Tuscaloosa, Glasgow Phillips, and Literature’s Loss
By Bill Stephens - May 05 , 2008
A friend of mine wrote a screenplay based on the book, Tuscaloosa, by W. Glasgow Phillips. The book was published in 1995 by the Plume imprint of Penguin and received massive literary accolades, went into translations, and got a film option. A writing grant was awarded to Phillips, who spent the next two years at Stanford University, ostensibly writing.
Phillips was 24 years old at the time the book published, and after his stint at Stanford and a short stay in Austin, Texas, he just disappeared from the literary scene into the bowels of Hollywood, never to be seen in literary circles again.
My friend let me read his Tuscaloosa screenplay, the first and only screenplay that I’ve read. I liked the script, so I bought and read the book. As writers, we can only hope that any of our stuff that goes to film would come out the end hewing to our original work as accurately as that screenplay did.
The book’s accolades were warranted. However good Phillips was at story telling, he was an even better wordcrafter. His writing style was just wonderful reading, laced with poignancy and humor.
My interest was piqued, and I did some research and found that he had written a book published in February 2007 titled, The Royal Nonesuch: Or, what Will I Do When I Grow Up. It is a narrative nonfiction memoir detailing his life after Tuscaloosa.
In Royal Nonesuch, Phillips tells about he sank into Tinseltown and became essentially a porno hustler and any other bottom feeding activity he could scrounge, including writing, directing, and acting in The Sound of One Hand Clapping. In this, his first film, he fights off Kung Fu warriors, using only his genitals.
He also wrote, directed, and acted in what might be termed a snuff film. Reading the book for this, I was so repulsed I failed to remember I had suffered through Tarratino’s Hostel a few weeks earlier, the only difference being that Hostel was obviously a drama while Phillips’ Human Number purported to be real. A first person point of view snuff film, shot with a hand-held videocam while the protagonist did his dastardly deeds, was to be screened on the Internet News Year’s Eve, 2000, the idea being that interest from newscasts and Internet freaks would spread the word and force it into distribution a la Blair Witch Project. To his credit, he scrapped the project after it was edited, when his dad objected to the idea. A major porno distributor also turned thumbs down, saying, “We wouldn’t touch that.”
Some of his socially unredeeming projects like CRAPtv, Orgazmo, and a few others are out there on the Internet. He also directed Undead 0r Alive, a zombie western that got its premier in Austin’s SxSW Festival, and by all accounts was so bad it never reached theaters again. It seems that it was neither horrific nor funny.
At a point late in his memoir, I was completely bummed out by this loser whose every professional decision was a disaster – socially and economically. How could someone so talented be launched with a breakout debut novel and blow it so badly with everything else he tried after it?
But in the end I have to say The Royal Nonesuch is piercingly honest and humorous, if unapologetic. He loves and cares for his mother, who is dying of cancer, and he’s rid himself of much of his baggage. He’s worked as a writer for South Park and other TV stuff. So I feel a little more kindly toward him. His story might make a better film than Tuscaloosa.
With all the struggling fiction writers out there dying for a break, it’s hard to imagine why someone so talented doesn’t cut out the garbage and crank out some more great fiction.
By the way, my friend is not a “wannabee” in Hollywood. He earns his keep as a well-paid film production designer. Any producers out there looking for a worthwhile property should chase down his screenplay, Tuscaloosa.
