Robert Mark Kamen

The Karate Kid is a semi-autobiographical story based on Kamen's life. When Kamen was 17, he was beaten up by a gang of bullies after the 1964 New York World's Fair. He thus began to study martial arts in order to defend himself.[5] Kamen was unhappy with his first teacher who taught martial arts as a tool for violence and revenge.[5] So he moved on to study Okinawan Gōjū-ryū Karate under a teacher who did not speak English but himself was a student of Chōjun Miyagi.[5]

As a Hollywood screenwriter, Kamen was mentored by Frank Price who told him that producer Jerry Weintraub had optioned a news article about the young child of a single mother who had earned a black belt to defend himself against the neighborhood bullies. Kamen then combined his own life story with the news article and used both to create the screenplay for The Karate Kid.[5]

DC Comics had a character called "Karate Kid". The filmmakers received special permission from DC Comics in 1984 to use the title for the first film (and consequent sequels).[6]

In 1980, after being paid $135,000 for his first screenplay (which was never produced), Kamen used the check to buy 280 acres of rocky land on Mount Veeder in Sonoma County, California. He hired winegrower Phil Coturri to make 46 acres into a vineyard in 1981. In 1984, the first grapes were sold to local winemakers. The vineyard suffered a fire in 1996, destroying half the vineyard. Kamen replanted the vineyard, and in 1999 he bottled his first Kamen-branded wine, a Cabernet Sauvignon. In 2002, Kamen hired Mark Herold to craft his wines.[7]