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.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
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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