Whew! I’m Turning 70!
Goodbye to the swinging 60s. On Wednesday I’m turning 70. And I’m hugely relieved that I made it this far. I should’ve been dead by now… several times. As I wrote in my memoir, Between Heaven and Hell, I was fully prepared to check out in November 2017 when I had my stroke. I was saying serene farewells to my family as they gathered around my hospital bed. But just like Al Pacino in The Godfather, when you think you’re out, they pull you back in. I have a very insistent — persistent — family.
All in all, I’m glad to still be alive — despite it all. Despite a country and a world that seems to keep finding fresh hells. A dismayed friend told me yesterday that his 92-year-old mother thinks this is the worst America’s ever been in her lifetime. I’m not sure about that. I remember the assassinations and bloody uprisings and endless foreign war and dark shadow of the Bomb — yes, the swinging 60s. But back then we also had a movement and a counterculture and the music. What do we have today? A world on fire. A Republican America that has gone completely bonkers. And a woke cancel culture that cannibalizes itself. Ugh.
And yet we beat on, boats against the current. I take pleasure in the creative achievements of those around me. Our Bernal Heights bungalow continues to churn out movies, books, music videos, street art, pop-up meals, etc. If dreams were thunder and lightning was desire, this old house would’ve burned down a long time ago. During the ‘60s and ‘70s, right here in San Francisco, we tried to build an alternate reality, inside the dying flesh of the old world. And we partly succeeded. (I wrote about it in Season of the Witch.) We’re still doing that at our house, like countless other families, collectives, bands.
The goal is the same, I’ve told my family and friends. To survive, to thrive, we need to go tribal. We need to take care of each other. We need to create the new world that we want to live in.
I couldn’t be there on the Paramount lot when my son Joe recently directed a music video for a big singer, which will be out later this year. (He’s between movies.) But I loved hearing how he assembled a crew of esteemed friends, family members and colleagues, and what a fun ship he reportedly captained. When he was a boy, Joe watched my wife, Camille Peri, and I do the same thing with many of our closest friends in journalism, after we launched Salon, the pioneering web publication. We were always on the verge of bankruptcy, often the target of Republican vipers. But we sailed merrily on together for a decade. (Miraculously, Salon still sails on today with a mostly different crew.)
So what are my words of wisdom as I approach the 70th-year milestone? Celebrate your survival. Stick with your tribe. Inhabit the world you desire.
I’m from Hollywood originally. I’ve always wanted my books to become movies, TV series. I’ve always believed the best story wins. And now my dream is coming true. At age 70, I’m suddenly a screenwriter and a producer. You live long enough and impossible things start to happen. Go figure.
Btw, this is a photo of me, at age 23 I’m guessing. I lived in a Venice, California bungalow with the creative and beautiful Zheutlin sisters. I always look stoned in old photos. But we were just high on life. I suppose I still am.
