The Reluctant Film Producer: Lights, Camera, Tennis!

Rocky Lang

Little did I know when my father gave me my first tennis racket that it would be decades before I realized what an incredible gift it was.

After four decades of producing, writing, and directing movies and working with some of the greatest stars of the business, I watched with the rest of us as a pandemic; the BLM and Me Too movements sent seismic changes throughout our world and Hollywood. Hollywood, like tennis, is a young person's game, a profession that most values the young, discards the old, and relegates the rest to obscurity.

Sanity

As I sat at home creating projects and having Zoom meetings, I realized my sanity was only intact because I could walk out to my beautiful court and hit tennis balls with my even more beautiful wife who played for UCLA. I could escape not only the relentless bombardment of depressing news but escape the bitterness and negativity of what Hollywood has become.

Hollywood has never been more lost. Consistently reactive to the culture and it is now running scared in a hyper-charged cultural renaissance. People are canceled, some for good reasons and others because they have been judged guilty before the facts are out. The original idea is harder to sell, taking a back seat to "branded content" remakes and sequels and a general regurgitation of old ideas.

I realized the agents became more intrusive in the creative process when their jobs are to sell. The executives are scared and increasingly angry. The creatives are bitter and afraid to lose their jobs. The safe bet is to stay away from the risks in a business that was great BECAUSE it took risks.

There is a dark cloud over just about everybody in Hollywood, and I realized Hollywood was no longer fun. And yet, I'm still in the game, pitching, writing, and selling.

As for many of us who played high school tennis and joined clubs in our middle age, we learned what a wonderful game tennis was. I met my first girlfriend on the court, Stacy Margolin, who would reach the WTA top 20 and has remained my dear friend for fifty years. I met Martina Navratilova and was invited by her to Wimbledon, where I saw her beat Graff from the players box in 1987, winning her fifth straight title. I played doubles with Bobby Riggs, Frank Parker and Frank Sedgman, all multiple grand slam winners. I practiced regularly with the Amritraj brothers, Anand former captain of India's Davis Cup team. I have made many great friends and have many great memories. Most importantly, I met my wife through tennis; perhaps the best thing tennis gave me. What I didn't expect is what happened in the fall of 2021.

Home Economics

I received an email from a writer on currently running television show, and she said she heard I was a good tennis player and asked if I would teach her. Although I am a USPTA certified pro, I have never taught. I got that certificate a while ago while writing a story on what it would be like for an old guy to try to get his professional certification when everyone else was 35 years younger. That's a crazy story, but not this one.

I begged off this request, but she was insistent, and she was a good writer, and I looked at it as a good connection and agreed to give her one lesson and see how it went. Well, she loved it, and I loved it, and we decided that I would teach her once a week. Two days later, she called me and said there were two other writers on the show that wanted lessons and so it began, and in no time, I had ten students. The reluctant tennis pro became the reluctant producer, loving teaching more than pitching.

Granted, it is easy for me as my home office is ten yards from my court so I can go from doing film biz to hitting fuzzy green balls. However, the difference is as bright as La Coupe des Mousquetaires, that shiny trophy Nadal seems to bite each and every May. Agents and studio execs are arrogant and dismissive. Negativity fills the air choking off creativity and ageism, sexism, wokeism, and other ism's all make the fun of movie-making about as fun as watching Carlos Ramos screw up a U.S. Open final. And then there is teaching tennis, almost as surprising as the freshness of Emma Raducanu winning ten matches to win the U.S. Open. Whoodathunkit?

Love

My students love the game, want to learn, and are incredibly appreciative. Most of all, we have fun as they learn how to play the game I love so deeply. Teaching makes the bullshit of Hollywood tolerable. It makes me care less about the crap because I know I have something else I love that makes me happy, and no one can take that away from me. Since this great revelation, I have sold several projects, but teaching is far more rewarding.

Shedding the Hollywood ego was something that, at first, was not easy to do. What would people think of me in the biz if I told them I was teaching tennis? I realized that at 64 years old, WTF? I don't care what people think. As I started to tell people what I was doing, some eyebrows were raised, and others said they were envious of my freedom and the shedding of egotism in a town that runs on it.

I have students of all kinds. High school kids, beginners, 4.5 players league players, and an incredible group of women. I designed a clinic for them called 50 Shades of Green because I run their asses off and play to the best of Motown. We have fun!

It's now been just over 25 years since my father died. But I know for me – and perhaps also for you – my father lives in my heart and mind every day. What are the life lessons we were taught? What are the lessons we want to pass on to our own kids? What gifts did parents give us that became evident to us only as we got older? I am quite sure my father, who taught me many things not only about life and making movies and to pinch the middle in doubles and be a thinking tennis player, never in a million years knew that his gift to me of tennis would come full circle as I approached my Medicare years. The love of the game remains bright for me, as bright as the brightest light on Broadway, a beacon of love and respect for the game and how it has given me so much.