Denver Direct: Long live Gary Reilly!

Thanks to Mike Keefe and Mark Stevens, Gary Reilly’s prodigious writing will not disappear into the dustbin, despite his death in March of 2011. Instead, his series of “Murph” novels will be published starting with “The Asphalt Warrior”. The launch will take place June 5 at the Tattered Cover in lower downtown, 1628 16th St at 7:30 p.m. Read the whole story here.

Gary and I worked on a number of projects back in the 1980s, including “The Heart of Darkness Club” and “Eddie Starr”. We became fast friends and, unfortunately, great drinking buddies, thinking we were operating in the style of Charles Bukowski. This ultimately lead to our parting of the ways, and we had had no contact since then.

Strange it was, then, that I woke up on Christmas morning of 2010 with one thought – call Gary Reilly. There was no dream preceding it that I could remember, just the thought – call Gary Reilly. So I googled Gary that morning but could not find his phone number, although his address was the same. Would that I had driven to his house instead of putting the note I had written aside. When next I picked up the note and googled again, Gary had already passed.

I had saved all of our efforts from those days, including many photos and videotapes we shot, and all of our collaboration and communications with Rob Kirk, our partner and Hollywood contact. Rob had done his best to pitch our project, an “entertainment concept” in Hollywood, and although there was interest, it was deemed to be too “scary” and “ahead of its time”. “Too far out”, they said. 

I hope to be able to publish some of this work in the near future. Hat’s off to Gary Reilly and his publishers Keefe and Stevens. I can’t wait to buy the first book in the series, “The Asphalt Warrior”. See you at the Tattered Cover on June 5th.