impact on his life.He is the author of two previous novels, My Mother's Son and Jacobo's Rainbow, each of which has won multiple awards. In addition, he has published four short stories and written the introduction for a nonfiction book. Hirshberg holds an undergraduate degree from Dartmouth College and a master's degree from the University of Pennsylvania. He lives with his wife and two dogs in Westchester County, New York.
Here Hirshberg shares his thoughts on the ideal director for an adaptation of his new novel, Crossing the Bronx:
The fascinating thing about this is that I have written the screenplay for Crossing the Bronx, and it is with my rep on Hollywood! In ‘Movieland’, the pitch has to start with what is known as the ‘Log Line’, and here is the log line for my screenplay:Visit David Hirshberg's website.
Returning to the gritty working-class streets of his childhood in 1955, army vet Jay deVenezia discovers his father Ike and brother Eric are involved in a scheme to bribe NYC officials to build an expressway that will destroy the heart of The Bronx.
Jay and his girlfriend’s valiant efforts—that include illegal wiretapping and a well-planned neighborhood uprising—don’t win this battle, but do succeed in the war by rousing public opinion against future community-destroying building projects.
The brothers’ fractious relationship speaks to the issues of how families split apart, and whether or not the pieces can ever be put back together. The dynamics of Jay’s relationship with his girlfriend Francesca Casterella—who comes from a completely different background—plays out against the tumultuous events of the day.
Four smart, savvy women (Jay's girlfriend, mother. and therapist, as well as Francesca’s grandmother, provide a strong counterbalance to the lies, thefts, beatings, concealments, murders, and prejudice evidenced by some of the men.
Ultimately, the Cross Bronx Expressway is built, but Jay and Francesca take solace in the fact that their opposition sparked other protests against City Hall and double-dealing, with the result that the community-destroying projects including the Cross Manhattan Expressway, the Rye-Oyster Bay Bridge, and a new stadium for the New York Giants baseball team in Manhattan’s Ft. Tryon Park are not built.
The screenplay can be summarized as the crime, corruption, and love story of On the Waterfront meet the intrigue and intensity of Reservoir Dogs, written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, who would be the ideal director for Crossing the Bronx. Tarantino is a master of interweaving multiple story arcs that appear at the outset to be independent of each other, yet are woven into a fabric that encompasses all of them at the end (note especially how he directed Pulp Fiction in this manner). He would be able to knit together the strands of the criminal conspiracies, the corrupted politics, the destruction of the neighborhood, the love story, and the family relationships in a way that allows the narrative to dig down to give a full picture of the complexity of behaviors, and how the decisions—that have both intended and unintended consequences—are made by those who are powerful and connected, as well as by those who are just ‘regular folks’.
Tarantino is the director who could illustrate persuasively how the world really works, thus enabling Crossing The Bronx to capture the essence of what drives us forward under the most daunting of circumstances in tension-filled action by allowing the characters to come to life in a realistic fashion to illustrate who we are, how we behave, and what causes us to change.
The Page 69 Test: Crossing the Bronx.
--Marshal Zeringue











