Interview with author Arnold Grossman

By Patti Thorn, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published October 20, 2008 at 8:12 a.m.

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Photo by Javier Manzano © The Rocky

Arnold Grossman, a former advertising creative director and political media consultant, co-authored two political novels with Colorado Gov. Richard D. Lamm. His latest book is Going Together, a quirky novel set in Los Angeles. A co-founder of SAFE Colorado, which sponsored a successful Colorado initiative to close the gun-show loophole, he also wrote One Nation Under Guns: An Essay on an American Epidemic.

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Rocky books editor Patti Thorn talks to Arnold Grossman, former advertising director and author of three novels and a nonfiction book about gun violence, about his contribution to A Dozen on Denver and his writing life.

Tell us why you chose the 1960s.

I picked that decade because that was when I was first introduced to Denver. I came out here from New York/New Jersey to go to college after my military service ... When I flew out here to be a freshman at the University of Denver, we had first stopped in Omaha. I looked around and thought, "I'm glad I'm not going here." Well, we got to Denver and when I stepped off the plane — they didn't even have jetways then — I looked around and said, "Did we go back to Omaha?" A very unkind observation of a city I grew to love. I do love the city. I've left it three times over my career, and I've always come back.

That's a little like your character, coming here for graduate school. I kept wondering if the larger story was based on any personal experience ...

Yes. I took my son, who was probably about 6 or 7 years old, to the rodeo one Saturday. Bear in mind this was the so-called turbulent '60s. His hair was maybe over the collar, a little bit longish. As we sat there, the announcer said, "Boys and girls, I want you to look around the arena and see all the cowboys, and you're gonna notice you don't see any long hair here because these are men." I was infuriated ...

At the same time, I read in the local press that some cowboys in for the Stock Show had an enjoyable pastime of going downtown looking for "hippies." They weren't really bent on violence, but to me, it was pretty brutal. They wanted to find a young guy with long hair and shear his head with sheep shears. That really troubled me. So those things left an indelible impression of that period on me.

Let's talk about your career, which has been really varied and interesting. After graduating from DU, you worked for Redbook and Good Housekeeping magazines in New York. You later moved into advertising. Why?

Money (laughs). I decided to come back to Denver. By then I was married, and Denver had gotten under my skin and I missed it. I came out here hoping to freelance. Well, that didn't work too well. Then we began having a family and I thought, "I need a real job ... "

Eventually I opened my own advertising agency with a partner. As we grew, we began to specialize in political advertising. The field was wide open — you could get all the work you wanted.

You were the one behind Pat Schroeder's first campaign for Congress in the '70s — a race she won — and the popular slogan "She wins. We win."

That was my first (campaign) ... It was so easy. People think it's hard. No. All you have to do is really get into someone's head and hopefully their heart a little bit.

In Pat Schroeder's campaign, we just did very simple black-and-white photography and Judy Collins music to back it up, and there was some emotion in it. Through that emotion you got a feeling for what this woman was really all about. She didn't even go on camera because she acknowledged to me, "Oh, I'll be terrible on camera, I have this funny glitch, and my voice is funny." And I said, "OK," so we didn't put her on camera. We created little 30-second dramas about the issues.

A Dozen on Denver: Stories to celebrate the city at 150

We asked 11 authors to pick a decade in Denver's history and turn in 2,500 words of fiction set in the city. Each week we've featured a new story and an interview with the author. Today, look for a special section in print compiling all the stories, plus one additional piece: Heirlooms, by Robert Pogue Ziegler, the winner of our story contest.

After Pat, I handled (U.S. Rep.) Leon Panetta's campaign ... Then Timothy Wirth ... Dick Lamm ... Gary Hart. I did two (of Hart's) Senate campaigns and was about to participate in his presidential campaign — I went down with the boat on that one (laughs) ...

I will add that, yes, I am an idealist. I would never work for a candidate (I don't believe in) regardless of the money involved. My test is: Would I go door-to-door for this candidate? I did it out of a commitment to a certain ethical framework, an ideological framework I have. I met some wonderful people.

Just curious about what you think of the current crop of political ads ...

I don't like the political advertising that's going on right now. We're back to smearing the candidate, Swift boating, trying to convince voters that just because the candidate has a dozen men, women and children standing behind him, he's really going to do something for those men, women and children. I really think there is a trend to insult the intelligence of voters. It troubles me a lot, so I don't do it anymore. But it's OK; nobody is asking me to do it anymore — I'm doing other things that I love now.

You have also worked in film and TV in LA. Your first project was an episode of The Love Boat. Tell us about that.

Do I have to? (Laughs.) What was it called? God, I can't even remember the title of it. It was with Toni Tennille and Robert Reed, the story of a man who had witnessed a mob killing and the mob was after him. Don't ask me how he ended up on the Love Boat, but he's kind of hiding out and he meets a women and falls in love and she gives him the courage to get off that boat at the end of the cruise and take on the mob.

How sappy — but it got me what I wanted; it got me an agent and into the (screenwriter's) guild ... I did everything from directing to writing reality crime shows. I (also) wrote an original screenplay, which was optioned and cast with Amanda Plummer, and I thought, "God, this was easy." Well, as often is the case in Hollywood, it eventually fell apart when it got down to the financing.

That story eventually became your romantic, offbeat novel Going Together. Can you describe how you got the idea for the story?

When I first wrote the screenplay, I was living in L.A. out at the beach, and something bad must have happened that week. The weather was awful and I was going, "Why did I move out here?" And I was running down the boardwalk from where I lived in Venice Beach to Santa Monica Pier and not feeling very good about the state of things. The pier, through the mist, came into view and I thought: "God, if someone really finds everything is so bad, they could just keep running and go off the end of the pier." And then I stopped and thought, "Oh, but that water's filthy." And I did what you just did: I started laughing. I said, "That's very funny: Some neurotic guy who actually thinks he's maybe suicidal thought, 'No, I'm not going into that water, it's too dirty.'"

I ran laughing to myself all the way home and sat down and started writing Going Together.

Now, ironically, the story is being considered again for a movie ...

This just happened about four weeks ago. I got a phone call from a cinematographer with whom I've worked over the years ... Nothing could come of it, but something could come of it as well. And that's where it sits right now.

You have several other projects in the works, including a nonfiction book. Can you leave us with a description of your typical writing day?

My day doesn't change much, unless I'm going somewhere. My typical day is a workout, a swim, then I'm at my computer as soon as I'm done and I write for maybe four hours a day. I find I can't write much more than that unless I'm really on a roll or a deadline; then, sure, I can write into the night. What I do is play a little game with myself. I usually set a word count for every day, and if I can finish it early enough, like 2 or 3 in the afternoon, I go to a movie. And that's a nice job. So that's a typical day.

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