The owner of the Banyan St. Gallery asked me if I wanted to put some of my still life paintings in his gallery and I agreed since they were just sitting around my apartment collecting dust anyway. Unfortunately, the paintings sat in his gallery collecting even more dust for another few years although he managed to sell a couple of them along the way.

One day his assistant called me and said a production company wanted to rent one of my paintings for an upcoming movie about Hawaii, and was I interested?

“What painting did they want to use?” I asked.

It was a painting of an oversized Japanese grapefruit called a Jabon, sitting on a red and yellow Hawaiian cloth with a plain white background. I was surprised because I thought the Jabon was one of my least interesting paintings, certainly one of the least complicated.

I told her I would be happy to have my artwork in the movie although I didn't understand why they didn't just buy it instead of renting. After all, movies have hundred million dollar budgets and the painting was only seven hundred dollars.

They sent me a formal release to sign, which I did, and after some months, I figured whatever was supposed to happen with the painting, wasn’t going to happen, so I didn’t think much more about it.

One day, about three years later, I saw a promotional trailer on TV for a new movie based in Hawaii called "The Descendants” and I wondered if this could be the film with my painting in it. It starred George Clooney as the scion of a rich Hawaiian family who was trying to determine what to do with their valuable ancestral lands.

I went to see the movie with my camera hidden inside my coat and timed the the film from the beginning to see if my painting would show up or if it wound up on the cutting room floor.

In the movie, Clooney’s character finds out that his wife, who was now in a coma, had been having an affair with a surfer dude. He is so freaked out, he runs to his neighbors’ house to confront them for not telling him about the affair. As he's berating them, you see my painting over his right shoulder for about 10 seconds. George and my grapefruit make their appearance together on the silver screen at precisely 31 minutes in.

I was so excited I wanted to stand up in the theater and shout, “Hey people, that's my painting, check it out.”

Many months later, the Academy Award show was on TV.  My mother was watching it but I was doing something else in my room. In the middle of the show, I happened to walk past her en route to the kitchen and saw George receiving the Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role. As he strolled up to the stage, they serendipitously showed the clip with my painting at the exact moment I passed by the TV.  Wow, I thought; my painting is on the Academy Award show. This was my ten seconds of fame and I wasn't even watching it…

The rental fee for the painting was $60 and the gallery took $30 as their commission. Apparently this bit of fame did not bring much in the way of wealth with it. After this glorious moment, three years went by, and the painting remained in the gallery unsold. Yes, you heard right: nobody bought it.

Because I was moving my stuff to Florida at the time, I decided to take all my artwork out of the gallery, including the painting that had been used in the movie. He wanted me to leave them there, but it was hardly worth it. If he couldn't sell a painting that had been in an award winning movie in three years, it would probably sit there unsold forever, so I packed it up and sent it off to Florida with my other gear…

I ran into an old friend on the street shortly after I mailed my paintings. He was parking in front of the Gold Coast condo where he lived with his new wife. He invited me to have dinner with them at Michel's, the fanciest French restaurant in Hawaii.

We met later that week and after introductions, the three of us sat down to an ocean front dinner at Michel’s. While we looked at the menus, I noticed a musician friend, Jeff Peterson, playing guitar over in the corner of the bar at the other end of the restaurant.

I knew Jeff through some friends and was aware that his music had been featured in “The Descendants.” I excused myself to go over and say hello.

We talked about the film among other things and I asked him if having his music in the movie had boosted his career. He said yes, since the movie came out he was getting CD requests from all over the world. Before that, he had been a local star but was not so well known outside Hawaii. I was happy to see him again because Jeff is a great musician and a genial humble guy.

When I went back to the table, my friend asked me how I knew Jeff and I told him the whole story about my painting having been in the movie.

When he heard this, he sat up straight and said, “ I want to buy it.”

“Huh?”

“I want to buy the painting in the movie.”

He whipped a check out of his pocket, signed it, and told me to fill in the amount myself. He never asked what the subject of the painting was or how much it was going to cost. He just bought it because it had been in a movie and because he knew me.

I, on the other hand, wanted to sell the painting because it had been sitting in that darn gallery for three years doing nothing and if I was able to sell it in one night without even trying, it would give me bragging rights over the gallery forever.

When I got back to Florida, I boxed it up and shipped it back to the couple in Hawaii. It has been hanging ever since on the wall of their tenth story apartment overlooking the clear blue Pacific Ocean.