My Friend Joseph - The Movie Extra - 1975

My Friend Joseph - The Extra
by Shale
August 2009

Back in the early '70s I had a friend, Joseph who lived with me or others in our group on occasion and who survived by doing odd jobs or creative stuff.

He got a gig as an extra on a movie shooting in New Orleans - "Hard Times" with Charles Bronson.

Of course we all went to see this movie, expecting a glimpse of Joseph on screen. I was surprised at how much screen time he got for this non-speaking part. He was mugging the camera in the bayou fight scene where Chaney (Bronson) beats the other fighter promoted by Mr. Pettibon (Edward Walshe) and gets ripped off by him. Joseph was holding the prize money for Pettibon when they refused to pay it to Speed (James Coburn).

I just got a DVD and saved some of these scenes off the monitor screen.




It is the only pic I have of Joseph - back when we were young. (I was surprised at how cute he was - but at the time I knew that). He took pix of me and Jim that I have today, as well as artistic fotos of New Orleans. He was very creative.

I have no idea where he is today or even if he is still alive.

TIME TRAVEL & TECHNOLOGY

Sometimes the impact of technology hits me when I go back into these periods of my life. When this movie came out a bunch of us in New Orleans went with Joseph to see it in theater. That was the only option back then.

There were not even mag-tape Video Home Systems at the time - we were just using 8-track audio tapes. VHS would be a couple more years.

Joseph (and I) couldn't imagine then that I would ever go "online" and "Google" Hard Times and find a "DVD" of the movie to be mailed to me in an envelope after purchasing it with my Visa card.

Or that I would play that DVD on my "personal computer" and take a digital foto "screen cap" off the monitor to post on a "Web page."

The technology at that time was still film, which we understood and which Joseph did very well. He used to make art fotos with a pinhole shoebox camera - black and white prints from paper negatives that he would hand color.

He also had a real camera and set up a little outdoor foto studio in the French Market to do portraits. He did a set for me and my partner Jim. Mine was on a bad hair day and looks like Charles Manson, but the one of Jim was very good.

Jim Hewitt by Joseph Tambor


Joseph did art fotos and documented some of the characters in the French Quarter. This one is of Eloisa Lopez a long-time regular as seen in her normal sack-cloth with crucifix and dragging her wagon to scavenge supplies.



We heard that she owned property in the run-down section of the Quarter and when she died, it went to the Catholic Church, which promptly liquidated it.

A decade later I would get my first SLR 35 mm camera and get into fotografy as an art form and to document the moments of my life. That too gave way to technology - film is history as I now take pix with a digital cam and process them myself in a foto editor.