If you’ve got a good half-hour to spare this Thursday morning, I recommend checking out “A Hollywood Ending,” Maccabee Montandon’s story of two Baltimore brothers (and Park School graduates) who moved to Los Angeles in the early 1990s with hopes of — you guessed it — making it in Hollywood. Needless to say, things didn’t turn out as planned.
The story tracks both the lead up to and the aftermath of the murder of Asher Montandon, Maccabee’s brother, in Los Angeles. Both boys were antsy in late 1980s/early 1990s Baltimore, hanging around in diners after punk shows. Asher became notorious for his senior project, a short film that satirized Park’s headmaster. Maccabee details the brothers’ heady early days in the city, as well as the effects the murder has had on the family in the ensuing decades:
By the time we moved to Brooklyn—to be young-ish in the city and because we wanted adventures and because that’s what all aspiring writers did in those days—my brother had been dead for eight years.
Once, on a cross-town bus, I was absolutely convinced he was riding behind me. I risked my own life and stared at a stranger on public transportation. Couldn’t help myself. Couldn’t not look. Was it? Is it? Had he faked it all in order to—what? Move to New York? It couldn’t be. Could it?
Read the rest at Gawker. According to his bio, Montandon is working on a screenplay set in Baltimore — can’t wait to see it!
Asher was my step brother. I miss him all the time.