My new YouTUBE Channel, books, ("OTHER LIVES, BENDS IN THE ROAD AND WHAT-IFs," etc.)," and being scared how close I came to living in the Lahaina, Hawaii fire!

My YOUTUBE CHANNEL: https://www.youtube.com/@LIGHTVIDEORick

Until recently I thought of myself as a filmmaker first & foremost, over writing & producing book (felt like my output of 26+ indie features linked here to my new YouTUBE CHANNEL!) was a pretty good place to call it a day), though I did write a how-to tome-of-sorts back in 1988, entitled, FEATURE FILMMAKING AT USED-CAR PRICES (Viking Penguin), which temporarily bailed me out of recurring lab debts from my first features. And surprisingly, I’m now doing both!—got a current feature, tentatively called BREAD MACHINE, in the editing oven (see preview of on-location shoot and DOC/Password BFF). Son Morgan Schmidt-Feng is seen on-set as co-producer/DP, with second camera (Lloyd Francis, who also shot THE 5TH WALL), along with my daughter/Co-producer, Heather, keeping the shoot together!

A few years after I left the Bay Area for a more affordable New Mexican existence with my wife Julie (luckily just before Covid hit) I took up this personal challenge to jump into Substack. I continued to see if I could make decent contributions as have writers like Sherman Alexie, who’s postings I’ve been greatly enjoying (I was already a great fan and met him a while back in my Pacific Northwest digs).  And I’m surprised that even Garrison Keillor has touched me in ways I didn’t expect (thanks again, Substack).  Never met him (Ha), and in fact was never a Prairie Home Companion fan, but his damn infectious/brilliant posts remind me of (1), my Midwest/Chicago frigid-winter, straight-talking roots, and (2), that sometimes I shouldn’t negate something before I even know what it’s about). Also, postings by Hanif Kureishi are cherished––he reports from his terribly unfortunate disability after an accident.  It’s these writers who inadvertently have made me decide to try this path of communication.

I’ve been writing books lately, including a trilogy of “Treasury of Art” photo books about my and Julie’s art collection, plus another entitled The Art of Julie Schachter, 50 Years of Sculptures, Paintings, and Drawings, 1972-2022. And penned a novel, “Other Lives, Bends in the Road, and What-Ifs.”

In an earlier downtime (1999) of neither having a burning film concept and/or any $ to do something about it (charging CCs was finally a no-no), I wrote more and tried my hand at a “conspiracy/suspense/thriller” entitled, “BLACK PRESIDENT.”  After all, I did get an agent from the film book and hoped I could get some revenue flowing, maybe enough to even keep my house a bit longer.  The original title was “Kennedy’s Twins” because that’s what it was about—two identical twin Black men growing up, youth in Chicago to adult politics, while secretly being the unknown sons of JFK.

After beating the bushes awhile, submitting the novel blindly to whatever Houses caught my online eye (my agent also tried to sell it) I came across a UK house online, Picnic Publishing, and blindly submitted it there like I had to others. And suddenly I got a positive email response saying that they wanted to see the ms. ( (I spent a pretty penny FedExing it there!). And they WANTED TO PUBLISH! (YAY for slush piles!). So I got to experience that indescribable, shockingly high feeling of hitting the jackpot—1st novel PUBLISHED!  

“BLACK PRESIDENT,” (Picnic Publishing, UK ©2008)

I was suddenly in seventh heaven (is there a sixth or 5th that’s also good?) and enjoyed all the steps of interaction with that small house and its co-owner, including suddenly having a former Sussex House senior editor in my life, who firmed it up with what he reported was “five passes, and still loving it.”  It did sell about 1000 copies initially, in Europe and elsewhere. 

I added a new new US edition with new cover graphic with a photo of Kennedy I found at Urban Ore in Berkeley, plus over months turning it into a 3-part edition (spending time writing two follow-up novels to complete the story)

Another version of the book-as-hardcover––a monster-thick, 792 page ‘COLLECTIBLE,’ all-in-one “door-stop size" entitled KENNEDY’S TWINS TRILOGY–– is available at Abe Books:” And a 2025 publication, what I call the “Substack Edition,” (I posted the book’s text over a several months…re-wrote parts as I went) is now available on Kindle). Please take a look

So I’ve been extremely lucky when flirting with this second occupation.  A full, blow-by-blow account of getting “FEATURE FILMMAKING AT USED-CAR FILMMAKING” to publication in 1988 against all odds is covered in my recent filmmaking book, “NEW DARK AGES––How a Punk Movie EMERALD CITIES Got Its Improv (©2020, Chapter-6). If you don’t know my movies yet, maybe begin by checking out reviews for my punkEMERALD CITIES, which features music by bands FLIPPER and THE MUTANTS And here’s a look at Mubi movie’s trailer

I’m holding the curtain on left (tennis visor), Kelly Brock Boen on right, while co-camera Bill Kimberlin frames shot of lead actress Carolyn Zaremba (Death Valley, CA, 1979).

Enough looking back!  My newest book, “Other Lives, Bends in the Road, and What-Ifs.” is, of course, my current darling––and something to worry about…Will it find an audience in the midst of all the other millions of orphan-books out there in the amazon swamp.  In a nutshell, it’s about several of my personal “what-Ifs,’ covering some of the most important choices I made in real life (“REAL-LIFE” STORIES), and their corresponding “ALTERNATE UNIVERSE” fiction accounts, me fantasizing about where things might have led if the choices were different. 

Feedback from my friends has happily informed me that the book works in a way I hadn’t expected, each reader sent to thinking about their own lives in this same manner.  The question is; Where would YOU be today, if you made different choices?

Here’s book’s US amazon link with details about alternate universe stories I’ve included. And pretty affordable, collectible, high-quality copies of ‘WHAT IFS’ are available from Berlin, Germany, where a B&W/wire-bound edition is online.

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Thinking about this Substack posting today, I’ve had the re-occurring thought about several more personal stories I hadn’t covered in this first edition.  Mainly, how I purposely bypassed my “LAHAINA” STORY, based on if I had taken either the bus-boy or waiter job I’d secured while on a short Hawaiian visit there in 1980.  Had I kept working and living in that small town––establishing friends and lovers, remaining in that paradise setting––I may have been caught up in the horrible, beyond imagination fire that recently wreaked havoc there, which most likely destroyed the restaurants where I was to be employed and places I’d lived then as a 36-year-old.  Fortunately I ultimately decided to return to California instead, heeding the call of my art career; my kinetic sculpture showing there required a smash-in at the Oakland Museum’s “Metal Show” (seen on back cover of my memoir, “TWELVE DEAD FROGS. (That’s me sporting newly-short hair, suit-and-tie costume, and an Hawaiian suntan in photo by Eric Cheney.) Also, by returning, I wanted to maintain my contact with my young children from a first marriage.  So that was a close call!

At any rate, Lahaini was a “what-if” that scared me, imagining that alternate reality, wondering how the writing would go as I fantasized about escaping fires, driving away if possible (many couldn’t), running for cover, dealing with the minute-to-minute reality of the disaster in a place where I might have lost my life  An article a while back in The New Yorker relating the details of the fire was very disturbing, and my heart goes out to the many Hawaiians who suffered there.

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