Category Archives: Directors

Coming To A Theater Near You?

by Alan Swyer

Actors, Directors, Fiction, Film, Film Crew, Filmmakers, Financiers, Indieprods, Producers, Screenwriters, Short Story 1

It’s the most cliched phrase in filmmaking: “I want to direct.” This screenwriter said it and had nothing to lose. 2,791 words. Illustration by Mark Fearing.

"Hit you for a favor?" Gregorian asked as he and Salter strolled toward their cars after an hour of pickup basketball at a park in Santa Monica.

"Fire away."

"A partner and I have a psychological thriller we’re getting ready to shoot –"

"And?"

"Mind taking a look at the script?"

As though monitored by some advanced form of Google Earth, Salter’s phone rang the very instant he finished reading the screenplay.

Asked Gregorian, "What do you think?"

"See the Dodger game last night?"

"You’re ducking."

"Yup."

"C’mon, I’m a big boy. Tell me your thoughts."

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On The Red Carpet In Cannes
Part Two

by Duane Byrge

Actors, Book Excerpt, Crime, Directors, Fiction, Film, Film Critics, Film Festivals, Journalists, Media, Producers, Publicists, TV, TV News 1

The lead actress of the opening night picture at the Cannes Film Festival is murdered – and a Hollywood film critic is the prime suspect. Part One. Part Three. 3,744 words. Illustrations by John Donald Carlucci.

The French National Police gendarmes hurried Ryan Cromwell through reception, which resembled a cheap hotel lobby, and down a narrow brown hallway. They propelled him into an interrogation room only slightly larger than a bread box and painted gas chamber green. A man in his mid-fifties, wearing a dull black suit befitting a homicide detective, studied a copy of the day’s Hollywood Times. The page was opened to Ryan Cromwell’s review of The Ice Princess. The cop looked directly at Ryan. Then looked down at the paper. Then back up at Ryan.

”We have some questions for you, Monsieur Cromwell,” the detective said in a monotone and perfect English.

”Please, tell me what’s going on?” Ryan’s voice cracked, and his mouth was dry. “Why was I dragged down here?”

“My name is Inspector Thiereaux. I wish to talk about your film critique. In your criticism of The Ice Princess film, you wrote, ‘The script is so bad that one hopes that the film’s signature blue scarf would be stuffed down Kristen Bjorge’s throat so we wouldn’t have to hear her utter another word of dialogue.’”

”What do you mean, ‘stuffed down her throat’? I never wrote that.”

“It is right here.” The policeman shoved the review across the table. Ryan grabbed it and scanned the opening paragraph. He had begun with a discussion about lead actress Kristen’s screen presence. None of that was there.

“These are not my words,” Ryan said.

“I do not understand.”

“Sometimes the editors cut or rewrite my reviews. This is appalling. Because it blatantly misrepresents my thoughts. I would never take such a vulgar and aggressive tone. It’s so Internet.”

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On The Red Carpet In Cannes
Part One

by Duane Byrge

Actors, Book Excerpt, Crime, Directors, Fiction, Film, Film Critics, Film Festivals, Journalists, Media, TV, TV News 3

A Hollywood film critic pans the opening night picture at the Cannes Film Festival – and suddenly he’s in police custody. Part Two. 2,430 words. Illustrations by John Donald Carlucci.

The half moon was smudgy white but ripening nicely for its full appearance at the Cannes Film Festival. Like a diva, it would not make its entrance until the final Saturday which the organizers already were proclaiming an evening of perfect alignment when “La Lunar Festival” would ascend to its spot of high honor in the dark blue Mediterranean sky. At the moment, the moon was glowing so exquisitely above the sea that it could have been a special effects rendition.

For a brief second, Ryan Cromwell savored the spectacle. Because the moon, the sea, the breeze, and The Ice Princess party were all his. It was the hottest Cannes invite in years. A sexy publicist from DeSimio & Associates had offered Ryan $250 for his ticket and, when he declined, she had upped the ante with an X-rated proposition. Ryan said no because he had a bad case of “Cannes Disease,” a contagious desperation that you had to be doing something every minute, and if not, you were missing something somewhere. Because the one event you decided not to attend would be the highlight of the festival.

Ryan was the senior film critic for the Hollywood Times, the top trade paper for the movie industry. He stood just over 6 feet with wavy dark hair and a physique toned by daily afternoon runs at the UCLA track and regular Tae Kwon Do workouts at a dojo on Sunset. He dressed well, but erratically, and when he won special praise for his “costume design,” as he called it, he took it as an indication that he lacked style at other times. He had just turned 38, and this was his eleventh trip to Cannes. It still always overwhelmed him that he was at the celebrated film festival, where the likes of his movie idols had graced the Red Carpet. Despite his modesty, Ryan knew that he belonged; his reviews set the tone and held the future for many of the films that would debut here in competition. The world would be reading him.

Standing in line to get into the party, Ryan was tapped on the back. He turned to see Stan Peck, his least favorite journalist. Peck wore a Hawaiian shirt, large sun visor and blue metallic sunglasses.

“Where’s your cigarette holder, Hunter?” Ryan asked.

“Slightly funny,” Peck responded. “I hoped to talk with you about your scathing review of The Ice Princess. It’s already the talk of the festival. I loved your lead: ‘Big guns, big gadgets, big hair, big dud.’”

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The Insect Wrangler
Part Two

by Robert W. Welkos

Animal Performers, Animal Trainers, Assistants, Directors, Fiction, Film, Producers, Short Story, TV Leave a comment

The two most important females in his film life betrayed him — the human and the spider. 3,657 words. Part One. Illustration by Thomas Warming.

The weeks pass and we find ourselves on an indie shoot in Hawaii. Some of the crew needle me about the young chick at my elbow. I put on a serious face and tell them to f-off.

The production is called Early Warning System and it’s being financed out of Hong Kong by two Chinese brothers who may or may not be Communist spies. At least, that’s the rumor circulating on the set.

The brothers are constantly in our faces. The director, who is also Chinese, would like to quit and return home but rumors persist that he could be shot if he did so.

Anyway, the brothers wrote the script, which centers around these Cadillac-sized insects — Lucy, Penelope and a bunch of hoppers — taking over the Big Island of Hawaii. The bugs have been super-sized by all of the lava flowing into the sea from Kilauea. Hey, they’re paying for this picture, so who am I to complain about the plot?

The film features Chinese actors and anyone we can get on the Big Island as atmosphere.

For our big scene, Lucy is to attack the hoppers.

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A Matter Of Principle

by Michael Brandman

Directors, Distribution, Executives, Fiction, Film, Film Crew, Hollywood Guilds, Hollywood Scandals, Lawyers, Moguls, Short Story, Studios 2

Little has changed in the movie business from three decades ago when nepotism, sexual harassment and racism ran rampant. 3,837 words. Illustrations by Mark Fearing.

Hollywood — Fall/Winter 1988

The sign on the door read: CAPITOL PICTURES, OFFICE OF THE CHAIRMAN.

The Chairman, Leo Moody, often joked that when the Board of Directors finally got around to shit-canning him, they’d save money by not having to change a name.

I was sitting in Moody’s outer office, across from his long time assistant Marie Liotta, who was at her desk sorting the morning mail.

From inside Leo’s office we could hear him hollering into the phone.

"He shouldn’t be doing that," Marie said to me.

"Doing what?"

"Yelling like that. You know he had surgery."

"What surgery?"

"Vanity surgery. He had his neck done."

I didn’t say anything.

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The Interview

by Mark Jonathan Harris

Directors, Fiction, Film, Film Critics, Indieprods, Media, Short Story, YouTube 1

He may never win an Oscar as a director. But he might snag one for acting. 1.932 words. Illustration by Mark Fearing.

The interview takes place in a suite at the Mark Hotel in New York. Although the director detests speaking to journalists, he understands the imperative of publicizing his new film. His last two movies disappeared with barely a trace; they can’t even be found on YouTube. At 59, he knows that if this film tanks, he may no longer be able to continue doing what he loves.

The interviewer is 26, a recent graduate of an obscure film school where the director fears he may be exiled if this film also fails at the box office. The aspiring critic has made several short YouTube videos analyzing movies of directors she admires and has begun to develop a following. She thinks that an interview with this controversial director can build her audience even more. Although she loves his first movie, his new film puzzles and disturbs her. She’s not sure what to make of it, or the director. At film school she took a class in documentaries and agrees with Jean Rouch, the French anthropologist/filmmaker, that the camera can unlock closed doors and provoke subjects to reveal more about themselves than they realize. She hopes the camera will do the same today and help her make up her mind about the director. She’s never filmed an interview before, though, and she’s apprehensive about it.

She knocks softly on the door of the hotel room. The director opens it, glass in hand. She wonders if it holds water or vodka. Entering the suite with her camera equipment, she looks around uneasily.

INTERVIEWER: I thought your publicist would be here.

DIRECTOR: I don’t have a publicist.

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Mentor

by Alan Swyer

Actors, Directors, Fiction, Film, Producers, Screenwriters, Short Story, Stunt Performers, TV, TV Writers 1

The young writer loved listening to the Hollywood history that the veteran shared. Was it true? 2,451 words. Illustration by Mark Fearing.

Hearing more and more stories about Hollywood in its heyday, Kaplan often found himself musing about how much he had missed. Not that his life had been boring or circumscribed, coming as he did from an industrial town in New Jersey where he had been a part of worlds never seen by kids from suburbia. In that blighted but interesting environment, he grew up with sons of the local Mafia, became one of only two white kids on the high school basketball team, and by the age of 16 financed excursions into Lower Manhattan by selling bags of oregano, catnip, and twigs to rich kids. Later he was an impoverished American in France with an expense account, thanks to a gig he hustled writing the Paris section of a travel guide for the youth market.

But the Hollywood that Kaplan later encountered was run by MBAs rather than moguls, and populated by “bankable" actors who seemed more like flavors-of-the-month than the stars of yesteryear. But as a young screenwriter then lunching with a stuntman turned writer-producer turned director on nothing but margaritas, chips and salsa, Kaplan was hooked.

Long enamored of the original version of Kiss Of Death — and even more of Richard Widmark, who carved a special niche for himself in film noir history by pushing an elderly woman in a wheelchair down a flight of stairs — the scribe was stunned to learn that his lunch partner, in drag, had done the stunt. Even more astonishing was that Verlaine had arrived on the set that day simply to visit his girlfriend, an actress who had landed a small role in the film. Only when every professional stuntman on the shoot balked at the far too dangerous gag did Verlaine, who had been searching for a way to make a name for himself in the business, volunteer.

Ironically, the largely alcohol-based lunch set up by an agent attempting to steer Kaplan away from feature films and into episodic TV was in many ways a mistake professionally. Because it came on the day when Verlaine, deluged with ridiculous network notes, received one that was a deal-breaker.

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Fat Caesar

by Jay Abramowitz

Actors, Agents, Child Actors, Directors, Diversity, Executives, Fiction, Momagers, Networks, Short Story, Showrunners, TV, TV Sitcoms, TV Writers 3

The unemployed TV writer joked about the most depraved series ever for a black kid. Uh-oh. 3,254 words. Illustration by Mark Fearing.

Eric Ornstill was imparting phony inside tidbits about Tom Cruise during another of his tours to the homes of the stars when the name of his former agent, who’d fired him a few months earlier, lit up on his phone. Eric jerked the van to the side of the street and informed his tourists he was about to present them with a very special treat: a conversation between a habitually unemployed TV comedy writer and a bona fide Hollywood dealmaker. He tapped the speaker icon on his cracked iPhone 4 and turned to face his confused passengers.

“Denny?” Eric asked, trying to mask his incredulity.

“Network’s got a show for some kid under contract,” said the agent. “Want to meet him?”

A few hours later, Eric called Denny and reported on his meeting with the talent and the talent’s manager.

“I sat in the Yum Yum Donuts at Melrose and Highland, with an African-American woman and her son, the star of the series, a somnambulant 5-foot-8, 286-pound 12-year-old who occupied the two chairs opposite. The mother didn’t pitch me a premise, she pitched a bunch of fat jokes while her son never took his eyes off his cell phone and consumed the contents of a box of Boston creams. It was clear to me that this grotesque excuse for a parent considers it in her interest – and, yes, in her son’s interest – that the kid remains morbidly obese for at least as long as it takes to produce a hundred episodes of the piece of shit she pitched me, if he lives that long.”

“And you nodded and smiled, right?”

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Press Play
Part Two

by Tom Musca

Actors, Directors, Fanboys, Fans, Fiction, Film Schools, Filmmakers, Screenwriters, Short Story Leave a comment

It becomes clear that the scheming student filmmaker’s only talent is for blackmail. 2,602 words. Part One. Illustration by Mark Fearing.

As the evening was drawing to a close, Danny Shields began to question his plan. Would he ruin his chances of being accepted at the USC School Of Cinematic Arts in the traditional way in the event the admissions office came to their senses and recognized his genius? If he replaced his cousin Chuckie with real actors, Danny was certain his movies would more than hold their own with the early works of notable auteurs.

It was now 9:30 p.m. and many of the alumni and a few of the prospective students were beginning to leave. At the buffet, Danny reached for the last of the salmon and maguro sushi that had been exposed to the air too long. It was that precise moment when Danny caught J.T. Quinn’s mirrored reflection approaching in a stainless steel tray. As Danny slid a few inches sideways, the Admissions Office executive absentmindedly stepped behind him, hovering only a few inches away, still indecisive on whether he would indulge himself with the picked-over platters.

Danny was on autopilot since he had envisioned a version of this very scenario at least fifty times from twenty different angles when he initially hatched the idea. He took out his refurbished iPhone and held it over his shoulder, as if he was casually photographing the gathering in a master. Danny reversed the lens, pivoted to his left, pressed record, then suddenly stepped backwards into Quinn, as if momentarily losing his balance, squishing his face in victim mode, the same way he had been rehearsing on the bus. J.T. reflexively mumbled, “Excuse me” and wandered off. Danny hit pause as Quinn steered his wife to the door, oblivious to what had just happened that would change his life forever.

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Press Play
Part One

by Tom Musca

Directors, Fiction, Film, Film Schools, Filmmakers, Short Story Leave a comment

The wannabe director seeks acceptance to elite USC film school any way no matter how sordid. 2,385 words. Part Two. Illustration by Mark Fearing.

The lights dimmed, the conversation stopped, the phones vanished, and the film came on. Being the first day of the new semester, the screening room was packed with film brats who had flocked to L.A. to study at the world’s most prestigious film school. Most of the time screenings started seven or so minutes late but tonight’s began on the dot. These were films the School of Cinematic Arts never wanted to show.

There are only a handful of top-tier film schools and even folks outside the business have a notion of the pecking order: UCLA, NYU, AFI, Columbia, Cal Arts followed by UT, Emerson, Chapman, LMU and perhaps U of Miami. But with little debate the consensus #1 cinema school is USC. Especially for directors. George Lucas, Ron Howard, Ryan Coogler, Judd Apatow, Jay Roach, John Singleton, Robert Zemeckis, James Ivory, Jon Turtletaub, Doug Liman, Jason Reitman, Taylor Hackford, James Foley, Walter Salles, Jon M. Chu, and Elizabeth Allen Rosenbaum just to name a few. Add to that a slew of up and coming female directors soon to make their mark on the industry. Shit, Steven Spielberg got rejected from the program and he still endowed the school with half a million smackers.

No shame there because getting into USC film school is now more difficult than getting into Harvard. While other film schools were ransacking China to fill dwindling enrollments, USC could afford to reject 97% of its applicants. No one knew that better than Danny Shields, for he had already been rejected four times.

Colleges are intentionally vague about their decision-making processes, and in the diversity frenzy gripping Hollywood, it didn’t help that Danny was a white male applicant from a community college who would require financial aid. Still, Danny Shields was not easily deterred, which is, of course, a very desirable trait for a filmmaker. Directors need to be stubborn and Danny Shields was not going to be ignored.

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Firing Forsyth
Part Three

by Nat Segaloff

Actors, Agents, Directors, Fiction, Film, Producers, Screenwriters, Short Story, Studios Leave a comment

With tensions climaxing, the filmmakers wonder if they can convince the famous actor to quit. 1,649 words. Part One. Part Two. Illustration by Thomas Warming.

Operation Death moved through the studio slowly but surely. Casting proceeded apace. Costume fittings were routine for a contemporary picture. Naturally, Forsyth would be contractually permitted to keep his clothes. Sets went up on schedule and, as expected, Dr. Doherty’s home, seen in only one quick sequence, was decked out with expensive dark brown shag carpeting.

Director-screenwriter Allan Spanner was Overseeing storyboards for the screenplay when his agent ordered him to find some place private to take the call. He chose the men’s room off the office.

“Are you sitting down?” the rep asked. “I just got a call from Pete Trimble, the newspaper columnist for one of the Chicago papers. He said he was letting you know that, under Writers Guild rules, a writer who is hired to write behind another writer has to inform the first writer.”

“What are you getting at?” Spanner asked.

“Pete Trimble is a friend of Brendan Forsyth. It looks like your old buddy has hired his old buddy to rewrite your script.”

“You mean the one we’re starting to shoot on Monday.”

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Firing Forsyth
Part Two

by Nat Segaloff

Actors, Agents, Directors, Fiction, Film, Film Crew, Producers, Screenwriters, Short Story Leave a comment

The celebrated actor starts driving the filmmakes crazy. Can they control him? 2,191 words. Part One. Part Three. Illustration by Thomas Warming.

The first phone call started as an innocent inquiry.

“Does he have to drive an SUV?” Brendan Forsyth’s agent asked.

“Why not?” Charlie Greene, one of the two producers on the film Operation Death starring Forsyth, asked back.

“Brendan feels that the character would drive something sporty. Say, a Porsche.”

Don Masaroff was an old-time ten-percenter who brought his client list with him when he’d hopped agencies the year before. He was known as a gentleman, had repped Forsyth since forever and was used to nudging producers rather than playing brinksmanship.

“The man’s a middle-aged surgeon,” Greene said. “Plus, we’ve lined up a promotional tie-in with GM for free vehicles in exchange for an onscreen credit. A Porsche wouldn’t be in character or in the budget.”

“Brendan thinks the character should be more daring,” Masaroff said, ignoring Greene. “That raises the stakes for his encounters. Besides, a lot of middle-aged guys buy a sports car. It’s a rite of passage, you know? I did.”

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Firing Forsyth
Part One

by Nat Segaloff

Acting Classes, Acting Coaches, Actors, Directors, Fiction, Film, Film Schools, Producers, Screenwriters, Short Story Leave a comment

A comedy-action star stretches to take on a daringly different dramatic role. 1,705 words. Part Two. Illustration by Thomas Warming.

Brendan Forsyth was a green-light machine. Ever since he shot to stardom opposite Ryan Howson in Gangsters Two, the pair playing two lovable rogues, he had become one of those rare Hollywood commodities popular with both public and critics. He was also smart. He had a social conscience and supported many causes and charities, but he kept a low donor profile. His marriage was stable and the press treated him and his wife, Barbara, with respect. He was selective with interviews.

His ability to choose projects was equally remarkable. He famously passed on the starring role as the ship builder who rescues all the passengers in the disaster picture Sea Doom because it was the builder’s flawed design that put everybody in jeopardy in the first place. Rather, he wanted to play the captain of the rescue liner because that was the only guiltless character in the script. Interestingly, Howson had no qualms playing the ship builder, and the re-teaming scored a box office record.

Forsyth would even take a supporting role if he thought it could help a picture get made. That garnered him a lot of good press, but it also made his fellow actors wary of him. And yet the guy was just so likable that they had to forgive him. What other big star would have played the fireman for barely ten minutes in the children’s movie, Cathy’s Kitten? Because his daughter loved the books, that’s why. Or the voice of a paranoid caller on the TV series Shrink Rap? Because the sitcom was his guilty pleasure, and it set off a trend of celebrity cameos.

So when Forsyth agreed to play the hotly contended role of Dr. Bob Doherty, an alcoholic surgeon who climbs on the wagon to save the U.S. President’s life in the medical thriller Operation Death, it was seen as another daring decision by the iconoclastic star. Producers Adam Hoffman and Charlie Greene were thrilled; Larry Cooper, the retired surgeon who’d written the bestselling novel, was honored; and screenwriter-director Allan Spanner was eager to work with his friend of twenty years dating back to when they were both struggling actors.

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The Minder
Part One

by David Freeman

Actors, Book Excerpt, Completion Bonds, Directors, Fiction, Film, Momagers, Recording Artists, Screenwriters 1

Who’ll be tapped to tame a young starlet with wild ways? 2,762 words. Part Two.  Illustration by Thomas Warming.

It was two o’ clock in the morning and Caitlin Harper was weaving her way east on Sunset Boulevard in her A5B3E0F0-C9C6-486D-B9BF-98B356EAA0EBCadillac Escalade. She’d had a lease on that enormous black beast for all of two days. Three of her pals were on board. Caitlin had sworn up and down to her agents, her manager (who was also her mother), her lawyer, possibly her accountant and to her one friend who had some common sense, that at night she would always have a driver. She would never, day or night, drive after drinking. She probably meant it when she said it, but Caitlin was twenty years old and famous. She did whatever she wanted to do whenever she wanted to do it. Caitlin had recently seen Bonnie And Clyde and was in a Faye Dunaway mood. She’d taken to wearing a black beret, imagining herself an outlaw on the run.

Caitlin Harper might have been the only pop diva I had heard of. That’s because everybody had heard of her. You couldn’t look at a screen or a magazine without encountering her round and lubricious face. She pouted her way across the American media with her high and swollen breasts pushed nearly out of her famous swooning necklines. I couldn’t name any of the songs she was associated with though I had seen a few of her movies.

On this night all that weaving from lane to lane, complicated by those Dunaway dreams, sent her diagonally across Sunset, over the lushly planted road-divider and into a telephone pole near the Beverly Hills Hotel. The pink palace as it was known was the property of the Sultan of Brunei, a personage that I’m sure Caitlin had never heard of though it’s entirely possible that the Sultan had heard of her. A woman in one of the big houses on Foothill Road was awakened by the noise and called in the accident. Caitlin had been drinking, which is what she was usually doing at two In the morning, unless she was having sex or possibly both at once. She was wearing her seatbelt, though I doubt it was buckled at the moment she wrapped the Escalade around that pole. It was a triumph of ingenuity that despite the inconvenience of interference from two airbags, Caitlin had enough of her wits about her to buckle up even if It was too late to do much good. Caitlin had banged her head on the side window which caused a mild concussion, but that was all. Concussions are one of the many things that seatbelts prevent. No one seemed interested in such pesky details. Her chums were bounced around a bit though the serious damage was to the pole and the Escalade.

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American Beast
Part Two

by John D. Ferguson

Actors, Directors, Executives, Fiction, Film, Film Crew, Moguls, Screenwriters, Short Story, Studios 2

Slowly and painfully, the one-time movie star comes back from near death. 2,232 words. Part One. Illustration by Thomas Warming.

Everything hurt.

He tried but he couldn’t move; restraints held his arms and legs down. There was something A5B3E0F0-C9C6-486D-B9BF-98B356EAA0EBover his face, something heavy and damp, and there were tubes in his nose feeding cool air into his nostrils to control the rate of his breathing. Pain vibrated throughout his body but it was a dull ache, not a sharp piercing, that ran from his neck to his toes. Something was masking the real feeling. Just when he felt he could open his eyes, he would pass out again.

There were times the famous movie star Tommy Shaw heard voices hovering above but he remained in a constant state between dreams and consciousness so that the voices hardly seemed real. Were they talking to him or amongst themselves? One time he could clearly hear the conversation:

Take it easy on the morphine, Mr. Clovis… We do want him to wake up some day. Can he handle the pain, Doctor? He moans so in his sleep… Gradually, okay?… We need to lower the dosage over the next few days… We must concentrate on getting Mr. Shaw back to full consciousness and then we can regulate the pain… You can see him trying free himself… Mr. Shaw, please try not to struggle… Your wounds will bleed… Please, sir, listen to the doctor.

Then Tommy would obey the voices and stop fighting against the restraints and fall back to unconsciousness.

Tommy Shaw’s recovery from his near coma, to his weeks-long stay in bed, to his standing and trying to walk, took over a month of painful rehabilitation. He couldn’t attend Helen Porter’s funeral; her family came and took her body back to Springfield, Illinois, and they made it clear that no one from Hollywood was welcome to be there. Fans left flowers and postcards with their condolences and hopes for a speedy recovery outside the gates of the mansion. Universal Pictures sent over food from the town’s best restaurants and Carl Laemmle sent over a signed blank check for whatever Tommy needed. No visitors were allowed in the house. It fell solely to Clovis to prepare his master for life as his new self.

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American Beast
Part One

by John D. Ferguson

Actors, Directors, Executives, Fiction, Film, Film Crew, Moguls, Screenwriters, Short Story, Studios 1

A 1920s Hollywood film star undergoes a shocking change in life and lifestyle. 1,843 words. Part Two. Illustration by Thomas Warming.

The children on Sunset Boulevard would play catch or kick-the-can or hide-and-go-seek in front of the dilapidated A5B3E0F0-C9C6-486D-B9BF-98B356EAA0EBmansion and shout, “The Beast is in the house!” whenever they looked up to the top window and saw the curtain move. They did this on purpose and would scream with delight and also a touch of fear. Because they knew that they’d attracted the attention of the Beast and that he was watching them.

The children had heard all the stories from their parents. That the house belonged to the once great silent picture star, Tommy Shaw, and had been beautiful in its day. “Such a shame! What a waste of real estate to have this house, now in shambles, in one of the most expensive neighborhoods in the country.”

The front yard was overgrown with wild bushes and fallen limbs. So different from ten years before it happened. Back then, the mansion stood majestically behind the carefully trimmed shrubs and bushes, the trees in constant bloom. And the walkway, all gray slate, led to the white marble staircase with the black iron railing that ended at the large front door made of oak with a brass doorknob and knocker. The mansion back then stood three floors high and had three gabled roofs; it was said to have twenty-five rooms, including twelve bedrooms and a ballroom where Shaw would entertain all of Hollywood on a Saturday night. Also on the estate were even more magnificent gardens with a tennis court, riding stables and a swimming pool. They said it was a house that Jay Gatsby himself would have built if he’d had the money!

Tommy Shaw built this mansion in 1925 when he was one of motion pictures’ highest paid stars and his name was mentioned in the same breath as Chaplin, Chaney and Fairbanks. Some said he was making ten thousand a week, some said it was more. He planned on marrying Helen Porter, a young star in her own right, and bringing her here and raising a family. Of course, that was before early 1929 when Shaw’s life and dreams were swept away within minutes.

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