When the wise guys offered to hasten the movie undertaking by sending me to the undertaker’s, I promised Robert Sabbag that, when I ended up in jail, he could write the book about my own misadventures along the marijuana trail. As I explained to Bob, even though all of the other people I knew in “the business” (the weed business) thought they were both invisible and invincible, I knew otherwise. I knew, even at that early date in the 1970’s that, in the end, I would pay the piper. Forgive the pun, please.
So, without rehashing the life I led between 1972 and 1981, let’s just say that as Casey Stengel suggested, when he answered the question “What do you do when you come to a fork in the road?”, I “picked it up.” No point in debating the wisdom exercised at that moment long ago, but eventually the fork I took landed me in Federal custody.
It happened this way. In 1983, I had gone on the run and assumed a succession of identities, all of whom were represented by genuine American passports with my picture on them. This course of action seemed prudent after I received a call from the US Attorney notifying me that I was the target of a Federal Grand Jury and offering me a deal in exchange for my full cooperation. Hey, Shane didn’t turn on his friends, neither would I. By 1990 I was Kevin Thomas Berrell and the General Manager of the Phillip Morris agency for the Caribbean, living and headquartered in St. Maarten, in the Netherlands Antilles. I was visiting the island of Antigua on business and waiting in the airport bar for a flight back to St. Maarten. Things were different then. So different that the bar was actually open to the taxi way that was used for boarding aircraft and you could drink your fill and walk directly to the stairs leading into your plane. Eat your heart out Osama!
Anyway, I was downing the Jose Cuervo generic for Dramamine and chatting up the bar when I struck up a conversation with a fellow American, who introduced himself as an off duty Coast Guardsman on vacation. We bought each other drinks and I told him that I was in favor of interdicting hard drugs, but that he and his fellow Coasties should let the weed loads through. He gave me what I later realized was a reassessing look and asked me what I did for a living. I promptly handed over my Phillip Morris agency card bearing the name Kevin T. Berrell and bade him adieu as they called my flight at that very moment. It turned out that he and his partner were in charge of the Caribbean anti-drug taskforce for the DEA and he eventually ran my identity through the US State Department’s Passport Fraud division on a hunch.
As he later explained, the truly tragic part of the whole story was the reaction of the real Kevin Berrell’s parents, living in Inglewood, New Jersey, when they were told that their son was alive and well, living in the Caribbean. Evidently quite a shock when you buried your nine year old son many years before in the local cemetery. To this day that is one of my major regrets. It never occurred to me that my using a dead boy’s identity would bring grief to his parents. Now that I have children of my own, I can only imagine. We not only weave tangled webs, we hurt people when we deceive others and ourselves into believing that any deception for any reason is acceptable.
Anyway, this DEA agent, Alexander Toth, who is now the DEA administrator for all of Latin America and the Caribbean, caught up with me on the island of Montserrat and told me that he didn’t know who I was but when he found out and could extradite me he would, “stick your real identity up your ass”, unless I told him right then and there. By that time, I had a wife and two sons, all named Berrell, back in St. Maarten and, that was a decision that, although increasingly attractive, would take some thought. I declined, but took his card.
I almost wrote, “to make a long story short”, but it’s way too late for that and, besides, most people think my name should be Allen Longwinded anyway. So…..let’s just say that a few months later I went to Florida, retained an attorney, contacted Alex Toth and revealed my true identity agreeing to plead guilty to marijuana conspiracy and elucidating my own criminal history. The fact that I started out as a filmmaker seemed to hold little importance as the tale unfurled. The reason that it all took place was immaterial in light of the weight of my crimes (pun intended). I went to Federal prison.
It’s a funny thing but when people find out that you’ve been to prison, they inevitably ask, “what was that like?” What they really mean is, “did you get raped?” Nope, I guess I was too old to be attractive anymore. Once I was incarcerated, though, I called Robert Sabbag and told him that it was time to start writing. Bob was doubtful. He felt that there had been too much time, that it was a no longer a “topical” story and that no one was interested. At least, it was not enough so to fork over an advance. I got out of jail in 1995 and, in 1997, Bob and I put together a six page story outline and he submitted it to his agent, Jennifer Rudolph Walsh. Lo and behold, nearly a dozen publishers expressed interest and I was invited to New York for a “dog and pony” show. That meant that the three of us, Jennifer, Bob and I made the rounds of all the publishers.
Another truism about recounting my experiences is that everyone inevitably takes me aside and whispers, “You must/probably/might know a friend of mine. He was in the business, too. His name is ________________.” Sort of the “two degrees of separation” that exist in the drug world. These publishers were no different. Whether they wanted to buy the book, or not, they all took the opportunity to regale us with their own drug related tales and inquiries about some connection to their friends in the 70’s. Finally, we made the deal with Little, Brown, and the rest, as they say, is history. In this case, it really was history, since, by this time, it had been nearly thirty years. I felt as though I was Butch Cassidy reading an account of his own life as an outlaw. The point, now that I finally get to it, is that, without the great book that Bob wrote all those years after we sat up all night, high above Manhattan discussing my exploits, I could never have found a way to make the movie I went to Mexico to make in 1972.
Donnie Bell and I are committed to turning the book SmokeScreen into a sympathetic, true, funny, and adventurous account of the halcyon days when weed smuggling was a romantic endeavor. To that end we are devoting the resources and time necessary to arrive at a great screenplay. That is the first step. Meanwhile, Belltower is starting production on the first of a three picture slate, the last of which is SmokeScreen. Read all about it by clicking on the link below.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Belltower-Entertainment-bw-602691354.html?x=0
Oh, and again, just for the record: No, I was not anyone’s girlfriend or maid in prison. See. You really wanted to ask that, didn’t you?
OK! Next time let’s talk about my meeting with the boys from A Band Apart Productions (yep…..Pulp Fiction and all that jazz) at Nobu for lunch. “We love your story, dude!!!!”
What the hell is a Nobu, an African gazelle? I’m not that hungry, dude!
Monday, April 12, 2010
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
#6: So…. Where were we? Oh yeah, the weed business
So…. Where were we? Oh yeah, the weed business, as Richard Pryor said, “got good to me” and I forgot that I started smuggling pot to raise enough money to make my documentary about the good ole’ boys who ‘outlawed” along the borders of this great country of ours. It all started because I needed money to finish the movie.
Last time we met here, I predicted that I would write about my time at “Club Fed” or as a guest of Uncle Sam at the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary or FCI, Atlanta, Maximum Security. However, I realize that to jump to that part of the story without recounting my attempt to immortalize myself in the late 1970’s would be a disservice to the funny bones of my readers. If you liked what you’ve read so far, you’ll get a kick out of this.
I wrote last time about meeting Robert Sabbag after reading his first novel, Snowblind, while living in New York and running the smuggling organization I had started several years before. Bob and I became friends and he asked me, after my cover story of being a record producer wore a little thin, what I did for a living. I replied unabashedly that I was a marijuana smuggler and related to him the story of how I had crashed a large cargo plane in the Colombian badlands and escaped on foot and horseback to Venezuela. We decided to collaborate on a screenplay, SmokeScreen, and, several months of hard work later, Bob delivered a bound manuscript to me in New York.
In those days I had a few close friends in the entertainment business. One of the closest, literally, since he lived one floor above me at 254 E.68th, was Nathan Weiss, who the year before had been named the most powerful lawyer in the record business by Rolling Stone. Nat had been the legal representative for Brian Epstein and the Beatles, Apple Records, April-Blackwood Music, James Taylor, Cat Stevens, Bonnie Raitt, and Miles Davis, just to name a few. I still count Nat Weiss as one of my few, true friends. That is, someone who loves you through hard times as well as flush times. He has been a bastion of sound advice and a shoulder to cry on. When you go to Federal prison, your circle of friends narrows considerably. Nat never shut me out of his life and, to this day, we remain in contact.
I had been chatting to Nat about the movie project that Bob and I were embarked on and he mentioned that he had some friends at Columbia Pictures that might be interested in a screenplay centered around the true story of a weed smuggler. Columbia had just had a huge box office hit with “Midnight Express”, the true story of an American youth caught trying to smuggle hashish out of Turkey and the nightmare he experienced incarcerated in a Turkish prison. Made sense, right? Right!!!
I took the final draft of Bob’s screenplay to Nat and he, in turn, took it to his contacts at Columbia. A week or so later, Nat summoned me to his office and told me that, Columbia was very interested provided that the story was billed as “true” and named everyone by their real name, and adhered to the facts surrounding the organized criminal activities, the crash and the escape. It occurred to me that, out of courtesy, I should discuss this development with the other people involved whose names would have to come up.
One such discussion summed it up nicely. To get the full effect desired, use one hand to push your nose hard to one side and say, a la Rocky Balboa, “You wanna make a movie about us and use our real names? Sure, you can make it but only after you’re dead. Now when do you wanna start?” I have since come to appreciate the candor of that response, particularly after a couple of years in Hollywood, where you are more likely to hear what you want to hear first and only discover the bad news much later. Mr. G, I salute you. If only you ran the studio. If you ever beat the triple murder rap you went down for, give me a call. Your son in Brooklyn has my number.
(I don’t know if Mr. G can receive email (he’s locked up underground for life in Greenwood, Colorado at last reckoning, but I hope he gets this somehow).
As you can see, I’ve met rejection on some grounds that the average would-be producer has never trod. Anyway, as a man of my word, I had to pay Bob for the screenplay regardless and, it wasn’t until everyone, including me, had gone to prison that we decided to resurrect the project as a book. And it wasn’t until I met Donnie Bell in Santa Monica and he said, “I’ve always believed that SmokeScreen would make a great movie!” and then proceeded to make it happen that I felt I was working with a “straight shooter” like Mr. G, pardon the pun. Donnie’s first production, Little Treasure, starring Forest Whitaker is featured in the Variety article that you can read by going to the following link: http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118016441.html?categoryid=13&cs=1
Next time, Club Fed, I promise. See you then.
Last time we met here, I predicted that I would write about my time at “Club Fed” or as a guest of Uncle Sam at the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary or FCI, Atlanta, Maximum Security. However, I realize that to jump to that part of the story without recounting my attempt to immortalize myself in the late 1970’s would be a disservice to the funny bones of my readers. If you liked what you’ve read so far, you’ll get a kick out of this.
I wrote last time about meeting Robert Sabbag after reading his first novel, Snowblind, while living in New York and running the smuggling organization I had started several years before. Bob and I became friends and he asked me, after my cover story of being a record producer wore a little thin, what I did for a living. I replied unabashedly that I was a marijuana smuggler and related to him the story of how I had crashed a large cargo plane in the Colombian badlands and escaped on foot and horseback to Venezuela. We decided to collaborate on a screenplay, SmokeScreen, and, several months of hard work later, Bob delivered a bound manuscript to me in New York.
In those days I had a few close friends in the entertainment business. One of the closest, literally, since he lived one floor above me at 254 E.68th, was Nathan Weiss, who the year before had been named the most powerful lawyer in the record business by Rolling Stone. Nat had been the legal representative for Brian Epstein and the Beatles, Apple Records, April-Blackwood Music, James Taylor, Cat Stevens, Bonnie Raitt, and Miles Davis, just to name a few. I still count Nat Weiss as one of my few, true friends. That is, someone who loves you through hard times as well as flush times. He has been a bastion of sound advice and a shoulder to cry on. When you go to Federal prison, your circle of friends narrows considerably. Nat never shut me out of his life and, to this day, we remain in contact.
I had been chatting to Nat about the movie project that Bob and I were embarked on and he mentioned that he had some friends at Columbia Pictures that might be interested in a screenplay centered around the true story of a weed smuggler. Columbia had just had a huge box office hit with “Midnight Express”, the true story of an American youth caught trying to smuggle hashish out of Turkey and the nightmare he experienced incarcerated in a Turkish prison. Made sense, right? Right!!!
I took the final draft of Bob’s screenplay to Nat and he, in turn, took it to his contacts at Columbia. A week or so later, Nat summoned me to his office and told me that, Columbia was very interested provided that the story was billed as “true” and named everyone by their real name, and adhered to the facts surrounding the organized criminal activities, the crash and the escape. It occurred to me that, out of courtesy, I should discuss this development with the other people involved whose names would have to come up.
One such discussion summed it up nicely. To get the full effect desired, use one hand to push your nose hard to one side and say, a la Rocky Balboa, “You wanna make a movie about us and use our real names? Sure, you can make it but only after you’re dead. Now when do you wanna start?” I have since come to appreciate the candor of that response, particularly after a couple of years in Hollywood, where you are more likely to hear what you want to hear first and only discover the bad news much later. Mr. G, I salute you. If only you ran the studio. If you ever beat the triple murder rap you went down for, give me a call. Your son in Brooklyn has my number.
(I don’t know if Mr. G can receive email (he’s locked up underground for life in Greenwood, Colorado at last reckoning, but I hope he gets this somehow).
As you can see, I’ve met rejection on some grounds that the average would-be producer has never trod. Anyway, as a man of my word, I had to pay Bob for the screenplay regardless and, it wasn’t until everyone, including me, had gone to prison that we decided to resurrect the project as a book. And it wasn’t until I met Donnie Bell in Santa Monica and he said, “I’ve always believed that SmokeScreen would make a great movie!” and then proceeded to make it happen that I felt I was working with a “straight shooter” like Mr. G, pardon the pun. Donnie’s first production, Little Treasure, starring Forest Whitaker is featured in the Variety article that you can read by going to the following link: http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118016441.html?categoryid=13&cs=1
Next time, Club Fed, I promise. See you then.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Part 5: Movie Financing 101
I had been back to New York and failed to raise the money I needed to complete the documentary on weed smuggling. What was I going to do? I had a clear vision at this point of the finished film. I had inadvertently discovered the perfect subject material and filmed enough to know that I had all the elements I needed to make a compelling movie, but I was out of cash. Well, not completely, but down to the last $5,000. When that was gone, there would be no more. At least not from the usual suspects.
Then it hit me. I now knew droves of participants in the weed game. From the campesino/farmers in Nayarit to the buyers in the States, the contacts I had made over the course of the year researching and filming the growing, harvesting, transporting and distributing of weed put me in position to smuggle a load. If they could do it, I could do it. It would mean no more kissing ass in order to get the money. All I had to do was finance one load and it would be smooth sailing. Lesson Number One: in the smuggling business, Murphy’s Law goes empirical. Not that “if it can happen it will happen”, but rather, “if it can’t possibly happen, it will for sure.”
The old adage “stick to what you know” applies doubly to smuggling. In this game, you can not only fail and lose your investment, you can end up in jail and lose your investment. Even worse, you might end up dead, never understand why, and lose your investment. Suffice to say that if I knew then what I know now, I still would have done it. Just a little differently.
In the end, the trip failed, I lost the last bit of money I had and the film I had shot ended up with my old mentor, Bernie Hirschensen at Fucci-Stone Productions in NYC. Thanks to Bernie and Billy Fucci that footage was still there and somewhat salvageable twenty-five years later when I got around to looking for it. But at that moment in 1972, the movie was forgotten. I was bitten and, although I have no proof of this, I suspect that many lives that eventually are consumed by an obsession are launched by an initial failure. The failure stung, it stuck in my craw. I had come so close. Why, I had already spent a good deal of my take (in my mind at least). I turned to the friends, all of whom were absolutely enchanted with the movie concept, within the smuggling community that I had made over the course of the six months prior for help. The next thing I knew I found myself sitting in a limo at midnight fifty yards off a Nevada state highway under a full moon waiting for a radio signal that would indicate the imminent arrival of an unmarked aircraft loaded with kilos of high grade Mexican weed. And the rest, as they say, is history.
If you want to know more about that part and what followed, read SmokeScreen by Robert Sabbag. For our purposes, all you need to know at this point is that, despite the success of that scam and the many that followed, I never finished that documentary. Oh, it occurred to me, more in the beginning than subsequently, that I really did get involved in smuggling to make enough to complete the movie. But, not unlike a few others before me, I was diverted from my dream by that other thing….what was it again? Oh yeah, ………..money! I realized, as soon as I began to make a lot of it, that I’d never had much to speak of and that life seemed to offer considerably more options when I had it. Move over Tiger! The view through the camera viewfinder was supplanted by a glorious narcissism in which I played the lead role. Aided by strong mood elevators of the organic variety and the fawning supercilious attention I was receiving by virtue of my new found wealth, I became the star of my own internal movie and wrote my part to compliment myself regardless of the true nature of my existence. I forgot about the real movie for five years.
It wasn’t until I read the final page of the New York Times bestseller, Snow Blind by Robert Sabbag in the summer of 1978 did my dream and all the attendant angst come flooding back to me. I was by myself in my luxury high rise in New York, high on cocaine, and, as I put down the hardcover copy of the book I had just finished, I decided that, whoever he might turn out to be, Bob Sabbag had articulated, in a way no one had been able to before, the unique atmosphere and culture of the world of the 70’s drug smuggler and I wanted to talk to him to share my long forgotten dream. Most people would have contacted the book publisher and his agent and begun the normal process required to meet the author. Not my style. Instead, I picked up the Manhattan telephone directory and looked up the Sabbags. There were only five or six and in short order I had located the right one and invited him to visit me, piquing his interest by offering him the cash contents of a Halliburton briefcase containing $200,000 in hundreds. Despite the late hour, Mr. Sabbag was able to find the time, even in the middle of a date with a young lady who went on to become a Rolling Stone editor, to stop whatever he was doing, grab a cab on the West Side and hightail it over to my place on the corner of 68th and 2nd. Isn’t that how all great collaborations got started?
In the future we will examine the results of this encounter, not the least of which was the book SmokeScreen twenty years later. Close to the final entry in this journal will recount how, after decades of dreams, meetings, promises, dashed hopes and chasing wild geese, I met someone who shared my dream and did what they said they were going to do. No matter what. Without Donnie Bell of Belltower Films, I would just be another aging “wannabe” making the Hollywood rounds and rounds and rounds in ever decreasing circles until, like a dog chasing his tail, I found a good place to lie down.
I once heard a fellow smuggler years ago recite his credo, his rules to live by. They make the Ten Commandments seem positively wordy:
Number One – Don’t Lie to Yourself (this struck a chord in me, since every mistake I ultimately made in my life started with me convincing myself that it would turn out “OK” despite my internal misgivings. i.e. – lying to myself).
Number Two – Don’t Lie to Others (pretty much a given if you adhere to Number One).
Number Three – Do What You Say You Are Going To Do.
It took a long time, but I finally found a Producer/Partner who operates by the same standards. Thank you, Donnie. For more info on Belltower Entertainment (BTOW) and current film projects go to www.belltowerfilms.com.
NEXT WEEK: Club Fed. Or how I learned the error of my ways and decided to return to my film-making aspirations.
Then it hit me. I now knew droves of participants in the weed game. From the campesino/farmers in Nayarit to the buyers in the States, the contacts I had made over the course of the year researching and filming the growing, harvesting, transporting and distributing of weed put me in position to smuggle a load. If they could do it, I could do it. It would mean no more kissing ass in order to get the money. All I had to do was finance one load and it would be smooth sailing. Lesson Number One: in the smuggling business, Murphy’s Law goes empirical. Not that “if it can happen it will happen”, but rather, “if it can’t possibly happen, it will for sure.”
The old adage “stick to what you know” applies doubly to smuggling. In this game, you can not only fail and lose your investment, you can end up in jail and lose your investment. Even worse, you might end up dead, never understand why, and lose your investment. Suffice to say that if I knew then what I know now, I still would have done it. Just a little differently.
In the end, the trip failed, I lost the last bit of money I had and the film I had shot ended up with my old mentor, Bernie Hirschensen at Fucci-Stone Productions in NYC. Thanks to Bernie and Billy Fucci that footage was still there and somewhat salvageable twenty-five years later when I got around to looking for it. But at that moment in 1972, the movie was forgotten. I was bitten and, although I have no proof of this, I suspect that many lives that eventually are consumed by an obsession are launched by an initial failure. The failure stung, it stuck in my craw. I had come so close. Why, I had already spent a good deal of my take (in my mind at least). I turned to the friends, all of whom were absolutely enchanted with the movie concept, within the smuggling community that I had made over the course of the six months prior for help. The next thing I knew I found myself sitting in a limo at midnight fifty yards off a Nevada state highway under a full moon waiting for a radio signal that would indicate the imminent arrival of an unmarked aircraft loaded with kilos of high grade Mexican weed. And the rest, as they say, is history.
If you want to know more about that part and what followed, read SmokeScreen by Robert Sabbag. For our purposes, all you need to know at this point is that, despite the success of that scam and the many that followed, I never finished that documentary. Oh, it occurred to me, more in the beginning than subsequently, that I really did get involved in smuggling to make enough to complete the movie. But, not unlike a few others before me, I was diverted from my dream by that other thing….what was it again? Oh yeah, ………..money! I realized, as soon as I began to make a lot of it, that I’d never had much to speak of and that life seemed to offer considerably more options when I had it. Move over Tiger! The view through the camera viewfinder was supplanted by a glorious narcissism in which I played the lead role. Aided by strong mood elevators of the organic variety and the fawning supercilious attention I was receiving by virtue of my new found wealth, I became the star of my own internal movie and wrote my part to compliment myself regardless of the true nature of my existence. I forgot about the real movie for five years.
It wasn’t until I read the final page of the New York Times bestseller, Snow Blind by Robert Sabbag in the summer of 1978 did my dream and all the attendant angst come flooding back to me. I was by myself in my luxury high rise in New York, high on cocaine, and, as I put down the hardcover copy of the book I had just finished, I decided that, whoever he might turn out to be, Bob Sabbag had articulated, in a way no one had been able to before, the unique atmosphere and culture of the world of the 70’s drug smuggler and I wanted to talk to him to share my long forgotten dream. Most people would have contacted the book publisher and his agent and begun the normal process required to meet the author. Not my style. Instead, I picked up the Manhattan telephone directory and looked up the Sabbags. There were only five or six and in short order I had located the right one and invited him to visit me, piquing his interest by offering him the cash contents of a Halliburton briefcase containing $200,000 in hundreds. Despite the late hour, Mr. Sabbag was able to find the time, even in the middle of a date with a young lady who went on to become a Rolling Stone editor, to stop whatever he was doing, grab a cab on the West Side and hightail it over to my place on the corner of 68th and 2nd. Isn’t that how all great collaborations got started?
In the future we will examine the results of this encounter, not the least of which was the book SmokeScreen twenty years later. Close to the final entry in this journal will recount how, after decades of dreams, meetings, promises, dashed hopes and chasing wild geese, I met someone who shared my dream and did what they said they were going to do. No matter what. Without Donnie Bell of Belltower Films, I would just be another aging “wannabe” making the Hollywood rounds and rounds and rounds in ever decreasing circles until, like a dog chasing his tail, I found a good place to lie down.
I once heard a fellow smuggler years ago recite his credo, his rules to live by. They make the Ten Commandments seem positively wordy:
Number One – Don’t Lie to Yourself (this struck a chord in me, since every mistake I ultimately made in my life started with me convincing myself that it would turn out “OK” despite my internal misgivings. i.e. – lying to myself).
Number Two – Don’t Lie to Others (pretty much a given if you adhere to Number One).
Number Three – Do What You Say You Are Going To Do.
It took a long time, but I finally found a Producer/Partner who operates by the same standards. Thank you, Donnie. For more info on Belltower Entertainment (BTOW) and current film projects go to www.belltowerfilms.com.
NEXT WEEK: Club Fed. Or how I learned the error of my ways and decided to return to my film-making aspirations.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
The Smugglers Tour of Hollywood, Part 4
[Sorry I’ve been absent lo these many weeks. There is no other way to say it. I’ve got the big “C” and what was to be a relatively brief stay in the hospital starting 12/31 turned into six weeks of debilitating IV nourishment flat on my backside at Scripps Hospital. Fortunately, I am back in action and so………………….]
These guys did Woodstock, they’re gonna love this!
I had burnt through the funds I raised prior to heading to Mexico in the early 70’s with a documentary crew and camera equipment. So, I left the crew in Mexico and flew back to NYC to raise the second half of the money I needed to finish the film about weed smuggling I had set out to make. It became apparent that the bloom was off the rose, however, and I was greeted not like the conquering creative hero I saw myself as, but rather as the demented con man who had talked the first investor out of a large sum of money and was now back, hat in hand, trying to get him to throw good money after bad. In short, I summarily exited the home of my once close friend amidst cries of “bring the equipment back immediately. I must have been out of my mind on drugs to give you that money.” That hurt.
I hit the streets of the Big Apple undaunted though. Surely there were comrades in creative arms out there. I just had to find them. Where to look? Now, back in installment 1 or 2 of this journal, I mentioned that I had shared an apartment with two beautiful girls, Hani and Jan. Right above the Bleeker street Deli, between 6th and 7th Avenues. These girls attracted men like honey brought in the flies and one admirer was the guy at Warner Brothers who had picked up Michael Wadleigh’s documentary, Woodstock, and become one of the “new age” golden boys in the movie business. Who better to pitch on the merits of a light hearted documentary look at the “disorganized” crime of marijuana smuggling? Perfect, right? Wrong!
It seems that Ron (not his real name) couldn’t shake the image of Hani, Jan and I sharing that king sized bed in our apartment. His eyes burned with pent up rage as he brushed aside my flights of cinematic fancy. He was “no fool” he assured me. He knew what “was up”. Of course, we never had sex, but try explaining that to a guy whose whole life is a lie. He’s married but keeping a young honey on the side for trysts in his little “in town hideaway.” He is so full of shit and caught up in the veritable “tangled web” of his own deceit that he can’t hear the truth. Needless to say, my project was never in serious contention during the meeting and it was years later that I went to a party at his house on Mulholland. Coincidentally, I was sharing a house on Laurel Canyon with his mistress and two (not just one this time) other dolls. And this time his suspicions were well founded. Yes, Ron, we did it. In fact we did it all over the place. Ah, the early 70’s, pre HIV. That was the greatest birthday I’d ever had. Thanks, girls! Sorry, Ron.
Still, if I had a chance to get the funds from Ron, the imagined specter of his cuckoldry loomed between us like Hoover Dam and any meeting of the minds that there might have been. Hollywood Lesson: deals can get killed due to completely extraneous circumstances having nothing to do with the project’s merit.
I went to execs I had worked for in one capacity or the other at CBS, Motion Associates, and other production houses. No dice. I went back to Dick de Bono at General Camera. I can still hear his answer and I won’t repeat it here out of my respect for more refined sensibilities. Where could I get the money? Anyone who has ever nurtured a film project recalls the moment when you ask yourself that question and no one answers. It’s lonely out there in the land of half finished motion pictures. As though the wheel of time has rolled by and somehow left you in its wake. Then it hit me! Of course!
A year earlier I had gotten a call in NYC from a friend in Mill Valley, California. He was the West Coast liaison for a new NYC based record label headed up by one of the two guys who promoted the Woodstock Music Festival a few years before. The same festival that spawned the movie that had catapulted Warner Brothers Ron to fame and fortune. Remember the movie and the news clips, the guy with the irrepressible Huck Finn smile and the long curly blond locks? That’s the guy. His girlfriend needed a ride into the city from JFK airport and my friend in Mill Valley had called and asked me to pick her up. I did and she remains to this day one of my best friends. Now that I was grasping at financial straws, it seemed a perfectly natural segue for me to go to “Mr. Woodstock” for help in completing the movie. I mean, surely, this guy would immediately “get it”.
I called the “the Coast” and enlisted my pal’s help in getting an interview with this music “wunderkind”. He had recently signed a Long Island piano bar singer to a recording deal and the guy’s first release was headed for Billboard’s #1 spot. He could do no wrong and thus his office was on an upper floor of what was then the Gulf and Western tower at Columbus Circle in NYC. Gulf and Western had bought Paramount/ABC and under the guidance of Charles Bludhorn become one of the world’s biggest conglomerates. Now, the building is the Trump Plaza Hotel and Gulf and Western is just a memory encased in leather binders on the shelf of some law firm. But in those days, they were riding high and I could sense opportunity opening before me like those elevator doors on the 22nd floor.
After a brief wait, I was ushered into his office. He looked just like he had on the stage at Woodstock several years before. A lesson in cultivating imagery ala Hollywood. If it works don’t change it. Work it. He was chipping away with a five inch folding Buck knife at a piece of cocaine the size of a draft horse’s hoof that sat in the middle of his desk. At his urging, I threw myself into the work at hand while, at the same time, recounting the details of my filmmaker’s journey to date. He listened with one ear, hand and nostril while the other half of his brain whittled. Occasionally I was graced with that effervescent and conspiratorial smile as I waxed eloquently on my own behalf. When I ran out of air and story, he looked straight into my eyes and exclaimed, “I love this idea. I believe you have a successful project.”
At last! I had met my kindred spirit. He did “get it”. Not only did he get it, he was obviously one hundred percent aboard. My search was over. I explained that I simply needed another $150,000 and we could have a finished feature length documentary complete with soundtrack within six months. Then he said something I had trouble understanding, at least at first. He said, “Great, Allen. I’m completely behind you on this. Just as soon as you get the money you need, let me know and I’ll handle everything from that point on.”
“But, but……I came to you for the money. I don’t have it and don’t know where to get it. I thought you were in. I thought that meant you were going to arrange for the money.”
“Oh, no. I, we, never put up the production funds on an independent project. So…..as soon as you have the money, let me know. Love the idea, love you. Can’t wait to get to work on it with you. Oh, oh, got another meeting in two minutes. Stay in touch. Remember, as soon as you get the money, call me. Great idea!”
ABJECT LESSON IN DEALING WITH MOTION PICTURE PRODUCERS: they’re just investment bankers in jeans and sweats. OPM, baby, Other People’s Money! A producer never invests his own money in development. He knows that if you are just interested in making money, the film financing business is a bad investment.
Oh, well. I started out to make this movie over thirty-five years ago. It has long since transcended the personal gain plane and now I toil for the joy of giving birth to the full realization of my dream from long ago. Thanks Donnie Bell, Nina Yang, and Belltower Films.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Belltower-Signs-Finance-bw-346524559.html
By the way, the guy in the Gulf and Western Tower………..over the last thirty years we have remained in loose contact. He has become a real friend, confidant and ally. I love to see that smile, Mike. So now I got the money. Go to www.belltowerfilms.com for updates.
Stay tuned. Next time we jump ahead twenty years and pick up the story as I get out of Federal Prison in 1995 determined to make the movie. What’s twenty years in the life of a film project? Enough time to turn it into a franchise!
These guys did Woodstock, they’re gonna love this!
I had burnt through the funds I raised prior to heading to Mexico in the early 70’s with a documentary crew and camera equipment. So, I left the crew in Mexico and flew back to NYC to raise the second half of the money I needed to finish the film about weed smuggling I had set out to make. It became apparent that the bloom was off the rose, however, and I was greeted not like the conquering creative hero I saw myself as, but rather as the demented con man who had talked the first investor out of a large sum of money and was now back, hat in hand, trying to get him to throw good money after bad. In short, I summarily exited the home of my once close friend amidst cries of “bring the equipment back immediately. I must have been out of my mind on drugs to give you that money.” That hurt.
I hit the streets of the Big Apple undaunted though. Surely there were comrades in creative arms out there. I just had to find them. Where to look? Now, back in installment 1 or 2 of this journal, I mentioned that I had shared an apartment with two beautiful girls, Hani and Jan. Right above the Bleeker street Deli, between 6th and 7th Avenues. These girls attracted men like honey brought in the flies and one admirer was the guy at Warner Brothers who had picked up Michael Wadleigh’s documentary, Woodstock, and become one of the “new age” golden boys in the movie business. Who better to pitch on the merits of a light hearted documentary look at the “disorganized” crime of marijuana smuggling? Perfect, right? Wrong!
It seems that Ron (not his real name) couldn’t shake the image of Hani, Jan and I sharing that king sized bed in our apartment. His eyes burned with pent up rage as he brushed aside my flights of cinematic fancy. He was “no fool” he assured me. He knew what “was up”. Of course, we never had sex, but try explaining that to a guy whose whole life is a lie. He’s married but keeping a young honey on the side for trysts in his little “in town hideaway.” He is so full of shit and caught up in the veritable “tangled web” of his own deceit that he can’t hear the truth. Needless to say, my project was never in serious contention during the meeting and it was years later that I went to a party at his house on Mulholland. Coincidentally, I was sharing a house on Laurel Canyon with his mistress and two (not just one this time) other dolls. And this time his suspicions were well founded. Yes, Ron, we did it. In fact we did it all over the place. Ah, the early 70’s, pre HIV. That was the greatest birthday I’d ever had. Thanks, girls! Sorry, Ron.
Still, if I had a chance to get the funds from Ron, the imagined specter of his cuckoldry loomed between us like Hoover Dam and any meeting of the minds that there might have been. Hollywood Lesson: deals can get killed due to completely extraneous circumstances having nothing to do with the project’s merit.
I went to execs I had worked for in one capacity or the other at CBS, Motion Associates, and other production houses. No dice. I went back to Dick de Bono at General Camera. I can still hear his answer and I won’t repeat it here out of my respect for more refined sensibilities. Where could I get the money? Anyone who has ever nurtured a film project recalls the moment when you ask yourself that question and no one answers. It’s lonely out there in the land of half finished motion pictures. As though the wheel of time has rolled by and somehow left you in its wake. Then it hit me! Of course!
A year earlier I had gotten a call in NYC from a friend in Mill Valley, California. He was the West Coast liaison for a new NYC based record label headed up by one of the two guys who promoted the Woodstock Music Festival a few years before. The same festival that spawned the movie that had catapulted Warner Brothers Ron to fame and fortune. Remember the movie and the news clips, the guy with the irrepressible Huck Finn smile and the long curly blond locks? That’s the guy. His girlfriend needed a ride into the city from JFK airport and my friend in Mill Valley had called and asked me to pick her up. I did and she remains to this day one of my best friends. Now that I was grasping at financial straws, it seemed a perfectly natural segue for me to go to “Mr. Woodstock” for help in completing the movie. I mean, surely, this guy would immediately “get it”.
I called the “the Coast” and enlisted my pal’s help in getting an interview with this music “wunderkind”. He had recently signed a Long Island piano bar singer to a recording deal and the guy’s first release was headed for Billboard’s #1 spot. He could do no wrong and thus his office was on an upper floor of what was then the Gulf and Western tower at Columbus Circle in NYC. Gulf and Western had bought Paramount/ABC and under the guidance of Charles Bludhorn become one of the world’s biggest conglomerates. Now, the building is the Trump Plaza Hotel and Gulf and Western is just a memory encased in leather binders on the shelf of some law firm. But in those days, they were riding high and I could sense opportunity opening before me like those elevator doors on the 22nd floor.
After a brief wait, I was ushered into his office. He looked just like he had on the stage at Woodstock several years before. A lesson in cultivating imagery ala Hollywood. If it works don’t change it. Work it. He was chipping away with a five inch folding Buck knife at a piece of cocaine the size of a draft horse’s hoof that sat in the middle of his desk. At his urging, I threw myself into the work at hand while, at the same time, recounting the details of my filmmaker’s journey to date. He listened with one ear, hand and nostril while the other half of his brain whittled. Occasionally I was graced with that effervescent and conspiratorial smile as I waxed eloquently on my own behalf. When I ran out of air and story, he looked straight into my eyes and exclaimed, “I love this idea. I believe you have a successful project.”
At last! I had met my kindred spirit. He did “get it”. Not only did he get it, he was obviously one hundred percent aboard. My search was over. I explained that I simply needed another $150,000 and we could have a finished feature length documentary complete with soundtrack within six months. Then he said something I had trouble understanding, at least at first. He said, “Great, Allen. I’m completely behind you on this. Just as soon as you get the money you need, let me know and I’ll handle everything from that point on.”
“But, but……I came to you for the money. I don’t have it and don’t know where to get it. I thought you were in. I thought that meant you were going to arrange for the money.”
“Oh, no. I, we, never put up the production funds on an independent project. So…..as soon as you have the money, let me know. Love the idea, love you. Can’t wait to get to work on it with you. Oh, oh, got another meeting in two minutes. Stay in touch. Remember, as soon as you get the money, call me. Great idea!”
ABJECT LESSON IN DEALING WITH MOTION PICTURE PRODUCERS: they’re just investment bankers in jeans and sweats. OPM, baby, Other People’s Money! A producer never invests his own money in development. He knows that if you are just interested in making money, the film financing business is a bad investment.
Oh, well. I started out to make this movie over thirty-five years ago. It has long since transcended the personal gain plane and now I toil for the joy of giving birth to the full realization of my dream from long ago. Thanks Donnie Bell, Nina Yang, and Belltower Films.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Belltower-Signs-Finance-bw-346524559.html
By the way, the guy in the Gulf and Western Tower………..over the last thirty years we have remained in loose contact. He has become a real friend, confidant and ally. I love to see that smile, Mike. So now I got the money. Go to www.belltowerfilms.com for updates.
Stay tuned. Next time we jump ahead twenty years and pick up the story as I get out of Federal Prison in 1995 determined to make the movie. What’s twenty years in the life of a film project? Enough time to turn it into a franchise!
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