Ride a White Zebra — Ron Montana

Ron Montana has written six published SF, mystery and mainstream novels, his latest being FACE IN THE SNOW from Bantam in 1992. He sold the movie rights and adapted this book to a film script in 1998.

His short stories have appeared in many of the major science fiction and mystery magazines and hardcover anthologies.

His first stage play, Community Property, enjoyed a 20-week run in the San Francisco Bay Area and he was the humor columnist for San Jose Magazine and the City Editor of the San Jose Downtown Post Newspaper for three years.

He has written ten screenplays, several of which have been optioned by major producers over the last decade.

In 1999, he and film collaborator Barry Schneider sold The Sailmaker, an epic multimillion dollar film, for a high six-figure amount. The project should be in production in 2000.

He has acted in many films and has directed several stage plays, as well as scripting radio plays.

Ron currently resides in San Jose, California, and has one other great love besides writing: riding his Peruvian Paso horses.

4. Book Description

RIDE A WHITE ZEBRA is a novel about the realization of dreams. If our characters can succeed in selling a decrepit gray mule to the circus as a white zebra, metaphorically speaking, they can then count coup on a society that considers them to be non-contributory.

The characters come together in the Mission Street District of San Francisco when Sally and Jack use Sidneys script, THE ATTACK OF THE GIANT FLEAS (possibly the worst script in the history of American cinema if THE BLOB is not considered), to con Blue Lou into a blackjack hustle to raise $25,000 to fund a fake production company.

Lou has been an avid film buff since early childhood (his mother was a drive-in movie projectionist who hung his car seat next to the projector six nights a week), and he is a sucker when it comes to anything dealing with the silver screen. Getting himself involved in what to the casual observer would certainly be recognizable as a scam, he proceeds to lead the intrepid hustlers to Reno to raise the $25,000.

On the tour bus fate strikes Sidney when he meets Lorili during her abortive attempt to hijack the bus. It is love at first smite and Sid is torn between duty and romance when Sally disarms Lorili and throws her off the bus.

Broken-hearted, Sidney goes through the motions as the gambling team actually does raise the money necessary to begin production on the film now entitled, THE AMNIOCENTESIS CONCURRENCE.

ZEBRA is the story of the love between two young people of totally divergent backgrounds: a young Jewish writer with great faith and a low threshold of pain, and a dynamic Latino woman who has very little trouble identifying what she wants and even less in securing it.

It is the story of an old man who dreams cinemascopic dreams in Dolby sound and who wants little more than to be a part of something more creative than blackjack hustling before he dies.

It is the interweaving of two inept but dedicated con artists determined to finally make that last big score that will allow them to rest for the first time in their treadmill existances.

ZEBRA tells how these mismatched and unlikely characters actually bilk a casino out of the seed money necessary to start up a motion picture company, how they attempt to con each other out of the bankroll, and how they finally end up in Hollywood where it is walk the walk time.

Someone once said that to fill the job of the Presidency of the United States was impossible, the person elected was never qualified, they were just forced to do the job and succeed because of the mantle of the office. Such is true of Piece of the Action Productions, a company so doomed to failure by virtue of its lack of virtue, it actually does get off the ground.

ZEBRA, as well as being a satirical look at movie making and the temperaments of show