I've had a bad day today, and nothing to do with the goal of this blog. Ted Kennedy died yesterday and with him goes an era, my era, my salad days as the saying goes, occurred during the Kennedy reign, I was in gym class when JFK was shot and I worked for Bobby in 1968 and now Ted, the last of the crew, is gone.
I was one of a few hundred college students who were shipped to Indiana to work for free for Bobby. If you saw Emilio Estevez's BOBBY, I was one of those young guys with sports coats and ties. My job was to register voters in the ghettos of Indianapolis and I will never forget the faces of the African Americans who opened their doors to this very Canadian white kid, how much they believed in him, how gracious they were, giving me food and water and coffee and on more than one occasion a beer or whatever they could find.
They loved him, loved the promise that the Kennedy's held for the little guy. They knew they were rich and spoiled, but that also meant they had to work harder for the poor and the children and the immigrants. And few families gave back as much as they did with the blood of three, Joe, Jack and Bobby.
The very reason I'm here in America, is because of Teddy and his immigration bills. Teddy in fact, has undoubtedly had more bills pass and has had more influences than any Senator or Congressman in the last 50 years.
Yeah, I know, they were womanizers (they didn't have to go to Argentina) and the mob helped them get elected and all the rest of that stuff, but nobody did as much for the average people as they did, and because they had so much, they felt it was their duty. Probably a Catholic thing, I still think that when things are going well, a voice inside me says "You're gonna die". Ah, Catholics.
So I trust you don't mind my little departure from movie making, after all, it's the end of a major part of my influences, my values and my hopes.
Okay, back to movie making.
