Episode 52: Gary Glassman - Smooth Walk to Providence

Gary Glassman - Smooth Walk to Providence

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This is Change the Story. Change the World, My name is Bill Cleveland

Part One: Clowns, Masks, and Acrobatics

Gary Glassman has been making films for more than 3 decades. Art films, experimental films, and documentary films —- actually, loads of documentary films that have won numerous awards on an extraordinary range of subjects, including prisoners, Spalding Gray, Building the Wonders of the World, The true story of Troy, Mayan kings, women pharaohs, orcas, dinosaurs, mummy's and the recent four part PBS series Native America, that explores the history and culture of the indigenous peoples of the Americans in the centuries before the arrival of the white man.

Gary's path to film making has been twisty to say the least. The circus, of course, but also, Education, teaching, prison work, performance, and media technology. Not surprisingly, given our obsession on this podcast, the through-line in all of his work has been asking questions and, what else, telling stories.

Gary Glassman: I guess I'm fundamentally, I consider myself a storyteller and, second to that, my medium is filmmaking. the foundation of it is really, storytelling. And it started, in my more adult life with, circus and street theater and performance, and then it moved to stage a performance art, and site-specific environmental spectacle, and then to TV and with TV. It was first in the art world, and now on international broadcast television.

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Encountering the intense commitment of San Quentin's circus community clued me into the transformational power of the circus arts and its profound historic culture. So much so, that I'm always on the lookout for artists with a little circus in their blood. This is certainly true for Gary Glassman, who became a quick compadre and was inexorably changed by both his encounter with the circus, and California prisons, which we'll hear about later.

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I went to a, a huge high school in Buffalo. and we were all being tracked for either, work in the assembly line at the Chevy plant, or being a manager at the Chevy plant. And I knew I just didn't want to do that. And I went to a very radical college Goddard College — no grades do whatever you want.

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Anyway, I started in preschool education and I was radicalized, through politics, of the Vietnam war and, started getting more into politics and Salvador Allende was elected as a socialist president of Chile. And I decided I'm going to go down there and study the education system and the transformation of the education system under a socialist government from a capitalist government. And, I was on my way down and, I was in Cuernavaca, Mexico taking a course, and the coup happened in Chile.

So I went back to college. I went back to Goddard and I didn't know what I was going to do. And there was this clown troop that came to perform. Their performance was just, well, transformative for me because they were speaking to me on a level that was just so primal. They spoke to basic human emotions of love and jealousy and greed and, and making me laugh, making everybody laugh.

And I thought, that's what I want to do. I want to reach people on that kind of level. And I was very fortunate because they were invited to become a theater-in-residence at, at Goddard. And I took their class, it was Clowns, Masks and Acrobatics, and, no brag, I was the best in the class, you know?

So, it touched a part of me in a way that I had never been reached and gave me a form of expression that I never knew I had. And, that changed my life. I went into performance from there and I joined the circus. they invited me, to join them. And so we toured the states and the world, I was with them for about three years. And, it was great. Yeah.

BC: As Gary mentioned, his circus experience morphed into street theater and site specific spectacle work which eventually led to his return to school in as an MFA student in UCLA's Theater Directing program. Which, as I indicated earlier this led to a serendipitous detour into prison work. ---- via a program called UCLA ArtsReach run by our now mutual friend Susan Hill. Who, by the way, you can learn more about in Episode 30.

GG: I had gone to a UCLA, to get, uh, uh, an MFA in directing, and, I produced this stage play, and there was somebody in the audience, who was running an arts program out of UCLA. And, she had some grant money and said, “Hey, would you like to do some shows in prison?” And I said, “Yeah, sure. I'll do that.” Me and my brother Steven, and our good friend, Eugene Palmer, we had performed under the name of the Traveling Energy Band. That was our, our big environmental spectacle, site-specific performance pieces that we would do on stilts and puppets and masks and all that. And we put together a, performance and toured some prisons.

And, it only dawned on me that we were in prison when they were about to pull the curtain on us. And we're hearing all the sounds of the guys in prison, and immediately started thinking about, what's the difference between us on this side of the curtain and the guys on the other side of the curtain. The people on the outside of the prison, and the people on the inside of the prison. And that's what got me into the whole idea of trying to explore it deeper.

Part Two: Walking Smooth

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[00:09:44] GG: I didn't have the means to make films. It was, very expensive. And, all of a sudden VHS came out and to me it represented the democratization of production and distribution. That's exactly what it was. It became accessible, or more accessible to more people. both in terms of the, mainly the watching of it, everybody had a VHS recorder, in their house and a play recorder player, and they were used to it and it, what they were playing it on was the same TV screen that they were getting high-end broadcast, programs on.

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So that's what started, and here's the connection, with, with clowns, and circus, or at least the way clown fed my life, was that this idea that it could tap into, a place that I never knew existed or bring out an aspect of me that I never knew I had. So, all of a sudden, here was the possibility of, tapping into that with the technology and trying to make it more accessible. And again, that sort of screen as the great equalizer, I thought, “Ah, this could make the president and somebody like a prisoner equal in the same space.” And, so I started thinking about prisoners. And, I wondered if I could tap into whatever it was that was tapped into from, for me with clowning and tap into that aspect of people who are locked up and free some of that expression in them, and use VHS technology to bring it out into the world.

BC: At this point in Gary's life a number of critical pieces came together, setting the stage for his transition from theater work to documenting and sharing stories on the screen. Driven by the idea that video could be democratizing equalizer he immersed himself in VHS technology. Because it was new and evolving, the only way to test its capabilities and limitations was to learn by doing. Which he did by exploring the medium with fellow artists like monologist Spalding Gray, and multi-media sculptor Jonathan Borofsky.

His collaboration with Borofsky took him back into the California prison system where he and Jonathan approached me in my role as Director of Arts in Corrections with a simple, but radical idea. Let these incarcerated citizens tell their own stories, In one scene from the film, which was called Prisoners, Borofsky describes his motivation as he motors across the Richmond San Rafael Bridge toward San Quentin.

Jonathan Borofsky: Why am I doing this? Why am I going to talk to prisoners? Well, we are all learning to be free. But these are people who make our lives a lot less free. They make us lock our doors and put bars on our windows, and worry about our own safety as well as the people we love. They create fear in our lives. But I know these people are human beings - not that different than myself, and I feel for them. They have to live their lives locked up in cement boxes. What a waste of life! They couldn't have been born this way. Something has happened in their lives, in their minds. What can I learn from these people? What does it mean to be free?"

BC: One young woman answered this way in response to Jonathan Borofsky’s question about what she missed most.

Incarcerated Woman: My daughter, the things I'm missing in her life, I don't really think much about anything else other than her. You know,

Jonathan Borofsky: What else might you miss aside from your Donna, which is obviously so big that it gets in the way of any other answer,

Incarcerated Woman: I guess living a real life, not feeling like, um, I'm just existing, you know, um, getting up in the morning and going to the store if I want to, or, um, living mm-hmm because you don't live in here. You just exist day after day. You’re just programmed. They like to think, I mean, programmed, you do this, you do that.

You don't really make decisions for yourself in here because decisions are already made mm-hmm you don't, you can't um, think about what you're gonna do tomorrow, because really you already know what you're gonna do the same thing you did today. So I guess just living.

BC: Prisoners, made a powerful statement that was both poignant and disturbing. It laid bare the sorry state of the prison industrial complex in the words of the people most affected. It gave men and women living in what was becoming the world's largest prison system a human presence and a voice. It also took that message to some very interesting places and planted a seed for Gary and the Arts in Corrections program that took us in a radical new direction.

GG: So yeah, it's in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern art and the Pompidou Center in Paris. But that opened our eyes, John and my eyes to, life in the prison. And, and it was out of that experience that you invited me to write a grant for creating a, the prison video workshop. So thank you for doing that. I never would have really thought about, doing anything long-term in the prison. had it not been for you and the Arts in Corrections program that, that, you were running

BC: It's important to point out here that, Arts in corrections was, and still, is a regular ongoing program of the of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation with a significant presence in every prison in the state. At the time Gary's video workshop was a one of a kind program that dramatically extended his aim of using video to equalize and amplify prisoners stifled stories.

GG: And I would go into the prison and I would feel so optimistic. And it just seems like, how can you go into a prison and feel optimistic? But I think it was because, there, I was given the opportunity to connect with people who we consider the most despicable, garbage and we lock them away. And I was given, the privilege of connecting with the best parts of them and giving them the opportunity to express themselves.

And it was inspiring, to see what they had to say and how they did. And the amazing thing about it was that, I mean, I think we just don't think that much about the power of media anymore, because it's so prevalent. There's more, there's more technology in our pockets now than, than I had going into the prison, working with, the men and women there, we've become, just jaded to it or we'd just take it for granted.

But, it's, there was something just very basic about the idea that if you could create an image of yourself on the screen that you would feel good about, then you could create that image for yourself in life. And it was totally transformative. I saw it, in the people who participated in the arts program and, this video workshop, They showed up for class and, and when they got out, they more than likely were able to stay out. It was a transformative experience for them

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In this clip, a workshop artist from the California Institution for Men (CIM) sits behind a desk in front of a map of the world. As he looks up into the camera, The logo for the “CIM Evening News” flashes on the screen

CIM Newscaster: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, it's good to be back in the studio again with you. This reporter with the help of officials at CIM, Chino implanted himself deep within the prison population, taking on the guise of a regular inmate armed with 15 cartons of camel cigarettes, the only prison currency. I was housed in a normal dormitory setting and given a bunk and locker my home for a week was Pine Hall. Yes, friends. I became, as they say in prison, vernacular “a homeboy.”

This is what I learned. Depending on the various weekly menus for meals to be served in the chow hall, along with the cycles of how much heat was being put on the culinary by the institution staff, mountains and mountains of food at enormous cost of the state of California was in fact being smuggled and sold on the yard by the private inmate population. It appears that the inmate population will do almost anything to avoid eating in the chow hall.

This is a sample of what can be bought on the yard. A 12 to 15 pound roast beef precooked five to six packs. Sweet rolls. When baked in packages of two, one pack of Camels. Turnovers, when baked in packages, a four one pack. Vegetable variety packs, two packs. Then let me continue on down this list that I have for you. Loaves of bread, peanut butter in three pound cans. Coffee grounds, and a 30 pound can, will cost you 10 packs. A double burger with all the trimmings roast beef sandwiches with all the trimmings, Graham crackers in, in boxes of three, a case of 90, small packaged cereals. That'll cost you three packs. 100 cartons of milk coming out at one time only two packs. Flats of eggs, three packs of cigarettes, and finally, a large can of tuna for only two packs of cigarettes.

It is this reporter's considered opinion that with enough cigarettes and armed with a common household electric iron for cooking, one would never have to go to the chow hall to eat, no matter how long his stay was at CIM. In conclusion, let me say that it is indeed true there that he with the most cigarettes in the end wins. In the week that I spent in the hell hole of pine hall I gained 20 pounds and spent my entire 15 cartons of cigarettes.

Here's another segment from Walking Smooth called. Talking TV.

Gary Glassman: Tony came to class one night, furious about a parole hearing that had not been ruled in his favor. We directed his energy into creating one of my favorite exercises, Talking TV.

Tony on TV: You know life sucks, life sucks.

BC: The scene opens with one of Gary's students standing alongside a big box, old school television, having an animated conversation back and forth with another image of himself.

Tony on TV: I mean really sucks.

Tony: What do you mean, really sucks?

Tony on TV: I had a 115 hearing today and, uh, yeah, but you got a hearing hearing agent called me over there. You can't hear something what's going on here? I got some interview with him. Yeah.

Tony: You get the job?

Tony on TV: I don't know, He smelled, he didn't have the right cologne you know what? He smell like, uh, his shoes weren't untied, you know, his shoes, shoes weren't tied. Jesus. He should buy a pair of slip on or something. His old lady probably looks like, uh, the fat lady bits or something. The guy was so, so unhappy. So, me unhappy?

Tony: You look unhappy.

Tony on TV: No, I'm not unhappy. Sure.

Tony: Sure look at it. To me, you know, if life, uh, throws you a bunch of lemons, make lemonade, man. Isn't that? What they say? Don't you remember? ‘

Tony on TV: Em yeah. right. All huh? All yeah, man. You know, so anyway, this guy gives me 30 days for, uh, For, for being sick, right. I went to the hospital instead of going to work one day, you know,

Tony: What’d you get, if you die,

Tony on TV: Uh, they write me a 115 and they call it a walk away ,uh, return thing

Tony: You act like you didn't like that one, man. What you shaking your head for man. Huh? Hey, you know, we make our own movies. We're the writers, we’re the directors. We're the producers. We're the actors.

Tony on TV: I understand that .

Tony: we create our own own.

Tony on TV: I ain’t going along with you.

Tony: Oh, you got to man. That's the only way we can survive. Huh, you and me.

Tony on TV: Life sucks!

Tony: You and me, life doesn't suck. Tony. Come on then. Let me tell you about it, man. Come on. Hey, where you going? Hey, I want the script rights to this man. Hey.

BC: Gary’s success with his original prison video workshops, both expanded to other prisons. And prompted similar efforts for other institutionalized populations.

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We expanded that program. we used, the model that I created at a California Institution for Men, and we got more grants and I was able to seed a number of other media projects throughout the California correctional system. And I called it the Prison Television Network, because we were able to actually bring VHS tapes from one prison to another, and they would play it on their closed circuit TV systems. And, there, there was that kind of institutional TV exchange going on throughout the whole system.

At the children's hospital, it was a little easier. they're not in prison. They’re there, but they're in the hospital and, the hospital already had a closed circuit TV system there. I created a project at a children's hospital and I called it CHT TV, right from the beginning Children's Hospital Television. And, I outfitted a gurney. with, all this production equipment. I had a, at this time, w we had moved to, high eight, which was even better than VHS was a higher quality.

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But in terms of the transformative power in the hospital that was amazing, because what happened was by participating in making media, it became sort of a way of the children, transforming their relationship to even their own health and their doctors. So, they became more participatory in that.

BC: Back in October of: 2021

Jill Sonke: We learned in a study, a similar study. We interviewed all 31 members of the nursing staff on a medical surgical unit over a period of about 18 months to learn about. how they perceived the effects of the work of artists and residents on their unit. And we learned all kinds of things that we expected to learn like that we dubbed one phenomena that we identified as the “happy patient, happy staff effect” patients described. If my patients are happy, I'm happy. And if I can send them.

My patients are going to be happy and that makes my job easier and it helps me take better care of my patients. So we learned that nurses recognized the benefits of engagement in the arts for their patients. They were asking the artists to come in when their patients needed distraction and relaxation, those sorts of things.

They also recognize things like from a clinical perspective, they noticed that blood oxygen saturation, it would go up and things like that.

BC: Gary shared a story that drove this home.

GG: We were doing a, a very simple. inter interviewing workshop teaching, the kids were interviewing each other and we were sitting around in a circle, basically passing a microphone around and, asking each other questions. And, this one girl puts the microphone up in front of the face of this other girl and asks her some very basic questions and the girl answered it. And, it was a little bit of a back and forth exchange.

And meanwhile, I'm seeing this woman in the back of the room just start crying. And I'm going to get all choked up, just telling the story. So I went over to her afterwards and said, “Did we do something that upset you?” and she said, “No, that was my daughter. And she's she has, she was in a coma for months and this was the first time she spoke.” It was incredible. just by putting the microphone in front of her, she spoke, and I'm not saying it's, it's not that in itself. I'm sure she's getting, she was getting great care and all that, but, that was the spark that broke through.

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I do a lot of these, a lot of my, films have been secrets of the Parthenon or secrets of this or that, and how did they manage to do, how did they build that, this perfect building and without any computers and, motors and, in just nine years, how did they do that? What's the secret? the secret to the secret is there is no secret. It's just vision and political and human will, it’s creativity, for sure. But it's all sharing. It's sharing a vision and saying, let's do that. let's do it, and let's do it together,

Part Three: Providence

BC: In: 1996

Given Gary's inquiring nature. It's no surprise that most of these shows pose a question. Like what really happened at Troy, and how did they build the Parthenon in the Sphinx? What can science tell us about the stories in the Bible?

GG: it’s funny. I think, I love what I do and, because it gives me a vehicle for being curious and diving into subjects where I can become, an expert for about six months or so, or a year. And, and believe me, I've forgotten a lot more than I've ever known. I always loved the story of Michelangelo carving the David. And they said, “How did you do that?” And he said, “I just chipped away what wasn't David.” and, and I, I do think about making documentaries, and it's similar.

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BC: In 2015, Providence Pictures was commissioned by PBS to produce a television series that explores the history and culture of the vibrant civilizations that flourished in America prior to the arrival of the white man.

Narrator: It is another world thriving with a hundred million people connected by elaborate roads, ridges and social networks. Banning continent with monumental cities aligned to the heavens and some of the greatest civilizations on earth.

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I've always felt like a facilitator of people telling their own story. And even before the current climate where people have become much more aware of that, it's always been at the heart of my work. So when I approached this native America series, the first thing I did was hire native American producers to work on it.

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What certainly what I learned and what I hope people who watch the, program learn, was that there's an incredible, authenticity, reliability historical, weight to the oral tradition and, and obviously native Americans telling their own story. And, and I think that's what the series does. It's, native Americans telling their own story. And it's a glorious one, in terms of what was here and what still is here.

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GG: Even though we're telling a story of the past, it's told by contemporary people and, peoples. And, and many native American peoples are living with the traditions that have been carried on for over 10,000 years, and those and those principles, and that way of life it really is in harmony with nature. The idea that we, as humans are just part of nature and, we need to be respectful of our place in nature and be stewards of protecting the earth. And if certainly if there's one important lesson to come from that it's that more now, more than ever.

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[00:28:49] GG: , I think it achieves a lot of what want from making these kinds of films and that is that, that it is meaningful. It can open people's eyes and minds to really right in front of them, but they don't really pay much attention to.

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[00:29:34] GG: My parents died a while ago, both my mother years ago, and my father in 2015. And, there were these boxes that I had packed up when they had moved from Buffalo Out to California. And, they ended up in my sister's garage and then she just said, I'm sending them to you. You deal with them.

So all these boxes showed up and, in the boxes were, family archives. I'll call them archives, but they were photographs and documents. And, during this pandemic, I started going through them and I found the ship passage for my grandfather as a 12 year old boy with a picture of him, on this document. And it's in Turkish because he's from Greece, but Greece was under Ottoman control. And, so I found that and, I actually have the blanket that his parents wrapped around him so he could stay warm and steerage on that ship voyage coming over. I think about, maybe someday, telling my personal story, which is so tied to my ancestors. And I think the thing about that, I'll tie it back to clowns and prisoners, is that the more personal we get, the more universal our message. And it's the only genuine way to reach people.

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[00:34:29] BC: I'm going to close with a short meditation on where we started with this episode, which of course, is with the clowns. When I refer clowns I am not talking about a McDonalds marketing character. I am talking about that ancient and essential presence in our community’s whose antics and tall tales reflect our own jumbled stories with the clarity of backwards wisdom. For me personally clowns, and all their iterations, the trickster, the fool, Coyote, Heyokha, the tramp — hold a special place in my pantheon of creative change agents.

Where ever you go in the world there is the joker, or Ananse or Eghu, messing with what is, making or remaking the world, with an act of creative disruption that is powerfully mysterious, and mischievous, and inspiring -- more often than not spawning more questions than answers. In other words, doing their job, like Gary Glassman, taking risks, challenging assumptions, questioning conventional wisdom, and helping to change the world, one story at a time.

And as this story comes to a close we'd like to thank Gary and his community of story makers and tellers for another fine episode. Change the Story / Change the World is a production of the Center for the Study of Art and Community. Our work through this podcast and our publications is to provide a chronicle of art and community transformation for others to be inspired and learn from.

To do this, we need your help. So to all you listeners, thanks again for your eager ears and a shout out and a special thanks to Judy Munsen for her genius musical contributions, and Andre Nnebe for his text editing prowess. For this episode of Change the Story / Change the World, this is Bill Cleveland saying, stay well, do good and spread the good word.