E.T., the Stolen Extraterrestrial?

Please join the Independent Film Circle for our next guest, Prof. Sudipto Shankar Roy, on Saturday, April 30th at 11am EST. You might first want to watch his jaw-dropping documentary, “Ordeal of an Impossible Dream” below.

Like Spielberg? All about E.T.? Or maybe you’re a screenwriter like me who feels infuriatingly certain that one of your scripts was once blatanly stolen? Get ready to have the top of your head blown off.

As always, this live, online event is free but pregregistration is required. Message me if you’d like to join.

Portfolio

Race & Class peer-reviewed UK journal article:
Nil Darpan: How a Mistakenly Published Play Helped Force Labour Reforms in British India

Democratic Communiqué peer-reviewed US journal, featured critical commentary:
Calcutta 1908: Apocalypse Now

Contingent Magazine:
The RRRevolution Will Be Cinematic (paid assignment; review and critical commentary of hit Indian film RRR)

Washington Post:
Supernatural Skeptics Don’t Know What They’re Missing
A Jewish-Hindu Connection
Four Pairs of Sandals as an Act of Faith

New York Press:
Confessions of a White [Presenting], Middle-aged Paan Eater
To Kebab and Conquer

Brooklyn Rail nonfiction book reviews:
Exquisite Corpses
Holey Logic, Batman
Daddy, Who’s Grover Cleveland?
Theater of Cruelty

New York Times, “The City” section cover story:
Talk Radio (paid assignment)

Time Out New York Paul Robeson film festival preview:
The Last Emperor (paid assignment)

Book foreword:
Postcard Tales by Raja Singha

Drexel University Office of Global Engagement:
Jatra With Me

medium.com:
Distress Signals: My Posthumous Friendship With a Civil Rights Hero
A Hindu-Appalachian Christmas in the City of Brotherly Love

Hemispheres:
Full House (paid interview with rapper Nelly at international poker tournament in Monte Carlo)

Blog Posts:
My Visit to Minning Town (paid  assignment; Chinese TV series review and critical commentary)
Escaping the Racist Escape Room Paradigm
House of Time (Indian film review)
Remnants of Jewish Kolkata
To Think That I Saw It On Markenpower Street

Published Scripts, Films,  Performances, Books and Youtube Channel:
The Jeff & Ishan Show (Indian film review channel)
The Magical Island of Weirdos (editor-illustrator of I.B. Stanley’s children’s book)
My role in the Indian film Manbhanjan
Tesla’s Letters (stage play)
Lady in a Box (award-winning short film)
Coast to Coast AM With George Noory (media appearance)
An Existential Dinner Conversation with Tina Brock (media appearance)
Continuing Revelation (paid industrial film)
Medicine, Man (stage play)
The End That Does senior editorial adviser (nonfiction book)
The Golden Horseshoe: A Lecture On Tragedy (theatrical performance)
Jeffrey Stanley’s Boneyards (theatrical performance)
The Great Kohinoor Diamond Heist! (escape room intro video)

Film Festivals and Panels:
FIIG Film Festival (curator, panel moderator)
Cannes Film, Content Creators Festival (Advisory Committee member, jurist, keynote speaker)
Moderator, UPenn (screening and discussion with Indian film director and Fulbright Scholar Abhijit Chowdhury held at the University of Pennsylvania)
Sequoia Independent Film Festival (juror)

Yours Truly on Coast to Coast AM

(News Flash: Jeffrey Stanley’s BONEYARDS reincarnates in Philly this June at the Art Church of West Philadelphia as part of the 2015 SoLow FestTickets and full details.)

Dear Friends, Just a quick note to let you know I’m going to be the primary guest on Coast to Coast AM on Friday night 4/17/15. I’m a longtime fan of this nationwide show so this is a dream come true for me.

I’ll hopefully be talking about the screenplay I’m currently writing (LITTLE ROCK, a bio-pic of artist and Navy Ensign Vernon “Copy” Berg, the first officer to legally challenge the US military for anti-gay discrimination; my script is an adaptation of a memoir written by his partner at the time entitled Get Off My Ship: Ensign Berg v. the US Navy by E. Lawrence Gibson), BONEYARDS of course, my ancient hit play TESLA’S LETTERS and my recent experiences on my Amtrak Residency trip looking for ghosts in Chicago’s Bachelor’s Grove Cemetery and exploring the supernatural with the adorable Iowa ghost-hunting family I fell in with for a few days in Colorado (please go here to have your mind blown).

Coast to Coast AM is a North American (United States and Canada) late-night radio talk show that deals with a variety of topics but most frequently ones that relate to either the paranormal or conspiracy theories. It airs seven nights a week 1:00 a.m. – 5:00 a.m. EST. Originally created and hosted by Art Bell, since 2013 the program is hosted mainly by George Noory. Coast to Coast AM has a cumulative weekly audience of 2.75 million listeners, making it the most listened-to program in its time slot. It’s heard on nearly 570 stations in the U.S., Canada, Australia and Guam.

Film industry guests have included screenwriter Joe Eszterhas, screenwriter Laurice Molinari, veteran comedy director Tom ShadyacBig Bang Theory executive producer Eric Kaplan, and others.

The subject matter covers unusual topics and is full of personal stories related to callers, junk science, pseudo experts and non-peer reviewed scientists. While program content is often focused on paranormal and fringe subjects, sometimes world-class scientists such as Michio Kaku and Brian Greene are featured in long format interviews.

Topics discussed include the near-death experience, climate change, cosmology, quantum physics, remote viewing, hauntings, contact with extraterrestrials, psychic reading, metaphysics, science and religion, conspiracy theories, Area 51, crop circles, cryptozoology, Bigfoot, the Hollow Earth hypothesis, and science fiction literature, among others.

Where can you hear it?  http://www.coasttocoastam.com/stations

Many thanks for your continued interest and support, and I hope to see you on the radio next Friday night.

Holey Logic, Batman

Brooklyn Rail review by Jeffrey Stanley of Richard Poplak’s The Sheikh’s Batmobile: In Pursuit of American Pop Culture in the Muslim World; Soft Skull Press, September, 2010

Richard Poplak’s quick-witted survey of U.S. pop culture throughout the core of the Muslim world functions as a meaty, detail-laden addendum to Lipstick Traces, Greil Marcus’s famed pop culture book. The latter claims to be a secret history of the 20th century, but nearly forgets that everyone has had a 20th century, not just a subculture of white people worshipping at the feet of Johnny Rotten and Malcolm McLaren. Punk rock is hard to take as anything other than really good rock-and-roll, and its so-called “philosophy of negation” is hard to take seriously when the music’s chief adherents are a bunch of white, middle-class kids shocked to discover that society is hypocritical. Really? It is?

The Sheikh’s Batmobile takes a step in the right direction, focusing on how U.S. pop culture, especially punk, heavy metal, and hip-hop, impacts upon and co-mingles with the cultures of the Middle East. The author is a Canada-based, white, South African journalist and director of music videos and commercials; he has a particularly keen eye and ear for the U.S.’s cultural influences, having been raised on a full diet of it himself.

During his two years of travels, Poplak dines with the Muslim world’s top CONT’D AT BROOKLYNRAIL.ORG>>

I resemble that.

Oh well, MTV Desi has me pegged.  They’re exactly right about me but at least they acknowledge that I also acknowledge that I am one more gawking American.

And I can’t complain about being named an honorary Desi, sort of.

New York Press Delves Into the Paan Game
by Abdullah

When I first saw the headline “Confessions of a White, Middle-Aged Paan Eater” on the cover of this week’s New York Press, naturally, I grabbed a copy and asked myself the question you’re asking yourself right now; What the hell is the New York Press?   Well, it’s a paper that’s running a cover story about something inherently Desi that’s breaking into mainstream culture. And why not? It didn’t take long for Americans to adopt the more… CONT’D AT https://www.mtvdesi.com/2010/12/07/new-york-press-delves-into-the-paan-game

The Asia Society also commented and was a tad less snarky than MTV (but who am I to complain about being snarky in a blog post?).

A Paean to Paan
by Aliya Sabharwal

…From describing his initiation into the practice of paan-chewing to drawing interesting comparisons to the tobacco-dipping culture of his Appalachian relatives, Stanley seems to have seriously and diligently researched this “local” practice. But the result is a riot for those familiar with paan chewing or chewers, if only for the novelty of reading an eloquent homage to the substance.  CONT’D AT ASIASOCIETY.ORG>>

Well, now it’s just too much. My paan habit has also made the celebrity gossip page of India Abroad, the major newspaper for Indian expats around the world, getting top billing over Tom Cruise’s tweets to Anil Kapoor.  I’m truly honored and humbled.