Mini Biography

Biography for

Ray Goldrup


Mini Biography


Ray Goldrup received the award
for Best Screenplay for the motion picture Windwalker at the San
Francisco Indian Film Festival; a commendation from Pres. Carter's
Committe On Mental Retardation for his two-hour The Innocent, on TV's
weekly episodic drama series How the West Was Won; wrote and sold over
200 stories for the international children's magazine The Friend; a
half-hour TV animated show, The Other Wise Man, for Bonneville
International; did some polish work on the script for Joseph Smith:
Prophet of the Restoration, now showing at the Legacy Theater in Salt
Lake City; a number of short dramatic films for The Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-Day Saints; wrote a novel for Horizon Publishers called
Then Came Charlie, & a novella for RIC Publishing--Me an' Percy
Crump; wrote the 3-Act play, The Last Bell. Currently seeking funding
for several of his screenplays, to co-produce with his two actor
brothers Tom & Jim Goldrup.

Ray also won the Golden Spur Award for the best Western teleplay of the year for his script, The Innocent, an episode for the tv series, How the West was Won; and for an episode of The Waltons in which Ron Howard played a boy dying from Lukemia (I think it was) and how his friend (Jon Walmsley, one of the Walton boys) had to deal with the idea of losing his best friend (loosely based on fact when Ray had a good friend during their childhood days) this show was chosen to play at a large Canadian hospital for terminally ill children to help them cope with their afflictions. The play, The Last Bell, almost a one-man play about an old poet battling with his conscience on wether he should speak out his convictions in a society ruleed by the state where religion is outlawed. We put it on in Petaluma, California back in 1972 when Ray directed, Jim played the poet and I played a man with my two young children who finds refuge at the old poet's place. We did it again near Santa Cruz, CA., in 1984 with Jim again playing the poet, Ray played a man convicted by the state and executed for speaking out his belief, and I played the refugee with the two children and also directed. We had good reviews both times and Ray's writing received critical acclaim. Yep, this may be his brother writing, but Ray is a dang good writer. When How the West was Won plays on the Encore western channel you can sample his writing in the two episodes in the final season that he wrote..."The Innocent" & "The Forgotten." Tom.

In the works as of January 20, 2011
Ray Goldrup


On Broken Wings



—Synopsis—




A contemporary, layered, coming of age story with a unique
difference; an earthy, human drama set in a small backwater town,
inspired by true events.



Themes
include the worth of the individual soul, choices, courage, friendship,
betrayal, forgiveness, acceptance, & the belief that one is
different only to the extent that he or she is his or her self and not
everyone else.




Ramie Hargrove, a 15 year-old only child, newly-arrived with his
mother—the two having fled an abusive father/husband respectively—in the
small, remote town of Warfield. Lonely {Michelle, his mother, working
two-jobs to keep them afloat; & when she is home, is too exhausted to do anything more than collapse} and friendless, Ramie is desperate for peer-aged companionship.


He finds favor/falls in with a group of self-defined elite youths
who call themselves the Warfield Wolverines, ruled over by a very
intelligent and wily controller; a guileful, volatile, and,
unbeknownst-to-the-others, unstable Dorian Bromley, 15. Dorian becomes
very fond of Ramie—--not to mention the fact that Ramie, once he is
indoctrinated into the strict-ruled “brotherhood”, has the potential of
being very useful to the club; the others like him, too, & he is a
uniting force.

Suddenly Ramie is in 7^th
heaven, surrounded by fast friends, socially prominent among his peers.
They do everything together. He is one of the chosen few, under a
strict oath wherein each member looks out for the other {kind of like a
teen “mafia”, if you will, in terms of effectuated camaraderie, though not a gang} & do nothing without club permission & mutual participation.


A romantic interest blossoms between Ramie & fellow club member
Rosella Knight that further lifts him to greater heights of euphoria.


Enter Billy Aylsworth, a 15 year old mentally challenged youth who
lives with his father {mother deceased}, their relationship strained at
best. Billy’s simple & profound Edenic regard for all living things
{“the big, the little and the otherwise”} finds him in dire conflict
not only with Warfield’s locals but with the law itself, yet helpless to
act otherwise because of that singular devotion to, & fiercely
guarded passion for the preciousness of life & his rescue of any
& all sentient beings in harm’s way. As he further declares, “God
wouldn’t take the time to make anything he didn’t love.” So “stealing”
lobsters from a tank in the meat dept. of the local grocery to save
them from a boiled-to-death fate is something he regards as a noble act.
His “weird/anti-social behavior”, plus the fact that he’s
“crookedy in the head” of course spawns whispers, pointed fingers &
unwanted embarrassment & humiliation to his father, Doolin—who fears
what others think/how it makes him look in their eyes: As he states,
in part, “For my son, blighted by his crippling disability, to survive
socially, he must conform to the norms of society! How do you think his
strange and unacceptable ways reflect on me? Bad enough he’s different
from everybody else, has the mind of a seven year old, doesn’t fit in,
without what he… “


Billy is essentially an inadvertent, involuntary misfit in a town
governed by “normalcy” & folks who look down their noses at
anyone—young or old—who are “different”/behave contrary to accustomed
social behavior.

Billy is not so
intellectually handicapped that he doesn’t understand prejudice,
indifference, hurt, and verbal derision. As he states, “How smart does
somebody got to be to feel?”


He is a loner, the proverbial round peg in the square hole, &
friendless {except for the creatures he rescues &, initially, an old
outcast/drifter he calls Mr. Tom}. The blunt of cruel jokes, he is
estranged by the one person he aches to have love him back: His father…
though, as alluded to, Billy has an innate love for him {and everyone & everything, both friend & foe alike; such is his nature}.

Ramie finds occasion to feel sorry for the Aylsworth boy after an incident

in
which Ramie & his fellow peers cruelly taunt the boy, but he is
restricted by club rules to associate with anyone who would make the
club look bad or is unacceptable in their eyes. As Rosella says, “That
re-tard is so not one of us.”


Events worsen when Ramie finds himself in unexpected company with
Billy {helping him save tadpoles in isolated pockets of water in a
drying creekbed and removing them to a pond in the woods}, wanting to
secretly make up for his wolfish behavior, & then be done with the
youth. After all, the kid is retarded & just plain weird.


Ramie is overseen by two of the Warfield Wolverines & put on
trial by the club at their headquarters in an old abandoned warehouse.
At risk of becoming once again a nobody in town, Ramie begs forgiveness
by Dorian & the others, promising to adhere to the club oath &
dictates, & he, after heavy chastisement, is once again embraced, physically
by a smiling Dorian {who fears if well-liked Ramie is disbarred from
the brotherhood it might weaken his hold on the others} who whispers in
Ramie’s ear—in a tone that chills Ramie to the center—“Just don’t piss
me off again.”


Ramie realizes that associating with Billy, anyway, is essentially
being alone—the Alysworth kid is not on his level of understanding or
enjoyment in mutual fellowship, let alone socially accepted by anybody
else. Besides, Billy’s father doesn’t want Ramie in his son’s company
after the two get in trouble with the local police {unbeknownst to the
Warfield Wolverines} involving an incident with an injured fawn in the
woods in the which a broken police car window is the result, & Billy
takes the blame for Ramie who, in a moment of anger, throws a rock at
the vehicle—--Ramie doesn’t speak up, afraid if the police knew it was
him, word would not only get to his mother but be picked up by the
Wolverines as well & it would put him in dire jeopardy with his
continuance in the brotherhood . Doolin rages into Ramie, saying, in
effect, it’s hard enough raising a boy like Billy without having a
so-called friend of his son assist him in his unlawful & unacceptable acts.


To insure the Aylsworth kid stays away from Ramie, Dorian &
company put Billy through a terrible beating, laced with residual
threats, in a downstairs high school locker room.


Mr. Tom {Thomas Clanton} comes to Warfield {a pariah/drifter in
rags}, with his own bag of issues {taking up residence in an abandoned
shack house/chicken coop}, mostly a malignant pain at his having lost
his only child, a son, years before to an illness. He was becoming a
doctor & was unable to save his son. His wife, disillusioned, left
him, & he hit the road in a feeble attempt to get shuck/lost of
himself. Finally ending up in Warfield where he eventually finds
redemption in Billy Aylsworth. Billy becomes like the son he had lost.
Billy, discovering Thomas is a doctor, begins bringing hurt animals he
happens on in his trampings about town & the nearby woods {a rabbit,
a field mouse, a bird, etc.} to Old Mr. Tom for repair, and by losing
himself in this effort, Thomas is able to partly assuage his old demons.
Those creatures Old Tom is unable to save, Billy buries in his secret,
well-tended graveyard in the woods. Billy later shows Ramie the little
cemetery, excited & astonished that Ramie actually wants to be his
friend.


Dorian & some of the other club members catch a wild bird, are
about to pour gasoline on it in a vacant field, and, for a bizarre rush,
set it afire & let it loose for a fiery, airy death. Ramie is
delivering newspapers on his bike, spies the imminent act, along with
sighting Billy not far away {unseen by Dorian, et al} preparing to chuck
rocks at the others in an effort to distract them & hopefully cause
them to lose hold of the bird.


Ramie, not wanting to lose his friends, but realizing the Alysworth
youth will get pummeled to a pulp by the others for interfering, must
make a choice. He joins Billy & reluctantly aids him. Rocks pelt
the youths, the bird escapes to Billy’s jubilation. They are pursued on
bikes. Dorian & the others eventually find Ramie behind a
dilapidated factory, a fight ensues, Ramie badly beaten, taken & put
on trial again in the club warehouse, a trial in which he dramatically
defends not himself but boldly & fiercely speaks in behalf of Billy
Aylsworth in a very moving & powerful speech {Ramie realizing to the
hilt how wrong he’s been in his treatment of a very special youth}, but
is voted guilty as charged.


Ramie loses not only his membership in the “brotherhood”, his
girlfriend who blasts him for, in effect, choosing a retarded kid over
her, but is put through a gauntlet of sorts {a run in the woods in which
he is pursued by club members in painted faces &, when caught,
“tarred” & feathered}. He goes to Old Tom for treatment {Billy is
also there}, and collapses; doesn’t want his mother to know what
happened.


Situations intensify, and following a cruel, heartless prank, Billy
saves the life of his nemesis Dorian Bromley to the latter’s
dumfoundedness: Billy, Dorian’s unlikely deliverer, rescues the latter
from the lethal fangs of an immense, provoked diamondback rattler, Billy
amazingly “eye talking” the thing into a peaceful retreat. Dorian,
almost speechless asking, “Why did you save me, after everything I have
done to… ?” Billy answering simply, wondering why Dorian would even
ask, “Because you needed help.”


Tragedy strikes unexpectedly, but in the end, lives are changed
forever… for the better… and we witness, as an adult Ramie says, “How
curious at times is Justice’s sure and wily hand.”




The story would carry a PG rating/slated for family fare, with
inherent traditional family values, and will be feature-length {approx.
90 minutes}.