Script show “˜Buck Naked’ traces life of ’80s rocker
By Nick Rabinowitsh
Nov. 20, 2002 9:00 p.m.
Ah, the ’80s. When else could a straight man wear nothing
but a pink cowboy hat, matching boots and a strategically-placed
toilet plunger?
The real life story of the scantily clad 1980s rocker Buck Naked
of the band Buck Naked and the Bare Bottom Boys will be brought to
the UCLA stage tonight in a staged reading of first-year UCLA
master of fine arts student Tony Moton’s original screenplay,
“Buck Naked.” The performance will be put on by Theater
Underground, a registered student organization sponsored by the
theater department to support and produce student theater on
campus.
The main purpose of the script show is to get some sort of
critique of Moton’s screenplay, and hopefully some attention
from Hollywood.
“The hardest thing to do is get good, solid feedback on a
script,” Moton said.
The show will be performed by 40 UCLA students, and will be the
first collaboration between film and theater students that Theater
Underground has ever attempted. It’s also a cross section of
graduate students and undergraduates.
“Buck Naked” is the first script show (meaning
direct reading and acting of a screenplay) that Theater Underground
will perform. Nevertheless, the group has high hopes for
tonight’s show.
“It’s really exciting to see new work that’s
up on its feet,” said Joy Vanides, president of Theater
Underground. “It is fresh and there’s something very
electric about it. People have almost a “˜no fear’ kind
of mentality.”
The timing for tonight’s show has a special significance:
it marks the 10th anniversary of Buck Naked’s untimely murder
while walking his dog in San Francisco’s Golden Gate
Park.
Moton originally took interest in Naked’s story after the
untimely death of his own brother, who died in a plane crash.
“I wanted to write a script about two brothers,”
Moton said.
After his brother’s death, Moton began to see parallels in
the lives of Buck and his brother. He took a weeklong trip to San
Francisco to look deeper into the life of Buck Naked. He was met
with positive support, and he began to seriously consider the
potential of turning the story into a screenplay.
“The trip to San Francisco was a way to deal with my own
loss,” Moton said. “In a lot of ways, I was exorcising
my own demons.”
After sitting on the script for four years, Moton finally
submitted it as part of his application to UCLA’s MFA
program.
“Once I got accepted this past spring, I realized that
maybe there might be an opportunity to have it performed,”
Moton said.
A month and a half ago, Moton held a staged reading of eight
pages of his script at CBS TV with the Nebraska Coast Connection,
an industry resource group that networks writers, actors and
directors. After getting some positive feedback, Moton decided that
the 10-year anniversary would be a fitting day to perform the full
script show.
The main premise of the script is a road trip that Naked and his
brother Hector take from Omaha, Neb. to San Francisco
(interestingly, Moton made the same trip to learn about
Naked’s life in San Francisco ““ Moton was working at a
newspaper in Omaha at the time).
“It’s a cross between Howard Stern humor and
“˜Almost Famous’,” said Casey Garritano, a
fourth-year musical theater student and actor with Theater
Underground. “It takes the form of a rags-to-riches story,
but he never was rich, so it’s more of a rags to rags story.
He had a screwed up life, and the screenplay is a really comical
glimpse into how he handles it.”
The script has a sad turn at the end, of course, but Moton sees
it as more than just a tragedy.
“It’s a pretty sad story, but there is also this
kind of celebration that I think will show on Thursday
night,” Moton said.
“Buck Naked” will be performed tonight at 7 p.m. in
Dodd 147. Admission is free.
