as a fictional character in Steve Erickson's 1996 novel, Amnesiascope .
He also wrote the screenplay for Echo Park (1986), [5] among other films, including Roadie (1980). [6]
He curated the Sundance Festival's 1989 retrospective on John Cassavetes.
Arthur Asher Miller was an American playwright, essayist and screenwriter in the 20th-century American theater. Among his most popular plays are All My Sons (1947), Death of a Salesman (1949), The Crucible (1953), and A View from the Bridge (1955). He wrote several screenplays, including The Misfits (1961). The drama Death of a Salesman is considered one of the best American plays of the 20th century.
Michael Royko Jr. was an American newspaper columnist from Chicago. Over his 30-year career, he wrote over 7,500 daily columns for the Chicago Daily News, the Chicago Sun-Times, and the Chicago Tribune. A humorist who focused on life in Chicago, he was the winner of the 1972 Pulitzer Prize for commentary.
Nachem Malech Mailer, known by his pen name Norman Kingsley Mailer, was an American novelist, journalist, playwright, and filmmaker. In a career spanning over six decades, Mailer had 11 best-selling books, at least one in each of the seven decades after World War II.
John Nicholas Cassavetes was a Greek-American filmmaker and actor. He began as an actor in film and television before helping to pioneer modern American independent cinema as a writer and director, often producing and distributing his films with his own money. He received nominations for three Academy Awards, two BAFTA Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, and an Emmy Award.
The Atrocity Exhibition is an experimental novel of linked stories or "condensed novels" by British writer J. G. Ballard.
LA Weekly is a free weekly alternative newspaper in Los Angeles, California. The paper covers Los Angeles music, arts, film, theater, culture, concerts, and events. LA Weekly was founded in 1978 by Joie Davidov, Jay Levin, Ginger Varney, and Michael Ventura. Levin served as the publication's editor from 1978 to 1991 and its president from 1978 to 1992.
James Hillman was an American psychologist. He studied at, and then guided studies for, the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich. He founded a movement toward archetypal psychology and retired into private practice, writing and traveling to lecture, until his death at his home in Connecticut.
Andrew O'Hagan is a Scottish novelist and non-fiction author. Three of his novels have been nominated for the Booker Prize and he has won several awards, including the Los Angeles Times Book Award.
Timothy Robert Noah is an American journalist, author, and a staff writer at The New Republic. Previously he was labor policy editor for Politico, a contributing writer at MSNBC.com, a senior editor of The New Republic assigned to write the biweekly "TRB From Washington" column, and a senior writer at Slate, where for a decade he wrote the "Chatterbox" column. In April 2012, Noah published a book, The Great Divergence, about income inequality in the United States.
Archetypal psychology was initiated as a distinct movement in the early 1970s by James Hillman, a psychologist who trained in analytical psychology and became the first Director of the Jung Institute in Zurich. Hillman reports that archetypal psychology emerged partly from the Jungian tradition whilst drawing also from other traditions and authorities such as Henry Corbin, Giambattista Vico, and Plotinus.
Michael David Herr was an American writer and war correspondent, known as the author of Dispatches (1977), a memoir of his time as a correspondent for Esquire (1967–1969) during the Vietnam War. The book was called the best "to have been written about the Vietnam War" by The New York Times Book Review. Novelist John le Carré called it "the best book I have ever read on men and war in our time."
On the evening of August 4, 1962, American actress Marilyn Monroe died at age 36 of a barbiturate overdose inside her home at 12305 Fifth Helena Drive in Brentwood, Los Angeles, California. Her body was discovered before dawn the following morning, on August 5. Monroe had been one of the most popular Hollywood stars during the 1950s and early 1960s, and was a top-billed actress for the preceding decade. Her films had grossed $200 million by the time of her death.
Anthony Bruce Summers is an Irish author. He is a Pulitzer Prize Finalist and has written ten non-fiction books. He worked for the BBC in current affairs coverage as a producer and then as an assistant editor of the long-running investigative documentary series Panorama. His first book was published in 1976.
"A Fine Romance" is a popular song composed by Jerome Kern with lyrics by Dorothy Fields, published in 1936.
Richard Ira "Rick" Klaw, is an American editor, essayist, and bookseller.
Mary Willis Walker was an American crime fiction author.
How to Be Very, Very Popular is a 1955 American comedy film written, produced and directed by Nunnally Johnson. The film starred Betty Grable in her final film role and Sheree North in her first leading role.
Michael Ochs is an American photographic archivist best known for his extensive collection of pictures related to rock music dating back to the 1950s and 1960s. The Michael Ochs Archives, located in Venice, California, contained 3 million vintage prints, proof sheets and negatives which were licensed daily for use in CD reissues, books, films and documentaries.
Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? is an original stage comedy in three acts and four scenes by George Axelrod. After a try-out run at the Plymouth Theatre in Boston from 26 September 1955, it opened at the Belasco Theatre on Broadway on 13 October, starring Jayne Mansfield, Walter Matthau and Orson Bean. Directed by the author and produced by Jule Styne, it closed on 3 November 1956 after 444 performances.
Berniece Inez Gladys Miracle was an American writer, known for her memoir My Sister Marilyn (1994) about her half-sister, actress Marilyn Monroe.