From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Bob Carlson, and this is Unfictional.

Unfictional is KCRW's program of stories and original documentaries. It's a part of KCRW's independent

producer project, a laboratory for radio producers, writers, and performers and

and sometimes on the show we open the door to radio artist Joe Frank.

For years and years he commanded a studio here at KCRW producing several award winning

and mind-blowing programs, so it's very exciting

that he's been premiering brand new stories produced for unfictional. And today

it's the story of a screenwriter who heads down a show business rabbit hole and sees

his life unraveling on a revolving road to nowhere.

It's unfictional on KCRW.com and a Hollywood true story by Joe Frank. I'm going to Oh, Behind the desk there's a wall of pigeonholes, each one bearing a room number.

You sign the guest register and walk outside by a small fenced-in swimming pool and pass an ice machine and a laundry cart and walk up a stairway to your room.

You unlock the door. and walk up a stairway to your room.

You unlock the door and find rows of dead bodies stacked up to the ceiling.

Should you call the front desk to complain,

these things are desk to complain.

These things are hard to decide.

Courage and wisdom in conflict.

Rain falls on the roofs of the other motel rooms where your enemies sleep. I guess you could call this a Hollywood true story. In 1986 I was invited to come out to KCRW in

Santa Monica to do a Saturday night radio show. Within a few months I heard a bizarre story

about two Caltech professors in Silicon Valley who developed a formula for transmitting

compressed data over the internet, and it ended up in a fierce struggle for credit and ownership of a patent.

One was a fragile high-strong Jewish immigrant from Russia. The the other a hard-bitten academic from Chicago.

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