Arts Express: Chuck Wepner Talks Chuck, Muhammad Ali, Stallone, Rocky, Anthony Quinn

** "I drove up to Louisville, Kentucky to Ali's funeral, I was there when they wheeled the casket down - and I would say to him now, Champ - thanks for everything..."  

Chuck Wepner Talks Chuck: 'You don't know me. Well, you do know me - but you don't know you know me.' Such is the rather unusual life story of Bayonne, New Jersey boxer and local folk hero Chuck Wepner, who has always seemed to live in the shadow of others. From his identity as the man who went nearly 15 rounds against Muhammad Ali in the ring, Stallone's muse  on whom he modeled Rocky - and now disappearing as himself into the screen persona of actor Liev Schreiber in the dramatic biopic, Chuck. And Chuck - the real one behind the multiple incarnations for a change - is on the line to Arts Express to talk about the film based on his life - warts and all. Channeling memories of Ali, a lifelong obsession with Anthony Quinn and Requiem For A Heavyweight, Stallone, Rocky, what's behind moonlight as a poet for years - and why we disagreed about tough women holding their own in the movie's macho world of boxing too. A feature at the Tribeca Film Festival.

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** "You know, when we were making this film, there weren't many films that dealt with people of color - and we tried to give them a voice."

Killer Of Sheep 40th Anniversary Re-Release: A Conversation With Filmmaker Charles Burnett. Though the film world has opened significantly to the marginalized stories to be told on screen from communities of color in this country, it certainly hasn’t always been so. And those engaged in the struggle to diversify that national conversation in movies have scarcely received any more recognition than the narratives themselves ever have. But a previously unsung cinematic pioneer who has endured, standing the test of time in producing salt of the earth screen classics through the decades while all those massively promoted Hollywood blockbusters continually fall by the wayside, is filmmaker Charles Burnett - the director of such raw and truthful storytelling in movies like Killer Of Sheep, To Sleep With Anger, Nat Turner and Nightjohn. Burnett phones in from LA to talk about the current 40th anniversary return of Killer Of Sheep to theaters,  commercially unreleased for thirty years. The slice of life drama revolutionized and re-prioritized the camera’s conventional gaze upon black inner city life, ironically introducing an all-natural filming process capturing what was already there all along, beyond existing caricatures. Namely, the daily frustrations, conflicts, joys and comic moments of life in Watts, and the demoralizing, profoundly symbolic labor of local sheep slaughterhouse workers there. And, a decades long suppressed film later declared a national treasure by the Library of Congress in 1990.

** "In the name of the amulets of friendship and civilization, and against border bashing and manias for regime change - in the name of triumph over the curse of explosions and drones..."

The Arts Express heads over to preparations during Memorial Day week  for the Fugs musical exorcism of the White House. Returning to the scene of the crimes so to speak, on the 50th anniversary Vietnam-era cleansing of the Pentagon of all bad karma, to once again purge the demons of war contaminating the premises. And in conjunction with the upcoming Veterans for Peace rally there at the Lincoln Memorial in DC. Our Arts Express Best Of The Net Hotspot for this week.

More information about the Tribeca Film Festival 2017 is online at: Tribecafilm.com/festival 

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Arts Express: Camilla Hall Talks Copwatch; 96 Souls, Cannes, Sgt. Pepper At 50

** "There is a much broader debate in America, about whose right it is to tell a story."

UK filmmaker and journalist Camilla Hall is on the line from LA to delve into her documentary, Copwatch. Spotlighting just how activists have organized together to do counter-surveillance on the police across this country, who are engaging in perpetrating racist sanctioned brutality and murders - and as part of the evolving mass movement video revolution. And in particular, the police murder of Eric Garner, and the ongoing defense of Ramsey Orta who's been railroaded for filming that murder - in a series of retaliatory arrests and imprisonments targeting him. With music by The Peace Poets. A Tribeca Film Festival feature.

LISTEN TO THE SHOW HERE

** "The always wonderful Marion Cotillard returns from the dead, to briefly breathe life into a film that retrogressively celebrates the director's Peter Pan syndrome as a mark of genius."

Bro On The World Film Beat: Arts Express Paris correspondent Professor Dennis Broe, continuing his followup on location reports from the Cannes Film Festival. And what's been going down there artistically and politically, including: A scathing critique of Russian deep capitalism consumer society playing out post-socialism; the post-colonial projection on Bulgaria of Germanic might in direct relation to its Nazi past; the scenario of a new form of bio-medical exploitation benefiting Big Pharma; the worst film of the festival, sprinkling references to James Joyce, Melville and Hitchcock; and plenty of President Macron predictions offscreen, into the fall.

  
** "That sort of irreverence and willingness to experiment, and that courage and being willing to fall on their faces, I think that's part of what makes the music so exhilarating now."

This week marks the 50th anniversary of the release of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper album. And phoning in to Arts Express to ponder the wild when not weird eternal legacy of the Beatles on this occasion, is Rolling Stone journalist and author Rob Sheffield. Reflecting on why their music has endured through the decades, and how the group transformed popular music as both entertainment and art. Sheffield's book on the subject is Dreaming The Beatles: The Love Story Of One Band And The Whole World.

** "There's a lot of over-medication going on out there - and maybe if that's tied to a story, it would make it something more than just being a sci-fi movie."

Filmmaker Stanley Jacobs phones in to Arts Express to talk about 96 Souls, his simultaneously surreal and hyper-sensory political sci-fi fantasy thriller - probing among other things, the oppressive power of pharmaceutical corporations over US society, universities, and experiemental scientific research. And, a rebel innovative bio-chemistry professor, dodging these establishment forces.

More information about the Tribeca Film Festival is online at Tribecafilm.com/festival.

Arts Express: Airing on the WBAI/Pacifica National Radio Network and Affiliate Stations.

Arts Express: Steve Coogan Talks The Dinner

*STEVE COOGAN TALKS THE DINNER
*PARIS CAN WAIT: A CONVERSATION WITH DIANE LANE AND ELEANOR COPPOLA

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Two new films mix cuisine and socio-cultural conflicted conversation:

LISTEN TO THE SHOW HERE

** "No man is an island, and we have to engage with things around us and speak our minds - and even though that means sometimes I'm going to invite a little derision and some negativity from certain quarters - but I'm okay with that."

Steve Coogan phones in to Arts Express from London to talk about his role opposite Richard Gere in The Dinner. And a film as much a mirror reflecting back critically on the audience as it is a movie, in how the drama challenges viewers regarding impulses that can compromise enlightened idealistic values versus self-serving behavior - whether tribal, familial or both - that dehumanizes and destroys those labeled as the "Other." And by extension, that could be referring to director Oren Moverman's native Israel in its treatment of the Palestinians, or the US inflicting horror on the people of any number of countries - all in the context of a ridiculously ostentatious and pretentious designer dinner.
A feature of the Tribeca Film Festival

** "I personally find it delightful to partake in an offering of a movie that is without aliens, robots, explosions, train wrecks, dire disease and plagues, or invasions from other planets."

That's Diane Lane, talking about her starring role along with Alec Baldwin as her emotionally self-absorbed spouse, in Paris Can Wait. Lane and the writer/director Eleanor Coppola, wife of Francis Ford Coppola, met with Arts Express to discuss how they explore through this film together in front of and behind the camera as women. And the journey beyond what is much more than a road movie, the predominant male perspective, filter, lens and narratives dominating cinema.

** Tribeca Focus: The Foster File: A Kurt Vonnegut page to screen allegorical tale of Wall Street money versus musical obsession. Spotlighting humble grocery clerk Herbert Foster 'who never owned more than one pair of shoes at a time' - and his mysterious alternate persona  Mr. Firehouse Harris, three nights out of seven.
A Tribeca Film Festival feature.

More information about the Tribeca Film Festival is online at: Tribecafilm.com/festival

Arts Express: Airing on the WBAI/Pacifica National Radio Network and Affiliate Stations