Play It Straight

By Brendan Broderick

In 1992 James Flynn lands a bottom-rung job at Commodore Pictures, a notorious grindhouse studio that launched the careers of countless Hollywood legends in the 60s and the 70s. A chemically-enhanced epiphany during the riots convinces Flynn that success depends on befriending Gordon Luker, Commodores visionary founder and industry rebel, who has reportedly gone insane and become a virtual recluse. Flynns quest for Luker leads him through an increasingly surreal landscape filled with natural disasters, an historic murder trial, several relationships, and a host of unforgettable characters ranging from the super-famous to societys outcasts. As Flynn closes in on Luker, he begins to understand what really called him West in the first place.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Sep 27, 2012
• ISBN: 9781475924879

Brendan Broderick

BRENDAN BRODERICK has written the screenplays for numerous B-movies and action films. Play it Straight is his first novel.

Book preview

PROLOGUE

When the independent film Dragonfly Summer struck box-office gold, Ron Conlon suddenly became the hottest movie star on Earth. Critics compared this new, moody teenager to James Dean: he was young, he was Edgy, he was one of the New Breed in Hollywood. He scowled sensuously from the cover of virtually every magazine, waved to screaming fans wherever he went, dated starlets and lingerie models, and ran with a superstar crowd.

The huge studios tasted blood after Dragonfly Summer and quickly cobbled together a knockoff titled Crocodile Tears, with Ron playing a moody teenage rebel again. The public turned out in droves for Crocodile Tears, so there was an almost immediate follow-up titled Lightning Strikes Once, with Ron playing a moody teenage rebel again. That one did respectably at the box office, though not nearly as well as the previous two.

Then came The Summer I Walked to the Moon, in which Ron played a moody teenage rebel again. This film sank like a stone, and the critics turned on Ron Conlon, ridiculing his apparent lack of range as an actor and branding him a flash in the pan.

After this embarrassing misfire, Ron called his renowned agent, Lou Dellascarpa, and demanded answers. Lou suggested that Ron play completely against type for his next project to show the world what kind of chops he had and landed him the lead in Mister Watson, Come Here. Despite increasing concerns of studio executives and poor early buzz, the sweeping life story of Alexander Graham Bell went forward—huge sets were built, hundreds of millions were spent. Ron and the director, Jan Klumpers, clashed almost immediately. Ron began to arrive late or not at all and referred to Klumpers only as Nazi swine. (Klumpers was Dutch.)

As expected, Mister Watson failed spectacularly. Ron fired Lou right after that, actually defaming him in the press one drunken night. Lou sued Ron for slander as a result, the two settled out of court, and Lou quit the business shortly thereafter. Jan Klumpers returned to Europe and never worked in Hollywood again.

After Mister Watson, Ron’s increasingly erratic behavior became regular tabloid fodder: Ron Conlon in Bar Beat Down, Ron Conlon Torches Aspen Chalet, Ron Conlon Suing Studios, Ron Conlon’s Bizarre New Beard, Ron Conlon Claims Phones Tapped, Ron Conlon: ‘Accountants Left Me Penniless.’ On and on it went until the press and the public tired of his antics, and soon it became clear that Ron Conlon’s run was over. His boyish cuteness had completely expired, and the money and the models and the superstar friends all evaporated from his life, as if part of a brief, intense dream.

This is how Ron Conlon—once the biggest movie star on the planet—found his way down to Commodore Pictures in Venice, California. He’d play a moody teenage rebel again at the age of thirty-two for a straight-to-video feature called Canyon’s Edge, the tale of a group of teenagers and a murdered girl found by the edge of a canyon—near a river. By this point, Ron had a paunch, jowls, and a prominent bald spot that the makeup artist would cover up with a type of aerosol hair product.

Though the casting choice seemed laughable, it was standard procedure at Commodore. Actors’ being too old or out of shape never mattered as long as the studio could squeeze some more juice out of a recognizable name. They would just tack an old picture of Ron on the box, put a gun in his hand (regardless of whether he ever held one in the film), and bill him as "Ron (Dragonfly Summer) Conlon." Someone would actually buy the film, or at least rent it, and by then of course it was too late: Commodore—or, more specifically, The Big Man—had already profited.

There was a saying at Commodore Pictures that if you worked there, you were either on your way up or on your way out. If Ron Conlon had bottomed out, then James Flynn figured he would pass him, going one direction or another.

The day before shooting began on Canyon’s Edge, Commodore held an orientation for the new production assistants, a grim process in which the second assistant director met with the team to explain Commodore’s rules and regulations and what was to be expected. Most of the individuals were new to the job and had no idea what they faced. Attendance was mandatory, so Flynn showed up once again and waited with the others in front of the studio entrance, a dirty white stucco building that led to the stages. Flynn had been to an orientation before and knew what to expect, so this time he hid in plain sight, standing front and center. True to form, when Pudner arrived he ignored him, instead scanning the periphery of the group for weak prey.

Carl Pudner was the seemingly permanent second assistant director at Commodore, a wiry malcontent with a face like Early Man: heavy brow, bad skin, rotten teeth, long, frizzy hair and a hunched posture. His leadership style—or lack of it—focused on derision and humiliation, and though this method proved effective with the occasional newcomer, most people would end up realizing the aggravation wasn’t worth it and stop coming in after a while, only to be replaced by more new fish.

Flynn and the new faces stood about in the parking lot with the sun setting behind them. Pudner took his sweet time arriving in his ripped T-shirt and filthy cargo shorts, tugged low by the weight of a Motorola walkie-talkie radio in the front pocket. Without introducing himself, he approached with a rolled-up stack of call sheets in his hand. He pointed up and down at one very short, frail recruit dressed in a flipped-collar polo shirt, white windbreaker, pressed chinos, and penny loafers.

What’s this, midget date night?

The recruit stared back for a moment with a faint smile. What?

"You think you’re gonna work in an office and hang out with actors, right? Wrong. I don’t even want you looking at the actors. You’re a second-class worker ant around here. You don’t even eat until everyone else eats. In fact, if you’re planning on having any kind of life outside this production, leave. The recruit suddenly looked as though he was going to cry. Pudner continued. We shoot till we make our day—sixty hours straight if need be."

Another pudgy-faced new fish sporting a goatee laughed derisively at this. Pudner turned to him. What’s funny?

Sixty hours is like three days, he responded.

That’s right, math genius.

I guess you don’t know it’s illegal to work people that long.

I guess you don’t know we’re non-union, Pudner said, and those rules mean nothing. Get used to that real fast.

I’m not talking about rules, or guidelines, I’m talking about laws. In America there’s something called—

Pudner put his hand up. Stop. You have just established that you’re going to be a problem so you’re not working here. Don’t need the aggravation, bye-bye.

Goatee protested, but Pudner drowned him out with repeated bye-byes until the man finally gave Pudner the finger and walked off. Fuck you! Screw you! he yelled.

Pudner waved him off. All of you are totally disposable. Screw up once and you’re gone.

Throughout Pudner’s ranting, a skinny, pale individual in a dirty denim jacket kept making fake gang symbols with his hands, hooting and cackling to himself and showing off what appeared to be bluish teeth. Pudner approached him. What the fuck are you doing while I’m talking?

I am Todor, denim jacket replied in a heavy Eastern European accent. I am to work on this film pro-duction. To learn this film pro-duction. I work hard. Hard. Todor made muscles.

Shit, Pudner replied. "This is sad. Looks like no one’s going to last."

Flynn listened passively as Pudner continued ranting while distributing call sheets. He knew from experience that most of the people there that afternoon wouldn’t last, but he intended to stay no matter what. The larger question was, Stay for what, exactly? Pudner had clearly found his niche in life, but Flynn saw no redemption in becoming an assistant anything. Something else called him west, and so he would continue to search for a benediction that would somehow justify the journey.

PART I.

1.

Allied Filmed Productions emerged from the Eisenhower fifties and changed its name to New Escapades Cinema with the dawn of the swinging sixties. It became Pacific Entertainment in the seventies and Ninth Dimension Films in the eighties, and then one day the Big Man decided a hard C sound was better for business (Coca-Cola, Kodak). So in the nineties, it became Commodore Pictures. Through all the incarnations, there remained one constant: Gordon Luker, President and founder.

Luker owned not only Commodore Pictures but everything that went with it—the offices, the studio, every camera, every lens, and every light. He pioneered the art of shoestring-budget filmmaking long before anyone else tried it, and his business model of making films for nothing and thus never losing money on them made him a wealthy man. Despite having launched the careers of some of the biggest names in the business, no one really knew of him outside of Hollywood.

Luker had been in the grindhouse business for forty years. In the early days before video and cable, he frequently directed his own films. As the years progressed, he detached himself, delegating responsibility to an ever-changing group of hungry associates who were willing to work for nothing in exchange for experience that might someday lead to that Big Break.

Due to high turnaround, making any sort of impression on Luker proved difficult. Your role in the organization made a difference, and if you landed a job at the corporate office in Brentwood, you had a better shot. Luker hired only Ivy League graduates—the best and the brightest—to work at the corporate office, and even interns needed the right connections to work there without pay.

Commodore’s studio in Venice was another matter altogether. Anyone could work there: drunks, addicts, the residentially challenged, the mentally disturbed, the dispossessed, criminals and ex-cons, imbeciles, malcontents, outcasts from all walks of life—all were welcome. This is where Flynn began.

He had come out on a tip from a contact he worked with in New York named Sean Hurst. Flynn met Hurst at a local TV station, where they ran errands for boozy, washed-up anchormen. At the time it seemed like the greatest job in the world because they were working in TV, but it was actually a dead-end assignment and Hurst had picked up on this before Flynn. So Hurst struck out to visit the West Coast.

The two kept in touch, and one day Hurst told Flynn he had found a job at Luker’s studio down in Venice at the edge of the ocean. Hurst said it was the place where people went to be discovered. There was always work at the studio, he said, and though the pay was virtually nonexistent, the long hours prevented one from spending money anyhow.

Flynn moved from New York and began in the Art Department as a production assistant, picking up props and putting knobs on fake doors. By accident, Flynn also landed jobs there as a second-second assistant director, which, despite the title, had nothing to do with being a director. Flynn soon realized it didn’t matter what he did or what the hours were, whether he was a production assistant or a second-second AD, he needed money while he figured out where life would take him.

At first Flynn stayed with Hurst, but he had brought enough cash out for the classic one-two in L.A: a car and a place. The Recycler advertised apartments to share, so he went looking and saw a lot of stained carpets in dark, overgrown courtyard apartments on the west side. They all depressed him the first day out, so he ambled to the south end of Venice to forget it all and stumbled upon a dingy bar called the Red Baron. Upon entering the dive, he felt instantly at home and fortified himself with a few drinks before heading back into the sunlight. He passed a sign for an apartment to rent off the southern end of the speedway, which turned out to just be a room with a bathroom, but it worked for him. He got it on the spot. The next day, he bought a dilapidated BMW with three hundred thousand miles on it for seven hundred dollars, and he was set, ready to let New York fade away—all the old buildings and old faces and old pain. Most of all, he was ready to let Her fade away.

One afternoon shortly after Flynn settled into this new, claustrophobic space, he thought of Her, how the memory of Her seemed odd in his mind in the context of this new place. It caused him to wonder if She still thought about him, wondering where he was or what he might be doing the same way he thought about Her still, on and off throughout the day.

2.

Despite the fact that Canyon’s Edge was going straight to video, or perhaps because of it, Ron Conlon placed extensive demands and riders in his contract. One such demand was a private trailer, affording him space and privacy. This amenity was unheard of at Commodore, but when it became clear that the trailer was a deal breaker for Ron, they finally agreed.

Ol’ J.W.—Commodore’s grizzled transportation captain—hadn’t anticipated this request. Having lost the remaining transportation budget on a horse at Santa Anita, J.W. had to scramble to find Ron a trailer. He reached out to a buddy named Freedom who lived year-round in a trailer with his old lady down at the beach parking lot. When Flynn saw J.W. tow in Freedom’s rusted, corrugated metal trailer, he knew they were in for trouble.

The day Ron arrived and first laid eyes on his trailer, he immediately thought it was a practical joke and tried to be a good sport about it, laughing loudly and looking around, waiting for someone to come out and bust him about it. When he realized no one would be coming out and busting him about it, the laughter ceased. Did you honestly think I would spend a second in there? his rant began. It smells like a rotten fucking sneaker in there! Do you know who I am? I’m calling my manager! Only after much shouting and many calls back and forth to managers and producers did Ron agree to use it—for one day only—until they found a suitable replacement.

The first day of location shooting began way out in Canyon Country. The crew set up base camp in one spot, the communal actors’ trailer in another, and Ron’s private trailer far around the bend, away from camp. Pudner assigned Flynn the responsibility of escorting the actors back and forth to set, so Flynn had to scramble all over the canyon to get all the actors settled. The Transportation Department rented a van to make this process easier, but J.W.’s driver never arrived with it, inexplicably, so they had no van for the day.

At one point, Flynn asked Todor to guard Ron’s trailer while he walked the half-mile to get the other actors. He implored Todor to stay put, and Todor gave him a thumbs-up, so he headed off feeling confident that Todor understood this basic request. A minute later, however, Todor ran off to play hacky sack with some of the grips, and in a case of Murphy’s Law perfection, the power went off in Ron’s trailer. Ron came out in his bathrobe to find himself alone in the middle of nowhere. He managed to hitch a ride to base camp with a passing motorcycle cop, and when he arrived in his bathrobe, he demanded to see someone in charge, again.

Pudner was in the production trailer at the time, chewing out a couple of the new interns. Ron stormed in and interrupted him, screaming at him in front of the new fish. Furious, Pudner grabbed his radio and shouted at the Transportation Department to solve the problem at once.

Flynn sat awkwardly between J.W. and Ron as they drove back in silence, bumping shoulders over the pitted road. J.W. eventually fixed the power and left. As he drove away, Flynn saw Pudner charging up the hill through the dust with his long hair flapping in the wind. What’s the goddamn problem up here?

I was getting the other actors to the set, Flynn replied. I had Todor covering for me.

Who? What the fuck are you talking about? Pudner demanded. Are you high?

To-dor. The new foreign guy.

I fired that useless dipshit hours ago.

Well, he probably didn’t understand because he’s still hanging around, Flynn said.

I don’t care if he is. This mess is yours. You own it. Pudner ranted for a few minutes about how he didn’t want to hear another peep from Ron Conlon, that Ron was ready to walk, that Flynn was terrible at his job, so on and so on. Flynn just listened and nodded until Pudner stormed off, and then he planted himself firmly in front of Ron’s trailer door.

Flynn smoked several cigarettes and then out of boredom decided to actually read the shooting script. It wasn’t very good, particularly the dialogue, of which there didn’t seem to be much. On the cover, it said, Screenplay by June Simpson. It seemed that she wrote all the screenplays at Commodore, at least the ones he’d seen lying around.

Everything changed when Melanie arrived. She was the summer intern from Santa Barbara, out to break into the movies with a little help from her wealthy father, who happened to be a long-time friend of the Big Man. Wherever Melanie wandered—which is all she really seemed to do—her voluptuous body caused most of the crew, both men and women, to trip over themselves. She approached Flynn in her low-cut T-shirt and short shorts, smiling faintly and announcing, I’m Melanie, as if she needed an introduction. Flynn smiled back. James Flynn, he said.

Melanie asked for a light and Flynn gave her one, and then she asked how Ron was doing. Flynn told her he was keeping to himself, and Melanie nodded, smoking her cigarette awkwardly before asking if Flynn had met a lot of stars working at Commodore. Flynn said, A few, and she asked for names, so he rattled off an unimpressive list of actors, mostly veterans of recently cancelled TV shows. Melanie crushed out her cigarette and asked Flynn what he did, and he explained that he was the second-second assistant director. Clearly unimpressed, she ran her hands through her long brown hair and sat down and perused the day’s sides as Flynn pretended to read the script, all the while ogling Melanie out of the corner of his eye.

Flynn felt no particular satisfaction calling himself a second-second assistant director. He longed for something more but wasn’t sure what that something was. Should he be an actor? He couldn’t act and didn’t want to. A producer? He didn’t know where to begin, and he didn’t like talking on the phone. A director? The hours were too long, and he didn’t know if he had the chops to handle it. Flynn was simply biding his time at that point, waiting for someone or something to give him direction.

Pudner suddenly came on the radio announcing lunch, so Melanie stood up, stretched, and asked if Ron was coming too. Flynn knocked on Ron’s door twice and got no response, so he quietly poked his head in to find Ron shuffling around in his bathrobe, gently patting his spray-on hair. Ron looked at Flynn and gestured to an Arby’s salad in a plastic bowl on the counter that had been there all morning. He inquired if this was the salad he had requested for lunch. Flynn nodded and asked if he wanted something else, and Ron laughed, sat down, and blew his nose.

In an epic lapse of judgment, Flynn headed off with Melanie, taking a scenic walk back to the parking lot, where they set up lunch. Flynn hoped to get to know Melanie a little and sensed that she was genuinely flirting with him. Before he could determine this one way or another, however, Pudner burst on the radio again. Flynn! What’s your twenty?

When Flynn explained that he had left the trailer to get some food, Pudner went ballistic. He ordered Flynn to return immediately to Ron’s trailer or else, so Flynn loped straight back, without lunch and without Melanie. He plunked himself back in the chair to sit guard, knowing full well that all the food would be gone by the time he got back, if he ever got back. With nothing else to do, Flynn resumed reading the derivative Canyon’s Edge screenplay, and as he thumbed through the pages he suddenly heard a long, wheezy laugh emanate from Ron’s trailer, one that clearly hadn’t come from Ron. Flynn stood up and listened for a moment, and then it happened again, followed by mumbling and then Ron’s pleading voice saying, Okay? Okay? Flynn knocked, and Ron yelled for him to