Been in New Orleans nearly two months now. Shows winding down.   Home stretch.   It’s been a pretty cool ride with Sylvester Stallone and Walter Hill.  Come on!  Rocky! And the Warriors!  Pinch me!  Renewed and forever solidified my idea of what is right and wrong when it comes to work ethic.  Regardless of age and one’s station in life, hard work is black and white.  Either you work hard…or you’re a lazy, short cutting mofo and results fall accordingly.  These two men, and I use the word “Men” with the up most admiration.  For Hill and Stallone have taught me a lot of what being a Man is about.  One has become a wonderful father figure… the other that cool uncle you always want to hang out with. They simply, are a First Class cut of men that is rare today- High-class gentlemen with a blue-collar roar to life.

Frankly, I had reservations at first…what if Stallone and Hill phoned it in?  What if this was just another million dollar paycheck for them?  Thoughts came and went, I never hoped for too much in case they turned out to be a couple smoky- mirror quacks.  But there was no phoning in, no quackery.  Just the real deal, simply they work their ass, and this is why they are still in the game.  Simple.

Seems so long ago now but when we started I was sacred out of my mind.  I mean, what would I have in common with these guys.  Could I play in the same league with true legitimate Icons?  Could I merit their respect?  Call it timing, call it fate, but we all met when we had more similarities than differences.  Each of us had something at stake, something to prove.  To ourselves, to the business of Hollywood, maybe even to the world.  For a ‘Chinaman-Gook-Jap face’, I have so much to prove.  I’m going to show them an Asian American male can act, can be funny, can get the girl, can kick some ass, can speak English, can make money.  For Stallone, he set out to prove, nothing has been lost in years of Super Stardom, nothing is lost after 50 plus movies, nothing is lost when you are a iconic characterture, nothing is lost and he still has a lot of mojo to share.  For Hill, he set out to prove 70’s is the new Hollywood 20’s.  A man with such a rich legacy in Hollywood, going back to writing for the great Sam Peckinpah, writing the ‘Aliens screenplay’, directing Warriors, 48 Hours, has the same hunger in eyes that Justin had during Better Luck Tomorrow.  The emotions come from the same place.  Everything is uphill but you still have a story to tell.  Hill has to fight the stereotype of Age, Stallone, the stereotype of, well of himself.  And me…well, the stereotype of my small eyes.  So we went to battle!  Went to wage war to tell a story about, as Walter Hill likes to describe it…”Two guys at a bar…

Stay Tuned.