Actor Edward James Olmos stands and delivers at Judson University in Elgin, Illinois

 

By Tom Siebert

Pioneering actor Edward James Olmos shared his intriguing takes on God and country, in addition to giving a well-received shout-out to Chicago’s baseball teams at the Inspirational Series of the World Leaders Forum at Judson University in Elgin on Monday night.

“Everyone knows God is a woman,” Olmos told the Christian college audience of about 400, many of whom smiled, laughed, and even clapped. “And Jesus is not white. He is from the Mediterranean.”

The Miami Vice and Stand and Deliver star did not shy away from another taboo topic, politics, saying that the United States is deeply divided over the false claim that President Joe Biden was not duly elected in November 2020.

“When the civil war comes, it will pass, so just go inside like you did during the pandemic­­––get some food and watch Battlestar Gallactica,” he joked, referring to the rebooted television series in which he played Commander William Adama from 2003 to 2009.

The charismatic actor talked about the heavy subjects with a light touch. But most of his hour-long storytelling traced his life from boyhood baseball player to teenage rock singer to actor, director, and producer who shattered stereotypes of Mexican Americans in plays, movies, and TV shows.

Olmos became famous portraying El Pachuco, narrator of the musical play and later movie Zoot Suit in 1981. From 1984 to 1989, he was the somber Lieutenant Marty Castillo in the mega-hit Miami Vice, winning both an Emmy and Golden Globe for the complex role.

Also in 1989, Olmos became the first and only American-born Latino to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor, after starring in Stand and Deliver as Jaime Escalante, an East Los Angeles high school teacher who successfully taught advanced calculus to at-risk Hispanic students.

“There’s no one more important than a teacher,” Olmos told the diverse crowd of staff, students, elected officials, and community members at Judson’s Herrick Chapel.

Wearing a matching black shirt and suit, he pulled up his pant legs, only to reveal socks bearing the blue and white logo of the Los Angeles Dodgers, in whose farm system he once played. “I know that here I should be saying Chicago Cubs! White Sox!”

Olmos, 75, has long been a peace and social justice advocate. In 1988, he joined United Farm Workers leader Cesar Chavez to protest the poisonous effects of pesticides on California grape pickers and their families.

And in the aftermath of Rodney King’s brutal beating by Los Angeles police officers in 1992, Olmos took a broom to help clean up riot-ravaged neighborhoods in the South Central section of the city.

At Judson, the actor/activist lamented the lack of jobs for Latinos in Hollywood and the overall increase of prejudice toward Mexicans in America.

“The last five years have been very difficult for us,” Olmos told the hushed audience, which was well-represented by those of Hispanic heritage. “We have to do better.”

Later joining host Jacqueline Ruiz and Olmos on the stage was Rick Najera, an award-winning sketch comedian and playwright.

Najera, a protégé of Olmos who was recovering from his third brain surgery, was presented with the 2022 Communion Champion award for “igniting the flame of inspiration.”

The event marked the resumption of the Inspirational Series part of Judson’s globally known World Leaders Forum after a five-year break.

Previous speakers in the series have been magician Jim Munroe in 2017; Olympic gymnast champion Mary Lou Retton in 2016; and in 2015, evangelist Nick Vujicic, who was born without limbs.

From 2010 to 2021, Judson’s World Leaders Forum has featured former President George W. Bush; ex-Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice; former Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev; ex-British Prime Minister Tony Blair; former Mexican President Felipe Calderón; Her Majesty Queen Noor of Jordan; Dallas Mavericks owner and Shark Tank host Mark Cuban; author, attorney, and diplomat Caroline Kennedy; former U.S. Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich; ex-Vermont Gov. Howard Dean; and actor Terrence Howard.

Located in northwest suburban Elgin since 1963, Judson University offers a Christian, liberal arts and sciences education through its Bachelor of Arts degrees for more than 60 majors, minors, graduate, and online programs, as well as certification and accelerated adult degrees. For more information, visit www.JudsonU.edu.

The World Leaders Forum funds entrepreneurship, diversity programs, and RISE scholarships for developmentally challenged students at Judson.

Following Monday night’s event, P.G. Nkalang'ango, a Judson senior from Tanzania and majoring in computer science, said he was most impressed with Olmos’s emphasis on simple disciplines, such as making one’s bed in the morning, as integral to success.

“I realized that I need more discipline in both the small things and the big things in my life,” said Nkalang'ango.

Abigail Belsan, a junior from southwest suburban Lemont who majors in architecture, enjoyed Olmos’s “lighthearted discussion.”

Asked whether she was okay with the actor’s vision of God as female, Belsan replied, "Everyone has their own beliefs."

All shook up after seeing brilliant, new, 'Elvis' musical biopic

 

By Tom Siebert

“Nothing affected me until I heard Elvis,” John Lennon once said. And Bob Dylan described hearing Presley’s voice for the first time as “like busting out of jail.”

 

I grew up in a subsequent era, however, when the “King of Rock ’n’ Roll” was widely viewed as an aging Vegas crooner who had long left the building of musical significance.

 

But as I watched director Baz Luhrmann’s epic Elvis, I was caught in a trap for 159 mesmerizing minutes, making me astonishingly aware that Presley’s life was much more triumph than tragedy.

 

In a tour de force performance, newcomer Austin Butler completely inhabits the hip-swiveling, barrier-breaking international supernova of music, movies, television, and time present.

 

Seen in dizzying flashback through the dying eyes of Presley manager Colonel Tom Parker, played by a puffy, prostheticized Tom Hanks, Elvis is more of a fast-moving montage than a movie.

 

The sweeping, frenetic film slows down just enough to depict in riveting detail Presley’s poverty-stricken beginnings in Mississippi, early rockabilly recordings, audiences of screaming girls and seething boys, mediocre-but-money-making films, dutiful Army service, stunning television comeback shows, and final glide path to drugs, womanizing, gun-wielding paranoia, and world-mourning death.

 

The movie has been praised for its overall accuracy by Elvis’s ex-wife Priscilla and daughter Lisa Marie. But screenwriters Luhrmann, Sam Bromell, Craig Pearce, and Jeremy Doner did take some dramatic license.

 

While it is true, for instance, that Presley’s sexually suggestive stage mannerisms garnered the attention of law enforcement, there is no documented evidence that Colonel Parker made a deal with the U.S. government that sent Elvis into the service in exchange for no criminal charges being filed against him.

 

What’s more, or less, no one in Elvis’s living circle can recall him hanging out with B.B. King and receiving career advice from the blues guitar great, as was imagined in the movie.

 

Besides, it would have been much more fun to fabricate Presley cavorting with Chuck Berry, who may not have invented rock ’n’ roll but certainly wrote its early narrative of teenagers, jukeboxes, malt shops, and sock hops.

 

A reincarnated Little Richard does appear in the film, portrayed eerily accurate by Alton Mason, who sings “Tutti Frutti” with all wail and glory.

 

However, it is easy to believe that Elvis was indeed profoundly affected by the assassinations of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., and U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy.

 

This would explain his dramatic shift from the good-rocking “Hound Dog” and “Heartbreak Hotel” to message songs such as “In the Ghetto” and “If I Can Dream,” the brilliant close to Presley’s NBC-TV special in December 1968 after the scrapping of a cheesy holiday medley.

 

But by far the most controversial aspect of the movie is the world’s top actor, Hanks, playing Parker as a gambling-addicted demon who exploited Elvis commercially, personally, and fatally.

 

“I made Elvis,” the colonel says near the end of the emotionally exhausting film. “But I didn’t kill him.”

 

No, he did not. And according to Parker’s biographer, Alanna Nash, there is no truth to the high-anxiety scene during which Presley fires his manipulative manager during a concert at the International Hotel in Las Vegas.

 

There is no question, however, that Parker’s 50 percent cut of Elvis’s earnings, coupled with the rigorous performing schedule that the manager demanded, played an integral part in Presley’s rise and fall.

 

But the singer’s electrifying voice––as well as his ingenious blending of blues, gospel, and country music––would have eventually changed the course of culture, even without the help of a conniving carnival barker.

 

When the 42-year-old entertainer died of heart failure at his Graceland mansion in Memphis on August 16, 1977, Elvis’s net worth was $5 million. His estate has since risen to an estimated $500 million, making him the most commercially successful solo act of all time. 

 

This movie, moreover, has already made more than $220 million, the second highest-grossing musical biopic behind 2020’s Bohemian Rhapsody, the story of Queen front man Freddie Mercury.

 

I went to see Elvis in suburban Chicago with members of my Christian singles group, a redemptive twist, considering that many churches, particularly in the South, once condemned Presley’s songs as “devil music.”

 

To paraphrase Dylan, the times they have a-changed. And Elvis is perhaps the biggest reason.