Ross Hawkins
Hello, New York Is Calling
David Gobbeo, my film and video editor, and I were guests on the Alan Chan Show on TriBeca Net Radio in New York last night. Alan is an attorney and a comic who also wears the hat of producer/director of a quirky little film noir titled Sakinara.
"Sakinara" concerns a sake salesman who dies under mysterious circumstances. The police think he was murdered. The prime suspect is a call girl with a very interesting clientele.
"Sakinara" will be screening at the Backlot Film Festival on Friday, Feb. 2 at 10 p.m. at the Fine Arts Theatre, 8556 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills. The complete list of screenings will be published next week.
Chan's radio show is an irreverent, politically incorrect showcase for new talent, entertainers, artists and musicians that can be heard live on net radio at 6 p.m. Pacific Standard Time.
Budd Schulberg and The Garden of Allah
When we made the decision to invite writer/producer Budd Schulberg to become the second recipient of the Thomas Ince Award at the Backlot Film Festival (Jan. 30 – Feb. 3), I remembered a conversation I had with my mother in the kitchen of our home. This was back in July of 1959. I was reading an article in Time magazine that told about how the legendary Garden of Allah Hotel was being torn down to make way for a bank building.
My mother paused from fixing dinner to reflect for a moment. Unknown to me, she had worked briefly as a cocktail waitress at that famous watering hole where the likes of Errol Flynn, Humphrey Bogart, Greta Garbo, Laurence Olivier and W.C . Fields hung out. She remembered meeting " a nice young writer there who was working with F. Scott Fitzgerald . “He was trying to keep him reasonably sober," she said. The writer was Budd Schulberg. He was collaborating with Fitzgerald on a screenplay called "Winter Carnival," a light comedy set at Dartmouth where Schulberg had attended before returning to Hollywood as a screenwriter.
When I talked to Schulberg this summer, I told him my mother remembered him from "The Garden of Allah." He paused for a moment and then said softly, "I have a lot of memories of that place."
The Movies’ First Cowboy Hero Lived, Worked and Died in Culver...
In 1903, Walter Cameron had the distinction of playing the sheriff in "The Great Train Robbery," the first American motion picture to tell a story. "The Great Train Robbery" is credited with having launched the American motion picture industry. Prior to that film, there had been several little experimental films that were regarded as little more than photographic curiosities.
When motion pictures were in their infancy, no respectable actor would appear in them. Walter Cameron got the role because he was willing to do it, and he actually had been a deputy U.S. Marshal in the Oklahoma territory. Paul Pitti, son of veteran stuntman and cowboy actor Ben Pitti, brought Cameron's story to my attention. He told me that Cameron was Will Rogers' uncle.
Winter Film Highlight: The 2nd Backlot Film Festival
With film festivals multiplying faster than termites at a lumber mill — three are currently running in Southern California — the question arises:
Can the Westside support still anotherfilm festival?
My Baby
I helped create the Backlot Film Festival to cultivate an appreciation of the rich heritage of the motion picture industry in this country and to bring a greater understanding of the debt current filmmakers owe to the pioneers. We don't teach history in school anymore. In a recent conversation with a 30-year- old USC graduate, I remarked that Winston Churchill had written a romantic novel back in 1919. She asked, "Who was Winston Churchill?"
To this end — to explore the rich history of the major art form of the last 100 years — the BFF will honor a filmmaker who has made a major impact on the motion picture industry.
Has Culver City Lost Its Heart?
Movie gossip columnist Hedda Hopper wryly observed in the 1930s that movie stars lived in Beverly Hills, vacationed in Palm Springs and worked in Culver City. Hollywood had the glitz, the glamour and the reputation of being the motion picture capital of the world. But it was in Culver City that more than 55 percent of all the films made in the U.S. were churned out, from the 1920s through the 1950s. It was in Culver City that the chariot race in the 1925 Ben Hur film was held, where King Kong ran amok, where Dorothy and her friends traveled down the Yellow Brick Road to see the "Wizard of Oz," where Rhett and Scarlett escaped from Atlanta in "Gone With The Wind," and where Gene Kelly sang and danced in the rain. Culver City was home to Laurel and Hardy, to Hal Roach's "Little Rascals," to the Marx Brothers, and to Tom and Jerry. Culver City was where Orson Welles sent us searching for "Rosebud," where Fred and Ginger danced through eight unforgettable musicals, where Bing Crosby sang "The Bells of St. Mary's," and where Gregory Peck lusted after Jennifer Jones in "Dual In The Sun."
Tut-Tut, Dear Voters, Look Who Is Getting Nasty
Culver City historian Robin Turner recently took the Democratic Club to task for endorsing Ken Lock in todays election for Division 4 Director of the West Basin Municipal Water District. The position has been held for several years by Ed Little, a local businessman and a Republican. Ms. Turner, who has been campaigning for termed-out Democratic state Assemblyman Paul Koretz for the position, also called the City Attorney's office. She complained that Mr. Lock had illegally posted campaign signs in Culver City. Mr. Lock's reaction to all of this attention was to inform the City Attorney that if any of his signs were in Culver City, they would be immediately removed. Mr. Lock also pointed out that the Water Board Director's position was non-partisan. Political parties were not supposed to officially endorse candidates in a non-partisan race.
Difference between the Reel West and the Real West
In the classic John Ford Western, "Stagecoach," aptly dubbed "Grand Hotel on Wheels," the Apache Indians are riding hard in pursuit of the stage across a dry lake bed. Seeing that they are about to overtake it, a Cavalry unit rides to the rescue. Ford later admitted that the often imitated chase sequence never would have happened in the real world. "The Indians would have shot the lead horse, and the chase would have been over," Ford dryly observed in an interview years later. In "The Searchers," the Indians pursue John Wayne, Ward Bond and company across a river bed. Wayne and the beleaguered Texas Rangers take cover behind a cluster of rocks at the river's edge. Soon they start firing at the Commanches who are mowed down while crossing the river.
A Unique Tribute to the Military
An exhibit of black and white and color photographs of men and women who served in the United States military from World War II to the present opened last Saturday with a splendid reception. The unusual exhibit will run, symbolically enough, until Veterans Day, Nov. 11. The AmVets Post 2 building, 10858 Culver Blvd., just west of the Vets Auditorium, is hosting the magnificent exhibit. The month-long display is interspersed with photographs of veteran images from Saigon, 1969-70, down to today. today. The exhibit serves as a stark reminder of the price that American servicemen and women have paid for serving their country in time of war.
Death of the Reel West
I love Westerns. My uncle owned a ranch near Wilcox, Ariz., 40 miles from the Mexican border and 40 miles from New Mexico. Every summer, from the time I was 12 years old until I was 19, I lived and worked there. The whole area was steeped in Western history. One trail that ran through my uncle's ranch was Skull Canyon. This was where the Clanton Gang ambushed a group of Mexican silver smugglers. It was said that their anguished cries could still be heard on nights when the moon was full. I actually got to meet the man who gave fresh horses to Wyatt Earp and his brothers when they were leaving Tombstone. As they headed for Colorado, angry friends of the Clantons were not far behind.
And the (Indian) Band Play on
Cochise's stronghold was in the nearby mountains. When Cochise died, his wife took his band of Chiraqaua Indians and hid out in the mountains in Mexico. The other Apaches called the Chiraqauas "The Nameless Ones" because they hadn't been branded on the reservation like the other Apaches. Cochise's wife led the group. She avoided capture by both Mexican troops and the U.S. Cavalry by living quietly in the mountains. She ordered Geronimo and his fellow fugitives out of their camp to avoid confrontation with the U.S. military. By the turn of the century, many of the Chiraquaua Indians, including Cochise's son, would cross the border. They worked as cowboys and scouts for ranchers tracking rustlers and the law-chasing escapees from Fort Yuma Prison.
Is Global Warming the Villain in This Mystery?
On Saturday, July 22, the temperature climbed to 119 degrees in Woodland Hills. Over in Canoga Park ,a man's car window exploded from the heat. Temperatures on the Westside climbed up into the 90s. There seemed to be no end in sight to the heat wave
According to a recent article in the Valley-based Los Angeles Daily News, the heat wave that has blanketed much of the Southwest this summer has less to do with global warming than with the rapidly expanding concrete and asphalt jungle that we are creating. Asphalt and concrete retain the heat that native vegetation, trees and chaparral once sent back into the atmosphere.
