Phillip Seymour Hoffman: the high school years

In 2006 I wrote an article on Phillip Seymour Hoffman, on the eve of his Capote Oscar, for an arts magazine in Rochester, NY - his hometown.

I interviewed his former high school drama teacher from the suburb of Fairport, a quiet town with solid neighborhoods, where parents and teachers communicate with each other. Phillip’s drama teacher knew his mother because she already had his older brother, Gordon, as a student. She knew Phillip’s main reason for enrolling in drama was that he’d hurt himself in wrestling and he could no longer pursue sports.

His teacher soon found Hoffman to be serious and hardworking. His first role, in tenth grade, was Radar, in MASH. She admitted the play had a bad script and was likely the worst she’d ever directed. But Hoffman had immediate audience appeal. “He came out with his push broom and swept his way accross the stage,” she said.

As a senior, he played the lead role in Death of a Salesman. In case of disciplinary problems arising from 700 students having to sit through a two-and-one-half hour play about an old man, extra teachers were stationed in the auditorium. Hoffman, however, held the audience and at curtain call won a spontaneous standing ovation.

His teacher then referred him - at 17 - to the director of the local Shipping Dock Theatre. He landed his first paid part as the teenage son of dysfunctional parents in Breeze from the Gulf, an intense three-character drama.

The director recalled that the local newspaper critic didn’t care for the play but liked Hoffman. “When I saw how he handled that part, I knew he’d make it,” the Director said. “I don’t mean in terms of winning awards but in terms of doing something well that he was passionate about. He had talent and talent can’t be taught. You can’t teach someone to feel. It has to come from the artist.”

Did Tom Petty kill Del Shannon?

Nope. Del committed suicide. But I see a question mark on the wall. Tom Petty released the album Full Moon Fever in April 1989, which included the single, Runnin’ Down the Dream. In the song Tom describes driving down the highway and “…me and Del were singin’ Little Runaway,” as in, Del was singing on the radio and Tom was singing along. Runnin’ Down the Dream received heavy airplay. Almost anywhere you or I (or Del) turned the song could be heard.

Tom Petty is a popular musician but in the big picture his artistic contributions are insignificant compared to the innovative efforts of Del Shannon. In the early 1960s, with bandmate Max Crook, Del introduced to modern music a new sound, including what was essentially the first synthesizer. Shannon was a forerunner in re-couching the music of youth and changing the landscape of the entire music market, one 89-cent single at a time. Over the years he made comeback attempts but failed.

Nine months after Petty released Me ‘n’ Del were singin’ Del shot himself. He was a forgotten hero, an unappreciated pioneer watching younger, mediocre musicians come along and, using sophisticated production techniques, create music that sold millions of albums. Tom Petty’s song drove home to Shannon the realization that he would never come back from the past. Petty’s widely played song was the final blow, rendering Shannon an irreversible anachronism.

The furniture store commercial promised no payments, no interest, ’til 2012

In 2012 Charles Manson will be 78 and eligible for parole again.

Did Einstein foresee this?

The price of gas is rising. So are the costs of dairy products due to the increased demand for corn, now used in making ethanol. The impact of these costs on our lives my soon pale in comparison to the threat posed by another dwindling resource; one that few people seem to be talking about.

Bees are disappearing. It’s estimated that one third of all bees in the U.S. have already disappeared. One beekeeper in California lost 300 million bees in one season. They simply disappeared. This isn’t just a problem in the land of fruits and nuts; it’s in South Dakota, New York, Germany, everywhere.

I didn’t really understand the importance of bees until I read this article:

http://www.nrdc.org/wildlife/animals/bees.asp?gclid=CMqSz8i5nJMCFQv_sgodPBO_xA

I thought bees just made honey and wax. In the process of doing that, they are so critical to fruit and vegetable growing - by spreading pollen - that farmers actually pay apiarists to place beehives on their land. Active hives are transported by truck to agricultural regions across the country. Billions of bees are brought just to California when that state’s almond trees blossom.

Why are bees disappearing? Experts say it could be a combination of factors (Boy, there’s a definitive statement!): pesticides that disorient bees so they can’t find their way back to the hive; an inadequate food supply; a new virus that targets bees’ immune systems. There’s also evidence to suggest that cell phones and other airborne communications waves are disorienting bees.

Albert Einstein said: “If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man.”

The Disappointin’ Bob Dylan

I recently visited my daughter and her new husband in Atlanta. The first day we visted Stone Mountain. That night we stayed home and watched the video, The Wall: Live in Berlin, a musical celebration of the tearing down of the Berlin Wall. The three-hour concert featured Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters, the Scorpions, Bryan Adams, Van Morrison, members of The Band, and other music icons, as well as a national orchestra and chorale, helicopters and paratroopers, and a crowd of probably one million. The music, the sound quality, the masses, and the obsessive Wall story all combined to create a memorable event. I’ve shown the tape to three sets of people, now, and no one has walked away from it until the final credits finish rolling.

The second day we visted Lake Lanier - half dried-up, and that night watched my son-in-law’s DVD of Alice In Chains’ Unplugged concert. The grunge band presented the acoustic side of themselves and, even though there were only six of them, and the crowd was small, they were as powerful as the previous night’s electrified and heavily-attended Wall.

So “more” isn’t necessarily better. In fact, I wanted to tell my daughter and son-in-law about yet another musical act - of only one - that could upseat both Alice’ and the Wall. But I had no evidence to present. The act is Bob Dylan. Was Bob Dylan. I watched him one night years ago sit on a stool with acoustic guitar and harmonica and mesmerize a packed sports arena with It Ain’t Me, Babe.

That Dylan is gone. I saw him recently when he came to Rochester Institute of Technology. Here was clearly a man who showed up to play the electronic keyboards and sing for 60 minutes, collect his money, and beat it back to the airport. He never acknowledged the audience in any way. I recognized almost nothing he played, maybe because it was drowned out by a band of “everyone’s” musicians whose guitars and amps filled the stage. Tony Bennett, with his carefully combed hair, tuxedo, and ever-present lounge smile, is more genuine than this guy. Dylan, his face hidden under the brim of a cowboy hat, almost seemed to enjoy - in a passive-aggressive way - disappointing us.

Surely the crowd of 4,000 (mostly students) left the concert asking themselves, “Was that really the guy who gave us Mr. Tambourine Man and Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door?” or, “This is the guy my parents are always talking about?”

I felt I needed to publicly apologize for him, and for myself for having been a proponent of his, and for suggesting he was important enough to warrant hearing. This has been my apology.

 

Capital punishment…not!

Today the state of Georgia executed a convicted murderer. He shot his live-in girlfriend three times in the face. He is the first person to be put to death in the US since the Supreme Court ended a de facto moratorium on capital punishment in April 2008.

There has long been a debate over the effectiveness of capital punishment as a deterrent to murder. But the debate is really unfounded. Why? Because capital punishment doesn’t really exist as it was intended; we as a society don’t enforce it. Instead of murder-trial-conviction-death, it’s celebrityhood. When someone is actually sentenced to death they become causes, not corpses. They appear in the media; on the front pages of newspapers, above the fold. If cameras aren’t allowed in the courtroom, defendants are rendered in water color or tempera by talented artists.

While you and I work to support our families, and catch little if any media recognition for it, people who kill their family members get top billing, widespread media attention and big-name attorneys to represent them in an appeal. And most times the defendant has his execution commuted to life in prison.

So the argument that capital punishment does or doesn’t deter crime has no real reference point. There doesn’t exist a sufficient database of statistics to support either assertion.

Smile!

I used to be a photojournalist. Like others (I assume), I found myself taking pictures even when I didn’t have my camera. You know, “Wow, look at the way the sunlight hits that building!” or, “Look how those blossoms cover the ground like pink snow!” I became an observer; mostly of people. I liked to watch and photograph people.

I still find myself studying people, in particular their media personas. I am certain Tom Cruise and George Stephanopoulos wear hairpieces. I know from taking hundreds of headshots that men don’t carry that thick a head of hair up front at ages 45 and 47.

Willie Nelson never appears in public without something wrapped around his head…a sweatband, a hat or a towel.

You’d think billionaire, Sir Richard Branson, would have the chutzpah to face the camera. He almost never does, though, not in the electronic or print images I’ve seen of him, including this month’s Worth magazine. He almost always looks away from the camera.

Based on media personas, we have questionable candidates for president. Barack Hussein Obama seems to not quite be in the moment. Watch any video clip. He’s not quite in synch with the camera or the interviewer; it’s as if he were Photoshopped into the scene. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s ‘picture’ is audible. She yells. A woman in a male-driven society, she apparently feels she must raise her voice to be heard. Meanwhile, the Republicans have countered with that homophobic embrace between John Sidney McCain III and Dubya, captured on film and widely displayed.

If public persona implies leadership qualities, we should nominate small children to run our country and our companies.

Do you ever wonder…

…what’s going to happen?

Look out below!

Here’s a link to a quick story and video on Asian Indians throwing their babies off fifty-foot buildings to increase the infants’ chances of survival in life. The kids land (hopefully) on outstretched sheets held like nets by other villagers. They’ve been practicing this ritual for more than 500 years.

http://www.wham1180.com/cc-common/news/sections/newsarticle.html?feed=104673&article=3624937

When I first saw this I thought, “This is crazy; what a bunch of idiots!” Then I started thinking, “Hey, wait a minute, these people aren’t stupid, they know exactly what they are doing. In fact, they are taking over the world, peacefully, unnoticed…one telemarketing job at a time.”

Hammer or club?

I was coming down the steps of the YWCA in Downtown Rochester, NY, carrying my guitar, coming from a group lesson. The YWCA offers many programs, including educational and rehabiliational for women re-entering society from prison or substance abuse. Midway down the steps I was surprised to encounter on of my girls from the detention center where I’d worked a year prior. She was a black teenager from the inner city who, like most of the kids - black or white - posed a behavior problem.

Oddly, she seemed delighted to see me and said, “Hi, Mr. Gardner!”

I said, “Hi, Sheila!”

Next to her stood a gaunt figure, head shaved, trench coat collar pulled up around the face, wearing work boots (it was a warm summer day). I recalled she had two notorious brothers, also institutionalized. One, who I knew, had attacked an old man with a golf club; the other, who I didn’t know, made the newspapers for crushing a man’s skull with a hammer while robbing him.

I knew this character standing next to her, head bowed, unresponsive as if under the influence of drugs, wasn’t the gold club wielder. Assuming it might be the hammer-attacking brother I said, “Is this your brother, Wade?”

Sheila looked at me puzzled and said, “This is my mother.”

I nodded “Hi” to mom and continued on down the steps, at first embarrassed by my social blunder, then painfully reminded of how home life (or lack thereof) plays a critical role in shaping the lives of children. This realization was why I quit that institution after two years; out of frustration.