Sonya Friedman

Nikkatsu Film

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by Sonya Friedman

After an 18-hour flight (before jets, and after refueling in San Francisco), I stumbled out of Japan Air into the frantic Tokyo airport.  As I scanned the huge, waiting crowd, each of them seemed to be an exact twin of the many others: small male Japanese, black suit, white shirt, black tie, forced smile. How would I ever find the film producers who’d hired me?  Ah, now I saw a group of five of those identical men on one side, waving a large white banner with the words “Sonya Friedman.”  Wow, I thought, I’m going to like Japan.

But the group tried to whisk me straight to the recording studio—where we would be casting actors for the dialogue and narration of a docu-drama about the end of the Samurai class.  Start work right away?  I was bleary eyed and exhausted.  “No way!” I said firmly, trying immediately to assume authority over the project.  “Hotel time.  We’ll meet in the morning.”

So the producers of Nikkatsu Films reluctantly dropped me at the hotel (which they owned, along with a cinema, a publishing firm, and a zoo).  I dropped off to sleep at once.  But not for long.  Suddenly, the bed was shaking, the walls were shaking.  I ran out to the hall, only to be reassured by the floor-clerk that it was a very usual and very minor earthquake. “Nothing to alarm, sir,” he said.  I replied, “Thank you, ma’am,”  then retreated and fell back to sleep.

More disagreements the next morning.  In New York City, I had written the English dialogue and narration for this doc, hired by a part-time film-producer who was also a dentist with offices at 43rd and Broadway.  (Who can explain the mysteries of financing in the film biz?) He and the Japanese producers had been so impressed, they’d hired me to direct the sound recording in Tokyo.  I don’t think the Japanese producers had realized I was a woman.  Right off, at every turn, they told me what they had already arranged.   I was auditioning for the voice-overs and narration, but every actor Nikkatsu presented had a strong German accent!  I explained I needed American or English actors, but they insisted I use their choices (“all tried and true,” they said).  “Fine,” I said, “I’ll just get the next plane out and go from whence I came.” The auditions were rescheduled for two days later.  Giving me time to reconnoiter.   Luckily, , my Japanese co-producer was Yoshi, amiable, experienced, and fairly fluent in English.  He was my guardian angel from day one—and left a red rose at my podium during every session.

Meanwhile, breakfast at the hotel had become weird.  A few minutes after I was eating my American-style eggs, toast, and coffee, a bouquet of flowers appeared.  “From gentleman there,” the waiter said, gesturing toward a white, European man who was beaming at me, expectantly.  I ignored him.  However, the next morning, more bouquets appeared, and even some small gifts. The White Gentlemen were desperate for the company of the White Lady. From then on, I had breakfast in my room.

Outside the studio, my hosts didn’t know what to do with me.  They’d never had a woman to entertain—previously, only male directors/producers.  The first night, they took me to a geisha club.  We were entertained royally by beautiful geishas with their lovely dance and songs.  But I felt vulnerable sitting with the others on a round bench with our feet dangling down into a large, empty hole.  What went on there with male visitors?

The next night, they took me to a strip-tease show.  The stadium had runways that extended deep into the audience. The music was deafening.  Women in full kimono-dress stepped out and began flinging off their outer, then inner, layers.  But not fully, before male customers leapt onto the ramp and, howling, tore off their remaining garments.  It looked dangerous to me, but my hosts were relaxed and chuckling.

When I managed an evening alone (assuring my hosts I was meeting a male friend in the city because they’d said it was IMPOSSIBLE for a woman to be out alone at night), I wandered the streets which were lit by huge, hanging lanterns, imparting an other-worldly, magical aura. (This was before all those skyscrapers.) At a restaurant, I pointed to dishes that looked tasty—and they were superb.  As soon as I’d finished a portion, they’d quickly rearrange what remained on the plate, to retain its pleasing composition.

One afternoon, we finished early and I took a taxi (absolutely NO tipping in Japan) to the Kabuki theater, long dreamed of.  The expressive pantomime was easy to follow, given its fabulous actors, makeup, and costumes.  Suddenly, the stage action stopped, and the entire audience jumped up and pounded onto the wooden stairs to the exit. Assuming there was a fire, I ran up, too.  Only to find it was lunch break—in the cafeteria.

There was a three-day hiatus while sound fx and music were added.   I escaped from my hosts (who’d firmly warned me that NO WESTERN WOMAN CAN TRAVEL ALONE) for Kyoto, the ancient religious center.  This was the highlight of my trip.  Exquisite Buddhist gardens have “pools of meditation”: One can sit and gaze at a tranquil pond in which large stones are placed in such a way that you can never see all of them at once, without turning your head—adding a touch of yearning (or excitement) to your contemplation. The local shops had exquisite fabrics, art, and books. (I purchased three huge art volumes and still don’t know how I lugged them home.) As I wandered around the ancient streets, abodes, and temples, I never encountered anything but courtesy, assistance and curiosity.

Back in Tokyo, the sound track finished, Yoshi and I celebrated our last evening together at a high-end restaurant.  Yoshi’s wife and baby son were in “North Country,” visiting his father, a Buddhist monk.  That was the profession Yoshi had been destined to follow, before he’d rebelled.  As the night went on and Yoshi was drinking more than he ever had in his life, he suddenly rose and started to stomp around in a hectic dance—startling the other staid Japanese—and shouting, “Sonya Friedman, I no want to be Buddhist monk!  I want to be INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MAN!”  I assured him that, once sober, he’d be well on his way to success.

Early on, I’d phoned my husband in New York to say I was experiencing a terribly unsettling sense of disorientation, not being able to read or hear with any understanding—true “traveler’s angst.”  It was as if the world I came from was spinning on entirely without me.  “Well,” he said, “doesn’t anyone there speak English?”  “Oh, they all speak it,” I said, “but nobody understands it!”  (“How you are?”  “You like Japan?” “You from where?”  Then, blank stares as I answered.) Later, even given my inability to read, write, or speak the language, my encounter with Japan remains an endearing memory.

 

Sonya Friedman:  Writer/director of documentary films, notably “The Masters of Disaster,” an Oscar nominee, and broadcast on national PBS.  Writer/translator of subtitles for foreign films, innovator of “supertitles” for opera at the Metropolitan Opera and at companies throughout the US and Canada. 

“The Phantom Tollbooth”

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by Sonya Friedman

Around 1960, my close friend, Norton Juster, received a Guggenheim grant, ostensibly to write a book about architecture and urban renewal, fields he had diligently studied and practiced.

Now, Guggenheim didn’t hold you to producing a specific work.  And when Norton took up his pencil to write about architecture, the pencil started writing a children’s book about a boy named Milo who was always bored—a book full of puns and word play and endless intellectual adventures (all disguised as fun). Milo goes on a long road trip accompanied by a dog-clock named “Tock” and an insect, named “Humbug.”  An orchestra plays the sunset; there’s a “which” instead of a witch, as Milo stumbles through the land of Rhyme and Reason.

You get the idea.  So did readers when the book came out in 1961. And they keep on reading it to this very day.

Norton used to phone me when he’d finished each chapter and read it to me.  He didn’t want me to comment; he wanted me to laugh.  He fretted when I didn’t.  “But, Nort,” I told him, “that was a chuckle.”  “Well, then, SAY ‘chuckle’ out  loud so I’ll know,” he said.

He was writing almost full time now, happily stealing hours from his architectural work  until one day, out to dinner, he got a fortune cookie that read,  “Your dreams are getting dusty.”

Not usually a superstitious type, Norton took this very badly.  He felt ill and even took to his bed. But not for long.  He couldn’t resist all the verbal tricks he was playing to enliven young minds.

“The Phantom Tollbooth” became so popular that—naturally—a film of it was produced. It animated the wonderful drawings that Jules Feiffer had made for the book.  When the film was completed, there was a private screening. Norton had me sit in with him.  As the film rolled, he kept nudging me, anxiously, fretting. “That’s too heavy handed; they needed my lighter tone.”  “That’s the wrong costume for ‘which!’”  “Damn! Who asked them to use those colors for Chroma?”  On and on, squirming uncomfortably as the characters in his book took physical shape on the screen.  I thought he was going to erupt and nix the whole project.  But then, as the end credits began to roll, he stopped his laments, turned to me and asked eagerly, excitedly, “HOW DID YOU LIKE IT???”

Norton went through the same agony with his next (delightful) book: “The Dot and the Line.”  He created the illustrations himself this time, using ingenious geometric shapes and forms.

Today, those books remind me of our inventive life in the 60’s.  Just as Nort spontaneously wrote a children’s book, I introduced “supertitles” to opera, and my husband Herman used his formidable documentary skills to strike out against the Vietnam War.

We weren’t paying attention to marketing or focus groups or test audiences or even to budgets.  We were having a good ride.

 

Sonya Friedman:  Writer/director of documentary films, notably “The Masters of Disaster,” an Oscar nominee, and broadcast on national PBS.  Writer/translator of subtitles for foreign films, innovator of “supertitles” for opera at the Metropolitan Opera and at companies throughout the US and Canada. 

“Waiting for Godot”

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by Sonya Friedman

      “All creativity consists in making something out of nothing.”  Racine

I wondered why I’ve seen Waiting for Godot so very many times.  Then some research told me why.  It’s been called “the most significant play of the 20th century,” and is one of the most performed plays in the world, staged in almost every country.  It has had a multi-racial cast, an all-Black cast, an Asian cast, one with the characters fragmented into ten players, and productions by prisoners (which intensely  moved Beckett).  The only cast that Beckett had firmly ruled against was one in which the players would be women. “Women don’t have prostates,” he said, referring to Vladimir who often leaves the stage to urinate. (In 1969, a Brazilian actress who played Estragon had a stroke onstage, and died.)

Beckett was also against his play airing on TV, unhappy with the one BBC-TV production. “My play wasn’t written for this box.  My play was written for small men locked in a big space. Here you’re all too big for the place.”

Waiting for Godot is a play in which nothing happens, yet keeps audiences glued to their seats. What’s more, the second act is where nothing happens, twice.

Two bedraggled acquaintances, Vladimir and Estragon, meet on a bare stage with only a leafless tree and a large stone. They discuss things of no apparent significance until we finally learn they are waiting for a man named Godot – uncertain as to whether he will ever arrive.  After a while, a tyrant named Pozzo enters, on his way to sell his mute slave, Lucky. Later, a boy shows up, explaining that Godot will not arrive tonight, but surely tomorrow.  Vladimir and Estragon then decide they will leave, but remain onstage, motionless.

In the second act, the two are again waiting for Godot by the tree which has now (mysteriously) sprouted some leaves.  Pozzo re-enters, but he is now blind and helpless, and Lucky – a mute – in a sudden frenzy, spouts a torrent of meaningless words.  They exit, and the boy reappears to say Godot will not be coming that day.  The boy denies he has ever met Vladimir and Estragon, and that he is not the same boy they claim to have met the previous day.  The two men rage at the child, who runs off in fear.  Then they consider suicide, but lack a rope.  They decide to return the next day with a rope, but remain motionless as the play ends.

The only thing Beckett says he was sure of about the men is” that they’re wearing bowlers.”  The bowler hat had been de rigueur for many men when Beckett was growing up in Ireland. And the bowlers and other comic aspects remind us of Laurel and Hardy – who often played tramps and had a hat-passing game as in all productions of “Godot.”  As to their rags, when Vladimir tells his companion he should have been a poet, Estragon says he was, and points to his rags as proof.  Referring to their  “blather,” Beckett introduced Irish idioms to firmly identify their nationality. In Britain, Godot is almost always played with Irish accents.

I first saw Godot in 1956 on Broadway with Bert Lahr (whom I lovingly remembered as the cowardly lion in “The Wizard of Oz”) as Estragon, E.G. Marshall as Vladimir, Kurt Kasznar as Pozzo, and Alvin Epstein as Lucky. What a cast.  But I only remember Lahr being hilarious.  I didn’t make sense of the play and didn’t need to; I enjoyed it without second, serious thoughts.

In 1988, I saw an all-star cast* at Lincoln Center, the hardest ticket in NYC.  Well, this time I was blown away by the performers and the play.  I was viscerally moved by these stranded, helpless, bewildered characters who – half comic, half tragic – keep staggering along without knowing why.

Estrogen:  I can’t go on like this.

Vladimir:  That’s what you think.

Later, sometime in Dublin, I saw the most vaudevillian performance, with constant bowler hat-passing and comic moves.  Here, “Godot” was pronounced “GODot” throughout.   (Beckett had flatly denied he had been thinking of God in the play.)

In 2013, at the Cort Theater, Ian McKellen mistook Estragon for a Chekhov character and Patrick Stewart played Vladimir as Hamlet.**

Left me cold.

The last time – and one of the best – was in 2023 in Brooklyn with Paul Parks (Estragon), and Michael Shannon (Vladmir) giving touching, moving portrayals while also being very funny. (Directed, by the way, by Arin Arbus, a woman. ) Now I found the play pertinent and puzzling, all at once. Just as it was meant to be.

*Robin Williams (Estragon), Steve Martin (Vladimir), F. Murray Abraham (Pozzo) and Bill Irwin (a famous mime) as Lucky, directed by Mike Nichols.

**Billy Crudup was Lucky and Shuler Hensley was Pozzo.

Sonya Friedman:  As a writer/translator, I created subtitles for foreign films, mostly Italian (Rossellini, De Sica, Fellini). Then I segued into creating “supertitles” for opera productions across the country, including for the Metropolitan Opera. As a documentary filmmaker, I was an Oscar nominee.

Little Red and Grandma Blue

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by Sonya Friedman

Little Red State put on her hoodie, packed a basket of goodies, and took off through the forest to visit her Blue State Grandma.  In spite of some of their basic differences, both Little Red and Grandma Blue had democratic spirit and loved their Republic.

Along the way, deep in the woods, Big Bad Trumpy Wolf jumped Little Red, mugged her (he had a history of this) and grabbed her goodies (another bad habit of his).

Then, startled by a gunshot from Supreme Huntress SS (aka Sonia Sotomayor) he took off for Grandma’s.  There, Big Bad Trumpy promptly attacked Grandma and wolfed her down. (Too bad, this would not have been possible had he been a fox.). After he had thus ravaged Grandma, he put on her nightclothes and jumped into her bed – continuing his shocking behavior of sexual misconduct and now, cross-dressing.

In the meantime, Supreme Hunter SS became so busy leading other people out of the woods that she lost track of Little Red’s travails.

Little Red – quite disheveled from that previous woodland encounter – finally arrived at her Grandma’s cottage.  She admired what she thought were Grandma’s greatly renewed vigor and especially her big white teeth – surprising, since the last time Little Red had seen Grandma, the old lady had been toothless.  But, Red reasoned,  with modern dentistry, anything is possible.

At that point, Big Bad Trumpy leapt out of bed and wolfed down Little Red as well. This removed all possibility of a continuing relationship between Red and Blue. Then Big Bad Trumpy swallowed up the whole damn country.

Sonya Friedman:  As a writer/translator, I created subtitles for foreign films, mostly Italian (Rossellini, De Sica, Fellini). Then I segued into creating “supertitles” for opera productions across the country, including for the Metropolitan Opera. As a documentary filmmaker, I was an Oscar nominee.

Sidney Lumet, Film Director

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by Sonya Friedman

Sidney Lumet had recently married a friend of my husband Herman, and we were invited to dinner. His was a large handsome brownstone near the 92nd Street Y. It had a rather somber interior with dark walls; however, on those walls were stunning American paintings mainly of the Wild West by Frederic Sackrider Remington.

Sidney’s wife Paidy (this was a third marriage for each of them) was a superb cook now married to, Sidney told us, a superb eater. The first course was artichokes. I noted with silent admiration how Sidney lined up his used leaves in a perfect circle around his plate, like the petals of a flower.

He was a charming host – no shop talk, at least not about his work. His many questions were about Herman’s documentary films and my subtitles for foreign films. At 8 p.m., he abruptly rose from the table, said goodnight, and retired. Paidy told us that he was – as usual – shooting the next morning and that anything in the world that would not pass in front of the camera lens did not, for him, further exist.

A few months later, Sidney phoned me to ask if I’d oversee the Italian subtitles for his new “Prince of the City,” which was to premiere at the Venice Film Festival. The film is about a narcotics detective in the NYPD, who, for idealistic reasons, chooses to expose corruption in the force, with dire consequences for him and those he turns in. An Italian translator was already at work on the subtitles, and Sidney wanted me to be sure that the Italian vividly replicated the rough-and-dirty slang of the original dialogue.

(As a Fulbright film student in Rome in the 50’s, I had lived in Trastevere, then a working-class neighborhood with its share of petty crime. No American girl had typically been seen walking its streets. I’d heard a lot of local slang.)

I was intrigued. Sidney wanted to send me to Rome to oversee the titles, but it was early summer, and I was at our Vermont country cabin with my husband, who didn’t want me to go. (I had just recently returned from Europe on a job.) So Sidney said he’d arrange for the Italian translator to come to me in Vermont. Little did he know I was on an isolated hill near nowhere. Herman and I arranged to put the signor up at a small inn about five miles away.

The translator, Signor O, set off from Rome to change planes in Brussels, where unexpectedly there was a total strike on air travel that grounded Signor O for three days. “Better him than you!” my husband said. It was decided that O would return to Rome and we would work it all out by phone (long distance calls, no cell phones back then).

Every morning at 6 a.m. my time, I would leap out of bed, quickly wrap myself against the Vermont chill, and converse with Signor O. As I heard his titles, I pointed out that much of his language didn’t have the roughness of the English.
-“Ah, Signora S., we don’t have all those drug terms here – like your ‘horse’ or ‘skag’ or ‘speedball.’”

– “Really? How about if you double-check at your local police station and give a listen?”

He called back, excited. “Signora, they do have a word for every one of those terms! And, of course, I’ll use them.”

Next, what to do about “fuck youse” and “cocksucker” and “your mother’s slit”? Again, he did his research and again called in the appropriately purple Italian equivalents – triumphant about finding this newly discovered vocabulary. I could now assure Sidney that the Venice Film Festival would get the full dose.

The film was praised at the Venice premiere (September 1981) and then got kudos in the States (even without subtitles).

A few months later, Signor O. was coming to New York and wanted to meet me. At our lunch at the Plaza Hotel, what a shock and probably a great disappointment for him to find that Signora S was a rather ordinary, well-turned out lady. Nothing even resembling a narco moll. We spoke of politics and the weather.

Sidney was delighted by it all. As was I.

Sonya Friedman: As a writer/translator, I created subtitles for many foreign-language films (Rossellini, Fellini, Godard, others) and was the innovator of “supertitles” for opera (The Metropolitan Opera Company, New York Opera, Seattle Opera, others). Among the documentary films I directed is “The Masters of Disaster,” which was nominated for an Academy Award, and was broadcast nationally on PBS.

Vermont: Second Nature

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by Sonya Friedman

We got to Vermont because I hated downhill skiing. My husband, Herman, a natural athlete and skiing enthusiast, had hoped to entice me into the sport, but a chilling start with a mad Austrian trainer who put me on a lift to the top of a mountain, then cursed me and kicked my skis when I couldn’t ski down – well, that was it.

So Herman decided to try “marathon” skiing, now known as cross-country. This seemed to me to be better for our pocketbooks (no slope fees, no expensive equipment rentals) and for our ages: I, now 40, Herman, now 48. We bought new skis, boots and poles, rented a place in New Hampshire near Mount Monadnock, and took a lesson. Soon we were gliding through those gleaming white birch forests and dreaming of a long skiing future. (Teenage kids and their friends had joined us and loved it, too.)

In a Vermont magazine, we discovered the marvelous 12-mile Skyline Trail and skied across steep hills and flat meadows around Woodstock, Vermont. Now for a cabin to use as our vacation skiing base. Herman wanted to buy. Woodstock land was too expensive, so we drifted further north – until we got to the tiny town of Chelsea, Vermont. At our first sight of the looming hills and gorgeous views there, we went to a real estate agent. Quickly, we put down a deposit on 10 acres on a high hill outside Chelsea town with a 360-degree view. We felt giddy. Then a local contractor, Arnold Clark, came to ascertain our needs. In a thick Vermont accent that we barely understood, he muttered that he thought we were crazy; there was no chance of electricity and less chance of water. Arnold could not fathom how a couple could be stupid enough to buy land so inaccessible. Until then, we had understood only that you opened a spigot and water came out.

Discouraged, we trudged down the steep mountain path to encounter a jeep with an old man and a younger one, asking what we were doing on the land. We explained we had just bought it. “Well, that beats it,” said the older man. “I’ve been farming this land for 60 years!” Back we went to the real estate agent, who said, no, that old man didn’t own the land, a different owner did. But if anyone claimed to have farmed that land for 60 years, we wanted no part of it. Later we realized the contractor and the farmer had saved us from disaster.

We soon found another 10 acres nearer Chelsea on a lovely hillside above a dirt town road, with spectacular mountain views and cinematic sunsets. We bought a large tent from L.L. Bean for living and sleeping. For cooking, we dug a hole in the ground, placed firewood in it, and a grill over it. For our cabin, Herman found a small company that manufactured “shelter-kits” and that soon delivered to the bottom of our hill: lumber cut to size, a set of large sliding glass doors, screws, nails, two hammers, two ladders, and two carpenter’s aprons.

Arnold Clark came and told us how to put in a foundation (we had no idea). He dug the four holes for “sauna tubes,” and poured concrete into them; our floor would sit on those. A friend came from New York to help Herman put the cabin up. It was 12 x 12-foot room with 12- foot sliding-glass doors and a 9 x 12-foot deck. Our vacation home. For $2,000.

It would be years before we had running water or electricity, but Arnold dug a well at the bottom of our hill, and got a small but steady stream of water. “Well, it ain’t no golden slipper,” he said, “but it’s better than no shoe at all!”

We carried water up in in jerry cans: summers, driving up our bumpy dirt path, and winters, pulling a toboggan. We installed gas lamps and had a small gas refrigerator. For heat, we bought a Norwegian Jotul stove, and stoked it with wood from our plentiful trees. (Our hill was covered with majestic sugar-maples.) We built a nice outhouse that had a bas-relief, a marble sink (with a removable stainless steel basin), a big pitcher of water, a colorful toilet seat, and a pail full of cleansing lime.

Our son Tim gave us a portable shower: it looked like a large hot water bottle, with a hose and a spray. We put it out in the sun for an hour or two, then had enough warm water to wash both of us. Winters, of course, we had to heat the water over our propane gas two-burner. We just threw the used water out the door until we realized we were freezing the steep wooden stairs we used to climb in and out of the cabin.

Summers were easy entrances. But when we arrived in the winter, the cabin temperature was often below zero. Both of us were on snowshoes and heavily dressed. My job was to get the wood-burning stove going, to set up the sleeping bags, and to unpack. Herman lugged food and other supplies up our steep hill, then went back down to haul up heavy jerry cans of water. When the cabin temperature finally climbed up to 30 degrees, it actually felt pleasant! And after a night’s bundled-up sleep, the next morning the place was cozy in the upper 60’s. Then we enjoyed our beautiful site: our comfort and the deep, deep silence.

Of course, we had to have a telephone; how else could we be in Vermont for a week or more and stay in touch with our New York office? (We were the producers and distributors of educational films.) Washington Electric came to ascertain the situation. They did install a phone and rigged an antenna in a nearby tree. Vermont ingenuity. Almost minutes after the phone had been installed, it rang! It was Mo Foner from the 1199 Hospital Workers Union in New York, asking us to provide films for their children’s festival. We were delighted to support the union and did so, at no charge. We were even more tickled to think that Foner didn’t know that the film execs he was talking to were sitting in a one-room cabin on a remote Vermont hillside with a phone hooked up to a tree.

True to our original purpose, we skied almost every day during winters in all weather and temperature. The exertion of cross-country skiing makes you very hot; it’s important to dress lightly and to pack a sweater for whenever you stop for more than a couple minutes. We found that the best skiing temperatures were between 20 degrees above and 20 below. We just stepped outside our door, put on our skis, picked up our poles, and took off – out over the lovely sloping meadows and rugged hills. We almost never saw another soul. Everything was white – every tree, every branch, every twig, every rooftop. Often hanging icicles gleamed in sunlight, giving a rainbow effect to the forests.

Once while skiing, we passed a simple but handsome house. We knocked on the door, and asked who was the architect. Then we looked him up, borrowed $10,000 from our local bank, and built an adjoining large family room (serving as kitchen, dining and living room) and a small room as a potential future bathroom. The architect had said we didn’t need him for such a modest structure, but I pointed out that while many documentary filmmakers just went out and shot footage, Herman and I, each professional writers, always wrote a script and that it was all to the good. He would be our professional. We were right; for a fee of $800, he designed beautiful high windows, repositioned the glass doors (which had been facing the northwest exposing us to gales such as those on a stormy sea), and placed the wood stove and chimney to take up a minimal amount of space in the new room. Also he designed an ingenious upward-slanted roof that gave height and elegance to the small cabin, all the while withstanding the strain of being frozen, then heating up and quickly defrosting, then freezing again as we came and went throughout the winters.

A friend in Philadelphia was moving and gave us a claw-foot bathtub and a sink. Our son-in-law Jon and Herman wrestled them up our hill.

Herman put a hole in our potential bathroom floor, where the tub drained, and a similar hole under the sink.

A couple of years later, Herman and I were in Vermont working respectively on a script and on film subtitles when a letter arrived: royalties from a children’s book based on an animated film we had produced. We stared at the check: it was for $6,000. “A toilet!” I said. “A vacation,” said Herman. We did both. We installed electricity, and with it a toilet, sink, tub and electric lights. And we went to Greece for a month. You could do a lot with $6,000 in the 60’s.

Sonya Friedman: As a writer/translator, I created subtitles for many foreign-language films (Rossellini, Fellini, Godard, others) and was the innovator of “supertitles” for opera (The Metropolitan Opera Company, New York Opera, Seattle Opera, others). Among the documentary films I directed is “The Masters of Disaster,” which was nominated for an Academy Award, and was broadcast nationally on PBS.

Marriage on Skis

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by Sonya Friedman

Cross-country skiing became a central part of my winters and of my life. I even married my husband on cross-country skis.

I’d been trying to get Herman Engel to marry me for several years. We were living together; I was very close to his three children – his teenage daughter, Kathy, was living with us. But Herman – influenced by his former, painful, failed marriage – worried that matrimony meant the end of trying, the end of giving one’s all. He was happy in our present life. But, finally realizing how important marriage was to me, he thought: Why give her grief? We’d been together 5+ years.

Herman had a humorous way of wiggling his eyebrows when he was for something. Finally, assenting to our marriage, he wiggled them.

Living in NYC, we couldn’t always ski out of our Vermont cabin. So we often went to Pound Ridge, N.Y. There, in February of 1971, Herman arranged for us to visit a Justice of the Peace with two witnesses, none of whom we’d ever seen before. We arrived in our ski knickers, high socks, boots, and with skis and poles. The Justice held out a Bible for us to swear upon; we spurned it. Then he murmured – almost indistinguishably – a string of words ending with: “with this ring I do thee wed.” We didn’t have a ring. One of the witnesses – a huge man –  handed me his ring, which was so big it could have been my bracelet. I returned it to him, nodding thanks. I said, I do; Herman said, I do.  The Justice pronounced us man and wife and told Herman he could kiss the bride. Instead, Herman – now the wise guy –  solemnly shook my hand.  The Justice gave us a marriage certificate, and a brochure with a poem – “Hiawatha.”

In the car, on the way to the ski trails, I examined the poem. It said that as unto the bow the cord is, so unto man is woman. Though she bends him, she obeys him. Though she draws him, yet she follows. I yelled, “What is this crap?” Herman was laughing, hard. “Well,”  he said, “YOU were the one who wanted to get married.”

We then had a big fight about which skiing trail to take.

When we got back to our Greenwich Village apartment, we started preparing dinner for our son Tim and his girlfriend, and for Grace Paley – we’d invited them to dinner before we knew we were getting married that day. We alerted Tim and he brought over a Stevie Wonder record, “Drink, drink that toast – drink that wedding toast.” Delightful. Grace arrived and, upon receiving the news, phoned her partner Bob Nichols who was rather a recluse. “Bob,” she said, “they just got married!” “I’ll be right over,” he said.

They lived a block from us.

Within minutes, the doorbell rang, and Bob started literally running up the 82 stairs to our 5thfloor walk-up, shouting, “We’re next! We’re next!” It was HE who wanted to get married, and Grace who had demurred. They were married a few months later.

Later on my wedding evening, my mother phoned from Florida. “Where were you all day?” she asked. “I’ve been calling you.” “I was out getting married,” I answered. “Thank God, Mrs. Engel!” she said. (I was 39 years old, and she had become desperate.) “No,” I said, “I’m not Engel, I’m keeping Friedman.”

“That’s ridiculous!” she said. “Friedman is now only your TRADE NAME.”

Then Kathy returned after a weekend with her mother and confronted us.  Scowling, she said, “I hear you got married. Why wasn’t I a bridesmaid?” She looked around at our comfortable apartment and her cozy room. “Well, it’s alright with me, as long as nothing changes around here!”

Herman and I continued our happy life together. After a year, I asked him, “Well, are you glad you married me?” He wiggled his eyebrows vigorously.

As a writer/translator, for decades I wrote subtitles for foreign films (by Fellini, De Sica, Godard, others).  Then, I introduced “supertitles” to the world of opera, and worked for the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera, Seattle Opera and many other companies.  For the past 50+ years, I have vacationed in Vermont, summer and winter. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dan & Whit’s

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by Sonya Friedman

Country stores are a cherished tradition in New England and in Norwich, Vermont, this is no exception. Except that this store, Dan & Whit’s, is exceptional. Famous throughout the region, even rating as a tourist attraction, the store sits on Main Street, housed in a non-descript building, fronted by a parking lot on cracked asphalt and two gas pumps. A sprawling outdoor message board displays personal notices and news of events in nearby Vermont and New Hampshire towns. There’s a battered upright piano (anyone’s free to play it) and buckets of flowers for sale. On Thursdays, a knife-sharpener sets up outside. And often, fiddlers show up for free concerts, or to support some benefit.

The large window is plastered with ads and advice:

Fresh Vermont milk, Propane Tanks – No roller blading or skateboarding – Night Crawlers and Worms – Trout Flies – Shotgun Shells (no guns sold since 1972) – Hate does not grow in the rocky soil of Norwich, Vermont – Black Lives Matter.

But the proudest sign of all proclaims Dan & Whit’s motto:

IF WE DON’T HAVE IT, YOU DON’T NEED IT!

Inside it looks, at first, like any country grocery store: worn wooden floors, narrow stacked aisles. But upon inspection, you’ll find all manner of fresh, local produce – fruit, vegetables, dairies, Ben & Jerry’s ice cream of course. There are also dental, skincare, and basic health products, vintage cheeses, and a large selection of wines. And wine-tasting events. (Dan & Whit’s even has its own label at $6 to $10 a bottle.) At the back, there’s a deli fully stacked with meats and, if you like, cooked on a sizzling grill. Other side aisles offer a large selection of additional necessities – sponges, measuring cups, candles, and back scratchers.

Many unfamiliar with the store will not notice a small passageway beside the cooking operation. But follow it and you find yourself inside a huge barn-like structure, a vast warehouse. Someone nicknamed it “West Norwich” referring to its immensity. Here, you discover all manner of garden, plumbing, and home construction supplies: toilet seats and martini glasses, horse and sheep feed, lobster pots, post-hole diggers, espresso machines, ammunition (locked up), and firewood. There are also services for glass-cutting, key-making, and film-developing.

Prices for the same item may vary, since they keep the sale price the same as when they bought the item. Stuff they purchased in April may have a cheaper sale price than the same item they bought in September. You have to look.

Another hidden store treasure can be found by cautiously climbing up the very rickety stairs to the second floor – to a trove of clothing. Barn jackets, boots, bathing suits, replacement boot liners, wool pants, snowshoes, fishing waders, flannel wear, and pet supplies. If they don’t know you, you’ll have to be accompanied. Because a while ago, when you opened a box of boots, there might have been an old pair in there. People had put on the new boots and left their old boots in the box.

Wire was put up on the outside of the upstairs window after an employee downstairs saw a pair of boots flying out. Apparently, the hurler counted on picking them up on his way through the parking lot: he never did, the sheriff was waiting for him.

Many children in the area get their first summer, or after-school jobs at Dan & Whit’s. All employees are well paid.

This amazing store was started in the 1800’s.  In 1955, two men who’d worked in the store for years bought it:  Dan and Whit.  (The current owner is a young man named Dan – grandson of the original Dan Fraser.)  The store has long been a community center where locals socialize and gather to discuss important issues.  Bernie Sanders and Patrick Leahy, the Vermont Senators, always make it a campaign stop.  Even the price of local real estate is determined, in part, by proximity to the store.

One June day during the Covid-19 summer, barber chairs miraculously appeared, wheeled out onto the cracked asphalt of the parking lot. The townies, all wearing masks, treated each other to free haircuts (many, sorely needed). And phone orders to the store result in home deliveries for the sick and the elderly.

Customers can bring in a broken lawn-sprinkler or wrench or whatever and get free advice on how to fix it, rather than a sales pitch on buying a new one.  Casual drop-ins may ask directions to the Interstate and leave with a home-made apple pie.

The great tradition of the great Dan & Whit’s goes on:

“IF WE DON’T HAVE IT, YOU DON’T NEED IT!” Hip, hip!

As a writer/translator, for decades I wrote subtitles for foreign films (by Fellini, De Sica, Godard, others). Then, I introduced “supertitles” to the world of opera, and worked for the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera, Seattle Opera and many other companies. For the past 50+ years, I have vacationed in Vermont, summer and winter. 

 

 

Entering Opera

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by Sonya Friedman

By the late ‘70s, I was well known for my subtitles for foreign films, mainly French* and Italian**, but also other languages, even Czech.*** So John Goberman, the producer of the tv music series “Live From Lincoln Center,” called me with what he thought was a normal request: “I’m doing an opera, live on TV, and want subtitles for it.”

I gulped. “How does one do titles for a LIVE opera?”.

“Oh,” he said. There was a long pause. “I thought you would know.”

“Ok,” I said, “let’s have lunch, bring your tech people, and we’ll figure it out.”

For subtitles for film you indicated the start and end points of each title by giving the lab the exact footage – i.e., 135 feet, 3 frames (these days, indicating digital time codes). But for a live performance? I had no idea.

I met with John and his team, then decided that after seeing the opera, I’d listen to it multiple times on tape while following the Italian libretto (for “Il Barbiere di Siviglia”). Then I’d sit in on the tv rehearsals to get familiar with the timing of the singing as well as with the camera shots.

My titles would be typed into a chyron – the same device that projects tv texts onscreen: names and scores for football games, for other sports events and for concerts. I would call up each title by pressing an “on” and “off” button, hopefully in synch with the singing. But I also wanted to avoid having a title go over a camera cut (a switch from one camera, one “take,” to another), because that makes the title seem to jiggle on screen. So I got a copy of the libretto that indicated every camera shot: which camera would be “on” and what it would show: i.e., camera 1, close up of Rosina; camera 4, full shot of stage; camera 3, close up of Figaro, and so on.

Timing my titles by following the camera shots, I could avoid having a line that I wrote for Rosina appearing over the face of Figaro, who was also singing at that time, now on camera.

So far nobody knew how this would work. Including me. Then the PBS executive who was enthusiastic about John’s novel experiment in presenting live opera subtitles to the tv audience, had a suggestion. The last camera rehearsal would include my rehearsing the titles, “calling” them, hopefully in synch with the singers and the camera shots.  That rehearsal was a life-saver. First of all, we learned that it could be done, and looked pretty good. Secondly, it calmed everyone’s nerves.

On broadcast night, we produced the first live tv opera with subtitles. But nobody outside the tv crew saw them. PBS was worried that we’d screw up, that the experiment would be a disaster. So that telecast did not include subtitles. PBS had arranged for me to fix the titles afterwards in the tv studio; the titles would then be added on the rebroadcast. John called me soon after to say the titles were ok; they looked fine! No need for this big fix. And sure enough, the rebroadcast went on with English titles for “The Barber of Seville,” a splendid New York City Opera production by superstar Sarah Caldwell (stage director and conductor) with the wildly popular diva Beverly Sills.

There was a big viewing audience. And then the letters poured in, thousands of them. People appreciated having subtitles, adored them, wanted them for all future opera broadcasts. PBS got the message. For our next televised opera, “Manon,” PBS widely advertised in print and on radio and tv: “You can follow the story because, for the first time ever in a live telecast, there will be subtitles on the screen.” The telecasts were the subject of a major editorial column in the New York Times, praising the introduction of opera subtitles, and my work.

I had entered the world of opera.

*French: Godard’s “Weekend,” and films by Truffaut, Clouzot, and others.
**Italian: films by De Sica, Rossellini, Fellini, Petri, Monicelli, Bolognini, and others
***Czech: Milos Forman’s “Black Peter” and “Loves of a Blonde”

In the 50’s, MGM had an enormous distribution of its films worldwide. To accommodate viewers in foreign languages, their NY office trained a couple writers in the craft of writing subtitles, narration, and dialogue. I was one of those lucky trainees, and went on to a career subtitling many foreign films by leading and upcoming directors. I am interviewed about my career in this video: https://vimeo.com/93793577

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Rossellini and Masaccio

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by Sonya Friedman

So there was Roberto Rossellini in 1973, inside Santa Maria Novella in Florence, Italy, having a full-blooded choleric fit. Before him, Masaccio’s ground-breaking portrait of Christ on the cross. Around him, a blizzard of 35mm equipment: camera, lights, crew and a dolly with a special focus-pulling device on which RR delighted in wheeling around, operating it himself during shooting. Missing? The actor who was to play a priest railing against Masaccio for portraying Christ not as the radiant Son of God but as a wretched, almost naked man dying of torture. With Masaccio’s startling foreshortened perspective.

To play the priest, RR had chosen a Dutch tour guide, not an actor at all. At this point in RR’s long career, he preferred to cast the man-on-the-street – those he found to have “authentic” faces. Although the dialogue had been written in English (the reason I was there as dialogue writer), many of the “faces” couldn’t speak English. In fact, the “authentic” lordly Prince of the Medici, was really a taxi driver, an Italian-only speaker. A disaster. The non-English speaking actors were frantically moving their lips, in order to be dubbed later – babbling numbers, “trent-otto, cinquanta tre, venti quattro….”

The Dutch guide, however, did speak excellent English. But where was he? Nowhere. As time clicked by, minute by expensive minute, RR’s blood pressure clicked upwards, bloated vessel by vessel. What to do? How to avoid the sudden death – right before my eyes! – of one of Italy’s most beloved and innovator directors?

“Roberto,” I suddenly said, “why not change the priest to a nun? And why not have me play her? I know the lines. I wrote them. And I’m here.” RR’s tense, agitated features relaxed into a wide smile. “Mia ebrea atea!” (My Hebrew atheist!)

He called loudly, gestured widely, crew members hurried, nuns arrived. I was ushered into a large room, walls and ceilings of dark wood, low lights. The nuns, some serious, others giggling, brought out a nun’s habit, removed my profane clothing, and dressed me saintly, hood to foot. I was ushered back into the holy cathedral. RR was already stationed on his focus-pulling apparatus; camera, lights and mikes were ready.

“Azione” was called, and I went into my angry spiel, shaking a furious fist at the offending painting. Afterwards, I could tell by the crew’s reaction that I’d done well. A year later, when I saw the final film in a Manhattan movie theater, the sight of myself as a Catholic nun was quite startling, as well as the fact that I’d been dubbed, still in English, by a more practiced actress’s voice.

I was a Fulbright student at Italy’s State Film School (Il Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia) and then worked in the U.S. as a documentary filmmaker, and a sub-titler of foreign films – which is how I met Roberto Rossellini. He had been criticized for his less than-accurate dubbing. And even though he complained, “We Italians look at the eyes; you Americans watch the mouths?” – still, he hired me to write English dialogue for his new docu-fiction trilogy “The Age of the Medici.”