Dear Literary Agent
,
I am a somewhat young writer, thirty years old. I have written and directed numerous
short films and written 3 feature length scripts since getting serious about my
craft four years ago.
They are: Blood in the Water,
a feature length thriller screenplay I wrote about two brothers that fall in
love with the same woman, their feud for her leads to deadly consequences. Roach Coach,
a comedy story about a food truck owner in Los Angeles who dreams of
owning a real restaurant, but is blackmailed from doing so by his female
coworker. My latest finished script is a thriller, BRING JOHNNY HOME(stylized in caps), about the head of a Mexican mafioso getting out of prison from a year
long sentence to find out his recent wife is pregnant and his youngest
brother, Johnny, is missing.
I would be happy to send any of these screenplays for you to look at, if you'd
like. I'm particularly proud of BRING JOHNNY HOME.
The reason I'm asking for a query is that I'm hard at work on my newest feature length screenplay, The Clocks That Can't Be Fixed, about a Mediterranean
child raised by adoptive Caucasian parents in a small Midwestern town
who decides to look for his biological parents who now reside in
California
and finds out he is not an only child. The theme for this story is that
there is never enough time to do what you want, so spend that time
wisely. The pages are in pretty
good shape, and I'd also be delighted to show you this one.
On my list of works to write is Creditline, set in the future when everyone has credit limits instead of
money, where one man's credit and identity disappears after he witnesses a
high-profile murder. The other script I'm working on is Celebrity, about a well known celebrity who is caught burglarizing a jewelry
shop by the owner and escapes by committing murder in the public eye, and while
on bail, freely roams the streets while tensions rise among his
neighbors, family, and friends around him as he pretends that nothing
has happened.
Please be in touch and tell me if you'd like to see some of my
material. In the meantime, I appreciate you taking the time to read my
letter.
Best Regards,
Danny Derakhshan
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Monday, March 23, 2009
Woman escapes from mental institution
Gerald sits down to a cup of hot chocolate. He turns on the TV and watches his favorite Simpsons cartoon. The cartoon goes to a commercial where on the TV a newsbroadcast has the anchorman reporting the quick news. "Mental Institute had three escaped women leave this morning. Now two of them have been caught. The third woman, now known as Miss Janine Sumperton is still at large."
Gerald spits out his hot chocolate at the news. That escaped woman is his ex wife and mother of his child who is at a birthday party that evening. He knew he didn't feel right coming home tonight as if someone was there all along. He quickly gets up and goes to the kitchen to grab a towel and the phone. He goes in the kitchen, grabs a white towel. He doesn't care that it'll be shit brown from the chocolate he needs to clean up. He goes back to the living room and grabs the phone on the way. He drops the towel to where the chocolate has been spit out and dabs it with his foot. As he does this, he dials the police department.
"Hello, I need personal affairs." "yeah, this is Jim, said a voice. "Jim, my wife is Janine Sumperton, well my ex wife, she escaped this morning. I need to get a patrol car here for tonight for me and my son Timothy." After much discussing with the detective, Gerald hangs up.
Footsteps are overheard from the backyard. Gerald slowly goes back and flips the lightswitch on. He peers out, but sees nothing. "I better turn on some lights until the police get here." He starts to turn on other lights just to be safe. He gets to the front and turns on the outdoor lights. A hand comes down and grabs him by the throat. It is Janine! He struggles and out the door he can hear police officers come up to the front door and ring the doorbell.
"Open the door, and talk to them, but do not let them in." says Janine.
Gerald spits out his hot chocolate at the news. That escaped woman is his ex wife and mother of his child who is at a birthday party that evening. He knew he didn't feel right coming home tonight as if someone was there all along. He quickly gets up and goes to the kitchen to grab a towel and the phone. He goes in the kitchen, grabs a white towel. He doesn't care that it'll be shit brown from the chocolate he needs to clean up. He goes back to the living room and grabs the phone on the way. He drops the towel to where the chocolate has been spit out and dabs it with his foot. As he does this, he dials the police department.
"Hello, I need personal affairs." "yeah, this is Jim, said a voice. "Jim, my wife is Janine Sumperton, well my ex wife, she escaped this morning. I need to get a patrol car here for tonight for me and my son Timothy." After much discussing with the detective, Gerald hangs up.
Footsteps are overheard from the backyard. Gerald slowly goes back and flips the lightswitch on. He peers out, but sees nothing. "I better turn on some lights until the police get here." He starts to turn on other lights just to be safe. He gets to the front and turns on the outdoor lights. A hand comes down and grabs him by the throat. It is Janine! He struggles and out the door he can hear police officers come up to the front door and ring the doorbell.
"Open the door, and talk to them, but do not let them in." says Janine.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Write down everything that we did as a group
At the age of 14 I had never seen a hardcore porno and admitted it to my friends who immediately took me to Justin's house, where The Fugitive was being held. The VHS tape box was for The Fugitive, but we had secretly named it The Fugitive with the Stolen Dildo because, well...it was a hardcore porno tape dubbed over The Fugitive. That tape went around and around our circle of friends and eventually was given outside the circle and never recovered.
Every Wednesday was recycling day, where the trucks would come get clean recyclables. I had a better plan. I would ditch school that day and go around from house to house with giant plastic garbage bags. I would go through the recyclables and take all the aluminum cans with me until I had a full bag or two. By 11 am, I had about 20 dollars worth of cans and took them to the little recycling centers that are in the parking lot of the grocery store. I did this like clockwork.
We would sometimes peep on other people in their homes. Once we saw this chick and dude come into the living room and they were very affectionate and sensual with each other. The chick was wearing a robe and the dude had his shirt off, we figured out what they were doing earlier.
We all saw a UFO the night nobody had any drugs or alcohol on us. One night we were all hanging out and there was nothing else to do so we went walking around the neighborhood finding places to hang out. We ended up near a creek just smoking cigarettes into the night. Later, Mitch noticed something in the sky hovering very slowly. Not so slowly that it would be anything we would know it would have been. We watched this thing hover around slowly in the sky for what felt like thirty minutes. We all agreed we were completely sober and that it must have been an alien ship. I still don't know what it was.
As we talked on the phone, it was important for us to talk in code in case our parents were listening in to our plans. So meet up spots had codenames like titty bridge because the bridge looked like it was a chick laying on her back with upright nipples poking out, vince's bridge was next to Vince's house but that wasn't a great codename, danny's crack was my hilarious attempt at wanting my own meetup place. It was just a spot that two houses almost met but the fences didn't meet so it was a crack or narrow getaway, the trees was meeting inside a tree. It was a huge tree that we had made into a reverse moat. We moved all the limbs around to the outer edge so we could hang out without people seeing us, though a smoking tree was probably noticeable.
When we didn't have a car, the only place to hang out was the back of buildings. There was a Blockbuster video that we'd hang out behind it smoking and drinking. One day me and Vince almost got into a fist fight when he kicked paint over me when we were drunk. After we had ingested the necessary alcohol. I went and sat by this door and lit up a cigarette. I guess Vince didn't know what the hell he was doing. He saw some paint cans about ten feet away from me and just kicked the shit out of one of them. The little paint can came flying at me and this greyish water splattered all over me. I was fucking pissed. I pushed him because I wasn't blind with rage but pissed enough to want him to apologize but he was drunk and didn't back down. There were metal rods that were about 6 feet long by the area and I grabbed one and chucked it at him. Luckily it missed but I saw how scared he got and threw 4 or 5 more near him. I think we took some barely visible punches and said "Fuck it, its not worth fighting, i'm piss drunk" and he gave me a cigarette and we were good again.
Me and Vince got drunk together one night and stayed up all night running around goofing off. The sun started showing up and we realized that we didn't have to be the kids that were sneaking out at night anymore so we got out our skateboards at 7am and rolled around trying to do stunts not quite drunk anymore but just awake. We barely had any energy to do weak tricks and even those weren't that great.
Vince, Me and David were hanging out together when Vince's mother paged him. So we went to his house where Vince was told that the family was going somewhere for an hour or two, which Vince still tried to fight to stay with us and hang out. So anyway, the 3 of us went outside and what me and Dave heard was Vince say "You guys can stay inside my house when you are gone. We'll be back in a few hours." What Vince had said was "You guys can stay ON THE SIDE of the house." Me and David knew where Vince's spare key was as did all our friends know each others secrets. So me and Dave go smoke a cigarette half a mile away and wait for them to leave.
So we get inside and the alarm goes off. "Why didn't Vince turn it off if he knew we were going to be in here watching TV?" I had said. David and me got a brilliant idea that Vince must've changed the code to something easy. I dialed in 1.2.3.4. The alarm went off! Cool!
Me and David turned on the TV and grabbed some Bugles from the pantry. A phone call came in and the caller ID said "Alarm Company". I picked it up and calmly gave the explanation. The guy on the phone said to let the police know when they came cause they had to. So that is how we almost got arrested for "breaking in" by using the keys to Vince's house so we could watch TV while Vince went somewhere for a few hours. The cops came and questioned us. Put us in cuffs and threw us in the backseat of the car...just as Vince and his family come back. The cops ask Vince's mother if she wants to press charges and she says "Hell no, get them out of those handcuffs." Vince seemed more upset that we had eaten his Bugles than being in his house.
We all knew what time that David's parents went to work. I think we hung out at David's because both his parents worked, this was the late 1990's and not everyone worked back then, lots of stay at home moms etc. Well we got used to going there that we planned our days around it. We might go to first class, then ditch the rest of the day over at his house. His parents were gone at 10:30am. So we'd wait near the house, say half a block away behind a trash can or behind some bushes until we spied his parents cars leave for work. Then we'd creep out and knock on Davids door to get in and start smoking weed.
Along with David's house came a rule for the closest of friends. It was called the "4:30 plan". David stated that everyone had to leave at 4:30 because his parents came home. So everybody said goodbye and left, except for the crew. We would walk about 2 to 3 blocks and then cut behind houses and appear at David's backdoor, this time it would just be the boys and we would hang out for another hour or so. That was the 4:30 plan.
There was a little trailer on a spot of land in the suburbs by David's home. The trailer looked uninhabited so we got into it and made it a home away from home. The trailer was the place to go before David's parents went to work. We would hang out and smoke or drink. Some dudes fucked girls in there, it got pretty crazy. It was dirty and nasty in there but it was a place to keep out of the snow until we could get into a house.
Once we got used to theft from businesses instead of buying them. I got out a school notebook and created 10 daring escape acts for theft. One from 7'11 to steal a lifetime supply of cigarettes, one from the liquor store for a lifetime supply of liquor, Stealing from Amini's Galleria for two $100 dollar pool sticks, and more I can't think of anymore. The plot was written down, mapped my escapes and what its value was in the pawn shops. Well for some asshole reason, Travis said it would be great to steal from the highest on the list first. Amini's Galleria. Then someone thought it would be great to get drunk first. Bad idea. Me and this kid Noah got drunk and got dropped off and went in and did a grab and run kind of scenario. Completely off from what I planned and we got caught a mile down the road after running from them. The Arab guys that owned the place beat the living shit out of me while waiting for the cops. One funny thing I said was "I swear to Allah, I'm sorry." I was really drunk and deserved all those punches in the face. The cops came and one of the cops that showed was my friend's mother. That was bad.
Me and Justin figured out how to steal alcohol from Homeland grocery. We did it quite successfully and got the house of 5 girls and 5 boys somewhat drunk. Now what happened is one of the hotter girls asks if I'll go steal more for me and her. I tell her no because i'm good and buzzed already. She starts to play with my dick in my pants and asks again. That was enough to get me going to the store. So me and Justin go back in happily walking through the grocery store with stupid smiles on our drunken faces putting cases upon cases of beer under the grocery cart space and walk it out. As we hit the parking lot, 2 guys come up behind us and Justin gets escorted away. I start running and this guy tackles me. He tries to handcuff me but I pull some crazy ass linebacker from the NFL twist and run off. I think I'm okay a half mile out, but he chases me down and catches me and brings me back where they called our parents. I remember being a complete dickhead to them. They took our photos which I smiled for the Polaroid camera. What an arrogant asshole I was. Anyway, we had to do 8 hours community service for the store, cleaning the store a week later.
Betrayal karma for me was when I stole from someone's sack of marijuana and hid it in my shoe. Later that night we went skateboarding in a no skateboarding zone apparently because the cops came and gave us tickets for it. Also they searched us and the cop asked me to take off my shoes, which brought the bud into view and I was arrested and taken to CIC, Children in Custody I think. While in there I figured I was in jail so I should start working out. I did pushups and sit ups until some guy yelled at me to stop.
I had to be taken to a "Scared Straight" program where I was dropped off at some government building and had Convicts having to tell us how bad it is in prison. I was ready to be bored off my ass for 8 hours. I walked in and saw my best friend David sitting in the back row. Me and him sat there joking around the whole time as I was pointing people out and stating what they were there for notably the fine little girls for prostitution.
Me and David getting in an argument about Beth. He told me that he liked her and I thought I'd do him a huge favor and go up and try to hook them up. She said she liked David as a friend(it turned out she wanted Travis because he had a car, women go figure) and I told him that. He was struck down pretty hard. He unfriended me for a long ass time too. I remember he threw a party and I wasn't invited. That sucked. He had a slingshot on the roof when I came to apologize and pelted the fuck out of me with rocks. I remember after a month or so, I saw him and he was completely happy to see me, I thought he was faking so he could punch me in the face but he hugged me and we were cool again.
Me and Justin got in a fight about something. But he took my PA and mic out and left it outside. Damn what did I do?
The only person that we didn't get in fights was Vince, we argued and shit but it wasn't like we stopped talking together. The coolest thing about us was that it was mostly just "forget it, lets talk about something else" kind of scenario. We always joked around about our races in our friends clique. David was Asian, Justin was white, Vince was Italian, Mitch was Irish, Travis was half Indian, and me Iranian. The group joked that we were the United Nations but cooler. I think me and Vince said that Persians and Italians would join forces and if the Italians didn't put you in cement shoes, the Persians would blow you up.
Mitch was mad the latest at the group. He fell asleep before everyone else one night a year ago. We posted the pics up on MySpace and he was pissed the fuck off. I didn't think it was too bad of a photo. It was him next to some flowers and he was sleepy, I think the guys were fucked up and it was pretty harmless but he took it really closely. Anyway, we are friends still. Its weird now because me and Mitch were not the closest in the group but I know that as we've grown, we are more like minded and I know we'd be hanging out everyday if I was in OKC today. We'd be off shooting guns, fishing on a boat we'd work on together.
Getting in a fight with Steve and Dwayne. I was in the car, Vince got punched by Steve. Weird, I think they just wanted to fight.
Dave was always starting fires. Haha. Just random matches being started and flung. Fucking hilarious.
Justin going overboard on stealing CD's and just stealing anything because he could and was good.
We all had pager codes. 33 for me, 6916 for Dave, 69 was meet up, 666 meant abort the mission(more on that) 20 20 was come see me. We had code names for meet up places.
The missions were to sneak out at night, and get into some trouble. We had a time where we stole all the bicycles left outside, once my entire garage in my house had 20 bikes in there. One night the bike I had stolen had broke its chain. I had to find a bike to bike home with and the only thing availabe around was a little girls pink bike. Fuck, I had to roll that home and ditched it around my house.
I think everyone tried to get with KC. Us being guys and she was blonde and had boobs. It was weird. I had no idea what the fuck I was doing on top of her. I'm an idiot. She had great breasts. Turned out she is a smart little firecracker.
Vince's first girlfriend was drunk and so was I, Vince was drunk too, he was in the backseat of the car with her in the middle and me and him on each side. I guess she was too fucked up and started groping me, fondling my junk and nudging me with her face on my neck. I knew Vince was my friend but I was drunk and I didn't say anything, plus I was pretty drunk 16 year old, she was 18 or 19. I told him later on in life and we had such a laugh about it.
Justin was the craziest next to Mitch. We experimented heavily with alcohol and wanted to see how good we could drive drunk. Justin would down a bottle of vodka and we would too. Put on our seatbelts and just go very very fast on the highway. Turn left, turn right, turn left etc, until we were lost in the boonies of Oklahoma and try to find our way back.
I got in a fight with those 6 black dudes over a pager which I was showing off. My brother loaned me his pager so I could look cool at school. Going home with my pals, a crew of black kids came out. Justin and Vince hid their pagers but I didn't understand why. The black guys fucked with me and then this one little guy came in and slapped me. I saw red. I threw my coat off and started after him and then five of his friends came in to the fight. I got a lot of punches at me and I gave a lot of punches. It was weird cause the next day at school all the black guys in the hallway gave me this "head nod" like they heard I was crazy son of a bitch or something. Also the black girls at the school kinda looked at me too. Fun times.
I had never been in a fight before and told my friends. They hooked me up. They found a kid that hadn't been in a fight either and he was this Asian kid. I forget his name but I met him a few years later and I think we were cool and realized it was stupid. The funny thing was he tried karate on me and I punched him in the top of his head. Not the best fight I'd ever been in.
Vince and me driving at night, a cop flicks his lights on, we think he's pulling us over and we have 30 valium on us. We decide to take half the bottle each, he goes first, swigging the bottle ingesting all of them. We spend half the night keeping him awake driving by the hospital in a large mile radius. Drinking a gallon of water, trying to make him throw up, etc.
Drove 2 cars full of people to Dallas for the Metallica concert, one of the cars stopped on the highway, so we packed 8 people in one little car. On the way back home, we met these ugly girls from Denton that drove a few of the guys home and wanted us to sleep with them. They were really ugly. I was wasted but even I could tell they were butt ugly.
Brian Grant- we sold him Hawaiian weed, which he happily bought. Nowadays, I think he did know it was fake but wanted friends so he pretended it got him high
High school I barely attended, showing up for lunch just to sell consumables. I was known as Dan the Acid Man in my sophomore year. I was always business back then. My friends and I would smoke pot all the time and even though I had taken LSD before I was not a big user. My selling point was that I was always on the acid and it was good. I even had buy one get one free on Halloween where I grossed 3k.
We met at the Clubhouse in Bluff Creek to plan out the days activities, smoke out.
Billy Ballews(?) We all decided to ditch class and go there to play video games. We all had about 2 bucks with us so we just walked around lazily playing a game or two. I happened to walk in a lonely corner and found a money bag full of tokens. I tried to contain myself and grabbed the 8 or so friends I had and passed out tokens to all them evenly. We played games for the next 4 hours where I learned to trick a ticket machine into giving me all the tickets it had. I took about 14,000 tickets to the counter once we were ready to leave and got the biggest electronic prize they had which was a Walkman. We walked across the street to the Venture and I returned it for 20 bucks which we bought some weed with. Possibly the greatest adventure day ever.
Me and Justin became friends because of a business deal. He had 2 copies of The Crow(which I still own today) and we negotiated I was to take him out for pizza after we smoked out,at the Fazoli's restaurant it was their grand opening. I went to the bathroom in Fazolis and unknown to me, Justin poured a shitload of red pepper on my pizza, I didn't notice as I came back and took huge bites. I ended up puking in the bathroom of the new restaurant. Best friends since that. The son of a bitch got me good.
When I was 14 my parents said they were wanting to leave for the weekend. I got the idea to throw a house party. Me and Zack created invite posters on his computer. I passed them out all over the school like I saw in some movie where the school is littered with invites. The principal calls me in to her office and she has one. The invite said BYOS (Bring your own stuff). She laughed and asked if she could come. I said anyone could come thats why there were flyers. Friday night came and about 50 people showed up, but my parents ended up not leaving for one reason or another. Cops showed up and everyone bailed, including me. I was seeing other people running and I started running. I got quite a bit of laughing at the next day at school. I never threw a party again.
Someone told me that Brandon had called my sister a slut. I went around saying I was going to kick his ass if I ever saw him again. Later that week, I was stoned and we drove to the 7'11. I'm in the passenger seat listening to music when Brandon shows up, sees me, comes right at me and tells me to get out of the car. I'm trying to be peaceful(I was messed up and not wanting to fight), and he sucker punched me in the face and he ran off. I was blazing mad at that point and we went searching for him. I saw him a few blocks down the road and ran at him- and got my ass kicked. He told me he was talking about KC, not my sister and we became cool again though my ego was bruised far more than my nose was.
We pulled a cigarette run at the local Stax. two groups of kids went in at different times and we got in place to steal as much as we could. Everyone got out but a good Samaritan grabbed David. We tried to get him out but couldn't. We tried everything, even breaking the back door in. Ross was kicking the door with all his might but it was the steel beam doors. David got picked up by the cops and we thought that was it for him. About an hour later, he showed up saying his parents dropped him off.
I was always around the convenience store stealing little things that I had no money for. Me and my friends could not go in if there was a certain person working who had caught us stealing.(I guess we weren't that good, or everyone eventually gets caught)I made friends with Josh, one of the guys that worked there. I did gas runs on him, then showed up later to hang out with him. He always pleaded with me not to steal from him but I had to. He only gave me a pack of cigarettes at a time. I did stock the cooler for him one day for a 6 pack of beer.
OGD: open garage door for other beer. We would go hunting at night for Open Garage Doors, or OGD as we would say over the phone. What this hunt consisted of was walking around looking for an OGD and running and grabbing all the beer in the fridge and consuming the alcoholic beverages. Once that mission was accomplished we would go on to more normal behavior like setting off fireworks and bothering people. On one occasion Dusty and Mitch broke into Brads parents garage and drank all his dads beer.
All we did was play pool instead of school. David had a pool table in his living room(awesome parents) and for some strange fate, his place became the go to place instead of rummaging the streets during school hours like Huck Finn. We would get stoned and play guitar and play loud music and shoot pool. David's parents owned a restaurant The Pagoda Garden and in his fridge was usually the most oriental foods that we always wanted to try. I think we had racoon balls once, or so David to us it was. I don't think I was ever grossed out so much after we had eaten some. Also there David came up with the staple of our teen lives: Bread, Sugar, and butter. I think we finished a loaf of bread a day.
Me and Vince were both bored of school by then. Class got out and we saw each other in the hallway. We both knew what each other wanted. To get high during school hours of course. We ran to his car, drove to his parents house, got some weed and rolled up a joint. We smogged out the car on the way back to school. Guess we weren't thinking too well back then. As we got back to the next hours class, he puts the roach in the ashtray. We get out of the car and smoke is coming out of the windows and what happens but Campus police came right then. Now this is what is interesting. We see this black cop always say "Just be honest and I'll let you go" and we lied and said we didn't have any. Regardless to say, we both got expelled from that particular high school, instead going to PC Academy which was in my opinion the greatest school ever. It was 4 hours long and I got credit for having a job.
David and the boys were hanging out and up walks Berkeley. For some reason the group didn't like him. David got up and said "hey watch this." and went up to Berkeley saying that Berkeley had talked shit about him. Berkeley denied it but David still clocked Berkeley in the face. Berkeley always feared David after that, even though they became "friends". Ahh, kids.
I got tired of asking for money in one dollar bills so came up with the scam of a lifetime. I pretended my car was broken down. I parked the car in a visible area and put the hood up. I stood around at the grocery store and asked for money, saying it was for gas and motor oil to get me to the next big city where I lived, I lived in Oklahoma City, but said I lived in Tulsa. Some nice folks gave me 5 dollars, but I was usually only asking for 3 dollars for a quart of oil. I came up with about $50 in an hour which I spent on stupid teenage things like cigarettes and gas and bottles of soda pop and probably weed.
In high school there were dozens of people asking for leftover change from getting a bag of chips. I observed a kid standing right by the machines and asked everyone for a good 5 minutes, until he had about 5 dollars from nickels, dimes and quarters.
I decided I'd go one notch higher. I took all lunches instead of going to class and came out with $25 dollars in one class day. I was asking for money, not really saying what it was for, bought myself some chips and had extra money. I don't remember what I bought with that money or how often I did it, but that was my business and finance class for me.
I quit doing drugs completely and drinking(so much) at 18. I moved to California a few years later, once I got my ideas down about what I wanted to do with the remainder of my life. Which is make films. Been here ever since doing things responsibly as a man should. "When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me." 1 Corinthians 13:11
Every Wednesday was recycling day, where the trucks would come get clean recyclables. I had a better plan. I would ditch school that day and go around from house to house with giant plastic garbage bags. I would go through the recyclables and take all the aluminum cans with me until I had a full bag or two. By 11 am, I had about 20 dollars worth of cans and took them to the little recycling centers that are in the parking lot of the grocery store. I did this like clockwork.
We would sometimes peep on other people in their homes. Once we saw this chick and dude come into the living room and they were very affectionate and sensual with each other. The chick was wearing a robe and the dude had his shirt off, we figured out what they were doing earlier.
We all saw a UFO the night nobody had any drugs or alcohol on us. One night we were all hanging out and there was nothing else to do so we went walking around the neighborhood finding places to hang out. We ended up near a creek just smoking cigarettes into the night. Later, Mitch noticed something in the sky hovering very slowly. Not so slowly that it would be anything we would know it would have been. We watched this thing hover around slowly in the sky for what felt like thirty minutes. We all agreed we were completely sober and that it must have been an alien ship. I still don't know what it was.
As we talked on the phone, it was important for us to talk in code in case our parents were listening in to our plans. So meet up spots had codenames like titty bridge because the bridge looked like it was a chick laying on her back with upright nipples poking out, vince's bridge was next to Vince's house but that wasn't a great codename, danny's crack was my hilarious attempt at wanting my own meetup place. It was just a spot that two houses almost met but the fences didn't meet so it was a crack or narrow getaway, the trees was meeting inside a tree. It was a huge tree that we had made into a reverse moat. We moved all the limbs around to the outer edge so we could hang out without people seeing us, though a smoking tree was probably noticeable.
When we didn't have a car, the only place to hang out was the back of buildings. There was a Blockbuster video that we'd hang out behind it smoking and drinking. One day me and Vince almost got into a fist fight when he kicked paint over me when we were drunk. After we had ingested the necessary alcohol. I went and sat by this door and lit up a cigarette. I guess Vince didn't know what the hell he was doing. He saw some paint cans about ten feet away from me and just kicked the shit out of one of them. The little paint can came flying at me and this greyish water splattered all over me. I was fucking pissed. I pushed him because I wasn't blind with rage but pissed enough to want him to apologize but he was drunk and didn't back down. There were metal rods that were about 6 feet long by the area and I grabbed one and chucked it at him. Luckily it missed but I saw how scared he got and threw 4 or 5 more near him. I think we took some barely visible punches and said "Fuck it, its not worth fighting, i'm piss drunk" and he gave me a cigarette and we were good again.
Me and Vince got drunk together one night and stayed up all night running around goofing off. The sun started showing up and we realized that we didn't have to be the kids that were sneaking out at night anymore so we got out our skateboards at 7am and rolled around trying to do stunts not quite drunk anymore but just awake. We barely had any energy to do weak tricks and even those weren't that great.
Vince, Me and David were hanging out together when Vince's mother paged him. So we went to his house where Vince was told that the family was going somewhere for an hour or two, which Vince still tried to fight to stay with us and hang out. So anyway, the 3 of us went outside and what me and Dave heard was Vince say "You guys can stay inside my house when you are gone. We'll be back in a few hours." What Vince had said was "You guys can stay ON THE SIDE of the house." Me and David knew where Vince's spare key was as did all our friends know each others secrets. So me and Dave go smoke a cigarette half a mile away and wait for them to leave.
So we get inside and the alarm goes off. "Why didn't Vince turn it off if he knew we were going to be in here watching TV?" I had said. David and me got a brilliant idea that Vince must've changed the code to something easy. I dialed in 1.2.3.4. The alarm went off! Cool!
Me and David turned on the TV and grabbed some Bugles from the pantry. A phone call came in and the caller ID said "Alarm Company". I picked it up and calmly gave the explanation. The guy on the phone said to let the police know when they came cause they had to. So that is how we almost got arrested for "breaking in" by using the keys to Vince's house so we could watch TV while Vince went somewhere for a few hours. The cops came and questioned us. Put us in cuffs and threw us in the backseat of the car...just as Vince and his family come back. The cops ask Vince's mother if she wants to press charges and she says "Hell no, get them out of those handcuffs." Vince seemed more upset that we had eaten his Bugles than being in his house.
We all knew what time that David's parents went to work. I think we hung out at David's because both his parents worked, this was the late 1990's and not everyone worked back then, lots of stay at home moms etc. Well we got used to going there that we planned our days around it. We might go to first class, then ditch the rest of the day over at his house. His parents were gone at 10:30am. So we'd wait near the house, say half a block away behind a trash can or behind some bushes until we spied his parents cars leave for work. Then we'd creep out and knock on Davids door to get in and start smoking weed.
Along with David's house came a rule for the closest of friends. It was called the "4:30 plan". David stated that everyone had to leave at 4:30 because his parents came home. So everybody said goodbye and left, except for the crew. We would walk about 2 to 3 blocks and then cut behind houses and appear at David's backdoor, this time it would just be the boys and we would hang out for another hour or so. That was the 4:30 plan.
There was a little trailer on a spot of land in the suburbs by David's home. The trailer looked uninhabited so we got into it and made it a home away from home. The trailer was the place to go before David's parents went to work. We would hang out and smoke or drink. Some dudes fucked girls in there, it got pretty crazy. It was dirty and nasty in there but it was a place to keep out of the snow until we could get into a house.
Once we got used to theft from businesses instead of buying them. I got out a school notebook and created 10 daring escape acts for theft. One from 7'11 to steal a lifetime supply of cigarettes, one from the liquor store for a lifetime supply of liquor, Stealing from Amini's Galleria for two $100 dollar pool sticks, and more I can't think of anymore. The plot was written down, mapped my escapes and what its value was in the pawn shops. Well for some asshole reason, Travis said it would be great to steal from the highest on the list first. Amini's Galleria. Then someone thought it would be great to get drunk first. Bad idea. Me and this kid Noah got drunk and got dropped off and went in and did a grab and run kind of scenario. Completely off from what I planned and we got caught a mile down the road after running from them. The Arab guys that owned the place beat the living shit out of me while waiting for the cops. One funny thing I said was "I swear to Allah, I'm sorry." I was really drunk and deserved all those punches in the face. The cops came and one of the cops that showed was my friend's mother. That was bad.
Me and Justin figured out how to steal alcohol from Homeland grocery. We did it quite successfully and got the house of 5 girls and 5 boys somewhat drunk. Now what happened is one of the hotter girls asks if I'll go steal more for me and her. I tell her no because i'm good and buzzed already. She starts to play with my dick in my pants and asks again. That was enough to get me going to the store. So me and Justin go back in happily walking through the grocery store with stupid smiles on our drunken faces putting cases upon cases of beer under the grocery cart space and walk it out. As we hit the parking lot, 2 guys come up behind us and Justin gets escorted away. I start running and this guy tackles me. He tries to handcuff me but I pull some crazy ass linebacker from the NFL twist and run off. I think I'm okay a half mile out, but he chases me down and catches me and brings me back where they called our parents. I remember being a complete dickhead to them. They took our photos which I smiled for the Polaroid camera. What an arrogant asshole I was. Anyway, we had to do 8 hours community service for the store, cleaning the store a week later.
Betrayal karma for me was when I stole from someone's sack of marijuana and hid it in my shoe. Later that night we went skateboarding in a no skateboarding zone apparently because the cops came and gave us tickets for it. Also they searched us and the cop asked me to take off my shoes, which brought the bud into view and I was arrested and taken to CIC, Children in Custody I think. While in there I figured I was in jail so I should start working out. I did pushups and sit ups until some guy yelled at me to stop.
I had to be taken to a "Scared Straight" program where I was dropped off at some government building and had Convicts having to tell us how bad it is in prison. I was ready to be bored off my ass for 8 hours. I walked in and saw my best friend David sitting in the back row. Me and him sat there joking around the whole time as I was pointing people out and stating what they were there for notably the fine little girls for prostitution.
Me and David getting in an argument about Beth. He told me that he liked her and I thought I'd do him a huge favor and go up and try to hook them up. She said she liked David as a friend(it turned out she wanted Travis because he had a car, women go figure) and I told him that. He was struck down pretty hard. He unfriended me for a long ass time too. I remember he threw a party and I wasn't invited. That sucked. He had a slingshot on the roof when I came to apologize and pelted the fuck out of me with rocks. I remember after a month or so, I saw him and he was completely happy to see me, I thought he was faking so he could punch me in the face but he hugged me and we were cool again.
Me and Justin got in a fight about something. But he took my PA and mic out and left it outside. Damn what did I do?
The only person that we didn't get in fights was Vince, we argued and shit but it wasn't like we stopped talking together. The coolest thing about us was that it was mostly just "forget it, lets talk about something else" kind of scenario. We always joked around about our races in our friends clique. David was Asian, Justin was white, Vince was Italian, Mitch was Irish, Travis was half Indian, and me Iranian. The group joked that we were the United Nations but cooler. I think me and Vince said that Persians and Italians would join forces and if the Italians didn't put you in cement shoes, the Persians would blow you up.
Mitch was mad the latest at the group. He fell asleep before everyone else one night a year ago. We posted the pics up on MySpace and he was pissed the fuck off. I didn't think it was too bad of a photo. It was him next to some flowers and he was sleepy, I think the guys were fucked up and it was pretty harmless but he took it really closely. Anyway, we are friends still. Its weird now because me and Mitch were not the closest in the group but I know that as we've grown, we are more like minded and I know we'd be hanging out everyday if I was in OKC today. We'd be off shooting guns, fishing on a boat we'd work on together.
Getting in a fight with Steve and Dwayne. I was in the car, Vince got punched by Steve. Weird, I think they just wanted to fight.
Dave was always starting fires. Haha. Just random matches being started and flung. Fucking hilarious.
Justin going overboard on stealing CD's and just stealing anything because he could and was good.
We all had pager codes. 33 for me, 6916 for Dave, 69 was meet up, 666 meant abort the mission(more on that) 20 20 was come see me. We had code names for meet up places.
The missions were to sneak out at night, and get into some trouble. We had a time where we stole all the bicycles left outside, once my entire garage in my house had 20 bikes in there. One night the bike I had stolen had broke its chain. I had to find a bike to bike home with and the only thing availabe around was a little girls pink bike. Fuck, I had to roll that home and ditched it around my house.
I think everyone tried to get with KC. Us being guys and she was blonde and had boobs. It was weird. I had no idea what the fuck I was doing on top of her. I'm an idiot. She had great breasts. Turned out she is a smart little firecracker.
Vince's first girlfriend was drunk and so was I, Vince was drunk too, he was in the backseat of the car with her in the middle and me and him on each side. I guess she was too fucked up and started groping me, fondling my junk and nudging me with her face on my neck. I knew Vince was my friend but I was drunk and I didn't say anything, plus I was pretty drunk 16 year old, she was 18 or 19. I told him later on in life and we had such a laugh about it.
Justin was the craziest next to Mitch. We experimented heavily with alcohol and wanted to see how good we could drive drunk. Justin would down a bottle of vodka and we would too. Put on our seatbelts and just go very very fast on the highway. Turn left, turn right, turn left etc, until we were lost in the boonies of Oklahoma and try to find our way back.
I got in a fight with those 6 black dudes over a pager which I was showing off. My brother loaned me his pager so I could look cool at school. Going home with my pals, a crew of black kids came out. Justin and Vince hid their pagers but I didn't understand why. The black guys fucked with me and then this one little guy came in and slapped me. I saw red. I threw my coat off and started after him and then five of his friends came in to the fight. I got a lot of punches at me and I gave a lot of punches. It was weird cause the next day at school all the black guys in the hallway gave me this "head nod" like they heard I was crazy son of a bitch or something. Also the black girls at the school kinda looked at me too. Fun times.
I had never been in a fight before and told my friends. They hooked me up. They found a kid that hadn't been in a fight either and he was this Asian kid. I forget his name but I met him a few years later and I think we were cool and realized it was stupid. The funny thing was he tried karate on me and I punched him in the top of his head. Not the best fight I'd ever been in.
Vince and me driving at night, a cop flicks his lights on, we think he's pulling us over and we have 30 valium on us. We decide to take half the bottle each, he goes first, swigging the bottle ingesting all of them. We spend half the night keeping him awake driving by the hospital in a large mile radius. Drinking a gallon of water, trying to make him throw up, etc.
Drove 2 cars full of people to Dallas for the Metallica concert, one of the cars stopped on the highway, so we packed 8 people in one little car. On the way back home, we met these ugly girls from Denton that drove a few of the guys home and wanted us to sleep with them. They were really ugly. I was wasted but even I could tell they were butt ugly.
Brian Grant- we sold him Hawaiian weed, which he happily bought. Nowadays, I think he did know it was fake but wanted friends so he pretended it got him high
High school I barely attended, showing up for lunch just to sell consumables. I was known as Dan the Acid Man in my sophomore year. I was always business back then. My friends and I would smoke pot all the time and even though I had taken LSD before I was not a big user. My selling point was that I was always on the acid and it was good. I even had buy one get one free on Halloween where I grossed 3k.
We met at the Clubhouse in Bluff Creek to plan out the days activities, smoke out.
Billy Ballews(?) We all decided to ditch class and go there to play video games. We all had about 2 bucks with us so we just walked around lazily playing a game or two. I happened to walk in a lonely corner and found a money bag full of tokens. I tried to contain myself and grabbed the 8 or so friends I had and passed out tokens to all them evenly. We played games for the next 4 hours where I learned to trick a ticket machine into giving me all the tickets it had. I took about 14,000 tickets to the counter once we were ready to leave and got the biggest electronic prize they had which was a Walkman. We walked across the street to the Venture and I returned it for 20 bucks which we bought some weed with. Possibly the greatest adventure day ever.
Me and Justin became friends because of a business deal. He had 2 copies of The Crow(which I still own today) and we negotiated I was to take him out for pizza after we smoked out,at the Fazoli's restaurant it was their grand opening. I went to the bathroom in Fazolis and unknown to me, Justin poured a shitload of red pepper on my pizza, I didn't notice as I came back and took huge bites. I ended up puking in the bathroom of the new restaurant. Best friends since that. The son of a bitch got me good.
When I was 14 my parents said they were wanting to leave for the weekend. I got the idea to throw a house party. Me and Zack created invite posters on his computer. I passed them out all over the school like I saw in some movie where the school is littered with invites. The principal calls me in to her office and she has one. The invite said BYOS (Bring your own stuff). She laughed and asked if she could come. I said anyone could come thats why there were flyers. Friday night came and about 50 people showed up, but my parents ended up not leaving for one reason or another. Cops showed up and everyone bailed, including me. I was seeing other people running and I started running. I got quite a bit of laughing at the next day at school. I never threw a party again.
Someone told me that Brandon had called my sister a slut. I went around saying I was going to kick his ass if I ever saw him again. Later that week, I was stoned and we drove to the 7'11. I'm in the passenger seat listening to music when Brandon shows up, sees me, comes right at me and tells me to get out of the car. I'm trying to be peaceful(I was messed up and not wanting to fight), and he sucker punched me in the face and he ran off. I was blazing mad at that point and we went searching for him. I saw him a few blocks down the road and ran at him- and got my ass kicked. He told me he was talking about KC, not my sister and we became cool again though my ego was bruised far more than my nose was.
We pulled a cigarette run at the local Stax. two groups of kids went in at different times and we got in place to steal as much as we could. Everyone got out but a good Samaritan grabbed David. We tried to get him out but couldn't. We tried everything, even breaking the back door in. Ross was kicking the door with all his might but it was the steel beam doors. David got picked up by the cops and we thought that was it for him. About an hour later, he showed up saying his parents dropped him off.
I was always around the convenience store stealing little things that I had no money for. Me and my friends could not go in if there was a certain person working who had caught us stealing.(I guess we weren't that good, or everyone eventually gets caught)I made friends with Josh, one of the guys that worked there. I did gas runs on him, then showed up later to hang out with him. He always pleaded with me not to steal from him but I had to. He only gave me a pack of cigarettes at a time. I did stock the cooler for him one day for a 6 pack of beer.
OGD: open garage door for other beer. We would go hunting at night for Open Garage Doors, or OGD as we would say over the phone. What this hunt consisted of was walking around looking for an OGD and running and grabbing all the beer in the fridge and consuming the alcoholic beverages. Once that mission was accomplished we would go on to more normal behavior like setting off fireworks and bothering people. On one occasion Dusty and Mitch broke into Brads parents garage and drank all his dads beer.
All we did was play pool instead of school. David had a pool table in his living room(awesome parents) and for some strange fate, his place became the go to place instead of rummaging the streets during school hours like Huck Finn. We would get stoned and play guitar and play loud music and shoot pool. David's parents owned a restaurant The Pagoda Garden and in his fridge was usually the most oriental foods that we always wanted to try. I think we had racoon balls once, or so David to us it was. I don't think I was ever grossed out so much after we had eaten some. Also there David came up with the staple of our teen lives: Bread, Sugar, and butter. I think we finished a loaf of bread a day.
Me and Vince were both bored of school by then. Class got out and we saw each other in the hallway. We both knew what each other wanted. To get high during school hours of course. We ran to his car, drove to his parents house, got some weed and rolled up a joint. We smogged out the car on the way back to school. Guess we weren't thinking too well back then. As we got back to the next hours class, he puts the roach in the ashtray. We get out of the car and smoke is coming out of the windows and what happens but Campus police came right then. Now this is what is interesting. We see this black cop always say "Just be honest and I'll let you go" and we lied and said we didn't have any. Regardless to say, we both got expelled from that particular high school, instead going to PC Academy which was in my opinion the greatest school ever. It was 4 hours long and I got credit for having a job.
David and the boys were hanging out and up walks Berkeley. For some reason the group didn't like him. David got up and said "hey watch this." and went up to Berkeley saying that Berkeley had talked shit about him. Berkeley denied it but David still clocked Berkeley in the face. Berkeley always feared David after that, even though they became "friends". Ahh, kids.
I got tired of asking for money in one dollar bills so came up with the scam of a lifetime. I pretended my car was broken down. I parked the car in a visible area and put the hood up. I stood around at the grocery store and asked for money, saying it was for gas and motor oil to get me to the next big city where I lived, I lived in Oklahoma City, but said I lived in Tulsa. Some nice folks gave me 5 dollars, but I was usually only asking for 3 dollars for a quart of oil. I came up with about $50 in an hour which I spent on stupid teenage things like cigarettes and gas and bottles of soda pop and probably weed.
In high school there were dozens of people asking for leftover change from getting a bag of chips. I observed a kid standing right by the machines and asked everyone for a good 5 minutes, until he had about 5 dollars from nickels, dimes and quarters.
I decided I'd go one notch higher. I took all lunches instead of going to class and came out with $25 dollars in one class day. I was asking for money, not really saying what it was for, bought myself some chips and had extra money. I don't remember what I bought with that money or how often I did it, but that was my business and finance class for me.
I quit doing drugs completely and drinking(so much) at 18. I moved to California a few years later, once I got my ideas down about what I wanted to do with the remainder of my life. Which is make films. Been here ever since doing things responsibly as a man should. "When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me." 1 Corinthians 13:11
Friday, March 20, 2009
Poor Old Rick
There was an old man named Rick who was too stupid and old to do anything new with his life. He was stuck in a dead end job that went nowhere too. He had served in the army when he was younger, but was kicked out for being too lazy there too. He let a whole platoon get killed because he was too busy trying to impress a woman that was out of his class. He tried harder to be liked than to be respected and that was his downfall.
This story isn't about that though. Its about his downfall creating a new view on life for him. You see, he wanted to die. He had nothing to provide his family for. He barely paid any attention to them anyway. His wife cared about him enough, and she knew that he could not be made to be what he could not become. So he just went to work. Now what happened was that the people that worked there saw how lazy and oafish he was, that they snickered as he walked by thinking he was cared for there. The true fact is that the other employees wanted the boss to fire him. But the boss never fired him, for reasons unknown.
The story starts with Rick coming into work late as usual, thinking that nobody noticed, but everybody did and looked down on him for it. Here's what really annoyed the workers. What Rick would do in 7 hours time, anybody else there could do in 2 hours time. Now this really makes the workers look bad, because if they would hire and keep someone who is so worthless, what makes them think that there could ever be a pay raise or that the company would last so long.
Rick would come in and sit down, drink his coffee and look busy for an hour, thinking he did a good job. After a while, he would push a few pieces of paper around his area to make it look like he had done something. So he worked harder at looking like he worked hard than actually working hard.
Once he had drank his coffee, he grabbed his keys and started his driving route. But here is a tough part for him. To drive a 2 hour route, he takes 3 hours so he can not be in the office and get paid for it. While everyone else is rushing to get work done, this jackass lazily takes his time. Its obvious he doesn't belong at the job where hard working people are.
Once he gets back to the office, Rick goes to the bathroom as soon as he drops off what he picked up. This is like clockwork for him. He goes there and spends 30 minutes walking around talking on his phone to unimportant people.
Well its almost closing time for the office, so Rick grabs a coffee pot and goes to wash it, taking another 30 minutes. He's done for the day. He sits at his area, staring blankly at a non existent life filled with no hopes and no dreams which he might have had before they crushed his soul. The only thing he can really look forward to is death since that is the only way his pain can go away.
This story isn't about that though. Its about his downfall creating a new view on life for him. You see, he wanted to die. He had nothing to provide his family for. He barely paid any attention to them anyway. His wife cared about him enough, and she knew that he could not be made to be what he could not become. So he just went to work. Now what happened was that the people that worked there saw how lazy and oafish he was, that they snickered as he walked by thinking he was cared for there. The true fact is that the other employees wanted the boss to fire him. But the boss never fired him, for reasons unknown.
The story starts with Rick coming into work late as usual, thinking that nobody noticed, but everybody did and looked down on him for it. Here's what really annoyed the workers. What Rick would do in 7 hours time, anybody else there could do in 2 hours time. Now this really makes the workers look bad, because if they would hire and keep someone who is so worthless, what makes them think that there could ever be a pay raise or that the company would last so long.
Rick would come in and sit down, drink his coffee and look busy for an hour, thinking he did a good job. After a while, he would push a few pieces of paper around his area to make it look like he had done something. So he worked harder at looking like he worked hard than actually working hard.
Once he had drank his coffee, he grabbed his keys and started his driving route. But here is a tough part for him. To drive a 2 hour route, he takes 3 hours so he can not be in the office and get paid for it. While everyone else is rushing to get work done, this jackass lazily takes his time. Its obvious he doesn't belong at the job where hard working people are.
Once he gets back to the office, Rick goes to the bathroom as soon as he drops off what he picked up. This is like clockwork for him. He goes there and spends 30 minutes walking around talking on his phone to unimportant people.
Well its almost closing time for the office, so Rick grabs a coffee pot and goes to wash it, taking another 30 minutes. He's done for the day. He sits at his area, staring blankly at a non existent life filled with no hopes and no dreams which he might have had before they crushed his soul. The only thing he can really look forward to is death since that is the only way his pain can go away.
Death by Motorcycle
A an older balding gentleman drives his Ford Festiva, and nice happy music plays, until a biker gets behind him, dark music hits, and he is sweaty and scared. The biker becomes a Mad Max type in his brain, he freaks out. Hilarity ensues.
The ending is that the biker behind him turns and is gone, but then he rides up to a biker in front of him at a red light. Then another biker gets behind him, and to the side of him. Maybe even a biker gang. Short film
The ending is that the biker behind him turns and is gone, but then he rides up to a biker in front of him at a red light. Then another biker gets behind him, and to the side of him. Maybe even a biker gang. Short film
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