Hey, Marsh,

Thanks for lunch, thanks for the green light, and you want something in writing. Look, this is not a pitch. I don't do pitches. I want to tell you a story. Have patience if I ramble.

In the beginning there was the crash, (which is my Big Bang, I cannot know what was before). Over here, our problems were and remain plain old economic. Anyone over twenty five thinks the price of gas is a crime against humanity, and poor people try to club you to death as you scurry from your cab into the airport. In Western Europe it went into a runaway chain reaction. They had penniless crash victims, mom and pop types included, hordes of them, turned nomadic, wandering around like lemmings. They had the anti-capitalist, anti-GM, pro-Gaia, pro-paganism, magic-murky, Save Our Planet thing growing into a monster volk movement: shaping up to be the green nazis. They had lootin' and a shootin' and mad dog migrants from the poisoned lands. Governments fell. Armed forces and teachers and other useful persons just upped and quit. That's the bgd.

Then the story begins. It's the story of the man who would be king. He's called Ax Preston. He was recruited, along with several other rather amazing people, to what the British government called their Countercultural Think Tank. He was a guitarist, at the time, with a chipper little band called the Chosen Few from Taunton, Somerset (=deep in the sticks). He was twenty six. Next thing you know there was a blood-spattered coup, a veritable massacre in one of the royal parks, and Ax and his pals were hostages of the deranged hippie regime that had taken over England. They were kid rock musicians. One minute they were dreaming of a record deal, next thing, they were doused in the blood of revolution. But they were patriots. Ax told them they could use the music, and turn the awful situation round. And they did it! The catalogue of disasters that they beat would be unbelievable except it was all part of the same thing: collapse of the card house. It took Ax two years. When he was twenty eight he was the ruler of England, by the will of the people. I want to tell the story of how that happened. Ax Preston is a phenomenon of our times. I want to show him making hedonism and free will work, in a tsunami of brutish violence. But what makes it Fabulous is that it was all done with the music.

Ax would be king: but there's more. There's Fiorinda, the scary-smart babe-rocker with the abusive megastar dad. There's Sage Pender, aka Aoxomoxoa, who needs no introduction. (Okay, you twisted my arm: introducing Sage. He's the demon techno whose very existence irradiated my youth. He's regarded as the Antichrist, in many parts of the USA. He invented immersion code. He's God, in my opinion). There's the relationship between these three, which is very slippery. Suffice it to say, the guys compete like wolverines disputing a kill, they share the girl and that's not all they share. I love it when beautiful guys love each other passionately, but they're not gay (this is not a proposition, btb). It's very rock and roll, very glamorous and it gives me an immense Jungian thrill, a masculine romance with girls in it.
And with guitar!

No, we're not going to go into what happened to them last summer. Nor what's happening in England now. I want to end on a note of valedictory glory, a triumph that foreknows its fall, a sense that great deeds are evanescent as a dream, and that's the way greatness should be. The Japanese have a word for it, Bushido. Ax's England blossomed and died, it was brief and perfect.

I'm sending you Unmasked, and Yellow Girl, and Sweet Track, Ax's only solo album, and not easy to get, even tho' the fucking data quarantine has supposedly given up trying to isolate us from European Revolutionary Culture. (I've sent them, they're on this letter, just press and play). You also have to hear the Aoxomoxoa and the Heads mix of 'Little Wing', which came about because one day Sage said to Ax, the reason why Jimi Hendrix is not revered like Beethoven, is because the mass market has to be turned on to something or it doesn't survive, and you can't dance to 'Little Wing'. It is BLAZING. It explains our whole global culture.

Please Marsh, let me make this movie in style, no scrimping, c'mon, c'mon. It's surefire, fantastically good looking, and the best idea I ever had.

Yours, most respectfully and sincerely,

Harry

Enrico Ernesto Fortunato Curtis-Lopez de la Concha

From: Harry Lopez
To: Marshall Morgan
Cc: Julia

It's not a problem. I know he hasn't returned a call since he resigned. I'm onto it. I can get hold of him. Don't ask me how, because I can't tell you, just trust me. Mr Preston is coming to Hollywood. It can be done, it will be done. I have an offer he can't refuse, right here in my pocket.

Harry