I'm excited that former Governor Jerry Brown seems poised to return to his old office in Sacramento. He's always been one of the most interesting figures in our politics. He's had his ups and downs, most of the "downs" being associated with his seemingly quixotic Presidential bids. Here's a piece from Madison, WI's Brava magazine, recalling a particularly spectacular - and unfortunate - moment in Brown's 1980 bid, with none other than Francis Ford Coppola in the director's chair:
By the time Brown and Coppola — who had met when Brown appointed Coppola to the California Arts Council — spoke seriously about the campaign, in early 1980, the California governor’s hopes were fading. He’d had trouble raising money, but Brown felt the April 1 primary in Wisconsin — a state often partial to mavericks — held his last best hope. Coppola produced a few TV spots for Brown that ran in Wisconsin. Then, with primary day fast approaching and funds running low, Coppola suggested the Brown campaign attempt something radical.
The decision was made to have Coppola produce a live half-hour show that would air statewide on March 28, the Friday night before the April 1 Tuesday primary. That Coppola knew little about the technology of live television broadcasting — and less about political campaigns — was apparently of small concern.
The director arrived in Madison on Wednesday, March 26, some 48 hours before the scheduled live telecast, accompanied by an entourage of family and friends. Madison-based media writer Tim Onosko covered Coppola’s Madison visit for the Village Voice out of New York City. That first day, Onosko asked Coppola’s brother, August, what he felt his sibling had in mind for Friday night.
“If Picasso were to paint a picture,” August Coppola said, “then donate it to a cause, that would be his way of contributing. Francis will create a piece of his own, and this will be his contribution.”
Wednesday night, Coppola made an appearance at Madison West High School and spoke about what had brought him to town. The director said he was in Madison to produce a live half-hour “event” on television in support of Jerry Brown’s run for the White House. A Capital Times reporter was present and reported on the director’s remarks.
“We’ll center ourselves by the Capitol building,” Coppola told his West High audience. “We’ll put up this immense television set and we’re going to go on TV live with the governor making a statement that he wants to make. I’ll be in a truck where I can make a live mix, making any combination of things ... we’ll decorate the dome and make it very beautiful; of course, it’s a beautiful building anyway.”
The show would be titled “The Shape of Things to Come,” taken from an H. G. Wells story about a society undone by war and reborn through technology. The new technology behind the Jerry Brown half-hour from Madison was called chroma key, and it was being developed at Coppola’s Zoetrope Studios in California. It was a technique of blending images on screen by removing color from one image, rendering it transparent and revealing another image behind it.
But as Coppola told his West High audience that night: “I have no experience at this kind of thing. One reason I’m so excited about doing this little piece is that it’s live television. I get to say ‘cut’ and ‘dissolve’ and if I screw up it’s right there; everybody knows it.”
Unfortunately for Coppola, and Jerry Brown, the director’s comments proved prophetic. The first thing viewers around the state saw was a graphic that said: LIVE FROM MADISNO. Then Brown hopped onstage and began to speak into a wireless microphone that wasn’t working. When the governor finally got a working microphone, the chroma key technology misfired badly. To viewers, it began to appear that pieces of Brown’s face were breaking off and sliding off-screen.
The Capital Times would quote a female UW student, among the estimated crowd of 3,000 who had showed up at the Capitol to watch: “I can’t believe this,” she said. “This is the weirdest thing I have ever seen.
Afterward, Jerry Brown tried to regroup at the nearby Park Motor Inn. He asked an aide, “How did I look?” The aide replied: “A little like Claude Rains in ‘The Invisible Man.’”
Coppola left town in a hurry. He caught a Union Cab to the airport from the Park Motor Inn that night. As it happened, the Union driver was Stuart Levitan, who would later become a well-known media figure and politico in Madison. Levitan said he tried to engage Coppola in conversation about the controversial ending of “Apocalypse Now” but the director demurred (tipping Levitan $50, however).
On April 1, Jerry Brown got 12 percent of the vote in Wisconsin and withdrew from the race.
Recent Comments