Sharon McNary takes us pothole watching; Collin Friesen locks us in a room; Salma Hayek backs "The Prophet"; and downtown LA is a new hot spot for gay bars.
Good going, gadget geek: your drone nearly crashed a medivac helicopter
"Lives weigh in the balance. We’ve flown thousands of missions safely. This is the first case of encountering a drone.” — Vince Ellis, Los Angeles Times
There have been several notorious cases already of drones interfering with firefighting aircraft during Southern California wildfires. But on Wednesday, a medivac helicopter had what might have been the closest call yet between an aircraft and a drone.
Todd Valeri, president and CEO of American Ambulance, which partners with a company that runs four medical aircraft in Fresno and Visalia, says on Wednesday, a Skylife chopper was returning with a snakebite victim. "When they were about two miles north of the Fresno air terminal, at about a thousand feet, the pilot observed a drone flying directly toward the aircraft." He took evasive action, and missed the 4- to 6-foot drone by just 15 feet.
It was a very close call, he says. "Had the aircraft made contact with the drone, it could have been catastrophic." In other words, a drone operator could have caused the death of everyone on board.
I asked Valeri what he'd want to say to the drone owner. "I'd want to have some confidence," he said, "that this wasn't done with malicious intent, and that some time could be spent explaining the safety concerns."
Congressman Adam Schiff has been one of the most vocal politicians calling for action on drones, and he told me, "Firefighters need to be able to do what's necessary to put down fire and to be able to operate safely. If there's a technology they can use to bring down a drone, they should use it. If there isn't, I'm okay with them using whatever. I really could care less whether the drone stays intact or the owner ever gets it back."
For more of our interview, and to hear what Valeri and Congressman Adam Schiff want done about drones, listen to the audio of our interviews.
(This post has been updated to add nurse Vince Ellis' audio interview and his statement that the drone came within 15 feet (not 20) of the chopper, and that the drone may have been up to 6 feet wide, not 4-5 feet.)
Nudie's rides again: Rodeo tailor to reopen with a caffeinated twist
In the '50s and '60s, the status symbol of country and western music success wasn't an award, it was a Nudie Suit. These flamboyant, rhinestone-encrusted outfits were made by a Ukrainian immigrant named Nudie Cohn. Cohn died in 1984, but his granddaughter is planning to reopen the family business — with a twist — in Old Town Newhall this October.
Nudie Cohn was born in 1902 in Kiev, Ukraine (then Russia). According to his granddaughter, Jamie Lee Nudie, "He was called Nudie, because he emigrated here from Russia at the age of 11. When he got to Ellis Island, the immigration officer asked him his name — his name was Nuta Kotlyarenko. The immigration officer wrote down 'Nudie,' and it stuck." Jamie Nudie took her grandfather's American first name.
Cohn and his brother had fled anti-Semitic pogroms in Russia. Cohn struggled in New York until well into adulthood. He shined shoes as a child and as a young man made money as boxer. He developed a talent for tailoring, and after marrying his wife Barbara "Bobbie" Kruger in 1934, they set up a lingerie shop in Brooklyn called Nudie's For The Ladies.
Bobbie and Nudie Cohn resettled in Los Angeles in the mid-1940s and there, on the fringes of Hollywood, they found a rising star in need of a competitive edge. Lefty Frizzell was an Arkansas-based, traveling country singer who was popular in honky-tonks across the South. Cohn had been putting rhinestones on G-strings for burlesque queens, and he thought the gems might be able to make a singer stand out on stage as well. Jamie says Cohn made Frizzell an offer: He'd put rhinestones on one of Frizzell's suits if Frizzell had "the guts to wear it."
Lefty Frizzell "You're Humbuggin' Me"
More singing cowboys followed suit — Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Tex Williams (a close friend of Cohn) and Hank Williams Sr. These performers brought Cohn's rhinestones and burgeoning embroidery talent to film, television and the stage of the Grand Ole Opry.
(Porter Wagoner in his wagon wheel suit. Courtesy Jamie Lee Nudie)
Cohn's clientele expanded in the '50s and '60s with Elvis Presley, Porter Wagoner, Buck Owens and many other top country and rock 'n' roll stars donning the signature chain-stitched designs Cohn cranked out of a new location on Lankershim Boulevard in North Hollywood. Birds of every genus were drawn in incredible colors, and though western themes predominated, some suits depicted pharaohs and UFOs (in Keith Richards' case).
(Keith Richards' UFO suit. Courtesy Jamie Lee Nudie)
Arguably the most infamous Nudie Suit is the Flying Burrito Brothers' Gram Parsons' "marijuana jacket."
"The original is in the Country Music Hall of Fame," says Jamie Nudie — but the giant pills, poppy flowers, marijuana leaves and nude women make replicas of the suit a popular request for current Nudie's seamstress Mary Lynn Cabrall.
(Nudie Cohn, L, and Gram Parsons, R, wearing a suit decorated with poppy flowers, marijuana leaves and pills on the arms. Courtesy Jamie Lee Nudie)
Jamie Nudie remembers her grandfather's style and generosity. Cohn gave away silver dollars on Halloween, but he also "gave to boys' homes, built playgrounds, and was very active with the LAPD," remembers Nudie. "He came from poverty... He just wanted to see people sparkle."
Nudie Cohn never wanted his granddaughter to learn how to sew, but they were very close, says Jamie Nudie. She was "the kid serving up the coffee" in Nudie's Rodeo Tailors, which she remembers as a "gathering place" where anyone, star or not, could come in, relax, enjoy a little bit of soup and shoot the breeze.
This is what she misses. Fortunately, Cohn and his wife Bobbie did teach their granddaughter how to run a business, and this October, Jamie Lee Nudie is opening Nudie's Custom Java in Old Town Newhall as a historic place where people can see Nudie Suits, buy Nudie Suits — and enjoy a custom coffee.
(Nudie Suits at Valley Relics Museum. Credit: Dominic Reyes)
In the meantime, Nudie Suits, photos of Nudie and his famous friends, and two Nudie Mobiles are on display at Valley Relics Museum in Chatsworth.
Song of the week: 'Undeniable' by Mild High Club
This week's Off-Ramp Song of the Week is "Undeniable" by Mild High Club.
Mild High Club is the solo musical project of Alexander Brettin, a Los Angeles resident originally from the Midwest. “Undeniable” is off his upcoming debut record “Timeline” which comes out September 18 on Circle Star Records. You can listen to the single on Soundcloud now:
https://soundcloud.com/stonesthrow/mild-high-club-undeniable
...and watch the trippy (somewhat disturbing) video for their previous single, "Windowpane:"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEX0r9cs5_0
Mild High Club plays Echo Park Rising this weekend and the Echo on August 26 with King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard.
Gay bars have been closing across SoCal, but not in downtown Los Angeles
“Throughout the ’80s and the ’90s, there were no smartphones. You went to a gay bar to meet guys. Now there’s a disconnect between the older guys and the younger guys, who have a completely different life experience. The younger ones don’t mind going to a straight bar to hang out. Personally, I’d rather die. It’s important to bring these guys into the world of ‘This is a gay bar. This is what it means to have a bar full of men.’ And that will hopefully get them to go out more and experience something they maybe haven’t before.” — Thor Stephens, Frontiers, Aug. 7, 2015
It's a reality gays and lesbians have had to embrace as the price of progress: the more society as a whole accepts them, the less reason there is for institutions like gay bars — relatively safe havens for LGBT people. And so many gay bars have closed across the region, including the historic the Friendship in Pacific Palisades, the Other Side in Silver Lake and the Black Cat Tavern at Sunset Junction.
But, lo! In downtown Los Angeles, which only a little while ago was down to one gay bar — the New Jalisco at Main and Third — two new venues have opened. There's Precinct at Fourth and South Broadway and Redline at South Los Angeles and Sixth, and one more is on the way: Bar Mattachine at Broadway and Seventh, named for the first gay rights group, the Mattachine Society.
Drew Mackie tells the story in the latest edition of Frontiers, and he joined me at Precinct on Tuesday evening with co-owner Thor Stephens and the co-owner of Bar Mattachine, Garret McKechnie.
"It's important to have a place that you feel at home and comfortable in," says Stephens. "You're in your world, and you're safe." And McKechnie adds, "And just because we have equal rights now, doesn't mean we have to be homogeneous."
For much more, click that little arrow and listen to my full interview.
Jerry Heller helped bring N.W.A 'Straight Outta Compton'
“Personally, I don’t really have that much animosity toward Jerry Heller. You know, it’s a long time ago. Respect the fact that Eazy was no fool. And this guy was like a father figure to Eazy. In a lot of ways, he did what he said he was gonna do. Which is, make him legit. We were selling records out the trunk of our car before Jerry came into the picture."
— Ice Cube to Amos Barshad in Grantland, 8/11/2015
The new movie "Straight Outta Compton" tells the story of how the group N.W.A broke out in the mid-1980s, revolutionizing hip-hop. O'Shea Jackson Jr. plays Ice Cube, Corey Hawkins plays Dr. Dre, Jason Mitchell is Eazy-E ... and way down the list of credits is Paul Giamatti as Jerry Heller.
Heller, now 74, was in his 40s when he started managing N.W.A after an already long music career working with Elton John, Van Morrison, The Eagles, Pink Floyd and others.
(L-R: Elton John and Jerry Heller. Courtesy Jerry Heller)
As Heller told KPCC's Adolfo Guzman Lopez in 2006, when he released his memoir "Ruthless":
"I heard about a little pressing plant down on Santa Monica Boulevard called Macola, and there was Ice-T, MC Hammer, The World Class Wreckin' Cru, CIA, J.J. Fad, The L.A. Dream Team pressing their records over there. So if you sold 10,000 records, on a record that probably cost you two or three hundred dollars plus the thousand you had to pay to press them up, everybody made a lot of money. So I got involved then. And in The World Class Wreckin' Cru was Dre."
Dr. Dre, of course, one of the founding members of N.W.A.
How did this white Ohioan mix with the black rappers from Compton?
"Remember," he told Adolfo, "I grew up in Cleveland on the same block as Bone Thugs-n-Harmony. I knew a lot bigger gangsters than N.W.A."
But their artistry was clear.
"This cry," he calls it, "from our inner cities, from these audio documentarians, probably the greatest poets of their era."
There's much more from Heller in Adolfo's interview from the Off-Ramp archive; click on the arrow above for the audio version.
Escape rooms deliver video game-level immersive fun, but with real people and situations
Ever had the urge to rob a bank? How about derail a nuclear war or break out of jail? If your answer is yes, don't worry, we won’t judge. And anyway, there are now a handful of companies in Los Angeles offering you the chance to fulfill those fantasies. They’re called escape rooms, and they're a ride you can take with anyone, from your grandmother to your boss.
The clock is literally ticking for the vacationing Fitzpatrick family. Stuck in a three-room bank office, mom Julie, 13-year-old Danny, and grandmother Nancy are desperately trying to crack one of the last puzzles that’ll lead them to the final prize. This game is called “Central Bank.” The object: Crack the safe and steal the pretend diamonds in less than 60 minutes.
“It’s fun to use your brain and get a reward by moving on,” says Danny. “Finding clues and stuff. It’s different from school, less boring.”
It’s also different from a video game. The bank room is a real room, the safe is a real safe (mostly) and the players are real people, physically interacting with each other.
“Everyone has a role to play, and you have to work together,” says Julie Fitzpatrick. “You can’t say I’m doing it all by myself, or it’ll never happen.”
Central Bank is one of two immersive games at Room Escape Los Angeles. In a two-story office building on Sunset Boulevard, players pay $33 each to try to crack the codes and solve the puzzles that get them to the next clue or open the next door. With dim lighting, piped-in police sirens and some heavy breathing, it gives you the feel of something more real than you might like to admit.
“The game itself causes an adrenaline rush, which people love,” says manager Jo Manojlovic, who watches over the players from behind a bank of security monitors. “When I did this for the first time, I was just addicted to the feeling, and I wanted to try all the games all over the world.”
Jo’s job is to make sure people don’t start tearing fixtures out of the walls looking for clues and to offer little nudges in the right direction when nerves overtake logic. Of course, for some players, no amount of hinting will help. “I will not lie,” she says with a laugh. “We do have some groups—" A discreet pause here. "I would recommend not coming high or under the influence of anything to Escape Room. It doesn’t work well, that’s for sure.”
Now even Hollywood has seen the potential of these games. In a handful of theater lobbies where they’re showing the latest "Mission: Impossible" movie, you can sign up for and play the "Mission: Impossible" escape room, where you have just 20 minutes to puzzle your way free.
Anecdotally, it seems to be a hit, says Megan Wahtera from Paramount’s interactive marketing department.
“I’d like to say an emphatic yes, but it’s always hard to formulate what works and what doesn’t," Wahtera says. "We definitely saw an uptick in ticket sales in those theaters. We’ve had some people say they drove over two hours just to make it to this one theater to experience it based on what they heard, so it’s been great overall.”
The escape room trend started with a computer game in Japan, became popular in Europe and has now spread to North America. There are at least 11 companies offering escape rooms in Southern California alone. At this location, they are averaging more than 20 groups a day, drawing locals and tourists, families and companies, all looking for the next thing in team-building. They're like trust falls, but with puzzles.
Now, if there’s a problem with these franchises from a business point of view, it may be this: Once you’ve done a room, you’re probably not going to come back and do it again. Which means the owners always have to create new attractions to keep the customers coming back. Look for Zombie Lab and Prison Break coming to this location soon.
By the way, the Fitzpatrick's did manage to crack the vault — with two minutes to spare.
“This one was very special because it was fun to see Danny so excited about doing something and wanting to do it again!” says proud grandmother Nancy. And when asked if this was the least lame thing he did with his mom and grandmother on his vacation, the teenager replied with an almost embarrassed “Yeah.”
Suspension of disbelief: We watch a pothole actually being filled in downtown Los Angeles
How bad are L.A.'s roads? Pretty bad. A new report says potholes and other hazards add more than $1,000 to the annual expense of operating the average vehicle.
KPCC infrastructure reporter Sharon McNary recently went out to see potholes being filled at 8th and Bixel at an entrance to the 110 downtown.
The road crew made quick work of it, and she met a homeless man named Anthony - and his cat Thanksgiving - who sees hundreds of suspension meeting their demise every day.
(Panhandler Anthony works the 8th and Bixel entrance to the 110 in downtown Los Angeles. Credit: Sharon McNary)
But what happens when a reporter isn’t watching? She wants to know your story, so please fill out her quick and easy survey and stay tuned for updates.
John Rabe interviews the actor who plays him in 'The End of the Tour,' David Foster Wallace biopic
At "The End of the Tour," of course someone else winds up becoming yourself.
Near the beginning of "The End of the Tour," the David Foster Wallace biopic based on David Lipsky's memoir "Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself," you can hear the actual voice of NPR's Robert Siegel introducing an appreciation of the author on "All Things Considered."
Then, toward the middle of the film (reviewed here by MPR's Stephanie Curtis), Wallace is interviewed in a Minnesota Public Radio studio by a tall, dark man with a lovely voice. That's me. (Click the bonus audio to hear that 1996 interview from the MPR archives.) Well, it was me, in 1996, in real life.
But in the movie, it's Dan John Miller.
I have no gripe with Miller. In "Walk The Line," which won an Oscar, he played Johnny Cash's guitarist and best friend, Luther Perkins; he's won a bunch of awards for narrating audio books; and he's the leader of the band Blanche.
I am truly grateful they picked an accomplished, good-looking actor to portray me. I am possibly even more grateful they picked someone from Detroit, like me, to play me, not someone who sounds like a male counterpart to Joan Cusack's pitch-perfect Minnesotan.
But I do wish they had picked me to play me. I really liked me for that part.
It was one thing when there was a movie with my name in 2010:
I can't really get mad that German filmmaker Florian Gallenberger didn't pick a C-list public radio celebrity to play the Oskar Schindler of China. I couldn't have pulled off the role of a man who saved something like a hundred-thousand lives during the infamous Japanese Rape of Nanking.
But for the 15 seconds "NPR Host" (me) is in "The End of the Tour," I would have been so perfect in that role you would have thought it was me. You could say I was born to play that part.
In any case, listen to my interview with Dan John Miller — click that little arrow above — and when they're making a movie about Miller, send a letter to the director telling them you know someone who'd be perfect to play him.
Roger Corman tells us about his original 1994 'Fantastic Four' that was never released
This week, Fox releases its latest reboot of Marvel’s "Fantastic Four." It cost a reported $122 million to make, but it wouldn't exist if it weren’t for a million-dollar movie made two decades ago by a legend of low budget cinema.
Quick. You're a creature so powerful you consume entire universes. Which Marvel supervillain are you? Answer: You’re Galactus, the sworn enemy of Marvel's mutant supersquad the Fantastic Four.
(Galactus in promotional art by Mitch Breitweiser. Wikipedia Commons)
But the real world has its Galactus too. He's a jovial grey eminence, who sits behind a big desk in a posh and airy office on the edge of Beverly Hills, and whose latest production is called "Sharktopus vs. Whalewolf."
And until I tell him, he doesn't even realize he — Roger Corman — personally destroyed the multi-billion-dollar Marvel Universe.
(R.H. Greene and producer Roger Corman. Courtesy R.H. Greene)
"'The Fantastic Four' was one of the most fantastic projects I was ever involved in," Corman says with a laugh. "I'm a little amazed that what we did in '92 is still in the news in '15."
Corman is now 89. His low-budget filmmaking career goes back more than 60 years and includes more than 400 producer credits and 50 directing credits. Films like "Attack of the Crab Monsters," "Attack of the Giant Leeches," "The Terror," "The Raven," "Little Shop of Horrors," "Rock 'n' Roll High School" and "Death Race 2000." Corman is often discussed in terms of the younger talents he discovered: Jack Nicholson, Francis Ford Coppola, Gale Ann Hurd, James Cameron, Martin Scorsese and more.
In the 1970s and '80s, Corman alums dominated studio filmmaking, and Corman could have been a studio filmmaker too. He directed a couple of films for 20th Century Fox, but decided he liked life better back on the outside.
"By 1992 I had a studio in Venice and I was producing about 10 pictures a year. We had our own distribution arm, and as we used to say, we had to feed the dinosaur. We had to make enough films so that the distribution arm could function," Corman says.
Nobody in Hollywood had more independence than Corman, nor could make more movies for less money. Which is why producer Bernd Eichinger, who died in 2011, called Corman when he got into a jam.
"He had an option to produce 'The Fantastic Four' on a 30 million dollar budget. But the option was going to expire on December 31st and he didn't have the 30 million dollars. So he came to me and said, 'Roger, I've got this 30 million dollar picture. Could you make it for 1 million dollars?' I said, 'We can do a pretty good job, I think, for a million dollars.'"
The main purpose behind "The Fantastic Four" was to keep Eichinger from losing his film rights. But Corman and company still tried to make a real movie. In 1992, there may have been a few other producers foolhardy enough to tackle a $30 million movie on a $1 million budget — but only Roger Corman could have pulled it off. His "Fantastic Four" is actually pretty good.
It's brisk, for one thing — 90 minutes flat. That's 71 minutes shorter than the butt-battering "Avengers: Age of Ultron," a film that cost $280 million to make.
Corman's film is also true to its source. The Human Torch has to cry "Flame on!" to control his powers. Reed Richards, the elastic team leader known as Mr. Fantastic, has a spit curl worthy of Bob's Big Boy. And the lavaman superhero called the Thing shouts out his comic book catchphrase "It's clobberin' time!" no fewer than three times.
That's not to say "Fantastic Four" isn't textbook Corman too — space scenes are a blend of NASA stock shots and the rocketship from a Soviet-era science fiction movie Corman's been plundering since the 1960s. And when Dr. Doom fires his death ray, Corman shows us '50s atomic test footage of exploding houses.
There's even a blown line reading, with the Human Torch saying, "I gotta make sure nothing here happens to sis."
Corman laughs warmly when some of the film's more obvious shortcomings are pointed out to him. "Those were some of the compromises we had to make in order to trim 29 million dollars off the budget."
"Fantastic Four" is a farewell address from a less pretentious time. When the Hulk was still a bodybuilder painted green, and the Thing was an actor in an orange rubber suit. It's a B movie for sure, but everybody brought their A game.
"We took the film very seriously as a challenge," says Corman, "an attempt to do something beyond what we'd been doing before. Everybody was really up for this."
"Fantastic Four" stands as one of the better Corman productions of the 1990s. It's also one of the few Corman films to never get released.
"We were ready to distribute the film when Bernd told us he'd made the deal with Fox. I said to Bernd, 'OK, you're now going to make the 30 million dollar picture.' He made it, and I think it came to 60 million or something like that. I said, 'What are you going to do with the 1 million dollar picture?' Fox said, 'If you want to continue with us, you're not going to distribute the 1 million dollar picture.' When Bernd told me that he'd sold it to Fox, I cashed the check, but I was somewhat disappointed."
But the world wasn't done with "The Fantastic Four." A bootleg version has a million views on YouTube. But the film's most lasting legacy — the one Corman himself was mostly unaware of — is as a butterfly effect.
Because of Roger Corman, Eichinger kept the rights to "The Fantastic Four," and then partnered with the Fox film studio for a couple of mega-productions. This severed the Fantastic Four from the rest of the Marvel movie universe, which now belongs to Disney. As a result, Marvel has discontinued the "Fantastic Four" comic book, and Disney has written the characters out of the upcoming "Infinity War" movies.
This shift is tectonic for true fans — because the Fantastic Four aren't just any characters. They're the first superhero creations from the team of Jack Kirby and Stan Lee, themselves two foundational figures on the Mount Rushmore of comic books. Cutting the Fanastic Four out of the official Marvel Universe is like cutting Moses out of the Bible.
"I'm amazed to hear that Marvel has done that," Corman says. "I understand their reasoning — Fox controls that one project. Nevertheless, it seems to me they could work together with Fox. There's no reason why they couldn't collaborate in some way. But egos sometimes get in people's ways."
The feud between Marvel and Fox has gotten so bad that one Marvel artist recently drew the cast of Fox's new Fantastic Four reboot into a Punisher comic book. And then blew them up.
Because Roger Corman knows how to make a movie for a million dollars, the corporate histories of two of the largest media conglomerates the world has ever seen have been altered irrevocably, and decisions worth billions are being taken in what reports describe as an atmosphere of bitterness and acrimony.
While Roger Corman just sits in his comfortable office, planning out his next production.
"You can't predict what is going to happen," Corman says. "You go forward, you do the best you can, you have your plan, and the plan never works out exactly the way you thought it would."
A partial cast and crew reunion and a special screening of "DOOMED!," a new documentary about the Corman production of "The Fantastic Four," will be featured at the American Cinematheque's Aero Theatre in Santa Monica on Thursday, Aug. 13 at 7:30 p.m.
Abraham, Isaac and del Sarto at the Getty Museum
“God said to Abraham, kill me a son. Abe said 'God, you must be puttin’ me on.'”
— Bob Dylan
There are a lot of things to like about the Getty’s ongoing show of works of late Renaissance painter Andrea del Sarto, including a bevy of rare red-chalk working drawings of figures that went into his greatest paintings. Seeing these is like having a scan of the mind of the great painter himself as he accomplishes his mighty work.
But to me the most arresting work there was one of three extant versions of del Sarto’s “The Sacrifice of Isaac.” It’s a subject that’s inspired artists as various as Rembrandt, Caravaggio and — as we shall see — sculptor George Segal. But no one ever did it better than del Sarto.
It’s an incomplete picture, with some brown underpainting clearly visible. But you don’t notice things like that. What you notice is an old man with a big knife about to kill a buff naked teenager. It’s the facial expressions that come out at you as much as the horrible action.
Old Abraham’s is that of a farmer somehow compelled to kill a favorite animal, but eager to get it over with as quickly as possible. Isaac’s is a wonderful compilation of horrified wide-eyed disbelief. "My beloved father, the man I care for most in this entire world, is about to cut my throat!"
The details are enthralling: Isaac cowers in his helpless nudity. As Abraham leaps to his vile, divine task, his superhero’s red cloak billows like Captain Marvel’s.
And then, bang right there in the middle — for though this is a flat painting, its genius creator makes it seem like a kind of animated sequence — there is this little winged cupid touching Abraham on the left shoulder. It’s an angel, God’s little sock puppet, saying "No, Abe, God’s just been messing with you.’’
“Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me.’’
— God
An unfortunate ram is found nearby and sacrificed in Issac’s stead. And this weird tale becomes a narrative of faith and love in the three global monotheistic religions — because of his faith, Abraham’s vast progeny spread all over the world, as Genesis hurries on to describe. But if Abraham and God ever talked to one another again, the Bible doesn’t mention it.
Del Sarto has his own doubts. In his great painting, what you take away is the lifelong trauma both men would experience: Dad wanted to kill me, I nearly killed my own son. It’s in their faces for us to see — not in the form of love or faith, but as enduring, eternal horror. They may trust in God, but they can never again trust one another.
A great artist of our own time did his own rendering of the same scripture, and this work’s history shows how deep within us the trauma of murdering our children remains. Almost 40 years ago, sculptor George Segal did simple life-size bronze of the story — with Isaac in chains, kneeling in wait for his father’s knife.
(Princeton University Art Museum)
The work was to commemorate the 1970 tragedy of Kent State, where National Guard troops fatally shot four protesting students. After much hypocritical blathering, the university rejected the statue as too controversial. Nothing could better show how powerful the ancient story remains to this day, that Midwestern officialdom still cannot look its powerful lesson in the face.
If you want to see Segal’s take on Abe and Ike, it’s on display at Princeton University. But del Sarto’s masterpiece , on loan from the Cleveland Museum, is still there on the Getty’s hill in Brentwood.
"Andrea del Sarto: The Renaissance Workshop in Action" is at the Getty Center through Sept. 13.
Alan Cheuse: My cousin, my best friend
Alan Cheuse, who died last Friday at the age of 75, was more than the man who delivered something like 1,200 pitch-perfect book reviews for NPR for more than a quarter of a century. Alan was my first cousin and a best friend.
I miss Alan's laughter, his wit, his good-natured gossip, and his bear hugs. A big Russian bear, but to be sure, a teddy bear, defying our raw Russian roots. Alan was the elder child of my father’s younger brother, but he took the name Cheuse, our grandmother’s maiden name, rather than Kaplan, because our paternal grandfather had abandoned the family in the turmoil of a roiling anti-Semitic Russia.
My father was subsequently swept up into the Czar’s army, World War One, followed by the revolution, but come the red-white civil war he had enough, deserted, and wandered west to Paris, where he became a tailor.
Meanwhile, his brother, Alan’s father Fishal, became in time a captain in the Red Air Force, but in the 1930s crashed his fighter into the hostile Sea of Japan and was saved. But instead of returning to a Stalinist Russia where our family was being purged, he ended up in Shanghai, flying air mail for the nationalists, until the Japanese attacked China .
To his rescue came my father, then relatively safe in New York City. He sponsored Alan’s father’s immigration to the United States. But his flying days were over, for the FBI deemed him a security risk. So he scraped by working as a radio repairman in New Jersey, and got married. Into this hard-edged world came Alan in 1940, five years my junior.
Alan always found comfort in books, and excelled at Rutgers. At graduation, he turned down a job with the New York Times where I was, to travel and write. We all envied his confidence, although taking exception to the depiction of the family in his memoir, “Fall Out Of Heaven,” which traced his Dad’s life in Russia and after.
Alan continued to write, more and more, and to teach. His workshops were legend. There also were friendships with writers -- I remember us hanging out with Bernard Malamud and Richard Ford, and would-be writers, too. And he did those NPR reviews, somehow capturing the essence of a complex book in exactly two minutes and twenty seconds on the nose, every time, for which Alan was justly proud.
As the years went on, we talked less and less about the family’s thorny past, and more about our present families and current projects, and what was for dinner. This adhered to the family adage that the mark of a survivor was not to look back, but to live in the moment.
Alan did just that. He lived every day. He was immortal ... until he was not.
Sam Hall Kaplan is an architecture and design critic, formerly of Fox 11, the LA Times, and the New York Times.