As a child of the first television generation—I was six when we got ours in 1950—I devoured Laurel and Hardy, The Bowery Boys/East Side Kids, westerns, World War II movies, and especially Charlie Chan.

This was a world before the civil rights movement. But there were stirrings. South Pacific opened in New York in 1949, addressing racial prejudice as a main theme. But contrary to the lyrics of You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught, which assumes that children are pure in opinion unless they are…

taught to be afraid
of people whose eyes are oddly made,
and people whose skin is a diff’rent shade

…in a January 2009 blog post, I noted that the converse is also true: you have to be carefully taught to be colorblind. In my childhood’s climate of commonplace and pervasive racial stereotypes, I was fortunate to have parents who lived and carefully taught that lesson.

Growing up Jewish in a small, racially diverse, Southern California farming town, I first became aware of prejudice contemporaneously with that original TV in our living room. I had heard stories of the Holocaust, but they were faraway and, because I had no family destroyed in its horror, unapproachably evil. Separated from children of color by the Southern Pacific tracks that ran like a fence through my town, I sat in primary school classrooms that were almost entirely white. Nonetheless, my parents were unwavering in their efforts to bring social justice into the lives of their children.

I was made aware that the typical Negro movie role of servant, laborer, or shuffling incompetent was spectacularly and unfairly stereotypical when my father’s choice to build an addition onto our home (I was ten) was an African-American contractor whose daughter, Shirley Verrett, later became a world-renown opera singer.

So when I watched Charlie Chan solve mysteries solely with his intellect, without force, I was intrigued and appreciative. Sure he talked in a fractured Chinglish…

• Bad alibi like dead fish – cannot stand test of time. (“Charlie Chan in Panama”)
• Cannot see contents of nut until shell is cracked. (“Charlie Chan in Paris”)
• Innocent act without thinking; guilty always make plans. (“The Sky Dragon”)
• Mind, like parachute, only function when open. (“Charlie Chan at the Circus”)

…but his Number One Son (Keye Luke) spoke perfectly, so I assumed the immigrant detective, a transplant to Hawaii, was no less intelligent than my Old World-accented grandmothers (either whom I suspect could have solved any mystery).

The review of Huang’s book addresses how some Asian-Americans have expressed displeasure at the image that Charlie Chan projected: bowing, deferential, mincing steps, a feminine/passive demeanor.

I always saw him as the smartest man in the room. I saw him as a hero.

*     *     *     *     *

Addendum: Click here for an interview with Yunte Huang, professor of English at UC Santa Barbara, about his book.

©2012 Steve Cotler's Irrepressibly True Tales. All Rights Reserved.

Satif Luwi Qatlar

Their destination was Oakland, where they would be met by their widowed 61-year old mother. She had decided to move from the East Bay to Los Angeles to be closer to her sons and had requested their packing and moving help.

They referred to themselves as screenwriters, work that had not yet brought in any significant rewards. Being a screenwriter with little income was commonplace in Los Angeles. Satif, a Harvard Business School MBA, had done a not-so-unscientific survey the previous year that indicated upwards of 30,000 screenplays were always available for purchase in the area surrounding the studios (from Hollywood west to the ocean plus the San Fernando Valley). Almost every dentist, massage therapist, and waiter had something on a shelf.

Success was elusive, but occasionally someone won, so the brothers worked hard…and constantly.

It was a full flight. The only two seats together were in the back…the last row. The brothers sat, buckled up, and watched out the window as the plane lifted up over the Pacific Ocean and turned northward. A few minutes later the stewardess (this was the era before “flight attendants”) offered orange juice and coffee in paper cups. The men accepted, drank, and drew no attention to themselves.

Refreshments consumed, Ali turned to Satif. “Okay, here’s your stay-sharp writing assignment. We’re going to come up with a scene.”

It was here that Ali unwittingly set the brotherly caravan on an unstoppable rendezvous with disaster. “Let’s say that you’re a hijacker,” he began, “and I’m your prisoner. Somehow I have to let the pilot know that the plane is in danger. How do we write the scene?”

Satif gave a weary sigh, “I’m tired. I think I’ll nap.” Sitting in the window seat, he rested his head against the fuselage wall and closed his eyes. About an hour later, he awoke to the seatbacks-and-traytables announcement. The stewardesses picked up the empty cups, and the BAe-146 Smiliner descended over San Francisco Bay, landing on time in Oakland, and taxied to the gate.

The two men were the last to reach the exit door. As Satif looked out past Ali, he noticed, but did not react to, two men in dark suits standing on the ground, each about five yards from either side of the roll-to-the-plane stairway, hand inside suit jacket. One step later, just as Satif’s foot touched the stairs’ top platform, both his arms were grasped by men identically besuited.

“Would you come with us, sir?” one of the men said. It was not really a question.

“What’s the problem?” Ali asked.

“Please come with us, too.” the other man-in-black said firmly.

Satif and Ali were led across the tarmac to a nondescript room where they were searched and interrogated. (When asked today about their ordeal, both agree that it was fortunate that their questioning took place one month before Dick Cheney was elected to represent Wyoming in the U.S. House of Representatives.)

It took an hour for Satif and Ali to convince the Federal officers that their government-issued driver licenses (same last name, same home address) demonstrated that they were brothers, and that it was unreasonable to assume that one of them was holding the other hostage.

It was then that one of the gendarmes produced the artifact that triggered the bust: a paper cup.

Ali gasped and, in a flood of explanation, revealed all.

“It was a movie scene. I mean, I asked my brother to— But he was asleep.”

After explaining the setup (hijacker and hostage), Ali continued, “The scene needed for my character to get a message to the pilot without the hijacker noticing. How do you do that? And then, while I was finishing my coffee, I figured it out.”

Ali got animated, waving his arms like a film director mapping out a take for his crew. “You film the actor draining his cup, but then, instead of setting it back on the tray, he drops his hand into his lap, and with the other hand, takes his pen and upside-down, without looking, he writes a message on the bottom of the cup. We lift the row of seats into the air and shoot straight up, right between his legs, zooming in so we can actually read the message as he writes it.”

Satif saw the main interrogator’s mouth twitch upward slightly.

“But my brother slept the whole flight, and by the time we started down, I had completely forgotten about it.” He paused. “But…since you guys are here, I guess the scene works.”

The G-men kept us for another 30 minutes, one of them pitching a “terrific idea for a movie,” while Mom watched our baggage rotate.

©2012 Steve Cotler's Irrepressibly True Tales. All Rights Reserved.

Once the eye candy is consumed—and it is uniquely delicious—a residual trace will be left in the wiring of those multimillions who sat down to be entertained, but were unconsciously lulled into the comfort of Cameron’s non-reality. I am not referring to his alien worlds. It is the triumph of the little man over the futuristic military-industrial juggernaut that poisons.

While Cameron is over-stimulating audiences with the endorphin rush of brilliant CGI imagery, he unselfconsciously shows bows and arrows triumphing over modern weaponry. We cheer the underdog, not realizing that this impossibility, while thrilling in Avatar’s fiction, dulls, demeans, and diminishes our real-world concerns about power-and-greed’s relentless quest to take all that is available now without regard  for future consequences.

What if Avatar ended with the arrows bouncing harmlessly off the military armor (as they did in the film’s first encounter between the humans and the Na’vi)? What if the military thoroughly destroyed the native Pandorans? It would be honest. It would be a repeat of reality (e.g., U.S. Calvary vs. Native Americans, Australian settlers vs. Tasmanian aborigines, and innumerable other one-sided contests). Audiences would hate it, but they would walk out reinforced in their concerns about their children and grandchildren.

But Cameron, in his quest to remain “king of the world,” has made certain that viewers will feel good, not concerned.  When they exit after the planet Pandora is saved from destruction, the warm feeling will stay with them like extra pounds, adding flab to their unwillingness and inability to take charge of their real lives and the real world.

In the middle of the societal and intellectual curve, where most citizens reside, the corporations offer the addictive soma of an Avatar. Who can resist?

©2012 Steve Cotler's Irrepressibly True Tales. All Rights Reserved.

I don’t.

Avatar—no doubt about it— takes filmmaking to new heights. The visuals are without parallel, and it is worth the ticket for the unprecendented, 3-D eye experience alone. But the story…

Here’s the plot of a typical Western.

White man finds gold on Indian land. Trouble. The Indians love their land and don’t want to give it up.

But the white man really wants the gold and has superior technology. So in comes the cavalry with big guns to kick out the bow-and-arrow primitives.

In the army’s employ is a half-breed. At first on the side of “progress,” he learns the ways of the noble savages, falls in love with the daughter of the chief, and ends up understanding that theirs is a just cause. For drama add some one-dimensional villains: a gold-is-all-that-matters mining boss and an egomanaical George A. Custer-type.

The result: War on the Plains.

The Indians scalp a few, but are eventually and inevitably overrun.

In Avatar, however, James Cameron lets the Native people (drop out ET…and they become the Na’vi) win.

I read a dozen reviews before writing this. Not one of them mentioned that the B-movie Western is back…at a much inflated budget.

Go see Avatar. But not for the story.

©2012 Steve Cotler's Irrepressibly True Tales. All Rights Reserved.

I need not comment.

©2012 Steve Cotler's Irrepressibly True Tales. All Rights Reserved.

I first came to Hollywood in 1975, where I starved writing four-minute radio dramas for Vincent Price ($86 each), then suddenly (it took four years!) I became extraordinarily successful at getting film projects produced: THE EARTHLING, with William Holden and Rick Schroder, and BACKTRACK, with Jodie Foster and Dennis Hopper. But the director was dying of cancer while shooting THE EARTHLING…and ironically the film was about a man dying of cancer. It could’ve been a brilliant inside view…but it wasn’t.

And Dennis Hopper, who directed BACKTRACK, had been mostly dead for years.

Mediocre twice. So I quit—for a long time.

I did Wall Street for a decade. Then I partnered with my brother and wrote another feature film. I raised all the money. It was Spring 1996. Hurricane! I had no idea what kinda ship was gonna run aground.

As an unflagging champion of Self-Reliance, I decided to show a small redwoods community saving itself. After casting Jason Robards (the only living actor to win an Oscar, an Emmy, an Obie, and a Tony) and a nearly unknown Hilary Swank, my brother and I built a fictional mill town, turned a quarry into a deserted gold mining camp, constructed a treehouse 60 feet up in a live oak, borrowed/stole logging trucks, and planned to convince the crew to lug lights, cameras, and cable a half-mile down a narrow dirt path to a waterfall where a skin-chilling love scene was to be filmed.

I produced. My brother directed. I scheduled 34 days of shooting. Three meals a day. Almost 70 crew members and cast, plus a varying number of extras. Over 10,000 meals!

Then I checked weather records for the previous seven years. Mendocino County rains seem to cease around mid-April, so I began shooting on April 17, 1996. It rained for 15 out of the next 34 days.

*  *  *  *  *

You make four movies when you make a film.

The writer “sees” the entire film in a mind’s eye. No rain. The cast is convincing. The execution imaginative. Movie #1 is perfect…but it’s imaginary.

Then the director, actors, and crew make it real, converting words into meticulously logged film rolls. We shot 140,070 feet; the finished film was 8,585 feet long. Inevitably, there are compromises: temperamental equipment, temperamental actors, temperamental crew. Results are never what the writers expected. Entire scenes simply don’t work, but some are even better! Result: Movie #2

Then comes post-production, a confusing welter of computer, film, video, sound, and optical technology—a more arcane, booby-trapped, and wretched hive of scum and villainy you’ll not find anywhere.

It begins with editing. More compromises. The director discovers, over many, many weeks in a tiny room with a big computer, that some of his brilliant visions were superb in the woods, but are too long, too slow, and too wandering to keep audiences in their seats. On a hunch, Sc. 114 gets inserted after Sc. 176, Scs. 177-180 are omitted, and suddenly the villain’s motivation is clear. The producer wonders why he rented expensive lights for the night scene that ended up on the cutting room floor. At last, there’s a beginning-middle-end. But it ain’t over yet…because the singing of the Fat Lady’s (and every other sound) has not yet been heard.

Dialog, which has been recorded separately from the film, is synched with moving lips. Foley, the sounds that come from feet, hands, clothes, slaps, whaps, thwocks, knocks, and plops—anything made by the movement of living creatures—is artificially created. Actors are recalled to “loop” garbled or misrecorded speeches. Sound effects are digitized and a musical score is composed, recorded, and edited to fit. Result: Movie #3.

Then the audience watches, and we discover that they see the whole thing differently than we ever did. They sigh when the script isn’t particularly poignant and laugh when it isn’t funny. This is the real thing: Movie #4.

HEARTWOOD was a coming-of-age love story and a drama about becoming the hero of ones own life. Sometimes heroes come back wounded.

©2012 Steve Cotler's Irrepressibly True Tales. All Rights Reserved.