Sometimes in the afternoon my wife Chris, who is often not well, watches a movie to relax, to be distracted and take her mind off the several worries that tend to occupy her in the evening of her life, in her late adulthood, the years from 60 to 80 as defined in one of the models of human development, of the lifespan, used by psychologists. On this sunny afternoon in Tasmania with less than three weeks to go in an Australian winter, the movie shown on the box was Summertree.1 This 1971 movie was about a young man going to Viet Nam. It starred Michael Douglas. The movie was released into cinemas nearly forty years ago, just one month before I left Canada for Australia in July 1971.
By 1972 my first wife and I had helped form the only Baha’i locally elected body outside of eastern Australia and outside of Adelaide, Perth and Darwin. Little did we know at the time how rare Baha’i Assemblies were outside the major population centres of Australia. Little did I or Michael Douglas know what was ahead of us professionally and personally. Michael and I were both born in mid-1944 as the allies were finally rolling back the German armies on the continent and on the Italian and Russian fronts. We also both graduated from university in 1966.
When Michael was breaking into acting in New York in the late 60s, the baggage of being the famous Kirk Douglas’s son—born with a silver spoon in his mouth, having no excuse to fail—literally made him sick with self-consciousness and anxiety.2 My anxiety and sickness in the late 60s came from a different source, a full-blown episode of bipolar disorder. –Ron Price with thanks to 17Two TV, 11 August 2010, 2:30-4:30 and 2 Evgenia Peretz, “Michael Douglas, Take Two,” Vanity Fair, April 2010.
You got into movies the year
we both graduated and I went
on to university in Windsor in
that City of Roses….Canada’s
most southerly city…taught in
Inuit land in ’67 on Baffin Is...
By the time you were producing
that great film….One Flew Over1
the Cuckoo’s Nest I also had my
time in mental hospitals and was
on my way, at last…in my career
as a teacher….You are still going
strong, Michael…with so many a
success in entertainment’s world
as we both head into these middle
years, 65 to 75, of late adulthood.
I wish you well in your several
projects, Michael, to help make
this world a better place2 and…
may we both finish our years on
this planet contributing to unific
forces that will preserve the life
of its planetizing-global culture.3
1 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a novel written in 1959 by Ken Kesey and published in 1962. The book is set in a mental asylum in Oregon. I became a Baha’i in 1959, began my travelling-pioneering life in the Canadian Baha’i community in 1962 and entered a mental asylum in 1968.
Kesey’s book was made into a movie directed by Milos Forman. The movie was produced by Saul Zaentz and Michael Douglas and starred Jack Nicholson. It was very popular, won many Academy Awards and is now considered a classic.
2 In 2009 Douglas joined the project "Soldiers of Peace", a movie against all wars and for a global peace. He also lent his support to the campaign to release Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, the Iranian woman sentenced to death by stoning after being convicted of committing adultery.]
3 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, “The Planetization of Mankind,” The Future of Mankind, Harper & Row, New York, 1959.
Ron Price
12 August 2010
Updated for: The Fashion Shot
On: 13/9/'10
By 1972 my first wife and I had helped form the only Baha’i locally elected body outside of eastern Australia and outside of Adelaide, Perth and Darwin. Little did we know at the time how rare Baha’i Assemblies were outside the major population centres of Australia. Little did I or Michael Douglas know what was ahead of us professionally and personally. Michael and I were both born in mid-1944 as the allies were finally rolling back the German armies on the continent and on the Italian and Russian fronts. We also both graduated from university in 1966.
When Michael was breaking into acting in New York in the late 60s, the baggage of being the famous Kirk Douglas’s son—born with a silver spoon in his mouth, having no excuse to fail—literally made him sick with self-consciousness and anxiety.2 My anxiety and sickness in the late 60s came from a different source, a full-blown episode of bipolar disorder. –Ron Price with thanks to 17Two TV, 11 August 2010, 2:30-4:30 and 2 Evgenia Peretz, “Michael Douglas, Take Two,” Vanity Fair, April 2010.
You got into movies the year
we both graduated and I went
on to university in Windsor in
that City of Roses….Canada’s
most southerly city…taught in
Inuit land in ’67 on Baffin Is...
By the time you were producing
that great film….One Flew Over1
the Cuckoo’s Nest I also had my
time in mental hospitals and was
on my way, at last…in my career
as a teacher….You are still going
strong, Michael…with so many a
success in entertainment’s world
as we both head into these middle
years, 65 to 75, of late adulthood.
I wish you well in your several
projects, Michael, to help make
this world a better place2 and…
may we both finish our years on
this planet contributing to unific
forces that will preserve the life
of its planetizing-global culture.3
1 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a novel written in 1959 by Ken Kesey and published in 1962. The book is set in a mental asylum in Oregon. I became a Baha’i in 1959, began my travelling-pioneering life in the Canadian Baha’i community in 1962 and entered a mental asylum in 1968.
Kesey’s book was made into a movie directed by Milos Forman. The movie was produced by Saul Zaentz and Michael Douglas and starred Jack Nicholson. It was very popular, won many Academy Awards and is now considered a classic.
2 In 2009 Douglas joined the project "Soldiers of Peace", a movie against all wars and for a global peace. He also lent his support to the campaign to release Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, the Iranian woman sentenced to death by stoning after being convicted of committing adultery.]
3 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, “The Planetization of Mankind,” The Future of Mankind, Harper & Row, New York, 1959.
Ron Price
12 August 2010
Updated for: The Fashion Shot
On: 13/9/'10
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