By: Darryl Reilly
“That foreword seemed funnier when I wrote it,” characteristically quipped Elaine May after Julian Schlossberg read from her preamble to his new memoir, My First Book – Part 2, A Producer’s Life Continues. The duo conversed before microphones in a private second floor area of the historic New York City theater district restaurant, Sardi’s, on August 13, 2024. This event for an invited audience was in celebration of Mr. Schlossberg’s book’s publication; it is a sequel to his engaging 2023 initial chronicle, Try Not To Hold It Against Me: A Producer’s Life, for which Ms. May also wrote the forward.
They befriended each other in the 1970’s when she was laboring to edit her film, Mikey and Nicky, and he was a Paramount Pictures vice president. “Warren Beatty told me you were okay for an executive” cracked May. “The worst two years of my life” described Schlossberg of his brief tenure at the studio. “I couldn’t say yes, I couldn’t greenlight anything; I could say no, and I could say I’ll get back to you…I tried to make Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz and Meteor there and got turned down…I was told I was thinking too small, and I was. They wanted big profits, and I thought of good movies that made smaller profits…I like the theater better!”
“This is my last interview, I don’t do them, and I don’t answer them” began the 92-year-old May. “If you were me asking you questions, what question would you ask me?” expressed May of her proclaimed lack of interrogative skills. Being Elaine May, this chat was a hilarious performance piece of her being herself. She pulled out a list of questions, it was instead a Sardi’s menu which became a sly prop. It later incited a reverie about Sardi’s deviled beef bones which she enjoyed in the distant past; it is not on the current menu, adding to the merriment.
(Photo credit: Rufus T. Firefly)
At times May would get deadly serious for even more mirthful results. “Julian tells great jokes, tell one joke, Julian.” Schlossberg comedically enacted a conflict between a bickering husband and wife; the punchline, “The car is in the lake” incited gales of laughter. Elia Kazan, Eli Wallach and George C. Scott were a few performing arts titans recalled through Schlossberg’s vivid storytelling. May even turned the audience questions segment into funny gambit. “Is there anyone here I don’t know?” “Who is that?” she asked Schlossberg of someone she supposedly knew who asked a question. At the end of this nearly 30-minute laugh-filled extravaganza we felt as though we had witnessed a set by that monumental comedy team, Schlossberg and May.
“I feel like I just had my Bar Mitzvah” wistfully stated the 82-year-old Schlossberg as he launched into a pivotal tale of his youth. Being Jewish and having been born and raised in the Bronx, are key facets of his humorous, warm and down to earth persona. He lived near the Kingsbridge Armory, “It’s still the largest armory in the world!” In the 1950’s it was used for various enterprises, including a traveling rodeo. A local storeowner offered the 10-year-old Schlossberg two free tickets to its opening day, explaining that the rodeo gave complimentary tickets to all the neighborhood shops for distribution to customers. Schlossberg then went around to all the nearby stores asking for two free tickets.
“I stood in front of the armory and sold those tickets, they cost three dollars, I sold them for two dollars; I did very well! I came home and like Scrooge McDuck, threw all those dollar bills onto my bed and dove in on top of them…” Thus, began a life-long entrepreneurial life in show business, ranging from producing feature films, television documentaries, and shows on and Off-Broadway. In 1974 he began hosting the long-running radio talk show Movie Talk; interviewing numerous screen celebrities of that era including Bette Davis, John Huston and Jack Nicholson. He rebooted Movie Talk earlier this year as a podcast, with new celebrity interviews.
For more information about Julian Schlossberg and to purchase his books, visit www.julianschlossbergproducer.com