Standing in the chow line! Good Times!

You’ve gotta read this article in the L.A. Times about Eric Monte. He’s the writer who co-created “Good Times,” wrote the “Jeffersons” spin-off episode of “All in the Family” and wrote Cooley High which “inspired” “What’s Happening!” Later in life he created “Moesha” and “The Wayans Bros.” shows. Today, 62-year-old Monte lives in a Salvation Army homeless shelter. He works on his laptop, which has something like 30 scripts and books waiting to be pitched, and he has a laser printer and a cell phone. They say that he gets residual checks sometimes but it’s just enough to cover his $300 per month shelter fees.

Apparently Eric went broke right around the time that he decided to sue ABC and CBS producers for stealing his ideas and not paying him for “Good Times,” “The Jeffersons” and “What’s Happening.” They gave him the creator title on “What’s Happening,” but no dough. After the $400 million lawsuit came out, no one would hire Eric. He won $1 million from the suit, but blew most of it on a play that apparently sucked. The other sources in the interview said that Eric is his own worst enemy. In 2003, he got hooked on crack and really fell off. What grown-ass man develops a crack addiction in 2003!! Surely everyone had gotten the memo on crack at that point, but not Eric. “People around me were getting high on crack and I decided to give it a try, and that was a major mistake," he told the Times. "The only thing crack did for me was give me a tremendous desire for more. I did it for two years and gave it up."

But it gets worse in my opinion, well, no, not worse than crack. Anyway, he cleans himself up, leaves L.A. and moves in with his daughter. He gets $10,000 from a movie deal, I guess it was based on “Good Times,” and blows that on a self-published book that he really believed in titled Blueprint for Peace. From what I hear, this book says that to achieve world peace humanity should follow seven principles: 1. Merge all nations into one. 2. Stop making weapons of war 3. Speak ONE universal language. 4. Stop using money as the medium of exchange. 5. Forget the concept of land ownership (6.) and the concept of inheritance. 7. Control population growth. So duded didn’t sell any books at all. They say he had a booth at the L.A. Times book festival and, nothing. What does he think? "I just have to figure out how to market it," he told the Times. "I know that as soon as it starts selling, it will sell for 1,000 years."

I mean, this guy Eric is really talented. His projects prove that, so I’m not gonna knock his hustle, but I will say that this book sounds ridiculous. He should have tried to get some celebrity backing like those Scientology folks did.

Either way, the article is great. The writer spent time observing him at the shelter and talking to him. He says he’s only one script away from being back on the top, and I completely believe him. I bet he has some hot shit on that laptop. It’s a wild story, I wonder if he’s thought about writing about a guy who had tons of potential and kept making risky moves until he found himself selling scripts out of a homeless shelter in the same town where he used to be the man?

For more on Eric, in his own words, check out this interview that he did with journalist Jimi Izrael, he posted the unedited version on his site.