Colan had been no different. For most of his 36 years of
life, films had sustained and carried him. He would never forget his first
drive thru experience. His mother and father had taken them to see something he
thought he really wanted to see until he turned around to look at another
screen in the tri screen theatre. There he watched, without sound, Legend.
Shortly thereafter his father had left and he fell completely into the world of
moving pictures as his mother had to leave him to fend for himself as she had
to work more. So he watched movies, every kind he could watch.
He had been raised in a back-water Oklahoma town called Chandler
right outside of Oklahoma City. When he had become high school age he had
talked his mother into letting him go to the best high school in the state
located in Norman Oklahoma near Oklahoma State University. There he had started
the process to get into the University of California Berkeley. From there he
had gone to Tisch School of the Arts at New York University with a 4.0.
Colan had graduated full of zest, zeal and an appropriate
amount of artistic angst. He had hit the independent film scene on fire. His
first three movies had been shot down instantly. The people he pitched to
insisted that Americans didn’t want to think. They wanted blood guts and
senseless violence. He had been unconvinced. The public took what they could
get. He was going to make films again.
All of his professors had seen the idealist in him and knew
what that meant. One by one over the years they had warned him away from
Hollywood. Make films overseas first, he had been advised. No no no, he had
been a patriot. He had only wanted to give his creations to American audiences
first. With the choices being Disney and Hollywood, he had chosen the later.
So, there he had gone. Hollywood was everything he thought it
would be and a slew of other things he hadn’t expected. He had expected to be
disgusted. To be insulted as the art he loved was being canonized and mass
produced without thought or originality. What he hadn’t expected was to be
lured in by the potential of ultimate power. To be held enrapt by the bright
lights the lifestyle, the parties, the drugs, the sex. Some of those women he
had met along the way had been willing to do anything. Anything at all for a
shot. The realization of all that has been lost happens much later.
Ironically, the most seductive lure of it had been the
competition. Being better, doing better hopefully in a way that shows everyone
how bad someone else is at this job. Colan had started as a rigging grip. After
5 years of wheeling and dealing, flaunting his degree, his good looks, and
southern charm, Colan Abrams from bumfuck Oklahoma and a broken home was the
most sought after movie producer in Hollywood. He had gotten to be an assistant
of a producer within a year and half of being in the company. Produced his
first film within the next six months as the man he was working for cracked
under the pressure. Pressure, Colan had eagerly and liberally applied. That
year he had turned a summer blockbuster that would’ve fallen on its ass with
the previous producer into a multi-million dollar worldwide hit.
The rules are simple for success in Hollywood. Money is the
name of the game and the only resume item that’s respected. Rule one summer, it
was luck. Rule two summers, the kid might have what it takes. Three summers
followed by a killer Halloween and an amazing Christmas showing. Baby the kid’s
a star.
Colan was a country boy at the core of his being. He hadn’t
been used to women that looked like Hollywood wanna be starlets did. He had never even let himself imagine men
willing to prostitute like Hollywood wanna be leading men did. Like any naïve
young man, he had lost his way. He had been exposed to it during school.
Needless to say, it wasn’t the same.
In the past the purity of the art of crafting film had kept
him focused and removed from much of the party life. Soon he learned that he
wasn’t really making films anymore. He
was in the business of making money. With the purity of the art gone, all that
was left was this sickening people pulsing floor show. When the lifestyle had
started not to be enough he had become a little worried. When the drugs had
started to not be enough, his worry escalated. When the sex became practically
another form of currency he had started having full blown panic attacks.
Two years ago, Colan Abrams, multi-billion-dollar movie producer,
film company executive, and all around Hollywood behind the scenes badass, suffered
a nervous breakdown. His perception of the world had never been the same since.
Coming June 2017
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