By Brendan O’Reilly
Jeffrey Bridges has no formal training as a writer, except for one class in creative writing that he found to be useless.
“People can get master’s degrees in creative writing and still not know how to tell a good story, or make three-dimensional characters with depth,” says Bridges, a 30-year-old Illinois native. “Writing is like painting. You can learn brush strokes and paint-mixing techniques, but that won’t make you a good painter. You’ve either got it or you don’t, and no class or degree can help in that regard.”
Bridges has completed five screenplays, and has started several others. He also wrote a 12-episode season of a T.V. series and a concept pilot for another. “And that’s in addition to what I’d estimate is 600 pages or more of radio drama script in the last two years,” he says. Despite his prolific writing, he has yet to make money off any of his scripts.
Bridges is the founder and executive producer of Pendant Productions, an audio production group that makes radio dramas like those broadcast over the airwaves in the 1930s and 40s. Pendant’s dramas are modernized for the 21st century and distributed over the Internet. Pendant had 487,000 total podcast hits and 65,000 mp3 files downloaded from the Web site in March, according to Bridges. Since its founding, Pendant has expanded to include seven monthly shows, a weekly show and two feature-length adventures. Pendant’s all-volunteer staff consists of over 80 voice actors, writers and directors.
Bridges founded the group in August of 2004, but Pendant’s roots go back almost a decade more, when the Internet was in its infancy.
In 1995, Bridges started a group for Web users who write stories based on the “Star Trek” universe. “Nerdy, yes, but then I’ve never claimed to be otherwise,” he says.
The group, called “Star Trek: Defiant,” led Bridges to exercise his writing muscles and collaborate with other writers. “Many of the people I founded that group with I am still very close friends with today, and I even met my wife there,” he says.
The group eventually made the leap from text to audio.
“I was horrified,” Tom Backus, a founding member of Pendant, says. “My voice going out to many people; It was one thing to write, but to voice act.”
“Eventually there was a production hiccup in getting that show moving past the first episode,” Bridges says, “but I’d gotten the bug.”
Bridges was exposed to the “Adventures of Superman” radio serial from the 1940s in 2004. “They were a riot and a lot of fun,” he says, “but just as cheesy as you might expect a superhero serial from the ’40s to be.”
He wanted to create a new Superman serial that was inspired by the original, but updated.
“It’s now Pendant’s longest running show, with episode 28 set to come out at the end of April,” Bridges says.
His wife, Susan, voices the character of Lois Lane for “Superman: The Last Son of Krypton,” an appropriate role as Lane is a reporter and Susan earned a journalism degree. She was a freshman in college when she met Bridges.
“One day we were chatting online and we exchanged phone numbers,” she says. “Our first phone conversation was just amazing.” They continued to write and talk, finding out that their fathers had worked at the same company, and they even attended the same company picnics together as children.
“Eventually he drove to my campus to meet me, and the next year he moved himself into a house near campus to be with me,” Susan says. They married during her senior year. “After the whole long distance relationship thing, we haven’t spent a day apart since.”
They found jobs together at a newspaper, while living in south Chicago, but were both let go after a corporate buyout. Susan was seven months pregnant with their son, Clark, at the time.
The layoffs forced them to rethink their situation. They concluded that Susan would be the bread winner, and Bridges would stay at home with Clark while developing his writing portfolio.
“Being a father is both the most difficult and most rewarding job ever, and I think most parents will tell you the same thing,” Bridges says. “But being able to be here to raise him and work on my writing while he’s taking a nap or what have you is really wonderful.”
Clark, four years old, is still too young to understand what his father does. “All he knows is that odd noises come out of daddy’s computer,” he says.
“Last year, we decided that if we were really going to make a go of this, we had to move to Los Angeles,” Susan says. The saved up money and made the move from Chicago.
Except for a select few, the members of Pendant have not met Bridges in person. Those who know him through Internet correspondence admire his dedication and helpfulness as a producer.
“In my experience, he’s very driven, very passionate about the work and this group, and extremely dedicated,” says Tom Stitzer, who voices the title character of Pendant’s “James Bond: To The End.” Stitzer also directs “Indiana Jones and the Well of Life,” both written by Bridges.
“Jeffrey Bridges crystallized my path in being a voice actor,” says William Raymer, a Pendulum, or fan of Pendant. After many failed auditions for roles, Bridges advised Raymer that his vocal range would be better suited to play a female role, or young child. On Bridges’ advice, Raymer made the jump from Pendant listener to Pendant cast member. He earned a role on a forthcoming show, “Once Upon a Time in Vegas.”
“I owe Jeffrey,” Raymer says. “End of story.”
Jeffrey Bridges, founder and executive producer of Pendant Productions. (pendantaudio.com)