Harry Dean Stanton smokes in front of Patt Morrison; Zoey 101 as Bob Tur continues to become a woman; remembering writer Frederik Pohl; and lamenting Miyazaki's retirement from animation.
In 'Partly Fiction,' Harry Dean Stanton looks back at his 59 years in film
"He's a walkin' contradiction partly truth and partly fiction...Taking every wrong direction on his lonely way back home"
- Kris Kristofferson, The Pilgrim: Chapter 33
Harry Dean Stanton is a man of many roles. Maybe 200 of them.
There’s hardly a film genre of note in the past 50 years that his lean, wrinkle-seamed face hasn’t appeared in: "Cool Hand Luke," "Godfather Part 2," "Alien," "Missouri Breaks," "Pretty in Pink," "Rango," "Repo Man," and the list goes on and on.
Onscreen, he is the consummate character actor, appearing unmannered in his style but letter-perfect about the work. Offscreen, he is a man of few words.
In a new documentary called “Harry Dean Stanton: Partly Fiction,” he lets his music do much of the talking about his life, as he explains it, sort of, to KPCC’s Patt Morrison.
The documentary “Harry Dean Stanton: Partly Fiction” opens September 13 at the Nuart in Los Angeles.
Zoey 101: Chopper pilot Bob Tur becomes Zoey Tur, Part 2
In June, Off-Ramp welcomed Zoey Tur into the studio to talk about Gender Identity Disorder, also known as gender dysphoria, which she'd suffered, as Bob, her entire life.
Among other macho exploits, Bob Tur piloted the helicopter that hovered above Reginald Denny's beating during the LA Riots and found OJ Simpson during his slow-speed chase. Much of that behavior, Zoey told us, was acting out. Inside, she knew she was a woman, christened Zoey at the suggested of two close friends, and she started hormone replacement on May 6, 2013.
So far, Zoey has been taking the drugs for the transition, and there are definite physical changes starting, but the big changes will happen with surgery, the first of which she says she'll undergo in a few weeks.
Today, after not seeing Zoey since our first interview, I met her in Santa Monica, and we talked about the transition (it's going well, but the drugs do much more than she expected), men (she's being relegated to the "girls' table"), dating (she and her girlfriend both decided they didn't want to date a woman, and she thinks straight men don't want to date MacGuyver), and Bradley Manning (she blames the Army as much as Manning).
(NOTE: This post has been edited to fix pronoun inconsistencies. After discussion with Zoey, we've decided that "he" will be used to refer to everything pre-May 6, 2013, when Bob started hormone therapy, and "she" will be used to refer to Zoey after that date. -- John Rabe)
RIP SF writer Frederik Pohl, 1919-2013, truly the last of his generation
Off-Ramp commentator Marc Haefele pays tribute to possibly the last of the post-WW II-era Great Generation of SF writers and editors, Frederik Pohl, who died Monday at 93.
Try to imagine "Mad Men" turned upside down. Instead of 21st-century TV writers trying to imagine what the advertising business was like in the middle of the last century, how about some mid-20th century writers trying to imagine the advertising business of the future?
In 1952, Frederik Pohl and his brilliant collaborator, Cyril Kornbluth, cranked out a classic of Speculative Fiction called "The Space Merchants." It foresaw a future ruled by the heirs of Don Draper, who’ve made consumption addictive and produced a wall-to-wall population explosion that's stripped the Earth of its resources.
According to The New York Times, "The Space Merchants" has been translated into more than 25 languages and has sold millions of copies worldwide.
It was a double predictive success — lampooning the exploding power of Madison Avenue and warning against ecological disaster. Rooted in 50s sci-fi and Mad Ave fiction, some digs still seem sly, as when the protagonist reasons that when the greedy world ran out of uranium there was still coal left, “and when we ran out of coal, we still had pedicabs.’’
Fred Pohl was 33 when "The Space Merchants" appeared; Kornbluth, with whom Pohl wrote 11 novels, was just 28. Six years later, Kornbluth died, and Pohl was on his own. By the 1970s he stood at the top of his field as a writer, but also as editor and cheerleader for younger writers such as Larry Niven, Samuel R. Delany and Joanna Russ. Many an editor, including me, can recall Fred suggesting we take a look at some phenom he’d discovered. We who took his advice were rarely sorry we had.
A Brooklyn-born high school dropout, Pohl was energetically self-educated, and the science in his fiction garnered professional respect. He early joined with other aspiring writers like Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov and Damon Knight in the pulpy incubator of 1930s science fiction fandom.
All became sci-fi titans, and, with Pohl’s death, all of them are gone — long-ago teenagers gathered in the back rooms of the late Depression to invent the imagination of an age. Asking questions most scientists weren’t bothering with: Can there be life on Mars? Is there life on other planets? Are there planets around other stars? Can we travel in space? And what kind of culture will space travel create?
Pohl was a light of this culture. By World War II, he was editing SF magazines and agenting sci-fi as well as writing his own. After Army service in Europe, Pohl wrote advertising copy — background for "The Space Merchants" – continued as an agent and wrote sci-fi with and without Kornbluth. But Kornbluth was only one of several collaborators, extending to his 2008 work with late science fiction superstar Arthur C. Clarke.
Pohl’s most singular collaboration, however, came in 1954, when Galaxy Magazine and the mainline publisher Simon and Schuster offered a prize for the great “undiscovered” SF novel. All the submissions were terrible. So the editors perpetrated a scam: Pohl and fellow sci-fi veteran Lester del Rey were commissioned to write the prize winner, the fictitious Edson McCann; the book was called "Preferred Risk." Let’s just say it was the best sci-fi novel ever based on the insurance industry.
In his 1960 study "New Maps of Hell," English mainstream novelist Kingsley Amis named Pohl the ablest science fiction writer. Soon Pohl was editing two of the four prominent magazines — Galaxy and IF — and putting his own stamp on the sci-fi genre through the '60s. His publications won multiple awards. But while he encouraged younger talent, the most revolutionary new writers were appearing elsewhere.
In the '70s, he concentrated on his writing. He won consecutive Nebula awards in 1976 and 1977— the last for "Gateway," the first in his six-book Heechee series. His 1979 novel, "Jem: The Making of a Utopia," won a National Book Award.
In his 93-year lifetime, Frederik Pohl wrote nearly 100 books: fiction and nonfiction. That is a towering accomplishment. Yet perhaps we should best remember him as the last of those fabulous sci-fi geeks of the dismal 1930s who focused their lives on trying to imagine the future we all live in today.
(Image: Jack Gaughan)
It really isn't that hot, people
Off-Ramp host John Rabe and KPCC Facilities Manager Yolanda Ware go outside with water bottles in tow to find out how hot it really is outside. Also features, environment reporter Molly Peterson and new editor Stephen Gregory.
Five years after Lehman, Off-Ramp follows up with laid off LAUSD educator
Five years ago, September 15, the investment firm Lehman Brothers collapsed, as appropriate of a starting point as any for the Great Recession.
Two years ago, unemployment was hovering between 9 and 9 and a half percent. Foreclosures still ran wild and schools all over California were feeling the pinch. For Off-Ramp's Hard Times series, producer Kevin Ferguson talked with Rosanna White, a high school teacher in Los Angeles who got her second layoff notice in a row.
Now, Off-Ramp is looking at life five years after the recession started to see how they are. Now known as Rosanna Llorens, she's married and mother to a little girl. Kevin Ferguson caught up with Rosanna and her family.
Rosanna had her 2011 layoff notice rescinded, but in 2012 she was pink slipped again--this time, it stuck. Llorens was pregnant, and her daughter overdue. "It was terrifying," said Llorens. "I was under the impression that my benefits ran out on June 30. So it's like 'oh my God, we're due to have a baby, and what about insurance?"
The Llorens family began to talk with their doctor about inducing labor--partially to ensure their child's birth would be covered by their insurance.
Rosanna says she took the time between jobs to spend time with her newborn daughter and reassess her career. Before long, Rosanna found a job as a college counselor at a private school in Santa Monica. For Rosanna, the transition to public education to private was easy. "It would've been more difficult if I didn't have the year off," she said. "I went sort of back into worth with a clean slate."
When asked if she felt she was a victim of the recession, Rosanna pauses. "I specifically remember when those things crashed and thinking I was in a bullet proof profession," said Llorens.
"They're always gonna need teachers, and I'm teaching in the inner city. They're not going to get rid of teachers from the inner city because those are the highest need areas. I didn't so much feel a victim to the recession as I felt a victim to poor management at a time when everybody had limited resources."
Rosanna says that she and her family are still recovering--during the layoff and pregnancy Rosanna and her husband had to dig into their savings a bit more than they would've liked. But she hopes her story can inspire hope in others. "I have thought back to that window of time and hope people can be encouraged who are going through this," said Llorens. "We're not wealthy, we're not doing excessively well. But we have recovered to a degree. And I think hanging onto that sense of hope and possibility is important."
Bad news in the animation world: Miyazaki is retiring
About the worst news any lover of animation could receive came from the Venice Film Festival this week, when the Oscar-winning director Hayao Miyazaki announced his retirement.
Miyazaki is the most admired and influential director working in animation today. When you speak to animators anywhere in the world, they invariably name him as the artist they most admire. John Lasseter says that when they get stuck on a film at Pixar, they screen one of Miyazaki’s features for inspiration. Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois at DreamWorks cite him as an influence; so do the directors at Disney.
Miyazaki, who co-founded Studio Ghibli, has made 11 features, plus a few TV shows and few short films. There’s not a bad film in the lot, and many of them are brilliant.
Like Walt Disney, Miyazaki understands that animation is often most effective when it’s presented without dialogue.
Satsuki and Mei waiting for the "bus" in the rain in My Neighbor Totoro ...
... or Chihiro riding the mysterious train in Spirited Away. These are magical moments. Their influence can be seen when Hiccup befriends Toothless in How to Train Your Dragon, and in the heartbreaking vignette in Up! that tells the story of Carl and Ellie’s marriage.
How much less enchanting would those moments be if the characters nattered.
Miyazaki, who is now 72, has talked about the need to groom new directors at Ghibli, noting that he and fellow director Isao Takahata are getting older. He talked about retiring in 1998, after Yoshifume Kondo, the promising young director he worked with on Whisper of the Heart, died of an aneurism, reportedly brought on by overwork. He complained that his eyes were bothering him after Spirited Away and that he might retire. But he kept on making films.
The last time I spoke with Miyazaki was in Tokyo few years ago, when he was clearly still a vigorous man, in full command of his artistic powers. And 72 seems too young to retire: Kurosawa made Ran when he was 75; Takahata is 78 and at work on a new film. Animation artists tend to have long careers: Betty Boop creator Grim Natwick continued animating into his 90’s; Bambi designer Tyrus Wong remains active at 102.
If Miyazkai’s decision proves final, he leaves behind an extraordinary body of work that will continue to influence the art of animation for decades to come. But animators and fans everywhere hope he’ll change his mind and keep making movies, and further enrich the art of animation, for years to come.
Hayao Miyazaki's final feature, The Wind Rises, will be released in the US by Touchstone Pictures on November 8 for a one-week award Oscar-qualifying run at the Landmark Theater on Pico Boulevard in West Los Angeles.
Animation expert Charles Solomon is author of, among other books, The Art and Making of Peanuts Animation: Celebrating Fifty Years of Television Specials.