Becoming A Son

by David Labrava

  “What’s your next destination?”

  “This is it.”

  “Miami?”

  “No. The PATH is the destination.”

  He put the camera down for a second and thought about that. It was like a light bulb went off in his head. Then he smiled and picked the camera up again and pointed it at me.

  “Can you explain that please.”

  “This is it so enjoy it. Wherever you are whatever you are doing is exactly what is supposed to be happening. So you are in your destination all the time. That’s your path.” They both put their camera’s down. The producer lady, I think her name was Kim or Tina or something like that walked up with a release. I had seen a release before so I knew what it was. They had a real tricky one, and I thought they only had about five minutes of film so what would it matter, so I signed it. I gave him all my information but I didn’t take theirs. When they drove away I still didn’t know who he was. It wasn’t until later that night at the bar did I find out he was some big time producer from Hollywood in Miami filming Wild on E with Brooke Burke. That night at Teds Hideaway all my friends were disappointed that I didn’t get the guys contact info. Everybody was ostracizing me for letting an opportunity go by. It was carzy how disappointed they all were. Everybody was trying to be in the movies or on commercials. That’s Miami. The bar is full of models and actors all trying to make it. I wasn’t chasing that Hollywood dream so it didn’t mater to me. I had about eight months to go till I could go back to Holland. I had a different dream.

  The next day my phone rang.

  “David?”

  “Yes sir.”

  I thought it was my dad. It sounded like my dad.

  “This is the guy you met yesterday. With the camera, remember?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Are you busy?”

  “No sir.”

  “Would you like to come down to the Mercury hotel. We can have lunch. I think it’s right around the corner from you.”

  “It is. See you in five minutes.” I hung up the phone and ran out of my house and across the deck to the stairs. Red was sitting on a lawn chair having a beer.

  “Hey. Where you going?”

  “Opportunity is calling?”

  “The guy called back?”

  “Yup. I’m on my way to meet him.”

  “Good luck.” Red was always positive.

  “Luck won’t have nothing to do with it.” I said as I ran down the stairs. I had no idea what was in store for me but I knew it was something good.

  When I got to the hotel the guy was in front of the hotel with the man and woman producers. We went upstairs to his room and the camera guy was there with big camera set up on a tripod facing the bathtub. In the tub was a chair in front of a window which let the sunlight shine on it. I took one look at that camera and knew it was expensive, it had a small screen built right on the side of it. I had never seen a camera like that before. I started formulating a plan to come back later that night with my pals and steal it. What can I say? It’s how my mind used to work. Old habits die hard.

  We all sat down.

  “Do you now who I am?” The old guy asked me.

  “Nope.”

  “My name is Zalman King. I finish projects.”

  I immediately thought to myself what a cool line., ‘I finish projects.’

  “I have 36 episodes airing on HBO called Chromium Blue. Have you seen it?”

  “No. I don’t have HBO. I don’t watch a lot of television.”

  They all took that statement in. Television was their business. Media was their business.

  “I have also done a few films, maybe you heard of them. One was called, “Nine and a half weeks.”

  “I heard of that one. Mickey Rourke was in it right?”

  “Yes. I also did a film called ‘In Gods Hands’. It has surfing in it.”

  “You did that? I saw that.”

  “That’s good. I’m doing a new project and I would like you to be the host of it. It’s kind of like a video magazine.”

  “When do you want to do it?”

  “Now. We have a camera all set up. If you could sit in that chair where the light is good I would like to interview you.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it. You will even get paid but that will be later.”

  “Have I got a time limit?”

  “No.”

  “Can I smoke a joint while we talk?”

  “Yes you can.”

  “Let’s do this.” I said. It was a no brainer for me. I knew I had nothing to lose. For the next two hours I had a conversation with Mr. Zalman King while I smoked a joint. When you grow up in Miami you learn all kinds of slangs and dialects, so some times I spoke like a Jamaican, sometimes like Tony Montana, sometimes like a cab driver from Brooklyn, and sometimes like me.

  Zalman King was all class. He was a true gentleman. He had a calm excitement about him whatever he was working on. You could tell he oozed success from every pore. He was totally relaxed with a camera in his hand, having fun just making movies. I had no idea we would become the best of friends.

  After the interview I signed a new release and we said our goodbyes and I didn’t think about him or the filming again for awhile. It wasn’t as if I thought anything was really going to happen from that interview. I stayed focused on my own dream. Until one day about a month later a package showed up for me from Los Angeles California. It was from The Z K Company and I knew it was from him.

  I opened up the package and there was a DVD and a t shirt in it. I went over to Reds apartment because he had a DVD player and I put the DVD in the machine and sat back to watch it.

  At first I thought it was pretty cool. The color was right, the sound. I could see that whoever made it knew what they were doing. That wasn’t the problem. I looked like a stoner to me, and it just didn’t sit right. I kept thinking about kids seeing it and that it wouldn’t be the best thing. I’m not a role model but for some reason I just didn’t want my mom or people to see me looking like some stoner. So I called Zalman King up on the phone.

  “You got the package? How do you like it?”

  “I don’t.”

  “Why not.”

  “Because I look like I’m some stoner.”

  “You WERE smoking a joint.”

  “I know. It’s just not what I expected.”

  “What did you expect?”

  “I don’t know. Not that. Maybe….more like a super hero or something.”

  “You are a super hero. You are STONER MAN.”

  “Not funny.”

  “Listen. Wait till you see what I do with it before you say no. I will take out the parts were you look really stoned. Ok?”

  I thought about it for a minute. I trusted this guy. I don’t think he is in business to fail. I didn’t want to throw away a chance at something, even if I wasn’t sure what it was.

  “Ok.” I hung up the phone. I was a little disappointed that the film was not what I expected. It was kind of like buying a lottery ticket. All week long you fantasize about how you are going to spend your winnings, then you are totally surprised that you didn’t win when the odds were twenty million to one against you in the first place. That’s how I felt. It was a good reality check. It just made me focus harder.

  About a month later another package arrived from The Z K Company. This time I waited until Red got home and we watched it. Red picked it up.

  “Sex Y and Z?”

  “Yeah.” Red rolled his eyes. “It’s not porn. Right? Your mom wouldn’t dig that.”

  “It’s not porn.”

  We put the DVD in and it had me at all the breaks, and every now and then I would pop up. The editing was great. It had a whole bunch of other people in it, like Ice T and the Bishop Magic Don Juan, which was way cool to me. It also had extreme surfing, skiing, skating, and fine girls would be popping up all the time. Not naked or anything, just pretty girls would flash across then screen. It was like a vide
o magazine and you were turning the pages about as fast as you could understand them. Just one clip after the next. It had these funny little skits in it also and a lot of extreme motorcycle jumping. It ended just as raw and abruptly as it started.

  “That was cool.” Red said.

  “Different, that’s for sure.” I had never seen anything like it but I wasn’t spending a lot of time in front of the T.V.

  Zalman King called a few weeks later and offered me a job in Los Angeles. We were going to film a few episodes of his show and he said I could do camera work. I told him I was going to go buy a camera.

  “Make sure it shoots 24 frames a second.” Zalman told me.

  “Why’s that?”

  “That’s film speed. You are about to go to school. With the technology of today I can shoot something with a camera that I can hold in one hand, that can be sold to a network.”

  I ended up buying the same camera as Zalman had. It was a hand held Panasonic mini dv cam. It was the highest end consumer camera that I could find in my price range. It was almost five thousand dollars. This was a big investment for me, spending five thousand dollars on a camera. I figured I could always sell it if it didn’t work out. I just thought it was important to come correct when I got to L.A. and show up with a camera. I was right because I was one of the guys with his own camera so I always got to work. One of the other guys who was a real school trained camera man was always renting one. Or the company did when they needed an extra camera on set.

  I still had six months until I could go back to Holland so I figured why not see what trouble I could get in on the West Coast. I could always jump ship anytime after six months goes by, so I figured the best thing would be to see how far I could take this deal in that amount of time.

  Zalman bought me a ticket to L.A. and let me stay in his guesthouse, which was a few blocks from the beach in Santa Monica. His guesthouse was two story building in his back yard and it was bigger than my place in Miami. He let me stay in it until I got it together.

  The day I walked in to Zalman’s house he was having a dinner party with the heads of three major networks as well as a bunch of stars. His wife Pat is an incredible painter and sculpter as well as a gifted script writer. Both Zalman’s daughters are artists. He definitely had a gifted clan. Extremely cool people.

  “Tell them how we met.” Zalman said as I walked in. I told the table the story about the restaurant. Zalman really liked that story. Then I went to bed.

  I woke up the next day on East Coast time about three hours before anyone else. It must have beenfour a.m. I saw a Starbucks on the way into to town the day before so I walked over to it. I was used to Cuban coffee Miami style every morning so I ordered an eight shot espresso. I walked back to the house by five a.m. and I knew no one would be awake for a while so I started writing something. I didn’t know the elements of a script yet, so I wrote a complete story only using the characters and the dialogue. This was a trick to get the story across with no description. But I didn’t know any better. I wrote for about thre hours and it was about ten pages long.

  Zalman had and office on Ventura blvd in Sherman Oaks. We rode in Zalman’s Mercedes to work and I read him the dialogue. Zalman had a whole bunch of people working for him. He had a complete film company. They could do everything, write it, produce it, film it edit the film they shot, all of it, in one building. He had a bunch of interns and young people that were trying to come up in this business working on the cheap. It was a cool little pool of talent.

  We got to the office the first day. We walked into the office of one of the interns. He was about twenty years old. Way younger than me.

  “Teach him the script writing program.” Zalman told him.

  “Final draft?” The kid asked.

  “That’s the one.” Zalman said as he went upstairs to his office. It took the guy a few hours to get me to understand the program and the elements of a script. I had been writing for years for the magazine, telling stories just not in script form.

  “The script is like a blue print for whoever is going to help you film what you write. It’s not just for the actors to learn lines. It’s for guys to get cars, build sets, find locations.” It all seemed so easy to him. I got the elements of the script fast enough and by the end of the day I had written my first script. It was a short story about sixteen pages long.

  Zalman was impressed as he read it.

  “Tell you what. You write funny skits and I will send you out with a film crew to film them.”

  “And pay me?”

  “Yes and pay you.”

  “Once again you got a deal.” We shook hands and I left his office. My friend Marko had an apartment off Western and Normandie on the other side of town that he let me live in free. I started writing scripts. The first script I wrote took a month and a half and was over three hundred pages long. I was so proud of it. I walked into Zalman’s office and put it on his desk.

  “What’s this?” He asked me.

  “My first script.”

  He picked it up and felt the weight of it then he dropped it back on the desk.

  “No one is going to read this.”

  “Why not? You don’t even know what it’s about.”

  “Because it’s too long. A page is a minute in film time. Ninety to one hundred and five pages, that’s your limit. And you have to get them written within three months.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “You don’t want to spend years writing a script. You want to be able to meet deadlines. “ He picked up the script and handed it back to me.

  “Go make two movies out of this.” He said. I did. I turned it into a movie with a sequel.

  I started seeing everything in three acts. I started writing three part trilogies. I would give my self all these different writing exercises. Writing the TV guide description, the back of the DVD description, the treatment, the script and stories. As long as I was writing something, completing projects, I was happy. Being a storyteller. I had been writing for the magazine for over a decade, so scripts were getting easier to write.. They were mostly dialogue and completing them became one of my favorite things to do. Soon I had a pile of them. I always finished within ninety days. Have to be aware of deadlines.

  I started working for the ZK Company all the time. We even worked on weekends. Everybody there loved to work and make films. I was shooting different skits with Zalman and his crew. It was cool because I would be a camera man when I wasn’t in front of the camera being an actor. Once in awhile he would send me out with the crew alone, but he would always show up. It was just like film school.

  I worked hard and saved my money. I didn’t know any one or go anywhere so I saved all my dough.

  I bought a nineteen fifty two Chevy pick up. It was flat black and slammed to the ground and had a whole bunch of Mother Theresa’s and crucifix’s in it all over the inside. Like some Santeria voodoo priest owned it.

  I bought it from an East Los Angeles Low Rider and this truck was dialed. His kids were screaming so bad because they didn’t want their dad to sell it. When I got back to the office Zalman freaked on it. We shot a few skits in the truck but I figured it was time for me to keep moving. This was not my dream. We had made three episodes of the show and I had learned a lot about camera work and script writing. I had gotten a lot out of being in L.A. but I knew it was time to go. I had somewhere else to be. I packed up my Chevy pick up truck, said goodbye to the friends I had made and drove back across the country. Again.

  68

  Driving across the country in the slammed 1952 Chevy pick up was a cool thing to do. At every stop some old timer would walk up and tell me about the first piece of ass he got in a truck just like that.

  Everybody waved at me in the truck every where I went. The truck looked like a Rat Rod but it was dialed with a 327 motor, it went real fast. Three days and four nights of straight driving and I was back in Miami. It wasn’t too comfortable sleeping in the truck but when there is somewhere
else you want to be all you want do is get there. This wasn’t a joy ride.

  Miami was exactly as I left it. I wasn’t focusing on the parties as much. I had been gone over four months and it was no secret I was planning on moving back to Holland. Jimmy and Red were taking care of the SBU parties for me. The parties kind of ran themselves. Once I picked a date and a bar to have it in they would just evolve into a party.

  I still had a few months to wait till I could go back to Holland so I started writing like a man possessed every day. Red was welding every day. Either bike frames or big gates in front of rich people’s houses. He would come home every day looking like he worked in a coal mine. I would be siting at my desk with a pile of crumbled paper behind me trying to write a script. Trying to write a coherent scene, trying to understand the elements of a script better. Writing a book was too far off to think about, so I stayed with scripts.

  The first person to ever try and sell one of my scripts is my friend Vinnie. Skinny Vinny we called him growing up cause he is hella skinny. He is also one of those very efficient people. In a town full of decadence and a whole lot of people trying things and failing, Vinnie was succeeding. We called him Mr. Efficiency as we got older. Vinnie owned a barber shop on Washington boulevard that was always busy. He called me up and asked me to bring him my latest scripts. I walked in and Vinnie was relaxing watching TV in the back. He saw me as soon as I got in.

  “Hemingway. How’s the writing going?”

  “Good. Still at it.”

  “You should have never left L.A. That’s where the action is. That’s where I’m going.”

  “I got some where else to be.”

  “That’s your problem and you don’t see it. You got nowhere else to be except right here. That’s why you walked in here. Did you bring the scripts like I asked you?”

  “Yeah.” I gave Vinnie my movie with a sequel.

  “What’s it about?”

  “It’s a love story.”

  “A love story? You wrote a love story?”

  “Everything is a love story.”

  Just then a girl walked in and walked over to us and gave Vinnie a hug.