Purple Fury: Rumbling with the Warriors - Rob Ryder

Making movies is a lot like life - a swirling chaotic clusterf*ck. n With these opening words, Rob Ryder grabs you by the scruff, jacks you into a subway car and starts spitting out Warriors stories, one after another, as that D train, the 6th Avenue Express, hurtles into the night. n It's the summer of 1978, and Ryder's been hired onto The Warriors as a P.A. then quickly bumped up to location scout. Six weeks later, a stuntman smashes up his leg and Ryder is suddenly a Baseball Fury. A weird turn of events - what with that purple make-up and long black wig and Yankees uniform... n PURPLE FURY: Rumbling with the Warriors is fast, smart and funny. Not your typical glamorous movie memoir - n On my first day I opened the front passenger door to a van, stuck out my hand to the Teamster behind the wheel and said, Hi. I'm Rob Ryder. His reply - So what? n Just that fast, Ryder finds himself caroming across Brooklyn looking for a street to blow up a car. (Without pissing off the neighbors.) n Slogging up and down Manhattan, searching out a giant grimy bathroom for the Warriors/Punks fight. (Paramount eventually had to build one.) n Escaping a brawl with some old-school Coney Island gangsters over a pair of giant bolt-cutters. (They never got them back.) n This book is no scholarly tome - but a cold plunge into the hot mess of real-life movie production - Ryder rough-shodding you into the spooky depths of Riverside Park or the stink and grime and squealing of trains in the NYC subways. n And just when New York's becoming all too much, you find yourself yanked across the country to Los Angeles - the land of milk and honey - where Ryder found work as a screenwriter and sports production specialist. n These Hollywood interludes include the likes of Whoopi Goldberg, Tommy Lee Jones, Shaquille O'Neal, Steve Martin and other (un)savory characters. n But it's always back to New York, where The Warriors barrels along, Ryder offering insights and inside dope with each new set-up. n After the Warriors/Furies bat fights, director Walter Hill makes Ryder a Punk in the subway bathroom brawl. 16 gangbangers in an enclosed space, shooting one of the greatest bare-knuckled fight scenes of all time. n Then all too soon, this train screeches to a halt - Stillwell Avenue Station - end of the line - Coney Island. Where you're dumped out onto the platform, feeling a lot like the Warriors did - battered, bruised, but still standing. And wei