Words Matter: Writing to Make a Difference - Hardcover

Dahling, Amanda; Blakely, Mary Kay

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0826220894 ISBN 13: 9780826220899

Verlag: University of Missouri Press, 2016

Inhaltsangabe

Newspapers and magazines have been steadily shrinking, and more and more former subscribers have gone to digital and internet sources for the news. Yet it has become increasingly clear that “short takes” don’t satisfy many readers, who still long for nuanced, long form journalism. By providing examples of classic magazine articles by professional writers, all of whom are graduates of the Missouri School of Journalism, this book fulfills the need for more sophisticated, thought-provoking essays that will resonate with both the general reader and students.

The book is divided into three broad categories: profiles, first person journalism, and personal memoirs, and includes the original articles as well as a “postscript” by the writers in which they discuss what they’ve learned about writing, journalism, and the business of getting published. Useful for students and instructors in writing programs, the book also appeals to writers interested in both the art and the craft of successful writing.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Mary Kay Blakely is associate professor emerita of Magazine Journalism, Missouri School of Journalism. She is the author of Wake Me When It’s Over: A Journey to the Edge and Back, and American Mom: Motherhood, Politics, and Humble Pie.

Amanda Dahling is an editor for University of Missouri Extension where she develops and edits educational publications, curricula, Web content and social media strategies. She lives in Columbia, MO.

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Words Matter

Writing to Make a Difference

By Amanda Dahling, Mary Kay Blakely

University of Missouri Press

Copyright © 2016 The Curators of the University of Missouri
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-8262-2089-9

Contents

FOREWORD The Journey of Writing Amanda Dahling, 
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS, 
INTRODUCTION Mary Kay Blakely, 
PART I. PROFILES OF PEOPLE, PLACES, AND ISSUES, 
PART II. FIRST-PERSON JOURNALISM, 
PART III. PERSONAL STORIES AND MEMOIRS, 
AFTERWORD Defeating That Crippling Sense of Inadequacy Ginger Hervey, 
LAST WORDS Mary Kay Blakely, 
CONTRIBUTOR BIOGRAPHIES, 

CHAPTER 1

THE MIRANDA OBSESSION

Bryan Burrough

Paul Schrader took the first phone call at his hotel in New Orleans. It was 1981, and Schrader, who wrote the screenplay for Taxi Driver and went on to direct American Gigolo and other films, was in Louisiana to shoot Cat People, with Nastassja Kinski. The woman on the line introduced herself as Miranda Grosvenor, and before Schrader could get rid of her, she had somehow managed to keep him talking for 20 minutes, gossiping about Hollywood and a number of famous men she seemed to know all about.

Intrigued, Schrader invited Miranda to call back, and she did, again and again. "She would just call you up," says Schrader, "and she was very, very charming. Funny. Sexy. It was incredible. The information she had on people was very accurate. She knew who was where and who was going to do what project. Once that happened, you got into the game, too, because she knew half the dirt on someone, and you added 10 percent. Then she took that 60 percent and went to the next person. ... And there was always sort of a tease, how good-looking she was, wait till you meet my friends. It was all about talking, flirting, power networking."

Repeatedly, Schrader arranged hotel-lobby rendezvous with the shadowy Miranda, but she never appeared. Perplexed, he phoned one of the names she had dropped, Michael Apted, director of Coal Miner's Daughter and Nell. Yes, Apted confirmed, he had talked on the phone with Miranda, too; no, he didn't know who she was, either. Apted mentioned that Richard Gere had a host of his own Miranda stories to tell. Schrader also reached Buck Henry, the screenwriter and occasional Saturday Night Live host, who confessed he too was captivated by Miranda's calls, though he also knew her only as a voice over the telephone. Amazed, Schrader nevertheless had neither the time nor the energy to unravel the mystery of his newfound friend. "This went on for five, six months," he says, "till finally it got so frustrating, all these aborted meetings, I just kind of let it go. I never found out exactly who she was."

Nor, apparently, did Robert De Niro, who, friends say, also took Miranda Grosvenor's phone calls. Nor Billy Joel, who tried out songs in progress on her answering machine and considered turning their strange relationship into a musical. Nor Peter Wolf, lead singer of the J. Geils Band, who attempted to meet her at a Louisiana hotel. Nor, in fact, did most of the dozens of well-known and well-to-do men on both coasts who answered calls from Miranda during the 1980s and suddenly found themselves drawn into the most fascinating, invigorating telephone conversations several of them say they ever enjoyed. It wasn't sex talk, everyone agrees, but it was flirty, gossipy, and more than a little mysterious. "You actually started living for these phone calls," remembers Brian McNally, the noted Manhattan restaurateur and hotelier. "I was absolutely — I mean, I couldn't wait for her call. She made you feel fantastic."

"A lot of nights she was my only friend," says Joel, who understood that Miranda was also phone pals with Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood, and Sting. "As they say, she did give good phone."

The story of Miranda Grosvenor, the riddle of who she really was and why she finally disappeared from the phone lines, has grown into a kind of urban legend in certain circles in Los Angeles and New York. The men who talked to her, a number of whom now decline to confirm they did so, came from all walks of the high life; they were actors and directors, rock stars and record producers, athletes and politicians, even a journalist or two. "[I believe] we're talking about hundreds of people," says Buck Henry. "This went on for 15 years. There's lots of people who think they have seen her, and it was not her. We're talking about someone who can con people into saying they saw her. It's very complex."

With her mellifluous, accentless voice — Henry thought she was British, others heard a hint of Manhattan's Upper East Side — Miranda Grosvenor was a silky phantom who told men she was beautiful and blonde, lived in the South, did some modeling, and looked after her fabulously wealthy father in New York City. Many men believed her; at least a few actually fell in love with her.

"Patrick believed she was the most ravishing woman on earth, with a red Ferrari, a powerful family, airplanes landing on the lawn," recalls Cynthia O'Neal, whose late husband, the actor Patrick O'Neal, became one of Miranda's most fervent phone pals a decade before his 1994 death. "She called him endlessly. I remember arriving at an airport someplace and Patrick was being paged. It turned out to be her. ... In the early stages, Patrick was really, really — well, she was intriguing. It made me nervous. Personally — and I didn't say this to him, not till after, when Patrick would talk about her — I kept seeing this image of this lonely, very fat girl sitting in a room. I don't remember how it ended, but he never talked about it afterwards."

The name Miranda Grosvenor, in fact, is one that any number of famous and respected figures would just as soon forget. "No, never heard of her," Gil Friesen tells me from his car phone one morning in Beverly Hills. Friesen, a former president of A&M Records, is now president of the board at L.A.'s Museum of Contemporary Art.

"From the phone," I clarify, having been told that Friesen was on close terms with Miranda.

"Oooooh ... Ohhhhh, my God. Yeah," Friesen says. "Oh, my God."

Friesen takes a moment to collect his thoughts as I list the names of some of Miranda's confidants. "Jesus," he finally says. "Well, Bob De Niro and Quincy Jones I can confirm. I know that through Quincy."

Friesen dates his relationship with Miranda to the early 1980s, her heyday. "She called me in the office," he remembers. "She just had an incredibly sexy voice and she had a great game, delivery, come-on. She said she was from — where? — Louisiana? I've never been there, but I was ready to go. ... We were going to hook up in Florida and of course that never took place, because that was never her intention. Her game was just to have fun with this. You know, Quincy thought she was this really large woman."

Friesen laughs. "This went on for weeks," he continues. "She keeps you on the line because she has a very, very engaging way of making you feel that she is dying to talk to you. She knew the male psyche quite well. [Eventually] I think I just dropped it, once I put two and two together and realized this was one of the silliest things I had ever done. It wasn't going to go anyplace. It wasn't real. It was just someone with a switchboard and a vivid imagination."

Brian McNally, who has operated some of Manhattan's most glamorous restaurants, such as Odeon and Indochine, received the first call at his Tribeca loft in 1982. It was...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: University of Missouri Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2016
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0826220894
• ISBN 13: 9780826220899
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 348
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar