American Outlaw - Jesse James [76]
Being a dad, I couldn’t help but reflect on my own relationships with my parents, who had never really seemed interested in giving me this kind of physical closeness. Remembering made me bitter. I couldn’t help it.
“I just can’t believe my dad doesn’t know his own grandkids.”
“It’s a lost cause, Jesse,” Karla said. “Forget it.”
It blew my mind, because I saw how adorable and how perfect my kids were. I couldn’t understand how people who were flesh and blood weren’t willing to make the effort to know them. I took the rejection personally, as if it was happening to me all over again, instead of my kids.
——
Months passed, and my shop and my kids grew. Unfortunately, so did the differences between me and Karla. Though we functioned as a team, the tension between us was mounting. The more we squabbled, the more I retreated into booze. The more I drank, the madder Karla seemed to get. It was a vicious cycle, and I didn’t know how to make it stop.
Then, in the spring of 1999, an event occurred that would change my life. A producer from the Discovery Channel, Thom Beers, called and proposed making a documentary about our shop.
“But why?” I asked, honestly flummoxed.
“Have you been watching TV lately, Jesse?”
“Not really,” I said. “I don’t have much time for it.”
“Reality TV’s hit,” Thom explained. “And it’s here to stay. Have you heard of The Real World? Survivor? These kinds of shows are leading the pack, nowadays. Viewers are starting to expect shows about real people.”
“I know what Survivor is, Thom,” I said, looking down at the long to-do list I had in front of me for the day. “And we’re definitely not that. So, unless you got something else to tell me . . .”
“Jesse,” Thom interrupted me, “we think that what you’re doing is absolutely unique. West Coast Choppers is very popular among a certain segment of the American population.”
“Gearheads, bike freaks.”
“Sure, gearheads. But with an hour-long show, the rest of America gets to see what you’re doing. It’d be great exposure. Come on, what do you say?”
I thought it over for a while. I still didn’t see what was going to be compelling enough over at our shop on Anaheim Avenue to rivet the American public to their seats—our high drama was going to consist of watching an average white boy try to make payroll at his greasy garage. But, I reasoned, Discovery was probably good at what they did. It couldn’t hurt to try.
The shoot was a disaster, though.
“You could not have come at a worse time,” I told Thom. “I’m getting ready to take five brand-new custom choppers to a huge annual bike rally in Daytona Beach, Florida.”
“Yeah, and?”
“We got a ton of work to do,” I snapped. “I don’t need any distractions!”
“More drama equals better ratings,” Thom said. He held up his hands. “Just saying.”
I almost eviscerated the camera crew. For two weeks, they lived in our shop, asking so many questions and being so invasive that I almost lost my temper several times. They seemed dead set on capturing every single step of what we did as a custom shop, from manufacturing the wheels to welding the frames to painting the flames on the metal.
They filmed us riding around Long Beach; filmed us talking with customers; filmed me feeding the sharks that I kept in a tank in the shop. They even filmed me squabbling with Karla over payroll, and by the time they got done with their work, I felt like an animal in the zoo who’d been prodded with a stick.
“Look,” I grumbled. “Can you explain to me why the hell you have all this footage of my dogs fighting each other?”
“Shows a deeper portrait of who you are?” replied a cameraman.
“No,” I disagreed. “And I don’t think footage of dogs trying to bite each other is important enough to be in the final cut of this show.”
“I’ll make a note of that,” he said drily.
Even though I hated the process and resented the strangers who had busted so rudely into my shop with their lights and cameras, I had to admit that secretly