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The recent documentary about Bob Dylan on WNET reminded me of when “Marty,” as Scorcese was referred to in 1969, called me in a whiny panic because he couldn't make out the dialog on the sound track for the “Portosan man” scene which I had recorded at Woodstock. He couldn't make it out because the tiny monitor speaker on his Steenbeck editing table was overwhelmed by the roar of the giant doodoo dirt devil next to the guy. He insisted on adding subtitles, which turned out to be unnecessary. I
knew from my monitor headphones (which by their nature filtered out low
frequencies) that the dialog was clearly audible. I told “Marty” that
he needn't worry about the audibility, since the full-range speakers in
the movie theatre would be able to reproduce the voices without the low
frequencies distorting them. If he was still worried (he seemed to be
having some kind of barely-controlled panic attack), I suggested that
he simply filter out everything below about 150 Hertz. He didn't know
from Hertz. He should tell the sound people to use a Pultec equalizer
to remove the low frequencies. I spelled it out for him. P-u-l.... He
was quite distraught, as though the sound was inferior because it was a
full frequency-range recording (made on a Nagra III recorder, rated as
“flat to within 1 dB from 30 cycles to 18,000 cycles.”). It is
incumbent upon me to here include a picture of that lovely machine: The cinematographer (the late David Myers), had spotted the Portosan man and came looking for someone to do the sound for an interview. The cameraman I had been assigned to work with, Al Wertheimer, was asleep (this happened at the crack of dawn), but I was awake, so Dave asked me if I'd do it. I agreed, and we just went to it. During the filming, I was unwilling to move my Sennheiser shotgun mike any closer to the Portosan man, despite Myers motioning me to move closer, because I needed to pick up Myers's voice from behind the camera as well as the Portosan guy's voice. I was afraid to move the mike too close, or it would get in the shot. I watched Myers as he adjusted the zoom on his camera, and as he zoomed in, I moved closer. It wasn't until after the shoot that I found out that Myers, more of a documentarian than Wertheimer, didn't mind the mike showing up in the shot. I wouldn't bother telling all this, as it is ancient history to me, but I feel that I've been unjustly criticized by those involved in the later production of Woodstock. When I was there at Woodstock, I was quite aware of a growing disparity between the kids in the crowd, who were grandly responding to a remarkable mass meeting in the rain and mud; and those in the trailers and “executive” tents. It seemed that whenever a helicopter arrived with food or supplies, the shipment went not to the hospital tent, but to the executives' camp. This engendered a certain class-resentment in me, being (albeit somewhat wilted) a flower child from WBAI myself. I'd seen Mike Wadleigh, the director, having to give up more and more control over his baby to Warners as the days progressed, in return for more raw film stock, until Warners basically had complete control. After the film was released, a bunch of fellow workers at Portosan convinced the guy we interviewed that he'd been made fun of, and sued Warner Brothers. I was asked to testify as to just how obvious our act of filming him had been, as one of their claims was that he didn't know he was being recorded. I personally hated Warners and the Warner people, who saw the film not as a celebration, but as a way to exploit hippies as product. I recall that an implication had been made that when Myers had returned to the film truck, reporting a great interview, people had laughed at it. I responded that if there was laughter (as there was at the movie theatre), it was because the “hippies” at Woodstock expected the usual working man to be hostile to their lifestyle, and when he said that he had one kid in 'Nam, and one kid there at the festival, it was probably the starkest representation of how divided the country was, and how this guy embodied that conflict. In any case, I said that Wadleigh's main instruction to the camera crews before he sent us out to cover the event was, “bring me back some beautiful pictures,” and if I had felt that we were in any way making fun of any human being, I would have sabotaged the audio tapes. That statement, while true, cannot have sat well with the suits at Warners, and may have increased their enmity toward me. Years later, one of those suits was to write a book about Woodstock, in which (without asking for my input, even though I still had the same 'phone number and still lived at the same address, a block away from the restaurant where we had our post-production dinner) he mentioned the Portosan scene and denigrated my competence. Oddly enough, Dave Bell's account of the incident included the fact that Dave Myers's camera had a “red light” to indicate to the talent that they were being filmed. I don't know who told him this (Marty?), but it's not true. At the trial, the judge had me fashion a wrapped-up piece of paper into generally the size and shape of the shotgun mike I was using, to demonstrate that it was big and obvious enough (along with the Nagra at my hip and the headphones I was wearing) to indicate that Myers and I were doing some kind of media thing. Well, Warners won the lawsuit, which pleased me in the sense that if nothing else, we gave evidence to the Portosan guy that no insult was intended (he allowed as how his buddies had pressed him to sue). The lawyers for Warners said after the verdict that it was my testimony which had won the case, but I was not trying to do Warners any favors. Since then, I did some movies with Brian De Palma and Harry Hurwitz (a great character, since passed away), but began turning down location sound gigs as my involvement with WBAI increased, until my ignominious firing there (more later), and my eventual move to classical FM radio, where I earned a Peabody award, among other more local awards for spot commercials I'd produced. Scorcese went on to produce some of the ugliest, most violent images in films, trying to slake the desire of Americans for more blood and more savagery, pretty much exactly the opposite of the world that those hundreds of thousands of kids in Bethel were reaching for, and reflecting in his later life the character of the whiny little wolverine* in sheep's clothing which he first evidenced to me 'way back when. God, this is getting tedious. I'm sure it sounds megalomaniacal, but I've been quiet about this stuff for 35 years, and as my time on this fucking mortal coil grows ever shorter, I've got to get it down, just for the record.
But I digress. In the Dylan documentary, we heard a bit of “Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues” from his HIGHWAY 61 REVISITED album (©1965 W. B. Music - ASCAP), which I'll reproduce here: When you're lost in the rain in Juarez and it's Eastertime too Well if you see Saint Annie please tell her thanks a lot Sweet Melinda, the peasants call her the goddess of gloom Well up on housing project hill it's either fortune or fame Now all the authorities they just stand around and boast Well I started out on burgundy but soon hit the harder stuff Then I remembered that Judy Collins, that Glorious Mistress of Melancholy, had recorded it; and that reminded me of another Collins rendition, “I Think It's Going To Rain Today,” which, when I had first come-broke-into the Big City, was my Mantra. I'll reproduce it here, so you may call on it in times of disgust with life and in need of eloquent self-pity: Broken windows and empty hallways Scarecrows dressed in the latest styles Lonely, lonely. Bright before me the signs implore me Hey, it gave me surcease. And Lo! I found out just now, while fetching the lyrics, that it was written by our own Randy Newman**. That song in turn then brought back the musical memory of a Sandy Dennis song that Judy Collins covered,‡ with a lovely rolling piano played by Michael Sahl: Across the evening sky all the birds are leaving For who knows where the time goes Sad deserted shore your fickle friends are leaving For who knows where the time goes I know I'm not alone while my love is near me For who knows where the time goes Who knows where the time goes The music is all in my mind, although only in solo instrument style (unless I'm just going to sleep or waking up), so I don't need to buy the actual songs. This mental storage will come in handy if New York City is ever inundated by a rise in sea level of the Atlantic caused by icebergs melting from global warming; and I survive, but without electricity. And they said I was wallowing in misery while singing these mordant songs to myself, over and over again. The Weltschmerz of those early New York years visits me again now, thirty-five years later, in my dotage. Out of work, hungry, despondent. I had named my ’BAI radio program “Out of the Slough” (with Slough rhyming with “plough”—plow).† Our program today is titled, “Into the Slough.”
Thanks to Wikipedia for the research material. *
“The Wolverine is probably one of the smallest and most powerful
top-of-the-food-chain predators. It makes a Tasmanian Devil look like a
sissy.”
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