(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 NATO—and 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 that, and 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 days—or 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 fairness—and 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.

(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 & 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, Flesh, Trash, 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.

Donald Trump finally got a law passed. 

After 12 years of failed attempts, New York State revised it’s Penal Code this week, with Governor Kathy Hochul signing the new law and declaring “Rape Is Rape,” expanding the technical legal definition of “rape” well beyond the old, parochial parameters of “vaginal penetration by a penis.”

And none of it could have been done, without a hand from Donald Trump–or, more accurately, a few of his teeny, chubby fingers and, what may or may not have been, a flaccid penis.  The first jury of six men and three women in the May, 2023 E. Jean Carroll case vs. Trump, just didn’t want to touch that one.

Mere days after Trump was found guilty, again, this year, by yet another unanimous jury, for repeatedly sexually assaulting and defaming E. Jean Carroll to the tune of $83 million (on top of the $5 million he already lost to her) New York State moved its Rape Law into the 21^st Century and into compliance with federal law, practice, and most modern law-enforcement definitions of rape.

The new law—which should, perhaps be named, “The Trump Middle Finger Rape Law,” broadens the definition of “Rape” to include nonconsensual anal, oral and vaginal sexual contact.  That means that whether the perp forcibly uses his or her fingers, a sex toy, a baton or anything else, or his penis in any penetration of a vaginal, oral or anal opening—on a woman or a man—the sex offender is guilty of rape.

New York State’s new definition of rape makes it comport with Federal standards, including those of the FBI, whose Uniform Crime Reports define rape as:

“penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.”

Ironically, that change in the FBI’s definition of what constituted rape, was made in 2012, during the tenure of then-FBI Director Robert Mueller. 

New York’s new rape law is also consistent and with the practices of the Rape, Abuse, Incest National Network (RAINN), which operates the Department of Defense’s SAFE Helpline, and has working partnerships with over 1,000 local sexual assault service providers across the country.

In signing the new rape bill into law, Governor Hochul said that what happened under the old law was that  “physical technicalities confuse jurors and humiliate survivors and create a legal grey area that defendants exploit.”

Which is precisely what the convicted sex offender Trump did in his first losing trial against E. Jean Carroll last May.

In describing Trump’s sexual attack on her, Carroll carefully told the Federal civil jury in 2023 that Trump forcibly inserted several fingers and his penis into her vagina, after pushing her up against a wall, and pulling down her tights.   It was the same detailed description of rape she had repeatedly recounted for decades, under oath, and in print.

During that trial, the jury concluded, that Trump had “deliberately and forcibly penetrated Ms. Carroll’s vagina with his fingers, causing immediate pain and long lasting emotional and psychological harm,” findings which led to their $5 million judgment in Carroll’s favor, $2 million of which was awarded as compensatory damages because of the brutal sexual assault committed by Trump.

Yet, despite Carroll’s sworn testimony that he also penetrated her with his penis, the Jury, for some bizarre reason, found Trump’s penis to be no more than another one of his teeny fingers, dismissing Carroll’s under oath, first-person account, as if they  were, somehow, in the Bergdorf’s dressing room watching the method of Trump’s sexual attack.

That distinction—between Trump’s chubby little fingers or his penis—under the old New York State Penal Law was enough for the sex offender to escape the previous “vaginal penetration by a penis”  technical requirement for rape.  The Jury just couldn’t tell Trump’s penis from his teeny fingers.

 US District Court Senior Judge Lewis Kaplan—who saw and heard the exact same evidence in that first case–was outraged over the jury’s jerry-rigged verdict on the question of rape, and he said so, several times. Writing immediately following the 2023 verdict, Judge Kaplan said quite clearly:

            “Indeed, as the evidence at trial recounted makes clear, the jury found that Mr.Trump in fact did exactly that.” (Rape Ms. Carroll).

Judge Kaplan—who also presided over E. Jean Carroll’s just concluded second defamation case against Trump— declared that the jury in the first case, based their decision on, as Newsday reported (January 30, 2024):

 “the narrow, technical meaning” of rape in New York penal law and that the verdict did not mean that Carroll “failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape.’”

In August, 2023, only a few months after Trump was convicted of being a sex offender, Judge Kaplan dismissed a defamation counter-claim by Trump against Carroll, where he whined that she defamed him by writing in a magazine article and later in her 2019 book, What Do We Need Men For?: A Modest Proposal, that Trump raped her. 

USA Today, reporting this week (January 29, 2024) in a story entitled “Did Donald Trump Rape E. Jean Carroll? Here’s what a Jury and Judge Said,” questioned why the jury accepted only part of E. Jean Carroll’s story of Trump’s criminal sexual attack on her:

“The jurors weren’t required to explain why, under the definitions they were given, they concluded Trump sexually abused Carroll but were less convinced he raped her.

However, in analyzing the jury’s verdict, Judge Kaplan said Carroll’s testimony about penetration by fingers was more “repeated and clear.” She said she “couldn’t see anything that was happening,” although she could feel it, describing the pain from his finger in particular. She testified that she wasn’t sure if he got his penis fully or only partially inside her.”

In Kaplan’s judgment, “full” or “partial” penetration wasn’t the issue:  any penetration of the vagina by Trump’s penis, no matter how small, was enough to trigger the definition of rape, even under the old law. If the jury did not believe Carroll’s sworn testimony of penile penetration, then why did they award her $2 million in compensatory damages for the sexual assault? As a consolation prize?

As excruciatingly painful as it was for E. Jean Carroll to experience this horror initially, and then to have to relive it over and over during her trials and many times after, under the old, out-dated New York State rape law, the serious felony of rape came down to the question of whether or not Trump’s penis could be confused for his teeny, chubby fingers.

Under the New York State’s new “Trump Middle Finger Rape Law,” penis size and depth or means of penetration is no longer, thankfully, a matter for a jury to measure.

(Photo by Steve Villano, of the Statue of Sainte Jeanne D’Arc at the Cathedrale of Notre Dame de Paris, May, 2012, Paris, France.)

The 2024 Presidential Election ended this week, and a tough, intelligent, courageous, and persistent 80-year old woman pointed the way to dignity and victory. Like Sainte Jeanne D’Arc of France, E. Jean Carroll is our new national symbol of freedom and independence.

 This lightening bolt for justice—the E. Jean Carroll defamation case against Donald Trump, a beast of modern times, gives hope to people being picked on around the world—and to Democrats, if they are paying attention–how pure guts, a steel spine,  persistence, and an unshakeable determination to never back down in the face of pure evil, will triumph.

This brave woman–sexually assaulted, abused and libeled on a huge scale by former President Donald Trump–beat the lawless sexual abuser, liar, convicted libeler, and fraud on his newest preferred campaign turf:  the Courthouse.  Today, she stands astride him, sword of justice pointing toward the heavens, our new national shero.  Oh, how Trump’s maggot supporters will despise the use of that term.

Trump never really saw Jean D’ Carroll’s slaying strikes coming, since she had a few time-tested  weapons on her side whose existence Trump has never recognized: the law, and the truth.  In short, she and her kick-ass team of attorneys led by Roberta Kaplan, took no shit, which, in the end, is all Trump really is.

Acting more like Oliver Sacks’ The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Trump–who mistook E. Jean Carroll for his–also mistook his own lies for the truth. 

That approach may work at MAGA cult covens, or when dining on the world’s “best” cake at Mar-A-Lago, but not before a real, live judge and jury.  When Trump whines that “the courts are out of control,” what he means is that they are out of his control— precisely how a legal system in a democracy should work.

Outraged that he lost a $5 million sexual abuse and libel case to Carroll last year, Trump—never a financial nor legal genius— decided to double-down, multiplying his initial loss nearly 18 times (to a total of $88 million) by seeking “retribution” against his sex abuse victim in print, at his MAGA mosh pits, and on national television.   The crapulent, spoiled brat, chauffered to private school in his mother’s rose-colored Rolls Royce, just couldn’t stand the fact that years after he physically and emotionally abused her, Carroll–refusing to bow before him–continued to wield her sword of truth and the law against him, over and over again in Court.   Each new Trump lie became a new cause of action.

There are historic implications for this case, which will, open the floodgates in the other pending civil and criminal cases against Trump.  Courage begets courage.

With a mostly white, mostly male, mostly middle-class jury finding that for repeatedly lying about the sexual assault Trump was found guilty of committing, and for incessantly smearing the name and reputation of his victim, Donald Trump deserved extraordinary—and swift—punishment.  The sword of justice struck a blow for fairness and decency.

In short, the jury of average American citizens spoke with a unanimous, strong & clear voice in its’  $65 million punitive damages award, that  “no man is above the law, nor does a sitting or former President have immunity from such actions.”   To underscore the message this jury was sending to Trump and monsters like him, the more the former President abused his power and libeled the woman he sexually abused, the more he would be punished.   The bellicose bully would, at last, be held accountable.

The jury from urban and suburban counties in and around NYC, where Trump was born, refused to be intimidated by the threats of violence by Trump’s deranged supporters.  Neither was the courageous E. Jean Carroll—whose name, unlike the jurors’, could not be kept secret—and who received numerous death threats over several years.

In Mary L. Trump’s Substack column on the day of the verdict in the Carroll case, Trump’s niece, a clinical psychologist, wrote:

“Donald is someone who has gone through his entire life without facing consequences—and I believe he thinks he can get away with everything.  Today, that changed. It was one of the first times Donald has been made to answer for his egregious behavior.”

It will not be the last, especially with so many Trump trials coming to fruition over the next few months.   If one, 80-year old woman’s persistence for justice can make Trump pay severely for the horrendous consequences of his actions, what kind of inspiring incentive does that verdict give Special Counsel Jack Smith, and Prosecutors like NYS Attorney General Tish James, and Fulton County DA Fani Willis?  In those cases, there are tens of millions of victims.

One of the most sweeping statements which puts the Carroll verdict in context for Trump’s upcoming trials and for the Elections of 2024, came from one of Carroll’s attorneys, Shawn Crowley, to MSNBC, on the day of the jury’s decision:

“I believe very strongly after today, that the lesson is that actually, no one is above the law. And, that your behavior, and your statements, and your threats and your lies are gonna catch up to you someday.”

Someday for Trump, was January 26, 2024; we know it, and he knows it.

But, it was E. Jean Carroll herself, radiant in victory, head held high in the glow of justice achieved, who perfectly articulated the call to action for women just like her, and millions of others fed up with being abused by well-connected, people in power, and the cages those ghouls construct to rob humans of fundamental rights:

“ This is a great victory for every woman who stands up when she’s been knocked down, and a huge defeat for every bully who has tried to keep women down.”

THIS is the battle cry for the 2024 Elections, for American women and men who care about the Rule of Law, and the dignity, personal rights and freedoms, of every human being.  

 Carroll’s clarion call for justice is already reverberating across the country with women of all ages, who know what’s at stake in 2024, and whose personal freedom to control what happens to their own bodies was ripped away by religious and political extremists, like Trump and his MAGA cult.

Donald Trump’s devastating defeat by freedom’s fearless “saint” Jean D’ Carroll and her formidable phalanx of female legal fighters, may look largely financial, for now. 

But don’t be fooled by appearances.  When the sword of justice is unsheathed, it’s light and power will change the world.

(Photo by Steve Villano, at Healdsburg Plaza, CA; December, 2022)

“Wheelhouse Kelley.”  

Turn that name over on your tongue a few times and what comes to mind?

 A Formula One race car driver?  A boxer with a terrific move?  A candidate for public office who never gives up?

The name jumped out at me as clear as the bell at the end of a boxing round, as I read the Press Democrat’s lengthy story about the 7-way fight for our California Assembly District (#2), which, serpentine-like, snakes it’s way from Santa Rosa, all the way up to the Oregon border.  This State Legislative district is the giant Salamander of all Gerrymanders.

As each of the six Democratic candidates were explaining why they would be best to represent our district, one comment leaped out at me.  It came from Healdsburg Mayor Ariel Kelley about how her hands-on experience governing a small city, and running several public service non-profit organizations, made her the best choice for the Assembly district which represents a wide-range of communities:

“They’re small cities, a lot of rural unincorporated areas, agricultural communities , environmental challenges, and those are things that are all in my Wheelhouse,” Kelley told the Press Democrat.

“Wheelhouse Kelley.” How perfect.  Visions of precinct captains or local block leaders from the Pulitzer-prize winning writer William Kennedy’s Ironweed series leapt out in front of me. 

“Right in my Wheelhouse!”  That’s what Kennedy’s lyrical literary characters said when they knew they could deliver on fixing your problem, because they wouldn’t stop until they did.   Nothing could better describe Ariel Kelley’s indefatigable approach to problem solving, big and small.

Her approach to persistent public service became apparent to me as soon as we moved to Healdsburg three years ago, after living in suburban New York City; in several smaller cities in upstate New York State; in New York City, San Francisco, and Napa. 

Having worked with one of the finest public officials in my lifetime, the late Governor Mario M. Cuomo of New York, and devoted several decades of my career to public service and public health, I hold anyone in elected office to a very tough standard.  It was clear to me from the get-go that “Wheelhouse Kelley” had devoted her life to exceeding those high standards. 

What stood out to me, as someone who headed three national non-profit organizations and worked at two major medical centers, was that Ariel Kelley, also served as CEO of Corazon Healdsburg, a model of modern, non-profit health-care delivery for a small city, serving thousands of citizens who otherwise would not have access to health care.

 As a Healdsburg City Council member and then Mayor,  “Wheelhouse Kelley” carried through on her commitments to create more affordable housing, to provide shelter for the unhoused, and bring greater diversity into every aspect of life in our town of 11,000 residents, almost 30% of whom are Latino.

Additionally, two tangible, specific actions of “Wheelhouse Kelley” impressed me. 

At Healdsburg’s first joint celebration of Hanukkah and La Posada in our town’s Plaza, Kelley—herself, Jewish, like me—collaborated with leaders of our Latino community, to highlight the beauty of both cultures. Without missing a beat, “Wheelhouse Kelley,” moved from lighting a large menorah with Jewish community members, to–speaking in Spanish– handing off the torch of leadership to Latino community members—while dozens of young children walked with lighted candles to celebrate the feast of La Posada.  It was a beautiful and moving illustration of how to gracefully teach different groups in the community about the shared love and meaning of each other’s culture.  This was right in Kelley’s wheelhouse.

The second specific action came at a pubic meeting where proposals were unveiled for the expansion of the SMART Train to Healdsburg.  I attended the community meeting with a predisposition to favoring placing the SMART Train station at the old, run-down railroad station, and cutting off the final segment of the train to Cloverdale, to save time and resources, and reduce traffic problems.

It was as if I had lobbed a softball into Kelley’s “wheelhouse.”  Without missing a beat, nor losing her inherent desire to teach, Kelley explained to me why continuing the SMART Train past Healdsburg was essential, and that the money for it was already approved. 

“Because it’s such an agricultural community, it opens up new pools of funding for us,” Kelley said.  “And, many of the workers who work in Healdsburg, live up in the Cloverdale area where housing prices are a bit less expensive. Extending the train to Cloverdale gives those workers a direct means of getting to work, and helps serve the entire region.”

Kelley’s facts, her friendliness, her willingness to meticulously think through every detail with me, and her well-considered concern for all her fellow citizens of the area, won me over. 

After all, I was in “Wheelhouse Kelly’s” wheelhouse now.