by Omar Tyree
“Twelve thousand dollars,” she told me. At ten percent for a down payment, the house was worth one hundred and twenty thousand dollars.
I said, “I’ll have to think about that,” and left it alone.
Our conversation was stale for the rest of that night. Mercedes drove me back home, and before we went our separate ways, she said, “;I know it seems like a fucked-up thing for me to do, me asking you for money like that, but we only live once. If you could help me out like that instead of me having to kill myself to buy this house, then that would mean a hell of a lot to me.”
I stopped and thought about her comment before I responded to her.
I said, “You know what? If you don’t learn how to have some faith and dedication in whatever it is that you’re trying to do, then even if I give you the money for this house that you want so badly in Yeadon, it won’t mean a damn thing. Because tomorrow you’ll kill yourself with the next project that you have no faith in, and you’ll start looking for someone to bail you out again. And I might as well tell you right now, I’m not gonna be the one.”
“Tracy, I wouldn’t even—”
I cut her off with my hand raised in a stop sign and said, “Whatever. I’m telling you now, I’m not gonna be the one. And you can blame your father all you want for your problems, but this is your life and your decisions now. So just like he mellowed out, you need to get with the program and get your priorities back in order!”
I could tell that Mercedes wanted to curse me the hell out before I left. I could read it in her spiteful eyes, but she couldn’t do it. Not yet anyway, because I still had something that she wanted. She hadn’t changed a fucking bit, and it was getting harder for me to continue feeling sorry for her ass! So I just walked away and left her hangin’, hangin’ on a damn string, just like she was used to doing with everyone else.
Hollywood, Hollywood
It makes you hurry up
only to slow back down
and await
a green light
that may never come.
Limbo City,
Bimbo City,
this is what it feels like;
a rhythmless poem
in need of perk.
YET, infatuation,
anticipation
calls your name at night,
while you sleep walk
toward the fortune
AND the fame.
Copyright © 1998 by Tracy Ellison
October 1996
After Tupac Shakur’s murder in September, there were eight or nine shootings in the Los Angeles area (several of them fatal) that were reported as gang retaliations. I had a chance to see the infamous LAPD in action out there (not on the streets myself, but on the Los Angeles news). By October, when things had cooled down a bit, I had enrolled in the UCLA Extensions program for screenwriting, and I knew a lot more concerning what to do and where to go, and more important what not to do and where not to go in LA. I began to brainstorm different ideas for my first attempt at writing a script for the course that I was taking. I also had received twenty hardback copies of my republished book Flyy Girl, with my portion of the advance still on the way. However, that did not mean that I was at peace with things. Hollywood had this greedy edge to it that made you feel unsatisfied with anything less than being an “A-list” star, and I was far from it! I was only a novice, trying like hell to learn how to swim in a hurry and make it upstream with Crenshaw, an urban love story.
In writing my first screenplay, I nearly spent the night a couple of times while using the computers at Kinko’s copy store. Through my years of undergrad, grad school, and teaching, I always had access to computers so I never bothered to buy one. However, it became inevitable once I started writing scripts out in LA. A personal computer was an essential.
My plan for the plot of Crenshaw was as follows:
Act I: An aspiring model who is new to the city of Los Angeles accidentally cuts off a young gang member who is on his way to carry out a retaliation murder for a friend who was killed by a rival crew. The gang member, irritated, nearly shoots the model for cutting him off because he was in a hurry and ready to kill someone. Although she escapes unharmed, the timid model is scared out of her wits, and the young gang member arrives a minute too late to carry out his murder as planned.
Plot Point I: The model arrives at her first photo shoot that same day, and unknowingly becomes attracted to the gang member’s older brother who is also a budding model.
Act II: The plot thickens when all is revealed and a feud breaks out between the two brothers regarding LA gangs, sissy modeling, the girl’s meddling, and her lack of understanding of street culture. Ultimately, all three characters are forced to reevaluate the meaning of life, love, and career aspirations in Los Angeles.
Plot Point II: As the model begins to learn more and becomes sympathetic to the blighted subcultures of LA through her association with her new lover, he is also shot and killed by the rival gang and the intensity of the rivalry escalates.
Act III: The model and the young gang member meet again at his brother’s funeral where their mother cries out for someone to stop the madness on the streets. Meanwhile, the younger brother and his gang friends develop plans to carry out a massive shootout.
Resolution: The model is inspired to action. She tries all of the words in the world to talk the younger brother out of throwing his life away in the gangs, and actually sleeps with him to stop him from joining his friends in the big plan. In the missed attempt at another retaliation, five of his gang member friends are killed, along with nine members of the rival gang. However, a police SWAT team arrests everyone involved, killing several more gang members in LA’s worse shootout in years. The young gang member then has nothing left to fight for and has a lot of thinking to do concerning his life. The model goes on with her career with a better understanding of the streets, and the young gang member finally sees the light and thanks her by sending her a diamond bracelet to her photo shoot.
After thinking out all of the details and finishing my first screenplay, I turned it in for review and discussion at the UCLA Extensions course, and it was immediately called a West Side Story meets Colors and Boyz N the Hood with a Jason’s Lyric and A Bronx Tale twist.
I couldn’t believe it! After all of my hard-ass work on that damn thing, it was blatantly unoriginal! That made my whole illusion of becoming a Hollywood screenwriter seem impossible. The question was: How in the world can you create something that hasn’t already been done and make people want to see it? Or, more important, as I learned in the business of Hollywood films and television: How can you take an old dog story, and turn it into a new dog with plenty of kicks and tricks with a major spin of the plot?
Actually, I had presented a major “spin” in Crenshaw. I had written a plot where the girl fucks both of the leading men, who were brothers, but that twist of the plot was called highly unbelievable. One silly white guy in my writing course chuckled and said that my screenplay had a pornographic arc to it.
He said, “You’re telling us that this hardcore gang member is gonna stop to knock boots and just forget about his plans for the big shootout? I mean, come on! Wouldn’t his gang members look at him as being pussy whipped if he did that?”
We all broke out laughing. I had to laugh at it too. It was comical and true.
I said, “Hey, don’t ever underestimate the power of great sex.”
“Oh yeah, well, just point me in the direction of any model like that. I’d tell her, ‘I have nothing left to live for. I’m ready to kill myself. I need great sex to save me. Please!’ And she’ll say, ‘Oh, sure, meet me at my apartment at eight.’”
They were having a field day with me, and it was no longer funny.
“All right, all right, let’s just settle back down,” our instructor told us. He was a dark-haired short guy with a long name that started with a K. Everyone called him Professor K. instead of trying, unsuccessfully, to pronounce his name cor
rectly, and he said that he didn’t mind it. He was also well connected in the business, so no one took him for granted either.
After we finished class that day, with everyone planning on sharing my humiliation with their Hollywood friends (I’m sure), my confidence had dropped a level. I was thinking about writing comedy, or even porno movies if they would let me. I thought about any- and everything, but ultimately, I didn’t fly out to Hollywood to make a fool of myself and embarrass the people back home who loved me. So whatever I did, it was going to be based on a sane decision.
“Now you know what we’re up against,” someone said from behind me as I walked to my car.
The sister’s name was Juanita Perez. She was from New York, and she looked really into the hip-hop movement with her twisted baby dread-locks and baggy, colorful clothing. Prior to that day, she hadn’t said a word to me. I just took it that she was there strictly for business, so I left her alone.
I smiled at her and said, “I was wondering if you were ever going to speak to me before this course was over. I mean, we are the only sisters in here. Then again, with your name being Juanita Perez, I wasn’t sure if you were more down with the Latinos or something. I figured that you looked brown enough to be black.”
She returned my smile. “My father’s from Panama, but you wouldn’t know it from looking at him. He looks like the average dark brown brother. But with your eyes and your look, I was thinking the same thing about you; that you were maybe a little extra.”
I laughed at it. “Girl, I’m from Philadelphia,” I told her. I guess she didn’t know. “My father is probably as brown as yours. He just happens to have light-colored eyes and he passed them down to me,” I added.
“I guess that we were both misled then. I’m sorry about that, but I’ve been burned out here too many times,” she said.
“What, with people who didn’t identify with being black?” I asked her. We stopped at my car.
“Yes. I was like, where are the real black people out here?”
I laughed and said, “Well, girl, you just found one.” I went further with it and opened the trunk of my car. “Matter of fact,” I said, grabbing one of my hardback books from the box, “I’ll even let you read about it.”
She looked at the illustration on the front cover and read the summary inside. She asked, “You have a book written about you?” She seemed really excited by it.
I said, “Well, you know, we all went through those flyy years back in the eighties, girl.” Juanita looked my age, so I just assumed that she was.
She said, “Don’t I know it! I had the big earrings and the drug-dealing boyfriends too. You should think about making this into a movie.”
I didn’t think too much anymore about making a movie about my life. After learning how skimpy screenplays were written as compared to books, I just figured that my life story was too damn long and detailed for a movie. My story would have been more like six to eight hours than two. They would have had to make a television miniseries about me like Roots. So I just thought that it was better told in a book.
I answered, “One day,” and left it at that.
Juanita read into it and said, “Oh, I get it. You want to get a few of your other ideas green-lighted first so that you can build up a track record and do what you really want to do.”
I said, “Yeah, that’s it,” just to go along with her.
She looked at the book jacket again and asked, “Who’s Omar Tyree?”
“He’s a writer that I know from back home in Philly. He started his own publishing company, and when Flyy Girl came out in ’93, based on my life story, we sold so many copies that a bigger publisher wanted to pick it up and republish it.”
Juanita grinned and said, “Word?! It must be good then!”
I smiled, not wanting to toot my own horn. However, when I thought about all of the early sex that I went through in the book, I had second thoughts about giving it to her. It was too late for that. Thousands of people had already read it, and I could count on thousands more who would.
“Well, let’s just say that I went through a lot of different changes,” I told her, feeling self-conscious. I had already given Kendra and Yolanda their copies. I kept wondering if their opinions would change about me once they read it.
Anyway, Juanita was all smiles. She said, “You know what, there’s a party over in Culver City this weekend that I want to invite you to, where we can both meet up with what they call Black Hollywood out here. I was just invited to it myself yesterday.”
I said, “Oh yeah? I heard about Hollywood parties and whatnot, but I haven’t been to one yet. It seems like you need connections to do anything out here.”
Juanita said, “Well, I’m already used to that from the New York crowd.”
I smiled. “I guess so.” In Philly, a blue-collar city, we were less concerned about keeping up with the Joneses, but I couldn’t say that we didn’t think about it at all. That would be a lie. So Juanita and I traded phone numbers before we went our separate ways.
$ $ $
“I don’t know about going to these Hollywood parties, Tracy. I told you I didn’t come out here for that,” Kendra was telling me at her house in Carson. I was begging her to tag along with me because I wanted to feel secure with more than one friend there. I also wanted to introduce Kendra to Juanita. I thought that we would all get along well together: three East Coast sisters.
“You know you want to go. Stop fronting,” I teased Kendra. I already knew that she would agree to it, if just to see how I would get along there. Kendra continued to think that I was too over-the-top with my actions.
“As long as you don’t sneak off in some back room somewhere and leave me,” she said with a grin.
I looked at her skeptically. “Sneak off in some back room for what?”
She laughed and said, “I’m just joking with you, girl.”
I caught on and said, “I’m a mature woman now. Okay? So don’t let that damn book go to your head.” I knew that Flyy Girl shit would rub me the wrong way!
Kendra said, “I know, Tracy, God! I mean, you obviously had to learn a lot from your life to get to where you are now. Everybody went through some of the things you went through in your book.”
“Yeah, well, don’t throw that shit up in my face.”
Kendra stopped and looked at me seriously. She said, “Tracy, if you’re going to react like this, then maybe you shouldn’t have agreed to put this book out with a major publisher.”
She had a point. I had to get over it.
“Okay, that was childish. I admit it,” I told her. “I’m just getting defensive now because I’m going to deal with new people reading this book who don’t know anything about what I’m doing now.”
“And when they get a chance to find that out, they’ll leave you alone about it,” Kendra advised me.
“Yeah, well, I just hope that these Hollywood guys don’t trip like I’m easy to get in bed, because I’m not. If you read the book correctly, there were hundreds of guys who wanted to sleep with me, but I only had five.”
Kendra started to laugh again and said, “Tracy, calm down and let it go. Now let’s go to this party.”
I was still beefing when we made it to Kendra’s car, but by the time we pulled up to the party in Culver City, I had mellowed out.
“Do you think that we’re dressed properly for this thing?” Kendra asked me with a grin as we climbed out of her car.
“I have no idea,” I told her. “That’s why we went with this.”
We were both dressed somewhere between formal and casual in our skirts and blouses.
“Yeah, I guess we can’t miss too bad. Unless everyone else in here is dressed up in tuxes and gowns, or dressed down in blue jeans.”
Judging from the cars that were parked around the private houses in Culver City, it was definitely a money spot. There were plenty of loaded SUVs, Jags, Lexuses, and Benzes parked outside. I even spotted a green Maserati and wondered who t
he driver was.
We walked right into the large, elegant flat with no problem and blended right in with the crowd. It seemed that most of the people there were playing it safe, dressed casually formal with skirts, dresses, and sports jackets.
The music of choice in the background was Tha Dogg Pound with Daz and Kurupt, which seemed out of place to me. The majority of the crowd were older than us. Maybe they should have been listening to smooth jazz or something.
“They still listen to rap music?” Kendra whispered to me.
I smiled. “That’s the same thing I was thinking.” However, no one was really dancing to it, just nodding occasionally.
“Ladies,” some tall brown guy in all blue said, approaching us with his hands out. He looked as if he had been waiting to receive us all night.
I asked him, “Are you speaking to us?”
“If you’re in my house and I don’t recognize you, I am.”
He said it super cool, but why did we feel like he had just dissed the hell out of us?
I said, “I was invited by my friend Juanita Perez, and I brought my girl Kendra along with me.”
Kendra just stood there and had me do all of the talking.
“Juanita who?” he asked me.
“Juanita Perez, from the UCLA Extensions course.”
I felt like a bigger fool with every word I spoke, and this guy was still looking blank at us.
He shook his head and said “I don’t know any—”
I cut him off and said, “Okay, I’m sorry. I can see that this is a know-only party, and since you don’t even know who invited us here, I think it’s best for us to be on our merry way.”
I was so fucking embarrassed! It seemed like everyone in that room was looking at us, but trying to play it cool at the same time like they were not.
“Well, you don’t have to leave, just tell me who you are,” he told us with a smile.
I guess he could sense how embarrassed we both felt. Kendra didn’t have to say a word to me, and I just knew she would talk about it the entire way home.