THE WHY OF MY LIFE

I'm going to do something a little different in this post. The Thanksgiving holiday has made me uncharacteristically sentimental... and patriotic. 

My good friend Beauregard Freidkin told me that if I want people to find and embrace my universe of characters and creations, they are going to have to know who I am. This is hard for me. I'm a private person. I like to stay behind the scenes. "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. I am the great and powerful Oz."

I once read a proverb that said, "If a person knows the why of his life, he will understand why he has done all the things he has done and all the things he is doing." Okay, I just made that up. But that doesn't make the truth of the thing any less.

Why? Why have I done the things I have done in my life?

First, I will have to give you a little background on me. ONE: I am African American (more on that in a minute). TWO: I was born in one of the most dangerous ghettos in Brooklyn. In this age of gentrification, you might be saying Brooklyn's not dangerous. But believe me, the Brooklyn I knew was ultra-violent with vast wastelands of debris. Most of the World War II movies you'll see from the 70s and 80s where tanks are rolling through bombed out areas of Europe, were filmed in Brooklyn or the Bronx.

I was also born in 1962, when American was segrated and Black Americans did not have civil rights. The 1960s was the landmark battlefield decade where full civil rights was finally achieved (at least on paper in 1968). It may seem odd now, but my friends and I considered ourselves revolutionaries and rebels, born in the cracks of the American dream, fighting against the system (the man). My older sister knew members of the Black Panther Party. My parents marched with King.

As a child I suffered from chronic insomnia. Up most nights, I was introduced to the late show on TV. That's where I discovered cinema: Humphrey Bogart, Orson Wells, Hitchcock, Cagney. This planted the first seed in my head regarding Hollywood. 

I also grew up in a world of comic book superheroes and Hong Kong martial arts films. Ahh... now we are starting to get to the why. The overriding themes in comic books and martial arts films is that the hero achieves empowerment through powers or intense training. Another seed is planted.

My insomnia is finally cured when I discovered gymnastics. This was my empowerment. My superpower, my martial arts. For high school, I was zoned to take the public bus to the Jewish and Italian part of town. At age fifteen, lost in a new school, I accidentally opened up a door to the gym during gymnastics practice. And that was it. I was hooked. I worked out at school and traveled to every open workout gym in the five boroughs from the Flatbush YMCA to Roberto Clemente State Park in the South Bronx. For two bucks, I got to work out on broken down equipment without benefit of a coach.

I was also heavily into acrobatic Break Dancing during the birth of Hip Hop in NYC. Our dance battles were something straight out of a Kung Fu movie.

But gymnastics was my true love.

That's when people started telling me I can't. I was fifteen starting a very difficult sport. And it may seem funny now, but I swore I was going to the Olympics. By the time I graduated high school, I realized I wasn't going to make the Olympics. My high school coach got me an offer for a half scholarship to a college gymnastics team, but I turned it down. If I couldn't be the best, I didn't want to do it. So, I put away my grips and went to Brooklyn College. 

But after a few months, I started getting the itch again. I began training harder than ever. It was around that time that a friend of mine told me he was going up to a gymnastics camp in Pennsylvania for a week. I decided to go with him. Up there, I was recruited as a parallel bar specialist for a college gymnastics team. The owner of the camp International Gymnastics was also coach of the local college gymnastics team at East Stroudsburg University. I got to train up there the whole summer. Then I started school there. I never went back home, except to visit.

This was also the summer of 1980. That was the year the president of the United States boycotted the Olympics in Moscow. The Olympic team landed at my coaches camp. I trained alongside of Olympic gymnasts and Olympic coaches. For a club gymnast from Brooklyn to all of a sudden be training with the top gymnasts in the world was like something out of a Rocky movie.

I didn't become an Olympian. But my gymnastics reached a high level of personal achievement and got me a university education.

Afterwards, when I wanted to move to Los Angeles and become a stuntman, people started telling me I couldn't. I did! Me and my gymnastics buddies from Brooklyn had been doing acrobatic martial arts fight scenes for fun ever since I could remember. But I never thought I would get paid to do the exact same thing for motion pictures. I had been tricking and free running decades before either existed.  

I even began coordinating and second unit directing, when I realized it was time to segue into my true passion and become a writer (I was a literary major and journalism minor in college).

As a writer here in Hollywood, I have had a lot of doors slammed in my face despite the fact I have the talent to be here. I'm not connected. I don't fit the stereotype of what a writer should look like. I'm not a bullshit artist. And I don't kiss ass.

Gatekeepers have kept me from reaching the audience I know is out there for my creations. 

But a new world is opening up here on the Internet. A world where artists can bypass gatekeepers and go straight to the audience, who will decide if they like them or not.

This is now my world. When I was watching the late show back in the 70s, there were few Black faces. And in 2013 American films, not all that much has changed.

My creations will speak to diverse demographics.

I reached much farther than my humble beginnings. In my neighborhood, you were a success if you didn't end up in jail and had a job. I have outlived most people I grew up with in that world. Many are dead, in prison, or so strung out on drugs they look like something out of "The Walking Dead."

But me... I'm still standing. And I have a hell of a lot of creating to do.

American is a flawed place. There is no promise of success. But there is the possibility. America is a land of possibilities. For everyone! Some just have to work harder than others.

Happy Thanksgiving everybody! 

Me

Carlton Kenneth Holder