Many are called, few are chosen. So goes a Marine Corps advertising slogan—also what I think of the talented transplants who flock from across the United States and rest of the world to make Los Angeles their home.
A creative individual needs to be confident, even reckless, to pursue their dreams for a living.
Moving to the big city is no joke, especially now. Even before the 2023 writers’ strike and 2025 Palisades fire, the migration of the entertainment industry was already in reverse, shifting to cheaper locations across the continent and around the globe. My wife, a customer who dresses actors for a living, said only 30 percent of her union worked this year.
I’m not sure what to think of the artists still trying to make a living in Los Angeles after so many setbacks.
Tinseltown is at a crossroads, and it takes a visionary soldier to trudge through these streets of half-broken dreams—one more confident and reckless than ever.
Trevor Simms, auteur, is a captain among them.
Auteur is no amateur
Adrenochrome (2017), Trevor’s first film, is a brutal and surreal tale in which he stars as an ex-Marine who foils a gang of Venice Beach psychos that kill people to extract a psychedelic compound from their victims’ adrenal glands.
A quintessential B-movie, sure, and now a gonzo classic.
I lived in Venice when Adrenochrome was filmed. With its trippy action, flawed characters, and unlikely hero—it struck a nerve in the burgeoning streaming scene, receiving accolades from action-movie aficionados who desire features that are edgier than the commercial fare often found on screen. My review:
A young American veteran finds the horrors of war eager to revisit him among big-breasted bikini babes, murderous drug gangs, aspiring cult leaders and divine surfer music in the hard-partying peacenik enclave of Venice Beach, California. This high-octane psychonaut action thriller revels in the excesses and failures of hippy-dippy plant power culture and the war-mongering state, providing the viewer with an equal dose of style and revulsion. This beautifully horrific mash-up of our nation’s most contradictory values amounts to a visceral and laughable feast filled with thought-provoking debauchery, carnage and pseudo-justifiable intrigue. For those ready for a rollicking satire to celebrate an American Dream torn asunder, Adrenochrome is the right nightmare for you.
It wasn’t long after I posted this review that Trevor contacted me, grateful that I understood his film. Soon, a friendship formed between us thanks to our mutual appreciation of the late Hunter S. Thompson, love of the great outdoors, and a desire to disrupt the entertainment industrial complex.
Departure from the coast
I told Trevor about my novel, Stay Younger Longer (2015), which I was interested in being produced as a film or TV series (duh, of course!).
We agreed to meet and discuss aboard his fishing boat/home, docked in Marina del Rey. I think we were both hoping for a payday, and we were mutually disappointed when we realized the most we would be able to offer each other was cheap booze and a laugh.
I went on to toil in a regular job for a large organization, publishing a steady stream of novels and stories on the side (and grateful to at least have a job when so many of my artist friends were unemployed and losing their minds). Trevor continued to act (horror movies made in Eastern Europe). He also organized film festivals, something he had done since moving to L.A. One, Filmchilla, settled favorably out of court when organizers of Coachella sued him for alleged trademark infringement.
Arrival at the ranch
Besides catching up at Trevor’s annual film festivals, we had little contact. COVID hit. I was promoted and bought a house for my family in Santa Clarita, north of Los Angeles. This extended my train commute to four hours a day. When I wasn’t working, I was sleeping, or trying to sleep. Or hanging out with my wife and daughter. Or exercising. Or writing.
Trevor, however, managed to extend his American dream in a manner truer to his art and preferred lifestyle. The native of Kentucky, raised on a farm, used earnings from his acting gigs to buy land on a discount during the pandemic, flip it for a profit, and secure several acres in the Sierra foothills.
A video he posted on Instagram showed his oversized fishing boat/home being towed by a pick-up truck along a dirt road to parts unknown.
It wasn’t long after that I received an invitation to his latest film festival, to be held at his new ranch, for those brave enough to make the trek.
My wife and I decided to make it a date.
T Bird and beyond
We drove north for two hours, each mile closer to the supposed destination making us feel like we were only closer to death. A tour in pitch blackness on a bumpy, windy road along canyon walls that eventually led to a starry valley with no other lights, or landmarks, in sight.
Even our GPS was wrong—it was surrounded by a blank screen, leading us nowhere. We parked in the middle of nothing, unable to see a foot in front of us, desperate.
“Some date this turned out to be,” my wife said. “Let’s turn around and go home.”
I rolled down my window and hollered into the darkness, “Trevor?!”
“You made it!” a voice hollered back.
My eyes began to focus on a bonfire. A bunch of dudes with gleaming eyes grinning at me.
Trevor lived in a cabin he built by hand on a hill overlooking his sprawling property inhabited by dogs, cats, cows, and chickens.
He drank water raised by a well.
His boat was beached against a boulder. A gigantic movie screen was propped up next to the boat.
Trevor had created his own drive-in theater.
The films were eclectic, as usual. My favorite from the show was Mike Caravella’s Astral Plane Drifter (2022). Highly recommended.
Through Instagram, I learned about Trevor’s new project. A video was posted of him fighting a homeless man. Then, another of him getting popped in the ass by a rubber bullet during a lockdown protest. Then, another of him challenging UFC champion Conor McGregor to a match, presumably to raise money to produce his new film … about bum fights?
It all seemed strange, even for Trevor.
He texted me to see if I would be willing to play a part as a cop in his new movie. The plan was to film on Saturday amid sweltering summer heat on a blacktop in Lancaster.
Such an idea, after a long week of work, sounded exhausting. I had grown soft and bougie.
I texted him back:
How much will you pay me?
He didn’t respond.
At least we had finally returned to those philosophical questions about art and profit that brought us together in the first place.
Since the release of T Bird (2025), I wish I had taken him up on the opportunity.
Film for the age
There is nothing entertaining about child trafficking—a notorious, underground industry often concentrated in coastal cities. An estimated 50 percent of human trafficking victims are children. In Los Angeles, the average age for a child trafficked is 12 to 14 years old.
That said, Trevor pulls off something uniquely compelling with T Bird—a brazen, sunburnt, and seemingly bonkers action-packed drama on the youth-crazed, under-exposed, dark side of his adopted hometown.
In the film, Trevor plays a homeless man who breaks up a child-trafficking ring.
T Bird leans on the same underdog elements that made Adrenochrome an underground success, but with fewer psychedelic special effects and more grounded camerawork that demonstrates a maturity in the auteur’s storytelling, which is more compelling and fitting for a mass audience.
Set amid the Westside during the COVID-19 pandemic, T Bird is a rudderless adult caught in a vicious cycle of bum fights, petty theft, and drug addiction.
Through a flashback, we learn that T Bird gets his name from the Thunderbird automobile from which he was kidnapped as a boy. As a product of child trafficking, T Bird’s background of abuse spurs his ongoing trauma and inability to function in day-to-day society.
So enters a child-trafficking pimp played by Tom Sizemore and a corrupt Child Protective Services worker played by Andy Dick. Together they profit off struggling families and a strained foster care system.
T Bird’s vindication as a character, as well as the payoff for the audience, comes with him aiding in the rescue of two trafficked children, played by Mikaylah Jo-Mae and Sunny Alan-Moon, and the bond they form in the process. Those scenes tugged on my heartstrings and made my wife tear up.
With Simms serving as star, director, and co-writer, and Wyatt Denny as co-writer, the cast of talented Hollywood outliers and newcomers add to the story’s gritty cache.
I’m not sure when Trevor’s next film festival will be, but I’m glad I had a chance to check out T Bird and reminisce about what makes Tinseltown tick beneath the glitz and glam: the magic of transforming angst into art.
Ryan Hyatt, November 23, 2025
National Human Trafficking Hotline toll-free hotline at 1-888-373-7888: Anti-Trafficking Hotline Advocates are available at all times to take reports of potential human trafficking.
Share this:
Categories: Culture
The La-La Lander 
Leave a comment