For a good part of my adult life, I guess a little over half of it, I spent every free moment writing at the cost of my financial, social, and physical life. I worked every back breaking entry level job under the sun and under the water. I also, because of my prolific writing, and reams of notes, I developed good computer and clerical skills, which allowed me to temp, or take, every demeaning entry level office job under the florescent. You've also probably seen me in the background of several films. Some of my better shots were in Twins and War of the Roses. I was really happy with my two efforts with Danny Devito, you can see me the longest in Twins. I am happy to report after sitting and talking with Danny, during breaks in shooting, that I found him as genuinely nice a guy, as he seems to be in interviews. Certainly the nicest guy with Hollywood clout I ever met. But I digress.
There were three co-staring roles in action movies, and if you've seen any of them, you watch way too many movies. In order: Killing American Style, Young Rebels, and Gypsy.
In Killing American Style, I played the younger bother of Robert Z'Dar and broke him off a prison bus. Robert was the Maniac Cop and a lot of action film watchers call him that guy with the JAW. It all ends in tears. We both die in the end. The movie was a rip off of Big Jake, and is the most coherent of the three.
In Young Rebels I played the younger brother of a guy I recognized from commercials, but I can't remember his name. My role: I was always getting into trouble, looking for the easy way, and he had to always bail me out, but he didn't do a very good job. I, thankfully, died about 30 minutes into the movie. This movie was, unfortunately not ripped off from anything, that I could discern, and honestly after I died, it stopped making any sense. I did meet one of the two cops from Plan 9 from Outer Space, but his acting hadn't improved. The script was written by an Iranian, in his second language of English, so the dialogue didn't exactly role off the tongue. It took all day for him to get his lines out and I didn't do anything that day but laugh at first, then cringe as everyone started to get irritable. It did add a day of shooting to my scheduled, which I didn't mind, since as a co-star I was making all of twice as much, as I made as an extra, excuse me background talent, in movies made by studios. Even though the food was so much better on the studio films that it probably made up the difference, plus there was no overtime for the co-starring roles.
Gypsy, my final big role, actually had a plot. The plot of the movie Billy Jack, I think some of the dialogue was actually lifted directly from the movie. I played, be prepared, wait for it, the younger brother who got into trouble. If you've seen Billy Jack, you know the role. Not particularly flattering, but I did what I could with it. It wasn't long after that I ran out of money and the screenplay option, I was living on, was returned to me when the next option payment was due.
It wasn't that I wanted to be a suffering artist, but I've never been very good at sucking up, brown nosing, or back scratching (Okay I'm a fair back scratchier', but only when I feel intimacy). And all of these talents are required in spades to get anywhere in Hollywood. I kept at the starving artist thing, believing that the moment I began working toward the goal of money, versus writing, it would be the end of my writing.
Unfortunately during my years in Los Angeles, tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people were looking for the same type of work I was. Temp, flexible hours, so I could go to meetings. When I went through a particularly long stretch of unemployment, combined with my roommate bailing on me, owing three months back rent, I ended up on the street. The tenants, I've had over the years of investing in real estate, can thank the leniency I showed them on that. Since I was foot loose and fancy free, I left town and went to commercial dive school in Seattle. Thank goodness they'll give a school loan anyone. Which led me to New Orleans and the oil fields of the Gulf of Mexico.
I was right about my writing, it did suffer. I struggled to keep it going but it was always a constant battle. I started investing in real estate, with my diving money, and when I broke my neck on a diving job, moved into investing and renovating properties full time. I did manage to fit in film school at the University of New Orleans. Film School, as it turned out, pushed me even further from my writing. While there, I agreed to write and direct a film. After I had gotten all of my friends to work on the film for free and put a year of my life into it, it died the death of a producer who's words were bigger than his wallet and there was no money to finish the film. So began my quest to put together a production company to finish the film. Then it was commercials and Rap videos for me and no time to work on the film and less time to work on my writing. Long story short, becoming a business man, made me too busy to do long form writing, and I have had to satisfy myself with my journal, and essay writing, for myself.
This left me with a large body of work sitting on the shelf, a lot of which has never even been read by anyone but me. I used to know how many thousands of pages I'd written between five novels, 10 screenplays, and my collections of short stories and poems, but I couldn't tell you anymore. While I'm good at picking properties that prosper, writing business plans, and such, I have never had the savvy, or the connections, to get one of my novels published. The standard look I see in peoples eyes when I tell them this, is that I must suck, to write so much and not get published.
In truth, it's not the writing I feel I suck at, I suck at getting published, which is much harder than the writing itself. Also, while in Hollywood, I was as full of myself, as is everybody else, and turned down some serious chances to be produced, because I didn't think the money was good enough. Please you could have turned me upside down, in one of the stylish suits I spent all my money on, and a nickel wouldn't have fallen out. Like most idiots in Hollywood, I only dreamed of the big break that would lift me out of poverty and put me in a Porsche. I didn't dream of a crack in the door that would allow me to work hard and polish my trade, while others made money off of my talent.
So now that I'm older I have come full circle and I feel about my writing the way I did when I started: I love to tell stories and I love for others to enjoy them. So I am dusting off the shelf, full of my unpublished work, and publishing it all, for free, (isn't that ironic) on this web site. I will let you be the judge. Did I not get published because I suck, or because I suck at getting published. I have started with some of my favorite short stories [they have not been re-edited because of time constraints, so please bare with any typos (ha did you see I spelled bear bare?)]. If I ever get a few hours to rub together I'm going to start a new novel Divers. Divers does take it's background from my time as a commercial diver, but it is not autobiographical. Once I get started I'll start publishing chapters on the web site. In the present enjoy what's here and if I get time I get some more of my shorts up.
Thank you for your interest. I hope you enjoy my stories. Please use the email link below to give me your opinion.
Sincerely,
Baron Alexander