How it started....

I went to Mexico to make a movie thirty-five years ago and never came back. At least not the same person, that’s for sure. I started out to film a true life rendition of the crazy outlaws, not criminals, albeit a fine distinction a valid one nonetheless, who populated the weed smuggling world of the early 70’s and their hilarious misadventures. Ironically, now decades later, the story will be told, only I am the subject and it will be my own misadventures that will be recounted on the screen. The Great Mandala rolls on.

Since SmokeScreen, Bob Sabbag’s wonderfully funny and painfully honest account of my smuggling days was published, I have been on a roller coaster ride through Tinsel Town trying to get “the movie deal” done. I sat down last week and began to write about the process starting with my first encounter with “my agent” and, thus, awakening to the reality of life in the movie lane. What started out as a paragraph took on a life of its’ own and when I finished I thought I should send it to all my friends and acquaintances who have expressed various degrees of interest and fascination with my involvement in the book and movie versions of my own life story.

Soon I began to receive responses, none negative, most of which contained the word “blog” and suggestions on publishing one. Like so many of my generation, I’ve gone from thinking of drugs as vitamins to only entertaining weed as an escape valve and from being an “early adapter” of technology to a change resistant hold-out. Until yesterday I had avoided either reading or writing blogs. Old dogs, new tricks, etc. Well, Live Here Now, people! A bloggin’ we shall go.

I went to Mexico to make a movie and……………………………………

So how did I get the money to go to Mexico in the first place and what made me think that a 22 year old night news cameraman for a CBS station could make a feature length documentary that would be a commercial success? Balls, stupidity, naivete, ego, blind ambition, or all of the above.

I had found work as the projectionist/gopher at Motion Associates on Madison Avenue. Motion made some of the most memorable commercials of the day ranging from Chanel #5 ads with Catherine Deneuve at the MOMA to all the Colombian Coffee commercials starring Juan Valdez, who, as it turns out, is actually Puerto Rican. Remember that little stutter on the road of reality as we wend our way to Hollywood where much is not as it seems. I was living in a third story walk up with two amazingly gorgeous women, Hani and Jan. Nothing happened, I swear! But try telling that to their boyfriends, all of whom could barely restrain themselves from strangling me when they realized that thee was only one king size bed in the apartment. Nothing happened, honest! More on this later.

At the same time I was hustling little moving jobs with my 1957 GMC short bed pick up. I met a white Rastafarian, yep, even in Manhattan in 1972, who, once or twice a week needed a few boxes of Jamaican weed delivered to various and sundry locations and individuals and they began to refer me to others, until I was in high demand (sic). One of these clients was Chris. Chris owned the first weed bar in NYC. It was located on Crosby Street before John and Yoko moved to the corner of Wooster and Prince and SoHo became cool. We all hung out at John Leon’s bar, 162 Spring Street and Chris’s place, known as Crosby’s, duh, was the worst kept secret in the city. You did have to pass inspection at ground level via video camera before being ushered into the elevator with a remote and taciturn Japanese guy (Ninja?), who glowered at you all the way to the 5^th floor. Then…….Amsterdam, my man! A bar that traversed the whole of the loft floor where happy tenders vended exotic weed from big bins under glass. Everything from Acapulco Gold to Afghani hashish laced with opium was available and the tables were filled with smokers excitedly predicting the proliferation of such businesses around the city, even around the country. It’s only been thirty five years, you wait and see.

It turned out that one of Chris’ suppliers was a Mexican American named Luis, who preferred to be known by the more romantic moniker of, “El Coyote”. El Coyote told me a story about swimming a couple of garbage bags containing weed across the Rio Grande with two broken ankles that had me laughing hysterically. A day or two later I went to see a highly acclaimed, feature length documentary by academy award winning director John Frankenheimer, Star, which was oddly fascinating and provocative, about a would be Roller Derby star. Somehow the two incidents became a vision of a commercially succesful, feature length film focused on the bizarre counter culture hero of the day, the pot smuggler. And who better to Produce/Direct?

Shortly after this epiphanous flash, I was sitting in the sumptuous living room of one Tom A. recounting with great relish the story of “El Coyote” and my resultant vision. Tom was heir to a significant part of the Sears and Roebuck fortune and was totally smitten with my roommate, Jan, who was endowed with one of the greatest senses of humor I’ve ever encountered, absolutely no fear of failure, and the finest pair of breasts man has ever been privileged to gaze upon. Not sure which of these traits Tom was fondest of, but I have my suspicions. When I breathlessly ran out of vision, Tom absently remarked, “That sounds like a great idea. I’ll back you. What’s the next step?”

Huh?

I went to Mexico to make a movie and, now, three decades plus down life’s road, I am going to see my vision become a reality. Thanks in large part to two amazing people, Donnie Bell, founder of Belltower Entertainment, Inc., and Nina Yang, producer of SmokeScreen and head of Belltower. They just signed one of the stars of James Cameron’s new, groundbreaking film, Avatar, to play Moe Norman, quixotic and legendary Canadian golfer in the Belltower production of Barry Morrow’s (Rainman), Dancing the Green. I am not at liberty to reveal the name, but you can check out the Belltower website, www.belltowerfilms.com, for more info on that and other productions in the works. As this journal of mine moves along you will get to know Donnie and Nina as I did and understand why meeting them made SmokeScreen, the movie possible.

Next week………”sleepy senoritas with their eyes on fire…….” Or…….right pyramid, wrong season, senor.