Translator: Yulia Kallistratova Reviewer: Ellen Maloney
It's an honor for me to be asked to speak to you this morning.
I am deeply in awe of these young people
and all young people who are involved in making a difference,
their energy and their commitment,
and the inventiveness and empowerment of the solutions that they've arrived at.
They are really, truly the hope of the world
and an inspiration and heroes to all the rest of us.
Winston Churchill once remarked
that it takes no time at all to prepare a speech of two hours
but there's never enough time to prepare a speech of ten minutes.
So, since I have very little time --
but [the clock is not running] so I guess I can call it longer --
(Laughter)
I won't have all the time that I would like
to tell you what's in my heart,
so I'm going to tell you some of the things that are on my mind.
I tend to speak in metaphor,
so actually, though I'm speaking about my career,
it is, in effect, a metaphor.
It was my experience on the journey when I was their age.
I started in the theater in Cleveland in 1963.
I was in a play at the Cleveland Playhouse called "Johnny Got His Gun"
which is from a novel written by Dalton Trumbo,
who if you don't know - I suppose, a lot of young people don't know
who Dalton Trumbo was, or of this novel -
it was a very powerful and evocative anti-war piece
that Dalton wrote just before the advent of the Second World War.
We were performing it,
and during the rehearsal period John Kennedy was killed,
and our whole world turned upside down.
I had no idea what to do with it.
I went off to England to some event, I came back,
and my father had cut a little squib out of the "New York Times"
that the theater that was touring the South
was auditioning actors and directors.
So, I went down to audition, I got this job
and I flew down to New Orleans.
I was met by the head of the theater
who took me to the place we were staying in the Quarter in New Orleans.
On the door it said "Coloreds only."
And I thought, "Oh, isn't that quaint!
It must be a throw back to the Civil War,"
just shows you how naive I was.
The very nice woman who owned the building showed me my room,
and then we went out for dinner, we went to a restaurant.
The founder of the theater - both founders of the theater,
John O'Neill and Gilbert Moses, were black, and I was sitting with John.
The owner of the restaurant threw us out.
I had never been thrown out of a restaurant,
so of course, I got up with my fists balled up, and John said,
"No, no, no. I'll take care of it,"
and informed the man that he was violating our civil rights.
That was my sort of introduction into the Deep South.
We toured Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee
playing mostly to the black community and integrated company
doing a play by Samuel Beckett called "Waiting for Godot"
and a boulevard piece called "Pearly Victorious" by Ossie Davis.
It was extraordinary; we were under the auspices
of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee,
who was in the process, along with core and SCLC,
of empowering people, black people in the South,
to register to vote, to reclaim their civil rights,
and to defend their human rights
against the onslaught of the racism in the South.
My introduction to Mississippi was,
as we drove in there was a church on the hill
with the side blown out that had been firebombed.
I went to the Freedom House, there were more black men
than I had ever been close to, listening to a 14-year-old girl
describe how she had been beaten, kicked, and spat upon
while integrating the lunch counter in Macomb.
That was my introduction to Mississippi.
We played to some incredible audiences,
Fannie Lou Hamer gave the best speech I ever heard about "Waiting for Godot."
And maybe you don't know who she is, but it was incredible
because these people had never seen a movie, they'd never gone to the theater
and yet, they sat and watched
one of the most complicated and abstract plays,
and were able to extract from that play some meaning for them.
This was the most profoundly moving and fulfilling,
and important event in what has now become my career.
So, where I stand now is I work in Hollywood
in an industry that is controlled by now six multinational corporations,
soon to be three, who produce --
(Chuckles)
they produce films,
which are mostly repeats, or rehashes, or mindless drivel,
whose purpose is to get people to buy very expensive tickets
over and over again,
to create profit for their multinational corporations.
And there is a subtext, which is to disempower and misinform people
as to their ability to be agents of change,
to take control of their world,
to see themselves, which is what the purpose of it is,
of art, is for us to be able to see ourselves, as Shakespeare said,
Hamlet says, "Hold the mirror up to nature,"
so that we can recognize ourselves and the actions that we take,
and we can modify our behavior and those actions,
so that we can be more effective, more open, and more compassionate.
This industry makes fewer and fewer films,
it pays those people lucky enough to be called A-list people
incredible amounts of money.
My union has a 120 thousand actors in it.
85 percent of those actors make less than 10,000 dollars a year,
which means they can't afford health insurance.
This is the way capitalism and the business model is applied to art.
So that when I go around and I talk to young people --
I just was in Savannah College of Art and Design
and I spoke to the kids there, they say to me --
because they're all budding directors and actors -- and they say,
"Well, so how do we make it?"
"When I go to Hollywood, how will I get an agent and where will I --"
I say, "No, don't go to Hollywood.
Don't go to Hollywood, stay in your community.
Find a group of like-minded people: actors, a director, cinematographer,
editors, the people that you need to create a unit,
go out into your community and find out what stories that community needs to hear,
wants to tell about itself, and make that into a film.
You will then have a film.
It's impossible for anybody outside the Hollywood system to distribute a film.
So, what is happening is because of these machines,
it is now possible to distribute these films digitally, virally.
And more and more people
will be able to access work which has no budget.
You know, when you make a ten-million-dollar independent film
it seems like a lot of money, I know, it is a lot of money.
But you need ten million more for the prints, and the advertising,
and the distribution costs, and of course, you can't raise that
on most independent films because the subject matter
tends to be important and therefore unappealing to the majority of people
who want to see crap. Isn't that right?
Isn't that what we all want to see? (Laughter)
Of course, I say this to young people
but I'm stuck because I'm obviously no longer young
and I'm sort of the caught in the belly of the beast.
So, my response to this is, of course, I was an officer at our union,
and I believe in One World Union -
I believe we need a union of all the actors unions,
Actors' Equity, and A.F.T.R.A, and S.A.G,
including the directors, and the writers, and the artsy those of the stage hands.
And we need to come together in America,
and then we need to have affiliates in England, and New Zealand,
and Australia, and France, and Germany, and Italy,
so that when a corporation comes, as they are coming --
I spoke to a man in the airport, he works for the National Football League
and they are doing it to him,
they are trying to destroy the players union.
And when they try to destroy our union
we'll be able to shut the complete industry down.
That's how us older folks do it: we tend to be on the violent side.
(Laughter)
I know,
there's so much optimism and enthusiasm, and hopefulness
in the young people that I've met this morning.
But I do have to say from an older perspective
we made a hash of it, really made a hash of it.
We have left you a disaster.
A lot of people use the idiom like it's one of those great tankers
that are four football fields long.
And it is steaming full steam ahead towards the cliff.
It takes a really long time to turn that thing.
Those are the incremental changes.
Unfortunately, the messes that we have created seem to be dictating
that there won't be time to make those incremental changes.
It will have to be a very dramatic solution.
I was involved after the Free Southern Theater
in protesting the war in Vietnam trying to end that conflict,
and I worked for the Black Panthers, an organisation I very much believed in,
because they were community-based, they were trying to do something
in spite of the occupation and oppression of the police forces
all across this country towards people of color
in what we call "the ghettos."
And our solution, the reason that we failed,
was that we polarized this country
by believing that we were outside of the problem,
that we were not on the train,
that somehow because of our protest
it absolved us of our connection and our responsibility
to find an inclusive nonviolent way
to alter people's mindset.
That sounds like incremental change and maybe it will work.
We will be able to change one mind at a time.
I don't believe it will change any other way.
You will always have to change one mind at a time,
and it will always come from small individuals and groups.
The solution is not at the governmental level.
As a dear man that I'm very fond of, Manfred Max-Neef said,
"There is not a politician or a person in power
who does not know what not to do.
They have been doing it since the beginning.
And they continue to do it
in spite of the evidence that is in front of them that it does not work."
This is why the boat is headed towards the cliff.
I hope - it is my dearest hope - that this will not be
what happens to us,
that we will crash on the rocks
and go down as a species or even as a planet.
I don't believe as a planet, but the species? I'm not so sure about.
I hope that we do have a transformation,
I think we are in need of a paradigm shift
and a paradigm shift, change of heart, is simply a choice.
I saw a film in Savannah by a man named Tom Shadyac,
who maybe you know of - he did "Ace Ventura: Pet Detective"
and all the ones that Jim Carrey made.
He made himself a bundle, bought himself a 17,000 square foot house in Pasadena,
and he was riding his bicycle on a fire trail and he fell off,
and he got a concussion and the concussion didn't go away.
It's called 'concussion syndrome' or something -
your ears ring and your head aches - and he thought he was going to die.
So, it turned out then it healed itself but he wanted to find out,
"What is the meaning of this thing that I wanted to leave?"
He went out all over the world
to interview people like the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu.
And he came up with --
he made this film called "I Am" which I highly recommend.
He came up with what seemed like fairly obvious observations.
One, that the natural world is incredibly interconnected;
that human beings are, by nature, cooperative;
that markets do not define our value and our meaning.
And that, principally, this is the most important one,
which I really liked and to which there's scientific evidence:
the heart, and not the mind,
is the organ which connects us to the natural world and to each other.
And so, with all my heart I wish all of you the best of luck.
Persevere, question authority, and seize the day.
God bless.
(Applause)