Coymoon Creations

WINTER 2015 NEWSLETTER
 

March 15, 2015

Here are some dates for Peter's upcoming book signings for THE RAINMAN'S THIRD CURE. From Library Journal - "Remarkably forthright and insightful, this memoir may inspire others to add a bit of Zen to their lives."

April 14: 6:30 pm - Diesel Bookstore, 2419 Larkspur Landing Circle, Larkspur, CA

April 16: 7 pm - Central Library, 1000 Fourth Ave, Seattle, WA

April 20: 7:30 pm.- Powell's City of Books, 1005 W Burnside, Portland, OR

April 21: 7 pm - Barnes & Noble, Americana Way, Glendale, CA

April 23: 12-1 pm - The Strand, 828 Broadway (& 12th Street), New York, NY
 

Last month GIRL ON THE EDGE was screened at the Sedona International Film Festival and this past weekend it was presented at the San Luis Obispo International Film Festival, where it won best narrative feature during the independent film awards. The film, originally titled "The Secret Place", is directed by Jay Silverman and besides Peter, it stars Taylor Spreitler, Gil Bellows, Mackenzie Phillips and the late Elizabeth Pena. This is a very personal story for the director because his own teen-age daughter had been sexually assaulted.  Herbert Payne of Broadway World praises the film with "Girl on the Edge is a poignant and uplifting film of hope, powered by Ms. Spreitler's compelling and heart-wrenching portrayal of Hannah whose obstinacy is the thin veil of a vulnerable soul. This young actress masterfully captures the complexity of Hannah's character. Mr. Coyote, as ever, is steady as a rock, playing the counselor everyone wishes they had." Film & Theatre critic, David Appleford writes, "From a sharply observed script from writer Joey Curtis and solid support from a mostly adult cast, including Gil Bellows as dad and Amy Price-Francis as mom, there’s also a comforting, take-charge presence from Peter Coyote as the man who runs the center and an appearance from the sadly missed Elizabeth Pena as Esther." The photo below shows Peter on location with the director, Elizabeth Pena, Taylor Spreitler and Mackenzie Phillips.

The Greensboro Symphony Orchestra of North Carolina has announced this year's classical Masterworks season, which includes a Coyote appearance. He will narrate Aaron Copland’s "Lincoln Portrait" on the season’s opening concerts on Sept. 24 and 26. That concert also will feature Grieg’s epic drama "Peer Gynt" and Strauss’s "Don Juan."

A 74-minute documentary called "Angel Azul" shows artist Jason deCaires Taylor create statues from live models, then submerge them to take the place of dying coral reefs. Taylor's work highlights an underwater crisis as algae encroaches. Peter Coyote narrates the film, which won best documentary from the Breckenridge Film Festival and best cinematography from the United Nations Association Film Festival. Cravat’s playful yet deliberate filmmaking style contextualizes the creation of Reclamation – presumably the 'angel' in the film’s title – within the larger goals of Taylor’s work and the acute threats to coral reef health. As invasive algae begin to smother the hundreds of existing underwater sculptures at MUSA, environmental experts including Dr. Sylvia Earle deliver an urgent message about the solutions necessary to save reefs while narrator Peter Coyote provides further insight into how our choices will decide the fate of these exquisite and valuable ecosystems for generations to come."

Peter has completed another film called NO DEPOSIT.  Filmed last year in Canada, it was written and directed by Frank D'Angelo and stars Frank D'Angelo, Dominique Swain, Michael Madsen, Margot Kidder, Doris Roberts, Robert Loggia, Paul Sorvino, Daniel Baldwin and Peter as Police Chief Williams. The film's official web sites gives the following synopsis: The story begins when a family man, Mickey Ryan, falls from grace through no fault of his own due to a series of downward spiraling events beyond his control. With his life turned upside down, Mickey tries valiantly to resolve his issues but hooks up with the wrong people who blind him with anger and hate. Then his life takes an even worse turn as evil infiltrates his life and he becomes involved in a series of hate crimes that seemingly give him no way out. Just when everyone is about to give up on him and he is poised to fall off the edge of life, one person finally steps up in a moment of redemption and forgiveness and saves him from the ledge of desperation.

Another unreleased film has undergone a title change. The French film, EVA ET LEON, written and directed by Emilie Cherpital, has been re-titled  L'ÉCHAPPÉE BELLE. It will premiere in France on June 17, 2015.  Eva is a 35-year-old free-spirited soul living a single, independent life, emcumbered by nothing. However a 11-year-old boy named Leon will soon change her life as she helps him find his mother.

February 13, 2015

The upcoming release of Peter's newest book, "THE RAINMAN'S THIRD CURE: An Irregular Education" has already been garnering wonderful praise! The publication date for this 288-page book by Counterpoint is set for April 14, 2015.

Amazon.com description:
The guiding metaphor in Peter Coyote’s new spiritual biography is drawn from a line in an early Bob Dylan song. For Coyote, the twin forces Dylan identifies as Texas Medicine and Railroad Gin – represent the competing forces of the transcendental, inclusive, and ecstatic world of love with the competitive, status-seeking world of wealth and power. The Rainman’s Third Cure is the tale of a young man caught between these apparently antipodal options and the journey that leads him from the privileged halls of power to Greenwich Village jazz bars, to jail, to the White House, lessons from a man who literally held the power of life and death over others, to government service and international success on stage and screen.

Expanding his frame beyond the wild ride through the 1960’s counterculture that occupied so much of his lauded debut memoir, Sleeping Where I Fall, Coyote provides readers intimate portraits of mentors that shaped him—a violent, intimidating father, a be-bop Bass player who teaches him that life can be improvised, a Mafia consiglieri, who demonstrates to him that men can be bought and manipulated, an ex game-warden who initates him into the laws of nature, a gay dancer in Martha Graham’s company who introduces him to Mexico and marijuanas, beat poet Gary Snyder, who introduces him to Zen practice, and finally famed fashion designer Nino Cerruti who made the high-stakes world of haute monde Europe available to him.

What begins as a peripatetic flirtation with Zen deepens into a life-long avocation, ordination as a priest, and finally the road to Transmission - acknowledgement from his teacher that he is ready to be an independent teacher. Through Zen, Coyote discovers a third option that offers an alternative to both the worlds of Love and Power’s correlatives of status seeking and material wealth. Zen was his portal, but what he discovers on the inside is actually available to all humans. In this energetic, reflective and intelligent memoir, The Rainman’s Third Cure is the way out of the box. The way that works.

Kirkus Review:
An imperious and flawed father figure looms large in Coyote's artfully rendered chronicle of his intriguing journey from confused, privileged youth to enlightened Zen practitioner. Not long ago, Coyote, international screen star and veteran countercultural revolutionary, had a transcendental experience that he had arguably been searching for his entire life. But while the author's Buddhist practice is a vital component of his often descriptively brilliant biographical odyssey, it is by no means the only one. Coyote's story, the follow-up to Sleeping Where I Fall (1998), is as much about a boy's initial introduction to the great wide world as it is about one complex human being's lifelong hunger for inner meaning. Coyote presents a fascinatingly intricate portrait of what it was like being the peculiar scion of wealth and power. As a child, the young Peter Cohon found himself languishing in neglect, floating in the staid world of his conflicted parents, Morris and Ruth. Soon, however, he was propelled headlong into a parallel existence where he met lively figures hired to run the family's Turkey Hill farm and Englewood, New Jersey, abode. "For the next ten years [caretaker] Susie Howard was the North Star around which my heavens revolved." The impressionable young boy eventually encountered jazz legends, intellectual radicals and rough-hewn outdoorsmen. In addition to an imposing gangster uncle, each of these individuals managed to shape the boy who would later become not only a central figure in America's nascent youth movement, but also a dusty pioneer in communal living, a left-wing rabble-rouser working inside the political system, and a struggling father trying to support a family with a heroin monkey on his back. Astonishingly, well into middle age, the author accomplished another remarkable turn, evolving into the well-respected film actor many know him as today. Presented with so many well-defined faces, there's guaranteed to be at least one Coyote, and probably more, that readers enjoy meeting.

For further reviews, please visit the new book page.

January 12, 2015

In November I reported that Peter had been invited to speak at DePaul University in Chicago, sponsored in part by Ancient Dragon Zen Gate. You can access two of his speeches at their web site . Here are a couple more photos from that event.

"An Evening with Peter Coyote" will be presented on January 29th at the Harris Center for the Arts in Folsom, CA. Peter will share his reflections on a life that includes "doing the Sixties" in San Francisco and chairing the California Arts Council in the '70s as an appointee of then and now Governor Jerry Brown. Tickets for the 7:30 pm event are priced at $19-$29; Premium $39; Students with ID $12. Tickets are available online at www.harriscenter.net or from the Harris Center Ticket Office at 916-608-6888 from 10 am to 6 pm Monday through Saturday, and two hours before show time. Parking is included in the price of the ticket. Harris Center is located on the west side of Folsom Lake College campus in Folsom, CA, facing East Bidwell Street.

Peter has narrated a new documentary called "Rise Above the Mark" about the heartbreaking realities of public education. It's the story of what happens when politics enters the classroom. Public schools are boxed in by current corporate reforms. Rules and regulations restrict vision, depreciate funding, demoralize teachers, and turn students into test-taking machines, robbing them of time to foster creativity. This film focuses on Indiana’s struggles with public school reforms—the same types of struggles experienced in schools throughout the United States. Experts Diane Ravitch, Linda Darling-Hammond, Pasi Sahlberg and others discuss how America can make positive changes to provide an exceptional public school system for all children.

Another recent narration was done for "Nicklaus: The Making of a Champion", which will debut on Sunday, January 18, on the Fox Broadcast Network. The documentary chronicles the life, career and legacy of Nicklaus, winner of a record 18 professional major championships, including four U.S. Opens, tied for the most all-time. His eight USGA championships include two U.S. Amateurs and two U.S. Senior Opens. The one-hour documentary features archival footage and interviews with family, friends and golf icons. The film's list of interviewees includes his wife Barbara, son Jack II, and daughter Nan, as well as golf legends Johnny Miller, Arnold Palmer, Gary Player, Lee Trevino, Tom Watson and Tiger Woods. Prominent golf journalist Mark Mulvoy and USGA Senior Historian Michael Trostel are also featured.