Plotting His Next Big Break
Long after "lights out," he labors quietly at a keyboard. His "room" is a cubicle large enough to hold two cots, two lockers and a shared desk. Among his few personal items: a cellphone, a wireless laptop, a laser printer. "Home" is a shelter run by the Salvation Army; he is one of nearly 300 people who sleep in the former military depot in Bell every night.
For Eric Monte, the last few years have been a blur of disasters. A series of strokes led to a spell of anti-seizure medicines and the loss of some memory. A year of crack cocaine abuse robbed him of money, dignity and a circle of Hollywood friends. Attempts to sell a self-published book drained the last of his savings.
The laptop, he insists, holds the key to a comeback: 30 movie and book projects waiting to be pitched.
And that just might be true.
Thirty-five years ago, Monte was among a group of young African American writers and directors who sparked an explosion of black culture. He wrote and helped create some of the most popular -- and groundbreaking -- movies and TV shows of the 1970s. He started with one episode of "All in the Family," moved on to co-create "Good Times" and wrote the 1975 film "Cooley High," which, in turn, inspired the hit 1976 TV series "What's Happening!!"
With success came an NAACP Image Award, a house in Tarzana at the foot of the Santa Monica Mountains, a Mercedes-Benz and the excitement of helping to spur a new generation of programming. Not only would Monte's shows portray African American families, the individual characters would be multidimensional and the scripts would avoid negative stereotypes. He would break with tradition and illustrate that life for the working poor isn't all about crime, drugs and cheap laughs.
But Hollywood, he says, did not share his vision.
Monte, considered by some -- even his friends -- to be his own worst enemy, was prickly about script changes and refused to endorse plots he considered degrading to blacks. He wanted more control, but when it came to ownership, he says he was frozen out.
In 1977 he filed a lawsuit accusing ABC, CBS, producers Norman Lear and Bud Yorkin and others of stealing his ideas for "Good Times," "The Jeffersons" (an "All in the Family" spinoff) and "What's Happening!!" Eventually, he says, he received a $1-million settlement and a small percentage of the residuals from "Good Times" -- but opportunities to pitch new scripts dried up along with his money. He lost the car, the four-bedroom house he shared with his two daughters and almost all the trappings of his successful life.
