The Quarterback

by David Scott Milton

Jimmy Jassy had been on the top for five years now, but the clock was running out. All he had left were the remnants of his incredible skills, and his snarling pride in being the man they called--The Quarterback.

246 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 27, 2007

About the author

David Scott Milton was an early member of the avant-garde Theater Genesis, along with Sam Shepard, Leonard Melfi and Murray Mednick. He has had more than a dozen plays performed Off Off Broadway including "The Interrogation Room", "Halloween Mask", "The Metaphysical Cop", and "Scraping Bottom". "Scraping Bottom", under the title of "Born to Win", became the Czech director Ivan Passer's first American film, and starred George Segal, Karen Black and Paula Prentiss. Other plays were "Duet for Solo Voice" and "Bread" at the American Place Theater and a revised version of "Duet for Solo Voice", re-titled "Duet", on Broadway with Ben Gazzara. [Mr.Gazzara's performance earned him a Tony nomination.] He has had six novels published: "The Quarterback" (Dell), "Paradise Road" (Atheneum), "Kabbalah" (Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich), "Skyline" (Putnam's), “The Fat Lady Sings,” and “Iron City.” "Paradise Road" was given the Mark Twain Journal award "for significant contribution to American literature." He has worked extensively as a screenwriter with directors Peter Bogdanovich, Mark Rydell, Sidney Pollack, Dick Richards, Irv Kershner, Milos Forman, John Cassavetes, and others. For more than thirty years, he taught graduate playwriting and screenwriting at the University of Southern California; conducted screenwriting seminars at the German Film and Television Academy in Berlin and the Duke University Film and Television Program. He is a member of the advisory board of the Christopher Isherwood Foundation along with, among others, David Hockney, Michael York, John Schlesinger, and Armistead Maupin. For fifteen years he ran a writers' workshop on the Maximum Security Yard of the California Correctional Institution at Tehachapi where his class consisted of a dozen murderers. In 2007, a one-man show, “Murderers Are My Life”, based on his prison experiences, was presented at The Two Roads Theater in Studio City, CA. It received a nomination as best one-man show by the Theater League of Los Angeles. A video of this show can be downloaded at www.dsmilton.com.

Reviews

[Rich Engel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots of old Pittsburgh detail in Oakland and a fictional town north of the city. A pretty good book considering it even includes some detailed scenes of football gameplay. Troubled guy is gritty, hard-drinking, and a great QB who achieves fame late, and we watch him at the end of his career.

[Cindy B. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not a sports fan. This was interesting because the path of his growth.