4/6/23
Newsletter #299
The Crack of Dawn
I arrived in L.A. in 1983 after spending over two years trying to raise the money to make a feature out of my 45-minute film, Stryker’s War (1981), and not succeeding. My company, Action Pictures, had been located in the same office as Renaissance Pictures. As I was unable to raise money for my film, Sam, Bruce and Rob were making international sales on Evil Dead, which had gained a reputation at the 1981 Cannes Festival when Stephen King reviewed and liked the film (as a note, we all had the same agent as Stephen King, Irvin Shapiro, who asked King to review the film). With this overseas stink on Evil Dead, which had not yet opened in America, Ren Pix (as we called them) made a deal to make Crimewave. I decided it was time to get out of Dodge.
So there I was back in L.A. with a feature-length script of Stryker’s War, a 45-minute “pilot” version on ¾-inch video (shot on Super-8), no money and nowhere to live. I slept on the couch of Eric and Jen, my very kind cousin and his wife, for what they thought would be a week or two. Sweet, thoughtful Jen showed me her awesomely stinky ounce of Humboldt skunk weed and foolishly said, “Help yourself.”
I somehow managed to get yet another agent to represent me and began shopping my project around town, which is a slow process. Six weeks later, having nervously smoked Jen’s entire ounce of weed – she was horrified – I was asked to leave.
I moved into my buddy, Marvis’ hippy house on Lanewood St. that dead ends into Hollywood High School. At its peak in about 1979, the decrepit 1919 mansion had eight people living there, all from Cleveland. Sadly, by 1983 the house had been condemned and was going to be demolished like all of the other big old houses on the block to make way for apartment buildings. So, as all of the Clevelanders left, I moved in. Most of the furniture was gone. Marvis and I got drunk one night and kicked holes in the walls. I set up my sleeping bag on the floor in the biggest bedroom upstairs. From the window of the bedroom I could see a swarm of Mexicans, like destructive ants, disassembling the houses one by one working their way up the block toward me. Astoundingly, the phone was still on in the house. Plus, these knuckleheaded Ohioans had abandoned their cat just as it gave birth to a litter of kittens. So there I was, all by myself in this big empty abandoned house, with all of these wonderful black and white kittens I was now attending to, waiting for my goddamned agent to call. Of all the places, this is where my buddy, Sheldon, and his girlfriend Tony came to visit me, and she stuck her hand in my face and asked, “Notice anything new?” I said, “Your nails look great, did you have them done?” Disgusted, she waved her fingers and said, “I’m wearing an engagement ring.” I congratulated them. I just saw Sheldon in L.A. and he and Tony have been married for 40 years.
After about a month I was evicted from the house on Lanewood and it was promptly torn down. I don’t know what happened to the cats. With my last remaining money I moved into the Hollywood Bowl Motel, directly across the street from the Hollywood Bowl, and fondly referred to as the Ho Bo Mo. This place was a shockingly low-budget shit-hole filled with pimps, hookers, drug dealers, and little kids. It was built in the standard California fashion of all rooms facing into a big courtyard, so the sound can echo and reverberate. The main dealer, a middle-aged black man in a cheap lawn chair, barked orders at everyone all the time. The rooms didn’t have phones. My agent called me at the hotel office, and they yelled down the courtyard for me.
I always carry a notebook with me. I do now. I write in my journal. At the Ho Bo Mo, I counted my change, went to the liquor store on the corner, set my notebook on the counter, and asked, “What’s your cheapest scotch?” The sales guy looked at my notebook and said, “Bad day at school?” I remember drinking that vile scotch out of a Dixie cup in that fucked up courtyard at the Ho Bo Mo, thinking, “Whatever they’re doing back in Detroit has to be better than this.” So, after a month I checked out, said goodbye to my agent, and hitchhiked back to Detroit.
Thus began the strange interregnum between Crimewave and Thou Shalt Not Kill…Except, which lasted for nearly two years. We all went to our offices in Ferndale every day. It was actually a very pleasant, though anxious period. On nice days Bruce and I would go golfing at Palmer Park golf course in Detroit. We were the only white people, we stunk, and everybody else was dressed to the nines and bet hundreds of dollars on every hole.
Today I intend to hang out on the shore of the Mediterranean. I passed the harbor yesterday and there are some really big, expensive boats out there. Not quite cruise ships, but close. They’re probably belong to Russian oligarchs.