Kevin Morris, Literary Giant

I continue to be intrigued by Kevin Morris, Hunter Biden's reputed sugar bro, because he's just one more feature of the whole Biden narrative that simply doesn't fit. He and his wife, Gabrielle Morgerman, a senior VP at the William Morris agency, are reputed to be powerful behind-the-scenes Hollywood figures, but for all that, they've both kept low profiles, except that in recent years, Kevin has been heavily promoting himiself as a novelist, of all things.

Sor far, he's published a collection of short stories, White Man's Problems (2014), and two novels, All Joe Knight (2016) and Gettysburg (2019). As best I can tell, he's been attempting to recasst himself as a major novelist of bourgeois angst, a John Updike for our current epoch, for some time. The review of All Joe Knight at Amazon says,

A prominent figure in the entertainment world who has turned to fiction in the last decade, Kevin Morris received wide literary acclaim with his story collection White Man's Problems, praised by David Carr as "remarkable" and Tom Perrotta as "revelatory". Now Morris cements his place as a bold new voice in American literature with his muscular debut novel, All Joe Knight.

Esquire ran an interview with him in 20l6 at the time of All Joe Knight's debut, and it at least gives us a fuller picture of how he wishes to be seen:

Kevin Morris, one of Hollywood's most successful entertainment lawyers, always wanted to be a writer. Finally, seven years ago, he found a writing space in Santa Monica and started work on his debut novel. In between bouts of trying and failing to get it published, he self-published a collection of short stories, White Man's Problems, for which South Park co-creator Matt Stone, Morris' friend and client, threw a book party. Grove/Atlantic publisher Morgan Entrekin attended that party and soon after offered Morris a two-book deal, to include a novel.

But nothing here fits. In 2009, Morris decided to become a wtiter or something, and he did what every aspiring writer does, he "found a writing space in Santa Monica", one of the most expensive places to rent a space you can imagine. And as a struggling young writer (born in 1963, he was 46 at the time), he tried and failed to get his first novel published. Well, the chances for anyone to get a first novel published are dismal. On the other hand, if your wife is a senior VP at the William Morris agency, that does change things somewhat.

In fact, let's check in on the couple's married life: in 2009, just as Kevin decided to become a struggling young first novelist, according to the Los Angeles Times,

It took singer Olivia Newton-John almost a year to find a buyer for her Malibu home, but she finally did -- and didn’t even have to get physical about it.

. . . The buyer is a trust representing Patrick Kevin Morris and his wife, Gaby Morgerman -- both entertainment industry heavyweights. Morris is an entertainment lawyer and Morgerman a senior vice president at William Morris agency. They own another Malibu house that is on the market.

. . . The Mediterranean-style house has four bedrooms and seven bathrooms in 6,482 square feet. The 1.28-acre compound includes a pool, spa and two-bedroom guesthouse.

The gated neighborhood is no stranger to celebrity owners. Newton-John bought the property in 2004 for $5,995,000 from the widow of actor Charles Bronson, and Britney Spears used to live next door.

So why did Kevin need to find a "writing space" in Santa Monica when he could perfectly well have used the two-bedroom guesthouse in the Malibu compound?

Something else doesn't fit. Novelists can't make money off their writing alone. Even if one of their books makes it to the best-seller list, that just gives a spike in income that lasts only a short time, and then they have to write another novel to pay the bills. As a result, in the modern age, they have to get gigs as cretive writing professors, which is how they make any sort of steady income.

But this is in turn based on a scam whereby undergraduates can be convinced they can make careers as novelists, which they can't -- the only way a novelist can survive is to teach creative writing, and that depends on duping yet another generation of undergraduates into thinking they can make careers as novelists, when their only actual hope is to get a writer-in-residence gig. As Kurt Vonnegut, himself a creative writing professor, wrote, so it goes.

The only way a writer can get rich off writing is to have a novel made into a Hollywood blockbuster, which is how Steinbeck and Hemingway got rich, more or less, although much of that money went to their ex-wives. But Kevin Morris, despite his wife being one of the most powerful agents in Hollywood, has yet to see any of his stuff made into a movie.

I won't dwell on the literary merit, or the lack of it, in his writing, but about all I can tell from the reviews I've read is that he writes about himself. The story lines all involve a kid who grows up poor in Philadelphia, gets rich, but discovers that isn't what it's cracked up to be, and more or less settles into cynical detachment. He says in the Esquire link,

There's always this assumption that somebody comes out the other side of the midlife crisis sort of repaired in one way or another. Either they have a brand new Camaro or they move to England or they go back to their same old job and are happy. Nobody spends too much thinking about: What if somebody just doesn't get happy?

So let me figure this out. Kevin Morris grows up poor in Philadelphia, gets into an Ivy League school, goes to law school and becomes a slick lawyer, marries a powerful agent, and decides to become a writer. But he's already rich. And apparnetly his books don't quite have what it takes to make it into Hollywood movies, even bad ones, despite his wife being a powerful agent. So he lives in this luxury Malibu compound and poses as a writer, sort of a dilettante John Updike for our age. Or at least, that was the story as of 2016 or so.

From what I've seen, Morris met Hunter Biden in 2019, when Hunter would have been at rock bottom and heavily in debt. He seems to have taken on Hunter as some sort of charity project. He appeared in a peculiar episode reported in the New York Post last year, but the filming of My Son Hunter in the Balkans took place in 2021:

It was a scene straight out of a film noir: A glamorous Hollywood writer flies in his private jet to a small Balkan enclave posing as a documentarian to gather information on a group of actors and filmmakers in the midst of shooting a biopic about Hunter Biden.

But the star of the surreal scenario that took place last fall in Serbia was Los Angeles-based lawyer Kevin Morris, a friend of Hunter’s who is now being accused of “spying” on the set of “My Son Hunter.”

. . . “On set, a man named Kevin Morris arrived and told us he was working on a documentary exposing Hunter’s corruption,” a tweet from the official “My Son Hunter” site declared on Tuesday. “He told us he was a retired lawyer associated with South Park. We allowed him and his crew to interview us, cast members, and film on our set.”

. . . Morris is a highly successful lawyer and a self-made businessman, who rose from humble origins in Pennsylvania to launch his own firm, raking in hundreds of millions for his first clients, the creators of “South Park.” Now he’s thrown in his lot with the disgraced, drug-addled son of a president, filming his own documentary about Biden.

“The whole thing is so bizarre,” one Hollywood insider told The Post. “What is a guy like that doing with Hunter Biden?”

The story goes on to detail the help Morris has given Hunter with his Hollywood connections:

The Hollywood attorney even found a high-powered literary agent for Biden, 52, when he was writing “Beautiful Things,” a 2021 memoir that chronicles his drug and alcohol addictions. Biden was so grateful for Morris’ counsel that he included him as part of “the outstanding team behind this book” on the acknowledgments page of his memoir.

In fact, both Morris and Biden are represented by the same agents — Aevitas Creative Management — which looks after Morris’ own works, the novels “All Joe Knight” and “Gettysburg,” and the short story collection “White Man’s Problems.”

But this is another piece that doesn't fit. The total income from all three of Kevin Morris's books is probably in the low two digits per month now. It probably isn't even worth it for that agency to continue Morris as a client. If he were a real writer, he'd certainly have to have a teaching gig.

It almost sounds as if Morris, who represented himself on the set of My Son Hunter as a retired attorney, has now also retired as a writer and is spending his time and considerable resources trying to rehabilitate Hunter Biden -- a fool's errand, it would seem, and for what reason, we don't know.

But beyond that, I'm more and more convinced that Hunter himself is a distraction. Rather than the kingpin of the Biden family frammis, he's been an enormous drain on Joe's fortunes, to the point that it's worth asking where the family money is in fact coming from if it never came from Hunter. And this may also be reflected in the strange, near-obsessive appeal Hunter has for Kevin Morris.

There's a great deal more to learn here.