Heir to An Execution/Saved! party

Saturday, May 22…saw Ivy Meeropol’s excellent doc Heir to An Execution. This film examines Meeropol’s family history, and quite a history it is too — she’s the granddaughter of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, executed as traitors in 1953. I knew next to nothing about the case aside from the very basic facts (I hadn’t known the Rosenbergs even had two sons, for example), so I was quite looking forward to the film.

Meeropol draws you in immediately in the opening sequence where she visits the cemetery where her grandparents are buried and the staff refuse to tell her where the graves are located. “But this is my family!” she protests. She encounters similar barriers when reaching out to relatives, most of whom don’t want to participate in her project, some of whom won’t speak to her at all.

So she relies a lot of her father and uncle (Michael and Robert, the Rosenberg sons), and her grandparents’ friends for interviews, plus a healthy dose of archival footage. This is not a film about the intricacies of the Rosenberg case (though Meeropol said she hoped it would make people interested in finding out more about it), but rather a humanizing of two people who were demonized in a manner that sounds eerily familiar to what we hear today in our post-9/11 you’re-either-with-us-or-with-the-terrorists worldview.

New information about the case adds another twist. Meeropol grew up believing her grandparents were completely innocent (as they maintained at the time), but declassified documents that came out in the ’90s suggest that while they were probably not guilty of the specific crimes they were charged with (passing atomic secrets to the Russians), Julius was most likely involved in some kind of espionage (though how useful his information was is debatable). And the Rosenbergs could have had their sentences commuted had they ratted out other communist sympathizers. They refused. Whether that was a noble or foolish gesture is left for the viewer to decide — as you can decide for yourself when the film airs this summer.

This being Saturday, the other big event of the day was…a party! This was the first of the parties held at the gala screenings, in this case, Saved!, which I didn’t see (my pass doesn’t allow it). But I was on time for the party, at Revolution, on the site of the old Brass Door/Brass Connection which I doubt few of you will remember. A big gray block on the corner of E Pike and Harvard. Not the most attractive environment, I have to say. Inside the lighting was dim enough I wondered if I could file a lawsuit should I trip down the stairs due to not being able to see. This was a worthy subject to discuss with my companion, as it was attorney Cinnamon Stephens, whose specialty is entertainment law (check out www.cstephenslaw.com), and who wore a festive colored skirt.

The food was Asian-themed; little takeaway boxes of noodles such as you’d get at a Chinese restaurant, shrimp in a garlic sauce in little plastic glasses, and, um, little blocks of cake that weren’t that great. And champagne…champagne…champagne. Revolution has a roof space, so we went up there, where at first the crowds were very light. Then Fest Programmer Carl Spence arrived to clear the way for the Important People to make their entrance. A tall, tanned young thing was one of these folks, who on sitting down at the table cleared for her immediately began checking messages on her cell phone. “That’s sooo LA,” I thought to myself. Later I was told it was Mandy Moore! A shame, as I would’ve told her I liked A Walk to Remember, which I think would have got her attention. The Important People didn’t stay long though. “They went back to the hotel,” a publicist told me. “The W?” I asked. “Oh no,” she quickly replied. “Not the W! They went…somewhere else,” she said enigmatically, perhaps worried I stalk the hapless LA stars if I discovered their hideaway. A place more hoity toity than the W? Would’ve had to be the Four Seasons I should think (which I’m told didn’t meet Mick Jagger’s specifications for grandeur). Ah, but do they have Krispy Kremes?

While chatting with publicist Mike Weber, I was introduced to Ondi Timoner, who turned out to be the director of Dig! and whom I was scheduled to interview on Sunday (that’ll be the subject of a future post). We agreed the music was too loud inside the club, but as the sun set it became too cool to stay outside. A pity. She was killing time before going back for the Q&A portion of her screening. Saw Todd Pottinger again; his wife decided to sit this party out. He showed me a meticulously detailed seating chart Richard Peterson had prepared, indicated where guests he hoped would attend his screening should sit. Wow. Color-coded and everything!

By now it was too crowded to move around comfortably, too cold to stay outside, and too loud to talk inside. So Cinnamon and I retired for a nightcap at the Rosebud, across the street.