For the Love of Roy Rogers

 

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Windom Easley is considered by many of his family to be a strange man. And that’s from the people who know and love him.

An avid fan of Roy Rogers when he was growing up, Windom still watches the old television shows, sings his songs, and wears clothes strikingly similar to Roy.

When Windom learns more about Roy’s charitable efforts, he begins to change his view of Roy Rogers from admiration to idolizing. Interpreting the myth created on television as the real Roy Rogers, Windom idolizes all that Roy was and represented.

Windom feels that what America needs now is a new Roy Rogers. Someone the kids can turn to instead of rap stars, belly button girls, and violent heroes.

Trying to reinvent himself as Roy, he struggles to find acceptance at network televisions as the new incarnation only to find himself laughed away. Only a local cable station, public access, will grant him his opportunity. The station manager views the show as the ultimate parody and assumes that Windom is a comedian.

Windom devotes himself to the new show, realizing this is his opportunity. His show, stunningly, becomes a hit. At first, many kids watch it as a laugh, but soon, some of Roy’s, er, Windom’s wisdom begins to sink in. He is continually booked at high schools and grocery store openings as a joke act, but although many don’t take him seriously, his audience of devoted followers that believe in him....grows. Other cable shows pick it up. Then, to stunned programmers around the country, Windom’s show grows in popularity...first as a sight gag more than anything else but the growth continues until the networks feel they have to sign him up as the next mega-star.

But can Windom survive? Can Roy Rogers?

Brief Description: A man setting himself up as the new Roy Rogers finds he is catapulted to fame.

Key Elements: humor, evaluation of moral America, and the comedy/drama of a man who believes in old-fashioned values.

Association: Building up on the mythology of Will Rogers and the fictional send off of Lonesome Rhodes from A Face in the Crowd, but without the cynical ending.