Jew Eat Yet?

The Ten Best Things About the 2007 Oscars

I always feel depressed after watching the Oscars. Why is that? They made a big deal last night that the Oscars went “green” this year and if I’m really honest I’d have to admit that whenever I watch the show, I go green too—with envy. Not envy for an Oscar exactly (although whenever I’ve had the opportunity to hold one of those statues, it practically had to be pried out of my cold, dead hands), but more an envy for the creative, collaborative process. I watch all those people dressed up in their Armani and Vera Wang and I think about how they are all working together to create art that enriches the soul and will live on long after they are gone. Of course, in many cases this is pure fantasy on my part, but watching these folks congratulate themselves always makes me speculate about how I can find more of that kind of passion in my own life and career. It’s not that I have a desire to work in the motion picture industry, I really don’t (with the possible exception of the folks who make those fantastic Oscar-nominated documentaries). But even if I had the dream and the talent, I’m sure I’d crack during my first meeting with a studio executive. “Danny, we love your screenplay about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, but the studio feels that it’s too Jewish. We’d like you to de-emphasize the Jewish angle so that we can appeal to a broader demographic.” Ah, the dichotomy of my life—I long for artistic collaboration and a feeling that I am part of a creative community and at the same time I JUST WANT TO BE LEFT ALONE.

I also hate what the Oscars turn me into. I spend a lot of time railing against the very concept of award shows and I avoid them like the plague, but come the Oscars and I am glued to the screen. But I don't have the temperament for it. Last year, before the Oscars, I went on and on about how great I thought Reese Witherspoon was in “Walk the Line” and how much she deserved the award even though I was convinced Felicity Huffman was going to get it for her performance in “Transamerica.” Then Witherspoon wins and I immediately turn on her, accusing her of “stealing” the award from the more deserving Huffman. The same thing happened this year. I commented how great I thought Alan Arkin was in “Little Miss Sunshine” but was sure that Eddie Murphy would win for his work in “Dreamgirls.” Arkin pulls off a surprise win, and I can’t enjoy it because I’m screaming for Eddie Murphy and feeling like some horrible injustice has occurred. Sigh. After Eddie Murphy lost, I become terrified that shoo-in Helen Mirren might not win and it was only after they called her name that I realized I’d been holding my breath in fear. At least Martin Scorsese finally won the damn thing, even though most people think it was more of a Lifetime Achievement Award. Let’s face it, he should have had about five or six of those babies by now. And how great that this year he got it right from the hands of his colleagues Spielberg, Lucas, and Coppola.

Then there are the obnoxious comments that come sailing out of my mouth throughout the show despite my abhorrence of such attitudes in “real life.” I despise Hollywood’s obsession with age and I frequently condemn its superficial view of beauty and sexuality, and yet there I am offering a running commentary that makes me sound like a cross between Howard Stern and Joan Rivers. I hear my constant babble about which presenters are knock-outs as well as my barbs about how some have let themselves go. Worse, I find myself fixated on the female presenters’ breasts, unable to restrain my opinions about whether they are too big, too small, or just right; pushed up too much, not pushed up enough, or tragically hidden. (“Come on, Penelope Cruz, what’s with the high-necked dress?” I say, despite my bitter condemnation of Chris Rock two years ago for his comments about the star’s physical attributes. Then I see a photo of Cruz today and realize her dress wasn't high-necked at all. Oy, I'm worse than I thought.) I make hideous comments about people’s ages (“How did James Taylor get that old?” “Whoa, what’s going on with Peter O’Toole’s teeth?”), their plastic surgery (“Nicole Kidman, what have you done to your face, girl, you’re only 40!”), or their talent (“Celine Dion, you clearly have an amazing voice—so how come I’d rather fight with the Japanese forces at Iwo Jima than listen to you sing?”). By the end of the broadcast, I want to commit myself to a residential facility for sensitivity training.

Despite my own Oscar-induced breakdown, I’d say it was an enjoyable but somewhat lackluster show. I’ve come to the conclusion that by their very nature, acceptance speeches are a bore, so let’s stop pretending otherwise, shall we? That’s why any actual emotion that leaks out is so thrilling, as well as the rare cases of witty lines perfectly delivered such as Maureen Stapleton’s “I want to thank everyone I’ve ever met in my life” or Dustin Hoffman thanking his parents for not practicing birth control. Actors are typically better at this than other winners, but before I propose legislation that outlaws acceptance speeches by anyone other than performers, I have to remember Holocaust survivor Gerda Weismann Klein who made everyone cry at the 1996 Oscars with her beautiful speech about valuing the everyday moments of life and the gifts of a “boring evening at home.”

Since I’m always so down on these awards shows, I’ll restrict my comments to the ten best things about last night’s telecast.

1. Ellen DeGeneres is real people.

I thought Ellen did a great job as host. Her gift for appearing comfortable and relaxed worked wonders on the nominees, the crowd, and the audience at home. True, sometimes her folksy approach made it seem like we were sitting around in her living room, not participating in a Big Hollywood Event, but I found that refreshing—there was still plenty of self-aggrandizing to go around. Ellen has that rare quality of being eminently likable without appearing desperate for our affections. We can all imagine her as our best friend and it seemed just as natural to see her chatting with a stagehand during her very funny Judi Dench bit (“she’s having ‘knee surgery’.…on her eyes!”) as it was watching her pass a script to Martin Scorsese or asking Steven Spielberg to take a picture of her with Clint Eastwood. The vacuuming bit was funny, but I wish they’d given her more to do during that last third of the show. It’s hard, I know, at that point you just want to get the damn show over with. I give Ellen top honors for her performance but I’m not sure she’ll be asked back. They might want someone with more of an “edge.”

2. Helen Mirren is a Queen, Meryl Streep a God.

Who is classier than Helen Mirren? She’s one of those people (like Judi Dench) who shines in every role she takes on, even when she’s appearing in total crap like the horrific “Caligula.” How great was it to see her finally get the accolades she deserves for her amazing performance in “The Queen?” Perfect, classy acceptance speech—just the right amount of humility. We get that she knows how talented she is, but she’s grateful for it, she doesn’t take it for granted. Mirren won me over even more during last night’s treacly Barbara Walters Special. Babs was asking one dumb question after another, but Mirren’s honesty and self-awareness was the perfect antidote. “Do you think the best is yet ahead, Helen?” Walters asked, a grave urgency to her voice. “No,” Mirren replied calmly, “I think this is it,” and then explained how she’s fine with that and looks forward to the next phases in her life, when she’s not receiving so much attention or praise. What is it with the American obsession of always having to one-up ourselves? We have to be better next time, get MORE fame, success, money, etc. How refreshing to hear someone acknowledge and accept the ebbs and flows of life and career with such dignity and grace.

Meryl Streep is our home-grown version of this. Streep must be well aware that she’s one of this country’s most gifted actresses but she has never lost her own humility or appreciation for others in her craft. I loved seeing her sitting in the audience gazing with unbridled affection at many of her colleagues. When Streep’s co-stars from “The Devil Wears Prada,” Anne Hathaway and Emily Blunt, went up to present an award, you could see Meryl mouthing how gorgeous she thought both of them looked, as if she were their proud, excited mama. She then made their Prada-related comedy bit work beautifully with her icy reaction to the women forgetting to get her a cappuccino. Pardon my fawning, but Streep can do no wrong in my book. I hope she continues making movies well into her 90s and wins a shelf of Academy Awards to add to her collection. Was there ever a more deserving win than her Oscar for “Sophie’s Choice?”

3. They’re here, they’re queer, we got over it.

Remember in the late 1980s when the red-ribboned crowd at the Oscars first started acknowledging that same-sex couples exist in the entertainment community? Remember the shock the first time a winner thanked his “partner?” You could hear the gasps, even among the ultra-liberal Hollywood crowd. How refreshing is it that in 2007 it barely registers when winner Melissa Etheridge thanks her wife or that the sexual orientation of the host does not warrant a news story? I’m not saying there weren’t gay-hating viewers somewhere in America doing spit takes when Etheridge planted one on her gal pal's lips or when Ellen came out in her Willy Wonka velvet pantsuit, but as a society we’ve really come a long way, baby.

4. Halle Berry was right—who knew?

In a similar vein, as I said when I offered my Oscar predictions, while I was one of the judgmental viewers who criticized the self-important ravings of Halle Berry in her 2002 acceptance speech, it turned out she was right. I now believe her win did open the door for other actors to win the big awards without such a Big Hoopla made over their color. Not that such things should be ignored in the guise of some notion that “we are all the same,” because we’re NOT, we each bring our own experience and background to the table, but it was great to see so many of the awards go to people of color without the need for all the yammering about ground-breaking history being made. Have we finally reached the point where it’s about the work? Thank God! Or should I say ¡Gracias a Dios! The many wins by Latinos may signal a welcomed new appreciation for the films and filmmakers of the Spanish-speaking world.

5. The funny guys can sing!

The number about well known comedians not getting Oscar recognition was funny and perfectly executed by Will Ferrell, Jack Black, and John C. Reilly. Who knew those guys could sing so well? The only problem with their thesis is that this group is so gifted that I won’t be in the least bit surprised if all of them eventually do cross over to Oscar territory and start picking up awards. Eddie Murphy did it (almost) and crazy man Bill Murray is now taken quite seriously as an actor.

6. The Academy orchestra develops a heart.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. My prayers were finally answered regarding the inhuman practice of blasting winners off the stage the minute they start their speeches for fear that they’ll run on too long. Oh, they still got a musical cue that told them in no uncertain terms to wrap it up, but it was a gentle piano tinkling rather than last year’s brass band cacophony that cut everyone off in mid-sentence. There were still some icky moments when someone in a multiple win went for the microphone only to find the previous speaker had used up all the time, but this was the first Oscar broadcast in recent memory that treated the winners with a modicum of respect.

7. Ennio Morricone is alive and well.

Watching the scary expression on Ennio Morricone’s face during his tribute, I first worried that the brilliant composer was having a stroke in his box, possibly caused by the pattern in the smoking jacket Quincy Jones was wearing. But Morricone’s stony expression softened when he came down to the stage and offered his heartfelt thanks in his native Italian. His music truly changed the movies and the award was well deserved. But are we to believe that Clint Eastwood speaks fluent Italian and was translating Morricone’s comments off the top of his head? Was he being fed the English lines through an earpiece? Either way, the speech brought home the point that it’s never about the words so much as the emotion behind them—I was crying listening to Morricone’s speech even before I knew what he was saying. I was less impressed listening to Sherry Lansing but I guess she can’t help it that she’s a lousy public speaker. I’m sure the work she’s doing is incredibly helpful to the world and I should be shot for saying this, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that the award was being given a bit too soon in her life (even she implied as much) and that it was partly an attempt by some of the sycophantic Academy members to kiss her powerful ass.

8. “We’re your Dreamgirls, boys, we’ll make you happy.”

I still feel “Dreamgirls” was gypped out of Oscar nominations for Best Picture and Best Director by the humorless Academy voters, but this number by Jennifer Hudson, Beyoncé Knowles, and Anika Noni Rose was hot, hot, hot. I still can’t believe Beyoncé’s killer rendition of “Listen” didn’t get the Oscar but I did think Melissa Etheridge’s song was quite good (unlike the painfully boring “Cars” tune written by Randy Newman and sung by James Taylor). I can’t imagine how nerve-wracking it must be to perform live in front of a billion people but the Dreamgirls team blew the roof off the place even though I resented that they had to turn their three song nominees into a medley rather than sing the full versions. I apologize again for every snide remark I made about Beyoncé following the 2005 Academy Awards and I remain in awe of Jennifer Hudson’s exquisite pipes. I’d rather hear Hudson sing a funeral dirge at my own execution than hear Celine Dion celebrate me in song at my coronation as King of the World. And I hope Beyoncé gets to sink her teeth into a meaty role that will land her on the stage of the Kodak to collect her own award some day. I’m sorry that Eddie Murphy didn’t join the women on stage, it would have been a great opportunity to show people how great he was in that role.

9. Debbie Allen is a no-show.

I’m sure Debbie Allen is an extremely talented choreographer and performer but one of the best decisions the Motion Picture Academy made in the new millennium was to toss out those ghastly Oscar production numbers of yore. Kudos to the folks who put together this year’s understated presentations. The montages of movie clips were excellent, the sound effects choir was fascinating, and the weird Pilobolus body formations were awe-inspiring, even though it took me until the show was half over to get that they were performing body sculptures representing each of the Best Picture nominees (I’m a little slow). The nominated songs were also staged in a delightfully simple way, with none of the crazy set pieces from last year such as the infamous burning car.

10. George W. Bush did not win an Oscar.

It’s almost too painful to see Al Gore on stage and speculate about what our world would be like had he been allowed to assume the Presidency that was rightfully his. Ironic that someone who was constantly criticized for being too “wooden” during the 2000 race has become so skilled and at-ease in public that he seemed far more comfortable than Leo DiCaprio during their bit. Gore’s message is a critically important one, of course, and he deserved the accolades he received last night every bit as much as he deserved the key to the front door of the White House. But maybe it’s all part of some Divine Plan and he’ll take up the mantle of the would-be President who has the most important and wide-reaching post-political impact (especially now that so many people have turned on Jimmy Carter). It’s easy to make fun of the so-called Hollywood green crowd, especially those that then pull their gas-guzzling Hummers out of the Hollywood & Highland parking lot, but the awareness that Al Gore has brought to environmental issues can’t be underestimated even if watching “An Inconvenient Truth” did make me want to hurl myself into an active volcano.

And so ends my 2007 Oscar recap. Still reading? Then can I say how great I think Diane Keaton is (as great as her pal Jack Nicholson is weird) and how much she deserves way better roles than the awful ones she’s been getting now that she’s reached an age Hollywood considers about one decade past death? Actually, Diane Keaton and Helen Mirren are exactly the same age so I have renewed hopes for Keaton’s job prospects. I also want to give kudos to Jodie Foster for the best intro to the ever-popular “who died this year” sequence even though Kendall and I can never get through that montage without thinking about the unforgivable omission of Dorothy McGuire from the 2002 list. Loved the pairing of young Abigail Breslin with Jaden Smith (especially when we got to see the beaming faces of his parents Will and Jada). Okay, STOP, the 24-hour window of being allowed to talk about the Oscars is quickly closing. But wait—I didn’t comment yet on the shock of “The Departed” winning Best Picture or the cool presentation of the costume nominees (even though seeing four Queen Elizabeths was a little scary) or Forest Whitaker’s moving speech or the ugly set that looked like a high school basketball court or how happy I was that the German movie I recently raved about won or…OK, OK, I’ll stop! Can someone please hire Oscar winner Thelma Schoonmaker to edit my unwieldy blog posts?

Oscar Pre-Show: 1957

Just a few hours until the Oscars begin and, as usual, this town is in major gridlock. I had to pass through Hollywood on my way to a restaurant on Friday night and what should have taken 15 minutes took me well over an hour. I think it would be easier to traverse central Baghdad today than to get anywhere near Hollywood Boulevard.

I’m starting to waffle on some of my predictions. Well, I’m pretty confident with the acting awards but a lot of people are saying that Martin Scorsese is finally going to get the Best Director Oscar for “The Departed.” I still haven’t seen this film and I hear it’s not his best but it would be hard to begrudge Scorsese any cinematic honor. I also predicted “Babel” would win for Best Picture but the buzz  in the street says it’s a race between “Little Miss Sunshine” and “The Queen.” I think it’s a crapshoot but either one of those is worthy, as far as I’m concerned. As if it’s possible to proclaim any one film as the BEST of the year. Oy, don’t get me started.

Tonight is the 50th anniversary of one of the worst travesties in Oscar history, the year Michael Todd’s bloated “Around the World in 80 Days” beat out  “Giant,” “Friendly Persuasion,” “The King and I,” and “The Ten Commandments” for the top prize. I would lay money on the fact that “80 Days” is the least known film of that bunch today, and deservedly so.

I took a quick dip into the trusty L.A. Times archives to see if all the Oscar hoopla we see today was present 50 years ago. In 1957, the Oscars were held at the Pantages Theatre, just down the street from the site of tonight’s festivities.

I was looking for articles leading up to the Oscar telecast and there weren’t half as many as we see today. An article about the retired sculptor who designed the Oscar emphasized his lack of interest in the movie business. “My wife Beatrice and I decided that the best use of our Oscar would be as a paperweight in our kitchen,” explains George Stanley. He then describes how he was appointed in 1928 by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to design a trophy to be presented to each year’s outstanding movie performers. They used to be made of gild-plated solid bronze but by 1957 the statues were made of steel and then gold-plated. Hmm, and I always thought MGM art director Cedric Gibbons designed the award.

Actor Don Murray was a nominee at the 1957 Oscars for “Bus Stop,” playing opposite Marilyn Monroe, but was unable to attend because his wife Hope Lange, also in “Bus Stop,” was giving birth to their 8-pound son Christopher.  Mom would be nominated for an Oscar the following year for “Peyton Place” and twenty years later, baby Christopher would make his acting debut in the Oscar-winning “All the President’s Men.” Christopher Murray is still acting—his last appearance was in this year’s “Smokin’ Aces.”

Also in the news during Oscar week 1957 was two-time winner Bette Davis. She was about to make her television debut playing a neurotic, would-be novelist in “With Malice Toward One.” Smarting from her lack of film roles, she avoids mention of the Oscar ceremony. Now that she has finally agreed to appear on television, she talks about  it as if it were a brand new invention that nobody has heard of. “I had to find out what this new thing was,” she tells interviewer Cecil Smith. “And now that I’m in it, I love it. Simply love it! They’re making films the way we used to make them. Shoot and be done with it. Movies have become so enormously wasteful.  The technicians took over. Now television’s giving acting back to the actors again.” At the end of the interview, Davis suddenly cries, “Tell me this is it, isn’t it? This television? They’re not going to invent something else for actors to do, are they? We’ve had it, haven’t we?” And she throws back her blond, pig-tailed head and laughs.

Few were surprised when Yul Brynner and Ingrid Bergman took the top acting honors for “The King and I” and “Anastasia.” It was the final vindication for Bergman who had been reviled by many following her adulterous affair with Italian director Roberto Rossellini. When she became pregnant out of wedlock in 1950, she was denounced on the floor of the U.S. Senate by Edwin C. Johnson from Colorada (a Democrat)  who referred to her as “a horrible example of womanhood and a powerful influence for evil.” Good Lord. A floor vote resulted in Bergman being deemed persona non grata  in the United States and she was forced into exile in Italy, leaving her young daughter behind.  Cary Grant accepted the award for his friend in 1957 but when Bergman appeared at the 1958 Academy Awards to present the Oscar for best picture she was greeted with a standing ovation.

Jerry Lewis was the host of the 1957 Oscars which also included live segments from New York with Celeste Holm presiding. The wacky Lewis was fairly restrained during the telecast and there were few surprises. As reported in the Times,  “The Oscar derby, so famous through the years, was unfortunately lackluster in genuine causes for audience excitement over the unexpected, but this did not interfere with the general air of jubilation that prevailed. Crowds on the street got out of hand more than usual during the arrival of the stars, and even more emphatically while they were leaving the theater. There were more controls than customary exerted within the theatre, but the end results were less effective than in the past.”

This article by columnist Jack Geyer appeared the morning after the telecast and it still rings true:

Some people make their living writing acceptance speeches for Oscar winners. A typical script goes something like this:

(Once on stage, acknowledge applause with demure look and dab occasionally at eyes with handkerchief. Be certain to kiss person who gives you Oscar, then turn and look at Oscar with downcast eyes until applause dies. Dab eyes with handkerchief again, then say, haltingly—)

“I (pause) I (pause) I just don’t know what to say. I didn’t dream (pause) I had no idea (pause, then in a rush) It’s just too, too wonderful. I’d like to thank all the wonderful people who made this possible—the chairman of the board, Mr. Sam Profit; the president of the studio, Mr. Bill Profit; the vice-president, Mr. Bill Profit Jr.; the producer, Mr. Bill Profit III; the director, Charley Profit; the writers, Tom and Jerry Profit; my mother-in-law, Mrs. Sam Profit; and all the wonderful Profits, I mean, people, who helped make my dream come true.”

(Grasp Oscar firmly to breast with both hands, kiss master-of-ceremonies fleetingly, then skitter off-stage, making certain your best profile is to audience.)

Then Geyer goes on to speculate what an actress would say if she were to really speak her mind:

“Well, it’s about time. After that performance of mine, who else? Actually I should have a small army of these things, if those who vote had any true appreciation of the acting art. I want to thank the producer for keeping out of the way and the director for keeping his mouth shut for a change. And I hope this award is a lesson to my leading man who should know better than to try any of his cheap, scene-stealing stunts on me. I see no reason why I should thank all of you for this award. I earned it. If anything you should thank me for the performance. Bernhardt couldn’t have done it as well.”

Tomorrow we’ll see full-page ads for the movies that win big tonight. In some cases, an Oscar win will mean new showings of films that were left for dead. The day after the 1957 Oscars, “Anastasia” burst back onto screens. Because “King and I” winner Yul Brynner also starred in “Anastasia,” the studio showed unbelievable chutzpah by “borrowing” Brynner’s Oscar to promote their own film. Ads for Bergman’s new film, Jean Renoir’s “Elena et les Hommes” (given the dumb American title “Paris Does Strange Things”), touted Bergman as “the most female of all women!” Not bad for a 42-year-old dame in Hollywood who the U.S. government had recently declared to be a vile example of womanhood! Apparently all sins and digressions are forgotten in the glint of Oscar gold.

Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the 1957 Oscars was the winner of the award for Best Story. A writer named Robert Rich won this award for the movie “The Brave One.” When he didn’t appear at the Pantages to get his Oscar, Writers Guild vice-president Jesse Lasky Jr. accepted it. He told the crowd that his “good friend” Robert Rich was attending the birth of his first child. But no one had ever heard of this guy. The press grabbed on to the story and this article appeared in the Times. “A bearded writer-photographer presumably was wandering around Spain yesterday unaware that he has won an Oscar,” the article began. Producer Frank King lied through his teeth when he talked about meeting the writer and that he was going to fly him back to the States to collect his Oscar. The Writers Guild was forced to admit that it had no Robert Rich in their records and the Academy retrieved the statue and held it until 1976 when it was presented to its rightful owner: blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo who had been using the name Robert Rich as a front.

No official blacklist  in effect tonight, but we should see plenty of politics including Al Gore’s moment in the sun. And at least Helen Mirren is a worthy 50-year follow-up to Ingrid Bergman. Bergman won the Oscar in 1957 for playing a woman who believed she was the Grand Duchess Anastasia, daughter of the Czar of Russia. Helen Mirren’s real name is Ilyena Vasilievna Mironov. Her grandfather knew Anastasia. He worked for Czar Nicholas and was in London negotiating an arms deal when the Russian Revolution broke out. He was unable to return and his wife and son (Mirren’s father) later joined him there. Mirren will win the Oscar tonight for playing Queen Elizabeth II, a close relative of Anastasia who was the great-granddaughter of Britain's Queen Victoria.

Ich Liebe Deutsche Filme!

Is it possible to appreciate the art of your oppressors even if its intent is to annihilate you? Does such an attraction reveal some deep-seated neuroses or perhaps a tendency towards self-hatred?

I’ve always been a huge fan of German cinema, including many of the propaganda films made during the heyday of the Third Reich. The most famous of these are Leni Riefenstahl’s “Olympia” and “Triumph of the Will.” Say what you like about Riefenstahl’s “innocence” or “guilt,” there’s no question that she was a remarkable filmmaker whose work pushed the boundaries of cinematic artistry. Whatever her personal motives (she claims she was something of a dupe and not a supporter of Hitler’s vision for the German people), Riefenstahl’s work underscorses how effective such propaganda tools are. After watching either of these films, I can see how politically ambivalent people might be moved to declare their allegiance to the Master Race.

I never bought Riefenstahl’s claims of obliviousness, to some extent she had to know the role she was playing as part of Joseph Goebbels’ propaganda machine, but at the same time I don’t think she was motivated by Nazi policy so much as blind ambition. Always reluctant to apologize for her actions (“I filmed the truth as it was then. Nothing more.”) she came closest to acknowledging some responsibility for her role in a 1993 interview. “Being sorry isn’t nearly enough, but I can’t tear myself apart or destroy myself. I’ve suffered for over half a century and it will never end until I die. It’s such an incredible burden that to say ‘sorry’ is inadequate, it expresses too little.”

Riefenstahl died in 2003 at the ripe old age of 101. Although haunted by her ties to the Nazis, she continued making films, mostly nature documentaries, all the way up to her hundredth birthday. I remember the hubbub when Jodie Foster announced several years ago that she was going to produce and star in a film about Riefenstahl’s life. “There is no other woman in the twentieth century who has been so admired and so vilified simultaneously,” Foster said at the time. Madonna and Sharon Stone were courted for similar projects (Stone even received a fawning letter from Riefenstahl) but were reluctant to portray the controversial director. Foster herself was vilified by some for wanting to take on this role. “I’m going to catch shit on that one,” the actress correctly predicted during an earlier interview. The project has stalled for years but it’s not dead yet. In her most recent statement, Foster said, “Leni Riefenstahl’s story is something I’ve been dying to do for a very long time. I see it as the acting challenge of a lifetime. She was perhaps one of the greatest filmmakers of all time and yet her name and work will forever be linked to the horror of Nazi Germany. We have a very complicated moral tale to tackle.” I trust Jodie Foster can pull it off and I hope she gets the chance.

When I was in college I took a course in German cinema and was fascinated by the films that were made just after the Nazi rise to power. “Hitlerjunge Quex” was the best of the lot. While the director of this traditionally structured 1933 film was not in Riefenstahl’s league, he proved that Nazi propaganda techniques were well developed early in the game. In the story, young Heini Völker is invited to join the Communist Youth Organization and attend a camping trip near Berlin. His Red-loving parents are thrilled, but Heini prefers the freshly scrubbed Hitler Youth groups since they seem like so much more fun and there’s something vaguely unsettling about the swarthy Commie boys. When Heini learns that a Communist friend of his father’s is planning a bombing attack on a Nazi building, he tells the Hitler Youth kids and wins their favor. Heini’s mother is so down on the Hitler Youth that she decides to kill herself and her boy with gas (!) but he survives and joins his brethren so he can work for the true aims of the Fatherland. When Heini bravely goes into a Communist neighborhood in Berlin to distribute pro-Nazi flyers, the nasty Commies remember his betrayal and murder him in cold blood. Völker becomes a hero and a martyr for the Hitlerjugend. Again, the power of propaganda is so strong that I found myself rooting for the Nazis throughout the film. Why wouldn’t I? They were presented as all that is good and pure in the world while the Communists were the embodiment of misguided loyalties and evil plots (there were Jews in that group after all). Of course, by the time this film came out, the Communist Party in Germany had already been outlawed.

It’s much harder to empathize with the Nazi propaganda films that explore the problem of Jewish vermin destroying Germany. I remember seeing the odious1940 film “Jud Suss,” a costume drama that was shown all over occupied Europe about a conniving Jewish businessman who wreaks havoc in medieval Germany with his shady business deals and doesn’t stop until he rapes an innocent German girl after torturing her father and fiancé. In the end, the Jew is sentenced to death for “having carnal knowledge of a Christian woman.” This film is painful to watch, but even with “Jud Suss” it’s easy to recognize the expert skills exercised by so many German filmmakers. Many emigrated to the United States when Hitler rose to power but others, like Veit Harlan, the director of “Jud Suss,” chose to stay and make films for the Nazi regime. (As an aside, Veit Harlan is the uncle of Stanley Kubrick’s German wife, Christiane, and several Harlans worked on Kubrick’s final project, “Eyes Wide Shut,” a film I found almost as uncomfortable to watch as “Jud Suss.”) Because of this film, Harlan was charged with crimes against humanity after the war but after several trials his case was dismissed. Like Riefenstahl, he claimed that the Nazis forced him to make the film but many of his former colleagues contradicted him.

I’ve been thinking of my love/hate relationship with German cinema because I just saw “The Lives of Others” (“Das Leben der Anderen”), the German nominee for this year’s Best Foreign Film Oscar. It’s an extraordinary film that I highly recommend although I feel guilty that it induced a long reverie about the films of the Third Reich as if all German films are somehow tainted by the country’s Nazi past. It seems unfair and nonsensical to mention this beautiful film and Nazi filmmakers in the same breath. (“They brought in on themselves,” my grandmother and many in her generation would say.)

“The Lives of Others,” directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, has nothing to do with Nazis per se, but everything to do with another dark period in German history. The film takes place in East Berlin in 1984, several years before the Wall came down. The infamous East German Secret Police known as Stasi is spying on its citizens with wild abandon with the aim of extinguishing any anti-government thoughts, opinions, or activities. This puts artists of all stripes at risk and many attempt to flee East Germany or face terrible persecution. In this story, a renowned playwright and his girlfriend, one of the country’s most respected actresses, unwittingly become Stasi targets. The most intriguing aspect of the film is the exploration of the impact such surveillance has not only on the people whose lives are being ruined but also on the people doing the watching. There are so many complexities and surprise turns in the film that I’ll say no more except to urge you to go see it. I’ll definitely be rooting for it on Sunday. It’s already won a slew of awards in Europe and at film festivals around the world.

Only two German films have won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film: Volker Schlondorff’s terrifying but superb “The Tin Drum” in 1979, and Caroline Link’s moving “Nowhere in Africa” in 2002. Both films address the country’s Nazi past head-on. Maybe modern German films will always be viewed through a World War II lens, even when the story is not directly related to this time period. My favorite German films of recent memory include “Good-bye Lenin,” “Run, Lola, Run,” “Das Boot,” “The Goebbels Experiment,” and “Downfall.” There’s no question that German filmmakers were among the pioneers of this art form, whether they eventually established new roots in Hollywood or participated in the various political nightmares experienced by their country.

Danger: Blogger in the Family

Does anyone remember that song from the 70s called “Don’t Make Love to a Country Music Singer?” It was recorded by Willie Nelson and Mary Kay Place and the lyrics warned against getting intimate with a country music star “cause he’ll tell the world about it in his country music song.”

I have friends who’ve published memoirs or even novels loosely based on their lives who got into serious trouble with their family members about how they were depicted in their works. One woman I know was practically disowned after her relatives read her book and didn’t like how another family member came across even though I saw it as a very loving tribute. I always dismissed the concerns of the rankled family members and assured my friends that as long as they exercised a modicum of sensitivity, anything they did for their ART was fair game. I’m starting to have second thoughts.

I often write about my family but I’ve rarely felt the sting of such criticisms. I remember when a 1998 piece about my junk food-obsessed childhood appeared on Salon, my mother ran around her office showing the article to everyone and screaming about all the great, nutritious food she made for us. But she was laughing through her “Oys!” and flattered to be the subject of the piece. I’ve ruffled a few of my flock’s feathers with this blog from time to time but always felt my inner censors were enough to prevent me from really crossing the line. Although I’ve written about some pretty difficult times in my family history, there are certain specifics that I would never share. On a few occasions I’ve called family members to ask if it would be okay if I referenced a particular anecdote.

In my previous post about the hippie movement, I never dreamed that the short excerpts I included of letters by my uncle and my grandfather would cause such a ruckus. Not that I wasn’t warned. When I mentioned to my sister last week that I had found these letters and was thinking of putting them on my blog, she immediately sounded the alarm and said that at the very least I should get permission from our Uncle Paul. “Oh, he won’t mind,” I said. “Why would he? They’re amazing artifacts from another time and place, written over 35 years ago, and they say so much about what was going on in our culture. Besides, he comes across great in his letter!” Sue continued to express strong reservations but I wouldn’t budge. “Don’t be silly,” I insisted. “These fit my post so perfectly, I have to use them!”

I emailed Paul only after the post appeared to see if he was upset about it. He seemed fine and said he wanted to see the full letters—he didn’t even remember writing that one about the business venture and commented that he was glad that my grandfather refused the loan. I promised to send the letters to Paul right away and repeated my thoughts about their sociological value. Then I started hearing from other members of my family who were open-mouthed aghast at my chutzpah for publishing these private words for all the world to see. Yikes.

It took me a while to get off my “But I Am the Family Archivist!” soapbox and admit that I had crossed the line. My sister finally broke through by having me imagine that a cousin of ours had come into possession of some letters between me and my mother that contained some rare harsh words. How would I feel if he posted those letters online, letters that weren’t rightfully his to begin with and which gave a very skewed view of those two people and that relationship? How would I feel? Outraged and appalled!

I apologize to my Uncle Paul and to all my family members who thought my actions were inappropriate and self-serving. I admit I got carried away with excitement at finding such golden relics of that time period and I could only look at them as Smithsonian-worthy documents that needed to be shared. If I can yank off my curator’s hat for just a moment, I can see how hard-hitting that letter from my grandfather is as he rips into my uncle’s beliefs and choices. Of course I know the backstory—how close the two of them were until the day my grandfather died in 1995. The conflicts they had with each other during the 1960s and early 70s when each was responding to the era’s intense social and cultural boundary-pushing did nothing to alter the love and support they felt for each other. I sure hope it comes across in my posts how much I love both my grandfather and my Uncle Paul, the man who kept our family together following my grandparents’ deaths and continues to open his home for all family events.

I finally understand the negative response I received and if I could go back a few days I’d certainly discuss it at length with my uncle. But I’d still want to post the excerpts, they’re just too damn good! I know I will continue to mine my cache of family memorabilia, but I won't make the same mistake twice.

So much for those plans to publish my sister’s diary entries...

Obsessed with the Sixties—Part 2

Forgive me, but I haven’t quite let go of my obsession with the hippies. My current interest began last October when my daughter wanted both of us to dress up like hippies for Halloween. Is that what it’s come to, I thought to myself, the mainstream has so processed and packaged the counterculture movement of the 60s that the images now appear primarily as retro-chic? We were on hipster Vermont Avenue yesterday and I swear to you, the clothes in every boutique’s window looked like they were straight out of Haight-Ashbury. Except instead of the actual vintage ensembles that the hippies put together for pennies, these were designer duds costing hundred of dollars an item. Leah’s main exposure to hippies comes from the musical “Hair” which we saw together last year. We’ve had discussions about what the hippies represented and how they compare to the young people today who oppose the war and other elements of our culture. I think Leah understands to some extent what the hippies were about back then but mostly she just thinks they look really cool.

When I was immersed in the L.A. Times archives the other day, I was amazed at the explosion of articles about hippies in 1966 and 1967, both positive and negative. And then, all of a sudden, interest plummeted and the only references seemed to be sad accounts of drugged-out kids who were destroying their lives. Again, I’m sure these media images did not fully reflect the reality of the situation and there’s no question in my mind that the actions of the hippies and other groups in the 1960s permanently changed the landscape of American society in many ways. But they sure did not get positive press for long.

To give just a small sampling of the media’s perception of hippies following their brief moment in the spotlight, a front page article on December 29, 1968, declared (already) “Hippie Era Nearing End.” A professor at Claremont College had put together a college course about the hippies (surely the death knell for a counterculture movement) called “Psychedelia for Squares” and stated in the article that “hippies are showing signs of fading into history, but their music and art will linger on.” How right he was. The goal of Dr. Christian Schriner’s course was to discover values in psychedelia and set up “bridges of continuity” between these values and the rest of society. Schriner stated that “drugs have contributed to much of the unhappiness and unrest among hippies today.” He planned to take his students on field trips to a psychedelic night club and to observe a love-in at Griffith Park. The class would study the music of Donovan, the Doors, the Beatles, and Bob Dylan. Where do I sign up?

Remember those ads geared to hippies that I mentioned in my previous post? By the early 70s these were replaced by anti-hippie advertisements in the paper, especially by razor companies experiencing a new boon in sales. “The Clean-Cut Look Is Here!” Schick blared in a full-page ad. “A shave so clean and easy…maybe even the hippies will want to look clean-cut! (Then again, maybe not.) Certainly for YOU, this is THE razor! For the majority of us, the clean-cut look is here. And, who knows, before long, it may be ‘in’ with everyone!”

In 1966 and 1967 there were many articles articulating the political and social goals of the various hippie factions. But by 1970, hippies were frequently lumped together with other controversial groups considered to be on the fringe of society. One article detailed a grant from Stewart R. Mott, son of General Motors’ Charles Stewart Mott, for organizations that would “help women wanting abortions, do research on extrasensory perception and human sexual response, and aid hippies.” There’s a triumvirate you’re unlikely to see today.

Another ominous sign for hippies in the popular culture took the form of derogatory jokes about them. Here’s one that assumes that all hippies were panhandling nuisances:

Two hippie types, one handsome and well-dressed, the other beared and shabby, were walking along Hollywood Blvd. soliciting alms.

“We’ll take quarters, dimes, nickels or pennies,” one called out good-humoredly, “we’re not proud.”

The other held out a 2-pound coffee can, jiggling the few coins in it, and varying the pitch by urging passersby, “We need help. Drop something.”

At Cahuenga, a woman they approached stared scornfully at them and declared indignantly, “You ought to be ashamed of yourselves! Why don’t you get jobs?”

“Lady,” one retorted, “you wouldn’t want us to deprive some deserving guys of their living, would you?”

Okay, not very funny, but pretty representative of the changing perception of hippies, especially those who congregated on Hollywood Boulevard. The merchants there weren’t laughing. A 1972 piece about the increasingly decrepit condition of Hollywood Blvd. blamed the hippies for the dearth of tourists. “The hippies ask for money and I’m afraid of making them mad,” one timid visitor reported. The storeowners on Hollywood Boulevard were taking legal actions to “encourage the subcultures to find other nesting places.” Hippies were grouped together with the prostitutes and “Jesus freaks” as responsible for the deterioration of this once vaunted street. For some tourists these groups were the attraction but the merchants were disgusted by their presence. “Now what we have are those damn hippies and religious cults. It makes it uncomfortable for nice people to come down here,” one storeowner commented. “Sure, people may come to see the creeps—but they never come back.”

Even the romanticized notions of Haight-Ashbury came tumbling down during this period. “Love Is Out, Violence In,” the Times reported, as the undercover activities of a policeman masquerading as a hippie were revealed. “I had to attend pad parties,” the cop said. “There was heavy incense, the interminable discordant records, the use of pot, speed, LSD. I saw girls and guys on bad LSD trips, screaming, weeping hysterically, and then lapsing into comas.”

Digging through my family archives (two drawers in my house that are crammed full of papers, photos, and other ephemera), I found some letters that epitomize the great divide between the hippies and the older generation. I’ve already mentioned my Uncle Paul, my mother’s younger brother, once a hippie traveling all over the country, now a lawyer in Chicago who is busy this weekend preparing for his son Joey’s Bar Mitzvah. Included in the cache of my grandfather’s papers that somehow ended up in my possession was a letter that Paul wrote from his new digs in San Francisco on September 30, 1971, to my cousin Howard who worked for Karoll’s, my grandfather’s chain of clothing stores. Paul was a radio DJ back then and was writing to Howard to see if he could get a loan from the family business to start a new venture booking bands in the Bay Area. He is going through Howard because he knew his father, my grandfather, would not be open to this idea, instead wanting 23-year-old Paul to come home and take his place in the family dynasty. The 12-page letter is a fascinating relic and Paul, I hope you’ll forgive me for printing an excerpt here without your permission (did you even know this letter existed?):

I believe you are chronologically close enough to my generation to understand the general strangulation that many of us feel in relating to the mammoth institutions of the established culture. Many people do not want to be cogs in a machine that by the machine’s standards is a success merely by the fact that it is getting bigger and bigger. This all has very little to do with capitalism or communism—the trend can be seen all over the world. Men and women around the world have stifled their creativity, needs and desires for self-fulfillment in order to survive in a world with things beyond their control. Perhaps I’m getting a little high flown here, lost in a whirlwind of rhetoric and I should get down to the meat of the matter.

I cannot tell other men how to live. You do what you see doing, what gets you off. My father is obviously immensely enjoying what he is doing. It is his own baby. He does what he does very well. I understand how hard it is for him to comprehend my actions over the last few years. I seem to be just wandering around, not really getting down to business. There is truth to what he says. I have been wandering, searching, weighing out the alternatives. I feel a great need now to really get down to business. But I have as great a need as he to be the captain of my own ship. He started his business with others from scratch. I have this same need to work out my own universe.

Beautifully stated, Paul! I’m sure my uncle never received the $12,000 loan he requested to start up this new business and represent San Francisco bands such as the Loading Zone, the Congress of Wonders, or Little John. Paul eventually did return to Chicago and put in time at the family business before heading off to law school. Among my grandfather’s papers, I also found a handwritten draft of a letter that he wrote to Paul during this period. While my grandfather probably considered himself a liberal politically, he seemed convinced that his son was becoming a dupe for the anti-Semitic commies:

I was pleased to receive your letter giving me your opinions on the Jewish population of America, with which I totally disagree. You evidently haven’t given this matter much thought or are influenced by people like yourself who are seeking to criticize the Jew because they believe they have found their true Messiah in their lack of sympathy and in their total abandonment of the beauty of Jewish life and its great universal teachings. Paul, what makes you believe every word uttered by the enemies of this country? I am not in favor of the Vietnam war, I am not in favor of bloodshed, but you treat every word published by propaganda artists for the communists as sacred. Paul, you are either not aware or “don’t give a damn” as to what happens to our people.

Paul, you are on a foolish destructive course and nothing but evil can come from it. You are fooling yourself, you have meaningless illusions, your house smells as though human sacrifices are being offered to your false god only now it is in the form of SMOKE that will someday hurt your whole mental process. Before you left to go to school in New York, you were an outstanding person who had a great potential to serve humanity, your people and yourself. You are dissipating that potential. Why don’t you awake and abandon your meaningless way of life? This is not a lecture, it is only both mother’s and my heart crying when we see such talent wasted in our beloved son. It is like putting a knife in our hearts. I pray every day to God who is above to set you straight in your thinking and help you realize that you are not half so smart as you think and that you have been influenced by people who are enemies of our people.

Oy. I only wish my grandfather could be here this weekend to watch his grandson Joey become a Bar Mitzvah under the proud gaze of my Uncle Paul.

Come On People Now, Smile On Your Brother

I was only seven years old during the Summer of Love but I desperately wanted to be a part of it. I didn't fully get what the hippies were about—my understanding of the counterculture movement was a romanticized blur in which I left the stuffy confines of my conservative Jewish household and marched in peace rallies with my ultra-cool bellbottom-wearing brethren. One, two, three, four, we don’t want your fucking war! I was riveted by the free-spirited rebellion against capitalism and the hippies' response to our government's imperialistic tendencies. Not that I wanted to give up any of my own daily comforts. Talk to me about the war after I finish my spaghettios, please. Can that rally wait until my shows are over? Does anyone know what time “The Flying Nun” comes on?

Despite my total naivete, I spent much of my childhood wishing I had been born a decade earlier. I imagined myself swaying in a drug-induced reverie at the local be-in or love-in or three-day mud-drenched rock festival. Sadly, my musical tastes were more in line with the Monkees than the Jefferson Airplane. The Monkees, a fake pop group put together by middle-aged Jews in Hollywood, had a #1 song in 1967, “I’m a Believer” and I knew all the words by heart. In retrospect, I was far more influenced by the manufactured grooviness of Madison Avenue than by the actual icons of Haight-Ashbury.

I’m sitting at a Borders bookstore on Sunset and Vine, a short distance from what was once known as the Sunset Strip—Ground Zero for the hippies of southern California. On the way here I drove by the Whisky a Go Go, a pioneering venue that once boasted the Doors as its house band and featured such acts as The Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, Van Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, and Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention. The concept of go-go dancers was born at the Whisky, and the club was one of the sites of the famous Sunset Strip riots. The glory days of the Whisky are long gone, but the club is still kicking. Earlier this week, it hosted the reunion of original Police members Sting, Stewart Copeland, and Andy Summers.

I’m lost in the 1960s right now because I just came from the Arclight Cinemas across the street where I saw “Factory Girl,” the new movie about Edie Sedgwick, Andy Warhol, and the various hangers-on during Warhol’s “Factory” days. I enjoyed the film despite the mostly negative reviews and a potential lawsuit threatened by Bob Dylan’s lawyers. Dylan is portrayed in the film as one of the causes of Edie Sedgwick’s drug addiction. Apparently the two were involved briefly, but Dylan rejects the depiction of his influence on Sedgwick’s life. Edie’s real-life brother, on the other hand, created quite a stir recently by claiming that not only were rumors of the affair between his sister and Bob Dylan true, but that his sister got pregnant during her time with Dylan and had an abortion. Because of the lawsuit, the Dylan character is only referred to as “the Folk Singer” in the final film.

Warhol fans must be none too pleased at the depiction of their idol as a sycophantic sociopath who enjoyed living off the trust funds of his rich-kids-turned-rebel followers. I thought Sienna Miller and Guy Pearce (below) were wonderful as Edie and Andy, and the film certainly outlines the dangers of the unfocused hedonism of Sedgwick, but Warhol’s actual groundbreaking ideas about art and society are given short shrift. Edie Sedgwick comes off as a spoiled socialite with major charisma who is bent on self-destruction, a byproduct of her “privileged” childhood in which, according to the film, she was abused in all manner of ways by her monster of a father. Sedgwick was considered the “It” girl of underground cinema and of Warhol’s inner circle until her drug addiction migrated from mischievous fun to out-of-control ugliness and Andy dumped her for the next Sweet Young Thing. These people are all supposedly rebelling from the oppressive culture they grew up in, but what do they actually stand for? What are their beliefs, their passions? The Dylan character, played by Hayden Christensen (who fares much better here than in his wooden performance as the young Darth Vader in the recent Star Wars trilogy) is presented as a prophet of his generation, but again, we don’t get a clue as to what he’s about or what is driving his music or his pursuit of Edie. I have to believe that the real-life characters of the 1960s had a hell of a lot more going on than these captivating but largely vacant characters. On the other hand, flagrant drug use has turned many bright lights (such as Sedgwick) into ghosts of their former selves so I’m sure there is accuracy to that part of Edie's sad story.

While at Arclight, I was looking at an excellent exhibition of portraits of public figures from the late 60s and early 70s by photographer Gilbert B. Weingourt. While perusing the beautiful black-and-white photographs, I was shocked to come face to face with someone I actually knew. Included in these images of people ranging from John Lennon to Abbie Hoffman to Squeaky Fromme was this shot of Bob Rudnick, political activist, DJ, and poet, among other things, who also happened to be a close friend of my Uncle Paul, himself a former hippie, and my brother Bruce. The photo above was taken by Weingourt in 1969, just a few years before Rudnick became a fixture at my grandparents’ Friday night dinners during the time he lived in Chicago. Who knew that we were eating matzoh ball soup with an actual 60s icon? I wish I had been aware enough back then to take more of an interest in his amazing life that was cut short when he died of liver cancer in 1995. I have no doubt that my uncle, brother, and many others have great stories about Rudnick and his counterculture cohorts, and I hope to hear more of these. I found a live radio show on the WFMU archives featuring Rudnick and Dennis Frawley (as part of the Kokaine Kharma team) reporting live from the 1968 Democratic Convention. Definitely worth a listen. I’m guessing that Rudnick put in some time with the hippies on the Sunset Strip.

The word “hippie” seems almost cloying today, a quaint relic from another century. I wanted to see when that word first appeared in the mainstream media here in Los Angeles, so I looked it up in the L,A Times online archives. The very first mention of “hippie” occurred on July 12, 1963, in an article about the use of common morning glory seeds as a hallucinogenic. The writer, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Herb Caen, tells of a letter he just received from Max Weiss, the bearded patriarch of Fantasy Records.

Mr. Weiss is a hippie and he writes like one. “Just heard a rumor that flipped me out of my skull. Seems it is no longer hip to sniff glue or take peyote. Even LSD is square. The real swingers chew morning glory seeds. After going through about 100 of them you go off to morning glory heaven. The Food and Drug scene was called into investigating because people who obviously were not flower lovers were buying up all the morning glory seeds in existence.”

References to hippies and LSD in 1963? In addition to the run on morning glory seeds, which actually do contain small amounts of a drug that is similar to LSD, there were several articles about hippies smoking banana peel, later proven to have no psychedelic qualities. But the word “hippie” did not appear in the paper again for over a year. Then, starting in late 1964, it exploded into the lexicon and countless articles were devoted to the phenomenon. At first the articles were respectful and curious, like explorers writing about a newly discovered tribe on some uncharted island in the Pacific. An article called “Teens Make the World Go-Go Round” began this way:

Between the ages of 15 and 19, there is a population sharing a world that knows no borders nor national identity. It is the teenager society, and in the Westernized nations of every continent, one hippie can scarcely be detected from the other. Long hair, radically styled clothes, a zest for groovy dancing and folk-rock music are but a few of the surface characteristics. Beneath the surface, it is clear that this is the new force in the world—a force that is not merely faithful to the trappings but recognizes the potential political strength in their growing and overwhelming numbers. The adults have to sit up and take notice.

Wow, can you imagine teens of any stripe being taken so seriously today? In a long expose called “The Flower Children and How They Grow,” journalist Richard Goldstein (who later became the executive editor of the Village Voice) states:

Hippies have twisted folk-rock into something mysteriously suggestive, something disc jockeys are afraid of. They call it psychedelic music. Sometimes that means a deafening burst of dissonance coupled with a dazzling light show. Sometimes it means a veiled or direct reference to LSD.

Come mothers and fathers throughout all the land
Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command
Your old world is rapidly aging
Get out of the new one if you can’t lend a hand
For the times they are a-changing.

That is Dylan’s most resilient song, because it describes the very core of American culture. Our order is always fading and our future is a fringe of the present. Those body-snatchers who have taken up residence in your house, with their pubescent pomp and circumstance, those aliens pretending to be your children, are a logical reaction to a cataclysmic series of events which have made style as we know it unworkable. There is no mystery about hippies. They are here and now because of here and now. They stand apart, disenfranchised. But they are what Jack Newfield calls “a prophetic minority.” The culture-definers.

It’s mind-boggling to read of the availability and acceptance of drugs during this period. The Fairfax District of L.A., a neighborhood that I frequent almost daily, was a virtual haven for drugs. Many articles featured the hippie crowd that used to hang out at Canter’s Deli, most of them stoned on LSD during the interviews. Columnist Burt Prelutsky went to Canter’s in early 1967 to check out the scene:

Ask a hippie why he comes to North Fairfax and you get, “It’s here. It’s all happening here…You can get everything up here.” And he’s not referring to the menu inside.

My own impression of Canter’s hippies is that they’re neither so bad as most people think nor nearly so special as they, themselves, think they are. They have the decency to regard a man’s color as inconsequential, but in their own way they’re as biased as any redneck. It’s just that their criteria isn’t color, it’s age and costume. At the age of 16 they’ve convinced themselves that the right sugar cubes can expand their minds, without having given the right books equal opportunity. While propagandizing in favor of individuality, they conform with religious zeal in matters of dress, drugs, hair style, jargon and beliefs.

Prelutsky, who migrated from the left to the hard right, became a TV writer and knew Kendall’s dad and uncle. He has his own blog and I imagine his conservative leanings would make him far less indulgent of hippies today.

Some people, mostly parents, started to sound the alarm bells for the free use of mind-altering drugs. Following an article in the Times extolling the virtues of the hippie quest for self-discovery, one worried mother wrote:

What about my healthy, athletic, religious, talented son who has given up everything for his psychedelic trips and his self-assumed role of modern missionary for the “hang loose” ideology? I could believe that he may eventually find his way back from the way-out beliefs and that eventually he may even learn to shave again and wear decent clothing. But what is going to happen to him because of the LSD he’s been using? Reliable medical authorities tell me that one “trip” can cause permanent brain damage or it may possibly take a dozen “trips,” depending on the user’s physical and mental health. What chance does my son have who has been on LSD for three years?

I resent doctors, professors and ministers who tell us we have nothing to worry about. I resent these modern songs glorifying psychedelic drugs. The long, greasy hair, the bare dirty feet and the horrible clothing are minor problems. LSD is a major problem and although there is probably little we can do for the kids who are already on it, I pray constantly that something will be done before any more of our young people’s lives are ruined because of it.

I’m sure if I’d read that article when it first appeared I would have quickly condemned this mother’s ravings. Today I see her as a solid voice of reason.

Despite their initial wariness, it didn’t take corporate American long to see the hippies as a potential consumer base, and the entire hippie movement as fodder for the production lines.

A large furniture ad for the May Company department store blared the headline “IT’S THE HAPPENING!! We are having a ‘Finish-In!’” They declared a lingerie chest, “FAB!” and hyped a “MOD!” rocking chair that didn't look mod at all. Other ads assured readers that flower children and hippies were welcome and that no shoes were required.

Then, all of a sudden, the tide turned. Around the time then-Governor Ronald Reagan described a hippie as someone who “dresses like Tarzan, has hair like Jane, and smells like Cheetah,” the Times was inundated with negative articles about the group.

When young adults act like children, they should be handled and punished as children. I have yet to see anything but children on the “Strip.” No one will ever convince me that this represents our “future generation.”

Hippies: Their talk of true love (but with few legal marriages), their orientation to drugs and the proclivity to begging rather than working are causing growing concern among police and health officials and other community leaders.

Hippies were declared a fad, a cult, and a dangerous threat to society. One columnist called them “super children at play.”

When is the dance going to end? And when and if it ends, who is going to wake up the kids and send them to their homes and to their hospitals?

I screamed with delight when I found the April 1967 ad announcing “the most shocking film of our generation,” a campy, fear-mongering exploitation movie based on the actual teenage riots that occurred several months earlier at the hippie hangouts on Sunset Boulevard that were targeted by the police for curfew violations. “Riot on Sunset Strip” starred Aldo Ray, Mickey Rooney’s son Tim, and Mimsy Farmer and is a hoot to watch today. Some scenes were filmed on location so the film provides valuable archival footage of a world that is no more even though the Hollywood-produced storyline is as absurd as the one in “Reefer Madness.”

In “A Far-Out Night with Andy Warhol,” young staff writer Kevin Thomas (now the movie critic for the Times) wrote about Warhol’s swoop into Los Angeles to open up a new discotheque.

For once, a Happening really happened, and it took Warhol to come out from New York to show how it’s done. Out came Nico, the long-haired, deep-voiced German model to sing songs as beautifully banal as herself, and The Velvet Underground, a rock group that goes beyond rock…It was like a searing sound from another planet. Out came Superstars Gerard Malanga, a gypsy type, and Mary Woronov, who looks like Joan Baez—really a beautiful pair—to dance their abandoned, frenetic, frenzied dances.

The whole show took on a ritualistic, incantatory quality. Everybody, but everybody, was turned on. The arrival of Andy, the hippie’s hippie, on the Sunset Strip, the hippie’s paradise, makes for the most perfect combination since peanut butter discovered jelly. “I love L.A. I love Hollywood. They’re beautiful. Everybody’s plastic—but I love plastic. I want to be plastic,” says Warhol. Speaking of those ladies he has made the pop girls of the year—Baby Jane Holzer in ’64, Edie Sedgwick in ’65 and Nico, a candidate for ’66—Andy feels that “Edie was the best, the greatest. She never understood what I was doing to her. I don’t know what’s going to happen to her now.”

Edie Sedgwick died of a drug overdose on November 16, 1971. She was 38. Her death was not mentioned in the Los Angeles Times but an article the next day bore the headline, “Flower Children Lose Militant Ardor.”

In 1967, the “summer of love” burst in Haight-Ashbury like a soap bubble in the sun. It was almost over before the rest of the world knew what a hippie was. Some of the seeds the flower children planted were flowers of evil, as the original hippies themselves came to realize. Countless American youths fell victim to drugs.

The first large hippie event in the mid-1960s, the “trips festival,” was organized by novelist Ken Kesey. Nowadays he leads a quiet life on a farm in Oregon. Kesey views Haight’s 1967 summer of love as part of a movement to put pressure on the United States in all areas. “The revolution has happened,” he said. “Now we are all hanging out waiting for its maturity.”

Did that maturity ever arrive? Not really. Certainly a lot of good things happened as a result of the political and social consciousness raising of the 60s, despite the excesses and misguided explorations by many hippies on the Sunset Strip and elsewhere.

On the way here I passed a club on Sunset Boulevard called the Skybar in a location that was once the nerve center of the Strip. Where hordes of hippies once participated in love-ins and peace rallies, vapid twentysomethings now wait in line for hours for the privilege of buying $15 drinks at this hideously trendy nightspot, only to be turned away by bouncers wearing silk suits because they are not cool enough to mingle with the likes of Paris Hilton and the Olson twins. Sigh. I don’t mean to condemn a whole generation because of the jaded gaucheries of places like the Skybar, but boy, no matter how that generation turned out in the end, sometimes I really miss the 60s.

Family Non Sequiturs

I guess I’m addicted to writing in my blog because whenever I go longer than five days without posting, I start to feel vaguely uncomfortable and anxious. What kind of hubris is that? I’ve been taking a break from blogging because my sister is in town with her family. My seven-year-old nephew Sam keeps asking me why I say “Oy!” all the time. Does he really have to ask? It’s scary how alike Sue and I have become, both in terms of our endearing “fun” qualities and our dysfunctional oy-spewing anxieties. The above photo of my sister and mother was taken over 40 years ago but it seems like yesterday. This was the year that my mother’s bouffant started rising like a cinnamon roll in a hot oven and my sister wouldn’t go anywhere without her faux fur muff. Who knew this innocent little lass would grow up to marry the biker hellion on the right and give birth to these leather-clad rebels.

They’re in town because my brother-in-law Jeff is finishing up Wilco’s upcoming CD called “Sky Blue Sky” that will be released on Nonesuch Records on May 15, the very day that Nazi occupiers in the Netherlands banned all Jewish music in 1941. My nephew Spencer is reading “The Diary of Anne Frank” at the moment and while Jeff isn’t Jewish, I’m sure the authorities would have hurled his records onto the bonfires because of his Jewish wife and sons and his decidedly anti-Fascist lyrics. This new CD is Wilco’s first studio effort since “A Ghost Is Born” was released in 2004 and it’s going to be a great one. Stay tuned for more connections between Wilco and the Third Reich. Hey, it’s not just me. During their last trip to L.A. a year ago this week, Sammy told Jeff that he had the perfect name for the next Wilco CD. “What is it, Sam,” Jeff asked. “The Nazi Website,” Sam bizarrely replied. Oy.

Margaret Sullavan and the Nazis

I went to a double feature in Hollywood the other night that knocked my socks off. The American Cinematheque is having a festival of films that they consider “Overlooked and Underrated,” including many that are not available on DVD. This week they showed two Frank Borzage-directed films, both starring that winsome, unique, and ultimately tragic actress Margaret Sullavan.

What’s the deal with Margaret Sullavan? At the risk of causing a major rift in my marriage, dare I say that her fame has not exactly withstood the test of time? While a huge star in the late 1930s and early 40s, she is rarely discussed today and I would bet that the average person on the street, especially those under 60, have never heard of her, or if they do recognize the name confuse her with Tarzan’s Jane and Mia Farrow’s mom, Maureen O’Sullivan. Not that my household is part of that demographic—Kendall wrote a whole chapter about Margaret Sullavan in her as-yet-unpublished new book and I’ve always been a fan of the actress who I remember in such wonderful films as “The Shopworn Angel” (in which her singing voice was dubbed by Broadway star Mary Martin) and especially Ernst Lubitsch’s “The Shop Around the Corner.” Both of these films co-starred Jimmy Stewart, Sullivan’s frequent on-screen partner. The two of them shared a rare and exquisite chemistry, with Stewart’s hopeful innocence playing off of Sullavan’s troubled sweetness.

It seems like all of Sullavan’s movie characters were simple girls at heart who were plagued by darker forces. Her characters usually managed to avoid or ignore the complexities of their lives for a good part of the movie but ultimately failed to stave off the tragedies that awaited them, most often culminating in the characters’ untimely deaths. Gore Vidal once wrote, “Margaret Sullavan was a star whose deathbed scenes were one of the great joys of the Golden Age of Movies. Sullavan never simply kicked the bucket. She made speeches as she lay dying; and she was so incredibly noble that she made you feel like an absolute twerp for continuing to live out your petty life after she'd ridden on ahead.”

I had never seen either of the films screening at the Cinematheque this week so I eagerly headed over to Hollywood. I was surprised that both were MGM movies (I never considered Sullavan a member of the MGM stock company) but what really floored me was the controversial content of the films. “Three Comrades” was based on a book by Erich Maria Remarkque describing the lives of three disillusioned German World War I vets in 1920s Berlin. The film was made in 1938 when the Nazis were in full power and Europe was moving closer and closer to all-out war. You’d think in the late 1930s MGM would go out of its way to avoid showing Germans in anything but a negative light but the film presented a hopeful, sympathetic portrait of Germany’s position in the world even though there are increasing references to the unnamed Nazi party that was beginning to kick up trouble.

American stars Robert Taylor, Franchot Tone, and Robert Young turn in great performances as the three German soldiers. One of the most amazing things about movies like this is seeing the arrogance on the part of American studios to set films in foreign countries without the slightest pretense of actors speaking the native language, having any kind of accent, or even refraining from using the popular American vernacular of the day. Hearing Taylor, Tone, and Young speak in American slang, it took me a moment to realize that we are supposed to accept that they are really German men talking German in Germany. It is the hunky but slightly doltish Robert Taylor who falls for the former aristocrat but now penniless Pat Hollmann played by Margaret Sullavan. But the three male leads are so close, so bonded, that it almost feels like Sullavan is being passed around among them, in some kind of wholesome yet homoerotic ménage à quatre. It’s rare to see such close friendships between men depicted in movies today, although the 1970s classic “The Deer Hunter” was partially based on this story.

One of the major claims to fame of “Three Comrades” is that the script was written by novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald during his brief Hollywood years. Desperate for funds, he took several movie gigs, work he found demeaning, but despite some major rewrite work on classics such as “Gone With the Wind,” “Three Comrades” is the only film for which he received screen credit. Of course one of the best things to come out of Fitzgerald’s stint in Hollywood was his unfinished and posthumously published novel “The Last Tycoon,” based on the life of MGM’s wunderkind, Irving Thalberg.

While Fitzgerald’s script sometimes seems a little too literate for its own good, the performances in “Three Comrades” are beyond reproach. I was intrigued by Franchot Tone’s moving portrayal. Tone was married to Joan Crawford during the making of this film but the marriage was already in ruins, with the very private and publicity-shy actor woefully mismatched with Crawford and her legendary obsession with image and career. It was a mutual attraction to Franchot Tone that sparked the famous rivalry between Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, an animosity that would survive long past the time when Tone would give either one of them the time of day. But despite his infamy as the recipient of romantic attention, I found him to be a subtle, gifted actor.

Having grown up watching Robert Young as the iconic patriarch in TV’s “Father Knows Best” and as the world’s most compassionate doctor in “Marcus Welby, M.D.,” I’m always surprised to be reminded what a huge movie star he was in the 30s and 40s, appearing opposite the most glamorous dames in Hollywood. In “Three Comrades” he plays the most troubled of the German vets, disgusted at the condition of his beloved country, spouting many comments about the hooligans we know are the up-and-coming Nazis.

Young appears again with Sullavan in the second film I saw the other night, 1940’s “The Mortal Storm.” The storyline of this film was even more shocking to me. At this point the war had already begun in Europe, with the United States gearing up to battle Hitler’s forces, and yet, once again, the film begins by presenting an idyllic portrait of the Fatherland in the period leading up to Hitler’s 1933 power grab. This time director Borzage was allowed to mention the Nazis by name and swastika flags, armbands, and other Nazi paraphernalia are visible throughout the film (including a very cool light fixture with swastika cutouts that produced giant swastikas on the walls and ceiling—I wonder how much this prop went for at the MGM auction!). Still, MGM being MGM, the word Jew was never uttered in the film, even though it’s quite obvious that the Frank Morgan character, Margaret Sullavan’s beloved university professor father, was supposed to be a Jew married to an “Aryan” woman. All of the Jews in “The Mortal Storm” are referred to as “non-Aryans,” a euphemism I found absurd. Who were they afraid of offending, Jews or Nazis? Notice the total lack of Nazis in the poster for the film. You'd think the story was set in Brooklyn.

Everyone in the small German town worships Morgan’s character who is celebrating his 60th birthday when the film opens. But it all changes that first night when it is announced that Hitler has become the new German Chancellor. Margaret Sullavan’s Freya Roth has just announced her engagement to Robert Young’s Fritz Marberg, who is already like a second son to Morgan. There’s a great moment when the news about Hitler comes in and we are all expecting wonderful, kindly Fritz to greet the news with horror. Instead, he jumps for joy at the report and whips Freya’s Aryan half-brothers into a frenzy about all the great things Hitler is going to do for Germany. Fritz’s best friend, Martin Breitner, played by Jimmy Stewart, finally registers the horror we had hoped to see in our leading man, and after Robert Young continues his transformation into a full-fledged Nazi out to purify the German race, Sullavan switches her allegiance to the “good German” played by Stewart.

Although this film was made at a time when the atrocities of the Final Solution had not yet begun, it does depict the endless persecution faced by Jews in Germany in the early 1930s including being stripped of their livelihoods and being thrown into concentration camps. We see Morgan, the Wizard of Oz himself, being visited in a German concentration camp by his loyal wife, played by the imperial Irene Rich, but no mention is made of the Nuremburg Laws, already in effect in Germany, that prohibited marriages between Aryans and Jews.

The film boasts a gaggle of other meaty characters including Dan Dailey as a violent young Nazi leader (how would the Nazis have reacted if they knew about Dailey’s penchant for crossdressing?), Maria Ouspenskaya as Stewart’s elderly mother (at least she had an accent even if it was the wrong one), and 16-year-old Bonita Granville who plays a simpleton maid with a wild crush on Jimmy Stewart. Throughout the film, poor Bonita is constantly being attacked behind closed doors by the Nazi thugs (it’s pretty obvious they’re having their way with her) forcing the poor girl to give up Stewart’s whereabouts again and again. Today happens to be Bonita Granville’s birthday (she would have been 84 but died of cancer in 1988) and I can’t help but think of her other big movie about this topic, “Hitler’s Children” in which Granville plays an American citizen of German descent who gets trapped in Germany when the war breaks out and is forced to join the Hitler Youth program and adopt the ideals of Nazism. I think “Hitler’s Children” is an amazing film but compared to “The Mortal Storm” it is about as subtle as the kick of a stormtrooper’s boots.

Needless to say, poor Margaret Sullavan doesn’t survive either film. From the moment she lets out with a little cough in “Three Comrades,” we know she's doomed. After changing the lives of the three male leads, she succumbs to a bad case of tuberculosis. At least in movies such deaths are elegant and ladylike. Sullavan's demise is much more violent in “The Mortal Storm.” She is gunned down by the Nazis (under orders from former fiancé Marcus Welby) seconds before skiing to safety across the border. Oy.

In real life, Sullavan’s end was no less tragic. Following two brief and troubled marriages (to actor Henry Fonda and director William Wyler), Margaret married agent and producer Leland Hayward with whom she had three children. It was her oldest daughter Brooke Hayward who penned “Haywire,” one of the best memoirs ever written about Hollywood. Sullavan tried to make family life work but her marriage to Hayward was not working out, she suffered from serious depression, and her children Bridget and Bill had their own mental problems (culminating in Bridget’s suicide at the age of 21). On January 1, 1960, the 48-year-old Sullavan was found dead in a Connecticut hotel room. The authorities believed she had taken a deliberate overdose of barbiturates but some people, including Kendall, don’t believe the actress intended to commit suicide. In any event, she had been quite miserable. Sullavan was appearing in a new play headed for Broadway. In an interview published just before her death, she said, “The theater is a cruel place, a horrible place. Oh, you don’t know how difficult it is to make myself come back to it. It is hell.”

Poor sad Margaret Sullavan. If you’re listening, know that for us it is absolute heaven watching you in your short but powerful body of work.