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January 25, 2012
 Here's
an update on the upcoming Ken Burns project, "The
Dust Bowl". The Coyote-narrated film will premiere
at the Telluride Mountainfilm Festival. The two-part PBS
documentary series is slated for television release in
the fall of 2012, but it will first be screened during
the festival weekend, May 25-28. Burns will attend the
festival and discuss his film with Mountainfilm
audiences.
I
just came across the June 2011 issue of Sun magazine
in which Peter gives an interview. Here's the
link to the article called "Against the Grain:
Peter Coyote On Buddhism, Capitalism, And The Enduring
Legacy Of The Sixties".
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"I don't think theater has ever been a vehical for
radical change. Theater is a vehicle for deepening
knowledge about the human species. I am not even sure
that the system has to change. People have to change. If
people behaved with self-restraint, generosity, and
compassion, even capitalism could work. We are never
going to create a system that generates fairness,
equity, goodwill and justice. I became a Buddhist in
part because I believe that change like that has to
start internally and be expressed one person at a time.
It is true that a system can advance to repress certain
attributes of human behavior, but no set of rules is
going to make us perfect."
...Peter Coyote |
Speaking
of theater, here's one of our "blast from the past"
photos taken of Peter in costume as he performed
with the San Francisco Mime Troupe back in
1967.
January 13, 2012
 Filmmaker
Ken Burns has announced his next project: a PBS
documentary called "The Dust Bowl", to be
narrated by Peter. about one of the worst man-made
disasters in U.S. history. The documentary will
highlight one of the worst man-made disasters in U.S.
history and will rely on interviews with people who
lived through the crisis as well as Depression-era
footage. The “dust bowl,” words coined by an Associated
Press reporter in 1935 to describe the southern plains
that rain had forsaken, was the worst man-made
ecological disaster in American history – in which the
heedless actions of thousands of individual farmers,
encouraged by their government and influenced by global
markets, resulted in a collective tragedy that nearly
swept away the breadbasket of the nation.
It was a decade-long natural catastrophe of Biblical
proportions encompassing 100 million acres in Oklahoma,
Texas, Kansas, Colorado and New Mexico – when the skies
withheld their rains, when plagues of grasshoppers
descended on parched fields, when bewildered families
huddled in dark rooms while angry winds shook their
homes and pillars of dust choked out the mid-day sun.
Burns will discuss his latest film this summer with a
PBS broadcast later this year.
December 30, 2011
Here’s
an audio interview Peter recently did with a woman named
Rebecca D. Costa. According to Peter, Ms. Costa wrote a
brilliant book called "The Watchman’s Rattle" about the
way our old habits of thinking leave us unable to cope
with crisis. Peter admits he didn’t remember the book
when they spoke or he’d have been tongue tied. The
interview is at:
http://www.rebeccacosta.com/the-costa-report.
December 15, 2011
A
new sports series! This week the National Hockey League
and NHL Original Productions announced the debut of the
day-in-the-life series "NHL 36", narrated by
Peter. The first episode, which aired on Wednesday on
VERSUS, featured Patrick Kane, a forward for the Chicago
Blackhawks. The series will include10 episodes that will
shadow NHL players for 36 consecutive hours. "We are
excited about the opportunity to create individual
player portraits with unprecedented depth, at home with
family, out with friends and in the workplace," said
Ross Greenburg, executive producer, NHL 36. "Wherever
they go, whatever they do, our cameras are there,
capturing what a day in the life is like for some of the
biggest names in the NHL."
Sigma
Corporation of America has teamed up with underwater
photographer, sculptor and conservationist Jason
deCaires Taylor to help photograph the artist's
oft-unseen work and share it with the world. In addition
to using the Sigma lenses to capture still images of
Taylor's project, the sculptor and a team of underwater
filmmakers are using the lenses to document his work in
a movie called "Angel Azul". The film is being
produced by a group of environmentalists and will be
narrated by Peter.
December 10, 2011
 From
a rich and diverse field of almost 90 submissions from
over 20 countries around the world, "Cages of Shame,"
a feature-length documentary by Martin Guinness, about
an inspiring mission to rescue moon bears from a bear
bile farm in China, has won The Humane Society of the
United States' sixth Animal Content in Entertainment
(ACE) Documentary Film Grant. The film is narrated by
Peter and is currently in the final stages of
post-production. Guinness responded with, "I'm proud to
be associated with The Humane Society of the United
States, and I'm enormously grateful to them for
recognizing the inhumane and iniquitous maltreatment of
bears in cages in Asia. When I first heard about bear
farms I could hardly believe it. That humans could treat
thousands of these wonderful animals this way - and not
even for any necessary purpose - was beyond my
understanding, which is why I knew that I had to make a
film to draw the world's attention to the plight of
these bears."
I
just came across the Fall 2011 issue of the Grinnell
College magazine in which Peter and fellow alumni
and friend, Terry Bisson, write about their political
activism back in 1961 when they and 12 other students
from the Iowa college decided to drive a thousand miles
to Washington, D.C., and fast for three days in front of
the White House. The goal was to protest the nuclear
arms race and the resumption of atmospheric testing of
nuclear weapons, to support President Kennedy’s proposed
test-ban treaty and “peace race,” and to force the
subject into the public forum. Here are some wonderful
photos from that event and, if you want to read the
article, you can
access the PDF at this link. Don't you just love
their jackets, ties and London Fogs!
Last
week Salon’s founder and CEO, David Talbot, moderated a
panel discussion and Q&A in San Francisco with veterans
of social movements and organizers of Occupy San
Francisco, Oakland and the University of
California, at Berkeley. Peter was among the panel,
which also included Dan Siegel, civil rights attorney;
Matt Haney, executive director of UC Students
Association; Rebecca Solnit, author, contributor to
“Occupy!: Scenes From Occupied America”; and
Melanie Cervantes, activist, artist and co-founder of
Dignidad Rebelde.
December 2, 2011
 Aldo
Leopold is considered the most important conservationist
of the 20th century because his ideas are so relevant to
the environmental issues of our time. He is the father
of the national wilderness system, wildlife management
and the science of ecological restoration. "Green
Fire; Aldo Leopold and a Land Ethic for our Time" is
the first feature-length (72 minutes) documentary about
Aldo Leopold’s life and contemporary legacy. Peter lends
his talent as the voice of Aldo Leopold, and the film’s
on-screen guide is biographer Curt Meine. The film
explores Leopold's life in the early part of the
twentieth century and the many ways his land ethic idea
continues to be applied all over the world today. In
partnership with the U.S. Forest Service, premiere
screenings in select cities will also celebrate the
100th anniversary of the Weeks Act, the law that lead to
the creation of many of our eastern national forests,
and sparked the long-term effort to replant and restore
forests that still continues today.
 Many
of you may not know that Peter's wife, Stefanie,
has a gifted voice as well which she lends to a San
Francisco area band for hire called "Olive & the
Dirty Martinis". The musicians include Eric
Lyons, Steve Rifkin, Justin Ganz and a famous name,
Jamie Redford - yes, Robert Redford's son. The band
shares a mutual love for rock and soul music from the
60's and 70's. From Zeppelin to Airplane, from Aretha to
the Doobies, from Stevie Wonder to Stevie Winwood, the
Martinis rock the house and inspire their audiences to
dance all night and sing along with some of the greatest
hooks and choruses ever written. For a live performance
video, you can check out the
band's web
site.
November 29, 2011
From
USA Today:
In the 1960s, community activists
in San Francisco operated free stores and organized
free medical care and other services. They called
themselves the Diggers, after a 17th-century
egalitarian English group of the same name. They
also borrowed from "potlatch" ceremonies where
Pacific Northwest tribe members earned prestige by
giving away their possessions, says Peter Coyote,
an actor who was a founding member.
"Free stores were just a way of creating a parallel
economy based on community," Coyote says. "As people
get poorer and as they get more disenfranchised and
as they get more cut out of the cash economy, they
start to barter and trade."
He thinks renewed interest in free stores, like the
Occupy Wall Street movement, is a manifestation of
frustration with greed. "Poverty is going to
reintroduce people to some long-lost ideas of
kinship, community, cooperation and mutual aid that
they'll find deeply satisfying," he says.
November 22, 2011
Sony Pictures Home Entertainment has just released
1985's THE LEGEND OF BILLIE JEAN on DVD as a
"Columbia Classic". The films stars Helen Slater in the
title role, and the unrelated Christian Slater as her
brother. Peter plays the sympathetic police detective
while Dean Stockwell plays the district attorney. From
hero to cult film favorite, the film tells the story of
young Billie Jean Davy, who leads a band of notorious
fugitives when a local rich kid steals and wrecks her
younger brother’s motor scooter. Her brother shoots the
kid’s father by accident creating a generational culture
clash. The soundtrack included music by Pat Benatar,
Billy Idol and the then-unknown Australian band
Divinyls. Earlier this year, the movie was adapted into
a musical at the Cavern Club in the hip Silver Lake
neighborhood of Los Angeles.
"My son was born during the filming of this movie, so it
has special meaning to me,” says Coyote. “I loved being
with all these bright talented kids on the set and
getting to play a pretty nice guy for once. I’ll be
happy that a new generation gets to check it out."
October 20, 2011
Word
has it that the HBO TV movie, HEMINGWAY & GELLHORN,
will be aired in May 2012. The film, directed by Philip
Kaufman, recounts the passionate and tumultuous marriage
of literary master Ernest Hemingway (Clive Owen) and the
up-and-coming war correspondent Martha Gellhorn (Nicole
Kidman), following their epic romance through seven
countries - from the Spanish Civil War and beyond. As
she grew in reputation and stature, the spirited
Gellhorn stood toe-to-toe with Hemingway, putting his
famous bravado and iconic style to the test. Peter takes
on the role of literary editor Maxwell Perkins.
 "White
Water, Black Gold", with a voiceover by Peter, is a
new film about the inextricable link between water and
oil in our modern world. It gives an investigative
point-of-view about David Lavallee’s journey down the
Athabasca River and across western Canada watersheds
(Edmonton, Vancouver, Fort McMurray, Fort Chipewyan,
Kitimat) in search of answers about the activities of
the world's thirstiest oil industry - the tar sands.
Following an imaginary drop of water, and later an
imaginary drop of oil, he discovers the threats to the
third largest watershed in the world and two separate
oceans.
October 6, 2011
 Filmmaker
and Webby Awards founder Tiffany Shlain opens her new
documentary "Connected: An Autobiography about Love,
Death & Technology" with a personal confession: She
once faked having to go to the bathroom during dinner so
that she could check her email on her phone. For many
web-addicted people, that might not be too shocking a
reveal, but for her it was a wake-up call — one that
comes close to capturing the film in a nutshell. This
latest documentary, narrated by both Shlain and Coyote,
screened at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival and has been
making its way internationally around art houses this
fall. The 80-minute film addresses how increased
technological connectivity effects environment,
population growth, the economy, relationships and how we
think and process information. Peter previously provided
the narration for Shlain's film, "The Tribe", an
exploration of American Jewish identity and the Barbie
doll.
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