PEACH PLUS
SECTION D, PAGE 3
THE BLADE, TOLEDO, OHIO ■ MONDAY, JULY 29, 2019
‘ONCE UPON A TIME ...’
Artist explains billboard vandalism

LOS ANGELES — Los An­ge­les street art­ist Sabo has done it again, mak­ing over a bill­board for Quentin Taran­tino’s Once Upon a Time … in Hol­ly­wood as yet an­other cri­tique of ram­pant sex abuse in Hol­ly­wood and be­yond.

In one in­stance, the po­lit­i­cal guer­rilla art­ist su­per­im­posed the faces of wealthy ty­coon Jef­frey Ep­stein and fu­gi­tive film­maker Roman Polan­ski on a bill­board fea­tur­ing the film’s stars, Leo­nardo DiCap­rio and Brad Pitt. Sabo re­ti­tled his faux flick star­ring the dis­graced Ep­stein and Polan­ski Once Upon a Time in … Pe­dowood — a not-so-sub­tle dig at the men’s his­to­ries with un­der­age girls.

“I’ve never prayed be­fore a proj­ect, but I prayed be­fore this one, in the names of all those chil­dren harmed by these mon­sters. I hope they all get caught and put be­hind bars,” Sabo wrote on the Un­sa­vory Agents web­site, which took credit for the works and is sell­ing prints of the post­ers. Sabo has pre­vi­ously run cam­paigns against short-lived Os­cars host Kevin Hart, ac­tress Meryl Streep, and the Os­cars for what he sees as pro­mot­ing pe­do­philia.

The un­flat­ter­ing and po­ten­tially li­bel­ous mod­i­fi­ca­tions are some of many, and high­light the art­ist’s take on wide­spread pred­a­tory be­hav­ior in the en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try.

The Ep­stein-Polan­ski edi­tion ap­peared Fri­day in Los An­ge­les on a mas­sive Out­front bill­board on the south side of Pico at Al­fred Street, one block east of La Cienega. It had been rented by Sony to pro­mote the film and now ex­plic­itly slams Polan­ski’s de­cades-old stat­u­tory rape con­vic­tion and Ep­stein’s re­cent sex traf­fick­ing charges.

“Ba­si­cally, I just wanted to bring that time to­gether with to­day,” Sabo, 52, said Fri­day, speak­ing about the Polan­ski-Ep­stein bill­board. “I put two peo­ple who are fairly well known and wanted them to share the bill­board — one from the past, one from the pres­ent — and I wanted to high­light how (child sex abuse) is such a prob­lem in Hol­ly­wood, par­tic­u­larly with the child cast­ing couch.”

The art­ist, who mod­i­fied the ads with the help of drones and two as­sis­tants late Thurs­day night and early Fri­day morn­ing, said he has not yet seen Taran­tino’s cel­e­brated film but plans to this week­end. It should also be noted that the movie, set in Man­son-era Hol­ly­wood, touches on the mur­der of Polan­ski’s preg­nant wife, ac­tress Sharon Tate (played by Mar­got Rob­bie). Tate is a sup­port­ing char­ac­ter piv­otal to the movie and Polan­ski (por­trayed by Ra­fal Zawieru­cha) is shown court­ing her.

The art­ist said he doesn’t be­lieve Polan­ski was suf­fi­ciently taken down dur­ing his trial nor dur­ing the #MeToo move­ment given that he still has a film show­ing at the up­com­ing Ven­ice Film Fes­ti­val.

“Movies should be en­ter­tain­ing,” Sabo added. “I would hate to think of Taran­tino as a po­lit­i­cal di­rec­tor, rather than one who tells sto­ries. And as soon as they start shov­ing their pol­i­tics down my throat, I’m not in­ter­ested. That’s for me to do as a po­lit­i­cal guer­rilla art­ist. He should write a story that’s en­ter­tain­ing (and) leave the po­lit­i­cal hor­ror to me.”

Else­where in Los An­ge­les, a bench ad for Once Upon a Time … in Hol­ly­wood fea­tures di­rec­tor Woody Al­len’s face on that of Pitt’s char­ac­ter. Al­len has also been dog­ged by mis­con­duct al­le­ga­tions, namely sex­u­ally as­sault­ing his adopted daugh­ter with Mia Far­row in the 1990s (an al­le­ga­tion that he has re­peat­edly de­nied).

By Nardine Saad
Los Angeles Times
TODAY IN HISTORY

To­day is Mon­day, July 29, the 210th day of 2019. There are 155 days left in the year.

On this date:

In 1914, trans­con­ti­nen­tal tele­phone ser­vice in the U.S. be­came op­er­a­tional with the first test con­ver­sa­tion be­tween New York and San Fran­cisco.

In 1921, Adolf Hitler be­came the leader of the Na­tional So­cial­ist Ger­man Work­ers Party.

In 1958, Pres­i­dent Dwight D. Ei­sen­hower signed the Na­tional Aero­nau­tics and Space Act, cre­at­ing NASA.

In 1965, The Beatles’ sec­ond fea­ture film, Help!, had its world pre­miere in Lon­don.

In 1967, an ac­ci­den­tal rocket launch on the deck of the su­per­car­rier USS For­restal in the Gulf of Tonkin re­sulted in a fire and ex­plo­sions that killed 134 ser­vice­men. (Among the sur­vi­vors was fu­ture Ari­zona sen­a­tor John McCain, a U.S. Navy lieu­tenant com­mander who nar­rowly es­caped with his life.)

In 1968, Pope Paul the Sixth re­af­firmed the Roman Cath­o­lic Church’s stance against ar­ti­fi­cial meth­ods of birth con­trol.

In 1980, a state fu­neral was held in Cairo, Egypt, for the de­posed Shah of Iran, who had died two days ear­lier at age 60.

In 1981, Brit­ain’s Prince Char­les mar­ried Lady Di­ana Spen­cer in a glit­ter­ing cer­e­mony at St. Paul’s Ca­the­dral in Lon­don. (The cou­ple di­vorced in 1996.)

In 1994, abor­tion op­po­nent Paul Hill shot and killed Dr. John Ba­yard Brit­ton and Brit­ton’s body­guard, James H. Bar­rett, out­side the Ladies Center clinic in Pen­sa­cola, Fla. (Hill was ex­e­cuted in Sept. 2003.)

In 1997, mem­bers of Con­gress from both par­ties em­braced com­pro­mise leg­is­la­tion de­signed to bal­ance the bud­get while cut­ting taxes.

In 2004, Sen. John Kerry ac­cepted the Demo­cratic pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion at the party’s con­ven­tion in Boston.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Ac­tor Robert Fuller is 86. Ac­tor David Warner is 78. Ac­tress Roz Kelly is 77. Rock mu­si­cian Neal Doughty (REO Speed­wagon) is 73. Ac­tor Mike Starr is 69. Docu­men­tary maker Ken Burns is 66. Rock singer-mu­si­cian Geddy Lee (Rush) is 66. Rock singer Patti Scialfa (Bruce Spring­steen and the E Street Band) is 66. Ac­tor Kevin Chap­man is 57. Ac­tress Al­ex­an­dra Paul is 56. Ac­tor/​co­me­dian Dean Hag­lund is 54. Coun­try singer Mar­tina McBride is 53. Rock mu­si­cian Chris Gor­man is 52. Ac­tor Rod­ney Al­len Rippy is 51. Ac­tor Tim Omund­son is 50. Ac­tor Wil Wheaton is 47. Rhythm-and-blues singer Wanya Mor­ris (Boyz II Men) is 46. Coun­try singer-song­writer James Otto is 46. Ac­tor Ste­phen Dorff is 46. Ac­tor Josh Rad­nor is 45. Hip-hop DJ/​mu­sic pro­ducer Danger Mouse is 42. Ac­tress Rachel Miner is 39. Ac­tress Alli­son Mack is 37. Ac­tress Kait­lyn Black is 36. Ac­tor Matt Pro­kop is 29.

Lee
Burns
TRIVIA CHALLENGE

1. Which of the “Big Three” Amer­i­can dol­lar stores owns one of the other two?

2. What is the “pa­tient’s” name in the bat­tery-op­er­ated ta­ble­top game Oper­a­tion?

3. What is the curved wooden stick used in the game of hurl­ing called?

4. Within 5 de­grees, what is Earth’s av­er­age tem­per­a­ture for all of 2019 so far?

5. Which state has the larg­est num­ber of mos­quito spe­cies?

6. What clas­sic Stan­ley Kubrick movie was ini­tially en­ti­tled A Jour­ney Beyond the Stars?

7. The Canary Islands were named af­ter what an­i­mal?

Answers are on Page 5

Copy­right 2019 by Mike Kelly

Woman fears running into her abuser

Dear Amy: I’m a 60-year-old woman. A few years ago, I moved back to the mid-sized city where I grew up in or­der to take care of my aging father.

When I was in high school, I got in­volved with a young man who was con­trol­ling and abu­sive.

The re­la­tion­ship lasted into my early 20s, when I ended it. I moved on, and he moved away af­ter col­lege.

Fast-for­ward to now, and I have re­cently learned from an old friend that this per­son has moved back to our home city. Amy, I am find­ing that I have not fully dealt with the trauma of this abu­sive re­la­tion­ship, and my feel­ings of an­ger to­ward this per­son have sur­faced once again.

While our town is quite large, I am wor­ried that I might en­coun­ter this per­son in a store or restau­rant. How might I re­act?

Can you help me so that this ghost from the past has no power over me?

— Afraid of the Past

Dear Afraid: I hope you un­der­stand that your fear of some­one who abused you — even though it was years ago — is rea­son­able and ra­tio­nal. This sort of fear re­sponse likely helped you to leave the re­la­tion­ship in the first place. It is your brain and body’s re­ac­tion to a real (or per­ceived) threat.

You should not try to over­ride or ig­nore this fear, but in­stead use it to de­velop rea­son­able strat­e­gies for cop­ing with the pos­si­bil­ity of see­ing this per­son.

Some op­tions are: es­cape,

avoid­ance, and con­fron­ta­tion. Run­ning out var­i­ous sce­nar­ios might be help­ful, to de­sen­si­tize you to the pos­si­bil­ity of en­coun­ter­ing your ex.

My in­stinct is that if you did run into him — or see him from a dis­tance — the first thing you would no­tice is how “old” he is. Abus­ers loom large and pow­er­ful in our minds’ eye. An abuser can con­tinue to frighten and in­tim­i­date well into their own frailty, and that’s the im­pact and con­se­quence of ear­lier trauma.

A ther­a­pist would be very help­ful here; at your age and stage of life, you are en­coun­ter­ing many tran­si­tions and chal­lenges. You de­serve to re­claim your strength.

Dear Amy: I joined a pop­u­lar DNA test­ing site a cou­ple of years ago to fur­ther my ge­ne­a­log­i­cal re­search.

My fam­ily is rel­a­tively small — just my sis­ters and three first cous­ins.

This past week, much to my as­ton­ish­ment, a half-sis­ter was iden­ti­fied. This sib­ling was born and lives in

an­other coun­try. She is a year younger than my mid­dle sis­ter.

After pur­su­ing this fur­ther, I have con­firmed the re­la­tion­ship. Not only that, but I dis­cov­ered that this half-sib­ling ac­tu­ally met my par­ents about 20 years ago.

My par­ents are now de­ceased and chose to take this se­cret to their grave. My sis­ters and I are all se­nior cit­i­zens.

My hus­band is the only fam­ily mem­ber who knows about this. I don’t know whether to share this in­for­ma­tion with my other sis­ters. My hus­band thinks I should tell my chil­dren. Any ad­vice/​in­sight would be ap­pre­ci­ated.

— Se­cret Keeper

Dear Se­cret Keeper: Your folks might have taken this se­cret to their grave, but you should not.

From your nar­ra­tive, it sounds as if — by meet­ing her to­gether — your par­ents ac­knowl­edged (and per­haps ac­cepted) this half-sib­ling. I hope this might make things eas­ier for you as you pon­der mak­ing this dis­clo­sure.

The truth is the truth. Your ge­ne­al­ogy is a chart of your fam­ily, through time. Ge­ne­al­ogy doesn’t im­pose value judg­ments.

Yes, this knowl­edge may pose lots of un­an­swer­able per­sonal ques­tions for you and your fam­ily, but you and your sis­ters should ac­cept the bur­den of not hav­ing an­swers, and find a way to cope with it.

You can email Amy Dick­in­son

at askamy@amy­dick­in­son.com

When bright lights made Savage Park shine
THE BLADE
The first outdoor lighted basketball game in Toledo was between City Park and Washington Playground on August 13, 1959, at City (Savage) Park.

The City Park League is un­of­fi­cially the best sum­mer bas­ket­ball to be seen, heard, or had in Toledo. And it was 60 years ago on Au­gust 14, 1959 that the Blade pub­lished this photo when its orig­i­nal court be­came the city’s first with lights, as the City Park team played Wash­ing­ton Play­ground.

Those courts at the Rev. H. V. Sav­age Park, or com­monly City Park,

were splashed again in light when they were beau­ti­fied this past week by a part­ner­ship be­tween the Arts Com­mis­sion of Greater Toledo’s Young Art­ists At Work and a pro­gram called Color My Court.

YAAW pro­vides young adults real-world pro­fes­sional arts ex­pe­ri­ence. Color My Court is a col­lec­tive that seeks to im­prove city parks through mu­rals on bas­ket­ball courts.

Sav­age Park is named af­ter Har­vey Sav­age, who be­gan the Mar­tin Luther King Kitchen for the Poor. The name was changed in 1982 thanks to a civic adopt-a-park pro­gram.

Go to the­bla­dev­ault.com/​mem­o­ries to pur­chase more his­tor­i­cal pho­tos taken by our award-win­ning staff of pho­tog­ra­phers, past and pres­ent, or to pur­chase com­bi­na­tions of sto­ries and pho­tos.

BLADE STAFF
MONDAY MEMORIES
THOUGHT FOR TODAY
“Great things are not done by im­pulse, but by a se­ries of small things brought to­gether.”
— Vin­cent van Gogh (1853-1890)
TODAY’S CHUCKLE
Start­ing a fu­neral ser­vice is quite an un­der­tak­ing.
‘Lion King’ reigns; Tarantino’s ‘Hollywood’ a distant 2nd

LOS ANGELES — The Lion King rode its cir­cle of life into a sec­ond week­end atop the box of­fice and Once Upon A Time ... In Hol­ly­wood, while not quite do­ing fairy­tale num­bers, gave di­rec­tor Quentin Taran­tino his big­gest open­ing ever.

Dis­ney’s re­make of the Ham­let-themed tale of Mu­fasa, Simba, and Nala, fea­tur­ing the voices of Don­ald Glover and Beyoncé, brought in $75 mil­lion in North Amer­ica, ac­cord­ing to stu­dio es­ti­mates Sun­day.

Its do­mes­tic to­tal of $350 mil­lion makes it the year’s fourth high­est-gross­ing film af­ter just 10 days.

Once Upon A Time ... In Hol­ly­wood fin­ished a dis­tant sec­ond with $40 mil­lion in its open­ing week­end for Sony, but it bested the 2009 open­ing of Taran­tino’s In­glou­ri­ous Basterds by $2 mil­lion and made a strong show­ing for an R-rated, nearly-three-hour film that was not a se­quel or re­make

and was aimed solely at adults.

The film with Leo­nardo DiCap­rio, Brad Pitt, and Mar­got Rob­bie as den­i­zens of a 1969 Los An­ge­les where old Hol­ly­wood was fad­ing and the Man­son fam­ily was ris­ing was more star-pow­ered than Taran­tino’s pre­vi­ous eight mov­ies.

“In our fan sur­vey, over 40 per­cent of the au­di­ence went to see the movie be­cause of the di­rec­tor,” said Paul Der­ga­rabe­dian, se­nior me­dia an­a­lyst for Com­score. “That’s in­cred­i­ble. You al­most never see that. Sony did a great job of put­ting that cast and cer­tainly Taran­tino at the front of the mar­ket­ing. That col­lec­tive star power just paid huge div­i­dends.”

It’s also the sort of film that’s un­likely to ex­pe­ri­ence a ma­jor drop-off in the com­ing weeks, which could po­si­tion it for awards sea­son given Hol­ly­wood’s per­sis­tent love for mov­ies about it­self.

But the film’s open­ing take was still

nearly dou­bled by The Lion King and its broad ap­peal.

“Lion King has ap­pealed to ev­ery­one, that’s a sec­ond-week­end gross that would be the envy of most films on their open­ing week­end,” Der­ga­rabe­dian said.

The rest of the box of­fice top 10 re­mained es­sen­tially un­changed.

Esti­mated ticket sales for Fri­day through Sun­day at U.S. and Ca­na­dian the­aters, ac­cord­ing to Com­score.

1. The Lion King, $75.5 mil­lion.

2. Once Upon a Time ... In Hol­ly­wood, $40.3 mil­lion.

3. Spi­der-Man: Far From Home, $12.2 mil­lion.

4. Toy Story 4, $9.8 mil­lion.

5. Crawl, $4 mil­lion.

6. Yester­day, $3 mil­lion.

7. Alad­din, $2.8 mil­lion.

8. Stu­ber, $1.7 mil­lion.

9. An­n­abelle Comes Home, $1.56 mil­lion.

10. The Fare­well, $1.55 mil­lion.

ASSOCIATED PRESS