BANG! The Media

Quarterly

Interview With Anthony Mora

Anthony Mora began his career as a freelance journalist writing for such publications as US, Playboy Publications, Buzz and Rolling Stone. He served as the editor-in-chief of Impresion magazine and Excel magazine. He has also produced videos and feature films. He is currently president and CEO of Anthony Mora Communications, Inc. BANG! - A LOVE STORY is his first novel.

Janie's first action in the book is to reassure herself that her gun is next to her. Why is the gun so important?

Janie has had a very unsafe life. Her gun is her ally and her protector. The gun wasn't a prop that I thought of as an afterthought, it just came with the character. Janie brought her gun with her. Janie's gun is not only her weapon against the evils of the world, it's also her security blanket. I guess society has changed quite a bit from the days of Peanuts and Linus.

Janie has been described as a female Holden Caufield, do you see her that way?

I don't think Janie would like being compared to any male character, but if I were to compare Janie to any character in literature, I think it would be Huck Finn.

John makes an awfully big decision by taking Janie with him from Los Angeles to New York. Why would he make such a decision?

You have to remember John is the really lost character in the book. Janie had a very specific direction that she had chosen. Agree with her decision to join The Flowers of God or not, it was a decision. John was floating around looking for a direction, searching for a course. The decision to save, and I use the word save advisably, Janie gave him a direction. Plus, there was also a practical aspect to his very unpractical decision. He had seen how cults and deprogrammers worked and he wanted to spare her that experience.

You say that Janie has a direction, but her choice is to join a cult.

And it's a choice that she never gets to make. She's not allowed to make her choice. She is the character with the clearest direction and path in the book. The rest of the characters, the supposed adults, spend the bulk of their time trying to interfere with her choice. Whether her choice is a good choice or a bad choice, we'll never know. I think we are generally frightened by people who have a clear direction, who make stark choices. Most people have trouble making decisions. Using tags such as moral and immoral often spares us the trouble of having to make difficult decisions. We let others do it for us.

She's joining a cult started by a pretty crazed character named Eden, a former TV talk show host and an ex-con. Where did Eden come from?

Who better to start a cult in the late 20th century? I guess that working in the media as long as I have has somewhat jaded me, but TV is where we get the bulk of our information. What's important, what isn't important, what's real and what's fake is all decided for us. The media is no longer an instrument that delivers information, it's a process that shapes what we think and believe. When you take all that into consideration, who better to serve as the leader of a religion than an ex-talk show host. Here is a person who has gone into the nation's home on a daily basis. He's crazy, I'll grant you that, but we are drawn to crazy. We can't get enough of crazy. Put Jerry Springer head-to-head against the evening news. Guess who's going to win the ratings war.

You've worked as a journalist, editor, publicist and producer, now you can add author to that list. Which hat suits you best?

Since I was sixteen all I ever wanted to do was write novels. So it took me thirty years, I'm a slow learner. I've enjoyed working in the media, but like I said, it's such a powerful force that it's a bit frightening. Writing novels is what I've always wanted to do. But I've never worked solely as a novelist. I'm so used to the fast-paced media schedule. Maybe spending that much time alone with myself would drive me crazy.

---

Preview West

Novel Approach
By Ed Delgado

What do you get when you cross a book reading with a play? Novel Acts is the brainchild of Anthony Mora, novelist and media exec, who seems to have invented a new format for presenting fiction. Novel Acts starts as a staged reading and transforms to become something all its own -- a cross between an intimate evening with the author and a dramatic performance piece that entertains while it showcases Mora's fiction. Novel Acts (four acts from two novels) is apparently intended to offer the film and publishing worlds a condensed preview of Mora's work, as well as entertain the reading public.

The premiere performance of Novel Acts took place on October 16th at the Acme Theater in Los Angeles, the second (and final) scheduled performance will take place in Manhattan at The American Place Theater on October 26th. Produced by Sarah Holcombe and directed by Ilo Orleans, "Novel Acts" offers superior performances, especially by Linda Cardellini, who is a regular on UPN's "One of the Guys", and is featured in the current film "Strangeland".

The evening opens as a book reading, with Mora seated on a stool to the left of the stage, offering a brief explanation of "P.O.P.", a novel-in-progress.

"P.O.P." is the story of Sarah Good, founder of the Principles of Perfection and the last great guru of 20th century. As Mora begins to read from his work, the actors enter the stage, the lights fade on the author, and the novel springs to life as a play.

The first chapter is a classic war of nerves between the egomaniacal Dr. Meyers (Jacob Witkin), a psychiatrist, and his beleaguered publicist (Nealla Gordon). Witkin and Gordon deliver a sharp, acid scene of two perfectly matched combatants that escalates into pitch-perfect hysteria.

The second chapter from "P.O.P." features Mrs. Siegel (Ann Convery in a sly, nuanced performance), an oblivious, self-obsessed woman who conducts her entire life, including the breakup of her marriage, from a treadmill as she speaks on her cell phone.

In a hapless and very funny portrayal, Richard Kuhlman plays her neighbor on the adjoining treadmill, alternately embarrassed and intrigued as he gets sucked into the drama of Mrs. Siegel's extremely messy life.

With a quick scene change and music break, Novel Acts moves on to "BANG! A Love Story", (Dunhill Books, September 1998) the tale of Janie, an attractive, precocious seventeen-year-old girl, who goes nowhere without her gun, and John, a forty-year-old magazine editor who takes her from Los Angeles to New York to escape some mysterious danger. It is never clear what the danger is and whether he has kidnapped her or not. More backstory would have been useful here.

Linda Cardellini is superb as Janie, the brash, brilliant teenager who is obsessed with talking about sex, and Dwier Brown (Field of Dreams) gives a beautifully modulated portrayal of an obsessed, embarrassed "older" man who is convinced every ear in the restaurant is aimed directly at them. There is a gradual transition from comedy to drama in the scene, which ends on a tender, wistful note as John guards the sleeping Janie.

The fourth chapter literally ends with a bang as Janie confronts Santos, a low-rent cult leader turned corporate intuitive, played aptly by Cliff Weissman. Cardellini is an actress to watch (you heard it here first), effortlessly moving from light comedy to rage and passion in the final moments.

As a forum for showcasing a novel, Novel Acts hits the mark. A polished, sharp production that delivers a wide range of performances in less than an hour, the evening showcases Mora's work as no book reading could hope to do. Whether the gamble pays off professionally remains to be seen, but as pure entertainment, Novel Acts's novel approach succeeds.




home | the novel | the play | the film
the media | the author | contact
the principles of perfection
the resurrection of light