Over 11 years and 570 episodes, John Rabe and Team Off-Ramp scoured SoCal for the people, places, and ideas whose stories needed to be told, and the show became a love-letter to Los Angeles. Now, John is sharing selections from the Off-Ramp vault to help you explore this imperfect paradise.
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Don't take this the wrong way, but it's a laugh-riot involving miscarriage, institutionalization, and suicidal thoughts.
As David Dean Bottrell tells us in his lightly fictionalized one-man show, David Dean Bottrell is Working, his resume is varied. He acted in the same high school drama class that put on The Days of Wine and Roses; sold marijuana in high school, then took a dish washing job after he got shot at while weighing and bagging pot.
Bottrell wound up subletting in Harlem in the 1980s and working for a Realtor who was delighted to find someone who spoke English; he wrote a screenplay about his family that wound up being made into Kingdom Come, then was essentially a black writer for Hollywood for five years.
Then, after a disastrous marriage to a Washington lawyer/meth addict, just when he was considering buying a handgun to kill himself -- it says something about Bottrell's acting abilities that the line about buying a gun brings down the house -- the industry came to the rescue with a recurring role on Boston Legal and 17 awards for his short film Available Men.
David Dean Bottrell is Working is at the Acme Comedy Theatre, 135 North LaBrea Ave, 90036, the next three Wednesdays. You can buy mixed drinks at Amalfi, next door, and bring them into the theater!
Listen to our green room interview to hear what black screenwriting job he turned down.