I woke up one day while in film school with an idea I really wanted to flush out. I was fascinated with the notion of man his love affair with sports and thought I had the perfect vehicle to explore it. Sometime around breakfast I decided to skip my classes that day and just start writing. I don’t know what drove me to do it. Writing scripts has always been one of the hardest tasks for me to do, but not that day. I wrote and wrote and wrote. It was one of those rare experiences where the ideas simply jumped from my head onto the keyboard. I decided in the midst of the craziness that it was going to be a pilot for a television show. I had no idea what a pilot script looked like and I didn’t care. All I knew was I had to finish it. No exaggerations, I sat down for twenty two hours straight and finished it. While writing it I had only one actor in mind playing the lead: Pat Morita. Not Mr. Miyagi or Arnold with the accent Pat Morita but the American comedian Pat Morita.

After the high wore off I decided to see if the script was actually any good. I read it and thought even though it needed a lot of work the essence of what I was trying to explore was there. So for the next month I read every book I could find about TV pilots and its structure and re-wrote it. Once I “finished” a bigger question arose- what to do next? I had no idea since I knew no one in the industry and the idea of TV was even more foreign to me. I decided I would try to get in touch with Mr. Morita. Not sure if it was the protocol but I figured it couldn’t hurt to have an Oscar nominated actor in my corner. I was able to acquire Mr. Morita’s agent’s address and sent the script along.

Months went by. I had moved on to other projects. But then one day, the phone rang. It was Mr. Morita’s agent. And this was all he said, “Pat read the script and is interested.” I was jumping up and down, not believing that an American icon had just read my script! I asked what I should do next and he replied, “Pat read the script and is interested.’ and hung up. Not wanting to dampen the victory, I decided to just bask in whatever that was. A couple of months went by and… nothing. Then one day the phone rang again and it’s the agent. He said, “Pat is in Vegas and wants to meet with you.” Hell yeah! I was a broke film student but realized trips like that was the reason why I applied for those high interest credit cards. I jumped on a plane that day and was in Vegas by the afternoon.

My only instruction was to meet Mr. Morita in front of the Plaza Casino at 9pm. I arrived on time and waited. After about fifteen minutes I started to think I should’ve demanded a number to call from his agent. About the half hour mark I started to plan out my night of Vegas alone. That was when I heard someone singing “Just in time… Just in case…”. I turned around to see the man himself. I knew he was short and he was much smaller in person, but only physically. He definitely made up for it in energy and presence. “You like lounge acts?” he asked. I nodded and away we went. We lounge hopped as he explained to me the history of each band and how important they were to the idea of Vegas. He’d get on stage sometimes with the bands and just riff jokes and songs. Of course, there was also I lot of wine involved. I thought I was pretty good at holding my liquor until I met Mr. Morita. The guy can pound it down. After about four lounges, he grabbed me and said “Let’s get the hell out of here and go drink.”

We then walked around old school downtown Vegas from bar to bar. Everybody recognized him everywhere and of course, every ten seconds they’d request the Karate Kid crane pose from him. At first I was a little sensitive about the whole “oriental, Mr. Miyagi” thing but i came to realize by how Mr. Morita handled the situation that it all came from a place of love. He simply embraced it, rewrapped it the way he wanted to, and gave the people an amazing story to share with their friends and family. There was no fake Asian accent, just a lot of good old American jokes (some really funny dirty ones too). And then he’d do the crane kick as the big finish and tell them to fuck off. The crowds ate it up.

In between more drinks and crane kicks throughout the night he’d share with me his life as a stand up comic and how he was known as the “hip nip”. He talked about how it didn’t matter what people called him as long as he knew he owned it. He also talked a lot about the old days on the road and about how to work the crowds. I was barely able to keep up. The other thing I remember was that he’d break into song all through the night (a lot of pun songs with my name. Just in case this, Just in time that.) Whether it was some oldie but goodie or just words that he’d string together, that was definitely the soundtrack for the night. There was never any talk of the script or anything about how we were going to go and make a TV show. And at about 4am, he simply said goodbye and got into a cab. I remember standing there watching the taxi drive off completely confused. But now with some time and experience under my belt, I look back at that night fondly and profoundly thankful that he would take a night out of his life to hang out with some kid who didn’t know what the hell he was doing. And now I know exactly what he was trying to tell me, and I hear it in the way he sang that night… “Just in case, Just in time, just keep doing what you’re doing…”