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meaningful health care legislation in our country's history, he ended the war in Iraq, he rescued the auto industry, he repealed Don't Ask Don't Tell, he stopped torture as a policy, he removed Bin Laden as a threat, he whittled down Al Qaeda, he overhauled our country's food safety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)

Peter Lorre

Peter Lorre was an Austrian-American actor known for playing sinister foreigners. Born Laszlo Lowenstein in 1904 to Jewish parents in present-day Slovakia, Lorre's mom died of food poisoning when he was only four. As a teenager, Lorre was a student of Sigmund Freud in Vienna.

Lorre began acting at age 17 and moved to Berlin where he worked with playwright Bertolt Brecht and composer Kurt Weill. Lorre came to prominence portraying a child killer in Fritz Lang's 1931 German film M. When the Nazis came to power in 1933, they used Lorre's image from M as an example of a "typical Jew" for their anti-semitic film The Eternal Jew. Ironically, Hitler's Minister of Propaganda Josef Goebbels (a fan of Lorre) warned the Jewish Lorre to leave Germany.

Lorre took refuge in Paris then London where he was cast by Alfred Hitchcock in The Man Who Knew Too Much.  Though he spoke little English at the time, Lorre learned his part phonetically.  Hitchcock nicknamed him "The Walking Overcoat" since he rehearsed in a floor length coat no matter the season.  He  moved to Hollywood in 1935 where he roomed with fellow emigre filmmaker Billy Wilder at the Chateau Marmont Hotel.  Lorre and Wilder ate cold Campbell's soup each day to keep from starving.  Lorre took small bit parts until he earned the starring role in the Mr. Moto films playing a Japanese detective.

Lorre became close friends with Humphrey Bogart and the two appeared in five films together.  Though he was married, 44-year old Bogart spent clandestine weekends with Lauren Bacall, 19, at Lorre's ranch.  Lorre helped convince Bogart to marry Bacall with the advice, "Five good years are better than none."

Lorre's on-screen dialogue was always quotable among movie fans.  In Casablanca, his character Ugarte tells Bogart's Rick Blaine, "You know Rick, I have many a friend in Casablanca but somehow, just because you despise me, you are the only one I trust."  In Beat The Devil, written by Truman Capote and John Huston, Lorre utters a classic monologue on the nature of time.  "Time. Time.  What is time?  Swiss manufacture it.  French hoard it.  Americans say it is money.  Hindus say it does not exist.  Do you know what I say?  I say time is a crook."

In 1941, Lorre became a naturalized American citizen.  He was subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee and asked to name anyone suspicious he had met since coming to the United States.  He gave the committee a list of everyone he knew.

After World War II, Lorre's career went downhill and he e began appearing in mediocre horror films and tv game shows. He was the first actor to play a James Bond villain when he portrayed Le Chiffre in a 1954 TV version of Casino Royale. Lorre struggled with gallbladder troubles and became addicted to morphine. Though he ultimately kicked his drug habit he gained hundreds of pounds in a short period.  In 1956, at the funeral of his friend Bela Lugosi, Lorre supposedly asked Vincent Price, "Do you think we should drive a stake through his heart just in case?"

Lorre was married three times and had one daughter. Catherine Lorre gained notoriety for being stopped in her car in Los Angeles in 1977 by the "Hillside Strangler" Kenneth Bianchi.  Bianchi later said he intended to abduct and murder Catherine but he let her go when he learned she was the daughter of Peter Lorre.

In the 90's, Lorre was the inspiration for the character Ren in the cartoon The Ren & Stimpy Show.  He was also the inspiration for the Boo Berry Ghost mascot for General Mills.  Lorre died of a stroke in 1964. Vincent Price read the eulogy at his funeral.  (6" x 6", black ink print)

Grandpa Al

My Grandpa Al was a seminal figure in my life. The youngest of 12 children, he was born in 1913 in Austria-Hungary and came to America at age 2. He was raised in a poor Jewish family and acquired a worldly education on the tough streets of the Bronx. He married young and became a traveling pasta salesman singing Italian songs to his customers.

Tired of east coast winters, he moved his wife and three daughters (my mom included) across country to Los Angeles in 1948. After a failed pretzel business, he opened a liquor store in midtown Los Angeles at the corner of Western Avenue & Pico Boulevard. The store was adjacent to Redd Foxx's nightclub Foxx's and celebrities often came by for Al's barbecue chicken and ribs. Al loved telling the story about the time he almost killed Wilt Chamberlain. It seems Wilt entered the store via the 8-foot high Western entrance for some ribs and left through the 7-foot high Pico door. Being 7 foot 1" tall, Wilt slammed his head on the doorframe and fell to the ground. Al gave Wilt a lifetime supply of barbecue to keep him happy.

In 1977 when I was 14, Grandpa Al gave me my first ever job as a clerk in his liquor store. I'd lived a sheltered life in the suburbs and that summer at Al's store was eye opening. The surrounding area was impoverished and crime-ridden. Two years earlier, Al was robbed twice at gunpoint. Six weeks before I began working, the store was robbed in the middle of the night and half the liquor stock was stolen or destroyed. Al was not intimidated. He'd made it through the 1965 Watts Riots and he considered himself a "tough Jew."

Al gave me lectures about the tricks of his trade. "Never leave more than twenty dollars in the register...Don't open the register until you see the customer's money...If someone asks you a question while the register is open, close the register, then answer the question." He showed me a thin strip of rubber beneath the counter that triggered the silent alarm. He taught me how to spot a counterfeit bill by rubbing the bill against a white piece of paper and looking for a faint green mark. He instructed me to leave a hundred dollars in singles in the fake safe in the storage room while leaving the lion's share of money in the real safe upstairs. He showed me the secret compartment beneath the register where he carried his loaded pistol. "I've never had to use this but if that day comes, I'm ready."

Grandpa Al was also a prankster. One time he decided to teach a lesson to a customer named Clarence who came in every day and stole candy bars. When Clarence entered the store, Al took a foil-wrapped Ex-Lax chocolate bar and inserted it into the outer wrapping of a Kit Kat bar. When Clarence approached, Al left the faux Kit Kat on the counter and walked away. I watched from the storage room as Clarence pocketed the Kit Kat and left. We didn't see him for two weeks. When Clarence finally returned, he looked noticeably pale and lighter. "Where you been, Clarence," my grandpa asked. Clarence's reply was unforgettable. "Man, you wouldn't believe the stuff that's been happening to me."

My grandfather finally sold the store in 1988. Along with my Grandma Stella, they devoted the rest of their life raising money for City of Hope Hospital to help aid children with cancer. This was my grandparents' tribute to their daughter Lita who died of cancer at a young age. Grandpa Al passed away in 1994. He was a beautiful man and I still miss him. (5" x 7", black ink print)