Читать книгу DYING TO MAKE A FILM - Sir Ray Mann - Страница 4

After three months in Georgia we arrived in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. My father’s youngest sister Shirley had a house there, so we moved in with her and her five kids until my mother could find a place for us. Some months later my father and my other brothers and sister came down, and to our surprise our parents got back together. Soon, we moved into a little house in a not-so-nice neighborhood.

I hated where we lived; no neighborhood was going to be better than my neighborhood back in Trenton. There were a few bright spots about our life, and one came in the form of a nice older lady who lived right up the street named Mrs. Clayton. When Mrs. Clayton knew I didn’t have any money she would ask me to go to the store for her and buy her a pack of Red Man chewing tobacco. She would always give me a little extra than was needed, and say “Here’s a little change for your pocket. You can’t go around broke.” Mrs. Clayton supported my dream of going to Hollywood and becoming a movie star, always telling me to go for it. Both my parents were immediately busy with new jobs, and my Aunt Shirley was put in charge of enrolling us into school.

After one look at Parkway Middle School I swore to my aunt that I would never set foot in that horrible place. She threatened to tell my parents that I was being disobedient so I gave in and just went with the flow for the moment. My first day at school turned out to be a bad one as I immediately made two enemies in John Spencer and Mickey Corcoran. Luckily, I also made three new friends. John and Mickey were the meanest dudes in the school and everyone was afraid of them. Because the rumor was I was from up north and I supposedly had weird eyes, the two of them made me a marked man in the Deep South.

At the end of school that first day I was walking from class with my three new friends Leroy, Lemon, and Dewayne when all of a sudden the two bullies walked up to me, followed by their group of flunkies. I think the whole school must have known that they were coming after me, even my new friends who immediately disappeared into the crowd. It was just me versus these two bad boys and their crew, but they didn’t know I was a Jersey boy and it was nothing to me.

As they approached I just stood my ground waiting to see what they were going to do. They asked me where I was from and I told them Jersey. Trenton, New Jersey. They said they didn’t like me and they were going to kick my butt. I invited them to bring it on and said the sooner the better. They said that we would meet tomorrow in the open gym to settle this matter and I said great.

Everyone in the crowd looked at me and shook their heads as if I was a dead man walking. As the crowd dissipated I finally found my three lost friends. They asked me what I was going to do. I said I was going to fight them both like we do in Jersey. They said I was crazy to go up against John and Mickey, not only were they mean but they were big. I smiled and said don’t worry.

Growing up in Jersey, I studied how my dad never showed fear and never backed down, and at the age of fourteen this was just another battle in the game of life. What was interesting about the whole thing was that I had only been in school one day and everyone already knew my name. I was popular and the girls had already started saying hi with that little wave of the hand. I was ready for my close up, and it looked like a big fight was the way to get it.

At home I told my older brother Willie Jr. about the confrontation and the upcoming fight in the gym the next day. I would still fight the boys, but my brother would hang back in the crowd in case things got out of hand.

When I arrived at the gym after school the next day, a crowd had already gathered. There were so many kids I couldn’t see who was on the court. Everyone parted and made a hole for me to enter. I scanned the crowd for my brother and he gave me the thumbs up.

I walked towards John and Mickey waiting for me on center court. I walked over without saying a word, and then pointed to John and said, “Since you seemed to be the toughest one of the two, I’ll take you first and then I’ll take your buddy next.”

I saw fear on their faces. They were expecting me to be scared, and when I wasn’t, I watched them second-guess themselves. I had been practicing karate with my brothers from the day I arrived in Florida, and my mother promised me she would send us to karate school soon, so I was ready to show that I was ready. I jumped into a karate stance and motioned for John to bring it on. John’s eyes grew wide and he froze. He started looking around at the crowd, taking in their reaction. I then motioned for Mickey to come on but he wouldn’t move towards me. Instead, he started to back up, leaving John by himself. I then told them that I would fight them both at the same time but they still wouldn’t go for it. The two toughest guys in the whole school had just chickened out. I had just seen what fear could do to you if you let it take a seat inside your mind. In the crowd, my brother smiled and my three friends rushed forward and gave me a hero’s greeting.

The next day in school the word got around that I had beaten the two toughest guys in the school. Over the years I became good friends with both John and Mickey, hanging out at their houses, but I always had their respect after that encounter in the gym; it was a great feeling to gain respect without having to fight.

About two weeks after that incident I met John Clark. I was walking home from school and saw three guys starting to fight in the street. Two of the guys were going up against the one guy, who was John. He had a large tree branch in his hands trying to take the two guys on at the same time. They were afraid of John who looked like a wild man swinging the branch with his afro and red dashiki shirt. John hit one of them in the arm and sent him hard to the ground. It seemed that the two had had enough, so John let them go with a warning to stay out of his way. From that moment, I liked John—or JC as I came to call him. JC reminded me of myself by the way he took on bigger guys, and how he didn’t back down when outnumbered.

I went over and asked him his name, and from that point on we became the best of friends. I got to know his mom and his five sisters and three brothers, and soon my family took JC in as a surrogate son and brother. JC and I hung out almost every day after school.

Soon afterwards, my family moved from our small house to a 40-unit apartment complex ten blocks away where my father had just gotten a job as the apartment manager. It was right behind a McDonald’s restaurant, which was great for me because I loved the place.

My mom found a new church in Florida for us to attend; my mom loved small churches because it reminded her of her days growing up in Mississippi. The church was called New Hope United Holiness Church, and the pastor was a very kind and humble man named Reverend William Burnett. He and his wife, Sister Barnett, ran the church. Sister Barnett stood tall at six feet. When it was time for the music she would sit up in front near the pulpit and beat her large pair of tambourines so loud it would drown out all of our singing. I loved that church and the small crowd that came there for worship. My mom would say that while we were young she was going to keep us in church just like the Bible said. She said when we got older it would be up to us and the Good Lord to decide how we worship. Sometimes Mom would let us get away with not going to church, but she attended faithfully, and that meant sometimes going two or three times a week.

I came from a family of preachers and church mothers, as they are called. My grandmother on my father’s side was a church founder, and many of my uncles were preachers and several of my aunts were either founders or mothers of the church. My great uncle Richard in Atlanta was the pastor of a large church that he built from the ground up. When we had come down from New Jersey and stayed with them for three months, I went to work with him to help build his church; it was just he and I out there working in that empty lot. Uncle Richard let me lay the first brick to construction, and I felt proud to know that I laid the cornerstone to one of God’s churches. There is an old saying in the Bible: “Train up a child in the way they should go, and when they are old they will not depart.”

My mom was doing her best by putting Christian values in us, and she knew that someday it would take hold and come in handy when trouble came our way. The whole family was busy at our new place; Mom had just gotten a new job at a computer company called Modcom. Dad was busy running the apartment complex, and my brothers were gone and my sister had gotten married and had two children and was busy with them. My little brother Louis would be picked up by my aunt and stay over at their house until my mother got him, so most of the time I would come home after school before anyone got there and be alone.

One day I arrived home and was extremely bored, so I decided to look for my father’s hand gun that I had seen many times when we lived in New Jersey; I knew in New Jersey he used to keep it under their bed so I decided to look there, and sure enough I found it. I believe it was a 380 automatic with 12 rounds in the clip. I didn’t see the clip, only the gun, and besides I didn’t know what a clip was for or how the whole thing worked. Regardless, little did I know that death was almost at my door.

I picked the gun up and began to play with it as if I were a cowboy, then I tucked it in my pants as if I were a gangster. I then took the gun into the living room and wondered what to do next with it. I laid the gun down on the kitchen table and poured a glass of juice from the refrigerator and tried to figure out my next move. In my fourteen-year-old mind, I knew the gun was safe because there were no bullets in it, but what I did next was simply stupid and foolish: I took the gun up off the table and pointed it to my head. A small voice told me Pull the trigger, to go ahead pull the trigger, it’s okay, but luckily, another small voice spoke up and said Don’t do it, don’t even play like that. Still, I put my finger on the trigger and began to pull back when the small voice spoke again: Don’t. I took the gun away from my head and pointed the gun to the floor and pulled the trigger and BAM! A bullet shot out, hitting the tile floor then bouncing into the hall plaster wall, lodging itself inside deep inside it.

Frightened, I fell up against the wall. I couldn’t believe what almost just happened. I thought about my parents and their faces if they were to come home and see me lying on the floor with a bullet in my head and my dad’s gun in my hand. It makes me cry even to this day.

I quickly gathered myself and put the gun back under their bed; I then went to the storage room at the apartment and got some putty, plaster, and green paint. I came back and covered the hole with the putty, painted it over and put the items back in the storage room. When my parents came home that evening they never knew what tragedy almost happened. The angels were there for me again, and looking back I know the Good Lord showed me mercy on that day. To be 50 years old now and think back on how the Lord could have let me die in that horrible way, I’m eternally grateful to Him.

A year later I started a new school called South Plantation. I was in the 9th grade, and most of the people from Parkway Middle School were also going to the new school, so that meant some of my old friends would be joining me there. My friend John Clark also went there, but JC was in a different section of the school because he was in a special class for students with learning disabilities. JC was a talented singer and musician, but academics were not his specialty.

I hated the name of the new school—South Plantation—because it reminded me of a time of slavery. I complained to my mother about it, but she said don’t worry about it and just get an education because a name can’t stop you. It still bothered me from time to time, but I had to remember this was the Deep South and not Jersey, so after a period of time I finally just put the name out of my mind and moved on.

At South Plantation High School I met people who would have a positive influence on the direction my life would take; one of these people was my gym teacher Bob Wilson. Coach Wilson was an ex-boxer from New York who also acted in films and TV commercials in his free time. In New Jersey I had acted in a couple of school plays: I played the wicked witch in “Hansel & Gretel” and Santa Claus in a Christmas show. When I heard from other students that Coach Wilson was a part-time actor, I immediately went to see him.

Coach Wilson told me to stick around after school to talk about acting, and after the final bell we sat in his office and began to talk. Coach told me he was from New Jersey, too, and within a few minutes we quickly bonded like good friends. There’s just something about Jersey boys; it’s a small state but we always look out for each other. We spent over an hour just talking about Jersey. He then told me he had an agent in both New York and Miami, and that he would be happy to introduce me to his Miami agent who helps him get film and commercial work.

I jumped up from the chair and shouted “All right!”

Coach must have liked my enthusiasm because he picked up the phone that instant and called his agent in Key Biscayne, Florida. He said he had a new young actor who they needed to sign up.

The agency was called Marbea Talent, and a lovely lady by the name of Maria Beatty ran it. Coach and I went down to visit the agency a week later, and the agent signed me within five minutes. This was the best news I had ever had; I was now an actor and I was going to be in films and TV commercials! I just knew my family was going to be proud of me. I got headshots and prepared a resume, and within a week of submitting it all to my agent, I was sent out on a TV commercial.

I didn’t land that first commercial, but it didn’t matter because I was picked for a small role in a big film that was called “The Greatest” starring Muhammad Ali as himself. It was partly shot in Miami and I played a “Young Man” that hits on Muhammad Ali’s girlfriend at a party. Although my role was eventually cut out of the film, it did get me a membership card to the Screen Actors Guild. It also made me very popular among my cousins, aunts, grandparents, and other family members from New Jersey to Florida.

I absolutely loved acting; it was what I wanted to do with my life. My new showbiz experience proved to be a great talking point with my friend JC—we would hang out at his house and just sit outside on his porch and talk about making it in the music and film industries. JC would talk about becoming a famous singer and I would talk about going to Hollywood to be a movie star. Sometimes JC and I would entertain his sisters in the house by singing a few songs. JC sang mostly Elvis Presley and I would sing songs by the Stylistics and Earth, Wind & Fire. His sisters loved it.

Everywhere JC and I went we talked music and Hollywood; this was the glue that bonded us together. I picked up some roles in TV shows and commercials. In Atlanta, I picked up role in TV movies like The Lady and The Lynchings for PBS, a movie-of-the-week called King, The Vengeance of Tony Cimo for an NBC movie-of-the-week, and even a Coca Cola commercial. This was all great, but what I really wanted to do was Hollywood movies. For every film audition my Miami agency sent me to, Coach was going to three or four—there were a lot more roles for white actors than there were for black actors.

But I didn’t lose heart. I took acting classes at a local theater and read every acting book I could get my hands on. Coach and I had become very good friends by this point, and I would often visit his house in Coral Springs. I got to know his wife and his kids and thought they were great people. I couldn’t keep my mind off Hollywood, though. I was already making plans in my mind to head west and try my luck. I had stars in my eyes and there was no way I could shake them. I had a long talk with my mother and told her my plans, and she said that if it was what I really wanted to do, then she was one hundred percent behind me. My mom, I found out, had become my biggest fan.

I did some research and found out that an old friend of my brother Willie Jr. was living out in Los Angeles, so I connected with him and laid out plans for my trip. About a month later my mother took me to the airport where I bought a one-way plane ticket with only seventeen dollars in my pocket. I kissed my mom goodbye and boarded the plane for Hollywood.