Sig Davidson Film explores Roanoke Jewish Experience

Photo by Rebecca Barnett, accompanied "Film Explores the Jewish Experience in Roanoke," Jeff Sturgeon, The Roanoke Times, January 13, 2014.  A cross-fade in the documentary "Sig Davidson: Reflections on Jewish Roanoke" shows on the screen at Mill Mountain Theater's Waldron Stage in Roanoke Sunday afternoon.  Below is the article.


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Jews populated Roanoke from its earliest days, were responsible for many downtown retail businesses and founded some of the city’s oldest houses of worship, according to an elder in Roanoke’s Jewish community.

Sig Davidson gives color to the story of Jewish Roanoke in a personal narrative that was captured on film and turned into a documentary. The film is now out.

About 100 people gathered Sunday at Mill Mountain Theatre’s Waldron Stage for the film’s first local screening, after which Davidson, 91, spoke for several minutes. The film was produced by Amy Morris, a former news director at WDBJ and now assistant news director at a television station in Philadelphia. The film was co-produced by Debbie Kaplan of Roanoke and assisted by a host of other individuals and businesses.

Davidson’s decade-by-decade account, told to the camera from an armchair at home in the Brandon Oaks retirement community, is one man’s intimate story of a community’s birth and evolution. In the film, he sketches the arrival of the earliest Jews in Roanoke, who came for the most part from Germany though the Baltimore port of entry. There were 18 Jewish families in Roanoke in 1899, he said.

He charts the opening of Temple Emanuel in 1899 and Beth Israel Synagogue in about 1902. The two Jewish houses of worship are still in existence with 160 and 140 members today, respectively.

He touches on anti-Semitism that banned Jews from public pools and the Jewish response — to create a club for Jewish families with swimming, volleyball and fields near what is now Green Hill Park.

He says 101 Jewish men served in World War II.

He describes the Roanoke Jewish community’s tradition of raising and distributing money for the welfare of Jews here and beyond and for the benefit of the Roanoke community generally, furnishing support for mental health assistance, higher education, literacy and Big Brothers Big Sisters.

He details some of the community’s rich business history. While Roanoke had railroading before the turn of the last century, another hearty business sector early on was retail — numerous merchants of clothing, shoes and dry goods downtown were Jewish. For his part, Davidson went to college, fought in World War II and then took the reins of the family business, the men’s clothing retailer Davidsons, until he retired in 1985. Davidsons is nearly 104 years old.

“We’ve come a long way. We’ve still got a long way to go,” he said near the closing moments of the short film, titled “Sig Davidson: Reflections on Jewish Roanoke.”

After the viewing, Davidson took a chair before the audience and spoke some more. Though they banded together to cope with discrimination early on, Roanoke’s Jewish congregations, a Conservative Jewish congregation at Beth Israel Synagogue, and a Reform Jewish congregation at Temple Emanuel, have experienced some separation and rifts.

Davidson told the mostly Jewish audience present for the film that he’d like to see the two congregations socialize and work together more, “being part of one community, not two houses of worship.”

The audience clapped.

Davidson’s own Jewish background is diverse in that he had a Conservative Jewish father and a Reform Jewish mother. He said that for most of his life, he belonged to both congregations, though today he worships mostly at Temple Emanuel. It’s a legacy that accounts for the some of his stature as a man to whom Roanoke Jews have looked for leadership, vision and identity over the years.

“It’s a remarkable family and a remarkable man,” said Roanoke physician Donald Stefl at the event.

Robert Klein, a regional representative of the Jewish Federations of North America, said in honoring Davidson with a gift Sunday: “He’s living history.”

Rabbi Fabian Werbin, who heads Beth Israel Synagogue, acknowledged Davidson’s wish for more closeness between Jewish congregations. “We are in the process of trying to see if we can build bridges,” Werbin said.

Joe Gallo, president of the board of trustees at Temple Emanuel, said it’s hard for the two congregations to connect spiritually owing to their different views on the faith. Similarly, social events with food can be a challenge because some Roanoke Jews eat kosher and some don’t. That said, a small group is making efforts to “rebuild trust,” Gallo said.

Copies of the documentary, which includes numerous photos of the region, are available at Beth Israel and Temple Emanuel.

Photo by Rebecca Barnett.  L to R  Sherry Davidson (son Steve's wife), Sig and Janice Dinkins Davidson (Larry's wife), with Larry in foreground out of focus.  Barnett's photo below catches Sig talking to the audience after the film.

PBS: Can you say "unlevel playing field?"

Photo of a mountaintop removal site by Daniel Shea of Chicago, who is now working on a series of photographs of coal plants, entitled Plume. (I'll be writing about his print sale to fund that project in my next post.)


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In reading Alessandra Stanley's July 12 column, "Mr. Secretary, This Is Your Life (in Plenty of Detail) I thought of the PBS handling of the film Coal Country v.s. that of the tribute to George Schultz. At the time that PBS pulled the plug on airing Coal Country, citing its Sierra Club funding, I wondered whether Board member Sharon Rockefeller (wife of the big coal lovin' WV Senator) had played any role.

I had seen the film at its West Virginia premiere and found it to be pretty even-handed, using a much more sympathetic representative of the coal industry than, say, Black Diamonds. This is not to criticize Catherine Pancake or her film. I am just saying that Coal Country, by Mari-Lynn Evans and Phylis Geller, looked to me to be ready for prime-time PBS, more akin to Ken Burns, than say its more controversial programming, such as POV.

Funding for the George Shultz tribute

Now, according to Stanley, PBS is airing a three-hour George Shultz tribute, whose sponsors include

Mr. Shultz’s Nixon-era colleague, Peter G. Peterson, who is married to Joan Ganz Cooney, the founder of Children’s Television Workshop. The Stephen Bechtel Fund gave money, so did Charles Schwab, founder of the Charles Schwab Corporation, where Mr. Shultz also served as a board member. So did many prominent foundations and individuals, including Senator Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat from California.

But John Wilson, the chief programming executive told Stanley that money had nothing to do with airing the program.

We evaluate programs on their merits ...PBS has a vivid track record of covering this administration’s key players. It goes without saying this is not our first look at the Reagan White House and not the last.

I guess just not so vivid a track record of covering mountaintop removal.

The directors of Coal Country react

The filmmakers of Coal Country have said,

It is important for us to state that THE APPALACHIANS airing on PBS (and one of their largest pledge films) was also funded in part by the Sierra Club. Now we learn that PBS has accepted a 3 hour film on George Shultz, funded in its entirety by his supporters.

PBS's decision regarding these two films surely appears to be a conflict of interest In looking at the site for Free to Choose Media, founded by Bob Chitester and producer of the Schultz film, it hardly seems to be involved in non-partisan projects.

Free to Choose Media: can anyone say "climate change denial?

Take a look, for instance, at what's next up for the company, What a Wonderful World. The site says it features

Johan Norberg, a noted Swedish Author and Scholar, will attack the pervasive and negative myths about Capitalism, Free Trade and Globalization with an insightful, engaging and often times humorous look at the world around us as it really is.

Then there's a finished project, Unstoppable Solar Cycles: The Real Story of Greenland, which

sets aside doomsday alarmism and political axe-grinding to look at the science behind the history of climate change on earth.

Supposedly, this is authoritative since

Dr. Willie Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and Dr. David Legates of the University of Delaware provide an easy-to-follow review of current climate science, which suggests that the sun's irregular patterns and other natural forces are the major sources of climate change.

Of course, climate skeptic Soon was Scientific Advisor to Greening Earth Society between Dec 1998 and September 2001 and had ties to the American Petroleum Institute, according to Sourcewatch. Legates, according to the same source is a frequent

contributor to publications released by the National Center for Policy Analysis, a conservative think-tank that strongly opposes climate change regulation.

PBS may have used Chitester before for a skewed series on economics

In 1980, at least according to his website, Chitester produced a series with Milton Friedman. (I can't find it on the PBS site, nor does IMDB list who aired it.)

Take a look at the PBS standards

Here are the network's standards on editorial integrity

PBS's reputation for quality reflects the public's trust in the editorial integrity of PBS content and the process by which it is produced and distributed. To maintain that trust, PBS and its member stations are responsible for shielding the creative and editorial processes from political pressure or improper influence from funders or other sources. PBS also must make every effort to ensure that the content it distributes satisfies those editorial standards designed to assure integrity.

Other journalists are weighing in--will PBS answer?

Greg Mitchell (email), formerly of Editor and Publisher, wrote this for his blog The Nation. But despite an action alert by Peter Hart at Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler (email, phone: 703- 739-5290) has yet to respond on his blog--the last entry was July 9. I hope that he'll write about PBS's decision-making regarding these two films, given his role in upholding the station's integrity.

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UPDATE (not part of my drafted op-ed):

In getting ready to write PBS, I also located some articles for further reading:

• Joe Strupp (email) weighs in at Media Matters

On July 14, I emailed Getler, copying the No New Coal Plants, Friends of Mountains, Appalachian Studies, Concerned Citizens of Giles County, Surry Justice and Mountain Justice Organizers lists, as well as the three writers above and Mari-lynn Evans:

Jul 14, 2010, 1:13 PM

Mr. Getler,

Consider the case of Coal Country v.s. the recent George Shultz tribute.

http://bethwellington.blogspot.com/2010/07/pbs-can-you-say-unequal-playing-field.html

I hope your station will revisit the original decision to not show Coal Country. By copy of this, I'm letting friends on several email lists know about this, thinking that they may find the topic of interest and want to contact you.

BTW, as you might know, Greg Mitchell also has a post w. more info on this:

http://www.thenation.com/blog/37323/pbs-offering-three-hour-valentine-george-shultz-rightwing-backing

As does Joe Strupp at Media Matters:

http://mediamatters.org/strupp/201007120040

And Peter Hart at FAIR

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=4114

On July 16, I copied just the three writers and Mari-Lyn, plus I wrote the NYT's author at the contact form at the paper.

Jul 16, 2010, 10:29 AM

BTW, I notice that you have a blog and the last entry was July 9. I hope that you'll write about your decision-making regarding these two films, given your role in upholding the station's integrity, especially in light of the standards on editorial integrity:

PBS's reputation for quality reflects the public's trust in the editorial integrity of PBS content and the process by which it is produced and distributed. To maintain that trust, PBS and its member stations are responsible for shielding the creative and editorial processes from political pressure or improper influence from funders or other sources. PBS also must make every effort to ensure that the content it distributes satisfies those editorial standards designed to assure integrity.

These standards are especially interesting, given that you gave the filmmaker an extra hour, according to the New York Times.

Also, you might be interested to know that this is a quite a topic of interest. My blog post has had more hits than anything in a long while.

The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus

I'm old enough to remember Christopher Plummer from 1965 in his turn as Captain Von Trapp in The Sound of Music. Over a half century later, I got to see him tonight as Dr. Parnassus in Terry Gilliam's 2009 fantasy,The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, in which he plays thousand year-old monk.

The devil, Mr. Nick (played by Tom Waits), you see, had come to the monastery where Parnassus believed he was keeping the world intact with his fellow monks by reading a story. Mr. Nick "proves" Parnassus wrong by stopping the monks' mouths; the world still continues. Parnassus counters that someone elsewhere has continued to tell the story, thus preserving the world. Mr. Nick wagers he can win more souls through desire than can Parnassus through stories and imagination. Parnassus wins and thus gains immortality, but his body continues to age and Mr. Nick offers him youth in order to win the heart of a woman he loves. In exchange, any child he fathers will become Mr. Nick's property when the child turned 16. At the age of 60, in a miracle reminiscent of Sarah's, the Mrs. gives birth to a daughter, Valentina(Lily Cole).

Parnassus has been reduced to performing a sort of medicine show from a decrepit wagon with Valentina and two other troupe members--barker/sleight of hand expert Anton (Andrew Garfield) and dwarf Percy (Verne Troyer)--outside the pubs of London. Mid-act, a drunkard barges onstage, crashes through the stage mirror without paying the price of admission and is thrown into a journey of the imagination that culminates in his being offered a choice between enlightenment and a pub. After he enters the pub, it explodes. Parnassus has lost another soul to Mr. Nick.

It is three days before Valentina's 16th birthday and Parnassus is depressed and drinking, having drawn the tarot card for the hanging man and is about to confess to Valentina when Mr. Nick (who, like a cat, seems to want to play with his prey) offers another wager: Parnassus can save his daughter by winning five souls before Mr. Nick can do so. On the troupe's way to the next venue, Anton spots a man dancing beneath the bridge. On closer inspection, it is a hanging man, (Heath Ledger playing Tony) whom he rescues with the help of Valentina.

Heath Ledger had previously worked with Gilliam in The Brothers Grimm. He asked to play Tony, according to Gilliam's On 12/18/2009 interview with CNN's Andrea Mineo:

he was in London working on the Joker, and at the same time he was working on a music video that he had written. They were designing animation and they needed a place to work, so I put him to work in my effects company. We had a space there and they were happily working. One day, I was showing my special effect boys and talking through the scenes, and Heath slips me this little note saying, "Can I play Tony?" And I said, "Are you serious?" He said, "Yes, I want to see this movie."

Almost anyone conversant with popular culture knows that Ledger didn't live to see the movie. He died in January 2008 of an accidental overdose of prescription medicines while on hiatus before the filming, started in London, resumed in Vancouver.

Gilliam, with a history of plagued productions, was ready to give up the project, according to David Morgan's story, "Resurrecting Heath Legder's Final Film," when his daughter Amy and cinematographer Nicola Pecorini persuaded him to finish. (See also, and an interview with Gilliam on the UK site, The Last Broadcast.)

Gilliam also talked to CNN's Mineo about Johnny Depp's role in rescuing the film:

So one of the people I called was Johnny Depp, because I introduced him to Heath and they had become very close. I was commiserating with Johnny and said, "I think the film's over. I'm going home." And he said "Whatever you decide to do, I'll be there." And that's a heartening statement. That is the beginning of the process of re-imagining the film. It was quite easy to rewrite it. All the premises were there. The ideas were all there. The first scene when Johnny goes through the mirror and his face changes.That establishes the principle very clearly and the rest fell well into place.

And since there were three trips behind the mirror (and perhaps because Depp was only available for a day or two, as he was filming Michael Mann's Pubic Enemies ) Jude Law and Colin Farrell play Tony, on trips two and three respectively. The rationale for the shapeshifting was elegantly accomplished by adding a scene where the initial drunk's face changes while he is within the imaginarium.

I'm amazed by Gilliam's imagination. The imaginarium is gorgeous: see the 12/18/09 photo essay "Designing the Imaginarium," from CBS News. And, despite the opinion of some other critics, I'd say the story is well told and compelling revisioning of Dr. Faustus.

Daniel Ellsberg: 40 years later

Poster for Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith's documentary The Most Dangerous Man in America, which had its first theatrical showing today.

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Daniel Ellsberg had been making copies nights since 10/1/1969---7,000 pages, a few at a time-- month after month, on a slow XEROX machine at a small advertising firm owned by a friend of a friend. A military analyst for the RAND Corporation, Ellberg had served as an advisor to Kissinger and Nixon. And as he told Amy Goodman today in an interview on Democracy Now, the facts pointed to

essentially an endless war in Vietnam, which is not exactly what Nixon had campaigned on. He had talked about getting out, and yet—he talked about getting out with honor, which really meant, to him, victory. And what he was hearing from the questions that I drafted for him, which were answered by the Joint Chiefs, was that the ability of a Vietnamese to operate without US air support indefinitely was never. That meant an indefinite US commitment to Vietnam. That’s not what the public was being told.

In 1971 fwhen Ellsberg leaked what came to be known as the Pentagon Papers to the NYT, he started a firestorm which would eventually lead Nixon to resign. He had decided

it’s my job to do something to get us out.

He had been inspired by Randy Keeler. He says Keeler

showed me that I could do something that I had never thought of, and that was risk my clearance, risk my career, risk my new relationship or my regained relationship with Patricia [now his wife], go to prison for the rest of my life—very heavy costs—with the possibility of informing the public in a way that would save hundreds of thousands of lives. And when I saw Randy, who was going to prison as a draft resister, rather than go to Canada, rather than to be a CO, I realized I could do what they did, and it put the question in my head: what can I do now that I’m willing to go to prison?

With the current escalation in Afghanistan, Ellsberg sees relevance today for what he did almost 40 years ago:

I look at this film, and I watch the bombs falling, and all I can see in my mind are the bombs, the same bombs, falling over Afghanistan, or Vietnamistan, and Iraq right now. And we’re really facing, at this moment, a crisis of decision that’s just like the one that’s in the film, which I failed at the time, where the President is doing something that I feel will be a disaster, and I kept my mouth shut about it, the change from 70,000 men in the spring of ’65 to an open-ended commitment, starting with another 50,000, which I knew was on the way to hundreds of thousands. ...

We need people to put out, to tell the truth, and to do it, not the way I did, not after the escalation, not after the bombs have fallen, but right now. Right now. And for the Congress to hold the hearings that will entertain those people.

This Week at the Lyric: Public Enemies

Went to the later show last night to see Marion Cotillard and Johnny Depp (plus a cast including Christian Bale, the chameleonesque Billy Crudup, Giovanni Ribisi and others) in Michael Mann's newest effort. Will me volunteering Monday.

Contra dance tonight features Tina Liza Jones.

More later, the library is closing. But, today, inspired by David Dodd, California librarian and Greatful Dead annotator extraorinaire:

"The book list was fun, then comes along the concert list.

OK, here are the rules. Test your memory and your love of live music by listing 50 artists or bands (or as many as you can remember) you've seen in concert. List the first 50 acts that come into your head. An act you saw at a festival and opening acts count, but only if you can't think of 50 other artists. Oh, and list the first concert you ever saw (you can remember that, can’t you)?"

Here's my list....

Bonnie Raitt at the 2004 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival--the most recent time I saw her



1. Earth Wind and Fire (first concert--you don't count glee club concerts nor musicals w. my parents, right?)
2. Iron Butterfly
3. Ike and Tina Turner
4. James Taylor
5. Alice Cooper
6. Grateful Dead
7. Taj Mahal
8. Willie Nelson
9. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
10. Joan Baez
11. The Neville Brothers
12. Bob Dylan
13. John Prine
14. John Hartford
15. Tim O'Brien
16. Molly O'Brien
17. David Massengill
18. John McCutcheon
19. Bela Fleck & the Flecktones
18. Alice Gerrard
19. Guy Clark
20. Etta James
21. Loudon Wainwright III
22. Peggy Seeger
23. Mike Seeger
24.Charlie Byrd
25. Holly Near
26. Arlo Guthrie
27. Peter Rowan
28. Pete Seeger
29. Odetta
30. Trapezoid
31. Freyda and the Acoustic AttaTudes
32. Boyd Tinsley (w. Rita Dove)
33. Bonnie Raitt
34. Bruce Hornsby
35. Tracy Chapman
36. Lyle Lovett
37. Indigo Girls
38. Laura Light and the Avant Gardeners
39. David Grisman
40. Nancy Griffith
41. Fred Eaglesmith
42. Doc Watson
43. Ralph Stanley
44. Here's to the Long Haul
45. Norman Blake
46. Steve Earle
47. Judy Collins
48. No Strings Attached
49. Tony Rice
50. Gillian Welch

and many more

Laila El-Haddad's insider take on Gaza

Photo of Laila El-Haddad from her blog, Raising Yousuf and Noor.

Today, as you consider the doings in Gaza, you might want to read read Gaza emigre Laila El-Haddad's "Still as death, dark is life." This poignant piece is from a longer version at The Guardian's Comment is Free (a 2008 Weblog awards finalists as announced yesterday):

My mother was in the Red Crescent Society clinic near the universities, where she works part-time as a pediatrician. Behind the clinic was one of the police centres that were levelled. She said she broke down at first, the sheer proximity of the attacks having shaken her from the inside out. After she got a hold of herself, they took to treating injured victims of the attack, before transferring them to Shifa hospital.

Now, three days later, they are trapped in their own home....

My mother comes to the phone. "Hello, hello dear," she mutters, her voice trembling. "I had to go to the bathroom. But I'm afraid to go alone. I wanted to perform wudu' before prayer but I was scared. Remember days when we would go to the bathroom together because you were too afraid to go alone?" She laughs at the thought. It seems amusing to her now, that she was scared to find her death in a place of relief; that she is now terrified of the same seemingly ridiculous scenario. It was really the fear of being alone. When you "hear" the news before it becomes news, you panic for clarity – you want someone to make sense of the situation, package it neatly into comprehensible terms and locations. Just to be sure it's not you this time.... It is Noor’s one year old birthday January 1. She will turn one. I cannot help but think- who was born in bloodied Gaza today?

Amid others' hype, posturing and pontificating, I find this effective because the author so quietly reports details of the daily life of her family and former neighbors during the current Israeli raids on Gaza and thus puts a human face on war.

If you're interested in the author, here is "Disengagement from Justice," an article she wrote for the July 28, 2005 WaPo. "A Mother Under Occupation" is an interview from the June 9, 2006 broadcast of Democracy Now. You can also watch a video Tunnel Trade that she made in collaboration with filmmaker Saeed Taji Farouky's (email) independent documentary production company Tourist with a Typewriter. She also made a film with that company on the Rafah playground, but I couldn't find a copy available online.

As my friend Betsy in KY said,

unbearably sad. I am terrified that US won't start moving towards more sane Mid East policy...I can't see any justification for the disproportionate force Israel is using!

New story recommendation of the day:

• "Don't Believe the Hype: The press bought into the $700 billion bailout, hailing it as a necessity. Why so many got it wrong—and how Paul Krugman got it right," Howell Raines, Portfolio
• "Cash For Trash," Paul Krugman, NYT, September 22, 2008: And if the government is going to provide capital to financial firms, it should get what people who provide capital are entitled to—a share in ownership, so that if the rescue plan works, all the gains don’t go to the people who made the mess in the first place.
• Katrina and Bush", Paul Krugman, NYT, December 30, 2008: what happened with Katrina wasn’t that the administration started to fail; what happened was that for the first time its failures were visible to all.
• "Farewell to All That: An Oral History of the Bush White House," Cullen Murphy, Todd S. Purdum, Vanity Fair, February 2009.
  

Site recommendation of the day:

The Consumerist, a soon-to-be former Gawker blog sold to The Consumer Union. Check out its guide to reading food expiration codes.



What I did today in addition to blogging:

Signed up to volunteer at the Lyric for the film Sllumdog Millionaire.



Who is reading my blog today:

• someone in Pomaria, SC who search on George Segebade to read House Red and George Segebade in Floyd Tonight outclicked to Shawn Brennerman's site

• someone in Cleveland who searched on "aaron genevie"Section 60: Arlington Cemetery

Mike Leigh Misses with Happy-Go-Lucky

I'm not saying there weren't enjoyable moments (the Tango lesson, the driving teacher) but the rave reviews for Happy Go Lucky seem undeserved for this slight slice of life. Truthfully I had to look up Leigh at IMDB (Ebert, Travers) to make sure that he was, indeed, the writer and director for such pieces of substance as Secrets and Lies (1996) and Vera Drake (2004).

Ron Howard's Frost/Nixon

Alastair Muir's photo accompanied the NYT review of Frost/Nixon when it opened as a play.


Ron Howard is bringing to screen the performances of Michael Sheen(previously seen Tony Blair in The Queen) and Frank Langella, pictured above, from their staged version of Frost/Nixon, Peter Morgan’s presentation of the back story of the David Frost television interviews with Nixon in 1977 which opened April 22, 2007 at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater.) Morgan wrote the screenplay.

No word yet on whether this is coming to the Lyric, but I'd love to see it. Ron Howard was on Democracy Today December 15.

The Secret Life of Bees

From Roger Ebert's October 15 review of Gina Prince-Bythewood's film, The Secret Life of Bees: a photo of Queen Latifah (beekeeper August Boatright, Jennifer Hudson (housekeeper Rosaleen Daise) and Alicia Keys (August's cellist sister and incipient activiest June Boatright).

I'll be seeing the film tonight when I volunteer at the Lyric. It also also stars Dakota Fanning (as Lily Owens, Rosaleen's charge) and Sophie Okonedo (May, the disturbed sister.) Okonedo played the wife of the innkeeper Don Cheedle in Hotel Rwanda (2004), one of my favorite films.

The Secret Lives of Bees is based on Viking's 2002 civil rights-era novel of the same name by Sue Monk Kidd (which we read in our book group.)

Monk explained in an interview at the link above,

In 1964 I was an adolescent growing up in a tiny town tucked in the pinelands and red fields of South Georgia, a place my family has lived for at least two hundred years, residing on the same plot of land my great-great-grandparents settled. The South I knew in the early sixties was a world of paradoxes. There was segregation and the worst injustices, and at the same time I was surrounded by an endearing, Mayberryesque life. I could wander into the drugstore and charge a cherry Coca-Cola to my father, or into the Empire Mercantile and charge a pair of cheerleader socks to my mother, and before I got home my mother would know what size Coke I'd drunk and what color socks I'd bought. It was an idyllic, cloistered, small-town world of church socials, high school football games, and private "manners lessons" at my grandmother's. Yet despite the African-American women who prominently populated the world of my childhood, there were enormous racial divides. I vividly remember the summer of 1964 with its voter registration drives, boiling racial tensions, and the erupting awareness of the cruelty of racism. I was never the same after that summer. I was left littered with memories I could not digest. I think I knew even back then that one day I would have to find a kind of redemption for them through writing. When I began writing The Secret Life of Bees, I set it during the summer of 1964 against a civil rights backdrop. It would have been impossible for me to do otherwise.

Here's an excerpt from chapter one:

At night I would lie in bed and watch the show, how bees squeezed through the cracks of my bedroom wall and flew circles around the room, making that propeller sound, a high-pitched zzzzzz that hummed along my skin. I watched their wings shining like bits of chrome in the dark and felt the longing build in my chest. The way those bees flew, not even looking for a flower, just flying for the feel of the wind, split my heart down its seam.

During the day I heard them tunneling through the walls of my bedroom, sounding like a radio tuned to static in the next room, and I imagined them in there turning the walls into honeycombs, with honey seeping out for me to taste.

The bees came the summer of 1964, the summer I turned fourteen and my life went spinning off into a whole new orbit, and I mean whole new orbit. Looking back on it now, I want to say the bees were sent to me. I want to say they showed up like the angle Gabriel appearing to the Virgin Mary, setting events in motion I could never have guessed. I know it is presumptuous to compare my small life to hers, but I have reason to believe she wouldn't mind; I will get to that. Right now it's enough to say that despite everything that happened that summer, I remain tender toward the bees.

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July 1, 1964, I lay in bed, waiting for the bees to show up, thinking of what Rosaleen had said when I told her about their nightly visitations.

"Bees swarm before death," she'd said.

Rosaleen had worked for us since my mother died. My daddy - who I called T. Ray because "Daddy" never fit him - had pulled her out of the peach orchard, where she'd worked as one of his pickers. She had a big round face and a body that sloped out from her neck like a pup tent, and she was so black that night seemed to seep from her skin. She lived alone in a little house tucked back in the woods, not far from us, and came every day to cook, clean, and be my stand-in mother. Rosaleen had never had a child herself, so for the last ten years I'd been her pet guinea pig.

Bees swarm before death. She was full of crazy ideas that I ignored, but I lay there thinking about his one, wondering if the bees had come with my death in mind. Honestly, I wasn't that disturbed by the idea. Every one of those bees could have descended on me like a flock of angels and stung me till I died, and it wouldn't have been the worst thing to happen. People who think dying is the worst thing don't know a thing about life.

Appaloosa

Photo by Loney Sebastion at Warner Bros. accompanied A. O. Scott's NYT review of Appaloosa, directed (and written in part) by Ed Harris.

Based on Robert Parker's 2005 novel of the same name, this film is at it's heart a sly (offscreen) sex farce with the real love between Hitch (Viggo Mortensen) and Virgil Cole (Ed Harris.) Also starring Jeremy Irons as the villian Bragg and Rene Zellweger as the Widow French.
Peter Travers's review and Roger Ebert's are worth reading.

Elegy

Still photo of Sir Ben Kingsley as David Kepesh and Penelope Cruz as Consuela Castillo from Isabel Coixet's Elegy.

When you make love to a woman you get revenge for all the things that defeated you in life.

So says David Kepesh, a bit creepy and way self-absorbed older professor who has captivated his former graduate student Consuela Castillo, now that the semester is over and she is fair game.

Kepesh is another aging and angry lecher in a line of semi-autobiographical characters created by Philip Roth, this time in The Dying Animal (2001) a la The Human Stain, from 2000, which we read in our reading group. I much prefer Roth when he gets outside himself, such in another of oaur selections, the dis-utopian 2004 The Plot Against America in which he imagines a parallel U.S. in which the anti-semitic Charles Lindberg had defeated FDR for the presidency in 1940. (All three books from Houghton Mifflin.)

That said, Roger Ebert, finds the movie, not great, but nicely done, and so do I. Andrew O'Hehir, writing for Salon, admires the acting, but doubts the semi-fairy tale transformation of Kepesh at the end and so do I. In contrast, Anohla Dargis, in a review in the New York Times on August 8, 2008, writes

Comparisons between novels and screen adaptations are inevitable, particularly when a film announces its literary pedigree as this one reasonably does. The trick is not to confuse the two or assume that the best adaptation is the most faithful or makes for good cinema.

And yet, Dargis does precisely that, complaining the Kingsley is too virile and not enough of a misogynist.

Elegy has strong supporting performances --Patricia Clarkson, as Kepesh's long-term no-strings sexual partner Carolyn, Peter Sarsgaard as his estranged son Kenneth and Dennis Hopper as his best friend George O'Hearn, with a brief appearance of singer and actress Deborah Harry as O'Hearn's wife, Amy. Sarsgarrd, BTW, as one of his first roles, played murder victim Walter Delacroix in Tim Robbin's 1995 film, Dead Man Walking.

Section 60: Arlington Cemetery

Image from the from the HBO site for its documentary on some of the families that come to visit the graves in Section 60, where soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan are buried.

Jon Alpert and Matthew O'Neill... "embedded" themselves into the fabric of daily life in Section 60, capturing landscapes, families, friends and officials. Over the course of four months in 2007, they filmed on a daily basis, earning the trust of families who shared some of their most personal moments.

On October 10, Democracy Now interviewed Alpert on this his third film in a trilogy of Iraq-related HBO documentaries, which includes Baghdad ER and Alive Day Memories: Home from Iraq.

Also interviewed are Paula Zwillinger, whose son, Lance Corporal Robert Mininger, was killed in Iraq on June 6, 2005 and Patricia Genevie, whose son, Private First Corporal Aaron Genevie, died April 16, 2007, in Baghdad.

A May 18, 2007 photo essay on that section of the cemetary from the Washington Post is here.

Man on Wire

Photo of Philippe Petit, crossing a high wire between the twin towers of the World Trade Center in James Marsh’s documentary from Stephen Holden's April 18, 2008 review of the Tribecca Film Festival.

Saw this at the Lyric tonight, thinking I was going to see Burn After Readeing, but it was well worth it.

Right now, Marsh is filming Nineteen Eighty, based on on British writer David Peace's novel of the same name.

Flow: for Love of Water

Photo from film.

Democracy Now has an interview today with Irena Salina on her new film, Flow, which will be at the Lyric in October. The documentary covers the global water crisis, examining how corporations took control of global water supplies and how we are quickly running out of water, asking the question "Can Anyone Really Own Water?" Here is the link for IMDB, as well as a link for a February 19 interview with Media Rights.

David Mamet: Redbelt

The film has gotten mixed reviews. Am going to see it at the Lyric tommorrow after selling popcorn last night. Will let you know what I think. Chiwetel Ejiofor won the 2000 London Evening Standard Theatre Award for Outstanding Newcomer for his performance in British playwright Joe Penhall's Blue/Orange which was reviewed by Philip Fisher, who interestingly tied the performance back to Mamet:

David Mamet's Oleanna showed how a decent, educated man could be brought to ruin as a result of what many would regard as relatively minor prejudices. In Blue/Orange, Joe Penhall attacks a similar subject slightly differently. In this case, the two major issues are race and madness. As with Oleanna, this play not only shows how an individual can be brought to his knees, it also raises interesting moral questions with regard to what is acceptable and unacceptable behaviour and what punishment should be meted out to a person who oversteps the limit.

Having seen Oleanna (I'm thinking at the Barter Theatre in Abingdon, and then there is the 1994 film with William Macey and Debra Eisenstadt), I looked up the Guardian's interview of Penhall to learn whether he mentioned Mamet as an influence. He didn't. But in contrasting the resources available for up and coming playwrights in Britian v.s. the U.S., he did provide what is my nomination for quote of the day:

In America they won't give you the steam off their piss. It's like boot camp. They seem to think that by tormenting and abusing and pissing on their aspiring writers they'll eventually find the next Arthur Miller.

Sidney Pollack Gone Too Soon at 73

Photo byTiziana Fabi/Agence France-Presse via Getty Images show Pollack in Rome after a press conference for the last film he directed, Sketches of Frank Gehry (2005).

A. O. Scott's New York Times tribute, "Sydney Pollack, Filmmaker New and Old," which is set to run tomorrow, might not have caught my attention, if Google had not listed it as, "A Master of the Mainstream, When It Still Aimed High." The official obit from today is here.

It's hard to imagine him gone, whether you're a fan of something old, like Tootsie, or something new, like Recount--about the 2000 presidential ballot fight in Florida. This last piece aired on HBO Sunday, the day before he died. And Pollack acted, playing among other roles, Will's semi-cad Dad on Will and Grace.

Information Activies Lisa Pease (blog, email) has written today about the very political nature of Pollack's films for Consortium News, saying it so well, I won't have to:

And while he brought a strong social consciousness to everything he
touched, he never let the message overtake the entertainment. He made great
films that mesmerized and moved and delighted.

You didn't realize until you were leaving the theater that you'd also
gotten a little lesson in history or morality as well.

I hope future directors will find the heart and courage to follow
in his exceedingly large footsteps. We lost a giant this week.