Camden's Denny Brown wrote - and lived - dramatic story
Denny Brown can relate to his most compelling characters: He's in pursuit of something, too. Brown, a former Camden High School basketball star, is the creator and one of the executive producers of a six-episode, fictional TV series called Chase Street that is being shot on the streets of his hometown.
Denny Brown can relate to his most compelling characters: He's in pursuit of something, too.
Brown, a former Camden High School basketball star, is the creator and one of the executive producers of a six-episode, fictional TV series called Chase Street that is being shot on the streets of his hometown.
Brown, a star forward for teams that won two state championships and lost the 1988 title game by a point, said the series' title is a play on the motivation of the folks on the screen.
"The politicians, they're chasing the power," Brown said the other day over lunch at Donkey's Place, a landmark restaurant on Haddon Avenue, around the corner from his old high school. "The drug dealers, they're chasing the money.
"And the everyday people, they're chasing that elusive American dream that always seems just a little out of reach for people in their situation."
The 47-year-old Brown is chasing something as well. His best friend and former teammate, Vic Carstarphen, said Brown finally is "pursuing his passion" after years of reluctance.
"He's been talking about this for as long as I can remember," Carstarphen said. "He always would say, 'Camden - there's such a great story here.'
"Now he's putting it out there. Now he's going for it."
Brown has been writing and rewriting Chase Street for the better part of seven years.
But the story within the story stretches back much farther than that.
That story, the one about the storyteller changing the dramatic arc of his own story - and going all-in on his dream - begins when he was in third grade and won an essay-writing contest.
"I won a year's membership to the new [YMCA] they just opened in the city," Brown said.
Brown said his mother, Brenda Brown, a longtime educator in the city, nourished his writing skills and made sure he was "grammatically sound" even as a youngster.
When he was 13, his father, Gary Brown, bought him a book called Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting by legendary Hollywood screenwriter Syd Field.
"My dad, he always was messing around with screenplays," Denny Brown said. "We would be watching movies, and he would be talking to me about plot points."
Brown knew he had a knack for writing. He was a street-smart kid from East Camden and an absolute stud on the basketball court - he grew to 6-foot-6 with a soft touch from the outside, ferocity in the paint, and a raging competitive spirit - but he had a creative gift, too.
Brown won the creative writing award as a senior at Camden High, although he didn't bother to attend the honors assembly.
"I got an 'A' on every assignment, but being a big basketball star, I would cut class sometimes and ended up getting a 'C,' " Brown said with a wistful smile.
Brown scored 1,608 points as a three-year starter during a golden era for Camden High basketball. He earned a scholarship to Iona and also played at Coppin (Md.) State before an injury ended his career.
He studied writing at the Art Institute of Philadelphia, circling around his dream profession but never fully committing. He worked in youth counseling, made some money in the mortgage business, engaged in more dialogue about writing than writing dialogue.
"How many of us have a passion that we would love to pursue but we never do?" Carstarphen said. "All things being equal, this is what you would do. But something holds you back. Maybe it's fear."
Brown studied The Art of Dramatic Writing by Lajos Egri and Creating Unforgettable Characters by Linda Seger. He read Aristotle's Poetics to learn the ancient Greek's ideas for storytelling.
"I always wanted to write," Brown said. "I always knew I could. I continuously read Egri to this day. I consider it my writer's bible."
Brown said Chase Street has a ripped-from-today's-headlines feel to it. The main character is an injured NBA star who returns to Camden to deal with family drama and a drug-dealing brother and gets "pulled into politics" as power brokers in the city recruit him to replace the scandal-riddled mayor.
Brown said Chase Street has been filmed almost entirely in Camden, in barbershops and restaurants and other locations in his hometown. Much of the cast is from the city.
Brown and other producers have been shopping the series with executives at Netflix, Amazon, and the Urban Movie Channel, along with other production companies.
They traveled to California to meet with Suzanne De Passe, the cochairman of the de Passe Jones Entertainment group and the woman who helped develop the Jackson 5 as a creative assistant at Motown.
They plan to televise the pilot before the end of the year, with a premiere at a South Jersey theater. The trailer for the series has been a hit on YouTube, with more than 385,000 views.
With its street hustlers and string-pulling politicos, with its everyday people caught in both kinds of crossfire, with its gritty Camden locations and echoes of real life, Chase Street has the makings of a great story.
But it's fiction.
Denny Brown's story is something special, too. And it's real.
@PhilAnastasia
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