The following week found me precariously perched on a 10-foot-high stage in front of the owner’s other shop, aptly named Georgette, alongside a female model. Both of us were scantily clad in a patchwork of fashion pieces, while the owner fussed over every detail, ensuring we revealed the absolute maximum amount of skin allowed by law—and perhaps a little more if no one was looking too closely.
Just a few days later, during a well-earned break from my gruelling modelling duties, the same talent scout I had brushed off earlier spotted me again. He approached with the confidence of a man accustomed to rejection.
“So, you made your way to the stage all by yourself?” he said, his expression betraying only the faintest hint of smug satisfaction. “I told you—you’ve got talent! Let me introduce you to the modelling agency I represent. You could be a star!”
“Well,” I replied, feigning regret, “I’m just a tourist here for six weeks. Then it’s back home to Germany. Sorry.”
“Oh, Germany!” he said, his excitement undimmed. “East or West?”
Ah, yes. The talent scout—a man of presumably great foresight in matters of modelling—seemed woefully lacking when it came to current world affairs. The fact that Germany hadn’t been geographically divided for quite some time now appeared to have completely escaped him. Then again, who has time to keep up with pesky historical milestones when there are careers to launch and egos to stroke?
Of course, he was not completely off the mark, the scars of the country’s division lingered in delicate ways. Even today—nearly 35 years after the wall came crashing down—Germans from East and West are often regarded as entirely distinct species. And to be fair, we do our best to prove them right.
Anyway, in the glittering world of fame and glory, knowledge of current or historical events was, and still is, considered a complete waste of precious brain capacity—a ballast rather than an asset. Who needs facts when you have fans? Even the geographical locations of entire countries often remain an unsolvable enigma to the VIPs of showbiz.
Side note:
The advent of online search engines like Google or pseudo-encyclopaedias such as the infamous Wikipedia—where any random keyboard lamebrain can share their half-baked expertise for the "greater good"—has only worsen humanity’s intellectual inertia. These days, no one even bothers to fake a basic understanding of anything. Why strain a single brain cell when you can just whip out an iPhone and Google your way to temporary wisdom?
Back at Venice Beach, take, for instance, the very shop owner for whom I was now gracing the stage. His grasp of the universe’s layout was—unfortunately— as flimsy as his taste in fashion. When I mentioned that “Yes, Germany is next to Austria,” he nodded sagely before derailing with, “So that’s where the kangaroos are at?”
“Close, but, no,” I corrected, suppressing the urge to facepalm into another dimension, “that would be Australia. Different continent. No lederhosen. No kangaroos. No overlap whatsoever.”
His blank stare suggested this revelation was both shocking and entirely irrelevant. After all, why bother learning the difference when the crowd is here, the models are posing, and the spotlight is still on you?
However, I now found myself staring down the barrel of a genuine, real-life dilemma. On one hand, here was this talent scout, brimming with what seemed like a disturbingly accurate nose for stardom potential—namely, me. On the other hand, abandoning my friend and little brother to fend for themselves while I chased the bright lights of fame hardly seemed fair.
As if this moral quandary weren’t enough, there was the slightly inconvenient matter of my two remaining months of service in the German Navy. If I didn’t finish that, I’d likely end up on Germany’s most-wanted list, dodging Interpol while praying the German Wehrmacht wouldn’t shoot me on sight as a deserter. And let’s not forget the small complication of my girlfriend back home, blissfully unaware of my imminent rise to Hollywood superstardom—or the stage I was currently prancing about in legally permissible levels of nudity.
So there it was: a three-way crossroads between loyalty, duty, and fame. A simpler man might’ve chosen to flip a coin, but this wasn’t some trivial decision about which side of the bed to sleep on. No, this was my destiny—or at least, my destiny for the next 15 minutes.
Lucky for me, the talent scout swooped in with a lifeline. “Don’t you worry, Marcel! You can head back home, take care of your obligations, and return in two months to kick off your promising career. Unless, of course, you face-plant into a tree and rearrange that face of yours, nothing can stop your good looks from taking you straight to the top. I admit, this business is a bit... superficial.”
With that, he handed me his business card and waved a cheerful goodbye, leaving me standing there, equal parts relieved and bewildered.
“Great,” I thought. “We can finish our road trip around the West, head back home, and I’ll barrel through the last of my Navy service. While I’m at it, I’ll casually convince my girlfriend that Hollywood is waiting for me—and by extension, her. All we’d need to do is sell everything—including her beloved little convertible—convince her to quit her job, sell my couch, and pack up for sunny California.”
The plan seemed foolproof. Except, of course, for the minor detail that it was entirely, hysterically ridiculous.
This feels like the perfect moment to indulge in a brief detour before I delve into the story of how I came face-to-face with the Terminator…
You see, back in the golden haze of the early '90s, I had no idea that absurd, half-baked schemes would become my signature move for the rest of my existence. Despite a childhood—and let’s generously include my teenage and adolescent years—that was essentially a carnival of chaos and catastrophe, I clung to the naïve belief that one day my life would settle into something resembling stability. Adulthood seemed like it might just be waiting for me on the horizon, a comforting mirage shimmering in the distance.
Regrettably, that horizon never stopped receding, always dangling just out of reach like a carrot in front of a particularly gullible donkey. And yet, here I am. The concept of maturing gracefully—or maturing at all, really—remains a foreign one. It hovers just beyond comprehension, much like quantum physics or the appeal of spinach smoothies.
At least, until now. The concept of gracefully aging into adulthood continues to elude me entirely.
Most people—at least everyone I've ever had the pleasure of crossing paths with—eventually come to the stunning revelation that movies are, well, just movies. Fabrications. Elaborate daydreams dressed up with special effects, mediocre actors and decent lighting. Real life, on the other hand, is decidedly less cinematic. Maybe no one ever thought to clue me in—an excellent excuse, as it shifts the blame—or, far more likely, I was simply too dim-witted to grasp this universal truth.
Movies, you see, are a refuge. A glittering escape hatch from the relentless grind of dull, 9-to-5 monotony and the tedium of real-life responsibility. That’s their purpose. They’re not a manual for living.
And yet, somehow, this vital distinction evaded me. It never sank in that the epic explosions, daring adventures, and heroic triumphs weren’t meant to be copied literally. I genuinely believed that everything in the movies wasn’t just possible but entirely achievable in real life—provided you were willing to try hard enough, ignore all common sense, and completely disregard the laws of physics at times.
Many of the professions I stumbled into were the result of a chaotic cocktail of financial desperation, existential bewilderment, and woefully misguided advice. But even more paths were forged directly from watching a movie and thinking, "Hmm, I could do that!" Sadly, the far more critical question—"Should I do that?"—never once wandered into my thought process.
How else could I have ended up as a mechanic, a military man, a martial arts instructor, a bouncer, a businessman, a wildlife photographer, a bush pilot, a cowboy, an actor, a model, and an elephant saviour? And that’s just the highlights reel. There’s undoubtedly more, but given that self-analysis isn’t exactly my claim to fame, the rest is probably lost to time.
Unfortunately, turning underwhelming experiences into meaningful life lessons is yet another skill that has dodged me—right alongside patience, moderation, and the ability to admit defeat.
There’s a saying—which, of course, I find absolutely laughable—“It’s better to master one thing than to be good at a thousand things.” To me, that credo is utter nonsense.
Here’s what I’ve learned instead: anyone I’ve met who truly mastered something—anything, really—usually turned out to be hopelessly inept and incompetent at everything else.
What’s even worse is that anyone who “masters” something inevitably believes they are, by default, a master of everything else. It’s as if excelling in one area magically grants them universal expertise. I find this attitude utterly tiresome, which is why I’ve never had any issue admitting my ineptitude at the start of any new adventure. Just because I could handle an airplane didn’t mean I had a natural gift for, say, operating a horse. I absolutely didn’t. Not even close. Call me a masochist, but I’ve always enjoyed throwing myself into the deep end to learn something new. Sure, it’s often a disheartening and painful experience—sometimes literally painful—but there’s a strange satisfaction in starting from zero. Even if starting from zero occasionally meant being flung from a horse and unceremoniously deposited into the bushes.
In my opinion, life rewards adaptability far more than narrow expertise. Being a Jack-of-all-trades makes you not only more versatile but also far more useful in navigating the unpredictability of life.
And here’s the best part: you’re not shackled to a single dream. You can explore, experiment, and reinvent yourself as often as you like. Life isn’t a one dish meal; it’s an eternal all-you-can-eat buffet.
Still, I suppose, deep down—or not really, now that I think about it—I understand that even my hilariously chaotic time on this planet might be finite. That, one day, I too might succumb to the tiresome inevitability of aging.
But not today.
That epiphany is a problem for another day—or another me.
Having thoroughly informed you with my life philosophy, let’s return to the story of how I met the Terminator!
Between my weekend stints on stage, my buddy, my brother, and I would haunt the famous Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, not only for shopping sprees but really just to absorb the American dream—or at least its more “shop-till-you-drop”, neon-lit version. And of course, movies. Always movies.
At the time, America wasn’t just ahead of Germany in fashion; it was an entirely different solar system. Sneakers, blue jeans, and baseball caps were practically ancient relics in the U.S. by the time they hit Europe, like some distant ripple from a cultural explosion no one remembered anymore. Germany, as usual, perfected the art of arriving late to the party, adopting trends with the same urgency as a glacier heading south for the winter.
The same went for blockbuster movies. By the time they graced German cinemas, all the actors—even the perpetually teenage cast of Beverly Hills, 90210—had long since shuffled off to their demise. I’m pretty sure that by the time The Terminator 1 premiered in the U.S., Charlie Chaplin was still being hailed as the fresh face of Germany’s cinematic future.
Of course, Germany had a movie industry too... though calling it that feels like overstating. It was more like a national hobby for people who found watching traffic lights too nerve wrecking. The films themselves were about as entertaining as a doorbell on a coffin. German actors only added to the misery, delivering performances with all the charm of a tax audit. In fact, watching paint dry was far more thrilling.
This is precisely why no version of reality—parallel universe or otherwise—could have ever convinced me to pursue acting in Germany. Becoming a referee at a tickling competition would have been a far more dignified career move.
Back to the movie theatre on Third Street Promenade, where the three of us—my brother, a minor who had to be stealthily smuggled in through a back entrance like a dwarfish fugitive from the orient—waited with bated breath for the blockbuster to begin. It was July 1991, and Terminator II was about to explode onto the screen.
That very morning, we had made a pilgrimage to the famous World Gym—admittedly the less glamorous sibling of Gold's Gym—in a hopeless bid to run into Arnold Schwarzenegger himself. We knew he occasionally trained there, but, unsurprisingly, today was not one of those occasions. Still, we spotted a few vaguely familiar movie faces—though their names were far too insignificant to stick—and stared at Arnold’s personal parking space, which boasted prime real estate right at the entrance.
This wasn’t just any parking spot. No, it was a sanctified Hollywood shrine, complete with an obnoxiously oversized star in the middle, as though Arnold’s car might otherwise forget where to park. As we admired it from what we thought was a respectful distance, a janitor came sprinting over, eyes wild, ensuring we wouldn’t dare set foot on this holy piece of tarmac.
It was, perhaps, at that moment—long before I ever got the chance to meet the man—that my glorified image of Arnold began to slightly fracture. The cracks deepened over the years to come, and the pedestal I’d placed him on melted away like an ice cream cone under the unrelenting sun of the Gobi Desert.
None of that disillusionment mattered in the slightest as we sat in the darkened theatre, completely absorbed and mesmerised by the spectacle on screen. We munched on the obligatory bucket of salted, grease-soaked popcorn—an utterly revolting substitute for the sweet, sugar-loaded variety we were accustomed to back in Germany.
In keeping with our newfound fitness mission, we had supplemented this culinary atrocity with protein bars that tasted like compressed sawdust, beef jerky tough enough to double as shoe leather, and flavourless, joyless non-fat, non-sugar, non-everything milkshakes that somehow managed to be even less satisfying than a glass of plain water. But sacrifices had to be made for the dream of sculpted perfection—or in our muscle vernacular: no pain, no gain!
Still awestruck by the Terminator's chiseled physique, the following morning found us jolted awake by the car alarm in the dingy parking lot of Gold’s Gym at 3:45 a.m. My brother, wedged in the backseat like sardines in a tin, groaned in misery, the backs of the front-seat headrests practically merging with his face. The moment the car doors slammed shut behind us, we caught a glimpse of little brother contorting his way into the front seats, his gangly limbs flailing like a marionette on strings. Clearly, he was determined to claim a few blissful hours of uninterrupted, headrest-free slumber.
Meanwhile, my buddy and I sprang to life like caffeinated Duracell bunnies, ready to storm the gym and claim the bench press before anyone else could. Sleep deprivation? Cramped quarters? A diet of protein-flavoured despair? None of it mattered.
Each of us had our own delusional fitness quest: I was hell-bent on chiseling my physique into Adonis-level perfection—because, naturally, the world needed another shirtless narcissist. Meanwhile, my buddy harboured dreams of slapping slabs of raw muscle onto his rail-thin frame, presumably to stop the wind from blowing him sideways. To achieve his lofty ambitions—though he hadn’t quite realised it yet—he’d eventually need to turn to a chemistry set more suited for a prize racehorse than a human being. Convincing his stubborn frame to pack on 40 pounds of muscle would require a small pharmacy’s worth of veterinary-grade pharmaceuticals and, perhaps, a prayer or two.
No matter what the outlandish commercials try to sell you: plain oatmeal and protein muffins won’t magically transform you from Bugs Bunny into the Incredible Hulk. That particular leap in evolution requires a bit more than breakfast food and optimism.
I, on the other hand, was slightly luckier—or perhaps just masochistic. My transformation plan merely demanded I abandon all culinary joy for the foreseeable future. No chocolate, no ice cream, no cakes, no sugar. In fact, nothing remotely enjoyable or flavourful. My diet consisted of things that tasted suspiciously like packing peanuts or the cardboard box your disappointing birthday gift came in.
Time, as Einstein pointed out, is relative—especially when you're having having fun.
As the days dwindled, a persistent question gnawed at the edges of my mind: how on earth was I going to sugarcoat the fact that my girlfriend and I were about to leap headfirst into a life-altering move to sunny California?
The master plan of becoming famous had some... let's call them "structural integrity issues." Where would we live? How would I obtain a work visa? Were there any benevolent strangers lined up to pave the way for this audacious endeavour? Yes, there were many. My qualifications for stardom were laughable—no acting school, no clue about fashion or modelling, and not the faintest idea of how to navigate Hollywood's labyrinth.
I was blissfully unaware that thousands of hopeful dreamers arrived in Los Angeles every year, only to be replaced by an even greater number of shattered souls limping home, broke and disillusioned. What made me think I would be any different?
To truly grasp the thrilling attraction of Los Angeles during that fading century, you had to be there. This overcrowded, smog-choked city radiated an irresistible promise of fame—like a siren song to the delusional and desperate alike.
Of course, the logical move would have been to go alone, without the "baggage" of a girlfriend, blaze the trail, and summon her once the path was clear. Any sensible person would have done it that way. Naturally, I had other plans.
How we went from an orderly life in Germany to, not long after, sleeping in a car on the infamous Brooks Avenue at Venice Beach—nestled among small-time criminals and the homeless—is a tale for next week.
Marcel Romdane, signing off.
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