Bonus Interview: James A. Watson Jr.

He was gone all the time, so at night we would she would sneak in a babysitter and to watch my two sisters, and my mother and I would go out to the movie. And that was a very endearing experience for me. And the Spielberg's story, it's similar to what happened to him. I went to see several films, and I was bitten. At that point, starts following them and got more involved watching television. That's the right thing,

I think. The first thing. I promised myself one day I'm gonna have that film and had that film or collected, not knowing that video would be what it is stream and so on. But that started. My mother put me in a couple of workshops during the summer to get me out of her hair, and again I was fun. In high school, I continued it. I went out for the football team and was working really hard. I started on the team, the C team, and then in the spring and I worked finally got to the B team.

the University of Redlands. I worked in their drama department and after the second year, but the second year or so, I wanted to do certain things, so I started producing my own theater there and we did our version of Golden Boy. It had been on stage when Sammy Davis Julie at the musical, so we did we modified it

for our setting it and it was very successful. And there's a friend of mine who had been to Vietnam and he had written a play based on Cousin Zaki's book The Last Temptation of Christ, and ironically Cousin Zachis was going to come to our school and speak, but Mike came to me and said, I'd like to do this into the play. So we staged it and did it, and that too, was very successful, just before he arrived on campus. Finally, by the end of my senior year.

Towards the end of the year, I got two important pieces of meal. One You're drafted Greetings Vietnam, and the second one was you have an opportunity to audition for the Royal Academy from London, so I within the same months. I used to drive my motorcycles from Redlands to Los Angeles and go to CBS Studios and my dorm moother.

At school. Knew a director, guy named Doc Livingston, who directed me but Young and the Restlers or Days of our Lives something like that, and at the end of every Friday, at the end of his work day, he would work with me on my audition Saint. We did that for six weeks and then I flew to San Francisco at ACT did the audition. There were thousands of people all across the country and they were going to

take twelve so I could. But within the same week I had gone to my physical and because I have asthma, I failed it and I didn't have to go. They didn't accept the fact that I was a cog subjective because of my faith and religiously I didn't want to

kill me, but I didn't believe in the war. So this curse that I thought I had on my life of being attacked by asthma, which was modified because my father was a doctor, so he could care for me and carefully but I failed the physical and then I was accepted at the academy and I'm with there and with twelve thirteen other kids. They had gotten a contract in a relationship to stage what they call Royal Academy East or something, and it was in Michigan at a college called Oakland University.

It was a two year contract or relationship. But after a year I came back to California for some family matters and auditioned that just one Saturday, while I was home, I went across the Bay back to act and audition. They open auditions every week and I auditioned for them, and they did a don't call us, we'll call you kind of thing, but it was nice seeing you, and a month later they did call me and I joined ACT.

So I was at ACT and working with some great people there, and Michael Lerner and other John Bloom and all kinds of people that also have a film career later the while was there. The year I was there, the Great White Hope was winning all the awards on Broadway and the director I was a guest director at the Act, so he was a very foreign old guy and they'd

been to the Marine sergeant or something. But I walked up to him and said, excuse me, I'd like to introduce myself and they maybe do an audition for you just in the future, maybe you might want to use me for something. So he said all right, He said, prepare two speeches, which I went back to my audition reachers and did them. He said, okay, I want you

to come back next week and do it again. Came back the following week and did And there was another guy in the room who happened to meet Lynn Sallmaster, who was the biggest casting director in Hollywood in those days,

and he cast me. He said, can you come to Los Angeles and meet the producers because the Miers brothers who did The West Side Story and The Apartment and you name it, In the Heat of the Night, those films which I was totally enamored with, especially West Side Story in the Heat of the Night, And he said, can you come. I came to Los Angeles met and the met a charming guy named Herbhershman was the line producer. And we met and he said that, okay, you see

like a possibility. And our director and his wife were vacationing it back in San Francisco before they come to start work at the film back to Hollywood. So I'm going to contact them. They're at the hotel. You go there and meet them, so he said. As I was about to walk out, he wrote me and says, study what's your name again? I'll make a note And I said, James Watson. That's the name of the character in the script. And I said I was cocky then am I said, well,

you see it's meant to be. I was twenty two years old, but I looked younger, and he said, could you play basketball? Because of my asthma and all that? I had danced, and so I could do that, but I hadn't. I couldn't run a lot. So that was one of the reasons I didn't. I gave up football and didn't do me. I didn't do anything extensive in basketball, but I wasn't going to lose the opportunity. So I quickly said, you ever met a black guy wouldn't play basketball?

His well, I don't know where these things came from, young, stupid, and ever do And he was okay. So I flew back to after Oakland, San Francisco, and Paul Bogard, who was the director who went on to direct all in the family for many years. I went to his hotel room and his wife opened the door. She was at a bath robe. But I just at the right place, yes,

coming in. Paul came in and he was in his bath row too, and I sat down and it was a little nervous for a second, and we talked in I don't remember if I read it or not, but we had a nice chat. I left and I was doing a play. Now at that time I was part of the company of act I went back in about a month later. They called and said, you've got this

film and I came to Los Angeles. I was in sixty nine and my first film, Jeff Bridges and Rob Reiner among the cast, and ed Asthma and for the Mirage Company, I had a great experience for them by that and I had a very good lead role in the film, which opened the doors for me in television and other things. And they weren't many blacks working at that time. Lou Gotchett was around, and LOUI used to tell me every year, I have to get reinvent myself

because they don't know what to do with us. And Sydney was the biggest star black, not only a black but period for about four or five years, even the

box office champion. And I did the first film with Jeff for there, and it was called Paul's of Anger and was based on a story that had occurred in the Boston newspaper when they were integrating schools and so on, and that's what the film is about, integration, and Jeff and I were on opposite sides, of course, but that led to a year later an opportunity to do a film with Sydney Cordier, and once again I had to be unconventional because I had worked for the producers, the

same producer, the Miers brothers. When my mother had taught meetings to always be professional and polite and all that which I was, and beyond time and pincher trade. He said, hit the mark and just say the words. And I didn't get casts initially in the film it was saying I saw my actually was casting it as well. So I called up Walter Marriage. I would never do that,

BEEAs spake, but I called up Walter Marriage. And I had gotten along very well with him, and said his secretary, and he came on the phone and I went into it was supposed to be a young urban kid. And they didn't cast me because they thought I was too sophisticated, too polished, and not rough enough around the edges quote unquote, not ghetto. On a I put on an act and I said, I went in the character over the phone and used a couple of executives and said a couple

of bass I don't swear, I don't do it. And I said, what's the matter with you? You think you know? And I said, you know a couple of things and challenged him, and there was a silence on the other man, and he said, oh, Okay, I'll tell our director to take a look at you. And I said, okay, I say you better. I hung up buddy, and I was, oh my god, I'll never work again. And I went to and they called me to go see the director. Director.

It was Gon Medford and they were doing Sidney each was doing the second film in the trilogy of the Order from the Heat of the Night, where he played Virgil TIBs, and it's about drugs infiltraining the community and a group of young vigilanti people in the neighborhood had all been affected by it were challenging the police for not doing enough, and we dragged Sydney in to help us.

If you've seen the film, But I went into the room to meet the director because I had learned my lessons at this point is that when you're meeting new people for the first time for certain arts or whatever, you got to walk in the room and be that guy. I can't walk in the room be ple items hawk and then for a transition to go into character. I'm still learning the tricks of the trade that and I walked in. I had my leather pants on and a tank topech my arms out all built up and I

had a hat on, I had sunglasses on. I sleeped into the room and in the direct and I stood and looked at the director and then he said, I've heard very good things about you. Is there any thing I could look at that would give me some idea if you'd be right for this? I said no, because I ain't gone yet. He said, put me in this film, you see. And he looked at me, went oh, yeah, okay, but you take the glasses off so I could see.

So I pulled him down. I looked over him and I looked at him and I said, oh, you one of them. Huh. You're gonna look deep into my soul. That's it. I'm sweating bullets's but I'm acting. And he went, okay, nice meeting you, and I left. Two weeks later, I get the call, I got the film and said, can you get to the airport slide to San Francisco. I go to San Francisco. They were on the wharf up there shooting the first opening sequence to the film, and I walked in the first Dad took me over to

meet Don, said he's here Don. He was James, And I walked up and I was this young kid again. I was like, Hi, how you doing.

just drive the car and hang out. So I'd drive all over San Francisco and this brand new corvette. So that's how it all started. But from there came back. By that time, I was established, I broken through the casting. People in Hollywood knew me more or less. I had

a very good agent. I was able to upgrade from basically had he just a commercial agent when I got my first film to being at that time a version of CIA, and I was working with some of the top guys who worked all the stars, and I had access there for other roles and started doing that commercials and so on, and that was the role. That's forty something fifty years ago.

They would put me in different roles, and so back then I was doing Cannon and I did the first show of the TV show was The Virginian and with Doug McClure and James Durry and Doug and I became great trains until he passed away, and it just met Aaron Spelling and he took to me and so he put me in all these shows. I did the Odd Squad several times, Beloved Vote and all those kinds of things, and it just I was very fortunate that it built and I was in sake that and I was competent

enough that they liked the products. One thing I noticed something in your little email you wrote yesterday related to the comedy. And after doing halls of Anger, which is a very serious, brooding kindel film. And then the second film was The Organization with Sydney, again another different kind of brooding kid. The canting directors wouldn't even though I had good agents, they wouldn't see me for the comedy shows or the situations, any of that stuff. And that

went on for almost two and a half years. I couldn't do anything because they said, we know him, we'd see him, but he does rheumatic stuff. He's a theater guy. And I said, oh look, so I said, my agent's got me open audition for Love American Style. I don't

know if you remember that show, oh yeah. And if In the show, the premise was you'd have two twenty minute fifteen to twenty minute little short stook comedy stories with top nine stars who you know, people that were very established, who would come in and do these little roles, and then Booken being around them, and in between the two acts they had what they called blackouts, and they were the ensemble of the six of us who would just come on and do stupid bug billion things, just

boom stupid jokes, one liners and whatever, and wearing dog suits and all kinds of nonsense but we really talked about nothing subtle about it at all, and we were also if you got that part, you were also given one of the episodes to be it. I came back. I actually had been in New York visiting some friends, and I came back, went to the audition to Paramount and closed my eyes again and went into the room. And I because I had two sisters, I used to keep the company at babysit and so I would act

stupid and they'd laugh. So I went in and as that guy and went in the room and just lit it up that way, and I got it. And once I started doing love American style, and that broke that down so that I could do other comedy shows that we led to, the Norman Lear shows, Jefferson's all the other different shows that he had, I think most of his shows, and it was anything it all today at that point I would do multiple different things again really good.

So there was good thirty years of just saying more films in the airplane, all that sort of thing. I was blessed. Really when I think about it now and I look how competitive is now. There are more opportunities, which is good. There are more stations, there are more jobs and that sort of things in certain ways, but the competition is keener, and it's still political, both socially and business wise. Any but my daughter's a lovely young

actress and she's trying to break in do things. And she always says to me, Dad, how it I'm so easy for you? Like then, like I'm having a hard time. I said, this is the work I was supposed to do and was my opportunity to reach certain people and try to be a good example to everybody. And I loved it because you know, and then and up to now, I always remained a fan as much as I was

a working actor. Norman Spelling was doing a movie of the Week with Edward g Robinson starting at Me, and I was cast opposite him in that movie of the Week, and I couldn't believe it. I'd seen him when I was a kid on TV and all the different shows, and then of course every week every year on Ten Commandments and all these other different things. And there I was on the stage and I kicked his paramount again doing this movie of the Week with him, and we're exchanging,

We're right there. It was just exciting. It was fine. Later on James Barner with Instro The Rockford Files. I went in there to do one episode and ended up working on several more of his shows. James Garner was probably the nicest speaker I ever met in the industry. He was so polite and professional and warm, and he made every actor working with him he embraced them, so

it was a great experience working with them. So I was so pleased that when you meet people that you idolize that mean from afar, they turned out to be nice people and get to work with their diet. Another film with James Colburn and Leslie Caron was and a number of other people and Robert Kulp, and I was. Leslie was a few years older than me, but I was still by a young man compared to her, but I didn't let that stop. Yeah, I'd spent some time with her and was charmed by her, and she was

just lovely. That's how it works, and has done has working in and I write as well, and I started writing almost the beginning of my career as well as acting. One of the key people that I met had influenced me in that regard was a woman named Renee Balente who had worked with David Sethkind in New York, and she had mentored a number of other stars, Burt Reynolds,

and that created his career. And when I came to Los Angeles, she was the vice president of Columbia Studios and the head of talent, and they had all kinds of shows on over there, Police Story and all kinds of other things. So I we'd go over there almost every week auditioning for some show, and inevitably I met her and she took a liking, and she took me

under her wing and we started spending time together. I met her husband, who was an amazing set designer and paid and I have a several paintings in my home that she gave me that he did. But she worked with me for the rest of my career, and we partnered up and tried to organize a number of productions,

and she taught me. I went to classes and all that kind of thing, but she taught me really how to write because she had worked with everybody from Catherine Hepburn to you name it, and ended up working I ended up working with Burt Reynolds again because of her, and that's kept me going. And that's what I'm One of the things I'm focused on now is producing my own stuff. And I've done enough TV shows in terms

of trying to challenge myself. And I also in the Leaves have a legacy of something that while those little shows that are all the Family and all those kind of you were fun, I'm working on a book and a couple of other screenplays that have a little more bite to them because I'm a politically social minded personally. Given what's happening in our country today and so on, I'm again trying to be an example of a certain point of view and support those images and that sort of thing.

along and changing things and shaping it. And one of the producer they had a second unit director who ended up directing a number of the episodes, and I started working with him, and when I did, he at some point which to me, we knew something about this scene here, and I so if you got any ideas. So I ended up rewriting a number of the scenes that I ended up doing because they just weren't working. They were too stilted. There was not real, real enough. And I

love it. I've always admired. Again, that's a greater voice for me is the writing, which is why, as I say, I'm working on a book that I'm hoping to do, and it does help me with the acting, and obviously to figure out what makes sense and how people behave from the beginning in school and college and everywhere there's a study of people, philosophy and psychology, to just give it into the heads of people that might be interesting if I ever had a chance to play some of

their little quirks or some of their characteristics that I could usually give a little more depth some of my roles. It's a canvas that you have to pay when to make it interesting. You have to put your own style, your own brushstokes on it, within the framework and have it work with the powers that be. And after a while they would trust me with certain things. And again I didn't try to go too far. It's been very

good experience. It's still challenging here. I go back to what lou said is every year, so I invent itself. Now when cable came in and then neither add and all these different things, and I'm three four generations of young actors that have come along, and new producers and groups of directors that don't a lot of those people don't do their homework, or they don't have time, or

they don't know. So you walk into the room, they don't know your backstory or your resume that well, so you have to reinvent and re establish yourself with these people. It's it's a constant challenge, but it's paid off for me so far, and I'm sticking with it. I don't know what else to do at this point.

view of humor. Ken was very open. He would he said he wrote a script, we'd shoot what he wrote, and then he would say, let's do another take, and if anybody's got anything, if they want to bring into it or do, let's throw it in. So invariably I found some instinctive stick to do or do something, and it ended up in the film. He was very open

to that. I don't know if you're here. There's a scene where I'm sitting in the cock that is the navigator and a guy comes in like he's cleaning the plane and he's vacuuming, and I'm looking at the command center and as he comes in he's a black guy and as he comes in, he's you know, I do the high five? That was I put that in and I just did that and I did that instinctively and it was It's fun. It is fun, especially when they let you loose and having a theater background, in stage background,

working with those people, you learn your craft. And I always young actors come and they asked me, and I tell them two things. Never give up number one and number two, be prepared because so you never know when your opportunity will come, and you don't know, you got to be ready for it. When it does come, it's going to be something unlike what you expected, so you have to be able to stay on your toes and dance. Ken was an easy going guy. He made it very

comfortable for all the actors. So we were like a stilly ensemble family of people that because they were all known as straight actors doing this stick, which was the whole joke. They too had backgrounds that made it work. On the contrasts of our styles and all that and the written word that they had worked out and it

was good. It was a fun experience. The only thing there's this at the end and I exit the Copie and I they're the problem the fire, and we end up going out in the outer space to find out what happened, and ended up drifting into the atmosphere some place. So they put us on a belt and lifted us up in the ceiling or the studio. That was a little uncomfortable. They pinged on certain areas, but we're all laughing and making the best of it. But Kin was good.

Ken was a nice guy, and the film obviously wash over seen.

fact when I did the Love American style. One of my Ted Lange and I are woke from the Bay Area, and Ted and I were good friends, and the director was a guy named Norman Abbott, who was I think a cousin or something from lou Abbot, Abbott and Costello. And he called us to his house one Saturday and said, I have this notion that you and Ted could be the next Martin and Lewis and I could get I have contacts in Vegas, and I think we could put together an act and take you guys to Vegas and

make some serious money. And that started. I was a young man with a young family land, but I was game. Ted had other things going and he didn't want to do it, so it didn't happen. But I was surprised from the beginning when I started my career that I had too much success doing comedy stuff as I did doing dramatic stuff. And it was very a lot of those things where I remember with great fondness because I was having fun. But the timing was there, the things,

the instincts were there, and it worked. But again, going back to training and whatever gift you might have to shape it, but it's hard knowing not spectly there's different types of comedy, different levels of it, and you can't. You have to know where the boundaries are and what your instincts are telling you about what they want you to do. In the big picture, you can't. You have

to fit in. You can't do some big thing or some broad thing that's going to end up on the cutting room floor because it's not consistent with the big picture. You're only part of the picture. And I think when I was doing the Organization, Sydney had just from the shooting Bucket the Preacher with Harry Bellefonte and Ruby d and he invited me to he was editing the film. He invited me to come and watch and edit the film, and I was really bitten when I saw how you

could take pieces and put pieces together. And that really helped me with my acting too, because then I understood better what was going to be usable and what wasn't. And I did an episode of a show TV show and the editor and the director came up to me at one point and said, we really appreciate when because when I'm not having my own lines, I'm still at my stage background. You don't quit acting even if I'm off camera. You stay in character, and if it's a

broad a wide take, I keep working. And he said, we always can cut to you for a reaction because you're still in the scene. You keep yourself in the scene. So I learned how to do that too, and sometimes I would insinuate myself very cleverly into a scene that on paper wasn't going to be established that way, but I was again a way of finding how to support the story and whatever was happening at that moment.

He and I got along great. It was fine. And I think he comes from the stage, comes from Broadway and all kinds of things in the background, and people think of him as the odd couple or certain certain things, and they don't realize. Most actors if they if they've been around a long time, they come from a broad background and deep background. So when another to discover another person who has done the same thing and has the

same respect for that, they respond to that. And I I was playing in the when I did the role with him that it's the first scene where he and I introduced. His boss brings me into the office and I'm DA and it's been a murderer and he's he's coming in to tell me that he thinks there's been a murderer and not it's not a regular thing. That was the Bregnis of the show. So we were being introduced for the first time, and the director there again

gave me some room and some latitude. So I at one point when he walked in and started the guy introduced me, I kept working. I didn't paying attention to him, and he looked like, are we what's wrong? Are we

going to stop? And then finally I looked at him very second hand like huh huh, and he went so he said, sir, but here's the thing, and I went what And I got up And then according to a chair in front of my desk, and he sat down and I walked around him, and when I sat in another chair opposite him, and I looked at him and I said, so you think there's something else going on? Him is at it? And he said yeah, I do,

and I said yeah. I got up and I went back from my chair and I sat and looked at him and I said, prove it, and he went okay, yeah, okay. And it was a totally different tone from what he and it was really alive and had a thing going on. And he liked it so much that he told the producid, I want that guy back. I want him to come back. So that's how I ended up becoming a semi regular on the show. Is he enjoyed me doing that, working with them, and gave the show a little more dimension,

and it was really a good experience. It went on for two three years, three seasons of it. I had a little bump in the road with him because I was shooting a movie of the week and what what happen is that they would call my agent week ten days ahead and said we wanted James's schedule for this episode in two weeks or next week or something, and we want to make sure he's available and whatever. And so I was doing this movie of the week and I just signed with this young guy as a manager

on only done that a couple of times ahead. And this manager and he was very eager and he was fullowing himself, and so they said that you're gonna they needed me. It was Thursday, they needed to have me them following Monday, and manager, unbeknownst to me, told the producer of the casting people, whoever it was that made the call, well, James's not available and he's busy doing this movie and if you want him to do the next episode, you need to push you a couple of

days and then he'll fit it in. And of course it went back to Jack that that's what I said, which of course I didn't. So Jackson, of course, as mercurial as he was, he went from I love this guy too, Oh really, okay, just got him out, but we'll go to some point he said hell. And it took me about eight months until through some friends I managed to get a note to him and said I never said that. I found out the next week that he had done and I fired the guy right away.

But I let him know the truth, and then when he realized that I hadn't said that, he rubbed me back into the show again, and I came back and we finished in the last year the show was on. So I was there were these like I said, you always have to be careful in this business, and you

know how it works. It was a frustrating moment for me at that time to have somebody you know, it's bad enough or difficult enough to walk the line yourself, but somebody else invades it with their ego and everything, and they imposed to them and the misrepresent you, and so you got to be careful. It's a really pickable business.

But Jack I enjoyed the show. He always liked to do timely things and make a little put a little something in the show that had a little grit to it, and I think that's one of the things he liked working with me. We could play tennis urbally and with our skills on the stage, and it made it. It was fun for him. So but it also came with certain issues. But we were there was something going on.

I can't remember it was. There was a It wasn't It was not any event that unlike the fire much like the fire, something that happened that some tragedy or something, and a group of actors had gone out to support it and walked the line and get the press involved by sort of things. So I went with Jack and some other people and Jack was being interviewed by the press. Came on and said, so, what's going on? Why are

you guys out here? And he said, you know, he explained why it was important to him and why we're not actors. We're people that are caring about other people. That's why thing. And he mentioned me and just threw me in and said, and we've got people like this and James won't care about this sort of thing, and we want to come here and show when supporting these people

it's important. I loved him for that. I loved him for that kind of sensitivity, and so it's one of the most memorable experiences for me to have developed a relationship with someone like they said. I've always been a fan, and so when I finally meet these people and bond with them on a different level, good, bad, or ugly, most of the time it's been good. It's been more rewarding than certainly the money or the It's not for me, it's never about trying to trainers or anything like that.

To me, it was about trying I love the craft, and I studied hard for it. I prepared for it, and I like the challenge of it. And that's why the writing or the editing and what I'm getting ready to do now. I may end up directing this next project that I'm working on right now or co directly. I'll probably bring somebody in because I'm going to be in it, so I don't want to wear too many hats.

But we don't have a lot of money either, so we're going to have to be creative, much like I did when I was in college, and my last two years in college, I ended up leaving the drama department and producing my own shows. And it taught me that you can do that or the show. It's important. It's important. Jack was a good guy, and I'm missing.

mentioned it. He appreciated the fact that, oh, you know that. Of course I know that you kidding, and we talked about it. So he warmed up really quickly, and it was he was easy going and in one again we we bonded well enough, had enough of a report that

we could be created to do things. So there was one particular scene in it where we didn't a bit of comedy stick that that wasn't in the script, but that we just worked it out and they put it in the show because of the ability for us to find something that wasn't on the page to make it a little more dimensional and interesting. We were to take I was we were. I was a detective investigating the murder, and he was on the scene doing his thing. He

again meeting those people. I never worked with him, but I met Tony Curtis at one point and when I was running around and he was a sweet guy. That's or anything. I've had nothing but really good experiences. Really, to be honest, you went to I believe in what you give is what you get. And then people in

this industry, I respect what other people have done. I admire them for their hard work and what they've gone through with the bad and the ugly people responded that, I think it's the way you have to be just in life. It's the way my parents raised me. And so I've never stopped being that little kid that went to the movies with my mom, just sat there with big eyes and went, oh, and this is interesting, and oh that looks like fun and all that. And then

meeting those people is like going to Disneyland. Oh look at this. That's going this ride. Oh look at that. I remember this. And when I worked with Renee, because she worked with everybody. She at one point she was producing a movie at Fox with Renee was the first woman to be then hit the President of the Producer's Skill. She won an Emmy on Showtime with Peter Falk in a TV movie that they did, And as I say, she'd worked with Georgey Scott and Katine Hepburn you name it,

you look at the pictures are a wall. And so this is a woman with great depth. And she became like an aunt or or family member to me, and so she would drag me along. And she called me one day we were working on a project and she said, come up with the satin stage whatever. And I went in and had no idea what she was doing, and she said, oh, here's Gene Simmons. Want to introduce you

to Gene Simmons. And of course, after Spartacles among other things, I could hardly speak, I was like, actually, oh again, I'm really I have never lost that kind of sense of it, which keeps it alive from me and makes the experience fun and real. My objectives are not to go after a power thing. You got to manage. You need power, you need to have it learned to get certain things done. There's things that I'm frustrated about that I didn't do earlier in my career, especially when I

had more leverage and that sort of thing. But everything seems to work out in its own time, and my faith as such, I'm not worrying about it. Gives I've nothing complian about, so it's good. And I say with people you've worked with, your opportunities, I passed like great. She was producing Jerry Lewis used to do the show every year, so one year she was producing the California, the LA version of it. So she called me and said,

come on down and work the phones with us. So there I'm sitting in a room with you name it, all these people, and there's Mary, Charlie Moore, and there's all these different people. And then later I worked with me Charla Moore on her the TV movie with her. And it's been a real gift to be able to learn from these people and to share a bit of my experience with them and have them appreciate what I'm

trying to do to some degree. And so now my daughter's out there doing it and she's a beautiful young woman. And she when she started, she was she'd be around the house doing what Michael Jackson was first the Jackson five, and she was four and she was trying to her dance and do this, and she wasn't very coortinated, and she wanted to later on, she wanted to do doole acting. In high school, she did guys and dolls and stuff like that and was stiff and I'm like, oh goodness, okay.

And then she tried a couple of other things, and then she went away to college for four years and she came back she said, I'm now I'm going to try to go and I said, what should I do that? So I gave us some advice and he said, join a theater group, so you can work with theater people. Learned the crack. Go take some classes through I to

do this. But she struggled around and then she got this opportunity to do this independent film where she played the gmail leading and when it was finished that they had a pre preview or something, when the whole family and all her friends went to the theater and I sat there, Oh, guys, you know what's going to happen here? And she comes on and she was incredible in the film. She was I was like, holy because she worked so hard.

She took whatever she had. She's smart, but she worked so hard, and she got to coach and she did all these things and she put a lot of chichens. So I was very proud of her. And so now she's she's up there. Now she's been doing it for a while. She still hasn't gotten what she wanted to be at that big shot. But there's another reason. I'm trying to produce a couple of things, because I want to give her an opportunity to be seato in some of this work everybody needs. I got my shot with

those people. If I hadn't walked up to the director in the Grave White Hope been arrogant, if I hadn't gone to Walter Mirish and acted stupid, have to get out there certain things too. It's not going to come to you. We got to make it happen in some kind of way. It's not your agent that's going to make it happen to you.

knew people that ran the state of California. So I think about on a first any basis, So I wanted to do this and the right that particular time, there was a major Jackson had been elected mayor of Atlanta, and so he was the first black person being of a large southern city. And there's just and I'll tell you but I ended up again totally blessing of so I'm on TV. I said that would be the guy I could learned, and I ended up going to his house.

He knew who I was. I ended up lived staying with him for a month and going everywhere he went. And when I came home, I had so many notes that I said, this is not a movie, this is a book. Because while I was there, I learned that my mother was from Texas, my father was from Virginia. I grew up in Washington, d C. California, so I didn't know as much about the Southern culture and all lesser thing. And I also developed more of appreciation for

what because I was around watching in them. Had an opportunity to meet Ralph ab Abneth who was working with Martin Luther Kinging and all those kinds of people, and Jesse Jackson. I knew the book is a boy the fictional family. It starts in nineteen thirty nine and it goes till up to the present. It said, it's going to be a big book, but it covers the life

of this fictional character. When we meet these your volies of young black kid sharecropper, and as he grows and his life experience develops, and his family and all the people that are fictitious, they are integrated into the most significant or some well known, some not so well known historical events that happened in this country, whether they were the bussing, the floods, or the new name and all

these different things. So the course of following the soap opera of the characters and the family and its growth, the reading can be educated about how this country developed and with its social background. And because a lot of people my family, I taught my kids to learn about what was happening historically into black kids, kids that integrated

their mix. So the book is called Resurrection, and it's chance to tell the history of America and make it accessible by putting a frame in the fictitious in staking kind of characters that were a little more like the soak or more, but good. It's my version of roots, that kind of thing. Yeah, and so I met a woman who was a publisher in New York who read the first part of me and encouraged me. And I think I'm on the right track. So I've just got to finish it.