William Horberg

From The Streets of Cleveland

 

The shock of unruly dark hair so familiar from the portraits by all of the various artists who drew him in the pages of his seminal '70's comic book "American Splendor" is mostly gone. So are the angry political and sociological rants that he was so brilliant at writing from his perch as a keen and trenchant observer of human nature, at least of those humans that peopled his universe as a filing clerk in a VA hospital in Cleveland, Ohio over the many decades he worked there. 

Nevertheless, the fine and mellow version of Harvey Pekar that took the stage at UCLA's Royce Hall the other night, as part of a double-bill with fellow graphic novelist Alison Bechdel ("Fun House") for a talk that was advertised as "Titans of the Graphic Novel" was as frank, insightful, wise and plain-talking as one would expect from the man whose innovation was to bring a quotidian realism to a medium that - pre-Pekar - had mostly been the place of costumed super-heroes and escapism.

Twain's famous maxim about opportunity invariably knocking while you're out at the neighborhood saloon fortunately did not apply to Pekar's own moment of cosmic serendipity - his discovery that his new Cleveland neighbor and fellow compulsive jazz record collector was none other than underground comic book artist and hero Robert Crumb! 

Summoning up the courage to show Crumb some of his own "stuff" (which Bechdel lovingly included reproductions of in her own slide show presentation) consisting of primitive stick figures with descriptions and dialogue balloons scrawled on a yellow legal pad, Pekar became one of the first writers that Crumb agreed to collaborate with as merely an illustrator. Taking Pekar's stories back to the Bay Area with him when he eventually left Cleveland, Crumb shared this unique and unusual voice with other artists that were part of a group that was transforming and expanding the definition of what a comic book could be, and Pekar became an unlikely figure in that movement.

I remember coming across Pekar's work in the early '80's in Chicago but this was the first time I had actually seen him in person outside his appearance as himself opposite Paul Giamatti playing Pekar in my friend Ted Hope's wonderful HBO production of his work "American Splendor", surely one of the best graphic novel adaptations ever to make it to the screen.

Pekar turned 70 last fall and shows no signs of slowing down, as he spoke about a sure-to-be-controversial upcoming comic book project called "How I Lost Faith In Israel".

As a cancer survivor, he quipped to the audience that he looks forward to his next 70 years, and we couldn't agree more!

william

 

He Did It His Way

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

For everyone who walked with us, or walked with us in spirit on Saturday, it was another amazing annual event as thousands of families came together at the Rose Bowl for Walk Now For Autism 2010, and Autism Speaks raised well over $1,000,000 to put towards their all-encompassing efforts in research, education and services for children on the autism spectrum.

Once again, thanks to all of you, Team Diego's Friends was one of the top fundraisers in Los Angeles, with over $11,000 in donations.

You'll be happy to know that while a parade of thousands marched and sweated around the Rose Bowl perimeter in the morning sun, true to his unique spirit and style, young Diego found a different way to roll, as his friends at the Air Force let him ride in their scale size replica of a USAF Jet!

The dude was in heaven, as all the other kids who were patiently waiting in line for him to vacate his pilot's seat will attest (sorry!).

For more photos of the day you can click here to visit Elsa's website.

The Walk is a big, noisy circus of an event that most typically developing children handle easily. Elsa and I were remarking afterwards how we have been coming for three years, and the first year it was all a bit too overwhelming and Diego was on sensory overload. Last year he was more comfortable but he still kept to his stroller and didn't interact much with the other children. This year the stroller stayed home, and Diego was mixing it up at the petting zoo, the drum circle, using the bubble wands, bouncing around the jumpy tent, and generally having a ball. 

Go,Diego, Go!!

william 
 

Let Her Ride

The great Dede Allen passed away last weekend.

 

One of the most innovative, accomplished and celebrated film editors ever to work in Hollywood, she was Oscar-nominated multiple times for work such as "Bonnie and Clyde" and "Dog Day Afternoon" among other masterpieces.

My one chance to work with Dede was on a film that was definitely NOT in the pantheon of her career, and wasn't even mentioned in many of the obituaries I read about her passing, but that has a soft spot in my heart nonetheless - the critical and box office dud "Let It Ride", which was commercial giant Joe Pytka's directorial debut starring Richard Dreyfuss and David Johansen, and was edited with saving grace by Ms. Allen.

 

With a screenplay by Oscar-winner Nancy Dowd adapting a book by Jay Cronley, and produced by another screenwriter and long-time Walter Hill collaborator David Giler, the film was shot during the writer's strike of 1988 at the Hialeah race track in Florida, and without speaking out of school, it was a veritable cornucopia of creative differences between writer and producer and actor and director and studio. 

As it is said, success has a thousand fathers while failure is an orphan, and by the time this dark comedy about an inveterate gambler's one blessed day at the track had been shot and edited and tested and recut and reshot and tested again and rejected by the audience, there were a lot of tears and celluloid on the floor.

But through it all, Dede Allen stood by the film and stood by the filmmakers, and was a lesson to me as a young studio executive with her creative and moral authority. She seems like one of those people who touched countless lives and left behind so much great work, and so many lessons to learn from along the way.

While she will rightly be remembered and lionized for the classic films and performances she helped to shape, I guess I will always remember her most for a film that didn't entirely work as anyone involved had hoped; but sometimes those are the ones you oddly feel most connected to. 

Everyone can be graceful in success, but keeping your head straight and your vision clear when the chorus of powerful voices around any struggling production raises to a clamor is a real gift that only few have.

Thanks, Dede. I feel lucky to have known you.

william

Exit Through Disneyland Security

Elsa and I really enjoyed the sold-out show the other night of U.K. street artist Banksy's new film "Exit Through The Gift Shop", either a documentary or a mockumentary - depending on your level of trust in the artist/filmmaker as a reliable narrator.

 

As one of the foremost practioners of an illegal art-form that combines graffiti and stenciled art with high-concept acts of provocation and inspired political anarchy, Banksy does nothing to either encourage or inspire blind trust from the audience. The film seems deliberately conceived and pitched to a fine line of ambiguity that leaves open various interpretations of it as a hoax or a sincere portrait of its seeming subject - a Frenchman named Theirry Guetta whose compulsive video-mania led him to endlessly pursue and film many of the seminal figures in the emerging international street art movement of the late '90's and early 21st century, and ultimately to a relationship with the reclusive and anonymous Banksy himself (only seen in the movie with his voice altered and his face obscured by an unlit hoodie).

Whether he's the real deal or merely a protagonist in japester Banky's own meta-narrative take on the art world, Guetta is a passionate and entertaining on-screen presence, as we watch him eventually drink the street-art kool-aid, adopting the nom-de-plume of Mister Brainwash, and staging a heavily promoted art event of his own very derivative work here in Los Angeles, where to the amazement of all, he becomes a star in his own right with over seven figures in sales.

While it would be a real stretch for me to claim much in common with these internationally celebrated denizens of the high art world, I did enjoy discovering one shared item on our life's resume: at one time we both have been arrested by Disneyland security, interrogated in the police station that lies behind the happy facade of the Magic Kingdom, and unceremoniously kicked out of the park for violating both the law and the spirit of the place.

For Banksy and Theirry, at least their transgression was a political act of artistic imagination - tying off a blow up doll replica of a Guantanamo prisoner to the fencing alongside one of the Disneyland train rides to the shock and disgust of patrons. 

 

I'm afraid my un-shining moment came on a West Coast road trip as a teenager back in 1975 when my friends and I, with a little help from Mary Jane, thought it would be funny to start a jelly-bean fight on the old Skyway gondola ride over the park. When our errant beans started to rain down on the Matterhorn ride below, it wasn't long before the park police were alerted, and were waiting for us when the gondola car docked at the station. With red, yellow and pink candies littering the floor of our car, there wasn't much point in denying our guilt, but we weren't prepared for the gravity of the consequences. 

Being escorted through the park past gawking kids and tsk-ing parents was already humiliating enough to scare us straight, but the accompanying dressing-down lecture on how our small subversive act was a stain on the park, and in the eyes of all of their foreign visitors, a black-eye on America itself, felt a little over-the-top, even in the spirit of those Bicentennial times.

After several hours we were finally released and escorted to the front gate. The final straw was having our hands stamped with some kind of yellow-ish indelible ink and told that if we tried to re-enter the park within some fairly extended time frame we would set off alarms and promptly be arrested. 

Whether this ink-stain security was real or a Banksy-like hoax I will never know, but it sure worked as intended, as I have never gone back to Disneyland in the 35 years since. 

I'd like to take my kids there one day, but not being anywhere near as brave as Banksy, I don't know if I could handle the embarrassment if I walked into the park holding their hands and just by chance my once and future stained hand set off their jangling, clanging and alarming alarms!

william

Sunday In The Park With Diana

Ah, the Diana camera. Nothing like it. Plastic. Cheap. Minimal functionality. Light goes in. Little control over what comes out. But every once in a while, something special emerges with a tinge of nostalgia that seems to be built in to the process.

The A-Maiz-ing Lisa Maiz was over with her family for a weekend play date recently, and in her ex-professional hands, the photographer used the Diana's strengths and weaknesses to great effect.

 

If Diego had been born in 1970 and we'd found this faded mona lisa smile photograph taken on his fifth birthday in an old trunk up in the attic and dusted it off for contemplation, it might have looked something like this!

 

Reuben and his brother, the other, older Diego, seem to have merged into one body-in-motion in this backyard action shot that captures the Diana's full frame compositions to full advantage.

I love the colors and sun-flare in this "five-shot" as all eyes including the baby are on the alien hovercraft getting its final charge before a mesmerizing flight that had all of the kids jumping for joy as Elsa looks on. 
 
Thanks for these lo-fi memories, Maiz!

Enjoy!

william

The Imaginary Zoo

  

I took the kids to the zoo the other day, and it struck me that with the steady advancement of robotics and digital technology, it shouldn't be too long before the plain old prosaic zoos of yore with their lions and elephants and seals and ibex get replaced with the high tech zoo of our curious imagination, a virtual place where, to our delight, fantastic creatures like the Harpy or the Ganesh roam their verdant enclosures.

What would you pay to see The Manticore or The Kracken or a Minotaur live and in person?

  

 
Imagine feeding time for the mermaids and mermen, or the four-armed Varuna?

Diego wants to make sure they have a tank big enough for a Leviathan, and that the Sphinx and the Chinese Dragon have lots to eat and room to run around and play.

Our imaginary zoo still has a few kinks to work out - we haven't captured a Phoenix or the even more rare Hippogriff yet - but it won't be long!

william
 

Death At A Premiere

Power couples.

Apparently the term originated in the United States (where else), and was first coined in the early 1980's when the intense public interest in Luke and Laura from the soap opera General Hospital made the pair a pop culture phenomenon.

Here you can see Hollywood's premiere power couple - he he he -  as we were out at a real premiere on Monday night when the new "Death At A Funeral", the very first movie with a Wonderful Films production credit, had a raucous debut at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood.

Star Tracy Morgan looked like he was wearing an Olympic gold medal and brought his bling as well as his relaxed and casual charm to the red carpet proceedings. I know if they did give out a gold medal for comedy, this guy would be the Mark Spitz of his generation.

Clint Culpepper is the boss, el jefe, mister president, head of the studio - Screen Gems - who made the movie, and as a producer one thing is for sure, if he's happy, I'm happy!

Zoe Saldana was the star of the biggest grossing movie of all-time and so in true Hollywood fashion we can now all take credit for the brilliant foresight we showed in casting her in "Death At A Funeral" last year. But the truth is even if she was an unknown newcomer, we couldn't have found anyone prettier, sassier, funnier, or more perfect to team up with James Marsden as the secretly-engaged couple in the middle of these funereal shenanigans.

But the real credit for this evening goes to actor-producer-writer-director and star of "Death At A Funeral", comedian Chris Rock. He was the one who called me two years ago with the somewhat unusual idea of remaking an English language movie that had just come out the summer before and was directed by the great Frank Oz. Chris is a really entreprenurial cat and he saw that there was an opportunity to take this wonderful comic premise and story and remake it with a new cast and new cultural milieu and bring it to a wide audience that had sadly overlooked the original British film in the limited release it had over here.

It opens wide this Friday at a theatre near you, so I hope all you blog readers will get out for the all-important OPENING WEEKEND and support Wonderful Films and this wonderfully funny film!

Enjoy!

william

 
 
 
 

 

Walk On

The 2010 Autism Speaks Walk Now For Autism is happening on April 24 at the Rose Bowl. As many of you who have been following the blog for a while know, Elsa and I and Natalie and Miro and Diego have been walkers the last few years in support of this event to raise money and awareness and further all of the important research and programs that Autism Speaks sponsors for the increasing number of families with children on the autism spectrum.

Thank you to everyone who has participated and supported our team - Diego's Friends - with donations in the past.

And the blog today is an invitation to everyone out there who would like to get involved and walk or donate this year. Thanks to the generosity of so many amazing people we have already raised almost $10,000 towards our goal of $20,000 this year, so we are half-way home. Yeah!

It is super easy to sign up -www.walknowforautismspeaks.org/losangeles/diegosfriends - and join our team Diego's Friends. And pass this link along to your friends and co-workers in your community as well.

Whether you are with us in spirit or in person, it is a chance to get involved and join a large community of people who are working for a change and a bright future for their children with special needs. We'll be sure to share all of the walk photos and highlights this year with you here, so come walk with us!

Or, in the words and song of folk/blues singer Ruth Foster - "Walk On"!

william

 

Health Care

Lost in the national debate about health care this year was any serious discussion about one of the burning issues of the mid-20th Century as explored in depth in this stunning expose from the pages of Detective Cases magazine - True Stories From Police Files!

Quacks and quack cures!

What is the point of universal coverage if you can't get your carrier to pay for your mythical radioactive bar therapy or they are still going to deny coverage for the master cell to revitalize life?

william

 

Cuban Comic Books!

I found these vintage cuban comic books in a stall at the Plaza de Cathedral in old Havana a few years back. They were published around 1965 in the early years of the revolution.

 

I couldn't find out much about the artists who created the work. But in the spirit of the times, I was struck by how the colorful and simple graphic adventures of the Munequitos within (a word which means small doll, but is also the cuban expression for cartoons), were combined with a dose of politics in the form of third world geography lessons on the back cover.

 

Hard to imagine an American kid getting educated on the agriculture of The Congo or the socialist economy of Saudi Arabia in the pages of his Marvel or D.C. comic book!

Enjoy!

william