... by Pat Winter
 Seventy-two hours at KFWB All-News radio in Hollywood... told in a 104-minute screenplay and companion novel. Read a sample on: ON AIR will be the first movie/novel about all-news radio in its heyday before CNN, PCs, cell phones, or the Internet… based on th true story of a sportswriter who went berserk and began stalking and shooting women employees at the station...
It's 1976. The Women's Movement has propelled women into the news and the newsroom. Sportswriter J.R. Rain is bitter because he's been replaced by a black woman. He kills his rival and a women jockey, and stalks his protégé Cooper McKinnon for covering his rampage as breaking news. When he tries to run her down in a mobile unit, Cooper accepts protection from L.A.P.D. Detective Wil Sagan. Despite strong attraction between Wil and Cooper, she calls him a cynic, and he calls her naive for trying to understand J.R.'s rage. Via audio, she and her cop track J.R. down. He almost drowns Wil, but Cooper overturns the cliché and saves Wil who stops her from taking revenge. Wiser about her own reactions and the backlash J.R. represents, Cooper and Wil strike a bargain that leaves them on the brink of something wonderful. ON AIR developed out of my experience and events at the all-news radio station. It took a long time to process into fiction the reality that this guy wanted revenge on women whom he blamed all his problems. The first written analysis of these events was a journalistic memoir, "Notes on a Death Threat," published in the January 1980 issue of MS Magazine. ON AIR is flavorful nostalgia of a more innocent time when... * California Governor Ronald Reagan was fishing for the Republican presidential nomination... * Liz Taylor and Richard Burton leaped into their second marriage... * the State of California tried Patty Hearst for robbing banks with terrorists who kidnapped and brain-washed her The screenplay is slam-bam action, plucky woman-in-jeopardy, 72-hours in the life of the medium that predicted today's wall-to-wall 24/7 news environment. The novel is a broader view of life as a reporter for The San Diego Union and KFWB. You get a gold star if you can name the actor and the movie from which I borrowed the face for the cover croquis at the begining of this listing... |
|
