Forgery
A Reader Writes: "Thanks for the information you share"
July 27, 2011. An email today from a reader of the blog here at KevinNelsonWriter.com.
"Thanks for all the work you do and information you share. I have tried to be an educated memorabilia consumer since the late 1990s. I am currently finishing my thesis in Economic Crime Management, and my thesis topic is better educating consumers around sports memorabilia fraud. Keep up the great work and if you have any advice let me know."
Kevin Nelson responds: My pleasure, and thanks for the kind words! We cover lots of topics here at KevinNelsonWriter.com, one of them being fake memorabilia and the crooks who sell it. You keep reading and we'll keep providing the info.
A Forging Work of Art: Greg Marino's Mantle
April 28, 2011 Having written a book about one of the best of the modern forgers, and arguably one of the best of all time, I occasionally hear from people who own corrupt autograph masterpieces created by Greg Marino. Marino forged perhaps a million autographs in his six-year criminal career, but without doubt his very best—his Sistine Chapel, if you will, the one that launched his career and that he truly mastered—was that of Mickey Mantle. Marino was a lifelong Yankees fan, and his Mantle forgery is a criminal consummation of passion, profit motive, and craft. The other day an email correspondent of mine, "Raiderman," sent me a lithograph he owns that was painted by Greg's father Angelo, and that bears Greg's famous Mantle. Here it is:
'The Social Network' and Operation Bullpen
[Here is an email I sent recently to the producer of the—someday, I hope—Operation Bullpen movie. A script based on my book has been finished and it is now being peddled around Hollywood although there are, as yet, no takers. I thought ‘The Social Network,’ the (relatively) new movie about the founding of Facebook by Mark Zuckerberg, has some parallels with the Bullpen story, as I say here…]
Hi L-
Saw "The Social Network" last night. I liked it and it spurred some thoughts on "Operation Bullpen," the movie. Give me just a minute or two to share them with you. "The Social Network" opened with a $24 million weekend box office and there's not a car crash or any violence to be found anywhere in it. That's reassuring, since I know that's one of the things you've heard from people about the Bullpen script: Not enough sex and violence.
Actually, "The Social Network" doesn't have much sex either, does it? No actual sex scenes, just party scenes and the suggestion of sex, but that's all. God knows the Bullpen story has lots more sex than that, with hookers and Vegas strippers and sex and drug parties on the Bada Bing boat. And it's got the criminal element to boot—the fact that all these formerly law-abiding guys are committing widespread fraud while being hunted down by the FBI. "The Social Network" has no big stars in it, unless you count Justin Timberlake, who's very good. Of course, it has a script by Aaron Sorkin, who's a superstar screenwriter and superb, and a hot director whose name I can't recall but who is clearly a hot property too. Interestingly, Kevin Spacey is one of the producers—isn't he Trigger Street Productions?—and clearly Kevin has a sharp eye for material, because he also produced "21." [ more ]
Remember "21"? I know you do. We talked about that one before. It was a sleeper hit that was No. 1 for two weeks in a row when it opened a couple or three years ago. It's based on the book, "Bringing Down the House," written by Ben Mezrich, who also wrote "The Accidental Billionaire," which was the book Sorkin used to write "The Social Network." Mezrich also clearly has an eye for stuff that Hollywood is looking for.
So both "The Social Network" and "21" were youth movies about gifted (and pampered and rich) Ivy League kids with some allusions to sex, very little violence (none in "The Social Network"), and lots of money. And of course "The Social Network has the glamour associated with being about the Facebook billionaire. But the story itself? It's basically about some legal proceedings and the makings of a Silicon Valley startup, founded by Mark Zuckerberg, the Charles Kane of his generation. The genius of Sorkin and the director is that they could make an entertaining movie of such thin material.
Okay, so hang with me, I'm coming to my point. The Bullpen story has many of the same elements as "21" and "The Social Network," except, of course, it's not about privileged rich kids. It's a working class story. But it is about young people, and it is potentially a youth movie. I've never seen the script for "Bullpen" (and I'm sure that's not the working title), but there is a clear potential story line in the character of Nate, the naïve young guy who starts as Wayne’s friend in the book. Wayne, the mastermind of the operation, takes him under his wing and basically teaches him to be a crook, brings him into the life, corrupts him, shows him how to rip people off. Nate makes millions of dollars selling fake memorabilia, buys houses, gets girls that he could never get before (just like Mark Zuckerberg), and basically achieves his corrupted version of the American Dream. And then, in the twist that makes the Bullpen story so powerful, Wayne ultimately betrays Nate and all his other friends and flips and goes to the FBI and turns in Nate and all the rest of his fellow crooks to save his skin.
So, again, I'm not trying to stick my nose where it doesn't belong, but if you tell the story from Nate's point of view—with Wayne as his slightly older Machiavellian mentor, along with the Marinos and all the other characters and stuff that are there—you have a youth-themed movie that teens and early twenties young people would really get into. You could potentially attract a bankable young star, as well as a late twenties, early thirties actor like Justin Timberlake who is playing the Wayne character. And the thing is, it's all in the story. You're not making any of it up. It's all there. That's what happened in real life. Thanks for listening-
Best, K
Happy Thanksgiving! And Notes About NPR, Forgery, Car Songs, and Mary Pickford
Posted 11-23-09. First and last thought: Happy Thanksgiving to one and all! More thoughts about cars, people, forgery, and other subjects:
Tomorrow I am going to San Francisco to be interviewed on The California Report on National Public Radio. It's a taped interview, so it will air in the Bay Area on Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, on KQED-FM 88.5 FM at 4:30 p.m./6:30 p.m./11 p.m. It airs on different channels and times around central and northern California. Consult the listings for your area here.
Last week I did an interview with Jeff Figler
of the Sports Byline Radio Network, which broadcasts to 700 stations
and 178 countries around the world through the Armed Forces Network.
This was about Operation Bullpen, my book on forgery which continues to
draw attention. (To the right is one of the gang's forgeries; all four sigs of John, Paul, George and Ringo are bogus.) I think the interview aired last
Friday but I'm not quite sure. As soon as I find out I'll update
this post.
I'm looking forward to my next round of book talks in southern California. Wherever I've gone, everyone has been very generous and welcoming, but I've got to give a special shout-out to Steve Fjeldsted, director of the South Pasadena Library where I will speak Dec. 3. Before my talk, Cottage Industry, a rock band, will play car and road songs for a half hour. Steve asked me for my favorites in this genre, so I chose three from the Beach Boys: "Fun, Fun, Fun," "Li'l Deuce Coupe," and "409." After the band's set, Steve will show a movie clip from "Bullitt," the famous chase scene with Steve McQueen burning rubber in a Mustang over the hills of San Francisco. Then comes my slide show and talk. For details on this show and my two other appearances next week in Riverside and Burbank, see the box to the left.
When you write a book, it's a little like hibernating in a cave. In the case of Wheels of Change, I hibernated for close to three years, mainly writing and reading and researching inside the walls of my office with occasional forays out into the world to see historic car spots, visit car shows, and drive the roads of the state. So it's especially nice to get out of my cave and see and talk to people. At the Pasadena Museum of History last week, I signed a book for a fellow who lived in the house in Pasadena where Walter Murphy had lived. Murphy was one of the great automobile coach builders of the 1920s, designing, among many other cars, the luxurious Doble Series E, one of the most beautiful steam automobiles ever made. I wrote about Murphy in Wheels of Change, and it was a thrill for me to meet someone with that close of a connection to him.
The next night, at the monthly meeting of the Mustang Owners Club of California Club at Du-Par's Restaurant in Granada Hills, a movie camera operator, now retired, introduced himself. He had worked on "The Godfather," explaining how he helped shoot the scene in which Sonny (James Caan) gets murdered, riddled by bullets in his car at the toll booth. A number of vintage cars are used in that scene, and one of them nearly ran over the operator (whose name, unfortunately, slipped past me) as it made its getaway.
At the San Diego Automotive Museum on Saturday, I spoke in the main showroom surrounded on all sides by gleaming old machines that once roamed the roads. Among the friendly faces I met there: Kenn Colclasure and Dee House of the museum, and Bernadine Bogdanovs, event coordinator for the Wheels on Reels film festival, which is devoted to the ongoing love affair between movies and cars. The films were shown at the Mary Pickford Theatre in Cathedral City next to Palm Springs. Mary Pickford and her husband Douglas Fairbanks both loved cars (especially Doug), and here is a picture of Mary with her Pierce Arrow, one of their many deluxe rides. Riding in back, Mary spoke to her chauffeur through a speaking tube that ran from the back seat to the front.
