A true Hollywood story that reads like the wildest fiction
1980, L.A. Former Paramount head of production and all-round mega-producer Robert Evans (Love Story, The Godfather, Chinatown) is desperate for a hit—of both the cinematic and narcotic variety. But he has two problems.
1) a thousand-dollar-a-week coke habit.
2) after a slap-on-the-wrist conviction for cocaine trafficking, Paramount has exiled him from Hollywood, seriously jeopardizing his Gatsby-like lifestyle.
To keep his finances afloat, Evans has the bright idea to combine his two favourite things in life. He’ll mount a lavish period gangster musical, “The Cotton Club”, and seek funding for the movie from drug money.
But before a single frame of film is shot, one of the producers is brutally executed in the desert and Evans’s girlfriend—also the girlfriend of a Colombian cartel boss—is the chief suspect. In addition, hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and cocaine has gone missing. And somehow Larry Flynt’s security guards, billionaire gun-runner Adnan Khashoggi, the flamboyant and hot-tempered Doumani brothers—major players in the “New Vegas”—and a former “Soul Train” dancer are all involved…
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all illustrations copyright (c) Banjamin Marra, 2022
Nicholas Mennuti is the writer of the espionage thriller Weaponized (Mulholland Books/Little Brown), which had film rights purchased by Universal Pictures and Scott Stuber and Scrap (NeoText). Nicholas's short stories have appeared in AGNI and Conjunctions, and he has written about the intersection of technology and entertainment for the Huffington Post. He is also a graduate of NYU's Tisch School of the Arts Dramatic Writing program.
Benjamin Marra is the creator, writer, and artist of the comics NIGHT BUSINESS, AMERICAN BLOOD, and TERROR ASSAULTER: O.M.W.O.T. (One Man War On Terror), all published by Fantagraphics. Acclaimed writer Grant Morrison chose Marra as a collaborator on the first issue of the relaunched HEAVY METAL Magazine. Marra had two serialized webcomic series appear on adultswim.com. His most recent book is JESUSFREAK, written by Joe Casey and published by Image Comics. In 2016, he was named one of the Art Directors Club's Young Guns. He illustrated the cover of American Illustration 35. In 2017, he was nominated for a Grammy Award for his album art of Wayfaring Strangers: Acid Nightmare, a collection of obscure 1970s post-Age-of-Aquarius Heavy Metal.
