6/23/22
Newsletter20
In case anyone’s interested, today is 24 Sivan, 5782, on the Jewish calendar. So 5782 years ago the world began. I asked a rabbinical student, “What about the trilobites inside the rocks?” The student said, “Ah-ha! God put the trilobites inside the rocks to keep us on our toes.”
Rudolph Valentino burst onto the screen in 1921 and immediately became a huge star. Suddenly every studio had to have a Latin lover, like Ramon Navarro, Antonio Moreno, and Ricardo Cortez. Well, Ricardo Cortez was really Jacob Krantz, a Jew from New York. His brother Stanley followed him out to Hollywood and he too changed his name to Cortez. Stanley (Stanislaus) became a cinematographer. One of Stanley’s first films was Orson Welles’ masterpiece, “The Magnificent Ambersons,” that looks astounding. He also shot “Night of the Hunter” which is also gorgeous. Roman Polanski hired him to shoot “Chinatown,” but alas, Stanley was too old and grumpy in 1975, and he promptly got fired.
John Barrymore’s last words were, “I’m the illegitimate son of Buffalo Bill.”
The two fathers and daughters to win Oscars are: Francis and Sofia Coppola, and Jon Voight and Angelina Jolie.
Being the star-fucker that I am, I befriended Dan DeSilva when he worked as a PA on Sam Raimi’s “Darkman.” Dan’s father, Howard DeSilva, was a very popular character actor in the 1940s, ‘50s and ‘60s. He played the bartender in “The Lost Weekend,” Best Picture of 1945, and Ben Franklin in the awful film version of the musical, “1776.”
Clichés are to be avoided while writing, although I really do like them. A wonderful cliché that no one understands anymore is, “Hoisted by his own petard.” In the middle ages a petard was a long stick with a sack of gunpowder on the end. When laying siege to a castle, the fuse of the petards were lit, then the attackers ran to the castle walls and rammed their petard between the stones. But who knew how long a fuse would burn back then? So the petard could blow up at any moment. If it exploded when you jammed it into the castle wall and were still holding the stick, you were hoisted by your own petard.
Another cliché I like is, “I’m at sixes and sevens.” This comes from an ancient dice game. If you rolled sixes or sevens you were stuck.
Bruce Campbell loves this story and tells it much better than me. When Kirk Douglas (real name Issur Danielovitch Demsky), arrived in New York right after WWII to try and be an actor, he paid his bills working as a gigolo. He became the escort of a wealthy older lady who was an outspoken Anti-Semite. Kirk got so aggravated with her that when they were in bed one night and she made snide Anti-Semitic comment, Kirk said, “You just got fucked by a Jew.”
One of my heroes is the first black heavyweight boxing champion of the world, Jack Johnson. As soon as he had some money he spent it on his two favorite things in the world: fast cars and white women. He usually traveled with two white women, and this was 1910. So Jack was speeding across Texas at 100-mph and got pulled over. The cop told him it was a $50 fine. Jack gave him a hundred dollar bill and said, “I’ll be coming back this way.”
If you want to make a sound man angry on a film set, just sing the movie production version of Cat Stevens’ “Moon Shadow.” “I’m being followed by a boom shadow/ Boom shadow, boom shadow.”
The sky is light. Another day beckons.