 I'd like to welcome Lucie Green to the Ain Ashbury video or illicitry project. My name is Rebecca Nichols and I'll be moderator. Welcome, Arthur. I'd like to know a little about your early years. Real quickly, maybe you can tell me where you were born. I understand you're a third or fourth generation in San Francisco. Maybe tell me a little bit your parents' names. Did you have any brothers and sisters? Well, I had grandparents and my grandmother was born in Santa Rosa and my grandfather was actually probably born in Cleveland but migrated out here. I grew up in the Richmond District and I just knew San Francisco as being part of my life and then I went away to travel. And as a matter of fact, I thought San Francisco was rather boring and kind of picked up and left and went off and did as much interesting stuff as I could possibly do in order to find out the meaning of life, if you will. So I wound up in Mexico and then Europe and then Mexico and then back to Europe again where I was traveling with a woman who studied underneath Martha Graham and a helper and Anna got me to Paris and Rome and Zagreb and then finally I wound up in the happening scene in Paris. I think this is in 63-64. And from there, I came back to San Francisco and was kind of casting about looking for something to do when I got a phone call from Bill Resner. And he wanted to know if I was interested in a project that he and Hillel and Reggie were up to and that was to take an old theater and turn it into a community theater or possibly a dance hall, possibly everything. And I had a choice of either doing that or working with a fellow by the name of Tony Martin. Tony did Bill Graham's first light show. He was out there, he was also a fine artist. But he was teaching at Mills College and it was a very straight job and it was actually too straight for Tony. So I turned him down, I showed up in the Haight-Ashbury, I thought this was great. I had done happenings, I liked experiential theater and it was like a wide open field of something that you could build an environment and you could do what you wanted to do as far as creative expression. Well, in that day, did you study anything special in school or just a whole new part of you opening up? Were you making it to some of your own skills? If I had to say to you, what was your career? Have you had many careers and talents that helped you get involved with this project? No, I was always the guy in school who was the projectionist, the guy that always put on the plays, the guy that was always selecting the movies that would be seen by the school. You always had a thread to entertainment on some level? Yeah, and that goes back with my family. My dad was a producer-director and was married to an actress. My mom was also an actress. What's your parents' names? My father's name was Luther Green and her stage name was Perky Steele and Ellen Chamberlain was her maiden name. So it was in my blood. But not really. I was always kind of like the next generation down from famous people, always kind of, I don't know. I became very introverted about it and worked behind the wings which is why I got into lighting and production, design, now filmmaking and so on and so forth. So I wasn't a ham. I didn't put myself up in that position. But I'd love to tell a story and put a show on somewhat indirectly. So that was my experience. Super. So you were called by who to find out about some location, to possibly do events or do places that the community could come. Who was in the contact you do? Well, it was probably Hillel's younger brother, Bill, who's unfortunately no longer with us. And he and- Bill Resna. Bill Resna. Yes. And Hillel had discovered this empty theater on H Street. And H Street, this is before the hippies were here. This was H Street. It was kind of a deteriorating Russian neighborhood looking at great grants. I think the theater was like four or $500 a month, something like that. It was like, what's this? It's the day in Asia, San Francisco, where you get a huge railroad apartment for $100 a month. It was like, if you could get a little bit of money coming in somehow, you could do anything you want. So my memories of the original taking over of the hate theater didn't have much to do with what was happening. I mean, the other, the Trips Festival, it happened. I think 1090 Page was happening. It kind of was a satellite show. But it didn't really point to the hate becoming what it was. But you were in Paris around this time? It was before, but it was after Paris. After Paris? And from Paris you came back to San Francisco? I came back and was actually in Mexico. I was traveling from Mexico to New York. And in New York, I heard word that the Trips Festival had happened and things were happening in San Francisco. So I kind of came back out this way. And then I was right there. In San Francisco, did you settle in when you finally came back? I was living in Marin. Had you ever lived in the hate Ashbury? No. You were in the whole time? No. But you spent a lot of time in the hate because of the straight theater? Well, yeah, I actually stayed in some communities. There were some really neat communities that were, a couple people take over, like a four story Victorian mansion. And so you got a whole floor to yourself for like all of $75 a month. Sure, sure. Sure, wonderful. So here you are with the project ahead of you. Were you excited about it? Did you believe in it? What was your role? Did you feel as one of the beginning founders of this place? It was almost a moving target. Every time you thought you'd achieve a goal, the game had changed. And the people kept changing. And the people kept getting more and more outrageous that were coming in. We had a friend of mine who was straight and filled by the name of Brent Dangerfield from Salt Lake City. And he showed up in San Francisco as a very bright-eyed Mormon youth. He was full of energy and zest and was giving things to everybody and teaching everyone about electricity and projection and recording techniques and all these things. That was just one of the players of the straight theater. There were always about 20-25 players and they kept changing. Sure. Sure. So we've heard some, later we're going to ask a few people to come together and talk about the straight theater. I would love to see, I would love to hear some of your first-hand account on events that happened at the straight theater. We'd been told that it became a dance school. I do remember this. So say I wanted to come in to a show, there were tickets sold. People could buy and pay admission. When it shows free, was there an admission? It should have been free. I mean, whatever we charged was never enough. And the rates were almost like $2 to come in and dance. Or maybe $2.50 would be the highest. Sure. Getting back to Anna Halpern when we came up with the idea that, well, gee, Arthur Murray doesn't have to have a dance hall license. We said, fine, we'll be a dance hall. I phoned up Anna Halpern. I said, would you like to be an instructor? She said, I'd love to. So before the Grateful Dead opened on opening night, Anna would get up and she'd give a few pointers. And then people would emulate whatever the heck she was doing and then go from there. And then people would play it over to practice dancing. It was a great idea. So we always had celebrity dance instructors. Right. Do you remember some of the celebrity dance instructors you have? No. Anybody that played there, Jerry Garcia, Quick, Quick Silver, any of these, they basically were these musicians basically the music for the dance school? They were. They weren't coherent enough to be instructors. They were great musicians. He's exactly. Do you remember on a weekly basis, was there any kind of schedule? Did something happen every Saturday morning? Or was there something? Did you sublet the place in any way for other groups to come in? I'm curious, and I think people watching this years to come, to be curious, what kind of things happened at the straight theater? Why is it so close to our hearts? We never turned anyone down who wanted to put some of that on. I mean, even the diggers came in and said they wanted the place. And we said, here, take it. So, no, we had people like Kenneth Anger did a special evening there. What was the name of the band? Hello, what was the name of that band? Equinox of the God. Well, it was the summer, I'm sorry, the autumn Equinox. Autumn Equinox. And it was a very weird evening of Kenneth running around and putting hexes on things. Things got wilder and wilder. And during the middle of all this, he had just had a falling out with his boyfriend, Bobby Snowfox, Bobby Bosele. And so he was looking for the missing, was it Lucifer Rising? Goes into the show, Lucifer Rising. There was a film that just got disappeared from Kenneth during the middle of this fallout. And he thought for some reason it was at the straight theater. And so the next day he would come in and put hexes and curses on things. And people were taken very seriously. So we wound up with garlic over all the doorways. And Kenneth was like in one of the back closets, swearing at the wall. And two gentlemen showed up in dark suits and went up to either side of them and escorted them out into a dark car and they drove off. And he wasn't to be seen for quite a while. He was a member of a group. He was a part of, came and rescued him from his own demons. Oh my goodness. You were looking at a flyer there. Well, we did a lot of movies at the straight theater. I'd love to see some of this and maybe you tell a story if you were involved or there. We built a projection business like a real theater. And then I had to go talk with the head of the union to get an operator's permit in order to become an official projectionist. And so Henry downtown at Jones Street office, he just sat down and he looked at me, looked down at the end of the desk and there's a mound of 16 millimeter black and white dirty movies. And he says, can you help me with these? And I said, yeah, sure. And he said, here's your card. And I walked out with a card and a whole pile of dirty movies are supposed to be showing at the theater. That got showed by the light show maybe, but they never got shown as part of the radio. And then as time went along, we'd rent. Oh, we did one evening with blue cheer. And I think we had the blob and the angry red planet. And we showed the band would play. We showed the blob and then we showed these reels kind of out of sequence. And so you didn't know which movie or what you were in. It was kind of like a combination feature film mit rock and roll event. And everyone had a lot of fun. It almost feels like that the street was a meeting house. It was a place where people would come and meet their friends and socialize. And besides the event that's going on, it was a place to connect with your family. That was a growing family of that time. Well, with the family. Exactly. Or the family was sent private detectives over to look for their families. Runaways and things like that. So how long was the straight theater actually open? That's a good question. I'm not sure. I think it was 1965 to about 1960. And at 67 maybe in the first part of 68. I'm not quite sure about that. We'll talk about that a bit. Maybe clarify that. That's something that can be looked at. Sure. So your role was among everybody else's teams to raise money, to pay the bills. Not really. No. There was kind of a division there. Bill and Reggie ran the office. Halal was more associated with the musicians and was the emcee. And the booker. And Brent and myself and maybe a few other people were in charge of the creative support and putting movies and doing the house stuff. Oh, okay. The office was always a lot of fun. They would go in the office and they would be smoking dope and throwing money in the air. And there would be like a sheriff's and they were trying to commandeer the box office money. And there was always a drama for the story of that going on. Right. So do you remember any, was there anything that happened like every week? Like did every Saturday morning, did they have something? Did you have a breakfast? Or did they have a deal with food? Looking back into a time capsule. Spontaneous events happening all the time. We tried to organize weekly things. I think the movies are supposed to go off on Tuesday or Thursday evenings or something like that. So there was a little bit of consistency. And the weekends were dedicated to rock and roll for that crowd. And in between we do theatrical performances with Julia Caesar. We had plays. Oh yeah. We had plays in there as well. We had plays and actually, did you ever have dance lessons there? I mean did somebody do any teaching of dance? No. No? Well yeah, next door we had, there was a sonic lodge next door we had taken over and there were actually were legitimate dance classes in there. Now that was down the street, on H Street between Cole and Schrader. I think later became the I-Beam. That's right. Is that the location? Do you ever, were you ever present when spontaneously the street closed and a flatbed truck would come along Schrader and the street would be closed and music playing live? Well the dead, yeah the dead did something like that once. But the street was closed more often than not because of these moving riots that would happen. And the riots were usually instigated by the police because they didn't have anything better to do and all they have to do is show up and a riot would start. At one time we tapped, there was, this was an old merchant street and there was the speakers along the street they played Christmas music on and so we had tapped into them. And one riot was going full bore and there's like tear gas being thrown back and forth and rocks and whatnot. And we put on the, I think it was the star-spangled banner and all the hippies stood to attention and the cops froze and the riot was over. It was just like, stop, that was it. And then all the cops, they started looking at all the wires and where they were going and they found the lead going to the street theater and by that time we had Amscary out the back and then they raided the front of the theater and God knows what happened because we were there. We went back in and the light show was tossed and threw it off the balcony. Oh my goodness. But they did that a lot. Oh my goodness, seriously. Yeah. So the police would come in and... They would open up the front doors sometimes and throw tear gas canisters in with... We'd have like 500 people in there that throw tear gas in. And you have a private venue with the dance school going on and the police would... The dance school never really got tear gas. It was all some other event. Yes, but you had the right to be open. Oh yeah. Yeah. The war zone. The war zone. I mean, I remember myself being on H Street and having the police arrive after a wonderful day and just with clubs all over the street telling people to get out of here and hitting people and marching this and then I just have a memory of the doors opening from the straight theater. And with smiles, the employees opened the doors and people just crowded the place to get off the street. It was a shelter away from the incident and a place to keep people. I have a loving memory of it. They hate because of that and not the street theater because of that. So during that day, during that period, there was no video. Pretty much you had your light shows happening with 16 millimeter, 16 millimeter loops and did anybody ever document your events? Do you know if there's... Yeah, there's... It was a film on audio tape. There's some film. The light shows worked. They changed a lot. There was the Brotherhood Light and Straight Lightning and a few other groups. Black Sheet, Puppy Farm, yeah. Black Sheet, that's a story. Puppy Farm. Yeah, and so pretty much you had musicians play that became now their legendary musicians and they were becoming well-known at the time. Part of the musicians were part of the whole family, the whole scene. And now they were playing the Avalon and they were playing the Fillmore and Straight Theater was one of the venues that was going on during that time period that was being... Yeah, the groups didn't want to get paid a lot. They could always play the straight. Yes, but the hate street was always a special place and everyone's hard. Yeah, it was more of a... If you really wanted to try something on the people, you could do it. And we had a theater that was perfect for it. We had a group come up from LA. Steve White found this group of... They were doing television acting training and they were called The Session. And it was... Joey Bishop's son, Larry Bishop, Rob Reiner and a few other characters and they had never appeared before in the live audience so they said, ah, well Steve White's got an ad on the straight theater, we've got a free theater, we can just play our first live show and see what happens. And none of these kids have all come from Beverly Hills. Never seen an audience before. And this was not a real audience. The hate, everyone was out there. Everybody was beyond experiential. And so these kids got up and they tried to do these skits, these pretty much straight skits in front of a group of people. And nothing happened. The audience did not just stare at them. And they broke down, they melted down, they went backstage, they cried, they got into a little huddle and stroked each other. And that was it. They went back to LA. They went right to the airport. They didn't try it again? No, of course they tried it again. I mean, they barely went on to write the Smothers Brothers show and then Rob Reiner, that was his start. Smothers Brothers. So do you, if besides the straight theater, did that take most of your time? Did you ever socialize within the scene, go to Golden Hill Park? Did you ever see any of the concerts in the park? Did you, was primarily your interaction with the straight? Was it a full-time job for you? Or did you, were you involved with going to the psychedelic shop at the New York Star Cafe or some of the... There were so many scenes happening on H-Street. Right now, I know that this fellow I knew from Mexico called Michael Bowen was an influential artist on H-Street. I never saw Michael in H-Street and yet we were both here. There was just so much happening. He did the human being poster in 1967 with Stanley Mouse. So it's like, I knew a bunch of people who went down to Monterey Park because that was cool, but I was busy doing something so I couldn't do it. So yeah, you could not do everything that there was to do. You were a player in the scene very differently than just coming to a town. Then maybe you could choose and pick what you're doing. You were working and you were helping create... Well, working is as much as working is and still it's working because you didn't have the option to go to Monterey when you had a show coming. It was interesting when the hate collapsed or when we got outnumbered by bad guys. You're wearing a collar. What is your personal feeling? Why the straight closed? Because the street went south because too many greedy influences came in and tried to pick up on the action or to make something, pay from it or make something from it. So you can't really pinpoint a person or place. It's really, of the time, all these other influences. I think historically every utopian or living society usually collapses from outside forces or if they close the doors then it collapses from within. I'm very curious what are you doing in your life right now? I'm doing documentary films right now. What's your subject? What interests you now in life after being through all of this? After the hate, I was in film post-production for about 20, 25 years and it worked on other people's films. It came to the point and said, that's it, I want to work on my own. Sure. I did that switch a little bit late in life and as with anything, whenever you migrate in your vocations people don't want you to do that because they're comfortable with you doing what you do and so when you move over there you have to start out all over again. I'm doing that. Anything particular that if this is watched in 50 years or we should be looking for what is close to your heart what drives you and what passion drives you to create the things you create? Well, I look to many stories and I kind of mastered the film and video art and so I just finished a documentary called In the Wake of the Zaka which if it's still up 50 years from now is www.zaka.com How do you spell that? Z-A-C-A Z-A-C-A.com and what is that film about? It's about another era in San Francisco's history it's about a gazillion era in the 30s who built a beautiful, luxurious vessel that sailed the Pacific and then it fought in the war and then it was owned by Errol Flynn and it still exists today in Europe and it's a very striking thing as well. So amazing. So you're thinking about possibly in the future producing some more documentaries, some more film and that's what you're involved with that's what you love to do. It seems to me that you're still in contact with some of your friends from back when and a lot of you are documenting yourselves in the past in the history of what's gone down so beyond just the documentation your friendships have grown and enriched and you have memories you share together and in a little while we're going to ask whoever's here from the straight to speak together and let's hear some stories. I want to ask you as well in the future when this tape is viewed I mean it's obvious that you took a risk rolled up your sleeves back when and we had some really great experiences at the straight theater because of it you and a team of other people. If young people view this I'll ask the same question I've asked before in the future what message would you want someone to get from this period that went by in the 60s that the straight theater would be part of if young people saw this 50 hundred years from now what would you want them to get out of it what would you want them to be left with? Well to challenge reality to challenge society to not look at everything as a status quo that's got to be dealt with on its roles is to keep looking make sure you're not in a box keep looking outside and have an inclusive of a better society better reality to go for make life better and finally that it only took one person and then one person maybe gets two and if the next generation is highway materialistic it doesn't matter you still got to do it exactly and just keep doing that well I want to thank you so much and we will be calling you back and in a little while we're going to do a group discussion and let you all inspire each other with stories but myself personally will speak for others thank you so much for doing what you did for being the person you are and contributing to the building of this so many people's lives were touched by it and as I know in the future as people of you will and still be inspired by what they've heard so I want to thank you so much to be part of this and we will be in touch with you many many times because we would love to hook up other parts of your work so that your memory in way in the future is remembered for the good things you've contributed and inspired with so thank you so much well thank you for doing it pleasure