The 30th anniversary edition of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (SFJFF) launches this Saturday and runs until August 9 throughout the Bay Area. It's an extensive and inspired line-up (my overview is here) and among the highlights you'll find three sidebars: Tough Guys: Images of Jewish Gangsters in Film, People of the Book (exploring Jewish and Israeli writers) and Voices of the Former Soviet Union. This last one is comprised of two documentaries and one narrative feature, all of which I've previewed on DVD screener and hereby recommend.
Between 1986 and 1992, I made four trips to the USSR and befriended several young people who were finding their way through the societal upheaval known as glasnost and perestroika. Nearly two decades later, their generation is the subject of Robin Hessman's intimate and revealing film My Perestroika, which won accolades at Sundance and New Directors/New Films earlier this year. The film has only a tangential relationship with Judaism, so many thanks to the SFJFF for programming it.
My Perestroika is the true story of five classmates from Moscow School #57 who experienced, as they tell it, happy childhoods of blissful conformity. "I can't say I wanted to be like everyone else—I simply was like everyone else," one remarks. They graduated as radical changes began taking place in the USSR, and discovered the world wasn't what they thought it was. Now adults in their early forties, we see the niche each has found in this uncharted society. Borya and Lyuba are married history teachers who live in the apartment where Borya grew up. They find it almost impossible to explain the Soviet way of life to their incredulous students. Borya's friends Ruslan and Andrei took completely divergent paths. The former is a subway busker and ex-guitarist for Moscow's popular punk band, NAIV, while the latter owns the Moscow franchise for upscale French shirt retailer, Café Coton. The fifth friend, Olga, is a struggling single mother who services commercial pool tables. What the five now share—besides a penchant for chain-smoking—is a cynicism for politics and wariness for Russia's swing towards hard line patriotism. In casual interviews, they reflect clearly on the events that shaped their lives—the end of the Cold War, the radical act of quitting Komsomol, the dissolution of the USSR, religion, the 1991 coup and the turmoil of the Yeltsin years.
Curiously, the director of this film is American, albeit one who studied filmmaking in Russia. She produced the Russian version of Sesame Street during her 10 years living there, and My Perestroika benefits from her perspective as both outsider and insider. Eschewing narration or voiceover, Hessman poetically—almost giddily—interfolds her five stories with news footage, propaganda films and pop music, as well as home movies of the five classmates shot by Borya's Jewish father. As Mary Anderson Casavant writes in her review for Filmmaker Magazine, this is "a documentary so good at breaking the rules of historical docs that it makes you question why anyone would follow them."
The sidebar's other documentary is directed by a second American who studied filmmaking in Russia. While Kevin McNeer's Stalin Thought of You is more traditional in form, it is nonetheless a fascinating portrait of one man's relationship with "history's most prolific mass murderer." The titular "you" Stalin thought of is Boris Efimov, a Ukrainian-born Jew who was the USSR's top political cartoonist for 70 years. The meat of this story, as well as the element which connects these two men, is Efimov's beloved brother Mikhail Koltsov, whom Stalin had murdered in 1939. Koltsov was well placed in Soviet hierarchy—a pallbearer for Lenin, editor-in-chief at Pravda, and a military advisor during the Spanish Civil War. The character Karkov in Hemmingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls is entirely based upon him. Following Koltsov's death, Efimov was branded a "brother of an enemy of the people" and was unable to work. Most amazingly, he wasn't killed as well, or exiled at the very least. Stalin brought him back to lampoon Hitler in his notorious political cartoons, earning him a place on the Gestapo's black list. Efimov would go on to cover the Nuremberg Trials and win the Stalin Prize twice before the despot's death in 1953. It's an astonishing tale, recounted in the film by a clear-minded grand raconteur in the years leading up to his passing at age 108. The film's only drawbacks are a few awkward English-language interjections by the filmmaker, and a scene where he tries to reproach Efimov for his "respect" of Stalin. Efimov rightly accuses him of being naïve.
The third Russian film in the sidebar is of all things, directed by a Russian. Celebrated animator / documentarian Andrei Khrzhanovsky's A Room and a Half, or A Sentimental Journey Back Home is a fanciful meditation on the life and work of Russian-Jewish, Nobel Prize-winning poet Joseph Brodsky. Like Stalin Thought of You, this screened at last year's Mill Valley Film Festival and it's fortunate that the SFJFF has brought it back. Khrzhanovsky's narrative feature debut begins with an older, exiled Brodsky setting off on a return trip to his beloved St. Petersburg, which he hasn't seen since being "invited" to leave the USSR in 1972. In fact, this trip never happened in real life and Brodsky died in 1996 without ever seeing his family again. Brief scenes of this imagined journey are surrounded by extended, nostalgic flashbacks to Brodsky's bittersweet youth and young adulthood in Leningrad. I was particularly tickled by the film's portrayal of young, Western-emulating Russian bohemians who would transform medical x-rays into forbidden copies of jazz and rock 'n' roll records (a similar milieu is portrayed in the 2008 Russian film musical Hipsters). To aid his storytelling, the director employs animation (cat and bird lovers will be especially charmed), a bit of surrealism (musical instruments fly through a snowy Leningrad night) and at one point he even inserts his characters Zelig-like into archival footage. Throughout it all, excerpts from Brodsky's writings are given voice. The nostalgia-inducing art direction and cinematography, as well as the acting, are impeccable. I envy those who'll get to experience it all in glorious 35mm on the Castro's big screen.
Cross-published on film-415 and Twitch.
The San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (SFJFF) hits the big 3-0 this year, and will celebrate that landmark anniversary with a slate of 57 films from 14 countries. At last week's press conference, Executive Director Peter L. Stein and Program Director Jay Rosenblatt gave a guided tour of this year's films and special events, which will run from July 24 to August 9 at five Bay Area venues. Rosenblatt is a celebrated local film director who now finds himself on the other side of filmmaker/film festival divide. He replaces Nancy K. Fishman, who left the fest after seven years at the programming helm. The SFJFF is the oldest and largest festival of its kind, and was recently named one of the world's 50 leading film festivals by indieWIRE.
Many wondered how the SFJFF would emerge—artistically and financially—from fallout caused by 2009's contentious screening of the documentary Rachel. At the press conference, the film wasn't even mentioned by name, but was euphemistically referred to as "the earthquake." Anyone who was at the Rachel screening can tell you how painful it was to witness such fractiousness at a Bay Area cultural event. I personally heard one megabucks donor defiantly proclaim he'd never give the festival another dime and it seems he's made good on his threat. I've since learned that in response, many SFJFF fans upped their membership levels to demonstrate support for the festival's diverse programming. While nothing appears to harbor a Rachel-like potential for divisiveness this year, who knows? One SFJFF30 panel discussion is tellingly named, Is Dialogue Possible? How Films Help Us Talk About Israel (…Or Not).
SFJFF30 unofficially kicks off on Saturday, July 10 with a free outdoor Union Square screening of 1987's Dirty Dancing, starring the late Patrick Swayze and a "pre nose-job" Jennifer Grey. The event is co-presented by the San Francisco Neighborhood Theater Foundation as part of its "Film Night in the Park" series. The festival proper launches two weeks later on Saturday, July 24. This year's opening night film is Ludi Boeken's WWII drama Saviors in the Night, based on the true story of Marga Spiegel, a Jewish woman hidden from the SS by a righteous Catholic farm family. Spiegel herself, now 98, is expected to attend the Castro Theater screening along with director Boeken and actress Lia Hoensbroech. This year's 30th anniversary Opening Night Bash will take place after, rather than before the screening. Opening night itself has been moved from Thursday to Saturday so people can party down without worrying about work the next day.
A highlight of this year's festival is a special program titled Tough Guys: Images of Jewish Gangsters in Film, curated by Fishman. In the catalog she writes, "Scratch the bark on your family tree and you might uncover a Jewish gangster or someone who paid off a Jewish gangster." Indeed, at the press conference Fishman revealed that her own grandparents once received an ominous funeral wreath from gangster "Dopey Benny" Fein. The four films in this series include Barry Levinson's 1991 Bugsy with Warren Beatty, 1961's King of the Roaring 20's—The Story of Art Rothstein starring David Janssen (TV's The Fugitive), Mickey Rooney and Diana Dors, 1975's Lepke starring Tony Curtis as mobster Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, and finally Howard Hawk's 1932 classic Scarface, "a gangster movie that would have had a Jewish subtext for the Jewish audience of its day because of Paul Muni's career in the Yiddish theater."
Following the screening of Lepke, Fishman will moderate a panel discussion with writers Ron Arons (The Jews of Sing Sing), Patricia Brett Erens (The Jew in American Cinema) and Albert Fried (The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Gangster). And if that ain't enough Jewish gangsta for ya, the JCCSF presents an exhibition of paintings by Pat Hamou, "Wise Guys: Mobsters in the Mishpacha," from now until September 15, and the SFJFF will screen four more Jewish gangster movies at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts this autumn, starting with John Sayles Eight Men Out on October 3.
Each year the SFJFF hands out a Freedom of Expression Award, honoring "the unfettered imagination, which is the cornerstone of a free, just and open society." Jay Rosenblatt was one of its earliest recipients in 2005. This year's honor goes to Arab-Israeli writer/satirist Sayed Kashua, who has made a career of skewering Israeli/Palestinian relations in an irreverent manner that "somehow brings Arabs and Jews together in wincing, barrier-breaking laughter." Episodes from the first season of his hit TV sit-com Arab Labor were shown at the festival two years ago, which I regrettably missed. Arab Labor: Season One spent a long time in my Netflix queue listed as "a very long wait," before disappearing from the on-line rental service altogether. Happily, three episodes from Arab Labor: Season Two will have their international premiere at SFJFF30 just prior to Kashua receiving his award. The following day, the documentary Sayed Kashua—Forever Sacred will screen, preceded by an Arab Labor episode from Season One.
When I first glanced at this year's line-up, the film that leapt out was Robert Guédiguian's Army of Crime. I've been a fan of this French-Armenian director's politically humanist films ever since Marius and Jeanette became a U.S. arthouse hit in 1998. Unfortunately, only three of his eight subsequent films ever made it to the Bay Area (The Town is Quiet, The Last Mitterrand, Lady Jane), which makes the appearance of Army of Crime something to celebrate. The film, which details the exploits of a group of Jewish-Communist French resistance fighters during WWII, has received rave reviews across the board. It stars such notables as Guédiguian regulars Jean-Pierre Darroussin and Ariane Ascaride (Guédiguian's wife), as well as Simon Abkarian, Virginie Ledoyen and Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet. If you're unable to catch the film's lone SFJFF screening on July 28, it'll be back for a one-week run on the SF Film Society's Sundance Kabuki screen on August 20.
There are two additional French films playing SFJFF30. Axelle Ropert's The Wolberg Family was the most interesting film I saw at the SF Film Society's French Cinema Now series last year. This wildly offbeat drama traces the dissolution of a family headed by a small town Jewish mayor, all set to a soundtrack of eclectic R&B singles from the 60's and '70s. I certainly hope to see it again. The other film is Marco Carmel's Father's Footsteps. It's also about a family, this one an Israeli-Tunisian clan struggling against the seduction of criminal life in 1970's Paris. It was nominated for five 2008 Israeli Academy Awards, including Best Film, Director, Screenplay, Actress and Cinematography.
Sometimes the most interesting SFJFF films are from the outer reaches of the Jewish Diaspora. Therefore I was delighted to see three films from Latin America on the roster. Marcos Carnevale's Anita has been selected as the festival's Centerpiece Film, and is about a young woman with Down syndrome searching the streets of Buenos Aires for her mother. The mother is played by legendary Argentine actress Norma Aleandro, with Alejandra Manzo in the titular role of daughter Anita (the latter is expected to attend the festival screening). Ilusiones Opticas is a debut feature from Chilean director Cristián Jiménez. This melancholic comedy has been compared to the works of Scandinavian deadpan masters Roy Andersson and Aki Kaurismaki. The film will be preceded by the short What About Me? by Etgar Keret and Shira Gegen, co-directors of the 2007 Israeli hit comedy Jellyfish. Finally, in Fabian Hofman's semi-autobiographical Te extraño (I Miss You), a Jewish teen is sent to live with relatives in Mexico after his older brother "disappears" during Argentina's Dirty War.
Two films I regretted missing at last year's Mill Valley Film Festival have happily resurfaced at SFJFF30. Tali Shalom Ezer's Surrogate follows an emotionally damaged young man through his sessions with a sex surrogate. The fest catalog warns/promises that "This film contains nudity." A Room and a Half is Russian animator/documentarian Andrey Khrzhanovsky's fanciful riff on the life of Nobel prize-winning poet Joseph Brodsky. This film was off my radar until rave reviews began pouring in from 2009's New York Film Festival. A Room and a Half also connects two SFJFF30 sidebars. People of the Book spotlights films exploring Jewish and Israeli literary lives and includes Ahead of Time (a doc about acclaimed journalist/photographer Ruth Gruber), Amos Oz: The Nature of Dreams and Grace Paley: Collected Shorts. The other sidebar, Voices of the Former Soviet Union, includes Stalin Thought of You and My Perestroika. The former is a documentary about Soviet political cartoonist Boris Efimov and his delicate relationship with the dictator who murdered his beloved Pravda editor brother (this film also screened at Mill Valley). My Perestroika profiles five Russians who came of age during the collapse of the USSR, and it received terrific reviews from Sundance and New Directors/New Films. As someone who travelled frequently to the Soviet Union during this period of radical change, it's a film I'm particularly looking forward to.
SFJFF30 closes in San Francisco—and opens in Berkeley—with The Klezmatics: On Holy Ground, Erik Greenberg Anjou's musical documentary about a band that's spent 20 years redefining and popularizing the Jewish dance/folk music genre known as klezmer. Another SFJFF music doc, The "Socalled" Movie, takes a look at Socalled, a.k.a Josh Dolgin, a Jewish/Canadian rapper/filmmaker/visual artist/YouTube sensation who's so hip he performs with ex-James Brown bandleader Fred Wesley. Socalled is expected to perform live on the Castro Theater stage, and his film will be preceded by Maurice at the World's Fair, a Spike Jonze-directed short made for Maurice Sendak's 80th birthday. And if you didn't get your fill of silent films at the previous week's SF Silent Film Festival, the psych-folk band Moab Strangers will perform a newly commissioned score alongside 1922's over-the-top Jewish immigrant melodrama Hungry Hearts.
But wait, there's more! Relations between a young Israeli woman and the Palestinian mechanic who works at her father's garage leads to tragedy in Keren Yedaya's Jaffa. Set in the port city that adjoins Tel Aviv, it's directed by the maker of 2005's much lauded Or, and features my favorite Israeli actress Ronit Elkabetz (Late Marriage, The Band's Visit). Two more films exploring Israeli/Palestinian issues are the documentaries My So-Called Enemy and Budrus, the latter having screened at this year's SF International Film Festival. And speaking of the SFIFF, director Sam Green (The Weather Underground) will reprise his "live" documentary Utopia in Four Movements at the SFJFF. Those in the throes of the current baseball season might want to check out the Dustin Hoffman-narrated doc Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story. In Ry Russo-Young's feature You Won't Miss Me, a young woman recently released from a mental hospital tries to navigate life in NYC. The film stars Stella Schnabel, daughter of artist/filmmaker Julian, and it won last year's Gotham Award for Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You. Finally, a married couple's relationship is turned upside down when the Nazis invade Czechoslovakia in the stylish thriller Protektor—a film that happens to be sponsored by my friend Michael Ehrenzweig. There are roughly a dozen more programs I haven't touched on; all the more reason to pick up a SFJFF30 catalog or go on-line for a closer look.
Cross-published on film-415 and Twitch.
I waited almost a little too long to interview Michael Lumpkin, Frameline's former Executive Director, before his unexpected retirement. I told myself not to hazard the same mistake twice and to make a more concerted effort to get to know and interact with his successor K.C. Price and, further, to become more involved with Frameline's championing presence in the Bay Area. I dropped the ball last year on meeting up with Price but rallied this year. My thanks to K.C. for so graciously considering my 35mm complaints even as he invited me into Frameline's office at the Ninth Street Film Center for a conversation. He carries on Frameline's ongoing tradition of being responsive to its constituency. A tall, affable and well-spoken gentleman, I sensed our conversation would be the first of many in years to come.
* * *
Michael Guillén: K.C., I was Googling you last night to see who the heck you were and I kept getting all these hits on this Black evangelist fleecing his flocks....
K.C. Price: Frederick K.C. Price!
Guillén: That's right. But I found very little on you and so would like to start out this morning by securing a little background information for a brief profile. You've clearly been around for a while?
Price: Yes, I've been working for Frameline directly or indirectly for 11 years now.
Guillén: Were you originally on their board?
Price: No. Michael Lumpkin hired me in 1999. I came on then and worked for four years as their Development Director. Frameline, CAAM, and the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival co-own the Ninth Street Film Center and—when Frameline moved into the building—we enhanced that partnership. All of a sudden the Center became its own non-profit so I moved from the Frameline position and became the Managing Director of Ninth Street. I did that for five years. I was still basically working closely with Michael and Frameline through those years. When Michael left, I applied for the Executive Director position and that's how I came back into the office directly.
Guillén: What are your duties as Frameline's Executive Director?
Price: The Executive Director in a non-profit typically oversees all the departments. Normally, you'll have a program department, an administration and finance department, and a development / fund raising department. I manage all three of those larger areas and am ultimately responsible for the organization. I'm the one who reports directly to the Board of Directors.
Guillén: So you've been in this position two festival years now? How are you settling in? Have you been enjoying yourself?
Price: Absolutely! I feel lucky to have this job. No doubt about it. Of course, anybody working in the non-profit sector with the economy right now has been facing financial challenges—especially at the end of 2008 when all this started—but, we have weathered all that very well and things are going great. No, I couldn't love this job any more. Being in this role last year during my first festival—especially following in Michael's footsteps—felt pretty terrifying sometimes; but, at this point, going into my second year, it feels so much more comfortable to me.
Guillén: Are you from San Francisco?
Price: No, I've lived here for 15 years. I'm from North Carolina.
Guillén: Is that where you were educated?
Price: I went to undergraduate school in North Carolina and then went to graduate school in Washington, D.C. for a number of years. Then I lived abroad for about 2½ years.
Guillén: With regard to this year's edition of Frameline, I'd like to focus on the two sidebars I'm most anticipating—the focus on South American queer cinema and the mini-retrospective of the queer shorts of Andy Warhol—and the festival's overriding attention to history. As you went to organize the festival, did these themes present themselves in the submissions received or did you sift through the submissions in search of works to fit chosen themes?
Price: That's an excellent question. I would probably say it's a little bit more of the former but there is a little bit of the latter to help bring it all together. For one thing, in terms of the films that we're looking at that are being screened at the larger film festivals—Toronto, Sundance, Berlin—we'll be able to see the brightest gems in LGBT cinema that are out there. On top of that we have about 500-600 submissions during Frameline's submission process; a lot of shorts but a large number of narrative features and documentaries too. So you will start to see some themes that are gelling out there in the zeitgeist in terms of what filmmakers are making.
I noticed last year that in a lot of the films that were coming in—and, of course, we were going for the high-end artistic quality films—there seemed to be a lot darker themes and more violence in the films last year. I remember some audience members mentioning that to me and all I could respond was, "That's what the filmmakers are making right now." I don't know if that was a consequence of the administration....
Guillén: Let's blame them for bumming us out.
Price: [Laughs.] Or maybe it was the war in Iraq?—I don't know—but, it was interesting to see that. Whereas this year—in terms of finding a theme—the whole South American program was definitely what was happening, which was really interesting. Back in December-January, people were asking, "What are you seeing?" and it was all these films from South America. When we drew close to the programming decisions in March, it was an easy thing to do. It wasn't just that there were a large number of films from South America, it was that there were at least 10 really great films from South America.
Guillén: Latin American cinema is primarily what I cover so it's always great when there's a respectable LGBT sampling and this year is just fantastic. As I was researching Frameline's selection, it was heartening to see these films popping up in other queer film festivals in the U.S. and Canada, most recently Toronto's Inside Out, which just wrapped a few weeks ago. How much does Frameline coordinate with other queer festivals to bring these films to North American audiences? Does it help to acquire the films since they're already on the festival circuit? Does their availability influence your programming decisions? Do you interact with these other LGBT festivals?
Price: We do interact with them—not necessarily to make the programming decisions—but, we have a lot of close relationships with several of the other queer film festivals. We get to know each other at the larger film festivals. They're wonderful people working at the other festivals. We have a great working relationship, for example, with Outfest in Los Angeles. One thing we do get out of knowing the other programmers is that sometimes we can check in with each other for tips or if we're looking for information on a particular film; but, it's not a close network in terms of making mutual programming decisions.
You do have to remember that there is a limited body of work that's being made each year that is high quality LGBT cinema. A natural consequence of that is that you're going to see some of the same films programmed at other festivals as well.
Guillén: In terms of the spectacular dimension of the festival and inviting talent to accompany their works, there's not any coordinated efforts between LGBT festivals to finance travel costs for—let's say—bringing in directors from Argentina, Brazil or Peru to attend their screenings? I imagine the complication there would be the calendaring?
Price: You've described what the issue would be. It is mostly about the calendar. As I mentioned to you, one of the things I learned from working for the consortium at the Ninth Street Film Center is that it's not always easy to collaborate. Collaboration is beautiful and it's wonderful when it works; but, it's also a tremendous amount of work.
Guillén: It looks good on paper?
Price: [Laughs.] Yes, it looks good on paper. It sounds really great when you're describing it but then there's the whole level of actually doing the work, which can sometimes be very challenging. When you can make it work, though, it's really exceptional in the non-profit world. As you say, if you can combine resources to finance travel, that's great; however—though there are some queer festivals close by to our's—sometimes they're just not close enough to make the travel work. For example, as I said, we have a great relationship with Outfest in Los Angeles and would love to partner more on travel with them because they're situated not too far after our own festival, maybe a week or so after Frameline; but, it's always almost impossible to split costs because, no, talent can't hang around for two and a half weeks inbetween festivals.
Guillén: Does Frameline receive much consular assistance for some of the films you're bringing in from other countries?
Price: Yes. We have a number of partners that help us in different years. For example, in the two years I've been here, last year we had generous support from the Swiss consulate and some from Sweden, I believe. This year, the Israeli and Norwegian consulates are supporting us.
Guillén: Being that you have such a strong South American sidebar, are you receiving any consular support from the South American countries?
Price: No, we're not. Usually we can make the consular support happen when we already have a working relationship. Sometimes it just doesn't work because—by the time we confirm that a guest is coming in and the amount of work it takes to get the consulate's support—it doesn't work for the timeline. It always sounds really good, but—when you get to it and try to make it all happen—the timing doesn't work unless there's already an established relationship. One of our longest supporters was the Canadian consulate; but, we haven't been receiving support from them in the last couple of years. I don't know if that's due to a change in government or if there have been budget cuts.
Guillén: So let me be clear, when you're saying "support" do you mean financial support? Or administrative support?
Price: Most of the time, it's usually financial support to bring in filmmakers. That's what we use it for.
Guillén: And—since, as you know, I have a vested interest in waning 35mm culture—do the consulates help out at all with print trafficking costs?
Price: Sometimes we'll ask if they can help with print trafficking costs; but, mainly we ask for support to bring in a director.
Guillén: Can you speak to Frameline's collaborations with Bay Area community organizations? Are there any new organizations that you're particularly proud to be working with this year?
Price: We have two different types of sponsorship support. We have corporate sponsorship where companies, businesses and sometimes non-profits donate either corporate financial gifts or in-kind gifts. The other part of it is the co-presentations where we work with different community organizations—this year I think we have more than 60 different community groups, mainly all non-profit organizations—and they help us get out the word about Frameline and the festival and we get to talk about them at the screenings as well as provide tickets to their constituents so they can attend the festival. Servicemembers Legal Defense Network is one of our relatively new co-presenters that we're excited about this year. They're co-presenting two wonderful films related to Don't Ask Don't Tell: A Marine Story (2010) and Out of Annapolis (2010).
Guillén: Taking the South American sidebar as an example, do you reach out to the Latino community?
Price: Sure, absolutely.
Guillén: Do these Latino community organizations meld with the queer community?
Price: Oh sure. We work with particular partners [Amor Sin Fronteras, El/La Program Para Trans-Latinas, Queer Latina/o Artists Collective, Somos Familia] that serve the Latino community in terms of getting the word out about this special program that we have in the festival so that the constituents they serve are aware that these films coming from South America are available. Then we give free tickets to them as well.
Guillén: I note this year that Lucho Ramirez, who I believe is affiliated with Cine+Mas, wrote up your program essay on the South American sidebar.
Price: Our Community Engagement and Communications Coordinator Harris Kornstein is amazing and has done a great job with the co-presenters this year. I'd say more than half of our programs have a co-presenter associated with them and, typically, in the introduction before the film starts we acknowledge the co-presenter; but, unfortunately, we can't get into much detail in the introduction because it will just bog things down. We're wondering if there are other ways that we can talk about co-presentation so that our community understands how many non-profit groups we work with? One of the wonderful things about the festival is its relationship with the larger community, as represented by the co-presentations.
Guillén: I might suggest profiles of your co-presenters on Frameline's recently-launched blog? That strikes me as the perfect place to get the word out. As you mentioned earlier, the other arm of sponsorship is corporate. This year Yahoo! joins Frameline as one of its premiere corporate sponsors. Talk to me about the value of that association and how it benefits the LGBT community.
Price: Frameline's been fortunate to have a long, successful set of relationships with corporate sponsors for decades now. Some of our sponsors have been with us on and off since the '80s and early '90s. What's fascinating is how these major companies have developed these rich relationships with us, supporting us so generously, which shows how far the community has come in terms of how eager these corporations are to be a part of a film festival that serves the LGBT community. That's exciting. Yahoo! has been a sponsor for four, maybe five, years and this year they went up to one of our two highest levels of sponsorship.
Guillén: As a non-profit with a festival arm, how much support do you receive from the City?
Price: Grants for the Arts is one of our largest funders. I believe about 5% of our budget comes from Grants for the Arts. They're a significant funder to Frameline and have been for a really long time. We couldn't do without Grants for the Arts!
Guillén: Then the remaining bulk of financing comes from memberships and ticket sales?
Price: We have about a $1.6-1.7 million dollar budget to run the organization year-round and the way it breaks down is that for contributed income we have individual donations and membership, which is close to about a third of our support. Our donors and members have been so much of what's made Frameline strong through the years. It's just like the audience itself, which has always been there for us. The foundation also gets government grants, along with the corporate sponsorship that we've talked about, and then we have a set of earned income and the primary one, as you said, is ticket and pass sales. We also have earned income from our distribution department through film rentals and DVD sales.
Guillén: Speaking of the distribution arm, I'd like to follow-up on a question I asked Michael Lumpkin when we spoke a few years back. I expressed to him how much I admired the "Send It Home" program that Frameline initiated back in the late '80s, I believe, and he told me that the program had been discontinued due to administrative complications. He mentioned, however, that it had morphed into Frameline's "Youth In Motion" program, a carryover of the "Send It Home" initiative. Can you speak to where Frameline stands with its "Youth In Motion" program?
Price: Educational facilities have always been the main, fundamental customer base for Frameline Distribution, which has been around for more than 20 years now. We have about 250 titles. The "Send It Home" program from a number of years ago was a specialized program where people could order films that they could send back to the libraries and colleges of their choice, provided they were accepted. [Laughs.] Once in a while, they weren't. So—though someone might have wanted to send a title home to Nebraska—we had to check to see if they even wanted it.
The "Youth In Motion" program that Michael talked to you about has been in effect for almost two years now. The concept for the program was based on "Send It Home", but basically what we did was we made four DVDs that each covered a separate theme, such as gender identity, LGBT marriage, there's one on the Latino LGBT community, and the fourth one is on visionary leaders (for example, we have a film we've distributed on Harry Hays). So, we took different titles and grouped them into these four DVDs and created action guides and curriculum for each of the DVDs and then we started working with gay-straight alliances throughout the state of California to get them into the GSA network clubs and sometimes into the more liberal schools especially and they're using the DVDs as teaching tools in these GSA clubs so that they have discussion topics and films that they can watch. It's a great way to help end homophobic violence within schools. The program has been incredibly successful. We've confined it to the state of California because we've standardized the DVDs to conform to California curriculum.
Guillén: Another question I asked Michael but I pose it to you because I think it's important to revisit this question every so often: with increased mainstream acceptance of queer cinema—not only through the inroads we've made into outlying communities through festival, theatrical and television programming, but in the accessibility and increased visibility of our queer stories on many of the new exhibition platforms—how long will it be necessary to have LGBT identity-based film festivals? Are they still relevant? Do they continue to serve a necessary purpose for our community? Do they still help in organizing identity and community?
Price: Yes, yes, and yes. [Laughs.] It's really wonderful that we do have all these new platforms and options to see things on television that we didn't used to see; definitely a plethora of queer images in media that weren't available, say, 10-15 years ago. On the other hand, though, Frameline's festival as well as the other LGBT festivals throughout the country still fulfill a really important need of bringing out a large collection of independent, really wonderful LGBT films that you're not going to have access to. If on your cable networks or your IPhone—should that be the medium you prefer to watch films—these films were available, I wonder if it would be a different question? Yet, it isn't. LGBT film festivals really are the only opportunity people will have to see a lot of these works.
Another thing around this is that—although we do have a specific community we serve and our films are about LGBT content—there's still this whole dimension that is no different than any other major film festival in the Bay Area. There's this other piece of it. Yup, we're offering you most of our films for the first time and giving you a chance to see them because they haven't been on television or shown up at the theaters yet. Plus, of course, the wonderful opportunity to see these works with your community in the Castro Theater. Because of those things, I don't see how queer film festivals are going to be diminished. I'm reminded of the argument made 100 years ago when the phonograph was invented that there wouldn't be any reason to meet for a symphony or an opera anymore because you could just listen to a record. As we know, that argument hasn't panned out. Queer film festivals will be around for a long time. There is a need there around it that you can't replace in a living room. Also, our numbers have not been going down. We've been increasing the last few years in terms of audience size.
Guillén: The attendant question would be whether it's become more difficult to coordinate programming with other festivals in the Bay Area who are now prone to incorporating LGBT cinema into their line-ups? Do you find yourself more in competition for some of the major titles?
Price: That's a really good question and the answer is no. Again, it's based upon collaboration. For example, within our building, we have incredibly rich relationships with the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival and the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival, and outside of the building with the San Francisco International Film Festival. There are crossover titles; but, we always talk about it. San Francisco International will sometimes show queer titles but we're in communication with them about what we are and are not showing. Based on those great relationships, competition for titles is not a serious factor of concern.
Guillén: A case in point would be François Ozon's Le Refuge, which I caught at Toronto, and which Frameline has included in its line-up, but which was also shown previously in the Bay Area at a preview screening at the recent San Francisco International. I'm curious, did they situate the film in their festival in that way because they knew you were going to be showing it at your festival?
Price: Those decisions are usually made by the distributor. The distributor then lets us know what they're doing and we usually just sign off on it. "Okay. Sounds great. Love it." Both festivals benefit.
Guillén: Returning to Frameline Distribution, are any of your titles available through Netflix Instant Play?
Price: I'm glad you asked. They're available through Amazon and TLA. You can actually buy some of our DVD titles through Amazon or our website directly. We've also just started making a selection of our titles available for downloading through TLA and Amazon. The benefit of associating with Amazon and TLA is that Frameline secures access to their broader market. For us to set up download streaming is cost-prohibitive so it's better to work through those partners and their technology and allow them to do it.
Guillén: With regard to the historicity that has become the underscored theme of this year's Frameline festival, was this a theme you already had in mind? Or was this again the case of recognizing what was out there on the circuit?
Price: More of what was out there. We didn't purposely do that. We did more consciously program the Warhol sidebar just because of a number of things that had happened over the past few years. We thought it would be a nice add-on after the underground cinema we programmed last year. Plus, we were motivated by the wonderful Centerpiece documentary Beautiful Darling: The Life and Times of Candy Darling, Andy Warhol Superstar.
Guillén: Is Canyon Cinema providing the Warhol prints this year?
Price: No, we worked with Canyon Cinema last year for our special program on underground cinema; but, this year we're working with MOMA for the Warhol films since they had the 16mm prints. They just came in the other day. I was excited when the big box arrived. Ron Gregg, the Yale film studies professor who's curated the sidebar, is absolutely marvelous and I'm personally looking forward to his lecture as well.
Around your question regarding the historical theme, that one came up after we had started programming and we started looking at what was the theme and we thought, "Wow. There are a lot of historical dramas here or films about our history in terms of narrative features."
Guillén: Do you have a take on that? Why historicity has become a thematic focus out there in the LGBT zeitgeist?
Price: I don't have a take on it. I haven't given it much thought as to why that has happened. I am interested, though, and I don't know if we could ever answer this question because it's just so mysterious what causes themes to happen. Is it just coincidence? Personally, in terms of my own taste in GLBT film, I love historical queer films. I find them fascinating. I come from a point of view of history that we didn't just start happening a few years ago. I don't feel that we've had a rich enough sense of history—whether through novels, films or art—and, for me, there's something lacking so there can never be enough of it.
So, for example, I was really excited how much you loved The Consul of Sodom. I did too. One of the things that just fascinated me about the film so much was that I would never think that a person such as the poet portrayed in that film would have led such a life in post-World War II Franco Spain. It surprised me; but, then—watching the film—I thought, "Well, of course." I would have thought it would have been a more oppressive time where a gay man couldn't live quite as openly; but, then again, when you come from such a wealthy family, you can get away with a lot more.
Guillén: That's a valid point. I felt the same thing watching Frameline's opening night selection The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister, where the individuation of a young lesbian was furthered by her social station and class privilege. Those are certainly factors worth consideration in assessing how individuals like Anne Lister and Jaime Gil de Biedma got away with as much as they did in the times they lived. But what captures my imagination even more is how the sheer driving force of their individuality pierced through oppression and repression. In each of them was their fierce desire to live an authentic life.
Price: Exactly. And just imagining the challenges that they must have been up against, especially someone like Anne Lister in Regency England. I wasn't familiar with Anne Lister when I previewed the film for the festival, although I've since found out that she is well known in women's studies courses—she's often been called Britain's first modern lesbian—but, otherwise, I didn't know anything about her. I think it's absolutely wonderful that films like this can bring a person such as Anne Lister back to a wider audience, especially since she has such a strong historic significance for the LGBT community.
Guillén: So to wrap up here, what are you hoping Frameline's audiences will take away from this year's festival?
Price: I hope that everybody gets to as many films as possible because I'm completely blown away by the breadth of excellent films in this year's festival. I keep shaking my head in disbelief at just how many beautiful films there are day after day after day. It's an especially strong year so I hope that people get to as many films as possible and don't miss out.
Guillén: I'm likewise invested in several of the projects chosen this year. Scott Boswell's The Stranger In Us is dear to my heart and I'm so pleased it sold out its original Roxie engagement, such that you've added a second screening at the Castro.
Price: Yes, we're doing a repeat screening at our first TBA slot.
Guillén: I saw my own youth in The Stranger In Us and it confirmed for me that all I have to do is look in the mirror to experience the selfsame historicity that has thematically veined Frameline34. Having arrived in San Francisco in 1975, not only has my entire adult life been lived here; but, I've been witness to the gay liberation of the '70s, including watching Frameline grow as a festival since its early beginnings. All these years later, my interest remains in how the festival shifts along with current trends. I'm glad to see the festival continuing to grow, that you have settled in so well into your stewardship, and I look forward to participating in this upcoming event.
Price: Thank you, Michael. I appreciate it.
Cross-published on Twitch.
Earlier, when I asked Program Director Nancy Fishman which program out of this year's edition of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (SFJFF) she was most anticipating, she didn't miss a beat in highlighting the salute to Gertrude Berg; a program consisting of four archival episodes from The Goldbergs television series, followed by Aviva Kempner's documentary Yoo Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg (2009). In tandem with SFJFF's presentation of the 2009 Freedom of Expression Award to Kempner, a Q&A session following The Goldbergs program, and a panel discussion following Yoo Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg, the program was leant considerable charm by the participation of Dr. Glenn D. "Pete" Smith, Jr., author of Something On My Own: Gertrude Berg and American Broadcasting, 1929-1956 (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2007). Perhaps it was his Mississippian drawl, or his enthused (and contagious!) scholasticism, or the intriguing disconnect between his youthful interest in a subject matter mostly unknown by Americans under 60.
Glenn D. Smith, Jr. is an assistant professor of communication at Mississippi State University located in Starkville, MS. Something On My Own was published by Syracuse University Press in 2007, and nominated for the 2008 Bancroft Prize, given for exceptional work in American history. The book has received notice in the Journal of American History, the Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, Television Quarterly, and Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies, among other distinguished publications. It also has its detractors: Ben Birnbaum stages his complaints at Tablet Magazine. Professor Smith is currently researching the careers of union activist and blacklisted actor, Philip Loeb, and fellow Mississippian Carolyn Bennett Patterson, the first woman senior editor at National Geographic.
Dr. Smith's salute to Gertrude Berg (in PDF format) supplemented the SFJFF program and his comments during the afternoon tribute added—as mentioned—charming heft to the informational proceedings.
* * *
Professor Smith's Intro to The Goldbergs:
Near the end of her life, Gertrude Berg asked herself, "Have I become the woman I always wanted to be or am I still trying?" If Gertrude was confused about her identity, she had good reason to be. After all, she spent more time as Molly Goldberg than she did as Gertrude Berg. The Goldbergs was produced, written and starred Gertrude but it was more than just a radio or television series; the first of its kind in either medium. It offered a glimpse inside the head of one of our more interesting, complex and prolific women in broadcasting history. If you wanted to know what Gertrude was thinking at any given moment in the day, look no further than that week's episode of The Goldbergs because—let's face it—she thought more about The Goldbergs than she did just about anything. I've often said in my writing that The Goldbergs was Gertrude's mouth piece for her political and social discontent. As you will see in the upcoming episode "Rent Strike", for example, Berg had something to say about the struggles of the common man and woman and she found the right person to say it in labor activist and actor Philip Loeb, who played Jake to her Molly.
So, The Goldbergs provides a glimpse into the world of Gertrude Berg. It offers, for example, bits and pieces of her own childhood in East Harlem, New York. It gives the viewer an idea of the life Gertrude may have lived—had she the inclination to do so—she had enough talent, drive and ambition to do something on her own. But yet The Goldbergs offers more than just a glimpse into the Gertrude Berg experience—as we celebrate her life today, let's look at it as just that experience—it also offers a microcosm of the Jewish American experience. All of this is to say that Gertrude—through The Goldbergs—created a venue through which the Jewish American was celebrated and people from all walks of life, including myself, were welcome.
* * *
After screening the archival episodes of The Goldbergs—which included a heartfelt performance by a young Anne Bancroft in "Mother-in-Law"—Nancy Fishman asked Professor Smith to talk about the history of The Goldbergs on radio and television, bidding wars between studios for the show, and what caused it to eventually go off-air?
He responded: "Okay, some of you may not know that The Goldbergs was first a radio series in 1929, premiered at the start of the Great Depression, and Berg sold the series to NBC as a daily radio 15-minute serial with no sponsors. It took NBC two years to find a sponsor, Pepsodent Toothpaste (who also sponsored Amos n' Andy). She went from making about $75 a week in 1929—from which she had paid off the cast and crew—to $2,000 a week in the early 1930s. By the end of her first decade on radio—The Goldbergs, y'know, was a cottage industry—Berg was making the equivalent of about $7,500 a week and in 1937 she became the first woman in broadcasting to sign a million-dollar contract with a sponsor: Proctor and Gamble.
"So when I'm asked about Berg's legacy, just the fact that as a woman in a male-dominated business—and that's exactly what it was, make no mistake—she was able to write, produce, direct and star in her own radio series every single day for almost 10 years without interruption…! That being said, the show carried itself during the Second World War where Molly sold everything, including war bonds, and in 1945 the show was finally cancelled. In that 15-year period The Goldbergs bounced between CBS and NBC, whoever the highest bidder was at that time. If anything, that shows you how skillful Berg was at negotiations. If NBC, for example, didn't meet her demands, she would go to Paley's network. If Paley, by example, by the end of the next contract didn't meet her demands, she'd go back to NBC….
"In 1949, the show did premiere on CBS—you saw three of the four episodes with Philip Loeb—and it lasted on CBS for 10 years and was ended, unfortunately, by the blacklist. Loeb was blacklisted for his union politics. He was a longtime member of Actors Equity, a champion for Actors Equity, he helped usher in things that I think most actors take for granted today, including rehearsal pay. …In his 20 years of union work, Phil would say that he loved Equity work first, his teaching at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts second, and acting third. It was, though, his union activities that got him blacklisted. Gertrude was asked by CBS and General Foods to fire him, but she refused. From there, she and Loeb were together in their 18-month stance in which they tried to find a new sponsor and a new network after CBS pulled the plug. The Goldbergs suffered from the blacklist itself, as did Berg. She spent the rest of her life piecing together what was left of her career and Loeb, of course, ended up committing suicide."
Asked whether Berg avoided being too Jewish on The Goldbergs, Professor Smith offered, "In the years I've researched Gertrude's career, one thing I've been struck by—in terms of The Goldbergs—is its universal appeal. She straddled that line between bringing the show that would celebrate—as we said earlier—the Jewish American experience, but not making it exclusive to one group of people. For years on radio some of her biggest fans were non-Jewish. Her favorite story, in fact, was when she got a letter from a group of Catholic nuns who had given up The Goldbergs for Lent. They had written to Berg to ask for copies of the scripts for episodes they had missed.
"As the show progressed from 1949-1955, it did get more diluted (if that's a word I can use in this situation); it became more homogenized (I think is the word we use in academia when talking about ethnic shows). The ones in 1949 specifically address more Jewish themes than the ones in 1955, believe it or not. But I think it's just because she wanted to walk that fine line. She was also very aware that Mr. William Paley was watching closely. When you think about Paley and his politics, as much as he gave to Jewish causes, he was also timid about the fact of who he was and where he came from. That played into that as well. In fact, in the beginning of 1949, he didn't even want the series for television. As I've often said, it's one thing to hear an anti-Semitic line on a radio show, or a rock being thrown through a window (for example) during Passover; but, it's another to see it on television. That made William Paley nervous and Gertrude—if anything—was a business woman. She was very sensitive to what sponsors might or might not feel or want her to do, until it came to Philip Loeb when they went a step too far."
Protesting that something was lost when the venue from The Goldbergs was shifted from the city to the suburbs, one gentleman questioned why that decision had been made? Smith answered: "Yeah, The Goldbergs lost a lot in translation—you're absolutely correct about that—and it had lost a lot of air time too. The show had been almost 18 months off the air. Philip Loeb was blacklisted in September of 1950. Berg and Loeb fought the battle often with the studio that entire season with General Foods. CBS and General Foods cancelled the show in the Spring of 1951. And the show didn't reappear until later in 1952. By that point you had a different type of situation where shows like Father Knows Best and Leave It To Beaver and I Love Lucy—which, by the way, was the heir to Gertrude Berg's time slot—were on the air. By the time Gertrude came back to the air minus Philip Loeb, she was having to play catch-up. That's something Gertrude had never had to do in her life because she was the trendsetter for 20 years from radio, and now to play catch-up? Her son Charlie told me that she considered the Guild Film series sort of a step down. That was the last time the show was on the air in 1955. She had gone from CBS to NBC and then on to a syndicated film series, that was sort of her last gasp at a television career. She spent the rest of her life really trying to get back where she was in 1949 and that's, I think, the great tragedy of her career. The highlight was Molly Goldberg and—let's face it—that was the quintessential image that she created. She had a hard time, in many ways, letting go of that image. By 1955, things had simply changed and—you're right—the show as a result lost a lot in the translation."
Asked about what I termed earlier as "the intriguing disconnect between his youthful interest in a subject matter mostly unknown by Americans under 60", Professor Smith chuckled and said, "That's the $64,000 question. That's always the first question I get. I enjoy that question because—as I tell my students—you know, a good television show and a good writer should transcend difference.
"I became interested when I was in graduate school. I was working on my masters at the university and—like most graduate students—I was looking for a good thesis topic. I ran across her name doing some research and I'm a journalist and a historian by trade—and I've told this story many times—but it was just a damn good story. I mean, point blank, a screenwriter could look for this kind of stuff and never find it. So I stayed with it. Believe it or not, I identify with Gertrude's story. Growing up in the South, we Southerners knew something about trials and tribulations ourselves, and her story speaks to the American Dream. Who doesn't want what Gertrude had in some way? Once I got to the blacklist, and started investigating Phil's life—for some reason I keep calling him Phil, like I knew him—but, once I started investigating that, I knew I had a big story. Then I knew I had a dissertation topic, which became my book. That's the long way around a short answer, I guess."
Fishman pursued this query in the panel discussion after the screening of Yoo Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg. Along with wanting to know what drew Professor Smith to Gertrude Berg, Fishman wanted to know when he knew he would end up writing about her? Which is unusual because Smith is from Mississippi, "Which," Fishman quipped, "was even farther away from Manhattan than the Bronx."
"Yeah," Smith grinned, "it's a long schlep. First of all, [her children] Cherney and Harriet were very hospitable to me. I was 27 or 28 when I sat down to interview Harriet and she said, 'Can I ask you a question before you start?' I said, 'Absolutely.' She said, 'Are you Jewish?' I said, 'No, ma'am.' She said, 'Do you mind if I ask your religious background?' I said, 'Well, I was raised Southern Baptist.' She said, 'Oh my God, you're a long way from home.'
"To answer your question, I was doing some research for my masters thesis in Auburn back in 1994 and—as I was telling this story earlier—like most grad students I was struggling to find a good topic for my masters thesis and I ran across Gertrude's name in some obscure book on women in comedy, which I found funny later on because Gertrude never considered herself a comedienne; she considered herself a performer first and foremost. But anyway, that reference led to another reference and turned into a class I was doing on broadcasting history and women in the media corps. I took it all in and that parleyed itself into a partial masters thesis and then a dissertation topic at the University of Southern Mississippi. But like most journalists and/or historians, it was just a damn good story. That's the honest-to-God's truth. I do identify with Gertrude's story a little bit—I have a family member who has struggled with mental illness—those kind of little nuggets stick with you. She reminds me—Gertrude, not Molly—of my own mother, a woman who has called me three times in the last four hours. A strong, domineering, Southern woman who did not get to live out her own dreams so she transferred all of those to her two daughters and her son. Part of it's that; but, it's just a good old-fashioned story.
"As far as when I knew that I had something, it was when I got into Syracuse. I had many fits and starts with this project. I had actually fallen asleep one night and had a dream about Gertrude. She was playing in a stage play and my mother was out in the audience with me—I can't figure that one out, to save my life—and she invited me, Gertrude did, to come back stage after the play. I told my mother she needed to stay in the audience and I went back there and Gertrude sat me down and we chit chatted—because Gertrude loved to chit chat—and she said, 'Darling, you're doing a good job. Make sure they don't forget me.' I woke up the next morning and I said, 'You know what? This is my project.' The minute I got to Syracuse and stumbled upon her two children, as my dissertation director told me, 'Goddamn, you've hit the motherlode here.' That's when I knew."
Asked where Gertrude Berg's broadcasting career would have gone had she not defended Philip Loeb, and conceding that morally she really had no choice, Professor Smith added, "It bothered her anyway. Even the fact that she went to the ends of the earth—which most people would agree that she did—the fact that she couldn't do enough really sat next to her. Those are the kinds of things that kept Gertrude up at night. She wasn't worried about the next day's script—because she had those things down pat—but, it was this fundamental belief that her grandfather taught her that in America the principle of fair play should actually mean something. She practiced that to the best of her ability in her career. Was she always fair? I don't know. Did she always make the right decision? I'm not sure. But I do know one thing. She didn't bat an eyelash [deciding] to protect Phil Loeb. That was the great tragedy of her legacy. She always felt like she didn't do enough."
Aware that Berg successfully played NBC and CBS off each other in a bidding war during the height of the show's popularity, Fishman wondered if it was easier for Berg to do so because she was a woman? Did that soften her relationships with Paley and Sarnoff and their minions? "Absolutely not," Dr. Smith objected. "Being a woman just made it twice as hard for her, especially when they found out at the board meetings that she was nothing like Molly Goldberg. I have copies of memos going between one NBC vice president to another and they don't know what to do with her. She learned the business from the ground up and was literally the only woman in a roomful of men, who at first patronized her and considered her to be Molly Goldberg and—once they realized their mistake—she was laughing all the way to the bank, as they say."
As for whether she would have had the same success if her career had started after the advent of television, and if she had not already established herself as a major radio star, Professor Smith mentioned: "Let's give credit to Worthington 'Tony' Miner, who was a young producer from the World Theatre who Paley had hired and entrusted with three charges. He wanted Miner to bring a children's show to the network so Miner helped create Mr. I. Magination. Paley wanted a variety show on CBS so Miner found Ed Sullivan to create Toast of the Town. Paley was looking for a third element, a radio drama, and Gertrude did force the issue on Paley and Paley did give her an audition; but, Miner saw the audition. He probably helped convince Paley that this was the third element in the trifecta, so to speak. To give a more personal answer, Gertrude told Judith Abrams when Judith asked that very question in the early 1960s, 'Do you think you would be successful today knowing what you know?' and Gertrude said, 'No. It's all about timing.' She said, 'I just happened to be in the right place at the right time and in show business it is all about timing.' "
Noting that television shifted towards conformism for reasons having to do with a lot more than McCarthyism and the blacklist, one fellow wondered if popular culture could have been different without those factors? Professor Smith thought not. "I don't think so, simply because Paley and Sarnoff controlled so much of the industry early on and they couldn't help creating the characters as people who didn't resemble them. They helped homogenize these images. You have a gulf from the 1950s to the 1970s. It took someone like Norman Lear to step forward and recreate the narrative, so to speak. Between that there's this gulf, this void, and women like Gertrude were no longer around to help create the narrative. Everyone talks about the creativity in Hollywood but—with all due respect—they recycle the same thing over and over and play it safe. You have to remember it's a business and Paley and Sarnoff were in the business of making money—not that there's anything wrong with that—but, somehow they're afraid that they're going to offend some viewers out there in Kansas somewhere who will take offense to someone like Gertrude Berg. They continue to underestimate our ability to be sensible viewers."
Asked if Berg was familiar with the Bronx, where The Goldbergs was set, Professor Smith replied: "Gertrude was a meticulous researcher and she spent a long time in the lower east side back in her radio days where she became recognizable. She would join mothers clubs in the lower part of Manhattan just to pick up the accent and the conversations and that sort of thing. But when she went to television, she gave up directing to Walter Hart. CBS wanted to hire a writing staff and she liked that idea but—as Newsweek pointed out in 1949—she owned the whole kit and caboodle so she did go to the Bronx and according to at least one newspaper article I know, she did visit Treemont Avenue.
"She noticed there was a lot of commotion in one apartment—it was a child's birthday party—so she knocked on the door and asked if she could come in? One of the kids from that party ran out the door and ran to a nearby park and shouted, 'Molly's in our house!' A stream of kids came running back. As far as I know, she did visit the Bronx just to get the look and feel of what Molly's world was like. Even though she grew up in East Harlem, Gertrude loved Park Avenue. That's where her roots were as a modern woman.
Prefacing that several scripts on The Goldbergs were quite provocative and inclined towards the Left, another gentleman questioned whether there was ever any concern that they were pushing the envelope at a time when the tide was clearly moving in the other direction? "No," Dr. Smith answered, "because she was selling a buttload of Sanka coffee and that's all William Paley really was concerned with. I have made the stance before—let's make no mistake—Philip Loeb was the reason this show was blacklisted. It had little to do with the social issues in the show. I do grant you they are very progressive scripts; but, if you watched TV in 1949, I don't think Gertrude was the only one doing the unusual. The government had been chasing Philip for two decades. His politics in the union had divided many people within Equity. He'd been running from the Attorney General and later on the Senate Internal Security Committee off and on for years and it just finally caught up with him. But that is the reason the show came to a screeching halt, not because of the scripts. Because once again, as long as the show was selling the product, that's all the sponsor was concerned with. Loeb just got too much publicity and it got just a little too warm in the kitchen for the sponsor."
As for whether Gertrude Berg wrote scripts for others, Smith relayed, "She did other things in the 1930s. She actually had another radio series The House of Glass about a woman who runs a hotel in the Catskills (sound familiar?). She dabbled in that off and on. The integral years, the post-war years rather, between 1945 and 1949, were some dry years, so to speak. She was working on her play Me and Molly and the quote 'she was floundering around looking for something to do' that I used in the movie, that's from Harriet Berg who told me that. She said her mother was 'floundering around.' She said she was unbearable when she wasn't performing. Harriet did tell me this, she said, 'You can always tell when my mother got a new gig because we could stop taking the bus.' Not that Gertrude ever took the bus—she took maybe one trip—but she tried to cut back on the shopping, which she loved to do. It didn't last very long. She loved the work and that's what motivated her as a mother and a wife."
Cross-published on Twitch.
The 30th anniversary edition of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (SFJFF) launches this Saturday and runs until August 9 throughout the Bay Area. It's an extensive and inspired line-up (my overview is here) and among the highlights you'll find three sidebars: Tough Guys: Images of Jewish Gangsters in Film, People of the Book (exploring Jewish and Israeli writers) and Voices of the Former Soviet Union. This last one is comprised of two documentaries and one narrative feature, all of which I've previewed on DVD screener and hereby recommend.
My Perestroika is the true story of five classmates from Moscow School #57 who experienced, as they tell it, happy childhoods of blissful conformity. "I can't say I wanted to be like everyone else—I simply was like everyone else," one remarks. They graduated as radical changes began taking place in the USSR, and discovered the world wasn't what they thought it was. Now adults in their early forties, we see the niche each has found in this uncharted society. Borya and Lyuba are married history teachers who live in the apartment where Borya grew up. They find it almost impossible to explain the Soviet way of life to their incredulous students. Borya's friends Ruslan and Andrei took completely divergent paths. The former is a subway busker and ex-guitarist for Moscow's popular punk band, NAIV, while the latter owns the Moscow franchise for upscale French shirt retailer, Café Coton. The fifth friend, Olga, is a struggling single mother who services commercial pool tables. What the five now share—besides a penchant for chain-smoking—is a cynicism for politics and wariness for Russia's swing towards hard line patriotism. In casual interviews, they reflect clearly on the events that shaped their lives—the end of the Cold War, the radical act of quitting Komsomol, the dissolution of the USSR, religion, the 1991 coup and the turmoil of the Yeltsin years.
Curiously, the director of this film is American, albeit one who studied filmmaking in Russia. She produced the Russian version of Sesame Street during her 10 years living there, and My Perestroika benefits from her perspective as both outsider and insider. Eschewing narration or voiceover, Hessman poetically—almost giddily—interfolds her five stories with news footage, propaganda films and pop music, as well as home movies of the five classmates shot by Borya's Jewish father. As Mary Anderson Casavant writes in her review for Filmmaker Magazine, this is "a documentary so good at breaking the rules of historical docs that it makes you question why anyone would follow them."
The sidebar's other documentary is directed by a second American who studied filmmaking in Russia. While Kevin McNeer's Stalin Thought of You is more traditional in form, it is nonetheless a fascinating portrait of one man's relationship with "history's most prolific mass murderer." The titular "you" Stalin thought of is Boris Efimov, a Ukrainian-born Jew who was the USSR's top political cartoonist for 70 years. The meat of this story, as well as the element which connects these two men, is Efimov's beloved brother Mikhail Koltsov, whom Stalin had murdered in 1939. Koltsov was well placed in Soviet hierarchy—a pallbearer for Lenin, editor-in-chief at Pravda, and a military advisor during the Spanish Civil War. The character Karkov in Hemmingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls is entirely based upon him. Following Koltsov's death, Efimov was branded a "brother of an enemy of the people" and was unable to work. Most amazingly, he wasn't killed as well, or exiled at the very least. Stalin brought him back to lampoon Hitler in his notorious political cartoons, earning him a place on the Gestapo's black list. Efimov would go on to cover the Nuremberg Trials and win the Stalin Prize twice before the despot's death in 1953. It's an astonishing tale, recounted in the film by a clear-minded grand raconteur in the years leading up to his passing at age 108. The film's only drawbacks are a few awkward English-language interjections by the filmmaker, and a scene where he tries to reproach Efimov for his "respect" of Stalin. Efimov rightly accuses him of being naïve.
The third Russian film in the sidebar is of all things, directed by a Russian. Celebrated animator / documentarian Andrei Khrzhanovsky's A Room and a Half, or A Sentimental Journey Back Home is a fanciful meditation on the life and work of Russian-Jewish, Nobel Prize-winning poet Joseph Brodsky. Like Stalin Thought of You, this screened at last year's Mill Valley Film Festival and it's fortunate that the SFJFF has brought it back. Khrzhanovsky's narrative feature debut begins with an older, exiled Brodsky setting off on a return trip to his beloved St. Petersburg, which he hasn't seen since being "invited" to leave the USSR in 1972. In fact, this trip never happened in real life and Brodsky died in 1996 without ever seeing his family again. Brief scenes of this imagined journey are surrounded by extended, nostalgic flashbacks to Brodsky's bittersweet youth and young adulthood in Leningrad. I was particularly tickled by the film's portrayal of young, Western-emulating Russian bohemians who would transform medical x-rays into forbidden copies of jazz and rock 'n' roll records (a similar milieu is portrayed in the 2008 Russian film musical Hipsters). To aid his storytelling, the director employs animation (cat and bird lovers will be especially charmed), a bit of surrealism (musical instruments fly through a snowy Leningrad night) and at one point he even inserts his characters Zelig-like into archival footage. Throughout it all, excerpts from Brodsky's writings are given voice. The nostalgia-inducing art direction and cinematography, as well as the acting, are impeccable. I envy those who'll get to experience it all in glorious 35mm on the Castro's big screen.
