Coymoon Creations

WINTER 2003/2004 NEWSLETTER

February 8:
Peter will be Master of Ceremonies at an upcoming two-day symposium called "The Making of Precious Cargo - Childbirth and Cradle Baskets in California Indian Culture." It will be held February 18-19 at the Embassy Suites Hotel in San Rafael. The Symposium, held in conjunction with the 20th Annual Marin Indian Art Show, will feature a premiere screening of the 15-minute documentary, "Precious Cargo". The film was directed by PBS award-winning filmmaker Terry Strauss and is narrated by Peter.

February 5:
On February 1, Peter's article, "When supporting only one presidential candidate just isn't enough" was published in the San Francisco Chronicle, in which he discusses his support for both Rep. Dennis Kucinich and Howard Dean.

There's a new documentary narrated by Peter now available in DVD and VHS called "Shaman of the Andes." This film explores the life of an Ecuadorean shaman, Taita Churo, and his traditional Quechua culture. As the modern world brings change to the Andes, the shaman's son, Enrique, continues the ancient healing practices of his father while incorporating western medicine. Shaman of the Andes provides a fascinating look at a culture existing on the margins of the modern world and takes the viewer on a journey into the mysterious world of the ancient healer.

January 26, 2004:
The 21st annual Miami International Film Festival will show 63 films from 34 countries and will kick off the event with Bon Voyage on January 30. Though not chosen to compete, the production was this year's French entry for Oscar consideration in the best foreign language category. It will be making its east coast premiere in Miami. In France it has been nominated for 11 Cesars. Peter will be attending the festival along with director Jean-Paul Rappeneau and actress Virginie Ledoyen. In this buoyant, fast-paced, romantic comedy, the French government and much of bourgeois society flee Paris for Bordeaux on the eve of the German Occupation in 1940, taking up temporary residence at the Hotel Splendide, where their worlds amusingly collide. Cast members also include Gerard Depardieu, Isabelle Adjani, Yvan Attal and Gregori Derangere.

News tidbit: Peter will be the commencement speaker at the University of Minnesota at their Morris campus on May 8.

January 21:
Be sure to check out the movie, A Time for Dancing, on Showtime. Based on a true story by Davida Wills Hurwin, the film is a poignant account of a gifted young woman who fights to fulfill her dreams despite having been diagnosed with a serious illness. Director Peter Gilbert has been nominated by the Directors Guild of America for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Children's Programs for 2003. From The Hollywood Reporter (1/15/04): "Larisa Oleynik is superb and altogether believable as Jules, a lithe and graceful dancer who has dreams of being accepted at the famed Julliard School. She's actually pretty single-minded in her pursuit of perfection, at the expense of her relationships with boyfriend Eli (Scott Vickaryous) and best pal Sam (Shiri Appleby)... Then it's discovered that Jules' nagging hip pain isn't something minor but Stage 4 cancer, to the horror of not only Sam but her parents (well-played by Peter Coyote and Patricia Kalember) and stoic dance instructor (Lynn Whitfield) as well. Suddenly, the fight isn't for glory on the dance floor but for life."

Steven Spielberg established the Shoah Foundation ten years ago after filming Schindler's List. A new web-based exhibit called "Voices of the Holocaust: Children Speak" will be launched in March on the Foundation's web site. Narrated by Peter Coyote, Elijah Wood and Natalie Portman, Children Speak will be aimed at American middle school students, aged 11-14. It will highlight testimonies from four survivors who were children during the Holocaust, and allow students to interact with the testimonies, while simultaneously exploring historical overviews, archival film footage, a glossary, maps, and survivors' personal photos.

The title of Rich Cowan's latest film, Main Line, currently in post-production, has been changed to Shadow of Fear. Scheduled to be released July 14, 2004, the film is about a man who goes to a lawyer seeking his help in covering up an accidental killing. What he gets is a blackmailer who uses the situation to his every advantage. The film's cast includes Matt Davis, Robin Tunney, James Spader, Aidan Quinn, Alice Krige and Peter as Congressman Henderson. Described as a thriller, the movie's tagline is "Once trapped inside, it's murder to get out."

In the Works: When Coyote isn't filming, he keeps busy writing and has come up with a couple screenplays of his own. The first is The Baritones, a goofy French farce about sex, cooking, murder, marriage, and opening a new restaurant. Producer Michael Cohen really likes the script and has offered to produce it. The second one is Pale, Thumper, and Bump - a young white man, in repentance for an overdose that killed his pregnant, African-American wife, volunteers at an all-black, Harlem high school, trying to 'give back' what his foolishness has taken from him. He meets Thumper, a brilliant young hip-hop artist he champions, and Bump, the local crack king-pin. In the ensuing struggle for Thumper's soul, we learn the value of stepping up. He's also hopeful that he may get the chance to direct a wonderful script called Play Time by Chris Green. It's the story about a very provocative couple in a planned community and their effect on their neighbors.

Last July Peter emceed the Howard Dean kick-off event at the San Francisco Hyatt. Here's a clip of Peter speaking on the dangers of proprietary voting machines. If you can't access the clip, this is the transcript: One last thing on the Georgia Voting Fraud. It can't be proven because the software is proprietary. There's a dress rehearsal. There's a website called Votescam.com, and you need to look at it. And everyone of us needs to write our legislators and say: "We want paper ballots." "We want transparent software." "We want the government supervising the elections.Otherwise, what will happen is, at the end of the day, the Police will take the voting machines, they will give them to the corporation, and the corporation will tell you who won. There's a long history of documented voter fraud in this country, and the dress rehearsal was the last presidential election. I narrated a film for a reporter called Greg Palast. 91,000 votes stolen in Florida. 91,000! Go to Greg Palast.com and look it up. Go to Votescam.com. If we don't stop voter fraud, we're not gonna win this election.

December 3, 2003:
Peter has narrated an hour-long documentary, which summarizes the Bush Administration's first three years and focuses on the broad issues of war, tax shifts, media consolidation, civil liberties and the shredding of the economic safety net. Premiering in the spring of 2004, "There's Something about W" presents its story by using the voices of the Administration and outside experts such as Paul Krugman, Molly Ivins, Daniel Ellsberg, Norman Solomon, Chuck Lewis and Michael Moore. For more information, visit http://www.somethingaboutw.org.

Coyote finds outlet for his acting, activism by joining The Exonerated -
The Exonerated became one of the year's most celebrated plays during its successful run at the Wilbur Theatre in New York. With a simple, almost spartan stage set, the production chronicles the amazing stories of six former death row inmates who were wrongly convicted of their crimes and eventually freed.  The play has attracted such big names as Richard Dreyfuss, Danny Glover, Aidan Quinn, Jeff Goldblum and Mia Farrow. This month's long stand at the Curran Theatre in San Francisco features an impressive list of starring performers that will change each week. Robin Williams and the no less impressive Amanda Plummer were the headliners last week. Aidan Quinn and Montel Williams replace them this week, followed by Stockard Channing and Brian Dennehy (beginning Dec. 9) and, finally, Peter Coyote and Penn Jillette (Dec. 16 through 21).

"We've got more people under lock and key than any other nation. And shows like this are a disturbing wake-up call because you are seeing, through the actors up there, people just like you."  ...Coyote

Brian McCoy of Record Entertainment recently interviewed Peter from his Bay Area home about his upcoming performance. In response to The Exonerated being described as a documentary play, Peter replied, "It's a lousy term. 'Documentary play' sounds like watching paint dry. This show is not a lecture. This show, if anything is an introduction to the fact that the people who wind up on death row can be just like you. You don't have to do anything wrong. You can be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I can't think of anything more compelling than that."

"When the governor of Illinois stops capital punishment in his state because 50% of death row prisoners are arguably innocent, it's just common sense." Coyote adds, "And not one of these people (mistakenly imprisoned) have received dollar one from the states that incarcerated them for 8, 11, 12, 15 years, but they have received over $300,000 from the production of The Exonerated."

"Prisoners are a category of people we want to ignore," says Coyote, "but each person who wakes up in the morning is a different individual. It's our mental laziness that makes us lump people together into types. There are as many different types of people in prison as there are out of prison. Some of them are innocent, some of them were framed and some of them were really guilty and should never get out. When you hear these stories, you realize that people do bend the facts, that does look good on the record of the DA to get a conviction, and the pawn that they are using is somebody's life."

In the same interview Peter comments on his work as a narrator -

"I started doing voice-overs while I was trying to build an acting career. I have sort of a
sixth sense. When I read the first sentence of somebody's script, I get the voice and I get
the rhythms, and I can just make that voice my own. I don't even know how I do that.
It does keep me out of a lot of bad films."

Journalist/film critic Thom Fowler met Peter recently at the San Francisco International Film Festival. While interviewing Mark and Michael Polish for Northfork, Fowler shared his desire to contact Peter for an interview for "Off the Radar" and the rest is history... What interested him the most was the actor's affiliation with the radical street theatre group, the Diggers. He felt that in spite of Peter's success in the mainstream, he maintained a commitment to progressive social change continuing to be part of an ever-growing effort to move what were once considered radical ideas about nuclear safety, health, personal empowerment and the environment into the public imagination and into the legislature.

John Buffalo Mailer (son of Norman Mailer) has become the new executive editor of High Times. His first issue, which became available on November 25, begins a total makeover of the magazine. The cover has a photograph of the actor Mark Webber, a question about education reform and zero references to marijuana. Inside is an essay on outlaw politics by Peter. Mailer says, "With the new High Times, we're using it as a metaphor, so it's not a magazine about pot. It's a magazine about our civil liberties and our tag line is 'Celebrating Freedom.'" Check out the October 1994 issue of High Times, in which author Malcolm MacKinnon interviews Peter about "Finding a Pure Place to Stand."

Coyote trivia - With the release of the Indiana Jones trilogy on DVD, you may have come across this tidbit - Spielberg's first choice was Harrison Ford, but George Lucas was reluctant based on the fact that Ford had already been featured in two of his films. A number of other actors, including Peter Coyote, Tim Matheson, and Tom Selleck, were considered and screen tested. What if.....

Husband-and-wife filmmakers, Michael Rosen and Sharon Howard, continue their tradition of championing the animal world through film. Three years in the making, their latest venture, "Wolf: An Ancient Spirit Returns", aired on KOMO-TV in Seattle back in October. Unlike the couple's seven other films, which were funded by television stations and grants, "Wolf" was self-funded. Howard and Rosen took money out of their savings to produce what they think is the first major program that explores the fragile relationship between wolves and humans. Howard and Rosen are hoping the show will air in other markets around the country. Peter also narrated their award-winning documentary "Natural Connections", which explored biodiversity and the impact humans make on the tiniest creatures around them. And he narrated "Return of the Wolves" back in 1989. But what about the coyotes....

Reinvented.net had a blurb about Peter back in April referring to his interview on the Canadian show, The Actors, which was shown on Bravo. The author referred to him as a "true polymath." In case you have to look up that word (like I did), it means, "a person of great or varied learning." I think that's the result of growing up in a home where floor-to-ceiling bookshelves abounded. What a blessing! In this webmaster's home we had a small two-shelf bookcase, which could hold no more than maybe 25 books. All I can remember of its inventory is Cluny Brown by Margery Sharp and The Razor's Edge by W. Somerset Maugham. Not even a bible, no magazines. Check out the web site of Elizabeth West, Peter's sister, and enjoy her treasury of delightful words!