Base, Ron

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Base, Ron

PERSONAL: Male.

ADDRESSES: Home— Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

CAREER: Writer, novelist, screenwriter, movie critic, magazine writer, and journalist. Worked as a reporter for the Toronto Star.

WRITINGS

Matinee Idol, Doubleday (Garden City, NY), 1985.

Foreign Object, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1986.

The Movies of the Eighties, Macdonald (London, England), 1990.

“If the Other Guy Isn’t Jack Nicholson, I’ve Got the Part”: Hollywood Tales of Big Breaks, Bad Luck, and Box-Office Magic, Contemporary Books (Chicago, IL), 1994.

Starring Roles: How Movie Stardom in Hollywood Is Won and Lost, Stoddart (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1994.

Magic Man (novel), Thomas Dunne Books (New York, NY), 2006.

SCREENPLAYS

(With Lawrence Dane) Heavenly Bodies, Moviecorp VIII, 1984.

White Light, Brightstar Pictures, 1991.

(With Olivier Austen and Hugo Pratt) Jesuit Joe, Duckster Productions, 1991.

(And producer) First Degree, Incorporated Television Company (ITC), 1996.

(With Michael Stokes) Press Run, Avalanche Home Entertainment, 1999.

Cover Story, Aladdin Entertainment, 2002.

(With Anne Ray-Wendling and Heidrun Schleef) The Last Sign, Transfilm, 2002.

(With Valerio Manfredi and Rospo Pallenberg) Memoirs of Hadrian, Rai Cinemafiction, 2007.

Also author of episode of television series Night Heat, Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), 1985.

SIDELIGHTS: Ron Base is a screenwriter, journalist, and movie critic. Several of Base’s nonfiction works focus on film and, in particular, the effects of casting decisions on the lasting fame of both movie and actor. In “If the Other Guy Isn’t Jack Nicholson, I’ve Got the Part”: Hollywood Tales of Big Breaks, Bad Luck, and Box-Office Magic, Base describes how chance, whim, and off-the-cuff decisions have made some stars and movies famous while denying others the chance in the limelight. Humphrey Bogart’s tough-guy movie career was propelled by the fact that contemporary star George Raft turned down several roles that then went to Bogart. The well-publicized search for the perfect actress to play Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind was less a concession to careful selection and more of a result of indecision on the part of director David O. Selznick. Base notes that offers and acceptances of parts in movies have had as much impact on stars’ and films’ enduring fame as have technical superiority or excellent scriptwriting. Base’s “eminently readable and informative film history imparts valuable insight into the workings” of Hollywood’s casting and star-making apparatus, noted Mike Tribby in Booklist.

A more mythic Hollywood forms the backdrop for Base’s novel Magic Man. The time is the late 1920s, and sound is the new innovation in moviemaking, all the better to help Americans forget the woes of ongoing Prohibition. Into this setting steps Brae Orrack, a dapper Scotsman on a quest for something that will save his life, but which, he is told, cannot be found: true love. Orrack is a “magic man,” cursed by his equally magical father to perish unless he can find that elusive true love. His one trick, turning stones into bees, seems ridiculous and useless, but it has so far served him well through some difficult situations. Convinced by his cousin that true love can be found in Hollywood, Orrack arrives, clad in a tuxedo, and immediately begins his search. His efforts bring him into contact with many of Hollywood’s greats of the time, including Gary Cooper, Clara Bow, and George Raft. Friend and neighbor Lily helps Orrack secure a job when his rent money runs low, putting him in position as a bodyguard/nursemaid for a womanizing Gary Cooper. When Orrack meets adventurous mountaineer Nell Devereaux, he believes he has found the true love he seeks. His efforts to woo her are complicated by Cooper, who also falls for the woman, and by Devereaux’s jealous Cuban suitor, dictator Gerardo Machado. When Machado abducts Nell and takes her to Cuba, Orrack sets out in determined pursuit, which will lead to further encounters with gangsters, gamblers, and hired killers. “Base works his own magic as he crisply choreographs the entrances and exits of his large cast” in his “delicious tongue-in-cheek debut,” remarked a Kirkus Reviews critic. “There’s something for everyone: humor, mystery, suspense, nostalgia and, of course, a little magic,” commented a reviewer in Publishers Weekly.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES

PERIODICALS

Booklist, October 15, 1994, Mike Tribby, review of “If the Other Guy Isn’t Jack Nicholson, I’ve Got the Part”: Hollywood Tales of Big Breaks, Bad Luck, and Box-Office Magic, p. 389.

Entertainment Weekly, August 11, 2006, Gilbert Cruz, review of Magic Man, p. 73.

Kirkus Reviews, June 1, 2006, review of Magic Man, p. 532.

Publishers Weekly, May 1, 2006, review of Magic Man, p. 33.