I have always loved those smart, well educated southern
Jews, and this is one damn smart Dixie Hebrew. Tommy
Shulman was in Hollywood writing up a storm when I arrived in 1977. He went to
Vanderbilt University with Bungaloids Crawford Binion and Bob Higgins,
and when we met in 1979 he was writing up a
storm--commercials whatever; he was making a living writing. He was so sweet and
kind of shy, and I adored him right away. He came to all the 4th of July parties
but never lived at Ten Bungalows. He already had a fine small place up in the
canyons and while we were playing, mostly Tom was writing.
I had dinner
with him not long before I took my sabbatical, and he and his wife are raising
their son, Max, and Tom is still writing. He can party with the rest of us, but he must
always go home and write I guess. He 's in the second CLOCK SERIES as well and I
am likely to repeat myself but unless you are a 14 year old Beetlejuice fanatic
you have not read the whole pumpkin so whatever... He wrote Dead Poets
Society and won himself one of them there gold statues (or as they say in Hollywood, An
Academy Award). Nice thing is, it loosened him up a bit and I guess relaxed him
some, because we had so much more fun last time I saw him, and even though I'm sure
he'll come crashing through and win another one sometime or other, he is less
frenetic about it all and so much more fun.
Email me, Tom, at
NineMoonCorp@aol and we will swap tales.
