James Rudolph is the pen name of Hollywood denizen, writer and actor James Mathers, who has written two new e-books, Cindy Eyes and Henry & Dad, that are available on Amazon.com for $6.99.
Mathers and his wife, Dallas, started “The Writer’s Group” in l990. They invited friends, writers and actors from New York to their home on Wednesday nights to read their plays, short stories, screenplays, prose, poetry where they give each other positive feedback.
Mathers said, “It became as a weekly thing. Then we moved to a theater over Jerry’s Deli, then to NoHo for a while, but we found a permanent home at the Two Roads Theater in Studio City. We’ve been doing this now for 22 years and the output has been prodigious. The Writer’s Group has been a stimulus for all of us. It’s motivating, it’s community, it’s supportive and it’s networking – networking is the job of everyone in our industry – it’s the woof and warp of the industry.”
“Henry & Dad” is based on a one-act play written by James, inspired by a conversation he had with his son a few years earlier. The play was produced a couple of times and did well, so he turned it into a novel. The hero, Henry, a construction worker finds his girlfriend pregnant and missing and has to reconcile with his alcoholic father in order to solve the mystery surrounding her disappearance. “It’s a fast-paced novel,” said Mathers. “An e-book to open up at LAX and by the time you get to Denver, you’ll be at the last page.”
“Cindy’s Eyes” is the story of Ray, a Hollywood taxi driver in the early seventies, and his remarkable fares. Ray falls for one of his fares, Cindy, a porno queen, and tries to drag her out of the hell she’s in. They try to make it, but she’s a victim of her addictions and slides back into the life, Ray follows. “This book has all the action of Hollywood in the early seventies - sex, drugs, rock and roll that Mathers experienced himself as a cab driver in 1969,” Mathers said.”
Reviews from Amazon about “Cindy’s Eyes” said, “It is provocative, dark, sexy and edge of your seat. This is a great read! There really must be a Movie made from this work! A totally untapped time period in Hollywood to explore. We haven't seen this until now. Not in THIS way. Everyone should check this piece out!”
Mathers is finishing his third novel “Gold Cup,” with the help of his colleagues from The Writer’s Group. It is about the famous after hours coffee shop that used to be on the corner of Hollywood and Las Palmas, it’s gone now, but it was where everybody congregated – cabbies, hookers, all the people of the night.
Mathers has several commercials running and a TV pilot coming out with Jon Voight, Leiv Schreiber and Elliot Gould. He is also in the movie “7500,” a teen horror thriller on a plane directed by Tak Shimizu (“The Grudge”) where Mathers plays the old guy on the flight from LAX to Tokyo and then, well…horror happens.
“In a recent Hyundai spot I’m a CEO riding in a Genesis with my minion. I have a heart attack and the driver shocks me back to life with the seat belt. It’s a funny spot and played on the Super Bowl and the Oscars and I did a “Got Milk” spot and some other stuff – I just try to keep busy. That’s the name of the game,” he said.
Mathers also produces “The Zombie Radio Show” with his partner, Craig Sabin, a web series that is a radio show satire based upon the “zombie apocalypse” which stuck New York in 2013. “We now have over seventy hilarious and edgy two-to-five-minute episodes produced and up on zombieradioshow.com,” said Mathers.
For more information please go to: www.studio44hollywood.com, www.henryanddad.com or www.cindyseyes.com.
