[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!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment