Goodbye Neil Simon, and Thank You

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There’s been so much news this week in marketing, politics, and pop culture that we all don’t quite know where to focus our attention. But I didn’t want the week to go by without honoring and mentioning someone that may have fallen off our radar:

Neil Simon.

Neil Simon!

Neil Simon, a New York City born and raised writer, passed away just recently. I simply must say something about him and the influence he’s had on me. Personally.

Thank you, Neil Simon. One of my favorite movies of all time is

The Goodbye Girl

. I was 14 years old when it came out. Neil Simon wrote it. 

First of all, it’s a New York story and at that time in my life all I could dream about was living and working in New York when I “grow up.”

Second of all, it’s a love story and at that point in my life I couldn’t even imagine my own love story but I was fascinated. That of course would come later, twists and turns and all.

But most of all,

The Goodbye Girl

is just an amazing story. It’s my first recollection of actually understanding that movies were stories…stories written by someone.

The Goodbye Girl

made me realize that someone somehow somewhere had taken out a blank piece of paper and wrote this movie. Wrote this story. A love story. A love story in NY. This someone was Neil Simon.

The Goodbye Girl

was the first romantic comedy to hit the $100million mark in sales. Richard Dreyfuss won an Academy Award for Best Actor, the youngest male to do so at the time. And it had one of the best theme songs ever (by David Gates who both sang and wrote it...wrote it!)...

And then there's American Bandstand, but that's an entire different matter.

Neil Simon was the first “writer” I really thought about. Sure I’d read books, obviously, but somehow seeing a screenplay come to life on a movie screen made me realize what writing was all about.

Storytelling. Writing. Engaging an audience. Entertaining.

And while I never imagined (and still don’t) that I’d make a living out of writing, I did imagine that someday I would write. Something. Then in 2010, some 33 years later, I published my first marketing book,

The Experience Effect

. Merging my chosen professional life with an interest in writing.

Then in 2016, I published

Out and About Dad

which is my story about my life as a father…with all the twists, turns, and a few twirls. There were also two other marketing books in between and another on its way this fall. While I still don’t fancy myself a writer, I do fancy writing. And I fancy Neil Simon for putting it on my radar.

Thank you, Mr. Simon. I won’t say goodbye, just thank you. Thank you in particular for

The Goodbye Girl

.

What's your experience? JIM.