After dad announced in no uncertain terms he couldn't cough up the large for NYU fall semester in 1974, I met with undergrad film chair Haig Manoogian and delivered the bad news like an Al Qaeda chieftain after 48 hours of Mossad interrogation.
Haig was visibly rattled as he shook his head, waving his cigarette about, "This is not good, Bruce. Not good at all."
He asked about financial aid and, like the naive dope I am, I told him my dad owned a company and our family probably didn't qualify. My foot still throbs from where the bullet hit -- fired straight from my lips.
Haig took another drag and looked me right in the corneas, "That's too bad, Bruce. We're gonna miss you this semester. What are your plans?"
"Get a job, I guess."
"Well, let me know if I can do anything for you. Don't be a stranger, okay?"
I thanked him for his support and told him I'd be, "Back in the spring, makin' pictures like Capra (his favorite)."
Haig smiled ear to ear like the Armenian elf he was, shook my hand as vigorously as a Saint Bernard wags its tail anticipating a blood-dripping slab of porterhouse, and I was the out the door.
Never to return.
Well, not exactly. But I'd never take another class at NYU. I'll get around to why later. I promise.
Thus began a period of hustling for money and foregoing my screenwriter fantasies for as long as I could stand it.
I hastily took a part-time dead end job at E.J. Korvettes in Paramus, NJ selling cameras, a position boldly advertised in jobs section of the Bergen Record. My boss, a disenfranchised and sardonic 30-something wiseacre whose name I will never recall, pushed me like a slaveship rowmaster to hawk an inferior 35mm snapshot camera hastily slapped together by some Japanese no-name sweatshop Nikon wannabee (the equivalent manufacturer today is some money worshipping Chinese back alley basement fly-by-night with a name like Gold Sky Camera) so I could make an aneurism inducing extra $0.65 per sale.
"That's your commish, above and beyond your hourly swag. The sh-t adds up, lemme tell ya," my boss implored, gold upper incisor momentarily blinding me in the bright overhead fluorescent glare.
I watched with utter nausea as he seduced sucker after sucker who wandered up to the counter to buy this piece of crap that, "It's like our special this week, I ain't lyin'. Better than a Kodak Instamatic. I swear on me mutter. Look at this craftsmanship. Can't beat that with a pogo stick." I did everything humanly possible not to hurl on the spot.
I collected my first paycheck, around $38 after taxes for the fifteen hours I groveled, and was gone like the Great Plains Buffalo, calling in sick for the rest of eternity. I should have learned my lesson. Sales was not my cup o' Joe.
My next humiliating gig was as a waiter at a pseudo Japanese hibachi restaurant, Ichiban, that I referred to as "itchy bum" to my friends. It was run by a whiter than Wonder Bread middle aged restauranteur named Ted, tall (compared to the midget help), with droopy war-worn eyelids, a long wrinkled sullen face that rarely cracked a smile, always sporting an open collar button down dry-cleaned cotton shirt, to whom owning a Japanese eatery was little distinguished from a Popeye's franchise. He was into making money and not overly obsessed with haute cuisine.
Ted played the role of bartender to keep an eagle eye on the hired asians who performed all his drudgery: Japanese sushi chefs who were little more than Key West buskers who juggled knives instead of multicolored rubber balls, sexy Korean, Japanese, and Chinese waitresses who knew how to smile coyly to run up big alcohol tabs (the more drunk you were, the less you cared about the lousy undercooked dog scraps masquerading for cuisine), and an occasional male waiter (moi) when he couldn't find any women to work the tables like geishas in a Kyoto tea house. The only other white person was some local high school senior who bussed tables at the snap of a snap-on nailed finger and who disappeared like a comet in a Nevada night sky, silently and in a wink, at closing bell.
Ted was of the opinion that, "Orientals all look the same. Black hair and slant eyes with funny accents. What's the big deal? Who gives a goddamn?"
Apparently no one because no asians ever ate here. At least during my "I spent a lifetime there one month" tenure. That should have been indicative enough of how excellent the Japanese food was, but I was clueless and, like I keep admitting, a dope.
Only loud, beer and mixed drink swilling middle class caucasians indistinguishable to me from Ted and his ilk ate at Ichiban. People who couldn't even pronounce the name. The oily businessman clientele got wasted every afternoon and pinched oriental asian butt while the women would blush, cover their mouths, and giggle. I did everything humanly possible not to hurl on the spot.
I did my time, got paroled, and walked a free young fool, still not quite disappointed in humanity, with a pep in my snappy step, whistling a Zep tune, playing air guitar, insouciant and non-plussed as can possibly be. Yet I was 18 years old, broke, desperate as a woodchuck in the Siberian tundra, living with ma and pa, possessing no job skills or prospects, existing on fumes and the kindness of high school cohorts and neighborhood rabble. I was as pathetic and downtrodden as an Indian leper.
The next turn of events was unthinkable and from out of the azure.
My father asked me to work for him. I started the next day as vice president of Toshihiko Sakow Associates, Inc.
That same day I started working feverishly on my first feature length screenplay, a sci-fi epic loosely based on Frank Herbert's inspiring masterwork, Dune, titled "STARCHILD". This was ambitious and outright audacious and would teach me some serious lessons right out of the box.
Thank the heavens for nepotism. How else would the kids of the captains of industry and sordid trust fund brats without an ivy sheepskin possibly eke out a spoiled, privileged existence (like I was one of them -- NOT)? I was about to find out in a full-on, totally gnarly way.
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