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Matthias Drawe
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With a Little Twist, It Might Just Work ... Kindle Edition

by Matthias Drawe (Author), Rene Alfaro (Editor) Format: Kindle Edition
3.6 3.6 out of 5 stars 48 ratings
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Young filmmaker Hardy is learning the ropes in New York. He has high hopes, but his quest to find a producer is off to a rocky start. The biggest hurdle lies in his screenplay. It's too costly to produce. Thankfully, Hardy is friends with a movie expert who gives him advice. It might just work, if he'd give it a little twist …

"Gritty, real and unapologetic."
"Wonderfully awkward situations."
"This story is for anyone trying to make it as a small fish in a big pond.”
(Voices on Amazon)

MORE FROM THE AUTHOR
The World is my Oyster
Wild Years in West Berlin
Previous page
  1. Print length
    197 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  4. Publication date
    November 3, 2016
  5. File size
    6835 KB
  6. Page Flip
    Enabled
  7. Word Wise
    Enabled
  8. Enhanced typesetting
    Enabled
  9. See all details
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Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B01M4S9IGF
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ D.A. Publishing (November 3, 2016)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ November 3, 2016
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 6835 KB
  • Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Unlimited
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 197 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.6 3.6 out of 5 stars 48 ratings

About the author

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Matthias Drawe

Matthias Drawe

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Matthias Drawe is a filmmaker, actor, journalist and writer. For a detailed biography, please consult Wikipedia.

Films by the author and TV interviews are available on YouTube on the channel muavin-publishing.

Some of the travelogues in "The World Is My Oyster" were commissioned by public radio in Germany and were brought to life on the airwaves by Christian Brückner, the German dubbing voice of Robert De Niro. As a German speaking listener, you could get the impression that it was actually Robert De Niro traveling.

Customer reviews

3.6 out of 5 stars
3.6 out of 5
48 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Claire O
4.0 out of 5 stars What NYer hasn’t felt like this before?
Reviewed in the United States on August 9, 2017
Verified Purchase
Before digging into this book I was a little wary at first. This isn’t usually the type of novel I like to read (in fact, I am more of a non-fiction type of person). But, as a native New Yorker, I figured I would give it a chance to see if this writer from Berlin could do my city justice. The characters were spot on for New Yorkers, everyone from the transients, to the judgy officemate, to the high powered lawyers. Somehow, Drawe is able to make them all work well together. Also, I couldn’t love the Dr. Z anecdote more! So New York!

As an analytical reader I tried to nail down the era the book was taking part in early on in the book. But, it wasn’t as easy as it sounds. It took a while, and clever hints and nods to technology to pinpoint exactly when it was set. Despite being set somewhat recently, the book read like an old timey tale of one man’s quest to succeed in his passion. Hardy was constantly trying to be someone he wasn’t, reminiscent of a Don Draper type character. This only added to my desire to keep reading.

I loved the juxtaposition between the protagonist being so serious and his circumstances often dire, that his entire screenplay was a comedy! I would have loved to see more of a development of that aspect of the plot. I think a lot of the gratuitous sex scenes in the beginning could have served better to develop characters in a more complex way. It often felt that characters would easily flit in and out of Hardy’s life—perhaps that was intentional, though?

Simply put, just like NYC, this book builds your hopes up, and then quickly dashes them—in a good way! I was left wanting to see just how Hardy’s efforts panned out (and was so engrossed I finished the entire thing in a morning), in spite of there being no such thing as a free lunch.
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Bryan D. Spellman
3.0 out of 5 stars Not the kind of book I normally enjoy reading, but I stuck it out
Reviewed in the United States on November 22, 2017
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Not the kind of book I normally enjoy reading, but I stuck it out. Not a single character I found attractive, and certainly not the kind of people I would hang out with, but while it quickly became apparent that "this cannot end well," somehow the author pulled things together in the end. The protagonist, a German film-maker wannabe, or rather a script writer, had one award winning short in Europe and now finds himself in New York City, past the expiration of his visa and dependent on his alcoholic girl friend. Will he avoid deportation or prison? Will he survive his girl friend's self-destructive actions? Will he get his screen play written and accepted? Guess you'll have to read the book to find out.
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Queon Wiggins
5.0 out of 5 stars Actually a good book that sneaks up on you- read it!!
Reviewed in the United States on December 16, 2016
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Prepare for a little down twisted adventure. A plucky screenwriter trying to get a film made, but a little more human and real than all the brands available in stores. Hardy is the hero, but he wears many faces. Hucky/Steven's amorous activities render all past as prologue, again & again! Jackie, the chief mask-wearer, grows disoriented when Hardy becomes more than just another questionable partner in her latest oubliette. A succession of professional coupledoms form up, with Hardy both as participant and bemused onlooker. A German by birth, the multilingual filmmaker handily mines his legitimate background in the arts as a conversational currency, negotiating each crisis point with a near-gallows interior perspective and evident flair.
The convergence of monetary necessity to work, Hardy's staccatic opportunities to market, adapt, & deliver his work, and the metaphysical desperation to survive and maintain meaningful creativity are the impossible trifecta of every writer. Hardy endeavors to pull it off, by the seat of his pants.
Hardy does this with a villain lurking nearby, a creative and uniquely menacing villain. Bill is nearly Add to dictionary in his zest to arrest any progress Hardy might enjoy, kicking the author off any hard-won plateau into a (sadly familiar) pit of chaos. Hardy's few available choices expand and contract like convulsions of fate. He inches toward success, viewing the pitfalls of a career of letters, sensing the double-edged sword of a success in the swirling world of cinematic milieu. Hardy moves closer to the mark, observing the celebrity lifestyle, and bearing up through the glimpses of others in their respective bolgias. Drawe sketches several fantastic caricatures, effected with mere phrases, the idiom and sparse detail a précis that never misses.
The entire book is skillfully written and accessibly prosed. For those us ready to nod at the many cultural and lingual references, this book really respects the learned reader.
I spurned my stack of library finds and bookcase tomes to finish this puppy overnight. The book starts off humble, wry like Elmore Leonard, but picks up speed, like Somerset Maugham multiplied by Christopher Hitchens. The New York stories of Hardy's quest remind one of David Niven's great autobiographic anecdotes. The flavor captures the ignominy of the unacknowledged writer while showcasing the tedium of corporate driven hand-to-mouth job hunting and the mind numbing mental prison of skilled employment. The DMV scene is more amusing (and rings more true) more than any chicken-coop scene ever could. Hardy's sexuality gets in his way as much as it serves him, a lesson to us all.
Hardy's arc toward success is foiled with a staccatic rhythm. Madly, Bill steps up his exploitation of Hardy, using their days-of- wine-and-roses drunken confessions as bartering chips. Bill grins in from the margin whenever necessary, the whale chasing the captain of the weary ship. Bill is the alter ego, testing Hardy's finish-line stamina, wearing away whatever foothold the filmmaker has attained.
Hardy's success is the double helix to Bill's downfall, driving Hardy to out-maneuver him.
But our hero is human. He is the man on the street, enduring the welfare hell with his flawed companion and trying out his own schemes to keep his little bark afloat. New York is shown to be a destination, a destination community , a haven for the stress Hardy is under. His aims are simply to succeed, to prove his métier in a small-town like New York.
Not much to ask. Thrown close with a cast of oddballs, by exigency, with a motley crew, Hardy is singed once or twice by the bonfire of the vanities of others, and their weaknesses. The fatal woman crosses his path once or twice, as he soldiers on. Hardy likes women, and vice versa, and this turns out to be a problem.

New York, as always, is a character. The key to every situation turns on a well-crafted word or phrase, the writer's noose. The intelligentsia-manqué of New York are portrayed loosely, but one can guess there may be one or two actual (To quote Tom Wolfe, presque vu, presque vu!) The banlieues of his European hometown, and the road not taken, mock Hardy from afar.
The screenplay and its adaptations echo Hardy's own life. The put-upon main character, trying to lift the Sisyphean burden out of the Mexican ditch, involves plotlines wearily mined from his everyday experiences. The tropes of the overused TV scripts and overdone clichés echo back at him from the oddest places. And Hardy's mother keeps writing those needling postcards so he won't lose track of how far ahead of him the Joneses (back home) are. Mom also reports on what kind of shape the girl is in; the one who got away.
Hardy's struggles will be very familiar to writers and artists of every stripe. The curse of talent haunts Hardy. He has the goods, he just can't get them to the marketplace. The hidden "gold" in them thar canyons of Manhattan is the production of his feature film, the logical next step from his festival success Cryptic X. As the best producers have said in many cinematic aftermaths, "it's all in the silver".
Hardy hunts through the maze of professional references and relationships of theatrical New York, and trips over a celebrity or two. His mental exhaustion shows through once or twice. Hardy hunts doggedly to obtain the Glengarry leads, the making of his film. The machinations to get a job wear him down all the while. He still seeks approval of a long string of decision makers for the greenlight of his screenplay. Will his sacrifices pay off? Always there is another hurdle in view. How many more people stand in the way? This list of geniuses extends with almost every conversation to include the ménage of every person involved and their personal choices for the role/locale/vedette.
This book is a worthwhile read, I advise anyone getting on a place to grab it and save.
By the end, I heard "Eroica" in the background!
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Top reviews from other countries

simon
5.0 out of 5 stars I would be happy to have a beer with the main character of this book
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 17, 2016
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I read the book in short bursts and found the main character Hardy great.He was the sort of guy we can all believe in, a bit of a dreamer at times and human enough to make him the type of guy you'd be happy to have a beer with .To pick two people in the book that I preferred after Hardy,it was the aging critic and his wife.They were a somewhat crazy couple and their interaction with Hardy bordered on the absurd.I also enjoyed Bill.He's an annoying malevolent presence reminding Hardy that he isn't yet in the clear.Of all the chapters my favourite was chapter 35:"Put to the test".Throughout the chapter I never thought that Hardy would be able to blag his way through this one.Things really did seem like they were going to get awkward for him, and I felt relieved for him afterwards.All in all the story reached a satisfactory conclusion and the end worked well for me.- I'm ready for the next one from Mr.Drawe.
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