Backstory: The Born Entertainer

If my published quest to make a movie began on January 1, 2011, it should be noted that my unpublished quest began 36 years prior to that. I deliberately chose a Sunday afternoon to be born, so that my mother’s absence from the church service that morning would generate attention. Plus I was born in the Whittier hospital, which explains my fantastic sense of humor.

As far back as I can remember, I was interested in theatrical atmosphere of some kind or another. The relevant memory I have of life in Los Angeles was the record (those old vinyl things) the girl across the street had. It was a “spooky” record designed to make little kids scream more with giggles than actual fright, but it had some great music, and a narrator with a good voice for Halloween material. And I loved listening to it, because it was so successfully atmospheric. Not that I was consciously evaluating it for its cinematic quality at that age, but I know in retrospect that its tone contributed to my creativity in those and later years.

We lived for about six years in the La Mirada neighborhood of Los Angeles, and while I don’t remember much of it, my mother will testify that I was putting on “shows” for my stuffed animals in those early years. I’m sure much of my life was a “show” back then: I had already demonstrated a tendency toward being a tour guide, for example, from confines as small as the driveway to much longer family road trips. My guess is I picked that up from the Disneyland railway recording or some similar venue.

So my interest in the general world of showmanship was a part of my nature from the very beginning, and has only grown since then. It may or may not be too bad that we moved from the Los Angeles area before I ever had a chance to show Hollywood what they were missing.