ABOUT LDFN
LA DOLCE FAR NIENTE PRESS. OUR MISSION.
No, it’s not the name of a small Napa vineyard! We are a small press founded by Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences member and Emmy-nominated writer Mark David Rosenthal, LDFN Press specializes in working with screenwriters to transform their unproduced screenplays into novels, and in publishing original works with natural cinematic potential. Our boutique approach allows us to nurture each project with the attention it deserves, working closely with authors to ensure their visions reach their fullest potential. Our debut publication, AN AUSSIE IN NEW YORK CITY, exemplifies our commitment to unique storytelling that crosses boundaries. It’s a story for both kids and adults who love dogs! This richly illustrated hardcover represents our dedication to creating and cultivating stories that can live and breathe across multiple mediums. We believe in the power of intimate, focused publishing in a world of corporate giants, and in the magic that happens when great storytelling finds its perfect form. Our hope is to champion stories that are specifically, though not solely, able to serve as IP (Intellectual Property) for film, TV, and video games. We also intend to find people who’ve written stories in other media — film, television, podcast — who have not been able to transition their pet projects into production and now want to turn those stories into novels. I once said in WHY WE WRITE: 25 TOP SCREENWRITERS SHARE THEIR STORES, ‘The best stories aren’t told — they’re felt.‘ And after decades in the business, I still think that’s the truth.
Now back to that name. Where’d it come from? The unequivocally greatest prose writer in the English language was actually the very Irish James Joyce, author of Ulysses. He lived as he called it ‘in silence, exile and cunning’ in Trieste, Italy, before World War I. It’s where he wrote his unsurpassed short story collection, THE DUBLINERS — which ends with in my opinion with the greatest short story ever written, The Dead. He also finished A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN there. During a life of enormous suffering, Joyce enjoyed his days in Bohemian, multi-cultural Trieste. He wrote to a friend he was living a life of, ‘La dolce far niente’. The sweet doing of nothing. Of course, always broke, caring for young children with his heroic wife, Nora Barnacle, while also, by the way, inventing a new way of writing (what we call now ‘stream of consciousness’) Joyce never ‘did nothing’. He taught English at Berlitz and tutored wealthy Triestine families until the outbreak of war forced him to flee to Zurich. Still, he looked back fondly on his struggling days in Trieste as ‘sweet’ because nothing was more nourishing to him than writing and family.
I think, as always, Joyce understands what is ambrosial in this life. We live in Santa Barbara, and while it’s not Italy, it’s about the best place in America to ‘sweetly’ write and enjoy family. Like Trieste back then, it’s an intimate but cosmopolitan small city where the mountains meet the sea. And, yes, while we work hard, it offers so many moments of delightful idleness. We hope to put out books with the same ‘sweet’ attitude!
MARK DAVID ROSENTHAL
(Using my middle name isn’t from a sense of grandeur! Merely because there are now a few ‘Mark Rosenthal’s’ lurking around. Though the best way to spot me is to look for my wondrous Labradoodle ‘Louie’.)
I’m primarily known as a screenwriter, but I also have an academic background with a Doctor of Arts with a focus in Chaucer and Middle English literature. I’ve worked on projects, as a friend says, ‘From Apes to Outer Space!‘ Apes are not a bad place to start! I wrote both TIM’S BURTON’S PLANET OF THE APES and MIGHTY JOE YOUNG with Charlize Theron. The latter, featuring a giant gorilla with a heart of gold, prompted Roger Ebert to write, “In an era of cynical family entertainment, here’s a film that remembers what it’s like to be young and full of wonder.”
I received an Emmy nominee for the 2016 reboot of ROOTS. The ATLANTIC magazine called ROOTS, 2016, “… important because it is the rare work that focuses on slavery from the perspective of the enslaved.’
MONA LISA SMILE was set at Wellesley College in the 1950’s with Julia Roberts leading an all-star cast in what The New York Times called “a thought-provoking exploration of art, feminism, and societal expectations.” The film’s enduring impact is evidenced by its current adaptation for the London stage by Anthology Theatre Company.
I navigated the treacherous waters of franchise films and sequels with SUPERMAN IV and STAR TREK VI.
My earlier work includes the cult classic THE LEGEND OF BILLIE JEAN which despite modest box office on its 1985 release, has become a beloved pop anthem of teenage rebellion. One critic noted years later, “Fair is fair!” -– the film’s battle cry –- has only grown more relevant with time. Recently, a friend of mine was riding Amtrak recently and saw this college bro wearing this T-shirt. She instantly called me and handed the phone over to him. He watches the film with friends all the time! (And no, the residuals remain less-than-modest, more like checks for $2.39!)
I will occasionally tell some of the wilder (surreal!) stories of a life making movies so check back.
Currently, I’m working with the legendary journalist and non-fiction book writer Thomas Maier (MASTERS OF SEX, DOCTOR SPOCK, MAFIA SPIES, among many others). We’ve adapted his official biography of Dr. Benjamin Spock – the man who revolutionized parenting – to the screen. And we are adapting the tragic and violent true-crime narrative of his DEADLINE ARIZONA about the unsolved 1976 car-bombing of journalist Don Bolles.