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 Links

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 journal, featured critical commentary:
Calcutta 1908: Apocalypse Now

Contingent Magazine :
The RRRevolution Will Be Cinematic (paid critical commentary)

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

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

Time Out New York Paul Robeson film festival preview:
The Last Emperor

Book foreword:
Postcard Tales by Raja Singha

Drexel University Office of Global Engagement:
Jatra With Me

medium.com:
Distress Signals
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 critical commentary)
Escaping the Racist Escape Room Paradigm
House of Time
Remnants of Jewish Kolkata
To Think That I Saw It On Markenpower Street

Published Scripts, Films, Podcasts and Performances:
The Jeff & Shuvam Show (podcast)
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)
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)

 

Fulbright Research Scholarship Announcement

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Now it can be told. I’m so thrilled to have been named a Fulbright-Nehru Scholar, and will be spending 5 months of the 2018-19 academic year writing and researching in India. If you’d like to learn more about my intended goals, the full scoop is here in this handy dandy pdf of the press release.

As a Fulbright‐Nehru Fellow I will to travel to Kolkata, West Bengal, India to conduct research from my host institution, Rabindra Bharati University, where I will research early 20th century Bengali film and theatre and its impact on India’s nascent independence movement. I will also spend time in Bangalore, Karnataka, India observing the Bangalore Little Theatre’s (affectionately known as BLT) theatre education program and teaching a playwriting workshop to BLT members.

I’m proud to be one of over 800 U.S. citizens who will teach, conduct research, and/or provide expertise abroad for the 2018‐2019 academic year through the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program.

Recipients of Fulbright awards are selected on the basis of academic and professional achievement as well as record of service and demonstrated leadership in their respective fields. The Fulbright Program is the flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government and is designed to build lasting connections between the people of the United States and the people of other countries.

The Fulbright Program is funded through an annual appropriation made by the U.S. Congress to the U.S. Department of State. Participating governments and host institutions, corporations, and foundations around the world also provide direct and indirect support to the Program, which operates in over 160 countries.

Mine is not an official US Department of State website. The views and information presented are my own and do not represent the Fulbright Program or the Department of State.

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>>