Six-ShooterLessons:The 12 Clint Eastwoods Project.

Six-ShooterLessons:The 12 Clint Eastwoods Project.a part of FUGERE (A Series of Olympiadic Events)

a project by haig aivazian

1992 . 2008 2009 . 2012

Six-Shooter Lessons: The 12 Clint Eastwoods Project

a part of FUGERE (A Series of Olympiadic Events)

Six-Shooter Lessons: The 12 Clint Eastwoods Project is a multi-layered narrative structure in the form of a lecture performance, examining the first American basketball team of professionals allowed to participate in the Olympics. This occurred due to a ruling by the International Basketball Federation (FIBA) prior

to the first post-Soviet games of Barcelona in 1992.

Barack Obama was elected to the office of the American Presidency in 2008. Days prior to the first performance of this work, a 30,000 troop surge in Afghanistan was announced as part of the Obama administration's military shift away from the Iraq

war.

This work covers the period spanning from 1992 until 2008, from the “Dream Team” at the Barcelona Olympics to the so-called “Redeem Team” in Beijing.

The lecture was performed in 2009 on 3 occasions, in front of small university audiences in Chicago and

Minnesota.

4 Years Later.

4 years: an Olympiadic cycle and a presidential term.

In recent times of social upheaval and political reshuffling, 2012 is a little bit reminiscent of some of the changes following the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 90’s, when borders became momentarily fluid, when new flags came about and

when old flags came to represent a people anew.

The United States was experiencing an economic recession back then, when Bill Clinton was elected president in 1992, preventing George H. W. Bush from a coveted second term. Clinton’s leadership role in the economic recovery of the country cemented his place as one of the more popular presidents in U.S history.

Since the initial presentations of Six-Shooter Lessons..., the original Dream Team has been inducted into the Hall of Fame. On the other hand, a new American team swept the competition in the London Games in 2012. Some experts have speculated that the greatness of this latest Team USA may, for the first time since 1992,

surpass that of the original Barcelona group.

American troops have completed their withdrawal from Iraq, leaving behind the largest diplomatic compound in the world, as well as a country whose social, economic, political and security fabrics are in

shambles.

President Barack Obama is up for re-election in a bitterly disputed campaign. While Bill Clinton has lent his support, popularity and oratory skills to the president, the opposing candidate has made use of

another popular figure to rally support.

During the Republican party’s Convention, legendary Hollywood actor Clint Eastwood made a surprise appearance. Using a chair as a placeholder, he gave a lengthy improvised speech, in which he pretended to

converse with an invisible Barack Obama.

Eastwood ended his speech in call and response style, quoting a catch phrase from one of his most popular movies entitled Sudden Impact, from the Dirty Harry series. “I’ll start it, you finish it” he said to his listeners: “Go ahead...” he began, pointing to the audience with both indexe fingers. The crowd completed the sen-

tence in unison: “Make my day!”

Scottie Pippen (F) Chris Paul (G)

Christian Laettner (F) Russel Westbrook (G)

Patrick Ewing (C) Deron Williams (G)

David Robinson (C) James Harden (G)

Karl Malone (F)

Andre Iguodala (F)

Charles Barkley (F)Kobe Bryant (G)

Michael Jordan (G)

Larry Bird (F)

Chris Mullin (G)

John Stockton (G)

Clyde Drexler (G)

Carmelo Anthony (F)

Tyson Chandler (C) Kevin Love (F)

Kevin Durant (G)

Lebron James (F)

Blake Griffin (F)injured prior to the

beginning of Games and replaced by rookie

Anthony Davis (F)

Earvin (Magic) Johnson (G)

Six-ShooterLessons:The 12 Clint Eastwoods Project.a part of FUGERE (A Series of Olympiadic Events)

I

1992: Barcelona, the World and the Dream Team.

The 1992 Olympic Games were historic for many reasons. Held in Barcelona Spain, the Games took place in what truly felt like a transitional time for the world.

Barcelona was the host to the twenty-fifth Olympiad, and as the first games to take place after the three quarter century long Soviet era, more nations than ever before were participating that year.

Among these new nations so to speak, was a unified German team, as well as the three Baltic states of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania. The

remainder of the ex-Soviet states had formed what was called the Unified Team and had entered the competition as one (though they each had individual placards during the inaugural and closing ceremonies).

Adjacent to the Soviet collapse was that of Yugoslavia. The atrocities that were to be witnessed by the region were only at their beginning stages: Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia-Herzegovina all participated as independent States.

The Federation Republic of Yugoslavia had been formed

that same year by the union of Serbia and Macedonia. This union was viewed as the aggressive element within that conflict and was therefore barred from participating.

South Africa was a participant again after being boycotted by the international community for many years due to the Apartheid regime.

Though the elections that were to bring Mandela to power had not yet taken place, F.W De Klerk had already launched the negotiations to try and

initiate a smooth transition into a post- Apartheid South Africa.

Beyond the timing of the games coinciding with a complex series of shifts in global geo-political paradigms, Barcelona was also significant within the context of the Olympic institution’s own history.

For the first time, professionals from the United States were allowed to participate in the basketball competition thanks to a policy change by FIBA (the International Basketball Federation) in 1989.

This decision would effectively change the face of international basketball as it gave room to the creation of what is often talked about as the best Olympic team in the history of the games: that team was the Dream Team. It included the following 11 basketball legends:

Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Charles Barkley, Patrick Ewing, David Robinson, Scottie Pippen, John Stockton, Karl Malone, Clyde Drexler and Chris Mullin. The team also included a University player named Christian Laettner.

II

Charles Barkley, Herlander Coimbra and the Angolan Spear.

“I don’t know much about Angola, but Angola is in trouble,” said Charles Barkley prior to team USA taking on Angola as their opening game on the international stage.

Indeed, the Dream Team pummeled the Angolans by a score of 116 to 48. But this was not sufficient for Barkley. Harvey Araton of the

New York Times described Angolan forward Herlander Coimbra as “a 174-pound economics student from a third-world, war-torn nation … the skinniest player on the […] team”.

Far from being the skinniest member of his team, the 250 pound Barkley fed his elbow to Coimbra’s chest, after the

Angolan had accidentally hit him on the head while reaching to grab a rebound under the basket.

After the end of the game, Coimbra was still confused as to why Barkley, a player that he idolized would “make violence on” him.

Barkley on the other hand was very clear about the codes of conduct governing such incidents: “Someone hits me, I’m going to hit them back,” he said “even if it does look like they haven’t eaten in a few days. It’s a ghetto thing. You

wouldn’t understand”.

“He could have pulled a spear on me!”he continued, jokingly trying to justify his seemingly misplaced aggression.

Barkley must have mistaken Coimbra for a Kenyan

or perhaps a Lesothoan

But the Angolan flag does not have a spear on it: what it has is a machete, which is meant to symbolize agriculture and self-defense. Had Coimbra been armed, it would have been to either defend himself, or feed himself: neither of which he was apparently able to achieve.

After the game, Herlander Coimbra went over to his aggressor to ask that he take a picture with him, The American, as a way to make amends for his ugly gesture, accepted. That photo was no doubt shown off to friends on many occasions upon Coimbra’s return to Luanda.

III

Michael Jordan and the 12 Clint Eastwoods.

12 days after that first game against Angola, The Dream Team, living up to all expectations, took the gold with a 117-85 win over Croatia. They had cruised through the Olympics unchallenged.

The Dream Team members were the superstars of the game, the superstars of Barcelona. Coach Chuck Daly had not had to call a single time-out throughout the competition.

Reflecting on his experience: “ It was like traveling with 12 rock stars.” He said, “That’s all I can compare it to”.

Michael Jordan however, could compare it to something else.

On the podium, the national pride and happiness on the gleaming faces of the Gold medalists was clear. Some players even came onto the podium draped in American flags.

After the ceremony, it soon emerges that those players were in fact acting in accordance with their franchise deals.

While Reebok had secured the contract for the entire Team USA attire, players such as Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley and John Stockton had to honor their contracts with Nike, and used the American flags as a way to veil the logos on their stars

and stripes tracksuits:

Clint Eastwood had just released Unforgiven that year, but Michael Jordan was referring to the Dirty Harry Eastwood: the one “you don’t assign… to murder cases, [and whom] you just cut loose”.

Directed by Don Siegel, Dirty Harry was released in 1971. In the film, Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood) “a San Francisco cop with little regard for rules, but

who always gets results” repeats the same monologue (with negligible variations) in the face of two different criminals.

The first monologue is in the face of a wounded bank robber at the beginning of the film.

It is said a second time near the end of the film, and in a considerably angrier tone, to “The Scorpio Killer”: the

main villain, whom Callahan spends most of the movie chasing after. The monologue was an instant hit and is possibly among the most quoted lines in Cinema:

“The lesson to be learned,” said Michael Jordan, “is that if you hire 12 Clint Eastwoods to do a job then don’t ask what bullets they have in their

guns.”

“I know what you’re thinking punk. You’re thinking did he fire 6 shots or only 5? Now to tell you the truth I forgot myself in all this excitement. But being this is a 44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world and will blow your head clean off, you’ve got to ask yourself a question: “Do I feel lucky?” (long pause) Well

do you punk?”

“I know what you’re thinking. Did he fire 6 shots or only 5? Well to tell you the truth in all this excitment, I kind of lost track myself. But being that this is a 44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world and would blow your head clean off, you’ve got to ask yourself a question: “Do I feel lucky?” (pause) Well do

you punk?”

Perhaps what Michael Jordan meant with this seemingly misplaced cinematic lesson, was that, if you hire players of a certain caliber to achieve a goal, you do not ask about the means.

Perhaps he was also suggesting that it was naïve for the world to think that by opening up the Olympics to

superstars of this kind that these sorts of contractual absurdities would not come up.

Indeed the Dream Team was not unlike Harry Callahan in this instance, they had little regard for so-called Olympic values, but they certainly got the job done.

In fact Nike could have very well lent its “Just Do It” slogan to the Dirty Harry Franchise had it not been conceived 17 years too late for the first film.

IV

Summer Games/War Games and Several Acts of Asking Oneself If One Feels Lucky

The Dream Teamers took over Barcelona, or at least their armies of fans did. Hotel management had to beef up security to account for the onslaught and the players had to be escorted by police at every stop.

Unquestionably the most popular athletes of the games, the Dream Team presence in Barcelona was nothing short of, and often referred to in the media as, an invasion.

Just five days prior to the Summer Games’ Gold Medal Ceremony, games of a different variety were taking place: War Games.2400 US troops were staging an invasion of their own: this

one a little more serious, on the Iraqi border in Kuwait.

That border had been under contention since Operation Desert Storm, which had ended the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait a year prior.

Now George Bush Senior was flexing his muscles in order to make sure that Saddam was going to comply with a recently drafted United Nations delineation, which the Iraqi leader had so far been refusing to recognize.

Perhaps it would have been a better point of reference for Jordan to use: 12 U.S soldiers instead of his Clint Eastwood lesson.

Certainly the cinematic elements would be present in such a metaphor, not dissimilar to other Eastwood classics of picturesque dusty deserts and high noon showdowns.

Then Barkley’s equating his act of violence to “a ghetto thing” would have made more sense: after all war is in large part “a ghetto thing”, as recruitment quotas are generally met when the economy is bad, and the mechanisms for that recruitment heavily target low income neighborhoods.

The troops themselves, however, would have probably identified with Dirty Harry: 2400 Clint Eastwoods on a mission, addressing Saddam Hussein and telling him to ask himself one question: “Do I

feel lucky?”

In this scenario, Saddam in the instance of the First Gulf War, would play the role of the injured bank robber at the beginning of the film. He is the guy that tests Callahan but stops short of the full face off.

After initially feeling lucky enough to challenge the might of the US, Saddam’s answer to the question, “Do I feel lucky?” produces a negative response.

The Iraqi leader stops just short of the full challenge and the potential of an all-out invasion.

His generals are instructed to fold, and the Americanceasefire terms are formally accepted on March 3rd 1991

If Desert Storm was the bank robbery scene, then Operation Iraqi Freedom twelve years later would be the face off at the end of the film with the Scorpio Killer.

However, unlike in the film, the bad guy here does not change: it is still Saddam. George Bush Junior however, has now taken on the role of Callahan from his father.

Saddam felt lucky like the Scorpio Killer who reaches for his gun to find that there was indeed a 6th bullet left in Callahan’s Magnum 44.

Like Scorpio, Saddam paid the price. His head was not taken “clean off” like Barzan al Tikriti’s, but he paid the price.

In this final scene, Callahan’s elusive 6th bullet is lodged in the Scorpio Killer’s heart. It stops the madman’s seemingly incomprehensible killing spree, dropping his fresh corpse down from a platform of wooden planks and into a body of water, his head grotesquely floating out

in a halo of blood

V

Befriending the Oppo-sition/ Another kind of Feeling Lucky.

Herlander Coimbra’s photograph with Charles Barkley was not the only instance of players wanting to be pictured with the legendary Dream Team.

In fact, during that same game, another Angolan player would repeatedly signal to his teammate on the bench to take a picture of him guarding Magic Johnson.

The opponents of the American team felt a sense of privilege simply being in their presence, even when they were being beaten with humiliating scores.

Simple gestures: a smile, a handshake could take on monumental importance for some.

After the gold medal game, Dino Radja and Toni Kukoc of Croatia were ecstatic at the extra attention they received from their idols. Radja was given Barkley’s jersey, while Kukoc was given an affectionate rub on the head by Magic Johnson as an acknowledgment of his good performance in the game.

Both of these players would make it to the NBA the next year: Radja with the Boston Celtics and Kukoc with the

Chicago Bulls. They were both feeling lucky, in their own way.

In 2003, Iraqis must have had that same feeling, though in a manner very different from Saddam.

In April of that year, embedded CNN cameraman Greg Danilenko described how Iraqi men, women and children who were initially cautious upon seeing US tanks enter into Najaf, would later chant around the troops and shake their hands.

Like many others in all of Iraq, some even took pictures with them. Pictures that they probably showed their friends at first, but later decided it would probably be best to keep away from the public eye, as insurgents began targeting those who sympathized with

the invaders.

George W. Bush had clearly announced in his Oval Office address on the 19th of March 2003, that the goal of the Shock and Awe campaign was “to disarm Iraq, to free its people, and to rid the world of a grave danger.”

Upon the capture of Saddam on the 14th of December of the next year, Bush again addressed the Iraqi people: the ones that “took the side of Freedom.”

“Our goals are the same as your goals” he said, “sovereignty for your

country, dignity for your great culture and for every Iraqi citizen, the opportunity for a better life”.

General Patraeus spoke of tangible progress within the efforts of Iraqi Security Forces, which the United States was invested in “training and equipping”.

In an op-ed piece published in the Washington Post in 2004, Patraeus wrote about that training being on track and the ISF taking on “a whole variety of security missions”.

In his progress report to defend the surge in Iraq in September 2007, Patraeus said that the Iraqis had “continued to grow and shoulder more of a load”.

It was uncertain as to when exactly the complete hand-over of security in Iraq would occur, but it was the inevitable and only exit strategy for the

United States.

VI

The Making of a Big Star, Catching Up With Old Friends.

Charles Barkley was a part of the second version of the Dream Team in the Atlanta Olympics of 1996. There he would meet Coimbra again:

“You made me a big star in my country,” said the Angolan to him. The two forwards have been friends ever since.

In Barcelona, Dream Team coach Chuck Daly reflecting on the significance of his team in international basketball said: “Finally there will come a day –I’m not saying it will happen anytime soon, mind you, but it’s inevitable that it will

happen— that they will be able to compete with us on even terms. And they’ll look back on the Dream Team as a landmark event in that process.”

The Dream Team served to improve the caliber of basketball played by the rest of the world. They taught them—sometimes using methods that were a bit harsh— how to handle themselves and to grow into better players.

And grow they did: In the 2002 World Championships the US team was eliminated by Yugoslavia with a score of

81-78 in the quarter-finals. In fact, the US finished 6th with a record of 6 wins and 3 losses.

Then, in the 2004 Olympics in Athens, the United-States was eliminated by Argentina with a score of 89-81 in the semi finals. The team, which was no longer being referred to as Dream, finished with a bronze medal.

VII

What Happened To My Teams? Redreaming USA.

At some point, though the exact time is blurry, the victorious airs of the United States lost a bit of their gloss: the photographs taken with the Dream Team have no doubt yellowed slightly from

exposure to the sun.

Or between Michael Jordan’s ascension on the podium in Barcelona and Saddam’s statue toppling from its pedestal in Baghdad. Perhaps it was somewhere between Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom, between the letters H and W, or maybe between the bank robber and the Scorpio Killer in Dirty Harry.

Perhaps the fading of the photograph began somewhere between Dream Team 1 and Team 5 (discounting three teams that did not include professionals due to labor disputes and other contractual

mishaps).

It is unclear when the slip occurred and whether it was a sudden frantic moment like the one between Muntadhar Al Zaidi throwing his first shoe and then

the second...

Or if it was a little more extended, like the moment between the release of the Nike Air Jordans #VII and # XIX.

It must have been somewhere in the lost trajectories of intersecting, invisible threats: Herlander Coimbra’s spear, Harry Callahan’s 6th bullet and Saddam Hussein’s Weapons of

Mass Destruction.

In some ways, locating the exact moment of the slip is unimportant.

If we are to apply the principles of Nike in our lives, if we are to “Just Do It”, then it is necessary to distance oneself from one’s recent mistakes.

It is necessary to create new and entirely different surges forward.

To shift attention from past blunders in order to invent new victories: to congratulate oneself anew.

On November 4th, 2008, Barack Obama was elected as the 44th President of the United States:

“If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible,” he said, “who still wonders if the dream of our founders is still alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy:

tonight is your answer”.

In August of that same year, in Beijing, the United States of America’s men’s basketball team, baptized the Redeem Team, delivered a similar message, once again claiming gold in a manner that was reminiscent of the original 12 Clint Eastwoods.

This time around however, there were no flags covering any logos and no contractual disputes to speak of: Nike had secured the contract for Team USA, and nothing was to tarnish the image of this Dream Team.

Chris Paul (G)

Carlos Boozer (F) Deron Williams (G)

Jason Kidd (G)

Kobe Bryant (G)

Carmelo Anthony (F)

Dwight Howard (C)

Michael Redd (G)

Dwyane Wade (G)

Chris Bosh (F)

Tayshaun Prince (F)

Lebron Jamesa (F)

Six-Shooter Lessons: The 12 Clint Eastwoods Project, is a part of FUGERE

(A Series of Olympiadic Events)

Documentation of the original lecture performance can be viewed at the

following link:

© 2009www.haigaivazian.com/FUGERE_SixShooterLessons.html

www.haigaivazian.com© 2012