"It was an ego thing for him," Cord Douglas says. "He never thought about whether there was a market for that particular kind of movie. ... Glen just thought if he came up with the idea, people were going to love it."
The trouble was where to find the money to turn his visions into reality.
"He didn't really know how to do it for a long time," Douglas says. "He ended up meeting these people to raise money. ... It turned into this monstrosity that took everybody down."
Around the same time, another independent movie producer named Steve Austin was struggling with the same problem. Like Hartford, he needed cash to finance his films. He and Hartford stumbled on the same solution: boiler rooms.
Austin did not grow up in the industry. He came from Indio, the last stop on the 10 freeway before you hit open desert. He was blond — with a wholesome, Southern California look — and bored. He was working in a liquor store in Palm Springs when an agent walked in and asked him if he'd ever done any modeling.
"It was my escape," Austin says.
He did some modeling, some acting, and stumbled into producing. At a two-day seminar on filmmaking, he met a producer who showed him how easy it could be to raise money. He could simply call people and ask for it. Austin watched in amazement as the producer made a cold call and closed a deal for $25,000.
"This is like printing money," he thought.
Austin turned out to be a good salesman. It helped to be pitching a movie that would play well in the Midwest — a family movie, pro-military, with an uplifting message. Investors also could be enticed with promises of red-carpet premieres.
"There's lots of emotional hooks," Austin tells the Weekly. "In order to get the client to buy into the dream, you've got to throw a lot of sizzle out there."
At his peak, Austin was raising $500,000 to $700,000 per month. He didn't have to account for any of it. Much of it was going into his own pocket. He dined at the Palm and the Grill on the Alley, rubbing elbows with Hollywood legends. He bought a $14 million house in Malibu.
"There's an addiction that goes along with it," Austin says. "You start to live expecting that money will be there."
He had started out trying to raise money to make films. But after a while, the filmmaking was secondary. He was mainly focused on raising money.
The addiction proved to be unsustainable. In 2008, Austin pleaded guilty to conning investors. He was sentenced to 36 months in federal prison and ordered to return $17 million.
In exchange for a reduced sentence, he agreed to wear a wire.
Glen Hartford raised about $1 million to make his first movie, Forbidden Warrior. He knew he was playing a high-stakes game, and he wasn't sure he would pull it off. He had come up with the idea for a samurai film, and raised the money, but he didn't have a screenplay. He placed an urgent call to Rod Hewitt.
"I've got to make a movie in a couple months or I'm going to jail," he said. "Can you write a script?"
Hewitt hadn't heard from Hartford since the producer cheated him again, this time out of $1,000 on an infomercial project. Hewitt never got into why Hartford thought he was in trouble, but while they talked, Hartford had a courier deliver a $1,000 check. Hewitt agreed, and churned out the script for Forbidden Warrior in nine days.
Through Peña, Hartford had met Nickerson, who did stunts on Rocky and Raging Bull. He was brought in to direct.
Nickerson and Hewitt grew to hate each other. Each blames the other for the shortcomings of the film, which was released on DVD in 2005. But both noticed something was not right with how Hartford was raising money. Nickerson said he was stunned when he heard that one of Cinamour's closers had made $50,000 in commissions that week.
"They were definitely running a boiler room," Hewitt says. "To me it was amazing they were getting away with what they were getting away with."
Forbidden Warrior was cheaply made, and looked it. But Hartford spent a lot on an orchestra. He was certain he could win the Oscar for best score.
Steve Austin was nervous about being an informant. To satisfy the government, he would have to get people to make explicit admissions to wrongdoing. How could he do that in a casual conversation? And what if somebody patted him down? But cooperating would result in a shorter sentence, so he did his best.
He knew several movie producers who relied on boiler rooms — including Glen Hartford. They all knew of each other. That's because they would buy their sales leads — the lists of potential investors — from the same source. That source would sell the same names over and over. So when Austin called up a potential investor, the investor might say that he'd gotten a similar movie offer the previous week. Austin would ask about it and, in that way, he learned who his competition was.
Shocking and very sad. Glen Hartford was a big dreamer more than anything. He was always cool with me and actually paid me some money for my film that he distributed, which is more than I could say about a lot of distributors. I really feel sorry for him, and the investors.
I knew both Glen & Ken Hartford in the late 80s and early 90s. Ken was a character but also an evil genius. Glen was an excellent salesman but very greedy and untrustworthy. Everything in the article is true and not at all exagerrated, Unfortunately there are many more Hartfords on the loose who haven't gotten caught or offed themselves yet. These people should become Buddhist monks for a while to learn about humility and that money isn't everything. What a sad tale!
Cudos to Gene Maddaus for a terrific read.There but for the grace of G_d went I.I worked in phone rooms for years selling everything from magazine subs to indulgences on behalf of the Teamsters Union. And I nearly hooked up with guys like Glen, Steve, etc. Whew! Hollyweird.
Sad story. But this guy was a piker compared the scams run by our own City Council. Over $1.5 Billion of tax dollars into the CRA/LA in the last decade. When the State abolished the CRA's as they are riddled with fraud, Los Angeles resurrected its CRA.
The difference between Ken Hartford and the city council is Ken thought secrecy was necessary while the LA city council does it public right in front of everyone and then the State Assembly backs them up.
Im curious...Care to elaborate and maybe post some more information on CRA/LA...i saw the website but maybe you have more insight on how it is fraudulent.
*CityWatch LA (on-line) has a lot of stories about 1601 N Vine and the $1.4 Million discrepancy in purchase value for that property.
There are audits by former Controller Laura Chick and there are problems with CRA Hollywood Western (17.3 M), the missing $1/2 Billion at Hollywood Highland, and the questions surrounding CIM's Midtown development in Wesson's district. Denis Zine has some specific complaints.** Also, the entire claim that CRA cures blight and adds to afford housing is false*
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