Blacklisting Myself: Memoir of a Hollywood Apostate in the Age of Terror [Hardcover]

Roger L. Simon (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 5, 2009

Blacklisting Myself details Academy Award-nominated screenwriter Roger L. Simon's odyssey from financier of the Black Panther Breakfast Program to darling of the political right. In this tale of Hollywood radical chic run amuck, Simon relates his adventures with Richard Pryor, Warren Beatty, Woody Allen and real-life Hollywood KGB officers. Among the topics covered along the way: the new blacklist for conservatives in tinseltown and how new media will destroy Hollywood as we know it.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Years ago, I read Roger L. Simon's first mystery novel, The Big Fix, and I was delighted. Roger was a left liberal then and so was I. Now Roger's politics and mine have changed, but his gifts as a writer have only grown richer. Blacklisting Myself is a story of Hollywood and America, funny and perceptive at the same time. --Michael Barone, US News & World Report, American Enterprise Institute

Review

Rueful, thoughtful, refreshingly direct, and full of juicy inside stories, Roger L. Simon's memoir is the best and most intimate account of Hollywood's politics yet published.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 250 pages
• Publisher: Encounter Books; 1 edition (February 5, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594032475
• ISBN-13: 978-1594032479
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.8 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,061,505 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

75 of 86 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Gulag February 16, 2009

By Jane Whitson

Format:Hardcover

If you, as I, are fascinated by how people begin the slow, often painful process of authentic life change after centering their lives on radical political and cultural positions we thought would never end--or we thought would end in some utopian fantasy world--then you won't want to miss Roger Simon's recently released "Blacklisting Myself."

Smart, clever, sophisticated, funny and radically honest, Roger has filled his book with recollections and vignettes from the wild and crazy days of the 60s and 70s when drugs, sex and rock and roll flowed freely over the land but turned out, as we all know, were not really free at all.

Going back with Roger as an erstwhile radical left screen/mystery writer residing in Hollywood after graduating from Dartmouth is an edifying and intersting trip. It's a long, long way from wanting to be "lionized as Fellini and idolized as Che" to being the current CEO of the conservative internet site known as Pajamas Media and sending Joe the Plumber to Gaza on a reporting assignment for PJTV recently....

Sure, he meant all his silly, lefty ideologies at the time, but a funny thing happened on the way to actualizing his radial fantasies: he began to re-examine his deeply held beliefs amidst a fascinating body of life experiences, and almost against his will started moving right: Though he'd rubbed elbows with Timothy Leary in a crackhouse, turned down a dinner engagement and business opportunities with Warren Beaty, had a flat tire in South Carolina while fomenting dissent during desegregation, spent time in both Communist China, Russia and Cuba, married three wives, was divorced from two and honed his skills as a mystery writer centered around his Moses Wine books, nothing could have prepared him, nor permanently kept him in his leftist myopia on that fateful day he sat in the courtroom watching the sensational O.J Simpson murder trail unfold.

It was there in the circus atmosphere of the greatest miscarriage of justice the world has ever watched live on TV that a whole new set of lights started to come on in Roger's head. Granted, only dimly at first, but the good news is they kept getting brighter as time has gone on.

How a man like Simon---who for decades had lived, breathed and had his being on the left fringe of politics and pop culture as the likes of Ward Churchill and Bill Ayers did and sadly still do---stopped, stared and slowly started changing direction and going right is a great read.

Indeed, with the kind of change you'll read about in this book, I can only wonder what's in store for Roger, in the words of Tim McGraw, "in his next thirty years." Will he end up writng screen plays about William Buckley? Try too oust Arnold as governor? Become an evangelical minister? (Ha! couldn't resist!) Who knows? Read this book, and stay tuned for the rest of the story.

If Roger can change from where he came from, then there's still hope for my left-leaning Obama-loving adult children. In fact, think I'll buy them each a copy just in case they're interested in reading how Roger Simon made a U-turn, and in Hollywood no less.

Why four stars instead of five? For one reason only: So he'll have something to strive for in his next thirty years! (On the Web, I write as Webutante.) Read more ›

51 of 59 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Couldn't Put It Down February 4, 2009

By S. K. Chartwell

Format:Hardcover

I was expecting to like this book, as I've long been a fan of both Roger Simon's detective fiction and his incisive political/cultural blog. But I was nevertheless surprised at what a terrific read this book proved to be, from start to finish. It's a great memoir of life inside the belly of the movie business, told with the grace, humor, and bite (and telltale stories!) that one would expect from a first-rate writer. But more than that, this is a compelling account of one man's struggle with the dueling angels of liberal political orthodoxy and common sense. It's still on my bedside table; I re-read it every night. I hope that, as a true child of Hollywood, Simon is already at work on the sequel.

53 of 62 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Simon's walk through familier history has a refreshing take February 5, 2009

By Joe R. Hicks

Format:Hardcover

Roger L. Simon's writing is not only a refreshing look-back at the politics that informed the Sixties-era Hollywood film industry, but also the direction of American pop culture post-Vietnam and Watergate. His breezy, often humorous style walks us through his interactions with figures as diverse as Barbara Streisand, Woody Allen, Warren Beatty and Richard Pryor to Abbie Hoffman, Black Panther leader Elaine brown and Timothy Leary. As a former Marxist theoretician-turned-political conservative, I especially appreciate Simon's thoughtful description of his own re-evaluation of his left leanings that eventually shifted significantly to the right. Smart, funny, insightful ... "Blacklisting Myself" is a delight. > Joe R.Hicks

26 of 33 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Wickedly entertaining and enlightening February 3, 2009

By LA book lover

Format:Hardcover

I can't think of the last time I was so riveted to a memoir. With great humor and honesty, the author recounts his journey through the shifting landscape of Hollywood from the late sixties to the present. Finally someone who was at the center of the counter culture gives an insightful account of how we ended up where we are. The conclusions Simon draws are profound, yet the book is a joy to read. Who could ask for more?

24 of 31 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars From radical to conservative in Hollywood February 6, 2009

By Michael T Kennedy VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Roger Simon would probably not agree to being called "conservative" but you can put only so many words in a review title. He has made a journey from his college days at Dartmouth, when he yearned to be a leftist radical yet was too fearful (and sensible) to accompany a classmate to Cambridge for an LSD party with Timothy Leary. He became a Hollywood screenwriter and novelist with an Academy Award nomination (for Enemies: a Love Story) with three wives and a gay son who became a father last summer via a surrogate mother. That is a full life for anyone.

His slow conversion from conventional (for Hollywood) leftist liberal began with the OJ Simpson trial. He and his wife watched the slow motion white Bronco chase, as I did from the bar in the Denali Lodge in Alaska, knowing that only a guilty man would behave that way. They watched the trial, and even got to attend one day when his wife won the daily lottery for seats. Sitting in the courtroom, he watched OJ flirt with his wife from the defendants table. OJ was so confident by that time, and rightly so, that he could revert to his womanizing nature and ignore the spectacle. After the acquittal, Roger began to examine his feelings about civil rights and affirmative action and the impact on the black "community" that allowed those jurors to ignore mountains of evidence. I watched much of the trial from Hanover, New Hampshire as I worked on a graduate degree after I had retired from medicine. I had one of the new satellite dishes and the afternoon session coincided with the end of my day of classes so I watched quite a bit of the trial. My impressions were a bit different from Roger's but his thoughts about the jurors were shared....

Then came 9/11 and his realization that his Hollywood friends and acquaintances were being left behind in a new world that they could not understand and refused to accept. At that point he became a neocon, the dreaded bete noir of the Hollywood left and its hangers on. Along the way, he tells an interesting and entertaining story of life in the world of the movies and writing. I am a movie fan, which is why I almost never go to the movies anymore. I spend a few hours a week watching the classics on DVD. I recently got a copy of a charming comedy called The Moon Is Blue, that I saw as a teenager. It was scandalous at the time since the topic was virginity and its loss. What a contrast with the soft core porn that passes for artistic license today.

Anyway, this is an interesting and entertaining book about the life of an aging Hollywood writer who has become a member of the "New Media" of blogging. He tells the story of Pajamas Media and its origins. He became a bit of a computer pioneer as one of the first screenwriters to use a laptop ( at the time the size of a steamer trunk) and has continued his pioneering ways with Pajamas TV. The book is small and reads quickly and I recommend it. Read more ›