Original Screenplay
The Last DJ
Written by Scott Wright & Susie Hatton
Hollywood, 1989. Guns-N-Roses, Motley Crüe and Poison rule the Sunset strip. At age 34, Dakota Jackson has it made. He’s the #1 DJ in LA, lives in a beach house in Malibu, and is fed a steady stream of girls and drugs by the record companies who court his favor. And he’s miserable. He’s divorced and in debt, still hung up on Elizabeth - the New York fashion icon who broke his heart - and obsessed with a girl he sees 10 times a day in the latest hit MTV video.
He takes payola to play a new record from an unknown band - Trigger - and the band amazingly explodes into stardom. Lead singer Blake Stevens becomes Dakota’s new BFF. Backstage one night Blake introduces Dakota to Charlie - the stunning girl from the MTV video - who has just become Blake’s fiancé.
Charlie slowly falls for Dakota, who is smitten and can’t help playing with fire. Blake, Charlie and Dakota weave a medusa’s knot of love and betrayal, until Elizabeth arrives from New York to throw more gas on the fire.
Loosely based on real people and events, and written by the people who lived it. “The Last DJ” nails the end of the rock era in southern California, as “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood” captured the end of the 1960s in LA.
