Interview Archives - Award-Winning Writer and Graphic Designer

Artist and Activist AleXsandro Palombo Raises Awareness on Women’s Issues

dorriolds — Sat, 16 Sep 2017 19:47:59 +0000

AleXsandro Palombo, from Milan, Italy is both artist and activist. He creates art series to raise awareness on social and political issues. He takes a special interest in women’s causes. I was excited to land an exclusive interview with him after having seen his breast cancer awareness works of art. It is a series of cartoon princesses with a twist: They all have mastectomy scars. Palombo refers to his cartoony artworks as “humor chic,” and has a blog of the same name.

You’ll recognize familiar female icons in his cartoons that include Snow White, Marge Simpson, Jessica Rabbit, Wilma Flintstone and more. It was an honor to speak to this male artist who cares so much about causes that are important to women. His numerous series cover timely and controversial topics that include breast cancer, domestic violence, physical disability and anorexia. He asks his viewers to rethink and redefine our rigid notions of beauty.

He also creates illustrations that fight anti-semitism, racism, and terrorism. You can find out more about Palombo and his works of art on Facebook, Twitter and his blog.

OUR INTERVIEW

Dorri Olds: What inspired your breast cancer survivors cartoon series?

AleXsandro Palombo: Every woman is beautiful, even after a mastectomy, and women should know that. I put order to the codes of beauty. A few years ago, a colleague of mine died from breast cancer. I think you really have to invest great energy in the prevention and create more awareness. If caught early, you can win upon this disease. The acceptance of your own body mutilated by a mastectomy is one of the most devastating moments of the disease. You must be very strong to be able to react psychologically and accept the new appearance of your body. My message is one of hope and courage. I believe that we must create awareness to young people and teach health education. Breast cancer is a disease that can affect younger women, too.

©AleXsandro Palombo

What sparked your Disney princesses with disabilities series?

I had a rare form of cancer. After the surgery to remove it, parts of my own body remained paralyzed. For the last few years it has been difficult for me to move because I spend a lot of time in the hospital for rehabilitation. My best therapy for life’s illness is art. I wanted to give visibility to a problem that affects a great amount of people all over the world. It’s a message against discrimination, a message to redefine the standards of beauty.

The major industries of marketing and media impose a false perfection. Diversity is not allowed. When you are a big company like Disney, you have a great responsibility toward the children that watch and learn from the messages you launch. Including, for example, a disabled protagonist who can surely create acceptance in a world where disabled children suffer all forms of discrimination and humiliation. Disability is part of our world, but unfortunately, too many people think that it is something ugly that you have to hide.

What inspired your series on domestic abuse victims?

We live in a society where women are treated like objects. In advertising campaigns, in the fashion magazines, in the TV, there’s a continuous bombardment of this type of “women as objects,” and personally I find it humiliating. We must begin to reverse this trend. We must subvert it, because if you don’t educate people to respect women, then everything will continue to be superficial.

Have you ever seen a very normal couple walking on the street, and then with a glimpse of the women’s face, you see she is bruised? In many cases, monsters are apparently very normal people. And in too many cases, women are ashamed to ask for help. Sometimes they believe that it’s their own fault, and they feel trapped in silence, and the violence goes on undisturbed. Look at the Indian women that are fighting against male abuse. They are very courageous, and I very much admire them all.

It should be men that fight against the men who abuse women all over the world. The law must ensure that these individuals are severely punished. We must never lower our attention to this important problem. There are no women immune to the violence, even if they are strong. I want my social artwork to slap faces with reality and be an inspiration to fight violence.

What inspired your cartoons of fashion icons like Anna Wintour and Karl Lagerfeld?

I hope to convince them to ban the use of real fur because it’s a massacre that cannot be accepted by a civil and modern society.

Can you explain your #FreeGaza project?

It’s horrific that the people of Gaza are forced to live in an inhuman condition, enclosed in a fence, and that’s why I strongly condemn the Palestinian terrorists of Hamas. Their violence against the Israeli people is unacceptable.

When did you first become interested in activism?

I started to be an activist when I was 14. I was a volunteer in dogs shelters, I brought food to hundreds of dogs. Then the Red Cross. Then I volunteered in the Italian Marines for two years; I have participated in important international peacekeeping missions. I’ve seen so much despair and suffering … mine is a vocation that comes from deep inside.

Are you concerned that Disney could sue you?

No. These are the stars of our time, popular icons just like some big stars. I draw them with my language and my imagination, just like Andy Warhol did with some divas and socialites in his day. I am a contemporary artist who explores the society. The cult of celebrity is an important part of my work, but my art also focuses on the social aspects of society and fights for the right of expression, freedom and equality. I’m an activist who always faces strong and controversial issues through art with my own artistic language. I mix color, iconic cartoon characters, satirism, humor, realism and surrealism. This way, I try to entertain and make people reflect in the same time. My artworks are like a mirror, the cultural expression of the society in which we live.

Do you exhibit your artwork in the United States?

For now I prefer the Internet. That is by far the largest gallery in the world.

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Interview about The Destruction of Hillary Clinton by Susan Bordo for the Forward

dorriolds — Tue, 23 May 2017 11:44:55 +0000

Written for the Forward

How did an extraordinarily well-qualified, experienced, and admired candidate — whose victory would have been as historic as Barack Obama’s — come to be seen as a tool of the establishment, a chronic liar, and a talentless politician?

That’s the question Pulitzer Prize-nominated author Susan Bordo, Ph.D., asked and answered in her new book, “The Destruction of Hillary Clinton” (Melville House Publishing, April 2017). Bordo, a media critic, cultural historian and feminist scholar, presents myriad reasons for Clinton’s shocking defeat. The biggest culprits included sexism, the right’s attacks on her, Russian interference in the election, and “media madness.”

Bordo told the Forward in an exclusive interview, “We’re inundated every day with sound bites — fragments of supposed breaking news. Anyone on Twitter or Facebook, or watching CNN, MSNBC or Fox News, saw this endless repetition of clickbait headlines. Phrases became stamped into brains: ‘Momentum for Bernie Sanders: Hillary Clinton likely to be charged with email crime.’”

The author also referred to “two immensely powerful assaults” on Clinton’s candidacy. One was FBI Director James Comey’s “inappropriate, inaccurate, and inflammatory interference in the general election.” Bordo was, of course, referring to Comey’s letter, made public 11 days before the election, stating that the FBI was opening a new investigation into recently discovered emails from Anthony Weiner’s laptop. By the time Comey issued his second letter to Congress, on November 6 stating that those emails did not change the FBI’s July decision that neither Clinton nor her team had committed any prosecutable offenses, it was too late.

The other huge offense, according to Bordo, happened much earlier, during the primaries. In February, we all saw Senator Bernie Sanders throw shade on Clinton, shouting to his growing millennial fan base that Clinton wasn’t a “true progressive.” He branded her “The Establishment.”

Bordo told me: At first, I’d identified with Sanders. He and I have virtually the same background. He grew up in Brooklyn. I grew up in Newark, New Jersey. Both working class Jewish families, left-leaning, secular. He sounded like one of my relatives—kind of fun, a bit exotic. I think for many young people across the country, he was like a character from a situation comedy.

His appeal to the younger generation of voters seemed to be a combination of his grandpa persona and his socialist-sounding ideals. Bordo writes that Sanders became a bigger problem in May when he referred to Clinton as “the lesser of two evils.”

“People who think if Bernie had gotten the nomination he would have been able to defeat Trump, just don’t get it,” Bordo said. “Anti-Semitism, with the power of the GOP to use that in ways to alienate people from Sanders, was just lying in wait. You even saw it creep up for Clinton although she isn’t Jewish.”

That reminded me of the sickening Trump tweet with an image of Hillary Clinton surrounded by money, with its white lettering against a red Jewish star that read, “Most Corrupt Candidate Ever.” Millions of Clinton supporters, like myself, have been left mourning what could have been while having to listen to the deafening blame heaped onto Hillary: that she ran a weak campaign.

Bordo said, “All campaigns make mistakes. It’s as though the critics were blind to the enormous character assassination that was happening to Clinton on a daily basis. On the day after Donald Trump’s inauguration, millions gathered around the world to protest his policies. A newscaster asked, ‘Where was this energy before the election?’”

Author Susan Bordo

Clinton lost, Bordo said, “because of a slender but critical mass of voters” who decided late for Trump — after the second Comey announcement — or voted third party or didn’t vote at all. Most were “hardworking people with little time to research facts, and trusted the morning and evening news.” That segment included “white, middle-class, suburban women who’d seen Clinton caricatured as untrustworthy, a self-centered elitist who didn’t understand the problems of ordinary people,” as well as “rust-belt men who learned from fragmentary sound-bites that Clinton was a corporate shill who had proposed putting coalminers out of business—rather than an honest candidate describing an economic reality.”

For the many of us still shell-shocked by this unrecognizable America, Bordo’s book offers a clear analysis of how a candidate who received the overwhelming majority of the popular vote, did not win the presidency.

“Until Trump actually won,” said Bordo,

many young, straight, white women may have believed that the rights they had enjoyed all their lives were somehow secure. The election woke them up, and propelled them to become a part of the resistance that Blacks, immigrants, and LGBTQ citizens were already engaged in — because they always knew safety was an illusion. If that resistance remains as diverse and committed as those first post-inauguration protests it will change the landscape of American politics.

Perhaps change has come already — since election day, according to Emily’s List, close to 13,000 Democratic women are ready to run for office and 7,000 have signed up to help them win.

Click here for more articles on the Forward.

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How to Accept a Compliment with Grace | by Wendy Toth and Power Pantsuiting

dorriolds — Mon, 01 May 2017 12:24:26 +0000

Thank you for the compliment, Wendy Toth and Power Pantsuiting. I feel honored to have been included in this great group of women.

How to Accept a Compliment with Grace

Getting a compliment is good for you. Science has proven that people perform tasks better, have improved memory, and feel happy after being complimented.

What many of us don’t know is how to accept a compliment gracefully.

If you’re getting such a nice boost, why is it so hard?

A couple of frustrating reasons have come to light in psychological circles.

Your view of yourself doesn’t line up with the compliment. Put another way, you could lack the confidence to accept the compliment comfortably.
You totally agree with the compliment, but don’t want put the other person off by seeming TOO confident.

Every human being on earth has likely felt both of these ways, depending on the subject matter of the compliment. At any given moment I feel good about some aspects of myself, and shaky about others. But either way, the compliment can cause me to feel uncomfortable!

I want that to end.

Compliments have too much going to for them to cause angst.

To help me formulate a plan for accepting compliments graciously, I reached out to a number of women I look up to, and asked for the word-for-word scripts they use to make compliment acceptance a breeze.

How to Accept a Compliment

Go Minimal

By Dr. Jessica Vogelsang, Founder of PawCurious

The more I try to respond or fill the space, the more I end up sticking my foot in my mouth.

The Script: I make a very conscientious effort to look the person in the eye, give them a heartfelt “Thank you. I really appreciate that!” and then stop talking.

Return the Favor

By: Lavanya Sunkara, Travel Writer

It’s all about reciprocity for me.

The Script: When others give me compliments, I usually say, “Thanks,” and if I have something to compliment them about, I will try to do so.

Enjoy the High

By Kaia Roman, author of The Joy Plan

I used to have a hard time receiving a compliment, always minimizing or deflecting because I felt self-conscious and undeserving. But then I learned about the physical mechanisms behind both giving and receiving compliments and I changed my ways. Compliments release dopamine in the brain, for both the giver and the receiver. And dopamine feels like a pleasure rush that is highly enjoyable!

If I didn’t let myself truly receive the compliment, I’d be missing out on this drug-free high.

Likewise, if I minimized the compliment from the giver, I’d be taking away their joy by turning an appreciative exchange into an awkward one. So now, when someone gives me a compliment, I think about the benefit they are receiving from that act of kindness and I do my best to amp up the effect so they’ll do it again for someone else. The world needs as many compliments as we can give!

The Script: “Thank you, that made my day.” or “Thank you, that was so nice of you to notice.”

I smile and let the dopamine soak in for both of us.

Go for Seconds

By Dorri Olds, Freelance Writer and Journalist

I was the youngest of three girls and was born a ham. I love attention—thrive on it really. So I’ve never been one to shy away from any limelight I can grab.

The Script: When somebody gives me a compliment I grin ear-to-ear and say, “Thank you!” I figure that’s like positive reinforcement. If their compliment is met with an enthusiastic response, then they will be more likely to compliment me again, right?

Take a Pause

By Jessica Remitz, Managing Editor, PawCulture.com

I am working on taking a beat to curb my knee-jerk “aw shucks” reaction. A friend of mine told me that she’d almost stopped complimenting other women because we’re so quick to brush them off, almost to the point of embarrassment. so I think it’s important to acknowledge to the other person on how nice a compliment is to hear—because it truly is.

The Script: I have begun looking directly at my complimenter (in a not creepy or adversarial way) and saying, “Thank you for noticing my [item of clothing/well-behaved dog/completed work project]. I appreciate you saying something, and worked hard to [find said item/raise a polite dog/go above and beyond].”

Split the Difference

By Talia Argondezzi, Director, Writing and Speaking Program at Ursinus College

In the case where accepting a compliment feels very unnatural, and almost impossible to do, it can be rude and awkward to just deny the praise you were given. Instead, take a baby step and challenge yourself by trying to split the difference. For instance, you might accept what was said, but then make a funny remark, or even self-deprecating one, but only on something you DO feel confident about.

The Script:

“I like your glasses.”

“Thank you. Like Rick Perry, I’m trying to wear my glasses more so people will think I’m smart.”

Keep It Simple

By Victoria Schade, Dog Trainer and Author

Since directly turning down a compliment can be a way of telling a person, “Nope, you’re wrong about that,” I try to accept it gracefully and then move on.

The Script: “Thank you, it’s my favorite scarf/blouse/shoes/whatever!” is an easy way to acknowledge the person’s compliment, or “That’s so kind of you to say,” or if someone compliments my writing I might respond with, “Thank you, that means a lot!”

Look Forward

By Aly Semigran, Writer and Editor

I had a recent experience with this with someone saying, “You deserve a good guy.” It was a friend I hadn’t seen in awhile and I caught them up with my most recent terrible dating experience and they told me, sincerely, “You deserve a good guy.”

The Script: I responded with, “Thank you. It’s taken me a long time to realize that.”

I didn’t bitch and moan “Oh there’s no good guys out there,” rather I acknowledged they saw something in me that’s taken me 32 years to accept. I think it’s rare to tell someone you agree with them about a positive side of yourself, but I think in this case, especially because so much time had passed, it caught us up on where I am now.

BONUS SECTION!

On Giving Compliments

By Cheyenne Gil, Body Positive Boudoir Photographer

When it comes to GIVING compliments (which I also think is a great step in your self love journey), give a compliment that you truly mean, and give it without putting yourself down in the process.

The Script: For instance, say you love someone’s hair. All you have to say is, “Wow, I love your hair! It’s beautiful,” NOT, “Wow, I love your hair! It’s so beautiful! My hair is so blah. I need to change it. But your hair is just so nice!”

Now that you know exactly what to say, check out:
How to Get a Compliment Tomorrow, The Level-Up Method

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When You Wake Up and Your YouTube Channel Has 888K Views!

dorriolds — Thu, 20 Apr 2017 10:57:19 +0000

UPDATE!!

YouTube Channel has 1.9 MILLION VIEWS!! Woooot.

When you wake up and your YouTube channel is up to 888,000 views and over a million minutes watched. Yeah, that.

www.youtube.com/DorriOlds

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Candid Interview with Rising Star Tye Sheridan

dorriolds — Fri, 25 Nov 2016 11:47:43 +0000

During Tribeca Film Festival, 2016, I interviewed “Detour” lead actor, Tye Sheridan. The 19-year-old heartthrob is a meteoric rising-star whose next role is the main character in Steven Spielberg’s “Ready Player One.”
Sheridan landed his first big break as Steve, the son to Brad Pitt’s character in Terrence Malick’s “Tree of Life.” In 2012’s “Mud,” Sheridan starred as a neglected boy opposite Matthew McConaughey. In 2013, he played the son of an alcoholic in “Joe,” co-starring with Nicolas Cage.
In “Detour,” Sheridan plays young law student Harper, whose mom is in a coma. Grief stricken and furious with his step-father, Harper gets blotto drunk and shoots his mouth off to tough-guy Johnny Ray (Emory Cohen). Big mistake!

Dorri Olds: In “Detour,” “Joe” and “Mud,” you played troubled characters so convincingly. What do you draw on to summon up that kind of anguish?
Tye Sheridan: For the most part, in these films I’ve been working on, their material is right on the page. So you just read it and get into it. You just start to live and breathe it so it all just becomes and feels natural.
DO: So much appears in your eyes. Are you accessing your own emotion?
TS: Yeah, thank you.
DO: You’ve always seemed wise beyond your years. Have you had any obstacles in life?
TS: Obstacles? You mean roadblocks? Yeah, I couldn’t get into college so I had to have this film career. Now here I am, a fucking loser. [Grins]
DO: A lot of creative people are driven by pain or questions…
TS: I think [for me] it was criticism. I think it was people telling me my whole life that I couldn’t do something. I used that as fuel to propel me forward. I guess I just pursued my goals and I met the right people and they helped me get there. I’m still not there but I’m gradually taking steps in that direction.
DO: How old were you when you started acting?
TS: I grew up in the middle of nowhere in Texas. I don’t know if acting was ever something that crossed my mind so early. When I first started I was only 10- or 11-years-old so I hadn’t really had time to think about what it was I wanted to do for a career. But then it all kind of fell into my lap and I quickly, over the next few years, I really fell in love with it—the art of filmmaking. My passion started to grow rapidly and now it’s to a point where I have a deep respect for the industry and for the arts.
There is a sweetness about Sheridan and his dedication to the craft of acting came through in Tribeca Film Festival’s neo-noir thriller, “Detour.”

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20/20 Anchor Elizabeth Vargas Talks About Anxiety, Alcohol and Her Moving Memoir

dorriolds — Thu, 15 Sep 2016 10:39:00 +0000

Celebrity newscaster Elizabeth Vargas told me, “I was nearly fired from my job. My husband left me while I was in rehab, I hurt my kids tremendously, and I nearly lost my life.”

Written for The Fix

“A huge part of my alcoholism was anxiety,”20/20 anchor Elizabeth Vargas told me. “I had panic attacks since kindergarten.” During our interview and in her new book, Between Breaths: A Memoir of Panic and Addiction, the veteran newscaster was candid about almost losing everything.

Between Breaths: A Memoir of Panic and Addiction by 20/20 Anchor Elizabeth Vargas

She went to her first rehab in 2012, but denial said she only needed two weeks of treatment. It’s no surprise that didn’t work and the disease progressed. In 2014, she went to a second rehab but left prematurely. She went home and drank again. Resigned and humiliated, she returned to that second rehab. Now sober for two years, Vargas is committed to sobriety but understands we only have a daily reprieve from alcohol.

“My story is different than others I’ve heard ‘in the rooms,’” she told me. “I drank moderately for 20 years. It wasn’t until my 40s that I fell off a cliff.”

Vargas described a day in 2012 when she showed up at ABC too drunk to work. “I stepped out of the car and stumbled. That’s when I knew I was in no condition to conduct an interview. My friend took one look at me and knew.” Her first rehab was that year at Cirque Lodge in Utah. “I look back on a lot of the writing that I did,” she said. “I’m struck by the lectures and therapists there. It was a very good experience.” But after leaving the Utah rehab after only two weeks, she was not able to stay sober and her alcoholism progressed. Vargas blames a combination of factors. “Stress at work, and then being diagnosed with post-partum anxiety. My drinking was suddenly on steroids and I had huge consequences.”

“I’d had lots of brownouts,” she said, “but never a blackout.” That is until one day when she began drinking in the early afternoon after work. “The next thing I remember is waking up at four a.m. in the emergency room with zero memory of what happened. I had a blood alcohol level of .4, which is lethal. I’m told a woman saw me at Riverside Park in my work clothes and wobbling in high heels.”

Two predatory men were eyeing Vargas so the concerned passerby intervened and got the drunk newscaster home safely. But Vargas passed out in the lobby and was taken away in an ambulance. The incident scared her enough to stop drinking and she went to her second rehab.

“It was a rude awakening. I woke up in Tennessee. My husband and therapist picked that rehab. I don’t understand how anybody would’ve picked it. Even my therapist there said, ‘This is not the right place for you. I don’t know how on earth you ended up here.’ But once there, I couldn’t get out.”

In the memoir that second rehab in 2014 is referred to as The Center. But Vargas told me, “I wrote that it was in rural Tennessee so most people can figure out it’s really The Ranch. For some people I’m sure it’s a life-saving gift but it wasn’t the best place for me. Most of the patients were in their teens and twenties. We had different life experiences and different issues.”

The newscaster confided that she already suffered with guilt. “Making my shame front and center wasn’t the best way to go. I wasn’t thinking about getting better and saving my life. I was thinking, ‘How do I get home?’ I wasn’t seeing my children and was desperate to know what was going on. I feared that my husband was hiring divorce lawyers and starting to date other people.” Frantic, she left prematurely against advice and learned her suspicions were correct.

I asked if she thought drinking caused the divorce. “My husband would say it did,” she said. “It’s easy to judge him but I didn’t walk in his shoes. I don’t know what it was like to be married to an alcoholic. I’m sure it was really difficult.”

Vargas said she would die for her sons. “I love them more than anything in the world. I would do anything for my children. But I couldn’t stop drinking for them.”

I pointed out that many interviewers still don’t seem to understand alcoholism. Vargas agreed. “They don’t. Trust me. Many people have no concept that this is a disease. To tell an alcoholic to stop drinking is like telling someone born with depression to be happy….”

* * *

Vargas said, “I asked my son last night, ‘Why do you think I’m writing this book?’ He said, ‘Because you’re brave and want to help people.’ I hope people will be kind.”

She confided, “As a child, I was shy and quiet because of my tremendous anxiety.” As an “army brat,” she moved almost every year. “I was bullied mercilessly from third grade through junior high. You’d have to learn how to fit in,” she said. “A lot of times, I didn’t.”

I asked if she thinks: Yeah, well, look at me now! Vargas said, “No, you never shed those horrible feelings. My earliest memories are infused with fear.”

Tasmanian Angel Leads Hep C Sufferers to Affordable Meds

dorriolds — Fri, 15 Jul 2016 18:58:36 +0000

Written for The Fix

Australian Greg Jefferys was near death eight months ago. The exorbitant cost of HCV treatment set him on a sojourn to find generic pills. Now, he is cured and saving lives.

Dashing outdoorsman Greg Jefferys, 62, delights in kayaking, fishing, rock fossicking, and spending time with his family in Tasmania, Australia. But one year ago, he was close to death. The Fix’s Dorri Olds caught up with Jefferys via Skype to learn about this man’s odyssey.

“I was rapidly approaching cirrhosis and my doctors said I might have liver cancer,” said Jefferys. Like millions of people worldwide, his liver was being destroyed by the hepatitis C virus (HCV).

As is typical of HCV victims, Jefferys had no idea he’d had it since the mid-70s. In August 2014, he was diagnosed and told he had contracted it when shooting drugs.

“I left home at 16,” he told me, “and was happy in a kind of crazy way. I was a mixed-up kid living on the streets and couch surfing. I drifted from the hippie culture into the drug culture and became a casual heroin user for a year. Then, for the next year, I became seriously addicted, but I quit cold turkey after seeing a few friends OD.”

HCV is a global epidemic. An estimated 200 million people across the globe have the disease—that’s 3.3% of the population—including 3 to 5 million in the U.S., many of whom don’t know they have it. Seventy-five percent of those with HCV infection in the United States were born between 1945 and 1965. The largest group is those who shared needles when they shot drugs. Statistically, as many people are infected with HCV as are with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Without large-scale efforts to contain the spread of HCV and treat infected populations, the death rate from HCV will surpass that of AIDS by the end of this century and will only get worse.

For every 100 people infected with HCV without treatment, 75 to 85 will develop chronic infection, 60 to 70 will develop chronic liver disease, 5 to 20 will develop cirrhosis, and 1 to 5 will die of cirrhosis or liver cancer. HCV is also the most common reason for liver transplants.

Gilead Sciences, known best for its HIV/AIDS treatments, is now the leader in HCV drugs—Sovaldi (sofosbuvir) and Harvoni (ledipasvir and sofosbuvir)—which can cure nearly all patients within 2 to 3 months. The obstacle is the grossly inflated price tag. Sovaldi costs $1,000 per pill, and Harvoni costs $1,125. According to the Wall Street Journal, the sales total for Harvoni and Sovaldi reached $19.14 billion in 2015. For comparison’s sake, it took Pfizer’s blockbuster medicine Lipitor nine years before it reached its record-breaking sales of $12.9 billion.

When Jefferys was diagnosed in August 2014, he knew he could never afford the drugs he needed to cure his HCV. Three months of pills would’ve cost him close to USD$100,000. That’s when he began an exhaustive Internet search for an alternative. He finally found it in India, where the generic Indian Harvoni for the entire 12-week treatment cost the equivalent of USD$1,350—only slightly more than the cost of one single pill here in America.

Jefferys said, “Gilead has licensed four major Indian pharmaceutical manufacturers to make and distribute licensed generic versions of Harvoni. The four licensed manufacturers are Cipla, Mylan, Natco Pharma, and Hetero, and all their products are chemically identical.”

In 2015, Jefferys flew from Australia to Chennai, India. He purchased the generic meds and underwent his 12-week treatment there. Within 11 days, his liver functions returned to normal, and within four weeks, no virus was detected in his blood. The trip and treatment cost him less than $4,000.

I’ve dubbed Jefferys the Tasmanian Angel because after he learned where to find affordable lifesaving meds for his HCV, he reached out to help others. I asked Jefferys if he got the idea for helping HCV sufferers access generic pills from the movie Dallas Buyers Club. That’s when the Australian’s warm grin filled my monitor for the first time. “I watched the Dallas Buyers Club after I first started doing this. Watching it did give me a few good ideas.”

Unlike Ron Woodroof (Matthew McConaughey’s character in the film), however, Jefferys is not motivated by money. “When I first started helping people to access affordable hep C medicines,” said Jefferys, “I never thought it would become a full-time occupation. But it has. I don’t want to profit from people’s sickness, though. There is enough of that going on already.”

Jefferys continued, “When I started, I didn’t think it would become such a big thing, so I did everything for free. When it started to take up so much of my time, I told people, ‘Look, if you can afford to give me a small amount of my time, that would be very much appreciated, but if you can’t, that’s okay, too.’

“Now, if I handle a transaction from beginning to end where someone says, ‘I want you to do everything for me. I’ll send you the money. You send it to your contact. You organize all the documents.’ In that case, I say, ‘I’ll charge a fee for that, but if you can’t afford the fee, then you don’t have to pay it.’”

He told me about a woman he’s currently helping. “She’s from Serbia, and her mother has hepatitis C. I’m organizing everything for her and doing that at below my cost. In Serbia, the income is about $50 dollars a week. I don’t want to make any money on that transaction.”

What about the legalities? Jefferys said, “It is perfectly legal to go to another country, buy generic drugs, and bring them home. Things get blurry when you get generics shipped to you. If you go to China and buy a box of counterfeit Ray Bans sunglasses and bring them home to the U.S. to sell them, that’s illegal. It’s a breach of patent law. But, if you’re in the U.S. and mail-order one pair of counterfeit Ray-Bans from China and have them sent to you for your own use, that’s not illegal. It’s the same with generic drugs. It’s the difference between buying something to make a commercial profit or for personal use. I help people buy medication for their own use; I am not selling it.”

Most of his work gives people information and honest and reliable contacts in countries where they can buy generics, such as India, Bangladesh, Thailand, Australia, and Honduras.

Why hasn’t Gilead gone after Jefferys? He said, “A Gilead insider told me that when I first started doing this, Gilead got advice from a ‘crisis manager’ who told them that if they went after me, it would just generate bad publicity for them and make a martyr out of me so. They have just decided to leave me alone.”

And it’s great that they did. Jefferys has gotten so involved in this issue that he was invited to the prestigious annual conference of the European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL). Jefferys said, “It’s been nearly a year since I was sitting on a plane flying over central Australia on my way to Chennai in India to find generic sofosbuvir. So much has changed since then. A year ago, my body was wracked with the hepatitis C virus.”

His eyes grew sad as he relived his ordeal. “I was exhausted most of the time and spent hours in bed every day. My blood was poisoned, and even my wife was scared of accidentally coming in contact with a drop of my blood. I was scared to play with my grandson in case I infected him.”

Now, his HCV is completely gone. He can swim or walk in the mountains for hours. On April 6, he flew to Barcelona, Spain for the 2016 EASL Conference being held April 13 to 17. He shared his story to demonstrate how vital generic HCV medicines are. He was among the top liver specialists, including scientific researchers, medical experts, and advocates fighting for policy change on treating liver disease. Jefferys even co-authored a paper by Dr. James Freeman from the Department of Emergency Medicine at Royal Hobart Hospital in Australia.

Jefferys said, “I hope Dr. Freeman’s presentation made medical professionals, particularly liver specialists, aware of the importance of generics, especially the licensed Indian generic hepatitis C meds.”

Last year, Jefferys studied the 2015 EASL conference papers for up-to-date information on treating hep C. “It was a steep learning curve,” he said. “Before I was diagnosed in August 2014, I didn’t even know what hep C was.”

I asked Jefferys what he thought of Gilead’s defense: their profit margin is justifiable due to all of the time and effort put into research and development for these HCV medications. Jeffrey’s response? “That is just bullshit. They didn’t put any research into it. They bought a patent, a finished product, and they marked it way up.”

He has no problem with research companies making a profit, “but,” he said, “it has to be a fair profit.”

At the end of our interview, I said, “You must have amazing karma now after helping so many strangers.”

The Tasmanian Angel said, “It’s a privilege, isn’t it? You don’t get a chance like that often. I guess once you’re my age, you look back on your life. I’ve had a good one, so it’s a great feeling to give back.”

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Pulp, Crime and the Headlines of the New York Post | Honeysuckle Magazine

dorriolds — Thu, 31 Mar 2016 06:31:23 +0000

Written for Honeysuckle Magazine
Click Here for PDF
New York Post Wins For Best Crime Headlines
Honeysuckle Magazine can’t get enough of the New York Post crime section. We’re lured in by the gallows humor and titillated by their tasty recipe of bloody, punny headlines and a fascination with the noir side of life. Our journalist Dorri Olds took a long, strange trip inside the Post’s scene of scribes who pen the trademark headlines and those who tell the dark tales of killers, liars and nutsos.
Jamie Schram has worked for the Post for 22 years. He began as a copy boy fetching coffee for editors but worked his way up. When the paper was short-staffed he was sent out to cover stories. He was assigned to the police bureau in lower Manhattan inside police headquarters where he shared space with journos from other outlets including Daily News, New York Times and Associated Press. Schram was promoted to police bureau chief and spent years at that gig, before moving to his current position, covering federal law enforcement in New York and Washington, DC.
Dorri Olds: Do you have direct contact with criminals?
Jamie Schram: Sure. I’ve spent many years interviewing serial killers—David Berkowitz, Richard Ramirez and I spent two years talking with Charles Manson over the phone. I’ve spoken to plenty of high profile and low profile serial killers.
Have you become desensitized to crime or do you have nightmares?
I’ve been doing this for sixteen years, and prior to that I was a crime reporter on the streets. Over time, you become desensitized, particularly here in New York, because, back in the day, there were a lot more murders, and crime. I’m originally from Jersey but came to New York in 1989. From ’89 to ’93, we had so many homicides. We’re not going through a crack epidemic like we did back then. In 1990, we had 2,245 homicides. This past year, we had 350, so you’re talking about a lot less murders, and overall, crime in general is down. Assaults and rapes and grand larcenies, everything is down.
Why do you think that is?
There are three factors: better police enforcement these days; a lot of bad guys from the ’80s and ’90s are dead or in prison; and New York is so expensive to live in now that lower income people have been pushed out of the city.
During your time off, do you read true crime books and watch cop shows?
I do. My favorite book is “Helter Skelter.” I read it as a kid, and that put the hook in me. I just finished a true crime book “Monster of Florence.” A very interesting read.
I love Ann Rule books. My favorite is “The Stranger Beside Me.”
Oh right, about Ted Bundy. Rule has a lot of fans and she’s done very well in her career.
What is your favorite part of the job?
I really enjoy the reporting aspect, especially when there’s a big story that involves a prominent individual who’s run afoul of the law, or has overdosed on drugs, in a nice section of Manhattan. I know that the paper is going to want every little detail about that crime or O.D. It pushes you to really tap into your sources and report the story better than your competitors. That has always been the inspiration.
Do you negotiate exclusives with the police department?
No, it’s mainly who you know. If you cover a beat for years, you’re going to know a lot of people. As you get to know them, they begin to trust you and give you the stories.

* * *
Deb Pines is an award-winning New York Post headline writer on the mostly-men’s team called the Copy Desk, where headlines for all sections are written. She’s also the author of a mystery series beginning with “In the Shadow of Death: A Chautauqua Murder Mystery.” Post Copy Chief Barry Gross assigns headlines to Pines and her coworkers. Writers are given specs of a story—length, dimensions and headline width. Then, at breakneck speed, they’re tasked with writing brilliant headers, making the stories fit and handing it all in on time to Gross.
Dorri Olds: Are there parameters for how far you can go with a racy title?
Deb Pines: We walk a fine line between humor and bad taste. With the tragic crime stories we try to be respectful but we make light of stupid criminal stories. You know, the guy who can’t shoot straight, or leaves his credit card behind, or snaps a selfie on a stolen phone, steals a car and gets caught.
Can you name some of your favorite headlines?
My best headline was about the Jet Blue pilot who had a mental breakdown. The concerned copilot locked him out of the cockpit and the passengers restrained him. A picture of him restrained was sent to the Post and I wrote for the front page, “This is Your Captain Freaking.”
In Times Square people are dressed as characters from Sesame street or Disney movies, and some are really just there to aggressively panhandle the tourists. When somebody dressed in a Cookie Monster costume menaced tourists and was accused of hitting a woman, I called him the “Crooky Monster.” In another I called Joan Rivers the “Joan of Snark.” I called supermodel Naomi Campbell “Striking Beauty” because she hits people. She has a pattern of striking her staff, throwing cell phones at them, knocking them around.
Then there was a controversy about a hotel on the Highline. Supposedly the hotel was encouraging people to take off their clothes and perform sex acts in front of the windows. Tourists were hanging out under the windows trying to catch pictures so I called it the “Eyeful Tower.”
Do you enjoy the dark humor?
Yes, being a tabloid we’re different from a more buttoned down broadsheet newspaper that treats things more soberly. We like to make light of things and give attitude because that’s who we are. When a terrorist was killed we wrote, “Rest in Pieces.” And we’re famous for, “Headless Body in Topless Bar.”
I like the whimsical headlines. The harsher or sexist ones maybe I’m less involved with because I’m the woman on staff. I did like “Deleter of the Free World” for Hillary’s email controversy and I loved when Pope Benedict stepped aside and we wrote, “Pope Gives God Two Weeks’ Notice.”
The Post is briefed when we’ve pushed the envelope. For example, Chinese groups picketed us when we wrote “Wok This Way.”
Those are hilarious.
This will probably get me in trouble, quoting me on this. But I didn’t think the “Wok This Way” was a major offense. We make light of all kinds of people, the same as late night television does. All the Anthony Wiener stuff we probably overdid, I guess, but people expected us to. If we don’t have a crude headline for the New York Post, people are disappointed. Readers expect that. We’ve had some very funny Wiener stuff and some very, you know, well, we’ve sort of gone a little too far. We got some pushback when we ran the cover, “Enjoy a Foot Long in Jail.” You can look at that as making light of prison rape or think it’s hilarious because Jared Fogle, the Subway spokesperson who pleaded guilty to paying for sex with minors, is a pedophile, the lowest of criminals.
See entire Noir issue at Honeysuckle Magazine

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Meet Laila — the Brave Woman Saving Heroin Addicts in Afghanistan

dorriolds — Fri, 02 Oct 2015 22:51:01 +0000

Excerpts from my article written for The Fix
All photos courtesy of Mirzaei Films.

Since the fall of the Taliban, the production of opium has skyrocketed. Afghanistan produces 90% of the world’s supply and 11% of the population there are addicts. Drug addiction is not recognized as a disease there and only a limited infrastructure for treatment exists.
Laila Haidari, 36, is an Afghan woman risking everything to save heroin addicts. Her older brother, Hakim, was an addict for 25 years. Laila is a former child bride, married against her will at age 12 to a much older man. She had her first child by 13 and by the end of her teen years, Laila had three children.
She wanted desperately to help her drug-addicted brother and escape her own unhappy life. At 21, Laila left her husband. It was a bold decision for an Afghan woman then living as a refugee in Iran. By leaving her husband, she was shunned by her family and her husband took her beloved children. With no rights and no help, she returned to her motherland, Afghanistan.

Filmmaker Elissa Sylvia Mirzaei, born in Pennsylvania, has lived in Afghanistan for eight years. She speaks fluent Dari and is drawn to intimate stories that reveal the complexity, beauty and tragedies of Afghanistan from an Afghan perspective. Shocked by the number of drug addicts using openly on the streets, Elissa felt helpless witnessing passersby step over the huddled and skeletal masses of dying junkies. She and her husband, Gulistan Mirzaei, founders of Mirzaei Films, met Laila in 2012 and were inspired to make their first feature-length documentary, Laila at the Bridge.

Dorri Olds: What does your film title, Laila at the Bridge, refer to?
Elissa Mirzaei: Laila Haidari is an amazing woman who courageously fled her situation and with her intense drive created a documentary about Afghan women that won awards at numerous festivals in the country. But, when Laila crossed over a notorious bridge in Kabul, known as pol-e-sokhta, which means “burned bridge,” she found her life’s true calling. She was horrified by the conditions she saw people living in by this putrid river, drug addicts injecting heroin amidst corpses. Men and women from all classes and castes and ethnic groups were suffering. Inspired by Mother Teresa, and desperate to help her addicted brother, she decided to start her own free treatment center.
The title comes from Laila’s work, which is based around the notorious bridge full of tragedy and death, but also because she offers another bridge to a new life. She sees herself as offering a lantern, leading the way down a path out of the darkness, but it’s ultimately up to the individual whether they will follow that path and stay clean. Another unique aspect of Laila’s Mother Camp is that addicts help other addicts. Those who have withdrawn and are on the road to recovery welcome new arrivals, shave their heads, wash their bodies caked in months of dirt from living under the bridge, give them hope and tell them that they’re in this together and they can get clean once and for all.

Do Laila’s “Mother Camps” provide methadone?
No, Laila’s center is a simple, low-cost operation that relies on cold-turkey withdrawal and the 12-step program. While cold-turkey withdrawal from heroin may shock us in the West, in the three years I’ve filmed the documentary about Laila, I have never seen it cause any medical problems for those in recovery. In fact, the opposite is true.
Is Laila in danger?
Yes, the world under the bridge is dangerous but not only due to the desperate addicts under the bridge, but also from the many drug dealers. By treating addicts, Laila is taking away their customers. She has been attacked on several occasions and threatened numerous times, but refuses to give up. Another huge threat is the corrupt policemen that take a cut from every dealer in exchange for not arresting them. As a woman in Afghanistan doing this work on her own, she faces many challenges but Laila is no victim. In our film, one of our intentions is to make sure that Laila never comes across as a victim, despite her hardships. She’s an incredibly strong, brave, and complex woman who is determined to change things.
My husband and I have had some risky situations. Corrupt policemen who became aware of our frequent presence at the bridge for our film have followed us. There are good policemen in Afghanistan, but even high-level government officials are involved in the drug trade. We in the West hear that it’s the Taliban who are profiting from the drug trade but we found out that’s only part of the story. The drug mafia is far more dangerous than the Taliban. One of the aims of our film is to show how complex Afghanistan is and that it’s not always clear who the enemy is. What the West understands about the Afghan people is actually very little. Our film is about a country that is broken after many wars, where every Afghan family has a scar and part of the collective trauma is addiction.

Laila and Elissa
Click here for more photos
Learn more about the Mirzaei film, Laila at the Bridge

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Dorri Olds Interview with Ray Liotta

dorriolds — Thu, 16 Jul 2015 08:30:51 +0000

“The Iceman“ is an intense, crime thriller based on the story of Richard Kuklinski, a murderer for hire who killed at 100 people and maybe more. Michael Shannon stars as Kuklinski who, unlike most hitmen, came home from “work” and enjoyed a quiet life as a loving husband to Deborah (Winona Ryder) and devoted father to their two daughters (McKaley Miller and Megan Sherrill). Kuklinski worked for the Gambino crime family, answering to Roy DeMeo played by Ray Liotta in his typical role as a really scary guy. DeMeo ponders whacking Kuklinski for his lack of loyalty but Kuklinski gets out from under DeMeo and teams up with “Mr. Freezy,” an ice cream man with a truck hiding frozen bodies (Chris Evans).
“The Iceman“ is directed by Ariel Vromen who co-wrote the script with Morgan Land. The cast includes newcomer Danny A. Abeckaser as Dino Lapron, Kuklinski’s only friend. Josh Rosenthal (David Schwimmer) plays Lapron’s. Robert Davi plays the role of Leonard Marks, Stephen Dorff plays Richard’s brother, Joey Kuklinski and James Franco does a cameo as Marty Freeman.
Ray Liotta is an interesting interview. It was candid; clearly not a canned script.
Dorri Olds: Do you think Richard Kuklinski was a sociopath?
Ray Liotta: What’s a sociopath?
Someone incapable of empathy and lacking a social conscience.
Any guys who kill for money, they chose that as their business. Mafia guys are all just insecure people who want their money. They’re like little seven-year old kids when they don’t get their way. I knew guys like that growing up in New Jersey.
Did you hang out with wiseguys?
Why would you ask me that?
Because you said you grew up with them in New Jersey.
Oh, that was in high school. I don’t think they were going around whacking people but they were hoods. Scary kids. I got chased by those guys over girls they didn’t want me with.
So what did you think of Kuklinski?
If you see the real guy, he’s way worse than Michael Shannon. He beat his wife. He put a knife in her back. Her kids corroborate the story that she was beaten a lot and in hospitals a lot. She was afraid to leave. He threatened her if she tried to leave.
Was your character, DeMeo, portrayed accurately in “Iceman”?
From what I read about DeMeo, he was a bad guy. There’s a book [For The Sins of My Father] about him by his son. He wasn’t well liked. They [Mafia guys] used him when the higher ups didn’t want to do it [murder]. He just kept begging to get made.
Do you think he was gay?
Not fucking gay. Why would you ask that?
Robert Davi alluded to it.
I think that says a lot about Robert Davi. He should stick to his character. I gotta smell Davi’s shit every time I walk into a room. [Scowls]
What did you think of David Schwimmer’s character, the killer Josh Rosenthal?
Rosenthal and DeMeo weren’t lovers. He was a Jew so he needed protection. Then DeMeo killed him. His son’s book said DeMeo got depressed after that because he was friends with Rosenthal.
There was a lot of talk about one of the press photos with you and Winona. What was that about?
I wasn’t holding her ass. I would never do that. I went to put my hand around her but in the photo it looks like I’m grabbing her ass. I got more press out of that than anything.
Was the set grim because of the dark characters you all played?
You gotta do whatever you gotta do to play a killer but no, the set wasn’t grim. It was a bunch of peacocks, Saying, “Ooh [effeminate voice] get outta my chair”
When you played Sinatra in “Rat Pack” did you feel like you things in common with him?
We’re both from New Jersey and we both say fuck, that’s what we have in common. When I played him I didn’t know his music. It was my parent’s music. The more research I did on Sinatra, the more confused I got how to play this guy. Stories about him were all different. It was much easier when I played the baseball player [Shoeless Joe Jackson in “Field of Dreams”].
What did you think of your character?
Roy [DeMeo] was crazier than all of them.
What about Chris Evans’ character “Mr. Freezy”?
He was the first to start chopping up bodies, but they were all nuts.
How do you hope people will feel when they walk out of “The Iceman”?
I want people to feel entertained. Transported to another place. I think they will. This is a really good movie.
How was it working with Brad Pitt on “Killing Them Softly”?
Brad Pitt’s a hack but I don’t know why that movie didn’t do better. This movie, “Iceman,” is better than a movie like, say, “Place in the Pines” [sic].
Why do you think you’re always cast in these dark roles?
I just made a movie with the Muppets and, no, I did not kill Miss Piggy. I kissed her. But when she started with her tongue I said, “Woah” [motions pushing her away]. This one guy, Danny Trejo, couldn’t stop talking to them. It’s like he thought they were real. [Looks down at his phone]
Are you looking for a Miss Piggy photo?
No. I’m seeing what time it is. I have to go to a movie.
As Michael Shannon was coming in Ray Liotta exaggeratedly rolled his eyes and scowled and said, “Michael Shannon? Good luck.”

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