Wrath of Khan's director Nick Meyer shares the movie he made with his dad in the late 1950s ... sound intersection ideas, literally ... Pasadena's homeless champion retires after 21 years ... the last slavery movies you will ever need to see ...
Director Nicholas Meyer's first movie is a surprising Father's Day story
Trivia question: What was Nicholas Meyer's first movie?
"The first one he wrote?" you might ask. "'The Seven-Per-Cent Solution,' based on his bestselling Sherlock Holmes novel."
Wrong.
"The first one he directed? It must be 'Time After Time.''"
Wrong.
"It can't be 'Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan,' that was waaay later."
Nope. It's not even "Invasion of the Bee Girls."
The correct answer is "Around the World in 80 Days," which Meyer wrote and directed with his father, Bernard Meyer, when he was a teenager in the late 1950s — a movie that not only taught the younger Meyer many of the tricks of the trade, but brought father and son together during a very difficult time in the Meyer household.
In 1956, for his 11th birthday, Nicholas Meyer was taken to see Mike Todd's lavish production of "Around the World in 80 Days."
It was, he says, "a religious experience. I was like Saul of Tarsus, on the road to Damascus, struck blind by a vision." And in the program for the movie — for this was a roadshow presentation of the blockbuster — was an article that said, "'You too can make a motion picture; no previous experience necessary. All you need is 13,000 people and six different countries, and a budget of what was then between four- and six-million dollars, and you can make a movie.' But I was 11 and I've never had a taste for irony, so I said to my father, I want to make a movie of my own. And of course, not being the most original mind around, the movie I wanted to make was the movie I had just seen."
And so, over the course of the next several years, Nick and Bernard wrote, shot, edited, directed, produced and distributed their 50-minute version of Mike Todd's classic, with Meyer as Phileas Fogg and his best friend Ronald Roose (who became Meyer's editor) as Passepartout, and Bernard doing the Jules Verne voiceover.
Here, for the first time, are excerpts from the Bernard and Nicholas Meyer production of "Around the World in 80 Days:"
Around the World in 80 Days, a father and son collaboration
The two made the movie whenever they could carve out time, shooting footage even on family vacations in London and at a Wild West park in New Jersey. They showed it to friends and family, and even rented it out through an ad in a magazine. Meyer says kids loved it for one reason, and adults loved it for an entirely different reason.
But there's much more to the story. Not only was young Nick doing badly in school — to his father's confusion and concern (Nick says it was ADD) - but Elly, Bernard's wife and Nick's mother, contracted and then succumbed to ovarian cancer.
So things went from bad to worse ... except when they were making the movie, when they observed a tacit truce. It turned out to be a lifesaving oasis of sanity and collaboration, and it's a great story for Father's Day.
Later, did they ever talk about the truce? "We sort of got past the point of feuding and arguing," Meyer says. "My coming of age and making something of myself went a long way to resolving things, and when people are dying, there's only one thing that we want to know about each other, which is, 'Do you love me. Yes. I love you.' And then all the other stuff drops by the wayside."
For much more of my interview with Nicholas Meyer, listen to the audio.
A big tip of the hat to the podcast I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere, hosted by Scott Monty and Burt Wolder, to whom Meyer revealed the existence of his "Around the World in 80 Days" in a long interview about Meyer's Sherlockian interests. And thanks to Nick for retrieving the DVD from his garage, letting me dub it, and sharing it with his fans at KPCC.
Can sound artist Alan Nakagawa help stop pedestrian deaths in LA?
This month, the Los Angeles Department of Transportation announced it made an exciting new hire: it isn't a new director, or some brilliant new policy wonk fresh out of urban planning school. It was sound artist Alan Nakagawa.
Nakagawa was brought on to work with Vision Zero, the department's campaign to eliminate traffic deaths in Los Angeles.
An L.A. native, he is work spans installations, visual work, recorded albums and more. He's also worked for Metro's public art program for years.
So, how can an artist save lives of Angelenos on the road?
Cities have tried to deal with traffic deaths for as long cars have driven down their streets.
"Why hasn't it been solved? Maybe we have to look at it in a different way," said Nakagawa. "So part of that different way — that innovative way, hopefully — is to put an artist on board."
LADOT isn't the first place to try this. For decades now, the New York Department of Sanitation has had artist-in-residence Mierle Laderman Ukeles on board — there, she's worked closely with workers to help improve the department's culture.
"There have been amazing projects all over the world where artists have been put into the mix," said Nakagawa.
So what will Nakagawa do, then? It's too early to say; the gig started just this week.
His first goal is to get familiar with the department's culture, maybe to set up shop in the LADOT's first floor gallery.
If you press him for specifics, Nakagawa will gladly share what he's brainstorming. He's inspired by the roadside memorials left behind after traffic deaths: the altars left for dead pedestrians, the eerie ghost bikes left on the side of the road after a cyclist dies.
"They're powerful," said Nakagawa. "And I'd like to start a city-wide library of these images, I want to start inviting people to submit images of their local altars and ghost bikes."
It might take years, but from there, Nakagawa can incorporate the massive data library run by the city's Vision Zero program to find hot spots.
"But that's one idea that I've been kicking around," he added.
Autry’s 'Revolutionary Vision', mavericks who took old school photos of nature and the West
Off-Ramp cultural correspondent Marc Haefele reviews "Revolutionary Vision," at the The Autry in Griffith Park through January 8, 2017.
84 years ago, just when small and smaller cameras were beginning to revolutionize photography, a group of American art photographers decided to take a backward step.
Group f/64 named itself after a large-format view camera’s smallest aperture setting—which, used correctly with long exposures, produced the most sharp-edged of black and white images—particularly of landscape and nature. It was a retreat from the idea of snapshots and the then-favored art photographic practice of misty prints and dark-room manipulation.
In order to gain the maximum realism and depth of field, the Group members often used 8x10 tripod bellows cameras reminiscent of those used by photo pioneers like the Civil War’s Matthew B. Brady. The result was some stunning landscapes and still lifes that set artistic precedents for generations of serious photographers
The works of five of the original seven f/64ers are now on display at the Autry Museum. These include pictures by two of the most famous photographers of all time: Ansel Adams and Edward Weston. Also shown are photos by Imogen Cunningham; Weston’s son, Brett Weston and Willard van Dyke. The work of one of the group’s chief modern followers, Richard Misrach, is also on show.
Considering that f/64 lasted only three years and mounted only one show, it was amazingly significant. Much of its work became iconic, part of our collective artistic vision. For instance, there’s Ansel Adams’ famous “Moonrise: Hernandez, New Mexico,” that somehow, with its tiny village and cemetery abiding against distant snowcapped mountains evokes all at once life, death and eternity.
Other group members are less well known: the singular Imogen Cunningham (who died in 1976 at 93) did pictures of flowers, vegetables and nudes that all share an expressive kinship. Like her f/64 fellows, she implemented the great photographer Alfred Stieglitz’ dictum to “Find beauty in the commonest things.” She also found great beauty in her portrait of the aging Stieglitz. As well as her photo-reportage of the 1960s Haight Ashbury culture, unfortunately not shown here.
The work of Edward Weston on view include two nudes and his famous “Shell,” a perfected vertical still life of pure shape. Weston ‘s lesser known son Edward accomplished two of the most impressive works in the show, which includes his powerful 1924 portrait of Guadalupe Marin de Rivera, like something ripped off a Spanish Civil War poster, and a view of the White Sands dunes of New Mexico that is, rightly, the centerpiece of the show. Willard Van Dyke’ stark portraits of rural industrial buildings show strong influence of German Post-Expressionism, just as it was about to perish under Hitler.
Far too young to be in the f/64 group is Richard Misrach, born in 1949. But he is in this show anyway, appropriately, since he shows the group’s influence: he also often uses an oversize view camera, has strong political ideas and has done some of his most famous work, to which he has brought a range of color unavailable to his predecessors, in western deserts. His politics, rooted in the 1970s, include environmental as well as social justice concerns. In this show, there is a subtlety to his sensibility—the colors of his desert firescapes are stunning, and only after due consideration does the perception of disaster sink in. His studies of the Salton Sea, itself the result of a century-old ecological blunder, show it eradicating ordinary signs of human habitation, like clotheslines and utility poles: grim reality beyond symbolism.
It is a show of great breadth and charm; I was impressed to see how much it appealed to the rank and file Autry Museum goers. It comes to us by way of the often reviled Bank of America, which is said to possess an amazingly diverse photo collection from which this show was abstracted. Maybe someday we can see it all.
Meanwhile, see this.
DIY Film Fest: The last slavery movies you ever need to see
Tim Cogshell, film critic for KPCC's Filmweek and Alt Film Guide, has joined Off-Ramp's team of commentators. Cogshell blogs at CinemaInMind, and in this commentary, Tim uses the N-word in context.
Here’s what Snoop Dogg said about the remake of Roots:
“I don’t understand America. They just want to keep showing the abuse that we took hundreds and hundreds of years ago. But guess what, we’re taking the same abuse.”
He said some more stuff too, but that’s what we could broadcast.
On this thing, I’m with Snoop. I've had my fill of slave, maid, butler and chauffeur movies, thank you. Yet recently Snoop and I have endured "The Help," "The Butler," "Django Unchained," "12 Years a Slave," the re-conception of "Roots" and "The Free State of Jones," and the eagerly awaited Nat Turner saga — with its appropriated title "Birth of a Nation" — is on the horizon.
I have all kinds of issues with movies about slavery in America, but I’m a professional film critic rather than a hip-hop maestro, so as part of my series of DIY film series you can do at home, here are several exceptional films about slavery in America that will get you up to speed on the subject, and get the subject out of my life — and Snoop’s — forever.
1. "A Woman Called Moses"
A 1978 television miniseries you can find online, "A Woman Called Moses" is the story of Harriet Tubman, the escaped slave who helped organize and conduct the Underground Railroad — and who will soon appear on the $20 bill. Sometimes irony is exquisite.
The film stars the great Cicely Tyson, who had the distinction of playing most notable black women in the '60s, '70s, '80s and '90s — no matter their age, complexion or actual nationality — from a teenage Kizzy in the original "Roots" to a 100-year-old Miss Jane Pittman in "The Biography Miss Jane Pittman."
2. "Glory"
I applaud "Glory," from 1989, because the title applies mostly to a bunch of black men. It's ostensibly a movie about a young white colonel and his command of the first all African-American volunteer company in the Union Army. Smartly, director Edward Zwick knew the movie had to actually be about these black men at war to set their people free. So that’s the movie he made, and by doing so he gave us Denzel Washington in his first Oscar-winning performance, a young Andre Braugher, and Morgan Freeman all on screen together. That’s almost as good as Chadwick Boseman, Anthony Mackie and Don Cheadle kicking pretty good ass in "Captain America: Civil War." Even though they are not all on the same side and technically the movie is still about the white guys.
3. "Beloved"
A lot of people don’t get this movie. They’re missing it. Adapted from Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, this 1998 Oprah Winfrey vehicle is deeply affecting and wonderfully acted by its whole cast, which includes Danny Glover in that period-correct Frederick Douglass hairdo. It's the story of a former slave who drifts in and out of brutal memories of her life as a slave, while haunted by the present spirit of the child she killed to keep it from slavery. As a journey into the psychological effects of slavery on a woman, it is unrivaled.
4. "Brother Future"
"Brother Future" is a 1991 TV movie that asks: “What would I do had I lived during slavery?”
The answer is almost universal: "Lead my people to freedom!" Phil Lewis plays a young brotha from 1991 Detroit sent back in time to the American south in 1820 to do just that.
5. The "Nigger Charley" series
The last movies I’ll mention in our DIY slavery film festival are "The Legend of Nigger Charley," "The Soul of Nigger Charley" and "Boss Nigger" — hard R’s, down the line. Released in 1972, 1973 and 1975, the titles were controversial back then, too. The N-word was replaced by the word “Black” for broadcast purposes in the first two films, and the third film was often called Boss Charley, or just Boss. Which is a shame because it misses the point of these very pointed post-civil-rights era blaxploitation films. Films that star Fred “The Hammer” Williamson as a brotha who by the end of the series is buying the freedom of black folks like Oscar Schindler, and slapping the snot out of every white man who looks at him funny.
OK, those are all of the movies about America’s peculiar institution you will ever need to see. Choose amongst them to build a DIY Slave Movie Film Festival of your own, and you’ll never have to see another movie about slavery in America, ever, and neither will I, or Snoop.
Song of the week: Darkstar (feat Empress Of) - "Reformer"
This week’s Off-Ramp song of the week is “Reformer” by the UK group Darkstar, but the singer's name comes straight out of Los Angeles: it's Lorely Rodriguez. Rodriguez grew up here and went to the LA County High School for the Arts. She did competitive jazz singing before she began writing and composing her own music under the name Empress Of. She talked about her Los Angeles roots with KPCC's The Frame.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Urh8RRMJcC0
This song, “Reformer” is just the most recent thing she’s done. Empress Of’s debut record — just called “Me” — was one of the best reviewed records of 2015.
Pasadena's homeless champion Marv Gross retires after 21 years at Union Station
When he joined Union Station Homeless Services in Pasadena, it had one facility with a few dozen beds for men, 22 employees and a budget of less than $1 million. That was 1995. Now, Rabbi Marv Gross presides over five facilities, 93 employees and a budget of almost $8 million.
Gross, 69, is retiring after 21 years. He'll do some volunteer work, some consulting and maybe some sailing in a Cal-25, which he says is "an aging boat, but it sails well" — like him.
I sat down with Gross in the courtyard of the adult services center on Raymond Avenue to talk about his work.
How big was the homeless population in Pasadena 21 years ago?
The first homeless count was in 1992, and it was somewhat over 1,200 people, and it stayed around that level. And many of the years that I've been here, it's been a little bit more than a thousand, a little bit less. It peaked in 2008-09 following the recession, but since then it's been going down, and fortunately, with the homeless count that was completed in 2016, there were 530 homeless people identified in Pasadena, which is the lowest count on record.
Can you take some credit for that?
Well, I think Union Station can take some credit. We're working very closely with the city and other agencies. I think there is a determination to try to significantly reduce homelessness in Pasadena and part of that credit I know belongs to us.
But on the other hand is there any way of knowing whether the population just moved to Skid Row in downtown LA?
The population is somewhat transient, although over the years we've found that the majority of people who we serve at Union Station actually grew up in Pasadena, so we're a local agency that by and large serves local clients.
Why are you retiring?
I'm 69. I just think it's time for me to have another type of life.
Listen to the audio for much more of my conversation, including why Union Station Homeless Services — far from the train station in downtown L.A. — has that confusing name.
Gross' last day is June 30, but his name will live on at Union Station in the Marv Gross Fund for Families, set up to help homeless families pay housing, rent, utilities, moving expenses, furniture, and to get them education and counseling.