from http://balkin.blogspot.com/2007/04/another-enemy-of-people.html

Sunday, April 08, 2007
Another Enemy of the People?
Mark Graber

I am posting the below with the permission of Professor Walter F. Murphy,
emeritus of Princeton University. For those who do not know, Professor
Murphy is easily the most distinguished scholar of public law in political
science. His works on both constitutional theory and judicial behavior are
classics in the field. Bluntly, legal scholarship that does not engage
many themes in his book, briefly noted below, Constitutional Democracy,
may be legal, but cannot be said to be scholarship. As interesting, for
present purposes, readers of the book will discover that Murphy is hardly
a conventional political or legal liberal. While he holds some opinions,
most notably on welfare, similar to opinions held on the political left,
he is a sharp critic of ROE V. WADE, and supported the Alito nomination.
Apparently these credentials and others noted below are no longer
sufficient to prevent one from becoming an enemy of the people.

“On 1 March 07, I was scheduled to fly on American Airlines to Newark, NJ,
to attend an academic conference at Princeton University, designed to
focus on my latest scholarly book, Constitutional Democracy, published by
Johns Hopkins University Press this past Thanksgiving.

“When I tried to use the curb-side check in at the Sunport, I was denied a
boarding pass because I was on the Terrorist Watch list. I was instructed
to go inside and talk to a clerk. At this point, I should note that I am
not only the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence (emeritus) but also a
retired Marine colonel. I fought in the Korean War as a young lieutenant,
was wounded, and decorated for heroism. I remained a professional soldier
for more than five years and then accepted a commission as a reserve
office, serving for an additional 19 years.

“I presented my credentials from the Marine Corps to a very polite clerk
for American Airlines. One of the two people to whom I talked asked a
question and offered a frightening comment: ‘Have you been in any peace
marches? We ban a lot of people from flying because of that.’ I explained
that I had not so marched but had, in September, 2006, given a lecture at
Princeton, televised and put on the Web, highly critical of George Bush
for his many violations of the Constitution. ‘That’ll do it,’ the man
said.

“After carefully examining my credentials, the clerk asked if he could
take them to TSA officials. I agreed. He returned about ten minutes later
and said I could have a boarding pass, but added: ‘I must warn you,
they’re going to ransack your luggage.’ On my return flight, I had no
problem with obtaining a boarding pass, but my luggage was ‘lost.’
Airlines do lose a lot of luggage and this ‘loss’ could have been a mere
coincidence. In light of previous events, however, I’m a tad skeptical.

“I confess to having been furious that any American citizen would be
singled out for governmental harassment because he or she criticized any
elected official, Democrat or Republican. That harassment is, in and of
itself, a flagrant violation not only of the First Amendment but also of
our entire scheme of constitutional government. This effort to punish a
critic states my lecture’s argument far more eloquently and forcefully
than I ever could. Further, that an administration headed by two men who
had ‘had other priorities’ than to risk their own lives when their turn to
fight for their country came up, should brand as a threat to the United
States a person who did not run away but stood up and fought for his
country and was wounded in battle, goes beyond the outrageous. Although
less lethal, it is of the same evil ilk as punishing Ambassador Joseph
Wilson for criticizing Bush’s false claims by ‘outing’ his wife, Valerie
Plaime, thereby putting at risk her life as well as the lives of many
people with whom she had had contact as an agent of the CIA. …

“I have a personal stake here, but so do all Americans who take their
political system seriously. Thus I hope you and your colleagues will take
some positive action to bring the Administration’s conduct to the
attention of a far larger, and more influential, audience than I could
hope to reach.”

From Erik Davis (author of the Joanna Newsom profile in Arthur V1 N25):

“This Saturday in SF I will be participating in an eclectic symposium brought to you by Chronicle Books and Geoff Manaugh’s supernifty BLDGBLOG:

when: Sat 4.7 (2:30-5pm)
where: California College of the Arts (1111 8th St, 415.551.9210)
price: FREE
details: http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2007/03/bldgblog-chronicle-books-present.html

BLDGBLOG’s founding editor Geoff Manaugh has pulled together a group of speakers as comprehensive and engaging as his design blog. This interdisciplinary conversation on architecture and landscape unites people from various, sometimes surprising, backgrounds. Walter Murch, film editor and sound mixer for pictures like Apocalypse Now (1979) and the Godfather trilogy, presents original research on how Rome’s Pantheon influenced Copernicus, while author Erik Davis explores mysticism and spirituality in California’s architectural landscapes. Architect Lisa Iwomoto’s show-and-tell displays her firm’s newest technologies along with digital models for housing projects, and Rebar Group founders John Bela and Matthew Passmore discuss collaborative and public design such as their COMMONspace project. “

‘I’m the last crazy artist’

Thanks to the end of a bitter 30-year feud, the deranged, gruesome movies of Alejandro Jodorowsky are finally hitting the big screen. Xan Brooks meets the director of El Topo

Thursday April 5, 2007
The Guardian

Alejandro Jodorowsky, the one-time king of the midnight movie, can still be seen every night at the witching hour – but only on Spanish TV. This white-bearded 78-year-old has a new sideline presenting “… and finally” items on the nightly news. He scours the papers and websites for these heartwarming little snippets and then records them in a block; 30 every month. “The planet is ill, everyone knows that,” he says. “But I need to be optimistic, otherwise I would just be adding to the negativity. So every night I come on Madrid TV and read a piece of good news.”

These days Jodorowsky has a snippet of his own to report. The director recently ended his 30-year feud with Allen Klein, the hardball executive who once managed the Beatles. It was Klein who helped promote the US release of El Topo – America’s original “midnight movie” – and it was Klein who stumped up the funds for its extravagant follow-up, The Holy Mountain. And, when the two men fell out, it was Klein who yanked both films out of circulation. But now the world finally has the chance to judge them afresh.

I meet Jodorowsky at his Paris apartment, in a book-lined room patrolled by cats. “Are you afraid of cats?” he asks. “Some people are.” He explains that he lives alone but has a woman – a new woman – moving in with him soon and that he is having the place repainted in readiness. “Five cats and a woman. That is all I need in life.” His grin exposes a spectacular set of teeth. They can’t be real, but maybe they are. With Jodorowsky it’s sometimes hard to separate the fact from the fiction.

Jodorowsky’s life reads like the plot of a magic-realist novel. He was born in Chile, of Ukrainian-Jewish descent, but abandoned his family “because my father was a monster, and my mother was as well”. Alighting in Paris in the 1950s, he studied mime with Marcel Marceau and directed Maurice Chevalier in music hall. Relocating to Mexico, he founded an avant-garde theatre group and scandalised the Catholic priests, who believed he was holding black mass orgies in the cathedral. “In Mexico they want to kill me!” he exclaims. “A soldier held a gun to my chest!”

In 1970, he directed El Topo, a deranged peyote western that some have interpreted as a metaphor for the Old and New Testaments. It starred himself as a cold-blooded gunslinger in rabbinical black, and his son, Brontis, buck-naked apart from a Stetson. El Topo came to the attention of John Lennon who hailed it as a counter-culture masterpiece. Lennon introduced the film in New York, where it later played in special midnight screenings for almost a year. He also convinced Klein to stump up $1m for Jodorowsky’s next production. And that’s where the trouble began.

I watch El Topo and it stands up pretty well; a shotgun wedding of Sergio Leone and Federico Fellini: primal and pretentious in about equal measure. Then I watch The Holy Mountain and it’s as though the world has gone widescreen. It’s astonishing, outlandish; unlike anything made before or since. The plot concerns a thief who meets an alchemist (Jodorowsky again) and embarks on a quest for immortality. Yet the movie comes riddled with extraordinary setpieces. The most notable of these depicts the conquest of Mexico, re-enacted with chameleons dressed up as Aztecs and toads playing the Conquistadors. “Klein hated The Holy Mountain,” says Jodorowsky ruefully. “He think I am crazy.”

Matters reached a head when the director bailed out of Klein’s next project, The Story of O. “I did not want to make a sexual film, because I am a feminist. So Klein says, ‘OK, if you don’t want to make this picture I will take your other pictures and no one will ever see them again’. And that’s what he did. He took all the copies and he retired them.” For three decades, the films existed only as poor quality bootlegs, which Jodorowsky would collect and circulate among his nearest and dearest.

The front door bangs and a woman enters the room. “This is my ex-wife,” he explains breezily. “We are very good friends.” It turns out that the former Mrs Jodorowsky has dropped by with some magazine clippings. More good news for his TV broadcasts.

Two years ago, Jodorowsky learned that the El Topo negative had been discovered in a laboratory in Mexico. His first thought was to release it off his own back. Finally he decided to contact his old enemy and the pair agreed to meet in London. “For 30 years I hate Klein and he hate me,” he recalls. “I thought I should take a weapon in case he wants to kill me. Then the hotel door opened and there was this little old man with white hair, just like mine. He said, ‘You are not a monster. You are beautiful’. And the whole thing, all that hate, was finished in 10 seconds.” Jodorowsky later supervised the re-mastering of both El Topo and The Holy Mountain. Finally, he says, he has the films exactly as he wants them.

These days he has found a fresh lease of life writing comic books and studying the tarot. He says the tarot has helped him make peace with his past and become a better father. He now returns to Chile to give readings for the president, Michelle Bachelet. He even has the photo to prove it. “That’s her,” he says. “Admiring me.”

Jodorowsky calls himself “the world’s last crazy artist”. But in terms of film-making he is now a king without a kingdom. He shot his last picture, The Rainbow Thief, as a hack-for-hire back in 1990 and has since disowned it. He still dreams of making a gangster picture starring Nick Nolte and Marilyn Manson but he can’t quite raise the cash.

In the wake of The Holy Mountain he embarked on an abortive attempt to adapt Frank Herbert’s Dune (later made by David Lynch). When the backers pulled the plug, several members of Jodorowsky’s core creative team jumped ship to work on Ridley Scott’s Alien – reportedly taking many of the film’s ideas with them. More recently his comic-book editor launched an unsuccessful lawsuit against Luc Besson. It was alleged that The Fifth Element was heavily indebted to Jodorowsky’s comic-book series, The Incal.

Jodorowsky insists he is happy, not embittered, when others do use his ideas. “They like me and they copy me,” he says. “That is very flattering.”

Out of the blue he tells a tale from the past, from his bad old days in Mexico City. He explains that the winner of a cockfight is judged to be the last bird standing – the one that does not put its beak to the ground. But some cocks are so ferocious they literally die on their feet, with their beaks inclined towards the sky. Meanwhile, the other bird survives a little longer, staggering drunkenly for a spell before expiring in the dirt. According to the rules, this bird “loses” and the other bird “wins”. Belatedly I realise Jodorowsky is talking about himself. “I want to live to be 120,” he says. “But of course I am getting old. And yet even if I die, the ideas live on. And that way I continue.” He points his head to the ceiling and bares that terrific set of teeth. In that brief moment they look as real as real can be.

· El Topo is out on Friday, and a retrospective is at the NFT, London, April 5-19. The Jodorowsky DVD collection is released on May 14