THE DON

Introducing: THE DON

The podcast series THE DON chronicles the wild anecdotes and escapes of Hollywood’s last great showman, Don Simpson, the producer who made such 80s classics as AMERICAN GIGOLO, FLASHDANCE, BEVERLY HILLS COP and TOP GUN. Don created a mythological persona known as “The Don” where in order to convince Hollywood to make his high-octane movies he had to live a high-octane lifestyle. But the lifestyle became all-consuming. His industry colleagues said that Don was so passionate about the movies that he was willing to die for them. And sadly, that’s what happened. “The Don” tells the epic, gonzo tale of one man’s obsession with his dream of making movies and how that dream led to his tragic downfall. 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.