12/3/22
Newletter177
The Crack of Dawn
Several different times in my many assaults on Hollywood, I returned to L.A. with very little money and nowhere to live. My cousin, his wife, and their infant son, lived right off Laurel Canyon Blvd., a block south of Sunset Blvd. I asked if I could crash at his place for a week or two, and he kindly said yes. Naturally, I stayed six weeks and they finally had to throw me out. However, when I first got there, they made the incredibly foolish error of telling me they had an ounce of awesome Humboldt County skunk weed, which I loved, and I should “help myself.”
Every morning I would wake up early before everyone else, walk up to Sunset Blvd., and have breakfast at Ben Frank’s. Every day I would take the same booth, take out my notebook and begin writing. And every day Roy Scheider would come in wearing shorts and sandals, seat himself at the counter directly opposite me, then proceed to read the trades, meaning Variety and the Hollywood Reporter, then he’d read the L.A. Times. As he would finish each trade or section of the Times, he would casually toss it over his shoulder onto the floor. Eventually, a busboy would come and pick them up. At the end of six weeks, not only had I overstayed my welcome, but I had also smoked their entire ounce of weed. They were horrified; an ounce would have lasted them a year. It took me two years, but I finally repaid them.
My buddy Sheldon had set me up with a wannabe producer named Jonathan Haze. Jonathan’s claim to fame was that he had starred in Roger Corman’s Little Shop of Horrors (1960). Since then, he had mostly worked on film crews as a production manager or an assistant director, but he dreamed of producing movies. Well, I had my 45-minute Super-8 pilot film, Stryker’s War, and feature-length script (which would become Thou Shalt Not Kill…Except five years later). Jonathan got me to an agent at International Creative Management, ICM, one of the biggest talent agencies in Hollywood. The agent’s name was Sam Gross. He was wearing a white sweater, white pants and sandals. Jonathan was wearing a button-down shirt and jeans. I was in a suit and tie, clearly a hayseed from Podunk. There was my movie on his desk – a ¾-inch video tape, the size of a hardcover book – as I clutched my script in my sweaty hands, Sam said to me a line that Martin Short says almost word for word in the movie The Big Picture (1989). “I don’t know you; I don’t know anything about you, I haven’t read your script or watched your movie, but you’re the next Steven Spielberg.”
Jonathan Haze’s next move was to get me and my project to Roger Corman, which was way cool with me. This process took four or five weeks, and that’s when I smoked all of my cousin’s Humboldt skunk weed (mmmm, Humboldt skunk). I finally did get a meeting with Roger Corman. Once again, I wore my suit and tie. Roger didn’t have a tie, but he was decently dressed in a sport coat and a sweater. The second I was in his office and looking at him up close, I realized and blurted, “Hey, wait a minute. You’re in Godfather II.” He smiled and said, “Yes, I am. I’m one of the senators at the congressional hearing.” I said, “I know your line. You point and say, ‘Who is that man in the back there?’” Corman smiled again and nodded. I thought, “Why the fuck am I talking about Godfather II?” And to make that point even clearer, Roger Corman said, “I haven’t got anything for you right now,” then looked down at some papers on his desk, and that meeting was over.
I guess that was 1981, which would’ve made me 23 years old. I stood there for a long moment in Roger Corman’s large office, in my suit and tie, clutching my sweat-stained script, and thinking, “I blew it. My big chance, and I blew it. Why did I have to bring up Godfather II?”
Have a swell day, y’all.