An Open Letter to The Wheatley School Alumni Community

Dear Wheatley School Alumni and Other Interested Persons,

This letter describes the interactions between three Wheatley graduates, and the subject matter arose out of Wheatley School Alumni Association activity. I humbly ask for your indulgence in reading, at your discretion, what is NOT a Wheatley School Alumni Association Newsletter.

I graduated from The Wheatley School in 1967. Tom and Jill Glaser, husband and wife, graduated in 1968. I am writing because Tom and Jill have committed a grave injustice against me, and maybe this public accounting will help me achieve a measure of fairness.

Tom’s parents, Viktor Glaser (1907-2000) and Daisy Kars Glaser (1922-1969), Czech Jews, went through the worst horrors of the World War II European Holocaust: cattle car transports; the Lodz (Poland) Ghetto; the Auschwitz Concentration/Death Camp; Angel of Death Josef Mengele’s life-or-death selections; and death marches through freezing German territory. That they both survived, returned home, and reunited is nothing short of miraculous.

Shortly after the Americans liberated Viktor and the Russians liberated Daisy, Viktor wrote a long letter, in Czech, to a cousin about his experiences. Eventually, two non-professionals translated the letter into English. In or about 2019, Tom asked me to publish the translation in The Wheatley School Alumni Association Newsletter. I told Tom that I would do so if I could drastically improve the English. He agreed, and I did. I published the result in Newsletter # 41, February 14, 2020.

Wheatley School Alumni Association Newsletter # 41

While expending considerable time and effort re-translating the letter, I thought, “This would make a great movie.” I told a successful screenwriter that I wanted to write a screenplay, and he said, “You can’t just write a screenplay; you have to know how to write a screenplay.” I asked him how I could learn. He recommended that I read three of the screenwriting “bibles.” I did, taking extensive notes and writing five pages of my own “screenwriting rules.” In or about September of 2020, I started writing “Viktor Glaser’s Holocaust,” and I’ve never stopped.

I learned that “Hollywood” will not bargain with more than one person for the rights to a screenplay, so, for $15,000, I hired a Los Angeles lawyer to draft an agreement by which I supposedly would obtain all rights from the Glasers, and they would receive, collectively and as previously agreed, half of anything I earned (I later learned that 10-15% would have been exceedingly generous, but I didn’t much care, because I wanted a movie much more than I wanted money). I had registered VGH with the United States Copyright Office under the names of Tom, Jill, and myself, simply as an act of good faith, so that the Glasers would not worry that I was trying to steal VGH out from under them (which I wasn’t).

I am not an “Intellectual Property” lawyer. But, in retrospect, from the outset, I don’t think Tom and/or Jill had any legal (much less any moral) rights at all in VGH. They did not write Viktor’s letter. Tom asked me to publish it publicly, which destroyed any arguable personal legal rights he may have had. And, finally, Tom had no “family story” rights, because VGH is not the Glaser “family story.” It is what Hollywood calls an “adaptation,” a fictionalized version of an earlier work. VGH is true to the spirit of Viktor’s letter, and it includes many facts about which Viktor wrote, but it also includes characters, scenes, dialogue and actions made up entirely out of whole cloth (based primarily on my knowledge of history and my own creativity). It covers a limited number of years. In no way could VGH be considered the “life story” of the Glaser family or any particular Glaser. (In any event, according to Google’s A.I., “Technically, no one owns the rights to their own life story.”)

Operating The Wheatley School Alumni Association and publishing the Newsletter takes a lot more time than you would think, probably at least by a factor of 10. Similarly, you would be amazed at how much time and effort I spent on trying to get VGH historically accurate. I researched how Auschwitz and other death camps operated, including how Zyklon B was administered. Every time I invented another Nazi, I consulted Google for “names, German, 1940s.” (BTW, I agreed to change one German name because it turned out to be the name of the beloved dog of one Wheatley graduate!). I spent hours researching and discussing, “The Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves.” I learned mid-century European currencies and measurements, ways of referring to dates, Nazi uniform protocols, the various Nazi troop organizations, the geography of Prague, and on and on.

I read the full text of screenplays of several of my favorite movies, such as “Casablanca,” “Titanic,” “Terminator 2: Judgment Day,” “The Shawshank Redemption,” and, of course, “Schindler’s List” and “The Pianist.”

I created an on-line “pitch deck,” and an on-line “synopsis.”

Viktor Glaser's Holocaust Pitch Deck

Viktor Glaser's Holocaust Synopsis

I used Final Draft screenwriting software, the industry standard. I laboriously converted the Final Draft version to Microsoft Word and .pdf versions for posting on Google Docs.

I was not shy about asking for help. To date, I have sent drafts of VGH to approximately 290 people, most of whom gave me feedback that I had to process, both to improve VGH and to show my appreciation. Notable among Wheatley advisors are Melanie Artim (1974); Tim Boland (1967, himself a successful playwright); Karen Bartscherer (faculty); Leslie Buckner Strauss (1967); Bob Halper (1965; with whom I spent six hours going over every line, sometimes debating every word); Laura Jarett (1967); Claude Levy (1966); Mitch Stephens (1967); Elizabeth Stone Matho (1963); Chris Vasan (1968); and others to whom I hereby apologize for omitting. Some of my best advice came from “JN,” a writer in Australia.

What probably took the most time was editing the entire 115 or so pages approximately 90 (that is not a typographical error; ninety) times (including this past Saturday, which, as usual, took virtually the entire day). Every draft was better than the last; the writing became spot-on.

Tom and Jill helped in various modest ways; occasionally commenting on the writing and telling me various stories that Viktor had told them, several of which I incorporated into VGH. They provided some lovely family photos, which are incorporated in the Pitch Deck. Of course, I assumed that they were doing this to better VGH, not to monetize their contributions (which, BTW, nobody else did). Tom Glaser often proclaimed, “I’m not a writer.” Well, VGH is a writing, and I wrote it.

The result of all this time and effort is, IMHO, probably the greatest Holocaust screenplay ever written, and arguably one of the greatest screenplays on any subject ever written.

Viktor Glaser's Holocaust Screenplay

People would sometimes tell me that excellent Holocaust screenplays have already been written and filmed, citing “Schindler” and “Pianist.” Oskar Schindler was not Jewish, and neither he nor Władysław Szpilman (the pianist) was ever an inmate in a Nazi concentration camp. VGH is, as far as I know, the most accurate screenplay that is actually about the Holocaust. It is a brutal, in-your-face, no-holds-barred depiction of the day-to-day experiences of millions of camp inmates. It portrays the beatings, the hangings, the shootings, the gassings, the cremations, and the burial of corpses. Many people told me they cried when reading it. It is also a love story. It is also, paradoxically, very humorous.

In or around the autumn of 2025, Tim Boland asked me whether any Holocaust survivors were still making movies. I researched and found one, Roman Polanski. I called his production company office and the fellow who answered, who I later found out was a Hollywood legend, asked me to send him a link to VGH. A few days later he told me, “This movie has to be made” and that he would put together a team to do it. A few days after that, another Hollywood legend (collectively, “The Hollywood Heavy Hitters” or “HHH”) called me and said, “I read your screenplay, twice.” He started to lay out how everything would proceed: a press release about the upcoming film; finding the right director and cast; lining up financing; filming in Budapest or Prague itself. He later told me that he envisioned an Academy award nomination in the screenwriting category. I told the Glasers all this, and they were as amazed and as thrilled as I was. They also spoke directly to the HHHs. We were off to the races! What could possibly go wrong?

Here’s what. The HHHs asked if I had any formal agreement with the Glasers. They read it and said, “Nobody in Hollywood will touch this movie unless you can renegotiate your deal with the Glasers.” Simply put, the Glasers retained too much control over VGH, such as the right to veto any deal I made with Hollywood, which defeated the whole purpose. So, I hired a new lawyer to draft a new agreement, worked with the HHHs to make it “Hollywood acceptable”, and sent “Agreement # 2” to Tom and Jill, with the understanding that everything was negotiable. Agreement # 2 would have given Tom and Jill (collectively) $250,000 by its terms (but I assured them that they could have $300,000; I was told that I myself could expect approximately $350,000); would have given them certain rights; and would have removed certain inconsequential rights. The HHHs told me that VGH would cost $100,000,000 (again, not a typo, $50M to film and $50M to advertise). Obviously, nobody in Hollywood is going to shell out that kind of money without obtaining complete control over who got to tell Viktor and Daisy’s story.

Tom has told me that he considered Agreement # 2 “a slap in the face.” He told me that he felt that I would use it to cut him and Jill completely out of VGH, and that the HHHs would use it to cut me completely out of VGH. The exact words of one of the Glasers’ emails were that they “would have gotten Zilch and lost all rights forever.”

There was absolutely no basis for those fears……absolutely none! I had been completely forthright with the Glasers from Day One. The HHHs and I had a wonderful working relationship, and they love VGH. One of them spent countless hours editing VGH with me to make it “Hollywood friendly,” and he suggested some improvements that I incorporated to flesh it out. I added several more scenes focusing on Daisy, which are some of my favorites. We also got VGH “down to fighting weight,” as Hollywood has some more or less strict rules about screenplay length. And how much did I pay them for all this? Zilch!

Tom and Jill refused, and still refuse, to sign Agreement # 2. They also refuse to sign Agreement # 3, which I spent hours writing, which is similar to Agreement # 2 but in plain English.

Towards the end of last year, all Tom and Jill would say about Agreement # 2 was, “But we have a deal.” True, but Agreement # 1 did not obligate me to do anything (it did not obligate me to work on a screenplay or try to sell it), unless I had a movie deal, which nobody would give me unless Tom and Jill relented. Faced with a Hobson’s choice, “this horse or no horse,” they chose “no horse.” I begged the Glaser’s to accept Agreement # 2. In a series of emails (I think there were three), I laid out the alternatives: You can have, $300,000; Tom’s parents will be lionized; Tom will be famous for the rest of his life; and the Holocaust deniers of the world will be punched in the nose, or you can have nothing. They chose “nothing.”

Now, why would the Glasers be this stubborn and self-defeating? They were following the advice of a New York City entertainment lawyer named David F. Schwartz of Gray Schwartz LLP. David told the Glasers not to talk to me directly, which I consider border unethical, and which proved to be catastrophic, because Tom, Jill and I had had many civil, pleasant, productive conversations. David spoke directly to an HHH person who started to lay out how VGH would be made, and David impolitely cut him off with the usual refrain: “But they already have a deal.”

I think David and the Glasers failed to recognize two signal truths. First, what Agreement # 2 took away from Tom and Jill, or prevented them from doing, was laughably insignificant. To this day, I can’t see that any of it mattered, certainly not compared to having VGH become a movie. And they failed to grasp that we needed the HHHs, they didn’t need us. Indeed, the HHHs got frustrated with Tom, Jill, and David’s obstinacy and abandoned VGH. They are now making a movie starring a top Hollywood draw about a legendary European-American artist (you would know both of their names instantly).

One thing that still sticks in my craw is that several months later, when I asked him, Tom said that he had no regrets, no remorse, about his refusal to “play ball.” Another thing, more significant for the present, is that Tom and Jill still refuse to sign Agreement # 2 or # 3.

In retrospect, I did everything right: I came up with a wonderful idea; I learned the craft; and I worked like a dog for years. Miracle of miracles (every year, Hollywood receives 60,000 screenplays and makes 500 movies, less than a 1% chance), I had a movie deal in the palm of my hand; and Tom Glaser, Jill Glaser, and David F. Schwartz flushed it down the toilet.

Upon information and belief, the Glasers have paid David in the neighborhood of $20,000, and all he has done is denied them $300,000 and the other benefits of having VGH become “VGH, The Movie.”

The HHHs have given me the names of a dozen producers who they think would do justice to VGH. I will start to contact them, but VGH’s legal limbo will not be a point in my favor.

Prior to publishing this, I sent a copy to Tom and Jill (and I assume that they sent a copy to David). The only response I received was a request to include Tom’s email address (tompglaser@gmail.com) in case anyone wants to reach out directly to him and Jill.

I would appreciate any moral suasion directed to Tom and Jill. And I would be happy to receive any feedback or advice about any or all of this. VGH deserves to see the light of day. It would be this generation’s classic Holocaust film.

Let’s not let Tom and Jill have the final word. Let’s let Viktor and Daisy have the final word.