Five Film Favorites: Newspapers/Periodicals

 by F.T. Rea

Legendary editor Ben Bradlee on the job
at the Washington Post.

This installment of Five Film Favorites offers a special challenge. It touches on two industries I've poured years of my time and toil into – the movie business and periodical publishing. It's also challenging because, from what I can tell, after the field is properly narrowed with some rules, the remaining list of outstanding flicks about newspapering isn't as long as one might expect.

Then again, as with the previous Five Film Favorites columns, the list of mine that follows isn't about declaring what I think are surely the five greatest films in a selected category. Instead, it's about good films that are favorites of mine. My favorites, today. Next week the list could change.

About those rules for this column: “Citizen Kane” (1941) isn't on my list of five this time. Here's why: Rather than focusing on Charles Foster Kane, the publisher or editor, etc., it's really more about Kane, the vain empire-builder, a driven man who must dominate all he surveys. That and the lonely Kane, who has a fetish for collecting objects that catch his eye. Although it has been one of my all-time favorite films since forever, this time around it just doesn't make the cut. Rules.

“The Parallax View” (1974) is well worth watching again. Nonetheless, it's more of a political thriller with a dauntless reporter for a protagonist. It's certainly not a look at the people who put out a newspaper and how they go about doing it. Accordingly, this means a ton of other movies, good and bad, are being ruled out for this list, since they rely too much on cliché-ridden variations of the independent-minded reporter acting like a dogged, badass detective.

So, in addition to being about films with interesting stories to tell about good characters, this list is about appreciating what it takes to assemble the staff, gather the facts, write and edit the copy on deadline, design the pages, sell the ads, run the presses and circulate the newspaper. 

In alphabetical order, here are my five favorite films about newspapers:

• “All the President's Men” (1976): Color. 138 minutes. Directed by Alan J. Pakula. Cast: Robert Redford, Dustin Hoffman, Hal Holbrook, Jason Robards, Jack Warden. Note: In covering a story about unusual burglars getting caught breaking into the Democratic Party's headquarters, which was in the Watergate building, Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward (Redford) and Carl Bernstein (Hoffman) find some loose ends. Following up, they begin an investigative journey that eventually hastens the collapse of the Nixon presidency.
  

• “Between the Lines” (1977): Color. 101 Minutes. Directed by Joan Micklin Silver. Cast: John Heard, Lindsay Crouse, Jeff Goldblum, Jill Eikenberry, Gwen Welles, Michael J. Pollard. Note: As the 1970s wound down, the alternative periodicals that had thrived in the late-'60s and early-'70s began to go out of style. And, the baby boomer staffers for such publications were getting older. This film reveals some of the challenges they faced and the anxiety they felt, as their time for being carefree and cool 20-somethings was running out.
  

• “Deadline U.S.A.” (1952): Black and white. 87 minutes. Directed by Richard Brooks. Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Ethel Barrymore, Kim Hunter, Ed Begley, Paul Stevens. Note: Bogart is the embattled editor of a large daily newspaper that's about to be sold off to tabloid-publishing interests expected to pull the plug on it. It's quite interesting to see that some of the same problems large newspapers have struggled with in the last 25 years of decline seem to go back much further than the age of the Internet. This film's noirish style and somewhat corny plot actually holds up pretty well.
  

• “Newspaperman:The Life and Times of Ben Bradlee” (2017): In this documentary black and white and color still images, as well as movie footage are presented. 90 minutes. Directed by John Maggio. Note: Among those seen and heard (as themselves) are: Ben Bradlee, Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward, Tom Brokaw, Sally Quinn, Jim Lehrer. Most folks are at least somewhat aware of Bradlee's pivotal role as the editor of the Washington Post during the Watergate scandal (See "All the President's Men"). However, Bradlee's life story, before and after that episode, is well worth knowing more about.
  

• “Spotlight” (2015): Color. 129 minutes. Directed by Tom McCarthy. Cast: Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Liev Schreiber, John Slattery, Stanley Tucci. Note: In 2001 investigating the Catholic Church for charges of facilitating the sexual abuse of children, many children – in Boston! – posed quite a problem for the Boston Globe. This view of the methodology of the editors and reporters doing their jobs properly is as good as it gets. The revelation of the powerful forces against them is brutally unsparing.
  

By the way, another rule I usually apply to movies selected to be on Five Film Favorites lists is that I must have seen the picture more than once. It's a good rule. Accordingly, I re-watched “Spotlight” again, just so I could include it. 

These five movies do a pretty good job of presenting moving pictures of inky newspaper people, on the job, publishing. Always on deadline! Assembling what Washington Post publisher Phil Graham liked to call, “The first rough draft of history.”

-- 30 --

"Catch and Kill," Indeed

"Catch and kill," indeed. 

Donald J. Trump's trial, the one currently underway in Manhattan, sure is casting a harsh light on the National Enquirer. Well, good. 

It's about time for us to take a good look at the overall damage that's being done by some of the sleazy practices of that periodical, as well as Fox News, and for that matter -- the whole "alternative facts," disinformation industry. 

The National Enquirer and Fox News have been among the most essential of the busy liars-for-hire who have been propping up Trump. Without his team of amoral propagandists amplifying his poor-pitiful-me fundraising messaging his influence shrivels. (Speaking of shriveling, Trump has looked to me like he's been doing just that, lately.)      

Anyway, isn't it high time for our society to question its continuing tolerance of lies everywhere in our midst? Especially lies posing as free speech. Consequently, it's a damn good time to recognize that disinformation is being used like a wrecking ball, to smash the very concept of truth into pieces. 

Of course, Trump, the MAGA boss, is the most prolific and meanspirited liar any of us has ever seen on the USA's political stage. It appears many of his followers get a kick out of his propensity to fling his words about, however his mood dictates. The darker the mood, the better. 

Moreover, with Trump's slicing and dicing of the truth, just as it is with his policies, cruelty is the essential stylistic factor. History tells us that Trump's fascist political forerunners in the 20th century also saw cruelty as an influential style to affect. 

Like Trump, back in their time, they used propaganda as a weapon to wage war on the traditional role that respect for the truth and honesty in dealings had played in holding democratic, rule of law societies together. 

In 2024, rather than hide their assaults on the truth, loyal MAGA cultists prefer to wear their sneering cynicism concerning the actual existence of truth on their chests like a colorful battle ribbon. 

For MAGA agents, the ribbon for a successful episode of "catch and kill," is much coveted, indeed. 

-- 30 --

The Jellypig

By F.T. Rea

Note from Rebus: The little painting to the right was the third in a series Rea did in 1983 to amuse his mischievous girlfriend. In each of them I got killed off in a different way. She told Rea I was a chump and deserved it.

In the summer of 1983, it was generally assumed that Rea had quit his job on a sudden whim. In truth, the mysterious process had been anything but sudden. 

The weird telephone piece below was made and photographed by Rea in that same summer. It's part of "the jellypig" story.

In 1997, feeling challenged by F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Crack-Up," Rea first attempted to write an account of his departure from the Biograph. As it required laying bare some of his troubles with what he calls "melancholia," it wasn't such an easy project to execute. This version of the story was put together in 2007. 

*

The Jellypig
By F.T. Rea

When one divines the presence of a specific person in connection with some unexplained occurrence, without any tangible evidence of their involvement, what real trust should one put in such raw instinct?

How much of a hunch is a flash of extraordinary perception? How much is imagination?

In a high contrast crisis, doubting a hunch could get somebody killed. But in everyday life’s ambiguous gray scale of propriety, how much can anyone afford to put at risk strictly on intuition? Hey, if you shoot a guy based on your gut feeling that he was about to kill someone else, with no corroborative evidence, you’re going to need a good lawyer.

The torturous story of why I left my longtime job as manager of the Biograph Theatre began with a ringing telephone on an Indian Summer afternoon in 1981 that I remember all too well. I put the Sunday newspaper aside to pick up the receiver and said, “Hello.”

There was no reply. At that moment there was no reason to think it was more than a wrong number or a malfunction on the line. Yet, after listening to a creepy silence for half a minute and repeating “hello” a few times, I sensed I knew the person at the other end of the line.

As I hung up that mysterious feeling was replaced by a flicker of a thought that named a specific person. Then the notion faded into a queasy sensation that made me go outside for some fresh air. For an instant I thought I knew something there was no plain way for me to know. Moreover, I didn’t want to know it.

My grandmother had told me a thousand times to never go against a hunch. Had I have discussed it with her she would have said a clear message from what she would have called my “inner voice” should always trump all else.

Instead of seeking her counsel I asked only myself: “Why would that person call me, to hang on the line and say nothing?” It made no sense. So, I tried to study the hunch, to examine its basis.

As I walked toward the closest bar, the Village, I was already caught in an undertow that would eventually carry my spirit far away from everything that had mattered to me.

Now I know that my grandmother understood something I was yet to learn -- a hunch is a bolt from the blue that cannot be gathered and investigated. It can’t be revisited like a conclusion. A true hunch can only be felt once.

Yet, for a number of reasons it was easier for me to view my inconvenient hunch as counterfeit. A few weeks later, by the time the calls had become routine, the whole concept of believing in hunches was on its way to the same place as beliefs in the Tooth Fairy and Heaven. A grown man, a man of reason, needed to rise above all such superstitions.

The caller never spoke. Usually, I hung up right away. Sometimes I’d listen as hard as I could for a while, trying to hear a telltale sound. The reader should note that telephone answering machines, while available then, were not yet cheap. Most people did not have one at this time.

After a haphazard year-and-a-half of one-night stands and such, following the break-up of my ten-year marriage, at this same time I had a new girlfriend. Tana was long-legged and sarcastic; she could be very distracting. She was a fine art major who waitressed part-time at one of the strip’s busiest saloons, the Jade Elephant. My apartment was just two blocks from there and she stayed over at my place about half the time, so she knew about the calls.

Tana was the only person who knew anything about it for a long time. She was sworn to secrecy. Mostly, I just let Tana distract me.

Quite sensibly, she urged me to contact the authorities, or at least to get an unlisted phone number. Offering no real explanation, I wasn’t comfortable with either option. Playing my cards close to the vest, I simply acted as if it didn’t really bother me. At this point she didn’t know about the hunch. We spent a lot of time riding our bicycles and playing Frisbee-golf.

As I rummage through my memory of this time period now the images are smeared and spooky. I stayed high more than before. For sure, I’ve forgotten a lot of it.

A few months later my nose was broken in a basketball game, and by pure coincidence I saw my grandmother on a stretcher at the hospital while I was there. Feeling weak, she had checked herself in. Nana died before dawn: March 5, 1982.

Later that morning, when I went to her apartment to see after her affairs, she had already packed everything up. She left notes on pieces of cardboard taped to furniture about her important papers and what to do with everything. A few days later my daughter and I sprinkled Nana's ashes into a creek in Orange County; it was a place she had played when she was a little girl.

Unmercifully, the stalking telephone calls became more frequent. Wherever I went, home, office, or someone else’s place, the phone would ring. Then there would be that same diabolical silence, no matter who answered.

Anxiety had become my familiar companion, although I didn’t know then to call it by that name. While I surely needed to do something decisive about the telephone problem, the energy just couldn’t be mustered.

If someone had told me I was sinking deeper and deeper into a major depression, well, I would have laughed it off -- I was too cocky to be depressed. In my view, then, depression was an affliction of people who were bored. It never occurred to me that pure confidence was leaking out of my psyche, spilling away forever.

Unfortunately, my narrow view of the problem centered around the mystery of who and why.

Part of the persona I had created and projected in my role as the Biograph’s manager was that everything came easily to me. I liked to hide any hard work or struggle from the public, even the staff at times. While I might have wrestled with the artwork for a Midnight Show handbill for days, I would act as if it had been dashed off in an hour.

Looking back on it now, I’d say that pose was part of a cool image I wanted to project for the theater, itself, too.

Living inside such a pretend world -- within a pretend world -- rather than seeing the debilitating effect the telephone monster was having on me, I saw only clues. My strategy was to outlast the caller, to close in like a hard-boiled movie sleuth without ever letting anyone know it was getting to me.

Since the calls started around the time I began seeing Tana, it seemed plausible it could have to do with her. Maybe an old boyfriend? Also, there was my own ex -- maybe one of her new squeezes? Maybe my rather eccentric brother (who died in 2005)? Beyond those obvious possibilities, I poured over the smallest details of each and every personal relationship.

As a theater manager, my movie detective training told me it had to be someone with a powerful grudge, so I created a list of prime suspects.

Misunderstandings with disgruntled former employees were combed through, rivals from various battles I’d fought over the years were considered. And, there were people I had hurt, out of just being careless. It became my habit to question the motives of those around me at every turn. In sly ways, they were all tested.

As I examined my history, searching through any details that could have set a grudge in motion, a new picture of Terry Rea began to emerge. I found reasons for guilt that had never occurred to me before. When I looked in the mirror, I began to see a different man, a self-centered phony.

It was as if I had discovered a secret, grotesque portrait of what was left of my soul, hanging in the attic, like Oscar Wilde’s character -- Dorian Gray.

Then my old yellow Volvo wagon was rifled. A few personal things were taken but they didn’t touch the stereo. When my office at the theater was burglarized, my glasses and a photograph of me were stolen. Of course, I saw those crimes as connected to the phone calls.

Tired of the ordeal and frustrated with me, Tana had been imploring me to have the calls traced. In late September, I finally agreed to do it. A woman who worked for the telephone company told me I had to keep a precise record of the times of all the calls, and I had to agree to prosecute the guilty party if he was discovered. Although it had been nearly a year, I was still holding the mystery close to me and hadn’t mentioned it to anyone at the theater.

As the telephone company’s pin register gadgetry soon revealed, there was good reason for that.

One way or another, I managed to get information out of the telephone company lady without actually getting on board with the police part of it. The bottom line was this -- there were two numbers on the list of traced calls that coincided with nearly all the calls on my record. One was a pay phone in Goochland County, the other was the Biograph’s number.

Several of those calls were placed from the theater, well after it had closed. After looking at the record of the work schedule from the previous weeks, one employee had worked the late shift on each night a call came from the building after hours. Not coincidentally, this same man was the only person who lived in Goochland, twenty miles away.

Most importantly, it was the same man revealed by my original hunch -- he was the projectionist at the Biograph. Now I refer to the culprit only as the “jellypig.”

Why jellypig?

Let’s just say he had a porcine, yet gelatinous way about him. I prefer to avoid using his real name because it suits me. People who are familiar with the cast of characters in this tangled story still know his name. That’s enough for me.

Nonetheless, while all the circumstantial evidence pointed at only one man the thought of wrongfully accusing a person of such a terrible thing was still unbearable to me.

So, I continued to stew in my own juices.

In November, I decided to move, to flee Grace Street for a new pad further downtown on Franklin Street. At a staff meeting, I revealed aspects of the stalking I had been enduring. I explained that for a while, I would not get a new home telephone. They were also told I had proof of who was actually behind the calls, but I said nothing about any of the calls having been made from the theater. Most importantly, I left them to guess at the villain’s identity.

Why?

Truth is, I don’t remember. Perhaps I was hoping to scare the jellypig and make him slink away.

Although the calls at my home ceased to be a problem, a week or so later a weird note was left in my car. Why that became the last straw I don’t know ... but it was.

The following afternoon, when no one else was in the building, I called the jellypig into my office. Sitting at my desk, I looked him in the eye and calmly lowered the boom. It was like living in a black and white B movie. None of it seemed real.

He looked scared and flatly denied it. So, I told him about the traced phone calls. That news deflated him; he collapsed into himself. The bulbous jellypig stared blankly at the floor. Then he insisted that someone ... somebody had to be framing him.

I was flabbergasted!

It hadn’t even occurred to me that he would simply lie in the face of such a strong case. To get him out of my sight I told him he had one day to come up with a better story, or the owners of the theater would be told and he’d be turned over to the cops. I can’t remember what I said would happen if he came clean. Most likely, I was still hoping he’d just go away.

Maybe I didn’t have a plan.

The problem with just firing the jellypig right on the spot was that replacing him wouldn’t be so easy. Since late-1980, the Biograph had been operating as a non-union house. Because of an ongoing dispute with the local operators union, I was hiring our projectionists directly off the street.

As it happened, our original projectionist developed a problem with the local union over some internal politics. Later, his rivals took over. They fought. He got steamed and walked out. Which prompted the union to tell me to bar him from the booth. Although I was uncomfortable going against the union, politically, I felt standing by the individual I had worked with for eight years was the right thing to do.

The union’s reaction was to pull its men off the job. This eventually led to me hiring the man who became the jellypig to be a back-up projectionist. For reasons I can’t recall, he was then at odds with the union, too, so he was willing to work at the Biograph in spite of the official boycott.

Subsequently, our full-time projectionist -- whose squabble had created the problem -- left to take a job with another theater that had also broken with the union. Which made it look like the whole town might follow our example and go non-union. Naturally, that put me in an even worse light with the union brass, who blamed me personally.

The jellypig seemed qualified to run the booth, so the easiest thing to do was promote him to full-time when the opening came about. Although I ’d never really checked up on him, like I usually did when I hired people, I put him in charge of the two projection booths.

So, if I fired the jellypig -- summarily and on the spot -- the Biograph didn’t have as many options as it should have, owing to the fact there was a very limited pool of qualified projectionists readily available to a non-union house. We had trained an usher to be backup, but he wasn’t ready to run the whole operation.

It seemed I had little choice but to get in touch with the union for a replacement. Since the theater was in a slump, it was a bad time for operating expenses to go up, and I expected the union bosses would go for some payback with a new contract.

The jellypig rushed into my office the next day with the big news -- he had solved the mystery! In a flurry, he claimed the person responsible for the calls was an old nemesis of his. It was an evil genius who was an electronics expert. He could fool the phone company’s machinery.

It seemed the jellypig's comic book villain had a long history of playing terrible dirty tricks on him, going back to their tortured childhood at the orphanage in Pittsburgh.

Oh brother!

Then, if that wasn’t bad enough, the jellypig told me the guilty one was doing it all for two reasons: One was simply to heap trouble onto the house of the jellypig, who had a wife and kids to support. The other was to hurt your narrator, directly ... since the evil genius knew all.

At this point the jellypig coughed up the breaking news that he had long been harboring a powerful carnal lust for me. Caught up in the moment, the jellypig began to sob, admitting it was all his fault -- he had foolishly shared the vital particulars of his secret craving with the evil one, himself.

OK. I know it makes no sense now, but as I listened to jellypig, along with disgust I began to feel something akin to pity. The selling jellypig assured me that he would do whatever it took to stop the evil genius from bothering me ever again. He begged me, literally on his knees, not to tell his wife or the theater’s owners about any of it.

My mind was reeling and my stomach had turned.

As I told the jellypig to leave the office and let me think, there's no doubt that I should have wondered which one of us was the craziest.

Not surprisingly, the tailspin the Biograph had gone into had become wilder. The theater was loosing money like it hadn’t in several years. As the winter came and went, my spirits sank steadily. It was like being paralyzed so slowly it was almost imperceptible.

During the spring, the two managing partners frequently brought up the subject of selling the Richmond Biograph, which scared me to no end.

In the meantime, the owners told me expenses had to be slashed drastically, meaning I had to let some people go. Who and how many was up to me, but salaries had to come in under a certain figure. So I was given a few days to come up with a new plan that had to eliminate at least one of the two guys who had been there the longest.

Shortly thereafter, I was at my desk talking on the phone to a close friend about how I was putting out feelers for another job, because the Biograph was for sale. Without thinking, I gave him my new, unlisted home phone number, which had been put in Tana’s name. When I hung up, it struck me the damned jellypig might have heard me, if his ear had been up to the common drywall between the booth and my office.

My home telephone rang several times that night.

That very night! It was pure hell. Mustering the coldblooded attitude to fire friends to cut costs wasn't within me.

Then there was this -- if I bowed out of the picture it would eliminate the biggest salary burden the theater had. By this point I had developed a couple of mysterious health problems. I literally lost my voice, due to a vocal cord problem.

Plus, the Biograph’s ability to negotiate with the local union would be less encumbered without me around. Good reasons for me to run away from 814 West Grace Street seemed everywhere I looked. With no plan of where I would end up, I suddenly decided to walk away from what I had once seen as the best job in the Fan District.

So I called the owners to tell them of my decision to leave; they also heard about the jellypig business for the first time. The boys in DeeCee were shocked and urged me to reconsider, to take a month off. They had hired me to manage the theater months before it opened it opened in 1972. We’d been through a lot together.

However, I’m sure they were actually quite torn with what to do with their floundering friend. Clearly, at that time I was not the resourceful problem solver I had been for many years. Beyond that, we could all see fashion was turning sharply against what had been a darling of the ‘70s popular culture -- repertory cinemas.

The future for the Biograph looked dicey no matter what I did. The owners agreed with me that the jellypig had to go ... as soon as possible. I remember mentioning that I had gotten him to promise to get psychiatric help in exchange for me not calling the police.

Without much of an explanation to anyone else, I announced to whoever cared that I was moving on and looking forward to a life of new adventures. Movie critic Carole Kass wrote a small article for the Richmond Times-Dispatch noting that I had “retired.”

Over lunch at Stella’s on Harrison St., soon after my barely explained departure from the Biograph, I told a former Biograph co-worker that maybe I had it all coming to me. Maybe the jellypig had just been an agent of karma. I speculated that perhaps my hubris and nonchalance had all but invited ruin.

She got so angry she walked out of the restaurant. At the time I couldn’t grasp what her reaction meant.

What I couldn’t explain to anyone, because I didn’t understand it myself, was that I just had no confidence. I didn’t know what to do next at any given moment. My gift of gab, such as it had been, was kaput. I stammered. In the middle of a sentence, I would lose my place ... questioning how to end it.

As the summer wore on it turned out the jellypig wasn’t quickly replaced in the Biograph’s booth, which galled me to no end. Apparently the owners were struggling with the union over a new contract.

That’s when I came up with the name “jellypig.” A few weeks after dropping my job like a hot potato I went by the theater to leave off a little drawing for him on the staff message board. It featured a cartoon character I created for the occasion -- the jellypig.

The character was a simple line drawing of a pig-like creature. He was depicted in a scene under a water line, chained to an anchor. He had little x’s for eyes. There were small bubbles coming from his head and drifting toward the water’s surface. The jellypig was almost smiling, he seemed unconcerned with his fate.

The caption read something like, “The jellypig takes a swim,” or “The jellypig’s day at the beach.” That began a short series of similar cartoons, all left off at the Biograph. The others portrayed a suffering jellypig in that same droll tone.

Yes, I did it to get into his head -- let him be scared, for a change.

Although I was no longer in charge of the theater, it was habit for me to have a say in it’s affairs. Which made for some awkward moments, because the jellypig cartoons weren’t funny to anybody but me. It put the new manager, Mike, who had been my assistant manager for five years, in an awkward position.

For about a year I had been doing a Thursday afternoon show on a semi-underground radio station called Color Radio. As a record played, from the studio I spoke on the phone with the jellypig. He was at work. I don’t recall what precipitated the conversation. Anyway, he told me he had blown off the notion of professional counseling. I warned him that he was breaking his bargain. He went on to say that he didn’t need any help, but that maybe I did.

The jellypig revealed to me that he resented the way I had treated him for a long time -- deliberately excluding him from much of the social scene at the theater. He complained bitterly, saying I had stood in the way of his advancement. But in spite of the way I had tried to poison the owners’ minds against him ... eventually, he would convince them to let him manage the Biograph to save money.

For the first time it hit me -- the scheming jellypig’s entire effort had been a “Gaslight” treatment. All that time I’d been playing Ingrid Bergman to his Charles Boyer.

The anger from what I had allowed to happen welled up in that moment. I told the jellypig that after my radio shift ended, I was coming directly to the theater. If he was still there, I’d break both of his legs with a softball bat.

On my way to the Biograph I wondered again who, if anyone, on the staff might have known more about the jellypig's game than they had let on. When I got to the theater the jellypig had called in a replacement and vamoosed. We'll never know what would have happened had he been there.

Maybe I would have broken only one leg.

The terrified jellypig worked a couple more shifts in the booth after that day. Taking no chances, he brought in his children to be there with him, as human shields. Then, wisely, he split ... for good.

Which meant no more jellypig cartoons.

It took my run for a seat on City Council in the spring of 1984 to wrench loose from that unprecedented spell of melancholia. Blowing off my hunch on that first call probably bought me more trouble than any other single mistake I’ve ever made. Tana and I split up in the fall.

All these years later, I wonder if I heard something in that first call. Maybe it was a sound so faint I didn’t know I heard it; almost like subliminal suggestion. Perhaps it was the churning sound of the projection equipment. Although I don’t remember hearing it, it’s the best explanation -- short of parapsychology -- that makes any sense.

My dear grandmother’s advice to trust six-sense hunches now seems like good medicine. Put another way, it simply meant -- trust your own judgment. Believe in yourself. Which might be the best advice I could ever give my own grandchildren.

*

Note from Rebus: By the time the Biograph's pair of screens went dark in December of 1987 many art houses had already closed all over the country. The golden age for repertory cinemas was becoming a fading memory. Months behind on the rent, Richmond's Biograph was seized by its landlord and closed down forever. It was two months shy of its 16th anniversary. 

The building that once housed the Biograph is still there. Now it's the oldest building on the block.

All rights reserved by the author.

Remembering Roy Scherer on April 20th

Roy B. Scherer
(circa 2006)

Rory B. Scherer (1942-2023) was a man I knew and respected for over 50 years. According to Roy's wife, Sally Camp, he died peacefully last year, on December 8th. 

To be sure, Roy was a one-of-a-kind marvel. His many years of contributing to society in a positive way, as a friend indeed and a ready activist, are now rightfully seen as aspects of a remarkable legacy. 

Over our decades of friendship, Roy and I shared many a laugh. His Libertarian political philosophy and his keen sense of social justice were always at the heart of his dogged activism.

Longtime Virginia politicians, as well as veteran political reporters, were all familiar with Roy (pictured right, my photo) and his opinions, especially those opinions having to do with the legalization of marijuana. As he was Virginia's original registered lobbyist dedicated to that issue, it is particularly appropriate to remember Roy -- now, with a legal smile -- on April 20th. 

However, his activism touched other issues having to do with anyone's Constitutional rights. Whether or not I agreed with him on a particular issue, I knew Roy to be a thoughtful man. Moreover, he was a kind man whose consistent beliefs seemed to flow from his life experience. That, rather than some canned, party line sort of thinking.

Thus, it is totally fitting that the Commonwealth's Senate has remembered Roy with the following resolution: 

SENATE RESOLUTION NO. 126 

Offered March 4, 2024

WHEREAS, Roy Britton Scherer, a passionate advocate for the legalization of marijuana and a beloved husband and friend to many in the Richmond community, died on December 8, 2023; and

WHEREAS, Roy Scherer was born in Richmond, attended military schools in his youth, and ultimately graduated from the Miller School of Albemarle; and

WHEREAS, Roy Scherer served the nation as a member of the United States Air Force, then volunteered with numerous organizations in the pursuit of social justice and civil rights; and

WHEREAS, Roy Scherer formed Virginians for the Study of Marijuana Laws and was at the forefront of advocacy for the legalization of marijuana in the Commonwealth; and

WHEREAS, from 1985 to the time of his passing, Roy Scherer worked for Virginians Against Drug Violence, cultivating strong working relationships with government agencies, nonprofit organizations, and stakeholders; and

WHEREAS, Roy Scherer impressed colleagues and state officials alike with his expertise, analytical mind, unwavering convictions, and persistence; and

WHEREAS, Roy Scherer was a longtime member and volunteer of the Libertarian Party of Virginia, and a fixture of the Richmond community who touched countless lives through his kindness and generosity; and

WHEREAS, Roy Scherer will be fondly remembered and greatly missed by his wife of 20 years, Sally; and numerous other family members and friends; now, therefore, be it

RESOLVED, That the Senate of Virginia hereby note with great sadness the loss of Roy Britton Scherer; and, be it

RESOLVED FURTHER, That the Clerk of the Senate prepare a copy of this resolution for presentation to the family of Roy Britton Scherer as an expression of the Senate of Virginia’s respect for his memory.

*

Note: On May 11, 2024, commencing at 2 p.m., a Celebration of Roy Scherer's life party will take place at 529 High Street in Petersburg. For more information about this event click on this Facebook link. 

RIP, Roy Scherer.  

-- 30 -- 

Trump's Jailed Martyr Ploy

Hey now, reports out of Manhattan are saying, the judge thinks they have a jury seated for the Trump election-tampering case. Still, the reader may wonder, what about the damn trampled on gag order?

OK, it looks to me like Trump actually wants to spend a night, or two, a week at the most, in the hoosegow. Some safe form of jail. Let's say it's like being grounded in the special X-Presidents' Suite, perhaps somewhere in the courthouse ... with no telephone.

At this point, I expect data from a focus group has suggested to the Trump camp that the spectacle of jailing Trump, with him gushing perp-walk trash-talk, will goose the craziest elements of his base to take action, ASAP. Your guess is as good as mine what that might mean.

This Jailed Martyr Ploy episode, or something like it, would be a-made-to-order kick-off for Trump's election year campaign using anger and fear to motivate and direct his Brownshirt cells. Maybe to be totally Trumpy -- the shirt color should be goldenrod.

-- 30 --

Those Missing Briley Cards

Note: In June of 1984, Richmonders experienced an abrupt change in the way mainstream news was gathered and presented. A monster jailbreak story caused that to happen. Because of that change, I stumbled onto an offbeat gimmick in the world of self-publishing. This piece about that episode was first written in 1988 for publication in SLANT. For the online realm, I rewrote it in 2005. 

Today, I have mixed feeling about this story. Maybe the best thing I can say about it is that I ended up learning more than I bargained for. It certainly proved to me, once again, that regardless of the artist's intentions, viewers tend to decide for themselves what it means to them ... as I suppose they should.   

*

Having terrorized the town with a series of grisly murders five years before, on May 31, 1984, brothers Linwood and James Briley led what was then the largest death-row jailbreak in U.S. history. In all, six condemned men flew the coop by overpowering prison guards, donning the guards’ uniforms and creating a bogus bomb-scare to bamboozle their way out of Virginia’s supposedly escape-proof Mecklenburg Correctional Center.

While their four accomplices were rounded up quickly, the brothers Briley remained at large for 19 days. The FBI captured the duo at a picnic adjacent to the garage where they had found work in Philadelphia.

Linwood Briley was subsequently electrocuted in Richmond on Oct. 12, 1984; likewise, James Briley on Apr. 18, 1985.

While the Brileys were on the run the volume and intensity of the media coverage, both local and national, was unprecedented. During that manhunt the Brileys-mania that surrounded it led to stories about them being spotted, simultaneously, in various locations on the East Coast from North Carolina to Canada. 

My sense of it then was the depraved were being transformed into celebrities, so newspapers and television stations could sell lots of ads. Once they were on the lam, if it came to making a buck, it didn’t seem to matter anymore what the Brileys had done to be on death row. When I noticed kids in the Carytown area were playing chasing games and pretending to be the Brileys, well, that was just too damn much for me.

“OK,” I said to a familiar Power Corner Happy Hour group in the Texas-Wisconsin Border Cafe, “if the Briley brothers can be made into heroes, to sell tires and sofas on TV, how long will it be before they're on collectable cards, like baseball cards? (or words to that effect).” To illustrate my point I grabbed a couple of those Border logo-imprinted cardboard coasters from the bar and sketched quick examples on the backs, which got laughs.

* 

Later at home, I sat at my ancient drawing table (which I still have) and designed the series of cards. The next  day I did the inking. To avoid race humor entirely, I used a simple drawing style that assigned no race to the characters. The sense of humor employed was sardonic and droll. I decided to run off a hundred sets of eight cards each, which were put into small transparent plastic bags, with a piece of bubble gum included -- for audacity's sake. As a test, I figured to sell them for $1.50 per set and see just what would happen.

Traveling around to Fan District bars on my bicycle, it took about three days to sell out the first press-run from my olive drab backpack. New cards were designed, to expand the set to 14 cards. More sets were printed, more plastic bags, more bubble gum. 

A half-dozen locations began selling “The Brileys” on a consignment basis. Sales were boosted when the local press began doing stories on them. For about a week I was much-interviewed by local reporters and orders to buy card sets began coming in the mail from as far away as France. 

Reporters started calling me for easy quotes, to fill articles on death penalty issues. That I was opposed to the death penalty seemed to strike some of them as odd. Finding myself in a position to goose a story that was lampooning the overkill presentation of the same press corps that was interviewing me was fun. At first. 

In the midst of a TV interview, I announced that T-shirts commemorating the Brileys' 1984 Summer Tour were on the way. Yes, with T-shirts I was crossing a line, but I didn't see that then.

*

Apart from my political cartoon on cards, the hated Briley brothers’ chilling crime spree and subsequent escape inspired all sorts of lowbrow jokes, sick songs, and you-name-it, some of which did indeed fan the flames of racial hate in Virginia. Naively, I felt no connection to that scene. 

At least, not until a stop at the silk screen printer’s plant suddenly began to cast a new light on my fly-by-night popular culture project. Walking from the offices to the loading dock meant passing through a warehouse full of cardboard boxes, stacked to the ceiling. Suddenly, I was surrounded: Four or five young men closed in and cornered me.

Some of them, if not all, had box cutters in their hands; all of them were definitely Black. At that moment I felt Whiter than Ross Mackenzie (then the editorial page editor of the Richmond News Leader). Tension filled the air when their spokesman asked if I was the man behind those cards and T-shirts.

As it was not the first time I’d been subjected to questions about the cards, I promptly asked if any of them had seen the cards. Or, had they only heard about them? 

As I suspected, they hadn’t seen them. Luckily, I had a pack in my shirt pocket, which I took out and handed to the group’s leader. 

As he studied them, one by one, his cohorts looked over his shoulder. I carefully explained what my original motivation had been in creating the cartoons. No one laughed but the threatening spell was soon broken. I let them keep the cards.

Later on, I was in a drug store, restocking one of my dealers for the cards, when a White lady with blue hair approached me. She worked there and had seen the cards, which she found unfunny. 

The woman told me her husband was on the crew that had cleaned up the crime scenes after some of the murders. Then she said that if I was going to profit from it, I should be man enough to hear her out.

So, I did. She gave me specific details. It was mostly stuff I had known, or suspected, but the way she told it was brutal.

At this point the success of my absurd art project seemed to be turning sour. Then I got a call from a reporter asking me what I had to say about Linwood Briley having made some disparaging remarks about my cards. Well, I got peeved and asked the scribe what the hell anybody ought to care about what such a man has to say.

Like it or not, I had become a part of what I had been mocking in the first place, which I mentioned in an interview with a Washington Post reporter writing about the phenomenon.

Rea says he designed the cards to deflate what he saw as the growing mythology of the Brileys, and to lampoon what he viewed as excessive media attention to their exploits. "The cards are deliberately provocative," he said. "I sensed that the Brileys, because of their derring-do, were becoming heroes. People wanted to know everything about them. We had two to three articles in the paper every day down here."

Rea drew the first cartoons for friends. When they found them amusing, he decided to market them at $1.50 a pack. "I'm a little uncomfortable that I'm becoming a part of the point I'm making," he said.

So I decided to withdraw the cards and T-shirts from the market. Today, without the context of the 1984 news stories being fresh, the humor aspect of the cards is somewhat arcane now. All the images were based on details from the aforementioned over-reported stories.

*

About three years later, I was having a beer in the Bamboo Cafe, standing at the bar at Happy Hour talking with friends. A middle-aged man who I didn’t know stepped my way. Furtively, he asked if I was the guy who “drew those Briley cards.”

After I said, “yes,” and introduced myself, he asked me a few frequently asked questions about the cards. Then he spoke in a hushed tone, saying something like, “What about those missing cards?”

“Missing cards?” I returned, feeling uncomfortable. “Are you asking why I skipped some numbers?

He nodded and reached in his shirt pocket to pull out a full set of The Brileys, with the cards still in the original plastic bag. Wanting to end the conversation quickly -- that he had the cards with him was way too strange for me -- I told him the simple truth with no jokes: “OK. First, I wanted to imply there was a vast series out there, without having to create it. Then, I wanted the viewer to maybe imagine for himself what the other cards might be.”

The collector put the cards back in his pocket. He stepped away, obviously disappointed with my easy answer, which gave him no dripping red meat to savor. As I remember it, he just walked away and didn't say anything else. 

That was fine with me.

 

Bottom line: Sometimes, like that night in the Bamboo, it seems the plain truth is of little use to inquiring minds. Which, is always a good lesson to learn, again. 

-- 30 --

What Did Not Happen

When there’s a tragedy, to do with a school shooting, sometimes memories of my own high school days pop up. In the mid-‘60s, in my crowd, we were so reckless with drinking, fist-fighting and driving our cars like fools, it’s hard to believe more of us didn’t meet the Grim Reaper in those days. 

Still, it was a safer time in some ways, in that dangerous drugs and lethal weapons were not yet on the list of risks my baby boomer age group routinely faced in its teenage years. Whatever street drug consumption was going on around Thomas Jefferson High School, when I was there in the mid-'60s was not on my radar. 

The first time I was offered marijuana was shortly after high school. That first time I turned it down...

By the time my daughter, Katey, was in high school two decades later, the culture had changed quite a bit. By then exotic fire arms and a potpourri of mind-bending drugs had become widely available, surely available to anyone with much of a desire to possess them, including kids. 

Speaking of attractive dangers for kids, one particular episode from my daughter’s high school years stands out as a time when something awful could have happened ... but didn't. 

The set up for a tragedy was certainly present. However, this time good luck prevailed.

Katey went to Open High, then situated at 00 Clay Street, in Richmond's Jackson Ward. At Open the students were encouraged to take a wide range of classes held in various locations. Some of those classes were taught by lay teachers. 

Please note: As Katey received a good education at Open, the reader should not take it that any put-down of the school, itself, is intended with the telling of this story.

Anyway, a few blocks from the school’s downtown headquarters, there was a large, rather run down, warehouse-like building that was being rented out by-the-room as cheap housing, art studio space, and whatnot…

At this time, I was still somewhat plugged into the mid-town, artsy night life scene in town. So when colorful stories emanating from parties that had taken place in the aforementioned building began to circulate, they easily found their way to my ear. In that process, I found that my 15-year-old daughter had been seen at one of those parties. 

When I inquired discreetly to learn more about the situation, my attention was soon drawn to a particular group that had been congregating in one of the building’s larger rooms. Apparently, the group saw themselves as members of a “philosophy club.” The club was headed up by a big-haired character who drove a cab. He also had a gig teaching an elective philosophy class at Open High. And, the class met regularly in the leader’s pad in the aforementioned building. 

From what I could gather, his place had become something of an anytime hangout for a certain group of precocious teenagers. To learn more, I went to see the principal of Open, ostensibly to ask her some questions about me teaching a film-appreciation class there. 

During our conversation, I inquired casually about the aforementioned philosophy class. Immediately, she became agitated. She asked me what I knew about that particular building and the so-called "philosophy club."

At that point I held back what I had heard. Instead, I asked her how much she knew about the club’s leader/teacher.

The worrisome details of what she blurted out next were similar to what I had been told. When I then confirmed that I had heard similar rumors the principal got more upset. She fretfully confided that she had already decided, earlier that day, to pull the plug on the edgy philosophy class.

While that was good news to me, I had to assume that move wouldn’t necessarily stop the most adventurous kids from continuing to hang out in that crumbling fortress, behind its locked doors. Which might include Katey. 

So I decided I needed to pay a call on the self-styled pedagogue, holed up in his command post. However, it turned out that simple task proved harder than it should have been. In two or three tries, no one answered my knock on the entrance door. 

Consequently, I left off a short message saying that I wanted to write an article about the club’s good work with alienated teenagers. The guy went for it and called me on the telephone. We set up a time for me to interview him.

First thing, the philosopher-in-chief gave me a tour of the huge, dungeon-like space. It had been years since I been inside that particular building; it struck me as worse looking than I had imagined. My tour guide assured me that most of the parents of the full members and novices were quite happy with him. He claimed they generally had faith that with his lessons he was truly connecting, in a positive way, with their hard-to-reach children. 

Meanwhile, I wondered how many of those parents had actually been inside the building, but I didn't want to tip my hand too soon. Yes, the youngsters partied sometimes, he admitted with a twisted smile. But it was all happening under his enlightened supervision. 

Furthermore, as part of their initiation into the club, the novices were also learning the value of hard work by gradually hauling off tons of the building’s ambient rubble. He boasted that the Libertarian in him then bartered their labor with the landlord, to pay his rent. 

His rent! 

That way he could channel more of the money the members raised, through their various projects, into video equipment and other such "philosophical" tools. By the time we got back to his desk, I had seen plenty and heard enough. Beyond that, no matter how alarmed, or not, one might have been about his convenient sense of morality, the dilapidated building itself, really was scary as all get-out.

In the guru’s point of view, it appeared he saw nothing intrinsically wrong with a creepy middle-aged man facilitating the corruption of 15-year-olds, all under the banner of legit schooling. 

Sensing the time was right, I interrupted his self-serving presentation. Abruptly, my tone changed. 

Borrowing from the hours of gangster movie footage I absorbed during my days as manager of the Biograph Theatre, I narrowed my eyes at the startled man, perhaps the way Humphrey Bogart or Robert Mitchem might look at a double-crosser. 

Standing up from my chair I explained to him that I wasn’t there to bring him trouble over whatever illegal shenanigans had already gone on in there. What I was there to say was that I did not want MY daughter in THAT building again. 

Without raising my voice, I said from that moment on, I would hold him -- "personally" -- accountable. Yes, he probably felt that the threat of bodily harm had just been implied. 

Satisfied that the speechless philosopher had gotten the message, I left directly. I certainly didn't want to stretch my tough guy impersonation too thin.

Later that day, I met with Katey to tell her about my visit to the warehouse. In so many words, I said I now had good reason to believe the philosophy club’s professor was a garden-variety child molester -- a sicko who was using access to drugs and the building’s tomb-like privacy to lure children away from all scrutiny.

While Katey objected to a few of my characterizations and interpretations, she couldn’t deny that some of it was probably accurate. Moreover, she was absolutely forbidden to go in the place again. Of course, I knew she could do as she pleased, so I hoped for the best.

Subsequently, when the warehouse fakir told his followers that Katey Rea must be kept out, well, some members took it to mean she was a squealer. That became a bigger problem when the school’s principal called the cops days later, to investigate the whole mess.

Because I had been spotted by club members, when I paid my courtesy call on their leader, they jumped to the conclusion that Katey’s father was the whistle-blower; she was blamed for their trouble. Which was mostly a bum rap, because we hadn't discussed it until after my visit to the philosopher's den, but the "squealer" label stuck for a while.

It wasn’t much longer before the philosophy club, itself, was 86ed from the warehouse. The cab-driver faded away. 

In the short run, Katey paid a bitter price for the clumsy moves her father made in his effort to protect her. She endured being ostracized from the cool kids group for a while. Not easy for a 15-year-old.

Still, we were all lucky. Some of those kids may have learned a lesson the hard way, but there were no funerals I know of. Katey learned firsthand something about the vagaries of in-crowd cliques. 

When this episode was unfolding, I was improvising. Doing what my instincts told me was right. But since it did cause Katey some trouble, I worried for a good while that I probably should have handled it differently. 

No doubt, some parents would have done nothing and hoped for the best. Others would have called the cops. Still others would have tried to be the boss and immediately changed their daughter's school. Knowing that any strategy I tried to impose on the situation could backfire, I followed my instincts to take decisive action, by moving  directly toward the source of the problem. 

Bottom line: OK, this piece mostly circles around imagining what bad things did not happen. Looking back on this story, I still think the solution wasn't worse than the problem was. 

I hope so.   

-- 30 --

Trump's Newfound Religiosity

Why has Donald Trump recently decided to become an unabashed, self-styled religious figure?

Well, to start with, that's where the believers can be found. Which means:

1. That's where the money is. Picture this: If Trump can get a coast-to-coast bunch of churchgoing Christians to peel off just half of what they're accustomed to donating to their church, and send it to him, on a weekly or monthly basis, that maneuver has the potential to be quite lucrative.

Although everybody knows Trump really, really wants/needs to be president, again, he has longed to have a never-ending fountain of money, in the worst way, for all of his life. It's possible Trump wants that fountain more than he wants back in the White House.

2. That's where the suckers are. If Trump thinks heroic WWII soldiers who were killed in battle in Europe were "suckers," just imagine what he thinks of the gullibility of people who have unflinching faith in Mother Mary's immaculate conception theory of how she became pregnant; what he thinks of the gullibility of people who believe that Jesus walked on water and that he died on the cross, then miraculously came back to life on Easter Sunday. Trump must figure he can convince a lot of those believers of almost any damn thing.

3. That's where the new voters are. Trump knows he needs new voters to replace some he has lost for various reasons. Death among them. But still, a certain small percentage of his supporters won't love his new religiosity strategy. So he especially wants to gather up millions of the young and baptized who are naïve enough, say, to purchase one of his Trump Bibles for only $59.99.

4. That's where the angry fools are. Trump needs to recruit a new army of crazies to do dirty work like his January 6th army did when called upon. So, as the year goes on, he needs a million angry fools who will sling violence at various assigned targets, on cue. Then, if caught, bank completely on receiving a presidential pardon.

5. Trump wants to fall back on being the one and only Godfather of the First Church of Trump, when he loses in November. Naturally, rather than situated at Mar-a-Lago, its palace/resort/headquarters will be at a beautiful offshore location yet to be determined.

Dear reader, I think you probably get my drift, so I won't go on stretching my point about Trump's new angle. Last thought: Never forget that in 2017 Trump, the wannabe fascist dictator, told us all just exactly where he still wants to take the country. Concerning the deadly riot in Charlottesville, Trump declared: "I think there is blame on both sides ... but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides."

*

-- Words and art by F.T. Rea.

-- 30 --