UCLA Commencement
LOS ANGELES, June 16, 2009 – Cinematographer Haskell Wexler, A.S.C., received The UCLA Medal, the university’s highest honor, at the 2009 UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television commencement on June 12.
The UCLA Medal was created in 1979 and is awarded to those who have made truly extraordinary and distinguished contributions to their professions and to our society.
Recipients have included national and international leaders in government, education, science, industry and the arts, as well as men and women who have advanced UCLA’s development into one of the world’s preeminent universities.
Wexler is renowned for his Oscar wins for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Bound for Glory. His credits include such notable movies as American Graffiti, In the Heat of the Night, The Thomas Crown Affair, Matewan and Coming Home.
Wexler is recognized not only as an influential filmmaker and storyteller, but also as a leading social commentator. Through such influential films as Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Bound for Glory and Medium Cool, he put a human face on conflicts between family members, social classes and nations at war.
Born in Chicago, he attended UC Berkeley before leaving to serve in World War II. His career began in Illinois, where after creating a studio with his father, he began to learn film production. After landing his first job as a cinematographer in 1958, he went on to work with such legendary directors as Elia Kazan, Mike Nichols, Norman Jewison and Milos Forman.
For UCLA students, he has generously shared his resources and vast knowledge, entrusting footage from his own work to the Film & Television Archive. He also has lectured to UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television classes and mentored alumni.
Crash inquiry
Recent inquiry into the Buffalo airline crash has revealed that fatigue and chronic sleep deprivation is a systemic problem for the regional airlines, working conditions that put everyone at high risk.
Our working conditions are not so far off those of the regional flight crews: long commutes, long hours, little or no time for normal rest or sleep. We are not flying airplanes but we are on the road in our cars, jeopardizing ourselves and everyone else on the road with us as we get to and from our workplace.
“A National Transportation Safety Board hearing Wednesday in Washington revealed that the pilot and co-pilot of the ill-fated plane were low-paid, had to commute hundreds of miles to work and probably were fatigued as they made the evening flight Feb. 12 from Newark, N.J. Read the rest of this entry »
Swine Flu and SLEEP
National Sleep Foundation Alert
Swine Flu, Sleep Deprivation and Long Hours
If you’re trying to avoid the flu, here’s some interesting news. The immune system is at its strongest while you’re sleeping, according to research presented at the annual meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology. Researchers at Stanford University infected fruit flies with two strains of bacteria, with one group getting the infection during the day and the other at night. According to the research, fruit flies that were infected at night were more likely to survive the infection than fruit flies infected during the day. Mimi Shirasu-Hiza, who led the team of researchers, told medHeadlines that the findings suggest the immune system is stronger at night, when all the other bodily functions are resting. The research also found that flies with impaired circadian rhythms had a difficult time staving off the infection. Your circadian biological clock regulates the timing of periods of sleepiness and wakefulness throughout the day. Circadian disruptions such as jet lag put us in conflict with our natural sleep patterns, leaving us feeling poorly and having more difficulty thinking and performing well. Because of this, it is important to keep a regular sleep schedule and allow plenty of time for quality sleep.
We don’t really have a union
from Gary Dunham -
An often overlooked frightening provision in the new proposed contract:
”On covered programs for original New Media rates and terms of
employment are freely negotiable, except that union security,
grievance and arbitration and no strike/no lockout provisions will
apply. No mandatory staffing and full interchange of classifications
will also apply.”
In what universe does a union agree to, and recommend ratification of, this language? It is clearly not a union at all. It is a self-serving, cabal of hypocrites interested in only one thing… their bloated salaries. The term “union security” does not mean security for the members; it means security for the organization, the Corporation that is the I.A. whose main “product” is our labor. This language is an unveiled message to the members; you are officially on your own.
We “the union” accept no responsibility for the terms and conditions that you, the membership must work under.
We “the union” accept no responsibility for ensuring job security.
We “the union” accept no responsibility for enforcing worker rights.
We “the union” accept no responsibility whatsoever for any issue.
What we “the union” are responsible for is collecting your dues (our salaries) and making sure that you cannot strike… Period.
Finally the IA and the 19 (now 15) “Hollywood” locals reveal their true purpose, in writing for all to see. The “sweetheart” union has fulfilled its end of the bargain. The union has delivered an uneducated, disinterested, and thoroughly confused workforce to the producers to be taken full advantage of. With the added bonus to the producers of being shielded from most federal regulations, because the workforce is part of a collective bargaining agreement agreed to BY THE MEMBERS!
Vote NO on 400 Hours
VIST 400hours.Com for more INFO
Are YOU still going to qualify for health care under the contract that we are about to vote on? The AMPTP wants to Raise the number of hours to qualify for Health Insurance from 300 to 400 hours.
The AMPTP told our negotiators that at least 10% (or a minimum of 3,500) IA members and their families currently covered by the medical plan have to be dropped, because of “projected” losses. This doesn’t even count the ones who currently do not qualify under the 300 hour minimum.
Many of our members will lose their Health Care if this is passed.
If the contract is passed, your bankable hours will NOT increase.
WE will NEVER get the 300 hours back if we lose them now.
VIST 400hours.Com for more INFO
Longer hours, longer hours
If the proposed union contract that was “negotiated” by our union leadership is ratified, everyone will have to work even more hours, more hours in the day, to qualify for the all important health plan the union provides. We will be required to further jeopardize our health, our very lives, to even be able to qualify for the plan coverage which is supposed to benefit us. There may well be more injury and death in our industry as workers try to preserve their health and safety, working under a new contract that does neither.
2008:
Hollywood box office up 2% to $9.78 BILLION GROSS.
2011:
Ratify the proposed contract today, and beginning in two short years YOU will need to work 33% more hours just to keep yourself and your family covered under the Motion Picture Health Plan.
Then, kiss your Bank of Hours goodbye.
Our new contract merits a resounding “NO” vote from the rank-and-file.
Send our negotiators back to the bargaining table by rejecting the proposed 2009-12 contract!
Visit 400 HOURS.com to learn more about why you should vote “NO,” and make sure that every single friend and colleague in the IATSE does the same.
Studs Terkel
The last few years when I have been visiting with Studs a number of times, besides telling me he was ready to go, he said “I want you, Haskell, to speak at my memorial” and I figured it was his way of saying… of talking about the affection that we have for one another, the fact that we have known each other for so many years, since I was like 10 years old when we first met. Then when I got this note, after Studs died, that his memorial was going to be on January 30th in Chicago, 2009, and that I had been selected by Studs to be the first speaker, I was, naturally deeply touched. So, I had to review my long personal relationship, and to hope that what I will say in his behalf will be in concert with what we both stood for our long lives. In researching and thinking about what Studs Terkel meant to me and also what he has meant to all of us, I have been encouraged by the character that exists, not just in the two of us, in our relationship, but which is out there and hopeful for all of America and the world at large.
Q & A at Woodstock Film Festival
by Jay Blotcher
Chronogram magazine
October 2008
www.chronogram.com
Q&A with Haskell Wexler
Among film historians, cineastes, and those who simply follow the eternal ballet between light and shadows, cinematographer Haskell Wexler commands as much attention for a project as that project’s director. And with good reason: His painstaking approach to the craft—from the time in 1962 that he ran down an alley with a handheld camera to create a classic cinema trope—has transformed good films into great films. (But not without on-set battles; in his memoirs, Elia Kazan pronounced Wexler “a man of considerable talent” but also “a considerable pain in the ass.”) Centuries from now, film students will still be hypnotized by the results of Wexler’s work on In the Heat of the Night, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Days of Heaven, Bound for Glory, and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, the latter two of which brought him Oscars.
Wexler, who will receive a lifetime achievement award at this year’s Woodstock Film Festival, is also known as an indefatigable supporter of progressive causes, from the Sandanistas to union leaders to more humane working conditions for the film industry. Even at 86, Wexler’s pugnacious approach to politics is evident in a brief phone interview.
You have been a champion of the Woodstock Film festival since its beginning. You are a gentleman of very specific and very passionate political ideals; you would not have become involved if it didn’t reflect your values.
Woodstock became known to me because of the map and the concert and the film. When it happened, it represented a generational spirit. And spirit shows itself profoundly in music. When they started the film festival, it felt like—if I can use one of those subjective words—it felt like they were dealing with that same spirit of who were are and who we want to be, what kind of world we want to live in. All those things relate to filmmaking. And filmmaking is what I do, what I love, what I get my pleasure out of.
We are careering into the Democratic Convention [as of press time]. I’m sure this will reignite people’s interest in Medium Cool [a documentary Wexler directed and shot during the 1968 Democratic Convention that folds the real-life protests into the film]. I wonder if you have been asked to appear at screenings of the film, and to talk about the experiences of shooting this film in 1968.
There have been a lot of groups of filmmakers who wanted me to join with them in filming around both conventions. And I have hesitated to want to cooperate with them for basically what you might call political reasons. Just like most of our history, I don’t think people really know the history. I think the history of 1968 is not in the film; it’s not what we shot on the streets. That’s the movie. That’s life, the movie. And I’m not interested in shooting life for the movie in 2008, because the players in the movie are much more sophisticated on the so-called security side. Their methods of sequestering any rights to assemble in any meaningful way have been so thoroughly militarized. And the danger of some kind of event—either by some crazy anarchist or by some provocateur—would create another movie that would not enlighten people, but make them more fearful and more [under] control of authority.
But the main difference between ’68 and now is that ’68 happened because on all levels, great masses of American people were not being heard by either the Democratic or the Republican parties. They were being ignored. So that was the essence of why they were demonstrating in the streets. And that is not clear from the so-called demonstrators [of this era] in front of the convention center—in either party, either candidate. Neither one of them are saying, “We are living in a lie.” No one is saying that the political system has lied to us in deadly ways.
When you accepted the Oscar for Best Cinematography for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in 1968, you said, “I hope we can use our art for love and peace.” I was wondering—
[Laughs] That’s right, I did say that! That’s true. I’m laughing at how cornball the words sound. And, actually, the Vietnam War was going on, and those words peace and love—you looked at an image in the back of your head of some girl in a T-shirt with her nipple showing, and some guy with long hair a kind of wild look in his eyes. So, those were revolutionary words.
Regarding the spirit of those words, which directors these days create work that help political advancement and peace and love? Is there somebody like a Hal Ashby [director of Bound for Glory] these days, whose art and attitudes and his political philosophy coalesce?
They’re out there, but they’re not out there. Amongst Hollywood directors, many of them—writers as well—do not get work. The corporatization of all our media, Bill Moyers speaks the best about that. It also goes with moviemaking. Look at the coming attractions at any time in any theater and see what it says in the [box] below: “Rated for violence, sexuality [etc.].” The established no-nos are the very thing [I look for in films]. When I see something that’s got a G rating, I figure, like a lot of people, that I don’t want to see this, it’s going to be boring. So that’s where [the movie industry] brought us, by changing our language and changing our response to images. In my documentary Who Needs Sleep? I quote George Orwell: “In a time of deceit, telling the truth can be a revolutionary act.”
One of the reasons [directors] don’t challenge [social injustices] is because those kinds of pictures don’t make money. Anti-war pictures are flops. If they’re flops, they’re failures. If they’re failures, nobody sees them. Getting back to Woodstock, [the] Woodstock [Film Festival] is a possibility for artistic, interesting, entertaining films to be showcased. [The festival] should also be a catalyst for people to see that those films that they think are worthy to be seen, are seen by more than the lucky people who come to Woodstock.
The Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to Haskell Wexler at the 2008 Woodstock Film Festival Award Ceremony, Saturday, October 4 by his friends and colleagues writer-director John Sayles and producer Maggie Renzi.
Woodstock Film Festival
I am just returning from the Woodstock Film Festival. I will hopefully be writing some things about this amazing experience. For the moment, I have posted some video from the event.
Haskell Wexler receives the Honorary Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2008 Woodstock Film Festival. Haskell also presents the Haskell Wexler Best Cinematography Award.
Amy Goodman and Two Democracy Now! Producers Unlawfully Arrested
“Look out Amy, it’s real”
I have had some personal experience covering protests at National Conventions, in my case being the Democratic National Convention in 1968. It is a really bad sign of the times when they start arresting journalists — at least Amy wasn’t tear gassed.
Amy Goodman and Two Democracy Now! Producers Unlawfully Arrested At the RNC
September 1, 2008
Watch Video:
UPDATE: Amy been released with charges against her. Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar have not are still in jail and may be charged with conspiracy to riot. Please keep calling the numbers below and demand their immediate release:
These calls can be directed to: Chris Rider from Mayor Coleman’s office at 651-266-8535 and the Ramsey County Jail at 651-266-9350 (press extension 0).
ST. PAUL, MN—Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman was unlawfully arrested in downtown St. Paul, Minnesota at approximately 5 p.m. local time. Police violently manhandled Goodman, yanking her arm, as they arrested her.
Goodman was arrested while attempting to free two Democracy Now! producers who were being unlawfully detained. They are Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar. Kouddous and Salazar were arrested while they carried out their journalistic duties in covering street demonstrations at the Republican National Convention. Goodman’s crime appears to have been defending her colleagues and the freedom of the press.
Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher told Democracy Now! that Kouddous and Salazar were being arrested on suspicion of rioting. They are currently being held at the Ramsey County jail in St. Paul.
Democracy Now! is calling on all journalists and concerned citizens to call the office of Mayor Chris Coleman and the Ramsey County Jail and demand the immediate release of Goodman, Kouddous and Salazar. These calls can be directed to: Chris Rider from Mayor Coleman’s office at 651-266-8535 and the Ramsey County Jail at 651-266-9350 (press extension 0).
Democracy Now! stands by Goodman, Kouddous and Salazar and condemns this action by Twin Cities law enforcement as a clear violation of the freedom of the press and the First Amendment rights of these journalists.
During the demonstration in which they were arrested law enforcement officers used pepper spray, rubber bullets, concussion grenades and excessive force. Several dozen others were also arrested during this action.
Amy Goodman is one of the most well-known and well-respected journalists in the United States. She has received journalism’s top honors for her reporting and has a distinguished reputation of bravery and courage. The arrest of Goodman, Kouddous and Salazar is a transparent attempt to intimidate journalists from the nation’s leading independent news outlet.
Contact:
Denis Moynihan: 917-549-5000
Mike Burke: 646-552-5107 - mike@democracynow.org