Stirling Silliphant The Fingers of God eBook Nat Segaloff
Download As PDF : Stirling Silliphant The Fingers of God eBook Nat Segaloff 
During the 1950s and 1960s it seemed that every TV show was written by Stirling Silliphant. His scripts for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Tightrope, Alcoa-Goodyear Theatre, Perry Mason, and, of course, Naked City and Route 66, made him Hollywood’s most produced writer. Later he dominated the disaster film cycle with The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno, brought martial arts phenomenon Bruce Lee to screen prominence with Marlowe and Longstreet, won an Oscar® for In the Heat of the Night, and helped create the TV mini-series. He lived the life of a movie star, not a movie writer, attending A-list parties, sailing his yacht around the world, driving posh cars, and turning out one hit after another.
But it came at a price Four marriages, estranged children, a son’s death, and, ultimately, expatriation. Stirling Silliphant The Fingers of God intimately explores the life and creative process of the man behind Charly, Pearl, The Grass Harp, Village of the Damned, and other big and small screen events. Drawn from exhaustive interviews conducted by author Nat Segaloff in the years before Silliphant’s 1996 death and augmented by material from his private files, what emerges is a complex portrait of a larger-than-life figure who rose to the top of a larger-than-life industry.
Stirling Silliphant The Fingers of God eBook Nat Segaloff
In one of the hundreds of scripts Stirling Silliphant wrote in his lifetime, one of his characters used the famous story about an elephant in a room with three blind men. Each man had a different idea what it was. To the one holding the elephant’s trunk it was like a long snake. To the one holding the elephant’s leg it was like a pillar. And to the third one holding touching the elephant’s side it seemed like a wall. The point the character was making that it’s almost impossible to know anyone or anything completely, as it really is.And that seems to be case with Stirling Silliphant, the man himself. Nat Segaloff’s biography, Stirling Silliphant: The Fingers of God has made an admirable attempt to capture the man in his entirety, but like the elephant, Silliphant’s life and his work are too large, of larger than life proportions in fact, that all we can do is applaud his biographer’s heroic effort. That Segaloff succeeds as well as he does is due mostly to his affection for the man he was privileged to call a friend, and his access to rare words written by Silliphant himself and faxed back to the U.S., after he had expatriated to Thailand.
It is through these words written in response to Segaloff’s questions, that we learn so much about a man who wrote almost the 8 million stories of the Naked City, and yet, curiously, seems never to have written much about himself. Aside from the revelations, mostly of a professional nature, contained in these faxed letters, Silliphant wrote very little about himself. There are no memoirs, no autobiographical works, but Segaloff points out that a lot of autobiographical material is contained in the scripts he wrote, especially the 73 hours of television he wrote for “Route 66,” the 1960s TV series starring George Maharis, Martin Milner, and latecomer Glenn Corbett.
Those scripts included mentions of things like Zen, Pirandello, and existential psychology, all subjects that interested him. But there were deeper personal things, burid in subtext. A script about a Bernie Madoff-type character played by Douglas Fairbanks, who risks sneaking back in the US to talk his daughter out of becoming a nun, was based on his own experience with his own daughter who joined a convent. Another about a philandering Vietnam vet trapped in a mine cave in with another woman, while his own wife is in labor, was based on his own failing marriage, at least in metaphor.
Segaloff recounts the history of four marriages, three of which ended because Silliphant more or less wanted them to, and the wreckage left behind as a result.
After Route 66 Silliphant went on to films and won the Oscar for In the Heat of the Night. The glory lasted into the seventies, but soon a new marriage, high divorce settlement costs to his third wife, found him needing money and thus began his cycle of disaster films with producer Irwin Allen. They started well, but by the time “When Time Ran Out” and “The Swarm” appeared he had reached a creative nadir. He frankly admitted he took the jobs because he wanted to buy things, like a yacht that he sailed with his new wife to the South Pacific.
But a truer reason was that he took those jobs because there was nothing else. Hollywood had changed. Scripts written on a human scale, that probe deep into the humanity of their characters became passé about the time Star Wars came out. Silliphant had dozens, no hundreds, of ideas for scripts he wanted to write. But Hollywood was no longer interested. The most devastating part of Segaloff’s book is the long, long list of projects, complete scripts, treatments, step outlines that are listed in the appendix of the book. How anybody, even a writer with as many produced scripts made into movies as he had, could persist on without being discouraged by so much rejection is the true measure of the man’s apparently indomitable spirit. In that sense, Stirling Silliphant truly was larger than life. And thanks to Nat Segaloff for showing him to us.
Get this book. Highly recommended.
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Stirling Silliphant The Fingers of God eBook Nat Segaloff Reviews
I have enjoyed so many films and television programs that were entirely the creation of Stirling Silliphant. Recently I began watching the television series "Route 66" (1960-1964) from the beginning and marveled at how he captured the zeitgeist of American culture of that time. Naturally I wanted to learn all I could about this great writer. This biography is a fascinating look at the man in the context of his time. Reading it a chapter at a time while alternately enjoying episodes he scripted for Route 66 is pure pleasure!
Well researched biography of writer Stirling Silliphant. The book had plenty of interviews with those who knew and worked with Silliphant as well as interviews with Silliphant himself. Most interesting was an appendix that provided information on numerous unproduced scripts and a bit of information on their plot. It was also interesting to see how often his scripts were changed, to the point where they were almost unrecognizable by Silliphant. I guess that was why writer Billy Writer became a director although Silliphant did not; although he did produce some of his works.
If you've ever watched Naked City (the TV series), Route 66 or Zane Grey Theater, then you have seen the footprints of Stirling Silliphant all over the screenplays. Add to these, blockbuster movie scripts like In The Heat Of The Night, The Poseidon Adventure and The Marlowe (the James Garner classic that introduced Bruce Lee to American movie goers), and you will see why Silliphant was one of the greatest screenwriters of all times. This biography will take you into a life full of passion, success, failures and flashes of writing genius. Especially recommended for novice and veteran writers alike, to see the creative processes of one of that generation's great writers (including Rod Serling).
Who listens? Who learns? Those questions are posed by the character of Linc, a conflcted Vietnam veteran, at the closing of "The Stone Guest", a Stirling Silliphant-scripted episode of the television series Route 66. The character of Tod, driver of the Corvette which is the conveyance for their joint odyssey across America gives this answer; "Somebody. Once in a while."
Nat Segaloff is surely one of those somebodies, having given us this long overdue biography, worthy of the great television and screenwriter himself. I knew Silliphant's legacy was indeed in good hands when Segaloff gave special attention to the Route 66 episode noted above. "The Stone Guest", one of over 70 Route 66 stories Stirling Silliphant wrote is the most engrossing hour of television I've ever seen. Many of those other Silliphant teleplays are similarly transfixing. All have ambitions far above their station.
But this very well-written bio is also a candid account - and therefor a tale of two Silliphants. One is the erudite master, spending himself completely to research and write fascinating stories that connect profoundly with the viewer. The other is the man of Hollywood excess - living large and prostituting his talent to do so.
The schism seems to have come about over time and with fame, according to Mister Segaloff. It may be the reason that he chooses his first chapter to be "In the Heat of the Oscars". Silliphant received the award for best screenplay for "In the Heat of the Night" in 1968. After that he was an A-Lister all the way but never quite the poet he was prior to this prestige.
In fact, Segaloff points out that some of the disaster films popular in the 70's that Silliphant was involved with ("The Swarm", 'Day of Reckoning") are ARTISTIC disasters. Very disappointing for a writer capable of creating "Vicky" on Route 66 - a solitary Biker-chick trying to outrun "grief" over the death of her uber-wealthy parents. Grief is "an albatross" and she eludes it by giving herself to life - "becoming" all the things she experiences. "Once I was a porpoise and raced a ketch halfway to Honolulu - before I became the wind in the spinnaker." His scripts for Route 66 were full of such fantastic imagery. It's amazing that such eloquence made its way onto commercial television.
Unfortunately after 1970 or so, there wasn't a huge amount of substance that Silliphant wrote. The exceptions had to do with his fascination with Asian cultures, particularly through his associations with Bruce Lee (TV's Longstreet) and his Vietnamese fourth wife, Tiana; herself a talented filmmaker.
The Silliphant best-of canon would include of course "In the Heat of the Night", but also two films he himself was dismissive of according to Segaloff; "The Slender Thread" and "A Walk in the Spring Rain". And there are little gems from the 1950's, before his tenures with TV's Naked City and Route 66; "Nightfall" and "Five Against the House". Almost all of the best of Stirling Silliphant on screen involved locations as co-stars - investing those tales with an added richness.
All of this is chronicled superbly by Nat Segaloff. There are a couple of Route 66 quibbles (George Maharis as Linc's predecessor, Buz, does not actually marry Anne Francis as Arlene in "A Month of Sundays" and the introduction of the Linc character comes in "Fifty Miles From Home" not "Fly Away Home" which was a different episode from season 1). Those will be easily over-looked by non-geeks.
Overall "Stirling Silliphant - the Fingers of God" is a MUST-read and MUST-have for any fan of Route 66, Naked City, Longstreet and/or the various films referred to in this reader's review. I literally could not put it down and I highly recommend it.
Peter Morley
In one of the hundreds of scripts Stirling Silliphant wrote in his lifetime, one of his characters used the famous story about an elephant in a room with three blind men. Each man had a different idea what it was. To the one holding the elephant’s trunk it was like a long snake. To the one holding the elephant’s leg it was like a pillar. And to the third one holding touching the elephant’s side it seemed like a wall. The point the character was making that it’s almost impossible to know anyone or anything completely, as it really is.
And that seems to be case with Stirling Silliphant, the man himself. Nat Segaloff’s biography, Stirling Silliphant The Fingers of God has made an admirable attempt to capture the man in his entirety, but like the elephant, Silliphant’s life and his work are too large, of larger than life proportions in fact, that all we can do is applaud his biographer’s heroic effort. That Segaloff succeeds as well as he does is due mostly to his affection for the man he was privileged to call a friend, and his access to rare words written by Silliphant himself and faxed back to the U.S., after he had expatriated to Thailand.
It is through these words written in response to Segaloff’s questions, that we learn so much about a man who wrote almost the 8 million stories of the Naked City, and yet, curiously, seems never to have written much about himself. Aside from the revelations, mostly of a professional nature, contained in these faxed letters, Silliphant wrote very little about himself. There are no memoirs, no autobiographical works, but Segaloff points out that a lot of autobiographical material is contained in the scripts he wrote, especially the 73 hours of television he wrote for “Route 66,” the 1960s TV series starring George Maharis, Martin Milner, and latecomer Glenn Corbett.
Those scripts included mentions of things like Zen, Pirandello, and existential psychology, all subjects that interested him. But there were deeper personal things, burid in subtext. A script about a Bernie Madoff-type character played by Douglas Fairbanks, who risks sneaking back in the US to talk his daughter out of becoming a nun, was based on his own experience with his own daughter who joined a convent. Another about a philandering Vietnam vet trapped in a mine cave in with another woman, while his own wife is in labor, was based on his own failing marriage, at least in metaphor.
Segaloff recounts the history of four marriages, three of which ended because Silliphant more or less wanted them to, and the wreckage left behind as a result.
After Route 66 Silliphant went on to films and won the Oscar for In the Heat of the Night. The glory lasted into the seventies, but soon a new marriage, high divorce settlement costs to his third wife, found him needing money and thus began his cycle of disaster films with producer Irwin Allen. They started well, but by the time “When Time Ran Out” and “The Swarm” appeared he had reached a creative nadir. He frankly admitted he took the jobs because he wanted to buy things, like a yacht that he sailed with his new wife to the South Pacific.
But a truer reason was that he took those jobs because there was nothing else. Hollywood had changed. Scripts written on a human scale, that probe deep into the humanity of their characters became passé about the time Star Wars came out. Silliphant had dozens, no hundreds, of ideas for scripts he wanted to write. But Hollywood was no longer interested. The most devastating part of Segaloff’s book is the long, long list of projects, complete scripts, treatments, step outlines that are listed in the appendix of the book. How anybody, even a writer with as many produced scripts made into movies as he had, could persist on without being discouraged by so much rejection is the true measure of the man’s apparently indomitable spirit. In that sense, Stirling Silliphant truly was larger than life. And thanks to Nat Segaloff for showing him to us.
Get this book. Highly recommended.
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