Travels with Sam

Sam arrived in LA a day or two before I expected him to.

"Hey man, I'm flying into Long Beach tomorrow morning, ok?" He also flew into a different airport than I thought. But when I picked him up I was the one who was late.

Sam Mestman -- the genius behind "Golf on Film," "Project: Redlight," and now "Sell Out," -- like most geniuses, is mostly misunderstood. An extremely creative person, he often makes simple mistakes with the details. For example, two weeks ago he called me and asked me to help him with a project. Here is a re-creation of the exchange:

SAM: I'm coming out to California to do a camp video, at this place between San Francisco and Los Angeles.
JOE: When?
SAM: It's going to be on a weekend.

Sure enough, it is not actually on a weekend but right in the middle of the week. Fast forward two weeks later, picking Sam up at the airport. Having just received the details on our "camp trip" I realize that the camp is actually east of Yosemite -- equidistant but not between San Francisco and Los Angeles. Begins an epic journey into a nostalgic past of camp-going, of bullshiting and pretending to know what we're doing -- of filming ropes coarses, horses and water sports.

Sam and I each day look at each other and laugh. We have to ask: how the hell did we get here, in the Sierra National Forest? People ask us at the camp and it's literally hard not to laugh as Sam answers the inevitable question, "You flew out here from New York for this, really?"

But don't let me say the wrong thing here. Sam is a misunderstood genius, and worth understanding. He is sincere, even if he seems sarcastic. All the time he tells these camp people how he's going to make a sick montage of the watersports, and he means it, he really does. He also, for reasons unknown, decides not to mention when I pick him up at the airport that it is his birthday. When I ask him about it later he says, "I don't even think about it, honestly." Sam is a master of misdirection. He is, often, blatantly subtle.

We drive to Berkeley after completing our three days of camp at the Gold Arrow Camp (GAC). There we meet up with Gabriella, whose parents and house seem somehow lifted from a children's tale or a Roald Dahl book. Sam and I are like drunks waking up to real life. We are unhappily finding that the real world is not like camp, that we have to worry about things like how to pay rent, where to eat, and not where is the good tinder for the campfire? This trip to Gabriella's gives us a chance to hunker down and adjust. Gabriella's dog Charley (recently neutered) runs around with a collar on his head, running into furniture with stunning effect. Gabriella and her mother speak Spanish to each other, entire side-conversations. The coffee is wonderful. I can picture it sitting there.

Later that day Sam, Gabriella and I visit San Francisco. We check out City Lights, the book store the beats built, and buy a book each. We drive around, up and down hills, and Gabriella and I laugh and laugh as Sam reads in the back. "When I get started, I have to finish," Sam says as I exhort him, playing Dad, to look up from his book and out the window at the hills, the trams, the bridges, the cute hippy girls.

That night we have dinner with Lisa, a former roommate of mine. When I lived with Lisa, I had just moved to the city after graduating, going home, finding my girlfriend seeing someone else and spending one of loneliest summers ever getting up in the morning and writing. Lisa was a banker-in-training, coming home and drinking wine, not sure at all that she wanted to be in that world. Lily moved to New York that fall, and we started seeing each other. After we lived together Lisa took her bonus and ran to the West Coast, where she works for the Gap and is dating a guy from St. Louis. Strangely enough, Sam met Lisa when he crashed at my place. The first thing he said to Lisa was "I'm not Joe." They then went to breakfast, a movie, and spent the day wandering around. Sam is full of surprises.

Sam, Lisa, myself and Lisa's friend Caitlin went to Napa Valley the next day and went wine tasting and played bocce ball. The sun was bright.

On the drive back to Los Angeles, and with plenty of amazement at the events of past week, Sam said: "Well, nothing disastrous happened." I like that Sam approaches the things that happen to him like he might a script he is writing -- able to smile at not knowing what comes next.