Richard Blackburn's Gypsy Wagon Cartoon

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UPDATE 02/25/09 – Scroll down to the section about Paul Ferrara ’65 for exciting news about Tom DiCillo’s upcoming Doors docunmentary When You’re Strange, which incorporates previously unseen behind the scenes footage of the band, shot by Ferrara when he was working as their official photographer.

It is the conceit of Richard Blackburn’s cartoon, commissioned by Jhn Ptak in lieu of rent, that the center of student life at what then called the UCLA Motion Picture Divison, was the fable Gypsy Wagon, And there was an eating spot there called the Gypsy Wagon, which John Ptak describes as “a gathering spot that everybody remembers. It was a food truck with a door in the side, but it looked home made.”

UPDATES WELCOME! We hope you have enjoyed reading about some of the colorful charaters who graced the “UCLA Motion Picture Division” in the 1960s. Of course there were many more; there are several others of note even in this cartoon. We would be happy to update and enhance this page with any additional information you might have to offer. Just drop us a line at POV World Headquarters and let us know.

A sampling of the people depicted in the cartoon:

4. JOHN PTAK ’67

John has not smoked a pipe in years—or used his collegiate nickname “Jack,” even though the opportunities offered by that moniker would seem limitless for a High-Powered Hollywood Agent.

Ptak began his career in 1968 when, after graduating from UCLA, he joined the staff of The American Film Institute in its first year, where he was part of the team that established AFI’s Center for Advanced Studies in Los Angeles. In 1971, he became an agent with International Famous Agency, now ICM, moving to the William Morris Agency in 1976 and to Creative Artists Agency in 1991, where he worked until the foundation of Arsenal, founded in May 2006 by himself and partner Philip Elway.

As an agent, Ptak was principally involved in the representation of motion picture talent, with an emphasis on directors, producers and independent films. Early in his career he was responsible for setting up such films as Airplane, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Jaws, National Lampoon’s Vacation and Taxi Driver. His personal clients have included directors such as Bruce Beresford, Brian De Palma, Costa Gavras, Terry Gilliam, Scott Hicks, Nicholas Hytner, David Lynch, Wolfgang Petersen, Paul Schrader, Ridley Scott, Tony Scott and Peter Weir, as well as producers such as Intermedia, National Lampoon, Michael and Julia Phillips and Rysher Entertainment.

At CAA, Ptak expanded the role of the traditional talent agent by representing the financing and distribution arrangements of over 100 independent films, working with his own clients as well as with Woody Allen, Kenneth Branagh, Jane Campion, Kevin Costner, Paul Haggis, Anthony Minghella, Phillip Noyce and Robert Towne on such films as Adaptation, Ask the Dust, Crash, Dances with Wolves, Driving Miss Daisy, Everyone Says I Love You, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hannibal, Lost Highway, The Mexican, The Painted Veil, The Piano, The Quiet American, Sliding Doors, Swingers, The Talented Mr. Ripley, and True Romance.

Ptak has participated in transactions ranging from traditional talent employment and production financing to the territorial sales of motion picture distribution rights worldwide, as well as the structuring of many international co-productions, including Ridley Scott’s 1492: The Conquest of Paradise, Butterfly on a Wheel, Peter Weir’s Greencard, Laws of Attraction, Vincent Ward’s Map of the Human Heart, Wolfgang Peterson’s Shattered and Wim Wenders’ Until the End of the World. He was a key executive in CAA’s corporate consultancy arrangements, having worked with such clients as Boeing.

5. GLORIA KATZ ’69

Gloria Katz (born ca. 1945) is an American screenwriter and producer, best known for her association with George Lucas.

Along with her husband Willard Huyck, Huyck has created the screenplays of films including American Graffiti, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and Howard the Duck

Shortly after her and husband Willard Huyck created a low-budget horror film now known as Dead People, though we much prefer its original moniker, Revenge of the Screaming Dead.

6. RICHARD BLACKBURN ’66

Although he is still best known as the screenwriter of Paul Bartel’s “Easting Raoul, Richard Blackburn is the director as well as the writer of another notsable cult movie, Lemora: A Child’s Tale of the Supernatural (1973) This fan-favorite erotic vampire film was finally released on DVD in 2004 by Synapse Films and widely received as a neglected classic.

Blackburn is currently working on a screenplay about his days at UCLA, an undertaking inspired partly by the "intense nostalgia" of reading Ray Manzarek's book “Light My Fire: My Life With The Doors.”

7. ALICE BAIRD JOHNSON

8. BOB PORFIRIO MA '66

Blackburn: "After helping to curate the first comic book exhibition in America at Yale, Bob Porfirio wrote on film noir for several books and journals. He is currently a realtor in Southern California.”

9. BRUCE HALL

10. JERRY HOWARD and his girlfriend LYNN

11. JOHN CUTIA

12. BILL KERBY MFA '69

Screenwriter Kerby is best known for his work on Jack Starret's cult classic crime spree action film “The Dion Brothers” aka “The Gravy Train” (1974), Hal Needham's action comedy “Hooper” (1978) and Mark Rydell's Janet Joplin bio-pic “The Rose” (1979).

13. STEVE WAX

Steve writes: “I remember this… “Felix Venable waking up during a Gary Essert film orgy showing of King Kong, and screaming “Kong’s Dong is bigger than Fay Ray!”

“My Jim Morrison memories: Jim skateboarding (is this possible?) up
and down the hall of the editing building and us telling him to knock it the fuck off. At the Gypsy Wagon one lunch time, Mansarek and Morrison showed up and unrolled the first Doors poster fresh off the presses — they had just signed their Electra record deal. We told them to forget it, they should focus on film, not music.

“Ray was a great filmmaker. My friend Carl Schultz and I worked on
most of his shorts and Ray was supremely talented and inspriational
guy. But after I read his book about the Doors I decided he was also a complete ego maniac.

“I remember standing for hours in the middle of the crowd at the Hollywood Bowl during the big Doors concert, manning a high speed Auricon camera on a tripod, told by [Doors photographer and classmate; see numberr 46 below] Paul Ferrara to wait for Morrison to fall backwards on the Unknown
Soldier. Jim fell right on cue, I hit the start button and the damn camera
jammed immediately. The films out on DVD I believe, The Doors Live
at the Hollywood Bowl . I may have a credit, but not one frame of film in it is mine.

I remember as a student DP following Cesar Chavez around the Central
Valley for a couple weeks on a student film for… what’s his name?

Where’s that footage?

The rough cut showing of Bonnie and Clyde at 3H — afterwards when
the producers asked us what we thought, we all complained about the
film being in black and white (it was work print) and the producers, including Warren Beatty, telling our professors they’d never come back to UCLA with a film again. When we heard about it we said fuck em, film didn’t work anyway.

RICHARD BLACKBURN responds – 06/29/07: Don Shebib was the skateboard king of the film dept but I do remember Jim Morrison on one as well.

Here’s a memory: the great Felix Venable cutting his film Les angeS
Dorment – get it? – using a paper punch on individual frames to sync the
resultant flashes up to the beats in Dave Brubecks popular jazz piece “Take
Five”. Felix’s contrary mindset, instead of avoiding light flashes as we were taught, was why not use them?

Keep ‘em coming people. We get enough quotes, we’ll have a book!”

16. MARTIN BONDELL ’66

19. JUNE STEEL ’67

20. INA MASSARI ’66

According to Blackburn, Ina Massari was the woman who danced on top of the TV in Jim Morrison’s film, bur we have not been able to confirm this with Massari herself. She became a film editor after graduation.

UPDATE: Massari assured us in a note that she was not the woman shown dancing on the TV in Morrison’s film. She was, however, the School’s best dancer in that period, and was later recruited to teach the members of the VDoos some sinuous stage moves.

22. BOB FERN

Producer of Richard Blackburn’s Lemora. Seems to have few other credits.
http://www.ncaonline.org/access-today/99fall.shtml#In%20Memoriam

23. GARY SCHLOSSER MA ’75

“I will tell you what I do remember. The buildings were not Quonset huts in the generic WW II sense. They were like Quonset huts. There were no tin roofs, one story with just plain old composite shingles. The main stage was designed like the editing buildings. I think they were built in WW II.

“I had the dubious experience of being Jim’s editing TA. He wasn’t much interested in doing conventional editing as I recall. I had to help him a lot. (Most with the technical aspects of how to splice, operate the moviola, etc.) Those of us who were TAs never helped out aesthetically. Heaven forbid, UCLA was noted for being an auteur school, the director/filmmaker ruled supreme in those days. TV was the bottom of the barrel. Only film counted. We were all going to be great directors, except for those who wanted to be musicians, documentarians, industrial producers, TV producers, DPs, Editors, Script Clerks, and makers of fine wines and canned pasta sauce. (FFC himself).

“Speaking of FFC. I am surprised you say that Jim was/is the most famous. I would say Coppola is the most famous, at least left the greatest mark on American cinema. Many others have followed, I see them in your POV magazine. My vote goes to Francis, although I never knew him. He left the year before I got there.

“Oh yes, I do remember that screening where Jim’s film was shown. I remember, my mentor, Ed Brokaw in very measured tones remarking that Jim had enormous talent but wasn’t realizing what he had to offer. By the way, nobody said 'fucking’ in the screening room. Colin would use very specific language other than swearing to make a point. He was always articulate and to the point. Makes for good sensational stuff, however.”

24. JOHN QUICK ’66

26. JEAN-PIERRE GEUENS ’66, MA ’66

29. PHIL O’LENO ’65

30. COREY FISCHER ’66

32. JIM MORRISON ’65

John Ptak recalls Morrison pre-Doors as an aspiring actor with a James Dean fixation, hence the invariable outfit of tight jeans, short hair, and a pack of cigarettes rolled up in the tee shirt sleeve. Blackburn questions the Dean angle, but adds: "Jim was fascinated by male hustlers, though. That's why he was the cameraman on Ron Raley's student film Patient 411."

The Dean-like image is confirmed by some recently unearthed very early film footage of Morrison.

34. DAVID THOMPSON

“In fairness to Jack Ptak I should add that his description of the screening of Jim Morrison’s 170B (rumored unofficial title: “White Trash." But no one has mentioned the scene of the woman reaming out John De Bella’s ear with her tongue, or the scene in which the projector showing the porno film breaks down and the guys at the “stag party” go berserk) is, to the best of my recollection, one of the most accurate I’ve ever read.

“(On second thought, the scene of the woman reaming out John De Bella’s ear may not be from Jim Morrison’s 170B. It may be from a BD/SM “design film” made by, I believe, Phil Oleno. I say “design film” because it was originally made for the motion picture production design class taught by Palmer Shoppe. “Starring” many of the film students of the time, this film has to be seen to be believed. But who knows where a print is these days? Anyway, if I’ve got the scene right but the film wrong, hopefully someone will correct me. The Cartoon/POV HQ Web Site seems to be the ‘Wikipedia’ of the Mid-Sixties UCLA Film School.) “Back then the the academic set up was: UCLA School of Fine Arts, Department of Theater Arts: Theater Division, Motion Picture Division and Television/Radio Division. Yes, back then you could even major in radio! The UCLA Film School buildings (pre-Melnitz Hall) were, as others have described, one-story WW II style military barracks, painted, as I recall, some shade of green or grey. There were, I believe, five buildings. Two were sound stages (and yes, they had floors and rigging to hang lights). They were on a north south axis, just east of Parking Lot 5. The other three buildings were on an east/west axis, just east of the sound stages. The northernmost building was 3H, the Warren Hamilton Theater. One of the other two buildings contained a small projection theater with sound mixing facilities, the animation department and the Film School Library, where Jim Morrison worked part-time for a while. The other building was the post-production building, AKA the Editing Rooms. Scene of many, many late night/all night editing sessions, fueled by various liquids and substances. (Hey, it was the Sixties.)

39. WARREN HAMILTON

“The Warren Hamilton in the cartoon was my dad,” writes Warren Hamilton, Jr. ’59.

“My dad who was senior scene technician in the motion picture division (as it was called then) from l957 to '77-'78. That is why he has a hammer in his hand [in the cartoon], because he was always building the sets for student films. He passed away in 2002 at the age of 96 and was still going strong building a house Joshua Tree.
“I was on campus from 1951 thru 1959 (less two years out for service in the Army). I have some great photos of some of the sets my dad built in the late 1950s.For one thesis project we turned the north campus into a Russian winter.

“I only remember one Quonset hut, which was used to store equipment. All of our classrooms (including Building 4F) were in WWII converted army barracks. Gary Essert, who was the ubiquitous projectionist, and the students named 4F TheWarren Hamilton Theater. Francis Coppola’s, Your A Big Boy Now (1966), premiered in the Warren Hamilton Theater. Later, Gary made a gag opening for the student films which featured my dad running around doing everything to set up for the screening.”

40. COLIN YOUNG ’58

Our alumni sources are unanimous in asserting that the professor who critiqued Morrison’s student film was nothing like the sneering snbobe portrayed by director Oliver Stone in his film The Doors.

Young was a leading figure in documentary and ethnographic film whose students have included cinematographer Joan Churchill (ast UCLA) and director Nick Broomfield.

The NFTS web site takes up the story: In 1970, Colin Young, a Scot then chairing the University of California’s Department of Theater Arts, was appointed as the School’s first director. With a loan from Rank, the NFS bought the old Beaconsfield Film Studios in Buckinghamshire – which had been home to organisations as diverse as British Lion Film Corporation, The Crown Film Unit and the North Thames Gas Board – and set about refitting it to professional industry standards. Young established four permanent departments – production, camera, editing and sound – and in 1971 the first intake of 25 students passed through the studio gates. Directors Mike Radford (The Merchant of Venice, Il Postino), Bill Forsyth (Local Hero) and Ben Lewin (Ally McBeal), pioneering documentarist Nick Broomfield (/I>Aileen: Portrait of a Serial Killer), and visual effects specialist Dennis Lowe (Cold Mountain, The English Patient) were among their number.

From the outset, the NFS rejected the vocational-school style, casting itself as a purveyor of in-depth film and television training. Unlike today, students did not specialise in a single discipline from the outset, but were welcomed as novices to be initiated into the filmmaking world: “Specialists are necessary, but we do not accept students as ‘editors’ or ‘directors’ as such,” Colin Young told Sight & Sound in1975. “Our Diploma course is designed to give all students a wide knowledge of all aspects of filmmaking. The School uses an active, not a passive curriculum, which responds constantly to individual needs.”

Young retired from the NFTS in 1992.

41. FELIX VENABLE '65

A piece of history from a Doors web site:

“1966 (Date approximate) – Jim and his friends Felix Venable and Phil O’Leno head off to Mexico on a quest to find 'true Indians.' Inspired by the writings of UCLA professor Carlos Castaneda, the three hope to be initiated into the spirits of peyote. En route, Jim jumps out of the car at an intersection, kisses a Mexican-American woman, and jumps back in the car as they speed off down the road. Jim’s good-natured comedic intentions are lost on the woman’s male companions who,enraged, run to their car and give chase, eventually catching up with the three friends and beating them up pretty badly.”

43. JOHN DE BELLA MA '65

44. DOROTHY FUGIKAWA and RAY MANZAREK

The co-founder, keyboard player and co-founder and keyboardist of The Doors from 1965 to 1973.

Manzarek responded by e-mail to our query about the cartoon:

UCLA was a fantastic place to study film in the ’60s. Life was sweet, the students were artists, the pot was fine, the films were damned good, the teachers were fabulous – my God, Josef Von Sternberg! The British invasion in rock had just started, the nouvelle vague was just concluding, Fellini made 8 1/2 and my student movies – Evergreen and Induction – staring Dorothy Fujikawa (my wife of 40 years now) had been accepted into the legendary Royce Hall screenings. I have written an autobiography called “Light My Fire – My life with the Doors“ which contains an entire UCLA film school sequence. Check it out.

45. JOAN CHURCHILL ’68

Joan Churchill offers her memories of TFT in the 1960s:

“The film school at UCLA in the 60’s was a world unto itself with the most amazing, colorful, raggedy bunch of artists… which of course we all considered ourselves to be. Even the great teachers, and there were many, were contrarian iconoclasts, totally dedicated to their art & to living life to its fullest. There was no differentiation in the courses with graduate students & undergrads taking the same classes; nor was there a sense of hierarchy – graduate, undergrads & teachers all hung out together, drank at the Lucky U & played pool. Or went on film binges going to see Antonioni’s films & then drinking coffee all night with Ed Brokaw (editing prof) marveling at their mystery. Or maybe it was the French New Wave directors’ films we would dissect sitting around Colin Young’s dinner table in Topanga with James Blue & Steve Larner who had both gone to IDEC (sp?), the French film school in Paris. All of the verite masters came through the school, as well as those from the Canadian Film Board: Michel Brault, Terry Filgate & Mike Rubbo (who made the fabulous “Waiting for Fidel,” the forerunner of Nick Broomfield’s & Michael Moore’s first person narrative filmmaking). It was an exciting time with many debates raging. A big one was the debate between the anthropologists and the observational filmmakers in the new Ethnographic Film Dept. as to what is the proper subject of film & what is the proper way to record it.

Jim Morrison and Ray Manzarek were just part of this diverse group. I was at the screening of Jim’s film. It was unremarkable compared to some of the others. Ray was a truly gifted filmmaker, using his girlfriend, Dorothy, in his films. And Felix Venable made a film called “L.S.D.”, cutting black & clear frames together in a pattern designed to create an epileptic seizure. Many of us became casualties of the excesses of the day. Jose Gonzales murdered his girlfriend, went to prison & when he came out, couldn’t understand why his old friends shunned him.

Jim and Ray put together a band which at the beginning consisted of Jim getting up onstage & mumbling some of his poetry to music. Paul Ferrara and I would go cruising late at night and “borrow” colored floodlights which lit the apartments of Westwood and use them in a light box that Paul built for the Doors’ show which he would assiduously work to the beat of the music at the foot of the stage. At least we had ringside seats. But in those days that wasn’t a problem.”

Joan Churchill, ASC, is a second-generation filmmaker. During her childhood, she made cameo appearances in educational films produced by her father, Robert Churchill. She enrolled at UCLA as an English major but changed her field of study after taking a summer class in filmmaking. She began her career as an editor and then switched to shooting documentaries for former classmates.

In 1971, a professor recommended her to Peter Watkins, an English director who was looking for a cinematographer to shoot Punishment Park, a fictional story about Vietnam anti-war protesters who are given a choice of going to jail or running a 50-mile gauntlet in the California desert, as a training exercise for the police and soldiers who track them down. The film was produced in 16 mm format in documentary style and blown up to 35 mm.

“There was no script and most roles were played by real people,” Churchill recalled. “I never knew what was going to happen next. The actors were very emotional. The film caused a lot of controversy when it played in cinemas because people didn’t realize that it was a fictional story.”

After that project, Churchill began getting calls to work on documentaries. Her early credits include Jimi Plays Berkeley with music legend Jimi Hendrix, Gimme Shelter with documentary pioneers Albert and David Maysles, No Nukes with Haskell Wexler, ASC and Kopple, and Hail Hail, Rock 'n’ Roll with Taylor Hackford.

Churchill went to London in 1974 for what was supposed to be a one-month teaching assignment at the new National Film School. She taught at the school for six months and ended up living in England for 10 years. During that period, Churchill began her lifelong collaboration with director Nick Broomfield, including, Juvenile Liaison, Tattooed Tears and Soldier Girls, which won the British Academy of Arts and Sciences Award for Best Feature Length Documentary and the Prix Italia.

Churchill received the first Outstanding Documentary Cinematography Award from the International Documentary Association last year. She has compiled more than 50 non-fiction credits, including such award-winning films as Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer, Soldier Girls, Asylum and Lily Tomlin. Her recent projects include Bearing Witness, a documentary about female journalists working in combat zones in Iraq, and a film for director Barbara Kopple about the country music group Dixie Chicks.

Women cinematographers were a rarity when Churchill began her career during the early 1970s. Now, more than half of the student cinematographers at UCLA are women.

46. PAUL FERRARA ’66

After forty years the documentary footage I shot of Jim Morrison, Ray Manzarak and their band The Doors has been re-edited into a feature documentary by the Dick Wolf Company, of "Law and Order" fame. It is entitled When You're Strange and is making the film festival circuit as we speak.

I was called in as a tech. advisor in 2007, to help shed some light on where and when the footage was shot. A year later, and with the addition of a new director, I saw the film in a preview at the Wolf editing dept. at Universal Studios. Since then the film has gone through some changes and just recently they hired Johnny Depp to re-do the voice over narration.

The film is a look at The Doors' journey through the times and tribulations of being a band in the late sixties. It is told, through narration, from a personal place by a person who wasn't there so the story is more than documentary, it is subjective. It gives it a human, fan based, love for the story. If you google the title you will find many reviews.

Also, I have written an autobiography, and have included some excerpts of it here that relate to Blackburn and the Gypsy wagon. Complete copies can be purchased here.

On the campus of UCLA near the Theatre Arts Department was a small catering wagon with tables arranged around it. We called it the Gypsy Wagon. People from the Art Department, the Theatre and Film Departments all gathered there between classes. It became a famous meeting place. All sorts of life were played out at the Gypsy Wagon: arguments, discussions, connections, love and breakups ... you name it, it happened there. Some of us used to bring small bottles of alcohol onto the campus and mix it with the cokes from the Gypsy Wagon. Joints were rolled and smoked; we had a lot of parties there.

I was one of the first to discover the Lucky U, a beer bar and greasy spoon near Sepulveda and Wilshire. At that time in Westwood there was an ordinance against serving alcohol near the university. The bar was just outside the restricted area. It was frequented by old farts from the V.A. hospital, nearby in Westwood. Most of the time it was a friendly place. Times sure have changed, huh? Now there are bars lined up from one end of Westwood to the other. I would park my BSA motorcycle near the Gypsy Wagon and shoot over to the Lucky U when the opportunity presented itself. I loved hanging out with the slightly damaged. There are not a lot of pretensions; things are pretty much what they are.

After a while there was a small crowd of people from the Film Department that used to frequent that place. Felix Venable, Jim Morrison, Jose Gonzales and I were some of the core group. The pitchers of beer were cheap and the food didn't make you sick. There were a couple of pool tables and we were welcome when we walked in.

My 170 film project "The End of Summer," starred my ex-roommate Dick Blackburn and my old girlfriend from El Camino, Jeannie A. Colin Young was the instructor in charge of my class. Under his tutorship I put together a story of two young people who go for a bike ride at the beach and stumble upon a mysterious house. The house was the castle near Hamburger Square # 11 ½ Anchorage in Venice Beach where Ron Ellis lived. They find the door open and go in. They are alone. They explore. They put on some music. It was bossa nova, "The Girl from Ipanema," and they dance. They sink to the floor. They make out.

Previously in our class discussion Colin Young and Stanton Kay, my cameraman, suggested that it was too easy. What if they don't make love? What if there's some problem? The new script was a secret. I told Blackburn and Jeannie that I would talk them through the love scene. When he would have naturally leaned in for the kiss, I stopped the scene again and again until he became confused and frustrated. I told him to take out a cigarette and light it. His confusion came across as his inability to complete the lovemaking. Blackburn never really forgave me for the trick I played on him and Jeannie. At the last moment the guy turns away for some reason. The moment is embarrassing. Is he gay or what? Jeannie was so hot. What happened? We never really find out. We find them later in a quiet scene sitting at a table eating some ice cream. As Blackburn eats his cone he gets some ice cream on his nose and the girl laughs and wipes it off for him, breaking the tension. The camera pulls back, the music score rises up and the situation is defused. The film was well received.

Jim's student film from our UCLA years had caused a buzz that wasn't necessarily all good. His print had fallen apart during the screening. In essence, the professor claimed that Jim was a bad filmmaker because of this faulty editing. In retrospect, I would have to say that it was a bad call on the teacher's part to come down on him so heavy. The visuals of Jim's film are vivid in my mind today. He turned the camera on his own crew. They were in Phil O'Leno's parents' house, drinking and smoking grass. Someone rolled a joint and they passed it around. They were high and the camera was hand held. The girlfriend of one of the crew stripped down to her undies and climbed on top of the T.V. She was dancing slowly and was threatening to take it all off. The program on the television just happened to be a documentary on Hitler's army marching into Paris. The combination of the semi-nude girl dancing and the Nazis marching is unforgettable. He was being free, letting the situation develop and capturing the moments on film. It was so pure. So his editing was not so good: his eye and his creativity made up for it.

Ray's autobiographical film was "Evergreen." I played the guy who steals his girlfriend. He finds a new girl in the Art Department. His new girlfriend was actually his real-life live-in girlfriend Dorothy playing the art student. Dorothy Fugikawa and Ray had a small apartment near me in Ocean Park. Ray was the first in our crowd to discover acid. He told me he had something I would like. They invited me to join them on Saturday morning in their apartment over the garage. He had scored three sugar cubes laced with LSD, and he and Dorothy wanted to share the experience with me. We took them first thing in the morning with some tea and honey. We listened to Japanese flute music for hours as we sank down on the floor and went into a sort of slumber.

47. DENNIS JAKOBI '61

Richard Blackburn: “ Dennis Jakob was one of the Department.‘s most original ’60s students, given to wildeyed provocative statements (”‘Off the Pigs’ is worthless. The accountants know where the money is. Kill them and the entire system will collapse!”) and eccentric film projects (the Moonshot intercut with the voyage of Vasco Da Gama).. He was a confirmed Eisensteinian montage devotee, edited the LSD sequences in Roger Corman’s The Trip, and accompanied Jim Morrison on a trip down to Tijuana. He moved to San Francisco to become a part time employee of Francis Ford Coppola, claiming to have hectored him into making a movie of “Heart Of Darkness” by Joseph Conrad which, of course, eventually became “Apocalypse Now.”“

50. JON DRURY ’60, MA ’64

51. TOM STOVERN ’64, MA ’67

52. STERLING NORRIS BA ’64, JD ’67

54. GARY ESSERT ’64

Blackburn says he drew the School’s hardworking projectionist as a cloud of dust because “he was always rushing off somewhere.”

Few people have had has much long-term impact on the experience of moviegoing in Los Angeles over the past three decades as Essert, who, with his professional and life partner Gary Abrahams founded first Filmex, in 1971, and the American Cinematheque, in 1984.

Journalist David Chierichetti writes: It always amazed me how much “The Garys” were able to produce on a limited budget since Filmex received nowhere near the subsidies that the major European Festivals get from their governments. In an effort to show films all year round, not just during an annual festival, “The Garys” created the American Cinematheque in 1981. Chronic financial problems caused Gary Essert to be ousted from Filmex in 1983. His longtime friend and supporter, Elizabeth Pollen, reminded him he still had the Cinematheque to work on, and he and Gary Abrahams continued to push the project until their deaths from AIDS in 1992. Their long time associate, Barbara Zicka Smith, kept it going, showing films in temporary venues such as the Director’s Guild and the Raleigh Studios. Plans to build a permanent facility in the Pan Pacific Auditorium and later on Hollywood Boulevard fell through due to the recession of the early 1990s. The once grand Egyptian Theater had been reduced to showing second run films and was closed entirely after the 1992 earthquake. It was purchased by the City of Los Angeles’ Community Redevelopment Project to prevent its possible demolition. Eventually the City Council voted to give the building over to the Cinematheque along with funds to start the ball rolling. Much fund raising and several years later, the dream has become a reality.”

Gary Essert and Gary Abrahams died within a few months of each other in 1993, from complication of HIV/AIDS.

59. JAMES BLUE ’46

http://cohesion.rice.edu/humanities/cinema/filminfo.cfm?doc_id=2075

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