 The movie of "Marjoe" won the 1972 Academy Award for Best Documentary, and although the film was not based on Gaines' biography, the attention brought by the Academy Award helped promote the book "Marjoe" into a religion bestseller and establish Gaines' career as a writer.The same year "Marjoe" was published, Gaines became editor of "Circus", a national teeny-bopper rock and roll magazine, and he also began a six-year run as the "Top of the Pop" columnist for the New York Sunday News, on alternate Sundays, dual positions that gave him a catbird seat in the fast lane of the rock and roll business during the golden era of the seventies.Gaines spent a year on the road living with Alice Cooper, and in 1976 he published "Me, Alice," by Alice Cooper with Steven Gaines, the first autobiography of a rock star.