Robert Kaplow

Kaplow was born to a Jewish family in New Jersey on May 30, 1954.^[4][5] He graduated in 1972 from Westfield High School in Westfield, New Jersey, where he wrote his first satirical sketches as a student.^[6][7]

One of Kaplow's later novels is sprinkled with references to Westfield. "Westfield remains for me the geography of my youth. I'm still very drawn to the place, though I don't live there," Kaplow said in 2009.^[8]

He graduated from Rutgers University, the state university of New Jersey. He became a teacher at Summit High School, working there for over thirty years before retiring in 2014.^[5][9]

Kaplow conceived the idea for Me and Orson Welles while a student at Rutgers University. He saw a photo in the periodical Theatre Arts Monthly from 1937 with Orson Welles with a young man.^[10] Kaplow wondered what the young man might have been thinking. He wrote the story, but it took about nine years to find a publisher.^[10] It was made into a film by director Richard Linklater which was released in 2009.^[2] The Guardian critic Sophie Martelli described the film as a "schmaltzy yet charming coming-of-age story."^[11] Me and Orson Welles was a New York Times bestseller^{[citation needed]} and the film in 2008 starred Zac Efron and Claire Danes. The movie was filmed in the Gaiety Theatre on the Isle of Man.

Kaplow's subsequent novel is a satire of writers, critics, and publishers.

For National Public Radio's Morning Edition, Kaplow created "Moe Moskowitz and the Punsters," a series of musical and satirical pop-culture parodies.^[12] These musical parodies were released on two CDs: Steven Spielberg, Give Me Some of Your Money and Cancel My Subscription: The Worst of NPR.^[5] Kaplow was fired from NPR on three separate occasions, the first because of concerns that the Moe Moskowitz character was a Jewish stereotype, the second over the perceived quality of the segment's humor, and the third because Cancel My Subscription's CD release featured an unlicensed use of the NPR logo.^[5][13]

Kaplow wrote the screenplay for Linklater's 2025 film Blue Moon.^[5], for which he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay.

As of 2025^[update], Kaplow is a longtime resident of Metuchen, New Jersey.^[3][13]

The Watcher

The 2022 Netflix show The Watcher, based on a real-life incident that occurred in Kaplow's hometown of Westfield, features a character loosely based on Kaplow named Roger Kaplan, portrayed by Michael Nouri, who is presented as a suspect of being the author of the mysterious letters.^[14] Kaplow became associated with the case during his time as a teacher, when he told students that he had written a number of letters to a residence in Westfield, as opposed to anyone who lived in the house.^[9] There is no known actual connection between Kaplow and "The Watcher", and Kaplow said in 2022 that the letters he wrote were to a different house in which he eventually befriended the residents.^[9]

Bibliography

• Alex Icicle: A Romance in Ten Torrid Chapters, the comic rant of an over-educated and under-loved eighth-grader obsessively in love with a girl who doesn't know he's alive
• Alessandra in Love, a comic tale about the romantic tribulations of a sardonic and intelligent high school junior
• The Cat Who Killed Lillian Jackson Braun: A Parody, satirizing the books of Lilian Jackson Braun and the mystery genre
• Me and Orson Welles: A Novel (2003), a romantic coming-of-age story set in 1937 around the founding of Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre
• Who's Killing the Great Writers of America? (2007), a satirical murder mystery. After Sue Grafton, Danielle Steel, Curtis Sittenfeld, and Tom Clancy all are murdered, Stephen King hunts for their killer
• Playland: A Slightly Subversive Love Story (2022), the tale of a teenage couple attempting to navigate a life together in New York in the summer of 1972
• The Lifers (2022), a novel about teachers

Screenplay

• Blue Moon (2025)^[5]