Claremont High alum Elliot Graham has been nominated for an Oscar by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.
Wes Woods II over at the Daily Bulletin had an article about Graham's nomination and gave the film editor's background:
Graham, 32, attended Sycamore Elementary School, El Roble Intermediate School and graduated from Claremont High School in 1994. He had "a stopover at Webb" before he attended New York University and graduated in 1999.
He has lived in Los Angeles, Seattle and London since leaving Claremont....
Graham said Claremont is a special place for him.
"I think growing up in old town Claremont, on-and-off college campuses, is a unique and special experience. With its Ivy League-ish, New England setting and tree-covered campuses, it affects the area around it. You meet all sorts of people and cultures who are interested in learning and knowledge."
The Claremont Courier's Tony Krickl also wrote about Graham's nomination on his COURIER City Beat blog:
He has also been nominated for an Eddie Award by the American Cinema Editors.
Graham will be in Claremont this weekend for a friend's engagement party. We'll be sure to catch up with him for a full story to appear in the Wednesday, January 28 edition of the COURIER.
We finally got around to seeing "Milk" a few weeks ago and liked it. As a genre, bio pics tend towards weakness, perhaps because the audience knows the outcome, but "Milk" has much to recommend it. For one thing, Sean Penn's lead performance is remarkable in the way he captures the title character's essence, showing Harvey Milk's transformation and growth from a slightly awkward, closeted gay New York attorney to a leader of a political movement. Penn, who was nominated for a Best Actor award for his work, also manages to convey both the need to be loved and the charisma that so many successful politicians seem to possess.
Liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican, the film has some important lessons to offer to anyone seeking change through politics. Persistence is one of these. Harvey Milk ran for office and was defeated three times before he was finally elected to office as a San Francisco City Supervisor.
More importantly, while being a change agent may get you elected, it won't necessarily make you a good elected official. You have to actually stand for something and offer positive alternatives; and, once in office, you have to govern, which means compromising at times and dealing with your former opponents fairly - something guaranteed to rile up your base supporters. The lesson is that, while it's great fun to lob Molotov cocktails over the Establishment walls, at some point the outsider becomes the legislator and has to lead from within the constraints of a new Establishment.
As if to underscore this, one of the film's key scenes is an exchange between Milk and Art Agnos (played by Jeff Koons). The two are both candidates in the Democratic primary for a State Assembly seat and have just finished a debate. As Agnos walks over to his car, he offers a tip to Milk: “In this town, you gotta give them a reason for optimism, or you’re cooked.”
So true, but it's not just Frisco, Art. It's Anytown, Anywhere. Claremont is no different. A few years ago, enough people wanted change to vote against incumbency. Councilmembers Al Leiga and Karen Rosenthal lost their re-election bids, and Paul Held and Sandy Baldonado likely would have been defeated if they had not stepped down rather than run again.
Llewellyn Miller, Jackie McHenry, Peter Yao, and current councilmember Corey Calaycay all ran as outsiders looking to change the council's direction. Of the first three, only Yao was re-elected, and we'll have to wait until March 3rd to see if people will re-elect Calaycay.
Miller and McHenry lost their second elections, but for different reasons. Miller, who was the first African-American elected to Claremont's City Council, was elected in the wake of the Irvin Landrum shooting, but quickly seemed to be co-opted by the very forces he was elected to change. McHenry, on the other hand, never seemed to learn the Art Agnos lesson about offering optimism, and that cooked her goose. McHenry the Revolutionary didn't quite manage the transition to governance, though to be fair, she also had then-City Manager Glenn Southard and his staff working to undermine her legitimacy.
The trick, as in some many things in life, seems to be balance, and it does seem possible that our City Hall is coming a little closer to finding that sort of moderation. As we've written recently, this election feels different from any in the past eight years, and the current council, even with the often disagreeable Mayor Ellen Taylor running things, has managed to work together in a more open, cooperative way than anytime in recent memory.
There are still times when things become knockdown, drag-out fights, but whereas in the past the Council and its commissions would have railroaded their plans through the decision-making processes, opposition voices have found just a bit more representation with this council than with previous ones. We'll have to see what the voters, who have the final say, think about all this.
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