Book Soup Hosts Author Peter Mehlman

Mandela Was Late

Frankly, as a parole officer, you root for your thugs to come late or, better yet, not show at all. They get kicked back in the can where they belong, and you have time for a sandwich. But somehow, I felt different about Nelson Mandela. Maybe I was losing my edge, but he seemed somehow more respectable than most of the ex-cons who pollute my schedule.

This is the opening paragraph from his famous article in Esquire Magazine and the title of his new book of memories of “odd things” in his “odd life”.  (click here to read the entire article at Esquire’s web site.)

“I’d rather be a travel agent on the Gaza Strip.”

Mehlman has knocked around the sitcom business for a long time.  For all you wannabes check out his sort of sitcom bio he wrote for Entertainment Weekly.  It’s called “Notes From The Sitcom’s Deathbed.”  It’s a screamer, so funny, yet so full of lessons learned in dealing with the Networks.  It’s good that every once in a while someone like Mehlman comes along to remind us of the kind of savage, kinky, aberrant currs that inhabit the upper echelons of the biz.  This article should be required reading, along with Merle Miller’s “Only You Dick Daring” to anyone who is venturing into the dark abyss called “Hollywood”. Click here to go to EW to read Notes From The Sitcom’s Deathbed.

Odd Thing.  After a hilarious reading from his book, Mehlman asked for questions.  There were none.  A packed house, silence.  Sometimes it’s like that, until one person asks a question and unleashes the tidal wave. I thought, “This guy has a million stories, how can there be no questions?”  But I’m just the video guy, hiding behind the camera and keeping a low profile. Maybe the conspiracy theorists are right, the flouride in our water is actually dumbing us down.  Maybe they dumped a double load in that day down at the water company.  Without stomach-pumping he entire Book Soup audience, we’ll never know.   Or come to think of it, maybe I was in a weird time warp of some kind, re-filming a scene from Mehlman’s film “Blank,” in which another audience had no questions, but applauded wildly for Mehlman’s crack-pot character Eugene Brusca, a man who never had an opinion on anything. Deja vu?  Naw, just another Odd Thing.

Click here to watch Peter Mehlman’s reading at Book Soup, or click the embedded version below.

Click here to go to Peter Mehlman’s web site

Click here to go to The Sager Group web site, Mehlman’s Publishers.

Click here to go to the Book Soup web site to get a copy of the book.

And finally, check out www.petermehlman.com.  It’s for sale.