Post by darkstar2 on Jul 21, 2008 16:16:50 GMT
A PERFECT DAY AT THE GYPSY WAGON
an interactive "oral history" project
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Starring Jim Morrison, Ray Manzarek, John Ptak, Richard Blackburn and several other alumni and friends of the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television circa 1966
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"Keep 'em coming people. We get enough quotes, we'll have a book!"
---Richard Blackburn
This page in an Internet-only oral history supplement to an article that appeared in the Spring, 2007 issue of Point of View, the magazine of the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television.
www.tft.ucla.edu/pov/pdf/pov_spring2007.pdf
Follow the link and go to page 10 to read the original article about Jim Morrison's days as a film student at UCLA.
The site is intended to be a repository of memories for people who were students here at the time.
The web architects, Angela McGregor and Herlich Quintos Aguiluz, have set up a very cool and simple interface that allows the information to be changed almost at a moment’s notice.
So we invite anyone who knows better or who has something interesting to add to let us know right away at POV World Headquarters. As alumnus David Thompson has observed: "The cartoon/POV Web Site seems to be the 'Wikipedia' of the Mid-Sixties UCLA Film School."
The ground rules are few: We will put up pretty much everything we get, barring material that seems to us to be scandalous or defamatory in the context of the mid-1960s. If any person requests changes to a section of the text that relates to themselves, those changes will be made immediately, no questions asked.
There is a long way to go. "There are others that I wish Dick had got in the drawing," says the original instigator of the article, John "Jack" Ptak. "Maybe we could say that they're behind the tree....Bill Norton, Warren Entner, Steve North, John Rubenstein, Diana Gould, Kirshna Shaw, Louis Stouman, Dan McLaughlin, Peter Belsito, John Young..."
All are welcome.
MOST RECENT UPDATES:
13. Steve Wax - 09-09-07 (proposing a Gypsy Wagon reuinion!)
20. Ina Massari - 09-09-07 (her first-person account of The Doors club debut)
28. Heather Folsom - 07/01/07
13. Richard Blackburn on Steve Wax - 06/29/07
13. Steve Wax - 06/28/07
20. Ina Massari - 06/18/07
30. Corey Fisher - 06/01/07
47. Richard Blackburn on Dennis Jakob - 06/01/07
57. Richard Blackburn on Ben Jackson - 05/31/07
34. David Thompson- 05/30/07
LETTERS
From Sixties-era students unaccountably omitted from the drawing, and assorted
fellow-travelers. To Date:
Alan Barker on Warren Hamilton -- 06/03/07
Jill Place (Gluck) -- written 05/05/07, posted 05/31/07.
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1. RALPH SARGENT MA ’65
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2. SAL BRUNO
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3. CHRIS WOOD
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4. JOHN PTAK ’67
...claims to not have smoked a pipe since this drawing was made—or to have used his collegiate nickname “Jack”, even though the opportunities offered by that moniker would seem limitless for someone who was a High-Powered Hollywood Agent for 35 years, mostly representing directors and independent films, going from ICM to William Morris to CAA before launching his own consulting company, Arsenal, in 2006. Worked his way through UCLA by running campus film series, as well as off-campus programming for the Laemmle Theatres, hence the film can in hand. Promoted the Royce Hall Student Film screenings for the students in 1967 when they took over the screenings from the faculty. <more>
5. GLORIA KATZ ’69
Katz is the hugely influential screenwriter and producer who, with her husband, non-Bruin director-husband Willard Huyck, launched her film career by creating a low-budget horror film now officially known as Dead People---though we much prefer its discontinued original title, Revenge of the Screaming Dead. She is even more famous, of course, for the films she worked on for George Lucas, including American Graffiti and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom..
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6. RICHARD BLACKBURN ’66
The screenwriter best known for his work on Paul Bartel’s Eating Raoul is currently working on a screenplay about his days at UCLA, an undertaking inspired partly by the “intense nostalgia” of reading Ray Manzarek’s book Light My Fire: My Life With The Doors. (see entry # 44 below).
For lovers of distinctive genre cinema Blackburn is also revered for his only feature film as a writer-director, Lemora: A Child’s Tale of the Supernatural (1973), a fan-favorite erotic vampire tale that was finally released on DVD in 2004 by Synapse Films. Blackburn also I also wrote and directed "Miss May Dusa," an episode of George Romero's TV series Tales From The Darkside.
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7. ALICE BAIRD JOHNSON
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8. BOB PORFIRIO MA ’66
Blackburn: “After helping to curate the first comic book exhibition in America at Yale, Bob Porfirio wrote on film noir for several books and journals. He is currently a realtor in Southern California."
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9. BRUCE HALL
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10. JERRY HOWARD and his girlfriend LYNN
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11. JOHN CUTIA
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12. BILL KERBY MFA ’69
Screenwriter Kerby is best known for his work on Jack Starret’s cult classic crime spree action film The Dion Brothers aka The Gravy Train (1974), Hal Needham’s action comedy Hooper (1978) and Mark Rydell’s Janet Joplin bio-pic The Rose (1979).
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13. STEVE WAX and his girlfriend STEPHANIE
Steve Wax is a partner in a new branded entertainment company
Campfire. He produced independent films after leaving UCLA and was
a founding member of the landmark San Francisco collective, Cine Manifest.
After working in LA as a producer for a time he moved to Boston to produce
a feature, The Little Sister and started the production company, Chelsea
Pictures, which is about to celebrate its 20th year. Steve has three children,
Rose, 8, Gabriel 14, and Jessica, 29, and lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Steve Wax writes:
"I'm in the bottom left next to Bill Kerby in Dick's great picture.
And I remember this...
"Felix Venable waking up during a Gary Essert film orgy showing of
King Kong, and screaming "Kong's Dong is bigger than Fay Ray!"
When I went to Louis Steuman (sp?) to ask him to sign my draft
deferment form, he tried to convince me to go to Vietnam to
experience "my generation." I got Bill Adams to sign it instead.
14. CARL SCHULTZ
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15. RON RALEY and PATRICIA RALEY
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16. MARTIN BONDELL
Blackburn: “Martin Bondell and his wife Julie founded the first ‘art’ postcard company, fotofolio, in NYC. Their cards are in most museums.”
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17. STANTON KAYE
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18. HUGH GRAUEL MA ’67
Popular teacher Hugh Grauel is a professor emeritus on the faculty of the School of Theater, Film and Television.
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19. JUNE STEEL MA ’67
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20. INA MASSARI
. A letter from Ina Massari:
"You can imagine how tickled I was to find myself in Richard Blackburn's illustration. My goodness, it certainly broguth back a flood of sweet and funny memories. What a unique class that was ...and what great teachers we had. James Blue [59]...Steve Larner [58]...Claude Jutra (from the Canadian Film Board).
"It really was a very special time to study film at UCLA...and it really felt like a "film school---so Bohemian in those quonset huts. Looking at the names and faces so cleaverly captured by Blackburn it is easy to see what a fabulous place in time we all experienced. Our leader Colin Young was so cool; we all loved him.
"Would love to have a chat with my fellow classmates but, alas, no computer."
Massari also sent along an article that appeared in the in-house publication NBC Newsline in August 1968, when she was named film editor for the network's Huntley-Brinkley Reoprt <more>
21. HUGH GREY
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22. BOB FERN & THE STUDENTS OF THE LYCEE DE LOS ANGELES
Fern taught at the French language school in Beverly Hills and was the producer and co-writer of Richard Blackburn’s Lemora.
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23. GARY SCHLOSSER MA ’75
“First of all,” Schlosser writes, “we had screenings at the end of every semester. There were literally hundreds of student films shown each year. Some good, some bad, many never finished. Do I remember Jim's film? No. But then, I can't even remember the ones I made myself. But I will tell you what I do remember…”<more>
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24 JOHN QUICK
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25. MARTIN Z. SMITH
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26. JEAN-PIERRE GEUENS ’66, MA ’66, and TINA HORNISHER GEUENS ’66, MFA ’70
Jean-Pierre “was nicknamed ‘Johnny Guns’ by [classmate] Dave Thompson [# 34],” Blackburn writes. Whether or not Geuens is still shooting from the hip he is now a respected film professor and the author of the highly regarded book Film Production Theory (SUNY, 2000).
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27. TOM DE SIMONE
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28. HEATHER FOLSOM ’68, MD
Heather Folsom writes:
"First of all what a great cartoon!
"Secondly, wow, what a thrill to see the names and faces of people who loom large in my panoply of the gods. Pretty much every person I recognized on sight and found the caricatures eerily accurate.
"Thirdly, I saw the pic which turned out to be me--thought at first it was Tina Hornischer for sure. Pleased to discover that my many hours cutting classes and being hyperactive at the Gypsy Wagon were not in vain.
"Minor Narcissistic Update: last name spelled FolsOm and though it's true I'm a physician & psychiatrist, I'm more identified with my work as a fiction writer--two books published by Cadmus Editions, third to come out in April 08.
"Thank you so much for the e-mail. Please also send a thank you Dick Blackburn for the cartoon and gracias to Steve Wax for archival assiduity: you once showed me miniature worlds you created--pleased to know that part of you remains engaged in this endeavor.
"xxHeather"
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29. PHIL O’LENO ’65
(See entry 41 below).
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30. COREY FISHER
Richard Blackburn: “Corey Fischer, while a contestant on The Dating Game won a date to Bangkok with Hair star Lynn Kellogg. He later worked in a Yiddish Theatre Company.”
Corey Fisher: "Imagine my surprise opening this site and--wham--there's Blackburn's brilliant shaky/caffeinated visual rant, not unlike the extended narratives he'd launch, in which he'd pull off spot-on impersonations of many of those pictured here. <more>
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31. RITCHIE VERCHEK
Blackburn: “After keeping a notorious 60's crash pad in Venice, Verchek returned to NYC. He is a public defender.”
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32. JIM MORRISON ’65
Ptak recalls Morrison pre-Doors as an aspiring actor with a James Dean fixation, hence the invariable outfit of tight jeans, short hair, and a pack of cigarettes rolled up in the tee shirt sleeve. Blackburn questions the Dean angle, but adds: “Jim was fascinated by male hustlers, though. That’s why he was the cameraman on Ron Raley’s student film Patient 411.”.
33. MARLENE RASNIK
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34. DAVE THOMPSON ’68
David Thompson: “After UCLA I worked for over 10 years in film making, primarily as a film editor: educational films, low budget features, experimental shorts, documentaries, theatrical shorts and lastly, TV commercials. The last job I worked on, just before I burned out on the film business, was a Tree Sweet orange juice commercial, featuring...OJ Simpson! <more>
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35. BILL ADAMS
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36. KATHY MILLER
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37. BOB MURRAY
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38. CATHERINE
The friendly woman who ran the Gypsy Wagon. Known only by her first name to most of the students who partook of her haute cuisine.
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39. WARREN HAMILTON
“The Warren Hamilton in the cartoon was my dad,” writes Warren Hamilton, Jr. ’59. “He was senior scene technician in the motion picture division (as it was called then) from l957 to ‘77-‘78. That is why he has a hammer in his hand [in the cartoon], because he was always building the sets for student films. He passed away in 2002 at the age of 96 and was still going strong, building a house in Joshua Tree."<more>
40. COLIN YOUNG ’58
Our alumni sources are unanimous in asserting that the professor who critiqued Morrison’s student film on that fateful evening was nothing like the sneering snob portrayed by director Oliver Stone in his film The Doors. Young was a leading figure in documentary and ethnographic film whose students have included cinematographer Joan Churchill (at UCLA) and director Nick Broomfield. In 1970 he returned to his England to found the National Film School (now the National Film and Television School.) The NFTS web site takes up the story:<more>.
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41. FELIX VENABLE ’65
A piece of history from a Doors web site:
"1966 (Date approximate) - Jim and his friends Felix Venable and Phil O'Leno [see # 29 above] head off to Mexico on a quest to find ‘true Indians.’ Inspired by the writings of UCLA professor Carlos Castaneda, the three hope to be initiated into the spirits of peyote. En route, Jim jumps out of the car at an intersection, kisses a Mexican-American woman, and jumps back in the car as they speed off down the road. Jim's good-natured comedic intentions are lost on the woman's male companions who, enraged, run to their car and give chase, eventually catching up with the three friends and beating them up pretty badly."
According to a UCLA database, Venable is now deceased.
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42. ED BROKAW.
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43. JOHN DE BELLA MA ’65
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44. DOROTHY FUGIKAWA and RAY MANZAREK
She was the star of his student films, now his wife of over three decades. He was the co-founder, with Jim Morrison, and the keyboard player of The Doors from 1965 to 1973. Manzarek responded by e-mail to our query about the cartoon: <more>
45. JOAN CHURCHILL ’68
TFT alumnus Churchill, ASC, was named Kodak Cinematographer in Residence in 2006. She is one of the world’s leading documentary cinematographers, having worked on such award-winning films as Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer, Soldier Girls, Asylum, Lily Tomlin. Bearing Witness and Shut Up and Sing, Barbara Kopple’s film bout the country music group Dixie Chicks. When the Residency was announced the School issued a press release that said, among other things: <more>
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46. PAUL FERRARA
…became one of the chief photographers of The Doors. He also directed the unfinished feature film HWY: An American Pastoral (1969), in which Morrison continued to pursue his dream of film stardom.
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47. DENNIS JAKOB ’61
Richard Blackburn: " Dennis Jakob was one of the Department.'s most original '60s students, given to wildeyed provocative statements ("'Off the Pigs' is worthless. The accountants know where the money is. Kill them and the entire system will collapse!") and eccentric film projects (the Moonshot intercut with the voyage of Vasco Da Gama).. He was a confirmed Eisensteinian montage devotee, edited the LSD sequences in Roger Corman's The Trip, and accompanied Jim Morrison on a trip down to Tijuana. He moved to San Francisco to become a part time employee of Francis Ford Coppola, claiming to have hectored him into making a movie of Heart Of Darkness by Joseph Conrad which, of course, eventually became Apocalypse Now."
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48. PALMER SCHOPPE
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49. PETER READ MA ’64
Blackburn: “Peter had a memorably unsettling role at the start of Francis Ford Coppola’s first feature Dementia 13.
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50. JON DRURY ’60, MA ’64
Blackburn: “Jon Drury (now deceased), was the brother of James Drury (TV's The Virginian). He was the self proclaimed "most unsuccessful actor in Hollywood". Possessing a stentorian voice and losing his hair at 13 years of age caused casting agents to assume he was a midget.”
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51. TOM STOVERN ’64, MA ’67
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52. STERLING NORRIS ’64, JD ’67
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53. DIANE BERGHOF
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54. GARY ESSERT ’64
Portrayed here as a cloud of dust because he was such a whirlwind of energy, Essert had a huge long-term impact on the experience of moviegoing in Los Angeles over the past three decades. With his professional and life partner Gary Abrahams founded first Filmex, in 1971, and the American Cinematheque, in 1984. Essert and Abrahams died within a few months of each other in 1993, from complications of HIV/AIDS. <more>
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55. ALEX FUNKE ’66
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56. DAVE ARKIN ’64
Blackburn: “After his biggest part as Peter Seller's hippie brother in I Love You Alice B. Toklas, David landed one of the three leads on TV's Storefront Lawyers, before becoming an unofficial member of The Robert Altman Stock Company. He appeared in M*A*S*H (along with Corey Fischer), Nashville, Popeye and The Long Goodbye.
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57. BEN JACKSON
Richard Blackburn: " Ben Jackson (now deceased) was a '66 faculty member and filmmaker. As my group's supervisor his terrific enthusiasm for my undergrad project 'Batman Meets Mr. Fizz' helped me stay focused when others thought I'd gone off the rails. It was the first undergrad film with dialogue. Later, Ben cast me along with character actor John Dehner's daughter in an improvised film he made (originally) called 'Hegel's Pennies' and later , I believe,'Torpedo Rocket.'"
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58. STEVE LARNER.
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59. JAMES BLUE ’46
A legendary experimental and documentary filmmaker who was also a Rice University professor and the founding director of the Rice Media Center and the Southwest Alternate Media Project (SWAMP).
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UPDATES WELCOME! Drop us a line at POV World Headquarters.
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OBLIGATORY DISCLAIMER: This moderated web site is intended as a meeting place where alumni of the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television can freely share their memories. The cartoon and the accompanying text represent the views of the individual creators and participants only. They do not represent the views of any employee of UCLA, the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television or Point of View magazine.
----------[Reunion proposal after the jump!]
Steve writes:
Ron Raley is in New York and we of course talked about A Perfect Day at the Gypsy Wagon and the Perfect Day website. We both agreed that we need to pull off a 60's UCLA Film School reunion soon, maybe call it the Gypsy Wagon Reunion. I'd suggest that the event take place in the early Spring when Los Angeles is in full flower. Maybe we'll try and take a picture of all of us in front of the Perfect Day cartoon, a sort of re-staging, like the Perfect Day in Harlem of course. Meanwhile, how do we get more people to post to the site. Lotsa holes there. I bare my soul and meager, meager response...
[The School would smile upon such an undertaking, and we would be offer whatever help we can. Drop us a line at POV World Headquarters (dchute@tft.ucla.edu) and let us know what you have in mind!]
Steve Wax is a partner in a new branded entertainment company
Campfire. He produced independent films after
leaving UCLA and was a founding member of the landmark
San Francisco collective, Cine Manifest. After working in LA
as a producer for a time he moved to Boston to produce a feature,
The Little Sister, and started the production company, Chelsea Pictures,
which is about to celebrate its 20th year. Steve has three children,
Rose, 8, Gabriel 14, and Jessica, 29, and lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Steve Wax writes:
"I'm in the bottom left next to Bill Kerby in Dick's great picture.
And I remember this...
"Felix Venable waking up during a Gary Essert film orgy showing of
King Kong, and screaming "Kong's Dong is bigger than Fay Ray!"When I went to Louis Steuman (sp?) to ask him to sign my draft
deferment form, he tried to convince me to go to Vietnam to
experience "my generation." I got Bill Adams to sign it instead.
"Lew Alcinder (Kareem Abdul Jabbar) walking thru the student union,
towering over everyone.
"Ansel Adams shooting stills of us in the old sound stage as we shot a
student film. He'd been hired by UCLA to create a brochure about the
school. We were floored that he was doing this, not having yet
learned about the need to earn a living. Wonder where those shots are...
"Ralph Sergeant, a tech genius, shooting with a three strip
Technicolor camera somebody had donated to the school. It was as big
as a refrigerator. I remember one line a film of Ralph's, "She left
in a yellow huff." Very odd guy, Ralph.
A burly Hungarian student director who'd escaped the Russian invasion
to come to UCLA, pacing in front of our whole class in 3H, trying to
find the words to pitch his second year project. After a long, long
wait, he open as follows: "Vee begin with the closeup of an island"
We roared with laughter and he never finished. But he shot the film
which included Russian Cossacks tossing babies on fires.
"Dropping by USC, home of the Professionals, and meeting George
Lucas, as we both had won some sort of award. He later introduced me to
Francis Coppola, who I then worked for briefly during the first
incarnation of American Zoetrope.
"I remember acting like a complete shit towards the faculty while
leading a student uprising in the mid 60's. Despite my bad behavior
(or I suspected because of it) they gave me a $1,000 scholarship
(donated by Bill Friedkin as I remember) and I bought the best car of
my life, a '53 Morgan twin spare. David Wyles got one too and bought
a Porche Speedster, which I believe he still has . David always had
style. Friedkin took me to lunch and went on and on about Allen
Ginsberg's Howl which had just come out.
"My Jim Morrison memories: Jim skateboarding (is this possible?) up
and down the hall of the editing building and us telling him to knock
it the fuck off. At the Gypsy Wagon one lunch time, Mansarek and
Morrison showed up and unrolled the first Doors poster fresh off the
presses -- they had just signed their Electra record deal. We told
them to forget it, they should focus on film, not music.
"Ray was a great filmmaker. My friend Carl Schultz and I worked on
most of his shorts and Ray was supremely talented and inspriational
guy. But after I read his book about the Doors I decided he was
also a complete ego maniac.
"I remember standing for hours in the middle of the crowd at the
Hollywood Bowl during the big Doors concert, manning a high speed
Auricon camera on a tripod, told by [Doors photographer and classmate]
Paul Ferrara [46] to wait for Morrison to fall backwards on the Unknown
Soldier. Jim fell right on cue, I hit the start button and the damn camera
jammed immediately. The films out on DVD I believe, The Doors Live
at the Hollywood Bowl . I may have a credit, but not one frame
of film in it is mine.
I remember as a student DP following Cesar Chavez around the Central
Valley for a couple weeks on a student film for... what's his name?
Where's that footage?
The rough cut showing of Bonnie and Clyde at 3H -- afterwards when
the producers asked us what we thought, we all complained about the
film being in black and white (it was work print) and the producers,
including Warren Beatty, telling our professors they'd never come
back to UCLA with a film again. When we heard about it we said fuck
em, film didn't work anyway.
Hanging out with the extraordinary Colin Young one evening, up at
his his overgrown Topanga hippie house, with his etherial young wife
and bratty kids, eating dinner with Pauline Kael. Colin was a force
to be reckoned with. When I visited him in England years later he had a
new young wife and the same kids, now grown up, were in trouble with
the Bobbies for gaffiti-ing American style all the neighbor's houses.
Gregory Peck and Elizabeth Hartman coming thru through the Film
Department (with George Stevens Jr. I think) and announcing to the
assembled department they were going to start a film school called
the American Film Institute. I got up and said they should put the
money into indie distribution, not another school. Good point, bad
timing.
Ptak, Jack that is [4], getting me to wait at a restaurant late one
night, camera in hand, ready to shoot a porn flick he was going to
direct -- after a couple hours he showed up to say the girl star had
backed out, went home disappointed.
Visiting Ptak at that theater in WestWood where he was the manager
and A Man and A Woman, www.imdb.com/title/tt0061138/, was playing
for months. Everytime we visited John/Jack and looked into the
theater, the camera was circling the couple and they were kissing and
that damn music was going, yadayada dadadah. You know the tune...
Warren Hamilton [39], a wonderful guy, telling stories about electrician's
getting arcs dropped on them, ending up maimed for life. He also said
stand by painters who couldn't paint any longer were put out back
cleaning brushes with chemicals that eventually made them blind. I
guess he was saying don't get a job as a crew guy. We didn't listen
to him and many of us worked our way through UCLA, crewing on low
budget features.
I remember learning to cut on an upright Moviola, repairing the numerous
tears caused by the damn thing with a cement splicer, which only caused
more damage. Then we finally got to use a Guillotine splicer, which had
just come in and were as the iPhone is now. When I take my kids to The
Museum of the Moving image in Queens next to the real chariot from Ben
Hur is a pile of equipment we learned on back at UCLA.
Doing lots of sound for Joan Chuchill [45], me with a Nagra, Joan with
her NPR. I was in awe of Joan. Still am.
Producing and directing an industrial film about steel buildings for
Dick [6] Blackburn's dad, sneaking into the film department editing rooms
to cut it. The budget was $2,500 and it had a helicopter shot! Yes,
great training for indie film producing. Made a profit on it when
Danny -- can't remember his last name -- the Deluxe lab manager
explained he could charge Dick's dad $50 for a print and bill me only
$40, so I made $10 on all the prints they ordered. They ordered
something like 20 prints, so my profit was $200, a couple months
rent. Deluxe Danny was later jailed for fraud. Damn.
Sid Solo, who ran CFI made it possible for all of us to finish our
film projects, was an incredible benefactor to generation of students
and should be in Dick's drawing.
Just before a Royce Hall screening, a TA, was it Dave Thompson [34],
probably stoned, who drove the negatives over to CFI for printing? The
back door of his truck flew open, and the "A" roll of the A&B cut
negative of a religious film by a very serious Jesuit film student
rolled out onto the freeway. Cars ran over it, but Dave recovered it
and after weeks of careful work they restored and printed the film.
At the Royce screening every other shot (the A roll) was scratched
and jumped around distractedly. We made snide remarks asking,
"Where's God when you need him, anyway?"
The extraordinarily inspiring Jim Blue [59] showing the interminable Diary
of Country Priest (Bresson, 2 hours plus of a priest starving to
death), late one night, then re-threading the projector and telling
us to stick around he was going to screen Diary all over again. We
really, really respected his dedication... and all snuck out.
At the beach with Claude Jutra on the Fourth of July, he complained
about American fireworks displays, I dared him to turn his back for
the entire balance of the display. He did this.
Terry Filgate, after Felix Venable [41] and Dennis Jakob [47]
a great, great, character at UCLA (he had shot one of the
first Cinema Verite documentaries with a 35 blimped Mitchell!)
telling me how he had finally raised the money for a feature he was
going to direct. But when he went to a bar to celebrate he came on to
the producer's wife and blew the deal. He was gleeful, we were proud
of him. Goddam producers.
The Lucky U, on Santa Monica under the 405 Freeway with a sign
pointing in the door saying, "Veterans Center." One day we saw a
blind man pushing a paraplegic through the door. They both proceeded
to get completely plastered.
Jerry Howard and I figuring out in our first year that we had been in
the same theater in Chicago (both of us separately passing through)
at the same day of the same showing of a Truffaut film (Shoot the
Piano Player?). We found this to be remarkable, and went around
telling everyone else about it. We couldn't figure out why no one
else seemed to care.
A young attractive woman film student complaining after a film
screened in 3H to everyone that the film just screened was incredibly
sexist -- and I almost, almost, went up, and grabbed her and ran out
with her over my shoulder. But I didn't. Always regretted that.
Dave Thompson's wonderful pronouncements and opinions -- and his
beautiful girlfriend, Gloria, who I lusted after.
My wonderful girlfriend, Stephanie Hughes, the first woman I ever
lived with, working at the Lobster at the head of the Santa Monica
pier, to support us, bringing home left over fish so we could have
dinner.
Finally, the weirdest story of all: Carl Schultz and I were roommates
at UCLA, living on Pacific in Santa Monica. One day our landlady
called Carl and said something had happened and she wanted to see us.
She was very upset. When we visited her, she claimed I had offered
sexual favors in lieu of the rent. As I remember she was 60 or so.
Geeze.
I denied the accusation, apparently made over the phone by someone
impersonating me. When we left a Santa Monica cop came out of
hiding, dragged us into his cop car and grilled us for an hour. I
continued to deny the story, telilng the cop I was in a film class at
UCLA at the time. I got statements from everyone to prove my story.
The cops didn't buy it. The case dragged on.
Then I remembered that a couple months previous, some guys from Army
intelegence had demanded I meet them because I had refused to sign a
loyalty oath during my Army physical. I snubbed them. Clearly they
had called my landlady to get even with me... I ended up as a
Conscientious Objector, working in the ghetto in San Francisco in
alternative service. And got a film deal with Francis Ford Coppola
during my second year as a C.O.. But that's another story.
Ah, UCLA and the Sixties."
RICHARD BLACKBURN responds - 06/29/07
"Wow! An entire memoir in and of itself. I'm glad Steve made some money off
the industrial film I wrote for my dad's company (Pomona-based Pascoe Steel
Metal Buildings). Am particularly fond of my brilliant voice over line
"We'll see where that truck is going in just a moment."
"Closeup of an island" was instantly legendary. The remark's author was one
Ivan Metev (whom I caricatured separately in a still existing sketrchbook).
Don Shebib was the skateboard king of the film dept but I do remember Jim Morrison on one as well.
Here's a memory: the great Felix Venable cutting his film Les angeS
Dorment - get it? - using a paper punch on individual frames to sync the
resultant flashes up to the beats in Dave Brubecks popular jazz piece "Take
Five". Felix's contrary mindset, instead of avoiding light flashes as we
were taught, was why not use them?
Keep 'em coming people. We get enough quotes, we'll have a book!"
------------
GARY SCHLOSSER
"The buildings were not Quonset huts in the generic WW II sense. They were like Quonset huts. There were no tin roofs, one story with just plain old composite shingles. The main stage was designed like the editing buildings. I think they were built in WW II.
“I had the dubious experience of being Jim's editing TA. He wasn't much interested in doing conventional editing as I recall. I had to help him a lot. (Most with the technical aspects of how to splice, operate the moviola, etc.) Those of us who were TAs never helped out aesthetically. Heaven forbid, UCLA was noted for being an auteur school, the director/filmmaker ruled supreme in those days. TV was the bottom of the barrel. Only film counted. We were all going to be great directors, except for those who wanted to be musicians, documentarians, industrial producers, TV producers, DPs, Editors, Script Clerks, and makers of fine wines and canned pasta sauce. (FFC himself).
“Speaking of FFC. I am surprised you say that Jim was/is the most famous. I would say Coppola is the most famous, at least left the greatest mark on American cinema. Many others have followed, I see them in your POV magazine. My vote goes to Francis, although I never knew him. He left the year before I got there.
“Oh yes, I do remember that screening where Jim's film was shown. I remember, my mentor, Ed Brokaw [entry # 42] in very measured tones remarking that Jim had enormous talent but wasn't realizing what he had to offer.
"By the way, nobody said ‘fucking’ in the screening room. Colin would use very specific language other than swearing to make a point. He was always articulate and to the point. Makes for good sensational stuff, however.”
OBLIGATORY DISCLAIMER: This moderated web site is intended as a meeting place where alumni of the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television can freely share their memories. The cartoon and the accompanying text represent the views of the individual creators and participants only. They do not represent the views of any employee of UCLA, the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television or Point of View magazine
==============
DAVID THOMPSON: "Galleons Sighted Off Jersy Coast"
"So I walked away from filmmaking and started a landscaping business: design and installation. Very satisfying work! But starting in the early nineties, I began to spend more and more time in the Northern Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, where my parents had retired. Reason: aging parents and their health problems. My father passed away, then my mother. I inherited a house. So here I am, a blue state person living in a red state town, and not a week goes by that I don't think of moving back to California---just like not a month goes by that Mr. Bernstein hasn't thought of that girl in the white dress on the Jersey ferry. If only those pesky housing costs on the California Coast would come down.
"As a graduate of UCLA Film School and #34 in Dick Blackburn's cartoon, I have a LOT to say about those years and my fellow classmates in the cartoon, as well as others. The cartoon seems to be my equivalent of Proust's madeleine. Remembrance of things past indeed! Now that the UCLA memory cells have been activated, the images are flowing like an acid flashback.
"I will not attempt to say it all here. But one important correction must be made. As some people have pointed out, Jack Ptak's description of the film school buildings in the article is inaccurate. But everyone seems to have forgotten the correct designation for the Film School Theater: It was building 3H, not 4F. Perhaps 4F is an unconscious reference to the anxiety at the time over possibly being drafted into the Vietnam War. Who knows? The official name of the theater was The Warren Hamilton Theater [see entry # 39].
"And Gary Essert [entry # 54] was so much more than just the projectionist. Gary booked all the films shown in 3H, either as part of the regular classes or as extra-curricular screenings. Gary used his studio contacts to acquire prints of new films before their general release, as well as studio prints of classic films. The high point for me was when Gary screened a pristine Warner Brothers studio print (10 minute reels instead of release print 20 minute reels) of The Searchers. After the screening John Ford came over to 3H from his home at 125 Copa De Oro, just off the NE corner of the campus. He answered all of our questions with patience and respect...mostly.
"Gary also created the "Film Orgy" at 3H, two to three day round-the-clock screenings of classic Hollywood films, some great, some good and some...well...entertaining in their own fashion. Such as September Storm, the only film ever shot in both CinemaScope and 3D! One Orgy "climaxed"(no pun intended) with a screening of an original MGM Technicolor Nitrate print of Gone With The Wind! You haven't seen the true glory of Three-Strip Technicolor until you've seen it in an original nitrate print. The Film Orgy later appeared as an annual event at Filmex.
"Gary also produced the bi-annual Student Film Screenings in Royce Hall. The "Intro" to the Student Film Screenings was Gary's student film project, his "170B," as it was known then. It was one long crane shot pullback across the Quad from the UCLA Seal on the main entrance of Royce Hall. Gary borrowed the crane from MGM for one day, before it was to be shipped by freighter to Spain to be used on Dr. Zhivago. The Director of Photography was Charles Clarke, who was teaching cinematography at UCLA after a long career in Hollywood, and the camera operator was Steven H. Burum, himself now the respected DP of Mission: Impossible, TK and and many others. [Burum was named by the School as its 2007 Cinematographer in Residence.] Gary shot in 35 MM and CinemaScope. and the music was composed by Dimitri Tiomkin!
"I worked for Gary at 3H. He taught me how to be a projectionist. But, most importantly, he was a friend. I just want to see that he gets the recognition he deserves for his contributions to UCLA Film School.
"In fairness to Jack Ptak I should add that his description of the screening of Jim Morrison's 170B (rumored unofficial title: "White Trash.” But no one has mentioned the scene of the woman reaming out John De Bella's ear with her tongue, or the scene in which the projector showing the porno film breaks down and the guys at the "stag party" go berserk) is, to the best of my recollection, one of the most accurate I've ever read.
"(On second thought, the scene of the woman reaming out John De Bella's ear may not be from Jim Morrison's 170B. It may be from a B&D/S&M "design film" made by, I believe, Phil Oleno. I say "design film" because it was originally made for the motion picture production design class taught by Palmer Shoppe. "Starring" many of the film students of the time, this film has to be seen to be believed. But who knows where a print is these days? Anyway, if I've got the scene right but the film wrong, hopefully someone will correct me. The Cartoon/POV HQ Web Site seems to be the 'Wikipedia' of the Mid-Sixties UCLA Film School.) "Back then the the academic set up was: UCLA School of Fine Arts, Department of Theater Arts: Theater Division, Motion Picture Division and Television/Radio Division. Yes, back then you could even major in radio! The UCLA Film School buildings (pre-Melnitz Hall) were, as others have described, one-story WW II style military barracks, painted, as I recall, some shade of green or grey. There were, I believe, five buildings. Two were sound stages (and yes, they had floors and rigging to hang lights). They were on a north south axis, just east of Parking Lot 5. The other three buildings were on an east/west axis, just east of the sound stages. The northernmost building was 3H, the Warren Hamilton Theater. One of the other two buildings contained a small projection theater with sound mixing facilities, the animation department and the Film School Library, where Jim Morrison worked part-time for a while. The other building was the post-production building, AKA the Editing Rooms. Scene of many, many late night/all night editing sessions, fueled by various liquids and substances. (Hey, it was the Sixties.)
"The Editing Building was also the location of the notorious Film School Men's Room, whose wall above the urinals was covered by a lot of imaginative and creative graffiti. Some of the graffiti were lines of dialogue from movies, especially from the Film School cult favorite, Marlon Brando's One Eyed Jacks. David Arkin [entry # 56] and Tim McIntire, Theater Division acting majors (both now deceased) used to stand around doing Marlon Brando/Ben Johnson scenes from One Eyed Jacks. David Arkin did the best Brando impersonation I ever heard. Tim Mcintire did a good Ben Johnson, but the best Ben Johnson was fellow acting major Gary Goodjohn. He was from Texas and he didn't have to "do" the Ben Johnson accent. He had it for real.
"In addition to the "adaptations", so to speak, there was the more "original" graffiti, such as: "James Blue is the eunuch high priest of the cinema", which I always though had a certain literary flair. Most likely written by a future screenwriter. And the most notorious graffito of all: "Jim Morrison has the ass of an angel".
"Between the Film School buildings and the Gypsy Wagon to the south (the North Campus Fast Food Outlet at the time) was a small parking lot. Faculty and staff only. Of course, that didn't stop film students from parking there, even if you intended to park for only a few minutes (famous last words). But if you parked there you had to watch out for Cody, the UCLA Police Department Parking Enforcement Officer. Cody would roar into the lot on his three-wheeled motorcycle and furiously write tickets before you could get back to your car or motorcycle and drive away. As he wrote tickets, those of us sitting on the lawn next to the gypsy wagon and the parking lot would boo him. And if someone got back to their car and got away before Cody could write and slap that ticket on their windshield, we would cheer.
"I think Cody got Jack Ptak's Austin Healy Sprite more than once. But back then the fine was only $5.00."
OBLIGATORY DISCLAIMER: This moderated web site is intended as a meeting place where alumni of the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television can freely share their memories. The cartoon and the accompanying text represent the views of the individual creators and participants only. They do not represent the views of any employee of UCLA, the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television or Point of View magazine.
================
RAY MANZAREK:
"UCLA was a fantastic place to study film in the '60s. Life was sweet, the students were artists, the pot was fine, the films were damned good, the teachers were fabulous - my God, Josef Von Sternberg! The British invasion in rock had just started, the nouvelle vague was just concluding, Fellini made <I>8 ½</I> and my student movies - "Evergreen" and "Induction" - staring Dorothy Fujikawa (my wife of 40 years now) had been accepted into the legendary Royce Hall screenings. I have written an autobiography called Light My Fire - My Life with the Doors, which contains an entire UCLA film school sequence. Check it out."
Source:
www.tft.ucla.edu/blackburncartoon/legend.cfm
an interactive "oral history" project
.
Starring Jim Morrison, Ray Manzarek, John Ptak, Richard Blackburn and several other alumni and friends of the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television circa 1966
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"Keep 'em coming people. We get enough quotes, we'll have a book!"
---Richard Blackburn
This page in an Internet-only oral history supplement to an article that appeared in the Spring, 2007 issue of Point of View, the magazine of the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television.
www.tft.ucla.edu/pov/pdf/pov_spring2007.pdf
Follow the link and go to page 10 to read the original article about Jim Morrison's days as a film student at UCLA.
The site is intended to be a repository of memories for people who were students here at the time.
The web architects, Angela McGregor and Herlich Quintos Aguiluz, have set up a very cool and simple interface that allows the information to be changed almost at a moment’s notice.
So we invite anyone who knows better or who has something interesting to add to let us know right away at POV World Headquarters. As alumnus David Thompson has observed: "The cartoon/POV Web Site seems to be the 'Wikipedia' of the Mid-Sixties UCLA Film School."
The ground rules are few: We will put up pretty much everything we get, barring material that seems to us to be scandalous or defamatory in the context of the mid-1960s. If any person requests changes to a section of the text that relates to themselves, those changes will be made immediately, no questions asked.
There is a long way to go. "There are others that I wish Dick had got in the drawing," says the original instigator of the article, John "Jack" Ptak. "Maybe we could say that they're behind the tree....Bill Norton, Warren Entner, Steve North, John Rubenstein, Diana Gould, Kirshna Shaw, Louis Stouman, Dan McLaughlin, Peter Belsito, John Young..."
All are welcome.
MOST RECENT UPDATES:
13. Steve Wax - 09-09-07 (proposing a Gypsy Wagon reuinion!)
20. Ina Massari - 09-09-07 (her first-person account of The Doors club debut)
28. Heather Folsom - 07/01/07
13. Richard Blackburn on Steve Wax - 06/29/07
13. Steve Wax - 06/28/07
20. Ina Massari - 06/18/07
30. Corey Fisher - 06/01/07
47. Richard Blackburn on Dennis Jakob - 06/01/07
57. Richard Blackburn on Ben Jackson - 05/31/07
34. David Thompson- 05/30/07
LETTERS
From Sixties-era students unaccountably omitted from the drawing, and assorted
fellow-travelers. To Date:
Alan Barker on Warren Hamilton -- 06/03/07
Jill Place (Gluck) -- written 05/05/07, posted 05/31/07.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. RALPH SARGENT MA ’65
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2. SAL BRUNO
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3. CHRIS WOOD
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4. JOHN PTAK ’67
...claims to not have smoked a pipe since this drawing was made—or to have used his collegiate nickname “Jack”, even though the opportunities offered by that moniker would seem limitless for someone who was a High-Powered Hollywood Agent for 35 years, mostly representing directors and independent films, going from ICM to William Morris to CAA before launching his own consulting company, Arsenal, in 2006. Worked his way through UCLA by running campus film series, as well as off-campus programming for the Laemmle Theatres, hence the film can in hand. Promoted the Royce Hall Student Film screenings for the students in 1967 when they took over the screenings from the faculty. <more>
5. GLORIA KATZ ’69
Katz is the hugely influential screenwriter and producer who, with her husband, non-Bruin director-husband Willard Huyck, launched her film career by creating a low-budget horror film now officially known as Dead People---though we much prefer its discontinued original title, Revenge of the Screaming Dead. She is even more famous, of course, for the films she worked on for George Lucas, including American Graffiti and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom..
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6. RICHARD BLACKBURN ’66
The screenwriter best known for his work on Paul Bartel’s Eating Raoul is currently working on a screenplay about his days at UCLA, an undertaking inspired partly by the “intense nostalgia” of reading Ray Manzarek’s book Light My Fire: My Life With The Doors. (see entry # 44 below).
For lovers of distinctive genre cinema Blackburn is also revered for his only feature film as a writer-director, Lemora: A Child’s Tale of the Supernatural (1973), a fan-favorite erotic vampire tale that was finally released on DVD in 2004 by Synapse Films. Blackburn also I also wrote and directed "Miss May Dusa," an episode of George Romero's TV series Tales From The Darkside.
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7. ALICE BAIRD JOHNSON
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8. BOB PORFIRIO MA ’66
Blackburn: “After helping to curate the first comic book exhibition in America at Yale, Bob Porfirio wrote on film noir for several books and journals. He is currently a realtor in Southern California."
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9. BRUCE HALL
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10. JERRY HOWARD and his girlfriend LYNN
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11. JOHN CUTIA
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12. BILL KERBY MFA ’69
Screenwriter Kerby is best known for his work on Jack Starret’s cult classic crime spree action film The Dion Brothers aka The Gravy Train (1974), Hal Needham’s action comedy Hooper (1978) and Mark Rydell’s Janet Joplin bio-pic The Rose (1979).
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13. STEVE WAX and his girlfriend STEPHANIE
Steve Wax is a partner in a new branded entertainment company
Campfire. He produced independent films after leaving UCLA and was
a founding member of the landmark San Francisco collective, Cine Manifest.
After working in LA as a producer for a time he moved to Boston to produce
a feature, The Little Sister and started the production company, Chelsea
Pictures, which is about to celebrate its 20th year. Steve has three children,
Rose, 8, Gabriel 14, and Jessica, 29, and lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Steve Wax writes:
"I'm in the bottom left next to Bill Kerby in Dick's great picture.
And I remember this...
"Felix Venable waking up during a Gary Essert film orgy showing of
King Kong, and screaming "Kong's Dong is bigger than Fay Ray!"
When I went to Louis Steuman (sp?) to ask him to sign my draft
deferment form, he tried to convince me to go to Vietnam to
experience "my generation." I got Bill Adams to sign it instead.
14. CARL SCHULTZ
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15. RON RALEY and PATRICIA RALEY
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16. MARTIN BONDELL
Blackburn: “Martin Bondell and his wife Julie founded the first ‘art’ postcard company, fotofolio, in NYC. Their cards are in most museums.”
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17. STANTON KAYE
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18. HUGH GRAUEL MA ’67
Popular teacher Hugh Grauel is a professor emeritus on the faculty of the School of Theater, Film and Television.
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19. JUNE STEEL MA ’67
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20. INA MASSARI
. A letter from Ina Massari:
"You can imagine how tickled I was to find myself in Richard Blackburn's illustration. My goodness, it certainly broguth back a flood of sweet and funny memories. What a unique class that was ...and what great teachers we had. James Blue [59]...Steve Larner [58]...Claude Jutra (from the Canadian Film Board).
"It really was a very special time to study film at UCLA...and it really felt like a "film school---so Bohemian in those quonset huts. Looking at the names and faces so cleaverly captured by Blackburn it is easy to see what a fabulous place in time we all experienced. Our leader Colin Young was so cool; we all loved him.
"Would love to have a chat with my fellow classmates but, alas, no computer."
Massari also sent along an article that appeared in the in-house publication NBC Newsline in August 1968, when she was named film editor for the network's Huntley-Brinkley Reoprt <more>
21. HUGH GREY
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22. BOB FERN & THE STUDENTS OF THE LYCEE DE LOS ANGELES
Fern taught at the French language school in Beverly Hills and was the producer and co-writer of Richard Blackburn’s Lemora.
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23. GARY SCHLOSSER MA ’75
“First of all,” Schlosser writes, “we had screenings at the end of every semester. There were literally hundreds of student films shown each year. Some good, some bad, many never finished. Do I remember Jim's film? No. But then, I can't even remember the ones I made myself. But I will tell you what I do remember…”<more>
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24 JOHN QUICK
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25. MARTIN Z. SMITH
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26. JEAN-PIERRE GEUENS ’66, MA ’66, and TINA HORNISHER GEUENS ’66, MFA ’70
Jean-Pierre “was nicknamed ‘Johnny Guns’ by [classmate] Dave Thompson [# 34],” Blackburn writes. Whether or not Geuens is still shooting from the hip he is now a respected film professor and the author of the highly regarded book Film Production Theory (SUNY, 2000).
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27. TOM DE SIMONE
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28. HEATHER FOLSOM ’68, MD
Heather Folsom writes:
"First of all what a great cartoon!
"Secondly, wow, what a thrill to see the names and faces of people who loom large in my panoply of the gods. Pretty much every person I recognized on sight and found the caricatures eerily accurate.
"Thirdly, I saw the pic which turned out to be me--thought at first it was Tina Hornischer for sure. Pleased to discover that my many hours cutting classes and being hyperactive at the Gypsy Wagon were not in vain.
"Minor Narcissistic Update: last name spelled FolsOm and though it's true I'm a physician & psychiatrist, I'm more identified with my work as a fiction writer--two books published by Cadmus Editions, third to come out in April 08.
"Thank you so much for the e-mail. Please also send a thank you Dick Blackburn for the cartoon and gracias to Steve Wax for archival assiduity: you once showed me miniature worlds you created--pleased to know that part of you remains engaged in this endeavor.
"xxHeather"
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29. PHIL O’LENO ’65
(See entry 41 below).
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30. COREY FISHER
Richard Blackburn: “Corey Fischer, while a contestant on The Dating Game won a date to Bangkok with Hair star Lynn Kellogg. He later worked in a Yiddish Theatre Company.”
Corey Fisher: "Imagine my surprise opening this site and--wham--there's Blackburn's brilliant shaky/caffeinated visual rant, not unlike the extended narratives he'd launch, in which he'd pull off spot-on impersonations of many of those pictured here. <more>
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31. RITCHIE VERCHEK
Blackburn: “After keeping a notorious 60's crash pad in Venice, Verchek returned to NYC. He is a public defender.”
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32. JIM MORRISON ’65
Ptak recalls Morrison pre-Doors as an aspiring actor with a James Dean fixation, hence the invariable outfit of tight jeans, short hair, and a pack of cigarettes rolled up in the tee shirt sleeve. Blackburn questions the Dean angle, but adds: “Jim was fascinated by male hustlers, though. That’s why he was the cameraman on Ron Raley’s student film Patient 411.”.
33. MARLENE RASNIK
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34. DAVE THOMPSON ’68
David Thompson: “After UCLA I worked for over 10 years in film making, primarily as a film editor: educational films, low budget features, experimental shorts, documentaries, theatrical shorts and lastly, TV commercials. The last job I worked on, just before I burned out on the film business, was a Tree Sweet orange juice commercial, featuring...OJ Simpson! <more>
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35. BILL ADAMS
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36. KATHY MILLER
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37. BOB MURRAY
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38. CATHERINE
The friendly woman who ran the Gypsy Wagon. Known only by her first name to most of the students who partook of her haute cuisine.
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39. WARREN HAMILTON
“The Warren Hamilton in the cartoon was my dad,” writes Warren Hamilton, Jr. ’59. “He was senior scene technician in the motion picture division (as it was called then) from l957 to ‘77-‘78. That is why he has a hammer in his hand [in the cartoon], because he was always building the sets for student films. He passed away in 2002 at the age of 96 and was still going strong, building a house in Joshua Tree."<more>
40. COLIN YOUNG ’58
Our alumni sources are unanimous in asserting that the professor who critiqued Morrison’s student film on that fateful evening was nothing like the sneering snob portrayed by director Oliver Stone in his film The Doors. Young was a leading figure in documentary and ethnographic film whose students have included cinematographer Joan Churchill (at UCLA) and director Nick Broomfield. In 1970 he returned to his England to found the National Film School (now the National Film and Television School.) The NFTS web site takes up the story:<more>.
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41. FELIX VENABLE ’65
A piece of history from a Doors web site:
"1966 (Date approximate) - Jim and his friends Felix Venable and Phil O'Leno [see # 29 above] head off to Mexico on a quest to find ‘true Indians.’ Inspired by the writings of UCLA professor Carlos Castaneda, the three hope to be initiated into the spirits of peyote. En route, Jim jumps out of the car at an intersection, kisses a Mexican-American woman, and jumps back in the car as they speed off down the road. Jim's good-natured comedic intentions are lost on the woman's male companions who, enraged, run to their car and give chase, eventually catching up with the three friends and beating them up pretty badly."
According to a UCLA database, Venable is now deceased.
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42. ED BROKAW.
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43. JOHN DE BELLA MA ’65
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44. DOROTHY FUGIKAWA and RAY MANZAREK
She was the star of his student films, now his wife of over three decades. He was the co-founder, with Jim Morrison, and the keyboard player of The Doors from 1965 to 1973. Manzarek responded by e-mail to our query about the cartoon: <more>
45. JOAN CHURCHILL ’68
TFT alumnus Churchill, ASC, was named Kodak Cinematographer in Residence in 2006. She is one of the world’s leading documentary cinematographers, having worked on such award-winning films as Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer, Soldier Girls, Asylum, Lily Tomlin. Bearing Witness and Shut Up and Sing, Barbara Kopple’s film bout the country music group Dixie Chicks. When the Residency was announced the School issued a press release that said, among other things: <more>
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46. PAUL FERRARA
…became one of the chief photographers of The Doors. He also directed the unfinished feature film HWY: An American Pastoral (1969), in which Morrison continued to pursue his dream of film stardom.
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47. DENNIS JAKOB ’61
Richard Blackburn: " Dennis Jakob was one of the Department.'s most original '60s students, given to wildeyed provocative statements ("'Off the Pigs' is worthless. The accountants know where the money is. Kill them and the entire system will collapse!") and eccentric film projects (the Moonshot intercut with the voyage of Vasco Da Gama).. He was a confirmed Eisensteinian montage devotee, edited the LSD sequences in Roger Corman's The Trip, and accompanied Jim Morrison on a trip down to Tijuana. He moved to San Francisco to become a part time employee of Francis Ford Coppola, claiming to have hectored him into making a movie of Heart Of Darkness by Joseph Conrad which, of course, eventually became Apocalypse Now."
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48. PALMER SCHOPPE
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49. PETER READ MA ’64
Blackburn: “Peter had a memorably unsettling role at the start of Francis Ford Coppola’s first feature Dementia 13.
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50. JON DRURY ’60, MA ’64
Blackburn: “Jon Drury (now deceased), was the brother of James Drury (TV's The Virginian). He was the self proclaimed "most unsuccessful actor in Hollywood". Possessing a stentorian voice and losing his hair at 13 years of age caused casting agents to assume he was a midget.”
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51. TOM STOVERN ’64, MA ’67
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52. STERLING NORRIS ’64, JD ’67
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53. DIANE BERGHOF
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54. GARY ESSERT ’64
Portrayed here as a cloud of dust because he was such a whirlwind of energy, Essert had a huge long-term impact on the experience of moviegoing in Los Angeles over the past three decades. With his professional and life partner Gary Abrahams founded first Filmex, in 1971, and the American Cinematheque, in 1984. Essert and Abrahams died within a few months of each other in 1993, from complications of HIV/AIDS. <more>
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55. ALEX FUNKE ’66
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56. DAVE ARKIN ’64
Blackburn: “After his biggest part as Peter Seller's hippie brother in I Love You Alice B. Toklas, David landed one of the three leads on TV's Storefront Lawyers, before becoming an unofficial member of The Robert Altman Stock Company. He appeared in M*A*S*H (along with Corey Fischer), Nashville, Popeye and The Long Goodbye.
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57. BEN JACKSON
Richard Blackburn: " Ben Jackson (now deceased) was a '66 faculty member and filmmaker. As my group's supervisor his terrific enthusiasm for my undergrad project 'Batman Meets Mr. Fizz' helped me stay focused when others thought I'd gone off the rails. It was the first undergrad film with dialogue. Later, Ben cast me along with character actor John Dehner's daughter in an improvised film he made (originally) called 'Hegel's Pennies' and later , I believe,'Torpedo Rocket.'"
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58. STEVE LARNER.
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59. JAMES BLUE ’46
A legendary experimental and documentary filmmaker who was also a Rice University professor and the founding director of the Rice Media Center and the Southwest Alternate Media Project (SWAMP).
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UPDATES WELCOME! Drop us a line at POV World Headquarters.
.
OBLIGATORY DISCLAIMER: This moderated web site is intended as a meeting place where alumni of the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television can freely share their memories. The cartoon and the accompanying text represent the views of the individual creators and participants only. They do not represent the views of any employee of UCLA, the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television or Point of View magazine.
----------[Reunion proposal after the jump!]
Steve writes:
Ron Raley is in New York and we of course talked about A Perfect Day at the Gypsy Wagon and the Perfect Day website. We both agreed that we need to pull off a 60's UCLA Film School reunion soon, maybe call it the Gypsy Wagon Reunion. I'd suggest that the event take place in the early Spring when Los Angeles is in full flower. Maybe we'll try and take a picture of all of us in front of the Perfect Day cartoon, a sort of re-staging, like the Perfect Day in Harlem of course. Meanwhile, how do we get more people to post to the site. Lotsa holes there. I bare my soul and meager, meager response...
[The School would smile upon such an undertaking, and we would be offer whatever help we can. Drop us a line at POV World Headquarters (dchute@tft.ucla.edu) and let us know what you have in mind!]
Steve Wax is a partner in a new branded entertainment company
Campfire. He produced independent films after
leaving UCLA and was a founding member of the landmark
San Francisco collective, Cine Manifest. After working in LA
as a producer for a time he moved to Boston to produce a feature,
The Little Sister, and started the production company, Chelsea Pictures,
which is about to celebrate its 20th year. Steve has three children,
Rose, 8, Gabriel 14, and Jessica, 29, and lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Steve Wax writes:
"I'm in the bottom left next to Bill Kerby in Dick's great picture.
And I remember this...
"Felix Venable waking up during a Gary Essert film orgy showing of
King Kong, and screaming "Kong's Dong is bigger than Fay Ray!"When I went to Louis Steuman (sp?) to ask him to sign my draft
deferment form, he tried to convince me to go to Vietnam to
experience "my generation." I got Bill Adams to sign it instead.
"Lew Alcinder (Kareem Abdul Jabbar) walking thru the student union,
towering over everyone.
"Ansel Adams shooting stills of us in the old sound stage as we shot a
student film. He'd been hired by UCLA to create a brochure about the
school. We were floored that he was doing this, not having yet
learned about the need to earn a living. Wonder where those shots are...
"Ralph Sergeant, a tech genius, shooting with a three strip
Technicolor camera somebody had donated to the school. It was as big
as a refrigerator. I remember one line a film of Ralph's, "She left
in a yellow huff." Very odd guy, Ralph.
A burly Hungarian student director who'd escaped the Russian invasion
to come to UCLA, pacing in front of our whole class in 3H, trying to
find the words to pitch his second year project. After a long, long
wait, he open as follows: "Vee begin with the closeup of an island"
We roared with laughter and he never finished. But he shot the film
which included Russian Cossacks tossing babies on fires.
"Dropping by USC, home of the Professionals, and meeting George
Lucas, as we both had won some sort of award. He later introduced me to
Francis Coppola, who I then worked for briefly during the first
incarnation of American Zoetrope.
"I remember acting like a complete shit towards the faculty while
leading a student uprising in the mid 60's. Despite my bad behavior
(or I suspected because of it) they gave me a $1,000 scholarship
(donated by Bill Friedkin as I remember) and I bought the best car of
my life, a '53 Morgan twin spare. David Wyles got one too and bought
a Porche Speedster, which I believe he still has . David always had
style. Friedkin took me to lunch and went on and on about Allen
Ginsberg's Howl which had just come out.
"My Jim Morrison memories: Jim skateboarding (is this possible?) up
and down the hall of the editing building and us telling him to knock
it the fuck off. At the Gypsy Wagon one lunch time, Mansarek and
Morrison showed up and unrolled the first Doors poster fresh off the
presses -- they had just signed their Electra record deal. We told
them to forget it, they should focus on film, not music.
"Ray was a great filmmaker. My friend Carl Schultz and I worked on
most of his shorts and Ray was supremely talented and inspriational
guy. But after I read his book about the Doors I decided he was
also a complete ego maniac.
"I remember standing for hours in the middle of the crowd at the
Hollywood Bowl during the big Doors concert, manning a high speed
Auricon camera on a tripod, told by [Doors photographer and classmate]
Paul Ferrara [46] to wait for Morrison to fall backwards on the Unknown
Soldier. Jim fell right on cue, I hit the start button and the damn camera
jammed immediately. The films out on DVD I believe, The Doors Live
at the Hollywood Bowl . I may have a credit, but not one frame
of film in it is mine.
I remember as a student DP following Cesar Chavez around the Central
Valley for a couple weeks on a student film for... what's his name?
Where's that footage?
The rough cut showing of Bonnie and Clyde at 3H -- afterwards when
the producers asked us what we thought, we all complained about the
film being in black and white (it was work print) and the producers,
including Warren Beatty, telling our professors they'd never come
back to UCLA with a film again. When we heard about it we said fuck
em, film didn't work anyway.
Hanging out with the extraordinary Colin Young one evening, up at
his his overgrown Topanga hippie house, with his etherial young wife
and bratty kids, eating dinner with Pauline Kael. Colin was a force
to be reckoned with. When I visited him in England years later he had a
new young wife and the same kids, now grown up, were in trouble with
the Bobbies for gaffiti-ing American style all the neighbor's houses.
Gregory Peck and Elizabeth Hartman coming thru through the Film
Department (with George Stevens Jr. I think) and announcing to the
assembled department they were going to start a film school called
the American Film Institute. I got up and said they should put the
money into indie distribution, not another school. Good point, bad
timing.
Ptak, Jack that is [4], getting me to wait at a restaurant late one
night, camera in hand, ready to shoot a porn flick he was going to
direct -- after a couple hours he showed up to say the girl star had
backed out, went home disappointed.
Visiting Ptak at that theater in WestWood where he was the manager
and A Man and A Woman, www.imdb.com/title/tt0061138/, was playing
for months. Everytime we visited John/Jack and looked into the
theater, the camera was circling the couple and they were kissing and
that damn music was going, yadayada dadadah. You know the tune...
Warren Hamilton [39], a wonderful guy, telling stories about electrician's
getting arcs dropped on them, ending up maimed for life. He also said
stand by painters who couldn't paint any longer were put out back
cleaning brushes with chemicals that eventually made them blind. I
guess he was saying don't get a job as a crew guy. We didn't listen
to him and many of us worked our way through UCLA, crewing on low
budget features.
I remember learning to cut on an upright Moviola, repairing the numerous
tears caused by the damn thing with a cement splicer, which only caused
more damage. Then we finally got to use a Guillotine splicer, which had
just come in and were as the iPhone is now. When I take my kids to The
Museum of the Moving image in Queens next to the real chariot from Ben
Hur is a pile of equipment we learned on back at UCLA.
Doing lots of sound for Joan Chuchill [45], me with a Nagra, Joan with
her NPR. I was in awe of Joan. Still am.
Producing and directing an industrial film about steel buildings for
Dick [6] Blackburn's dad, sneaking into the film department editing rooms
to cut it. The budget was $2,500 and it had a helicopter shot! Yes,
great training for indie film producing. Made a profit on it when
Danny -- can't remember his last name -- the Deluxe lab manager
explained he could charge Dick's dad $50 for a print and bill me only
$40, so I made $10 on all the prints they ordered. They ordered
something like 20 prints, so my profit was $200, a couple months
rent. Deluxe Danny was later jailed for fraud. Damn.
Sid Solo, who ran CFI made it possible for all of us to finish our
film projects, was an incredible benefactor to generation of students
and should be in Dick's drawing.
Just before a Royce Hall screening, a TA, was it Dave Thompson [34],
probably stoned, who drove the negatives over to CFI for printing? The
back door of his truck flew open, and the "A" roll of the A&B cut
negative of a religious film by a very serious Jesuit film student
rolled out onto the freeway. Cars ran over it, but Dave recovered it
and after weeks of careful work they restored and printed the film.
At the Royce screening every other shot (the A roll) was scratched
and jumped around distractedly. We made snide remarks asking,
"Where's God when you need him, anyway?"
The extraordinarily inspiring Jim Blue [59] showing the interminable Diary
of Country Priest (Bresson, 2 hours plus of a priest starving to
death), late one night, then re-threading the projector and telling
us to stick around he was going to screen Diary all over again. We
really, really respected his dedication... and all snuck out.
At the beach with Claude Jutra on the Fourth of July, he complained
about American fireworks displays, I dared him to turn his back for
the entire balance of the display. He did this.
Terry Filgate, after Felix Venable [41] and Dennis Jakob [47]
a great, great, character at UCLA (he had shot one of the
first Cinema Verite documentaries with a 35 blimped Mitchell!)
telling me how he had finally raised the money for a feature he was
going to direct. But when he went to a bar to celebrate he came on to
the producer's wife and blew the deal. He was gleeful, we were proud
of him. Goddam producers.
The Lucky U, on Santa Monica under the 405 Freeway with a sign
pointing in the door saying, "Veterans Center." One day we saw a
blind man pushing a paraplegic through the door. They both proceeded
to get completely plastered.
Jerry Howard and I figuring out in our first year that we had been in
the same theater in Chicago (both of us separately passing through)
at the same day of the same showing of a Truffaut film (Shoot the
Piano Player?). We found this to be remarkable, and went around
telling everyone else about it. We couldn't figure out why no one
else seemed to care.
A young attractive woman film student complaining after a film
screened in 3H to everyone that the film just screened was incredibly
sexist -- and I almost, almost, went up, and grabbed her and ran out
with her over my shoulder. But I didn't. Always regretted that.
Dave Thompson's wonderful pronouncements and opinions -- and his
beautiful girlfriend, Gloria, who I lusted after.
My wonderful girlfriend, Stephanie Hughes, the first woman I ever
lived with, working at the Lobster at the head of the Santa Monica
pier, to support us, bringing home left over fish so we could have
dinner.
Finally, the weirdest story of all: Carl Schultz and I were roommates
at UCLA, living on Pacific in Santa Monica. One day our landlady
called Carl and said something had happened and she wanted to see us.
She was very upset. When we visited her, she claimed I had offered
sexual favors in lieu of the rent. As I remember she was 60 or so.
Geeze.
I denied the accusation, apparently made over the phone by someone
impersonating me. When we left a Santa Monica cop came out of
hiding, dragged us into his cop car and grilled us for an hour. I
continued to deny the story, telilng the cop I was in a film class at
UCLA at the time. I got statements from everyone to prove my story.
The cops didn't buy it. The case dragged on.
Then I remembered that a couple months previous, some guys from Army
intelegence had demanded I meet them because I had refused to sign a
loyalty oath during my Army physical. I snubbed them. Clearly they
had called my landlady to get even with me... I ended up as a
Conscientious Objector, working in the ghetto in San Francisco in
alternative service. And got a film deal with Francis Ford Coppola
during my second year as a C.O.. But that's another story.
Ah, UCLA and the Sixties."
RICHARD BLACKBURN responds - 06/29/07
"Wow! An entire memoir in and of itself. I'm glad Steve made some money off
the industrial film I wrote for my dad's company (Pomona-based Pascoe Steel
Metal Buildings). Am particularly fond of my brilliant voice over line
"We'll see where that truck is going in just a moment."
"Closeup of an island" was instantly legendary. The remark's author was one
Ivan Metev (whom I caricatured separately in a still existing sketrchbook).
Don Shebib was the skateboard king of the film dept but I do remember Jim Morrison on one as well.
Here's a memory: the great Felix Venable cutting his film Les angeS
Dorment - get it? - using a paper punch on individual frames to sync the
resultant flashes up to the beats in Dave Brubecks popular jazz piece "Take
Five". Felix's contrary mindset, instead of avoiding light flashes as we
were taught, was why not use them?
Keep 'em coming people. We get enough quotes, we'll have a book!"
------------
GARY SCHLOSSER
"The buildings were not Quonset huts in the generic WW II sense. They were like Quonset huts. There were no tin roofs, one story with just plain old composite shingles. The main stage was designed like the editing buildings. I think they were built in WW II.
“I had the dubious experience of being Jim's editing TA. He wasn't much interested in doing conventional editing as I recall. I had to help him a lot. (Most with the technical aspects of how to splice, operate the moviola, etc.) Those of us who were TAs never helped out aesthetically. Heaven forbid, UCLA was noted for being an auteur school, the director/filmmaker ruled supreme in those days. TV was the bottom of the barrel. Only film counted. We were all going to be great directors, except for those who wanted to be musicians, documentarians, industrial producers, TV producers, DPs, Editors, Script Clerks, and makers of fine wines and canned pasta sauce. (FFC himself).
“Speaking of FFC. I am surprised you say that Jim was/is the most famous. I would say Coppola is the most famous, at least left the greatest mark on American cinema. Many others have followed, I see them in your POV magazine. My vote goes to Francis, although I never knew him. He left the year before I got there.
“Oh yes, I do remember that screening where Jim's film was shown. I remember, my mentor, Ed Brokaw [entry # 42] in very measured tones remarking that Jim had enormous talent but wasn't realizing what he had to offer.
"By the way, nobody said ‘fucking’ in the screening room. Colin would use very specific language other than swearing to make a point. He was always articulate and to the point. Makes for good sensational stuff, however.”
OBLIGATORY DISCLAIMER: This moderated web site is intended as a meeting place where alumni of the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television can freely share their memories. The cartoon and the accompanying text represent the views of the individual creators and participants only. They do not represent the views of any employee of UCLA, the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television or Point of View magazine
==============
DAVID THOMPSON: "Galleons Sighted Off Jersy Coast"
"So I walked away from filmmaking and started a landscaping business: design and installation. Very satisfying work! But starting in the early nineties, I began to spend more and more time in the Northern Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, where my parents had retired. Reason: aging parents and their health problems. My father passed away, then my mother. I inherited a house. So here I am, a blue state person living in a red state town, and not a week goes by that I don't think of moving back to California---just like not a month goes by that Mr. Bernstein hasn't thought of that girl in the white dress on the Jersey ferry. If only those pesky housing costs on the California Coast would come down.
"As a graduate of UCLA Film School and #34 in Dick Blackburn's cartoon, I have a LOT to say about those years and my fellow classmates in the cartoon, as well as others. The cartoon seems to be my equivalent of Proust's madeleine. Remembrance of things past indeed! Now that the UCLA memory cells have been activated, the images are flowing like an acid flashback.
"I will not attempt to say it all here. But one important correction must be made. As some people have pointed out, Jack Ptak's description of the film school buildings in the article is inaccurate. But everyone seems to have forgotten the correct designation for the Film School Theater: It was building 3H, not 4F. Perhaps 4F is an unconscious reference to the anxiety at the time over possibly being drafted into the Vietnam War. Who knows? The official name of the theater was The Warren Hamilton Theater [see entry # 39].
"And Gary Essert [entry # 54] was so much more than just the projectionist. Gary booked all the films shown in 3H, either as part of the regular classes or as extra-curricular screenings. Gary used his studio contacts to acquire prints of new films before their general release, as well as studio prints of classic films. The high point for me was when Gary screened a pristine Warner Brothers studio print (10 minute reels instead of release print 20 minute reels) of The Searchers. After the screening John Ford came over to 3H from his home at 125 Copa De Oro, just off the NE corner of the campus. He answered all of our questions with patience and respect...mostly.
"Gary also created the "Film Orgy" at 3H, two to three day round-the-clock screenings of classic Hollywood films, some great, some good and some...well...entertaining in their own fashion. Such as September Storm, the only film ever shot in both CinemaScope and 3D! One Orgy "climaxed"(no pun intended) with a screening of an original MGM Technicolor Nitrate print of Gone With The Wind! You haven't seen the true glory of Three-Strip Technicolor until you've seen it in an original nitrate print. The Film Orgy later appeared as an annual event at Filmex.
"Gary also produced the bi-annual Student Film Screenings in Royce Hall. The "Intro" to the Student Film Screenings was Gary's student film project, his "170B," as it was known then. It was one long crane shot pullback across the Quad from the UCLA Seal on the main entrance of Royce Hall. Gary borrowed the crane from MGM for one day, before it was to be shipped by freighter to Spain to be used on Dr. Zhivago. The Director of Photography was Charles Clarke, who was teaching cinematography at UCLA after a long career in Hollywood, and the camera operator was Steven H. Burum, himself now the respected DP of Mission: Impossible, TK and and many others. [Burum was named by the School as its 2007 Cinematographer in Residence.] Gary shot in 35 MM and CinemaScope. and the music was composed by Dimitri Tiomkin!
"I worked for Gary at 3H. He taught me how to be a projectionist. But, most importantly, he was a friend. I just want to see that he gets the recognition he deserves for his contributions to UCLA Film School.
"In fairness to Jack Ptak I should add that his description of the screening of Jim Morrison's 170B (rumored unofficial title: "White Trash.” But no one has mentioned the scene of the woman reaming out John De Bella's ear with her tongue, or the scene in which the projector showing the porno film breaks down and the guys at the "stag party" go berserk) is, to the best of my recollection, one of the most accurate I've ever read.
"(On second thought, the scene of the woman reaming out John De Bella's ear may not be from Jim Morrison's 170B. It may be from a B&D/S&M "design film" made by, I believe, Phil Oleno. I say "design film" because it was originally made for the motion picture production design class taught by Palmer Shoppe. "Starring" many of the film students of the time, this film has to be seen to be believed. But who knows where a print is these days? Anyway, if I've got the scene right but the film wrong, hopefully someone will correct me. The Cartoon/POV HQ Web Site seems to be the 'Wikipedia' of the Mid-Sixties UCLA Film School.) "Back then the the academic set up was: UCLA School of Fine Arts, Department of Theater Arts: Theater Division, Motion Picture Division and Television/Radio Division. Yes, back then you could even major in radio! The UCLA Film School buildings (pre-Melnitz Hall) were, as others have described, one-story WW II style military barracks, painted, as I recall, some shade of green or grey. There were, I believe, five buildings. Two were sound stages (and yes, they had floors and rigging to hang lights). They were on a north south axis, just east of Parking Lot 5. The other three buildings were on an east/west axis, just east of the sound stages. The northernmost building was 3H, the Warren Hamilton Theater. One of the other two buildings contained a small projection theater with sound mixing facilities, the animation department and the Film School Library, where Jim Morrison worked part-time for a while. The other building was the post-production building, AKA the Editing Rooms. Scene of many, many late night/all night editing sessions, fueled by various liquids and substances. (Hey, it was the Sixties.)
"The Editing Building was also the location of the notorious Film School Men's Room, whose wall above the urinals was covered by a lot of imaginative and creative graffiti. Some of the graffiti were lines of dialogue from movies, especially from the Film School cult favorite, Marlon Brando's One Eyed Jacks. David Arkin [entry # 56] and Tim McIntire, Theater Division acting majors (both now deceased) used to stand around doing Marlon Brando/Ben Johnson scenes from One Eyed Jacks. David Arkin did the best Brando impersonation I ever heard. Tim Mcintire did a good Ben Johnson, but the best Ben Johnson was fellow acting major Gary Goodjohn. He was from Texas and he didn't have to "do" the Ben Johnson accent. He had it for real.
"In addition to the "adaptations", so to speak, there was the more "original" graffiti, such as: "James Blue is the eunuch high priest of the cinema", which I always though had a certain literary flair. Most likely written by a future screenwriter. And the most notorious graffito of all: "Jim Morrison has the ass of an angel".
"Between the Film School buildings and the Gypsy Wagon to the south (the North Campus Fast Food Outlet at the time) was a small parking lot. Faculty and staff only. Of course, that didn't stop film students from parking there, even if you intended to park for only a few minutes (famous last words). But if you parked there you had to watch out for Cody, the UCLA Police Department Parking Enforcement Officer. Cody would roar into the lot on his three-wheeled motorcycle and furiously write tickets before you could get back to your car or motorcycle and drive away. As he wrote tickets, those of us sitting on the lawn next to the gypsy wagon and the parking lot would boo him. And if someone got back to their car and got away before Cody could write and slap that ticket on their windshield, we would cheer.
"I think Cody got Jack Ptak's Austin Healy Sprite more than once. But back then the fine was only $5.00."
OBLIGATORY DISCLAIMER: This moderated web site is intended as a meeting place where alumni of the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television can freely share their memories. The cartoon and the accompanying text represent the views of the individual creators and participants only. They do not represent the views of any employee of UCLA, the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television or Point of View magazine.
================
RAY MANZAREK:
"UCLA was a fantastic place to study film in the '60s. Life was sweet, the students were artists, the pot was fine, the films were damned good, the teachers were fabulous - my God, Josef Von Sternberg! The British invasion in rock had just started, the nouvelle vague was just concluding, Fellini made <I>8 ½</I> and my student movies - "Evergreen" and "Induction" - staring Dorothy Fujikawa (my wife of 40 years now) had been accepted into the legendary Royce Hall screenings. I have written an autobiography called Light My Fire - My Life with the Doors, which contains an entire UCLA film school sequence. Check it out."
Source:
www.tft.ucla.edu/blackburncartoon/legend.cfm
