In 1997 the organizers of a conference called Selling To Hollywood invited me to be on that year’s writing panel, The Road To Success. To pick up the honorarium, it was expected that I actually appear at hotel in the Valley where conferees from all over the country had paid for a weekend of hearing from A List producers, directors, agents, lawyers and the likes of me. The occasion called for clean underwear.

Then I fired up my burnt orange, two-door Cadillac with the brushed steel and padded vinyl roof. The Caddy was a classic, made when wetlands were still called swamps. It had an audio system just waiting for an eight-track tape of the Bee Gees, and you could almost land an airplane on the hood, under which came the careless hiss of the fuel injected, four-barrel carb sucking in natural resources like a vampire with hemophilia.

I lived in an oceanfront apartment building, on the wetlands side, and as the Caddy angled up out of the underground garage, blocking my view of everything save hood and sky, a blue heron screeched. The undercarriage must have appeared like a mechanical behemoth rising from the depths. When the center of gravity shifted, joggers and cyclists were scattering. Small children who had never been driven to a play date in anything bigger than a Saab stood agog.

I thought, Boy, do the organizers of this shindig need to update their Rolodexes.

Nine months earlier when I still had some dregs left in my career, I had been invited to the conference. At that time my agent Lawson “I thought he was dead” Beavers called every six months or so to let me know that he was alive but still too busy to talk about any work for me. With a call now three months overdue, I was sure that one of us was terminally ill.

Driving up the 405 North, I wasn’t sure what the future would bring, whether I’d be able to pay overdue rent, but I certainly wasn’t going to chance having to pay for parking. That was one reason I nosed the Caddy into the service parking lot of the hotel and left it for the help to stare at. I slipped through a hedge, put the smell of Dumpsters to my back and sashayed up to the main entrance like I was a citizen of he greatest country on earth and everyone else was an illegal alien. Which was pretty much true up to that point.

Then I found the foyer to the main ballroom where other citizens were milling. The Road To Success session had 45 minutes before start time I could feel butterflies gathering in my belly, and before 45 minutes were up, they all would be skittering off the flight path. What in God’s name was I doing here?!

The bright lights of the panel were a writing team fresh from a hit feature and a three-picture development deal at hundred grand a pop, more if their scripts made it to the screen. They owned a house. The other two panelists were producer/writers, one of whom had a couple of hit series listed in the program notes.

A rule of thumb about entertainment incomes is that producers, directors and series writers own real estate. Writers-slash-nothing and most actors rent. The latter wait tables between pictures while the stars with mansions holiday at Betty Ford. The former—

“Jeff?”

Say my name with some progesterone behind it, and you’ve got my full attention. I turned to a woman. Suddenly the Caddy outside was brand new, and Saturday Night Fever was blasting from the speakers. We talked as if 23 years ago were just last week.

Christine Foster headed the Research and Development Department at Wolper Productions where I cut my teeth in show business. Before I met her, she had been a noviciate in a nunnery in Florida, jumped the wall for Hollywood but remained a devout Catholic. An atheist, I used to tease her mercilessly about religion. Now I was telling her about my conversion and giving her the straight dope about my circumstances.

She told me about her husband, another unemployed writer. She told me about becoming a literary agent and how hard it was to get work for any writer. She said some nice things about Lawson “I thought he was dead” Beavers. She asked me if I knew that she was moderating the upcoming panel.

Frankly, my dear, I was there only for the honorarium. I hadn’t finished reading the program notes posted in the foyer outside the ballroom.

If they’re not broadcasting your license number and asking you to move your car, or requesting that you step out of the aircraft for a full body search, hearing your name on a public address system can be rather pleasant. Once, twice, three times. Christine’s opening remarks were nearly all about me. I was talented, I was a gentleman, I was watching an audience of 300-plus begin to believe that I was the star of the panel.

Christine tossed me the first question. It was like playing slow pitch softball, and I was Hank Aaron. I hit a grand slam laugh line. She asked other panelists questions, but a lot of them were tagged with, “And, Jeff, what do you think?”

Afterwards I could offer only a brief thank-you. Christine had work to go to, and panelists were ushered to separate tables where conferees could line up for face time.

There was a black man who kept waiting off to the side until the very end of the time allotted for one-on-one. He was a reporter for a major daily, meaning that it wasn’t in California. He told me matter-of-factly that he could put a call into The White House and expect President Clinton to either pick up or get back to him within an hour or so.

The thing was, he kept wondering whether he would rather be a screenwriter. I had said some things that, when he read between the lines, made him uneasy about switching careers. What did I really think about writing for television and movies?

Flashback: Vietnam.

Besides girls, that was all we seemed to talk about in college, and at times recreation could be deadly serious too. One night in the common room of my freshman dorm I was playing poker. Across from me was a black man named Bill. We were the only ones left in the hand. It was my turn to fold, call his bet or up the ante. As I fingered what was left of my chips, he said very kindly, “Don’t play any more. Just get up and walk away.”

To Bill I owe the fact that had some money left for other aspects of my misspent youth. There was no way I could pay Bill back for seeing that I was a horrible gambler and relaying the truth as best he could. Perhaps, though, I could return the favor with the reporter.

I told him that nine months ago my Honda had been repossessed. I picked up a $1,200 mechanic’s lien on a Cadillac. It sputtered into the service lot of the hotel like a consumptive checking into a sanatorium. It was now bleeding oil on the pavement. I was praying that it wouldn’t seize up on the Sepulveda Pass when I went home.

I added that I was at least as talented as any other writer on the panel. I had a good agent who worked his tail off for me, but because he hadn’t been able to scare up any business lately, he was too embarrassed to call.

The reporter nodded. That was that.

I had planned to go home but I stuck around for the dinner that the sponsors were giving for the weekend’s panelists. I drank too much wine, my least favorite of adult beverages, but I wasn’t going to pay for drinks at the bar. I danced too long with a woman whose name and story I have both forgotten. I did get home in one piece, however.

Not long afterwards my wife said, “We’ve had our ups and down, but all this time you have provided for me and the children. Maybe now it’s my turn.”

I still work occasionally for relatively low pay but can thankfully report that my wife drives off every morning in a Lexus SUV. Left alone, I sometimes recall when I was an A List writer and a so-so human being. Whenever the conference comes to mind, my being any kind of writer doesn’t matter. I remember some very good people and dare to think I might have been one of them.

I call it a revelation, how the former host of The Tonight Show put the bible in perspective for me. At the time I was ignorant of Johnny Carson being anything but a comedian. The only bible I had laid a hand on was in court. I was innocent, I swear, but justice running amuck is a different story.

Before Johnny Carson became the King of Late Night Television, he took over from Edgar Bergman in hosting an afternoon quiz show, Who Do You Trust? Perpetual sidekick Ed McMahon would occasionally correct the grammar. “It should be ‘Whom.’ Whom Do You Trust?”

Whichever way you put it, it’s a good question.

It began rattling around my mind last week as I read a book published in 1953 by a scholarly pastor who was head of a high dollar church in Washington, DC. His thesis used the relatively new discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls to reveal that Jesus was probably not historical and definitely not divine, but if such a man existed, he was brainwashed by the end times messianic propaganda of the Essens, members of an extremist sect of Judaism, who were guardians of the scrolls.

If gospel writers held contrary opinions to the pastor, it was because they were hawking a myth. The First Century Jewish historian Josephus had described the Essens, but if his description didn’t back up the pastor’s claims about the sect, it was due to Josephus selling out to the Romans. Besides, José had ever been near the Dead Sea.

Maybe he hadn’t. I sure haven’t. What I’ve seen of the photographs of the scrolls, their writing might as well be chicken tracks. I have no idea if it is correct, the author’s assertion that most scholars of the Old and New Testaments think the scriptures are irrelevant to modern life, present a crock of nationalistic stepped-in-what? and rehash folklore clearly stolen from surrounding pagan cultures.

Maybe. Just as easily, it could be that Jimmy Carter’s assertion of being a Christian is another case of stepped-in-what? The man hammers nails in his retirement, does some writing; that’s all I truly know.

I am aware of- but have never met- biblical scholars who thoroughly disagree with the pastor who wrote the book. Allegedly, they’re not all fundamentalists, but they do start with the assumption that the biblical texts don’t have to be wrong. As a lowly, untutored hack, I see vast difference in at least the English translations of pagan creation stories and the Genesis account. Maybe if I spent time in seminary and learned Hebrew and Greek, I could find a few more examples. Depending on the seminary, of course.

In the meantime the only side I can count on regarding Jesus or Moses, or a whole bunch of things that have nothing to do with the bible, like automobiles causing the “Little Ice Age” of the 14th Century or whether the Holocaust really took place, is who do I trust?

Sorry. Whom.

About the same time the pastor’s book on the scrolls came out, C.S. Lewis addressed a conference of Anglican clergy in England. He stated that the laity did not know what most Anglican priests truly thought of traditional doctrines and popular beliefs. Then he warned, if ordinary people did find out, the clergy would be addressing empty pews. He wondered in an essay on the subject: why people so adamantly non-Christian still wanted the label?

Psst, Clive! Can you hear me? The money. Those boys couldn’t attract an audience unless they had collars on. Who else but the church was going to pay them to billow and squeak?

The American pastor was beyond warning. He was being very daring long before the Sixties made controversy comfortable. Although he died and went to God knows where, his church looks to be thriving. According to the internet site, it is planning to celebrate Kwanza right after Santa Claus comes.

With a few notable exceptions, the Church of England also seems to be navigating the post-modern waters with some success. Her architectural landmarks attract hordes of tourists and make for great echo chambers.

In the early seventies there was a large, growing charismatic ministry in Orange County headquartered near Knott's Berry Farm.  A friend of mine worked for the ministry in public relations, and a friend of his, a secretary, came to him fearfully one day to relate a telephone conversation she accidentally picked up on her extension.  It was between the head pastor and a man on the East Coast.  They were talking about the ministry and how it might better launder money for the Mafia.  

"What do we do?" she asked.

He thought a moment.  "Quit," he said.

Not so long ago my friend faced down a drug-addled punk threatening his family, so he's no coward.  But he’s always been prudent.  What he understood those thirty-plus years ago was that a mere secretary and a new college graduate with an expectant wife could not right a terrible wrong.  He was aware that local cops and FBI agents, or just their curious secretaries, could not always be trusted with secrets.  Sometimes they took bribes.   "Quit," was a good answer for a man with a growing family.  "Let's go to the law," would have been a bad one.

As far as I know, the ministry was never caught out, but over time it dwindled in influence, the number of congregates falling sharply.  Yesterday afternoon all this came back to me in a strange way.   I was brooding on the Senate's approval of a Chamberlain-like Secretary of Defense and the Iraq Study Group's recommendation to the President to get out as soon as possible.  Both, I thought, must be the morale boosters for the Mafia and disheartening for--

My friend's story was taking on an unexpected allegorical bent.  The Mafia is Islamic fascism.  The ministry is the United States of America.  The law is a lot of wishful thinking: that the U.N. might do something; that Saudi Arabia is an ally; that Syria and Iran aren't already engaged against us; that it's OK for a while longer to send men to die for something we're planning to walk away from.  

The friend?  He's someone like me, or maybe you, who marvels at the corruption of thought prevailing among our leaders but knows full well that one can't do a thing about it.  It is nations, not individuals, that make war, win, capitulate or surrender.  Iraq's immediate reaction to events here was a call for a "regional solution" to the war.  Whatever else that means, it puts Iran in charge, and the leadership there has already said what it is planning to do--produce nukes, wipe out Israel and put the West under a caliphate.

Allegories can be stretched only so far, which is why I’m switching to an historical comparison. A family man in the Philippines in 1941 would have been well advised to find a rabbit hole.   Whether a Japanese tank rolled over it was outside his province.  Praying was called for because which side will dwindle is always up for grabs.  But even if it is your enemy’s side, what happens in the short run can be pretty ugly and take years from which to recover.

The fellow I'm now working for sent following news item.  It shows what the intelligentsia in America has on its mind, a kind of Maginot Line made up of lies and half-truths about your automobile and American industry being the real problems.