THE DON

"Mobsters and Tennis"

Pierce misses Don's funeral and mistakenly ends up at the funeral of fabled Hollywood lawyer and fixer Sidney Korshak. It’s there that he connects with the producer of Chinatown, The Godfather, and Rosemary’s Baby- Robert Evans. It was Don that took Evans’ old job at Paramount as President of Production. Back then Evans was in a rapid career spiral, while Don was the hottest executive in town. Evans invites Pierce to his house for a game of tennis and to talk about his relationship with Don. Pierce learns that Don and Evans shared the same Hollywood madam. He also learns that Evans had a connection with the actress Autumn Weston- who may or may not have been connected to Don’s death.  Learn more about your ad-choices at <a href="https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com">https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com</a>See <a href="https://omnystudio.com/listener">omnystudio.com/listener</a> for privacy information.

THE DON is a docu-drama on the life of the producer of TOP GUN, Don Simpson, which uses narration, clips, and fictional re-enactments via “lost tapes'' to take you behind the scenes into Hollywood’s decade of decadence, the 1980s. Before the era of MeToo, there was Don Simpson the poster boy of toxic masculinity, whose outlandish behavior was not only tolerated but encouraged by the film industry who profited greatly off Don’s movies. Don Simpson was, like the character he named after himself in his movie TOP GUN, a maverick. His signature style of filmmaking created one hit after another— AMERICAN GIGOLO, FLASHDANCE, BEVERLY HILLS COP, TOP GUN- they all came from the mind of Don Simpson. Don loved the movies so much that he created a mythological persona known as “The Don” to match his signature movies— loud, ballsy, cheesy— his movies were full of homo-erotic testoterone-driven race car drivers and navy fighter pilots and stripper/welders who wanted to be ballerinas— these were the movies from Don’s absurd fantasy world— this was the world that Don actually lived in— there was no separation between life and art. And that movie persona that he created— “The Don”— grew more and more outrageous and more extreme— until ultimately… it killed him.