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Mr. McDougal Discusses Jack Nicholson and Chinatown in a Sequelcast Interview

The Candlestickmaker is now available on Amazon!

Viet Nam, drugs & rock 'n roll circa 1968, the year that everything changed. Read the Prologue here!
Rub a dub dub
Three men in a tub
And who do you think they be?
The butcher, the baker
The candlestickmaker
And all of them lost at sea.


Aboard the spy ship U.S.S. Argosy in the war-tossed waters off the coast of Vietnam, three young American sailors form an unlikely bond. Each has fled an America they were raised to love but somehow no longer understand. When forced to choose whether to face combat or stay and fight the war in the streets, they sign up for a war that reflected the conflict that raged inside each of them. The one thing of which they were certain was that the only people in the world that they could depend on were each other.
As their friendship deepens in bars and brothels from Hong Kong to Subic Bay, Ernie Brigham and his companions slowly become aware of a dark secret aboard the U.S.S. Argosy. Upon their return to the America they left behind, they are changed at best, lost and damaged at worst, but ultimately sobered by a war that never should have been fought.
In the tradition of Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, Denis Johnson’s Tree of Smoke, and Phillip Caputo’s A Rumor of War, The Candlestickmaker recalls a Vietnam that seared disenchantment into a post World War II generation who learned to question authority at all levels. A coming-of-age story bookended by shocking revelations that shatter illusions about patriotism, government and the nature of modern warfare, The Candlestickmaker takes readers on a voyage that will guarantee they never read the Mother Goose nursery rhyme in the same way again.

Recently discussed Vietnam, writing, and varied flotsam and jetsam with veteran blogger Luke Ford. Listen and/or read about it here: Luke Ford Q&A

"Things Have Changed: The Lives of Bob Dylan" is my next project for John Wiley & Sons


Bob & friend
I've been on the road, in the stacks, on the Internet and down in the courtroom basements of America researching and writing my Dylan biography for over a year now and the Bob I've been finding is not the one we've come to know. A poet to be sure, and one of our finest, but an all-too-human recluse too with much to hide. I fill my days with Dylan now, parsing, interviewing, matching facts with Bob's fictive spin in hopes of producing a definitive biography. I thought I'd be closer to the finish line by now, but me, I am still on the road, heading for another joint, and despite Bob's recent six-book deal, I'll tell it from a different point of view...

Five Easy Decades


My biography of Jack, L.A. and the evolution of the film industry over five-not-so easy decades is now out in paperback, Spanish and Portugese. It is required reading for aspiring actors and a bestseller in beautiful downtown Madrid.

Here's what they said at...

the L.A. Times,

the Long Beach Press-Telegram,

the Orlando Sentinel.

...and the Washington Post.

And here's the pre-publication reviews.

FROM PUBLISHERS WEEKLY:

Taking on not just a legendary subject, but a legendarily private subject—refusing biographers and TV personalities, Nicholson prefers “the occasional magazine Q&A or quickie newspaper interview”—author and New York Times film writer McDougal (Privileged Son) has turned out a model biography: exhaustive, full of action, and startlingly illuminating. Nicholson—flamboyant yet guarded, outrageous yet articulate, charming yet polarizing—has marched to his own drummer for 50 years, heading up a parade of celebrated films and famous women, eliciting strong opinions in just about everyone; as such, McDougal presents an engrossing showcase of big films and bigger personalities. Following a modest, fatherless New Jersey childhood, Nicholson set out on a California odyssey that would require stamina, guts and luck, as “eking out a living” in the early sixties gave way to the career-making premier of Easy Rider: “ ‘I had been around long enough to know while sitting in that audience, I had become a movie star.’ ” Los Angeles plays a starring role, giving Nicholson his wild lifestyle, a loyal, eclectic roster of friends and a long-time neighbor in Marlon Brando. Digging up as many roles offstage as on—hardheaded businessman, softhearted friend, master of rude rejoinders, fanatical sports fan and poetic philosopher—McDougal makes Nicholson’s everyday life just as fascinating as his films, which also get considerable, thoughtful attention; in fact, McDougal’s research is so deep and detailed, his extensive chapter notes could make a fine book of their own. (Oct.)

FROM THE LIBRARY JOURNAL:

"Jack Nicholson has the most Oscar nominations in film history, and only Katharine Hepburn has more wins. He has shunned television interviews and never cooperated with a biographer, though a dozen or so books have been written about him. Journalist McDougal (The Last Mogul: Lew Wasserman, MCA, and the Hidden History of Hollywood) researched Nicholson through friends, associates, court documents, books, and unpublished documents. Raised to believe his mother was his sister, Nicholson spent ten years struggling to make it in Hollywood, toiling in potboilers like The Cry Baby Killer and Hells Angels on Wheels, writing scripts (e.g., The Trip and the Monkees movie, Head), and hanging out with other Hollywood hopefuls like Bob Rafelson and Henry Jaglom (who both became well-known directors and figured prominently in Nicholson’s career). His small but career-changing role came in 1969 with Easy Rider. With lots of interesting tidbits that will surprise fans and almost 60 pages of notes and bibliography, McDougal’s biography is the most definitive to date. Highly recommended."—Rosellen Brewer, Sno-Isle Libs., Marysville, WA


A SIGN OF THE TIMES AT "AMERICAN EXPERIENCE"


Five years ago, I signed with Peter Jones Productions as consulting producer on a two-hour PBS documentary based on my biography of Otis Chandler, "Privileged Son: Otis Chandler and the Rise and Fall of the L.A. Times Dynasty." "Inventing L.A.: The Chandlers and their Times" which premiered on "American Experience" in October of 2009, is an ambitious reprise of the generation by generation history of the once-great Los Angeles Times and its publishers who, arguably, created modern day Los Angeles from a pueblo that Gen. Harrison Otis first called home in 1881. The tale tracks the career of the General's son-in-law Harry Chandler, one of the inspirations for Robert Towne's Noah Cross character in the classic L.A. noir film "Chinatown", followed by the quintessential L.A. power couple Norman and Dorothy Buffum Chandler, and culminates in the ascension of their son Otis to the Publisher's Suite in 1960. Last spring, "Inventing L.A." was honored with a George Peabody Award for excellence in television broadcasting.

HUH, HELL... PAY ATTENTION!
--- Carl A. McDougal, Leader of the Band (1920-2005)


I once lived and wrote near the sea, more specifically in Long Beach, California, but insane traffic and a general decline in the environment made me relocate to Memphis five years ago. A bit of my heart will always remain along the Los Angeles coastline where I was born and spent most of my life, witnessing the slow decade-by-decade dissipation of Eden by the Sea.

But turns out Memphis is not only the home of the blues, Elvis and the finest barbeque on the planet. It's also green -- Tennessee is, in fact, the greenest state in the land of the free; Davy Crockett got that much right. Our manse isn't moss covered, but it does have a lot of the other attributes of Southern comfort: oaks, poplar, hickory, deer, fox, wild turkeys and a host of other varmints, including armadillos, gopher snakes and coyote. There is no traffic. L.A. freeways are a distant memory and outside of the pollen, the air is clean and the water plentiful. It is a far cry from living in an asphalt desert. Doesn't mean it's flawless. Humidity and heat would make it unlivable for a California boy were it not for air conditioning. But with it, Memphis is mighty fine, mighty fine indeed.

Memphis is a good place to write and that is what I'm doing. John Wiley & Sons published my biography of Jack Nicholson and his career in film, and Five Easy Decades is on the shelves now. So guess who I'm writing my next biography about?

Watch for updates here on "Things Have Changed," my Vietnam era novel "The Candlestickmaker," the documentary miniseries "The Acid Chronicles," a TV dramatic series based on "The Last Mogul" and other projects.

Our shack out East in the Tennessee wilderness...

Fiction
Three sailors aboard a U.S. spy ship during Vietnam learn a dirty little military secret...the hard way.
Selected Works
"Part biography, part dysfunctional family chronicle, and part institutional and urban history, with generous dollops of scandal and gossip." --
The New Yorker
"McDougal makes Nicholson’s everyday life just as fascinating as his films in Five Easy Decades"
--Publishers Weekly
“Engrossing”
--New York Times
“A bombshell!”
--New York Daily News
“Tough and adversarial”
--Los Angeles Times
The true Hollywood nightmare and tragic love story of Robert Blake and Bonny Lee Bakley.