Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Swimming with Bridgeport Girls
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 5/22/1967
WEBSITE:
CITY: Venice
STATE: CA
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3294574/ * http://www.simonandschuster.com/authors/Anthony-Tambakis/403466477 * http://deadline.com/2011/11/warrior-co-writer-lands-book-deal-199304/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: no2011194853
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/no2011194853
HEADING: Tambakis, Anthony, 1967-
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100 1_ |a Tambakis, Anthony, |d 1967-
670 __ |a Warrior [VR], c2011: |b container (Anthony Tambakis; writer)
670 __ |a Internet Movie Database, Dec. 15, 2011: |b (Anthony Tambakis; b. May 22, 1967 in Fairfield, Conn.; writer, producer, actor ; a former Professor of Creative Writing, an award-winning short story writer)
670 __ |a Swimming with Bridgeport girls, 2017: |b t.p. (Anthony Tambakis) abou the author (Anthony Tambakis is the recipient of the Paul Bowles Fellowship for fiction writing and a renowned screenwriter. He is currently adapting the 1961 novel and film The hustler for Broadway and penning the screenplay for Swimming with Bridgeport girls, his first novel. A native of Fairfield, Connecticut, Tambakis lives in Venice, California.)
PERSONAL
Born May 22, 1967, in Fairfield, CT.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, producer, and actor; formerly worked as professor of creative writing in Atlanta, GA.
AWARDS:Received Paul Bowles Fellowship for fiction writing.
WRITINGS
Also adapter, with Gavin O’Connor, of Walter Tevis’s novel The Hustler as a stage play.
Swimming with Bridgeport Girls is being produced for film by the Gotham Group, with Tambakis adapting his novel for the screen.
SIDELIGHTS
Anthony Tambakis is best known for his work in film and television. He was the coauthor of the screenplay for the 2011 film Warrior, the story of two estranged brothers who come to terms with each other and with their alcoholic father through their participation in a mixed martial arts tournament. He has also been tapped as screenwriter for the DC blockbuster supervillains epic Suicide Squad 2. His fiction debut, however is Swimming with Bridgeport Girls: A Novel, a story that draws on his background growing up in Connecticut.
Swimming with Bridgeport Girls tells the tale of a failed ESPN commentator named Ray Parisi who has lost his job, his reputation, and his wife, and has made the decision to get at least one of them back. “As the story opens,” wrote a Publishers Weekly reviewer, “he is still in love with his recently divorced wife, L, though she is dating another man.” Ray’s ultimate goal, said Mike Fleming Jr. in Deadline Hollywood, is “to win back his wife, using a faulty recollection of the climax of The Great Gatsby as his inspiration.” Ray believes that he can win L.’s affections back if he fulfills one of her dreams: to live in a certain southern mansion. Help comes in the form of a $600,000 windfall legacy from his father. Ray decides that he can turn the money into the two million dollars he needs to buy the mansion if he goes to Las Vegas and plays the tables. “Tambakis keeps the humor from getting too broad and Ray from getting too sympathetic,” explained a Kirkus Reviews contributor, “though the reader usually roots for him anyway.”
Critics enjoyed Tambakis’s first foray into fiction. “According to a Simon & Schuster press release,” declared Jeanne Muchnick, writing in the Fairfield Daily Voice, “`If a Richard Russo protagonist went on a bender in Vegas, the result would be something like this.'” “`It’s a fast, fun summer read that’s also really about something,’ Tambakis said. `It’s humorous and heartbreaking at the same time. I think there’s something in it for everyone,'” reported Tara O’Neill in the Ctpost. “He said the story is centered around a love story, but it’s a book that manages to be feminine and masculine, appealing to a greater audience.” “Swimming with Bridgeport Girls [in] no way reads like a thesis,” declared Rick Koster in the Day. “Instead, it’s stunningly comic, with laugh-out-loud lines and descriptions on virtually every page—and yet it’s also a tender and desperately sad story of romantic obsession, the shifting sands of a relationship, and the self-delusion embedded in addiction. It’s as though Dan Jenkins rewrote Under the Volcano—and Parisi, a former creative writing professor and a recipient of the Paul Bowles Fellowship for fiction, nuances the opposite forces of tragedy and comedy with balletic grace.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Day (New London, CT), July 9, 2017, Rick Koster, “Anthony Tambakis’ Debut Novel Is Hilarious—and Heartbreaking.”
Kirkus Reviews, May 1, 2017, review of Swimming with Bridgeport Girls.
Publishers Weekly, May 15, 2017, review of Swimming with Bridgeport Girls, p. 32.
ONLINE
Ctpost, https://www.ctpost.com/ (August 22, 2017), Tara O’Neill, “‘Swimming with Bridgeport Girls’ Author Grew up in Fairfield.”
Deadline Hollywood, http://deadline.com/ (November 30, 2011), Mike Fleming, Jr., “`Warrior’ Cowriter Lands Book Deal.”
Fairfield Daily Voice, http://fairfield.dailyvoice.com/ (August 14, 2017), Jeanne Muchnick, “From Fairfield to Hollywood: Writer Pens First Novel with Nod to Bridgeport.”
Internet Movie Database, http://www.imdb.com/ (February 21, 2018), author profile.
Simon & Schuster Website, http://www.simonandschuster.com/ (February 21, 2018), author profile.
Print Marked Items
Tambakis, Anthony: SWIMMING WITH
BRIDGEPORT GIRLS
Kirkus Reviews.
(May 1, 2017):
COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Tambakis, Anthony SWIMMING WITH BRIDGEPORT GIRLS Simon & Schuster (Adult Fiction) $26.00
7, 11 ISBN: 978-1-4516-8491-9
Once a successful ESPN sportscaster, Ray Parisi is making a spectacular mess of his life.This debut novel
by screenwriter Tambakis is loaded with Bruce Springsteen references: the hero is in love with a Jersey girl,
and one of the Boss' most famous onstage speeches gets quoted in full. Deep into a gambling addiction, Ray
has lost his job and wound up in a cheap Connecticut motel, and now the cops are after him because he
assaulted a jockey who won a race after Ray had bet against him. He's never gotten over his ex-wife,
identified only as L., who is now about to remarry. Ray gets a second shot when his estranged father dies
and leaves him a $600,000 inheritance. But instead of turning his life around he heads to Vegas, where he
plans to win a few jackpots, raise enough to buy a $2 million dream home, and convince L. to leave her
fiance and join him there. His only ally on the trip is Renee, a teenage runaway he meets at a strip club, but
even she's gone by the time Ray heads to Memphis to crash L.'s wedding. Tambakis keeps the humor from
getting too broad and Ray from getting too sympathetic, though the reader usually roots for him anyway.
His final confrontation with L. feels messy but true, just like a good Springsteen song. If this were a
Springsteen album, it would be "Devils & Dust": partly set in Las Vegas, it evinces hope and humor but is
dark and gritty at its core.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Tambakis, Anthony: SWIMMING WITH BRIDGEPORT GIRLS." Kirkus Reviews, 1 May 2017. General
OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A491002940/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=170543e6. Accessed 29 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A491002940
Swimming with Bridgeport Girls
Publishers Weekly.
264.20 (May 15, 2017): p32.
COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Swimming with Bridgeport Girls Anthony Tambakis. Simon & Schuster, $26 (320p) ISBN 978-1-4516-
8491-9
In his first novel, Tambakis stacks the deck against his gambling-addicted protagonist, Ray Parisi, a fired
ESPN personality whose life is in free fall. As the story opens, he is still in love with his recently divorced
wife, L, though she is dating another man; a bookie is after him for money; and he is wanted by the
Connecticut state police for attacking a losing jockey. A windfall inheritance from his late, estranged father
sends Ray off to Las Vegas in a quixotic scheme to raise a grubstake to purchase some property in Atlanta
that has special meaning to his Southern-born ex. In Las Vegas, Ray romances the fickle Lady Luck, but it's
too late: L announces that she is going to marry her lover. So Ray flies off to Memphis, where he enlists
some help in derailing her impending wedding (shenanigans include hopping the wall at Graceland). The
author does an excellent job of recreating the noon-at-midnight feel of a Las Vegas booze-and-gambling
binge. But Ray, as a character, remains problematic. He is a fine, witty companion in the early going, but
after a while, this poster boy for arrested development becomes a bit of a bore. Late in the story, the
meaning of the title becomes clear and supposedly offers insight into Ray's actions. But it comes too late to
revitalize this study of a flawed man's wildly wrongheaded search for redemption. (July)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Swimming with Bridgeport Girls." Publishers Weekly, 15 May 2017, p. 32. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A492435595/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=013a1b2b.
Accessed 29 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A492435595
'Warrior' Co-Writer Lands Book Deal
by Mike Fleming Jr
November 30, 2011 8:42am
EXCLUSIVE: Anthony Tambakis, who teamed with Gavin O’Connor and Cliff Dorfman to write the underrated film Warrior, has sold his novel Swimming With Bridgeport Girls to Simon & Schuster for spring 2013 publication. This comes at a time when Tambakis and O’Connor are teamed on a stage play adaptation of The Hustler, the Walter Tevis novel that was turned into the 1961 pool hustler film that starred Paul Newman and Jackie Gleason. Tambakis and O’Connor are writing it and eyeing a Broadway bow, with Renee Zellweger aboard to play Sarah Packard, Fast Eddie Felson’s companion.
Swimming With Bridgeport Girls is a romantic comedy about a charismatic young gambler who loses everything and sets off on a quest to win back his wife, using a faulty recollection of the climax of The Great Gatsby as his inspiration. Tambakis will adapt the novel for the screen, and The Gotham Group will produce.
On the Warrior front, I am surprised that it is generating no awards-season buzz, especially for what should have been a breakout performance by Tom Hardy. Joel Edgerton and Nick Nolte were also on top of their games in this tragic father-son-brother triangle.
2011 Warrior (screenplay)
2013 Cinnamon Girl (TV Movie) (creator) / (story) / (written by)
2015/I Brothers (orignal story)
2015 Jane Got a Gun (screenplay)
2017 Sun Dogs
2018 Gringo (screenplay by) (completed)
2019 Suicide Squad 2 (screenplay) (announced)
lifestyle 08/14/2017
From Fairfield To Hollywood: Writer Pens First Novel With Nod To Bridgeport
Jeanne Muchnick
FAIRFIELD, Conn --"Swimming with Bridgeport Girls," which came out July 11, doesn't take place in Bridgeport, but it does have a lot of Connecticut connections.
The novel, by Fairfield native Anthony Tambakis, follows its main character, Raymond Parisi, a charismatic gambler and disgraced ESPN anchor, in a quest from Mohegan Sun in Uncasville to Las Vegas and Memphis in an effort to win back his wife. This, after being fired from his anchor job and enduring a host of public humiliations.
According to a Simon & Schuster press release: "If a Richard Russo protagonist went on a bender in Vegas, the result would be something like this."
The book was 14 years in the making and is billed as a heartwarming and heart-wrenching tale of one man's mission to finally get it right.
A Hollywood screenwriter, Tambakis, who now lives in Venice, CA, draws on Fairfield County references throughout the book, with his character reminiscing about friends who live in 22-room homes in Greenwich, ice skating at the Wonderland of Ice in Bridgeport, and taking Metro North into the City.
Devil's Glen in Weston also gets a mention, as does Staples High School in Westport and Sandy Hook.
Tambakis is currently adapting the 1961 novel and film "The Hustler" for Broadway and penning the screenplay for "Swimming with Bridgeport Girls." (The actress Natalie Portman is one of those who gave a glowing review on the book's jacket.)
The author, the recipient of the Paul Bowles Fellowship for Fiction Writing at Georgia State University, is also behind the writing of the movie "Warrior" for which Nick Nolte received an Oscar nomination and current projects that include Academy Award winners Will Smith and Charlize Theron.
Click here to sign up for Daily Voice's free daily emails and news alerts.
‘Swimming with Bridgeport Girls’ author grew up in Fairfield
By Tara O'Neill Updated 6:37 pm, Tuesday, August 22, 2017
Author Anthony Tambakis, 51, grew up in Fairfield. His debut novel, “Swimming with Bridgeport Girls,” was released last month. Photo: Contributed Photo / Anthony Tambakis / Contributed Photo / Connecticut Post Contributed
Photo: Contributed Photo / Anthony Tambakis / Contributed Photo
Image 1 of 3
Author Anthony Tambakis, 51, grew up in Fairfield. His debut novel, “Swimming with Bridgeport Girls,” was released last month.
Author Anthony Tambakis grew up in Fairfield and spent his summer days cliff jumping at Devils Glen Park in Weston. He said those days inspired the title of his novel, “Swimming with Bridgeport Girls.”
Tambakis, 51, said his grandmother grew up in Bridgeport and he lived in Fairfield with his family until he was in his late teenage years. His family still lives in Fairfield and he said he occasionally comes back to visit.
“Devils Glen was the first place we ever really hung out with girls,” Tambakis said.
He and his high school friends would also hang out at Jennings or Penfield beaches in Fairfield.
“That was every day in the summer,” Tambakis said.
His debut novel, “Swimming with Bridgeport Girls” was released in July and follows the protagonist Ray Parisi, a fictional former ESPN anchor, during his journey to try to win back his ex-wife.
“It’s a fast, fun summer read that’s also really about something,” Tambakis said. “It’s humorous and heartbreaking at the same time. I think there’s something in it for everyone.”
He said the story is centered around a love story, but it’s a book that manages to be feminine and masculine, appealing to a greater audience.
Tambakis said most of his first novel was written and edited at the Fairfield University Library, where he would spend up to 16 hours a day.
“I don’t even know if they — the library — knows that,” he said with a laugh.
He said he started working on the novel in the fall of 2003.
“It took me over a decade to get it right,” Tambakis said. “It was a long journey.”
After working as a professor in Atlanta, Tambakis said, he moved to Hollywood about 10 years ago and started screenwriting.
Tambakis is known for his work on “Warrior,” “Jane Got a Gun” and “The Karate Kid 2,” among other titles. He said he’s also working on a television show with Toby MaGuire.
Tambakis lives in Austin, Texas, with his golden retriever named after Joni Mitchell, as he works on his next book.
He said he likes to move to different cities, but he also couldn’t see himself writing a novel while living in Los Angeles.
“I was burned out on L.A.,” Tambakis said. “You can only deal with the movie business so much. To write literature, you need to be away. I couldn’t see writing this next book in L.A.”
He said his love for writing came at a young age.
“I just wanted to be a writer since I was a kid,” Tambakis said.
At the age of 11 or 12, Tambakis said, he hitchhiked to the Fairfield train station and took the train into Grand Central Terminal to read there.
“I thought it was incredible that a stranger could speak to you through their writing,” he said.
Three books that he said he revisits every summer — and that have inspired his passion for writing — are F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby,” J.D. Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye” and Ernest Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises.”
Tambakis said whenever he is back with family in Fairfield, they always stop at Duchess or Rawley’s Drive-In.
As for his hobbies, Tambakis said there isn’t too much time for them while working on a novel.
“Music and dogs,” he said. “But there’s not time for a lot of hobbies. If you’re not physically writing, you’re always thinking about writing.”
Anthony Tambakis’ debut novel is hilarious — and heartbreaking
Anthony Tambakis (Submitted)
Anthony Tambakis (Submitted)
2
Published July 09. 2017 12:01AM
By Rick Koster Day staff writer
r.koster@theday.com rickkoster
In his debut novel, "Swimming with Bridgeport Girls," Connecticut native and established screenwriter Anthony Tambakis ("Jane Got a Gun," "Warrior," the impending "Sun Dogs" and "Karate Kid 2") deals with some fairly weighty literary constructs. They would include: the distinction between "character" and "personality"; real-world immediacy contrasted by the timelessness of art; and negotiating the structural and aesthetic differences between writing novels and films.
But "Swimming with Bridgeport Girls" is no way reads like a thesis. Instead, it's stunningly comic, with laugh-out-loud lines and descriptions on virtually every page — and yet it's also a tender and desperately sad story of romantic obsession, the shifting sands of a relationship, and the self-delusion embedded in addiction. It's as though Dan Jenkins rewrote "Under the Volcano" — and Parisi, a former creative writing professor and a recipient of the Paul Bowles Fellowship for fiction, nuances the opposite forces of tragedy and comedy with balletic grace.
The narrator, Ray Parisi, is a one-time ESPN sportscaster whose headlong fall from success and what he regarded as a perfectly happy marriage is tied to a raging gambling problem as well as the emotional cocoon provided by his own charisma. His innate self-confidence is such that he refuses to accept with any seriousness that his ex-wife, known as "L," is about to remarry. In fact, he regards her fiancé, a successful, much-older entrepreneur, as a sort of personal affront.
Living in squalor, Ray gets an unexpected break when his estranged father dies and leaves him $600,000. Rather than pay off his debtors and rebuild his life, though, he comes up with a scheme to head to Vegas, hit the tables and turn his stake into $2 million — which would be just enough, he blithely believes, to buy a specific estate once romanticized by L. The gesture, Ray believes, will make her leave her fiancé, and they will rebuild their once idyllic life.
There is plenty of Connecticut lore in the book — in addition to ESPN, the Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods casinos where Ray fans the flames of his burgeoning addiction, as well as the titular Bridgeport girls — but the bulk of the story takes place in Vegas. There, with support from an unlikely comrade, Renee, a runaway teen with a tender heart and a street-wise wisdom that makes up for any lack of formal education, Ray stumbles through the lunacy of Las Vegas. Despite or perhaps because of his own self-deception, he somehow and farcically lands on his feet time after time. When, at last, a rendezvous in Memphis at L's wedding begins to seem likely, Tambakis pulls off a magnificent and bittersweet denouement.
Tambakis, who grew up in Fairfield and now splits his time between Venice, Cal., and New York City, recently answered questions about "Swimming with Bridgeport Girls." His answers have been edited for space.
Q. For all his considerable faults, Ray is a hilarious and likeable character, and his laser focus on regaining his wife seems a supremely romantic if increasingly sad quest. Ultimately, he seems a character flawed by his own charisma. That must have been difficult to write.
A. One thing to remember is that Ray is speaking in the first person, but he's reflecting back on the past. He has a little more self-awareness than in-the-moment. It's only when you're standing in the wreckage that you can actually look at it and see it. That softens it a bit.
It always comes down to the difference between personality and character. If you have a big personality and people like you, it's easy to hide character flaws. Ray's like that. Some beautiful women in our society are never required to develop a character because it's so easy not to. Ray's been winning his whole life by not doing anything — but the big personality guys always and ultimately fail because character wins out.
Q. To counterbalance Ray's seductive likeability, you start off each chapter with a diary excerpt from L. Therein, you see from her perspective Ray's metastazing devotion to a distorted fantasy of the past. These are so revealing and haunting that I don't think the novel could succeed without them. In fact, I became convinced you may well have written L's diary excerpts before the rest of the novel. Did that happen?
A. I do see why you would think that but, in the end, it was almost exactly the opposite. When I started the book, I completely related to Ray but, as I worked the process of his life and finished, I understood L much better. I added the diary excerpts later for much-needed context. The way we always tell our break-up stories — the one you've probably been bored by from friends or family (laughs) — is totally about "me." By which I mean we always tell these stories to be the victim or the hero and to portray the ex as a total shrew or whatever. But there are always two sides.
Q. You sure know a lot about gambling and casinos. Is there anything in your past that we should know about?
A. (Laughs) I grew up in Fairfield, but not the rich part. But we all knew each other. Half of my friends were already preordained to be doctors and successful and they definitely had it together. Fairfield connotes preppy. We didn't grow up that way — the rest of us were drunks or artists or blue collar workers — but we wanted that money. We'd spend a lot of time in Bridgeport because you could gamble — even at 14 if you knew the right people.
My grandfather took me to the jai alai in Bridgeport and we'd go to the races at Belmont Park. And we did it not to have fun so much but to make money. In 1985, (former Mets pitcher) Dwight Gooden went on a 16-game winning streak and we rode that. Every time he pitched, it was like they handed us money.
Q. You mentioned that you comprehensively outline each character before you start writing. How hard is that, and how does the natural and overall flow of humor play into that?
A. You have to be an insane person to write. Hemingway said it was easy. "Open up a vein and bleed." My process is to do a lot of prep work — outline, character development, and figuring out everything ahead of time. It's all ready, and I work that way with the movies, too. I literally have maybe 3- or 400 details about each character. If I do that, then on good days, a character might take off, and I become nothing more than a glorified stenographer. And if they're funny characters, well ...
The character Ray cracked me up all the time. I miss that guy. Of course, there are elements of my voice in there but, for example, the conversations between Renee and Ray are completely a result of their characters, and I just found myself laughing out loud at them. Those are the best days. That's the magic for me. Then you revise and revise. One of my advisors once told me, "You're finished when you've exhausted a story's potential for meaning."
Q. Renee is a tremendous character. In no way does she represent Ray's ideal of a soul mate — only L does that — but Renee is so sweet and funny that I found myself wondering if you'd dig a hole for yourself: if her relationship with Ray doesn't end well, do you significantly damage the reader's sympathy for your protagonist?
A. That's a spot-on observation. If you write a really sympathetic character that people feel for, you can't have the protagonist (screw) her over. Or at least I can't. I suppose it depends on what the goal is. But with both the original ending and the published version — which were very different — Renee ... well, let's just say I always had the knowledge that she had to have a happy ending.
Q. It's very rare that, in general, comic novels or films are given as much intellectual heft as more serious efforts. To me, "Swimming with Bridgeport Girls" is very much a work of literature — even as I laughed through the darkness. Do you worry about how the book will be perceived in this context?
A. It's a concern, though typically I run away from any kind of marketing stuff. If (the publisher or critics or readers) want to put it in a certain category, they will. I think calling it a tragicomedy is probably best. The tragedy is there but the humor cuts that and there are elements of both. I don't think anyone would recommend it as a strictly "funny" book because it's more than that. I'm very happy with the way it came out.
Anthony Tambakis
Anthony Tambakis is the recipient of the Paul Bowles Fellowship for fiction writing and a renowned screenwriter. He is currently adapting the 1961 novel and film The Hustler for Broadway and penning the screenplay for Swimming with Bridgeport Girls, his first novel. A native of Fairfield, Connecticut, Tambakis lives in Venice, California.