#a.e. hotchner

[doubledaybooks]

He’s 101, Unless He’s Only 98. And He Just Wrote Another Novel.

A.E. Hotchner, who grew up to be pals with Ernest Hemingway and Paul Newman, just published a mystery about a boy, a long-ago summer and a jewelry heist.

[viciouslyrobotic]

I'm reading a book called Shameless Exploitation; In Pursuit of the Common Good that I got from a book fair which has to do with Salad Dressing.

Paul Newman and A.E. Hotchner are the writers and the subjects of the story and lemme recite my favorite excerpts so far;

• "Whenever I do something good, right away I've got to do something bad so I know I'm not going to pieces.- Paul to Joanne right after he fell out of the tree house, Beverly Hills, California, 1985" pg 13, chapter 2

• "Hotch: Uh-huh. And how do you see us in this restaurant? PL: Oh, I'd tend the bar and you'd be the Jolly Greeter. Hotch: Uh-huh, people are going to come from all over to be at the bar with this famous movie actor, sitting there with their martinis, taking close-ups with their Instamatics, clinking glasses with the superstar, that it? PL: Pretty picture, isn't it? Hotch: Uh-huh. Well, how about this picture? In comes a party of eight oystermen and their wives, all permed and perfumed for the occasion, a couple of rounds of martinis, then the eight oystermen go to the Jolly Greeter and say, "Where is the superstar bartender we have come all the way from Gloucester to clink a glass with?" Oh, says the Jolly Greeter, at the moment he's sunning himself, in between takes, on the beach at Bali-Bali. Sorry. Whereupon the eight oystermen, having come all the way from Gloucester with their permed and perfumed wives, kick the be-jesus out of the Jolly Greeter. PL: Well, Hotch, there's a price for everything." pages 16-17, chapter 3, about opening a restaurant

• " "Well, kid," said the Godfather behind the desk, "we'll spring for the olive oil and we split fifty-fifty, but we got to go with the Umbria name, not this-what'd you call it?" "Newman's Own." "No, you ain't." "I'll let you know." "What's to know? We got a deal." "I've got to talk to Newman." "Why?" "He's my partner." "Call him up." "I can't bother him now." "Why not?" "His doctor says he's dying." "Call him up." "Right! I've got his number in the car. I'll be right back." There are still track marks from the 'Vett's rubber, bearing indelible testimony to Hotch's frightened foot on the throttle." Page 22, chapter 4, Hotch is meeting with a mayonnaise bottler trying to get Newman's Own salad dressing bottled properly. Honestly, the entire Mayonnaise scene (as I'm calling it) is great but I'm not writing all that.

• Chapter 5 dishonorable mention to drunken horse guy. If you know you know.

Overall, the chapters are short, and the writing is a little clunky at times, but it's endearing so far as these men, an actor and his writer buddy, stumble haphazardly through getting this salad dressing biz off the ground.

Also Sawtooth Homestuck shares that name with A.E. Hotchner, who was sometimes called Sawtooth.

[meuponmyponyonmyboat]

The Moth | The Art and Craft of Storytelling

The Moth is an acclaimed not-for-profit organization dedicated to the art & craft of storytelling. It has presented true & first person stor

[meuponmyponyonmyboat]

A. E. Hotchner, Writer and Friend of the Famous, Dies at 102

His diverse body of work included novels, plays and a memoir about Ernest Hemingway. He was also a partner with his friend Paul Newman in bu

[toldnews-blog]

New Post has been published on https://toldnews.com/technology/entertainment/the-old-man-and-the-play-friend-keeps-word-to-hemingway/

The Old Man and the Play: Friend keeps word to Hemingway

When the 1958 film adaptation of “The Old Man and the Sea” hit theaters, Ernest Hemingway happened to be in New York City to watch the World Series and invited his close friend A.E. Hotchner to go see the movie with him.

“About 12 or 13 minutes after we sat down, he turns to me and says, ‘Ready to go?'” Hotchner said in a recent interview at his Connecticut home. The 101-year-old author and playwright recalls them walking out and taking off down the sidewalk, Hemingway ranting the whole time that the star Spencer Tracy was totally miscast, that he looked like a fat, rich actor trying to play a fisherman.

“He said, ‘You know, you write a book that you really like and then they do something like that to it, and it’s like pissing in your father’s beer’,” Hotchner said. (Hemingway reserved this particular turn of phrase for a handful of hated adaptations of his work, he said.)

Later that night, sitting at Toots Shor’s restaurant — a hangout frequented by Joe DiMaggio, Jackie Gleason and Marilyn Monroe — Hemingway urged Hotchner to do his own adaptation someday. Hotchner said he promised he would try.

More than 60 years later, Hotchner has kept his word. His stage adaptation of “The Old Man and the Sea,” a brief novel published in 1952 and winner of the Pulitzer Prize, premieres at the newly renovated Point Park University’s Pittsburgh Playhouse on Feb. 1.

“It wasn’t until I became an old man myself that I really got to a version that could transport itself beyond the book,” he said.

Hotchner should be the perfect candidate to take the novel to the stage: he fished with Hemingway in Cuba, went to bullfights with him in Spain, hunted with him in Idaho and wrote the 1966 best-selling biography “Papa Hemingway.”

He also helped edit Hemingway’s bullfighting classic “The Dangerous Summer.” He often served as his agent and adapted several stories for television, including “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” ”The Killers” and “The Battler,” which led to his first meeting with Paul Newman. (The two became best friends and neighbors and started the “Newman’s Own” food company together. But that’s another story).

“Somehow that pledge to him haunted me, because he died not too long after that. For years I would think about “The Old Man and The Sea.” But I never could think in my head how you could take this very personal book, because the old man is really Hemingway himself, which is really a literary work,” he said. “How do you bring that to life on the stage?”

He tried maybe 10 times over the years to adapt it, starting drafts only to scrap them, until his latest effort.

To help reel the project in, he enlisted his son Tim Hotchner to collaborate on it and help transform his draft into what will run in Pittsburgh through Feb. 17.

“I’ve lived with Hemingway’s ghost for my whole life and there was something very profound about this story, even though it’s very simple,” said Tim Hotchner, 47, a documentary filmmaker and writer. “And to have a 101-year-old father who’s still going out for his marlin, and hopefully coming back with better results, there are a lot of themes that really resonate.”

Tim Hotchner also saw the project as a way to re-examine the work with a modern lens: to look at what it means to be a man in the world and to look at the environment.

To make “The Old Man and the Sea” accessible on stage, the Hotchners crafted a kaleidoscope of the tale, and mined the text for a new approach. The boy has a bigger role, and Hemingway himself is a character, as is a cellist who evokes the moods of the play throughout.

It stars Tony Award-winning actor Anthony Crivello as Santiago, the aging fisherman, David Cabot as Hemingway and Gabriel Florentino as the boy, Manolin. Cellist Simon Cummings will perform original music for the show. The play is being directed by Ronald Allan-Lindblom.

Getting the draft to the stage happened unusually fast, as a result of a collaboration with New York City-based RWS Entertainment Group.

The Hotchners’ agent passed along the script to Joe Christopher, who heads up RWS’s theatrical division, who took it with him on vacation in June.

“I don’t know if it was because I literally read it while I was lying on the beach, but I could viscerally see the show working,” he said. He told RWS CEO Ryan Stana it would be the chance of a lifetime to work with someone who had been side-by-side with Hemingway.

The Pittsburgh Playhouse was looking for a new work to launch its first season in its renovated theater and Stana, an alumna of Point Park University, floated the idea to the school.

“In less than 24 hours, they were in,” he said.

The production is unique in that students at Point Park University are working on the show alongside professionals in all aspects from set design to ticket sales. It’s something Stana sees as a circular moment — youth helping bring to life the work of a centenarian playwright.

The entire show was put together in six months.

At 101, A.E. Hotchner is sharp, funny and surprisingly energetic. During a four-hour interview at his home, he needed only a 10-minute break to get a glass of water. Last year, his Depression-era detective novel “The Amazing Adventures of Aaron Broom” was published and he’s still writing daily. His routine: breakfast, write, lunch, write, nightly news, dinner, gin and tonic, and maybe a movie.

As for “The Old Man and the Sea,” he’s satisfied with having finally followed through on a half-century-old promise to his friend, and he’s pleased with how it turned out.

“This is going to be a version that Hemingway would never have walked out on,” he said.

[mitchelmd]

"Hemingway In Love by A.E. Hotchner - Introduction" by MacmillanAudio

[hemingwayvsfitzgerald]

The step up from writing parodies is writing on the wall above the urinal.

Ernest Hemingway, as told to A.E. Hotchner

[live-primerates-blog]

Newman’s Own – Great Products for a Great Cause

Nearly 5 years after his death in September 2008, Paul Newman and his Newman’s Own food company continues to be a charitable force to be reckoned with.