Filmmaker Chronicles Infamous Battle In Parallel California Water Wars

Anne Kelly-Saxenmeyer
Mirror contributing writer

   At a recent reading and slide show at Santa Monica’s independent video store, Vidiots, Eames Demetrios (grandson of Charles and Ray Eames) offered a history lesson on California’s Water Wars, the turbulent time in which L.A.’s racial junta invaded San Francisco in a desperate grab for its water rights.
   If you went to public school before such inflammatory material was suppressed from the curriculum, you’ll recall that although most of the battle sites of the Water Wars coincide with modern day places, the chronology of Parallel California (as Demetrios calls it) is “extremely difficult to reconcile.” Demetrios even suggests that the 58 county-states of Feudal California may have existed on an alternate plane.
   The evolution of Demetrios’ “Wartime California” is nearly as difficult to follow. Published by Xlibris in November 2001, the book contains the script for the film by the same name, the opening of which (some five years ago) resulted in “rolling street battles in Autonomous Westwood” and its other premiere sites. The film (which has been mysteriously lost) was based on a memoir entitled “Feudal California Boyhood,” by Cyrus Hawkes, the son of a legendary general in San Francisco’s battle for independence.
   In addition to a brief history of Parallel California, Demetrios’ presentation at Vidiots included photographs of its battle sites, artifacts of its lost wildlife (like the water mole, that leaves traversable, underwater mucus tunnels in its wake) and some recently recovered story boards for the film, depicting the famous hang glider boat battle over the Golden Gate Bridge.
   Fear of censure (or perhaps holiday shopping) kept the big crowds away from this controversial event. Maybe it’s just as well, for as friendly as the little wine and cheese gathering seemed, the divisive nature of Demetrios’ message (that of a clearly biased native San Franciscan) is still readily apparent. As he concedes in the introduction to his book, “Of course, Northern and Southern Californians still regard each other warily,” and “any project that explored the seminal events in the history of this hostility was asking for trouble.”
   Owner of Eames Office on Main Street in Santa Monica, Eames Demetrios is an author, filmmaker, and multimedia designer. For more information on “Wartime California” and its author visit www.wartimecalifornia. com.