Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
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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.)

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.

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

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?

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.

Because of having read several of his detective novels, and having followed his political blog since its inception, I eagerly awaited the release of Roger Simon's memoir. To say the least, I was not disappointed. It seems to me that, in a sense, a memoir may be the most difficult literary form, as the writer is forced to be brutally honest throughout, not only with himself, but with everyone who has ever known him. While I have no independent, "objective" evidence to determine the honesty of Mr. Simon's account, virtually every word in his memoir convinces me that he is representing himself, and his life, in the most candid and fearless way imaginable. As a physician, trained in residency in the (Freudian) psychoanalytic tradition, I have both strengths and definite limitations in trying to assess what is, after all, the limited sample of a person's "behavior" that one gets reading his memoir... but, allowing for those limitations, I would have to say that "Blacklisting Myself" proves Mr. Simon to be a supremely intelligent, courageous, sober, and penetrating analyst of himself and of our era. All that, and a terrific sense of humor, too!

Don't miss this book, even if (especially if!), you think you will be disinclined to accept any of Roger Simon's political judgments.

James D. Woolery, MD

For anyone who would like to sit down with a highly perceptive, self-aware, funny, smart, charming and profound human being, buy and read this book. Far more than the memoir of one individual, Simon mines his own experience-rich life to illuminate the several eras he has witnessed, felt and understood (he's 65 now, so the eras extend from the Army-McCarthy Hearings when he was eleven to Obama's election.) Filled with great instant portraits of almost everyone you've ever heard of in Hollywood (e.g., Oliver Stone's study features his Oscar "illuminated by a special spotlight lest you fail to notice it".) He goes everywhere (China---the People's Republic of in 1978: as he crosses over from sophisticated, still-British Hong Kong into "a small, almost ascetic greeting center, a tinny version of
'The East Is Red' playing through loudspeakers. It was like crossing into a parallel universe, an Oz of people in blue pajamas.") Soviet-era Russia, Israel, Europe of course, and many places of the heart. With an eye for great, telling details, and a complex, passionate nature that he understands with great insight, he takes the lucky reader on a tour d'horizon and a tour de force through the endlessly fascinating power hierarchies of Hollywood, Washington and New York, with detours through the decades from the 60s to today. He was always ready for the next challenge, no matter how difficult, and he met each one head-on, with extraordinary intelligence, courage, confidence and humility. He seems to be at a "malice toward none" time in his wonderful life, so this is not a "I'll show THEM" score-settling book, but rather a look back and a look forward at a life full of character (his own) and characters, of loves and betrayals, of the scales falling from his eyes, which are always open, maybe even when he sleeps. This is a rare human being, one who, in Matthew Arnold's poem describing Sophocles, has a an "even balanced soul, From first life tested up to...age, Business could not make dull...Who saw life steadily and saw it whole." And he can write, too. Read it and learn. Read it and enjoy. Read it and admire. There is so much to learn, enjoy and admire in this extraordinary self-examination and analysis of the last fifty years of life and of art. If Amazon allowed readers more than 5 stars, I'd give this one a hundred. Minimum.

I liked this book very much, especially insights into the hypocrisy of the rich and famous (actors) and the powerful (producers). But it focuses mainly on the past - yes I know it is a memoir - but I would have loved to have seen more insights and stories from today, and less about the founding of Pajamas Media - which was interesting. So instead of taking out the Pajamas story, I wish the author, who is very engaging, had written more. Perhaps there's a sequel in the making, Hollywood style? All in all it's a one of a kind memoir and worth reading. A nice way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

Blacklisting Myself chronicles Simon's radical past with the new left including tales of the Black Panthers and Timothy Leary. It explains his success writing the Moses Wine novels, the first hippy detective played by Richard Dreyfus in the movies. As a screenwriter he writes about his collaboration with Richard Pryor and Paul Mazursky culminating in his Oscar nomination for ENEMIES A LOVE STORY.

But Simon wasn't the same man after 9-11 and neither was his alter ego, Moses Wine. The book is a look back at the way Simon saw the world as a youth and how he has come to see the world in the age of terrorism.

His new outlook has allowed him to reassess his earlier experiences and comment on the radical politics that Hollywood began adopting in the 1970s. One thing I found particularly interesting was how the real radicals that ran studios in the 1970s rarely infused their politics into movies, thinking of the movies as a business first. They would make mainstream movies and then funnel that money to causes like the Panthers. The more radical movies from that period were made by amateur jacobins eager to secure their reputations as down for the cause.

This goes for a great extent today as well. A lot of the current left-wing zeal is merely a way for Hollywood players to become part of the club although many of them have little interest in the actual political issues. Meanwhile, right-wing actors are generally protective of their beliefs fearing a loss of work for vocalizing them.

Simon discusses the blacklist of the 1950s and how it became a badge of honor during those times. But today, the blacklist is aimed in the opposite direction. He admits that at his age he might not be in demand either way, but becoming a vocal neo-con ensured that his days making movies would be over.

Length:: 7:26 Mins

This is a memoir I'd put right up there with Ron Radosh's Commies and David Horowitz's Radical Son. I'm glad for Simon's turnabout...his turn both to the right and to the side of the righteous. Thanks for your journey, Roger.