As he prepared to catch a flight to Chicago, Eric Monte savored a moment of anticipation: What would it feel like to be back at home and not living in a homeless shelter?
“I’m excited about the possibilities,” said Monte, 62, a couple of hours before boarding his flight at Los Angeles International Airport. “I want to see my old neighborhood, my old street. I want to start rejuvenating my life.”
Nearly 40 years ago, Monte abandoned Chicago’s Cabrini-Green housing project and hitchhiked to L.A., chasing a childhood dream to create black heroes for the small screen. He became one of a handful of young African-American writers and directors who sparked an explosion in black culture in Hollywood in the early 1970s.
Monte wrote an episode of the groundbreaking TV show “All in the Family,” moved on to co-create “Good Times” and wrote the 1975 film “Cooley High,” which inspired the hit 1976 TV series “What’s Happening!!” He made his last visit to Chicago for the “Cooley High” premiere.
Then came the downward spiral when life stopped going according to script.
There were disputes with entertainment executives and bad investments, a series of strokes and the loss of some memory. A year of crack cocaine abuse robbed him of money and Hollywood friends. Attempts to sell a self-published book drained the last of his savings.
Last year, Monte ended up in a Salvation Army shelter in Bell, Calif., one of nearly 300 people who were sleeping in the former military depot every night. His cubicle was large enough to hold two cots, two lockers and a shared desk; he paid $300 a month for housing, three meals a day and counseling.
But the food was edible, the lights were paid for and the doors were locked. He felt secure, surviving on money that trickled in from residuals. Surrounded by a wealth of characters, Monte wrote new material on his laptop, confident that he was “never that far away from a blockbuster hit.”
There were a few nibbles from producers looking to launch a remake of “Good Times” after an article about his life appeared earlier this year in the Los Angeles Times. But negotiations faltered over issues of creative control.
“I’ve been hurt before, but I won’t be hurt again,” Monte said.
Illinois state Rep. Ken Dunkin (D-Chicago), who, like Monte, grew up in the Cabrini-Green projects, read about the writer’s plight in the Tribune and decided to coordinate a small fundraising effort to bring him home. “We want him here in Chicago,” said Dunkin, 40. “This man should not be going out like this. I grew up on `Good Times.’ That’s me. I grew up in the ’70s looking at that show. Our family gathering, bonding moments were around that show. That was our building.”
With Dunkin’s help, Monte paid for the last three months at the shelter in Bell and bought a plane ticket to Chicago. He arrived here Dec. 18 to a welcoming reception at Little Black Pearl Workshop, a non-profit arts program for young people on the South Side, where Monte will be given the opportunity to work, Dunkin said, adding “I’m going to get the film community to help.”
Monte is now living in a studio apartment at the Mercy Housing Lakefront subsidized housing complex on South Wabash Avenue. His possessions are being sent to Chicago one crate at a time from Oregon, where he had been living with his youngest daughter before returning to Los Angeles in June 2005. A wide-screen television and his desktop monitor have already arrived, but he awaits other key items.
“She’s got my desktop computer, my printers, a box of books,” Monte said.
Dunkin said there are lessons to be learned from Monte’s life: “His story is profound in a number of ways. We are all one or two months away from being an Eric Monte.”
Thirty years ago, Monte’s shows helped spur a new generation of TV and movie programming . He won an NAACP Image Award, and he was eager to create characters that would be multidimensional and avoid stereotypes.
But Monte wanted more control over his creations. There was 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, Monte says, he received a $1 million settlement and a small portion of the residuals from “Good Times.”
But opportunities to pitch new scripts dried up along with his money.
He lost his house in Tarzana, at the foot of the Santa Monica Mountains. He bounced around. There were a few opportunities but nothing solid enough to stage a comeback. Monte suffered through a yearlong addiction to drugs and finally ended up in the shelter, where residents watched the daily reruns of his shows.
Monte never watched.
Chicago offers Monte another chance at redemption.
Monte is trying to sell some scripts he wrote while at the California shelter, including a movie script of “Good Times” — “same family, different actors and moved up to 2006,” he said. And he and a friend from Los Angeles began shooting a documentary of his life just before Monte left Los Angeles. The pair shot footage at the Little Black Pearl reception and at 525 W. Locust St., the Cabrini-Green rowhouse where Monte lived from the age of 6 until about 20.
Being close to family will also help.
“I’ll be around people who want to help me further my career and better my life,” Monte said. “There won’t be the animosity I received in Hollywood.”
He will continue to try to find backers for his movie and television projects, and he dreams of meeting Oprah Winfrey and showing her his self-published book: “Blueprint for Peace.”
In Chicago, Monte said, his daughter has taken him shopping for warm-weather clothing as well as a new easy-chair recliner, which he prefers to use while sitting in front of his computer. He still misses his mother, who died six months before he sold his first script, and hopes to surround himself with siblings, nieces and nephews.
Are there any regrets?
“Nobody lives as long as I have lived without having some regrets,” he acknowledged.
“But basically I have lived a phenomenal life. I’ve had a great time and it ain’t over.”
