The introduction to my 2002 book: Cinematic Dwarves

Subtitled: How Chad Lowe and the Black Hand of Elite Hollywood Short Guys Control the Industry.


My wife Jane enjoys a few glasses of red wine before bed, and she has the cutest chubby little fingers. I love each and every one of them, but they just don't possess the nimbleness required to handle a wineglass. A few years ago, Jane spilled a little vino into the laptop that the book I was writing was on. The data was irretrievable, but I forgave my wife instantly and completely. I never make fun of her fingers, which I call "my nummy widdle sausages" but now I remove all glassware from her hand and serve her her wine in a large-handled plastic safety container reminding her "We don't want any accidents!"

All I have left from my years of exhaustive documentation and writing are these intro passages from the inner and outer jacket.


The journey of research and realization recounted in this novel stems from a very personal experience. I saw Wesley Snipes and how short he was in the D.C. train station. I wasn't taking a train. I was just buying a pretzel. Wesley Snipes was dazzlingly good looking and dapper in his purple hat and on his way to the NCAAP awards being held in D.C. the same night as my cousin's wedding. Wesley Snipes is a good egg for going to that NCAAP awards show. He's great. I love his movies and I once edited some slander out of his wikipedia page, so it is not lightly or with any malice that I tell you: Wesley Snipes was not an inch over five feet tall. I had to actually squat to look at his face under the brim of his purple hat. It was no trick of the light. It's not like you need to have shortdar. It's not like gaydar or toupeedar, requiring skills of nuanced judgment that are not universal. Even children are accurate in gauging if someone is taller or shorter than them.

I saw a little Piven at a baseball game and he was great, but he was so tiny. He looked like a baby with his round head and chubby cheeks. He was a manbaby. I wanted to pick him up, and I don't know, just hold him? I'm pretty sure I asked. You've got to ask the tough questions, sometimes. Hard-hitting, mind-punishing questions. Questions I call "The Noodle Busters." Like why is Wesley Snipes so short? Why are a lot of celebrities kind of short? You ask questions then those questions start asking questions.

I hope this book asks those hard questions, then answers those questions harder. My research has inexorably concluded this worldwide conspiracy of Elite Hollywood Short People goes on right in front of our faces in our movies, our television shows, and our commercials. Piece together the snugly fitting fragments:

• Movie and TV studio sets need to be locked down because they are designed by a closed cadre of workmen who have taken an oath never to tell the public they build their sets in 7/10 scale.

• Ask any Director and he will tell you. Directing a movie is largely about one thing: framing the shots so that these tiny individuals don't look as bizarre on camera as they do in real life. It's called "forced perspective" and it's not always possible. In the movie Minority Report, normal-sized actor Max Von Sydow was paired with thumb-sized boy man Tom Cruise and Stephen Spielberg tried to get them as far away from each other as he could every shot, but it still looks like Max could pop off Tom's head and swallow it like a pill.

• Did you know Tom Cruise is careful never to be photgraphed with any coins or dollar bills or any universally sized item that people could use to get a sense of the scale of the actor?

• Did you know if Mel Gibson was just an inch taller, he wouldn't be an anti-semite, a heretic, or an alcoholic? Like Robert Downey Jr. and most other short people, Mel just can't process alcohol or major religions.

• Did you know the average height for Australians is 5' 1"? But converted to Australian (or Crookaroo) that's 5'11"!

• Did you know Chris O'Donnell used to live in a toadstool like a Smurf? The man is three apples high.

• Did you know a lot of these short actors like Wesley Snipes have great bodies because it's easier for short people to work out? How far do you lift a weight? An arm length. Shorter arms means you're moving it less of a distance. He's probably got a really high metabolism like a squirrel. That's just science. 

Wesley Snipes is fit as a fiddle and could literally beat me up with one hand tied behind his back. He could beat me up with the hand that was tied up, because his thumb is stronger than my whole body. But I was hit by an epiphanic thunderbolt the moment I saw how short Wesley Snipes is. It all unraveled for me, the curtain flew back and I could see the men working behind the scenes. The Scientologists. Entertainment lawyers. The men who make special shoes for Russell Crowe, who has feet like a Geisha. A petite but sinister shadow conspiracy concieved in Australia and now run by Chad Lowe, a modern day Adam Weishaupt. This is the story of scores of other smart vicious men in the spirit of Napoleon. This is the story of the schemes and plots these gnomes conduct on a massive scale. It is a story of thousands of California co-conspirators and millions of their unwilling, unwitting benefactors -- movie audiences everywhere. This is the story of a Chad Lowe you didn't meet when he played that retarded kid on that show. Subtle and brilliant, Chad Lowe is a ruthless mastermind with thirsts for cocaine and grisly porn and a taste for vengeance.

This is the story of the littlest guys and the biggest lies, propped up by a complex architecture of misinformation and intrigue that spreads to every facet of the entertainment industry. We must out all the closeted short people, to cleanse our society from their lies, and for the common dignity of short people everywhere. It is misogyny to suggest that women, in all cases, be shorter than men. It would improve the mental health of short men to know that their favorite actors are themselves tiny despite mad attempts to avoid the fact. Disseminating this information can stop these little fellows from manipulating our minds and the movie industry. Metaphorically, we don't want them jumping out of the pies they're baked in and biting us on the finger like Jack did to the giant. This is the story of Cinematic Dwarves.



It should be noted that not all celebrities are short. I saw Famke Janssen once and she's about six foot. I saw her lift a horse cart that had fallen on a peasant girl. Then she broke coins with her bare hands in an ale house as the villagers cheered.