F-Stop Books
F*Words
Before First Light
New West
á LA carte
Action/Items
Who Needs Heaven?
My Serious Thoughts & Ignorant Bliss
Just Another Dead Man
Love has its Limits
Person Place Thing / Way Shape Form
Who's Afraid of Michael Kearns?
Fusion Illusion
I'm Talking To You
LOST RIVER
Twelve One-Act Plays
I'm Not a Poet
A Good Place to Live
Descriptions
F*Words
Some people lead charmed lives. There is extra grace involved when the person who lives that life is as charming and irresistible as the author of this autobiography. The author seems to have just walked in the door full of enthusiasm as projects - films, plays, restaurants - were forming and fresh talents being born to which she offered her services. Bright and educated but not wielding one special talent, she proved to be endlessly improvisational working on films "Woodstock", "Marjoe", "Eraserhead", "The Last Waltz", etc. Some she offered to help had genius, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Marty Scorsese, David Lynch and others. Generally, she was just looking for work with people she might enjoy and the results were ingenious. The places you can go and the things you can experience with such an honest attitude and indestructible spirit are simply and beautifully described. Young women, especially, will thrill to see how a life can be created, and not just take the one they've been given. Other readers can enjoy a view from the wings of fame, revel in a life well-lived and realize that simple choices can lead to magic.
Action/Items
A collection of four produced plays by playwright, Tony Abatemarco, including his award-winning monologue FOUR FATHERS, a monologue/adaptation of his short story COLOGNE or The Ways Evil Enters the World, and his two multi-character plays, BEAUTIFIED, and FOREVER HOUSE. Los Angeles-based Abatemarco is the Co-Artistic Director of Skylight Theatre Company. His decades long career as an actor/director/writer/producer/teacher includes work seen nationally from coast to coast, on Broadway, television and in feature films. Internationally, he has performed or directed in London, Edinburgh, Paris, Spoleto, Delphi, Calgary and in South Korea. His writing has been published in literary, scholastic and theatre journals as well as newspapers and periodicals. A graduate of Juilliard Drama school, he has won multiple awards for his theatre work in Los Angeles as well as two NEA Directing Fellowships and an SDC/Director's Guild Observership. He is married to the renowned visual artist, Dan McCleary.
New West
Cole is a lonely rancher in New Mexico, who needs a break. SueAnn, an ex-showdancer, is now in desperate straights. They prove you can get lucky in Las Vegas when they meet there...under dicey circum- stances. He takes her home with him. Now, his rustic ranch is heaven. Together they'll defend its rustic gates as they must. Cole has loved a few women, ruffled a few feathers and country folk have unfor- giving memories.
Before First Light
A book of poems about love, lust, triumph and disappoint- ment, which span a lifetime. Surprisingly entertaining, pleasantly serious.
Rocketry
I was raised
on superstition
so the technology
of love
initially
confused me.
Bodies
seemed
exquisite
but dangerous
and complex
as modern rockets
beneath their
protective
shrouds.
For a while
I concentrated
on faces
which were
rudimentary,
studying them
kissing them
but staying
safely away
from the intricate
hardware
down below
until I felt
competent
to try
my hand
at rocketry.
Later
would come
the moon, mars,
and fiery breakups
amid the brilliant
stars.
á LA carte
"NOIR is the indigenous Los Angeles form: It was created here, it grew up here and from here it spread, not only as a genre but as a way of looking at life, character and fate." - Richard Rayner.
Ever since God forsook this “City Of The Angels”, there has been one obsession shared by every inhabitant from the lowliest immigrant to the biggest star or the greediest businessman. That one thing is “ambition”. It is the only virtue the city has left. Jake had ambition, too, but it wasn’t coupled with greed. Sally, who strode into Jake’s place that afternoon, proffering a scarlet smile and a generous display of her long perfect legs, had more ambition than Jake would ever have imagined.
Like most L.A. women with looks as lethal as a loaded gun, Sally had come to the City Of "Angles" from somewhere else to make a splash in a bigger pond.
Conrad has already made his splash - a lot of them. Moneyed people have specific targets for their wealth, acquisitions they "must have" beyond the obvious prime real estate, luxury cars, jewelry, fine art and so forth. Some rich folks, men, especially - from famous athletes and movie stars to bogus European royalty - really want to own a restaurant, not for money, but as a talisman, an ego thing. History does not record it, but ancient emperors probably lusted after a steakhouse of their very own. Conrad was no emperor but he had lots of money and Jake's restaurant was what he wanted.
KIRKUS REVIEW:
WHO NEEDS HEAVEN?
TRUE STORIES
A memoir offers vignettes from an entire lifetime.
In his latest work of nonfiction, Binder looks back on his life and renders several incidents and themes in a series of autobiographical stories. The author has led a picaresque life, with many adventures and crises, and he’s inserted many of these escapades into the entertaining, touching, and often enlightening tales arranged in these pages. He takes readers back to his childhood, painting affectionate portraits of the many people who influenced him while he was growing up. Binder includes a particularly memorable remembrance of his mother, who was felled by a serious stroke that robbed her of her speech (“Visiting her in the human warehouse they call a hospital, I’d point to letters of the alphabet printed on a card and she would blink to spell the word she wanted to convey”). He also gives readers a captivating, behind-the-scenes look at the famous child evangelist Marjoe Gortner. Binder worked on the crew that produced the Academy Award–winning 1972 documentary about Gortner’s illusion-dispelling revival tour, in which he exposed the deceits of his childhood ministry. The author watched all of this up close and relates it with enthusiasm and sympathy. (Sometimes a touch too much sympathy, since at one point even Binder seems convinced by the enthusiasm of the crowd: “I don’t believe in magic, nor do I believe in God, but I do believe in miracles. I witnessed one.”) Whether he’s recalling partying with Kris Kristofferson and Willie Nelson in Las Brisas, Texas, or recounting the fracas he and his partner got into in 1966 at the Albany Convention Center when Sen. Robert F. Kennedy was speaking (“Reporters grabbed at our feet trying to trip us up and bring us down. They failed. I was exhilarated”), the author has clearly told most of these tales many times in his life. These written versions are fine-tuned to perfection and provide a large and constantly moving banquet of intriguing moments.
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Who
Needs
Heaven?
I woke this morning and couldn’t think of the word for dementia.
All good things are born in dreams. Dream on.
Life is pointless. Isn’t that wonderful!
"I’m no Mark Twain or Dorothy Parker, but I’ve collected my wit, wisdom and wisecracks between covers. It’s one you can pick up and read through or dip into from time to time to be amused, maybe enlightened, or even pissed off. Some might call this a “bathroom book” or a “coffee table book” (if it were larger). It’s illustrated by a talented friend, with whom I have lived, laughed, quarreled and slept with for half a lifetime. We both like it. You might too."
Back cover of Who Needs Heaven?
Illustrations & Design by Jeanne Field
Back cover of My Serious Thoughts
& Ignorant Bliss
My Serious Thoughts
& Ignorant Bliss
by John Binder
“JUST ANOTHER DEAD MAN”
David Bonds is an aging professional, a tough guy, whose stoic life is upended by heart problems.
His condition becomes doubly troublesome when it triggers an attack of human compassion, the likes of which he has not experienced before.
How does a debt collector with a fragile heart and no medical insurance raise a hundred thousand dollars for an operation that will save his life?
(Film script available.)
Back cover of Just Another Dead Man
Love has its Limits
A Second volume of poems from a lifetime of loving and winning, lusting and losing, writing and reciting, braving the world and submitting to it.
An unusually structured memoir, using a collage technique, tells the story of Larson's life, using material from the early 70s to the present, consisting of poems, experimental prose, salient quotations (from artists and writers especially inspiring to him, such as Walt Whitman, Oscar Wilde, Marcel Proust, Lou Reed, Bob Dylan and Emily Dickinson), as well as commentary on film history, including an extended essay called "All the Doomed Blondes", concerning the love goddess figure as represented in films by Jean Harlow, Carole Lombard, Marilyn Monroe and Jean Seberg, with many stops in between. Other actors given special attention in the book, include Steve McQueen, Montgomery Clift, James Dean and Marlon Brando, with special attention given to both Hepburns. Details of personal contact and conversation with iconic performers include conversations with Steve McQueen, Kim Stanley, and Natalie Wood.) Journal entries are featured, from a move west to east in 1995, from Los Angeles to NYC; a trip to Russia in 2007 to host a classic American film festival; as well as workshops with Robert Bly and Joseph Chaikin.) The book also describes adventures in producing and directing special events, usually done for political purposes, such as a concert version of "The Wizard of Oz" performed at Lincoln Center as a benefit for the Children's Defense Fund, featuring Jackson Browne, Jewel, Roger Daltrey, Nathan Lane, Natalie Cole, Debra Winger and the Boy's Choir of Harlem, with musicians Ry Cooder, Dr. John and David Sanborn;
a program for Desmond Tutu's 75th Birthday, which was a benefit for Artist for a New South Africa. Further experiences collaborating with Jackson Browne are highlighted, spanning 40 years. In a long acting and directing career, including acting in the films "Mike's Murder", "Step Mom", "UFOria" and others, he was fortunate enough to work with some of the greatest actors of our time, including Meryl Streep, Ed Harris, Debra Winger, Gene Hackman and Ellen Burstyn, all of whom find their way into this memoir. As for theater work, from Shakespeare to Strindberg to Denis Johnson, there is particular focus on Sam Shepard, with whom he did a dozen plays, directing and acting, and Murray Mednick, in particular 'The Coyote Cycle', one of the great epics of 20th century American theater, in which Larson played Coyote. His relationship with the Coyote tales of the Native American culture is central to his story. Sexuality and spirituality, fame and failure, family and the search for a real home, all will be revealed, explicitly and frankly, in a manner which will make for a rollicking good read.
Each of the chapters begin with a quote from Dr. David N. Daniels (1934 to 2017), one of the founding fathers of today’s Enneagram. David’s work and his legacy are carried on at www.drdaviddaniels.com
A collection of three plays by the acclaimed Los Angeles playwright known for "…collisions of sex and death, of eroticism and grief"—The LA Weekly. The volume includes Who’s Afraid of Edward Albee? which archly explores the backstage drama of four male actors in Albee's similarly named masterpiece, "…this sprawling exercise in excess is consistently fascinating, as watchable as a train wreck and as feverishly histrionic as a Joan Crawford film festival.” – Los Angeles Times.
The anthology also includes Bang Bang, a visceral plunge into the heartache of a school shooting alongside an enigmatic title character with his own legacy of violence. The play delves into our society's addiction to the spectacle of carnage, power, and sex. Finally, in Bloodbound, the physical love between two brothers--one who is the play's meta-speaking author, and the other who is a prisoner serving life—only underscores the depths of their emotional entanglements. An indictment of the injustices of mass incarceration, inside a love story, the play also reflects the inevitability of revising our own narratives. “Kearns has developed a uniquely descriptive, empathetic story… Bloodbound is a profound, committed journey. The writing is intense and intimate, distinctly characterized by precise use of language.”—Gia on the Move.
Fusion Illusion got its start when John Binder posted a poem on Facebook and Joe Romano posted a painting as a response. Forty-five more poems and paintings later, with pages designed by Jeanne Field, we have a book we all are proud of. This visualized poetry is a unique experience which can be fun and funny, dreamy and in love, realistic and difficult. They cover music, romance, war, poverty, spirituality, and just everyday life.
The Fourth book of poetry by John Binder has the wisdom of remembrance and the embrace of the present. Binder is thoughtful, angry, in love and funny.
In his fifth book of poetry, Binder writes humorous and serious contemplative pieces.
Preface
I must confess
I don't always
cherish my poems
Today I modestly do
If you don't like them
that is up to you
It takes nerve
to paste one's thoughts
up on the wall
for the world to see,
or whatever fraction
of the world
takes notice at all
My consolation is that
that when I'm gone,
they'll still be here
amusing or annoying you,
as I did to those I knew
Read on, my friends,
or throw the book
across the room
If I am still here,
I'll print another soon
Then what am I? An observer, a storyteller, a collector of incidents and accidents, a family man, a writer. Things happen when you write everyday. You quiet your mind, you expand it, you worry it, you piss it off and then something sometimes comes of it.
Jump in, take the ride, and I sorely hope you like some of these poems.
“I was raised in Palmyra, about ten miles northwest, named after the city in Syria and located in Northeast Missouri. The sign at the entrance read, “PALMYRA: A Good Place to Live.”
Palmyra was a town with a strong sense of family pride and a respect for traditional conservative values. They expected others to live by a standard of moral behavior. Those who fell outside the rules of conduct were talked about rather than directly talked to. Talking to was left to local authority figures or the pastor.
The social and cultural background of Palmyra influenced my understanding of societal norms and exposed me to fascinating characters that later served me well in my occupational life. I learned to read social cues and accurately interpret their meaning. The non-spoken boundaries and polite discourse became automatic in my style of relating as I matured into adulthood.
BIO- John Binder
John Binder studied literature at Kenyon College from which he graduated in 1962. He wrote for the college literary journal, directed theater and acted the lead role in several classic plays there.
He studied acting at H.B. Studios in New York and did graduate work in film at New York University, where he wrote screenplays, directed student films, and later taught a film production workshop.
He formed Paradigm Films with Michael Wadleigh (dir. “Woodstock”). As a cinema verite team they shot dozens of social documentaries for Public Television, CBS and film segments for the Merv Griffin TV show, as well as commercials and public service spots.
At Paradigm he was a producer, co-director, editor and soundman. Co-workers at Paradigm were filmmakers Thelma Schoonmaker, Marty Scorsese, Jim McBride, cameraman David Myers, producers L.A. Johnson and Dale Bell.
He worked on two Academy Award Winning Documentaries, “Woodstock”, and “Marjoe”. He co-produced and edited the award-winning anti-war documentary “No Vietnamese Ever Called Me Nigger”, now permanently-installed in the African-American Smithsonian Museum. He co-directed “Four Children”, winner of the White House Film prize for government-funded documentaries. He edited the documentary “Thirty Days To Survival”. He was a soundman on the rock film “Mad Dogs And Englishmen”.
BIO - Tony Abatemarco
Principally known for his theatre work, Tony’s first collaboration as co-writer and director of the a cappella musical BRAIN HOTEL won multiple plaudits including the first LA Weekly “New Directions in Theatre” Award and was subsequently selected as a representative Los Angeles event for the International Olympic Arts Festival, 1984.
Next he co-authored SIR VIVAL SWEEPSTAKES for Jacques D’Amboise’s National Dance Institute at the Mark Taper Forum. His first one-man play, FOUR FATHERS, won DramaLogue and LA Weekly Awards for Best Solo Writing, excerpts of which are included in Michael Kearns’ “Getting Your Solo Act Together” published by Heinemann.
IN SAMBA ZONES (later, THE NEXT BIG THING) was produced in the first Mark Taper Forum New Works Festival ’88, and developed further by the Audrey SkirballKenis Foundation in ’91. He was commissioned by John Densmore of The Doors to collaborate on a screenplay adaptation of Mr. Densmore’s New York Times bestselling memoir, “Riders on the Storm.”
In Hollywood, he wrote a script for Robert Altman of “North Dallas Forty”. He was also Altman’s Script Supervisor on “Buffalo Bill And The Indians”. He wrote “Endangered Species” and "Trixie" for Alan Rudolph, and “Honeysuckle Rose” for producer Sidney Pollack. He won the American Heritage award for scripting a CBS movie “Sam Houston”. He wrote “Assault and Matrimony” a TV movie for NBC, plus many pilots and rewrites including the mini-series “Return To Lonesome Dove", the "Black Fox" trilogy
He wrote and directed the feature film “UFOria” with Fred Ward, Cindy Williams, and Harry Dean Stanton. “UFOria” made the top ten film lists (1986) of The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, The Chicago Tribune, LA Weekly and others.
He was co-head writer, producer and he directed several episodes of the western TV series “The Lazarus Man” starring Robert Urich.
He wrote and co-directed with Darrell Larson a full-length play “Dreams Die Hard" based on David Harris' book. Set during the anti-war and civil-rights movements of the 60's, it's the story of Allard Lowenstein who brought white college students to Mississippi to register voters. David was one of the them, Dennis Sweeney was another. The experience unhinged Sweeney who killed Lowenstein in 1980.
Recently he’s been writing short plays, three of which he directed as short films. He also has published two books of poetry, "Before First Light" and "Love has its Limits", a long story, "New West", a novella "Á La Carte" and his autobiographical short stories, "Who Needs Heaven?". "Fusion Illusion" is a collaboration with painter, Joe Romano, John's poems and Joe's paintings.
His twelve plays to date (including the four produced ones published here) have intermittently been through development processes at LA TheatreWorks, Stages Theatre Center, LA Theatre Center, Santa Fe Stages, and at his own Skylight Theatre Company where he has served as Co-Artistic Director since 2012.
His short stories have been published in the literary magazines Noir Mechanics, Boneshaker, High Performance, and by Windfall Press (COLOGNE), and his songs have been covered by Suzy Andrews on her debut album “Profile” produced by Ulyseé Musique, Paris. His essays and articles have appeared in The Los Angeles Times, the A.S.K. journal, “Parabasis,” lastagetimes.com, The Santa Monica Emeritus College Journal, the Santa Fe Playhouse’s “Callboard,” and in several art galleries including his husband, Dan McCleary’s catalogue for his Federal Arts Project mural “American Jury” installed at the Federal Courthouse of Las Cruces, N.M.
He is a frequent reader of original material at spoken word events at Beyond Baroque, Rant&Rave at Rogue Machine, BackStory at the Victory Theatre, Spoken Interludes, Tasty Words, Highways and on both KCRW & KPFK Public Radio stations. Watch for Volume II of his as-yet-unproduced collected plays in the near future.
IMAGE: DAN MCCLEARY
Bio - Darrell Larson
Darrell Larson is an actor/director/poet, etc. He has been in dozens of films including: Mike’s Murder, UFOria, Stepmom, Rachel Getting Married, The Manchurian Candidate, Twice in a Lifetime. Stuart Saves His Family, Frances, On television he appeared in: Marcus Welby, M.D.; Law and Order; Law and Order: SVU; Gunsmoke; Bonanza; The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd; Congratulations, It’s a Boy, and many more. In theater he performed as Coyote in The Coyote Cycle, and acted in Action, Curse of the Starving Class, Simpatico, The Dance of Death, XA: A Viet Nam Primer, Dominus Marlowe, The America Piece, Dog Logic, Comedy of Errors, The Confessions of Doc Holliday, Mexican Day, Dreams Die Hard, The Gary Plays, The Hillary Game, Clearwater and so on. He directed Are You Lookin’, Cowboy Mouth, The Unseen Hand, Simpatico, Comedy of Errors, Karla, The Wizard of Oz in Concert: Dreams Come True, Psychos Never Dream, Shoppers Carried By Escalators Into the Flames, Scar, and on and on. He taught at Columbia University in the Graduate Film Department, lectured at the Smithsonian, and hosted a classic American film festival in Kaliningrad, Russia. He lives in downtown Los Angeles.
Darrell directs Jewel in the Wizard of Oz
Bio - Michael Kearns
Michael Kearns was born in St. Louis, Missouri. As a young man he attended the Goodman School of Drama in Chicago, Illinois, and graduated in 1972 and moved to Los Angeles. For more than 25 years he has been active in the Los Angeles art and politics communities, maintaining a mainstream film and television career with a prolific career in the theatre. His activism is deeply integrated into his theatre works, and he has received grants from the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department, the Brody Foundation, and PEN Center USA West. In 1984, along with playwright James Carroll Pickett, he co-founded Artists Confronting Aids (ACA), and is a current commissioner of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays.
After a career as a theatre actor who also appeared in television and film, Michael Kearns established himself as an award-winning, internationally-acclaimed artist who has played many roles (in the entertainment industry) for the past half-century: actor, director, playwright, dramaturge, acting teacher, writing teacher, author, producer, and solo performer. Beginning with the AIDS crisis, Kearns became a hyphenate: An artist-activist whose work, while not exclusively, has largely focused on HIV/AIDS, amassing a virtual library of material in all media that is unparalleled. Kearns is currently an Artistic Associate at Skylight Theatre Company, Artist-in-Residence at Housing Works, Artistic Director of QueerWise, and West Coast Program Director for Spoken Interludes Next.
His two widely-lauded solo theatrepieces, Intimacies and More Intimacies, in which he portrays a dozen culturally diverse people with HIV/AIDS, were produced in Los Angeles, In addition to other solo performance pieces (including The Truth Is Bad Enough, Attachments, Rock), and Tell Tale Kisses, Kearns has written several full-length plays: Myron, Mijo, Robert's Memorial, Who's Afraid of Edward Albee?, Blessings, Barriers, and the lyrics for Homeless, A Street Opera. Kearns co-wrote the screenplay for Nine Lives, based on his play, Complications. His solo piece Going In: Once Upon A Time in South Africa chronicles the time he spent in Johannesburg with his daughter, working at an orphanage.
Bio - Joe Romano
Joe Romano began painting in the mid-sixties while attending the Combs Conservatory Of Music in Philadelphia. At that time he befriended the renowned artist and teacher Benjamin Britt whose studio was across the street from the Conservatory. Joe would spend several hours a week at Ben's studio watching him paint while working on some of his music studies there.
One day, Ben handed Joe some paint and said that he should make a picture. Although he had no training, and felt intimidated because of Ben's mastery of art, at Ben's insistence he "made a painting". "I was hooked", said Joe, and from that moment, although music was his main creative outlet, painting became his other passion. In 1974, while living in Los Angeles, he was invited to show some of his work at a local exhibition of Los Angeles artists, and he was "discovered" by a local gallery there that wanted to exhibit his work. He continued to work in the music industry, as a composer for film, records and theater. All his spare time was devoted to painting.
In 1989, an art dealer he met wanted to do a one man show of his work for her private clients, many of whom were in the entertainment business. Of the 30 pieces assembled for the show, 19 sold on the first day, and his recognition among serious collectors began to take off. Since then he has shown in many galleries and exhibitions, mostly in the Los Angeles area.
Joe lives in Ashland, OR with his wife, playwright Lisa Loomer, and their son Marcello.
Bio - Delores Swigert Sullivan
Delores Swigert Sullivan has worked in the fashion industry as a model, model agent, and model scout for Ford Models New York. She is the former President of the American Adoption Congress in Washington, D.C., a nonprofit organization dedicated to adoption education and legislative advocacy. Her life story and adoption reform activism were featured in Rolling Stone Magazine. She holds a Master’s Degree in Clinical Social Work and is a psychotherapist. She is married to author Randall Sullivan, whom she met when he interviewed her for Rolling Stone. They live on the Oregon Coast.
CONTACT F-Stop Books
For any media inquiries, please contact publisher Jeanne Field:
Tel: 310 471-6317 | f.stop.books@gmail.com
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