Aloha Princess

This picture is of Dave Villwock (the famous hydroplane driver) with me in Hawaii. He visited me at my new job in Hawaii with one of my former bosses. In my career, as a business manager, I stayed friends with my former employers and employees. 

I've lived in seven states, and nothing compares to my years in Hawaii.  My time in Hawaii was magical. I've written over a dozen screenplays and pilots, and one of my favorites is Aloha Princess. 

Aloha is a Hawaiian word with many meanings, ranging from love, peace, and compassion to pity and grief. It's commonly used, especially by visitors to Hawaii, to mean "hello" and "goodbye."

My move to Hawaii came at a magical time in my life. I got a dream job to live in paradise, and I had recently learned that I was Native American and joined the Cherokee Nation tribe. I took a trip to England during the height of the Princess Diana obsession and became a "royalist," the term they call fans of the monarchy. I knew every Disney princess story and could sing the words to all their songs.

I changed my fascination with princesses to the Hawaiian Monarchy. I learned everything I could about Queen Lili'uokalani - the last queen of the Kingdom of Hawaii. The thing that I found the most amazing, is that she visited the United States twice, once in 1887 and again in 1897. She was an incredibly educated and well-read woman and must have known about the Indian Removal Act in 1830 and the ongoing American genocide of Native Americans. She loved her people - her love was so great that she made a King Solomon-like decision to not call her people to arms and avoided a similar fate for Pacific Islanders of the Native Americans who were corraled and marched into reservations -- all because some resisted the land-grabbing government.

I would like to write a screenplay based on her now out-of-copyright autobiographical novel, Hawaiʻi's Story by Hawaiʻi's Queen, but I thought a story set in the present-day would be a more marketable movie, thus my script, Aloha Princess.  In addition, that type of historical script should be written by a Pacific Islander - although I wouldn't mind co-writing.

You might wonder what caused me to leave Hawaii? It was hard, I have dozens of close Hawaiian friends who I've stayed in touch with over the years and I truly left my heart in the islands. But I worked for a man that broke all three of my rules. He lied to me, broke a promise that he made that he'd help me buy his company when he retired and yelled - yes, yelled at me. You might think I have thin skin - but I grew up in a charmed house. My parents never yelled at me (or each other) and never struck me. No, there weren't "new age" parents - they beat the heck out of my brother. My mom used to tell the story of how she had to put him in an upside-down playpen and put the TV on top. He was a terror and deserving of Mom's daily screams. On the other hand, I was a shy and bright kid who easily understood the rules and tried my best to stay out of trouble.

After getting yelled at for an outrageous reason, my boss had three strikes, so I had to quit. To prevent it from happening again, I decided to start my own business and never have a boss disappoint me again. Creating a technology company was the excuse I gave him for leaving his employ because it wasn't important that both of us knew why. I ended up having him as a client, along with dozens of others in Hawaii - and I returned often until I sold my software company enabling me to live my dream of writing full-time.  He died that same year.

 Aloha Princess means so much to me - along with the word, aloha. It sums up the "hello" I gave to Hawaii by spending hours in the Iolani Palace, Bishop Museum, and local library, learning everything I could about my adopted state. It means "love, "- which reflects the love I have for everything Hawaiian - and "goodbye," the hardest thing I've ever had to do - leave a job that enabled me to meet celebrities, stay in my boss's waterfront homes, fly on his private plane, and attend dinners where the "per plate" fee was more than someone like me could ever afford. 

If you click on this link, Aloha Princess, you can read more about my script and I hope that someday it will be made into a movie and filmed in beautiful Hawaii.