Billy Van Zandt launches memoir ‘Because It’s Funny’ at Brookdale
6 mins read

Billy Van Zandt launches memoir ‘Because It’s Funny’ at Brookdale

Kaneb0

play

It’s fitting that Billy Van Zandt is holding a launch for his new memoir “Because It’s Funny!” on Brookdale Community College.

The Middletown school is not only a proving ground for many of the accomplished playwright’s new works, but the book itself was born out of a gathering there.

“The first book I did (‘Get in the Car, Jane: Adventures in the TV Wasteland’) was about my TV shows and then I went back to Brookdale and did a favor for them,” he said. (Van Zandt Milmore Productions) flew in from all over the country to share it with me. We just started telling stories, and suddenly it was like, “oh, there’s my next book.”

Van Zandt, a Middletown native, said his goal was to get all of those stories, and more, down on paper.

“People have been asking me about the origins of the plays for years, and the fact that we had a niche in the style that we performed in, very physical comedy, kind of old-fashioned but modern at the same time. I also want to pay tribute to the company of actors that I have worked with for almost 50 years,” he said.

More: Spring Lake’s very own Disney princess returns to NJ with Disney on Ice

The book also serves as a tribute to Van Zandt’s longtime writing partner, Jane Milmore, who died in 2020. Together, the pair wrote “Love, Sex and the IRS,” “You’ve Got Hate Mail,” “Drop Dead!” “The Boomer Boys Musical” and more than 20 other plays. The pair also worked on scores of television shows.

Van Zandt said that when he wrote his first book, he didn’t realize it, but it was a tribute to her.

“It painted a nice picture of her. And I ended up doing the same thing with this book. So if you take the two books and put them together, you get a pretty good picture of Jane and how important she was to the success of all of them,” Van Zandt said.

Always writing

Van Zandt spent much of his childhood on the Shore writing.

“I was always writing stories, and I did the school play in ninth grade, and I ran the children’s theater at the Children’s Theater in Rumson. I wrote all the children’s theater there while I was in high school,” he said.

But he admits that he first began writing plays professionally as a vehicle for himself to act in.

“It started like most actors who write plays for themselves – it’s all about me, me, me. If you read all our plays in order, you can kind of see the learning curve of how I learned to write. When I realized that the story was more important than what I did on stage, the plays really grew up, basically.”

Breaking the mold

Van Zandt, also an actor who has appeared in movies like “Jaws 2” and “Star Trek,” as well as television shows, says his goal is simple.

“I just love to write, and I love to play with an audience, and that’s what it’s all about for me. I just wanted to make people laugh,” he said.

He and Milmore broke many rules along the way.

“Nobody told me I couldn’t do whatever I was doing. We wrote a musical. We had no training in music, in writing a musical, but we did it because nobody told us we couldn’t do it. Then we did the silent film because no one told because we couldn’t,” he said.

“I’ve always jumped in feet first and then figured out how to do something later.”

The couple’s plays are some of the most produced and have been staged all over the world.

Van Zandt says he enjoys seeing different spins on the pieces.

“Our show, ‘You’ve Got Hate Mail,’ had won Mexico’s equivalent of a Tony Award, which is phenomenal. To make a very long story short, the play takes place with five actors and five laptops, and that’s the story. about a divorce told through emails I get down there, there’s no desks, there’s no computers, there’s a choreographer in the show, for some reason, and it was so. drastically different from how we did it, and that was brilliantly directed, he said.

“I thought, ‘Wow, I would never have done it this way, and I would never have thought of it this way.’ I love seeing things that have a different design, it’s really fun, it also tells me that the writing holds up.

Van Zandt Way

Earlier this year, Middletown held a street named for Van Zandt and his half-brother, Steven Van Zandt of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band and an actor in his own right.

“It’s so surreal. It’s still very strange to me. But I really love it. I love it. I love it for many reasons. I’ve always been very proud of the hometown I grew up in, and it’s such an honor , not just for me and my brother, but my whole family, it’s my father’s name on there too, and he was a World War II vet,” Van Zandt said.

Book launch

Van Zandt will attend the book launch with actor Jeff Babey. It will include a conversation with the couple and a book signing.

The launch is set for 7 to 9 p.m. Saturday, November 16 at Brookdale, 765 Newman Springs Road. The free event is open to the public. RSVP at facebook.com/events/3587172628094677.

Ilana Keller is an award-winning journalist and lifelong New Jersey resident who loves Broadway and really bad puns. Reach out on Twitter: @ilanakeller; [email protected]

Website https://shopmaisonbouey.fr

Related Posts