In the unfriendly climate of a Hollywood under the gun for repeated violations of child labor laws, Sicherman, having never spent a moment in a school room --or any other room for that matter-- took his talents overseas. On the invitation of Mai Lo Qai, southeast Asia's leading filmmaker and underworld overlord, Sicherman's last film, Operation: Girl Scout, was brought to Thailand.

The film, originally a Daniel Stern vehicle about a boy on the run from a pair of bumbling crooks who is forced to disguise himself as a Girl Scout, was sold to Don Mai for a donkey, three boxes of Thin Mints, and a favor to be named later. The film's director, Omar Levine, was a long-standing associate of Mai, and in payment for his many years of service was given a seat in the director's chair. Jerry Tucci, the film's first director, became tired of working without a chair and eventually handed the complete directorship to Levine.

Sicherman, for his part, worked well in the new environment. The Thai culture fascinated him and he could often be found, after a shoot had wrapped, wandering the streets of Bangkok in a stimulus induced haze, eating flat noodles and buying twelve-year-old boys "for show." His eleven years in show business did, however, leave a small divide between him and the producers as the posh Hollywood lifestyle he had become accustomed to was not always so available.

"Worst slave I ever had," said Mai in a 1992 interview from a Cambodian labor camp. "He'd do nothing all day but sit in his trailer eating peanut butter crackers and trying to whistle. When shooting was over and it was time to kill him, he went back to the states. Is that loyalty? I ask you. Is that loyalty?"

The movie was a hit in the overseas market, where its dialogue was dubbed into an entirely unrelated script, but back home a still embittered Hollywood machine refused it domestic distribution. Downhearted, Sicherman finally threw in the towel and made the decision to turn the entertainment industry's Pinocchio into a real boy.

"I couldn't stand the hypocrisy any more," said Sicherman. "So I decided to leave show business and go to vocational school. It was there that I learned how to read."

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