by Jerry Cimino
The Beat Museum
211 W. Franklin Street
Monterey, CA 93940
www.kerouac.com
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The painful details about our journey to Burbank:
BACKGROUND/PREPARATION
We almost never made the trip to Methodfest and Burbank. I'd been talking to both Randy Allred
of Beat Angel and Don Franken of Methodfest and was very excited about going. I hadn't
expected to launch the Beatmobile until sometime in May, but when I found out the details about
the premier of Beat Angel and when Don invited us down for the entire nine days, it was hard to
say "no."
So this meant a rush schedule to get to trailer built out and the rest of the preparatory work on the
RV. I enlisted the aid of a good friend in Monterey, Brian George, who is a master craftsman and
who offered to help me design and build the trailer complete with five angled bookcases and
removable display panels that doubled as support structures for when we were traveling. Brian
and I spent weeks on the measuring, cutting, sanding, varnishing and assembly of the trailer
build-out. We didn't put the final screw in place until noon of the very day we left.
Concurrent with this I ran into a major problem. About ten days before I was scheduled to leave I
noticed an indicator light came on inside the RV that said "low air". I called Gene, the man who
sold me the Airstream and who loves this baby so much he has me call him every week to tell
him how she's doing. Gene owned the Airstream for 17 years and had recently restored it to near
original condition because he expected to keep it forever but then his grandchildren decided they
wanted to go RV'ing with him and his wife so they bought a bigger bus with slide outs that would
accommodate all the grandkids.
Gene gave me a wonderful deal on the Airstream, even giving me back a few thousand dollars on
the final purchase price saying, "An RV is just like your house, there's always something needs
fixing - you got a light switch or a faucet that needs work in your house, right? An RV"s the same
way. Then, it's also just like your car, it needs lots of attention - this week it's the tires, next
month it's the muffler. So, you're going to need some money to get things fixed periodically, so
instead of paying me the full amount we agreed to, you just keep a few thousand in case anything
needs fixin' anytime soon. And you call me anytime you want to because I know every nut and
bolt of that Airstream" I remember thinking to myself, "where do you find people like this in the
world today?"
So I called Gene to tell him about the "low air" light and asked him what I should do. "Oh, that's
probably nothing, the Airstream has an airbag suspension system to it to make it ride smoother.
There's these two big football size airbags under the frame, now these aren't airbags like for
when you get in an accident, but part of the suspension system, and if the Airstream hasn't been
moved in a week or two then some of that air might have leaked out so you just start her up for
five or ten minutes and your compressor will come on and you should be OK."
So I did as Gene said but the light never went out. I stood outside and heard air rushing out the
back of the RV and called Gene back. "Well, it sounds like you've got some kind of air leak,
maybe a hose or a clamp. It could be one of the airbags, I never replaced those in all the years I
owned it. Get you an RV doctor who makes house calls and maybe he can fix it right up for you."
Well, a few days later Urial, the traveling RV doctor, comes out and tells me the bad news. "One
of you airbags is shot. It just dry-rotted away. It's the same kind of rubber on a tire, they're made
by Firestone, but they don't stock them anymore for these Airstreams as there are so few of them
on the road. We'll have to get them special ordered and it'll take about three weeks. "Urial, I got
to be in LA in a week, isn't there anyway we can get them faster?" "I'll check on it," he said.
After Urial left I called Gene and explained the situation. "Can you think of a way we can rig
something up so I can get to LA?" "Well, you know," Gene said, "I used to have an old GMC
truck that had airbags and one time those airbags went out on me just like they did on your
Airstream and I bolted a couple of wooden blocks in their place and it held the frame up. Tell you
what you do - get yourself a couple of big heavy pieces of wood about the size of the airbags, ten
inches wide by eight inches high and four inches deep - heavy duty wood, now, and you drill
some holes in there and you use the air jacks on the Airstream and you lift her up off the ground
and you bolt those blocks of wood in there and that'll probably get you to LA and back. Now, it'll
be bouncy, but the Airstream will hold together and you'll be OK."
When Urial called me back about the airbags, he said they would indeed take three weeks. I told
him about Gene's idea regarding the blocks of wood. "I've never done it before, but it sounds like
it'll work," Urial said. "I'll call some guys I know who own a suspension shop and we'll see what
they think. They sell truck tires too, so maybe they can put those new tires on we were talking
about."
So, the next day Urial and I drive into the suspension company and Matt the manager and his
boys tell me they've got the tires I need and, yeah, they can probably rig up the blocks in the
suspension as well. So Matt gets involved in it personally, it was a challenge - a puzzle, and he
said he and his boys were going to get me to LA for the movie premier, so the four of them
worked on it for like four hours, measuring and cutting, drilling and sawing, and we finally get the
blocks in place and I'll be damned it they didn't work just like Gene said they would.
As Matt's totaling up the damage, he calculates the price of the new tires then he looks at his
watch and says, "why don't we charge you an hour's labor for the suspension plus parts - that'll
be $79 for the suspension portion." Four of them worked on it for four hours each! For $79
bucks! "Thanks, Matt. I appreciate it." "I know," he said. "You'll be back." And he was right.
So after getting the Airstream back in shape and continuing the trailer build-out with Brian, there
was the choice of my traveling companions. John Cassady and I have known each other for ten
or twelve years and had often talked about the possibility of a road trip. John had recently been
laid off in the aftermath of the high tech meltdown of Silicon Valley, having worked for the same
company for twenty years. I knew he had some time on his hands so I thought the time might be
right for a road trip. (By the way, if you're in need of a technical support guy, they don't come
much better than John, so shoot me an email if you want to talk to John about a job.)
And then I thought, given the Airstreams tentative condition, plus the untested trailer design, I
might want to have a second vehicle as a 'chase car', so a friend of mine named Josh Wilbur
came to mind. Josh is a 25-year-old photographer whose work is absolutely brilliant. He shoots
photos like nobody I've ever seen even though he's only been doing it a few years, plus he's an
all around good guy. So I figured Josh, driving my wife's SUV, could serve as a back up for the
Airstream and take photos of our adventure as well. And even though Josh and John had never
met I knew them both as easy going guys so I figured the three of us would get along famously in
the RV.
And this brings us to the actual beginning of our "road trip".
THURSDAY, APRIL 1ST
John was driving in from the Bay Area and Josh was coming in from Santa Cruz, the three of us
set to meet at my house at 10 AM. Meanwhile, Brian and I are still screwing the boards into place
in the trailer. At 9:30 I call Josh, "Good, you haven't left yet," "No, I'm running a little late". "OK,
so let's push it back to 11:00. I've already called Cassady." Then, an hour later, John and Josh
and I touched base again. "Let's make it twelve," I said. "I've had some delays."
At twelve fifteen I park the newly minted Beat Museum on Wheels in front of the Museum
storefront and start tossing stuff inside. Cassady calls. "Where are you?" I yell into the phone as
I'm lugging stuff around. "I'm at your house! Where are you?" "I'm at the Museum. I'll be another
hour." "An hour! What happened to ten o'clock? I got up early for this!" "Sorry, John.
Unexpected delay, couldn't be helped."
So, Josh shows up and we got on the road about 2 PM, all bright and full of expectation,
flashbulbs popping and smiles all around and about 100 miles from home in the middle of
nowhere between King City and San Miquel the Beatmobile crapped out on Highway 101! Josh
was driving the chase car (SUV with a tow-hitch) and he saw fire belching out of our muffler as
John and I nursed ourselves off to the side of the road. The three of us sat in the Airstream
trying to work the problem and all we heard was that hapless 'rrrghhh-rrrgggghh-rrrggghhh' sound
of an engine that won't start and after about a half an hour of fruitless effort John shouts over the
noise of me cranking the engine "Stand on it! Stand on it!" meaning the gas so Josh and I look at
each other like "what the fuck" and then "vroom!!" the engine springs to life and soon we're
booking on down the road again with John explaining, "Neal always told me when you can't get a
car started, stand on the accelerator" and it worked.
A half hour later the engine goes dead again and for the second time we're inches from these big
ass semi's whizzing by at 80 miles an hour and this time it's forty minutes before we can get it
started again with the battery dying and the sun going down and Cassady sitting in the drivers
seat working the key in the ignition saying, "I got the touch, I got the touch" and of course Josh
and I saying "yeah, right" and again, by some miracle "vroom!" the big 454 engine comes alive
and we waste no time in the dusk hightailing it to a gas station twenty minutes down the road and
roll in to a Chevron station where we tank up and soon discover the battery really is dead and the
engine won't fire up again so we're stuck.
So the next thing we notice is this Big Kahuna looking guy who's getting gas next to us is dancing
around us raising his arms and doing "the wave" and casting spells on our engine as we try to get
the thing started for the third time, but this time no dice, and we're bantering with the guy and it
turns out he lives like a mile away and happens to be an aircraft mechanic and so we let him
diddle with the Beatmobile as we're dead in the water at this point and he runs back to his house
and comes back with a huge generator that his fifteen year old daughter had helped him load into
the back of his pick up and he's got all kinds of other gizmos, but we still can't get anything
running so Kahuna swings his big ten cylinder Dodge Ram pick up over and eventually tows the
RV along with the trailer out of the gas station and over to an isolated spot the cops told us we
could park over night and I go out with Brian the Kahuna guy to look for a fuel pump at ten PM
which we're unable to find and when we come back John and Josh have ordered in pizza and are
strumming guitars and singing in the RV so we all settle in to sleep in the RV over night by the
side of the road watching a pre-release copy of Beat Angel on Videotape that had been sent to
us.
FRIDAY, APRIL 2nd
The next morning the Good Sam RV club comes by to tow us 50 miles to San Louis Obispo, up
and down these monster hills, with the RV on the back of a huge tow truck and the Beat Museum
being pulled by the SUV we had the foresight to bring on this inaugural run and it takes all day for
the mechanics to figure out that an electrical wire had frayed and touched the frame and shorted
out our electrical system. Apparently, Matt and his boys weren't looking close enough where they
put one of the wooden blocks and somehow the electrical wire to the fuel pump had gotten
wedged in between the wooden block and the frame and the weight of the RV had crushed the
wire and copper touched metal and shorted out the electrical system. God knows how we were
able to get it started twice after it had conked out and the RV guys said it's a miracle we didn't
have a fire and they worked with Gene over the telephone for an hour, Gene explaining what all
the intricacies of the Airstream were all about and finally at five PM we're back on the road trying
to get to Burbank by nine-thirty for the big Methodfest launch party and we pull in to town right at
9:45 with the Beatmobile running fine.
So Burbank, being a big active downtown and no place to park, we pull in to a funeral home with
a big empty lot and after buttoning down the RV and the chase car with the trailer we're about to
walk the block to the party when Dennis comes sauntering out of the funeral home wearing
pajamas and no shoes and asked us what we're doing on his lot. So after explaining we were the
guests of honor at this great party a block away and we just drove down from the San Francisco
Bay Area and we're already late he told us we could stay if we promised to be gone by 2 or 3 in
the morning as he had a funeral at 8 AM so we did and all was well.
The party was huge with fire dancers and outfits like you only find in LA and people dancing and
drinking and business cards flying like peanuts. In LA you hand out your business card the
instant you meet someone, there's no conversation, just business card exchanges so everyone
can figure who can do what for whom, and we met all the Beat Angel people who had invited us
down with introductions all around and finally rolled out around 2 AM. Great folks, the Beat Angel
people - Randy Allred, Vince Balestri, Frank Tabbita, Amy Humphrey and Bruce Boyle - more on
all of them later. So we left the Methodfest party at closing time and lived up to our obligation to
not interrupt the funeral the next day and found a parking spot near the hotel where all the Beat
Angel people were staying and settled in for our time in Burbank.
SATURDAY, APRIL 3rd
We spent a good part of Saturday getting to know our new Beat Angel friends better, lunching in
a Mexican Taqueria that was in between their hotel and where we had spent the night in the RV.
John and Josh and I made out well in that confined space, the Airstream being well suited to
accommodating many people. We leaped at the chance to use the showers in the hotel as the
small shower in the Airstream was the temporary storage bin for Josh's surfboard and John's
guitar. Plus, we were operating stand alone and without the convenience of being hooked to
water or electricity as we camped out in the residential Burbank neighborhood. The natives were
friendly, however, and took an interest in the Beatmobile and the movie as well. Made the first
sale out of the back of the Beatmobile that day as a neighbor lady named Gaby bought a copy of
Ferlinghetti's Coney Island of the Mind - fitting, I thought, as that is the book that got me in to
reading all these works thirty-five years ago in the first place.
Later that evening we hooked the trailer up to the SUV (Isuzu Rodeo) and dragged it a few miles
to Hallenbeck's General Store in North Hollywood where an Open Mic had been planned as the
evening's event. We took the SUV as opposed to the RV as we weren't sure about parking and
it's a good thing we did as, in our lost state, we made a handful of U-turns we never would have
negotiated in the fifty-plus-foot length of the RV-trailer. Once there Vincent gave a performance
as did Jimmy Henry who was also in the film. I gave a reading of some of Jack's poems, which I
enjoyed, and we met Hollie and Teresa and some of the other people who are on this mailing list
and live in that greater LA area.
Around midnight we followed a stream of cars to a place called Residuals in North Hollywood for
an after hours get together and met all kinds of other people, one of whom was a big Ken Kesey
fan and who turned fan-boy on John once he heard he was Neal's son. The guy was a musician
and thought we should all genuflect because he had once played with George Clinton and when I
jokingly remarked in my funkadelic way I didn't know George Clinton from Bill Clinton, the guy got
all serious and pissed and said, "I've been dissed by bigger men than you" and I'm thinking, who's
dissing who, I'm just not that big a music fan. So as we're leaving fan-boy starts handing us
some pot thinking he can impress John that he's "holding", but we toss it before we head back to
the parking lot. "Nothing illegal in the Beatmobile" has been my motto since day one - why give
the cops a chance to bust you if you don't have to?
So the three of us saunter back to the bank parking lot where we'd parked the SUV and trailer a
scant two hours before and distinctly notice, very readily, the parking lot is empty! "What
happened to the car and the trailer?!" Josh shouted and John sat down on the curb - "I can't
believe they towed both the car and the trailer!" And sure enough, they had.
So, we called the LAPD and when they asked me what the license plate number is I knew I was
in trouble as I don't memorize stuff like that. "Call us back in the morning when you have it so we
can trace what towing company took your vehicle," the cop told me over the phone, so I called my
wife at home while we took a cab back to the RV and left her a voicemail at three in the morning
asking her to call me the next day with the info so we could bail ourselves out.
SUNDAY, APRIL 4th
The next morning, all the proper info in hand, we traced the SUV and trailer to a towing company
near the Burbank airport. I spoke to Jason over the phone like he was my new best friend.
"Sorry, we're going to have to charge you $267 twice," he told me. "We had to put the trailer on
dollies to bring it back here." Josh was pissed. "How can they do this to you?" he demanded.
"You were parked on a bank lot on a weekend." "These bastards don't give a damn about that,
Josh, I've read about these predatory towing companies here in LA - they have a contract with
the cities that allows them to tow anybody anytime and you can't fight it, all you can do is pay up.
It's a scam and the cities are in on it. I should have known better." "Well, I'm going to tell them
what a bunch of rotten bastards they are," Josh replied. "Wait until we get everything back," John
warned and I chimed in, "They already know they're rotten bastards, Josh. But to this guy it's just
a job". Me and John telling the younger guy what life is all about.
So we take a cab up to the Burbank airport to retrieve our stolen goods and I struck up a
conversation with the cabbie whose tag said, 'Arnold Al Harumphe' and when I asked, "Is your
real name Arnold?" he responded in his broken English, "Yes, I was born in Pakistan, but Arnold
is my real first name" and I'm thinking, "Why don't I believe this guy?"
So, after a thirty minute drive we're pulling up to the Rip Off Tow Company of Burbank and all of a
sudden we see this real old car come around a bend and John says, "Hey look at that old Stanley
Steamer" and I recognize the guy driving it and say, "That's Jay Leno!" and we all raise our
cameras, but Jay is out of sight by then, so I pay Arnold the thirty five bucks for the cab ride and
give him a fat tip for being a nice guy and we ring the bell at the tow company.
So the tow company is like an armed fortress with razor wire on all sides and steel bars and nasty
looking dogs with bared teeth and everything is all boarded up and you can't see anything inside
and you got to pass your license and registration and credit card through a little pass through like
a speakeasy and I'm thinking "these guys must have people want to kill them all the time" and
Josh is mooning the guys behind their backs and John is taking pictures of the moonshine and
the three of us are cracking up and then I'm ready to sign the papers and the guy wants me to
sign that everything is intact and no damage and I say, "I can't sign that without seeing everything
first" and Josh starts telling the guy "You didn't have to tow us, you know" and the guy says, "You
want to come back in a couple of days to get this stuff?" so the bastards had us by the short ones
and they knew it so we settled down and finally got it all back and when I asked for directions
back to our hot el the guy says, "It's about three miles that way" - and we all say, "Shit! - that
fucking Arnold took thirty minutes to drive us here!" What is it about LA that half the people are
crooks?
MONDAY, APRIL 5th
Monday was the big day. Beat Angel was premiering that night for the very first time and the
Beatmobile was about to meet the public for the very first time as well. Josh and John and I
prepped for the launch that entire morning. The movie people had told us they had cleared our
arrival with the city people the week before and I myself had indeed spoken to a certain someone
at the city who was more concerned about any "obscenities" I might have in view of children than
she was anything else. When I asked where I should be parking I was met with, "Where do you
want to park?" "I don't know," I told her, "I've never been to Burbank." I was told to leave it to the
movie people's discretion.
So, that morning John and Josh and I did a final reconnaissance of the downtown area and
decided the best place to be was on a public plaza near the movie theatres that would gain
maximum exposure. I made the final drive through with our Methodfest contact and the two of us
called the lady at the city of Burbank we had been working with and left her a message on her
voicemail as to what we were doing and where we were setting up and left our phone numbers in
case she had any concerns. Then we hooked up the big trailer to the RV and the Beatmobile
rolled in to the middle of the plaza in Burbank like God's own machine come to visit!
It was magnificent! Josh was popping off photos and John and I set the chocks and started
unpacking the Beatmobile and immediately people started gathering and asking questions and
boy were we in our glory! The Beatmobile was a hit from the moment we touched Burbank - that
big silver colored Airstream with trailer all decked out in posters of Jack & Neal and the Beat
Angel premier poster and the Methodfest posters and we were a sight to behold. Immediately
people started looking at the displays and checking out the books and videos and grabbing
Kerouac.com bumper stickers and you'd a thought they were waiting for the clowns and the
trained animals because the circus had come to town.
It was glorious! "Is that Kerouac?" "What is this thing, a museum on wheels?" "What, did you
guys produce a movie?" Oh, man, it was everything I dreamed it would be and just as we got
everything set up a woman joins the crowd and says, "This is great! It's about time Burbank did
something like this.." and it turns out she worked for the city, right down the hall from the woman
we had left the message for an hour before. And then other people - tourists, business people on
their lunch hour, kids on skateboards - and then the Mall Security people show up and start
hovering around on walkie talkies, just kind of watching us, but not approaching. And then a Fire
Department guy comes by - "You can't be here, this is a fire lane, we've got to be able to get our
trucks through here. Is that Neal Cassady? Well, how about if you move everything over about
ten feet, that'll give us enough room to get the trucks by." and then an hour later the Police
Department - "Do you have a permit? You've got to have a permit? Who'd you speak with at the
city? Well, wait, our dispatcher just found an email so I guess it's OK." and on and on all day.
And around about five o'clock we all went to a little open air theatre about a block away where
John had been booked to give a talk and do a Q&A on what it was like to grow up in the Cassady
household and he kept the crowd enthralled with his stories of Neal and Carolyn as well as Jack
(who often lived with them) and Allen (also John's namesake, his name being John Allen
Cassady) and Ken Kesey and Jerry Garcia and others. John had his guitar, playing some of
Neal's favorite songs, and he told the story of how Neal used to love to read him Winnie the Pooh
stories when he was a kid and how his mother Carolyn was always buying him Winnie the Pooh
dolls in 1951-1952 which lends new insight into Kerouac's final paragraph from On The Road
where Jack asks, "And don't you know God is Pooh Bear?" and everyone who heard John tell his
stories was glad they did.
Finally, around 6:30 we pack it all in because it was time for the movie premier at 7 PM. Now
Josh and John and I had already seen the video version a few nights before, but there's nothing
like the big screen and a crowd of people so we left all the displays out to public view but locked
up the Beatmobile and went down to the premier and saw it with all the other people and it was
even better on the big screen than it was on TV. And later we went to one of the local bars where
the Methodfest was hosting that night's party and retired back to the Beatmobile on the Plaza of
Burbank after closing hours. We were undoubtedly the very first people to ever sleep in an RV on
that spot, I have no doubt, and the security guys were all friendly and helpful as we tumbled in to
the RV at three in the morning, taking care not to make too much of a ruckus in the middle of the
business plaza.
TUESDAY, APRIL 6th
The next morning John was being interviewed and Josh and I had some meetings to attend with
some people we had met so we didn't get back to the RV until later in the day and when we did
Cassady was holding down the fort - "Where've you been, there's been hundreds of people
asking questions" so we unloosed the Beatmobile for the second time as I went to park the SUV.
As soon as I got back I knew there was trouble when I saw the police car with lights-a-flashing
parked in the crosswalk and I saw all kinds of serious looking men in ties and wearing badges
hovering around looking grim with their arms crossed and frowns for faces.
"Who told you you could park here?" barked the head city guy as I walked up. I rattled off the
name of the woman I'd been speaking to at the city. "She said she never spoke to you, she said
she never got your voicemail", him obviously already hearing the story from someone. "People
around here are saying you've been laughing because you've put one over on everyone telling
everybody the other guy gave you permission".
"I'm not trying to put one over on anybody," I said. I'm not trying to go around anyone, I've never
done this before, I don't know what I'm supposed to do."
"Where's your permit?" The other guy asked me. "I didn't know I needed a permit," I answered.
"Of course you need a permit!" the city bellowed, frowning and looking like he was about to cry.
"What makes you think you can do this without a permit?" the other city followed up. "Nobody
ever said anything about a permit," I said truthfully. "Look, I'm not trying to cause anybody any
trouble. We thought we were wanted here. If you guys are telling me I got to leave, I'll leave".
"And what about insurance!" the other city again. "What if somebody gets hurt and they sue the
city?"
"And do you think you can just sell things here? You don't have a sellers permit!" he shouted. "I
have a sellers permit from Monterey," I countered. "Well, do you have one for Burbank?" he
glared. "Look," one of the cops said gently, "if you don't have a piece of paper, you don't have
nothing," his eyes apologizing for the city people's frenzy, "I think you just better pack it up and
go". "OK," I said, "but it's going to take a couple of minutes, there's a lot to pack up and I'd
appreciate it if you could stop traffic so I can back up out of here".
So the cops stopped the cars allowing me to back the big rig out onto the street and the city guys
harrumphed and hurummed and looked all authoritative and nasty as they stood with their arms
crossed and finally a look of satisfaction on their faces as the Beatmobile wheeled on out of
Burbank and I'm sure they were thinking "good riddance". Josh got some great photos of our exit
with police lights flashing and nasty looking men with official city badges
And immediately the rumors started flying around Burbank. The local bookstore was pissed
because we were taking their customers and dropped a dime. The Starbucks people didn't like
that a bunch of radical beatniks were parked across the street. The city people were angry
because we'd made them look like fools setting up shop and not paying for permits.
As for me, I was fine with it. I was a little out of breath from packing everything up inside of five
minutes, but I'd learned what I needed to learn. The Beatmobile was a draw! It attracted
attention just like I knew it would. The interest in the Beats is strong! Their message is still as
alive and as misunderstood as ever! I rolled out of Burbank four days earlier than planned but
with an understanding and a knowing that if I persisted and with the right attitude, the Beatmobile
had the potential to be everything I hoped it would be.
That night we went to a party.
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 7th
Wednesday was a blur. Getting settled in to a new residential neighborhood in another part of
Burbank. Meeting with a newspaper reporter who we had expected to meet with the previous
day. We talked about the ride down. We talked about getting towed from North Hollywood. We
talked about getting run out of Dodge. We even joked about a great headline for his story, "Beat
It, Angel" - the story of being run out of Burbank. They wanted us to bad mouth the city. They
wanted us to name names. In the end the newspaper ran a story about John and me, both in
our fifties, taking a road trip in the luxury of a motorhome as opposed to a '49 Hudson. Josh
wasn't mentioned at all.
Later that night we went to the second screening of Beat Angel. Just as I was getting some
popcorn for the movie my phone rang and it was fan-boy. He wanted me to be sure to tell John
he was playing at a club on Hollywood Boulevard and he wanted us to stop in. "Be sure to tell
John," he repeated. "Yeah, don't worry," I said and then I powered off my cell phone as the
movie started.
Upon the third viewing of Beat Angel I was even more impressed than I was the first two times.
Later, at the after hours party, I overheard Vince Balestri talking to this young guy who had just
won the acting competition for the Methodfest. The kid's name is Germaine De Leon, he's
nineteen and he looks like a young Marlon Brando - he's got a presence and a force about him
that is indescribable. Look for this kid someday, I predict we'll be hearing more about him in time.
That night, though, Germaine was listening to Vince. "You gotta act from your heart!" Vince was
telling him, sounding as much like Kerouac as ever. "You gotta ask yourself, "What am I in this
for? Why am I an actor? Do I just want to make a lot of money, do I just want to be famous?
And if that's all it is, that's OK, but you're young, you need to look deeper, you gotta ask yourself
questions nobody else is going to ask you. You gotta ask, "What's this mean to me, what am I
trying to accomplish? What am I trying to convey to people with my talent, with my acting?"
Germaine was listening hard to Vince. It was good to see him take the conversation so
seriously. Here he was a nineteen-year-old kid with movie star looks and on top of the world after
having just won this major competition and he was taking Vince's words to heart. "Sure you gotta
know Method Acting, but you gotta know everything else too - Stanislavski, Stella Adler,
Strasberg - you gotta know it all, and you gotta be able to drop in to it in a flash, no preparation,
no excuses, just living it, being it. And you gotta act from your heart, Germaine. Act from here it's in your heart".
THURSDAY, APRIL 8th
On Thursday we used the down time to get to know our neighbors in Burbank. We happened to
have parked in front of Sandy and Jeanie's house and they couldn't have been nicer. Turns out
one of them had actually worked on post-production of The Last Time I Committed Suicide, a
movie that came out a few years back about Neal Cassady, and they were very kind to us, much
kinder than I probably would have been had three strangers shown up and parked in front of my
house with a 35 foot RV, a trailer and an SUV. Sandy even let me borrow some of his power
tools so we could get the Beatmobile roadworthy for the upcoming drive back.
Later that day we all piled in to Randy Allred's room and played a mean game of Risk. Josh and I
love playing that game, ever since I first taught it to him a year ago, losing the first time on
purpose so he'd get the thrill of victory in his blood, and of course I was all over the board that
day as Vince attacked and Randy counterattacked and Jack Marino and Richard Egan, two other
new friends we had just met, all hooted and shouted. I may have only had six armies left toward
the end there and Josh had his little pink men spread all over the board, delighting in the idea that
his pink boys were going to tromp my dominant black armies, but we had to call the game on
account of previous commitments so we never did get back to it and I know I would have made a
sweeping comeback had we not needed to hightail it downtown for that evening's events. Josh
cried when the board was packed away, convinced he was being robbed of a great victory.
FRIDAY, APRIL 9th
Friday was the night of the big awards dinner at the Castaway hosted by Methodfest. The
Castaway is this big banquet hall on top of a hill in Burbank overlooking all of LA. All the beautiful
LA people showed up and it was a big "to do" with me and Josh and John getting a special
invitation from Don Franken of the Methodfest and sitting with our friends at the Beat Angel table.
It was a glorious night with some people in tuxes and others in blue jeans, some driving up in
limos and others in old Pintos. Lots of banter and lots of photos - glamour and glitz mixed with
beer and champagne.
We sat at the table with Randy, Vince, Bruce and some of the other folks we had met. Also
sitting at our table was Germaine whom we had all sort of taken under our wing and for whom it
was a forgone conclusion that he was going to stand up to collect an award as it had already
been announced days before. What was a surprise, however, was Germaine's acceptance
speech.
During the course of Germaine's speech he thanked all of us for befriending him that week and
made special note of what he had learned from Vince Balestri. He said Vince had opened him up
to ideas he had never given thought to before. He said that he'd never met an actor like Vince
before, a person who not only wants to support other people but who asked him to look inside
himself in a deep and spiritual way. He said no one had ever asked him to look seriously at why
it was he was doing what he was doing. "No one's ever asked me to examine myself like that
before, Vince. And I promise you I'm looking at it hard and I'm coming up with answers". And
then Germaine concluded by noting, "I want to thank you Vince, and I want you to know I'm going
to keep on acting.. from my heart".
SATURDAY, APRIL 10th
Saturday we slept until noon after a late evening the night before. Just as we're ready to leave
our friendly neighbors Sandy and Jeanie came out with their little kids to say goodbye and then
Sandy noted some leakage coming from the engine. We checked in to it and unable to really
make a determination we hoped it was nothing.
So John and Josh and I got on the road around 2 PM after a quick stop at the Weinerdudes and
screamed up Highway 101 in record time. The big Chevy engine of the Beatmobile was
humming along fine and the chase car had trouble keeping up with us. Aside from stopping for
gas, we really didn't need to pull over. The best part of the Beatmobile is you walk to the fridge
you walk to the bathroom you walk to get a bag of chips. "Hey, John, I forgot to tell you, fan-boy
called a couple nights ago. He wanted you to know he was playing at a club on Hollywood
Boulevard." "Oh, yeah?" "Yeah."
And as we cruised the last miles toward home, we stuck a CD in the dash and listened to Steve
Allen playing piano as Jack read the last few lines from On The Road --"So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the
long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge
bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going, all the people dreaming in the immensity of
it, and in Iowa I know by now the children must be crying in the land where they let the little
children cry, and tonight the stars will be out and don't you know that God is Pooh Bear? the
evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before
the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all the rivers, cups the peaks and
folds the final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what's going to happen to anybody besides
the forlorn rags of growing old, I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the
father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty."
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