"Everything, and I mean everything I knew was wrong. Everything." -- Mike Flores


FLORES: ... The McCarthy era is the bedrock of many people's beliefs- for liberals exposure to the era is often when they decide to become liberals. So there is this feeling if they read what really happened, pretty much their entire belief system collapses...

... I fail to see how you can take one case of manipulation of our reality as bona fide but a different version of the McCarthy Era- can't be trusted.

=============================


First page of his Blog here

Snip:
To my friends on the left- I do not agree with Anne Coulter's new look at  McCarthy- she only knows half the story. But there are going to be some difficult revelations here, for both sides. Many are still difficult for me.

To my friends on the right- the Democrats can not be blamed for the view they have of the period. THEY NEVER KNEW THE FACTS. Neither did the conservatives.

Thus begins this experiment. In coming weeks we are going to look at the 1950's and the effect the "red scare era" had on life, the media and resonates to today.

=====================


Interview On McCarthy Era

Above Classified remains the only website that has interviewed me on The CIA revelations on Joseph McCarthy. Here is an unedited new interview you might like to read.

QUESTION: Have the release of the CIA FAMILY JEWELS file made your pointing to the CIA report of what really happened with Joe McCarthy any easier? Has the press or military historians asked for your take on the CIA report?

FLORES: No! Not at all. The McCarthy era is the bedrock of many people's beliefs- for liberals exposure to the era is often when they decide to become liberals. So there is this feeling if they read what really happened, pretty much their entire belief system collapses. Conservatives like Ann Coulter who defend McCarthy never ask questions like, who gave McCarthy the names? The CIA admissions I think must be taken into account in history. In fact, they override all that was before. Just as The Family Jewels files makes it clear that leading liberals used the CIA and looked the other way when it broke its charter- those stories have been told by some media but not others.

What really gets me is when people quote from incidents in the Family Jewels files but refuse to even read the CIA file on McCarthy and what they did to him. I fail to see how you can take one case of manipulation of our reality as bona fide but a different version of the McCarthy Era- can't be trusted.

QUESTION: Did you try to reach out to people on the McCarthy era?

FLORES: When I started writing about what I had found out I was overwhelmed with hate mail, threats, libels, I actually had people who had seen my plays write that I wasn't a playwright, I was making it all up. Talk about black propaganda ops! These were people who knew I had done plays but were trying to keep people from reading what I was saying. I posted recently at a bulletin board my material on McCarthy and could not believe the attacks aimed at me. I was told I wasn't a DJ, I had never done comedy with Del Close, I had never dated celebrities, I had never worked in film and theatre, and the campaign against me for linking to the CIA website became very surrealistic. They couldn't attack the CIA admissions, so they went after the messenger. People were posting physical threats against me and the moderators didn't think that was important enough to stop. Libel, slander, everything but answering the CIA admissions.

One college professor I approached I spoke to about using the CIA files to examine how our popular and artistic culture were manipulated by the CIA to disgrace McCarthy- and was told no such class would ever be taught at his school. When I offered the CIA report to him he said he refused to read it.

QUESTION: To remind our readers, what were the revelations in the CIA files?

FLORES: There was a secret group within OSS and CIA called THE POND run by a true American hero, Jean Grombach. It's role was not discovered until decades later, when boxed CIA files were found in a barn in Virginia. The confused family that found the boxes called CIA in Langley, who carted the boxes off. Although filled with authentic CIA documents, no one at CIA knew anything about The Pond. Retired agents were contacted and the story began to emerge.

In 1942 a head of KGB Intel began feeding Grombach names of spies in our government. Which he passed on to his supervisors.

For ten years, as the names came in, from the State Department to spies in OSS and then CIA- no one actually did anything about the spies. FDR let them stay, Truman would disband OSS when Grombach convinced him it was entirely compromised, but Truman was gone after being blamed for firing Douglas McArthur- and one of my former heroes, Eisenhower, then moved to protect his beloved Army and Dulles at CIA decided to set up Joe with a fake name and cause him to lose confidence. McCarthy was right, the list of names were correct, he was the first government whistleblower and we see what they did to him. That's pretty much it.

QUESTION: Why can you read these reports and draw these conclusions, while even people involved in education don't want to hear this?

FLORES: I decided years ago that I wanted to know the true history of America, but I had no idea it would lead to a complete re-thinking of McCarthy history. I like to be proven wrong, and change my beliefs. Others clearly do not. They call it flip flopping.

I am also a Navy brat, still love Navy Intel, so I realize that most of our history is actually propaganda. Diplomacy, of which spying and secret deals are often a part of, is our real history. Comments like, that President brought us Camelot, are just propaganda. It means nothing. Sadly, historians by ignoring all the revelations coming from the UK and Germany and Russia on the 1930's through the 1960's just continue the propaganda.

We are getting ready to have a national orgy over FDR. Now, today economists all say he prolonged the depression, his New Deal was largely undone his first year in office by the Supreme Court which he then openly began to replace members of with people who agreed with him. Yet we are told by prolonging the depression he saved America from revolution. Bullshit propaganda. Easily researched. But they don't.

So FDR did nothing to stop spies in our government, he turned 200 million Europeans over to Stalin. The man in charge of security at Yalta, Alger Hiss, had been identified as an agent in 1942! Many Europeans committed suicide in front of our consulates in protest of being turned over to Stalin. We couldn't understand why they wouldn't want the free health care, or why they would rather die than be slaves! He also gave Hoover of the FBI his enemies list for Hoover to spy on about their sex lives and so forth. Long before Nixon and his enemies list. So while the FBI should have been acting on The Ponds' list, they were spying on FDR's enemies sex lives instead. Illegal break-ins and illegal wiretaps by the FBI during the FDR through the Eisenhower years also destroyed many cases against spies far worse than the Rosenberg's.

Some folks not only can't, but refuse to handle the truth!

What are we celebrating? Nostalgia. Nothing real.

QUESTION: A class on how propaganda shapes beliefs, how the CIA framed McCarthy and how our pop culture deals with those days would probably result in making it very hard to use propaganda again.

FLORES: Well I know one school they would rather teach the old CIA spin!

QUESTION:

So what are you doing with the knowledge you have?

FLORES: I'm working on a movie right now, ADOLF HITLER AGAINST THE PIRATES but I'm also working on a play based on the CIA revelations. I love spy stories that are true. Being attacked has allowed me to develop a tough exterior. I have a pretty good idea what I am in for, what I will be accused of and the like. Once I realized that when the play comes out there are those at various boards that will attack and how they will, it is going to be a slam dunk to stop them. I actually do DJ, I actually do plays, I actually have dated celebs! So when they rush out to attack- they will be easily squashed.

QUESTION: So you let them attack to build a false case against you?

FLORES: Yep. I believe those charges will come out when my play does as part of a smear campaign - but right now I'm in control of their "information".

I would have made one hell of a spy!

QUESTION: What has been the most positive thing that's happened to you over this?

FLORES: I spoke in front of The College of Complexes on this. When I arrived as things were being set up I noticed a table full of left wing and socialist lit. There were even guys going around selling their socialist papers! I thought, man am I in for it. The place filled up, two rooms full. As I gave the talk, I saw a lot of skepticism in the audiences faces. After passing around the CIA papers however, that look went away. At the end of the speech, the people you would think would have the most to lose, applauded me and punctuated their questions by saying my research was untouchable. Socialists! Pro union people! But they wanted to know the truth about the era.

QUESTION: Is ADOLF HITLER AGAINST THE PIRATES a comedy?

FLORES: Dramedy, and its based on a true story!

QUESTION: (laughter) and what is the McCarthy title?

FLORES: The working title is THE CIA VERSUS JOSEPH McCARTHY, which I took from the CIA files. They don't call it The Red Scare or the Witch-hunt Era. They know what it was!

QUESTION: I have a feeling the critics are already trying to figure out how to attack you on this!

FLORES: I do not call myself a theatre person. I am an entertainer. I market outside the theatre community, which I estimate for small and medium range theatre to be about 2000 people. If I was in theatre the critics would have nothing to fear. 6 to 8 weeks and your out. My own shows have run for 33 weeks to a year and a half, with one exception. If I did things the way theatre people did, my casts wouldn't be paid, there wouldn't be medical and psychological benefits, etc. My shows, even the hits, would close in 6 to 8 weeks. So I call myself an entertainer, and go after people who would normally go to a bar or movie than live theatre. The hundreds of theatre groups out there can fight over the 2000.

So I have made myself review proof.

QUESTION: Both these projects seem like they would attract press.

FLORES: Good. I love journalists because most of them have taken ethics classes. I have seen critics send in another person to review my plays, and put their own name on it. There was a guy at the Tribune so hated by his co-workers that the mail room would stop faxes and refuse to deliver them to him because he was so arrogant to them. I watched a woman critic laugh during an entire show I did and then write that she didn't laugh once. I have had critics from a so-called alternative paper admit they tried to be mean because they wanted a job- and the paper seems to favor slapdowns.

Very few people read small theatre reviews, but get in the fashion section or have a journalist write about you- people do read that.

There is a reason one paper in town often puts the reviews across from the obituary page.

There are theatre groups in town that tell actors I don't pay, I don't offer medical benefits, etc. I have had whole casts signatoried into SAG, have offered free legal counsel, have been covered by national and international press. Pretty soon the lies of these groups will be harder to pull off.

QUESTION; You seem like you are already in battle mode.

FLORES: Nope. Victory mode. The truth will out.

http://joemcarthytruth.blogdrive.com/

=====================



Who is Mike Flores?

Just Who Am I?
There have been some questions raised as to who I am. Well, this article appeared in the Chicago Tribune that appeared about me. So this will give you an idea.

Mike Flores puts improv technique to the acid test

By Robert K. Elder
Tribune staff reporter
May 19, 2004

If Mike Flores had a resume, which he doesn't, the "experience" portion would look something like this:

Movie director, scriptwriter, disc jockey, playwright, actor, improv comedy troupe leader, Vietnam War protester, underground journalist, hippie and founder and president of Chicago's Psychotronic Film Society.

This week, he's adding "improv dramatist" to the list with "The Acid Test 1966," a psychedelic ensemble theater piece performed by The Wrecking Crew, Flores' improv comedy troupe.

Film composer Mark Mothersbaugh, the former frontman of post-punk icons Devo, provides recorded music for Flores' loony vision, which takes its name from Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters' 1966 trip across the U.S. exposing the populace to psychedelic culture and LSD.

"I was fortunate enough to make friends years ago with an older, more mature [acid guru] Tim Leary," Mothersbaugh says. "Although my days of dropping acid had long been over, I associated the era with a lot of positive change and spontaneity. It always fit into my life in a positive way, and to create music for [Flores'] project -- it's a chance to work muscles that were already there."

From 1966 to 1967, Flores says, the whole country went through a major cultural shift. Students were protesting the war in Vietnam, "the pill" ushered in the era of free love, and politics became a powder keg sitting in the middle of many family dinner tables.

Flores, who turned his 43-week run of "Bettie Page Uncensored: The Unauthorized Story" at Lakeview's Playground Theater into an independent movie last year, says he wants to explore the significance of those few mid-'60s months.

"I'm interested in that moment when things began to change, and the versions I've seen of that moment so far [have been lacking]," he says.

"The stuff that's left over from the era really doesn't capture what happened to the people, what was on our minds and what started the ripple that would change society."

Flores' "The Acid Test 1966" revolves around a party and a sextet of youths from different walks of life. One character has run away from the home of her Navy officer father, which reflects Flores' own biography.

"All of the characters probably represent some part of me," concedes Flores, a frenetic, motor-lipped raconteur. "Many of the experiences the characters have, I had at some point."

Friction on home front

A former military brat, Flores was born in San Diego, then raised in Osaka, Japan, and Atlanta. He says he left home because of friction with his parents over Vietnam.

"I was being groomed for military school, then a second lieutenant [position] in Vietnam," he recalls.

The turning point came, he says, in 1966 when his father, a lifetime Navy man, was visited by a friend, just back from a tour of Vietnam. The visitor brought along a slideshow, Flores remembers.

"The first slide was of him on top of a pile of bodies and the second was guys with enemy ears strung around their necks," Flores says. "I think it was those slides that shook me up."

So, he left home, hitchhiked through 36 states looking like "a stalk of broccoli," rail-thin with a large Afro. He survived by writing for underground newspapers, and in 1971 got an offer from the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in Chicago to write and organize demonstrations against the war. After the SDS gig ended, Flores hung around Chicago floating from job to job, watching bootlegged Japanese animation. In 1979, friend Del Close, legendary Second City personality and founder of the ImprovOlympic, turned him on to improv.

"I also got excited by what Del was trying to do with it," Flores says. "Del's vision was the long-form improv method could be used to create shows, movies, TV shows -- and then when you have something you feel comfortable with, you keep it."

From 1979 to 1985, the pair performed as "Pope Michael Flores and Rev. Del Close" on television, radio and nightclubs, Flores says.

Close died five years ago of complications from emphysema. People still misunderstand his long-form improv methods, Flores says, which is basically using improv to create characters and plots spontaneously, then honing the end result into a cohesive narrative structure.

"Unfortunately, it got labeled as an improv exercise and no one tried to carry it to the next step," Flores says. "The Acid Test 1966" is his attempt to demonstrate Close's vision.

"I liked the idea of characters creating themselves," Flores says. "I have a skeleton of where we're going, where the dance numbers come in, but everything else is created by the actors themselves."

George Dickson, 28, plays Wild Bill in the play, host of the "acid test." He says he joined The Wrecking Crew after answering Flores' ad in the theater magazine Performink.

"He's either crazy or a genius, or maybe both," Dickson says of Flores. "He has big plans and ideas and unorthodox methods. I like the freedom that he gives you. He's the only director I've had who shows up with a 12-pack of beer."

Championing cult movies

Flores hasn't had a day job in 10 years and spends most of his time working on plays, movies and projects with the Psychotronic Film Society, which champions cult movies. An Internet enthusiast, Flores showers his cast, friends and colleagues with multiple daily e-mails about new music, politics and conspiracy theories.

Starlet photos and autographs, including signed glossies of Sean Connery, Johnny Carson and Kate Moss, decorate an entire wall of the Rogers Park apartment he shares with wife Kat Southerland, "Acid Test's" executive producer.

In a gravelly voice with a vague Southern accent, Flores recounts the time he dropped acid with rocker Duane Allman, the time he dated actress Kim Cattrall (a signed cast photo of "Sex and the City" hangs on the wall), the time his wife proposed to him "over hot wings at Hooters" and the tale of turning 16 in a New Mexico jail -- all stories his cast has heard, some more than once.

"He has a story for everything; he's done just about everything," says Kai Collins, 27, an Uma Thurman lookalike who plays free spirit Eve in the show.

During their first, hour-long, phone conversation, Collins remembers, "I doodle when I talk on the phone, so when we were done talking, I had about 10 pages and at the bottom, I wrote, `This guy is totally nuts.'" Collins has since, affectionately, upgraded her assessment of Flores to "functionally insane."

Ever the non-conformist, Flores isn't moving his production into traditional venues.

"I'm moving it into nightclubs, movie houses, art galleries -- places where people don't expect to see improv anything," Flores says. "We do shows like a rock group."Part of the reason is the form of the show. There's no stage, and audiences are encouraged to mingle and interact with the characters at "the party." Non-traditional venues also have economic benefits.

"Theater people wait for the critic to show up," Flores says. "Then they hope it's a good review and they hope they can sell enough tickets to at least cover the rent. This is unacceptable for me. If I did that, I'd have to take a job."

He is convinced Chicagoans want to see something new.

"There's about 200 theaters and about 700 theater groups in Chicago and they all pretty much battle for the same 2,500 people. So they end up running for four weeks, six weeks. They spend a year developing a show, they don't have a chance of getting back any of what they've invested," Flores says. "My shows tend to run so long -- they've gone 33 weeks to a year and a half. They appeal to people who are experience-oriented. They want to experience something new, want to feel like they are involved in something exciting."

Connection to the fringe

Mothersbaugh says this passionate point of view helped draw him to the project.

"I've always been connected, through Devo, to the more interesting fringe artists, so I meet a lot of madmen and really talented visionaries," Mothersbaugh says. "I think of [Flores] as somebody who is very enthusiastic about . . . all the little bits of shrapnel that influence and make up culture."

The pair had tried to team up before, but something always got in the way, Flores says. "But when I told him I was going to basically re-create an acid trip [in the performance], his reaction was immediate. He volunteered to do the music."

Flores wants to take the experience from "The Acid Test 1966" and create an unrelated improv indie movie. There are also plans in June to do a comedy concept CD with The Wrecking Crew, produced by Joe Cassidy of local band Assassins.

"I call myself an entertainer, as opposed to being a theater person. I don't hang out at actor bars, I don't talk about the family of theater," Flores says. "I'm easy to miss in the theater community until you look in the paper and say, `Damn, that show is still running?'"

====================






Posted: Tue - September 18, 2007 at 01:30 AM            

©