Life After Cooley High & Good Times

Released in by American International Picture, Monte wrote the script, basing the film and characters on his true-life experience while attending Cooley Vocational High School in Chicago where Monte had lived at Cabrini Green Projects. Entertainment Weekly ranked Cooley High 23 on its list of 50 best high school movies. Legendary screenwriter and filmmaker Spike Lee has cited Cooley High as an influence, a film for all aspiring filmmakers to watch.

Cooley High inspired this show also. Cabrini-Green was a tough place to live, where gangs, illegal drug activities, shootings, robberies, high unemployment, and even death flourished. The Chicago city council voted to demolish the decaying apartments in As a kid, Monte felt a burning desire to become someone special to escape harsh realities of violence and crime at Cabrini-Green.

During an interview with Dialogue Magazine, Monte recalled how his mother, fed up with abuse, kicked their father out of the house. His mother Anna was an avid reader. She read everything, particularly Sherlock Holmes novels. Lone Ranger is white! Once Monte watched Lone Ranger again—he discovered the fella was right.

Doing a little more research while watching TV and theater movies, the future writer never saw any black heroes on TV. Only white actors and actresses were hailed as heroes in movies and television during the ss. Though extraordinarily smart in school, Monte would later say that school bored him. I wanted to make a contribution to society. I made that vow again but this time as an adult.

Against heavy odds, yet infused with burning passion to create and write about black people in movies and on TV in an uplifting, heroic way to inspire young black people—Eric Monte, armed with a suitcase and a ticket traveled to Route 66, where the bus let him off. Running on empty, but full of hope, Monte hitchhiked to L. Arriving in California in , Monte hung out with hippies, sold drugs, wrote poetry and smoked weed.

Finally, the Chicago-native signed up for playwriting class at L. A City Community College, where he honed his writing skills, showing great promise as a stage play writer. Word spread like wildfire that L.

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Community College had a young writer on fire. Around or , Eric Monte befriended an actor named Mike. Monte recalls the time when he first met Evans.

Hoping to get the break of his dreams, Monte wrote a script with Evans character included, gave it to Evans, And, Evans gave it to Norman Lear. Lear accepted the script. He asked Evans to have Monte call him. After meeting Lear, Lear hired Monte for the show.

Lear had told Evans the Jeffersons was too controversial to air when Monte pitched the script. Monte set the tone and place similar to the Cabrini—Green housing project located on the Near North Side of Chicago, where he grew up. Monte envisions the family as a close-knit, blue-collar family struggling to survive in the projects. The show would cover hot-topics that plagued black communities, drugs, gangs, teenage pregnancy and unemployment.

Monte conceived the family as a husband and wife, with three children, and a noisy neighbor. Monte accuses the white writers and producers of forcing their preconceived ideas upon the characters who played in the show which featured John Amos and Esther Rolle as James and Florida Evans. Monte hit another snag when the producers wanted the father character of John Amos eliminated.

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Matters got more complicated when after the first season Monte did 80 percent of rewrites on the show, he dropped this piece of discrimination against him. The camera then pans across high-rise apartments before zooming in on a drab row-house. This was the heart of Cabrini-Green, and it's where I met Rick Stone the other day, not far from where he got his first acting job four decades ago. He and his friend Norman were shooting hoops one day when a white stretch limo pulled up.

Inside was one of "Cooley High's" producers.

He was like, hey, how would you guys like to be in a movie? Man, get the hell out of here with all of that. We thought he was jiving. They were looking for two of the toughest gang bangers around here - and come to find out it was the police that recommended us. Norman's character is called Robert, and Stone's is called, well, Stone. In this scene, the two are shooting dice in the back of a diner when a girl interrupts their game.

As character Hey, hey keep on stepping, baby. If we wanted to be preached to, we'd go to church. That last voice is the brainy and bespectacled Preach. He's played by Glynn Turman.

His best friend is basketball star and ladies' man Cochise, who's played by Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs. We see the boys cut class, hop on the back of a CTA bus and try to get to first base with their girlfriends. Directed by Michael Schultz, what made "Cooley High" such a landmark film was its honest depiction of teenage life in the projects. Although he suffered several strokes in recent years, he remembers it well. Afterward, Stone and Robert think the other two snitched on them, and Cochise gets killed.

Preach finds him lying motionless under the L tracks, his screams drowned out by the trains above. It's hard for me, even now. I'm 70 years old, but he was - he was my man.