6/19/23
Newsletter #369
The Crack of Dawn
I’m in downtown Berkeley, CA, at a “hotel” called the Berkeley City Club. It was listed as the nicest (and most expensive) hotel in downtown Berkeley. Well, it’s not really a hotel; it was built in 1927 as a women’s club and has been converted. The rooms are the size of my bedroom, there’s no TV or AC or coffeemaker, and the toilet is underneath the sink. I turned on the shower and it literally took 15 minutes to start getting warm — while reading a sign about saving water — then there was no water pressure. In all fairness, it’s a cool, retro, Deco place, and has a pool in which I haven’t been. Anyway, it’s too primitive for me, and the upshot is that I’m moving hotels. I’ll go back to the Sheraton in San Rafael, across the bay in Marin. All I’m looking for is Paris or Barcelona located in America. Unfortunately, we don’t have any cities like that.
Although I’m doing my best to keep this newsletter politics-free, and for the most part have, I’m going to use contemporary politics here to get to another story.
Gary Jones has been my good buddy for the past 40 years. When we were in pre-production on Thou Shalt Not Kill…Except in 1984, Gary came walking in one day wearing his trademark floppy, OD green, army hat and held a cardboard box. Within the box were crude versions of all sorts of special effects: rubber faces with remote controls to make them wince, blood packets, wires, batteries, bottles of latex, etc. Gary asked, “Need an FX man?” Scott Spiegel and I looked at each other, amazed, then both said, “Yes,” and hired Gary immediately.
Gary was FX supervisor on Lunatics: A Love Story, which has every kind of special effect I could think of, and he pulled them all off. He did the same thing on my film, Alien Apocalypse (2005). He’s a talented, funny, very calm guy, who has gone on to direct about 12 feature films.
For the first 30 years we knew each other we never mentioned politics once. We could talk about movies forever, and that was enough. However, somewhere in about 2015, Gary began to express an interest in politics (which he may have always had, but didn’t discuss with me), as well as a proclivity for Donald Trump. As we neared the election, Gary became a full-fledged Trump supporter. Well, that’s fine. He can believe anything he wants, and so can I. That hasn’t got anything to do with our friendship. But over Trump’s four years in office, when it became clear to me, as well as to a great deal of the human population, that Trump was an insane, incompetent, moron, Gary stuck with him. And I don’t understand how. But if we get near the subject, tempers begin to flare, particularly mine. He’s a calmer guy than me.
In the interim, Gary and I made a movie together. We co-produced (with Mike Choly), Warpath (2020). We consciously decided to put politics aside and just do our jobs, which we did. But the philosophical divide remained, and it grew deeper. Everything Trump did as president offended me, and Gary supported all of it.
I’m going to back up a second. In 2015, before the election, I would go into a tirade about what a useless turd Trump was, and Gary would laugh at me and say, “Let’s see what the voters think?” Need I mention, Trump went and won. The voters had indeed spoken. Gary was apparently right, the motherfucker.
As Trump then committed a thousand atrocities as president, I’d vow, “He’s not getting reelected.” And Gary, in his pleasant, upbeat way, would say, “Let’s let the voters decide in 2020.” Well, the voters decided, Joe Biden won handily, with 7 million more popular votes, and that’s when the bullshit began. Now it’s rigged. Now the voters can’t decide because the system is rigged against them. Well, that’s bullshit. The system isn’t rigged, the voters decided, and your man lost. Period. But no, now it’s all a big conspiracy. No, you lost. Man up.
Anyway, I’m a supporter of the United States of America, and I’ve spent a fair portion of my life studying the history of this country, particularly the presidents. Who is president actually means something to me. As proof of this — not that I ahve to, but I enjoy sharing my geekiness — having read all the books on the big-shot presidents, I’m presently reading a new book about Grover Cleveland. In most of the major historians’ opinions, Cleveland falls about 8th. That’s pretty good. And here’s a useless fact. His name was really Stephen Grover Cleveland. His nickname growing up was, “Big Steve.”
Furthermore, since Trump became president, I have gone out of my way to keep an eye on what the law thought about what he was doing. Being in awe of our founding fathers, and a firm believer in our system of government, and ultimately, our legal system (which has many problems), I deeply believed that if I waited long enough, the legal system would get him. And it did.
I have been checking in every single goddamn day for six years (thank you Glenn Kirschner, because Justice Matters) to make sure that the cases against Trump never got dropped, and they didn’t. They made their way snail-like through all the courts that they needed to, and now, six years later, the shit has come down. Two indictments so far, with at least two more coming. Donald J. Trump, for the first time in his 76 years, has now entered our very flawed, and rather Draconian, criminal justice system, from which it is exceptionally difficult to escape. America doesn’t have the most people incarcerated in the world for nothing – our criminal justice system is a bitch. Whether you like it or not, that’s where Trump is – he’s indicted.
So, I couldn’t help myself. When Trump got his first indictment in NY, I immediately called Gary, laughing and gloating, and said, “Guess who’s going to prison?” and he hung up on me. After he was indicted again, Gary wrote me an email inquiring, “Can I vote for him in jail?”
After some research I wrote back and said that you can. Eugene V, Debs ran for president on the Socialist ticket five times throughout the late 1800s, and early 1900s, and the last time was from prison. However, in the case of Debs, he was illegally incarcerated for leading a peace march. Eugene V. Debs was a terrifically important man, instrumental in bringing about trade unions, and treating workers fairly. Eugene Debs actually received over a million votes in jail in 1920.
It’s dawn in Berkeley, CA. I grew up next to Berkley, MI, and I saw a lot of movies at The Berkley Theater. California seems like they have too many Es,