​I hope everyone had an enjoyable Independence Day*!  The celebrations are over.  Now we are into the “dog days of summer”.  But that doesn’t mean there isn’t lots going on. 
 
This week’s issue contains:
Updates on My Health
The Girl In the Basement – The Novel Has Begun
More Before Noon reviews & news! 
More on Me & Michael Cimino
Ben and Gravity Falls
And more!  Read on!
 
If you want to be added to the email list, please write me in the comments section below!
 
Updates on My Health
Thank you for all the emails enquiring about my health!  I am happy to report that my pinched nerve is doing much better.  The pain only happens if I lay certain ways during the night and even then it is not excruciating like it was to begin with.  I will just keep doing my exercises and taking my pills when needed.  I am hoping this is the end of my health problems for 2022.

The Girl In the Basement – The Novel Has Begun
As subscribers to The Girl In the Basement email list know, I started writing this last Thursday as part of a 30 day challenge.  My goal is to turn this screenplay into an eBook that I can publish this Fall.  As of today I have finished 2 chapters for a total of 25 pages.  And I am still hoping to have it done in 30 days, sort of my own personal NaNoWriMo.** 
 
Do you want to join the Girl In the Basement email list and receive daily updates while I write?  Just express your interest in joining in the comments below.

​More Before Noon reviews & news! 
Don’t know about Before Noon?  Learn more about this work of fan fiction here:
What is "before noon"? - Richard Rothrock
Readers continue to praise my latest work:
“I am reading this now and all I can say is “Wow!” Just when I thought the story of these two had nowhere to go, Richard took it to the next level of love. So enjoying this!!!!!!!!!!!!”
--Lydia Huston
“Fantastic!!! I’m loving it! I adore that series and you are doing it great justice.”
--Lindy Lenk
“Just finished reading your script and I loved it. It was beautifully written.  I wish you the best of luck with this wonderful story.”
--LeeAnn Doherty
“Before Noon is so brilliant.”
--Robert Eberwein, retired OU film professor
 
A few of you are still reading it and I am very much looking forward to your comments.
Would you like to read Before Noon?  Say so in the comment section below and I will send it along.
 
Last month, I entered Before Noon in the Fan Fiction Film & Screenplay Festival in Toronto, Canada.  I will find out on July 31 if it makes it to the next round.  Please cross your fingers and think good thoughts.

More on Me & Michael Cimino
Am thinking of entering the first 15 pages of this script in the Page Turner Screenplays contest.  Deadline: July 26.  If you have not read Me & Michael Cimino and would like to read the first 15 pages, please contact me in the Comments below.

Ben and Gravity Falls
My son Ben is currently serializing his own fan fiction tale by continuing the saga of the classic Disney Channel TV show Gravity Falls.  He is dropping a new chapter each Wednesday this summer and it is very good.  Picking up the story ten years after the series ended, he has captured the tone of the series very well.  If you haven’t checked it out, click on the link below:
Somewhere in the Woods: A Gravity Falls Mystery - Wonder (weebly.com)
​

​Reader For Hire
My initial summer rush is over.  Have you got a project you’d like feedback or assistance on?  Feel free to contact me by replying to this email.
 
More on The Girl In the Basement
I did make the changes to my horror script that my last reader suggested and am pretty darn happy with it.  I just don’t know whether to continue submitting it or just focus on the finishing the eBook.

American Kids
Still working toward my end of the year goal of putting out my novel American Kids as an eBook.  More updates on that soon!
 
Newsletter Schedule
Once again, thank you to all of you who have expressed interest in receiving these newsletters.  I plan to publish them twice a month on the 2nd and 4th Tuesdays.  The first one of the month will pass along any news I have.  The second will feature something creative: either an essay or a blog entry.
 

​Thank you again for reading.  The newsletter will be back on July 26 (cross your fingers) with “How The CBS Late Movie Expanded My World & Changed My Life”.
(3169) "CBS Late Movie" Intro from 1976 - taped from Dayton, Ohio!! - YouTube
 
Happy Writing!
Richard
 
Please feel free to share this!
​
*Independence Day (1996) is one of my favorite popcorn movies.  I have lost track of how many times I have seen this movie.
 
**NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month.  Find out more about it here:
Welcome | NaNoWriMo
 
If you no longer want to receive this newsletter, just let me know and I will remove you from the list.

​




Looking for something patriotic to watch for this year’s Independence Day?  Then you can’t get any better than this movie:
 
1776 (1972) ****stars
Sherman Edwards’ Tony-winning musical has been adapted to the screen with its Broadway cast mostly intact (a rare thing indeed) and original stage director Peter Hunt at the helm.  William Daniels and Howard Da Silva are brilliant as John Adams and Benjamin Franklin trying like heck to wake up the Continental Congress and pass the Declaration of Independence.  The movie entertainingly shows how the divisions we lament in this country have been there from the very beginning.  It also shows how we must learn to overlook those differences if we wish to accomplish a greater good.
 
The songs are fun.  The debate pretty much follows how it all went down.  George Washington’s dispatches from the front capture how on the edge the Continental Army operated.  And I fall in love with Blythe Danner every time I watch this.  (For those of the younger generation, she is Gwyneth Paltrow’s mother).  Virginia Vestoff is all strong and resilient as Abigail Adams (she died of cancer shortly after the film was made).  A shout out as well to Donald Madden as John Dickinson, the tireless opponent of all things relating to independence.
 
The film makes us realize what a close shave getting independence declared actually was.  It is all here: deathly ill Caesar Rodney’s midnight ride through the night to cast a Yes vote, James Wilson’s last minute change of heart.  It makes you realize in this age of filibusters and 60 vote minimums, that many of the greatest laws we’ve passed in this country did so by the skin of their teeth. 
 
Be sure to watch the restored 164-minute version readily available on DVD.  It was cut by half an hour when released in 1972.  President Nixon, friends with producer Jack Warner and busy orchestrating the Watergate cover up at the time, thought some of the dialogue and the song “Cool, Cool Conservative Men” liable to anger the country and send the population into the street.  So Warner cut them.  Fortunately, the cut footage has mostly been restored.  Frankly, I find it all prescient on where the country was going to go.  Of where we find ourselves now.
 
TRIVIA: The last movie filmed at the original Columbia Pictures studio before it was torn down and sold.
 
PET PEEVE: Director Peter Hunt restored all of the footage except the complete version of John Adams’ song “Piddle, Twiddle, & Resolve”.  I got a chance to ask him about that once and he confessed that he didn’t restore it because he always hated how he shot the song.  Daniels is standing there singing how it is “hot as hell in Philadelphia” and steam can be seen coming out of his mouth (because it was really a chilly night in L.A.).  You can watch the complete song HERE.