I Remember Joseph Failla

In 1973. 

[I learned yesterday that Joseph Failla, who I’ve mentioned on this blog and who contributed to Premiere’s Home Guide when I was running it in the 1990s and 2000s, died in hospital after experiencing shortness of breath. Like me, he was 62.)

I remember in seeing Night of the Living Dead with Joseph Failla on the night before Halloween, known in our town of Dumont as “Cabbage Night.” I remember Joseph’s father picking us up and driving us back home. I remember some moron kid actually trying to apply shaving cream to one of the car’s windows while it was actually moving. I remember that Joseph’s father, who was not by any yardstick a “devil may care” person, being very irritated at having to come and chauffeur us home from the movie, which had upset us into witless silence. I remember him saying “nonsense.” I remember this being maybe 1969.

I remember seeing Night of the Living Dead, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Cowboys, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, several Godzilla movies, and a million more pictures, at the Palace Theater in Bergenfield with Joseph.

I remember Joseph drawing and writing a "Peanuts" parody called "Charlie Blech." 

I remember walking with Joseph and with Mark and Aaron L. all the way from Dumont to the Stanley Warner Theater in Paramus, over roads with no sidewalks, risking death, just so we could see Dirty Harry in the spring of 1972.

I remember Joseph and I discussing our highly unrealized film projects. The anti-Vietnam film  eroM oN (read it backwards), told from the POV of a dead soldier, in reverse. Johnny Angel, based on the Shelley Fabares song, the story of the loves of a girl biker. The Ballad of somebody or other, a Peckinpah-inspired Western.

I remember getting off the phone with Joseph after we had a long and rambling conversation during which Joseph insisted that Fellini was preparing an adaptation of the comic strip Beetle Bailey. I remember after I cradled the handset my puzzled mother asked “Don’t you two ever talk about anything real?”

I remember Joseph and I creating a book together, called Canadian Alligators and Otter Things. It was a group of illustrated comical stories about a quarter of alligators who were members of the Royal Canadian Mounties. I remember many years later an uncle of mine asking why we had never done anything with the book, because we had apparently created what could have been the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles of its day. I remember saying to my uncle, “Well, we were ten.”  

I remember in eighth grade, during gym class, sitting on a bench with Joseph, as we invariably did, because after a long period of being picked last for baseball or dodgeball or what have you teams, the gym teacher decided to leave well enough alone and just exclude us from play. I remember telling Joseph that I had been invited to a party that evening (a rather extraordinary occurrence) but that I wanted to get home in time to catch Psycho on the 11 p.m. movie on some local station. I remember our gym teacher, Coach M., whose life claim to fame had been being on the 1964 Mets frm team, overhearing me and smirkingly saying, “What is it, Kenny, an all-boy party?” I remember Joseph and I then clamming up.

(I remember many years later Joseph telling me that Coach M. had died of a heart attack. “Oh well,” I said.)

I remember taking a bus home from a movie in Paramus with Joseph and telling him about a small piece I’d read in Time magazine stating that in California, a TV ad for condoms was run during a late-night slot. I remember we concocted a storyboard for a condom commercial then and there, and that later on Joseph, who was getting more and more uncomfortable writing expository prose, then making a comic strip out of the fake ad for health class. I remember many years later the both of us being flummoxed by actual condom commercials featuring “Trojan Man.”

I remember that Joseph somehow got to see Mean Streets before I did. I remember him calling me and describing its opening scene, the “home movies” and the Ronettes song “Be My Baby.” I remember him saying, “This is for me.” I remember we both had to have been 14.

I remember in his senior year in high school Joseph writing and drawing, for a class project, an elaborate comic based on Dante’s Inferno, with the nine circles of hell represented by eight class periods and then the prom. I remember that he drew me as the Virgil character.

I remember Joseph telling me about one of his instructors at the School of Visual Arts, Art Spiegelman, and of his initially appalled reaction to Spiegelman’s comic about his mother’s suicide, “Prisoner on Hell Planet.”

I remember standing on line with Joseph and with My Close Personal Friend Ron Goldberg™ at Cinema Village for a double feature of The Shining and The Killing. I remember a couple of fellows standing behind us going on about Clint Eastwood’s directorial career, talking about how with Play Misty for Me Eastwood hadn’t yet found his “water level.” I remember Joseph squinting at me and saying, in an Eastwood rasp, “What do you know about my work, punk?”

I remember being mildly irritated with Joseph for not having submitted any work for an SVA comic magazine that published student art, and which contained a ton of work by his fellow student Drew Friedman.

I remember Joseph admiring Friedman’s talent but being very disapproving of Drew’s classroom behavior, especially with respect to the instructor Harvey Kurtzman.

I remember an animated character Joseph concocted while at SVA, “The Slug,” which was, indeed, an anthropomorphic slug who smoked a cigar and made wisecracks.

I remember Joe’s graphic novella, “Ed Victory,” about a paunchy, washed-up former superhero living in a North Bergen tenement.

I remember when Joseph was a co-manager of the Stanley Theater in Jersey City, and how he once proposed to put up on the marquee: COMING FOR XMAS: TAXI ZUM KLO.

I remember Joseph working at a video store in Teaneck where one of his regular customers was the jazz guitarist George Benson, who once made a special order for Raymond Chow’s Lady Kung Fu.

I remember Joseph telling a group of friends at lunch that another customer came in requesting Henry V: Portrait of a Serial Killer.

I remember when Joseph became the manager of the laser disc section at Route 17’s Tower Video, where he quickly acquired the nickname “Laser Joe.” I remember his clientele included Ernest Dickerson and Gordon Willis, and that he became friendly with them both. He also had a couple of New York Yankees as customers.

I remember having Joseph over at the very messy studio apartment of a Manhattan girlfriend for some reason, and of him saying upon entering, “It looks like Catherine Deneuve’s place in Repulsion.”

I remember also having an intimacy mishap with that girlfriend, in which I bonked her nose with my forehead, which caused her considerable pain and swelling. I remember her being very angry with me over the course of several days and at one point saying “I’d like to grind your bones into dust.” I remember relating all this to Joseph, in great earnest. I remember Joseph then paraphrasing a Raging Bull line: “She ain’t pretty no more.”

I remember the funeral for my cousin Mark, who died of lymphoma in 2002. I remember my father showing up for the wake, which I had not expected, as he had been self-estranged from this side of the family since the early 1980s. I remember he spoke to me with a seriousness that was unfamiliar to me and that he said, “I can’t imagine anything worse than for a parent to lose a child.” I remember my father perking up when Joseph appeared. I remember my father asking him “So do you still get to spend time with Herman here,” using a nickname for me that he concocted after I had a sudden growth spurt at age twelve, a nickname my dad knew that Joseph would be the only person in the room to get. I remember Joe giving my dad an affectionate half-smirk and saying “We manage.”

I remember several years after the Route 17 Tower Video closed, its building was repurposed to be the gym in Burn After Reading. I remember Joseph telling me of seeing hand-painted signs with an arrow and the word “BAR” painted on them, on the north side of the highway.

I remember in one of our last phone conversations telling Joseph that I must be getting soft in my old age, because I didn’t think No Time To Die was so bad. “For me the Bond franchise ended with On Her Majesty’s Secret Service,” he said, and I could hear the shrug. I remember responding, “Man, you are hardcore.”

I remember learning recently that my cousin, Tommy Gentile, who had been so helpful with my mother’s funeral and who helped Joseph a great deal when his own mother died about a year after mine, had himself died in May of 2021, and that for whatever reason our side of the family had been kept out of the information loop on this one. I remember that I had intended to call Joseph and to say to him, “So if any of you are thinking of DYING, you should know that there’s a small change of management at Gentile Funeral Home.”

In 2020. 

Comments

[Martin]

Really lovely, Glenn. Thank you.

[EddieMarsAttack]

Very nice piece. So sorry you lost your friend.

[Marc Leland]

This saddens me.

[Nikki Busch]

Loved this, Glenn. Joe was a sweet, one-of-a-kind guy. He’ll be missed.

[Steven Uhrik]

A beautiful tribute to your friend

[Pete Apruzzese]

Thank you for this. I was friends with Joe since 1981, our last film seen together was The Irishman. I enjoyed our all too few chats, many with with you, Glenn, after a classics show at the Lafayette on Saturdays. Somewhere in my stuff I have a cartoon he drew of me, I need to find it.

[Craig Kaplan]

Incredibly moving, Glenn. Anyone would be lucky to have such a remembrance. I’m very sorry for the loss of your friend.

[Bruce Lundy]

This is lovely, thank you. Makes me want to cherish my own friends more.

[Preston]

Beautiful write up, Glenn. Condolences.

[Bria]

Shocked. I saw Joe all the time at Stop & shop in Dumont. He wasmost of myh art classes at DHS.

[Joe Scalia]

Joe was a nice and friendly person He also said hello when I with my friend on Oak St
What great person

[Vicki K]

Thank you Glenn, I so enjoyed reading this. It's brought back a lot of fond memories. I spent a lot of time with Joe after high school but lost touch with him over the years. He was a wonderfully unique person and I feel sad that I hadn't seen him in so long.

[Glenn Kenny]

Thanks for your words, Vicki. I believe we met at least once during those times. If you are inclined, please get in touch at the contact email for this site ([email protected]) or at [email protected] . I am trying to organize a memorial for Joseph a few months down the line and I want to make sure everyone who can participate is in the loop.

[Mark Zecca]

Hi Glenn. Thank you for this beautiful recollection and tribute to Joe. I remember the many days we all would spend together. His dry humor amused me and his incredible knowledge of films was impressive. I thought his talent as an artist was outstanding and always told him so. Even though we lost contact decades ago, I remember him fondly. Marc Leland always kept me abreast. My best to you and I am so sorry for your loss. I know you were very close friends. MARK ZECCA

[George]

Wish I had stayed in touch with my high school and college friend who shared my pop culture interests. We drifted apart in our mid-20s, when we were living in different states, and never reconnected. This was in the '80s; staying in touch was harder before email and texting.