Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
When I eventually die I expect to get my first vacation from writing. It seems I’ve been doing it all my life. I found some letters I had written to my mother in German at age 6 while on vacation with a very strict and overbearing German kindergarten teacher. My grandmother had died and mother was in mourning and not feeling well. They sent me to the Black Sea with my kindergarten teacher, a woman Hitler would have admired. I guess I was quite unhappy there but too cautious to put it in writing, so I wrote to mother about how much I loved and missed her, subtly communicating about my discomfort with that authoritative woman who would force me to eat fish, skin and all, which I detested.
I should explain, I suppose: English is really my fifth language. I was born in a former Austrian province of Romania where most folks spoke German and Romanian. Romania had a love affair with France and everything French. Starting in grade one, we were given French and German lessons daily. The whole curriculum, of course, was in Romanian, which was a good language to have. It may have remained closer to Latin than the other Latin tongues, such as Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, etc. It made it easy, years later, to pick up bits of these.
My would-be/should-be fourth language is Hungarian, which has Mongolian roots. Whenever I hear it, I find myself grinning. It was my dad’s language and apparently, he didn’t want to share it. He had lots of Hungarian friends and listening to them in conversation, I found myself picking it up. I don’t speak it, of course, but I managed to collect a substantial vocabulary in Hungarian which, I am told, I pronounce perfectly.
This language has played a fairly big role in my life. In 1961 I produced a TV commercial with Zsa Zsa Gabor. At one point, she became rather demanding about various things, so I said to her, “You are becoming a ‘Zsirke Fogo,” which means ‘chicken thief,’ a mild way of accusing someone of being a rascal. She was surprised, assumed I spoke the language, and started prattling excitedly in Hungarian. I held up my hand to explain that I didn’t really speak it, but we became instant buddies and the commercial became a huge success. More recently I wrote about that experience in the book, “The Zsa Zsa Affair,” which seems to have achieved some popularity.
The next time that the Hungarian language affected my life was roughly in 2007. Note that my long term memory is considerably better than my short term memory. This normally happens in our declining years. I had walked through a park filled with dogs and noticed a strange apparition which I can only describe as a rectangular suitcase covered with Rastafarian locks, bounding through the grass energetically. I asked its owner what it was and he informed that it was a Puli, a Hungarian ‘water dog’ or ‘sheep dog.’ I had never before seen another specimen of that strange looking creature and addressed it in proper Hungarian which brought a lot of angry barking. I know I have something in my looks, or smell, or genes that attract dogs. I’ve never met a dog I didn’t love or who didn’t love me in return, but this Puli wouldn’t even let me pet him. He was barking at me in Hungarian. I could tell. The first syllable in Hungarian always gets the accent and his “BOW wow-wow-wow-wow,” was clearly Hungarian; and employing some rather off-color dog language at that.
I felt compelled to write about this experience in a 900 word piece which I sent to a writer friend in Hollywood who sent it on to an old comedian I used to adore, Shelly Berman. Both of them wrote to me insisting I find a publication which would carry such pieces on a weekly basis. I responded, explaining that I didn’t make it up and such incidents don’t just happen on a weekly basis. But I reread my piece and realized that I had mixed diary notes with mini-memoir and that combination appealed to me. It inspired me to write my biography in some such manner, making compulsive diary notes whenever so prompted and then adding biographical stuff if the events of the day brought on memories of the past.
The year before, a publisher had come across a screenplay of mine which hadn’t been produced and she fell in love with it. She insisted I write a book adaptation. I was busy at the time with film development and something in my gut turned me off about the publisher but she insisted and offered to have the book ghost written while still paying a decent royalty. I agreed, but it turned out to have become a distasteful experience. I edited the poorly written book, she ignored my edit and less than a year later she pulled a bogus bankruptcy stranding a dozen other authors, too.
At this point, e-books were becoming established and I decided to not only write my bio but e-publish it, too. My ego prevented me from pure self-publishing, so I registered a book publishing company with intent to eventually also publish the works of others.
Combining diary notes written only when there was something worthy of recording and then combining them with memoir is a leisurely way of writing, not overworking the memory to recall details but simply recording what comes back to mind because of something that takes place today.
I found myself writing several obituaries of friends who had died and their death reminding me of relationships of years ago. When Leslie Nielsen died, for instance, I recalled how I had first met him and what a prince he had turned out to be. I had started out as an actor. There was only theater and radio in the mid-1940s. TV was still to come in a few years. I had done the radio network audition. A lovely lady staffer took me aside and confided that she will send the audition results, which were very good, to all the producers, but this would lead to nothing unless I badgered them and made myself known. I did so, and finally got a call for my first show.
I had expected them to throw me a bone. I expected the show to be a marginal little school broadcast. As I walked into the studio, to my great surprise, I found seated in a big circle, just about every ‘name’ actor in existence at the time. These were the radio drama stars of Canada at the time. I was naturally cowed and became frightened. After the first read-through, a good looking, fair-haired young man came to me and said, “You are new here, aren’t you?” I nodded. He introduced himself. “I am Les Nielsen. Come; let me introduce you to the assembled.”
I never forgot that kindness and thoughtfulness. We stayed in touch until he moved to New York where he quickly got work, and, by the time I moved to New York a few years later, he had moved on to Hollywood. We worked in different worlds, though, even though we were both in film production – TV commercials and feature films are distant cousins.
Over a few years, as an avocation, really, I wrote over a million words combining diary notes with memoir, far too much for one book. So I began to “mine” this trove. But to my surprise, I had been doing similar stuff throughout my life.
I found letters written in my teens; quite a lively exchange with several young guys and gals. We would write in the style of authors of the latest book we had read. It was fun and inspiring.
Later, when I began to act in radio drama, I found many of the scripts wanting and decided that I could do better. I contacted Radio Writers’ Laboratory in Pennsylvania which was syndicating scripts around the world and they were happy to take me on.
In 1948 I graduated with honors from Lorne Greene’s Academy of Radio Arts and teamed with another graduate to write comedy shows. We didn’t sell any but made contacts one of which, the head of radio for Young & Rubicam, then the biggest ad agency in the world, offered me a job as a radio commercials writer, in fact as chief writer, but I ‘chiefed’ only myself because I was the whole copy department. It involved great volume and was probably perfect baptismal fire because in advertising one frequently needs to come up with great ideas and copy on an instant basis.
When I arrived on Madison Avenue at 27 I was years ahead in experience of my contemporaries and competitors, having been radio-TV director of a Canadian ad agency with offices right across the country, having written and produced TV programs and TV commercials, and having written for every existing medium as well as performed in all of these. On Madison Avenue I wrote TV commercials, documentaries and sponsored films – won five awards for creative excellence. On the side I wrote songs, words and music – ended up with over 30 releases on most major labels with artists such as Paul Simon, Carl Perkins, Fred Neil, Lillian Briggs and many others.
In summary, I’m 88, have outlived most of my contemporaries; am blessed with health and energy that might take me to over 100. I put in 70 hour weeks, developing films, records and books – now have six e-books published plus one by another which I edited and published – have two more ready for editing and publishing and am working on a highly ambitious plan which, if successful, will merge my company, Veni Vici Entertainment, which includes Veni Vici Books, with a wealthy Chinese company, leading to great international projects.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
The book I’m presently promoting, which I published at the end of last September but found time only now to push, is titled MY HILARIOUS SEX LIFE.
The inspiration for it came in the late 1970s when I lived in Los Angeles and received a call from a director/painter/writer who wrote poorly but was a good friend. He lived in Toronto and we had known each other for many years. He sought my opinion on an idea he had to write a book about all the women he had slept with. I commented, “It would become a very long book.” He seemed overly focused on sex. Frequently when I would bring up any subject or point to a location, it would remind him of a woman he had slept with.
I, on the other hand, had marginal interest in sex. I was often attracted to women as potential friends, rather than sex partners. I had had female friends with whom I would no more have thought of sleeping than with any of my male buddies. I was often amused by sex because to me it often IS funny.
I’ll never forget looking out a window to see my horny beagle trying to mount a police dog mix in heat. The bitch was too tall for his penis to reach her vagina and he, with front-paws on her back, was desperately pumping, with his weenie piercing the air like an index finger belonging to a politician who emphasizes his lies in debate.
Now the relationship with my oversexed friend involved other aspects that inspired me. He thought I was very funny – which I’m really not – but since he expected me to be funny, in his company I frequently became so, and his laughter would egg me on – the compulsive performer in me would make me that much more funny. In short, our meetings usually involved a lot of hilarity.
This led me to suggest the following: “Come to L.A. for a week or two. I’ll put you up and I’ll arrange with one or more restaurants some free dinners in exchange for publicity in a book. Like in the film, “My Dinner with Andre,” we’ll chat but focus on sex. You will recall the fourteen million women you’ve had and I’ll recall the great experiences I MIGHT have had if I hadn’t talked myself out of them. We’ll get a lot of humor because you turn me on and I become funny. We’ll bring a recorder and record our conversations. Then we’ll hire a transcriber to transcribe these conversations. We’ll edit them in a week or two and we’ll have a rather unique book that should tickle the debauched to the righteous comedy lovers.”
My buddy gave it cursory consideration and then declined. He wanted to write his own book. I knew he never would and, sadly, he didn’t. I attended his funeral some seven years ago.
So my book became a collection of pieces; call them articles or chapters. In a sense, you might find it ‘uneven’ because each experience I relate took place at a different time in my life, seen through my eyes that adopted a different viewpoint at the time. The biggest piece, Lainie, Lou & Mr. Laing, finds me roaring with laughter each time I re-read it, even though it contains sad moments.
After ending a 30 year marriage I had met a divorcee who had a sense of humor. She was quite funny, really, because she was highly neurotic. I had intended to take my experience with her and fictionalize it, blow it up into a full novel but expediency and the need for a lead piece for this book, decided me to record it as it happened. In my view this piece elevates me above Bob Hope and Jack Benny and Seinfeld and all the others. After a great session in bed, I gave that lady a line that found her laughing so hard she fell out of bed and that makes me a king of comedians.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
Not that I’m aware of. I keep promising myself to set a timer by the PC and force myself to get up and move about every half hour but I’ve yet to keep that promise consistently. It is not unusual for me to write furiously for six hours at a stretch and that is just as unhealthy as sitting on a plane for that long – they warn us of blood clots, etc. Writers, beware! The lack of movement while writing slowly kills you. GET YOUR EXERCISE.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
I’m not consciously aware of any single one. In my youth I read books in German, Romanian and French, which deeply impressed me because in youth we are impressionable. I no longer read in anything but English. I have re-read some of the early books in English translation and found them ludicrous in style. It is a critical attitude that, more often than not, will influence me. If I read or see something that I compulsively criticize, I concentrate on doing it differently myself. Many of my moves in life came about because I saw others doing the same thing in a manner that I considered wrong.
What are you working on now?
In music, I plan an album as Ol’ Mack, the Mountain Man in which I “talk” the lyrics I’ve written while two gals fill with vocals. The first in that Ol’ Mack voice, a gravelly Nashville accent, is on YouTube now in two versions – one a cappella – titled THE HELLION OF HADES
In film I’m blowing up a half hour TV Pilot comedy, THE FROZEN CHOSEN into a 110 minute feature film script. Concurrently I’m preparing a presentation to Chinese production and funding houses for a merger of Veni Vici Entertainment, leading to production of a dozen films that are multi-national in content.
In books this year I plan to edit two more completed ones – “ISLOMANIA” and “MY PERFORMING YEARS.” Also to explore paperback versions of three of my existing e-books.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
If I had one I would keep it secret. I don’t know of one. We live in a fast moving world in which today’s magic is tomorrow’s dud. Google Ad Words apparently worked fantastically a few years ago. Now, nada. A good Kirkus Review, I had been told, could really move a book’s sales. You pay for them – a lot – and you take your chances. They might give you a rotten review, depending on the quality of your book and the taste of the individual reviewer. You got the option, of course, to put a lid on the review and not have it published – simply to write off the investment.
I felt “My Hilarious Sex Life,” was different enough to entice a reviewer. What I had not counted on was a review so glowing that even my lack of modesty would have ruled out. A seasoned writer friend of my in the South, who has some 15 books out, read that review and said she’d give her right arm for it on any of her books. It sold not a single copy of that title. She checked with her friends. One of them had the same experience recently. Kirkus no longer sells books.
I am fully prepared to meet total failure with the present promotion of “My Hilarious Sex Life,” which is priced at 9.99 and will get three days at zero cost. Everybody and their cousin is using the same tactic, to promote with low price and/or totally free for a few days at a time. The problem is, too many are doing this. There are now hundreds of sites promoting free books. Amazon and all the other retailers or major publishers have not come up with any magical promotion ideas or device. When all the books are cheap or free they might as well all be expensive. Who has time to distinguish between them?
The world will soon have more websites than people. The only folks benefiting are website developers and hosting outfits. All social media might become more effective if it became ANTISOCIAL. The only thing that will sell books is effective publicity, not advertising in measured media, but effective publicity. This is costly but doable. I know how, and I’m not going to share it, but also, I may never afford it or bring it off.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Certainly. Get born into a wealthy family or marry a rich spouse or find another source of income that doesn’t take much of your time – anything that lets you write for enjoyment instead of “trying to make it.” You may find – I certainly did – that writing can be one of the most enjoyable occupations in the world – and you can do it anywhere – on an island or iceberg or sharing an eagle’s nest. But it loses its enjoyment when you’re pressed financially and are dependent on it.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
Oh, yes, I’ll never forget it. It came from a big fellow named Rocky whom I met in a sleazy bar. He said, “Kid, this is America! You can have anything you want if you walk in with a big smile and a gun.”
What are you reading now?
Just reference material. I have always read very little fiction.
What’s next for you as a writer?
Stayin’ alive!
If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
Instructional books on how to build a cottage with coconut trees and driftwood, how to catch fish and fish recipes. That kind of practical stuff.