From: glevy@PRATT.EDU
Date: Wed Jul 26 2006 - 17:07:02 EDT
----------------- Original Message -------------- The last action hero The Ocean Press story How does a leftist Melbourne book publisher manage the lucrative legend of Che Guevara? In good conscience, writes Michael Dwyer. Melbourne Age, July 25, 2006 THERE are no fake action heroes in Cuba. The absence of commercial advertising means no Superman signage, no Wolverine-flogging cable TV, no Mr Incredible or Lightning McQueen luring your kids into a fast-food joint. What billboards exist feature slogans of national pride and solidarity such as "Cuba podra probar que este mundo puede salvarse" (Cuba will be able to prove that this world can be saved), typically under the bearded faces of real-life action figures Fidel Castro or Ernesto "Che" Guevara. Only one of them grows older from one picture to the next. El Che, who was executed in Bolivia in 1967, remains forever young, handsome and charismatic, an image-maker's dream. Since the success of The Motorcycle Diaries in 2005, his star has once again gone global. But next year, the 40th anniversary of his death, his international billboard profile is likely to make Superman look like last year's underpants. In January, film director Steven Soderbergh (Erin Brockovich, Traffic, Oceans 11), began shooting a biopic titled Guerrilla, starring Oscar-winner Benicio del Toro, based on two books of Guevara's memoirs. Like The Motorcycle Diaries and 15 more volumes of the Argentinian revolutionary's written works, the global rights belong to a North Melbourne publishing house, Ocean Press. It's an independent company with "a radical world view" and, with a million copies of Diaries sold last year alone, a pretty radical cash flow as well. David Deutschmann, who founded Ocean with his partner, Deborah Shnookal, in 1989, acknowledges the ideological dilemma this presents. "Ocean Press has a political heart and a political soul, I hope, but it's still a business," he says. "And despite ourselves - because we're quite bad as business people - it's been a success. Even before Che Guevara we were a moderate success. With Che, I'd say we've become quite a good success in Australian terms." How a Melbourne company came to manage the complete written works of Che Guevara is perhaps worth a screenplay in itself. It could begin in front of a butcher's shop near the corner of Elizabeth and Flinders streets in 1969, where a 14- year-old kid from Sunshine joined his first political protest to support the Gurindji land claim on the Wave Hill cattle station in the Northern Territory. With the election of Marxist Salvador Allende as Chilean president in 1970, Deutschmann's interest in the politics of Latin America blossomed as he pursued various left-wing causes through high school and university. After the CIA-sponsored coup of '73, he became involved with political refugees from Chile who helped deepen his admiration for Guevara. It wasn't until the early '80s that Deutschmann made his first trip to Cuba at the request of a progressive American publisher for whom he was working in New York. "I had an Australian passport, so I didn't have the travel restrictions to Cuba that Americans are subject to," he explains. In 1987, he edited The Che Guevara Reader, which has since become the most authoritative anthology of Guevara's work in the English language. In the past 25 years he's revisited Cuba dozens of times. He now owns a house there, and is due to return in mid-August at the invitation of Fidel Castro, to participate in the President's 80th birthday celebrations. "The first time I met Che's widow, Aleida March, was about 10 years ago," he says. "In 2000 we began to have serious discussions with her about one or two books. It was a gradual process of proving we were people she could trust, but also who could actually deliver." Today, Ocean Press services more than 2000 bookstores in the United States. It's shifted 400,000 English copies and 45,000 Spanish copies of The Motorcycle Diaries there, and sold the translation rights to 39 other countries. The Italian deal alone accounts for $US1.5 million ($A2 million). Aleida March's motives for this arrangement are not financial. Deutschmann emphasises that the "significant proportion of money" flowing from Ocean Press goes to the Che Guevara Studies Centre in Cuba, a resource centre that "seeks to illuminate (the) cultural depth, political incisiveness, irony and passion" beyond the iconic T-shirt image. "Che's widow and four children live in Cuba, and they don't see a cent," he says. "They still drive old cars, and she lives in an old house with paint peeling off the ceiling. If she wanted to receive this money she could easily live quite differently, but she believes it should go to the studies centre, to social projects, to Cuba." Aleida March was herself a guerrilla fighter before the Cuban revolution, which is how she met Guevara in the late '50s. That story will be part of Soderbergh's film, Deutschmann says. He's facilitated many meetings between March and the director since he sold the film rights for two books, Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War and The Bolivian Diary, for $US700,000, to Soderbergh last year. As for Ocean's share of all that filthy lucre, "that was one of the things we were losing sleep over", Deutschmann says. Four months ago, they established Ocean Sur, a company dedicated to publishing books from and for Latin America, at greatly subsidised prices. Deutschmann has since spent most of his time setting up offices in Cuba and Venezuela. Branches in Chile, Colombia and Mexico will open in coming months. Ocean Sur is publishing a new Spanish language title every week, with a strong emphasis on the politics of the region. There's also Ocean Film, which specialises in making documentaries on Latin America with young filmmakers. "I'm not on any campaign for Cuba," Deutschmann says. "Obviously I support very strongly what they've tried to do these last almost 50 years, to create an alternative, but it's by no means a paradise and by no means a model. Nevertheless it is, for the Third World and Latin America, an example of what you can do if you prioritise social concerns above others. "What I feel most strongly about is that Cuba has the right to determine its own destiny." Only Hollywood, however, can determine the destiny of Che Guevara. For Puerto Rican star and producer Benicio del Toro, Guerrilla has been a labour of love for seven years - it was he who brought Soderbergh to the project while they were making Traffic together in 1999. But the commercial imperatives of mainstream filmmaking are known to trade historical fact for popcorn sales on occasion. Is David Deutschmann concerned that Guevara could turn out to be next year's Mr Incredible? "I wouldn't be honest if I didn't admit to some nervousness, some hesitation," he says. "We're still involved in the process of working on the script, but I personally have no veto over the script. Neither does Aleida March or Cuba. The film is Soderbergh's. But we are involved in helping that team prepare the script, introducing them to people, clarifying historical details. "I will say that Soderbergh insists on this being historically accurate. I think all the key people involved in the film have a real commitment to doing a really challenging, honest film about Che." Perhaps his personal entreaty from beyond the grave will be persuasive enough. In Guevara's prologue to his Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War, he makes an open invitation for others to add to his recollections. "I only ask," he writes, "that such a narrator be a strictly truthful." LINK <http://www.oceanbooks.com.au> VISIT US AT: Hasta la Victoria Street Bookshop 360 Victoria Street North Melbourne Tel: 9326 4280 Opening Hours: Mon-Fri 10am-5:30pm
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