MEMORIES

Anyone who's read any of my work knows I care a lot about getting history correct, at least as I've lived it and witnessed it.  But whenever I do more research, I discover new evidence for the need to correct something I thought I knew well.

Photos can be like that too.  Someone sent me this photo through the Internet earlier today, Colleen Halsey, a friend from my L.A. days who I met through her twin sister, Jo An Kincaid.  It was taken at her wedding to Richard Halsey, and that's me standing with Bob Chartoff with the glass in his hand.

I almost didn't recognize myself.  Partly because I'm wearing an oversize oil slick pattern suit coat I thought made some kind of absurdest statement about style constrictions.  (Possibly influenced by David Byrne's giant suit STOP MAKING SENSE period.)

In this shot it makes me look like I weighed a lot more than the 150 pounds I've weighed since I was fifteen (and still do) except for a brief period when another L.A. friend talked me into working out and building another ten or fifteen pounds of muscle. Which the ladies seemed to dig but made me feel extremely uncomfortable.

Anyway, there I am, in a shot I almost thought was someone else. In a moment in my personal history looking like I wouldn't have remembered if I hadn't seen this photo. Not only because of the brain operation and aging in general, but because candid snapshots like this often surprise with their this-couldn't-be-me unexpected reality.

Memories. Almost as good as making new ones.

VIVA LA DIFFERENCE

So, think there's no difference between the left and the right, between Dems and Repubs?

Try to remember that most on the right opposed the release of Nelson Mandela (including some praising Mandela now!) and sanctions against apartheid.

It was the left, and initially exclusively Democrats, supporting Mandela's release and the sanctions against South Africa that ended apartheid and led to Mandela's freedom.

NELSON MANDELA R.I.P.

FRED HAMPTON R.I.P.

On this day, Dec. 4th, in 1969, Fred Hampton, the young Black Panther leader in Chicago, who I loved and admired, was shot to death by the police while he was sleeping in his bed with so many bullets it made the ending of Bonnie and Clyde look like a picnic.

Originally claiming they were only returning fire, it was immediately clear by the evidence that the only shots fired had been from the police, though of course they tried to cover it up.

I wanted to type up a poem I wrote on the day it happened, but it was only published in one of my smaller books (Stupid Rabbits I think), the only copy of which is in my archives at the NYU library and I don't have easy access to it at the moment.

So let me just say, it was one of the most egregious displays of the misuse of the police and the FBI ever in this country. But also a perfect example of what happens when the police—local, state and national—are used for political ends rather than for what they are meant for, to protect and serve.

This wasn't like more recent murders of young black men by police, where the police were simply too frightened and ill-trained and dumb to recognize the mistake they were making. This was a planned assassination.

Hampton did nothing but help people. He was a really sweet cat, and young. Only 21. I met him when he was 19, and he was just an intelligent, caring and gentle soul in my experience. He remains one of the unforgettable martyrs for peace and justice, an icon of my 1960s, and a reminder that no matter what, we have to stay alert to injustice and fight it as much as we are able.

NEW QUOTE

"One well-established fact is that polarization in Congress maps onto one measure better than any other: economic inequality. The smaller the gap between rich and poor, the more moderate our politicians; the greater the gap, the greater the disagreement between liberals and conservatives. The greater the disagreement between liberals and conservatives, the less Congress is able to get done; the less Congress gets done, the greater the gap between rich and poor."      —Jill Lepore (from "Long Division" in The New Yorker Dec. 2, 2013)

TWO ICONS

Billie Holiday of course, and Martin Luther King. two giants in my personal iconography.

THE SEARCHERS

Caught this for the eighth or tenth time last night on TCM's "Essentials" with Robert Osborne and Drew Barrymore.  I knew Drew a little back in my Hollywood days when she was still a teenager. An incredibly bright, mature and competent person even then. Watching her grow as a film commentator on TCM's Saturday night showcase for movies Robert Osborne and her select as "essentials" has been a treat.

Last night particularly because Osborne for the first time (in my perspective) was reacting to aspects of THE SEARCHERS, which as he pointed out is considered by many critics and the American Film Institute as the greatest Western film ever, like a kind of grumpy old fogey. For instance saying he didn't like the technicolor and preferred the way the director John Ford shot the same locale (Monument Valley I believe) in black and white in his other Westerns.

He said that in response to Drew's enthusiastic response to the deep and bright primary colors in the film. Osborne also objected to Natalie Wood getting movie star credit and then not appearing in the film until very near the end which he felt distracted from the story and more or less predicted the outcome for her character.

But Drew again said that was one of the things she liked most about Wood's character, though hardly on screen Wood gave the character a kind of depth and fullness just with her movie star presence and stature. Only Drew said it better.

THE SEARCHERS is definitely high on any list I used to make (pre-brain op when I constantly made lists) of favorite Westerns and movies of any genre. But like the majority (probably more than ninety percent unfortunately) of Hollywood movies set around the time of The Civil War, this one three years after it, the ex-Confederate soldier is always cast as more noble, a better warrior and battle strategist, more honorable and more dependable and braver than anyone else and the Yankees, especially the soldiers are either shown to be fools or devils or slobs or unreliable or devious or incompetent or cowards etc.

It's despicable and partly came from early movie people sympathetic to the South, like D. W. Griffith, and partly from the post-Reconstruction period's attempt to placate the losers' bitterness and revenge fantasies by capitulating to the myth of the supposed honor and nobility of their cause. But in fact their cause was the perpetuation of an evil, the institution of slavery, and the facts show that more Union soldiers showed nobility and bravery and honor than their enemy.

TWELVE YEARS A SLAVE should be required viewing after any of old Hollywood's movies that mythologize the Confederacy and its defenders (as John Wayne's character is in THE SEARCHERS). But that major caveat aside, THE SEARCHERS is still a pleasure to watch for everything else about it, including the vibrancy of its technicolor and the beauty of Natalie Wood's cameo performance and presence. As well as the entire cast of great Hollywood character actors.