8/11/22
Newsletter69
The Crack of Dawn
It’s The Middle of the Night (1959), a second-rate picture written by Paddy Chayefsky and starring Fredric March, who is plagued with the awful problem of having the young, ridiculously shapely, Kim Novak fall in love with him. I should have such problems.
Perhaps twenty years ago, when I was at the tender young age of forty-five, my dad offhandedly remarked, “I really hated Hebrew school, that’s why I never made you go.” I said, “Dad, I went to Hebrew school three times a week for seven years.” My dad looked honestly surprised and said, “Really? I did that to you?”
The day before my dad died, I asked him, “Do you like Duke Ellington?” He shook his head and said, “No. But I like Count Basie.” I was taken aback. I like Count Basie, too, but he only wished he was Duke Ellington. Duke, Count, get it? So I thought, “That can’t be the last conversation I have with my father. Luckily, he hung on another day. My dad was a such hard-core Republican that he never stopped defending the honor of Richard Nixon. So I asked, “Dad, did you vote for Harry Truman [a Democrat]?” He looked around the room in the convalescent home at our various family members grimly sitting deathwatch to make sure no one was listening, and whispered, “Yes.” I asked, “Did you vote for John Kennedy?” He looked around again, then said, “Yes.” I asked, “Did you vote for LBJ?” With an expression of shame he admitted, “Yes.” I smiled, “Dad, you’re a closet leftie.” That was our last conversation, and I felt well satisfied.
When I was still working as a PA in the early 1990s, I worked on a music video for my fellow Detroiter, Ted Nugent. The first day of the shoot was at a recording studio in L.A. It was a particularly easy day as they got shots of Ted noodling with the mixing board, which he clearly had no idea how to use. I found myself in the little lunch room with just Ted and I. I said, “Ted, I’m also from Detroit, and I bought Journey to the Center of Your Mind when it came out on a 45.” He smiled and said, “That was my first record.” He leaned forward and said, “You want to know what I really want to do?” I asked, “What?” He said, “I want to kill a black rhino with a compound bow.” I said, “Aren’t they an endangered species?” He nodded, “Sure, but if I hit the fucker right in the pump,” he pointed at his chest where his heart was supposed to be, “that’ll kill it.” I excused myself and went back to work. At the end of the day, Ted gave me, and nobody else, a copy of Bow Hunter magazine, and a bumper sticker that said, “Bow Hunters do it deeper.” I threw them both out, but I wish I’d kept them.
In L.A. in 1997 I was called on for jury duty. I showed up at the courthouse in Van Nuys every day for a month and never got on a jury. Finally, I got up in front of the judge and said, “I’ve been here every day for a month and haven’t been chosen for a jury. I have a feature motion picture opening next week and I have many things to do. May I be excused?” The judge asked, “What’s the name of the film?” I said, “Running Time.” He said, “You’re excused. Good luck.” My film opened at the Laemmle Theater in Santa Monica on Dec. 19, 1997, the exact same day that Titanic opened. There wasn’t a single person at the Laemmle Theater, but one block away there was a line of people as far as you could see waiting to get into Titanic.
Just the slightest hint of daylight is showing through the trees.
The Amboy Dukes were great, and so was Ted for a while. I love "Stranglehold." Then he started shooting off his mouth, and we all gasped. Oh, dear, he's a complete idiot. Still, that doesn't negate his previous work.
Holy shit. Your Ted Nugent story is bonkers. Never sought out any of his music because he turned me off so badly, but I recntly got a copy of The Amboy Dukes first LP and it's great. Opens with a cover of "Baby, Please Don't Go" and Nugent quotes my hero Jimi Hendrix's "Third Stone From The Sun" on the guitar. Cool shit.