By Jack Foley

I am tempted to write a film script
Called QUESTIONABLE BEHAVIOR.
In this script people would do things
That were legal but unethical.
They would profit at the expense
(Pun intended) of others.
Nor would the questionable
Behavior be limited to the characters.
I should like to point out
That writing a film script is a prime example of questionable
behavior.
Look what it did to F. Scott Fitzgerald.
And not only writing a film but producing one (Think of Harvey
Weinstein)
Or directing one
(Think of John Ford, “The only man who could make John
Wayne cry,”
Or of Alfred Hitchcock, who was asked by a Concerned doctor,
“Are you trying to KILL
Tippi Hedren?” The answer
Was probably yes.)
Need I go on about the lives of actors?
I mean the successful ones, leaving
Aside the ones who fail or who achieve
(In Jimmy Carter’s wonderful phrase) only “limited success.”
How many suffer heartbreak or hopeless dependency
On drugs? How many become total drunks
Who were once sensitive, intelligent people?
How many become crazies like Marlon Brando
Or tragic heroines like Marilyn Monroe, Peg Entwhistle, and Jean
Spangler?
I know of two
Who murdered their wives
And then themselves.
Better to find
Something else to do,
To stay in the darkness of unfame
In a nice house
With plenty of DVDs
And a pretty girl or boy
Who has strong arms, a great smile,
And talented underwear.

By Jack Foley

Scorsese? what about stories
dealing with what Indians are
rather than with what whites
did to them — Indians as victims ?
have you seen or heard of
I Heard the Owl Call My Name
with the great actor, Tom Courtney ?
or seen or heard of Kasi Lemmons’
wonderful Eve’s Bayou ? there are
no white people in the film at all. it’s
not about black–white relations,
it’s about relations within an active
and thriving black community, and
more specifically about a family
within that community. Scorsese
bought into the ultimately racist
notion that you have to have whites
(nasty ones perhaps but whites)
in a film about Native Americans.
(and the whites he uses are very
prominent white actors, how else
can you get people to come to the
movie ? yet perhaps Scorsese’s
name might have been enough, enough
to have made a film about what it’s
like to be a Native American NOW.)
Hollywood (and the USA) did to
Indians what they did to Vaudeville:
destroy the institution and then
use the story of its destruction
as interesting subject matter.
For the Filmmaker, Mary Kerr
Dear Mary,
we are no longer
“a people of the book”
History is the movies

By Craig Sipe

The Crow
A Movie from 1994

Brandon Lee was Eric Draven on Devil’s Night
in 1994 when I flew my first mission.

Infernos blazed, murders, sacks on Devil’s Night,}
where Lee was accidentally shot . . . shot dead

on set at 28, Brandon’s dad, Bruce, Green Hornet’s
Kato in 1966 also croaked into a nebulous bye,

nefarious like Brandon’s Crow rising
to cult classic status over the years.

A “classic” is a term interchangeable with other
movie words such as “sequel,” or “reboot”

while a “cult” refers to a group of folks having
practices or beliefs regarded in the norm

as far wings of either pitch, somehow
strange like the preposition

of a Crow

un–earthing souls wrongly
done to exact revenge

upon their own dagger-magnets. Can you
imagine me, as a pissed — knifed drone

with my pearled eyes pearled on you —

a crow’s eye — my crows beak picking
the mysteries from your ears

balled–up in your grey matter wax, and

finding my caw–caw sortie way
to home upon your sill, then soaring

my own cursed, immortal course
back to un–rest, a sated soul,

for now, returned to a grave peace
for love, and ill? So, yes,

Hell . . . I’m in.

By Craig Sipe

I am the hot rumor

of my own life

— like Keyser Soze —

losing the gimp

as soon as I fancy

myself out of

— sight —