6/16/22
Newsletter 13
It’s 4:14 AM and black as pitch. Pitch, by the way, is pine resin that used to seal the seams of wooden ships.
Sgt. Rock, the venerable comic book hero began his run in 1959 and is still around (now written by Bruce Campbell). But writer-producer-director, Sam Fuller, made a war film in 1951 called, “Steel Helmet,” and the lead character is a tough Marine sergeant named Sgt. Rock.
I directed Anthony Quinn in one of his last movies, “Hercules in the Maze of the Minotaur.” When I got back to L.A. I told my buddy Rick all about the experience and he said, “Write it down,” which I did (it’s on my website, Beckerfilms.com). Rick read my essay, “Directing Anthony Quinn,” and said, “You skipped my favorite encounter.” Rick was a writer, too, and he had a theory that somehow, whatever your point is, you’ll forget to put it into your first draft. This is the scene that’s not in the essay. I still blush remembering it, and that embarrassment is undoubtedly why I skipped it. Quinn and I were standing on the set waiting for the lighting. He was 80 years old, bitched endlessly about everything, swore like a sailor, and absolutely hated the script. He had nothing but derision for the two young writers, and would holler every morning, “My lines are shit! Get Shakespeare and Homer in here to rewrite them.” Anyway, were standing on the set and Quinn declares, “All young people are stupid,” which of course included me. I asked, “What is it that young people should know that they don’t know?” He said, “OK. Gilbert and Sullivan.” Being an egotistical ham, I recited: “I am the very model of a modern Major General/ I’ve information vegetable, animal, and mineral/ I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical/ From Marathon to Waterloo in order categorical/ I’m very well acquainted too with matters mathematical/ I understand equations, both the simple and quadradical/ About binomial theory I’m teeming with a lot of news/ And many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse.” Mr. Quinn smiled. I’d managed to impress him.
The famous baseball player, Jackie Robinson, the first African-American in the Major League, had a brother named Mack. Mack competed as a runner in the 1936 Olympics. He came in second to the famous athlete, Jesse Owens. Sadly, nobody remembers Mack Robinson. Being a famous person’s brother, or coming in second, don’t count.
When I was seven we lived across the street from Our Lady of La Salette, a Catholic church. On the front of the building (long gone) there was ten-foot sculpture of a particularly grisly depiction of Christ on the cross. I remember standing there and staring at it for a long time, thinking, What an awful thing for one person to do to another. That night I asked my dad, “Who is that poor, dying man nailed to a cross in front of Our Lady of La Salette?” My glib father replied, “He was a Jewish man who gentiles killed.” My seven-year-old brain thought, “Is that what they do to Jews in this neighborhood?”
Soon thereafter, I heard the word, anti-Semite for the first time. I asked my dad what it meant. He said, “A Semite is a wandering Jew.” I knew anti was against, so I thought, We’re not wandering, we live in a house. I’m OK.
I’ve had a question rattling around in my head ever since then: Do anti-Semites hate the Three Stooges and the Marx Brothers, too?
It’s 5:10 and the blue gels are just beginning.
Subscribe at: