LITERATURE + LECTURES

Brazos Bookstore and Ouisie's Table invite you to a luncheon and book event  with Tracey Jackson, author of Between a Rock and a Hot Place: Why Fifty is Not the New Thirty, at Ouisie's Table on Wednesday, April 13 at 11:30AM.

Tracey Jackson lived in New York.  She wanted to be Neil Simon.  She did not want to move to LA and sit under a palm tree writing for TV.  Even though by then, that was exactly what Neil Simon was doing.

Within six months she was sitting under a palm tree writing the pilot for BABES, the FOX sitcom about fat people. This earned her her one and only award to date, her NAFA, National Association for Fat Americans Award. By then she was no longer “zaftig” and didn’t like staying up late with a lot of guys eating junk food so she decided to write movies.

Her agents told her she couldn’t. She changed agents and proved them wrong.

She has been writing feature films for the last twelve years. She loves India. People said, “don’t write about India, nobody will make movies there,” she wrote THE GURU for Working Title Films, which was the first Hollywood/Bollywood crossover film. While it may have gotten buried here, it was a hit in the UK and in India.

Since then Tracey has written four films in or about India. THE OTHER END OF THE LINE, a trans-global love story, produced my MGM. She wrote ASHES TO ASHES for and with Goldie Hawn, which will come out someday, because Goldie doesn’t take no for an answer either.

Tracey has written over fifteen feature films and fourteen television pilots. She really wanted to write for the biggest producer in the world, Jerry Bruckheimer, but everyone said she couldn’t do that because she was a girl and she did comedy, but then she got hired to adapt CONFESSIONS OF A SHOPAHOLIC for Jerry Bruckheimer, which was released in February 2009.

The last thing Tracey ever thought of doing was making a first person documentary, especially one where she was at the center. But, like many things she never thought she wanted to do, she somehow found herself smack dab in the middle of her first documentary, LUCKY DUCKS, which started life as a study of why children of boomers are spoiled and unable to cope and ended up being both that and an exploration of who we are as children and how that carries over into our parenting.

She now finds it hard to do anything without a camera crew and lighting designer following her around.

Tracey has just completed her first book, BETWEEN A ROCK AND A HOT PLACE, a comedic look at aging,  poking giant craters in the baby boomers delusion that fifty is the new thirty. It is part memoir, part self-help and a lot of laughs. Published by Harper Collins in February, 2011.

She now spends much of her time blogging and doing consulting on Indian films.

Location:
Ouisie's Table
3939 San Felipe Drive
Houston, Texas 77027