[CW-Grad] Fwd: Evered piece on AOL News today and Tomorrow

[Robin Russin]

Go Chuck!

Begin forwarded message:

From: CBEvered at aol.com
Date: April 15, 2010 9:56:35 PM PDT
To: robin.russin at ucr.edu
Subject: Fwd: Evered piece on AOL News today and Tomorrow

 

From: CBEvered at aol.com
Date: April 15, 2010 9:55:00 PM PDT
To: CBEvered at aol.com
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Subject: Evered piece on AOL News today and Tomorrow


hello all! Please see below, running tomorrow on AOL News,
Chuck wanted to make sure you had a copy, all best,
Wendy
 
Hollywood Warms Up to the Military
Updated: 5 hours 13 minutes ago
 
By Charles Evered
Special to AOL News 
 
(April 16) -- It amazes me when I read accounts today of the comparatively non-acrimonious relationship that existed between the military and the Hollywood establishment of yesteryear, particularly before the war in Vietnam.

Reading accounts of major stars who joined up to fight during World War II, of socialites and actors in Los Angeles establishing the Hollywood Canteen and encouraging the mingling of those who serve with those who portray, boggles the 21st century mind. 

Ethan Peck, above, stars along with Emmy winners
Bebe Neuwirth and Peter Coyote in Adopt a Sailor,
written and directed by Charles Evered

One need not go into a long treatise about why this doesn't happen anymore. Wars are different now. It is -- at least on the surface -- a more complicated time. 

So when I started to travel with a tiny budgeted film I wrote and directed called "Adopt a Sailor," I girded my loins and readied myself for a gantlet of rolling eyes and exasperated sighs of indifference. 

I had myself lived in both worlds, having joined the U.S. Navy Reserve at a comparatively old age (in my mid-30s). My recruitment began as I toured an aircraft carrier in San Diego while writing a script called "Carrier" that I had sold as a pitch to DreamWorks. I met kids on that ship who were just 18, making an annual salary of what would constitute a week's stay at a high-end hotel on Central Park West or in Santa Monica. I was humbled by their dedication -- and since my life had become nothing more than sitting around and whining at Starbucks about the state of my career, something in me seized on a chance to break out of my own complacency. 

After I joined, some of my friends were supportive, while some of them where aghast. One asked why I would "want to take a step back like that." An actor (and ex-friend of mine) said that he thought my joining was the same as "ending up a garbageman or something." 

So when I got the opportunity to write and direct a little film about a sailor from Arkansas who spends the evening with a sophisticated couple from New York City, I harbored no illusions about it jumping into a "Juno" stratosphere. 

On paper, the film is almost unmarketable -- mostly dialogue, no overt political ax to grind, no drug deals gone bad, no effects per se, no sex, no overt auteur directing style. (I studied with George Roy Hill at Yale, who said, "If you want to direct, find a compelling story, hire great actors and get out of the way.) My expectation was that we'd screen the film for patient friends and my stunned agent on a white sheet strung across the living room at my producer's house. 

Miraculously, however, great actors did agree to appear in the film, including Emmy winners Bebe Neuwirth and Peter Coyote, who worked for about one-sixtieth of their usual salary. 

And then it went on to screen at more than 20 national and international film festivals, won a couple of festival awards, garnered a distribution deal of its own and actually started to get seen by people. Was it "Juno"? No. But it wasn't on a white sheet in the living room either. 

My heart was reinvigorated by the number of people who gave our "little film that could" a chance. People who put aside their own sometimes reflexive aversion to all things military and related to our little story. 

The truth is, "Hollywood" -- or what that word has come to represent -- isn't as close-minded as lots of people make it out to be. The town was fair to us. 

And for a brief moment in time, I thought I saw -- reflected in the response to my little film -- a vision of what our country could be. Less divided. More integrated philosophically and, more important, on the mend. 

Charles Evered is a writer and director who lives in Los Angeles and Princeton, N.J. He served in the U.S. Navy Reserve, ending up a lieutenant. His feature-film directing debut, "Adopt a Sailor," will be available on DVD from Echo Bridge Entertainment on April 20. The film stars Peter Coyote, Bebe Neuwirth and Ethan Peck. For more information about "Adopt a Sailor," go to www.adoptasailormovie.com. 
END



Robin Russin

Associate Professor & Graduate Advisor
Department of Theatre
University of California, Riverside
Riverside, CA 92521
(951) 827-2707
(213) 949-1061 cel
robin.russin at ucr.edu
http://robinrussin.com

"I try all things; I achieve what I can." - Ishmael in "Moby Dick," written by Herman Melville

"Deserve's got nothin' to do with it." - William Munny in "Unforgiven," written by David Webb Peoples

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