Beating the Odds as a Filmmaker

At his absolute lowest point, Gil Cates Jr. had no job, was $60,000 in debt, had gone through his bar mitzvah money and even sold off the gold cuff links that his late grandfather had given him. He didn’t dare tell his family.

Sports gambling was Cates’ gnawing addiction, an addiction he kept hidden from his father, Gilbert Cates, a former president of the Directors Guild of America, longtime producer of the Academy Awards telecast, producing director of the Geffen Playhouse and former dean of UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and Television.

Now the 30-year-old son has come to grips with the addiction that nearly devoured him before he finally managed to walk away from his gambling habit five years ago.

Cates has written and directed his first feature-length film, called “$pent,” a drama tinged with humor about a group of friends, their addictions and the tapestry of deceit they invariably weave trying to hide their problems from loved ones.

The film, also produced by Cates, Jordan Summers and Rana Joy Glickman, debuted Friday. Produced for about $1 million, the film is being released through Regent Entertainment, a Santa Monica-based film and television production, distribution and exhibition company. (“$pent” features Cates’ father in a small but crucial role.)

“$pent” revolves around a 25-year-old aspiring actor named Max (Jason London), who makes a pact with his alcoholic girlfriend (Charlie Spradling) that he will stop betting if she stops drinking. Along the way, Max’s sexually repressed roommate (James Parks) must also decide if he can go on living a lie by remaining in the closet.

“It’s really his gambling journey, his gambling problem, that propels everything,” Cates explained recently over lunch. “But in a wider sense, it’s about denial.”

As he bounds to his feet with a wide smile inside his cramped, ground-floor office, tucked away a block from congested Santa Monica Boulevard, there is nothing in the filmmaker’s cheery demeanor that hints of a dark past. He has just signed with the William Morris Agency as a writer-director and has two films in development that he is attached to direct. He also recently finished writing a comedy he plans to put on the spec market soon.

Yet, between the ages of 21 and 26, this former actor--whose family ties brought him in proximity with prominent directors, studio chiefs and Hollywood celebrities (his cousin is actress Phoebe Cates, who is married to actor Kevin Kline)--lived in a parallel universe.

It was a world of giddy highs and gut-wrenching lows.

One week he would win big, and his bookie would arrive from San Diego with an envelope stuffed with $100 bills. He was off to Tiffany’s to buy a gold-and-diamond Xs-and-O’s ring for his then-girlfriend or head to the Good Guys for a big-screen television.

Then the next week, he could lose big time. That’s when he placed desperate calls to friends and relatives making up some story about how he needed emergency cash until a payment came through from a long-lapsed Merrill Lynch account in New York. He never revealed why he really needed the money.

“There were times I had $5,000 on one game and $3,500 on other games,” Cates recalled. “There was a time I won nine weeks in a row, but on the 10th week I lost more money than those nine weeks combined. I had no idea how I was going to pay it. I had no money. I couldn’t tell my dad. I had gone through all the money I had saved, all the money I had earned.”

It was a world of deception.

On Sunday mornings, he would slip into the bathroom with a portable phone and turn on the shower so his sleeping girlfriend couldn’t hear him dial up the latest line from the bookie on that day’s NFL football games.

Cates’ addiction to sports betting eventually got so bad that he stole his girlfriend’s audiotapes and exchanged them for money at the Wherehouse so he could treat himself at McDonald’s and buy gas. At other times, he would gobble down food without paying at supermarkets.

“I could go to the aisle where there was sushi,” he said, “put it in my cart and, as I’m looking for other food, put it in my mouth--a little California rolls or whatever--eat it, and then just leave everything and go.”

His constant companion was a pamphlet called the Gold Sheet, which he’d purchase for $7 at a newsstand near Junior’s Deli on Westwood Boulevard. It’s printed in black ink on gold-colored paper, and it’s the gambler’s bible, forecasting the line on every game in a given week along with reports of player injuries, key matchups, weather projections and any other information vital to serious bettors.

Weekends were a blur of televised games, beginning with college football on Saturday, moving to NFL games on Sunday and capped off with Monday Night Football.

Why did he do it?

“I loved winning,” Cates said.

Why didn’t he just get a job and pay off his gambling debts?

Although he no longer thinks this way, Cates said, he believed at the time that because he was an actor and because he came from a well-off family, it would be too embarrassing to park cars or be a waiter.

Besides, how many waiters make $8,000 on a weekend? That was Cates’ best haul. Then again, how many drop $15,000? Cates did that, too.

He didn’t come by his gambling habit hanging out in dingy pool halls reeking of spilled beer or rolling dice on street corners with shifty-eyed souls named Louie. His parents, Gil and Jane Cates, were upstanding, straight-arrow folks. Neither they nor their three other children gambled.

Close Father-Son Relationship

To this day, father and son remain extremely close. When dad ran the directors’ guild, he would take his boy to labor negotiations. They also attended Laker games, for which his dad held season tickets.

Cates became president of his senior class at a private French school, Le Lycee Francais in Los Angeles. He then attended drama school at Syracuse University, his dad’s alma mater. When he returned to L.A., he got into acting, landing parts in TV shows that include “Matlock,” “Major Dad” and “Silk Stalkings” as well as feature films.

He was introduced to sports betting by an acquaintance, who used a bookie based in San Diego. Cates first bet $50--and won. He won again, wagering $100 on the Chicago Bears minus seven points. After four or five months betting through his friend, Cates was placing his own bets with the bookie.

The first year, Cates won maybe $2,000. But no gamblers strike it rich forever. He eventually went through his entire $33,000 in savings, which included money left from his bar mitzvah and one grandfather. He also sold the cuff links his other grandfather left him.

His late uncle, Joe Cates--father of Phoebe and creator of TV shows that include “The $64,000 Question”--once helped the youth out of a jam, telling his nephew that life’s all about growing up, so “grow up.”

The son hid his addiction from his father, feeling it would be too humiliating to ask him for money to pay off his gambling debts. Even though the father loved his children, he didn’t believe in handing them things on a silver platter.

“He was always there for me; don’t get me wrong,” the son recalled. “My dad is the most generous guy. If I was to say, ‘Dad, I need a thousand dollars,’ he would be there for me. I don’t have a trust fund. I don’t have guaranteed money. . . . But, God forbid, if something were to happen to me, they’d be there.”

In a recent telephone interview from Nashville, where he is directing James Cromwell and Annabeth Gish in James Agee’s “A Death in the Family” for PBS, Gilbert Cates said he didn’t realize that his son was hitting up friends to pay off gambling debts.

“I only realized it afterward,” he said. “A couple of friends told me.” His voice lowered. “I’m glad I didn’t know.”

Even now, his son’s decision to go public with his addiction is difficult for his father to discuss in public. They are “unpleasant memories to try and dredge up.”

But the 66-year-old Cates also taught his son that the best screenplays often come from personal experience.

“To me, I always encouraged him to write about what he knew,” the father said. “I was moved and touched by his screenplay. It was authentic and he lived it. But I have to tell you in all honesty, I wasn’t enthusiastic about him going public with it.”

At his darkest moments, the son sought help at Gamblers Anonymous, hoping that if he heard the horror stories of other gamblers, it would frighten him into quitting. He finally overcame his addiction through sheer willpower.

But temptation is still never far away. Because of his history, he is on every tout’s mailing list enticing him to bet through offshore companies based in the Caribbean or others in London. After receiving one recent mailing, he knew immediately what to do.

“I threw it in the trash.”