THROWBACK THURSDAY / 2007 FRAMELINE31 / THE FALL OF '55—The Evening Class Interview With Seth Randal

In anticipation of a free screening of The Fall of ’55 scheduled for Saturday, May 14, 2022, 6:00PM at The Community Center, 1088 N. Orchard St. in Boise, Idaho, to be followed by an onstage discussion between Seth Randal and yours truly, I felt it might be helpful to revisit our earlier conversation when his documentary screened at the 31st edition of Frameline, San Francisco, California. 

Seth Randal was thoroughly enthused when we met. He had been putting up announcements of an added screening of The Fall of '55 [Wikipedia / IMDb], necessitated by the rapid sellout of his first screening at the Roxie Film Center. Amiable, articulate and earnestly invested in his own project, we retreated to Harvey Milk Plaza away from the noisy festival throngs to conduct our interview in sunlight and fresh air. Coincidentally enough, both of us were both born in Mercy Hospital in Nampa, Idaho. 

As Randal has synopsized at the film's website: In late 1955 and early 1956, the citizens of Boise, Idaho believed there was a menace in their midst. On Halloween, investigators arrested three men on charges of having sex with teenage boys. The investigation claimed the arrests were just the tip of the iceberg—they said hundreds of boys were being abused as part of a child sex ring. There was no such ring, but the result was a widespread investigation which some people consider a witch hunt. By the time the investigation ended, 16 men were charged. Countless other lives were also touched. In some cases, men implicated fled the area. At least one actually left the country. The investigation attracted attention in newspapers across the nation, including Time magazine. In 1966, author John Gerassi wrote a book on the investigation, The Boys of Boise. The "Morals Drive" left scars which remain to this day.

Admirably influenced by the work of documentarian Ken Burns, The Fall of '55 likewise pays homage to the graphic design of Saul Bass (Advise and Consent, 1962) via Matt Johnson's art campaign, highlighting the double entendre of the film's title. A torn cottonwood leaf becomes the icon of hearts torn by Boise’s homosexuality scandal.

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Seth Randal: It's tremendously exciting to be here in San Francisco and to have the first showing sell out. It's just overwhelming. It's remarkable to see the interest that people have in this story.  

Michael Guillén: Audiences in San Francisco have been trained to appreciate queer history. As someone who came here in 1975 in the midst of the Castro Florescence and has watched Frameline develop all these years, the quality of the documentaries that have made it into the program line-up has increased each year. I was excited by your entry—The Fall of '55—because, as I mentioned, I'm from Idaho, born in Nampa, raised in Twin Falls, and was aware of John Gerassi's book The Boys of Boise that examined the events that scandalized the capitol in the mid-50's, though not aware of all the details included in your documentary. What motivated you to focus on this story? Why did you feel it was a story that was important to tell now? 

Randal: I had learned about these cases back when I was in high school going to Nampa High and my cousin's girlfriend had told me that there had been this scandal and a book had been written and I was blown away. So I went to the Nampa Library and I went to "that section" where they had these types of books and looked it up and I picked up the book and I thought, "Y'know, there are some great stories here but there's a lot to read and I'm not in that place in my life where I can do it." The thing that interested me most was I wanted to know what happened after the book. I wanted to know what happened to the people whose lives had been destroyed by this and find out if they were able to recover? Were there any ongoing consequences or impact? And understand how the scandal changed the lives of the individuals who were involved; but, also their families and the community as a whole. That's really what interested me in following this story: trying to find out the consequences and what happened to these people, which is why it took us such a long time to make the film because it was an incredibly intensive research process trying to find everyone that was connected to the case. 

We actually found and determined the outcomes of all of the men who were prosecuted as well as most of the young accusers. We found out what happened to them and their families. We also tracked people not just through time, through 50 years, but many of them had moved away, scattered, so we had to find out what happened to them, approach them, and ask them to talk. The thing that got me most was the idea of the injustice, that people were prosecuted over something that was really out of their control. They were prosecuted for being gay and that—as a gay man—was something that I found really frightening. I wanted to know more about the cases. Originally, it wasn't going to be a documentary. I thought maybe I'd write a play or a screenplay and I got to thinking, "If I'm going to write a screenplay or if I'm going to write a play, I'm going to want to do the research to make it as accurate as possible." Because I wasn't living in the 1950s, I would want it to be as accurate and fair as possible. Then I got to thinking, "If I'm going to do all this research, hell, I work in TV news, maybe I should make a documentary about it." The reason why I did it when I did was because I knew at that point the 45-year anniversary was approaching. I knew that many of these people were maybe already dead and—if they weren't dead—I wanted to get them to talk as soon as possible, as quickly as possible. Having watched the film, you can appreciate that one of the people interviewed in the film passed away during the process of making the film.  

Guillén: That underscores the importance of recording these testimonials. One of the film's true highlights are the absolutely fascinating audio tapes of Mel Dir. 

Randal: Thank you, Jonathan Ned Katz!  

Guillén: I was impressed. There's an effective juxtaposition that goes on in your documentary, in that you have staged many of the comments—envoicing journalistic sources—but you've mixed this recreated material with verbatim recordings of an interview with Mel Dir. 

Randal: I think that interview was conducted here in San Francisco. Mel Dir was the man who was arrested here in San Francisco. Even though the cases are called The Boys of Boise, the scandal ended in San Francisco with Mel Dir's arrest. The Sheriff came from Boise all the way to San Francisco to arrest Mel Dir. Mel Dir was taken back and you heard the quote Mel Dir makes in the film where the San Francisco police officer said, "We wouldn't go to Oakland to make an arrest like this." Thank you Jonathan Ned Katz for sharing the interview with us and letting us use it, letting me know about it, but also for the work that he's done. It's a tremendous contribution to our history as LGBT people. The remarkable thing was Mel Dir was one of the easiest people to track down and find. He was one of the first people [to pop up] just searching online. However, he passed away right after I started work on the film. He had passed away right after we found the address; just a couple of months earlier he had passed away. Because of the work of Jonathan Ned Katz, we now have this vivid, historical document and Mel Dir tells it like it is. He describes the experience of being in the Number One cell house and to hear the story of being brought back to Boise and appearing in court.  

Guillén: The Fall of '55 is also an insightful glimpse into the Cold War rhetoric that determined public attitudes regarding gender at the time. Peter Boag, who provides commentary in your film and wrote a contextual foreward for the reprint of The Boys of Boise, describes how this cold war rhetoric influenced the way homosexuals thought of themselves or how they were thought of by mainstream culture. Blackmail was one of the most effective tools to maintain normativity at that time. I can recall as a teen growing up in Twin Falls the sniggering that went on regarding any mention of The Boys of Boise and becoming aware of how blackmail was the modus operandi by which so many gay men's lives were ruined. I remember making the conscious connection then—really before coming out became the political act it did in the mid-70's—that I would not be put in a position where I could be blackmailed and that the only way to do that would be to be honest about my sexuality. You can't be blackmailed if you're out. That Cold War mentality that was so strong in Southern Idaho—perhaps throughout the whole country but very much so in Southern Idaho—is it still somewhat like that in Idaho? Some of your interviewees—Ron Bess comes to mind—made comments suggesting attitudes towards gays haven't budged much. Did you meet resistance filming this documentary? 

Randal: In the process of trying to research the film, we actually met with a lot of resistance. The prosecutor of these cases [Blaine Evans] hung up the phone when I called him the first time, which was just shocking to me; he was involved in these cases. That was just one example of the resistance we faced. A lot of people—when we were doing the research—still didn't want to talk about it. It may be different now. I hope it's different now. I really hope that the film can be used as a springboard for a dialogue about what happened. That's why we tried to go with an extremely fair approach to the film. We faced a lot of resistance trying to get the people connected to the case to talk. It was really quite frustrating a lot of times. With [regard] to the Cold War mentality, Boise per se isn't necessarily as conservative but the greater Boise area is still very conservative and these cases—which, as you said, were snickered at—were still being snickered at 50 years later, although people didn't know as much about it because so much time had passed, so much rumor and innuendo.  

Guillén: One of the things that struck me about your film is its Crucible-like atmosphere with young people pointing fingers and ruining the lives of adults; but also, the politicized usage of children by conservatives to advocate and further homophobic agendas. 

Randal: That's exactly how I see it. Let me tell you a story that I think is appropriate to this. For the latter part of making the film, I worked at a TV station in Boise for three years, which is an extremely conservative TV station. When I was working at the station, there had been a number of alleged enticements of children and the station was gung-ho going at it gangbusters, not using any critical judgment, because that was what was pushing the hot buttons: keeping your children safe; protecting the community; keeping our nice wholesome community safe. There is still a little bit of that there; but, I don't think that's necessarily a Boise thing. It just comes with conservatism in general; the idea of trying to exploit these moral causes in order to push some sort of agenda. That continues to go on. When I was young growing up in Nampa, I was a Republican. In junior high, my ninth grade year, I went and volunteered at the local Republican office making phone calls and hammering yard signs, so I've been there.  

Guillén: For me, what's problematic about the Boise story is that, yes, the "keeping children safe" rhetoric was being used to further certain political agendas, but the reality is—and your documentary implies—these selfsame "children" were baiting gay guys for money. We might call these kids "trade" today. 

Randal: I don't know that they would have necessarily seen themselves that way. They were a [few] poor kids who found a way to make money. The teenagers who were involved with the initial arrests had previous criminal records. One of them killed his father. These were kids who had tough lives and they found a way to make some money. I know that one of them, it impacted his life forever. I don't want to get into a lot of detail in order to protect him, but, his name was mentioned in the book—Gerassi didn't use a pseudonym—he was married when the book came out; his in-laws didn't know that he had been part of this scandal until the book came out; and he said it led to his divorce. He has since remarried and has led a straight life. It was an opportunity for him to make some money and—you're right—it was a lot like The Crucible. Some young people made some accusations and it just got out of control.  

Guillén: That quality of the witchhunt was emphasized in your documentary. Could this happen again? Have we evolved as a subculture so that we can't be blackmailed by guilt? 

Randal: Shame. Shame is the word I use. And the shame was not just for the people directly connected to the cases. Let me share a story about another man who was living in San Francisco [during the investigation]. I found him and talked to him on the phone and we had a very nice conversation. I approached him about the idea of coming back to Boise. We would pay for his transportation to come back to Boise to do an interview for the film. He seemed like he might be interested. We had a nice enough conversation that I was willing to ask him that. The next day I get a phone call from his sister saying, "Don't ever call my brother again. Leave him alone." Because for her it was still an extraordinarily painful thing. So the shame goes well beyond just the people who were directly connected to the families. Also, there are still many people in the community who feel a sense of shame over how the community reacted.  

Guillén: The thing about shame that I've long noted is that it's the flipside of pride. That's why I ask you whether or not this could happen again now because—in the midst of the queer community celebrating Pride Week here in San Francisco—we define and defend ourselves by pride. I suspect it would be much more difficult to capitalize upon shame as was done in the mid-50's. 

Randal: It would completely be possible for something like this to get going, but it would never reach the scale of the Boys of Boise. And the reason for that is that in 1955 there were two TV stations in Boise, there was the one newspaper, there were no free papers or anything like that, and everybody read the newspaper. The newspaper had a lot of influence. They had these fiery, emotional editorials getting the community riled up. Something like that couldn't happen again. Also, positively, humanity has evolved and we now have greater critical thinking skills. Americans tend to understand that, yes, there are homosexuals and there are a lot of other people who aren't like them and you may like them, you may not like them, but it seems like things are improving. I would absolutely hope that nothing like this could ever happen again and I certainly don't think it would happen to this extent.  

Guillén: Let's talk about how you've structured this documentary. You employed voiceovers, conducted one-on-one interviews, and incorporated archival footage; it's textured with multiple levels of information. How did you go about shaping all this material? 

Randal: I would have loved it to be the kind of documentary where we didn't have to have narration. We had to structure it the way we did partially out of necessity. We had to use the resources we had. In telling the story, I didn't want it to jump around chronologically. I wanted the scandal to unfold the way it actually happened to try to give the viewers as much of a sense of living the scandal as possible, where it starts with the arrests and then it continues to build and gets more intense and then the consequences of it. I wanted—as well as I could—to recreate [the scandal] and give people the feeling of what the tension was like in the community and the constant editorials. So we hit the newspapers frequently with these editorials and headlines because that's what the people of Boise were experiencing. They were having it hammered at them twice a day because at the time the Idaho Statesman had two versions. In constructing [the documentary], I wanted to do it in a way where it would build up; where—as June Schmitz in the documentary describes it—it would be "an avalanche." We also made the choice early on that we would be as fair as possible with this. I recognize that lives were destroyed by this. I understand how painful it was for these people who lived through this, who had to endure it. The woman who called and said, "Leave my brother alone", I felt great empathy for her because I understand how painful it was for her. Because of that, we didn't include his story in the film. We chose carefully what stories we had based largely on people's willingness to cooperate. There are even more incredible stories of this scandal that could be told but we chose to focus on primarily the ones where we had involvement or where we had to dovetail off of another story. For instance, the West Point cadet—  

Guillén: Frank Jones. A sad story. 

Randal: A very sad story. I find it deeply moving. Very painful.  

Guillén: I found his story moving because, admittedly, towards the beginning of the documentary I didn't much like him. I saw him as one of the Crucible-like informers; but, by the end of the film, you had humanized him and—as audience—I was stunned by how the scandal destroyed his life. He was a true victim of consequences. 

Randal: We had to include his story because we had the interview with Mel Dir and it dovetailed off the Mel Dir story. I would have loved to have expanded on his story. There were a lot of painful details about it that we just couldn't include [out of respect to his family].  

Guillén: The other victim of guilt by association was Jack Butler, the psychiatrist who was brought in to Boise to assess these cases. 

Randal: And was booted out of the Mormon Church.  

Guillén: That was amazing to me; that the taint of this scandal was so pervasive it could damage the lives of those conducting the investigation. 

Randal: This was a long process and it was difficult at times to soldier on, to continue to do this, because this was something I basically devoted essentially my life savings to and my weekends and evenings, my vacation time (which was when I came to San Francisco to do research for the film or when we went to Southern California to do research and interviews). I was working the TV news business at the time. During the final editing process of the film, I was working at my day job at least 50 hours a week and then coming back to do this. What motivated me to keep going was the power of the stories, particularly the Alty Travelstead story, which had never been told before. That story is so moving in and of itself, it just needed to be told, and then to know that he had passed away, I knew then that I had to continue to soldier on and make the film; it had to be done. These stories had to be told. They can't be forgotten and I hope the film can be used as a learning tool. I also hope that this scandal can be revisited by future filmmakers, playwrights or authors.  

[Of interest is that Variety's Ronnie Scheib did not share Randal's commitment to these individuals. Scheib states Randal's interviews with Alty Travelstead solicited commentary that was "peripheral to the chronicled events" and "somewhat insipid." For my money, Scheib completely missed the point about the consequential ramifications of the scandal and how it damaged the lives of those "peripheral to the chronicled events."]  

Guillén: Was it in your capacity as a TV journalist that you were able to access the archival footage? How did you secure that footage? 

Randal: In the process of putting this all together, there's a lot of serendipity. The puzzle pieces were being handed as if it were predestined that they be there. All the black and white footage of Boise was a 1955 Chamber of Commerce film. Some filmmakers had apparently gone from city to city around the country doing these Chamber of Commerce films and they had been in Boise in October of 1955. That footage of Boise in 1955 of the Ada Theater, of the police officers standing in front of the Police Department, that moves down and plants squarely on the city councilman whose son was involved in the scandal was all shot the month the scandal happened. All of that black and white footage came from the same source. That Chamber of Commerce film was discovered in the Egyptian Theater [formerly the Ada Theater] by two gay men who run the theater. They found this film and donated it to the historical society right when we were in the process of editing the film. When I looked at it, I about fell out of my seat! [It] was completely relevant: the police department, these shots of [Boiseans] throughout town. That this film existed was just remarkable. 

We were working on this film with a very tight budget. I invested between $30-$40,000 of my own money and we solicited donations from the community; the Friends of The Fall of '55—approximately 100 people from Boise and throughout the country—donated about $10,000 to help finish the film. They held house parties, did silent auctions and put together a premiere celebration at one of Boise's LGBT bars. I am deeply in their debt and humbled by their belief in me and our film. But it was still a very tight budget. That's why—later in the film [when] we talk about Mike Wallace of CBS News coming to town—we don't have shots of it because we couldn't afford to license them. If we did, I would have loved it. 

Most of the color [archival] footage that we have in the film, I [secured from] June Schmitz ("It starts with a 'Q' "). I had written out the script and I was racking my brain about where we could find footage, how we could cover this, what were we going to do? I went to June Schmitz and I said, "June, do you have any photographs? Do you have any home movies or anything?" She said, "Home movies? I got 100 cans of home movies." And she did! She had a 100 cans of home movies because in the 1950's she was going around constantly with her Super8 camera around her neck. She shot [these home movies] in film and the color is so rich and vibrant. The shots looking down Capitol Boulevard to the Capitol Building or her performing in the club, again, I had written about her being a lounge singer and here she had footage from the era of her doing it! She actually had the 1955 Fairyland Parade. I about fell out of my chair. I was just stunned. Again, it was like God had opened up the puzzle bag and all the pieces were falling out. This goes here and this goes here and this goes here. It was like it was meant to be. Most of the color footage we got from June Schmitz, including most of the shots of San Francisco, like driving over the Golden Gate Bridge; she had shot it. The cable car going down the hill? June Schmitz shot it. Shots from Mexico? Thank you, June!  

Guillén: So now that The Fall of '55 is starting to make its festival rounds, what are your hopes for the film? Do you have distribution? 

 Randal: We actually have distribution through Frameline.  

Guillén: Excellent! 

Randal: We still have to sign the paperwork but I'm comfortable with Frameline. They have a tremendous mission. Frameline knows what they're doing. This is the kind of film that's right up Frameline's alley. They understand how to market a film like this because it's sort of a niche film. Well, most people would perceive it to be a niche film, though I personally believe it has a much broader appeal because this could have happened anywhere.  

Guillén: I agree. As we were discussing earlier, the Cold War mentality, the Crucible-like theatrics, lift The Fall of '55 above mere queer history. 

Randal: The '50s were not a good time for LGBT people. Everyone thinks of the '50s as being Ozzie & Harriet time and for LGBT people it was a very difficult time. Young people need to know that, understand that and respect that. With Frameline being the premiere Lesbian and Gay festival, it has tremendous contacts within the festival industry. We showed at Newfest in New York City and Reeling in Chicago, plus some regional festivals.  

Guillén: How have audiences reacted? 

Randal: People have had different responses. In New York City, for instance, when we had the shot of Idaho's tallest building towards the end of the film, people laughed.  

Guillén: I laughed when Byron Johnson said people always thought he was from the Midwest because they didn't know the difference between Iowa and Idaho. That used to drive me crazy when I was an Idahoan. 

Randal: Boise—especially in the 1950's—was a tremendously isolated place. The Interstate Highway system didn't exist. If you wanted to fly out of Boise, you'd be flying on a propeller-driven DC5. It would take 2-2½ hours to fly anywhere, let alone to drive anywhere. A community that's as isolated as that being thrust into the national spotlight in newspapers around the country, in Time magazine, you can imagine how difficult it would be for those people to be in the spotlight for this embarrassing shameful investigation.  

Artist: © Jeremy Lanningham

Guillén: Tell me a little bit about Alan Virta, the historical adviser on the project. 

Randal: The way I got involved with an historian—Alan Virta—was because Alan met Jonathan Ned Katz at a history conference a number of years before I met him and Alan started thinking, "Well, I can do something with gay history too." So Alan actually began researching. When I met him he had done gay research for a slideshow that he does. He's taken it throughout the state, [received] an award from the ACLU, it's tremendous work, so I actually called in sick to work one day when I saw in the newspaper that his slideshow was going to be coming to town. This was when I was thinking about doing a film and here was somebody who had done a project on gay history in Idaho. I thought, "This is someone I need to meet."  

Guillén: Interesting. I would love to see his slideshow on gay history in Idaho. Not too many people know that the Castro Florescence in the '70s received a tremendous boost of energy from Idaho queers—namely Scotty Williams—who had moved here from Twin Falls. He helped start some of the main businesses here in the Castro and elsewhere in San Francisco—Fanny's, Burton's, Ivy's—all these places that were hubs for the gay urban populace in the mid-'70s. I got my start in San Francisco because Scotty hired me as a dishwasher (for one night!) at Fanny's. I was such a lousy dishwasher that he instantly promoted me to busboy. His contribution to what was "gay" at that time was indispensable and marks him as an unsung hero in my book. 

Randal: During the midst of the scandal [in the mid-'50s] there were a lot of former Boiseans living in San Francisco, people who moved here. There was a gay couple who moved away who had been together over 50 years. I went to the funeral for one of them. I wish they would have talked. They essentially ran what I would call a home for refugees. Their friends who had fled Boise, they let a number of them stay with them. There's a man who I talked to who was living here at the time, he had an emotional story that I wish I could have included in the film. He was a Latino. One of the few in his community [who was gay]. He opened the newspaper one day and saw that there had been more arrests. I think this was after [Joe Moore] the banker had been arrested. He ended up not going to work that day because he was frightened. Well, there's a knock at the door. He lived upstairs in a rooming house and the landlady opened the door and there were two men in suits there wanting to talk to him. She knew he was there home from work but she lied and said she didn't know where he was and she thought he was at work. That gave him a chance to hide out in town. He hid out at a movie theater and he hid out at the post office for a while, waiting for his family to pick him up. His family picked him up and they were driving back home and the father said to the mother in Spanish—because it looked like their son was asleep—"What's 'gay'?" They got back to the house and they ended up all three of them holding each other and crying because he's now become a fugitive from justice. They drove him via back roads to Ontario because the Boise bus station and the train station were under surveillance. He got on a bus and came down to San Francisco. 

When the Sheriff came to San Francisco to arrest Mel Dir, he also questioned this man, but he didn't bring him back to Boise because he knew the man's father. So the Sheriff let him go. This man then lived in San Francisco for 30 years before moving back to Boise. But talking about this story, he still is overcome with emotion thinking about it. I wish he would have talked but he lives in a small town again with shame. He left San Francisco and went back to living with a sense of shame and what will people think and rumors and innuendo. It's still happening in small towns.   

Guillén: It saddens me to know that's still happening. I had a gay friend from high school who died of AIDS and—when I phoned home to express my condolences to his mother—she begged me not to tell anyone for fear that it would make it difficult for her grandchildren. It broke my heart that he was buried under six feet of shame. 

Randal: I approached the scandal [the way I did] because I understand that sense of shame in a different way. My father died of AIDS 20 years ago. May was the anniversary of his death. We lived with that sense of shame for a long time, and carried it around, because when he died back in 1987 it was still very [stigmatized]; Ronald Reagan had just gotten around to saying the word. It was early on and my family lived with this sense of shame for a long time. So—in telling this story—I wanted to make sure that I was fair to these people because I understand what it's like to have this sense of shame about something that's happened in your past, about something that somebody else has done that you can't control. I understand why it's so painful for them and I have tremendous empathy for them. That is why I created the film I did. That is why I created The Fall of '55. I wanted to make sure it was not going to exploit these people or these cases in any way but still not pull any punches in telling what really happened, thoroughly researching, going through the newspapers, using the letters from people—especially those prison letters, which were so moving—and because of my own background it was important to me to tell this story in a fair way. Dealing with the sense of shame was something that I buried and repressed. Even though I'm gay myself, it was something that took me a long time to get past. 

[Originally published June 28, 2007.]

REVIEW: DEER HOOF ON RIVER COBBLES (2022)

Dendrochronology is the word that comes to mind in assessing poet Walker Abel’s body of work in anticipation of the April 22, 2022 release of his fourth volume of poetry Deer Hoof on River Cobbles, to be published by Homebound Publications. The science or technique of dating events, environmental change, and archaeological artifacts by using the characteristic patterns of annual growth rings in timber and tree trunks—the history of wood, if you will—is, for me, an apt characterization of the unfolding growth of Abel’s vision and the maturation of his craft.

You could say that Walker and I met each other as saplings in mid-December 1986, when he attended Gary Snyder’s seminar “The Girl Who Went Off With A Bear”, sponsored by the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco (where I was a full scholar at the time). The seminar’s venue was the historic Firehouse at Fort Mason in San Francisco. At that particular event, I was helping out the Institute’s public programs by passing out box lunches to the participants. When I realized that Walker had not pre-purchased a box lunch and was going to go without, I offered him one for free. He was grateful, we exchanged contact information, and thus began what has been without question one of the main epistolary friendships of my life.

In what Walker later characterized as “a daring overture”, I wrote Walker after the seminar, stating: “My responsibilities to the seminar kept me from having much time to converse with you, but—in the brief time that I did—I felt that words were nothing more than small berries on a twig of juniper for you, and that twig hidden in a forest of junipers.” He confirmed in his response: “You are right … about my relation to words. I don’t say much. And I do emulate the wordless ways of nature, be it creek or juniper berry.”

During the ensuing years, Walker shared his freshly drafted poems with me as he maneuvered through his education. I even read—and learned a lot—from his Masters Thesis “The Poet and Nature: Emerson, Whitman, And An American Spiritual Path From the Perspective Of Transpersonal Psychology.” His eventual employment with the Sierra Institute allowed him to put his wilderness psychology into practice. Each year’s worth of poems, each achieved goal, registered as a tree-ring indicating his growth as a writer. It was intriguing to watch the typewritten manuscript of Runes In Present Mountains, which he offered me to read, transform (albeit amended) into his first published volume of poetry, The Uncallused Hand (2014), which won the 2014 Poetry Prize from Homebound Publications, went on to become a Finalist in the Foreword Reviews 2014 Book of the Year and to win Gold in the 2015 Nautilus Awards. The Uncallused Hand was followed by Stories Dreamed from Dust and Distant Light (2017) and Five Hearts of Aloneness (2019). How pleased I was to see Walker achieve his audience. He was no longer small berries on a twig of juniper hidden in a forest of junipers.

Which brings me to the tree ring closest to the bark. At a time when so much of the world has lost its previous meaning and I struggle to retain my footing in our contemporary moment—let alone set out towards an uncertain future—troubled by pandemic waves, political-corporate corruption, and heart-wearying environmental degradation, Walker’s most recent collection of poems—Deer Hoof on River Cobbles—offers redemptive hope to my apocalyptic mind by suggesting that I remain in the power of the present moment, to not wrestle with meaning, neither meaning forlorn and lost, nor meaning feared and anticipated.  

Deer Hoof sagely begins with versed contemplations on how Walker recommends his poems be read. Etymologically, contemplation is an act of being “together with”, “near”, “by”, “beside” a piece of ground that has been consecrated, and that is meant to be used to build an edifice, a “temple”, to honor and worship the spirit of that place. The demarcation of a space that becomes sacred enough upon which to build a temple, however, sprang from much simpler origins. A space that was marked out for observation—let’s say a hilltop—leant ancient augurs opportunity to portend or prognosticate towards bad or towards good. From that hilltop they could have a commanding view of birds in flight and craft their predictions. Should their crafted predictions become reliable, that marked-off piece of land, that hilltop, gained sacred credence, earning it the stature of a temenos, a precinct set apart from the ordinary, and an eligible site for an altar, and eventual temple, to worship the spirit of place. But before becoming too enmired or wedded to that religiosity, I would suggest that the temenos was deemed sacred simply because that was where one could go to be one’s true self. It’s in that inflection that I approach the act of contemplation, which I understand as being in the temple of one’s own being, especially as reflected by nature, or rather as being understood through the evidence of nature. I’ve long thought of Walker as an augur poet able to read nature. His unique gift, however, is that he can mark off and have a dialogue with the sacred from any point of observation, implying that the sacred is not within any one person or any parcel of land, but rather in the interaction between person and land, and most assuredly between a poet and land, which is to say nature. Among his proposed contemplations, he offers: 

1.  

Like listening to instrumental music 

or gazing at abstract or impressionistic art 

can I notice what effects come to me 

rather than pushing 

to figure out what the poem means? 

2.  

If each poem is its own being 

like a plant or animal 

can I let the presence and the gestures of that being 

have their place in the world— 

something arisen out of Mystery 

representative not of a life 

but of Life? 

Rather than have his poems allude to something other than what they are through ascribed and parlayed meaning, Walker suggests that poems exist intact within their own structure, their own being, and that—if fortunate, if attentive, if disciplined—the reader can breathe with the poems, match the rhythm of the poem’s breath, to earn the relaxed company of the poem. He asks us to be with his poems and to take part in what he describes as their “expansive moment”. In mastering the description of nature, or his impressions of nature, Walker’s poems simulate somatic certainties about nature. Although people might have varying cultural (i.e., mental and ideological) attitudes about nature, the effect of nature on the human body translates universally. Across the board, witnessing a supreme sunset can calm and soothe the body, or hazarding an extreme storm can instill fear and awe in the body. He quotes Mary Oliver: “You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.” By striving to capture a clear description of nature—rather than trying to interpret nature—Walker is, in effect, making the images of his poems somatically accessible, thereby minimizing the distance between the poem and the reader. He is playing with the ancient Hindu adage tat tvam asi, thou art that. To become one with the poem, Walker assures us, is to witness the Absolute, by way of nature. This is his temenos, the ground of his poetry. He intimates as such in his poem “Not One, Not Two”: 

just a voice clear as the river 

and paired with it, a listening 

made of the same water. 

And again in “Everything Happens Of Itself”:  

So perfect, the pale green of sagebrush 

summoned out of light and leaf 

as though there could be severance 

between the seer and the seen. 

Through his poems Walker situates his reader, acknowledging the dynamic tension between the “complementarities”, as he terms them, of thought and language, handing the reader the punctuational diagonal slant as if saying, “Here is your oar, Raftsman, navigate your two shores.” This energizing principle of thought and language and how it is structured is what I envision not only as the raftman’s ruddering oar, but a holy hinge, something that connects and utilizes complementarities, allowing movement in two directions, like a hinged door swinging both ways, or the bellows Lao Tzu describes in the quote Walker provides. Further, I like to think of that door as swinging both ways at once. 

In his observations of nature, Walker is sometimes oneiric. Nature becomes so specific, so exact, written in sensuous detail that it borders on the dream-like for escaping the quotidian. But nature itself is an everyday phenomenon so the quotidian speaks more to a failure in language. Just as dreams are often just what they are without our being able to interpret or understand them, nature in its being is the same. You might also notice that Walker avoids speaking about nature in the past tense, but most often keeps it in the present, preferring aspect to tense, often speaking in gerunds. In this way a sacred moment of observation lasts forever because it is continually happening, which one can interpret as a shamanic point of view. If memories are indulged, it is to resuscitate them into the present moment. An invocation of an observation from the past necessarily occurs as a present observation. This allows the inherited wealth of a lifetime worth of observations to thrum through each new observation, but Walker tempers the weight of the cumulative by reducing description to its quintessential truth, as he relays in “Too Die For”:  

By stripping time this spare 

the naked moment 

hatches out of thinnest air.  

The poem from which the collection borrows its title has this visionary stanza:  

Behind every tree, she said 

an unseen column of space. 

That after sticks are gathered 

beauty burns with fugitive heat. 

That “unseen column of space” imagined “behind every tree” is as much an understanding of how the visible world of phenomena—nature, if you will—relies upon and is informed by something invisible, something which it is not, that again through complementarities advises the poet who cares to pay attention that—if something is corporeal, something must be incorporeal; if something is conceivable, imaginable, thinkable, communicable, definable, expressible, speakable, it remains forever ineffable. No one ever said the poet’s dance with words would be easy. Perhaps the greatest danger is when a poet becomes inflated with his own words. To his credit, Walker is humble in his lucid descriptions. He knows that he doesn’t invent these things; he simply has the heart and the visual acuity to describe them clearly to the best of his craft. He knows that the “unseen column of space” is what makes beauty burn with fugitive heat. Everything we cannot know, we cannot see, cannot express, is what makes what we can know, what we can see, what we can express all the more beautiful for being fleeting, fugacious, fugitive. “Forever you want me to say,” he states in “Lifting Anchor”, “but never is just as true.” Poetry is the human experience expressed at its best. 

There is significant generosity in Deer Hoof. Segmented into 10 sections, including a preface and an addendum, Walker introduces each section with a pair of selected quotes that he has gleaned from years of reading. The quotes give thematic shape and structure to the individual sections, as well as pay deference to respected influences. Walker has a compelling need to share gem-like snippets of writing from the likes of Lao Tzu, Mary Oliver, Jim Harrison, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, Freya Mathews, Galway Kinnell, Pablo Neruda, W.S. Merwin, Wallace Stevens, among others. Apparently, clarity loves company and seeks to share its light. With tender wryness Walker summarizes in “Ars Poetica”:  

If it were critiqued 

that all my poetry 

amounted to variations of 

I was here 

acquiescence 

would be immediate 

if allowed to add 

You were too. 

 Deer Hoof concludes with an addendum—“Poetry, Qigong, and Expansive States of Being”—which, along with the volume’s introductory contemplations, are welcome pieces from the poet offering glimpses into his own craft. “But the appeal of poetry through the ages,” Walker defines in his addendum “is exactly because, even in its use of words, it can nevertheless be a portal for the reader (or listener) into a moment not limited by language. And an expansive moment, however achieved, has proven itself deeply appealing to humans.” It is his description of this “expansive moment” that I recognize as his temenos, as his sacred ground of being, which he observes faithfully so he can share it with others. 

Earlier, when I was opining that the ineffable delimits all human expression, Walker appears to concur. He understands that “the poet is someone who is able to leave the verbal mind, and enter a space that is in itself wordless and yet out of which words cohere.” In hopes that his poems allow readers to share in their expansive moments, Walker goes one step further and offers qigong techniques that he uses to put himself in a ready state of acceptance. Qigong might not be the technique that works for you, but the poetry of Deer Hoof on River Cobbles will certainly aim you in a direction that will.

EDITORIAL: A NOTE TO THE READERSHIP OF THE EVENING CLASS

What a difference a decade makes. Or for that matter, try short of two.  

The Evening Class project began in 2006 as an enthusiastic exploration of the self-publishing possibilities of the blogging medium, which was then in its ramp-up stages. The promising ideal of a “citizen press corp” (a term, I believe, coined by Susie Gerhard when she was serving as editor for SF360, the journalistic arm of the San Francisco Film Society) idealistically offset what was being recognized as the gradual weakening of what the fourth estate could offer to cinephilia. As ad revenues dried up for newspapers, so did columnar space for film reviews and commentary and—as the cogs often work in these geared transitions—blogs proposed an alternate form of publicity. It was a particularly exciting time for being the onset of the “blogosphere” when bloggers throughout the country and into other countries introduced themselves, shook each others’ hands, began meeting up at film festivals, and began linking into each others’ work to demonstrate and enjoy the variety of approaches to film coverage that editorial policies at newspapers could rarely afford. 

Some of the blogs were erudite and incisive, such as Girish Shambu’s eponymous site, nuancing films with academic tools to better understand their structure and cultural import; others were like fanzines focusing on favored genres—horror, westerns, police procedurals, sword and sandal sagas; some were alert to all film-related events in their regional calendar, such as Brian Darr’s ever-informative Hell On Frisco Bay; some served an aggregate function like David Hudson’s itinerant Daily, strengthening the network of the blogosphere by profiling individual efforts swept up in the collective stream. There’s no doubt in my mind that without the interactions formed in the blogosphere—without Girish’s skill in gathering writers together to discuss film cogently, or Brian’s notifications of rare but important screenings, or David’s promotion of the best of our work—The Evening Class would never have found what it needed to grow and thrive: camaraderie. 

It was a proud frenetic season of work and contribution. Being one of the very first bloggers in the Bay Area to request and be granted press credentials remains in my mind to this day a singular achievement. I helped lead a charge against the gatekeepers of film publicity, established working relationships with publicists based on new strategies of coverage, and watched over the years how the passion and practice of so many individuals fed into the strengthening of local film cultures and the capacity of film commentary to educate, enthuse, inform. I never identified as a film critic, always as an enthusiast, and tried to remain true to that spirit within.

Though I may have been one of the first to seize opportunity, however, it wasn’t long before storming the gates seemed like a high-flown scene in a Cecil B. Demille Biblical epic, a race to get the word out on a film before twenty-five others did, before fifty others did. As press passes began flying out like cards in a hand of poker; as publicists began hunkering down on what they required, if not demanded; as eventually each film festival developed their own social media departments with full-time committed employees, the obsolescence of the blogging format revealed itself. No longer needed to pick up the slack of the fourth estate, what was the role then to be played? How many blogs could a person keep up with? How many broken links before a broken spirit?

The decimating effect of the COVID pandemic on brick-and-mortar film festivals bifurcated access, producing virtual festivals and hybrid festivals (combining virtual screenings with in-theater screenings) that attempted to simulate the festival-goers’ experience. These were effective in varying degree; but—without question—the old days of audiences communally watching movies together in the dark shifted into the realm of the nostalgic. After two years of canceled film festivals, several have initiated re-entry into live screenings and it is yet to be determined how much of an impact the safety-in-place directives have influenced viewing habits. Who will return to watch movies in brick-and-mortar moviehouses? Who will fear to do so?

Not quite knowing where The Evening Class was to go next, I’ve elected to branch out from exclusive film coverage to incorporate literary and musical domains, using the same strategy of producing direct source material by way of interviews and Q&A transcriptions. During the COVID Interruption, I discovered the Academia website, joined, and was delighted to discover that conversations from The Evening Class were being incorporated into academic papers all over the world. This has given me the incentive to imagine this blog into the future. What follows will be the results of that incentive. I apologize to my readership for the long lapses in coverage, but hope you will join me in months to come.

TREEFORT MUSIC FEST 9 (2021)—The Evening Class Interview With Smokey Brights

Any day that releases two new singles by Seattle band Smokey Brights [Facebook / Twitter / Instagram] is cause for celebration. “Honey Eye” and “Unity”, produced by Andy Park (Death Cab for Cutie, Deftones, Princess Nokia) and engineered by Sam Rosson (Great Grandpa, Sydney Sprague), and released on Freakout Records, are described as “anthems for finding light and protecting joy in the strangest of times.” 

“Unity”, featured as the “Daily Discovery” at American Songwriter, is described by singer and keys player Kim West as “a rally cry against division; an anthem against apathy. We have all seen how much easier it is to divide than unite these days. People are scared, people are angry, people are tired. And why wouldn’t they be? It’s a nightmare out there. But there is still so much love and light left in this world. And it is worth fighting for. Living in the Pacific NW, we have seen smokier and smokier summers. It is easy to look up in the blood red sky in the middle of an August day and just think, whelp that’s it. We’re too far gone for fixing. And it’s true—no single person is going to save us. But if we can find the common ground to work together, we can fix more than we even know.”

  

“Honey Eye”, a Big Takeover exclusive, is described as “a sincere and desperate love letter from one worried lover to the other. As the world seems to crash down around them, their resolve is to live and love as deeply as possible, while they still can.” 

Cobbling from the press release for Smokey Brights: “Fronted by husband and wife duo Ryan Devlin (guitar and vocals) and Kim West (keys and vocals) , Smokey Brights was born during a cash-strapped Christmas when the two approached their first holiday season as a newly-formed couple. They looked at their woefully underfunded bank accounts and their long list of family and friends, and knew that gift cards and baked goods weren’t going to cut it that year. It was right then and there that they decided to combine their mutual love of music and record a few of their favorite songs to create CDs to distribute among friends and family. This lofi collection of covers contained the seeds of what would become the band we know today as Smokey Brights. 

“Now married, their bond continues to permeate their pop songcraft. Pulling from their mutual love of 70s rock, vintage synthesizers, thrift shop treasures, and early MTV, the pair co-writes about the deeply personal aspects of their life together. The early days of their origin story is on full display in songs that speak to their transitions: As young friends to life partners in their beloved city of Seattle. Touring in a van during the Northwest’s notoriously grey winters. Being in love in a deeply uncertain period. And everything in between. 

“West, a barred attorney, and Devlin, who has a background in booking, publishing and punk bands, create songs that are perpetually deep and eminently danceable. Nick Krivchenia (drums), is an Ohio native from a family of musicians, and brings a soulful, classic groove to Smokey Brights’ sound. Luke Logan (bass) grew up singing folk songs with his family in Kodiak, Alaska, and provides melodic bass lines and a crucial third harmony to the band’s vocals. Together, Smokey Brights create a stoney blend of Northwest rock & roll and razor-sharp disco grooves. 

“Musical inspiration is commonly sketched into notebooks in the curiously small, window-less dining room at the center of their home, crowded with a 50s jukebox, a Wurlitzer 200A electric piano, guitar holsters, and the upright piano West grew up learning on, complete with a well worn sticker marking middle C. Only after songs are fleshed out on guitar, piano, and voice, they make their way downstairs to the band’s wood-paneled practice room and take on new shapes and grooves at the hand of the full lineup. 

“Despite the pandemic, Smokey Brights continue to record and release music in and around a constant bustle of songwriting, demo recording, BBQs, bar-tending, co-working, band practice and 18 months no one will soon forget. The band remains best known for their explosive live shows that immerse the listener in warm, harmony rich, and arena rock anthems, and instantly found a hard core fanbase in the US, UK, and Europe, and earned slots at SXSW, Off Beat Festival, and Treefort Music Fest. 

“After more than a decade they have a rabid base of fans to show for it. Gaining momentum with every show, they are a self-made, self-sustaining rock ‘n roll machine that generates maximum joy through musical communion.” 

Thanks have to go out to Dana Robinson Slote, tour manager for Smokey Brights, who first invited me to come listen to the band at Treefort, and then arranged a Zoom interview the week after. 

* * *  

Guillén: I want to congratulate you on your presence at Treefort. I caught your “hot” show at The Hideout, where you were literally dripping with sweat. It looked like you were melting on stage. I’d like to start off with the name of the band—Smokey Brights—because I haven’t read anything anywhere regarding what that name signifies. How did you go about choosing Smokey Brights as the name for your band? 

Ryan Devlin: Originally, before we were Smokey Brights, we were called Colossal Brights. We had a little recording project going—Nick, myself, our original bassist Jim, and Mikey our original lead guitarist. We were making some demos and were thinking, “How are we going to get a name for this?” 

I had the radio down real low when I was driving home one night listening to KEXP and this song where I thought I heard someone say in this song “colossal brights”. I thought that was such a cool phrase. I came back to the band and told them, “I’ve got the band name: Colossal Brights!” Jim looked at me and he goes, “Spell Colossal.” And I couldn’t. So I said to him, “Well, it’s back to the drawing board, I guess.” 

A day later, Jim was like, “Y’know, ‘Brights’ is a cool name. I’ve never heard that attached to a band. It’s kind of cool.” We’ve always straddled some darker, moodier, gloomier elements—being Northwest folks suffering through the cold—but we also love pop, and are trying to find the light of things. So, it felt like ‘Smokey’ Brights embodied the dichotomy that sounded like what we were already doing.  

Guillén: I understand you’ve been to a few of the Treefort festivals, but I’m curious what your experience of this particular edition of Treefort was like? For our community this edition was painfully meaningful. It took such a struggle and effort on the part of the Treefort team to get the festival going that, for myself, it felt triumphant that Treefort actually got back out there for the community. There had been worried concerns that they might have to cancel again when the Delta Variant began spreading in Idaho, which I honestly believed might have spelled the death of this festival. So it was great that the festival got to go, albeit masked and vaxxed and waxed (whatever people had to do). [The band laughs.] 

So I want to know if each of you can give me a feeling you had about what your experience of the festival was? I know you got to play three different stages—the Record Exchange, the El Korah Shrine, and the Hideout—which is lucky. I don’t know many musicians that have had that luck. So, perhaps, in describing your experience, can you comment as well on the variance of the stages? Perhaps on the sound systems? If you felt your music was being presented differently on the different stages? 

Kim West: I’ll go first. You described it perfectly. The experience was triumphant. It was triumphant and surreal to get to play our favorite festival. We played Treefort a couple of times before and the first time we played we came in 20 minutes before our set and had to leave at 7:00AM the next day because we were on tour. All of our friends were like, “What are you doing? You have to be here the whole time!” We were walking around the streets of Boise, freaking out, saying, “What are we doing? We’re messing up! We have to be here the whole time!” Ever since then, we come Wednesday through Sunday and just try to experience so much of it because it’s more music than we get to see in four days.  

Guillén: Who can? It’s a discovery festival. You’ve been here three or four times, as you’ve said, and yet this is the first time I’ve seen you, or even heard of you, because there’s always over 300 bands and it’s tough trying to graph out who to listen to. A person can only do so much. I feel lucky that I got to see you guys this time. A lot of that is due to Dana, who has been doing a remarkable job for you. She reached out and invited me to come hear you. 

I feel your band is on the cusp of something—I sense it, I feel it—and I’m excited for you guys. I’ve been listening to as much of your music as I could get my hands on and have been bopping around the house. I really love the music. But back to the festival, other band and stage experiences? 

Ryan Devlin: I’ll try to be brief but I can speak to that feeling that it might not have happened was really palpable. There was a lot of conflict even within our own immediate community of other musicians and friends, people who come to every Smokey Brights show in Boise, who weren’t so convinced that Treefort should be happening. I was following along. I read Eric Gilbert’s interview in the Idaho NPR affiliate where he said, “We need to prove that this can work. That if we get vaccination cards in hand, and we mask up, we can go ahead and have a really good time together.” 

One of the most surreal moments to me was when I had a hangout with a friend, a resident of Boise, usually vocal on Twitter about how Treefort shouldn’t happen because Idaho’s health care systems were overloaded, and it was too irresponsible. We went to our first set, we hung out, we had a really long conversation, and then that night he drove home and he passed what he described as a country bar. He looked at it and a lightbulb went off in his head. He thought, “I’ve driven by this bar every night during this pandemic and it’s been packed. These people aren’t wearing masks. And these people aren’t being vaccinated (some might be, who knows?). Treefort’s not the problem.” 

Kim West: Of course not. 

Ryan Devlin: Treefort has been working collectively to create a safe experience. If they don’t do that, as a music community, as promoters, as bands, people are going to find something else to do but it might not be as safe. So that feeling of being right on the edge, everyone was feeling that, but it wasn’t until we got there that we thought, “This has to happen.” 

Kim West: It has to happen, yeah. And I couldn’t have thought of a cooler way to start our experience than to play the Record Exchange for their first in-store appearance in 18 months. The sound was amazing. I wasn’t expecting a stage. I wasn’t expecting a full PA. It was like the whole nine yards. The sound guy was probably one of the more experienced sound guys in Boise. He had worked for everybody and knew that whole system backwards and forwards. We could hear everything. It was a really nice way to ease back into this festival experience.  

Guillén: I was just watching the videos from your performance at the Record Exchange today. They’ve just gone up. 

Kim West: Oh, cool….  

Guillén: And they do sound good. 

Kim West: We’ve played in stores before and it doesn’t usually sound like that.

   

Guillén: How about the El Korah Shrine? 

Nick Krivchenia: I think my audio is gone again. Oh, here I am!!  

Guillén: [Laughs.] Okay, that’s enough feedback out of you. [Band laughs.] 

Luke Logan: The El Korah was massive. We felt really humbled to play it and thankful that we were able to get that slot and that Eric trusted us with that. One of the things that we didn’t have during the pandemic was audiences. They’re a pretty important half of what we do; the people who come to give it back in our faces. We played some shows throughout the summer. We had a couple of ones where it felt like we were getting some energy and pulsing but they were smaller scale. Our El Korah experience was big scale. Talking to what Ryan was saying, knowing that everyone had gone through so much to get to that point too, that it was a very intentional crowd, even moreso than it usually is, made it even more meaningful as they were moving along with the rhythms that Nick was putting out. It made it one of the more special performing experiences I’ve ever had.  

Guillén: Which leads me to the question of what it was like for you guys to be onstage looking out at a masked audience? Normally, you’d be registering smiles, you’d be registering facial reactions to your music; but, suddenly, you’re watching a sea of masked faces. Did that affect you? Other musicians who have answered that question for me have said that it didn’t make a difference, that they still felt the energy of the crowd. But did you miss the facial connection? 

Ryan Devlin: I can speak to that. We had a few practice runs of playing to masked audiences and I have to say that, at first, it was a little disorienting because we are so much depending on the energy put forth from our audience and, yeah, that is usually displayed in cheering, in smiling, in singing along, all those things that we don’t really get to have with a masked audience. But by the time we got to the El Korah Shrine, we had several different performing experiences and I was pretty used to the masked audience. Feeling the energy of those people in that room far transcended any sort of loss of seeing the smiles or anything like that. One thing that the mask does not cover are tears. When we played “I Love You, but Damn”, I looked out and saw at least three friends, dude friends, just crying.  

Guillén: Dudes aren’t the same anymore, are they? [Laughs]. Nick, reaction to the Hideout. How did you like the Hideout? 

Nick Krivchenia: Loved it.  

Guillén: It wasn’t too hot for you? 

 Nick Krivchenia: It was super hot. The sound was great. We got everything we needed. Great crowd.  

Guillén: You guys might not have noticed this, but across the street from the Hideout was a big parking lot, which was where I was parked whenever I came down to the festival, and in the parking lot your music got amplified. It was a huge sound. I couldn’t believe it! There were people actually sitting on the higher levels of the parking lot to watch your set from there. 

Kim West: That would have been a good spot to watch!  

Guillén: I came in to cover Treefort this edition primarily because of my interest in the COVID Interruption—those 18 months of artistic interruption—which almost devasted film and film festival culture because film culture is based so much on production and exhibition, both of which couldn’t be done. Whereas, music differs in that—though you couldn’t have exhibition and concerts—musicians could still make music. Can you speak to how your band kept its musicality together? I’m actually proposing that the COVID Interruption helped many artists focus and get more creative. What happened with you folks? 

Kim West: For us, it was three phases of COVID. We had a record on deck, “I Love You, but Damn”, that was going to come out. We had four tours, national and international, booked. We had a whole year ready to go. We were like, “Here we go!” We were getting ready and then COVID hit. We actually personally weren’t very creative the first couple of months. We were sad. All of a sudden we were free-floating and trying to figure it out. I consider us very lucky in that we were all able to prioritize our time in getting together and practicing and making that something that was important to us. Ryan and I saw these two men [Nick and Luke] and our two other friends and that was it. Those were the only people we saw during the whole pandemic in person without the masks. We made it work. We got through the sadness. We wrote a record that we kind of liked. Then we kind of scrapped that. Then we wrote another record that we really liked and we went and recorded it about a month and a half ago. In two days all the amazing tracks were done. In a week everything was recorded. Then we came into being able to play live shows again. There wasn’t a moment of, “Oh no. Do we know how to do this still?” It was: “Oh yeah, we can!!”  

Guillén: One thing that has always fascinated me about music is the cover song. There were two songs that caught me in your work immediately: “I Love You, but Damn”, of course, but then you had a cover of Gerry Rafferty’s “Right Down the Line”, which was just a beautiful cover. And then when Dana sent me the press notes, I discovered there was this wonderful love story behind all of this with the covers and the poor Christmas and the CD that went out with the covers on it as Christmas gifts. I’m interested in knowing what some of those covers were on that CD, because it’s not available is it? 

Kim West: I actually have a picture of it on my phone from a friend’s aunt who just found a copy of that. 

Ryan Devlin: It was just a burnt CD.  

Guillén: That’s what I figured, but I thought it was interesting because I have been arguing with musicians I’ve met in the Boise scene about the importance of covers. I’m an older guy so I’m familiar with music from the ‘60s and the ‘70s, and going even further back. I had a complaint with the Boise music scene when I first arrived because it was so thoroughly saturated with neo-psychedelia. It was like every band I heard was neo-psychedelia and they were copying each other. I could only take so much of that, y’know? I would say, “Can’t you guys learn a traditional? Like even just one traditional? Can’t you go back and sing a song written by a songwriter from the 1970s? Would that be so wrong?” 

For me, the value of a song is that it can be interpreted. If you write a good song, it can be sung in different tempos, different languages, you can do so much with the structure of the song. So you started out with a burnt CD of covers and I’d like to know what some of the titles were on that burnt CD. As I was going through your body of work noting which covers you’d done, there was “Right Down the Line”, there was Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams”, and Sinead O’Connor’s “Nothing Compares to You.” Are there any others that you’ve actually recorded?

   

Ryan Devlin: That first EP was wintery, holiday-feeling songs for us, but they were not traditional holiday songs. We had Joni Mitchell’s “River”, Kim sang it, and it was really beautiful. 

Guillén: I would love to hear that. You know, of course, that Joni Mitchell’s “River” has since become an official holiday song? 

Ryan Devlin: We did a cover from one of my most formative bands, Idaho’s own Built to Spill. We did “Twin Falls, Idaho.” We did “St. Augustine” by Bob Dylan, again feeling vaguely religious, vaguely holiday. It’s one of my favorite Dylan tunes.

 

Guillén: How autobiographical are your songs? My roommate was listening to “I Love You, but Damn” and he was taken with the lyrics from where you talked about “being taken home to dinner to meet the parents and how are you going to explain me”. Was that about you two? 

Kim West: “You’re back home getting your degree / explain me to your family.”  

Guillén: With the COVID Interruption having tripped up the release of “I Love You, But Damn”, don’t you think it should somehow be re-released? 

Ryan Devlin: We would need to get a bigger label. 

Kim West: We have two singles coming out soon. And we’re going to release a deluxe version of “I Love You, but Damn” on CD with those two. We’ve gotten quite a number of requests for CDs, generally from people not in the U.S., usually people in Asia; but, CD technology is still alive and well in certain parts of the world and in people’s cars.  

Guillén: Tell me the story of “I Love You, but Damn.” 

Ryan: In the briefest sense possible, not all of Smokey Brights’ songs are autobiographical, but the speaker in that song is probably Ryan Devlin, me. When Kim and I first started dating about twelve years ago, I was playing in a couple of punk bands and touring a lot. For the first six months of us dating I was gone easily three months of it. We had an up and down cycle, y’know? We’d get together, we’d break up, we’d get together, we’d break up. That song is literally about love and distance, trying to grow up and figure it out, while being very far away from this person that might be falling in love. If we might be falling in love, we might have to change ourselves, I might have to change how I think about myself.  

Guillén: I’m sure you recognize that in the corpus of your work, it is an important song. As I was reviewing your work, it was the first song that, POW, I was grabbed. “What is this song?!!” And I’ve noticed you’ve chosen to use it to close your sets, so obviously you are aware of its power? So I’m glad it’s getting a CD re-release with your two new singles. 

I’m going to let you go, because you got to go, you have other people to talk to, but thank you so much for your time and I really hope you guys enjoy your ascent. I really think you’re on a cresting wave. 

Smokey Brights: Thank you, Michael.

THROWBACK THURSDAY—The Evening Class Interview With Cassandra Peterson (All About Evil, 2010)

Eleven years ago, dragstar impresario Joshua Grannell (better known to his fans as Peaches Christ) embarked on his first feature film All About Evil (2010), which featured actress Cassandra Peterson (better known to her legions of fans as horror hostess Elvira: Mistress of the Dark) setting aside her revealing goth lingerie to play it straight as a concerned mother of a troubled teen. The shift in persona revealed Peterson as an actress to be reckoned with. 

Little did I know at the time that the true horrors in Cassandra’s life were not being evoked in Grannell’s film. According to Wikipedia, it wasn’t until the recent publication of Yours Cruelly, Elvira: Memoirs of the Mistress of the Dark (2021) that she admitted being sexually assaulted by Wilt Chamberlain during a party at his Bel Air mansion in the 1970s. Chamberlain allegedly offered to show Peterson his custom-built closet for his NBA jerseys, before he forced her to give him oral sex. Peterson had stated that she had blamed herself and was almost "convinced that I was a very bad person for letting that happen", until the Me Too movement made her rethink the experience. Peterson felt that the assault was "creepier" because Chamberlain had been a personal friend. 

As her publishers Hatchette Books synopsize: “On Good Friday in 1953, at only 18 months old, 25 miles from the nearest hospital in Manhattan, Kansas, Cassandra Peterson reached for a pot on the stove and doused herself in boiling water. Third-degree burns covered 35% of her body, and the prognosis wasn't good. But she survived. Burned and scarred, the impact stayed with her and became an obstacle she was determined to overcome. Feeling like a misfit led to her love of horror. While her sisters played with Barbie dolls, Cassandra built model kits of Frankenstein and Dracula, and idolized Vincent Price.

“Due to a complicated relationship with her mother, Cassandra left home at 14, and by age 17 she was performing at the famed Dunes Hotel in Las Vegas. Run-ins with the likes of Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., and Tom Jones helped her grow up fast. Then a chance encounter with her idol Elvis Presley, changed the course of her life forever, and led her to Europe where she worked in film and traveled Italy as lead singer of an Italian pop band. She eventually made her way to Los Angeles, where she joined the famed comedy improv group, The Groundlings, and worked alongside Phil Hartman and Paul "Pee-wee" Reubens, honing her comedic skills. 

“Nearing age 30, a struggling actress considered past her prime, she auditioned at local LA channel KHJ as hostess for the late night vintage horror movies. Cassandra improvised, made the role her own, and got the job on the spot. Yours Cruelly, Elvira is an unforgettably wild memoir. Cassandra doesn't shy away from revealing exactly who she is and how she overcame seemingly insurmountable odds. Always original and sometimes outrageous, her story is loaded with twists, travails, revelry, and downright shocking experiences. It is the candid, often funny, and sometimes heart-breaking tale of a Midwest farm girl's long strange trip to become the world's sexiest, sassiest Halloween icon.” 

What neither Wikipedia nor Hachette mention, however, is what it took Emily Kirkpatrick writing for Vanity Fair magazine to celebrate: love. In Yours Cruelly, Elvira, Peterson “comes out of the coffin” and reveals she’s been in a relationship with Teresa “T” Wierson for the past 19 years, following the end of a 25-year marriage to Mark Pierson. “For the first time in my life,” Peterson writes, “I’m with someone who makes me feel safe, blessed, and truly loved.” And I think that’s the best memoir anyone can have! But am I the only one who thinks it’s odd that Wierson rhymes with Pierson? Had I known anything about any of this when Cassandra and I sat down to talk during one of Evil's exhausting night shoots, I might have had opportunity to ask her directly. Instead, appropriate to time and place, we talked about her participation in the film; a conversation, incidentally, that ranks as my most popular entry on The Evening Class to date. Not Bela Tarr. Not Hao Hsiao-hsien. Not Andrey Zvyagintsev. And what silly arthouse aficionado claims that genre doesn’t traffic? 

In tribute to finding love and scoring blog megahits, I tip my hat to yesteryear and republish my conversation with Cassandra Peterson, Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. 

* * *  

Michael Guillén: Cassandra, I consider you—not only iconic—but probably one of the most intelligent and talented artists of my generation. You've had such a profound effect. As I was surveying your career, I was shocked how many places you pop up. A classic example is you as a strip tease performer on the cover of Tom Waits' album Small Change. 

Cassandra Peterson: People are talking about that so much lately and the very bizarre thing about that is that I don't know if that's me! I don't know. People say it is, it looks like me, but I don't have any recollection of ever doing that. But it was the '70s, so I don't have a recollection of a whole lot that I did then.  

Guillén: I'm very pleased to talk with you as Cassandra Peterson. Not to disrespect Elvira or anything; but, her accomplishments are well-documented, so I wanted to focus instead on the fact that—within All About Evil—you actually get to play a role, to act. How does that differ from playing an icon like Elvira? 

Peterson: Well, it's a lot different because I don't know what I'm doing as an actor in All About Evil. I feel pretty comfortable as Elvira. As myself, I act so rarely that my biggest challenge is not to act like Elvira, y'know? People go, "What are you thinking of while you're acting?" and what I'm thinking is, "Don't roll your eyes and mug."  

Guillén: I respect your humility but I wouldn't deminimize your chops as an actor. The other night I was watching you do multiple takes on a scene, over and over and over, and I was genuinely impressed with your concentration. I knew you were exhausted, it was something like 3:00 in the morning, it was stop and go with the scene, but you kept going back to the same space, in character, focused. 

Peterson: Thank you. I guess I've been around for so damned long that I've finally picked up on it, whether I'm trying or not.  

Guillén: You've had a longstanding friendship with Joshua Grannell and his alter-ego Peaches Christ for at least the last few years, how did you get pulled into this project? 

Peterson: It was obviously through Peaches. She told me she was doing this movie and wanted me to be part of it. I really didn't know if I could act in a role. She had seen this other short film I did called Tomoko's Kitchen (2006) that was apparently screened at the Sundance Film Festival. I had a small role in it (and I don't know how I got dragged into that one either). I never watched it because I didn't want to see what I looked like in it; but, Joshua had seen it and he said, "I thought your acting was really great." I was like, "You're kidding?" Then I actually watched it and I wasn't as bad as I thought. So I thought, "Hmmmm, okay, maybe I can act in All About Evil, I don't know." It had been so long.  

Guillén: Have you grown as an actor as a consequence of committing yourself to performing in Evil? 

Peterson: I guess I have. The hard part about being an actor is not being self-conscious. From being Elvira for so many years I have absolutely no shame or self-consciousness—that's all gone—so I feel very relaxed.  

Guillén: That must feel fabulous to be so confident and centered? 

Peterson: It does feel a little bit like, "Oh well, I can do whatever now."  

Guillén: What has it felt to be directed by Joshua, or I guess I should say "Peachua"—Joshua, half in drag? 

Peterson: Peachua's a great name! It's been great because Joshua is just so damn sweet and nice and any suggestions you make, he thinks they're great. He's such an easygoing guy. I love being around him. He's funny and we work great together. I love doing stuff with him.  

Guillén: This moviemaking environment and this experience of late night shoots, multiple takes, how does that differ from your TV experience where you have set skits? 

Peterson: The hardest part for me is not having a teleprompter. Oh no! I'm a teleprompter queen. To actually have to remember lines is stressful because—with TV—I never have to remember any lines ever. So that's the hardest part for me, plus staying up all night. I know I'm "Mistress of the Dark"; but, y'know….  

Guillén: And I imagine that—even after working all night—it's hard to decompress and get to sleep? I did three nights of extras work while recovering from an appendectomy and was doing pretty good until the third night, when I finally had to beg off and go home to sleep and recuperate. I was so exhausted, I thought for sure I was just going to go home and die. But, instead, I couldn't go to sleep. I was so wound up. It took nearly three hours to calm down enough to sleep. 

Peterson: That happens to me too. I go home after filming on set; but, I'm so beyond exhausted that I'm still wired, y'know?  

Guillén: Do you want to do more acting gigs beyond your Elvira persona? 

Peterson: Maybe. But I don't want to start the whole thing of getting an agent and going back out on the calls; I'm too lazy. I've been doing this too long. The thought of going out on interviews is more than I can stand.  

Guillén: All About Evil is more a labor of love, then? 

Peterson: It is. When friends call me and ask me to do something, then I love to be there. But the practical thing of looking for work? That's just too hard.  

Guillén: Tell me about your character Linda. What was it about the role that you felt you could move into? 

Peterson: Well, she's a mom with a teenager and I am a mom with a teenager. Every line that is written in this script for the character of Linda is something I have repeatedly said before to my own kid.  

Guillén: I was observing with interest the manner in which you handle your co-star Thomas Dekker, who plays your son Steven. Dekker is something of a live wire on the set. 

Peterson: Yeah! "Get over here! Where's your coat? Stop smoking!" Face it, being cast in the role of Linda was typecasting.  

Guillén: And you haven't had to do any of the gore effects in the film? 

Peterson: Not really, no. Just what I have on now: a little blood. I get to kill a bad person. That was fun. I never get to kill anyone. I did get to threaten Pee Wee Herman once in Pee Wee's Big Adventure (1985); that was good. That was a dream job for any gal: getting to threaten Pee Wee.  

Guillén: You'd worked with Paul Reubens earlier, however? 

Peterson: We'd been in The Groundlings together and we were in a Cheech and Chong movie together [Cheech and Chong's Next Movie, 1980]; but, mostly working at The Groundlings.  

Guillén: I haven't heard much about Paul Reubens lately. 

Peterson: He's around. He's been doing quite a bit of acting and working on a whole bunch of TV projects that he's trying to get out there; but, he does quite a bit of acting as himself.  

Guillén: When I first interviewed Joshua a few years back, you hadn't yet made it up to Peaches Christ's Midnight Mass; but, you were scheduled to make your first appearance and I remember Joshua being all excited about it. How difficult is it to have such a strong alter-ego; Joshua has Peaches and you have Elvira? You mentioned a little earlier that you had trouble getting rid of Elvira acting the role of Linda. 

Peterson: Well, when I see a camera in front of me, like I said I just start mugging, rolling my eyes and stuff, automatically. I play it pretty straight here in All About Evil, I'm Mom, I'm not making jokes or anything and the hardest part for me is, "Don't be Elvira, don't be Elvira." That's all I'm thinking. "Be normal for once for God's sake, woman!"  

Guillén: And how would you describe working with the ensemble on the All About Evil set? 

Peterson: It's great! I love all these actors. Everybody here is just so great. Oh my God, Jack Donner—who plays Mr. Twigs—I think he's stealing the show, damnit! He's such a pro.  

Guillén: You say that with complete love? 

Peterson: I do! I love it! He's such a great actor and such a nice guy; but, everyone in the cast—I feel like they're all little kids; they're all adorable—we've been getting along great. I've been swapping music with them and they've been showing me how to do things on the computer because I'm so computer illiterate. We've been having a lot of fun. Even on our day off we all got together and had dinner. That was nice. 

 Guillén: Your involvement in this project is something of a gift to San Francisco. It certainly has been to the extras involved in the film. They bemoaned the fact that they missed Mink Stole—she shot her scenes before the extras came on board—but, they've been excited to interact with you and delighted to watch you in action. 

Peterson: That's cool! The extras have told me they're very excited and I've been out sitting in the audience with them, talking with them. They seem like real fans. They're great.  

Guillén: Have you always loved genre films? 

Peterson: I have. Ever since I was a kid, I've loved that kind of thing. I've always been into it. For me, All About Evil is a cross between Herschel Gordon Lewis and John Waters. They've melded together. It's a dream job for me.  

Guillén: I was recently watching the YouTube clip of you and Peaches on stage at Midnight Mass. Peaches acknowledged that she was influenced by you and you credited the creation of Elvira to a drag queen… 

  

  

Peterson: Oh yeah, definitely! Lots of drag queens.  

Guillén: I'm intrigued by that sense of continuity. 

Peterson: Isn't it weird? I really do feel that I learned everything—how to walk, talk, dress—from drag queens and now I'm influencing drag queens. It's come full circle. Isn't that weird? I can't tell you how many drag queens have come up to me and said, "Oh, you were my idol growing up." And I'm like, "Well great, I see I've rubbed off on you."  

Guillén: I'm aware that you're holding auditions to find a second Elvira to make appearances that—as I think you've said it—don't pay you enough? 

Peterson: [Laughs.] That's exactly right. Gimme that money! No, actually it was a low budget attempt at doing what I would eventually like to do, which is to franchise the character of Elvira. Not quit Elvira right now—as someday I'm going to have to—but, sort of doing what Bozo the Clown did. I love basing my entire career on a clown. Bozo—for anyone old enough to remember him—was wearing tons of make-up too so that he could go out and get a lot of other actors to play Bozo to make various appearances and do TV shows across the country. I started thinking, "Hmmmmm. Bozo. That sounds like a good gig. Maybe I could do that too."  

Photo by Aaron Rapoport/Getty Images 

Guillén: This is why earlier I was praising your intelligence. You market better than almost anyone I know. Elvira has been a successful "product" for you. 

Peterson: Thanks. Well, I have a lot of help. I get good people and I'm still working on that, believe me. I'd like to say it's much bigger than it is; but, it's been going along pretty well for 28 years.  

Guillén: So your hope is to continue the Elvira franchise but to be behind the scenes? 

Peterson: Exactly! Yes. So I don't have to be schlepping around in this outfit when I'm 85.  

Guillén: As I mentioned earlier, It's been a true pleasure to watch you perform as an actor in a non-Elvira role. 

Peterson: Thank you. It's been fun for me. A nice break.  

Guillén: And I trust that—even though you may not want to go out and actively solicit roles—that when people see your performance in All About Evil it will open a window on a whole new facet of your personality and earn you invitations to act in other films. 

Peterson: It would be nice to be given an opportunity to do something without having to work too hard to get it. [Laughs.] 

Originally published April 10, 2010.