Celebrities in Disgrace, the Blog
Welcome to Celebrities in Disgrace: where your feelings/thoughts/theories– and your own writings– about all things celebrity-related are welcome too. I’m Elizabeth Searle and I wrote a novella called Celebrities in Disgrace and co-wrote the screenplay for a short film of Celebrities (produced by Bravo Sierra, the company that helped me begin this blog).
The blog is a work-in-progress. Mostly My Guest Posters and I blog about our collective celebrity obsessions, the scandals and sagas that grip us in our Celebrity Nation. I devote one page of the blog to ‘writings inspired by celebrities’– short poems, stories, personal essays, excerpts. (see StarLit.).
When my own celebrity-inspired Celebrities in Disgrace book came out, we decked our book party cake with cut-outs of ‘disgraced celebs’. Everyone ate a lot and talked a lot– with great glee but also great intensity– about celebrity obsessions.
For the past several years, ever since I wrote an opera and then rock opera based on Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan, I’ve become an accidental expert on ‘celebrities in disgrace.’
I’m a celebrity-addict from way-back and I’m fascinated by the hold that these distant glittery beings have on us, the amount of space they take up in our minds and more. I’ve come to feel celebrity stories are our modern folk tales, our ‘shared narratives,’ the stories almost everyone knows and follows in this fractured isolated society. Besides which, I can’t help myself. I just plain like talking and thinking about celebrities and scandals, don’t you?
So have a piece of celeb-decked cake and let’s dish.
About Elizabeth (and Tonya & Nancy too)
Greetings; I am new to blogging and I am perhaps the only literary fiction writer who has ever appeared on ESPN HOLLYWOOD. I’m the author of five books of fiction, including Celebrities in Disgrace (adapted as a short film) and A FOUR-SIDED BED (in development as a feature film and adapted as the short film FOUR-SIDED)– plus my most recent novels, GIRL HELD IN HOME and WE GOT HIM, new in AudioBook. I also wrote the librettos for an opera and Rock Opera about Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan, the scandal skaters Our show played a sold-out run in NYC at NYMF and recent runs in Chicago and Texas, as well as 2018 & 2019 concert events in NYC with a CD from Broadway Records, drawing national media. Future productions are also in the works!
Tonya & Nancy: The Rock Opera (music by Michael Teoli) has inspired incredible media attention. including Good Morning America, CNN, CBS, FOX and more; the half-hour chamber opera in 2006 (music by Abigail Al-Doory Cross) also drew huge media, including NPR, MSNBC, USA TODAY, the worldwide AP and mention on The Daily Show. The chamber opera was most recently performed in Minneapolis in 2018, with previews on ice. A clip from the rock opera was shown on ABC prime time in Feb. 2018.
People love to talk to me about Tonya and Nancy, those ‘scandal skaters’ who still hold great fascination 20-plus years after their 15 minutes. Tonya Harding herself came to our rock opera premiere and proved to be (whatever her dark past) a good sport with a great sense of humor. The book and film Celebrities in Disgrace also involve Tonya and Nancy– not to mention such hot-button topics as teacher/student sex and shame/fame.
I’m a lifelong addict of celebrity gossip. In days of old, folks gossiped about their small towns. If you’re like me, you’ve moved an awful lot. I attended four different high schools. I grew up on movie stars and TV– did you?
I’m convinced, after my Tonya & Nancy experience, that there is a hunger to talk about celebrity obsessions at a deeper-than-tabloid level. In both the operas and the film involving Tonya and Nancy, I try as a writer to ‘get at’ the deeper themes of that sublimely absurd scandal, which always struck me as both comic and poignant.
One trigger to me writing about Tonya and Nancy was conservative columnist George Wills saying on TV during the scandal: ‘This is a ridiculous story that has absolutely nothing to do with life in America today.’ I thought: a ridiculous story, yes, of course– but it has EVERYTHING to do with life in America today. That’s what I think about celebrity obsessions in general: while admittedly ridiculous, they are a part of our lives in America today. They hit all kinds of nerves and emotions inside us. I enjoy exploring all that in my books, my rock opera and now on this blog, with you.
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Celebrities in Disgrace 
Ryan O’Neill tops the list. Imagine coming on to his own daughter at Farah’s funeral. Well, to be fair, he didn’t recognize her. Love means Never Having to say you’re sorry?
You said it, Judith! And now Ryan is negotiating a Reality TV show for his jailed son Redmond. And as you say, he never seems to say he’s sorry…
I, too have been obsessed with celebrities for over 50 years. When I open my newspaper , if there is a celebrity story on the front page, I always read it first–the war and health care can wait until later. I have even gone so far as to read The Inquirer! I think it is a wonderful escape mechanism. The ultimate celebrity high is reading a well written novel or biography about celebrities…such as Norman Mailer’s or Joyce Carol Oates’ books about Marilyn, but for the daily fix I have a gossip column in my newspaper, and now I have this extraordinarily well written Celebrities in Disgrace blog.
Thanks for your kind words, Barb! Always good to hear from a fellow lifetime addict of the celebrity scene. And yes, I agree it is a wonderful and fun escape, among other things. I also agree that I love both of those terrific Marilyn books: MARILYN by Mailer and BLONDE by Joyce Carol Oates. Glad to hear you are enjoying the writing on the blog. I’m proud that we’ve been able to attract some very talented writers for our Guest Posts, and some very witty writers in our Comments. Thanks for joining the fray! Elizabeth
Speaking of ‘About’ and the driving forces behind this blog…
I found a kindred spirit in this interesting writing by Nancy Doyle Palmer on Sandra Bullock in Huffington Post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nancy-doyle-palmer-/why-every-woman-i-know-is_b_509770.html
an excerpt:
“Fame in America and the culture of celebrity creates this kind of situational intimacy that is as much a national phenomena as it is a total travesty. I’ve been writing about it here on the Huffington Post for several weeks now and am never without a topical topic. It just keeps coming – these moments when everyone with a pulse knows the same story. The same person. Often, the same old song. They’re up and then they are down. The news cycles of revelation, confession, shame and redemption.”