AND NOW FOR THE MOVIE!

I told of a small chapter in my story yesterday, that made the audience laugh—so I’ll share it here… It happened in 1967 the year I left college to follow my bliss. I had been expelled from Syracuse for something I’d written during an exam, something never intended for the eyes of the post graduate intern who grabbed it out of my hand as I was attempting my escape from the examination hall.

After I’d fought my way back in to school, with a plea about free speech to the Dean of Students, I quit.

I ended up back home, living with my parents. The question of "just what was I going to do with my life?" was resolved in a heated discussion with my father in the front yard. "I want to be a motion picture director," I told him.

"Fine," he said in his well-connected way, "I’ll call Eliott Hyman at Warner Brothers." Mr. Hyman was the sole owner and President at the time.

Days later I was ushered into a seat in front of the biggest desk in the biggest office I’d ever seen. It was at Warner Brothers headquarters in the Pan Am Building in New York.

Just like in the movies, Mr. Hyman reached into a drawer and pulled out a humidor. Just like in the movies, he said something like, "Cigar, kid?" I politely refused. He lit up what looked like a foot-long cigar. "So I hear you want to be a director?"

"Yessir."

Without wasting time with small talk, he picked up the phone and told someone on the other end that he was sending me over for an interview. The man’s name was Jim Feller, and he was—I found out when I got across town to his office on 9th Avenue—the head of the shipping department. The interview was a sham, just like in the movies. I knew, from the way Jim Feller treated me, that I had the job way before he ever told me I did.

Although I was not exactly on a movie set, I found out after a few days on the job, that I was in the right place. Everybody that worked in the shipping department was going to be a director! Except for the secretaries, that is, who all dreamed of being an actress.

I resigned myself to doing the best job I possibly could. I was promoted three times during my short tenure. The fact that I’d been hired by the president of the company might’ve had something to do with the promotions.

Unfortunately, it was 1967 and I had lost my "2-S" status, so I was drafted into the Army, which cut my movie career off before it began. Two years later, when I returned from Vietnam, I was too much in shock to even remember the career I’d begun. Years later, I found out that Warner Brothers would've been obligated to hire me back.

But being back in the world—and alive—was good enough for me. I was on my way out to California with my friend David in his white Mustang convertible with a cooler of beer in the trunk, in search of hippie chicks and free love.

It’s 36 years later now, and I’m ready for the movies again. It’s time to make a movie of the novel I’ve written. Last night I found myself asking my son Andrew, "who do you think should play me?"