Alright, I’ll grant you that the New York Jets, at 3-0 under former USC quarterback Mark Sanchez, may be the best team in history. But that presupposes you’re a Jets’ fan, something that probably requires you having been alive in 1969 when the wild-ass, mustachioed Joe Namath was “guaranteeing” victory over our parents, old-line Baltimore Colts. (The shock being that the Jets beat the Colts at their own game, running….)
Another Jets’ fan I know is screenwriter Louis (pronounced, in the NYC vernacular, “Lewwy”) Venosta.
I’ve been tempted to call him these last several days. You see, at one point, when I was a film student at Columbia, I lived on the Broadway side of 106th Street; Louis (remember, “Lewwy”) lived on the other, Columbus Avenue side.
But we both wore our #12 Joe Namath jerseys proudly every Sunday the Jets played.
Cut to: A couple of years later.
I’m now Newsweek’s entertainment correspondent in L.A. and my old friend Louis ”from the block” (as J.Lo put it), is suddenly a big star in Hollywood.
Turns out his brother wanted to be a dancer and (just like in “Fame,” the original) brought his younger brother Louis with him to the audition. The older brother didn’t make it, but Maurice Bejart, one of the chief choreographers of the ‘70s, fell in love with Louis and took him on tour through Europe for several years.
When he got back, at 18 and not knowing what to do, he went to an audition for this new movie (in 1980), “Fame.” Not only was he picked as a principal dancer (you can see his Che Guevera-like visage eyeing the beautiful blonde ballerina in the opening sequence), but director Alan Parker liked his story so much that he incorporated it as the main “throughline” to the script. (His screen name is “Leon.”)
Cut to a couple of years later still…
It’s the mid-‘80s and, the world not having seen a good martial-arts movie since Bruce Lee died in the early ‘70s, is suddenly treated to a new, #1 hit, “Berry Gordy's The Last Dragon” (directed, of course, by Motown founder Gordy, but written by Louis Venosta). Naturally, it starts a new trend, bringing everyone from Brian Bosworth to Jean-Claude Van Damme to the screen -- the first big movies of each, “Stone Cold,” and “Double Impact,” I oversaw as vice-president of production for Michael Douglas’ Stonebridge Entertainment.
So, of course, I reconnected with Louis, who was now represented by UTA founder Jeremy Zimmer and living on the beach in Malibu (a long way from 106th!)
Turns out he’s now one of the hot screenwriters in town (later writing “Bird on a Wire” for Mel Gibson and Goldie Hawn). He and I decide to start a new boxing society (since we considered the rest of Hollywood to be wimps) called the Malibu Boxing and Brix Society, or BBBS (we had T-shirts made to that effect.)
