Mother Russia.

(Yulia Navalnaya speaking to the world following Putin’s murder of her husband, Alexsei Navalny.)

One of the most important videos of our lifetime. Please take two and one-half minutes of your time to view it. With worldwide support, this strong woman can put an end to Putin’s reign of terror. Let the murderous dictator try to ban “Mother Russia” the way he banned Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption organization. Please click on the link below, and pass it on:

https://www.nbcnews.com/video/alexei-navalny-s-widow-appears-in-video-on-his-youtube-channel-204475461644

Suozzi, English, Cuomo, Grassroots Organizing & Staying Grounded.

(Grassroots and Labor organizers surround Tom Suozzi (center, wearing tie) as their relentless, coast-to-coast ground game propelled him to victory.)

Tom Suozzi’s special election victory, taking back New York’s 3rd Congressional District seat stolen by serial liar, fraud and MAGA poseur-boy George Santos in 2022, was like an atmospheric aerosol of fresh, clean air, blasting away the scuzzy Congressional stench emanating from the GOP’s dying clutch on the House of Representatives.

News organizations, political pundits and pollsters, who, on the day before the election were calling the contest a “toss-up,” scrambled to quickly kill their lazy leads, and come up with some new rationale for the Democrat’s convincing victory.

They failed to take into account two important factors:

  • what was going on across the country among alarmed, activated and educated citizens far away from social media and the polls;
  • and, Tom Suozzi’s solid family and political history, and his strength as a tough, smart, prepared candidate whom history finally had its’ eyes on.

I’ll let others speculate about the weather and whether the GOP opponent was simply Santos in drag, or just a drag as a candidate, outclassed by Suozzi at every turn. Instead, focus on how fate — and a political environment hungry for some sanity — found the Democrat’s new “rising star”, at age 61.

First, the political setting. Many concerned citizens across the nation know that the country is on fire, and our institutions which deliver us daily services like Social Security, healthcare and national defense, are in danger of being burned to the ground by a gnarly group of nihilists. Few things shout “5-Alarm Fire” as loudly as folding table after table of organizers across Sonoma County, California, pushing for volunteers to make phone calls and write postcards for Tom Suozzi, a Congressional candidate on Long Island, nearly 2,750 miles away.

If you get away from social media long enough, turn off screaming Cable channels, and have the good sense to disregard most polls, the nationalization of the most important, high-stakes political races in the country hits you in the face. It’s impossible to go to any event or public gathering in California, without witnessing a wondrous sight: the passionate, smiling faces of organizers from Indivisible or Sister Districts working hard to educate people about what’s at stake in swing districts, from coast to coast, and the urgency of turning out the targeted vote. It’s a shining example of national community, at the very time some media fixates on deep social fissures.

Then, there’s the matter of the actual Suozzi story. Learning it might be helpful, especially since some, like David Leonhardt of the New York Times (2/15/24) are already comparing Tom Suozzi to the original Bobby Kennedy. Spare us, please.

Suozzi needs to nip this aggrandizing now, before it goes to his head and makes him do something stupid to ruin this moment. He simply has to ask Andrew Cuomo, Eliot Spitzer or Fani Willis about believing the hagiographies hawked by others about you, and paying a steep price for such arrogance.

To many New Yorkers, the Suozzi name was synonymous with the City of Glen Cove on Long Island, and with pragmatic, common sense, slightly center-left politics. The Suozzis were never radicals.

Joseph Suozzi, Tom’s father, born in Ruvo del Monte, Italy, was an US Air Force Bomber Pilot and war hero in WWII, who, at 28 years old became one of the nation’s youngest mayors, elected to lead Glen Cove, in 1956. Subsequently, several other Suozzis would serve as Glen Cove’s mayor during the next four decades, including Joseph’s brother Vincent, and the youngest of his five children, Thomas. They laid out a blueprint for how a family of immigrants, through hard work, education, and following the law, could make it in this country.

A Harvard trained lawyer, Joseph Suozzi was first elected to a 14-year term as a New York State justice of the Supreme Court, in 1961, the year after John F. Kennedy was elected President.

Leading the Nassau County Democratic Party in the 1960’s and JFK’s campaign on Long Island, was John F. “Jack” English, a young lawyer, who would go on to a put together a powerhouse law firm which would later include Joseph Suozzi once he stepped down from the court (Meyer, Suozzi, English & Klein). English also built one of the most effective Democratic party organizations in any major American suburb, showing Democrats nationwide how to compete in traditionally Republican areas.

In 1962, the year after Joseph Suozzi was elected to the State Supreme Court, English helped elect Eugene Nickerson as the first Democratic County Executive in Nassau County history — and the last Democratic one until the election of Tom Suozzi, Joe’s son, some 40 years later — born that same year Nickerson was elected to his first of two terms.

Jack English went on to become an advisor to JFK and his brothers Robert and Ted Kennedy, and was instrumental in getting Bobby Kennedy to run for a U.S. Senate seat from NY in 1964 — a seat which Kennedy won — and then to run for President in 1968.

A powerful voice in Democratic National Politics for decades, English served as Deputy Campaign Director of Jimmy Carter’s 1980 Presidential campaign, at the same time when Mario M. Cuomo — then, New York State’s Lt. Governor under Governor Hugh Carey — headed Carter’s campaign across New York State. Four years earlier, Carey had appointed Joseph Suozzi to an Associate Justice position in the NYS Appellate Division.

I met Jack English in 1986, before I met any of the Suozzis. Mario Cuomo was Governor of New York, and English was scheduled to meet with Cuomo on the 57th floor at his Two World Trade Center Office, overlooking the Statue of Liberty. Marty Steadman, Cuomo’s Press Secretary who hired me into the Cuomo Administration’s Press Office, asked that I sit in on the meeting and record the conversation.

English, six years Cuomo’s elder, minced no words — perhaps a sign that he knew he had little time left to wait for Mario Cuomo to make up his mind. He would die of liver cancer the following year, at only 61 years old, the same age Tom Suozzi is now.

“Governor, I think you ought to consider running for President, “ Jack English said looking straight at Cuomo. “I think you are exactly what the Democratic Party needs at the head of the ticket to take back the White House in 1988.”

Cuomo shook his head “no.”

“I’m very grateful for your confidence, Jack,” Cuomo said, and proceeded to tell this political legend that he was too busy running New York State, and loved being Governor. He explained to English the challenges of fighting for the people of New York against a national administration intent on pitting region against region, race against race, and rich against poor.

Cuomo, up for re-election that year, was one of the few Democrats in the country willing to take on the Reagan Administration on issues like Nuclear Power, and the fight to retain the State and Local Tax Deductions (SALT), which mattered a great deal to homeowners in New York’s suburbs, where property taxes were already high. It’s the same bread & butter issue which — 30 years later — Tom Suozzi championed in his first three terms in Congress, after the Trump Administration capped the SALT deductions at $10,000 in 2017, a fraction of the astronomical property-taxes many middle-class Long Island homeowners struggle to pay.

“You need someone like a Bobby Kennedy, “ Cuomo said, artfully steering the conversation away from himself and toward a topic Jack English knew better than anyone. Then, almost was if he were setting himself up to be the logical answer, Cuomo continued:

“We need someone like Bobby today; someone who can unite black and white, rich and poor; who can speak to the needs of working people, and get people in the suburbs and the cities to see that we are all part of the same family.”

I took a deep breath, held my pen perfectly still and looked carefully at Jack English, sitting only a few feet away from me. His Irish eyes twinkled, and he leaned forward in his chair.

“Well, I think you’re that person, Governor.”

Cuomo, again, wrinkled up his generous nose, and shook his head “no.” He would not allow himself to be held to a standard that he could not control, nor felt he could meet — not even from as towering a political figure as Jack English. He was comfortable being Mario Cuomo, thank you.

Tom Suozzi needs a strong dose of Mario Cuomo’s humility right now. Suozzi tried, and failed, to force himself into the national spotlight twice before, in 2006 and 2022, when he was humiliated in two Statewide Gubernatorial Democratic primaries — one against Eliot Spitzer, and more recently against incumbent Governor Kathy Hochul.

The siren song of superiority seized Suozzi in 2021, when he announced his primary challenge to Hochul, New York State’s first female Governor, who came to power after Andrew Cuomo’s resignation over sexual harassment charges that year.

In declaring his candidacy, and giving up the Congressional seat into which Santos slithered, Suozzi told the Washington Post on November 29, 2021 that:

“I’m hoping that we’re going to win the majority again — and we may not. Doesn’t matter; I’m running for governor because I believe that this is the job that I’m made for.”

Ouch, Tom. Winning the majority “doesn’t matter?” “This is the job that I’m made for?” Yikes. That was almost as bad as the last reputed RFK reincarnation, Beto O’Rourke, and his now infamous interview in Vanity Fair five years ago next month — complete with Annie Leibovitz’ artistic photos — where Beto bragged that he was “just born to be in it,” referring to his short-lived run for President. Beto’s political career has never recovered from that insufferable boast and too-glitzy photospread.

Suozzi’s admirable family story, as a child of an immigrant who was a war hero and a first-rate judge who inspired his youngest son to dedicate his life to public service, doesn’t need embellishment, nor do the Suozzi’s need to take a back seat to the Kennedys or the Cuomos. They’ve achieved amazing things in their own right.

Intuitively, Tom Suozzi knows thisand that strong family history gives him the security of being capable of great personal growth and staying grounded — when he allows it. I know this because I’ve witnessed it.

Toward the end of his tenure as Glen Cove Mayor in the late 1990’s, and before his first run for Nassau County Executive, I did Labor/Management training for the City of Glen Cove with Cornell University’s ILR School’s Labor Studies Program. I taught in the Cornell program for some 20 years, and, because of my work in government, Tom Germano, the program’s director, asked me to join him in a special assignment he just received: from the Mayor of Glen Cove, Tom Suozzi.

Having done similar work for the Postal Workers Union with Germano, I was surprised the training was being pushed hard by Suozzi himself. Usually, our requests for such hands-on work came from frustrated municipal union leaders, trying to move unresponsive bosses. Suozzi’s personal involvement was a breath of fresh air, and something elected officials rarely did.

Even more refreshing was observing Suozzi participating in the training sessions, while no one from the public or the press was watching. He was engaged; he was grounded; he listened to his workers; he asked good, fearless questions about his own managerial style; and he genuinely wanted to improve the lives of everyone around him. No press releases were issued; the work itself, was the goal.

Now, with history’s eyes squarely on him after his crucial Congressional victory, Suozzi needs to remember to act as he did during those productive Glen Cove Labor/Management work sessions — that the only judgment of his actions that matters, is whether or not he’s doing what’s right. He needs to forget about fawning sycophants, and false praise.

That’s an approach that would make Jack English, Mario Cuomo and many of his labor and grassroots organizers smile.

My Draft Speech for Joe Biden to Deliver NOW: “I Never Forget the Things That Matter Most in Life.”

(Joe Biden with his son Beau, who, as a Major in the Delaware National Guard, served in the Iraq War. Beau Biden died of Brain Cancer at the age of 46, in 2015. )

**NOTE TO READER: As someone who worked with Mario Cuomo, I’ve drafted a speech for Joe Biden to deliver this week, on the things that are most important to remember. Just own it, Joe. Your brain and heart are full.**

Look.  I’m old, and I sometimes forget things; but there are things that matter that I will never forget.

I know what it is to lose a child, a spouse, people you love; and I know how to comfort those who have also experienced such losses, and to carry on, because we must. Enormous personal loss, and grief and love and compassion are things that I can never, ever forget.

I know what it is to lose a family member in service to this nation, and I will never, ever forget their sacrifice, or the excruciatingly painful moment of their death, their  family’s deep suffering, and the cruelty of anyone who calls these American heroes, “losers and suckers.”

I know what it is to fight for the rights of the disabled, or of those who are old, or frail, or Black or Brown, or fleeing torture from another land, or for someone who’s female, or gay, or poor, or struggling, or different in any way.  I will never forget to fight for them.

I will never forget about Social Security or Medicare and how both programs pulled working families out of poverty, and I will never forget to keep fighting for those essential protections for my fellow 75 million Americans over the age of 60.  

Social Security and Medicare are lifelines to those who weren’t born with a silver spoon in their mouths, or chauffeured to a ritzy private school in their mother’s pink Rolls Royce, as Donald Trump was, or inherited $400 million from their Daddy.

I will never forget about fighting for affordable health care for all—which out of sheer meanness Trump repeatedly tried to kill, and we fought to keep it alive.

I will never forget how hard we fought to prevent our families from being punished for having preexisting conditions, like AIDS or Cancer;  nor how we battled relentlessly to bring drug prices down— down to $35 for a shot of insulin—despite vicious opposition from the dark money, anti-family interests behind Trump.

I will never, ever forget about Democracy at home, nor about the tiki-torch carrying MAGA monsters screaming  “Jews will Not Replace Us,” marching to protect their symbols of segregation and hate.  I will never forget their twisted faces full of hate, and I will never, ever stop fighting them and anyone who enables them.

I will never forget the deep scars and sacrifices of hundreds of thousands of Americans who fought to end Slavery—the direct cause of the last illegal American insurrection against our government—and their courageous fight for freedom, citizenship and voting rights.  We stand on the strong shoulders of generations of those who endured daily horrors, and of those brave freedom fighters and soldiers of dignity and decency and democracy at home.   I will never forget them, nor ever stop fighting for diversity, equality and inclusion in a country built on those bedrock principles.

I may, momentarily, forget the names of the President of Egypt or the President of Mexico, but I will never, ever forget—nor forgive– the terrible tyranny of Fascists like Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin and Putin.

I will NEVER forget the six million Jews, slaughtered by pure Nazi hatred, and the one million twinkling lights at Yad Vashem, commemorating the one million merciless deaths of Jewish Children at the hands of Fascists.

Donald Trump may love to repeat the pernicious, hate-mongering language of Adolf Hitler, and he may swoon over the smug, sinister swagger of Mussolini, and the scorched-earth, inhumane tactics of Vladimir Putin in Ukraine, but I will never forget the hundreds of thousands of US troops who died fighting Fascism, nor the millions of young children, women and innocent civilians slaughtered by these dictators, whom Trump admires.

And, I will never, ever forget NATOand the life-saving, and democracy preserving sacrifices made by our Allies, who have stood with us, shoulder to shoulder, and kept the world free from global totalitarianism.   

 I helped strengthen NATO during my Presidency, while Donald Trump has already forgotten the lessons of the last World War—if he ever learned them—and has promised one of the world’s most vicious tyrants, Vladimir Putin, that he can do whatever he wants to NATO—destroying Democracy’s strongest alliance, and burning down the achievement of millions of free people—and the sacrifices of our sons and daughters, parents and grandparents.  Donald Trump forgets all of that.

This April, NATO turns 75, stronger than ever, and no one in their right mind, thinks it’s too old to keep the world safe for Democracy. 

This August, Social Security turns 89 years old, and no one with any understanding of the struggle of making ends meet—especially for those of us over the age of 65, not born into extreme wealth—think Social Security is too old to continue to put food on our tables.  I’ll never forget, nor stop fighting to protect, these two pillars of our American families. 

I may forget a few words here and there, but I’ll never forget about human rights, and human dignity and human freedom, and the human sacrifices made throughout many generations to get us to where we are today. 

I’ll never forget about our children and our grandchildren, living in an increasingly fragile world threatened by random gun violence and environmental destruction.

Nor, can I ever forget or ignore the cries of the children of war, under unrelenting siege and bombardment in the Ukraine or in Gaza.  These are all our children, and I will never forget them.

I may forget a few things, now and then, but I will never forget the tens of millions of women in our own country, robbed of the right to take control of their own bodies, and to make their own decisions about their health.

I’ll never forget who I am, and where I came from, nor my father’s sage advice that, “Joey, a job is more than a paycheck, it’s a source of human dignity.”  That’s why, I am proud of having created 14.8 million jobs during my first term as President, more than any other President in US history during my first term.

I’ll never forget Franklin Roosevelt hoisting himself up from his wheelchair, so he could pull this country back on its’ feet, following the Great Depression.   FDR’s powerful example of hope and tenacity drove me to help get this country back up and running again, following the  high unemployment of the  COVID Pandemic.

 I have never forgotten thatand am especially proud that we’ve kept the national unemployment rate down under 4 percent for two straight years, while the Stock Market experienced its’ greatest gains in American History in the first two months of this year.

I’ll never forget how Donald Trump assured the nation in January, 2020, when the earliest cases of COVID were reported, that he had the virus “totally under control,” advising us that, “like a miracle” it would disappear, and forgetting basic high school science, he suggested injesting bleach to cure it. 

How could anyone forget that brainless, heartless response to the Pandemic?

How could anyone forget the 400,000 preventable COVID deaths that occurred during Trump’s final year as President?

 How could anyone forget that under Trump’s mismanagement, incompetency and dishonesty concerning the COVID Pandemic, life expectancy of Americans dropped to its lowest level since World War II?  I may be 81 years old, but I can never forget that.

And, like many American, I can never forget that maybe if Trump had spent more time doing his job and less time playing golf, he wouldn’t have forgotten the oath he took as President to protect the American people.

How can any American forget that in the 1461 days of Trump’s presidency, he spent 307 days on golf courses, at a financial cost to American taxpayers of $144 million, and the personal cost to millions of Americans of their jobs, and, in many families their loved ones, because he forgot to do his job as president.

Nor can any of us ever forget that Trump spent 428 daysor nearly one-third of his presidency—visiting Trump organization-owned properties, and that, among all American Presidents, Trump came in first in taking in vacation days, and dead last in getting legislation enacted.

And, Americans know that if Donald Trump spent less time on tanning beds, less time layering on pancake make-up, and less time dying his hair orange, to pretend he’s young, he’d have had more time to spend on the people’s business.

And, who can ever forget that Trump, a bankrupt builder,  proclaimed every other week  to be “Infrastructure Week,” and did absolutely nothing about it, while during my first year in office, we enacted the biggest U.S. Infrastructure rebuilding program since the Great Depression—the $1.2 trillion bipartisan Infrastructure Investment & Jobs Act.

Yes, I am a well-intentioned, elderly man, who sometimes forgets a name or a date, but I have never forgotten what matters most in life, what’s essential to the lives of Americans, and the lessons we learn from each other from life, love, disease, and death. 

What I’ve learned from decades of experience in public service and from living 81 years on this precious planet, is that what matters most in this life is, as the great Catholic theologian Teihard de Chardin said, is “to be part of something bigger than ourselves.” 

That’s something I can never forget, and it’s a lifelong lesson I learned from my working-class parents; from the good, solid people I grew up with in Scranton; from the patriotic men and women—including my son Beau–who went off to fight in our wars and protect our freedoms.

These are the lessons I’ve learned from life, from death, and from my faith. They are seared into every sinew of my being.

 It’s those instructions in building lives of dignity, decency and fairnessand the daily inspirations of the working men and women struggling to live them– that can never, ever be forgotten.

God bless you, God bless our troops, and God Bless the United States of America.

It’s Not Bush v. Gore; It’s Truth v. Gorsuch.

(Colorado attorney Jason Murray argues before the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of the State of Colorado, on February 8, 2024. Artwork by William Hennessy.)

9-0. That’s my prediction for how overwhelmingly the U.S. Supreme Court is going to deny Colorado the right to kick the insurrectionist Donald Trump off their State’s ballot.

The Court never wanted to kick Trump off the ballot, and the terrible lawyering of Colorado’s attorneys, gave them an easy way out.

Colorado’s attorneys never made their case; never told the High Court how and why the Colorado Supreme Court found that Trump had participated in the January 6, 2021, attempt to overthrow the US Government, and fell under the Article 3 definition of an insurrectionist; never seriously advanced the premise of a State’s right to conduct its own system of elections, and never, ever, even once challenged the Supreme Court justices on their previous State’s Rights dogma on Abortion, Voting Rights, and Gun Regulation.

Not even Justice Neil Gorsuch, who, 12 years ago, wrote an opinion that a State’s right to run its own elections was sacrosanct, was confronted with how this case differed, and the hypocrisy of his present position. Instead, the Colorado attorneys let Gorsuch and everyone else off the hook. The question was never raised how alleged Constitutional “textualists,” could so easily abandon the clear text of the Constitution.

How could Colorado not hire former Republican federal Judge J. Michael Luttig to argue the case before the Supreme Court the way he, and Harvard Constitutional Law Professor Laurence Tribe, brilliantly argued it in print and in public? Why did Colorado throw two attorneys, with zero Supreme Court experience, up in front of the nine justices and millions of Americans, only to have them fall flat, and fail to scratch the surface on such profoundly important constitutional issues?

The question of what constituted insurrection under the U.S.Constitution and whether Trump committed it was never weighed, yet we know that Trump will twist the outcome to say he was “exonerated from being an insurrectionist.” Nothing could be further from the truth, but the Colorado attorneys failed to drill down on that possible outcome.

All the Trump Court will decide, when they hand down their overwhelming verdict, is that the State of Colorado–from an administrative and ministerial standpoint–has no right to kick Trump off the ballot. Then, we’ll have to watch–and throw the Justices own arguments right back at them–when the Texas v. US case concerning Border Control comes to the Supreme Court, and the Right Wing justices jump through hoops to find that Texas has the authority to defy the US Government on the matter of immigration security.

I’d like to hear Justice Clarence Thomas—whose spouse supported Trump’s January 6th attempt to overthrow the U.S. government—wring his hands again about “the confederacy” and “segregation” when the Texas case comes before him. Maybe he’ll enlighten us on the rights of Southern states to secede, and the latest “Lost Cause.”

Will the Supreme Court give this Colorado decision to Trump on a technicality? Will the Justices avoid the determination of Trump’s central role in the January 6th insurrection, and then rule against Trump on his bogus claims of blanket immunity to balance the scale?

Or, will The Trump Court take a pass on that one, too, by simply waving it off, and letting the DC Appeals Court’s unanimous decision stand? That to me, is the High Courts’ safest, most likely outcome: give former President Trump Colorado (which he’ll lose in the general election anyway, and let the Appeals Court deny “citizen Trump” any claims of immunity for his criminal actions.

But until then, the question of whether or not the 14th Amendment’s Article 3, forbids “insurrectionists” from holding public office–and whether Trump’s directing of his followers—including Ginni Thomas— to stop the proper functioning of the U.S. government and attack the Capitol Building qualifies under the definition of insurrection–remains unanswered.

It’s not quite Bush v. Gore; it’s Truth v. Gorsuch.

Joe Dallesandro’s Interview Magazine Q & A Makes Clear: He’s Still ‘Little Joe’ from North Babylon to Me.

(Joe Dallesandro & child, photo by Francesco Scavullo; press shot for Andy Warhol: Paul Morrissey, for movie FLESH; from Joe Dallesandro’s Facebook Page.)

Joe Dallesandro sat next to me in Mr. Hoover’s 8th Grade Choir, at Mount Avenue Junior High School in North Babylon, NY, a working-class town on Long Island, about an hour outside of NYC by train.

A lot of people in our class thought Joe was a tough guy and they feared him, but he was alway very kind and gentle to me, and, really, that was all that mattered. He was way cooler than I could ever hope to be, since I was such a nerd and totally clueless about sex and many other things in Junior High School.

Years after he made his early movies with Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey, I thought it was kind of a wink of fate that we were in Greenwich Village around the same time in the late 60’s; me, giving up a full, journalism scholarship at NYU, attempting suicide, and dropping out of college; him, making movies that would become classics, like “Flesh” and “Trash” and “Frankenstein.”

I couldn’t handle the Village in the late 60’s, being so clueless about drugs and sex that I thought a “nickel bag” was a cheap condom. Joe, on the other hand, embraced it head-on, and, without intending to, became the model for the perfect male body that people spend years trying to achieve today.

None of it seemed to faze, “Little Joe,” which I loved, and none of it went to his head. I remember an interview he gave Newsday, after the success of his early films, where he said that what he really wanted to do in life was open a pizzeria in North Babylon. Look out Pizza D’Amaro in Sunset City Shopping Center, I remember thinking.

His latest interview, done this week in Interview Magazine (Feb. 5, 2024), shows how, beautifully, neither fame, nor the years, have changed Joe very much. We both turned 75 last month, 10 days apart.

I suspect when we meet again, he’ll be just as kind and nice to me as he was at Mount Avenue Jr. High. I’d still love to work on the story of his life, in book or film or TV series form, to simply show people how life was lived in a simpler—but very tough time—before every little one of peoples’ moves was planned, or scripted, or posed, and then recycled ad nauseam on social media.

I love the fact that the kid who sat next to me in choir–whose early facial and full-body portraits have become iconic models for androgynous male beauty–never planned it that way. Fuck Tik Tok, and Instagram, “influencers,” and “followers;” I’ll take the real Little Joe anytime. And, I LOVE the fact that he grew up in North Babylon

(The entire Interview Magazine interview between Joe Dallesandro and Bruce LaBruce is reprinted below. You can order limited edition silkscreen prints of Jack Mitchell’s magnificent photos of Joe on littlejoe.bigcartel.com.)

SUPERSTAR

Joe Dallesandro Tells Bruce LaBruce
About Life as a Warhol Superstar

By Bruce LaBruce

February 5, 2024, Interview Magazine

As an aficionado of the Warhol Superstars (several of whom I and my fellow Toronto queercore coconspirators emulated in the ’80s), it was with great alacrity that I jumped at the chance to interview the mighty Joe Dallesandro, aka “Little Joe.” I had actually met Joe before, back in 1998 when I photographed him for Index magazine. When my friend and I picked up Joe outside of the Hotel Brevoort, an L.A. apartment building he still manages, he wasn’t in a great mood. To break the ice, I asked if he knew the history of the building. “Yeah,” he replied. “Somebody built it and now people live in it.” I had never heard anything put so succinctly. After we plied him with Taco Bell, however, his disposition shifted, and, gentleman that he is, we ended up having a very pleasant and professional photo shoot.

Besides, this wasn’t his first time in front of a camera. Joe Dallesandro, with his muscular physique and rugged good looks, first became known for playing a series of hustler or hustler-adjacent characters in the Warhol movies directed by Paul Morrissey. There was Flesh (1968), Trash (1970), and Heat (1972). Those were followed by the Warhol/Morrissey horror pastiches Flesh for Frankenstein (1973) and Blood for Dracula (1974), both opposite the great Udo Kier. Many know him solely for those performances, but Joe acted well beyond the Warhol years, including more than a decade working as an actor in art and exploitation films in France and Italy. Film geek that I am, I did my best to focus on his impressive body of work (and less on, shall we say, the more salacious side of his life). But with Joe, life often imitated art. Joe has always been comfortable discussing his sexuality (he’s openly bisexual, according to Wikipedia), and two of my favorite quotes on the question of one’s sexuality come from Joe himself, in Flesh. When asked by a neophyte hustler if he’s gay or straight, he replies, “Nobody’s straight. What’s straight? It’s not about being straight or not straight. It’s just you do whatever you have to do.” Then, when his inquisitor tells him he’s crazy, he responds, “Everybody’s a little crazy.” Words to live by.

———

SUNDAY, DEC 3, 12 PM, 2023 LA

BRUCE LABRUCE: Hey, Mr. Dallesandro. How are you?

JOE DALLESANDRO: I’m good. You can call me Joe.

LABRUCE: Okay, Joe. Thanks for taking some time on a Sunday afternoon.

DALLESANDRO: This is my day where I have time to take. I can do anything I want on Sunday.

LABRUCE: Oh, cool. So what keeps you busy on the other days of the week?

DALLESANDRO: I run a building. I collect rents and schedule repairs, and I make sure my place doesn’t fall down.

LABRUCE: And that’s the Brevoort.

DALLESANDRO: Yeah. It’s just a regular building.

LABRUCE: But it has an interesting history. The Black Dahlia lived there with her boyfriend a year before she was murdered. In fact, I made a film called Hustler White, where I chased Tony Ward down the street and over a wall. It turns out it was the Brevoort.

DALLESANDRO: Oh, wow.

LABRUCE: You’ve met Tony Ward, haven’t you? I saw some pictures of you two on your Twitter.

DALLESANDRO: Yeah.

LABRUCE: Hustler White [1996] was an homage to you, in a way—your appearances in the Paul Morrissey movies Flesh [1968], Trash [1970], and Heat [1972]. I’m a big film geek, so I’m going to ask you about some of your movies. But first, there’s a story about you stealing a car when you were 15 and going on this crazy car chase with the police through the Holland Tunnel.

DALLESANDRO: True story.

LABRUCE: You got shot in the leg. How painful was that?

DALLESANDRO: It wasn’t painful at all. I didn’t even know I was shot until I saw blood. Put my finger down to feel what was going on, and it went into my leg. So that was creepy. The bullet was still inside. I had to go to a hospital and get it taken out.

LABRUCE: Wow. Did you flag down a car or walk?

DALLESANDRO: Somebody had just jumped out of their car and left the motor running because it was wintertime. I had just thrown out a bunch of keys and didn’t want to get caught with them. I ran across the street, jumped into the car, and took off. I had to follow the signs to my neighborhood because I didn’t know where I was. I made it home, and my father said, “You need to go to the hospital.” And that’s what I did. I guess there was a bulletin about somebody going through the tunnel in a stolen car so the police were at the hospital. They said, “You got to confess. We know that was you.” I confessed.

LABRUCE: Did it seem like a movie when you were experiencing it?

DALLESANDRO: No. It just seemed like a scary thing, like, “I’m in big trouble now.” So that was my horrible childhood, which led me to a reform school—or a work camp, which is what it was.

LABRUCE: What kind of work?

DALLESANDRO: Forestry work, chopping down trees, pruning them so that they don’t cause fires.

LABRUCE: So not the worst work that you could have done.

DALLESANDRO: No, but when you’re 15, you should be in school. You shouldn’t be in a place with a bunch of 18-year-olds. But I learned how to use an axe at a very young age, so that was useful later in life.

LABRUCE: That pops up in some of your later Italian films, where you’re in gardens and working with tools. Some of those films seem almost based on your life. There’s one called Season for Assassins [1975].

DALLESANDRO: Oh my god.

LABRUCE: A pretty interesting film with [actor] Martin Balsam, where you’re going around with these other tough street guys creating havoc, and they’re raping women and stealing from rich people. Was that something where the director decided, because of your background, that you would be perfect for this role? Or did it just happen that you were attracted to it?

DALLESANDRO: I decided whether to do them or not. I could usually tell in the first 10 pages of the script. That was after I did the Paul Morrissey films in Italy, Flesh for Frankenstein [1973] and Blood for Dracula [1974]. I was signed to do two other films there.

LABRUCE: There’s one called The Climber [1975] and Born Winner [1976]. Do you think they were aware of your background and that you were a wild kid, and that’s why they offered you the roles?

DALLESANDRO: No. I think the reason they chose me is because of the work I’d already done with the Warhol people, FleshTrash, and Heat. One director wanted to be the first one to work with me over there. He was upset when I worked with another Italian director first, but we still did a movie together.

LABRUCE: Martin Balsam is such a legendary actor. Did he leave an impression on you?

DALLESANDRO: He was, to me, a true actor. He was very, very spoiled. See, I was a different type of person, a regular guy, and these people were movie star types, which always bored me. I’ve had an actor here in my building once say to me, “Don’t you know who I am?” And I just laughed my ass off because who gives a shit who you are? You’re a tenant.

LABRUCE: But Balsam seems like a real professional. He’s one of those guys that probably just goes in, does the work, and gets out.

DALLESANDRO: That’s the way he was, but he was also very angry with crew members if he felt they weren’t doing their job right. He was pretty tough to work with, but thank god I didn’t have to work with him that much.

LABRUCE: You’ve played so many crazy characters. In one film called One Woman’s Lover [1974] you blow up a rabbit. Do you remember that?

DALLESANDRO: Oh yeah, I’m supposed to be a fascist or something.

LABRUCE: You’ve played a lot of sadistic characters. And sexually sadistic characters, like in La Marge [1976]. Was that coming out of the Warhol thing where you were associated with Frankenstein and Dracula?

DALLESANDRO: La Marge starred Sylvia Kristel and myself. She was really famous for her films in Paris, like Emmanuelle [1974]. So it fit that I should work with her. But by the time we came to do our film together, she wanted to be a nun. She didn’t want to do any nudity or anything like that anymore, so the only one who appears nude in that film is me.

LABRUCE: Which happened a lot, I think. You’ve talked about how you’d rather just take your clothes off than have people trying to talk you into it.

DALLESANDRO: I didn’t look forward to doing any of that. It’s just that it appeared in the script, and I said, “No problem. I’ll do it.” But there are a lot of films with no nudity. The only thing I wanted to do in my youth that never happened was to make a cartoon, something that my child could see.

LABRUCE: You worked nonstop in Europe through the ’70s right up until the early ’80s. At that time Europe was very sexually libertine. There was a lot of open nudity and sexuality in the culture. That must have played into all these roles.

DALLESANDRO: I assume so. When I started my career over there, I didn’t want to make any more art films. But I was told by a person that was acting as a manager, “Look, Joe, you started with that crowd, and you’ve got to continue with it because people are expecting it.” That’s how the movie with Louis Malle [Black Moon, 1975], and the Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin movie [Je T’Aime Moi Non Plus, 1976], came to be.

LABRUCE: Do you have an impression of Serge Gainsbourg?

DALLESANDRO: Working with Serge and Jane was one of the best experiences I ever had. It was a good movie, before its time.

LABRUCE: It’s beautifully shot. Same with the Louis Malle film, Black Moon, which is so surreal, with nude children running around and goats and ostriches. What was the set like?

DALLESANDRO: The two things that Louis had trouble working with were the animals and the children. You can’t control either. With actors, you can tell them what you want and can get them to do it. You can’t tell a pig what to do, and you can’t tell children what to do. But it was fun to shoot.

LABRUCE: It’s very dark, with the war metaphor.

DALLESANDRO: Men and women fighting against each other. But we shot the film at his home. It was cool. He had set up a giant tent for feeding us lunch, and we had a great chef who prepared food for us. They don’t think anything about drinking wine at meals because that’s like someone having a glass of milk. Then they’d start back up working just fine.

LABRUCE: I read somewhere that you like to hang out with the crew more than the cast.

DALLESANDRO: I didn’t like producers, man. They annoyed me because they thought they controlled everything. A grip does more for a movie than any producer does. They’re making sure everything on the set is right so the cinematographer can get the picture he wants and the actor can do his scene the way it needs to be done. And they’re pretty cool people.

LABRUCE: It can be boring to make a movie, so it’s nice to have people you can talk to.

DALLESANDRO: Yeah. Otherwise you pretty much sit down and take a nap between shots.

LABRUCE: When you came back from Italy, you went to Hollywood and were quite successful working there. You worked with some great actors and directors like Richard Pryor [in Critical Condition, 1987] and Malcolm McDowell [Sunset, 1988].

DALLESANDRO: These were all super people, man. And it’s not like I’m some character. I’m just Joe. I can play Joe real well, so if you need somebody to play Joe, I’m good at it.

LABRUCE: What was working on television like?

DALLESANDRO: The speed was more like underground movies. With a bigger movie, you’re working at a slower pace, and there’s more time taken into each shot. With television, you have to get more done in a day.

LABRUCE: Looking back at the Warhol films, you’re one of the last remaining Superstars. I’m wondering about those amazing movies like Lonesome Cowboys [1968], which just seems like a complete lark and so much fun. Where was that shot?

DALLESANDRO: Arizona. And shooting with Andy was a lot different than shooting with Paul [Morrissey]. Paul had at least tried to put a story in it. With Andy it was just turning on the camera and letting us go. It was fun shooting with him, but the star of that film would be the one who talked the fastest and the loudest.

LABRUCE: So that would be Viva.

DALLESANDRO: [Laughs] That would never be me because I didn’t talk at all. So yeah, that was Viva. And Taylor Mead, who was pretty cool. There was Eric Emerson, who was a dancing hero, and Louis Waldon. I was the youngest, so they all thought they were directing me, telling me what to do, that I’ll look good if I do this. I didn’t care how I looked. The first movie I made was with Andy, he was shooting a 24-hour movie that was only shown once in its entirety. That was after Paul had cut a small movie out of it and made The Loves of Ondine [1968]. That was the first film I made with Andy, which was a strange, interesting little role that I played.

LABRUCE: What was Ondine like?

DALLESANDRO: He was fun to work with because he was playing a silly character, married to Brigid [Berlin]. And we did just a small scene of me teaching him wrestling, and it was silliness. So when Paul came over with a release for me to sign, I thought, “What? This is ridiculous. This is never going to show as a movie anywhere.” But it did, to my surprise. And that’s when I began working with them. I went to work at the Factory as a bodyguard or someone to let people in and out of the place.

LABRUCE: Were you literally standing outside the Factory?

DALLESANDRO: I was the doorman. I sat at the desk and buzzed you in. After Andy had been shot, we built a thing around the elevator. So you came in off the elevator and then you were in a small box of a room and I would buzz you through a half-door into the Factory.

LABRUCE: Do you remember Valerie Solanas [the woman who shot Andy Warhol] coming in?

DALLESANDRO: I came in after she was gone. They’d just taken the last person away in the ambulance. That’s when I showed up and thought, “Well, it looks like I don’t have a job, because I wasn’t here to do any protecting.” Later she was back on the streets with a whole shopping bag full of guns. They arrested her, but she never spent any time in prison. It was more that she was crazy and somehow if you get well from being crazy, you’re back out.

LABRUCE: Is there anyone from those days you’re in touch with, like Paul Morrissey?

DALLESANDRO: No, I don’t talk to Paul. I don’t think he’s so coherent anymore. His niece takes care of him.

LABRUCE: The director of Season for Assassins, Marcello Andrei, is still alive. He’s 102 years old.

DALLESANDRO: Wow. That’s wonderful. I love when anybody is still around.

LABRUCE: You made 55 movies in your career, which is pretty unbelievable.

DALLESANDRO: I don’t remember all the movies I did, but they kept me fed. But you made a lot of movies too, and it’s harder for directors than for actors. And you’ve got a long life ahead of you, man. I’m at the end of mine.

LABRUCE: You’re not that old, my friend. Seventy-five is the new 50. And you’ve had a whole career and a family. You have two kids, three grandchildren. That must be really satisfying.

DALLESANDRO: Yeah, but I wish I’d have spent more of their childhood with them, but that wasn’t meant to be. But we do spend our later years together.

LABRUCE: Do you ever miss New York?

DALLESANDRO: No. I was born in the South, so my body just wants to be somewhere warm. I couldn’t stand the cold of New York. It’s horrible. I don’t even like watching snow on TV.

LABRUCE: If someone came and offered you a juicy role right now would you take it?

DALLESANDRO: Sure.

LABRUCE: Maybe I’ll try to write something for you.

DALLESANDRO: Oh, that’d be wonderful.

LABRUCE: Do you watch a lot of movies these days?

DALLESANDRO: I have an Apple TV thing, where I watch mostly Disney. I love animation. There’s no violence in it, and any violence they portray in the cartoon is acceptable to me because it’s not real. I don’t watch the news in my old age because it’s just a repeat of stuff I saw when I was a kid. Why do I want to see the same old nonsense? I thought we’d be living in some utopia by the time I was my age because of the people that I knew in my youth. Everybody was smoking marijuana and living a good life and being hippies. I thought when these people grew up, politics would be totally different. Instead it all turned into greed and they’re worse than the people we had before.

LABRUCE: There was a lot of idealism in the late ’60s and ’70s.

DALLESANDRO: Yeah. We don’t have any of that going on today. Just yesterday at a supermarket down the street from me, somebody came in and had a shootout with a security guard because of road rage or something.

LABRUCE: Where do you think it all went wrong, Joe?

DALLESANDRO: I really don’t know.

LABRUCE: I’ll go right back to the beginning. I’m curious about your debut with Bob Mizer and the Athletic Model Guild. How did you meet him?

DALLESANDRO: That was a pure accident. I was in Los Angeles looking for something that a young person can do, and I met somebody who said, “You should be a model,” not knowing they meant nude modeling, but it turned out that that’s what it was. And it provided me with some money to survive.

LABRUCE: You were only 15?

DALLESANDRO: Actually I was 16, so I was an adult by then. I was a manly man. I had a good life. You were influenced as a director by Warhol films, weren’t you? Along with John Waters.

LABRUCE: Yeah. What was your impression of working on Cry-Baby [1990] with John Waters?

DALLESANDRO: I really didn’t have much to do there, man. I could have done so much more with John. I loved working with him, and I wish we would’ve stayed more friendly with each other, but it is what it was.

LABRUCE: He just got his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Do you have one?

DALLESANDRO: Of course not.

LABRUCE: Somebody’s going to have to work on that. I’m going to start a petition.

DALLESANDRO: I wouldn’t be interested in wasting money on something like that. But I do want to say something. People can order limited edition silkscreen prints of Jack Mitchell’s photos of me on littlejoe.bigcartel.com.