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My little brother complex
And vindication, when my brother wrote “Groundhog Day”
It’s no secret I’ve got a little-brother thing for my big brother. When I was in first grade, he was captain of the 6th grade crossing guards at our school. It was cool when I’d see him working in the uniform. I felt protected on the bus. When he was a senior in high school and I was 11, he had a satire column in the school paper. I remember him reading drafts at dinner, everyone laughing, and me thinking “He’s so cool.” In the 75-year history of GHS, students did not give graduation speeches, but he was popular enough that the administration relented when he offered, and even though he wasn’t valedictorian (I think he was runner up), he delivered a totally amusing speech that was so good they decided to let a student do one the following year, (but then stopped the practice, immediately thereafter). But I sat in the audience and memorized his speech. It was funny. I still laugh about it today.
I always knew he was a great writer. But every little brother thinks his big brother is great like that.
When I got to Hollywood he was still in Chicago writing funny things, but it felt to me like he should be famous and he wasn’t trying hard enough. I was working on “The Twilight Zone” TV series and tried to convince him to submit some of his creepy short stories to…
