Simon Sings

With the announcement today that Kodak is discontinuing Kodachrome, I imagine it would be in some way appropriate for me to describe what I created that led to Paul Simon’s song “Kodachrome”. This is not something I can prove, short of Paul Simon admitting it. All you have are the innumerable things I can prove regarding people using my material, in terms of a reference for judging whether I am being truthful in this instance.

Before telling my “Kodachrome Story”, I first offer a description of another one of many instances when Paul Simon made use of my material. I do so in order to provide you with a sense of how solid my basis is for seeing Paul Simon as someone aware of me and the “usefulness” of my material. Though you are not an eyewitness to the truthfulness of each thing I describe, I am - therefore, if you choose to believe these details are true, so you will see how I would have no doubt with regard to the conclusion I reached.

Joel's Baby
In 1976 I met someone named Tom Long (interestingly, I ended up casting him as Peterson in my 1993 video, "A Scene From ‘Mall Man’”, though prior to that I hadn’t spoken with him in years), who worked at an employment agency when I was looking for work during summer break from CalArts Film and Video School. Tom described to me his peripheral involvement in the movie business. He was friends with someone named Bob Sickinger, who was involved with “Lords Of Flatbush”, a 1974 movie that started the careers of Sylvester Stallone and Henry Winkler. I thought “Flatbush” was terrific, which I expressed (I was not jumping on any bandwagon, as this movie was far from being a success with the critics). Tom Long had the concept for a movie they were throwing around, which he asked me to work on for no money. There was nevertheless a chance to be read and considered, and I liked the concept, so I jumped in: it was the idea of a white high school boy impregnating a black high school girl, but when the child is born he appears white, and doesn’t find out his mother is black until he is older. There were a lot of other ideas in there too, but I dropped them for the most part, it not being my style to even work off of someone else’s initial concept, let alone mold my work closely around someone else’s material.

I created a character named Delores, who worked at the adoption agency. I created a major scene where the father travels across the country to find the son he never met, only to learn that his son has been adopted by racists, and is perceived as white. Instead of awakening his son and telling him the truth about where he came from, he kisses the boy as he lies sleeping and then he turns around and heads back home again. Exactly like the emotionally powerful moment in the Paul Simon 1977 song, “Slip Slidin’ Away”, Simon's first major hit in a long time. While I was working on this screenplay (“Joel’s Baby”), Tom Long also told me that Bob Sickinger’s current project was using the music of a group called Stuff, which I’d never heard of (I believe the movie was something about a Chicago taxi driver, played by one of the authors of "Grease"). Stuff was composed of New York City studio musicians who previously had only worked on other people's records, and because I felt that I was now in proximity to Stuff, I thought, hey, I’ll buy their record, why not.

I knew that Simon had used material from my screenplay - he even winked at me so-to-speak, by including a character named Delores in the song (he could easily have named his character Gertrude, I'm certain of this). It was after I had already developed a firm conviction regarding this song, due to the big emotional moment shared by both our works, that I learned that Paul Simon had formed a new band, composed almost entirely of the members of the group, Stuff. This began their association with Simon, with members of Stuff remaining in Simon's band to this day.

Some of the people who use my material carve out a niche, often going to the same particular work of mine, such as Spielberg and my “Mall Man”, or McCartney's album covers and me/my material. McCartney might also derive album titles from me as well, or parts of songs, but album covers more consistently.

Kodachrome
When I was in high school in New York City in 1972/1973, I wrote down a movie idea with the surreal premise that everyone had a camera over their face, not unlike women in Arab nations covering their faces. It would be like a form of nudity not to have a camera over your face. I then had the protagonist, a high school boy, go to a party when suddenly his camera falls to the ground, smashing to bits. It is an intense moment, resulting in an hysterical reaction from the character at the humiliation, leading to his becoming deeply traumatized. The irony of this consequence is that at the same time he is the only one who sees the world in color now that he has no camera.

In May 1973 Paul Simon released “Kodachrome”, which contains that intense part, at the end of the song, where the idea of taking away his Kodachrome transcends the emotion one might normally project onto the idea of someone taking away one’s Kodachrome. He's screaming about it. One also hears in that song a specific attack on what is drilled into one in high school (“when I think back on all the crap I learned in high school it’s a wonder I can think at all”). The premise of my film idea similarly relates to the concept that everyone is forced to see things in a distorted way, and must shed this crap that "they" attach to us. But no, the song is not a literal, exact rendering of my film idea.

Fifth Grade
I had previously found things in Paul Simon’s work that could have come from me, but I was not yet ready to see that they did in fact come from me. For example, I had a turn at decorating a wall in my 5th grade class (1965 or 1966), and so used a Snoopy poster my sister got for me (it had formerly decorated the wall of a dance). I was everything Peanuts back then, and even did a Peanuts newspaper using a mimeograph machine belonging to friends of my parents. The Snoopy poster was under the flag, and so one day after we all did the pledge of allegiance, the teacher said, “Okay, let’s do the pledge of allegiance again, only this time to the flag, not to the Snoopy poster on the wall.” In the 1975 Simon and Garfunkel song, “My Little Town”, Simon refers to saying the pledge of allegiance to the wall. I made little of it at the time, to regard something as a coincidence is to not make much of it. This was also the 5th grade class where I wrote the 15-page story (considered an incredible number of pages for a kid to write back then, especially as the assignment was that all we had was a photograph to write a story from) that led to the 1966 Beatle songs “Paperback Writer”, “Eleanor Rigby” and “Yellow Submarine” (which I describe somewhere or another - someday I'll return to this post and add the link, promise), and this was also the grade I was in when I was involved in the incident that led to the 1968 Stones songs “Jumping Jack Flash” and “Street Fighting Man” (which I also describe somewhere or another - someday I'll return to this post and also add this link, promise). Once one accepts the premise that The Beatles saw something going on with me when I was in the 5th grade, it is less difficult to accept the idea that The Rolling Stones and Simon and Garfunkel would revisit that “period” in my life. Once one accepts the idea that a very important part of "Slip Slidin' Away" came from me, it is less difficult to accept the idea that "Kodachrome" is the same story.