When you look down at your feet, do your shoes give away your birthplace, income level or your social status? Do they tell the world what you do for a living, what your hobbies are or whether or not you’re married? Well, they used to. You Are What You Wear Shoes have been around in one form or another for…
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(Don’t Let Me Be) The Last Virgin in Saigon Song writing isn't as easy as it looks... even when you're trying to slide into home
I’d been fogging up the windows with Magda Biedermann for the better part of our senior year. As graduation approached, I had only one thing on my mind: consummating our relationship (and coincidentally, losing my standing as a virgin) before being drafted and sent off to Vietnam. Her motives were considerably more funereal: she wanted to get married and carry…
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Acting is the Life (Sentence) for Me How prison helped me win an Academy Award
With less than seven months go to before my next parole hearing, I decided to get my house in order. Or, should I say my cell. I was doing 15 to life at Sing Sing for a long list of class C misdemeanors, including furnishing cigarettes to my 12-year-old sister and her friends. Since my parole requests had already been…
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Screenplays Are Easy What do MASH, Law & Order and The Sopranos have in common?
Late Sunday evening, the phone rang. Which, in and of itself wouldn’t be remarkable except that I had been in the Federal Witness Protection Program for over six months. What was more intriguing was the nature of the call and how it would change my life forever–writing Academy Award worthy screenplays. “Hello, is this Allen Smith?” It is. “This is…
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Making Writers Great Again Trump University may be closed, but it's not too late to write like a reality star
Folks, I’m very, very, very pleased to announce the grand opening of my Donald J. Trump Writers Workshop. Together, we will determine the course of America and the world for many, many years to come. We will face challenges, we will confront hardships… wait a minute. That’s my inaugural speech, not my Writers Workshop introduction. Shit. Let me try it…
