Background

Hi. I’m Weisbecker. Think of me as Allan. Welcome to my website.

I'm the author of Cosmic Banditos (“Outgonzos Hunter S. Thompson!” proclaimed the UPI book review headline), a semi-autobiographical novel and an absurdist tale of a band of crazed modern (or post-modern, or post-post-modern) fugitives including a dog named High Pockets. They're all on a deranged quest to confront a physicist who holds the secret to The Meaning of Life, plus they have a question or two for a nymphomaniac named Tina, who also knows some things…

It’s a funny book.

I'm also the author of In Search of Captain Zero (“A dangerous tale, filled with humor, insight, lawlessness, heartbreak, and some wicked cool waves” raved the Chicago Tribune), which is my memoirist chronicle of my real-life Heart of Darkness journey through the wilds of Mexico and Central America in pursuit of a missing old buddy, who had disappeared somewhere “beyond the end of the road” – and my relentless need to understand “the inner dreads I would seek to shake.”

And it's funny, too, believe it or not.

Both of the books have been optioned for the movies: In Search of Captain Zero by Sean Penn and Cosmic Banditos John Cusack, with myself doing the initial screen adaptations. In the past I've collaborated in screen and TV writing with the likes of Michael Mann [Miami Vice, The Insider, Heat, the Last of the Mohicans] and Robert Chartoff [Rocky, Raging Bull, The Right Stuff].

How the movie deals are actually going is another story. (A hint: Sean Penn has wished me “something resembling death.”)

Yup, funny too.

Speaking of which: Now there's my third book; another goddamn memoir. (If shit would quit happening to me, I’d quit writing memoirs.) This one is aptly titled Can’t You Get Along With Anyone? A Writer’s Memoir and a Tale of a Lost Surfer's Paradise, and in it I take my need to know everything to my personal end of the line, nearly paying the ultimate price when my inner dreads surface with a vengeance. (Truman Capote had it right: what seemed paradise is mere scenery, a curtain that, lifting, reveals pitchforks and fire.)

Six years in the living of the events and in the writing of them, and by far my most ambitious work, Can’t You Get Along With Anyone? A Writer’s Memoir interconnects my passion for writing, for wave riding, for finding someone to love in this world, and – ultimately, for truth, in a heart-rending account of my improbable life.

And as I say, it's funny, albeit in a harrowing Doctor Strangelove meets Franz Kafka meets The Endless Summer way, if you can wrap your mind around that convoluted allusion.

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Before I direct you to the link to more stuff about my new book (and tell you where you can buy it), a word about my site: It’s just had a complete revamping. I’m also no longer at the end of the road paradise called Pavones, down in outback Costa Rica. My bolt from that paradise is the crux of my book. And what “paradise” really means.

If you haven’t done so already, I urge you to subscribe to my newsletter (which I’ve been calling my Down South Perspective, DSP for short). It’s free and there’s going to be some wild ass stuff on it soon.

Click here to learn a bit more about Can’t You Get Along With Anyone? A Writer’s Memoir and a Tale of a Lost Surfer's Paradise, including why Sean Penn wished me “something resembling death.”

And surf my site: my In Search of Captain Zero photo tour is especially worthwhile, I think. Here’s a direct link. But please check out my new book: you can click My New Book on the home page to get there too.

Click here to go to some Reviews of CYGAWA. (I must confess that this is my favorite link of them all.)