In the late 80s my close friend and colleague, Diana Keener (Where’s Diana?) and I formed a mixed media theater company called Mixed Company for which I wrote music, co-directed and performed. We produced several full length shows.
For our second show, “Timepiece” we shot a short film in 16mm black and white called Black & White Ball which features Dutch Belted cows. These wonderful looking animals used to be grazed on the outskirts of Petaluma.
For your viewing enjoyment, here is a transfer from VHS uploaded to YouTube.
Yes, that is our own fellow musician and Accordion Babe cover girl, Roxanne Oliva starring as a temptress. She appears with Arthur Hills as patriarch and adoring father, Diana Keener as a proper wife, John T. Sherman as a wandering husband, Hillel Familant as a young man with potential, Patrice Warrender as contemplative guest, Pat Walp as aspiring gentleman and yours madly as hostess.
Eddie Izzard as Long John Silver in re-imagined Treasure Island.
Izzard told TV Guide magazine,
“We certainly have softened and romanticised them (pirates)… It’s probably the Disney effect.
“The truth is, pirates were drunken, murderous bastards who didn’t give a f**k about anyone but themselves and would not hesitate to rip you up.
“They were well organised, like mafia gangs. In fact, our approach here is much less classic Treasure Island and much more Goodfellas.”
Yes, indeed. It was a very brutal world, far more rough than the cartoon Disney pirate images. Psychopathic captains and vicious, greedy crews who went rogue were decidedly not lovable types.
But, and I must mention this on the eve of International Worker’s Day, many a maritime worker in the 17th and 18th centuries became ruthless in response to gross and unfair exploitation of their labor by tyrannical captains and the expanding powers of merchants and governments seeking to profit from deep sea trade.
Deborah, a close friend of GDub and Mags, graciously put us all up in Seattle and fed us. She makes a mean bowl of oatmeal and fabulous meatballs and pasta. And she funded our project!
