The Man Who Interviewed Emilio Estevez by ritchey

Posted on: May 13, 2005 8:30 PM

I have always thought of my father as the man who interviewed Emilio Estevez. My father, Mike, is 62 years old and lives in a small red state town, where for many years he has published a local newspaper. Most of his adult life has been spent in the newspaper business, although as he puts it, "you never would have thought I'd end up that way." I caught up with my dad just a second ago, over the phone. He said he had just finished helping our friend Ralph unload a big truckload of stuff, and that of course he had time to talk about interviewing Emilio Estevez.

Dad is a handsome, thoughtful man who favors Stetson cowboy hats and gigantic 1985 suburbans so battered that several of the many doors can no longer be opened. He grew up in the construction business (Grandpa Henry was a carpenter who died in his arms when Mike was 18, leaving he and my uncle orphaned and dirt-poor) in West Texas, where he lived all his life except for a brief sojourn to Winter Park, Colorado. There, he and my mother lived in a van for awhile ("it was a commune, really," my mom says, "we made our own tortillas."). "I worked my way through college as a Teamster--on the loading docks at night," says Dad, "it was just happenstance that I got into the newspaper business [and interviewed Emilio Estevez]. A lot of it has been luck, but here I am."

Mike got his first newspaper job in 1967, at the San Angelo Standard Times in Texas. The Standard Times was the flagship paper for the Harte-Hanks newspaper chain. The owner, Houston Harte, "was a dapper little fella about 5'6" and who always wore spats, and that kind of thing, even in West Texas. He was a confidante of Lyndon Johnson." Mike got an interview with managing editor Dale Walton, who he says hired him based solely on the fact that he knew how to type ("if I had not learned how to type I probably wouldn't be in the newspaper business today," says Mike, "there's a cautionary tale for modern youth").

Mike arrived in San Angelo without "a single dollar bill" and showing his future proclivity for the aforementioned 1985 suburban by driving a 1959 Oldsmobile with a driver's side door that you had to hold shut while you were on the road. Walton told him to get a haircut. "I wasn't a long haired hippie even though those were the days," says Mike, "I had the philosophy but not the trappings." Lacking the required dollar it cost to get a haircut in those days, Mike went to work without one, only to have Walton take him aside: "Consider this a signing bonus," he said, handing my dad a dollar bill. Mike worked at the Standard Times for a year, making $85 a week, typing until 3:00 a.m. on an old Royal standard typewriter, "not even electric!"

For someone who had no inclination of joining the business until happenstance plunked him down in a job, my father is one of the most ubiquitously "newspaper-y" people I have ever met. He loves it. When I was young he would take me into the pressroom and let me sit at his desk (this was the happy tradition that led to me being snatched up by a frantic photographer on a deadline who needed a kid to pose with "Equal Rights for Children Smurf" in an issue of the Fort Worth Star Telegram, where my father worked when he interviewed Emilio Estevez.). When he started his own small-town newspaper many years later, he would take us into the actual press building so we could watch the enormous rolls of newsprint spinning over the machinery and being cunningly pressed, printed and folded until they popped out the other end as a complete newspaper. "I love the smell of newsprint," I remember him saying.

It was at the Standard Times that my father learned to love the business. "I was right there, right in the heat of Vietnam. I worked every night until three, and then we'd all go to the waffle house. We'd talk about the newspaper business, and politics, and that's when I really started learning what it was all about. That was one of the best years of my life, even though I was there all alone, I didn't have anybody, didn't have a dime."

Soon he moved to Dallas to work for the Associated Press. This was where he met a man ("a typical drunk" who "had read all of Samuel Beckett's work in the original French") who introduced him to Jim Lehrer. Lehrer was then trying to get a fledgling television news show called "Newsroom" off the ground. This was in 1969, during the national newspaper strikes. Corporation Public Broadcasting was giving out money to newspaper people so they could start news shows of their own. This was happening all across the country. Now, a Bush Administration lackey has recently been appointed to head CPB, thus striking the final nail into the coffin of what was once a true bastion of free speech and the free press. "But back then, they stepped out there and funded these controversial newsroom programs--longhairs, black people, feminists--showing up on TV in Dallas in 1970, if you can imagine, with liberal ideas, and reporting..it's hard for you to imagine what it was like."

Dad worked on Newsroom with people like Joan Didion and Jesse Jackson. "It was an amazing time," he says. For his first beat, he covered the city council. He'd go to the meetings all day at City Hall, then report on them that night back at the Newsroom. The way the show was set up, all the reporters sat at their desks and the cameras went back and forth to them as they did their stories. There was a telephone sitting right in the middle, "so that the people we were talking about could call up and comment on what we were saying. If I was doing a story on a City Councilman, he could call up and argue with me about it live on the air. It happened all the time."

It was during this first beat that my father had one of his legendary run-ins with the conservative Dallas establishment:

"I covered for a long time the county government. And the county judge and the county sheriff and the DA had all been in office 25 years. They had swept into office as young men, gonna clean up Dallas, you know. And they were all as right-wing as you could possibly get, of course, very interesting characters. I got along good with all of 'em...The judge and the DA were always chewing on big old cigars, and the sheriff was always smoking cigarettes. Bill Decker--real badass. They were all mean people. So I'm there one day in the county courtroom and two of the county commissioners got mad at the judge. They came on newsroom that night and said some ugly things about him. We had a young black reporter named Greg Roverson on the show. At one point he asked "are you saying that Judge Skerrik is insane?" and they both said "yeah." So the next day, I have to go up there and cover the courtroom. And the judge comes out, just fuming, chewing on that cigar. And he comes up to me--court's full, all the cameras are running--he called me Miko. He says "Miko, you tell that jiggaboo out there that this old man ain't crazy." and I said, "judge, i'll tell him, but you ought'n't to talk like that." I went back and I told Jim what he'd said, and I said, "Jim, sooner or later we've got to start calling these people on this kind of thing." He said let's do it. So that night I reported the story just like that. (me: "saying jiggaboo and everything?" Mike, "oh yeah"). Well! The next day I had to go back out there again, downtown to the city hall. The judge was fuming. All the tv cameras and reporters were ready this time, because everybody'd seen what I said the night before. He says "you know Miko? I'll tell you one thing. You're right: I don't like militant niggers and hippies, never have, and never will." I said "judge, i hope you mean what you say because you're gonna have to hear it again tonight on the air."

I went back out and told Jim, and that night---I was at my desk, we had our office chairs, and I sat on half of it and Greg sat on the other half. We were in the same chair. And the camera opened on my face, and I told that story. And when I said that quote, about the militant niggers and hippies, the camera pulled back and there's Greg sitting right beside me. Whew! "

The public response, I ask? "Oh, well. The judge got voted out of office not long after that. Even in Dallas, people were going "God almighty! What kind of thing is this?'"

At this point Dad tells a few anecdotes about my birth (in my notes I have written: "first house = mom pregnant/axe under the bed). Then we begin discussing Journalism in general.

"Why do you think institutions like the New York Times have come under fire from both the right and the left wings lately?" I ask.

"Because the Times was always a standard bearer for the democratic party. And the reason everybody's mad at the Times is because it is LIKE the democratic party today in that it doesn't know WHAT it is. It no longer evidences the strength of its convictions."

How does he feel about blogs and the internet in general? "I say the more the better. But really we are not individually equipped intellectually to handle it. Because we don't know anything. So we go online and we see something like Matt Drudge or some moron blogger just putting out junk, but if it's the junk we like or it rings a bell with us, it reinforces our opinions. So misinformation, there's going to be ten million times more misinformation than ever before, and we are less equipped to deal with even the misinformation we get now. Because our educational system has pretty much imploded."

Dire words from a man who was once optimistic enough to actually bet me twenty clams that OJ Simpson would go to prison. Oh, sweet victory.

In the early 70's, Dad was one of "ten or so" journalists chosen from around the world to receive Neiman Fellowships to Harvard. He lived for a year in Boston, all expenses paid, and took whatever classes he wanted. He was friends with people like Michael McGovern (an ongoing character in Kinky Friedman's novels), and attended lectures by guest speakers like Hunter S. Thompson (whose appearance for the Neimans my dad describes as "a melee.").

I must begin skipping vast portions of my dad's life, as we have already tarried long into the night and my deadline draws nigh (not to mention the fact that I have been lambasted in this contest for being long-winded). "Daddy," I say, "it's time to get to the point." "Well, li'l dumplin," he says, "I guess you're right."

"I had a lot of jobs at the Star Telegram, and my last job there was as the film critic. Emilio Estevez was making a few movies back then, I don't know what happened to him since then. He made the "Breakfast Club", remember that? And he made "Repo Man." Harry Dean Statnon was in it, I sang harmony with him recently. Anyway, so, I went to the movie and then Emilio was in Chicago and his publicist called and said 'do you want to have a phone interview,' and I said sure. So at the assigned time, I called, and I was all set. Because Emilio comes on and he's of course in his best and brightest movie star form..."Mike! Hello, this is Emilio Estevez." And I said, "fuck you, queer." And there was this long silence. And then he caught on--i think he's got good sense--he started laughing. And we had a real good converation after that. I've always been sorry he didn't do better. I don't know, maybe he's happy as a lark."

For those of you who are unfortunately unfamiliar with the great "Repo Man," allow me to explain my father's very funny and dare I say extremely BALLSY joke: There is a scene in this film wherein Harry Dean Stanton is driving next to Emilio, and he yells, "hey kid you wanna make twenty bucks?" and Emilio without missing a beat snarls "fuck you queer." This is an extremely obscure reference for one to make when interviewing the star of the film, particularly when this is the very first thing one says on the phone with said star.

After interviewing Emilio Estevez, my father moved with us to a pitch-black rural mesa with no electricity or running water at 8,000 feet in Colorado. My childhood, which had been idyllic, became abruptly less idyllic, but more interesting. For this I am grateful. Dad started his own newspaper and is still running it in between stints as the owner of an antique store and as an actor ("The Wendell Baker Story," directed by Luke Wilson, coming out sometime, I don't know. He plays a prison guard. He has one line, which is: "Get up. Get off the bus, boy. This is Huntsville." He also is seen riding a horse ("well of course your father is TERRIFIED of horses," says my mom)).

Before hanging up with my dad, I was very struck by what he said about running a small paper in a very right-wing town:

"Well it's in my mind constantly. I am pretty much a past master at it, 62 years old, done it all my life. Started out in San Angelo, a bastion of conservativism. Worked in Dallas--if you asked anybody in the country what's the most conservative big city in the U.S. they would say Dallas. It's where Kennedy was killed, for god's sake. So I've worked in those kinds of environments. I don't know if it's good or bad, to tell you the truth. It's something I deal with all the time. I almost never put what I really think in the paper. For two reasons. One: most people don't think that way and two: what I really think is also more liberal than what my staff even thinks. So I have a double whammy. I don't only have to worry about the right wing realtors and bankers who are the backbone of my advertising. I also have to worry about the people in my office. And it's an interesting project. Is it healthy? I don't know. It might be because it--I don't know how healthy it is to show no restraint. You know people like that. Is that healthy? I don't know. I'm just doing what I know I have to do to make my business work. And overriding everything else is that I believe in newspapers, I love newspapers. And I believe in giving them the best newspaper that I can, that I can afford to give them."

There you have it. My dad: The Man Who Interviewed Emilio Estevez.

Previous: American youth answers to Medya | Den Home | Ultimate Blogger Home | Next: The Genius. The Activist. The Celebrity.

Comments:

© 2005 URBN*HNKG | Design by YACHT | Using MT 3.33 | DEN RSS 2.0 W/O COMMENTS: DEN RSS 1.0