Wesleyland

A couple of weeks ago one of the most important political figures in American history gave a speech in my backyard. Of course when I say my backyard, I don't mean that literally, since my current backyard is an alley in West Hollywood frequented by gay hustlers, vagrants and aluminum can collectors. What I am referring to is a place where I will always feel at home no matter how long I stay away, a place I feel connected to in many different ways, a place where I have a special history and which holds strong memories. It is a magical place, a mythical place, a place like no other. It is a place I call Wesleyland.

Officially, of course the name of this mythical land is Wesleyan University. It was founded in 1831 as a Methodist school for young men, but has since become known as one of the most prestigious and progressive universities in the world. It is physically located in Middletown, Connecticut which is the main reason I have such a strong connection to the place. My great-grandfather, Emmanuel "Manny" Eastman is buried in Pine Grove Cemetery in Middletown. My grandparents, Oscar and Agnes, met in Middletown. Oscar worked at the Wilcox-Crittenden factory in Middletown making marine hardware. My father, Warren and uncle Bob attended Middletown High School and both graduated from Wesleyan. I went to Wesleyan and so did my sister Susan. My nephew Chris was born in Middletown at the same hospital where my Dad was born. Susan has lived in Middletown for almost twenty years. My nephew John grew up there.

Even when I was a kid, back in Louisville, Wesleyan held a special place in my imagination. On Thanksgiving, we ate our turkey on a set of Wesleyan china, each plate featuring a different landmark from the Wesleyan campus, like Olin Library, Memorial Chapel or South College. In the summer we visited my Dad's relatives in Middletown. I still remember walking around campus in the early 70's when revolution was in the air. I knew the names of the buildings from our Thanksgiving plates. We toured the old science buildings where my Dad studied chemistry. We saw the pool where he swam on the swim team. The Wesleyan campus was an exciting mixture of old and new, familiar and strange, fantasy and reality.

But my favorite part of campus was the large open grassy field bounded by the administration buildings on the east, Fayerweather Gymnasium on the north, Olin library on the south and Foss Hill to the west. Known as Andrus Field, to me it will always be my "backyard" and the center of Wesleyland.

Back in the day, Andrus Field held an old cinder running track, a baseball diamond, and a football field with removable wooden bleachers. Students could sit on the terraced lawn behind Olin Library and watch an intramural softball game, play Frisbee on the football field, jog a few laps on the cinder track, or maybe just sit under the shade of one of the hundred year old maple trees on Foss Hill and enjoy the scenery. Nowadays the track and baseball diamond are gone, but the field still gets plenty of use. Like hosting the commencement ceremonies

When Barack Obama stood on the marble podium that rises from center of the terraced lawn, there were over 20,000 people gathered on Andrus field and Foss Hill to hear him speak. Including my parents and my sister. The biggest crowd ever recorded prior to that was 8,000 people for Wesleyan's 175th anniversary two years ago. Although I've heard that when the Grateful Dead played a free concert on Andrus Field in 1970, the place was pretty packed.

My first two years at Wesleyan, I lived in a dorm called West College which was nestled among a grove of trees on the north slope of Foss Hill. I crossed Andrus Field hundreds of times going to and from classes or over to Fayerweather Gymnasium. I ran numerous laps on the cinder track and did many a hill sprint up Foss Hill. Our cross country races began and ended at the foot of Foss Hill. Andrus Field was the scene of many official gatherings, such as Spring Fling and of course Commencement. But it was also the site of a lot of unofficial activities, like the legendary Communal Moan. In the winter we "borrowed" trays from the dining hall and used them as makeshift snowboards to slide down Foss Hill. This was years before any of us ever saw an actual snowboard.

It was during those carefree days of curiosity and experimentation that I first came up with the concept of "Wesleyland". The atmosphere at Wesleyan was so conducive to learning, growth, experimentation, and discovery that I began to see the campus less as an institution of higher learning and more like a kind of intellectual theme park. There were so many amazing things to learn, do, and experience. And as students, we were free to pick and choose whatever struck our interest. And the thing I noticed about so many of my fellow students was that they all had so many different interests and abilities. You might meet someone who was a pre-med and think of them as a "squid", a term applied to boring nerds who spent all their time studying. But the next time you saw the squid he might be playing mridungam in an avant-garde jazz ensemble. And then later the same squid might be covered with mud and tearing up the rugby field. You soon learned not to take anyone, or anything at face value.

It was not long before I realized that, although my classes were excellent and the professors of the highest caliber, I was learning as much from my fellow students as I was from my courses. There were specific examples, like my sophomore roommate Terry who introduced me to jazz, showed me how to play guitar and taught me calculus. But there were also the non-specific lessons, like my friend Andy who showed me how to take a negative situation and convert it into a positive one. Or Kevin, who taught me how to think like a writer. My friend Sindi taught me how to always be myself. Mitch taught me how to live in the moment. Nancy taught me about love.

Even after I left Wesleyan, I continued to learn from the people I met there. After graduation, during my year in Pacific Beach with Bob, I learned a lot about self-confidence. Dan has always been an example of professionalism and hard work. Dave has given me hope. Mark showed me about resilience and character. Joel was my healer and guru. Jon taught me how to feel.

When we all met each other at Wesleyan, we were students. But we were also something else. We were teachers, too. I think we will always be students, just as we will always be teachers. It's the primary function in life, to learn and to teach. I think that's what I found out at Wesleyland. And that's one of the reasons I found it so fitting to see Barack Obama speaking in my backyard two weeks ago. Obama is a great student of the human condition and he inspires people to learn more about themselves and each other. And he teaches by example that we can all continue to improve ourselves and the world around us through knowledge and understanding and passion for learning. A great leader is one who serves. And to serve is to learn.

I still have so much to learn. And the whole world is my Wesleyland.

The Marathon

Probably one of the most defining events of my life is the marathon that I ran my senior year of high school. In those days running was a pretty big part of my identity. I began running not long after my ten-speed bike was stolen right out of our front yard. That was a pretty earth-shattering experience -- to think that the criminal element had penetrated our sheltered suburban bubble on the outskirts of Louisville. But in a way, having my bike stolen opened up a whole new world to me. I became a runner.

I still remember the first time I tried to run a mile. My lungs felt scorched, my muscles ached, my feet were on fire. Apparently running was not quite as easy as pedaling. My friend Mark Bush had challenged me to go out for the cross country team with him. The team held practices over the summer in preparation for the fall season. I was trying to get in shape so I could keep up with the team. I had a long way to go.

That summer Mark moved to Lexington, so when I reported to the first practice I didn't think I would know anyone. But as it turns out, one of my classmates, Lou Armstrong, was a longtime cross-country runner. He introduced me to some of the other guys. Gary Steier was another familiar face, I had met him through Mark. Another kid, named Tommy Pfau, became something of a running yoda to the rest of us. He was immersing himself in the art of distance running and would be one of the main advocates of training for the marathon the following year.

And then there was Ray. A transfer student from across town, Ray was kind of an enigma. During the early days of summer practice, Ray often seemed to be struggling at the back of the pack, clutching his glasses in one hand and complaining of "lactic acid" build-up in his massive thighs. Eventually, Ray would become one of my closest friends as well as a world-class athlete.

That year our team won the state championship, due to a stellar lineup of seniors who had been training together for years. Lou was also among the top runners. Ray, too, had made amazing 'strides' to break into the varsity squad his first season out. In cross country, a team of seven runners competes, but only the top five finishers actually score. Their place determines their individual score: first place scores one point, second place two, and so on. The top five scores are added together and the lowest team score wins.

Senior year, due to the loss of most of our best runners, I moved onto the varsity squad. Fortunately I had kept up my training and was fairly competitive by the beginning of the season. Much of that had to do with the influence of Tommy Pfau and his doctrine of distance.

Basically, according to Tommy, the best way to improve your running was to run, and to run a lot. Ten miles a day was our average, with several thirteen milers per week. Whereas during the season, we would be focusing on shorter, faster workouts, all summer long we went for distance, distance, distance. The culmination of our summer of distance was a twenty mile run that remains one of my most cherished memories, in part because it was so much fun. We were already gearing up for the marathon that was scheduled a few weeks after the end of cross-country season. But first we had a championship to defend.

The day of the state meet the weather was cold and rainy. About fifty yards from the starting line there was a huge puddle about a foot deep that covered the entire width of the course for a good 20-30 yards. It was quite a rude shock to have to splash through all that frigid water at the start of a race. Not the best way to stay loose and warmed-up.

We were favored to win the meet since we had defeated every team on our schedule that year, including our arch rivals Trinity and St. Xavier. Trinity and "X" were the two all-male Catholic schools in our area and had always been our toughest competition. But we had our share of talent, including returning champs Lou Armstrong and Dale Sirrine, the indefatigable Ray Sharp, distance guru Tom Pfau and newcomer Jim Brill. Jim was the younger brother of one of our departed seniors who in a very short time had become one of our top scorers. I had managed to carve out a place for myself in the top seven, which entitled me to compete in the state meet.

Talent, however, will only get you so far. After that you need experience. And experience was something we were lacking. The harsh conditions of the race took their toll on our young team. Unfamiliar terrain, slippery wet grass, driving rain and bitter wind threw us off our game. We struggled to do our best, but the boys from Trinity and "X" were made of sterner stuff.

As I came up the final hill to round the bend for the long sprint back through the giant puddle to the finish line, I found myself closing in on Jim Brill. I was confused. Jim was usually one of our top three scorers. There was no way I should be anywhere near him. But here he was, face twisted in a painful grimace, hand clutching his side, urging me to pass him. But I couldn't. He was way better than I was. It didn't make sense.

Our team finished third that year, not a terrible showing, but we really should have won. I don't know how much difference it would have made if I had been able to break out of my self-imposed paralysis and pass Jim at the end. I might have lowered our score. Maybe we could have taken second. Maybe not.

The disappointment of our poor performance in the state meet only lasted a couple of weeks, though, because we now had another goal ahead of us: the marathon.

In a way, the entire cross country season was only a prelude to the marathon. This was to be the first marathon held in Louisville and we were psyched. We had all competed in the annual Derby-week mini marathon, but this was the real deal. However, the cross country season had also served as a diversion from training for the marathon. At least it had for me. The team had been focusing on increasingly shorter workouts at faster paces as we neared the end of the season in order for us to "peak" at the state meet. And in fact, I had "peaked" at the state meet, running one of my fastest races ever, despite the bad conditions. I had no doubt that I could run the marathon, but I hadn't been doing the kind of training that would allow me to run my best race. Still, I'd put in a couple of weeks of long runs between the state meet and the marathon and I felt ready.

The day of the big race was cool and overcast, which was actually just what we wanted. It's easy to overheat when you run 26 miles. A nice cool day is ideal. I ran with Tommy. We had done a lot of miles together and our running styles were very compatible. Plus I knew that Tommy had a race plan and I figured I would just tag along and follow his lead. In a long race you have to have plan and the discipline to stick to it. The first half of the race, when you are feeling good, you will tend to run faster than you should. You need to hold back a little to save your strength for the second half. Likewise, in the second half, you will feel tired and will tend to slow down, so you have to make sure you run a little faster than you want to. I knew Tommy would keep me on pace.

What I didn't know was that, unlike the rest of us, Tommy had been training for the marathon right through cross country season. He had been going out on his own after our team practices and putting in additional distance work. On the day of the marathon he was in peak condition for the long race. And we were just flying along.

I didn't realize just how fast we were going until the halfway mark, when I heard the the times being read out loud as we went by the checkpoint. We had covered the first thirteen miles in about an hour and twenty minutes. That's faster than I had run the same distance in the mini-marathon the previous spring.

"Whoa," I said to Tommy, "aren't we going a little fast?"

He shook his head. "Nope, right on pace."

That's when I realized that Tommy had a plan all right. He was planning on setting the national record for his age-group. He was a year younger than I was and the record was somewhere around 2:45. And at this pace he was going to break it.

I had no intention of setting any records. All I wanted to do was finish the race and try and break the three hour barrier that separates the men from the boys in marathon racing. But I felt great so I kept going alongside Tommy for another four or five miles.

Then I hit the wall.

You hear a lot about "hitting the wall" in marathon racing. It's when you reach the point where you have completely used up every bit of energy you body has stored and you literally have nothing left to go on. But hearing about it and experiencing it are two very different things. First of all when you hit the wall, you immediately understand why they call it hitting the wall. It's as if you slammed into an invisible plane, on one side of which you are a normal healthy individual engaged in a fairly stressful, but tolerable activity. On the other side, however, there is only misery, pain, exhaustion, weakness, and insanity.

I hit the wall around mile eighteen, which is a fairly common point to do so. Apparently human bodies can handle just about anything for eighteen miles. But go one step further and WHAM! Pain City. It's like someone took a ball peen hammer and reduced every bit of your muscle fiber to useless shreds of meat. Then they inserted a spinal tap and drained you of all essential fluids and electrolytes. Without electrolytes, your brain is like a computer with zero RAM memory. You simply cannot function. Your joints have been surgically removed and replaced with jello. You lungs have been stuffed with sawdust. All you want to do is collapse and weep like a fool. But of course you cannot weep because you are completely dehydrated.

And you still have eight miles to go.

Quitting was just not an option. I had worked too hard to fulfill this dream. And what I lack in foresight, I make up for with sheer bull-headedness. I just kept running.

This was quite a lonely stretch of the race. People had gotten pretty spaced out by now and I was in a daze, running an endless loop. Occasionally I had to stop and walk, but not for too long. There were a few aid stations along the way where I gulped down water and Gatorade. But I knew all too well that these attempts at replenishment were futile. It was far too late for them to do me any good. You need to take aid at the beginning of the race for it to have any effect. Whatever I was drinking at this point would only sit in my stomach unprocessed until the race was over. But it still felt good to stop and drink something.

Meanwhile, in order to keep myself going, I had a secret weapon. Her name was Mary.

I'd had a crush on Mary since I saw her walk into English class the first day of sophomore year. But Mary was way out of my league. She was captain of the cheerleaders and dated the captain of the basketball team. I was just a nerdy cross country runner. But besides being beautiful and smart, Mary was also very cool. We eventually became buddies. I even took her to a dance once. It was one of the greatest nights of my life. She never made me feel awkward or stupid. She was the perfect woman.

As it turned out, Mary's father worked for a company that was sponsoring the marathon. Mary had said she would be working one of the aid stations along the race route. I hadn't seen her yet, so I knew she must still be up ahead. I couldn't let Mary see me hobbling along in agony and defeat, so anytime I rounded a bend I picked up my pace a little just in case she was there. Mary kept me going mile after mile. Call it pride or delusion or teenage lust, but Mary was my beacon. And I never stopped.

Nor did I ever see Mary. She never made it to the race. Something else had come up. Probably just as well, the thought of basking in the glow of her lovely smile as she handed me a cup of orange Gatorade is what kept me moving forward. Seeing her might have broken the spell.

I never did find out my official time in the marathon. My number got lost in the shuffle. My Dad was watching the clock, though, when I came across the finish and he said my time was 3:11. That's a pretty respectable time for a first marathon, but I didn't break the magic three hour barrier. If I had run a smarter race, I would have broken it easily. But it didn't matter. I had done it, I had finished. And I had overcome much greater difficulties than I could have possibly imagined. I knew a lot more about myself now. I knew that no matter how tough things get, I will never give up.

Tommy set the national record for his age group, beating the previous record by several minutes. He was on fire that day. We both ended up going to Wesleyan and running on the cross country team together. I never did run another marathon. At least not yet.

But the lesson of the marathon has always stayed with me. It has to do with believing in yourself no matter what happens. And persevering when you have a goal, despite the obstacles.

I haven't seen Mary for years. Ray and I visited her once when she was at UNC. She was as wonderful as ever. I spoke to her on the phone last year when I called my friend Gary at our high school reunion. She sounded great. That Louisville accent just melts me. I never did tell her what a big part she played in what has become one of my most important accomplishments. Maybe someday I will.

Pretty soon I will reach the ten year anniversary of my arrival in Hollywood. At times my dream of becoming a screenwriter seems a lot like running a marathon. Only with no end in sight. But I know I can keep going. And I know that I will reach my goal. Even if I hit the wall.

Being Here

"I like to watch."

My first job in the movie business was as an usher at the Alpha 3 Cinema in Louisville, Kentucky. I was a senior in high school and Alpha 3 was the local "arthouse" theater. Or at least it tried to be. The summer after I graduated, Alpha 3 underwent a procedure we euphemistically referred to as "twinning". That meant that what had once been a fairly cool theater with a full-sized screen that showed intelligent films for a small but discerning audience was butchered by the forces of capitalism and ignorance into two smaller theaters, one of which continued (for a while) to show decent movies and another that showed commercial crap.

I didn't know it at the time, but it was the beginning of the end of a golden era. Someone once said, you never know you're in a golden era until it's too late. I had grown up during a renaissance of Hollywood filmmaking. Movies like Bonnie and Clyde, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Patton, The French Connection, The Godfather and Jaws had turned the old studio system on its head and breathed fresh life into worn-out genres. And in 1977, a movie called Star Wars completely rewrote the book. These same movies that had ushered in the era of maverick directors had also ushered in the era of huge weekend grosses, cookie-cutter sequels and massive marketing campaigns. Hollywood knows a good thing when it sees it.

But for a time, we lived in a world where passionate young directors threw convention out the window, breaking every rule in Hollywood to put their personal visions onto the screen. And the result was some of the best movies ever made.

Some of these movies wound up at the Alpha 3 and provided my early education as a filmmaker. Even before I started working at 'Alpha' I was frequent patron. My older sister Cindy worked there for a while and so did my younger sister Susan. I saw a lot of great movies there before and after the "twinning". I remember seeing a midnight showing of Fantasia on the big screen. That was also the night I learned that there were quite a lot of potheads in Louisville.

It was at Alpha that I saw Robert Altman's brilliant Nashville and the dreamlike 3 Women. I saw Bob Rafelson's Stay Hungry with the then unknown Arnold Schwarzenegger. I saw Annie Hall at Alpha with my girlfriend Christy who worked the box office. I saw films by Francois Truffaut, Clint Eastwood, Milos Forman and Martin Scorcese and many others. But there was one movie I saw at Alpha that really knocked me out, and made me think a lot about someday making my own movies. That movie was called Harold and Maude and it was made by a guy named Hal Ashby.

Recently I read a very interesting book called Easy Riders, Raging Bulls that tells the story of how a group of young directors infiltrated Hollywood in the early 70's and radically changed the landscape of movie making. Guys like Altman, Coppola, Bogdanovich, Scorcese, Spielberg, Hopper, Friedkin, Rafelson, Lucas and DePalma. And Hal Ashby. I never realized how much Ashby influenced me until I read this book and looked at the list of movies he made. Between 1971 and 1979 Ashby made six of the coolest movies ever to come out of Hollywood. And each of them made a strong impression on me.

Harold and Maude (1971) was Ashby's second movie as a director. He had worked as an editor for several years and earned an Oscar for his work on In the Heat of the Night. What really got me about this movie, besides the hilariously dark tone and the bizarre relationship between a young man and a sweetly crazy elderly woman, was the way Ashby used music and imagery to create moods and evoke the inner life of the characters. He used the songs of Cat Stevens for the all of the music in the movie. This was back when Cat Stevens was huge.

The Last Detail (1973) was one of Ashby's movies I didn't see until I was in college and had the benefit of the Wesleyan Film Series. With a gritty script by Robert Towne (that drew fire from the studio for its liberal use of the "F" word) and a signature performance by Jack Nicholson, the movie is classic early 70's: anti-genre, anti-heroic, anti-Hollywood.

Shampoo (1975) teamed Ashby and Towne with the poster boy for "new" Hollywood, Warren Beatty. The story, set on the eve of Richard Nixon's first election as president, captures the shifting values and vague morality of a new generation as the old generation tightens its grip on the political power structure. The movie could just as easily be about the new generation of filmmakers trying to break away from the old studio system. But Ashby provides no easy answers or uncompromised characters. All are flawed yet still sympathetic.

Bound For Glory (1976) played at Alpha 3 and I must have watched it half a dozen times. It was my introduction to the Woody Guthrie legend and the imagery of the film is as indelible as the imagery in Woody's songs. But even in this mythic portrayal, Ashby gives us a complex and difficult hero. Not all of Woody's choices are easy to accept. In the end it is a bittersweet tribute to an American icon.

Coming Home (1978) is one of those rare movies that can transcend mere entertainment and serve as a catalyst for social change, and in this case even healing. The story focuses on two Vietnam vets, played by John Voight and Bruce Dern, and their struggle to cope with returning to "the world." Jane Fonda plays a woman who is married to Dern's character, a gung-ho career officer, but falls in love with Voight's character, a paraplegic. Once again Ashby manages to show both sides of a complex issue with humanity and balance. In the climactic sequence, Voight delivers a heartfelt speech to a group of high-schoolers, imploring them to consider that they have a choice to go to war or not. Meanwhile, Dern's character tragically loses his battle with his post-war demons and ends his life.

Being There (1979) is Ashby's last great movie. Peter Sellers plays 'Chance', a dimwitted gardener whose simplistic observations and accidental friendship with a rich and powerful man set him on the path to becoming the next president, without having a clue as to what is happening. The idea that a complete simpleton could be elected president seemed far-fetched at the time, but of course that was before Reagan and "W". Sellers' low-key performance combines masterful comic timing with honesty, sweetness and innocence. Shirley MacLaine is hilarious as the wife of Chance's wealthy pal. I also loved Ashby's use of music in this movie, including the song "Basketball Jones" by Cheech and Chong and Eumir Deodato's jazzed-up version of Also Sprach Zarathustra (also known as the theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey.)

Unfortunately, Hal Ashby didn't fare too well in the 80's. The golden age had ended and the era of the studio executives and producers had begun. Movies were being made based on marketable formulas featuring likable, one-dimensional heros. Steven Spielberg and George Lucas recycled Han Solo into Indiana Jones and spun off two sequels. Scorcese and Coppola both struggled to find audiences. Bogdanovich crashed and burned. Hopper went underground.

But Ashby's fate was the cruelest. His legendary drug-use and paranoia drove him further and further from the mainstream while his obsessive editing style managed to piss-off the last few studio execs willing to work with him. Realizing he needed to turn his life around, Ashby quit doing drugs and tried to adopt a more business-friendly persona. But nobody was buying it. Ashby was treated as an outcast in Hollywood. Adding injury to insult, Ashby developed pancreatic cancer and died in 1988.

It almost seems like the change in Hollywood's business climate killed Ashby as much as the cancer. Ashby flourished in a time when even studio execs were willing to take risks, bend rules and push the envelope. But when the big corporations gobbled up the studios, there was little breathing room for creative spirits like Ashby. What's ironic is that without the creative spirit and the risks, there would be no Hollywood in the first place. Oh sure, you can always make a dozen sequels to Pirates of the Caribbean or rip off another comic book or put Will Ferrell, Vince Vaughn, Owen Wilson and Ben Stiller in a locked room and watch them endlessly improvise "clever" lines. But if you really want to make great movies then you have to take bold risks. You have to give the Ashbys of the world a chance.

Fortunately, there are still a few creative spirits left in Hollywood. The rise of the independent film movement has provided a home for some of them. Of course, many of the so-called independent companies are actually owned by the studios and are still being governed by bottom-liners as opposed to visionaries. But it's better than nothing.

I wonder what kinds of movies Ashby might be making if he were still around today. Those are the kinds of movies I'd like to make.