{"id":105505,"date":"2018-01-29T12:00:30","date_gmt":"2018-01-29T12:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=105505"},"modified":"2018-01-26T11:47:00","modified_gmt":"2018-01-26T11:47:00","slug":"a-genuine-actor-francesco-serpico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2018\/01\/a-genuine-actor-francesco-serpico\/","title":{"rendered":"A Genuine Actor: Francesco Serpico"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThere are unconscious actors among them and involuntary actors; the genuine are always rare, especially genuine actors.\u201d <\/em>
\n\u2013 Friedrick Nietzche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>\u201cAny artist [person] who goes in for being famous in our society must know that it is not he who will become famous, but someone else under his name, someone who will eventually escape him and perhaps someday will kill the true artist [person] in him.\u201d<\/em>
\n\u00a0\u2013<\/em> Albert Camus, \u201cCreate Dangerously\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt ain\u2019t me you\u2019re lookin for, babe.\u201d<\/em>
\n\u2013 Bob Dylan, It Ain\u2019t Me, Babe<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0<\/em>Enter<\/strong><\/p>\n

The set was real but illusionary: A legendary old New England hotel dressed festively for Christmas and the holiday season.\u00a0 Norman Rockwell\u2019s magical realism.\u00a0 The lobby full with merriment, the cozy fire dancing to the sweet sound of violin and piano Christmas music mixed with a subtle alcoholic fragrance.\u00a0 Main Street U.S.A.\u00a0 Snow on the street and the classic strains of \u201cWhite Christmas\u201d in the inner air.\u00a0 A mythic setting for meeting a legendary actor.<\/p>\n

But as I entered the dimly lit set, the legend was nowhere to be seen.\u00a0 I approached the spot where the musicians were playing and didn\u2019t see him in the room opposite.\u00a0 Then, as I was greeting two actors with bit parts that I knew (unconscious actors, I should add), out of the shadows came a laughing Russian spy obviously dressed as a Russian spy, one red star on his hat, walking stick in hand.\u00a0 He and I were there to have a drink and enjoy the music that would allow us to talk privately without being overheard.\u00a0 A few hours earlier he had sent me a strange message from Epicurus:\u00a0 \u201cIt is impossible to lead a pleasant life without living wisely and well and justly, and it is impossible to live wisely and well and justly without living pleasantly (\u2018justly\u2019 meaning to prevent a person from harming or being harmed by another).\u201d<\/p>\n

What did this cryptic message mean?\u00a0\u00a0 The day before I had met a leading expert on the CIA on the same set and we had discussed the criminal activities of the Agency, how they dissembled and lied in their self-declared mission to defeat communism everywhere, even where it didn\u2019t exist.\u00a0 Those people were great at creating false myths, counter-myths, and Hollywood\/media narratives to discombobulate a public already lost in an entertainment culture.\u00a0 Now I was meeting this crazy Russian whom I heard say to some passing actors that he was a communist, and then he said something in Latin that totally perplexed them, which made him laugh.\u00a0 A woman approached him and said she liked his hat.\u00a0 Again he replied in Latin with a Russian accent and her face dropped.\u00a0 Then we all laughed. She blushed, the scent of flirtation in the badinage. Was this guy serious or a comic having fun?<\/p>\n

Off to the bar he and I went for some vino, wisecracks spewing from the mad Russian\u2019s mouth. Heads turned to watch our passage, for even on this movie set, his costume stood out.<\/p>\n

The True Man<\/strong><\/p>\n

As we settled in a corner with our drinks, a joyous warmth enveloped us.\u00a0 Play-acting was fun.\u00a0 Francesco was good at it.\u00a0 Here in the Red Lion Inn in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, no one took him for the legendary New York City Detective, Frank Serpico, shot in the face for being \u00a0a whistleblower before the word became commonplace, and made mythic through the 1973 movie, Serpico<\/em>.\u00a0 To the people surrounding us, he was just an amusing guy in an interesting hat, a man having fun with a buddy.<\/p>\n

At a round table in front of the chairs we were sitting in, a group of six middle-aged adults sat playing cards. They were not conversing. Frank mentioned that they reminded him of those pictures of dogs playing cards.\u00a0 He got up and asked them if they were playing for high stakes.\u00a0 They laughingly said no, just for amusement.\u00a0 And what game were they playing? I asked.\u00a0 A children\u2019s game, the woman said. It was a perfect scene from a spoof, and Frank whispered to me, \u201cThe masses are deluded with TV, Hollywood, and children\u2019s games.\u00a0 Let\u2019s bark.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBecome who you are,\u201d advised Nietzsche.\u00a0 Frank had done that; had always done it, despite decades of having to escape the mythic masked man Hollywood had made of him when Al Pacino played him in 1973, creating the legendary persona behind which the real person is expected to disappear, held hostage by the mask. \u00a0\u00a0While all persons are, by definition, masked, the word person being derived from the Latin, persona, <\/em>meaning mask, there are those who are nothing but masks \u2013 hollow inside.\u00a0 Empty.\u00a0 No one home.\u00a0 Unconscious and involuntary actors living out a script written by someone else.\u00a0 Not Frank Serpico. He has consistently been an unmasker, a truth-teller exposing the fraud that is so endemic in this society of illusions and delusions where lying is the norm.<\/p>\n

The Lone Ranger <\/strong><\/p>\n

Frank has always understood masks. When he was an undercover cop, he used his play acting skills to save his life.\u00a0 In the recent documentary film, \u201cFrank Serpico,\u201d directed by Antonino D\u2019Ambrosio, he says he told himself: \u201cYou\u2019re going on the stage tonight.\u00a0 The audience is out there.\u00a0 I told myself I was an actor and I had to sell my role.\u00a0 I got my training in the streets of New York where I played many roles from a doctor to a derelict and how well I played those roles my life depended on it.\u201d His acting skills were his protection, but these acts were performed in the service of protecting the citizens he had vowed to protect.\u00a0 Genuine acts.<\/p>\n

Shakespeare was right, of course, \u201call the world\u2019s a stage,\u201d though I would disagree with the bard that we are \u201cmerely\u201d players.\u00a0 It does often seem that way, but seeming is the essence of the actor\u2019s show and tell.\u00a0 But who are we behind the masks?\u00a0 Who is it uttering those words coming through the masks\u2019 mouth holes (the per-sona<\/em>, Latin, to sound through).\u00a0 In Frank\u2019s case, the real man is not hard to find.\u00a0 Never was. From a young age he was incorruptible.\u00a0 When he became a cop and took his oath, he was the same honest guy, though not fully aware of the dishonesty that pervades society at all levels.<\/p>\n

When this honest cop was lying in a pool of his own blood on the night of February 3, 1971, having been shot in the face in a set-up carried out by fellow cops, Frank Serpico heard a voice that said, \u201cIt\u2019s all a lie.\u201d\u00a0 In that moment as he fought for his life, he realized a truth he had previously sensed but never fully grasped in its awful reality.\u00a0 His honesty, his refusal to be a corrupt cop like so many others, his allegiance to the sacred oath he took when he became a police officer, was returned with a violent snarl by the liars he walked among.\u00a0 And in that moment he was determined to live and return their lies with more truth, which he did in his subsequent eloquent testimony to the Knapp Commission that was investigating police corruption in the New York Police Department because of him.<\/p>\n

The After Life<\/strong><\/p>\n

But then came the rest of his life, not a small thing.\u00a0 Lionized and damned as a \u201crat\u201d by many cops, recreated through the superb actor\u2019s mask of Al Pacino in the film Serpico<\/em>, his legend was created by the celebrity machine.\u00a0 His truth was turned into a Hollywood myth; a true American hero became a cool movie star.\u00a0 But unlike a movie actor or entertainer, he was still Frankie the honest boy who became an honest cop, and he wanted to become who he was, not an actor playing someone else.<\/p>\n

Police work was his \u201ccalling,\u201d he told me.\u00a0 It is a word with deep religious roots.\u00a0 A vocation (Latin, vocare<\/em>, to call).\u00a0 The mythographer Joseph Campbell has written eloquently of \u201cthe call\u201d in The Hero with a Thousand Faces<\/em>.\u00a0 When one is called by this mysterious voice that many call God, this call to adventure and authenticity \u2013 the hero\u2019s way, he terms it \u2013 one is faced with a choice whether to accept or refuse.\u00a0 Campbell writes:<\/p>\n

[It] signifies that destiny has summoned the hero and transferred his spiritual center of gravity from within the pale of his society to a zone unknown.\u00a0 This fateful region of both treasure and danger may be variously represented: as a distant land, a forest, a kingdom underground, beneath the waves, or above the sky, a secret island, lofty mountaintop, or profound dream state; but it is always a place of strangely fluid and polymorphous beings, unimaginable torments, superhuman deeds, and impossible delight.<\/p>\n

From the start of his police work, Frank sensed he was moving in \u201ca zone unknown\u201d and danger lurked along the way, but he had accepted the call.\u00a0 Like the heroes in all the authentic myths, he could not be sure where it was all leading.\u00a0 He came to realize that it led to the depths of hell, the frightening underworld through which the hero must transit or perish.\u00a0 The dark night of the soul.\u00a0 A near death experience at the hands of the monsters.\u00a0 Unimaginable torments.<\/p>\n

Let Me Be Frank<\/strong><\/p>\n

But dawn broke slowly, the same rosy-fingered dawn that greeted Odysseus as he contemplated the next step on his journey \u201chome\u201d from the war zone. \u00a0So Frank left home, set sail for Europe, and although a wounded warrior, he took up the rest of his life.\u00a0 \u201cSome may say I\u2019m full of it,\u201d he said to me, \u201cbut my life has been like a serendipitous dream, one scene after another.\u201d\u00a0 This may surprise those who think of him only as Frank Serpico, the heroic and honest cop.\u00a0 But that was a role he played, something he did, not who he was. He has led a colorful, exciting, and adventurous life, but not because of the movie and book about his cop\u2019s life.\u00a0 His name Frank, after all, means a free man, and Frank is the epitome of a free-spirited soul, always trying to escape others\u2019 definitions of him.\u00a0 Sitting with our wine amid the music, he said:<\/p>\n

I wanted to be who I was before the shooting.\u00a0 Back then I knew more people and they knew me.\u00a0 Friends.\u00a0 Afterwards they made me into their own image. They were looking for perfection, but I wasn\u2019t perfect.\u00a0 So I became more guarded and felt I was living under a microscope.\u00a0 Even among friends, if we were playing a game in which you could make up things, like a word game, and pretend just for fun, and I did it like them, they would look at me as if I couldn\u2019t, that if I did, I was betraying myself as the honest cop.\u00a0 I had become the legendary honest cop to them, not Frank, a guy who had lived up to his oath to be an honest cop, but who was also a regular person, not a celebrity.\u00a0 So I\u2019ve had to deal with people being drawn to me\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 because they think I\u2019m a celebrity.\u00a0 I\u2019m not an actor.\u00a0 I\u2019m the real thing.<\/p>\n

I was drawn to him because I sensed he was a compa\u00f1ero, similar to old, authentic friends I had grown up with in the Bronx.\u00a0 Guys with consciences, not crooks.\u00a0 Friends who could laugh and joke around.\u00a0 From our first meeting we connected: each of us dressed in individual camouflage \u2013 he, the bearded, aging Village hippie, concealing a conscience-stricken Italian-American kid from Brooklyn; me, sporting the look of an Irish-American something from the Bronx, concealing a conscience-stricken radical thinker and writer.\u00a0 Birds of a feather under different plumage, costumes concealing our true identities.\u00a0 Real play acting.<\/p>\n

And then there was that Catholic thing.\u00a0 Both of us products of New York Catholic families and schools.\u00a0 Thus conscience does not necessarily make cowards of us all. It also calls to us be honest, brave, and frank, despite the corruption of religious institutions.\u00a0 Nietzsche again:\u00a0 \u201c\u2018Christianity\u2019 has become something fundamentally different from what its founder did and desired\u2026.What did Christ deny?\u00a0 Everything that is today called Christian.\u201d\u00a0 Frank hated school, and when he attended St. Francis Prep he was beaten by a religious Brother.\u00a0 Then, when this teacher died and was being waked, Frank looked at him in the coffin and found himself, to his own amazement, crying for the man.\u00a0 \u201cThat\u2019s how deep it goes into you,\u201d he said to me, \u201cyou end up crying for your tormentor.\u201d\u00a0 And while I understood his point of criticism that a corrupt society reaches into the cradle to poison us from the start, I thought there was more to it, some deep human empathy in that boy\u2019s soul.\u00a0 In the man\u2019s.\u00a0 Like Nietzsche, I sense in Frank a Romantic at heart.\u00a0 He once wrote a poem in which he said:<\/p>\n

I was taught religion and all about race I was taught so well I felt out of place<\/em>
\nBut now I am a man and have no one to blame<\/em>
\nSo I must forget words like guilty, stupid, and shame.<\/em>
\nAnd with the help of my soul I\u2019ll remember the way<\/em>
\nAnd get back where I was on that very first day.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Then he added in prose:\u00a0 \u201cThe God I believe in is not just my God, but the God of all beings no matter what language they speak\u2026.I have no use for man-made religion\u2026.They profane the name of Christ but none follow in his footsteps save a few perhaps like St Francis and even Vincent Van Gogh.\u201d<\/p>\n

The few: St. Francis and Van Gogh.\u00a0 Telling choices.\u00a0 The wounded artist with a primal sympathy for the poor and the saint who drew animals to him out of love for all beings.\u00a0 St. Francis Prep where Frank was first wounded by a sadist, a sign of things to come.\u00a0 And later, the lover of nature who lives in the country and feeds birds that eat out of his hands.\u00a0 The man who has written a beautiful essay about Henry David Thoreau.\u00a0 And the artist\/genuine actor who writes, plays musical instruments, has acted in theatre, is producing a\u00a0 film about former Attorney General Ramsey Clark, another maverick who has also come in for severe criticism.<\/p>\n

The Lying Rats<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat has been your reaction over the years to having been harshly criticized as a \u201crat\u201d by so many N.Y. cops?\u201d I asked him.<\/p>\n

\u201cI took it as a joke,\u201d he said.\u00a0 \u201cI am a rat.\u00a0 It\u2019s my Chinese zodiac sign.\u201d\u00a0 But turning more serious, he added, \u201cI never broke bread with these people, so I never could rat on them.\u00a0 I was never a part of them.<\/p>\n

In fact, when I was asked to wear a wire to record guys I worked with, I said absolutely not.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t out to catch individuals, but to warn of corruption throughout the system, from bottom to top in the Police Department.\u00a0 It\u2019s the system I wanted to change, so in no way was I ever a rat.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat sustained you all these years?\u00a0 Was it faith, love, family – what?<\/p>\n

\u201dIt was wine, women, and song,\u201d he replied with a smile, as he held up his glass for a toast.<\/p>\n

As we were walking through the crowded lobby, a woman was rocking in a rocking chair.\u00a0 Frank burst into song about a rocking chair to amuse me; then told me he was once sitting outside a caf\u00e9 and someone approached him to act in a production of William Saroyan\u2019s The Time of Your Life.\u00a0 <\/em>He said to the guy, \u201cBut I\u2019m not an actor.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cBut you look the part of the Arab in the play,\u201d was the reply.\u00a0 So he took the part of the unnamed Arab and got to recite the most famous lines: \u201cNo foundation all the way down the line. No foundation all the way down the line.\u201d\u00a0 A refrain that echoes Frank\u2019s take on American society today.\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s all a lie\u201d or \u201cNo foundation all the way down the line\u201d \u2013 little difference.<\/p>\n

Until we see through the charade of social life and realize the masked performers are not just the politicians and celebrities, not only the professional actors and the corporate media performers, but us, we won\u2019t grasp the problem.\u00a0 Lying is the leading cause of living death in the United States.\u00a0 We live in a society built of lies; lying and dishonesty are the norm.\u00a0 They are built into the fabric of all our institutions.<\/p>\n

Later he quoted for me the preface to that play, words dear to his heart:<\/p>\n

In the time of your life, live – so that in that good time there shall be no ugliness or death for yourself or any life your life touches.\u00a0 Seek goodness everywhere, and when it is found, bring it out of its hiding place and let it be free and unashamed. Place in matter and flesh the least of the values, for these are the things that hold death and must pass away.\u00a0 Discover in all things that which shines and is beyond corruption. Encourage virtue in whatever heart it may have been driven into secrecy and sorrow by the shame and terror of the world.\u00a0 Ignore the obvious, for it is unworthy of the clear eye and kindly heart.\u00a0 Be the inferior of no man, or of any man be superior.<\/p>\n

Remember that every man is a variation of yourself.\u00a0 No man\u2019s guilt is not yours, nor is any man\u2019s innocence a thing apart.\u00a0 Despise evil and ungodliness, but not men of ungodliness or evil.\u00a0 These, understand.\u00a0 Have no shame in being kindly and gentle but if the time comes in the time of your life to kill, kill and have no regret.\u00a0 In the time of your life, live so that in the wondrous time you shall not add to the misery and sorrow of the world, but shall smile to the infinite delight and mystery of it.<\/p>\n

A Genuine Actor<\/strong><\/p>\n

And so I came to understand those words of Epicurus that this Thoreau-like bon-vivant had sent me.\u00a0 A pleasant life must be a just life, and if one is wise, and if one prevents people from harming or being harmed by others, one has chosen wisely and well.\u00a0 That is the way of the genuine actor.\u00a0 As Nietzsche meant it, a genuine actor is an original, one whose entire life is a work of art in which one begets oneself, or becomes who one is, as the Latin root of genuine (gignere<\/em>, to give birth, to beget) implies.\u00a0 In a world of phony actors, Frank Serpico the real man, stands out.<\/p>\n

He stood out long ago when he so courageously came forward to light a lamp of truth on the systemic corruption within the NYPD, and despite paying a severe price in suffering that almost cost him his life, he continues to speak out. Having spent a decade in exile in Europe where he entered into deep self-reflection (\u201cThere\u2019s nothing outside that isn\u2019t inside,\u201d he says), he returned \u201chome\u201d still passionately committed to shining a light on all that is evil but taken for normality that harms people physically and spiritually.<\/p>\n

To this day his conscience gives him no rest.\u00a0 He is still fighting by lending his name and presence to cases of police corruption, injustice, racism, the silencing of dissidents, etc. He does not live in the past. \u00a0A while ago he protested with some NYC cops the deplorable treatment of the football player Colin Kaepernick by the National Football League. \u00a0Just recently he spoke out for justice in the egregious 2004 police fatal shooting of Michael Bell, Jr. in the family driveway in Kenosha, Wisconsin.\u00a0 Supporting a video being distributed to 10,000 registered voters in a quest to get a public inquest, Frank wrote:<\/p>\n

This video equals the cell phone footage that captured the shooting of Walter Scott in South Carolina.\u00a0 Such compelling and condemning evidence of a cover-up and abuse can no longer be ignored.\u00a0 For the sake of justice in American policing, Attorney General Brad Schimel and DA Michael Graveley must reopen this investigation if society\u2019s trust in their police is ever to be restored.<\/p>\n

But before anyone gets caught up in hero worship of the genuine hero that Frank is (not a pseudo-hero deceptively created by the celebrity and propaganda apparatus), his parting words are worth remembering.\u00a0 In this corrupt society, you had best not get ensnared in mythic fantasies about heroes coming to the rescue. It ain\u2019t him, babe, it ain\u2019t him you\u2019re looking for.<\/p>\n

When you see injustice and corruption, when you open your eyes and see lying and deceit everywhere, you must be your own hero; you must be courageous and act.\u00a0 \u201cTake care of it yourself,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Or in the words of Nietzsche\u2019s Zarathustra, a book that serendipitously fell into his hands when he was alone in a friend\u2019s humble chalet in the Swiss Alps and shocked him with its relevance to his own experience: \u201c\u2018This is my<\/em> way, where is yours?\u2019 thus I answered those who asked me \u2018the way.\u2019\u00a0 For the<\/em> way, that does not exist.\u201d<\/p>\n

______________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Edward Curtin is a writer whose work has appeared widely and a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/a>.\u00a0 He teaches sociology at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. <\/em>A former college basketball player, he teaches the sociology of sports, and writes on a wide range of topics.\u00a0 His website is <\/em>http:\/\/edwardcurtin.com\/<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When this honest cop was lying in a pool of his own blood on the night of February 3, 1971, having been shot in the face in a set-up carried out by fellow cops, Frank Serpico heard a voice that said, \u201cIt\u2019s all a lie.\u201d In that moment as he fought for his life, he realized a truth he had previously sensed but never fully grasped in its awful reality. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":89352,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-105505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105505\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}