I'd like this to be a world where audiences always know the backstory for every artist. You can't tell the players without a program! The world has never been perfect as far as that goes, but there used to be more of an effort. Everyone wants to be in the Big Show in America, but the Big Show is all surface and not to be punctured. It's the nature of the media and materialism. It's a picture factory; it's not conducive to stopping and introducing you to complete human beings. In the majority of cases, frankly, that's no loss. There's little worth knowing beyond their role on the doctor show, or their perfectly nice hit song. But there are so many cases where the artist is an extraordinary person, and the public -- even a public that is well aware of that artist's best known work -- has nary a clue about the amazing depths that lie beneath.
I first knew Peter Coyote (Robert Peter Cohon, by. 1941) as a movie actor, often as a second leading man, the cop or the villain. He's not flashy, but his body of work is impressive. It includes the movies Southern Comfort (1981), E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982), Cross Creek (1983), Jagged Edge (1985), Outrageous Fortune (1987), Bitter Moon (1992), Buffalo Girls (1995), Sphere (1998), Patch Adams (1998), Erin Brockovich (2000), The Hebrew Hammer (2003), Return of the Living Dead (2005), The Comey Rule (2020), and about 150 other film and TV credits. He's got one of those dark, angular "character" faces that can read as handsome or homely depending how he is presented.
His chief asset, however is that VOICE. There's something really American sounding about it. It sounds decent and trustworthy and "heartland" (even though he is bi-coastal creature). There's a very pleasant honk to it, but it seems to come from his gut, and what he says connects. There's no accident to his success at this, I feel, and we'll get to why. But at any rate, narration has probably been his greatest professional success. He's become nearly ubiquitous in pop culture, in commercials and documentaries. He's narrated no fewer than 11 Ken Burns documentaries, among them The West (1996), The National Parks (2009), Prohibition (2011), The Dust Bowl (2012), The Roosevelts (2014), and The Vietnam War (2017). Among scores of others he also narrated such things as Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005), Summer of Love (2007) and at least a dozen National Geographic docs.
There is a telling preponderance of programs about war, corporate villainy, social justice, the sixties, and activism in his documentary work, and this is the clue that tips us off to the rich life that preceded Coyote's time in the movies, which he didn't break into it until he was about 40 years old. But there's an even earlier clue: his name. No one is named "Coyote"! Apparently we're not allowed to say "spirit animal" anymore, but, honestly, the man took a trip on peyote, had a deep spiritual experience, and identified in some profound way with this animal. He didn't do it glibly or lightly. He made that experience, influenced by Native American culture, a PERMANENT part of his life. Influenced by the Beats (in particular Gary Snyder), he also became a dedicated, practicing Zen Buddhist (indeed he is an ordained Zen priest -- again, a commitment, not something he dabbles in). These experiences transformed him. But they're not where he began.
Coyote's family was Jewish. He was born in NYC and raised in New Jersey. He studied to be a writer at Grinnell College in Iowa, where he played in a folk band called the Kittatiny Mountain Boys, and became an anti-nuke activist. In 1961, he and his protest group were invited by President Kennedy to come to the White House (unprecedented at the time) to state their case. (They actually met with National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy). Coyote was accepted into the prestigious Iowa Writers Workshop, but ended up doing his graduate work at San Francisco State University.
Obviously, arriving in San Francisco in the mid-60s puts Coyote in a very particular time and place. Already interested in performance he became involved with the San Francisco Mime Troupe starting around 1965, and toured with their famous production of The Minstrel Show, Civil Rights in a Cracker Barrel. Involvement in the Mime Troupe led him and colleagues like Emmett Grogan and Peter Berg and others to create the unique collective known as The Diggers, and telling you about THAT has been the secret agenda of this entire post.
The San Francisco Mime Troupe was already radical, but the Diggers went several orders of magnitude beyond that. The Diggers were named after an English Protestant movement of 1649-50 which experimented with common ownership of agricultural land. (Their experimental communities were broken up and their leaders were imprisoned, of course). The core of the San Francisco Diggers activities was still theatrical, but they moved beyond scripted plays in public spaces to full-on improvised political street theatre. They staged protest actions in masks and make-up, in the same atmosphere that gave the world the Bread and Puppet Theatre. They organized Happenings and events, and presented rock groups like Janis Joplin with Big Brother and the Holding Company, The Jefferson Airplane, and The Grateful Dead. They were influential on Abbie Hoffman and The Yippies. Their ethic of free performance was a reflection of their larger vision, which was about the abolition of money and materialism. They opened a Free Store, which gave away donated stuff; offered medical care at a free clinic; and served free (donated) food. They also put out publications, leaflets, newsletters with political writings and poetry, all free as well. There is an amazing Diggers website here.
Within a couple of years, The Diggers handed off their charitable activities to local churches, and migrated to various communes outside the city. After about a decade of this rural "drop out" lifestyle, Coyote returned to acting at the Magic Theatre in 1978, where he most famously created the role of Austin in the original production of Sam Shepard's True West. And this is what led him to the movies.
Coyote has also written numerous books: Sleeping Where I Fall: A Chronicle (1999), The Rainman's Third Cure: An Irregular Education (2015), Tongue of a Crow (2021), The Lone Ranger and Tonto Meet the Buddha: Masks, Meditation, and Improvised Play to Induce Liberated States (2021).
With Israel in flames (and Ukraine STILL in flames), I have little doubt this dedicated peace activist is not having his happiest birthday. I thank him however for his example of a life well-lived. His official website is here.
No comments:
Post a Comment