Janet Berliner

Unless something miraculous occurs, this is likely to be my last SU blog. For many months, I have been suffering intense chronic pain. In addition, I have the tremors. My hands hover over the keys like anxious hummingbirds, which makes writing well nigh impossible.  This blog came about because, this week, I was asked to write an Author’s Note for my Crichton Book.  Somehow, I did it, thus I have it to post for your interest-or not.  Be happy.

The house was parked halfway down a Santa Monica side street, close enough to the beach that, at seven in the morning, I could smell the December fog coming off the ocean.  I was an hour early. I sat on the concrete front step, watched a jogger sweat his way down the street, and lit a cigarette, reminding myself that I had better make sure to bury the ash and the butt.

Only hours before, I had finished the last of my preparation for this extraordinary assignment-a one-week interview with Dr. Michael Crichton-by reading his Master’s Thesis in anthropology.  The thesis explored the possible relevance between the size of the brain and other physical parts in man and animal against IQ and ability, demonstrating that a popular racist theory of the time-that the Egyptians were descended from Europeans, not Africans, since Africans could not have had the brain capacity to build such a great civilization-could not stand up to scientific examination.  The thesis included a photo of a male Jew’s nose being measured by calipers. I had read six million words of Michael’s work, including twelve drafts of Jurassic Park.  The first several of those used the children as the major protagonists, that being what Michael truly wished to write. Nobody had told me to read everything, but I was almost as OCD as Dr. Crichton.  Turned out to be a good thing, since I was quizzed mercilessly before he accepted me as worthy of doing the work I had set out to do.

Judging by the exterior of the house, this was to be a less-than-exciting week.  There was no flower to be seen, no name above the mail slot.  The grass was so well trimmed it looked as if the blades had been measured to make certain they were all the same height.

It all looked so ordinary that it felt institutional.

Half an hour into my wait, a car drove up.  My heart bounced, but three women climbed out. They introduced themselves as his staff.  One offered me a cup of coffee, which I gladly accepted.  She brought it outside along with her own and lit a cigarette. “No lectures,” she said.

I lit one of my own.

“How long you hoping to be around?” she asked.

Hoping? A strange choice of words, I thought, and said, “All week, early morning until dinnertime.”

She choked on a mouthful of coffee.  The other two women came out to see if there was a problem.

“This poor young woman thinks she’s going to interview Michael all day, every day, for a week.  Anyone for odds?” She looked at me with pity in her eyes.  “Twenty minutes is his max, Girl.  You’ll either run out in tears or he’ll get busy or bored and tell you to leave.”

“Oh well.” I dug a small grave for my butt. As long as I could ask him about the calipers and the weak endings and the lack of interest in characterization, my homework would have been worthwhile.

An SUV drove up to the house and parked.  The girl with me whispered good luck and made a rapid departure as Michael Crichton strode toward me.  He was six foot nine; I’m five two on a good day. I reminded myself that intimidation was not an option.

“You’re early,” he said.

I stood up. My nose was on line with his belly button. “One of my greatest failings,” I said.

He smiled.  For one, fleeting moment, he looked like a little boy. I would learn that he doled out smiles like bonuses. Most of the time his body language was arrogant and said, “I’m a big man, rich and famous.”

We entered the house. Like the garden, it was perfect, neat, spare. I sat down in the corner of a large, expensive leather sofa and placed my microcassette recorder between us. He took an armchair and stretched his legs along the coffee table. His feet made it perfectly to the end.

“How much of my work have you read?” he asked.

“All of it.”

“Really?”

The tone of his voice annoyed me.

“Yes,” I said. “Really.”

He began to grill me, in true professorial mode.

“Which one did you like most.”

“Travels.”

He looked surprised. “Why?”

“Because it’s the only one written in your true voice and because I’m a gypsy.”

Without further comment, he said, “Let’s get started.”

I hesitated.  He looked annoyed.

“I’d like to talk for a while first,” I said, trying not to sound as nervous as I felt.

“I’m a busy man,” he said. “Don’t waste my time.”

Was I closing in on twenty minutes? I glanced at my watch. “That’s more likely to happen if we don’t talk first,” I said.

A week later, we closed up shop.  I’d been presenting drafts daily. The big man was happy enough to send me flowers in ICU, where I lay after 7 days and nights of work. He said he looked forward to doing updates every few years, and then he took off for Hawaii.

Clearly, given where this book ends, the updates never happened. His life became additionally complicated by lawsuits, a divorce and remarriage, and a move to New York. He dealt with the book and movie sequels of Jurassic Park and with ER, and was increasingly involved with the Press as his novels began to deal with major political issues. As for our book, it had an ISBN number and was in the catalogue, but there was always something that stopped the process from reaching completion.

He returned to Los Angeles, remarried, was the victim of a home invasion in the little sterile house where we’d worked. The years passed, the wall around him, literally and figuratively, grew higher.

Only those closest to him knew that he was dying.

I hope, wherever he is, he’s writing Travels II.

–30–

I’m a bit late getting this post done this month as I had intended to include a video I had received from a cousin of mine who has MS. Many of you have probably seen the video in the time that it’s circulated the Internet. It shows three Chinese dancers, each of whom is missing at least one limb. The video isn’t about how sad it is that these dancers have lost limbs, but about the beauty they make dancing as they are.

Also, every year an old friend of mine sends me a calendar from the Foot and Mouth Painters. I don’t think it requires much explanation to know what that calendar contains.

Previously here on Storytellers Unplugged, I’ve mentioned some of the other charities I support, such as Half The Sky, where the wonderful Jenny Bowen and her staff work tirelessly to help the young orphans of China, mostly girls; or Plan International that helps children and their communities in poor areas all over the world. When I feel sorry for myself, I stop and write a letter to one of my foster daughters in Africa whom I support through Plan, or to Jenny Bowen to thank her for the work she does. Sometimes I write to old writer friends who are often forgotten in the rush of life.

The point I’m making, if you haven’t picked up on it, is that I try not to dwell on my own problems, as hard as that may be when your hands hurt just trying to tear the toilet paper off the roll. When I feel sorry for myself, I remember those who have it worse and yet go on. That allows me to go on.

So, hopefully, in the new year, when you feel your limitations pounding on you, instead of feeling sorry for yourself, you will do as the dancers I mentioned at the beginning have done and use what you have to make something beautiful.

I hope you’ve all had joyous holidays and let’s have a wonderful new year.

By Janet Berliner

In November I promised more of STONES. Here it is. Happy Hannumas. –Janet

My half-brother, David, whom I have yet to meet in person, was for some years a member of Ha-Mosad le-Modi’in u-le-Tafkidim Meyuhadim, The Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations better known as simply Mosad. Mosad is one of several agencies responsible for intelligence collection, counter-terrorism and covert action in Israel.

My only contribution can be with words.

From Israel, I travelled to Berlin to visit my mother, who was at that time working for Die Mahnung (The Warning), the newspaper arm of the League of the Persecuted of the Nazi Regime. Through them, the search for survivors continues, as does the vigilance against anti-semitism. This continuing campaign rests mostly in the hands of an incredible elderly woman, Dr. Rehfeld Waltraud, herself not a Jew but a lifelong fighter against prejudice and racial injustice. In the newspaper’s small offices in a prewar building on Mommsenstrasse, the battle against Who Cares and It Never Happened goes on. A week later, my mother attended a religious service at the rebuilt temple in Oranienburg, near the first of the forced labor camps. While she was at that service, here in the United States where all races should be united against bigotry, Reverend Farrakahn was televised spewing hatred at the Jews.

Then the Wall between East and West Berlin came down and the world celebrated. I wanted to walk the few blocks to the Kuferstendamm and witness the partying, but my mother was adamant. I was to stay in the flat with her, door locked against intruders.

“Ich bin der einzige Jude in diesem GebŠude,” she said, as if I didn’t know she was the only Jew in the building. What I didn’t know was why that was especially significant that evening.

“When the people in the building are angry,” she said,

“they turn on me.”

She was right; I had seen them do it and she was right, too, about their anger. The East Germans were already claiming reparations, pensions, and medical care, all of which would come out of the pockets of the West Berliners. The Westerners were claiming family property in the East, which took up the time of the courts. The cost of freedom for the East Germans was high and elderly West Berliners were the ones who were going to suffer for it.

Soon after returning to America, I received a letter from my brother David who was living in a small town not far from Vienna. He had become an antique dealer, and through his business had come into possession of the collected volumes of circulars (Rundschrieben) sent to banks and bank officers ordering the seizures of Jewish property and money. These circulars include propaganda informing the bank officers how the seizures will ensure that Germany controls the finances of the world and explaining step-by-step how and where to take the money and property and where to send it into hiding. They cover the years 1934-1944 and into April of 1945 with the exception of 1935, 1937, and 1938. According to the chief archivist at the Landesarchiv in Berlin, only a small portion of these documents exist in the German archives.

David had bought these papers with every penny he had plus loans from his bank. His life had been threatened because it was clear he intended to expose them, so it was foolish to make them public over there, on his own. The documents included minute details of the Austrian involvement. He has been in touch with the World Jewish Congress and with the Jerusalem Post, who had said they would help him by making the matter public–after he had–as they put it–the ear of someone in political power.

At that moment, Deputy Treasury Secretary Eizenstat was in Austria to assist in negotiations for reparations from the Austrian government and businesses. While the German government has been very open about its attempts to make restitution for its past, the Austrians have been much less accepting of responsibility.

Acting as my mouthpiece, my dear friend and agent Robert contacted the U.S. Holocaust Information offices and spoke with a Mr. Becker who works with Mr. Bindenagel, the director of the office. Bindenagel reported directly to Deputy Secretary Eizenstat. He promised to have somebody in Eizenstat’s party in Austria contact my brother the following day. Meanwhile, I stayed up practically around the clock translating what I could of the beaurocratic language in what were later to become ‘The Berliner Documents.’

The documents comprised thousands of pages. Here is one small excerpt:

(These papers are) described as documentation of the practices and activities of the National Socialists in Germany and occupied territories, specifically including complete archives of “Rundschreiben der Wirtschaftsgruppe Privates Bankgewerbe” for the years 1934, 1936, 1939-1944, and continuing through April 1945, plus additional documentation yet to be catalogued and described.

Permission to Seize Property

1) Under the Revocation of German Citizenship, the Interior Minister has come to an agreement with the Foreign Minister as published on 13 February, 1941 (German Reich Announcement number 38, 14 Feb. 1941) the laws governing the recall from Naturalization and the revocation of German Citizenship from 14 July, 1933 in combination with the proclamation concerning the revocation of German Citizenship and the recall of the recruitment to German Citizenship on the Eastern border from 11 July 1939, the below named sought after German Citizens and they have permission to lie in the seizure:

“And they have permission to lie in the seizure. “

This is an official order to locate and capture the listed people and seize their belongings and assets, through whatever means necessary.

History knows the Nazi Terror as a racist, nationalistic assault on Jews and Gypsies. The purpose behind the attacks, we are told, was to purify Germany and the world. But was that the sole reason?

Very few people realize the extent of organization in the National Socialist regime. Only those who have been deeply involved in the study of its history realize that the banks were under strict Nazi control, and that they worked in concert with the Siechereitzpolizei (Security Police) to seize and redistribute the fortunes and possessions of Jews and others who were declared non-Germans. The National Socialists regularly sent circulars, Rundschreiben, to the officers of banks in Germany and German controlled territories listing the names, addresses, dates of birth, and other pertinent information about people who had been declared non-German. The banks were ordered to seize and transfer the assets of these people for the good of the Reich, or at least the good of the members of the German Economic Committee.

Until recently, only a small proportion of these documents were known to have survived. The banks were not supposed to save them. However, a cache including the complete archives of these circulars for the years 1934, 1936, and 1939 through April 1945 surfaced. The story these archives tell is not one of racial hatred, but of massive thievery and greed hidden behind the trappings of nationalism. Among other additions to history’s view of the Nazis, the circulars give detailed instructions on how the Hitler Youth leaders should encourage their young members to start savings accounts at the banks, and how the banks should explain to those same children why that money was taken and given to them, i.e., for the greater glory of the Reich.

I did everything I could to raise interest and consciousness, including handing the papers to Geraldo Rivera’s assistant and talking to Geraldo himself about them when he was here in Vegas, doing a poker gig. Nobody gave enough of a damn to want to learn more or help to make them public.

As a last resort, assisted by my Robert and David, I made contact with a Dr. Dettmer of the Landesarchiv. Talk at the time was that Saur Verlag should publish the volumes (+2,000 pages each), then the Landesarchiv acquire the originals. Dr. Juergen Matthaus, a renowned archivist, was sent by the Holocaust Museum in DC to examine the documents.

David’s search for these documents had taken twelve years. By then, I had been involved for two years.

In the end, K.G Saur Verlag put the papers on microfiche and printed a few copies, one for David and another for Yad Vashem, to whom we donated the information on behalf of the Berliner family.

But wait, there’s more.

During the course of his digging, David found a last will and testament recorded by Paul Berliner, one of our father’s brothers. The will left everything he had to be shared equally by his brothers or their progeny. At the time he wrote the will, he owned a large clothing factory in Berlin. In 1939, the Nazis took the factory and everything in it.

Eleven years ago, at this writing, David applied to the German government for reparations. They told him what documentation he needed. No matter what he gave them–my birth certificate, our father’s birth certificate, a lock of my hair–it was never enough.

Last week we were told that probably, in a few months, we would be told what money we would get and when.

Unless we die first.

It boggles the mind to think of how many Jews are being treated in this manner. Now. In the year 2006. As for how much we’ll get, if and when we’ll get it, that’s anybody’s guess.

So to anybody who says, “Things have changed,” I say this: Not all that much.

Not even here, in Las Vegas.

Recently, I (a 5’2″ weakling in a wheelchair) told a 6’2″ truck driver that he would have to stop making racial slurs–in this case against Mexicans–or see me in the parking lot. So what if he beat me to a pulp; the point would have been made.

My challenge stopped the man’s mouth but the incident proved to me again that the battle against the worst of the human spirit is not over. And since that is so, it becomes clear what we must do. While we must not stop talking and writing and making films, we must also be brave enough to make acts of injustice accessible by way of the new mechanics…be it by way of internet and CD-Rom, tours of the Museum of Tolerance….

We must watch and weep.

We must read and learn.

And we must make sure that it never happens again.

Let’s see if we can do that this coming year.

by Janet Berliner

A few months ago, I wrote about the art of interviews and the fun of doing profiles. One of the sub-sets of my essay was pointing out that some of the best interviews are arrived at opportunistically. You see or meet someone famous, introduce yourself, and jump right in.

The worst that can happen is that you’re rejected, which is more good practice for the vicissitudes of writing; the best is interviewing someone fascinating and ending up with a publication, a byline, and a check.

In that first blog, I included an opportunistic interview I’d done with Marion Maley, Walt Disney’s Birdsinger. I got so many positive responses that I thought I’d throw another one at you.

The day I interviewed Ray Bradbury, at a Chinese restaurant in Santa Cruz, California, he introduced me to Joseph Mugnaini, artist, filmmaker, teacher, writer. Joseph, Ray told me, was a special man whose friendship and work had long been a part his life.

I quickly discovered that Joe had an intensity that rivalled Ray’s, and a wonderful sense of the absurd. When he offered the information that Heinlein had his place in Santa Cruz electronically protected, making him a prisoner every time the electricity went off. This he called “…a wonderful Science Fiction irony.”

At that moment, I determined to interview him.

Joe declared himself perfectly willing to do an interview. He told me his optimum venue was cocktail hour at the Crow’s Nest in Santa Cruz and that day would be fine. The sky was darkening and the boats in the harbour below were tugging at their moorings when I got there and sat down opposite Joe at a table with a view. He tipped his wide-brimmed cowboy hat, raised the first of many glasses, and toasted decadence. Then grinning, exposing the space where teeth should be, he placed his hand on my knee.

“Anytime I see something pretty I have to touch it. But rest easy. I’ve forgotten why it feels so good and what I’m supposed to do with it,” he said.

The man was seventy-seven years old, craggy as Red Rock Mountain, and irresistible.

Who, you may well be asking, is Joseph Mugnaini? Here’s a quick Vita.

Joseph Mugnaini was best known for his illustrations of The Martian Chronicles and other Bradbury ventures. He taught at Los Angeles’ Otis Institute of Art at Parsons College and had written three art textbooks. The film “Icarus” by Ray Bradbury, with artwork and animation by Mugnaini, was nominated for an Academy Award and won the Golden Eagle Award. Mugnaini had also illustrated Ben Hur, The Time Machine, War of the Worlds, and numerous other books. He had been the recipient of numerous awards. His work was represented in many public collections, including the Smithsonian Institution and the Library of Congress. At the time of the interview, he was working with Bradbury on a prime-time TV series about the Smithsonian and putting together a portfolio of lithographs, “Ten Views of the Moon.”

Back to the interview. Mugnaini’s enthusiasms were infectious. Sometimes senseless, often controversial, and always colored by expletives, his views spilled out into the atmosphere he loved best–booze, broads, and bar talk. Well past typical retirement age, he said he had no time left for sacred cows. He proved it by offering opinions on everything from politics to polemics, from astrology to art.

I asked him, “You obviously love women. Since we’re in California, how did you feel about Ferraro, for example, having presidential aspirations?”

“Around election time,” he responded, “I was in a restaurant on Highway 5 near Santa Rosa, California. There were a couple of guys wearing cowboy hats sitting in the back. One guy says, ‘My wife just bought a dog. I don’t like female dogs, and I don’t like Eye-talian bitches, so I’m going to call her Ferraro.’ I had to get up and walk out. There’s a lot of ignorance in this country.

“With all the power we have, we have a lot of parochialism, which is dangerous. I’m the kind of guy who will take a wasp out of my swimming pool because I like to save its life, but if you could take a politician and slice him up an inch at a time, man I’d love it, including our great president.”

I asked him about politics in the academic world.

“I don’t teach regularly anymore,” he said. “I don’t even go into the office. In fact, I only go to the john because I have to. If I could pee out the window, I would. I used to be head of the art department at Otis Parsons. I only survived because I had sharp teeth and bit back. Now I can keep out of politics and it’s kind of nice. I’m old enough now to be totally free. I don’t give a damn.”

Why, then, did he still teach?

“I learn a lot from my students,” he told me. “There’s a symbiotic relationship between teacher and student. You get great feedback from young people searching, searching, searching. The book I’ve been working on is made up of tapes, videotapes, and notes students made over years and years. Students don’t take down notes they don’t go along with, so in a way, it’s already edited; all I have to do is get it together.

“The new book’s about drawing. In my later years, I’ve found out that drawing is a pragmatic thing. It’s not just conceptual, it’s tactile. I’m not talking about emotions. I’m talking about the fingers. Just like you can actually feel the wetness of a brush,” he says as he picks up a napkin, “you can feel the dryness of this, and you’re conscious of space.

“You never see a guy like Segovia watching his fingers on a guitar. He doesn’t have to. His fingers are pure catalysts, transferring music from one space to another, from brain to heart to guitar. In art, you first have to separate concept from fine art and drawing if the whole is to make sense.

“People used to think drawing was a discipline you had to endure before you could paint masterpieces. That’s a lot of bull crap. Drawing means understanding form. It means being able to read form and space the way a good composer must understand the structure of music. All art, visual art, is abstract.”

“Is that true of commercial art, as well?” I asked.

“Yeah. The most realistic painting in the world depends entirely on how the space is handled. Like I tell people, if you could stand behind a guy like Van Gogh, aside from a lot of belching and farting, you would see the material going on the surface.

“When you look at the finished work, you’re still conscious of the act. If I throw an ink bottle over there and on the way it splashes, when people come in they will look at that, but what they will actually see is me throwing the bottle. The act itself is there.

“If I make a six-inch line on a blackboard with a ruler and chalk, I can tell someone in New York and say, ‘I just made a six-inch line, medium pressure, with a ruler,’ and it could be duplicated. But if I go like this,” he gestures wildly, “it could never be duplicated.

“If I had to copy a painting, it wouldn’t be a Van Gogh. Van Gogh couldn’t copy his own painting because it’s the artifact of an act. You’re conscious of the pressure of the brush, the anger or the excitement, and you can feel with your hands, and you don’t have to look. That’s what I’m writing about. It’s never been done before about art.”

“How would you relate your concepts about painting to writing?”

“Writing has to have rhythm. Writing can be done in many ways, but if you don’t have rhythm, the whole thing breaks down. As a matter of fact, a guy who had rhythm and made more sense of nonsense than I’ve ever known was Edward Lear. He had a sort of–what I call–emphatic language that grabs you by the balls.

“I did an experiment with a bunch of people for UFC at Idlewild–I do a workshop with them every year. I had a very large audience and on the blackboard I put down nonsensical terms. I put down ‘whoosh,’ ‘scatterjack,’ and ‘swish.’ Just wrote them down like that.

“And then, on the blackboard I made a thing with angles and then I took the chalk and I smoothed it out and a little farty kid identified the nonsensical term with a nonsensical image. Something that goes beyond what you really understand, but that’s hard to achieve. I listen to Bach, I must have counterpoint, too. A pas de deux has to use music without competing with it.”

I thought about that for a while. He ordered another drink. After it came, I asked him if what he had said was like working on a typewriter and using the hum of the machine as your music.

“Yes. The hum pushes you beyond your limitations. It gives you new boundaries, new tools. That’s what I mean when I talk about the limitation of art. If you are going to build a house of cards from here to there, you’d better either have a wide base, or big cards, or the goddamn thing will collapse.

“I take my students out in the park where there are a lot of vertical trees. I say, ‘Walk in there–what do you see?’ At first, they draw the landscape without any concept. I try to show them that they’re dealing with a bunch of verticals. Above their heads is the mass of leaves that the verticals are supporting.

“If they walked into a temple, an Egyptian temple, say, they’d have the same thing–vertical, vertical–and something above their heads. You are always enclosed somewhere. That is what influences you, not the goddamn trees, but the shape of things and the way they’re related to space.”

I asked him about Bradbury, comparing the writer’s overwhelming flow of creativity with the way some people drown themselves in religion. Mugnaini ignored the reference to his longtime friend and collaborator, preferring instead to tackle the question of religious zealotry.

“A couple of friends of mine I hadn’t seen for a long time cornered me once and tried to convert me to Christianity. I told them I was into that stuff a long time ago and didn’t need it.

“They kept on telling me what a great guy Jerry Falwell was and so forth. The only way I could get away from them was to shock the shit out of them. I told them I thought Jesus Christ was a fag. Not that I’m against Christianity in a humanistic way.”

I tried to steer the conversation away from the dangerous questions of religion to something more about his own background, asking him for a favorite story about one of his famous friends.

“There’s Noah Dietrich who wrote a book about Howard Hughes, how he designed the titty hanger and all that shit. Noah used to be on the water board for Los Angeles with the Chandlers, who started LA.

“A journalist I know, Mike Roberts, asked me to take him to see Noah, so I did. We went into the kitchen–Mary was there–and Mike wanted to know something about Howard Hughes. Noah began to talk about how the Chandlers took over San Fernando Valley and how they bought property and then got the water in so that they could make money on that property, because after all, the Chandlers started LA.

“They had the money, the railway system, everything else was theirs. So Mary said to get on the subject of Howard Hughes, but Noah kept on talking about the water project. A week later, another guy came up there, a screenwriter, and Noah told him the same story, and the film Chinatown came out of it. Remember that? And one of the characters, played by Houston, was called Noah. Did you see the film? Well, it’s right out of Noah Dietrich.”

Curious, I asked him what kind of guy Noah was.

“He was a charming sort of a guy, reactionary as hell, you know what I mean? He worked with Howard Hughes. And he supported Nixon. A sharp cat, a very sharp cat.”

We had started the interview talking about politics. I decided to ask him how he felt about what was currently happening in this country.

“When I went to vote, I looked at the sheet and I was the only Democrat. Before, you could never find a goddamn Republican. Now everybody’s a Republican.”

I asked him what he thought was going to happen in the ’99 election. His response was to tell me that he was not a fortune teller.

“Astrologists say–” I began.

“Astrology!” he interrupted, in the same tone as he might have said, ‘Bah, Humbug.’ “It’s a different kind of prejudice, judging people by the day they were born. Fads! I think I’ll start a fad where you read the future by the creases on people’s butts.”

A pretty waitress walked by. Joe Mugnaini raised his glass. “Talking about butts,” he said, and our conversation travelled away from anything I’d care to repeat.