Podcast: Interview with Filmmaker Morley Markson (1988)

Former Black Panther Donald Cox in Morley Markson's Growing Up in America (1988).

From 1981 to 1989, I was assistant producer and co-host of the radio show On the Arts, at CJRT-FM (today Jazz 91.1) in Toronto. With the late Tom Fulton, who was the show's prime host and producer, we did a half-hour interview program where we talked to artists from all fields. In 1988, one of those people was Canadian documentary filmmaker Morley Markson.

In 1971, Markson made Breathing Together: Revolution of the Electric Family, a documentary which interviewed prominent counterculture figures and social activists from the '60s, including Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, William Kunstler, and Donald Cox. When I sat down with Markson in 1988, his follow-up film Growing Up in America had just been released.

In Growing Up in America, Markson returns 18 years later to many of those featured in his original film and reflects with them on their impact and the current state of politics and culture in the United States. Considering the dark events of the past few days, it seems timely today to reflect on the larger sweep of American history, through the eyes of some of its most vocal and idealistic figures.

– Kevin Courrier.

Here is the full interview with Morley Markson as it aired on CJRT-FM in 1988.

 

– Kevin Courrier is a freelance writer/broadcaster, film critic and author (Dangerous Kitchen: The Subversive World of Zappa, Randy Newman's American Dreams, 33 1/3 Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica, Artificial Paradise: The Dark Side of The Beatles Utopian Dream). Courrier teaches part-time film courses to seniors through the LIFE Institute at Ryerson University in Toronto and other venues. His forthcoming book is Talking Out of Turn: A Collection of Reviews, Interviews and Remembrances currently being assembled on Blogger. 

Tom Fulton was the host and producer of On the Arts for CJRT-FM in Toronto for 23 years, beginning in 1975.