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As books go I've bought this many times and shared it with people. All of them reported back that it was a moving beautiful work. A couple of those people said, hard to believe he was on Howard Stern. Well I like Howard Stern, for me how I understood their point was, this work is great, but who knew? I think it is a beautiful tribute to a family and a life well lived. I know I couldn't write nearly so great a book. I thought, why the hell isn't there a paperback version. It'd sure save me money. So I asked A.J., over on his Twitter why not. This interview with A.J. is a hope to share it with more readers, and hope, even if only a few more sell, the publisher will get the hint, it needs more eyes, because such a work deserves more readers.
I was very blessed and scared to interview A.J. Benza. He has lived numerous lives, lived them publicly, and I loved his presence on Howard Stern, and, enjoyed his E show about Hollywood lives and tragedies. Blessed because he gave of his time and attention, and scared because I didn't want to screw up.
Was your motive for writing the work simply memoir as in a diary of sort, or did you go into it knowing it had a certain power, and wanted to share it for that?
AJ Benza: I wanted to write something to document my family’s existence. I had a wonderful upbringing and many years of happiness at our home on Long Island, and I just wanted to get that era down on paper. I remembered that summer as something that stayed with me forever. Sometime around 2009 or so, I began playing with turning it into a screenplay. But I figured a book would be best first. And if someone liked it enough, it would get optioned and I could get paid to write the screenplay. And that’s exactly what happened.
As a memoir did you write it primarily to link your work of reporting of other lives, to writing about your own life, and create a work to memorialize a life in print?
AJB: This wasn’t about me. This was really a love letter to my family, mainly my father. I found myself the same age my father was back in 1974 and I was really tapping into what his feelings and insecurities and challenges were back then. At some point it hits and overcomes you – ‘Wow, I get it. I understand standing in my father’s shoes.’ This book is really about how my little cousin changed my father, and that is what changed all of us.
Was the dichotomy of proper and normal versus criminal and feared what made this story particularly poignant, that is, if you’d been raised by a 3rd generation American family in the Midwest and had a cousin stay for the summer, do you think it would have resonated so powerfully? Why or why not?
AJB: I think what makes this story poignant or very relatable is because of its commonality. Families all over experienced this. I never thought about families out in Tennessee or Colorado or even outside America when I was writing. I just told our true story. It was only after it was published that I began to get letters and calls from people everywhere telling me “This is exactly the way it was for me and my family!” And that made me feel great. But I think ‘74 and Sunny’ is bolstered by my father’s language and his passion. Every story is better when the subject’s are a quirky, passionate, dangerous and loving.
You’ve said that you are working on writing the screen version of the work, is it written with a mind to who might make the film, act in it, or be the audience, or, do you simply write it thinking, on film this would work best by presenting it thus…?
AJB: As I was writing the book, I wrote it with one eye on a future movie script. I always felt this story was good enough to be a film. And the subject matter of gender and nature vs. nurture is so timely and important in our culture that it always screamed for a TV or film treatment. Now, that I am nearly done with the script I’ve come to the conclusion that – as sweet and wonderful y book is – I punched up some parts to make them ‘movie moments.’ Truth is, book and scripts are written very differently is style and structure. But I’m very happy with where the script is at. George Gallo was the first director I met when I came to L.A. in 1997 – he had me over to his house for dinner. It’s just another wonderful quirk of fate that he would be the one who wanted to direct the movie as soon as he and his wife read the book.
Did your cousin change your own view regarding gay and straight, was the real transformation your own, or that of watching your father’s deeper honor and love for family rise to the surface in response to hate speech?
AJB: My cousin didn’t change my view. Our time together that summer and subsequent summers basically formed my views on the world of gay and straight. I was young and my mind was still very moldable. The bigger thing that occurred was watching my father come to understand my cousin’s world. That summer sparked a compassion in him that obviously made a huge impression on me.
In your personal experience, do you think the goal of any book should have a transformative evolution and resolution, or can it exist successfully as a simple memoir without any sort of moral evolution?
AJB: Every book should change you. It may be subtle, it may be gigantic. But either way, every book should move the reader toward a resolution that wasn’t necessarily there before that book was cracked open. But in all honesty, I wasn’t prepared for what my book would do to people. I truly began writing it because some books and scripts have a gestation period in the writer’s body. ‘74 and Sunny’ had to come out of my body. I was gonna give birth to that book whether I wanted to or not. At some point, I didn’t have the control. The book did. I am aware of some people who didn’t truly expect such an emotionally rewarding book.
Do you think perhaps your previous presence in the media as a gossip columnist, "punching bag for Chuck Zito", Stern show person, had an effect of lowering those expectations?
AJB: People are gonna see me the way they see me. For instance, you bringing that up the Zito fight, I just have to laugh. On one hand, it shows just how little some people know about me. On the other, I get to change your short-sided perception. If they don’t understand that a man grows and his life is entirely different than it was 25 years prior, that’s a shame for them. Being knocked out by Chuck Zito was wonderful. Not that very night, but the aftermath and all the years since. For various reasons back then, I was in need of being humbled. And the universe has a way of sending down what is needed to correct that. In my case it was a one punch, strip club knockout in a janitor’s closet. Chuck and I are friends to this day and I respect what he did that night. If anything, it provided me more of a ‘tough guy’ image – as did my Howard Stern appearances and my Daily News column – so that when I wrote ’74 and Sunny’, it made a lot of people pleasantly surprised at who was underneath that gruff exterior. The world sees you the way it wants to see you. And eventually you are who the world says you are. But it’s always nice to show a softer side and have the public embrace it.
This is not, NOT saying you aren't or weren’t a good writer, ever, asking if the world you moved in previously was less snobbishly literary, less “proper” less normal, than most of that of other memoir readers?
AJB: I never connected with a literary crowd and never wanted to. I don’t do well with people who live with a stick up their asses. In many cases, a writer is as good as the stories he’s lived, the relationships he’s forged and the life he’s courageously carved out. My writing is good because I got off my ass and lived the life of 100 men.
I truly enjoyed you on Stern Show, your appearances were wild. Did being on that show feel surreal, or, was it just really good radio?
AJB: There were times when it felt surreal – like watching two sisters have oral sex right in front of us at 7:25 in the morning. Or having strippers wait for me in the green room so we could hang after the show ended. Or frankly, just shooting the shit with Howard during commercial breaks. It never felt like a job that’s for sure. I have only the fondest memories of Howard and the show. There was nothing bigger. It was the best radio of all time. But more than anything, sitting across from Howard, helped me be real and honest. What people don’t understand is being on that show there is this insane desire to make Howard laugh. It’s akin to how you wanted to please your father or mother. And in doing that, it made me understand that my straight-up honesty is what separates me from other story-tellers or writers. So that’ll never change for me. When you listen to me or read me…it’s always the straight dope.
Do you have other works born from your life experiences such as that summer of 1974 in the works? Where will you take your many talents from here?
AJB: Right now, I spit out countless true stories about my life in journalism or Showbiz on my daily podcast “Fame is a Bitch.” I’m also writing my third book, which will me another memoir based on my life out here in L.A. the last 22 years. Those stories have never been written down. My first book ended with my move to Hollywood. So there’s a lot more to say.
Thanks A.J.
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