BIGGER THAN LIFE AT 84, THE LEGENDARY MAGAZINE LENSMAN AND FILM MAKER IS VERY MUCH IN THE PICTURE
By Denis Hamill
Gordon Parks puffs a pipeful of Captain Black tobacco, his keen 84-year-old eyes suddenly narrowing as he points to an urn on a shelf. .. "Those are Gordon Junior's ashes," he says, referring to his son, who was killed in a plane crash while filming a movie in Africa in 1979. "Half of them are here. Half were scattered on Kilimanjaro, a mountain he loved. I was up all night writing about his death for my next book when I heard the news about my good friend Bill Cosby's son, Ennis. My God, I know that awful empty place in the heart where Bill is right now. I thought of calling him, but I think I'll write a letter to express my sorrow, to get it right.... " Parks the first black photographer for Life magazine and the first black to direct a mainstream Hollywood movie, best-selling author, respected painter, noted classical musician and a cherished piece of American history is sitting on a couch in his office at his midtown apartment overlooking the East River. The room is alive with the cross-pollinated passions of his long, lush life books, paintings, photographs, movie cassettes, keyboards, a personal computer. He locates manuscript pages 110 and 111 of his forthcoming "Half-Past Autumn" (Little, Brown), a memoir and retrospective distilled from a half-century of legendary photography. He taps a passage about his son Gordon Jr., a film maker whose best-known work was "Superfly," the huge hit of 1972. About half-past three, Jimmy Richardson, Gordon Jr.
's assistant, called and said, "Pops, something terrible just happened.
" As though I already knew, I spoke the most painful words I've ever spoken, "Gordon's dead.
" Parks writes of having to awaken his son's wife, who was then pregnant with his grandson, Gordon 3d, to tell her the awful news. And then flashes forward 17 years to the recent holiday season, when Parks told his teenage grandson for the first time about the ashes. "So that's my father," Gordon 3d said. "He's been here with us all along.
" Just as Gordon Parks Sr. has been with us all along, seemingly everywhere, sharing a remarkable life that began in Fort Scott, Kan., in 1912 as the last of 15 children. His mother taught him to play the piano when he was 6, a skill he'd use in his midteens to sing for his supper in a brothel in St. Paul after his parents died. A few years later, while working as a busboy in the all-white Minnesota Club, he'd sneak into the club's library after hours, hungrily devouring novels, newspapers, poetry. His life forever changed in 1937, when he leafed through a discarded magazine while working as a waiter on the North Coast Limited, a luxury train running between St. Paul and Seattle. "There were these amazing photographs of Okies and migrant workers," Parks recalls. "They were taken by photographers who worked for Roy Emerson Stryker at the Farm Administration in Washington, D.
C. I thought I could do that.
" Parks soon bought a used camera, which he says became "a weapon against poverty and racism.
" By 1938, he was doing fashion photos for the Minneapolis Spokesman and St. Paul Recorder. Marva Louis, wife of heavyweight champion Joe Louis, saw some of his photos and aided his move to Chicago, where he won a fellowship to work for Stryker in Washington. In 1948, without an appointment, a brazen Parks carried his portfolio into the offices of Life magazine. He left with an assignment to photograph the gangs of Harlem. Then he was assigned a fashion spread in Paris. While on the Queen Mary, heading home, he received a cable from Life asking him to join the staff. In 1963, a fellow Life photographer/writer named Carl Mydans convinced Parks that his childhood tales of growing up black in Kansas were the makings of a novel. "I went home and pecked out seven triple-spaced pages that night," Parks recalls. "I showed them to Carl, who asked if he could show them to a friend.
" A week later, Evan Thomas, vice president of Harper & Row, offered Parks $10,000 to write "The Learning Tree," which became a best seller and is now in its 60th printing. "The Learning Tree" also transformed Parks into the Jackie Robinson of cinema, the first black to direct a mainstream Hollywood movie. John Cassavetes, a Hollywood maverick actor/director, told him there was only one man who could direct "Learning Tree" Gordon Parks. "I said, `Hollywood would never let a black man direct a film.
"' But Cassavetes put Parks together with Kenny Hyman of Warner Bros., who gave Parks carte blanche. Parks not only directed, but produced the film, wrote the screenplay and composed the score. Hyman's only requirement, Parks recalled, "was that I hire one of five line producers under contract to the studio," Parks recalls. "I met four, all nice guys who were eager to work with me. The fifth guy was a surly fella named Bill. He just grunted, questioned whether I knew camera-left from camera-right, and seemed to resent my getting the job. I chose him. Hyman asked why. I said, `Because I want to be his boss.
"' The man was William Conrad, later to be TV's "Cannon.
" "He worked out fine," Parks says. "We became friends.
" Next, Parks directed the huge hit "Shaft," and later "Supercops" and "Leadbelly.
" He also did a lot of TV work, including his own five-act ballet, "Martin," about the life of Martin Luther King. Along the way, Gordon Parks, Renaissance man, has amassed 32 honorary doctorates, endless photojournalism and humanitarian awards, published 20 books, composed scores of classical music pieces and had dozens of painting exhibits. These days, resembling a black Einstein, Parks sleeps past noon and works through the New York night, the big windows looking out on the dark river, sipping mint tea and trying to cut down on the pipe, typing on a PC, alternating between poetry, novels, screenplays and memoirs. "I also compose music here in this room, mixing strings, oboes, drums or whatever I need, a far cry from the standup Kimball my mother taught me on.
" Parks says he chooses to live in "big, beautiful, dirty New York because all my friends are here, because all the arts that feed my life are here. And because I can always take one of my three ex-wives out to dinner. He gets frequent visitors seeking his sage guidance. "John Singleton, the young director, was here the other night, asking for some advice," he says. "He wants to remake `Shaft.
' He's very good. I also get notes from Spike [Lee] just to say, `I love you.
' I like a lot of the movies these young black film makers are making today. But my one piece of advice to them is that they shouldn't limit themselves to just black films. Make films about people, all people. Do Shakespeare. If you want to reach a universal level in your work, don't put limitations on yourself and then blame others for segregating you into a niche.
" Parks' career is a lesson plan of example, what with the novel "Shannon," about Irish working-class immigrants, a novel-in-progress about J.
W. Turner, the British landscape artist, and another novel called "It Happened Once," about an African-American high school student. "The doors are more readily open for blacks getting into the arts today," he says. "But I'm afraid racism will never go away. I was never connected to genius, but I always strived for survival. My mom always said, `If you're gonna be somebody, you have to want to be somebody.
' If anything propelled me in my life, it was that I wouldn't let bigotry stand in my way. My daddy told me, "Sometimes you have to waltz around your enemy to fox-trot on his back.
"' At half-past autumn, his other piece of advice for young artists is never to squander opportunity. "Sure, luck has played a part in my life," he says. "But I was always prepared for luck. By that I mean I'd done my homework, read everything I could get my hands on, listened well to smart people, listened carefully to great classical music, studied lots of films, traveled, visited grand museums, worked on perfecting my craft. Luck is useless unless you're ready for it.
" Twenty-eight years after penning "The Learning Tree," Gordon Parks has become one himself. sidebar: A short list of Gordon Parks' Books and Films BOOKS 1. The Learning Tree (Fawcett) 2. Voices in the Mirror (Minnesota Historical Society Press) 3. Choice of Weapons (Harper & Row) 4. Arias in Silence (Bull Finch-Little, Brown) 5. Glimpses Toward Infinity (Bull Finch-Little, Brown) FILMS (All are available on video) 1. The Learning Tree 2. Shaft 3. Shaft's Big Score 4. Leadbelly 5. Supercops (Poem by Gordon Parks:) Significant Things Nothing is more compelling than silence. Ask a star or the moon. Nothing is more important than love. Ask me. I mistook it for grief. - Gordon Parks