Brad’s Comments (group member since Dec 19, 2011)

Brad’s comments from the Q&A with Brad Geagley group.

The seed that ultimately flowered into my full-grown book, “The Stand In”, came from two sources, sacred and arcane (so to speak). When I was a lad, my all-time favorite movie was Joseph L. Mankiewicz’ “Cleopatra” (he’s the “sacred” part of my narrative) – and I don’t care what ANYONE says about it, I find it to be one of the greatest epics ever made, largely due to the exquisite dialog crafted by Mankiewicz. Yes, it’s long winded, and might be dull to some, but there are some of us who find the rise and fall and gorgeous cadences of perfectly written speech to be as exciting as any yellow explosion or car chase. Anyway…as I’ve indicated, Joe Mankiewicz was the first person in my life to alert me to the glories of writing. In film school, my thesis was a critical re-evaluation of the film and because of this I contacted the great man. It took many months to assure him that I was a legitimate researcher and not some gossip monger, and then he began to trust me. He was a brilliant raconteur, and had grown up in the movies (his brother, Herman, had written “Citizen Kane” and he himself had made two all-time classics, “A Letter to Three Wives” and “All About Eve”.) I listened breathlessly as he told me stories about the industry and how he had joined it just after silents turned to sound. Next to ancient Egypt and renaissance France I love the history of film-making and Hollywood more than any other. Then he told me a small story about Montgomery Clift that became, years later, “The Stand In.” When he chose Clift to star with Elizabeth Taylor in “Suddenly, Last Summer” he had been warned by John Huston that Clift was a shell of his former self due to his disfiguring car accident a few years before; that he was unreliable due to his addiction to pain pills, and that it had even been rumored that many of his scenes in “Raintree County” had been completed by his photo double. I extrapolated that small story into its far more lurid conclusion in “The Stand In” – when a studio becomes aware that their leading man may be the serial killer preying on blond actresses in the Hollywood Hills and how they set up his photo double to take the fall. But then I turn the tables – what if the photo double is actually a better actor (and far more reliable) than the star himself? What does the studio do then?

The second influence (the arcane) was a run in with a pair of true grifters when I lived in West Hollywood. They would pose as a married couple whose car had broken down on the way to the hospital, pretending that the “wife” was in labor. They accosted people up and down Santa Monica Blvd. for “taxi money”, and I myself gave them $20. Later I read of their arrest by the Police Department for impersonation and extortion. I decided that I was not going to be pissed off, because the story was so good that I had been more than repaid. I also decided their story could find its way into “The Stand In” too; the male grifter became the basis for Eddie, the star’s photo double…how Eddie had come to grift his way into show business only to find himself in the mitts of the biggest grifter of them all, Hollywood itself.

Of course, Hollywood wins. It always does.

I'd love to chat with you about my latest book, the inspiration for it and your thoughts on it. I'm open to talking about my older books as well. Ask me anything about Egypt or Los Angeles, I'm in love with both locales.