Roger L. Simon

Last updated
Roger L. Simon
Roger L Simon.JPG
Born
Roger Lichtenberg Simon

(1943-11-22) November 22, 1943 (age 80)
New York City, U.S.
Education Dartmouth College (BA)
Yale University (MFA)
Occupations

Roger Lichtenberg Simon (born November 22, 1943) is an American novelist and screenwriter. He was formerly CEO of PJ Media (formerly known as Pajamas Media) and is now its CEO Emeritus. He is the author of eleven novels, including the Moses Wine detective series, seven produced screenplays and two non-fiction books. He has served as president of the West Coast branch of PEN, and as a member of the Board of Directors of the Writers Guild of America; he was also on the faculty of the American Film Institute and the Sundance Institute.

Contents

He has contributed to The New York Times , The Wall Street Journal , The Los Angeles Times , Commentary, Real Clear Politics and City Journal , among others. Simon has also been a Hoover Institute Media Fellow.

Simon's most recent work, The Goat, was published in 2019. It was described as his "best novel" by The New Criterion. [1]

As of December 1, 2019, Simon has moved his journalism exclusively to The Epoch Times as their Editor-at-Large.

PJ Media

Simon served as CEO of PJ Media until 2013 and is currently its CEO Emeritus. PJ Media is a media company and operator of an eponymous conservative opinion and commentary website. Founded in 2004 by a network primarily, but not exclusively, made up of conservatives and libertarians led by Simon, it was originally intended as a forum "with the intention of... aggregating blogs to increase corporate advertising and creating our own professional news service" but later included an online television service, PJTV, as well. [2] PJ Media's name, formerly Pajamas Media, is derived from a dismissive comment made by former news executive vice-president Jonathan Klein of CBS during the Killian documents affair involving then-CBS anchorman Dan Rather in the fall of 2004: "You couldn't have a starker contrast between the multiple layers of checks and balances at 60 Minutes and a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas". [3] PJ Media was sold to Salem Communications in March 2019. Simon continues his affiliation with the company as co-founder and CEO Emeritus.

Books

Moses Wine series

The Big Fix

Roger L. Simon began to develop the idea for Moses Wine when Alan Rinzler, who was working as an editor at Straight Arrow Books, a venture by Rolling Stone, suggested that a book Simon had written about a veteran of the Bay of Pigs Invasion who goes crazy and kidnaps the son of a radical lawyer, had poor commercial prospects. Rinzler suggested that Simon do something "more Rolling Stone". [4]

In response, Simon, who had recently been exploring the works of Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald came up with the idea of updating the private-eye genre with a "hip, political, and edgy longhair". Six weeks later, Simon had finished the first Moses Wine novel, "The Big Fix". At the time, Simon was living in Echo Park, California, where many of the stories in the Moses Wine series take place. Moses Wine was different from other fictional detectives that Simon saw as devoid of ethnicity, family, friends, or interests outside of work. In Moses Wine, Simon created a character that was proudly Jewish, divorced, and given to smoking marijuana. The cases taken on by Moses Wine were also unconventional. "The Big Fix" focused on the case of an Abbie Hoffman-like radical prankster who attempts to derail the presidential candidacy of a liberal democrat. "The Big Fix" won several awards and became a best-seller. It was later turned into a popular movie starring Richard Dreyfuss in 1978 for which Simon wrote the screenplay. [4]

Raising the Dead

In "Raising the Dead", Wine is retained by an Arab organization to prove that it had nothing to do with a terrorist attack. Most of the story takes place in Israel and Los Angeles, where a young member of a militant Jewish group has gone underground. [5]

Responding to speculation that he had uncovered information related to the killing of Alex Odeh, a regional director for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination League who had spoken out regarding the takeover of an Italian cruise-ship by Palestinians, Simon said that while he had visited Israel twice and talked to Jews and Arabs in the West Bank, he had not made any inquiries about the case. Simon said, "This is not fact, this is fiction. If I had accidentally uncovered any information, I would have gone right to the FBI. It's a capital case." [6]

California Roll

At the start of California Roll, Wine is feeling his age and recovering from a mid-life crisis when he is invited to Silicon Valley by Alex Wiznitsky, a young genius known as the Wiz, who wants him to become head of security for Tulip, a computer company that rose from backstreet obscurity into the Fortune 500 in only three years. Soon after, one of the Wiz's collaborators, another genius known as the Last Nerd, has disappeared. Wine eventually follows the case to Japan where roughly half the story takes place. [7]

The Straight Man

In "The Straight Man" Wine has quit his posh job in corporate security and is back in West Los Angeles where he is half-heartedly doing private detective work from his apartment while trying to cure his mental angst with regular visits to a psychiatrist. This psychiatrist, himself disabled and using a wheelchair, asks Wine to investigate a possible murder. The dead man, Mike Ptak, was the husband of a patient being treated by the psychiatrist.

Moses Wine as autobiography

Simon says that the books are partially autobiographical. He said, "the series reflects where I was and where I am. It's my diary. I have to have some new thing happening in my life that engages me. I wrap a mystery around that. That's why there aren't more books. I've always been told that I should be doing one every year-and-a-half. I can't. I can't treat it like a television series, every week a new mystery." [4] Simon published eight books about Wine over a 30-year period, from 1974 to 2003. No new Moses Wine volumes have appeared since then.

Non-fiction books

Turning Right at Hollywood and Vine: The Perils of Coming Out Conservative in Tinseltown

First published as "Blacklisting Myself", this short memoir was Simon's first book-length work of non-fiction. It describes his gradual political turn from left to right as well as many personal adventures in movie business working with such well known figures as Richard Dreyfuss, Richard Pryor, Woody Allen and Paul Mazursky.

I Know Best: How Moral Narcissism Is Destroying Our Republic, If It Hasn't Already

An outgrowth of Simon's political writing, this book explains how moral narcissism is a threat to our republic. Unlike the conventional narcissism of a Greek youth transfixed by his handsome reflection in a pool, this is a narcissism of ideology. What you proclaim are your ideas and values, Simon warns, not their results are what makes you "good". The first chapter of this book was reprinted in Commentary magazine.

Screenplays

Besides "The Big Fix", among Simon's other screenwriting credits are Bustin' Loose , with Richard Pryor, Enemies, A Love Story with Anjelica Huston and Ron Silver, My Man Adam which Simon also directed, and Scenes from a Mall , with Woody Allen and Bette Midler. Simon also received story credit on A Better Life , a movie about an undocumented immigrant working as a gardener in Los Angeles while struggling to keep his son away from gangs.

Awards

Simon was nominated for an Academy Award for co-writing the screenplay of the 1989 film Enemies, a Love Story based on the novel by Nobel Prize winner Isaac Bashevis Singer.

The Moses Wine novels have been nominated for the Edgar Awards from the Mystery Writers of America. [8] The Big Fix received the John Creasey Award for best first crime novel from the Crime Writers of Great Britain. [9]

Political views

Simon remained conventionally liberal until the 1990s when he began asking questions in response to events such as the O.J. Simpson murder trial. Simon, a former civil rights activist in the 1960s[ citation needed ], said he was shocked by "the kind of essential dishonesty to justice" of Simpson's acquittal. Simon said, "I found the use of racial politics in the O.J. trial so repellent to me, morally, but also, I couldn't believe it was happening right there in front of my eyes. It started to shake up some things. And then came 9/11." [10]

Simon experienced a political transformation in which he felt alienated from what he saw as the excesses of the Left after the realities of the September 11 attacks affected him. He jokes, "I may be the first American writer who was profiled both by Mother Jones and National Review ." He supports same-sex marriage and the War on Terror, and contends that those issues are linked. He also edits a weblog. In 2005 he founded, with jazz guitarist Charles Johnson, webmaster of the Little Green Footballs weblog, a startup company called Pajamas Media. Pajamas Media, now known as PJ Media, expanded in 2008 into Internet television with Pajamas TV, later known as PJTV. Simon, with screenwriter Lionel Chetwynd, hosts PJTV's "Poliwood" show, covering the intersection of politics and Hollywood.

Simon's first non-fiction book, Blacklisting Myself: Memoir of a Hollywood Apostate in the Age of Terror, [11] was published by Encounter Books in February 2009. It was republished in 2011 with additional material under the title Turning Right at Hollywood and Vine: The Perils of Coming Out Conservative in Tinseltown

In May 2015, Simon began writing the Diary of a Mad Voter blog for PJ Media to cover the presidential election of 2016, interviewing major candidates in print and video.

Simon's recent book -I Know Best: How Moral Narcissism Is Destroying Our Republic, If It hasn't Already – was published by Encounter Books in June 2016.

Education and personal life

Born to a Jewish family [12] in New York City on November 22, 1943, Simon is a graduate of Dartmouth College and the Yale School of Drama. He has been married three times. He is currently married to Sheryl Longin, who wrote the screenplay for Dick, a film spoof of events in the Watergate political scandal. In 1997 Simon directed the feature film Prague Duet [13] based on a script he wrote with Longin. They currently live in Nashville, Tennessee with their daughter.

Bibliography

Novels

Play

Produced Screenplays

The 1971 film Jennifer on My Mind and the 2011 film A Better Life were both based on material by Simon, but he did not write the screenplay for either film.

Non-fiction

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dalton Trumbo</span> American screenwriter (1905–1976)

James Dalton Trumbo was an American screenwriter who scripted many award-winning films, including Roman Holiday (1953), Exodus, Spartacus, and Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944). One of the Hollywood Ten, he refused to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in 1947 during the committee's investigation of alleged Communist influences in the motion picture industry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Goldman</span> American novelist, screenwriter and playwright

William Goldman was an American novelist, playwright, and screenwriter. He first came to prominence in the 1950s as a novelist before turning to screenwriting. Among other accolades, Goldman won two Academy Awards in both writing categories—once for Best Original Screenplay for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) and once for Best Adapted Screenplay for All the President's Men (1976).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay</span> Category of film award

The Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay is the Academy Award for the best screenplay adapted from previously established material. The most frequently adapted media are novels, but other adapted narrative formats include stage plays, musicals, short stories, TV series, and even other films and film characters. All sequels are also considered adaptations by this standard.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kirk Douglas</span> American actor (1916–2020)

Kirk Douglas was an American actor and filmmaker. After an impoverished childhood, he made his film debut in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946) with Barbara Stanwyck. Douglas soon developed into a leading box-office star throughout the 1950s, known for serious dramas, including westerns and war films. During his career, he appeared in more than 90 films and was known for his explosive acting style. He was named by the American Film Institute the 17th-greatest male star of Classic Hollywood cinema.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ring Lardner Jr.</span> American screenwriter (1915–2000)

Ringgold Wilmer Lardner Jr. was an American screenwriter. A member of the "Hollywood Ten", he was blacklisted by the Hollywood film studios during the late 1940s and 1950s after his appearance as an "unfriendly" witness before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) leading to Lardner being found guilty of contempt of Congress.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paul Mazursky</span> American director, screenwriter, and actor (1930-2014)

Irwin Lawrence "Paul" Mazursky was an American film director, screenwriter, and actor. Known for his dramatic comedies that often dealt with modern social issues, he was nominated for five Academy Awards for Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969), An Unmarried Woman (1978), Harry and Tonto (1974), and Enemies, A Love Story (1989). He is also known for directing such films as Next Stop, Greenwich Village (1976), Moscow on the Hudson (1984), Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986), Moon over Parador (1988), and Scenes from a Mall (1991).

Abraham Lincoln Polonsky was an American film director, screenwriter, essayist and novelist. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for Body and Soul but in the early 1950s was blacklisted by the Hollywood movie studios, after refusing to testify at congressional hearings of the House Un-American Activities Committee, in the midst of the McCarthy era.

Howard E. Koch was an American playwright and screenwriter who was blacklisted by the Hollywood film studio bosses in the 1950s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Albert Maltz</span> American writer (1908–1985)

Albert Maltz was an American playwright, fiction writer and screenwriter. He was one of the Hollywood Ten who were jailed in 1950 for their 1947 refusal to testify before the US Congress about their involvement with the Communist Party USA. They and many other US entertainment industry figures were subsequently blacklisted, which denied Maltz employment in the industry for many years.

Lionel Chetwynd is a British-American screenwriter, director and producer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Philip Dunne (writer)</span> American screenwriter, film producer & director (1908–1992)

Philip Ives Dunne was an American screenwriter, film director and producer, who worked prolifically from 1932 until 1965. He spent the majority of his career at 20th Century Fox. He crafted well regarded romantic and historical dramas, usually adapted from another medium. Dunne was a leading Screen Writers Guild organizer and was politically active during the "Hollywood Blacklist" episode of the 1940s–1950s. He is best known for the films How Green Was My Valley (1941), The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947), The Robe (1953) and The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965).

Daniel Mainwaring was an American novelist and screenwriter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Guy Endore</span> American novelist

Samuel Guy Endore, born Samuel Goldstein and also known as Harry Relis, was an American novelist and screenwriter. During his career he produced a wide array of novels, screenplays, and pamphlets, both published and unpublished. A cult favorite of fans of horror, he is best known for his novel The Werewolf of Paris (1933), which occupies a significant position in werewolf literature, much in the same way that Dracula (1897) does for vampire literature. Endore is also known for his left-wing novel of the Haitian Revolution, Babouk: The Story of A Slave. He was nominated for a screenwriting Oscar for The Story of G.I. Joe (1945), and his novel Methinks the Lady. .. (1946) was the basis for Ben Hecht's screenplay for Whirlpool (1949).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Morrie Ryskind</span> American dramatist and conservative activist

Morris "Morrie" Ryskind was an American dramatist, lyricist and writer of theatrical productions and movies who became a conservative political activist later in life.

<i>The Big Fix</i> (1978 film) 1978 political comedy thriller film

The Big Fix is a 1978 American political comedy thriller film directed by Jeremy Kagan and based on the novel by Roger L. Simon, who dramatized his own novel for the screen. It stars Richard Dreyfuss as private detective Moses Wine and co-stars Susan Anspach, Bonnie Bedelia, John Lithgow, and F. Murray Abraham.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">PJ Media</span> American media company

PJ Media, originally known as Pajamas Media, is an American right-wing subscription-based commentary website. It was founded in 2004, with its majority owner being software entrepreneur, billionaire and angel investor Aubrey Chernick, founder of Candle Corporation. Salem Media Group acquired the company in March 2019. PJ Media also operated the online television and video network PJTV, which ceased operations on May 11, 2016.

Bernard Gordon was an American writer and producer. For much of his 27-year career he was prevented from taking screen credit by the Hollywood Blacklist. Among his best-known works are screenplays for Flesh and Fury (1952), Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956), and 55 Days at Peking (1963).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hollywood blacklist</span> Mid-20th century banning of suspected Communists from US entertainment

The Hollywood blacklist was an entertainment industry blacklist put in effect in the mid-20th century in the United States during the early years of the Cold War, in Hollywood and elsewhere. Actors, screenwriters, directors, musicians, and other American entertainment professionals were barred from work by the studios.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edward Lewis (producer)</span> American film producer and writer (1919–2019)

Edward Lewis was an American film producer and writer. As producer, he worked on nine films in partnership with actor Kirk Douglas; from 1958 to 1966, Lewis was Vice-President of Kirk Douglas film production company, Bryna Productions, as well as its subsidiaries, Brynaprod, Joel Productions and Douglas and Lewis Productions. He also produced nine films directed by John Frankenheimer. Lewis also wrote several books.

Stephen Yafa is an American screenwriter, author, and speaker. He was noted for his 1968 screenplay, Paxton Quigley's Had the Course, which was also a Writers Guild of America award-winning novel. The film was renamed "Three in the Attic." Reviews were not good, and Variety noted that Yafa disowned the picture. Yafa co-wrote the screenplay for the 1971 film, Summertree, with Edward Hume, based on the successful Ron Cowen play.

References

  1. "Simon's center-court star". The New Criterion. Retrieved 2020-10-26.
  2. Simon, Roger L (April 28, 2005), An open letter to all bloggers, archived from the original on 2005-04-29.
  3. "How the Blogosphere Took on CBS' Docs", News, Fox.
  4. 1 2 3 Dick Lochte, "The second coming of Moses Wine; Roger L Simon's semiautobiographical novels about the edgy, radical sleuth are being reissued." Los Angeles Times, May 22, 2000
  5. Champlin, Charles (4 September 1998). "Bloody Sunday: Raising the dead, by Roger L Simon (Villar: $15.95; 227 pp.)". Los Angeles Times.
  6. Valerie Takahama (20 October 1988). "Jewish mystery writer uncovers his religion, not Alex Odeh killing". THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER.
  7. Gross, John (17 May 1985). "Books of the Times". The New York Times.
  8. "Edgar Award Winners and Nominees in the Private Eye Genre" . Retrieved 8 June 2015.
  9. "JOHN CREASEY MEMORIAL AWARD". Archived from the original on 6 December 2003. Retrieved 8 June 2015.
  10. Robert Stacy McCain (24 January 2008). "ohn Wayne of blogosphere; For Simon, the frontier is online". The Washington Times.
  11. Simon, Roger Lichtenberg (2008). Blacklisting Myself: Memoir of a Hollywood Apostate in the Age of Terror: Roger L. Simon: 9781594032479: Amazon.com: Books. Encounter Books. ISBN   978-1-59403-247-9.
  12. Andrew, Leigh (June 3, 2004). "Simon Says". National Review. Simon elaborates on this in our interview. "I grew up a New York Jewish boy.
  13. MikeAdel (6 March 2000). "Prague Duet (1998)". IMDb. Retrieved 8 June 2015.