I first met Charles Schulz in 1968. He was at the beach working on
the latest episode of "Peanuts," and one of his extras didn't show up. I
think it was that red-headed girl, but I'm not sure. It was supposed
to be a pretty basic episode. Schulz's star, Charlie Brown, is at the
beach playing. He loses his beach ball. The girl returns it, and Brown
gets all hot for her or something. Pretty basic. But, without the girl,
there's no story.
I was minding my own business, building a sand castle or what not,
and Schulz comes up to me and says, "Hey kid, you want to be in a
comic strip? I'll buy you some ice cream." Now, I wasn't much
interested in showbiz, but I always have had a fondness for ice
cream. So I agreed to do the strip. Everything went pretty smoothly,
and Schulz asked me what flavor of ice cream I wanted. I told him
vanilla, and he just kind of snickered. He was like, "Vanilla? You sure
you don't want chocolate? Isn't that more your style kid?" I didn't
think much of it at the time, I just wanted my damn ice cream. Now,
looking back, it seems to mean a lot more.
About nine months later, I get a call from Schulz. He tells me people
loved my appearance, and he wants to make me a reoccurring
character in his strip. He says I'll be able to get all the ice cream I
can stomach. I guess I was pretty naive at the time, but it sounded
like a great deal. Little did I realize, I wasn't a reoccurring character,
I was a token character. C'mon, the strip had lots of women, a dog, hell,
even a bird, but did you notice any minorities in the cast other than
me? Hell no. I was it. Schulz's little token black boy.
Despite my insignificant part, I continued to do the work, even
turning down offers from competing strips. Hell, if I would have
taken a gig with "Mary Worth" or "Blondie," I still would have just been
a token character. Besides, Schulz was doing movies at this point,
and I guess I was blinded by the bright lights. It's one thing to see
your face in the papers, but words can't begin to describe the feeling
you get once you make it onto the big screen.
Since I wasn't a regular character, like Lucy or Linus, I also had time
to pursue other interests. I worked on a few blaxsploitation flix in
the '70s, but none of them really broke through. It was good
experience, and I started to learn all the behind-the-scenes work.
Before too long, I was writing and producing. Now I don't want to say
it was because of my skin color, but none of the studios wanted to
get behind my ideas. I even tried some writing for television, but it
wasn't really my bag. I put together a few scripts for "Diff'rent
Strokes" - finally, a show with some black kids. I even filmed an
episode, but for some reason, it never aired.
That was a turning point in my career. I was a little
bitter. OK, actually I was super pissed. Nobody wanted to support my
work, and no one would take me seriously as a writer or an actor.
After my work on "Diff'rent Strokes," I started hanging out with Todd
Bridges. You can imagine the rest. Drugs, alcohol, whores, I couldn't
get enough of any of them. And, I wasn't exactly rolling in the green.
I was hardly ever doing anything with "Peanuts" anymore. I think
Schulz was upset because I was trying to be my own man. Anyhow,
I needed to make some cash, so I put together a little stable of
bitches and started pimpin'.
I know pimps have a bad reputation, but I was good to my girls. I
kept them fed and clothed and disease free. Because I ran such a
high-class operation, I started landing some pretty famous clients.
These weren't street hos I was running. I had the finest pussy out
there for a while. Pimpin' was exciting, but it was nothing compared
to showbiz. Along the way, I don't want to say exactly how, but I met
Arsenio Hall. He was trying to take over that Joan Rivers show on Fox,
but his material was weak. What he needed, was a good writer, and I
just happened to know the best - Me!
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