What's The Issue?

There's a three-person race for selectman in Chatham. The May 17 election is a month away. So far there has been little said about the race, which pits two incumbents, David Whitcomb and Ron Bergstrom, against challenger Leonard Sussman.

During the next few weeks, there will be profiles published and at least one debate, scheduled for May 2 at the Eldredge Public Library. Which issues will come to the fore? Is the town running smoothly, or is there room for improvement? Is the current board too soft on development? Should selectmen push harder for zoning revisions? Did the board bungle the zoning bylaw rewrite?

What do you think should be an issue in this race? What question would you like to ask the candidates?

Post your answers here. We'll link this to The Chronicle's website and try to get a discussion going.

Final Word On 'Chatham'

OK, last post about the movie "Chatham." Really.

A bit more digging today has turned up some more interesting stories about the antics of the film's major actors. Look for a report in this week's Chronicle of a more general nature, but here's some of the stuff that I won't be putting in the paper.

Carradine's little performance at Yellow Umbrella Books was apparently even more sensational than I'd realized. He did make folks buy his "Kill Bill" book before signing copies of "Cap'n Eri." He was (apparently) quite intoxicated. He left a sour taste in many people's mouths.

On Sunday, on his way out of town, Carradine reportedly stopped by The Squire, ordered a drink, and toasted the town. Perhaps that made up for some of his antics. Maybe not.

Carradine was certainly the most colorful cast member. A regular at The Squire, he was never kicked out of the restaurant despite rumors to the contrary. There was an incident early on where he lit up a smoke in the dining room while having dinner with director Dan Adams. When a freaked out waitress appealed to Otis for help, he went in the back and got a fire extinguisher. He went up to the table and told Carradine to put out the smoke (can't remember if it was a cigar or cigarette) or he'd use the extinguisher. "Do you want to die?" Carradine reported. "I figure I can get off one good blast before you can get out from behind that table," Otis replied. A standoff. Tension. Then Carradine caves, and snuffs out the smoke.

Despite all that, Carradine genuinely appears to have invested a lot in this film. He reportedly hired someone to video tape things behind the scene. Perhaps he believes this will be a big acting break for him, getting him out of genre roles and into more mainstream, leading man type roles. At 70, it may be a bit late. But I have to admit the guy has paid his dues (has anyone seen "Sonny Boy" or "Evil Toons" or "Waxworks II?") and does deserve some recognition among larger audiences.

That said, he will be remembered in Chatham. Bruce Dern and Rip Torn were more low-key. Torn was apparently enamored of shellfishing. One story has him totting his clam rake around the set, not because he needed it as a prop but because he didn't want to lose it. Dern was visible but I heard no real scuttlebutt about his off screen activities.

As I mentioned in previous posts, Jason Alan Smith charmed many people with his Southern manners and self-effacing personality. One local shop owner told me that he gave copies of his book of photos to the cast and crew, and only Jason stopped by the store. Smith also attended the memorial service for Wendy Costello, wife of the owner of The Squire, even though he'd only been in town a short time and had only barely met Richard. He's a young guy and has a big, possibly important career ahead of him, and to his credit didn't burn any bridges.

OK, enough about the movie. Read more if you like in this week's paper, where there will also be a story about how the film has boosted, at least locally, the reputation of Joseph C. Lincoln, the long-dead novelists whose book serves as the template for "Chatham."

Next time, I promise to get into some town politics, and will henceforth try to make regular postings and give Chronicle readers an opportunity to sound off about local issues.

Star Struck In Chatham

"Chatham" has wrapped filming. The final shots were done early Saturday morning, April 14, and involved the burning of the pool hall that forms one of the film's central plot elements. After the early week filming of numerous scenes in front of the block between the hardware store and Seaview Street, which was dressed to sort of resemble 1905 (see a slideshow of the shoot here), the sand was swept up and the modern signs and awnings were back in place.Ending filming didn't quite end the sort of minor league hysteria that's gripped the town for the past few weeks.

On Saturday afternoon, "Chatham" star David Carradine was slated to hold a book signing downtown. He was late for the 1 p.m. event; word on the street is that the book store owner had to cross the street to the Wayside Inn, wake the actor and escort him over to the store. By that time there was a line of people down the street waiting to get signed copies of Carradine's "Kill Bill Diaries" and the book upon which the "Chatham" movie is based, Joseph C. Lincoln's "Cap'n Eri." Carradine duly signed books, sitting at a stool and smoking away. He reportedly became testy when folks brought in their own copies of the Lincoln book or didn't want his book. I showed up about 4:30 p.m., expecting him to be gone. I'd requested two signed copies of "Kill Bill" the previous day because I knew I couldn't get downtown by 3 p.m. He was still there, and seemed a bit, shall we say, unsteady. I greeted him and reminded him that we'd spoke earlier in the week on the set, but he just looked at me with rheumy eyes, asked my name again and added above his signature on the book in front of him. We'd actually met three times; once briefly at the shanties at Barn Hill, once at the graveyard shoot (see photo right) where he regaled me with stories, and earlier in the week. He was least garrulous on Tuesday, when I introduced myself as a reporter and asked some official, though softball, questions. Apparently I rated more conversation as a civilian. Maybe that's the Hollywood mentality.

What are people in Chatham going to talk about now that the cast and crew of the film have left town? The past month and a half have generated more than enough stories to keep people going until the summer arrives. Many of the stories involve the exploits of Carradine, although Bruce Dern and Rip Torn pop up now and again. Mariel Hemingway didn't mix much with the locals, although she surfaced in a shop here or walking along the beach there. Jason Alan Smith impressed people with his Southern manners and genuine interest in local people and places. He seemed a bit more down to earth than many of the others. I had several chats with him (see photo right) and found him engaging. He seemed to feel he could relax here and not have to worry about most people giving him the gawking treatment. Most people. Not all. And he answered my questions in full, coherent sentences.

More to come...

'Chatham' Makes A Splash

"Chatham," the movie, is making a big splash in Chatham, the town on Cape Cod. Whether it's filming at the Oyster River shanties or one of the actors being asked to leave The Squire, the production has spiced up the usual drab time of March and early April, given residents something to talk about other than the unsightly appearance of the new community center or the seemingly endless series of road closures and detours.

I've written a few stories about "Chatham" for The Chronicle, going back to January when I did a front page piece announcing the production. This Tuesday, I spent a morning watching the cast and crew film a scene in Seaside Cemetery --- coincidentally, right across the street from my office --- and took some of the photos you see here (more can be found in a slideshow here). I'd already written the sort of "on location" story about the film the previous week, when I spent time on the set at the Oyster River Pirate Co. shanty at the end of Barn Hill Road. This week, my story was about a local resident who was serving as set decorator for the film. But I saw and heard more on Tuesday, and thought I'd post it here for those who are interested.

I spent some time talking to the guys in charge of the horses and livery; they were from Connecticut and brought with them a horse drawn hearse dating from the 1800s. They'd been in numerous films, including Amistad. Poor guys spent the entire cold, damp day standing there as background for the burial scene.

Some background for those not familiar with "Chatham." It's based on "Cap'n Eri," a book by Joseph C. Lincoln, a best-selling author in the early 1900 who lived part-time in Chatham. The story revolves around three retired sea captains, played by David Carradine, Bruce Dern and Rip Torn, who are sick of their sloppy ways and each other's horrible cooking. They decide to advertise for a bride for one of them to marry, so someone else can do the cooking and cleaning. Enter Mariel Hemmingway. A love triangle develops, and there's more plot elements along the way, including a temperance movement that culminates in the burning down of a pool hall that opens up in town (that's being filmed next week behind Chatham Hardware). Charles Durning plays a fourth sea captain who is the leader of the temperance movement. It's his funeral the rest of the cast was attending in the scene filmed this week.

After spending hours decorating the cemetery, positioning extras, setting up the camera, and making sure no headstones dated later than 1905 (the time of the story) were in shot, writer and director Dan Adams finally yelled "Action." About five takes of a longshot of the scene of a minister (played by singer Jonathan Edwards) saying a few words over the grave, with the rest of the characters, including Tony-award winning actress and Chatham resident Julie Harris, standing by silent and grim.

During a break while the crew set up for a medium closeup, I had a chance to wander among the actors, talking to some locals playing extras, saying hello to Ms. Harris (whom I've met numerous times though she never remembers me; not that I fault her for that, she's in her 80s and had a stroke or two). She was gallantly escorted in both the scene and off-camera by young actor Jason Alan Smith, who helped her to a chair and got her coffee like a proper southern gentleman. He told me he was from a town near New Orleans, and so the dampness of the weather was familiar to him, though it was a bit colder than he would have liked it. "I'm too used to living in Los Angeles," he said.

I cornered David Carradine as he puffed one of his ever present cigarettes, which he keeps in a rather stylish case I suspect is his and not a film prop. I'd spoke with him briefly at the shanty shoot, when he asked if my newspaper had a crossword puzzle and what service it came from. Then he asked if we had comics, which precipitated a discussion about comics and comic books, with him telling me all about a 1940s comic he fondly remembered called Supersnipe.

Knowing his interest in comics, I asked him a question someone else had asked me: how much input did he have to the Superman speech in Kill Bill. He told me a long story about sitting up late one night with Quentin Tarantino in a parlor of a hotel in China during the filming of the movie. Someone had said something about Christopher Reeve being a poor Superman but a great Clark Kent. That sparked a discussion along those lines. The next day, Tarantino had the speech written. It was a great story, Carradine's point being how much Tarantino was willing to trust his actors and use them to feed the film.

The opposite, Carradine said, of Ingmar Bergman, who controlled everything. "He'd slap your hand," Carradine said, slapping my hand, "and tell you to look this way," he grabbed my jaw and shoved my had to the side. Once, Bergman sat down right next to the camera during a close up and said, "So what kind of expressions are we going to make today," Carradine said. "I didn't move a f****** muscle," he said. "And then everything was fine."

At that point, Carradine was called for the shot and I had to go back to my office. It was deadline day, unfortunately, and the end of that day's Hollywood encounter.

Previously I'd spoke when Bruce Dern, who walked about how brave he thought director Dan Adams was for filming a movie on his home turf. Dern said he'd never been to the Cape --- Newport to film Great Gatsby being the closest he'd come --- but that like everyone else, had his own concept of the place. He said he was enjoying his time here.

I won't get into the gossip here, at least not yet. There are stories around town of Carradine being asked to leave the Squire for lighting up a cigar (it was actually Christians, reportedly), of Hemmingway being rather aloof, and of Smith dating one of the Squire bartenders (not true). Perhaps more of that will surface later.

Look for more postings soon. And let me know your experiences with the "Chatham" phenomenon. Hey, it beats writing about zoning.

Anatomy Of A Breaking New Story

Working under a weekly deadline has its plusses and minuses. This week’s big story, the announcement of the pending sale of Chatham Bars Inn for a record $166 million, illustrates both.
Clearly a story of great importance to the Chatham community. In fact we’d heard that the inn was to be sold the previous day, just hours before we had to finalize that week’s issue. The news came in from several sources, all either as rumor off-the-record responses to inquiries.
I contacted CBI’s parent company, once we waded through the levels of corporate ownership and identified the correct entity, but the person designated to speak to the press was not available. We had to make a decision, to either run with the unconfirmed reports of the inn’s sale or hold off until we received confirmation.
At this stage all we knew was that there was some sort of agreement to sell the inn to a buyer whose identity had yet to be established. We’d heard rumors like this before, related to CBI and other major properties. This time we were certain that the rumors were true --- because of off-the-record confirmation --- though we had little detail. Going with the unconfirmed story still carried some risk.
Understand, Cape Cod media, plucked and purged as it has been by corporate mergers and closings, is still competitive. We had to weigh the very real possibility that our competition would get wind of the story, and with a week to go before our next edition, scoop us with the new. To the average person this may not mean much, but to those of us who deal with local news day in and day out, it’s a matter of pride in our ability to do our job, and, admittedly, ego.
We opted to wait rather than risk going with an unconfirmed story, to hold our breath and hope against hope that the story would remain below the competition’s radar for another week.
Those hopes were dashed late Wednesday when several financial news services issued a brief notice about the sale of the inn. And then Thursday morning came the final blow in the form of a faxed press release. We knew we were not the only news organization to receive it.
I scrambled, made several phone calls to confirm the fax and get some other details on the record --- from some of those same sources who would only talk off the record just a little more than 24 hours earlier --- and wrote a story which we posted on our Web page about the same time the daily newspaper put theirs up.
I continued to work on the story throughout the day, intent on confirming the identity of the buyer. I’d been told Tuesday who it was, but was unable to confirm it; the initial press release from Great American, and its spokesperson in an interview, would not say who the inn was being sold to.
By midday, I’d talked to Richard Cohen, president of Capital Properties, the company that’s agreed to buy the inn. You can read about his comments to me in the news story on page one. But now I was faced with another dilemma. Apparently, I was the only one who’d confirmed who the buyer was. Do I put the information on the Web site, thus making it public for everyone, including our competition, or hold onto it and hope against hope --- again --- that the competition doesn’t get it before our next edition comes out?
I opted to hold off, and as we go to press this Tuesday, we’ve still got an exclusive on that important piece of information.
You can see the problems a weekly deadline poses for breaking news. Even if you have the inside track on something big, there’s often little chance the daily competition won’t also have it before the next edition hits the stands.
The Web is a great tool for disseminating news, but for a weekly paper, it can be problematic. We’ve wrestled with the idea of doing a mid-week update, but have yet to agree on criteria for the types of stories we’d highlight. We don’t want to tip our competition off on what we’re working on, nor do we want to remove any incentive for reading the print edition. As newspeople, we relish the idea of getting the story first and getting it out there. Yet the dilemma: do we hold something back if we have an exclusive, or share it with our readers on the Web as soon as possible?
A daily paper or a Web-only service doesn’t have to deal with these concerns. We’ve built up our Web site considerably, but the paper is still our bread and butter. We’re not a blog and we’re not a gossip site, so we still have to adhere to basic journalistic tenants, such as getting confirmation on the details of a story.
Did we make the right decisions in the case of the CBI story? I think we did. What do you think?

Every politician in America should immediately lose his or her government-sponsored health insurance and have to fend for themselves in the world of HMOs, co-pays, deductibles and and high medical costs. If that happened, we'd have universal health insurance and health care reform in a heartbeat.

We just received word here that our health insurance costs are going up again. We're lucky here at The Chronicle to even have an employer-sponsored health care program, but the costs are killing us, and crippling the business. If politicians want to do something that will benefit Americans, don't lower taxes --- reform health care and health insurance. Universal health insurance, at minimal costs, would put money into people's pockets which is now going to cover extreme premiums as well as medical costs for those of us with high deductibles. Just in my case alone, that would be an extra $400 per month, half of which I would gladly apply to some sort of government-sponsored health care program. If all Americans participated, the costs of such a program would be very low.

But it ain't gonna happen. Too many lobbyists for the industry, too many timorous congressmen and senators. Massachusetts is working on a plan, and while its goals are laudable -- to decrease the number of uninsured --- it will do nothing to help those of us who are insured but are paying through the nose, to the detriment of our family budgets. The majority of those who have health insurance need relief, in the form of lower premiums and reform of the health care system, which is the only way to reduce the huge chunk of our gross national product that goes toward health care.

Enough rant.

What we're working on for the March 2 edition of The Chronicle:

Chatham's human services survey finds residents have difficulty paying for house, and many older citizens worry about being able to remain in their homes.

The board of selectmen meets Tuesday to revisit the controversial harbormaster's budget, which the board voted to cut last month.

And a new fund-raising effort by the town's PTA will have everyone playing "Chatham-opoly."

In Harwich, we explore the fallout from the announced closing of three grades at the Holy Trinity School, feature a project to renovate the police department's communications center using donated equipment and Cape Tech students, and report on initial efforts to find a new superintendent of schools.

Welcome to this blog. I plan on using it for a variety of purposes.

First off, some promises. I won't rant. I won't publish anything here that I wouldn't publish in the paper under my own name. I may do some reporting here, but it will only be to reinforce information either already presented or that will be presented in the paper.

I have no control over comments posted by others. I will endeavor to review these occasionally and respond if necessary.

Blogs are used for many different things; I see this as an extension of my newspaper work, but in a more personal way. I plan on offering some insights here that don't make it into the paper for one reason or another. I also plan on using the forum to offer broader comment on local and national issues. I may even occasionally write about unrelated matters, my hobbies, my family, my town, my friends, anything I think can provide insight or offer some entertainment or information.

I will also use this blog to give readers of The Chronicle updates on stories and previews of what we are working on for the upcoming edition. With the preliminaries out of the way, I'll do that right now: Here are a few stories you can expect to see in the Feb. 23 Chronicle:

In Chatham, a proposed quasi-public pier in Pleasant Bay faces opposition. Plans are underway to develop a new police facility at the annex property. And the Whales are coming!

In Harwich, Town Administrator Wayne Melville is likely to give his notice to the board of selectmen any day now. Police overtime is under scrutiny, and architectural students work with the community to design an affordable housing project.

Also, an economic summit in Chatham today sees business leaders optimistic for the nation, the state and Cape Cod.

See you soon.