Nick Richey had a pretty wild childhood, and poured some of his craziest stories into his film 1-800-HOT-NITE, which stars Cobra Kai breakout Dallas Dupree Young as a teenager in trouble who — fleeing from a child welfare worker after a drug bust at his house — gets some helpful guidance from a phone-sex operator.
To answer your first questions: Yes, Richey called quite a few phone sex lines as a kid. And no, they never gave him good advice.
“I would pile into a phone booth with my friends, and we would call phone sex operators,” he recalls. “We managed to get a few lines in of ‘dirty talk’ until they realized through the giggles and the laughing that we were kids and would hang up on us. So they were usually short-lived conversations.”
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Not so in 1-800-HOT-NITE. When an operator named Ava (played by Richey’s wife, Ali Richey) picks up on how much trouble Tommy (Young) and his friends are in, she starts to take an interest in their lives, beyond the dirty talk. Along Steve (Mylen Bradford) and O’Neill (Gerrison Machado), Tommy flees Child Protective Services, tries to scrounge up enough money to get a hotel room, and has a horrible encounter with some creeps who introduce him to a very scary snake.
“They’re 14 years old, and they’re encountering fistfights, first kisses, being robbed — all these all these sort of little, in some cases, lower-class rites of passage, as he’s on the verge of becoming an adult and having to take responsibility,” Richey explains. You can listen to our full interview with Nick Richey on the MovieMaker podcast, available on Apple, Spotify, anywhere else you listen to podcasts, and here:
Richey’s first film was the well-received Low Low, in which Ali Richey starred. That 2019 film is about four high-school girls confronting sex, violence and adulthood on the last day of summer. 1-800-HOT-NITE covers similar ground, but this time with boys a few years younger. The film debuted to praise at the Deauville Film Festival premiere in a France before a strong domestic festival run that included the Heartland International Film Festival and Austin Film Festival. It’s now available on demand.
Richey says on the podcast that he found Dallas Dupree Young without knowing his lead had landed a key role in Cobra Kai, as victim-turned-bully Kenny. He and the film’s other young actors auditioned for their 1-800-Hot-Nite role during pandemic lockdowns.
“The audition was tough. I had this super-emotional scene in there. And you’re asking these kids to get there on Zoom, and you’re not there as a director to work with them and direct the in-person,” Richey says. “And you never know, maybe they don’t want to give that performance in front of their parent, who’s sitting there behind the cell phone. He did such a great job.”
Richey came up with the story for 1-800-HOT-NITE while writing a blog about his lower-middle-class childhood in Vancouver, Washington, near Portland.
“There were events that launched me into adulthood a little too early,” he recalls. “I wanted to explore for myself why some of my friends ended up in prison and in trouble, and how I ended up sort of channeling my challenges into something productive, like filmmaking.”
Though he never had to dodge CPS, like Tommy does in the film, his childhood wasn’t easy.
Aly Richey as Ava in 1-800-Hot-Nite, directed by Nick Richey and starring Dallas Dupree Young.
“My parents were kind of these renegades,” he says. “They ran away from home together when they were 15, and they’ve been together ever since. But, you know, with that comes other other issues… you’re in your twenties with three sons, working at bars. My mom and dad were getting into trouble. My dad was dealing with addiction issues at the time. We were struggling in so many ways, and I was watching friends get taken into foster care or taken by CPS. I was getting robbed. I was robbing. I was breaking into homes with friends and stealing.
“I would steal my school clothes from from stores,” he continues. “I was getting in trouble with the police for malicious mischief or vandalizing a cop car. There were many, many ups and downs, and fights. Someone looked at me wrong, it was a fistfight.”
The scary snake thing that happens to Tommy in the movie also happened to Richey — but with an iguana.
“I had a paper route and I was collecting money. I was like a 12- or 13-year-old with a paper route — whose stupid idea was it to give me a bank bag to go around and collect like $600 worth of subscriptions in cash in a Section 8 neighborhood, where $600 is a lot of money?” he asks. “And so I was knocking on these guys’ door. My manager did tell me, ‘Don’t ever go in someone’s place. Don’t ever go in their apartment.’ And of course these guys were like, ‘Come in, come into my apartment, don’t worry — why are you acting weird? You want your money, come in.'”
All together now: Nooooo.
“I went in,” Richey continues. “And as soon as I went in, he locked the door behind me and kind of pushed me in, and there were these other men in there, and a woman. I could smell alcohol.”
And the out came the reptile.
“I’d never seen an iguana before. They put it on my face and my shirt. And it had sharp claws. And they robbed me.”
He didn’t call the police, because he didn’t trust them, given his own run-ins with the law. Eventually he became determined to turn his life around.
“Once I sort of straightened myself out, I was in high school, I was doing well, I was a good student. My older brother and I were gonna be the first people in our family to go to college, and were very excited about that. I just focused on. ‘I need to make money. I’ve been poor my whole life, I don’t want to be poor anymore. So I’m going to be like an investment banker.’ And the next thing I know, I’m like 18 years old, reading The Wall Street Journal, trying to figure it out, getting my Series 6 and 63 licenses selling variable products and life insurance by my freshman year of college.”
But he wasn’t totally free and clear of legal troubles. In addition to a college job at Red Lobster, he had a side hustle selling fake IDs.
“I think the statute of limitations is over, so I’m safe,” he jokes. “I was selling fake IDs to college students to help pay tuition, but then I almost got arrested. I barely evaded getting arrested on that, and was like, Oh, I almost ended up in prison. I’ve got to stop. I gotta get a legit, you know, another third job.'”
Meanwhile, he had always wanted to tell stories. He would use a little tape deck to record the analog-era equivalent of a podcast — “or like a radio story of some adventure.” So he auditioned to be a host on the local WB station, and got the job. A casting director in Portland recommended he move to L.A., and he did. But he discovered that writing and directing appealed to him more than acting.
Along the way, he met his wife, his most reliable collaborator, with whom he’s currently planning another film.
And he hasn’t completely given up danger. It’s kind of a long story — at the end of the podcast — but he now restores ancient weapons when he’s not making films.
“I love storytelling,” he says. “And I think that there are stories behind these ancient cultures that exist in their artifacts. In a way I feel like I’m keeping those stories alive by preserving those artifacts.”
1-800-Hot-Nite, written and directed by Nick Richey and starring Dallas Dupree Young, is now available on VOD.
Main image: (L-R) Mylen Bradford, Dallas Dupree Young and and Gerrison Machado in 1-800-HOT-NITE, written and directed by Nick Richey.
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