There is no good way to put this. My longtime friend, Howard Zinn, died yesterday, January 27 in Santa Monica. He suffered a heart attack. It started out a sad day in my world. It's the first anniversary of my mother's death, at the same age as Howard, 87. I am too numb to write much at the moment. ... I will say Howard inspired many, myself included, as a historian, activist, an avid participant in the world, someone who never let his optimism fail, despite the shitstorms that kept on coming down around us. Howard and I occasionally went to Red Sox games, the last time in September against the Blue Jays. He was having trouble walking, pain in his legs and back and had to stop several times walking to the cab stand. But did I think something like this was imminent? No. Inevitable? Of course. Eventually. Not today.

I suppose one of the prouder moments of my life was introducing Howard and Billy Bragg back in the late '80s. It was at a concert at Tufts University. Howard was not a rocker - but he was fascinated by what Bragg was bringing to his college-age fans, the politics and the passion. When they met after the show, Billy was beside himself. He was meeting his hero. And he had been reading Howard's seminal book, "A People's History of the US" on his tour bus.  I can't write much more now. I will repost a version of what I wrote in November about "The People Speak." Howard was Jewish, but not a theist. He did not believe in an afterlife. I tend to share this belief, but I truly hope we are wrong.

Howad Zinn's long-in-the-making documentary, "The People Speak," which features actors voicing real people's thoughts from Zinn's alternate-take history books, will finally hit the world, Dec. 13 at 8 p.m. on History. But there will is a Boston screening of the film on Monday Nov.23,  at Emerson's Semel Theater. Local bonus: The History version is 90-minutes and the Emerson screening will be a two-hour version. I recently saw a half-hour clip at BU's Tsai Performance Center, and it's impressive, stirring. 

In 2007, I went to a couple of the readings for the film at the Cutler Majestic Theatre. I was at the press conference that followed. One of the actors, Viggo Mortensen - you can see him soon in "The Road" - bristled slightly because I asked if there was any trepidation participating in a “radical” version of American history. “Not radical,” he said. “I’d say ‘the truth.’’’
    Zinn, B.U. professor emeritus, calls it “history that’s different from the history books people had in school. The point of view was of people who’d gotten into trouble and had to fight back, dissidents and troublemakers of all kinds – the people who have given us the freedom of democracy we have.” He’s referring to both “A People’s History of the United States,’’ which sold its millionth copy five years ago, and its offshoot “Voices of A People’s History of the United States,” which he co-authored. The latter uses letters, poems, songs and the like from both the famous (Ali, MLK, Thoreau, Twain) and obscure (union organizers, workers, soldiers).

At the Cutler, they filmed Mortensen, David Strathairn, Danny Glover, Marisa Tomei, Josh Brolin and many more taking on those roles. Brolin read a particularly wrenching passage from Dalton Trumbo’s “Johnny Got His Gun.” Mortensen sang Dylan’s “Masters of War,” a capella, and John Legend performed Nina Simone’s “Mississippi Goddamn” and Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Goin’ On.”
  The project was hatched ten years ago by Zinn pals Matt Damon and Ben Affleck with Chris Moore (of “American Pie”). They met when Moore co-produced “Good Will Hunting.” This, Moore said, was them “trying to bring this to a bigger audience, ‘cause we’re the Hollywood guys.”
  After the Boston readings, they continued to shoot and the film has music from Bruce Springsteen, Eddie Vedder, Bob Dylan, Pink and more. The film will have a life following the Boston screenings with another seven stops at college campuses. At the BU screening, Zinn, Straithairn and Moore spoke and took questions. Moore said that this film was a starting point, that they'd be calling back the actors that helped them on this one for sequels. (They've already got scads of out-takes.) Moore told a funny story, too, about Matt Damon and Morgan Freeman. Damon got Freeman interested in the project and Freeman agreed to do a reading in an L.A. studio. What Damon didn't tell him was that it was going to be filmed. Moore asked him if he wanted to go to make-up and Freeman didn't know why: He thought he wouldn't be on camera and was prepared jsut to read a piece by Frederick Douglass. Moore gave him an out, but Freeman took a breath, took some time, got into charater - and nailed it.