It’s 1932: banks are failing, movie theaters are closing, and the executives, directors, writers, and stars at MGM are under intense pressure to produce fifty films a year and turn a profit. Director Victor Fleming is desperate for a hit to prove he can make the transition to talking pictures, and writer Anita Loos returns to Hollywood, broke and determined to succeed without her manic husband. Their collaboration will change the industry forever, but at what price?

The Pride of Metro is historical fiction that functions as a layered literary account of the dawn of the golden age of MGM Studios and fall of pre-code Hollywood. Ostensibly, the series follows the ambitious agendas of major players at the studio who must compromise themselves to overcome artistic and moral hurdles that stand between them and the fame and fortune they desire. The unrelenting pressure of production, and conflict in their lives demand great sacrifice. The paths the players take to achieve greater and greater heights cover the production slate at MGM from 1932 to 1933, but more specifically the fallout from Grand Hotel, and Fleming and Loos’ film that provokes the censors, Red Dust, yet the surprising subject of the story is the history of filmmaking in the 1930s told through the struggles of this stellar ensemble. Using their careers as a lens, a vivid collage of the studio’s story becomes clear. The conviction with which characters chase their dreams—and the sins they commit— create compelling literature.

My great uncle on my mother’s side, is Oscar winning director, Victor Fleming (Wizard of Oz, Gone With the Wind). He was a Hemingway-like character and as my great-aunt used to say, "there were no F words in the movies, but they sure were flying around the house." Many of the stories I grew up with are myths, often perpetuated by the stars themselves. This, along with my extensive cinema studies, and own career directing give me a unique perspective of this time that is rapidly fading from the memory of the world. I’m weaving a fiction that represents the drama off camera in a way never seen before.

These men and women despite their flaws and conflicts, powered the only studio to turn a profit in every year of the Great Depression, but were torn between what sells, what they want to make, and what the moral leaders of a bleeding nation demanded and the struggling audience enjoyed. These passionate and ambitious artists and businessmen evolved cinema from silent black-and-white to talking, to color while under intense public scrutiny and back-breaking corporate pressure. But what eroded the psyches and sanity of the Metro employees was the volcanic power of their own ambition, and the rewards and losses of the lives they gambled with and the fickle taste of a frustrated audience drowning in the Depression. The MGM players, producers and creatives fancied themselves gods and goddesses, when the reality was they were gladiators, destroying themselves for the public’s entertainment.

My name is Kevin T. Morales, you can follow me @kevintmorales on twitter. I look forward to hearing your thoughts, and sharing this journey.