Lewis Abernathy has moved up in Hollywood since his days as a starving stagehand. Now he’s a screenwriter and director, with a few credits to his name. Do you know a little film called “The Titanic”? Yep, that was Lewis Abernathy. He wrote one of the early scripts for his buddy of 15 years, James Cameron. He even had a role in The Titanic—and played himself in Cameron’s “Ghosts of the Abyss,” an IMAX 3D documentary about the Titanic. Last fall, Abernathy was back home in Denton, Texas, doctoring a script for Cameron and writing some episodes for the new TV series “Bionic Woman” when the Writers Guild of America went on strike. Writers on strike are not supposed to write. Lewis Abernathy was back to being a “starving artist.”

Abernathy, a self-described workaholic, has a strategy honed by years of being unemployed in Hollywood. He has, at various times in his past, worked as a detective, a magician, a shipwreck hunter and an inventor. (His inventions include an eyeglass holder with a night light and a one-handed snack tray able to hold both food and drink.) While his friends in Los Angeles were getting “day jobs” in muffler shops this time, he took advantage of the cheaper lifestyle in Texas to invent the “Gobbler,” a revolutionary new trash and leaf bagging system. And while they were moving into smaller houses, he was working (shhh) on his novel, a crime story.

Abernathy knows the crime genre. He worked as a private eye to put himself through film school at the University of Southern California. For 14 years, he roamed the concrete jungles of California, spying on cheating husbands and other low-life scum. He once got hit in the face with a coffee mug by a police officer in Malibu. “Get out of my beach community Abernathy!” he was told. Sound familiar? It should. The Cohen brothers ripped it off for their cult classic, “The Big Lebowski,” which borrowed several real-life examples from Abernathy’s crime fighting days.

Abernathy looks like a man behind the camera, not in front of it. He usually shows up in black sweatpants bunched at the ankles with white socks and brown sandals–much to his girlfriend’s horror. (The other constant is a cigarette in his hand.) The glasses framing his baby blue eyes have a rubber strap that hangs around his neck. A soiled black baseball cap with a light at the tip of the bill helps him see the buttons on his camera when he’s working at night. He has a reddish beard and keeps his long, wavy hair tied back in a ponytail. Large and jolly, he likes to play Santa Claus and pass out presents during Christmas. Not for children, mind you, but for pretty girls in bars.

His magic tricks aren’t made for the kiddos either. “Most of my magic tricks are adult bar parlor tricks… they’re a little bit naughty,” he says, pulling out a card that reads: If you’re in the mood for sex, smile. If not just tear this card up. It is made of non-tearable paper. It’s hard not to smile. “They never can,” he says, winking and laughing.

As a child, Abernathy was obsessed with shipwrecks, becoming the youngest member of the Titanic Historical Society, Inc. That’s why his friend “Jim” asked him to help write one of the first drafts of “Titanic” and later gave him an acting role in the film, playing a treasure hunter. Abernathy, for all his girth and mirth, has been down to see the real Titanic numerous times. He’s also dived with treasure hunter Mel Fisher into the famed Atocha, the Spanish galleon that sank off the Florida coast in 1622 with priceless gold, silver and jewelry. He wasn’t allowed to keep any of it, but he does have two replicas of silverware taken from the ship. Abernathy’s also been down to the Andrea Doria, the Italian cruise ship that sank in New York harbor in 1956. He didn’t get rich from that dive either.

Unemployed? No sweat. Abernathy's been a detective, a magician, a shipwreck hunter and an inventor.

The latest writers’ strike was his second. As required, he checked in everyday with the “Grubby Union” as he calls it, wearing a pair of his trademark black sweats. Writers, unlike the Screen Actors Guild, are notorious for arriving at screenings in pajamas with Ding Dong crumbs on their sweat suits, he notes. Because the pickings were slim for targets to picket in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, he didn’t exactly have to pound the pavement with fellow strikers. “I mean, what are we supposed to picket?” he says throwing his hands up in the air. “The Relay Tower or Channel 4?”

Instead, he kept up with the local and international news, played with his dog Heidi, worked in the yard, hung out with his girlfriend and went to bed by 10:30 p.m.—a drastic change from his writer’s life. “I write like a man obsessed,” he says, lighting up probably his sixth cigarette in 30 minutes. “I take bathroom and cigarette breaks. But eating, sleeping and bathing I don’t do much of. Maybe that’s something unique to writers.”

Abernathy’s currently working on a mock ‘50s short movie featuring a robot, which he is building himself. His next endeavor is to shoot a low-budget film in Denton, where he grew up and went to college, earning a degree in communications at the University of North Texas. He hopes to get started before next spring. “Now that I’m off strike, I can actually write it,” he says.

Writing, of course, means he will have to mothball his secondary careers as magician, inventor, detective and shipwreck hunter. Keep your eyes open for him. He might put you in his next screenplay. Just be sure to keep any ham safely locked away.