What I am about to share from my past is somewhere between history and story. When I first started thinking about this episode in my life, I was bothered that many of the facts have gotten lost with time and it would detract from what I wanted to share. Memory takes a beating with age, but the good stories survive, at least they do for me. I want to tell you about the time I was within inches of being a film producer and went to Hollywood and had a hand shake deal with Roger Corman.

The year was 1995. I was living in Santa Fe, NM, just off West Alameda, in a little compound with a handful of one story and two story units. Glen was one of my neighbors and he taught screen writing at The Institute of American Indian Arts. Honestly, I don’t recall exactly how we met, but that’s not an important part of the story anyway. We became friends and hung out together. I was definitely into a maverick, professional life style, having recently finished a stint with an English record label, establishing US distribution for them. Right around then, I had gotten myself involved with Belize, importing herbal remedies, creating a company called Planet Patrol. However, I was definitely waiting for opportunity to whisper in my ear and have always been the kind of guy that believes everything put in front of me is for a reason.

Glen wanted to be the first Native American to direct a feature film and he was quite passionate about it. He had written a screen play about the true story of a half-breed Indian, who lived in the Northwest just before the turn of the twentieth century. At one time, I knew his name. Glen shared news clippings with me from the local papers and his story was all there. He had killed at least a dozen men. He robbed stagecoaches and held up some banks. He became known as a Robin Hood figure, because he would share some of his bounty with Native American families, allowing them to buy their land from the banks who held the deeds. As a result, he was protected and impossible to catch. Part of the legend held he had hidden gold in a cave somewhere in the woods.

We both decided we were going to make a movie about his life story. Glen was the writer/director and I would be the producer, because I had a talent for putting things together, having produced a major concert series back in ’89, etc.. Somehow, through people at his school, we made contact with a major Hollywood agent, by the name of Hillard Elkins. Having worked around the broadcast business in NYC, before coming to Santa Fe, his name was very familiar to me.

Hilly, that’s what he was called, felt we could make a movie deal and he was going to make some calls on our behalf. It took a couple of weeks. He scored a meeting with Roger Corman, the king of low budget films and a true legend in the film industry. His impact was huge. He discovered too many actors and directors to even get started. At this point in his career, his was primarily making direct to video movies, ones you never heard, all of which made a ton of money. They would usually have some kind of lurid cover, like a romance novel screaming for your attention.

He set up a meeting and we flew to LA to meet Hilly at his Beverly Hills mansion. What I remember most was all the Napoleonic era pieces of art and memorabilia, including a classic hat that supposedly belonged to him. The comedic element to me is that like most all show biz agents, he was short and Jewish and Napoleon was not famous for his slam dunk, if you get my drift. Some guys, like Hilly, spent their lives compensating for their height, becoming as big as they could.

When it was time to go to our meeting, Hilly said he’d drive. The three of us squeezed into his white sports car, the make escaping me, and he drove like a bat shit lunatic, all the way to the meeting. He was passing on the right and flying around turns and going way faster than he should. I will never forget him telling us that Steve McQueens taught him how to drive!

We went into Roger’s office, a free standing, two story building, with his production company initials on the front. We were escorted into his office and after hand shakes, the four of us sat around a low table and talked. He said he read the script and liked it and wanted to make the movie and was figuring on a budget of around $700,000, right in the B range. We told him we wanted to shoot it up around where the story actually took place and that we would be using as many Native Americans as possible. We already had a lead in mind, who was interested, a fine young actor by the name of Adam Beach. We stood up and shook hands on the deal.

On the way back to Hilly’s, he repeatedly said he was shocked at how easily it went down. Glen and I got in our rented car and both could finally exhale. I cried and thought of my father, who died when I was quite young and feeling I had made it for him, because he worked so hard and just barely got by. I can remember that feeling right now. Glen was thrilled at achieving his dream of being the first Native American film director and I was happy for him.

We got back to Santa Fe, just waiting for the details to get wrapped up and then Hilly called with even better news. Roger wanted us to do a movie before ours and all of sudden, we were now going to do two films. It was going to be the story of Geronimo, shot somewhere in the Dakotas. WTBS had announced they were going to do Geronimo’s story, starring the well known actor, Wes Studi. Roger, being the operator he was, wanted to beat them into the marketplace with his version, confusing people, so they would buy his low budget version.

When the script arrived, I couldn’t believe it. We were told it was written by two guys in LA, who had never been to Indian Country and wreaked of all the dumb stereotypes of drunken Indians and “squaws”,  all the prejudices that Native Americans have been shackled with forever. After forty-two years in NYC and coming out to New Mexico, I had never met a single Native American before. I don’t know why or how, but my heart was touched very deeply by these people in ways I can’t say. Their reservations were poverty stricken and there was pain everywhere. Maybe, somewhere in my historic DNA, I knew oppression. I don’t have a good answer, just a quiet connection.

I told Glen I couldn’t do this movie the way it was written and argued with him, which seemed strange, because it should have been the opposite. He wanted to do it, because it would still break that glass ceiling for his people to direct. After all this time, I think I know a little more and can better appreciate what this opportunity meant to him, regardless of the ugly story. Finally, he agreed he would speak with Roger and ask if we could make some modest changes in the script. I don’t think anybody ever said anything like that to him before, because our opportunity dropped dead during that phone call. I think we had one more conversation with Hilly, after trying to reach him for several weeks.

I was that close to actually being a Hollywood film producer and don’t have an ounce of regret with my choice.