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Entertainment

Sean Penn and Dylan Penn Make ‘Flag Day’ a Household Affair

Sean Penn and Dylan Penn Make ‘Flag Day’ a Family Affair

MALIBU, Calif. — Sure, Sean Penn has two Oscars. But at home, his children Dylan Frances Penn and Hopper Jack Penn wanted to pelt him with tomatoes.

“I tell jokes terribly,” Sean admitted. “They always tell me, ‘You probably should have stopped there.’”

“As you do with your dad,” Dylan added, rolling her eyes affectionately. Despite her father’s failings as a stand-up comic, she trusts him as the director who could kick-start her acting career — if she wants one. “Flag Day,” which premiered in competition at Cannes and is in theaters Aug. 20, stars the two in an adaptation of the journalist Jennifer Vogel’s memoir, “Flim-Flam Man,” about her shaky young adulthood in the orbit of her charismatic con man father, who died following a high-speed police pursuit.

Sean handed Dylan the book when she was a teenager. She passed. Now 30, she took nearly 15 more years to agree to make the film, long enough for her 61-year-old father, Sean, to come around himself to doing double-duty as director and leading man, the first time he’s tried to do both. “I don’t think stereophonically,” Sean said.

He had an easier time convincing his son, Hopper, to sign on to a small role as Vogel’s brother.

“He just asked me to play Nick and that was that,” Hopper said by email.

Sean and Dylan were sitting in their front yard in the shade of an Airstream trailer named Las Vegas, in honor of Sean’s intended elopement to Leila George. (Because of the pandemic, the couple was instead married by a county commissioner over Zoom last summer as Sean’s nonprofit CORE opened a Covid-19 testing site at Dodger Stadium that has since evolved into a fleet of mobile vaccination units.)

Alongside three large dogs continually changing their mind about where to nap, the two talked over each other, and indulgently allowed themselves to be interrupted, as they hashed out their maturing relationship. “I know what the stamps are in her passport — and she knows mine,” Sean said. “And it was thrilling that we were able to transfer it to a movie.” These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

This is a film about finding your own identity apart from your parents. Dylan, you avoided acting. You worked at an ad agency, you helped edit scripts, you delivered pizzas — how were your tips?

DYLAN PENN Terrible.

SEAN PENN That terrified me. All those frat houses around U.C.L.A.

DYLAN I started modeling like six months into being a pizza delivery girl. I would work at night doing pizza deliveries, but during the day, I was doing full hair and makeup for a shoot. So I would show up to these frat houses and they’re like, “Oh, did someone order a stripper?” Nope! Just a pizza. I always thought I would be in the film industry, but I expected to be behind the camera. When I was, like 15, 16, the first time you came to me with this project, I just felt like it was a really silly thing to do.

Acting?

DYLAN Adults dressing up as different people. The real reason that I got into acting in the first place was because I told my parents [her mother is the actor Robin Wright] I wanted to direct eventually, and both of them told me that I should know what it’s like to be an actor before I direct so that I know how to direct an actor.

Was this film always going to be the two of you?

SEAN I was going to be involved in it first as an actor. She didn’t feel ready for it. And then when it came back around, it came to me as a director. So then I was just going to direct it. And then we got into a bind about a month out from shooting, and I had to just jump in and I’m so glad that I did.

DYLAN It was a real shock because we’ve never worked together. The idea of him directing me was already like a big undertaking. The idea of being so vulnerable with your own family in front of 40, 50 crew members is daunting.

SEAN Your dirty laundry is going to be aired on a daily basis. I don’t mean your family history dirty laundry, but I mean that day’s emotional interactions with each other. But on the upside, I’ve never been so excited on any movie set as when I was in a scene with her, or just watching her kill it. In particular, the thing that all actors say, but very few do, is that listening is everything. She listens in a way that I love watching because she doesn’t tell you what she’s thinking. I like putting the camera close on her because she’s not going to wink at you.

What about Sean as a director makes him unique?

DYLAN His vision is so fully realized ahead of time. Even working in a space where, financially, it was a bit of a constraint, there was no limit to making that vision become a reality. A prop, a location, my hair. Literally, the opening where Regina King and I had a scene together. I walked in and he was like, “You would not be wearing mascara.” And I remember being so pissed. It was a fight for 10 minutes to take the mascara off.

SEAN It was a two-and-a-half-hour standoff.

DYLAN I was wrong. But I’m stubborn and it was a fight.

SEAN I will just say on your behalf, a lot of times where she had a different view, more often than not, I came around to thinking that she had the right idea. So I would be very interested in seeing the things that she directs.

Acting dynasties go back to the Barrymores. But it feels like your family is shaping a directing dynasty. Dylan, both of your parents released films in the last year that they directed, and Sean, your father, Leo Penn, was a director.

SEAN I spent a lot of time with him as a kid on sets. TV one-hour dramas. He was much more patient. A gentler sort. But I’m sure that a lot of my general sense of what a director’s job is comes from him.

And he directed you in “Little House on the Prairie”?

SEAN That was summer money as an extra as a kid. I didn’t think I wanted to get involved in film until senior year of high school.

And “Judgment in Berlin” [a 1988 film that featured Sean as a trial witness].

SEAN That was a great experience. We talk about in this story, how much of your parents do you really know? The deceptions in the relationship between John and Jennifer — from John to Jennifer.

Even with a gentle, open, loving man, it took going to Berlin, knowing [that during World War II] he’d flown those low-altitude bombing missions virtually where we were, and walking with him through a square where mothers are pushing strollers. I won’t call it regret by any means, but the humanization of what he’d done from the air had wiped him out.

Getting to know one’s parents makes me think of Dylan’s Instagram post from a couple of years ago of your dad’s first wedding day.

DYLAN It was the first time that I realized, “Oh, my parents are people without me.” And this is like on a deep level, after going through a lot of family therapy. I get asked so much, “Wait, so you’re Madonna’s daughter?” Oh right! He was married to her — they had a life together.

You were 5 when you left Los Angeles and moved to Northern California. Just before, your mother was surprised by people with guns in your driveway. Do you remember that?

DYLAN I remember it vividly. It was me, my mom and my brother in the car. We pulled in around 10 p.m. and these two guys were standing in the driveway. My mom just said, “Don’t get out of the car. Don’t make a sound.” She got out and they pointed a gun at her stomach and she threw the keys in the bushes and yanked us out of the car. That superhero thing that moms take on when their children are in jeopardy.

SEAN And then they took the car.

DYLAN They crashed.

SEAN They finally crashed into a dumpster and took off running. They actually caught the second guy with a heat sensor from the aerial unit. He had gotten into a dumpster himself, but because he’d been running, his body was hot and they were able to see his heat.

DYLAN [This is one] reason my mom has said she didn’t want us growing up in this paparazzi frenzy that L.A. was becoming. Now, it’s beyond what it was in the ’90s.

It’s pretty impossible for anybody not to remark on how much you look like your mom. On the inside, do you see your dad?

DYLAN Oh my God. I feel like we’re both very alpha personalities, but with that, also being introverted in terms of our private life. I think a lot of my strength comes from watching my dad. My mom, as well, but just in different ways. I also think we see things in similar ways and emotionally react similarly, just in terms of, like movies that we watch, that we cry at —

SEAN Everything.

DYLAN It’s like what a lot of people have with their best friends. You both observe the same things.

SEAN Through a similar lens.

DYLAN Yeah, through a similar lens.

Some of these scenes seem like they would have been hard to shoot, really harrowing. You’re recording her as she’s watching you die onscreen.

DYLAN It’s an awful thing to watch. It was the first time that I felt 100 percent like my dad is not there — this is my dad — and I really felt like he was shooting himself in the head. I was crying and I could hear him crying behind the camera.

SEAN Watching you cry over me. [Fake sobbing] It’s so sad to see you lose your father!

You were crying, too?

SEAN She made me cry a lot. She makes me cry a lot. You kind of feel like somebody should call Child Protective Services on you for directing. What are you putting your kid through?

There’s a line in this film: “I think the greatest hope a man can have is to leave something beautiful behind — something he made.” Am I alone in thinking that line had a resonance for you?

SEAN Oh, no. It has resonance for me as you say it. Yes. Listen, I don’t know what else I was doing here. Now with two kids that I feel so proud of who are already accomplishing things out of their own gifts. On a beautiful day, despite a pandemic and everything else, you kind of go, it’s all gravy from here. Knock wood. [Knocks on a palm tree] But no question, I would be lost without ’em.

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Politics

World Struggle I Memorial in Washington Raises First Flag After Years of Wrangling

World War I Memorial in Washington Raises First Flag After Years of Wrangling

WASHINGTON – Monuments to the war dead of the 20th century are one of the central attractions in the country’s capital. So it has always been remarkable that one of the most momentous American conflicts, World War I, failed to find national recognition.

Now that the United States is pulling out of its longest war, a memorial to one of the most complicated is due to open on Friday, which officially opened in Washington after years of entanglements between monument preservers, city planners, federal officials and the commission that brought it about.

The first flag was hoisted at the memorial in Pershing Park near the White House – rather than along the National Mall where many devotees had imagined it – in a place where office workers once hurried to ice skate, sip cocoa, and nibble lunch sandwiches sat underneath the crepe myrtle. Battles over the monument’s location, accuracy, and size were part of his journey.

“Our goal was to create a memorial that would go hand in hand with other monuments and raise World War I in American consciousness,” said Edwin L. Fountain, deputy chairman of the World War I Centennial Commission, recognizing that this was the case In contrast to these monuments there must be a monument and a city park. “

The only original allusion to the war in the park, a statute of General John J. Pershing who commanded the American expeditionary forces in Europe, will remain on the edge of space. At the center of the monument, however, is a large wall that has its final feature: a 58-foot bronze sculpture that, depending on your point of view, is either a bold testimony to the importance of the mission or an impairment of its natural environment.

The design, restoration of the original park, and construction of the new monument will cost $ 42 million. The commission still has $ 1.4 million available.

The sculpture “A Soldier’s Journey” tells the story of an American from reluctant service member to returned war hero in a series of scenes with 38 characters. They are designed to convey the story of the country’s transformation from an isolationist to a leader on the world stage and create a definitive visual reference to the next great war. The play had its own trip from New York to New Zealand to the Cotswolds of England, one with live models in period clothes and thousands of iPhone photos and other technology to capture the models in motion.

Critics – many of whom have fought the concept of Mr. Fountain with every available tactic – say the structure is incapable of marrying a historically significant park with a grand dream monument.

“The real question is: did the monument use the power of the place where it is now?” said Charles A. Birnbaum, president of the Cultural Landscapes Foundation, who attempted to add the park to the national register of historic places, thereby cutting down on the commemorative planners’ large-scale plans. “Has it succeeded in integrating into a place in a federal city that is unique in serving tourists and residents?”

The park, designed by M. Paul Friedberg, a well-known landscape architect, and built in 1981, was in ruins when the foundation stone for the memorial was laid in 2017. A popular ice rink was closed in 2006 due to mechanical problems and never reopened; The nooks and crannies were littered with garbage and pigeons that preferred to eat it.

Admittedly, it wasn’t anyone’s first choice for a memorial. Quarrels of a very Washington kind engulfed the effort.

Texas Republican Ted Poe spent years trying to expand the memorial effort on the National Mall before retiring. Congress considered converting the District of Columbia War Memorial at the end of the mall into a national memorial. Washington officials firmly opposed this, as did Missouri lawmakers who wanted no competition for the National World War I Museum and Memorial in Kansas City. The Ministry of the Interior was also not interested in the project.

In 2014, Congress decided on Pershing Park. In 2016, Joseph Weishaar, a 25-year-old architect, and Sabin Howard, a neo-classical sculptor in New York, were selected to create the giant sculpture after winning a design competition.

“I made a very myopic, classic male figurative sculpture that came from Hellenistic art,” said Howard. “Neither of us was ready. It’s just insane. You are entering this process that could cost you 15 years of your life. “

Given the location of the monument, the pace moved significantly faster than the National Mall, despite multiple reviews by the US Fine Arts Commission and other federal agencies.

Mr Howard began hiring models in 2016 – as did his daughter Madeleine, who played the role of the young girl in the sculpture – who dressed in antique clothes and played fight scenes when he was in a studio with 12,000 images on his iPhone made in the South Bronx. The project continued in New Zealand, where Mr. Howard made film props using special technology to create the first model for commission review.

Next, he and his models packed up for the Cotswolds, where he used a special foundry to begin his sculpting, which is now being completed at his studio in Englewood, NJ

Mr. Howard said he was aware of making the sculpture visually appealing but also educational. “My client said,” You have to do something that dramatizes World War I enough that visitors want to go home and learn more about it, “he said.

However, accuracy gave way to artistic license. The piece, which shows black, Latin American and Native American soldiers, blurs reality. At a meeting with the commission in 2018, Toni Griffin, a member, noted that in World War I black soldiers did not normally fight white soldiers as shown and suggested that “the sculpture should represent the authentic experience,” so the minutes from the meeting.

While changing the black troops’ helmets to reflect this, Mr. Howard said he was unaffected by the broader argument. “You had segregation in the army,” he said in an interview. “On the battlefield, however, there is no difference.” Even when black soldiers were portrayed in a historically incorrect way, he said, “They had to be treated as equals.”

It is a notable coincidence that the memorial opens to visitors during a pandemic, much like the flu outbreak that killed thousands of troops in the trenches during the war. “The flu wasn’t on my head,” said Mr. Howard. “What I thought was a pro-human act increase.”

The memorial is unlikely to suppress longstanding criticism that too many memorials in Washington focus on war and death.

“There are marginalized stories that could be celebrated and sobering stories about the reality of the war experience that could more effectively honor the victim,” said Phoebe Lickwar, who was a landscape architect in the early stages of the project. “Instead, we are presented with a banal narrative and a glorification of the struggle.”

Categories
Politics

Man admits dragging cop to be overwhelmed by flag pole

Not in Trump’s ‘nature' to do what's right for the U.S.,’ says Panetta

Rioters clash with police on January 6, 2021, trying to enter the Capitol through the front doors.

Lev Radin | Pacific Press | LightRocket | Getty Images

A Colorado geophysicist admitted to authorities that he was “in a fit of rage” as he dragged a police officer to be viciously beaten by a man with an American flagpole and others during the January 6 riot in the US Capitol announced a prosecutor.

The suspect, Jeffrey Sabol, attempted suicide sometime after the riot and also bought a plane ticket from Boston to Zurich, Switzerland, the prosecutor said at Sabol’s trial hours after his arrest at a Westchester County, New York hospital, Friday morning.

“He has the financial means to evade these charges,” said US assistant attorney Benjamin Gianforti during a videoconference and phone hearing held in the US District Court in White Plains, New York.

The prosecutor said authorities had reason to believe that Sabol “attacked another police officer” with a baton that he brandished during the riot.

Sabol “admitted he was in a fit of anger during the attack on the police officer” and told authorities his memory of much of the rest of the day on January 6 was foggy, Gianforti told Judge Andrew Krause.

Krause ordered Sabol, 51, to be detained without bail on a criminal complaint filed against him in the US District Court in Washington, DC, calling him a danger to the community and a risk of escape.

“This behavior is more than pale,” said Krause when he ordered Sabol’s imprisonment for civil disorder.

“These are extremely serious acts with consequences,” the judge told Sabol, a divorced father of three who grew up in New York State and whose sister is a colonel in the US Army.

According to authorities, Sabol can be seen in a widespread video during the riot, wearing a brown jacket, helmet and backpack, as he dragged a policeman to the ground outside the Capitol, where another rioter hit the officer with the flagpole.

Gianforti noted what he called the “irony” of the officer who was attacked with the US flag during the uprising by a group of supporters of President Donald Trump who opposed Congress and confirmed President Joe Biden’s election victory.

The prosecutor said police in Clarkstown, New York found Sabol in his car on Jan. 11, but did not specify exactly why Sabol was not arrested that day.

Sabol’s federal defender, who asked to be released for a $ 200,000 bond, said Krause that Sabol spent a week in a psychiatric center that was being treated after the riot.

Sabol’s lawyer also said the defendant is now stable.

The attorney said Sabol’s work history was “second to none” and his final job was to remove unexploded ordnance from the state for a Colorado environmental company.

The president of the company Sabol works for declined to comment, saying he had just learned from a CNBC reporter that Sabol had been arrested in connection with the Capitol riot.

NYC plumbing workers also indicted

Also on Friday, a New York plumbing worker was charged with participating in the riot.

Garbage man Dominick Madden has been identified in videos posted online showing him wearing a sweatshirt supporting the right-wing conspiracy QAnon during the Capitol Hill riot. The New York Post first reported his ID on January 14th.

Madden was tried in federal court in Brooklyn by Judge Ramon Reyes Jr.

Madden, 43, was charged in the District of Columbia with knowingly stepping into or staying in a restricted building or site without legal authority, knowingly engaging in disorderly or disruptive behavior in a restricted building or site, and forcibly for reasons of capital intruding into the building or the site.

Madden took sick leave from his position with the city’s Sanitary Department during the January 6th attack, according to an affidavit by an FBI agent in support of the complaint. The department has since suspended Madden, the affidavit said.

Madden was released on a $ 150,000 bond with his sister and brother-in-law’s home in Middletown, New Jersey listed as collateral.