By DAVID MICKEY EVANS (Flying Wagon Books; 2012)
Anyone out there remember RADIO FLYER? It was a 1992 movie directed by Richard Donner and scripted by David Mickey Evans, and something of a bomb. A famously “troubled production,” it attempted to dramatize childhood abuse in a high spirited E.T.-ish manner that managed to miss both the whimsy (which was overshadowed by the abuse) and the horror (which was too muted to fully register) of Evans’ conception. This twenty-years-after-the-fact self-published e-text by Evans is essentially a novelization of RADIO FLYER, yet one that allows us to see how it was initially conceived, and why it was that Evans’ original screenplay was at one time such a hot property in Hollywood.
It’s told in the form of memories by a man named Mike of his childhood in Pacoima, CA. It was a dark period, dominated by bullies, a distant mother and Mike’s stepfather, a forbidding personage identified only as The King. The King was a violent drunk who liked to periodically beat up the eleven year old Mike and his nine year old brother Bobby, who The King picked on incessantly because he was too small to fight back. Eventually Mike and Bobby hit upon “The Big Idea” of removing Bobby from The King’s clutches by building a flying contraption out of their Radio Flyer wagon, upon which Bobby can literally fly away.
David Mickey Evans is best known as a screenwriter and director, but here proves himself a talented wordsmith. His prose is lively and convincing in its portrayal of the wonders and horrors of childhood (in contrast to the movie, whose child-centric worldview felt forced and contrived). It’s only in conjunction with that magical world, after all, with its monsters and talking animals, that the wonky premise makes any sense.
Where the book falters is in its descriptions of the abuse meted out by The King, which are too timid and perfunctory to justify the boys’ outsized reactions to it, and the overwrought launching-of-the-Flyer climax, which is too similar to those of E.T., COCOON and dozens of other like-minded flicks (this is one area in which RADIO FLYER, which had a much economical climax, actually outdoes THE KING OF PACOIMA).
This e-text, I should add, has an attractive Evans designed layout. It’s decked out with professionally drafted photos, drawings, storyboards and designs (resulting in a litany of credits on the copyright page). Those things alone certainly don’t make for a must-buy, but they do succeed in complimenting the text quite nicely.