Milton-Friedman-Endorsed Book Predicting Current Financial Crisis Adapted as Screenplay
Submitted by: The J. Neil Schulman Living Trust
2008-10-10 23:01:19
(OPENPRESS) October 11, 2008 -- Author/filmmaker, J. Neil Schulman, who in 1989 won the Prometheus Hall of Fame Award for his 1979 novel of America in financial meltdown, Alongside Night -- and who on October 1, 2008, accepted the Audience Choice award from the Cinema City International Film Festival for Lady Magdalene's, the suspense-comedy feature film he wrote, produced, and directed -- has just completed a screenplay adaptation of Alongside Night that he's been working on for 27 years.
"I don't think I spent as much time working on this screenplay as J.R.R. Tolkien spent writing his Lord of the Rings trilogy," Schulman said, "but it took the current world financial crisis catching up to projections I made in my novel three decades ago for me to decide that I finally needed to get my story of how our country can be rescued from government policies that take us to the brink of catastrophe as an action movie that's at once chilling, funny, and hopeful."
Alongside Night won high-profile praise when it was released in hardcover by Crown Publishers in 1979.
Milton Friedman, the first American to win the Nobel Prize for economics, wrote about Alongside Night, "An absorbing novel--science fiction, yet also a cautionary tale with a disturbing resemblance to past history and future possibilities."
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."
And Anthony Burgess, author of the dystopian novel A Clockwork Orange, 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."
As described by the Wikipedia entry on Alongside Night, "The book focuses on the character of Elliot, the son of a fictional economist and Nobel Laureate ... set in a United States on the brink of economic collapse, where inflation is spiraling out of control and the government struggles to keep hold of its power. Trading in foreign currency has become illegal and many shops are subject to rationing; as a result there is a sprawling black market for almost all conceivable goods. Other nations have not fared so grimly, and organisations such as EUCOMTO (European Common Market Treaty Organization - the novel's prophetic vision of the future EU) issue stable gold standard currencies."
In an email of October 8, 2008, Schulman stated that it was his intent to "sell the script to a production company or get it financed so I can begin pre-production through my own company [Jesulu Productions]."
following its 1979 Crown hardcover release, Alongside Night's publishing history has included mass-market paperback editions from Ace Books in 1981 and from Avon Books in 1987. It's currently available both in a Pulpless.com web-downloadable eBook edition from http://www.alongsidenight.com and in the trade-paperback edition available on Amazon.com and most other book retailers.
Requests to Jesulu Productions for the Alongside Night screenplay will be forwarded to Schulman's personal management.
