Dave Gudsen, in AppleTV’s show, Smoke, is loosely based on real-life firefighter-turned-arson-investigator John Leonard Orr, hailed as the most prolific American arsonist of the 20th century. Yes, you heard it right. John Orr didn’t only set fires in Glendale and surrounding areas but was also the first to arrive at the crime scene to investigate. However, it needs to be mentioned that Taron Egerton’s character, Dave Gudsen, just draws inspiration from the life and crimes of serial arsonist John Orr, and the show isn’t exactly based on his true story, as the creators have taken certain creative liberties in the portrayal of its antagonist. To begin with, John Orr was active during the 20th century, from sometime in the 1980s until his arrest on December 4, 1991. And he set fires in the LA region, mostly Glendale, where he worked as a fire captain and arson investigator. Meanwhile, AppleTV’s Smoke is set in the modern day, with Gudsen setting fires in a fictional city called Umberland, located somewhere in America. The modern adaptation comes with its own set of challenges, as today we have CCTV cameras on every street corner, paired with AI face detection tech, so I am not quite convinced a modern-day arsonist like Gudsen has been able to evade the law for such a long time.
Moving forward, in real life, John Orr has two biological daughters, while in Smoke, Gudsen lives with his wife, Ashley, and his stepson, Emmett. This is one major deviation from the true story. But speaking of similarities, you might have noticed how Gudsen was always the first to reach the burn site. He would arrive even before the firefighters and click pictures of his glorious act. And once everyone had gathered at the crime scene, Gudsen, like a true hero, would locate the “point of origin” amidst the charred rubble, boasting of his instinct and knowledge to his fellow colleagues and senior investigators. Gudsen, just like his real-life counterpart, used an incendiary device composed of a cigarette with three matches tied to it with a rubber band. The delay device would allow the serial arsonist to flee the scene even before the fire started, therefore ruling him out of the investigation. This “signature” incendiary device was found at multiple burn sites, which convinced the investigators that all these fires were the work of one man.
In the show, Gudsen has been writing a book about an arson investigator trying to catch a serial arsonist in the city. In real life, John Orr himself wrote a similar novel, titled “Point of Origin,” which many investigators believe was some sort of long confession, as Orr wanted someone to find out about his crimes and stop the arsonist in him before it was too late. In the book, Orr has detailed all his crimes and the investigation, bringing insights to the case that no one was aware of except for him, which convinced the authorities in the end that it was Orr who had been setting fires in the area. He was also found guilty of the deaths of four people who lost their lives because of the fire inside Ole’s Home Center on Fair Oaks Avenue.
In real life, Captain Marvin G. Casey of the Bakersfield Fire Department had procured evidence, a fingerprint, from the crime scene. He had an intuition that the fingerprint belonged to one of the arson investigators attending the arson convention in the area. And yes, he was right. In Smoke, Detective Michelle Calderone made a similar guess. She believed that one of the former or operating firefighters might be involved in the arson in the area, and coincidentally, the man she was looking for was sitting right in front of her. It was her partner, Dave Gudsen. It’s likely that, in the show, Calderone is going to play an important role in Gudsen’s arrest. Also, before I forget, John Leonard Orr, the real-life serial arsonist, is currently serving a life sentence in Mule Creek State Prison, Ione, California.
Speaking of the psychological aspects of the character, the investigators throughout these years have tried to find an explanation for John Orr’s overwhelming desire to set fires. His actions could be seen as a way to express his anger, anxiety, tension, frustration or other complicated feelings, but they never believed that Orr was a pyromaniac. Orr had always been in control. He knew what he was doing the whole time, which was why he was able to fool the authorities for such a long time.
Orr’s motive for setting fires was more complex than mere obsession. The thing is, John Orr always wanted to join the LAPD, the most glamorous police agency in America at the time. He wanted to be a hero solving a series of violent crimes, but he never got a chance. His application to the LAPD was rejected after he failed the psychological testing. According to the report, Orr had issues with authority. He was passive, indecisive, and showed signs of a schizoid person withdrawn from people. In short, he had an emotionally unstable personality, which wasn’t exactly the best fit to become a police officer. As time went by, Orr always resented the detectives with their guns, who considered themselves far superior to a simpleton arson investigator, which didn’t even sound like a real job to them. This particular trait was also visible in Dave Gudsen’s character, who often clashed with the new detective, Calderone, and had issues taking orders from her. So by setting those fires, and arriving at the crime scenes with all that knowledge about arson, Orr made himself feel important. It was his moment to shine among his colleagues, and therefore he kept repeating those arsons until he finally realized that his obsession with becoming a hero was getting out of hand. Some investigators believed that Orr got himself arrested after he killed four people in the Ole’s Home Center. He knew his actions weren’t suitable for a normal society, which was why he wrote what was basically a confessional novel. It’s also quite astonishing that Orr has spent 35 years in prison and still hasn’t set any fires on the inside.
So these are all the similarities and differences that I was able to spot between Dave Gudsen and his real-life counterpart, John Leonard Orr, in the first two episodes of Smoke. But if you have anything to add or a question in mind, feel free to drop a text in the comment box below.
