ON BENDER’S L.A., MICHAEL ELIAS’S LOVE LETTER TO 1970’S LOS ANGELES

On tonight’s show, we’ll be joined by author, screenwriter, director, television writer and producer, playwright and Living Theater alum Michael Elias to discuss his new semi-autobiographical novel Bender’s L.A., best described as “an elegy for lost loves and lost cities, and a love letter to 1970s Los Angeles. Eve Babitz meets Raymond Chandler."  That said by Patrick McGilligan, author of Young Orson.  Steve Martin said, “Bender is a deeply memorable Hollywood character. I loved this book."”

Educated in the classics at St. John’s College, Michael Elias took his knowledge of ancient Greek and philosophy to New York, trained at the Actors Studio, acted in The Living Theatre, La MaMa, the Judson Poets Theatre, and the Loft Theater where he teamed up as a comedy act with Frank Shaw to play coffee shops, nighclubs and five stints on The Tonight Show.  Fired by Ed Sullivan, they abandoned the act and took off for Hollywood to write sitcoms, variety shows and the classic Jewish Western, The Frisco Kid, starring Gene Wilder and Harrison Ford. Elias went on to write and co-produce Norman Lear’s All’s Fair. He  wrote episodes for such shows as The Mary Tyler Moore Show, All in the Family, The Odd Couple, The Funny Side, and The Dick Van Dyke Show.  With Rich Eustis, he wrote and produced the comedy series about precocious high school kids, Head of the Class. He was a longtime writer for Steve Martin, collaborating on Martin’s comedy albums, network TV specials, and the screenplay for The Jerk. His other produced screenplays include Serial, Envoyez les Violons, and Young Doctors in Love.  As writer and director of Showtime’s jazz film classic,  Lush Life with Forrest Whitaker and Jeff Goldblum, Elias was nominated for best Director at The Cable Ace Awards.

The Catskill Sonata, his semi-autobiographical play about blacklisted artists in a small hotel in the mountains, ran four months in Los Angeles, was directed by Paul Mazursky, and was ranked by The LA Weekly as number one in its list of ten best plays of the year.

His previous novels are The Last Conquistador, about the Inca, published by Open Road Media, and the psychological thriller You Can Go Home Now, published by Harper Collins.  He is a regular contributor to AirMail.