Roger L. Simon

Roger L. Simon

Roger L. Simon is the author of ten novels, including the eight prize-winning Moses Wine detective novels, which have been published in many editions and translated in over a dozen languages. He is also a screenwriter and has written for all the major Hollywood studios, including “Bustin’ Loose” with Richard Pryor, “Scenes from a Mall” with Woody Allen, and the adaptation of his own “The Big Fix” with Richard Dreyfuss. Simon received an Academy Award nomination for his adaptation of Isaac Singer’s “Enemies, A Love Story” in 1989. He taught screenwriting at the American Film Institute and the Sundance Institute and served on the board of directors of the Writers Guild of America. He is a former president of the West Coast branch of PEN and a former vice-president of the International Association of Crime Writers. His first non-fiction book, Blacklisting Myself: A Hollywood Apostate in an Age of Terror, will be published by Encounter Books in January 2009. Simon has been blogging since 2003 and is the co-founder and CEO of Pajamas Media.

Academy Award-Nominated Screenwriter’s Unexpected Right Turn

by Roger L. Simon

The following is an excerpt from Roger L. Simon’s Blacklisting Myself: Memoir of a Hollywood Apostate in the Age of Terror, which will be published by Encounter Books in late January. Simon is the Academy Award-nominated screenwriter of Enemies, A Love Story, Bustin’ Loose and Scenes from a Mall, among other films. He is also the author of the multiple award winning Moses Wine detective novels, the first of which, The Big Fix, was made into the Richard Dreyfuss film with a screenplay by Simon.

This excerpt from the chapter “The New Blacklist” about political conditions in contemporary Hollywood is from late in the book. Earlier parts are more autobiographical, detailing Simon’s migration from a “card-carrying” member of the Hollywood Left to his current job as the CEO of the right-leaning Pajamas Media. Along the way are encounters with Warren Beatty, Barbra Streisand, Timothy Leary and Abbie Hoffman, among many others.

Pre-publication copies of the book may be purchased at Amazon, and you can join the book’s Facebook Group here.

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