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Archive - April, 2010

The Story of Claude – Part 10

April 30, 2010 0 Comments

In between the laughter, the dancing and the parties I really got to know Claude, he’s not a perfect man but he doesn’t pretend to be one either. He loves his family and he loves his friends. Many people I met remarked that if I was ever in trouble Claude was the man that I should call; and in their eyes I could tell that many of them had already made that phone call.

One of the great things about Claude is that he himself has walked a path similar to mine. He told me stories of years before, of borrowing bow ties and going on trips to sell insurance, sleeping in his car and having to “seal the deal” before he could pay for the gas to drive all the way back. Much dignity comes from the struggling and suffering foes we encounter on the path to success.

There’s a strange thing I’ve noticed in this journey of mine… people who have truly suffered rarely blame God and they are nearly always filled with joy.

The Story of Claude – Part 9

April 29, 2010 0 Comments

Charlotte was a beautiful, life changing experience, my first time in America’s South. Claude met me at the airport with his childhood friend, an African-American Dandy (fashionista) called “Gresham.” The car ride to hotel was one of the funniest experiences of my life, these guys were outrageously funny, nothing was off limits, not even Claude’s down syndrome son Dominique.

For the next seven days I was immersed in the African-American culture and I loved it. I rarely talked to another white person. I was one of three white guys (dancing embarrassingly badly) at Claude’s birthday party. I went to a gentlemen’s business meeting at a “Barbers Shop,” I even let the Dandy dress me like a real Southern Gent.

It was a truly amazing time, hanging out with some of the most beautiful people on earth, race and individual heritage weren’t an issue to separate but to celebrate.

The Story of Claude – Part 8

April 28, 2010 0 Comments

Eventually the talk moved on to what I am doing with film and how the internet has changed the landscape forever. Claude really seemed to understand what I was getting at, he added to the vision, he understood me.

If you want to innovate you must begin your task with the simple notion that the way things have been done in the past is not the way they will be done in the future. With the internet the past is two years ago, with film the past is the last eighty years. Big systems like big ships out on the ocean take a long time to turn, they take a long time change. For this reason alone innovation nearly always comes from the renegade fighters, those who subvert the system from the outside.

Claude was going to leave for the airport at 7:30pm that night, but when he didn’t leave to well after 8pm I knew I’d found a good friend, a man who had different but complimentary skills to mine, a man I could trust, a disruptive partner in crime. A few days later the phone rang and the next thing I knew I was being flown to Charlotte on the East Coast of America.

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The Story of Claude – Part 7

April 27, 2010 0 Comments

And so we talked and ate dinner together… Rather Claude ordered ribs and myself (still on a spiritual fast) salivated as he ate those ribs.

You can’t predict the future, you make your plans and you think you know the outcome but life is to beautiful to be contained and controlled in the small corridors of the human mind.

Three weeks ago I couldn’t possibly have known that the man sitting opposite me, tearing the flesh from those barbecued ribs was going to play such a big part in my life. I had no idea that this man called Claude had the ability to give birth to my dream.

He was African-American from the South, I was a white New Zealander from the bottom of the world. We were like Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn getting ready to embark on a great adventure together.

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The Story of Claude – Part 6

April 26, 2010 1 Comment

The saga continues…

Claude rung me the next day and asked me what I thought of the other men at the table? They were hitting him up for cash and making all sorts of promises about getting Will Smith for their movie etc. They were treating Claude like he was slow cause he came from the south and wasn’t in the film business. I think they thought he would be an easy touch when it came to money.

The film deal they were trying to arrange was very similar to the deal I had when I first came to Los Angeles; heavy on promises and light on facts. I was able to talk Claude through the business and it proved to me that even our worst experiences are used for our good further down the track.

Claude wanted to catch up for dinner and when I walked into that restaurant in Westwood, I made sure that I left all my business documents in the car… Life after-all is all about relationships!

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The Story of Claude – Part 5

April 25, 2010 0 Comments

Claude was real friendly and real southern and just like fried chicken I liked him from the get go. He had an absence of bullshit and a genuine quality about him. I discussed briefly with him, my plans for film-making and the internet and we exchanged business cards.

I dropped Claude an email that night briefly telling him how nice was to hear someone in Hollywood talking about the “inherent value” in relationships and I apologized for eavesdropping on his conversation… excusing myself on the groungs of being creative. As an aside listening to other peoples conversations, and people watching (staring) are an essential ingredient if any artist really wants to get to know his audience.

When I pressed SEND on my email, I did it with very low expectations, the way a man might put a message in a bottle. I was so used to meeting people and not hearing from them again that I wasn’t certain that I would ever meet Claude again. Little did I know that we would be eating dinner 24 hours later…

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The Story of Claude – Part 4

April 24, 2010 2 Comments

I’m so sorry that I have missed two days of blogging, my life has turned upside down, excitedly hectic and full of immense possibilities; all because of the man I met in the coffee shop, this man called Claude. Back to the story that began 3 weeks ago…

So I’m sitting there at the coffee shop in Beverly Hills, hungry from my fast, listening to these three con artists trying to scam Claude. I’m reading my scripts in the background in an overt fashion, hoping that Claude will notice that I’m “in the industry.” I begin to feel foolish, I begin to feel nervous, doubt overwhelms me; I pray this prayer…

“God if you’ve set his up, if you want me to meet this man, then get him to talk to me because I don’t have the faith to walk across the room and speak to this stranger.”

The point of todays blog is this… You can have huge faith in a very weak thing (yourself) or you can have miniscule, fickle, frail, mustard seed type faith in an incredible good, massive thing (God).

Claude got up from the table and grabbed himself a coffee and headed back towards the table… He stopped short of his chair, he looked right at me and said “how are you doing today?”