Running Shoes  − 1 December, 2003

I was home for Easter and everyone was particularly excited to see me. Nothing was really happening in the family. Mom & dad's health was OK, no newborns and the kids were in between ages. I suppose I was the main attraction. We did what we did. We shopped. I was coming from a very financially depressing time in Los Angeles and I refused to pay retail for anything. I knew I could screw the price down on anything I really wanted and forgot the rest. I was hardened. My aunt Donna Kay commented that I seemed older than I was. It was true. The bitching and moaning I did about my bosses at MGM and people in general in LA spoiled my youthfulness.

Regardless of all that I was an impulse shopper, but my impulses were refined. I never bought shit. I bought like a professional gambler having a feeling about a slot machine or a roulette number. I felt a pair of adidas running shoes. I carried them around the store looking for something to outweigh them. At the end they had gone cold and I was setting them down to leave. My aunt Donna Kay offered to buy them for me. I was teeter tottering between guilt and acceptance and Donna Kay made it easy for me to cave in and I let her buy them for me. I'm sure she spent lots of money on me growing up, but never this directly. I was tense about it, but ultimately happy to have the shoes.

I put them in the closet and never touched them. My tax guy redid my taxes for the last four years and re-filed them earning me $4000 by the middle of June. I was set for the summer. My rent was paid. I started marketing myself as a cinematographer. For weeks I sent reels out and emailed links to quicktime clips. I was at a friends house in Echo Park when I got the phone call from a manager that said I was going to be one of the most important figures in film in the next ten years. He would like me to meet with his director. By the beginning of August I was scheduled to fly to NYC and shoot a horror film with these guys. I waited. And waited for further information about the shoot, but in the end they couldn't afford to fly me out. I was notified the day I was supposed to leave.

But the phone rang again. I was to meet a director at The Grove the following afternoon. The dumb-ass I am I waited an extra 45 minutes for the guy and he finally showed up. I was pissed. I used to work for The Ohio State University and MGM Studios. I was a professional. I was on time. I barely gave him the courtesy of a smile, but bothered to tell him that Rembrant's 'The Prodigal Son' painting moves me to tears and his film would be my Rembrant. I was so ashamed of myself until he showed up the following night with a contract offering me $4000 a week to shoot his film. I was then all in.

I met everyone else in his production company- a lot of good writers and some industry names. I felt secure to start my own prep for the film. I watched 6 movies a day with a notebook and the script of his movie. I loved it. I was finally making the smart, informed and intuitive decisions Polanski, Scorsese or Tarantino would.

We met with actresses. We went through every starlette in Hollywood. At first it was Natalie Portman, then Kirsten Dunst, then Christina Ricci, then Anna Paquin, then Amber Benson. Amber Benson is the only girl I met with. She sang a beautiful acapella for us and Jerry's Deli. I was won over. She could carry the part easily. We set a shoot date for October 15th.

I wallowed through the next few weeks, then I got the call. E! Entertainment Television was going to be 'on set' with us shooting the 'behind the scenes.' Damn it. I was fat. I gained 40lbs. after I quit smoking and weighed 200lbs. Christ! For the past year or more I've had the biggest crush on Giuliana DiPandi. Now she was going to be 'on set' with us.

I grabbed the running shoes my aunt Donna Kay bought me and ran out the door. I live 1/4 mile away from Moonshadows, the restaurant, and made it 1/2 way there before I had to catch my breath. The next day I made it all the way to Moonshadows. Soon I was running the track at Pepperdine University in Malibu. I outgrew the track and started running San Vicente in Santa Monica and The Stairs, 200 brutal concrete steps between Santa Monica and The Palisades.

I lost 10 pounds instantly and was averaging a loss of 3-5 pounds a week. By the time we were ready to shoot I was feeling good about myself. I still had a ways to go, but at least I felt energetic and sexy.

The shoot was pushed back. There was a logical reason for it. One on the actors had a scheduling conflict. We pushed it two weeks. I kept running everyday. Usually I'd start at Pepperdine, watching the fog burn off the coast, then I would hike the hills. I loved noticing my heart beat pound. I finally felt alive again, like a teenager, even though I was 29.

The shoot was pushed another two weeks. I inquired about my pay. I got the run around from the production team so I called the director/producer. He had to drop the call on the other line, warning him I was after my pay check, to take my call. I know this because he was nonchalant about it and told me. He said he was meeting with the money people that night and he assured me in the morning that they were putting $300,000 in escrow at the end of the week for us.

I was appeased. I kept running. I was getting in good shape. I couldn't wait to be 'on set.' But I was worried that the guys I hired felt strung along. I had 2 camera assistants on my team and 3 second unit people waiting to get paid also. I crossed my fingers and said I'd pay them Friday.

I ran in the morning then wasted the rest of the day waiting. On Thursday they pushed the shoot back another week, this time they admitted to needing more time to secure finances. When I found out I was at home working on the 'shot list' with some friends from college, hanging out on vacation. I lost it. I went from typing to pounding my fists on the keyboard, threw my headphones off my ears, and ran down to the landing by the ocean to destroy some plastic chairs. I was only on my second chair when I dislocated my shoulder. Shane the surfer in the near by apartment came out to see what all the ruckus was about. He recoiled when he saw my shoulder hanging low.

My firends and I spent the rest of the day touring Hollywood. I downed beers as medicine and ran out of money at dinner.

The next week I ran everyday at Pepperdine like it was my last, worried as shit that they'd be able to pay me this Friday. I was a month behind on rent. My roommates were breathing down my neck about it. I cried one day on my way to the track thinking I might have to leave Malibu and drive back to Canton, Ohio. I looked at my Mercedes and felt like it was only a matter of days until they took her away from me.

This next weekend was the big announcement. We had one of the biggest publicist telling all of Hollywood that the writer/director/producer was also going to be one of the leads along side Amber Benson & Thomas Ian Nicholas.

Thomas Ian Nocholas, best know as Tera Reid's boyfriend in American Pie, went straight to his agent Monday morning and pulled out along with the rest of the cast and financiers. Before the market closed in New York, we were dead in Hollywood.

I had nothing. Not money, nothing to sell... nothing, just my running shoes.

I knew that whatever happened from here on out, as long as I had a pair of shoes and limber legs nothing else mattered. My triumph was in my heart beating, between my legs and the street. Hollywood would have been fun, but my life was in the momentum of myself.

I kept running, hit financial 'rock bottom,' lost some friends and found a shitty job. Six months later I turned 30 a complete failure, at everything except running.

One month later I started dating my wife, another runner. Like running she made me forget about everything I never did.

We fight and love and fail, but most importantly we propel ourselves.