Cuban dissident Doctor Oscar Elias Biscet is a 2007 Presidential Medal of Freedom winner, a Nobel Prize nominee and former Amnesty International Prisoner of Conscience who was recently released from jail after spending over eight years in the gulags of the Castro brothers for his non-violent, pro-democracy, and pro-human rights activism. Before that internment, he had spent three years in the Castro’s prisons for those same activities. Since the press, both in the United States and internationally, largely ignores the struggles of Cuban dissidents against the Castro’s half-century totalitarian dictatorship, readers are hardly to blame if they’ve never heard of Dr. Biscet, but filmmaker Jordan Allott is working to change that. Jordan’s documentary about Dr. Biscet, “Oscar’s Cuba,” has done much to bring the plight of Dr. Biscet, and that of the Cuban people for whom he fights, to the attention of the world. I reviewed Oscar’s Cuba last March for Big Hollywood, and recently spoke to Jordan about Dr. Biscet.

—–

BIG HOLLYWOOD: Tell us about Dr. Biscet.

ALLOTT: Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet is President of the Lawton Foundation for Human Rights based in Havana, Cuba. He is a medical doctor and is considered by many to be Cuba’s leading opposition figure. Dr. Biscet was sentenced to 25 years in prison by the Castro regime for his non-violent promotion of human rights and democracy in Cuba. Oscar was recently released after spending about nine years in prison. Before this sentence, Dr. Biscet had spent three years in prison for a number of crimes including, Disrespect and Dishonoring National Symbols. Dr. Biscet only enjoyed 36 days of freedom in between these two unjust imprisonments.

BIG HOLLYWOOD: Have you spoken with Dr. Biscet, or with his wife, Elsa Morejon, since his release?

ALLOTT: I have not talked to Dr. Biscet directly since his release. I would like to give him some time to get adjusted to life outside of prison and I realize many people around the world are attempting to contact him. The day after his release Oscar watched our “Oscar’s Cuba” documentary and was very humbled by it. He liked the documentary very much. About six weeks ago I was able to have a quick three-minute phone conversation with Dr. Biscet from his prison outside Havana. During this conversation he sounded strong as he thanked the international community and human rights groups in the United States for the continued support. (more…)

Monday, November 22, marked the birth date of the great Hoagland Howard “Hoagy” Carmichael, 1899 – 1981. Born in Bloomington, Indiana, Hoagy wrote, or co-wrote, among many other tunes, “Georgia on My Mind,” “(Up a) Lazy River,” “Skylark,” the perennial amateur piano duet favorite “Heart and Soul” and of course, with lyricist Mitchell Parish, the immortal “Stardust.”

Artists as diverse as Bing Crosby, Willie Nelson, and John Coltrane have recorded “Stardust.” The haunting, jazz-tinged melody is rightly regarded as one of the high water marks of American popular song. It’s been said that one sign of a truly great song is that it can be successfully interpreted in a variety of styles, and while there is certainly no need to prove that “Stardust” is one of the all-time great popular tunes, I’d like to invite you to check out a couple of examples. Here are links to snippets of two of my favorite versions of this tune, one by Louis Armstrong from 1931, and the other, from 1957, by Nat “King” Cole. The two arrangements are wildly different, and the performers themselves, of course, formidable, yet Hoagy’s melody is the real star of both versions.

It will be of interest to Big Hollywood readers to know that in addition to being a genius songwriter, Hoagy Carmichael was also politically lucid. He was, from the time of his Indiana upbringing, a conservative Republican. Carmichael’s son Hoagy Bix once said of his father’s political views: (more…)

“We will obtain the liberty of the Cuban people.” — Doctor Oscar Elias Biscet

Filmmaker Jordan Allott’s documentary, “Oscar’s Cuba” paints a compelling portrait of Cuban dissident Oscar Elias Biscet, whom Armando Valladares, former Reagan administration Ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Commission and himself a former political prisoner of the Castro dictatorship, cites as the most important living figure in the struggle for Cuban liberty.

—–

In 1998 Doctor Biscet dared to publish a report in which he interviewed many Cuban mothers who testified that their infants had been born alive and then killed by the regime. The totalitarian regime that controls Cuba views problematic pregnancies or unhealthy infants as a threat to their much-touted low infant mortality rates. Cuba has the highest abortion rates in our hemisphere, with 6 in 10 pregnancies ending in abortion. Thanks to Dr Biscet, we now know that many of these abortions were not the choice of the mothers involved, that said abortions were coerced, and indeed that many of these infants were born alive…then terminated. When Dr. Biscet made this issue a matter of public record, he gave the regime a black eye. The regime was not going to let this go unpunished. Dr Biscet continued to speak out for human rights and democracy on the island, and he paid a price for it: in 1998 and 1999 he was arrested more than 20 times.

On March 18, 2003, seven years ago today, Dr Biscet was arrested along with more than 70 other dissidents in what has come to be called “la Primavera Negra,” the Black Spring of 2003.  He was sentenced to a 25-year sentence, which he is currently serving in the notorious Combinado del Este prison outside of Havana. Dr. Biscet spends much of his time in solitary confinement, incarcerated in an underground cell. Yet Biscet endures, and continues to defy the regime. (more…)

(more…)

People have been saying to me for months, “Joe, where’s Tío Chano?” Referring, of course, to my Uncle Luciano.

Well, the short answer is, I didn’t know. For as long as I have known Tío Chano, that is to say, for my entire life, Tío Chano has disappeared for months at a time. Nobody in the family knows where he goes, and we have learned not to ask.

At the end of August 2009 Tío Chano asked me for a ride to LAX. I dropped him off at the Tom Bradley International Terminal at 2:30 AM on August 30th. We heard nothing from him until less than a week ago. (more…)

Last Friday I got back from a hike and saw that my Uncle Luciano (we’ve always called him “Tío Chano”) had taken the car. He left me a note saying that he was going to go see “an Army movie.”

Somehow, I knew he was going to be disappointed.

Poor Tío Chano. He claims that he hates going to the movies, but he won’t stop going to them. My father recalls that the last time Tío Chano liked a movie without reservation was “Patton” in 1970.

I’m not buying it. I think Tío Chano secretly loves the movies, even when he despises them. Last weekend he saw “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” and even though he says it was terrible, he’s started reading our collection of “Harry Potter” books. He insists they’re ridiculous but he’s already halfway through the second book. (more…)

My Uncle Luciano (we call him Tío Chano) has been living with us for several months now and I’ve been worried about him. He spends all his time holed up in his room obsessing about politics and the state of the culture. I urged him recently to get out more, maybe see a movie or something. “What movie?” he asked. I answered offhandedly, “I don’t know, something escapist, like ‘Transformers 2.’” I lent him the keys to my car and off he went to the movies.

(more…)

For some strange reason, the image of Gary Cooper on that famous Solidarity poster popped into my head today. So I Googled it and was surprised to see that today is in fact the twentieth anniversary of the elections, and the successful Solidarity candidacy in those elections, that the poster promoted. The poster is doubly iconic, both because of its historical significance and because the image of Cooper from 1952’s “High Noon” was already iconic when the poster was produced. If you haven’t seen “High Noon,” by the way, go see it. Right now. And shame on you.

This being that anniversary, it’s a good day to recollect how much passion, honor, and gritty philosophy went into those old Westerns, how much they can still teach us today, and how much good the American Western has done not just for America, but for the world: the image of Cooper walking alone down that dusty black and white street is a reminder that sometimes when you do good, you have to do it alone. (more…)

I ask you, folks, wouldn’t this make a great movie:

Late 1950s, Toledo, Ohio, USA.

The Hero, rugged, blue-eyed, blonde-haired, is a searcher, misunderstood by family and friends. He is a freewheeling, Kerouacian type who in his twenties never kept a job or stayed in one place for long. He did a stint in the US Army: stationed in Japan, he went AWOL, got himself time in the brig and a dishonorable discharge. The Hero tried working on a ranch, scratch. Joined the circus. Nope, not a fit. Everywhere the Hero goes, he confronts the questions: Why am I here? What do I do? Now 30-ish, he needs a purpose in life.

The Hero

One day the Hero learns that another American, a close friend from his Army days, has been murdered by goons of the corrupt dictator of an island nation. The Hero heads down to the Island and joins the rebels to fight against the dictator that killed his buddy. For perhaps the first time in his life, the Hero finds someplace where he is needed, and where he can make a difference. He’s had freedom all his life and has not known what to do with it; he finally finds his purpose: helping others fight for their freedom. The Hero’s military training proves invaluable to the rebels, among whom he eventually rises to the rank of Comandante, the highest rank in the rebel army. He falls in love with, and marries, Olga, a lovely 22-year-old rebel who is as fiery and committed as he is, and they have two daughters. The rebels triumph over the dictator and at first the Hero and his wife are happy in their new life, but the leader of the rebels in due time reveals himself to be a worse dictator than the one who preceded him, turning to the far-right and establishing not just a new authoritarian dictatorship, but an out-and-out totalitarian dictatorship. (more…)

Unfortunately, when people recall Charles Hardin Holley, aka Buddy Holly, many think first of the plane crash in which he, the Big Bopper, and Richie Valens died, fifty years ago today. That’s a shame because Buddy’s music was about life, about living bigger than a Cadillac. Buddy’s Sound was not about death. Nor was Buddy about “raging against the machine.” Buddy said, “move over, give me the keys to that machine, I want to see how fast I can make it go.” Buddy’s music is a Yes, not a No. 

Perhaps more than any other fifties rock and roller, Buddy displayed a capacity for growth, for pushing the boundaries of The Sound. At the time of Buddy’s death he was living in New York City, married to a young woman born in San Juan, Puerto Rico and hanging out in coffeehouses, where he listened to beat poetry and flamenco guitar; at the same time he had booked a steel guitar player for the recording session that he didn’t survive to attend. Buddy was both growing in new directions and sinking his roots deeper into that fertile American earth from which The Sound had sprung. Who knows what great music this restless creative spirit would have brought forth in the sixties and seventies? Maybe in Heaven Buddy will play us all a new song. (more…)

“How I would like to rise to power just to unmask cowards and lackeys of every sort and squash their snouts in their own filth.”

Che Guevara, Bolivia, September 8, 1967.

“No rapport had been established with the locals…” Anderson, p. 722

As I said in part one of my review of Soderbergh’s “Che,” The film gives us no idea of what happened after the Cuban Revolutionary government took power. Quite a lot did happen. We all know about the Bay of Pigs invasion, which deserves its own four-hour movie, hopefully directed by someone other than Soderbergh. We also all know that hundreds of thousands of people left Cuba in the early 1960s. People have never stopped leaving.

What’s less known to outsiders is that under Castro’s command, the Cuban Revolution began, very early on, to eat its own. The highest rank in the Revolutionary army was then the rank of “Comandante.” Here’s what happened to a few Revolutionary Comandantes:  In October 1959, Comandante Huber Matos, who is omitted from this film, criticizes the influence of Communists in the Revolutionary Government, and tenders his resignation. He is arrested, and serves twenty years in prison, during which time he endures severe torture. The dashing Comandante Camilo Cienfuegos is killed in an airplane crash within a week of the arrest of Huber Matos. The wreckage has never been found. Matos, who along with Camilo flanks Fidel in the famous photographs of Fidel’s entry into Havana, is among many who have never accepted the plane crash story. In March of 1961, Comandante William Morgan, of Cleveland, Ohio, also omitted from this film, is arrested and executed.

(more…)

It would take sixteen hours to even begin to inventory the problems of Steven Soderbergh’s “Che,” a bad movie about a bad guy, the Argentine Ernesto “Che” Guevara. The  “Roadshow Edition” that I endured at the Nuart Theatre in Los Angeles, clocks in at 4 hrs, 23 minutes in length. The film is divided into two overlong parts, the first dealing with the Cuban Revolutionary War, the second dealing with Guevara’s Bolivian disaster.

An hour of this movie is tedious; four hours of it sends one into a coma deeper than that of Fidel himself. The guy sitting behind me at the Nuart who, judging from his intermission cell-phone conversation is an enthusiastic Che lover, snored during Che’s Bolivian martyrdom. So historical questions aside, does the movie succeed as entertainment? No. It bores.

Let me say some nice things about the film. There is some lovely cinematography. There are nifty opening graphics of a map pointing out the various provinces of Cuba, although when the graphics re-appear after intermission and proceed to point out every single country in South America, it feels like a fourth grade geography lesson. Soderbergh seems to think that his audience is composed of idiots. I’m finished being nice, by the way.

Benicio Del Toro, a talented actor, is miscast as Ernesto Guevara; he has none of the cocky swagger and sarcastic humor of the real Che. He looks chronically depressed throughout the film. No one would follow Del Toro’s Che, except to a pharmacy to make sure he refilled his Zoloft.

At times the other actors, who unlike Del Toro are portraying Cubans, don’t even seem remotely Cuban; at other times the attempts of these same actors to behave and sound Cubanazo, chico, are hokey and forced.

(more…)