“Brenda – A Whimsical Look at a Fallen Star” is a story about values, emotions, hope, despair, frustration, ambition. . . a story of good versus evil. It’s about “us and them.” It’s about love and it’s about contempt.
A young girl who has grown up in Terre Haute, Indiana, in the quintessential dysfunctional family in which she is offered to her father’s poker buddies to pay off his perpetual gambling debts. Her mother can’t help her because she’s busy “bedding” every thing in pants. . . in her daughter’s presence.
Brenda escapes to Hollywood where she’s caught up in the homeless / drug scene. Eventually she and her voluptuous body are “discovered” – not at Schwab’s Drug Store but trying to hustle some drugs in front of the Pussycat Theater on the Boulevard.
Brenda is seduced into the porn industry where her looks and talents propel her to the top where she remains for several years. Eventually, however, a new body comes along and Brenda becomes a veritable “has been.” She plummets into physical and psychological oblivion.
Enter Dr. Malcolm Hughes, head of the Psychology Department at LA’s premier private university. He’s gotten a federal grant to conduct research and interviews for the purpose of returning those in the porn industry to mainstream society.
Hughes’s fractured personality, sexual obsessions and narcissistic petulance clash with Brenda’s fragile emotional state. Brenda’s “good friend” intervenes – Brenda re-emerges as a legitimate superstar through the tutelage of her friend.
What happens to Dr. Hughes? What of the relationship between Brenda and her “girl friend?” And, lastly, how do all the values, societal norms, and lifestyle balance in the end?
