Larry Beinhart
Encyclopedia
Larry Beinhart is an American
author
. He is best known as the author of the political and detective novel American Hero, which was adapted for the political-parody film Wag the Dog
. Directed by Barry Levinson
, it starred Dustin Hoffman
, Robert De Niro
, Anne Heche
, William H. Macy
, Denis Leary
, Kirsten Dunst
, Woody Harrelson
, and Willie Nelson
.
The New Yorker called the novel "a tour de force of satirical fiction."
Beinhart is a Fulbright Fellow
. He's won the Edgar Award
, the Gold Dagger
, the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière
, and been shortlisted for the Edgar two more times, and for the Shamus Award.
"Salvation Boulevard," his most recent novel, is currently in production with Pierce Brosnan
, Greg Kinnear
, Jennifer Connelly
, Marisa Tomei
, Isabelle Fuhrman
, Ed Harris
, and Jim Gaffigan
. The director is George Ratliff, the producer is Cathy Schulman. It is scheduled for a 2011 release.
The tag-line for the novel is, "The corpse is an atheist professor, the suspect is an Islamic foreign student, the defense attorney is a Jewish lawyer, the investigator is a born-again Christian - the mystery is God." It is a serious study of religion, faith, and the classic questions of philosophy wrapped inside a comic thriller.
Beinhart also writes screenplays, most recently an adaptation of his own novel, "The Librarian." (“Think John Grishom meets Jon Stewart.” Rolling Stone.)
His non-fiction books are:
"Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin," Nation books. Robert McChesney called it, "The media book against which all others will be measured.”
"How To Write A Mystery,"1997 Ballantine Books “The best genre specific book on writing we’ve seen.” Denver Post
He's had op-ed pieces and articles in the Esquire, New York Times, International Herald Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Baltimore Sun, Newsday, Huffingtonpost, Alternet, Buzzflash, Common Dreams, and others.
He writes a monthly column on politics for Chronogram.
No One Rides for Free (1986) received the 1987 Edgar Award
for Best First Novel.
"Foreign Exchange," was listed on the NY Times Notable Books of Year
Beinhart spent two years in Oxford
, England
, where he was a Raymond Chandler Fulbright Fellow in Detective and Crime Fiction Writing at Wadham College
. An avid skier and sometime instructor at Hunter Mountain in New York State, Beinhart spent one winter in St Anton, Austria
researching Foreign Exchange and parts of several winters instructing in Les Trois Vallées
, France
.
He currently resides in Woodstock, New York with his wife and two children.
He is represented by Richard Pine, Inkwell Management, New York.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
. He is best known as the author of the political and detective novel American Hero, which was adapted for the political-parody film Wag the Dog
Wag the Dog
Wag the Dog is a 1997 black comedy film starring Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro, co-starring Anne Heche, Denis Leary and William H. Macy about a Washington spin doctor who, merely days before a presidential election, distracts the electorate from a sex scandal by hiring a Hollywood film producer...
. Directed by Barry Levinson
Barry Levinson
Barry Levinson is an American screenwriter, film director, actor, and producer of film and television. His films include Good Morning, Vietnam, Sleepers and Rain Man.-Early life:...
, it starred Dustin Hoffman
Dustin Hoffman
Dustin Lee Hoffman is an American actor with a career in film, television, and theatre since 1960. He has been known for his versatile portrayals of antiheroes and vulnerable characters....
, Robert De Niro
Robert De Niro
Robert De Niro, Jr. is an American actor, director and producer. His first major film roles were in Bang the Drum Slowly and Mean Streets, both in 1973...
, Anne Heche
Anne Heche
Anne Celeste Heche is an American actress, director, and screenwriter. She started her career on the daytime soap opera Another World, for which she won a Daytime Emmy Award in 1991. Heche gradually landed supporting roles in feature films, and in 1997 appeared in I Know What You Did Last Summer,...
, William H. Macy
William H. Macy
William Hall Macy, Jr. is an American actor and writer. He was nominated for an Academy Award for his role as Jerry Lundegaard in Fargo. He is also a teacher and director in theater, film and television. His film career has been built mostly on his appearances in small, independent films, though...
, Denis Leary
Denis Leary
Denis Colin Leary is an Irish-American actor, comedian, writer and director. Leary is known for his biting, fast paced comedic style and chain smoking...
, Kirsten Dunst
Kirsten Dunst
Kirsten Caroline Dunst is an American actress, singer and model. She made her film debut in Oedipus Wrecks, a short film directed by Woody Allen for the anthology New York Stories...
, Woody Harrelson
Woody Harrelson
Woodrow Tracy "Woody" Harrelson is an American actor.Harrelson's breakthrough role came in the television sitcom Cheers as bartender Woody Boyd...
, and Willie Nelson
Willie Nelson
Willie Hugh Nelson is an American country music singer-songwriter, as well as an author, poet, actor, and activist. The critical success of the album Shotgun Willie , combined with the critical and commercial success of Red Headed Stranger and Stardust , made Nelson one of the most recognized...
.
The New Yorker called the novel "a tour de force of satirical fiction."
Beinhart is a Fulbright Fellow
Fulbright Program
The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright-Hays Program, is a program of competitive, merit-based grants for international educational exchange for students, scholars, teachers, professionals, scientists and artists, founded by United States Senator J. William Fulbright in 1946. Under the...
. He's won the Edgar Award
Edgar Award
The Edgar Allan Poe Awards , named after Edgar Allan Poe, are presented every year by the Mystery Writers of America...
, the Gold Dagger
Gold Dagger
The Gold Dagger Award was an award given annually by the Crime Writers' Association for the best crime novel of the year.For its first five years, the organization's top honor was known as the Crossed Red Herring Award....
, the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière
Grand Prix de Littérature Policière
The Grand Prix de Littérature Policière is a French literary prize founded in 1948 by author and literary critic Maurice-Bernard Endrèbe. It is the most prestigious award for crime and detective fiction in France...
, and been shortlisted for the Edgar two more times, and for the Shamus Award.
"Salvation Boulevard," his most recent novel, is currently in production with Pierce Brosnan
Pierce Brosnan
Pierce Brendan Brosnan, OBE is an Irish actor, film producer and environmentalist. After leaving school at 16, Brosnan began training in commercial illustration, but trained at the Drama Centre in London for three years...
, Greg Kinnear
Greg Kinnear
Gregory "Greg" Kinnear is an American actor and television personality who first rose to stardom in 1991. He has appeared in more than 20 motion pictures, and was nominated for an Academy Award for his role in As Good as It Gets.-Early life:Kinnear was born in Logansport, Indiana, the son of...
, Jennifer Connelly
Jennifer Connelly
Jennifer Lynn Connelly is an American film actress, who began her career as a child model. She appeared in magazine, newspaper and television advertising, before making her motion picture debut in the 1984 crime film Once Upon a Time in America...
, Marisa Tomei
Marisa Tomei
Marisa Tomei is an American stage, film and television actress. Following her work on As The World Turns, Tomei came to prominence as a supporting cast member on The Cosby Show spinoff A Different World in 1987...
, Isabelle Fuhrman
Isabelle Fuhrman
Isabelle Fuhrman is an American teen actress. Fuhrman is best known for playing Esther in Orphan.-Life and career:...
, Ed Harris
Ed Harris
Edward Allen "Ed" Harris is an American actor, writer, and director, known for his performances in Appaloosa, Radio, The Rock, The Abyss, Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind, A History of Violence, and The Truman Show. Harris has also narrated commercials for The Home Depot and other companies...
, and Jim Gaffigan
Jim Gaffigan
James Christopher "Jim" Gaffigan is an American stand-up comedian and actor.-Early life:Gaffigan was born in Chesterton, Indiana and attended La Lumiere School in La Porte, Indiana. He is the youngest of six children and often jokes about growing up in a large family. He attended one year at...
. The director is George Ratliff, the producer is Cathy Schulman. It is scheduled for a 2011 release.
The tag-line for the novel is, "The corpse is an atheist professor, the suspect is an Islamic foreign student, the defense attorney is a Jewish lawyer, the investigator is a born-again Christian - the mystery is God." It is a serious study of religion, faith, and the classic questions of philosophy wrapped inside a comic thriller.
Beinhart also writes screenplays, most recently an adaptation of his own novel, "The Librarian." (“Think John Grishom meets Jon Stewart.” Rolling Stone.)
His non-fiction books are:
"Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin," Nation books. Robert McChesney called it, "The media book against which all others will be measured.”
"How To Write A Mystery,"1997 Ballantine Books “The best genre specific book on writing we’ve seen.” Denver Post
He's had op-ed pieces and articles in the Esquire, New York Times, International Herald Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Baltimore Sun, Newsday, Huffingtonpost, Alternet, Buzzflash, Common Dreams, and others.
He writes a monthly column on politics for Chronogram.
No One Rides for Free (1986) received the 1987 Edgar Award
Edgar Award
The Edgar Allan Poe Awards , named after Edgar Allan Poe, are presented every year by the Mystery Writers of America...
for Best First Novel.
"Foreign Exchange," was listed on the NY Times Notable Books of Year
Beinhart spent two years in Oxford
Oxford
The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, where he was a Raymond Chandler Fulbright Fellow in Detective and Crime Fiction Writing at Wadham College
Wadham College, Oxford
Wadham College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, located at the southern end of Parks Road in central Oxford. It was founded by Nicholas and Dorothy Wadham, wealthy Somerset landowners, during the reign of King James I...
. An avid skier and sometime instructor at Hunter Mountain in New York State, Beinhart spent one winter in St Anton, Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
researching Foreign Exchange and parts of several winters instructing in Les Trois Vallées
Les Trois Vallées
Les Trois Vallées or The Three Valleys is a ski region in the Tarentaise Valley, Savoie département of France, above the town of Moûtiers and have areas within the Vanoise National Park...
, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
.
He currently resides in Woodstock, New York with his wife and two children.
He is represented by Richard Pine, Inkwell Management, New York.
Selected works
- No One Rides For Free (1986)
- You Get What You Pay For (1988)
- Foreign Exchange (1992)
- American Hero (1993) (reissued as Wag the Dog: A NovelWag the Dog: A NovelWag the Dog: A Novel is a 2004 satirical conspiracy theory novel, originally published as American Hero in 1993, written by Larry Beinhart. It speculated that Operation DESERT STORM had been scripted and choreographed as a ploy to get George H.W...
) - How to Write a Mystery (1996)
- The Librarian (2004)
- Fog Facts:Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin (2005)
- Salvation Boulevard (2008)
External links
- Larry Beinhart's website
- Larry Beinhart's blog at The Huffington PostThe Huffington PostThe Huffington Post is an American news website and content-aggregating blog founded by Arianna Huffington, Kenneth Lerer, and Jonah Peretti, featuring liberal minded columnists and various news sources. The site offers coverage of politics, theology, media, business, entertainment, living, style,...
- Larry Beinhart: Federal Confidential at Buzzflash
- Interview: Larry Beinhart at Alterati
- Mandalay finds 'Salvation Boulevard' Ratliff to write, direct Beinhart adaptation By Michael Fleming, Variety, June 23, 2008.