ANOTHER FAVORITE OLD QUOTE

"We want to create a world in which love is more possible." —Carl Ogelsby (wrote this down in the 1960s but don't remember where I read it)

I'm not so good anymore, if I ever was, at quick witted answers in situations with other folks, men in particular, but I still do pretty good on the keyboard of a typewriter or computer. So this quote puts the media reaction to the Mueller report in perspective in a way I understand...

ONCE

My two oldest children—Caitlin and Miles—in the 1980s after we moved from Manhattan to Sant Monica.

RUTGER HAUER R.I.P.

That Rutger half smile and those twinkling but at the same time piercing eyes, that's the way I remember Rutger. I have a million Rutger Hauer stories. We met through a friend in the 1980s and became instant cohorts. He introduced me to my dear friend the late great poet and playwright Lynn Manning, who also happened to be the blind heavyweight judo champion of the world when Rutger was playing a blind martial arts master and needed coaching.

He traveled around Europe in one of those huge "American" trailer trucks that he customized the inside of into a 1980s bachelor pad (lots of black light and leopard skin upholstery and barbells etc.). He got studios and production companies to hire me to co-write with him movie ideas he had, which was challenging since every time we got together he'd have seen or read something that inspired him to go in a totally different direction (including once where the ending reveals the whole movie was a fantasy in the mind of a prisoner in solitary).

We first met in New York, but after I moved to LA in 1982 we'd run into each other there or he'd come up with some project that would give us a reason to hang out. Once talking a studio into flying me to Paris where he was making a film and told them he needed me there to work on a screenplay with him for a future movie (that never got made as far as I know).

I was surprised to learn from the news of his demise that he was two years younger than me. He was such a commanding presence that he not only seemed much larger than me but older and wiser too, if at times uniquely eccentric. First time he visited me at a house I was renting in Santa Monica he showed up in nothing but farmer overalls. He claimed the monologue his dying character in BLADERUNNER speaks was totally improvised and spontaneous.

We had a little fallout when I barged in on a reading of a screenplay I'd adapted from a stage play he bought the rights to and put his name on as co-writer with me but didn't ask me to take part in the reading for execs at some studio and my ego got hurt and I did what I sometimes did to defend it that usually came across as angry and/or arrogant. But next time I saw him he was his usual sweet self.

He was a great actor and a total original. There was and will never be anyone like him. I wish I'd kept in touch better. Condolences to all who loved him, which includes me.

BLACK 47

I finally got to see the recent Irish film BLACK 47 in its entirety, and was so happy I did. The title refers to 1847, what some say was the worst year of the so-called Irish "famine"—which was just the world's way of avoiding calling it the genocide it was, since there was plenty of grains and food available but a choice was made to let the Irish Catholic peasants emigrate or starve to death, which a third of the country did.

The movie calls it a famine, which bugged me, and doesn't make clear the English penal codes that kept the Irish Catholics—like my ancestors were, including two of my grandparents who emigrated late in the 19th century—from speaking their own language or practicing their own customs etc. But it realistically portrays the suffering and the oppression of my ancestors and those like them, and posits a fantastic revenge story that, though action-movie fantasy, feels very satisfying to this descendent of clans that went through this period.

Directed and co-written by Lace Daly, one of the signal accomplishments of this film is the use of the Irish language, or as my grandfather called it: Gaelic. The hero is played by an Australian actor, James Frecheville, who learned the language and is totally convincing as the brooding enforcer. He is surrounded by a terrific cast, including the Irish actors Stephen Rea and the underused but always great Sarah Greene.

It should have won a best foreign film Oscar, in my opinion, and I only wish I had seen it on the big screen. But even on a smaller one, it is an essential history lesson wrapped up in a really good action flick.

NEW FAVORITE TEE SHIRT

FRANK DE LA ROSA R.I.P.

Frank de la Rosa is mostly known as a great jazz bassist, but I knew him as the coolest uncle of a dear friend in the 1990s in LA and the cool brother of triplet sisters who were equally cool in their varying ways. I only spent time with him at a few events, but I loved talking with him. He had a generosity of spirit, in my encounters with him, that unfortunately isn't as common as it should be. My condolences to all his family and friends and fans.

Hard to find videos (for my old brain anyway) of his bass work, but here's a gig he played on where you get to hear some of his exquisite musicianship, if you listen closely: