Jew Eat Yet?

In the Maine

I’ve been on blog hiatus for the past week as I attended a series of Heinemann meetings here in beautiful York, Maine, just north of Heinemann’s Portsmouth, NH headquarters. We’ve been talking about the state of progressive education and how our company is faring in this dismal time of mandated curriculum and high-stakes testing. It’s a challenge but Heinemann will always be a beacon to teachers who strive to do what’s right for kids—create child-centered classroom experiences that engage students and allow them to think critically and develop a lifelong love of learning. It’s always inspiring to be around my colleagues and I can’t wait to get home and start acquiring more books! I may be the only editor at Heinemann who uses a blog as a recruitment tool but I can already think of two teachers I met through this blog that I hope will write for us. If you are an educator who believes in a progressive, constructivist approach to education, please email me if you want to discuss a possible book. Two of our authors who are also contributing editors are here with us this week and you should check out their amazing resources: Harvey "Smokey" Daniels, who understands more than anyone how teachers can hold on to kids as they navigate through middle and high school, and Gloria Pipkin, who should win a Nobel Prize for her tireless, courageous work in defending the rights of teachers and students during these crazy times.

This is a beautiful part of the country and I frequently betray my L.A.-soaked frame of reference with comments like “Wow, this looks like a movie set!” I can’t help but continually check the 17th and 18th century buildings to make sure they’re not just false fronts. Yesterday before our meeting we took a walk along the York River and ended up at the John Hancock Warehouse, a building that was owned by the Boston patriot and was a store and a customs office during colonial times when the river was a major thoroughfare. The customs official there used to collect taxes on ships bringing china, fabrics, silver, furniture, and tea from London, or the ships that were exporting tallow, apples, and potatoes from York to the West Indies.

I admit that before I started coming to New England for Heinemann, my knowledge of Maine was restricted to two things: George Bush Sr.’s summer home in Kennebunkport (just up the road from here) which is in the news this week because Papa Bush invited Bill Clinton to stay with him while he’s in the area promoting the new paperback edition of his book. I was surprised to see the photos of these two fishing and golfing together and looking like the best of chums. Sort of heartening to see although I read that many right wingers are not pleased by this friendship because they worry it might lead to the Bush family pulling its punches if Hillary decides to run for President in 2008. (Don’t worry, I’m sure they’ll be capable of plenty of hideous attacks.) Funny how my utter loathing of what George W. is doing in the White House is making me look back to the days of George Sr. with something approaching nostalgia. His budding friendship with his former ideological enemy adds to George’s newfound appeal even though the relationship doesn’t seem as sincere as the one between Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford.

My other knowledge of Maine comes from the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical “Carousel,” set in a Maine fishing village in the late 1800s. While I’m sure most of the move version was shot on the Twentieth Century Fox backlot, the dark tale of Billy Bigelow and Julie Jordan looks authentic to this rugged seacoast area (but then again, so does “Murder She Wrote’s” Cabot Cove, and I’ve stood on that southern California set at Universal Studios!). Don’t think I haven’t burst into song several times during this trip where the surroundings are so quaint I feel like I’m an extra on the “Carousel” soundstage. And of course, being June, how could I resist?

June is bustin' out all over
The ocean is full of Jacks and Jills,
With the little tail a-swishing'
Ev'ry lady fish is wishin'
That a male would come
And grab 'er by the gills!
Because it's June... June, June, June
Just because it's June, June, June!

We went to the oh-so-cute town of Ogonquit the other night for a great dinner with the gang and one of my co-workers told me that the area boasts a very large gay and lesbian community. Surely the town song must be:

You're a queer one, Julie Jordan,
You been acting most peculiar,
Every morning you're awake ahead of me,
Always settin' by the winder.
You like to watch the river meet the sea.

Maybe Julie Jordon or Billy Bigelow were gay. Billy kept insisting, “I’m not the kinda fella to marry anybody!” That might explain the tragic results of his and Julie's attempts at a love affair. And it would bring new meaning to one of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s best songs:

If I loved you,
Words wouldn't come in an easy way
Round in circles I'd go!
Longin' to tell you,
But afraid and shy
I'd let my golden chances pass me by!
Soon you'd leave me,
Off you would go in the mist of day,
Never, never to know
How I loved you
If I loved you.

I think I was about 12 when I saw the movie version of “Carousel” for the first time, about a year or so after my parents’ divorce. There were times back then when I was keenly aware of my numbed-out state—my survival mechanism for coping with my mother’s absence and the radical changes in my family life. I remember staring in the mirror and trying over and over again to cry. Not a tear, I just couldn’t do it. Then one day my sister and I were watching “Carousel” on our little Sony TV that sat on our kitchen table (yes, we watched TV at every meal—great idea, huh?). At the end of film, when the ghost of Billy Bigelow is watching the daughter he never knew get taunted by the local Maine brats, he stands beside her and tries to give her strength. The unhappy daughter senses her father’s presence and suddenly sees a light in the storm that is her miserable life. She knows that she will be able to live through the adversity she currently faces and come out happy and strong on the other side.

Walk on through the wind,
Walk on through the rain,
Tho' your dreams be tossed and blown.
Walk on, walk on
With hope in your heart
And you'll never walk alone,
You'll never walk alone.

Something about that scene hit a nerve and unleashed a torrent of pent-up emotions. Hearing Gordon MacRae’s Billy and then Shirley Jones’ Julie sing those words I started crying so hard that I had to run up to my room. I haven’t had a problem crying since that day although I sometimes need a movie like “Carousel” to spur me on.

And now, with several lobsters digesting in my system, I’m off to Boston to fly home. I may stop by the inspiring JFK Library on my way out if I have enough time. If President Kennedy had lived, do you think he would have befriended his rivals as Carter and Clinton have done? There’s an image to contemplate: an elderly John Kennedy on the golf course arm-in-arm with Richard Nixon. Wish we could've seen that.

Jennifer Aniston Is Controlling My Brain

I read this insane article on the AP wire this morning called “Brain Cells Recognize Famous People.” Apparently a new research study has shown that individual brain cells can respond to pictures of certain celebrities. In one case, the article reports, a single cell was activated by different photos of actress Halle Berry, including some in her “Catwoman” costume, a drawing of her, and even the words “Halle Berry.” The senior investigator of the study, Dr. Itzhak Fried of UCLA, said that the findings appear in a part of the brain that transforms what people perceive into what they'll eventually remember. But he is quick to point out that “there is not only one cell that codes for Jennifer Aniston. That would be impossible.” I wonder how many Jennifer Anniston brain cells I have. Maybe their presence explains why I didn’t care for “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” which Kendall and I saw last weekend. This was the movie that introduced Brad Pitt to Angelina Jolie—by all reports a major factor in the collapse of the Pitt-Aniston marriage. Were my Jennifer Aniston brain cells screaming in revolt every time Brad and Angelina appeared on screen in a hot n' heavy clinch (which was every moment when they weren’t trying to brutally murder each other)?

Charles Connor, a brain expert at Johns Hopkins, called the results of the study striking. “Nobody would have predicted that conceptual information relating to Aniston, for example, would be signaled so clearly by single cells.” What’s going on? Are the nation’s leading scientists obsessed with Jennifer Aniston? Are they hiding copies of “Us” magazine under their lab reports?

Apparently the research for this study was conducted by placing electrodes in the brains of eight people with epilepsy so that doctors could track the origins of their seizures. Yikes! The researchers then studied which cells became activated as the participants looked at images on a laptop computer. One participant had a brain cell that reacted to different pictures of Aniston, for example, but was not stimulated by other famous faces. Dr. Fried also noted that when this participant was shown photos of Aniston paired with actor Brad Pitt, from whom the actress later separated, the brain cell didn't respond at all. “I don't know if it was a prophetic thing,” Fried said.

This is an idea worthy of Faye Dunaway’s “Network” program schedule or a Fox reality show: “Tonight at 9, tune in to hear our panel of epileptics weigh in on the impending Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes marriage. Remember, folks, brain seizures do not lie!”

Maybe this explains why I’ve been having such a God-awful week, watching with rising anxiety as my current state of self-judgment and irritability affects everyone around me. I may well be suffering from a Battle Royale between the celebrity brain cells running rampant in my temporal lobes. On Monday night Kendall and I went to the Motion Picture Academy to see a beautifully restored version of “The Heiress.” Olivia de Havilland was absolutely brilliant in the role, but now I’m convinced that I have a brain cell dedicated to her estranged and perpetually jealous sister Joan Fontaine that started its cranial attack as soon as de Havilland made her entrance. What other brain cells are fighting in my head? Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons? Bette Davis and Joan Crawford? Tom Cruise and Brooke Shields?

The study reported that in one participant, the same brain cell responded both to Jennifer Aniston and to Lisa Kudrow. The Johns Hopkins scientist called this “a tantalizing glimpse at how neurons represent concepts like membership in the cast of ‘Friends,’ and could lead to much more extensive studies of how conceptual information is organized in human memory.” Could be. Or maybe Aniston is purposely invading the Kudrow cell because she's so furious. Here she is locked in as this summer's tabloid fodder while Lisa Kudrow is having a great run in her superb new HBO show, “The Comeback.” Whatever's going on in there, it’s clear that my current brain chemistry is fragile enough without these dueling celebrities.

Out, Jennifer! Out!

Forefathers

I’ve been obsessed all weekend with researching my roots. Well, not my roots exactly, more like the roots of my neighborhood—tracing the people who lived in the various houses on my block over the past hundred years and finding out what happened to them after they left the hood. I’ve already mentioned my obsession with Henry Jensen, the man who built our house for his family and who lived here from 1909 until his death in 1944. Jensen built some of the earliest movie theatres on the West Coast (including the magnificent Raymond Theatre in Pasadena which is facing imminent ruin at the hands of greedy developers) as well as many beautiful L.A. structures including other homes in our neighborhood. I’m still on the hunt for the only living relative of Henry Jensen that I know about, his great-grandson Robert Matthews, who last I heard was a 50-year-old lawyer in Orange County. So far every address I’ve tried has been a dud but I haven’t given up. Robert, if you’re out there, let me know!

But this weekend, thanks to insomnia and a subscription to Ancestry.com, I started mapping out the rest of the neighborhood, becoming as engrossed in the lives (and deaths) of the people who once occupied my block as I am in my own family’s history in the shtetls of eastern Europe. The hours flew by as I studied the handwritten census forms from 1910, 1920, and 1930, along with the Social Security Death Index and World War I Draft Registration cards, my eyes aching like those of a Talmudic scholar hunched over the Torah. There are few things that give me a greater rush than successfully cross-referencing the right names and dates to find missing pieces of the puzzle. I can feel the past coming alive during my research, the ghostly images from years gone by filling up the geography I now inhabit.

As I conjure up the forgotten history of this neighborhood, it's as if I’m paying penance for the years of neglect that transformed the area from one of the most fashionable districts in Los Angeles to a gang-infested wasteland that was tearing down mansions as fast as they could prop up hideous, poorly constructed cardboard boxes masquerading as housing. Our neighborhood is now cleared of the crack houses and ruins of the L.A. Riots during which several of the storefronts on the corner of our block were torched. The old-time neighbors who care about their homes are more visible now, as is the incoming breed of yuppies (including me and Kendall) who are so appreciative of our gorgeous old homes and the rich histories they contain.

Why is it so thrilling to me to trace the stories of people who have been dead for more than a generation? I added many details to my master list of what our neighborhood looked like in its heydey. I discovered a fascinating mix of lawyers, doctors, tailors, real estate agents, orange growers, owners of gold mines, a silent movie actress, the lead saxophone player in Paul Whiteman’s orchestra, the rabbi who married Irving Thalberg and Norma Shearer, a famous architect of Craftsman houses and his one-year-old son who went on to become an Oscar-winning Art Director, along with countless people of all ages who did not work but were listed by the census workers as having “own income.”

The renowned architect I mentioned is Frank M. Tyler, responsible for some of the most beautiful homes in Los Angeles. Realtors today invoke Tyler’s name as a major selling point and the prices of the homes he built in the area have skyrocketed since we moved here a few years ago. I am a big fan of Tyler’s work and was thrilled to find him living down the street in the year 1910. At that time the 33-year-old architect resided in the stately new home that he designed for his father-in-law, John Burkhart, 54, who himself was a master carpenter along with his son, Harry, age 27. John and Beckie Burkhart’s daughter Lillian had married Frank Tyler in the summer of 1904. At the time of the census, the Tylers had a five-year-old son named Donald and a rambunctious one-year-old boy, born on March 28, 1909, named Walter. The children’s grandfather, William Burkhart, was living with the family following the death of his wife. Also on the census rolls was the Burkharts’ live-in housekeeper, Julia del Vescoso, 55, who had emigrated from Turin, Italy at the turn of the century.

Fast forward to 1920 and we find that Frank Tyler’s fortunes have grown considerably. Now his in-laws live in his house instead of the other way around, a large estate on Casitas Avenue. I guess some architects can’t stop building themselves new houses because by 1930 the middle-aged Tylers are living in yet another exclusive L.A. neighborhood while Lillie’s parents reside in a different Tyler-designed house back on Casitas with their son Harry who is 47 and unmarried (what’s going on there, Harry—inquiring minds want to know!).

Frank’s son Walter, who lived on my street as a young boy, inherited his father’s design sense but instead of building homes he used it to make his way in the movie business as a successful Art Director. Beginning with “Henry Aldrich, Boy Scout” in 1944 (the 11 Henry Aldrich films were Paramount’s answer to MGM’s successful Andy Hardy franchise), Walter went on to art direct some of the most prominent films of the next three decades including “A Place in the Sun,” “Roman Holiday,” “Sabrina,” “The Ten Commandments,” most of the Elvis Presley musicals, all of the early Neil Simon films from “The Odd Couple” to “The Out-of-Towners,” and ending with John Frankenheimer’s “Black Sunday” in 1977. Tyler was nominated for nine Academy Awards and won in 1950 for Cecil B. DeMille’s “Samson and Delilah.” He died on November 3, 1990.

Have I lost you yet? Are your eyes glazing over as you wonder why I can’t seem to focus on the here and now with the same zeal that I reserve for these useless tidbits that form the historical archive in my brain? I just wanted to illustrate how one name on a 95-year-old census form can start spreading its tendrils until I find myself doing extensive research on families that one hour earlier I knew nothing about. I’ve also been buying old L.A. high school yearbooks on eBay looking for further information on the former inhabitants of my neighborhood. Thanks to my newly acquired 1922 Lincoln High School Yearbook, I spent several hours last night researching the life and times of one Huber Smutz, class president. Come on—did you really expect me to let that name go by unresearched? I now know more about Huber Smutz and the Smutz family than I ever dreamed possible, but I’ll be kind and spare you the details.

There is a section in the yearbook containing pictures of the graduates and long descriptions of their school activities. For example, senior Franklyn Pierce was the Self-Government Secretary, Treasurer of the Lincolnian Society, Head Yell Leader, Vice President of the Glee Club, President of the Senior Dramatics Class, and Second Lieutenant of the ROTC. By contrast one single-line entry immediately stood out to me: “Hyman Zarinsky: Has zest.” Nothing else was mentioned, but then again, when you have zest, what else is there to say? I had to research Hyman, of course, and soon was able to piece together a dossier of his life which ended on October 6, 1980. But some things can’t be found in government documents. Did his wife Molly share the yearbook committee’s assessment of her husband’s zest? I can only hope. Even the pencil-written scrawls of the kids who signed the yearbook couldn’t escape my Need to Know. On one spring day in 1922, Charles Sanderson, also known as “Kid Sandie,” signed this yearbook, originally owned by a sophomore named Lena Loarmann: “Our eyes have met, Our lips not yet, But O You Kid! I’ll get you yet!” You’ll be happy to know that Kid Sandie did not try to make his living as a poet but by 1930 was living a few blocks from here with his wife Esther and was working as a bill collector for a national magazine.

This being Father’s Day, you’d think I’d turn my powers on my own dad, about whose family I know so little. I’ve tried and tried, but it’s as if they never existed. My father’s mother Jeannette, as I’ve mentioned, suffered from mental illness and was institutionalized when my father was still a boy. They were homeless from time to time and my father started working at a very young age in order to survive. He never knew his father. While there was a man named Morris Miller that possibly fathered one or both of my dad’s older brothers, it seems unlikely that he was my father’s father so the name my daughter and I carry is by default. (By all accounts Morris Miller was a no-good shmuck but let’s give him a shout out for leaving the name Miller in his wake instead of saddling us with my grandmother’s maiden name of Manosowitz!)

There has been all sorts of speculation about the identity of my father’s father, including the possibility that he was a guard at one of the asylums Jeannette frequented in the early 1930s, but short of psychic intervention, all leads have run dry. Is that why I’m so driven to research other people’s families with an OCD-like fervor? Would a therapist say that I’m somehow trying to reclaim my own lost identity through these cross-referenced names and dates? With no decent male role models, my father defied the odds and became one of the most loving and caring fathers that ever walked the earth. I hope Leah sees me as a good dad since I have no similar excuse. I’ve had an abundance of excellent male role models in my life, from Peter Miller all the way to Hyman Zarinsky and Huber Smutz!

Yahrtzeit

Last night at sundown was the beginning of my mother’s yahrtzeit, the anniversary of her death according to the Jewish calendar. I can’t think of a better evening for this to take place. First we attended the premiere of Leah’s latest play, “Bugsy Malone,” in which she played several characters from a temperamental singer at Fat Sam’s speakeasy to the gum-chewing moll of gangster Dandy Dan. It wasn’t an easy show and the kids did a great job. Leah’s characters were nicely delineated despite the lack of costume changes that I’m sure left the audience thinking they were all the same person. While the content wasn’t as questionable as some of the plays this theatre company tends to perform, most of the girls were painted up like dime store floozies trolling Times Square. Oy. But oh how my mother would have loved seeing this and all of Leah’s shows.

From there we raced to the Greek Theatre in L.A.’s Griffith Park for my brother-in-law’s show which was superb. I’ll leave the real reviews to the music bloggers and the Wilco fansites but I can’t remember them ever sounding better than they did last night. It was such a great evening and again, my sister and I couldn’t help thinking how my mother would have been so excited about the band’s success. If she were still working at the Merchandise Mart, she probably would have had a couple thousand of her coworkers on the guest list and would have continually burst into her boss Chris Kennedy’s office with news of Wilco’s Grammy wins or their latest CD sales.

I definitely felt like she was there last night and I was so touched that Jeff placed a Manischevitz yarhtzeit candle right there on center stage between him and the brilliant Wilco drummer Glen Kotche. It remained lit throughout the show giving my mother the best seat in the house. After the band finally left the stage we screamed as one of the crew members blew it out (you’re supposed to let yahrtzeit candles burn out on their own) but I’m sure my mom could forgive the goyishe roadies who were probably panicked all night about the fire hazard burning atop one of the amps.

Being L.A., I of course combed the VIP section for celebrities who were Wilco fans and I was able to spot Toni Collette, Juliette Lewis, Jason Bateman, Catherine Keener, James Spader, and some guy from “Entertainment Tonight.” The crowd, as always, was wildly enthusiastic and I spent as much time watching them as I did Jeff. Seeing thousands of people mouthing his words and getting so much joy from Jeff’s songs, I can only imagine what that feels like. It’s amazing for me to think of a handful of people reading my blog so I can’t even fathom what it must be like to consistently face enormous crowds who hang on to your every word. How lucky that it hasn’t gone to any of their heads, all the band members seem as down-to-earth as they are talented.

When we first met Jeff he was still in Uncle Tupelo and seemed so very young and innocent. I remember an early dinner with Sue, Jeff, and my mom in Chicago where my mother bizarrely went off on a rant about some of my sister’s old boyfriends, several of whom were also musicians, listing the ways that they were deficient. Catching herself as she dissed the men in Sue’s life, she quickly added “except Jeff, who’s darling!” This became a catch-phrase we started adding to the end of our own slanderous diatribes. We could talk trash about anyone we liked as long as we ended with “except Jeff, who’s darling.” About a year or so after they met my sister got cancer and had to go into the hospital for surgery. It all turned out fine but at the time we didn’t know what to expect. As soon as my sister’s gurney was wheeled into the elevator to go up for surgery, Jeff collapsed to his knees, sobbing against the elevator doors, forever endearing himself to my family.

Leah came to the Wilco show last night straight from her performance in “Bugsy Malone.” At one point when Jeff dedicated a song to his family and the giant TV screens at the Greek showed my nephews and Leah, I wanted to hold up a sign behind her head that said “My daughter just performed in a play! I swear I don’t usually let my 10-year-old go out looking like Brooke Shields in ‘Pretty Baby!’”

I don’t think we need a trance channeler to hear my mother’s kvelling from the Great Beyond. I can still feel her incessant and happy “Oys!” from last night ringing in my ears.

Nothing Is Better for Thee Than Me

Is anyone old enough to remember that Quaker Oats slogan? I used to love visiting their old headquarters which was located in the same Chicago landmark where my mother worked, the Merchandise Mart. We used to take the Quaker Oats tour whenever we had a free moment so we could stop by the test kitchen and sample the strange recipes the researchers were always working on. I’ve got oatmeal on the brain today because my nephews Spencer and Sammy (ages 9 and 5) are in town from Chicago to shoot a Quaker Oats commercial with the three other members of their band “The Blisters.” These young non-actors got the gig through a bizarre series of events, it wasn’t something they sought out. But oh, what fun it was!

The commercial was shot yesterday at the Hollywood Center Studios where many Marx Brothers, Mae West, and Jimmy Cagney movies were shot. Howard Hughes’ “Hells Angels” with Jean Harlow was filmed here, and it was later the location for many classic TV shows including the first two years of “I Love Lucy” as well as “Green Acres,” “Mr. Ed,” and “Petticoat Junction.” The Lucy soundstage has a special plaque marking its historical importance and the studio commissary is called the Babalu Café to honor Ricky Ricardo’s famous song.

When I first moved to L.A. in 1986, MGM, once the classiest film studio in the world, was in its waning days (it soon become Lorimar, then Columbia, and today it’s Sony Entertainment). I perfected a technique back then to get past the security guards at the front gate and wander around the lot to my heart’s content. I’d dress nicely, park my car on the street, grab a yellow pad and a couple of pencils, and look extremely busy jotting down notes on my pad as I sauntered past the guard in the back of a group of studio executives. Sometimes I would even start raving about some contract I was working on, pretending I was talking to the person in front of me. I never got caught and I’d spend hours in the gargantuan soundstages and prop rooms looking for items from MGM’s gloried past. One time I found myself alone in a huge room containing massive backdrops on gigantic rolls including a panorama of the Scottish highlands from the Gene Kelly/Cyd Charisse movie “Brigadoon.” Alas, the fabled MGM Lot 2, which contained all of the outdoor sets including Andy Hardy’s home town of Carvel, was stupidly torn down in the early 70s (despite Debbie Reynolds' best efforts to save it) and sold to developers who built a bunch of hideous residential homes and condos. One of the many insane moves of the 1970s, a miserable decade for preservationists everywhere.

These days it is nearly impossible to sneak into film studios. For a good year after 9-11 there were sharpshooters armed with rifles on the roofs of the soundstages since rumor had it that al-Quaida was planning some hits on the sites responsible for spreading the culture of the infidels worldwide, and security is still intense. So it was a treat to be in a studio again, even if it wasn’t one of the biggies. I put on my fake MGM executive look and wandered around the lot. Every once in a while I caught snippets of what people were screaming into their cell phones. Some verbatim examples:

“That fucker promised me a deal at Dreamworks. What the fuck am I paying him for?”

“Our D.P. (Director of Photography) doesn’t know his asscrack from a hole in the wall.”

“I can’t use kids, it’s a long shoot. Call Shirley, I need a bunch of '18-look-youngers' by Monday."

I never heard that phrase, “18-look-younger,” but it’s very Hollywood. I guess that’s how they get around the strict child labor laws when it comes to shows featuring minors. Just get 18 year olds and pretend they’re 14. Many of the people I saw at the studio seem to be going for the “45-look-younger” category.

The Blisters’ commercial was directed by none other than Academy Award winner Errol Morris. He’s done a bunch of fantastic documentaries including “Gates of Heaven,” “The Thin Blue Line,” and “The Fog of War.” I wonder who was a more insightful interview subject, former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara or my five-year-old nephew Sammy. Robert McNamara told Morris, “Any military commander who is honest with himself, or with those he is speaking to, will admit that he has made mistakes in the application of military power. He's killed people unnecessarily—his own troops or other troops, through mistakes, through errors of judgment. A hundred, or a thousand, or ten thousand, maybe even a hundred thousand. But he hasn't destroyed nations.” Sammy Tweedy told Morris, “When I hit my head, it makes me think better.”

I loved the set, a series of giant, perfectly reproduced oatmeal boxes. Spencer got to play his drums atop a box of Maple and Brown Sugar Instant Oatmeal. All the kids were naturals—Spencer, Dylan, Hayden, and Henry, and they even wrote an original song about eating oatmeal that sounded great (to quote Spencer, “Oatmeal makes you rock more efficiently!”). But I was especially riveted by Sammy’s avant-garde performance. As the band played, Sammy wandered in an out of the frame holding up a series of kid-made signs about oatmeal. Sometimes he’d hold them upside down, sometimes he’d drop them on the floor, one time he was almost trampled by the crew member holding the Steadicam. I don’t think that soundstage has seen such brilliance since Harold Lloyd shot “The Freshman” there in 1925!

California law requires a social worker and tutor on every set where children are working. Every time any of us spoke to the kids we worried that the social worker was going to turn us in to the authorities! And thanks to the abuse that cute child actor Jackie Coogan endured in the early 1920s after starring with Charlie Chaplin in “The Kid” (his mother and stepfather wouldn’t give him a dime of the $4 million he earned as a child), all of the parents on our set were educated about the Coogan Act which requires a portion of the kids’ earnings to go into a blocked trust that no one can touch until they’re 18. (But the Coogan Act couldn’t prevent adorable Jackie Coogan from morphing into scary Uncle Fester in the 1960s sitcom “The Addams Family,” also shot at this studio!)

All in all, it was truly a unique experience. The guy who created the ad campaign, Scott Smith, was one of the finalists in Project Greenlight this year and you can read his comments about the day in his excellent blog.

As they were finishing up the commercial, I suddenly wondered if it was wrong to have children acting as corporate shills. At least all of the kids in the band really do love Quaker Oats products so they didn’t have to lie during their interviews! I made a joke to the parents about producing a dossier on the political activities of the company, now owned by Pepsico, and when I checked later I actually did find out that they are one of the top 25 contributors to the Republican Party. Should I tell my lefty sister and my brother-in-law Jeff who might go on an anti-corporate rant at the Wilco show here next Tuesday? Oh well, I also found some charity work that they’re involved in, so who am I to judge the purveyor of such a wholesome nutritious product?

I never touch the stuff myself. I’m a Cream of Wheat man—you know, the hot cereal that uses offensive pictures of black servants on the box? Oy.

Cream of Wheat is so good to eat,
That we have it every day.
We sing this song,
Cause it makes us strong
And it makes us shout HOORAY!

The Loudness of Silence

I urge you to go see a powerful documentary that is in the theatres right now called “Shake Hands with the Devil.” This gripping film details the experiences of Romeo Dallaire, the retired Canadian general who was in charge of the United Nations mission to Rwanda during the 1994 genocide. About 800,000 Tutsis were brutally murdered by the ruling Hutus during this brief period, and the rest of the world did absolutely nothing to help. Dallaire was not in good shape following the conflict, and after a suicide attempt in the late 90s he finally sought treatment for the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder that resulted from his time in Africa. The documentary is based on his book of the same title and follows him back to Rwanda for an excruciating trip to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the genocide. It is so unusual to hear a former official accept responsibility for a failed mission while also properly indicting the governments, organizations, and political jockeying that made his goals in Rwanda impossible to attain. This is an amazing man who ultimately does not shy away from confronting his demons or facing the relatives of the people he was unable to save.

When Dallaire speaks in front of an enormous crowd at an event to mark the anniversary, he sadly admits to the assembled Rwandans that the superpowers simply had no interest in them. While tens of thousands of troops were dispatched to white European Yugoslavia, virtually none were sent to Rwanda. The small country offered no strategic interest, no oil, nothing to buy or sell—all it had was black Africans and, as he acknowledges hearing at the U.N., “perhaps too many of those anyway.” There are so many ways the killing could have been avoided and then stopped but no one gave a damn. In America and much of the world, people were obsessing about the O.J. Simpson trial, a complete non-story, while close to a million people were being murdered in a systematic and highly organized campaign. The Belgians, Rwanda’s former colonial power, come across very badly in the documentary, starting with their insistence on separating the Rwandans on their I.D. cards into the two groups in the first place. The Catholic Church was also complicit in the crime but there is plenty of blame to go around.

It’s interesting that 10 years later we seem to be trying to expiate our guilt with a rash of films about the genocide, including a recent Frontline special and the studio film “Hotel Rwanda.” It’s great that we’re now being educated about the tragedy but for the Rwandans it’s all a day late and a dollar short. Despite his attempts to deal with his past, General Dallaire is still prone to deep depression and hallucinatory episodes where he literally sees the mountains of cut up corpses of men, women, and children. “I can’t sleep,” he admits towards the end of the film. “I can’t stand the loudness of silence.” 

I don’t want to draw any connections between mass murder and the death of one beloved celebrity, but within minutes of coming out of the documentary tonight my thoughts moved from the loudness of silence to the “Sounds of Silence.” I was shocked and saddened to hear that actress Anne Bancroft died yesterday of cancer. I had no idea she was even ill and I’m doubly grateful that I went to that recent screening of “The Graduate” a few weeks ago at the Academy and got to witness her brilliance with an enthusiastic crowd that included the filmmakers. Now I understand why they made no mention of why she wasn’t there that night especially since I’ve often seen her and Mel Brooks in the audience at other Academy events. The last time we saw her in person was a few years ago and she seemed so wonderful and kind, and still extraordinarily beautiful. Of course Anne Bancroft's amazing work in “The Miracle Worker” can instantly send me into an uncontrollable fit of hysteria. She gave so many great performances: “The Pumpkin Eater,” “To Be or Not To Be,” “’Night Mother,” “Agnes of God,” even her turn at Mary Magdalene in the TV version of “Jesus of Nazareth.”  I was very touched by her small role as the kindly actress who befriends John Merrick in “The Elephant Man" and I even enjoyed her appearances in lesser films such as "Demetrius and the Gladiators," "The Hindenburg," and "G.I. Jane." She was always a class act, turning in superb performances even when the films themselves sucked.

In 1976 I was visiting New York and staying at the Mayflower Hotel near Columbus Circle. One morning as I left the hotel I noticed a film crew setting up. They were filming a brief scene between Shirley MacLaine and Anne Bancroft for the wonderful film, “The Turning Point,” with the side entrance of the Mayflower standing in for a dance studio. I dropped all my plans for that day and spent hour after hour watching them shoot the scene in which MacLaine and Bancroft meet in the street and hug. The best part was watching the two actresses in between takes. They clearly loved each other and were having a great time on the film even though I couldn’t believe how boring and time-consuming the whole process was.

As AmbivaBlog said tonight in her moving tribute, “There are people you're just glad are there. You may not think of them often, but it's always a pleasure to be reminded of their existence, and of the sort of bedrock satisfaction it gives you even when you're not thinking about them.” I so agree that Anne Bancroft fits this description. Did you know Bancroft’s real name was Anna Maria Italiano? And that when she spoke in her real voice she sounded like a truck driver from the Bronx? I’m just grateful that her film voice and magnificent performances are forever planted in my brain.

I know I just said I wouldn’t make a connection, but now that it’s in my head, Simon & Garfunkel’s song seems like a bitterly appropriate comment on the world’s reaction to the Rwandan genocide.

And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never share
And no one dared
Disturb the sound of silence

"Fools", said I, "You do not know
Silence like a cancer grows
Hear my words that I might teach you
Take my arms that I might reach you"
But my words, like silent raindrops fell
And echoed
In the wells of silence.

Deep Throat for Kids

This week’s Big Reveal that former FBI man Mark Felt was Watergate’s “Deep Throat” was a stunner and immediately brought me back to my high school obsession with the Watergate Hearings.

While Watergate was a national travesty and embarrassment, it was a boon to high school civics and government classes. Here I am in a 1973 photo (in my favorite tuxedo t-shirt) intently listening to my teacher Elaine Harris expound on the crimes that were committed by members of the Nixon administration and the President himself. My very first memory (at the age of 4) was watching JFK’s funeral on TV as my mother ironed and sobbed next to me, and I was made painfully aware of divisions in our country and in my parents’ marriage during the 1968 Democratic Convention. But it was Watergate that propelled my generation into its own political consciousness and forever weaned us from the fantasy that all of our leaders were to be trusted and admired.

Don’t you think Mark Felt looks a lot like Hal Holbrook, who played the unknown Deep Throat in the 1976 movie version of “All the President’s Men?” Lucky coincidence? Imagine the trouble this nickname gave to high school teachers as they tried to avoid talking about the film “Deep Throat” or the act it represented. I think it was an editor at the “Washington Post” who coined the phrase as opposed to Woodward and Bernstein but even then we knew damn well that it was referring to the most famous porno of all time. It was a true phenomenon in the early 70s and I remember hearing that going to see it in downtown Chicago was one of the last things my parents did together before they split up. More information than I (and you) needed to know?

The Watergate Hearings, which began on May 17, 1973 and amassed 319 hours of coverage by August 7th, was my favorite TV program that spring and summer, eclipsing shows such as “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In,” “Marcus Welby, M.D.,” “Room 222,” and “Bridget Loves Bernie.” The gavel-to-gavel coverage of the hearings was a riveting precursor to Reality TV as well as a soap opera that made “Dynasty” look like “Captain Kangaroo.” I’m not saying that as a high school freshman I understood the intricacies of what was taking place, and I admit that before the hearings I had never heard of Watergate Bad Boys Haldeman, Erlichman, or Dean, but, unlike the O.J. Simpson and Michael Jackson trials, this was TV that was drowning in content and teachable moments. The unprecedented coverage by the networks was mercifully low on the constant yak of outside commentators who today try to guide every second of our viewing experience, and we were instead allowed to witness history in the making. The ratings would make the producers of “American Idol” drool—it was estimated that 85% of all U.S. households had tuned in to at least some portion of the hearings despite Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox’s attempts to ban Watergate testimony from the airwaves.

The facts presented during the hearings were incredible—from the bungled burglary of the Democratic National Headquarters to the question that was increasing in volume with every passing day, “What did the President know and when did he know it?” In addition to following the Watergate burglars’ connections to E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy, the lurid tales of hush money and illegal CIA activities, and the shocking revelation that Nixon had recorded almost every conversation he’d had in the Oval Office, I must admit that I was also closely watching one other critical aspect of the hearings: Maureen Dean. I guess this country is so sexist that we can’t have a big government hearing without crowning someone the Honorary Hottie (remember Fawn Hall?). John Dean’s wife definitely took up that mantle during the Watergate coverage. And let’s face it, she was…well…hot! Her pulled back blond hair was reminiscent of Grace Kelly and Kim Novak and her ever-changing couture wardrobe sure beat Martha Mitchell’s increasingly desperate appearances (would that we had listened more closely to Martha’s ravings). To cement her status as the Hot Babe of Watergate, Maureen Dean was later accused by various right wing sleazeballs of being a high class hooker with ties to the mob. The Deans are currently involved in a libel suit against G. Gordon Liddy and others for publishing the preposterous story that the Watergate break-in had nothing to do with President Nixon but was orchestrated by Dean to protect his then-girlfriend Maureen by removing materials that linked her to a call-girl ring run out of the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate Hotel. And so the fun continues, more than 30 years later!

I think out of my entire collection of paper ephemera from my past, the piece I’m most proud of is my official membership card in the National Sam Ervin Fan Club. Ervin, of course, was the North Carolina senator who presided over the Senate Watergate Committee and was the one who got to grill all of the players. He became a household name during the hearings and the public ate up his folksy analysis of the events, delivered in his wonderful Southern drawl. Of John Mitchell and John Erlichman, Ervin said, “I don't think either one of them would have recognized the Bill of Rights if they met it on the street in broad daylight under a cloudless sky.” When Nixon claimed executive privilege, Ervin commented, “The President seems to extend executive privilege way out past the atmosphere. What he says is executive privilege is nothing but executive poppycock. The President is a servant of the Constitution and not its master. There is nothing explicit or implicit in that instrument which exempts him from a duty the law imposes on all competent human beings in our land.” About the Watergate scandal in general he said, “I used to think that the Civil War was our country's greatest tragedy, but I do remember that there were some redeeming features in the Civil War in that there was some spirit of sacrifice and heroism displayed on both sides. I see no redeeming features in Watergate.”

Where are the feisty, courageous Senators of today? Just before he died at the age of 88, Sam Ervin wrote a letter to President Ronald Reagan that began, “Dear Mr. President: The Constitution is the wisest instrument of government the earth has ever known. If America is to endure as a free Republic as ordained by it, Presidents, Supreme Court justices and other public officers must do what they have sworn to do, that is, support it. Despite my admiration for you, I am constrained by my duty to our country to assert that what you say and advocate, in respect for religion, shows that you do not understand the religious clauses of the First Amendment, and how obedience to them is essential to the preservation of religious freedom they are designed to secure to all Americans of all faiths.”

Right on, Sam. If you want a chilling reminder of how badly we need some folks in Washington who are willing to reprimand our out-of-control leaders, listen to this week’s broadcast of NPR’s “This American Life,” called “Godless America.” If only Ervin were around to have a crack at Tom DeLay who recently said in a speech that God is using him to promote a “biblical worldview.” I’m renewing my dues in Sam Ervin’s Fan Club.

My Life Is a Film Set

Hooray! “Monk” just called and they need to extend the shoot another day so they’ll be here until Tuesday. I could happily live the rest of my life on a set although we overdid it yesterday with one gourmet meal after another. But there are no calories because it’s free, right? As usual, the actors pick at the salad bar while the crew gorges on plate after plate of excellent food. (I guess we’d be in the crew!) I loved watching John Turturro get into character but couldn’t bring myself to snap a picture of him or the other actors. There was a funny bit of dialogue in the episode they were shooting that reminded me of myself: one of the detectives was saying that Frankenstein was a suspect in the episode’s crime and Turturro's character kept interrupting him saying that Frankenstein was the name of the doctor who created the monster but not the monster itself. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said the same thing—maybe I do need that OCD intervention.

We were so exhausted last night that we all went to bed when we suddenly heard the location scout bounding up our stairs. At the last minute they decided to shoot a scene inside our house. We said fine, and apparently they were here until 2 am but we slept through it. The episode is called “Mr. Monk Goes Home Again” (maybe I’m not supposed to be revealing any of this!).

Leah crawled all over the set last night taking lots of pictures. You can check out her photo essay and commentary on her blog. But I’m relieved she wasn’t an extra since the filming was endless. I guess extras are now called “background,” at least that’s how the ones I spoke to introduced themselves. They regaled us with stories of the best craft services in town. Apparently “King of Queens” is the best show for food but none of the TV shows compare with the big movies. Oy, the budgets these production companies must have—more than the annual expenditure of a Third World country. Of course the first “background” person I spoke to was from my old neighborhood in Chicago and even went to Northwestern the same years I did.

As much as I could live without the real Halloween, I’ll be sorry to see this one go.

Happy…um…Halloween?

The TV show “Monk” is back on our block this week shooting another episode. Monk’s brother, played by the brilliant actor John Turturro is in the episode so they’re using our neighbor’s house again as the Monk childhood home which his mentally ill brother has not left in 35 years. Because Turturro’s character is an agoraphobic OCD hoarder the crew spent days filling up our neighbor’s house with stacks of newspapers and a lifetime of decaying possessions. In the previous episode they shot on our street, our house was home to a murderer who set fire to the Monk homestead. They’re not using the inside of our house this time, but because it’s supposed to be Halloween they’ve completely decorated all the houses surrounding Turturro’s. You should see the faces of the people driving down our street who slam to a halt when they see six houses decked out with hundreds of beautifully carved pumpkins, blinking ghosts, and flying goblins! There’s a life-sized monster on sentry duty at our front door that I desperately want to keep, and all sorts of zombies and ghouls in the graveyard they constructed on our front lawn. Can’t we please have a professional film company decorate our house for every holiday? No matter that they’ll always be around five months off!

There are signs all over the neighborhood directing the cast and crew to our street but instead of saying “Monk” they use the code name for the show. When I first saw the signs reading O.C.D. with arrows pointing to our house, I thought Kendall and my therapist had arranged a mental health intervention!

The best news is that we scored craft services in our backyard. Heaven! When I came home last night I found Emmy winner Tony Shalhoub in our backyard helping himself to chicken wings, freshly baked pretzels, and potato salad. My home office is just a few feet from the catering tent, so my goal is to become the world’s first Diva Editor of educational books. As I sit here finishing a manuscript called "Summarizing, Paraphrasing, and Retelling," I'll just stick my head out the window and yell to one of the production assistants, “WHERE’S MY DECAF LATTE, DAMMIT? GET ME A FRUIT PLATE AND A THESAURUS AND MAKE IT SNAPPY!” They’re mostly shooting after dark and yet they have a giant light outside our bedroom window that is as bright as a supernova. The blazing, eerie light shining through the slits in our curtains reminds me of something out of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” At 10 last night the neighborhood was full of costumed trick-or-treaters but because of strict child labor laws some of them were actually midgets masquerading as children. Only in L.A.

By the way, at that movie last night, an excellent and challenging French film called “Rois et Reine” by Arnaud Desplechin, I was dumbstruck when the college-aged ticket taker asked, “Are you a Senior?” “AM I SENIOR?!” I replied, my voice rising in inflection with each word. “Are you a Senior?” he repeated, staring at me blankly. “NO,” I said with an unpleasant little laugh, “I am NOT a Senior!” Please believe me, I am thrilled to be 45, and I cannot fathom why anyone would ever lie about their age as if there’s something shameful about getting older in this crazy, youth-obsessed culture. However, DO I REALLY LOOK 65? Oy, I need another latte and maybe a brownie—where’s that damn production assistant?