Good-bye Mr. Kish

Ken Kish

Today, the last day on the job for The Macomb Daily's managing editor Ken Kish, has me feeling a tad melancholy and I've only been here for a few decades. 

Other reporters have been working with Kish since the days of black-ribbon typewriters and smoke-filled newsrooms.

"Oh, the memories I have of Kish," said features editor Debbie Komar, who started at the newspaper a year after Kish in June 1973. "The hours he spent on the phone talking to irate readers (and somewhere in the conversation there was always the phrase: 'I don't want to argue with you'; the stories of his days as company clerk in the Army; his oft-repeated recollection of a headline written at the Flint Journal about an automobile accident involving a topless dancer ('Bares 2, rams 10'). With the humor comes the spirit of a dedicated newsman, a generous human being, and someone to whom we could always turn, personally and professionally. The newsroom won't be the same."

He’s been at the helm for 42 years.

When I joined the crew at The Macomb Daily, I considered myself to be experienced, having worked my way through university as a reporter for a major weekly newspaper in Canada. From RCMP news and politics to the border patrol, agriculture and the rodeo circuit, I covered it. For extra pay and free film I also worked on the photo desk. After a week of filing news and listening to Kish's newsroom banter, I realized I had a lot to learn, and this was the place to do it.

Early on I covered features and did not report directly to Kish for assignments. Still, whenever I was anxious to cover something new - be it the courts or elections (U.S. elections were so much more exciting than what I was used to) he gave me a chance. It came with warnings, plenty, it seemed. But with every assignment completed to task and on deadline, the warnings lessened. Today, I no longer feel like a reporter under Kish but a colleague among others, such as political writer and columnist Chad Selweski who worked with Kish all of his 28 years at The Macomb Daily concurred. Kish always gave people a chance.

“I interviewed for the job with Kish and Kehetian (longtime editor/columnist Mitch Kehetian, also retired) and it did not go well. I was nervous. I didn’t sell myself,” Selweski said. “When I left, I thought for sure I had blown it. So, I took a big chance and called Kish later to tell him the interview may have been bad but I’m not good in those situations. Look at my clips and you’ll see I’m a good writer. Give me a chance. He took a chance, hired me, and was obviously pleased with the result. For many years he used to always tell that story about me calling back and convincing him to hire me.”

Kish is moving on with his life but left behind will be the quote file – containing many Kishisms. “When we first started having ‘Casual Fridays,’ none of us were quite sure what we could wear and what we couldn’t,” Selweski recalled. “Then, when it was taken one step further – wearing anything you wanted on election night – Maria (Chad’s wife) happened to stop by during one election night shift. Ken was wearing some kind of silky, velour exercise outfit (kind of like a running suit). Maria took one look at him and said, ‘Why is he wearing his pajamas?’”

That remark, of course, made the Quote File greatest hits for that year.

Funny moments like that help to get you through the serious side of covering news and days like 9/11, which I will remember forever. Not only because of the way it changed America and the world, but me. Within seconds of knowing it was no accident, Kish had a list of questions that people would want to know and had reporters assigned to answer them. He was the general and we were the troops, relying on his knowledge and direction.

As trying as the day was for me as a writer, it was nothing to what I felt as a mother. My first reaction was to get to my children, to their school. But, given the time to reach my husband and ensure that my family was safe, I was able to return to the task at hand.

That's the other reason I’ve enjoyed my work here at The Macomb Daily. I’ve had editors like Kish, who never made me choose between my job and my family. He was supportive in other ways too. When my mother passed away, I felt the need to write about it and he gave me the space, literally, for a column.

I don't know what Kish plans to do. What does a general do when he stops being a general? I'm sure given his experience and knowledge he’ll continue to share what he knows with this generation of greenhorns and perhaps learn something new from them.

How about a blog by Mr. Kish?

'Be Seated' for a good cause

Pull up a chair and learn more about “Be Seated Silent Auction” put on by the Older Persons Commission through Sept. 26. You can buy one-of-a-kind chairs and browse through a sale of artwork being sold at low prices.

“It’s a fundraiser for the art department here at OPC,” said Paula Bedsole, OPC art department programmer. “It helps to keep it (art classes) affordable and it helps to maintain all of the equipment. We have a very large art department.”

The department includes a pottery studio with several pottery wheels and kilns.

Proceeds from the auction of chairs created by area artists and the artwork donated by members of the community will help to maintain those artists’ tools.

 “We have to keep them in top-notch condition so the things they make turn out well,” Bedsole said. “But the main purpose of the fundraiser is to keep the cost of art classes – which range from pottery and lapidary (stone polishing) to silversmithing and quilting affordable (for the seniors at OPC).. We feature every fine art you can think of.”

There are approximately three dozen unique and oh-so-different chairs to bid on. Most of the chairs were designed by regional artists just for the event. At least one - a recliner fashioned from the seat of a 1994 Pontaic Bonneville SSE - has been donated to the cause. The chairs are on display at the OPC library through Sept. 26. Each one has a starting bid, but if someone falls in love with a chair – and does not wish to wait for the auction or risk losing to another bidder - there is a buy-it-now option available.  However, interested buyers can only do this between 8:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. Monday through Friday, when the OPC offices are open.

Bedsole, who came up with the idea for the event, said this is something she’s always had on the backburner and is hoping that it will be the first of many. So far it’s looking like it will become an annual event.

“We’ve had quite an outpouring from the community,” Bedsole said. “There are chairs for every taste. I think that’s what impressed.”

Also part of the event is a used art sale. This is already an annual event that attracts buyers from all over the state. The sale features a variety of second generation pieces – from Southwestern art and original oil paintings to limited edition prints and poster art. There is no admission charge to the sale, which caps off the fundraising events on Sept. 26. Items will be available for sale from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

“It’s a great shopping adventure,” Bedsole said. “The prices are affordable and they go away with something they like.”

The OPC is located at 650 Letica Drive in Rochester. For more information, call 248-656-1403.

The streets of Toronto are alive

It’s only day two of the Toronto International Film Festival and already almost 76 films have been shown. 

Some of them like “Twelve Years a Slave” left audiences speechless. 

Actor Chiwetel Ejiofor in a scene from 12 Years a Slave.

The film by director Steve McQueen is based on the true life story of Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a free black man from upstate New York who was kidnapped and sold into slavery in 1841 and finally freed in 1853. TIFF describes it as the story is a triumphant tale of one man’s courage and perseverance to reunite with his family that serves as an important historical and cultural marker in American history. The film also stars Michael Fassbender, Benedict Cumberbatch, Paul Dano, Garret Dillahunt, Paul Giamatti, Scoot McNairy, Lupita Nyong'o, Adepero Oduye, Sarah Paulson and Brad Pitt. 

Almost all of the cast members attended the premiere in Toronto.

“I came out just to see Brad Pitt,” said Eileen Randall of Toronto, who said she’s never missed a festival but always misses Pitt. “He’s been here in Toronto before and every year I miss him.”
 

Actor Brad Pitt arrives for the premiere of 12 Years a Slave at TIFF (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Nathan Denette)

“Not this year,” Randall mused.

Celebrity sightings are a big part of TIFF but once the stars leave the red carpets and enter the theater life at the festival resumes with people from all over the world – chatting in their native tongue about the films they saw or are waiting to see.

“It’s amazing. I heard three different languages in the same earshot,” said one TIFF visitor.

“It brings people together from different countries and you get to know them (while standing in line for tickets or waiting for the show to begin),” Randall said. “It also brings in revenue.”

 

One of the many street performers entertaining movie goers – is hoping for that to be true. “This is going to pay my way home,” said the guitar player from Calgary, nodding toward the case on the sidewalk filled with change.

It all starts in Toronto

The red carpets will roll out with tonight’s world premiere of Bill Condon’s “The Fifth Estate” officially kicking off the 38^th edition of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).

“The Fifth Estate” is a dramatic thriller and one of several TIFF selections based on real events spawned in the digital world.

Benedict Cumberbatch as Julian Assange in The Fifth Estate.

As outlined by TIFF the story begins as WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and his colleague Daniel Domscheit-Berg (Daniel Bruhl) team up to become underground watchdogs of the privileged and powerful. On a shoestring, they create a platform that allows whistleblowers to anonymously leak covert data, shining a light on the dark recesses of government secrets and corporate crimes. But when Assange and Berg gain access to the biggest trove of confidential intelligence documents in U.S. history, they battle each other and a defining question of modern time: what are the costs of keeping secrets in a free society – and what are the costs of exposing them?

 “We have a number of films dealing with the idea of living in an information society, what that means now. (In addition to the Fifth Estate), we have a documentary called “The Square,” about the Arab Spring and the Tahrir Square revolution and how much of that was about information – about Facebook and Twitter and YouTube,” said TIFF artistic director Cameron Bailey in a report by CBC News. “These things are now part of our lives. People are asking questions about having political change enacted through media, but also how information about us is held through governments, by authorities.”

Fifth Estate is expected to hit Detroit theaters just in time for Oscar contention.

And an Academy Award is possible for any one of the 146 features films making their world premiere in Toronto. “Every best picture winner since 2007 has played at TIFF, from “No Country for Old Men” to last year’s winner “Argo,” which was based on the CIA operation to rescue six Americans in Tehran during the U.S. hostage crisis in Iran in 1980. This year the story will return as the Canadian documentary, “Our Man in Tehran.”

Much of the buzz surrounding the heavyweights has to do with exposure to previous film festivals like Cannes and Sundance. Alffonso Cuaron’s space odyssey “Gravity,” starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney; Steve McQueen’s slavery epic “Twelve Years a Slave”; and Jason Reitman’s “Labor Day” to name a few.

Josh Brolin, Kate Winslet and Gattlin Griffith in a still from Labor Day.

“A lot of that (Oscar buzz) does begin in Toronto because our audience here has become known for having a good nose for quality films and finding films like ‘Slumdog Millionaire,’ ‘The King’s Speech,’ ‘Argo’ and ‘Silver Linings Playbook’ – even going back to ‘American Beauty’ in 1999,’ ” said Bailey. “I would hope that the attention is never limited to those films that might be in the horse race because there’s a lot more going on here.”

Just ask the cinephiles of last year’s festival who camped out in a line that snaked around a Toronto city block to get tickets for “This Is Not a film.” The clandestine documentary was shot partially on an iPhone and smuggled into France in a cake for a last-minute submission to Cannes. A feature by director Jafar Panahi, it depicts his day-to-day life while under house arrest in his Tehran, Iran, apartment. Panahi, who remains under house arrest while appealing his government’s sentence -- six years in prison and a 20 year ban from filmmaking – has a second film coming to TIFF, “Closed Curtain.” The lines are forming now for that one.

A scene from Closed Curtain.

As for the blockbusters headed for mainstream America this fall, we’ll have to wait and see. Chances are a great deal of them will be seen first in Toronto.

For more coverage of the Sept. 5-15 festival visit The Macomb Daily and The Daily Tribune

-- AP contributed to the report 

My interview with Elmore Leonard made me a fan

Macomb Daily file photo/David N. Posavetz

It is a sad day for writers, but also TV fans, readers and students – anyone who has been entertained by the words of Elmore Leonard. The Michigan native and crime novelist,  whose books have launched many Hollywood movie and TV series, died Tuesday morning at his home from complications of a stroke he suffered a few weeks ago.

When I met him three years ago he was two months shy of 85.

It was the inaugural year of the Elmore Leonard Literary Arts and Film Festival and I was granted an interview with the author -- although I don’t think he would have denied anyone a chat provided they were seriously interested in his work. 

Admittedly, I was excited to meet him. 

I considered the menagerie of characters that Leonard created over his nearly six decade writing career. If audiences were not being introduced to them through his books (44-and-counting) or novellas they are discovering them on the big screen. There was always some ambitious director or screenwriter plucking a villain or hero from Leonard’s circus of feisty true-to-life characters. His words inspired almost 30 films and TV movies including “3:10 to Yuma” (based on a shorty story he sold to Dime Western magazine for 2 cents a word). This September, I was hoping to chat with him again about a film debuting at the Toronto International Film Festival that was based on his book. For Leonard’s festival, organizers featured a special showing of the pilot episode for the hit FX Network series, “Justified.” Though not a direct adaptation, at the heart of the TV series that spawned a new generation of Leonard fans, including my son, is Leonard’s beloved character U.S. marshal Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant). 

As excited as I was, I was leery, too. A few people who had met him when he was younger gave me the impression that he was aloof and difficult. So, I went to the interview expecting him to honor his commitment to the festival but nod for a handler to give me the old five-finger warning (meaning you are outta here in five minutes).

Instead it was just him who answered the door.

As luck would have it, he was in the middle of writing. After a cordial greeting he ushered me into his office. It was an area in the great room sectioned off by a wooden desk facing a wall of windows overlooking his garden. On his desk was a burning candle, no doubt trying to mask the smell cigarette smoke, an electric typewriter (not quite an antique but definitely not modern) and a stack of paper. As he showed me later the canary paper bludgeoned by pencil corrections were pages of his new book about U.S. marshal Givens.

Following a quick session with our photographer David Posavetz, which included Leonard offering to pose with Poz, he and I settled into a casual conversation about his career and his family. He is the father of five children, and his son Peter, who lived nearby,  followed in his footsteps, going into advertising before achieving his own success as a novelist in 2008. Elmore was gracious and kind, not only in the manner in which he responded to questions but in carrying the conversation onward. For hours we spoke about writing. I learned that while he drafted a screenplay – it was not fun for him.

At one point during the interview, he saw that I was staring at the sheets of yellow paper strewn across his desk. I was straining to read the straightforward and believable Leonardian dialogue that made him famous.  So, he grabbed one and read the words aloud, like they were all new to him. After reading a sentence or two, he put the paper down and made a correction, then read to the end of the page. “I always write in longhand first,” he told me. “I cross out what I don’t want and then just keep adding to it.” When he felt the page was done, he would complete a polished version. It was done, not on a computer, but on his trusty IBM Wheelwriter electric typewriter. 

When we both needed a moment to stretch, he gave me a quick tour of the kitchen and living room (adorned with photos of his family and works of art). We rounded a corner and entered a small room where his wife was working. Stacked on several shelves in the small room were the books he had published over the years. With one children’s book to my name, I can only imagine how proud he was of his 44 titles. He did not gloat or brag but proceeded to tell me a story about several of them including his newest title at the time, “Djibouti.”

By then I could tell by the shadows on the wall it was time to leave, or invite myself to dinner. Even then, he did not rush me out the door. Instead he eyed his collection of books and picked a stack of titles that he knew my teenage son would enjoy.

My time with Elmore Leonard that afternoon could not have been better. I was inspired. I was entertained and I felt enriched having met him.  

One final note
If there was one Elmore Leonard quote I'll remember it's this -- as I am a vacuum when it comes to interesting facts ...
 
“Don't go into great detail describing places and things, unless you're ­Margaret Atwood and can paint scenes with language.
You don't want descriptions that bring the action, the flow of the story, to a standstill.”