Fault Lines - John Knoop

Fault Lines
A Nomad Filmmaker’s Journal
Memoir by John Knoop
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Fault Lines
A Nomad Filmmaker’s Journal
Copyright 2012 John Knoop
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I’m on the home stretch. Ready for the Reaper, though not expecting him just yet.
Still eager to savor the human comedy along with memories of many great adventures. I’ve
been sitting here looking out at the San Francisco Bay from my place on the ridge-top in El
Cerrito, trying to figure out how to tell my story. I’ve had a full life and the trade-off is that I
must live in a wreaked body that wakes me at dawn every day with waves of spasms and
soreness. I know I’m lucky that I still have a body that walks and a story to tell. Maybe the
challenge will prevent me from mourning over the decay of our republic and keep my mind
moving even if my body can’t follow at its old pace. There may not be a publisher ready to
take a chance on an oddly structured memoir by a non-celebrity but I hope to publish mine
so I can give copies to my grandchildren. First I must write it.
I hobble into the kitchen and heat some water in a battered saucepan to pour
over a spoonful of Turkish grind. I’ve been making coffee this way since living in Bali
years ago while I shot a film there. Maybe a toke of hash to open the memory bin, which
contains a kaleidoscope of events from both war and peace. Since I have the best bad
luck of anyone I know, there are some narrow escapes in the plot line.
I moved over here to escape the dot-com boom surrounding my former South-of-
Market loft in San Francisco. It’s a small one-bedroom house that I’ve filled with my
books and film equipment. There’s a stone fireplace in the main room. My bed is
wedged between it and a big window that has the Golden Gate in the middle with
Alcatraz gleaming to the left like a floating medieval castle in the morning light. I’ve
torn out a wall, removed the wall-to-wall carpet and asked my brother Rudy to lay down
a pine plank floor so I could turn both rooms into a live/work space, like a small loft. A
tattered Navaho blanket hangs on the wall behind the bed and there’s a Zapateca
weaving I brought back from Oaxaca lying on the bed. A steamer trunk with my
grandfather’s initials carved into the lid is against one wall. He probably packed it when
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he came to San Francisco in 1906 as a young engineer to help rebuild the city after the
big quake. There’s a DVD duplicating machine sitting on top. Lighting stands and a
square Halliburton case on the floor next to the fireplace. Cobwebs in the corners.
Books, DVD and VHS copies of films on every shelf and surface. It’s a mess, but it’s
mine and I know where to find everything. The kitchen is dirty but I can’t be bothered
with keeping it clean. It hasn’t made me sick. Outside there’s an unkempt herringbone
brick terrace under a white Acacia next to a Monterey pine.
In the second room I weave my way through a disorderly pile of lights, an SQN
mixer, a 16mm Éclair camera and a collapsed Vinton tripod to a drawer stuffed with a
dozen battered notebooks and leather bound journals I started writing in my teens. I’ve
hung on to them for years to prove to myself that I’m a writer as well as a filmmaker.
They have sustained me through more than one identity crisis, and now I’m going to see
if I can use them as a skeleton to hang my story on. The journals will serve as ribs and I’ll
see if I can flesh out the parts between with some of my thoughts now, sitting here in El
Cerrito. Maybe I’ll start with some fairly involved journals I wrote about a motorcycle
trip to Argentina, when I decided to drop out and dive into a serious effort to be a writer,
after a strange freshman year at Columbia College.
Moving to my computer I crack open a musty folder to begin reading the journal I
started writing after I left New York and headed for Argentina.
Paoli, Indiana, June 27, 1958
Thank god, we’re on the road at last. Our BMW R-69 is parked outside a Main Street
café, leaning against the curb, resting on the crash bar that protects its two horizontally opposed
cylinders. It’s a bizarre looking load: a surplus duffel bag on each
side of the rear wheel and another on the rear luggage carrier with a
spare tire draped around it. People slow down to stare as they pass.
There are three boys circling it right now with their chins out,
pointing at the engine. Who knows? It could be the first of its kind
ever seen in these parts. It’s not a Harley or an Indian, so what is it?
Naren Bali and I are having a sandwich. This is the first entry
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in my “Concise Rambling Journal.” I’m developing my own version of shorthand, using
keywords and initials so I can jot ideas fast. Sitting with us at the counter are four bib-
overhauled farmers talking about anhydrous ammonia prices and their corn crops. Down at the
end of the room there’s a plump woman in a wicker chair facing the window. Her body is
shaking with soundless laughter. One of the farmers turns and asks where we’re going on that
machine, nodding at our bike.
“California,’ Naren says. “And after that, we’re headed to Argentina.”
“That’s quite a trip.” The man whistles, “So far away I’m not sure where it is.”
“Bottom of South America,” his friend says.
Naren is from Buenos Aires. He’s a physics major. He’s been studying and working recently at
Columbia as a computer programmer and now he’s going home and I’m going with him. We left
New York three days ago and pulled away from my parent’s farm east of Cincinnati this morning,
after a heartwarming send off. Who knows where we’ll be tonight. Sleeping next to a wheat field in
Kansas I hope.
It was at the beginning of my freshman year at Columbia College that I showed the bursar
a bogus letter from my uncle saying I was living with them so I could move off campus. That’s
when I met Naren in the funky kitchen of a jazz musician’s apartment on 116 th street where I
rented a room. I noticed a slight accent and his wry sense of humor. He wears a short beard and
has the look of a smart pirate. Soon we were cooking what we called ‘tuna fish shit’: rice and
canned tuna with some frozen beans or peas thrown in for color. There was nothing but
expensive bistro style food in our neighborhood, so we formed a cooking pact to save money and
just ate sandwiches, eggs and things like the tuna slop. It resulted in getting to know each other
and hatching this escape plan. My latest; I’ve actually been trying to escape all my life. Escape
what? Authority and myself. I remember listening to a program on WQXR that played a lot of
music from the Andes. I wanted to see where it comes from. Mostly, though, I was eager to break
free of the academic world to see if I could make it as a writer.
Naren’s been talking to the farmers but he’s tired of waiting for me to finish
scribbling. Time to pay the waitress and bid the farmers good afternoon. Once this steno
notebook goes to the inside pocket of my leather jacket I’m ready to hit the road. It’s my turn to
drive.
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Colorado, June 30
We alternate the driving, switching every hour or so. There are only a few positions you
can sit in with two on a cycle, although when I’m the passenger I’m working out a way to stretch
by leaning back against the load and raising one knee and then the other to cup it between my
hands. The cycle is running beautifully, even with the load and windage of the three duffel bags.
Coming down quiet two-lane highways at high speed, we are a forbidding sight, especially
with Naren at the helm. He wears a surplus aircraft-carrier flagman’s cap, which resembles an
executioner’s hood. His fierce beard merges with huge, bug-like goggles. Dogs rise from peaceful
repose in clipped yards to howl in amazement and flee tail tight under porches. Children playing
happy games look up smiling to see us approaching and are transfixed by stark terror.
We ride until we’re cold. About forty miles past St Louis we run the cycle off the road,
through a little creek and up a hill in the moonlight overlooking highway 40. I fell asleep talking
to the big dipper. We dozed a couple of hours past sunrise.
Taking a break next to a stream somewhere in the Rockies. Naren’s gone for a walk and
the R-69’s engine is cooling so it’ll be ready for the next climb on this 90 degree afternoon. I
have no idea what form this journal should take. I doubt I’ll have much control over it. It will
probably become an amorphous mass of incoherent outbursts, a sort of interior mumblelogue.
Better that than a travelogue. I’ll send these notes to Judy for safekeeping as I finish each steno
book. Wonder if Judy’s mom will ever accept me.
I called Judy in Cincinnati yesterday morning, asked her mom if Judy was there and heard her
grim response that she wasn’t. Reminded me of our graduation ceremony, when I traded places
with my friend Marvin Freidenn so that the ruse I cooked up to date Judy could continue. Her
family are orthodox Jews and she is forbidden to go out with gentiles, so I dated her all winter and
spring as Marv. She’s a classic beauty, with long black hair and a figure that takes everyone’s
breath away. Judy’s father, who died when she was nine, ran a plumbing and heating business
from a small shop in the impoverished West End district of Cincinnati. He was a prankster, who
liked to gamble and loved taking Judy with him to poker games. They lived in a mostly gentile
neighborhood and once when she was not invited to her best friend’s birthday party because she
was Jewish, Judy gathered some grasshoppers and wrapped them in a little box with a ribbon,
delivered them to the girl’s mom, then ran home to hide in the back yard. The mother was
outraged and stormed down the street where she found Judy’s father sitting on their porch. When
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she told him what Judy had done and called her a juvenile delinquent he laughed and said he was
proud of her for having the spunk to return an insult.
Judy’s a good student and headed for medical school, very
alert and witty about the way the world works. She and I are sure we
deserve each other, regardless of orthodox traditions. I could tell
that her mother was suspicious whenever I picked Judy up, but we
got away with it, and the graduation gave me an opportunity to seal
the arrangement in public and confound those in the know with what
seemed a meaningless prank. The vice principal, Mr. Leudeke, was
startled when I walked to the stage for Marv's diploma, but he
handed it to me without pause. When my name was called and Marv
walked up, there were some titters in the bleachers.
A wheat field in Kansas the second night. We pulled off a few miles short of Colby, rode a
couple of hundred feet into the end of a 1000-acre field to bed down. A beautiful stand of Duram,
ready to harvest. I’m awake just as the heads of grain catch fire in the rising sun. The color of the
crop gives my gut a tumble; I sit there shivering in the beauty of it, sucking in the pure odor and
tasting the color of the wheat. I see a combine moving in the distance so I wake Naren and tell
him he is about to be thrashed for violating the grain’s virginity. We load up and hit the road.
The people of Kansas have their hearts full of trees and a river flowing through the back
of their minds. The piercing loneliness of a wheat field stretching as far as you can see. Quivering
and undulating in the wind like a well-made body asleep. A dog howling on a low hill as precise
and lonely as pain. Last night at 12,000 feet on the west side of Gore Mountain pass where the
mosquitoes wrote obscenities in stings across my forehead. Earlier we coasted through a canyon
next to a river full of moon. Now it’s on to Utah.
Utah, July 1
We’re at the counter of a brand new, air-conditioned diner on the sweltering floor of a
desolate, empty valley in the Utah desert. There is no other sign of life for miles in any direction
and only one pickup in the huge parking lot. Maybe they’re expecting a uranium rush. Strange
and futuristic as the setting is, there’s something archetypical about an old cowboy sitting at the
counter with us. He looks up when we come in, nods, sweeps his eyes over us, noticing the laden
cycle leaning again the curb outside, and then goes back to mopping his bread through the gravy
pool in his mashed potatoes. His face is bronzed and leathery, with a fine fluff of three day white
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eard. He wears riding boots, jeans, and a blue work shirt from the pocket of which dangles the
yellow string and paper pull disk of a Bull Durham bag.
After we order he turns to us and says, "You fellers sure picked a hot one. Where you
coming from on that machine?" We tell him and he gives a long low whistle, pushes back his
plate and rolls himself a cigarette with clean rapid movements of his nut-brittle fingers. Then he
tells us the story of a kid he knew who used to herd cows with a motorcycle until one day he was
fooling around in a corral full of horses, "spinning around on the bike and raising dust with the
horses all bunched together over in one corner of the corral, nervous and jumpy as mustangs
holed up in a box canyon. Then the kid comes a little too close and a big gray stallion plants both
his rear hooves up to the hocks right on the engine of that thing. It knocks the kid off and he
crawls away and watches the stallion spin around to raise up on his hind legs and come down
like a hammer on that machine 'til it’s all smashed to hell. Damnedest thing I ever saw."
A cautionary tale from the frontier of the machine age.
I am overwhelmed by what has haunted so many, from De Tocqueville to Thomas Wolfe.
The terrifying vastness of America. That aspect of the country seems incorruptible. Where’s our
famous progress here in the sagebrush? I thought rain and civilization followed the plow.
Berkeley, July 3
We average between 35 and 45 miles per gallon cruising at 70 or 80. From Ohio to
California we spent thirty-six dollars for gas, oil and food with tips. The wind is an almost
constant force against us after Missouri. A pure headwind is best. A quartering wind means
leaning into it, bracing against it, which is a physical effort. Going across the Utah salt flats we
had such a fierce cross-wind that to breathe we had to turn our heads away from it and I could
only get 80 mph out of the bike at full throttle. I checked it the next night in Nevada on a windless
stretch and got 105 mph.
Down the long slope to Sacramento yesterday afternoon. Alfalfa as far as the irrigating
eye can see. Visions of a thousand toiling wagons loaded with green-cured hay merging with the
horizon on their way to the feedlots. San Francisco Bay is red with the blood of the dying sun, as
rocking horse happy, we ride into Berkeley. We’re staying with a former classmate of Naren’s
near the UC campus. Today I’m in San Francisco to check City Lights bookshop, then to hang
out at one of the cafes on Grant Avenue in North Beach. The scene reminds me of the Village, but
I don’t connect with anybody. I’m sending Judy a postcard of Sausalito Harbor and asking her if
she would consider living there with me some time. I think I may be a total romantic. It’s
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wondrous and frightening how completely one’s mind and body can be possessed by the image of
another person.
Redlands, California. July 7
Miller is right. Rexroth is right. The West Coast, especially along the Pacific to the south
of Big Sur, feels like a bit of paradise. Highway 1 is visual ecstasy. You can live on the beach for
months of the year. I’m tempted to find and knock on Henry Miller’s door, but we decide to keep
going.
Mumbo jumbo of electrical problems as we try to leave L.A. The voltage regulator or the
generator brushes. Find a sandy field along the San Gabriel River and bed down. Sleeping with
one ear to the ground I hear dull thudding; it’s a lone man crossing the field at two in the
morning. At dawn raucous boys are riding their horses through the fog on the other side of the
river. A man is shoveling sand into a bucket and dumping it into the back of his station wagon.
Back in town we get the bike checked out and buy the new battery they say it needs at Milne
Bros, the BMW dealer here. Then we head south, planning to drive the hot country to the
Mexican border at night. The engine is doing fine till it blows its right piston. We limp into a gas
station on the edge of Redlands, make friends with the nice old geezer from Petoskey, Michigan
who owns it, and go to work pulling the head. We camp out in a field across the road and the next
morning I stand by the roadside with my thumb out and my notebook in my pocket so I can write
when I have a chance. I hitch back to Milne Bros. in L.A. for a new piston.
I remember hearing from my parents how eager they were to move back to Ohio at the
end of the war because they hated L.A. so much. Now I see why as I deal with the freeway culture
and the cool indifference people treat each other with. An intriguing mystery: man the blunderer,
the half crazed wanderer, man the hobbled and defeated, the contented inhabiter of suburban
corrals. Anesthetized beyond any knowledge of why his greatest happiness lies in domestication.
No yardstick to measure ease against freedom. It all looks like one long squat on the jakes of
complacency.
I’ve never been to Levittown, but I think I’m surrounded by a western version of it here.
Not where I want to live, ever. Glad the parents were such upper crust snobs about L.A. and took
us back to the farm so I could grow up running through the woods instead of around a sub-
division in Pasadena. I heard the story of how they started the goat caper many times. It went like
this: on their honeymoon, driving south from Cincinnati through Kentucky to the Smoky
Mountains, they stopped to watch a pair of Nubian goats gamboling in a pasture along the
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highway. Ten days later, on the way home, they stopped again
and bought a young doe. Back on their farm above the Ohio
River, twenty miles east of Cincinnati, they realized that the
goat was not happy. It must be lonely, they decided, and the
solution was to go and get another, a young buck. So my
mother started her herd and her family at the same time.
Within a couple of years, she had a daughter and the first of
five sons and a small herd of Nubians. In 1939 her doe, named
‘Midnight’, set the world record for milk and butterfat
production. I heard about this triumph often enough to know
how proud she was of it and to realize how much it shaped her life. There must have been times
when she chose whether to comfort a crying baby or help a doe give birth to its kid. And times
when she wondered if she’s ever get back to her dream of being a writer. My father built her a
small brick goat barn below the springhouse. It had a hayloft, a set of wooden stanchions and a
milking stand that folded down from the door, all designed and carefully crafted by my father
from finished pine. The goats were given several acres of pasture on which to roam and feed. It
was my task by the time I was seven to milk the six or eight does before school each morning and
again each evening.
She was teaching first grade at Lotspeich, a private school in Cincinnati, when she met my
father. One of my aunts told me they all understood why she fell for him: ‘He was better looking
than Cary Grant, more interesting than her other suitors and he loved Mozart and played the
flute, which won daddy over right away’.
Marrying a talented, handsome, but socially
undistinguished man like my father and living in the country was an
act of rebellion that was not without its price. My grandmother never
approved of her youngest daughter’s marriage or lifestyle, with its
rejection of society and romantic back-to-the-land aspects. Marie
Wurlitzer’s disapproval may account for periods of tension between
my parents that sometimes lasted for days. I never understood the
source of those painful times when my mother and father tried quietly
to ignore each other, but I was well aware of the heavy atmosphere.
They were normally affectionate and happy with each other so it was
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quite noticeable when something was wrong. I remember the feeling of warmth that radiated to
us children in the back seat when they drove together, talking quietly, my mother’s hand on my
father’s shoulder or sometimes resting on his thigh.
After Pearl Harbor, my father joined the Navy. He had been editing a photography
magazine called Minicam, which was centered on the emerging interest in small, high quality
35mm cameras, like the Leica. Due to his skills as an award-winning photographer he was posted
in Hollywood to direct training films. My mother sadly sold off her herd, many of the prize
animals going to another goat fancier, Paula Sandburg, the wife of Lincoln's biographer, poet
Carl Sandburg. Guessing we might have to stay in California, she sold the farm as well, four
hundred acres of woods and meadows above the Ohio River. We took the Super Chief to Los
Angeles with my mother and a woman from Prague named Leonora Straeka, hired to help out as
cook and nurse maid. A few weeks later when the check from the farm’s buyer bounced, the sale
was cancelled. My parents were happy about this; they had already decided they didn’t want to
stay in the superficial climate of L.A. any longer than necessary, so the farm was rented to the
Brown family. We returned to Ohio at the end of l945 in a dark blue l940 Mercury touring car,
stopping in Santa Fe for midnight mass on Christmas Eve and at the Taos Pueblo the next day,
where I had a snowball fight with a group of Indian boys who were defending their Pueblo from
white invaders.
Mazatlan, July 14
This beach is great. Large bay and ample surf. No Coney Island crowd. Naked boys leaping
like frogs in the froth. From Redlands to Nogales, from Nogales to Hermosillo, from Hermosillo
to Guaymas, we ran the engine slow, to break in the new piston. Rarely faster than sixty, which is
safer anyway with the rough road and all the cows wandering on it.
We stop for food or fuel and a crowd of forty or fifty people gathers within minutes.
Schoolboys are the most intently fascinated with us. They form a silent ring of wondering faces,
jostling each other for the best look. And then the question in shy timorous tones: ‘De donde
vienen ustedes?’ And the first boy to hear passes the amazing answer to the outer edges of the
circle: ‘Estados Unidos!’ If we said ‘Mars’ they would not be more astounded.
At dusk we stop and make friends with campesinos by the roadside. The Latin tradition of
hospitality never fails, and we are invariably invited to eat something, and often to sleep in a bed,
though we usually refuse and spread our sleeping bags on the veranda, or the floor of the parlor.
As an exchange, Naren tells the story of our journey, and the children are invited to sit on the
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ike and often given a short ride. Slightly detached and formal with adults, Naren has a way of
quickly making friends with children and having them giggling in minutes.
One evening we approach a village in the Sierra Madre with a huge thunderstorm looming.
As the first drops hit we stop at a lantern-lit tienda. The owner leads us behind his store to the
barn and we run the cycle inside. Half the village gathers to watch as we shed our rain-suits and
spread out our sleeping bags on the earthen floor between a mound of shelled corn and a pile of
cobs. The campesinos sit against the wall smoking and talking to Naren as the rain drills down
and a crescendo of church bells rings out, vying with the thunder. Naren answers their questions
about our trip then describes the daunting challenge of the distance that lies ahead. I have begun
to absorb Spanish much as a child learns a mother tongue, simply by being there. It helps to have
studied Latin and French. I’m basking in being as irresponsible as a two year old, one who drives
a motorcycle at 80 miles an hour when the road is clear of wandering cows and slow-moving
oxcarts. I find my position quite enjoyable since it allows me to pursue another role I have not
always been free to enjoy: that of observer, released from all social obligations. I can sit here
and fill pages in this notebook while Naren talks to those around us, and it’s understood that I’m
like a deaf-mute. It’s a new form of being alone, with only slight loneliness. I have no regrets
about taking a leave of absence from Columbia College, a recess that I’m already sure might
never end. And feel lucky that Naren and I liked each other enough to accept the challenge of
making this trip together.
During a break in the storm we go back to the store and our host gives us hot milk with
rice and anise and some tasty round wheat cakes. Then he pours us each a drink of mezcal. With
the storm rumbling in the background, he and Naren talk late into the night about his fear of
atomic war, and he refuses any compensation for feeding or stabling us. I am learning the
phrase ‘Esta en su casa’, which I hear whenever we try to pay for hospitality. ‘This is your
home’. With each passing day it feels more true, a kind of sweet and very real welcome that
implies safety from any storm. It makes me think of how different the people of urban America
are in their sealed off suburbs and reminds me of the people from Appalachia I grew up with.
My mother has help at home from Cora Gullett and Ola Powers, both women originally
from the Blue Ridge, women with psychic stamina who keep their families together as their men
became drunkards, marginalized on the edge of industrial society. Cora showed me where and
when to find wild strawberries, and Ola told me about supernatural powers and how they must
be reckoned with. She also showed me how to make a perfect piecrust. In some ways I feel closer
to these women than I do to my mother. We can joke and hang out and I feel the warmth and
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tenderness of their affection. They are more relaxed and intimate with me than my beautiful,
high-strung, disapproving and critical mother. They make me feel I can do anything and do it
well. I know my mother loves me in an almost possessive way but I’m pretty sure that I can never
really satisfy her demanding nature.
Mexico City, July 30
In the Sierra Madre of Mexico, it makes no difference that I’m from an exalted world with
an elite pedigree. I’m a deaf-mute people smile knowingly at. It’s time for me to start over, with
no advantages in my favor. Just my memories to support me, and Naren to deal with the world
around us, leaving me free to build a new identity. Or retrace my former one, at least on paper.
We are staying at the Engineers Club in Mexico City, as the guests of one of Naren’s
former classmates. There is a shy girl named Rosa who cooks and serves meals. She has a big
healthy body and a handsome Indian face. She says ‘Buenos dias’ and ‘Buenas tardes’ to
everyone with the same solemn look on her face, and I never hear her say more than that to
anyone, not even to her co-workers in the kitchen. After a few days I gave up on seeing her smile,
so this morning I made a series of looney faces at her and she not only smiled, she broke out
laughing, spilling a bowl of milk and laughing even harder. Now she grins whenever she sees me.
At five in the morning after a mezcal binge with a dozen of these engineering students we
serenade their cook whose name is Lydia, who is fat, forty, who lives in a room on the roof of the
Engineers Club and who after half an hour of full-lunged, three-guitared, whole heart flung song,
comes out in silent, sleepy, abashed gratitude to stand in the light of her room’s door and say
simply, ‘gracias’.
Completing work on the cycle this afternoon. Re-facing the clutch, grinding the valves. I
rode this morning on the unpadded rear fender of an old Triumph 350 twin behind one of our
engineer friends with a cylinder head balanced on my knee, bracing as he wove through the
gnarled Mexico City traffic. Sudden semi-violent contact with a pink Volkswagen. A big and very
irate man examines the crash-bar crease in his pink flank. My friend explains in rapid Spanish
that he is conveying me on important errands because I came from New York and am going to
Buenos Aires and my motor needs repair and therefore a dented bug is of absolutely no
consequence.
‘But my beautiful VW,’ he says with a note of tenderness, ‘it’s smashed.’ Together we find
fifteen pesos and leave the man moaning quietly.
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Puerto Marques, August 7
We’ve taken a side trip down to Acapulco, and it’s nothing but hotels, gringo-ridden and
unappealing. The son of the Dominican Republic’s dictator Arturo Trujillo is here. He sailed in
on a beautiful four-masted, barque-rigged ship with a clipper hull and is rumored to have flown
Kim Novak down from Hollywood on a chartered DC-6. The gossip on the beach says he will
spend half a million pesos during his stay. A French woman just lost a leg and an arm to an
enterprising shark, and the shark bounty rose to 125 pesos. We’ve retreated from all this and
found a beautiful tourist-free bay a few miles south at Puerto Marques, where we pay two pesos a
night to sleep in hammocks under which the surf runs at high tide. We eat bananas, bread and
fish.
At night the bay is dotted with the lights of fishermen’s dugouts. Bodies gleaming in the
lightning hauling in a net, five on each shoulder-heaved line. If the lead man loses purchase in
the loose sand he moves seaward: an on-going rotation. The net is out about fifty yards from
shore, thirty feet long and ten deep. When they haul it up on shore there are several bushels of
fish to be divided by the fishermen’s wives. Later the men drink beer and play cards. One ageless
man sits at a table, very drunk, watching me with gnome-like, multi-focused eyes. I give him a
cigarette and light it for him. He draws on it and puts it on the table and watches it slowly roll
off. I pick it up and hand it to him and when I look back he is grinning and watching it roll off the
table again.
One of the fishermen is playing a guitar at the table with the drunk; a small crowd gathers
around to listen. The drunk nods and smiles, trying to keep time by drumming on the table.
Music: the dominant sound in my parent’s house is classical music pumped through a hi-fi
system with Voice of the Theater speakers in the living room and smaller ones all over the house
and in the basement workshop and darkroom. My father has a huge collection of 78s. He bought
one of the first players as soon as LP's became available, and the library of discs grew ever
faster. He set up a timer that would turn on the music every morning so we could start the day
with Beethoven, Vivaldi, or Mozart instead of a buzzing alarm clock.
In the milking parlor the radio remains tuned to WCKY, the most powerful voice of
country music in the Midwest; 50,000 watts of Hank Williams, Bill Munroe and the Carter
Family. Country music was part of my working life. It was in the barn that I first heard
"Blueberry Hill" and "Heartbreak Hotel". I knew as soon as I heard Elvis that his kind of
"Hillbilly Music" was not just for me, the goats and the hired men while we were milking or
cleaning up.
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There was also a herd of sheep for a couple of years, and a few hogs and chickens on the
sidelines. I think now of this period as a
contest between my mother and father to see
which breed of animals would reign supreme
and occupy the growing number of sons my
mother produced, the last of whom, Anthony,
was born when our mother was forty-three.
The goats won out in the end, maybe because
my father was too busy with his career as the
editor of Modern Photography magazine, the successor to Minicam. In l950 my parents decided
to sell off the losing contenders and build a pasteurizing plant. They made a deal to market goat
milk through French-Bauer, the largest dairy company in Southern Ohio. This meant raising
more feed: hay, corn, oats and barley, and that meant more hired men and more tractors and
equipment to work the fields. It was exciting for me. Fieldwork became my passion; glorious
evening and often night-time hours alone at the helm of a Ford-Ferguson plowing, disking,
mowing hay, or cultivating corn. During the spring planting and fall harvest seasons I could get
out of milking because the timing of field work was crucial, and younger brothers could usually
be pressed into service as milkers. Solitude, sunburn and rich aromas. Strong alliances with the
hired men who represented the world of hard work with their no-nonsense, down-to-earth
intelligence, as well as the surreal world of smoking and drinking in bars, and two toned V-8
Ford coupes with richly resonating glass-pack mufflers. We had a natural bond, partly based on
the unspoken fact that they resented my mother being the boss as much as I did. We shared the
feeling that ‘city folks’, (which included my parents), didn’t know what life was about, and that
the work we did was more important than theirs.
Some dogs chase a fat pig down the beach. Squonking, it runs under Naren’s hammock,
knocking him out into the sand. We laugh and buy ourselves beers from the concession stand.
Tomorrow we’ll head back to Mexico City.
Guatemala, August 24
In Mexico City they say the thieves are so clever they would steal the blue from the sky if
the Lord didn’t stop them. So they steal your socks without taking your shoes off. That’s the
warning I heard. Happy to be here and out of the frantic forty-eight. We completed some
additional work on the cycle this afternoon at a great BMW shop run by a dignified sixty year-old
15

German-Mexican named Senor Rowald. On Sunday we’re riding south with him and his group of
avid BMW loyalists on their monthly outing to Puebla. He wears leather pants and his R-60 has
bronze straight pipes that sound great. As good as glass packs on a V-8.
The highway south of Arriaga, in Chiapas, is still being built. All traffic headed for
Guatemala has to be transported to the border town of Tapachula by rail. The freight agent in
Tonala wears a soiled Panama hat and a heavily sweat-stained white shirt with smears of food
and wine from collar to belt. His face is drawn into a bitter cringe and his glass left eye rolls and
dances in its socket behind a milky cloud of mucus. Naren asks him when the next train is leaving
for Tapachula and how much it will cost us to get on it with the cycle. The man says he will put us
on the shipment he’s making up to leave at five that afternoon if we give him twenty dollars.
Naren gives him a quizzical look and asks how the rate is computed. The man looks at us with
seething anger for a couple of minutes in silence. Then he tells us in a voice silky with hate that it
is eight pesos for the first hundred kilos and a peso for each additional kilo. This amounts to
about two U.S. dollars. Naren asks what time we should be there to load and he says 3:00. When
we return at 3:00 the office is locked. After waiting around and then asking some boys if they
know where he is, we find the man at a café on the main square, staring intently at a bottle of
cheap wine. When Naren asks when we are to load he gives us an ugly, triumphant smile and
says the shipment is not leaving that day. I wonder what embittered this man so much. It’s clear
that he tried to cheat us because we are foreigners, but there is more to it than that. He is angry
with everyone and everything.
We ride north to a river we crossed on the way in. There are large smooth boulders with
fast cold water from the purple mountains to the east. Next to the river are cottonwoods and a
knee-high carpet of grass. We take off our clothes and lay in the current. It tugs at our bodies,
brushing fine grains of sand lightly against our skin. We sleep there and next morning we hoist
the cycle into a baggage car after paying thirteen pesos, allowing us to take the train ride over
the border to Tapachula where the road begins again.
El Cerrito
I can see that transcribing all these journal entries is going to be a major effort. But
I’m happy with the main entries and surprised by how much is worth keeping. Maybe it’s
a chance to go deeper and produce something more revealing than any of my films or the
things I’ve written. I’m glad I finally broke down and bought a 23 inch cinema display
16

screen for the computer, so I can work here with less electronic buzz. It’s better for editing
film too.
Sitting here looking out at the San Francisco Bay I know there were mistakes more
serious than dropping out of Columbia. A pattern of doing what my friend Kay describes
as yielding to my lazy side. What she means is a tendency to not push deeper in my work
and fail to achieve what she believes I’m capable of, which allows me to say at some
point, “Far enough. Time to move on.” She’s right of course, but I think it would be more
accurate to call it impatience. Maybe that essential American habit of always being ready
to hit the road if things are hard or seem dull. It’s true that I was seduced early and forever
by the allure of the road. The legacy of the frontier: there’s always another, brighter
chance on the horizon. Or maybe I’m just hiding from my laziness behind an existential
state of mind about how the world works? I decided early on chasing success would be a
sucker’s game that would keep me from living in the moment, and that we’re all denying
our mortality; taking ourselves too seriously.
At nineteen I was definitely enmeshed in my romantic fantasies. I didn’t guess
what was in store for me or what a poor husband my quest for adventure would make me.
My idealistic dreams about love were based far more on reading than experience. As a
farm boy I was familiar with the lust of the goat, but my agnostic side kept me from
punishing myself about the equivalent in myself: no burden of guilt about sin. But I didn’t
guess how much more powerful biology and hormones are than dreams of a loving
partnership. Having escaped my domineering mother I didn’t want to see how vulnerable I
still was to the sexuality of powerful women. I thought I knew who I was, but awareness
of my failures made me avoid looking too close.
I hated the rules that all seemed to support a phony culture, so I figured it was best
not to join the team and just invent my own game. Dropping out was a good start. I
hadn’t made many friends, or connected with Columbia, so it was no more a lonely road
than I was already on, but much more appealing. Today I don’t feel any regret about
those impetuous youthful decisions; in fact, I’m glad I made them since they launched me
on a more interesting life than I might have had otherwise. It’s clear to me now that they
were a series of detours from the task of looking deeply at myself. That my whole life has
17

een like a road movie. Now I get to step away from behind my camera and my
adventures and figure out what my life is about. And what it was about.
On my way to the bank this morning I saw several people rush to the aid of a
well-dressed, elderly gentleman who had tripped in the crosswalk and smashed his face
which was bleeding profusely. I decide there's nothing I can do and continue hobbling to
the bank, leaning on my cane. It's gratifying to notice how many people were concerned.
I can't help wondering if there would have been any help for a shabbily dressed man. Or
a healthy looking greybeard like me. Probably less. On my way back I see the wounded
man surrounded by people and propped up on the sidewalk as an ambulance pulls up.
There are large splotches of blood on the sidewalk and a woman is holding a white
handkerchief over the man's nose.
I come home and over a tamale for lunch I read a piece about Joe Mitchell in the
New Yorker. For years he wrote ‘Talk of the Town’ entries. Would he have joined the
crowd and tried to talk to the wounded man? I realize it's not my nature to do that. If it
had been a fight or dispute I might have lingered to watch. If I could have helped—and I
would have tried if it had happened close to me—that would have given me a way to
connect. What seems to fascinate everyone most about Mitchell, once they finish
praising his work, is that he wrote nothing for the last 30 years of his life, though he sat
at his New Yorker desk nearly every day during all those years. And none of the editors
put any pressure on him to produce. Apparently he was at peace with it.
I can easily identify with his silence those last years as I learn how to accept and
live with my disability. There are days now when it all seems such a charade that there's
really not much worth saying. Or doing. It's a peaceful kind of nihilism. Far more
bearable than earlier and more depressed versions. More like an extreme sort of
detachment--an almost historical perspective about how brief and meaningless our lives
are, re-enforcing my commitment to recognize every significant moment and relish the
most fleeting images of love. There's sadness in it but it's more like resignation than
sorrow. I’ll need to flip that mood into productive introspection and say some
uncomfortable things about myself and my family if I really want to write this book.
18

Neither of my parents grew up on farms. My father was the son of a civil engineer
and lived through high school in Troy, Ohio. His great-great grandfather Jacob was one
of the first white settlers in Miami County, having been given a land grant by the
Continental Congress for fighting the British during the revolutionary war.
My mother was raised in the magical kingdom her father Rudolph Wurlitzer
created in a lush suburb of Cincinnati. The house was a multilayered turn-of-the century
castle with an indoor, heated swimming pool on the lowest level, squash courts above
that and a teak-floored music room on the next level. There was a Wurlitzer theater organ
19
at one end and a small room for a
collection of Stradivarius and
Guerneri violins and violas in glass
cases on one side. In another alcove
was a player-piano, but there were no
jukeboxes in sight. They weren’t
proud of the product that saved the
company after the depression. I think
they were too snooty. A few steps
above the music room was the dining room with a massive circular mahogany dining
table centered in a half moon of French doors with a view of the gardens. The table was
mounted on a motorized platform concealed by a rug. My grandfather loved to entertain,
and there was a steady stream of noteworthy guests from the world of music, theater and
the arts at his table. At the beginning of a meal my grandfather simply threw a switch and
the table would turn noiselessly and imperceptibly while the wine and food was served. It
made a complete revolution every hour and a half. At the end of several courses,
heightened by excellent wine and animated conversation, many an astonished guest
would find himself looking into the depths of the music room after having begun the
meal looking out into the gardens. I grew up hearing my mother and her sisters chuckle
about this prank and also how I made pianist Arthur Rubinstein laugh by jumping on his
lap when I was two.

The gardens were on several levels, with a lake at the bottom of a forested ravine.
On the far side of the lake was a two-story log cabin with bunk beds on the second floor
and a rustic kitchen below; a life-sized dollhouse for my mother
and her sisters to play in. Further along the lake was a cave
carefully contoured with jagged cement stalactites. In the depths
of the cave a steel pipe was hidden in the ceiling and covered
with a stone in the grass above. The pipe could be blown into like
an instrument to produce bear sounds that terrified and delighted
children in the cave. Beyond the cave was a tree house in a
massive oak. My grandfather had created this fairyland to entertain his children, and it
clearly reflected his playfulness and good taste. Since he died when I was nine, I never
got to know him. I only found out last year that he was a member of the Unitarian
Universalist Church and that his Catholic wife, Marie, was ex-communicated for
marrying him. My strongest memory is his happy grin as he passed out handfuls of dollar
bills to the throng of prancing grandchildren surrounding him at family parties when he
called out, “Who needs a dollar?”
Subsequent years produced more painful memories about the Wurlitzer legacy as I
grew to disdain it and feel uneasy around most of my aunts and uncles, who seemed like
upper crust bigots and anti-Semitics. They were far more sophisticated than Archie
Bunker but equally mean-spirited.
I couldn’t ignore the irony that I was dating a Jewish beauty whose family were
anti-goy and never would accept mine or me.
Guatemala, August 25th
On the main street of a town in Guatemala this morning we sat on the cycle watching a
funeral procession circle the plaza. A wizened crone stands in the crowd of sloe-eyed, solemn
people who hang about looking at us in a dumb lethargy of disbelief while waiting for the
procession to move on. The old woman leans on a cane pole. Her body is wound in unwashed
rags held together by bits of string and wire. She holds out a wrinkled hand to us and, receiving
nothing, shakes her pole at us vindictively. Then she stands watching, her eyes darting about like
threatened goldfish. Whenever a child wanders too close she reaches out with her pole and pokes
it viciously.
20

A boy of about six wanders up and, intent on watching us, he does not see her behind him.
She reaches out and gives him a poke in the back, and he stumbles forward and turns to her with
angry tears in his eyes. She takes a step forward and jabs him in the stomach, and he runs down
the street howling. She looks about proudly, a faint smile of gloating satisfaction playing about
her mouth. A boy of about ten sees the other boy running away, sees her, and comes up to the
edge of the crowd, where he stands for a minute looking us over with an alert intelligence none
of the other faces, except the old woman’s, show. Then he moves quietly up behind her, grabs
her pole, wrenches it away from her and flings it into the street. She curses him and orders him
to return it, kicking at him as he dances just out of her range. He laughs at her, the crowd echoes
him hollowly and she begins to cry.
A three-minute medieval passion play, with cruelty, violence and justice.
San Jose, Costa Rica, September 5
We’ve been making some serious miles and now we need to get more work done on the
bike. We present ourselves to the VW/BMW agency here and explain our limited finances. Phone
calls are made and lackeys dispatched to have welding done, procure a new rear tire, new roller
bearings for the rear wheel, a new tail-light. All the work and parts are supplied to us gratis and
free for nothing. We stay with our new friend, the star salesman of the agency, a Colombian and
a generous sort, who’s treating us like lost brothers. There are enough nationalities working at
the agency to help us get visas for the rest of the trip. Visas have been a pain in the ass and an
expense. Panama wants to see tickets in and out of herself plus five bucks a head for a 72 hour
visa. That could be impossible for us, but its been taken care of now.
On these last legs through Central America we continue to improvise our shelter. I’m
grateful for Naren’s quick wit and skill at pulling this off, especially in the cities. It’s much more
interesting and far cheaper than staying in hotels and it’s a way of connecting with real people
in each new place. In San Salvador we slept in the park at the center of town after making
friends with a gardener who let us put the bike in a tool shed. In Managua we struck up a
conversation with a teenager who invited us to his home where we slept on cots in the parlor.
His mother's kitchen had a spring-fed well one hundred and forty feet deep. She cooked us a
splendid simple meal and smiled quietly to acknowledge our thanks. The warmth and purity of
these chance encounters are one of the great rewards of the journey.
In Honduras we spend a night in an army barrack, and in northern Costa Rica with the
Feluco Construction Company, who are building the Pan American Highway. We reach their
camp just at dusk and a foreman invites us to spend the night. Dump trucks, D-8’s, earthmovers
21

and graders all drawn up in orderly array. Rows of barracks, workshops and a huge cook shack.
A long dining hall which feeds 125 men three times a day in lumberjack quantities. The men get
50 cents an hour, room and board; they work six days a week and are transported to their homes
for a three-day break every second week. They are a happy bunch.
At a gas stop in Honduras we have a brief encounter with a pimple-faced teenager from
New Orleans who reminds me of an America I don’t miss. This kid is traveling with his father in
a new Cadillac, moving to Tegucigalpa to join an uncle in the lumber business. The sad part, he
told me, was leaving behind his ’57 Chevy with a Corvette engine. But the consulate in New
Orleans told him there wasn’t a drag strip in all of Honduras. “Jesus man,” he says. “I don’t
know what I’m going to do down here. I don’t know about where you come from, but in
N’Orleans the cats are purely car crazy. That’s all they think about. I mean not even girls. A girl
is just another accessory you put in your car, like a four-barrel carb.” I don’t bother to tell him
that I’ve been more plane crazy than car crazy.
In the early 50's my father graded an l800 foot landing strip into one of the ridge-top
fields and put up a windsock. It was a moment he was proud of and one I had dreamed of. Before
long there was a four-place Cessna l70 tied down by the side of the strip. I learned to fly in that
plane and soloed on my sixteenth birthday after one hour of flight time with a licensed instructor
in an Aeronca Champ. First time I ever flew one of those, but no problem. The instructor laughed
and said he was turning me loose to solo after taking a little ride with me. In the afternoon I took
my driving test, a formality that seemed ludicrous, since I had been driving on and near the farm
for years.
A week later I found a Piper Vagabond in Trade-a-Plane at the nearby Blue Ash Airport.
It cost me 800 dollars, money I had made working on the
farm over the years. My father dropped me at Blue Ash
and I flew out to circle the farmstead, calling down to my
waving brothers, “come out and see it”, then I did a long
swoop over the river, ending in a chandelle, after which I
landed and parked next to the windsock. They came out on
their bikes, Kit in the lead, then Rick and Roddy. My
mother drove out with two year old Tony. I could see pride
and a little awe in their faces. They crowded around the plane and I put Roddy and Tony in the
cockpit and showed them how to move the joystick and watch the ailerons go up and down. I was
glad I hadn’t bought a car, which some of my classmates were doing as they turned sixteen,
22

primarily so they’d have more freedom to pick up girls. I was proud and more than a little
arrogant about being the only junior at Walnut Hills High School with his own airplane and a
license to escape the mundane world of my peers any time I wanted; elated that I was strong
enough to chart my own course.
Puntarenas, September 9
Forty miles south of San Jose, Costa Rica, the highway turns into a trail we’re told is
virtually impassable, even on foot and using a sharp machete. It might take weeks to hack our
way through, so we choose to do a portage down to the Canal Zone from the Pacific port of
Puntarenas. In the end, this may also take several weeks, since we are repeatedly refused free or
'workaway' passage by each of the freighters that’s docked here on its way south.
Puntarenas is a few blocks of sandy streets with a couple of restaurants and several bars
on an isthmus shaped like a half pear. It smells of oranges, fish, stale urine, diesel, creosote and
old wood rotting in the tropical air. We’re sleeping in a house under construction, having made
friends with the head carpenter, and we hang out each day under the palms on the port side
esplanade, waiting for the next freighter, sitting at one of the three cafes, the ‘Blanco y Negro’,
the ‘Rancho Grande’, or the ‘Rio de Janeiro’. There are prostitutes working the sailors at the
cantinas and bars but Naren and I have neither the interest or money for them. I have plenty of
time to dream about Judy and write entries in my journal. Yesterday I imagined myself back at
home on a lazy Sunday afternoon, and I sketched a satirical four-page play poking fun at my
mother’s campaign to worm all the goats, interwoven with my father’s search for a missing blue-
handled trowel.
As the dairy herd grew to nearly 400 goats there was a scourge of incurable viruses and
inexplicable tumors. This lasted more than a year. My mother was increasingly frantic and
frustrated when the veterinarian she trusted had no solution. There was talk about the trials of
Job and the merciless injustice of the natural world. She created isolation pens and treated the
sick animals with endless injections of antibiotics and serums but her fear about the sick ones
contaminating the others led to days when it was my turn to load a dozen or more goats in a
trailer and drive out to a gulley at the end of the landing strip with a 22 caliber pistol in my belt. I
would shoot each one in the back of the head as the others watched with what I’m sure was stark
terror. Then I had to drag them all to the bottom of the gulley and shovel enough earth over them
to keep any marauding dogs off. It was a desolate ritual that haunts me still. These were often
animals I had milked twice a day for years. Animals whose kids I had helped deliver. Animals
who each had a name and a history with us humans. I looked at that pistol with revulsion. The
23

size of our herd had thrown everything out of balance. I wondered if my parents knew the
meaning of what they were doing and if running the biggest goat dairy in the Midwest made any
sense. Especially if it required killing my Nubian and Alpine friends. Eventually the pathogens
moved on and this reign of terror was over, but the questions remained about the forces of nature
and how I should relate to my parents’ effort to succeed in the world of commerce.
I wonder how strong a psychic hit all this has been for me. It launched me firmly on the
road to pacifism and was confirmation of my thoughts about the dark side of life. I expect the
worst and sometimes doubt my right to anything better. I don’t trust fate to be benevolent nor
human nature, including my own, to be beyond suspicion.
This morning I watched as a boy punting a ball down the paseo kicked his shoe off and up
into a plane tree. Then he threw the ball at the shoe, and it hung like a ripe grape where the shoe
had been. He threw the shoe, and it joined the ball in the tree. He threw his remaining shoe and
everything came back down. He gave a joyful chortle and went on down the esplanade. This
panoply of life and the freedom to sit and watch it is the education I am looking for. We’ve come
9000 miles over these past two months and spent 400 dollars, most of it on the bike. Two hotel
nights so far. Between us we have a bit more than 100 dollars left. Things are cheap down here
and we’re very frugal, but maybe we’ll need an infusion. Gasoline is rarely more than ten or
twelve cents a gallon. The comida corriente at the Hotel Pacifico is 22 cents or 2 colons with
salad and a glass of milk. It’s costing a dollar apiece a day for us to live here. We’d rather not
live here any longer. The captain of an American tanker, the ‘Gulfabo’ said he would take us to
Panama, then changed his mind and wished us luck.
Gunter, the German second mate on the ‘Magdeburg’ had five ships torpedoed and
bombed out from under him in the Mediterranean. In 1943, disabled, his freighter put into
neutral Barcelona. An hour later a British destroyer was docked next to them in such a way that
their flags crossed. Gunter and a shipmate went ashore and took the last table in a crowded
restaurant. A few minutes later two British officers came in and were seated at the same table, the
only one left with vacant seats. Shock and horror on both sides. They ignored each other but by
the end of the meal were drinking together and after several bottles of wine were wondering why
they should fight each other.
Every week or so I buy an envelope and go to the post office to mail the journal back to
Judy. She is my Penelope; making her my muse keeps me from missing her too painfully. I’m
asking her to write me care of Thomas Cook & Sons in Quito, Ecuador, the first place I can be
24

pretty sure that there will be a Cook’s office. Just trying to stay in touch has become rather
surreal.
A pair of American missionaries come by and ask if they can join me here at my table in
front of the Blanco y Negro. I say sure and go on writing as they order a pipa. “You’ve got to try
it, Herb. It’s coconut milk.” The older one is stocky, sport shirted, balding, soft-spoken and has a
delicately done tattoo of Our Savior on his left ear lobe. Really. The younger is a gangling six-
footer wearing an ivy-league shirt, whose most distinguishing feature is his blatantly protuberant
upper front teeth.
I offer a Tico cigarette and the elder one says primly, “Thanks, but I can’t smoke because
I don’t have a chimney.” I light up anyway, without a chimney. A single pipa arrives and they
bend over it like a teenage couple at the corner drug.
“Well, how do you like it, Herb?” Coy giggles from Herb, who admits he doesn’t like it
much. “Come on, Herb. Drink up, fellow. Good for you.” Herb fiddles unhappily with his straws.
“Herb, shame on you. The level hasn’t gone down at all.” Elder bends over and finishes it. I’m
not sorry to see them go and I get back to my journal entries about growing up on the farm,
which is probably four thousand miles due north of where I’m sitting.
My Piper was a two seat, 65 hp, fabric-covered yellow beauty that suited me, though it
didn't entirely fulfill my fantasies of historic fighters like Spads and P-5l’s and Spitfires. But it sat
there waiting for me, ready to fly up the river at water level, under an isolated bridge once, and
under power lines more than once. I soon thought of its wings as an extension of my arms and
made it a point of honor to clip a sprig of maple leaves with my tail wheel from the tree at the
south end of the field every time I landed to the north. I loved the tangy perfume of high-octane
aviation gas filling the air when I opened the petcock below each fuel tank to drain any water that
might have gathered from condensation. I relished the ritual of turning the engine over with the
wooden propeller a couple of times to prime it before switching on the ignition and giving the
prop a hefty pull to fire the Lycoming. I could then kick the wooden chocks out from in front of
the wheels, jump in the cockpit, and taxi to the end of the runway.
I easily flew the required hours of cross-country, passed the various written exams and
was ready for the private pilot's test as soon as I was eligible, on my seventeenth birthday. I
passed it that afternoon and flew home to take my brother Kit for a ride. We flew north to visit
Lindy Grey, the former hired man who was now working on a farm about sixty miles from ours. I
25

circled the hayfield next to the farmstead and landed up-hill, up-wind through some freshly
windrowed hay.
We walked to the house and found no one home. It was a hot, humid evening at the end of
May. The air was still and the light beginning to fade when I decided to take off. I had a choice:
up hill with only a light, occasional puff of breeze, or down hill, taking a chance on no breeze. I
bet on the latter, and poised at the top of the field watching the grass along the fencerow until
there was no movement, then I gunned it. At the bottom of the field I didn't have enough lift to
clear the double fencerow. As we plowed through the wire I switched off the engine to diminish
the chance of fire, then climbed out and picked up a chunk of the splintered wooden propeller and
smashed it over the engine cowl in disgust. Then I turned to Kit and gave him a fierce shake,
saying, “It’s all your fault; without your extra pounds I would have made it.” Then I laughed and
hugged him. He grinned and laughed his wry laugh and said, “ I’m sorry. Real sorry we didn’t
make it over the fence. How are we going to get home?”
The right wing hung limply, disengaged from the fuselage by a blow from a fencepost.
When Lindy arrived a few minutes later, he drove us home. No one said much. I developed some
fancy theories about convection currents and inversion layers caused by the hot weather and
topography of the hayfield and about the new prop Moose had sold me to increase my cruising
speed. Really, I knew I’d made a poor decision: the field was too short for a windless take-off and
my luck had simply run out just before I reached the fence. It would have been much worse if
either of us had been injured.
A few days later Moose arranged the sale of the Piper Vagabond for two hundred dollars
to an A&E mechanic who had it flying three weeks later. He hauled it out of the hayfield and I
reimbursed Lindy’s boss for the fence repair. I joined a flying club, which gave me access to
three Cessnas at low hourly rates. I flew a 170 to pick up my sister Janet and her friend Seaweed
at Carlton College in Minnesota. Over the next year I racked up nearly two hundred hours of
flying time before leaving the farm for New York City. I was a lucky farm boy living my dreams of
being a pilot, but ready to trade them for the Big Apple.
I had a pretty good year at Columbia after dropping all the required courses at the
beginning of the first semester. I was able to join a lecture course taught by critic Lionel Trilling
and a junior class seminar on American literature with Quentin Anderson, the son of playwright
Sherwood Anderson. These classes dealt with the territory that interested me. I had already
disqualified myself from graduating when I dropped out of the required weekly lecture on the
history of the University, failed to sign up for physical education and repeatedly absented myself
26

from "Sexual Education". That requirement made me feel I was back in high school. I didn’t
want to study medicine or law or become a teacher, so what did I need a degree for? I was ready
to do anything to avoid getting stuck in the conformist bourgeois traps America had set for me
and my peers to keep us in line during the frenzy of 50’s prosperity. I wanted adventure.
All winter I was a glutton for the cultural benefits I came to New York City to feed on.
The main reason I chose Columbia. It was all a short subway ride away. The village. Jazz clubs.
The ‘Five Spot’ to hear Charlie Mingus. Cecil Taylor playing at a café on Bleecker Street.
Theater on and off Broadway. Richard Burton in “Look Back in Anger”. Jason Robards and
Lauren Bacall in “The Iceman Cometh” with my high school friend Judy Denman. After the
play, by pure chance, we ended up sitting next to Robards and Bacall at a bar across the square
from the theater. We drank and talked with them until closing time and then at their apartment
until four that morning. They seemed to understand my decision to drop out of Columbia and
head for South America, and asked me what I wanted to write and who my writing influences
were. Not a word of patronizing or paternal advice. They wished me success on my journey, and
Judy on her studies at Radcliff. They might easily have ignored us in the first place. They must
have thought we were interesting so they adopted us for a few hours. It made me feel lucky and a
bit special.
Shortly after that I went to see my cousin Sally at her tenth floor apartment down in the
fifties on the east side. She had been in France for several months and told me she was sad about
the end of an affair in Paris. Then she surprised me by unbuttoning her blouse and showing me a
couple of hairs growing next to her left nipple. Did I think that could be why the affair had gone
wrong? No, I said, that couldn’t possibly be why. I said it was a beautiful breast and assured her
she was a lovely woman and said maybe he was just a prissy fool. Sally and I had always been
close and loved talking to each other about books and life and loves, and our strange family. We
once spent a whole afternoon talking, facing each other on a leather couch in my parent’s living
room. Then we drove to Yellow Springs to see a performance of King Lear at the Oberlin
College annual summer Shakespeare festival. Two years later in her apartment, I tried to
comfort her, but not effectively enough to keep her from throwing herself from the fifth-floor
window a month later. I wished I had seen the need to do more, and maybe kissed the nipple
instead of just kissing her cheek like a proper cousin.
I suffered a severe slump in my spirits. I felt sad and confused. I wondered what I was
doing there, trying to read 2000 pages a week. I had never had any therapy but had read some of
Freud’s Basic Writing and was curious about it all, so I took advantage of a student privilege and
27

went to a staff Adlerian psychiatrist at Columbia. Cold, with a pinched demeanor, his first
question, without any preamble, was, “Why do you hate your mother?” I answered that I didn’t
hate her any longer and that my depression was not about her, but about death and winter in New
York and the meaningless work I was doing at Columbia College, not to mention my frequent
desire to say the unsayable. He was a sour, pug-faced man in his thirties and didn’t pick up on
my attempted joke about Wittgenstein. He scowled at me intently and reiterated that the first thing
he needed to know was why I hated my mother. I had actually finished years of battling my
mother and come to understand her and love her but he was the last person I wanted to tell about
that. I decided there was no chance he was going to provide the help I wanted. I said I could
easily explain, without any formulaic questions, why I might grow to hate him, if he was
interested. He was stuttering with surprise and indignation as I stood up to leave. It was soon
after this that I dropped the Contemporary Civilizations course with its excess of reading and
started talking seriously to Naren about going to South America, which I hoped was all the
therapy I needed. Unless I suddenly found myself hating my mother. Or anyone else.
In the ‘Café Botecito’ yesterday I met two Iowa dairy farmers. They are Quakers, part of a
growing colony at Monte Verde, with three thousand acres at five thousand feet, adjacent to a
rain forest. They moved down here and bought land several years ago to escape the militarism of
the United States. Both have done prison time for refusing to serve in the U.S. army. They have a
herd of Guernsey cattle and are the sole cheese producers in Costa Rica. They invite Naren and
me to visit, but we decline, since we are afraid we’ll miss a boat. I am fascinated by their
commitment to pacifism and the description of what they’ve been through, leading to the decision
that they must leave the United States.
El Cerrito
Thirty years later I did get to Monte Verde. I went there with Julia Whitty to
document the rain forest, which these same Quakers had helped turn into a national park.
Julia and I were there to work on a film she was making with Hardy Jones. We stayed at
the bed and breakfast on the Quaker dairy farm, and I felt the hand of time brushing me
as I searched for the faces of the two farmers I had met as a vagabond of nineteen.
Last night I dreamt I was in Mexico in a beautiful colonial town like Veracruz.
Lots of great old American cars in perfect shape. A Studebaker backed up in front of me
on a tree-lined street to find a parking place. There was a guy with me carrying a piece
of meat wrapped in wax paper. It was a perfectly split half of a lamb. At some point it
28

ecame cooked and he laid it on its wrapping in the street and we sat on the curb
watching the old cars go by. Finally I reached out and took a chunk of the meat to
sample. Then to my surprise the guy squirted lighter fluid on a portion of meat and lit it,
explaining that he liked his meat warm. I joined him in tasting the warm meat after the
fluid burned off.
I am amazed, as always, by the power of the dream world. I wonder if this one
was triggered by reading the journals and remembering the excitement of those days on
the road. I feel totally incapable of analyzing my dreams. I consider them by far the best
films I make and since they are so much better, quicker and easier to create I’m just
sorry the audience is so limited.
Today, in El Cerrito, on the 40 th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s
assassination, I watch four eloquent black Americans talk about King’s legacy on the
NewsHour, and I wonder if there’s a way I might be more involved in confronting the
American dilemma than I am writing this book. Back when I was an active filmmaker
and cameraman it was a life of engagement on many different levels. Being part of an
attempt to report the truth was always a satisfying challenge, especially working with
Elizabeth Farnsworth for the NewsHour, since they had an ethical voice and a large,
intelligent audience. Making longer documentaries about guerrilla wars in Salvador,
Nicaragua and Eritrea had elements of connection too: a feeling of kinship with the
underdogs fighting for survival.
For years I had the good fortune to film, and witness, a wide range of cultural
events, along with many political ones. I had the pleasure of filming the Kronos quartet, a
re-staging of A Streetcar Named Desire by A.C.T., the Buena Vista Social Club at the
Paramount in Oakland, Alan Ginsberg playing his harmonium at a reading with Gary
Snyder, The Pickle Family Circus, the Kamakazi Ground Crew, Tom Noddy, the Flying
Karamazov Brothers and all the other great performers in the New, Old-Time
Chautauqua. The Dalai Lama talking to a group of Hopi Elders. Interviews with the
presidents of Japan, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama. Clinton’s first
inaugural parade, with the black, teenage break-dancers I rode with by bus from Kansas
29

City. And I can boast that I got paid to enjoy all of these events. Now I must line up with
everyone else and buy a ticket.
On board the schooner Gloria, September 20
30
As we sat at the Blanco y Negro one morning
we saw some possible good news walking our way.
It was Captain Ed Powers of the schooner Gloria,
with a look of recognition on his face.
We talked to Powers when we first scouted the
Puntarenas scene and he told us he was heading
south and through the canal to the Caribbean. But
he was waiting for someone to charter his schooner. No charter clients have shown up so now he
is willing to take us, if we will help him repair the damage he suffered in a squall off Nicaragua.
We are delighted to move on board, loading the cycle in his skiff and then winching it on board
the schooner. We go to work on the damaged rigging, replacing broken stays, realigning cables,
patching the mainsail and getting ready for the voyage to Panama. Both of us have experience
sailing. Naren crewed with an uncle in Argentina and is well versed in nautical lore. He even
knows how to use a sextant. I sailed in Michigan and won races. While we do the repairs the
captain lays in supplies: mostly cheap canned goods and what will probably turn out to be our
staple, a full stalk of still green but ripening bananas. I’ve been hearing Ed’s story, which strikes
me as the tale of a classic American hustler.
Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Powers is about forty-five. He looks a bit like Walter Pigeon,
with a pencil thin mustache. He has an affable manner, and loves to talk about himself. By asking
innocent questions, I gradually put together a rough biography.
When he was fourteen, he quit the eighth grade, ran away from home and got a job clerking
in a dry goods store. Three years later he had a girl and a late model roadster. He moved to
Florida with the car and the girl and developed a system to beat the horses at Hialeah Racetrack.
His system was based on getting the racing form fresh off the plane from New York and watching
the board at a bookie joint until a favorite came up with fairly long odds, seven or eight to one.
Whatever his system was, it worked so well that Ed was able to salt away a small fortune. He
married the girl, bought an Airstream trailer and headed for Mexico.
They settled in Cuernevaca and had a couple of kids. When the money ran out they moved
to Los Angeles, where he stumbled into the bronze baby shoe business, which required very little

capital and no skill, other than that of a salesman. His raw material was the list of births at the
L. A. County Courthouse. When a mother came home from the hospital there was a card in her
mailbox with congratulations from Ed Powers and a tender suggestion that baby's precious
memory be preserved in eternal bronze. A month later Ed called in person with a sample and a
winsome spiel. With luck he took away that superfluous first pair of shoes and returned them a
few days later encased in bronze and ready for the mantelpiece.
When war broke out Ed was well established and had no desire to fight, but he was unable
to convince his draft board that baby shoe bronzing was vital to the war effort. To avoid the draft
and preserve his booming business he took defense jobs and worked the list of mothers after
hours and weekends. With the ever-increasing number of pregnant war brides, he found it
increasingly difficult to report for work, and was declared 1-A by his draft board 25 times before
the war was over. Each time he talked his way into another defense job and out of being drafted.
At the end of the war he had a $40,000 house in Lynnwood, a Rolls Royce, formerly owned by
Charlie Chaplin, and l6,000 untaxed dollars hidden in his basement.
He took a cruise to Cuba, and then went down to Rio to enjoy the freedom his hard earned
war profits had given him. He was devoutly unfaithful to his wife. In l950, back in L.A. and still
preserving baby shoes, he found himself one afternoon with nothing pressing after a day in
Balboa, so he drove over to the Newport Yacht Basin to look at the boats. Seeing on a bulletin
board that there was a schooner for sale, he asked if he might look at her. He was shown the
sixty-four foot Gloria, a fisherman rigged schooner, built in l938 by a wealthy businessman in
Seattle. She was owned for a while—Ed proudly claimed—by Errol Flynn. The Gloria had
comfortable accommodations for eleven, a spacious main salon and ample diesel power. She was
solidly built for the oceans of the world and carried enough sail to keep a crew of four busy. Ed
Powers decided that he had always wanted a boat like this one. He made a ridiculously low bid
and the next day she was his. Before long he left his wife and moved onto the boat. Within a year
he was divorced and began what he described as the idyllic period of his life. Women were easily
persuaded to take a drive out to beautiful Newport Bay to inspect the boat. They often liked it so
well they stayed all night. Powers kept his ship shining. He enjoyed scrubbing the decks and
polishing the brass, and he found being the owner of this noble craft immensely satisfying. He
promoted charters out to Catalina Island and developed a clientele of avid users. One condition
was that those who chartered the Gloria demonstrate expertise in deep water sailing. Another
was that Powers be part of the group, as a guest, not as the captain of the schooner.
31

Then, in search of new range for his idyll, Powers left California, the baby shoe business,
his wife's constant requests for overdue alimony, and three ardent middle-aged admirers who
stayed all night once too often. He sailed south with a Norwegian named Bob, and a charter
group, down to Acapulco. When he left there several months later, he was said by one angry
husband to be "the worst kind of philanderer". He told us several versions of this story, always
with pure, boyish pride in the final insult.
It’s obvious as soon as we set sail that, despite having owned the Gloria for eight years,
Ed Powers has learned nothing about the sea or about sailing. After a few days with him on the
Pacific, it begins to seem that his pristine ignorance actually protected him all these years.
Perhaps it was a sort of cunning self-recognition that he hadn't the capacity to learn or that half
knowledge might have killed him. When the Gloria sails, she is sailed by the people who charter
her and those, like us, who turn up to work as crew.
As the captain motors out of Puntarenas harbor Naren and I rig the sails and prepare to
hoist them as soon as we are clear. Without a mutiny we happily take over the schooner and sail
into the sunset. A joyful moment and worth the long wait in Puntarenas. We will stand four-hour
watches, which gives us eight hours off to sleep, eat and read, or to lie under the three jibs and
watch the dolphins surfing the bow wave. Late the second night out, under full sail, a squall
comes up on the captain's watch. The wind has shifted and in a panic he calls for help as he
allows the schooner to jibe, mumbling forlornly "Which way is the wind? I can't tell where it's
coming from cause my flashlight's not working."
Naren takes the helm and heads back up-wind while I slither out on the bowsprit to free
the snarled halyards and furl in the jibs. Then, as the storm intensifies we decide to reef the
mainsail, and it’s apparent that the rigging is tangled at the crosstree. Naren hoists me up the
mainmast in the boson’s chair to free it. It’s exhilarating to be thirty feet into the night sky with
rain lashing at me and the deck pitching below. For me this is the most vivid image of our escape
from Costa Rica.
“He’s a hopeless landlubber, and capable of sinking his own ship,” Naren says to me
later that night, grinning his mischievous grin. From that night on we furl the sails and motor on
the captain’s watch. Naren and I both feel like we are playing a role in a dramatic comedy. I
dislike everything Captain Ed represents, but he’s such a character that I am entertained by him.
32

Cristobal Yacht Club, September 29
Six days after setting sail we pull into Balboa and are met by a pilot, who takes us to tie
up at pier l8, complete with reversed rat guards on the hawsers to keep rats from coming ashore.
The captain goes to negotiate passage through the canal. He returns, suffering waves of shock at
having to pay $120 dockage, pilot and canal fees. The following day we are piloted through the
canal. It’s a dreamlike trip across Gatun Lake through brief explosions of rain, punctuated by
dazzling cumulus towers, surrounded by cobalt blue sky. Now we are anchored at the Cristobal
Yacht Club, a short dingy ride from all the American food we can eat. I spend most nights sitting
on the terrace of the club reading and writing, often long past the closing hour. I’ve gotten to
know the night watchman, who, when he’s finished tidying up, brings me a beer on the house.
He’s Jamaican, the son of one of thousands who came to build the canal. The other night he
asked if I'd like to smoke some ganja, and I readily agreed, since I’ve never had a chance to try it
and have wanted to since reading Terry Southern’s short story Red Dirt Marijuana. We go at
four in the morning to a row of tenements in Colon, to a wizened old woman sitting in a cubicle
who sells us a handful of ready rolled joints. Our conversations are more complex now, and so
are my dreams. I feel smarter about the way the world works and what a serious joke it may all
be. The euphoric effect makes me ready to accept whatever life offers, no matter how absurd or
bizarre. I feel an infinite calm hanging over me and I am more thrilled than ever to be on this
journey. I find myself reviewing my life from a different perspective and have plenty of time to
write about it. The ganja seems at least as creative a stimulus as alcohol. Maybe more cerebral.
El Cerrito
So here we are cruising along towards death. It's more unavoidably obvious every
day. All I have to do is look around at my place and the way I live to see the un-
mistakable evidence of an eccentric old geezer who piles things up rather than stowing
or throwing them away. It’s not just the news of friends and acquaintances falling ill or
dying; the boomers are writing and worrying about death almost as much as they are
about the disaster in Iraq or the challenge of George Bush. I feel grateful that I’m free to
wrestle with my journals or the hijos film and ready to greet the Grim Reaper whenever
he comes for me. A placid, puttering high for the golden years.
I had a contrasting, energized, upbeat dream last night about being a young man in
S.F. during the Civil War. It was clear in the dream that S.F. was not a hotbed of
abolitionists, but a gathering of individualists, desperados and opportunists. I guess I was
33

one of them. I was a sailor having a drink in a bar on the Barbary Coast; someone asked
me if I was thinking of going back to fight for the Union. I said, “Not a half a chance.” I
was struck lucidly in the dream by the emphatic ring of the a’s surrounding the ‘half’. I
saw myself as tanned and strong, wearing denim sailor pants. The rigging of tall ships
hung over that portside saloon. The liquor was flowing freely, and I was clear-headed
and sober, though I had a shot of whiskey in my hand.
This rather happy dream revealing me as a successful maverick is a clear contrast to
the semi-waking nightmare that haunted me when I was eight or nine. I’d be trying to fall
asleep and I’d hear a witch-like voice talking about me in very cynical tones. I never saw
her and didn’t identify the voice as belonging to anyone I knew. But she was clearly a
surreal force that had power over me and menacingly echoed the disapproval of my
mother and grandmother. The voice was angry and ugly and seemed to be telling the
world at large about my miserable performance. It tormented me quite regularly during
that period of my life. I tried not to take it seriously but it made me very uncomfortable
and probably heightened my rebellious opposition to authority. I think I emerged from
that time of extreme vulnerability when I began to have some victories as a swimmer on
the high school team and as a race-winning sailor and tennis champion during summer
vacations in Michigan.
In high school I liked to drink. Once I had my driver’s license it was simply a
matter of crossing the Ohio River and going to a liquor store in Newport, Kentucky
where putting down the money was the only requirement for purchasing a bottle. I made
it a macho point of honor to keep a pint of gin in my locker at school and cautiously but
proudly shared it with friends. On New Year’s Eve that year I drank most of a fifth of
Beefeater’s straight from the bottle at an all night party. I drove home without a problem,
but when I got up around noon I had red blotches all over my body and no certain
memory of whether it had been worth it. I shifted my attention to relatively moderate
amounts of bourbon after that night.
The senior year at Walnut Hills High School was like a holiday. The new principal,
Dr. Howe, an urbane and civilized import from Boston, had initiated a program of honors
classes for eligible seniors. Dr. Edwin Sauer, lured away from the University of Chicago,
34

taught the honors course in English. Ed was someone who knew and loved literature and
he introduced us to a feast of great reading, both poetry and prose. We studied T.S. Eliot's
The Wasteland, Thomas Mann's Death in Venice, James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a
Young Man, Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, E.E. Cummings,
Wallace Stevens, Gerald Manley Hopkins, D.H. Lawrence, Mark Twain, and Rimbaud.
On my own I discovered Albert Camus and Jean Paul Sartre. I began to understand
existentialism and it excited me to find a philosophical premise supporting my own
thoughts about the meaningless joke of life. I wrote a story based on a real fishing trip
with one of the hired men. He used a burlap sack of walnuts crushed in their hulls to
poison the water and bring the fish floating to the surface. Ed liked the way I had written
it and the symbolism. I trusted that his praise was genuine. He thought it should be
published and so submitted it to his friend, John Crowe Ransom, at the Kenyon Review.
It did not surprise me when Mr. Ransom said no. I was disappointed and cynically
decided the rejection was because I wasn't his student. I went on to write an involved
essay about Thomas Mann's Dr. Faustus and what I had decided was the ghostly
influence of Frederic Nietzsche on that work. This project exempted me from other
assignments for the rest of the year. In the spring Dr. Sauer invited me to join him for a
jaunt to Keeneland Race Track, near Lexington, Kentucky. We drove down on a Saturday
afternoon, went to the races, had dinner on our winnings, and then checked into a motel
room. As I was falling asleep Dr. Sauer moved into my bed and began trying to seduce
me. It took me by surprise, but I was able to convince him, by showing him some
evidence, that making love to another man didn't appeal to me and, reluctantly, he moved
back to his bed. The next day we were again at the races, talking about literature and
drinking in the cocktail lounge, our friendship subtly strained, but still intact. Dr Sauer
mentioned Judy, who was also in his class, and made a snide remark about her being
more interested in shopping than studying. I saw this comment as weirdly veiled jealousy
and a statement about his feelings for women in general. Aside from that, neither of us
showed any obvious neurotic tendencies about the night before. I heard later from friends
that they were hit on by Dr. Sauer as well, and I felt puzzled about my naiveté in not
recognizing that he was gay. I also felt that the basis of our friendship was literature, and
35

the other part didn’t matter to me, so maybe that’s why I had missed it. I think I was glad
I missed it and just had the friendship.
Memories of this early stuff remind me that my libido has been on hold since
the brief fling with Rosa two years ago. I have fewer distractions in my life now. I like it
this way. Companionship seems more consistently rewarding and a lot less complicated.
My friendship with Kay is stronger than ever since it survived our erotic sequence. The
younger people in my life, including my kids, rarely interrupt me or even return my calls,
which is okay though sometimes puzzling. I’m catching up on the Fassbinder films I
missed when I was on the road all the time. Renting them from Netflix. I started with The
Marriage of Maria Braun. Stunning performances and a script that plays like a
historical novel. Now I’m well into Berlin Alexanderplatz. Amazing what he was able
to do on German TV back in the eighties. Great filmmaking. The only thing close on
American TV is something like The Wire or Deadwood on HBO, which seems to have
become a special zone for good work like the Germans were doing back then. Maybe
HBO is successful because Americans are so hungry for something better than the
smaltzy, violent network fare without all the ads. How lucky I’ve been, to make my own
films outside that world of the marketplace. And how lazy I’ve been about the business of
forcing the marketplace to pay attention to my work and show it, even as the films I shot
for others became ever more successful. But I was always happy to put ambition aside in
exchange for freedom to enjoy life as it came. And felt lucky to be able to pull it off
without any degrading hustle. Now I have the role in the film community of being an
occasionally celebrated has-been.
Galley of La Fortuna, October 12
Naren and I have been wandering the docks of Colon trying to find a boat that will take us
south to Colombia. Our research reveals that the road south from the Canal Zone turns into a
dirt trail after thirty-five miles. From that point until well into northern Colombia, there are no
roads at all through the Darien peninsula, which is said to be one of the wildest jungles left in the
world, complete with headhunters, we’re told. I’m dubious about that, but not about the
unfinished Pan-American Highway. Looking for a way to make the portage we walk the piers on
the seedy side of Colon known as the Falks River district, where the coastal traders dock. Falks
River is a nautical slum, rich with cooking odors mixed with less savory ones, dogs patrolling for
36

any scrap of sustenance, clothes hanging from the rigging of the boats, and leering characters
offering everything from drugs and women to watches, jewelry and perfume smuggled in from the
free port. A Panamanian policeman notices us. He is understandably suspicious of our looks,
since both of us stopped shaving when we hit the road and our clothing is a bit ragged. There are
few beards in Panama. A beard suggests a Cuban revolutionary and, in fact, there are rumors of
unrest in northern Panama. The policeman asks to see our papers, and when Naren tells him that
we are required to park them at the gatehouse as we leave the Canal Zone, he’s doubly
suspicious and says we are under arrest. From his kiosk he calls headquarters and we wait for
them to send over what appears to be a laundry truck with a rusted out rear door and a soldier
carrying a rifle with bayonet affixed. We are delivered to a stationhouse, where Naren explains to
the sergeant on duty that we are staying on an American yacht anchored at the Cristobal Yacht
Club, a fact he can verify by calling the Canal Zone Harbor Police. The sergeant, who is eating a
hamburger and eyeing a girl across the room speculatively, distracts himself long enough to deny
our request and tells us to sit down and wait. We do, for about an hour, at the end of which we
are put in a taxi with another armed guard and taken to the headquarters of the Panamanian
Secret Police. We aren’t worried, yet, though it begins to seem like a bad joke with increasing
overtones of Kafka.
The plainclothesman who receives us has no idea why we were sent to him. He tries calling
the sergeant at the stationhouse, who has gone off duty or is busy with the girl he was eyeing. The
guard that brought us knows nothing. So the investigating officer finds himself in the awkward
position of having to ask us why we are his captives. We helpfully tell him our story and suggest
he call the Harbor Police, but he thinks there must be something more to find out, so he passes us
to his superior officer. He is equally baffled and passes us to his superior, who asks some probing
questions about the labor situation in the U.S. and passes us to the last man in the hierarchy. He
is a jovial and reasonable sort who is most interested in which team will win the World Series. He
finally makes the call to the Harbor Police who verify that our passports are in their hands. And
so, ten hours after being arrested at Falks River, we are released and able to return to the Gloria.
The next day we find passage south out of Colon on the coastal trader La Fortuna, in the galley
of which I’m sitting and writing these entries in my Concise Rambling Journal.
We’ve been sailing, motoring actually, from Colon down the Caribbean coast of Panama
through the San Blas Islands, a cluster of coral atolls inhabited by the Cuna Indians. The Cuna
are a strong and self-reliant tribe known for their artful appliqué fabrics, molas and strikingly
decorated canoes, each with an eye on either side of the bow to ward off evil spirits.
37

La Fortuna buys copra, dried coconut meat, from the Cuna, anchoring off each island to
wait for the canoes to come out with their woven baskets full of copra. A boarding ladder is
lowered and the women climb up onto the ship to stand in line at an open hatch where the second
mate has a scale set up to weigh each basket and shout the number to the first mate who stands
inside a cubicle on the stern, which serves as a general store. He notes the weight and when each
woman arrives at the open counter he pays her in bills and coins, which she holds while she
cranes her neck to survey the groaning shelves behind the first mate. Then she places her order
for razor blades, tobacco, needles and thread and perhaps a measure of bright cotton cloth. The
mate piles her order on the counter, computes the total and takes back the money she has been
holding—not as though it were hers but as though she were only taking care of it for the mate
while he was busy. He counts out the money and gives her back a few of the coins or marks down
a debit to be settled when the ritual re-occurs. Meanwhile the captain, Reginald Johnson, another
second generation Panamanian of Jamaican descent, leans against the railing of the bridge in
khakis and an ivy league print shirt with a baseball cap shading his eyes. He shouts out jovial
greetings with jokes and news to the men who stand onshore or sit in the canoes waiting for their
wives to finish the trading.
For two days we’ve been coasting among these lovely islands and coral reefs. The clear
turquoise water is shallow and full of fish. Between anchorage points Captain Johnson is
insouciant and skillful at the helm, dodging the reefs of the many narrow passages like a dancer,
while the first mate leans in the open window of the pilothouse; the two of them keeping up an
incessant low volume monotone in English, an unending flow of anecdote and speculation. First
one of them talks—without seeming to address the other—and then passes it off as though they
are engaged in a kind of relay soliloquy rather than a conversation. It seems a clear indication of
many years of working companionship.
Acondi, Colombia, October 17
Then to my regret we are out of the islands and anchoring in the bay off Puerto Obaldia, the
southernmost town in Panama. We winch the cycle down
into a motor launch and unload it in the surf, only to be
immediately surrounded by a crowd of fascinated
children who have never seen a vehicle of any kind,
since there is no road into this sea-locked place. I start
the engine and ride the bike up from the beach to the
plaza, then back to the beach. The children are giddy
38

with the excitement and noise, not knowing which direction the bike will take and where they
must run to evade it. To them it was an unpredictably wild animal. During the twelve hours we
are in this place, every person who is capable of walking must have come to where the bike leans
against a rock on the beach, to stand staring at it, as though it were an object from outer space.
We leave at six the next morning, in an eighteen-foot dugout canoe. There are six in the
canoe: the two men who do the rowing and sailing when there is enough wind, a woman, her
child of ten months and the two of us. The cycle lays sideways behind the mast with its handlebar
dipping into the waves. The canoe has about four inches of freeboard, which we learn is more
than when they smuggle l000 coconuts, their normal cargo on this run down to Colombia. They
smuggle a ton of sugar on their return. The canoe is very fast when the wind comes up. "Como un
Johnston," says Angel, the canoeist at the helm. His dream is to equip the canoe with an outboard
motor so he can run coconuts without worrying whether the wind will hold long enough to get
him into Columbia before dawn. The rugged coastline appears to be completely uninhabited until
we come to a settlement on a beach where we pull in to leave the woman and her child and to eat
a bowl of tasty fish stew. Well after dark we reach Acandi, the first village in Columbia on the
north side of the Bay of Uraba. Overturned dugouts lining the beach provide each of us shelter
for the night.
At dawn a man in uniform with a pistol on his waist greets us. He came down to wash his
face in the estuary and is curious about us when he sees the motorcycle and our rucksacks. We
tell him we were looking for a way to cross the forty miles of bay to the town of Turbo, where a
road will allow us to continue our trip. He invites us to move into the jail and to stay as long as
we like. We gladly accept, since the offer gives us a roof and a place to cook. The jail is a one-
room building with two cells, a desk, a row of cots, and a rudimentary kitchen in the yard out
back, beyond which there’s an outhouse. We’re in a Latin version of the Wild West, with its own
laws and pragmatic ways of dealing with reality. The police have a pet boy of three, an orphan
they are raising, and one prisoner, a fellow from down the coast who killed a man for meddling
with his wife. The prisoner sleeps in one of the two cells and leaves every morning to go to work.
No one treats him like a criminal, nor is there much question of his being sentenced for long. He
is just boarding at the police station until the formality of an investigation is completed. We cook
and eat together like a family during this sojourn in the Acandi jail. There are plenty of bananas,
coconuts, mangoes and papayas and an occasional chicken. It’s primal family life, surreal
comfort, nothing complex, leaving me plenty of time to write about mine.
39

We are definitely the country cousins in the Wurlitzer family. My parents are treated by
some of the relatives with the subtle condescension reserved for bohemian eccentrics. The uncles
practice varying degrees of conservative republicanism and consider themselves successful,
important citizens. I think of them as stockbrokers, advertising executives and accountants.
These aunts and uncles live in a ring around the Cincinnati Country Club and its golf course,
and my grandmother’s house is at the bottom of the circle. My parents have no use for country
clubs, or for churches, and I think they instilled in us a kind of reverse snobbery about joining
anything. I learned early to be proud of being different, and at school this attitude was
reinforced by my lack of enthusiasm for pop culture, especially the ‘bubble gum’ music that all
the girls listen to. We rarely went to movies and didn't have a television until the coronation of
Queen Elizabeth in l952. Then, we were encouraged to watch only the coverage of major events,
the political conventions, or programs like Omnibus and Edward R. Morrow’s See It Now. For
me that was not a problem, since I was busy either farming, running in the woods or reading. I
found more satisfaction in books than from the flickering screen trying to sell me stuff I didn't
want or need. I didn’t connect with the main stream of pop culture; when I finally saw the Jackie
Gleason show on my grandmother’s TV, it was beyond me why my peers never missed it. I had
cynical thoughts about the herd instinct.
What distinguishes Acandi from all the other frontier-like jungle towns on this coast is that it
has a genuine WW II jeep, in running condition. Battered, paint-less, bald-tired, smoking and
incapable of going more than half a mile in any direction without running into a solid wall of
jungle or the sea, the jeep has made Acandi famous as a citadel of civilization all up and down
this road-less coast. We heard of it as far north as the San Blas Islands. Apparently it came to
Acandi back in the late 40s when United Fruit was considering the possibility of a banana
plantation here.
Medellin, Colombia, October 29
We leave Acandi on a boat scarcely larger than the dugout that brought us there, but this
one, the Tres de Mayo, has a neat three cylinder Swiss inboard engine. Although this craft
already has a load of three thousand contraband coconuts bound for Turbo, the owner can’t
resist the eight dollars we offer him. He’s a swarthy and rather surly fellow who does not inspire
Naren’s or my trust, but we want the ride and the little boat looks good, though once the cycle,
our baggage and the three of us are on board, the Tres de Mayo sits alarmingly low in the water,
with about an inch of freeboard. We put to sea in the afternoon and when the wind comes up the
deck is awash constantly, requiring non-stop bailing.
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At dusk we anchor close to shore at a settlement where a funeral is taking place, which the
captain says he must attend. He puts on his visored, all plastic officers’ cap with its anchor and
coiled rope insignia and calls to a canoeist on the beach, who comes out and ferries us through a
flotilla of lamp-lit fishermen balanced in the bows of their dugouts with their spears poised.
Birdcalls pierce the jungle just beyond a row of mushroom shaped huts. We eat bananas among
the shadowy swirl of dark bodies along the beach and then follow a path into a clearing where a
crowd has gathered in front of a more imposing hut, which turns out to be a church. Deep inside
is an altar of rocks. Above that hangs a picture of Jesus clipped from a magazine. Around it burn
candles in pop bottles. In front of the building are four benches: planks mounted on stakes driven
into the ground. Men and boys begin to gather on the benches, talking in groups of three and
four, their voices mingling in the parry and thrust of pleasantries, while the women, solemn and
sorrowing, pass into the chapel to stand before the stone altar. The men pool their attention on
one of their members telling a string of viper-quick, corrosive jokes. The respondent laughter is
also sharp, bursting like a flung plum--a bit louder and more abandoned after each joke.
The little boys, all sitting together on one of the benches, not understanding fully, but
catching the fever of hilarity, begin pinching each other furtively, pinching not the one next to
them but the next one, thereby involving the one in the middle when the one pinched retaliates on
his nearest neighbor. Inside, the chanting grows louder, less constrained, more and more
incoherent and unrecognizable, blended now with moans and a rhythmic stamping of feet. A
small white dog runs in and out among the swaying skirts. Through the men's unchecked
merriment there passes a bottle of aquardiente. The boys begin throwing handfuls of dust at each
other.
And then, when it seems the energy of the women could mount no higher, there is a ragged
wail from the tear-streaked wife whose husband died, and this is accompanied by a chorus of
dogs all over the settlement, howling in sympathy. Outside, simultaneous with both the wailing
women and howling dogs, one of the benches on which the men are sitting collapses in a plunge
of unbalanced bodies to the earth, with a round of laughter from the men in final counterpoint to
the wailing women and howling dogs.
By midnight we are back on board the Tres de Mayo, moving through light rain squalls
and choppy seas that require everyone to bail, even the captain on a couple of occasions, when
we are swamped rather seriously. Shortly after dawn we pull into a deserted dock on the outskirts
of Turbo. We unload the cycle and head west for Medellin over a single lane dirt road. We ford
several muddy torrents that require throwing or carrying our rucksacks across, then riding as
41

fast as possible to counteract the strength of the current and to keep a strong exhaust pushing the
water out of the mufflers. In one case water is up to the bike's saddle and the engine drowns out
when a bit of river enters through the faultily closed air cleaner. We push the bike through,
remove the plugs and kick it over repeatedly to pump the water out with the pistons’ pressure.
Then we pour a bit of gasoline in each cylinder and let it evaporate while we clean the plugs and
drain a bit of the oil to lose any water that’s in the crankcase. As usual, I am grateful for Naren’s
expertise with anything relating to physics.
As we climb into the mountains the road becomes even narrower, hewn from the face of an
almost sheer mountain wall with the jungle hanging over it. The vehicles that use this road
regularly, the trucks and brightly decorated buses, have sirens in addition to their horns, and
they drive like demons with their sirens wailing; the sound cascading in eerie, haunted echoes
through the complex terrain. I am entranced by the rapid variation of the landscape as we go
from passes at thirteen thousand feet, to alpine valleys, to dense jungle plains, all in a matter of
hours. Tonight we are in Medellin for a rare sleep at a European-style pension and a chance to
catch up on my journal. Last night we slept in a village schoolhouse in one of those lovely alpine
valleys, after making friends with the amiable professor who teaches there and was eager to hear
our story during the dinner he provided us.
Pasto, Colombia, November 2
I’ve been tempted to look for some more marijuana, but don’t want any complications,
since Naren isn’t interested. When I extolled pot’s appeal after trying it in Panama he expressed
a surprising bias, saying he didn’t want anything to do with it. He’s not prudish, but he is
pragmatic. It’s probably even legal here. Or ignored.
There is no shortage of violence in Colombia. This country has been wracked by a complex
political feud for the past ten years; an undeclared civil war that has killed more than 200,000
people and is simply referred to as "La Violencia". We’ve been exposed to it in a peripheral way
as we drive from Cali to Pasto, after the second flat in one day just at dusk in absolutely barren,
uninhabited cattle country of small plateaus broken by jagged ravines with the unpaved road
winding through them. A few meters up the road from us is a crude shrine in which candles burn.
We have seen many of these and assumed they were all memorials to people killed in highway
accidents. Several trucks pass before we are able to stop one: we want to use their light and
pump, which works with their air-brake system. The trucker that we finally flag down shows
obvious reluctance and is eager to get away as fast as possible after helping us inflate our tire.
He explains that the shrine up the road is for a boy who was murdered a week before. He was not
42

of that district, but from Bogota, and no one can figure out why he was killed, as he was not
robbed, nor was his car stolen. He was found slumped over his steering wheel with a bullet
through his forehead.
The next morning on another treeless plain we have another blowout and no spare tubes
or patches left to repair the blown ones. Naren catches a ride to buy patches in the next town,
leaving me with the bike on a vast expanse of open range with cows as far as I can see. About
noon a boy rides up on a horse and we chat to the limits of my Spanish. When he asks if I am
thirsty I say yes, thinking he might have a canteen in his pack. He turns his horse and rides away
at a trot towards a house barely visible on the horizon. An hour later he returns with a bottle of
Frescola and will not allow me to pay him anything. We talk and smoke Pielrojas. I dig out a
battered pack of Camels I bought in the Canal Zone. He accepts them, bids me farewell and rides
back towards the house. After a while I go to work bringing the journal up to date.
The day wears on without any sign of Naren or anyone else, and I enter a hunger-induced
trance sitting by the bike in the merciless sun. Every hour or so a truck or bus goes by. This is the
Pan American Highway in all its glory and with all its potholes and bits of glass and nails to
puncture tires. But I am comfortable being alone here with myself, feeling a cosmic sense of this
vast space and an awareness of the size and curvature of the earth. I decide I am experiencing a
rite of passage and a thematic lesson about adventure: it will sometimes cast a lonely shadow. I
know now, in a way I have been trying to understand since I was a kid, that being alone is okay
and that this trip is teaching me how to relish triumphant solitude.
When I was about ten my mother began showing her finest goats at the Ohio State Fair
every August. After the first year she honored me with the responsibility of staying by myself with
the animals during the week leading up to the judging, to feed, water and milk them in the several
stalls allotted to us in the goat barn. This meant she really trusted me, and it suited me far better
than the month at a posh summer camp in Michigan the year before. The fair had a more
proletarian flavor and was my favorite adventure from the first summer on. I slept in one of the
stalls on an army cot, surrounded by bales of hay and bags of feed. I got up at dawn every
morning and joined the adults having coffee and donuts at a snack stand nearby. I liked being
free in this rich grownup environment. Though tending the goats was a priority, I had ample time
to explore the fairgrounds and sample the pleasures of the Midway with its games, rides and
sideshows, from the cigar smoking fat lady to the Freak Show. I snuck into the grandstand to
watch the harness races. I made friends with the son of another exhibitor. We prowled around the
fairgrounds and made slingshots from coat hanger wire and rubber bands to shoot carefully
43

folded wads of cardboard through the clouds of cotton candy carried by unsuspecting fairgoers,
preferably those in the hands of teenage girls. When our timing was right the victim would turn
back from watching a ride or talking to a friend and find a cavernous hole in the confection. For
ten days I savored the smells and sounds of the fair and had fantasies about training my horse to
be a sulky racer or maybe running away with a circus.
At dusk clouds roll in and it begins to rain. I roll myself in a poncho and doze until Naren
returns after having been gone nearly fourteen hours. Using our flashlight, we put the tube in,
pump it up and ride to the first of several gas stations at which Naren had failed to find patches.
We sleep on the porch, sheltered from the rain. It was one of the longest, strangest and most
magical days of the trip so far.
El Cerrito
Kay and I walked into the 25 th anniversary Film Arts Foundation party right after
the showing of a doc about a handful of us filmmakers launching the organization back
in the seventies. Several compliments on my description about how we did it. It gave me
a good feeling to be recognized and not quite yet forgotten. I was given a copy and when
I looked at the film a day or two later was relieved to find that I hadn’t made any stupid
pronouncements or put on any airs.
Checking my messages early this morning I found that I could have done a shoot
for the NewsHour on Sunday if they had been able to reach me. It underlined for me how
happily out of touch I am much of the time. Even though I’m sidelined as a cameraman
by my disability, I still get some calls. When Kay and I are away together I don’t often
consider checking my messages. And though I could use the money I don’t mind
avoiding the struggle with the gear and the traffic. And I can look forward to a shoot at
Indian Canyon next week for C.L. Reed.
At times like this when I’ve missed an opportunity as a result of my careless ways
I’m able to shrug it off and remain even-tempered. That reminds me of how much more
placid my psyche is than when I was the gloomy and negative boy my mother frequently
accused me of being. At the core of this negative stance was a conviction that no matter
how beautiful, exciting or enjoyable life was, it remained a meaningless puzzle. Except in
the moment. Watching a flight of geese over the river in a glowing sunset had as much
44

meaning for me as those things we were told we should believe in. Being nuzzled by the
colt I was training was more important and brought more joy than getting a good grade.
Looking at this tendency, I see that my whole life has been an unconscious search
for meaning beyond the clichés. What I found first—starting at an early age—was
adventure in the woods, sometimes laced with danger. Usually alone in nature, like
climbing twenty feet to the bottom of an un-mortared stone well to meditate while
looking up into the sky or leaping from rock to rock in a rain-swollen creek bed. I soon
discovered that creative challenges, like writing, were another way to quiet the negative
demons and keep my vital energies engaged. In my twenties I began to see that ambition
and ego led me towards meaningless territory and I determined to live for the beauty of
momentary joy, dismissing the lures of fame and fortune as traps, though I still longed to
be recognized and I still enjoy getting attention.
Last night I dreamt of an old, whimsical, impoverished scholar in Rome who had
collected ancient books and manuscripts about the walls and sewers of the city. He sat
smiling at me in his study. He showed me beautiful drawings of the old stonework; maps
that clearly indicate the sewage system as the veins of the city’s body, revealing great
aesthetic intricacy. I’ve never been to Rome except in books and movies. It delighted me
to go there this way.
Quito, Ecuador, November 7
The northern part of Ecuador is a contrast to southern Colombia. It’s mountainous, with
neat, well-cultivated fields and grassy pastures; wheat flowing down the slopes and rows of
potatoes and corn running against the contour. It’s well-populated, with frequent, clean and very
substantial villages. The highway is paved with small, smooth, round stones, which are laid one
at a time in a sand base by men whose patience is even greater than their poverty. This makes a
good surface until the earth underneath heaves, and then it is like driving over the furrows of a
freshly plowed field. Every hut along this stretch seems to have at least a half dozen dogs, and
every dog considers it his duty to chase what is perhaps the first motorcycle ever seen in these
parts. And so for about a hundred miles we have at least one dog running after us at all times. We
grow quite fond of these escorts, sometimes keeping the same ones for several kilometers when
the going is slow, with the pack constantly shifting and renewing itself, as each dog tires or
decides that he barked loud and followed long enough to satisfy his own standards. We begin to
45

time them and name them. We also grade them according to fierceness of attack, ferociousness of
bark, lunging speed, pickup, staying power and kick dodging ability. The winner of this marathon
is a big steel-blue mongrel with terrific lunge, unbelievable pickup and a top speed of forty-two
miles per hour, so we name him “King of the Canine Escort Service”.
There were always beautiful dogs on the farm. The first I remember were the pre-war pair
of Irish Setters coursing around my sister and me as we played in the yard. They once gobbled
down a turd my younger brother deposited next to the sandbox. I know this surprised me: I was
not yet three years old but it has remained an indelible memory. It served as a brusque initiation
into the natural world. After the war there was a Blue Murrell collie named Robbie, a noble
beast, and one of my best friends after I saw him grab a fallen branch in his mouth and pull it out
of my path when I was sledding one day in the pasture behind the barn. I had no doubt he was
doing it for me. I would often lie in the grass with Robbie’s head on my chest, stroking his silken
coat and telling him my dreams. I was convinced that he understood every word I said to him.
A few years—and several dogs—later, when I was about twelve, I was mowing hay, a
heavy crop of first cutting clover, brome and alfalfa. Suddenly our three-year-old collie, Ginger,
bounded out of the thick grass and directly into the sickle bar of the mower, losing three legs
before I could even stop the tractor to hold her in my arms as she bled to death. She had been
running to greet me, unaware of the deadly power of the serrated blade hidden in the grass.
Devastated, and struggling to maintain my stoicism, I tried to comfort Ginger with expressions
of grief and love as the tears flowed down my cheeks and her blood soaked my jeans, its heavy
odor blending with the pungent scent of the freshly cut clover.
We’ve had a couple of luxuriously comfortable days here at 9,000 feet in Quito with one
of Naren's former classmates. It’s a cold city of stately colonial buildings and very little modern
flavor. But it does have both American Express and Thomas Cook offices, so I found a letter from
Judy. She writes that she has enjoyed the batches of scribbled pages and that she brings each
installment to the farm and reads it to my parents and brothers. She says they treat her like a
member of the family and that she really enjoys the music and food from the garden, neither of
which she has at home. When she suggested to her mother that they eat more vegetables, Sarah
told Judy to open a can of beans. I imagine Judy teasing and laughing at her mother and also
how grateful my parents are that she makes the effort to share my journal. These visits give my
parents a natural way of getting to know Judy and to think of us as a couple, so that makes me
happy. I’m sending Judy everything I’ve written since Panama.
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Tumbes, Ecuador, November 12
We head south through a very different region of Ecuador with great sweeping valleys and
huge estancias. The descendants of the Inca are in much the same position the Spanish Conquest
put them in nearly five hundred years ago. They greatly outnumber the white population, and
while some live in the towns, they form the labor force of this feudalistic agrarian society. They
are paid the equivalent of four cents a day and even if they somehow manage to get out of debt,
the very effective blackballing system of the estancia owners prevents them from ever leaving the
land on which they were born, even to take a job on another ranch. They are a conquered race,
living as perpetually indentured servants who might be better off as slaves. I’ve heard that the
former black slaves on the coastal plantations were treated far better than the Indians on these
upland estancias.
On Sundays and holidays they go into the villages to get drunk. They drink the cheap
aguardiente produced by a government monopoly. It is strong and raw and has the cloying odor
of the over-ripe sugar cane from which it is made. Leaving Quito early on a Sunday we drive
along roads crowded with Indians going into the villages nearest their estancias. They walk
briskly, proud and happy, with the father leading, the wife and the rest of the family tagging
along behind. By noon the villages are full of those already drunk, singing and milling like cattle
in a feedlot, gathered eagerly around the fifty-gallon drums, which the tavern owners move into
the street and set up on sawbucks. Some Indians are already lying in the street with happy,
oblivious smiles on their faces.
By late afternoon it is over and the procession reverses. Long haggard lines of debilitated
revelers stumbling toward the next week's work, leaving scars in the dust as they draw one foot
painfully after another; many of the men leaning on the shoulders of their wives and eldest
daughters, although they, too, are often drunk. Many of the men have broken and bloody faces
and are still gesticulating and lunging wildly at an opponent long separated from them. Others
have passed out and lie at the side of the road with their wife standing over them trying to
harangue them back to consciousness, or that having already failed, squatting silently beside the
sprawled body with the rest of the family deployed along the road or in the ditch. I spend this day
feeling as though I am trapped in a Heironymos Bosch painting.
The following day has its own surreal aspect as we climb from the rich valleys into a high
desert at thirteen thousand feet. A cold, dry wind blows through thin, rattling reeds. The peaks of
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the Andes lay in humped desolation to our east. We spend most of the day in this region, and the
thin air leaves me with a cramped feeling. Finally we come to the end of this plateau and look
over into a rut-like, brown, jagged mountain range with a thin cloud layer hanging over it. It's
been dark all afternoon, and now the light is pale green and sickly. I feel like I am looking out
over the end of the world.
By the next day we are in rich jungle approaching the Pacific coast and the border with
Peru. The endless road overwhelms me with a feeling of contentment and joy. What a great gift,
to always have a new stretch of road ahead, day after day. Especially a one-lane gravel track
through unpopulated jungle. I don’t want it to ever end and make a vow to myself that somehow,
it never will.
It’s taking nearly two days to cross the border with Peru. There’s a patron saint's day being
celebrated in Tumbes, and the population is busy staying drunk. So we sit in the town's only café
reading and writing, yawning with boredom and sneering at the bureaucracy; reminds me of how
I felt about the social structure I lived in not long ago.
In high school I was expected to join a fraternity. I kissed them off and ridiculed the whole
idea of exclusive clubs that seemed more fascist than fraternal. Having thought I was one of them
after I won a couple of races for the swimming team, the other students wondered who I was. I
didn't look like a scholar type, though I read through every class that bored me. I didn't act like a
weakling, having grown up in command of four younger brothers. The small group of classmates
I considered friends were sneeringly called 'non-conformists' by the other teenagers because we
didn't join fraternities. We didn't try out for sports. We made fun of the kids who parroted their
parents’ support for senator Joe McCarthy. We read books that we were not required to read,
and we listened to classical music. Some of us even went to the Symphony and to the world
renowned Summer Opera at the Cincinnati Zoo Pavilion, which was an odd and wonderful venue
that satisfied several interests with one stop. We bought the latest releases of Shostakovich and
Stravinsky for our collections, and lots of jazz, but none of the music our peers listened to. Little
Richard and Fats Domino were as far as we went in that direction. We were elitist snobs, and we
conformed to our own tastes with haughty certainty. I realize now, that in that way, I am much
like my parents and grandparents.
We have gotten to know all the officials here in Tumbes, both Ecuadorian and Peruvian, and
they finally agree to stamp our passports so we can cross the silly border which runs right
through the center of their town.
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Lima, November 17
The best road we've seen since Arizona, recently built with American equipment to help
American companies exploit oil and mineral deposits in the northern regions of Peru. Three
cheers for generous old Uncle Sam with his red, white and blue hands in everybody’s pockets.
Nixon was jeered recently in Venezuela when he told them how grateful they should be to the U.S.
I think they even threw things at him. I’m not exactly keeping abreast of current affairs, but every
so often I see a paper or even Time magazine along the way.
We’re grateful for the good road. It’s a dreamlike terrain that makes me feel like we’re
driving down the longest and broadest beach in the world; an expanse of sand that stretches from
the Pacific shore to the foothills of the Andes with dune formations of striking complexity and
beauty. We roll into Lima on a tailwind and go straight to the offices of Motor Sport S.A. where
the owner, the l957 Peruvian motorcycle racing champion, let’s us sleep on the floor of his shop
for several nights while we put in a new left piston, rings on the right one to keep the two
cylinders in balance, new wheel bearings, and an exhaust valve on the left cylinder because we
found that it had a strange hair-line crack from the tip of the stem down to the seat. Lima is
another colonial city full of poor Indians and a small wealthy ruling class. We’ve made friends
here with the night watchman, who lives in a room adjoining the shop. He’s a great old man who
lets us cook in his tiny kitchen and offers us cups of the strong and tasty fruit liquor he makes
every summer.
Santiago, Chile, November 25
Once the cost of the repairs are paid we’re nearly broke, but we set out anyway, after
wiring my parents and asking them to send some dollars to Santiago, Chile. We calculate that if
we drive hard and eat little we might make it. We push ourselves twelve or fourteen hours a day,
making time on the good road and stopping only for gas. North of Tacna the Peruvian army is
holding maneuvers. Lines of well-equipped troops marching on either side of the road with tanks
and armored cars deployed alongside in the desert, stirring up heavy clouds of dust that billow
over the highway, enclosing us in a murky tunnel lined with determined, sweat-glistening faces.
At the border with Chile we count our money and find less than twelve dollars between us
with still nearly two thousand miles to go. Not even enough for gas. In Arica we ask a couple of
people where we can get the cheapest meal in town and the second person agrees with the first,
49

so we go there. It’s an Italian restaurant full of truck drivers and workers. For forty cents we
each have a heaping plateful of spaghetti with meat sauce, bread and a beer each. We savor each
mouthful, thinking it might be our last hot meal for days. A man at the next table hears us talking
English and comes over to ask if he can join us. He brings his wine bottle with him. He’s a taxi
driver, and we are good friends by the end of the second bottle of wine. He insists that we spend
the night at his house. In the morning his wife gives us coffee and fruit, and we head south into
the dust and wind of the Atacama Desert. The road is a broad, unpaved course of unremitting
washboard ruts that leaves us picking our way along the shoulder at twenty miles an hour or less,
trying to find any smooth patch. Occasionally we try driving at sixty or more to see if we can
plane on the ridges of the ruts but this seems to promise blown out shock absorbers even sooner,
so we resign ourselves to the slow pounding and curse the government of Chile for spending
nothing on road maintenance. We begin asking gas station owners if we can work in exchange for
gas and almost without fail we are given a fill-up. As usual, we trade the story of our journey for
what we need. Sometimes we get an empanada or two in addition to the three or four gallons of
fuel. In contrast, when we stop at the American consulate in Antofagasta to ask if we might
borrow a few dollars for a few days, the consul treats me with contempt and shows no interest in
the story of our journey or in helping us beyond giving me a pack of Chesterfield cigarettes. My
least favorite brand.
The shock absorbers go out, one after another in quick succession as we come to a river
valley between burning desert plateaus. We drive slowly and painfully through the sandy, rock-
strewn upper end of an arroyo and down along the river through irrigated fields of alfalfa and
wheat. We ford the emerald green, fast moving water running down from the Andes. The water
hisses on the engine and steam rises in our faces. We begin climbing the long hill to the next
plateau with a hot tailwind blowing our dust ahead of us, the overheated engine stinking in the
dead air. Suddenly the luggage carrier snaps from the relentless vibration of driving without the
cushioning effect of shock absorbers. We stop and unload our duffle bags to wait for a truck or
bus. Three hours later, after sunset, we hail the first vehicle to come past. It’s a bus commanded
by a huge woman who sits behind her driver and gives orders in a strong rasping voice like a
ship captain. The passengers get down stiffly to stretch and relieve themselves behind the bus,
and the assistants pour water into the boiling radiator from a barrel lashed to the roof. Then the
woman shouts to her crew to put our bags aboard and tells us we can meet them in Iquiqui at the
marketplace around 3 A.M.
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We get there after midnight and are lying on the cold stones against a wall when a pair of
soldiers come along on patrol and kick our boots to wake us. They tell us it’s indecent to sleep
there. We explain that we are waiting for the bus, and they insist that we sit on a bench if we must
wait there. Naren curses them softly, calling them militarist pigs as we move across the plaza to
the bench. When the bus comes we get our sleeping bags out of the duffels and sleep under the
bus. In the morning we find a blacksmith shop where we get the rack welded and reinforced, then
we head on slowly towards Santiago, still with no suspension. We arrived here tired, broke,
hungry and vibrating from the un-cushioned ride. But we made it on our twelve dollars and the
generosity of Chileans. We find the competition racer whose address his friend in Lima gave us,
and he invites us to stay in the spare room at his parents' house. We gratefully accept the
invitation, and now we must go to work finding the parts we need to fix our suspension. My
parents have wired some dollars to American Express here, so we’re okay.
El Cerrito
The Golden Gate Bridge is just showing through a fog bank. A humming bird is
sipping from a morning glory by the fence and a pair of golden eagles are spiraling on an
updraft over towards the bay. I stand looking out for a while, feeling lucky about this
view and wondering if I’ll have trouble making a transition in the journals when the trip
to Argentina ends. There’s less to work with when I got back to Ohio and spent most of
my time wooing Judy, but I know once we get to Spain there will be plenty.
A vivid dream last night about being part of a performance-art piece that
reminded me—lucidly—as I dreamt, of Ken Dewey and of Artaud’s Theater of Cruelty.
Tom McEvilley, my brilliant, competitive and cruel friend since high school, was there
in the background, as the inspirational voice of what seemed a brilliant monologue, at
times delivered by me and at other moments viewed and heard by me. The surreal sets
and imagery were strikingly compatible and as strong as the words. I woke feeling
unsettled by memories of my complex and painful friendship
with Tom and how we vied for power among our group of
friends. Somehow we both won those battles and have
remained friends for life.
As though cued by my dream, McEvilley just called to
51

thank me for my message expressing sympathy about his son Monty’s accident. He tells
me the details of what happened. Monty is 38, a divorced worker in the Manhattan art
world and a heavy drinker. He was out drinking late one night with his friend Chris, a
painter. Around midnight they parted and Monty took the subway to Jersey, where he
lives. At a transfer station, quite drunk and half asleep, he stumbled off the train and sat
down in the lotus position on the yellow warning line at the edge of the platform and
dozed off again. When he heard a train coming he staggered to his feet and fell off the
platform onto the tracks, falling between the rails just as the train came into the station.
He lay flat on his back as the first cars ran over him, and looking down at the
underbellies of the oncoming cars he thought he saw the silhouette of a unit of air
conditioning or something hanging down that was going to smash into him. So, trying to
time the move between the wheels of two cars, he flipped his body over the track, losing
all but the heel of his left foot and all but the thumb of his right hand. Tom and I agree
that it could have been worse. It’s a stunning image, that flip he did. Monty will walk on
the heel and photograph with his left hand.
Tom and I began our friendship in the ninth grade. I remember joining him one
time for a movie at a theater on Fountain Square. He offered me a Lucky Strike, and I
counter-offered a Camel. Tom had a deep love for poetry and the novels of William
Faulkner. I was in my Hemingway phase. Tom was witty and brilliantly sarcastic. I was
taciturn and bent on action. There were times when I felt insecure about his strong
personality and was convinced that he had a more powerful intelligence, but I was glad to
have found him after two lonely years of junior high school without any strong
friendships or kindred spirits. I had quit the swimming team after winning two races at
the end of the first quarter. Couldn’t stand the chlorine or the coach. I became more aloof
and solitary as I evaded social life at school and the bullying, superficial ways of my
peers that left me feeling both superior and vulnerable. Tom and I were rebellious,
romantic and eager to sample life’s passions—beyond tobacco and alcohol. We didn’t go
to sporting events or root for the home team. We were our own team. We found we had
many essential interests in common, and we shared the leadership of a small band of out-
casts which we began to call ‘Bananas and his Bunch’. Any of us could be Bananas.
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Whoever was acting craziest and most amusing at the moment was considered Bananas.
Most often it was Tom.
One night Tom and I decided to combine culture and rebellion by going to a
performance at Symphony Hall in pajamas and bathrobes, mixing nonchalantly during
intermission with the adults in evening dress. Two of my aunts were aghast when they
noticed me. They decided we were both bananas and pretended that they didn't recognize
me, which proved to me that we succeeded in our mission to epater le bourgeoisie.
Another time, my brother Kit, Tom and I were hanging out at the Empress Chili parlor
downtown after a movie. At the end of the meal, when the check came, we presented our
payment with a delicate swirl of catsup on the dollar bills. The waitress was outraged,
and before we knew it, she had called a cop in from the street. He decided we were
guilty of disorderly conduct and disrespect for government property, the almighty dollar,
but he could only arrest me, because the others were not yet sixteen. So he hauled me
over to city jail, where I spent the night and much of the next day before being bailed out
by my brother and an uncle of Tom’s, who was a lawyer. Being strip-searched and made
to bend forward with a room full of other prisoners for the rectal inspection was my first
experience of the loathsome power of the State. My parents were away, so I didn’t need
to tell them about this event. They would have simply warned me to be more cautious in
public and repeat their strong disapproval of Tom, who they had never liked.
Mendoza, Argentina, December 5
We leave Santiago and head northeast to Los Andes, where we clear Chilean customs.
They tell us that the pass is still blocked by snow and that we will have to take a train through the
tunnel to Argentina. We drive east through a long, funnel-like valley in a slow ascent, with the
afternoon sun hot on our backs and the wind blowing from the west, sending our dust ahead of us
up the road. The valley narrows until finally, at about three thousand feet, we hit the stark wall of
the first range. The road is barely one lane, and rock-strewn. It climbs the slope with a tormented
hairpin turn every hundred feet or less.
We fall eight times in the two hours it takes to climb the fifteen thousand feet to the tunnel.
The road is so steep and we have so much weight on the back wheel that when we come into the
crown of a switchback at about five miles an hour with the engine hot and lugging down hard,
panting for oxygen in the thin air, the front wheel loses its purchase or even becomes airborne
53

and the bike goes skittering off to the outside of the turn with the handlebars loose and ineffective
in the driver's hands. Unable to regain our balance, we go down, out of control and cursing.
Several times we slide back down the road forty or fifty feet until we hit the piled boulders at the
edge of a drop-off.
When we finally reach the station just outside the tunnel, a train is pulling in. We make
rapid and highly unofficial arrangements with the crew and then with the help of several
passengers who have gotten down to stretch, we put the cycle into a baggage car. A few minutes
later the train pulls out and labors up the last incline before the tunnel with its cogwheels
clanking rhythmically. We sit in the lounge car and drink Chilean Pilsner with a couple of
Argentine businessmen returning to Buenos Aires. I am struck by how little elation I feel as we
come out of the tunnel to begin the last l500 miles of the trip, entering Argentina, our destination
for all these miles and months. Crossing the Andes is a symbolic moment. We sit drinking the
beer and chatting, looking out over a snow-patched slope with long shadows making the
desolation brilliant. I am fully aware that the trip is over. How will I deal with this radical
change? No unknown vistas and endless miles full of mysterious challenges. I console myself with
the knowledge that my trip won’t end in Buenos Aires; my life is a trail that stretches endlessly in
front of me. Argentina is down the train track and ready to be explored. Judy is in Ohio waiting
to see what we will do together. And only the ancient fates know what else lies ahead. Three
women in Greek myth, I believe. Maybe I need to take note of the fact that it’s three women.
We get off the train in Las Cuevas. With the wind blowing down off the snow it is much
colder than on the Chilean side. Everything is neat and orderly, the houses built with bright
yellow pine logs and steep roofs. A great number of soldiers move about purposefully. We get a
customs clearance and head for Mendoza on a road that descends gradually and is even paved
for stretches of ten and fifteen kilometers at a time.
Buenos Aires, December 12
After a happy ending with customs allowing Naren to legally import the motorcycle, we
decide to drive all night, leaving Mendoza on the evening of December l0th. Moving through
vineyards stretching to the horizon, down a well-paved, straight road with huge lumbering diesels
hauling wine and cattle, the steady throb of our engine echoes in my ears. For the last time on
this trip I feel the midnight surge of lonely joy: sweeping and boundless exuberance under the
moon.
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In the dawn light, with rich black earth rolling past on either side of the road, there are
muddy, bleak, low-roofed towns which are the only blight on the face of this immense wealth of
land. By early afternoon we are approaching the sprawling northern suburbs of Buenos Aires. I
sense excitement in Naren's driving and the way his voice jabs when we talk. He drives fast,
passing skillfully, but with more abandon than usual. I ask him if he can find his way home, and
he says that might be hard to forget. When we stop in front of the large old house in the Olivos
district it looks at first as though no one lives here. Naren has not written for more than a month.
He says it’s quite possible that his family are at their new place in the country for the summer.
Then we notice a living room window partially open. We look inside and see that the house is in
use. As we bring the bike through the front gate a boy of about sixteen runs up with greetings and
excited questions spilling out. Naren says, "This fellow here claims to be my brother, Tatito,
although I'm not sure if he is or not." By dusk the whole family has gathered and are joyously
welcoming their eldest son. Five years since they last saw him. He returns like a lost hero. On a
dirty black motorcycle with a gringo.
Naren's father is from a Brahmin family in Delhi. He studied at the London School of
Economics and came to Argentina to write his thesis on the history of trade between Britain and
Argentina. He met and married Naren's mother, a young teacher at a prestigious English
Academy in Buenos Aires. Now she is the headmistress of that school. Naren's father retired and
is pursuing an entrepreneurial scheme to extract royal jelly from beehives by removing the
queens and inserting an extra number of carefully faked large cells like the ones that workers
make when they need to create a new queen. He recently purchased an elegant manor house,
outbuildings, and a section of what had once been a l0,000 acre estancia near the town of
Bragado, province of Buenos Aires.
Naren and I begin disassembling the motorcycle so that the tank, frame and fenders can be
sent out for repainting. The Buenos Aires Police recently began to replace their fleet of Harley
Davidson bikes with BMW's. There is a sudden cachet to the make, but no dealership serving the
consumer market yet, so we know we have an easy sale once we preen our old steed.
Bragado, Argentina, February 1
We’re all in the country for the rest of the summer to work on the royal jelly project. I
happily find myself part of Naren’s family, ready to settle into some writing. I set up a workspace
in a corner room with latticed shades, a desk and a borrowed typewriter. I have adjusted easily
enough to having nowhere to go. I’m eager to try something more serious than the journal: a
55

novella based on stories that a favorite hired man told me while we were suckering the tobacco
crop one steamy July.
Our mornings on the estancia are devoted to attaching twenty or so queen-sized cells to
frames that are then placed in the hives, once the queen has been captured and removed. The
other task is removing royal jelly from the cells after the bees have been tricked into filling them.
There are usually furious worker bees zooming around the estancia on kamikaze missions of
vengeance after we invade their hives every morning. I was stung so severely on the forehead a
few days ago that both of my eyes were swollen shut for nearly twenty-four hours. I stumbled
around like a blind man without a cane.
After a leisurely lunch on the veranda, we often play a traditional Argentine liar's poker
known as truco. Two or more sets of partners try to trick their opponents using false gambits,
ploys that are often sheathed by a knowledgeable player in lines of flowery poetry. There is an
entire literature embedded in the game. Clever and experienced players give a kind of free-form
performance, which makes the game unique. Naren’s father loves truco, and he is helping me
learn it well enough to be a qualified beginner. It’s good for my Spanish. In the evening I am
often joined in my study by Naren's sister Usha, a girl with a keen interest in literature and a
growing interest in me, which I happily return. I just introduced her to Garcia Lorca, and she
gave me a copy of Martin Fierro. She has begun writing poetry while I toil on my novella. When
the compound grows quiet we often interrupt each other to do some petting, restrained for her by
local mores and for me by my love for Judy. One evening we ride to visit a young couple who live
a few miles away, allowing the horses to walk side by side so that our calves brush and
occasionally are interlocked fleetingly. Fidel and Che have just marched into Havana in triumph,
so we drink Cuba Libres, wondering how long it will remain libre. There’s skepticism about the
United States and deep distrust of its foreign policy. The Monroe Doctrine wasn’t much of a hit
down here.
Yesterday the wiry gaucho who Naren's father inherited when he bought this place challenged me
to ride his eighteen hand high, jet-black stallion. I know the man doesn’t like me, because I’m a gringo. I
also know that no one but he ever rides this horse, yet I sense he will make me miserable if I refuse and
I’m certain that I might never again have the opportunity to ride such a magnificent beast. I accept the
dare.
As I mount, and before I’m even in the saddle, the stallion goes to work trying to lose me. He
begins a series of high-speed careening bucks as we head down the lane and, when that fails to unseat
me, simply tries to run out from under me, unleashing a gallop that is the most exhilarating equine
56

experience I have ever had. I cling to his mane with the hand holding the reins and hook my other hand
under the leading edge of the saddle. The stallion has his own itinerary, and I don't care where he goes,
as long as I can stay along for the ride. Without ever slacking off for a second we circle the section: a
four-mile ride in what seems like less than four minutes. When I dismount back at the estancia the horse
and I have come to an understanding and I thank him for the thrill. The gaucho and I are no longer
enemies either. He never offers the stallion to me again, though he does often invite me to join him with
his wife in their kitchen as they pour ma´te into their gourds and suck it through silver straws. Before
long I acquire my own ma´te gourd and straw.
LAN Chile Constellation, April 3
I finish a draft of the novella and begin to think of returning to Ohio. I find a cheap flight to
Miami on LAN Chile Airlines, and have a tailor make me a dark green corduroy suit for ten dollars to
replace my well-worn travel clothes. It’s time to move on and I allow myself no sentimental pangs, but
keep the goodbyes simple. Naren and I take a long look at each other.
“See you around.”
“Right”, he says, and smiles.
Now I’m having the surreal experience of looking down at the roads we spent so many months
toiling over as the lumbering Constellation flies from Buenos Aires to Santiago, Lima, Quito and then
Panama City, before swinging east over the Caribbean to Miami.
Amelia, Ohio, July 15
Outside the Miami airport I stick out my thumb and catch a ride with two sailors on leave who
are driving home to West Virginia. A couple of rides later I’m back on the farm. My first call is to Judy,
who still lives at home with her mother while she studies pre-med at the University of Cincinnati. On a
used car lot downtown I find a black, gangster style l940 Buick with fender skirts for $250. I cruise in to
see her several nights a week. She is more beautiful and alluring than ever. Natural poise, the balance of
an athlete and a wry sense of humor that I love. Before long we’re talking about marriage as the only
way to free Judy from her family so we can spend as much time together as our long separation and
raging hormones demand. Making love half the night in the Buick or on a blanket under an apple tree is
beginning to seem uncivilized so the idea of marriage is not a surprise to me. My arrogant and selfish
side knows I’d be freer to pursue my dreams and ambitions if I stayed single, but I easily suppress that
voice as greedy and heartless. And lonely. Though we both consider it a formality, marriage seems the
necessary way to deal with her family situation. We laugh like a pair of conspirators about the strange
irony: to gain the freedom to be together we are surrendering our independence.
57

Biology is stronger than any rational plan I can resist it with. I know I’m ready to take the plunge.
Confident and fulfilled in the afterglow of the trip to Argentina, I want to continue pursuing an education
through adventure and experience, and if a mate I am in love with can come along that will be great. I’m
very excited about hitting the road with Judy. She says nothing to change my mind; she’s eager to escape
life with her sour, embittered mother. When Judy tells her that we are getting married Sarah wails, “If
you do that it will put me on my death bed.” I imagine Judy giving a sardonic smile—her trademark
expression of mockery—and promising a proper funeral.
I give several readings of my novella to small gatherings of friends. When Tom McEvilley and Marv
Friedenn give me favorable reactions, I’m hopeful that it might be published. I consider sending it to
John Crowe Ransom at the Kenyon Review, but don’t. The Mt Adams Review, a new local literary
magazine, accepts and prints a short segment from my ‘Concise Rambling Journal’. I am ready to
challenge the world.
My parents recently bought the nearby Townsley farm. There is an empty mansion, a small lake
and a large apple orchard. The orchard is in bloom and the trees need spraying so my parents hire me
for $150 a month and I go to work, consulting with the best farmer in the neighborhood, Jim Nobis,
about the spraying program. I never eat an apple again without peeling it, after seeing how much poison
goes into raising the crop. I clear out the storage room above the apple cellar, put in a kitchen and a
bathroom, then build some Japanese shoji-style screens to divide the one large room into work and
sleeping zones. I’m proud of my skills as a carpenter, though I
need to hire a plumber to get the bathroom right. In July, after
picking up a marriage license from city hall in Lawrenceburg,
Indiana, we have a wedding ceremony in a cornfield, performed
by our friend, Joel Wittstein, who is studying to become a rabbi.
It has more to do with performance art than with religion. The
leaves of corn are not high enough to form a hoopa, but it turns
out they represent fertility even so. My parents and brothers Roddy and Tony are there; Judy's mother
and sister are not. Her family boycott the marriage and a few days later they try, unsuccessfully, to have
it annulled. Judy’s mother says they will sit Shiva for her. We expected this reaction, so despite the
unpleasantness, Judy and I are happy together in the nest I built. Judy finishes her sophomore year and
is ready to trade her academic career and dull life with her mother for a marriage that promises
excitement. We begin planning our escape. I want to live in Spain and Judy is eager to see the world;
wherever we go is okay with her. Meanwhile we work together in the orchard. Judy drives the tractor
pulling the sprayer and I circle the trees wielding the hose and applying the spray.
58

El Cerrito
When Kay got her new Outback we spent 16 days putting 2500 miles of back-
country roads on it in spectacular terrain. Our summer camping trip. We saw a lot of
new country and found some new hot springs. We didn’t eat a single meal in a restaurant
or sleep anywhere but on the ground. The only disappointment was that it’s getting more
crowded, gated and fenced out there. Times have changed; I feel lucky to have known
those great places when they were still empty.
I’ve had to re-adjust to living alone and not waking each morning next to Kay as I did
for the last two weeks. The first morning I found it so unappealing and fruitless to get up that I
stayed in bed an extra two hours dozing and revisiting in my memory all those great campsites
we’d been sharing and the meals we cooked over open fires. Now it’s time to dive back into the
journals and get finished with that time in Ohio and move on to Spain.
I dreamt this morning of being in Cincinnati doing research on a film project about
clowns and the allure of running away with the circus, a strong fantasy during my youth.
Kay had found some names and addresses and written them down. We went together to
Mt. Adams and found that a triangle of houses had recently been torn down, eliminating
the addresses we sought. We were about to give up when a tall blond fellow appeared and
seemed willing to help find his old neighbors, the clowns. I went with him in his car and
Kay followed in ours. We went into a neighborhood like Hyde Park and he succeeded in
losing her by making strange turns. We ended up at a compound that turned out to be a
theater and there were two other tall blond fellows who were like the first one’s doubles.
Before I knew it I was wearing a bizarre mask with a rhino-like horn and frog-like
goggles and was a member of the troupe in a theater-of-the-absurd performance piece. I
kept longing for Kay to find me. I felt waves of guilt about allowing us to become
separated and that I had been tricked by the blond clown. I also felt that I was a target of
the clowns. They ridiculed my mission of documenting the circus and made me a focus of
the piece. Powerful paranoia. The dream was laden with rich imagery and dialogue and
despite my discomfort I was amazed, as always, by the dream world and the complex
mirroring of my insecurities and feelings of abandonment. Those almost certainly began
when I was weaned at three months on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. My parents were on
59

their way to the World’s Fair on Long Island and nursing babies in public was uncouth
and unheard of.
Amelia, September 12
As an interim escape from the sweaty work in the apple orchard Judy and I take a surprisingly
convivial trip with my father and mother down to Flat Rock, North Carolina to visit the Sandburgs. Judy
and I slip away for hikes up the mountain behind their farm. There is no tension with my parents and I
feel we have been welcomed into the adult world. I talk to Sandburg about my plans to be a writer.
60
“Forget making a living for a few years, if you
want to write your own material,” he says.
I’m glad to be on such good terms with my
parents. It’s a refreshing shift from the difficult teen-age
years. I once argued with my father about the decimation
of the tribes during the conquest of the West. I never saw
him so close to apoplectic rage as on that occasion. A
look of disgust settled into his face as he asked me to
explain myself. When I defended my opinion that white intruders had stolen the Indian lands he looked at
me sternly and ended the conversation by telling me I was naïve and he’d rather not hear any more on
this topic from me. It didn’t occur to me that I was describing what happened when Jacob Knoop came
to Miami County, Ohio back in the 1790s.
When I was fourteen I got into some serious dalliance with one of the daughters of hired man,
Lindy Grey. Carol and I started with playful necking around the
barn and that evolved to become my first experience of heavy
petting. There were occasional meetings in the fields and in the
basement of her house, just beyond the barn. One rainy night there
was a light but insistent tapping at the window. I looked over and
saw the grim face of my father glaring at us. I was humiliated and
resentful. What grated most was the fact that my father had been
unable to simply counsel me about not getting the girl pregnant.
He had to spy on us. He never got around to talking to me father
to son. His Calvinist background didn’t seem to allow my healthy energy to be worthy of discussion. Sad
and lonely memory. It struck me as ironic that both my parents had rebelled against their parents to

forge their own paths in life, and though they encouraged our individuality, they repressed us. Strange
how the human world works.
October 3
Judy’s pregnant. We’ve known for a while. Time to escape to Europe. Amazing that we got
away with the rhythm method until we had a marriage license. Not exactly part of our plan. Biology at
work. A blessing from the corn god. I’ve made reservations to sail on the Ile de France the first week in
January of l960.
I finish the apple harvest, sell the classy Buick for a 200-dollar profit, pack some books and an
Olivetti portable. We’ll live cheaply in Spain. I have no doubt that we’re on the right course and feel
supremely confident.
Paris & Almeria, Spain, January 16
Judy is six months pregnant, and the rough winter crossing of the North Atlantic was no fun for
her, though she’s very cool and uncomplaining about it. I find her more than once in the classic position,
leaning over the railing, and do my best to comfort her.
We’re in a three-dollar hotel on the Blvd Montparnasse. I am excited to be here and caught up
in fantasies engendered by reading Hemingway, Dos Passos and Fitzgerald. We go to the Louvre,
Montmartre, and Les Halles. We eat the onion soup, and we walk all over the Left Bank.
We buy a cheap Morris Minor convertible and head south to Toulon where we stay with the
Pepin family. Their son, Robert, lived with my parents as an exchange student and became good friends
with my brother, Kit, while I was on the road to Argentina. In Toulon we come down with a heavy flu,
which makes us terrible guests and a nuisance. The Morris is sick too. It needs a valve job, which I
perform with the tools and help of a friendly mechanic.
We head across Provence and on to Spain in dreary winter weather that follows us down the
Costa del Sol, without any sol. We get as far as Almeria, staying in cheap, empty hotels with fawningly
solicitous staffs. We are looking, without much direction, for a place that says ‘stay here’, and we feel
disoriented by the increasing pressure to find a place before we run out of time. Judy is very patient and
uncomplaining, and I am aware of how frightening the uncertainties of this adventure could be for her.
When I ask her about her fears, she denies having any, claiming that as a medical student she knows
everything she needs to take care of herself. I am determined to protect her by finding the right place. A
place that feels good to both of us, and that she can take for granted without wishing we were
somewhere else, like back in Cincinnati. She says that the farther from her family, the better.
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Here I am, stuck in the narrative format. Telling the story of ‘Our Escape to Europe’. We have
no idea where we’ll end up.
Deyá, January 27
I learned about Deyá, Majorca through a chance
encounter with a composer back in Ohio. He had been there and
met Robert Graves, and he gave me a letter of introduction. It
seems worth checking out, since we haven’t found anything on
the mainland. We head back north to Valencia, where we catch a
ferry to Palma. We drive straight off the ferry to cross a fertile plain through blossoming almond
orchards, then climb into the mountains, through the village of Valdemosa and on to Deyá, where we
check into a pension on the main road. The place is immediately appealing. Built on a hill, with a small
plaza and church at the top, the village is a series of terraced gardens and stone houses and is notched
with narrow streets, some so steep they’re broken by steps. At the bottom of the village, known as the
Clot, a ravine leads to a cove on the Mediterranean. Fifteen hundred feet above the village is an
imposing crescent of cliff-faced mountain called the Teix, with several torrents pouring from it. I’ve just
gotten a local geography lesson from the woman who runs the pension and I’ve learned my first words in
Majorcan: Teix, Clot; ‘Bon dia tinga’, instead of ‘Buenos dias’ in Spanish.
After exploring the village we go to introduce ourselves to Robert Graves. He and his family
are in England, but Robert’s secretary, Karl Gay, and his wife Eleanor welcome us. Karl, a Jew who fled
Nazi Germany in the 30's, ended up working for Graves and Laura Riding before they were all forced to
leave Spain at the beginning of the civil war. Karl takes us to meet the village midwife, Maria, a seventy-
year old woman whose matriarchal warmth immediately becomes another reason to settle in Deyá. We
had thought we would need a hospital, but once Judy meets Maria, she is eager to experience home
birth. Within a few days we move into a chalet outside the village, above the hamlet of Lluchalcari.
It is a small modern, stone cottage in a grove of pines. There’s a butane burner in the kitchen
next to the more traditional charcoal pit. A fireplace in the living room heats the house. Kerosene lamps
and candles provide our light. The view up and down the mountainous coast is spectacular, and when
Robert comes back he shows us his boathouse and cove a short walk below Lluchalcari. This provides a
private and lovely place to swim, though it’s a bit tricky when the surf is up.
Deyá, February 20
At sixty, Robert is still amazingly energetic. He swims and hikes with the vigor of a man half his
age. We often run into him at the cafe where we go every afternoon to check our mail and pick up our
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liter of milk, which is ladled out of a five gallon can by the dueña of the
cafe. Both the mail and the milk come on the same bus from Palma
every day around four o'clock. Maria tells Judy to walk as much as
possible to build her strength for delivering the baby, so we usually
walk the mile to the village. On the way we pass ‘Canelluñ’, Robert's
house, often just as he is heading into the village for his mail. He slows
his leonine stride so we can walk together, and soon he invites us to
dinner with his wife Beryl and the kids: William, Lucia, Juan, and
Thomas. He and Beryl seem to be rooting for us, the youngest members
of the small colony of foreign writers, painters and sculptors in this
village that had once been theirs alone to share with the Majorcans. Robert is natural and unpretentious
and slightly amazed about his current success in America. He tells me of his troubled state of mind when
he was my age, recovering from the horrors of World War I. He was declared dead after the battle of the
Somme in 1916, the opening event of his first best seller, Goodbye to All That. I mention but don’t dwell
on my uneasy state of mind about being an unpublished twenty-year-old author, soon to be a father. My
detachment about my fears is so complete that I am often quite unaware of them. I consider it all simply
another adventure. Robert and I find common ground and became friends despite the great difference in
our ages and backgrounds.
March 2
Reuthven Todd was passing out leather bound notebooks in the Café the other day. This
is one. He comes back from Palma every Monday carrying one more basket than he left with,
always laden with purchases he can’t resist: plastic scales, egg cups, rebound books,
draftsman’s pencils by the dozen, boxes of paper clips, and several notebooks like this.
He passes one notebook to Alston, another to me and a third to Keith, drawing them from
his basket with sleight-of-hand rapidity. “Want a notebook, Alston?” flip, “John?” flap,
“Keith?” flip.
“You’ve given me a problem.” Keith says. “ I never know what to do with notebooks.”
Reuthven looked up from his basket of surprises, a rather pained expression on his face.
He glanced lovingly at the unwanted notebook, as though he’d like to take it back.
March 19
The sea is calm today, with jaggedly broken, violent clouds hanging over it. The breaks are
mirrored in steel blue patches on the water. The horizon is sharp, etched definitely against the slate grey
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anger of the sky. I’ve been reading Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet. They are beautifully written. Full of
good advice and an amazing dedication, but I feel a bit uncomfortable about them. There’s something
unnatural about taking such pains writing to a person you’ve never met. I get the feeling he’s writing
more to posterity than to the young poet. His sententious tone also bothers me; he’s so damned
evangelical. Maybe it’s the translation; wish I could read German.
We have a shortwave radio and we listen to the BBC and the Voice of America to stay in touch
with the world. Hearing bits of Kennedy and Nixon speeches I feel glad to be cut off from the sham of
American politics. Both candidates sound phony to me, though I favor Kennedy, partly because I heard
in South America about how arrogant Nixon was when he came to Venezuela in ’58. A more vivid
political reality for us is the war in Algeria and the plaintive messages the French troops send to their
families on RTF, the French broadcasting system.
Franco’s iron grip has relaxed in the Balearic Islands so that tourism can prosper. Despite
strong cultural ties with Catalonia, the islands were basically neutral, and even somewhat pro-Franco
during the Civil War. The Italians flew from an aerodrome near Palma to bomb Barcelona.
April 3
On the 30 th of March Judy wakes me and says that her water has broken, contractions are
beginning and I should find Maria. I drive to the village, to Maria's cottage. She throws a shawl over her
shoulders, picks up a black satchel and climbs into the car. Five hours later Judy gives birth to our first
daughter, a perfect 9 1/2 pound charmer we name Tanya. It’s an exciting moment. I am proud of Judy
and her courage and am glad I can be so intimately involved in the birth. I’m ready to help, though all I
do is heat water and bring it to Maria. Over the following days Judy and I find it miraculous how quickly
Tanya learns to nurse and sleep through the night.
We had some fun preparing a trick birth announcement two
weeks ago so we can mail it out now that she’s born. To do this prank I
borrowed a doll from Karl’s daughter Diana and stood wearing a snorkel
by the edge of the Mediterranean, holding a net in my left hand and with my
right, holding the diapered doll by the feet like a trophy catch. Judy took the
picture and once Tanya was born and weighed we printed and mailed out a
postcard with the following inscription:
“Documentary photograph of a newly discovered Mediterranean sea sprite. Caught warbling at
the gulls while sunning herself on a rock off the coast of Mallorca.
Genus: Knoop (Tanya); weight: 9 lbs, 4 ozs; 1:30 PM, March 30, 1960”
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It was a joke that once again shocked my aunts back in Cincinnati. They insisted to my mother
that we send the exact dimensions of the infant and that I should be made to promise that I would never
hold Tanya upside down again.
April 15
Down to the finca at noon for eggs. The sky over the sea a-march with cumulous. A sharp
northwest wind piling the swell against the cliff below the tower. The brief shower that passed half an
hour earlier was hanging dark and poised over Deya, blocking out the Teix. The pavement gleaming
black. Francesca is howling at her youngest son Tonio who is always in disgrace and has on his face—
even when committing some new atrocity—an expression of frightened martyrdom. She finishes her
harangue and greets me happily,
“There are no eggs. The hens have stopped laying. But we can look. There are some caves
where sometimes…” She scrambles up through the woodlot to a cleft in a large rock and shoos a setting
hen off one gleaming egg. She holds it out to me triumphantly.
“A present. For the niña.”
On our way down to the kitchen she moans about her slack hens. At a time when eggs
are selling for 3.50 pesetas apiece.
“The weather?”
“That and the season. The rain and the cold and the time of year.”
We sit, Judy and I, by an almond log and coke fire listening to and laughing at the
V.O.A. broadcasting in painfully enunciated English on a Q&A list of inane topics: What’s the
largest firm in the U.S.? It’s AT&T. Imagine that. And it’s privately owned. Will any new faces
be added to Mt. Rushmore? No. We feel well informed enough to switch to the BBC, which may
give us actual news of what’s happening in the world. Or play Brecht & Weil’s Mahagony, one
of the few records I brought along with some Bach and Vivaldi.
Sam Spiegel is trying to figure out where to shoot his film Lawrence of Arabia and is
in touch with Robert, so he and I talk about T.E. Lawrence. Robert knew Lawrence when they
were both famous veterans and Lawrence was struggling to recover from the gloom he felt about
the betrayals meted out to his Arab brothers by Sikes/Picot and the Treaty of Versailles. Robert
loans me his signed copy number three of a rare, limited first edition of The Seven Pillars of
Wisdom.
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Often Robert shows me poems he has just written, and I give him the first drafts of my
stories as I finish them. His comments are invaluable, and he insists that I have Karl go over the
stories in the same way he goes over Robert's own work. When I show Karl my work, it’s clear
why he is such an indispensable aid to Robert. He learned English in his twenties with a
precision that makes him a maniacal copyreader. He spots repetitions and excessive alliteration
like a hawk cruising for field mice. Beyond that he has an analytical sensibility that is equally
merciless in pouncing on faulty logic or a wandering story line. I probably learn more about
editing from this process than I could have in a writing class. Robert compliments me by writing
a letter of introduction and recommendation to his New York agent, who will attempt to sell my
stories. I show Robert my ‘Concise Rambling Journal’ about the trip to Argentina and he
suggests that I might turn it into a novel. But I am intent on writing short stories about the
people surrounding my life on the farm, following my current models, Chekhov and Turgenev. I
work away steadily despite feeling uncertain about my future as a writer. I just want my talent to
be discovered, or at least recognized, and not have to promote myself or look for attention.
Probably naïve and a bit vain.
October 30
In July my parents come over for a visit, mostly so my mother can coo over Tanya, her first
grandchild. We show them a good time and have more than enough big restaurant meals here and in
Palma and Soller. Then we take the ferry to Barcelona and I drive them in the Morris up to Marseille.
They go on to see friends in Germany and I sell the Morris so I can come back on a used BMW
motorcycle with a Stieb sidecar. Bob Pepin joins me for the wild ride down the Costa Brava through
swarms of vacation traffic. We dart in and out of the unbroken stream
all the way to Barcelona. It isn’t long before I realize that driving a bike
with a sidecar is a lot of fun. It’s an extraordinarily maneuverable and
quick vehicle. I learn how to lift the sidecar, with or without a
passenger, and hold it in the air as long as I want, and this skill comes
in handy on the narrow roads of Majorca. A few days ago, to avoid a
collision when I came around a curve to find a tour bus barreling at me
and leaving no room to pass and no time to stop, I lifted the sidecar,
with Judy and Tanya in it, and hung them in mid-air over a wall for a few seconds while I slithered past
the bus with the bike’s two wheels on the edge of the road next to the drop off.
Made a convertible-style roof for the sidecar to keep Judy and Tanya dry in the upcoming winter
rains. I’m able to quickly disengage the sidecar to leave it behind when not needed. Before she is a year
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old Tanya is an avid fan of two-wheeled travel. Sometimes the two of us ride down to the market in Soller
for supplies that the estanco in Deyá has run out of. It’s a short ride with lots of curves through the olive
groves above the coastline, and Tanya loves sitting on the gas tank in front of me with my legs clamped
around hers. She is a favorite of all the shopkeepers, who welcome her in Majorcan and reward her with
sweets.
February 10
I’m walking up the road on my way to the finca to buy some eggs when a small English car slows
as it approaches. The couple in the car are looking at me very intently. I decide to pretend I only speak
Spanish if these English tourists want anything much. When we are next to each other, my cousin, Rudy
Wurlitzer, jumps out and greets me.
"I couldn't be sure it was you," he says. "You look like a Majorcan with that beret you're
wearing." He and the girl he is traveling with move in with us. She leaves after a few days but Rudy
decides he will rent a house and stay in Deyá; another young writer caught in the web of beauty and
cheap living that Deyá offers. It’s great to have my favorite family member suddenly part of our life;
after finding his own place Rudy continues to spend a lot of time with us. He and Judy are soon as close
as he and I. Before long he buys Tanya a beautiful little stuffed donkey on wheels that he names ‘Old
Boy’.
Rudy is as committed to writing as I am and since neither of us has been published we share
some frustration on that score. We read and critique each other’s stories without any reservations. We
compete openly when we play chess or on the billiard table at the café but try to just give each other
serious brotherly support about our writing.
April 2
A house called “Cane Fusimaña” became available in the village, so we move in. It has the
traditional meter thick stone walls that keep it cool in the summer and easier to heat in winter. It also
has a large garden, where I grow a bountiful crop of tomatoes and some marijuana from seeds I acquire
in Paris when Rudy and I drive there together on the motorcycle for a change of scene and cheap tickets
to Waiting for Godot. Pot isn’t legal, but we smoke it openly on the New Cafe terrace with the Cabo of
the local Guardia Civil, an unusual type who likes to hang out with the foreigners, and speaks with
considerable erudition about Dostoevsky and Sartre.
There is a bathroom on the main floor of our new house and another upstairs with the three
bedrooms. The attic already has lines in place for hanging tomato vines at the end of the season so that
the last green fruit will ripen slowly, providing fresh tomatoes well into the winter. Our rent jumps from
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fifteen to twenty dollars a month, but we are more in touch with the community and able to hire a
teenager, Magdalena, the baker's daughter, to help with Tanya and the daily chore of washing diapers.
February 16
Every afternoon half a dozen men gather at the New Café for a game of truc. Three of them are
very old and they are always here. The forth is the well-dressed, weasel-faced Doctor M. Capo Verd. The
other two may be any of several hangers-on, like Castor, the mailman. One of the first group, the oldest,
is well sunk into senility. His face is smooth and pink, almost unwrinkled, though looking closely one can
see that it hangs in doughy folds around the gullet. He wears thick, steel-rimmed glasses. One’s first
impression is that this old man has a cherubic and beautiful face, but if you look directly into the thick
glasses that first illusion is broken by a wave of horror, for looking into his eyes is like looking into open
oysters. His obscenely magnified eyes swallow the whole face.
All around us the village throbs with life. Children run squealing and shouting in the street,
knots of women sit in the sun knitting and gossiping. The rumble of cartwheels replaces the distant
sighing of the sea that we knew at our chalet outside the village. From the window of the room where I
work I have a view of terraces rising on the other side of the road. Beginning in the early spring there is
a tangle of color—the green of algarroba and lemon trees cut by the tawny stones of the terrace walls;
the sharp yellow of ripe lemons against a mist of almond blossoms; above this the smoky green of olive
groves and the skeletal limbs of a barren fig tree.
Juan Rosca is plowing on the sixth terrace opposite my window. He was plowing this morning
and burning at noon. Now he’s plowing again. Yesterday he was busting sod with one of those prong-like
tools they use here. Soil preparation here is complicated and requires days of work for each tiny plot. I
hear Juan’s hoarse, raucous ‘eeaugh’ as he encourages his mule around a lemon tree in the middle of
the terrace. The mules here are admirably well trained and very clever. They back and fill in spaces that
seem impossible to negotiate and in general comport themselves with as much dignity as their masters.
April 17, 1961
Resolving to keep work on my desk so that there’s something to start with each morning.
If I don’t have a story in progress, this journal is an option and gives me a way to stay in touch
with myself and what’s been happening. A way to leave a trail so I can see where I’ve been. And
a low pressure way to practice writing, like a tennis player warming up by batting a ball against
a wall. I find it numbing to sit down to an empty desk with an empty head.
Brad Rising lives in a tall house just below the mirador. There is a veranda in front,
looking out over the cove and the barren terraces leading down to it. Once these terraces raised
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grapes for a local winery, but when the vine plague that wiped out all of Europe’s grapes hit
here, these terraces were never replanted or grafted with California stock as were all the more
important vineyards.
Brad’s house has three big rooms downstairs, all sparsely furnished, bright paintings on
the walls. The simplicity is effective. When I stopped by yesterday afternoon the sun was about to
fall over the mountain, so the light, the house and the bright, empty terraces produced an
atmosphere of Mediterranean serenity.
Brad is poor but quite happy with his life as a writer and he tells me he’ll be happy to stay in
this house as long as possible, even with the disadvantages, the seclusion, lack of plumbing, distance
from the village. It all adds to his feeling of independence, and I can see this, silent and proud in his
eyes.
April 25
Tanya is a year old. I ask Maria, the midwife, to take care of her so that Judy and I can have a
look at Spain and a vacation during Easter week. We take the ferry to Valencia and from there we drive
south to Granada where we stay long enough to wander through the Alhambra, then we go on to Seville
and Cordoba. Holy Week is a good time to be in
Andalusia and we see a famous ceremonial parade in
Cordoba but I soon realize that travel is harder for Judy
now and we both miss the baby more than we enjoy being
on the road. Judy is a good sport but it is difficult to
travel under these circumstances so we cut the trip short
and head back to Deyá. After that I don’t urge Judy to
come with me when there is a trip I want to make. It’s sad
but clear to me that my romantic dreams about travel together are an illusion that I must recalculate.
Our priorities are not the same.
April 30
The air was thick with an unknown quality all afternoon. An unearthly throbbing silence
drained onto the village from the mountains. The sun burned through a thin veil of cloud. The
few people out moved listlessly, coatless, their sleeves rolled up. Then suddenly, just at dusk the
shalloc came roaring down on us. Wind from the African desert, sirocco. Shutters slammed up
and down the street as the wind tore through the houses; a swarm of papers hissed over the
roofs.
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Now it’s dark and the electric tension has faded from the air. It’s over. But no rain in
those heavy clouds that blew in with the shalloc. There hasn’t been a rain since Christmas. The
torrent, which ran until July last year is already dry. We will have no electricity at all soon. The
crops down on the plain are withering up. But the tourists are in full bloom.
Tanya’s character is beginning to emerge now at fourteen months. She is quick to sense the
feelings of others; she sniffs out the emotional weather of every situation immediately. She likes attention
but is subtle about only bidding for it with all her charm when she knows the people well. A coy streak
shows occasionally, perhaps fed by the knowledge that she can get her way when she wants. This is
evident also when she is thwarted and shows an uncanny awareness that she is cute as she performs the
tricks that Judy has taught her like ‘baker’s man’ or ‘did you ever see a lassie?’ There is something self-
satisfied in her manner, which is totally lacking in her innocent pleasure when she succeeds in blowing
out a match. She learns very rapidly, falls quickly into patterns of play. Living here may slow down her
ability to learn English well at an early age, but she understands simple orders and ideas in both
languages, often without our having any memory of teaching them to her.
June 17
Juan March, Mallorca’s grim pride, is reputedly the richest man in Europe and one of the
richest in the world. He was born in Sta. Margalida, about sixty years ago. I was talking to a taxista
about him the other day at the Old Cafe.
“He’s richer than the state,” the man said. “And he started out herding hogs.” Local boy makes
good. He soon went on to better things and got his real start running contraband during World War One.
“One of his skippers—a friend of mine—got caught time after time. If there were a dozen boats,
his was always the one they caught, while the others got through. So one night, instead of taking the
course March plotted for him, he set his own. He got through, sailed to France, sold the cargo, and has
lived there ever since.” A fair enough exchange after all the man had suffered as March’s decoy. March
got control of the petroleum monopoly, CAMPSA, and during the second war, he fuelled German ships
and subs from bases in the Baleares. He did a good business on the side tipping off the British about
movements of the German fleet. About 1943 March advised Franco that the Axis was going to lose the
war. Franco asked how he could say that and March said, “It’s the way the money’s going.” Franco
gradually and carefully switched sides.
The taxista told me another story about March going to Geneva on vacation and checking in at
a big hotel where several Spanish lumber dealers were staying, having come to attend an auction. When
they saw March, they panicked and decided their only hope was to offer him a million pesetas to not
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attend the auction. March knew nothing of the auction, but swallowed his surprise and said he’d
consider their offer and let them know in the morning. The next day he said that for a million and a
quarter he would forget the auction.
August 27, ‘61
Deyá is a select resort for those who know it and every summer they come from various parts of
Europe to spend their vacations. The two pensions and one hotel are full from June through August, and
the small beach at the Cala becomes a miniature Riviera. In May, a fisherman's wife opens her cafe on
the veranda above a boathouse and serves delicious tapas and lots of sangria. By the end of September
the foreign population falls back to a handful of writers and artists who live here year round and share it
with each other like a large family. There is Brad Rising, who is writing a novel about his experiences
living on the Bowery; Keith, an English poet; Ruthven Todd, a Scottish writer who comes and goes; Bill
Waldren, a painter from L.A and his wife Jackie who has become Judy’s good friend; American writer
Alston Anderson and New Yorkers Bert and Vida, who have learned to speak Majorcan and live in a
hidden cottage above the coast in an algarroba grove.
Bill Waldren recently found an overhanging rock formation below an olive grove that he thinks
was an ancient camp or maybe a burial ground. He invited me to come and help him do some
excavating, and we did find some shards of pottery and even some ceramic beads. Digging further has
since revealed bone fragments and more beads. Bill asked me to write a query letter to the National
Geographic magazine to see if they could be interested in an article. I just got a rather abrupt dismissal
from them.
Down at the Cala yesterday. The water was clearer and more beautiful than I’ve ever seen it.
Antonio told me there are only four or five days a year when it’s like that. Absolute calm. From the
mirador we could hear conversations on the beach. Sonya and Jeremy were swimming out by the
elephant rocks, perhaps a quarter mile from where we stood looking down. We waved and they said
‘hello’ and we heard them as though they were ten feet away.
An hour later, down on the beach, a heavy-set, middle-aged tourist installed himself with his girl
and turned on a transistor radio loud enough that everyone turned to stare. I called over to Sugy, who
was sitting near the couple, asking her to ask them to turn it down or off. I hoped they’d get the message
but the radio stayed loud. More annoying than flies, or sand in your shoes, or someone scratching glass.
Totally presumptuous. George Sheridan offered to go with me and we walked over to the couple.
“Buenas tardes,” I said. The man stared blankly. His girl had her head down, sunbathing.
“ Good afternoon.” Slightly less blank stare.
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“Bonjour monsieur,” George chirped. “Le radio deranger tout le monde. Sprechen ze Deutch?”
“He’s a deaf mute,” I said to George as we laughed and began walking away. This brought the
man out of his trance and he started screaming at me in English: Who the hell did I think I was telling
him what to do? We continued walking away and the man finally turned his radio down. The peril of
midsummer intruders in paradise.
El Cerrito
More vivid dreams. One about Eric Orr being himself right
down to the facial expressions. It was great to see him and made me
realize how much I continue to miss him. Since he died back in ‘98
my memory is often flooded with images of him. So he's still with
me. I first met Eric when he came out with Tom McEvilley to the
Townsley farm when Judy and I lived there. He came on the white
BMW R-50 he had spent that summer riding around Spain and
Morocco. We went for the first of many brisk runs on the winding
back roads of hilly southern Ohio. Images of Eric laughing and talking in that intense way he had
of holding forth.
Eric at the houseboat he had on the Ohio River with a raccoon living in the rafters. Eric
in my back yard building an Okie-style trailer to move to California. Eric laughing and jiving
and poking at reality. Always ready to get close and to go deep. And stay up all night with
whatever drink or drug was available, though he always brought his own on-board, built-in,
high-energy stimulus. Eric at the big dune in Nevada in a sandstorm. At the Hualapai hilltop on
the edge of the Grand Canyon where he had driven me with the part I needed to fix a Citroen.
With his son Johnnie at the Pamona drag strip totally engaged in fatherhood. Relating to Johnnie
as a friend. When I lay in the hospital with a broken neck and back he came with food every few
days and did a performance piece of fixing delicious salad and feeding it to me while his wife
Peggy expertly massaged my swollen legs after seeing how physical therapist Joan Joss did it.
Deyá, August 10
The high point of each summer is Robert's birthday party. People show up from all over. Ava
Gardner flew in from Madrid to flirt with every good looking man on the terrace. There are racks of
lamb, casks of wine from the village of Benisalem, live music played by Robert’s son William and his
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friends, and a play, a quasi-Elizabethan farce, written by Robert and performed by those of us he can
press into service. Robert has found a new muse in his search for the white goddess of his dreams and
poems. She is a vivacious Canadian named Margo Callas who arouses many male instincts in the
foreign colony of Deyá, including mine. Beryl seems calm and unconcerned. Robert and Margo came to
dinner the other night, with Rudy and a couple of others. We all went down to Robert’s dock below
Lluchalcari for a midnight skinny dip, our bodies flashing with phosphorescence and libido.
Lisbon, September 12
From Barcelona to Madrid is a long one day ride, after the ferry trip from Palma. I stay with
Lucia Graves and her room-mate Stella Reeves, hanging out with them until I bed down on the living
room couch. They are studying here in Madrid; two beautiful young women. I’ve had a crush on Stella
since meeting her in Deyá two summers ago when she came with her father, a poet and friend of Robert.
Driving through the cold early morning mists of Salamanca to Ciudad Rodrigues and
on to the Portuguese border, the black limousines and luxury sports cars with white and black
number plates give me a sinister feeling. Wealth moving at high speed.
Once in Portugal the countryside contrasts sharply with the brilliant aridness of Castile
and I enjoy the well-paved roads, the green landscape, the lovely, neat villages and the good
food, all of which makes me forget that first ominous feeling. Tonight it returned as I was coming
out of an expensive movie theater in Lisbon with a bar on each balcony and a restaurant next to
the lobby. Across from it was a shoddy, cheap movie house. It was intermission and the working
men and boys stood outside, cordoned off from our exit, watching as we left, watching the money
go out into the evening. Everything fell into place for me. There is definitely something sinister
about Portugal. Perhaps no more than any under-developed country, but maybe more intense.
Intense, like the fado, that most haunting love song.
Once powerful and rich, this country clings to its former glory with poignant tenacity.
The shadow of the Angola struggle hangs over everything. Placards on bumpers, ‘Portugal e
Angola’, ‘Angola os terre de Portugal’. The same message in shops and bars. In the windows of
government buildings slick displays of drawings and photos showing the beneficial side of
colonial policy with loaded text appealing to nationalism, courage, pride of civilization,
tradition and the glory of Portuguese history. A dictatorship clinging to the past.
I liked climbing to the top of Lisbon and seeing the golden sails of barges on the bay in
the afternoon light. It’s been a good taste of open road alone on the bike and a good look at
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northern Spain and Portugal. A week of strong impressions and contrasts. A fast ride through
Estremadura tomorrow and then on to the ferry in Valencia.
Deyá, July 26
We weren’t ready for Judy to be pregnant again or happy about it and we briefly toyed with the
idea of an abortion, but decided it would be too difficult and sad. This birth is much more difficult than
the first one. After Judy has been in labor for more than twenty hours, Maria tells me to put my hands on
her hips and to pull as hard as I can when she tells me to. Judy is exhausted but the baby’s head is at last
beginning to appear. As the crowning progresses a bit more, Maria sees what she has already suspected:
the baby's scalp reveals a slight blue tinge. Maria deftly inserts her hands around the head and tells me
to pull her hips, which I do. As Judy moans in agony Maria extracts the infant from the womb and
quickly unfurls two wraps of the umbilical cord from around its neck. The baby responds to the release
from that choking noose with a snorting howl of relief. She is born on Bastille Day and we name her
Michelle. She seems fretful, even angry about her difficult arrival. Can’t
say I blame her. Judy is not in perfect spirits either and suffers from
insomnia just when she most needs sleep. Iranian writer Idris Shah has
come to visit Robert Graves and is staying in Robert's guesthouse at the
top of the village, below the church. He is a scholar of Sufi metaphysics
and an accomplished hypnotist. When I tell him about Judy's difficulties
he offers to help. After a few sessions of hypnosis he has given her the
power to put herself to sleep. After a few days she regains her normal
energy and good spirits.
Our neighbors across the street are a French painter named Paul and his tall longhaired
German girlfriend, Karen. They live in a building even older than ours, a typical combination of
dwelling and barn. It has a huge kitchen with a vented hood over a raised fire pit in the center of the
room. The adjoining space has an ancient olive press with a giant wooden screw suspended from the
rafters to squeeze the oil from the ripe fruit after harvest. Paul and I often hang out together in the
evening, in front of his place. When the snails come out after a rain he collects a pot full and feeds them
a cleansing dose of flour. Twenty-four hours later, when they have passed the flour through their
systems, he marinates them overnight in white wine and then cooks them slowly so we can feast on them.
Paul saves some of the snails from the cook pot. He paints numbers on their shells, then clears and
marks a race track so we can bet on them while we sit drinking wine and eating their brethren.
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June 21, ’62
Yesterday I sat on the café terrace watching some workmen hacking away at the plane
trees along the road. They moved in like a swarm of locusts and began their attack on the trees.
Two or three climbed into a tree to begin cutting off the limbs while another pair began sawing
at the denuded trunks. They had already eliminated four of the majestic old trees, which have
stood for perhaps two hundred years just at the bend in the road by the village washing troughs.
Nothing remains but the white stubs of their trunks, sawed nearly level with the ground.
the railing.
I drank off my cold coffee and sat watching. Juan came out of his café and leaned against
“They’re changing your view. Why are they cutting them down?”
“I don’t know. I suppose someone thought they were in the way. They are probably going
to widen the road, for the tourist buses.”
“It’s a shame,” I said. He agreed. Progress is a disaster, I thought.
It’s our third spring in Deyá and I feel increasing disappointment with my lack of success. I have
finished thirty-four short stories, many of which made the rounds of the literary magazines like Sewanee
Review, Prairie Schooner, the Virginia Quarterly and others with only an occasional personalized
rejection slip. The agent has certainly tried, but rejections keep coming. I make a vow to write no more
stories until one is so compelling that I can’t ignore it. I am losing momentum and also running out of
the money from my education fund that I’ve spent here instead of at Columbia. My father has said that
it’s time to come back and find a job. I decide I should learn a trade so I spend several days a week in
Palma at the VW repair shop where I’ve been maintaining my motorcycle. The shop manager, Pepe, who
has become my friend, gives me a course focused primarily on how to remove and repair the engines and
transmissions. I’ve always had a rapport with machines, so I get pretty good at it after the first one. I’m
hoping this training will qualify me for a job back in the states. I’m ready to be a member of the
proletariat. Pepe is a thinking man with a habit of fixing on a key word as he works. A word or phrase
roots itself in his mind and rolls off his tongue over and over until something interrupts or distracts him.
“Es dificil,” he’ll say. A pause of several seconds, then, “es dificil.” A pause, as though he’s
reconsidering, then, with renewed vigor, “mas que dificil.”
The other day he had laryngitis so badly that he was reduced to whispering and avoided talking
by using, signs, nods and signals. He was barely able to conserve his voice when seized by a mot juste.
His lips would repeat it countless times, even though he tried to prevent any sound from coming out.
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August 2
Time to begin packing up. I have a cheap ticket on an Italian liner so I can take all the
overweight, while Judy flies with Tanya and Michelle to New York and on to Cincinnati.
“Seize the moment between ripe and rotten” …Yeats
Amelia, Ohio March 5, ’63
“What’d you do over there?”
“Nothing much. Traveled around. Learned some Spanish. Wrote some stories.”
“Did you sell ‘em? Make any money?”
“No. That’s why I’m back. I need to make some money.’
We have moved into a vacant tenant house next to the place we lived before, above the
apple storage warehouse. I go to work picking apples for our neighbor, Jim Nobis, and filling out
applications for factory jobs all over southern Ohio. The V.W. dealers are not interested in hiring
me, since they only want factory-trained mechanics in their dealer network. The independent
shops need someone who knows Jaguars and MGs. Makes me feel once again like an upper class
misfit. Knowing how to work hard doesn’t count.
Jim’s apple crop has been in the barn for weeks and there are no job offers from the
dozen applications I’ve filled out, so I’m selling the Encyclopedia Britannica for a while, without
much luck, and also a tacky sheet metal siding product that allows the buyer to turn his place into
a brick home without ever mixing any mortar. Just scraping by, and hating it. Missing what I
remember now as our idyllic life in Spain and my independence as an unpublished writer. Oh
well…
August 4
The '53 VW I bought when we came back is worn out from all the driving I’m doing as
a salesman and it’s not worth fixing. It already had 250,000 miles on it when I bought it. I am
sick of trying to make a living this way and so finally, with some misgivings, I accept the offer of a
temporary job doing research for the publishing company where my father works. Their
magazine, the Farm Quarterly, needs someone to travel around the Midwest and South
interviewing farmers about what books they'd be ready to buy on agricultural topics. I find Judy
an old $75 Mercury coupe and buy a used BMW R-69 to ride around the Midwest and South
talking to Farm Quarterly subscribers, mostly big farmers. Great ride through the Smokies last
week. Miles of beautiful mountain curves, coming back from talking to a bunch of farmers in
Georgia. Country southerners: natural, humorous, safe in their pagan strength; sure of their way
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among themselves. Distrusted me. Some of them are a bit put off by my taste in vehicles, but I get
the job done, once they notice that I know how to talk about farming. They are almost as curious
about the BMW cycle as people were back in the late fifties on the way to Argentina. Being out on
the road is fun. The hard part is I have to pour the results of my research into a meaningful
report. It indicates that a book on corn production will be the most likely to find an audience.
I still keep these notes in that leather bound journal Reuthven Todd brought me from
Palma two or three years ago. Doing this every once in a while is my only ongoing attempt to
keep on being a writer. But it’s still a habit. Forced production is out. A travesty. I solemnly vow
not to force myself to write any fiction again. Back to the joy of the hunt. I’m a bum. Have to
recognize that and revel in it. Maybe we’ll become a gypsy family. Better unsafe than sorry.
These fragments of dissent won’t go away. Or these random quotes I’ve been collecting since
back in Deya:
the finest joys.’
‘The lust of the goat is the bounty of God”
‘Man came to forget that all gods dwell within the human breast.’
‘As the caterpillar lays her eggs on the fairest leaves, so does the priest lay his curse on
‘Prisons are built with bricks of law; brothels with bricks of religion.’
‘The human merry-go-round sees many changes: the illusions that cost India the efforts
of thousands of years to unmask are the same illusions the West has labored just as hard to
maintain and strengthen.’
‘True humor begins when you cease to take yourself seriously.’
November 7
F&W Publishing wants me to take my task seriously and to continue my research: to find
the most knowledgeable authorities in the field and determine who is best qualified to write what
they hope will be the definitive book on corn production. I accomplish that by finding two guys at
the U of Illinois, so F&W hires me to produce the book, edit the two authors' work, find artists to
do the charts and graphs that are needed, and select the photographs. And along the way I am
asked to write an occasional article for the Farm Quarterly. I carry my Nikon on these trips and
start taking pictures just to see if I can. I find that it comes naturally and I spend some time in my
father’s library looking at the work of great photographers like Steichen, Capa, Eugene Smith. I
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eread Let us Now Praise Famous Men and start learning from my father how to use his
darkroom. I discover Man Ray and begin making ‘Ray-o-grams’of my own in the darkroom.
The temporary job for F&W is rapidly turning into a career. I thought I was being clever
and detached when I took this job. The best one available; a comfortable temporary harbor. I
didn’t realize it could become a commitment that would double back to snare me. It’s easy
enough to do the work properly but harder to ignore the malaise that hovers over me. I continue
to hone my skill at remaining detached. I am able to hire a couple of friends to do layout and
design. Though I’m not doing what I want as a writer, things aren’t really so bad. At least I am
feeding my family and having fun with my good friends. I don’t allow myself to dwell on that lost
sense of triumph after I returned from Argentina or whine about failing to publish my short
stories.
April 3
Our house is becoming a gathering place for a group of friends, many left over from high
school days, along with some new ones, most of them students at the University of Cincinnati.
Under the good influence and urging of New Yorkers Stanley Sulkes and Larry Telles, we form an
informal film club and begin renting classics like Bunuel’s Andalusian Dog, Frederic Wiseman‘s
Titicut Follies, Maya Daren’s Meshes of the Afternoon, and Jean Vigo’s A’propo de Nice and
Zero de Conduit. I borrow my father’s 16mm Bell & Howell projector and a screen for these
showings.
Many in this group of friends have motorcycles and the back roads of Clermont County are
ideal for high speed cruises with lots of challenging curves. One memorable day Tom rides out on
his Harley Sportster with his new friend, artist Eric Orr, who is riding a white BMW.
Knowing the roads, I lead the pack. A Saturday afternoon ride often turns into a weekend
party. Parked in the tool shed by the barn are several exotic bikes that need attention, among
them a Vincent Black Shadow and a Norton Manx. I don’t know where they came from or whose
they are. I guess I might become a collector, though I really don’t want to be burdened with
owning anything more than I need. I took the Vincent out for a spin the other day with Peggy
Peters on the pillion seat behind me. That J.A.P. engine is so powerful I nearly drove out from
under her when I gunned it in second.
We have plenty of space, a lake to swim in and teak floors in the empty Townsley mansion
on which our visitors can sleep. My crop of marijuana, planted between rows of tomatoes and
corn in the kitchen garden, is more than enough to fuel these weekends and the manic games we
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play. One of these we invented the other day is called ‘Roofing’. Someone drives a junker around
the dam that encircles the lake with an attacker on top of the car, trying to reach in and grab the
steering wheel and plummet the car into the lake, while the driver lurches and brakes radically in
an attempt to throw the roofer off. Miraculously no one’s been hurt, nor any cars submerged.
Tom McEvilley christens our group “The Albert Schweitzer Memorial Motorcycle
Club”, a sardonic jibe at the fact that my father recently took a herd of goats to Lambarene as a
donation to the Schweitzer Hospital. It seems we are regressing to our turbulent, rebellious high
school days, but for me all this rowdy stuff is a way to sublimate
disappointment and steel myself for another week of serious, boring
work on the corn book.
Judy and I are considered the luckiest and most enviable
couple. While everyone else is still in school, I am married, with a
good job and an interesting place to live. In an impromptu pole one
party night I am voted the sexiest man and Judy the most beautiful woman in our group. Judy
dismisses this by claiming that our best feature is two bilingual,
poised, and lovely daughters. I agree.
October 5
Disaster was lurking. Jody Barg, a high school friend and a
new member of the pack, couldn’t resist the urge to show his mettle
on the BMW he bought at the factory in Munich and rode around Europe all summer. He passes
me before a hairpin turn, a difficult turn that has to be entered with precision since it isn’t
banked. Jody comes into it far too fast. From right behind, we see him slide off the road at the
apex of the curve, hit a culvert, and go flying nearly a hundred feet through the air above his
cycle, landing in a farmyard lumber pile. His spine is severed. He may never regain
consciousness and has already spent a month in a coma. I feel a deep sadness spiked by guilty
confusion about whether there was a way I might have prevented the accident. I know that in an
abstract sense I caused it by demonstrating the joy of high speed riding. But why, oh why had
fate prompted him to pull ahead without realizing this was the wrong curve to take any chances
on.
Our manic period is over. There are fewer gatherings and soon after Jody’s accident
JFK is shot in Dallas. It’s a grim winter. I have lost my way and all my momentum. I fear I am
wasting my life. I remain stoic and keep the pain to myself, but I’m seriously depressed. One night
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I get stoned with Eric and Judy Orr and find myself in a terrifying, catatonic state of mind. I
realize that my carefully suppressed mood is probably apparent to everyone who knows me well,
and must be especially difficult for Judy to live with. Jody died in the hospital a few days ago.
September 22, ‘64
After a business trip to Atlanta on the book project, I drive across Alabama and join the
Orrs in Mississippi. After hearing Stokely Carmichael speak earlier this year they volunteered to
work with SNCC on the Freedom Summer voter registration drive. I’m curious about the Civil
Rights movement so joining Eric for a few days is a way to check it out without making any
serious or difficult commitments of my own. It’s typical of me to be an observer, not a joiner. Eric
is fully engaged and happily ending a summer of satisfying work. I take some photos of him
speaking to a crowd, standing in the back of a pickup. The three of us drive back to Cincinnati and
a few days later I help Eric build an Okie-style trailer on which he piles all his household goods
and furniture for a move to Los Angeles.
‘Father’.
Eric chides me about Tanya and Michelle calling me ‘Johnnie’, rather than ‘Daddy’ or
“A loss of authority,” said he. “Decay of the family structure.” He’s childless, and had
an authoritarian pop. I tell him I don’t mind if they treat me like a friend. The way for me to be
close to my children is to love them openly rather than through jumbled and egotistical
pronouncements of strength. I want to treat them as much as possible as equals, taking into
account the measure of their understanding, and modulating the amount of discipline
accordingly. God knows they get a strong enough dose of insignificance being adrift in the adult
world.
‘Never too soon to talk to your child,’ I tell Eric.
Amelia, May 14, ‘65
The book on corn production is finished and F&W has decided that there should be
another one, on soybeans. It’s time for me to escape. I’ve had enough of the book department.
Judy and I talk it over, weighing whether to head for New York or San Francisco. We decide the
West might be better for the kids, and easier for us. And more interesting, right now. Free Speech
movement and beatniks. I tell F&W Publishing that I’m moving to California to find work there.
When he hears I’m leaving, Grant Cannon, the editor of The Farm Quarterly, says that the
magazine needs a Western Editor to achieve more thorough coverage. If I want the job I can set
up an office and consider the western states my territory and they'll pay for the move to San
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Francisco. With mixed feelings, I say I'll give it a try. I should be happy working as western
editor of The Farm Quarterly. It’s often referred to as the Fortune of the farm magazine world.
It’s a large format national magazine with high standards for its writing and Life magazine style
photographic layouts. If I had wanted to be a journalist, it would be an honor. I guess I’m a snob.
I’m not willing to go easy on myself or welcome good fortune.
S.F. August ‘65
I go on a scouting trip to San Francisco where I make some new friends, rent an
apartment on Waller Street and find a school called Presidio Hill for Tanya and Michelle. Back
in Cincinnati I oversee the successful launch of Modern Corn Production and buy a '59
Porsche Super 90 with a sunroof and Rudge knockoff wheels for fifteen hundred dollars.
Probably a bargain with that roof and those wheels. I help Judy pack our belongings for
shipment and then take off with Tanya in the Porsche while Judy and Michelle ride the train west.
It is a memorable drive. Tanya arranges a nest for herself in the back of the car with books and
toys, and I tell long stories about witches and wolves and make stops in places with sand to play
in or water to swim in. The country flies by at the rate of six to eight hundred miles a day. Tanya
and I move into the Waller Street apartment and the next day we pick up Judy and Michelle at the
Union Pacific terminal. Soon a moving van will deliver our furniture, books and my motorcycle.
November ‘65
We are happily intrigued with San Francisco and spend a few weeks exploring it. When I
pick Tanya and Michelle up from school we go on an adventure to the beach or Golden Gate
Park or the Embarquedero. It’s great to see how easy it is for me to make them happy. And they
like their new school. I have a leisurely schedule making connections and doing research as I
look for story ideas. I’m planning to extend my territory south to include Mexico if I can find
good topics down there.
There is another side to my life in contrast to the world of agribusiness where I earn a
living for the family. Part of the decision to move to San Francisco was based on sensing
something exciting in the wind here. The free speech movement is in full flower, and protest
against the war in Vietnam is growing rapidly. I’ve been hearing a buzz about local bands, like
the “Jefferson Airplane”, playing in small clubs like “The Matrix” that are sold out every
weekend. A Waller street neighbor takes me to a garage a couple of blocks away where a
longhaired artist named Bill Hamm is projecting dazzling arrays of abstract imagery on a sheet.
LSD is legal and readily available all over town. There is a growing sense of community as the
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excitement swells. For example, total strangers who sense a tribal connection have started
smiling at each other on the street. Maybe that’s what psychedelic means.
March ‘66
Ken Kesey is a major figure here and his series of semi-public Acid Tests around the Bay
Area are gaining considerable notoriety. In the spring of '66 he rents the Longshoreman's hall to
stage a ‘Trips Festival’. I’m there with a friend from the Art Institute, and a girl in line with us
sneers at me for having such short hair. Producer Bill Graham of the S.F. Mime Troup is running
the event and is probably one of the only sober people there; a group called the “Grateful Dead”
plays from a platform above the crowd in the center of the hall. The music and the light shows
and the drugs all have a permanent home now since Graham has opened the Fillmore Auditorium
on Friday and Saturday nights; he books local bands that rapidly become household names.
Posters for their shows spring up all over town. The word is that there will soon be shows at the
Fillmore every night of the week, and a collective called ‘The Family Dog’ has opened the old
Avalon Ballroom to feed the ravenous crowds' hunger for even more live music. FM radio station
KMPX is beginning to play album cuts of the new music all night, pioneering a novel
broadcasting format.
My younger brother Richard dropped out of St. John's College in ’63 and joined the
army. He spent his last year in Thailand and as soon as he was released came to stay with Judy
and me on Waller Street. He got his bearings and his own place and was drawn into the
psychedelic scene, following all the daily excitement around town; going to Allen Ginsberg
readings and speeches by Timothy Leary. He re-enrolled in St. John's to study at their new
campus in Santa Fe, New Mexico next fall. He’s continuing his experiments with LSD. I’m happy
to see him getting connected cause I know the hitch in the army was hard for him, except for
Thailand, which he seemed to really enjoy. He brought back some records of the music and a
bamboo flute. He’s living down on Market St. with a beautiful black woman named Joanne.
June ’66
It has been a while since I set pen to this paper. A bridge of silence that has led me no-
where inside myself. I have been spiraling up and down on an axis of self-imposed dread like one
of those made in Hong Kong propellers on a spiraled stick. Never quite able to know what I know
for long enough to put it into effect. But continually rising and falling. What brings me to these
pages is realizing that I need a place to flush it all out. Mainly as a therapeutic exercise; an
unlimbering of the brain as well as an object lesson for the machinery in me that freezes up every
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time I have article writing chores—magazine stuffing—to do. This all started, lying on the couch,
chewing over what Kent said about seeing his worst fuck-ups as milestones to finding himself
‘worthy of his own esteem’. Mistakes are part of his path to serenity. Fine, for him. But where I
am there is no forgiveness for my failures: most of all for those I would see as despicable in
someone else. Like abruptly telling the kids there is no Santa just before last Christmas. My cruel
side, wanting them to be the hippest, least hood-winked kids in the class, and share my life-long
hatred of phony holidays. Despicable to hit them with that. Tanya’s just six years old.
Where does this tyrant come from, I’m wondering? The one that takes over and ruins the
game of life for me. I know quite well that it comes from the mad queen in my mother, but where
does it live in me? It lurks somewhere, afraid to show itself, working with an array of poisons,
only applied in stealth. I have lost all touch now with my flow. Just stumbled over a self-reproach
for girlishly hovering over what the reproachful voice calls ‘diary-like drivel’. Must learn again
to listen to myself and content myself with whatever I hear. Anais Nin wrote diaries and by God
so did critic Edmund Wilson.
Strange that I should feel the need to justify this or any activity. Yet I constantly try to
measure what I do and who I am against the standards set by others. Do I lack my own? Sartre in
his ‘The Words’ tells of his need, as a boy, to have a ticket; to justify his existence by flashing the
ticket proving who he is, and what he does. Eventually he loses the ability to write as a form of
self-entertainment. Once it is settled by his folks that he is a writer, he finds writing a duty and
cannot be satisfied if it is effortless. I’m suspicious of this dictum since it’s sort of the other way
around for me. I believe in the power of words to sing to the writer. Writing is tortuous for me as
soon as I become conscious of the need to write as a duty. When that happens I wish that I could
be satisfied with any other dream, or better still the most mechanical activity. Like being a VW
mechanic. I wish I could buy the easy ticket for my own ride. I can’t see what difference it makes,
on a rational level, what trip you’re on, as long as you know you’re moving. But I have set myself
the goal of a ‘meaningful’ or a ‘productive’ passage through life, and as a result I’m spending
much of my time in the waiting room, out of touch with my own momentum, forgetting it’s really
all a meaningless joke anyway.
I have never had to work to stay alive. Nothing I ever did was absolutely necessary. So no
pleasure ever really felt deserved; no activity truly meaningful. Even when I threw myself into
running my mother and father’s farm, it was illusion that drove me. They didn’t really need the
money the farm had been losing or the money I made them. I knew this, and was able to enjoy the
activity for its own sake, but not entirely. Much too aware of the phoniness of the whole situation,
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of their praise for my efforts, and our mutual deceit in accepting the lies. I knew I was doing it
because it made me more worthy in their eyes and my own. And I saw their worship of work and
distrust of pleasure as based on their failure to have meaningful lives. They made work a
perversity. Praising it on a grand, abstract scale and condemning every form of idleness except
those serious, reverent activities like nature hiking. So if play is forbidden and work loathsome,
what is there to do? I’m glad they haven’t found religion. Deep background for my current
malaise. Heavy stuff. Like the fog outside in the dark. I think I feel something panting out there. A
siren is slicing through it.
October ‘66
In February Judy and I bought a house on 23rd Street and, in July, Judy gave birth to our
son Geoffrey. He is a cherubic baby with a wonderfully calm and happy disposition, but despite
the joy he radiates, Judy and I are increasingly at odds. Passionate lovemaking in cars and
hayfields is only a faded memory, with nothing replacing it. My dissatisfaction with myself about
having to work for the magazine makes me contentious and difficult. Even though I know I’m
doing a good job for them and writing with more style than necessary. In addition to my strong
feelings of alienation I find Judy's absorption with the children leading her into bourgeois
positions I thought we had turned our backs on years earlier. Naren Bali, now teaching physics
at U.C. Berkeley, came to dinner recently with his wife Margarita and his sister Usha, who
recently married an American college professor and was visiting from Wisconsin. Though it
should have been a happy occasion, seeing them made me feel severely disoriented. I couldn’t
relate to them and realized afterward that I was in a semi-psychotic state, full of self-loathing and
suffering from acute depression. They knew me seven years ago as a promising young writer and
now, in my own eyes, I’m nothing but a successful hack, living with an unrelenting sense of
failure. A few days ago, to punish myself, I took my unfinished novel and thirty-nine short stories
to a trash barrel in the back yard and performed a ritual cremation. I feel I’ve reached the
bottom of the barrel right along with the smoldering ashes of my dreams about being a published
short story writer.
Some bad news for Ricky: the acid was legal when he bought it, but when he was stopped
for speeding on my BMW bike in Gallup a week later, it had that very day become an illegal
substance. He was in jail until my father flew out and found him a lawyer who managed to get the
case dismissed, but Rick was expelled from St. John’s. He’s back here hanging around and
working in one of the Avalon Ballroom light shows, but he’s confused and unhappy.
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S.F. March ‘67
I’ve come up with a form of self-therapy, a way to heal my wounded ego about being the
journalist I can’t respect. To illustrate the Farm Quarterly articles I am expected to hire first-
rate photographers, but I have begun to take more and more of the pictures myself. It’s a
challenge and it’s already making my job more interesting. On a story about Mexico’s failing
ejido system near Ciudad Obregon, in Sonora, I do all the photo coverage. I get some dramatic
pictures of the workers harvesting corn in golden evening light. From the forward cockpit of a
Stearman biplane I get a snazzy wide-angle shot of the helmeted and goggled pilot with the rich
cropland unfolding below him. The magazine hasn’t complained about the quality of my pictures,
or about the money I save them by doing both kinds of coverage. I’m shooting a little film on
Super 8 for Nina Landau with Gary Goodrow of the Committee Theater, an improvisational
satirical review founded by veterans of Chicago’s Second City. I like doing this camerawork even
more than shooting stills for my articles. Maybe filmmaking is not just a distraction or a hobby.
Could it be a fresh start with a clean slate? I’m proposing to the magazine that they equip me to
make them a film in l6mm. I’ll do it while I research the stories I’m writing for each issue. Maybe
it’ll make me happy in my work, like one of the Seven Dwarfs, singing a Disney melody. I’m even
ready to be corny.
Judy and I went to Golden Gate Park to join an event announced as a 'Gathering of the
Tribes for a Human Be-In' at the Polo Field. Thousands of people smiling at each other. Suddenly
there’s our high-school classmate from Cincinnati, Bob Charlton, jumping out of the crowd to
greet us. We haven’t seen him since high school and are surprised to find that he lives in the
Haight/Ashbury. And is an accomplished filmmaker. A cosmic coincidence?
April ‘67
The magazine likes the idea of making a film. So I’m moving fast with highly focused
energy. I ask Bob Charlton to advise me; he’s my mentor as I look at my first rushes of the farm
film. I’ve opened an account with Eastman Kodak, bought a Bolex camera, a Uher tape recorder,
and a basic editing setup with rewinds, splicers, synchronizer and Moviescope. It’s a form of
living film school. I’m an avid student learning rapidly by making mistakes and needing to know
how to avoid repeating them. I feel the excitement of figuring out how to cruise on my own terms.
I’m watching films with a new kind of attention. I pay close attention to technique and even find
myself looking at television in a new way. It surprises me to find there is more creativity evident
in some of the TV commercials than in much of the programming.
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Just back from a junket to Berlin. The German government flew me over hoping I might
do a story about an exhibition of agricultural goods and equipment, which I found a complete
bore and nothing to write about. Instead I did a short piece about how the tradition of small plots
around each village hinders modern mechanized farming. (For me it makes them more interesting
and more like Deya.) I got to see much of West Germany and took some routine stills. Stopped in
London on the way back to see Stella Reeves. I still have a crush on her, ever since Deya. She’s
about to get married, so I kissed her goodbye and took her out to dinner. Had an enjoyable visit
with Idris Shah, who I hadn’t been in touch with since Deya. He’s quite famous now, since
publication of The Sufis, with the intro by Graves.
May ‘67
I’m spending most of my time on the road, prowling through the
vast expanses of western agriculture, shooting roll after roll of film,
energized by my desire to record the beauty of this dynamic industry,
which I now relate to in a new way, through the viewfinder of my Bolex.
From Stearman biplanes seeding rice to the skilled craftsmen grafting fruit trees, from the
migrant workers bagging onions and hoeing lettuce to the cowboys roping cattle, I want every
aspect of it on film so I can weave it into a mosaic of the machines, animals and men. I’m
determined to make the most beautiful and dynamic documentary anyone has ever seen about
agriculture. With an occasional ironic touch about industrialized farming.
I want people to experience the visual excitement I felt when I saw films
like Jean Vigo’s `A propos de Nice, and Zero de Conduit. I’m up every
morning before dawn to catch the golden light and I try to always be in
position to shoot some dramatic activity in the rich light of evening.
I feel a growing certainty that I am meant to do this and that I will succeed. At the same
time, I’m feeling more and more uneasiness about my life with Judy.
I’ve become friends with Saul Landau, Nina’s husband. He works at public TV station
KQED, writing and directing documentaries for what is called the ‘Special Projects Unit’. A guy
named Irving Saraf has emigrated from Poland to work as the Unit’s cinematographer. They are
shooting films about Fidel Castro, Mario Savio, Tom Hayden, and the anti-war movement. Saul
starts asking me to join them as a second camera when they are documenting protest events.
Recently I covered Market Street and the Bay from the top of the Ferry Building; I film Tom
Hayden riding my BMW. No pay, but it’s good experience and there’s helpful commentary on the
footage from Irving and Saul. My life is changing fast. Feeling blessed by good fortune.
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June ‘67
Bob Charlton and I are working together shooting the free concerts and the ongoing
circus of events in the Golden Gate Panhandle; footage he is hoping will help him secure funding
for his first feature. We filmed a guy named Jimi Hendrix on the back of a truck the other day: an
amazing performer and virtuoso guitarist. Working with Bob is a good experience and gives me a
way to observe the cultural phenomena that are taking place without surrendering to any of them.
Judy and I have been smoking pot for years, so that is nothing new. Last year I took some Sandoz
LSD one afternoon at a friend’s garden party. Judy decided not to join me; she was worried
about taking care of the kids if she got too high. Acid was still legal, and though I was rather
casual about taking it, I immediately recognized why people call it a ‘mind expanding drug’. I felt
a surge of happy and amused detachment about how bizarre we humans and our world look
through the LSD prism, and how little anything matters. I felt I was sailing above it all, including
my own problems. Proud to say it was a happy first trip.
Judy and I go to concerts at Winterland and the Avalon Ballroom to hear Country Joe &
the Fish, the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, or Big Brother and the Holding Company with
Janis Joplin, but we haven’t signed up for communal living or any other aspect of the hippie
revolution. I have always been dubious about joining anyone else’s parade. My best recent
involvement in current events is the thorough, sympathetic article I’ve written about Cesar
Chavez and the UFW’s grape strike. The hardest part was making the connections to get a short,
not-very-satisfying, interview with Chavez in his AirStream trailer office, since his lieutenants are
understandably suspicious of the farm press. I enjoy being a rebel with a cause; it’s a role I have
been missing.
June ‘67
Near Fresno preparing to shoot footage of a machine windrowing alfalfa. News on the
radio that war has broken out in Israel. Another war. Glad I have filmmaking to focus on. It’s a
relief being 28 years old and the father of three kids. Not eligible for the draft so free to protest
the war in Vietnam, rather than fight it. I shoot the windrower and sit making notes about how I
see myself in all this conflict. In our new house above Noe Valley we look like every other petite
bourgeois family. I have a good job and we are property owners with two cars, an infant son, and
two daughters going to a private school. It’s true that I made all this happen but I feel
increasingly confused and trapped by it. Judy and I are on separate and rapidly diverging paths.
Her passion is baby Geoff and mine is filmmaking. We’ve been married for nearly seven years
now and I wish I had a little more perspective about marriage. I think if you’re lucky, it might
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evolve from infatuation to a broader, deeper, even if lonelier form of love. But maybe I’m too
selfish, so I just feel trapped.
El Cerrito
Everything is much easier to for me to understand as a greybeard than it was when
I was a struggling young father. I’m glad I survived and that now I have my awareness of
mortality to guide me through a constant evaluation of what is important and how
superficial so much else is. I’m grateful for all the close and yet non-binding friendships
my life is full of now. Strong, meaningful affection without any dependence, or any
neurotic interference from our libidos. I’m more free than ever on my solo flight through
life, and partly as a result of this freedom I have stronger commitments than ever to
friends and family. Even though there’s unspoken understanding of where the limits are
and how far we can go. I’m in a position to help whenever they ask and I know I can call
on them if I need to. Lending money to my son Geoff, my daughter Savannah and my
nephew Taylor is no problem. They are clearly determined to pay it back when they can,
without any nagging from me. I have the good credit they lack and they have the ability
to make money that I no longer have. Savannah is designing unique clothes. Geoff is
building a recording studio and Taylor is buying a beautiful piece of land on a ridge
above the Pacific. I’m happy for them. Glad they’re charging ahead and not obsessed by
what a charade it all is, as I was at their age. Meanwhile I’m blessed by an independence
that often feels like a psychedelic high. The price is an occasional blast of loneliness. I’m
free to spend as much time as I want doing what I want: mostly working on this series of
journal entries about my life and adventures. I’m constantly shuffling the deck and
deciding which elements to use and what should be left out. There are days when I do
nothing else except for a little Tai Chi and a walk if the weather is good.
I just got a call from Kay, who is in Teheran, visiting an Iranian filmmaker she met
at a festival in Munich last year. I’m happy to hear from her. Iran test fired missiles this
week to prove that they’re ready to fight back if attacked by the U.S. or Israel. I dreamed
Kay and I were at a conference together somewhere in Europe. We had been working all
day in a kind of cubicle. I think we were writing a presentation. Then everyone was on
the move at the end of the day and we were eager to join them and get some air. We went
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into a large hall and Kay broke away from me to rush to the other end and join a huge
circle of people holding hands. I had a lucid flash that my disability was keeping me from
moving fast enough to stay with her. I was still part of it but put off by its new-age-iness
and felt abandoned. I was trying to see Kay across the hall among dozens of faces, some
of which seemed quite similar to hers. As the circle was closing a second time I left it and
went to the far end of the hall where I lit a cigarette. Another lucid flash that I don’t do
that anymore. Not like America, I thought. Here you can still smoke if you want. I was
wearing my silver bicycle helmet now, hoping it would make me easier to spot in the
crowd. But Kay didn’t come and I couldn’t see her.
S.F. August ’67
Tonight at Canyon Cinema Alice Anne Severson auctioned off mementos: a pair of
rhinestone studded sunglasses once maybe worn by Elvis and a jockstrap that’s been in the same
room as John Lennon. She has a flare for public performance and an acerbic wit, which makes
these evenings enjoyable even when the films are mediocre.
Spent Sunday afternoon at the Fillmore watching legendary films by some of my strongest
influences: Kenneth Anger, James Broughton, Bruce Baille, Chris Marker and many others.
Someone arranged a six-hour screening of classic underground films for Michelangelo
Antonioni, who’s in town doing pre-production on his film Zabriski Point. Events like this are
often free or done on a cost-sharing basis; there has been a remarkable sense of cultural
community in the San Francisco Bay Area. But now the scene is becoming a media feeding frenzy
and a commercialized bonanza. The "Summer of Love” is nearly over, and corruption of the hope
and idealism is turning ‘a whiter shade of pale’.
The mood on Haight Street has shifted from one of happy intimacy, with knots of friends,
or even strangers, gathering to share a joint, to that of a tourist trap. Buses full of out-of-towners
gawking at the longhaired freaks create a constant traffic jam. The original ‘head shop’ at the
corner of Haight and Ashbury, the ‘Psychedelic Shop’, which in its early days was a cultural
resource, is a get-rich-quick bazaar trying to be a national franchise. The street is becoming a
dismal crime scene with boarded-up shops and haggard junkies whispering “Pot? Acid? Speed?”
to potential buyers on the sidewalk. My friend, filmmaker Shelby Kennedy, has rented one of the
vacant shops for next to nothing and set up a studio. Walking down Haight Street to drop in on
him is like visiting a netherworld full of specters from a layer of hell.
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September ’67
I stop at the Art Institute to see my friend Kent Hodgetts and while I’m there a friend of
his, a painter named Sharon Hennessey, catches my eye. She is a sexy 23-year old with bobbed
hair and a mischievously alluring look. She says she’s interested
in making an animated film. She seems like an exotic flower and
I immediately decide it would be great to somehow arrange for
her to be blooming in my life. I’m leaving in a few days to shoot
the wheat harvest in the northwest, so I ask her if she'd like to
come along to record sound while I’m filming. To my surprise
and delight she says yes. When I ring the bell at her apartment near the Art Institute she lets me
in and continues talking on the phone with her father. I am amazed by how serenely she answers
his questions and how tenderly she defends her younger brother about something he did that
annoyed their father. I think then that maybe she’s not just a pretty young artist but woman with
grace and substance and a hint of noble purpose. Her apartment is large and funky but well set
up.
Sharon throws a small bag in the Porsche and we drive east and over the Sierras, through
Nevada and north toward the rolling wheat fields around Moscow, Idaho where the harvest is in
progress. We stop for a swim in the Truckee River and camp that first night on the open range
north of Winnemucca. Wakened in the early morning by some cattle who seem curious about
what we’re doing on their turf. I build a fire with some chunks of mesquite and make coffee, then
we hit the road. We have plenty to talk about; literature and how the world works as well as some
shop talk on painting and filmmaking. I ask Sharon about her painting and find that she has
already been recognized as a promising young artist in Manhattan and has sold a couple of
paintings before deciding to enroll at the S.F. Art Institute, where she hopes to further refine her
style. I find it easy to relate and a pleasure just to be with her. She passes the simple test of being
content with intervals of silence as we move through the landscape. When I watch her I see
something calm and magical.
The following day we make it to the wheat fields by late afternoon. I get some dramatic
footage of combines and billowing clouds of chaff in the sunset. With very little coaching, Sharon
records the machines and some insect and bird sounds as well. She is eager to learn and shows
signs of competitive impatience if I am too attentive. We return through Washington and Oregon,
gathering footage of apple picking and hop harvesting. Sharon is quick to pull out the tape
recorder whenever I am filming. She points the shotgun microphone at anything making a sound.
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Somewhere between the wheat harvest and the pungent hop vines we become lovers and she
surprises me with a brazen statement that she might never be in love with me. When I ask what
that means she says that I offer interesting travel and a chance to learn filmmaking, but I
shouldn’t assume anything just because we’ve had sex. I am aware of the chances I’m taking but
find it exciting to be getting the high-octane fuel I crave so much more than home baked lasagna.
Finally I am living my fantasy about traveling with a woman; a woman who I can work with; a
woman I can fall in love with and make love to. I ignore the nagging guilt. It’s not a secret that I
am married and have three kids, but it’s a topic we avoid.
S.F. October ‘67
I’m renting space from an Art Institute friend in his studio south of Market Street. I’ve set
up my editing bench and begun to assemble a rough cut. Judy seems totally absorbed in her full
time job raising the three kids and running a well-kept household. She is indifferent to me and my
work on the film. It barely seems to interest her. I drop in on Sharon at the apartment she shares
with her friend Cynthia on Greenwich Street, across from the malt factory. She has acquired a
red 90cc Honda moped and is busy making her animated film, studying the I-Ching, reading
Gurdjief and Ouspensky. Her wit and dazzling looks give her the ability to cast an erotic net over
a crowded room full of friends. She also attracts and gives serious attention to a couple of North
Beach’s derelict street people. I find her totally fascinating.
Midwest, November ‘67
I drive east for a final round of shooting: corn harvesting in the Midwest and fall color
around the old home ground in southern Ohio. A good visit with my father. We fly to New
England in his Beechcraft Bonanza on some business for the publishing company and we work
together gathering some footage for the film. We talk constantly about composition and how to
keep the footage dynamic. I sense it makes him happy to see me so committed to filmmaking and
in an oblique way following his path as a photographer. This results in an unspoken but palpable
mood of good feeling between us for the whole trip.
S.F. December ‘67
I spend more and more time with Sharon. I tell Judy I’m leaving, to move in with Sharon
and her roommate, Cynthia Norton. It’s painful. I tell her I’ll support her as long as possible, but
nothing I can say is any help. There’s no way I can justify it to her or myself. No one else knows
how miserable I’ve been before discovering filmmaking, using my excitement about that and the
affair with Sharon to restore my self-esteem. All I know for sure is that I’ve experienced a rebirth
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and am no longer overwhelmed by despair. Beyond that I’m in a haze of denial about what I’m
doing. Ending the marriage and copping out on my responsibilities is all happening in a surreal
vacuum.
February ‘68
I’m doing two more stories for the magazine. I’ve made an agreement with them to
concentrate on finishing the film when the stories are done. Once I deliver the film my editorship
will end and I’ll be off their payroll. I’m not sure how I will make a living, but I’m certain that
being a filmmaker is my only option. I’m pressing forward with the editing, happy with Sharon.
Sad about the wreckage I’m leaving Judy and the kids in. Judy’s going back to school to study
nursing. This is a logical move, since she was a pre-med student when we married. Her anger at
me has propelled her into the heart of the women’s liberation movement, and she has a host of
new friends and a lover I know and like. She wants to be one of the first of a growing number of
midwives in the Bay Area. Memories of Maria in Deyá.
July '68
Sharon and I decide we should find our own place so we jump on my motorcycle, ride
across town and cruise the alleys South of Market writing down the phone numbers on 'for rent'
signs. The first call pays off. It’s a loft above a warehouse that was once a small recording
company called Fantasy Records and then, briefly, a neighborhood children’s center run by the
sociology department at S.F. State College. The place is trashed, but it’s big and has skylights,
and it is cheap. We sign a lease and go to work. The first thing we do is build a four by eight foot
shower pool coated with fiberglass that can be filled to a depth of 14 inches. My kids spend hours
splashing when they come downtown to stay with us. Sharon has made a very natural and
convincing effort to be close to them, relating more like an aunt than a surrogate mother. They
try to accept her but I sense they’re hiding a lot of resentment.
We sand the floors, and Sharon paints a lovely mandala on the floor of the main room
while we watch Mayor Daley’s police beating protesters in Chicago during the Democratic
Convention. After the assassination of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, and the growing
horror of Vietnam, I am more cynical than ever about the democratic process. It seems clear that
America has trapped itself in Cold War rhetoric, and is doomed, like every other empire.
I’ve decided that political activism is not my course and that learning how to be a film
artist is perhaps the only way I can make a meaningful contribution. This gives me a chance to
stay detached about what’s happening in the world. I’ve read Herman Hesse’s Siddartha and
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The Way of Zen by Alan Watts and am not yet tempted to become a Buddhist or join any of the
radical movements either. I practice my own form of Hillbilly Buddhism, through meditation and
by treating filmmaking as my spiritual quest while I try to maintain an indifference to
materialistic striving. Many people I know are joining the Zen Center, but I’m sure it wouldn’t
suit me; the discipline is too rigid, too much like religion or school. Sharon briefly practiced zen,
but it’s clear that neither of us are joiners. We’ re more inclined to create our own scene.
February ‘69
The loft on Natoma Street satisfies a long delayed fantasy to live again in an unusual
space, like that first one I built back in Ohio. There’s a cargo hoist with a platform we can run
out on an I-beam and lower to the street. There was an impromptu reunion of the old Ohio gang
last week. Kent Hodgetts left his VW Bug in front of the loft and went off somewhere. When he
came back he found his car dangling like a fish on a line ten feet above the sidewalk. McEvilley
and I simply unhooked the platform in the loft, dropped the chain, hooked it onto the front
bumper of the VW, and lifted the car into the air. These antics mask the fact that Judy is missing.
They definitely like Sharon, but Judy is still missing.
I roam the quiet early morning waterfront streets with Sharon and my camera, gathering
surreal footage for a future film. Last night I got a ticket when I drove my Porsche between the
empty legs of a rumbling straddle cart on the embarcadero. A brazen prank unluckily spotted by
a hidden cop. I feel like Sharon and I are the couple everyone wants to be—giddy with affection
and happily productive. I think of us as echoing the myth of Fairbanks and Pickford. We are a
hip, jaunty pair with style and talent and nothing is going to get in our way. I’ve begun calling
her ‘Clara Hayseed’, a semi-conscious echo of my early infatuation with the Appalachian women
of my youth who fuelled my earliest sexual fantasies. Those lonely,
alluring women leaning in the doorways of $10-a-month shacks while
their husbands worked day jobs in gas stations and spent nights in local
saloons.
July ’69
I met Freude Bartlett by chance at Diner Labs. We hit it off right
away, hanging out there waiting for our rolls of processed film. I took
her home to Harriet Street on the Norton. Knocked out by her vivacious
good humor and tornado-like energy. She is the most striking redhead I've ever seen, with a full-
blown, flame-red Afro. She introduced me to her husband Scott, the well-known avant-garde
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filmmaker. He has a blonde Afro and the bearing of a rock star. They live in the Reno Hotel, an
abandoned building in our neighborhood that was once known as the hotel where low ranking
prizefighters stayed. Scott has an agreement with the owner, allowing him to take over the former
lobby and a large part of the first floor. He’s turned it into a palatial studio. The most admired
feature is the sauna, built out of salvage lumber and railroad ties, next to a very large kitchen.
Freude is thinking of going to Morocco and on to Europe to market Scott’s films. I
introduce her to Sharon and they immediately begin talking about going to Morocco together.
Sharon and I have been together for nearly two years and the relationship is growing stale and at
times difficult, with increasing resentment on her part about time with my children. She’s become
more like a stepmother than she was at first, when the challenge of winning the kids over and
entertaining them amused her. She’s increasingly demanding and a financial burden.
Occasionally she gets a handout from her father, but she refuses to find a job and depends on my
support. Her parents are constantly haranguing her about not being married. We’ve begun to
argue a lot and are no longer very happy together. Until meeting Freude she’s been trying to
convince me that we should take a trip to India. Travel with her is not as appealing as starting my
next film. The conflict about the kids increases my guilt and is an underpinning to my growing
disenchantment. So I tell her I want to be alone at this point to pursue the next film project. I give
her all the money I can spare, a 16mm Bolex camera and some film. I’m glad she is leaving.
Within a couple of weeks she and Freude are on their way.
September ‘69
Freude comes back after splitting off from Sharon and going to Europe where she sells
Farm to German TV. A welcome windfall for me. Sharon is apparently making her way slowly
overland to India. Living in another sector of the Reno Hotel is my
friend Roger Kent, a sculptor and composer experimenting with
synthesizers. He’s going to compose the sound track for Penumbra, the
film I’m shooting by generating images with a microscope. On Labor
Day weekend Roger helps me lift the center skylight at my place to build
a greenhouse sleeping space around it, giving me a rooftop view of the
skyline of San Francisco. He provides the windows, from the empty
rooms of the Reno, and the engineering skill and tools that I lack. He’s
an M.I.T. graduate. Roger has long red hair, a bushy red beard and vibrantly alert eyes. He
stands about five feet ten and is incredibly strong. When my friend Jody Kent splits up with her
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lover in Venice and comes north to visit I introduce her to Roger Kent as his long lost sister. They
go out for dinner and it looks like they will stay together for dessert.
Ohio, November ‘69
My father suddenly died of an embolism. It’s a surreal blow that leaves me reeling. I fly back
with brothers Ricky and Roddy who have been hanging out at a weird commune in San
Francisco. His death shocked us all since he has been healthier than our mother, who has breast
cancer. Now she’s alone, but Roddy is going to stay with her. Ricky hits the road. My only relief
is that my father saw Farm before he died. Glad that he didn’t miss it. He reported to me that the
film was well received, although its style puzzled those expecting a conventional promotional
film. It doesn’t matter to me what they think. My father made it clear that he knew what I had
achieved and was happy for me. Only a few who see the film will realize that it’s actually a
learning experience in experimental filmmaking, masquerading as an industrial documentary. It
opens with an accelerated telephoto sunrise, followed by a rapid-fire montage composed from the
strongest images in the film, cut to Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. It is un-narrated and purely
expository, a lyrical portrait of modern agriculture, with no sales message. Luckily it cost the
magazine very little, and we are parting on good terms, though when they asked me to send the
equipment back I refused on the grounds that I might not be able to eat without it. They tell me—
pointedly—that I’m one month short of deserving my long-term employee benefits. Oh well, I’d
rather have the equipment.
December ‘69
Scott and I have become good friends while Freude is away. Though sometimes lonely
and missing Sharon, I’ve been happy living alone and devoting most of my attention to work.
Except for a couple of one-night stands. When he hears about a major cultural event brewing at
the Altamont Pass—a free concert with the Rolling Stones, Santana and the Jefferson Airplane—
Scott decides to rig two Beaulieu cameras a couple of feet apart on a metal beam and run them
simultaneously to achieve a stereopticon effect which he can play with in the editing room. He
asks me to shoot with him, and to take him on my motorcycle, since we know there will be a
serious traffic jam. Shooting music without recording in sync is a familiar thing for me after all
the work I did with Bob Charlton back in ’67. It is a technique based on looking for special
moments and dramatic images rather than the non-stop coverage everyone else is doing with
their sync-sound equipment. I shoot bursts of film in slow motion that day while Scott shoots at
normal speed with his double Beaulieu invention.
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We get to Altamont early and it is a grim scene right from the start, nothing like the
ecstatic 'Woodstock West' people are hoping for. Thousands are already shivering in the gray
windy weather and trying to defend their blankets and turf while Santana plays. Hell's Angels
have been deputized as security guards by the concert’s organizers, and they are threatening the
crowd with pool cues. It’s a tense and ugly scene, but we manage to get right up front, a few feet
from the stage. We are both shooting when the Stones come on with the Maysles brothers
documenting them. We’re only vaguely aware of the commotion that breaks out behind us, when
an Angel's bike is knocked over by an innocent member of the audience. We have no idea that the
person who knocked the bike over is being stabbed, though it is happening behind us, less than
fifty feet away.
For me it’s a chaotic, disappointing and sad day in the midst of a stoned and increasingly
barbaric crowd on bad acid trips. I concentrate on shooting MOS Rock and Roll footage. It is
nothing very special, even being a few feet away from the dynamic Rolling Stones. Their
performance is constantly interrupted by the chaos and Mick Jagger’s forlorn attempts to calm
the brawling mob in front of the stage. I couldn’t wait to get away as soon as we’d shot the dozen
hundred-foot rolls of film we’d come with. There was a parking ticket from the CHP on the bike,
which we’d left on the shoulder of Interstate 5. It will be interesting to see what the Maysles
brothers do with that strange day. Anything fresh will be a welcome antidote to the way the press
swarmed over the event and declared it the end of an era, which it probably may be.
January ‘70
Sharon’s back from India, having been gone for six months. When I pick her up at SFO I
can’t believe that I missed this person at all. She seems a disoriented, petulant stranger. I wonder
if this is a symptom of travel fatigue or if she is as uncertain about getting back together as I am.
Despite a strong sense of foreboding about staying with her I can’t bear not giving it another try.
I welcome her back and take her to the loft where we sleep in the roof house that I built thinking
of her while she was gone. It’s a week or two before we feel safe with each other. Then she hits
her stride by reclaiming her position in the community of friends and becomes once again the
most vivacious, sexy and witty woman I know and the most difficult and self-absorbed as well.
She feels free to have affairs when we are apart. I don’t mind that as much as the pleasure
she takes in rejecting me, which seems at times a haughty confirmation of what she said on our
first trip about not falling in love. I believe in an open relationship, but not if it leads to mean-
spirited manipulation. It has become an ongoing test of wills and I’ve begun to regret that I
didn’t pay attention to that inner voice, warning me to remain single. Her return has been a key
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moment of decision-making, teaching me that I should trust my intuition, no matter how painful.
But, despite feeling trapped and confused, I still love her too much to say it’s over. I’m acutely
aware now of the pain created by knowing she doesn’t love me but still hoping she could. I don’t
want to know what I know; I want to re-discover the bliss of our first year together. I’ve begun to
fantasize about evolving a relationship that allows each to do what we want and fall back in a
new kind of love as a result. I’m still a hopeless romantic.
February’70
The main thing Scott and I have in common is our obsession with
film. We recognize our distinctly different talents and skills without any
obvious jealousy. He is very skillful at recruiting expert collaborators and
producing films with pop art appeal. I am more of a purist and a loner and
defiantly opposed to looking for success by focusing on popular subject
matter. We frequently look at each other’s work in progress at the Reno or
my loft, and tell each other what we think.
Scott’s first film, Metanomen, made while he was a student at S.F. State, was a hit on the
experimental circuit. His second film, Off-On, made with Tom Dewitt, catapulted Scott into being
one of the most successful avant-garde filmmakers in America, largely as a result of Freude’s
skills at promoting him and Tom’s techno-wizardry. He is assembling the material for his next
major work, Moon ‘69. The moment of national euphoria when Apollo 8 circled the moon and
returned safely was soon eclipsed for many of us by the knowledge that Martin Luther King and
Robert Kennedy are both gone now, and the U.S. is left with Nixon and his sinister legacy. Shades
of Nero’s Rome. So I guess we need a distraction. People are fascinated with the challenge of
putting a man on the moon, so Scott’s topic and timing are right on target and consistent with his
ability to be a trend rider. He is a full-fledged celebrity, and people gather around him, eager to
bask in his aura. There is an ongoing scene at the Reno that I am delighted to drop in on, and
ready to leave when I have my fill.
April ‘70
I hitchhike back to Ohio to see my mother. She has been struggling with breast cancer for
many years. Talking to her on the phone, I sense that she won’t be around much longer. So I
make the trip and spend three bittersweet spring days with her—just the two of us, talking almost
without pause during all our waking hours. She is pale, thin and has a luminescent beauty. We
both know that we are saying goodbye for the last time. I’ve never felt closer to her. We are at
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peace and all the tension of earlier years is gone. The strength of our love-fueled communication
is like a high for me, amplified by the sadness and clarity of the truth we are not trying to avoid.
May ‘70
During Cambodia Week there are massive protests
about the Nixon/Kissinger invasion. I have the opportunity to
put my filmmaking talent where my politics are by making a
four-minute film I call Five O'clock Rush, about a protest in
front of the San
Francisco Stock
Exchange. My friends Latanne Keeler and her husband
Kent Hodgetts conceive and finance this event and invite
me to film it. They pour pig blood over l000 one-dollar
bills. The businessmen are predictably outraged, and
messengers and janitors scoop the money up within
minutes. It’s a traffic jam of bodies scrambling for blood money. Once again I’m taking part in
defacing the American Dollar, and cashing in on the fact that blood and money are inescapable
images at the core of our culture. The opening shot of this protest film is an elderly blind woman
towing her blind husband down Market Street with a leash around her waist. The fruit of
wandering around town with a light 16mm camera, the Beaulieu. I have never seen the blind
leading the blind before and I feel it is the perfect opening statement for Five O'clock Rush.
September ‘70
My mother dies in July and I’m glad I made that trip to say goodbye. I’m satisfied that we left
nothing important un-said. My sister and brothers and I gather for the funeral, and then by turns
we stay to clear the home we grew up in so that it can be sold and the inheritance taxes paid. We
also must auction off seven paintings by my mother’s uncle, Henry F. Farny, a renowned painter
of Western scenes. There is no cash for any of us until we can sell the land. Sleeping in my
parent’s bed Sharon and I conceive a child, on or near the day in August that my mother was
born. Sharon and I consider that we have been blessed by my mother’s spirit and that this is a
sign we should stay together. We drift further into our uneasy agreement to stick it out and try to
have a life. We decide we are fated to be together, two headstrong egos trying to each forge their
own path, while staying out of each other’s way as much as possible.
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It turns out that Farm and the outtakes from it are providing some financial support. I’ve
sold several batches of unused footage to former connections, like the California Farm Bureau.
German and Canadian TV will broadcast the film, for which they’re paying decent fees, and a
segment will be included in a CBS documentary about new styles in filmmaking. There was even
a call from US-AID but I quoted them a high price and they seem to have shied away. I’m
flattered by the attention and by an offer of a job as Director of Photography for a series called
"Hot Dog" being launched for the youth market. Desperate to preserve my regained
independence and freedom, I turn down the offer, but shoot and edit a segment for them about a
beekeeper. Sharon records the buzzing.
I happily cash the resulting check so that I can finish my work–in-progress: the abstract
ten-minute piece called Penumbra, shot while Sharon was on her trip to India, composed of
images entirely shot through a microscope. With Freude distributing it this film shows at a few
festivals and is recognized as a "painterly" effort by one reviewer, but fails to launch me as an
independent filmmaker or even pay for itself. At times I have more work as a still photographer
than as a cameraman or filmmaker and it’s often not enough to pay the rent or help Judy.
January ‘71
Sharon gives me a card with the inscription: “Your Xmas present is coming.” Then she
tells me that she has done a trade with sexual liberation figurehead, Margo St. James, founder of
the prostitute’s union. On Christmas eve Margo will be arriving to spend the evening with me,
Sharon says, while she goes to Margo’s cabin on the slopes below Mt Tam to do a thorough job
of house cleaning.
Margo and I say goodbye around midnight and vow to make this an annual event. Sharon
later admits to a friend that this brazen gift took its toll on her confidence. For me it is obviously
a double-edged statement about our relationship, and I thank her for both the insult and the great
rollicking time with Margo. It seems to me classically and geometrically Freudian. Sharon never
made peace with her father, so she finds men she can punish. She falls in love with and pursues
men who reject her. I seem to follow the same pattern, in reverse. Maybe our psychic wiring is
too similar and that explains our difficulties getting along with each other.
March ‘71
Our only luxury these days is going out for a cheap Thai dinner or an even cheaper
Mexican meal. After one of these outings, as we drive home through the Mission District, Sharon
notices a woman being pummeled by a man on the sidewalk. She asks me to pull over and when I
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do, she jumps out and confronts the man so ferociously that he backs off and the woman is able to
walk away. I’m proud of Sharon; it’s this spirit that drew me to her in the beginning.
It’s clear to me now that the psychedelic joy ride ends in a cul-de-sac. No easy
answers. Visions of utopia smoldering on the horizon and our dreams of free love suddenly have
high price tags. I’m hunkered down in the shadows reading E.M. Cioran, hoping his negativity
will serve me as a shield from the bitterness of reality. I’ve decided the only salvation I may ever
find is the reward of meaningful work. Immediate satisfaction; parallel to dangerous adventure.
Sharon no longer considers herself an active painter. She decides to write a script for a
feature film about Estaban, the black Moor and cohort of Cabeza de Vaca. When she finishes
that, with no buyer in sight, she begins a novel, a soft-core adventure that surprises me with its
entertaining and skillful narrative flow. Admiration for Sharon’s intelligence and talent is at the
core of my love for her and I know that if she is recognized for a creative success we will get
along better. She’s been dabbling seriously in taking still photos and has mastered the
Hasselblad I inherited from my father’s camera collection when my brothers and I split
everything up. I build a darkroom for her, equipped with the enlarger and accessories from my
father. Then I build an editing room I’ve been longing for: two rewind benches, so that I can
search on one and turn around to assemble on the other. It’s a sealed room with a blower that
creates positive pressure to prevent dust from settling. For months I’ve been wandering around
the West gathering footage for my next film, a multi-layered collection of mythic abstractions
about the death of my mother. I finish it and call it Here Below, after working week after week in
my new editing room and selling a camera to pay the lab bills and the rent. A distributor who
sees it at the Ann Arbor film festival offers me a generous contract, but the advance never comes
so the film goes to Freude’s Serious Business Company.
It’s an intense time and my activities are picking up speed, as a filmmaker and as a
cameraman for others. I shoot a nine-minute black and white film for Joan Jonas and Richard
Serra called Paul Revere. It’s a droll constructionist piece, using light bulbs, instructional cards,
a bell and a lantern, on a small stage they built at a studio where they’re staying on Fillmore
Street. We do it all—basically an in-camera-edit—in one long session and then go for a 2:00
A.M. dinner at Sam Wu’s in Chinatown, the restaurant where you can see anyone hungry for
Chinese food late at night. Richard describes the work he’s doing at a steel mill in Southern
California and I talk about my fascination with the graphic aspects of sand dunes and my hope to
make a film in them. Steel and sand: elemental topics over Chinese food.
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June ’71
Freude experienced home delivery of her son Adam back in January. I filmed the event for
her. Scott and Sharon assisted Freude and the midwife. Now Sharon is expecting a home delivery
with the same midwife, who after hours of labor recommends that we better move to U C
Hospital. Soon the doctor assigned to Sharon begins talking about a caesarian section. Then,
luckily, he goes on a break, leaving Sharon with a bright young intern, who tells me he thinks the
baby is transverse in the womb. Sharon and I urge him to do anything he can to avoid a
caesarian. I watch him deftly reach into Sharon’s womb and flip the infant. Within minutes, she is
born.
We name her Hennessey, so she can have a last name from each of us. We bring the
placenta home from the hospital and perform a pagan ritual that one of us read about: we grill
part of it and eat a few savory bites, then plant the rest under a small lemon tree we are growing
in a planter at the loft. This ritual is said to bring good fortune.
Sharon's mother is coming to help and to admire her first
grandchild, and I’m going to the Grand Canyon to work for Joe
Munroe. Sharon is always supportive about my going off to work as
long as I’m getting paid. Joe has developed a passion for running wild
rivers and he’s hired me to help finish shooting his first documentary
film, Dare the Wildest River, about running the rapids of the
Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. Joe called me a month ago
about shooting for him. He’s one of the photographers I often enjoyed working with back in
Farm Quarterly days. Joe is one of the nation’s most successful photojournalists, with several
famous pictures on his list of credits; the Life cover of 12 undergraduates crammed into a
California phone booth, and the Farm Quarterly cover of two piglets nuzzling each other, a
poster of which became an icon for both sides of the argument over whether the police should be
called ‘pigs’.
July. ‘71
The trip through the canyon is yet another revelation for me about the power of place; my
only regret is that I am just filming and not rowing as well. When I come back from the river,
Hennessey is thriving and bringing us luck. Maybe it’s those bites of her placenta. Sharon has
received an advance from Grove Press for her novel and I’ve been awarded a grant by the
American Film Institute to make Dune, a film based on an ambitious proposal Sharon helped me
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write and we submitted six months ago. No connection to Frank Herbert’s novel with the same
title. My goal for this film is to create mythic scenarios and surreal spaces that will transport the
viewer into a fantasy world of dynamic surprises, as I attempted to do in Here Below.
I’ve been learning how to time my original to prepare it for printing at the lab. Sandy
Northrup, who works at Monaco Labs, has given me a couple of lessons on putting the aluminum
tabs on the edge of the film and properly filling out the cards to program the printer settings with
the color and exposure values. I figure knowing how to do this
will give me more total control over the esthetics of my films.
October ‘71
We drive our battered Citroen north to Vancouver and
then across Canada, gathering footage of buffalo, prairie fires
and northern lights along the way and camping out of the car.
Hennessey, now four months old, is a happy traveler, nursing
almost as often as she wants and sleeping in a canvas crib on the back seat. After a couple of
weeks we pull up at my cousin Rudy Wurlitzer's place on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia,
looking out over the Northumberland Strait. A few days later we go to a Justice of the Peace in
the nearby village of Inverness and make Hennessey legitimate by getting married so we can
mollify Sharon’s parents about our sinful life together. Rudy’s friend, Roberta Neiman, takes
some pictures of us in our hippie wedding finery. Back at Rudy’s place his neighbors Robert
Frank and June Leaf join us and we all eat a roasted chicken. Our wedding is a non-event for two
parents who aren’t there and an infant who is sound asleep.
We visit Sharon’s parents and collect a four thousand dollar reward by showing them a
healthy, legitimate granddaughter. Then, a day later, we hit the road again for ‘The Farm’ in
Tennessee to visit my brothers Roddy and Anthony who are graduates of LSD Pied Piper Stephen
Gaskin's ‘Monday Night Class’ in San Francisco. My brothers joined the bus caravan Gaskin led
on a speaking tour around the country before settling on a thousand acre tract of land near
Summertown, Tennessee. The sorghum harvest is underway, and the rustic mill they built is
cooking up the first batch of "Old Beatnik" brand molasses, which is more palatable to me than
the doctrine about ‘four marriages’ stewing among the groups’ leadership. I’ve been having
doubts about whether a ‘two marriage’ can work. We don’t stay long and a few days later we
are hiking down the Bright Angel trail into the Grand Canyon with Hennessey riding on my back,
singing to the crows that wheel above us much of the way down to Phantom Ranch. As we hike
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out a snowstorm makes the last two thousand feet very difficult, but finally we fall into the
Citroen and head for California.
February ‘72
Desperately broke and casting about for a way to make some money, I decide to expose a
few rolls of leftover film stock in the most provocative and commercially viable way I can. The
San Francisco Erotic Film Festival has just taken place, and Scott's film Lovemaking—shot in
his sauna—wins a prize. Spurred on by Scott's success, and with a little support from the National
Sex and Drug Forum, I make an arty ten-minute erotic film. I come up with a multi-layered
private pun for the title. Norien Ten is a strain of wheat developed for the desert regions on
Mexico's west coast. Wheat obviously makes bread, which is what I need to do, and bread is the
staff of life, as is the lingum, one of which is dramatically displayed in the film. When people ask
me what the title means, I rarely try to explain it. Norien Ten wins a prize at the First New York
Erotic Film Festival. The film is busted when it shows outside the festival at a Manhattan theater.
A few weeks later it is banned in Boston and when I send it to Peter Bloch, my distributor in
London, it is seized by customs. I have little interest in pursuing a career in pornography and,
luckily, I just got a shooting job and also have the grant from the AFI to finish making Dune.
July ‘72
Joe Munroe was in Des Moines, Iowa, pitching a film proposal to the Pioneer Hybrid
Seed Company. He called and asked me to fly out and bring a copy of my film, Farm. He’d
already sold them on using me as the writer for this project, since they already knew my work
from the magazine articles and the book on corn production. Now he wanted them to meet me and
see my work as a cinematographer. Fresh proof that work in this world is all about connections.
Once Joe had a signed contract, he wanted me to start on the research. The standard industrial
documentary fee to do the research and write the script is more than I made all of last year.
Naturally I accept and fly to Des Moines. They sign, and I go
to work.
I write a draft of the script, submit it and then go off to
the desert near Beatty, Nevada to work on Dune with a group
of friends and a beautiful hot air balloon that Kent Hodgetts
built. It’s an unadorned white envelope with a transparent
Lexan gondola. Last year Kent flew it with Eric Orr in Kenya
and in the foothills of the Himalayas, in Kashmir.
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We make camp in a hardpan bowl at the base of the big dune. Sharon and I bring lots of
food and film. Others contribute various entertaining substances--wine, whiskey, and pot. There
are guitars, a saxophone and a couple of drums. It is a reunion of the old gang, disguised as a
filmmaking project. Eric Orr and Tom McEvilley come up from L A with artist Ron Cooper. The
campfire burns late every night.
Early the first morning we inflate the balloon and make a flight over the dunes. Kent has
fashioned a number of whimsical devices to create a fantasy element: a ladder to climb up to the
gondola, a pair of paddles to propel it. We have fun playing around with these and the chicken
feathers we jettison as the balloon ascends, but none of this ultimately fits into the concept I’m
now finding in the editing room, when the more complex and ambitious early plans for this film
are stripped away and it becomes a much different piece. Far more minimalist and something I
am proud of in its reduced form.
The third night, when the wind comes up, we are forced to bank our campfire and seek
shelter in our vehicles from the biting sand. About two in the morning we see lights moving
through the haze of the sandstorm. Several vehicles seem to be circling and probing about on the
desert floor as though lost. Eventually they find us and reveal themselves to be the Nye County
Sheriff's Posse. They have come out to see what we are doing here and what is all the stuff piled
up over there? They begin rummaging through the balloon bags excitedly, working up to a fever
pitch when they spot the bale of chicken down. In the dark, in the howling wind, several of them
keep pulling out handfuls of down to examine, and it disappears as fast as they can pull it out.
Within minutes, pounds of chicken feathers have evaporated into the desert, and so has their
certainty that we are drug smuggling hippies, picking up a load of marijuana that presumably
has been parachuted to us here at the big dune.
The next morning it is calm again, and I make a flight with the camera. I am able to get
over sand swept clean and trackless by the storm, and from a couple of hundred feet I frame a
shot of Sharon, a solitary ant-like figure, crossing a spine of drifted sand. In the final edit I use
this shot at the end of the film, the only time a human figure is visible in the entire piece,
dissolving that shot into a step-printed optical of brightly glinting grains of sand that I hope
suggest the Milky Way.
November ‘72
The soundtrack for Dune is by Jordan Stennberg, who decides we should record Tibetan
gongs in a mineshaft he has access to in the Sierra Nevada. I rent a stereo Nagra tape recorder
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to do this and struggle with Jordan to get a decent mix at Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart’s
studio in Novato, which he offers to us at a very generous rate.
Thanks to Freude Bartlett’s distribution efforts, the film is released and shown at a number
of festivals and sold to Canadian and German TV. When it plays at the Film Forum in New York
I get a favorable review in the Times, comparing my compositional aesthetic to that of still
photographer, Edward Weston. This strikes a vein of pride since I love his work. I have an eerie
memory of visiting him with my father when I was about four, at a cottage tucked into the sand
dunes along the California coast, probably around Malibu.
December ‘ 72
Sharon has decided to make a film called What I Want. She
spends over a month collecting demands from her friends and every
woman she runs into, then writes all eighty or ninety of them on a scroll
of white butcher paper. It’s a striking collection: “I want more women
truck drivers on the road”, “I want every man I’ve ever known to beg
for forgiveness”, “I want to be able to light a match in a seventy-mile-an-hour wind” and she
practices until she has it down. Then she asks me to shoot her reading it. I borrow Joe Munroe’s
Nagra recorder and his Arriflex camera so I can do it in sync. I set everything up at the loft, light
it and shoot it in one long take, a fourteen minute, virtually invisible manual zoom out from her
face to the entire scroll of demands sprawled in front of her. Sharon reads it beautifully on the
first take. I have a couple of prints made without bothering with any credits to save money and
the film is an instant hit with the women’s movement. Our problem now is that Freude can’t
satisfy the demand for prints, and the more we make, the less profit there is from rentals. In the
end, when there is suddenly no more demand because everyone has seen it, we barely break even.
July ‘73
I want to build a yurt up on Redwood Creek, northwest of
Ukiah, on a piece of land that we bought with the four K
Sharon’s father gave us as a wedding present. I spend several
days with Hennessey at Pier 16, on the Embarcadero, salvaging
cheap lumber before the wrecking crews move in. Sharon is in
L.A. working with her friend Susan Vogel on a piece of sculpture
and hanging out with the art crowd in Venice. It’s a chance for me to take a turn at childcare and
allow Sharon her freedom. Hennessey watches me pull pine planks and redwood tongue-and-
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groove from the pier walls. Then, at Cindy Norton’s shop in the Reno Hotel’s former garage, on
Harriet Street, using the plans I’ve sent for, I carefully table-saw everything into pre-formed
pieces for assembly at the site. Hennessey, at just over two, is barely weaned and a bit whiney at
times about missing Sharon, but we manage despite that. She collects nails and blocks of wood to
play with and draws pictures on the concrete floor with colored chalk. At night we sometimes go
to the Mission for a cheap meal. Other nights we go to a movie or visit a friend. Back at the loft I
read her to sleep. We are both glad when Sharon returns, though Sharon lets me know she has
not been faithful. When the yurt is built just above Redwood Creek beneath two towering old
growth redwoods it becomes a favorite camp site for the whole family, with Geoffrey and
Hennessey building dams to improve the swimming hole and Tanya and Michelle hitchhiking up
on weekends. I brag proudly to my peers that the total cost of the yurt was $165—fifteen dollars
for the plans and $150 for the materials.
S.F. October, ‘ 73
Kent Hodgetts and I hatch a plan to go to Cairo, engage the owner of a felucca and sail
to Luxor with stops at all the temples along the way, filming the architectural remnants of the
world’s first great empire. Interwoven with an account of our adventures. We research carefully,
write a proposal, and begin looking for funding. We make friends with the key dignitaries at the
Egyptian Embassy in San Francisco and secure the permits necessary for filmmaking. There is
even a chance of funding from the Egyptian travel ministry, though we were not offering a typical
promotional travel film.
S.F. November ‘73
Just as it seems possible that the Nile River fantasy might actually happen, the ‘October
War’ with Israel breaks out and blows it all away. After this disappointment I am even more
determined to escape San Francisco, my marriage, and my dull struggle with poverty, so I
reserve two seats on a bargain offering from Braniff Airlines for a flight to Bogota, Colombia. If
sailing the Nile is out I will satisfy my hunger for adventure with a new Latin American
experience. I’m not sure who the second seat is for, but it costs nothing to reserve it, and I think
there is a chance some friend might join me. Sharon’s book was canceled when Grove Press
decides to drop all the unknown authors on this year’s list to avoid bankruptcy, so she is working
on her next book. I will pay the rent, leave her enough money to live on with two-year-old
Hennessey, and scrape together a couple of hundred for my traveling expenses. I am planning to
take buses down to Ecuador and to hike the Inca trail south from there.
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My friend Caleb shows up. He’s been fantasizing about smuggling cocaine. He and his
wife have just sold their house and he has a small bundle to invest. Before long we are talking
about buying a pound of coke and bringing it back. The idea appeals to me on several levels. If
we succeed I can pay the rent and buy some camera equipment. Sharon is all for it. We think the
‘War on Drugs’ is a stupid, counter-productive mistake that makes no more sense than
Prohibition did in the twenties. If people want to abuse drugs, that should be their privilege, same
as it is with alcohol. Legalized drugs might loose much of their appeal and be worth a fraction of
the profit our venture could yield. Defiance of the law is not only lucrative, but a tempting way to
thumb our noses at a government we consider incompetent, immoral and bloodthirsty. Of course,
we realize the DEA is ready to do way more than thumb their noses at us if they can.
Caleb, an artist and sculptor, proves that he is brilliant at designing invisible
compartments to hide things in. He is a craftsman and very good with his hands. He borrows a
telescope from a friend and fabricates a support base that appears solid but actually is a hollow
chamber into which he calculates we can ram a pound of coke. Neither of us has ever used
cocaine and we don’t know anything about it. I do some research and find someone who knows
how to test it and what tricks are being played on naïve buyers. Caleb and I realize that we are
an effective team for this venture, each offering strong skills that provide what the other lacks.
Colombia, December ‘73
Before long I confirm the two seats with Braniff for early December. We will each take
cameras to film a solar eclipse that is expected to reveal the passage of the comet Kahoutek, a
major event that is certain to attract many tourists to South America. On the street in Bogotá the
first night a teenager offers us cocaine, so we buy a gram for six dollars and I am able to practice
evaluating it as well as sampling its effect. I decide I like it—a substitute for strong coffee that I
can carry in my pocket, with the bonus of a subtle euphoric side effect. The next day, in search of
clear skies to film the eclipse, we hire a car to take us over the Andes to Villavicensio, in the
Amazon region. Arriving at dawn, we set up the telescope and our two super-eight cameras just
as the town awakens. Soon we are surrounded by children who are gathering in the town square
with bits of dark glass to watch the eclipse. While they wait they watch us. Caleb soon has a line
of them cued up for a turn looking through the camera attached to our Questar telescope.
Back in Bogotá we begin a bus ride south, heading to Ecuador. We spend a day or two in
Cali, where I make a connection at one of the cafes behind the main plaza with a man who says
he will find us the coca when we return from Ecuador. The bus rides turn into a surreal reprise of
my motorcycle trip fifteen years ago with Naren. I am amazed at how much has happened to me
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since then. More than ever I still love the excitement of unknowable events around the next bend
of the road ahead. I think I’ve learned a thing or two about connecting to the challenges as they
come at me. I depend on what I’ve been calling my Hillbilly Buddhism to stay detached.
Crowded buses full of peasants with bags of produce, chickens, ducks and children. Caleb
speaks almost no Spanish, but he is quick to show his impish grin and have the other passengers
in stitches of laughter with the way he mimes incomprehension whenever they speak to him. We
film the market in Otavalo and the next day, in a nearby village, we make friends with some Inca
men building an adobe wall. We film them and drink chicha with them, and when we try to help
build the wall they laugh merrily and offer us more chicha. After reaching Quito a few days later
we fly back north to Pasto and on to Cali in a perfect old Ecuador Air DC-3, for eighteen dollars
each. It feels like a time warp taking us back to U.S. air-travel as it must have been in the forties.
In Cali I go to work with our connection to find some coca worth buying. It is difficult
since gringos like me are easy marks for those who want to unload inferior or completely bogus
merchandise. There are tense moments in sinister neighborhoods when my demeanor is the only
defense against being beaten and robbed, or even killed. It is clear to me that they know how easy
it would be to take the four thousand dollars they assume I am carrying. I am incredibly
vulnerable when I walk away from a pound of bad coke. I feel like I’m living in an action comic
strip or a B-movie.
I learn to ignore casually concealed pistols and grim rejoinders at these crucial moments.
My interior monologue is coldly fatalistic; as long as I can accept the fact that what happens
doesn’t really matter, I can deal with the constant tension. Reciting a Tibetan mantra, I manage
to project calm and steady indifference. Day after day, it is necessary to reject one offering after
another, until finally there’s one that tests and looks acceptable.
Caleb carefully tamps the coke into the telescope mount and seals it. The next day we
catch a flight to Caracas where I give the sturdy ‘anvil’ case to Pan Am Air Cargo for shipment
to SFO. We hope, by making this extra trip, to disassociate ourselves from our score and re-enter
the U.S. as innocent tourists. After thirty-six hours in Caracas we fly back to Bogotá to catch our
return flight on Braniff to L.A. and San Francisco. When I go to customs two days later wearing a
suit and tie and humming my mantra, the telescope sails through without raising any suspicion.
Before long we triple Caleb’s money and split the profit. Mana from the South.
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El Cerrito
After those days were over I never craved coke or bought any for myself. If
someone offered me a line I enjoyed it. I think I was protected by my love of adventure
and danger; both far stronger than any love for the drug. I was definitely in a position to
be seduced and enslaved by cocaine. My Puritan alter ego couldn’t allow such weakness.
I’m just glad I don’t have an addictive personality. I’m lucky. None of my kids are
addictive either. I never told them not to try anything they wanted and didn’t make
anything forbidden fruit.
Over the next year and a half we made a couple of additional runs, each time with
more capital and larger capacity devices to carry home the merchandise. I felt more than
ever like I was living in a B-movie. Perhaps this sense of unreality helped me stay
objective about how to deal with the inherent perils of smuggling, not the least of which
was the guarantee of ten years in prison if our luck didn’t hold. One of my first decisions
was to treat coca with respect and use it sparingly. This was easy once I discovered that I
didn’t like the jaw-clenching effect if I took more than a little. I also was determined to
be discreet and sell it only as a broker, in major quantities, to as few people as possible,
and to avoid dealing grams or using it to impress anyone, especially women. And perhaps
most important was the decision to turn much of my share of the cash into cashiers
checks written to myself from fictitious clients. I then deposited these in my account and
paid tax on them when I filed with the IRS. With this money I scraped through more hard
times as a filmmaker. I also replaced the equipment I had sold to pay the rent when the
cupboard was bare. I made a down payment on a small building next to a foundry on
Minna Street that I decided to buy for $21,000. It had been built around the turn of the
century and had so many crib-like rooms on the second floor that I decided it had been a
whorehouse. Madam Minna’s place? I went to work tearing down walls and putting in
skylights and turned it into an elegant studio. I moved into it six months later.
By the end of that brief smuggling period I felt very lucky to have gotten
away with being an outlaw and I was eager to move on as a filmmaker. Within ten years
the crack epidemic began and cocaine was no longer an exotic and exclusive recreational
drug for the elite, but a threat at the core of society. It was apparent to me that Caleb and I
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had played our small part in the inception of this nightmare that fueled the War on Drugs
and filled America’s prisons with young black and brown men, while we two privileged
white men went free. Like so many of our class, we had survived the Get-Rich-Quick
American Dream.
S.F. August ‘74
Mike Mitchell is a dynamic and articulate rebel involved in a complex, multi-layered scene. His
drag racing sobriquet is 'World’s Fastest Hippie'. He grew a ponytail when long hair became
fashionable and, since he believes firmly in sex, drugs
and rock and roll, decided he should give himself the
racing sobriquet of ‘Hippie’. Doing so gets him a lot of
attention, much of it unfavorable, at the drag strips. On
one side of his car in bold letters is the word HIPPIE,
and on the other side the word REVOLUTION. Under
the car’s rear spoiler is ‘Impeach Nixon’ with a swastika replacing the x. The manager of the
Indianapolis drag strip won’t allow Mitchell to race unless he tapes over that message on the
rear of his car.
With the help of a small crew of friends, Mitchell has made a name for himself at
the top of the ‘Funny Car’ echelon of the drag-racing world. In the early seventies he toured the
country with his first unique ‘Funny Car’, a Corvette without a top or windshield. This car was a
hit and a race winner. Mitch’s habit of doing 800-foot burnouts before his runs is also a crowd-
pleasing trademark.
The day we meet at his shop through a Marin County acquaintance, I decide within
minutes that he is the subject of my next film even though I have never considered making a
documentary about drag racing until that moment. When I ask him, he agrees immediately. He is
a natural, without a moment of camera shyness or clumsy hamming and he clearly has the
confidence and charisma to be a star. The film’s opening dialogue is over a shot of Mitchell’s car
being towed back to the starting line in fading evening light.
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“It’s bored and it’s stroked and it’s an all-out,
maximum, high performance motherfucker,” he says.
“It’s the great American way, man. You try and make it
go as fast as you can go. The Japs and the Germans
have their different trips, but when it comes to making

some power, we’ve got it. That’s what keeps everybody off our backs.” This isn’t hippie
nationalism. It’s pure Mike Mitchell.
I’ve stumbled on a great subject; also a perfect character for the direct cinema
documentary I’m not equipped to make. I’m still searching for that ephemeral voice between
theater and fiction, and always broke, so I don’t want to invest in the sync camera or Nagra I
need to do direct cinema style coverage of Mike Mitchell and his world. Still more committed to
my abstract expressionist style than to the journalistic form of carefully balanced documentaries I
have been seeing on PBS or the new wave films of the Maysles brothers and Pennebaker. I
admire their work but don’t feel influenced. I’m making the film I was initially inspired to make:
a terse, detached commentary on the beauty of America's obsession with speed. I use my J/K
optical printer to step-print the hurtling machines and bring them down to contrasting slowness.
Peter Kaukonen, helps me build a correspondingly abstract soundtrack. I’m satisfied with hewing
to my original path. That’s the reward.
S.F. June ‘75
Freude Bartlett’s Serious Business Company briefly distributes World’s Fastest Hippie
just before she goes out of business. When a friend finds a used Eclair ACL package I borrow
some money to buy it with him. So now I can shoot sync sound. I’m buying Munroe’s Nagra 4.2
and a new mic to go with it.
Scott has been talking for a couple of years about a Film Arts Society, an organization
that will advance and support those of us who try to survive outside the marketplace, while
treating film as an art form, rather than a commercial medium. He’s been obsessed with the idea.
The initial concept, while appealing, seems to me somewhat flowery, and I suggest that we might
focus on pooling our resources to buy a flatbed-editing machine, something none of us can afford
alone. Since few of us are making verite’ documentaries, none of us has really needed one, but I
rented one to finish World's Fastest Hippie, and I know that I am moving towards shooting and
editing sync sound material. We have some boring meetings, usually enlivened by a bottle of wine
and a joint, as Scott pushes the idea of Film Arts around. It is a small group: Scott, Michael
Wiese, Howard Rheingold, Michael Lytle, Kent Hodgetts and me. We are all friends and don’t
mind having an excuse to get together, though it begins to seem like a hopeless dream that will
never come to anything. I want it to happen primarily to help us buy a Steenbeck editing machine,
so I put the first fifty bucks in the till to buy envelopes and postage.
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Scott has kept it alive from a cardboard box of files in his space. He has left the Reno,
split up with Freude, and is living in a cramped attic above a print shop on Cole Street. At some
point the Society became a Foundation. I think when we realize that with a tax exempt status we
can ask individuals and corporations for money, offering the inducement that if they fund us as
generously as possible they can pat themselves on the back with a tax deduction. When our
lawyer, Richard Lee, succeeds in getting the exempt status the ball is rolling. Stephanie Rick, and
then Julienne Bair, do some very effective organizing. Then Gail Silva takes on the burden and
the FAF is growing rapidly under her skilled guidance.
Grand Canyon, August ‘75
I’m part of a group of friends who constantly check
with the National Park Service for the cancellation of
permits to run the Colorado River through the Grand
Canyon. We luck out this year and secure one of these
hard-to-get permits for July. Sixteen of us commit and make
sure we are ready on the designated date. Because Sharon
complains that I never take her on any trips I invite her to
come, after arranging to leave Hennessey with our friends Jane and Larry Reed.
This is an oar trip of five rafts, with an experienced oarsman in command of each one. I
have a new hypelon raft made in Taiwan. It’s very maneuverable, though not as classy as an
Avon, but much cheaper. Much better than the navy life rafts I started rowing with Munroe a year
after shooting on the Colorado for him back in ’71. I’ve just spent more money building a
wooden frame and buying four, high quality Smoker ash oars than I spent on the raft itself.
Once the trip is underway I begin to feel that Sharon is just another passenger, a rather
overbearing one I wish had stayed home. She is determined to criticize me whenever possible; in
return I ignore her. Ron Cooper and Jody Kent are most often my passengers. Jody has become
Ron’s mate, after splitting up with Roger Kent. Sharon rarely rides in my raft and is more remote
than ever sleeping next to me under the stars.
After Phantom Ranch we do a two-night stop at Tapeats Creek, so that we can spend a
day there. Ron, Jody, Sharon and I hike several miles up to magical Thunder Falls, where a twin
underground torrent comes pouring from the face of the red-wall more than two thousand feet
above the Colorado River. Ron and I climb 100 feet up the treacherous cliff next to the waterfall
and then manage to reach one of the two points where the water pours out of the red-wall. From
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there we enter the bowels of the earth; straddling the flow and bracing against the wall on either
side as we inch into a cool and darkening cavern with the water
rushing between our legs. After about a hundred feet we come to
a Y where the stream we are straddling joins its twin. At this
point we turn around, since the combined flow is too wide to
negotiate. If we slipped into this powerful torrent we’d be hurled
off the cliff like a chunk of flotsam. Back at the base of the
waterfall we rejoin Sharon and Jody. The four of us linger in the
exhilarating cool mist of the waterfall for an hour before starting
the hike back to camp at the confluence of Tapeats Creek and the
Colorado.
The next day we row a slow, hot, twelve-mile stretch to make camp at Olo Canyon, setting
up our kitchen against the canyon wall almost directly below an overhang with a V-shaped sluice
that drains the side canyon. When we make camp it is dry and though we are aware of a distant
thunderstorm to the south we only joke about the possibility of having a flash flood for dinner. No
one is very concerned about it since the storm is so far away. When dinner is nearly ready Ron
goes down to the river to get something from one of the rafts. On his way back he hears
something that sounds like an oncoming freight train. Looking up at the cliff, he sees a wall of
orange water approaching.
"Here it comes," he yells at the top of his lungs. "Get back fast."
His last words are drowned by the tumult as a shaft of water ten feet in diameter pours off
the face of the cliff, burrowing into the flat, sandy canyon floor like an augur. A rapidly widening
pool forms around this thundering waterfall; it pulls pots, pans and supplies into the void before
anyone can retrieve them. Ron manages to catch some of the aluminum utensils as they bob
down an instantly formed spillway flowing to the Colorado. Most of us stand watching in awe as
this drama unfolds. Having heard about and imagined flash floods for years, I feel it a distinct
and slightly terrifying honor to have one happen in our campsite.
Eventually we eat what is left of our meal and go off to our bedrolls. The torrent slowly
diminishes during the night and is only a trickle at dawn. The pool is like a bomb crater: fifty feet
wide and still half full of water. After breakfast we do an inventory of lost cooking gear. Hearing
that we are missing our Dutch oven, I make a mental calculation of where this heavy iron pot
might have been carried by the flood. With a touch of bravado I point to the far side of the pool,
below the beginning of the spillway. Then I walk into the water and over to the place at which I
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pointed. I lean over, reach down and sweep my hand across the bottom of the pool until—much to
my amazement—I feel a metal handle. Dumping water and sand from it, I pull the Dutch oven
into the air with a flourish and receive a round of applause.
We pack our rafts and head downstream to Matkatamiba. In high spirits, I row ahead of the
others and pull in to scout the landing, which requires rowing into the mouth of a side canyon,
just above the tongue of a small rapid I’m afraid might be bigger than usual with this year’s high
water. The only way to have a look at it is from above, so I climb thirty feet up the cliff to a ledge;
a minor feat compared to the climb at Thunder Falls two days before. Moving along the ledge I
come to a rock jutting across it and requiring that I find a handhold on the far side. My
impetuous nature takes over. High on the experience that morning, over-confident and not
wanting to turn back, I test a piece of rock, find it solid and make my move around the impasse.
Then I experience the nightmare every free climber dreads: the handgrip doesn't hold when I put
serious weight on it, and I am suddenly airborne. I spin 180 degrees and kick off as I fall, hoping
to clear the twelve-foot wide rock bench below and land in the river. I land just short of the river
and hit the water head first after bouncing off the jagged bench. The shocking cold of the water
gives me a flash of crystalline lucidity with an instant printout of the damage. I know with total
certainty and, as it turns out, total accuracy, that my left heel is smashed, my right ankle is
sprained, the left knee is hamburger, and my back, neck and head are undamaged. I swim in to
the bench as Ron jumps off an arriving raft and deftly pulls me out of the water by grabbing my
left hand and then lifting from under my belt buckle. He and Jody spread their life preservers for
me to lie on, and we watch my left foot swell to the size of a small watermelon by the time the
other rafts have all arrived from upstream. Someone digs out the medicine chest and gives me a
dose of codeine tablets. Sharon seems angry and contemptuous as she treats and bandages the
knee. Most of the party go up Matkatamiba Canyon for lunch while I lay in the shade of the cliff I
have fallen from.
“You’ve got to stop taking these chances,” Ron tells me. “You’re going to kill yourself.” I
remind him of the risks we both took two days earlier and promise him I won’t take any more for
the rest of the trip.
We have a meeting about what to do. I reject the idea of being helicoptered out, assuming
we could flag down another party with a radiophone. I suggest that we continue down the river,
with Ron rowing my raft. He rigs me a sort of divan on the platform over the bow of the raft. We
set off downstream. I lie there like a dismantled bowsprit with my swelling foot propped on a
piece of duffle, occasionally coaching Ron who rises to the occasion with great skill and zen-like
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concentration that makes him a very fast learner. When we come to a rapid I brace myself with
my better leg against the wooden raft frame to keep the foot from being dislodged or smashed by
the turbulence. Later that day we reach Havasu Creek, where a doctor traveling with a
commercial party examines me. He agrees that there is no great rush to get to a hospital since an
operation can't be performed until the swelling subsides. From one his party’s coolers he gets me
a bag of ice cubes to wrap around my foot. He says if I can take the pain I might as well go on
down to Diamond Creek. That’s our normal take-out point, an hour by dirt road from Peach
Springs, where we parked our cars after unloading the rafts at Lee's Ferry.
That first night is the longest of my life. I barely sleep. By the end of the next day P.J. and
Ron hand me a pair of crutches made out of driftwood. I discover that mega doses of aspirin work
far better than codeine, which only dulls the pain and keeps me groggy. On the morning of the
third day we run Lava Falls, the most difficult and dramatic rapid on the trip. Ron does a perfect
job of threading the needle at the entry and negotiating the line of monstrous stacked waves to the
left of the rapid's center. Jody stands by bracing me and ready to help if we capsize, but it is a
flawless run, and all she has to do is bail.
On the fifth morning after my fall we reach Diamond Creek, where Jody, Ron, Sharon and I
say goodbye to the rest of the party. They have decided to go on down to Lake Mead. I entrust my
raft to a novice member of the party who is eager to try rowing this last easy stretch. The four of
us settle under a brush-roofed shelter and wait until evening for a ride in a battered Ford
Mustang with two Hualapai men who have come down at dusk to fish. They graciously let us
overload their car with our duffle and sunburned bodies for the twenty-mile ride up to Peach
Springs. Jody and Ron stand on the rear bumper clinging to the trunk's lid; Sharon and I sit in the
back seat. I must put my left leg between the two front seats and it receives a few excruciating hits
when the driver has to make sudden gear changes. One of the Indians is interested in filmmaking
and I promise to send him some books. He points out his peoples’ sacred places on the drive up
the wash and tells us some of the stories connected to those places. We buy dinner for these new
friends at the Cafe in Peach Springs, then head to a motel in Kingman for the night. I sleep with
the first of many bags of chipped ice wrapped around my foot, and in the morning Sharon begins
the drive back to San Francisco, where she checks me into Mt. Zion Hospital about eleven o'clock
that night. Her seething anger about my careless nature has receded and she seems to have
calmly accepted her role as my caretaker.
Two days, and many pounds of ice later, I have a five hour operation, during which a
chunk of bone from my hipbone is used to rebuild the heel. The surgeons are pessimistic about my
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chances of ever walking without a limp and advise me to let them fuse the heel so I can limp
without pain for the rest of my life, but I hold out for the slim chance of recovery. They leave the
heel temporarily fused by five metal pins.
S.F. October ‘75
I learn to hop around the loft on my good leg with great dexterity and to carry my crutches
resting on the handlebars of my motorbike and tucked into a belt slung over my shoulder. This
means I can walk when I get to my destination. I do a shoot on crutches in Nebraska with Joe
Munroe, using my new camera to film some sync sound segments. I start riding Sharon’s bicycle
as a substitute for walking when I need to move around the neighborhood. I find it good therapy
for the broken foot and soon am only limping slightly at the end of long days. I buy a bicycle of
my own and begin riding it increasingly as my main transportation around town.
Washington D.C. November ‘75
I bought an Amerail Pass so I can go to Washington to look at NASA footage recently
made accessible to the public. I am hoping to discover some great footage of the earth shot from
space as a source of material I can acquire to make my next film, without any risky travel on my
bad leg. From the air I’ve seen the intricate sand patterns where the Colorado flows into the Gulf
of California. I want to explore that visual direction further. It seems a novel opportunity to make
an exhilarating and beautiful film. Despite searching the NASA archives I am disappointed to
find that none of the astronauts bothered to point a camera at our planet for more than a few
seconds. There are miles of footage of the launches and miles more of hi-jinks by the crews in
weightlessness, clowning in the capsule for the camera. But there is virtually nothing of the earth
forms passing beneath the most perfect photo platform ever built. What a waste.
Sunset Limited; West Texas, November ’75
Working my way back west. Smoking in moderation, walking slowly. Psycho-motor
control closing into sync with train time. Rail rhythm. Right-of-sleigh. Trying to figure out how to
tie my shoes. Read up, read down; the schedule for brain time never got set, up or down. When I
think I should be here, I realize I didn’t finish being back there. The whistle blows; I’m still on the
side-track. Conceptual-eyes, near or far: must learn to see what’s happening on the middle
ground. Usually seduced by the charm and safety of the background. Occasionally caught by
secret promises and macro-beauty of the near, I think I should expose myself more in the center.
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Baja, February ‘76
Will Janis is engaged in an ambitious effort to film the grey whales in Magdalena Bay,
where they come every winter to mate when they're young and to die when their time is up.
Soundman Ag Andrianos and I are a sync team, using my Éclair and his Nagra. Scott Bartlett
works alone with his Beaulieu hand camera. Will has invited a great number and variety of
performers to come down and celebrate their commitment to save and protect the whales. There
are Kathakali dancers, fortunetellers, palm readers, folk singers, and performance artists. There
is a hot air balloon for aerials by Scott. All of the performances are for us to film, which is great
fun for me. Some turn out to be exclusively for the whales, though they seem totally indifferent to
this earnest human effort at communication. Will is spending thousands of dollars to provide
luminaries of new age culture to entertain them. Paul Winter and his ‘Consort’ perform at dawn
on a floating platform towed in for this purpose and anchored in the estuary two miles from our
camp. The whales and the film crew, Ag and I, are the only audience. The nearest breaching by a
potentially appreciative whale is a quarter mile away.
The campsite is on an island separated from the mainland by the estuary. It is about ten
miles from the nearest village or road, so the participants and all the supplies are brought in on
launches by Baja Expeditions. This is an outfit run by former Colorado River guide Tim Means, a
big affable guy I soon became friends with. Sharon and I brought our recently acquired kayaks
and we both learn to do the Eskimo roll. Sharon is kayaking one morning when a whale spy-hops
a few feet off her bow, hovering there to look at her for at least fifteen seconds. Hennessey has a
magical encounter with a harbor seal when it comes up to the campfire at dusk to see what is
going on. It settles in like another person right next to Hennessey, the youngest member of the
group. She strokes its head and it calmly looks into her eyes as though they are old friends. It
stays there with her for about ten minutes and then flaps its way back through the sand to the
water.
Greenfield Ranch, April ’76
A weekend at the yurt with Tanya, Michelle and Geoffrey. Hiking, swimming and hanging
out under the big redwoods. The girls are skillful hitch-hikers and have been getting up here
more often than I have so everything is in good shape. They like taking care of it and I’m proud of
them. Ralph Scott is helping Judy rebuild her house on 23 rd street and she seems less angry with
me these days.
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Baja, May ‘76
I’ve been making a film for Tim Means to promote the
trips offered by his Baja Expeditions outfit. Several trips to the
most beautiful parts of Baja. He provides me with financing for the
film. It’s a trade. I don’t charge him a fee and Sea of Cortez is my
film to do whatever I want with; it costs him only the lab and
film stock expenses. My method is to concentrate on the
place and its flora and fauna. Not only does that suit my
style, it seems to me that the best way to encourage people to
see Baja is to avoid showing other people in these pristine
desert spaces. There is no sales pitch or narration. There are only the natural sounds I record
on my Nagra SN as I film, and In C, Terry Riley’s hypnotic music. My friend Virginia Quesada
knows Riley well enough to call him, describe the film and ask if I can use the music. He says
yes. A generous gift.
This is my most ambitious attempt at working alone,
without a soundman, recording sync sound with the high quality
little reel to reel recorder and an AKG directional mic mounted on
top of the camera. It turns out well. Tim’s already showing the film
to gatherings of interested travelers with considerable success. I
show it a few times as my latest personal work and then shelve it without any attempt to find
distribution. Though I am happy with the film and had a great time making it, I think it’s too
minor to bother with any marketing efforts. I’m rarely satisfied with my own films once completed
and shown publicly. Once I get some distance, I want to make another draft, but can’t afford
another trip through the lab.
Bermuda, October ‘76
I continue to hone my sync and verite’ documentary shooting skills on projects like
Dolphin, a documentary by Hardy Jones and Michael Wiese. We interview treasure hunter Mel
Fischer, in Florida and he tells us about encountering unusually friendly dolphin at certain
coordinates on the edge of the Bermuda Triangle. We go there, and our underwater crew gets the
most intimate footage of dolphin in the wild anyone has ever seen. Stephan Gagne, a brilliant
sound engineer who until recently was in charge of the Bill Graham organization’s sound
systems, has designed an underwater keyboard to entertain the dolphin. They are so curious and
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crowding around him so attentively that Gagne is the centerpiece of the underwater footage,
along with the dolphin. Gagne and I will work with Hardy Jones on a new film in Japan early
next year.
Maine, October ‘78
Michael Wiese hires me to do a few days of
shooting on a portrait of Buckminster Fuller. He’s
making it with Bucky’s grandson. We spend two days
with Bucky at his place in Maine and he and I establish
an immediate rapport. We sit around his kitchen table
talking and when I ask him about the Dymaxion car he
says that it was too far ahead of its time for America.
When the prototype got rammed by another vehicle there was so much bad publicity he had to
give up on it. We go for a sail with Bucky on Penobscot Bay that yields some dramatic footage.
It’s a pleasure to shoot him at the helm of his boat because he radiates his love of sailing in every
frame. I put my Nagra SN in his pocket to record him talking to Wiese as they stroll through a
meadow. I prefer this to using a radio mike, which I find unreliable. Bucky loves the high tech
craftsmanship of the little Nagra. At the end of this visit, Bucky gives me a map of the bay with an
inscription reflecting our camaraderie and a tracing in red ink of our course during the afternoon
of sailing. A few weeks later we shoot a performance by Bucky with Werner Erhardt, the founder
of EST, at the Pasadena auditorium. Before it begins we spend some time with them in a green
room backstage. Erhardt is clearly in awe of Fuller and nervous about engaging in a dialogue
with him in front of a large audience. He is fawningly obsequious, and Bucky treats him like a
silly little boy, leaving him tongue-tied and far from his usual domineering self.
Baja, June ‘78
Tim Means has discovered a fantastic old character named Tacho Arce in central Baja
California. He calls and gives me an intriguing account of going into deep and remote canyons
where mysterious cave paintings have been hidden for
centuries. Why not make a film there? Tacho is related
to many of the people who live in the region and has a
string of mules to carry us and our equipment. Larry
Reed and I are already planning to make a film together
in Bali, so we decide we might as well make this one
first, as a warm up. One challenge is packing the gear so that it can travel safely by mule and is
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eady to work under dusty conditions. I figure out how to pack an ACL, three magazines, two
lenses and two batteries in a Halliburton pilot case, which is far smaller than any camera case. It
will fit in an overhead compartment, so I’ll never need to put it in checked baggage when I fly.
The practice I get packing light and tight for this trip will probably serve me well.
Larry and I drive down to meet Tim at Tacho's ranchito a few miles north of San Ignacio.
Here we find a wonderfully isolated culture that has changed little in the centuries since the
Spaniards arrived. Mounting Tacho’s mules at the end of the road, we head up a narrow defile
into the mountains. I ride with one of my two ACL cameras on my lap so that I am always ready
to shoot. Our first stop on the way to the canyons is at the village of Santa Teresa where we film a
wedding the next day. The bride and groom are cousins. The locally distilled mezcal is fragrant
and better than any I have ever tasted. The meals are
also superb: roasted goat or chicken, thick tortillas and
fresh goat cheese.
In the deep canyons we camp above a beautiful
stream and go to work filming the mysterious
pictographs whose exact origins have never been
determined. Black and red figures with arms raised holding spears; whales, tortoises, coyotes
and deer running across the roofs of overhanging cliffs. Hunting is the dominant theme. Our
serious intentions amuse Tacho. He thinks the claim that America
put a man on the moon is a joke and a trick performed with the
help of Hollywood. He and his young assistant Chuey make up a
song about hobbling us at night so we can’t steal the mules. I get
them to sing it on camera, indicating their amused distain for us.
To them the cave paintings are no more significant than the
doodling of children in the sand. If they had not brought us and
our money, Tacho would consider them less important than a flowering cactus.
We go for a last swim in the pool below our camp. I lose my footing as I dive over a rock
lurking just below the surface. I smash directly into it. This creates a rapidly growing welt in the
center of my forehead. I wonder how I got away with making the dive a dozen times to have my
luck fail on the last day. By the next morning I have a horn-shaped protuberance growing from
my forehead that is the source of more than a few raucous jokes. We break camp and spend the
rest of the day filming at a ranchita up the canyon where we are welcomed and fed a hearty goat
stew. That day I do some of the best shooting of the entire project. I feel such rapport with what
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I’m doing that I think the blow to my forehead has actually opened my third eye. I do a lot of
handheld shooting with a wide lens, which will give me the fluid quality I want. One take of a
little boy learning to walk with his teenage sister is done by crabbing backwards with the camera
just above the ground.
During a parting meal with Tim at a restaurant in San Ignacio, a young doctor from San
Diego looks at my forehead and tells me I should be in a hospital and, that unless I am very lucky,
I will probably not live long enough to get to one. Under the circumstances it seems a brazen and
slightly sadistic thing to say. He clearly takes pleasure in predicting the death of a perfect
stranger. I laugh and say I’m going to ignore his warning, then begin the drive to San Francisco
with Larry. I never consider seeing a doctor about the opening of my third eye. Ironically, I hear
from Tim that this same doctor suffered a fatal heart attack while playing tennis shortly after my
encounter with him.
Chicago, August ’78
A call from Terry Zwigoff about shooting the Chicago
segments of his film Louie-Bluie. He’s experienced a false
start with another cameraman, and is in a jam. We work out
a deal and soon are in Chicago with an amazing group of
black musicians who started playing together 30 years ago.
The main subject, Howard Armstrong, is superb: a musician,
artist, cartoonist and raconteur. The week of shooting goes well and Terry asks me to consult on
the editing as well.
El Cerrito
On the road for three days, with my son Geoff and his friend Trisha. They are
good company, and it’s a welcome change of pace from being here every day working
on these journal entries.
My brother Rudy is turning 60 and his friend Lois offered to throw a party for
him at her place near Covelo in the Round Valley northeast of Willits. Going with Geoff
and Trisha was an overdue hit of tribal bonding and a chance to hang out together longer
than we usually have time for. Geoffrey drove Trisha’s Audi G-4 Quattro with skill,
much of the time listening to a CD with some Stones songs that were never released.
He’s playing drums for a band that he’s recording on Tuesday, so he emphatically
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drummed the steering wheel in a kind of psychic rehearsal. He’s mainly a very good
guitarist, but also plays piano and drums.
The party, spread in and around a 1930’s era farmhouse, was an exercise in
getting to know several people I may never see again. Like Jay, who told me his story of
leaving the U.S. in ’68 to escape the draft. He lived in France, Israel and Sweden before
coming back and working in Berkeley as an architectural designer. Then he moved up
here and the guy he was renting from offered to sell the place to him for a reasonable
price if he could just put down five grand and continue paying the same amount as the
rent until it was paid off. Brotherly capitalism.
It’s a hot summer night in Covelo. Good food, wine and herbal smoke. During a
round of toasts I’m prompted to tell a story about Rudy when he was eight. He had
already read most of Mark Twain and one day he posted a sign over the front door
reading, “ In dogs we trust.” I tell the laughing crowd that I knew he’d have an
interesting life. I ramble on for a bit about myself and how a few years ago my life
changed in two seconds and now that I have a second chance I’m glad to be here to meet
all of Rudy’s friends and neighbors.
After a skiing accident a few months ago, Rudy decided to take a break from his
floor laying business to heal an injured knee, so he rented out his house and set up a
camp in the field behind it. He bought a small trailer to live in during bad weather and a
forty-foot cargo container to move all his books, tools and personal effects into. He built
an outdoor kitchen with a tarp over it next to the trailer, raised a well-ventilated tent over
a bedstead, put a fifty gallon horse trough on some pallets to bathe in and built a ‘fly
proof’ latrine in some cedar saplings. It’s a rustic compound that I find quite appealing,
especially after lying in the horse trough for an hour at the end of the second hot
afternoon, talking to Rudy and watching him water his tomatoes and corn. The place is
typical of Rudy’s funky good taste and cleverness.
He heats up some lentil soup for us and then Geoff, Trisha and I head south in
the smoky glow of evening. Forest fires are still smoldering just to the north after this
catastrophic month: 1300 lightening sparked fires in California and floods throughout
the Midwestern states. Is this the beginning of the apocalypse?
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We decide to stop at Harbin Springs for the night and have the good fortune to get
their last empty room, which we share; I’m in a sleeping bag on my Therma Rest on the
floor. The pools are all overflowing with summer bathers. I go from hot to very hot to
cold, being cautious and using my dragon cane from Bali. Harbin is like a pow-wow of
naked ghosts from the sixties. I remain detached as I quietly admire the most beautiful
bodies. The best-looking are an athletic black guy and a mulatto woman. A couple of
long-haired white women come close, but don’t have the vibrant energy of the lithe,
cocoa-colored woman with dreadlocks half-way down her back. At the end of the
afternoon I’m soaking in a small hot pool when a man holding his three-month-old infant
daughter asks if I suffer from M. S., as he says he does. I explain that I broke my neck
and back in a bike accident and we strike up an exchange about ourselves that is
surprisingly intimate and thorough. It’s the hot spring syndrome at work; you either
ignore each other or you’re instant friends. He’s struggling to finish writing a book about
corruption in the Dalai Lama’s sect of Tibetan Buddhism. I tell him about my book and
he says it sounds like something he’d like to read. Everyone says that; it’s the polite
response and doesn’t mean anything much. We talk for over an hour while he and his
young wife pass their baby back and forth in the healing 98-degree water. He was born in
England, grew up in Kenya, moved to Canada and then here. He volunteers that he’s
farther right than left politically, but it seems more of an intellectual stance than a
political one. I decide not to plum that territory. It’s time to leave and I get home in time
to hear reactions to Obama’s speech to 200,000 Berliners.
S.F. May ‘79
I’m upgrading my equipment package for a film with Larry Reed about shadow puppetry
and Balinese culture. I buy high-speed lenses, an 8-track mixer, and a Shoeps microphone. There
is money in the bank and I am confident and excited about how things are going. I’m doing the
work I want to do and leading the kind of life I love; each new film is another adventure. The
difficulties of my life with Sharon continue, but since I am away much of the time it is bearable. I
console myself with the fact that all my friends have rocky marriages, and ours is never boring. I
promise Sharon that she and Hennessey can come over to Bali for a couple of weeks once we are
near the end of the project.
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Bali, September ‘79
Larry Reed has lived in Bali and studied shadow
puppetry with Pak Rajeg, one of the foremost dalangs on
the island. Larry is fluent in Indonesian and also has a
good command of Balinese. He’s a natural with languages:
fluent in German, French and Spanish too. We move into a
guesthouse in Sukawati and live there for the first week or
so. The smells, colors and the climate are so reminiscent of
Latin America that I keep wondering why I’m not hearing Spanish. It seems an amusing form of
culture shock, but it slows my start at trying to learn
Indonesian. Once we are acclimated we move to the village
of Tunjuk, where Larry's friend Sumandi has a small house
that he’s made available to us. I immediately feel
comfortable in the calm Hindu climate of village life,
surrounded by nature and non-mechanized agriculture, with
the incredible geometry of terraced rice paddies in every
direction.
Steve Gagne, the skillful soundman I worked with on Dolphin and Hardy Jones’s Island
at the Edge is a big help on technical decisions. Electricity has not reached Tunjuk yet, so Steve
sets up a system of charging our camera and Nagra batteries from car batteries, which we send
in for re-charging on the bus that goes to town every morning. After trying once, unhappily, to
work with a noisy, rented generator, we buy ten 12-volt motorcycle batteries, put them in a
wooden box and wire them in series to provide 120 volts for lighting our night scenes. This gives
us about forty minutes of shooting with a couple of tota-lights.
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Larry and I have decided not to make a typical
ethnographic documentary but, instead, to put together
a small cast and shoot a simple narrative with a strong
documentary flavor and a deep involvement in
describing the culture. Larry wrote a treatment as part
of the proposal that got him a development grant from
the J.D. R. III Foundation. From this he evolved a
script from his very sharp observations of Balinese village life and culture.

Bali’s ancient irrigation system is a remarkable feat of engineering. The mountain at the
center of the island is the source of nearly all the water. As it descends, the water flows from one
community to the next and is filtered and purified by being forced to pass through the soil after
each village uses it. Every village has a Subak, an irrigation council, to administer the system
and make sure that the water is diverted to each district and field in a fair and timely fashion.
Bali, November ‘79
When Sharon arrives with Hennessey I take a weekend off to stay with them at a ritzy
beachfront lodge in Sanur. We’ve been apart for three months and I hope we might re-unite
happily with a romantic interlude here in paradise. It doesn’t quite happen, though I have a great
time with Hennessey, who is now a long-haired, perky little beauty. We swim and play on the
beach and go for long walks. Sharon is her usual disagreeable self, finding fault with me and
everything I offer. After a couple of days the three of us move to Tunjuk and I go back to work on
the film. Hennessey makes several friends by the end of the first day; she is ready to explore this
new culture and needs very little attention from us. After Sharon sees that there is no part for her
in the filmmaking she gets involved in the ritual art-making activities of the village women, who
are happy to include her in their work weaving talismans. But its clear that she thinks she should
be in charge of our project; she continues to make snide comments and is difficult to live with in
our cramped quarters. My disaffected way of ignoring her probably makes it worse.
S.F. January ‘80
We finish shooting and run out of raw stock as the monsoon hits Bali in early December.
I have been gone nearly four months, isolated from news of an increasingly tense world. The
Russians invade Afghanistan as we return to the U.S. and the Shah seems about to lose Iran,
which I’m afraid may give us Ronald Reagan as president next year. I bury myself in the work of
syncing up and then appraising the twenty hours of footage with Larry. After the hard times in
Bali I am determined to quietly end living with Sharon so I often stay at my studio on Minna
Street.
The other day I rode across town and dropped in on a woman I’ve always liked. I
apologized for just ringing her doorbell unexpected, saying I was out for a ride and needed a
destination. It turns out to be her bed, where we begin an enjoyable dalliance. I refer to her as
Madam X, admitting casually to Sharon that I’m not faithful. When Sharon realizes I am serious
about ending our marriage she promises to finish an affair she has been having for the past
couple of years and swears she will be easier to get along with. I am wary, and say I think it’s too
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late, but she tries very hard to convince me that she wants to stay together. I doubt that her
combative nature will allow her to ever be happy with me, or perhaps with anyone. I often puzzle
over why I put myself through this struggle with her for so many years. Is it my fate to be
challenged by smart, seductive, contentious women? Perhaps it’s a legacy of the hard times with
my mother, which drove me to see easier women as boring.
S.F. April ‘80
I almost escaped, but Sharon just told me she is pregnant and that she wants to find a place
to live that has trees, grass and birds, unlike the inner-city loft we have been renting all these
years. Biology and feminine intuition have won another round. Time once again to buckle down
and try to somehow make our marriage work. Maybe this time, pregnancy will signal a turning
point and we’ll learn how to treat each other better. We’re buying a cottage in San Anselmo.
Sharon’s friend, architect Robert Mangurian, working with Kent Hodgetts, is designing a
beautiful, simple addition. Two of her favorite men and her enslaved husband, building a new
nest for the pregnant queen bird.
San Anselmo, April ‘81
When the contractor I am working with walks off the job halfway through the project, I
become the contractor and put my best energy into building an unusual house. I hire my friends
David Boatwright and Kent Hodgetts to help finish. Early in January Savannah is born. When
her head emerges from the womb, she seems to pause to get her bearings. She calmly looks me in
the eye for about a minute—an amazing minute of unmistakable bonding for me, and a look that
seems to say, “so that’s who that voice belongs to”—and then she proceeds with being born.
We finish the house a month later and move in. I am proud of it and Sharon seems happy
with the change and with our new baby. I rent out my studio, transfer everything to the loft and
settle into a solid period of editing the Bali footage with Larry. I ride my bike the 52 miles to the
loft and back every day and love it. When the El Nino storms create landslides above Sausalito
and close highway 101, I am able to ride across the middle of the empty Golden Gate Bridge and
for those few minutes it feels as though I am the last person still on wheels.
S.F. August ‘81
Work on the Bali film is interrupted only occasionally by minor shoots for others and a
happy break for another run down the Colorado with my fifteen year old son Geoffrey, who takes
over rowing one of the rafts from a middle-aged guy who can’t handle the big water. Geoff and I
have run a couple of California rivers and he’s learned to row, but this is his first trip on big
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water. He’s athletic and well coordinated; he rises to the occasion and has a flawless run. This
trip is good for both of us, despite a Citroen breakdown on the way home. Sharon’s found a store
up in Sonoma County at Two Rocks where she buys about forty feet of Christo’s Running Fence
for a few bucks. I hang it over the terrace outside the sliding barn door in the middle of our living
room. It’s like a silk; a sky filter that cuts the sun’s glare.
S.F. June ‘82
After showing Shadow Master at the San Francisco Film Festival, I get a call from a woman
named Tina Wendt asking me to submit a bid to produce a film about the treasures of Chinese art
at the Palace Museum in Taipei. I soon learn that the project is part of a Byzantine scheme to
raise money for the YWCA of Oakland, whose sister city is Taipei. I win the bid, despite
competition from several prominent local filmmakers. It’s a triumph and I decide maybe I’ve
made it to the big time in the local pond. I ask Larry Reed to co-direct, Kent Hodgetts to record
sound, my neighbor, photographer David Seligman, to help me with lighting. Tina’s nephew,
Doug Wendt, is my camera assistant. None of us know much about Chinese art, so Larry and I go
to work doing research. On the tech side, I build a small dolly-boom using an obsolete dental
drill arm that I found at the Goodwill store. The arm is fully articulated and I am able to make
complex and flowing camera moves around an object or along a surface. I mount it on a platform
with small fat tires to provide smooth tracking. I am proud of this little invention and of my ability
to turn small investments into unusual tools.
Taipei, July ‘82
Larry and I leave San Francisco two weeks ahead of the other crewmembers to do pre-
production. Tina Wendt has arranged for Mai Chung from Taipei to serve as our guide and
translator. She is a patron of the YWCA and a supporter of the project. As a member of the elite
business class she is able to give us a thorough introduction to the local culture with an amazing
emphasis on great food at the best restaurants in Taipei.
There’s a serious problem when we are ready to begin shooting. The museum refuses to let
us film the art we have chosen. This is a shock that confounds everyone involved. Tina had said
that everything was arranged with the museum and that permission had been granted. Since we
have nothing on paper we are forced to start negotiating almost from scratch. We sense that the
museum officials suspect that part of our mission might be to photograph classic ceramics and
figures so that the YWCA can then start making cheap replicas to sell on the open market. We
later stumble on evidence that this might have been the case. Larry is able to make some headway
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using his connections at J.D.R. the 3 rd Foundation. This surprise from the museum gives me the
excuse to do the coverage I want anyway. I expand our documentary’s palette to include more
current Taiwanese art, craft, and contemporary, as well as traditional culture, so that we can be
ready to forget the museum if they don’t let us film the art we have chosen. It’s material for my
kind of filmmaking: an annual ceremony of penitents walking on hot coals; worshippers doing
trance dances in a smoky temple; an early morning tea ceremony where old men drink tea
brewed from treasured leaves two hundred years old, and extensive footage of the vibrant life on
the streets of Taipei.
In the end, the museum allows us in with the camera, but restricts us to filming only a
dozen pieces, which we must specify in advance. Larry and I choose carefully. The most
rewarding result is spending a whole day on one Sung dynasty scroll about forty feet long. It is
like an eleventh century graphic novel, and I make use of the dolly boom to move from one
chapter to another.
S.F. September’82
The YWCA has spent our entire post-production budget on an ill-conceived West Coast tour
by a Taiwanese pop singer who bombed in every city from San Diego to Vancouver. Their plan
was to finance the film with profits from the music tour; in effect the reverse took place.
I go ahead with syncing up all the footage and making an assembly roll, hoping that the
YWCA will raise some money. They don’t, since everyone involved in the two-pronged project’s
conception is either disgraced or fired. I interest the Cultural attaché at the Los Angeles
Taiwanese embassy in getting the funding from his government, but then, sensing how hard it will
be to satisfy them with the verite style documentary I envision, I back out and leave it on the shelf.
It’s another hard lesson learned about the pitfalls of independent filmmaking. Though I’m in the
hole for some of the post-production, at least I made enough to pay all of us for the shoot in
Taiwan.
S.F. April ‘83
Sharon has written a strong, clever script for a narrative film called Mother and asks me
to produce it for her on video. She wants to have a go at script writing and to reassert herself as
an artist. She spent months working on a script with her friend Gisela Getty before they gave up
on it. This new effort with me is a simple detective story with a twist. All she needs is for me to
pull off producing it and then she will have something to show. I know it’s dangerous territory
but decide to do it to keep the peace and as a way of learning how to work in video. I ask my
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friends from Video Arts, a production company, to help. I direct, and Kim Salyer is the director of
photography. I do some re-writing, which annoys Sharon, and then I cast it from the pool of local
actors, with daughters Hennessey and Savannah as the offspring of the main character, played by
Taylor Gilbert, who is really quite good. She represents Sharon in many ways: a frustrated
housewife married to a filmmaker who she murders and buries in the back yard. The
autobiographical elements are more chilling than amusing but undoubtedly part of Mother’s
strength.
We put it on tape in less than a week of carefully organized shooting. To save money,
Sharon takes on the chores of ‘craft-service’ so that there are meals and refreshments on the set.
She would rather have been directing and is her usual ill-tempered, competitive self, but she
realizes that she must trust me and stay out of the way. I am
confident and happy about working with actors; directing them
seems to come naturally to me. Mother is a dark piece and a
challenge to direct. Kim and I have good rapport about how to
make the piece look the way I want, more like film than video,
with lots of contrast in the lighting. Ed Rudolph does the sound
recording and edits the footage with me. We de-colorize it and
finish in black and white, to get as close as possible to the look of classic film noir.
S.F. July ‘83
Mother shows at the Mill Valley Film Festival and as part of an American Federation of
the Arts tour called 'Revising Romance' and in Holland at the Kijkhuis Video Festival. It is well
received and even makes a little money. Not sufficient kudos for Sharon. She has more ambitious
goals in mind for a full-length version of her script. With help from Gisela and other contacts in
L.A. she uses the video to promote me and her script in Hollywood. She finds an agent who is
eager to see me expand Mother into a feature. I feel we have gotten the best out of Sharon’s
original story and that in the feature length version she is simply exploiting the current trend
towards sexual violence. So I shy away. I don’t want to spend the necessary amount of time
networking down in Los Angeles to make something happen that I don’t have my heart in. I don’t
bother to go down to meet my agent, and soon we are no longer in touch. I’m not hungry for the
Hollywood experience; it doesn’t appeal to me. I have hit my stride in the documentary world and
don’t want to break it. People call me; I don’t have to hustle for work. I am the
filmmaker/cinematographer people look for when they have a difficult project. I have experience
making my own films added to my cinematography for others, most of which now end up at
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festivals and PBS, so my camera work is on display and well known. For quality conscious
producers, my high-end package of cameras, lenses, lights and sound equipment is appealing.
New York, August ‘83
Sharon’s pissed at me for dropping her feature ball. That costs me the points I briefly
won from her when I finished Mother, so I am happy to hit the road on George Csicsery’s Where
the Heart Roams, a documentary about the romance novel industry and Passage to Power, John
Giannini’s piece on the founding convention of the Vietnam Veterans of America in Washington
D.C. Both of these films, even though both defer my salary, have more appeal than trying to make
a feature I don’t believe in. George’s film includes the bizarre challenge of shooting during a
chartered Amtrak train trip—the ‘Love Train’—from Los Angeles to New York with dozens of
romance novel writers. The conditions for filming are difficult. David Seligman is a great help
gelling windows and rigging subtle lights as well as sprinting up and down the corridors to fetch
equipment. Jay Miracle faithfully lurks at the edge of my shots with my boom mic and Nagra 4.2.
Before we interview eighty-year-old Barbara Cartland at her New York hotel, she tells me that
until I give her a ‘footlight’, she won’t say a word. It’s all about hiding her wrinkles.
John Giannini’s film is a grueling week at the Roosevelt Hotel with a lot of great veterans
like Bobby Muller who are adamantly anti-war and outraged by Reagan’s invasion of Grenada.
Nevada, November ‘83
Kim Shelton is an energetic and focused young filmmaker who is fascinated with the
traditions of western ranching. She asks me to shoot a film by spending a month ‘on the wagon’
during the ’83 fall roundup at the I/L Ranch in north-central Nevada. The I/L is a million acre
ranch that still uses a horse drawn chuck wagon. We join them at the ranch house a day before
they harness an eight-horse team and load up to head east toward the meadows below the
ranch’s mountainous summer range. By the end of that first day of shooting, soundman Doug
Dunderdale and I establish a basic rapport with the cowboys that grows into productive mutual
respect. They are sneeringly dubious about having a film crew with them until they see that we
aren’t afraid to get dirty and that I will risk my neck and my camera by balancing on the
singletree of the wagon while it is in motion, to get close-ups of the team at work. The ringleader,
Dean, whose idea it is to use the big team and who’s in charge of making it work, seems flattered
when I make a point of getting thorough coverage of him driving the team on the first day. He
gives Kim the title for her film when I ask him to describe himself. “As far as I’m concerned,” he
says, “we are The Highly Exalted. If you don’t think I’m highly exalted, maybe you better look in
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the mirror when you shave in the morning.” This mixture
of bravado and aggression make Dean the natural
spokesman for the other eight cowboys and the ranch
foreman as well. His soliloquies about cowboys and the
way city folks see them provide an ongoing voice-over
throughout the un-narrated film.
Part of the agreement with the ranch is that the film
crew will take care of its own cooking and not burden the chuck wagon cook. So most nights we
stay in a trailer across from a small casino and gas station at a wide spot in the road called
Taylor Canyon, about forty minutes south of the roundup operation. I brought a large ‘wall’ tent
we can all sleep in when we want to film the dawn starts of the cowboys’ day. I love this project
and feel totally in my element. I am grateful for what Kim has found and how she has brazened
her way into the cowboy world to set the project up.
Kim hires Sharon to do the shopping and cooking for us. It’s another opportunity to
include Sharon. Sharon eagerly accepts the job, but I know her dissatisfaction about just being
along to do the chores will probably create problems. She’s at Taylor Canyon hanging around at
the gas station/saloon/casino or cooking, or shopping for food in Elko with our nearly three-year-
old daughter Savannah while I am off having a good time with Kim, Doug and a bunch of
cowboys. As soon as she realizes she’ll be far from the action her mood is more dour and
quarrelsome than usual.
After a month on the wagon we pull into ranch headquarters and the cowboys are ready to
go to town and check in at the whorehouses. I think we should go with them and know they’ll help
us get a scene with the women, at least something at one of the cathouse bars. Kim refuses,
though I beg her to let me go alone with the soundman. She doesn’t see the importance of having
this footage for a realistic ending and doesn’t want to spend another day or dollar away from
home. Now, a couple of months later, during the final stage of the edit, we make a special trip to
film a safer and weaker version of what I had wanted to do: at a casino bar in Elko, without the
prostitutes and the richer mood they would have generated.
California, May ‘84
Nancy Kelly came out west to explore ranch life and ended up making a film called A
Cowhand’s Song with her friend Gwen Clancy. I shot some final scenes for them, and they edited
at my studio on Minna Street. Nancy asks me to shoot her next documentary, Cowgirls. I am
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happy to join her to make three portraits of ranch women. The first is Norma Hapgood, who has
been ranching for a lifetime with her husband and daughter in Northeastern California’s
Surprise Valley and out on their permit range in Nevada. Norma is a strong, agile woman of
great vitality and spirit who is happiest in the saddle, but equally competent crawling under a
windrowing machine with a grease gun. To me, she represents the best of rural America, and her
way of relating to her husband Hillard indicates a classically solid partnership. At dawn every
morning she goes out to milk the cow while he fixes a traditional ranch breakfast of ham, eggs
and biscuits.
Wyoming, June ‘84
ranch. And fun to follow with the camera.
Oregon, July ‘84
Melody Harding is the ‘foreman’ of a ranch in
Wyoming, and, like Norma, she is happiest in the saddle,
though when we arrive to begin shooting she is stacking bales
of hay with the vigor of a young man. When she pauses for a
drink and a pinch of snuff, she comments on how hard it is to
find men to do this work she’s doing with pleasure. Strong,
beautiful, smart; as competent as any man to manage this big
The third segment of Cowgirls is about two young sisters on their parents’ ranch in
Oregon. We film them riding, shoeing their horses, and vaccinating cattle with their father. I am
amazed at how dedicated they are and how quickly they learn not to look at the camera, though
the youngest one gives me a brave grimace when her horse steps on her while she is cleaning a
hoof in preparation for shoeing. Right after Cowgirls shows on PBS’s Point of View I see Marc
Weiss, who started it, at Gail Silva’s. He jokes that POV is a showcase for my camera work,
since I have shot more of their offerings than anyone else. Word of mouth and the quality of my
work have won me a niche in a difficult business that I still refuse to think of as a business.
Nicaragua, October ‘84
As the Contra war grows more intense in Nicaragua I’m looking for some way to have a
closer look and maybe make a film. Peter Amundson tells me about an organization that is
recruiting filmmakers to teach two-week seminars at INCINE, the film institute in Managua. I
make a phone call to offer my services and before long I’m at the Intercontinental Hotel in
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Managua with some interesting journalists and the occasional CIA spook sneering at the
‘sandalistas’.
The spirit of revolution is still strong and hopeful, though I’m finding the more fervent
Sandinistas unbearably sanctimonious. My strongest connection to what is happening in
Nicaragua centers on total disgust with the Reagan Administration’s policy of mining the harbors
and bringing in ‘dirty warriors’ from the Argentine military to train and support the Contras in
Honduras. The Contras are mostly Somoza’s former Guardia who were mostly thugs and
assassins.
Nicaragua is a surreal threat; the Sandinista spirit of rebellion reminds the U.S. of what
she has lost, and there is the added threat that the U.S will look silly once again for backing the
bankrupt vision of Somoza and his oligarchy. We’ve already invaded this country fourteen times.
Why do I keep thinking that America has absorbed the dark traits of those she defeated in WW II?
El Cerrito
Just back from a two-week stay in Chile with my old friend Susana Blaustein
Munoz, who moved to Santiago from Mendoza, Argentina last year to live with her new
Chilean love, Maria Elena. I had a difficult but interesting trip. Susana is teaching film at
a great school in the heart of downtown Santiago, the University of Arts and Social
Sciences. She invited me to come down and show some films and I decided to make the
trip, partly to see her, but also to get her thoughts on the film we shot together years ago
about the ‘Dirty War’ in Argentina that I’m trying to finish editing. She wasn’t able to
connect with my edit or encourage me very much. I wanted to honor our initial
partnership but it seems she bailed out of the project too long ago.
I made the trip on frequent flyer Delta miles and had to sit around Atlanta waiting
for a connecting flight. Too much sitting is murder, even though I can’t walk very far
either. At least I’ve booked aisle seats so I can stand up and stretch my stiffness every so
often during the flights. I finished reading Dark Star, a novel by Chilean Roberto Bolano
and went to a bookstore where I picked up a copy of Obama’s The Audacity of Hope. I
read it with pleasure and the realization that we might end up with a president who is a
good writer. And knows how to think. If he wins will he have the strength to rescue
America?
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Arriving exhausted the next morning in Santiago I was struck with the fact that
it’s been fifty years since I was last here, with Naren Bali, on the motorcycle. I chatted
with the taxi driver about current politics; glad to be able to warm up my Spanish. Knew
I’d need it when I went to Susana’s school a couple of days later.
At the University of Arts and Social Sciences I showed my piece about
Argentina’s hijos and hijas, the children of the disappeared, and Maria’s Story, the
documentary about El Salvador. This was fun and I was able to function smoothly during
a question and answer period afterwards. Susana was standing by to translate if I needed
her. There was so much enthusiasm that the director of the film school asked me to do a
second showing the following week, which I happily agreed to. There was a third
showing at Le Monde Diplomatique, a radical publishing house that has a weekly film
screening. A red-haired teacher brought about fifty of her students, who took a lot of
notes and asked some good questions. After they left, three adults came forward and
asked if they could buy a copy of the film about Argentina and El Salvador. I said no, but
I can give you a copy. They said they were anarchists and they would accept the copy
only if I would let them bring me a copy of ‘Romero’, a feature about the Salvadoran
archbishop shot at his pulpit, a film I have been chasing for years and want to see. Also a
film by Miguel Litton and a film about the repression in Uruguay. Two days later they
showed up at Susana and Maria Elena’s house with the films.
Santiago has certainly changed and seems more like L.A. than the town it was
fifty years ago. It has spread far beyond its colonial center and there are now huge areas
filled with sprawling shacks of the impoverished victims of the ‘economic miracle’, the
triumph of the neo-liberal policies of the ‘Chicago boys’. Maria Elena tells me the
country is in a state of amnesia about what happened during the Pinochet years. Everyone
is so busy working two or three jobs just to survive that they have no time or energy for
dissent or activism. Much like here in America. Apart from the three showings, the best
part of the trip was getting to know Susana in a more thorough, deeper way than ever
before, and hearing the story of her difficult struggle as a gay Latina with a conservative
and repressive family. The happy ending is that two years ago she and Maria Elena found
each other miraculously on the internet and have been together ever since.
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Managua, October ‘84
A couple of the students in my cinematography seminar are already accomplished
cameramen. Frank Peneda is so good I’m not sure what he’s doing here. After a few days of
rather boring standard exercises we find something real to do: making a documentary report for
the government’s series ‘Cara al Pueblo’ about the situation on the Atlantic coast. Maybe that’s
why Frank is here. This means a trip to the end of the road by bus and then by boat down the San
Juan River to Bluefields where there is a whole different culture. Sultry, tropical. Lots of beautiful
black faces. A Salsa-Caribe band; Luis Carrion dancing with a uniformed beauty who is wearing
a pistol with an engraved silver handle; a bathtub of iced beer and half the Sandinista directorate
under one roof with only a handful of casual sentries posted around the neighborhood; sheets of
rain from sudden storms off the Caribbean. We shoot 35mm film from the Soviet Union and send
it to Cuba for processing. I leave the country knowing I will return if I can raise the money to
make a documentary, even though I’m not sure yet what it will be about. This is the freedom that
trying to make a feature in Hollywood might not have allowed me; I can just plunge in and have
an adventure, relying on my filmmaking experience to help me turn the adventure into a
documentary. I start to improvise a treatment by describing the struggle and conflict I’ve been
seeing in Nicaragua.
Barcelona, November ‘84
I apply for grants from the Pioneer Fund and the Rocky Mountain Film Center and then
fly to Spain with Jaime Kibben to shoot a promotional film for the Ayuntamiento de Barcelona,
with Dan Wohlfeiler, a producer who has lived there and learned to speak Catalan like a native.
Happy to get the call from Dan, since it means returning to one of my favorite cities and a host of
memories. Our main topic is the great cuisine available in Barcelona, so we end up filming, and
then eating, at all the best restaurants in town. I bring my bicycle and get up early every morning
for a ride to Montguich, the old fort overlooking the Ramblas and the harbor. When the shoot is
over Jaime and I fly to Paris and share a hotel room with his old love, Pam Moscow. I have the
opportunity to ride over the Cristo-wrapped Pont Neuf, which is closed to all but pedestrians and
cyclists. I drop in on the bankrupt Éclair Factory and meet the handful of technicians still
working in a ghostly, barn-like building full of empty work benches scattered with parts and
tools. One of these guys gives my ACL a complete tune-up in two hours while I watch. He charges
me eighty bucks. A welcome bargain.
Nicaragua, May ‘85
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I got the two small grants, so I’m back in Managua to
sink in and find a focus. This time I rent a room in a private
house that Saul Landau’s son Greg finds for me. Greg moved
to Managua in ’80 to join a popular band, Groupo Moncotal.
He introduces me to Augusto Tablada, whose nickname is
Tuto and who has some experience as a sound recordist. Tuto
is ready to help me plan the film. We drive around the country
in his beat-up old Datsun to research locations and meet
potential subjects. On the road to Matagalpa we stop by a stack of watermelons with a couple of
kids in charge of selling them. We buy one and Tuto uses their machete to slice it up. The melon is
like nectar. Tuto begins talking with the kids, telling them riddles, asking them questions. Massive
and bear-like at over six feet and perhaps 240 pounds, he has that gentle, tender quality common
to many big people. He quickly gets the kids smiling through their shyness and then laughing
outright. "What do you think of Daniel Ortega's designer sunglasses?" he asks them in a
confidentially serious tone. "Can we win the war of the sunglasses? The gringos have a lot more
than we do." They don't know Ortega has been mocked for his designer sunglasses, but they
laugh giddily all the same at ''guerra de las gafas.”
Tuto was studying in Chile when Allende fell in September of ’73. The police kicked in the
door of the apartment where he was staying with four other students.
‘Where are your guns?’ they asked before ransacking the apartment and hauling them all
to the stadium to be imprisoned with hundreds of others.
‘Why are you studying here, instead of in your country?’
‘After the earthquake destroyed Managua I got a scholarship to come study here.’
He was tortured and interrogated but eventually turned loose to be deported back to
Nicaragua. He says that he fears death far less after surviving the brutal scenes in the stadium,
including machine-gun executions. We drive to Juicigalpa where he points out his formerly well-
connected father’s mansion which is now a Sandinista command center. Lot’s of greetings from
cousins and some great cheese from an aunt.
The public service announcements and personal messages posted on Radio Sandino
remind me of rural a-m stations in the Midwest back in the 50’s. A sample:
“Maria Flores, your sister had a nine pound boy last night. Everything’s fine.”
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“Jorge, we need the two mares and some motor oil.”
“Luis Mejia, your father died yesterday. We expect you for the services in Granada.”
I hear some intriguing stories about the annual coffee harvest and the massive effort to
find enough people to pick the crop. The young couple at this place I’m staying both joined the
harvest brigades last year. They tell me what it’s like. With sixty thousand men in the army there
is a labor shortage, so the solution is to recruit government workers, students, and foreign
volunteers. I think my film is going to be a series of portraits loosely centered on this big effort.
I’m going to see if I can evoke the idea of a dialogue or argument at a Café, at the same time
allude to the Nica coffee harvest. Maybe call it ‘Café Nica: Portraits from Nicaragua’.
Augusto takes me to meet Alan Bolt, a theater director who lives near Matagalpa with his
company of actors, Nixtayalero. I watch them rehearse a new play. It’s potentially a great
opening for my film. Alan and I have a serious discussion and he suggests they might do a
performance on the main square in Matagalpa. We set a tentative date to do it. Next, Tuto and I
visit Alan’s sister Gladys, whose husband was recently ambushed, tortured and killed by the
Contra on the road to his coffee plantation in the mountains. Gladys is continuing to manage
their plantation and general store. She agrees to be in the film. We visit several coffee fincas and
choose one near Matagalpa, called La Pintada, to be our base for filming the harvest. We find a
contrasting and critical point of view in the voice of Ricardo O’Lieu, a coffee grower in favor of
the revolution but disillusioned by the results and the discrimination against private growers. I
like the challenge of doing a film that goes beyond cheering for the Sandinistas. I’m writing a
script to help me stay on track and to re-assure my funders. Labeling it ‘Rojo y Negro’.
The current chapter in Central America all started with toppling Arbenz in ’54. U.S.
policy has descended from that Cold War legacy in a grim spiral that ends with the Salvadoran
Boy scouts who were trained to function as a death squad. The church, the state and the army all
working, with U.S. support, to preserve their ruling oligarchies much as we in the north protect
our corporate feudalism.
S.F. December ‘85
To pay for the film, I’ve been planning to supplement the meager grant money with a hefty
fee I’ll get for shooting an industrial documentary for the Electric Power Research Institute.
EPRI decides to downscale their project just as we finish the first week of shooting at a foundry
outside Pittsburg. That means a less hefty fee. I’m not sure I can even pay for my film stock until
a friend, filmmaker Jon Jost, tells me of a chance to buy some bargain outdated Fuji reversal
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from a source in Montana at a fraction of what the Kodak negative would cost. I do some tests
and find it okay. I’m still short, though. After paying for the airfares I’ve still got the expenses.
My youngest brother, Anthony, now living in Northern California, lends me some money. I train
him to work as my camera assistant and promise him credit as producer.
Nicaragua, February ’86
Tony is loading the camera magazines with unerring precision and is an unflagging
support. It’s great to have him along and I’m going to see if I can pull him away from working as
a truck mechanic so we can work together full time. Maybe lure him into becoming a Steadicam
operator. We rent a Toyota jeep in Managua, and hit the road for Matagalpa with Tuto. We get a
cheap room where the three of us sleep dormitory style on cots with the film gear piled around us.
The hardest part is sharing a squat toilet behind a curtain in a corner of the room. We get up
before dawn, have breakfast at a café nearby and head out to the finca to go to work with the
coffee pickers. One morning I see a Sandinista soldier with a fawn on the main street in
Matagalpa. He is dirty and haggard, with long straggly hair and in full battle dress. There are
AK cartridge clips on his belt, a couple of rifle grenades and hand grenades hanging from a
bandolier and the fawn supported on one arm with its head nestled under his chin. I go to the
jeep for my camera but when I get back the soldier and his deer are gone. A telling image that got
away, reminding me to carry the camera even when I want to put it down.
Excited about how the Nixtayalero performance in Matagalpa went. I dance around them
like a monkey to get all my camera angles. Three-camera coverage by a cameraman who is
always thinking about editing as he shoots. One of my
trademarks. The play has a mythic quality mixed with
jibes at U.S. invasions. Half the town gathers to
watch. We celebrate getting the play in the can with a
good meal at the big hotel and then hit the road for
six days, filming at Gladys Bolt’s general store, then
at fincas north of Jinotega where the tension from
Contra attacks is most intense. At one of them vice-president Sergio Ramirez’s daughter is
leading a harvest brigade and we film her working and talking to the pickers about solidarity.
Will I label her to make the point of how everyone pitches in, even the elite? I don’t think so. I’m
not going to intrude with lower thirds to identify anyone else. Too newsie. At a one-room school
the children are using workbooks from China with math problems illustrated by rows of hand
grenades. The Contra are periodically mining the roads we travel and because the Toyota is
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valuable, we’re a tempting target for ambush, but we make it through unscathed. Back to meet
Groupo Moncotal and film them setting up at finca La Pintada, then performing a song they
wrote for the film about the coffee harvest. Moncotal does a studio recording of this song a day
later; it’s on the radio in Managua the day after that. Greg says it’s on the way to being a local
hit. I’ll put it under my film’s closing credits. I love how fast you can develop momentum in the
un-developed world.
S.F. April ‘86
I carefully perform the chore of syncing up my footage, using the original reversal without
making a work print. I transfer it to video with a borrowed camera, shooting off the screen of my
flatbed-editing table to create a video master. A clean flatbed in a clean room. Constant Dust-Off.
Then I buy a Panasonic half-inch editing system with the money I have just saved by not making a
work print. I do a rough cut, learning how to edit video, and decide that I want to return for more
shooting in Nicaragua during the harvest season this winter. Meanwhile I have to earn some
money. The familiar struggle to balance my personal filmmaking with the need to support the
family—doing whatever paying work I can find that doesn’t derail the Nicaragua project.
S.F. June ‘86
At the beginning of June I started on a rescue rough-cut edit of Juliet Bashore’s film
Kamikaze Hearts, which has been mauled and then abandoned by four earlier editors. Juliet is
an intriguing woman I have seen around the film community for years. She and Sharon recently
became friends and spent a couple of months trying to find a way to put her footage together,
using the flatbed-editing machine I loaned them. Then they give up and ask if I will do it for a
small fee. I agree with one condition: I’ll move into my loft and give it my best attention for a
month but no one can look over my shoulder or interrupt me along the way. I know I must work
alone. The material is great but it’s a mess, so it takes me several days to untangle it enough to
get started finding the story buried in the debris. What Juliet did was shoot a powerful
documentary-style narrative about a love affair between two women in the porn industry. Sharon
Mitchell and Tigr Mennett. It’s a true story, played by the women themselves. I like the
foundation of reality under the material and find it easy to get involved with the rough cut.
Once I have combed through and found the structure that I think works, I take a video dub of
it to L.A. and show it to Juliet, who seems relieved and delighted. She’s set up a dinner with her
friend, Alex Cox, who wants to meet me cause he’s making a feature in Nicaragua. He’s been there
but not as recently as I have. We meet at the Versailles on Venice Boulevard for some Cajun chicken
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and a chat about the Sandinistas and my impressions on how things are going there. I send him some
books gathered during my research. Copies of Juliet’s rough-cut go to the Mill Valley and FAF
festivals in hopes that at least one of them will show it.
Colorado, July ‘86
I drive out my favorite highway, U.S. 50, to the Rockies, to join a new friend and client, Toby
McLoed. Working on his film, Downwind/Downstream, a documentary about the destruction of
glacial valleys in the Rocky Mountains. Decades of ruthless mining and the more recent
encroachment of ski resorts are the cause. Toby is a vital young filmmaker who made a widely
recognized documentary, The Four Corners, a National Sacrifice Area, with Glenn Switkes and
Randy Hayes, when they were students in the journalism Department at U.C. Berkeley. We bounce
around from Aspen to Leadville to Telluride gathering footage of mineral charged runoff from mines
and inactivity at superfund sites. I’ve brought my bike to ride on the mountain roads of Colorado.
Keeps me in shape. Several rides from Aspen to 12,100’ Independence Pass. Three hours up, a short
rest, and then 20 minutes down, passing every vehicle ahead of me in the tight curves, even sports
cars and motorcycles. A fool for speed on two wheels. Riding a Ron Cooper on sew-up tires.
S.F. September ‘86
Bob Hawk has accepted Juliet’s film for the Film Art’s Festival but only if we can have a
final cut in time. We promise. This means Juliet and I barely have time to complete a fine cut, mix
the soundtrack and get the negative into Monaco Labs to pull a release print for the festival.
Juliet moves in to my loft to help find footage and direct the final shaping of her film. We begin
an intense marathon of editing, with lots of coffee and very little sleep. Every couple of days we
take a break to eat a decent meal at the Billboard Café, a nearby venue for the Neo-Dadist art
scene flourishing in the ‘SOMA’ neighborhood. What takes us by surprise a week after we plunge
into the sleepless effort is an irresistible wave of passion that leaves us beached on the carpeted
editing room floor. We have ignored a strong attraction to each other since we first met years
earlier but now we ride it as our greatest reward and a stimulant more potent than strong coffee.
Juliet has a mysterious, exotic look, a lithe build, and a rapier-sharp, high I.Q. that is as
appealing as her sensuality.
S.F. October ‘86
The closer we get to the deadline, the more we disagree about the final structure of the
film and there are fierce arguments. After doing a mix at Russian Hill Recording with Leslie
Schatz we stagger over to Monaco Film Labs with the negative, knowing that we are not finished
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ut forced to stop and print the film anyway. Kamikazi Hearts opens the festival to a standing-
room-only audience. A second show is added at one o’clock the next morning and it sells out
too—strong proof of the power that word-of-mouth has in the gay community. It’s a high-voltage
event and I feel the crowd connecting to the story as it unfolds. Sharon, who is credited as the co-
producer, is pleased and so is Juliet. They bring the stars up with them and do a giddy Q&A at
the end of the first show.
S.F. October ‘86
Juliet and Sharon take off with their film to the Independent Feature Project market in
New York City and I go to the Napa Valley to work with Alan and Bean Finneran shooting
footage that will be part of one of their ‘Soon 3’ theater productions. After we all return Juliet
and I go back to work. One day Sharon bursts into the loft and confronts us with the undeniable
fact that we are sleeping together. Juliet smiles at her in a bemused way. Sharon ends her tirade
by throwing a cup of coffee at Juliet and storming out. I know I am in a hopeless trap, but I also
know I’ve been looking for final proof that it’s time to split up with Sharon. The intensity and
clarity of what I feel for Juliet gives me that proof. None of the other brief affairs I’ve had over
the years with Sharon have been serious. What I have with Juliet is what I’ve been missing: a
relationship based not only on physical attraction but also on affection and mutual respect.
S.F. November ‘86
I tell Juliet that since I am headed into a shit storm with Sharon it will be better if she
goes back to L.A. for a while. I offer to bring a flatbed editing table down and join her to finish
the film whenever possible. This plan doesn’t suit her cause she wants to keep the work humming
along the way it’s been. But she agrees to go back to her place in Venice for a few days so I can
cool things down with Sharon. I guess I’ll probably have to end it with her. I am in a vise between
two willful women and she is the only one I can sidestep, since I don’t have two kids with her.
Strong as it is, I can predict my infatuation with Juliet might also end badly.
I don’t want to put Hennessey and Savannah through the psychic turmoil of having a
stepmother and the rest of the garbage and turmoil my first three kids suffered. Just having me
leave Sharon will be hard enough for them. To give them my love, to survive and pursue my own
work, I need to live alone. I have to find a new measure of strength and resolution to untangle my
life with Sharon so that I can move on. It won’t happen over night. I feel a sense of sad
determination.
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S.F. December ‘86
I’ve negotiated a trade with Sharon. If I want to finish Juliet’s film Sharon insists I must
give her two things: she will go to Nicaragua with me and share a producing credit on Café Nica
with my brother Anthony. Otherwise, she says, she’ll make sure I never see Juliet again and never
finish the film. It’s outrageous, but I know Sharon will do everything possible to disrupt us by
throwing one tantrum after another if I don’t agree. She’ll somehow block this next version of the
film from going to Berlin. A counter-productive co-producer. If I do agree with her I can let Juliet
stay; we’ll be able to continue our work and, obviously, our affair. So, I’m taking Sharon with me
to Nicaragua and am determined to end it with her when we come back. It’s my only pragmatic
choice to avoid total chaos. Sharon has won again. Juliet and I go back to work shaping
Kamakazi Hearts into a better piece, ready to go into the lab and then off to the Berlin Film
Festival with Juliet.
Nicaragua February ‘87
We film a scene with a group of campesinos who have received land from the government
and are building beautiful, simple, wattle-walled, tile-roofed houses based on a low-cost
traditional design by a Berkeley architect, Huck Rorick of the Groundwork Foundation. His
colleague, Steve Sears, is living at the collective to help initiate this model housing program.
Nearby is a remnant of the rainforest that once filled this valley. It is inhabited by Howler
monkeys who give us an outrageous chorus every morning at dawn. We document the building
project with an emphasis on the smoky dynamics of making the roofing tiles. The design uses
local materials and could be significant as an alternative to the cheap, ugly, corrugated tin
shacks the Sandinista government is building everywhere for the poor.
In Managua, with Augusto’s help and connections, we gather a group of poets and
intellectuals at a café by the lake Somoza once threw his victims into. I am hoping for a spirited
debate about the country’s political situation in the café setting. Happy with the scene, but I’m
worried that sound-recording problems for Tuto may prevent me from including much of this
material in the final cut. He says he failed to turn the Nagra on at one point while I was shooting.
S.F. March ‘87
To my chagrin, after the compromises I’ve made with Sharon and a difficult month with
her in Nicaragua, I find Juliet still in San Francisco. The loft is a wreak. Juliet admits she did not
put the film in the lab to print our new version, or even send the former version to Berlin. I can’t
believe it. I blow up and tell her she’s betrayed me. I insist that she leave immediately. She throws
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some stuff in a bag and we go to the airport. She is sullen and tearful but gives me no explanation
about why she didn’t take the film to Berlin. Finally, at the airport, she breaks down and tells me
she stayed in San Francisco to have an abortion, and was too depressed to print the film or go to
Berlin, and too angry at me to take care of the loft. I am moved to tears by her pain and the
sadness of how it is ending for us. It’s a strange and irresolvable farewell. I can find no
meaningful way to comfort her; it is clear that we have betrayed each other. I tell her I will send
the film materials down to Venice by Greyhound Package Express.
Luckily, to lessen my sadness I get to do a one-night super 16mm shoot with Les Blank on
a Rye Cooder concert with his Moula Banda Rhythm Aces in Santa Cruz. I shoot hand held on
stage. A prime position stage left that allows me to work very close when I want to. A shot right
down the keyboard of Van Dyke Parks playing his piano. Close ups of his hands. Medium wide of
his hands, torso and face. A stacked shot of the faces of the black quartet of singers. I can move to
the rear center for the drummer. Profile of Flaco Jemenez on accordian. It’s a treat shooting
great music.
El Cerrito
This stuff about Sharon and my pattern of attraction to powerful women gets me
thinking about how it all started with my mother. In my teens, I slowly gained strength in
the battles with her, yielding a rising level of self-esteem. When we argued I calmly held
my ground, often having the last word. I had increasingly become her trusted partner in
the dairy operation and her liaison with the often-difficult hired men. Feeling stronger
and less defensive, I learned how to show her my love by being calmly considerate and
affectionate. I was about to be a man and at last we could agree and disagree as equals. It
was increasingly clear to me that she was uneasy and uncertain about herself, deeply
insecure, and finally, I knew it wasn’t my fault. She had simply, for years, taken on more
than she could handle. And I understand now that she was afraid of being wrong. And not
knowing made her feel inferior, so she put her kids down for what we failed to know. She
tried to intimidate us into knowing, rather than teaching us how to learn. She was
neurotic, complex, strong and beautiful.
Once in the mid-fifties we had a long drive through Indiana and Michigan to buy a
goat whose bloodlines she wanted for the herd, and we were able to talk about life and
literature and our difficulties. She trusted me to do all the driving; miles of beautiful,
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empty, two-lane state highways through fertile farmland. I told stories about some of our
gang’s pranks and made her laugh. We were relaxed and comfortable with each other.
Bordering Oedipal, I suppose. It was a rewarding breakthrough signaling the end of our
years of contention. She encouraged me to go on writing and admitted she was sad she
hadn’t succeeded as a writer and was proud that perhaps, I would. So here I am, still
trying to fulfill that hope.
It’s clear to me now that the bittersweet disaster with Juliet—and all the struggles
with Sharon for a working partnership—have been a repeating pattern in my search for a
relationship like the one with my mother after that breakthrough. I was always ready for
combat, and to yield, up to a certain point. Starting with Judy. Maybe I’ll try a different
approach in my next lifetime.
S.F. April ‘87
Sharon agrees that we should split up, but insists that I give her the loft. After a bitter
exchange I compromise by agreeing that I will move my editing equipment out to San Anselmo
where I will finish Café Nica while taking care of Savannah. When I finish the film and re-paint
the interior of the house for her I will move back to the loft and we will be formally separated—
our marriage over.
First I get to disappear and make some money by doing a ten-day shoot with Hardy
Jones and Julia Whitty in the Galapagos Islands, living on a schooner, chasing and filming sperm
whales and reading 100 Years of Solitude in Spanish. It’s an amazing contrast. A welcome
escape from my life in the belly of the bestia del Norte. I buy myself a genuine tight-weave Monte
Cristi Panama hat in Guayaquil for 75 bucks.
S.F. May ‘87
Hennessey is away at boarding school. Sharon found it difficult having her around any
longer so she pushed hard to help her win a scholarship and get her out of the house and into a
good school where she could invest her energy in getting an education. So it’s just me and
Savannah, now a playful six-year-old. I get her to kindergarten at the French-American school in
San Anselmo every morning and then go to work editing. Around noon I usually take a break to
ride my bike up the Bolinas Road above Fairfax. A steep climb and lots of curves for a fast
workout. Then I go back to work until it’s time to pick up Savannah. We shop for groceries and
cook dinner together or split a burger and malt at our favorite burger joint, Phyllis’s. Often
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Sharon surprises me by returning late from the loft to crawl into bed with me and make love. I
find this ironic since I know we are finished.
S.F. August ’87
I’ve completed Café Nica; just doing the sound mix
and lab work. Making a cover shot to use for publicity and a
poster. In July I enter it in the FAF and Mill Valley festivals
and go to work on distribution, which I arrange with the
University of Indiana in Bloomington. I paint the interior of the
house I built for Sharon, load the editing setup in my old
Citroen wagon, and head back to the loft on Natoma Street. On
the way I stop in San Rafael at ILM to sit in on a mix of Alex Cox’s film Walker, about the first
round of North America’s obsession with Nicaragua. Powerful imagery. It’s an amazingly
radical departure for a Hollywood film. Not sure it’s going to be a big hit in the U S of A. Too
abstract. The script is by my cousin Rudy Wurlitzer, who also plays J.P. Morgan in the film. Alan
Bolt has a part and most of Nixtayalero are extras.
Rudy, Alex and Ed Harris are all at the mix, working with Richard Beggs, the sound
designer; Saul Landau’s son-in-law. Many contrasts to my own far more intimate and basic
Nicaraguan offering. The documentary difference. Also several million more in their budget,
which was probably good for Nicaragua. I finished Café Nica for less than $30,000, much of it
good for Taca Airlines.
S. F. November ‘87
Learning to live alone, after 30 years of struggling through two marriages. Nearly fifty,
with five offspring. I’m proud of all five, but thoroughly disillusioned with the mating game. I
disqualify myself from living with anyone and give all of my
attention to my work. I know how lucky I am to have a career
that actually pays me to do work I love and allows me to
often shoot films simply for the satisfaction of making a
contribution.
Café Nica plays to enthusiastic audiences at both the
Mill Valley and FAF festivals and gets some good reviews.
My distributor/agent Louise Rosen sells it to the Discovery
Channel, as she did with Shadow Master a few years ago. U.
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of Indiana will distribute. I make plans to go to Havana where Café Nica is in a film festival
sideshow and I put fifty dollars down on a flight from the Yucatan because it is less complicated
than going through Miami and dealing with U.S. restrictions on travel to Cuba. Looking forward
to Havana.
S. F. January ‘88
Just about to fly to Mexico and Havana, I get a call from Berry Minot, a dynamic
producer/director who wants me to shoot People Say I’m Crazy, a film for the California
Department of Health about mental patients and the damage done by President Reagan’s
cutbacks that have thrown thousands out of the mental wards and onto the streets. It sounds
interesting and I need the income Berry’s project offers, so I have to skip going to Havana. It’s
fun working with Berry and she’s well qualified for tackling this difficult topic. The subject matter
is important, and Berry has a great main character named Leonard Cohen, a six-foot-four,
ineffably sweet man who suffered years of electric shock treatments and is now a leader in the
struggle for patient rights.
This is my first serious use of broadcast quality video—rather than 16mm film—for
documentary production. It is clearly the future, and I am aware of the need to come to terms
with it. The biggest problem for me is the need for more light, which I try to amplify in the
subtlest ways possible, using reflectors and soft-lights, canceling my preference for working with
natural light. For close up work and interviews I design a simple small soft light using a piece of
silk on a set of barn doors rigged to a Lowell Tota light. This is not always enough and the filmic
look I try to achieve with video is not yet in fashion in the TV world.
I have launched myself on a new course, integrating my simple personal life and my work. I
want to live actively in the world with less hedonistic pleasure or need for it, and with less
interest than ever in joining any mainstream group or cause or belief system. I study ever more
carefully how to remain indifferent to everything our culture considers most important: fame,
fortune, and romance. When a beautiful woman smiles at me I try to enjoy that as a gift without
any implications. At times I wonder if I’m becoming like some weird sort of secular monk.
Charleston, S.C. April ‘88
My skills, cameras and high-speed lenses for shooting 16mm are still in demand. David
Boatwright has started a production company in Charleston, South Carolina called ‘Lucky Boy
Films’ with actor/producer O’Neal Compton, who has an advertising agency and amazing talents
as a performer, writer and entrepreneur. David and O’Neal hire me to shoot a series of TV
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commercials they are doing for Ford dealers and for the South
Carolina Credit Union League. I have always avoided
commercials and even refused to shoot them, but working with
David and O’Neal is different: a special kind of entertaining
and lucrative work. Along with soundman Jonathan Gaynor
and gaffer Les Stringer we quickly form a high-energy team
with unusual rapport. I am soon dubbed the ‘Human Steadicam’ by O‘Neal who loves the
efficiency of my hand held, boom-like moves which allow us to shoot a record number of polished
commercials in a day, without a dolly. And, because the work comes through O’Neal’s agency, he
makes sure we never have a client on the set. No conflicts about aesthetic or directing decisions.
As often as we can, we shoot these spots outdoors with available light, using silks or foliage
overhead and a couple of large reflectors I started using in Bali. O’Neal’s character Justin
Thyme is locally famous as the droll pitchman selling Fords, and soon is broadcast in dozens of
markets all over the Southeast from Florida to Tennessee. His Bojangles Chicken spots are airing
all over the country. For the award winning Credit Union series David and O’Neal write some
clever human-foible sketches that we then shoot documentary-style and cast with great local
talent to play along with O’Neal and David. Like micro dramas; sixty second short stories. All in
16mm. David and O’Neal edit and master on video in Atlanta. I am often amazed by the rapport
the three of us have when we work together; each supplying a skill the other two lack and never
disagreeing about how to combine our talents. Smooth, enjoyable and lucrative.
El Salvador, April ‘88
A Salvadoran woman calls, asking if I will join a group of people from the Bay Area
Sanctuary movement on a trip to El Salvador to visit the refugees at various locations and at the
Colomoncagua camp which was set up across the border in Honduras after the massacre at El
Mozote in ‘81. They hope that I will make a film they can use for their fundraising efforts. No
money offered, but I am eager to assess the situation in El Salvador and I hope to make
connections that will lay the foundation for starting a film of my own in Morazon Province about
Radio Venceremos, which has eluded the army’s tracking efforts by staying on the move and
broadcasting from a different location every day for years. I agree to join the Sanctuary people
and borrow an eight mm Sony Pro video camera from Larry Reed as I leave town.
S.F. April ‘88
I enjoy the freedom and ease of gathering material with the little camera. I’m pleased
with the quality and happy to find that there is more than enough to make a short documentary
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for the Sanctuary Movement. All shot with available light; I’m impressed with the camera’s
ability to function in low light. And with how easy it is to hide, in a bag of clothes to get through
checkpoints. I write a rough editing outline of the material and enlist a young editor named Lori
Muttersbach to do an assembly edit. Lori is a skillful editor I bond with rapidly and trust to carry
forward my ideas about the footage. We bond happily on another level as well, though it’s rather
ephemeral because I’m not available to offer what she needs. I’m too committed to remaining
single. Before long Lori has edited a solid short piece that we are happy with.
The day before the scheduled online edit with Ed Rudolph at Video Arts I am out at
Sharon’s in San Anselmo doing some yard work for her. When I finish I go for a bike ride. As I
ride through Fairfax a Golden Retriever runs out into the Bolinas Road from Mora Alley, directly
into my path. Neither of us can see the other because a parked delivery truck blocks our view of
each other until it’s too late. When I hit the dog I go flying through the air upside down and
backwards as though I’ve hit a brick wall. I land on my un-helmeted head in the middle of the
street, and am unconscious until I come to at Marin General Hospital 90 minutes later.
The next day, Lori visits me in the hospital and says that the on-line edit of El Nuevo
Amanecer went smoothly. Before long I recognize that I’ve lost my sense of smell entirely and
diminished my hearing slightly in the accident. The Cooper road bike is a mess. It really was like
hitting a brick wall at 30-mph. Serious frame damage, and damage to me too. It’ll take me more
than a few days to recover. A couple of people I love are begging me to start wearing a helmet.
Maybe I will.
S. F. June ‘88
Catherine Ryan is the co-producer with Pamela Cohen of a project about a woman in El
Salvador, one of the leaders of the FMLN, the Frente Farabundo Marti para la Liberacion
National. Cohen and her co-director Monona Wali went to Chalatenango Province a few weeks
ago with a full crew and 125 rolls of 16mm film. They found themselves immobilized by a
government offensive. They were trapped, hiding on the edge of a village for three weeks and only
able to shoot a few minutes of film.
When Catherine contacts me I recommend using small format video and show them the
footage I have just come back from Salvador with. We have some lengthy meetings about it all,
shoot some tests together and decide to head south in November with two of Sony’s best 8mm
cameras, 70 hours of tape, a selection of rechargeable nicad batteries and small solar chargers,
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a couple of professional mics, an SQN mixer and a small tripod, all of which we will carry in our
three backpacks.
France, October ’88
With a little push from George Csicsery and our mutual friend Pierre Cottrell I’ve
entered Shadow Master in the Amien Film Festival. It’s showing and so is George’s Where the
Heart Roams, which I shot for him. They send us tickets for a free ride on Air France. Director
Monte Hellman is being given a Tribute at the festival, so he’s on the flight with us. And Millie
Perkins, from his film The Shooting. I’m zapped by jet lag the first couple of days in France and
wonder why I’ve bothered to come. All the good food and wine is less important than my thoughts
about the upcoming shoot in El Salvador. The showings of George’s and my films strike me as
routine. It’s fun hanging out with Pierre and George, seeing Monte’s early films, but it’s like a
surreal vacuum, because my mind is already in Central America.
El Salvador, December ‘88
San Salvador seems an ordinary Latin American capitol with the usual chaotic traffic
mixed with street vendors; the flowery middle-class neighborhoods surrounding the downtown
business district and above it all, Escalon, a hillside of mansions for the oligarchy. There is a
measure of architectural chic among the numerous construction projects around town and a lot
of people hustling to get their piece of the nearly $2 million a day in U.S. aid. Plenty of shopping
malls and fast-food chains—Pop’s, Biggest, McDonald’s, Taco Bell. At times it feels like a
suburb in Los Angeles. Then a Huey flies over at 50 feet, or a pickup full of heavily armed
soldiers goes by, or a bomb goes off—with increasing regularity—and one is reminded of why the
right wing ARENA party’s catchy election theme song “Vamos al Cambio” is on everybody’s
lips, regardless of their politics. El Salvador is sick of this war that has claimed more than 70,000
lives over the last eight years, devastated the economy despite $3.8 billion in U.S. tax dollars, and
shows no signs of being negotiable.
Pamela Cohen, Monona Wali and I have come to El Salvador to make Maria’s Story for
Channel 4 in England. The project grew out of Pamela Cohen’s long involvement with the civil
war in El Salvador and is a natural progression from her earlier films: Dateline: El Salvador,
Breaking Ground, Life in the New El Salvador, and Winning Democracy.
Chalatenango province, FLMN camps, December ‘88
After a few days in San Salvador we left town at 4:30 one morning in a van with an
experienced driver. An hour later we are sitting by the roadside half a mile from the Colima
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checkpoint, watching the light come up over the mountains, and waiting. When a bus passes us
we fall in behind it and roll up the van’s tinted windows. When the guard waves the bus to a stop,
calling, “Abajo todo mundo”, we pull around the bus and cross a bridge to continue northeast.
The other checkpoints on both sides of Chalatenango City are still yawning and we reach the
village of Guajilla by 6:00 a.m. without stopping.
The next morning at 3:30 we move to a house on the edge of the sleeping village and
watch a woman light her cooking fires in raised adobe pits. The flames reflecting off the
corrugated tin roof throw her shadow through the billows of smoke. A mule brays, there is the
plaintive wail of a child, and suddenly Manuel steps out of the dark, smiling at us. He takes an M-
16 off his shoulder and props it against the wall.
“Mucha carga,” he says, nodding at our full-sized backpacks and accepting a piece of
pan dulce. He laughs ruefully as we shoulder the packs and head out, crossing a pasture and
threading our way through a herd of sleeping cattle. We stumble along behind Manuel, learning
to walk in the dark on a steep, rock-strewn path. From time to time he whistles an FMLN theme
and the third time he does this, the tune returns from a copse of trees above the trail. Manuel
smiles.
The sky along the ridge lightens as we move through reed-like, head-high zacate and then
into a forest broken by occasional clearings. We stop to rest in a ravine. Manuel smokes. The
sound of a radio drifts down the path and a minute later two compas join us. We listen to the
morning news on Radio Venceremos: yesterday 400 civilians marched to protest the
government’s blocking of solidarity aid. Manuel makes a fist and grins at us.
“How long will you be here?” he asks. “If you stay a while, you’ll see us take power.
We’ll do it soon.”
We press on. During the last hour the path is straight up and uses what little energy we
have left. The ascent is so steep there are footholds worn and carved into the path. At about 9
a.m. we stagger into a camp and the woman we have
come to film rises to greet us. She gives Pamela a hug and
smiles warmly at me and Minona.
Maria is 39 years old and has been in the
mountains of Chalatenango since the bloodbaths began in
the late ‘70s. Her work is primarily political organization,
but we find her in command of the region with a pistol on
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her belt. This is a temporary situation brought on by the ambush and death of the previous
commandante a couple of weeks ago. Maria’s husband Jose works in supply and procurement at
a camp a day’s walk distant. Her youngest daughter Minita, who is 13, has never lived in a house
and sleeps every night in the same hammock with her mother. She is learning to be a radio
operator. An older daughter is a nurse stationed in another municipality. Maria’s first-born
daughter, also a nurse, was ambushed, raped, and killed two years ago by government troops.
Maria is stocky and energetic, quick to laugh—rabble rouser and mother to her world.
She begins each day singing ballads before dawn from her hammock, infusing good humor into
everyone around her. I think of her as a reincarnation of the Spanish Civil War heroine La
Passionara. She grew up in the border town of Arcatao. Her mother was a servant for a wealthy
family. Her father was gone. At the age of 12, to help her mother and pay for her own education,
she rose every morning at 3:30 to make and deliver 300 tortillas around town before school
began. In her avid quest for education she accepted an invitation to study at a convent school but
soon found that it was administered by the extremist right-wing OPUS DEI, and that she was
expected to perform more as a servant than a student. She withdrew.
Still in her teens, she married Jose, a successful small rancher with traditionally
conservative tendencies. She soon got involved in the semi-clandestine beginnings of the local
campesino organization, the Union de Trabajadores del Campo, at first without Jose’s consent.
The camp we find ourselves in is on the edge of a cliff looking out over a valley
increasingly controlled by the FMLN. It is a rearguard position, mostly filled with trainees; a
silkscreen propaganda press unit that turns out thousands of leaflets every few days, and
wounded combatants. Above the camp is a radio position: a pair of captured U.S. issue field
radios with which a pair of compas monitor key channels for the army’s transmissions about
their movements. The kitchen is at the base of a rock wall; the fires are covered and vented with
lateral smoke diffusion tunnels. A few yards above the kitchen is a spring that provides just
enough water for the 20-odd members of the camp.
Hygiene around the camps is amazing and invisible.
Occasionally I see someone stop along a trail to pick and
pocket choice leaves. Paper is scarce and anything to read
a treasure.
Maria and Manuel, her subaltern, spend most of
their time in a rudimentary office—a bench and worktable
made from lashed-together branches. Several times a day a young messenger with a downsized
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M-16 arrives carrying a pouch of notes. He is usually dispatched on the run, eating a tortilla
smeared with beans.
As I doze off the second night, the horizon brightens with parachute flares and the elegant
dual red tracer lines of a C-47 gun ship attacking a guerrilla position across the valley. The
flares are so brilliant—like10,000 watt arc lamps—that you could nearly read by their light, even
though they are several miles away.
Maria tells us we must lighten our packs or we’ll be left behind. So we stow the second
camera, the tripod, 50 rolls of tape and most of our personal effects in a cave that one of the
compas leads us to. We are told we can retrieve anything we need from the cave within a day or
two by messenger even if we are far away.
In my small backpack I carry a change of socks, pants and shirt, a flannel sheet to sleep
under, a poncho, toothbrush, and my greatest luxury, a 3/4 length Therma-Rest pad to sleep on. I
have a strange little pack on my chest that I can reach into on the move if I need to. In it are
tobacco, notebook, a pocket-sized Spanish dictionary, spare batteries and tape and a copy of
Galeano’s Open Veins I’m reading in Spanish. I can park the camera in this one if I want but
mostly I just carry it, ready to use at all times. In one cargo pocket of my fatigues is a gourd bowl
to eat out of and nestled in it is a bag of Turkish-grind coffee, my favorite drug. From time to time
I have to score some beans, roast them in the camp kitchen and grind them in the compa’s mill in
their kitchen when it is free of masa. Pam and Monona carry additional tape, and batteries, along
with the solar charging panels and the sound gear. They graciously carry more weight than I,
leaving me free to stay nimble with the camera. Their luxury item is a small tent.
The FMLN is an army fueled by sugar and corn. If you can’t eat nine thick tortillas a day
you’ll certainly lose weight. Tortillas, beans, coffee with lots of sugar, occasional eggs, potatoes,
plantains, cabbage soup with tomatoes in a chicken bullion-cube stock. Infrequent treats are fish,
oranges, tamales and real chicken soup with a few bites of tough but tasty meat. Out on the trail,
passing through abandoned hamlets, someone will suddenly split off to climb a tree and return
with a handful of avocados, limes, green mangos or papayas to share with everyone.
Guerrilla chic: High quality nylon hammocks that can be folded to the size of a fist, black
nylon jackets, small shortwave transistor radios, the very rare Sony Watchman, black fatigue
pants and fatigue-pocketed shirts, high lace-up leather boots, hunting knives with silver handles,
any pistol.
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“We started with pistols,” Manuel tells me. “When we saw a known bastard soldier who
was vulnerable, we would acquire a carbine. It wasn’t long before we had a lot of M-16’s and
AR-15’s.”
On the third day we are on the move with Maria and a handful of others through the
valley, up to San Jose de las Flores. For Maria these trails are laden with memories of outrage.
One of the worst is the Rio Sumpul massacre when fleeing civilians, mostly women and children,
were caught in a crossfire of army machine guns, helicopter attacks and ORDEN members firing
from the windows of their private planes like crazed rabbit hunters. At the end of that day there
were hundreds of bodies floating south on the current. Maria made it across, and she’s never
worn pants again because she nearly drowned trying to swim and carry her 3-year-old daughter
with pants and pockets full of water. Memories of outrage: bodies hanging from the great mango
tree outside the guard station above Arcatao—campesinos caught having a meeting after work;
the bones of a cow and a cross marking the grave of a husband and wife who were walking home
through their fields when a helicopter came over the hill and shot all three for target practice. A
couple of hundred yards beyond the high point on the trail out of Flores, a recent helicopter
strafing shredded and tattered a huge mango tree and bamboo grove in the midst of a hamlet.
Maria stops on the trail to tell us how it was when they first fled to the mountains. No one
really knew who the guerrillas were, but in the towns and villages everyone was curious. The
Guardia recognized the people’s fascination, so one day they started a rumor that the compas
were camped in a certain place. Then the soldiers came there in civilian clothes and when ten
young men came up from Flores to meet the guerrillas, the soldiers greeted them: “You stupid
sons-of-bitches, we’re the Guardia.” They killed them all and bragged about it as a warning.
San Jose de las Flores, December ‘88
We hiked over from our camp to Las Flores for the Dia de los Innocentes gathering. A
couple of hundred compas pour in from their camps in the surrounding hills. At public events like
this, the leaders perform much like sophomores in a class play, spouting reams of rhetoric in
wooden, halting tones, almost self-deprecating. The formation exercises have an equally comic-
opera quality, mocking at the same time both militarism and revolutionary ardor. The guerrilla
fighters listen patiently and then dance to Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Down on the Bayou”
at fully distorted peak volume until two the next morning.
At 4 a.m. three rounds of automatic fire erupt nearby and 40 or 50 bodies were instantly
in manic motion under the eaves of the porch around me. Three minutes later everything is
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packed, and everyone ready to move or fight, when word comes in that the enemy was a horse,
who survived the trigger-happy impulse of a 15 year-old at one of the periphery guard posts.
The romantic overtones of daily life are inescapable. Everything is shared—cigarettes, a
cup of coffee, sweets, fruit. The occasional traumatized compa is treated with gentle patience and
given tasks he or she can handle. In this context, the rhetoric makes sense and warms the heart.
The realities of guerrilla Marxism seem irrefutably successful in terms of fraternal support, anti-
materialism, psychic balance, good humor, fighting spirit and basic Christian values. When they
win, I think, the context will undoubtedly shift. Meanwhile, there are many who have lived with
this reality for ten years or more. The cipotes—the kids—are the most convincing, having known
nothing else. Arnulfo, one of the messengers, is totally adept at survival on the trail and more
graceful socially than many of the adults. He’s been with the FMLN since his parents were killed
when he was five years old.
At the beginning of our second week, a compa named
Eduardo arrives to take command of Municipal Dos. Maria is now
free to concentrate on her political duties and that means we are on
the move with her throughout northern Chalatenango. One morning
we covered 11 miles before breakfast. The direction and timing of our
marches depends on where the compa contingents are, what kind of
terrain we need to pass through, and radio intercepts about the enemy’s movements.
Because the people we are with are feeding and protecting us, we are soon influenced by
their communal pragmatism and within a few days we join them in calling the Salvadoran army
the ‘enemy’; the guerrillas never refer to themselves as guerrillas but always as compas. They
think of themselves as companions struggling to defend their families, friends and relatives who
have been routinely slaughtered by an army trained, supplied and financed by a foreign power in
league with their oppressors. The Salvadoran army has always been the private police force of
the oligarchy and its government. Now, swollen by U.S. support from 12,000 to 54,000 men, it is
a political force as well.
The sinister syntax of everyday press reports about this war seem laughable, and a far cry
from the thorough and brilliant reporting done by Mark Danner and Alma Guillermo Prieto in
the early 80’s. Current well-hewn attempts at balanced journalism often read like subtle re-writes
of U.S. State Department news releases and do not correspond to the world we find ourselves in.
These stories call the FMLN bandits, hooligans, subversives or terrorists, these people we are
with, who live with each other as compas. We see ineptitude and rhetoric, but overshadowed by
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playfulness, tenderness, and a pervasive mood of mutual respect. Unspoken but always present is
the awareness of death. I have a growing fascination with that topic: what is the effect on the
human psyche of living for years with the nearness of death. I was planning to ask Maria, but
before I did, she began to talk about it as we walked along one day. “The only thing I’ll miss
about this terrible war,” she said, “is the way struggle stimulates us and keeps us from talking
shit all the time. It’s a healthy life if you can stay alive. Here we are, living outside, breathing
clean air, eating simple food, and taking care of each other.”
Though the war grinds on and can reach any corner of the liberated zones, there is an
FMLN infrastructure that functions smoothly, providing elemental communal services such as
health care, dental care, school. And even childcare for working mothers. There are collectives of
all sorts producing basic foodstuffs that are distributed based on family needs. Others
manufacture furniture and implements, acquiring and selling basic goods.
Tension rises and falls with barometric unpredictability. When it is calm in the mountains
you can forget this is one of the most active war zones in the country because it feels so much like
a national park or a wilderness area. Then you come upon a ruined canton quietly crumbling and
you can almost hear the voices of those who were once here. Frozen in time: a church with one
wall perfectly intact, glass in one of the elegant French doors. You can look through and see
saplings growing in the rubble of the opposing wall. And above, part of the steeple clinging to
what is left of the roof. On the veranda of someone’s abandoned house sits a rusting pot that
would have soaked corn for 200 tortillas and next to it a chair with only three legs. Then a
mortar round detonates, or a chopper comes over the ridge with sudden frenzy, or a firefight
breaks out in the distance. And you realize that this version of peace will continue a while longer
before the walls can be rebuilt and the roofs retiled and children can play on the intricate lacing
of paths between the houses.
On Christmas Eve we dance in a clearing on the edge of a large bamboo grove with a
pair of radios tuned to one of San Salvador’s pop stations. There are frequent commercials
reminding us to vote for a change with ARENA, or for more of the same with the ruling Christian
Democratic Party. Everybody dances with everybody and the rising moon sends shafts of dust-
filled light through the bamboo. We name the spot ‘Club Bamboo’.
Christmas Day begins with helicopters strafing a position in the valley below us. Eduardo
and two radio operators spend the morning at the high point above our latest camp monitoring
the action. Nine-year-old Arnulfo is perched at the top of a tree above Eduardo, watching the
horizon. One of the choppers stays high while the other does three cautiously off target runs and
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then scurries west a couple of miles to use up its rockets on an abandoned camp. Word comes
over the radio that there was a direct hit on a discarded poncho. The live chickens for Christmas
dinner don’t arrive because of the enemy activity, but Arvidio digs up some canned Danish
chickens from a reserve supply cave. Everyone gets at least a wing.
January ’89
A couple of days after Christmas, as we are bedding down, there’s the eerie whirr of an
incoming 120mm artillery shell that lands just beyond our camp. I feel the shock wave of
detonation and grab my camera, even though it is pitch dark. A compa named Silvia grabs my
hand and tows me toward a huge protective boulder on the edge of the camp, saying, “You’ve got
to be lying flat because it’s the shrapnel that’s dangerous.” I lay behind the boulder with the
others, recording nervous conversations while nine more rounds fall along the ridge above us.
After it has been quiet for a while, everyone returns to their hammocks. It occurs to me that I’ve
been so intent on recording the event that I’ve scarcely registered fear. When four more rounds
came in around midnight, no one bothers to get up and take shelter. At 4:30 a.m. we are shaken
awake and told in a whisper to be ready to move in three minutes, to be absolutely quiet and use
no light. Word has come in that there is an enemy patrol headed down the ridge toward us. We
move out in the dark, joining contingents from two neighboring camps. Eduardo and a handful of
combat-ready men stay behind to cover our withdrawal. There is no moonlight and I am amazed
at how rapidly the column moves over the narrow, rocky trail. The only sound is the occasional
clatter of a displaced rock. My feet seem to learn a more prehensile role, sensing a grip through
the soles of my boots. I find it helps to have even a barely visible shape ahead and so I position
myself behind a compa with a sack of corn across his shoulders. He uses an unsheathed machete
to hold the sack in place as we negotiate grades, which, if any steeper, would be cliffs. I leave just
enough distance to avoid the machete should he fall, while still able to follow the whitish blur of
his bag of corn.
At dawn we are moving down a long grassy hill. Facing back at the serpentine trail I get a
shot of 70 or 80 people descending: fighters, radio operators, poles with vats of corn suspended
between two kitchen workers; a wounded girl in a hammock slung under a bamboo rod, women
with kitchen utensils balanced on their heads. By 7:30 a.m. we are miles from the camp we’d fled,
listening to chopper patrols.
“This little retreat will be one of the last,” Manuel tells us. “We’re really headed the
other way.” And 24 hours later, we are back at our previous camp.
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The trails are littered with 15-centavo cookie wrappers, an occasional Kern’s fruit juice
can, shreds of ripped and discarded clothing, and every so often, a pair of worn out boots. By the
end of that first month I am passing familiar landmarks,
like the spot where my eye was nearly poked out by the
whiplash of a stripped sapling, where I severely barked
my left shin against a rock in the dark during the ginda,
where I stenciled my forehead moving through a thicket,
where I sprung the upper eyelet of my right boot. A
month. Maria has ten years of memories on another
scale and still she sings.
We are camped in what once was a well-populated area with 12 or 14 ruins below and a
maze of footpaths, walled gardens, banana plantations, and bamboo groves. Down the hill where
water from a dozen rivulets combines to form a stream, there is a small patch of sugar cane
where we shoot a scene with three of the young messengers gathering ripe cane to peel and chew.
When they’ve had their fill, they bathe and wash their clothes. A flight of bees passes overhead
humming like an approaching rocket, followed by a flight of excited birds squawking down the
ridgeline.
A pack train comes clattering in well after dark. At dawn I notice what they’ve brought: a
pair of slightly rusted 30-caliber machine guns, two dozen M-16’s, ammunition, boots and
cartridge belts. The muleskinners form a circle of straw hats on the edge of the kitchen, their
animals staked in the underbrush, feeding on dry grass and foliage. Maria’s husband, Jose is
with them. Every so often, whenever he can, he shows up at our camp to spend a few hours or a
night with Maria and Minita. There is always lots of laughter and good feeling and then, before
long, he’s gone again.
There is heavy firing in the valley that morning just after breakfast and Eduardo is in
command from a high point above camp. Intense radio exchanges reveal that an enemy patrol
coming up to Las Flores has rounded a bend just as a half-dozen compas are crossing the road.
The compas find cover below the road and eventually manage to turn the patrol around without
taking any losses. Eduardo is in his element—directing, questioning, counseling—while the voice
from below reveals a mix of stress, excitement, and exertion. After an hour and a half it is quiet
again and as I am setting up the solar charging panels Eduardo cautions me to be ready to hide
them at a moment’s notice since we can probably expect some aviation as a result of the action in
the valley. He is right. There’s a chopper patrol within a few minutes, and then a series of high
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passes by one of the six-engine U.S Air Force surveillance planes operating out of Illopongo in
Honduras.
“We’re on camera,” Eduardo tells me, laughing. “And they can see the warts on our
faces if we look up, so let’s stay under cover and give them the same boring pictures they always
get.”
I talked to a compa named Lito. He is on the move from one region to another, doing
some sort of political coordination. He speaks of how demoralized the army is; the young soldiers
deserting, shooting their officers. The elite troops are avoiding encounters whenever possible,
calling in air support at the slightest threat. The Atlacatl is a shadow of what it once was back
when they came home from training at Ft. Bragg and would throw kids of suspected subversives
in the air and spear them on their bayonets. Proud warriors, trained by the mighty northerners.
Only six of the original members of the battalion remain, Lito says. It’s been a long war, and the
tide is slowly turning.
As the dry season comes to a close, the countryside is selectively burned by the compas
wherever there are large areas of zacate, the tall, reed-like grass that allows cover for an
approaching patrol. When they are able to dominate these areas, the army burns all the tree
cover to eliminate campsites, sometimes using napalm. So in effect, the compas are burning the
tall grass to keep the troops from burning the trees. The night crackles with bursts of flaming
zacate and more compas wear black clothing every day.
After New Year’s, activity of all sorts quickens. Groups around camp start making
bandages with cotton and gauze strips. Bags of bandages, hundreds of bandages. Then hundreds
more the next day. New recruits are showing up in mounting numbers. There were 17 new faces
one day, including a couple of teachers and several women who left their kids with grandparents.
AK-47’s are appearing in the hands of veteran troops. When I ask Eduardo where these guns are
coming from, he says, “We’re buying them from the Contras. They don’t need them anymore.”
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Maria takes us to visit a tailor shop and bomb
factory. She needs to be measured for a new skirt, a
black one. After a short walk we come to a well-hidden
little camp with four foot-treadle powered sewing
machines whirring away and two men making rifle
grenades out of aluminum pipe while another man fills a
crescent-shaped tin canister with gunpowder. Two of

these fit perfectly around a power pole. Disrupting the flow of power is one of the FMLN’s
favorite attacks on the economy. They tell us that all of the materials for these homemade
munitions are readily available in the hardware stores and pharmacies of any major town.
Back in Municipal Tres I talk with Pablo, who wears a Polo shirt with the logo ‘New
Man’ over its pocket—an unintentional echo of the Cuban revolution from a U.S. shirt maker. It
is an appropriate insignia for a radical intellectual who spent years trying to mobilize a guerrilla
movement in his native land, a country in South America. I’m guessing Colombia. He asks me not
to include him in any of the scenes we are filming. I rib him about being ‘el Hombre Nuevo
Invisible’ and we sit and talk about the state of things, mostly as he sees them; the phenomenon of
America’s messianic fear of socialism and the psychic distortion this fear has cast over the 20 th
Century—the equivalent of witchcraft in the Middle Ages—and how this crusade allows a vital
nation to support, and often generate, the most inequitable and cruel wars imaginable; and to
waste its resources, its energy and its people in a barbaric and self destructive fashion. And how,
ever more deeply involved in the intricate web of Latin American crises, the U.S. increasingly
resembles the Spanish Empire bleeding its colonies and stagnating on the easy pickings, while it
diverts itself with an endless inquisition, as the rest of the world moves on towards the next
century. In Latin America, the state, church and army are all determined to resist change and
protect the ruling class, Pablo says. As the U.S. drifts toward corporate feudalism, in El Salvador
the oligarchy, a shadow state, clings bitterly to the agrarian past. Heady stuff.
One of the challenges of shooting this film is letting a mosquito choose its feeding point
and dig in while I keep filming without flinching in the middle of an interview take. It has all been
hand-held camera work since the second day when I left the tripod behind, so I have no freedom
to swat a mosquito while I’m shooting. Usually we arrange to be seated. That means I can rest
the camera on my knee or use my elbow to prop it at eye level. Many of the interview sessions run
over an hour, so there is a high muscle cramp factor and sometimes my perch is more than
precarious. I am proud of my ability to adapt to the difficult circumstances and still get good
results. I decided early on that living in this rear guard guerrilla war zone suits me as a
filmmaker and as a rebel. It really isn’t that dangerous except when we are being shelled, though
the potential for surprise keeps a healthy tension in the air. Documenting a great subject like
Maria means there is always good material to focus on and this knits the whole experience
together no matter what’s happening. Pamela and Minona show no tendency to be afraid or even
nervous, except about making a good film. I am glad to be working with them and grateful for
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Pamela’s excellent planning and good judgment. They give me the freedom I’m used to working
with and we never disagree about what’s important.
One day Maria, Manuel, Ezekiel and Eduardo sit
in a circle above the camp kitchen planning a night attack
on the outposts of Chalatanango City. Eduardo outlines
the strategy for what is essentially an advanced training
session and a dress rehearsal for the full-scale offensive
that everybody expects soon. Maria is quiet, but her
presence is clearly felt. Though her responsibilities are with the civilian population and militia,
her basic understanding of military logistics is known to be acute and is highly regarded. In the
early ‘80s when Chalatenango was a free fire zone and every civilian a target, and before she
joined forces with the FMLN, Maria led several hundred men, women and children into hiding on
the north side of Mount Chichilco. Fleeing from a helicopter disembarkment of elite troops, they
walked all night in the rain, carrying their children and what little food they had, climbing
through the wooded hills into the shelter of the mountain where they camped clandestinely for
several months. Children were born, old people died and everyone was hungry through that
desolate winter. It was then that Maria formed many of the allegiances on which her work now is
based. She knows everyone we encounter on the trail and in the towns. Often she hugs a child and
tells him that she was there when he was born. She greets the people with surpassing warmth and
they seem to glow in her presence. She invariably makes them laugh and fuels their
determination. When they speak of her, they call her ‘Maria Chichilco’. She was their leader on
the mountain and they know that without her they might not have survived.
One day as we cross the Rio de los Muertos at a confluence with a smaller stream, she
says, “We won’t stop to bathe this time. I feel nervous. I don’t like being down in a bowl like this
when the enemy’s so active. They can come in suddenly with their aviation and you’re trapped.
That’s when you learn how to run—when the bullets are dancing off the path around your feet.”
“You should talk to Lucia,” Ceba says one day, nodding at a comandante visiting
Maria. “She speaks perfect English. She studied in the same school in England with Lady Di.”
We talk to Lucia, but in Spanish because she claims to have forgotten her English after all the
years she’s been in the mountains.
“When we enter the capitol in triumph, Lu” says Maria, “all your upper class friends will
rush to greet you and push me aside. Here’s what I want you to do: I want you to clear a path for
me so I can fart in their faces.” Lucia laughs and promises she will.
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That night we sit up talking to Rene and Cesario who have just come back from an
attack on the guardposts at the Cinco de Noviembre dam. Rene, who seems to be in a slightly
devilish mood, tells us that Cesario once smoked the Bible. Cesario admits that this is true. He
was hiding in a remote area, and being out of cigarettes, managed to obtain some tobacco but
had nothing to roll it in except the pages of a Bible. Day after day he rolled Psalms into
cigarettes. “How were they,” we ask.
“Very inspirational. I felt quite holy.”
Often after morning formation there is a chorus of voices calling out to ask Cesario if he
is going to bathe that day. It turns out that he was once caught in a helicopter disembarkment
while bathing in a water hole near some abandoned houses. Surrounded by government troops
and with no place to hide, he covered his clothes and submerged himself, breathing through a
reed for a couple of hours. Ever since, Cesario has been a less frequent bather than the others,
who tend to wash every day if there is time and water. Cesario has the air of a veteran and a
loner. The teasing he endures about the Bible and bathing is actually a sign of respect tinged with
awe.
He wears camie pants, shirt and hat, which identify him as a fighter of some stature and
longevity. And he carries an AK-47. One can spot new recruits since they often wear a mix of
civilian and military clothing. There is no insignia of rank in the FMLN. In fact, there is almost
no attention paid to rank whatsoever. Everybody is a compa, even if they happen to be a
comandante. Anybody can ask anyone else for a cigarette.
Maria is tired. The endless meetings and the tension of the buildup for the offensive are
taking their toll. During the seven weeks we’ve been with her, I’ve never seen her spirits so
diminished. As we prepare to leave Flores, a radio report comes in about an unidentified column
moving from the direction of Arcatao; she is vexed by the uncertainty and the possibility of being
cut off. We wait on a promontory above the village until the situation is clarified by another radio
message confirming that a group of compas were remiss in their signaling. As we move on Maria
fumes about her dependence on the radio.
“God, I hate them. But we’d be lost without them. But what I hate most of all is this war.
It makes me more angry every day. And every day I hate the enemy more. I hope God gives me
the chance to kill just one of those mean ones before I die. Just one, in a face-to-face shootout.
Not an ambush, not some situation where I have to listen to him begging for mercy. A shootout,
me against him.”
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El Salvador, February ‘89
When we are nearly out of tape we head over the mountain with Maria to the town of Las
Vueltas. The trail is one of the most spectacular and difficult of the many we have walked. It
descends into a series of ravines with lovely mountain streams that flow into the Rio Sempul, then
rises to a pair of hamlets pocked with 500 pound bomb craters, empty, ruined houses. We stop
briefly to rest and Maria says that we must move quickly on the next stretch because it is
completely denuded and we will be exposed until we clear it. And pelado it is—pealed of all
vegetation, a giant bald promontory that the trail ascends at a drastically sharp angle. As we
near the summit an A-37 comes in for a bombing run on the other side of the range we are
climbing. The detonations seem a ghostly underlining of Maria’s pragmatic nervousness. We
clear the crest and drop down into a beautiful populated valley in the center of which is Las
Vueltas, where the Atlacatl elite battalion was turned back just four days ago by a small group of
determined compas. We gorge ourselves on cookies, sugar coated peanuts, and cans of fruit juice
from the store.
Later that afternoon Lucia introduces Maria to the crowd, most of whom already know
her. Maria launches into a rousing speech. She tells the story of the ’32 insurrection and how the
people rose up against the Guardia with nothing but scythes, machetes and their anger. Now, she
says to them, it is time to do it again; only this time there are better weapons and every reason to
use them. She pulls from her knapsack a one-liter soda pop bottle. Holding it up she says, “This
is a weapon any of us can make in a matter of minutes and it can stop a truck or even a tank.
Here’s how you do it. You fill the bottle with gasoline and then you can make it even more
powerful by dropping in scraps of plastic. There’s too much plastic lying around everywhere and
this is a good way to clean it up. You can even use plastic bags. The more you use the longer it
burns. Then you make a wick and that’s it.”
She holds up the bottle, asks the crowd to clear a space, lights the wick and throws the
bottle into the middle of the plaza. There is a satisfying puff of smoke full of flames, and the
contents of the cocktail blacken the stones of the plaza for the next twenty minutes while a band
assembles in front of the church and begins to play. Maria joins them, singing one ballad after
another until well after dark.
San Salvador, February ‘89
We are on U.S. Ambassador William Walker’s lawn at the embassy in San Salvador with a
crowd of journalists and camera crews shooting Vice President Dan Quayle—just in from the
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Perez inauguration in Caracas, where Duarte’s wife represented El Salvador—smiling at
Napoleon Duarte. Quayle’s toast to Duarte creates a look of consternation among the
dignitaries. “I have just spent two days in Venezuela with your wife, Mr. President,” he said,
“and she sends you her greetings.” Not just another stupid low-level gringo advisor. The Vice
President of the U.S.
I think I’m undergoing some weird culture shock being here in San Salvador. A kind of
post climax dyslexia that leads me to make off-the-mark observations and outright non-sequitors.
Plus inability to spell or write legibly. Seven weeks on the trail with Maria has made all three of
us a little crazy and unfit for the so-called civilized world. I liked it better out there in the
mountains with the compas. Getting out of Chalatenango was a trip. Knowing we might be
searched we labeled all the tapes with rock and roll titles; the 8mm cassettes look almost the
same as those for music. I’m glad we did that. To look less like a compa, I tortured myself by
shaving off my beard.
Coming into Chalatenango we were searched, and as the two soldiers got more and more
serious after finding a batch of the tapes, our driver distracted them by offering his pack of
Marlboros and they lost interest and didn’t find the more deeply buried cameras. Happy with
their smokes, they allowed us to leave the checkpoint.
The star of my Pan Am flight to Los Angeles is an eight-week-old, five-pound Salvadoran
baby on its way to London with its adoptive parents who are nervously delighted with their prize.
“Maria’s such a pretty name,” says the mother to the stewardess. I nod in agreement.
I am reminded of the dispassionate account of a compa named Andrecito, about his
children having been taken by a nun and given to an Italian couple while he was in the
mountains. He didn’t blame his wife. “She was tricked by the nuns. They said the children were
going to be put in a school in San Salvador and my wife thought they’d be safer from the war. It
took me a year and a half to find out they’re in Italy. Now I must somehow find a way to get them
back. But first we’ve got to win this war.”
El Cerrito
My daughter Michelle called and we had a good chat. I’ve been
missing her because we’ve both been busy and not in touch very often.
She’s raising two great kids and has embarked on an adventure with an
older man I haven’t met yet. Hearing about this makes me a little sad
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ecause I really love her husband Juan, the father of her kids. He’s
from a village near Zacatecas and he’s a strikingly likeable guy, one
of the millions doing the hard work in this country. He’s lithe and
strong; he has a calm demeanor that I always notice. When he’s with
the kids or working in the garden he projects infinite patience.
Back in ’94 I was poised to leave for Sarajevo to shoot Truth under Siege for
Leslie Gladsjo. Michelle called and asked if I could help her rescue Juan, who was stuck
in Tijuana after trying to cross three times on his way back from a Christmas visit to his
mother. Michelle and Juan had been together for two or three years. He and Michelle
looked great together and were obviously in love, so I was happy for her.
Michelle and I made a point of dressing like upper class tourists. We flew to San
Diego on a Sunday morning and rented a full-sized Buick. I bought a Sunday Times to
scatter across the back seat and we drove to Tijuana. We met Juan at a motel he’d been
staying at and the three of us stood behind our car in an empty parking lot. We did a
ceremony to make Juan invisible and Michelle held her elegant black cape over him as he
slid into the open trunk of the Buick. I closed the trunk and we drove to the border and
lined up with hundreds of other cars. We bought a plastic bag of white toy figures from
one of the vendors weaving through the lines of cars. As we finally approached the
customs official I saw the trunk lid on a car like ours pop open four lines over. Smiling
slightly and humming my customs mantra I drove forward. The pleasant looking,
uniformed customs official leaned forward to survey us and asked, “ Did you buy
anything in Mexico?” “Just these toys,” Michelle said, holding them up. The man smiled
and waved us forward. I drove to a quiet dead end suburban street near the San Diego
airport, popped the trunk open and the three of us embraced and flew home smiling at
each other the whole time as though we’d been blessed. I’ve never been happier or done
anything as simple and important to help one of my kids. Juan and Michelle married a
month later and now, after twelve years together have separated, but live minutes apart
and share the upbringing of their daughter and son. Michelle teaches English as a second
language and Juan does landscaping for a small group of clients, including me. He’s an
expert at pruning trees properly and taking care of plants.
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S.F. May ’89
Woke up thinking about how an acceptance of death can enhance the intricate pleasures
and games life offers. A heightened awareness of the power of love is a result, as are a sense of
proportion, a lack of self-righteousness and the rejection of any cause that is not an expression of
pure and simple humanism.
Susan Kalish calls to talk about a project in Eritrea. I am intrigued. I have barely shaken
the dust of El Salvador’s civil war from my boots and here is another guerrilla war beckoning
me, this one the world’s longest and most intense. Susan recently worked in Tigray Province in
northern Ethiopia for one of the NGO outfits and saw what was happening to the Eritreans. She
is determined to help them by making a film to tell the story about their struggle for freedom from
Ethiopia. It began in ‘52 after the Western powers continued to renege on promises to help
Eritrea gain independence in return for their help defeating the Italians during the war. The
Eritreans began the longest guerrilla war in history. When general Haile Mariam Mengistu
dethroned Emperor Haile Selassie, he destroyed the remains of the Amharic Empire and assumed
leadership of a political machine, known as the Derg. By enlisting Soviet aid he got tanks, guns,
jet fighters and bombers to combat the Eritrean rebellion. The Eritreans just kept fighting. They
are said by the CIA to be the best guerrilla force in the world.
Sudan, June ‘89
Ramadan in Khartoum, Sudan. Hours in customs after 36-hours of flying and layovers.
All our camera and sound gear is impounded despite entreaties, tears and assurances that we are
just passing through, on our way to Eritrea. It’s a nightmare but Susan is very determined.
Endless trips to government ministries, where the few people working are weak with fasting and
the heat. From 9:00 to 2:00 Khartoum is a swarm of blue-black faces and white gallibeahs. The
mornings are an eerie frenzy that suddenly ends when the shops close. Streets that all morning
have been swollen with dense and chaotic traffic, with sleepwalking fasters wandering through it,
are suddenly quite empty and abruptly quiet. Rows of supine bodies everywhere. On the grass,
under the bridges, on the sidewalks. There are bodies splayed about in every conceivable position
on every surface, as though truckloads of mannequins have been scattered at random. At
sundown they come back to life, to eat and drink tea and listen to music late into the night.
After a few days we pry our camera gear out of customs. Air Sudan is on strike, so we
must find a way to Port Sudan, on the Red Sea. With the help of the manager at the Acropole
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Hotel we find and hire a bus: a fifty passenger diesel with a driver, his helper and a couple of
drums of fuel. In 17 hours we cross the huge, desolate country to Port Sudan. A pair of
Landcruisers, drivers and an interpreter take us into Northern Eritrea. I re-read T. E.
Lawrence’s The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, a copy I found at the Acropole. It seems appropriate.
Our drivers wind through rocky defiles and tack across the desert tracks with the finesse
of pinball wizards. We sleep part of the first afternoon at an oasis and then leave in time to make
the border just after dusk, moving into Eritrea under cover of dark with a convoy of freighter
trucks hauling supplies to Orrota, the underground capital of the EPLF, which we reach by two
AM. We drag the gear and coolers containing our 16mm film up a rocky path to a guesthouse
built into the canyon with its doorway the only visible evidence
that there is a building here. The cruisers are parked under trees
and covered with earth colored canvas.
Though there are several Ethiopian surveillance flights a
day, and the Antinovs and Migs have hit the roads leading in
many times, this town of thousands has never been discovered—it
is so well hidden and its people so disciplined, even the children. Six thousand of them go to
school every day, scattered throughout one of the town’s broader canyons in open classrooms
under the trees. We film an English class at one of them.
Everything is dispersed: to do any damage the Derg would have to carpet-bomb
thousands of acres and achieve direct hits on countless underground installations. We film a
sandal factory, which converts worn-out truck tires into hundreds of pairs of 'fighter' sandals
every night. It’s Italian machinery, hauled in—like everything else—from Port Sudan. Then we
film a machine shop the size of two Olympic pools, staffed by crippled former fighters. It’s one of
several underground facilities where trucks are maintained, captured Russian tanks rebuilt and
the mechanical needs of this sophisticated guerrilla army tended to with impressive skill.
A hospital complex stretches for half a mile up a narrow winding canyon. The operating
rooms and clinics are built from reefer containers sunk into the hillside. We film an intricate re-
amputation of a leg that was taken off crudely in the field. The patient is given a dose of Sandoz
LSD and a local anesthetic. He is fully conscious and quite calm throughout the procedure,
though he moans from time to time in a detached fashion. The surgeon re-shapes the amputated
stump so that a prosthetic leg can be fitted when the wound heals.
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Later we meet a second surgeon, at her clinic. Her specialty is surgery on facial wounds.
Some are so grotesque they would seem impossible to restructure, but we study before and after
photos that leave no doubt about her artistry. At the top of the valley is a pharmaceutical plant
that turns out 3 million aspirin doses a year, anti-malarial chloroquin for two million people and
a host of antibiotics and medications. All of this, and thousands of people, are invisible from the
air.
We leave Orrota in the late afternoon, running a slight risk of Ethiopian MIG attack by
being on the road before dark, but our drivers seem confident that we are leaving late enough
and that the mountainous terrain provides protection. I lay in the back of the Land Cruiser
dictating notes into my pocket-cassette recorder about what we’ve shot in Orrota. Descending a
long grade at about 6000 feet we pass a Mercedes freighter climbing the mountain and leaving a
trail of diesel fumes in our path. Suddenly I am overwhelmed by the heavy odor of diesel, as I
haven’t been since before my bike accident with the dog a year ago. It’s as though a loose
connection has been repaired by bouncing down this unpaved road. I rejoice even more when we
stop at an oasis and a tray of Turkish coffee is offered to us. I smell the cedar chips burning in the
center of the tray and the delightful odor of the steaming coffee. For the next few days I enjoy this
miraculous recovery and then the sense of smell gradually drifts away and is completely gone
again by the end of a week. I marvel at the capricious mysteries of the human organism. I hope
they will favor me again by permanently reconnecting that blown circuit.
We’re south of Afabet, an Ethiopian stronghold the Eritreans
won a year ago in a huge tank battle that was said to rival El Alamein,
where Montgomery defeated Rommel in ‘42. Mengistu called his
troops to attention and shot the general who lost the battle. We film a
huge collection of junk Ethiopian tanks in a pass where they were
ambushed north of the main battlefield. Now the armies are facing
each other on two mountain ridges with a steep valley between them.
We climb a couple of thousand feet up the Eritrean side before sunrise
and then, after a welcome bowl of soup at a simple field kitchen, we scuttle through half a mile of
trenches to reach a command post. From there we can see the Ethiopian trenches on the other
side of the valley and off in the distance, the town of Karen. The Ethiopians recently stormed this
ridge, unsuccessfully, and there are rotting corpses on the slopes with vultures feeding on them. I
make a few tentative, quickly executed wide shots over the ramparts, knowing that a lens glinting
in the morning sun could be a sniper target, and then I do some coverage of the trenches and a
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command post shored up with heavy timbers supporting several feet of earth. Nothing much is
happening and the situation seems an eerie echo of a First World War trench warfare stalemate.
On the backside of the ridge are large kitchens and a shaded classroom where fighters can take
courses during their off-duty hours. We sit in on a civics class and film briefly. The commander
teaching the class is a lovely 27-year-old woman, a veteran of ten years of combat. Nearly half
the combat forces are women; lean, strong and beautiful. At the end of the day, as we start our
descent, the Ethiopians begin shelling. We watch the shell-bursts moving along the ridge on our
side of the trenches, searching perhaps for kitchens and classrooms. Or documentary filmmakers.
By dark we are back in a hidden safe-house and I reload my magazines, store the exposed film in
a cooler and bed down for a sound sleep after a day that started long before dawn. Driving north
we come on a man with an Éclair NPR camera on a tripod in the middle of the dirt track. An
Australian crew making a documentary with Thomas Keneally. He’s written a novel, Towards
Asmara. We end up at the same guest-house that night. There’s an enjoyable exchange over
dinner and I give Keneally a draft of my Maria’s Story article after some questions about what’s
happening in Latin America. He’s very congenial and curious about us and our project.
We’re back in Port Sudan. I find the elements of my favorite simple meal in a street
market: ripe tomatoes, garlic and onions that I sizzle in olive oil and serve with eggs and rice to
the three of us and Gebra Hewitt, our host with the cherubic smile. He and I have a good
connection. We sit on the porch talking. Gebra, laughs about being a prisoner of his duties
running the guesthouse. He was wounded near Asmara in '78: a bullet through each thigh. Back
at the front three months later during a skirmish over a convoy of transport trucks he was
wounded by a shrapnel hit in his chest, which permanently disqualified him for active duty. There
is a raven perched on the roof across from us, and a goat in the yard bleats in response each time
the raven calls. Gebra smiles at this elementary joke of nature. I ask him how everyone maintains
such a disciplined and cheerful attitude after all these years of war. He makes some telling
comments about his fellow Eritreans.
"It's true," he says, "that we seem dedicated and pure in our idealism. That's because
everyone has agreed we have no option until we win this war and take back our country. Things
will change once we've triumphed. Competition will begin again. Some will start to fill their
pockets here. Others will leave to offer their professional abilities in other countries. The doctors,
for example. Some of them will say, 'we've worked all these years for nothing. Now it's time to
open a private clinic.' But I’m curious to see what pitfalls we can avoid as a society getting a
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second chance. It's inevitable that bureaucracy will rear its head. It's actually there now, but
functioning in a way you can't see very often."
Returning from Port Sudan to Khartoum is almost as hard as getting here was three weeks
ago. Finally we find a charter pilot with a Cessna 205 who is willing to cram me, Susan, the
soundman and our gear into his plane for the flight. When he says it is impossible to get
everything into the cargo hold I work with him. We rearrange the gear with origami like
precision and get it all in. The next day flying out of Khartoum we find Keneally and his crew on
our British Airways flight to London.
S.F. July ’89
Documentation as a form of exploitation hasn’t yet entered my viewfinder as a conflict. I
am fortunate to have never had to make the choice between filming someone in pain, or helping
them. I try to keep in mind the ethical questions about how we filmmakers relate to our subjects.
How do we honorably and honestly walk the line between truth and exploitation to avoid
betraying our subjects? Should we ever turn off the camera when emotions are overwhelmingly
strong? Most would say ‘No, that’s when you get the good stuff’. But I want to remember that the
camera is not only a powerful mirror. It’s also a potent stimulus. And there are situations that
can be radically changed by the camera’s presence and the director’s persuasion.
I finally grasp that we humans are as insignificant in the universe as insects are to us. Do
great criminals and wanton killers recognize this? And then decide to have their way seeing how
little weight our moral laws actually have? If the glitter of temporal success is bright, it's obvious
that many just indulge their appetites. When they wake up hungry and drained of love, do they
remember what sent them on that path?
Munich, September ‘89
George Csicsery and I fly to Munich, rent a car and drive to a gathering of
mathematicians in Poland to work on George’s film N is a Number, a portrait of mathematician
Paul Erdos. We stop in Prague. It takes a while to find the last two empty hotel rooms in Prague,
which is swarming with West German tourists, enjoying the very favorable exchange rate. We
make friends with some kids working at our hotel. A lively blond girl in reception agrees to go
with us for dinner at a place away from all the tourists. A simple place down near the Danube.
She makes it clear how eager they all are to shake off the Russians.
A week in Poznan with the mathematicians. I’ve brought my Vitus and have time for some
rides. On one I find a good location, an amphitheater where we shoot a scene with Erdos talking
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to a young Polish mathematician. The camera loves the geometry of curving diagonals. I buy a
Russian camera, the Zenit, for twenty overpoweringly strong dollars, with lenses said to have
inherited the Zeiss technology taken back to Moscow at war’s end. We drive south and spend a
day and night in Krakow, which I love. Then on through Slovakia to Budapest, where we continue
filming our subject in his native city. We stay with relatives of George’s. The neighborhood is full
of East Germans, living in their Tuborgs and Trabants as they besiege the West German agency
for visas. Many of them give up on visas and go to a festival at the Austrian border where they
simply walk across, as the guards look the other way. I ride the Vitus with a cousin of George’s
who is an avid and very strong cyclist up the Danube and back for a hundred and ten miles
before lunch, then take a long nap.
S. F. November ‘89
I’ve been working on a script for a feature that I plan to shoot on 35mm and super 16. It is
a thriller about a bicycle messenger/writer who stumbles on a coke smuggling operation in
support of the Nicaraguan Contras. I weave in a lot of detail from my recent experiences in
Central America and title it Jackals in the Rain. Thinking I might get closer to the truth through
fiction than documentary since I’m dealing with an un-provable set of projections about what
might be happening. I hope to make this script strong enough that I can easily raise a couple of
hundred grand and shoot it with unknown actors and a crew of friends. But I‘m not quite satisfied
with the script; too many subtle clichés. I put the third draft on the shelf ‘till I have time for
refinements.
I’m standing in my kitchen squeezing a lemon into a glass of water. I have just ridden
back from the headlands north of the Golden Gate. Suddenly the loft begins to sway and creak
like a wooden ship in a heavy sea. As I steady myself against the kitchen counter I realize that it’s
a serious earthquake. I enjoy the sensational motion without any thought of taking cover. It’s not
my first quake and I speculate it’s at least 7 on the Richter scale. It’s more fun than being under
fire so I’m calm. After a few minutes I get a call from someone asking if I can meet them with a
video package and document the damage. It’s for a TV show I’ve never heard of called ‘Hard
Copy’. I change out of my biking togs and drive over through intersections with dead traffic
signals to the nearby Adolph Gasser rental house. Surprised at how well everyone handles the
missing stoplights. No panic; people wait their turn. The equipment warehouse is a chaotic
shambles, with racks of lighting and grip gear spilling onto the floor. A couple of dazed looking
employees are sorting through the damage. I ask the manager, David Keane, if he can put
together a video package and then ask the alert young woman helping him if I can hire her to do
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sound with me. Her name is Leslie Gladsjo. She agrees and we go to meet the producer in North
Beach. From there we go to the Marina, which is on fire and swarming with firemen rigging
hoses to pump from the bay and from distant hydrants that still have pressure. Collapsed four-
story apartment buildings lean into the street on top of flattened cars. The police captain in
command of the neighborhood is operating out of a parking lot from which he can see his own
house burning. We cover him talking on the phone, giving orders to his men, and then we get a
brief interview that serves to tie the whole scene together. I shoot some dramatic low angle
footage of the firemen at work, and of rescue crews trying to dig people out of rubble. It’s a
balmy Indian summer night and the streets are full of people hanging out watching portable TV’s,
drinking wine, telling each other of their narrow escapes and waiting for the next aftershock. A
surreal party atmosphere in the midst of chaos. I feel lucky to have hired Leslie; she is very
proficient, also very beautiful. She’s a Harvard graduate. At 3 A.M. we finish in the Marina and
cruise out to Candlestick Park where we find a mobile satellite unit set up by ABC to transmit the
World Series game that had just begun when the quake hit. They send our footage to ‘Hard Copy’
and a six-minute piece is on the air that night. I have a fierce crush on Leslie by the end of that
surreal night of shooting. She’s my type of woman, the mix of beauty and talent I always fall for.
I check in with her in a couple of days and it’s clear she’s not available. I hope she will at least
be another alluring friend.
S.F. November ‘89
I’m working with Elizabeth Farnsworth on Thanh's War, which will take us to Vietnam
early in 1990. When I realize how much I am going to spend on renting a
video camera for that project I decide that I can no longer afford not to
own one so I borrow a lot of money to buy a light one-piece Beta
camcorder that Sony has just released, the 300. It’s only a little bigger and
two pounds heavier than my ACLs. Video tape is cheap; the cameras are
expensive: both to buy or to rent. My peers charge nearly twice their 16mm
rate when shooting video.
Elizabeth is a recognized and accomplished print journalist, writing as a freelance for
magazines like Foreign Policy, The Nation, Mother Jones, and the San Francisco Chronicle. She
began doing an occasional report for the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour in 1983 after she made a
documentary, The Gospel & Guatemala, with Steve Talbot about the situation in Guatemala
during the mid-80’s. Elizabeth and I have recently been checking each other out to see if we can
join forces after she responded to a copy I sent her of my article about shooting Maria’s Story. I
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took her to lunch to ask if she would consider co-producing a film called Latin Leaders—
portraits of several Central and South American thugs who are running their countries. She liked
the idea and thought we might find some funding. Then she met Pham Thanh on a story for the
NewsHour and asked me to join her to make a doc telling his story of being wounded in his
village as a kid and then brought up in Berkeley. She’s calling it Thanh's War. We may forget
about Latin Leaders.
Vietnam, January ’90
Jaime Kibben and I fly to Taiwan to do a piece for his client, American President Lines,
at the port of Haiphong. Boring but lucrative. From there we fly to Bangkok to meet Elizabeth.
She and I walk the teeming streets from our hotel to the Vietnamese consulate where we complete
the final paperwork needed to enter Vietnam. Jaime entertains himself by exploring Bankok’s
river scene on the water-taxis.
We fly to Saigon and start work on a report for the McNeil/Lehrer NewsHour about
economic reform. In the afternoon we meet our subject, Thanh Pham to shoot a scene of him with
Thiet, his bride-to-be, in a pedi-cab rolling through Saigon traffic. Another scene of them walking
through a street market. It’s surreal to actually be here, after all those years of the war on TV. I
almost feel like I’ve been here before, especially this neighborhood. Staying at the Cu Long
Hotel, formerly the Majestic, looking down at the Mekong River with all those bars just up Tudo
Street where the GI’s used to hang out and pick up Vietnamese girls. There’s still rock and roll
and pretty girls in the bars and still massage parlors on the roof of the Continental Hotel, but no
GI’s. To save money, Jaime and I share this room with our gear piled around us. Tomorrow we
all fly to Da Nang.
Because Elizabeth, Jaime and I are the first Americans in the rural area southwest of Da
Nang since the end of the war, the Vietnamese consider us a major security problem. They are
taking what seem to us exaggerated precautions to avoid an international incident. Though we
hoped to stay in the village, camping if necessary, it was not to be. We are put up on the top floor
of a government office building in Thang Binh, still about twelve miles from Thanh’s village. It’s
a half hour drive to where the road ends, and a walk of an hour and a half to the village of Binh
Phu. Apparently there are rumors that people are planning to attack us, so the building is
guarded by a small army of local militia. After the second night, the Vietnamese decide it’s still
too risky and they move us to a Da Nang hotel, thus bringing our daily commute to six hours.
Because time and especially daylight are limited, we simply subtract another couple of hours
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from our sleeping schedule, in order to spend most of the daylight hours in Thanh's village. It’s
normal life in the documentary trenches.
On the way in, the first day, we stop at the district headquarters and talk to the local party
leaders. They are very curious about whether any of us were here during the war. We all opposed
the war, so we tell them that. As we prepare to leave, a woman runs up the path to confront
Elizabeth with an outburst of emotion and memory that seeing us triggers. She tells us—with
Thanh translating—of the day when an attacking plane killed her mother, decapitated one son
and wounded another as they worked in the paddy. She waves the withered stump of one hand,
begging Elizabeth for an explanation. Elizabeth takes the hand in hers and tries to console her.
The walk to the village is through a beautiful and intricate mosaic of rice paddies and
hamlets that have slowly been rebuilt since the war ended. At one crossing a footbridge is made
of two 120mm shell casings; at another there is the barrel of an M-60 machine gun. Unexploded
ordnance is still a problem. Just two weeks ago a farmer lost his life when his shovel hit an M-79
grenade. For most of the walk we have a growing retinue of children following us, chattering
happily, watching and laughing as we slide through the muddy stretches. Jaime entertains them
by turning his furry Windjammer microphone cover into a squeaky animal at the end of his boom
pole.
One evening as we approach a compound on the edge of the paddies, a man begins
yelling angrily at Thanh: "Why have you brought these Americans here? Didn't they kill enough
of us? Didn't they kill your entire family? We don't need them here." Thanh goes over to talk with
him as we pass, and he rejoins us a few minutes later, telling us that the man is drunk on Tet
wine. We feel the conflict for Thanh and stress that the man has a right to his anger, drunk or
sober.
It seems that we are here to record a series of tragic
stories, balanced by the joy among Thanh's family, and the
festivities in preparation for his marriage. Thiet is twelve
years younger than Thanh; she was born after the day
Thanh’s mother and grandmother died in front of him during
a firefight when he was twelve. They were in the family shelter
behind their house, as American tanks and troops came
through the village in pursuit of VC sappers who had been
bivouacked nearby. During a lull Thanh's mother went to the opening to look out, just as a GI
was passing. Seeing her, he lobbed in a grenade that killed both women and tore Thanh's
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esophagus open. We film Thanh at this place, which is now a barren field. The shelter has been
filled in, the house destroyed and in its place are the graves of Thanh's mother and grandmother.
Thanh burns incense at their grave markers, and stands sobbing softly there. I try not to intrude
as I film this moment of sorrow. At the well where he watched several of his playmates die during
a bombing attack, he says he wishes there were some kind of pill he could swallow to take away
these memories and make him like other people.
The next day we talk to a cousin who was there the day Thanh's sister died, a year after
Thanh was rescued by the C.O.R. (the Committee of Responsibility) and taken to San Francisco
to be patched up at the U.C. hospital and then adopted. The cousin describes trying to save the
sister after her leg was severed during an artillery attack on the village. He and his sister pulled
the wounded girl in from the field and brought her to a makeshift shelter but couldn't get her to a
hospital because of the continuing attack. She bled to death while they huddled in the shelter near
her. The cousin broke into tears as he finished telling this story to us, saying, "If only we could
have gotten her to a hospital she might have been saved."
At the Da Nang hospital where Thanh was taken by medivac chopper at the end of the
battle, we meet one of the head doctors and as we interview her she realizes that she was based
briefly at a VC field hospital in Thanh's village during the war. She seems to understand our
quest for the truth of this story.
In Hanoi we meet with the administrator of Vietnam TV. The studio has two VHS cameras
and in the broadcast room there are two U-matic 3/4" decks, one of which is being repaired
rather frantically by two technicians.
"We have a saying here about our broadcast situation, a kind of joke.” Mr. Lam says, “We
say: a picture is anything you can see on your screen. Because many times when it is time to
broadcast, things are not working, and people only see an empty screen. So even when it's not a
very good picture, we're happy to have something on the screen, even the still life of a flower,
rather than nothing."
Recently he went to the US and visited CBS, NBC, ABC and Turner Broadcasting. In a
meeting with Ted Turner he agreed to become a member of the CNN network, broadcasting and
submitting coverage to the weekly world news program. But to do so he had to have a satellite
dish and transmitter. When the State Department blocked the shipment, under embargo
regulations, there was a lawsuit. Turner won.
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One of our last nights, walking around the Lake of the Sword, in the center of Hanoi, Jaime
and I come upon an amazing scene. A cave-like empty building along the lake has been taken
over by teenagers. There is a band playing Beatles tunes; the lead singer not only looks like John
Lennon, he sounds remarkably like him. The youth of Hanoi are dancing with abandon, and they
welcome us as soon as we appear, as though we are old friends, as though they were expecting
us. They pull us magnetically onto the dance floor to join them. I find myself dancing with a
young man, for the first time in my life, and it seems as natural and joyous as any time I ever
danced before. I am unaware of gender and conscious only of Dionysian motion. It is an
experience that seems directly lifted from Hermann Hesse's Magic Theater. I am aware of an
additional layer of meaning that is like an augury: the power and vigor of youth has won out over
the wizened meanness and nationalism of cold-war politics. The unspoken message is that we are
welcomed from the western world that brought them the Beatles, and forgiven simultaneously for
all the horror we once brought along with the music. I am both glad and sorry that I don't have
the camera. As we wander back along the lake to the disheveled Hotel Metropole I wonder how
long it will be before our nation forgives them and at least lifts the embargo so the business of
America can get on with its business.
Pan Am to SFO, January ‘90
Elizabeth and I sit with a pile of notes on a seat between us, working on an outline of the
thirty hours we’ve shot for our documentary and the two pieces for the MacNeil/Lehrer
NewsHour. Sixty Beta tapes are stowed in the compartment above us; I never want them in
baggage. Thanh’s War is partially financed by the two reports Elizabeth is doing for the
NewsHour. Very little information is available in America about Vietnam, partly because of how
difficult it is to get permission to enter the country, but also because it seems America needs to
ignore and forget the war, which creates a de-facto embargo by the U.S. media on stories about
Vietnam. So we’re doing a piece about doi moi—economic reform—and another about cultural
openings. But most of the footage is for the documentary. I’m delighted by how smoothly this
difficult trip has gone and how well the three of us got along and worked together. We like each
other. Elizabeth seems to feel the same and thanks Jaime for coming and both of us for working
well below our normal rates.
We fall into a brief discussion about the second half of the 20 th century being a unique
time in history when the world has been polarized by super-power confrontation and ironically
enjoyed a golden age of economic and political stability interrupted only occasionally by
relatively minor conflicts. Minor only if history has the cold eye of an accountant in comparing 4
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million dead from the Korean War and two million in the Vietnam War to the 60 million who died
during WW ll. Not even counting Cambodia’s million plus and some other odds and ends in Latin
America and Africa.
S.F. February ’90
It is increasingly apparent that Thanh’s War is a documentary about the other side of the
war, about the rural Vietnamese experience in an area controlled by the VC and hotly contested
by the Americans. One of these Americans is Hal Bell, who was in command of a firebase on the
ridge above Thanh’s village. Elizabeth finds Hal through her research and arranges for Hal and
Thanh to meet at a Vet Center in Berkeley. When he spots a place on the map spread in front of
us where several of his men were ambushed, Hal is overcome with anger. "That's the goddamn
place," he says, whacking the map with his hand.
He asks Thanh if there were troops in his village when the attack that killed his mother
began and when Thanh says there were, Hal says that was the problem: they were in the wrong
place at the wrong time.
"Well," Thanh says, laughing lightly. "That was our home."
"Oh God," Hal says, softly. "I know."
Tanu Tuva, July ‘90
Kungar Tug, Tuva. Our arrival at this wild and remote place in a Russian M.I. 17
helicopter was a major event for the nearby villagers. Each day more of them show up at this
camp by the side of the Yenessei River. They turn it into a kind of
bazaar; a group of the men crowd around a cloth game board
gambling with shells as betting tokens; a teacher brings displays
of priceless ancestral artifacts to give us a sense of the culture
and history of the region. And there are throat-singers to
entertain us: the sounds of two and even at times three voices
coming from one man’s lungs. On a slightly sad note, one mother dressed her daughters, preened
her husband, and brought them to my camera like offerings. They danced, he played the
accordion, and then she sang and it seemed that the dominant force coming from her nervousness
was ambition. And it is this that will probably keep her family stuck in the rough assembly of my
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footage. The school mistress welcomes us with great warmth, presents us each with a piece of
embroidered cloth and tells us we are the first Westerners to ever visit their village.
The Yenessei River, flows east out of the mountains of Mongolia and north to the Arctic
Circle. A collective of Russian outfitters called the ‘Laboratory of Adventures’ organized the
expedition David Boatwright and I are filming for a doc I’m doing on my own nickel. They’re
from Moscow, a gang of skilled dropouts: a physicist, an electrical engineer, a welder, a rocket
engineer and four teachers. One of them, an English teacher named Luba, is our translator. Their
interest in food is constant and highly evolved, which is fortunate since it means they’ve managed
to find crates of fresh provisions before leaving Moscow, where it is hard to find a loaf of bread
right now.
Anatoly, the leader of the trip, brought his beautiful Irish Setter ‘Altai’, and Aeroflot
allowed the dog to travel with us. ‘Altai’ lay in the aisle of the Tupelov 154 next to his master for
the entire flight from Moscow to Kyzyl. Seeing the flight attendants step around the dog alerted
me to what a different and surprisingly permissive culture we are in. Soon we will be on our way
down this beautiful river through an unspoiled wilderness. I fantasize that we’re in a time warp
and actually in Idaho a hundred years ago. It reminds me of the Salmon River.
Tuva was once part of the Mongolian Empire; its lush valleys were pastures for the herds of
Genghis Khan. Then, for centuries, there was no contact with the rest of the world. Protected by a
ring of mountains, the Tuvans followed their herds and their Buddhist and shamanic traditions
without interference until 1944, when they were annexed by the Soviet Union.
We visit an eighty-year-old shaman who smokes her ceremonial
pipe and tells us about the sanctity of certain places in nature. ‘If there’s a
tree in the middle of a meadow,’ she says, ‘it is special and should never be
cut.’ She claims that she fights evil with her talismans in places where
spirits cross paths. Spirits, she tells us, are everywhere, not just in Tuva.
She performs a ceremony with her talismans, a bundle of thongs holding an
array of metal tools: a spear, a shovel, a hoe and a saw. She plays a mouth
harp and sings a chant and tells us that our trip has now been blessed and
that no harm will come to us. Afterwards, talking to Luba, I find out that no
one has apprenticed to her due to decades of Soviet opposition to shamanism. It’s considered
regressive and superstitious and so has been effectively outlawed. As a result this woman is the
last shaman in the region.
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Tuva, August ‘90
No phones and no airplanes and no sign of another living soul for our first ten days on
this river. Unbroken forest on both sides of the water. Lots of mosquitoes and tiny ticks that
burrow into and barb your flesh so that you must dig them out with a needle or knifepoint. Then
the terrain opens up and we visit a family of shepherds living in yurts in a broad meadow above
the river. We buy some goat milk and a sheep, which they butcher for us while we drink tea in one
of the yurts. I film them herding their sheep and goats and separating milk to make cheese from
the cream.
Floating along later Anatoly says, ‘The only good thing
about the Chernobyl disaster was that it made people begin to
think about the threats from technology and development. Atomic
plants, hydroelectric stations. All that stuff destroys the
ecosystems. Nomadic people don’t need or even want electricity,
but the government comes along and builds dams and hydro plants anyway. Like the Katun River
in the Altai region. Then these people have to try to learn how to live in our culture when their
own is destroyed. It’s too crazy. We must find other ways to generate power.’
We pulled in for lunch on a log-strewn bank of the broadening river. There are tiny cacti
on the hillside above us, a southern exposure with rock outcroppings. The opposite bank is virgin
forest. I have 15 more rolls of Betacam tape and just enough battery power left to shoot them. It
rained all morning and we hovered under a tarp on the big pontoon raft. I took the camera out at
one point and shot the shrouds of mist on the mountainside and the river over Viktor’s back as he
manned the sweep. A thunder-clap echoed off the mountain walls.
We’ve reached the region of Orthodox fundamentalists known as Old Believers. We stop to
visit an old woman who has lived alone since her sister died, miles from her nearest neighbor,
raising sheep and cattle; fishing and gardening. Only
occasional help from the world of men. She shows us some
bronze icons that she says tarnished overnight when her
sister died. She recites from a huge book of religious texts
printed in old Russian, squinting through broken eyeglasses
and falling into a trancelike state as she reads. As we leave
she plaintively asks Lena, one of the teachers from Moscow,
if she would consider staying with her. Lena quietly and sweetly says that she can’t.
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In the ‘Old Believer’ village of Ussep people shun us at first. Then suddenly, a woman
welcomes us and immediately invites us into her home. Her name is Ilena. She has lived here all
her life and has four daughters, one of whom still lives with her. She tells us of her struggle with
the rigid rules of the community which considers learning and contact with the outside world a
sin. With a little prompting by Luba she sings a lovely contrapuntal ballad with her daughter and
then as we prepare to leave, she asks if we could take her two teenage grand-nephews with us to
run the major rapid a few miles further down the river. We readily agree to take them. They sit at
the fire with us that night.
The next morning Ilena arrives by motorboat at our camp above the big rapid and we sit
talking to her. She tells us that in 1943 her great aunt brought a son and two other boys to the
head of this half-mile long rapid. The three boys committed suicide by throwing themselves in the
raging water as the only way to avoid joining the Soviet Army. I stay behind to film her watching
her nephews ride through the rapid. Clearly a kind of exorcism for Ilena. Her face glows with
happiness when she sees the grinning boys go past in the big pontoon boat.
In one of our last camps there is a parting celebration. Each of us from the West is
presented with a Soviet flag, signed by all of the Russians. Generous portions of Vodka are
consumed. Anatoly proposes a toast to the health of the earth as Boatwright drums a lively tune
on a timpani he improvises using jars, tin cups and containers from the expedition kitchen.
Hong Kong, August ’90
During three weeks and three hundred miles on the Yenessi River, we descended 3000 feet
back to Kyzyl, the capital of Tuva, where a slobbering drunk greeted us, reeking of vodka, and
tried to help carry my gear. I fly to Moscow and a day later to Hong Kong, where I expect to meet
producer Richard Hall and soundwoman Leslie Gladsjo for a shoot in China. We think we are
going to follow the new young Beijing-appointed Panchen Lama on a trip across China from
Changdu to northern Tibet where he will be welcomed by 3000 horsemen having a race in his
honor. This documentary has all been carefully planned with permits from Beijing and a second
crew coming from NHK TV in Japan. But when I get to Hong Kong there is a message from
Richard, still in California, saying there were sudden problems and delays. The Chinese say that
a storm has made the roads unsafe. It seems more likely they have changed their minds about
allowing western journalists to be so close to Tibetans, and the delays are probably permanent. I
hang out for a few days with my friend John Giannini at the FCC, the Foreign Correspondent’s
Club, in Hong Kong. We’re having lunch there one day when the news that Saddam Hussein has
invaded Kuwait comes over the wire. For the hell of it, and no real substitute for Tibet, John and
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I fly to Bankok to shoot a strange little film about Thom Krabok, the Opium Pipe Monastery,
where drug addicts can make a vow to renounce their habit and take a course in herbal cleansing
and vomiting. There’s a fine looking black American, a former marine who hints to us about
having been in Beirut as a mercenary at the time of Sabbra and Shattila. And coming here to heal
his soul soon after. He’s in charge of dispensing the herbal tea and seems very serene. Not sure
this doc will ever get released or even edited. It’s a solid little story, but vomiting is not a very
trendy topic, even if ending drug addiction is.
S.F. October ’90
It’s hard being back here South of Market after the eventful miles this year. I check in with
Elizabeth at KQED where she’s editing the Vietnam doc with Blair Gerskow. They edited the two
pieces for the NewsHour together last Spring; both aired with good responses. I ride out to see
Sharon and Savannah but it’s hard to often fit that in as the days get shorter. I prefer not to ride
after dark. Hoping to take Savannah and any of the other kids who can get away to New Mexico
at Christmas time to visit old friends there.
Maria’s Story just played at the Film Arts Foundation Festival to a full house. Great to see
how well it went from 8mm video to Beta, to 35mm film. I could complain about the video
artifacts but I’m not a snooty purist about film. It’s clear to me that, especially for docs, it’s the
content that counts, no matter how it looks. And we had a great character in dramatic situations,
so the content is strong. I liked seeing my work on the big screen with an audience riveted to the
story. Pamela, Monona and Katherine did the Q&A. They didn’t ask me to join them, which
seemed a slightly mean-spirited message. My article about shooting the film is in the current FAF
Release Print magazine, which I thought might help launch the film. None of the women has said
a word about it. I think they fear I’ll get more attention for shooting their film than I deserve.
They’re a little skittish that way, but I can’t blame them, in this male-dominated society. I’m
probably not aware of how much attention I get without even trying.
I’m not sure where I’m headed as a filmmaker. The script for Jackals in the Rain is still
on the shelf and I’m enjoying all this other stuff too much to think seriously about it. I know I’d
have to give it my full attention and drop everything else. I have the skill, the equipment and the
intention. I even have a line of credit. What I seem to lack is a sense of fashion in filmmaking. I
could say I’ve never wanted it; in any case I've never had it, and now I'm not much interested in
tracking the current trends, though I am inevitably aware of them. I usually disagree with them or
simply find them superficial. It's interesting to go to a festival that once represented a common
ground for the best work being done in many directions and find the majority of films all
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following a current set of fashions. The result, sadly, is that if feminist anger, neo-Dadaist clutter,
MTV style rapid cutting are the flavors of the season there is little or no room for anything else in
the entire festival, and a startling number of more interesting submissions are rejected.
California, November ’90
Tano Maida tells me that he wants to make a film about Hansel Mieth. I am intrigued and
eager to meet her. She fled Germany in the early thirties to escape fascism and join her mate Otto
Hagel in the U.S. They weren’t Jews but they didn’t like what they saw happening in Germany.
They struggled to survive in Depression Era California, sharing one 35mm camera as they lived
with and documented migrant workers in the Central Valley. They slept on the roof of a cheap
apartment on Telegraph Hill and turned their bathroom into a darkroom to process their photos
from the fields. After Hansel’s work was noticed by the WPA there was growing support and
recognition. She and Otto both covered the fledgling ILWU’s general strike that shut down San
Francisco in ’34. Several of her pictures of those turbulent days became famous. When LIFE
magazine wanted to make her their first female staff photographer, she refused the offer, saying
she didn’t think her politics were compatible with theirs. LIFE then hired Margaret Bourke White
but kept offering Hansel single story assignments, which she occasionally accepted. They
convinced her to join their staff in the late thirties. She and Otto moved to Manhattan and enjoyed
two years of fame and fortune.
Now she is living on the ranch they bought when they moved back west in ’41 after she
resigned her staff position at LIFE. They built a beautiful simple house with a large darkroom.
I’ve been there shooting several times with Leslie Gladsjo recording sound. I shoot Hansel
working in the darkroom, making prints of cowboys working the range in Texas back in the 40’s.
At 84, she is still very active and busy with her amazing archive of negatives. She shows me her
collection of Rolliflexes, Leicas and Contaxes and then picks up a Nikon F when I say I want
footage of her using a camera. We go out in the garden and I
bend down and rest the video camera on my knee to shoot a
short scene of her at work.
I just got a slide in the mail from her. It’s a picture of me
taking the footage of her. In my camera’s lens is a perfect
reflection of her holding the Nikon. It strikes me as a fine
exchange of the warm regard we have for each other. I’ll have a
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couple of prints made and take one to her next time I visit.
New Mexico, January ’91
We all have Christmas dinner at Judy’s on 23 rd Street, including Sharon, who comes late
and brings Savannah and Hennessey. Since I stopped living with Sharon four years ago Judy has
decided to just treat us all like members of a tribe. There’s a record cold spell and even in S.F.
it’s below freezing. After one of Judy’s great meals all the kids except Geoff and Hennessey climb
into my Citroen wagon and we head for New Mexico. My friend and fellow cinematographer
Michael Anderson has injured himself and asked me to do a shoot in Israel with Susana Munoz
and Erica Marcus. I must meet them there in two weeks so this will be a shorter trip than I
expected. We’ll stay at Jody Cooper’s place on the edge of the plaza in Chimayo. We make it
across the Sierra to Reno just after dark and I fill up in Sparks, planning to stop again for more
fuel in Ely as I have before on this same run. But not in these temperatures or with this many
passengers and this much extra weight. Sadly at a little after midnight the engine sputters and
dies in the flat east of Little Antelope Summit, still 30 miles shy of Ely. The stations in both Austin
and Eureka were closed. I curse myself for not topping off in Fallon. The girls have nodded off
but I ask Tanya to fluff out one of the down bags in the back to keep them warm. It’s below zero
out there. No traffic in either direction, which is normal for U.S. 50, America’s loneliest highway.
I’m ready to jump out and flag down any car or truck. It’s nearly an hour before the first lights
come our way. It’s a pickup with a Basque shepherd at the wheel and the woman who cooks at
the ranch where they work. Coming back from a Christmas outing in Ely. We drive together to a
ranch about 3 miles away and the shepherd wakes the foreman, who he knows. He sleepily and
unhappily pumps me a five-gallon can of gas. I give him three times what it’s worth and promise
to bring the can back. I don’t know how to thank the Basque shepherd. He smiles and says God
will reward him and I can help someone else in need when I have a chance. I promise I will and
slip a mini-mag-lite from my pocket into his hand. It’s heartwarming when events like this allow
one to see how generous and eloquent ordinary people can be.
Israel, January ’91
Susana Munoz and Erica Marcus both grew up as Zionists and are now making a film
about Raymonda Tawil, a Palestinian woman who struggled for years to break the barriers
between Jews and Arabs so that they might begin a dialogue that could lead to peace. I’m happy
to join them. They’re both experienced filmmakers. They know me and my work and trust me to
help them find the story. Looking at the situation on the West Bank and in Gaza gives another
twist to my once pro-Israeli perspective. The dream of a new kind of nation was long ago
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muddied by years of cold war power games that anointed the Israeli military as America's best
boys in games we preferred to let them play as our surrogates. This added up to a whole
generation of documented and seriously rumored real-politic I couldn't have guessed at a few
years ago, culminating in their intricate involvement training Contras, advising Noriega, arming
the Guatemalan military, supplying and training the Medellin cartel's paramilitary forces,
working behind the scenes for the last two governments of Peru, and playing strange games with
South Africa in the ‘80s.
On the West Bank and in Gaza, the strongest Israeli projection is militarism and
arrogance. An interview with Yael Dayan, who followed her father into politics, shows so much
ill-humored bias that it will be tough to use any of it. In Nablus when I try to film a checkpoint
openly, I am shut down before I get the first shot. "I don't want to see your permit," the lieutenant
said. "Put the camera away right now or I'll confiscate it." I can tell he means it. Later we get a
better scene shooting from our van while the soldiers are too busy firing tear gas to notice us.
"We want peace," an Israeli cab driver tells us one day. "We've always wanted peace, all of
us. I think the Palestinian people do too, most of them. Look how much better off they are now.
They were living in mud houses before." The myth from the man on the street: there was nothing
here but a few primitive Bedouins until the Zionists came along and made the desert bloom. It
took a little dynamite but, well, a few mud houses—most of which were stone—and a bunch of
squalid bedu couldn't be allowed to stand in the way of progress. Uri Avnery put it most
poignantly in a paragraph about the Holocaust syndrome: there's no remorse for the victim from
those who have been victimized. And so it goes: 250 housing units a day sprouting like post-
modern fungi on the hilltops of the West Bank.
As the tension builds about the looming conflict over Kuwait and the chance of Iraqi Scud
missile attacks, Jerusalem is seized with an obsession to cover all windows with polyethylene to
protect everyone from chemical warheads. As business slows and most shops close, there are
more and more people on the streets with gas masks dangling from their necks.
Roberto, a Salvadoran refugee with Canadian citizenship, skips out of town without paying
his bill at the Jerusalem Hotel: well over a thousand dollars. A classic Latin charmer, tanned,
handsome and witty, he was always surrounded by women on the grape-arbor shaded café
terrace. Then his room was empty, except for a bag of miscellaneous gear worth a few hundred
dollars, most of which turned out to be borrowed from people here who were impressed by his
passion and dedication to the Palestinian cause and the video documentary he is making about
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children of the Intifada. This event reminds me of how frequently some on the left justify ripping
people off because they’re doing good work for a noble cause.
As we leave there is a tense scene at the Tel Aviv airport. I’m going to Spain to do some
shooting for Leslie Gladsjo on her film about a big performance there by Survival Research
Labs—the San Francisco performance art gang. Susana and Erica are returning to the States.
Before I can board my flight to Barcelona I am interrogated for over an hour at the Tel Aviv
airport. Though I have acquired a second passport for travel to Israel after traveling through the
Sudan, the inspector spots a sticker on one of my cases from the Acropole Hotel in Khartoum
with Arabic on it and this arouses a great deal of suspicion. Finally, with Susana stepping in and
vouching for me in Hebrew, I am allowed to give her a farewell hug and board my flight.
El Cerrito
Brother Tony just called from his truck and said he thinks McCain will win. He’s
more in touch with all that conflicted, angry energy in working America than I am, so it’s
a chilling shot of reality. I tell him I think Obama will pull it off, if he can stay alive. As
Obama slips in the polls it’s clear to me that some people have shifted from being
affected by the phenomenon of his early popularity. It really seems akin to rock-star
celebrity and they aren’t paying attention to what he’s saying or where he stands on
progressive issues. They’ve been responding to him as they would to a sports hero or a
guy whose music they enjoy. So this favorable but superficial popularity is easy to sway,
and some are suddenly confronted by the fact that their support might put a black man in
the white house, and that’s too startling. They might have to call it the black house. They
wouldn’t vote for their garbage man or gardener to be president, so McCain’s the only
answer, even if he ruins their lives and scotches the narrow hope of the country’s
recovery from 8 years of Bush/Cheney. They’ll probably just cheer with arms raised like
Neanderthals as McCain strafes and bombs his way to the end of history. I’m still hopeful
but feeling that if America is too stupid to elect a candidate as smart as Obama we don’t
deserve him.
Spain, February ’91
After filming in Israel and Barcelona, I go sleepwalking back to Deya’, thirty years after I
last left it, when I was a hungry young writer with a family to feed. I find my way around Palma
as if I had been here last week, though it seems a bit hazy. I have lunch at an old favorite
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estaurant on the Rambla that hasn't changed--even the menu--or so it seems, but the prices are
about twenty times higher. I find where the bus leaves for Deya and have an espresso and an
ensaimada—the unique Majorcan puff pastry—while I wait. The Majorcan mountain people
seemed as inbred, linguistically turgid, and reptilian as ever. And then suddenly there appears
one of startling beauty, like a time traveler from another galaxy.
Beyond Valledemosa I peer through the bus window at the abstracted, ancient olive trees
whirling in the foreground past the emerald and cobalt sea. In Deya, slashes of a foaming torrent
are suspended against the cliff above the village. After finding a place to stay I walk out to a
house known as Canellun and knock on the kitchen door. Beryl Graves, Robert's widow, says
casually, "Well, hello,” as though we’d seen each other yesterday. “Is that really the same
leather jacket you used to wear? It looks to be," re-enforcing the time warp. She asks me in, and
we engage in a six-hour, seamless exchange that darts all about the thirty-year gap in our
friendship. There is an occasional rumble as flights of B-52’s from mainland bases pass overhead
to bomb Iraq. Beryl winces with distaste about this topic and tells me of her plans to visit Cuba
and perhaps Moscow. I tell her about my impressions from Moscow last year and the trip to
Tuva. I leave her a copy of my article in Release Print magazine about making Maria’s Story.
At Tomas Graves' house the next day I watch a 3-year-old girl bat playfully at a 5-year-old
boy. In his basement Tomas has installed the printing press that his father and Laura Riding
brought here sixty years ago to publish their own and other works out of the mainstream--the
Seizen Press. Now Tomas is attempting the same thing and having a rough time of it but doing
beautiful limited editions.
The next morning I walk in a light rain to the cala, the cove below the village. There is
more plastic on the beach and it looks smaller than I remember it. I climb through the olive
groves back up the coast and walk out beyond the hamlet of Lluchalcari. The finca—a massive
old farmstead we used to walk through to swim at Robert's boathouse—has been turned into a
hotel.
I fly back to Barcelona in a saddened mood. Sometimes there's a tide of disenchantment that
washes through my consciousness and leaves a flotsam of cynical weariness scattered where
bright sand once lay. A place where everything is dominated by a detached sense of hopelessness.
When this mood begins to fade there remains a residue of awareness that the big joke is not very
funny; that we often appear to be automatons programmed to mistreat each other and destroy the
planet. We have obviously become the most advanced organism in nature and during this rapid
march we’ve left behind the ability to care for ourselves and the environment we live in, while
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other species like elephants and wolves have never forgotten how to do this, even under the
pressure to survive our ever more malevolent assault on them. The evidence of our failure is
everywhere, from the headlines to the sidewalks outside my door back in downtown San
Francisco, where winter brings the desperation of those sleeping on the sidewalks into ever-
sharper relief.
Iraq, April ’91
Sammy is a gift from Allah. He’s twenty-three, son of a former attaché in the London Iraqi
embassy, so he has a fine English accent to go with his amiability and good looks. When we meet
him, he’s been up all night partying and is on his way home, until he spots Sarah Leigh trying to
find a cab for us at six a.m. outside the hospital where the Red Crescent put us up. He offers to
take the three of us around Baghdad and we gratefully accept. Since our arrival two days ago,
we’ve been frustrated by one terrified taxi driver after another, each refusing to drive us where
we need to shoot because they fear the authorities. The letters we have from the foreign ministry
give us permission to film everywhere except military installations but these letters do nothing to
allay the paranoia of ordinary people. With Sammy as our shepherd we go immediately for a
dawn shot of the huge crossed swords outside the main military base, a monument to the fallen
heroes of the war with Iran. Sammy and Sarah Leigh chat with the guards while I get my shots.
Greg Landau and I are following a group of doctors, lawyers and students from Harvard
University as they assess the damage from the Gulf War. It’s difficult to understand what the
destruction we’re documenting around Baghdad has to do with driving Saddam from Kuwait. It
smacks more of turning the entire country into a shooting gallery, with no reticence about killing
civilians, or blasting away indiscriminately at the infrastructure--including non-military targets
like the sewage treatment plants, which are now sluicing millions of gallons of raw human waste
into the Tigris River every hour. But Americans are proud once again to be the monkeys with the
moxie; perhaps they sometimes use a little excess firepower, but there is a tradition to uphold. So
it’s interesting to travel with these students and teachers of law and medicine from Harvard who
are intent on proving that there might be other ways to be American, or at least to question what
our war machine has done here. There are moments, however, when a couple of them seem most
concerned about whether or not they are on camera. Sarah Leigh has other concerns. The only
member of the group who speaks Arabic, she has relatives in this part of the world, and a better
grasp of what is going on. She rapidly becomes a key voice in our reporting process around
Baghdad, and we know we will miss her when we head south with Sammy, who has agreed to
take us to Basra. We get some general coverage of the wreaked center of town; a scene in a
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Christian neighborhood that was heavily bombed and the scene at the damaged sewage treatment
plant.
We finish in Baghdad and leave the next day in Sammy's white Chevy, the same model and
color the secret police use. Sammy gives us mobility, cover, Arabic and a youthful perspective; he
is tireless, alert, and capable of driving l20 mph with the skill of a Tour de Monte Carlo winner.
When we need gas he does a dance I wouldn't have dared to--he backs into the head of the line
knowing neither attendants nor those he cuts in front of will challenge the white Caprice. He
saves us hours by doing this, and then on the way to Karbala he saves our asses. When suddenly
confronted by a mirage-like thousand pound bomb crater centered on the two lane blacktop he
manages to brake down from ll0 to about 50, then takes the upper edge of the left shoulder in a
controlled slide, catches the lip of the crater with his right front and right rear wheels and in a
mushroom cloud of dust brings us to a stop just shy of two vehicle cadavers which haven't fared
so well. His left front tire is blown and the power steering line crimped by the impact and severed
at a connecting nipple. When I walk back to survey the geometry of the event it seems miraculous
that we have escaped with such minor damage. I imagine the options: vaulting without a ramp
over a twenty-five foot crater that is ten feet deep, or taking a shoulder that slopes at forty-five
degrees and is already littered with wrecks. It clearly looks as though he did the only thing that
could possibly avert a serious accident, and he did it perfectly, with split-second timing. Once
again I am thankful for my good luck. The Betacam 300 in my lap hasn't even taken a hit. We
change the blown tire and Sammy drives on without power steering.
In Karbala, the street leading to the Mosque in the center of town is closed by soldiers
who tell us they are about to dynamite a damaged building. The Shiite insurrection has just been
brutally suppressed by Saddam’s Republican Guard, so what’s happening here is punishment.
We wait and eventually there are three powerful detonations.
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We drive through and find that the old city is in
the process of being completely razed. Amid acres of
rubble, bulldozers and front-end loaders are finishing
the removal of hundreds of years of history. The
mosque, one of the most sacred in the Muslim world, is
occupied by Republican Guard troops. After lengthy
negotiations we are allowed into the mosque, but only
to look, without the camera. After talking with him for a
few minutes about the history of this place, I persuade the captain in charge to let me go get the

camera so I can shoot inside the mirrored and gold-emblazoned center of the mosque, as a
compliment to Iraqi culture. As we leave the mosque he shows us a large room with six nooses
hanging from the ceiling; there are bloodstains on the floor and walls. Here, he says, the rebels
hanged and slaughtered government officials and Baath party members. "I wanted you to see
this," he says, " but cannot allow you to film it, because we have information that this situation
has already been turned against us by other journalists." What actually happened remains a
mystery.
Near Diwaniya we find two power plants that were
saved by burning piles of rubber tires to create thick columns
of black smoke, which re-con photos interpreted as hits. We
spend some time documenting the wreckage of another plant
that was not spared and these ruins provide sad sculptural
images of apocalyptic grandeur. Bridges around Najaf were
sprayed with water and their metal railings covered with
burlap sacking and palm thatch to confuse the laser tracking systems, with some success. Then
we come on a bridge crossing the Euphrates that is seriously damaged. I interview the engineer
who is trying to figure out how to rebuild it; he gives me a droll comment about not having
studied how to repair bridges damaged by missiles. Then he explains how difficult it is for people
to cross the river in un-powered boats, especially if they must do so at night. I pan over to film a
small boat on the water, with a passenger pulling the boat hand over hand using a cable strung
across the river for this purpose. Just as the engineer says ‘they sometimes fall in the water’ the
person in the boat loses his balance and his grip on the cable and nearly falls in the water. A
strange lucky moment for the camera.
We film a family whose house was hit by a missile. Two teenage daughters are very
scathing about Bush’s vows not to bomb civilians. One of them mocks Bush’s recent taunts
urging the Iraqi people to replace Saddam by asking why the American people don’t replace
Bush. Iraqi tanks are on the move as we head north out of Basra. Barely a month after the end of
the war, it scarcely seems like a defeated army, more like one spoiling for another round with the
Iranians. We pass one T-72 after another as they run directly on the pavement at 40 mph.
"They're in a hurry," Sammy said, "or they would run on the shoulder and not wreck the
pavement." As we approach the closest point to the Iranian border--30 miles--we see them taking
up positions on the embankment that parallels the road north. "This is the 4th line of defense,"
Sammy said. "They must be worried; there are already lots of troops in the other lines closer to
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the Iranian border." Tuning in the BBC on my pocket short-wave receiver I find no indication of
a major clash yet, though the Iranian Prime Minister has called for a trial of Saddam Hussein as
a war criminal, and apparently there were mortar attacks on these lines two days ago. Midway to
Baghdad we pass an endless convoy of UN vehicles headed south--about l50 white Toyota Land
Cruisers and 4-Runners. I decide that this might be what the new world order is really about:
Russian tanks mollified and distracted by white Toyotas with the letters UN all over them.
It turns out that Sammy was in the Republican Guard, a reservist called up during the
Storm. He tells us that they spent the last days of the war starving in their bunkers outside Basra
under a rain of allied fire that cut off supplies and finally stopped all communication. At this
point it became a rout, every man for himself. Sammy slipped away and made it to the Turkish
border, where he turned himself in to the Americans, who put him in an internment camp. When
he realized he might be there for months and was told that immigration to America was not a real
possibility, he slipped away again, and back to Baghdad. He tells us about the days immediately
after the cease-fire and the beginning of the Shiite rebellion: Saddam's security forces rounded up
and eliminated hundreds of dissenters in Baghdad alone. "You wouldn't believe how efficient they
are," he says. "And when they're being efficient, they are totally merciless."
As we part company Sammy refuses to accept any payment from us, for himself or the use
of his father’s car. We have been paying the expenses and that’s all. He is so adamant that it’s
apparent his help was purely an act of good will with no ulterior motive whatsoever. The only
other possibility: he was the most subtle and unobtrusive minder in Iraq. He helped us do
whatever we wanted.
In Amman, as I prepare to interview her husband, the American wife of a general in the
Jordanian air force says, “George Bush has done irreparable damage to this part of the world.
And he has made me ashamed to be an American." Her husband, the general, speaks in
somewhat more measured tones about the situation. "Americans really don't understand our
world. They see it only from their own perspective. Bush’s new world order is a new degree of
destabilization for us. Bush only listened to those who supported his determination to start a war
after Saddam’s occupation of Kuwait. So, a negotiated settlement was never possible, and from
our point of view this was a tragic mistake.”
Belfast Ireland, April ’91
Debra McDermott and I fly off on Air Lingus to Dublin. We stop in Shannon for a
Guinness with hundreds of boisterous troops in desert cami’s happily on their way home from
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Iraq. Most are not aware how proud they’re supposed to be for ending the Vietnam syndrome
with the inconclusive victory over Saddam.
We are here to do pre-production interviews for Debra’s portrait of Mary Robertson,
first woman to ever be elected president of the Republic. She’s agreed to let us spend four days
tagging along with her later this summer. But first Debra must raise some money; she asked me
to help generate the footage for a fund-raising reel. She’s done some good research and we have
a bunch of people to see; mostly in Belfast. Also in Derry and maybe South Armagh. It feels
pretty spooky here; like an armed camp. When I start to do a shot of a guard tower from our car
there’s the sharp click of an automatic weapon taken off safety and a megaphone voice saying,
“No photography; move on immediately.” Troops on every corner; many armored Land Rovers
mixing with the traffic. Short interview with a laconic spokesman for the IRA on the Catholic side
of town.
I can’t believe how green the Emerald Isle really is. The salmon is so good we eat it
every meal. Lots more Guinness. It feels good here despite the occupation and tension.
Hawaii, May ’91
Toby McLoed, Andy Black and I are here on the Big Island to cover a protest about geo-
thermal drilling for Toby’s Sacred Land project. After we finish a day of shooting on that topic
we go to get some footage of Kilauea Volcano, which is steaming quietly at the bottom of its
1000-foot-deep crater. Then we drop in at the nearby visitor center and watch a film about the
lava flows. When the film ends we have the good fortune to meet the filmmaker, a geologist
working for the USGS. He and Toby strike up a conversation that leads to an offer to take us on a
hike over the lava flow currently in progress from a side vent of Kilauea; something we couldn’t
safely or even legally do without USGS permission and guidance. Toby, Andy and I meet Bill, the
USGS guide, down near the coast and hike for about an hour to reach the mouth of a river of
molten lava coming down the slope. When a pair of trees explode into flame just a hundred feet
from us it’s obvious we’ve arrived. Before we start walking on the lava Bill warns us to follow
him carefully and put our feet down as close as possible to where he puts his. One careless step
might be our last, he says. We head parallel to the orange torrent of molten flow and onto the
encrusted and cooling surface which still radiates enormous heat and has windows through
which we can see the fiery lava moving. Stopping to make a shot I can feel the temperature rising
through the soles of my hiking boots. When we come to a large opening in the crust it is like
looking into a cathedral; there are glowing shapes of cooling but still molten lava in an amazing
array of vibrant colors. It’s a feast for the camera and before long I’ve shot both the 400’
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magazines I brought. That night I notice that the Vibram soles of my new hiking boots are worn
nearly flat after walking for that hour on the hot lava.
Cambridge, England, June ‘91
Cambridge glows in golden light between summer rain squalls as we set up to shoot a
scene with Paul Erdos in the Old Guest Room, built for Henry VIII, slept in by Queen Ann and
more recently by Queen Elizabeth when she visited Trinity College. Paul Erdos, George
Csicsery’s subject for N is a Number, is here to receive an honorary degree, along with Mary
Robinson, president of Ireland, and Alec Guinness. I do a shot of them parading across the
courtyard on the way in, and with Georges’s help getting permission I climb into the belfry of the
church for a high angle of the whole scene as they parade out an hour later. We peer into a
library built by Christopher Wren and walk on the immaculately clipped lawn with Bela
Balabash, who, as a Fellow, is allowed to walk on the grass and to let us join him. This place is
saturated with the ghostly presence of the great minds that have been here. Wittgenstein stayed in
those rooms; Somerset Maugham liked to sit reading by the river over there. It is said that until
this century you could walk from here to London on land owned by Trinity College.
San Antonio, July ’91
I’m here for a few days shooting a corporate doc for Levi Strauss that Jaime Kibben is
producing. I’m fascinated by the power of telepathy so I’ve decided to take some notes about the
thoughts I’m sending my new love Nicole on the telepa-phone. I asked her to do the same and
when I get back we can compare our notes and see if anything matches.
Friday; 8:20 p.m. Is it too exhausting, the conflict about our love? Concealment, the need to
dissemble? Will it wear thin and make the magic commonplace? I’m sure I felt you calling. Are
you calling to ask about this.
Saturday; 7:40 a.m. It’s new psychic territory, really extraordinary. No blame, no threat.
Commitment, trust; joyful, calm intensity. Acute awareness. Extra sensory connection across time
zones and 1200 miles. I’m sure it’s not an illusion.
Saturday; 12:40 p.m. I stroke your inner right thigh, running my hand slowly from your knee to
the crease at the top; pressing lightly there at the edge of your mound.
Monday; 6:20 a.m. Slight negative feedback as I’m hanging at breakfast with Jaime in the
airport. Perhaps generated by interference when we heard our plane was moved to another gate.
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Monday; 8:18 a.m. There could have been dozens of other entries over these four days. They
would be a description of two people in the same mental space working separately on the same
task: checking in every few minutes for a brief exchange, a smile, a nod, a light touch. I’m eager
to compare your log to mine.
Hanoi, November ’91
Elizabeth is interviewing one of the North Vietnamese generals for a NewsHour piece
we’re doing about the search for American MIA’s. We check in at the Military Guest House in
Hanoi where we’ve been invited to stay. It’s a simple and comfortable atmosphere: a row of
narrow rooms with bunk beds in a wooded park. Sitting on the steps of the room next to the one
Jamie and I share, I spot a familiar face. It’s Tim Page, a British photojournalist I met while
working on John Giannini’s doc about the founding convention of the Vietnam Veterans of
America in ’83. Now, in Hanoi, I introduce him to Elizabeth as one of the characters in
Dispatches, by Michael Herr, the book she happens to be reading about the war.
We do a day of coverage at the village where Navy pilot Robertson’s F-4 fighter went
down, destroying 31 dwellings and probably killing him. Hundreds of cubic meters of earth are
being sifted in the meticulous combing of the crash site as though it were an archeological dig.
This provides paying work for the villagers—an ironic compensation for the destruction of their
village—and leaves them puzzled about the intentions of the strange Americans.
The U.S. is spending millions of dollars trying to recover the bones of MIAs in Vietnam.
Something close to three million per body and several million more than the budget for
supporting PBS and NPR. California spends four times more per year to keep a man in prison
than to educate a teenager and could save 90 million a year by abolishing the death penalty. A
New York study reveals that it costs l.8 million to try an indigent capital defendant through the
first stages of appeal, while life imprisonment costs an average of $602,000. For me these
numbers don’t add up.
Once we finish in Hanoi we fly to Saigon and find Tim
Page sitting in the lobby at the Cu Long Hotel. I’m struck by
the small world of journalism. We shoot a scene for our next
piece, about cultural changes, at Saigon’s recently re-
opened racetrack with Tim as our guide and companion. He
tells us a harrowing story of his narrow escape from an
ambush near the racetrack during the May offensive in ‘68.
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Cambodia, November ‘91
Driving up the Parrot's Beak from Saigon, we make it through the border with ease. Then,
a few miles into Cambodia, where the narrow, unpaved road runs on top of a dike between rice
paddies, we are suddenly blocked by a Peugeot 404 wagon stacked with luggage and crammed
with passengers. Two soldiers seem to be interrogating or shaking down the passengers. One of
them is rather unsteady on his feet, weaving about the car waving his weapon. Then just as he
spins his attention our way, a Toyota pulls up from the opposite direction. The driver goes to the
trunk of his car. As he slams it shut, we see a pistol in his hand. Walking over to the hood of the
Peugeot he speaks to the soldiers and then waves us past. Who was he? The Khmer Lone
Ranger?
In Neak Luong, a town on the Mekong that had a new two hundred foot wide boulevard
carved through it by a B-52 raid in 1970 (when the U.S. wasn't bombing Cambodia), we stop to
wait for the ferry. A clown mime is performing on the veranda of a restaurant with a group of
musicians playing xylophone-like instruments remarkably similar to a Balinese gendere. A small
crowd of locals make up the audience. Being with them and watching the magically skillful mime
triggers the question that runs like a sub-current through the Cambodian experience: who were
the Khmer Rouge and how could they have done what they did? How could they be related to this
graceful performer and the radiant culture he mirrors? This culture is so distinct from ours and
their traditions so mysterious that perhaps we will never understand what happened here. But
how important is that difference, really? I was being entertained and was enthralled by a mime
from across that divide; the transmission was unaffected by our differences. And haven't we had
our own quiet little genocidal moments? Not to mention those of our European and Latin cousins.
This current running through my sub-conscious reaches torrent strength at Tuol Sleng a few days
later and at the killing field just outside Phnom Penh where the shards of bone and shreds of
clothing lie entwined in the undergrowth just beyond the pits from which hundreds of skulls were
excavated not long ago by relatives of those who had battered those bodies and buried them
there. A tight spiral, within which everyone was related. Is that the difference? That we modern
civilizations only practice genocide on those of other races and religions? It’s hard to write
anything cogent in the visitor's book at that stark monument but I try to say something about
memory.
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Peru, April ’92
At the plaza in Huaral, a town about ninety kilometers north of Lima. It’s Sunday and an
agit-prop theater group is performing in the center of the plaza. Pedi-cabs and moto-cabs swirl
around mixed with an occasional 40's Ford, creating a strangely Asian flavor. We talk to a
couple of old men who don't respond when we ask about Sendero. Back at the car, Lotta, our
blond Peruvian assistant with a Swedish mother and blue-blooded Peruvian stepfather, is talking
to a pedi-cab driver. She is visibly excited.
"He's willing to talk about Sendero, but not here," she says, so Elizabeth, Jaime and I
follow him to a small park several blocks away. He tells us that Sendero is definitely moving in
and recruiting actively among the teenagers. Three delinquents were killed the other night. A
notice was left on one of the corpses to warn people that this is what Sendero will do to those who
represent themselves as Sendero cadres and try to exact bribes from the farmers in the valley.
The kid is very nervous: he stops talking every time anyone comes by. We thank him and move on
to see the owner of a nearby ranch who is holding out against attacks by Sendero.
The rancher's guards won’t let us in. The boss is asleep and his wife is in town so we must
wait for her to return. When we get to him, Sr. Fukuda is very gracious and very precise about
the situation. His determination is obvious. "My sons, who are l3 and l6, consider it an
adventure," he says. "They sleep with M-l6's under their beds. I've taught them how to shoot, and
they're getting quite good at it. My wife is already a good shot." He gives us a wan smile. "When
the attacks come, they're ready. We're not leaving, though most of the others around here have
given up or moved into Lima and are trying to manage their farms as absentee owners."
And so the Fukudas are living in a medieval fortress with a private army manning the
guard towers every two hundred feet of the fourteen-foot-high wall that surrounds their 250
acres. There have been assaults every two or three weeks for the past six months. A mysterious
young woman came to visit, saying she represented the workers and needed to discuss working
conditions. Fukuda felt she was casing the farm and was probably the local Sendero comandante.
He shows us a wooden case of hand grenades, which he keeps under his desk. Then he takes us
out to the barns to see his prize pigs--dozens of enormous sows with huge litters. He says that his
breeding program includes a horoscope for each sow. His program seems to be working rather
well; the hogs appear as healthy and productive as the pride of Iowa. Fukuda is obviously a hero
to his workers. One wizened old man comes up as we leave the hog barn and pleads tearfully with
him to be more careful; others look at him with unbridled love as he passes. After a drive through
his orange and lemon groves—also immaculately tended—we come upon a contingent of soldiers
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getting ready to go out on patrol. They have recently been posted here by president Fujimori as a
kind of loan, and a gesture of support, though it seems to embarrass Fukuda slightly to explain
their presence. He tells us that he supported Mario Vargas Llosa in the election, but he obviously
feels Alberto Fujimori is on the right track with his auto-golpe and the harsh measures that have
followed it. Fukuda's perspective is clearly that of a warrior under siege. The soldiers climb into
their Russian truck and head for the gate. We leave too, knowing that at dusk the odds get worse
on the back roads.
On the drive back to Lima we fantasize with Lotta about setting up a travel agency to
specialize in Terro-Tourism, for all those world-weary travelers who've done Bali too many times
and need an exciting sojourn in the Andes with Sendero or a private audience with Pablo
Escobar. For slightly less than a Concorde trip around the world—two weeks for only $48,000—
she could offer a vacation no one else at the party can match. For bargain hunters I suggest
monthly specials in domestic hotspots like Belfast and South Central Los Angeles.
Flying down the Huallaga Valley the next day I see a palm oil plantation of several
thousand acres with a wall around it much like Fukuda's, but in this case each side is a couple of
miles long. More bricks, more guns; I wonder about the price of palm oil, and the price of labor
to defend it, and what other crops might be growing under the palms. We get to Tarapoto about
noon, flying in over the Andes and up the Huallaga in a twenty passenger Fokker, with stops at
several jungle airstrips. A Peruvian Air Force colonel meets us on the tarmac and checks our
credentials before providing us an armed escort to the base on the other side of town where we
try to set up an interview with the commanding officer. His aides are dubious, but say they’ll see
if they can get us an appointment. Then out of the camp to find a cab back to town where we
check into a hotel off the main plaza. Jaime and I check out our gear. Elizabeth goes to work on
the phone and reaches a former teacher named Mario who sounds like a good lead. He agrees to
help us. He taught at a dozen schools around this part of the valley for many years, so now, as a
reporter for El Pais, the Spanish weekly, he can move among all layers of the population with
relative ease. His former students are everywhere: some are members of the army, some are with
Sendero, or with the more traditional Marxist MRTA, and others live among the Indian and coca
producing communities. In less than 48 hours we dip into these opposing worlds and gather a
solid body of footage. Without Mario, it would have been impossible to do anything so fast;
without Elizabeth's deftness at research on location we might never have found him.
The second morning there is a message from the commander of the army base saying he’ll
see us. He is very cordial; he tells us ruefully that as a general he makes less than the MRTA is
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paying new recruits these days, since their coffers are filled by alliances with Colombian coca
buyers. There is a kind of wistful elegance about him as he describes the new law of the jungle
he's been asked to occupy and civilize--asked by the old order which is now intricately involved in
its own headlong rush to chaos.
After the interview he says there is someone he wants us to meet: a fifteen-year-old girl
who has defected from Sendero. She puts on a ski mask and tells us a very elaborate and
reasonably convincing story about joining Sendero so that she can avenge the killing of her older
brother by Sendero. After a year with them she commanded a small band on the Upper Huallaga.
Now she’s turned herself in to the army, giving their intelligence officers an earful of strategic
detail and reaping her revenge. As we leave she’s sitting alone in the mess hall having a hearty
meal.
When there are bodies to be disposed of in this valley, they are thrown into the river; when
the tension builds people say: "El Huallaga tiene hambre: The Huallaga is hungry." As I come
out of my hotel room the door across the hall opens, and the occupant looks at me with primal
suspicion: a measure of the mood generated by the armed strike called by the MRTA.
On a wall in the village of Lamas, which is full of MRTA slogans: "La derecha y su novelista
no pasaran: The rightwing and its novelist won’t win," a jibe at Vargas LLosa left over from the
election campaign. Now they have Fujimori to include in their slogans, but haven't come up with
any yet that I've seen. He is still in the dicta blanda stage, which leaves his popular support quite
high, and people refer to him affectionately as 'El Chinito’, even though he’s Japanese. A recent
decree states that everyone is free to walk the streets and plazas as long as they don't interfere
with the government, which is perhaps why there are two tanks parked, and manned, outside the
parliament and another two in front of the ministry of justice. Not that justice isn't handed out as
it always has been. Mario tells us that in Tarapoto not long ago, two Colombian narco-traffickers
were captured and jailed, one an ex-colonel and the other an ex-major in the Colombian army.
For the next few weeks they fed everyone in the jail, including their warden and his guards, from
the best restaurant in town. Eventually a bevy of lawyers arrived from Lima and the next day the
warden left with his two former captives in a Cessna 210 for Santa Fe de Bogotá.
On our return to Lima we are hustled by a taxi driver so persistent that he convinces us he
can get the three of us and our gear into a VW Bug, which in fact, he does, much to our
amazement and discomfort. He then lectures us all the way to Miraflores about the evils of the
CIA, the DEA and the Peruvian Congress, and the wisdom and courage of Fujimori in
confronting them.
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This has been a great shoot with a lot of strong contrasts and high tension. I’m always
happy working in Latin America anyway, but especially when it’s like this. And I have my new
Canon 6-96mm lens that let’s me work close and stay in focus closer. Now I can shoot the way I
always have in 16mm. I’ve been waiting for someone to make a lens like this since I started
shooting video, and finally Canon did, for a mere $12,000. In another couple of days we’ll wrap
it up here.
"Peru is like France in the l8th Century: the first country to collapse as the old institutions
of society fail," Hernando de Soto tells us when we interview him at his Institute, the gatehouse of
which is blown up two days after our visit, killing the man standing guard. De Soto is a
prominent author and free-market enthusiast. He was Fujimori's adviser on the drug situation for
the first six months until conflicts developed and he resigned. It is revealing to talk with him
about the true implications of the 'drug war' in the light of the invasion of Panama and increasing
U.S. military aid to Colombia, Bolivia and Peru. He tells us that an entirely different course
might have yielded better results and cost a fraction of the money wasted. Is it possible that Bush
is just trying to update the era of the big stick and get on with the good old-fashioned business of
exploitation? Meanwhile the Japanese are quietly buying governments and about to start building
a road over the Andes so they can more rapidly move the fruits of the Amazon Basin to Asia.
Now, sitting on this United flight north as we return to San Francisco, I imagine myself
arranging my schedule in hopes that I won’t miss a call from Nicole. It would be pitiable if it
didn’t feel so right.
Thailand May ‘92
Gaetano Maida, Leslie Gladsjo and I reach Bangkok just as several weeks of protest come
to a climax. A half million Thais, including one of our subjects, gather on the grass at Sanam
Luong to hear an afternoon of speeches calling for General Suchinda's resignation. We’re here to
make a film about graduates of the Luce Foundation’s Asian studies program. As we move with
the crowd away from the green, the change of mood is palpable, and the cry goes up to march on
the Parliament for an all-night vigil. The excitement mounts: motorbikes course through the
crowd, jumping the curb; a bus full of demonstrators passes with a dissident leader called
Chamlong on its roof exhorting the crowd through a megaphone. He’s an outspoken opponent of
the government. We stop in front of the Royal Hotel to change tape and regroup. I suggest staying
with the crowd because I can feel it building to some sort of finale, but it is nearly eleven, we've
had a long day, and Tano reminds me that there are a series of appointments the next morning.
So we go back to our hotel.
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Tuning in the BBC next morning there’s coverage of the bloodbath that began at three
A.M. when the army opened fire on the crowd. All appointments are canceled. Bankok is under
martial law. Prateep, one of our subjects and one of seven leaders of the democracy movement, is
trapped with the protesters inside a cordon of troops. The nightmare goes on for three more days
with bursts of carnage all over the center of the city. The lobby of the Royal Hotel becomes a
triage clinic until Tuesday, when troops come in and walk across the bodies on the floor to arrest
the doctors, shooting those who resist.
We circle the action, filming from vehicles, at one point running from soldiers down a
sidewalk with a crowd that is trying to draw the troops off a bridge where hundreds are trapped.
I get a shot of this by holding the camera backwards as I run. For three days these streets,
famous for the worst traffic in the world, are empty. At night on a few of the construction
projects, the eerie flickering glow of acetylene torches signal that there is no curfew on
capitalism.
On Thursday the King calls Suchinda and Chamlong to the palace and broadcasts the
scene on Thai TV. They kneel before him as he lectures them like errant schoolboys for unsettling
the kingdom. They each respond with ritual obsequiousness: one for inciting the people to
demand constitutional rule, the other for slaughtering and injuring hundreds, perhaps thousands,
because they made those demands. Two days later Suchinda steps down, returning to the
barracks of the richest army in the world, from which he had come, already a millionaire.
The Cobra Gold military exercises between Thai and US forces are postponed, due no doubt
to the preoccupation of the Thai players, but there is no mention from the Bush Administration of
sanctions or any form of condemnation of the slaughter. According to the Bangkok Post, sales
and delivery of military hardware continue unabated. Prateep has survived and we get our
interview. Not sure what Tano will do with all the dramatic footage of insurrection in a piece for
the LUCE Foundation. He jokes that having me as his cameraman with my karma makes what
should have been a simple shoot an exciting and dangerous adventure.
S.F. June ’92
I’m struck by the recognition that as parts of the world splinter into small republics, the new
world order seems to drift into an ever wider circle—like the new world economy, which fixes the
price of everything from oil to apples everywhere from Paris to Bangkok. And luckily, the fact
that I don't believe in Capitalism, Communism, the Glory of Western Civilization, and the
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essential goodness of humankind has not disqualified me from being a documentary filmmaker or
cameraman.
Perhaps too much time at 40,000 feet. And in foreign countries. When I’m back in San
Francisco I’ve started noticing a kind of reverse culture shock. My point of view seems that of an
alien, with an almost anthropological detachment. I look at myself, my friends and my family with
the same bemusement as I look at a foreign culture. Or even an ant colony. Our foibles seem so
inconsequential and sad that it's hard to take seriously the energy and dedication we feed them
with. I think it’s best to be amused at how seriously we take ourselves. And best for me to
continue living alone and remaining uncommitted, except to friendship and my secret love.
Der Hurley, an Irishman from Saltillo, Mexico, told me about visiting New York, riding on
a subway late at night with his family, sitting across from an eighteen year old black man with
blood running from his mouth, who stood up, bent over and whispered, "I would like to be the kid
on your lap and start my life over again."
Is it any wonder that so many die of cancer since we are a cancer on the face of the earth,
spreading destruction at an ever-increasing rate through every eco-system?
Alaska, July ’92
A call from Phil Cates about shooting a documentary on
the “New Old Time Chautauqua”. He tells me this diverse
group of ‘new vaudeville’ performers has been gathering every
July at the Oregon Country Fair. Since ’81 they have gone on
from there to the hinterlands of Montana, Idaho and
Washington State to do free, live performances in small towns where there has never been any
live theater, and where often there is not even a movie theater. By taking culture to rural
America they are reviving the Chautauqua tradition that flourished from the 1870’s to the mid
1920’s.
The Flying Karamazov Brothers, a successful comedic juggling troupe, have designed a
mobile stage that is pulled by a 3/4-ton truck and can be assembled over the chassis of its
trailer in about 40 minutes. The group’s caravan pulls into a town, establishes a campground at
a fairground or on an empty field, sets up their stage and sends their Fighting Instruments of
Karma Marching Chamber Band/Orchestra on a parade down the main street to announce
their arrival and rouse the public, inviting them to attend the vaudeville show soon to take place
on the stage. Meanwhile professional chef Ray Sewell, who has a restaurant in Eugene, Oregon
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called ‘Chez Ray’, goes to work in his mobile kitchen to make a great meal for everyone. He is
famous for the meals he cooks on tours for the Grateful Dead, Santana, Bob Dylan and many
others.
Phil Cates is a fan of Chautauqua who has decided to document the group’s ambitious
tour this summer: four weeks on the Alaska Ferry System, with performances on the ferries and
at all the stops along the way to Haines. Sounds like fun and a welcome contrast to some intense
recent shoots. Phil and I work out a deal which includes bringing Andy Black as the soundman
and my daughter Savannah, who has just returned from two months in China. Sharon recently
graduated from the American College of Traditional Chinese Medicine in San Francisco and
went to China with Savannah to do an internship in the city of Changdu. I want to spend some
time with Savannah and assume that the ferry trip will be an adventure she might enjoy.
Andy Black, Savannah and I fly to Seattle with the video and sound equipment. We meet
Phil and John Heus, our field producer, and go to the ferry dock in Bellingham where the
members of the Chautauqua are hanging out and waiting with their trucks and gear. We board
the ferry, shoot the departure and settle in for the first night of travel up the Inland Passage
between Vancouver Island and mainland British Columbia. Andy, John and I have a cabin to
sleep in and a safe place to leave our gear. Savannah has a bunk that first night too. We go to
work the next morning, filming a warm-up performance the group gives in the main lounge.
The first stop is Ketchikan, where we camp at a community center. During the fire circle
that night 78-year-old Faith Petric is declared the Official Crone of the group to rousing cheers.
For many years she has been the queen of San Francisco’s folk music scene, hosting a bi-weekly
jam session at her home on Clayton Street. She has long been a member of the New Old Time
Chautauqua.
Savannah quickly makes friends with Chez Ray’s daughter Shine and within a couple of
days I only catch an occasional glimpse of her and barely have a chance to talk to her except
when she needs some money for snacks. It’s clear she’s hit her stride and is enjoying the trip.
She sleeps in the Chautauqua Greyhound with Shine and a couple of other teens. Andy, Phil,
John and I have tents. I’m proud of how independent Savannah is and also that she knows to
never bother me when we’re filming. She’s done serious traveling both with me and with Sharon
so she’s learned how to be alone and fend for herself.
We press on to Craig, Wrangle, Sitka, Juneau and a magical stop at the logging village
of Thorne Bay, on a peninsula of the Prince of Wales Island. The marching band makes a slow
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passage down the only street in the settlement and before long everyone in town and most of the
dogs are following and whooping with excitement and joy at this strange and wonderful
visitation. It is obvious they have never seen anything like it, and so Chautauqua’s mission is
richly fulfilled at that stop. At a performance the next evening on the ball field at Craig a bald
eagle is perched at the top of a pine behind the mobile stage and seems to enjoy the entire show.
‘Here we are,’ Ray says, ‘this strange tribe of people invading a community that’s never
seen anything like us. My God, they say, who are these people? Some of those crazy hippies, or
what? After they see the parade and the show and the workshops they know we’re here to make
them feel good and they beg us to please come back.’
When I notice Savannah slipping away from her friends
to practice Wu Shu, the martial arts exercise she studied in
China, I alert Rebo, the production manager, to watch her work
out. Savannah has always shown great talent as a dancer and I
was thrilled to see what she learned in China. When Rebo sees it
she decides immediately to ask Savannah to join the show.
Savannah proudly agrees. For the last several stage performances she goes on stage after an act
by ‘Godfrey Daniels’ and receives a resounding burst of applause each time.
Chautauqua is full of great musicians; foremost among these are composers Doug
Weiselman and Gina Leishman, founders of a unique jazz ensemble called Kamikaze Ground
Crew. For me they represent the most amazing quality of this talented gang: they simply love to
perform and they do so constantly, for an audience if
there is one, and for themselves if there isn’t. One night in
Juneau when we are camped next to a church, Doug and
Gina slip into the church and Doug plays the organ while
Gina accompanies him on clarinet and then on saxophone
for a couple of hours. It’s an ongoing musical dialogue
that often borders on the ecstatic. The Chautauqua
experience: I see it as an experiment in resolving the conflict between material and spiritual
values and a constant test of friendship and honesty.
Back in Seattle, I notice that Boeing has it headquarters on Marginal Way.
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S.F. September ’92
Making a late dinner in the loft, I hear a report on NPR about an outfit in Salina,
Kansas called the Land Institute, started by a guy named Wes Jackson. I think it could be a story
for us so I make some notes and call Elizabeth the next day. She likes it, partly cause she’s from
Kansas, so we kick it around and end up deciding to propose it along with a piece at the State
Fair, talking to people about the election. The NewsHour goes for it and we have a four-day
shoot in Kansas, hanging out with Wes and hearing about the need to reform American
agriculture before we lose the other half of our topsoil. And lose the small towns, like Matfield
Green, where there are far more dead in the cemetery than living in the houses and where the
Land Institute has bought several houses and the depression era school to use as a conference
center. We spend a day at the fair in Hutchison where we interview Dan Quayle’s wife, who is
campaigning for her husband and Bush. Then an afternoon talking to farmers and small town
folks about why Kansas may not stay in it’s traditional Republican column. Pure Americana on
the prairie, seasoned with politics.
Nicaragua, November '92
Returning to Nicaragua for the NewsHour is haunting and strange, full of sad memories
and reminders of human frailty. The magic is still here, but mixed with a new measure of
desperation. The Sandinista dream turned to swill as the garbage rose to the top. Elizabeth,
Jaime and I go to an election night party at the American Embassy, shooting the results of a
straw poll that emphatically elects George Bush, and then we watch the faces grow long as the
monitors reveal Clinton’s victory.
After a couple of days in Managua, we head north to Matagalpa, and then--totally by
chance—to a finca just beyond La Pintada, where I practically lived in '86 while working on
CAFE NICA, with Tuto and my brother Tony, ending with the huge party, with Grupo Moncotal
entertaining the coffee-picking brigadistas. Now we are unraveling a story about the conflict
between landowners and their workers. It feels a lot quieter, spirits deadened.
There is hunger everywhere, no more free clinics, no free education and some indications
that there may be another generation of civil war. We bounce in a Land Rover over dirt roads to
the northeast with Sergio Caramana of the OAS. We talk to the army in Matiguas and to re-
contras in Rio Blanco and Mulukuku: groups of angry men who have grown weary waiting for
land and credit. It’s pretty clear many have decided it’s about time to pick up a gun again.
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Sorting out what is actually going on in Nicaragua with so many echoes from the past is
dreamlike. The parade of memories is constant, and I find myself fascinated by how the memory
functions. It's clearly faster than a PC. If I want to, I can scan my file of images from Nicaragua
'84,'85,'86 and '87 simultaneously. As we pound for bone jarring mile after mile on the road to
the Atlantic Coast I review a sequence of images from the Caribbean port of Bluefields: Daniel
Ortega's '84 campaign; the Cara al Pueblo meeting in a school gym; A Salsa-Caribe band; Luis
Carrion dancing with a uniformed beauty who wore a pistol with an engraved silver handle; a
bathtub of iced beer and half the Sandinista directorate under one roof with only a handful of
casual sentries posted around the neighborhood; sheets of rain from sudden storms off the
Caribbean. Then at a turn in the road I'm at La Praga: the first meeting with Alan Bolt, the
theater director and political maverick; a rehearsal with Nixtayolero of their mythic play called
El Castillo; the night in a small clean room up the road with haunting bird calls in the dark and
the cold bracing water from a hillside tap to shower under the next morning; running through the
dust and diesel of Matagalpa a year later to shoot the performance in front of the Cathedral.
Then there was a file on the new dawn in Latin America: the grace, pride and total lack of
arrogance displayed by a l4-year-old entrusted with an AK-47 and command of a checkpoint
near Esteli; the bulletin board of personal messages on Radio Sandino; the mother of seven from
the Ministry of the Interior picking coffee for a month at La Pintada; the quality of the music and
the dancing at the Mau Mau Club; the lovely l9 year old ‘china’ who knocked softly at midnight
to ask for a cup of coffee and then wondered what it would be like to make love to a man more
than twice her age. There is even an occasional flash from '58, the first time I came through here,
on the motorcycle. The strongest of those is of the cotton fields near Leon at the end of the day
with hundreds of workers trudging through the golden dusty light to the tarpaulins they slept
under at the edge of the fields; the reek of insecticides in the humid air; a convoy of swaying
cotton wagons heading for the gin, pulled by a one-lung John Deere tractor chuffing through the
dusk.
My tripod and some NP-1 batts have been stolen from the back of our un-lockable jeep as
we shoot a poverty scene in a slum on the edge of Managua. I had asked an old geezer selling
smokes to watch the jeep, and even given him some coins in advance. He says he didn’t see
anything, so what can I say. I’ll have to go on to our next shoot in Panama without a tripod.
Maybe I can borrow or rent one from my soundman there. Oh well. Whoever stole it will
probably never guess it’s worth nearly four grand in the States.
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My anarchistic tendencies lead me to delight in the random dance of verite’ style shooting.
That leaves me somewhat less interested in careful, dogmatic rendering of reality. It's quite clear
to me that you can often get closer to truth and poetry through incisive editing than through
“balanced coverage”. As a documentary maker I try to observe without judgment: that in the end
is what builds a file of useful material. At the same time, I don't think it hurts to have passionate
commitments, which stimulate perception and help one stay alert to nuances that may generate a
memorable shot. A great deal of my shooting is hand held anyway; partly because I prefer to
present a lower profile but primarily because I'd rather have a few jiggles and false moves than
miss a shot or make one that starts too late because I'm fussing with or moving the tripod. And
then there are some situations, like the logistics of shooting Maria’s Story, or this theft, which
dictate working handheld, and shape the habit into a stylistic necessity.
El Cerrito
As I keep trying to take Tai Chi more seriously there are moments when I feel about
to be transported by it into the state of grace that I long for. I feel now that it is wrapped
into my recovery process in such a way that I am making parallel steps towards learning
the form and regaining my wreaked body. It’s a meditation that will go on for the rest of
my life. I’m trying to understand the mysterious flow of energy at the heart of this
practice and how it differs from physical capacity. I realize it’s more like radiation than
sweat. More like internal travel than like pumping iron. I think that I almost understand
when I think of it as chi, yet I’m so easily distracted by the discomfort of my disability
that it’s hard for me to harness it for very long. I would love to escape the tyranny of this
ruined body and not have to think about how to cajole it into all its bodily functions.
What blessed freedom that would be. Meanwhile I’m grateful for everything it can do so
much better than other disabled bodies. And I know that it is still slowly getting better,
though in almost immeasurably small increments of change. I also know that though
everything I do all day is a struggle, starting with getting my unwilling body out of bed
and coaxing it to push through the pain of standing up straight, in fact, all of this struggle
is actually physical therapy.
I think what I feel about ageing is what I feel about being a gimp: it’s a challenge
that I want to meet as gracefully as possible. Much as I enjoyed my full physical abilities,
I know that I value the life of the mind and the spirit even more. After watching a tape
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Elizabeth sent me of Stanley Kunitz reading his poetry I’m even more certain of this. At
95 he was as vibrantly alive as anyone a third his age. And an example of someone
running on pure energy. An inspiration and another reason to keep working on whatever
keeps the creative juices flowing. Like this book, which I’m still struggling to finish. I
have my doubts about its literary merit, but it’s a challenge to comb the journals for
details I’ve left out that will make it more alive.
Monaco, March '93
Shooting once again with Hardy Jones & Julia Whitty. This time on their film about coral
reefs dying in the oceans of the world. A major shoot last winter in Tahiti and a corral atoll
called Rangarora where I was able to film them as they were swimming with shark; filming them
80 feet below me on the tidal rip at the atoll’s mouth. Never seen water so clear. Now we’re here
in Monaco to film displays of coral in the aquarium. I can’t help noticing that Monte Carlo seems
a perfect place to also study the root causes and psychic breeding ground of social unrest and
revolution in our time. Here is more glitter and conspicuous consumption, more posture and
pretense than perhaps anywhere else on earth: a place where the envious gawk at the wealthy--
who blithely display themselves as the primary tourist attraction.
We’re here by chance during the ‘Bal de la Mer’, an annual event for the world’s richest
yachtsmen and women. It’s a week of feasting and festivities that ends with a gala dinner dance.
Hardy wangles us invitations to that event and I manage to get into a room overlooking the wharf
for a wide establishing shot of the whole scene, then I go down to mingle with the crowd for
close-ups.
After the dinner, prizes are awarded to lucky ticket holders. The biggest prize is from Delta
Airlines: two first class roundtrips anywhere in the world that Delta flies. The winner is Madam
Rashid, wife of the Finance Minister of Saudi Arabia and owner of the Lady Maura, a 270 million
dollar miniature ocean liner anchored here and dwarfing the rest of the flotilla. She uses the
yacht as her sole residence, floating about the world on it, with her children. Madam Rashid is a
young, beautiful Lebanese and she does not wear any head covering. She comes to the dinner
wearing a punkish leather jacket, the back of which is emblazoned with an American flag. When
she takes it off there is a noticeable hush on the terrace as an emerald the size of a robin's egg--
nested in a sea of diamonds on her chest--dazzles the crowd. She laughs and walks to the podium
to receive her prize. She laughs again and says, "This is really so amusing, because I have two
jets of my own, and I've never needed to fly commercial. But maybe I'll try it some time." She goes
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ack to her table to sit with Prince Rainier's son who seems quite happy; when the band invites
him on stage he responds eagerly and sings James Brown’s "I Feel Good". The rumor on the
terrace is that he’s looking for a movie star to marry.
Cambodia, April ‘93
Sihanouk is hovering in China while two of his sons fight it out for control of Cambodia,
and the United Nations is staging the largest and most extravagant election in its history. The
millions of dollars that have poured into Phnom Penh since Elizabeth, Jaime and I were here in
the fall of '91 have transformed the capital into an entrepreneurial
paradise. Prices have rocketed, traffic has thickened with used
cars from Japan, and a choice of good restaurants is the big
reward for journalists. There is the spiffed out 'International'
below one of the old hotels near the market; the 'No Problem'
modeled on 'Rick's' in the film Casablanca, with a piano bar and
MTV downstairs and a class act upstairs for the haute cuisine
crowd; then there is the 'Ghecko', the current favorite for good but
still reasonable sidewalk dining. We’re doing reports for the
NewsHour on the threats posed by the Khmer Rouge to the
elections, and on the UN effort to prepare the country for voting.
We document the UN circus around town for a couple of days while getting credentialed
and briefed by the UN and then we head down the Mekong to Pre Veng province in a bouncing
Land Cruiser for a day with the electioneering troops. Tim Page and Robert McCrum join us for
the ride; they are doing an election special for The Guardian. It’s good to see Tim again; he
recently married and tells me he's never known love like this before. I say I’m glad for him and
hope it lasts; I guess I’m feeling a burst of desolation about my mostly solo flight through this
time in my life and the pain it can cause. Tim’s drinking soda water and smoking extra strong
reefer from the market in Phnom Penh. Pot anesthetizes the pain of his multiple wounds from the
war in Vietnam. After a two-hour pounding on poorly maintained dirt roads and a ferry crossing
to an island in the Mekong River we arrive at a village only miles from the Vietnamese border.
An American election volunteer named Melissa Moye, has actors, costumes and a sound
system to put on a show interspersed with instructions and lectures about the election process.
It’s apparent that the hundreds of villagers squatting in the dust with kymars held over their
heads to shield them from the sun are gathered here to see these extraterrestrials in strange
clothes speaking a funny language. That is the real show. Melissa, a tall, earnest girl with long
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londe hair, urges everyone to vote. She assures them that there are no satellites that can monitor
the ballot despite persistent rumors that the pens to mark the votes will transmit a signal
revealing the voter's selection. Tim tell us the story of a peasant coming to Phnom Penh from one
of these villages, finding a telephone and picking it up to begin talking with his wife—who is in a
village where there isn't and never has been a telephone--telling the wife about his journey and
asking how many meters of cloth she wants, then saying plaintively, "She can't hear me."
Up at 4:00 AM to go north at dawn in an MI-l7 cargo chopper with a UN Military Observer
from the U.S. Army, Colonel Jay Carter. We fly over the Tonle Sap and see the abandoned
flotillas of fishing boats where massacres by the Khmer Rouge have been happening recently. The
KR are determined to drive the Vietnamese intruders back down the river to Vietnam. We stop in
Siem Riep to drop off election materials and to pick up a Russian Civ Pol (civilian policeman)
going north. The Colonel introduces us to his colleague, Roustom Saliakov.
"His father was a Colonel in their Strategic Rocket Forces, in charge of ICBMs," Carter
says. "My father was in counter intelligence and brought about the defection of a Soviet Colonel
from Strategic Rocket Forces. Roustom fought in Afghanistan; I was in Vietnam. Now here we
are working together in Cambodia like brothers."
North, to circle Ankor Wat for a crow's eye view. I shoot it from the cockpit and that brief
shot symbolizes the task that brought us here: distilling situations of enormous complexity into
twelve or fourteen minute reports. Circling this site that took perhaps 200 years to build, and
then on to an outpost near the Thai border, where we drop off the Colonel. Later at a camp of the
Dutch Battalion a ten-minute sandwich break with the Dutch troops, then a drive to the border in
a Land Rover with a mounted and manned machine gun behind the driver. Heavily mined
territory. The Dutch indicate the spot where an ambush took place two days earlier. At the border
word of the recent hijacking of a UN jeep from an American military observer and his translator.
Four NADK (Khmer Rouge) blocked the road, fired into the ground to emphasize their point, and
then took uniform, camera and jeep from the un-armed American, leaving him in his shorts.
Over the hill from the UN checkpoint to the Thai border, where Thai soldiers sullenly
forbid us to film. Back on the Cambodian side a short patrol with the Dutch, through a lumber
mill and out to a promontory overlooking a vast and beautiful carpet of forest, which stretches as
far as I can see. The whole area is mined so it’s wise to follow the Dutch with some care along
the single file pathway.
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In Thmar Pouk, Jeff Jaso, another American UN Military Observer, takes us to the market,
where he shows us a group of Khmer Rouge troops loading a truck with bagged rice stolen from
a convoy of international relief goods coming up from Phnom Penh. When he sees me filming
from our pickup one of the NADK waves an AK-47 and starts toward us. Jaso's translator jumps
from the back of the pickup and goes to meet the Khmer Rouge guard, distracting him and
allowing me to continue shooting.
Jaso lives with two other UN Military Observers on the second floor of a loft-like building
where a massacre took place in '75, when the Khmer Rouge seized power. The Chinese UNMO is
quiet and spends most days in his hammock, reading. The recently arrived British UNMO is
excited to be here. He and Jeff do a lot of probes around the area, assessing the situation. Jeff
admits to me that though they are technically supposed to be unarmed, they both sleep with
assault weapons under their beds. Jaso was in Salvador during the 80's, as one of the U.S.
military advisors there. He makes a veiled reference to all the terrible things he was involved in
then and says he is writing a novel based on those experiences. I tell him a little about my time
with the FMLN and we share a version of that surreal kinship Colonel Carter referred to—time
spent on opposite sides of the same war.
Back at the Dutch Battalion headquarters with Swedish volunteer Annette Meyer for a
briefing on plans to increase protection of the election workers due to recent deaths and
mounting threats by the Khmer Rouge in their attempts to disrupt the elections. She’s clearly
upset about the danger. The Dutch commander assures her that no one will go out except with
armed convoys like the one that escorted us this afternoon: Land Rovers with mounted and
manned machine guns and armed troops. Later I shoot a scene in a restaurant with all six
Swedish volunteers discussing their misgivings about the conditions they are working under.
Annette says they have been given sandbags for the floor of their car to protect them from mines,
but laughs about the futility of this gesture. Soon it’s midnight and we've been on the move and
shooting for about 20 hours. The material from this day’s work will be at the heart of one of our
two pieces.
There are times, usually late at night, when I consider the possibilities. The very real
possibility of a bullet, a shell, a mine or a mortar with my name on it. The basic version is
relatively easy: if it happens, you're dead. A more malevolent version leaves you alive but
dismembered, or vegetated, and that’s harder to deal with. Then there's prison, possibly with
torture to extract the information you have been gathering. You can lie awake considering these
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matters and how to meet the challenge if it comes, or weigh the equally real and greater
possibility of a car wreck anywhere, any time, and drift peacefully off to sleep.
Eel River, August ’93
My brother Anthony’s cabin up here is an ideal place to practice the last rites of the iron
age. The bears have broken in looking for treats and ransacked his kitchen. Tony is putting the
finishing touches on a new door built from a 16 foot beam he found wedged in a tree along the
river. He’s welded three massive hinges and a three bar clasp. The ends of the three hinges are
bear-clawed into the words ‘Wild Man Wild’, hanging sideways in a subtle relief that can’t be
seen unless you know it’s there. His old CB handle from trucking days was ‘Wild Man’. Aside
from the brown bears there are cougar, who recently killed 17 sheep one night on the ranch four
miles upstream; bobcats, one of which gave us a rasping, scuttery greeting last night from a
quarter mile away. And rattlers. Tony spotted a four-footer last night. With automatic Euro-
pagan sureness, he leapt the fence and axed the snake into several segments. He removed the
rattles, noting that the fifth of seven was smaller.
“The peak year of the current drought,” he speculates. “Gave him a lean year.”
As I watch Tony working on the door I regret not having brought my little High-8
camera. He’s so gracefully mechanical, it would have made a good sequence, with the dialogue
of us talking about the end of the iron age. Maybe I’ll do a scrapbook doc up here and give it to
him. Having made that commitment, on paper at least, it’s time for a swim before starting the hot
four-mile hike out to where I left my wagon by the bridge near Hearst.
Guatemala, September '93
Elizabeth, Jaime and I wait over an hour in Guatemala City for the newly appointed army
spokeswoman. The army has run this country since President Arbenz was overthrown in '54 with
a little help from the Dulles brothers and United Fruit. Run it behind the civilian president’s back
and increasingly owned it, so their public relations department doesn't feel any obligation to keep
appointments, especially with the North American press, who are not always properly
subservient. After an assistant—a flustered, red-faced fellow—offers us the second or third
excuse it is clear that we are being stood up, so we leave. Naturally we don’t mention this episode
in our piece, nor do we mention the topic we had come to discuss with the spokeswoman: the
highly publicized claims that the army has reformed and is dedicated to human and civil rights.
The government can make these claims partly because the death squads have become more
proficient and subtle. As in Salvador, their killings can be blamed on criminal elements and
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delinquents, or simply called accidents. During the last few months the PAC's--Civic Patrols,
which campesinos and villagers are forced to join--have done the dirtiest jobs, including several
mini-massacres, which is another way for the army to polish its image internationally, since not
everyone realizes that the PAC's are a surrogate army controlled by the military and allowed to
run a little wild in their own neighborhoods as compensation for their obedience to the local
military commanders. It’s as though every adult male in America were given a gun and told to
join a local militia to patrol their neighborhood every night, paying special attention to any men
who refuse to join.
We stop at a PAC post by a bridge in Quiche and talk to the leaden-voiced leader of a small
contingent. His men are positioned on both sides of the bridge with assault rifles aimed at us and
the atmosphere is heavy with menace. I wonder if they get a bonus for silencing journalists.
"Without us there would be more violence from the communists" is the robotic claim of the
leader—an echo from the early 80's when the PACs were set up.
“Has nothing changed over the last ten years?” Elizabeth asks him.
"Things are better because we continue to patrol,” he says with grim certainty.
There is little doubt that the guerrilla insurrection would not have been contained without
the government’s scorched-earth policy from '82 to'86, backed by the community-rending
presence of the PACs. When Elizabeth asks reform-oriented President Ramiro de Leon Carpio
about them he disappoints but doesn’t surprise us by saying that they are an example of
successful counterinsurgency strategy studied by military men the world over, and will be
necessary in Guatemala until the guerrilla surrender.
In Chunima, a Maya village where a man was recently killed by a mysterious stranger in a
blue pickup for refusing to serve on the local patrol, we meet with a schoolroom full of men and
women who are willing to talk to us despite their fear of reprisal for meeting with anyone from
outside the village. The PAC, they say, will claim that when they talked to us they were meeting
with the guerrilla. The women in their bright traditional clothes, their traje, sit on one side, and
the men, in western, or ladino clothes, on the other. The men tell us of the threats they live with
since withdrawing from the Patrol. One of the women, wife of the man killed for pulling out, gives
a keening recital of the barrenness of her life since her husband's murder.
"The children wait for him to return," she says. "They cry and wait. There is no laughter in
our house. In our house there are always tears."
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After nearly five hundred years of repression these people have now been divided and set
against each other by their tormentors, and by the simple law of the gun. In Santa Cruz de
Quiche Elizabeth interviews two families who have fled their village and taken refuge in the
Council of Ethnic Communities office because their lives were threatened after they withdrew
from the PAC. They were trying to form an electrical cooperative and couldn't afford to donate
their time to the Patrol any longer. As soon as they quit they were accused of being guerrillas.
Fleeing their homes they lost everything. They are sad but defiant.
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A short distance to the west but a world apart is
Santiago Atitlan, where ten years of violence
culminated in a separate peace. After the guerrilla
group ORPA, The Organization of the People in
Arms, made significant recruitment gains in this
isolated Tzutujil Indian community on the side of
Lake Atitlan, the Guatemalan Army built a barracks
just outside the town and began a reign of steadily increasing terror. Soon people didn't go out
after dark, and toward the end they neither looked at nor spoke to each other on the street. The
level of suspicion and distrust was constantly fueled by disappearances and the frequent dawn
discoveries of mangled bodies in the ditches and cobbled streets. The ancient rivalries between
neighborhoods and even families were spurred by rumors and carefully placed favors. What had
once been a prosperous and closely-knit community was corroded into a nightmarish
battleground of ghosts, punctuated by the clattering of boots in the dark streets and gunshots in
the distance. Estimates of the carnage range from six to ten percent of the population. Then one
night in l990 four drunken soldiers, in civilian clothes, dragged a man from his house. He
resisted, a teenage boy was shot in the leg, and his family sounded the alarm that has long been a
tradition in times of trouble: the ringing of the church bells. Four thousand people came to the
church at midnight and then marched to the barracks, unarmed, waving white flags. At the
barracks they demanded to speak with the commander. A line of soldiers stepped forward from
the barracks perimeter and fired once in the air and then into the crowd. The people turned to
run, and as bodies fell around them they dove to the ground. Forty-one were hit, all in the back;
thirteen of them died. News of this massacre reached the capital, where members of the national
and foreign press responded rapidly to publicize the event. The outgoing president, Vinicio
Cerezo, negotiated an agreement with the town: the army would withdraw, the CAPs would be
disbanded, and neither the guerrillas nor the army could cross a perimeter sixteen miles from the
town's center. The national police would be confined to their offices and the town would provide

its own security, with an ancient version of the CAP: the Ronda, a group of neighbors armed with
whistles and staves, patrolling every night from dusk to dawn.
Since this settlement went into effect three years ago, there has not been another killing or
disappearance in Santiago. We spend a day and a half filming continuously, totally immersed in
the story of what happened here. A seventeen-year-old boy was shot in the back and in the leg the
night of the massacre. He is paralyzed and confined to his wheelchair but still has hope of
recovering. The story he tells us becomes a key element in the piece, with a scene at the painting
class he attends regularly in a studio above the radio station built by American missionaries back
in the sixties. We film him painting and talk to his teacher about the work. A friend guides the
wheelchair over rough cobbled alleys to his home where there are more of his paintings.
Elizabeth buys one of the best.
Later, at twilight, to the shrine of the ribald local Mayan God, Maximon, who still has
power here. He predicts that Jaime will father a daughter. Then filming the men when they gather
to pray together, Catholics and Evangelicals, before going out on the nightly Ronda. I am moved
to tears by the passion and determination they express. They let us join the patrol and we film
streets filled with people after dark, and children playing ball under a streetlight as the Ronda
goes by.
S.F. October ‘93
The material shot in Santiago Atitlan would be enough for a thirty minute documentary: it’s
sad that we must distill it to just over eight minutes; one of our shortest. This is often the case and
I think that the news format actually forces us—at our best—to do a kind of video Haiku. ‘A
Separate Peace’ runs on the NewsHour as word reaches us that the army is making a new effort
to get back into Santiago Atitlan.
When mortality begins to weigh too heavily and the mistakes I’ve made burden my leisure
moments I try to counter all that with the knowledge that there will be another magical place, a
sudden burst of laughter in the dark, the chance to spend time with someone I love, the time to
read poetry or listen to music.
El Salvador, September '93
Elizabeth, Jaime and I are here to do a report for the NewHour about the peace-process
under pressure as an election approaches. After a couple days covering events in San Salvador I
promote a trip to the province of Chalatenango. We pull into Guarjila and stop to ask a couple
of young women sitting at the roadside if they know where Maria Serrano lives. One of them
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looks familiar. When she smiles slyly and tells me how to find the house I am almost certain she
is Maria's daughter, Morena, though it’s been five years since I last saw her. We find Maria and
Jose at home, a piece of luck since she is on the road constantly and he lives mostly in Arcatao,
taking care of his land and animals there. It’s a heartwarming welcome and it makes the fragile
peace seem real to see them without guns in their belts. Maria introduces me to a couple of
neighbors as the man who filmed her in bra and panties while she
bathed in a mountain freshet back in '88, during the war.
We laugh and hug each other repeatedly, and then Morena shows up
and we have another round of laughs about my failure to recognize
her. It’s a delight to be with Jose and Maria once again and to have
this chance to bring Elizabeth and Jaime into my friendship with
them. They know what we have lived through together; they can see
the strength of our feeling for each other. My extended family, in two
directions. Maria fries us each an egg and serves it with rice and beans and a tortilla. At
bedtime she takes us down to the communal center, a garage-like office, where there are some
mats we can sleep on. If we could hear Maria singing to greet the dawn it would really be like
old times.
Maria tells us that after some serious thought she has decided not to run for office,
though there is a strong current of FMLN support for her making a bid in the upcoming elections
to become a deputy from Chalatenango. She feels she can do more if she stays closer to her base:
the people of this province. I recall a conversation we had as we walked along one day during the
war. She said she hoped they would all remember what they fought for once they'd won, hoped
she'd remember not to talk shit no matter what the provocation. And so here she is living in a
dirt-floored adobe with a privy and an earthen stove to cook on. The first time in fourteen years
she's had a roof over her head, and yet she is on the trail most of the time, organizing, just as she
did during the war. Jose says she often walks the six miles to Chalatenango City when there is no
ride. She’s a leader of the FMLN in the province of Chalatenango who doesn’t own a car and
still walks to work.
Back in San Salvador we encounter a wonderfully symmetrical contrast to Maria in
Kirido Waldo Salgado, the Rush Limbaugh of Central America. A man so smoothly evolved on
his right wing trail that he is a finished product--ready to market. His perfect Spanish, delivered
on the air or in person with absolute bell-like clarity. His thorough and lucid analytical
statements on the political situation seem to have the intellectual balance of philosophy, and
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there is only an occasional glimmer of madness. I doubt we’ll include much of him in the report,
but I’m delighted with the interview as a surreal example of human diversity and polished
perversity.
It is inevitable to wonder what would have happened if the FMLN had achieved a military
victory back in '82, as they nearly did. The U.S. under Reagan couldn't permit another
Nicaragua, and in fact the Duarte Government’s defeats in '82 opened a pipeline of military aid
resulting in more helicopters and upgraded fighter-bombers and enough funding to triple the size
of the army. As the war ground on relentlessly and a million and a half U.S. aid dollars a day
flowed into the country, the illusion of a general insurrection was far more palpable out in the
controlled zones than in the Beverly Hills atmosphere of San Salvador.
As the dust settled after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the resounding electoral
defeat of the Sandinistas, the United Nations, exercising new prominence as a broker, was able to
negotiate the evolution which is now taking place, step by step and without a single shot fired in
open conflict between the former enemies since January l6, l992, when the FMLN marched into
San Salvador carrying banners that proclaimed: 'Ganamos la Paz’; ‘We've won the peace'.
What is taking place here seems almost miraculous against the backdrop of conflict in
Bosnia, Georgia, Haiti, Somalia and particularly Nicaragua. Yet, as everyone in Guarjila knows,
not a single acre has been distributed to them yet, and land for the tillers among the ex-
combatants is surely one of the keys to a lasting peace.
S.F. October ‘93
A month after we saw her in Guarjila Maria Serrano begins a hunger strike in front of the
Cathedral in Chalatenango to protest the most recent in a series of killings of FMLN leaders,
which everyone but the government attributes to resurgent death squad activity. During our
interview with President Cristiani, Elizabeth asked him about these killings. He stiffened slightly
and blamed them on 'delinquents'.
I’m grateful that the reports we do for the NewsHour are permitted to be more like short
stories than carefully ‘balanced’ formal journalism with equal weight given to opposing points of
view. We try to get close to the people affected by events. We include their pain, confusion and
tears. Their voices are always stronger than the ones expressing an official or government
policy—which, however, we always include, for what it’s worth: often a touch of irony.
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S.F. January ’94
Michelle calls and asks if I can help her rescue her friend and lover, Juan, who is stuck in
Tijuana. We fly down together and figure out how to solve his problem. I was happy to be able to
help. He’s a great guy and they seem really happy together. They’re planning to get married and
I asked them to wait until I find out when I’m leaving for Bosnia, so I can be there. They promise
and I say I want to buy the wedding dinner.
Split, Croatia March ’94
Here with Leslie Gladsjo & Natalie Borgers working on their film Truth Under Siege,
which focuses on how propaganda fuels the latest Balkan Wars. We’re covering a great satirical
weekly called the Feral Tribune, which reminds me in its inventiveness of the Oracle, back in the
60’s Haight. Righteous opposition and humor; an appealing mix. In fact there’s an ‘us & them’
atmosphere about the whole scene that echoes the sixties. Plus some literal aspects: long hair and
rock music playing everywhere. Leslie and Nathalie have done good research prep and are
working smoothly together. That makes us an easy triangle and leaves me the psychic solitude I
crave, free to miss Nicole, and write her an occasional letter. This is good because I’m a bit
spoiled by the freedom of working with E.F. and Jamie. We’re in a villa across the bay from Split,
next to a cement factory. The fruit trees are in bloom. There’s a British Navy supply ship, the
Resource, unloading hundreds of white UN containers.
The old town of Split is a scenic gem. There’s a palm-lined esplanade. Narrow alleys
radiate from the 1000-year-old cathedral. It’s a classic Mediterranean vacation mecca and
there’s not a tourist in sight. Tomorrow we start hanging out at the airport waiting for a ride with
the UNHCR on one of their C-130, ‘Maybe Airlines’ flights to Sarajevo.
Sarajevo, Bosnia, March '94
Even though the current cease fire has been in effect for nearly a month, Sarajevo
Aerodrome is still a fully armed camp, with gun emplacements on its perimeter, earthen
embankments the length of the most active runway, and bunkers of sandbags and containers at
the end of what was once a beautiful terminal building and now is a shelled-out ruin. Inside the
bunker complex you can climb into the back of an APC and ride to town without further exposure,
clearing the checkpoints of both Serb and Bosnian forces without stopping. Just after that first
checkpoint is a wafered-Yugo by the roadside, looking like a new species of rather large road-
kill, then a pair of light tanks sprawled in the ditch. Beyond that there are bullet and shrapnel
holes in every visible surface: a whole neighborhood with the appearance of shredded lace,
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indicating the absolute frenzy of the combat that took place here. A monumental expenditure of
lead and life. Further into town the conflict was more a matter of bombardment and sniper fire
from the hills beyond; even those buildings that appear un-hit have few windows with glass in
them.
We register at the ugliest building in Sarajevo, the famous Holiday Inn, a surreal
campsite for journalists and NGO workers. The five story main courtyard is dark and gloomy
except in the late afternoon when the evening light pours in to add a festive touch. People often
gather in the lobby, as though it were a normal hotel. All the restaurants are closed except the
main one above the demolished casino, where we eat two very light meals a day. Breakfast is a
couple of slender rolls and a tablespoon of jam. Dinner might be a wafer-thin slice of canned
roast beef, some canned peas, a dollop of mashed potatoes, and a small portion of Turkish pastry.
Those two meals add forty U.S. dollars to each of our bills, but nothing to our waistlines.
Checking in the first afternoon after waiting ten hours for the flight from Split, on the
Croatian coast, we stumble from the elevator in the dim light, and down a darkened hallway full
of debris, broken glass and snarls of wire. We were limited to 20 pounds apiece on the UN flight
so we don’t have much to carry. I have the camera and a daypack with batteries, charger, a clean
shirt and a pound of Turkish-grind coffee. My lighting kit consists of one Streamlite, a high-
powered spot/flood flashlight that burns for over an hour between charges. With a piece of
diffusion over the lens it gives a nice soft light for shooting interviews in dim light. Leslie and
Natalie carried twenty hours of Betacam tape and a change of clothes. Most of the rooms have
been hit and are burned out or trashed, until we get to the west side of the building which is only
obliquely in the line of fire. Here we find our rooms, undamaged except for their shattered
windows.
There is no water and no heat, but there is electricity and in my room a working TV. Leslie,
Natalie and I take a large shard of glass from a window down the hall and wedge it and then duct
tape it into the window of their room to keep out the cold wind, laughing together about doing the
Holiday Inn’s maintenance. We’re glad to finally be here, after waiting around Split for days
after we finished our shoot there. I fill three empty wine bottles with water at the restaurant while
Leslie and Natalie hit the streets to see if they can find Studio 99, the radio station we hope to
cover first. Natalie is a tall, affable Belgian who teamed up with Leslie back in San Francisco.
They’re working well together and have done a lot of good research for this project.
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I go out with the camera, in the evening light, walking through shards of glass to appraise
this place and its people. There are signs they’ve begun to
believe the cease-fire might hold after so many that didn't.
People are digging gardens and piling up the debris. But
even without the shelling the siege goes on; Sarajevo is a
giant prison, cut off from the world except for what the
UNHCR airlift brings in. My initial impression is that there
is a mass high; everyone’s so open and seems so vital. The romantic implications of this are
quickly tempered by the realization that most of the people on the street are in a hunger trance
and probably feeling a kind of euphoria about not being under fire for the past few days.
Between takes I study the people, trying to figure out where they fit in the matrix of the
normal world. The first clearly recognizable person was a man of about 60 -- a distinguished
looking gentleman in uniform -- someone used to running the world. Somehow, once I'd seen him,
I knew that this was not necessarily a gathering of idealists at the gates of Armageddon. It was
simply the upper animal kingdom as usual: a mix of those one finds anywhere, but caught here in
the slurry of political dissolution between the fall of communism and the triumph of capitalism.
Beyond this grim reality there is still an ineffable feeling of camaraderie, the feeling that results
from sharing intense experience.
"We couldn't understand what was happening when this nightmare began," says Nera, a
woman who occasionally translates for us. "And then we couldn't believe that the world didn't do
anything to stop it. The only thing that helped one stay sane was to keep working, at all cost. At
first we moved into our basement, then after a while everyone became more fatalistic, and we
moved back upstairs. You know, the Serbs here had everything, including l6 of the l7 banks in
Sarajevo, and most of the best positions in government and the business world. What more did
they need, in a material sense? You understand, many Serbs took no part in the madness that
broke out; many are still here, suffering with the rest of us. Yet the Chetniks attack them along
with all the rest of the friends and neighbors they grew up with. They may claim they are
Christian but it seems to me they’re more like barbarians."
At Studio 99, a fiercely independent radio station, there seems to be a kind of focused
excitement; people doing work they love are spurred on by defiance and dissent to produce a
variety of programming: news and commentary, lots of great rock and roll and classical music,
childrens’ stories, live music, and an interview every evening conducted by the director of the
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station, Adil. When we interview Adil, he tells us that during the siege each day was worth three
days in normal times, every moment heightened, every look more meaningful.
"Before the war I had never really noticed the approach of spring," he tells us. "Never seen
the beauty in people's eyes. The material world lost importance. I learned that life is stronger
than death; that a man's strength can oppose death."
Every time one of them returned to the studio alive during the siege they celebrated. In a
twist of typical Sarajevo humor they, along with many other survivors, began to call themselves
'The Missed' since none of them were hit. Month after month, the workers at Studio 99 survived,
unhurt. One day a worker came in moaning and said he had shrapnel in his stomach; lifting his
shirt and laughing, he pulled a sliver of steel from a minor wound.
"In contrast to the state radio station," Adil says, "which played sad, classical music, we
broadcast normal music--regardless of the fact that there was shelling and people were being
killed--because we wanted to work for those who were still alive, who were fighting for life. We
will have enough time, later, to cry for those who were killed. Those who are alive, who are
struggling for life, need help."
The station is buried in the basement of a government office building, which gives it the
priority power it needs to stay on the air during the frequent blackouts--when generators fill the
gap. Studio 99 has struggled over their right to criticize the government; at one point they had to
replace the transmitter they were renting from BiH Radio & TV when it was suddenly hauled
away one evening after Adil recorded an interview with a renegade member of the presidency
who made critical comments about the government. The station was off the air for ten days while
they raised the money for a more powerful replacement unit. The station's antenna is in the house
of one of the DJs who lives on a hill about two hundred feet above the studio. During the siege
many of the workers simply lived in the studio. It still seems a bit like a disheveled dugout.
Adil feels that the western media has over-simplified the political situation in Bosnia to make
it more understandable and palatable to readers and viewers. It is typically portrayed as a
religious or civil war, when in fact it’s neither, he says. It’s a cultural war and a simple
territorial struggle. The Bosnian Serbs are driven by nationalist demagogues like Radovan
Karadzic to attack the urban culture of the cities, invoking the specter of a Moslem state at
Europe's underbelly in an attempt to balance the outrage in world opinion. What is known as the
Fourth Option has been largely ignored and unreported: the return to a multi-ethnic state
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without partition. Here, in every recent poll, it is what the majority want; despite the horrors of
the past 22 months, people are ready to forgive and rebuild.
After a few days we move out of the Holiday Inn and into a room full of overstuffed furniture
rented to us by a blowsy woman who works for the government. She charges us 30 Deutche
Marks each for the privilege of sleeping on her couches. I prefer the floor on the Thermarest pad
I carry in my tripod case. Though still expensive the move saves a couple of hundred a day and
cuts our walking distance to Studio 99 in half. We buy bread in the market and live mostly on
that. It's amazing how quickly one can get used to a minimal diet, walking miles a day, and
bathing with glasses of cold water. It helps to have interesting work and good company.
Malik Kulenovic does an ironic commentary on current events for Studio 99 radio every
morning at l0. It’s called "Leo News". But first he opens his newsstand on a corner in a quiet
residential neighborhood, where he sells all the newspapers and magazines he can get his hands
on to a very loyal clientele, many of whom stop to chat or trade books for magazines or simply to
listen to his high-spirited rap, which is clearly a warm-up for the radio show. Before the war he
worked as a computer technician, a job he still goes to every day after the radio program. The
morning we film him he ends his broadcast with a weather forecast: "At Mt. Igman, the anti-
cyclonic field is getting weaker; there are no Serb attacks. And from Slovenia and North Western
Europe a weak abnormal confederal front is approaching. It's going to be sunny, with south
winds getting stronger, becoming a storm."
"People have many problems," Malik says. "But you must look to the future. You have
people—friends—and you have the future. We must live together. But if you have problems with
self it is a very big problem. I haven't this problem. I have problems to go to Split. I have trouble
to go to Zagreb." He stops. "Because my son is there." He turns abruptly and walks away so we
won’t see the tears. A moment later he begins the energetic chorus again, announcing his news to
the neighborhood. His standard response to "How are you?" is "Sarajevo still".
"Sarajevo is an oasis of death surrounded by a desert of life," says Mladen Kristic, a writer
for Ratni Dani, (War Days) the independent magazine and our next subject. Ratni Dani has
nothing: no money, no computers, no electricity in its offices and no government support or paper
allotment. All they have is talent and opposition to everything except good ideas. And yet they
have managed to get out an issue almost every month since the war began, and they have a
devoted readership among all those who cling to the memory of Sarajevo as a multi-ethnic
cultural Mecca.
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Mladen is tall, thin, and twenty-five. He has the raffish looks of a cartoon character. "I am a
firm believer in those important western values: sex, drugs and rock and roll," he tells us as we
stand on the street outside a club where a live band is playing. He is doing a story about Sarajevo
nightlife, which is alive and well, despite a loosely enforced l0 PM curfew.
"The music scene is nothing like it was before the war, when it was second only to London,"
he says. "Many people left; many others died. But it never stopped, even at the worst times of the
siege. A lot of people here--I'm one of them--would spend their last few DM’s for a beer at night
rather than something to eat. It was like the Weimar Republic maybe, I think. And now that the
shelling has stopped, young people are really making up for lost time to find lost pleasure." At the
Sloga Club, a lovely little hall about half the size of the old Fillmore Auditorium in San
Francisco, there is a crowd of perhaps 500; so dense that only a few are dancing. We follow
Mladen from one packed club to the next, through a maze of musical style.
"Many strange and sad things happened between people in this time," he says. "I had a
lover, a Muslim, and we were so much in love. When the Croats began the siege of Mostar, her
family forbad her to see me ever again because my family is half Croat. They decided I was
responsible for the siege of Mostar. Can you believe that? When I was growing up here, no one
paid attention to ethnic differences. Every family had mixed blood somewhere in its history, and
we all accepted it; we were proud of it."
At his apartment the next afternoon, he introduces us to his "doggy dog", a beautiful pup
named Mirna (which means peaceful in Serbo-Croatian), who eats better than he does, on black-
market canned beef. "Even Mirna couldn't survive on the humanitarian aid that is given out.
What a joke. I've seen very hungry people take a mouthful of some of that garbage they call food
and spit it out, because they couldn't bear the taste. And yet, at the worst times of the siege, when
you couldn't find a gram of bread in this town, there was always heroin and cocaine. How do you
explain that? I think perhaps governments everywhere are drugging their people. Is it possible?"
Using a traditional cylindrical brass mill, Mladen grinds the coffee beans he has just roasted
on his gas stove, and makes round after round of Turkish coffee for us. The price of roasted beans
has come down during the last few days from over a hundred dollars a kilo to about seventy-five.
Mladen shows us his tiny wood-burning stove in the corner of the studio apartment.
"Do you know how I kept from freezing when I had no more wood to burn? I burned half the
clothes in this closet. Wool is the best. You roll it up and it burns slowly and produces a lot of
heat. My graduation suit gave me the most heat and the greatest pleasure to burn." He
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emembers sitting in this room watching MTV during nights of heavy shelling and finding the
surreal contrast too much to bear. He said that after counting his own close calls and near misses
on the street until he passed l00 he stopped keeping track. Perhaps most telling of the images of
horror scattered through his intense monologue about the past two years is the scene of a cat
eating a human brain from a severed skull on the street. The saddest and most chilling for anyone
involved in media is his description of a CNN crew throwing chocolate bars from their armored
car to a crowd and then filming the riot that ensued. Mladen is certain it was done to provoke an
ugly scene, though I wonder if it hadn't perhaps started as a naively generous impulse which they
then took advantage of. Not much difference, really.
At a checkpoint on our way to the Oslobodjenje printing plant the next day we watch a pair
of UN trucks rumble past. The lead vehicle slows and the driver throws two cans of ham to the
government troops standing guard. I can't help thinking of the CNN incident and ponder this one:
was it the arrogant gesture it seems, a comradely gift casually given, or a preventive offering like
throwing food to a hungry dog to keep him at bay?
A re-definition of material values here; people sold their BMW's and Mercedes Benz’s for a
few hundred dollars to buy sugar, coffee, bread and beans at ten to fifty times their normal value.
Mladin sold his VCR for thirty dollars at one point. "I’ll never think about money the same way
anymore," he says. "When you know you can die at any moment it changes how you see money;
you just spend it when you have it and do something else when you don't."
With fuel at $l20 a gallon there are no traffic jams in Sarajevo; in fact there is so little traffic
that when a car comes up suddenly and unexpectedly it can be dangerous since the drivers are
still in the habit of driving at breakneck speed to outrun the shells and sniper-fire. The most
favored vehicle among the press and NGOs is the Defender, a custom Land Rover sheathed in 1/2
inch Lexan: opaque for the body and clear for the reduced-sized windows.
One evening I watch a pair of leather coated women walk together in perfect sync, their
heels clicking and echoing on the quiet unlit street. When the wind comes up there is the ghostly
clatter of sheet metal flapping in the ruined buildings. Every so often at night there is a burst of
Anti-Aircraft fire: streamers of orange flame across the sky; perhaps a kind of warning reminder
from the besieging forces that they are still here. As we walk with Mladen the last night of our
stay one of these sinister messages erupted above us and he remembers one of his worst
moments: the time he saw a pregnant woman hit by an AA shell on the street. It ripped open her
stomach, giving simultaneous birth and death to her child. The mother died a few moments later.
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"I doubt that any of us will be able to forget what we've seen during these last two years," Mladen
says. "And some will be driven mad.”
Nevada, May ’94
Time for a hit of desert. The first campsite is at a wild hot spring in central Nevada. We get
there just before dusk, and set up our sleeping gear on a grassy patch above the hot pool. Then
we bathe and my sweet companion, Nicole, makes some dinner while I roll out a tarp to put our
pads and bags on. We are in our sleeping bags early and I have just dozed off when Nicole cries
out: “Wake up! There’s something making funny noises down there.” I wake up and we peer into
the darkness below the spring where we can see in the faint moonlight that a herd of seven or
eight mustangs and a couple of wild burros are grazing. The sound she had first heard was the
raucous neighing of one of the burros. It sounded like a bullfrog to her. Nicole asks me if they
might trample us and I assure her that they won’t and go back to sleep. When the herd runs past
us only a few feet away, it doesn’t even wake me but Nicole says she sat bolt upright, thrilled by
how close they came and not frightened a bit.
Nicole and I are making steady progress finding ways to intensify our experience together
and keep the vital sense of the journey alive. Missing her all those times we’re apart is the most
painful, but still oddly life-enforcing. It’s clear to me that she knows what’s right for her better
than I do. I’ve learned to accept and trust that fact. I wonder if she’s the woman I’ve been
searching for all my life. It’s a total mystery.
S.F. June ’94
of high that challenges my best instincts for hand held work.
Pleasanton California, May ‘94:
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Shooting street music all over San
Francisco with Foster Reed and Trisha, who has
done a great job of finding the best buskers in
town. Doug Dunderdale is recording sound on a
new Nagra DAT machine that weighs a ton, but is
a beautiful high tech showpiece. I always love
shooting music; it seems to give me a special kind
It looks like a retirement community from the far end of the parking lot: a well appointed,
landscaped cluster of earth-toned buildings, with the coastal mountains green and shrouded by
fog in the distance. Once we’ve parked and carried the gear closer, we have no doubt it is a

maximum-security prison. The razor wire alone is convincing; the security check and triple entry
procedures make one certain. Jaime Kibben and I are working with Karina Epperlein on her film
Voices from Inside, about the search for inner freedom by the women at a high security federal
prison.
Karina is amazing. She’s a theater artist and director who started volunteering in 1992 to
conduct a theater workshop at the Federal Women’s Prison in Pleasanton. She decided to make a
documentary to tell the prisoners’ stories and managed to set up the filming sessions so that we
could conduct them without interference from the prison authorities. Doing that was a measure of
her skill as a producer that seems almost a miracle. A case of very difficult conditions right here
in America, far from any declared war zone.
The four women in the theatre class are rehearsing a play they have written with Karina’s
guidance about their lives in prison. We shoot all afternoon as they knit their nervous excitement
into a nearly polished performance. In the evening, they are ready for a dress rehearsal, which
reveals they have achieved something beyond recreational theatre. Two nights later they perform
for prison staff and visitors. The warden is impressed but concerned about the content, which
clearly indicates a mood of dissent mixed with the pain of separation from children and families.
In general, the staff can’t understand the source of this talent; they can’t figure out how these
women who they regard as criminals, could express emotion in such a professional manner.
Karina is the secret; she has shown the women how to unlock the energy of suppressed rage and
channel it into a coherent performance. They call Karina “The Screaming Lady”; anyone
walking by the workshop when they were doing warm-up exercises could hear piercing cries. She
taught the women to release their pain through movement, voice exercises, writing and drawing.
On Sunday night, the inmates see the play, and there is no confusion on their part—they give a
series of standing ovations to their sisters on stage and many are moved to tears.
Several of the women are political prisoners: Marilyn Buck was involved with the Black
Liberation Army; Linda Evans was an SDS organizer first arrested in ’70 for conspiracy and
crossing state lines to incite a riot (the “days of rage” in Chicago), and in ’85 for acquisition of
weapons; Ida Robinson helped her boyfriend hijack a PSA flight to Los Angeles and take it to
Cuba; Dylcia Pagan was a Puerto Rican activist.
Dylcia married William Morales, a leader in the struggle for Puerto Rican independence. He
blew off both hands and much of his face while making a bomb. Arrested and hospitalized at
Bellevue Hospital in New York City he managed to escape. Cornered in Monterey, Mexico by
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U.S. and Mexican law enforcement, he shot the nose off an FBI agent, killed a Mexican
policeman and was sentenced to eight years in a Mexican prison.
Dylcia and ten others were arrested near Chicago. They were tried and sentenced to the
longest terms on record for conspiracy to overthrow the U.S. government, though they claimed
they were fighting only for the independence of Puerto Rico. Dylcia got 55 years. Some say their
most serious offense was organizing Morales’ escape. When Dylcia’s son Guillermo was born,
FBI agents surrounded mother and child. The baby was taken to Mexico by friends, and placed
with a family who raised him until he was 15. In August of l994, he came to San Francisco where
he lives with Anna Maria, a compañera of Dylcia, who moved from New York to take care of him
and make it possible for him to see his mother. Guillermo is a boy of great poise and beauty who
has rapidly adapted to his life in San Francisco, though his English is still sketchy. He says he
has made friends, but he no longer tries to tell them his story.
“They can’t believe their government would do what they did to my mother,” he says,
“because they all believe in the American dream. You know, liberty and freedom.”
At Pleasanton, we hear a litany of testimony, even from one of the guards, that women are
generally given longer sentences than men for the same crimes, and in many instances are
sentenced as co-conspirators for crimes in which they had little or no involvement. The system
rewards turning others in, since this helps perpetuate and justify its expansion. Both the system
and some of the accused benefit from this policy: higher numbers of new prisoners are good for
the public relations effort; fingering someone else usually results in a reduced sentence.
I come away from the days at Pleasanton feeling that the implications of all this are
sinister and long-term. Since we already have the largest prison system in the history of the
world, what will more hysteria yield? The current answer is legislation such as “Three Strikes
and You’re Out” which can put a thief with two serious prior convictions in prison for life if he
steals a loaf of bread, and mandatory sentences for minor offenses, i.e., five years for possession
of a single gram of crack. The Drug War, which accounts for most of the increased prison
population, appears to have been lost. It seems that until it’s legal to do what one chooses with
one’s body, our government will create ever-larger bureaucracies as it builds layer after layer of
control mechanisms, which profit from the prohibition they are intended to enforce while
escalating the profitability of what they prohibit.
My friend, artist Eric Orr, wryly suggests that the sentence for all non-violent crime
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should be a college degree, and that prison personnel—including guards—should be required to
have a degree in literature or philosophy.
S.F. June ’94
Andy Black and I join Werner Herzog at ILM—Industrial Light and Magic—George
Lucas’s animation division in San Rafael to shoot a report for German TV, on the future of
cinema. We are given a tour of what is happening at ILM, and I shoot a lot of walking backwards
tracking shots to keep Herzog and the head of ILM on camera. After finishing at ILM we head up
to the Napa Valley to interview Francis Ford Coppola on the veranda of his home overlooking
his vineyards. Francis is in an expansive mood about the future of cinema and holds forth at
length about ‘virtual cinema’, which he says is just around the corner. He tells Werner that we
will soon no longer need any of the current technology; instead of going to see a film we will
simply swallow a capsule, close our eyes, and experience the film. Werner is very dubious and
maintains that cinema must return to its roots and simply tell good stories.
It’s a hot summer day and after we finish the interview Francis graciously invites us to take a
swim in the lake, which is in an arroyo above the house. He and Werner continue to talk while
Andy and I go with the two women from ZDF-Munich, the producers of the piece, to have a
refreshing skinny-dip in the lake. On the way we pass the ‘swift boat’ from Apocalypse Now,
which is sitting on a trailer behind the house.
Jaime Kibben and I are doing research and some planning about a trip to Chiapas for a
piece on the Zapatistas. Maybe for the NewsHour if things go the way we hope. Jaime has good
connections in San Christobal and has been working on a film of his own there about the
Lacandon Indians. Elizabeth is up for it, but suddenly the NewsHour asks us to go to Haiti,
which is about to be invaded, so I’m working on finding a way to get the three of us to Haiti. I
think I’ve got seats for us on one of the last Air France flights in but I’ve got to get us to Trinidad
and Tobago to meet it. Haiti’s a definite hot spot, so it could be interesting. Especially if Aristide
gets to come back.
Haiti July ’94.
Sunday morning on the steps of Sans Souci, the Versailles that Henri Christophe built for
his Queen at Milot, Haiti. A class of six to ten year olds listens intently to a catechist and then
runs joyfully through the ruin into an adjoining field to exercise in nearly perfect unison. I think
how positive it might be for every racist in America to see the energy, intelligence and beauty of
these kids. Just below the palace a group of teenage boys is playing soccer. Beyond are the ruins
of the complex that was completed in 1811: hospital, foundry, carpentry and iron working shops.
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In the valley behind the palace are traces of the water purification and irrigation systems
designed at Christophe’s bidding by a French engineer, who drew on Greco-Roman concepts to
build a system that was the most advanced in the New World. This brief respite from civil chaos
lasted only 16 years. Since Columbus landed at the other end of this island, which he named
Hispaniola, Haiti has known 200 years of slavery, 20 of revolutionary struggle, and 170 years of
violence and class dissension.
As the intense morning sun turns the haze over Milot a sickly yellow, 300 people gather in
the circular cathedral below the gates of Sans Souci. The priest performs a two-hour mix of
liberation theology, music and theatre. Afterwards, Elizabeth interviews him and he says: “How
could I not favor Aristide’s return? The election said ‘Yes’ to democracy and ‘No’ to
dictatorship; the coup said ‘No’ to democracy and ‘Yes’ to dictatorship.”
We go to a cooperative on the edge of town. Here a group of peasants acquired a few
hundred acres of arable land after Baby Doc went down, and then under Aristide a meager
amount of credit to begin developing it. They built a well, so that they could pump drinking water,
rather than scoop it from the stream. The day after the coup, an army patrol came through and
destroyed the pump, stole the communal grain, and hauled away nine pigs. The leaders of the co-
op have been underground since then. One of them tells us that he fears a U.S. intervention will
concentrate on containing the democracy movement once it has removed the current military
leaders from power.
All this is in marked contrast to the scene we documented two days earlier on the Plain du
Nord where hundreds gathered to celebrate the fête of Saint Jacques. These festivities were
marked by rich layers of pagan ritual and tradition: naked men and women in trance gyrated in a
pool of mud; a couple of mambos prepared to sacrifice roosters; there were bands of dancers and
costumed musicians; a heifer festooned with the colors of St. Jacques was led to its death; a man
sat in a trance beneath a crucifix on a raised platform, joined by his woman who made an
offering of a powdered herbal substance; a vendor with a carton of condoms wore a sandwich
board proclaiming the benefits of “securité e plaisir.”
A prosperous looking man greeted us in English and told us that Aristide must not come
back, and that America would regret an invasion. “It will be worse than Vietnam,” he said.
“What need an invasion? We are not at war here. Look at all these happy people.” He gestured
at the celebrants, one of whom already told us that neither he nor anyone could speak openly to
us because they would be beaten or killed if they did. We heard later that the man who hailed us
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in English was once Baby Doc’s consul to Miami. The air is thick with intrigue and paranoia.
And rich with potential for filming in vibrant color.
Back in Port-au-Prince, the swarm of journalists here to cover the looming invasion is the
only thing replacing the tourist trade, which was cut off when the embargo began. As the
situation grows increasingly uncertain, many reporters are trying to find a way out of the country
on a last Air France flight, or by going over the Dominican border. Those remaining have
decided—or been assigned—to stick it out. Combing the situation for any story they haven’t
already done, they settle into routines of drinking, eating, and hanging out at the Holiday Inn, El
Rancho, and Montana hotels, or, for those who can do without full-time power and phones, the
elegant old Oloffson where Graham Greene wrote The Comedians. A favorite story is about the
burgeoning crowds at the airport trying to get on one of those last flights out. Though it is
technically illegal under the military government to photograph at the airport, or for that matter
along the entire seacoast, everyone is doing it and getting away with it. We started out at the El
Rancho but now have moved to the Montana to be in the middle of the journalist scene. We’re the
smallest network crew here. ABC has a huge gang and a complete on-line editing system.
We exchange a few dollars for some rapidly inflating Haitian gourdes with a Lebanese
businessman who says, “I can’t stand to see my country destroyed because of the weakness of Mr.
Clinton in his fight with the CIA and Pentagon for the pleasure of Mr. Aristide. The Americans
spent l9 years here 85 years ago building an army of occupation to control the people so they
could run the business. Now what is this new arrangement they’re after?”
“These guys are gangsters,” says one democrat, a member of a prominent family. “There’s
no state here because the place is run by gangsters. The army is a political party with guns. The
opposition has been systematically crushed since the coup; there are no longer even
demonstrations. It’s the silence of the tombs. Aristide has to come back in order to break the back
of the military. Until they are no longer the arbiter, I have no future as a Haitian.”
Repeatedly, we hear the claim that U.S. policy has been to de-stabilize and dismember
democracy movements, in Haiti and in Latin America, in order to maintain control and keep
labor and resources cheap. Many argue that if the U.S. had wanted Aristide back he would
already be here. Others are sure that the coup could never have happened without approval on at
least the ambassadorial level. A ton-ton macoute complained recently to one of the reporters
about the crowds of poor people bathing and washing clothes in the fountain near the U.S.
Embassy. “If it weren’t for you guys and the rest of the international community, we’d shoot
them. But since you’re here, we just beat them. It works almost as well.”
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I have never seen such extremes of heart and spirit in direct contrast to such viciousness.
The depth of feeling in the eyes of children leaves me repeatedly on the verge of tears. On a street
reeking of sewage in La Saline a man tells us, “There’s nothing left for us but the grave” while
every evening the elite gather on the veranda across from the casino at the El Rancho Hotel to
learn how to cha-cha-cha. There is no embargo on dance lessons.
Bernard Dietrich, who wrote Papa Doc and the Ton Ton Macoute, and has covered the
Caribbean for Time since the sixties, gives us a briefing. “The most important thing to remember
about Haiti is that the greatest threat to those in power is one man, one vote. That’s what Aristide
represents. They don’t care about the country, even less about the people. The only thing they
care about is power and the money that comes with it. By far the richest families are those who
came from the Middle East, traders who went out to the country to sell, worked hard, made
fortunes. In the Haitian tradition begun by French planters, they want to keep everything to
themselves and hold the masses at bay.”
After several attempts Elizabeth gets an off-camera interview with General Biambe,
Cedras's comrade in arms and according to many, the most powerful man in the junta. He
expresses his scorn for the U.S. government and his contempt for Clinton in ways that echo the
most virulent attacks by the right wing in the States. He indicates that he is sleeping here in the
barracks with a weapon at his side, ready to fight to the death if an invasion comes.
At the end of that day we talk with Patrick Delatour who is working with NBC while he waits
for the embargo to end so he can resume his career as an architect. He is a superb raconteur and
student of history, from a family of five brothers, all brilliant, who each hold a different position
on politics.
“Haitians,” he says, “don’t take responsibility for anything. That trait comes from the slave
mentality. When something went wrong, or a mistake was made, the slave had to deny any part in
it to avoid punishment. Thus Cedras blames Aristide for the coup. Even the richest Haitians look
down from the hill at where we all came from. Madam Cedras—through her husband’s position
and her lover’s power—may be the most influential person in the country. We are definitely a
secret matriarchy. And you see how Haitian? Madam Cedras’s mother still lives in the slums of
Jeremie.
“What invasion?” he laughs, “It’s the other way around. We’ve invaded America. One and a
half million of us. This story is really about thesis and antithesis. A slave became the king of
Haiti, and the president of the U.S. at that time was a breeder of slaves. Jefferson could not
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ecognize his own sons from the loins of the love of his life, though he built a spiral staircase
from his office at Monticello to the basement apartment where he had installed her. I knew
Aristide was on his way out when he fired Boss Antoine Baul. This man became chief mason at
the national palace in l927. He could walk into every president’s office until 1991. His nine sons
all became millionaires.”
The state of siege begins with an announcement at 1:30 a.m. to the mostly Latin press, in
Spanish, by Cedras. At seven the next morning, Peter Arnett does a standup on the roof of the
pool house at the Montana Hotel, looking out over the city and implying that the invasion could
come at any minute. Bernie is a bit more sanguine, guessing that there will be one more attempt
at a deal.
We have no idea when we’ll be leaving. We have just been busted for a couple of shots we
didn’t even need. Driving by the airport with our interpreter/fixer Lulu Saint Lot the day after the
last flights in or out of Port-au-Prince, we decide it wouldn’t hurt to have some footage of the
dead airport for the file. Passing the Civil Aeronautics Administration building, we see an open
gate beside the building, giving access to the field, looking down the main runway, with the
terminal in the distance. We park and Jaime, Lulu, and I jump out to grab a couple of shots of the
quiet runway, the terminal and the empty tarmac. Just as we are returning through the open gate,
someone calls out in English: “Sir, wait, sir!” Lulu says to go on to the car, that he’ll handle it.
We watch from the car as the man, a junior executive type, speaks heatedly to Lulu. They go
inside the building and a few minutes later we are asked to join them. Soon armed soldiers arrive
and hold us at gunpoint.
We wait for the airport director, Lulu’s uncle. Lulu grew up in the States and graduated
from UCLA. His father was the first Haitian ambassador to the UN, and his family has powerful
connections throughout the government, army and social elite. Lulu returned to Haiti to start a
tee-shirt manufacturing business after the fall of Baby Doc. He was doing well, making T’s for
the National Football League, among other clients, and paying his 600 workers more than the
normal three dollars a day. Then the embargo cut off his supply of Chinese cotton and forced him
to shut down. Lulu is a tall, well-built mulatto with winning sparks of good humor and
intelligence in his eyes. Now, he is shocked not to be shown the deference he has experienced all
his life.
The director, when he finally arrives, is clearly not able to treat the matter lightly. Lulu’s
demeanor changes noticeably as he watches his uncle defer to the men with the guns. When we
are told that we will be escorted back to the hotel, but that Lulu and our driver Andre will be
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held, Elizabeth takes an adamant stand. She insists that we be taken wherever Lulu and Andre
are being taken, since they were working for us and we are responsible for them. The security
chief and the airport director try to persuade her that this is impossible and will only complicate
matters. She demands that they be released with us or that we be taken with them. Finally Lulu
begs her to relent, convincing her that we can be more help if we are free. I quietly concur with
this and she gives me a stern look. Lulu is adamant. Perhaps this event is the first step in the
radicalization of a Haitian son of the elite. The next is being sneered at by soldiers of low rank,
who escort him to the crew-cab Toyota and shove him into the back seat with Andre, and who
then sit on either side of them for the trip to our hotel, which implies house arrest for us. From
there, Lulu and Andre are taken to an army barracks known as the Nouvelle Fort Dimanche.
We start the next day by going to the Ministry of Information where we are told we must go
to the airport to talk with the security people about Lulu and Andre's release and to get back our
video cassettes, an hour and 12 minutes of valuable footage, the best I’ve shot in the slums of La
Saline and Cité Soleil. There are also three blank tapes.
“Instead of you, we keep your tape, including the black ones,” the major said, indicating
they have looked at the tapes. “You know very well that in your country you kill people for
trespassing at an international airport.” I suppress a laugh and he glares at me. “You know you
do,” he insists. He tells us that the Minister of Information expects us and insinuates that we are
rude and stupid not to be sitting outside his office already. We don't mention that it was one of the
Minister’s assistants who sent us here.
We go first to Nouvelle Fort Dimanche, where Lulu and Andre are being held. Along the
way we buy food and cigarettes for them. We find them in the reception area, sitting on the
narrow wooden bench they slept on. Lulu is still confident and says they will be out by evening.
Andre is more guarded and doesn’t hide his worry. He is 72, a gentle, athletic old man of
ineffable sweetness who walked the three miles from his house to the hotel every morning to meet
us and drive our rented Mitsubishi four-wheeler. The commander of the Dimanche barracks is a
friend of Lulu’s, so Lulu’s wife is allowed to bring food. A soldier who dated Andre’s daughter
recognized him, so his family is now also in touch. We assure them that we will do everything
possible to get them out. Lulu says not to worry, but also not to let the press corps use his and
Andre’s names or cover the episode.
We head to the Ministry of Information to see if the minister is, in fact, eager to talk with us.
After waiting a couple of hours, we meet him as he leaves and he tells us curtly to come back at
11 the next day. Promptly at 11 a.m. we are at the Ministry of Information. After again sitting
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around for a couple of hours in the sweltering reception room, we are asked to come into an even
hotter waiting room, and to present our Haitian press cards. We are told we will not be given
them back. At the end of the afternoon, we still haven’t seen the minister. For me there is a kind
of formal staginess to the whole affair that smacks of Edwardian comedy with a French accent;
for Elizabeth it is a grueling challenge that keeps her attention focused on how to get Lulu and
Andre freed. After six hours of sweaty tedium, we are ushered out of the Ministry and go back to
the hotel to log some tape, having accomplished nothing but the surrender of our press cards.
I discover a Creole phrase that describes my mood: I feel like a casque zombie, the shell
of a zombie. It actually reminds me of when Naren and I were busted in Panama thirty-five years
ago because we looked like radicals. The next day we see a lawyer about Lulu and Andre. He
assures us that he will get them out that evening. We log more tape and are interrupted mid-
afternoon by word that there are immigration officers looking for us in the lobby. Jaime has been
asked by one of them for his passport, and after showing it to them he was informed that the three
of us are being deported.
Elizabeth is firm about not leaving until Lulu and Andre have been released. Two people in
prison because they were helping us is a nightmare she can not willingly walk away from. For
her it’s simply a matter of principle. I sense she’s slightly annoyed with me for not joining her in
taking it seriously instead of my tendency to see it all as a surreal comedy. She calls the American
Embassy for their advice, then talks to the lawyer and to Lulu's wife, who both say that they think
that the decision to deport us results from a high level order to finish punishing us before Lulu
and Andre can be released. Lulu and Andre have been moved to the ghostly national penitentiary
and their only hope at the moment is that things will improve once we are thrown out. Though it
makes her furious, Elizabeth takes this new element into account. The embassy sends someone
over to monitor the situation and he says there is no way to stop them if they want to deport us.
Ultimately we are able to negotiate an appointment to be deported the following morning rather
than immediately. The embassy will be allowed to send a car for us to ride in. The Haitian
immigration officer, Gary, says they will pick us up between 8 and 10 a.m. The press corps is now
ravenous for the story. Elizabeth and I go upstairs and draft a press release so the key details will
be consistent. The AP story filed the next morning—the most widely published account of our
detention and deportation—is a near verbatim copy of the release we wrote.
At dinner we run into Mireille Durocher Bertin, one of Cedras's lawyers and a strong voice
in support of the coup. We interviewed her the day before we were shut down at the airport; the
last portion of that interview and all the cutaways, including a sweet-mother scene of her reading
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to her kids, are on the first of the three rolls confiscated. Elizabeth tells her that we won't be able
to use her interview since we have no cutaways or reverses. Mireille's ego goes into overdrive
and she promises to make some calls and get the tape to us before we leave in the morning or
give it to ABC to send up on their next charter flight in a few days.
In the morning U.S. Ambassador Swing graciously comes to have coffee and bid us farewell,
leaving behind an information officer with a driver and a Chevy Suburban. We have breakfast
and finish packing, then Jaime and I hang out in the lobby with friends from the press corps,
while Elizabeth is on the phone constantly, making a last ditch effort to get Lulu and Andre out.
Several video crews are poised for our exit; a couple have already taped us at breakfast and in
the lobby. It is a novel and vaguely amusing shift to be on the other side of the lens. Finally just
before noon, our armed escort arrives with Gary, the immigration official, who is annoyed that
we are not waiting with our luggage at the curb. After we carry the gear down and load it in the
embassy’s Suburban, Elizabeth gives a short, eloquent statement to the press, expressing her
fears for Lulu and Andre and all the other Haitians who work with the foreign press and relief
organizations. Gary is impatient to be off and barks at a photographer taking a picture of him,
“Stop that shit, you skinhead!” He then reneges on his agreement that we can ride in the
embassy’s Chevy and orders us into the bed of his pickup. Probably so we’ll look more like
prisoners.
We are driven downtown followed by a pack of press vehicles, with photographers and
cameramen hanging out the windows to get their shots. We pull into police headquarters, just
below the national palace. Gary orders us to descend and come inside for fingerprinting and we
refuse, not wanting to be out of sight of the press and our embassy guardian, who are locked
outside the compound but able to observe. I suggest several times that the fingerprinting could be
done in the truck, and finally they bring out the ink block and take prints of all ten fingers from
each of us. Then we are left to bake in the midday heat for an hour and a half. When we try to
shield ourselves with pieces of cardboard lying in the truck bed, a hefty attaché pulls the
cardboard from our hands. A Haitian government video crew—the only press allowed in the
compound—try to interview us but we refuse to respond, knowing it will fuel the junta’s
propaganda machine. It is now altogether clear that we are being used to broadcast a message to
the rest of the press. The Haitian police hope to humiliate us and scare the others by parading us
through the streets of Port-au-Prince in an open pickup and making us sit in the sun.
Understanding this makes it easier to maintain a cheerful demeanor and to laugh among
ourselves at every opportunity.
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When we finally leave the police station, there are two policemen in the truck bed with us,
each with an Uzi pointed our way and a 45-caliber pistol in his belt. The pickup tries
unsuccessfully to outrun the press vehicles, which jockey behind in hot pursuit until they have
their shots. At Croix des Bouquet, we stop at the police barracks for mysterious internal
paperwork and are required to off-load the Suburban and pile our gear into the pickup. At the
final checkpoint before the border, the Suburban is forced to turn back, and only a vehement
show of machismo by one of our police guards convinces two soldiers manning the checkpoint
that we must be allowed through. It seems for a moment that we might not be deported due to a
contest between the national police and the army. Ready at this point to be in the Dominican
Republic, we root for our captors, the cops. At a final checkpoint we are returned our passports
and allowed to hand our gear over the closed gate to the Dominican side, where the captain in
charge welcomes us.
It s like walking across the border of a life-sized map: we go from brown to green, from
deforestation to tropical splendor in a few paces. A unique experience in living history: crossing
a line drawn across an island and walking from 200 years of exploitation in its final stages, into
another place, time and language that retains a semblance of cultural sanity.
We hire a car, drive four hours to Santo
Domingo, check into a hotel and collapse. The next
day on the flight to San Francisco we see ourselves
on CNN being driven through Port-au-Prince. It’s a
little too surreal for comfort. Not the video we went
to Haiti for three weeks ago. Elizabeth and I have
often joked about the fact that we have been doing a
new version of the same story about oppression and
injustice in different countries for years now. No deja vu this time; it’s a new story.
S.F. August ‘94
I get a call from Elizabeth. She says that Lulu and Andre have been released. Lulu says that
the final days were pretty grim, and some fellow prisoners were fighting starvation by eating the
excrement of their fellow prisoners. He hopes some day soon to publicize the injustices and
inhumanity he’s seen. We file the first of two stories; our confiscated tapes are still being held
and many more Haitians have died at the hands of the de-facto government.
Coon Rod Flat, August ‘94
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Just back from the surreal Haitian experience. Camped at Coon Rod Flat to film the
ceremonies of the last members of the Winnemem Wintu tribe. It’s a lush meadow along the
stream that flows from Panther Springs down the east flank of Mt. Shasta. A cleansing return to a
more balanced state of mind. Being at 7000 feet, working with Toby and Andy, sleeping under a
bright sky laced with August meteor showers. Definite stimulants to sanity.
S.F. September ‘94
The Marines finally come to Haiti and one of the great charades of current affairs begins. It’s
a political soap opera played out on the world’s TV screens. At least one major script revision a
day. Jimmy Carter cuts a deal that few can believe or understand. A deal that allows the junta to
stay in Haiti. Perhaps he’s blinded by his born-again pacifism. Or the grail of a Nobel Peace
Prize.
“We were holding all the cards,” Senator Tom Harkins says, “and we folded.” Aristide is
called an ingrate by the rightwing because he does not fawn and say, “thank you” for a deal that
sells him out, and leaves U.S. troops holding hands with the rulers they’ve been sent to remove
from power. On Monday and Tuesday, Junta member Michel Francois, who was in hiding,
unleashes his police and attachés to beat the crowds in full view of American troops and the
press. A measure of hubris that seems more than the charade can accommodate. Republicans
moan about this being just a Clinton adventure, not in the national interest. Senator Chris Dodd
rises to say that defending democracy was once a supreme national interest.
Unusually good footage on every network. I’m glad to see the American press in action,
swarming over a story that needs to be told. The irony of what Carter backed Clinton into is
suddenly in everyone’s face. On Wednesday another script revision allows US troops to intervene
when they see a Haitian being beaten to death by another Haitian. There is suddenly less talk
about the honor and dignity of the military government. A few days later 1,000 MPs arrive to
back the new policy. No more beating and killing people on the nightly news. 13 Haitians have
died in two days at the hands of the attachés, so it is acceptable to disarm them now. A serious
firefight in Cap Haitien between Junta gunslingers and U.S. Marines. The final script revision
sends the Junta into exile in Panama.
The press has been able to do a remarkable job on the Haiti story because they were
unrestricted. Quite different from what happened in Grenada, Panama and the Gulf, where U.S.
military control of the media was described as total censorship. In this case the press was already
in Haiti when the troops dropped in. Also because it was not a combat situation, except for the
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Haitians being beaten and killed by their own police. For the first time in my adult life, I was
happy to see U.S. troops in action. Especially those who spoke up about having to watch the
horror at the beginning of the week. Great to see the G.I.’s relate to the people in the streets,
playing with the kids. I remember a white marine in full combat dress, M-l6 slung over his
shoulder, dancing with a Haitian girl as a crowd of onlookers cheered.
Carefully tucked away between the lines of the script: unspoken outrage that Clinton would
do all this to help a bunch of violent, singing, dancing, lazy, ungrateful, uppity blacks. As William
Jennings Bryan said about Haiti when he was Secretary of State in l913: “Think of it, niggers
speaking French!” He said it in public. Now, of course, everyone who thinks it must say it in
code. News that the CIA supported and financed the para-military FRAPH forces in Haiti until
recently reveals another coup by our shadow government. Tacit agreement from the Department
of State?
Nevada, December ‘94
On the last day of the year I cross the Sierras with my daughters Hennessey and Savannah
on the tail of a storm that I confidently promise them will play out by the time we get to northern
Nevada. As we run up the highway east of Pyramid Lake at 100 mph the afternoon sky opens to
create a chiaroscuro landscape with great ridges of dark cloud hanging over the mountains while
the foreground blazes with bright desert light. Pulling into a cottonwood grove northeast of
Gerlach about four PM we make camp and build a fire as the clouds begin to glow. Below us is
the Black Rock Desert, a vast dry lakebed. Hennessey chops garlic while some potatoes boil. I
roast the garlic in olive oil until it turns golden then I drop a chunk of tuna on the grill. I pour the
garlic and oil on the potatoes and the fish. As we eat, the sky and the landscape grow ever more
beautiful. We share a clear sense of exaltation at being here together for this celebration of light
and color. As the last light fades we walk down the rutted lane through the sagebrush and then
over to the edge of the desert where a five fingered geyser spews from a tufa rock formation. We
strip in the moonlight and get into a large pool fed by the scalding spring but soon—not warm
enough—we move to a small shallow pool closer to the geyser and lie in primeval ooze close to
body temperature. Then after a quick plunge in the cooler water we dry quickly in the cold wind
and walk back to our camp to rekindle the fire and sit happily finishing the wine opened at
dinner. It's become an annual ritual to be as close to the elements as possible for a celebration of
the equinox and the New Year without any funny hats or noisemakers.
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El Cerrito
I woke to shake off a cyber nightmare about plugging my laptop into what seems
like a compressed air line on the outside of a building near Golden Gate Park across from
St. Mary’s Hospital. This gives me internet-like access to a world-wide stream-of-
consciousness system so I can talk to people and read their minds. But no one can hear
me. My mike is turned on but the sound isn’t being transmitted. I can see images of all
these people, and hear them, but they can’t hear me. It’s a form of torment I can’t escape,
and it’s amplified by waves of poor circulation from my nerve damage that’s causing
soreness in my legs strong enough to become a lucid layer in the dream. There’s a final
image of being in a huge amphitheater and connected to all the faces. My own version of
Facebook? Bizarre but inconclusive. Maybe that’s why I woke up and found an e-mail
from Susana in Chile saying that the rough-cut of the Hijos film, which I left with her and
at her school in Santiago, has been copied and spread around in Argentina. Good news,
and it counter-balances the dream; my work is being transmitted. The main reason I’ve
been intent on finishing that film is so people in the Southern Cone can see and hear the
information we gathered and be aware of what happened so they can try to keep the
monster of impunity from being unleashed again. So it’s a happy twist on that dream
about a new age of connectivity, with all its advantages and drawbacks.
Washington D.C. May ‘95
Shooting a gathering of poets at the Library of Congress for Haydn Reiss. Working alone,
without a soundman. An occasional specialty of mine as budgets dwindle. Wes Jackson is here
giving a speech. We share a laugh. I spend a day covering poet laureate Robert Haas working
with a civic group and a bunch of kids cleaning up the debris of pollution along the Anacostia
River for a Green Means piece on PBS. Then shoot a solo presentation of his thoughts and
poems at a sold out theater for a portrait Elizabeth Farnsworth is doing of him for the
NewsHour. She’s moved to D.C. and is anchoring now with Jim Lehrer. We rarely get to work
together these days except when there’s a lucky chance like this. I fly to Albuquerque and drive
up to the Taos Talking Picture Festival where Leslie and Nathalie’s film Truth Under Siege is
showing. The festival invited me to appear on a kind of sideshow program to talk about my
experiences shooting in war zones. Leslie lets me know she is more than a little pissed that they
invited me and didn’t send her a ticket to fly there for the showing of her film. I don’t blame her,
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ut there was nothing I could do about the situation. She undoubtedly thinks I hustled someone at
the festival. It’s a quick festival hit for me and a chance to see old friends in the neighborhood:
Ron Cooper in Ranchos de Taos and Jody, in Chimayo.
Arizona, September ’95
Drinking coffee with Toby and Andy at a campsite off I-40, twenty some miles west of
Needles. Watching mile long trains go through the village of Goff two miles away. We talk about
Bosnia and speculate about its future now that NATO has finally acted and brought the Bosnian
Serbs to talk about peace, in Dayton of all places. The billions that will flow in to reconstruct; the
next round of fighting when the Serbs re-enact their ancient role as partisans bedeviling the
power structure that tries to contain them. Or another vicious round between the Muslims and
Croats. And what about Kosovo?
Traveling with Toby and Andy has all the best aspects of male friendship: mutual respect
and recognition of each other’s knowledge and ability. Stimulating conversation, focused and
synchronous attention to whatever we are doing. The absence of competitiveness makes ours
distinct from traditional male bonding. If we were making war or playing sports instead of
making movies, it would probably be different. I’m delighted to have it the way it is.
What I value most about my friendship with certain women is a version of this with the
added challenge and excitement of two quite different sensibilities mysteriously united: two lost
halves that form a new whole with the sweet potential of being the beast-with-two-backs. Once
you've had that incomparable pleasure, sex without it is like coupling with a complete stranger—
exciting on the physical plane perhaps, but lacking that psychic union, not really worth bothering
with. I’m happily locked into my affair with Nicole, the married woman I’ve known for a while.
We both value our lack of dependency, which allows us to be totally and passionately engaged
when we’re together and totally independent in leading our separate lives. It suits me to only
meet on the high ground. It doesn’t happen quite often enough, and that keeps it very powerful.
In Kykotsmovi we are on Hopi time for two days. The main reason for being here: an
interview with the spokesman for the Hopi Elders,
Thomas Banyacya. We have chosen a site beyond Old
Oriabe and southwest of Hotevilla. In the background is
Apoinavi, a hammer-headed butte known to be the last
stop of souls on their way to the other world. Thomas
was a day late getting back from a speaking tour in the
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Northwest, so he is too tired to give us the interview for a couple of days; he has traveled and
spoken every day for the last ten. He’s 86 years old and I suspect he looks better than I would
after a similar trip. We hang around in Indian summer weather with Thomas Jr., a jewelry
maker, and his South African wife Theresa, a graduate of the National Institute of Film in
London. They met when she made a film about the Hopi. We spend the middle of the first day at
Tommy's building site near the base of the cliff at Old Oriabe. The next afternoon we visit Martin
Gasheawoma, the keeper of the Fire Clan tablet—until it was taken away from him after he broke
tribal law and showed it to an outsider, the Dalai Lama.
An event we filmed three years ago. I have never
experienced a handshake like the one with the Dalai Lama.
Sitting at a table in his adobe, Martin gives us a
three-hour lecture on the history of the tribe, with codices
to illustrate. A grim appraisal of the current state of Hopi
affairs. Nearly civil war in Hotevilla between the
traditionals, who honor the prophesies, and the
progressives, who are aligned with the tribal Council and U.S. government agencies, like the
BIA.
After our interview with Thomas we pack up and head for Las Vegas. Thomas is giving a
couple of talks at something called the Whole Life Expo, a New Age road show which combines
featured speakers like Thomas with vendors of Spirulina, Polaroid snapshots of your aura,
magnetic bracelets, crystals, ear candles, dijeridoos and Mayan ponchos. Las Vegas promises to
be an ironic setting for Thomas's message. The most glittering display case for all the elements of
Koyaanisquatsi anywhere in the world.
We cover the expo, Thomas's two talks, and then ask him to walk down Fremont Street,
which has been turned into a mall in the heart of town. Thomas bores down on the camera as I
walk backwards, shooting. He comes at me faster and faster until I am running backwards. At the
end of the block we are stopped by three security cops. They say this is private property and we
cannot shoot here. We already have. Thomas says, "Let's get out of here. I hate this place". The
shot reveals a man trying as fast as he can to get out of a place he hates.
Driving down the eastern flank of the Owens Valley I fall into an awareness of the power of
place. Awesome and noble terrain like this seems to have history embedded in it. I’m drawn past
thoughts about our insignificance and imagine Thomas Banyacaya moving around the country
and the world carrying the message about his people’s relationship to the earth. This gnome-like
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messenger of ineffable calm and sweetness delivering a sermon full of doom. Pointing out all the
indicators in the Hopi Prophesy that signify impending destruction. It’s my good fortune to move
through one amazing chain of events and ideas after another. In large part this is a result of the
trust and friendship with colleagues like Toby and Elizabeth.
Arizona, October ‘95,
Traveling alone doing research and some advance shooting for a piece Elizabeth and I are
making for the NewsHour about a shift in the sagebrush revolution. We’re calling it ‘Hope on the
Range’. On the flats coming into the Austin, Nevada grade I drive straight into a whirlwind and it
is like being batted by a huge paw. Later, coming out of Eureka, I run through the most dramatic
hailstorm I've ever seen. It slows me to 10mph. I move out of the storm and into a landscape that
makes my heart sing. At dawn the buzzards and ravens will come clean the toll of jackrabbits and
rodents from the highway.
Our story is about small groups of ranchers and environmentalists working with people from
the government agencies and trying to find an alternative to the more radical ecologists’ solution
of bovine cleansing heralded recently by bumper stickers like "Cattle free in '93". One of these
organizations, ‘Common Ground’, has come up with conclusive proof that it's not the number of
cattle on a given range; it’s the way they are managed that makes the difference. The old way
was to let the cattle feed until the grass was gone, and then move on. The new approach is to
graze heavily but briefly, and then allow the range to rest long enough for full recovery. The
action of the hooves and the pruning effect of grazing have been shown to result in a faster and
more vigorous return of grass, just as regular mowing makes a lawn healthy.
Tommie Martin of Common Ground describes it to me this way: “We ranchers have spent
l00 years making a real good home for cows, but also for elk and deer and a lot of other critters.
Now we've got a problem with overgrazing and it looks to a lot of people like there are just too
many animals. The solution is not to kill the elk and deer or limit the number of cattle. It's not that
simple. You know, there are entries in some old journals written by early settlers that talk about
deer herds that were miles long and elk populations in the thousands. Not to mention the 6
million buffalo. So there were possibly more animals before we came along, but we changed the
balance when we brought in cows. Some people say it's that the weather has changed. Horse
feathers. There have always been cycles of change in the weather.”
“Here's what I think about that: the buffalo before the white man came were kept in herds by
their natural predators, the Indian, the wolves and coyotes. They stayed bunched up for
protection, grazing and fertilizing an area and then moving on. They wouldn't come back until
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their manure had been absorbed and the grass was completely renewed. Same with the elk and
deer. That's the main cycle we broke, when we brought in cattle, because cattle don't bunch; they
spread out and graze a wide area intensely. So you're left with plants that can't survive or revive.
All the range reform ideas make this worse. The mistake is we've been about fixing something
sick, and not figuring out how to prevent the illness. We confused order with structure and
catered to structure.”
Our main focus will be on the Malpai Borderlands Group down on the Arizona/New
Mexico/Mexico border. They have pooled their resources and over a million acres under the
guidance of Wendy and Warner Glenn, who have been ranching east of Douglas, Arizona all
their lives. About fifteen ranchers have joined this effort to protect the land from the steady
encroachment of developments. Together they have signed an agreement to preserve the land for
ranching, in perpetuity. Warner offers to show me the land in this pact from a high point.
We are up at 4:00 a.m. After a classic breakfast of ham, eggs and home fries, Warner
loads four mules on a trailer and we drive to a trailhead at the base of a mountain in the
Coronado National Forest. With us are Larry Allen from the Forest Service and Peter Warren
from the Nature Conservancy. We saddle the mules and start up the trail in pre-dawn light. I have
the Betacam on my lap and spare tape and batteries in a backpack. At the top of the mountain we
watch the sunrise and I shoot the three men having a discussion of the Malpai Groups’
achievements and goals. This footage will provide the opening for the NewsHour piece.
Warner Glenn connects me with Levi Klump, one of the local ranchers who are most
opposed to the Malpai Group. I make an appointment to interview him and some others in Bowie,
Arizona. We sit at a picnic table in the city park. Al Schneberger of the Livestock Weekly Digest
is stridently outspoken: “We’re talking about tying up certain options into perpetuity and
everybody’s ears ought to go forward when that happens. This is something that came from the
outside and it’s still being run by people from the outside.” He intimates that the Nature
Conservancy is more evil than communism and that promising not to ever subdivide your ranch is
a pact with the devil.
S.F. November ‘95
It was a productive ten-day foray. I gathered elements of footage over a vast area that would
have been too expensive to cover with a full crew for a NewsHour report. Elizabeth, Jamie
Kibben and I fly down to Tucson for a quick shoot to tie it all together. Elizabeth talks to a
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gathering of the Malpai Group with John Cook from the Nature Conservancy in the Glenn’s
living room.
S.F. December ‘95
I'm not sure I’ve grown up yet but I am a bit less cynical than I once was. Probably a result of
gaining some perspective and a kind of detachment that makes a cynical stance seem just another
attitude without merit. Or I may simply have reached a level of existential acceptance that goes
beyond cynicism and makes it seem at best peevish and sophomoric. More to the point: cynicism
is inadequate to define or address the degree of absurdity I see in most human behavior. This
leaves me balancing on a fine line with hopeless inaction on one side or the chance to play every
hand so that some humanistic result can be achieved on the other. For me there's no large result
possible, but only endless opportunities to make connections by recognizing our mutual plight,
whenever possible recording the transaction and telling the story.
El Cerrito
I feel signs of a slowdown in the minor improvements to my disability. I’m not sure
it’s a real change; it could be just global warming or the fact that I’m getting older. It
seems every spinal injury is different so nothing is predictable or common when it comes
to recovery. I decided long ago that my best tactic is to ignore all the confusion created
by my blown-out nervous system and just learn to live with it as gracefully as possible.
So the best thing is to accept my fate with gratitude. It could be so much worse.
I am often startled by the realization that I'm as seriously crippled as many of those
people I've politely ignored on the streets of the world all these years. I'm constantly
bored with the infinite layers of discomfort my ruined nervous system forces me to
negotiate with. Often I feel like a puppeteer manipulating my wooden limbs to make
them perform properly. The hardest psychic hit for me these days is seeing a skillful
cyclist negotiating curves on a winding road. A wave of nostalgia washes over me and I
think seriously of taking the old carbon frame out for a spin. Then I reconsider and ride it
on the ‘headwind trainer’ in my study or I go for a walk in the park at the end of my
street. Both of those efforts—minor for a normal person but major for me—require an act
of will to overcome the inertia of doing neither.
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Santa Monica, June ’96
I’ve just been fired from a strange project called Love in Hollywood, a film by George
Stefan Troller, a German director successful at making docs for German television. This one is
for a distributor called Kick Films. He hired me based on my reel but he barely speaks English
and it was immediately apparent that he wished he had his German cameraman on the job, so he
could direct him in German. So he fired me at the end of the first week and flew over his German
cameraman. I was glad to be free of his rather domineering style and his obvious and persistent
dissatisfaction. And the pursuit of every cliché he had ever heard or read about Hollywood. Lots
of dull interviews with people like Hugh Hefner and Peter Bogdonavich. I got some good stuff
and had some fun shooting ‘Muscle Beach’ and the break-dancers, skate boarders and other
performers on the Venice boardwalk. In stark contrast to dull hours shooting women being made
up in a huge beauty saloon and far too many red carpet openings for new feature films. A scene
with trans-sexuals interviewed on the street in Hollywood didn’t go the way George wanted and
that was his excuse to fire me. I’m glad to be free, though I needed the money. At least he paid me
for eight days and retained Andy Black to do the sound recording.
Dagestan, Russia, August ‘96
Our waiting room at the domestic terminal of the Moscow airport may be a metaphor for the
Russian State: a barn-like space with flickering neon lighting and dirty floors. No fans or air-con,
blaring and distorted Russian rock on the P.A. system. One has to wait in three separate lines just
to get to the door. There is a 4 th queue at the plane’s ramp that is stalled by two cleaning women
exiting the Tupelov 154. One of them is dragging a large plastic bag down the stairs. Half way
down, it breaks, spewing bottles, peanut shells and cigarette butts on one step after another. The
woman picks up the bag and her companion sweeps the debris down the stairs to leave it on the
tarmac.
It’s the Wild West with BMW’s, walkie-talkies and unregulated opportunities of many kinds.
A post-war atmosphere with people living in fuel storage tanks and underneath construction
equipment. A crumbling infrastructure in every direction. Technology to put men in space but no
time to develop a telephone system that works.
Boris Yeltsin's security chief, Alexander Lebed, is trying to negotiate the right to make a
political settlement in Chechnya with members of his own government; meanwhile a ceasefire is
holding after the startling recapture of Grozny by the Chechen rebels. Russian forces have been
pulling out for three days, waving from their APC's to cheering crowds of their adversaries. In
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Makhatchkala we attend a press conference at which members of the opposition call for the pro-
Russian government of Daghestan to step down. Less than a week ago Gamid, the popular
Minister of Finance, the man considered most likely to be elected president in Daghestan’s next
election, was assassinated in his car. His driver and a woman who witnessed the shooting from
the roadside were found dead the next day. Rumor indicates that he was about to crack down on
high level corruption and massive pilfering of funds allocated for education and infrastructure.
There have been eleven political killings in recent weeks and more than twenty over the past year.
The growing power and influence of a Muslim separatist movement is a significant development
in this society that has a tradition of multi-cultural toleration and peaceful resolution of conflict
among its 36 distinct clans. Recent events echo those of the past century when a charismatic
leader and warrior, the Iman Shamil, formed a coalition of Muslim allies, declared a holy war
and successfully resisted two Czars and several Russian armies for over thirty years. It’s a region
that has known turmoil and war with Russia for much of its history.
I’m here to co-produce a film with Verona Fonte. I have been curious about this part of the
world for some time and looking for a project on which I can test one of the new mini-DV
cameras while I assess my ability to generate quality visual and sound material working alone,
without a soundman. Verona, a psychologist with filmmaking aspirations and a little experience,
has been here before and made some contacts. When she approached me with her proposal I said
no. The whole situation reminded me of that one with Susan Kalish and her Eritrea film back in
’89, so I was wary. Eventually, after Verona sweetened her offer in ways that promised to give me
enough control to see it as a co-production, I agreed to help her make a documentary about
conflict resolution in the Caucasus.
Gusein Magomayev, our main subject, was once the coach of the Soviet Olympic Karate
team. He and his wife Olga pick us up at the airport and drive us to their home in the mountain
village of Halenbek Aoul, 20 miles east of Makhatchkala, the capitol of Dagestan.
Two days later we head into the Caucasus to the village of
Tedib with Gusein and Olga. He is from this region, and wanted
us to see it. The oldest part of Tedib is an Avar clan village built
on a pinnacle of rock that gave it security for more than two
millennia. Two more ancient villages lay along the valley
between Tedib and the Black River Avar, flowing two thousand
feet below. A torrent provides water for the gardens that fill this high desert valley. There is the
sound of running water close by at all times. The whole village is an intricate web of irrigation
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channels; when these don't get the water where it is needed even the pathways are used as
conduits. The flow is shifted throughout the day to provide distribution to all the gardens. There
are amazing gardens everywhere; ripening peaches, apples, plums and pears hang in abundance
and on the ground are tomatoes, cucumbers, squash and watermelon. I am fascinated by this
place and happily spend an hour trying to document the water system with low angle tracking
shots.
We move into the house of Gusein’s Aunt Salimat, unoccupied but perfectly maintained since
she died last year. The women and girls of the extended family set to work bringing in food and
water, scrubbing the porch, and digging potatoes for dinner. Our visit is clearly considered a
happy event.
We climb a steep, rocky path between houses that brings us to an ancient spring in a cave. A
tunnel was built in the fourth century from the top of the village down to this spring, giving the
people of Tedib the ability to withstand a very long siege. The water is cool and sweet, better than
anything from plastic bottles. Just as we finish filming with the man who shows us the spring, a
call to prayer drifts through the mouth of the cave from a mosque in the neighborhood below. We
stand still listening and I film our host's lips moving as he prays silently in the cool shadows.
We spend the afternoon wandering around the old village with Hadji Mourad, his wife
Hadijat and their son Magamed, a twelve-year-old, blond
Adonis who is a student at Gusein's school and has been a
national Karate champion since he was ten. He is a walking
definition of Caucasian, though seeing him bend towards
Mecca on his prayer rug might confuse anyone who thinks
the word means Christian. There have been several religions
and more than thirty different languages in this region for
centuries. We end the afternoon at the house of Magamed's grandmother. She feeds us a
traditional supper of boiled bread (somewhat like matzo balls) with a tomato and garlic sauce to
pour over it. Then we sit outside above the river in the twilight and I film women coming
downstream with loads of hay on their backs. They go out with scythes early every morning
during the summer to cut grass on the mountainside above the village. They bring in the cured
forage in the evening to store for winter feed. Flocks of sheep and cattle are visible high on the
mountain in the last rays of the setting sun. I ask the grandmother if it is true that women do all
the work here and she smiles at me and agrees, confirming what we've been seeing since we
arrived in Tedib. I can't remember ever feeling so definitely the primal power of women holding
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together a society and making sure it survives. From the
youngest to the oldest they are busy from dawn to dusk and
they radiate a focused, intense yet entirely sweet energy,
almost the opposite of the subdued and sullen energy of many
women in male dominated cultures.
We make the dusty and perilous trip back to Halenbek Aoul, taking a shorter route along the
Black River Avar that leads to a four-kilometer tunnel through the last mountain peak. The roads
are potholed and washed out in places and for the most part unpaved. Gusein and his wife Olga
insist that I film the long tunnel as a metaphor symbolizing 70 years of Soviet repression. To
honor their suggestion I get a shot of the light at the end of the tunnel and another of them
emerging in their maroon Lada Neva.
Back at the school in Halenbek Aoul a storm has swept through the valley leaving the streets
of the village slick with mud. A gale force wind is still blowing and the wooden second story of
the house vibrates subtly at the peak of each gust. A full moon climbs over the Caucasus through
a cloudless sky and there’s the distant rumble of the Russian army’s artillery attack on Grozny,
which has been going on since the troops were all pulled out.
Gusein Magamayev was the second of fraternal twins born in l951 in Kahib, an Avar clan
village in the mountains of central Dagestan. Gusein had rickets and was not expected to ever
walk. He was vulnerable to every childhood disease and spent much of his youth in hospital. But
he taught himself to walk and as a teenager--in defiance of doctor’s orders--he engaged in
various sports, slowly reshaping his body and even winning contests. At eighteen he was the
weight-lifting champion of Dagestan.
"Many times I crossed the line of life and death," he tells us, "and every time I turned back
to life. I had a strong desire to survive. To run in the streets, to fight with other children, though
at first I had no strength except my powerful spirit."
"I was strongly prohibited by the doctors even from running or getting excited. But in spite
of that I was lifting l00 kilos. Once I came to a professor who had examined me one year earlier.
He couldn't recognize me and when he realized who I was he dropped the towel he was drying his
hands with and he asked: ‘How have you done this to yourself?’ I said: ‘I did nothing. I just
exercised and I became strong and healthy."’
Gusein had to compete under someone else's name because the first medical examination
would have prohibited his participation. During long periods of convalescence he read widely
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and began to draw. In his early twenties he became a successful dissident cartoonist, known for
his political satire. At the same time he continued his engagement in sports and was eventually
drawn to martial arts. From 1979 until karate was banned in ’83 Gusein was the coach of the
Soviet karate team in Moscow. In l984 and ‘85 he studied Tai Chi and Wu Shu in China and was
recognized as a student of championship material.
Gusein and Olga began giving classes in martial arts at the trailer they lived in outside the
village of Halenbek Aoul. These classes were informal and at first only for members of the family,
but soon there were several boys from the community and the word spread.
"We had no intention of starting a school," Olga says. "But it was a natural extension of the
coaching Gusein was doing already.”
“The philosophy of martial arts is basically peaceful,” Gusein says. “Through his fists and
fighting, a boy learns how to achieve peace. This is the paradox that lies at the foundation of all
eastern martial arts. It doesn’t happen overnight. They have to work, to eat, to study, and to train
constantly. We read to them, give them books to study, talk to them, train them, and organize
them. In the older boys, the good characteristics that are hidden inside appear and are reflected
on their faces. They understand quickly; they learn how to restrain themselves. They will smile in
response to insults and feel compassion in this world. We move gradually toward this ideal.”
Now the school is Gusein's main focus; the ongoing struggle to expand and improve it
consumes all of his best attention and energy, though this doesn't keep him from teaching every
day, starting with morning practice at dawn. Acting on their principles, Gusein and Olga never
allow money to distort their mission as educators. This creates problems when it comes to paying
the bills and makes them vulnerable to the tendency of some parents to skip paying tuition.
Because the school is theoretically supported by the state its status is somewhat ambiguous in the
private sector. People are not aware of the fact that each year the Ministry of Education has
failed to pay the amount promised. After a trip to England with the class this summer nine million
rubles had to be taken from the school construction fund to cover the debt created by parents who
did not pay for their child's airfare and trip expenses. When we film the pre-school parents’
meeting in September Olga explains frankly that conditions at the school will not improve until
more parents pay their bills, and that the boys will have to use outdoor toilets again this winter.
"I tell you this because some of you should consider putting your son in another school this
year,” she told them. “We have thought seriously about closing the school for a year to finish
building."
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One of the parents at this meeting (only 10% showed up) suggests that they should pay a
higher tuition and there is general agreement. The current tuition is 60 dollars a month, a portion
of which is allocated to cover those who cannot pay. Despite the difficulties and the poor
conditions, word of mouth about the program has created a steady stream of parents arriving at
the school, begging to be allowed to enroll their sons. Nearly two hundred have been refused
before classes begin this fall.
After a few days Gusein takes us to Mahatchkala with Medina, his daughter, who speaks
English and is acting as our interpreter. We arrive at the compound of Magamed Hachilaya
across from the stadium he owns. Magamed is a former Karate student of Gusein's and was the
Soviet Karate champion several years running when he was a young man. Verona met him when
she was last here and he agreed to be in the documentary. Now he is the Daghestani Minister of
Agriculture. It is soon apparent that his position is far more complex than his title might indicate.
There are several men at the gate of his compound, obviously functioning as guards. A polished
racing-green Hum Vee is parked across the street. Eventually Magamed's wife arrives in a
chauffeured Volga. She invites us in and we enter the compound with our luggage and gear. In
the center of the compound is the main house, an ornate structure still under construction.
Workmen are mixing concrete on one side and sanding fluted columns at the front. A blond boy is
riding a bicycle around in circles in the courtyard. Inside the house we are offered tea with
sweets and then lunch -- a bowl of soup and platters of meats, cheeses and salads. We are told
that Magamed will return soon. When he does he greets us curtly, acting as though he's never
seen Verona before. He sits down and takes a few bites of soup and has a brief exchange with
Gusein about our film project. He seems to have forgotten that he recently agreed with Verona to
be one of three men whose lives are portrayed in our documentary. He seems totally self-
absorbed and distracted. When a friend of Magamed arrives Gusein bids us goodbye and leaves.
To test our presence I pull out the camera and film Magamed talking to his friend and
showing him the two floors of the house above us. It’s a kitsch palace with heavy custom-made
wooden furniture in every room. The doors are all stained glass, even those of the bathrooms and
bedrooms, as are all the windows. In nearly every room there is at least one painting of
Magamed, wearing his trademark black Fedora. In the dining room is a painting of him with his
three brothers, one of whom was killed last year after a dispute with some Chechens over a
woman. Across the room is a painting of Magamed standing on a ledge of rock in his Karate suit
with the mountains of Daghestan behind him.
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Suddenly Magamed is on his way out the door and when we ask if we might join him he says
it’s not possible; perhaps he'll have time the next day. In the morning, he says, there is a press
conference we might want to attend with him. But we must be ready to leave at nine o'clock. A
couple of hours later he is back, sitting in the courtyard on a couch, talking to a steady stream of
petitioners who had been standing in line outside waiting for him. They are metered in to him one
at a time by the guards and he deals with them rapidly, pausing occasionally to bark orders to the
guards or yell harshly at his two sons: the blond on the bike and a younger boy who spends much
of his time kicking and punching a sheep dog puppy when he is not harassing his l8 month old
sister. We hover on the other side of the courtyard talking to Magamed's wife Zera who is clearly
a very unhappy woman. She asked us to stop filming the second her husband came into the
compound to hold office.
In the morning we follow him across the street to the gymnasium in the basement of the
stadium, where there is a meeting of his inner circle and the leaders of the Lok clan. He allows us
to film briefly, and then indicates that we should wait outside on the street, where a few minutes
later the meeting continues beside the Hummer. It’s begun to seem that we are dealing with a
warlord who happens to be the Minister of Agriculture in his spare time. The men of the inner
circle seem more and more like henchmen in a gang operation. Something is generating far more
money than a government salary could possibly provide. There is one exotic vehicle after another
in front of the compound: Jeep Cherokees, BMW 750's and Magamed's personal set of wheels--a
Mercedes 560 SL Coupe. There is also a personal helicopter, not to mention the house and its
lavish appointments.
Magamed walks over from the Hummer to his Mercedes Coupe, jumps in without a word to
us, backs into the street and leaves. We arrange with one of his subalterns for a ride to the main
square where we spot his car and find our way to the press conference. He never shows up, nor
do any of the elders of the Lok clan; it’s announced that they are unable to attend. Three other
crews are there with lights and VHS cameras, the standard provincial format for covering news:
only the national news channels can afford Beta cameras. We tape the whole event and interview
the man who organized it when it’s over, then walk back to Magamed's place to find lunch
waiting for us. He arrives soon after we do and then gets a call from the President's office asking
him to come to a meeting. He agrees that we can come but dashes off in the Mercedes while we
negotiate a ride. When we get to the Presidential palace a few minutes behind him we are denied
entry at the door: he has not left word to let us in. Gusein’s daughter Medina tries to arrange this
but it is hopeless; after a tedious wait on the steps we give up and go back to the compound where
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we amuse ourselves reviewing the footage from the press conference on a 40 inch monitor in the
dining room. Zera tells us that she has invited some friends for tea so that we can meet them and
film a discussion of Dagestani life from the women's point of view. She warns us to stop if her
husband returns. We tape for nearly an hour, though only a couple of the women are responsive
enough to make it worthwhile. I’m struck by the contrast to the radiant women of Tedib. The
filming does seem to cheer Zera up and she answers several of our questions. Then suddenly
Magamed returns. When they hear him coming through the courtyard the women stiffen and the
session is over.
After dinner that night we interview Magamed. As he sits down in one of his massive
armchairs he removes a small pistol from his back pocket. He watches the news while I set up a
light. He looks bored and tired but once we get started he gives some thorough answers and only
looks at his watch twice. Afterwards we thank him and say that we'll leave in the morning since
we realize that he is unable to let us follow him in the way we had hoped to. He makes no attempt
to dissuade us, but provides us with a driver who takes us back to Holenbek Aoul at high speed in
his Jeep Cherokee Limited.
Over the next day or so we decide to concentrate on the
portrait of Gusein and his wife Olga and the school, which I
find more and more visually appealing as I get up at dawn
each morning with the boys to film their morning practice in
lovely shafts of oblique morning sunlight. Verona’s third
subject, a political activist, has not responded to her messages, so we have discounted his
participation. We decide to pursue the political situation in any way possible to provide
background, but the film will be about the school and the people who run it.
S.F. October ‘96
At the end of nearly a month we have a semi-solid body of footage and it is time to fly back to
Moscow and catch our flights to Amsterdam and San Francisco. There’s a warm parting with
Olga and Gusein and an exchange of gifts. They give me a sheepskin and a kris, a traditional
dagger in a sheath. I give them my Streamlite, the powerful police-style, re-chargeable flashlight
that I’ve been carrying for low-key emergency lighting since Sarajevo. None of their neighbors or
friends has one of those.
As our plane descends over San Francisco Bay Verona indicates to me in a very firm way that
she’s taking home with her all the tape we’ve shot. I was planning to transfer it to Betacam so we
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could start editing. It’s suddenly clear that she wants so much control over post-production that it
will make my participation meaningless. I must admit that having ignored my initial doubts I’ve
blown it in my appraisal of Verona. She’s trickier than I guessed. I was willing to risk those first
reservations I had about working with her, risk a month of my time and an airline ticket for the
reward of filming in a part of the world I wanted to see. What we’ve got is a much smaller film
than she enticed me with, but I could have some fun with it. She’s simply taken advantage of me
to get it in the can. It’s clear that I’ve been snookered and that she was only pretending to agree
that we would produce and edit the film together; each assuming they’d have control. I can’t
work with anyone who plays devious games. No point in taking a stand to negotiate with someone
I probably can’t work with anyway. Oh well. It was an expensive trial of some new technology, a
chance to meet some great people, do some good shooting and see the village of Tedib, one of the
most magical places I’ve ever been.
S.F. November ’96
Oh Lord. A swamp of disappointment and depression since Dagestan. I return to be
startled and whacked by the end of my long happy affair with Nicole. Still in love with her.
Haunted by memories of our sweet and rewarding companionship. She busted herself. I always
understood her commitment to family. I knew that living apart might be the best way to maintain
the pure flame of our love; always thinking like a survivor of the marital wars. I knew how well it
suited me to fly solo. But why had she turned herself in? Had I failed her or was there too much
guilt? Much as I wish it could go on I accept the fact that it’s over. I’m glad we had as long
together as we did. It was a blessing. I’m sure we’ll stay in touch as friends.
Losing myself in work is the only way to deal with those questions so I pursue my intention
to do single-handed reports with my new mini-digital camera. Maybe for the NewsHour. Or
perhaps for Nightline, which is airing some unusual solo pieces shot by correspondents using the
new cameras. Saw one the other night about going into Bosnia by long-haul truck. I’m
researching what might be the first of mine: Mexicans slipping over the border and walking 90
perilous miles across the Sonora desert in Arizona to find work. I drive to Tucson for a meeting
with John Annerino, a reporter I’ve found who did the walk with a group and wrote the story for
a Phoenix paper. He agrees to do it again with me in a few months, as a co-producer. I head
home, through Nevada, so I can see some favorite country and avoid those boring freeway miles.
Now I'm blind to every fork in the path except the ones that lead to more solitude. I sit in
an arroyo at dawn. The sun glances diagonally off my wagon. A vast and luminous valley below
is ringed with mountains the color of burnt sienna. I savor coffee brewed on an open fire while
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toasting two slices of bread over the coals. I peel an apple and toss the rind to the lizards. In the
stillness of that moment I realize that the closeness Nicole and I have known can never be lost
but only thrown away, no matter how many miles lie between us. N’ome say’n?
Boston, January ‘97
I go to work with Ray Telles and Roger Graef in Fort Worth and Boston on Michael
Swartz’s three part series about juvenile justice in America, In Search of Law and Order. It’s
fun working with Ray; someone I’ve always liked. There’s a whole series of good projects to do
this spring, including my piece with Susana about the ‘dirty war’ in Argentina. I think I can make
the schedule work, but it’s going to be tricky.
Pondering as I read the Times how America has always reveled in having a free press. But
if you study it carefully you might decide it’s rather expensive. There’s such a strong need for
self-censorship that all forms of media coverage are prone to be incomplete or skewed. The most
important stories are the most vulnerable to pressure from both corporations and government. An
example is what’s happening to Gary Webb’s series in the San Jose Mercury News about the
CIA involvement in smuggling crack-cocaine to finance the Contra War. The editorial outrage
and opposition to this story in major media, including the New York Times and Washington
Post, is so great that the Mercury News has retracted the series. Webb resigned. There is
convincing evidence that the stories are accurate and that the opposition to them was
orchestrated by powerful but un-named sources. Guess who.
Saint Mary’s Hospital, February 5
I have the best bad luck of anyone I know. If I didn’t I’d be dead by now. I’ve survived
more narrow escapes than most of my peers. Every ten or twelve years I have to pay up. Now I
must ride the latest twist of my fate. Serious as it is, it could be much worse.
On the 31 st of January I picked up a check at the Film Arts Foundation from the Soros
Documentary Fund for the film I’m shooting and producing with Susana Blaustein about the
hijos and hijas of the disappeared in Argentina’s ‘dirty war’. Susana and I open an account with
the money and spend the afternoon allocating and spending it. There’s enough to hire Andy Black
to record sound, to buy three round trip tickets, 20 hours of Betacam tape, 20 hours of mini-DV
tape. We assign the rest of the money to expenses during our three-week shoot and for a fund-
raising reel when we’re back in San Francisco. I give Susana a hug, get on my bicycle and head
into Golden Gate Park to have dinner with a friend over in Cliffside. Turning into the park at 25 th
Avenue is like entering an ominous, pitch-black cave. Half inclined to go home and get my car.
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There is no moon. Fog has come in and huge trees block any reflected light from the city. I lower
my photo-chromic glasses and ignore a strong sense of foreboding. Finding the gate to cross the
Polo Field locked, I speed up to fall in behind two cars on the main drive so I can use their light
to guide me. There’s the faint memory of a wobble as I lose control of my bike.
When I come to I’m lying belly down on a grassy patch of earth with my left arm twisted
under my chest, reaching out beyond my right ear. I can't get up. I’m paralyzed from my neck
down. I’m looking into a deep, dark pit, struck by the image that I’ve been flung over the bars like
a rag doll. What did I hit? A fallen branch? Jolts of pain like high voltage electrical shock. I start
howling to ride them.
Between surges of pain I take stock. Surprised how lucid. No shoot in Texas with Ray Telles
next week; might not meet Susana in Argentina next month; series of trips with Toby to finish
sacred sites film probably lost. Months of tasty work cancelled. I may be permanently crippled. I
can see depression and suicide, or just another weird, challenging adventure. There it is, yes or
no to life. A simple, binary equation. Which way will my psychic compass swing? I decide right
then to pursue every thread in this tapestry that leads to joy and beauty. Material for a vivid new
chapter in my journal. Life’s an adventure disguising a joke. Is that my hollow laughter?
Suddenly I have company in the dark—two passing law students notice the red light
blinking on my downed bike and decide to investigate. They find me. One of them goes off to
phone an ambulance while the other urges me to stop trying to move. I ask if he knows how long
one can be temporarily paralyzed? Maybe this won't be permanent. Three calls before the
ambulance finds us. The paramedics slide a stretcher under me and we head for San Francisco
General. Probes to test my responses convince the paramedics that I’ve severed my spine. At the
Emergency room two neurosurgeons are standing by. Three hours, many X-rays later I’m moved
to Intensive Care. I’m in a state of euphoric suspended animation, very lucid. I feel absolved of
my guilt and sins and responsibilities and free to hover in a state of pure being. I momentarily
achieve what Japanese Buddhists call kensho, a state of grace and calm that monks might spend
a lifetime trying to reach. It’s a feeling of greater liberation than I’ve ever experienced.
On the other side of a curtain a nurse's soft voice repeatedly and unsuccessfully exhorts a
patient named Murry to wake up. In the morning the curtain’s pulled and I have the room to
myself. Tanya, Sharon and Jaime are hovering around my bed. I’m wheeled downstairs for an
MRI. Soon a doctor says my prognosis has improved 200 %. The spinal column is not severed;
the three fractured vertebrae will heal without an operation. A chance of full recovery.
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my finger?"
"Here," the doctor says, holding out her index finger to my right hand, "can you squeeze
"No, I can't. Even though there's nothing I'd rather do."
For the next three days I lie in a morphine reverie, unaware of what a disembodied, dazed
and helpless state I’m in. I spend most of my waking hours talking to constant visitors or on the
phone. Someone must hold the phone to my ear until Tanya brings me a headset.
An ambulance hauls me across town to St. Mary's Hospital to join their Spinal Injury
Rehab Unit. I meet Joan Joss, the head physical therapist. She gives me a wheelchair and begins
teaching me how to swing my legs over the side of the bed, stand up, turn 90 degrees and lower
myself into the chair. The beginning of recovery, after ten days of total paralysis. Sitting in the
wheelchair talking to Sharon, I think about moving my right foot. I can't see it, but she can and
she exclaims with delight, "Your foot's moving". First proof of the power of visualization. I fill my
mind with images of the movements I most need to achieve. Walking to the bathroom from my
bedside is one of the first that I concentrate on. In a couple of days I take my first three
unauthorized and unexpected steps into the arms of Mei, one of the nurses, when I stand up from
the wheelchair, lunge forward, and dance with her to the edge of my bed. We both laugh heartily
as I sit down.
Eric and Peggy come by at noon with a salad and plate of roasted chicken. Eric feeds me.
Says I look a little peak-ed. Peggy massages my legs the way she saw Joan doing it when they
arrived. Feels good. Heide and Tony were here earlier. They decorated the room with posters
and kewpie dolls to laugh at. I get up early and go in my wheelchair down the hall to an alcove
where there’s a microwave. I heat some water to make a cup of cowboy Turkish. Tanya brought
me a bag of Turkish-grind from Peets.
I’m learning new tricks to do things I've been doing all my life. It
could feel humiliating. But I know I have nothing better to do than heal
myself. It’s primarily the battle of the bed and the bathroom. The hours in
the wheelchair are the easiest. There’s a new criterion for measuring
exhaustion. Millions of transmitters and receptors in the nervous system
are trying to come back to work and are easily worn down. I have flaccid
muscles in those parts of my body where the nerve damage is greatest. The
muscles in my left arm, for example, have simply disappeared. It’s like a limp stalk of celery.
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Amy, a Philippina nurse in her sixties, is a sweet messenger who comes each morning to
wake me at six to deal with my catheter and help me dress. I love the way she moves me and
positions each limb—carefully and without any unnecessary effort; knowingly but without any
flutter--simply making sure that the next move to put on this or take off that will be comfortable.
The nurses are all quite different. The way each does the catheter is very revealing in several
ways: some seem obsessed with wringing out every drop of urine by pressing insistently against
the bladder while others share the patient's desire to get it over with as quickly as possible.
Savannah comes to see me. I’m trying to learn how to
walk. She watches me circle a table in the lounge, steadying myself
with my left hand and using a crutch on my right. When I stop and
look over at her she’s shaking with sobs; the shock of seeing her
strong, agile father crippled. I think she wonders how it can
possibly be. A warning of how shocking my condition is to those
who know me well. I wobble over to give her a hug. Promise to take her camping in three months,
when school is over. I can tell she doesn’t believe it’ll happen. She wipes her tears away.
“It’s only life.” I say. “My number was up. You’ll never know how much I got away with.
How lucky I’ve been.”
“Maybe you’ll tell me everything someday.” She laughs a bit more freely.
Saint Mary’s February 14
I get a metal finger from occupational therapy which can be attached over my inanimate
right index. A kind of hunt and peck device for dialing numbers. I discover that I can dial faster
by putting a pencil between my teeth and leaning over the phone. It’s also easier to find a pencil
than to ask somebody to strap on the fake finger. A day or two later I find I’ve regained enough
strength and dexterity in my right thumb to press the keys with it.
Larry Reed brings me a Pearlcorder with a switch I can operate with my weak and unwilling
fingers. At six-thirty the next morning, when the ward is still quiet I sit happily for half an hour
dictating all the thoughts and ideas I've been memorizing since the accident. I find this minor
achievement enormously satisfying. A topic I keep coming back to is that my best medicine is the
concern of family and friends. Not that I have taken for granted the incredible tribe I'm part of,
but I never needed them in this way and they never had a chance to show me how truly and
intimately we are related.
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Susana is leaving soon for Argentina, and confirms our friendship with almost daily visits.
During these last twelve days she watched me emerge from a totally paralyzed to a semi-
functional being. She recognized the possibility that I might be able to join her in Buenos Aires on
March 12th. Nearly everyone thought I was deluded about this until I could quote Dr. Yarnell
when he burst into my room to tell me that they had just been discussing me during the weekly
patient review and had revised my prognosis.
"You're doing great and we think now that you may walk out of here in six weeks from
when you came--five weeks from today," he said.
"Do you think I could make that four weeks?" I ask.
"It's possible," he said. "Just don't let the pressure build up and work against you."
I tell him that I have set myself the goals of being able to walk, feed myself, dress myself,
take care of myself in the bathroom and tie my shoes by the 7th of March and if I achieve those
things I will confirm my ticket to Argentina. If not I'll stay in San Francisco. Sharon says I’m a
fool to even consider anything other than rest and therapy. She’s been very helpful and has
organized a brigade of family and friends to bring me a good meal every evening. She wants me
to move in with her so she can take care of me. And control me. I try to convince her that staying
with her and wishing I were in Argentina would not be that healthy. Our tradition of dissention
hasn’t changed. I won't know if I can be ready until just before my deadline, so in the interim it’s
simply a way to pull myself forward.
St. Mary’s, February 20
Freude comes with a friend named Marjorie. I entertain them with a demonstration of
how I feed myself like a monkey by shoving the plastic dishes close enough to mouth the food
directly, without a fork. I make them giggle a few times. That makes me happy. I’m grinning back
at them. Freude wants to know why I’m not angry or in mourning. It’s tough to explain. I tell her
I haven’t yet conceded this is anything but a temporary loss. Why should I bother with anger? It
can only be focused on myself. Harder to explain that I’m not sure I can measure loss any more.
Maybe in this case it’s only change, providing me with a new challenge. Is that too surreal or
abstract a concept? If I thought it would help to scream ‘WHY ME?’ I would do so, but my stoic
nature tells me that it wouldn’t help.
‘Anyway,’ I say, revealing my negative side, ‘since life is essentially meaningless, I really
don’t think it matters what happens to me.’
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She makes a funny face resembling a grimace when I say that. I know this existential point
of view keeps me in balance and ready for whatever my fate may be. I also know I’m not
admitting how serious it already is. Freude learned to deal with being crippled by polio at the
age of five. I am still in an initial stage of denial while she’s had a lifetime to incorporate the
challenge of being disabled. She says that long ago she recognized that she’d never play third
base for the Yankees. I grew feeling constant reinforcement of my prowess. Until now I’ve had no
reason to mourn the loss of any of that. Now I’m eager to convince myself that it simply doesn't
matter. Anyway, I’m sure that slowly I'll get back some part of what I lost.
St. Mary’s, February 25
Maxima, a nurse from Nicaragua, is a statuesque beauty with a confident, calming manner
that refreshes me whenever she comes in the room. I enjoy speaking Spanish with her and talking
about our very different memories of Nicaragua. When I get a copy of Saul Landau’s new
documentary about the Zapatistas I invite her to watch it with me and my old friend Gail Silva
who dropped by to bring me a delicious dinner.
Many days my room is full of great people from late afternoon until after midnight. It may be
the best and weirdest party I've ever thrown. I even have a bottle of prize-winning Del Maguey
Mezcal that Ron Cooper sent me. I can’t drink but my guests can. Friends like Jaime drop by
several times—to see the others as well as to visit me. At times I feel like an invisible onlooker
attending my own wake. When anyone comes in with a long face I try to make sure they leave
laughing. Elizabeth comes and watches me the morning I first walk down the hallway, pushing
and leaning on a wheeled table with Joan Joss coaching me. Lori Muttersbach visits and I beg
her to give me a haircut like she used to. She wheels me into the bathroom and gives me a perfect
trim with scissors borrowed from nurse Amy.
Saint Mary’s, March 2
Wheeling over to my window I am grateful for the spectacular view this room provides me.
I can tell by the wet streets that there's been a brief storm during the night. There is a doughnut of
white cloud around Mt. Tam, a slash of darker cloud hanging over that, and the ethereal
whiteness of cumuli nimbus above all of it. To the west, off the headlands lighthouse, I can see a
stream of whitecaps heading out towards the Farralon Islands. To the north, Pt. Reyes is just
visible in a dusky haze. Shades of pale blue and emerald green between these layers of cloud
complete the illusion of looking out my window at a perfect Sung Dynasty painting.
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The body's memory of itself slowly re-awakens. I’m making simple moves with more
spontaneity. I begin a detached appraisal of my body the way I used to appraise a malfunctioning
tractor or hay baler, feeling the sections of the damaged unit in different ways as they emerge
from total numbness. The lower back seems to have a piece of plasterboard melded into it. My
knees are chunks of wood; the midriff and groin are made of rock. As the nervous system partially
awakes it’s clear to me how far I still have to go. Staying detached about the body gives me
strength. As long as I can live in my mind there’s no fear about the body. It can almost be
ignored. I decide to simply trust this miraculous organism to repair itself as fully as possible and
then to shut down quietly when its time has come.
S.F. March 9, ‘97
I hobble out of the hospital with Andy Black. I ask him to take me to the site of my crash
before he drives me downtown to my loft. I’m surprised to see that the street hooks to the left,
rather than yielding to the right as it meets the main drive. I decide that not being able to see this
and drifting to the right in the dark, I probably hit the curb where it breaks for a crosswalk and
that threw me over the handlebars. It hardly matters, but both the filmmaker and the writer in me
want to have a clear image of what happened.
Andy is a fellow Ohioan, from Mansfield, a town in the north. He’s a thoughtful, skillful
filmmaker, adept at both sound recording and camera work. He’s quiet and alert, with a droll
sense of humor and the sort of restrained ego it’s great to have in a collaborator. When I first met
him he had just finished making a beautiful documentary about his experiences as a crewmember
on tugboats in the San Francisco Bay.
It’s not easy being back here alone in the disheveled old loft, but I’m
happy to have achieved all of my self-imposed goals and confirmed
my flight to Argentina. I even manage to limp my dirty laundry down
to the wash & fold service on 8 th street. I’ll organize the gear for the
trip with Andy. Tanya is using some vacation time to come along as
my personal assistant and nurse—a gift like none I’ve ever received.
She’s made me a vest with a sling-like pouch built into it for my left
arm. That arm is still too weak to be unsupported. Tanya’s a busy and very successful freelance
technical writer. She graduated Phi Beta Kapa in Physics from S.F. State. Began a career in the
high-tech world working at the Stanford Linear Accelerator, moved to Sun Micro when they were
still a small company, then went to work for Bell Labs writing a manual and from there she went
on to a series of writing projects. She’s very composed and beautiful and I’m proud of her.
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Glad I’ve already lived a full life. When I was twenty, I was certain it would be better to
die young than to fade into sickness or dependency. Now, starting over at 58, I have a rich array
of experience and memories to sustain me. It’s like simultaneously being offered a mysterious
gift certificate for a new life and a diploma for the old one.
Buenos Aires, March ‘97
Tanya, Andy and I leave for Miami on the afternoon of March 12th to connect with our
flight to Buenos Aires, where we meet Susana the next morning and begin working on our
documentary about Argentina’s ‘Dirty War’ during the seventies and early eighties.
Susana has not worked here on her native turf since making Las Madres, The Mothers of
Plaza de Mayo in 1985 with Lourdes Portillo, but she plunged right back into the frantic pace of
this Latin Paris and has everything ready to start shooting the day after Andy, Tanya and I
arrive.
My right leg, the weaker one, is badly swollen after fifteen hours at 35,000 feet. I realize I
may have blood clots resulting from not being able to move during the hours of the flight when
everyone, including me, fell asleep. United had said they couldn't give me an aisle seat each time
Tanya called to get one: they had oversold the flight. The haughty Argentine next to me with an
aisle seat refused to trade. I’ll ignore the clot danger until I’m back in San Francisco. We rest
and then have a celebratory high protein Buenos Aires style dinner: enough to feed half the
homeless on 6 th Street in San Francisco. The next morning we go to work with our Argentine
soundman Adrian, our lithesome assistant Brigida and 'El Gringo', our driver. The Gringo drives
us in a white '79 Ford Falcon, the favored vehicle of the Navy school of Mechanics, the infamous
ESMA of Admiral Massera. Is this car an orphan of the campaign to disappear suspected
dissidents during the dark days we are here to document? We’ll do a shot of it pulling in on a
dimly lit street.
I am convinced that this is the appropriate physical
therapy for a filmmaker who has suddenly turned himself
into a Class D quadriplegic. Stumble out of the hospital as
soon as possible, get on a plane and fly off to make your
next film, preferably with some skillful friends and an aisle
seat so you can stand and stretch every hour. I know it’s
right for me to be here working with Susana every day. We already have enough good material to
make a short piece. Nobel Peace Prize winner Adolfo Perez Esquivel gave us a great interview
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with bites that could serve as opening and closing statements. Susana, Andy and I are relating
smoothly. Andy is doing great camera work and I add occasional suggestions that our
collaborative effort turns into refinements. I’m finding it a novel and rewarding process to be
directing and not shooting. To a certain extent I’m able to ignore my condition simply by focusing
all my attention on the project. Still totally a prisoner of my damaged body. I’m hustling it a bit to
help make this movie. Denying it any extra attention.
In a tender role reversal Tanya takes care of me as I sometimes took care of her when she
was little. She makes sure that I take my medicine; she straightens my bed, washes my clothes.
When I’m unable to make it out of the bath on my own she pulls me out. I ask her to explain black
holes to me, since my nervous system seems to be in one that immobilizes me. She grins and says
her studies of physics didn’t cover the black hole of nerve system damage. It’s all completely
natural, unforced and gratifying. She comes along and helps on location some days and on others
she stays behind to buy food and cook for us and to work on the book she’s writing. She says
she’s glad to have this opportunity to get to know me better and I ask what she’s learned so far.
“That you’re even tougher and braver than I knew,” she says. I tell her this trip is closing a long
loop: she was conceived shortly after I returned from Argentina to Ohio in 1959. I tell her how
grateful I am for her help.
We spend most of our time with the members of H.I.J.O.S.—an organization started a year
ago by sons and daughters of the disappeared. Susana has done a great job of pre-interviewing
and selecting the most dynamic and articulate among them. They are the legacy of Argentina's
'Dirty War'. They picked up the banner of social activism that was ripped from their parents’
hands by one of the most brutally repressive dictatorships in recent Latin American history,
which, in my proposal to Soros, I described in this way:
On March 24th, 1976 political turmoil in Argentina was suddenly frozen by a military coup
proclaimed in the defense of Christianity and Western Civilization. During the next seven years
thirty thousand Argentines, most of them young but not all of them politically engaged, were
machine gunned and thrown into mass burial pits, killed during torture or dropped drugged and still
living from Naval cargo planes into the South Atlantic. During the first weeks less than two hundred
armed leftists opposed the military in scattered groups. Though these were quickly reduced to a
fraction of that number, the activity of military police and death squads was unrelenting and always
justified by the need to wage a "dirty war" against the fiction of a heavily armed, numerically
superior communist menace. One proud warrior bragged that the Nazis may have excelled in the
number of Jews and Gypsies they eliminated but that he and his peers had devised more
sophisticated methods of killing and the most efficient and successful means of torturing dissidents.
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That’s the legacy we have come to document through the children of the disappeared.
Some members of HIJOS are extremely radical while others seem quite pragmatic; all of them
are unbowed in their anger about what happened to their parents. They are unified and spurred
on by their determination to wake up the country.
We film a group of sons and daughters preparing for a torch-lit march. They’re working
on the roof of a building that has a Pierre Cardin fashion shop on the ground floor and the
Partida Communista on the three floors above it. As we climb the five flights of steep, narrow
stairs I nickname the place the 'PC Building'. Needing a laugh as I struggle with the stairs. On
the roof a swarm of young adults are busy attaching candle holders made out of soda cans to
four-foot stakes. Others are painting slogans on huge
canvas banners. Andy has a good time racking the focus of
his shots among all the toiling bodies. Or I imagine he
does, with a tinge of regret that I’m not shooting. This is
my kind of scene. Or used to be. At least I’m here and not
in a wheelchair back at Sharon’s place.
Reminding myself often to slow down. Savor each
experience fully and make every decision fruitful. Being
good at going fast was a seductive skill. Now I need the allure of a deliberate pace; it’s essential
for maintaining my balance and dignity. When I walk with others it’s not easy to keep up. I give
them the choice of forging ahead or walking with me at the pace I set. Glad I have the
Pearlcorder to make notes. Much easier than trying to write them. Fingers are still really stiff
and numb.
We are working in a way I never have before, building a huge file of oral history.
Covering every relevant aspect of current events: preparations for protest marches on the 21st
anniversary of the coup, the premier of a weekly radio show called "Hijos" and protests about the
murder of a journalist named Cabezas who was doing a story about corruption in high levels of
the Buenos Aires government. At the heart of our effort are strong young voices telling stories
and giving personal accounts of the horrors during the seventies. I begin to see the project as a
new kind of challenge: after years of being an image driven filmmaker I am now in a situation
where the spoken word dominates, even perhaps obliterating the need for images other than the
face of the speaker. For the fundraising reel, I am beginning to see a montage of short bites from
many voices addressing the same topics, interwoven so that they will have poetic clarity that
doesn't depend on any cinematic device or background coverage. I think that the emotion of the
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material we are collecting will provide the drama we need to carry the piece. Susana's good
choices of subjects and her unobtrusive interview technique are yielding an almost theatrical
intensity of response. A book of drawings and cartoons about it all by Hijos who are artists will
provide some good illustrative cutaway possibilities. Also these drawings are an appealing
substitute for archival news footage as B-roll. Susana and I checked out some news footage the
other day and I decided it doesn’t suit our tone so we don’t want it. It would disrupt what I want
to do with the voices we’re gathering.
Thirty-eight years since I was last here—nearly two/thirds of a lifetime. Two wives, five
kids and many films. Countless wars, disputes and mountains of evidence that the human
condition does not improve. We are surrounded here by ghostly chimeras of inhumanity. The
convicted members of the military Junta have all been pardoned by Menem and are free to walk
the streets, as is Astiz, the naval lieutenant known to have arranged the death of two French nuns.
I reach Naren Bali on the phone and we agree to meet for lunch. A year ago I was sitting
at my computer, thinking and writing about the last time I saw Naren, in 1967. The phone rang. I
answered and was asked by the caller, who had a slight accent, if I knew the person named John
Knoop from Cincinnati. I answered that I was that person and asked who was calling. He said it
was Naren Bali and I broke into amazed laughter.
‘Are you the same Naren Bali I rode a motorcycle from New York to Buenos Aires with in
1958?’ I asked. ‘The same Naren Bali I was remembering two minutes ago?’
We talked excitedly for a few minutes and then arranged a meeting two days later, before
he returned to Argentina. Naren came to my loft for dinner with his wife, daughter and son. We
spent the evening talking and laughing. Finally coming to the most significant topic, after Naren
read my proposal for the documentary. He said it was very important for us to examine the
parallels between Argentina in the seventies and Germany in the thirties. And what made those
parallels possible. He had been apolitical all his life and was only vaguely aware of what was
going on during the years of the "Dirty War". He was living a couple of blocks from the U.S.
Embassy at the time, and would often hear bombs and shots in the night. He remembers being
approached by someone who was subtly, but clearly, sounding him out on his willingness to get
involved.
"Aside from never having been political, I have never been suicidal either," he said. So
he devoted himself to his work as an engineer and to his family.
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"Why did we not stop it?" he asked. "That's the important question. I just said that I
didn't know what was happening, but we all knew that something was happening and we had
access to information if we wanted to pursue it. But we chose to remain ignorant. Now we know
what an incredible killing machine the Junta set up. And I live with some regret that I did
nothing."
I asked him what he might have done. He said the situation was so complex for him that
the only thing he could have done was to leave the country again and somehow fight from
abroad.
"So," I asked, "the only non-leftist opposition to the repression came from those women
whose kids disappeared? The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo?"
"That's basically true," he said and added that he had joined the weekly march in front of
the Argentine equivalent of the White House several times with the Mothers. "Well, I shouldn't
exaggerate," he added. "I marched three times.”
Buenos Aires, March ‘97
We do a turnaround of that San Francisco dinner at one of the better restaurants along the
river in Buenos Aires: Tanya, Andy and I are Naren and Margarita's guests. Tanya cuts my steak;
I still can’t hold anything with my left hand. We talk about the Cabezas case and the
demonstrations being organized by H.I.J.O.S. and the MOTHERS for the 21st anniversary of the
coup on March 24th. We talk about the possibility of a plebiscite to cancel Menem's amnesty and
put the coup leaders back in jail. Naren thinks that 75% of the public would vote in favor, but that
it would only have symbolic value since legal maneuvers would keep the condemned free.
"The judicial system is a joke," he says. "More than
half the judges are left over from the dictatorship."
I ask Naren if we can interview him and at first he
demurs, saying he doesn’t really qualify as a subject. But
when I beg him, pointing out that he represents a position
and point of view that are important and which the film
won’t have without him, he agrees. When we show up at his
home to do the interview Naren is totally articulate but not at ease. This makes it hard for him to
say what he told me in private.
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Our one word title for this project--IMPUNITY--is a universal issue throughout Latin
America and much of the rest of the world. The concept that those in power have the right to kill
their fellow countrymen without fear of retribution and then to walk the streets bragging about
having saved their country, as Admiral Massera does here. The ascendancy of the right wing to
power in Argentina and its self-proclaimed victory over "communism" became a rallying cry for
conservatives everywhere; particularly those in the U.S. where the mood of failure following the
fall of Saigon was still an open wound. Jeane Kirkpatrick and Elliot Abrams apparently found
time to visit and encourage the Junta. Roberto D'Aubuisson of El Salvador and Mario Sandoval
Alarcon of Guatemala attended the fourth gathering of the CAL, the Confederation
Anticommunista Latinamericana in Buenos Aires, where they were able to discuss the death
squads' techniques. The nightmares to come during the 80's in Central America found their
seminal inspiration in what happened here. Once Reagan was in power the exchange began in
earnest: Argentina's dirty warriors came to Honduras as surrogate U.S. advisors to the Contras
while fifty of Somoza's finest ex-national guardsmen were sent to Argentina for on-site training
before going into action against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Over it all hangs the feudal
tradition of impunity.
Buenos Aires, March ‘97
Hoping to get an interview with Captain Scilingo, the Naval frigate commander whose
testimony was the source for El Vuelo, a book by Horacio Verbitsky, about dumping drugged
dissidents alive from cargo planes into the South Atlantic. The captain and his fellow ranking
officers were required to each take their turn performing this task. Scilingo found it repugnant,
but did his duty. The next years were full of nightmares and he became an alcoholic. Ten years
later he approached Verbitsky to write the book. The book caused an international uproar.
Scilingo was soon jailed on a charge of fraud concerning a business venture. Many thought it a
trumped up charge to punish him for the book, which describes the most gruesome details of the
Argentine Navy's ‘dirty war’.
Our assistant Brigida has been working for three weeks on getting us into the U-9 prison
in La Plata to interview Scilingo. She’s repeatedly been put off. Susana asks me to call; a male
voice might break through the macho screen. I make the call and assume the role of an imperious
and impatient gringo journalist, laying on a heavy accent for the fun of it. I am promised an
answer by noon the next day. We get the appointment. When we meet, Scilingo is fully prepared
to give us some highlights revealing how corrupt and steamy the ESMA operation was.
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"This wasn't some renegade group," he tells us. ‘This was the Argentine Navy. All very
well organized and documented. It was really like a private war for those in command. And they
treated it like sport; like a hunting trip. Only a monster could have designed such a sophisticated
system for killing. In my opinion Videla, Massera and the others should serve their time in a
common prison along with ordinary criminals. And the
story of these flights should be repeated a thousand times
so that we recognize a Machiavelli like Massera when he
appears with a simple solution to civil strife. Then we will
remember what happened before and we’ll say: `NO’”.
We drive back from La Plata in the dusk and begin
preparing to fly north the following day. I have a deep
feeling of satisfaction about what we’ve done together. This lasts all the way back to San
Francisco, amplified perhaps by the fact that Andy talks to the Purser about my disability and
suddenly I have an empty row of three seats in Business Class and am able to stretch out with my
swollen legs propped up. Lying here I feel like a pilgrim wandering through the memories of my
life and loves. I marvel at the good fortune of my headlong career and I see myself staggering
forward into an uncertain future.
S.F. April ‘97
A four-day session in the hospital to deal with the blood clots in my right leg. The doc puts
me on a three-month course of blood-thinning Caumadin. Why hadn’t they done that as I left the
hospital the first time? They knew I was going to be flying for fifteen hours. Susana and I start
logging the footage from Argentina. Before long she decides to give up trying to survive in
America and returns to Argentina, leaving me with the unfinished film. Not sure yet what I’ll do
with it. We’ve already burned through the grant from Soros.
I finish the two-dozen physical and occupational therapy sessions allowed by my medical
insurance coverage and then decide to ignore my disability and continue with my working life. A
number of people help by donating to a rehab fund set up by the Film Arts Foundation. Cousin
Rudy and Elizabeth both make major donations. I’m a bit more in debt than usual. I decide to
maintain an optimistic attitude about my chances for a full recovery. This may be an illusion or
just the best way to avoid sinking into despair about how difficult everything is for me now.
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Nevada, May ‘97
Off to the Garrett Ranch, on the south side of the Black Rock Desert with Savannah and her
classmate from Germany. Fulfilling the promise I made her when she visited me in the hospital: a
camping trip to the ‘Frog’ hot spring. Days in the desert are always good for my spirits. I hobble
around gathering mesquite deadfall with them and we build a fire and grill some salmon. It’s a
favorite campsite where giant frogs were grown in the hot water a hundred years ago and sold to
the Northern Pacific for their dining cars. I slide in to do some therapeutic swimming. It’s a
perfect oval hot pool with a sandy bottom and I manage to pull myself out without help. There’s a
chimney by the side of the pool. All that remains of the ranch house that was once here. A trio of
big cottonwoods below. Northern Pacific tracks beyond and then the vast playa of the Black
Rock. Good to be out here with Savannah; a reminder of better days. She’s headed to Thailand
for her Junior year of high school. To a small city near the Laotian border. She’s excited.
Denver, June ‘97
Good news. Well-paid, high-end work. Tony Stark asks me to do a shoot on a project he’s
directing for Nova about breaking the sound barrier. I pick him up at SFO and we drive with Andy
Black and the Betacam package to an interview with Chuck Yeager at his home in the Sierra. The
setup interview with camera on tripod goes okay. When I try to shoot some hand-held B-roll I’m a
little shaky, so I ask Andy to do it. Then we drive down to Sacramento and fly to Denver for
another interview with a scientist who worked on designing the Bell rocket. Stay at the great old
Brown Hotel. Without Andy’s help carrying and setting up the camera I would not have been able
to do this job. After watching me walk at airports Andy tells me I look like a drunken sailor. I’m
grateful that my old clients are asking me to shoot. It’s a combination of wanting to support me
and not realizing how seriously disabled I am. I guess they know they can rely on my experience
and my eye even without my former agility.
Texas, July ‘97
I continue at nearly my old pace. Fly to Texas to work again with Ray Telles on the
juvenile justice project. Soundman Jaime Kibben and I go on a night patrol with a Ft. Worth
policeman and somehow I manage to follow the cop when he flushes a teenager carrying a rifle
out from under a suburban house. Dramatic, shaky mini-DV footage. Jaime helps me with setups
and director Ray Telles does a skillful job of shooting a handheld scene for me, in the tailor shop
at the Huntington prison. Not an easy week. More practice with my new balancing act—juggling
recovery and denial. The work is all so familiar and I know just what I want to do. If only I could
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ing my nervous system back on line so my body could do what I tell it to do. I take naps
whenever I can between locations. Ray is very understanding about this and my disability in
general.
Mt. Shasta, August ‘97
With Toby and Andy to shoot the morning broadcast of a Native American radio show in
Chico and a swarm of new age crystal groupies at Panther Meadow on Mt. Shasta. We get some
good ironic stuff to illustrate how differently the white culture relates to nature and how offensive
their carelessness is to the natives. “They act like the world is their parking lot,” Florence says.
Able to do a little decent hand held Betacam work. Andy does the harder stuff for me. I sleep all
the way home in the back of Toby’s van.
L.A. August ‘97
Wow, what’s this? Nine to fifteen year-olds driving beautiful little racecars burning
alcohol and turning the quarter mile in 10 to 14 seconds. An
amazing and bizarre American phenomenon. A curious echo
of the short I made twenty-three years ago, World’s Fastest
Hippie. Here with Eric Orr, to document his nine-year old
son Johnny racing a mini-dragster at the Pomona drag strip.
I hobble around this scene with the mini-DV camera for two
days making a portrait of a man I love mentoring the son he loves. Tom McEvilley and his mate
Joyce are here too, which makes it even more fun. Joyce helps me by carrying the tripod. The
hardest thing is climbing up to get a scene in the control tower with the guy announcing the runs.
More days in L.A. as the Director of Photography on a two-camera super 16 shoot that I’ve
lined up the gear for. It’s a fundraiser for O’Neal Compton’s feature High Cotton, with Andy
doing sound and David Boatwright designing the sets. A good workout as D.P. and operating one
of the two Aaton cameras. We shoot three major scenes and O’Neal seems happy. Back in San
Francisco I do a two-camera shoot for Elizabeth and the NewsHour on ACT’s revival of A
Streetcar Named Desire and another on the Kronos String Quartet. It’s great to work with
Elizabeth again. She’s happy to be back with her family in Berkeley. Retired from the anchoring
position in D.C. and working now as the Chief Correspondent for the NewsHour from her new
digs at KQED.
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S.F. November ‘97
Clinton is on his way to Argentina for a state visit. Shortly after Captain Scilingo finishes
serving his time thugs attack him on the street in Buenos Aires. They pull him into a car and
carve on his cheeks the initials of three magazines that published interviews with him after
publication of his book with Verbitski, El Vuelo. The New York Times runs an editorial about the
assault. I call Elizabeth and suggest a piece on all this. She convinces the NewsHour that I should
do the story using my footage keyed to the Clinton visit and the interview Susana and I did with
Scilingo. I edit with Jay Hansel at KQED. Elizabeth produces and narrates. The piece airs the
day the Clintons arrive in Argentina.
Charleston, November ‘97
I fly to South Carolina to direct photography on a 35mm shoot for the title sequence of
Compton’s High Cotton, which includes a challenging take from the open door of a little two-
passenger helicopter. I position myself to grip a 35mm Arriflex camera between my knees. I ask
the pilot to crab sideways across the field so I can get a tracking shot five feet over the cotton. It
takes three tries to get it right, with a lift over the big expanse of cotton where the pickers are at
work. O’Neal has done a great job setting the scene. The cotton field is full of colorfully dressed
African Americans picking cotton. We shoot a sequence of a team pulling a wagon past the
pickers and O’Neal following on a horse as the plantation owner. Good close ups of the pickers. I
suggest and then do a shot from ground level of the wagon gliding over the camera, revealing
three kids sitting on the tailgate. This day of shooting feels almost like old times. I stay with
Boatwright and Molly that night and meet their new daughter, a one and a half year old cutie.
S.F. December ‘97
Five grueling days on a commercial with a transmitter on a handheld Betacam. Both Jaime
Kibben and Michael Anderson are ready to help me carry the camera and hoist it on my shoulder
at each location. A handheld 16mm shoot for Stephen Gebhardt covering the Hudson Tigers
football team. They’ve come from Michigan to watch a high school team in Concord, California
break the Tiger’s record for the longest winning streak in high school football. Andy Black is my
invaluable camera assistant once again and Claudia Katsyanagi.
I am exhausted, but nearly out of debt, with these jobs and the help of many generous
donations to the recovery fund set up by the Film Arts Foundation.
It’s been a hard year and I don’t know if I can keep up this crazy pace. Wonder if I can
muster the energy to find a new game to play for the money I need. Maybe I should act on my
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lifelong, half-serious plan to become a cab driver. Release Print has published the last two
articles in my Kaleidoscope series and paid for them. These twelve pieces have run over the last
few years and several people have asked when the book will be finished. Maybe I will write a
book. The only way I’m interested in documenting my life is to tell more stories about adventures
that reflect the strange, sad beauty of our world. That would keep me busy and out of mischief.
Does any of it really matter? I keep coming back to the only certainty in this whole realm: what
matters is the commitment to help Savannah start her adult life. Everything else is ephemeral.
Just got a letter from her. She’s having a great year in Thailand. Sharon and Hennessey have
gone over to spend Christmas with her.
S.F. February ‘98
Four days with Jaime Kibben on his Media 100 editing system making a ten minute first
chapter of the Argentina film, which I am calling The Legacy: Memories of Argentina’s Dirty
War. I think we’ve done something that stands alone as a short and is not just a fund-raising
trailer. Jaime is eager to see me finish the film and helps not just with the edit, but with the fund-
raising proposals I write and submit to ITVS and the Latino Broadcasting Foundation.
Waiting for Karina to come by. Whenever she says she can come give me a lesson I plan
that day so there will be no interference. I make sure the door at the bottom of my long stairway
is unlocked at the hour I expect her. I am awestruck by the bond that has been evolving with her
over the past six months. She’s been teaching me the principles of T’ai Chi. The standing
meditation is a way to regain my balance so I’m not always on the verge of falling over. The
‘catwalk’ is a very slow walking exercise that begins to teach my right leg to move without
dragging the foot or rolling the hip so acutely as before. In
exchange I tutor Karina on doing her own camerawork. She’s
making a film about an Armenian woman who survived the
Ottoman massacres of 1915-18. A great old woman with spirit
who, at ninety-one, still tends a garden and the fig and
pomegranate trees in her back yard down in Fresno.
My time with Karina has become a meditation on
friendship. It began as a gift from the depths of compassion
when Karina realized that she might be able to help me on my
healing journey. I hadn’t seen her since finishing the camerawork on her film Voices from
Inside, three years ago. Now, in our early meetings she teaches my body how to begin
communicating with its damaged parts again. She also helps me sharpen my perception about the
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oad ahead in the healing process, reminding me continually that I’m moving to a new place in
my life, not returning to where I came from, despite my determination to do so. Our exchange
grows more fascinating the more time we give each other. Karina invites me to join the Tai Chi
class she is teaching in Oakland twice a week. Though it’s almost impossible for me to keep up or
do the form properly, I feel it an honor to be included. I also know it may be the most beneficial
physical therapy I can find, since it’s about one’s inner state of mind relaying balance and
coordination to the body.
A whole new game: meeting the challenge of disability. Some tricky situations—like
moving through a crowded room without stumbling or needing to lean on a stranger’s shoulder
for support. Three falls in two days. I decide to use a cane Karina found for me. A beautifully
carved dragon of hardwood from Bali. It’s an announcement of my condition, a disarming
conversation piece and a friend of every child who sees it. Much as I miss my old physical
abilities I value the life of the mind and the spirit even more. There are moments when I must
remind myself of this.
S.F, March ‘98
I’ve begun to accept the fact that I’m crippled for life. There are no miracles when you
wipe out your nervous system. Some days I wonder how long I can fool myself that I still enjoy
living in this wrecked, aging, beat-up body. Every little thing is a challenge. It’s hard to walk,
hard to cook, hard to button my shirt or unzip my fly, impossible to sleep through the night. Hard
to just sit and read since I have spasms in my legs when I sit too long. Unrelenting discomfort in
all four limbs twenty-four hours a day. Learning how to ignore it all and feed my spirit is the
best trick I’ve learned.
Even so, I admit that there are times when I feel life itself such a charade there’s really
not much worth doing. I marvel at the intricate engineering of a spider web outside my window,
look out over the back stoops, watch the thoughts flicker through my daydreams, listen to Hamza
el Din play the oud, and let it all be.
Eel River, April ‘98
Rowing with my brother Tony to his remote cabin on the Eel River. We raft eight miles
down the river, swollen by spring rains. I row part of the way with great pleasure. I’m elated
about a call yesterday. A producer wants me to do a shoot in Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. I
carefully explain my condition to him. He wants to hire me anyway. It seems my former ability
and reputation for good results in difficult conditions are outweighing anything I say about being
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disabled. When we pull in to climb up to Tony’s cabin I get a strong reminder of my condition.
It’s such a steep climb that Tony has tied a rope between trees to act as a banister. I’m unable to
pull myself up this steep part, even with the rope. Just too weak. Tony hoists me on his back with
my arms around his neck like a child and carries me up to the cabin.
Soaking in the clarity of this wild and beautiful place I think seriously about whether I’m
ready for the potentially grueling job I’ve accepted. What if I must walk forty miles to get out of
Afghanistan? They want me to shoot both 16mm film and mini digital video. Can I load the Éclair
magazines with my disabled fingers? Just barely, but maybe not in 110 degree weather with high
humidity in India. I consider Karina’s reaction when I told her that I was going to Asia for a
month of shooting. She sees far more clearly than I how disabled I am, and how deluded I am
about returning to my former life and work. After thinking about it all weekend and returning to
San Francisco I call the production company in L.A. and say I can’t do the job. I give them Andy
Black’s number with a strong recommendation and they hire him. It’s the first time I’ve ever said
no to this kind of project. Or to a $15,000 dollar fee.
S.F. May ‘98
Another challenge. A woman producing a spot for MTV’s ‘Rock the Vote’ series calls to
ask me to shoot 16mm coverage of a protest. A group of students are boycotting their high school
and surrounding an Oakland police station. Once again I explain that I can no longer do what I
once did. The woman begs me to send my reel anyway. She calls me again in a few days and says
she wants me to be one of her three cameramen even if she has to carry me between setups. It’s
hard to turn down that kind of flattery and enthusiasm, so I say yes.
The production assigns me a camera assistant, but to make sure I have the help I need, I
hire Karina. She quickly and deftly learns how to load the camera magazines. After a day of
scouting with the producer I decide to have two cameras on the shoot since at one point I will
need to shift instantly from high speed to normal film as the students leave a BART station to hit
the street. No time to change magazines. Karina is invaluable at this point and throughout the
morning; she carries both cameras whenever we are moving and not shooting. The other
assistant carries the tripod and backup magazines. It is not an easy day, but I know I have done
some decent work. When I hear that the final product is only a 30 second spot I realize that we
put out an amazing amount of crazy effort for the eight or ten of those seconds that came from my
cameras.
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S.F. August ‘98
Karina helps me with several jobs in a row. Overnight and with one lesson I teach her
how to use a mixer, boom microphone, and a couple of radio mics to record sound on an all day
shoot documenting a celebration by members of the Sikh community. She does it perfectly. She is
my camera assistant on several shoots that would have been impossible for me if she had not
been carrying the camera and tripod so I can hobble at a reasonable pace to the place we are
setting up. She recognizes how important it is to help me gain perspective about my recovery and
reaffirm myself by finding a transition into a new way of working. She also hires me to shoot on
several of her projects. She has become my favorite colleague and my best friend.
S.F. November ‘98
A call from Eric Orr’s assistant at his L.A. studio with the shocking news that he died
early that morning of a heart attack. She has been unable to reach Eric’s wife Peggy to tell her of
his death because Peggy is on the road from their home in Marin to put their son Johnny on a
plane from Oakland to LAX. Johnny and Eric were planning to go racing the next day. Could I
drive over to the Oakland airport and advise Peggy of Eric’s death? I said I would and
scrambled to get there in time to greet Peggy and Johnny as they approach the check-in counter
at the Oakland airport. Their delighted surprise at seeing me turns to stricken pain when I tell
them Eric died a few hours ago.
S.F. June ‘99
I just had a surreal evening of media ghosts haunting me everywhere I turned. Starting
with an article by Isabel Hilton in The New Yorker called ‘The Disappearing Government’ about
recent events in Peru. It’s an intriguing account of the Fujimori reign with a lot of detail on the
early years. A flood of memories about being there with Jamie and Elizabeth in the spring of ’92.
Hilton describes going to meet with Peruvian scholar, writer and political consultant Hernan de
Soto at his place in Lima which was later bombed. We were there exactly 48 hours before it was
bombed, which gave us a distinct chill when we heard about it the following day.
I turn on the TV to see what’s cooking and there is a clip from the Maysles brothers’ film
about the Altamont concert, Gimme Shelter. A wide shot from the stage down into the audience
may include me and Scott shooting the Stones from a few feet in front of the stage. I flip channels
and stumble on a Japanese yakuzi shoot-em-up as a woman assassin is taking aim at a man going
into a temple in downtown Tokyo. The same temple where I shot some B roll material for the
NewsHour when we stayed in a hotel nearby. I flip to another channel and there is a doc about a
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lack Vietnam veteran named Clarence with a piece of footage from the VVA founding
convention at the Roosevelt hotel in DC in ‘84. I was there that whole week shooting John
Giannini’s ill-fated effort to make a doc about the war and the VVA. A strange way to feel
connected to the culture: turning on the TV and finding memory droppings of your career on
every channel you turn to. Who knows what accounts for such uncanny synchronicity. I suspect it
could only happen once, which is just as well, since it was such a strong, bittersweet hit of
nostalgia for my once active life.
S.F. December ‘99
Some despair about living in this wrecked body. My ability to sense the mind/body
interaction slowly increases as I hear echoes of Karina’s multilayered teaching and use the tools
provided by T’ai Chi and Chi Gung in my daily practice. These give me a clearer and more
accurate perspective about how disabled I am. The only solution is to keep learning new tricks
about slowing down and re-training what’s left of my physical self. I take heart in the fact that my
mind is no more disabled than it ever was.
This morning I lay on my mat doing stretches. I flexed my fingers and tried to direct my
understanding of their stiffness a notch deeper, into the realm of self-healing magic. I realize how
thoroughly I’ve been trying to ignore the gravity of my situation these last two years as the only
way to live with it. Now I’m pretty certain that the blown out nervous system is not going to
suddenly wake up and restore me to my former agility. So if I focus my attention properly, there’s
the challenge of going deeper in my recovery and even the possibility of going further. A subtle
but significant shift of attitude is required and I think I’m ready to attempt it. Slowly. Step by step.
S. F. October ‘01
Karina went east to visit some friends. Two days after she flew home from Boston’s Logan
airport the first World Trade Center building was destroyed by a plane flying out of Logan. Had
to notice the connections. President Bush declares war on Osama bin Laden. The same logic as
deciding to deal with an infestation of termites by vowing to kill the queen. Has he really lost
sight of the fact that making him a martyr only increases his power? Perhaps it’s his need for a
new war and Bin Laden’s the perfect new enemy. It seems clear that they are unwitting allies. So,
the great experiment with democracy is over and the barbarians are at the gates. And the
barbarians among us are already in power. The Dark Ages laced with high technology and
evangelical fundamentalism have begun. Was the Intelligent Designer more like an indifferent
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Lord of the Manor or a chicken farmer than he was like his alleged son Christ? If he had
intentions other than propagation and survival of the fittest would the world be in such a mess?
All the voices in government and the media are either saying we must hit the Taliban soon
and hard. Or they’re saying what won’t work. I hear nothing about a constructive diplomatic
policy that could work. Or a few quiet moves inside Afghanistan by our Special Forces. I
fantasize that rather than spending billions on bullets and bombs we could bomb Afghanistan and
the rest of the Muslim world with $20 bills. Literally or figuratively rain money directly on the
people, bypassing the governments, with the message that this is a gift from the Great Satan. The
cost of this, per body, would be far less than going to war, and maybe more effective.
Oddly enough, the air force has begun to load C-117’s with food packs and to drop them
on Afghanistan from 25,000 feet as a gift from the people of America. The cardboard containers
are supposed to disintegrate on the way down to free the food packs so they can flutter down but
some of them fail to open, which means that 200 pound cardboard bombs are falling on buildings
and people. The other serious problem is that the Afghans haven’t yet developed a taste for
peanut butter.
Alameda March ‘02
Someone recommends me to the people who are starting an unusual school in Alameda. I
check it out and realize it’s a possibility. All in one building, no hard travel and, most important,
I can ask Karina to shoot it with me. She’ll be burdened with all the lifting and running and the
challenge of doing most of the handheld camera work I used to love and was known for. Because
her T’ai Chi skills give her the ability to move with great fluidity she’s a natural at handheld
shooting.
The school was started by students who are sick of regular high school and are members
of a youth empowerment program called HOME. They’ve been doing real things—like building
the largest public skateboard park in California, running a youth employment agency,
establishing and working in a child care center. For a place to start the school they successfully
petitioned the Alameda City Council and got a building on the former Naval Air Station.
The events of 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan
hang over the first semester like a winter storm. To get
closer we teach a documentary course and shoot
interviews with both students and teachers. Soon we are
part of everyday life at the school. One day a pupil refuses
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to join the community circle until she is lovingly coaxed back by her fellow students. Another day
a senior won’t participate in a self-rating exercise, and her rebellion results in a re-affirmation of
student rights. On ‘parents’ night’ mothers and fathers are asked to write letters to their kids
expressing their deepest feelings. The following day the students read the letters and share them
with each other, crying with surprise at their parents’ love. At the school’s childcare center,
‘Home Sweet Home’, the ability of teenage boys to relate with creativity and tenderness to young
children is a revelation. These events are highlights in the film’s surprisingly dramatic arc.
Our approach is to maintain the lowest possible profile and to avoid distracting the
students. We’re there two or three times each week of the first semester and for major events after
that. A large documentary crew would be inappropriate for the extended shooting schedule, so
it’s just the two of us, each doing our own sound recording with radio and shotgun microphones
to eliminate invasive boom mics looming over the subjects. The students did some hamming and
mugging in the early days, but soon learn to trust and ignore the cameras. We shoot through the
school year on a slender budget and finish the final edit to title it We Are Here Together and
enter it in the Mill Valley Film Festival. It’s shown four times, with gratifying responses.
S.F. October ‘03
I didn’t get word that Maria Serrano was in Santa Cruz, speaking after a showing of
Maria’s Story. Sad to miss seeing her. I heard she’s her usual vital self and has recently moved
to San Salvador to study and earn a teaching certificate. I often wonder how it is now in those
lovely mountain hamlets of Chalatenango and if they’ve had a chance to recover from the war.
Have the gardens and orchards been replanted? Or did all the young campesinos migrate to San
Salvador to finds work in low-paying sweat shops? I hope to go back and see for myself.
S.F. January ‘03
A chilling call from Jaime’s wife, Jerri Lynn Cohen. She just heard from the U.S. Embassy
in Israel that Jaime died when the van he was in was struck by a speeding driver and rolled over
on the way to the Tel Aviv airport. Doing the work he loved—recording sound with cameraman
Michael Anderson on a film project to promote peace in Israel. Michael struggles to survive after
an operation.
A rich skein of memories about 25 years of travel and work with Jaime. All those hotel
rooms we shared. All those miles. All those new places and great faces. Back in the 80’s there
was Elko, the Carranza Plain, the Sea Ranch, Barcelona, Paris and Amsterdam. Spools and
sprockets. Nagra and Eclair. Then the pace quickened as it became more electronic. All those
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dusky rooms where Jaime quickly occupied every flat surface with our gear, leaving me just
enough space to make us cowboy-Turkish coffee every morning.
He covered a great distance and a lot of territory in his creative life: from musician and
composer and sound recordist for film and video he moved on to become an accomplished editor,
cameraman and film producer/director. There were times when he had all these balls in the air at
once. Hundreds of us gather for a memorial at the Cowell Theater. We’ll miss him.
El Cerrito
At the start of the second war in Iraq America seemed more xenophobic and
conformist than any time since the 50’s. New York Times correspondent Chris Hedges
was boo-ed and heckled as he delivered a commencement address thoughtfully critical of
the war at Rockfort College in Illinois: a stunning example of how mindless and
sycophantic the herd has become. Or still is. The Bush administration’s efforts to
orchestrate, amplify and capitalize on fear probably bring those latent elements of
conformity back into stronger play.
Everything about this country that made me eager to leave when I was nineteen is
still here. Even in educated and sophisticated circles since 9/11 there seems to be a secret
layer of xenophobia that forbids any deep critical analysis of American culture beyond
scathing clichés about MacDonald’s or Walmart. The myth of ‘America the Good’ and
her noble mission of bringing freedom and democracy to the heathens must be honored
no matter what horrors of foreign policy it masks. In 2003 few seem to realize that
America’s current pre-emptive foreign policy is nothing new. As a nation we began
taking what we wanted and justifying it as a defense of our national interest when we
grabbed a third of Mexico in 1846. The habit continued in Hawaii, the Philippines, Puerto
Rico, Nicaragua, and Haiti. Then there was Vietnam. Now there is the occupation of Iraq.
than ever:
Kipling’s bitter couplet after the death of his son during WWI seems more relevant
If any question why we died
Tell them because our fathers lied
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It's easy to blame a pervasive feeling of despair on being surrounded by bad news and
the evidence of human failure. While school kids with guns are killing each other to get
attention, the war in Iraq grinds on without any sign of resolution. It’s a more obscene
and wasteful travesty than even we who opposed it could have guessed, with chilling
echoes of the intelligence manipulation before the Bay of Pigs and the imperial hubris of
Vietnam. Falluja, having been subdued and destroyed, is offered millions for rebuilding,
while millions go hungry in this country. Then there’s Abu Ghraib and the amazing lack
of response to what was happening there. Afghanistan is parceled out to the warlords
once again and growing more opium than ever. Russia under Putin is crumbling back
towards totalitarian chaos. The frenzy of materialism in this country makes life here an
increasingly bizarre charade, directed by men who operate like a cabal of gangsters and
blithely ignore the melting polar icecap. Unless this country’s moral compass swings
toward a humanistic approach, allowing it to govern for all its citizens and the future of
the natural world, it seems the planet will drift ever closer to a grim fate with the Gulf
Stream weakening and bringing more hurricanes to the Caribbean and floods to Europe,
while the thawing Siberian taiga adds methane to an ever warming atmosphere.
I feel an increasing distaste for the frenzied style contest going on everywhere I turn;
a weariness with world affairs as I flip through the Times, skimming ever more rapidly,
with a sense of deja vue and disenchantment. The paper’s veiled jingoism during the run-
up to war confirmed that it’s no longer a reliable source of information for what’s really
happening. For an overview, I rely on the New York Review and Harpers. I keep
noticing that at the Times they don’t bother to proof read as seriously as they used to.
Some of the documentary films broadcast on PBS show the same tendency: sloppy
camerawork, careless editing and little or no direction. Another indication that quantity
and speed are winning out over quality and craft. I don't feel smug or superior about this,
though I wish I could. What I feel is an underscoring of my sense of loss in an
increasingly alien and ugly world. I remind myself that it’s all a joke and that I have the
best bad luck of anyone I know and that all these matters are inherent and inevitable
elements of the human condition, which must simply be accepted before one can connect
with the dance of life. Just a delicious challenge at a feast of obstacles.
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Are these dismal times with W in power really any worse than the 50’s with
McCarran and McCarthy or the Vietnam War with LBJ and then Nixon? Well, yes, I
think they’re harder to live with because the stakes are higher and the compounded
despair is greater. Nothing about the country has really shifted. The ignorance of the
electorate is just as great and most of the major options for change have been defeated.
The impulses from the country’s heart and soul that created and supported the New Deal
have been warped and overcome by the clever machinations of the New Right. So,
having influenced and exploited every part of the world for sixty years, America is left
with no more frontiers, nothing to say and nowhere to go. Like some overweight drunken
bully, and drunk on its own power, like every bloated empire, its leadership seems too
arrogant to remember history. Is it possible that we might sober up and make the choice
of stepping into a new role based on humanistic and progressive values? Renounce our
faith in policies dominated by militarism and greed to start over and build a truly
egalitarian and democratic country? Maybe powered by the sun, wind and tides? I’m not
holding my breath. Perhaps as it all gets even worse there will be a surge of power from
the people and America’s best side will re-assert itself. I’m hoping Obama can represent
that potential. The massive effort to defeat him has only begun and seems to thrive on the
repetition of outrageous lies. It’s said that a third of the public still believes he’s a
Muslim. It shouldn’t matter if he were. Is that simply a more palatable excuse than
admitting they won’t vote for a Black American? Do we deserve more corporate control?
A war hero trying to be a maverick? A woman poised, without blinking and with frequent
winks, to be our first fascist dictator? Or are we actually indifferent to all this and simply
a culture obsessed with erectile dysfunction?
A welcome relief arrives with two batches of Betacam video footage I shot for
other people years ago; one about a trip on the Alaska ferry system with Vaudevillians of
the ‘New Old Time Chautauqua’ and the other about street musicians in San Francisco.
The people I shot these films for never finished editing and both projects were generously
given to me as raw material to work with however I chose. Learning to use ‘Final Cut Pro’
made this easier. Much better than editing straight video and having to start over to make
each major change. On-line editing is like going back to editing film, but without all those
spools of cored work-print to wrestle with and splice. I finished those two projects and
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made copies available to anyone who wanted them. Mostly Chautauqua members from the
tour in ’92; they had given up on ever seeing a film and were surprised and happy to be
offered DVD copies of it now.
Making the film about what happened during the ‘dirty war’ in Argentina has
been a long, strange progression. First, despite having broken my neck and back, I
worked with Susana Blaustein to get it shot; Andy Black doing the camerawork. After
Susana dropped out, I edited a fund-raising short with Jaime Kibben that showed here
and there but produced very little money. Years of letting the project sit and
occasionally working on it without funding. Since I try to avoid regretting my loses I
was determined not to create another one by giving up on a film shot at such a pivotal
moment in my life. I just kept coming back to it. Even though there was no money or
headline timeliness. But there was always my messianic commitment to finish it so
people in the Southern Cone could see and hear the information and try to keep the
monster of impunity from being unleashed again.
Last year, I still had an edit which I knew was too long, so I pulled it down to a
35-minute version and put subtitles on it. I showed it to a few people. The reactions were
positive and several friends urged me to finish the film properly. Karina had such
perceptive, specific suggestions about the drawings and the music that I asked her to be
my co-director. She agreed to join me. Karina is one of the most creative women in my
life; she’s helped make a better film than I dreamed of twelve years ago and even helped
me raise some money to do it. I’m glad to have another chance to work with her.
El Cerrito May 2009
Fine tuning the edit and the subtitles with Aleixo Goncalves, our assistant editor
from Chile. He’s much better on Final Cut than I am and has been a big help correcting
my translating mistakes and doing the photo-shop work on the drawings. Every few
hours I go to the kitchen and make him a cup of the black tea he likes. Karina is working
here with us most of the time, though today she’s recording music for the soundtrack
while Aleixo and I work on the subtitles. She brings her alert intelligence to brighten our
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work zone; always shows up wearing something interesting, usually in vibrant colors.
She and I sit behind Aleixo at a table in my editing room choosing the drawings we want
to include. It’s a great version of that collaborative partnership I’ve always looked for. I
think she’s the beautiful, challenging, unavailable mate I’ve been searching for all my
life. We’ve found our balance as collaborative friends and there’s no longer any libido
tension between us. I’ve learned how to yield to her good ideas and stay out of the way.
She returns the favor.
After we talked to several local composers about scoring the film we decided none
of them were right and Karina assembled a group of musicians to look at the film then
create and record music for it. After doing that she worked in a studio with BZ Lewis to
position and mix the music. Karina was a concert cellist in her teens and has incredible
knowledge and taste about music for film. I trust her completely. Last week she coached
and rehearsed me on delivering the narration I wrote. It’s over the new opening we
made from a collage of the drawings.
It feels right to close the circle and finish this film, launched on that fateful day in
‘97 when I crashed my bike in Golden Gate Park. Latin American affairs have been such
a part of my life since the motorcycle trip to Argentina with Naren Bali fifty years ago.
All these inter-locked elements that reflect my life haunt me like lost friends. On a deep
level, I’m satisfied about not abandoning what may turn out to be my last film. The other
unfinished projects waiting in my editing room don’t seem that important though lying
in the bath last night I thought about making a short on the magical village of Tedib in
Dagestan. Even without seeing the footage since ’96 I was editing every vivid moment:
from the man’s praying lips in the cave-spring to the women coming off the mountain
with bundles of hay on their backs.
I just e-mailed Naren to thank him for the footage he sent. Naren’s wife
Margarita is a filmmaker, and at my request she and Naren covered the 33rd
anniversary of the coup this spring in Buenos Aires, shooting footage for us to weave
into the credit sequence. It includes a couple of our subjects who were marching that
day. Good luck and synchronicity; proof also that friendships like mine with Naren can
last a lifetime. In the film Naren represents an important point of view; that of the
apolitical member of society who tried to ignore what was happening during the
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dictatorship. In his short sequence he speaks eloquently of the sadness he feels about
this.
Karina and I are committed to the film, encouraged by its relevance: this seems a
fortuitous moment to offer a study of oppression, slaughter, disappearance and torture
to a world troubled by revelations about what the U.S. has been doing over the past
eight years and wondering whether this country will proceed to live under the rule of
law or be governed by the laws of fear. Clearly the struggle is not over. Now that it
seems to be drifting into a strange gridlock which could end in some form of neo-fascism
we should feel blessed to have lived in a semi-functional democracy. If we’re lucky, it
will just be more plutocracy sustained by militarism and rampant consumption. Feeling
grim about it all.
El Cerrito January 2010
We premiere Awakening From Sorrow at the Mill Valley Film Festival. The two
showings are well attended and we do the Q&A sessions standing up on stage together. I
respond to a question about the timing by saying that although this film was shot in ’97,
the dark side of the human condition is not governed by the calendar or by the map of
the world; the horrors of Argentina’s ‘Dirty War’ can happen any time and anyplace;
they’re happening today in Iraq and Afghanistan. Karina and I trade off our answers
smoothly without interrupting each other or competing. She compares the activism of
the Hijos to the mood in Germany while she was growing up in the seventies when she
and her peers questioned their elders about the leftover Nazism they saw.
Fortunately there are no stupid questions, which keeps us on meaningful issues.
At a third showing a week later for a group called the ‘Taskforce on the Americas’ we
have time to answer more questions than at the festival and even sell the dozen dvds I
brought. Bean Finneran, Steven Olsson and Gloria Jackson are all there and it’s
heartwarming that they made the effort. A few weeks later, a showing at La Pena
Cultural Center in Berkeley offers me the opportunity to invite artist Claudia Bernardi
from Buenos Aires to join us on stage so she can answer in more detail a question about
the end of amnesty for leaders of the coup in Argentina. Claudia invited me to show my
rough cut of the film to her class at the California College of the Arts in Oakland last
year and prompted me to finish the film. There was an encouraging response and great
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questions from her students. Asking her to join us on stage seemed appropriate and gave
me a chance to thank her publicly. Now that we’ve attended it’s first four showings I feel
the film is successfully launched as it moves on to several more festivals.
El Cerrito
Along the journey to this page I found that my journals are more than the skeleton
of this book. They are the body of the book, a gift from my former life and the early
ambition that kept me writing. Digging through them and laying them out in sequence
has been like making a documentary film with archival material. It’s a documentary book
and a closer look at myself than I’ve ever taken, with no need to run or hide from the
reflection in the strange, time-warped mirror I’ve created. It can make me laugh and
might even make me cry.
All my kids—Tanya, Michelle, Geoffrey, Hennessey and Savannah—are living in
the Bay Area and we get together when we want, though not often since they all have
busy lives. I don’t chase them. Fourteen years after leaving her, no longer able to support
her, I formalized my separation from Sharon with a divorce. She practices acupuncture
and teaches at the American College of Traditional Chinese Medicine. When I called
Verona Fonte to ask for a couple of rolls of the Dagestan video footage that I shot for her
in ‘96, she apologized about having ended our collaboration so harshly and gave me all
thirty-five rolls. A welcome but long delayed gesture. So now I have the frames I wanted
of the women bringing down hay from the mountain.
I gave the loft I had been renting since ‘68 to Savannah and moved to this small
house across the San Francisco Bay in El Cerrito. There are often deer peering in at me
from the back yard and a steady procession of neighborhood cats patrolling the brick
terrace. I no longer have to struggle with parking or walking through the bodies of the
homeless sleeping on the sidewalks of my old territory. I’m entertained by spider webs,
spiraling butterflies and hummingbirds. The other day I watched fog course through the
bay headed to the Carquinez Straits. Just north of the Golden Gate it cascaded over the
headland ridges with the rippling frenzy of a torrent in spring.
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I woke this morning enmeshed in a dream that I was making a film about some
Irish fishermen who were doing more than simply fishing. Blue skies, waves and emerald
coastlines. In the galley of their trawler, a stunning beauty was chanting a poem as she
prepared some porridge. She inserted a line admitting they were all rebels, looking over
at me with a mischievous smile, fully aware that I was filming her. I knew it was a great
moment in a stunning shot. I felt sudden lucid joy about being in touch with real energy
both in the dream world and the filmmaking effort. That woke me enough to lie there
reveling in the power of both. And trying to retrieve the beauty’s line of poetry.
That dream was a reminder that I’m not ready for an easy chair, pipe and slippers
yet and probably never will be. The most important change is my willingness to embrace
stillness, accept my condition, and trade the rewards of a quiet contemplative life for the
excitement and adventure I once knew. Time to read, listen to music, talk to friends, work
on films or this book. I want to empty my mind and cleanse my spirit of the ego and pride
that still cling to me. I hope to see myself floating free in a space that is empty of
everything except creative activity and love and unchained by that; receptive to every
nuance and unfettered by style; stable in mood and unthreatened by shifts in the psychic
weather; alert to the cosmic forces and my own total insignificance; at peace with those
around me and comfortable with my self. A hillbilly Buddhist on a hilltop, looking back,
and struck by how fortunate he’s been. The struggle since my crash has changed and
seasoned me and left me happier, emotionally stronger and ever more certain that the
love exchanged with members of my tribe is life’s greatest reward.
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Acknowledgment
I’m grateful to editor Lana Griffin for her perceptive questions and suggestions as
we re-structured this manuscript. Heartfelt thanks to all the producers and directors I
worked with over the years. They hired me, trusted me to document their subjects, and
gave me many of the experiences this book describes. I’m grateful for the commitment
they made to their projects and to me. Clips from their films and mine can be seen on
my web site, http://www.johnknoop.com.
Photo credits
Cover: Elizabeth Farnsworth; page 4 & 7: Fred Knoop; page 10: Fred Knoop, Annette
Wurlitzer; page 15: Fred Knoop; page 19 & 20: Janet Stites; page 22: Fred Knoop; page
30: Naren Bali; page 38: Naren Bali; page 51: John Knoop; page 58: Fred Knoop; page
60: Fred Knoop, Joe Munroe; page 62: Fred Knoop; page 64: Judith Knoop; page 66:
Robert Pepin; page 72: John Knoop; page 74: John Knoop; page 79: Fred Knoop; page
86: John Knoop; page 93 & 94:Tom Dewitt; page 97: Freude Bartlett; page 98: John
Knoop; page 101: Joe Munroe; page 102: Roberta Neiman; page 103: Jane Levy; page
105: John Knoop; page 105: Tanya Knoop; page 110: John Knoop; page 112: Joe
Munroe; page 113: Ron Cooper; page 118, 119, 120 & 121: John Knoop; page 124: John
Knoop, Jane Levy; page 129: Kim Salyer; page 131 & 132: John Knoop; page 136:
Anthony Knoop; page 138 & 145: John Knoop; page 150, 151, 154, 157, 158, 160: John
Knoop; page 163: Tanya Knoop; page 164: Michelle Knoop; page 166, 167: John Knoop;
page 171: Christopher McLeod; page 173: Jaime Kibben; page 176, 177, 178: John
Knoop; page 181: Hansel Mieth; page 187, 188: John Knoop; page 192: Jaime Kibben;
page 199, 201: John Knoop; page 206: Elizabeth Farnsworth; page 211: John Knoop;
page 213: Jaime Kibben; page 217, 222: John Knoop; page 237, 238: Christopher
McLeod; page 243, 244, 245, 249: John Knoop; page 253, 254: Tanya Knoop; page 257:
Bill Singman; page 258, 260, 262, 264: Andrew Black; page 266, 268: John Knoop;
page 273: Karina Epperlein.
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