Governor Bob Palin (R/Alaska)

AN ALTERNATE UNIVERSE, August 29, 2008:

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain today suprised everyone by announcing that he'd chosen Alaska Governor Bob Palin to be his Vice Presidential running mate.

Although the party gamely presented a united front to the television cameras, behind the scenes many Republican bigwigs were trembling with shock and awe. Said one, who asked to remain anonymous, "What was he thinking? This Palin guy will be only a heartbeat away from the Presidency should anything happen to McCain ... and at his age, with that skin cancer, he could drop any minute. God forbid, of course."

"What's the matter? Dan Quayle wasn't available?" said another. "And I say that with all due respect to Quayle. I knew Dan Quayle and Bob Palin is no Dan Quayle."

But Karl Rove, unofficial advisor to the McCain campaign, enthusiastically supported McCain's choice. "This Palin guy is a two-term small town mayor who's been Governor for only two years. His foreign policy experience is limited to living close to Russia. Domestically? He killed a bridge project, wants to teach Creationism in public schools, and got rid of some corruption. But you know those Alaskans: twenty words for snow, fifty for corruption. And he's got five kids, so that should keep him out of the West Wing and out of trouble. Perfect, right? If they can knock off Obama and Biden in the Fall, then W. can retire to the ranch, and Cheney can continue to run things from an undisclosed location. You know, Dick told me this telecommuting is a great thing. Wish I'd thought of it."

When it was suggested that there were surely worse choices than Bob Palin -- but no one could think of any at the moment -- Rove nimbly quashed that assertion.

"Worse choices? Sure there are. I, for one, am breathing much easier since McCain didn't try to exploit the gender issue and blow everyone's mind by picking a woman -- especially a woman as unknown and inexperienced as Bob Palin. That would smell like the campaign believes there's a bunch of disaffected Hillary gals out there who are so stupid that they don't care who they vote for as long as she has the right equipment down there. That kind of pandering would have been so transparent and insulting that even I wouldn't have advised McCain do it -- and that's saying something. Of course, I don't want to be totally negative. I'm sure Palin's a nice enough guy. Great smile. Could surprise us. But it's risky to try and enhance something to look bigger than it is, especially a guy McCain met with only once before ... 'Hello, President Palin?' ... picking him for the ticket. Just imagine: "President Palin met today with Russian Prime Minister Vladmir Putin ...' I don't know. Sounds wrong to the ear.

"But here's an interesting idea. I've been reading a lot of science fiction since I left the White House, and this stuff about alternate universes really plunks my magic twanger. You know: Hitler wins the war. We win in Iraq. God is a woman. I could go on ... Wouldn't it be crazy if in some other dimension McCain had chosen Palin, but he was a woman, and everyone asked if McCain would have picked her if she was exactly the same -- qualifications, experience, philosophy -- but was a man? Hmm. Good idea. I'll have nothing to do after November. Maybe I should write a book ... Nah, no one will believe it."

Lots of book news this week.

On August 30th, Skylight Books in Los Feliz celebrates the opening of its new space next door, called SKYLIGHT BOOKS 1814. The expansion is a special place for books on art, photography, architecture, design, fashion, film, theater, graphic novels, and magazines. City Councilman Tom LaBonge will be on hand to for a ribbon-cutting ceremony. Festivities begin at 3 PM, but an 18.14% discount will apply to purchases made at both stores all day long.

I am also digging the newest Skylight Books blog, Corpus Libris, featuring photo essays of books and body parts. Caution, not all photos are safe for work so peep at your discretion.

Speaking of books and writing, the September 2008 issue of the Southern California Automobile Club magaine, Westways, is out (but not online yet). Readers will find Barbara DeMarco-Barrett's guide to Southern California Literary and Book Festivals.

An upcoming show of photographs, "The Holocaust Archive Revealed: Bad Arolsen Through the Lens of Richard Ehrlich," at the Craig Krull Gallery in Santa Monica has generated a great deal of local press attention this month. Today, the LATimes.com posted Suzanne Muchnic’s piece on the show and rumor has it that the story will run on a full page in Sunday’s Los Angeles Times. Pieces have also recently run in the Jewish Journal, the Malibu Times and the Palisadian-Post.

Not bad for a small show of photos about documents opening for one week only in the quiet days prior to Labor Day. Why all the fuss?

Richard Ehrlich is a urological surgeon with offices at the UCLA Medical Center. An avid photographer who resides in Malibu, Dr. Ehrlich traveled to the International Tracing Service (ITS) offices in Germany and persuaded officials to let him photograph the world’s largest collection of Holocaust archives, a repository of over 50 million documents recording Nazi atrocities against European Jewry and other minorities.

Fifty-four images from Dr. Ehrlich’s portfolio of this trip will be on view at the Craig Krull Gallery in Bergamot Station in Santa Monica, starting Tuesday, August 26, 2008 and ending Saturday, August 30th. Sponsored by Consulate General of the Federal Republic of Germany in Los Angeles and the American Jewish Committee's Los Angeles chapter, this is the first local exhibition of the images. Visitors will see photos of Anne Frank's transfer papers to Bergen-Belsen, the actual Schindler's List, and minutes of a meeting at the Wannsee Conference in 1941. That's where they planned the Holocaust.

Additional exhibitions are being planned at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art; the University at Buffalo Art Gallery, State University of New York; the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y.; and the Museum of Judaism in Paris. Éditions de la Martinière in France will publish the portfolio as a book. Copies of the portfolio have been donated to several Jewish institutions and universities, including UCLA’s Charles E. Young Research Library and the Shoah Foundation at USC.

I had a few follow up questions for Dr. Ehrlich, which he kindly answered below:

How did the show come about?

I showed the portfolio to gallery owner, Craig Krull, and he was so taken by it, saying, “Wow, we have got to show these.” He canceled his vacation to reopen the gallery for this week. It is not a long period of time—most shows run for 6 weeks but Craig changed his whole schedule around to be able to show these things because he was so taken by it and I just think such high marks for him because you know most galleries would not show such a non-commercial venture. I am very high on Craig for having the foresight and the aptitude to do it this.
The exhibit had already been shown in Washington DC at the national meeting of the American Jewish Committee, which holds its yearly meetings. Thousands of people show up from all over the world and the organization sponsored for the portfolio to be shown on various panels and so forth. They provided the money for the show to be shipped here for exhibition by the Los Angeles chapter.

What has been the response to the upcoming show?
Well, the response has been due to with the topic, and not me clearly. Craig said he has never seen such a response so clearly the subject is very poignant and people are very interested in it. Craig told me that when he usually sends out invitations to upcoming shows he rarely receives phone calls from potential attendees but when he sent out announcements for the show the phone has been ringing off the hook since he sent out this information as some people presume that it was an invitation-only, which is not, and they keep calling [to RSVP].

Now that you have finished the project, what did the entire experience teach you?
There are 2 important, overriding themes of this show for me: people should be able to remember what happened and also the incredible collaboration between the American Jewish Committee and the German consul to sponsor this show. It is very poignant that the German embassy here [in L.A.] has such a good working relationship in with the American Jewish Committee chapter as well as the New York office. It’s just extraordinary to have the Jews and the Germans coming together to show this material.

What was the original article in the International Herald Tribune that piqued your interest in the archive?
It was a tiny piece in the paper. Just 4 lines or something buried in a small page and I don't really know why it caught my eye but it did and it piqued my interest. The article explained about the International Tracing Service, saying that the archives have been inaccessible and that it goes back to 1945. I thought that was really interesting and I wondered why there were not accessible. I am one of those kinds of guys that when I get interested in something I am very persistent until I find out it is not worthwhile so I really track it.

At first, the institution was not forthcoming at all because they did not understand what I wanted to do and why I wanted to see the documents. But when I finally did get permission through somebody in the State Department, the ITS Department they could not have been more forthcoming and nicer. I actually have come to be very friendly with the director who is fairly new.

My inquiries hit at a very interesting time because all these years in the records have been inaccessible, [despite] thousands of inquiries from the affected families.

But this new director and the new thrust from the International Red Cross decided that it was time to begin to digitize these records and try to share them with the other Holocaust-related museums like the Holocaust US Museum. For years staffers at the Holocaust Museum in the US had been agitating for the ITS to do this and then things started to turn around. I got there just when organizers were starting a survey process for digitizing all that paper, more than 50 million documents relating to 17 and a half million lives.

How did the International Tracing Service archive start? Did they buy available archives all over Eastern Europe?
No they did not buy anything. The ITS originated as an arm of the International Red Cross and it is controlled by 11 Western countries but Germany pays for its staffing and upkeep. The Germans kept these records during WWII but started destroying them just before the Russians advanced from the East. The Russians came so quickly that they could not destroy all the materials so no one will ever know the full extent of the documents kept by the Nazis.

Were there any restrictions on what you could photograph?
I was able to photograph anything I wanted and there was no holding back. The ITS asked me sign a few papers [addressing] the fact that I would be sensitive to the subject matter, but there was no prohibition. The archive director said that it was fine to photograph whatever I wanted and provided me with a guide [staff member] who spoke English. She was very instrumental in taking out documents because she knew the collection so well. You can imagine with all the 50 million documents in there you could be there for 10 years and still not see everything clearly. There were many things that I did not see because it was just impossible, but I did find some really spectacular ones and then I just try to set the mood and set the scene and show people what it was like um most important for me was it was a difficult project photographically because the subject matter is so brutal. Yet I was trying to do this in a sensitive, photogenic manner.

Do you speak German?
No I don't. I had another girl with me who was a sister of a friend of my wife who is a taxi driver in Berlin who speaks perfect English so I was able to use her as a go-between with the ITS staff member who spoke English.

Did you use any special techniques to make your pictures?
No, I would just see something and then I would try to make it look as artistic as possible and try to set the mood of what it is. For example, the photos on my web site are really very somber and that is the way they looked in the archive. I did not try to change any of that or use special lighting. I tried to keep the mood of a somber place. Some of the documents are old and yellow and fading and I tried to just keep the mood of the place.

What are some of the most memorable items in your photographic portfolio of the archives?
There are a couple of photos that I find exceedingly poignant but since there are only 54 photographs in the portfolio all of the images are memorable and tough. One image in the show is a large-scale blow up of one of the rooms where the documents reside, papers and index cards stacked on shelves or in drawers. It shows the enormity of these papers, which in fact represent people's lives. There is also a photograph of a card file box from Auschwitz. The kind you see in libraries…

Another interesting photograph is a chart of different armbands designating people’s status that Nazis designed from the early ‘30s. The chart includes a legend so that if you were a Jewish homosexual you would have a pink star or you would get a different symbol if you were a political prisoner or a gypsy, etc. When I showed this chart to a good friend of mine, who is CEO of a very large corporation with lots of advertising brands, he went crazy. He had it in his office because it was the ultimate branding of people.

Did you envision the response and attention your work has received so far?
No you know I did not do it for that. But once I saw what I had I became motivated to have people see the documents. I didn’t just want the images put in a drawer because that is not going to help at all. I am not personally looking for any notoriety at all but I want the images to be seen so that people will understand what this is all about and they don't forget about it. It is not going to be too many years until all of the victims of the Holocaust will be dead and the children don't know about it. Plus, you have these guys [Holocaust deniers] who are saying it never happened and David Duke and some of these other neo-nazi people who are saying it never happened then you go to a place like this [ITS] and it is unbelievable.

Now you can actually see proof in those 50 million documents!

What can I write about Bernie Brillstein, who died on August 7, at 77, that hasn’t already been written in obituaries and remembrances too numerous to count? His career was covered, from the William Morris mailroom in 1955 to personal management (Jim Henson, John Belushi, Gilda Radner, Lorne Michaels, Norm Crosby, Rob Lowe, Martin Short, ad infinitum), to running Lorimar Film Entertainment, to Brillstein-Grey Entertainment with it’s stunning roster of clients, to selling out to Brad Grey but staying aboard and never considering retirement even after Grey moved on to Paramount and the company re-branded itself as Brillstein Entertainment Partners in his honor, even though he no longer owned a piece of the action ....

I guess, having been the lucky guy he trusted to help him write his 1999 memoir, “Where Did I Go Right: You’re No One in Hollywood Unless Someone Wants You Dead,” and the 2004 collection of his “Bernie-isms”, “The Little Stuff Matters Most: 50 Rules from 50 Years of Trying to Make a Living,” (which I wanted to call “The Pocket Bernie” but he wisely overruled me), I can safely repeat what I told Variety reporter Cynthia Littleton: “Bernie was the man who loved show business.” I should have added, though I wasn’t thinking too clearly after he was gone, that Bernie being Bernie, show business, that most fickle of mistresses, returned his affection unreservedly, with all her heart.

Bernie and I first spoke the year "Ghostbusters" was made. I did a story on Harold Ramis for Vanity Fair. I got a quote over the phone and moved on. Next, we spoke in the early 1990s when I did a Playboy Interview with “SNL” producer Lorne Michaels. I got a quote and moved on. In 1995, when co-writing a book with Jeff Foxworthy, whose TV sitcom was a Brillstein-Grey production, I ran into Bernie backstage in Las Vegas. Knowing something, but really, hardly anything about him -- except I had a feeling -- I pitched him the idea of doing a book. He said nah. A few months later I ran into him again in the lobby of the Ritz Carlton in Aspen, at the HBO Comedy Festival. I reintroduced myself, told him I was there doing a Playboy Interview with Dennis Miller, pitched my creds as someone who’d interviewed many of the company clients, including collaborating on the biography of faux talk show host Larry Sanders with a pre-Brad Grey-lawsuit Garry Shandling – ie, I was comedy friendly – and mentioned the book again. He surprised me by saying he’d tried recently but dropped it. (Hmm. I thought he’d said he wasn’t interested?) Why? The potential collaborator had too soon asked him if he had any good Brad Pitt stories. “I threw her out.”

I settled for hanging out with the BGE crowd, courtesy of Dennis Miller (before he came out of the Republican closet), and their circle of powerful friends and performers. Fun times. A few days later it was all over and I approached Bernie in the big theater and thanked him for including me when he could have easily said, "Who's this putz?" I didn’t mention the book. “Come see me in my office in L.A.,” he said, completely surprising me “and we’ll talk.”

My life was about to change.

Bernie’s, too.

Later he told me that “Outcomes rarely turn on grand gestures, high-flying concepts, or the art of the deal.” That was one taste of an incredible spontaneous stockpile of wisdom I for years attempted to absorb directly through my skin, like an application of Head-On. “More often it’s all about whether or not you’ve sent someone a thank-you note.”

I’m no Eddie Haskell, but my politeness had turned his head. After a while – and after scrupulously avoiding asking for Brad Pitt stories (until Bernie offered -- and by the way, we used none in the book. Bernie would never take credit for a client who wasn't actually his) – I stopped worrying about getting thrown out, too. In fact, the complete opposite happened.

The next year, and the year after that, I was on his rented jet flying to Aspen, and a constant at his side, invited to sit with him in the hotel lobby as he held court, or at a meal with players young and old and so powerful that I couldn't get them on the phone even if I booked the call a year in advance (though thanks to Bernie it was never a problem), or just walking the snow-packed streets together, window shopping, getting coffee. I am – was – only one of his thousands of friends, and certainly not a particularly important one, and yet in those moments I knew he enjoyed being able to let down the Bernie Brillstein mask -- even though he was always Bernie through and through. We'd talk about our families, or he'd regale me with great gossip about Hollywood types and trusted me never to repeat any of it, or tell tales from the old days and bemoan -- though not too much; after all, he was still in the thick of it and not "some old Jew playing golf in Florida" -- how the business had changed and how very few were in it anymore for the fun and glamour and "show." For a guy so beloved behind the scenes, he always cared more about the show, and was only in the business to help the talent he respected make the shows. In this memory we were bundled up in Aspen, but could just as easily have been two Jews in the schvitz. We did this in New York, too. And L.A. Wherever and whenever the opportunity allowed.

And, as the years passed, he was always ready with a kind word, or the blunt truth, or a "fuck 'em" attitude. He never wanted less than the best for me. He recommended me for books and always touted my writing. He knew me inside and out -- "You never think you're as good as you are, kid; but maybe for you that's a good thing" -- and he was there for me whether I had issues with my teenaged son (who doesn't?), or was celebrating my new books, or my wife's successes, or we were simply sharing stories about our vacations. He talked about his real life, too. Celebrated his milestones. Worried about his kids. Loved them more than anything. And, this I loved: Whenever a headline or business development or hiring/firing reflected something he'd suggested or predicted in the book, he'd call and say: "Can you believe it? We were right, in the book. This is what we said would happen/they should do." Not "I". We.

(Excuse me. I'm a bit verklempt.)

Doing the first book was a Hollywood education for me, a master class taught by the master. And for Bernie it was a way to confront the depression, at 65, and find his place in the world after a divorce that included him selling his half of the company to Brad Grey and “no longer being king.” He opened up about that transition publicly, to his credit, in a business where appearances seem to be everything.

And then the book came out and it was a rebirth. Great reviews. Much love. A new wife, the wonderful Carrie, who was finally the right match. ("One out of four. I'm batting .250" he'd say. "Very respectable.") And when the book was acknowledged as a mile wide and more than the standard inch-deep package of Hollywood glad-handing and self-aggrandizement, and reviewed well in the Los Angeles Times and New York Times, and everywhere else, he was thrilled. He used to joke that I'd lied to him about how easy doing the book would be, only to discover that we taped sessions for a year. But it was worth it, he said. The book had given him a much needed second wind. (Well, perhaps fifth or sixth wind.)

The greatest compliment? When he finally read the first draft on a plane to England, he called to say that even though he knew the story by heart, the book had, to his surprise, kept his interest. Believe me, it wasn't the writing; it was the life I had written about. It was the joy of a collaborator who could crawl completely into the skin of his subject and speak in his voice. Of course, I was lucky. Voices like Bernie's come along rarely.

Afterward he never tired of telling me about all the letters that rolled in, and about all the chance encounters in unusual places, with people who'd read the book and recognized him. Then he'd ask if I had any books left over in my stash because he needed a few. For a few years the company gave his book to all new employees. And why not? Bernie let it all hang out, including starting the book by cutting short the standard "I started in the mailroom" opening to tell a graphic and hilarious story instead, about going to the proctologist in 1955. That he began there let readers know they were in for not only a ride, but a bracing level of honesty. After all, instead of being humiliated and slinking home after opening his eyes in a cold sweat and discovering his mother, father, aunt, and uncle unexpectedly crammed into the the doctor’s examination room while he was lying sideways on the metal table, pants off, knees to his chest, a tube up his ass -- "Here, have a look" -- he went back to the office and told everyone. That was Bernie. "If you have a great story, tell it."

Now, here I am, twelve years, two Bernie books and other little writing tasks that I did for him because it was him, later – and he’s gone. I can’t just call the office and have the ever-faithful and wise Christina put me through. I will never again hear the, “Hiya, kid,” when he came on the line, or when I walked into his office, or feel his big arms around me and hear an “I love ya, kid” whispered in my ear. Never again will we sit and talk for hours, Bernie in his chair, myself spread out on the couch, a tape-recorder sometime between us, Bernie making a point and punctuating it with, “It’s the truth.” Never again will he joke about a third book, which he had tentatively titled, “Now Let Me Tell You The Truth About These Assholes.”

Through it all Bernie never made me feel like anything other than a friend who he incidentally trusted to make him sound on paper like he sounded in person. I could do that -- and here's a tip to other heavyweights of all kinds who ever contemplate a book -- because he fearlessly let me get to know him (yes, I, too, watched him drop trou on the golf course and pee when nature called), and he had the courage to tell me everything. Want a good book? Do what Bernie did.

He was that way with many. Whether roaming the company floor, chatting with the associates and assistants, or working in his corner office, Bernie’s door was always open, both literally and figuratively, to welcome those who needed encouragement, mentoring, or just wanted to enjoy his company. Bernie was renowned for his ability to connect with everyone who worked there, no matter who they were, and make them feel special and important.

When I moved on to other writing projects, Bernie read everything early. He understood when I did something for the money and made sure to make sure I would also do something for the heart. He made “The Mailroom” possible by inspiring me with his own mailroom stories, making early connections for me to help get it off the ground, and after the success of his memoir, mostly by his unstinting habit of giving me all the credit.

So I dedicated “The Mailroom” to Bernie.

He was also a relentless supporter of my quest to get the Miki Dora story done, even before it had been conceived of as the book, “All For a Few Perfect Waves.” And just because we weren't working together on some project of his during the four years that dream book took, he didn't just fade away, another Hollywood "friendship" as ephemeral as the town we lived in. He'd take me to lunch regularly at the Grill, where I could follow the storyline of his latest diet and health concern. He'd call me every week, if I didn't call him first. "How ya doing, kid? Did you read about NBC not doing pilots this year? Schmucks! That's what we said in the book. How's your son? What college did he get into? Fantastic. When am I going to see you? Anytime you want. Just tell Christina." And the great thing about Bernie was that he didn’t wait for publication to offer his congratulations. Or even for his own chance to read the first draft. The minute I was done writing, he called. Finishing was the important thing. That, and the journey.

~

Bill Maher once called Bernie “The last of a dying breed; an incredibly successful Broadway Danny Rose.” The New York Times wrote that he “changed the face of show business.”

“When I got my first Emmy,” said long-time client and friend Lorne Michaels, “I thanked a lot of people, and then I thanked Bernie for being the one person who would listen to me when I complained about all the people I had just thanked. Bernie recognized what was fascinating to people. He watched his generation -- which is the Copacabana -- collide with the Blues Brothers. Suddenly these guys were doing cocaine and wearing silk jackets. It was a very turbulent time, and the constant in it has always been Bernie."

The accolades could go on indefinitely and for years they have – including last Monday night, August 11th's memorial at Royce Hall, as reported by Cynthia Littleton. The 1800-seat house was virtually packed with those wishing to give Bernie the tribute he deserved.

I wasn’t there. I’d been long scheduled to be in Hawaii for a friend’s wedding and had tacked on a book signing in Honolulu. The day before I left, Bernie’s wife asked me to write an obituary for the family that they might use. I did it -- even though it was strange not only because he hadn't yet died, but because writing as Bernie was much more fun than writing about Bernie. Then I left. When I landed, I stepped into the sultry Honolulu dusk, switched on the cell phone, and got the news.

Bernie was gone.

I'd visited him in the hospital more than once and my final memory is of Bernie sitting up in bed, hospital gown askew, many pounds thinner and frankly looking very in the pink, white hair and beard in fashionable disarray, thick-rimmed black glasses perched on his nose, giving me a big wave and thumbs up. The last was both a statement about himself, and a question for me: How was I doing? Me? What about him? I squeezed his hand and told him everything was great and that I loved him. His trachea respirator tube made speech impossible, but his huge smile told me everything I needed to know. A great last and lasting image.

Yet there I was in Honolulu, waiting for the airport cab to take me to the hotel, feeling as if I was on the year’s number one mis-timed trip until I realized that Bernie would have said, in his gravely grumble, “Go to Hawaii, kid. Enjoy yourself. I won’t know you’re not there.”

This reminds me of something. In March, 2004, CNN’s Larry King asked Bernie to contribute to his new book, “Remember Me When I’m Gone: The Rich and Famous Write Their Own Epitaphs and Obituaries.”

Bernie asked me to come in and help him put together something. Here’s what we came up with:

“Once I said that when I'm finally gone, at least I know what I want on my gravestone. Once I wanted it to read ‘From 'Hee Haw' to 'Saturday Night Live' to 'Dangerous Liaisons,' but it’s gone far beyond that now. So maybe this: “He made a difference. He made people laugh. He made people happy. People wanted to be with him. Not now though.”

In 2007, Starbucks put the opening epigraph from Bernie’s second book on a run of its coffee cups. It read: “In a world where celebrity equals talent, and where make-believe is called reality, it is most important to have real love, truth and stability in your life.”

Bernie gave me all three, plus trust. He had the courage to tell me everything, and I gave him everything I had in return.

We opened the proposal for "Where Did I Go Right?" with the words, "Bernie Brillstein is larger than life." The void he leaves behind, as well as the memories, are just as large.

As the Los Angeles Times Book Review said in their cover story review about the memoir, "Bernie Brillstein means being more than a guy with a particular set of clients and wives and deals. Bernie Brillstein is a way of being in work. It is rapture in work.”

And even more so, a rapture in life.

Bernie was my mentor, my second father, my friend. I’ll miss him like hell.

But really, like so many others out there who also knew him and loved him, I'll mostly think of myself as very, very lucky to have had the chance to miss him at all.

(photos top and middle by Neal Preston; last by Danny Moloshok/AP file 2006))

Driving down Crenshaw Blvd, just south of Adams, I snapped this photo of a sidewalk capitalist hustling T-shirts commemorating Bernie Mac and Isaac Hayes. I sure hope that a Bo Taylor shirt has been added to the mix by now.

Darby Crash lived fast, died young and left a needle-tracked corpse. The year was 1980, the heyday of LA punk, and I was a student at Loyola Marymount. All my housemates were lighting candles for John Lennon, whose murder had just shocked the world.. I wanted to kick in a window for Darby.

Fast forward 29 years. Crash, the infamous Germs singer, has been dead longer than he ever lived, but his mystique lives on in a new movie by Rodger Grossman, who became obsessed with Crash after seeing him perform on Penelope Spheeris’s seminal punkumentary, The Decline of Western Civilization.

“What We Do is Secret” comes out in LA on August 22, and it’s a loving ode to the naïve, self-destructive Crash and LA’s DIY punk scene.

I never caught The Germs in their spasmodic heyday. Many who claim they did are dead and half the others are lying. The band played few gigs – vandalism and violence had gotten them banned from almost every club in LA.

But I did get my bad old self over to the Starwood when Darby played an infamous post-Germs gig in 1980, right after he’d returned from hanging out with Adam Ant in London. Darby was a New Primitive now, decked out in a Mohawk, Indian warpaint and leather leggings. (Grossman has him wearing torn Sex Pistols pants with bobby pins and zippers so my memory’s probably faulty) The songs were cacophony, the crowd jeered and Darby himself reeled around the stage, oblivious.

It was like watching Grand Guignol, with the primal painted creature on stage violently embracing the dual roles of god and sacrificial victim. Not everyone there hated him. Many were lost in their own addled trances, slamming and pogoing like punk dervishes. I stood on the sidelines, entranced. The Dionysian spectacle of it, the orgiastic apocalypse of punk, felt like mainlining a new religion. The crowd, the chords, the words thudding inside your brain…what more do you want when you’re 20?

No one knew Darby would be dead soon. But even I realized this wasn’t the energy of X, the Plugz, Blasters or so many other LA bands. There was a palpable sense that Darby had gone beyond where most of us could follow.

So now it’s 2008 and I clip-clop into the Egyptian Theater one recent afternoon for a screening of “What We Do is Secret” and run into Stella from KXLU, whose show Stray Pop first brought punk to the middle-of-the-road Loyola masses. We reminisce about the five punks we knew there. I’m hopelessly out of touch.

Then comes the movie, whose music supervisor, Howard Paar, knows his stuff. He used to run the ON Club, a ska nightclub on the grungy (back then) Echo Park end of Sunset Boulevard where I spent many happy evenings. I’d discovered it shortly after living in Europe, where I’d met the ska band Madness on a Channel crossing. They boasted their record was #1 on the British charts but I’d been on the Continent awhile and thought these spotty, pale 15 and 16-year-olds (I was all of 19) were pulling my leg.

“What We Do” features plenty of Germs songs (sung by the actor Shayne West, who’s now an official band member) and the decision to recite the signature Darby song-poem “Manimal” instead of singing it gives his haunting lyrics even more power.

I giggled when the Germs visited Rodney Bingenheimer’s “Rodney on the Roq” show. Rodney’s weedy musical voice and his fanboi enthusiasm inspired both mockery and jealousy, but his KROQ show was the soundtrack to our lives back then, a raw, non-commercial program that played local bands like the Suburban Lawns, whose glorious “Gidget Goes To Hell” is heard briefly in the movie.

This conjured up memories of watching Sue Tissue, long, auburn-tressed lead singer of the Lawns, yelp “Oh My Janitor” as she stood, stiff and strange, in a weird Mormon-ish pastel dress on the grungy Starwood stage. My boyfriend at the time, Lawrence Welsh, was in a local band called The Alcoholics so if they weren’t playing, we were making the rounds to hear other bands.

As the credits rolled over David Bowie’s “Rock and Roll Suicide,” I staggered out into a sunny August afternoon in gentrified Hollywood, which seemed suddenly deeply wrong. But I had dinner to get and kids to put to bed. It was another world, and I’d been gone for miles now.

Observing an L.A. Photographer: sixth in a series

The photographer who produced some of the most iconic images of Los Angeles has been described as, among other things, an oddball, a recluse and a perfectionist. Max Yavno, who died in 1985, is currently featured (with many other photographers) in the Huntington Library's exhibit, "This Side of Paradise, Body and Landscape in L.A. Photographs." He has become an artist whose work is synonymous with Los Angeles, according to Huntington photo curator Jennifer Watts.

His black-and-white photographs stand out as some of the best visual records of the urban landscape of post-World War II Los Angeles. A documentarian at heart, Yavno took his camera to a variety of Los Angeles locales. He photographed complex street scenes (like one of his best-known images, "Muscle Beach, 1949"), vernacular architecture, ("Hot Dog, 1949" and "The Leg, 1949"), street life in immigrant communities, and storefronts whose graphic qualities appealed to his highly ordered sense of design. Watts, an unabashed Yavno fan, feels that the under-appreciated photographer "clearly loved this city. His images show the ethnic diversity and languid quality of life in Los Angeles." She goes on to say, "he was an amazing printer. He would spend hours in the darkroom perfecting a print. His work is representative of the old school craftsman approach to photography, the direct lineage to Edward Weston."

Yavno was born in New York City in 1911. Never formally trained, he began his professional photography career when he was hired by the WPA (specifically the Federal Theater Project) in the late 1930's to photograph urban New York scenes that could serve as models for theatrical stage sets. He also became a member of the Photo League, a group founded in 1936 which was a cooperative of professional and amateur photographers. Among them were documentary photographers Aaron Siskind and Consuelo Kanaga, who both played important roles in Yavno's photographic development. Siskind went on to world reknown as an abstract-expressionist photographer and became Yavno's lifelong friend. This period was key in the formation of Yavno's unique strengths as an image-maker — his mastery of technique and composition combined with his social awareness.

After World War II, during which he served as a photography instructor for the military in Southern California, Yavno settled in Los Angeles. He was contracted by Houghton Mifflin to do the photographs for "The San Francisco Book" with columnist Herb Caen in 1948, and then in 1950 "The Los Angeles Book" with newspaper columnist and author Lee Shippey. Many of Yavno's best-known images originally appeared in the Shippey book. Although now hopelessly outdated, "The Los Angeles Book" is a quirky look at aspects of the city in the late 1940's.

Guided around the city by his friend, social worker Beatrice Griffith, Yavno photographed people hanging out on the street in black and Latino neighborhoods. His subjects appear unaware of his presence, suggesting that Yavno spent enough time with them to earn their trust. His 1945 photograph "Chavez Ravine" is an important document of a Los Angeles minority community that was later made non-existent by urban development.

From 1954 to 1975, Yavno abandoned his personal work and produced only commercial photography. He may have been influenced to do this by photographer Edward Weston's struggles to make a living. "If Weston could not make a go of it with his world reputation, what the hell chance did I have?," he said in the 1981 book, "The Photographs of Max Yavno," by Ben Maddow. In the 60's, he purchased a building on Melrose Ave., between Fairfax and La Brea which housed his studio and living quarters. His advertising clients included Hunts and he also shot for Vogue, and Harpers Bazaar.

Former Los Angeles Times researcher Nina Rosenfield, who briefly dated Yavno in the 1970's, recalls that Yavno seemed to "love the life on the street outside his studio, perhaps because he himself was so isolated." She remembers that he always seemed to be worried about money and that while "his enthusiasm for his work was charming, he was pretty obsessive about it."

When he returned to personal work in the mid-70's, the art world had become far more accepting of the medium of photography. Yavno produced his second large group of Los Angeles images. He criss-crossed the city, photographing in neighborhoods from Watts to Venice. Notable images from the period are "Pinks, 1977," "Self Portrait, 1977," and "Cheap Gas, 1978." He was represented by G. Ray Hawkins, who ran one of the first influential Los Angeles photography galleries.

Around this time, Yavno became close with another Los Angeles photo gallery owner, Stephen White. Now a collector and curator, White told me recently that Yavno is "seen today mostly as a regional photographer." In terms of art market value, White feels that "Yavno's work hasn't grown in stature like others has." For a photographer who was so enamored of documenting the external life of his adopted city, Yavno was surprisingly solitary. He would go out to Tom Bergin's on Fairfax, but according to White, he was "reclusive, not close to many people."

Also during the 1970's, Yavno spent a good deal of time re-printing earlier images. He produced a new body of work while traveling to Egypt, Israel, Mexico, and Morocco.

After his death in 1985, the executor of his estate, Los Angeles industrial developer and photography collector Leonard Vernon, turned the bulk of Yavno's work over to MOCA. The museum mounted an exhibit, "The Permanent Collection, Max Yavno Photographs" in 1989. Richard Koshalek, then MOCA's director, said "Of the many locales in which Yavno pursued his career, Los Angeles was a prime focus for the artist's attention as he sought to record and pay tribute to its people, communities, cityscape, and geography."

A large part of Yavno's work ultimately landed at the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona in Tucson. Yavno prints can be found in a number of Los Angeles area collections including at the Huntington, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Michael Dawson Gallery and the Jan Kesner Gallery.

All photos by Max Yavno
Muscle Beach, 1949, copyright The Huntington Library, Art Collection and Botanical Gardens
Chavez Ravine, 1945, via The Michael Dawson Gallery

Perhaps everyone but yours truly was already aware that the Princess Mariana, a 258-foot vessel that CNNMoney.com calls one of the most desirable charters, reportedly rents for a whopping $606,500 a week.

That works out to about $1 per second, which is about how long it took to focus and snap the photograph above. I couldn't find any references to fuel consumption, but it's got to be horrible for something so … yeah, I know … probably not an issue.

CharterWorld.com says the craft went through a $12 million refit in 2006 "taking her to a new standard of mega yacht." Among its amenities is a 12-meter swimming pool and a starboard hull wall capable of being lowered to give the private terrace off the owner’s suite full exposure to both water and sun.

From CharterWorld.com:

"There is also a helipad on board – and when the helicopter has left, it becomes a golf driving range with a massive screen showing a host of well-known courses.

The decks on board Princess Mariana are extremely spacious and there are plenty of dining opportunities to choose from. One level up from the bridge deck is the party deck with two bars, casual seating areas, a raised dance floor, a grand piano, three cinema screens, a barbeque, sun beds and a spa pool! There is a cinema on the main deck with seating for 13 guests.

There are six staterooms which all have plasma TV’s and private ensuites. The entertainment system on board has a huge capacity for storage with plenty of music and DVD’s to choose from. This system can be accessed from all staterooms."

Links to more photos of the yacht, and a few other shots of what those of us not on a yacht were doing Sunday at Venice Beach, follow:

Click to e-mail TJ Sullivan in LA