Update!

Apple has a security hole in both its mobile and desktop operating systems that could let a malicious hacker jump in on what you think is a secure Web transaction if you’re on a public Wi-Fi network like those at a coffee shop, airport or some other location. This week, Apple rushed out a patch for its iOS 7 and iOS 6 operating systems to fix a serious security issue. If you’ve gotten the prompt to update and you haven’t, do it now. If you’re still running older versions of iOS on your iPhone, iPod, or iPad, update now.

No Difference At All

You write a hit the same way you write a flop.

Alan Jay Lerner

Stephen Ward Will Close

They say on Broadway: "There is no limit to the number of people who won’t buy tickets to a show they won’t want to see!". For the first time in his career, Lord Lloyd-Webber has made this experience himself. His latest show, Stephen Ward, will close in two weeks. It joins a list of under-performing Lloyd Webber West End shows: The Beautiful Game, The Woman in White and his Phantom of the Opera sequel, Love Never Dies. But even amid such commendable company, it’s his biggest flop to date. Fortunately his ego is tough enough and his wallet is deep enough to take the hit.

Larger Than Life

"I didn't want to be the crippled songwriter or the crippled singer. I wanted to be the singer or the songwriter who was crippled. I wanted to be larger than life and a man among men…"

Doc Pomus

A Documentary Of Doc Pomus

I just had a chance to watch the documentary Aka Doc Pomus about one of the 20th century's greatest songwriters. This wonderful biography of Doc Pomus does him full justice and also tells the the bitter-sweet tragedy of his life. Crippled by polio in his childhood, Pomus - born Jerome Solon Felder on June 27, 1925 in Brooklyn, New York - became interested in singing blues and writing songs after hearing a Big Joe Turner record as a kid. He played saxophone at the time, and after hearing Turner, blues music became his obsession. By the mid-'50s, after singing in a thousand blues clubs, Pomus came to a crossroads in his career: he was in his early 30s and if he wanted to get married and support a family, it was not going to be by singing the Blues - he decided to concentrate on songwriting. He took a young piano player, Mort Shuman, and molded him into his writing partner - a partnership that lasted many years and even more hit songs. I had the luck to get to know Mort in the 70's. We created and produced songs together, and he told me a lot about his time with Doc. Together they wrote the words and music to such hits as "Save The Last Dance For Me," (one of the 25 most popular songs ever recorded) "Little Sister," "Suspicion," "Can't Get Used to Losing You," "Surrender," "Viva Las Vegas" and hundreds more. After securing their own office in the Brill Building, the team continued to crank out hit after hit. Presley alone ended up recording more than 20 of their songs throughout his career, including items like "Mess of Blues." After the Pomus-Shuman partnership broke up, Pomus took a ten year hiatus from writing. He earned his living as a professional gambler, a weekly poker game run out of his West 72nd street apartment. Pomus' son Geoffrey was sitting next to his father one night, trying not to give away the cards in their hand and maybe learn a thing or two about the game, when the mob came in to get their cut... by way of two masked gunmen. This ended Pomus' gambling career and pushed him back to writing. Collaborating mostly with Dr. John, Pomus penned another string of gems for B.B. King, Mink DeVille and a host of others. In 1991 Pomus became the first white person to be awarded the Rhythm and Blues Foundation's (an organization he co-founded) Pioneer Award. Later that year, on March 14, he died of lung cancer at the age of sixty-four in New York. It makes me happy that William Hechter and Peter Miller have created a film that comes close to building the monument for Doc which he so well deserves.

Lady Bess

Chayefsky On Writing

Artists don't talk about art. Artists talk about work. If I have anything to say to young writers, it's stop thinking of writing as art. Think of it as work.

Paddy Chayefsky

Network Stories

Arguably the best screenplay of the last fifty years is still Paddy Chayefsky’s “Network". Dave Itzkoff, a culture reporter for The New York Times, just finished a book dedicate to that great movie. “Mad as Hell: The Making of ‘Network’ and the Fateful Vision of the Angriest Man in Movies,” tells the story behind the screen. It is a must not only for Chayefsky admirerers such as yours truly, but for everybody interested in film making. One of the episodes Itzkoff reports is about the director Sidney Lumet's initial disappointment in Faye Dunaway’s performance. “She’s having trouble with the words,” Lumet told Heim. “He was thinking of replacing her,” says the editor. About Chayefsky Itzkoff writes, “at the age of 51, he could get his film scripts commissioned but not produced; he could get his television pilots shot but couldn’t get them on the air; and it would require the collective disappearance of every other form of dramatic art before he ever wrote another play for Broadway.”

Scrivener

Masterwriter