Jerry Rubin Goes Hollywood

Jerry Rubin with film director Faddoul.
                                                                photo by Abe Shelton

Tony Morris
Special to the Mirror
  
   One of three graduate students in cinema at USC who were awarded $4,000 and the necessary equipment to produce a short film, Merva Faddoul, who is 23 and a native of Biblos, Lebanon, chose to do her film about Jerry Rubin.
   The Rubin Method, which she wrote and directed, depicts the trials, tribulations and accomplishments of Rubin, a longtime fixture on the Third Street Promenade and City Council candidate in the fall election.
   Rubin, who turned 60 in December, legally changed his name to Jerry Peace Activist Rubin earlier this year and is at pains to explain that he is not related to the late ‘60s activist Jerry Rubin. He says he has been an activist for 25 years.
   In chronicling Rubin’s life, Faddoul takes us back to the Cold War with images of Air Force bombers and an exploding hydrogen bomb. Global annihilation was a real possibility then and it was a traumatic time for the young Rubin, who recalls his childhood fear of civil defense sirens wailing through the Philadelphia neighborhood where he grew up with his mother, father and three brothers.
   At the age of three, Rubin fell and suffered a severe blow to the head which brought on epilepsy. After years of treatment, he was “cured,” but, in the interim, he got caught up in the psychedelic drug scene and once saw a friend die from an overdose. But, unlike the “original” Jerry Rubin, the future peace activist says he “had absolutely nothing to do with stopping the Vietnam War.”
   Rubin moved to Venice on July 4, 1967. When a beautiful woman on the beach handed him a flower, he found himself “falling in love with the place…[though] I had not yet experienced or felt anything like the peace and love generation.”
   The film includes scenes of Rubin and his wife, Marissa, an art therapist at UCLA, on the Venice beach. Their wedding rings are hearts with peace symbols in the middle.
   There is also video footage of the 1986 cross country peace march in the film in which thousands of people walked 3,500 miles from the west coast to Washington D.C. It was then that Rubin first made his mark as a peace activist, delivering a mile-long peace scroll bearing thousands of signatures to the United Nations.
   The Rubin Method also includes footage of Rubin’s daily routine, beginning with his boarding a Big Blue Bus carrying the folding table on which he displays his eclectic collection of stickers and labels in the Promenade. In addition to selling buttons and stickers, he stamps peace symbols on customers’ hands, arms, faces, foreheads. When he’s accosted by the occasionally vociferous critic, he doesn’t take the bait, but just keeps on smiling.
   Over the years, Rubin has managed to attract the attention of the media regularly. Los Angeles Times’ writer Bob Pool said, “Jerry’s a publicity hound but that’s what he has to do. He doesn’t have the money for billboards and newspaper ads.”
   KPFK Radio’s Michael Benner said of Rubin, “He is there in your face with an open heart and a big grin, saying ‘come on we can do better.’”
   The Rubin Method will be presented at The Gaslite, 2030 Wilshire Boulevard, on Monday July 19, at 7 p.m. Following the screening of the 30-minute film, there will be a question and answer session with director Faddoul, film crew, and Rubin. The screening is free.