AND

The Story of Colors cover left and
the author, Subcomandante Marcos, right.
Cinco Puntos Press, a small press located in El Paso, Texas, was recently awarded a $15,000 grant from the National Endowment of the Arts to translate and publish an illustrated children's book titled The Story of Colors. Earlier this month, the grant was cancelled when William J Ivey, the chairman of the NEA learned that the author of the book is Subcamandante Marcos, the leader of the Zapatista guerrillas of southern Mexico. The application for the grant had passed sever levels of review required by the NEA over the last year and was just waiting for payment when Ivey received a call from a reporter at the NY Times regarding the book. The NEA said it was highly unusual for the chairman to step in at the last moment to override the decision of the review committees (one of which, the 26-member National Council on the Arts, includes 6 federal lawmakers) and added that this marks the first time that Ivey has rejected a grant.

The book, illustrated in full color by Domitila Dominguez, a Mexican artist, tells the story of how the gods grew bored with the grey colored universe and how they went about inventing the colors, one by one. The text includes elements that may be considered controversial to mainstream America. the story is told through the rebel leader, who sits down and lights his pipe while he waits to hear a tale from an Indian elder named Antonio. The book begins with the sentence, "The men and women were sleeping or they were making love, which is a nice way to become tired and then go to sleep." The accompanying illustration depicts a reclining naked woman in a sexual embrace with the figure of a male god.

There is no reference to the Zapatista cause in the book, and Ivey has stated that he was not concerned about the book's contents but that he feared that payments for the rights to the title might find their way to the Zapatista rebels. "I am very aware about disbusting taxpayer dollars for Americans' cultural life, and it became clear to me as chairman that this just wasn't right for the agency. It was an inappropriate use of government funds," he said.

Bobby Byrd, the publisher of Cinco Puntos Press, said that there was no risk of that happening, as Marcos does not believe in copyright and waived his rights upon the original publication, in Spanish, of the title by Colectivo Callejero located in Guadalajara, Mexico. The rights paid by Cinco Puntos would go to Colectivo Callejero for the use of the artwork.

On March 10th, the Lannan Foundation, a private foundation in Santa Fe, NM, agreed to give $15,000 to subsidize Cinco Puntos to publish the bilingual book.

Do you think the NEA should have cancelled the grant which would have enabled the publication of "The Story of Colors" in America?
 Yes
No

Send us any comments you have about this situation. Our favorites will be published in Evergreen.

Your name:

Your e-mail:
Q - Why do evergreens keep their leaves?

A - Evergreen trees do not keep their leaves indefinitely, but rather may grow new ones before the old ones fall, or keep some and drop others over a period of time.
Last week's question ...
Stanley Kubrick, a film master, has died at the age of 70. Kubrick, who was always trying to reshape the world of cinema, helped to push the boundries of American film. His films were full of psychological references and he constantly portrayed an intelligence rarely seen in mainstream cinema. At the time of his death, he was working on a film adaptation of an Arthur Schnitzler novel, called "Eyes Wide Shut." He will be greatly missed.

What is your favorite Stanley Kubrick film?

Unanimous - Dr. Strangelove

Our favorite memories/messages from our readers about Stanley Kubrick-

Sent by Joseph Bosch

About Stanley

Of all the directors I've known Stanley was the most umbilical with his audience. It was not only that he had a total grasp of image, story, performance, music, sound effects and editing. He knew more about these things than the accredited professionals in their fields. He even knew more about motion picture accounting than the bean counters but he had the naivete to think it would impress the producing conglomerates into trusting him. They know that there is no trusting an artist.

He is the only director I know who forced some poor assistant to view every frame of every print that was shipped to cinemas, and this ran to thousands of prints. He knew the larcenous nature of film labs and knew they would try to "bury a print in the release schedule" if they were not watched assiduously.

Much is made of his reclusiveness, but no fine director wants to take part in the ritual demanded by brown-nosing, treacherous interviewers and biographers. As soon as he could he told the leeches to get lost, as do we all when we can.

He had the usual tough time emerging from the swill industry and he did it, too, with craft and opportunism. Nabakov told me that Stanley never revealed his intention on LOLITA. Nabakov did the screenplay in awe of Stanley but only on seeing the completed film in his neighborhood cinema did he realize that Stanley had changed the age of the heroine from 12 years old to 16 or 17.

Stanley knew what a clunky actor Kirk was, with his dimple the most expressive part of his equipment. Yet he made SPARTACUS after PATHS OF GLORY and learned (oh! he learned!) how vain a star can be. Yea, verily unto the destruction of a movie!

When Stanley finally got the power to do his art the flowering of his genius became possible. No one has made a political comedy better than DR. STRANGELOVE. Only Chaplin is in his class.

It is true that he was short on the niceties with his crews. He was distracted by the need to control every nuance or see it probably go lousy.

He was devoted to his family with a ferocity rarely seen. I remember that when we were both making films in Ireland we both got death threats, his specifically directed at his children. We talked about it and agreed that it wasn't the IRA, it was some disappointed actor who dropped a few pence in a coin-box phone and played at being a terrorist. Stanley didn't want to find out. He shifted production of BARRY LYNDON overnight to Salisbury Plain.

We'd better see his like again or we're in bad shape.


Sent by Dana Cook

Arthur C. Clarke on front-projection

(...) He [Murray Leinster] developed many original ideas, and patented at least one of great ingenuity and commercial value. It was the "front-projection" system which enabled Stanley Kubrick to shoot __2001's__ "Dawn of Man" sequence in a genuine African location -- without leaving London. (...) I can still recall my amazement when Stanley first showed me the principle of front-projection in the MGM Studio at Elstree, just north of London. We stood at one end of the set, facing the huge screen of retro-reflective ("cat's-eye") material covering the far wall. Stanley lit a match -- and its image came straight back at us, its brilliance apparently undiminished after a journey of more than a hundred feet. (Elstree, England, 1960s)

(Source: Arthur C. Clarke, __Astounding Days: A Science Fictional Autobiography__ (New York: Bantam, 1990), p. 21.

Michael Caine on the source of his music

I also made friends with another fascinating man -- the American director Stanley Kubrick. He had settled in England and I often used to go to his place just outside Elstree Studios to watch movies in his home cinema. (...) When Stanley was making __2001:A Space Odyssey__ I clearly remember him choosing the music for the film. He had a ticket for the local library, where you could not only borrow books but take out gramophone records, too -- but only one at a time. This meant that Stanley would go to the library each day, come back with one record, listen to it, then start the whole process all over again. One day, he announced that he had found the right theme for the film, and it was called __Also sprach Zarathustra__ by Strauss. I had no idea what this sounded like, but now it is familiar to us all as the theme from __2001__, courtesy of Elstree public library. (Elstree, England, late 1960s)

(Source: Michael Caine, __What's It All About? : An Autobiography__ (New York: Turtle Bay Books / Random House, 1992), pp. 215-16.

Sent by Richard Baxstrom

Watching 'The Killing' and realizing that 'Reservoir Dogs' had already been made, only better.