It was the summer of 1997 and it was miserably hot. Our apartment on Watseka Blvd did not have air conditioning but most days the ocean breeze kept us cool. That day the wind was blowing from the east and the fans in the windows blew only hot, sandy air through the room. My son Jordan who was 2-years old had jumped off the kitchen table and fallen on his face. He was screaming at the top of his lungs. I held him over my shoulder patting his back walking back and forth in front of the fan to try to cool him off and calm him down. There was a knock on the door. I was surprised to see my friend Nitai standing there.
“Can I come in?” He said.
Curious about our visitor, Jordan stopped crying. I invited Nitai inside.
We sat down and Nitai explained that for the last few years he and Shiva and some other guys we knew had been going up to Vancouver, British Columbia and buying high-grade indoor ganja and selling it in LA and Hawaii. This big time weed dealer from Honolulu named Maha had given $130,000 to another guy named Vasudev to hold for him. Vasudev and his girlfriend Sara decided to steal the money and hopped on the first flight off the island. Nitai told me that Maha thought they were headed for my hometown back in New Vrindavan, West Virginia where Vasudev had grown up. Nitai came to ask me if I could help find them.
Vasudev’s older brother JR had married my sister Radha and so by marriage he was my brother-in-law. I knew that if he had gone back to West Virginia it was so he could hide out and have our family around to watch his back. I told Nitai that I didn’t know if I could get the money back but that I would try to talk to Vasudev. I was going back east to work the Poconos and Michigan NASCAR races, and my plan was to check on Vasudev during the week in between while I was back east.
When I got back from the Poconos, my brother Shawn told me that he had sold Vasudev a black Ford Taurus and a Colt. 45 automatic. We went to talk to Vasudeva and his girlfriend Sara. Vasudeva claimed that Maha had slept with his girlfriend and that was why they stole the money. My brother Shawn and I finally got Vasudeva and Sara agreed to return half the money to Maha. Then I got Maha on the phone and asked him for $40,000, 1/3 of the money he had stolen from him, if I could get him 40,000 back. Maha lost it on me and told me that he would come get the money himself. I tried to convince him to be reasonable, but he wouldn’t listen.
“I’m coming there right now.” he shouted over the phone.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” I replied.
“What’s that mean? You were supposed to find him. That’s it.” Maha shot back.
“He’s my brother in law and he came here for our help. Now I would never go to Hawaii and start causing problems and I am asking you not to do that here.”
“You just hold him there.” Maha ordered me.
“No, I’m not going to just hold him. He’s agreed to return half of the money, and I think I should get something for finding it for you.”
“I’m coming there.” Maha barked on the phone.
“The money will be gone then.” I told him.
I hung up the phone. I didn’t know it at the time but I had just been drafted into the cannabis business. Vasudev gave us $40,000 of the $130,000 he had stolen from Maha to invest in the movie I was trying to produce. In return my brother Shawn and I agreed to back him up if Maha came looking for him. $40,000 was not nearly enough to make a movie but our plan was to turn that money into a lot more.
Shawn and I figured if these knuckleheads could make money smuggling Ganja from Canada, so could we. At the time you could buy pounds of high grade indoor grass for $1500 Vancouver and sell them for $4000 back in LA. My brother Shawn and I drove up to Vancouver, British Columbia with the $40,000 to and bought 25 pounds of high-grade indoor grass. We packed it in vacuum seal bags and loaded them into a black hockey bag. From there I dropped Shawn off in the woods just north of the US-Canadian Border. After carefully inspecting and vacuuming the car I drove through the border alone. The Customs Agents just waved me through.
From there I made sure I wasn’t being followed and then drove back along the border and picked up my brother who had hiked the Ganja into the US by then. He would wait for me at the top of a hill where he could see every car that came into the valley. If I were being followed, he would stay hidden. If I wasn't being followed Shawn would flash his light and I would turn around and pick him up. From there it was an 18-hour drive to Los Angeles where Ganja was selling for $4000 a pound and was usually gone within a week. In the winter of 1998, we put up the $40,000 and made $100,000 of our first run. Our plan was to start filming in the spring.
It was March of 1999 and my lovely wife Lisa and I were living in a charming wooden dome house on the corner of Braddock and La Salle just behind Sony Pictures in Culver City. Late one night there was a knock on the door. It was Devon Wheeler. Devon told me that he had just found out that his father-in-law and business partner Leonard Kamhout had been molesting his wife Lila while she was 9 years old. I knew Leonard Khamhout who had carved the silver jewelry and created the designs for Chrome Hearts and I didn’t believe Devon but when I questioned Lila about it she swore that it was true. Lila’s sister Chandra and her mother Patricia who had joined the Hare Krishna’s with my parents in Denver backed up her story and I was forced to accept the truth, the man behind the Chrome Hearts was a pedophile. People do love their predators.
Devon now claimed that Leonard was trying to cut a side deal with the Japanese buyers to cut him out of the silver business that they were partners in and asked me if he could move the masters and the molds from his shop in Venice to my house in Culver City and if he could set up the silver production in my garage to do his Christmas first orders. I agreed without asking too many questions or asking for any payment. My friend was in a bad spot and needed help. I didn’t know that Devon’s father in law Leonard Kamhout was the creator of the Chrome Hearts jewelry line which would go on to become a billion dollar brand and that his work was already world famous. I definitely had no idea how successful the business would be. The next day there were 10 people working in my garage, casting, assembling and polishing silver jewelry. After a few weeks a thick layer of black dust from the sanders and polishers covered the orange and avocado trees in the yard.
One day Devon came to me and told me that they were going to make $6,000,000 in the first year of operation. “Well maybe you can pay someone to clean some of the dust off my orange tree then. My yard looks like the side of the freeway. I can’t eat these oranges now.“ I told him pointing at the black dust that was now caked on to orange the trees in my yard.
“Don’t worry about it. I’m going to pay for your movie.” Devon offered up casually.
“Get serious.”
“No, how much will it cost?” Devon asked me.
“If we shoot it with a skeleton crew and only one star can do it for $250,000. Right now I’m trying to get Brett Harrelson lined up to star in it.”
This was true. My friend Hippie Steve from Venice who supplied Death Row Records, Julia Roberts and a bunch of other Venice Cats back then had introduced us. Hippy Steve had been buying Ganja from me for a couple years now and was the real life inspiration for “The Dude” in the film “The Big Lebowski”.
“I’m going to pay for it.” Devon went on to say. “We’ll be making a lot of money. We can put the jewelry in the movie and write it off as business expense. I haven’t forgotten what you did that year for me.”
“Come on. I wouldn’t snitch on anyone over an ounce of weed.” I shot back.
“Still not everyone would have done what you did,” he replied.
“Thank you. That is awesome. Alright let’s do it. I think I’m going to change the name from “Storm” to “Karma to Burn.” I said.
“I like it.” Devon chimed in puffing on the massive blunt we were sharing.
From that point on my brother Shawn and I went ahead as if the movie was happening. I buried the hatchet with Maha and I told him I would put every dime of the money that I had gotten from Vasudev into the movie. I had taken Maha’s money from Vasudev and I was taking money that Devon was making off ripping off his father in law. It was true that Leonard had molested his daughter and it kind of freaked me out that they were making money hand over fist in Japan from the predator jewelry that he carved. It really made me realize how much people love predators. The entire situation made me uncomfortable, and I swore I would put every penny Vasudev and Devon gave me into the movie. I didn’t want their bad karma to burn me and so I would put it all into the movie.
With the money I had made so far I hired the director and the actors, booked the locations and rented the cameras, vans and equipment. When I went to ask Devon for the money for the movie, he told me that had changed his mind. He decided to give me $50,000. It was only a year after all. I had already signed contracts with the actors; paid deposits on locations and rented the cameras and vehicles with the money I had. I took the $50,000 Devon gave me and told Brett Harrelson that we couldn't afford to pay him. My brother Shawn Detamore would have to play the lead. We packed up the two cargo vans I had already rented and headed out to West Virginia to start shooting.
We had hired Peter Daskaloff to direct the film and he had great connections with actors willing to work in independent films. Our plan was to shoot the film in 35-millimeter and we got a great deal on short ends. We shot the film with a 5-man crew. Peter the Director lit the set and was the Director of Photography. Milan Kiss did the sound and grip work. Tereza Nelson did makeup and pulled focus while the cameras were rolling. Jalu Bidye and Vikram Bharati handled the special effects and reloaded the film.
My brother Shawn, Patrick St. Esprit, Tulsi Ball, Robbie Welles, Ernie Garcia, Ken Del Conte, Shea Curry and Mellisa Busby all made the trip to West Virginia. My brother Shawn Detamore played Jonathan Storm the lead and we cast Robbie Welles and Ernie Garcia from “Dusk Till Dawn” to play the bad guys. “Karma to Burn” was the first film appearance for Patrick St. Esprit who went on to star in such films as “United 93” and “The Hunger Games”. The whole cast and crew went on location to West Virginia and Ohio for 2 weeks. We shot the rest of the film in LA but it would take almost 3 years to complete the project.
Making a feature length 35-mm with no prior education or experience and almost no money was an ambitious and foolhardy endeavor, but I wouldn’t trade it for all the tea in China. I may have come to Hollywood thinking I could do a better job than them but now I have nothing but respect for the men and women who make films, even bad ones. They really do pour their heart and soul into their work. I was very proud of all the people who worked on the film and that it was set in my hometown. A lot of people come to West Virginia to film movies but most of them are not set in West Virginia. Our film was set in the Ohio Valley and in places I remember growing up. If not for the locals bailing out from day one it would have never happened.
From the beginning disaster seemed to shadow the production of “Karma to Burn” like a dark cloud but so did incredible and impossible luck. The first day of shooting the Chief of the Wheeling Police Department who had agreed to let us use the Wheeling Police Department police cars in the film told us that he had read the script and changed his mind. The Wheeling Police Department would not cooperate in the making of a film about a criminal who makes the police look bad. So the first day of shooting we had no cops and no cop cars, the whole reason I decided to shoot on location in West Virginia. It was a fkn disaster.
I walked out of the police station. The cast and crew stood around on the corner of Chapline and 15th Street drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes, all ready to get started. They were all set up to shoot the first scene of the film but now I had to come out and tell them that we had lost the cops, the cars and that we needed to find another location. I told Peter to shoot the establishing shots while we were set up. If worse came to worse we would cheat the interior shots somewhere else later.
“You’ve sure got your ass in a sling here. Jason, What are you going to do now?” said Patrick St. Esprit after I told them what the Chief of Police had said.
“I’ll think of something.” I replied.
“Well you better.”
Patrick wasn’t the star of the film but he was by far the biggest name in the movie and he stole every scene he was in. He had done parts on Walker Texas Ranger and a few other TV shows and he was the most experienced actor we had. He had been up all night partying and seemed ok with not having to work. He was also getting paid the most. I really needed him to make the film work and he was right. I was so fucked.
A man approached us from across the street. He had long black hair and was wearing a Motley Crue cut-off T-Shirt, cut-off jean shorts and flip flops. In his right hand he held a Newport cigarette .
“Say, are you guys making a movie?” he asked, inhaling a drag from the Newport.
“That’s the plan.” I answered him.
“Well, if you need anything let me know. He held out his hand to me.
“The name is Rusty Fatula. My dad owns Wheeling Tent and Awning. I know everyone around here.” he said.
I shook his hand furiously.
“Jason Detamore. It’s a pleasure to meet you.” I answered.
“Maybe you can help me.” I said. The Chief of Police of Wheeling agreed to let us use their cars in our film and he just told me that they won’t let us. We need some cop cars.”
“Does it need to be Wheeling police cars?” Rusty asked.
“Not really.” I said.
“I know the Sheriff of Belmont County right across the river. I’ll give him a call right now.
The more I thought about it the better it was. In fact the Wal-Mart we were supposed to rob for the movie was across the river in Ohio. It would actually make more sense in the car chase.
I found out that Rusty was telling the truth. He did know just about everyone in the Ohio Valley. Rusty introduced us to Mike Riley who knew just about everyone else. Mike Riley owned Riley Chevrolet and let us use cars from his dealership for the movie. The Sheriff of Belmont County not only agreed to let us use their police cars for the car chases but even had his deputies appear as extras in the film. I also ended up getting the Sheriff of Marshall County to help. I did end up having to use Rusty’s wife in the movie but she actually did okay. After only a two hour delay, we were back in business and on to the next shot. Vine to Vine Like Tarzan we go.
The entire shoot was like that as we seemed to bounce from miracle to miracle. We had rented a Brinks Truck for the armored car robbery scene at Wal Mart, but Brinks backed out at the last minute too citing the same reason as the Wheeling Police Department. They would not let us use their armored car to be robbed in our film. We were all set up to film at Wal Mart when we got the bad news that the Brink’s truck wasn’t coming. Just as we were about to break up the set, the real Brink’s truck pulled into Wal Mart for its daily pick up. So we filmed the scene guerilla style using the real Brinks Truck and cheated the close ups later.
In another scene one of the bad guys Oscar (Ernie Garcia) steals a kid’s bike after wrecking his car. The scene wasn’t even in the script. The kid had just come along on his bike while we were filming, and we asked him if he wanted to be in a movie. He said yes and so we used him and his bike. I thought it was one of the funniest scenes in the movie.
We shot everything we needed in West Virginia and Ohio in two weeks. Then we ran low on money and had to make another trip to Vancouver. With the last of our money, we decided to make one more run up to Canada to keep the production going. We hoped to make at least $100,000 from the run, enough to finish the filming and editing. We also decided to film the excursion and to make a documentary film about how we made “Karma to Burn. I brought along my Canon GL-2 digital video camera and my brothers Shawn and Paul came along too.
The mission was a complete disaster. For one thing it was summer and finding good weed was not easy. We spent almost 2 weeks looking in Canada before finally scoring 25 pounds of the sweetest, stickiest mean green we had ever seen. The smell was so strong we had to triple seal it. “This shit is too good. We can’t let the Feds get it.” I told my brothers Shawn and Paul as we were sealing the packs in the garage jinxing the whole mission. Stupid, Stupid, Stupid. It is not wise to mock the gods.
In those days I would drop my brother Shawn off with a backpack full of Ganja just north of the US-Canada border at Osoyos. He would then hike over the border with the backpack full and I would drive through with nothing in the car in case the car was searched at the border. By then we had made this run 3 times with no problems, and we were very comfortable with it. Only this time when I went to drop my brothers off at our normal spot there was smoke and firefighters everywhere. A forest fire was raging out of control, and we were told that no one was allowed any closer. There was no chance we could get through at our normal spot.
My brothers, Shawn, Paul and I looked at the map of British Columbia and Washington and decided to try another route. We drove through the sleepy town of Hope, British Columbia where the film “First Blood” starring Sylvester Stallone was filmed. It was foggy and rainy as we drove through the little town, and it reminded us of the movie. We drove even further south following the Skagit River until we reached Ross Lake Campground on the Canadian side. The northern shore of Ross Lake sits in British Columbia Canada while the southern tip of the lake is in Washington.
Our plan was to stash the backpacks with the Ganja along the trail on the Canadian side and then drive through the US-Canadian border with nothing in the car. Once we were on the American side we would drive back to Ross Lake, hike back into Canada, grab the weed and hike it back into the US like we were regular campers. What we didn’t take into account is that the trail along Ross Lake runs through some of the most rugged terrain in North America. We burned through our food early in the hike and after running for 46 miles over rocky mountain passes and through thick forests in 24 hours, we emerged starving and exhausted. We were surrounded by Border Patrol, DEA Agents and Whatcom County Sheriff’s Deputies.
We had a plan for what to do if this happened and we all stuck to it. There were signs everywhere in Ross Lake National Forest offering a $5000 reward for information on smuggling. We had filmed ourselves pretending to find the bags packed with Ganja along the trail. We had all agreed to turn the bags in for the $5000 reward and recorded it on video. When we were arrested, we told the Border Patrol that we were location scouts and that we had found the bags or marijuana stashed along the trail and planned to turn them in for the reward. The Feds didn’t believe our story and we were all taken into custody, but there was no evidence proving otherwise. 2 years later, after spending a small fortune on lawyers, we pled guilty to a possession charge and a $5,000 fine.
After the bust in Washington State, we were out of money and so we had to shut down production of Karma to Burn. We all had bills to pay, and now we needed money for lawyers on top of everything else. I was out on bail with charges pending against me in the state of Washington when I decided that being a filmmaker and a Ganjawalla were both difficult careers. I had to make a choice. I could do one or the other but not both.
For years the only Ganja you could get out of Mexico was Brick Weed, compressed kilos of seeded, wispy sativa. In the early-90's the Mexicans began separating the male and female plants so they were no longer filled with seeds and planting high grade Indica. The bud looked almost identical to the indoor strains being made popular in the US at the time. They called them “pretendica“ or “pillows”.
We had about $10,000 left and that was not enough to finish Karma to Burn so I decided that I would just stick to being a Ganjawalla. I rented a Ford Ranger Pickup Truck and filled the spare tire with 16 pounds of Mexican Pillows that I picked up from my friend Rasa in San Diego. I drove the Ford Ranger across the country back to Wheeling, West Virginia. Once I got there my brothers and I sold the 16 pounds with the help of my brother-in-law Matty Boy.
Matt Horvath aka Matty Boy (Nascar), the Author, Joel Horvath
From the moment I showed up at his house with the spare tire full of “pillows” Matty boy went to work. Matty Boy had been my co-defendant in my first case and had served 2 years in F.C.I. Morgantown. He had been out of prison for a few years now and was tired of the low paying jobs that were being offered to him because of his criminal record. Within a week Matty Boy had the 16 pounds sold and I was back on the road again.
I had paid 600 a pound for the pillows in San Diego and sold it for $1,200 a pound to Matty Boy back in Wheeling who then sold it for between $1800 to $2400.Pounds of indoor were selling for $4000 a pound and the good “pillows” went like hotcakes for up to $3000. I took the $28,000 we got from the first run and bought a Dodge Ram Conversion Van for 12,500. I drove the Dodge with the money back to LA and spent the rest of the money on another 30 pounds of “pretendica.” My guys in San Diego agreed to front me another 60 pounds so now I had 90 pounds packed and ready to go.
My plan was to stash the ganja behind the speakers and above the cabin in the conversion van. That way even if I got pulled over and searched the van they wouldn’t find anything unless they tore the van apart. My mother was staying with us at the time and had just retired from her bookkeeping job with Good Night Inn. She was already bored and offered to drive the van back for me. So we registered the van in her name, and she was on the road a few days later, just a retired old lady driving back from visiting her grandkids in Santa Monica. She dropped the van off with my brother in law Matty Boy and two-weeks later my mom was back in LA, this time with over $100,000 in cash.
I bought another Dodge Ram Van and the next time I bought 200 pounds and packed it in the van. From that point on it was on like Donkey Kong. We started sending out 200 pounds every 2 weeks and by then the other van would come back with $200,000. The product was fantastic. Big, juicy, green and purple buds that you couldn’t tell much difference between the indoor strains that were just becoming popular on the East Coast. It was less risky than crossing the border into Canada and cost half as much. Wheeling, WV was centrally located and within a year we were supplying distributors in Pittsburgh, Youngstown, Cleveland, Columbus, Philadelphia, Baltimore and New York. After my youngest Karl brother moved to Gainesville, Florida we expanded south adding distributors in Charlotte, Atlanta, Little Rock and Miami.
The Detamore Boys. Karl, Paul, Shawn and Jason (the author)
Back then I went by the name Reggie and after a while people asked where the weed came from and the answer they got was “This is Reggie’s weed.” After a while they started asking for it by name. “Bring me some of that Reggie” they would say and the name stuck.
I like to think of this as the “Golden Age” of Ganja smuggling. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars were in full swing, and the interstate highways were mostly clear of the most gung-ho law enforcement agents, many of whom were also in the Reserves or the National Guard and had been called into rotation and sent overseas to fight in the Middle East. In their absence, our business thrived. By the end of President Bush’s first term all of us had bought our first houses and by the end of his second term were all planning on buying second homes.
It was around this time that I first met Woody Harrelson. Devon made a bunch of money from Lone Ones, the silver business he and his wife Lila had jacked from her dad but now they were getting a divorce. Devon bought Fred Durst’s house up the street from Woody off Coldwater soon after Fred was made Vice President of Interscope Records. Woody’s father Charles Harrelson had been involved in the assasination of President Kennedy and had gone to prison for murdering a federal judge and Devon’s father Howard Wheeler had died of cancer while under investigation for the murders of Charles St. Denis and Steven Bryant and the two of them quickly became fast friends. I was introduced to “Woodrow” as he is known by his friends after my brother Shawn and I had finished “Karma to Burn”, a film about a college football player who was sent to prison for Ganja (marijuana). Woody’s brother Brett was originally going to be cast in the film and even though that had fallen through the film had been nominated for a few Independent Film Awards and we thought it would be cool if we could get Woody to help us promote the film.
My brother Shawn and I used to go over to “Woodrows” with Devon and his brothers in the afternoons to swim and play Pool Ball. Woody had two toy basketball nets set up at either end of his pool and he would invite friends over to play Pool Ball, a combination of basketball and water polo played in the water. The objective of the game was to score baskets in the kid sized basketball hoops. The strategy consistently employed was to gang tackle the ball carrier while dragging and dunking the open players under the water to prevent them from catching the ball. These games were very competitive, and you never knew who was going to be there. Sometimes Owen or Luke Wilson would show up, and I remember that Ed Norton was an absolute dawg out there. Alicia Silverstone even played a few times. Bill Mahr lived close by off of Coldwater Canyon with his girlfriend who was also operating an elite escort service out of Bill’s guesthouse. Her girlfriends all smoked weed and didn’t like to pay for it and so they used to hook up with my friend David, a dentist who also grew phenomenal weed in a string of warehouses out in the Valley. So my boy was getting his board waxed on the regular at Bill Mahr’s all the time because as a rule hoes absolutely hate to pay for weed. I do remember that Woody had a wall in his house where guests are invited to write down something for others to read in posterity. The last time I was at Woody’s house I wrote on the wall in black magic marker.
“Hypocricy is the tribute that Vice Pays to Virtue.”
I often wonder if it is still there.