CS4W: Welcome, Michael and thank you for joining us! Please tell us about Stolen Boy.

Thank you for having me, Sandy. Wow, is that a loaded question. Okay, here we go. Stolen Boy is my heart and my soul and my left heel all rolled into one. It was me when I was a kid growing up. Confused and lost. Always searching for the wrong things in life. Thinking that the world only revolved around me. That the world owed me. Not the other way around. I was those kids in the book. An aspect of each and every one of them was a part of who I was growing up.

These kids just didn’t get it. All but one of them had everything they should ever have been able to ask for in life. The world had basically been handed to them, and they didn’t know how to deal with it. Because they always wanted more. Something we’re very familiar with in the Western World. We grow up and we see things that other people have and we want them for ourselves. And we don’t always consider the consequences. And when we don’t get what we want we become angry. We seethe because society has deprived us of what we feel we deserved.

It has stolen our youth from us, and made us grow up in a world that turned out to be different than we had anticipated. We thought we could control the world, but the fact was the world controlled us. And that was not an easy realization to come by. Our destinies had been stolen by a society fueled by intolerance and vengeance and greed. Our frustration and anger led to drinking and drugs and committing acts that society had no tolerance for. Our lives were stolen from us and we were sent to prison or death row without ever really having a chance to grow up. To learn how to make the right decisions for ourselves. And the really bizarre thing about it was—these kids in this story—they may have had everything they could ever want, but they really never had a shot in life. They were unprepared to deal with what they had gotten themselves into.

CS4W: How did you initially become interested and involved with this story?

I live very close to both the areas where the kidnapping took place as well as where the murder happened. When the story first broke in the summer of 2000, it was such a strange happening, such an unusual set of circumstances, that it got a lot of play by the media. You have what are essentially these young pot dealers who are trying to make a living slinging a little spleef—except for Hollywood who slung a lot of spleef—when all of a sudden they get caught up in this really bizarre situation where they got this fifteen-year-old kid. Kids committing violent crimes against kids. In a perverse way, the story was something that was attractive to the eye. So I had read all about it. And then in April of 2003, I got the call from Nick Cassavetes. He had said he wanted to make a movie about the youngest man ever on the FBI’s Most Wanted List. A guy named Jesse James Hollywood. And of course I knew who he was talking about.

I didn’t have to be asked twice to join a Cassavetes film adventure. So I jumped aboard. And right away I could see something weird was going on. So I wanted to get more information. And when I did, I noticed a couple of things. First of all, I knew I was going to have to write a book about this. It was just too bizarre. It was too…bare. Too raw what these kids and their friends were accused of doing. Their lack of empathy. The dissociation. And it was amazing all the information I got my hands on about these guys. I had an incredible story that needed to be told.

But you know what else I realized? Even more importantly. I realized that these kids were us. Cassavetes and I used to talk about that. This was how we grew up. We had our buddies. And we played a lot of sports. And, unfortunately, alcohol and drugs were a major part of our culture. It was the 70s. Our parents were in the film industry. I went to Hollywood High School and he went to North Hollywood High. There was no way to avoid it. And I think it was that recognition that these guys were so much like us that made me get involved with Hollywood’s case in the first place. I didn’t want to see them try to kill this guy. I don’t want any of them to have their lives destroyed anymore than they have been. This could have been me in so many ways. This could be your child. Kids screw up sometimes, and these guys messed it up big time. And kids need a second chance. We all do. I fret to think about where I’d be if I didn’t get a second chance in life. And a third and a fourth …

CS4W: What do you hope people will take away with them after they read Stolen Boy?

That as a culture, there is something lacking between our kids and their upbringings. And in most instances, that centers around the parents. In most traditional families, parents play the predominant caretakers for their children. They are the biggest direct influence upon their kids. Hey, even if they shuck that responsibility off on someone else, they’re still influencing the direction their kids are going. So parents need to recognize this, and accept the responsibility that comes with it. They must set the proper examples for their kids. Children learn much through association. If they see their parents drinking or doing drugs—or selling them—they’re going to pick up on this. I’m not saying that they’ll definitely become alcoholics or drug dealers, but the odds increase tremendously. The same thing for parents who like to expose their kids to guns. It’s just increasing the danger threshold by about a million parts. For you and for them. If you solve yo ur problems in life through anger and violence, and this is how you deal with your kids, how do you think they’re going to turn out?

The math is real simple. So let’s change what we’re doing. Lets raise our own awareness to the qualities we want to witness in individuals around us on a day-to-day basis, and then let’s practice those qualities for ourselves and our kids. This will be the bridge to our future. So I hope both kids and parents alike recognize themselves in the characters in my book, and recognize that we all have faults. We just need to admit them, and set out to change. That’s the key to our futures. For us and our kids. The ability to recognize the need to continually change. It is a process. Life is a marathon of learning, not a sprint.

CS4W: What type of feedback have you received from your readers?

It’s been totally overwhelmingly positive. People really get it. Readers are smart, you know. They understand the resonance of what the book is saying. People have expressed to me that they’ve begun to take deeper looks within themselves and their relationships with their kids. I think it’s helped to serve its purpose in another way too. And that is in urging people to talk about the important issues. Our kids are our everythings. If they fail, we fail. If they feel pain, we feel it twice as hard. My book is a good ride, but it’s also a painful experience. You just want to reach your fist through the cover and grab these kids and shake them and wake them up before it’s too late. And that’s what readers are beginning to recognize. They have to wake up and look at their kids, and look at their own lives, and address the need to make some changes. Before for them, like the characters in my book, it becomes too late.

CS4W: Michael, you eventually played a part in the legal proceedings. Why were you subpoenaed?

I was subpoenaed because, at the time of Jesse Hollywood’s capture, I was the world’s foremost authority on the crime and its characters. I had all the information the prosecutor had. I had the police reports and the trial and appellate transcripts and all the newspaper articles. The confessions, the audiotapes, the videos, the photographs. I had the psychological records and the sentencing reports. I also got an amazing amount of info from the interviews Nick Cassavetes and I conducted with key participants. Between the two of us, we talked to just about everyone who was important to both sides. I’m the only one to this day to have interviewed both the victim’s sister and brother. I got an amazing amount of information from them. Deep stuff. Important stuff. Heartbreaking stuff. They really are amazing people. Their strength to move on… I had been working on the film and book for two years when Hollywood was captured. I had accrued a lot of information. And the defense wanted it. It’s that simple. Jesse James Hollywood’s life was at stake.

So his famous trial attorney, this guy named James Blatt, asked me what I had. I told him, and he said he wanted it. I couldn’t give it to him. It just wasn’t the right thing to do. I had these relationships with the prosecutor and the witnesses and I didn’t want to violate those relationships. I wanted to hold onto the information they had provided me with. So he asked me to testify. He wanted me to establish the ‘what’ and the ‘when’ to what I had gotten. That was all fine and dandy, but there was one huge problem with that.

I found myself in this terrible Sophie’s Choice-like situation. Because, if I testified my testimony could be used to help save Jesse Hollywood’s life. There’s no question about that. I could establish the nexus between the prosecutor and myself that Mr. Blatt felt he needed. And obviously I was the only one who could do that because I was the one who met with the prosecutor all those times. That was my job with the film. But if I testified, my testimony could also be used as the cornerstone for criminal prosecution against the prosecutor and his office. Mr. Blatt believed Mr. Zonen had committed illegal misconduct in his dealings with me.

Now this is a man who bent over backwards to get me the information necessary to make the movie and the book. I considered him a friend. But I also know he was dead serious about wanting to stick Hollywood with a death sentence. I’m a life kinda guy—not death. So when the California Attorney General agreed not to criminally prosecute Ron Zonen or the Santa Barbara County District Attorney’s office, I agreed to testify. Unfortunately, the new prosecutor on the case is still trying to subpoena me. And this causes me grief because I won’t help him try to kill Jesse James Hollywood. That’s just not going to happen. Everything he does is with death as his ultimate goal. I won’t be a part of it. And I could go to jail as a result of my position.

CS4W: Where does the case stand at the present time? Are you still involved?

Right now the case is with the California Supreme Court. And there is a stay with the trial court pending the outcome with the Supremes. The California Supreme Court is set to decide important issues regarding how prosecutors should deal with the mass media while trying high profile cases. Truthfully, I hope they set some strict guidelines. When the men in the name of law go on TV or the radio and say someone did something, it really does slant the fairness in any kind of criminal prosecution. The public is going to believe as truth what the law enforcement officials say the defendant allegedly did. It’s a tainted process. The defendant really can never overcome that implication of guilt fostered through mass media reports. The only place law enforcement officials should be talking about the case itself is in a court of law, and not through the media.

When the decision finally does come down in the case, which I expect to happen sometime late this spring, then the case will be kicked back to the trial court and a trial date will be set. I expect to at least have to deal with the subpoena issue with the prosecutor when it comes back. I would like it to go away, though. I’ve already been ordered to turn over all the notes and tapes of all my interviews. The defense attorney tried to get all my book notes and my character profiles. And basically everything else as well. I had to hire an attorney to defend me in court. It’s been a real hassle. And I really want my involvement with it to end.

CS4W: It’s apparent that this story and the legalities of the case have consumed your life for the past few years. Were there ever days you found it hard to work on the book? Did you ever think about abandoning it?

The energy of this project actually has gotten pretty overwhelming at times. After I initially refused to turn over my documents to the defense, I got threatening phone calls. I’ve battled the prospect of going to jail for not cooperating with the court on three different occasions. I’m still under that stress. I don’t want to turn over my stuff to anyone. But in a strange way, I think in the long run it will all be worth it. I believe, ultimately, when the truth finally does come out, Jesse Hollywood will not be subjected to the death penalty. And that’s key.

And then there’s Ryan Hoyt who’s presently on death row as a result of all this. Jesse Rugge is spending life in prison. Are we just going to stand by while the system ruins these two? And what about their families? Their mothers? Is it really going to make anyone any better if we destroy all of them? There are alternatives.

I think one of the most important things with my book is that it paints a much more realistic picture of what these guys were like than any prosecutor in court or cop did with the media. These guys were demonized by law enforcement officials and the media throughout the ordeal. The former prosecutor thought these guys were the lowest scum on earth and they should be destroyed for what they did. The victim’s family still wants justice. And I fear that they would collectively just as soon see all these guys dead. So I always felt I had to get my book out no matter what. I was never really allowed to quit this project. I had to keep going no matter how stressful the situation became because the story was just too important. There are so many lessons in what happened. And I felt the truthful essence of character and motivation of these troubled youths had to get out there before Jesse Hollywood got the death penalty. I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself if I had just sat back and watched that happen.

CS4W: My daughter loves Alpha Dog and I’ve watched it with her quite a few times. We know how it ends and cry every time, but we still get that feeling of “please don’t let it end this way.” What was your experience like being involved with the movie?

The movie itself was a wild experience. On the one hand, I thought Nick Cassavetes put together one of the finest casts of young talent I’ve ever seen in any movie. What a bunch of neat actors and actresses he had playing these parts of these real people that I had either come to know personally or had learned all about. Heck, Justin Timberlake’s about as big a star as there is, and it was really cool getting to know him a little bit. He’s a real class act. Very mature for his youth. But he’s the real deal. So was Anton Yelchin. Very smart guy. And Emil Hirsch was a crackup. He does this great George Dubya. And Ben Foster’s a very talented actor.

You know, being around these guys made me want to be a kid again. These guys had made it. When I was their age, I was a starving actor. That’s why I decided to shift gears and go to law school. I just didn’t have what it took to make it as an actor. But these guys did. And I respect them for that. And I thought they did a terrific job with the movie. It was a very difficult movie to make. This is not a happy film. You don’t leave the theater feeling real chipper when it’s over. But it’s a film that makes you think. One you’d come away from, maybe not even believing that this kind of thing could happen, but it really did. It’s mind numbing to think that. That kids could be capable of letting something like this spiral away from any rational conclusion. Plus, there were a lot of legal problems with the movie. Hollywood’s attorney filed a federal injunction against it trying to keep it from coming out. But overall it was an experience of a lifetime. The whole process has been a real growing experience for me.

CS4W: Are you working on any new writing projects?

There’s interest in a sequel with Stolen Boy and also a possible TV project, but we’ll see. I’ve been working on this story going on five years now. I really do want to move onto a new kind of energy. But more importantly, I’m looking forward to moving on beyond the Hollywood case. I’m glad the trial will be coming up soon so we can bring some kind of resolution to the matter. Both for the victim’s family, and for Hollywood’s family. I think it will help bring a lot of closure for many other people as well. There were so many people involved in this case. Many lives were turned upside down. Two communities still bear the scars from the ways the tragedy touched them. And besides, I don’t want to go to jail. I want that threat to end.

But I’m also a first time fiction writer. There’s a lot of work to be done to promote one’s first novel. It’s a fulltime job for writers battling to break into the corporate mainstream of book selling. So I’m doing more promoting and marketing these days than writing. But we’ll be getting back to it heavily real soon. I really do miss that intense creative process. And there are about three different stories I’m dying to write. I just need to get the shift of time and focus to get to them.

CS4W: Lastly, is there any advice you’d like to share with our readers about writing?

Yes, I believe there is a huge audience out there for stories that generate new consciousness for the readers to explore. I think people are getting a little burned out from the typical testosterone laden stories where the hairy-chested Marlboro man suffers some injustice, vows revenge in no uncertain terms, and then kills off half the city’s population to get at the evil doer. That one’s gettin’ kind of old, you know. Let’s try something new. Let’s take the reader in a new direction. Readers are hungry for books that will make them feel good. Sure, there’s the occasional Rambo-brain out there who can’t stand anything short of mayhem and bloodshed. But most of us really do want to change. That’s why we buy so many self-help books. We really are searching for answers. So if you’re a writer, and you have some answers, put them down in your book.

And if you’re a fiction writer, then create well-drawn main characters that experience change in a positive manner. Maybe, although Harry Chest really wants revenge, and everyone in the audience wants him to blow the entire neighborhood away for good riddance, he turns his cheek, surprising the audience, and he gets the girl anyway. And in the process, from the natural machinations of the universe, the bad guy gets his comeuppance. From a different source. Then everyone’s a winner. The hero has taught us a beautiful lesson about doing the right thing and getting your just rewards as a result. The doctrine of revenge has been neatly scratched out as illogical. The idea of revenge is so deep on the human psyche. But we can change that through our writing. We are changing that.

CS4W: Thank you again for being with us, Michael! We appreciate your time and wish you all the best! Congratulations, too! BooksandAuthors.net voted Stolen Boy Best Book in Fiction for 2007!

Thank you so much for taking the time to find out a little bit about what I’m about.

BIOGRAPHY

Michael Mehas is a writer and attorney living on California’s Central Coast. While attending Pepperdine University in the early 80s, Michael performed and worked for his mentor––independent film legend John Cassavetes––who gave him the best advice he’d ever received for an aspiring writer: “Go get experience in life to write from.” And so he did. In 1988, Mehas received his Juris Doctorate from Pepperdine University School of Law, and the following year graduated from the Academy of Justice School of Advocacy, having learned all aspects of criminal trial preparation, management, and resolution. He followed this with a brief stint with the Public Defender’s office and private practice where he researched, prepared, and tried felony criminal matters, including a death penalty case in only his third trial. In the 1990s, Michael divided his energies as a screenwriter and freelance journalist, his work published internationally. In 2003, he co-founded an international news and feature Internet magazine called The Inquisitor. Later that year, he again teamed with writer/director Nick Cassavetes as the associate producer on Alpha Dog, a major motion picture from Universal, starring Justin Timberlake, Bruce Willis, and Sharon Stone. Based on his unprecedented research, access to confidential case files, and interviews with key participants, Michael has just finished the extraordinary psychological thriller, Stolen Boy, scheduled for release in July 2007