J. Neil Schulman
@ Rational Review
A Filmmaker on Film
The New Official Alongside Night Teaser Trailer
Feb 11th
Official teaser trailer for the forthcoming futuristic thriller, Alongside Night.
The film is currently being edited and this trailer uses unfinished assets.
The full trailer won’t be produced until the movie is completed and ready to be shown, later in 2013. — JNS
Now in post-production: Alongside Night. Look for it later in 2013!
Alongside Night – Official Movie Trailer
Oct 18th
The Alongside Night Official Movie Trailer was premiered at Libertopia this past weekend. — JNS
Now in production: Alongside Night. Look for it in 2013!
Two New Alongside Night Videos
Oct 17th
The Alongside Night Official Music Video was premiered at Libertopia this past weekend during my talk in the second video. — JNS
Over a year ago when I asked Soleil O’Neal-Schulman to compose a theme song for the Alongside Night movie based on the poem I’d written back in the 70′s for the forematter of the novel I did not specify a style for the song; and a month or so ago our discussions involved how her more recent music was more alternative and less likely to satisfy what I was looking for. I simply told her, “I trust your judgment; I trust your taste” — and left it at that.
When Soleil delivered a one-verse demo, here’s what I wrote her:
“The novel Alongside Night is dedicated to Samuel Edward Konkin III, whose vision of black-market traders developing a libertarian revolutionary code first inspired me to organize two conferences held off-season at my father’s brother and sister-in-law’s Camp Mohawk in the Berkshires in fall 1974 and spring 1975; and to begin writing Alongside Night in 1974. Sam was one of my closest friends when I was your age, living in New York City, and we not only had libertarian ideas in common but we also shared a lot of the same esthetics in books, movies, and music.
“Sam and I made it a practice always to go together on opening day to see the latest James Bond movie, and we both loved the John Barry underscores and the opening song which set the tone for the movie, often sung by female artists like Shirley Bassey (“Goldfinger,” “Diamonds are Forever,” “Moonraker”), Gladys Knight (“License to Kill”), Nancy Sinatra (“You Only Live Twice”), Lulu (“The Man With the Golden Gun”), Carly Simon (“Nobody Does It Better,” from The Spy Who Loved Me, and Sheena Easton (“For Your Eyes Only”).
“You have just given Alongside Night a James Bond theme song. It’s exactly what Sam would have wanted. It’s perfect.”
I wrote two more verses with Soleil’s close guidance so in a way this song is a three way collaboration between myself at around age 24, myself at age 59, and Soleil at age 21.
Soleil provided a first-draft full production of the song to Alongside Night‘s composer, Daniel May, and the final production is their collaboration.
Music by Soleil O’Neal-Schulman
Lyrics by J. Neil Schulman
Performed by Soleil O’Neal-Schulman
Produced by Daniel May
–J. Neil Schulman, October 11, 2012
Here are the song lyrics:
Alongside Night
Parallel Day
By Fearful Flight
In Garish Gray
Will Dawn Alight
And Not Decay
Alongside Night?
Alongside Night
Invisible Day
We hide our light
Out of the way
They bring the fight
We won’t obey
Alongside Night
Alongside Night
Agorist Day
To wake our fight
To make our way
We seize the right
So come what may
Alongside Night
Copyright © 2012 Alongside Night, LLC. All rights reserved.
At Libertopia on October 13, 2012, writer/director J. Neil Schulman talks about the evolution of Alongside Night from a novel published in 1979 to a feature film currently in production. This presentation includes some exclusive surprise content.
Now in production: Alongside Night. Look for it in 2013!
I’m Out of Their League
Jul 15th
First published here on J. Neil Schulman @ Rational Review on April 7, 2010.
I just sent out an email to a producer in which I took a pass on submitting my materials to potential investors in my next project.
Neil, are you crazy, or just retiring?
Neither one.
Last Friday, when I returned home from a week in California, I played back a message on my home telephone’s voice mail, left three days earlier. It was from someone I didn’t know, but the message said these magic words, “I want to talk to you about a project.”
That was enough for me to open up my subscription to IMDb Pro and look up various spellings of the caller’s last name.
When that didn’t pin it down I Googled the phone number left by the caller. That did the trick: it provided me with the correct name for what turned out to be a line producer whose credits I could look up. It showed him as line producer on a project in pre-production, with a budget of $8 million.
You need to understand at this point how things work.
A film listed as being in “pre-production” means that it’s supposed to be a go project — financed and with a start date for principal photography. IMDb Pro is often enough inaccurate about such things, but if a project is actually in pre-production, the line producer would be the guy who’s hiring the crew.
I have a lot of credits on Lady Magdalene’s beyond the ones I usually front-load — writer, producer, director. I acted in it. I wrote songs for it. I did a lot of post-production work with various job titles. These are all jobs I have experience doing and can do for someone else. So if a line producer is calling me when he’s listed on IMDb Pro as having a multi-million dollar movie in pre-production, that sounds to me like a possible job offer, and it’s a call I’m going to return.
Being Easter weekend, it wasn’t until Monday that I was able to get this line producer on the phone. And it quickly became apparent that the call I was returning wasn’t for a job offer. He was someone who didn’t know me beyond seeing my name in a discussion on film financing on LinkedIn, and he was pitching himself to me as someone who could put me in touch with sales agents for Lady Magdalene’s, or put me in touch with investors for my next project.
The guy has real producing credits listed on IMDb. But he said all the wrong things.
The first thing was that he didn’t know my credits. He wasn’t aware I’d written for The Twilight Zone. He didn’t know I’d written, produced, and directed a completed indie feature film. He didn’t know me as an author. He didn’t know I’d won awards and accolades for my work over the past four decades.
Then he told me that he had gotten distribution for hard-to-sell indie features. I guess Lady Magdalene’s is one of these because it hasn’t sold to a distributor yet. “There probably wouldn’t be money up front,” he told me, “but these guys go to all the film markets — including AFM!”
Er, I’ve been to the American Film Market, myself. Lots of times. I can go through the book and see who’s there and buying indie features as well as anyone else. Someone who does that for a film producer isn’t a distributor — he’s a sales agent. He can no more put my movie into theaters or displayed in Walmart than I can. And if “there’s no money up front” then someone is asking me to tie up the rights to my ready-to-show movie with no money put up to show me that someone is matching my risk in having produced it.
Wrong answer.
Wrong answers again when he started telling me which stars could get a movie financed and which couldn’t. He knew — like everyone in the business knows — the low-end-budget films without any stars that have been huge box-office successes: The Blair Witch Project, Napoleon Dynamite, Juno, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Paranormal Activity. “Those are the exceptions,” he told me. “The investors I know won’t put money into a movie unless there are certain stars attached.”
I know this list. It’s the list of the flavor of the month — whichever actor was in a movie that did well recently. It doesn’t matter if the actor can’t put a coherent sentence together and how hard it would be for a director to get a performance out of him or her. And most important from the investor’s standpoint, the attachment of an A-list star to a movie is not in the slightest an accurate predictor about whether the movie will be successful enough to earn back the investment. The list of A-list-driven box-office flops is endless.
Then the kicker. He wanted me to print out and snail mail him synopses of my scripts, because “My investors won’t read a script without reading a synopsis first.”
And they want to see the movie poster for a film seeking distribution.
I actually agreed to send this guy a DVD of Lady Magdalene’s along with synopses of several of my scripts before I hung up.
Then I woke up today as if from a nightmare, practically screaming.
I don’t want these illiterates getting anywhere near any of my projects.
I don’t want these ignoramuses anywhere near the movie business.
If I was in the Mafia, I’d be putting out contracts on them.
These clowns — and I have no idea who they are — are not qualified to invest in movies. If they want to put money into films, it’s easy to watch movies then pay attention to the credits, to find out whose work it is that they like. It’s easy to attend film festivals to get in on the ground floor of new talent. It’s easy to read books and watch plays and decide which ones would make a good movie.
I’ve spent a lifetime doing work that has got me a reputation, that has built a fan base. If you’re looking to invest with me, I make it exceedingly easy to find out who I am and what I’ve done.
My credits and resume are on IMDb and LinkedIn.
My books are on Amazon.com and linked from my official website, listing reviews and awards.
There’s a Wikipedia article about me.
A Google search on me links to thousands of pages.
It costs all of $2.99 to watch Lady Magdalene’s on Amazon.com Video on Demand.
A fan of the Twilight Zone episode I wrote, “Profile in Silver,” put it on YouTube.
I have serialized one of my novels on my blog, and another of them has been a free download — with over 80,000 downloads already — since last June.
Any film producer can get in touch with my manager or agent — or me, directly — and ask to read any of my scripts. They’ll have a download link for the script’s PDF in their email box within minutes.
And if you’re too lazy to do any of this, kindly go sell cleaning products. It’s philistines like you that are producing unwatchable dreck that’s robbing people like me who love movies and have paid our dues from the opportunity of getting our handmade-with-love movies in front of audiences who might love them.
Pass.
Now let me tell you the right answers.
There’s nothing that I, as a creative artist, like more than someone who “gets” me. Art is communication, and if there’s nobody out there who can receive and understand the communication, it’s a tree falling in a forest … and in this particular case there really is no sound.
Ayn Rand could talk all she liked about how the work itself is everything, but please note that she was fooling nobody except, possibly, herself.
Barbara Branden tells us in The Passion of Ayn Rand that when, upon its first publication, Atlas Shrugged was panned by the book critics — when Ayn Rand felt that no literary figure of major consequence stood up to defend the masterpiece she’d spent a decade sweating bullets to write — she went into a deep depression.
Because she felt she had failed to communicate to an audience that meant something to her, Ayn Rand never wrote another word of original fiction for the remaining quarter century of her life.
We are all so much the poorer for it.
A creative artist — writer, painter, composer — often enough works in solitary, and has to contemplate a future audience to be able to work. That’s what Ayn Rand meant about the work coming first. The artist has to be the first audience for the art. But it’s a tragedy when the audience for art only shows up when the artist can no longer hear the applause.
An investor who appreciates my work enough to finance its distribution is a jewel beyond ordinary price to me.
But that’s a job title to be earned, just like any other.
Speaking for myself, I’ve been in this business long enough to know what I do, and do well. I’m going to hold a damn strict job interview for anyone who wants to invest in one of my projects.
But speaking on behalf of all artists looking for distribution to their audience, finding someone who exists in both the circle of “dedicated fan” and the circle of “investor” is a hell of a Venn diagram to fill out.
Owning a checkbook doesn’t make you a qualified investor any more than owning a guitar makes you Eric Clapton.
Capitalism is also an art. The art of capitalism fails when talent is missing … and all that’s left is stupid money.
Winner of the Special Jury Prize for Libertarian Ideals from the 2011 Anthem Film Festival! My comic thriller Lady Magdalene’s — a movie I wrote, produced, directed, and acted in it — is now available free on the web linked from the official movie website. If you like the way I think, I think you’ll like this movie. Check it out!
Armed Children in Movies
Apr 28th
Armed Children in Movies
Driving Liberals Absolutely Nuts
The copyrighted images in the attached graphic are used under the political comment protections of the Fair Use Doctrine. This article is Copyright © 2012 The J. Neil Schulman Living Trust. All rights reserved.
Winner of the Special Jury Prize for Libertarian Ideals from the 2011 Anthem Film Festival! My comic thriller Lady Magdalene’s — a movie I wrote, produced, directed, and acted in it — is now available free on the web linked from the official movie website. If you like the way I think, I think you’ll like this movie. Check it out!
Alongside Night Movie to Preview Spring 2012 at George Mason University
Feb 13th
(Facebook) October 18, 2011 (Revised February 13, 2012) — The movie adaptation of award-winning author/filmmaker J. Neil Schulman’s “1979 Novel Ripped from Today’s Headlines!” — Alongside Night — will offer a special preview at the JC Cinema on the Fairfax, Virginia campus of George Mason University during the Spring Semester of 2012.
The preview, currently scheduled for Wednesday, April 11, 2012 7:30 PM, is being sponsored by the campus organization Mason Liberty, an affiliate of Students for Liberty, the Institute for Humane Studies, and AntiWar.com.
The announcement was first made on Facebook.
The movie, which Schulman adapted from his novel and is directing as his second feature film, is currently in production. It stars Kevin Sorbo in the role of Nobel laureate economist Dr. Martin Vreeland, whose theories are the lynchpin of a political crisis when the United States dollar becomes worthless on world markets.
Alongside Night began principal photography on December 5, 2011, and is scheduled to complete principal potography in Spring 2012, with screenings planned to begin in Summer 2012.
It’s being co-produced by J. Neil Schulman’s Jesulu Productions / Alongside Night, LLC, and Richard Iott’s Braeburn Productions.
The 30th anniversary PDF edition of the Alongside Night novel recently passed 344,000 downloads from http://www.alongsidenight.net.
The novel portrays the near-future collapse of the American economy due to government overspending and the federal government monetizing its debt — resulting in a hyperinflationary collapse of the dollar — as seen through the eyes of Elliot Vreeland, the teenage son of Nobel-prizewinning economist Dr. Martin Vreeland, key player in a last-ditch attempt to prevent the United States government from collapsing because its money can no longer pay government officials or the military.
Alongside Night was originally published hardcover October 16, 1979 by Crown Publishers, with dust-jacket endorsements from Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman and A Clockwork Orange author Anthony Burgess.
The novel went on to win rave reviews in publications across the political spectrum from the Los Angeles Times Book Review and Sunday Detroit News to Reason Magazine and Liberty.
It’s often been compared to Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. One reviewer wrote, “If Ayn Rand’s ‘Atlas Shrugged’ was the elementary school of a very effective education in freedom, then J. Neil Schulman’s ‘Alongside Night’ has to be the post-graduate studies course.”
In 1989 Alongside Night won a Prometheus Hall of Fame Award from the Libertarian Futurist Society. The novel was voted the Freedom Book Club’s Book of the Month for May 2009. Also in 2009 the Karl Hess Club cited Alongside Night as one of the reasons it was awarding author J. Neil Schulman its Samuel Edward Konkin III Memorial Chauntecleer Award.
Alongside Night at Occupy LA * LAPD
Photo by Tim Cavanaugh, Reason
Alongside Night has won cult status among libertarians, gold-bugs, advocates of laissez-faire capitalism, Tea Party proponents — because of endorsements for the novel from Tea Party icons Congressman Ron Paul and Glenn Beck — and on October 10th a copy of the novel was spotted by Reason Magazine reporter, Tim Cavanaugh, at the northern encampment at Occupy LA * LAPD. The novel — endorsed by Samuel Edward Konkin III, author of the New Libertarian Manifesto — is considered one of the founding documents of the international Agorist movement, being the first published presentation of CounterEconomics as an alternative to politics as a means of achieving libertarian social goals.
On June 13, 2009, the novel’s current publisher, Pulpless.Com, made a 30th anniversary PDF edition of Alongside Night available for free download from its website at http://www.alongsidenight.net. The novel quickly became a popular download but went viral when in five days in May 2010 over 100,000 copies of the novel were downloaded.
The 30th Anniversary PDF edition of Alongside Night passed 300,000 downloads on September 19, 2011. There have been over another 44,000 downloads since then.
Its text is the same as the 20th Anniversary edition of Alongside Night published by Pulpless.Com in 1999 and still in print as a trade paperback. An Amazon.Com Kindle edition with the same text was also published in 2009, and it was this edition that was read by Glenn Beck.
Dr. Milton Friedman wrote of Alongside Night: “A cautionary tale with a disturbing resemblance to past history and future possibilities.”
Anthony Burgess wrote, “I received Alongside Night at noon today. It is now eight in the evening and I just finished it. I think I am entitled to some dinner now as I had no lunch. The unputdownability of the book ensured that. It is a remarkable and original story, and the picture it presents of an inflation- crippled America on the verge of revolution is all too acceptable. I wish, and so will many novelists, that I, or they, had thought of the idea first. A thrilling novel, crisply written, that fires the imagination as effectively as it stimulates the feelings.”
Dr. Ron Paul wrote, “Alongside Night may be even more relevant today than it was in 1979. Hopefully this landmark work of libertarian science fiction will inspire a new generation of readers to learn more about the ideas of liberty and become active in the freedom movement.”
Dr. Paul is appearing in the movie as himself, with footage shot during his February 3, 2012 visit to Pahrump, Nevada for a campaign rally.
On his June 2, 2009 radio broadcast Glenn Beck said of Alongside Night, “It reads exactly like my show — written in 1979! Phenomenal! Phenomenal!”
The Los Angeles Times Book Review wrote, “High Drama … A story of high adventure, close escapes, mistaken identities, and thrilling rescues. … A fast-moving tale of a future which is uncomfortably close at hand.”
Publishers Weekly wrote, “An unabashedly polemical, libertarian novel which packages its message in a fast, effectively told action adventure.”
The Sunday Detroit News wrote, “Let me begin with a disclaimer: I don’t really agree with many of J. Neil Schulman’s ideas about society or politics or money. But his first book, Alongside Night, is as enjoyable piece of cautionary fiction as I have read in some years … Like Ayn Rand and Robert A. Heinlein, Schulman can tell a good story!”
Reason Magazine has called Alongside Night, “One of the most widely hailed libertarian novels since the classic works of Ayn Rand.”
Science Fiction Review called it, “Probably the best libertarian novel since Atlas Shrugged.”
Liberty Magazine wrote, “As the seventies ended … the time seemed ripe for a great libertarian novel to appear, and so it did. The novel was Alongside Night…”
Alongside Night’s author, J. Neil Schulman, is also known for his Prometheus-Award-winning novel, The Rainbow Cadenza (Simon & Schuster, 1983), known as the screenwriter of the 1986 CBS Twilight Zone episode “Profile in Silver” in which a time-traveling future historian creates an alternate time-line by stopping the JFK assassination, is author of the Charlton Heston-endorsed nonfiction book Stopping Power: Why 70 Million Americans Own Guns, and is the author of the longest interview ever conducted with science-fiction Grandmaster Robert A. Heinlein, published in Schulman’s The Robert Heinlein Interview and Other Heinleiniana.
In 2006 J. Neil Schulman wrote, produced, and directed the suspense-comedy feature film, Lady Magdalene’s, starring the original Star Trek’s Lt. Uhura, Nichelle Nichols, and the film won “Best Cutting Edge Film” at the 2008 San Diego Black Film Festival, “Audience Choice” at the 2008 Cinema City International Film Festival, and a “Special Jury Prize for Libertarian Ideals” at the 2011 Anthem Film Festival, which is part of FreedomFest. The film is currently available from Amazon.com as a Special Preview DVD and Amazon Instant Video, where the movie’s musical soundtrack is available both as CD’s and as mp3 downloads. Sponsored by Life Enhancement Products, the movie will have its local Nevada. television premiere on Halloween 2011 then be released nationally for broadcast & cable-satellite, as well as a planned Blu-Ray/DVD combo pack to be released in 2012. The complete Life-Enhancement-sponsored Lady Magdalene’s will also stream on the web for free from its official movie website at http://www.ladymagdalenes.com beginning in October 2011.
J. Neil Schulman has written a screen adaptation of Alongside Night and is in production directing it as his second feature film, starring international film and TV star Kevin Sorbo in the role of Dr. Martin Vreeland. Both Schulman and Sorbo are executive producers on the production, and its official movie website at http://www.alongsidenightmovie.com. The producers also have set up an Official Facebook Movie Page.
Kevin Sorbo
and J. Neil Schulman
Kevin Sorbo was the star of the #1 rated worldwide TV series, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and is featured in the 2011 movie Soul Surfer.
New York Times bestselling author Tom Woods has written of the Alongside Night book-to-movie project:
The libertarian world has been doing a good job writing and publishing in economics, history, and philosophy. But to reach a wider audience, we need to go where the people are. For one thing, people read much more fiction than nonfiction. J. Neil Schulman’s Alongside Night is an excellent example of the possibilities for libertarian fiction. And now there’s a move to get his book adapted into a motion picture. Fiction writing and the movies are two areas where we are getting killed. We’re not even putting up a fight. A project like this can change that.
Alongside Night, with major endorsements from Ron Paul and Milton Friedman, its libertarian awards and rave reviews, and the intention of Free to Choose media to use the film in its teaching modules distributed to high schools, is an extremely rare opportunity to make inroads into the mass entertainment media. It would be great to see people of means get behind this important project.
Tom Woods
This article is Copyright © 2011, 2012 The J. Neil Schulman Living Trust. All rights reserved.
Winner of the Special Jury Prize for Libertarian Ideals from the 2011 Anthem Film Festival! My comic thriller Lady Magdalene’s — a movie I wrote, produced, directed, and acted in it — is now available free on the web linked from the official movie website. If you like the way I think, I think you’ll like this movie. Check it out!
Braeburn Entertainment and Richard Iott join Jesulu Productions on Alongside Night
Feb 12th
(OpenPress) February 12, 2012 — Braeburn Entertainment, Ltd., and executive producer Richard B. Iott, have joined Alongside Night, LLC/Jesulu Productions, in the production of the feature film, Alongside Night, based on the popular and award-winning 1979 novel, adapted and being directed by the novel’s author, J. Neil Schulman, starring international film/TV star, Kevin Sorbo, and featuring an appearance by Dr. Ron Paul.
Kevin Sorbo
and J. Neil Schulman
Alongside Nightt is a near-future action/suspense feature following Elliot Vreeland, teenage son of Nobel-prize-winning economist Dr. Martin Vreeland (Kevin Sorbo), who finds himself on the run from FEMA when his family disappears during political chaos following the collapse of the U.S. dollar due to unsustainable government spending.
In addition to being an award-winning libertarian novelist and journalist, J. Neil Schulman is writer of the 1986 CBS Twilight Zone episode “Profile in Silver,” about a future history professor who travels back to 1963 Dallas and creates a self-destructing alternate timeline by preventing the JFK assassination, and Schulman is the writer/producer/director of the triple-film-festival-award-winning 2010 suspense-comedy, Lady Magdalene’s, starring the original Star Trek‘s Lt. Uhura, Nichelle Nichols.
Rich Iott
In addition to being a successful producer on over a dozen feature films including Call of the Wild 3D (Christopher Lloyd, Wes Studi, Veronica Cartwright), Beautiful Boy (Michael Sheen, Maria Bello), and Insight (Sean Patrick Flanery, Natalie Zea, Adam Baldwin), in 2010 Richard Iott was a Republican candidate for Congress from his home state of Ohio, endorsed by Tea Party supporters.
Alongside Night began principal photography in December 2011 and is planned to begin screening in Spring/Summer 2012.
Dr. Ron Paul wrote about the novel, “J. Neil Schulman’s Alongside Night may be even more relevant today than it was in 1979. Hopefully … this landmark work of libertarian science fiction will inspire a new generation of readers to learn more about the ideas of liberty and become active in the freedom movement.”
Alongside Night was published hardcover by Crown Publishing October 16, 1979 with the following endorsements:
Nobel laureate-in-economics Milton Friedman:
“A cautionary tale with a disturbing resemblance to past history and future possibilities.”
A Clockwork Orange author Anthony Burgess:
“A remarkable and original story, and the picture it presents of an inflation-crippled America on the verge of revolution is all too acceptable. I wish, and so will many novelists, that I, or they, had thought of the idea first. A thrilling novel, crisply written, that fires the imagination as effectively as it stimulates the feelings.”
>
Resurgence in Popularity:
Alongside Night holds the record for the most popular libertarian novel on the World Wide Web. Over 100,000 copies of Alongside Night were downloaded within five days in May, 2010. Since its release on June 13, 2009, over 340,000 copies of Alongside Night‘s 30th Anniversary PDF edition have been downloaded from www.AlongsideNight.net.
Libertarian Awards won:
1989: Libertarian Futurist Society, Prometheus Hall of Fame Award
2009: Freedom Book Club, Book of the Month for May 2009
2009: Karl Hess Club, cited in the Samuel Edward Konkin III Memorial Chauntecleer Award for author J. Neil Schulman
Reviews:
Reason Magazine:
“One of the most widely hailed libertarian novels since the classic works of Ayn Rand.”
With Liberty:
“If Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged was the elementary school of a very effective education in freedom, then J. Neil Schulman’s Alongside Night has to be the post-graduate studies course.”
Science Fiction Review:
“Probably the best libertarian novel since Atlas Shrugged.”
Los Angeles Times Book Review:
“High Drama … A story of high adventure, close escapes, mistaken identities, and thrilling rescues. … A fast-moving tale of a future which is uncomfortably close at hand.”
Liberty Magazine:
“As the seventies ended … the time seemed ripe for a great libertarian novel to appear, and so it did. The novel was Alongside Night…”
Publishers Weekly:
“An unabashedly polemical, libertarian novel which packages its message in a fast, effectively told action adventure.”
Sunday Detroit News:
“Let me begin with a disclaimer: I don’t really agree with many of J. Neil Schulman’s ideas about society or politics or money. But his first book, Alongside Night, is as enjoyable piece of cautionary fiction as I have read in some years … Like Ayn Rand and Robert A. Heinlein, Schulman can tell a good story!”
Plot Synopsis:
The American economy is in freefall. Markets are crashing. Inflation is soaring. Bankruptcies, foreclosures and unemployment are up, and even defense contracts are going overseas. The United States military is threatening to go on strike. Foreigners are buying up everything in America at firesale prices while gloating over the fall of a once great nation. Homeless people and gangs own the streets. Smugglers use the latest technology to operate bold enterprises that the government is powerless to stop, even with totalitarian spying on private communications. Anyone declared a terrorist by the administration is being sent to a secret federal prison where constitutional rights don’t exist.
And caught in the middle of it all are the brilliant teenage son of a missing Nobel-prizewinning economist, his best friend from prep school whose uncle was once an Israeli commando, and the beautiful but mysterious teenage girl he meets in a secret underground … a girl who carries a pistol with a silencer.
The setting could be next week. But this novel was written three decades ago.
Full information on the production is on the official movie website at http://www.alongsidenightmovie.com and on its Official Facebook Page at http://www.facebook.com/alongsidenightmovie .
Winner of the Special Jury Prize for Libertarian Ideals from the 2011 Anthem Film Festival! My comic thriller Lady Magdalene’s — a movie I wrote, produced, directed, and acted in it — is now available free on the web linked from the official movie website. If you like the way I think, I think you’ll like this movie. Check it out!
Paul Rosenberg on Alongside Night
Nov 11th
Speaking to Steven Michaels of InvisibleAssets.com in Steven’s weekly telephone conference call, guest Paul Rosenberg of Cryptohippie.com and author of A Lodging of Wayfaring Men spoke about Alongside Night and the upcoming movie.
Paul Rosenberg on Alongside Night
(MP3 audio, 42 seconds)
See also Alongside Night Movie to Premiere Spring 2012 at George Mason University and Alongside Night Approaches
Cato the Elder ended every speech, “Carthago delenda est!” — “Carthage must be destroyed!” Recently I’ve been ending everything I’ve been writing:
Alongside Night Must Be Made!
Winner of the Special Jury Prize for Libertarian Ideals from the 2011 Anthem Film Festival! My comic thriller Lady Magdalene’s — a movie I wrote, produced, directed, and acted in it — is now available free on the web linked from the official movie website and as a DVD on Amazon.com. If you like the way I think, I think you’ll like this movie. Check it out!
J. Neil Schulman at Libertopia 2011: Brother Can You Spare A Million Bucks?
Nov 10th
J. Neil Schulman at Libertopia 2011:
Brother, Can You Spare A Million Bucks?
J. Neil Schulman at Libertopia 2010:
Reloading the American Revolution
Kevin Sorbo talks about Alongside Night
See also Alongside Night Movie to Premiere Spring 2012 at George Mason University and Alongside Night Approaches
Cato the Elder ended every speech, “Carthago delenda est!” — “Carthage must be destroyed!” Recently I’ve been ending everything I’ve been writing:
Alongside Night Must Be Made!
Winner of the Special Jury Prize for Libertarian Ideals from the 2011 Anthem Film Festival! My comic thriller Lady Magdalene’s — a movie I wrote, produced, directed, and acted in it — is now available free on the web linked from the official movie website and as a DVD on Amazon.com. If you like the way I think, I think you’ll like this movie. Check it out!
New Indie Film Distribution Model Pioneered by Nichelle Nichols Comic Thriller Lady Magdalene’s
Nov 7th
Strategic business alliance between nutritional supplement company Life Enhancement Products and indie film company Jesulu Productions demonstrates a new distribution model for indie films, where a sponsor’s sales revenues are shared with a producer, repaying movie investors. First up: Lady Magdalene’s, a triple-film-festival-award-winning suspense comedy starring original Star Trek’s Lt. Uhura, Nichelle Nichols, released for free views both on web and TV, with Life Enhancement infomercial.
(OpenPress) November 8, 2011 — Most entertainment industry observers are confident that new-media distribution of movies to digital devices will become a major part of film distribution, but until now nobody has demonstrated a business model that creates a revenue stream sufficient to repay film investors. Now one indie film company is trying to create just such a digital-media revenue stream, making independent film-making once again attractive to investors by creating new profitable competition to traditional distribution channels monopolized by the interlocking cartels of movie studios, broadcast/cable/satellite systems & networks, and chain theatrical exhibitors.
Jesulu Productions has just released for free viewing on both YouTube and broadcast television its triple-film-festival-award-winning suspense comedy, Lady Magdalene’s, starring the original Star Trek‘s Lt. Uhura, Nichelle Nichols, including an up-front infomercial by the nutritional supplement company, Life Enhancement Products. The strategic business alliance between the independent film company and nutritional supplement company pioneers a new distribution model for independent films, whereby the new revenue stream created by the movie’s sponsored distribution is shared with a film’s producer, repaying movie investors for the costs of production.
This business model for infomercial-sponsored independent film distribution was conceived by Lady Magdalene’s writer/producer/director, J. Neil Schulman, also an award-winning novelist and journalist, who in the 1980′s and 1990′s founded and operated two eBook publishing companies, SoftServ Publishing and Pulpless.Com, which were the first companies to make books by bestselling authors available for download to personal computers, first as SoftServ in 1990 via the General Electric Network for Information Exchance (GEnie), then beginning in 1995 from the world wide web as Pulpless.Com.
“I believe movie watchers are already used to seeing commercial messages before a movie starts,” says Schulman, “on TV and even in movie theaters. I also think a well-done and entertaining infomercial is much more likely to produce results than traditional web banner advertising extraneous to the movie, which web surfers are much more used to ignoring.”
In Jesulu Productions’ suspense comedy, Lady Magdalene’s, Nichelle Nichols plays Maggie, the colorful and determined madam of a legal Nevada brothel — relocated from New Orleans after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita — and in tax default to the IRS. However the talented but disgraced federal agent, Jack Goldwater (Ethan Keogh), sent as the federal receiver to manage the brothel, soon uncovers evidence that Lady Magdalene’s is being used by al-Qaeda operatives as a meetup for a plot leading to the tunnels under Hoover Dam. But Agent Goldwater and a female federal agent he soon meets up with (Susan Smythe) can’t figure out what al-Qaeda is really doing until they seek help from Lady Magdalene and the working women at the brothel.
Lady Magdalene’s: Free Web Edition was released on YouTube as a single high-definition video, available for web streaming or download, on October 22, 2011; and on Halloween, October 31, 2011, Lady Magdalene’s had its world television premiere on KPVM TV, Pahrump, Nevada, the town in which most of the movie’s principal photography was shot, using both familiar locations and many locals in the cast. The movie broadcast was preceded by the thirty-minute Lady Magdalene’s KPVM TV Halloween 2011 Premiere Pre-Show (also available on YouTube), hosted by cast member Mara Marini (“Nurse Gretchen”), and featuring interviews with star Nichelle Nichols, writer/director J. Neil Schulman, cast-member Mark Gilvary (who plays two different roles in the movie), and features on Pahrump local actors who were selected from a local casting call.
A second thirty-minute video,Lady Magdalene’s Pre-Show, intended for TV broadcasts elsewhere, is also available for viewing on YouTube.
Both the Life Enhancement infomercial and the two pre-shows were produced by Jesulu Productions.
Lady Magdalene’s has won three film-festival awards: “Best Cutting Edge Film” after its premiere at the 2008 San Diego Black Film Festival; ” Audience Choice” at the 2008 Cinema City International Film Festival shown on the Citywalk adjacent to Universal Studios Hollywood; and, most recently, “Special Jury Prize for Libertarian Ideals” at FreedomFest’s Anthem Film Festival at Bally’s Las Vegas in July 2011.
Life Enhancement Products is the exclusive distributor of the nutritional supplement formulations of New York Times bestselling authors, Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw, and the infomercial seen in both the movie and the pre-show features Mara Marini interviewing founder, president, CEO, and editor of Life Enhancement Magazine, Will Block.
J. Neil Schulman and Will Block have been friends since they met at a New York libertarian meeting in 1972. Block was the videographer at Schulman’s 1985 wedding to Schulman’s ex-wife, singer/songwriter, Kate O’Neal, two of whose songs are featured on the soundtrack of Lady Magdalene’s.
Schulman and Block are both executive producers on Schulman’s next film production, Alongside Night scheduled to begin principal photography in December, starring international TV and film star, Kevin Sorbo (also an executive producer on the film). Schulman has adapted the screenplay from his Prometheus-Hall-of-Fame 1979 novel, endorsed by Nobel-laureate Milton Friedman, A Clockwork Orange author Anthony Burgess, and presidential hopeful Congressman Ron Paul, and Schulman will be helming Alongside Night as his second feature. Schulman has referred to Alongside Night as his “1979 novel ripped from today’s headlines” as it follows the teenage son of a Nobel-prizewinning economist through a U.S. facing fall of the United States government due to the hyperinflationary collapse of the U.S. dollar. The movie is scheduled to premiere on the campus of George Mason University in Spring 2012, sponsored by campus organization Mason Liberty and AntiWar.Com.
Full information on Lady Magdalene’s is on the official movie website at http://www.ladymagdalenes.com. The official Lady Magdalene’s Facebook Page is at http://www.facebook.com/ladymagdalenes.
Full information on Alongside Night is on the official movie website at http://www.alongsidenightmovie.com. The official Alongside Night Facebook Page is at http://www.facebook.com/alongsidenightmovie.
Information about Life Enhancement Products can be found on the web at http://www.life-enhancement.com/movie.
Winner of the Special Jury Prize for Libertarian Ideals from the 2011 Anthem Film Festival! My comic thriller Lady Magdalene’s — a movie I wrote, produced, directed, and acted in it — is now available free on the web linked from the official movie website and as a DVD on Amazon.com. If you like the way I think, I think you’ll like this movie. Check it out!
