by Wallace Wyss –
I was lucky the first time, when a Hollywood producer spotted my bio of Shelby (SHELBY The Man, the Cars The Legend) and bought it. Hollywood didn’t buy it from me but they did pay a nice little option price to be first in line for three years.
So then there’s the action thriller novel (Ferrari Hunters). A big fan of the old Travis McGee detective series written by John D. MacDonald, I tried to imagine that character in the modern day, albeit he makes his living between private detective assignments hunting barn find cars.
Which I did, for a ten year period, after meeting a well heeled New Yorker at a Ferrari meet. He’d pay for me to go around the country and snatch up whatever exotics were gathering patina, from Bizzarrinis to Bentleys.
The novel’s premise is that a prototype car is stolen from a small automaker (think Tesla in the early days) and our hero is hired to get it back. Much shooting and long distance driving ensues.
I published a very short run, sent it around and nothing–some producers will send it back unopened. I recently got another brainstorm–the Cars & Coffee events in Malibu. Now I have been to the same type of event in Tustin, CA, Agoura, Riverside, you name it but what distinguishes the one in Malibu, the furthermost one called Trancas, is that the audience of drivers of Lambos, Porsches, Bentleys, Rolls, and oddballs like Alvis must have a certain percentage of movie folk.
And what do they wear? Hey this is at 7 am in the morning with sometimes thick fog. A lot wear denims. The all purpose material. The jackets that give no hint of your economic status.
So being a painter I whipped up some impromptu film-style posters to promote the book, had a few printed on cloth and sewn on jackets and headed for the Malibu C & C. I had to hastily re-do them when I realized some of the cars I picked weren’t worth a million dollars. The tagline is, after all: “Some Ferraris are worth a million dollars. That’s enough to kill for….”
In one case I used a portrait of a Ferrari that never actually existed, except as a design created by a bored VW designer. But hey his design won him a job as a Lambo designer.
So far I only have a few people wearing them but am making more. If you own a V12 Ferrari, and live in Malibu you qualify. Production is limited–I am putting different cars on each one.
And hey if the Ferrari people don’t answer, I could change the hero into a Porsche hunter. They are slightly easier to find but the right cars are going up in price just as fast…
If you know somebody in the business that qualifies, send me his contact info.
Let us know what you think in the Comments.
Wallace Wyss
THE AUTHOR: Wyss is presently at work on the sequel, he can be reached at Photojournalistpro2@gmail.com
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