Los Angeles Daily Journal

        LOS ANGELES - Imagine 125 incarcerated, streetwise teen-age boys sitting still, mesmerized by a man speaking to them about what it was like growing up in a foster home where he was regularly beaten, berated and horrifically abused from the time he was 2 until he was moved to an orphanage 13 years later.
        "I could take being beaten and all that. Well, not really. But you learn to deal with it when you are a child with no power," Antwone Quenton Fisher said.
        Now 43, Fisher grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. But the abusive foster home, he added, could have been anywhere social workers overlook signs of abuse or fail to visit kids totally dependent on them for their protection.
        "My foster mother was good at disguising herself as a good person," Fisher, wearing a white baseball cap with the word "Navy" emblazoned across the top, told boys sentenced to Camp Gonzalez, a Los Angeles County probation camp in Calabasas.
        Fisher spent 11 years in the U.S. Navy and is the author of an autobiography called "Finding Fish." Published by William Morrow in hardcover and HarperCollins in softcover, the book has been on the New York Times' bestseller list, and a movie about Fisher's life, tentatively titled "The Antwone Fisher Story," is scheduled for release this fall.
        The film is being distributed by Fox Searchlight Pictures and was directed by and stars Denzel Washington. Fisher, whose previous screenwriting credits include such films as "Rush Hour" and "Money Talks," wrote the screenplay.
        "Bring a hankie," he joked.
        The writer volunteered to speak at the probation camp after learning that some of the kids had been reading "Finding Fish" in their creative writing class. Kids in that class questioned Fisher about whether it was OK to use slang in their writing.
        "You have to write the King's English first, and then you can write slang and give it your own voice," he replied.
        When one of the teen-agers asked whether they could see a sneak preview of his movie, Fisher looked exasperated.
        "Come on brother! You have got to get out of here," he said. "All of you have got to get out of here."
        It would have been easy, Fisher said, to have ended up behind bars like his foster brother, Dwight, who's been in prison since he was 18. The only reason he's in one place and Dwight's in another is that he got away from the neighborhood where he grew up.
        "When a boy turns 18, he should go somewhere else," Fisher said.
        From the beginning, no one could have predicted that the product of a chance liaison between two people destined to fail in their lives would make any positive contribution to the world.
        Fisher's father, an entertainer, was shot to death during a domestic dispute with a longtime girlfriend two months before Fisher was born in prison to another of the man's casual encounters.
        Fisher's mother, who also grew up in foster care, has spent her adulthood in and out of prison. A former prostitute and drug addict, she was not able to raise any of her five children, who all grew up as wards of the state.
        Then there was the foster home from hell. If he wasn't being beaten by the preacher's wife, he was being sexually abused as a young boy by his female babysitter.
        It wasn't until Fisher became a withdrawn, shellshocked teen-ager that a new social worker noticed the erratic behavior of the preacher's wife who, he said, mistreated all the foster children in the home. Temporarily moved to an orphanage, Fisher was then sent to an out-of-state reformatory for delinquent boys because no other housing could be found.
        After graduating from high school at the reformatory, the 18-year-old was cut loose from the child welfare system where he had spent his entire life. With no family, friends, resources or skills to fall back on, Fisher lived in a men's shelter until being menaced by the older residents.
        If you're a kid forced to live on the streets, Fisher writes, you quickly lose all track of time in a soul-less world "always on the lookout for new recruits."
        Of night smells, he writes that you eventually get used to them: "You may notice broken glass has its own smell. The various smells of wine bottles - Thunderbird, Night Train, Boone's Farm - mixed with the other varieties of liquor and beer are distinct, too.
        "These smells compete with the smells of rats, wet plastic, and rotting wood, the smell of a hollow place. And you can hardly avoid the recurring smell of human feces and urine."
        Fisher's first job on the street was working as a go-fer for a pimp who ran a prostitution and drug ring. When Fisher was made aware that small children also were being sold for sex, he protested.
        As a consequence, Fisher was beaten senseless by his boss. A prostitute warned him to get out of the neighborhood.
        "It was a real dark time," Fisher said. "I could only think of the moment."
        After returning to the community where he grew up in foster care, he witnessed the murder of a childhood friend. That was enough. Fisher left Cleveland behind when he joined the U.S. Navy.
        And, for the first time, he saw a new world. Not long after, he began having explosive outbursts he didn't understand.
        With the help of a Navy psychiatrist (played by Washington in the film), Fisher learned to channel his anger about his abusive childhood. The therapy also inspired him to become a writer, and he began looking for his biological family.
        Eleven years after he joined the Navy, Fisher fell in love with Southern California while stationed in San Diego and Long Beach. He didn't re-up; instead, he got a job as a prison guard at Terminal Island.
        Three years later, he no longer could handle watching prisoners be mistreated. He quit and went to work at Sony studios as a security guard.
        Meanwhile, he continued to search for his family. After securing his child welfare records, Fisher was able to make contact with his father's relatives. They didn't know he existed. So he arranged to go to Chicago and Cleveland to meet them. Through his father's family, he tracked down his mother, a woman he described as toothless and much older than she was, and four half-siblings.
        In "Finding Fish," he writes, "Over the years, our mother had been, for various reasons and for various periods, hospitalized, incarcerated, and on probation ... Later on, we stayed in touch for a while, but as two people with only DNA in common, being so different, and given the circumstances of our status, creating a true familial relationship was not possible."
        When Fisher returned home, movie executives who had learned of his story from his Sony boss asked him to write a screenplay.
        "So I went to Savon and wrote my story on a bunch of yellow tablets, and I've been writing ever since," he said.
        Married with two children, Fisher told the boys at Camp Gonzalez he has a good life.
        The only message he wanted the kids to hear was simple.
        "Make your own way," he said. "But you have to prepare yourself to make a life for yourself."