J. Neil Schulman
@ Agorist.com
Why I’m Screwed
I recently posted on Facebook, then as a web page, a request for voluntary compensation (“donation” implies I’ve done nothing to merit it) for the content I’ve given away free for many years.
My request for financial support during a life crisis when I can’t pay my bills hasn’t brought in a dime.
I conclude I’m unpopular. I conclude I’ve been rejected.
It’s logical and not all that surprising.
I’m pro-gun and have written major newspaper and magazine Op-Eds and articles, books, and made two movies supporting the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, but because I’m not also an anti-abortion / pro-police / close-the-borders cultural conservative the Second Amendment activists won’t support me.
Because I’ve written in favor of regarding creative works as deserving property rights I’ve pissed off most of the current “anti-IP” libertarian movement.
Because most libertarians are atheists, as I was into my 30’s, then I talked about how “I Met God,” I’ve generated intense hostility from libertarians and atheists; but my stating I now believe in God got me no support from any religious affiliation since I say my change-of-mind came not from “religion, scripture, or faith” but instead from direct experience.
Because I won’t endorse the Johnson-Weld ticket of the Libertarian Party the LP supporters reject me.
Because I’ve said I’m voting for Donald Trump despite my being in favor of open borders, off-the-books workers, and Edward Snowden, the Trump supporters don’t like me.
Because instead of rock or country music I chose classical violin music for the soundtrack of my movie Alongside Night, I alienated a lot of potential fans.
J. Neil Schulman, directing Alongside Night
Because in my “brothel-meets-Jihadis” comedy Lady Magdalene’s I have no nudity or sex scenes, I disappointed adolescents who expected a movie set in a Nevada brothel would have both, but because I linked modern prostitutes to the biblical whore Rahab I also tick off Christian fundamentalists.
Libertarians are fish-out-of-water to both liberals and conservatives. Despite my having won praise for my libertarian writing from Milton Friedman, Anthony Burgess, Charlton Heston, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Neil Smith, Robert Anton Wilson, F. Paul Wilson, Colin Wilson, Poul Anderson, Jerry Pournelle, Larry Niven, Gregory Benford, David Brin, Nathaniel Branden, Ron Paul, Thomas S. Szasz, Grover Norquist, Silk Road founder “The Dread Pirate Roberts,” Jeff Riggenbach, Walter Block, Kerry Pearson, Dyanne Petersen, Doug Casey, Wendy McElroy, Glenn Beck, Alex Jones, Michael Medved, Walter Williams, Piers Anthony, Brad Linaweaver, Samuel Edward Konkin III, and prominent others, I’m a fish-out-of-water even to libertarians like Lew Rockwell, Jeffrey Tucker, and John Stossel.
It would have been so simple to be more popular.
All I would have had to leave behind was my mind.
Want J. Neil Schulman’s Free Stuff?
Help Pay His Bills!For many years I’ve been giving away books and other things I write, research, and produce for free.
- Alongside Night, now both the latest PDF edition of the novel and an online link to watch the full action movie.
- My full-length comedy “brothel meets domestic-terrorist” movie, Lady Magdalene’s.
- A personal website with articles, photos, and more rich content.
- The PDF edition of my trade paperback book Stopping Power: Why 70 Million Americans Own Guns.
- The two-volume history of my first venture into eBook publishing back in 1990, SoftServ, in the eBook Book Publishing in the 21st Century.
- My website The World Wide Web Gun Defense Clock.
- The complete audiobook I Met God.
- Two blogs with years worth of articles, short stories, and complete books.
Keep on reading. All these free links are further down.
All free, no charge, no registration, nobody’s name, Facebook, Twitter, email address, or other online personal info collected for future marketing. Hundreds of thousands of views and downloads, possibly well into seven figures because I never kept close track of a lot of it.
Today I made sure everything of mine I sell on line on Amazon has an up-to-date affiliate link.
I am arranging to fix broken automatic download links that vend seven PDF editions of my books for sale so that I don’t have to email books when a Paypal payment is made.
I also made sure that on every page I give away my work for free (other than on Youtube) there’s a “Like it? Reward it!” Paypal link. Some of my websites aren’t compatible with the link so I link them to this page, which is.
I have to do this. I’m 63 and it has come to my attention that “the golden years” require a stash of gold I don’t have.
My daughter informs me it would be unseemly to go into details. But in an age when everything I have produced in a long career has been displaced from brick-and-mortar stores and competes with an ocean of free entertainment digitized as my own creative output has been, I am in serious danger of not being able to sustain my continued ability to pay my bills.
Here are some links to where I give away free stuff, not all with “Like it? Reward it!” Paypal buttons:
Watch here: Alongside Night the Complete Feature-length Movie. Written and Directed by J. Neil Schulman.
Watch here: Lady Magdalene’s the Complete Feature-length Movie. Written and Directed by J. Neil Schulman.
The World According to J. Neil Schulman personal website, with his book links, articles, photos, bio info, and much more!
J. Neil Schulman @ Agorist.com and
J. Neil Schulman @ Rational Review.com — J. Neil Schulman’s free/no-subscription blogsFree PDF: Alongside Night Movie Edition Novel by J. Neil Schulman
Free PDF: Stopping Power: Why 70 Million American’s Own Guns by J. Neil Schulman
Free two-volume eBook: Book Publishing in the 21st Century by J. Neil Schulman
Free web book: Nasty, Brutish and Short Stories by J. Neil Schulman
Free web book: Self Control Not Gun Control by J. Neil Schulman
Free web novel: Escape from Heaven by J. Neil Schulman
Free educational/info website: The World Wide Web Gun Defense Clock, webmaster, J. Neil Schulman
Alongside Night the Movie related radio interviews
I appreciate your patronage.
J Neil Schulman
August 27, 2016
August 28, 2016 - 11:55 pm
Hi, Thanks for liking my movie review. Yes, it’s nice to make a case and have another understand it. You’ve tried everything else, so how would you like to be a satellite TV network producer? Look at some of the ones I’m ramping up. Of most immediate interest is I and my Human Investments TV Networks partner, Melinda Puksbury-Foster in our holding company are ramping up not one but 6 TV networks. I decided to start with PhoneVoter TV & Digitsl Networks to create a shared media strategy between Libertarian Party, Refirm Party whose candidate Rocky de la Fuente on 18 ballots is a billionaire, and the Green Party. They can do shows together where the candidates and audiences nominate different Cabinet Officers for topic discussion. Yeah, Anerica’s got talent. Add computer servers, tallies, and contribution phonetrees, and you make money at that intersection. It might be possible to throw the election into the House and hold a fusion governing strategy together versus the GOP deal makers by having them answer to the PgoneVoters of hit shows.
If you want to show classical violin, I am ramping up ARTisTVision for buyers of Art. I have researched by asking artists, galleries, and museums what kind of shows their art would fit into. I am at 104 shows and no producers. Hmmmm
Others are there from JuryVoter TV, Quality Immortality & Longevity QUAIL Health TV. NBC has a peacock, I have a quail. Sells lifestyle, exercycles, science fiction and fact genomics, supplements,… By programming on topic plus QVC style buying. No elixirs, no forever orders after your first, nice guy stuff wins in this market.
You want to create the Agorist show, fine. I am creating LISTEN Libertarian Internationale Satellite Television Electron Network. The all media arm of Libertarian Internationale. Yeah, you heard me right. Wanna produce it?
Call me at 760-607-8381 after looking at the ideation website.
Brock d’Avignon
Libertarian Office of Strategic Services
LOSS Leader
August 29, 2016 - 12:06 am
Brock: I’ll get in touch with you privately to follow up.
Thank you!
Neil
September 3, 2016 - 4:28 pm
I did receive some generous voluntary contributions as a result of this article; but, realistically, the amounts I received are good to keep some of my immediate bills paid only for another two to three weeks. Where are the grants for libertarian artists, writers, and filmmakers the left always gives its artists, writers, and filmmakers? Where’s the “Shark Tank” of libertarian investors to back libertarian content? Why did the “pro-freedom” Moving Picture Institute finance a third film version of the late liberal Kurt Vonnegut’s short story “Harrison Bergeron” and ignore true libertarian source materials by Prometheus-Award-winning writers such as L. Neil Smith and myself?
September 4, 2016 - 11:39 am
Wow, it’s depressing how you’ve done everything right and still can’t pay your bills. So many people have so much to answer for. Do you think there is some kind of insider agreement (I hate to use the C-word) to keep you down?
September 4, 2016 - 2:58 pm
http://www.breitbart.com/big-hollywood/2010/05/17/yes-there-is-a-hollywood-blacklist/
September 5, 2016 - 4:49 pm
I’ve trashed two comments, both with the same trollish theme, from anonymous posters using fake email addresses that bounced when I used them to ask for the writers’ real names before I posted them.
This isn’t IMDb, boys.
September 6, 2016 - 3:15 am
Neil, ol’ compadre, I think you have the same basic problem I’ve got; very good at making a worthwhile product, but downright lousy at *marketing* it. This is what agents, managers, etc. are for. Not having good ones is what’s kept us both as poor as church-mice.
As for the movie: as political propaganda, it’s better than all of Michael Moore’s work but, I must admit, not as good as the “Atlas Shrugged” trilogy. Production values are very good, acting quality varies pretty widely, and (sorry!) so does the scriptwriting. There’s too much Information Dump in the early scenes; remember — “Show, Don’t Tell”. Finally, I like classical violin as much as you, but having almost no other instruments makes the background music boring. You should have added a bass, cello or flute, at least, and I would have had some sequences done in the style of Flogging Molly (which hear) or Celtic Thunder.
I liked it, and not just for the theme.
September 6, 2016 - 4:15 am
Funny you should mention that. I’ve been working on getting either old or new representation for about a year, and it’s only in the last few days that I have a new literary agent and producing partner, who’s reaching out to major people starting today.
That’s not a bad place to land, considering the Atlas Shrugged trilogy had a production budget of $47 million or so for the three films, and Alongside Night‘s budget was under a million.
I used the same opening as the novel: starting in Elliot Vreeland’s classroom discussing political-economics as if it’s just a dry, abstract subject — then BAM! — Elliot is pulled out of class and gets hit with the practical effect on his life, which puts him and his family in dire peril for most of the rest of the movie.
Leslie, I did not compose, orchestrate, conduct, or record the musical underscore for Alongside Night. That was Daniel May. I made general suggestions for the kind of soundtrack I wanted but the selection of instruments Daniel orchestrated and called in for the recording session he conducted with the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine was not the job of the movie’s screenwriter, director, or producer. You can find Dr. May’s filmography at http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0561906/?ref_=pro_nm_visitcons
But featured in the movie’s soundtrack is the Goldfinger-style Alongside Night theme song composed and performed by Soleil O’Neal-Schulman (co-produced by Soleil and Daniel); another rock anthem composed by Soleil, “Unchained,” but arranged and performed by Jordan Page; another “alternative rock” song “You Goin’ Out Like That?” music and lyrics by Polly Klemmer and Kate O’Neal and performed by their band Out of Town; a jazz number called “Gypsy Jam” Daniel composed and had performed by Zero Ted featuring Ed Bloot (saxophone), Joe Negri (guitars); and an alternative Western ballad I composed, produced and sung by Daniel May, “Tried by 12,” with guitar solos by Jesse Lee Cantrell. That’s some significant stretches of the movie without a violin to be heard.
In addition, you’ll find a wide range of instruments including clarinet, oboe, violas, harp, etc., accompanying the violin soloist, Marat Bisengaliev with the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, in the recording of the Ravel Tzigane for Violin and Orchestra, a recording we obtained from Naxos of America, which Daniel edited for the underground shopping mall sequence.
Thanks for the comment!
Neil