This happened during a near prehistoric time before GPS was a given.
Just FYI, it was also my first time driving a minivan.
My blood pressure soared as I desperately searched for the offices of Roger Corman, producer/director of such films as Little Shop of Horrors, Teenage Cavemen, Sharktopus, and, of course, Attack of the Crab Monsters.
It was pretty much right after college.
I was in Los Angeles working on developing some film projects.
[…which meant I was basically unemployed and totally broke…]
A high-powered NYC producer friend asked if I wanted a one week gig:
Driving around a group of prestigious British filmmakers who were making the rounds at various LA studios and agencies.
I might even be invited to inconspicuously hover on the periphery of a meeting or two.
Of course, I said YES.
The first day was super fun.
I picked up the filmmakers at their hotel and whisked them off to the Sony and Paramount lots.
On day two, I was even more excited since we were starting with no less than producer/director Roger Corman.
Although Corman’s the absolute king of low-budget exploitation films, he’s also launched the careers of Francis Ford Coppola, Jack Nicholson, Martin Scorsese, Jonathan Demme, and many, many others.
(I was quietly convinced, of course, that I would be his next huge discovery.)
That is…until the minivan and I got totally lost.
You see, Corman’s offices are on San Vincente Blvd. which is incredibly tricky.
and shows that part of the confusion is because trolly tracks were part of the original construction chaos.
The boulevard splits into two avenues at one point, changes names at another, isn’t conventionally labeled East and West, and there are even weird numbering inconsistencies on each side.
Frankly, San Vincente doesn’t even have the decency to follow the basic Los Angeles grid system.
It’s very easy to get lost in other words, especially if you’re an overly confident, newly-arrived East Coast transplant like I was, unaware how much the boulevard was out to confound and confuse me.
The tension in the minivan grew more and more intense.
A call to Corman’s offices pointed us back in the right direction, but now the remaining four studio and producer meetings for the rest of the day had to all be adjusted, rescheduled, or canceled.
The woman leading the tour––let’s call her “Gertrude”––was seething with anger, but in a very British, Maggie Smith way.
When we eventually got to Corman’s offices, I was, of course, banished from that meeting, forced to sit in the minivan, playing with the radio.
After the meeting ended, the front seat dynamic was just as unpleasant, however.
For the rest of the afternoon, Gertrude kept jabbing at me.
“Are you sure you know the way to this one?”
“I don’t suppose there’s any better way to get there faster, is there?”
“I really don’t think there’s any way we can catch up.”
“And now we have to deal with rush hour…”
(Deep sigh)…
There was so much tension that I worried the minivan might actually explode.
Finally, after I pulled into the studio lot for the last appointment of the day, I turned to Gertrude and said as politely as I could:
“Pick One:
You’ve got to either Fire Me or Forgive Me.”
Gertrude was taken aback.
I repeated her choices: “Fire Me or Forgive Me. It’s up to you.”
She didn’t reply.
She just sniffed with annoyance as she exited the minivan.
Yet when she returned with her comrades an hour later, she’d made her choice.
She forgave me.
She decided to let it go.
We drove off, a thousand pounds lighter.
Simply because it’s December, it was an easy and obvious choice to theme this month’s meditation HERE around Letting Go.
Yet I think we would all agree that 2020 requires an entirely new level of this practice.
Interestingly, both choices I offered Gertrude were about letting go.
It was up to her whether she chose firing or forgiveness.
I’m glad she chose forgiveness––I ended up being invited as the filmmaker’s guest to their final boozy night out on the town––but either option was vastly preferable to spending a week driving a minivan with someone riding shotgun who’s silently furious with you.
I do have several more suggestions in upcoming newsletters for wrapping up 2020.
All of them, however, are centered around one thing––the necessity of Letting Go––beginning with the new meditation HERE.
As with Gertrude, I want to gently remind all of us of the huge freedom we have in our lives––far more than we tend to realize––to fire or to forgive.
Each situation is different…and the choice is entirely up to you…
All that’s important is that you actualize your self-empowerment and really release whatever’s not serving you.
Like San Vincente itself, Letting Go might seem enormously tricky…
And yet everything we want to receive in 2021 might just be waiting for us at that elusive address.
Namaste for Now,
