When I interviewed John Cassady last year in connection with the documentary ‘The Magic Bus,’ I was surprised at his enthusiasm. Now living in the Santa Cruz Mountains, John is the son of Beat legend Neal Cassady, known both for his own writings and as the model for the Dean Moriarty character in Jack Kerouac’s ‘On the Road.’
Articles by Richard von Busack
The Best Films of 2012
Luckily, 2012 gave us two epics about the richness of cinema-making: both digital (‘Life of Pi’) and analog (the uncanny, gorgeous ‘Holy Motors’).
Hoffman and Pheonix Score in ‘The Master’
Don’t expect a specific rebuke to L. Ron Hubbard in ‘The Master,’ P. T. Anderson’s bewilderingly exciting new film. South Park and Steven Soderbergh’s 1996 Schizopolis are closer to direct kicking ass and naming names.
Summer Movie Preview
Superhero antics, Woody Allen, Wes Anderson and of course the Beach Boardwalk’s free movie night.
Fellow Activist’s Film Pays Tribute to Judi Bari
You have a motion-triggered bomb loaded with nails. It’s armed. You, as an anti-clearcutting “Green Mafia” terrorist, are presumably going to deliver this weapon to the Redwood Empire some 200 miles north of the Bay Area. Question: would you first put this bomb under your car seat and take it for a nice twisty drive, 75 miles in the wrong direction, down Highway 17 from Oakland to Santa Cruz?
If you can answer “yes” to this, the FBI needs you.
Susie Bright on Sex, Politics and Religion
“Revolutionaries don’t look good on actuarial tables,” says Santa Cruz’s Susie Bright, but her own survival is a tribute to her strength, eclecticism and honesty. Maybe a revolutionary defies the insurance companies’ odds if she has enough of a sense of humor.
Where’s The Romance in The Movies?
Once upon a time, potential young lovers could watch a cancer movie together, hoping a weeping session would make that special someone all clingy and compliant. Ali MacGraw will be addressing a crowd at San Francisco’s Castro Theater this Valentine’s Day, along with a screening of Love Story (1970). If “Love Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry,” as that tearjerker’s famous tagline went, irony means never having to mean it when you say you’re sorry.
Freud Slips
David Cronenberg analyzes the analysts in A Dangerous Method.
My Career as a Cartoon Vandal
So Bil Keane is no more. At age 89, this celebrated and beloved cartoonist has gone to meet Winsor McCay and Charles Schulz. The creator of The Family Circus, a redoubt of simpler times for more than 50 years, died Nov. 8.
Few among us have not gloried in the world’s most widely syndicated one-panel cartoon, or chuckled over the gentle, homey foibles of Bil, Thelma and their four rambunctious kids, Billy, Jeffy, Dolly and young P.J., as well as the grim specters “Ida Know” and “Not Me.”
PRFF: Trainspotting
If you thought trains meant a lot in blues songs, consider how much metaphysical freight they pull in Japanese film. Donald Richie was one of the first westerners to write about Japanese cinema. His new collection Viewed Sideways (Stone Bridge Press) includes a 1993 piece on the importance of trains in Japan’s films.
