Wednesday, April 2, 2025

224. Don Simpson and the Hollywood Culture of Excess

Don Simpson was one-half of one of the most successful production partnerships in Hollywood history. His reality-distortion-field helped bring about films like Flashdance, Top Gun, Beverly Hills Cop, The Rock, Crimson Tide, and Days of Thunder, films that collectively grossed more than $3 billion dollars. Don Simpson's life is a cautionary tale with an ignominious ending forever ensconced in Hollywood history. His appetite for drugs, prostitutes, plastic surgery, black Levi's 501 jeans (worn once and discarded), wrecking Porsches, pharmacology, peanut butter, and pizza got the best of him at age 52. Listen in for the outrageous tale of how a pudgy kid from Alaska talked his way into transforming big-budget Hollywood blockbusters for a new decade. LINKS: Buy my guest Charles Fleming's definitive book about Hollywood in the 80's, High Concept: Don Simpson and the Hollywood Culture of Excess. Don & Jerry on Charlie Rose, less than a year before Don's death. A pretty good but exploitational multi-part tv documentary about Don Simpson. Now-cancelled Hollywood gadfly James Toback's 'The Big Bang', starring Don.