Michael Herr

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Michael Herr (born in 1940, Syracuse, New York) is a writer and former war correspondent, best known as the author of Dispatches (1977), a memoir of his time as a correspondent for Esquire magazine (1967-1969) during the Vietnam War. The book was called the best "to have been written about the Vietnam War" by the New York Times Book Review; novelist John Le Carré called it "the best book I have ever read on men and war in our time."

Herr also co-wrote with his close friend Stanley Kubrick and author Gustav Hasford the screenplay for Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket based on Hasford's novel, The Short-Timers, (for which he, Kubrick, and Hasford were nominated for an Academy Award). He also wrote the narration for Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now. He collaborated with Richard Stanley in writing the original screenplay for the 1996 adaptation of the H.G. Wells novel, The Island of Dr. Moreau. However, Stanley claims the subsequent rewrites cost Herr his writing credit, omitting most of the material created by the two writers. The omission probably worked to his favor, however, since the movie was panned by critics and earned credited writers Stanley and Ron Hutchinson a Razzie Award for Worst Screenplay of 1997.

Michael Herr is said to be retired and living in Delhi, NY. He recently completed a screenplay for On the Road based on the book by Jack Kerouac, due for release in 2007. [1]

[edit] Publications

Dispatches (1977) ISBN 0-679-73525-9
The Big Room: Forty-Eight Portraits from the Golden Age (1987) (with Guy Peellaert) ISBN 0-671-63028-8 (stories about Hollywood personalities including Judy Garland, Howard Hughes, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra and Walter Winchell)
Walter Winchell: A Novel (1990) ISBN 0-679-73393-0 (biographical novel about the newsman Walter Winchell)
Kubrick (Grove, 2001) ISBN 0-8021-3818-7 (based on essay for Vanity Fair)