The Necklace Of God

This story started out as an idea for a movie back in 1985. At that time, a friend of mine, Ted Swanson, was the assistant director and production manager for the movie, "The Witness," starring Harrison Ford. Ted loved martial arts almost as much as I did, and we had talked about doing a martial arts movie. By then, most producers and directors were losing interest in martial arts films, saying that the genre had lost its appeal to the general public. Most of them stated that martial arts movies just were not making any money, and I told all of them that the reason this was so, was because they had cheap plots, were poorly written and poorly acted. Martial arts films had become nothing more than cheap knockoffs, wannabes, and the people who produced them thought that all they had to do to have a hit martial arts movie was to have people run around kicking and screaming while wearing Asian outfits. I told them that martial arts audiences were more sophisticated than that. Make a quality martial arts film, and you would make money. Ted and I talked about this often while he was on the set of "The Witness," and I assured Ted that, if we could develop a good plot, we could make a great martial arts movie. And I wanted to be in this movie. At that time, I had done acting and singing for television and stage, and I was a national martial arts champion, so I told Ted that I could put it all together, and once he was done filming "The Witness," we could meet in L.A. and talk about making it happen. It was time to write a movie... and I had never done that. One thing I did know, it had to have as much entertaining action and plot twists as "Indiana Jones." As I told Ted, you can't just have a bunch of cheap, meaningless fight scenes. This movie would have me singing, acting and demonstrating legitimate martial arts. I agreed to meet him in L.A. in September. As time passed, I realized that there was no way to write a novel in the short time I had left. So, I decided to do a synopsis of the movie, and I began to outline the plot and flesh out the characters. By the time I was due to leave for L.A., I proudly had enough written to show Ted. I laugh now, but when I got to Ted's house, instead of what I had expected I would do, which was to give him the book, have him read it and get back to me, Ted sat there in his living room with his son present and said, "Tell me the story." I was flabbergasted. I wanted him to read and absorb what I had written. I had spent all of this time putting a written story together for him, and now he was going to have me ruin it by simply telling him the story. I was disappointed. Needless to say, we never made this movie, but, hey, why let a good story go to waste? So, if you like martial arts, and you want to read a short story, here, then isThe Necklace of God