Pacino

When Francis Ford Coppola and Paramount Pictures set out to cast the role of Michael Corleone in The Godfather, they had a disagreement. The studio wanted Robert Redford, Warren Beatty or Ryan O'Neal. Coppola wanted an unknown Italian American actor. At the time, Al Pacino had just one starring film role to his credit playing a heroine addict in The Panic In Needle Park. Coppola brought Pacino in for multiple auditions but Pacino kept blowing his lines. Producer Robert Evans referred to Pacino as "that little dwarf" and he told Coppola "a runt will not play Michael." Evans was concerned that Pacino's short stature would be a problem since Sonny Corleone was originally to be played by six foot four actor Carmine Caridi.

Coppola continued to audition actors for Michael including Robert DeNiro, Dustin Hoffman, Jack Nicholson, David Carradine and Martin Sheen. The studios began pushing James Caan for Michael but he wasn't Sicilian enough for Coppola (Caan is Jewish). Coppola threatened to quit if Pacino didn't get the role; Evans agreed as long as Caan was cast as Sonny.

A few weeks into production, Coppola began having second thoughts.  He was concerned that Pacino was playing the role as too meek and mild. "You're not cutting it for me kid," Coppola told Pacino. True to his Actors Studio training, Pacino was allowing himself time to discover who Michael was as a character. Marlon Brando understood Pacino's method acting approach. He intervened on Pacino's behalf and urged Coppola to keep him.

The scene that saved Pacino's job was the restaurant scene where Michael retrieves a gun from the bathroom and kills Sollozzo and the corrupt cop McCluskey. The scene is a tour de force of brilliant acting. Michael and Sollozzo converse in Italian with no subtitles. Since the audience doesn't know what the actors are saying, they are forced to focus full attention on Pacino's eyes, his sagging shoulders, the way he subtly moves his head to conceal his inner turmoil. The scene depicts the moment that Michael transforms from a naive young man to a vicious mob boss. It's also the moment that Al Pacino transforms from unknown actor to movie star.

Pacino was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor for The Godfather. He has since been nominated for eight Acting Oscars winning once for Scent Of A Woman. Pacino's salary for The Godfather was just $35,000. Two years later, his salary for Godfather II increased to $500K + 10% of the gross after break-even. For Godfather III, Pacino initially demanded $7 million. Coppola was so infuriated he threatened to write a new script that opened with Michael Corleone's funeral. Pacino settled for $5 million. (4" x 6" black ink print)

Jack Kerouac

Jean-Louis "Jack" Kerouac was a novelist and poet who became the face of the Beat Generation. Born in 1922 in Lowell, Massachusetts, Kerouac began writing at age 12. He carried journals everywhere, scribbling personal notes, poems and thoughts.

In high school, Kerouac was a star football player earning him a scholarship to Columbia University. During freshman year, he broke his leg playing football. He quit the team and dropped out of school. He enlisted in the navy but served only 8 days before being diagnosed with a "schizoid personality" which led to an honorable discharge.

Kerouac returned to New York and moved in with an old girlfriend, Edie Parker. He worked odd jobs as a short order cook, railroad brakeman and construction worker. During this period, Kerouac met Allen Ginsberg, Neal Cassady, William Burroughs and other odd characters who became synonymous with the Beat Generation. (Kerouac coined the term "beat" to describe a person with little money and few prospects.)

In 1945, Kerouac was diagnosed with phlebitis in his leg connected to his old football injury. He was confined to a bed in his parents home next to his father who was dying of stomach cancer. He began writing, fueled by benzedrine and coffee. The result was The Town and the City, an 1,100 page novel about his boyhood in Lowell and the junkies and intellectuals he met in Greenwich Village. The novel was published to poor reviews sending Kerouac into a deep depression.

In the winter of 1948, Kerouac went on a road trip with Neal Cassady driving across the country at light speed. They visited old friends, all night cafes, broken down bars and forgotten towns. They acquired food, money and gas by whatever means possible. Kerouac and Cassady arrived in San Francisco in 1949, broke and exhausted. Reflecting on his trip with Cassady, Kerouac experimented with a frenetic, benzedrine-fueled writing style he called "Self-Ultimacy." He would fall into a deep trance and write with chaotic speed, channeling spontaneous prose that jibed with the ethos of "first thought best thought." His writing style was influenced by the jazz music of Charlie Parker and Miles Davis and the concept of breathing in Buddhist meditation. Kerouac's words had an inherent rhythm and cadence, especially when spoken aloud.

Kerouac completed the first draft of On the Road in three weeks. He typed on a teletype roll, a single-spaced, unbroken paragraph resulting in a 120-foot long scroll. On the Road was published by Viking in 1957. The book became a bestseller and Kerouac became an overnight sensation. To Jack, the novel was simply about "two Catholic buddies who roamed the country in search of God." To the world, the book changed the face of literature and spawned the 60's hippie movement. Teenagers began hitchhiking across country, experimenting with drugs and sex and scrawling spontaneous poetry in dogeared journals. Ironically, Kerouac turned his back on the hippies and flower children ("It's politics, not art").

Kerouac despised his newfound fame. After getting beat up outside a New York bar, he began to fear the public. He grew estranged from Neal Cassady and his old 'Beat' friends. Jealous novelists attacked Kerouac in the press. (Truman Capote famously said, "That's not writing, it's typing.") Kerouac continued writing and publishing novels (Dharma Bums, The Subterraneans, Visions of Cody) but none garnered the acclaim given On the Road. He continued abusing drugs and alcohol and his writing and vitality suffered. In 1961, Kerouac moved to Big Sur in an effort to kick drinking and rekindle his writing talents. Instead he had a mental breakdown and returned to San Francisco to drink himself into oblivion (chronicled in Big Sur).

Beaten and lonely, Kerouac left California to live with his invalid mother in Florida. He never learned to drive and his house had no phone. He spent his days listening to jazz music and drinking Johnny Walker Red and cheap wine. He remained deeply religious, devoted to his unique brand of Buddhist-tinged Catholicism. When friends insulted God or religion he would respond, "Ah, Jesus died for bums like you." In 1969, after a night of heavy drinking, Kerouac hemorrhaged and was rushed to the hospital. He died the next morning at the age of 47. In 2009, the original manuscript of On the Road sold at auction for $2.4 million. (5" x 6", black ink print)

Mr. President

Barack Obama is the 44th President of the United States.  He has become a Rorschach President.  People's opinions say more about themselves than they do about President Obama.  Contrary to urban myth, President Obama is not a muslim or a communist or a black power advocate.  He is also not a prophet or a saint or the reincarnation of Abraham Lincoln.

President Obama loves basketball, he collects Spiderman comic books, he listens to Miles Davis & Bob Dylan.  His favorite films are Casablanca and One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest.  On his first date with Michelle, he took her to see Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing.  In Swahili, his name means "one who is blessed."

Like a true leader, President Obama has voiced opinions and taken actions that are not always popular.  He passed the only meaningful health care legislation in our country's history, he ended the war in Iraq, he rescued the auto industry, he repealed Don't Ask Don't Tell, he stopped torture as a policy, he removed Bin Laden as a threat, he whittled down Al Qaeda, he overhauled our country's food safety system, he advanced women's rights in the workplace, he invested in clean energy and the nation's aging highway system and he re-instituted regulation over the out-of-control financial sector.  President Obama has done all this while battling unprecedented obstructionism from the GOP Congress.

Shortly after the election in 2008, I met a woman at a party in Los Angeles who claimed to be a numerologist.  She said that in numerology the number "4" corresponds to "work and effort." "44" equates to "double work."  Since Obama was the 44th President, the woman claimed his presidency would require a tremendous amount of effort.  Nothing would come easy and progress would be slow and plodding.  She went on to say the "44" indicated that Obama would preside for two presidential terms of "4" years each.  "The numbers never lie and this is what the numbers say," she insisted.  As we reach the final week before the 2012 election, I take heart from this strange conversation from four years ago. The current polls indicate a dead heat between Obama and Romney.  I'm no numerologist, but like everyone else I'm searching for election-time solace wherever I can. (6" x 7", black ink print) (original sketch by Gabrielle)

Jim Jarmusch

Jim Jarmusch's 1984 film Stranger Than Paradise started a renaissance of American independent cinema. Jarmusch was born in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio in 1953. His mother was a film reviewer and she often left Jim at the local cinema to watch matinee double feature horror films. In his teen years, Jarmusch was attracted to beat culture and arthouse cinema.

Jarmusch attended Columbia University with the intention of becoming a poet and he became editor of the Columbia Review. He left New York for Paris where he spent his days at the Cinematheque Francaise immersing himself in the films of Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer and American director Sam Fuller. In 1976, he  returned to the states and was accepted into NYU's Tisch School of Film. His classmates included future peers Tom Dicillo, Spike Lee and Sara Driver.

During his final year at NYU, Jarmusch became assistant to famed director Nicholas Ray (Rebel Without A Cause) who was collaborating with German director Wim Wenders on the film Lightning Over Water. Jarmusch left NYU and assisted Wenders on the film The State Of Things. Wenders gave Jarmusch the leftover black & white film stock which Jarmusch used to complete a 30-minute movie that became Stranger Than Paradise.

Stranger Than Paradise is a deadpan, slow-moving comedy that recounts the journey of three disillusioned youths from New York to Florida.  Like many Jarmusch films, the characters are outsiders on the fringes of society.  I remember seeing the film when it came out and saying to a friend, "Nothing much happens but I can't get this movie out of my head."  This was common of Jarmusch's films.  He was once quoted as saying, "I'd rather make a movie about a guy walking his dog than about the emperor of China."  Paradise won the Camera d' Or at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival.

Jarmusch's next film Down By Law featured Tom Waits, John Lurie & Roberto Benigni. The movie marked the first of five collaborations with cinematographer Robby Muller. Jarmusch's next two films--Mystery Train and Night On Earth--experimented with parallel narratives, multiple stories connected by theme rather than plot. One of Jarmusch's favorite devices is to have a foreigner speaking in a native tongue while others struggle to understand. We see this with Aunt Lotte in Stranger Than Paradise, Benigni in Down By Law, the East German cab driver in Night On Earth and the Haitian ice cream man in Ghost Dog. Tom Waits observed of Jarmusch: "Jim went gray when he was 15...As a result, he always felt like an immigrant...a benign, fascinated foreigner. All his films are about that."

Music is crucial to Jarmusch's storytelling. His films have a unique vibe, slightly out of tune with a heavy reliance on music to invoke tone. Whether it's John Lurie's discordant jazz for Down By Law, Neil Young's sonic guitarscape for Dead Man or Mulatu Astatke's Ethio-jazz rhythms for Broken Flowers, Jarmusch's soundtracks are always memorable. Jarmusch himself is a musician. He played guitar for the early 80's band The Del Byzanteens and he recently completed an album with Dutch composer Jozef Van Wissem. Jarmusch loves using musicians as actors in his films. These include Tom Waits, Iggy Pop, Joe Strummer, John Lurie, RZA, Jack & Meg White and Screaming Jay Hawkins.

Jarmusch is currently completing a romantic vampire film called Only Lovers Left Alive. He is also working on a documentary about Iggy Pop and the Stooges as well as an experimental opera about Nikola Tesla. Jarmusch is the founding member of the tongue-in-cheek 'semi-secret' society called the Sons of Lee Marvin. Members supposedly include Tom Waits, John Lurie, Iggy Pop, Josh Brolin, Neil Young and Nick Cave. The qualification for membership is that you possess a passing resemblance or plausibly look like a son of actor Lee Marvin. (5" x 7", black ink print)

The Entrepreneur

Josh Richman is godfather of the Los Angeles club scene.  His record of renowned clubs includes "Grand Ville," "Teddys," "Les Deux" and "Greystone Manor." He is a founding member of the Alliance, an event promoting agency that organizes A-List parties for companies like Sony, Cadillac and Heineken. With his ever-present fedora and walking stick, Josh has no business card, no office and no website. His success is built on a vibrant personality and a magnetic pull to the people and places "that matter."

Josh and I grew up across the street from each other in a Studio City suburb. We were best friends as kids but Josh was always a step ahead of me.  While I listened to Elton John, Josh listened to T-Rex.  While I watched Beanie & Cecil, Josh viewed Fritz The Cat.  Josh's family was the first in the neighborhood to subscribe to the Z Channel and we spent many nights watching movies like Freebie and the Bean and California Suite.

We were both latch key kids. We played sports year round until the streetlights came on and we scoured the nearby Auto Graveyard beneath Mulholland Drive searching for snakes and scorpions.  We shared the surreal experience of seeing our local ice cream man suffer a heart attack and crash his truck into a fire hydrant.  We also raised hell together, breaking into people's homes and rearranging their furniture and changing their answering machine messages.

At age 5, Josh began recording radio commercials with his father Don Richman, a legendary radio producer and tv writer.  As a teenager, Josh parlayed his radio experience into an acting career.  He appeared in The River's Edge, Heathers and Natural Born Killers.  Josh was orphaned by the deaths of both parents by age 21.  His surrogate family became confidantes like Johnny Depp, Robert Downey Jr. and Keanu Reeves.  In 1991, he forged a relationship with Axl Rose that led to Josh writing the Guns N' Roses music video "Don't Cry" as well as his directing the video for "Live And Let Die."

In 1992, Josh produced the film The Last Party in which Robert Downey travelled along the presidential campaign trail. Josh was also manager for the rock band Deadsy which featured lead singer Elijah, son of Cher & Gregg Allman. Always a diehard USC Football fan, Josh is a Dodger dugout staple and a courtside regular at both Lakers and Clippers games. Like his father, Josh is a true renaissance man and I'm fortunate to call him a true friend. (6" x 8", black ink print)

Karloff

Boris Karloff was born William Henry Platt in England in 1887. The youngest of 9 children, he was bow-legged, had a lisp and stuttered.  All his brothers were members of the British Foreign Service and his great aunt, Anna Leonowens, was the inspiration for the musical The King And I. He moved to Hollywood in 1919 and took small roles in silent films, often playing exotic Indians or Arab villains due to his dark skin tone (his background was Anglo-Indian).  He supplemented his meager film income by working as a truck driver.

In 1931 at the age of 44, Karloff took on the role that made him a star: Frankenstein.  The part had been offered to Bela Lugosi, but Lugosi passed.  The Frankenstein costume had a heavy back brace and 4-inch platform boots weighing 13 pounds each.  The bulky costume caused Karloff back pain for the rest of his life but it also brought him immediate fame.  "My dear old monster," Karloff said.  "I owe everything to him.  He's my best friend."

During production, director James Whale was afraid that 7-year old Marilyn Harris, who played the little girl, would be terrified of Karloff in costume.  When she first saw "the monster" at the crew hotel, Marilyn ran from her car to Karloff, took his hand and asked, "May I drive with you to the set?"  Karloff responded, "Would you darling?"

Karloff reprised the monster role in Bride of Frankenstein and Son of Frankenstein.  During production on the latter film, Karloff's only daughter Sara was born.  He rushed to the hospital in full costume and makeup to witness her birth.

Karloff and Lugosi were Universal's top horror stars in the 1930's.  Though they were not close friends, their legendary "feud" was merely a publicity stunt.  Off screen, Karloff was a kind gentleman who gave generously to children's charities. He was one of the original twelve founders of the Screen Actor's Guild and he spoke out about hazardous working conditions for actors.  Suspicious of film studio anti-union tactics, Karloff always carried a role of dimes so he could conduct union business on pay phones.  (He was convinced his home phone was tapped.)

Karloff played key roles in The Mummy, The Mask of Fu Manchu and Scarface where his character was gunned down in a bowling alley.  In 1941, he starred as a homicidal gangster in the stage version of Arsenic and Old Lace. Karloff turned to radio and television in the 40's and 50's.  He did a parody of Frankenstein with Vincent Price on the Red Skelton Show and his final appearance as Frankenstein came in a 1962 episode of Route 66.

Though he worked in the US for more than half his life, Karloff never became a naturalized American citizen. He also never legally changed his name to "Boris Karloff."  He gained new fame in 1966 as the narrator in How the Grinch Stole Christmas.  He was also the inspiration for the first illustration of The Incredible Hulk and his voice was the basis for Kellogg's Tony The Tiger commercials.

Karloff lived out his final years in England battling arthritis and emphysema. Despite three back surgeries, he always remained grateful for Frankenstein. "You could have heaved a brick out the window and hit ten actors who could play my parts.  I just happened to be on the right corner at the right time."

Karloff died of pneumonia in 1969.  He was cremated in Surrey, England.  Four low-budget Mexican horror films which he made late in life appeared after his death.  Take that Tupac. (4" x 6", black ink print)

Self Portrait

I was born and raised in a San Fernando Valley suburb nicknamed "Hebrew Heights."  I was a kvetcher as a boy, the type of kid who in little league was hit by a pitch on the shoulder and limped to first base.  At age 10, I got in trouble at a synagogue-sponsored summer camp for claiming Sammy Davis Jr. as my favorite Jewish cultural figure.  My adolescent years were painful: too much acne, not enough confidence and a bit too much weed. My teenage salvation was the music of Peter Gabriel, the writing of Henry Miller and the basketball genius of Magic Johnson.

In my 20's I had a succession of terrible jobs: customer service rep at an oven mitt factory, ditch-digger for a "Zombie Graveyard" B-Movie, supermarket food promoter for a black-eyed pea distributor (which required me to dress in a black-eyed pea costume).  My worst job was as a urine carrier for a San Francisco law firm. Prospective legal employees were required to take urine drug tests and it was my duty to transport the fluid from the law offices to a testing lab a mile away. Fortunately I never had any accidents though one guy offered me $100 to swap my piss for his.

For the past two decades I've worked in the film and music industries.  I've embraced the "wisdom of letting go" and I've come to accept Hunter Thompson's eternal law of success: "When the shit clears and the dust settles, just be there."  I took up woodcut & linocut carving a few years ago when my wife bought me a woodcutting set for my birthday.  While carving my own image I realized I'm a genetic mutt.  I have my father's lips, my mother's nose and my grandfather's eyes.  I no longer smoke weed, I'm a fanatic for coffee (Philz Coffee in San Francisco tops the list) and I remain an obsessive Lakers fan. (6" x 8", black ink print) (original sketch by Gabrielle) (reference photo by Kevin Smith)