John Fitch...

I enjoyed interviewing John Fitch who is a wealth of information and enthusiasm. I thought I would preview my conversation with him here.

Kevin Courtright and Led Zeppelin

Kevin Courtright has been a long-time associate of mine and was an actor in my film and TV repertory company for some 15 years going on to write and direct in the process. Over the years, he has been involved with music as a composer and a scholar. He has now written a book, Back to Schoolin': What Led Zeppelin Taught Me About Music, that takes an extraordinary look at the band, its influences and its business. Back to Schoolin' delves deeply into the subject of Led Zeppelin while going much further afield examining the many ways the band has influenced music and the music business.

Back to Schoolin': What Led Zeppelin Taught Me About Music

Tight but Loose, the Led Zeppelin magazine, wrote "Kevin Courtright's Back to Schoolin' offers a wealth of in-depth Zep analysis" calling it "...an admirable mass of Zep cornucopia." I couldn't have said it any better.

Ed Niles meets Enzo Ferrari

I thought I would share this excerpt from my conversation with Ed Niles where he tells me about his first encounter with Enzo Ferrari.

The CableACE Awards

Before the Emmys included cable television programs for consideration and until 1997, the ACE (Award for Cable Excellence) which became CableACE served to honor what was best on cable TV. I was pleased to serve as a judge during its last nine years usually judging the Best Directing in a Comedy Series category. It was a great assignment as we were locked up in a hotel suite--usually high above Universal Studios but once at the Peninsula in Beverly Hills and once in Century City--watching one excellent show after the other pausing only to enjoy a buffet lunch served en suite. The Larry Sanders Show and Dream On were usually the top contenders but other great shows where offered for consideration and it was a wonderful way to spend a day and see what some very talented people were doing.

Each year, the CableACE organization would ask us to refer other industry professionals to serve as judges. Kathi Carey, an actress/writer/producer/director in my organization was my first nomination and she went on to judge the awards for the next eight years. The following year, two more writer/directors from my group joined the ranks of judges. In the end, I think six of us were taking part in a variety of categories.

Every year, we would hire a limousine and go to the CableACE Awards presentation show that was staged at the Wiltern Theater on Wilshire Boulevard and the buffet/party after the taping. One year, Cirque du Soleil performed onstage as part of the awards show, which was spectacular. The guys wore tuxedos but the ladies in the group became quite competitive regarding fashion for these events. Even my daughter, who I escorted to the final awards event, was quite the fashion plate.

As much fun as judging the awards had been for all those years, I don't think I would be up for it today. The idea of sitting in a room all day having to watch Dancing with the Stars or Say Yes to the Dress would be my idea of torture in its purest form.

The photo below shows Morgan and me, along with fellow CableACE judges from my group, about to depart for the awards taping.

Le Château des Artistes

If one were to consider the Cine Paris group that I founded and supervised from 1980 until 2001 with its repertory company for film and television along with its associated film school and combined it with the salon aspect of the weekly Elysée Wednesday gatherings that have been attracting professional artists of all sorts for almost three years now, it would come very close to being the precursor for something like Le Château des Artistes--an artists' community to be set in the south of France where visitors could experience the château life as guests, film students could live as residents while completing their studies and artists of all disciplines could instruct, learn and create. Add to this a film studio, a proprietary cable TV channel and an annual film festival and the definition is almost complete.

Otto Zipper

I spent a lot of time in a showroom at the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and 26th Street in Santa Monica. It belonged to Otto Zipper and featured Ferraris that held me spellbound for hours at a time. On the occasion of my first visit, there was a Bordeaux colored Berlinetta Lusso showing its profile to passers-by and behind it in an array was a 250 2+2, a 330 GT America and a 330 GT 2+2 (quad headlights)--a very generous offering for someone who had never seen a Ferrari up close. My only previous exposure had been to see Jill St. John's Lusso in the paddock at Riverside Raceway through a pair of binoculars, which was pretty impressive, I have to say. Seeing these cars close up where the nuance of the design was highlighted by optimized lighting was like seeing your favorite paintings in the Louvre.

My host on those occasions was Trevor Hook, an Englishman's Englishman, always well-presented and perhaps better suited to a Rolls-Royce showroom, he had aristocratic manners in the best sense and spoke in an impeccable 'brochure' vernacular referring to Pininfarina as the Maestro. It was Trevor who offered me my first ride in a Ferrari. I suppose he figured I'd invested enough time staring at and studying these cars that I should be accorded the privilege of a more dynamic experience. He selected the keys to a Bordeaux colored 250 GTE and off we went up Wilshire to a street that ran behind the Brentwood Country Club and featured a ninety degree right-hander that allowed him to demonstrate the Ferrari's flat cornering capability at speed which, along with the seductive sound of the the V12 with its timing chains and canvas-ripping exhaust note (sorry about the cliché, but it's how Trevor would have described it), was an unforgettable, landmark experience for me.

It would be awhile before I bought my first car which wasn't a Ferrari but a Jaguar E-Type but that didn't stop me from returning again and again to Otto Zipper's to see what was new in the showroom. When I acquired my Berlinetta Lusso, it was to his shop on Wilshire that I took it for service. I remember developing a rapport with Mrs. Zipper who thought I should buy a Porsche 904 that they owned or was for sale by a customer. She was quite knowledgeable about the car and was convinced it would make an ideal street racer. As much as I liked it, it wasn't Italian and didn't have twelve cylinders.

When I bought the GTO, I wasn't surprised to find that it had an Otto Zipper provenance. He had owned it when Richie Ginther raced it at Riverside where he finished fifth overall in the Times Grand Prix in 1964. One day, as I was waiting to collect the Lusso after some routine maintenance, I saw Otto standing in the far end of the shop in deep contemplation of what I think was a Porsche 906 parked in the corner. I was reminded of this quiet moment a lifetime later when I snapped a candid photo of Jim Glickenhaus in his shop in quiet reflection as he gazed at his cars. I've heard people say that "it's just a car" but I could never think in those terms. Cars, like the people who get involved with them, give us a lot to think about.

The photograph comes by courtesy of Bill Diller who can be seen as a young man standing with Otto Zipper.

April 12

Today is the anniversary of a formative event in my life. I recently found the archived copy of the Los Angeles Times front page that head-lined the event though a number of details were not yet known at the time of publication. I was later told by LAPD and LAFD members who had been on the scene that traffic was backed up from Woodland Hills to downtown Los Angeles. Hospital personnel told me that the woman driving the car which had been going the wrong way on the freeway had a blood alcohol level so elevated that she should not have been able to crawl much less drive a car. I had not been expected to live through the evening. The accident occurred on Good Friday.

Reading the Times article, I was reminded that a third car and driver had been involved. I began to wonder how he had survived and what effect the accident had had on his life. I determined to find out but a quick Internet search revealed he had passed away in 2009 from lung cancer. I found a phone number and decided to see if I could speak to his wife. I almost didn't make the call as I didn't want to bother her or bring back painful memories. I did make the call, however, and was able to speak to her. I am very glad I did. She is a delightful woman, now in her eighties, and she was very pleased to hear from me. When I introduced myself by saying I had been involved in an accident on the Ventura Freeway many years ago, her first words were, "Were you the young boy in the Cadillac?"

Allen G. Piersol survived with only a hand injury that quickly healed. He refused an insurance settlement and was well-known and respected as an engineering consultant in the field of mechanical shock, vibration, and aeroacoustics. His wife Teresia told me that he had gone to the store that evening but hours went by without his return. Finally, the doorbell rang and she opened her door to find two policemen who had escorted her husband home. He was pale and shaken. "Our lives were never the same after that," she told me. ""We gave thanks for every day that we had together from that evening on."

I was enjoying Teresia's sense of humor and philosophy on life and, at one point in our conversation, she remarked that. "You have a very calm voice. Are you happy or are you taking Valium?" I assured her I was not taking any medication and that life had dealt me some very good cards along with the bad.

We were only on the phone for about thirty minutes but I don't think I will ever forget her.

David Gritten: These TV guests...‏

One day I received a phone call from someone at the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, a Hearst newspaper in competition with the Times. They asked if they could send someone to interview me about my series (Interview) which had come to their attention. Of course, I agreed. Arrangements were made and the Herald's television critic David Gritten arrived at my house in Laurel Canyon along with a photographer.

The Herald-Examiner was my favorite newspaper at the time featuring columns over the years from Bud Furillo, Melvin Durslag, Alan Malamud and Doug Krikorian--an All-Star line-up if ever there was one! Though I'd read the Style section, which was devoted to the arts, I was unfamiliar with David Gritten so I looked for his articles to see what he wrote. I wished I hadn't. The first article I came across was a piece he did on a media personality who was promoting her film career based on a personal relationship with a male box office star. David dissected her with surgical precision usually reserved for autopsy procedures implying, perhaps, that her career was dead. I was forewarned.

As David conducted the interview in my living-room, I had no idea of his personal reaction to what I was saying in response to his questions. His British reserve and equanimity served him well and left me to focus on his questions rather than his thoughts. Later, we went out onto the deck overlooking the canyon where we took the photo that accompanies the article. As David and the photographer left, I had no idea whether he liked (Interview) or intended to write its obituary. I would have to wait to find out.

A few days later, I received a call telling me the article would appear in the Sunday edition and so it did. It was on the front page of the Style section with two other articles--one about Bernardo Bertolucci receiving the Oscar for The Last Emperor and the other about the Getty Museum. At least I was in good company!

Reading the article, it immediately became clear that David liked (Interview) opening with, "Los Angeles devotees of superior TV talk shows have been keeping a closely guarded secret to themselves these last couple of years." He wrote a very complimentary and appreciative appraisal of the series and David was not someone to hand out idle compliments in print.

I had been intrigued by David's "poker face" during the interview betraying none of his reactions and, given what he had written about the show, I decided to invite him to play an author in front of my cameras. Happily, he accepted. We went into the studio where I created a persona and story for him in the few minutes before we taped. He would be a British spy and there would be some professionally and personally controversial issues in the story. He gave a great performance.

Days later, after I had delivered a copy of his episode on cassette to him, David called me. He said that, while watching his performance in the interview, he couldn't tell where his truth ended and my fiction began. It was, perhaps, the best compliment he could have paid to me.

Grob at eight thousand feet

When I first saw The Thomas Crown affair--the real one--I became interested in sailplanes. The aerobatics that the McQueen character performed in the movie were daring and exciting and seemed to combine the best elements of auto racing and sailing--two of my passions. It wasn't until I met Pippa Scott, an actress turned producer, that I decided to take the plunge and actually go flying. Pippa had seen one of my (Interview) segments, with me as the 'author' for once, and we met for dinner where we both expressed a fascination for sailplaning. We agreed to go out to the desert to a glider port and get our wings. It wasn't long before Kathi Carey, an actress and writer/director in my organization, also began making the trek to the desert with me and took to the air.

Flying the German-made Grob was great fun and seeing the world at eight thousand feet through a clear canopy was a lot different than the view through the window of an airliner. "Be careful of the military jets," we were told. "They like to come in along the top of the mountain range." We weren't too far from Edwards Air Force Base. One morning, I looked off to my left and saw a C5 Galaxy at my altitude not more than two or three miles away. It looked huge.

One day I arrived at Chrystal to find that there had been a fatal accident. A sail plane had gone down. No one asked if I wanted to fly under the circumstances. Pilots fly. Once airborne, we flew over the crash site and circled to look at it--confront it for all that it signified--because pilots have been taught, or understand by instinct, that danger is best met head-on like the time I heard footsteps running towards me as I was about to enter my house. I pulled the door closed, turned the key to lock the deadbolt securing my children inside the house and turned to walk toward the man who was running at me with the gun. Semper contendere.

The best part of flying was performing aerobatic maneuvers. Wing-overs were fun--an airborne rollercoaster where you dive to gain airspeed and then pull back on the stick and fly straight up into the sky. At a certain point, the sailplane will lose speed and almost come to a stop. At the peak of the climb, one makes a turn to the right or left and the plane goes nose-down. You then dive straight for the Earth and when you have sufficient airspeed, you pull up and head, once again, straight for the sky.

The last maneuver I learned (before life and schedule demands kept me from my twice-a-week visits to Chrystal Soaring) was the stall spin. I was asked to deliberately stall the airplane--slow it until there wasn't sufficient lift to keep it airborne--which would cause one of the wings to drop and, more quickly than you can think it, the plane is in a spinning dive toward the ground. Interestingly, I had no sense of the plane spinning. It was more like the desert floor, which was coming up at me very fast, was rotating. A little left or right rudder to stop the plane's rotation, then neutralize the rudder, pull back on the stick and we are in business again. Elevation is your friend.

I've thought many times over the years about going back to Chrystal Soaring, if it is still operating. There is something about piloting that affirms faith in one's convictions. The dynamics of flight cannot be seen but they can be believed.

Ed Niles

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of conducting an on-camera interview with Ed Niles for the third time. It seems that, even in revisiting familiar topics and anecdotes, there is always something new that emerges that keeps my interest piqued and I always come away from talks with Ed wishing we had more time.

I've known Ed since the first time I attended a Ferrari Owners Club meeting in Los Angeles. I had already owned my Ferrari Lusso long enough for it to have made the transition from silver-blue to red after the blue kept fading and I tired of having it resprayed. That evening I also made the acquaintance of Bob Bondurant who was a guest speaker and saw, for the first time, the Ferrari Breadvan owned then by Asa Clark. At some point, in the middle of the proceedings, Matthew Ettinger made a grand entrance being wheeled in with two broken legs. A memorable gathering for reasons too numerous to count.

It is only a small exaggeration to say that I don't recall seeing Ed in the same Ferrari twice though some of them he owned as many as five times buying them back from subsequent owners. He had more Ferraris pass through his hands than anyone I know. Race cars, production models, one-of-a-kind specials--he owned them all. Most memorable for me were the 250LM (which he sold to Sonny Bono) and the stunning Nembo spider designed by Tom Meade which some regard as the most beautiful Ferrari ever. Everyone familiar with the famous Breadvan will know the part Ed played in bringing this historic car to the USA but new details are revealed with each telling. Did you know that the car was originally destined to a buyer who wanted to remake the iconic rear portion of the car to look like a GTO?

Ed has been a model enthusiast over the years working as a turn marshal at races, a judge at concours d'élégance events, president of the Ferrari Owners Club and has been a very good friend to those who share an interest in all things Ferrari. He is one of the few people I can speak with who has also met Enzo Ferrari. Ed will appear in my documentaries about the Carrera Panamericana and the Ferrari GTO but I really believe he is worthy of a documentary dedicated solely to his experiences and observations--he is the gold standard.

Articles written by Ed for the Ferrari Club of America can be found on-line here: http://www.fca-sw.org/Features.aspx?id=3