I've crossed the parking lot of mediocrity, walked through the lobby of the absurd and entered the theater of the ridiculous...While I've vowed to keep my politics personal, sometimes I just can't help myself so I'll post linkage to check -- should you choose to see how far the rabbit hole goes...Remember: get into the living of this life, get involved and don't forget to write it all down somewhere. Bob's your uncle...
...this piece was written earlier in the morning...take your time, follow all the linkage and see where the rabbit hole goes...
...man, I'm getting tired of waking up mornings with my skin leaking...I should stop sleeping with talk radio on but that shite's like crack...I bolted up out of REM sleep this morning while subconsciously absorbing the Bill Press Show when I heard about the Senate's overwhelming support of separating Iraq into three regions...why do I care, you ask?
...ever since Joe Lieberman (pictured above in a pic that looks like he's about to swap spit with the POTUS) dropped the "Going Independent-bomb" back in February,because of the DNC's stance on sending another 21,500 troops into the combat, he's turned into a sabre-rattling arse; began acting like a hand puppet/ mouthpiece for the GOP...something along the lines of Willie Tyler and Lester or, better still, Wayland Flowers and Madame (pictured below with some of the dancers who used to appear with them on those old episodes of solid Gold back in the day)...
...I get a little dispeptic every time I see/ hear him deliver one of those tight-lipped, terse-mandibled "Joe-mentum", stay the course speeches cheerleading towards the right on why it would behoove us to keep shoveling our dough down that Mesopotamian money-hole...he too had a role in last nights terror-sweat and according to the verbiage I found in the LA Times...
"The White House reacted tersely, noting that the measure conditions the policy change on the agreement of Iraqis. "The amendment recognizes that Iraqis will be the ones that make decisions about their political future," National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said in a statement. 'It also reiterates the importance of bottom-up reconciliation.'In the Senate, Biden's proposal has attracted far more Republican support than any previous Democratic plan, but it will have no practical effect unless it pressures the president or Iraqis to change course. Senate Democrats last week failed three times to overcome GOP filibusters of measures designed to more forcefully change the course of U.S. policy in Iraq, including two that would have mandated a withdrawal."
...I still try to retain a modicum of optimism, though, while ignorning what sometimes seems to hang over my shoulders like a cloud of impending doom and gloom...a little hope, if you like..especially when I read news stories that begin like this:
"An Oregon judge on Wednesday ruled that two provisions of the Patriot Act violated the U.S. Constitution's protection against unlawful searches and seizures." ...continued on Reuters...now that's a little good news, ain't it?
...maybe the worm will turn and more of us will get the proverbial zap on their heads before the culmination of the 2008 election cycle...but, as I've said before in one of many of my self-styled Letters to Americans... I won't hold my breath, either...
...I've ranted on here before about my views on how the American public does itself a disservice when they don't demand better from their media outlets but lately it's become plainer to see that that is not a one way street that the American braintrust travels on...I posted a link to this for one of my readers elsewhere...I'll admit that the images can get a little ham-handed but I was shooting for the President's vox for this post...too, I thought I'd slap it on here because, to be honest, I think these words from JFK bear repeating...especially in lieu of what's been taking place on the world stage for the last couple days...press play and read along...
JFK speech 1961
"Ladies and gentlemen,
the very word 'secrecy' is repugnant in a free and open society. And we are, as a people, inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago, that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts, far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it.
Even today there is little value in opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating it's arbitrary restrictions. Even today there is little value in ensuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand it's meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment.
That I do not intend to permit to the extent that it's in my control and no official of my administration, whether his rank is high or low, civilian or military, should interpret my words here tonight as an excuse to censor the news, to stifle descent, to cover up our mistakes or to withhold from the press and the public the facts they deserve to know.
For we are opposed, around the world, by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding it's sphere of influence on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly-nit, highly-efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations. It's preparations are concealed, not published. It's mistakes are buried, not headlined. It's descent is silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed.
No president should fear public scrutiny of his program. For from that scrutiny comes understanding, and from that understanding comes support or opposition, and both are necessary. I am not asking your newspapers to support an administration, but I am asking your help in the tremendous task of informing and alerting the American people, for I have complete confidence - - in the response and dedication of our citizens, whenever they are fully informed.
I could not only stifle controversy among your readers, I welcome it. This administration intends to be candor about it's errors, for as a wise man once said: 'An error doesn't become a mistake, until you refuse to correct it'. We intend to accept full responsibility for our errors and we would expect you to point them out when we miss them. Without debate, without criticism no administration and no country can succeed and no republic can survive. That is why the Athenian lawmaker Solon decreed a crime for any citizen to shrink from controversy. And that is why our press was protected by the first amendment. The only business in America specifically protected by the constitution. Not primarily to amuse and entertain, not to emphasize the trivial and the sentimental, not to simply give the public what it wants, but to inform, to arouse, to reflect, to state our dangers and our opportunities, to indicate our crisis and our choices, to lead, mold, educate, and sometimes even anger public opinion.
This means great coverage and analysis of international news, for it is no longer far away and foreign, but close-at-hand and local. It means greater attention to improve understanding of the news as well as improved transmission and it means finally that government, at all levels, must meet it's obligation to provide you with the fullest possible information outside to narrowest limits of national security.
And so it is to the printing press, to the recorder of man's deeds, the keeper of his conscious, the carrier of his news that we look for strength and assistance.
Confident that with your help man will be what he was born to be: free and independent."
Janeane Garofalo: Still One of My Favorite Broads...
...a decade and change before Disney dropped Ratatouille I was into Janeane Garofalo...I think I started falling for her in Reality Bites when she played Vickie-- a chick with convictions; stood for what she believed in...and still knew who in the hell Willona Woods from Good Times was...since I've moved to California, I've run into some of the cast from that particular film while doing the writing thing-- like Ethan "crustache" Hawke (in still below with co-star Janeane ) and even Matt "the forehead" Dillon but Garofalo's the one I've always wanted to have a sit down with and shoot the shite about current affairs and books...hell, she even pulled off a cameo at the end of Pulp Fiction...
...this lady is probably why I dig on brainy brunette broads with big mouths who wear pointy glasses and usually have something to say...Garofalo's been burned at the stake for speaking her mind but she didn't just step off the stage at open mic night in the Bryn Mawr student union...she's got some big ideas that she uses her comedic chops to convey...she's earned her mumpin' bones first doing stand up, then acting and now, a mixture of the two...
...when it's all said and done, I think a lot of people will say they were down from the beginning...like those fuckers who say they liked the Buzzcocks long before Ghost World came out...I used to love her and Sam Seder's talk show on Air America...then it got pulled...but it was funny and I was one of the early bloggers on that show's hell raising earlier threads (BlayznSddlz, son)...check my girl out tearing Faux News' Brian Kilmeade a new one a couple of years ago, the February before the war in Iraq was initiated and, well, you see what we've wrought...Peaches...
...here she is speaking on one of my favorite HBO series: Rome...
...here she is calling Bill Maher out...a couple of nights ago for toe-ing the line on the low-low...
...later, breaking down Directive 17 and the "Mission Accomplished" ethos on another segment in that same show...see, put her in an environment, not in the middle of a gaggle of brainwashed brownshirts on Fox hell bent on shouting her down but one that's open to new ideas, alternate ways of thinking and she's 'bout it-'bout it...go' on, girl...
...and, finally, my favorite from this appearance...how Colin Powell, somebody I actually HAVE met... could've changed history...and didn't!!!...
...(this was written about 4:45 AM this morning)...my eyeballs popped open an hour before the alarm went off for some reason...and I'm rested...almost TOO rested...sheiße, son...what I'm feeling is akin to what Andrew "Large" Largeman felt like when he was walking through LAX on meds while taking a trip back home to Jersey in the film Garden State...been there before...all of this reminded me of when I covered that flick as a favor for a journo friend who wanted to go out of town with her boyfriend that week, she called me at my day gig making "purty-please-with-sugar-on-top" sounds, so I caved and went over to the Fox Lot to check the last screener as that weekend I'd have to interview Zach Braff and there's nothing worse than talking to talent about their film that you never got a chance to see (did it once in the salad days and didn't care for the feeling, I recall thinking I was going to get called on the carpet but I never was)...
...the piece I ended up doing was on Natalie Portman as the Garden State junket went off without a hitch and I hooked my homebiscuit up with her out-of-state booty call...I even got pointed to some tunage that I ordinarily wouldn't have checked at the time as I didn't really vibe on the Shins' stuff at the time. Zach's use of the tune "New Slang" during his directorial debut on the film pulled my coat...which brings me back to right now, 6AM, staring at the ceiling; smoking cigarettes and watching Captain Kangaroo as it were...which is when I'd be getting up ordinarily...damn, there goes the alarm clock...back on schedule, I guess...every now and again I'll just wake up of the middle of the night/ early morning when all of a sudden a thread of thought takes hold and I just start writing something...this has been one of them...and now, time to make the donuts...
...Om namaha, Shivaya...that's a Buddhist chant that loosely means: Greetings to the person/ soul that I am capable of becoming...I recite it sometimes while I'm looking in the mirror shaving...I've been using it a lot lately...that gig I went to downtown last week was a bust...they didn't think I was "the material" for working in a law firm...so I continued ghost writing in one of my cafes and the guy I'm penning it for is digging on the direction I'm taking it which is cool...but I need more loot than this to keep the rain off my head while I wait for those people back in New York to get it together...
...So I wrote and wrote and re-wrote and edited all day yesterday and, just before the sun went down, I got a call with an offer for another gig over at one of the major studios to expedite this Web-related project which, although won't last as long as the law firm editing gig, would pay a grip more $crilla than I would've if I were working with that fancy-pantsed lot down in the finance district...a couple of minutes ago I got the call back and ...I'm in there, son! I start on Monday...The ladies who interviewed me were much more laid back than those two twitchy tossers with the sticks in their keysters and we got right down to brass tacks without all of that alpha male posturing...it was refreshing...I just shot on over to the lot and acted like myself, no fuss no muss (and yes, I wore the Blerd glasses again)...
...Om namaha, Shivaya...things work themselves out...I think once I finish re-reading James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room, love to backtrack on the classics, I'll do a re-read of another fave: Hermann Hesse's Siddhārtha which follows the life of Siddhārtha Gautama, the Brahmin Prince who eventually rescinded the cordoned life of luxury after witnessing how his subjects really lived outside the castle walls which led him on a journey that would ultimately take him to the the Sri MahaBodhi, the great Bhodi Tree which, after reaching Enlightenment, The Awakened One sat in front of for a week, while staring at it in unblinking gratitude...the temple that's there now was built much later...it's all good...I don't claim to be a Buddhist by any stretch but I definitely do dig on some of the messages and try to apply them in everyday life as much as I can...I've been cool with The Enlightened One's story for a minute...and have stated as much... the latter has helped me wriggle through a truckload of scrapes while as I work on solving my Saṃsāra...Om namah, Shivaya...that's word...it's funny how things get resolved on their own...work themselves out...and they all eventually do...don't they?
"...I worship the gurus lotus feet. Awakening the happiness of the self revealed.
Beyond comparison, working like the jungle Physician. To pacify loss of consciousness from the Poison of existence. In the form of a man up to the shoulders. Holding a conch, discus and sword. Thousand headed, white. I bow respectfully...
...it's been crazy hot for the past week and change...which started me thinking about global warming and how it seems to be getting hotter and drier every year...a couple of days ago, tens of thousands of LA County area residents were sitting in the dark and over the weekend, this elderly couple in Studio City died from complications due to the heat...that was a bummer to hear...what a way to go...I was listening to a talk radio show and one of the hostesses mentioned that she was out of it because the power was out in portions of the Hills as well...a single crocodile tear ran down my cheek, like Iron Eyes Cody on the side of a littered highway as I thought..."poor baby...don't you have one of those platinum covered generators that David Cross was talking about on his It's Not Funny album?"Heat makes me cynical and snippy as hell if you haven't figured that out yet...I'd forgotten about being back in the south and how that humidity made you want to choke people...but, still, I'm buggin' out...I'M BUGGIN' OUT!!!
...this heat-induced train of thought brought me to all the latest talks of infrastructure and the lack thereof, as most of our resources are being poured into that Mesopotamian black hole...there's people out there who think that things like taking care of bridges, interstates, the power grid and other functions that have been taken care of by government agencies with our tax dollars, should be privatized (done by businesses who'd no doubt be in it to earn a profit and would half-ass it up to ensure they'd be needed in the future)...that dog don't hunt...look at what's been wrought whenever market-driven corporate enterprises have been used as a stop-gap solution...like, say, all those war profiteers we hear about all the time...oh, they're out there...I met one in the library a couple of weeks ago, this old, Elmer Fudd-lookin' cat dressed like somebody's hayseed grandpa and though he was nice enough (a trifle TOO interested in what I was doing for my trastes, you'd never think he had his fingers crossed in hopes that we'd cross the border and go into the Persian theater...which would be a windfall for his little company-- a very high creep-out factor, there. I've been going elsewhere ever since...was kind of afraid to even bring it up here considering the political climate...but that's another story for another time...
"In the summer of 2000 a drought in the North West states reduced the amount of hydroelectric power that was available to California, though at no point during the crisis was California's sum of [actual electric-generating capacity]+[out of state supply] less than demand. Rather, California's energy reserves were low enough that during peak hours the private industry which owned power-generating plants could effectively hold the State hostage by shutting down their plants for "maintenance" in order to manipulate supply and demand. These critical shutdowns often occurred for no other reason than to force California's electricity grid managers into a position where they would be forced to purchase electricity from other suppliers who could charge astronomical rates. Even though these rates were semi-regulated, the companies (which included Enron and Reliant Energy) controlled the supply of natural gas as well."**
...I was on the east coast during the California Energy Crisis during the summer of 2000...when the Golden State, strapped for electricity, got fleeced out of hundreds of millions of dollars by out-of-state energy concerns like Enron...I followed the story as it unfolded from the other side of the country and thought to myself...somebody's head is gonna roll..turns out, it would be Gray Davis' dome that would be politically severed...he was voted out of office and ushered in the rule of "Der Governator"...although the energy market was predominantly privatized already, there were laws in place that kept these private holdings from running roughshod over the consuming public, deregulation ceded guard duty of the proverbial hen house to the foxes; some thought that the corporate price gauging would've never been able to take place if California hadn't unanimously loosened up on restrictive Energy laws a few years from both sides of the aisle prior under the administration of Governor Pete Wilson (R) who was long gone by the time the lights went out in 2000...crooks like Ken Lay had found an open window, climbed a ladder, scuttled inside like the slimeball he is and then kicked the ladder away...
"Utilities were precluded from entering into longer-term agreement that would have allowed them to hedge their energy purchases and mitigate day-to-day swings in prices due to tranisent supply disruptions and demand spikes from hot weather.Then, in 2000, wholesale prices were deregulated, but retail prices were regulated for the incumbents as part of a deal with the regulator, allowing the incumbent utilities to recover the cost of assets that would be stranded as a result of greater competition, based on the expectation that "frozen" would remain higher than wholesale prices. This assumption remained true from April 1998 through May 2000.Energy deregulation put the three companies that distribute electricity into a tough situation. Energy deregulation policy froze or capped the existing price of energy that the three energy deliveries could charge. Deregulating the producers of energy did not lower the cost of energy. Deregulation did not encourage new producers to create more power and drive down prices. Instead, with increasing demand for electricity, the producers of energy charged more for electricity. The producers used moments of spike energy production to inflate the price of energy [5]. In January 2001, energy producers began shutting down plants to increase prices"**
..."Recession", says the wind...how soon we forget...or have we really...times are a lot tougher now than they were seven years ago. I was reminded of this a few weeks ago when Wal Mart announced that their earnings were in a down turn and shortly after that The Dow dropped 200 points which got my and the finance sector's skin leaking...the Fed has since infused tens of billions of cash into the market to offset that little hiccup but it can't keep doing that forever...not with the bloated deficit that somebody's going to have to pay the vigorish on at some point...we're tapped out, gentle reader...as a nation we're too broke to shop at fucking Wal-Mart, it seems...streams of finance are drying up all over the place...except for that 1% of people who are living like the cotton is high...the people that mainstream media outlets must be talking about and to but those of us knee-deep in the shite know better-- the first part of the 20s might've been "roaring" with finance sector exuberance ...but it limped into the 30s......whimpering
...I can't call it...this heat is crazy-making and when I don't get my rest, my mind tends to race: the heat got me thinking of natural disasters which got me thinking of the Dust Bowl which lead to images of the setting in John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath, then the Great Depression and what led to it..then economics and the situation that we're in right now; the eminent housing/ real estate bust all of which brings me back to where I live and the heat wave...see the logic?...as I type this, there's still 25,000 plus people still sitting in the dark all over the Southland-- 400,000 people's power has been disturbed at some point in the past week and based on the transitive laws of nature and probability, if it doesn't cool down soon, my card's gonna get pulled too... The thing is, they were predicting rain last week at one point....I even recall waking up on one of those sultry nights, my arms bear hugging a fan under the windows and hearing thunder; seeing lightning bolts...but the water never came so I thought I'd bitch about it a little, like I am now...I'll try to keep doing the right thing, however, no matter how far up the mercury rises...it could be worse going for a brother, to quote the godfather of Macroeconomics, John Maynard Keynes, "In the long run, we are all dead"...quite...I wonder if that ever entered the minds of those two oldsters just before they expired...
...I've been getting in touch with my inner cave man while sitting in the stultifying heat that's been hovering over town like a veil of hostility...it's brutal, my A.C.'s non existent, so I've been working out of library and at cafes but today, its so fucking hot, that I don't feel like moving...so I laid in bed for a couple of hours listening to ethereal sounds like the ones found on the Greek electro-composer Vangelis' Themes album while reading The Mammoth Hunters by Jean M. Auel...tunes like "Chung Kuo" capture the mood...
The book, the third in her Earth's Children series, is set on the coasts and steppes of the pre-historic European continent during the 10,000 year interstitial (warming trend in the climate) that occurred during the last Ice Age (that ended about 25,000 years ago). It follows the young girl, Ayla who, after being adopted by a clan of Neanderthals as an orphaned child, is raised, taught to be a medicine woman, forcibly inseminated by a Neanderthal man who despises her for being Homo Sapien and then gets handed her bearskin wrap and cast out of their cave for learning to use weapons; hunt (which women of the clan were not allowed to do). She got the hook for pretty much exemplifying traits that would eventually put our species at the top of the evolutionary food chain, heralding the end of the less adaptive Neanderthaler model-- there's a great scenario in Clan of the Cave Bear (the first in the series that was turned into a film starring Daryl Hannah back in the 80s) where she accidentally ingests a double dose of some prehistoric peyote and sees the future, the modern age...the film's ok, I guess but it doesn't do the book one iota of justice...but I'm looking back with jaded, post Matrix/ iMax eyeballs...
...at any rate, girlfriend has a death curse thrown her way and is shunned by the Neanderthals, so she leaves her half-breed baby with her sister (the birth-daughter of the woman who took her in) and strikes out on her own. She eventually finds a small, isolated cave far away from the clan on the coast and at the edge of the continental steppes...the valley of the horses, as it were which the second book was named. Alone in the valley, her survival skills kick in ( the same instincts that she was told never to pursue but, like ornery humans chicks tend to be, did so anyhow). She starts to hoard food and hunt in preparation for the rapidly approaching winter. Too, she domesticates a foal , which had never been considered or attempted, after capturing its mother in a pit trap for meat...she did so not to make it a pack animal but to have some other living thing around...for company and unconditional friendship. Later, she learns to speak words again -- Neanderthals spoke with sign language and grunts-- by a man named Jondolar who she nurses back to health after he's mauled by the mate of a cave lion she raised-- don't ask, get the book, son...
...when Jondolar's health is back up to snuff, he urges Ayla to continue on with him as before the cave lion attack (!) he was on his journey back to his homelands which lie far away, across a mile high glacier (!!), in the north...she grudgingly acquiesces because she's fallen for a man of "the Others" (what the people who raised her called homo sapiens, people like us)...the second book ends with the two fording a river on horses (again, don't ask) and crossing paths with a tribe of people who called themselves Mamutoi...Mammoth Hunters...that's the book I'm reading again right now to keep my mind off the sweltering sump...cool schieße, if told by a scribe with the expository minerals and Auel, although sometimes long-in-the-tooth with her prose, has got the hazel nuts to pull it off-- and as an added bonus, the frosty descriptions of Ayla's chilled environment has helped suspend my imagination and get my mind off of this drawer-drenching humidity that has precipitated into a body-shaped sweat-angel that has my back glued to the sheets on my bed...(I started typing this with the MacBook on my stomach, BTW)...
...I've always liked books like this, where man's (in this case, woman's) wits are taken to task by the forces of nature from Sterling North's Rascal to the dogs 'n cat in The Incredible Journey to Jack London's To Build a Fire (and Call of the Wild ) on up to The Sex Lives of Cannibals : Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific (a super-funny book by J. Marten Troost that should be checked)...I've even slogged it through Moby Dick as a kid, after several attempts at getting through it, to learn about whaling...it's all literary gravy...if you were to ask me, I'd probably encapsulate my thoughts with a cliche of that variety...still, the scenarios inferred in the telling of all those tales made me wonder what I'd do in similar circumstances...
..."You know, ironically enough, back home my dentist's last name was Spalding"...I cackled like a hyena goofed out on skunk weed 'n whippets when Tom Hanks dead-panned that line in Castaway to "Wilson" the volley ball that his character got chatty with while stranded on an island in the far reaches of the Pacific Rim...look at him in that picture, engrossed in a full on back-and-forth with a fuggin' volley ball...good stuff, Shecky...yeah, I'm one of those eight people who actually liked that film...I think I'm jazzed on these kind of books because they speak to something that I've always wondered about: were we to lose all of these electronic/ solar/ gas operated accoutrements that our animal-pelt-wearing pre-historic ancestors managed to survive without for a couple of millennia while packs of hungry beasts chased 'em first around and eventually out of the Serengeti's Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, would we, modern man, make it? You know, with the furry, fanged and ferocious calling all the shots out on the desolate plains of a cold, cruel world...Doubtful...judging from that YouTube of that Teen Miss South Carolina contestant that's making the rounds recently, I'd wager that a huge swath of the current human population would not be here for long...bear food, I call 'em because people like that are the ones you'd hear about walking stupidly into the forest for a picnic...at night...but what do I know?...I'm sittin' here thinking about hunting woolly mammoths and walking across a sky high sheet of bluish-white glacial ice...I might be selling some other kind of crazy when I say it but I do feel a few degrees cooler...that means it's working, I guess...time to put Ayla and the mammoths down and start punching up some more of that book that I'm writing...laters...
Peter Fonda & Ben Foster Get Mean: 3:10 to Yuma (Q&A)
As stated in an earlier post, I got to participate in roundtables with some of the cast of James Mangold's forthcoming western remake of 3:10 to Yuma over at the Regent Beverly Wilshire last week...I posted the session with Russell Crowe and Christian Bale already......and now I will throw on what went down with Peter Fonda and Ben Foster (pictured below)...Peter came in first and we all got rolling and Foster came in a bit later...I don't know if you remember Ben from Six Feet Under or X-Men...but when you see him in Yuma, you'll know who was in command every time the cameras were on Charlie Prince, the hard-ass he plays in the film...he rocked that joint...so did Peter but for different reasons...check it...
Q: So which was it that made you go for the role in this film, the genre or the character?
Peter Fonda: First genre, then character. I'd seen the original 3:10 to Yuma and I didn't have to audition for the part-- I had to prove myself. Which, I guess, is a form of an audition. And I knew a great deal about westerns. I knew that Jim Mangold had not shot a western before but, also, I felt that Cop Land had a bit of a western rhythm to it. For me, a western is a wonderful way of telling a story about us now, without letting anybody know you're doing it. So, getting into that saddle was great because I got to be a part of that-- I did have to prove to Mangold that I wasn't too laconic. [laughs] ...but I still got to play it down and back. And I believe when you're playing a character that's, underneath, low and slow and less intense, you can create more danger with it. And my character, although not in the original motion picture, [helps develop] the character of Ben Wade very well. And, you know, I play the stone-cold killer, so I'm on the same side of the coin [as Ben Wade] but different coins. So, saddling up, I can ride like the wind-- I hate (acting on) horses, no problem, I love westerns. Motorcycles, well, Easy Rider was a western but the motorcycle I rode was more like a phallic symbol-- a horse really doesn't get there...what a horse does to a cowboy is put him right on the ground. A motorcycle does too, bike riding on the road-- it was a pleasure to saddle up for Jim Mangold, director that I really appreciated, and thought I would appreciate, whose work I really appreciated and now I appreciate it more. He was a man of great integrity on the set and, uh--- does that cover the question? [laughs]
Q: You mentioned that a western speaks to how we are now. Could you expound a little bit more on that?
PF: ...it's easy to address these character conflicts, whether its conflicted stuff inside one character or conflicts between two different characters without telling you that you're looking at what's happening today. Now, there's mayhem in the streets today, in Iraq. I mean there, mayhem in the streets of Baghdad, isn't there? So, in a way, we're looking at people who are stone-cold killers, the man who just joined me, Ben Foster, a stone-cold killer [introducing Foster who walks in and takes a seat beside Fonda]...serial killers, I think we've got some over there on both sides of that coin but, that way, we discuss these ethics and problems in today's view and yet with yesterday's viewpoint. And that awares an audience that that's happening which is taken up with the story. But it's entertaining, its later on that you think "that does apply" [to what's going on in the world today]...Ben's heard me say that westerns and science fiction films, really good ones, can also discuss the present but in a disguised way, that truly discusses what's going on in an hour of our lives.
Q: You've directed a couple of westerns, why do you think the genre's fallen out of favor with the wider audience that it once held? Because its tough to even get them off the ground today.
PF: You know what, I don't think westerns have necessarily fallen out of favor with the audiences. I don't think that the filmakers are delivering as good a western as possible. But then you look at Unforgiven, you know, what a cool wester that was...Dances with Wolves...It's not as dead as you think but the big studios don't talk about them because they don't know how to sell them. And they make them, unfortunately, I think for the film makers, for a lesser budget which means you have to do more, for less.
Q: Would you agree also that the calibre of actors that were around when westerns were in the heyday aren't really around as much? We don't have a lot of Waynes or Jimmy Stewarts.
PF: You'd be surprised at what we've got going in terms of actors-- its writers and studios that aren't quite sure about the idiom. But I do know what you mean about, "where are the Randolph Scotts, the Joe McRays and the Gary Coopers...wow, you know, and John Wayne, a terribly under-rated actor-- he was a great actor, I knew where he had to go [inside] to get his characters. And I like Cooper's idea that if you know what you're doing, then you don't have to act. I thought that was very cool. And the western character is a romantic thing but there can be the good/ bad guy romantic thing and there could be the bad/ bad guy romantic thing. [In 3:10 to Yuma] here, you've got I'm a bad/ bad guy, you think I'm good because I'm a Pinkerton protecting the stage coach, whereas Charlie Prince [Ben Foster] is a really bad/ bad guy [laughs]...take it away Ben...
Q: Ben, the writers said that you added a lot to your role that wasn't on the page...do you think so?
Ben Foster: Well, that's very generous. I completely disagree, I mean, I read the script and Charlie started showing up. And it was just re-reading and re-reading and re-reading and the picture becomes a little clearer. And then I just started isolating what he cared about most and what he was willing to do for that. Preparing for it was as simple as going through archival photographs-- western outlaws seemed, to me, like rock stars. And Arianne Phillips, our amazing costume designer, has a rock 'n roll background, so it was very easy to go down that path. I found a very similar leather jacket from that time in a museum, white leather and that, to me, was sort of a glam rock approach. Next were some [wild life] documentaries on wild cats and [watching] how they deal with their prey and...then just listening to the horse. It's amazing how the environment [that you're shooting in] will teach you about the role. It's not so much about constructing it and developing it and saying "look what I made". It's more like "I don't know what this is but I'm after it and...it's over here. I don't know, I don't want you to go "here's this weirdo actor bullshit" [laughs] But that's what it is.
Q: After you wrapped, did you have a hard time leaving behind the Charlie Prince that had grown inside?
BF: He was a terrible character, man. I've said this before but I certainly don't know exactly what I'm doing, when I'm going in-- you're kind of in the dark, in the swamp and you're finding your way....And when you're done with the job, you definitely track some mud into the house. I mean, I'm not going home with this guy every day, so, yeah, it does take some time...I was happy to not kill anybody for a while.
Fonda: I would watch him all day long [with his pistols], drawing them, putting them away [reholstering], twirling them, cross-drawing them...and it's that kind of practice that makes you feel comfortable with it. Because, as Mangold said, in earlier times it was an extension of your arm. I believe that it's also an extension of your character-- how you use it...or don't use it.
Q: Peter, did you have a particular scene that was your favorite...or the most fun to do?
PF: Wow, you know, I don't think about it as "fun". I think, fulfilling, maybe interesting, and I try to make every day that I go to [location] work for me that way...I would've liked to have been in that last scene in Contention because that was incredibly cool action-- this is me as the audience watching it -- in the back of my mind the film maker's like "hmmm, THAT was tasty" but then, the actor inside goes "I got to play a very tasty character too." So, I can't say one way or the other if it was a "fun" scene or...It was a very difficult shoot. I always bitched about the cold but as soon as I hear "action" -- what cold? As soon as "cut"-- aahhh bitchbitch, moanmoan, bitch. So, there wasn't a "fun" moment for me, work is what I have the pleasure of doing. I get paid for it. How many people go to work loving what they have to do? If there's money in the bank and film in the camera, what time do you want me there? If there's no film in the camera and not a lot of money in the bank-- when you see me, I'll be there. So, that love, that I have, is for the work-- any particular moment or day, some are more fun than others, some are more difficult than others but I always got to work.
Q: Was there a difference for you in the reception you got for doing Ulee's Gold as opposed to, say, how Captain America was received?
PF: Well, you know, what's interesting about Ulee's Gold was that all the press said "what a remarkably understated performance that was" and I was like, "where the hell were they when I did Easy Rider?" [laughs] "what an understated role"...as Captain America it was like [in stoner voice]: "Wow. Far out, man...that's beautiful. Here, try some of this." [laughs] and then the last line, the most imperative line of the film, which I loved: "you know what Billy? We blew it"-- I threw that away, now that's an understated performance! [laughs] Ulee Jackson, I got to go places with that, I didn't know where it was going to take me but wow, "understated?" Where were they for Easy Rider?
3:10 to Yuma opens nationally on Friday, September 7th.....
