Opa! Meeting film expert and philellene Andy Horton on the island of Kea

“Laughter is an instant vacation.” Milton Berle

As part of my presentation of philhellenes, i.e. foreigners in love with Greece, this time I visit Andrew (Andy) Horton on the island of Kea (Tzia).

Last week on a beautiful sunny morning with a slight breeze from the sea, the boat from Lavrio passed Kea’s characteristic lighthouse and pulled into the main port of the island (Korissia)

As we got off the boat, white haired smiling Andy Horton met me and Elias and led us to Tzimis’ café along the seafront.

  

Horton, professor emeritus of film and video studies at the University of Oklahoma, is an award winning screen writer, with 30 books (and over 100 articles) on screenwriting and other aspects of film. He and his wife Odette have had a house above the harbor of Kea for many years.

(We had also visited Kea two years ago (see blog: https://olivesandislands.home.blog/2020/09/13/in-and-around-attica-the-smiling-lion-of-kea/). This time we went for the purpose of meeting Andy and Odette, and later having a swim in the blue green waters of the Gialaskari beach.

Where to start with Andy?  I had a set of questions but often one story leads into another. One moment he’s telling us how he had coffee with Paul Newman in Manhattan (“and can you believe no one even noticed and that’s New York City for you!”) to how he worked with Brad Pitt in Yugoslavia, but I’m getting ahead of myself.  After ordering our freddo cappuccinos, I took pen and paper and began.

Your connection with Greece goes back over 50 years.  How did you first come here?

When I graduated from college (Hamilton College in New York State) in 1966, the Vietnam war was going full force in the United States. I knew that when I graduated I was going to be drafted and I had to think of a way out as I was strongly against the war. So my roommate, who was from Greece and an Athens college graduate, told me they were hiring teachers.  I applied and they hired me, an English major, to teach.  When I showed the army my teaching papers, they said “Great, we approve of your teaching in Greece.”  The reason? “So you can help prevent communism there!”  After a couple of years (meanwhile the junta had started in 1967) I knew I wanted to leave Greece as an American during the dictatorship, and I returned to the states to do my Ph.D and came back in 1974, in the waning months of the junta. 

Was your thesis on film studies?

Yes and comparative literature.  I loved Giorgos Seferis’ poetry.  I had discovered I loved poetry and film, and that comes from living in Amherst Massachusetts in my high school years.

So you were inspired by Emily Dickinson! 

And not only. When I was young, Amherst College had a program where Robert Frost gave lectures on poetry. He really inspired me. He seemed just like everyone else, but those poems! And on Sunday evenings they showed foreign films. I went to a Jean Luc Godard festival and that was it.  I knew I wanted to get involved in film and be like him.

Speaking of Godard and his avant garde cinema, let’s touch on your recent talk on Greek film director Theo Angelopoulos [Angelopoulos died in 2012]

Last month I was part of a panel on Angelopoulos at the 12^th Athens Avant Garde festival and I talked on the spirit of comedy in his films.

Really? I wouldn’t think Angelopoulos’ slow deliberate style and comedy go together in most people’s minds!

If we embrace a larger vision of comedy… as Theo says himself, there is definitely an ironic or dark humor in many of his scenes, for example in his most-seen film from 1975, the Thiasos “The Traveling Players,” [a group of Greek traveling players, whose performances are always interrupted by social and political crises from 1938 to the early 1950’s like the Second World War and the Greek civil war]

Some of the best films have both comedy and tragedy, “laughter through your tears.” An example is Zorba the Greek, that I teach in my global comedy class. What can be more affirming at the end with the “teach me to dance” scene between Alan Bates and Anthony Quinn!

You also had a deep friendship with Angelopoulos over the years. How did you meet him?

When I returned to Greece in the mid 1970’s after getting my Ph.D., I taught in the English department at Deree College, but my true love was in film and I became the film critic for The Athenian magazine. Through that connection I met Theo and I invited him to come to Deree to talk to the students about film.  

The Athenian! That really takes me back. I couldn’t wait to go to the periptero every month to get the new issue. I loved the articles — they were really well written — and I learned so much about Athens in my early years here. 

So let’s continue on your professional film career and involvement and then go back to your Greek connection. At the University of Oklahoma, you’re retired but you still teach film classes here and there. Are they usually on comedy?

I prefer the term “refreshed” instead of “retired” (laughs)  but yes I’m often asked, “can you give a talk on some aspect of comedy” or a seminar on a director. (In late August of this year for example, I’m doing a seminar on the American comic director of the 1930’s, Preston Sturgis) I do classes now mostly with older adults, but with every comedy class I teach, I start out with two questions: 1) when you were a child, who was funny, who made you laugh?  It can be a family member, friend, whatever.  Some people answer “nobody,” but after some prodding, there’s usually someone!

And (2) What do you want on your tombstone?  There are so many clever epitaphs: “I told you I wasn’t feeling well” is a good one. The director of the film MASH (Robert Altman) has “finally a plot!”  These questions get us talking and laughing and thinking about comedy. 

What are some films you use in your comedy courses?

In the course on global comedy, besides Zorba, with its wonderful comic vision at the end, some others I have on the syllabus are Monty Python Life of Brian , Life is Beautiful, O Brother Where Art Thou, some Preston Sturgis films, as well as a number of lesser known films from other countries.

The classes are rewarding both with 18 year olds and over 50 year old students, but the most gratifying group I had was when I taught and lived in New Orleans, sad to say one of the most violent crime areas in the U.S. and with a large prison system.  I was given permission for several years to run a comic film series; I went once a week to the main prison, showed a comedy and then we talked about it. I loved how well this worked and got prisoners to talk and share and take on a much more human façade.

I’m sure they looked forward all week to the film and your discussion! The power of laughter can be therapeutic. It reminds me a little of McMurphy trying to bring laughter as therapy for the inmates in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. 

Right! I wanted to do the same in Oklahoma, but the state government won’t allow me to do such workshops with the prisoners.

We also see the practice of laughter as therapy with the Clowns without Borders project in the Thessaloniki area refugee camps. How did you get involved in this?

One of the things that’s always stayed with me is what Paul Newman said to me, that it’s not enough to be a good director or actor, you’ve got to be in the spirit of making the world a better place. 

That was a wonderful project for sure.  One day in 2016 I was listening to NPR Radio, saying that American clowns were on Greek islands near Turkey helping refugees from Syria and other countries LAUGH. I was intrigued and got in touch with them to make a documentary film. They explained that they had moved on to Africa but I could work with Swedish clowns in Thessaloniki refugee camps. And so that’s what I did with my award winning former student Brady Foster. He filmed four Swedish young folk, performance artists, helping the children, and we had supper each evening with them to discuss their work and what they enjoyed about this.  So it became my film “Laughter without Borders.”

[Note:  The clowns are not just entertaining the kids but they often find themselves in the role of working through trauma for what the children have been through. The clowns help build up the kids’ self-esteem, making them feel that they matter, that they’re important.

The film was screened at the LA Greek Festival in 2017 and also presented at the Hellenic American Union in Athens, where Andy often lectures. Here’s the trailer:] 

The film itself opens with an epigraph of a quote by comic genius Charlie Chaplin:  “Laughter is the tonic, the relief, the surcease for pain.”

Now here’s a question many would like to know. How did you come to work with Brad Pitt in his first feature film? (I always thought Thelma and Louise was his first part.)

That was his second.  So, the Yugoslav director Bozidar Nikolic, who was familiar with the Yugoslav popular film I had co-written in 1983, “Something in Between”, came to me with a script “Dark Side of the Sun”  that had his attention but which clearly needed re-writing.  I agreed and did a rewrite that they approved.

Then I helped them meet some very helpful casting directors in Hollywood and they interviewed  about three hundred actors and finally chose Brad, who at the time was doing some work in TV. This was his first feature film in 1988 and entirely shot in Yugoslavia.  I was there on location for a while (I was still teaching, and so couldn’t get away for too long). The director kept telling me “Andrea, please spend time with Brad!”   Here was Brad, an Oklahoma kid, who had never really been anywhere, and telling me “I’m enjoying it here, but I really should see more of Europe.”

I know there is much more about your career but here we are on a lovely Greek island. Let’s talk about Kea now. What made you want to have a house here?

It’s far away from the lifestyle of Mykonos and Santorini! And it’s close to Athens.   

     

I think the comparative quietness is still its appeal isn’t it.  The island is very popular with Athenians and very crowded on summer weekends I imagine.

Over the years in Kea, you’ve led many groups here from the States studying Greek history and culture in cinema. Tell me about that.

Yes, 21 groups over the years.  And now that I’m retired, (or refreshed) and my wife Odette just retired, I would like to do some workshops here, and we can come more often.  But for so many years, we could just come in the summer months. The groups stay 5 days or so on Kea. One of my participants who I’m proud to say I taught screen writing to was Sterlin Harjo, who does the acclaimed series on Hula  “Reservation Dogs.”  They also go to Athens, to the ancient theater of Epidavros and the islands of Idra and Poros.

What are some highlights of the groups?

Well I love Aristophanes (no surprise there!) and on every group trip to Greece we share doing out-loud readings of scenes of Lysistrata, so they can see how you can use a wonderfully “crazy” idea for a strong political purpose, a la Greek women going on a sex strike to stop the war that men have made.

[ I looked through a couple of the booklets given to students – there was an eclectic collection of short articles, some written by Andy, some not, on Greek history, ancient, byzantine and modern, notes on Aristophanes, selections of poems by Seferis, Cavafy, excerpts of Nikos Kazantzakis’ spiritual exercises, articles on the Karagiozis shadow theater, an interview with Theo Angelopoulos, a recommended reading list including Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, Kazantzakis, Report to Greco, Zorba the Greek and philhellenes par excellence Henry Miller, The Colossus of Maroussi and Lawrence Durrell, the Greek Islands. There were also accolades of students who have joined the groups, as well as some humorous readings like “The 11 commandments of travel” including the first “commandment” which I think is essential for any traveler (not tourist!) “Thou shalt not expect to find things as thou hast them at home, for thou hast left thy home to find things differently.”]

Andy is a great believer in travel. Besides his numerous books on screenwriting. he has written several memoirs including  Without a Zip Code about his sabbatical year (1997 to 98) between teaching at Loyola University in New Orleans and before starting at Oklahoma. He took a year off, spent 4 months in Kea and 6 months in New Zealand. He also has a delightful memoir called Bones in the Sea, the title inspired by a rough crossing on a  boat somewhere in Greece where the cook was throwing bones from lunch overboard and commenting  to the seasick passengers “that’s all we are, bones in the sea.”

The book tells about his earlier stay in Kea in 1987 with Odette and his two year old son. They stayed not in the harbor, but in the old island capital, about four miles up a winding road to “Hora,” the name typically given to Cycladic island old capital towns. 

The Cycladic capitals are always a bit inland, up from the port. In Kea, outside of Hora, a footpath takes you to the famous smiling lion, estimated to be created around 600 BC. No one knows the origin of that smile…

Incidentally, Kea’s footpaths through the island are well known and travelers come from other areas of Europe to traverse them.  Several years ago, there was a plan to pave the 20 minute footpath from Hora to the site of the lion. Judith Allen-Efstahiou, a watercolor artist based on Kea, in her book Mapping the Walk set out to record plants that she felt would be destroyed by the paving of the path. The plan was scrapped – perhaps the book had some effect! 

At age 78, Andy still has plans. He would like to involve Greek actor Renos Haralambidis, who starred in and directed an acclaimed first feature film “No Budget Story” in a script of Andy’s with the title  “Route 66.”  And now that he and his wife are “refreshed,” as noted, he’d like to do some workshops on Kea.

Time was passing, a baby was crying unconsolably at the café, some car horns were honking and we left to walk up a series of steps, as you must do in island port towns to Andy’s house, passing the usual splashes of bougainvillea in bright magenta color around doors, past a sign for massage and a gentleman’s hair salon – though as Andy tells us, not so much has changed over the years.

Up at his house, he shows us his 200 + collection of DVDs (the only person I know who has as many DVDs as we do, having gathered them over the years from Sunday newspaper supplements) and books on Greece. On the wall an honorary certificate from the Kea City council expresses its gratitude to Horton for “his valuable concern and love for the island of Kea.”

Certainly, I think whatever workshops he can do on Kea would be a real plus and continue showing his concern and love for the island.

At the house we’re happy to meet Odette, his fellow travel companion and lover of Kea, and sit for a short visit on the terrace, which is perfect for a morning coffee or even better, as it’s more shaded from the sun then, for a late afternoon ouzo. Soon the grapes, both green and red varieties, will be ripe. Odette tells us that in previous years if they were here at that time, they were happy to give the surplus to local restaurants.

The trend in Kea is building in remote areas — when you travel around the island, as I noted in my other blog, you see up in the barren hills what look like brown or beige boxes, which are different from the traditional cycladic architecture of the whitewashed houses with blue doorand shutters.  These houses might be more roomy than the old traditional houses near the port and might have a dramatic view but I think they’re a bit too isolated.

Some of the houses are so remote, they’re almost impossible to be found.  As Andy tells us, “We tried to find a friend’s house the other day. The directions were like ‘turn left at the second garbage bin, turn right at the 3^rd olive tree.’ We never did find the house!”

An island is a perfect place to test what you really need. In his book Travels with Epicurus, retiree Daniel Klein leaves the states to go to the island of Idra to enjoy what he calls the leisurely pleasures of retirement.  There he discovers you really don’t need as much as you’re made to feel you do.

Visitors come and go in the two months that Andy and his wife are living on Kea.  Recently his son Sam (the two year old in Bones in the Sea) visited with his wife and Andy’s two year old granddaughter.  He’s looking forward to his daughter’s wedding next year.

He tells us of another latest project, doing research on islands with less than 50 people (he himself has visited 48 islands).

Two months on Kea are nearly up and Andy and Odette are returning to the U.S.

I thoroughly enjoyed our meeting. Andy is living the way many of us dream of: a house on a Greek island, still “refreshed,” working and finding satisfaction in the area he loves and with a loving family… I think like Thoreau, he is living life “deliberately” with meaning and purpose. One of Andy’s favorite expressions for those who know him is “opa!”  One meaning of that is to celebrate the Greek dance and that’s what he does, in the dance of life, he lives with not only the intellect, but curiosity, passion and exuberance.  Stin iya sou! To your health!  Viva!

And now, content with our company and conversation, it was time for me and Elias to find those crystalline waters of the island.

You can reach Andy at ah.horton@gmail.com.

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Sherri Moshman Paganos is a writer and former educator, inspired by her life in Athens, where she and her husband are happily retired and enjoying their travels in Greece and abroad. You can check out her writing — fiction, non-fiction, poetry and articles here.