He drinks. He smokes. He gambles. He curses. He thinks about committing adultery. You’ll love him.
It’s not just a tag-line for the best horseplaying flick of all time but also a damn near perfect description of its writer (sans adultery).
Now 65, Jay Cronley is a writer, horse racing enthusiast and gambler with an infectious laugh. Inducted into the Oklahoma Writers’ Hall of Fame in 2002, he has eight works of fiction to his credit, three of which have been turned into movies in North America. In addition to Good Vibes (which became Let it Ride), Quick Change and Funny Farm were lucky enough to grace the silver screen.
“Through my adventures,” jokes Cronley, “I have learned why decent books are turned into rotten films. When movie people pay stars big money, the camera stays on them, no matter the story line.
“It’s every writer’s goal if you write fiction and write books to have a screenplay self-contained in the book so somebody could just clip it out and they can’t screw it up,” he adds. “With Let It Ride they did it word for word.”
Directed by Joe Pytka (of Space Jam fame), the story made it to the big screen courtesy of producer Ned Dowd. “Ned is a hardcore horse guy,” says Cronley. “He got hold of Good Vibes and got a bunch of his pals who love racing and they optioned the book and made the movie.”
It turned out to have a brilliant ensemble cast that perfectly played Cronley’s quirky characters. Those characters, he insists, are composites of everybody he’s ever known. “Those people are in Hot Springs today,” he grins. “That’s the great charm of racetracks and that’s why it’s so fun to get to a track. The racetrack is the last bastion for characters. Anywhere else you’re in rehab. Even in my simulcast joint there are some real rascals.”
One of the more memorable characters from the movie is Simpson, the big guy you pay to get a spot at the rail. Though there was never a ‘real’ Simpson, Cronley says he and his buddies would pay college kids to keep their place at the rail on Arkansas Derby Day.
“All that stuff’s based in fact,” he says. “Obviously it’s exaggerated, but there’s some truth in every single thing there.”
So who are the regulars at his local simulcast parlor? “Four lawyers, some winos and a house painter,” he says.
“All I have to do is go over there and ask them who they like and run a line through it. If I’ve got a race and it’s down to two or three horses, there are two or three people that I will go find and ask them who they like. They’re golden and they can’t pick anything.”
It may be why the movie’s so good. You know those people and it brings them to life.
“From My Friend Flicka to Seabiscuit, you don’t even know they gamble on the races,” Cronley points out. “And that’s what was fun about our movie. It’s about gambling. It showed people gambling and betting. I don’t think there’s ever been another horse racing movie about gambling.”
Gambling was a part of Cronley’s life back then and still is today. He has been writing a weekly horse racing column on ESPN.com for nearly five years. He also writes three general interest columns a week for the Tulsa World newspaper, where he’s now been writing for two decades.
His acumen when it comes to the written word can be attributed to his upbringing. Cronley was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, but his family soon moved to Oklahoma to avoid the harsh winters. “My father was the sports editor for the Daily Oklahoman for like 35 years, so I was always around writing,” he shrugs.
“When you live in a house like that you can’t get away with using bad grammar. You have to read all the time,” he laughs. “The only way to learn to write is to read.”
Growing up in a state where college sports are a way of life, it was no surprise Cronley became an athlete. He played baseball for the University of Oklahoma and was talented enough to be named All-Big Eight, but sports just wasn’t his calling. After college, he spent several years in the New York City rat race selling stocks, but decided he’d be happier living on Tulsa time.
“When you’re around writing and you read all the time,” he shrugs, “you kind of gravitate back to that.”
In 1979 he published Good Vibes, his second novel.
He always liked horse racing, but it wasn’t easy to follow it in Oklahoma. Blue Ribbon Downs was the first racetrack in the state, but it didn’t become pari-mutuel until 1984, so in order to wager you had to travel. “You had to go to Las Vegas to a sportsbook or drive to Oaklawn (Hot Springs, Arkansas) and that’s where I got in the habit of racing being not just an in and out simulcast pop,” says Cronley. “It was like a weekend trip because Hot Springs is four and a half or five hours away and it’s beautiful. It’s kind of like Saratoga or Del Mar, where you go and it’s an event.”
So Cronley would travel to Arkansas and spend a few relaxing days. “I’d wake up and go fishing in the morning and go to the racetrack in the afternoon and that’s how I got on to racing as a vacation. And I still go back every year.” It was on one of those trips that he was inspired to write Good Vibes.
“I was looking at the Form and there was a horse called Rambunctious Road in the first race on the next day and this horse looked so good that I had to go play it,” he recalls. “The track was 25 miles away on a two-lane road, and everything on earth that could go wrong did.”
“There were wrecks and it was horrible weather and fog and I was driving on the shoulder and I was going to do anything to get to that racetrack,” he grins. “The traffic in Hot Springs was horrible. I had to park nine blocks away and I got out and I ran like a road runner cartoon and I hopped a rail. I made it a minute to post and I got my bet down.
“The horse won, and I thought -- some days things just go absolutely perfect. What a funny idea it’d be to do a book where you just absolutely can’t lose.”
Cronley still gets fan mail from people who love watching Let It Ride. “You know the way athletes get their little ipods and listen to music to get in the right frame of mind before a game? Handicappers use this movie that way.
“The other day some guy sent me an email and said he and his people got together and watched Let It Ride to get in the right frame of mind to go to the track. It’s so fun to hear stuff like that.”
People who own a hard cover copy of Good Vibes may be pleased to know the book has developed a large price tag “When it’s a relatively small printing and it becomes a movie overnight, the hard-backs become extremely valuable,” Cronley admits.
“A couple years ago someone sent me a page from a rare book company [with books on] the pyramids and religious writings and there next to something from 4 A.D. was Good Vibes and it was an original hard back signed copy for $1,300. And I’ve got none. All I’ve got are two paperbacks.”
He’s still got pen to paper more often than not, and it’s a lot to keep on top of. To deal with all the writing, he breaks each day down into three parts. “I get the newspaper general interest column out of the way, then I make horse racing notes and then I work on my new script.
“I’ve been working on a murder mystery script and it’s just so different. With a book, you can write 50 pages about going to the bathroom. But with a script everything has to go right to the plot and to the people and you have to think about the camera.”
He’s also become a fan of the new Animal Planet show, Jockeys, and with the Derby less than two months away you better believe he’s looking at the contenders.
“Everything that wins the Arkansas Derby is hot,” he winks.