Third Time's the Charm

Steve Lopez isn't the type to get caught up in the glitz of his adopted hometown's biggest industry. At least not these days.

"As soon as anybody smiles at you in Hollywood," he says from experience, "you know you're in trouble." And it doesn't take too many tales of woe to grasp the depth of his meaning. Yet for Lopez--ever the sardonic interpreter of the world around him--the film industry remains more a source of amusement than annoyance.

"There's a level of insincerity," says the former Inquirer columnist. "You realize very quickly in this industry that you can't take people at their word." Otherwise there would've been a film version of Third and Indiana years ago. But there may be one soon, if an enterprising young filmmaker from Philadelphia has his way.

Now a columnist for the Los Angeles Times and the author of three ready-for-the-big-screen novels, Lopez is no stranger to the Hollywood shuffle. While he pretty much sticks to gritty city intrigue, he could surely write a book just about his run-ins with film folk.

There was the time when Oprah Winfrey's people teamed up with Quincy Jones' people to option his first book, Third and Indiana, a novel about a North Philadelphia neighborhood struggling to survive the invading drug trade. But Oprah's folks wanted a happy ending. There was the time, after Oprah's option ran out, when Quincy Jones' team convened a new group of investors. They even held a meeting where they told Lopez they'd raised enough cash to make the film. Then they disappeared. Oh, and there was the time when Lopez's second book, The Sunday Macaroni Club, almost wound up on the small screen. And, well, you know where this is going. The whole town, laughs Lopez on the phone from his desk at the L.A. Times, has ADD.

"Storylines get hot, and then they're not," he says. "It's like My Big Fat Greek Wedding. People do it till they overdo it."

But those people aren't like Tom Bradford. A 35-year-old Center City native, Bradford has been trying to bring Third and Indiana to the big screen for the last six years. His mother sent the book to him out in California, where he'd relocated after college to work in the industry. And Bradford was smitten.

"Every director has their 10-year project," says the current Burbank resident. "This is gonna be mine."

When it comes to telling a compelling story, both men agree it's tough to get a better setting than the streets of Philadelphia. "It was an amazing education walking through Philly and having people run up to you and offer you drugs," says Bradford, a Friends Select alumnus. "I was dragged into an alley and mugged once at knifepoint. I was probably 14, 15 years old. I remember walking past 18th or 17th Street and Chestnut, and someone had jumped out of one of those buildings there and committed suicide. You kinda see everything walking through the city, and I think a lot of that had an influence on me."

After leaving for L.A. in 1991, Bradford got a job in the industry, diligently moving through the ranks until he found himself directing. In 1998 he wrote, produced and directed his first film, Screenland Drive, which he describes as "a dark comedy about two best friends and the woman who gets in between them." (Yes, it's autobiographical.)

Screenland premiered at the Hollywood Film Festival. It was then picked up by a little international distributor, and well, let's just say Bradford's now a big guy in Thailand.

With Screenland to his credit, he was picked to direct Do You Wanna Know a Secret?, a straight-to-video teen screamer starring Joey Lawrence. He fought for the job, though he hated the script. "Part of it was a mistake," he says of the dubious career move. But he won't take the same risks with Third and Indiana.

Bradford just blew through Philly on an East Coast junket to scare up funding for his magnum opus. He and Lopez's wife, Alison Shore, long ago finished a screenplay that's garnered some industry interest, but these days the writing team is thinking smaller.

"Now I'm wanting to make this a Philadelphia project," Bradford says. "Not a Hollywood movie with 20 producers and 15 writers all staying at the Four Seasons. I want that money to go to the film."

Lopez describes a similar vision for Third. "It's not a feel-good, uplifting story, and I just don't know how big a market there ever will be for that." Another concern, he adds, is whether the public has already had its fill of "hardscrabble stories from the dying inner city."

Though the tale's worth telling, he concludes, "it's probably not something that's gonna play big at the cineplex." So he appreciates Bradford and Shore's ambition not to "Hollywoodize" his novel.

If the movie version ever gets made, says Lopez, "it'll be because Tom refused to give up."

It would be best, he continues, if Bradford got the financing for a modest film that everyone involved could be proud of. And if they can't be proud of it, why bother?

"I would love to see it get done," says Lopez. He's just learned to keep his hopes in check. "I've arrived at this attitude after several years. It's a one-in-a-million shot, and there's nothing I can do to make it happen. So I don't give it much thought."

And besides, he's already onto the next thing.

Though he won't specifically reveal its topic, Lopez's first nonfiction book--still in the proposal stage--will be based on "a personal experience." Specifically certain "middle-aged developments" in his life. And if his recent Hollywood hijinks are any clue, he should have plenty of matinee material to mine.

For more information about the film, email thirdfilm@att.net