I'm going to do something a little different in this post. Today I'm feeling 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.
SINcerely yours,
Carlton Kenneth Holder
Zombie Parade
Images courtesy of "The Black Album
