In this episode of Wild Rivers Film Radio, host Sue Wright sits down with musician and music reporter Lon Goddard to talk about the North American premiere of Dezo Hoffman: The Man Who Shot the Sixties. From London’s swinging music scene to rare behind-the-scenes stories, Lon shares his personal connection to Hoffman’s legendary rock ’n’ […]
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(00:07):
Greetings, cinephiles.
I'm Sue Wright,
and welcome to
Wild Rivers Film Radio, the official podcast of
the Wild Rivers Film Festival
here on KCIW
one hundred point seven FM.
And today, we're sitting down with Lon Goddard,
(00:28):
a longtime Brookings resident,
musician,
music reporter, and a man with stories
that a jukebox at midnight might not tell.
But
before we dive in, we'd like to thank
the Wild Rivers Film Festival's twenty twenty five
presenting sponsor,
the Tolowa Dene Nation.
(00:49):
Your generous support has made both our festival
and the summer film workshop possible this year.
We also thank our incredible
sponsors, the Roundhouse Foundation,
Travel Curry Coast,
Sutter Coast Hospital,
Edward Jones, Our Flower House,
Southwestern Oregon Community College Curry campus,
(01:12):
and the city of Brookings.
If you'd like to join these amazing supporters
in celebrating
indie cinema, expanding film education,
and growing a film economy here on the
Wild Rivers Coast,
visit
wildriversfilmfestival.com
for sponsorship
opportunities.
(01:33):
If you're just discovering us, welcome. The Wild
Rivers Film Festival is a four day celebration
of indie and local cinema
each August in Brookings,
this year from August
'17.
We'll screen more than four dozen films across
three venues, many followed by filmmaker q and
a's, and there's also a full slate of
(01:54):
panels, VIP parties,
and our unforgettable
awards ceremony.
Festival passes are on sale now at wildriversfilmfestival.com,
and we'd love to see you there.
If you're just tuning in, you're listening to
Wild Rivers Film Radio. I'm Sue Wright. And
today, we're talking with Lon Goddard. Lon, welcome.
(02:17):
Thank you, Sue. Glad to be here. I'm
glad you're here too.
You're introducing the film, Deso Hoffman, tonight.
Deso Hoffman, the man who shot the sixties
in its North American
premiere.
Let's start at the beginning. Tell us about
how you happen to be in London at
the time when Deso was photographing the Beatles
(02:38):
and so many other major
celebrities?
I arrived in London in 1966.
I had no particular reason to be there.
It was just on a whim. A friend
of mine was already going there. He had
arranged some classes in Manchester,
and we had just graduated from high school
down at Elk Grove, California. He was going
(03:00):
there anyway.
I had nothing else to do. We were
flatmates.
And I said, okay. I'll go too.
Because I had an extra thousand dollars in
the bank for I can't remember why.
So we sailed, and we got to London
in '66.
And I had a guitar with me. I
was doing guitar one zero one. So I
(03:23):
managed to
find a bunch of folk singers, which was
difficult in London,
and I got absorbed by that. Yeah.
I was absorbed by that community.
And then I needed to get a job,
so I I guess a thousand dollars doesn't
last that long even the mid even in
the mid sixties. Right? Secretly, my parents did
(03:44):
help. Oh, okay.
But it got us across on an ocean
liner. It was only, I believe, $225
for us to go from,
from New York to, Southampton.
It was a great seven day trip on
the liner. Uh-huh.
Exciting. We ate well and
seemed like first class even though it wasn't.
(04:05):
I think we were below water. But there
we go. It was a big adventure. Right?
And the So you needed a job.
I needed a job and I could draw
caricatures. I did it all the way through
high school,
drawing people who were running for student body
president and things like that. And so I
thought, well, I'll buy these music papers that
(04:26):
I see on the stands. There were at
least five of them every week that were
telling you what's going on in music,
almost all over the world, but centrally
in London. And I drew pictures
of,
caricatures of, the photographs,
and then I took them around to the
various papers trying to get a job. Record
(04:46):
Mirror hired me to do one caricature
a week, And I believe
they gave me £6.10
for it, which is
Not enough to live on.
And then
because I showed creative ability,
I was,
hired to do
layouts.
So I became the assistant layout man taking
(05:09):
the paper to the printer each week, which
gave me a lot of newspaper experience.
And eventually, I asked the editor,
if I could write. I told him I
had the ability.
I won a couple of things in high
school for writing stories,
and he said, Okay.
I'll give you something to write. I I
said, What? He said, I'll give you an
(05:30):
album to review,
because stacks of record albums came in. Stacks,
like you won't know how many every week
of people trying to get their
albums, reviewed by people on the paper, get
some publicity.
So he gives me an album, and I
expected something in music, but it wasn't.
It was
(05:50):
Why is There Air?
So that's your start, Ezra.
Yeah. I know Cosby came to ill repute,
but there I was stuck with reviewing a
comedy album,
which I did, and Cosby was good at
that, I have to say. After his,
appearances in I Spy, which is a great
series and things, he had a real good
(06:11):
history before he went down.
Anyway, I reviewed it, and he said, That's
not bad. We'll use it. And then he
sent me off on my first interview,
which was with the crooner Jack Jones,
who's the son of the, Western star Alan
Jones, film star.
And Jack Jones was,
(06:32):
at a table
at a hotel when I came in,
which must have had 20 people around it,
and I had to go up and tap
him on the shoulder and say, Excuse me,
I'm
from record mirror,
shaking like a leaf.
And he said, Oh yes, absolutely. And he
was just so pleasant
and accommodating,
took me aside to a table, gave me
(06:55):
a big interview, which I took down in
terrible shorthand that I was developing
for myself because I I didn't have any
tape player. I was gonna say so. You're
actually taking notes from this. I'm taking notes.
And this is your this is your first
big interview, right? First one. Absolutely.
And I went back to the office, and
I was also not a typist, so I
(07:17):
had to hunt and peck and type that
out. But he said, my editor, Peter Jones,
said,
That's fine, we'll use it.
And so from then on, it was up
to me
to get on the phone, find out who
was who in the music business,
organize interviews to me and go and do
or be told to go and do them
(07:38):
by someone else,
and then at the same time lay out
the paper,
baby it through the printer,
and that was my job for
at least seven years on Record Mirror
before I departed
to other jobs. So you have a really
big part in publishing the record Mirror for
those years. Very much so. And we made
(08:00):
sure that the cover photo
was by Dezo Hoffman, almost invariably.
And it's also noted
on the cover, photo by Dezo Hoffman. Dezo
was,
the Ric O'Mear official photographer
when I came in. So
And so he was already there when you
started? He was already there, Yeah. But I
(08:21):
he hadn't I don't think he'd been there
that long, but,
he was the official photographer,
and his office was only about a block
or two away.
And it was in another street,
Gerrard Street is the name of it, and
it was Chinatown.
Chinatown in London was very small. It really
(08:43):
was
fairly restricted to Gerrard Street,
and it was just kind of a treat
to always go down to Dezo's office through
Chinatown.
He was on like the Third Floor or
something,
through a very old gated elevator,
and go in and go through the files
for pictures that we needed for interviews that
had been done by other writers or me,
(09:05):
or say, Dezer, we need you to go
with us because we're gonna go and interview
the kinks. We need you to shoot that
while we do the interview.
So Dezer would go with us to interviews
that were done,
individually,
me or the other reporters,
or he would go and do things of
his own, and he would bring people in
the studio,
(09:25):
groups, and shoot them,
and then we'd have access to those files.
So we worked pretty closely with him. I
was gonna say, it sounds like you worked
hand in hand a lot of times. All
the time.
All the time. And Dezen was a pretty
unique fellow. He was
he had a huge
vocabulary
with a brilliant
(09:46):
Eastern accent
that was just,
really inviting.
He could go up and tap you on
the shoulder or do anything. He could straighten
the blouses on women that he was shooting
or say take this off, and they just
were just open to everything. He just had
this He was so charming. Thing about him.
He was a charmer,
definite charmer.
(10:06):
He could make people do weird things
like the Beatles jump up in the air
all the time.
They do what he said to do. And
then that becomes this iconic image of the
Beatles
in the air. It did. Before Instagram
and iPhones and, yeah, do this, you know,
this iconic
(10:27):
Yeah. To make them do it at one
time, all four of them, and so they
were in different
bizarre positions,
airborne. And it it still resonates with people
today. People know that image.
It does. And Dezo also had
an individual
(10:48):
foresight in using lighting,
and also perspective.
Things would come at you in his pictures,
or he would light it so well that
you looked great even if you didn't.
He shot a picture of me, which
I still think is one of the best,
even though it looks like a teenage
(11:10):
who knows what. But he made me look
better than I ever did.
So how long did you work with you
worked with Dezo for seven years, is that
right? Yes. You worked at the record mayor
for seven years. Seven years with Dezo. Mhmm.
He was still working with him when I
left.
I was,
invited to become the head of the press
(11:31):
office for Columbia Records in London, CBS,
and I knew the previous
press officer
very well, so I took the job. And
that's quite a step up? It was. That's
what I thought. And it was, and I
had a fine time
as a PR. It was a reversal.
It formally, it was,
(11:52):
the
PR's,
formally it was the PR's job to get
me to go and interview their artists.
And then it became my job to get
someone like me to interview the artists that
I then represented.
So it was a reversal.
So how long did you work
in music in London altogether? Twenty no, not
(12:14):
twenty five years.
I'd say it was about eighteen
So this is a good long run. Of
the twenty five,
because after
I finished in the music business, which entailed
becoming the editor of Disc, another one of
the five big papers,
and also
(12:35):
many years at Phonogram Records as the head
of press office there, which is Mercury label
and others that
we know.
I left to become
I left because I didn't like punk music
very much. Oh, okay. I'd never heard that
before.
So you do have some music biases.
I couldn't
honestly go out and represent something I didn't
(12:57):
care for. Okay.
So I went to what I
always did well, became a professional illustrator,
and I
was able to get agents,
and I did financially better as an illustrator
than I ever did in the music business.
I can't say it was more fun because
you work alone.
And I had nights of just drawing and
(13:18):
drawing and drawing and projecting and
figuring out how to do perspectives.
It was all flat artwork, and
night after night, I think I did one
that was 72 hours straight
just illustrating
with airbrush and things like that.
Okay. So it was pretty lonely. And you've
(13:39):
gone back to folk music. I think that's
your your first song. Right? I always did
that anyway. Yeah. Okay. Well, I since
Deso Hoffman, the
documentary,
is in its North American premiere,
can you just tell us a little bit
about it and get folks excited about going
to see it Oh, sure. At the film
(13:59):
festival this year?
It was
Deso's assistant, Alan Messer,
who was approached by the,
team from Slovakia,
formerly
Czechoslovakia,
because
Deso was,
well, he wasn't actually Czechoslovakia,
but he spent his entire youth there. You
know, he was actually, I think, Austro Hungarian.
(14:22):
I think he's Hungarian, right? Yeah. I believe
he was a mixture. His his wife was
Catholic, he was Jewish,
Austrian and Hungary,
and then he wound up
spending his
small years in
Czechoslovakia.
So we consider him to be that, and
so do they.
(14:43):
The Slovakians
regard him as their own, and
they wanted to make a film about him
when, they discovered the fact that he'd done
all this work for the Beatles.
So they contacted Alan Messer, who was, Deso's
young assistant. I think he started with Deso
when he was 16,
(15:04):
something like that. So I worked with Alan
too. Alan recommended
myself
and, Norman Jopling, who was my mentor,
besides editor Peter Jones on record,
but Peter Jones had passed away.
Norman Jobling is into film.
He was the head of,
(15:26):
of the,
production,
and so he was the person who was
teaching me layouts.
And he also taught me
somewhat in a way of typing, and
just really
edged me into
the entire process of Record Mirror.
So Norman's in the film, Alan's in the
(15:46):
film,
and,
I was contacted,
and the film team, Patrick Lankrich and associates,
flew me down to Oakland
from here and set me up in a
hotel room and
did an interview.
Prior to that, since I knew I was
(16:07):
going to be
interviewed, I took a lot of Dezo's photos
with me, which I had,
and I took
a little it
was an iron
phony camera.
It's really just a little set piece, a
prop, because I thought it might be interesting
to put it on a table if they
were going to film. And
(16:28):
oddly enough, they did a little
sequence where I'm in the street and I'm
imitating Dezo and his accent.
That's in the film. Okay.
I was amazed that they even used it.
I told them that I was also a
caricaturist,
so
while I was being filmed,
(16:50):
they said draw him, and I did. I
mean, so I was sitting there, I drew
Desil, and they filmed me drawing it. And
this part, does this sit up in the
film? It's in the film. Yeah, and I
held it up and I said, I think
the mouth is wrong.
It's in there. And one of the oddball
things that they did in the movie
is that,
when I was
(17:11):
picking up pictures that Dezo had shot,
I was explaining
that it was always an official Dezo print
was always stamped Dezo Hoffman, and it was
an individualized,
specific print.
And I showed them one of those and
saying,
This is a picture he shot of me,
(17:32):
and here's the print on the back of
it saying Dezo Hoffman. Well, they didn't show
the picture, It just showed that.
And then I showed them another one, which
was stamped Rex Features,
because it was kind of pitiful, but eventual
it was an eventuality,
I suppose,
as history moved on, that someone was going
(17:53):
to purchase
Dezzo's entire
library. And
a bigger syndication firm, which I'd used for
many
reasons earlier, called Rex Features. They bought everything
that he had,
and so there are some of his now
that are reprints,
and they say Rex Features on them, which
is kinda too bad, but
(18:15):
that's the way things go. And the street
moves on, doesn't it? And we don't want
to lose
these memories and stories about people who are
so important.
You've also been involved,
for a long time you were involved with
the interviews with Elma Williams, who was a
long time Brookings resident, but also an Academy
(18:37):
Award winning
editor and,
producer
for films like High Noon and Tora! Tora!
Tora!
I'm just curious. Do you
can you see a documentary about Elmo Williams?
Oh, I absolutely can. Elmo was you know,
there's a great deal of comparison between Elmo
(18:57):
and Deso.
Both of them were just eloquent speakers.
You want to sit down and listen to
them
for hours.
And,
yes, and Elmo has a huge history. He
was head of
twentieth Century Fox Pictures,
for Europe.
He won that, Academy Award for editing High
Noon,
(19:18):
which was put on the shelf as a
a two reeler that wasn't gonna go anywhere,
until he fixed those clocks and made them
tick all the way through the film.
And by George, he got himself an Academy
Award. Heather It threads the whole film, doesn't
it? John Brad It does. Tick, tick, tick
tick to high noon. Uh-huh.
(19:39):
With two exceptions.
There are two scenes in the film which
are obviously shot at the same time. They're
outdoor
shots,
and there's an overhanging clock which is out
of sequence.
And Elmo
moaned about that forever. So you have to
have a pretty good eye to see that.
But when I got into Brookings,
I fell in with some people who were
(19:59):
doing a local TV show weekly
for a non existent channel now, but it
was the educational channel,
and there was someone doing a fellow called
Dave, he was doing a
weekly thing called Coast Stories where he interviewed
interesting
people. Dave wasn't very good at interviewing him,
and he was the cameraman at the same
(20:21):
time, so it really didn't work. And I
came in and said, Let me be the
host.
And that worked real well, and we did
it for quite a long time, and one
of the people
that popped up
who was interesting in the town was Elmo.
Uh-huh. And so we contacted Elmo, and I
did a twenty minute interview out on the
gazebo in the backyard of his house, which
(20:43):
I still have
on tape
where we first met.
And that's I still have it, so that
was how we met.
And from then on, my interest in films,
which
goes way back like music
and somewhat ability as a host,
We did 24 shows for the Chetco Pelican
(21:03):
Players, screening and lecture shows. Mhmm.
So Elmo had a It's a different movie
every year, right? Or every time you did
one of these? Yes. We'd do a couple
a year,
and we'd show the screen, we'd screen the
movie. Well, first, Elmo would come out and
say something about it. Well, actually, let me
go back. And
you did this in costume too, right? In
(21:23):
the theater? Yes. I was just gonna say,
Let me go back. We'd do a skit
in front of it. And so I would
come out in costume and do some kind
of a funny skit, which sometimes involved him,
sometimes it didn't, but then it led into
a corner which had been devised
a set piece by
Mike Moran,
(21:44):
and he was also,
in costume, Elmo,
and so we did the interview
in costume. Sometimes the skits were
really elaborate.
I don't know if you want me to
describe the one I liked best. Well, give
us an example.
The best one was for High Noon,
the second time. We must
(22:05):
there was a band of musicians
that I played with,
the art walk musicians in the town here.
Everybody played different instruments.
When we gathered those people together, there were
seven or eight of us,
and we dressed us all in Western costumes.
About three of us had actual
(22:25):
guns that shot
smoke blanks.
The rest of us had tons of guns
anyway, and one of us had a shotgun
with a blank in that.
Well,
we did this skit where we were waiting
for,
there was two of us, myself and another
fellow sitting around a phony campfire,
waiting for the posse to get back, and
(22:45):
we're chasing Bad Boy Williams,
who was an outlaw.
They all rode in and they all all
had huge amounts of equipment, and they put
them all down and all that stuff. And
mysteriously,
we thought,
I said, let's do a song before we
get to sleep, boys. We'll go and find
him later. And mysteriously, they all picked up
(23:06):
instruments,
and we all did,
Rider in the Rain. It's a Randy Newman
song with full harmony, and stand up bass
appeared out of nowhere. Oh my goodness. And
then suddenly,
Elmo burst in from the side, shooting wildly
these blanks, bang, bang. And, oh my god,
it's Elmo Williams, and he shot everybody. Everybody
(23:27):
died in some way
except me.
I arrested him. Because you had to interview
him. I arrested him, and I grabbed him
by the collar and dragged him over into
the corner, sat face,
sat him down, took his gun off, and
said, now talk.
I love that.
Well, I think we need to get Elmo
Williams to talk in a documentary. Alright. I
(23:50):
absolutely agree.
Okay.
We're coming down to the end of our
thirty minutes and it's gone very fast.
I'm just curious. So this is your first
year at the Wild Rivers Film Festival. Right?
It is. Because you've been out of town
the last couple of years, and we've held
you hostage
this year with the Dezo Hoffman film.
(24:14):
Besides introducing
the Dezo film and doing the Q and
A afterwards,
is there anything that you're looking forward to,
this year at the film festival?
I'm looking forward to
being asked
anything that I might be able to elaborate
as an answer. Okay. That's what I'm looking
(24:34):
forward to. I love the interchange. Yes.
Interviews. They're The interchange between myself and someone
who's asking a question? Yes. Yes. They're your
jam. Okay.
Have you have you had a chance to
look at the program? Any films that
I've seen the program, but I don't know
the titles. Okay. That's the only one that
I know. But I'm looking forward to seeing
(24:55):
a lot of them Okay. Because I'm always
surprised that I'm a film nut anyway.
So, yes, I'm looking forward to the entire
festival. Okay. Wonderful. Well, so right after
our interview, not long after our interview,
the students that did the Wild Rivers
film workshop this summer,
(25:16):
they did five days of instruction, and then
they did five days of shooting,
a TV pilot, which is kind of like
a Saturday night live for teens called Wild
Wild Rivers.
And that's
that is screening at two today,
and it is
so funny, but it's so well done. And
(25:36):
so I hope you're
just talking about, you know, young people getting
a start in the industries.
I hope you'll go and see that. It'll
be reminiscent, and I'll laugh. I'm sure. Okay.
Is there anything you'd like to add before
we close out here? What did I miss?
(25:57):
Well, let me see. Deso and Elmo, both
four letters, both ending in o.
Interesting.
I'm looking forward to both. Okay.
Yeah.
So we're probably gonna wrap it up here.
Lon, thank you so much for joining us
today. Thank you for having me.
(26:17):
If to our audience, if you're just tuning
in, you've been listening to the Wild Rivers
Film Radio.
I'm Sue Wright,
and,
we're here at the Wild Rivers Film Festival
twenty twenty five.
We've got lots of films to see, and,
if you're listening to this
after the film festival, we will be back
(26:40):
next year in 2026,
third weekend in August.
And I think that's it for this episode
of the Wild Rivers Film Radio.
To learn more about the festival,
buy passes,
volunteer,
or explore sponsorship
opportunities,
visit wildriversfilmfestival.com.
(27:01):
And you can also follow us on Facebook
and Instagram.
We have activities
all through the year, including an afternoon indie
series on the first Saturday
of the month at the Chetco Community Library
and a short screening as
Film as Art during Brookings' Second Saturday Art
(27:22):
Walk.
So,
we are here, and
this is the Wild Rivers Film Radio.
Our recording is done by Michael Gorse, who's
sitting in the booth and,
always
helps us make
sound wonderful.
And our sound mixing and editing is done
(27:42):
by Tom Bosack.
I'm Sue Wright.
Our guest is Lon Goddard.
And until next time,
we'll see you at the movies.
Greetings, cinephiles.
I'm Sue Wright,
and welcome to
Wild Rivers Film Radio, the official podcast of
the Wild Rivers Film Festival
here on KCIW
one hundred point seven FM.
And today, we're sitting down with Lon Goddard,
(00:28):
a longtime Brookings resident,
musician,
music reporter, and a man with stories
that a jukebox at midnight might not tell.
But
before we dive in, we'd like to thank
the Wild Rivers Film Festival's twenty twenty five
presenting sponsor,
the Tolowa Dene Nation.
(00:49):
Your generous support has made both our festival
and the summer film workshop possible this year.
We also thank our incredible
sponsors, the Roundhouse Foundation,
Travel Curry Coast,
Sutter Coast Hospital,
Edward Jones, Our Flower House,
Southwestern Oregon Community College Curry campus,
(01:12):
and the city of Brookings.
If you'd like to join these amazing supporters
in celebrating
indie cinema, expanding film education,
and growing a film economy here on the
Wild Rivers Coast,
visit
wildriversfilmfestival.com
for sponsorship
opportunities.
(01:33):
If you're just discovering us, welcome. The Wild
Rivers Film Festival is a four day celebration
of indie and local cinema
each August in Brookings,
this year from August
'17.
We'll screen more than four dozen films across
three venues, many followed by filmmaker q and
a's, and there's also a full slate of
(01:54):
panels, VIP parties,
and our unforgettable
awards ceremony.
Festival passes are on sale now at wildriversfilmfestival.com,
and we'd love to see you there.
If you're just tuning in, you're listening to
Wild Rivers Film Radio. I'm Sue Wright. And
today, we're talking with Lon Goddard. Lon, welcome.
(02:17):
Thank you, Sue. Glad to be here. I'm
glad you're here too.
You're introducing the film, Deso Hoffman, tonight.
Deso Hoffman, the man who shot the sixties
in its North American
premiere.
Let's start at the beginning. Tell us about
how you happen to be in London at
the time when Deso was photographing the Beatles
(02:38):
and so many other major
celebrities?
I arrived in London in 1966.
I had no particular reason to be there.
It was just on a whim. A friend
of mine was already going there. He had
arranged some classes in Manchester,
and we had just graduated from high school
down at Elk Grove, California. He was going
(03:00):
there anyway.
I had nothing else to do. We were
flatmates.
And I said, okay. I'll go too.
Because I had an extra thousand dollars in
the bank for I can't remember why.
So we sailed, and we got to London
in '66.
And I had a guitar with me. I
was doing guitar one zero one. So I
(03:23):
managed to
find a bunch of folk singers, which was
difficult in London,
and I got absorbed by that. Yeah.
I was absorbed by that community.
And then I needed to get a job,
so I I guess a thousand dollars doesn't
last that long even the mid even in
the mid sixties. Right? Secretly, my parents did
(03:44):
help. Oh, okay.
But it got us across on an ocean
liner. It was only, I believe, $225
for us to go from,
from New York to, Southampton.
It was a great seven day trip on
the liner. Uh-huh.
Exciting. We ate well and
seemed like first class even though it wasn't.
(04:05):
I think we were below water. But there
we go. It was a big adventure. Right?
And the So you needed a job.
I needed a job and I could draw
caricatures. I did it all the way through
high school,
drawing people who were running for student body
president and things like that. And so I
thought, well, I'll buy these music papers that
(04:26):
I see on the stands. There were at
least five of them every week that were
telling you what's going on in music,
almost all over the world, but centrally
in London. And I drew pictures
of,
caricatures of, the photographs,
and then I took them around to the
various papers trying to get a job. Record
(04:46):
Mirror hired me to do one caricature
a week, And I believe
they gave me £6.10
for it, which is
Not enough to live on.
And then
because I showed creative ability,
I was,
hired to do
layouts.
So I became the assistant layout man taking
(05:09):
the paper to the printer each week, which
gave me a lot of newspaper experience.
And eventually, I asked the editor,
if I could write. I told him I
had the ability.
I won a couple of things in high
school for writing stories,
and he said, Okay.
I'll give you something to write. I I
said, What? He said, I'll give you an
(05:30):
album to review,
because stacks of record albums came in. Stacks,
like you won't know how many every week
of people trying to get their
albums, reviewed by people on the paper, get
some publicity.
So he gives me an album, and I
expected something in music, but it wasn't.
It was
(05:50):
Why is There Air?
So that's your start, Ezra.
Yeah. I know Cosby came to ill repute,
but there I was stuck with reviewing a
comedy album,
which I did, and Cosby was good at
that, I have to say. After his,
appearances in I Spy, which is a great
series and things, he had a real good
(06:11):
history before he went down.
Anyway, I reviewed it, and he said, That's
not bad. We'll use it. And then he
sent me off on my first interview,
which was with the crooner Jack Jones,
who's the son of the, Western star Alan
Jones, film star.
And Jack Jones was,
(06:32):
at a table
at a hotel when I came in,
which must have had 20 people around it,
and I had to go up and tap
him on the shoulder and say, Excuse me,
I'm
from record mirror,
shaking like a leaf.
And he said, Oh yes, absolutely. And he
was just so pleasant
and accommodating,
took me aside to a table, gave me
(06:55):
a big interview, which I took down in
terrible shorthand that I was developing
for myself because I I didn't have any
tape player. I was gonna say so. You're
actually taking notes from this. I'm taking notes.
And this is your this is your first
big interview, right? First one. Absolutely.
And I went back to the office, and
I was also not a typist, so I
(07:17):
had to hunt and peck and type that
out. But he said, my editor, Peter Jones,
said,
That's fine, we'll use it.
And so from then on, it was up
to me
to get on the phone, find out who
was who in the music business,
organize interviews to me and go and do
or be told to go and do them
(07:38):
by someone else,
and then at the same time lay out
the paper,
baby it through the printer,
and that was my job for
at least seven years on Record Mirror
before I departed
to other jobs. So you have a really
big part in publishing the record Mirror for
those years. Very much so. And we made
(08:00):
sure that the cover photo
was by Dezo Hoffman, almost invariably.
And it's also noted
on the cover, photo by Dezo Hoffman. Dezo
was,
the Ric O'Mear official photographer
when I came in. So
And so he was already there when you
started? He was already there, Yeah. But I
(08:21):
he hadn't I don't think he'd been there
that long, but,
he was the official photographer,
and his office was only about a block
or two away.
And it was in another street,
Gerrard Street is the name of it, and
it was Chinatown.
Chinatown in London was very small. It really
(08:43):
was
fairly restricted to Gerrard Street,
and it was just kind of a treat
to always go down to Dezo's office through
Chinatown.
He was on like the Third Floor or
something,
through a very old gated elevator,
and go in and go through the files
for pictures that we needed for interviews that
had been done by other writers or me,
(09:05):
or say, Dezer, we need you to go
with us because we're gonna go and interview
the kinks. We need you to shoot that
while we do the interview.
So Dezer would go with us to interviews
that were done,
individually,
me or the other reporters,
or he would go and do things of
his own, and he would bring people in
the studio,
(09:25):
groups, and shoot them,
and then we'd have access to those files.
So we worked pretty closely with him. I
was gonna say, it sounds like you worked
hand in hand a lot of times. All
the time.
All the time. And Dezen was a pretty
unique fellow. He was
he had a huge
vocabulary
with a brilliant
(09:46):
Eastern accent
that was just,
really inviting.
He could go up and tap you on
the shoulder or do anything. He could straighten
the blouses on women that he was shooting
or say take this off, and they just
were just open to everything. He just had
this He was so charming. Thing about him.
He was a charmer,
definite charmer.
(10:06):
He could make people do weird things
like the Beatles jump up in the air
all the time.
They do what he said to do. And
then that becomes this iconic image of the
Beatles
in the air. It did. Before Instagram
and iPhones and, yeah, do this, you know,
this iconic
(10:27):
Yeah. To make them do it at one
time, all four of them, and so they
were in different
bizarre positions,
airborne. And it it still resonates with people
today. People know that image.
It does. And Dezo also had
an individual
(10:48):
foresight in using lighting,
and also perspective.
Things would come at you in his pictures,
or he would light it so well that
you looked great even if you didn't.
He shot a picture of me, which
I still think is one of the best,
even though it looks like a teenage
(11:10):
who knows what. But he made me look
better than I ever did.
So how long did you work with you
worked with Dezo for seven years, is that
right? Yes. You worked at the record mayor
for seven years. Seven years with Dezo. Mhmm.
He was still working with him when I
left.
I was,
invited to become the head of the press
(11:31):
office for Columbia Records in London, CBS,
and I knew the previous
press officer
very well, so I took the job. And
that's quite a step up? It was. That's
what I thought. And it was, and I
had a fine time
as a PR. It was a reversal.
It formally, it was,
(11:52):
the
PR's,
formally it was the PR's job to get
me to go and interview their artists.
And then it became my job to get
someone like me to interview the artists that
I then represented.
So it was a reversal.
So how long did you work
in music in London altogether? Twenty no, not
(12:14):
twenty five years.
I'd say it was about eighteen
So this is a good long run. Of
the twenty five,
because after
I finished in the music business, which entailed
becoming the editor of Disc, another one of
the five big papers,
and also
(12:35):
many years at Phonogram Records as the head
of press office there, which is Mercury label
and others that
we know.
I left to become
I left because I didn't like punk music
very much. Oh, okay. I'd never heard that
before.
So you do have some music biases.
I couldn't
honestly go out and represent something I didn't
(12:57):
care for. Okay.
So I went to what I
always did well, became a professional illustrator,
and I
was able to get agents,
and I did financially better as an illustrator
than I ever did in the music business.
I can't say it was more fun because
you work alone.
And I had nights of just drawing and
(13:18):
drawing and drawing and projecting and
figuring out how to do perspectives.
It was all flat artwork, and
night after night, I think I did one
that was 72 hours straight
just illustrating
with airbrush and things like that.
Okay. So it was pretty lonely. And you've
(13:39):
gone back to folk music. I think that's
your your first song. Right? I always did
that anyway. Yeah. Okay. Well, I since
Deso Hoffman, the
documentary,
is in its North American premiere,
can you just tell us a little bit
about it and get folks excited about going
to see it Oh, sure. At the film
(13:59):
festival this year?
It was
Deso's assistant, Alan Messer,
who was approached by the,
team from Slovakia,
formerly
Czechoslovakia,
because
Deso was,
well, he wasn't actually Czechoslovakia,
but he spent his entire youth there. You
know, he was actually, I think, Austro Hungarian.
(14:22):
I think he's Hungarian, right? Yeah. I believe
he was a mixture. His his wife was
Catholic, he was Jewish,
Austrian and Hungary,
and then he wound up
spending his
small years in
Czechoslovakia.
So we consider him to be that, and
so do they.
(14:43):
The Slovakians
regard him as their own, and
they wanted to make a film about him
when, they discovered the fact that he'd done
all this work for the Beatles.
So they contacted Alan Messer, who was, Deso's
young assistant. I think he started with Deso
when he was 16,
(15:04):
something like that. So I worked with Alan
too. Alan recommended
myself
and, Norman Jopling, who was my mentor,
besides editor Peter Jones on record,
but Peter Jones had passed away.
Norman Jobling is into film.
He was the head of,
(15:26):
of the,
production,
and so he was the person who was
teaching me layouts.
And he also taught me
somewhat in a way of typing, and
just really
edged me into
the entire process of Record Mirror.
So Norman's in the film, Alan's in the
(15:46):
film,
and,
I was contacted,
and the film team, Patrick Lankrich and associates,
flew me down to Oakland
from here and set me up in a
hotel room and
did an interview.
Prior to that, since I knew I was
(16:07):
going to be
interviewed, I took a lot of Dezo's photos
with me, which I had,
and I took
a little it
was an iron
phony camera.
It's really just a little set piece, a
prop, because I thought it might be interesting
to put it on a table if they
were going to film. And
(16:28):
oddly enough, they did a little
sequence where I'm in the street and I'm
imitating Dezo and his accent.
That's in the film. Okay.
I was amazed that they even used it.
I told them that I was also a
caricaturist,
so
while I was being filmed,
(16:50):
they said draw him, and I did. I
mean, so I was sitting there, I drew
Desil, and they filmed me drawing it. And
this part, does this sit up in the
film? It's in the film. Yeah, and I
held it up and I said, I think
the mouth is wrong.
It's in there. And one of the oddball
things that they did in the movie
is that,
when I was
(17:11):
picking up pictures that Dezo had shot,
I was explaining
that it was always an official Dezo print
was always stamped Dezo Hoffman, and it was
an individualized,
specific print.
And I showed them one of those and
saying,
This is a picture he shot of me,
(17:32):
and here's the print on the back of
it saying Dezo Hoffman. Well, they didn't show
the picture, It just showed that.
And then I showed them another one, which
was stamped Rex Features,
because it was kind of pitiful, but eventual
it was an eventuality,
I suppose,
as history moved on, that someone was going
(17:53):
to purchase
Dezzo's entire
library. And
a bigger syndication firm, which I'd used for
many
reasons earlier, called Rex Features. They bought everything
that he had,
and so there are some of his now
that are reprints,
and they say Rex Features on them, which
is kinda too bad, but
(18:15):
that's the way things go. And the street
moves on, doesn't it? And we don't want
to lose
these memories and stories about people who are
so important.
You've also been involved,
for a long time you were involved with
the interviews with Elma Williams, who was a
long time Brookings resident, but also an Academy
(18:37):
Award winning
editor and,
producer
for films like High Noon and Tora! Tora!
Tora!
I'm just curious. Do you
can you see a documentary about Elmo Williams?
Oh, I absolutely can. Elmo was you know,
there's a great deal of comparison between Elmo
(18:57):
and Deso.
Both of them were just eloquent speakers.
You want to sit down and listen to
them
for hours.
And,
yes, and Elmo has a huge history. He
was head of
twentieth Century Fox Pictures,
for Europe.
He won that, Academy Award for editing High
Noon,
(19:18):
which was put on the shelf as a
a two reeler that wasn't gonna go anywhere,
until he fixed those clocks and made them
tick all the way through the film.
And by George, he got himself an Academy
Award. Heather It threads the whole film, doesn't
it? John Brad It does. Tick, tick, tick
tick to high noon. Uh-huh.
(19:39):
With two exceptions.
There are two scenes in the film which
are obviously shot at the same time. They're
outdoor
shots,
and there's an overhanging clock which is out
of sequence.
And Elmo
moaned about that forever. So you have to
have a pretty good eye to see that.
But when I got into Brookings,
I fell in with some people who were
(19:59):
doing a local TV show weekly
for a non existent channel now, but it
was the educational channel,
and there was someone doing a fellow called
Dave, he was doing a
weekly thing called Coast Stories where he interviewed
interesting
people. Dave wasn't very good at interviewing him,
and he was the cameraman at the same
(20:21):
time, so it really didn't work. And I
came in and said, Let me be the
host.
And that worked real well, and we did
it for quite a long time, and one
of the people
that popped up
who was interesting in the town was Elmo.
Uh-huh. And so we contacted Elmo, and I
did a twenty minute interview out on the
gazebo in the backyard of his house, which
(20:43):
I still have
on tape
where we first met.
And that's I still have it, so that
was how we met.
And from then on, my interest in films,
which
goes way back like music
and somewhat ability as a host,
We did 24 shows for the Chetco Pelican
(21:03):
Players, screening and lecture shows. Mhmm.
So Elmo had a It's a different movie
every year, right? Or every time you did
one of these? Yes. We'd do a couple
a year,
and we'd show the screen, we'd screen the
movie. Well, first, Elmo would come out and
say something about it. Well, actually, let me
go back. And
you did this in costume too, right? In
(21:23):
the theater? Yes. I was just gonna say,
Let me go back. We'd do a skit
in front of it. And so I would
come out in costume and do some kind
of a funny skit, which sometimes involved him,
sometimes it didn't, but then it led into
a corner which had been devised
a set piece by
Mike Moran,
(21:44):
and he was also,
in costume, Elmo,
and so we did the interview
in costume. Sometimes the skits were
really elaborate.
I don't know if you want me to
describe the one I liked best. Well, give
us an example.
The best one was for High Noon,
the second time. We must
(22:05):
there was a band of musicians
that I played with,
the art walk musicians in the town here.
Everybody played different instruments.
When we gathered those people together, there were
seven or eight of us,
and we dressed us all in Western costumes.
About three of us had actual
(22:25):
guns that shot
smoke blanks.
The rest of us had tons of guns
anyway, and one of us had a shotgun
with a blank in that.
Well,
we did this skit where we were waiting
for,
there was two of us, myself and another
fellow sitting around a phony campfire,
waiting for the posse to get back, and
(22:45):
we're chasing Bad Boy Williams,
who was an outlaw.
They all rode in and they all all
had huge amounts of equipment, and they put
them all down and all that stuff. And
mysteriously,
we thought,
I said, let's do a song before we
get to sleep, boys. We'll go and find
him later. And mysteriously, they all picked up
(23:06):
instruments,
and we all did,
Rider in the Rain. It's a Randy Newman
song with full harmony, and stand up bass
appeared out of nowhere. Oh my goodness. And
then suddenly,
Elmo burst in from the side, shooting wildly
these blanks, bang, bang. And, oh my god,
it's Elmo Williams, and he shot everybody. Everybody
(23:27):
died in some way
except me.
I arrested him. Because you had to interview
him. I arrested him, and I grabbed him
by the collar and dragged him over into
the corner, sat face,
sat him down, took his gun off, and
said, now talk.
I love that.
Well, I think we need to get Elmo
Williams to talk in a documentary. Alright. I
(23:50):
absolutely agree.
Okay.
We're coming down to the end of our
thirty minutes and it's gone very fast.
I'm just curious. So this is your first
year at the Wild Rivers Film Festival. Right?
It is. Because you've been out of town
the last couple of years, and we've held
you hostage
this year with the Dezo Hoffman film.
(24:14):
Besides introducing
the Dezo film and doing the Q and
A afterwards,
is there anything that you're looking forward to,
this year at the film festival?
I'm looking forward to
being asked
anything that I might be able to elaborate
as an answer. Okay. That's what I'm looking
(24:34):
forward to. I love the interchange. Yes.
Interviews. They're The interchange between myself and someone
who's asking a question? Yes. Yes. They're your
jam. Okay.
Have you have you had a chance to
look at the program? Any films that
I've seen the program, but I don't know
the titles. Okay. That's the only one that
I know. But I'm looking forward to seeing
(24:55):
a lot of them Okay. Because I'm always
surprised that I'm a film nut anyway.
So, yes, I'm looking forward to the entire
festival. Okay. Wonderful. Well, so right after
our interview, not long after our interview,
the students that did the Wild Rivers
film workshop this summer,
(25:16):
they did five days of instruction, and then
they did five days of shooting,
a TV pilot, which is kind of like
a Saturday night live for teens called Wild
Wild Rivers.
And that's
that is screening at two today,
and it is
so funny, but it's so well done. And
(25:36):
so I hope you're
just talking about, you know, young people getting
a start in the industries.
I hope you'll go and see that. It'll
be reminiscent, and I'll laugh. I'm sure. Okay.
Is there anything you'd like to add before
we close out here? What did I miss?
(25:57):
Well, let me see. Deso and Elmo, both
four letters, both ending in o.
Interesting.
I'm looking forward to both. Okay.
Yeah.
So we're probably gonna wrap it up here.
Lon, thank you so much for joining us
today. Thank you for having me.
(26:17):
If to our audience, if you're just tuning
in, you've been listening to the Wild Rivers
Film Radio.
I'm Sue Wright,
and,
we're here at the Wild Rivers Film Festival
twenty twenty five.
We've got lots of films to see, and,
if you're listening to this
after the film festival, we will be back
(26:40):
next year in 2026,
third weekend in August.
And I think that's it for this episode
of the Wild Rivers Film Radio.
To learn more about the festival,
buy passes,
volunteer,
or explore sponsorship
opportunities,
visit wildriversfilmfestival.com.
(27:01):
And you can also follow us on Facebook
and Instagram.
We have activities
all through the year, including an afternoon indie
series on the first Saturday
of the month at the Chetco Community Library
and a short screening as
Film as Art during Brookings' Second Saturday Art
(27:22):
Walk.
So,
we are here, and
this is the Wild Rivers Film Radio.
Our recording is done by Michael Gorse, who's
sitting in the booth and,
always
helps us make
sound wonderful.
And our sound mixing and editing is done
(27:42):
by Tom Bosack.
I'm Sue Wright.
Our guest is Lon Goddard.
And until next time,
we'll see you at the movies.
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