On Monday, Nov. 25, at 7 pm at the West Tisbury library, learn how two screenwriters solved the nearly 30-year-old art heist at Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (and why they had to turn this historic event into a comedy). According to a press release, Arnie Reisman will tell the story of his award-winning original screenplay, ”Rembrandt Has Left the Building,” co-written with Nat Segaloff, based on the world’s biggest unsolved art heist. Reisman and Segaloff’s script offers a compelling solution to who stole the paintings and why they will probably never be recovered. Based on interviews with the two chief suspects and a deathbed confession from one of them, it shows how the robbery was committed, and the dryly funny reasons the investigation ran aground almost from the beginning. This event is free and open to the public. Refreshments served.
Arnie Reisman is an awardwinning writer, producer, and performer. In 2009, with Ann Carol Grossman, he produced for PBS “The Powder & the Glory,” a 90-minute film on the business rivalry of Helena Rubinstein and Elizabeth Arden. The film began the stage musical “War Paint.”
In 2015, the Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse produced his play, “Not Constantinople.” His national telecasts include “Hollywood on Trial” and “The Other Side of the Moon.” In 2014 he was named Martha’s Vineyard poet laureate. He has authored two books of poems, “Clara Bow Died for Our Sins” and “Sodom and Costello.” Since the series began in 1996, he has been a panelist on National Public Radio’s “Says You!” weekly comedy quiz show, sitting next to his wife, Paula Lyons, former national consumer reporter.