I met a 74 year-old guy named Billy around the pool.
“Did ya hear I was on a chain gang?” he said to me.
I don’t know about you but I’ve never really known anyone who spent time in a gang, together in chains, in the south, hunted by bloodhounds, etc. My journalistic instincts were buzzing.
(Note to self: the buzzing sound could have been a speedboat on the Delaware River to my left or a truck on the Delaware Expressway (I-95) to my right.)
(Note to self: you are using too many parentheticals.)
The first thing Billy said to me (even before the chain gang story) was that he didn’t talk to his younger brother. Why the brotherly disgust in a city of brotherly love? Here’s why. The brother had recently approached Billy’s girlfriend and said, “Billy doesn’t love you; he loves another woman. He’s just using you. He calls you his ‘Lottery Girl’ or worse and he tells the world that he’s only with you for the money and perks.”
Whoa! Hey-now! What a rotten thing to say about your brother, right?
“It was rotten,” Billy told me. “It happens to be true, though.”
Yeah, that led to an awkward pause.
“But still,” he added.
I knew what he meant.
WRITING ASSIGNMENT: I dare you to start your character description in your next screenplay like this (and make it seem plausible): “Our hero is a 74 year-old gigolo and former chain-gang member.”
Like the journalist I once was (in a past life) I asked Billy, “Why you? What made the cops, back in 1950-something, decide that you, a nice, clean-cut kid from Lower Merion (a cushy Philly suburb that also produced Kobe Bryant) were a dangerous animal who needed to be chained up in the Florida heat?” (And this was before they invented Gatorade.)
“Mistaken identity,” Johnny claimed.
My homeless buddy, the Artist Formerly Known As Otis, blamed the same type of bad luck for his multiple arrests in cities and small towns worldwide.
I told Billy what Otis often told me: “I was there -- but I didn’t do it.”
“That’s right,” Johnny replied. “I was in a bar. Someone ….”
You can guess the rest.
That creepy sound you just heard was the Florida judge’s gavel (in a steamy 1950 courtroom) slamming “guilty” against the miniature guillotine set-up on his desk. (BTW, miniature chain-gang set-ups weren’t invented until the 1960’s; there was one big-seller which featured Oswald and Ruby on the same chain-gang.)
ANSWER TO WRITING ASSIGNMENT: Your new character description should read: “Our hero is a 44 year-old gigolo and ex-motorcycle-gang member.”
Notice what I just did to my main character? I changed everything about him and made the concept less interesting but more commercial. That means I’m thinking like a producer. If this writing thing doesn’t work out, and a lot of people are betting it won’t, I can always rent a house with a pool and print business cards that read, “Donnie Anonymous – Producer.”
If I changed my name to Donnie Anonymous, I’d probably become well-known.
(Note to self: if you become too well-known, watch out, because … “The more you have, the more you have to lose.”)
(Note to self: Despite my own admission earlier in this blog that I overuse parentheticals, end this blog with one.)
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