They Call Me Supermensch Read online

  EPIGRAPH

  May the poor find wealth

  Those weak with sorrow find joy.

  May the forlorn find new hope,

  Constant happiness and prosperity.

  May the frightened cease to be afraid,

  And those bound be free.

  May the weak find power

  And may their hearts join in friendship.

  —His Holiness the Dalai Lama

  CONTENTS

  Epigraph

  Introduction

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Epilogue

  Photos Section

  About the Author

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  INTRODUCTION

  ONE NIGHT IN 1968 I WAS DRIVING IN LOS ANGELES, looking for a place to stay, after just quitting the job that had brought me from New York to California. I saw a hotel vacancy sign, pulled into the semicircular driveway, and parked. The Landmark Motor Hotel at 7047 Franklin Avenue was built in the 1950s and looked it. Very Southern California Modern—a long strip of concrete, steel, and glass, with two tiers of rooms whose doors opened out onto balconies. Palm trees and typical L.A. shrubbery stood around it.

  I went up three or four steps and through the glass doors of the lobby. From the lobby I could see into the central courtyard and the swimming pool, with more rooms surrounding it. The man behind the desk was small, slender, well manicured, with a thin mustache. He looked like a character actor from a James Cagney movie—which it turned out he had been. His name was Charles Latour, but I’d learn that no one ever used his first name. Everyone addressed him as Mr. Latour. He and Mrs. Latour were the managers. He was very nice and gave me a good rate on the only unit available, a two-bedroom suite, number 224. I didn’t have a bank account, just the cash in my pocket, but that was enough to get me the room for three or four weeks.

  Mr. Latour walked me into the courtyard, around the pool, and up to the second-floor balcony. Number 224 was a corner unit. The living room had a sofa and a couple of chairs in that fifties plastic style that was never comfortable. You always felt you were going to slide off them onto the floor. Past that was a dining table and chairs, and a small kitchen. Bedrooms were left and right, with a bathroom in the middle.

  I settled into the place and took a hit of acid. On one hand I was really scared to be in Los Angeles. I was in my early twenties and a continent away from my family and friends. The job I had headed to California for had ended in less than a day. I had enough money to survive for maybe a month, and no prospects beyond that. My mother had always accused me of being irresponsible. I seemed to be proving her right.

  On the other hand, I was ecstatic. I was on my own in Hollywood, California, high as a kite on acid. For the first time in my life I had nobody to tell me what to do. I was simultaneously scared to death and thinking, Wow, man, look at you!

  Around midnight I stepped out onto the balcony. The courtyard was hazy with that kind of misty fog that rolls into L.A. some nights, and lit from inside by the blue pool lights. I was standing there, awash in my confusion of fear and elation, when from somewhere in that blue haze, down by the pool, I heard a girl scream. I could barely make out some figures down there. For some reason, whenever someone is in trouble, in any way, my instinct is always to be the guy on the white horse who saves them. I hurried down the stairs and into the haze. Ahead of me vague figures tumbled around beside the pool near the diving board. My brain went right to rape. I’m not sure why. Rape had never been any part of my life.

  I said something like, “Hey, man, you can’t do that,” and went to separate them.

  That’s when the girl punched me in the mouth.

  “We’re fucking,” she said. “Would you please leave us alone?”

  Boy was I embarrassed. I made a hasty retreat back up to my room, feeling much more like a schmuck than a hero. The ecstatic side of my mood vanished, and it took a while to get to sleep.

  The next afternoon I woke up to a beautiful day of Southern California sunshine. I went down to the pool, where some young people my age were lounging around in the shade. The girl among them asked, “Are you the guy who interrupted us last night?” She told everyone the story and they all started laughing.

  Then she introduced herself. She was Janis Joplin. Lounging on pool chairs around her were Jimi Hendrix; Lester and Willie Chambers of the Chambers Brothers, who had the hit song “Time Has Come Today”; Bobby Neuwirth, Bob Dylan’s road manager; and Paul Rothchild of Elektra Records, who produced albums by Janis, the Doors, and others.

  Completely by chance, without knowing a thing about it, I had put myself in the hotel where a lot of music people stayed when they came to L.A. I had no idea at that moment, but the rest of my life had just begun.

  In January 2012, it ended.

  Twice.

  I was on an operating table at the time, unaware of the drama as I flatlined twice and the doctors revived me. I didn’t know about my deaths until I woke up in a hospital bed a couple of days later, feeling really peaceful and at ease. When they told me, it occurred to me that if I hadn’t woken up, I would be okay with that.

  Now, I was on intravenous painkillers, which I’m sure contributed to my blissful state. Still, I have never forgotten that feeling, like death was really easy. It wasn’t that I wanted to die. I wasn’t suicidal. But if I had died, I could accept that. I was sixty-six years old. I had lived a relatively long and very successful life, with many incredible adventures since that night I stumbled on the Landmark. I had gotten to know and be friends with a lot of amazing people. I had cooked for the Dalai Lama! I got to experience love! I considered myself very, very lucky. If it had all ended while I was blissfully unaware, so be it.

  I couldn’t hold on to that sense of peace forever, though. In fact, by the next day I was beginning to feel pretty low and sorry for myself. I had almost died! I was alone in a blank white hospital room, with no wife and family around me. And it was Friday the thirteenth. I could look out the window at beautiful trees, but I couldn’t touch them, and didn’t know if I ever would again.

  The phone rang. It was Mike Myers.

  “Ready to say yes now?”

  He was referring to the documentary he wanted to make about me, an idea I had been resisting for years by then. I was touched and flattered that he thought anyone would want to watch a movie about a guy they probably had never heard of. I mean, a lot of people in show business knew who I was. I probably have more celebrity friends than most of my celebrity friends. Guess I’m part groupie. But I had never sought fame and celebrity for myself. My job as a manager had always been to make other people famous. My own satisfaction came from being very good at that, and from helping my clients get what they wanted. When the band Alice Cooper, my very first clients, were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2011 at the Waldorf-Astoria in Manhattan, we were elated. It had been a long, often bizarre journey since we met in Los Angeles in 1968. I was so happy for them, and proud of myself. But I left the ceremony right after and was back in my hotel room ten minutes later. I high-fived myself in the mirror and went to sleep. It was my job, not my life.
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br />   I have learned that fame has no intrinsic value. And I have seen what harm fame did to many of my friends and clients. The more fame they got, the more damage it seemed to do them. Why would I want that?

  But now I said yes to Mike. Maybe it was ego, maybe it was the painkillers, but whatever the reason, I’m really glad I agreed. Because in making Supermensch, Mike got me to start seeing my life in a new way. I had always thought of my life as a series of random events, all luck and circumstance, like the way I met Janice and Jimi. Soon after that I started managing Alice Cooper as a cover for selling my rock friends drugs. Within a few years Alice was one of the biggest rock acts in the world, and I started branching out to manage other types of performers.

  I first went to Maui because I was trying to quit smoking. I didn’t quit, but I bought a house, and have lived in Paradise ever since. In the 1970s I started producing and distributing independent films as a favor to a friend. Having dinner during the Cannes Film Festival, I met the world-renowned chef Roger Vergé. That led me on another journey, managing the careers of many of the greatest chefs in the world. More important, Vergé showed me how to live a happy and fulfilled life in service to others. I saw it again when I met His Holiness the Dalai Lama. I met him through Sharon Stone—whom I met at Cannes.

  My whole life has seemed to go that haphazard way. I get up in the morning, start down one path, and it leads to another, and another. I always knew that I was living a very lucky life, but it wasn’t until Mike made Supermensch that I started seeing that there might be a way to connect the dots. Mike helped me realize that maybe there’s something to my life’s journey, some lessons I’ve learned along the way, that would be useful to other people.

  Since Supermensch had its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival in September 2013, I’ve been overwhelmed by the response. All kinds of people, from all over the world, seem to be touched in some positive way by the movie. Everywhere I go, strangers stop me on the street to thank me for it. They have sent me letters and emails and left hundreds of comments on Facebook and Twitter, like:

  “I was blown away by his generous, giving spirit.”

  “Shep should run the planet.”

  “We should all approach business the way this great man has.”

  Of course, some of the people I hear from are struggling writers, actors, or musicians who want me to manage or advise them. I guess the movie makes it seem like I have the magic touch and can make anybody a star. I’ve heard from women who want to meet my friends or have my baby. People send me gifts, too. A vintner in Napa Valley shipped me some bottles of a very, very precious wine with a note: “I love your approach to business and to life. If there is anything I can do to be of assistance to you in Napa or northern Cal, just let me know.” Somebody else sent me a check for a thousand dollars to donate to the charity of my choice.

  I’ve also heard from titans of industry and well-known entertainers who’ve seen the movie, were deeply affected, and want to meet me or just talk on the phone. I got really curious to know what it was they were seeing and hearing in the movie, so I accepted some of the invitations. I was hoping they would show me a pattern in my life I wasn’t aware of.

  This search led me once again to say yes to something I had said no to many times. At a Brooklyn book signing by my friend chef Roy Choi, Anthony Bourdain (there I go being a groupie again) came over to me and said he wanted to do my memoir as one of the line of books, including Roy’s, that he was putting out through Ecco. “I want to look behind the curtain and see what makes a supermensch,” he said. I thought about it for a day, and decided maybe doing a book would help me understand why my life has unfurled the way it has. I called him and said yes, and the journey began.

  As I wrote this book I looked for some common threads linking the events in my apparently accidental life. One of the things people seem to respond most strongly to in the movie is the perception that I’ve managed to become successful in the cutthroat worlds of the music and movie businesses while staying a nice guy, and apparently a happy one. It’s not something we’re used to seeing. In business, and especially in the music and movie businesses, you’re supposed to get ahead by being the alpha dog who barks the loudest, bites the deepest, and doesn’t care who he screws over.

  I’m not that guy. I’ve always taken a very different approach. Writing this book got me thinking about what that is, some guiding principles I’ve lived and done business by.

  Two simple words came up over and over again: Thank you. I wake up in the morning and say thank you. I say it again when I go to sleep at night, and countless times in between. I’ve been doing it for decades, and it always makes me feel good. To me, life is a miracle. It’s a miracle that I’m here, no matter what kind of day I’m having. It’s a miracle that I have this extraordinarily complex body that can feel both pleasure and pain. It’s a miracle that I have this amazingly complex brain that’s capable of both joy and sadness. When I’m feeling lonely or sad or confused, it’s a miracle I’m even here to feel lonely or sad or confused. I’m so happy that I can feel sad.

  We have so many things to be thankful for. Pick a few each day. Your health, your friends, your weather, your dog, your breathing, your seeing, your walking. Lots to choose from. Try it.

  Something else that makes me happy: Do something nice for someone today. Something you didn’t have to do, maybe for someone you don’t know. I find that making others happy makes me happy. Simple, but very effective.

  Then there’s a big principle behind the way I have always tried to conduct business: Create win-win situations. I call it doing compassionate business. It doesn’t have to be winners and losers. It can be winners and winners.

  Along with that goes my idea of the coupon. When somebody does me a favor, I feel I am obligated to return that favor. I say they have a coupon with me. They can redeem that coupon anytime, in any way, and I will honor it. That’s win-win, too.

  I have tried never to hurt people or draw blood. If I did, it was by accident, and I certainly didn’t gloat about it. I try to live by a mantra: Don’t get mad. Getting mad only hurts. Use that energy to accomplish your goal.

  And then there’s this: Create history, don’t wait for it to happen. Visualize your goal, then create the road that will take you there.

  I realize how lucky I have been to have mentors who illuminated a path for me. I had always thought of it as random, but maybe it isn’t. That’s way too big a question for me, but it did get me to examine my life for those common threads. I hope that in reading this you will find some simple tools that will help make your journey through life happier and more meaningful. At the very least you can get a peek into a life well lived (I think), and hear some great stories.

  One note: The events and experiences detailed in this book are all true and have been faithfully rendered as I remember them, to the best of my ability. Some of it happened a long time ago, and I wasn’t taking notes thinking I’d write this book someday. The conversations come from my recollection of them, but I can’t claim they represent word-for-word documentation. Rather, I tell them in a way that I think evokes the real feeling and meaning of what was said, and in keeping with the true essence of the events.

  1

  I WAS BORN ON OCTOBER 18, 1945, in Jackson Heights, Queens. We lived in an apartment there until I was in the third grade. I had one brother, Edward, three years older than me. My father, Benjamin, and mother, Pauline, were first-generation Americans, the children of immigrants. My mother’s mother, Fanny Frank, lived seven or eight blocks away. She and a lot of her sisters had come over from Poland, and I grew up knowing their large family. My mom’s brother Benny lived with Fanny.

  My earliest recollections are of walking from our apartment to my grandmother’s when I was five or six, holding my father’s hand or my uncle Benny’s. Jackson Heights was very Russian and Eastern European Jewish, plus some Italian. Everyone lived in brick apartment buildings like ours, twenty-five units, fifty, a hund
red. It was a nice neighborhood, clean and safe, just like in the old TV serials. All the neighbors knew each other and helped each other out. When someone new moved into the building everybody brought them housewarming gifts. It was all people just like us on the street, lots of babies in carriages and kids playing. The older people, my grandmother’s generation, spoke the languages of back home, which I didn’t understand.

  In my memory I look up at my dad as we walk through the neighborhood. He’s middle-aged, six feet tall, brown hair going gray and thin on top, wearing thick glasses that made his eyes look a bit squinty. I don’t think he ever looked in a mirror. Clothing meant nothing to him. But he kept himself in good shape, and although he never talked about it, he was athletic. He had some trophies he’d won playing handball, and he was a good golfer. I always felt he was a handsome man. After he passed away, I went through a box of his things and found a card he and a few of his friends had printed up when they were young men in the 1930s. It said, “Bachelors available for parties.” That makes me laugh every time I see it. He and my mother made a striking couple. She was five foot seven and beautiful, with jet-black hair.

  He was a bookkeeper all his life. At first he worked at a brewery called Feigenspan’s in Brooklyn, then as the office manager at a place called Herman’s Handkerchiefs and Scarves in midtown Manhattan. He never talked about his work. He didn’t talk much at all. He had a beautiful smile, though, and could laugh himself to tears. I don’t know if timid is the right word to use, but he certainly was not an aggressive man. He never pushed himself forward. He never even drove a car, which was really unusual for a man in those days. I only saw him angry once. He was not a sad man, not depressed in any way, just quiet.

  My grandmother’s apartment was on the second floor, at the end of a hallway. It had a metal door with a buzzer and a little round viewer so the person inside could see who was there. When that door opened you could see through her foyer and down a hall straight into her kitchen, which was right out of Happy Days. It was very small, with just barely room for her to turn around. A Formica table with benches stood on the linoleum floor. She had a primitive white icebox with a chrome handle, and a four-burner gas stove. And she had knickknacks all around, snow globes and little porcelain animals.