3/14/23
Newsletter #275
The Crack of Dawn
Somewhere around 1990 I saw a documentary called Hell’s Angels Forever (1983) about the history of the Hell’s Angels motorcycle club. A few of the bikers were discussing the fact that they were already second-generation bikers. Their fathers had returned from WWII with various forms of PTSD, had no interest in conforming and fitting back into society, bought motorcycles and started clubs. This was before the formation of the Hell’s Angels in 1948, which was really an amalgamation of several earlier clubs.
I got the idea of telling the tale of the creation of the very first motorcycle club, which they don’t even know is a club – they’re just a bunch of vets who like motorcycles and take a road trip. I set the story in the Midwest and populated my fictitious group with vets from all branches of the service. My leads were a Marine from Detroit and a sailor from Toledo who meet on a bus leaving from San Diego taking them home in 1946. On the bus the sailor meets a girl who gets off in Texas.
Back home in Detroit, living with his parents and kid brother, the Marine purchases a “knocked down” (KD, meaning band-new, in the crate, and never assembled) U.S. Army Harley-Davidson WLA 45 motorcycle for $50, which is true. You could get a KD Willy’s Jeep for $100. The black army supply sergeant who sells our hero, Homer (I wrote this before The Simpsons), who already owns a WLA 45, helps Homer assemble his bike. Homer’s 17-year-old brother enviously watches the two men assemble the bike, drink beer, and discuss a road trip. Wanting to be included, the brother buys an old (only sixteen years old), 1929 Harley, with pedals, for $25. Being a kid, he jazzes up his bike with a brand-new invention called a “transistor” radio, a wooden box with an aerial that he affixes to his bike. Now they’re adventures are accompanied by big band swing jazz.
They meet up with the sailor, who rides a 1938 Indian Four (meaning four cylinders) that has an electric starter. The four men ride south heading to Route 66, where they head west intending to visit other vet buddies in Fontana, CA, which is where the Hell’s Angels started. Along the way they meet several other vets who also aren’t fitting back in that either have motorcycles, or quickly procure them, and the gang grows. As the weather warms, they shed their coats revealing their many service tattoos. They stop shaving and grow beards. The 17-year-old brother gets a tattoo because the other guys have them.
Along the way, cleverly set up in the first scene in the bus with the girl, our bikers get to the panhandle of Texas where the girl lives, and it’s a town with a secret. A biker is unfairly arrested. All the other guys decide to not take shit from the local cops and go get him out. Action ensues. Most of the gang, battled and bruised, make it to California, and thus the idea of the motorcycle gang grew . . .
I wrote the script. My buddy was playing basketball with the Fishman brothers who had just made Tapeheads (1988) and were about to make Posse (1993). They read my script, liked it, and took an option, meaning they gave me money – not a lot, $3,000, but it was more than anyone else was giving me – so that for a year they were the only ones who could buy it. It’s just like a house.
Only what I didn’t know was that while you have the option on something – a script or a house – you can sell that option to somebody else for a lot more money. So Bill Fishman, and his brother whose name I can’t remember, re-optioned my script to Beacon Entertainment. Beacon, run by a man named Armyan Bernstein, who was making movies: The Road to Wellville (1994) and later Air Force One (1997), and a bunch of other stuff – none of it very good – kept re-optioning the script from the Fishmans, who kept re-optioning it from me for far less money, but I was still happy to get it. And this went on for three years. I honestly thought that eventually someone was going to lose interest, I’d get the rights back, then have to shop it around. Whatever.
It was 1994 and I was 2nd unit director on Hercules. I came back to the hotel covered in mud to find a mile-long roll of fax paper on the bed — a 50-page contract. Beacon was exercising their option and buying the rights to the script. Writer’s Guild minimum was like $69,000, or something. I thought, “Get out.” But when I got back to L.A. there was a check waiting for me.
I typed all over 120 pages of paper and somebody gave me $69,000 for it, plus the option payments. I think it would make a good movie, but what do I know? It was good that I saw Hell’s Angels Forever.
So, due to time changes, I’m damn near in sync with the dawn, but I can’t see it. Wait, I see it. The dawn and I have both cracked.
Blessings on your tent and your camels. Shalom Aleichem; Aleichem Shalom.