"Making movies is a lot like life - a swirling chaotic clusterf*ck."
With these opening words, Rob Ryder grabs you by the scruff, jacks you into a subway car and starts spitting out Warriors stories, one after another, as that D train, the 6th Avenue Express, hurtles into the night.
It's the summer of 1978, and Ryder's been hired onto The Warriors as a P.A. then quickly bumped up to location scout. Six weeks later, a stuntman smashes up his leg and Ryder is suddenly a Baseball Fury. A weird turn of events - what with that purple make-up and long black wig and Yankees uniform...
PURPLE FURY: Rumbling with the Warriors is fast, smart and funny. Not your typical glamorous movie memoir -
- "On my first day I opened the front passenger door to a van, stuck out my hand to the Teamster behind the wheel and said, "Hi. I'm Rob Ryder." His reply - "So what?"
- Just that fast, Ryder finds himself caroming across Brooklyn looking for a street to blow up a car. (Without pissing off the neighbors.)
- Slogging up and down Manhattan, searching out a giant grimy bathroom for the Warriors/Punks fight. (Paramount eventually had to build one.)
- Escaping a brawl with some old-school Coney Island gangsters over a pair of giant bolt-cutters. (They never got them back.)
This book is no scholarly tome - but a cold plunge into the hot mess of real-life movie production - Ryder rough-shodding you into the spooky depths of Riverside Park or the stink and grime and squealing of trains in the NYC subways.
And just when New York's becoming all too much, you find yourself yanked across the country to Los Angeles - the land of milk and honey - where Ryder found work as a screenwriter and sports production specialist.
These Hollywood interludes include the likes of Whoopi Goldberg, Tommy Lee Jones, Shaquille O'Neal, Steve Martin and other (un)savory characters.
But it's always back to New York, where The Warriors barrels along, Ryder offering insights and inside dope with each new set-up.
After the Warriors/Furies bat fights, director Walter Hill makes Ryder a Punk in the subway bathroom brawl. 16 gangbangers in an enclosed space, shooting one of the greatest bare-knuckled fight scenes of all time.
Then all too soon, this train screeches to a halt - Stillwell Avenue Station - end of the line - Coney Island. Where you're dumped out onto the platform, feeling a lot like the Warriors did - battered, bruised, but still standing. And weirdly exhilarated.
Rob Ryder played both the Purple Baseball Fury and a Punk in The Warriors. He moved to Hollywood as soon as the movie wrapped, and has had a long, varied career as a screenwriter and sports director. He has written screenplays at Paramount, Warner Bros., 21st Century Fox, et al, for A-list directors including Walter Hill, John Hughes and Ron Shelton. Ryder played basketball at Princeton and parlayed his sports experience into consulting/directing jobs on White Men Can't Jump, Blue Chips, Celtic Pride, Father of the Bride and more - working with stars such as Steve Martin, Whoopi Goldberg, Shaquille O'Neal and Tommy Lee Jones. Ryder has also worked on video games for EA Sports, including NBA Street, Madden NFL and EA FIFA. Ryder's memoir, Hollywood Jock, was published by Harper Collins in 2006. Rob Ryder can be contacted at www.purplefury.net.
