Hoping for a funding touchdown

Young Chang

Two Christmases ago, screenwriter David McKenna visited Olive Crest,

which provides homes and services for abused children, and met a young

girl who gave him an unforgettable look.

Her eyes communicated fear, mistrust and reluctance. It was an

abnormal look for a girl that small, toward a stranger who had done her

no wrong.

“There was something deeper,” McKenna said. “Two years later, I’m

addressing that look.”

Since last spring, the Newport Beach native and his wife Marcy have

co-chaired a new fund-raising arm for Olive Crest called the Lighthouse

Guild -- a group of young (in their 30s or close to that age range)

adults from Orange County.

On Superbowl Sunday, Feb. 3, the upbeat guild will put on its first

fund-raiser at the Newport Beach Marriott Hotel to raise money for abused

and neglected children. Comedian David Alan Grier will host the event,

the Laker Girls will perform, football opportunity pools will include

trips and Irvine BMW will give away a 2002 convertible BMW.

“We’re so tired of your traditional black-tie, silent-auction, shallow

charity function,” said the 33-year-old writer of movies including

“American History X” and “Blow.” “The perception of charity work right

now is boring, let’s face it.”

Changing this perception is also part of the couple’s goals. They’d

like to raise money and get people involved, but they’d simultaneously

like to change the way charity work is seen and done -- get it across

that helping out can be fun, Marcy McKenna said.

The Newport Coast couple began getting involved with Olive Crest two

years ago, through a friend. The girl who gave McKenna that look also

gave David McKenna an emotional reason to get and stay involved.

“An emotional attachment is needed because otherwise, it’s temporary,”

he said. “If you meet the kids, the harder you work and the longer you

want to work for them.”

Marcy McKenna remembers spending Christmas with six children from

Olive Crest last month. She and her husband brought a honeybaked ham to

the home, along with stockings filled with fun necessities and a

Playstation 2.

“Once you meet the kids, it takes your heart,” Marcy McKenna, 32,

said.

They’re children who were abused, abandoned or neglected. They’ve

already been moved around so many times that most of them sleep in their

street clothes and shoes, unsure when they might have to get up and

leave.

Cautioning that he’s about to make a harsh analogy, McKenna compares

the kids at Olive Crest to children with terminal illnesses.

“With charities like AIDS and cancer, the kids are terribly sick but

usually there’s somebody there to love them,” he said. “These kids, they

have zero love... I get more love in one day than these kids get in a

lifetime.”

McKenna, who grew up on Irvine Avenue and went to Newport Harbor High

School, knows what it’s like be a happy kid and wishes the same

upbringing for all the 15- to 17-year-olds he meets at Olive Crest.

As a boy, he rode his bike to the beach everyday and, like many

Newport natives, delivered the Daily Pilot. He played football with Coach

Mike Giddings at Newport Harbor High and learned from him the principles

of discipline and the will to win.

“He taught me to attack life and that failure is not an option,”

McKenna said. “And I thank him for that.”

The screenwriter, whose other works include “Body Shots” and “Get

Carter,” attributes his success to that attitude.

When he wasn’t playing sports in high school (or eating sandwiches at

Ruby’s Sandwich Saloon with peers Mark McGrath and Stan Frazier of Sugar

Ray), he’d write stories in his head and dream up scenarios. As a finance

major and journalism minor at San Diego State University, he wrote his

first script -- inspired by a friend who was falsely accused of rape.

“The charges were dropped, but his life was ruined,” McKenna said. “At

the time, the movie ‘The Accused’ was out. I thought it’d make a good

movie.”

Today, after four scripts that have been turned into films, one film

in production and a project that he’s about to direct -- “The Twelfth

Man,” which Meryl Streep and James Gandolfini have committed to --

McKenna also plays the role of dad. Son Jack Morris McKenna was born four

months ago.

His Newport Coast home is as plush as the violet-patterned cushions

that plump up each couch, and in a picture frame among many other frames,

Sylvester Stallone is found smiling with Marcy McKenna.

But David McKenna doesn’t get blinded by the glitz of his life. He

sees what’s going on so clearly, in fact, that he’s blatantly using his

celebrity status to get others his age involved in charity.

“I wanna have fun,” he said, “But I don’t want to be soft about it

anymore.”

FYI

* WHAT: Super Bowl Extravaganza 2002

* WHEN: Feb. 3. The tailgate party begins at 1:30 p.m., the kick-off

takes place at 3 p.m.

* WHERE: The Newport Beach Marriott Hotel, 900 Newport Center Drive,

Newport Beach

* COST: $150

* CALL: (714) 543-5437, Ext. 1206 or https://www.ocsuperbowl.com