We recently got word that four of our productions are official selections of this year’s Miami Web Fest, which will be happening in the “Magic City” September 29th through October 2nd.
This article excerpt, part of a series entitled The Quorum Chronicle, appears in full — along with expanded audio content — exclusively for our Patreon backers. See our Patreon page for further details.
The film influences that went into crafting the Los Angeles of “All That Glitters” are too numerous to mention. (Or at least too numerous to iterate in a single Chronicle entry.) After all, many of the signature characteristics of the city — at least within the crime genre — are common to nearly the entirety of the noir ouvre. Not that The Gambler’s Tale fits definitively in the noir model: I like to think the world we portray isn’t quite as irredeemable as is the case in true noir, which is why I tend to refer to our story as a hardboiled crime drama — a subtle distinction, but distinct nonetheless. I’ve always thought of it as a sort of hybrid with roots in film noir or hardboiled crime fiction in general. With that in mind, it’s only right to at least attempt to highlight a few memorable standouts.
[What] makes Los Angeles unique as a setting is that the omnipresent sunshine and wide-open spaces serve to make the dark alleys and backroom dealings all the more jarring.
Two of Billy Wilder’s classics immediately come to mind. First, 1944’s Double Indemnity, which presents L.A. as a place where otherwise appealing people are willing to do terrible things, executing an intricate, cold-blooded fraud and murder scheme in the service of all-consuming ambition. Second, 1950’s Sunset Blvd. throws into sharp relief the ultimate futility of ignoring reality in favor of a preferred fantasy, as well as the dissonance between the utter corruption and moral bankruptcy of Hollywood and its irresistible appeal. And both of them highlight the sharp divide between the way things work for the rich and powerful and the less well-connected among us.
That same divide comes through in Howard Hawks’s 1946 classic The Big Sleep, which also deserves credit for explicitly portraying an illicit gambling operation — The Cypress Club — that villain Eddie Mars operates without the slightest fear of legal complications. Of course, we can only hope to recapture a fraction of the chemistry between Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in that film — though I do think we manage to resolve our mysteries a bit more cleanly. The Big Sleep also features a memorable scene where the protagonist, Philip Marlowe, attempts to decode a mysterious cipher, a task Jimmy also tackles in “All That Glitters” (and which may be of particular interest to anyone who listens all the way through Quorum’s end credits).
Be sure to check out the complete article, in both text and enhanced audio formats, along with the rest of The Quorum Chronicle series, at our Patreon page. And thanks so much for your continuing support of Jabberwocky Audio Theater!
This article excerpt, part of a series entitled The Quorum Chronicle, appears in full — along with expanded audio content — exclusively for our Patreon backers. See our Patreon page for further details.
As an author, when crafting any new story, it’s important to make sure your environment is fleshed out as much as possible. For one thing, even if much of that background material is never explicitly referenced in the final result, it helps you avoid inconsistencies — which careful readers, viewers, or listeners will notice, no matter how much you might try to convince yourself otherwise. For another, it gives you a foundation on which to make revisions — and rest assured, no matter how confident you are in your initial outlines, there will be revisions. And finally, it ensures that your world has the same kind of tonal consistency as your story and characters.
The Hall of Recordsis a genuine location, and one I couldn’t readily fictionalize without breaking the illusion of reality… but for the sake of storytelling, I opted to retain the location while dramatizing its contents.
The first season of The Gambler’s Tale, “Outstanding Debts,” was set in and around Las Vegas, and I took great pains to make sure my representation of the city was as thorough as possible. That’s not to say it was completely, factually accurate, but it was based in reality — which meant that any time I deviated from reality, I did so intentionally, and made sure that within the bounds of my tale, everything remained consistent. The casinos and other locations may have been fictional, but I made sure I knew where each of them was situated geographically, even to the point of checking traffic routes and distances between them. Anyone who’s spent any time in Las Vegas — and, admittedly, my time there has been limited — will know there’s a big difference between the classic casinos on Fremont Street and the Strip-based megaresorts.
This season, The Gambler’s Tale heads to Los Angeles with “All That Glitters.” And once again, I wanted to make sure to present the city in as detailed a manner as possible. Again, that’s not to say it’s exactly accurate in the strictest sense, but any alterations to reality are made with deliberate intent. For example, we feature several real-life locations and landmarks — such as the Griffith Park Observatory, the Roosevelt Hotel, the Exposition Park Rose Garden, the L.A. Civic Center, and the viaducts crossing the Los Angeles River — but just as many fictional ones. As a general rule of thumb, in cases where I’d be depicting these locations as they appear in real life — or where they were too iconic to reimagine as fictional alternatives — I would go ahead and reference them directly. But in instances where the location was purely fictional, even if comparable to some real-life location, I’d take the time to give it its own distinct flavor, while still anchoring it alongside its real-world analogue (or analogues).
Be sure to check out the complete article, in both text and enhanced audio formats, along with the rest of The Quorum Chronicle series, at our Patreon page. And thanks so much for your continuing support of Jabberwocky Audio Theater!
We don’t know what combination of machine and human judgment put us on the list, but we are thankful… and congrats to all our fellow purveyors of audio fiction. May this help get new listens!
Associate Artistic Director William R. Coughlan gives you an update on one of our new series in development as well as talks a bit more about this month’s bonus for Patreon backers.
This article excerpt, part of a series entitled The Quorum Chronicle, appears in full — along with expanded audio content — exclusively for our Patreon backers. See our Patreon page for further details.
It’s said that California — and Los Angeles in particular — has the most poker playing going on of anywhere outside of Las Vegas. Whether that’s true or not doesn’t really matter; in a town that thrives on storytelling, the truth is at best a passing consideration.
Be sure to check out the complete article, in both text and enhanced audio formats, along with the rest of The Quorum Chronicle series, at our Patreon page. And thanks so much for your continuing support of Jabberwocky Audio Theater!
This article excerpt, part of a series entitled The Quorum Chronicle, appears in full — along with expanded audio content — exclusively for our Patreon backers. See our Patreon page for further details.
The world of gambling as depicted in the second season of The Gambler’s Tale, “All That Glitters,” is decidedly different than that in “Outstanding Debts.” No longer is our story set against the backdrop of high-stakes Las Vegas poker, with its unique set of professional players and power brokers. Moreover, online poker is no longer an ongoing concern. As of the summer of 2012, when our story is set, not much had changed since the conclusion of our first season, at least not as will impact the world of Quorum — online funds remained largely unavailable to players, and the dust was still settling in terms of criminal indictments and civil actions. But most importantly, we’re not in Las Vegas anymore. And gambling in California is decidedly different.
Under California law, percentage games are illegal, but because poker falls outside that category, whether or not you want to consider poker “gambling,” that specific prohibition doesn’t apply.
Popular wisdom (at least in the United States) holds that gambling is legal in Nevada (and Atlantic City) but illegal pretty much everywhere else. But that is far from the reality. Still, attempting to apply any kind of consistent logic to the various legal restrictions can quickly become an exercise in futility. For one thing, as we touched on in one of our earlier entries in this series, coming up with a single, coherent definition as to what constitutes “gambling” is problematic at best. For another, most jurisdictions are more than happy to ban gambling — largely on moral pretext — right up until they have a chance to share in the often-substantial profits, or when the beneficiaries are charitable organizations (as if the purported immorality of promoting such an insidious activity as gambling miraculously changes based on who’s running the game). And sometimes, a particular form of gambling is just too ingrained in the public consciousness — or its operators are too powerful — to prohibit outright.
A prime example of this last point is betting on horse races, as is featured in this season of Quorum. The full history is far too complicated to go into here, but in a nutshell, horse racing is so ingrained into the nation’s culture that despite the underlying structure being effectively identical to comparable forms of gambling that are largely illegal, such as sports betting, it would be extraordinarily difficult to prohibit. (With specific regard to California, horse racing was legalized by voter referendum back in 1933.) That said, until 1970, all horse betting had to take place at the actual track. That year, New York became the first state to legalize off-track betting — that is, betting on a race taking place other than where the wager was physically placed. But after actual racetracks complained that they were losing revenue to off-site betting parlors, the federal government stepped in with the Interstate Horseracing Act of 1978. This act certainly didn’t require states to allow off-track betting, but at the very least it allowed them a clear framework within which to do so, as well as establishing that states had the right to regulate the process. (California does allow such off-track betting and has a number of authorized betting outlets.) In a surprising parallel to the world of online poker, regular debates around the applicability of the Interstate Wire Act of 1961 to horse betting often raged. And in an ironic twist, while the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 (or UIGEA) referenced in season one of Quorum was intended, at least substantially, to target online poker, that same act carved out an explicit exemption for online horse betting, enshrining its status as a legal form of gambling.
Be sure to check out the complete article, in both text and enhanced audio formats, along with the rest of The Quorum Chronicle series, at our Patreon page. And thanks so much for your continuing support of Jabberwocky Audio Theater!
This article excerpt, part of a series entitled The Quorum Chronicle, appears in full — along with expanded audio content — exclusively for our Patreon backers. See our Patreon page for further details.
Real estate speculation has long been a vital part of the American economy — and prompted more than a bit of illicit activity. To quote Gene Hackman as Lex Luthor (to whom we even give a little shout-out in our tale), “Son, stocks may rise and fall, utilities and transportation systems may collapse. People are no damn good. But they will always need land, and they will pay through the nose to get it.” And while Luthor’s plan — destroying half of California to create a new west coast — was appropriately grandiose, befitting an iconic movie supervillain, we’re definitely more grounded in Quorum.
The contentious Kelo v. City of New London Supreme Court case in 2004 affirmed that city governments had the right to seize property and turn it over to private developers, rather than solely for public works projects.
In my first outlines of the script, the specifics were vaguely defined. I was more interested in developing the character conflicts and general motivations than in the details — at least initially. But once I began researching the backdrop of Los Angeles in 2012 (since, just as “Outstanding Debts” was linked to a specific time, so too would our second story arc, “All That Glitters”), I uncovered a wealth of real-life drama that I could incorporate as backdrop, even if substantially modified to work within the scope of our tale.
The most memorable of these, of course, is the demolition and replacement of the Sixth Street Viaduct, which spans the LA river from the city’s downtown Arts District to Boyle Heights. Originally built in 1932, the bridge had long been an iconic fixture of the Los Angeles cityscape, being featured in countless films and television series, including Grease, Terminator 2, Gone in 60 Seconds, Tapeheads, 24, and Lost, just to name a few. It was even declared eligible for inclusion in the National Registry of Historic Places. But engineers discovered that the substandard chemical composition of the bridge’s concrete had resulted in a chemical process known as alkali-silica reaction (colloquially referred to as “concrete cancer”), causing it to deteriorate a mere 20 years following its construction. Various methods had been used over the decades to try and ameliorate the damage, but ultimately, seismic vulnerability studies revealed that the bridge was in danger of collapse in the event of a major earthquake, and the bridge’s inevitable closure and demolition planning began. A design competition was launched for the bridge’s replacement in April of 2012, with the winning submission — from architect Michael Maltzan and the Kansas City-based HNTB infrastructure design firm — being announced that October. The new design, called “The Ribbon of Light,” features sweeping cable-supported arches, and will accommodate not only the original bridge’s four traffic lanes, but also dedicated bicycle lanes and 14-foot-wide sidewalks, as well as multiple sets of stairs allowing pedestrians to descend from the bridge to the planned 12-acre Sixth Street Parc below. This new community space is expected to include basketball courts, soccer fields, fitness areas, a dog park, skate park, amphitheater, and several picnic and garden areas. In other words, a much larger development than simply replacing the existing structure with something comparable. Once I learned more about the project, I knew that — with a little creative embellishment — it would serve as a particularly apt anchor for one of the critical revelations in “All That Glitters.” Closure and demolition began in January of 2016, and after several delays, the bridge is finally scheduled to reopen in the summer of 2022.
Be sure to check out the complete article, in both text and enhanced audio formats, along with the rest of The Quorum Chronicle series, at our Patreon page. And thanks so much for your continuing support of Jabberwocky Audio Theater!
