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Jeremy Larner (born March 20, 1937) is an American author, poet, journalist, and speechwriter. He won anOscar in 1972 forBest Original Screenplay, for writingThe Candidate.[1]
Jeremy Larner was born in New York, and grew up inIndianapolis, winning his high school tennis championship in 1954.[2][3] He had some playground rep as a basketball player in Indianapolis, where he encounteredOscar Robertson and other future stars on the playground courts of that city.[citation needed]
Larner graduated fromBrandeis University in 1958, where he was close toHerbert Marcuse,Irving Howe,Philip Rahv, and a fellow student namedAbbie Hoffman, who later, running a small bookstore inWorcester, Massachusetts, became an early champion of Larner'sfirst novel.[4]
In 1959, Larner began aWoodrow Wilson Fellowship atUC Berkeley, but finding himself unsuited for academic life he left graduate school in his first year and came to New York City at 22.[citation needed] He stayed there throughout the 1960s, writing five books in that period.[5]
In 1962, Larner was assigned byDissent magazine to cover the teachers' strike, and spent several months going to elementary school classes inHarlem. His long account of what he discovered was widely anthologized, having come to the attention ofMichael Harrington, author ofThe Other America: Poverty in the United States, which inspiredJohn F. Kennedy andRobert F. Kennedy.[citation needed]
Larner's first published piece was a critique ofJ. D. Salinger, published inPartisan Review in 1961.[citation needed] Also in that year he journeyed south to cover thelunch-countersit-in strikes organized at black universities, and wrote several pieces forThe New Leader andDissent.[citation needed]
In '63, Larner edited a taped collection of interviews withheroin addicts at theHenry Street Settlement in New York. The harrowing stories told in these interviews became the basis of one of the first books from tape:The Addict in the Street, which remained in print for 20 years.[citation needed]Grove Press celebrated its publication in early 1965 with a party for Larner andWilliam S. Burroughs, whereNorman Mailer challenged Larner to a fight.[citation needed]
Larner's first novel,Drive, He Said, won the Delta Prize for first novels in 1964. The prize had gone unclaimed for several years and by then had reached $10,000. The judges wereWalter Van Tilburg Clark,Mary McCarthy andLeslie Fiedler.[citation needed] For the title of this novel, Larner chose a line from the poemI Know a Man byRobert Creeley.[6]
The heroes ofDrive, He Said were acollege basketball star who has mixed feelings about his stardom and what is expected of him and his revolutionary roommate, who eventually burns the campus down. The reviewer inPlayboy magazine echoed the establishment verdict when he said, "Nothing like this could happen in America."[citation needed]
In 1964, Larner won theAga Khan Prize fromThe Paris Review, for the best short story of the year, "O the Wonder!"[citation needed]
After 1964, Larner worked as a freelance journalist and published articles, essays and stories in many magazines, includingHarpers,The Paris Review, andLife.[citation needed]
Larner reported on the trial ofDale Noyd, a decorated fighter pilot who had refused to train other pilots for thewar in Vietnam. The account, which ran inHarper's, was selected for an anthology of the best journalism of the year.[citation needed]
In 1965, Larner began teaching in the English department atStony Brook, State University of New York, although he had no degrees beyond the B.A. He taught classes in poetry and in the modern novel from 1965 through 1969, taking the year off in 1968, when he won an N.E.A. grant in the first year they were given to individual artists. He would later teach, for one year, at theJohn F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.[citation needed]
In March 1968, Larner became a principal speechwriter forEugene McCarthy in his campaign for President. Afterwards Larner wrote a book,Nobody Knows, about his travels with the McCarthy campaign, and most of it was serialized inHarpers Magazine in April and May 1969. This book got good reviews and was widely read by many who participated in the campaign and wondered what happened to McCarthy after the assassination of Robert Kennedy.[citation needed]
In a wide-ranging interview, given in 2016, Larner spoke about his experiences writing for McCarthy, and how that influenced his script forThe Candidate:
"I thought a campaign was like drifting downriver on a raft, where everything is beautiful: then you begin to hear the roar of the falls up ahead, but it’s too late. You go over the falls, you lose yourself, you become eternally confused by the difference between yourself and who your public thinks you are. And it's a disarming, dissociative experience. And Redford played that very well: the better McKay gets at campaigning, the more he loses himself."[7]
In 1971,Drive, He Said, was made into a movie directed byJack Nicholson, who collaborated with Larner on the screenplay. This film constituted Nicholson's directorial debut[8] and is available as part of the Criterion edition "America Lost and Found: The BBS Story."[9]
Larner continued his work with the peace movement in 1969. During theMoratorium which mobilized hundreds of thousands of people around the country, he wrote speeches forSam Brown, the chief organizer and spokesperson of the Moratorium, and also forPaul Newman, who gave a statement on behalf of several actors who were advocating that war protesters miss a day of work.[citation needed]
During this time and afterwards, Larner spoke at many college campuses, first in behalf of the anti-Vietnam-war movement, later on movies and politics. He has spoken at one hundred universities around the country.[citation needed]
In April 1971, Larner wrote a documentary-style script for a feature film directed byMichael Ritchie and starringRobert Redford about a campaign for senator from California.The Candidate was released during the election of 1972, and was critically acclaimed; the film holds a score of 89% onRotten Tomatoes based on 36 critical reviews.[10]
In 1973, Larner got an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for his script forThe Candidate.[citation needed]
Some politicians, likeDan Quayle, did not seem to realize the movie was ironic. Quayle spoke frequently about how the movie had inspired him, causing Larner, during the 1988 elections, to write an op-ed forThe New York Times, saying, "Mr. Quayle, this was not a how-to movie, it was a watch-out movie. And you are what we should be watching out for!"[11]
During this time, Larner occasionally wrote speeches for politicians, likeBill Bradley, when he gave his basic position on Israel, or stars likeRobert Redford, when he spoke in behalf ofenvironmentalism.[citation needed]
In 1987 Larner began to write poetry, and in 1989 began to have public readings. In 1992, he wrote a long story, titled "Rack's Rules", the only piece of fiction in an anthology titledSex, Death & God in Los Angeles.[citation needed] After losing his home in the 1991 Oakland Hills fire, he contributed an article toFire in the Hills, a compilation of responses to the fire, and became a regular contributor toNew Choices magazine.[citation needed]
Larner moved back to New York City in the 90's, where he reached a point of severe disorientation before being diagnosed withsleep apnea, and wrote an article about the condition (not diagnosed or treatable until the 1980s) and his experience of it, that caused many people to recognize and recover completely from a state that otherwise can lead to sudden death.[citation needed]
It was in New York that Larner was inspired to writeChicken on Church, both a mock-epic and a love poem to the city, particularly to the neighborhood on the end of Manhattan Island. It has been described as Whitmanesque, but full of specific detail and classical allusions.[citation needed]
Larner first wrote the poem in 1992 and has revised it frequently since then. "Chicken on Church" and selected other poems have recently been published byBig Rooster Press.
Jeremy Larner now lives outside ofSan Francisco, continuing to write poetry, finishing a Hollywood novel based on "Rack's Rules", and making notes for his memoirs.[citation needed]
