BIO SPHERE

Graduation Day, 1974

In celebration of the (ack!) 50th anniversary of my graduation from UCSC, here's what I cobbled together for the online Alumni Reunion Profile pages.

 

As a junior transfer from Southern California, I graduated in 1974 from Porter (then called College V) with a BA in Aesthetic Studies. This coveted document got me a job selling popcorn at the UA Riverfront Cinemas on Front Street, followed by a stint in the textbook room at Bookshop Santa Cruz. 

 

As a lark, I answered an ad in a new 12-page throwaway publication called Good Times for a second string movie reviewer, which I thought would be a fun thing to do until I got a real job. This experiment in gap employment lasted 45 years.

 

I went through two owners, three publishers, at least 17 editors  (I lost count), five changes of venue for our physical offices, and an earthquake. Not to mention some two thousand movies, at the very least, and probably a couple hundred more. In 2017, my reviews started appearing on Rotten Tomatoes. I would still be at it if COVID-19 hadn't eaten my job in 2020. The theaters closed, and even though they've now reopened, people no longer consume movies in the same way; the massive amount of available "content" is too much for a weekly paper to keep up with.

 

In the meantime, I've had three novels published since 2001, with a fourth on the way. It was also my ridiculous good fortune to be married to artist James Aschbacher for 40 years, whose vibrant and playful murals (three of which we painted together) decorate public spaces and elementary schools all over Santa Cruz County.

 

 

My principal workplace for 45 years! 

 

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Although the Aesthetic Studies degree would soon be discontinued in favor of an actual discipline, what it meant to me in practical terms was I got to make up my own DIY major. Having completed all my science requirements at the community college level, I spent my two years at UCSC taking lit classes from Paul Skenazy and John Jordan, art classes from Doug McLellan, and Art History classes from the inimitable Jasper Rose.

 

Rose was so entertaining, my housemate (who wasn't even a student) used to come with me to sit in on his class. He would come swanning into the room trailing his slightly tattered black and scarlet Oxford robes, launch himself across the lectern, and greet us with an expansive, "Hello, duckies!" (My girlfriend and I call each other "Ducky" to this day!)

 

 And although I never studied to be a movie critic (it was strictly on-the-job training), I did take one terrific film course from Tim Hunter on Alfred Hitchcock. In those days of Pass-Fail grading, we could do pretty much whatever we wanted for a final, so I drew a storyboard for an imaginary murder sequence in an imaginary Hitchcock movie. "This is hot!" Hunter scrawled in the margin. Translation: Pass.

 

My favorite UCSC memory? A bunch of us were loitering in the hallway waiting for our lit professor to come open the classroom when Jasper Rose came gliding by and asked what we were up to. Someone said we were waiting for our Victorian Fiction class. To which Rose replied, "Oh, there is nothing more fascinating than Victorian Fiction! Unless, of course, it's Victorian fact!"

 

RANT, REFLECT, REPEAT

 On Turning 70

Just like Halley's Comet, tearing up the sky every 75 years. Or Cicadas, emerging every 17 years to blanket the Midwest with their irritating noise. I'm on a similar schedule: every 20 years I subject readers to the ongoing soap opera of my advancing age. 

(Way) back in 1982, I wrote a cover story for Good Times about the angst of Turning 30 — the age after which no one was to be trusted, according to the '60s pop culture I grew up in. In 2002, when I was writing a biweekly, non-movie-oriented column for GT, I wrote Vintage 1952, grappling with the surprising revelation that I had somehow become an official Golden Oldie at age 50. 

It hadn't really occurred to me to continue the saga in print this year — possibly because it hasn't quite sunk in that I'm on the cusp of yet another scary birthday that ends in a zero. Well, let's not say scary, but momentous. At the close of one decade, you're supposed to take stock of The Story So Far, while advancing glib strategies on forging ahead into the next one. 

My first two articles were determinedly upbeat in tone, genial pep talks for embracing the ongoing adventure of life. They seemed to resonate with the vast Boomer demographic of which I am smack in the middle. But life has thrown me a few curve balls since then, including a surprise diagnosis of MS at age 62, and a sudden, unexpected plunge into widowhood. I wondered if my experience had become too specific for readers to find "relatable." 

Then I was messaged by a reader who remembered Vintage 1952, and asked point blank if I had penned any further reflections on turning 70. 

So. On further reflection, I realize you don't get to age 70 without a few battle scars, visible or otherwise. (Unless there's a portrait of your glamorous youthful self crumbling away in an attic somewhere.) In the immortal words of Gilda Radner, it's always something. At this age, everybody has issues — that's part of the deal. Besides, given the global upheaval of these last two years — not to mention the previous four — maybe my sense of personal upheaval isn't so unique after all. 

Still, how deeply did I want to plumb the roiling murk of my psyche at this turning point in my life? Did I have the insight, the courage (the gall?) to produce my personal McCartney III? 

As I noted in Vintage 1952, age alone does not necessarily confer wisdom and dignity on a person, but the very fact of your persistent existence earns you a few perks. I know several women my age who have joyfully stopped wearing bras, mostly retired professional women (as opposed to hobbyists) whose jobs required a dress code. Unlike me; when your workplace is a dark movie theater, who's going to see? I still wear a pull-on sports bras most of the time, but they're mostly decorative, since time and age have so radically realigned what used to go in them. Glimpsing myself in the mirror, I'm astonished to see how far south their contents have descended, taking my cleavage with them. 

The only parts of my upper body that are still nicely rounded are — surprise! — my biceps, accidentally toned in the daily act of gripping my rollator as I drag myself around. 

But I'm not here to take inventory of my mutating body parts — isn't that what "old people" do, drone on and on about their ailments? I promised myself I was never going to be that kind of old person! But the truth is, none of us ever expects to actually be an old person at all, despite all evidence to the contrary. And it's funny how our concept of what constitutes "old" recedes like a bad hairline the closer we get to each chronological milestone. 

Meanwhile, our inner 17-year-old (that imaginary friend no one else can see) assures us that old age only happens to other people; if we take spin classes, do crossword puzzles, go gluten-free, we can beat the rap. 

The calendar, however, does not lie, and no bribes, threats, or claims of executive privilege can slow its inexorable course. Age sneaks up on us when we're not looking, so the question becomes not if we're going to age, but how we're going to do it. 

 Let's face it, getting older is ridiculous, so maintaining a sense of humor about it is more essential than ever. The more you can laugh at it, the less power it has to terrify you into submission. Of course, at this age, not even the most delusional among us can pretend that the best is yet to come. But tempting as it is, you can't stay mired in the past, or you risk becoming a relic yourself, like pay phone booths or videotape. 

Back when Gloria Steinem turned 50, someone tried to compliment her by saying "You don't look 50." To which she replied "But this is what 50 looks like." 

No one else gets to tell you how to look — or act — your age. That's your privilege; if you've made it this far, you've earned it. It's up to you to show 'em how it's done. At fifty, I joked that thirty had once been the absolute dividing line between fresh, hip youth and the "vast nothingness that came after." But what's out there now, looming in the darkness after this particular milestone? 

Ask me when I'm ninety.

THE GOODBYE GIRL

45 years and 4 months.

No, that's not how long we've all been sheltering in place. It's the length of time I've been writing for Good Times. To put it in perspective, my very first movie review (Monty Python and the Holy Grail) was published in GT in October, 1975. Which was a year and a half before I even met my Art Boy, in the spring of 1977.

We moved in together in February, 1978, and got married 7 1/2 months later. We were together for 40 years, 'til death us did part.

That was almost three years ago. And before, during, and after all that time together, I've been writing weekly film reviews for Good Times.

Until the Attack Of COVID-19, in March of 2020, when my career came to a screeching halt. I haven't set foot inside a movie theater since March 13 of last year, about four days before they all shut down.

Talk about an identity crisis!

 

I was a fresh-faced 23-year-old just out of UCSC, in my embroidered hippie overalls, when I started my stint at GT. I figured going to the movies would be a fun way to make my rent until I had to go get an actual job. (Historical note: Rents were a lot cheaper in those days.)

On the face of it, I had zero qualifications for this job. I wasn't a film scholar, had never even taken a journalism class. But I'd spent my entire childhood watching old movies on TV with my mom. In those days, you couldn't just dial up something on demand; you had to be prepared to stay up to 1 AM on a Saturday night, for instance, for the weekly movie classics on The Fabulous 52, in L. A., which began at 11:15 PM, right after the news. My mom popped the corn, and my night-owl brothers and I would settle in.

For a couple of years, the series MGM Classics played every Sunday afternoon in syndication, and another station (possibly an early PBS channel) played classic foreign movies with subtitles. Musicals, monster movies, Errol Flynn swashbucklers, even cheesy Italian gladiator movies, my mom's appetite was inexhaustible, and we watched them all!

The rest was on-the-job training. Fortunately, I was inspired by how amazingly diverse the Santa Cruz movie scene was in those days. Besides mainstream movies at the chain theaters, there was the original single-screen Nickelodeon, and the repertory-style Sash Mill Cinema for art house fare, the plucky, independently-owned Capitola Theater (which persisted in showing double-features with cartoons, and 15-cent M&Ms, well into the '80s), a thriving drive-in, even a venue for X-rated "adult" movies at the old Cinema Soquel.

So, ten years after my first byline at GT, I was still at it. Back then, I used to joke that I'd been with the paper so long, people meeting me for the first time expected me to be 80 years old.

Once, in the mid-'90s, a young writer who had recently joined our editorial pool asked around to find out how he could get some film review assignments. Somebody told him, "Lisa Jensen would have to die." (He told me this story later, and we both laughed. I never did find out which colleague made that pronouncement.)

When Siskel and Ebert were all the rage, I appeared on a similar movie review program with fellow critic, Rick Chatenever, then at the Sentinel, on local TV station KRUZ. One early evening, as I emerged from a screening at a downtown theater and started walking past the folks lined up for the next show, an older woman I didn't personally know broke into a merry grin as I went by. "It's our movie girl!" she cried.

During a few flush years, I wrote two reviews a week, and sometimes three, if this or that indulgent editor could figure out how to lay them all out on the same page. For a couple of years, early in the Millennium, when Greg Archer was our fearless leader, I also wrote a bi-weekly opinion column about any damn thing I wanted, which I loved.

True, there have been times when I flirted with the possibility of retiring from the fray. The closest I came was after my first novel was published, back in 2001. The dangling carrot of writing fiction full-time, without having to stop and expend brain cells on a movie review every week, was tempting. After all, Art Boy had given up the comic book store to pursue art full-time, and, boy was he loving it! Still, it's just as well that I didn't follow that carrot off a cliff, since it took another 13 years to get my next novel published!

Marquee de Sad: Not coming soon

 

But now that I actually am 80 years old, I find myself at a crossroads. COVID-19 has wrought havoc in all facets of the movie business: productions have been halted, release dates postponed, and movie theaters closed. New movies are being released directly into the privacy of viewers' homes, as they shelter in place. It was almost a scandal when last spring's big-ticket releases, like Disney's live-action Mulan and Christopher Nolan's mind-bending Tenet, finally went direct to streaming platforms after postponing their release dates for months. (Tenet actually played in cautiously-reopened downtown theaters for about 15 minutes until they had to shut down again.) By the time Wonder Woman 1984 came out at Christmas, direct-to-streaming had become (yet another) new normal.

And this week comes the news that the Cinema 9 in downtown Santa Cruz, smack in the middle of Pacific Avenue, is now closed for good. It has not yet been officially confirmed, but word is that Regal Cinemas, the parent chain that operates it, is pulling out; employees have been given notice, while the company reportedly is offering to transfer them to other Regal theaters. Of course, most other Regal theaters nationwide have also been shut down since October, but that the company may be abandoning the Santa Cruz venue entirely has an extra ominous ring of finality to it.

The venerable Nick and Del Mar downtown, as well as the Cinelux theaters at 41st Avenue and in Scotts Valley, also remain dark, although their websites maintain that their closures are only temporary. So far.

But after a year-plus on hiatus, what will the future of movie theaters even look like? Millennials are leery of anything that takes them out of their comfort zones, like driving (hence Google buses and Uber). They may have not yet developed the habit of congregating with their fellow humans in a public space with a big screen; they’d just as soon watch movies on their phones. 

Meanwhile, I know plenty of people in my age group (the Stone Age) who have long since given up movies in public for Netflix, et al, in the privacy of their own living rooms. Especially now that what used to be called "first-run" movies are instantly available on the home screen.

I volunteered to review movies going straight to streaming, although it seems a little superfluous to review a movie that's already beaming directly into your home. Who needs my opinion? If you don't like it, switch the channel!

But Good Times is more concerned with supporting and promoting local businesses that are still open to some degree, and available to our local readership, like restaurants, bookstores, and farmers' markets.

So is this my cue to exit, stage left?

After all these years, I had hoped to be able to leave Good Times on my own terms. But now it seems that decision is mostly out of my hands.

We can't know what the future will bring. Once we're all vaccinated, maybe movie theaters will stage a miraculous comeback. Maybe I'll still dabble in the occasional review, if there's something I really don't want you to miss. Maybe I'll finally have new stuff to post on my Rotten Tomatoes page!

But in the meantime, treasured readers, know this: It has been my very great pleasure to be your movie girl for all these years. This community of dedicated, opinionated, and unrepentant movie fans means the world to me.

Thanks for all your support, your encouragement, and your letters, even when you disagreed with me. My favorite, in the very early days, was the reader who objected to "the jejune jottings of Ms. Jensen." Fair enough — you can't get much more jejune than age 23! (I got better — I hope.)

But mostly, as always, thanks for reading. 

 (Top: Good Times promo, ca 1977)

(Cinema 9 photo by Shmuel Thaler, Santa Cruz Sentinel)
 

HOLD THAT (DEAD)LINE

After 40-odd years in journalism (some of them damned odd), I respect deadlines.

It's not that I grudgingly obey them, or that I've had to coach myself to accept them. I need them. I cling to them. They are the dangling carrot that propels my life forward.

Obviously, deadlines determine when I go see a movie (remember going to the movies?) in order to get my review in the paper. Sometimes, they influence which movie I see, depending on which showtimes are more favorable to making my deadline.

My entire week is orchestrated around seeing a movie on Friday, writing my review on Saturday, and sending the finished piece to my editor by Sunday afternoon — all to make my Monday morning deadline.

The entire book-publishing industry also runs on deadlines. They exist for turning in that first draft, for each new revision, for providing front and back matter, author photos, Q&A guidelines, PR material — everything depends on each successive deadline being met in a timely manner. Miss one, and the entire infrastructure stutters to a halt.

The habit has spread to every other part of my life. I pay bills according to which due date is looming next, and plan meals around which item in the fridge is most likely to rot if ignored much longer. I'm inspired to clean house when I know visitors are coming, and dress according to whatever events are going to take me out into the public eye.

But now all that's changed. The coronavirus pandemic has claimed yet another casualty: the deadline.

Five weeks into lockdown, and my schedule is completely out the window. Movie theaters are closed and I'm taking my yoga classes on Zoom, so I'm liberated from the task of having to actually go out in public. I don't drive any more, so I'm not even shopping; kind-hearted friends are picking up my groceries and bringing them to me. Some are intrepid enough to come in the house; others do a porch drop. Most days, the only one I interact with is my cat.

Did I say "liberated?" I'm in freefall. Without deadlines, where's my motivation?

The decline was gradual. First, I stopped strapping on what I call my ID bracelets every morning, vintage Celebracelets by Faye Augustine with my book titles spelled out in tiny silver alphabet-block beads. I never used to appear in public without them, but now . . . 

Then, I stopped washing my hair every single morning, a big adjustment for someone as psycho about her hair as me. Maybe once or twice a week, if it doesn't look too hideous, I dare to let it go. Who's going to see me?

Some routines are still inviolate, in the absence of actual deadlines. I have to get dinner on the table by 7 pm in time for Jeopardy, and cleared away at least by 8:30 to have time to read before bed. Monday night is still Pizza Night, without fail — but the rest of the week, all the days tend to run together.

I don't go out, so the clothes I wear in public (you know, the ones that are still intact) stay in the closet, while my comfort outfits (sweatshirts, jeans, pom-pom slippers) get worn all day. I still wash my clothes every Saturday — even though the loads are smaller — but I'm down to washing my sheets only every other week.

I used to make jokes about Miss Havisham — until she popped up in my mirror.

Meanwhile, my living space is showing signs of — let's call it benign neglect. If those discarded slippers are littering the stairs all day, or a cobweb the size of a volleyball net is hanging from the hallway ceiling, who's going to know?

I'm starting to feel like that tree that falls in the forest. Am I still a sloth if there's no one to see me?


(Cartoon by Mick Stevens)
(Helena Bonham-Carter as Miss Havisham, Great Expectatons, 2012)

I WAKE UP STREAMING

It’s official — I’m superfluous!

With theaters shuttered (temporarily, we hope) due to the coronavirus, and no one going out to the movies, nobody needs to know my opinion of a movie they can stream from the privacy of their own couch.

It’s not like they have to pay to get in!

So my column in Good Times is suspended until further notice. If we, as a town/state/country/planet ever achieve normalcy again, I expect to be back on the job. But who knows how long that will take?

In the meantime, I encourage housebound film fans to boldly go into the archives of the product-delivery service of your choice — Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, You Tube, Viewmaster, whatever — and explore titles from over a century of vibrant cinema.

Silent films, for instance, are astonishingly creative!  Check out anything from about the turn of the last century through the 1920s, back when the pictures were first learning to move, and they were making it all up as they went along. You’ll be amazed at their ingenuity!

Then there are Errol Flynn swashbucklers, Film Noir, MGM musicals, French New Wave, Hitchcock, Fellini, the Marx Brothers; they’re all out there, just waiting to be discovered.

Be adventurous! If something doesn’t grab you in the first 20 minutes, dial up something else. There won’t be a quiz, and there isn’t anywhere else you have to be.

Me, I’ve been catching up on movies I missed the first time around. Last night it was The Greatest Showman, an utterly berserk fantasia on the imagined life if P. T. Barnum, staged like a Hollywood musical.

Famed 19th Century opera diva Jenny Lind (Rebecca Ferguson) sings a power ballad. Keala Settle as the Bearded Lady leads a chorus of Barnum’s circus sideshow attractions in an empowering Millennial-style anthem.

But, hey, in the midst of it all, there’s Hugh Jackman in the top hat and ringmaster’s outfit, singing and dancing up a storm. I’m home alone — I have to have some fun!

Sure, I’d much rather be watching movies the way God intended, on a great big theater screen. And I fervently hope all this enforced home viewing doesn’t signal the end of the neighborhood movie house down the road, by giving viewers one more excuse not to interact with each other in public.

Still, there’s something to be said for watching a move with a cat on your lap — as long as she doesn’t mind the occasional popcorn kernel bouncing off her head.

THE LEGEND OF MONDAY NIGHT PIZZA

Pizza Boy to the rescue!

Blame it on Good Times.

When I first met James in his comic book store, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, I had already been writing for Good Times for two years. Six months later when we moved in together, we only had one rule as we made up our freestyle new life: every Monday night, I had to do the (dreaded) Film Guide.

The Film Guide was the section in the paper that listed every movie theater in town, what new movies would be opening at each one that week, and all their showtimes. There was no iMDB in those days, so TV and newsprint ads were all I  had to go on when it came to blurbing new titles.

But the gnarly part was getting those showtimes. Way before there were personal computers (certainly not in our house), let alone FAX machines, I had to call each theater manager on the phone and scribble down (usually in pencil) every single showtime for every single movie in the course of the week — daily schedule, weekend schedule, holiday matinees, midnight movies, the works. Then I typed them on a typewriter (look it up, kids) into my master list, three pages of hard copy I delivered by hand to the GT office first thing Tuesday morning, deadline day.

With me on the phone for hours, Mondays were a little hectic around our house, especially at dinner time. One theater manager in particular never decided what he was going to play on any given week, until he knew what everybody else had booked. Some nights, I wouldn't get off the damn phone before 8 pm — by which time, I was In. No. Mood.

The yeast goes on: why mess with a good thing?

But trust my Sweetie to step into the breach! Even though he had not yet discovered the cooking gene within himself, he knew how to bake a frozen pizza. While I was stewing on the phone, he'd be in the kitchen chopping up real food — green onions, red peppers, black olives, mushrooms — and grating extra cheese.

His next move was to pop a tape into the VCR and record Jeopardy — my favorite way to chill — at 7 pm. As soon as I could finally hang up and finish typing, he would assemble his pizza, stick it in the oven, and pop a cork. (Okay, he usually didn't wait around for me for that part!)

Et Voila! Whenever I was finally ready to sit down and eat, we had hot pizza, cold bubbly, and Jeopardy! Pizza, champagne, and Jeopardy was our Monday night ritual for years — even after theaters started faxing their info to GT and I was liberated from the Film Guide. The tradition continued through the rest of our married life, and continues for me to this day. Why mess with a good thing?

It wasn't until years later that we started making our own pizzas from scratch. (Well, almost, thanks to Trader Joe's pizza dough balls.) I wouldn't have remembered how many years, except that I found the top photo above of our very first home-made pizza! It's dated November, 2003! Notice how shiny and silvery the pizza screen is. It's completely black now, untold thousands of pizzas later — and, yes, I still use it!

SOUVENIR

Looky what I found clearing off some bookshelves the other day. Fat Freddy’s Cat was a spinoff from one of the most fabled underground comix of the ’70s, The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers.

Why am I hanging on to this relic of hippie nostalgia? It's a souvenir of the day I met my future.

One day in the spring of 1977, I walked into a comic book store with a couple of friends and a stack of silk-screened posters we’d made for the recent Spring Fair. I didn’t know from comics, but we wanted to sell our leftover posters on consignment, and the recently-opened Atlantis Fantasyworld had posters on its walls.

I can’t remember what came of that transaction; my friend, the comic collector, was handling the business end of the deal with one of the owners, Joe. But I didn’t want to look like a deadbeat, so I wandered around the shop and picked up this copy of Fat Freddy’s Cat, which I bought from the other owner — Jim.

She sells silk screens at the Spring Fair

We chatted for a few minutes over my big purchase, and that was the end of that — or so I thought.

Little did I know that a couple of months later, the Star Wars juggernaut was about to hit Santa Cruz. My publisher at Good Times told me if I could find a photo, he’d run my review as a cover story.

(Back then, GT was only 12 pages long, so a cover story meant the text of the review was actually printed on the cover! Not buried on page 6 with the ads for The Broken Egg, Cymbaline’s and The Good Fruit Company.)

The photo was the catch. It’s not like we could just dial up iMDB. (This was long before computers were invented; we were practically chiseling the paper onto slate tablets, like The Flintstones.) But I had seen some movie stills on the wall at — you guessed it — Atlantis Fantasyworld.

Comics convert: me & my future

Joe was off at lunch the day I went back. But Jim was happy to stop filing comics for a few minutes to help me out. There was no one else in the store. We talked for an hour.

I never did get that still. (Turns out the only ones he had on the wall were from vintage ’50s monster movies.)

But I did get my cover story — my counterpart at the Sentinel took pity on a newbie and gave me one of his Star Wars stills — which gave me another excuse to visit Atlantis for another chat, the day the story was published, and then — well, you get the idea!

So when I happened upon Fat Freddy’s Cat, the discovery was bittersweet — but mostly sweet.

I notice it’s Book #1, and practically in mint condition (except for some fading on the spine), as it’s been mostly untouched by human hands all these yeas. I wonder if it’s worth anything — I’d have to ask Joe.

But it’s priceless to me.

SOMETHING ROTTEN

Look, Ma, I'm on Rotten Tomatoes!

I guess if you do something long enough, somebody is bound to notice.

The busy elves over at RT have uploaded 94(!) of my Good Times reviews from the last couple of years onto the site.

I'm right up there with the big kids from the Chicago Sun Times and New York Magazine (among many others).

I even get my own page, listing all my reviews, with links to the movie pages in question!

This is kind of a cool deal. Color me stoked!

WONDER WOMAN

Here's lookin' at you, Nancy Raney!

She never actually made a film, but Nancy Raney was the undisputed godmother of the Santa Cruz movie community. When she took her final bow last week, surrounded by her loved ones, it was truly the end of an era

As co-owner of The Nickelodeon with her husband, Bill Raney, who opened it in 1969, Nancy was the the theater's one-woman publicity department.

As soon as a movie was booked, Nancy was on the phone to get the word out, not only to us ink-stained wretches of the press, but to anyone else in town she could think of who might be remotely interested in the film, or its subject — schools, service groups, foreign language societies, politicians, surfers, artists, musicians, you name it.

She was also a tireless cheerleader for arts and culture in Santa Cruz. She attended, promoted, or otherwise supported such local institutions as Shakespeare Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz Symphony, Pacific Rim Film Festival, and Santa Cruz Public Libraries, among others. An avid reader, she loved to organize cross-promotions with Bookshop Santa Cruz, or Capitola Book Cafe, any time a movie came out with a literary pedigree.

Nancy and Bill: too much fun.

But perhaps Nancy's most indelible influence on our arts scene—besides her buoyant personality—were the advance press screenings she organized at the Nick, so local scribes could get our reviews in print the same week a movie opened. I was only a lowly stringer at Good Times in 1976, when Nancy first invited me to a screening.

She greeted us in the lobby and ushered us into the auditorium, exuding her usual warmth and good humor. She had my life story out of me in no time (granted, at age 22, my story was pretty short). It's not that she pried, exactly, but she was always so interested in other people, and we found her interest irresistible.

As I inherited the job of full-time film critic, Nick screenings became a weekly event in my life. At first, I remember being worried about a potential conflict of interest: heaven forbid I should let myself get too chummy with the proprietors of a local movie house. Hah! I found I couldn't maintain a sense of aloof, professional decorum for very long, with Nancy. She was way too much fun!

It was never held against me when I wrote a bad review—and I wrote plenty. Nobody laughed about the stinkers more uproariously than Nancy. When I once revealed to her that I kept a mini-bag of M&Ms in my purse to keep me awake if a movie dragged, she gave me a family-sized jar of M&Ms for Christmas.

We both loved British history, Charles Dickens, and period books and movies of every stripe. And Nancy was fascinated by nuns, as only a Midwestern girl with a good Nordic Protestant upbringing can be. (And the naughtier the nuns, the better!) She had migrated out west in the first place to attend Stanford, which she also loved, and she kept in touch with a close-knit sisterhood of fellow Stanfordians for the rest of her life.

Oscar party, 1988: Buz Bezore, Nancy, me, and Art Boy

 When I married Art Boy (yes, Nancy was one of the few people in town I knew even longer than I've known him), he and I started hanging out with Nancy and Bill regularly at the Raney's mountaintop retreat above Happy Valley, enjoying Nancy's great dinners, telling stories, and always laughing like crazy. Our friendship continued on after they sold the Nick to Jim Schwenterley.

When we started hosting Oscar Night parties for local film folk, Nancy and Bill were at the top of the A-list. (She, always in a fetching negligee, since our guests were given the option of dressing up or wearing jammies.) And pretty soon, Nancy and I were taking field trips together that had nothing to do with movies — the Stanford Shopping Center; the Barbie Musum in Palo Alto (she knew about my weird fetish for dressing up my vintage childhood Barbies as the Best Actress nominees for those Oscar parties).

A trip we once took to the city (the reason for which escapes me, now), turned into Nancy's Swanky Public Restroom Tour of San Francisco. Upscale department stores, uber-plush restaurants and hotels, she knew 'em all! Then there was the time that Nancy, the instigator, in cahoots with Stacey Vreeken, one of my favorite ex-Good Times editors, sprung a surprise 50th birthday party on me, featuring just about everybody I knew in town.

Birthday Girl + instigators: Nancy and Stacey Vreeken.

When I took my first halting steps into fiction-writing, Nancy was there to cheer me on. She read all my unpublished novels in manuscript form (talk about a trouper!), and when I finally got one into print, she made sure her book club read it.

Nancy was no mean hand at writing, herself. A veteran traveler, she and Bill favored remote destinations—Yellowknife, in Canada's Northwest Territories; Papua, New Guinea; African safaris—and she wrote some fine travel pieces for the alternate alt-weekly. (In a photo in the Raneys' hallway from one of her last trips, Nancy is beaming down from the back of a camel.)

To my undying admiration, she once journeyed along the Trans-Siberian Railway (by herself!) To St. Petersberg to visit the Hermitage. For years, I was helping her edit her memoir of this astonishing event, but her life was always so full, I don't know if she ever had time to finish it.

It's hard to imagine Santa Cruz without Nancy Raney. I loved her pretty much from the minute I met her in the lobby of the Nick, and that never changed. We were as close as family—closer than most—but, now, it helps to imagine her perched on that camel, off on her next adventure.

ARTING AROUND

Art Boy welcomes you to his 25th Open Studio!

Hey, kids, what time is it?

Ten points for Gryffindor if you said Open Studios time!

Artists all over Santa Cruz County are standing ready, as we speak, to throw open their doors to you, The Public, for the next three weekends. And it all begins today.

For those of you who came in late, here's the deal: participating artists countywide are divided geographically. North County artists (basically from the Yacht Harbor to Davenport) open their studios this weekend. South County artists (between the Yacht Harbor and Watsonville) will be open next weekend, October 10-11.

The following weekend, October 17-18, is Encore Weekend, meaning artists from both sides of the county can be open for one last hurrah. If they want to. It's not mandatory to do a second weekend, so if you're putting off visiting your favorite artist until Encore, check the catalogue first to make sure he/she will be open.

(A word top the wise: North County ceramicist, painter, and jewelry-maker Beth Allison Gripenstraw, a favorite here on the blog, will only be open this weekend. Beth doesn't just show art, she creates entire environments—including, in recent years, Alice's Mad Tea Party, an African safari, and Paris in the 1920s. This year' she's promising a voyage down the Amazon—without the bugs. Or, if there are bugs, they'll probably be made of papier mache! Or perched on a vase, like these froggies!)

Speaking of the catalogue, it's now a slick, glossy magazine format, with much larger images of each artist's work. And this week only, it's free, free, free inside the Good Times! Otherwise, you can pick one up at any of the usual outlets around town for the ridiculously cheap price of $5! (I suggest you get one at the Art League and stop in to see the show featuring one piece of artwork from each of this year's participating OS artists.)

And to get in the mood: look who's the lead story in the Arts & Entertainment section of GT this week! Yes, it's Art Boy (aka: James Aschbacher, above), juggling paint cans and ideas with equal dexterity, in this great photo by Chip Scheuer. Click here to read the profile by the one and only Christina Waters.

Then grab a catalogue and an art buddy, and chart your personal art adventure!

DARK MAGIC

Baby critic in the making: media was always the message

40 years on the movie beat in Santa Cruz

Santa Cruz in 1975 was heaven for a fledgling film buff. The movies were great: Dog Day Afternoon, The Godfather Part II, Nashville. Admission was around $2.50 for a double-bill.

Those were the days! Much has changed in the world since then—especially the movie scene, and the moviegoing experience, here in Santa Cruz.

My affair with both began in the summer of 1974. As a freshly-minted UCSC grad, I packed up my BA, and went to work nights selling tickets and popcorn at the U. A. Cinemas (now the Riverfront). It was the streamlined "flagship" of the United Artist chain of theaters in town (which at that time included the Del Mar, the Rio, 41st Avenue Playhouse, and Aptos), before the corporation lost interest in Santa Cruz and let its theaters crumble into ruin.

Fledgling critic ca. 1976

The flip side of this corporate mentality were independently owned mom-and-pop movie houses. The Nickelodeon, operated by Bill and Nancy Raney (one screen, with a vintage nickelodeon movie machine roped off in the lobby), was a popular venue for foreign films, maverick indies, and festival programming. (Like a brilliant French New Wave retrospective that my roommate, Jan, and I drank in like fine wine every Saturday afternoon for weeks.)

The family-owned Capitola Theater, and Cinema Soquel, showed less-than-brand-new double features. (Although, in a couple of years, Cinema Soquel switched to X-rated films in a desperate, but doomed attempt to stay solvent.) The Skyview Drive-In was still showing movies, but Gary Culver had not yet opened Scotts Valley Cinema, and the Cinema 9 was not yet even a gleam in the developer's eye.

In January, 1975, Rene Fuentes-Chao opened the Sash Mill Cinema, with 25-cent popcorn and double bills like A Streetcar Named Desire with Last Tango In Paris, Sunday Bloody Sunday with Persona, or Chinatown with Touch Of Evil.

It had poor insulation, no ventilation, and a corrugated metal roof that guaranteed patrons would freeze in the winter and roast in the summer; raindrops sounded like Taiko drumming. We loved it. Its program of vintage and recent films changed three times a week, and they published a poster-sized schedule every quarter, which everyone I knew had taped to their refrigerator.
  

Early GT promo (ca 1977) for its new full-time critic

The Sash Mill and the Nick catered to Santa Cruz's new identity as a university town. Programming was inspired and offbeat, prices were relatively low, and the sense of community was enormous—especially among students (and recent students) discovering David Lynch, or RKO musicals, or Japanese samurai movies together.

Jan and I went out to the movies with my brother, Steve, almost every night. And I wrote obsessively about everything I saw in my journal, long before anybody ever paid me to do it.

Enter Good Times, a 12-page entertainment weekly started in April, 1975, by Jay Shore. By then, I was working at Bookshop Santa Cruz, in the textbook room managed by Steve, and my nights were free. When GT film reviewer Christian Kallen advertised for an assistant, I hauled out my old (manual) college typewriter, hammered out a one-page review of some dreadful B-movie we'd recently seen at the drive-in, and mailed it in. Two weeks later, Christian called me up to tell me seven people had responded to his column, but I was the only one who'd actually written something. It must have worked; I became Christian's official stringer

I love to write, and I love movies, but the rest was strictly on-the-job training. When Christian left town, about a year later, I inherited the job.

In the lobby of the "old" Nick, ca 2004

One of the greatest perks of that job was the fabled Nickelodeon press screening. In big cities, films are screened early for the press, so writers can meet their deadlines and get a review out on opening day. The Raneys embraced this idea for a small, movie-loving town like ours. Their eclectic films needed attention right away; if a movie didn't get reviewed that first week and draw a house, it probably wouldn't last a second week.

For years, Thursday afternoon press screenings at the Nick became the place for the SC film elite to meet. It was like a private club for local scribes, where we all got to hang out together, whatever rivalries might have been going on between our papers.

I had known Buz Bezore slightly at UCSC, but the Nick lobby is where I first met Christina Waters, Tom Maderos, and Michael Gant, all of whom wrote about film sometime or other in the various incarnations of the Santa Cruz Express/Independent/Taste/Metro/Weekly. Bruce Bratton was a regular, as were Rick Chatenever and, later, Wallace Baine, from the Sentinel. I'm pretty sure I met Morton Marcus for the first time at the Nick, and probably Geoff Dunn, when he was making his first local history documentaries. UC professor and film historian Vivian Sobchak attended the screenings for years, and, more recently, Dennis Morton and David Anthony from the KUSP Film Gang.

My first GT review! Monty Python & the Holy Grail. October 23, 1975

In one sense, we knew we were all on the same team—the collective treasure hunt to discover great movies and spread the word. We saw the sublime, the ridiculous, and everything in between at those Nick screenings. And since we rarely agreed on which was which, debates were spirited as we filed back out into the (always unexpected) daylight.

Sadly, those press screenings are no more, much like film itself.     Movies are projected digitally. Vintage film reels are preserved as objets d'art suspended from the ceiling in the lobby of the Nick, relics as quant as that old nickelodeon machine once was. Today, movies assault you in 3D, seats rock or recline, theaters call themselves "cafe lounges." But it was never about all that stuff. All that really matters is the transformative magic of the movies.

ON THE BRINK...

I was recently invited to sum up last year, 2014, in one word. I chose "Beginnings," thinking of the chance I got last year to spread my wings as a fledgling author. But I realize now if I was going to be 100% accurate, I should have said simply "Change."

The one constant in life is change, as some wag or other probably said once. Some things we confidently expect to last forever, and it's always a rude surprise when they don't. The much beloved Capitola Book Cafe closed its doors last year, to the despair of readers everywhere. Ditto Pretty Mama's, after decades as the place to go for discount chic with attitude.

Santa Cruz's favorite free cinema event, the Pacific Rim Film Festival, was unable to produce a 2014 edition. And while the show finally did go on for the critically endangered Shakespeare Santa Cruz, abruptly unmoored from the support of UCSC, the old entity had to reinvent itself, phoenix-like, as Santa Cruz Shakespeare, before presenting a season entirely funded by patrons and sponsors.

2014 was also the year the entire editorial staff at Good Times, my home port for nearly (ulp) 40 years, were unceremoniously shown the door when the entity formerly known as Metro/Santa Cruz Weekly moved in to run the show. So nothing lasts forever.

Meanwhile, I find myself on the brink of more changes in the New Year. Last July, after toiling away on the fringes forever, I had a novel published by a major US book publisher. I enjoyed the thrill of working with a professional editor and PR team at Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press in support of Alias Hook; I had a fabulous book event at Bookshop Santa Cruz, embarked on an extensive book blog tour, and launched Alias Hook pages on Facebook and Pinterest.

The question is, now what?

Most writers lucky enough to get a novel published have a couple of spares waiting in the wings. I certainly do! And when I showed my favorite of the lot, another story in the fractured fairy tale line, to the agent who took me on last spring, she loved it! But my editor at TDB was not so enthused, so even though I did an extensive rewrite, that book (let's call it Book B) was put back on hold indefinitely.

Another book? I do have a few ideas...

My editor was interested in a sequel to Alias Hook, however. And while I've always considered that book a stand-alone—poor James and Stella have been through enough: I had no plans to drag them through any more complications—an idea did occur to me for approaching the Neverland from a completely new perspective.

After all, my Neverland already exists fully-fledged in the percolating hothouse of my brain, so the world-building has already been done.

All I had to do was think of a plot, which, okay, is usually my Achilles Heel. (Plot? You mean the characters can't just sit around lobbing witty remarks at each other?) But just like a grown-up author, I wrote up an 8-page plot outline for the sequel (let's call it Book C) and submitted it as a proposal to my editor.

He liked it enough to make an offer. But my agent didn't want to close a deal on Book C if it meant Book B would never see the light of print. She wanted to shop both books elsewhere. So throughout December, in addition to year-end movie deadlines and the holidays, I was jamming away at revising Book B.

The problem was, even though I finally got the approval of my beta reader (okay, it was Art Boy), and even though my agent loved the rest of the book, she and her minions had reservations about the opening. They were afraid that the early scenes/pages/chapters didn't get to the good stuff fast enough. And of course, every time you add or subtract anything in the front of a book, you have to comb through the rest of the book to make sure it all adds up. In one month, I revised the entire manuscript three times.

After so many revisions, the only solution is a brain transplant.

But my agent and I finally had to agree to disagree. Outside of a brain transplant for new ideas, there wasn't anything else I felt I could do to it. Lucky for me, we opted for something a bit less drastic—we decided to send out the most recent revision to an editor my agent had mentioned the book to before the holidays, who was evidently dying to read it. At the very least, we thought we might get some valuable insight before I plunged into yet another rewrite.

But, surprise! The editor loves it.

Understand that this in no way constitutes an offer on Book B, much less a sale. The editor has to discuss it with her team at her publishing house, and it's not enough if they simply love it as much as she does. She has to convince them it's a book they can market, or else they have to convince her that it's not. So the fat lady hasn't sung quite yet.

But at least two people in the NY publishing world love my little book! Now we just have to wait and see what happens next. Will Book B make the cut? Will this be the beginning of a beautiful new professional friendship? And what about Book C?

Stay tuned...


(Top: painting by Heinrich Vogel, 1902.)

STOP THE PRESSES!

The Santa Cruz alternative newspaper scene just got a lot weirder. Not necessarily better. Not necessarily worse. Just weirder.

Remember those old newspaper movies of the 1940s? Whenever a big story broke, some fast-talking editor like Cary Grant or Kirk Douglas would grab the phone and yell, "Stop the presses!" This is a moment like that for local media.

Yesterday, the news broke that Metro Newspapers, the corporate entity that operates the Santa Cruz Weekly (formerly Metro Santa Cruz), along with several other publications over the hill, has purchased its crosstown rival, Good Times, from its most recent owner, Mainstreet Media. And, no, it wasn't an April Fool's joke.

It was more like an item in "Believe It or Not."  Hit hard by the economic downturn and the decline in print media in general, The Weekly was becoming the incredible shrinking paper, while GT—despite cutbacks, downsizing, and one or two painful layoffs—still managed to operate at a healthy percentage of its old capacity. If a merger was even suspected, most observers would assume it would go in the other direction. 

So, what's the deal?

GT owners have come and gone over the years. I always refer to them as the Pros from Dover because I have no earthly clue who they are from one regime to the next. Normally it doesn't impact us much, the editorial and art departments, freelancers, and staff who go about the business of getting the paper out every week. 

Most of the incoming owners don't really want to fool around too much with the team in the trenches responsible for making the paper a successful enterprise worth buying in the first place.

Not so, this time.  In one afternoon—and a Monday at that, deadline-eve, when things are hectic enough in the office—publisher Ron Slack, editor Greg Archer, Entertainment Editor Jenna Brogan, and staff writer Joel Hersch were out the door. That's a huge chunk of the team responsible for making GT a success.

Dan Pulcrano, owner of Metro Newspapers, has a long history with the local alt-journalism scene. For the (ulp) 39 years I've been at GT (beginning when I was an infant prodigy, of course), there has basically never been a moment when our paper was not the target of some other feisty little publication—the Independent, the Phoenix, the Express, the Sun, Taste, Santa Cruz Magazine, Metro Santa Cruz. Dan Pulcrano was involved in a lot of those papers, along with Buz Bezore, Christina Waters, Geoff Dunne, Stephen Kessler, Michael Gant, Tim Eagan, Bruce Bratton, and many other luminaries on the local media scene.

These were the folks who never thought GT was alternative enough. And I have to say there have been times in this paper's checkered history when I agreed with them, when I would have gladly jumped ship and gone to play for the scrappy rival team. But not lately.

Yes, once upon a time, GT was "Lighter Than Air"—a tagline that apparently we will never, ever live down. Get over it. It's been decades since those words appeared in the masthead, or were reflected in the editorial content of the paper itself. When Ron Slack was installed in the publisher's office 13 years ago, he not only relocated to Santa Cruz and got involved in the community, he dedicated a hefty chunk of GT column inches, staff, and resorces to reporting on local news and issues, alongside the arts and entertainment coverage that had sustained the paper over the years. 

Good Times blossomed under the stewardship of Ron Slack, the tireless efforts of our fearless leader, editor Greg Archer, and the contributions of dozens of writers, artists, columnists, critics and dreamers too numerous to mention. I am extremely proud and excessively lucky to have worked with all these people. It won't be the same around the ol' newsroom without them.

No one knows at this point how this transition will play out. Incoming editor Steve Palopoli is a good guy; we used to work together at GT. I suspect that the success of this venture will depend—as always—on the heart, integrity, and sheer stamina of the folks in the trenches, the creative staff tasked with the insane, impossible, wildly exhilarating business of getting out a weekly newspaper.

For the story so far, catch up with Wallace Baine's excellent piece in the Sentinel, and this interesting news item on the purchase in the Silicon Valley Business Journal.

To relive those thrilling early days of alt-journalism in Santa Cruz, check out this vintage piece from the old Metro.