Michael Herr (born in 1940, Syracuse, New York) is a writer and former war correspondent, best known as the author of Dispatches (1977), a memoir of his time as a correspondent for Esquire magazine (1967-1969) during the Vietnam War. The book was called the best "to have been written about the Vietnam War" by the New York Times Book Review; novelist John le Carré called it "the best book I have ever read on men and war in our time." Moreover, Herr later became accredited for pioneering the literary genre of the nonfiction novel, along with authors such as Truman Capote, Norman Mailer, and Tom Wolfe. Herr also co-wrote the screenplay for Full Metal Jacket with his close friend and director Stanley Kubrick and author Gustav Hasford. The film was based on Hasford's novel, The Short-Timers and the screenplay was nominated for an academy award. He also wrote the narration for Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now. He collaborated with Richard Stanley in writing the original screenplay for the 1996 adaptation of the H.G. Wells novel, The Island of Dr. Moreau. However, Stanley claims the subsequent rewrites cost Herr his writing credit, omitting most of the material created by the two writers. The omission probably worked to his favor, however, since the movie was panned by critics and earned credited writers Stanley and Ron Hutchinson a Razzie Award for Worst Screenplay of 1997. Michael Herr is said to be retired and living in Delhi, NY. He wrote an early screenplay of On the Road, based on the book by Jack Kerouac, which was never produced. Sources indicate the film version of Kerouac's book will be made from another writer's script and released in 2009. [1]
Publications
- Dispatches (1977) ISBN 0-679-73525-9
- The Big Room: Forty-Eight Portraits from the Golden Age (1987) (with Guy Peellaert) ISBN 0-671-63028-8 (stories about Hollywood personalities including Judy Garland, Howard Hughes, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra and Walter Winchell)
- Walter Winchell: A Novel (1990) ISBN 0-679-73393-0 (biographical novel about the newsman Walter Winchell)
- Kubrick (Grove, 2001) ISBN 0-8021-3818-7 (based on essay for Vanity Fair)
External links
- Heath Anthology of American Literature bio page
- Michael Herr at the Internet Movie Database
- Audio interview with Dom Swain, 1990 at Wired for Books.org with Don Swaim
- LA Times Profile of Herr, 1990
- Open Letter from Herr re Kalu Rinpoche, a Buddhist Lama, 1990
- Bio at The Oscar Site
- A draft of The Island of Dr Moreau screenplay, dated April 26th, 1994
- Interview with Michael Herr about the essence of war. Scene taken from the documentary First Kill about Herr's book Dispatches.
