Strange Bedfellows Successfully Defend Loving Couples

Theodore Olson

In San Francisco today a three-judge panel of The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled what was, duh, obvious: Proposition 8 violates equal protection under the law and therefore is unconstitutional.

“Although the Constitution permits communities to enact most laws they believe to be desirable, it requires that there be at least a legitimate reason for the passage of a law that treats different people differently,” Judge Stephen Reinhardt wrote in the decision. “There was no such reason that Proposition 8 could have been enacted.

“All that Proposition 8 accomplished was to take away from same sex-couples the right to be granted marriage licenses and thus legally to use the designation ‘marriage.’ Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gay men and lesbians in California.”

The legal team representing the American Foundation for Equal Rights and two same-sex couples who had brought the suit is ostensibly a contradiction in terms: Theodore B. Olson, former Solicitor General under George W. Bush and a Republican, and David Boies, a Democrat.  The two had previously been combatants when the United States Supreme Court heard Bush v. Gore, the fight in FL over hanging chads, etc., which resulted in Bush ascending to the presidency.

Mr. Olson and Mr. Boies believe that they’re now headed back to the Supreme Court, on the same side, and feel confident that Ninth Circuit’s decision will be upheld.

David Boies

Mary

Mary Tyler Moore

Surely Mary Tyler Moore’s mantelpiece is crowded–seven Emmys and a Tony. And this Sunday another statuette, a smiley fellow, will join the group when the Screen Actors Guild honors Moore with its 48th Life Achievement Award. 

Moore’s eponymous series was must-watch TV in my suburban household.  I admired her beauty, charisma, talent, hair.  But it wasn’t her significant style that was her greatest influence.  When I was growing up, a woman’s place was said to be in the home (and with the era’s economy, families were able to get by on one salary).  Neither my clever mother, nor her friends, nor Abby, Stephanie or Andi’s mothers had an outside job.

I learned to be a woman in the world, at work, from watching Mary Tyler Moore. When I told her this, she replied, “Marlo Thomas didn’t do it for you?”

Maybe the quote sounds snarky written here, but it wasn’t.  It was self-effacing and funny.  And I somehow managed to resist throwing myself at Moore’s feet, chanting, “I am not worthy.”

The 18th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards will be broadcast on Sunday, January 29, 8 pm on TNT and TBS.

Mary Tyler Moore

Terrible. Two.

Dennis Kucinich

Citizens United, the “Corporations are People” love child of the conservative movement and the Roberts-led Supreme Court, celebrates its second birthday today.

To belabor my metaphor: in 2010 the infant spoke its first protected “words” and poured record-breaking cash ($400 million) into the midterm elections.  In this year’s Republican primary in South Carolina alone, $13 million has been spent.  And shadowy, syntax-challenged super PACs promise to drown out the voices of the American people throughout the 2012 election season.

To further belabor: Robert Reich and Common Cause have proposed smothering the toddler.  Amend2012.org is advocating for a  constitutional amendment to reverse Citizens United, collecting signatures on its site to send to state legislatures, providing information and ways to get involved.

Yesterday, Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) introduced a constitutional amendment,  H.J. Res. 100, which would provide for the public financing of federal elections.  Kucinich said, “Because of the Citizens United case, American democracy has been put up on the auction block.  We must rescue American democracy from unlimited corporate money.”

But luckily serious issues often beget comedy.  To paraphrase Stephen Colbert, “With one stroke the Supreme Court leveled the playing field and gave the naming rights to that field to Bank of America.”

Robert Reich

Le Crazy

Frederick Wiseman

Maybe it’s because the show, “Désirs,” that Fredrick Wiseman follows from creation and rehearsals to premiere, in his new documentary, “Crazy Horse,” about the legendary Parisian cabaret seemed to me part Rockettes (with bare breasts and butts) and part Joshua Light Show; or  because it was yet another masterful film by Wiseman (his 40th, 38th non-fiction); but most likely because the beautiful women were literally dancers (not strippers cloaked in a euphemism), and undoubtedly with options available to them, had chosen to pursue careers at the Crazy, that the proceedings didn’t scream sexism in sequins.

In “Annie Hall,” Woody Allen’s cinematic alter ego tells a friend that he’s hyper-sensitive to any hint of anti-Semitism (and although the example he offers, his mis-hearing a simple, common question as, “Jew eat?” was funny, he wasn’t kidding).  I am similarly on guard for sexism but watching the evolution of “Désirs,” staged by celebrated French choreographer, Philippe Decouflé, was fun and entertaining.  Imagine if Wiseman had been the third major filmmaker this year to shoot a documentary in 3D.

And in my defense–just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean they’re not after you.    More than a decade ago, waiting for the first press screening of that year’s New York Film Festival to start, Manohla and I speculated how many films would screen before we’d be witness to the life of a prostitute, stripper or other sex worker and joked about programming the All Prostitute/Oldest Profession Film Festival.  And as the lights dimmed, the first frame of the first film featured a gorgeous whore.

Jean-Luc Godard famously said that all you need to make a movie is a gun and a girl.  Here, Manohla’s L.A. Weekly piece (with hilarious headline) on working girls on screen:

http://www.laweekly.com/2001-04-26/film-tv/she-shtups-to-conquer/

“Crazy Horse” will open on Wednesday, January 18 in New York at Film Forum.

2012

happy, healthy new year

While other cultures also had the concept and a symbol for zero, the Maya in Mexico independently invented the number in the 3rd century AD for their complex and extraordinarily accurate calendar.

I went to Mexico with the group Judith organized, including staffers from New York’s Museum of Natural History, to photograph the Maya storytellers they were recording.

Jaime, wonderful, simpatico, working for what was then known as INI (Instituto Nacional Indigenista), was the crucial member of our team, driving with us down roads that would barely merit a mention on a map.  And not far (in miles) from the ruins of Tulum and  Chichén Itzá, cities of their great, ancient civilization, we met Maya living in small, often isolated villages in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo.  The nearest town, where we stayed (and joined the celebration for Día de la Raza), was Felipe Carrillo Puerto.

The stories that were recorded, centuries-old, were told first in Yucatec (one of  languages of the Maya) and then in Spanish and featured nature, animals and parts of the creation myth–but no one spoke about what has become frequent fodder for late night cable TV shows: December 21, 2012, the supposed end of times.

But the pop culture’s interpretation of the Maya calendar–unlike that of scholars, who only identify the end of a cycle, just as December 31, 1999 marked the end of the last millennium–is in sync with the zeitgeist.

Three films at last fall’s New York Film Festival ushered in the apocalypse: Lars von Trier’s great “Melancholia,” Béla Tarr’s equally impressive, “The Turin Horse,” and Abel Ferrara’s less interesting, for me (but very smart friends, film critics and scholars, Ronnie and Greg, disagree), “444: Last Day on Earth.”

The extreme weather of 2011 is seen by the fringe as foretold–which actually it was but by sources it disregards–scientists, hair on fire, screaming about climate change.

But without a year of vigilance and activism, the true cataclysm of 2012 will be the realization of the radical agenda of the Republican right.  In the crosshairs is all that makes this country this country, as they advocate destruction, including (but far from limited to), the shredding of the safety net, hacking away at voting rights and the separation of church and state, endless tax cuts for the richest and eliminating the regulation of business.

Juan Cima Barzon, storyteller and woodcarver, with his children, Dzula, Mexico

Happy Holidays

NYC, December 2011

War is Over (If You Want It)

I’m grateful that as of last Sunday, the United States was only still prosecuting one overt war and all of  our military men and women had left Iraq.   But I was horrified and saddened by the 14 bombs that ripped through Baghdad on Thursday, as sectarian strife seemed to revive, killing at least 69 people.

And still pending: whether or not New York City mayor, Michael Bloomberg, and the Department of Defense will approve a well-deserved parade down the Canyon of Heroes for our brave Iraq war veterans.

Dancing in the Streets (of Wuppertal)

Wim Wenders, Salzburg, 1982

“Giddy,” said Susan, when asked last summer about her reaction to Wim Wenders’ 3D documentary, “Pina.”  ”I’m kinda giddy about the film.  Make that REALLY giddy about the film.”  And although neither the work of the eponymous subject, the legendary late choreographer Pina Bausch, nor the filmmaker, usually evokes that reaction, the adjective is bullseye apt for describing the feeling caused by the hybrid.

Wenders and Bausch had discussed collaborating on a film for almost two decades until in 2008 Wenders finally saw a route to bring to the screen the exhilaration and beauty of the live performance of Bausch’s Tanztheater Wuppertal by employing the rapidly developing new generation of digital 3D cinema.

Together they selected four pieces, “Cafe Müller,” “La Sacre du printemps,” “Volmond” and “Kontakhof.”  But two days before the first rehearsal shoot, on June 30, 2009, Bausch died unexpectedly.  Wenders, in his grief, decided that the project could not proceed  but encouraged by Bausch’s company and staff, family, and other artists, began shooting in the the fall of 2009, with the ensemble performing on stage and outside in Wuppertal and its environs.

The 3D camera followed the Tanztheater ensemble members closely, moving through space with them and subsequently allowing viewers to experience that thrilling sensation.

(I have photographed Wim Wenders many times in almost three decades–ask me sometime to tell you a funny story, which ends with a pun from my friend Billy linking my photos and Wim’s name–and in the three images here, one thread that my work has followed is apparent.  Influenced by the great photographer August Sander and his monumental book, “People of the Twentieth Century,” I started by making full-length portraits in environments, later moving in so close, photos framing a face in a way that is rarely seen in reality–unless one is moving in with a fist or a kiss.)

“Pina” will open on Friday, December 23 in New York (Walter Reade Theater, IFC Center and BAM Rose Cinemas) and a national rollout will follow in January.

Wim Wenders, left to right: The Devil's Graveyard, Terlingua, TX, 1983; NYC, 2006