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February 27, 2009
 Peter,
accompanied by his wife Stefanie, is visiting Cuba this
week, attending the 11th Habano Cigar Festival in
Havana. He has written several articles for the
San Francisco Chronicle
in travel log fashion. Though
he's receiving some flack for his political statements, I'm sure our
socialist will continue to make waves. The photo was
taken the other evening with Cigar Aficionado's
James Suckling, who described Coyote as "a thoughtful
liberal with a huge love of the leaf."
 Two
days before the Academy Awards, Peter attended the
international charity gala called "Montblanc
Signature for Good". It was held at Paramount
Studios in Hollywood. The charity benefits UNICEF
education and literary programs. The evening included a
champagne reception followed by a unique menu designed
by Wolfgang Puck. The photos below show Peter with
"4400" series co-star, Karine Lombard.
The
answer to the mystery photo in the last update was
the 1982 film, "Endangered Species".
February 3, 2009
 Almost
three years from the start of production in Kansas City,
ALL ROADS LEAD HOME, was finally released on DVD
on January 13th. It had a limited theatrical release in
the midwest last year and showed up at a few film
festivals. Girls between the ages of 8 and 12 will love
this film. The story involves the successes and
struggles of a young girl named Belle Lawlor (played by
Vivien Cardone) who undergoes a drastic personality
change after her mother dies. She rebels against her
father and is sent to live with her grandfather (played
by Coyote) on his Kansas farm. Doug Delaney, who
penned the script, believes the real story is about
wounded people and animals and how they can heal each
other.
 In
an interview last month at the Palm Springs Film
Festival, producer Kim Waltrip spoke about her film,
ADOPT A SAILOR, an idea which began as a 10-minute
staged reading piece for the one-year anniversary of
September 11, 2001. In early 2007 Kim was given the
screenplay by writer Charles Evered and she quickly knew
this film had to be made. They pulled together
financing, cast and permission from the Navy to shoot on
deck of a carrier during Fleet Week in May 2007. The
rest of the film was shot in the desert at a home
dressed to look like an upscale New York City apartment.
Peter remembers getting the script and thinking how
alive and witty it was. He knew he had to sign up.
Though working with a first-time director can sometimes
be problematic, Peter recalls, "Working with Charles was
like heaven. He wrote the play, he's lived it, but he
has the sense to trust his actors. His direction was
sparse and sure." Kim admits it was a small production,
but with a huge scope. She adds, "The response from
audiences thus far has been amazing. The film seems to
touch everyone, no matter what policitcal party they are
in, no matter what part of the country they come from.
There is something very universal about this story that
resonates with everyone who sees it."
 In honor of Wallace Stegner’s birth on February 18,
1909, the University of Utah’s public television station
KUED TV has produced a new documentary on Wallace
Stegner. The biographical film, narrated by Peter,
premiered February 2nd and will be used in a variety of
upcoming centennial celebrations of the famous
Westerner's life. Stegner was many things - teacher,
historian, environmentalist and writer. He was a
Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and non-fiction author, with more than
thirty full-length works and countless
essays addressing the landscape, humankind’s footprint,
and the evolution of a region and nation. The hour-long
documentary will feature interviews with
former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor,
the late Edward Abbey, ex-U.S. Department of
Interior secretaries Bruce Babbitt and Stewart Udall,
environmentalist and river guide Martin Litton
and biographer Phillip Fradkin.
Coincidentally, Wallace Stegner once called the national
parks "the best idea we ever had" and filmmaker Ken
Burns has incorporated that into the title of his next
documentary series called "The National Parks:
America's Best Idea". The 12-hour, six-part program,
directed by Burns and co-produced with his longtime
colleague, Dayton Duncan, who also wrote the script,
will premiere on PBS in the fall. The series will tell
the remarkable story of our national parks from Acadia
to Yosemite, Yellowstone to the Great Smoky Mountains,
the Everglades of Florida to the Gates of the Arctic in
Alaska, and scores of other parks that preserve unique
landscapes and icons of our national existence. Burns
promises it will not be a travelogue or a "nature film"
but a documentary history, albeit with some of Nature's
most spectacular locales as its backdrop. Its drama will
reveal struggle and conflict, high ideals and crass
opportunism, stirring adventure and enduring
inspiration. In addition to Peter's narration, the
series will feature first-person voices read by several
other actors, including Tom Hanks, Andy Garcia, Josh
Lucas, Eli Wallach, Campbell Scott, Sam Waterston and
John Lithgow. PBS Home Video is producing a complete DVD
box that will feature "making of" footage and an
interview with Burns and others involved in the film.
Another
Palm Springs event, running from March 4-8, is the Agua
Caliente Cultural Museum's Festival of Native Film &
Culture. The 8th annual festival will offer narrative
feature films, documentaries and short films from Native
American and international indigenous filmmakers. Peter
has narrated a documentary called "Power Paths"
that will be screened at the festival on Friday, March
6. Bo Boudart's new film focuses on the Navajo, Hopi and
Lakota Sioux people who are opting to introduce
renewable energy projects into their communities through
grassroot movements.
Mystery
photo of the day for die-hard Coyote fans. Can you name
the movie?
$5
A DAY is slated for a limited release in New York and
Los Angeles on April 24th. The film was shot in New
Mexico and Atlantic City back in the fall of 2007.
The 90-minute film was screened at TIFF (Toronto
International Film Festival) in September, and more
recently at the Palm Springs Film Festival last month.
Peter, in a minor role as Bert Kruger, says the film is
"hysterically funny and very surprising." Described as a
charmingly sweet comedy, the film stars Alessandro
Nivola as a young man forced to reunite with is dying
con-man father, played by Christopher Walken, while on a
cross-country road trip. The film's cast also includes
Amanda Peet and Sharon Stone. Here are some movie
stills:
Lennie
Appelquist recently filmed an interview with Peter
Coyote one misty morning in the Muir Woods, just
north of San Francisco. Peter was asked what it
means to live your best life. He spoke about his
love of the Muir Woods. In the sixties when he
"dropped out" and became a part of the hippie
culture, he actually lived in the woods. As he stood
with the small crew in the woods, he looked at the
redwood next to him and said, "This redwood gives
off oxygen so we can breathe but do we view it as
something magnificently manifested in a spiritual
sense?" Peter's question makes me wonder how does a
fully human, fully alive person not view nature as a
supreme reflection of God's glory. Obviously, if
everyone believed this, we wouldn't be living in a
polluted world today.
December 10, 2008
 You
can add another National Geographic documentary to
Peter's ever-growing list.. His latest one is called "Lost
Cities of the Amazon", a 52-minute film that
looks at efforts to find legendary cities of gold
described by a Spanish cleric accompanying early Spanish
Conquistadors. Over the centuries, explorers traded
tales of a lost civilization amid the dense Amazonian
rainforest. Scientists dismissed the legends as
exaggerations, believing that the rainforest could not
sustain such a huge population - until now. A new
generation of explorers armed with 21st-century
technology has uncovered remarkable evidence that could
reinvent our understanding of the Amazon and the
indigenous peoples who lived there. Using CGI and
dramatic re-creations, National Geographic re-imagines
the banks of the Amazon 500 years ago, teeming with
inhabitants living in the Lost Cities of the Amazon.
Sean
Penn bagged the first published foreigner's interview
with Paul Castro and now Peter will be making a trip to
Syria on an artist-to-artist mission with hopes to meet
with President Bashar al-Assad and others. Phil
Bronstein, former SF Chronicle editor (and Sharon
Stone's ex) had this to say in his article "Rourke,
Penn, and Coyote: Who are the heavyweights?" -
"Normally I get the creeps when I
see celebrities pretending to be diplomatic
emissaries or enrollees in the latest overseas
cause. But I know these two guys. They're not doing
dilettantish stunts here, like some celebs who show
up in the Baghdad Green Zone in flack jackets,
'fact-finding' and spending hundreds of thousands in
US taxpayer-funded security for the photo op. There
were no grip-and-grin shots of Sean with Castro and
no one knew about it until he published his
interview."
Peter, a long-time political junkie, says he was
"listening to C-Span and heard a bunch of foreign
service professionals talking about the need for
more person-to-person contact" in various countries
hostile to the US. So he arranged to meet with
Syrian TV stars and other artists. Then he went
after appointments with politicians. "I'm a little
old for a stunt," he says. "What am I going to do,
get a romantic lead role out of this written for a
30-year-old because someone saw me in Syria?"
Neither of these trips to current axis of evil
countries are official door-openers for Mr. Obama.
But neither are they Jane Fonda on North Vietnamese
artillery gun. Let's remember that Nixon's opening
to China started with ping pong, right?
I'm not big on throwing the diplomatic doors open to
anyone with greasepaint. Other than Bono, whose
frequent flyer miles I want. I mean what if Mickey
Rourke shows up in North Korea with an albino
alligator and a bottle of steroids for Kim il Jung?
(They could compare dads.) But there are some
actors, like Penn and Coyote, who can operate
outside the envelope of their craft in a pretty
interesting way, so why not?"
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