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Frosting on Werner’s Cake

Nov 8, 2004  •  Post A Comment

What do you get the man who has everything? If he’s Tom Werner and his Boston Red Sox have just won the World Series, you get him a meticulously decorated, chocolate-mousse-filled cake and champagne and sing him a rousing chorus of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” led by Mr. Werner’s partner in TV moguldom, Marcy Carsey.

That’s how Mr. Werner was welcomed back to the West Coast by Carsey-Werner employees who had grown bleary-eyed following their boss’s team through a marathon American League Championship Series and the shorter but ever-so-much-sweeter World Series.

The Insider hears that Mr. Werner was still in victory shock when he entered the Carsey-Werner conference room expecting to meet talent for a potential project and instead was greeted by “Surprise!!!!” from a chorus of C-W types that included, ’tis said, a couple of Yankees fans.



Grossman’s Book ‘Action’



Gary Grossman’s first novel, “Executive Action,” will be followed in October 2005 by a sequel. “Executive Action” is being shopped by Endeavor (Mr. Grossman’s theatrical reps) and BroadThink (his literary reps) as a potential film. “Action” has been so warmly received that mystery/crime best seller writer Edna Buchanan offered a blurb for the paperback edition, which is due out in August.

So it’s about time that Mr. Grossman-one half of L.A.-based Weller/Grossman Productions, the source of thousands of hours of TV programming including two of The Insider’s all-time favorite HGTV shows, “Simply Quilts” and “The Carol Duvall Show”-got some book party “Action” in New York.

And that’s just what’s going to happen at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 10 at the Kips Bay Borders, which is so close to The Insider’s Manhattan apartment that even she, the congenitally anti-ambulatory personality, will feel pressured to walk home afterward, not hail a cab or hop a bus. Over coffee on a recent trip to New York with co-founding partner Robb Weller, Mr. Grossman recalled how being in New York on 9/11 inspired him to write the heavily researched political thriller-at the pace of two pages a day-that “ultimately is about our relationship with the Middle East.

“I don’t club anyone over the head with it,” Mr. Grossman said.

The Insider is relieved. At 519 pages, such “Action” could do some damage.